Here's what I learned. To maximize EMP effect, the weapon has to explode at an altitude of over 19 miles - there's a dramatic increase in the amount of gamma converted to electricity at that height. The EMP effect is generally limited to the line-of-sight to the weapon, and does diminish somewhat as the weapon explodes at greater and greater heights - because more of the gamma radiation which is converted to electrical energy by the atmosphere is radiated upward.

The end result of my quick Excel calculations is the energy per square mile would vary between 0.03 joules/mile for a 10KT weapon detonated 15 miles up, with an effective radius of 350 miles and 17,800 joules/mile over an area with a radius of 1500 miles for a 1 megaton blast at 300 miles up.

Now this may sound like a lot, but recall that a lightning bolt has about 109 - 1010 joules.

And a Shahab-1 has a maximum height of about 55 miles.

Here's some math [formatting fixed by Joe]. There are three cases for calculating EMP; ground burst, mid-level air burst, and high-altitude burst.

High-altitude is defined as over 19 miles; there the effect is far greater (more of the gamma radiation from the weapon interacts with the atmosphere, creating a plasma, and thus the burst of electrical energy).

For a high-altitude burst, about 10^-2 of the gamma radiation is transferred to EMP. For a mid-altitude burst, it's about 10^-7. For a one-megaton weapon, the total energy output is about 4.2 × 10²² ergs. About 3 × 10^-3 of that becomes gamma radiation, or 1.26 × 10²⁰ ergs.

At low altitude, this yields about 1.26 × 10¹³ ergs, at high altitude, about 1.26 × 10¹⁸.

In joules, that's about 1.26 × 10⁶ for low altitude, and 1.26 × 10¹¹ for high. It's linear to weapon yield, so a 10 KT weapon would have 1.26 × 10⁴ at low altitude and 1.26 × 10⁹ at high.

But that area is dispersed over a wide area - the total energy matters, but the energy density matters as well (total energy matters more in effects on long conductors, like power lines).

Even at very high altitudes, the EMP effect is limited to the 'tangent radius' of the blast - the height at which it goes below the horizon. So at a 15-mile blast height, the radius looks like 350 miles. At 300 miles, it would be about 1500 miles.

So, as above the energy per square mile would vary between 0.03 joules/mile for a 10KT weapon at 15 miles, with an effective radius of 350 miles; and 17,800 joules/mile over an area with a radius of 1500 miles for a 1 megaton blast at 300 miles.

What's my point?

When Iran or whoever can develop weapons with yields in the megaton range, and the ability to deliver them to a height of 300 miles, we need to worry about EMP. Until then, I'd say we've got other problems.

Corrections and comments welcome...

« ok, I'm done now

YOU may have read over the weekend about how David Rohde's' (pictured), a New York Times reporter, recently escaped from seven months in captivity with the Taliban. But you probably don't remember reading about his initial kidnapping - because the Times, as well as other major outlets that got wind of the story, agreed to maintain a news blackout on the abduction, after numerous experts suggested that publicity would make Mr Rohde's' captors more likely to kill him. But Mark Danziger at Winds of Change is peeved, because he thinks journalists aren't nearly as circumspect when it's not one of their own at risk. He cites an anecdote about a panel on journalistic ethics and the military, at which Mike Wallace argued that a reporter accompanying guerillas who are about to ambush American troops should act as a neutral observer, rather than warning his countrymen. It's not clear whether Mr Rohde's' - or many journalists - would take the same view, but Mr Danziger believes that it is, at any rate, symptomatic of an institutional malady, wherein journalists falsely believe themselves to be "above the shared obligations of citizenship". This is, I think, a badly mistaken portrait on many levels.

Well, the Wallace story is an important one, but it certainly wasn't remotely the only one I discussed. And if you take a moment to read what I actually wrote, the core points I made were in comparing the treatment of the Rhode kidnapping to other-non-journalistic ones (which were reported), as well as another journalistic one (which was not). I'd be happier with DA's response if he'd addressed that point - at all.

