If this is genocide....

Milosevic faces genocide charge

U.N. prosecutors opened their genocide case against Slobodan Milosevic Thursday, vowing to prove that he played a leading role in the worst crimes in Europe since World War II. The former Yugoslav president scoffed at the charge, saying his regime had helped "achieve peace, not war" in the Balkans.

[...]

Lead trial prosecutor Geoffrey Nice said the coordinated destruction of villages and systematic murder of civilians in Bosnia will be traced back to the Bosnian Serb leadership, and ultimately, Milosevic.

So if this guy committed genocide, what has Saddam done in Iraq? Where is his "arrest warrant" from this UN Tribunal? What is the difference?

“The accused intended to destroy the Bosnian Muslim population in part or in whole in order to achieve those aims,” Nice said.

Oh, I see. If a non-Muslim kills Muslims, it's genocide. If a Muslim kills Muslims, a la Saddam, it's called...what?

Signs of repression

Jan Herman, in his MSNBC blog The Juice, notes:

Here's a twist. The American Library Association has many fewer book bannings to report than ever. Last year only 20 to 25 books were dropped from school reading lists or libraries, according to The Associated Press.

And I thought Bush was running such a repressive regime....

(PS - I don't know how valid the link to Herman's column is, as there is no "permanent link." This is noted as his Sept. 25, 2002 / 10:30 a.m. ET entry.)

Goring, Goring, gone!

We begin today with Michael Kelly taking apart Al Gore for his speech before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco:

This speech, an attack on the Bush policy on Iraq, was Gore's big effort to distinguish himself from the Democratic pack in advance of another possible presidential run. It served: It distinguished Gore, now and forever, as someone who cannot be considered a responsible aspirant to power. Politics are allowed in politics, but there are limits, and there is a pale, and Gore has now shown himself to be ignorant of those limits, and he has now placed himself beyond that pale.

Then there's yesterday's Best of the Web, wherein James Taranto wonders if an android has replaced AlGore, given the change in his stance about Saddam and Iraq:

So who's this impostor, claiming to be Gore, who delivered a speech yesterday at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, in which he delivered what the Associated Press calls "a sweeping indictment of President Bush's threatened attack on Iraq, calling it a distraction from the war on terrorism that has 'squandered' international support for the United States."

It appears Saddam Hussein has unleashed a new weapon of mass distraction on America, a Gore-like android so realistic it is every bit as lifeless as the real thing.

Taranto links to previous speeches by Gore that talks directly of the US taking action to topple Saddam, and contrasts that with the Commonwealth speech where in says that would be a Very Bad Thing.

All together now: Thank god Gore lost the election.

Oh, academic freedom, where art thou?

Dahlia Lithwick gives a lesson in Free Speech 101, which does not speak well of how colleges, those bastions of higher learning, deal with "free speech":

These firings and suspensions were not initiated by the government, and consequently they don’t implicate the First Amendment. They threaten a broader democratic ideal of free speech: the long-cherished belief that words don’t hurt but censorship does. Call it patriotism or call it “academic sensitivity,” but censorship is still censorship, even when it’s invoked to shore up some gauzy dream that universities are a Technicolor rainbow of love and tolerance.

And they complain about Bush....

Neolibertarian News Portal

Ah, labor

Study Boosts Case for Flex Time

Researchers at the University of Stirling in Scotland found that employees on an annual hours contract in the United Kingdom earn a 13 percent higher hourly wage than weekly workers. The most compelling employer perk is a 50 percent reduction in overtime.

But unfortunately for Americans who get paid by the hour, this fabulous-sounding arrangement is illegal in the United States. It flies in the face of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which says only salaried workers can work on an annual hours contract.

Meanwhile, Paul Harvey reports this morning (via the radio) that a US labor union is seeking to cut costs for the construction of their new headquarters...by hiring non-union laborers. Gads, I wish I could find that story!

It was a bad choice

This link is to Yahoo's "full coverage" page of the story, with assorted links showing the history of things.

These are few people more remorseful than a mother who gets caught beating the beejeezus out of her kids. The remorse always comes after they get caught, though. This lady remained at large for over a week after the -- and let's be delicate here -- incident. TV news this morning (NBC) reported that she claimed she wasn't "on the run" or evading the police; she was just waiting for the arrest warrant.

Of course, that ignores all the news stories of "police seek mother for questioning." To heck with that, I supposed.

And of course you'd have to ignore that she died her hair after the "incident." Probably just a coincidence.

And you'd have to ignore the criminal history, though in all fairness it's for theft and fraud, not child abuse.

Still, my favorite quote is from her own lips:

"I'm being punished, there is nothing worse that could happen to me right now."

What's the punishment she's referring to? Her daughter being in protective custody, one imagines, though the story doesn't make that clear.

Er, about that recession...

Joseph Stiglitz, chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, writes:

It would be nice for us veterans of the Clinton Administration if we could simply blame mismanagement by President George W. Bush's economic team for this seemingly sudden turnaround in the economy, which coincided so closely with its taking charge. But although there has been mismanagement, and it has made matters worse, the economy was slipping into recession even before Bush took office, and the corporate scandals that are rocking America began much earlier.

Do people still blame economic problems on Bush? Well, of course! Silly!

On Wi-Fi

Wired 10.10: Being Wireless

But 802.11 systems — now available in a variety of flavors, including 802.11b, widely known as Wi-Fi — do not stop at the walls of your home. Depending on the intervening materials, a vanilla Wi-Fi can radiate more than 1,000 feet. Since I live in a high-density area, my system reaches perhaps 100 neighbors. I do not know how many use it (totally free) — frankly, I do not care. I pay a fixed fee and am happy to share.

Because further down the street, beyond the reach of my system, another neighbor has put in Wi-Fi. And another, and another. Think of a pond with one water lily, then two, then four, then many overlapping, with their stems reaching into the Internet. (Credit for the water lily analogy goes to Alessandro Ovi, technology adviser to European Commission president Romano Prodi.)

Look at the numbers: 3G, in its most generous projections, will deliver data speeds of 1 megabit per second — in two years. Today, Wi-Fi commonly provides 11 megabits, offering up to 54 megabits. Which standard do you think will be adopted?

I added a Wi-Fi access point to my home P2P LAN and everything worked right out of the box. The possibilities are liberating. I take my laptop to bed, to the garage, to the backyard...pretty much anywhere I care to work. Build a new desktop PC, add a Wi-Fi NIC, and it goes anywhere there's power. Wireless printing, etc. Meanwhile, the wireless NIC I purchased for my laptop works at school....

Back at home, I let my neighbor in and, voila, broadband for the neighborhood. That's the model Nicholas Negroponte discusses in this article. Frankly, I find it exciting.

Stating the obvious

Sasha Castel pointed out this UPI article which contains this lovely quote:

"When the Europeans demand some sort of veto over American actions, or want us to subordinate our national interest to a UN mandate, they forget that we do not think their track record is too good," a senior U.S. diplomat said recently in private. "The Europeans told us they could win the Balkans wars all on their own. Wrong. They told us that the Russians would never accept National Missile Defense. Wrong. They said the Russians would never swallow NATO enlargement. Wrong. They told us 20 years ago that détente was the way to deal with what we foolishly called the Evil Empire. Wrong again. They complain about our Farm Bill when they are the world's biggest subsidizers of their agriculture. The Europeans are not just wrong; they are also hypocrites. They are wrong on Kyoto, wrong on Arafat, wrong on Iraq -- so why should we take seriously a single word they say?"

Which reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend last week, on what would happen if (when) we go into Iraq. His contention was that we couldn't win, that we'd be stuck there for years, that "those people have been fighting for a thousand years."

Fine, said I, but bear in mind that for over a decade, no one has accurately predicted how the US military would behave in a fight. The little actions aside, such as Somalia, look at the larger actions. Gulf War of '91, everyone said we'd get creamed. Saddam's Republican Guard were combat-hardened, experienced desert fighters. Thousands of casualties, years of struggle, the futility of war!

Result: Exceptionally low Allied casualties, Iraq booted solidly out of Kuwait, all done in record time.

Now, Afghanistan: the horrid winter, the trained, experienced, hardened, etc., mountain fighters of the Taliban. They'd slaughter us in those mountains. Bloodbath. Horror! Years of continuous fighting.

