I'm not thrilled with a lot of what GWB has done on the front of diplomacy, self-sacrifice, and careful consideration. I think he has done the right thing in making it clear that we are serious and that we are willing to use force; up until now our response to the threats and acts of the Islamists was best summed up as "Isn't that cute!!" No more. Sadly, I don't yet see a better plan from the Democrats - one that would lead me to choose one of them over GWB. I'm not endorsing Bush (that would be hard for me to do) - but I'm certainly going to push the Dems to come up with something better. Here's a couple of off-the-cuff suggestions: First, we're not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we're done. Afghanistan will not turn into Vermont any time soon, but we will make sure that the power of the warlords is checked, and that it doesn't collapse again. Iraq could be the leader of the Middle east, and we intend to help build it into that; Second, we're too dependent on ME oil. We're going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration. We're going to build the damn windmills off of Cape Cod; Third, we're going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones; Fourth, we're going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military by adding at least one division to the Army, and looking carefully at the allocation of all our assets to make sure that we have the resources to deal with the kind of wars that we are going to realistically face; Fifth, we're going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support. We will also talk about what kinds of support would be forthcoming if they did stop; Sixth, we're going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions; That'd be a start... UPDATE: * Roger L. Simon responds to Calpundit's challenge as well. * Matthew Yglesias joins a respectful cross-blog debate in a way that's less than respectful. He gets this return volley, plus a proposed bet. Wonder if he'll take it?

« ok, I'm done now

Indeed, that is perhaps one of the most accurate ways of measuring the extent of a society's progress or backwardness. I have for long championed the cause of equal rights for women, not only because I firmly believe they are equal to men in all aspects of life, but also because a society that subordinates women to men cannot hope to make any headway on the path to progress. The institutionalized concept of male superiority, the so-called machismo ethos, works not only against the interests of women as a group but of society as a whole. In other words, the worst thing about male chauvinism is not that it is reactionary and completely out of step with the spirit of the age, or even that it is at odds with basic human rights, but that it is an insurmountable obstacle in the way of progress. The Roots of Male Chauvinism I have no doubt whatsoever that male chauvinism grows from the seeds of male insecurity. A confident man who believes in himself, his intellect, his abilities and with a strong sense of self does not need to assert his superiority over women. The experience of dealing with thousands of young men has taught me that the more modest their capabilities, the more insistent they are on clinging to the chauvinistic culture that relegates women to a lower status than men. It is understandable: those who fail at the public level have nothing left but to assert themselves artificially in their little private domain. Strangely enough, the generations that grew up in the fifties and sixties, like myself, are more progressive on this issue than later generations. Several factors have contributed to this phenomenon. One is the spread of reactionary interpretations of religious teachings, another is the more high-profile role that was coming to be assumed by women. With more and more women receiving an education and participating in the workforce, the myth of male superiority was effectively shattered. To compensate for this blow to their self-esteem, many young men sought refuge in a kind of mythical victory, invoking their innate superiority on no other grounds than their gender (how easy it is to find texts promoting the notion of male superiority, a notion that flies in the face of science, reason, culture, humanity, and civilization.) As previously mentioned, many years spent closely observing the attitude to women among the men I worked with confirmed the existence of an inverse relationship between a man's lack of self-confidence and his willingness to accept that women are equal to him in all respects, and that, indeed, in some respects they rank higher. For if women are men's equals as human beings, their value surpasses that of men in certain areas, notably as mothers, the first teachers of humankind. Some of the proponents of the male-superiority theory use specious arguments to back their claim that women are somehow inferior to men, often citing religious texts to justify their position. But there are always other texts that assert the full humanity of women and the equality of both sexes. At the end of the day, any text, even if it is divine, requires a human agency to interpret it, and the real test is how the mind elects to deal with it. Thus the source for the notion of male superiority is not, as some people claim, religion, but the stages of human history in general and of tribal/Bedouin history in particular when civilization and humanistic values were at a low ebb. There is no greater proof that the issue has nothing to do with religion than that none of the proponents of this chauvinistic approach care to underscore some of the aspects of the first marriage entered into by the prophet of Islam. Not only was it exemplary in terms of the equal humanity of both partners, but in many other aspects, like the wife having the right of divorce and the husband not taking a second wife. But the reactionary chauvinists choose not to see these examples or not to bring them to light, as if they never were. Steps Forward... The first person in history to receive the Nobel Prize more than once was Madam Curie. That alone is enough to silence those who claim men are superior to women, and it is far from being the only instance of public recognition of a woman's excellent achievements. But diehard male chauvinists dismiss the argument that brilliant women like Madame Curie, who are light years ahead of them in intelligence, knowledge and success, testify to the fallacy of the male superiority theory, and claim that such women are exceptions that confirm the rule. In fact, the only reason women were not allowed to realize their full potential earlier is that for centuries they were subjugated by men, who then claimed they were unfit to take part in, let alone win, the race. My experience as the CEO of a giant multinational corporation employing thousands of men and women proved to me not only that male staff members were in no way superior to their female colleagues, either in education, performance, management or leadership qualities, but that, if anything, the opposite was true. Possibly because they were driven by a sense of challenge and the desire to prove themselves, women often proved to be superior in many ways. Last year, the first female judge was appointed to Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court. This is an important step in the right direction, but needs to be followed up. The appointment of women to all levels of the judicial system is the only way to end what is an affront to the norms of civilized behaviour. If we start the process now, in twenty years' time we can have a judicial system comprised of 50% women. This is a natural state of affairs that should prevail in all aspects of life. A society that restricts important positions to men uses up only half its potential in the way of intelligence, performance, productivity and education; it is a society running on half steam. Not surprisingly, a society that does not make full use of all its assets remains in a state of underdevelopment, for how can a person run on one foot? Women's organizations have worked and continue to work tirelessly to promote the status of women in society. Yet they are required to do even more, to set in place a comprehensive plan designed to put an end to the reactionary male chauvinist culture dominating our society - in the family, in education, in religious institutions and in the media. A campaign should be launched to drive home the point that the only source of a man's blind belief in his innate superiority over the opposite sex is a tremendous lack of self-confidence. Free people like to deal with free people and the opposite is true. The only men I hear propounding outlandish theories about their superiority over women and the inability of women to hold leadership positions are frustrated men who are themselves devoid of any qualities of leadership or elements of superiority. ... And Steps Back Any society that views women as unequal to men contrives to find references and 'evidence' to support its perception, although the attitude has no religious or legal basis, but is a purely cultural phenomenon. It follows that the more developed a society's educational/cultural environment, the less inclined its members are to subscribe to the primitive belief that a person's worth is determined by gender. In a developed society, people no longer need to ask a question that is reactionary by its very nature, namely, are women equal to men? There are clear examples that prove that the issue in its entirety is a cultural one. Despite the existence of Qur'anic texts enjoining men to release a wife who no longer wishes to continue the marital relationship, and prohibiting them from keeping her against her will just to hurt her, the legal system has for many years provided men with a legal device that allows them to do the exact opposite: the infamous beit el ta'a, whose only purpose is to enable a man to hold his wife against her will, and to hurt her, both psychologically and financially. This is a flagrant example that epitomizes the backward attitudes prevailing today, in total disregard of several sources that could have been interpreted progressively in the context of a more enlightened cultural environment. Although the system of beit el ta'a was a disgraceful legal, social, and cultural travesty, when the government enacted the khul'a law, empowering women to exercise a human right that no fair-minded person can oppose, it stuck in the throats of thousands of our men. How could the law deprive them of a tool of brutal injustice that was in their hands? If they had a reasonable amount of self-confidence, this long overdue legal development, which represents a very important step forward, would not have bothered them at all. One can only wonder how a man who wants the law to help him keep his wife locked in a marriage against her will can reconcile his attitude with such values as manliness, chivalry and honour. The long and glorious history of Arab male chivalry, decency and pride is rendered meaningless when one man keeps his wife in a marital relationship which she does not want. The issue is also indicative of a state of cultural rot when thousands of young men and women are completely opposed to the idea of granting women the right to divorce, even though it was a right held by the first wife of the prophet himself. One of the most shocking aspects of the male supremacist mentality that has taken hold in some societies is that it is not, as might have been supposed, confined to the male segment of the population. Although men are its source and beneficiaries, the myth is embraced wholeheartedly by many girls and women, who raise their children to accept without question propositions that run counter to all contemporary values of progress, science and civilization. Steps Toward Change The issue is addressed in greater detail in my forthcoming book, currently being prepared for publication. Entitled The Tragedy of Women in our Contemporary Reality, it talks of the impossibility of liberating women from the yoke of the male supremacist culture, which is a form of slavery, unless women themselves are at the vanguard of a movement to change societal attitudes in line with the requirements of the age, to replace the reactionary view of women as inferior beings with a view that accepts them as equal to men in all respects. More, they should promote the notion that although they constitute half the population, their actual value, as mothers, is far greater than their numerical weight. It is tragic that in this day and age, when the advanced world is concerned with knowledge, development, civil liberties and human rights, we should still be asking the shameful question: Are women equal to men? For more of Tarek Heggy's writtings in English, please visit www.t-heggy-site-contents.org and for Tarek Heggy's writings in French please visit www.metransparent.com/authors/french/tarek_heggy.htm.

« ok, I'm done now

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * Iraqi police are now acknowledging that they received threats from Islamic extremists prior to Monday's attacks, though I tend to question what kind of Muslim would use the term "Mohammedan" to describe themselves given its offensive connotations for most Muslims. * One of Monday's attacks was thwarted and the would-be suicide bomber is now in US custody. He carries a Syrian passport, but that isn't proof-positive that he is Syrian because Damascus was handing passports out like Christmas cards to foreign fighters during the run-up to war. * US forces have killed Abu Fares, a Baathist leader who was said to be plotting against the coalition. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * I don't normally read The Nation, but if this is true then it needs to be explained. * The suicide bombers who blew up the Red Cross may well have achieved at least one of their objectives, the International Committee of the Red Cross is weighing withdrawl from Iraq altogether. * Daniel Drezner has has an excellent round-up that gives us an indication of the real progress in Iraq along with some thoughts on the real lesson of the 1968 Tet Offensive. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * Bangladesh and Portugal have both opted out of sending troops to Iraq, though South Korea and Turkey are still onboard. * Calpundit has the numbers for how much money was pledged for Iraq in Madrid, though the totals don't seem to add up to the figures being reported in the media. * Kesher Talk lists all of the countries that are supporting the US with troops and in what amounts. WMD HUNT * A lot of people are surprised that WMDs haven't been found in Iraq, but Retired Air Force General James Clapper, the director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, doesn't appear to be one of them - he believes the weapons were probably moved abroad, possibly to Syria. ETCETERA * Salon has a feature up on The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated August 19, 2003]

« ok, I'm done now

IRAN REPORTS * The conservative Weekly Standard is claiming that al-Qaeda has a new home: eastern Iran. * The Daily Telegraph is meanwhile reporting that up to 20 members of VEVAK have entered the UK to gather surveillance on Jewish targets for al-Qaeda to attack. Britain's Jewish community seems to be taking this report very seriously. * Muhsin Mirdamadi, the head of Iran's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in Damascus, pledging support for Syria in the event that it is hit by US sanctions. * Iran has recently launched an international PR offensive against accusations that the IRGC and VEVAK are providing shelter for al-Qaeda, giving a list of 240 al-Qaeda operatives to the UN and claiming that it warned about al-Qaeda's fanatical disposition. From the looks of things, the US isn't impressed with the ayatollahs' latest charm offensive. * Radio Free Europe summarizes the recent Iranian flip-flop regarding uranium enrichment as well as the international community's fears concerning the Iranian nuclear program. U.S.A HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * UPI is reporting that Osama Kandil, the chairman of the Islamic Society of Boston, has been linked to the Safa Group that I noted in my last Winds of War. More discussion of the situation involving Kandil can be found here and here. * Al-Qaeda sleeper Iyman Faris has been sentenced to 20 years for conspiracy and aiding and abetting terrorism. THE WIDER WAR * Al-Qaeda has reportedly established bases throughout the Sahara Desert in countries like Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania to serve the influx of al-Qaeda operatives arriving from Yemen, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. Given the past activities of al-Qaeda and the GSPC in West Africa, one can easily speculate that something big may be in the works. * Jemaah Islamiyyah is regrouping in Indonesia and Indonesian Welfare Minister Jusuf Kalla is claiming that the organization has set up training camps in central Sulawesi, possibly reopening the 10 al-Qaeda training camps that were active between March and November of 2001. * Sulawesi, meanwhile, has seen an upswing in violence recently with the discovery of 600 kilograms of explosives in Tailse. This comes after Jemaah Islamiyyah claimed responsibility for killing 11 Christians to mark the anniversary of the Bali bombings. * Australian Al-Qaeda sleeper Willie Brigitte Virgile has been deported to his native France where he faces terrorism-related charges. Virgile appears to have quite a resume, as his Haldon Street Prayer Center cell included one of the Australia al-Qaeda fighters now in US custody at Guantanamo Bay and provided survival training courses to French Islamic extremists in the Fontainbleau forest just outside of Paris. Among other things, he is suspected of involvement in the al-Qaeda suicide bombing that killed Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masood two days before 9/11. * But the story doesn't end with Virgile. While in Australia, he received orders from al-Qaeda leaders based in Pakistan that he was to provide shelter for an al-Qaeda explosives expert. That he may have successfully performed this task has placed Australian anti-terrorism police on high alert. * MILF commander Guindatu Mamantal Dulang, who goes by the rather appropriate alias of "Bimbo," has been arrested by Filippino intelligence for involvement in a series of bombings in General Santos. * The fighting continues in Afghanistan as US and Afghan forces killed 20 Taliban fighters along the Pakistani border over the weekend, while 2 State Department contact workers were killed in a raid on the Afghan border town of Shkin that ended in the death of 10 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Another skirmish near Shkin left 18 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters dead, as well as 2 CIA operatives. * In Pakistan meanwhile, support for the Taliban is running strong in the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan where the pro-Taliban Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal holds power. And while you'd never know it from the body count, the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters inside of Afghanistan are said to have reorganized into a more effective fighting force. * The US sees a credible threat to airplanes in Saudi Arabia. One wonders if this isn't perhaps linked to this development. * Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a Wahhabi political organization that among other things serves as the "legitimate" front for the al-Qaeda affiliate Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, tells Forum 18 what their Islamic utopia looks like. The funniest thing is that this is actually rather "moderate" given the worldviews of other al-Qaeda front organizations like the UK-based Khalifah and al-Muhajiroun movements. * Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe reportedly suffered a stroke but was either treated by Chinese or South African doctors. * We try to end on a lighter note if possible. It appears that the first Turkish bus brothel is in trouble for its, um, unique take on Turkish law in regard to prostitution.

« ok, I'm done now

Luskin - who, as far as I know, is a grown-up, writes with pretty sharp elbows himself:

Paul Krugman began his Tuesday column for the New York Times - inevitably, about the blackout - with one of the few truthful statements I can ever recall him uttering: "We still don't know what started the chain reaction on Thursday."

And it seems like pots should be careful about calling kettles black, no matter that the pot has been careful to tread - barely - on the side of the line which divides actionable from exceptionable behavior. And pundits who use slings ought to be able to take a stone or two, and the fact that Mr Luskin can't - the fact assuming that the letter Atrios posted was genuine (and the lawyer's name does check out on the firm website) - certainly drops him a few kilometers below credible in my view. Free speech - even hurtful speech - is something the folks at NRO (and others) have championed for some time. It appears that they neglected to mention that it only matters when someone else's ox is being gored. Personally, I'm hoping it's some kind of prank. In that case, I'll personally email Mr. Luskin an apology. Watching and waiting...

« ok, I'm done now

It doesn't matter once the concentration goes up past some threshold level level. Similarly, as we look at gun ownership in the U.S., one of my arguments with the supporters of strict limitations on gun ownership is that once we have, say, five or six million guns in the U.S., it doesn't matter how many more we have (we currently have something like 300 million), we won't see a meaningful change in the violence people commit with guns. Similarly, once the possession of nuclear technology went past the core five countries, it doesn't much matter how many more have it, it is going to be essentially impossible to control with the level of absolute certainty that is required. So we have to find ways to adapt. First, we have to adapt strategically. One of the key things that frightens me is that the keystone to preserving a virtually fallout-free 20th Century - Mutually Assured Destruction - doesn't map well to people who believe that blowing themselves up in a paroxysm of fury and hate is actually a good thing to do. Next, we have to adapt tactically. We have to harden our cities, and we have to start now. The good news is that it already looks as though we already have. And, to some extent, we need to harden our hearts. Joe and others have posted frequently about the madness that is at the heart of the Islamist movement. It is madness that must be turned and blunted - or must be stopped. I'm not yet at the point of arguing that we must stop it. I believe it can be turned, and that other voices can be found. But we must move to weaken the forces of hate and strengthen the forces that oppose them - all over the world. That's a burden, and we have to carry it - alone if needful, although I think that it doesn't have to be. Because the alternative will be even worse.

« ok, I'm done now

That may sound flip or trivial to you. The past 70 years offer us abundant lessons that underline why recognition and understanding of that hate are anything but trivial. Rwanda reminded us that organized hate is a weapon of mass destruction, even if its only arms are guns and machetes. Alas, the level of organized hate in the Muslim ummah (trans. "community of Islamic believers") is reaching levels that have few precedents in modern times. When coupled with a mentality of thwarted supremacism and conspiracy theory unreason, history shows that it becomes the most toxic - and dangerous - sort of idolatry. At present, this precise witches' brew is being carefully-fostered throughout the ummah, and deliberately organized by a variety of religious and secular actors at both governmental and non-governmental levels. 9/11 was the demonstration that no place was safe from this hate, and that no scale of human destruction was too large to contemplate for jihadi haters. For those who had not already made the connection beforehand, 9/11 was the final piece of the puzzle that both clarified the full implications, and made them much more attentive to the presence, depth and nature of this hatred and supremacism. Malaysian PM Mahathir's speech and the reaction it got teaches us that even among many Islamic "moderates," what varies is not the presence of these elements but rather their comparative intensity. As Drezner notes, it's a depressing reminder - but it is not the final word. As the saying goes: I have good news, and I have bad news. First, the good news: this mentality is not universal. Many decent individuals and organizations in the Muslim ummah are taking real risks and fighting this tide, or just walking another path. It need not necessarily be a secular Western path, as long as it is healthy within itself, and thus free of the key pathologies described above. This, and not the blurry "moderate vs. radical" dichotomy, is where we need to set the bar. Winds of Change.NET pays attention to such people because they're the reason we can hope for a better future together, as opposed to an inevitable future of genocidal wars. Which brings me to the bad news: hoping doesn't make it so. Are the Muslims walking a path that is healthy within itself numerous or powerful enough to suppress, control and make significant ideological gains against their co-religioinists who DO preach organized hate and act on it? At present, the answer is clearly no. By itself, this situation more than suffices to ensure that Islam will be unable to live peacefully with its neighbours - and the arc of conflict, bloodshed, and repression from Algeria to Nigeria to Sudan to Israel to Central Asia to Indonesia and beyond bears this out. That is certainly a tragedy, but it's a low-level tragedy on the global human scale of things: a force stifling economic and human development in various regions, and producing global bloodshed in the tens or hundreds of thousands each year. Which brings me to the really bad news. When current rates of technological change and diffusion of knowledge are added to this phenomenon, they create the potential for major tragedies on a global human scale. Nuclear proliferation is increasing the odds of weapons falling into the hands of suicidal haters who will use them - either governments, or "jihadi freakazoids" (to use Charles' charming term) who gain access to them through political upheavals, or the aftermath of "broken arrow" accidents, or betrayal. When coupled with the "zone of conflict" around many Muslim states and the tested insights of game theory, it doesn't take a genius to predict that the probability of multiple nuclear weapons being used within the next 20 years is rising significantly. Biological terrorism is a lesser but real possibility, esp. if lethal, contagious diseases with weeks-long incubation periods are coupled with an ideology of suicide murder. We focus on these weapons because thwarting attempts by such people to gain the means of global-scale catastrophe is a worthy activity in and of itself. Ultimately, however, the real problem is organized, religiously motivated hate and supremacism, and the deliberate way in which they are being fomented within Islam by influential individuals, organizations... and by nation-states, many of whom are also bent on acquiring the means to match the desired ideological ends of the hatreds they foment. If we can agree that supremacist hate is the problem, we will have taken the most important step toward understanding our enemy. One important benefit is that our sense of hatred's importance will focus our discussions and attention in new ways (q.v. the Counterrevolutionary's series on the dynamics of organized hate: Part I | Part II | Part III), and sensitize us to the process whereby this phenomenon is linking up with other strains of organized hate worldwide. The other key benefit is that this common recognition will also allow our seperate discussions re: the nature of that hate and what to do about it to become much more productive. Different questions are a good thing. Different realities are not. What's beyond question to me is the fact that the reality and scale of this supremacist hatred must be faced. The alternatives are denial or collusion, both of which are often on display within the West. The wages of their indulgence are the continued growth of that hate, and global-scale death on a scale not seen in decades. "It's the hate, stupid!" It needs to be confronted, strongly. It needs to end. UPDATES: For more concept-related background.... * Anti-Globalization, Anti-Semetic, Anti-American. Adds some chilling examples highlighting the reality of the sharing going on between Islamist theocrats, neo-Nazis, and neo-Marxists. The Democratic Party's Fred Siegel has noticed, and so has Michael Totten as he reads his AdBusters. It ties into the patterns observed in "Hating America, Hating Israel" - ever hear the one about the 2 waiters...? * Corollary post, November 2005: The Forever War Isn't About Us

« ok, I'm done now

Mahathir & Malaysia * RE: Mahathir. Little Green Footballs, which reports closely on organized hatred in the Islamic world, has numerous posts here. The Gewilo and Niraj have commentary on Mahathir speech while ChannelNews has a great article on Mahathir and his administration. Personally I am happy he is stepping down at the end of this month, it is time for a change. * JK: Daniel Drezner's take on the speech as a reflection of Islam in 2003 is also worth serious consideration. Congrats on being reprinted in India's 3rd-largest paper, Dan! * Malaysia, in many ways demonstrates the difficulties the world has in waging the War on Terror; which is, many of the countries where terrorist come from, train, are financed, and launch their attacks are the same countries that are our allies. Yet they are allies who routinely criticize the west and are often openly hostile to non Islamic countries and people. Mahathir at one point has been pointed out by G.W. Bush as a great aid in the War but in the last months Mahathir has said the War on Terror is an excuse for the US to wage war on Islam. Remember that Malaysia was one of the bases for al-Queda and the 9-11 operations which some suggest where even supported by staff at the Iraqi embassy in Malyasia. * At the same time Mahathir acknowledged that Malaysia has terrorist cells but says "We are very vigilant and we know what is happening. We have a good intelligence and we can act before things happen". Our Problematic Allies * Pakistan is a prime example of the problem and the UPI reports that Pakistan is trading nuclear weapons technology with Saudi Arabia. Little Green Footballs has more on the subject. If this is true its deeply disturbing but hardly surprising. Niraj also has some interesting commentary on the Pakistan-Saudi Arabia alliance. * Philippines reported eliminating the Jemaah Islamiah bomb maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi who just a few months earlier had escaped from jail in Manila. The Gweilo has a great commentary though casting doubt on official claims that al-Ghozi was killed in a shooting as well as problems with the Philippines government in general. * This month was also the one year anniversary of the Bali bombing by the Al-Queda franchise Jamaah Islamiah and people are still feeling the after effects. Indonesia like Malaysia is noted partner in the US War on Terror, and just like Malaysia, Indonesia recently snubbed Australia by not attending an Australian ceremony to mark the anniversary of the Bali bombings. Indonesia has been a weak player in the War on Terror. Their government has moved slowly to deal with its serious terrorist problem, and has often pandered to the Islamic fundamentalists in its country and the terrorist thus make a big come back. Bush's Asian Travels * This month G.W. Bush also made a six country whirlwind trip to Asia which in part was soured by Mahathir's speech and further comments. While the media focused on Mahathir, Bush was able to persuade the 21 countries at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting to issue a joint statement against terrorism. He also made Thailand and the Philippines non Nato allies. India and Pakistan * India has offered Pakistan a deal to restore air links and sporting ties between the two countries as well other things to help move the peace process forward. Jihadis though, are actively trying to sabotage the process even during Ramadan when on October 28th terrosits set off a bomb injuring 36 people and Indian Intelligence sources expect more to come. * I have reported before about the terrorist Darwood Ibrahim holding up in Paksitan and India demanding that he be turned over to authorities. Varnam reports that the US has confirmed he is in Pakistan and is putting pressure on Pakistan . * While Pakistan often seems to be working against the US led War on Terror, it has also been one of the most successful countries in capturing and eliminating terrorists often in close coordination with the US. While I have in the past citied possible reason for this schizophrenic behavior regardless Pakistan keeps nailing terrorists. ETCETERA * Last week in the Philippines police raided a bomb making lab and terrorist hide out and found materials and notes supposedly related to biological and chemical weapons manufacturing. * Deroy Murdock wrote a article for the National Review Online last month that linked Iraqi staff in the Philippines to Abu Sayf bombing in Zamboanga city. * Every month I like to point to a resource that I think is especially interesting and informative about South Asia. If you don't regularly read Rantburg I recommend checking it out on a regular basis especially since they seem to catch a lot of news on South Asia that seems to slip through the major media sources.

« ok, I'm done now

Sounds pretty serious. Now for the money quote.

The driver of the white Land Cruiser was Syrian, Iraqi authorities later said, and at 10:15 a.m. he drove slowly through the police station's back gate. There he was blocked by a barricade of sand-filled barrels and a $120-a-month policeman who ordered him to retreat.

Now, I'm sure that $120 a month is an OK salary in Iraq right now, but what matters here is that the Iraqi police officer did what he was supposed to do. He was attentive, and he reacted - he defended himself and his police station against an attack by a foreigner - not an American military attack, but a terrorist attack by a foreign Arab.