Result: Taliban go bye-bye, US casualties that you can count on your hands. We will be there for years, but that's because it'll probably take a decade or so to build up an infrastructure, economy, and a new national government. Skirmishes here and there, certainly, but nothing like what was predicted.

And so it goes. When I hear descriptions of a long, bloody struggle in Iraq if (when) we attack, I am reminded of those who complained long and hard that the US military was always preparing to fight yesterday's battles, rather than tomorrow's. Then I see how we perform in actual combat, and realize that Those In Charge have taken that warning -- and lesson -- to heart. The protestors have not. In short, they have no idea how we'll hit Iraq. Neither does Saddam. And that's the key.

McGeorge

I have completed my fourth week of law school. I now completely understand the tagline for "Who's Harry Crumb": Nerves of steel. Body of iron. Brain of stone.

I am convinced that I have a brain of stone.

Contracts is relatively easy, thus avoiding the entire "Paper Chase" scenario (tagline = "You have to choose between the girl you love and the diploma you've worked for all your life. You have 30 seconds."). Unfortunately, in my world Mr. Kingsfield teaches Torts. He's much more polite and humorous, but the assault is much the same. I believe they call it the Socratic method of instruction. It feels more like the Inquisition. I swear, first time that Gatling gun of questioning was turned on me I turned into Porky Pig: "Ah bu duh blb guh."

Wonderful impression.

Ah, but it is a challenge, is it not? And at the other end I'll be rich and famous and a total puddle of goo. The only thing that cheers me up are the looks of total panic on the other 110 faces in class. Ha, I am not alone!

Miller's Crossing

All right, a confession. I have enjoyed every single Coen Brothers film I have seen, but none more so than Miller's Crossing. I found a video tape of this for sale in a grocery store around six years ago. Someone borrowed the tape and it wasn't until this weekend that my order for a replacement came in (after a two week wait; no, it doesn't take half a decade to get a copy!).

Oh my, what a joy to watch it again. Is this the Coens best film? No, I'm sure that's yet to come. But I think it's better than, say, "Fargo." I can watch it repeatedly, back to back, and not get bored. Two other Coen films are close, "Raising Arizona" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou." But both take a backseat to "Miller's Crossing." Not by much, but enough.

There is not a wasted frame. Virtually every word is important. At just under two hours, this is a lean film. Again, nothing is wasted, from the moment three ice cubes hit the glass, to a hard look from an up-tilting head it's all glory. Yet at its core it seems like such a simple plot. Sure. Much like any other Coen film.

Please, check it out. Demand a DVD, because I'm sure I'll wear out this tape before I loan it. All the other Coen films I have are on DVD, and the few I don't have are also on DVD. "Miller's Crossing," for mysterious reasons, isn't. In fact, a check of the Internet Movie Database shows that "Miller's Crossing" is the only Coen film not on DVD, damnit (except for some strange thing called "Crimewave," which I've never even heard of; ah, they only wrote that one).

Ah well, there's always next year, with "Intolerable Cruelty"!

Egads!

Mark Helprin writes that Bush 43 has failed the test of September 11:

We fought for a year to save Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein. Why will Saudi Arabia, if it is not an enemy, not allow us the same bases from which we protected it, to protect ourselves? What relationship with them, exactly, do we wish to preserve? They are used to buying whatever they need, and over many years they have bought us in many ways. Immediately after Sept. 11, they dropped oil prices. This was more than anti-invasion insurance, it was blood money...

Strong language, much of which I'm included to agree with. Someone coined the phrase, but I forget who (Instapundit? Best of Web?):
The road to Baghdad is through Riyahd.

There is no going back

Victor Davis Hanson writes of The Wages of September 11. Best of the Web noted this article, and exerpted a great quote comparing Europeans to "blinkered Hobbits." The next paragraph maintains the beat:

America learned that "moderate" Arab countries are as dangerous as hostile Islamic nations. After September 11, being a Saudi, Egyptian, or Kuwaiti means nothing special to an American -- at least not proof of being any more friendly or hostile than having Libyan, Syrian, or Lebanese citizenship. Indeed, our entire postwar policy of propping up autocracies on the triad of their anticommunism, oil, and arms purchases -- like NATO -- belongs to a pre-9/11 age of Soviet aggrandizement and petroleum monopolies. Now we learn that broadcasting state-sponsored hatred of Israel and the United States is just as deadly to our interests as scud missiles -- and as likely to come from friends as enemies. Worst-case scenarios like Iran and Afghanistan offer more long-term hope than "stable regimes" like the Saudis; governments that hate us have populations that like us -- and vice versa; the Saudi royal family, whom 5,000 American troops protect, and the Mubarak autocracy, which has snagged billions of American dollars, are as afraid of democratic reformers as they are Islamic fundamentalists. And with good reason: Islamic governments in Iran and under the Taliban were as hated by the masses as Arab secular reformers in exile in the West are praised and championed.

Good stuff.

9/11

I was going to write up something fancy, take my time, edit, cut paste, link, etc., and decided in the end to just sit and type this all spontaneously. Across the nation, people are holding memorials, rememberances, etc. My office is roughly 90% empty as most of the staff is either 1) on patrol, activated because Governor Davis has decided that California must be on a higher state of alert than the rest of the nation (after all, he might say -- has said -- "All Those Planes Were Coming Here"), and 2) they're down by the Capitol, at Sacramento's big memorial. So, it's quiet, a stark contrast to one year ago today.

One year ago, I was just waking up and clicked on the television to check weather and traffic. Only they were reporting that one of the towers of the World Trade Center was on fire. I sat up in bed and thought, No way! High-rise fires are horrific things, and it's staggering to imagine trying to fight one in so tall a building. I changed channels over to Fox News. Sure enough, there's a burning tower, waaaaay up there, too. Annette was already up and drying her hair, so I told her what was going on. She came in, watched for a bit, and went back to her morning prep work.

They were already reporting that witnesses saw a "large aircraft" hit the tower. There was some clown on with the reporter, saying how this could all be an accident, that the sun was rising, glare off the buildings, lots of traffic, blah blah BOOM!

The Fox News camera was a little too zoomed in. What I saw via this live broadcast was an enormous fireball rising up into the screen. The cameraman zoomed out and now you could see the true magnitude of what had just happened, that something had happened to the second Tower. I jumped to CNN, which in a few moments replayed what they had just recorded. Their camera hadn't been as tight on the first tower, so you could clearly see the approaching 767, watch it disappear behind the towers, see the horrific explosion, and I said out loud, "Accident my ass!"

When I was buying my morning Starbuck's mocha, the first tower fell, and it hit me hard that the world had become a different place. By the time I got to work, the second tower was gone, and not a lot of regular work got done that day. Often, the words of someone else sums up best what you feel, think, or even say. This time, I followed a link to Leonard Pitts, Jr., of the Miami Herald, who wrote:

You monster. You beast. You unspeakable bastard.

The paper says it's around 700 words in length, and stands as a better speech than most of those delivered by Our Leaders. It would be magnificent to hear it read today, rather than someone trotting out the Gettysburg Address (as appropriate as it might be).

This morning, in front of the restored Pentagon, President Bush pointed out that within a week, men and women within the damaged Pentagon planned the United States' response to attacks of 9/11. That within one year we had hit back and liberated a country from oppression. What more fitting memorial can there be? What more need be said, other than we shall continue to pursue our enemies?

This morning, during my commute, NPR cut away from the Pentagon speeches to one being given in Pennsylvania by the widow of pilot Jason Dahl, who was flying United Flight 93. She attributed to Martin Luther King the famous Nietzche quote, "That which does not destroy us makes us stronger." Maybe King said it too, but it sounded strange. Her point was dead on, though; we're not destroyed, we're stronger.

What I find incomprehensible are those who oppose our actions. Osama bin Laden, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, the entire Family Al-Saud, et al, are the oppressors of the world. They are some of the worst despots of the world...yet we're not supposed to touch them. The Ted Ralls of the world tell us that when a terrorist speaks, we should pay attention and take them at their word, yet when we do and try to act to prevent terrorists from carrying out their threats, we are evil incarnate.

Insane.

We support the only Democratic country in the Middle East (i.e., Israel), and are told that is a Bad Thing. What we need to do is support the creation of another despotic, dictatorial welfare state (i.e., Arafat's Palestine). That will make things better, not throwing out the existing despots. Eek, mustn't do that. Might destabilize the region, you know.

Insane.

I'm getting a little peeved now, so I think I'll wind down. Music of the moment is the John Williams score for "Saving Private Ryan," especially track #1, "Hymn to the Fallen," music that would be perfectly appropriate at any of the numerous memorials being held across the country and around the world. I'll leave you today with the words of Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain, from October of last year:

So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice, too. Justice not only to punish the guilty. But justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people around the world.

And I mean: freedom, not only in the narrow sense of personal liberty but in the broader sense of each individual having the economic and social freedom to develop their potential to the full. That is what community means, founded on the equal worth of all.

The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalor from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause.

This is a moment to seize. The Kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.

Today, humankind has the science and technology to destroy itself or to provide prosperity to all. Yet science can't make that choice for us. Only the moral power of a world acting as a community, can.

"By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more together than we can alone".

For those people who lost their lives on September 11 and those that mourn them; now is the time for the strength to build that community. Let that be their memorial.

Amen to that.

More on Iraq flip-flops

This keeps getting pounded on in Conservative media (notably Rush Limbaugh), and I'd love to have some pundit in the media simply ask one of these fellows: What's changed that makes Saddam less of a threat today than he was in 1998?

Democrats Supported War on Irag in 1998

Democrats are expressing reluctance and sometimes outright opposition to President Bush's plans for action against Iraq, even though they were on board with former President Clinton's plans to attack the rogue nation four years ago.

So, what changed...other than who's in the White House?

Lives spared

Water issue was Problem #1. Thus, the boy may live, thus I may live. Carpet is still wet. Ugh.

Osama speaks

With luck, he's coming to us from the grave. In any case, there's: Bin Laden tape praises hijackers - September 9, 2002

"There aren't enough words to describe how great these men were and how great their deeds were," bin Laden said in an audiotape message played Monday by the Qatar-based, Arabic-language television news network Al-Jazeera.

Just let's remember that this is what they did.

It's 1:30AM; why aren't I sleeping?

Well, because either 1) I have a serious problem with a toilet I just installed a month ago, or 2) I have a young male teen who can't close a shower curtain. One or the other. If #2, there may be mayhem when the sun rises. We've had this, er, issue before, and he tends to not tell when Things Go Wrong. Like an inch of standing water in the bathroom. Which, over the next hour or so, leeches into the hall carpet. Around ten feet of it, three feet wide, making around 30 square feet of carpet and pad. Soaked. Nice and wet. Squishy to walk on. Ick!

I'm waiting for the towels to dry. Sop up what I can, get a carpet cleaner tomorrow and s-u-c-k the water out. Hopefully before mold sets in. Should be doable, I've been in this sort of mess before.

But I want the cause to be #1, because I can turn off the water and try and figure out a cure.

If #2...damnit, I don't want to be a resident at San Quentin....

(Please, just kidding. I'd never see the inside of The Q, his mom would kill me.)

Meanwhile, the inconsistent

Color me confused (my, what a lovely shade), but I read this bit from Billy:

Former President Bill Clinton urged the Bush administration Thursday to finish the job with Osama bin Laden before taking on Iraq.

"Saddam Hussein didn't kill 3,100 people on Sept. 11," Clinton said. "Osama bin Laden did, and as far as we know he's still alive."

[...]

"I also believe we might do more good for American security in the short run at far less cost by beefing up our efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere to [flush] out the entire network," Clinton said.

Clinton said he supported President Bush's efforts in Afghanistan, including military actions and support of the Afghan government.

--ex-President Bill Clinton, 2002

...so I felt the urge to surf (as I'm sure so many others already have) and find from the Google cache, there's the Text Of Clinton Statement On Iraq - February 17, 1998:

We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information and ideas.

And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.

[...]

Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made?

Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.

And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who's really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.

[...]

Now, let me say to all of you here as all of you know the weightiest decision any president ever has to make is to send our troops into harm's way. And force can never be the first answer. But sometimes, it's the only answer.

You are the best prepared, best equipped, best trained fighting force in the world. And should it prove necessary for me to exercise the option of force, your commanders will do everything they can to protect the safety of all the men and women under their command.

No military action, however, is risk-free. I know that the people we may call upon in uniform are ready. The American people have to be ready as well.

[...]

In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.

If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.

But if we act as one, we can safeguard our interests and send a clear message to every would-be tyrant and terrorist that the international community does have the wisdom and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era. That is the future I ask you all to imagine. That is the future I ask our allies to imagine.

If we look at the past and imagine that future, we will act as one together. And we still have, God willing, a chance to find a diplomatic resolution to this, and if not, God willing, the chance to do the right thing for our children and grandchildren.

Thank you very much.

--ex-President Bill Clinton, February 1998

The actual text/article should be at CNN All Politics but it wasn't responding when I clicked the link. Meanwhile, you might also read:

Iraq Special Report

"A failure to respond could embolden Saddam to act recklessly, signaling to him that he can, with impunity, develop these weapons of mass destruction or threaten his neighbors," the president said. ". . . And it would permanently damage the credibility of the United Nations Security Council to act as a force for promoting international peace and security.

--ex-President Bill Clinton, 11/12/1998

(All emphasis mine.)

So I'm compelled to ask, aside from Bill no longer being president, what's changed? Saddam, without complying to a single UN demand, is suddenly no longer a threat? To anyone?

And for what it's worth, there were also a lot of people rabidly opposed to Clinton doing anything about Iraq.

Open your eyes....

London to host Islamic 'celebration' of Sept 11

Extremist muslim clerics will meet in London on September 11 to celebrate the anniversary of al-Qaeda's attacks on America and to launch an organisation for Islamic militants.

The conference, which will be attended by the most radical mullahs in Britain, will argue that the atrocities were justified because Muslims must defend themselves against armed aggression.

It will launch the Islamic Council of Britain (ICB), which will aim to implement sharia law in Britain and will welcome al-Qa'eda sympathisers as members.

It is not necessary to fabricate inflammatory rhetoric for Islamists (or, if you prefer, Islamofascists); they provide the best stuff themselves.

Hey, they're consistent!

After the bombing of Iraq, danger grows of a US ground assault

Washington's assertion of its right to take unilateral military action to support its global interests has further inflamed international relations. The mounting resentment of many US "allies" was indicated by Paul Quiles, former French defense minister and current chairman of the French National Assembly's defense committee. Quiles denounced the US for playing "world policeman" by attacking Iraq without UN approval. He charged that Washington was deliberately weakening the authority of the UN as part of a strategy "to turn NATO into a military organization with wider aims."

Oh, sorry, forgot the date. That's from December 1998. Seems some people are truly stuck in a rut!

Enough already?

I popped to this column on a referal from Instapundit. Jill Stewart writes:

Let me be among the too-few columnists in this self-absorbed, egocentric, materialistic, pleasure-obsessed, jingoistic country of ours to cry out into the great mindless void that no, in fact, we have not changed in the year since September 11.

Moreover, since I feel so much better getting that off my chest, let me add that I am achingly weary of seeing Americans treat the tragedy as if it outstrips every other contemporary tragedy in our world, and I am irked beyond belief that the victims of September 11 and their survivors are treated with a holy sanctity not afforded to other victims and other survivors of man's horrific actions against mankind.

She's annoyed that people are still grieving. She finds this appalling. I agree with her on the demonstrated greed of some people, but I also know that some people actually show grief that way; they want something for their loss, damnit.

But if you read the second paragraph you'll see that she's in that same "trajedy" loops that Krauthammer was writing about. Suffice to say that I agree; 9/11 wasn't a trajedy, it was an attack. The earthquake in India was a trajedy. It does not equate to what happened September, 2001.

On how to "remember" 9/11

Charles Krauthammer on Remembrance and Resolve:

But we would pay such homage had the World Trade Center and the Pentagon collapsed in an earthquake. They did not. And because they did not, more is required than mere homage and respect. Not just sorrow, but renewed anger. Not just consolation, but renewed determination. And not, God help us, "closure," that clarion call to passivity and resignation, but open-ended action against those who perpetrated Sept. 11 and those who would perpetrate the next Sept. 11.