The vehicle hit the outer wall of the police station with a grinding thud. Then there was the briefest moment of silence. No explosion. No gallant martyrdom. The Syrian jumped from the vehicle and hurled a grenade at Arshad as a bullet tore into the would-be bomber's stomach. Before he passed out, he managed to shout: "Arabs are cowards! Iraqis are traitors! I am an Arab, you cowards! Allahu akbar [God is great]!" Police officers said they found a Syrian passport in the pocket of his blue, robe-like dishdasha. On the passenger's seat was a police shirt and police armband that might have enabled him to pass through checkpoints.

I don't know. If Syrian Islamists are the drivers in this round of suicide attacks, and if Iraqis are starting to successfully defend against them, I'll take that as a) some measure of proof that the 'flypaper' theory might not be completely specious, and b) as proof that something significantly good is happening over there. I've said in the past that the two keys to winning this war are an iron butt - the simple willingness to sit it out - and the adaptability to learn from our mistakes and the opponent's tactics. We may be showing both. I'll add Instapundit's great comment here, and second it:

Because if the White House -- by which, in this case, I mean George W. Bush -- decides to drop the ball on this, I'll probably vote Democratic, even if Kucinich is the nominee. A half-hearted war is the very, very worst kind. I think that Bush understands that. He'd better.

« ok, I'm done now

Bolivia * Is Bolivia out of the woods now that Gonzálo Sánchez de Lozada has resigned? Hardly, if one reviews what has lead up to the crisis there. In addition to the issue of the gas pipeline and its proposed route through Chile which I mentioned in this briefing, this fine analysis by Larry Rohter in The New York Times puts much of the focus on the coca eradication efforts supported by the US and the resentment this fueled in Bolivia. * Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian and head of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University thinks newly sworn-in President Carlos Mesa can't expect much relief from either Washington or the cocaleros (coca growers) and their leader, Evo Morales. * Latin America commentator, Andrés Oppenheimer, while stating clearly that the rebels are anything but democratic, feels that the US needs to review its way of dealing with the War on Drugs. * Meanwhile, Evo Morales said to the AP recently that the gas could be exported provided Bolivia "recover[s] ownership of the hydrocarbons." President Mesa clearly has a very rough, seemingly hopeless path ahead and it's fraught with a lot of difficulties. Clearly the status quo in this, the poorest country in South America, cannot remain the same. * A good first hand source for keeping up with what's taking place on the ground in Bolivia is Miguel Centellas' blog. Cuba * President Bush has vowed to put more pressure on the Castro regime by tightening the embargo and cracking down even harder on Americans traveling to Cuba. I honestly do not see this as anything other than pandering to the base of support that Bush needs in Florida for 2004. In fairness, this pandering is truly bipartisan as Al Gore clearly demonstrated during the Elian Gonzalez affair and his break with the Clinton administration policy of returning the boy to his father. * The embargo and travel ban have been in effect for some 40+ years and the net effect has been to strengthen Castro. As I wrote here El Jefe seems to tighten the screws of repression when anything in the way of a thaw starts to take place in Cuban-American relations. This results in the US increasing pressure on Cuba and instills even more fear in the Cuban population as this excellentfirst-hand report of off-the-record conversations with Cubans in The Financial Times clearly demonstrates. * Yet there is a growing sense in the US across the political spectrum that the travel ban and embargo need to be put in the dustbin of failed ideas. William F. Buckley wrote this column critical of the embargo, the US Senate recently voted not to fund enforcement of the travel ban by 59-36 and the House of Representatives voted 338-91 against funding enforcement of the travel ban. The major dissidents in Cuba, many of whom languish in or have served time in Castro's jails also oppose the embargo and travel ban. Their argument was taken up effectively by Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch in testimony before the US Senate, who noted that many dissidents also want the embargo eased. * A Cuban dancer who defected to the US recently made the most compelling argument for ending the travel ban. What was that about if you can't bring Mohammed to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed . . . * JK: Daniel Drezner adds his 2 cents to the debate. Colombia * Colombia and Guatemala are having elections. Colombia's is an election taking place the last weekend of October for state and municipal leaders and a referendum on several changes including reducing the number of congressional seats and freezing state salaries and pensions. The FARC, in their continuing effort to make Colombia ungovernable were held responsible for thirteen deaths on the day of the referendum vote while the right-wing paramilitaries led by the AUC are focusing on intimidating their opponents and killing human rights activists. * Meanwhile, some of those on the right in Colombia are taking their infighting a bit seriously. * President Uribe, by the way, was on PBS' Newshour a couple of weeks ago and was asked about accusations of his ties to paramilitary groups and Pablo Escobar in his younger days refused to comment on the allegations against him. He also didn't deny them. As of this writing (Sunday night October 26) it appears that President Uribe's referendum is being defeated and his candidate for mayor of Bogotá has been defeated. The average Colombian waits wearily for better days. Guatemala * Guatemala is having elections next month and the violence there is increasing. * One of the leading candidates for president in the Nov. 9 election is former general Efrain Rios Montt, who was dictator in 1982 and 1983 at the height of Guatemala's bloody civil war. Rios Montt's record when he was in power before speaks for itself. * Rios Montt himself views this violence thusly: "'I think the passion to be the winner that many supporters have makes certain excesses inevitable,' he said. 'But I see that as normal.'" [my emphasis] Perhaps he can explain why it's "normal" for the violence to be perpetrated against those he opposes and not those he supports . . . Venezuela * The Venezuelan Electoral Council has set a four day period from November 28 to December 1 to collect signatures for a recall referendum on Hugo Chávez. Chávez, for his part, has thrown down the gauntlet. * But Chavez warned: "They should know that although they are not going to get (a referendum), their names will be recorded. Unlike in a vote, which is secret, they will sign. They will put their names and surnames, their national ID number and their fingerprint,' he said." As Miguel Octávio noted, Venezuela has a significant segment of employment in the public sector. This certainly appears to be directed to those workers. General Resources * Finally, if you are interested in coverage of the Americas in a daily newspaper in the US, the Miami Herald is consistently the best source in the country. They have assembled a comprehensive set of articles in anticipation of the upcoming Americas Conference in Miami. If you're interested in this part of the world, this is a good place to start on some of the major issues facing Latin America. The next installment of Randinho's Latin America Briefing will be November 25. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Latin American events can be found at Beautiful Horizons.

« ok, I'm done now

John McPhee talks a bit about it in his book 'The Control of Nature'. The lengths we have to go to preserve our habitable bubble - the web of infrastructure that keeps the harsher forces of nature away from my house - against storm, fire, and the assaults of nature which would manifest entropy by wiping our homes down to sand and rubble. Now, particularly in Los Angeles, we have a problem in that we do three things: # We build outward along the city margin, which means we are in increasingly inhospitable terrain (the hospitable terrain having been developed decades ago). We do this for two reasons; because people seem to want semi-rural homes, and because they don't want denser cities. They want the experience of looking out their yard at a wild canyon, covered with chaparral, and seeing a coyote or a bobcat. They just get upset when the canyon burns, taking their home with it, or the coyote views Fluffy the cat as an appetizer. They don't want to increase the density within cities, because the congestion will be worse and the character - the suburban, detached home nature of much of Los Angeles, changes to an urban one as the density passes certain thresholds. And part of why they came to Los Angeles was to get away from an urban environment.

# We don't spend money on the infrastructure that would make building out into the margins safer. Here we have an unholy alliance between the Left - the environmentalists who want to minimize the footprint of humankind on the wild places as we build them out, and the Right - who don't want to burden developers with expensive improvements.

# We have starved the core public services - fire, police, emergency medical response - to feed the other, more politically rewarding parts of local government. And we've especially starved the preventative public services - like the folks who monitor brush clearance, or the public health and mosquito abatement folks - because they're unglamorous and don't 'show well' at budget time. And so we burn. If I had to characterize myself right now, I'd say I'm a 'Pat Brown' liberal. This state has twice as many people as it was designed to hold - as the man-made infrastructure that supports our habitable bubbles was designed for - and that can't last. While his era was one of pouring massive concrete infrastructure from one end of the state to the other, this era will be about sensors, electronic control systems, and small-grain solutions to the problems that could be solved in the 60's by the liberal application of concrete. But if we don't invest in our infrastructure - if we don't act to protect the bubble that we all live within - we'd better get used to camping in stadiums.

« ok, I'm done now

IRAQ BRIEFING * Al Qaeda scored a big propaganda victory over the weekend with a rocket attack on the Al Rasheed hotel that succeeded in killing an American Colonel and wounding at least 18, while driving U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary out of the hotel. The attack marked a new facet in terrorism, using a cart loaded with RPGs (and modern, post-embargo French rockets) to launch a barrage against the hotel. Although minimally effective in terms of damage inflicted, the success in striking such a high-profile target and escaping unharmed will probably help the anti-U.S. groups to recruit additional terrorists to their side. * The Command Post is reporting on the work 82d Airborne Division paratroopers are doing to try and eliminate extremists in Baghdad. * JK: Who's contributing in Iraq? Kesher Talk has the full list of countries who are helping out, and their contributions. * The BBC is reporting that Iraq may never have tried to restart its nuclear weapons program following the 1991 Gulf War. If true, this raises yet more questions about the state of U.S. intelligence services and their inability to detect the true state of Iraq's programs. Alternately, if the intelligence agencies were correct...where did all the WMDs go? Neither question is likely to have a good answer, but we'd better find them anyhow. * JK: Where will President Bush's $87 billion go? Newsweek attempts to answer the question. Meanwhile, Team Agonist links to an article describing life for Bechtel's workers in Iraq (PWD: laexaminer/laexaminer). * JK: An update on USAID Reconstruction Activities in Iraq, from Andrew S. Natsios, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator... "I've been involved in more than ten reconstruction efforts in the last 14 years. This is the fastest and most massive that's occurred anywhere in the world during that time period." * JK: Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy has published a web diary of her trip to Iraq that's worth a look (Hat Tip: Instapundit). * JK: Some of Iraq's crime surge is a good thing. IraqPress says there are no exact statistics on how many loyalists of the former regime have been killed since its downfall more than six months ago. But residents in Tikrit say no day passes without at least one murder taking place (Hat Tip: The Agonist). * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated April 1, 2003] IRAN REPORTS * The Agonist has discovered reports of Iranian spies in Britain searching for possible terrorist targets. Disturbing news, if true. * In what sounds like a stalling tactic, Iran now says it will study the suspension of enriched uranium production. Something tells me this study will take a very long time. * Meanwhile, Iran continues to try and avoid pariah status, this time offering up the names of 225 suspected al Qaeda detainees to the UN Security Council. U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * Both parties are accusing the White House of stonewalling the 9-11 Inquiry. While any such inquiry will doubtless uncover some items that paint the Bush Administration in a bad light, it is also likely to identify areas where the U.S. could be doing a far better job of protecting its citizens. Stonewalling the inquiry seems an unwise move on the part of the Administration. More here from Amygdala. THE WIDER WAR * JK: Former infantry officer Patrick Walsh chastizes Lileks for a recent Pentagon-bashing Bleat, and offers some very useful background that will help readers understand the decision process within the Pentagon and put the Rumsfeld Memo into context. Meanwhile, Geitner Simmons offers some historical perspective. * JK: "The Destruction of the U.S.A. is a necessary condition for Peace," & other charming slogans. Once again, the mask slips from the "antiwar" movement at a Washington DC demonstration. Then there's this sign.... * Pakistan arrested 230 al Qaeda suspects in northwestern Pakistan this month. Local residents claim the prisoners were not terrorists, however, but are scapegoats in an operation intended to appease the United States. * JK: The threats against El Al flights to Toronto were apparently not false alarms, as Canadian police have discovered a rocket launcher smuggled into Canada that was to be used in the attack. * JK: Then again, none of this should surprise. Canadian jihadis are starting to become something of a problem, and Canada's notoriously lax enforcement is an open joke. * JK: As usual, The Guardian has no clue whenever it looks at the Right side of politics. It's history of Israel's Left is pretty good, though, and its diagnosis of the Israeli Left's sorry situation can be summed up in one word: Arafat (Hat Tip: Amydala). * JK: To fully grasp the current plight of Israel's left, however, you also have to understand the origins of zionism among the socialist pioneers who founded the Labour party. Sean LaFreniere explains. * It would appear Israel is doing some damage to Hamas, as the terrorist organization is now proclaiming its desire for more talks. This is a marvelous stalling tactic for them, as it provides them time to rebuild their forces before launching new attacks on Israel. * JK: Anyone who cares to look can discover just how bad the situation is in North Korea. But as Gary Farber sadly points out, no one wants to know. * JK: Algeria is the latest official ally in the War on Terror, and they will receive an additional $700,000 in aid to help them fight terrorism. Don't spend it all in one place, guys. * We always try to end on a lighter note. How about Mark Steyn on the Sudanese superstitions that Zionist sorcery is making their penises disappear? Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

« ok, I'm done now

The civilizational death-wish of some on the Left has never been on clearer display than in the demented assertions of the "rights" of governments like these to possess nuclear weapons. As if this was a matter of no import, whose awful and predictable consequences could be wished away by delusional legalisms. As if the mere existence of these tyrannies created "rights" we should respect.

Yet the truth stares us in the face, and will not go away: Fibonacci's sequence lives on today in the nightmare form of nuclear proliferation, and all current indications point to the conclusion that nothing of consequence will be done to halt the relentless addition of its sums. Parapundit drives this point home in a series of 2 excellent articles, covering the work of Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center on the broken non-proliferation process, and UPI Editor in Chief Arnaud de Borchgrave's report on nuclear agreements between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (see also our Aug. 8, 2002 piece). Not to mention the connections to Iran's nuclear efforts, which are breeding further proliferation as other countries in the region notice that nothing is being done to stop them. Both features are typically thorough, with a lot of additional background and links. Their conclusions are depressing. At best.

Taken in aggregate, these developments constitute the most profound indictment to date of our progress in the War on Terror. The prospect of The Bush Doctrine's (key speech | Winds summary & analysis) utter failure within 5 years of its proclamation raises issues that go far beyond the question of Iraq. They speak to the conduct of the war from its very inception, and deserve serious, knowledgeable scrutiny of the highest order. Since the odds of that coming from the Left range from nil to negative, people on the Center and Right need to step back from the immediate fray and begin thinking about our options and limitations very, very seriously. We won't have many chances to change our course and get this one right. If, indeed, we still retain any chance at all.

UPDATE: Armed Liberal offers some further thoughts in Thresholds.

« ok, I'm done now

4. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (Girard). An ephemeral set of vignettes that still serves as the most definitive film biography of anyone that I've seen. I happen to be a huge Gould fan, but friends who aren't love this as well.
5. Choose Me (Rudolph). The most romantic move I've ever seen, and one that captures L.A. in the early 80's (Ed Ruscha is in it!) better than any history book you're likely to read.
6. Singin' In The Rain (Donen/Kelley). I mean, 'Singin In The Rain.' What else do you need to know? Gene Kelley, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse, Comden and Green, "Moses Supposes","Dignity", and "Singin In The Rain.
7. Henry V (Branagh). "No King of England if not King of France," and St. Crispin's Day. Sadly, Branagh's best to date, but I still have hopes for him.
8. Oklahoma (Zinneman). The American experience in the American musical.
9. Godfather II (Coppola). The look on Pacino's face at the end of the film is the payoff; the film itself is a riveting counterpoint to 'Oklahoma!".
10. Yankee Doodle Dandy (Curtiz). A joy to watch, and something that let Cagney express the warm heart under the hard edge.
11. Young Frankenstein (Brooks). Hard to figure out which Brooks to pick, but this is the one we watch the most often.
12. Chinatown (Polanski). Perfect surfaces, sullen, soiled woman, and John Huston as the appetite that built a city. I see echoes of this film everywhere I go; in Catalina last month, I sat in one of the yacht clubs and looked around...
13. Winchester '73 (Mann). James Stewart moves away from 'It's A Wonderful Life' and shows what the hardness in his eyes means. A valued gun is stolen, and Stewart goes to get it back.
14. Blade Runner (Scott). The future. Where William Gibson got all his ideas.
15. Bringing Up Baby (Hawks). Grant, Hepburn, and the definition of effortless attraction based on brains and sharp wit.
16. White Hunter, Black Heart (Eastwood). Clint Eastwood plays John Houston in Africa. Eastwood, beaten in body and spirit, being driven away and waving with malice to the local gentry.
17. Don't Look Now (Roeg). Roeg also made 'Performance' which almost made the list, but this is the scariest, sexiest movie I think I've ever seen. It's the only movie I know that has caused me to lose sleep; I can't reccomend it enough.
18. King of New York (Ferera). Over-the-top 90's gangster movie, worth watching for Christopher Walken's definitive portrait of the master criminal out for one last score and for Lawrence Fishburne's mindblowing hip-hop gangster, Jimmy Jump.
19. M.A.S.H. (Altman). Dude, the 70's were largely defined by the attitudes in this movie. And not only is it a historical artifact, but it's damn funny and one of the last Altman films in which he actually cares about his characters.
20. Shakespeare In Love (Madden). A much better than OK movie, but it has one magical quality - it makes you imagine what it must have been like to see a Shakespeare play for the first time.
21. The Long Goodbye (Altman). Phillip Marlowe trying to live in 1970's Los Angeles. Honor? What does that mean?

OK, that'll get us started...

« ok, I'm done now

First, Porphy a while ago did a thoughtful series of posts decrying the Academy and suggesting that it's the seat of Bad Philosophy, and that it's not looking good for our team over there. I think his arguments are good and interesting, but - partly because I'm an innate optimist (hey, I'm going to get married for the third time!) - I don't have his level of anxiety about this. It's a serious issue, but let me hold this out as a counterpoint:

A new nationwide poll, released yesterday by Harvard University's Institute Of Politics, finds she is far from alone: Of the 1,200 student respondents, 31 percent identified themselves as Republicans, compared with 27 percent who said they are Democrats. The largest number, 38 percent, called themselves Independent, or unaffiliated.

The Academy doesn't live in a dewar; it is refreshed every year with new students who come in, go through it, are changed and change it in turn. Eventually, they will run departments...and it won't be in geologic or even historic time. Porphy and I'll be around to see it. Plus I owe him a response to his funny "You Know You're a Liberal" post. Next, Marc Brazeau, in Portland Oregon (Michael Totten, have you had dinner with him yet?) has a damn interesting set of policy prescriptions for the Democratic Party in the next few years. It's a long list, I agree with some but not all, but it sets out an interesting place to start talking about liberal strategy. My alltime favorite:

Democrats should be striking a bargain between business and the organized constituencies that act as countervailing forces. The bargain is this: Less regulation - More enforcement. Simpler, less nitpicky laws in exchange for bigger budgets for enforcement and real penalties for non-compliance - ball busting fines and in appropriate cases: jail time.

Ties in nicely with this, doesn't it? I'll dig in, but I'm also shamed; I need to stop doing cute op-eds and start being prescriptive. Scott Talkington has a cool blog called Demosophia; what got my attention there was a damn good post on "Totalitarianism 3.0" Here's a sample:

But it seems that, ironically, the most virulent and world-threatening forms of the malady have coincided with the rise and spread of liberal democracy. I would almost suspect that the mere presence of a system seeking to institutionalize the optimization of liberty gives rise to an opposing ideal that seeks to control every thought and act through terror. And the first manifestation of this ancient rivalry may have been in the epic Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta.

Go hang out and learn something from these folks; you may not agree, but I can guarantee you won't be bored. Sometime soon I'll dig in and complement and criticize in detail - I promise!! (corrected deeply embarassing misspelling of Scott's blog; thanks to Mitch for the correction)

« ok, I'm done now

Politics and Economics * As leadership in the Caucasus moves from Brezhnev-era leaders to those who cut their teeth during the leadership of luminaries such as Andropov and Gorbachev, the ways that Azerbaijan and neighboring Georgia handle their elections have major regional consequences. * The West is putting the screws to Georgia ahead of its November parliamentary elections. Citing corruption concerns, the Council of Europe has warned it might blacklist Georgia for its corruption and lack of democratic reforms. Meanwhile the United States has cut development aid to Georgia. The cut, much of which comes from planned aid to the energy sector, is likely punishment for Georgia ceding control of half its energy infrastructure to the Russian electricity giant RAO Unified Energy Systems. Both Europe and the US say that the elections will be a major test for Georgia. * In neighboring Armenia, RAO has signed a new protocol with the government giving it control of 80% of Armenia's generating capacity. RAO chief Anatoly Chubais, a member of the liberal SPS party, said Russia's goal over the next 30-50 years should be to become a liberal empire. * Dynasty seems to be all the rage in the Turkic lands of Central Asia. Some analysts believe that recent moves by Dariga Nazarbaeva, the elder daughter of Kazak president Nursultan Nazarbaev, indicate she is being groomed for leadership. * Uzbekistan's opposition Erk (Freedom) Party held its first party congress on Uzbek soil in a decade on October 22. Throughout 2003, Uzbekistan has allowed public meetings of the Birlik (Unity) movement and protests by workers and merchants in Tashkent and Ferghana. Both Erk and Birlik aspire to compete in elections at all levels, but still face harassment and uncertain legal status. That both parties have held public meetings is a positive sign, as limited as its meaning may be. For a pessimistic view of the future of opposition in Uzbekistan, see IWPR's coverage. Also, you can find the address (which may or may not have been read) of Erk's exiled leader, Muhammad Solih, at Muslim Uzbekistan. * In other moderately good news from Uzbekistan, the Uzbek som is now convertible, kind of. Uzbekistan has budged on IMF insistence that the country lift restrictions on the som. Grand announcements promised full convertibility and the elimination black market trading, but the reality is far different. Current account restrictions have been lifted, allowing importers and exporters to freely trade back and forth between dollars, euros, and soms. * While a step in the right direction, for every step forward, Uzbekistan seems to take two back. Read why not to invest in Uzbekistan, the story of Paul Jahn, and how a strange decree on bazaars will drive up prices. * Afghanistan's Loya Jirga will meet December 10 to debate, revise, and adopt a new constitution. Final touches are still being added before a draft is made public. Assuming it is left unaltered, the country will be called the "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan," and the document seeks to harmonize democracy and Islamic principles. Afghan Voice posts excerpts of past constitutions to compare to the new one, and promises to keep us abreast of developments. Regional Security * The Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan is recognized as Central Asia's heart of Islamic fundamentalism. There a number of reasons for this area being a breeding ground for extremism, and this story covers them all. For some, a lack of economic opportunity is the root of extremism; others are drawn to it out of a lack of opportunities to express politlcal views legally; while others seek to fill a spiritual and informational void in their lives. Unfortunatley, in Ferghana, all these forces are at work. * Benjamin T. Brake of the Council on Foreign Relations argues the US should reasses its basing strategy in Central Asia. The current strategy of possibly maintaining permanent bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan as "lily pads" for rapid deployment to Central Asian hotspots has not been reconsidered in light of August's joint military exercises of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Uzbekistan did not participate, perhaps in a nod to the US). All the members of the SCO have a strong commitment to fighting terrorism while China and Russia view the US as a strategic competitor in the region. * Brake argues that a continued US presence decreases chances for regional cooperation and encourages Russia and China to attempt to foil US plans the region. The unintended consequence of this competition is an "arc of instability" that creates opportunities for terrorist groups. * As winter approaches, the Taliban is reportedly sending 2,500 troops into Afghanistan from Pakistan's Baluchistan province. In response, US and Afghan forces have launched large operations in southern Afghanistan, capturing a handful of fighters and a senior commander, Mullah Janan. Unfortunately, Mullah Janan is a common name, and the captured one may turn out to be unimportant. * Pakistan is responding to US and Afghan criticism of cross border incursions by Taliban and Al Qaeda forces by erecting new fences, towers, and checkpoints on its western borders. Pakistani officials don't say how long the fence will ultimately be, but acknowledge that they are not doing a good job of keeping their borders secure. * The increasing presence of Taliban in Afghanistan only makes life more difficult for the aid workers pushing to get the country back on its feet. * Tajikistan is in a war of words with Russia over the Russian border guards that patrol the Tajik-Afghan border. The Tajiks have been trying to renegotiate their contracts with Russia to avoid having to split costs for the troops. Both countries have strong shared interests in patrolling the porous border with Afghanistan. Tajikistan's military is not strong or well-trained enough to undertake the task on its own while Russia is able to attack the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan at a relatively easy to patrol, short border (when compared to its long Kazak borders). And the rest * Russia made a surprise appearance at the recent OIC meeting in Malaysia. Though Russia does not have official observer status, about 15% of its population is Muslim, much more than OIC member Guyana's 9% minority. The appearance may be aimed at convincing the Muslim world that Russia is sympathetic to Muslim causes. * Fossil finds in Georgia make researchers reconsider human evolution. * Impress your friends! Wow poetry fans! Three-Toed Sloth points out that Langston Hughes was the first American to be translated into Uzbek. Hughes visited Soviet Central Asia, and had a book of essays published in the USSR. A handful of "lost" poems that only exist in their Uzbek translations have been "found" in the last known copy of Hughes' A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia. * In Uzbekistan, the successful Peace Corps Volunteer needs to have a Machiavellian streak to get the job done. Hilltopper displays his/hers and comments on the annual debate over sending students to pick cotton. The next installment of The Argus' Central Asia briefing will appear November 19. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Eurasian events can be found at The Argus.

« ok, I'm done now

I am and have been critical of the Administration for doing the right thing - taking the Islamist threat seriously and responding - yet lacking (or at least not sharing) a clear vision of what we were doing, and downplaying the seriousness and difficulty of the conflict we have been handed. This memo - and article - are glimmers of hope to me. First, they suggest that the Administration, which I have been convinced has pursued a somewhat closed-minded approach in the leadup to the war is willing to look at alternate paths. Next, and most critically important, it means they are asking the right core question - how do we know when we're winning? How do we define 'victory' in this murky conflict? I said, in talking about the economic success of the U.S.:

The success of the American economic model is built largely on failure. It is built on our willingness as a people to try things and to risk failing; built on the fact that we accept failure as part of the price of ultimate success; and ultimately on our willingness to accept displacement and change as a natural part of our social and economic lives.