The temptation on any anniversary is to just look back. But on Dec. 7, 1942, the country did not just look back on the sunken Arizona. It looked forward to the destruction of Japan.

He writes that we, as a nation, have a pacifist nature. Proof? It took three years for US to enter World War 1; a surprise attack drove us into WW2, which had already been raging in Europe close to two years. Consider that if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait, and if we had resisted bombing Kosovo, today we would be celebrating close to thirty years of peace (absent 9/11/01, that is).

A good read.

Clarity from Berkeley

The true explanation of September 11 has been found:

Oliver Poole reports from Berkeley, California, the counter-culture centre of America, on some offbeat analyses of what really happened on September 11.

"After Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania, they saw a craft buzzing around. Now what was that? All earth air traffic had been grounded. And in the World Trade Centre, where are all the bodies? They were transported out first to be experimented on. Listen to me now, September 11 was all caused by aliens."

But of course.

As an aside, Berkeley was where, for the first time, a, er, street resident came up to me, saw my camera, and said, "You can take my picture if you gimme five bucks."

Beware, idiots walk the Earth

As referenced by Best of the Web and mentioned on Rush Limbaugh's Open Line Friday show, Jimmy Carter speaks:

The Troubling New Face of America

Formerly admired almost universally as the preeminent champion of human rights, our country has become the foremost target of respected international organizations concerned about these basic principles of democratic life.

Hey, didn't Carter once run for President?

Oh, that's right. He was president. The USSR invaded Afghanistan, I'm sure he spoke harshly at them. Iranians rose up and overthrew a despot, and put in his place a despotic regime, which in turn abducted a group of Americans and held them hostage; Carter used strong language...oh, and tried to micro-manage a flop of a rescue mission (remember Desert One?). The country slipped into malaise and we had double-digit inflation. Jimmy, with brother Billy, just said we had to get used to the fact that we would have to make do with less. And he brokered MidEast peace plans which have, by and large, completely fallen apart; he lectures endlessly.

Oops. I guess he's just not very good at actually doing something.

So, obviously, he's the one to listen to. Uh-huh.

For those seeking immortality

French Mayor Bans Residents from Dying

LE LAVANDOU, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a French Mediterranean town, faced with a cemetery "full to bursting," has banned local residents from dying until he can find somewhere else to bury them.

Obviously, we all must move to that town. At last, government doing something useful!

The wonders of NPR

So I'm driving into work today, listening to the local National Public Radio (NPR) station. Yes, yes, I know, I should have known better, but while I detest their news coverage (for reasons that will become apparent), I like their little profile stories. Such as the one this morning about bull frogs taking over desert lands in the southwest. Fascinating stuff. Really.

In any event, at around 7:30AM I'm listening to the news. The bad part of NPR. Ugh. And they speak a reason why I detest their news. Seems someone tried to assassinate Afghanistan President Karzai (link to MS-NBC story, NPR doesn't post their stories). What's remarkable, in my mind, about the NPR report was the wording. Someone tries to shoot Karzai and "several people were injured when his American guards returned fire."

The entire tone, the entire way it was presented, was as though the only reason anyone was hurt was because those damn, vicious American lap-dog bastards defended themselves and the person they were responsible for. How freakin' dare they!

Then there was the story about that enormous car bomb found in Israel, coming out of the West Bank and headed for who knows where. The television news story I saw when I woke up said the car's driver and passenger ran away, but were caught. NPR says they got away. Which is it? Of course, this is the nature of reporting and trying to figure out who has a story that's closest to reality. CNN's story, for instance, doesn't say one way or the other.

Last (thankfully) was the NPR report on how the Arab world is opposed to the US taking any military action against Iraq, because the real problem in the region is the Palestinian issue and those evil Jews in Israel. Darn. Typical story, everything is our fault, because Israel is another one of our lap-dogs. Why do these people insist on condemning the one democratic government in the region, and giving all the despots a pass? If the Palestinians are so desperate -- and I don't doubt that they are -- why don't some of those despotic regimes kick some money? The Saudi prince who recently visited President Bush, what was his travel budget, something like $80+ million per day? (Damnit, can't find the link yet.) I bet the Palestinians could use a few days worth of the travel budget.

Ah well. Obviously, however, I need to listen to the news from somewhere other than NPR. Lovely little stories, though....

Ted Nugent to Lance Bass

Oh, the sage advice of elders:

"[Lance] Bass needs to quit worrying about going into outer space and embrace and celebrate life by learning how to kill his own food," [Ted] Nugent said Tuesday. "A slab of flesh on the back of a deer is the finest source of protein on the planet."

But Ted, can't we do both?

(And, damn, it's been too long since my last slab of venison.)

Maybe at least a pretense of impartiality

In today's Sacramento Bee, an editorial on the recently-passed state budget, at the end of which the (anonymous) author writes:

So last Saturday the Assembly ended up, as is so often the case with the two-thirds rule, passing a lowest common dominator budget, one that neither cuts spending nor raises taxes. It pretends to cut spending and pretends to raise revenue, but in fact it pushes off the crisis into next year, when the state is likely to face another shortfall of at least $15 billion.

That's a far worse result than Davis' budget proposal in May or than the budget approved by the state Senate in late June. Indeed, it's not much better than having no budget at all. But as long as California keeps the two-thirds rule, and as long as legislative Republicans regard ideological purity on taxes as more important than governing, the state can't expect much better.

So, all right, it's not a great budget. It's plain as day that the Bee is supporting their candidate for gov, namely Guv Grayout, master of the power crisis ("Honey, where'd the lights go?"); never mind that part of his "small" tax increases would have raised my automobile registration fees to nose-bleed levels...and that on my motorcycle.

But nice shot at the Republicans who stood at least attempted to stand on principle, versus The Other Side that stood by more and more spending, and "Let's buy that damn electorate!"

My state is in a handbasket, headed for a warm place.

PS - What in the hell is a "lowest common dominator budget"? I don't remember that term in public admin class.

Ugh

9/11: ‘American Idol’ seizes the day

So, apparently whoever wins the "American Idol" contest will now sing at the Lincoln Memorial during the 9/11 rememberance ceremonies next week.

This fabulous promotional stunt is the brainchild of Champions of Hope, a D.C.-based group “dedicated to improving the lives of young people” by getting them to participate in community service. Champions of Hope, looking to drum up publicity for the Sept. 11 launch of its United Day of Service campaign, secured permission to stage an event at the Lincoln Memorial and pursued the “American Idol” producers.

Aggressively.

Part of me says, "Hey, what the heck. What can it hurt?" After all, the "winner" is -- up to this point -- just another wannabe in the bunch.

On the other hand, it just reeks of a promotional during what should be a solemn rememberance (as if). And, in fact, that's what it is, given the statements by "Champions of Hope."

Still, makes me queasy.

Just Like a Pill

I may have to start listening to more Pink:

Run just as fast as I can
To the middle of nowhere
To the middle of my frustrated fears
And I swear you're just like a pill
Instead of makin' me better, you keep makin' me ill
You keep makin' me ill

From "Just Like a Pill."

Does this describe US/Europe relations?

And the survey says...

Get stuffed!

Survey: Europeans Say U.S. Partly to Blame for 9/11

Most Europeans believe America itself is partly to blame for the devastating attacks on New York and Washington last September 11.

According to a new poll, which questioned more than 9,000 Europeans and Americans about how they look at the world one year after the attacks, 55 percent of Europeans think U.S. foreign policy contributed to the tragic events.

The highest percentage of those who thought Washington should blame itself for the attacks was in France, at 63 percent, while the lowest was in Italy, at 51 percent.

This from the people who believe that the death of Diana is the most significant historical event in the last hundred years. Oh, all right, that's just a Brit survey, but see the point. These ninnies believe that the death of a gossip story queen was of greater historical significance than two world wars, or anything else.

Thus, their opinion of our "responsibility" re 9/11 is, ahem, excusable.

Warning, Horrible Joke: Microsoft will apparently name their next operating system Windows Diana, because it is superficially beautiful, actually does very little, and crashes spectacularly.

(Stop that groaning, you were warned.)

Let's talk

Because these people believe in the open and free exchange of ideas and information....