Our military success is founded on the incredible logistical and technological advantages that our economy has given us - and also on our willingness to apply the same principles to our warfighting; to learn, to adapt, to change. If Rumsfeld hasn't written this memo, he should have been fired, and I hope to God that the fact that so many Democrats are seizing on it is so much political spin, rather than sheer naive stupidity - which is what it is if they aren't spinning.

« ok, I'm done now

(Apologies to StrategyPage, but they don't have working permalinks, so for archival purposes I'll copy the entry here.)

October 23, 2003: In today's world, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that one man can make a difference. Paul Ray Smith is on the way to becoming the first serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor since MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randall Shughart fought their last battle in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, SFC (Sergeant First Class) Smith was a platoon sergeant/acting platoon leader in the 1st Brigade's B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion attached to the 2-7 Task Force. Bravo Company was in contact with Saddam's forces nearly every day during the second phase of the campaign. After a pause below As Samawah and Karbala, the drive on Baghdad from the south carried the 2-7th into Saddam International Airport. On the morning of April 4, the Task Force was inside of the airport and several enemy soldiers had been captured, so a containment pen had be to quickly built. There was a wall 10 ft tall paralleling the north side of the highway, on the battalion's flank just behind the front lines. Smith (whose callsign was 'Sapper 7') decided to punch a hole in it, so that the inside walls would form two sides of a triangular enclosure and the open third side could be closed off with rolls of concertina wire. Smith used an armored combat earthmover to punch through the wall and, while wire was being laid across the corner, one of the squad's two M113s moved toward a gate on the far side of the courtyard. The driver pushed open the gate to open a field of fire, revealing between 50 and 100 enemy soldiers massed to attack. The only way out was the hole the engineers had put in the wall and the gate where the hardcore Iraqis were firing. What happened next was equal to Audie Murphy's legendary World War II heroism. Iraqi soldiers perched in trees and a nearby tower let loose with a barrage of RPGs and there were snipers on the roof. A mortar round hit the engineers' M-113, seriously wounding three soldiers inside. Smith helped evacuate them to an aid station, which was threatened by the attack as well. Smith promptly organized the engineers' defense, since the only thing that stood between the Iraqis and the Task Force's headquarters were about 15 to 20 engineers, mortarmen and medics. A second M113 was hit by an RPG, but was still operational. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers were charging from the gate or scaling a section of the wall, jumping into the courtyard. Smith took over the second APC's .50-caliber machine gun and got the vehicle into a position where he could stop the Iraqis. First Sergeant Tim Campbell realized that they had to knock out the Iraqi position in the tower and after consulting with Smith, led two soldiers to take the tower. Armed only with a light machine-gun, a rifle and a pistol with one magazine, the trio advanced behind the smoke of tall grass that had caught fire from exploding ammunition. Smith yelled for more ammunition three times during the fight, going through 400 rounds before he was hit in the head. Shortly before taking the tower and gunning down the Iraqis inside, Campbell noticed that the sound of Smith's .50-caliber had also stopped. Campbell figured Smith was just reloading again. The medics worked on SFC Smith for 30 minutes, but he was dead. According to the citation, his actions killed 20 to 50 Iraqis, allowing the American wounded to be evacuated, saving the aid station and headquarters (as well as possibly 100 American lives). Fellow soldiers credit Smith with thwarting the advance of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers from the Special Republican Guard, which was headed straight for the 2-7 Task Force's headquarters (Tactical Operations Center), less than a half-mile away. The battle captains, commanders and journalists huddled at the operations center were trying to protect themselves against tank fire and snipers in the nearby woods They had no idea about the possible onslaught of Republican Guard from the nearby complex. Smith, a veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, was a 33 year old from Tampa, Florida. He left behind a wife, a son and a daughter. Memorials to SFC Paul Ray Smith, online at: · http://www.fallenheroesmemorial.com/oif/profiles/smithpaulr.html · http://www.sfcpaulsmith.com/

« ok, I'm done now

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * Iranian-backed Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr is warning the US to stay out of Sadr City, Baghdad's largest Shi'ite area. Al-Sadr is also calling for a Khomeinist-style theocratic government independent of the United States. * Al-Sadr's antics aren't going unnoticed either, the US is ready to confront him if he becomes a threat. Den Beste has his own thoughts on the proto-Khomeini. * In the meantime, it looks like al-Sadr's future Islamic Republic is off to a bad start - US troops have stormed a municipal building in Baghdad that had been taken over by his Mahdi Army. * A Saddam Fedayeen leader organizing attacks on US troops in Tikrit has been captured, along with two former members of the secret police. And from the looks of things, these might not be the only people in the area, there are reports that Saddam Hussein may be there as well. * Asad Mohammed Hasan, the third-in-command of Ansar al-Islam, was recently captured by US forces near Mosul. Hasan commanded Ansar al-Islam's Second Souran Unit, a group of 400 jihadis including 50 Arab al-Qaeda members. * Iraqi Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloom has recently escaped an assassination attempt according to the Iraqi Governing Council. RECONSTRUCTION AND THE ECONOMY * There's a new Iraqi blogger with his own interesting perspective on the situation. * US troops are apparently making ready use of Iraq's first Burger King, even as free media is gradually returning to the old Baathist stronghold of Tikrit. * Newsday reports how US troops are learning the ropes of Iraqi society in the ongoing reconstruction effort. * The Iraqi Governing Council will hold elections in 2004. * The Asia Times reports that UN speculation is that Iraq will require $36 billion in reconstruction costs over the next four years in addition to the $19 billion requested by President Bush for non-military needs. * Members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army clashed in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala with followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani, a moderate cleric who supports the US. I suspect that al-Sadr is attempting to establish himself as the ruling Shi'ite power in Iraq by driving out any challenges to his spiritual authority. * According to Gallup,71% of Baghdad residents want US troops to stay for at least a few more months. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * The US has rejected a timetable for transferring power to the Iraqis. * US and Turkish forces are quietly cooperating in Iraq in the form of integrated border patrols. * South Korea has pledged to send troops to assist the US in Iraq. * The Iraqi weekly Al-Yawm Al-Aakher has done some digging and reports that yes, Virginia, Saddam Hussein was training al-Qaeda operatives. This squares with what I noted back on October 13. * The US believes that over $3 billion in Saddam's old slush funds are tied up in Syrian banks that may be funding the Baathist guerrillas. ETCETERA * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated April 1, 2003]

« ok, I'm done now

IRAN REPORTS * Saad bin Laden is in Iran and is being protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps along with over two dozen other al-Qaeda leaders and ~400 middle management. Qods Force, the IRGC subdivision that is protecting the al-Qaeda leaders, was formerly run by Ahmed Vahidi (who is now a deputy defense minister?) has long-standing ties to al-Qaeda dating as far back as the early 1990s. * Der Spiegel is reporting via al-Bawabathat Israel has plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities a la Osiraq and says that Iran has three hidden nuclear facilities that are completely hidden to the outside world. * Meanwhile, Israel military intelligence chief General Aharon Zeevi says that in 10 months, the Iranian nuclear program will reach the point of no return. This may be one of the reasons for the sense of urgency in resolving the situation regarding Iran's nuclear program. U.S.A Homeland Security Briefing * The terrorist financial apparatus in the United States run deep, as can be seen from this story detailing the antics of the Safa Group. * Evidence appears to be emerging that serial sniper John Mohammed who terrorized the DC area for nearly a month was in fact a member of al-Fuqra. Whether or not this means that USA is going to have to remake their movie of him, beats me ... THE WIDER WAR * Mohammed Iqbal bin Abdul Rahman has been granted a stay on his deportation to Indonesia by the Malaysian High Court. Also known as Abu Jibril, he is blacklisted by US State Department and is regarded as the second-in-command of Jemaah Islamiyyah. * Claims of connections between Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and al-Qaeda have been widely circulating for the last year or so on anti-Chavez websites like Militares Democraticos. I generally ignored such claims as propaganda until US News and World Report started talking along similar lines (DD: the original site is no longer accessible free of charge, though you can read most of the article along with my initial commentary here). Now it seems that UPI is also reporting on these connections as well. * The Asia Times has a disturbing account of the rise of the People's War in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and its ties to other communist terrorist groups like the LTTE, the PKK, and the Shining Path. * Al-Qaeda leader Abu Abdul Rahman al-Najdi has taken to the internet to issue a new call to arms, this time against the Iraqi Governing Council. * Foreign al-Qaeda fighters training at MILF camps in the Philippines have been told to stay out of sight while MILF resumes its negotiations with the Filippino government. * Hassan Hattab, the fanatical leader of the Algerian GSPC has reportedly been deposed by the organization and replaced with Nabil Sahraoui. Sahraoui, who doesn't appear to be wasting any time in scaling up the GSPC's attacks, has already issued a communique in support of al-Qaeda's war against the West. * Taliban fighters in Afghanistan are stirring up trouble in Zabul. US and Afghan troops responded by attacking a Taliban camp. To date, the most recent Taliban activity has been a highway seizure, a sign that the US counter-insurgency campaign is having some success. There have also been some recent indications that the "moderate" faction of the Taliban are willing to negotiate with the Karzai government. * Across the border in Pakistan, the Pakistani military killed a high-ranking al-Qaeda member following a gun battle in which 2 Pakistani soldiers and 8 al-Qaeda operatives were killed, with another 18 being taken prisoner, with US national Abdullah al-Saoub being among the dead. * There was some initial speculation that top al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Khadr was among the dead, but it seems that he managed to escape. However, it should be noted that the entire Khadr family appears to be involved with al-Qaeda to at least some extent and that one of his sons was in charge of a terrorist training camp before 9/11. * Paul Maloney explains why the US designation of Dawood Ibrahim as a global terrorist is a key victory for the war on terrorism in South Asia. * Jemaah Islamiyyah is reportedly organizing summits and replacing captured terrorist leaders - a probable sign that they are getting ready to launch more attacks. * Russian forces in Chechnya have captured 60 terrorists rebels planning to attack the inauguration ceremony of the Russian-backed Akhmad Kadyrov and funded by Abu Walid, a relative of several of the 9/11 hijackers. Meanwhile, Russian casualties in Chechnya appear to be on the rise. * Attacks on Westerners appear to be on the rise in Somalia, while the al-Qaeda affiliate Eritrean Islamic Jihad has attacked US NGO workers near the Red Sea. * We try to close on lighter note if possible. As a religious person, I generally think that a leap of faith every now and then is a good thing, but I sure hope that this isn't what most people have in mind ...

« ok, I'm done now

Both current and past senior civilian defense officials reportedly have grown increasingly frustrated with the conventional mindset of many strategic level military officers. In their view, too many senior leaders are too cautious, lacking the "fresh thinking, creativity, and ingenuity" to engage in the "out-of-the-box" thinking required to fully understand the new asymmetric threats and challenges posed by the global war on terrorism.

and

This article seeks to identify the adaptive linkages that exist between strategic leader competencies and the mental readiness for asymmetric and more conventional warfare. Fortunately, the writings of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz seem to offer a framework to help guide the needed adaptation in strategic leader thinking with regard to asymmetric approaches to warfare. An identification of these characteristics in the writings of both Sun Tzu and Clausewitz offers the opportunity to adapt their concepts to the present and anticipated challenges of asymmetric approaches to warfare. However, it is also important to recognize that while "asymmetry is important to strategy . . . not everything is asymmetry."

Take a look, as I think I'll be commenting on this and the Rumsfeld memo in more depth in the next little while. To get a glimpse of how I feel about this, go read this old post on risk.

« ok, I'm done now

Back already? I know what you're thinking. You're a bit titillated that Glenn blogged about oral sex, and otherwise, you're just going "Yeah, whatever." The commenters over at TalkLeft sure were. Well don't. Because this is absolutely-damn-important. I don't care if you're a liberal or a conservative. This issue - the increasingly dense spider web of law and administrative regulation that we find ourselves bound in - screws up your hopes. For conservatives, it's a gimme. The State enmeshes it's eeevil tentacles deeper and deeper into your flesh...iaaaa, C'thulu, C'thulu...etc. By definition, conservatives (as opposed to Republicans, who are fine with regulation if it promotes Christian faith or behavior, regulates unseemly sexual behavior, or subsidizes favored businesses) are opposed to this. But liberals need to be opposed as well. They need to be opposed for a variety of critically important reasons. First, and foremost, because it makes each of us subject to the arbitrary whim of law enforcement. Remember the notion that law enforcement should be fair? Tough to do when everyone's a lawbreaker and the officer and agents of the court can pick who they want to stop, and book, and prosecute. I said:

The average speed on the 110 freeway (except during rush hour congestion) is over 80 miles per hour. The speed limit is 55; this means that the enforcing officer can select from a huge population of violators at will. Is he a racist? Then black drivers may get cited. Is she mad at her red-haired ex-husband? Red-haired drivers will get red lights in the mirror. This kind of law gives incredible unlegislated discretion and power to the enforcers, and makes the average citizen into the average lawbreaker. But our political system runs on it...

But that's not all. Somehow many liberals have become lost in a fog in which legislation is a meaningful substitute for action. I don't want legislation, I want change, and somehow I'm being handed a bill of goods by my legislators who somehow believe I can't tell the difference.

I've always believed that one of the key problems in our system of government is that we all confuse passing laws with making changes. As anyone who's ever managed people knows, there's a world of difference between sending memos (or policy and procedures documents) and changing employee behavior.

Look, if you're a liberal - and I hope that at least a couple of the people rewarding this are - when you petition the State to act on an issue, what do you want? Do you want better schools, or a thicker book of regulations and an entire bureaucratic armada to (selectively) enforce them? And in so doing, neither accomplish the goal (which is supposedly why you want something done) and arm the opposition with another host of arguments for why liberalism is ineffective, intrusive, and immoral? And for both liberals and conservatives, because it attacks legitimacy, that critical web that ties us together into a polity. Reynolds talks about how " the law loses prestige." I don't think that's a strong enough statement (although he's a law professor, so maybe it means more to him than to me). Legitimacy is critical, and sadly in short supply these days. To sum up:

So ... pass a law ... get a photo op ... accomplish nothing. This is worse than just ineffective. It is worse because the presence of this vast body of unenforced law both breeds contempt for the law (decline in legitimacy) and creates a kind of bureaucratic leverage over each of us, as we are caught in a web of selectively enforced laws.

« ok, I'm done now

Here is a listing at my various analyses and predictions (the "committees" being referenced here are the al-Qaeda military committees that coordinate terrorist activities) and analysis on how they turned out. 1. One committee in northern Pakistan, specifically the Northwest Frontier Province, Baluchistan, and Azad Kashmir that coordinates both the Taliban/Hezb-e-Islami insurgency in Afghanistan and terrorist activities across the Indian subcontinent. If bin Laden is alive, this is where he is likely to be. The loss of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, and Ammar al-Baluchi has likely heavily diminished this committee's capabilities. While there is still a definite center of terrorist attacks, the number of dead civilians being killed by the jihadis, with the exception of the August Bombay bombing that left 50 dead there have been no mass casualty attacks by the al-Qaeda affiliates HuM, JeM, and LeT appear to be on a downward swing that will hopefully continue. Nevertheless, the loss of the leadership does not negate the organization possessing the infrastructure or will to carry out major attacks, as events like this clearly demonstrate. 2.One committee located at an IRGC military base in the Kerman province of Iran, allegedly "under arrest." As this committee appears to be the one that is coordinating the insurgency in Iraq, I would take Iranian claims that the al-Qaeda leaders are in custody and unable to communicate with their followers with a whole shaker of salt. Judging from recent reports regarding Saad bin Laden and two dozen other al-Qaeda leaders being hosted at IRGC military bases, it would appear that my suspicions were right on the margin here. 3.One committee located in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge and in Chechnya whose members include Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, Abu Walid (a relative of three of the 9/11 hijackers), Abu Iyad, and Abu Khabab, the head of al-Qaeda's WMD department. This committee is heavily involved with their counterparts in Iran and has a number of additional members according to Collin Powell's presentation to the UN who were complicit in the attempted plots to use chemical weapons in Europe in late 2002 and early 2003. Chechnya has been fairly quite of lately (relatively speaking) and the Russians recently thwarted a major attack on their handpicked leader in Chechnya. However, Chechnya is still a focus for jihadi activity and is very likely to remain such for the near future. 4.There appears to be at least one more committee located somewhere in Africa (Sudan, Somalia, or Niger would be my best bet) that consists of a number of dangerous individuals that include Hassan Hattab, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Abderazak al-Para, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Of all the al-Qaeda leaders, these are probably the ones that we know the least about. I wrote this before the GSPC directly merged with al-Qaeda and Hassan Hattab was deposed. The recent attacks on Western NGOs in Somalia and Eritrea, with the attacks in the latter nation being directly linked to al-Qaeda, would seem to indicate that Africa is taking on more and more of an importance to the network, a topic I'll deal with further down. 5.Africa is going to take on an increased role in terms of the war on terrorism. Both Burkina Faso and the former government of Charles Taylor in Liberia had documented ties to al-Qaeda that remained strong even after September 11. Al-Qaeda operatives began arriving in Somalia almost as soon as the Taliban fell in Afghanistan and the organization reputedly established bases in Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Nigeria in June 2002. Additional strongholds were said to have been established in Sudan and Kenya at some point prior to the Riyadh bombings. These bases are going to take on more and more importance for the organization as the battle continues. Again, the incorporation of the GSPC into al-Qaeda and the attacks against Westerners in Eritrea and Somalia are all indicative of this. Far more telling is this story from the Washington Post documenting the spread of both Wahhabism and al-Qaeda into Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria. As the article suggests, the US would do well to follow these moves to ensure that al-Qaeda is unable to transform Africa into a successful base from which to recoup the substantial losses that it has suffered over the last two years. 6.The current fighting in Iraq is now the central pivot of al-Qaeda's global war against the West. Increasing amounts of resources and operatives are going to be diverted away from regional campaigns in order to fight against coalition forces in Iraq. This turns the fighting in Iraq into a contest of collective wills between the coalition and the terrorists as far as who backs down first. If they succeed in Iraq and force the US to withdraw with its mission unfullfilled, using Iraq as a base from which to destabilize other Middle East states will be child's play by comparison. The writing is on the wall on this one, as can be seen in the very words of bin Laden (or at the very least, someone who sounds like him). Iraq has become the central battlefield of the global jihad and while it has a temporary force multiplier for the organization, there is also the added benefit of creating a battlefield where we can do to them what they seek to do to us: kill their fighters and exhaust their resources. It has become somewhat cliche in blogosphere, but every al-Qaeda fighter dead in the sands of Iraq is one less suicide bomber with which to attack New York City or Washington D.C. The enemy is quite aware of this, which is why they seek to thwart our efforts in Iraq at all costs. They know that Iraq is a battle in this war that they dare not afford to lose and it must be recognized that the same is also true for us. 7.Tracking down and eliminating each of these leadership committees should take on a top priority as a means of both ending the foreign insurgency in Iraq as well as serving as the ultimate means with which to splinter the terrorist network. That al-Qaeda is now forced to incorporate what had previously been affiliates into the center is ultimately a sign of weakness and a testimony to the success thus far of US-led anti-terrorism efforts. By destroying the entire leadership of the terrorist network, al-Qaeda's remnants and affiliates will splinter apart, enabling each of them to be dealt with in turn. The loss of the leadership, combined with the destruction of any bases that have been established over the last year and the disruption of the financial channels, will be the three blows that nail shut al-Qaeda's coffin once and for all. This statement was true two weeks ago and it remains true now. Killing a hydra is tricky business, but sooner or later it dies.

« ok, I'm done now

You don't have to wait until he's back up to send him the $25. There are several mirrored sites on free web servers which have PayPal buttons -- it looks like he's more than half way to the goal: * Geocities 1 * Geocities 2 * Geocities 3 * 150m 1 * 150m 2 * Tripod 1

If you've ever wondered how you could make a personal contribution to the war effort, this is one such opportunity. The Winds of Change.NET team strongly encourages our readers to give to this worthy cause, and keep Internet Haganah standing watchful guard on behalf of us all.

« ok, I'm done now

"Californians said: `Business as usual is not cutting it. We are sick and tired of partisan bickering. Get the job done,' " said Wesson, D-Los Angeles.

And this:

In a memo distributed to Democratic Assembly members three days after the election, their chief campaign strategist, Darry Sragow, had this advice: "While voters continue to support Democratic ideals, they need reassurance that Democrats also grasp and are prepared to deal with the public's concerns about jobs and pocketbook issues -- the state's and their own." The Democratic caucus, he added, should "put aside whatever differences it may have with the governor-elect and enter into good-faith negotiations regarding the budget."

Not that I'm smug about it or anything...

« ok, I'm done now

"If the DOS attack that nailed Hosting Matters was from the same source as the one that took out Haganah a few days ago, then it is coming from a number of Malaysia-based websites and internet forums frequented by al-Qaeda supporters from the Gulf. I'm looking around the various forums for more information, but here is the claim of responsibility for the Haganah attack that crippled their website. As-Sahwah has been used in the past as a means of disseminating al-Qaeda propaganda to its supporters the Arab world - and the board administrators, per Haganah, are said to be in contact with member's the terrorist network's media committee. I thought I'd bring this to your attention not just because if this is them then what happened to Hosting Matters may well be a test run to see how much they could get away with. You might want to consider a friendly warning to other major warbloggers to start backing up data in preparation for such an event."

Indeed. --- UPDATES --- * Dan Darling has more information and updates in the Comments section. * N.B. The kind of people who do things like this are called "crackers," NOT hackers. * Jeannie at Dodgeblogium wonders if this is what Malaysian PM Mahathir had in mind in his recent speech. Answer: probably. Brace yourselves...

« ok, I'm done now

IRAN'S QUEST FOR (NUCLEAR) FIRE * SpaceWar.com provides a chronology of events leading to the most recent developments, and the folks over at Rantburg.com seem to have a similar take on the latest events. * Minutes before publishing this report, we received a news brief that quotes a Senior Iranian Official as saying on Tuesday that Iran was not prepared to totally abandon its disputed uranium enrichment programme which Washington says could be used to make atomic bombs: "We believe that stopping enriching uranium is totally unacceptable and we think nobody agrees with (doing) that in Iran," Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. He added that, "When we consider something as our obvious right we will not yield." * Haaretz News Service reports: The Islamic Republic will only temporarily halt it's depleted uranium program. Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani was quoted saying "One of the agreed points was that Iran voluntarily will temporarily suspend enrichment to show its goodwill and to create new trust between Iran and other countries." That's just great, Iran agrees to temporarily halt uranium enrichment, a few spot inspections, and in return France, Germany and Britain agree that Iran "could expect easier access to modern technology and supplies in a range of areas." * So lets see, in about a year or so once the regime has completed it's uranium enrichment program, and has implemented a range of new sophisticated technology compliments of France, Germany and Britain, we can expect them to act peacefully towards the free nations of the world and begin granting freedoms to Iranian citizens? * If you are under the impression that British abuse of the Iranian people is only a 20 year phenomenon, it would do some good to read the abstract of this book: The Great Famine and Genocide in Persia, 1917-1919. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS * Ohh that's right, I forgot to mention, a regime that is one of the top sponsors of terrorism throughout the world! I guess freedom, human rights, and justice are issues of little relevance to those who have have forged fantastically lucrative ties with Tehran over the past two decades. * EDITORIAL: At first glance, reports such as the ones that you will inevitably find plastered to newspapers and blurbs scrolling across your television set may seem to paint a picture of hopefulness and positive movement in regards to the regime's concessions and compliance, when in reality they are nothing more than a facade comprised of empty rhetoric and blind men. We can achieve true hopefulness and positive movement by understanding that until the end of time, "reality" will never cater to empty rhetoric and illusion, but rather will directly serve the hearts, minds and will of mankind. If the Iranian people are screaming, crying and in many cases dying for freedom, then as free people of planet Earth we have a DUTY to answer their cries (JK: DJ Persia clarifies this in the comments section). Our message to the Iranian people should not be that we would like to continue to rape and milk your country by dealing with the regime, but rather it must be, "We Are Coming!" SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS * The 2nd World Press Freedom Ranking has just been released by Reporters Without Borders. Iran ranked 160 out of the 166 countries that were ranked. I guess that's the type of score you get when you repress, imprison and murder journalists. Does anyone remember Zahra Kazemi? The world media seems to have forgotten her. * Radio Free Europe is reporting that Conservative figures in the government and the leading conservative political factions are advocating the candidacy of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) personnel for parliamentary office. Do the Iranian people really need an even more conservative unelected government? * Meanwhile, Iran says that it may withdraw from OPEC. * Finally, we'll end on an offbeat note. Geitner Simmons has a fun story from Washington D.C., involving the Iranian Embassy just after the 1979 revolution.

« ok, I'm done now

I was fortunate (or not, depending on your point of view) to come of age in the late 60's and early 70's first in West Los Angeles, then in Santa Cruz. There wasn't a lot of parental supervision, and we pretty much got to do what we wanted. Much of it, unsurprisingly, revolved around sex. We had thrown the old rules of courtship out the window, and hadn't yet made up any new ones. So there was a lot of room for bad behavior, and really no standards against which to judge it. My own story is relatively minor: A woman who I knew slightly came to me in an emotionally fragile state, and while my memory today is clear that it was she who initiated things, matters came to a head when she, nude, slammed me in the jaw and ran out my door, clutching her clothes. I sat up that night, realizing that while what I'd done wasn't vile - barely - it was certainly wrong; and that while she'd been the aggressor, a gentle man - a responsible man - would have pushed her away and made a date for a future time when she might be more self-posessed. To this day, I'm grateful to her for hitting me (she's one of the very few people who have raised a hand to me about whom I would say that). In the other issue, I was a witness, then a participant in cleaning up the mess: Two students got onto an elevator and Something Happened. He denied it, she asserted it, and the disciplinary codes at the time gave a fair amount of room to decide what to do. He was my friend, and I didn't believe him capable of what he was charged with; I wound up as his defender, and got him off with a relatively minor sanction. Of course, it later turned out that the charges were true. So it's a complex world, with rules we often reject where we understand them. And past performance is obviously no guarantee of good behavior. Do I think that men have sexually abused women through most of history and gotten away with it? Absolutely yes. Do I think that the rules today are totally stacked in favor of the accuser, and that innocent men suffer unjustly? Equally absolutely yes. I don't yet know how we navigate this. I think we have a complex of half abandoned structures that once regulated our behavior, and half-emerged new ones that someday will. And now we're in the valley, just pushing forward as best we can. There are so many issues where the balance between men and women had not yet hit an equilibrium; I could do an entire blog on it, but this isn't that blog. When Biggest Guy was of an age that he was likely to be sexually active - when he had a car and was out on his own away from adult supervision, he and I had a series of long talks about the risks involved. One that I had been particularly concerned about was AIDS; his and his brothers' godfather died of it when he was about nine, and was old enough to have some idea of what was going on. I wanted to make sure that the sex=death fear wasn't there for him, but that the had a healthy respect for the risks. To me the greatest risks weren't AIDS (actually a low risk in his population subgroup), but the old-fashioned ones of pregnancy and emotional damage. I recently had much the same talk with Middle Guy. But when Biggest Guy went away to Virginia and then started school, we had the most serious talk. I explained it to him simply; the rules were stacked against him. It wasn't right or fair but that's what it was and that, simply, if he wasn't a true gentleman, the consequences for him might be much worse than a sore jaw. He got it and so far, from what I hear and see, he's on his way to walking through this first minefield. I'm still holding my breath. And on the bigger issue; TG and I were playing with a toddler girl during Dave & Deborah's wedding; the little girl was at that appallingly cute age when walking it itself a form of self-expression, and when round pink cheeks (usually flecked with the remains of a snack) frame a smile of total exuberance. The girl's mom and I had chatted and she knew I had older boys. "Do you wish you'd had a girl?" And before I could consciously think, I replied "Well, she'd shoot damn well, that's for sure." It's a difficult thing to say, but I think that women have a duty to resist. I'm very aware of the risks. But it's not to distinguish themselves as victims of violence, rather than someone who "says yes and then changed her mind," but for the same simple reason that I think we all have a duty to resist. Because it raises the price of being a predator. In matters of sex, men who transgressed were once at risk from the woman's kin or from the community if in fact their transgression was public enough and the victim someone who mattered. In matters of violence, it was the norm to resist, and the negative consequences of those actions is in part what kept bad behavior in check. Today we are taught to passively get through it, and then go seek counseling. Men who are basically guilty of not being gentlemen are labelled as predators, and the predators - sexual and otherwise - continue to flourish, because we've built an ecology that suits them just fine. I think we can change that, one sock to the jaw at a time.

« ok, I'm done now

One of the reasons the Haaretz study was so difficult to carry out is that the Israeli government's budgets have purposefully hidden spending on settlements within other costs, bundling them with subsidies to border communities and those in the Negev Desert, areas where people need to be induced to live either because of risk or limited economic opportunities. This cover-up is part of an unhappy pattern. Look at any government map of Israel, and you will find no border demarcating the occupied territories. Although Israel has never officially annexed the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it has treated them, in many ways, as if it had. This means that those seeking to establish Jewish towns and villages in the captured lands have benefited from generous government subsidies: personal income tax breaks, grants and loans for house purchases, bonuses for teachers. The Jewish settlers, who now number 230,000, have been granted special bypass highways, water supplies and health clinics. Even the cheery red-roofed bedroom settlements a few miles from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are treated as if they were distant depressed towns. Teachers who settle in them, for example, get four years' seniority, an 80 percent housing subsidy and 100 percent reimbursement for travel, and more. The result, according to Haaretz, is that the average settler family benefits from about $10,000 more per year of government spending than a family living within Israel proper.

Here's the deal. Pretty much every one of us - regardless of whether we live in the Americas, Europe, Asia, or Africa, lives on land taken from other people by conquest. That's pretty much the basic story behind our history as humans. The question becomes: When do we stop the clock? In 1967, Israel took by force of arms the territories known as the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. They held them, originally, as a defense against conventional military invasion, as had been attempted in 1948, was imminent in 1967, and was tried again in 1973. With those territories, came a population of Arabs - many displaced in the conflicts of 1948, and loosely Jordanian, Syrian, and Egyptian at first - but now and forever Palestinian. The question is simple: Did Israel hold those territories as conquest, with the intent of expanding into them? Or were they a military buffer and political bargaining chip? As a military buffer, events, history, and military technology appear to have passed their usefulness by. As a political bargaining chip, Israel seems to find itself in the predicament of the kidnappers who took Bette Midler in 'Ruthless People'...no one wants them back. So what we're left with is conquest. Morally, many (including me) find that repugnant. And the official claim is that Israel doesn't intent to take over ("colonize," for lack of a better term) the Occupied Territories; Israeli efforts to negotiate some kind of 'land for peace' deal would support that. But... ...by building an increasingly dense network of civilian communities in the West Bank and Gaza, what happens on the ground looks like a creeping colonization. So as much as I'm happy to bust the Arab world for talking peace and diplomacy in English and bombs and bullets in Arabic, I have to wonder how it is that we're talking diplomacy and ceding control of the Occupied Territories in English, and budgeting for new construction in Hebrew. Let me note one thing: I haven't changed my opinion that offering statehood to the Palestinian people, as things stand today, would be a fool's errand. Either there is no government capable of containing the violence of the various sects, or the government is duplicitously claiming that it cannot. In neither case has anyone these shown me that they deserve the keys. But while we figure out how to deal with the charmingly erratic nature of the Palestinian polity, we need to do so from a position that is sustainable - militarily, economically, politically, and morally. And I've gotta question whether the current policies - of quietly burying a huge budget to subsidize people to move into the settlements, while talking about handing them back to the Palestinians - are sustainable on any of those grounds. Militarily, the original justification for settlements was they would provide 24/7 sets of Israeli eyes to assure that there would be no pre-invasion buildup. Between satellite imagery and Predators, that justification seems pretty much evaporated at this point. I have to believe that in the face of constant, low-intensity attacks such as we are seeing now, the settlements cost a great deal more in readiness than they provide. Economically, the Haaretz articles seem to speak for themselves. Politically, I used to think that the slowly growing settlements were a ploy to induce the Arab world to hurry up and negotiate - if they waited too long, there wouldn't be any land left over to make into Palestine. It may be that we're hitting that point now (back to 'Ruthless People' again). But the fact is that Israel has to figure out what to do with the population in the West Bank- having done too little over the last 20 years has created the conditions we see today, in which crazed leaders can make strapping on a Semtex belt seem like a sensible thing to do. I have come to believe that Israel should either annex the Territories and deport anyone who objects - and take the political conseuences, which I believe would be catastrophic - or find a way to give them up. Neither of those processes is helped by this current policy of accretion. And morally, it's hard to look at the policy of settlements while negotiating to give it back without a certain level of repugnance. It's duplicitious at best, while a public and absolute freeze on settlements - and even a meaningful rollback of some of the less-defensible ones - would at a time of profound Arab weakness, should be seen as a sincere act and demonstration of good faith. M. Simon emailed the following in response to my intial snippet of a comment:

To Armed Liberal, Since the comments are broken I have this reply about settlements. If Arabs and Muslims living in Israel are no obstacle to peace please explain how Jews living in the Palestinian territories are an obstacle to peace? If that is not good enough then you might consider that for a peace deal that was real Israel has dismantled settlements in the past. Why wouldn't they do it again? Settlements are an imaginary obstacle. Land is not being taken from Arabs. Land which once belonged to the Jordanian government (which they have long since renounced) is being used. Simon

And I owe him a reply. First, and foremost, the Arabs who live in Israel do so freely as members of the Israeli community - they are subject to israeli laws, participate in the israeli economy, and do so with the free and full consent of the Israeli government. Settlers live in enclaves, subject to Israeli law rather than what passes for Palestinian law, and do so over the protest of much of Palestinian society. If Arab governments bought or expropriated (as Israel has done to property once owned by the Jordanian or Egyptina governments) land and built enclaves for Palestinians within Israel, subject to Jordanian law, the people of Israel would be rightly outraged. Why is it different for the Arabs? Yes, they can be dismantled for a peace deal, but I've got to believe that as they and the people who live in them get more and more entrenched it will be less and less possible to do so every year. And personally, I'd rather see the $500 million/year spent more constructively by being offered directly as a bribe to the Palestinians for peace. Fred Lapides also blogged this at Israpundit

« ok, I'm done now

He says, "There's nothing left of me. I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise. Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness? It has no resistance to sunlight." This is how Hallaj said, I am God, and told the truth! The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself. Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring. Work. Keep digging your well. Don't think about getting off from work. Water is there somewhere. Submit to a daily practice. Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door. Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who's there.    - from Coleman Barks' "The Essential Rumi"

So... what's Rumi telling us? Use the Comments section to offer your thoughts!

« ok, I'm done now

The one proven technology for treating cholera was far too expensive to deploy against a large outbreak. Other systems cost as little as 35 cents, but were too complicated for unskilled caregivers. So people died. Enter the Open-Source approach... bq. "But the team needed more medical expertise. So Prestero turned to ThinkCycle, a Web-based industrial-design project that brings together engineers, designers, academics, and professionals from a variety of disciplines. Soon, some physicians and engineers were pitching in - vetting designs and recommending new paths. Within a few months, Prestero's team had turned the suggestions into an ingenious solution. Taking inspiration from a tool called a rotameter used in chemical engineering, the group crafted a new I.V.(Intravenous) system that's intuitive to use, even for untrained workers. Remarkably, it costs about $1.25 to manufacture, making it ideal for mass deployment. Prestero is now in talks with a medical devices company; the new IV could be in the field a year from now." That, and many other innovations besides. If you want more background on the open source method itself, Eric Raymond is your man. While the article's hype about "replacing the corporation" is over the top, I firmly believe that open source and its variants are in the process of going mainstream. The success of that process matters. To you, me, them... everybody. Everybody. In an age of scorched-earth copyright wars and increasingly desperate efforts to fetter and balkanize the Internet, reminding people of the open source ethos and the promise it offers will be an important task for dynamists of all political stripes. I firmly believe that as long as we don't sabotage the support structures on which it rests, open source and its variants will become an increasingly important force driving global wealth and innovation in the 21st century.

« ok, I'm done now

"The Net is not the peaceful little village of academics and hobbyists it once was; now it's a metropolis, with serious money to be made, serious power to be wielded and serious nastiness to be warded off. Walker's contention is that the very mechanisms now available and in development to manage life in such an environment - the walls we need to protect ourselves, the authentication of identity that we need to trust each other - could gradually create a structure of choke points and authority that would leave government and corporate powers in control of Net use, and all in the name of protecting the user. Before you say it could never happen, read the full treatise - it's long, but clearly written, and it's an eye-opener."

I'll second that recommendation, and add one of my own. For a longer-range view that looks at the underlying potential in both directions, David Ronfeldt's 1992 paper Cyberocracy is Coming remains the most perceptive single piece I've yet read.

« ok, I'm done now

* Adam Morris at PRC News and CH at Why Read This discusse the significance of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bain's seperatist moves in advance of his 2004 relection campaign, although, Morris's views regarding so-called U.S. weakness are, in this blogger's opinion, off the mark. * The Peking Duck and The Gweilo Diaries look at China's imprisonment of leading health official Ma Shewin for revealing the extent of the AIDS epidemic in Henan province. * Disturbing trends in Hong Kong's care of the young and old are noted at The Gweilo Diaries. * Andres Gentry, proprietor of the excellent China blog 'Water,' offers an essay on the narrow selfishness that pervades mainland Chinese society. An excerpt:

"Yesterday (almost like manna from heaven for the purposes of this essay), there was a fire in the apartment block across the street from mine. I was walking back from buying vegetables at a nearby market and saw a gathering crowd and the unmistakeable scent of ash. The fire engines hadn't arrived yet, but I could predict what was going to happen: people would come running to stare, point, and laugh, but certainly not to help.... If you see someone else in pain, stare, amuse yourself, but never ever do something to help because if you help someone then you become responsible for that person and that is completely against your narrow self-interests. This idea is sometimes taken to its logical, but most grotesque end. At accidents that occur at places and times where there are no witnesses, but one of the drivers is injured, the other driver sometimes intentionally hits the other person again to kill him. Why? Because if he stayed alive the other driver would be responsible for his medical bills, but if he's dead then he doesn't have an impact on the other driver's life or pocketbook. Pause and consider the twistedness of that. Then pause again to consider that such stories are common enough to make it onto CCTV."

* JK: Hmm, this actually sheds new light on Team Agonist blogger Sean-Paul's recent China experiences during his Silk Road Journeys. Sean-Paul's reaction was pretty off-the-scale (see also this follow-up), but perhaps Andres' writings will help add some perspective on the whole incident for both Sean-Paul and his readers/critics. * JK: Sean-Paul deserves criticism, but so does the culture he observed. Unless you're a member of the Holy Postmodern Leftist Church, of course, in which case perspective is the last thing you want and other cultures' immunity to criticism is an article fo faith. Should you find this faith challenged, chastise yourself for reading the scribblings of patriarchal racist lackeys instead of Derrida's holy texts. 3 Chomsky speeches, a Monibot column and alms to Indymedia should suffice for pennance, and help restore perfect belief. * In Hong Kong, Phil at Flying Chair reports on the sparsity of Chinese virginity. * Local blogger BWG does a star-turn on CNN, as Asia's first blogging celebrity * On the lighter side, Hemlock continues to corner the Hong Kong stock market, suggests Jackie Chan as Chief Executive and discovers he suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder.

« ok, I'm done now

It may be that the server load caused by MT-Blacklist's "display suppression" feature is a capacity killer for sites with as many comments as we have (8500+): bq. "When the plugin is active, all comment and trackback content is compared to your blacklist. Posting of comments or trackbacks with blacklisted content will be blocked and all existing ones in the system will be omitted from MTComments and MTPings listings as well as MTEntryCommentCount. This control is useful if you are experiencing troubles. Think of it as the big red lever on the wall." Those omissions require the system to scan a LOT of comments each time, something Jay Allen confirmed in an email to me tonight. WizBang has a hack to fix the problem, but Jay notes: bq. "The new version should be ready tomorrow. Not only should it be faster and more efficient, but it will also give you a choice on whether you want each feature. That means you could keep post and ping filtering on yet turn off old comment filtering. Should help your problem entirely." MT-Blacklist v1.1 sounds promising. If you need other measures to protect your blog, we have a roundup of alternatives and complementary measures here. It's also likely that we'll make some moves with Server-Side Includes to lessen the CPU thrash caused by having things like Category Listing Links and Recent Posts available on each page, plus very flexible archiving (Individual posts to make our briefings printable, by Date because people are used to that, and by Category so you can follow our coverage over time). While some of these problems are a function of our growing scale, we're hoping that others will learn from our experiences and improve their own blogs in these ways. Not only will we keep you posted every step of the way, therefore - when we're done, we'll offer some tutorials that share our experiences and code fragments. Join the effort! Anyone else out there with advice, thoughts, or comparative experiences to share is strongly encouraged to email joe, at windsofchange.net.

« ok, I'm done now

"Toward the end, a kind of hysteria gripped the newsroom. I witnessed a deep-seated, irrational need to get something on this guy [Schwarzenegger]. By Wednesday before it was published, I counted not fewer than 24 reporters dispatched on Arnold, and this entire enterprise was directed by John Carroll himself." "Carroll launched the project with the words: 'I want a full scrub of Arnold.' This was fully and completely and daily driven by Carroll. He's as good as his word on being balanced and trying to make this paper more balanced, he really is. But not when it came to Schwarzenegger. Carroll changed completely. It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn't care what it was." ... "It all happened amidst a poisonous atmosphere here against Schwarzenegger---a blatant political undertone that was everywhere in the newsroom. These are people who have been in the building a long time and have formed a culture together. It's easy for all of us to start thinking very much alike." "The reporters probed everything they could think of about Schwarzenegger: his health, his businesses, his charities. They couldn't find out anything horrible about his charities, but they tried very, very hard. His business empire made him look good---so the business empire story was buried in the paper. It ended up on something like, I don't know, Page A36. And as these issues got abandoned because they produced no dirt on Arnold, as desired by Carroll, the team going after him got more and more focused on sex and steroids." "It was awful to watch Carroll. It became a Capt. Ahab and Moby Dick thing where they felt an increasing need to nail those points that could most hurt Schwarzenegger. At times, it made me physically uncomfortable to be in the newsroom."

As they say, read the whole thing. Here's my take: I'm met Jill once or twice (we're certainly not friends), and she doesn't seem suicidal. For her to lay this directly on the Times, and to do so publicly, means she believes in what she's saying, and believes that when push comes to shove, she'll get backed up. Because if she's not... I'm making popcorn. Oct. 20 Update: If you scroll to the bottom of Jill's column, there's a correction; it appears that her source got the betting pool wrong.

"Note: In a previous version of this interview, the source stated that betting pool of 113 journalists conducted at the Times showed about 25 percent thought Schwarzenegger would win and recall would win. However, reporter Ken Reich, who conducted the pool, says this information is wrong and offers the following correction: 'Of the 113 participants, 74 picked both the recall to pass and Schwarzenegger to win the replacement race.... Of the 113, by the way, 101 picked Schwarzenegger to win the replacement race, 11 Bustamante and one McClintock.' "

Kind of a significant fact to get wrong; but as noted, I'm buttering the popcorn waiting to see how this develops.

« ok, I'm done now

North Korea: Developments

• US Secretary of State Colin Powell is apparently considering a multilateral security pact with North Korea. Chris over at Free North Korea! makes it quite clear that he does not favor security guarantees without North Korean promises to respect basic human rights - check out this sample letter at his site.
• The US is seeking a wider regional role for its forces in Korea, reports the Inifidel.
• Jasper Becker looks at some of the movement going on leading up to the next round of talks. Meanwhile, Joseph over at Infidelworld wonders if the North Koreans are "sexing things up" with their recent bluster.
• The North Koreans have apparently taken the liberty to cut the Japanese out of future talks concerning the nuclear issue. I also comment on this at the Marmot's Hole, as does Kirk at It Makes a Difference to the Sheep. Kirk also takes time to chronicle the opportunities lost by the North Koreans to improve their relations with the Japanese (here and here), as well as direct us to this post at Free North Korea! on how North Korea has miscalculated on the issue of Japanese abducties.
• Check out this October 10 piece in the WaPo concerning changes brewing in previously pro-Pyongyang ethnic Korean schools in Japan.
• What's the punishment for student radicals who break into a U.S. Forces Korea facility during a live-fire exercise? Why, a suspended sentence of course.

North Korea: Recommendations & Debates

• Kevin of Big Hominid asks some extremely thought-provoking questions on North Korea - you'd be wise to give them a look.
• At Open Source Politics, Adam Morris - he of Brainysmurf fame - adds some very though-provoking commentary on North Korean refugees and the impact of Iraq on American North Korea policy. Check out Conrad's response over at the Gweilo Diaries, as well as my own over at the Marmot's Hole. This dialogue was sparked, BTW, by a heart-wrenching in the WaPo on the plight of North Korean refugees - Asia bloggers Andres Gentry and Peking Duck comment on it as well, as does Barry Briggs.
• Over at Tacitus, Big Dog asks us what we'd do about North Korea.
• Tony over at Oriental Redneck laments the failure of a number of Koreans to get a grip on reality when it comes to the North.
• Over at the Marmot's Hole, I question the thought process of the South Korean Ministry of Unification.

North Korea: Socio-Economic

• Over at Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms, Kevin contributes quite possibly the definitive post on the debate surrounding food aid to North Korea (and it's not even finished yet!). Coincidentally, Kevin's analysis was in part triggered by this post by Brian of Cathartidae citing a report that food aid is being sold in North Korean black markets.
• On the topic of refugees, check out Alan Fung's series on the Sino-Korean frontier in the Asia Times - Part 6 deals with North Korean prostitution in Yanbian Choson Autonomous Prefecture. Also, the consulate section of the South Korean embassy in Beijing was forced to close due to an overload of refugees residing there.
• Thinking of taking a vacation to North Korea - take a look at this post by Brian of Cathartidae linking to some commentary on North Korean tourism at Right Wing News.
• Randall Parker takes a typically in-depth look at the North Korean economy over at Parapundit.

South Korea

• South Korean President Noh Mu-hyeon may step down if he loses a proposed referendum on his rule in December. This is currently the biggest story in Korea at the moment, and Oranckay's Weblog is THE blog to consult on this matter - his posts on this issue are too many to link individually, so just visit his blog and enjoy. I offer a post on this topic as well at the Marmot's Hole.
• An initial fact-finding mission to Iraq concluded that South Korean peacekeepers would face little threat in the area around Mosul. That report received heavily criticism from a number of sources, and another fact-finding mission is now being arranged.
• Mike of Seeing Eye Blog takes the Korean daily Joongang Ilbo to task for their myopic vision concerning Iraq. Also worth-reading is his riotous and overdue assault on columnist William Pfaff, The Australian editor Paul Kelly, and Joongang Ilbo senior columnist Kim Young-hie.
• I offer my own thoughts on the debate concerning the potential South Korean dispatch of combat troops to Iraq at the Marmot's Hole (reprinted in the Korea Times here). Also check out Kevin of Incestuous Amplification's roundup of Korean news reports from the initial phase of this debate.
• Professor Song Du-yul, who is either a pro-democracy activist or a Communist traitor (it depends on who you ask), is back in South Korea after 37 years of exile in Germany, and his presence is creating quite a fuss. For those familiar with neither the man nor the controversy surrounding him, read through this Aidan Foster-Carter piece on him in the Asia Times. Two blogs you may want to take a look at for commentary on this issue are Oranckay's Weblog and my own. Choice pieces from the Oranckay - "Song Tortured By The Press," "For the Record: Song Du-yul," "Song Du-yul Admits Workers' Party Membership," and "The Chosun on Song and Kim Keun-tae." Over at the Marmot's Hole, the relevant posts are "Prof. Song Du-yul - A Couple of Thoughts," "OK, perhaps Song is a bigger scumbag than I previously believed," and "Song Du-yul's Flying Circus."
• Just how petty can South Korean politics get? This petty.
• Divorce - not just for Americans anymore. And on a strangely related note, Korea rules cyberspace.

Baseball Notes

• Outstanding Korea blogger and avid Red Sox fan (nobody's perfect, I guess) Kevin of Incestuous Amplification blogs at length about Red Sox reliever Kim Byung-hyun's infamous "one-finger" salute to the fans of Beantown - see "Done and Done," "Impressive Resume," "Customs" and "I Lied."
• On a more positive note, Samsung Lions first baseman Lee Seung-yup hit his 56th homerun of the season on October 2, breaking Sadaharu Oh's 39-year old Asian record for most homeruns in a single season.

« ok, I'm done now

I'll skip over his arrogance and rudeness; he was in a hostile environment, and maybe he was nervous. But watching the discussion, I realized something that brought the Times issue into clearer perspective for me. In the discussion, I had substantive issues with his points, which were essentially that journalism is superior to blogging because it has an editorial process which drives it toward 'fairness' (he felt that objectivity was impossible and not necessarily even desirable), but a fairness informed by the moral sensibilities of the institution (I'm pulling a short argument out of a long and somewhat rambling discussion). Bloggers obviously don't. I tried to make the suggestion to him that individual blogs weren't necessarily good at driving toward fairness, but that the complex of blogs - the dialog and interaction between blogs - was, and might in fact be better than mainstream media, isolated as they are from feedback. (Note that Perry from Samizdata got this point before I finished the sentence). And what was interesting to me was this - that while I have (violently at times) disagreed with other bloggers in face to face discussions, I always had the feeling that there was a discussion going on, a dialog in which two people were engaged and trying to understand each other's points, if for no other reason than to better argue against them. But in dealing with The Journalist In The Hat, no such dialog took place. He had his point to make, and very little that I said (or, to be honest, that others who participated, including Howard Owens, who pointed out that he had worked as a journalist) was heard or responded to. He had his points, and he was going to make them over, and over, until we listened. Or until we said 'bullshit' too many times and he walked away in a snit. And similarly, what I think torqued me off as a consumer of mass media - and I think others as well - was the LA Times blindness to the fact that it is a part of a larger ongoing dialog, and that the stories on Arnold's sexual - I'm not sure how to characterize this - behavior clearly would have an impact, and were in fact reported to have an impact, by Carroll's own admission. I've said all along that what matters is that the paper act with at least the appearance of impartiality, or as my pet journalist said, 'fairness'. Had the Times wrapped its Thursday piece in an explanation that made three simple points: 1) We've been working on this full-bore since August 6, we wish we'd run it sooner, but we didn't believe it was right not to run it before you voted; 2) We understand the problems this presents for Arnold and his campaign, as well as the appearance it gives that we're 'hitting' him, and we've given him and his campaign space to respond; 3) We devoted equal resources trying to dig into rumors about Davis' behavior and been unable to come up with enough solid, sourced information to make a story out of it. I'd have been mildly unhappy, but certainly not angry, and would have had no cause to be angry. But the Times didn't so any such thing. And here's my point. As someone who reads the Times every day, along with a lot of other media, the clear tilt of the paper couldn't be more transparent to me. I'm not going to go too deeply into the news portion, although I've started saving clips. But it took me about 30 minutes last night to go through all the columns available on the Web. I've got links and clips below, but let me give you a summary count (methodology was simple: I went to the Times web site, clicked on 'columns' in the left bar, and went through each of the listed columnists and pulled anything that had to do with Davis, Arnold, or the recall. Note that 'balanced' doesn't mean pro-Arnold or pro-recall; it means looks at both sides and tries to present analysis): Al Martinez: 1 column, violently anti-Arnold and recall. Ronald Brownstein: 1 column, balanced. Patt Morrison: 10 columns, 8 violently anti-recall and anti-Arnold, 2 moderately anti-recall and anti-Arnold. Dana Parsons: 1 column, mildly anti-Arnold Tim Rutten: 7 columns, 6 mildly anti-Arnold, 1 anti-Bustamente David Shaw: 4 columns, 2 mildly anti-recall and 2 mildly anti-Arnold George Skelton: 10 columns, all balanced Steve Lopez: 9 columns, 4 violently anti-Arnold, 1 moderately anti-Arnold, 3 anti-recall. Obviously, my characterization is subjective. Go down and browse the links below and make your own call. But I'm willing to bet that the overall characterization won't be that the columnists were, overall, balanced between positions. And that matters a lot, because the columnists are the human face the newspaper presents to us, it's readers. And in this case, that face was largely speaking with one voice. Update: Porphy comments intelligently on this (as usual), but mistakes my meaning in one place - to his credit, I think I was unclear, so I'll use this to do better. First, when I talk about the 'appearance' of impartiality, I'm talking about what to me would be courtesy. It's a recognition that while I'm taking one position and believe in it, there are other positions, and that I'm acknowledging that while I support this and think you should too, that it is one position in the marketplace of ideas and that you as a reader might want to consider the others, foolish as they may be, before making a decision. Think of it as consultative selling. He then assumes that when the reporter (I hope he doesn't mean me) was talking about 'fairness' as opposed to 'objectivity' that he meant:

His concept seems to approximate that of "Progressives" - being "fair" means taking sides and treating others differently based on whose side they are on. Those on the Progressive side can and should be cut some slack, because they mean well, while those opposing Progressivism must be held to more exacting standards as a matter of course because they are not advancing the cause of justice, equality, and social change anyhow.