Powell Booed and Jeered at Global Environment Meeting

Jeers, boos and shouted protests interrupted Secretary of State Colin L. Powell today as he defended the United States' record on the environment and help for the poor at the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

Delegates from American and Australian environmental groups repeatedly interrupted him, shouting "Shame on Bush!" Some held up banners reading, "Betrayed by governments" and "Bush: People and Planet, Not Big Business."

It must be nice to be so smug and secure in your position that you don't and won't tolerate any dissent. Bear in mind that in this forum, Powell represented dissent, and this yahoos couldn't tolerate the notion. Lovely people, truly.

Good Morning Afghanistan

This story is just too cool:

On the Radio, Afghans Call Nation to a New Day

In a country where commuters are likely to travel by donkey cart and where many walk long distances for water, a breakfast radio show calls for something of a cultural leap.

Much like the helicopter-borne American troops who clatter across the skies in their hunt for the remnants of Qaeda and Taliban forces, "Good Morning Afghanistan" is a graft from the distant world that has intruded on life here since Sept. 11.

Yet few changes have been more popular, with city dwellers and villagers alike listening in numbers that have stunned the young crew running the program from a dusty studio in Kabul, the capital.

And one of the top radio personalities is a woman, doing a job that a short while ago probably would have gotten her brains blown out.

Remember, though, we've done nothing to improve life in Afghanistan. Uh-huh, sure.

Suddenly, a rant was seen

I could be wrong, but I think Andrea is having a rant. A jolly good one, too.

Compromises

Den Beste writes a marvelous blog entry about the necessary compromises that go into engineering projects:

Actually, there are a lot of other tradeoffs going on which are less evident, like tailoring the feature set of the project to the design team available, and making plans based on the kinds of components which are readily available. All engineering is a tradeoff.

Run any single one of those parameters to the rail and you make it impossible to complete. It's as simple as that. Define "affordable" as "free" and it can't be done. ("Paid for by someone else" isn't the same as "free".)

Define "acceptable delivery " as "five minutes from now" and you'll be disappointed. Define "safe" as "impossible for there to be any kind of failure" and the engineering process won't ever end.

He writes about the "failures" of the World Trade Center in terms of lives saved, and thus questions if they were failures at all. Consider that if the buildings had truly failed, there could have been more than 50,000 people killed. Fact is that they stood long enough for the overwhelming majority of people to evacuate.

You see symptoms of this every where. Any degree of failure is ranked as an overall failure. Unemployment is, what, around 5% right now, but it's unimportant that that means 95% of eligible people are working. 5% aren't, the system has failed!

Food for thought.

Mine eyes have seen the glory

What revolution are You?
Made by altern_active

On innovation and your cell phone

Technology Review - Push-Button Innovation

Hello? Hello? Can you hear me now? The telecom sector seems badly disconnected. Analysis reports state that over two trillion dollars’ worth of its market value has evaporated in less than 30 months. The high-flying, high-tech visionaries of the high-bandwidth future--Global Crossing, Covad, Williams, XO, Teligent, et al--have vanished into bankruptcy or liquidation. The AT&Ts, WorldComs, Qwests and Sprints, as well as their counterparts overseas, have seen their bold ambitions for growth in billion-dollar gambits such as the third-generation wireless standard turn into mad scrambles for survival. A few dishonest telco execs may even be going to jail.

There are many good reasons for this sorry state beyond corrupt accounting. Here’s one of the best: America’s telecom companies are lousy innovators. ...

Interesting reading, especially in light of that "Can you hear me now?" ad campaign tromping around. All they're doing is bragging about reception. Wee! Meanwhile, we don't even have a standard for text messaging (three standards in US, in contrast to single standards in Japan and Europe).

A Palestinian State

Mother of 7 executed as informant

It is a new form of violence not seen before, even in the Middle East. For the first time, a Palestinian woman, a widow and mother of seven, has been executed by her own people for allegedly collaborating with the Israelis. There was no trial, no appeal, no mercy.

By all means, let's support yet another despot in the Middle East. It will give an opportunity to see even more stories like these.

Thank god for environmental summits

Lobsters, caviar and brandy for MPs at summit on starvation

The sickening champagne and caviar lifestyle being enjoyed by Earth Summit delegates was exposed yesterday.

They are gorging on mountains of lobster, oysters and fillet steak at the Johannesburg conference -- aimed at ending FAMINE.

The article does a lovely job pointing out the ironies raging around the conference. Unfortunately, it only takes aim at the key western delegates, including (shock!) the US. I guess the others are just nibbling bread crumbs in sympathy with the people they oppress--er, govern.

Computers, feh!

Considering the, uh, issues we're having at work, I offer this, the Gospel of Tux.

Power to the Penguin!

Godzilla!

Is it GODZILLA?
brought to you by Quizilla

So I wish I knew what this was about, but nonetheless....

Fun in the modern age

Technology Review: How (not) to Build a Dirty Bomb

When I call Matthew Bunn, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative think tank in Washington, he says he is a little worried about this idea.

"One does not want to provide a cookbook for terrorists," he says. Nonetheless, he recommends that I try Russia.

"If I was building a dirty bomb," he says, "that's what I would do. In the nuclear age, they were building nuclear airplanes and nuclear rocket-ships. They were digging canals using nuclear bombs. There was a great deal of nuclear enthusiasm, and now loads of these big, hulking, nasty radioactive sources are scattered around all over. Those are the absolute worst. And loads are still missing in breakaway republics."

Entertaining reading, of a sorts.

A little Dr. Seuss

Received this in my email:

Dr. Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash

(Read this aloud, if you can!)

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk,
and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

Oh dear oh my....

Best Films Ever?

Dan Sallit contemplates Sight & Sound's new list of the Top Ten Films Ever. And, tada, Citizen Kane still rules!

On meeting standards

From the Washington Post, Algebra = X in One School, Y in Another, which recounts a Maryland state algebra test which had students asking: Where's the algebra?

University of Maryland mathematics associate professor Jerome Dancis called the test "pretend algebra." Montgomery County parent John Hoven, an economist, said most of the problems were what students in Singapore get in the fifth grade. Even one of the people responsible for the test, Maryland State Education Department official Gary Heath, said, "We would be the first to tell you it doesn't have a lot of algebra, nor was it intended to."

Then why call it an "algebra test" if it doesn't have algebra in it?

Pretend algebra, indeed. Explains why much of our educational system is "pretend."

A history of flight lesson

Seth Shulman, in Technology Review, writes about The Flight that Tamed the Skies. In recounting early aviation pioneers, he names:

One of them was Glenn Hammond Curtiss, who in the spring of 1910 completed a 243-kilometer public flight along the Hudson River from Albany, NY, to Manhattan. Curtiss’s feat--the first true cross-country flight in the United States--was a technological tour de force. Not only was it by far the longest flight yet attempted in the United States, but it meant traveling over unpredictable terrain with virtually unknown wind and weather hazards--quite a different matter from the fair-weather demonstration laps around airfields that characterized most of the previous flights....

Great stuff, if you're into the "pioneer days" of early aviation. Also makes the point that the person who does something first is seldom the one to actually develop a technology, to demonstrate what it's really capable of. The Wright Brothers might have proven the concept of powered flight, but Glenn Curtiss demonstrated what could be done with it.

Coming to your provider soon?

Europe to force ISPs and telcos to retain data for one year

European Union proposals on data retention would compel telecom firms to keep customer email logs, details of internet usage and phone call records for at least a year.

That's the gist of proposals leaked via civil liberties group Statewatch, which says the plans increase law enforcement powers without adequate civil liberties safeguards.

In the name of tackling "terrorism" the EU's Justice and Home Affairs Minister decided last September that law enforcement agencies needed to have access to all traffic data....

So, we (the US) aren't the only ones using this "war on terrorism" (as opposed to a war against terrorists) as an excuse for snooping hither and yon. Will wonders never cease.

Security, oh, Security!

Speaking of Jerry Pournelle, the column is Live Free Or..., and I think he's a tad annoyed, as it begins....

We continue to lurch forward to incompetent empire, with the petty tyrants in the airports demanding that we act as if we like them when they do something particularly stupid, and if we make the wrong comment, they bare their teeth and arrest us. But we were born free.

I presume the goal is to eliminate air travel entirely. ...

Like I said, I think he's...annoyed.

Is this your computer...?