I took it slightly differently. I think of what he meant as being a good Little League coach, called on to umpire the game. You clearly want one side to win, but you follow certain norms - in order to see that you, as well as both sides are playing by the rules (it's not too different than what I talk about above). Sadly, as I note, I think they're making all the calls one way. That may well mean that Porphy's definition is better (more accurate) than mine. End Update... All links as of Sunday night/Monday morning Al Martinez: Oct. 10

Once upon a time in the land of Col-lee-forna, a village elected an idiot named Serios Gropper to run things. The villagers all knew he was an idiot, but he was strong and had the widest grin anyone had ever seen and was always on stage lifting things and grinning whenever there was an opportunity, so everyone knew who he was. Familiarity counts. The leader ousted in favor of Gropper was a 90-pound weakling named Maxim Dul who was always getting sand kicked in his face at the beach and who hardly had any grin at all. Gropper, everyone said, had substance and a bold face, and that's what Col-lee-forna needed. Nice hair too, perfectly colored and sprayed.

Ronald Brownstein Oct. 6

If Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante becomes governor or if Gov. Gray Davis retains his seat amid the charges against Schwarzenegger, Republicans are sure to consider their candidate the victim of dirty tricks from Democrats and the media. Imagine the howls of outrage from talk radio - or the resistance from Republicans in the Legislature - that Davis would face if he survives under these circumstances. Every day after a date with the hangman is a good day - but Davis would be at war every moment for the rest of his term. If Schwarzenegger holds on to win, the hostilities might be even more intense. Even before the allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced, Schwarzenegger was unlikely to win support from a majority of voters; it's always been possible that fewer Californians will vote to make him governor than to keep Davis in office. Under the best of circumstances, that meant Schwarzenegger was likely to start with a precarious base if he won.

Patt Morrison: Oct 7.

Like your average Californian, I'm interested in just one thing in this election - me. Where does all this leave me? If Arnold wins, it leaves me in deep, that's where. So let me say right now: All that stuff I wrote about Arnold before? About him not being able to remember meeting with energy villain Ken Lay? About him being able to balance the budget but maybe costing the state big in sexual harassment suits? About his going AWOL from the Austrian army for a bodybuilding contest? About his not voting in six of the last eight state elections? I was just making statements that were ludicrous and crazy and outrageous because that's the way I always was. I knew they would get headlines. We were promoting bodybuilding - I mean newspapers. I was always outrageous. Otherwise I wouldn't have done the things I've done in my career. Hey, if the voters can believe it from him, they can believe it from me too.

Oct. 6

The California Governor's Conference for Women, the 17th annual, is still scheduled for Oct. 22 - but with which governor? Both First Lady Sharon Davis and her husband are scheduled to speak at the event - as is actor and children's book author Jamie Lee Curtis, a Schwarzenegger co-star who in 2001 joined three of his other co-starring women to protest a Premiere magazine article alleging Schwarzenegger's boorish conduct on movie sets. Since a Times story last week on the same subject, Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that he acted inappropriately toward some women and apologized.

Sept. 30

Why did I have this dream, now? Ask me a hard one. It was about the recall. If Arnold Schwarzenegger is a week away from being elected governor of the fifth-largest economy in the world, if comedian Dennis Miller's name can be seriously bruited about as our next U.S. senator, then I can become a Supreme.

Sept. 22

"I'm not quite sure if he's a Republican, conservative. I'm not sure what he is. As you know, he's pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-choice, pro-orgy, pro-hashish Let me tell you if Arnold Schwarzenegger ever would win, I would love to go to a Republican Governors Assn. What a party this could be - he could light up that group." Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee.

Sept 16.

McClintock, the man who's been on the radar screen for 20 years, suggested acidly, on a different cable news show, that Robertson and his flock "take a closer look at the positions that Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken on a wide ranger of social issues. I think they'll be appalled." The social issues - abortion, gun control, gay rights - the dirt swept under the carpet, the unmentionable topics of the campaign, which is saying a lot in an election that's had to discuss group sex. The social issues the national GOP used to divide and conquer are the same ones that have derailed them in California, which is why everyone's keeping his mouth shut about them this time, lest it run the GOP off the rails again. The Schwarzenegger faction desperately wants McClintock to bail out before he becomes a Naderesque spoiler. But none of them wants his fingerprints to be found on McClintock's back. So all they can do is hope that someone, in political-Becket fashion, will rid them of this turbulent candidate - because McClintock is not the type to oblige them and step aside.

Sept 15.

"He is a great film star. But I find his idea to run for governor absolutely insane America should be governed by people who have a clue. I hope he doesn't win." ? Dixie Chicks banjoist Emily Robinson, quoted in the German newspaper Abendzeitung about Arnold Schwarzenegger. After Dixie Chicks lead vocalist Natalie Maines announced in March that they were all ashamed that George Bush hails from Texas, their CDs were slammed and stomped on in a vivid demonstration of free speech vs. free markets.

Sept. 9.

Arnold Schwarzenegger enlisted in Austria's army, not its air force, but he's an ace at flying the missing-man formation. Schwarzenegger went AWOL from the army to compete in a bodybuilding contest, winning a title that got him his start - at the price of a few days in the stockade. Maybe going AWOL in the debates will work to his advantage, too. This morning's gubernatorial debate will go on without him, just like all the others, save for the one invitation he has accepted, for Sept. 24. This RSVP record may be bad democracy but it's brilliant politics: Put your guy in one debate and one debate only - the one where the candidates get the questions in advance - so there's only one set of video clips, one set of sound bites of your guy at the top of his game, for the press to use over and over again.

Sept. 8.

"For $1 million in California, I could get enough signatures to put a proposition on the ballot to outlaw ice cream." ? Walnut Creek electrician Donnie Snyder, demonstrating against the recall outside the first gubernatorial debate.

Aug. 26.

The state budget, the state government, aren't a film script, with a straw-man villain who is easy to set up and, ultimately, a cinch for the hero to knock down. Nobody is pro-taxes; anyone thinking of running on a pro-tax platform would be better off starting up a theme park called "Root Canal Land." But please, Mr. S., in spite of the temptations to cinematic chest-beating, don't tease us by invoking some no-tax paradise, unless you also plan on having each of us go out and boil our own drinking water, pave our own roads, pour our own sidewalks, and dig our own sewers. In that case, I'll be over to borrow a shovel.

Aug. 25.

" 'Dianne, what's happening out in California? It's like you turned the United States on its side and all of the nuts fell to California.' " ? California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, telling a group of West Los Angeles business leaders about being teased about the recall by a fellow member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The quote is a variant of one often attributed to architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Dana Parsons Oct. 5.

I could have asked at that moment about Arnold's original denials of boorish behavior around some women - before he 'fessed up last week - but that would have killed the festive mood. This is a weekend to celebrate what recall supporters say is democracy at its finest. Let's all join the parade and anoint Arnold Schwarzenegger - this man we trust and know so well - to turn our fortunes around.

Tim Rutten Oct. 8.

According to Carrick, "the way the entertainment press clustered around this campaign actually subverted the efforts of the serious press to be substantive. It allowed Schwarzenegger to pursue a strategy of inaccessibility and to get away with it." So was the recall itself so novel and Schwarzenegger's presence so unexpectedly overwhelming that there are no lessons to be drawn about future campaigns and their news coverage? Not in Carrick's view: "At the end of the day, I think we can conclude that, when it comes to covering politics, more is not better - if it's not of higher quality."

Sept. 27.

Martin Kaplan, of USC's Annenberg School for Communication, agrees. "In some sense, we were auditioning all five of the candidates Wednesday night. After what we saw, it would be difficult to imagine wanting to spend the next three years with any of them. "To many viewers, this debate may have confirmed a suspicion that the recall itself has become a great waste of time and money. Rather than the great experiment in public engagement that it once seemed to be, it's become about as edifying as mud wrestling. People are saying it isn't even entertaining anymore, which - as we all know - is the greatest sin of all."

Sept. 20.

Steinberg faults the conventional political press for not finding more aggressive ways to pose tough questions. He pointed out that while most of the candidates were debating in Hollywood this week, Schwarzenegger was virtually across the street taping Larry King's show at CNN's Sunset Boulevard studios. "None of the reporters and camera crews there for the debate even bothered to go across the street and hassle him with shouted questions," Steinberg said. "Schwarzenegger's strategy requires a docile news media, and he's getting one."

Sept 17.

Johnson argued that "under an elective system the recall should be applied to all officers. It will make no judge weaker, nor a strong judge less strong. It will be a warning and a menace to the corrupt only." But state Sen. Charles Wheller, also a progressive Republican, denounced the concept as a threat to "judges with courage to decide against the majority" and as a "strike at the very foundation of the government in which I live." Judicial recall's enactment, he warned, would overturn "the last of the republic of our fathers.... We will pass from a constitutional democracy built by them to a pure democracy and all its dangers." Sound familiar?

Sept. 13.

In an interview, Kaus said, "It fits in with Arnold's line that the Oui interview also was a lie to promote a film. In both cases, Schwarzenegger is treating his audience as a bunch of marks who he can con. One senses that maybe he approaches politics this way, as well.... The other, more revealing, thing is that he thought this sort of story about conning people was appealing." It's a distinctly Hollywood contribution to contemporary politics. No more bothersome second thoughts or tiresome contrition. Confronted with the failings or indiscretions of the past, simply deny it ever happened; just say you lied and then get on with it. That's publishing and politics, Hollywood style. All that's required is that you lose the capacity to blush.

Sept. 10.

Field's findings regarding Schwarzenegger are interesting on two counts: One is that the action film star and former bodybuilder is struggling to increase his base of support among those Californians pollsters deem likely to cast a ballot. (Campaigns that somehow energize people who have not previously voted regularly are the sort that give pollsters nasty shocks; Schwarzenegger partisans are hoping this, like the first gubernatorial contest between the late Tom Bradley and former Gov. George Deukmejian, is one of them.) Second, this latest survey confirms the findings of the most recent Times Poll in reporting that Schwarzenegger has a significant problem with women voters, who make up 50% of California's total electorate and 52% of its likely voters. The Times Poll found that fully 50% of the women inclined to vote hold an unfavorable impression of Schwarzenegger, while 41% see him in a positive light. Field reports that Bustamante now leads his chief Republican opponent by 13 points among likely women voters.

Sept. 6.

There are few rules in life that admit no exceptions. Here is one: The pursuit of identity politics ends in an intellectual swamp that inevitably drains into a moral sewer. That's why Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is wrong not to speak more clearly to the issues raised by his one-time membership in a Chicano student organization whose founding credo is a mind-numbing amalgam of quaint revolutionary rhetoric and pseudo-mystical racialism. It's also why the mainstream media's off-handed treatment of this issue is one of the avoidable shortcomings in their coverage of the recall campaign.

David Shaw: Oct. 12.

Nothing seemed to stain his image or stem his advance. Instead of being hurt because his experience was in movies, not politics, he was helped by it. His on-screen persona made him so familiar that some newscasters even called him "Arnold" in their on-air stories, thus playing directly into his campaign effort to depict himself as a regular guy, the nonpolitician, the overgrown boy next door. By its very existence, early media coverage legitimized Schwarzenegger's candidacy and, over time, made him seem a likely winner. People like to side with a winner - especially against a loser like Davis. It makes them feel smart. So voter sentiment began to show a shift in his favor. That turned the polls around, and ultimately, it all became self-perpetuating - and self-fulfilling.

Sept. 28.

To be fair, the recall is something of a farce, and many of the candidates are worth a guffaw or two. I mean, when was the last time a candidate for the governorship of anything used the slogan "Finally, a governor you can get drunk with"? Even California news organizations - The Times among them - have been unable to resist pointing out, in various ways, that this campaign more closely resembles the theater of the absurd than an election for the leader of the world's sixth-largest economy.

Sept. 21.

Fortunately, even in a time of growing media consolidation, there is still enough variety in our news sources that a diligent citizen can get different images from different venues and, with some effort, gather enough information to triangulate and approximate what a public figure might really be like. It's difficult work, especially in politics, entertainment and professional sports, where the images of public figures are so tightly controlled by highly skilled, highly paid spinmeisters. But it's both possible and necessary. If you do seek information from several sources - and ignore rumor and gossip - you should be able to decide what you think Schwarzenegger is really like, how much his sexist behavior reflects his true character, and whether you want him for your governor.

Aug. 24.

At a time when the national news media are enjoying an enormous collective laugh at California's expense, both suggestions are likely to be difficult to follow. With a Terminator, a HuffenPuffington, a pornographer and a self-described "ageless" billboard model among the 85,000 candidates for governor, the opportunities for online digression and vilification may be irresistible.

George Skelton: Oct. 9.

Arnold Schwarzenegger won a historic election with ease. Now he has a historic opportunity - because of a rebellious public and a charismatic personality - to bring landmark change to California. That will be much tougher than getting elected to replace a despised governor, especially when his principal rival was a weak-running lieutenant governor falsely linked, in voters' minds, to the guy being bounced. (Gov. Gray Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante probably didn't have five minutes' total conversation in five years.) But making big change won't be as tough as pundits are predicting, if Schwarzenegger takes the right steps.

Oct. 6.

Sacramento--The campaign trail isn't what it used to be. Especially a trail trod by Arnold Schwarzenegger. It used to be - a few governors ago - that political reporters and campaign advisors would spar over issues. Like taxes, spending, education, the environment. Just what does candidate Schwarzenegger mean by his promise to freeze spending? To restructure debt? There's no such sparring these days, not in a recall revolt that's not only historic but often histrionic and hysteric. Especially not with this substance-light front-runner.

Oct. 2.

Davis' strategists are seasoned pros and they're realists. Privately, they acknowledge the governor is on political life support. His chances of surviving the recall are very slim. All these major polls continue to deliver bad news for Davis. Each brand is different, with its own polling method. Yet, all have one thing in common. For months, none has shown support for the recall dipping below 50% of likely voters. In fact, considering the margins of error, nothing much has changed since early summer. The polls, on average, have been showing recall support in the mid-50s and opposition in the low 40s. If nothing has changed in months, why would it in the next week?

Sept. 29.

Huffington, 53, may be annoying, but she's articulate. Most important, she's articulating and accentuating an issue most candidates don't dare touch: the corrupting influence of California's political contribution system and the need for public financing of campaigns. Viewers and party partisans may wince when she accuses another candidate - Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, for example - of "legalized bribery" for accepting barrels of money from special interests, like Indian casinos. But that's the most honest, cut-the-baloney description of it. You've got to be very naive not to recognize the relationship between special interest donations and a governor's bill signings and political appointments, or a legislator's votes.

Sept. 26.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the leading contenders, walking right into some nasty exchanges with independent Arianna Huffington that they had no hope of winning. Sure, Huffington goaded them, but so what? We teach our kids to avoid such fights. Schwarzenegger acted like a blunderbuss and looked like a bully, interrupting Huffington in a collision of booming and shrill European accents that was hard on the ears.

Sept. 25.

Sacramento is a fiscal basket case and there are plenty of people at fault. Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature certainly share the blame - and so do California voters. Yes, we should all take a long look in the mirror. We've stripped the governor and - especially - the Legislature of the power they need to govern, tying their hands.

Sept. 22.

Sacramento--Look, I'm no lawyer, let alone a constitutional scholar. But you don't need a JD degree to recognize simple errors of fact in that court opinion ordering a delay in the recall election. Little errors, to be sure. But it's annoying when a three-judge panel of a U.S. court of appeals produces a piece of work that, in some places, is just plain sloppy. Granted, the mistakes undoubtedly are irrelevant to the court's conclusion: that the recall election scheduled for Oct. 7 should be delayed - most likely until the March 2 primary - because some people using faulty old punch-card voting machines could be denied their equal protection rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Sept. 18.

The California Republican Party is missing something. At least, I couldn't find it at the GOP's state convention last weekend in L.A. Neither could others I talked to. Missing was the roar of social conservatives, the right-wing zealots who fight abortion, gay rights and gun control - and get their heads handed to them by Democrats in general elections. I listened to Saturday's speeches and didn't hear the words "abortion" and "pro-life" once. Nor "guns" and "2nd Amendment." Nor "homosexuals" and "traditional marriage."

Sept. 15.

There is a familiarity to this movie. I keep thinking I've seen it before. Actor runs for governor. Star-struck crowds get excited. Rivals claim the actor's a political amateur, totally devoid of government experience. Moreover, he speaks - or script-reads - in generalities; he doesn't offer specifics. Toward the end, opponents think - wishfully - that voters will come to their senses, be leery of the unknown and retain the status quo. Choose the devil they know. Back then it was Gov. Pat Brown. Today it's Gov. Gray Davis. Naw.

Sept. 11.

Proposition 54 is seen differently by different folks. Backers behold it as another death blow to racial preferences. Democratic pros, although opposing the measure, welcome it as a tool to prod the party faithful into voting in the recall and saving Gov. Gray Davis. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is treating it like a casino jackpot. He's using it to launder Indian gambling donations - too large to legally handle in his gubernatorial campaign - into anti-54 TV ads intended to energize Latino voters and elect him.

Steve Lopez: Oct 12.

What in the world are we up to now? the rest of the country always wants to know. We sneeze, and they wonder if it's contagious. Now we've really done it. We fired Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with an action hero who doesn't know a parcel tax from a pig in a poke, and we're already being treated to jokes like this one: Arnold's first health care proposal? Free breast exams.

Oct. 10.

"You tell the locals to pass parcel taxes in order to keep the library open," Cain says. "The problem is we're talking about police and fire services too, so this is going to be a dangerous game." I'm not buying any such rabble. I refuse to believe the new guv would have led us down this path if he didn't have answers. C'mon, Arnold. The cigars are trimmed, the beer is cold and the car is running. Don't let me down.

Oct. 9.

I thought there was supposed to be a stampede from Chico to Chula Vista - crazy populists running through the streets in a rage over an increase in car license fees. After enduring Darrell Issa and Mary Carey, a Taco Bell poll, a seven-page ballot of candidates, several debates starring Arianna Huffington, 5,500 "I'll Be Backs," 7,000 "Hasta la Vistas," and cameos by Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Rob Lowe, Dennis Miller, Oprah, Larry King and Jay Leno, was 60% too much to ask? Actually, maybe it was all those things that made people sit this one out.

Oct. 8.

Perfect. A campaign that began with the late-night comedian may be notarized by him. And so we've had our little revolution and the new emperor is Der Gropenfuhrer, which, in Austrian, means: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oct. 7.

I've now found three actresses who say they were not molested by gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, I'm telling you this for a self-serving reason - I'm hoping to save my job by preventing more people from canceling their subscriptions because of all our stories about Arnold groping women. But there's more to it than that. On this election day, I'm doing it out of a sense of fairness.

Oct. 6.

On Tuesday it probably won't matter that the economic bust, term limits that stack the Legislature with amateurs, and state initiatives that devour the budget have done as much as Davis to create California's problems. What will matter is that Schwarzenegger has promised 30 pieces of silver and a clear conscience, regardless of who gets hurt.

Oct. 5.

I've been harder on Schwarzenegger than Davis lately because the challenger hasn't made the case for why he deserves the job, and I offer no apologies. I offer no apologies for this newspaper, either, for publishing stories in which a growing parade of women claim to have been bullied, pawed and humiliated by him. The purpose wasn't to derail his campaign. The purpose was to tell readers what was learned in a two-month investigation about the character of a man who wants to serve as both governor and role model. You don't have to believe that, and you don't have to buy the newspaper. But read something, will you? The quality of this country's conversation is sinking faster than Davis's numbers, and I don't think the problem is too much reading.

Oct. 4.

Arnold's Army came to Arcadia Friday morning, and the scene was like nothing I can remember in recent political history. As I tried to park, and realized that one lot after another was jammed, the teeming masses streamed by me on foot, marching, marching, marching, trance-like, as if to a revival. Old folks, young folks, moms and dads pushing strollers. Arnold Schwarzenegger, great terminator of evildoers, was coming to the Los Angeles Arboretum to vanquish sorrow, discomfort and the car tax.

Oct. 3.

Reports of Arnold Schwarzenegger's sexual mistreatment and humiliation of women drew outrage here Thursday on the campaign trail. Outrage at the Los Angeles Times, not at Arnold. I would have thought that at a gathering of conservatives, who rightly vilified President Bill Clinton for his raunchy scandal and nationally televised lies, there'd at least be some finger-wagging at Arnold. Not a chance with the Teflon Terminator.

« ok, I'm done now

IRAN REPORTS * Congratulations to Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer-activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts on behalf of her fellow Iranians. Dare we hope that this Nobel, like those given to Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa, will mark a turning point in efforts to expand human rights? THE WIDER WAR * Phil Carter has some observations on the advantages of applying the Geneva Convention to the Guantanamo detainees. I'm not sure I agree, but it's a good argument that deserves to be heard. * Conrad of the Gweilo Diaries points out a few of the reasons military force was a far better option in Iraq than in North Korea. Hopefully we won't end up having to fight in North Korea as well, because Conrad's absolutely right about the probable ramifications. * The Bird Dog offers his thoughts on what he would do in North Korea. There's no guarantee his ideas would work, but they sound pretty promising. * Charles Johnson asks a question that should concern all of us: when it comes to terrorism, which side is the State Department on? Sadly, most of us have already figured out the answer to that. * JK: And if you hadn't figured this out, the Wall St. Journal has an article worth reading. The State Dept. is clearly the best diplomatic service Saudi money can buy. * JK: Pakistan is concerned about the sale of Israeli Phalcon airborne radar planes to India. Niraj says that doesn't make sense. * JK: Benjamin Gefen offers an assessment of what Israel's attack on terrorist camps in Syria will do to the region. * Jonathan Gewirtz examines Israel's decision to threaten Arafat's life and then failing to follow through. He's not impressed, and he makes a good argument that Israel needs to start worrying more about its security and less about its relationship with the U.S. * Arafat may have run through another prime minister, as Ahmed Qorei says he may not remain as Prime Minister-designate once his emergency cabinet disbands in three weeks. The odds are good Arafat has won another round in his bid to retain control of the Palestinian Authority. * JK: The Philippine government said it killed escaped Indonesian terrorist Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi on Sunday. Al-Ghozi, a member of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), embarrassed the Philippine government by walking out of his cell at national police headquarters in mid-July. * As China prepares to send its first taikonaut into space, Stephen Green reminds us that the future of war will be in space. He's right, but I'm not convinced a resurgence of NASA-style space exploitation is going to move us in the right direction.

« ok, I'm done now

IRAQ BRIEFING * Can U.S. efforts in Iraq make a difference? SGT N.J. Todd, an Army Reservist who served in Bosnia, says yes, citing his experiences in a land where genocide and oppression are much more than political slogans. Hat tip: Opinion Journal. * If the mainstream media won't report on good news from Iraq, Citizen Smash is on the case, with a fine roundup of good news you might not have seen elsewhere, including the release of the Iraqi generals that Chief Wiggles and Winds of Change.NET have been advocating. * More good news from Iraq, as the Marsh Arabs habitat is returning despite Saddam Hussein's best efforts to destroy it. Moves like this are doubly good for U.S. strategy in Iraq, as they help the ecology while also increasing support for the removal of Hussein. Hat tip: Instapundit. * Fred Kaplan questions the $87 billion supplemental package for Iraq and Afghanistan as a 'slush fund,' and Phil Carter agrees, but he points to Congress's responsibilities in this area, as well as some other issues that nobody seems to be raising about resources for Iraq. * Austin Bay 'walks back the cat,' examining our prewar intelligence and assumptions on Iraq to see where we went right and where we failed. Here's hoping the CIA is spending a great deal of time on this as well. Hat tip: Instapundit. * Ralph Peters accuses George Bush of selling out the Kurds to get some Turkish troops into Iraq. It's a damning accusation, if true, as letting the Kurds down (again) would go a long ways to negate the successes we've had in Iraq. (Hat Tip: M. Simon) * JK: Searching for WMDs in Iraq hasn't located a smoking gun yet, but Charles Krauthammer points out the importance of what has been found to date, as well as how much searching yet remains for the inspectors. * JK: what is it like to come home to a country you haven't seen in two decades? Read Yasmine Bahrani's account of her homecoming and find out. * Representatives of the Iraqi Governing Council will be accepted as legitimate Iraqi representatives at the Islamic Conference in Malaysia, although the conference is expected to demand a removal of U.S. troops as soon as possible. * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated Aug. 19, 2003]

« ok, I'm done now

The O'Neill lawsuit also cites an account of al-Qaida training from a former member of the Saddam Fedayeen, a special Iraqi paramilitary unit. "A trainer at Unit 999, Abu Mohammed, who had escaped Iraq, confirmed that such training was under way on how to lay bombs and how to use chemical and biological weapons in operations in the Middle East and West. Unit 999 ran a course for a number of extremist Middle Eastern groups, including al-Qaida," the suit states.