I was reading Jerry Pournelle's Byte column this week, which lead to peruse this, Next-Generation Win32 exploits: fundamental API flaws. Gleeful news:

This paper presents a new generation of attacks against Microsoft Windows, and possibly other message-based windowing systems.

The flaws presented in this paper are, at the time of writing, unfixable. The only reliable solution to these attacks requires functionality that is not present in Windows...

Oh joy, oh rapture. Well, at least Microsoft does publish The Ten Immutable Laws of Security.

Greenpeace, liars!

The Daily Telegraph reports that Melting glacier 'false alarm', referring to a "warning" issued by Greenpeace. The original "alert" apparently showed a picture of a retreating glacier, blamed it all on man-made global warning:

"The blame can be put squarely on human activity," Greenpeace said. "Our addiction to fossil fuels releases millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and this is what is causing temperatures to rise and our future to melt before our eyes."

And lo and behold, they're full of it!

But Prof Ole Humlum, a leading glaciologist in Svalbard, 500 miles north of Norway, said yesterday: "That glacier had already disappeared in the early 1920s as a result of a perfectly natural rise in temperature that had nothing to do with man-made global warming."

The article describes the earlier Greenpeace statement as "misleading at best." Misleading? How about flat out full of **it?

And how come this story isn't getting press time in the US (least that I've seen)?

Up, up, and away...

Specialists put space elevator on fast track

The message from the First International Space Elevator Conference, held here Aug. 12-13, is that the concept is an idea whose time has come … well, almost. World-class specialists in diverse fields -- from materials science, bridge-building and aerospace technology to law, business and financing -- contend the project is on the up-and-up.

“This is a vertical railroad,” said Brad Edwards, co-founder of HighLift Systems, a privately held, Seattle-based firm established this year.

As Robert Heinlein is quoted as saying, "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere."

Let us rewrite history

While perusing old mail, I read in last week's (!) Best of the Web a little piece referring to this article in ArabNews, so I had to go read for myself. (Eek, such a habit.) And I read:

Suddenly you notice that all these exotic and diverse places have one thing in common, they were bombed by Brits and Yankees. These guys sure get around. Today we bomb Afghanistan, tomorrow the rest, or whatever they sing in the Air Force. The reasons vary. They had bombed China for the stubborn Chinese did not want to buy their opium, Colombia, for they were selling drugs, Russians and Vietnamese, for being Commies, Cambodians, for being there, Germans and French, for offending Jews, Iraqis, for hard cash and Sudanese by mistake.

What were the "exotic and diverse places"?

Marseille, Brittany, Oriente, Milan, Naples, Shanghai, Archangel, Berlin, Hamburg, the passes of Hindukush, Tokyo, Baghdad, Manila, Havana....

Egads, for the most part he's recounting Allied targets of Nazi occupation during World War II. Bombing China because they didn't want to buy "our" opium? The stuff grows best in that neck of the woods, so why would we sell it to them? I suppose I don't understand the reference, shame on me.

But the rest, what nonsense. It's as though they were never military targets, just places that "offended Jews" wanted annihilated.

I should be thanksful, I should. You couldn't make up better stuff than this.

Good point about Sudan, though....

Tech rolls on

Salon.com Technology | The media titans still don't get it

You'd think that, in summer 2002, with the red ink of a thousand bankrupt dot-coms still bleeding across the stock charts, everyone could agree on what happened to the Internet. Big money poured in; a few got rich, many lost their shirts. Trend became gold rush became bubble. Pop -- end of story. Now, everyone, back to work!

That, at any rate, is how much of the commercial media world views the Internet saga. New technology thing came along. Couldn't figure it out. Seemed important. Threw a lot of money at it. Down a hole. It's over now, thank God.

And that would be the story's end, if it weren't for one stubborn fact that refuses to vanish....

A review of a pair of books covering a volatile period in tech growth.

So this began when...?

Paul Roberts reviews the book "Buy, Lie and Sell High", whick attempts to figure out what happened to the stock market, and why all these CEO's just flat out lied.

In his new book," Buy, Lie and Sell High: How Investors Lost Out on Enron and the Internet Bubble," D. Quinn Mills sets out to analyze what happened. A professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and the author of a number of books on the high-tech industry, Mills argues that the bubble in Internet and technology-related stocks that developed in the U.S. and international stock markets during the late 1990s was evidence, not of the "irrational exuberance" of ordinary investors, but of a complete ethical collapse on the part of major investment banks, brokerage houses and even the Federal Reserve.

The 90's? I thought Bush was the root of all evil in the corporate world?

Signs

After a brief pause....

We saw "Signs" this last weekend. Excellent, if not perfect, film. I think we've found the heir apparent for Hitchcock; M. Night Shyamalan gets my vote right now. Harry probably sums it up best. (I especially love Quentin Tarantino's desire to film a Godzilla flick, and the kind of film he'd like it to be.)

Shyamalan has a consistent theme in his films to date, namely one of redemption mixed with recovery of faith. This is rather blatant in "Signs," which is all right since that's precisely what the film is about. All the crop circles, apprehension, aliens, etc., are all window dressing for Mel Gibson's loss of faith...and whether he'll recover it or not.

The science fiction fan/writer in me asks a ton of questions, but it gets told to shut up since the point of view of this film wouldn't have the answers, maybe wouldn't even ask the questions.

About the only persistent problem(s) I have involve weapons and their use. Namely, are there really farms in Pennsylvania without a gun in the house? And...throughout the film, no one seems to fight back; they just crawl deeper into their rabbit holes, waiting to be found. Odd and rather annoying.

Still, all in all, great little thrill ride, with at least one or two scenes that should make you jump. Go see!

The beat goes on (and on)

Palestinians approve Israeli plan

As top Palestinian officials headed for talks in Washington, the Palestinian Cabinet on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to an Israeli proposal that troops withdraw from some Palestinian areas in exchange for a Palestinian crackdown on militants there.

Which is pretty much what Israel has been demanding all along, isn't it?

The story itself is full of interesting, er, twists. Such as the caption for the lead photo:

Palestinian police rush through the streets of Gaza with a casket in preparation for a body after incursions into Gaza by the Israeli army Wednesday.

"In preparation"? You mean they're rushing to where they anticipate a death? Is this sloppy writing, or what?

Further in, MS-NBC has picked up the Reuters beat.

Meantime, at least five Palestinians were killed Wednesday as Israel pursued its military crackdown on several fronts.

Wow, death toll rising. Wait! Next paragraph:

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, troops arrested Yehiyeh Daamseh, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia and an explosives expert accused of dispatching several suicide bombers to Israel. In a March attack attributed to Daamseh, 11 Israelis were killed in Jerusalem.

Ah, so he's more than just a casual casualty (so to speak). And he's not a terrorist, a member of a terrorist organization, no no; he's a member of a militia! Ah, of course.

In a second raid Wednesday, Israeli troops killed Ziad Daas, a local leader of the Al Aqsa militia in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Daas had been wanted by Israel for alleged involvement in the execution-style killing of two Israeli restaurant owners in Tulkarem in December 2000.

So #2 is also just a local militia dude. At best, however, he's a wanted murderer, but we know the nature of his group, don't we?

The remaining three on this list are a "bystander" during the Daas shoot-out. Silly man, but regretable nonetheless. There's also "a third person" killed during this, and that's the only way they're described.

#4 is Hamas leader Hussam Hamdan, previously mentioned in the Reuters story. I thought he died before Wednesday?

#5 is a policeman, killed by a stray bullet while he slept. That's truly sad, really, no sarcasm, no snide tone. However, is this the same policeman of the Reuters story?

Confused reporting, at best.

Through a spinning world

So, since I was already at Reuters, I thought I'd check the headlines, and lo and behold read that the "militant" designation, rather than "terrorist," continues, but with even greater fervor. For instance, the headline reads:

Israeli Forces Kill Five Palestinians

...and the story begins:

Israeli forces killed at least six Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip Wednesday, but both sides drew closer to agreement on an Israeli plan to ease a military clampdown in occupied areas.

Now, when a lot of web sites (such as Yahoo!) picks up Reuters (or AP, or whoever), they often only print the headline and the first paragraph. You have to click the link to read the entire story. So, a quick scan of web "headlines" would read that those vicious bastards, the Israelis, and just killing Palestinians again.