That got me thinking about Unit 999 and as a result I decided to look more into it, relying on the the FAS description of the Iraqi al-Istikhbarat al-Askariyyah or Military Intelligence, of which Unit 999 was a part of. I found this: bq. "Unit 999: This "deep penetration" unit, responsible for domestic and international clandestine operations, is headquartered at the army base at Salman Pak southeast of Baghdad. Unit 999 activities have included infiltratration of opposition militias in the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, a planned effort by the unit to kidnap the US commander General Schwarzkopf from Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm, and sabotage attacks on Iranian oil installations in the 1990s." Initially Unit 999 had five battalions of 300 men apiece, and more recently another battalion was formed to counter Iraqi opposition groups. * 1st "Persian" Battalion [Iran] * 2nd "Saudi Arabia" Battalion * 3rd "Palestine" Battalion [Israel] * 4th "Turkish" Battalion; * 5th "Marine" Battalion [sea-borne operations, mine warfare, etc] * "Opposition" battalion In 1994, following the founding of the Iraqi National Congress [INC] opposition group, the Istikhabarat was assigned the role in monitoring and countering the opposition to the Saddam regime. The "Opposition" includes comprises sections dealing with Kurds in the north and Shias in the marshes of the south. Most of these battalions can be linked up with known Iraqi-sponsored terrorist groups: * Persian = Mujahideen-e-Khalq * Palestine = Palestine Liberation Front/Abu Nidal Organization * Turkish = PKK/KADEK That accounts for all of the groups of foreign terrorists except one: the Saudis. What Saudi terrorist group was training at Salman Pak? Well, according to the testimony of an Iraqi lieutenant general and Sabah Khodada, I think that we can draw a fairly straightforward conclusion.

« ok, I'm done now

It's actually pretty easy. If you like the clean(er) air and water in our urban areas, thank a liberal. If you like the idea that Condi Rice is the NSC advisor rather than an instructor at a segregated secretarial school, thank a liberal. If you like the Internet, thank a liberal (DARPANet was created in no small part thanks to a government research grant). If someone you know or love survived an auto accident recently, thank a liberal. (Seat belts, safety glass, crush zones, air bags - yes, I know that air bags and seat belts have killed some people, but all the stats I've seen are pretty suggestive that they have saved far more than they have killed - etc. etc.) If you were able to own your own house without paying down 30% to get a 5-year mortgage, thank a liberal (30-year mortgages were a FDR innovation). If you worked an industrial job for thirty years without being disabled, thank a liberal. I certainly don't believe that all regulation is good, that forms of regulation that were designed fifty years ago are the best we can do today, or necessarily that being pro-relgulation is necessarily what defines a liberal (conservatives seem to have no quams trying to regulate what we do in our bedrooms and what we can watch, read, and listen to). But there are some clear benefits to the 'liberal regime' and while we do need to change the bathwater, I'd like to keep the baby, if that's OK with you. There are probably some more...I'd love to get some suggestions. Maybe I can try and come up with something useful on this...

« ok, I'm done now

This matters because if pornospams et. al. are left unchecked, they will significantly impair the entire weblogging community - not just by killing comments as a normal blog feature, but by triggering automated filtering software at some workplaces once they notice all the porno links. What do we need to prevent that? Software, and support. Software: Yoz Grahame's Cheerleader has a very intelligent set of suggestions, in "7 Tips for a spam-free blog". The article addresses tools vendors as well, which I especially appreciate. It also references Mark Pilgrim's outstanding overview of Club vs. LoJack solutions, which is finally available again after going down yesterday. If you're looking for serious long-term thinking about how our tools need to evolve and what we need to do, Mark's piece can't be beat. Though Shelley has a good one, with some worthy cautions about trust networks and smart feature requests. Roald and Macdonald have an Open Letter to Google which is very much on point. We all have a mutual interest in stopping this, and working together from both ends just makes sense. I'll add another thought. Not only do we need MT-Blacklist, we also need a clean-up utility. One that looks in the comments for the "URL" field, and when it finds a match with our ban list (or even a specific entered value for v1.0), it collects that comment and presents us with a "Power Edit" list that allows us to delete comments in batches of 25-100 at a time. When we're done, one site rebuild would allow us to have a completely clean blog. Support: In addition, hosting providers have to get smarter. Tens or hundreds of weblogs rebuilding hundreds of entries will have the same effect on their servers as a denial-of-service attack. Comment spam should therefore be treated like one. For starters, hundreds of incoming data posts from the same IP ought to raise a red flag and cause diversion or access denial. Mwanwhile, our provider at Bloghosts.com has already moved to firewall out the following netblocks from their servers: 209.120.176.0/24 and 62.42.228.0/24. This will help for now, but over the long term they may want to consider an add-on service. It would include installation of MT-Blacklist, configured to draw from a central blacklist hosted and updated by bloghosts.com themselves, plus renamed CGI submission scripts in their MT(Movable Type) installations to make blogs they host a lower-profile target. The Cadillac option could even include an upgraded Host-specific MT package with a full-fledged spamtrap configuration. That would be a substantial draw for many bloggers, I think, who would gladly pay additional fees for services that take this problem off their hands. This much I do know - we'll need these measures sooner rather than later. Preteen, Lolita and the spawn were just the beginning. There's no reason these attacks couldn't be scaled to add hundreds of comments to each weblog, and no reason why they wouldn't be. Brace yourselves, because you ain't seen nothing yet.

« ok, I'm done now

Al-Hallaj was martyred in 922, as a result of the following saying that expressed the nature of his mystic union: bq. ana'l –Haqq ("I am Truth") It's important to note that "al Haqq" can also mean G-d as the embodiment of one of the 99 Attributes of God, and in the Muslim faith calling oneself G-d is a capital heresy. It did not help matters that his doctrines were already regarded with both religious and political hostility. If Sufis no longer proclaim such ideas publicly, however, some still believe them. From the point of view of Truth, the divine is in each person, and each person has the potential to make of themselves and their life a temple to God. As the Sufi saint Junaid is reported to have replied when asked about this incident afterward: bq. "What should he have said, 'I am Falsehood'?"

« ok, I'm done now

* Shimon Peres, who was the keynote speaker at the World Nano-Economic Congress, said the following: "Nuclear power is destructive but nanotechnology is all about constructing the world anew. It gives us the opportunity to change everything: to make computers the size of a head of a pin, material hundreds of times stronger than steel, robots the size of a single hair on your head that can travel inside your body and attack cells like those that cause cancer." * Ohr Simcha is a home for children of loneliness, fear, and poverty, the home for which they have yearned for all their young lives. This state-of-the-art residential and educational facility is located in Kfar Chabad, not far from Tel Aviv. * "Once in the fourth grade, I got caught in a lie..." Thus begins "Jewish Values for a Secular World," as Jeff Jacoby explains the revolutionary nature of the message Jews have been telling their children and the rest of the world for 3,500+ years. * A film by a Tel Aviv student has won first prize in the Manhattan Short Film Festival. Sheferman's achievement is even more impressive insofar as over 550 films from 30 countries were submitted as entries this year, and only 12 were admitted to the final competition. * The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Thursday awarded the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa the status of a site of world heritage, for its historical urban buildings in the Bauhaus style.

The buildings, built in the 1930s and named by the "White City" organization, put Tel Aviv on a list of just 7 cities to receive the award. (Part of miniluv's Positive Blogging Week)

« ok, I'm done now

DW: How are you feeling? KUEHL: I am really sad. I'm more angry than anything. And I haven't even started thinking about what the Senate will need to do in order to save the state. DW: Save the state from what? KUEHL: From ignorance. This guy has no idea how to run a state. One of two things will happen. He'll have his own ideas and no way to carry them out. I mean he has already proposed three things that the governor cannot do. He wants to roll back the car tax on his own by fiat, which he can't do. He wants to tax the Indians, which he can't do. He doesn't know anything about running the state. So either he will propose a lot of stuff he can't do and we'll have to govern, or he'll be pretty well manipulated by people who have an agenda, very much the way I think the president of the United States has been handled by people who are really telling him how to do these things. In which case we may have to counteract things that are worse than things he proposed on his own. His handlers will probably be more conservative than he is, or in the Republican Party line. Convince him he'll bring businesses back to the state by cutting more benefits to workers, by unraveling anti-discrimination statutes which they call job killers. DW: Will he be received civilly by the Democrats in the Legislature? KUEHL: He will be received civilly. We have received everyone civilly. I don't know if everybody is going to go to the State of the State (speech). Because frankly I don't think there is going to be a lot of content that anyone’s interested in. What’s this guy got to say to us about the state of the state? Nothing.

I've had a few other interactions with the more-liberal part of my team, and one characteristic I've noted is a certain...arrogance. The conservatives are arrogant too, but they simply think that we liberals 're delusional or traitorous. They give liberals the respect of being people responsible for their own actions The Democrats have this kind of sad, kindly, 'we know better than you and we're gonna make you do the right thing' attitude. I've been burned by it twice in my old blog: First, in a post commenting on an email by Avedon Carol I said:

I’ve talked in the past about the ‘liberalista’ (I'm looking for a word for the high-profile liberals who I believe have hijacked the leadership of the liberal movement and the Democratic Party - that will do until I come up with something better) attitudes, and the underlying position of obnoxious superiority.

Avedon Carol posted a couple of times a response to my MESS OF CRACKPOTTAGE post below; I noticed that there were multiples, and that she had clarified her point and wasn't trying to link me to Ann Coulter (ick), and thanked her.

I was too quick on the ‘send’, because this is the email that crossed mine: (here's the money graf:)

BTW, if the kind of support I was getting for my writing was of the caliber of the comments you got to this post, I'd definitely ask myself what I was doing wrong.

Avedon

(emphasis added)

Gosh, there are so many things to talk about here…

…the first is that my team, the Democrats does in fact elect fools as well.

Cynthia McKinney, anyone?

…the second is that marvelously perfect tone of self-righteousness in the last paragraph.

Then there was this, in response to a post by Dave Yaseen:

Dave Yaseen, of the usually smart blog A Level Gaze, posts what I pray to Woodie Guthrie is a slip of the liberal tongue. His post concludes:

Yes, this debacle of an election is the media's fault. But it's our fault as well, and we need to drastically change the way we do things in the Democratic party, not diddle around with how to phrase things to make them palatable to the electorate. If we have to drag American voters, kicking and screaming to chose their own interests, so be it.

(emphasis mine)

Well, damn. That's the way to reach the poor uneducated voter and get them onto your side...

I've seen the problem elsewhere. I'm back helping out a prominent charity here in L.A. (one of the two that I actively - too actively, sometimes, given the state of my calendar and checkbook support), and met with the board president and executive director the day after the election. Their attitude was sadly an exact mirror of Sen. Kuehl's; the lumpenproles had been suckered. I gently suggested that until the Democratic leadership could learn to respect that lumpenproletariat - even when disagreeing with on matters of policy - we had a lot of time outside on the porch to look forward to. Here's the deal; I think that facing reality is the way to go. You can ignore it for a long time, but eventually it catches up with you. Up in Alaska, we've all read about how it just happened:

A California author and filmmaker who became famous for trekking to Alaska's remote Katmai coast to commune with brown bears has fallen victim to the teeth and claws of the wild animals he loved. Alaska State Troopers and National Park Service officials said Timothy Treadwell, 46, and girlfriend Amie Huguenard, 37, were killed and partially eaten by a bear or bears near Kaflia Bay, about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage, earlier this week. ... U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher Tom Smith; Sterling Miller, formerly the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's top bear authority; and others said they tried to warn the amateur naturalist that he was being far too cavalier around North America's largest and most powerful predator. "He's the only one I've consistently had concern for,'' Smith said. "He had kind of a childlike attitude about him.'' "I told him to be much more cautious ... because every time a bear kills somebody, there is a big increase in bearanoia and bears get killed,'' Miller said. "I thought that would be a way of getting to him, and his response was 'I would be honored to end up in bear scat.' ''

In politics as well, when you ignore the bears, you are likely to wind up as bear scat. A big part of my hammering away at the Democratic Party is because I perceive a sense of disconnection from reality as strong as Treadwell's, who "routinely eased up close to bears to chant 'I love you' in a high-pitched, sing-song voice." I think that there is an equally strong disconnect from reality within the core circles of the Democratic Party - and that the results will be equally ugly until that changes. --- UPDATE --- I can't believe I forgot to connect this dot as well. Arrogance in place of thoughtfulness figures in another recent post of mine, about Columbia. The key event? the response of the intellectually arrogant managers to the suggestion by some low-level engineers that the Air Force use it's ultra-high-resolution reconnaissance satellites to take a picture of the damage on Columbia's wing - pictures that almost surely would have shown the damage and allowed for the possibility some outcome other than the one spread across the Texas sky. The official position? bq. "A NASA liaison then emailed an apology to Air Force personnel, assuring them that the shuttle was in "excellent shape" and explaining that a foam strike was "something that has happened before and is not considered to be a major problem." The officer continued, "The one problem that has been identified is the need for some additional coordination within NASA to assure that when a request is made it is done through the official channels."

« ok, I'm done now

IRAN REPORTS * Iranian Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is calling on Iran to "resist all pressures and threats," a likely reference to the IAEA deadline. * Iran is the primary backer of Islamic Jihad along with Syria, but Khatami isn't worried about the prospect of airstrike by Israel. * Newsweek is reporting that hundreds of Ansar al-Islam members who fled the US bombing campaign have escaped into Iran and established a base of operations at the Kurdish refugee camp of Baramawa. They appear also appear to be receiving at least some support (not to mention medical assistance and weapons) from the Iranian government, which implies a tacit approval of their activities. U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * The Washington Post recently documented the intricate web of Saudi-financed institutions that are spreading Wahhabism (and by extension Salafist organizations like al-Qaeda) in the United States. Fred Pruitt and Paul Maloney weigh in with their own thoughts here. * Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a US Muslim activist charged with having illegal dealings with Libya, may be a money courier for Syrian-based terrorist groups. * In what easily the dumbest thing I've ever heard of out the federal government (and that's saying a lot), there are now allegations that the FBI send money to Hamas. The rationale? To see if they would use it for terrorist attacks ... * Speaking of Homeland Security, it appears to be sorely lacking at US nuclear facilities these days. What a comforting thought ... THE WIDER WAR * Middle East Newsline is reporting that the Algerian military has the GSPC HQ under seige in the Babour mountains - with the leadership still inside. While I tend to share Joe's skepticism about the GSPC casualty figures, this may well turn out to be a key victory in the war on terror. * The Australian intervention in the Solomon Islands has brought an end to the days of warlords in that part of the Pacific. Good work, mates! * Acting Chechen president Anatoly Popov was apparently poisoned, making him the first high-ranking Russian official to be successfully poisoned by the Chechen terrorists rebels led by Shamil Basayev. * Somali gunmen have killed Annalena Tonelli in an act of pure malice. While it could easily be any warlord's thugs, one should not rule out the involvement of al-Ittihad al-Islamiyyah. * Videos of Osama bin Laden containing instructions on bombmaking are disturbingly popular among British Muslim fundamentalists. * Three Filippino policemen and one Abu Sayyaf member are dead after an escape attempt by Abu Sayyaf member Buyungan Byngkak. The Manila Times recounts the bravery of Filippino Arvin Garces, who was killed by Byngkah while helping to get the wounded Filippino police officers to safety. * According to Indian security forces, over 211 terrorists have been killed and 20 captured during the month of September, more than 80% of them described as "foreign mercenaries" - a probable reference to Pakistanis or Arabs. * Factional fighting has broken out yet again in Afghanistan, this time between rival warlords Atta Mohammed and Abdul Rashid Dostum. This latest round of the power struggle between the two men has left 60 dead. * The Taliban are amassing a force of 2,500 fighters to cross into Afghanistan to fight the US and the Afghan government - and they're being assisted by a coalition partner in the Baluchistan provincial government. * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. Sometimes the media makes unfortunate mistakes, like the New York Times's decision to rely on Greg Packer as the source for dozens of "man on the street" quotes. Still, it's always nice when people can swallow their pride and acknowledge their mistakes.

« ok, I'm done now

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD * The Weekly Standard reports on the foreign fighters captured in Iraq. * Saddam Hussein was reportedly sighted in Kirkuk. The PUK appears more than happy to welcome him. * US forces have captured one of Saddam's old executioners in central Iraq. * Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez is stating that the increase sophistication among the Iraqi guerrillas is a direct result of foreign fighters coming in through Syria and Iran. * The US has captured a Republican Guard air defense commander and 111 apparent flunkies in a raid in al-Qaim, near the Syrian border. RECONSTRUCTION & THE ECONOMY * MEMRI provides some good insight into the new Iraqi press to give an idea of what the newly-freed Iraqis are thinking. * With Saddam out of power, many observers seem worried at the prospect of Iranian-sponsored Khomeinism spreading among the Iraqi Shi'ites. As long as the Iraqi religious leaders are made up of men like Sheikh Farqad al-Quzwini, the US has nothing to worry about. * The BBC reports that Baghdad is now experiencing a drug crisis and the accompanying crime wave, with some of the addicts being extremely young. * On brighter note (and I'm not sure how this squares with the BBC story, but Baghdad's a pretty big city), it seems that Baghdad's cafe culture and legendary nightlife is now back on track for the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein. THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE * The Turkish parliament has voted to deploy troops to assist the US in Iraq. The Turkish military is very skilled at counter-insurgency operations and so long as they're deployed outside of the Kurdish areas this shouldn't be much of a problem. WMD HUNT * It has now become accepted wisdom in some quarters that Iraq never possessed any WMDs after 1991. If that is in fact the case, one might want to explain why Iraqi scientists who cooperate with the US are being shot if they have nothing to tell us. * The US is pursuing tips on Scuds and anthrax still in the country, according to David Kay. ETCETERA * Which other "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated August 19, 2003]

« ok, I'm done now

As any number of news articles have noted since his capture, Mohammed was with the organization since the very beginning and was the mastermind responsible for both Oplan Bojinka in 1994 and the 9/11 attacks. His capture forced the network to reorganize itself and likely thwarted any planned terrorist offensive that was intended to coincide with the war in Iraq. The Summit According to the September 8 of Newsweek, bin Laden held a "terrorist summit" in April 2003 shortly after the fall of Baghdad:

In April, shortly after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, the Qaeda leader convened the biggest terror summit since September 11 at a mountain stronghold in Afghanistan. The participants included three top-ranking representatives from the Taliban, several senior Qaeda operatives and leaders from radical Islamic groups in Chechnya and Uzbekistan, according to a former Taliban deputy foreign minister. He got the details from a Taliban colleague who was there. Bin Laden, in a fiery mood, appointed one of his most trusted lieutenants, Saif al-Adil, to be Al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq. The leader handed the Egyptian-born al-Adel a letter of introduction, asking all religious leaders, businessmen and mujahedin to give him any support possible. Al-Adel left Afghanistan immediately. A few weeks later he was reported to be in neighboring Iran, where he is said to be under house arrest. The Taliban official nevertheless insists, contrary to American intelligence assessments, that al-Adel made it to Iraq and is organizing anti-U.S. operations. At the same meeting bin Laden said he was working on “serious projects,” another ranking Taliban source tells NEWSWEEK. “His priority is to use biological weapons,” says the source, who claims that Al Qaeda already has such weapons. The question is only how to transport and launch them, he asserts. The source insists he doesn’t know any further details but brags: “Osama’s next step will be unbelievable.” The plan was reportedly delayed and revised after the March capture of Al Qaeda’s operations chief, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. U.S. intelligence officials say no one disputes bin Laden’s interest in germ warfare. Nevertheless, they argue, his main priority is to kill Americans by any means readily at hand—and most bioweapons are harder to get and use than many of the alternatives.

Now the source behind this information is former Taliban officials and local tribesmen who could easily be lying, nevertheless if one takes it as face value it explains a number of things, especially when read in conjunction with this article from the Washington Post that documents the role that current al-Qaeda military commander Saif al-Adel played in ordering Abu Musab Zarqawi to establish a front in Iraq. One further note to be made about the events of the summit are that the Taliban boast about al-Qaeda wielding chemical or biological weapons isn't half as far-fetched as it might sound. Especially if someone was helping them out in this regard. The New Breed In any case, as we entered into May 2003, the Saudi magazine al-Majallah was contacted by a man named Thabet bin Qais who claimed to be al-Qaeda's new spokesman. According to bin Qais, al-Qaeda has "sidelined" the September 11 team, not all that surprising a move given what happened to them. The nom de guerre of the new spokesman, Thabet bin Qais, also reflects a definite shift within the organization. In Islamic tradition, bin Qais was one of the companions of the Prophet Mohammed and frequently served as his spokesman. Over the course of the last year, a series of audio and written sermons have appeared on a number of websites and internet forums sympathetic to al-Qaeda's cause, allegedly from bin Laden. These have not received widespread notice from the media because they were not intended for general distribution but rather as messages to members or supporters of the organization to reinforce the goals and direction of their global war against the West. The topics of these sermons range from the need for global war against the West and revolution throughout the Arab world to the meaning of jihad, despite the fact that bin Laden is has no recognized religious authority with which to make such claims. The climax of these sermons occurred at the beginning of July 2003, when a bin Laden audiotape declared the terrorist leader as the new Prophet of Islam and announced the creation of five new pillars of the faith. These statements, which are extremely heretical from an Islamic perspective, also illustrates the degree to which bin Laden's meglomania has come since September 11. This is an important thing to be aware of because it illustrates that this is no longer a clash between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb for bin Laden and his followers: this is now a battle between the rest of the world and the new Prophet of God. In any case, Thabet bin Qais was hardly the only al-Qaeda leader to step into the spotlight during this time period. Al-Majallah also received E-Mails from Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, whose rants are wonderfully chronicled over at Alphabet City. Al-Ablaj, who made cryptic references to the Riyadh bombings before they occurred, discussed everything from al-Qaeda's alliance with Saddam Hussein to the organization's position on the American withdrawl from Saudi Arabia. While bin Qais and al-Ablaj were hardly the newest al-Qaeda leaders to be announced since the overthrow of the Taliban (others include Ramzi Binalshibh, Abu Hazim, Abdel Azeem al-Muhajir, and Abu Leith al-Libi). Back in the Saddle Again Both Thabet bin Qais and al-Ablaj remain at large to date, but shortly after their E-Mailed statements to al-Majallah, al-Qaeda and affiliate organizations carried out a series of mass casualty terrorist attacks in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Chechnya that put the rest of the world on notice that al-Qaeda was once again a global force to be reckoned with. Similar major attacks during the summer reached Algeria, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Russia, even attacking the United Nations building in Baghdad. The ratio of attacks and attempted attacks inside of Iraq should serve as an indication that the organization now regards the battle against coalition forces in the country to be a holy war of liberation on par with the group's efforts in Chechnya and the surrounding Russian republics. According to Amir Taheri, the late Yusuf al-Ayyeri saw Iraq as the penultimate battlefield within which the organization can defeat the concept of Western democracy much the same way that the Afghan mujahideen (from al-Ayyeri's point of view) defeated the concept of communism. This new strategy appears to have been accepted by the al-Qaeda leadership and may account for two recent changes to the organization's behavior. The first occurred on September 25, when a communique from al-Qaeda stated that it was open to accepting the offer of negotiations with the government of Yemen and even going as far as to praise the Yemeni dictator, declaring that he was the only Arab leader who wasn't an agent of the West. These developments come after an al-Qaeda operative bearing the nom de guerre of Al-Mutaz Biulah al-Qandahari was designated the new al-Qaeda leader in Yemen. Then on October 3, ICT reported that four additional affiliate organizations (the Yemeni Islamic Jihad, the GSPC, and the previously unknown Ahfad al-Sahaba) had formally merged with al-Qaeda much the same way that Ayman al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad did in 2001. While this merger is interesting for a number of reasons if for no other reason that much larger affiliate groups like Jemaah Islamiyyah or the LeT were not included in favor of the smaller Yemeni ones, this is likely an attempt by al-Qaeda to shore up its center by drawing fighters away from what had previously been local struggles in order to serve as a force multiplier for the group in its battle against the US in Iraq. This formal announcement of the terror network's reorganization comes at a time when it appears that it has decentralized to the point where it now operates four separate military committees, all of which appear to be in contact with one another with at least some degree of coordination as far as the direction of the global jihad is concerned. * One committee in northern Pakistan, specifically the Northwest Frontier Province, Baluchistan, and Azad Kashmir that coordinates both the Taliban/Hezb-e-Islami insurgency in Afghanistan and terrorist activities across the Indian subcontinent. If bin Laden is alive, this is where he is likely to be. The loss of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Tawfiq Attash Khallad, and Ammar al-Baluchi has likely heavily diminished this committee's capabilities. * One committee located at an IRGC military base in the Kerman province of Iran, allegedly "under arrest." As this committee appears to be the one that is coordinating the insurgency in Iraq, I would take Iranian claims that the al-Qaeda leaders are in custody and unable to communicate with their followers with a whole shaker of salt. * One committee located in Georgia's Pankisi Gorge and in Chechnya whose members include Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, Abu Walid (a relative of three of the 9/11 hijackers), Abu Iyad, and Abu Khabab, the head of al-Qaeda's WMD department. This committee is heavily involved with their counterparts in Iran and has a number of additional members according to Collin Powell's presentation to the UN who were complicit in the attempted plots to use chemical weapons in Europe in late 2002 and early 2003. * There appears to be at least one more committee located somewhere in Africa (Sudan, Somalia, or Niger would be my best bet) that consists of a number of dangerous individuals that include Hassan Hattab, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Abderazak al-Para, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. Of all the al-Qaeda leaders, these are probably the ones that we know the least about. Implications What can the US expect as a result of this reorganization as far as the future of the war on terror goes? 1. Africa is going to take on an increased role in terms of the war on terrorism. Both Burkina Faso and the former government of Charles Taylor in Liberia had documented ties to al-Qaeda that remained strong even after September 11. Al-Qaeda operatives began arriving in Somalia almost as soon as the Taliban fell in Afghanistan and the organization reputedly established bases in Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Nigeria in June 2002. Additional strongholds were said to have been established or expanded in Sudan, Kenya, and Bangladesh at some point prior to the Riyadh bombings. These bases are going to take on more and more importance for the organization as battle continues. 2. Because of the increasingly decentralized nature of the leadership and the lack of easy communication, coordinating mass casualty attacks on the scale of September 11 are going to be increasingly difficult to coordinate, especially if they are intended to be launched against Western nations. However, the organization has ongoing research in the area of non-conventional weaponry and a crude chemical or biological weapons attack should not be ruled out as a possibility. 3. The current fighting in Iraq is now the central pivot of al-Qaeda's global war against the West. Increasing amounts of resources and operatives are going to be diverted away from regional campaigns in order to fight against coalition forces in Iraq. This turns the fighting in Iraq into a contest of collective wills between the coalition and the terrorists as far as who backs down first. If they succeed in Iraq and force the US to withdraw with its mission unfullfilled, using Iraq as a base from which to destabilize other Middle East states will be child's play by comparison. 4. Tracking down and eliminating each of these leadership committees should take on a top priority as a means of both ending the foreign insurgency in Iraq as well as serving as the ultimate means with which to splinter the terrorist network. That al-Qaeda is now forced to incorporate what had previously been affiliates into the center is ultimately a sign of weakness and a testimony to the success thus far of US-led anti-terrorism efforts. By destroying the entire leadership of the terrorist network, al-Qaeda's remnants and affiliates will splinter apart, enabling each of them to be dealt with in turn. The loss of the leadership, combined with the destruction of any bases that have been established over the last year and the disruption of the financial channels, will be the three blows that nail shut al-Qaeda's coffin once and for all.

« ok, I'm done now

WTO Trade Talks * A month ago, the WTO trade talks were about to end with no agreement, largely over the issue of agricultural subsidies. * Deroy Murdock notes on NRO that the Group of 22 developing nations (many of them African) that scuttled the talks are now a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Abiola blames the impasse on developed nations that continue to subsidize. * One issue that wasn't addressed at Cancun (but should have been) is GM foods. AfricaBlog has a monster post on the subject. Liberia * US Marines have left Liberia after providing logistical support in the wake of "President" Charles Taylor's exit. * Despite the Marines' departure, it's unclear that their mission is really accomplished. According to the Washington Post, Taylor continues to exert political and military influence in Liberia. If that's the case, Liberia's road to peace remains long and uncertain. * So it looks like the only way to really be finished with Taylor is to arrest him. Nigeria * Here's a quiz: What would you say is the happiest country in the world? If you said Nigeria, you win! JUST EMAIL ME YOUR BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER AND I'LL DEPOSIT $1,000,000 IN YOUR ACCOUNT. * And speaking of Nigeria, the Nigerian space agency this month launched the country's first satellite. I didn't know that Nigeria even had a space agency. * Amina Lawal, the Nigerian woman sentenced to stoning by a Nigerian Islamic court, was acquitted this month on a technicality. * Of course, this doesn't mean that Islamic extremism is no longer a force in Nigeria. * JK: Meanwhile, Flit goes head to head with Andrew Sullivan & Instapundit over the whole uranium yellowcake from Africa issue. Well researched? Yes. Does it affect my conclusions re: the war, or even the WMD threat from Iraq? No, because it was never central to those conclusions. More Africa * South African author John Coetzee has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Abiola comments. * Ivory Coast: Still a French quagmire? * Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's pseudo-dictator and considered one of the most pro-Western of African heads-of-state, appears to be running for president-for-life. Sadly, few African leaders are in any position to criticize. * Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the Blackhawk Down incident in Somalia. It would have been hard to predict ten years ago, but it looks like military planners have realized that Africa is on the front line of the War against Terrorists and are planning accordingly.

« ok, I'm done now

Her style got the best of her on day six of the mission, January 21, when at a recorded MMT meeting, she spoke just a few words too many, much to her later regret. It was at the end of a report given by a mid-ranking engineer named Don McCormack, who summarized the progress of an ad hoc engineering group, called the Debris Assessment Team, that had been formed at a still lower level to analyze the foam strike. The analysis was being done primarily by Boeing engineers, who had dusted off the soon to be notorious Crater model, primarily to predict damage to the underwing tile. McCormack reported that little was yet resolved, that the quality of the Crater as a predictor was being judged against the known damage on earlier flights, and that some work was being done to explore the options should the analysis conclude that the Columbia had been badly wounded. After a brief exchange, [Linda] Ham cut him short, saying, "And I'm really ... I don't think there is much we can do, so it's really not a factor during the flight, since there is not much we can do about it." She was making assumptions, of course, and they were later proved to be completely wrong, but primarily she was just being efficient and moving the meeting along. After the accident, when the transcript and audiotapes emerged, those words were taken out of context to portray Ham as a villainous and almost inhumanly callous person, which she certainly was not. In fact, she was married to an astronaut, and was as concerned as anyone about the safety of the crews.

Or maybe not...

The story was a sad and unnecessary one, involving arrogance, insularity, and bad luck allowed to run unchecked. On the seventh day of the flight, January 22, just as the Air Force began to move on the Kennedy engineers' back-channel request for photographs [], Linda Ham heard to her surprise that this approach had been made. She immediately telephoned other high-level managers in Houston to see if any of them wanted to issue a formal "requirement" for imagery, and when they informed her that they did not, rather than exploring the question with the Kennedy engineers she simply terminated their request with the Department of Defense. This appears to have been a purely bureaucratic reaction. A NASA liaison then emailed an apology to Air Force personnel, assuring them that the shuttle was in "excellent shape" and explaining that a foam strike was "something that has happened before and is not considered to be a major problem." The officer continued, "The one problem that has been identified is the need for some additional coordination within NASA to assure that when a request is made it is done through the official channels."

There appear to have been other problems. Go great the magazine and read the story for yourself - you'll understand how it is that large, stultifying bureaucracies, whether in Houston or Sacramento, just seem to be incapable of actually delivering adequate responses to the complex world in which we live. I feel bad for Linda Ham, who with this book will doubtless be publicly hung with the tragedy. But if we are going to hang her, let's at least try and learn something from it.

« ok, I'm done now

THE NEWSPAPER STORIES They certainly were stories. A lot of us read them with some level of amusement, and from time to time we have either rolled our eyes or just shaken our heads, wondering what the reporters were talking about. Boy, do they ever dress things up. They also miss the big picture, and apart from interviewing some great guys in the lower ranks also latched onto some to the weird senior people who for their own reasons (not the least of which was obvious self aggrandisement) who gave them a "load" every once in a while. I have learned a lot about reporters over the past few years, including their propensity for a "good story" (hey, even Pulitzer prize winners are being found out now!) but I had no idea they could be so naïve. A couple of the sources used once or twice should have appeared to even the goofiest reporter as class one Ontario grade A, Olympic level story-stretchers. Once or twice when we were gathered around the internet pages reading the various articles, we roared out loud. Never again will I read reports on absolutely anything from at least one of the regular reporters without snickering to myself. Yes, it is dangerous, and we are doing a lot to help people here in terms of security and keeping an eye on events, then reacting as best we can. It is also true that people shoot at us - as recently as last night in fact, but the drama that was put into a lot of the articles was, well, crap. Equally entertaining was the CBC who actually stated in a story that ISAF had not been attacked in 6 months! Wow, so the Norwegians who were shot, the Germans who were blown up, and the Dutch who were wounded, along with the dozens of rocket attacks, bomb detonations at ambushes against troops were all actually imagined. But then, what do you expect from the CBC? If it has nothing to do with Trudeau's vile offspring or some other equally mundane topic, it isn't worth the research. No doubt they will soon produce a series on why we should all feel sorry for the Taliban - just victims of those mean old American oil companies and McDonalds!

Yep. Sounds familiar.

« ok, I'm done now

Or maybe Oakland's own curse would do the trick. Despite their incredible record of success on a shoestring, the A's had lost every chance they'd been given in recent years to clinch a series - 6 games in a row. Oops, make it 0-7. The Sox get even for "the bunt" with 2 bizarre plays at the plate, then pull some 11th inning magic of their own to win Game 3 at home in Fenway. Even so, just 1 more loss will end the Sox' season. Ahead 4-3 in the 8th inning of Game 4, the A's seemed all set to break Boston's heart again... but David Ortiz, 0-for-16 in the series, made it 1-for-17 by smashing one off the wall. Sox 5, As 4. Boston holds on, and wins. The Fenway Faithful go wild. Which meant the A's were headed home to Oakland, 0-8 now in clinching games. The winner of this one goes on, the loser goes home. The A's have ace lefty Barry Zito on the mound, but they're up against Pedro Martinez himself. Pressure! And for once, it's not on the Red Sox. It may have been the most nerve-wracking game I've ever seen. Barry Zito matching Pedro pitch for pitch, and taking the early lead. Manny Ramirez' clutch 3-run homer to make it 4-2 Boston. The collision that sent Boston center fielder Johnny Damon off the field in an ambulance. The A's making it 4-3 in the 8th, then starting the 9th with 2 walks. Derek Lowe, the Red Sox former closer and now their #2 starter, is brought in to be a closer one more time. He gets 2 outs, but walks the bases loaded. One last batter. One last chance. And the winner is...

« ok, I'm done now

The journalistic arm of the political establishment reached out and backhanded Arnold. I'm sorry, but none of editor Jon Carroll's excuses wash. He said: "We ran it when we felt it was publishable, I would have loved to have published it earlier." He should have said: "I know the timing looks bad for us. In retrospect, it was probably a bad call. But we published it when we felt it was publishable. Believe me, I would have loved to have published it earlier." But he's far too arrogant to believe that. There's no way not to acknowledge the timing of this. Kaus even predicted it (hey does anyone know how to figure out the ID's for his individual posts so you can create direct links?); he explained: "Wednesday, October 1, 2003 Shoe day? Tomorrow would be about the logical last day for the Los Angeles Times to drop its bomb on Arnold Schwarzenegger. If editor John Carroll waits any longer it will look like a late hit designed to stampede the electorate." Actually, it was a perfectly-timed late hit, guaranteed to dominate the weekend news, as it has. And, as I noted, it was deliciously one-sided. I said: "A good paper of record - one that took it's responsibilities seriously - would have laid out both issues, talked about what each means in the context of governance, and trusted us - the public - to use that information to make up our minds. But we're talking about the L.A. Times. And in taking this kind of blatantly partisan stance, it continues to weaken it's role as a reliable source for information." And as I thought about it over the weekend, I realized that to me, the greatest danger is the ossification of the political process; it's the way groups like moveon.org - which started as a 'non-partisan' effort to damp the stupidly partisan impeachment effort, has become another string in the Democratic violin. Somehow the gravitational field is such that as you become closer and closer to the center of power, you get pulled into a one of two rigid orbits; that's an international issue (yes I know about multiparty coalitions and parliaments), not just a California or US of A one, and it's incredibly destructive. It's destructive because it is flexibility, and the willingness to adapt to facts that make our Western liberalism powerful. And that becomes almost impossible to do in this kind of environment. Facts and language themselves seem to become plastic and run like Dali watches. We've got to do something about it. Electing Arnold won't be the powerful statement that I hoped it might be, and I doubt that he'll be the governor that I hoped he might become. But... Electing him will be a slap to the face of the political class, which it badly needs. So at the end of all this, and for what little it's worth, I'm endorsing him. My fingers are crossed, but I'm secretly pleased to imagine the fury of the editorial board of the LAT. I think Arnold will win big (in part because I think his support tends to underpoll as people are abashed to admit they're voting for him), and if so, I think the Times will have played a significant if inadvertent part in his victory. It's a brick pulled out of the wall.

« ok, I'm done now

One of the things that I admire intensely about both Kevin and Glenn is that when I started reading them, I read them both as fellow iconoclasts - that while Kevin was liberal, he wasn't interested in playing to the party line and while Glenn was libertarian-conservative, he was equally disinterested in playing for one team or the other. Each of them, it seemed to me (and I ought to go do some kind of analysis of posts but don't have time), spend a nontrivial amount of their time poking at the stupidities of their own sides. I felt like there was the germ of a Third Path kind of movement here, a chance to create a Party of the Sensible. We might disagree about certain aspects of policy, but we'd agree that it ought to be reality-based, instead of living within the soap-opera world that constitutes political life in America today. But going back over the last few week's posts, it just seems to me like each has joined the chorus of people saying "hooray for our side"; maybe it's just l'affaire Plame, but it just reads like Kevin is out to nail the Bush team and Glenn is out to defend them - and all of the lesser issues they talk about start to fall into place according to that force field. Maybe this is who Glenn and Kevin have always been. Maybe it's an unavoidable consequence of being taken seriously, as I think both Kevin and Glenn are. Maybe it's all in my head. But if you share my belief that the biggest threat to the Republic is the crystallization of our politics into something too inflexible to deal with the problems we're facing today and will be facing in my son's time, it's hard to look at this without worry.

« ok, I'm done now

IRAQ BRIEFING * David Kay didn't find any incontrovertible evidence of Iraqi WMDs, but he hasn't ruled out such a discovery yet. Meanwhile, his report certainly unearthed a host of circumstantial evidence, despite the common reports that nothing was found. * Are we getting our money's worth in Iraq? The US authorities in Iraq are looking to spend $20 million to buy new weapons for the Iraqi police, having already confiscated tens of thousands of weapons from Iraqi arsenals. Meanwhile, the US is also looking to spend $1.2 billion to train new Iraqi cops in Jordan, rather than doing the training Iraq for far less. There will always be mistakes made in spending money, but these seem somewhat difficult to defend. Hat tip: Gary Farber. * Kevin Drum notes another instance of poor prewar planning by the Bush Administration, this time regarding a marked discrepancy between projected and actual Iraqi oil revenues. While there is certainly no point in crying over spilt milk, these are issues that need to be remembered when next we evaluate a proposed course of action by the Bush Administration. * Check out this fascinating account of a US raid on an Iraqi counterfeiting operation, written by one of the last embedded reporters in Iraq. Some depressing words regarding the new Iraqi police force, but some interesting reports regarding US efforts in Iraq. Hat tip: Lexington Green. * Was the Polish discovery of state-of-the-art French antiaircraft missiles in an Iraqi stockpile legitimate or not? There's no way to know now, but it will be interesting to see what else turns up in Iraqi stockpiles over the coming months. Hat tip: Instapundit. * Donald Sensing examines the Administration's reasons for going to war, and notes that while he's seen nothing to prove them wrong, there were some pretty serious failures of intelligence by the US intelligence community leading up to the war. * Iraq had no WMD programs, but apparently someone in Iraq is killing Iraqi scientists just in case. This certainly doesn't prove Iraq did have such programs, but it's certainly some damning circumstancial evidence. Hat tip: Pejman Yousefzadeh. * The US administration in Iraq isn't making its life any easier with repeated failures to provide a promised $40 payment to former members of the Iraqi Army. These failures have led to rioting in Baghdad and Basra, putting troops in danger to no good purpose. * Another small blow to Saddam, if he's still alive: new Iraqi banknotes are appearing now that no longer have Hussein's face on them. One more small step in the right direction. * Japan is considering providing $1.5 billion in aid to Iraqi reconstruction over the next two years. It's a drop in the bucket, but some foreign assistance would be a godsend for the Bush Administration. * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated August 19, 2003] IRAN REPORTS * The Guardian reports that Iran and the U.S. are engaged in talks to reduce the tensions between the two nations, a move that Pejman Yousefzadeh thinks could be a devastating blow to the Iranian reform movement. * Women are in uniform in Iran for the first time since 1979, after 215 women graduated from Iran's police training college Saturday. A small step towards true liberalization, but this is arguably an indicator of the success of the Iranian population's calls for a move away from Islamic law. U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * The US may have no idea whether or not the Department of Homeland Security is protecting anyone from security, but the bureaucratization of the agency is in full swing. But I'm sure that discussions over how they'll get paid won't have any effect on their effectiveness. * The GAO, meanwhile, is recommending the DHS keep a closer eye on foreign workers to ensure they can't stay in the country when their visas are revoked or expire. Doubtless they'll get right on that once their pay situation is straightened out. THE WIDER WAR * Syria will seek a UN Resolution condemnning Israel's strike on an alleged terrorist training camp in southern Syria. With the United States holding the Council Presidency, don't expect Syria to have much luck; indeed, the US may use this as an opportunity to cast some light on Syria's relationship with state-sponsored terrorism. * Val Dorta takes on what we're fighting, with a cogent essay addressing the fallacious nature of a 'war on terror.' Hat tip: Jonathan Gewirtz. * I got yer root causes right here; if poverty really is one of the driving factors of terrorism, then free trade is an important part of the cure. Think we'll see many 'root cause' fans advancing free trade and reduced subsidies anytime soon? Hat tip: Dan Drezner. * Meanwhile Steven Den Beste notes another root cause: the hard work by lefty professors to undermine the government by emplacing their arguments in an educational context. * Is Yasser Arafat on his way out? Charles Johnson posts a photo that suggests he might be; but Israel probably isn't that lucky. Meanwhile, Arafat has plenty of stooges trying to protect him in the interim. Hat tip: Charles Johnson. * North Korea's food situation has been desperate for years, but the stories of cannibalism now coming our are worse than chilling. Hat tip: Donald Sensing. * George Bush was ridiculed for linking North Korea and Iraq in the 'Axis of Evil,' but the North is certainly getting upset over a US call for South Korean assistance in Iraq. Given that such a withdrawal would improve the balance of forces for the North, it's difficult to understand what else could be getting the North's nose out of joint if they had no ties whatsoever to Iraq. * The Pakistan Herald Tribune warns that the United States is in danger of losing the war after winning the battle in Afghanistan. Although I think they underestimate US successes in Afghanistan, there's little doubt this will remain an issue for some time yet. * We try to close on a lighter note if possible. It's been a truism for years that men are tough to get to the doctor, but an Ethiopian man paid the ultimate price for pride when he decided not to seek medical attention when his wife crushed his testicles during a domestic dispute. Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

« ok, I'm done now

Perhaps you are among the millions never told of Lieutenant Governor Davis's widely known--but long unreported--penchant for physically attacking members of his own staff. His violent tantrums have occurred throughout his career, from his days as Chief of Staff for Jerry Brown to his long stint as State Controller to his current job. Davis's hurling of phones and ashtrays at quaking government employees and his numerous incidents of personally shoving and shaking horrified workers--usually while screaming the f-word "with more venom than Nixon" as one former staffer recently reminded me--bespeak a man who cannot be trust with power. Since his attacks on subservients are not exactly "domestic violence," they suggest to me the need for new lexicon that is sufficiently Dilbertesque. I would therefore like to suggest "office batterer" for consideration as you observe Davis in his race for governor. The most disturbing aspect of Davis's troubled side is the ease with which the power elite in California, many of whom know he is unbalanced, laugh off the long public deception that has created Davis's public persona. "He'll never be governor," one well-known Democratic state senator explained to me last year, justifying his own failure to criticize or out Davis. "He'll never be the Democratic nominee," the senator insisted. And that's certainly how things stood, in my own mind, until Davis announced his intention to run for governor. It quickly became apparent that Davis's only Democratic "competition" would be Al Checchi, a guy who squeezed $50 million out of a lot of little people ten years ago in his sudden vault from silver-spooned graduate of Harvard Business School to Texas mega-multimillionaire during the reorganization of Disney. The Disney deal made Checchi an instant player who immediately began dreaming of becoming a senator--or was it governor?--of Texas. So self-absorbed in building his millions is Checchi that, although he has lived in Beverly Hills with his family for much of this decade--when he wasn't decamped to his mansion on Lake Harriot in Minneapolis during his takeover of Northwest Airlines--most of my friends still think Checchi comes from somewhere in Northern California. They can be forgiven their ignorance, because throughout the civic debates that have embroiled Los Angeles, Checchi has been a cipher. He is a leading champion of no causes, has established no meaningful charities, has left no laudable trace. He's the 312th richest man in America, and nobody can even pronounce his name. So it was with alarm that I read the very similar speeches given by these two men as they both offered plans to reform the dismal academics in California's public schools, a scandal that many observers believe will be the hot issue in the governor's race. In his speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Checchi at least had the nerve to identify teacher incompetence and lack of teacher testing as a key problem. Davis, who has long slept with the power anti-reform teacher's unions in Los Angeles and other cities, could not bring himself to utter such a blasphemy. In his only major divergence from Checchi, in a speech to Town Hall of Los Angeles in September, Davis largely blamed parents. Observing this pair of oddballs, the notion struck me: Isn't it a fatal flaw of the Republicans, not the Democrats, to promote candidates for top office who have no right to lead a civil society? How can it be that the Democrats suddenly suffer Dan Quayle Disease, after their years of carping about the Republicans' penchant for nominating louts and fools? More specifically, why on earth is the California Democratic Party allowing such sour milk to rise to the top, when California so desperately needs great men and women in charge? One cannot get a straight answer to these questions via official channels, such as the Party itself. But one can at least delve into the true nature of the life and times of the disturbing Davis and, as his detractors predictably dub him, of checkbook Checchi. Most crucial of all is the fact that both Davis and Checchi have based their considerable career successes on the perpetuation of carefully crafted whoppers. "I guess Gray's biggest lie," says his former staffer who notes he often flies into a rage, "is pretending that he operates within the bounds of normalcy, which is not true. This is not a normal person. I will never forget the day he physically attacked me, because even though I knew he had done it before to many others, you always want to assume that Gray would never do it to you or that he has finally gotten help." On the day in question, in the mid-1990s, the staffer was explaining to Davis that his perpetual quest for an ever-larger campaign chest (an obsession she says led Davis to routinely break fundraising laws by using his government office resources and non-political employees to arrange fundraisers and identify new sources of money) had run into a snafu. A major funding source had dried up. Recalls the former staffer: "He just went into one of his rants of, 'Fuck the fucking fuck, fuck, fuck!'" I can still hear his screams ringing in my ears. When I stood up to insist that he not talk to me that way, he grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until my teeth rattled. I was so stunned I said, 'Good God, Gray! Stop and look at what you are doing! Think what you are doing to me!' And he just could not stop." Perhaps the worst incident--long known to Davis-adoring editors of the Los Angeles Times but never published by them--was Davis's attack four years ago on a loyal aide in Los Angeles who for years acted as chief apologist for his "incidents." The woman refuses to discuss the assault on her with the media, but has relayed much of the story to me through a close friend. On the day in question, State Controller Davis was raging over an employee's rearranging of framed artwork on his Los Angeles office walls. He stormed, red-faced, out of his office and violently shoved the woman, who we shall call K., out of his way. According to employees who were present, K. ran out clutching her purse, suffered an emotional breakdown, was briefly hospitalized at Cedars Sinai for a severe nervous dermatological reaction, and never returned to work again. According to one close friend, K. refused to sue Davis, despite the advice of several friends, after a prominent Los Angeles attorney told her that Davis would ruin her. According to one state official. K. was allowed to continue her work under Davis from her home "because she refused to work in Davis's presence." (Checchi's campaign should get a copy of the tape recording Davis left on K.'s home telephone, in which he offers no apology to K. but simply requests that she return to work, saying, "You know how I am." Well, we do now Gray. Of course, the problem is that Davis's only serious Democratic opponent, Checchi--though not missing obvious nuts or bolts like Davis--has also built his entire public life on a disturbing fabrication which throws into severe doubt his ability and worthiness to run California state government. As a San Jose Mercury News writer and a New Times writer showed in recent exposes of Checchi's history at Northwest Airlines, Checchi's claims that he "saved" Northwest in a dramatic takeover in 1989, and that he deserves to be governor of California because he is a turnaround genius, are not supported by the facts. Northwest was not, in fact, a troubled airline when Checchi--using inside information from his best college buddy who sat on Northwest's board of directors--dreamed up a plan for buying up Northwest stock with other investor's money and forcing Northwest into a position of selling the company to Checchi and pals. In fact, the company spiraled into trouble and near-bankruptcy under Checchi, requiring both major union concessions in 1993 and a huge government bail-out in 1992. Yet Checci openly chortles about how he risked less than $10 million of his own money on the original $3.65 billion takeover deal, which has today made him a very rich man. He is very, very proud and has every reason to be," insists Darry Sragow, Checchi's campaign manager. With two men running for governor who are so willing to gloss over their questionable histories, the unsettling tradition of "opposition research" may play a more critical role than ever in the history of this race. (Op Research, if you're not a cynic in the know, is the practice of hiring political assassins to dig up dirt. The damaging info is: A) widely broadcast or B) dangled in private before the offending candidate as a way to silence that candidate on a major issue on which they have been personally compromised. Garry South, the talented campaign manager hired by Davis, has hired op research whiz Ace Smith (I'm not kidding about that name) who operates his assassin outfit from the Bay Area. Darry Sragow, the inspired campaign manager hired by Checchi, has hired the Berkeley and Houston firm of Rice and Veroga. I asked both camp if they intend to go after the really Big Lies both men are relying upon: Gray as the mild-mannered man of decency, Checchi as the savvy savior of troubled institutions. Says Elena Stern, an official with Checchi's campaign: "Al is adamant about not running a negative campaign, so he will only offer comparisons, not attacks." One "comparison" Stern pointed out is that Davis' camp recently planted a hit story against Checchi in the San Francisco Chronicle claiming that Checchi is facing a discrimination lawsuit by a fired worker. The fine print, however, is that the suit was thrown out by the 9th Circuit three years ago, and it arguably has little remaining merit. Says Stern, "By comparison, Gray Davis has actually lost a race discrimination lawsuit" filed against him by a former female employee. But is the Checchi camp going to unveil to voters Davis's history of violent "incidents" and hysterical fits? Stern wouldn't say, and Sragow said he "questions whether they way a candidate acts in private has anything legitimate to do with the campaign. So I don't think you'll be hearing from us about whatever violence is alleged amongst Gray's staff or others." By contrast, South, who admits that Ace Smith has been digging up dirty for Davis's use "for nearly a year" seems far more prepared to discuss the lie holding up the house that Checchi built. "Until he fucked up Northwest Airlines, Checchi had visions of sugar plums about running for office in Minnesota, and there were numerous local news reports about that in '89, '90 and '91, and about Checchi even meeting with political consultants," says South. "He denies it now because he needs to look like a loyal longtime resident of California, but we think voters want to know that his interest in California is recent indeed." The ploy of trying to cover up one's sudden self-serving interest in California did not work for another carpetbagging multimillionaire, Michael Huffington, and it is likely to backfire on Checchi as well. For example, California voters will be disturbed to know that shortly after the employees bailed out Northwest and the government spent nearly $1 billion saving the airline, Checchi sold his Minneapolis mansion in 1994, abandoned all thought of running for office there, and escaped back to Beverly Hills. Once back, he barely took a breath before hiring consultants to explore running for California governor. These two dreary choices for governor leave me hoping that DiFi will jump into the race. Feinstein's hatred for Gray Davis is well-known, and a source close to her confirmed to me last week that "She is still weight a late entry"--in part because she can't imagine a worse fiasco than Governor Gray. And there's a solid chance that the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Dan Lungren, can beat the tainted Democrats at the polls next year. But, unfortunately, Lungren is as free of meaningful ideas as Kathleen Brown, who ran for governor in 1994, and voters may reject Lungren as swiftly as they did Brown. So my question is simple: how did we get stuck in the position of hoping that the job of governor of California, one of the most august positions of power in the Western world, is not won by a mega-fibber or a closet wacko. The Democratic Party likes to wheeze on about how it has all the answers. I'd love to hear them explain this one.