But, ah ha, keep reading:

Israeli undercover soldiers on a "roundup of wanted terrorists" killed four militants and wounded another three in an exchange of fire with gunmen holed up in a building in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, an Israeli military spokesman said.

Well, they don't seem so innocent any more, despite first impressions. Israel calls them "terrorists," so to remain non-judgmental, Reuters re-christens them "militants."

It, of course, gets better:

Palestinian residents said one those killed was a local militant leader.

In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli sniper shot dead Hussam Hamdan, 27, a senior member of the military wing of Hamas, an Islamic group dedicated to Israel's destruction.

"Local militant leader" of a group which, tada, we finally read is "dedicated to Israel's destruction." There, even Reuters said it. Maybe it's time to stop this silly talk about appeasing these people? They don't want peace; they want the end of Israel.

And they broadcast their attitudes and intent:

Senior Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantissi, vowing revenge for Hamdan's death, said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon should now be killed.

[...]

"I demand and urge the military apparatus of Hamas to target...Sharon personally and to target his house and his son," Rantissi told Reuters.

His son? This is important why? For terror, of course. But these are militants, remember, not terrorists.

Almost missed anniversary

I was looking for stories about the 57th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing yesterday, but apparently didn't look in the right places. So, today I find one:

Reuters: Hiroshima Hits 'Pax Americana' at A-Bomb Memorial. Bush is apparently annoying the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba:

Akiba invited Bush to Hiroshima "to confirm with his own eyes what nuclear weapons can do to human beings" and lashed out at Washington's go-it-alone stance.

"America has not been given the right to impose a 'Pax Americana' and to decide the fate of the world," Akiba said.

"Rather, we, the people of the world, have the right to insist that we have not given you the authority to destroy the world."

"Destroy the world"? Where does that nonsense come from?

For a Reuters' piece, it actually manages to have a shade of balance:

While Japan each year solemnly mourns its own war dead, less attention is paid to the victims of its military aggression and hardly any to the fact that its own military was engaged in research on an atomic bomb during World War II.

In a small but timely reminder of that research, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said at the weekend that secret documents on Japan's nuclear efforts, taken out of the country in 1949, had been returned to the institute in charge of the research.

Historians have long known about the research, although how much progress was made is a subject of debate.

I knew that Japan has a long-standing abhorence of nuclear weapons, but I didn't know that their development of an atomic bomb during the war was anything more than a rumor. Interesting.

You have to work to keep the faith

NYC Workers Accused of Stealing Millions From Credit Unit After Sept. 11

NEW YORK -- In one of the largest fraud cases resulting from the terrorist attacks, thousands of people are accused of using ATMs to steal $15 million from a municipal employees' credit union whose computer security system was damaged on Sept. 11.

[...]

"This is a prime example of no good deed goes unpunished," [District Attorney Robert ]Morgenthau said. "People took advantage."

The kicker, of course, is that credit unions are typically set up to get their members better deals than a standard bank would be willing to offer. So, who ultimately suffers here?

The irony is killing me

Windfarms Stir Up Controversy

The winds off Cape Cod, Mass., are some of the strongest in the country -- and now they're blowing a storm of controversy.

Developers have proposed trying to harness these mighty winds for energy by building a 170-turbine wind farm that could power half the homes on the Cape....

[...]

But there is vocal opposition to the wind farm from an unlikely source -- environmentalists.

As classic a case of NIMBY (not in my backyard) as I've seen in a loooong time.

Jokes via email

And the story goes:

My name is John. Driving to my office this morning on Califonia Interstate 5, near Lake Forest, I looked over my shoulder to the left and there was a woman driving a brand new Mustang, with her face up next to the rear view mirror, putting on her eye makeup. I looked away for a few seconds and when I looked back, there she was, halfway over in my lane, still working on her eye liner!

It scared me so bad I dropped my electric razor, which knocked the Krispy Creme out of my other hand. In all the confusion of trying to straighten our the car with my knees against the steering wheel, it knocked the cell phone away from my ear, which fell into my Starbucks coffee between my legs, splashed and burned Big Bob and the Twins, ruined the phone, and disconnected an important call!

Darn women drivers!

Only too true, too true....

A bit of a wandering rant

So I read this little gem, which leads to Ted Rall's bit, which has little nuggets of truth that are just a pain to dig out from all the anti-Bush anti-American anti-West rhetoric. Eventually I end up on Warblogger Watch, which certainly provides plenty of evidence of Charles Kauthammer's clarification of the differences between how Conservatives view Liberals and vice versa. Namely: "Conservatives are mean, Liberals are stupid." Other posts over at The Watch illustrate and support Christ Weinkopf's list of "What Liberals Hate Most."

While scrolling through the Watch's postings (and wondering, "Well, who watches the watchers?"), I found this one which, in turn, has this little quote:

It's really not much of a democracy anymore, is it? Shouldn't we own up to the fact that the US is governed by an oligarchy? Such an admission would at least begin the process of clearing our political language of cant.

So, I had to make sure I understood what he was trying to say. Thus, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001, defines oligarchy as essentially a "ruling elite." Its definition also includes this interesting little note:

In practice, however, almost all governments, whatever their form, are run by a small minority of members. From this perspective, the major distinction between oligarchy and democracy is that in the latter, the elites compete with each other, gaining power by winning public support. The extent and type of barriers impeding those who attempt to join this ruling group is also significant.

Which all leads to something any mean Republican or Conservative can tell any stupid Democrat or Liberal:

We (as in the United States of America, for worldwide clarification) don't live in a Democracy; we live in a Republic.

Accepting the oligarch aspects of our government, it seems that it has been ever thus. Decades upon decades ago, when I was much younger, there were a given set of politicians in office. They're still there today. Ted Kennedy is still a US Senator. In the California scene, at least Willie Brown is no longer in the state assembly, but he's still in politics (as mayor of San Francisco, my home town). This pair always leap to mind for two reasons: 1) I was raised by Democratic parents, so we always paid attention to Democrats. 2) "Professional politician" is all their job resumes read.

I laugh my ass off every time someone points at [name a Conversative or Republican] and says he's never worked a day in his life, can't possibly understand the needs of "the working man," etc. etc. etc. As if any Liberal/Democrat is any different! Possibly worse, because they're certainly more subtle about shilling for Big Corporations. Just take a gander at the bills Hollins and Berman have presented on behalf (and at the behest) of the ever-more-monolithic media industry. (More complete coverage via previously mentioned article by Farhad Manjoo, Sour notes, or Dan Gillmor's Hacking, hijacking our rights.) They literally want to take control of your home computer, yet no squawks. Stock market takes a dump, though, and it's all because Bush is a pawn of Big Business. In fact, that's why we bombed Afghanistan! Blah blah blah.

Back in the early seventies, while I laughed at all the fools in their cages -- er, cars -- because my motorcycle got over 40 miles per gallon and I could fill the gas tank for less than a buck, there was this little matter going on called "Watergate." Yet, what got the bigger headlines and put people in a real uproar was the oil embargo and the rising price of gasoline (it soon took a buck and a half to fill my gas tank, damnit). Liberals -- at the time self-identified as "radicals" -- lamented that people were more concerned about the price of gas for their cars, than an assault on their freedom. (Why? Because the personal automobile is a tangible expression of that freedom. But that's another rant.)

The reverse seems true today, only it's clearly driven by ideology. There is opposition to what Bush v2 does simply because he's a Republican, and therefore must be mean. On the other hand, many of these same people ignore a Liberal, government-sponsored, direct assault on what has become the second great icon of personal freedom in our country, the personal computer (flavor of your choice).

They must be stupid.

Hacker heaven?

THIS must have been fun!

This incarnation of capture the flag, the brainchild of a Seattle group of high-minded security geeks known as the GhettoHackers, pits rival hacking groups against each other in a game of corporate espionage. Each group has to maintain its own server while attempting to crash or take control of other teams' servers.

Way cool.

Clinton's Black Hawk History

The Wall Street Journal has this featured article which reiterates much of what has been said about Clinton's recent attempt to blame the Battle of the Black Sea (Black Hawk Down) on President Bush Version 1.

We can understand Mr. Clinton wanting to defend himself, but as usual he can't get his own facts straight. His introduction of Somalia here is one of those breathtakingly brazen attempts to dodge responsibility for which Mr. Clinton is justly famous.

...

President Bush the Elder sent U.S. forces into Somalia in December 1992 to aid the United Nations in relieving a massive famine. In May of 1993, four months into his term, President Clinton declared that mission accomplished and pulled out most of the U.S. force.

...

[B]ack in Somalia, with no U.S. deterrent, Somalia's warlords began fighting again. After a series of bloody attacks on U.N. peacekeepers, Mr. Clinton launched a new mission: In August 1993, he sent in a force of Rangers and Special Forces units to capture the brutal warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid and restore order.

[Emphasis mine.]

Thus, Bush v1 really had nothing to do with the events in Somalia that have come to be known as Black Hawk Down. It's Clinton all the way, rah rah rah!

A moment of history

Civil War ironclad’s turret raised

The coral-encrusted gun turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor was raised Monday from the floor of the Atlantic, nearly 140 years after the historic warship sank during a storm.

Over this last weekend I listened to a historian, who said that the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the pivotal event of the Civil War. Even though they two ships fought to a draw, it was the key strategic victory for the North, which was attempting to assemble a blockade around all Southern ports, indeed all of the south (their Operation Anaconda).

The Virginia was the South's bid to break that blockade. If it had succeeded, there was a good possibility that the British would enter the war on the side of the South. If that had happened, history today would be much...different.

But it didn't, because the Monitor stopped the Virginia. And because of that, the blockade held, the South was starved of resources and resupply, the Brits stayed out, and the North went on to put a torch to the South.

In this light, Gettysburg was a foot note, a "formal" recognition of the inevitable.

At last!

In this morning's Washington Post if the report on a briefing that identifies Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States:

A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States.

"The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. ...

One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. "People used to rationalize Saudi behavior," he said. "You don't hear that anymore. There's no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem."

This is something even Ted Rall agrees with! (Well, all right, maybe not really. However, he does say that it made/makes much more sense to after the Saudis and Egypt for 9/11 than Afghanistan.)

Haunting

Glenn Reynolds linked to this memorial. Homicide cops often refer to themselves as speakers for the dead. Who will speak for these victims?

Wishing

Please let this post be true.

Shouldn't we take them at their word?

Israel launches air attack on Gaza

Israel fired missiles at Gaza City Monday night in the first such strike since the outcry over a bombing that killed a Hamas militant leader as well as 14 civilians, many of them children. Monday’s attack, on what Israel said was a weapons factory, followed a series of attacks by Palestinians over the weekend that left 13 dead. Earlier Monday, Israel announced a “total ban” on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank and sealed off part of the Gaza Strip with tanks.

...

HAMAS WARNING

Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 27 people since the July 22 Israeli airstrike that killed leading Hamas militant Salah Shehadeh and 14 other Palestinians in Gaza.

...

About 4,000 people celebrated the bus bombing in Gaza City late Sunday, passing out sweets and praying near Shehadeh’s destroyed house. Militants shouting over loudspeakers vowed to “avenge every drop of his blood.”

“We advise (Israelis) to prepare more body bags and wait for the coming operations,” a masked Hamas militant said.

The press harps on the civilian casualties involved in Israel's assassination of a terrorist leader. The terrorists themselves swear revenge for his, the terrorist's, death and seldom if ever mention the others any more.

And even Ted Rall says you should take a terrorist at his word, so aren't the Israelis now justified in flattening Hamas strongholds? After all, they're answering a very direct, very sincere threat which is backed with action.

Just a thought.

And speaking of the weekend...

No, I didn't get to see "Signs," though one of the brood did, and he says it's scary and great. Bastard. I'll have to flog him later. The rest of us might get to go tomorrow evening, because starting next week my life will be entering a typhoon. Rather excited about it, truth be known.

Meanwhile, I did a flock of updates to my Windows 2000 boxes, including installing Service Pack 3, which installs (quit without my permission) some new gimic that wants to always check for "critical updates." I was doing that manually, thank you very much, leave the automatic crap out of my system. The MS update site has been saying I need to install this for the last month or two; I kept telling it, "No, go away." It didn't, and now MS has given it to me anyway. The install wizard allows me to tell it to shut up and drop into a coma; we'll see if it stays that way.

I also go Mandrake Linux 8.1 installed (again) on my old PC. Can you say s-l-o-w? At least with the GUI. Whenever they talk about the speed of Linux on old iron (mine is a Pentium 166 with 80MB's of RAM) they must be talking about the command-line interface (CLI), because at the GUI level it borders on useless. No better than Windows 98 SE runs on this same box (dual boot setup), and sometimes worse.

Nonetheless, my foray into Linux resumes...as time allows. All I immediately need is to install Word Perfect.

There's a new trend in town

[All emphasis mine.]

MS-NBC: Israel clamps down after fatal attacks

Israel responded to a bloody 24-hour period by further clamping down on Palestinian movements Monday, announcing a complete ban on intercity travel in most of the West Bank and blocking the Gaza Strip's north-south road with more than two dozen tanks. Nineteen people on both sides, including assailants, have died in a renewed surge of violence, including the bombing of an Israeli bus and separate shootings in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Reuters: Israel Tightens Hold on W.Bank, Gaza After Attacks

The militant Islamic group Hamas said it sent the suicide bomber who killed nine people by detonating a bomb on a bus in northern Israel. Hamas said it was its latest act of revenge for an Israeli air strike that killed its military commander and 14 other Palestinians, mostly children, in July.

AP: One Killed in Northern Israel Blast

Israel's Channel Two television said it appeared the people inside the car were Palestinian militants aiming to carry out an attack.

CNN.com: Settlers killed in West Bank

The front page (index), on 08/05/2002 @ approx. 0930, read:

Palestinian gunmen ambushed a family of Jewish settlers early today on the West Bank, killing a husband and his pregnant wife and injuring their two children, Israel Defense Forces said. The ambush followed a bloody Sunday that saw eleven Israelis killed in attacks by Palestinian militants -- a suicide bombing on a bus in northern Israel and a shooting in Jerusalem.

(The story itself used different language.)

I avoided the news like the plague this weekend, wanting nothing more than a long ride to the coast, smell sea air, etc. Not that I succeeded, curse the flock of teenagers at home.

So this morning my ears perked up as I'm listening to ABC news, and I hear the various perps who conducted the recent series of terrorist attacks described as "Palestinian militants." And I'm perusing news stories, and there it is, again and again. Militants. The "best," of course, is from Reuters (who else?) which describes Hamas as a "militant Islamic group," though it's been officially classified as a terrorist organization.

Militants. Makes them almost sound legit.

MS-NBC is also priceless. "Nineteen people on both sides, including assailants, have died..." What a load! The only people on the "other side" (presumably Palestinian) who died were the suicide-homicide fools -- sorry, assailants. Can they twist the language just a little more...?

Which is why I sometimes just need to avoid the news.

My weekend plans include...

'Signs' a thrilling ride

In the middle of the night, Graham's daughter wakes him with the news that "there's a monster outside my room -- can I have a glass of water?" Soon Graham and Merrill are chasing someone, or something, around the outside of the farmhouse. Then Morgan calls them into the corn fields, where he has made a frightening discovery. With dogs howling in the background, the family finds huge patterns have been pressed into their fully grown corn fields.

The previews for this film have been perfect. It looks as though this could be an absolutely chilling thrill ride of a film.

We got hit!

Strange crater found under the sea

An otherworldly crater has been discovered hundreds of feet beneath the floor of the North Sea, using sophisticated seismic mapping equipment designed for petroleum exploration. Researchers say the 12-mile-wide, multiringed crater is 60 million to 65 million years old -- going back to the end of thedinosaur era -- and looks more like impact craters on moons of Jupiter than anything seen on Earth.

This stuff is just too cool.

As seen on TV

Bias is where you find it, but this morning demonstrated a doozy. Morning news story on Sacramento TV station KCRA Channel 3, about how a jury is about to come out with a verdict against Bill Simon, Republican candidate for governor against the Democrat incumbant, Gray[-out] Davis. Talking news head says that "experts" believe this spells the end of Simon's run for governor. Then they show video tape footage of this expert.

Who is Governor Davis's spokesman.

Expert? Uh-huh, sure.