(edited to correct date of column)

« ok, I'm done now

It's good news, because it's recognition that the wind industry is now strong enough to stand on their own. Which is really excellent news. Wind projects in America are now in the $1 to $5 billion range per year. At $1 per watt capital cost that means we are now adding 1,000 to 5,000 MW peak a year to wind capacity. Texans are adding 25 turbines to their state total. Why is this significant? After all Texas already has over 1,000 turbines, so another 25 is small potatoes. Even the total of 250 projected for the site over the long term will be just a drop in the bucket of Texas development. The significance is that these new units are all 1.5 MW (peak) turbines. Which means the 1.5 MW units are no longer being bought on a trial basis. Now they're in series production. Energy from this size plant is now lower cost than the energy from natural gas plants that have proliferated in the last ten years driving up natural gas prices. Because of their fast start up and shut down times, however, the gas plants are in fact complimentary to wind production. So the money invested in them will actually help the transition to a wind economy. Just to pile on the good news, let me quote wind energy executive Jim Walker of enXco: bq. "enXco's success in these generation bidding processes is the result of our ability to drive down the cost of energy production, to where we now compete with other power producers and fuel sources." Capitalism. Ain't it great? Another exciting development is that the UK government plans to install 6,000 MW of turbines in the offshore areas of the country. This would represent 5% of UK's electrical production. My guess is that despite the "displacement of greenhouse gasses" rhetoric, a project of this size would not be entertained unless it was at least cost competitive with other electrical sources. Currently, the maximum turbine size available for offshore use is in the 3 to 3.5 MW range. The greater cost competitiveness of this size turbine is offset by the cost of getting the electricity from the turbines to the shore. The really good news here is that experience with larger machines will be gained in the U.K., bringing us that much closer to 3 MW on shore machines that will be able to compete with coal electricity without the wind subsidy. When we start getting those size machines in series production, we ought to end the subsidy for future projects. While desirable perhaps for the ramp up phase of the market, these subsidies will only distort the market and waste money when wind is fully competitive. Expect me to raise this issue even more strongly when the size of production turbines on land goes into the 3 MW range. (c) M. Simon - All rights reserved. M. Simon is a Free Market Green and an engineer for Space-Time Productions, providing high efficiency power converters for portable equipment. Permission granted for one time use in a single periodical. Concurrent publication on the periodical's www site is also granted.

« ok, I'm done now

There's a significant cost to doing politics this way. At some point, it becomes harder and harder to find any vegetables or fresh meat on the counter with all the junk food. And, as people's reactions to Tom McClintock (the conservative but knowledgeable candidate for CA governor who many felt made the most impressive showing in the debate) show, there's a hunger for substance that just isn't being met. many of the knowledgeable people I know say that McClintock is running above the levels his core ideology (faaar right) ought to support, because in large part he's seen as the substantive candidate. Right now, it's my feeling that both the White House and the media - at least in the form of the L.A. Times - stand to lose more than they gain from their obvious partisan stances here. For the Times, it's an easy call. Arnold has doubtless been a letch on his movie sets and off for most of his career; that's a legitimate issue to use in weighing his character. But Gray Davis has also got a personal history; one of verbally physically abusing staff and those who deal with him who get on the wrong side of his control-freak's temper. Sadly, I can't find the original article online any more, but it's quoted in this Opinion Journal piece:

A 1997 profile by the liberal columnist Jill Stewart of the weekly New Times Los Angeles recounted several instances of Mr. Davis "hurling phones and ashtrays at quaking government employees." She concluded that "his incidents of personally shoving and shaking horrified workers" marked him as "a man who cannot be trusted with power."

A good paper of record - one that took it's responsibilities seriously - would have laid out both issues, talked about what each means in the context of governance, and trusted us - the public - to use that information to make up our minds. But we're talking about the L.A. Times. And in taking this kind of blatantly partisan stance, it continues to weaken it's role as a reliable source for information. For the White House, it ought to be easy as well. Bush's core political strength is our belief in his commitment to a strong defense. His personal strength is based on his ability to present himself as candid, even blunt. Here's a case where he'd have been well served - he'd still be well served - to get in front of the issue, mount a convincing internal investigation, and share the results with the public. It wouldn't be hard; everything in the White House is logged. Now I don't know - and few people do - if what was done was a crime or simply sleazy. A lot depends on Plame's exact status, and as of today, I haven't seen a clear report on it. Even if it was just sleaze, it's sleaze in the one area where Bush can't afford to look like he's partisan at the expense of commanding, and in an area where his appearance of partisan hackery rather than aggressive leadership in fact weakens us all by weakening the Office of the Presidency.

« ok, I'm done now

IRAQ BRIEFING * Speaking of WMDs... President Bush's $87 billion budget request for supplemental spending in Iraq and Afghanistan includes $600 million ear-marked to fund the search for the missing weapons, an amount which indicates the administration's intention to keep looking for the elusive WMDs despite the House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee declaring that evidence of an ongoing Iraqi arms program was deficient even prior to the war. * Iraq's governing council has backed off its initial plan to permit 100% foreign ownership in most economic sectors. Dan Drezner - writing before the Governing Council's decision - has some excellent advice on why they need to stop waffling, and start embracing investors. * Meanwhile, the Governing Council is preparing a war crimes tribunal to try members of Saddam's regime as well as Saddam himself, if he's taken alive. * The hunt for Saddam continues. Latest Saddam sighting reports claim he was seen as recently as five days ago in Northern Iraq. * As American casualties in Iraq continue to mount, the Feyadeen attacking our troops claim they aren't terrorists - they just want to kill Americans here, there and everywhere. Someday, perhaps, the peaceful members of Islam will speak out. * Which "cards" have we captured so far? The CENTCOM list. And the visual version of "Ba'ath Poker." * The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops. American, British and Australian. Anyone out there with more information, incl. the Poles and Czechs? [updated August 19, 2003] IRAN REPORTS * The window to shut down Iran's nuclear weaponization may be as short as 6 to 9 months. Iranian Girl reports that the calls for U.S. intervention are mounting. * JK: Hippercritical has an interesting set of Iran-related links and news. * Iran's political oppression continues unabated. The latest: three men have been sentenced to death for having contacts with outlawed political organizations. * Iran's mullahs are forming a spy network of their own, it seems, with agents posing as teachers being dispatched to foment unrest in Iraq. * Looking for information on what's going on in Iran by those with first-hand knowledge? Check out the listing of Iranians blogging in English. U.S.A. HOMELAND SECURITY BRIEFING * It's one step forward and two steps back in security at Los Alamos as the security chief who was forced to resign has now returned to work. * So what's CAIR been up to lately? Apparently, getting their just desserts. Couldn't wish it on a nicer bunch of idiots. * Tuesday's arrest of a civilian translator at Guantanamo Bay may have come as a surprise to some. Daniel Pipes says it shouldn't have given the long list of Islamic infiltrators in the recent past. THE WIDER WAR * Dan Darling has an in-depth look at the man alleged to be al-Qaeda's new leader in the Gulf region, and the larger meaning behind this transition in the organization's grand plan. * Hezbollah is winning? Apparently, they think so: "These "martyrdom operations," as Hezbollah prefers to call them, are often seen in the West as a tactic of desperation. But the leaders of this Lebanese Shiite militia view them as a successful weapon that has put Israel on the defensive." * Experts are increasingly in agreement: the 9/11 WTC attacks could have been prevented. Why weren't they? Because ten years ago, Bill Clinton shrugged. * JK: Medienkritik notes von Deutschland that the terrorist organisation Al Queida had connections to the Saudi financed King Fahd Academy (König-Fahd-Akademie/Elementary School) in Bonn, Germany, as revealed by the German TV programm "Panorama". * We try to close on a lighter note if possible, and this time Tony Blair is handling the honors for us - sort of - with the speech he'd give if he could really speak his mind. Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

« ok, I'm done now

bq. "...If our intelligence can't reliably identify weapons stockpiles and the process of proliferation, the next 9-11 will be far more terrible." Anyone out there arguing that failure to find WMD in Iraq means they can't trust their government needs to consider that this intelligence assessment was very widely shared. They're actually quite right about the trust, just not in the way they think. The CIA et. al. had 13 years of Saddam as a target to figure out what was going on. If they failed under those circumstances, that government cannot in fact be trusted... to accurately assess the origins of WMD threats (or terrorist acts), and offer timely warnings about the point at which WMD threats become serious enough for action. Feeling safe yet? Sleep well. UPDATE: Blaster isn't sleeping well.

« ok, I'm done now

Mehrad Vaezinejad's brief summary of the situation to date is very good, and reader sashoyant's comment that some of these nuclear reactors are near major earthquake fault lines should make people worry all by itself. Ted Turner and Sam Nunn's Nuclear Threat Initiative foundation also has a set of worthwhile resources about Iran's weapons programs. Meanwhile, the news is not good re: Russian cooperation to stop Iran's efforts. Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment is the final signal that makes its intentions very clear. They will not stop until they have atomic bombs. The Iranian regime is doing more than just playing with fire here. It is deliberately playing with the lives of every man, woman and child in Iran. As I noted in my comments re: Kaveh's article:

"These odds would be low, but they'd be there. And it could happen over something as stupid as an accident. Rafsanjani has (in a feat of amazing idiocy) already threatened to use Iranian weapons against Israel, and said he could accept their retaliation because Iran would die but Islam would live. That can't be ignored (and nor can this). What it means is that Iranian possession of nuclear weapons forces Israel into a hair-trigger mode. Travel time for missiles is short, the country is very small, and so there is no margin for error. For Israel, it's "use them or lose them" once the alert is given. Now, contemplate further that the USA and Soviet Union both had false alerts during the cold war. Neither pressed the trigger, because they both had countries large enough, and spread-out facilities secure enough, that they believed they could afford to wait and be sure. As I've noted, Israel does not have that luxury. Imagine that one day the "Green Pine" radars of Israel pick up a set of Iranian missiles launching on a trajectory toward Israel. Let's imagine that this happens during a period of considerable tension for some other reason, so everyone is already on edge. Finally, let's imagine it's really a glitch of some kind, a mistake. The Israelis now have minutes to decide - and if they decide the wrong way, we just kissed how many million Iranians goodbye (and most of Israel in the ensuing retaliation) for a software glitch? At that point, the excuse of "but having nuclear missiles made Iranians feel better, and gave us a sense of power" will be rather cold comfort, no? Is a false sense of foolish pride really worth placing all Iranians under that risk? Now, one may note that Israel has these weapons, why doesn't the same logic apply to them? Of course, it does. They have nuclear weapons because they believe, with good reason, that losing a war means their wholesale murder and destruction anyway. If you're already playing for annihilation stakes, nuclear weapons can't raise them any further. Pakistan, confronted by a hostile and nuclear-armed India on its border and a direct flashpoint for war in Kashmir, had a similar argument. In these cases, the risks inherent to a nuclear deterrent may indeed be seen as a lesser evil in the calculus of national security. Iran is NOT playing for annihilation stakes. Even if it declared war on the U.S.A. it wouldn't be playing for those stakes. But if it gets nuclear weapons, it would be. This is hellishly dangerous. I haven't even brought the U.S. reaction into play, or the possible response of Russia to having its own cities in range of Iranian missiles. On regional grounds alone, possession of nuclear arms by Iran endangers Iranians more than it makes them secure. I see too many people treating these weapons like they're some kind of game, or an expensive toy like buying a Ferrari or something. It isn't just a game, and they aren't just toys. The only things being played with here are the lives of Iranians. The only way to win that game, is not to play in the first place."

A regime that believes nuclear strikes on Iran are acceptable if Israel also perishes will not be deterred from this quest, which takes the logic of suicide terrorism and applies it with breathtaking megalomania at a national level. The key to creating a stable situation will lie instead with the Iranian middle. Right now, they see an Iranian A-bomb as a "national prestige" project worthy of support. That belief needs to change into an understanding of the dangers Iranians are being exposed to, and the weakness of the case for doing so. Once more Iranians understand the truth, it will both speed up the end of the mullahs' regime and ensure a safer region for everyone in the years ahead. The West has levers at its disposal to communicate that message and to foster a strong, peaceful anti-nuclear movement in Iran, if we really wish to do so. One wonders, too, where the global anti-nuclear movement is on this issue... or are nuclear weapons only bad in the hands of the United States, and fine in the hands of openly genocidal theocrats who also preach suicide and live in the 10th century? Faster... and smarter, please. Time's running out. UPDATE: * Think a glitch can't cause armageddon? Perhaps you should talk to Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov. Otherwise known as "the man who saved the world." For real. * More comments and thoughts on the difference between Iran and USA-USSR or Pakistan, and why this particular situation is so structurally unstable, over in Hooman's comments section.

« ok, I'm done now

• Pakistan often claims that it does not support in any way terrorism in India but recently one of India’s most wanted terrorists, Dawood Ibrahim, has shown up in Karachi and is responsible for bombings in Pakistan.

• India in the last few years has started to develop greater relations and influence with the United States and has actively started to lobby the U.S. congress to get more favorable treatment for its self.

• Three more terrorists suspects where captured September in Indonesia. Indonesia is a hot bed of Islamic fundamentalism with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world and it’s not hard to see how young men turn to terrorism with schools like this.

• Many people have wondered why Australia has been so supportive politically and militarily recently of the United States and in part it is because Australia thinks that the situation in Indonesia is so bad that it may need the military muscle of the U.S. to help stabilize the region if Indonesia’s government should collapse.

• Niraj offers up a lengthy post on Sharon’s visit to India with additional links to Varnam's comments.

• South Asia seen as the new hub for global terrorism.

• Tech Central Station has started to publish articles focusing on Asia and the Pacific. Check it out for some really new and interesting points of view on South Asia.

« ok, I'm done now

Re: the analysis, there is no doubt that some members of the (very large) Saudi royal family have directly funded the spread of Wahabi Islamicism and therefore also terror acts. Some of those princes are cynical secularists, some religious fundamentalists, most (but not all) dream of somehow magically recovering Arab supremacy across the world. They hate the West for the mirror it holds up to their own weaknesses while also sneering at its "decadence". There is also no doubt that the oil industry is multinational first and foremost, that its major players have concerns, interests and perhaps loyalties that MAY in any given situation go beyond their countries of origin. But what your post totally lacked is any recognition of the factors, interrelationships and motivations that constitute the reality on the ground in the Middle East. And, your post fails to note the real limits on what we can achieve through direct confrontation. The Saudis For instance, the Saudi leadership are sitting on a demographic and economic timebomb. There are something like 14000 members of the royal family alone, most of whom have little power, less motivation to accomplish anything in life through work/ scholarship/ philanthropy and - significantly - diminishing wealth as well. You want to put pressure on the Saudi crown prince??? Get in line - there's little you could do that comes close to the internal pressures in that place right now. If you think Bush et al are somehow corruptly in cahoots w/ the Saudis, wait until you see more Saudi money go to subvert any diplomatic or economic pressure brought to bear on them by the US. Talk about blowback potential - our economy has already suffered from our use of economic sanctions in places like Iraq (not to mention the high expense of all those years of enforcing no-fly zones). You think our current economy is awful?? I lived through the stagflation of the 1970s, when interest rates reached 20% on mortgages and more on consumer loans, when you could only buy gasoline on alternate days at high prices and when the US dollar dropped greatly in purchasing power overseas. With the current debt load of the federal government, we are far more susceptible to unintended consequences of this sort today. And before that, as a child I lived through the unemployment of the 1950s, when there were far fewer safety nets than today, even after recent budget cuts in our states and counties. So please to put things in perspective .. today's economy is facing structural challenges due in part to global trade and the impact of technology, but things have been much worse in living memory. However, that does not mean that we aren't at risk of being hurt badly by hostile economic action. We are - which means we need to move carefully. Our Military Options We should also be realistic about our military capability. I've been around a fair number of military people and have experience with some military technologies. It is absolutely true that our capabilities are unmatched. But what isn't true is that we can apply those capabilities everywhere / anywhere we want. Our volunteer forces are heavily strained right now, we have to resupply smart munitions which will take time and money, we have to build new launching places for rapid deployment and covert operations (a major effort of Rumsfeld, by the way, and one he should get far more recognition for than he has to date). I am very proud of our armed forces and of the technology lead we have, but I also know that others are working hard to try to catch up and that we do have some very real limits regarding how much we can take onto our plate at once. You're right to note that the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq places a great strain on us in the short term. A major limitation we have is the number of special ops forces, translators and psych ops specialists we can deploy with expertise in Asian, Middle Eastern and African Islamic countries. I've been fretting for years about the tendency of many American students to blow off foreign languages and culture studies & we see the results right now. One reason Mossad is so successful is that they can deploy people who have spoken Arabic since they were children and who can move among other groups as if they were natives. Without that kind of covert cover, and the intelligence it can produce, Mossad would be a lot less successful at what they do. These "facts on the ground" must be taken into account when we decide how to deal with Saudi sponsorship of Wahabists and terrorists. Strategy Have you ever played the kid's game Pickup Sticks? Sometimes the best way to get at the central problem is to work from the edges in. That's especially true when there are dangers and risks to balance ... the risk that an oil price shock would send Western economies into massive depression being one of them. I've been following the macroeconomic trends for over a decade now. If we can get through the next 10 years or so with nothing worse than limited recessions in the major economies, then global trade should even out the economic landscape sufficiently for all countries to be better off. But that won't happen automatically, and the possibility of a major world wide depression is very real. It's utterly irresponsible to suggest attacking a major oil supplier as if there were no predictably harsh economic consequences for the poor in the US and elsewhere. Those alternate sources of oil? Take a hard look at how long it will take to bring them on line. Ditto for constructing new nuclear power plants. We should be pursuing all those things plus serious conservation plus new technologies, but that takes TIME. In the meanwhile, there's a complex, dangerous world situation to confront. Or rather, there are several interrelated threats to be dealt with, any of which could blow up in our faces tomorrow if handled with the kind of all-or-nothing emotional response you demand. Yes, Iraq is going to be long, hard, expensive, risky, ambiguous and a mess ... more of one than this Administration came close to predicting. And yes the Bush tax cuts are unsustainable in the face of rapidly ballooning public deficits which, given the amount of dollar-denominated Treasury debt still out there from the Reagan & Clinton days, threaten the value of the dollar in serious ways. And yes, I'm really concerned about Pakistani Islamacists with nuclear weapons, Iran's successful pursuit of the same and the murderous intent of Islamacist fanatics. And yes, yes ... Saudi funding of these networks has got to stop. But it is incredibly naive - I'm sorry, there's no better word, unless it be "uninformed" - to think that the Saudi ruling princes can be openly, unambiguously and successfully pressured into massive repentance and reform by the US. Should the US try to pressure the Saudis overtly, you can be sure that massive amounts of Saudi wealth would go into pockets in Europe, Africa, Asia ... and probably also to some US politicans opposed to whichever administration was in power ... to influence others against us. Take into account as well the impact of a possible decision on the part of OPEC to refuse to sell oil to the US if we do. And keep in mind our vulnerability due to massive Treasury debt. A lot of the Treasury bonds and bills outstanding today are held by Saudis and others around the world. A deliberate sell-off of them would cause the value of the US dollar to plunge disastrously. Such a sell-off has not happened (very much) in part because right now it does not make economic sense for those who hold the bonds - but a wealthy group who were willing to take financial losses in order to harm the US economy could do a whole lot of damage. All of these factors suggest that pressure on the Saudis is not a one way street and must be applied with precision and care. I really sympathize with the frustration, fury and demand for action in your post and your comments. My daughter was near the World Trade Center on 9/11. My neighbors include the families of fire fighters who worked in the city. And I'll be damned or dead before I allow my country, my way of life, my daughter to be destroyed by Wahabi fanatics. It's because so much is at stake that our response must be both strong and effective, not just emotional or based on the fantasy that we could solve the problem by going in and blowing things up. The real world isn't a video game, there are lots of complexities and we only get one chance to do it right. So what, then, can be done? And is our presence in Iraq diverting attention from the Saudi problem? Options, Options From a military perspective, I tend to agree that if military action is needed we should execute rapid strike operations where/when possible. They are not, however, a panacea. Can you spell out why you prefer these to "war" and how you see them as different from "war"? My military friends see rapid strike operations specifically as part of their set of war options. Again, Rumsfeld has been fighting to shift the focus of our military staffing, training and planning towards more flexible arrangements, but this takes time. And some thoughtful Army officers will insist there are real costs and risks associated with this approach as well. I understand your desire to work through diplomatic channels and international frameworks. The hope is that we can avoid major war operations and have some cover of "legitimacy". However, I have grave reservations about the effectiveness of responding to terror through international "legal" frameworks. I put "legal" in quotes because I think that the moral and treaty-based nature of international forums is at best very muddled. There is no international government that is authorized to create international laws. What we have are a variety of treaty agreements and these do not constitute laws in the sense I think you mean the term. That throws us back on arguments of morality, accountability and human rights, where various countries have very different standards they would like to apply. Whether diplomacy can deal with terror networks and the funding activities of Saudi princes is also in my opinion very questionable. By and large, diplomacy only works when both sides have something to gain by it. We should do what we can through diplomatic channels, but inevitably they will fail because so many players like France and Russia have things to gain (or think they do) from the status quo that threatens us. Here we come to what I regard as the irony in this discussion. Tony, you are greatly frustrated at what seems to be GWB's inaction regarding Saudi complicity in terror networks. You want their role to both be acknowledged and also to be dealt with in the context of various international agreements and relationships. I have sympathy with both desires, but think neither will have the effect you want. I think the Bush administration is indeed pressuring the Saudis and is doing so in various ways that take into account the potential international consequences of that pressure - especially the economic ones, but also geopolitical considerations. In the short term, we need those Saudi princes who are not fanatics to work with us to slow down the flow of money to al Quaeda and other Wahabist networks and to identify immediate threats of terrorist violence that are being planned. We also need, if possible, to prevent a major price hike for oil (going into winter in the northern hemisphere) and/or a dollar sell-off. And we had better be careful not to leave a power vacuum that the most fanatical Saudi clerics could fill, with a regime that is even less helpful to us. The biggest weapon we have with which to take down the corrupt Saudi princes is the Iraqi oil industry. Not by expropriating that resource for ourselves unjustly, but simply by ensuring that Iraq is producing and selling oil at the rate their reserves could support. That action would significantly curb both Saudi wealth and influence. For that reason, I believe our occupation of Iraq and our difficult, expensive and dangerous work there is actually the most effective response the Administration could make to your call for action against the house of Saud. The terror networks know that - it's why so many sabotage acts are being carried out against the Iraqi pipelines. A final thought - it really is the case that Halliburton is by far the most likely organization to be able to get the Iraqi oil industry rebuilt and working again quickly. It was for this reason, as well as because of their existing logistics master contract with DOD, that I am not overly bothered by the role Halliburton is playing in Iraq. I'll be furious if they don't do a good job, and they should not be allowed to make a really outrageous rate of profit (allowing for risk), but so long as they do a decent job, they are directly answering your call to take down the power of the Saudi princes who are directly and indirectly responsible for terror and repression. Conclusion Our struggle against Islamacist terror and Wahabi attempts to overthrow Western culture will be long, hard and dangerous. A major element of that struggle will center on curbing the sponsorship given by some Saudi princes. More broadly, there are tectonic shifts occuring in international relationships, including the US-Saudi Arabia relationship of the last several decades. Fasten your seat belts - it will be a long, tempestuous ride for the next 10-20 years. The stakes are very high and our response must be global, multi-dimensional and determined. The Saudis are part of the problem, but not all of it, and our actions must take into account all of the major factors and players if we are to succeed.

« ok, I'm done now