First, there is the premise that it is extraordinarily rare for journalists to "sit on" information because they believe that the value of disclosure is trumped by some even weightier social good. Yet it's not hard to think of examples. Most newsrooms, for instance, refrain from naming victims of sexual assault in print. Of course, what really has Mr Danziger's dander up is the putative lack of journalistic restraint when it comes to stories that may implicate national security - or, at least, stories the government asserts will do so. Yet here, too, there is serious reason for doubt. The Times held its story on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretap program for over a year - and a year too long by my reckoning - apparently on the theory that it would not otherwise occur to terrorists that they might be targeted for surveillance.

No, it's certainly not rare; but the fact that it's frequent doesn't make asking how suppression of stories comes about - how journalists choose which stories to suppress - uninteresting. The wiretap story was a judgment call, but I didn't mention it; what I mentioned (in passing) was the SWIFT program - a perfectly legal program, secret, and disclosed by the Times and other newspapers. But, again, that's a passing comment - my real point was the difference in (apparent) treatment of members of the tribe, as opposed to outsiders.

This is scarcely a new development. Historian Kathryn Olmstead's excellent book "Challenging the Secret Government" explodes the myth of an overzealous post-Watergate press corps so eager for a scoop that national-security concerns are given short shrift. On the contrary, she documents a widespread sense that the press had gone "too far", and finds abundant evidence of compliant editors enforcing omerta on stories that, in retrospect, appear to have threatened embarrassment rather than genuine security harms. The problem, of course, is that there's something of a sample bias here: When the press decides to run with a story over the objections of the security establishment, we hear about it. When they suppress a story, by definition, we do not hear about it - or at least, by the time we do hear about it, we don't hear much, because the news has gone stale. While one can debate the wisdom of disclosure in particular cases, it is very hard to argue that the NSA programme - which was almost certainly illegal - did not implicate a profound public interest in knowing what one's government is getting up to. The kidnapping of a journalist is also newsworthy, to be sure, but it seems quite clear that the public interest in that instance is not at all on the same order of magnitude. We do not need to invoke some special concern for the lives of fellow journalists to understand why the obligation to report might seem less compelling there. In other cases, to be sure, the Times has chosen to report on kidnappings - but it seems awfully hasty to assume that's a function of a double standard for reporters rather than other circumstantial features that led to a different assessment of the risks in the other cases.

Oh, puh-leeze. I'll see his Olmstead (which was the kind of book that was shocked! to discover that journalists rolled over fortheir political patrons from time to time) and raise him Geoffrey Stone's 'Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime' - a much more historical and rich examination of government management of news media from a civil libertarians perspective. And note that he still hasn't touched the truly significant issue - which is the differential treatment of kidnapping victims depending on whether they are of a favored class or not.

But let's turn to the more general question of whether reporters are "above the shared obligations of citizenship". The first thing to note, in the case of the rather implausible thought-experiment of the reporter embedded with a guerilla group, is that Mr Danziger does not even appear to consider whether there might be some valid case for "neutrality" in such circumstances. He regards it as self-evidently contemptible. It may well be that a journalist in that position ought to consider the obligation to warn his countrymen more weighty, but it seems foolish not to at least acknowledge that a norm of neutrality, especially for a war correspondent, is not some kind of pointless moral blind spot. It is the precondition for journalists' being able to get access to hostile organisations. That ceases to be possible if they're simply part-time combatants without uniforms. For this hypothetical scenario to be remotely plausible, there needs to be a background presumption that journalists will not, in fact, behave in this way.

I kind of feel like he's dodging any of the points I tried to make here, but let's play. The symposium I cited was in turn cited by James Fallows in "Why Americans Hate The Media" - a book well worth reading, by a thoughtful journalist who spent some time exploring the disconnect between American culture and our corporate media. The point of the story - as a reminder - wasn't the 'thought experiment,' but the reactions of the journalists and audience. By placing so much emphasis on the substance of the thought experiment, DA engages in some rhetorical sleight-of-hand (A cat in a box? How does the box work, exactly? Whose cat is it? Of course the box can't keep out the sound or movement of the cat - this is a silly experiment, Herr Schroedenger) and either completely missed the point or wants to avoid discussing it.

Of course, the "ambush" thought experiment is something of a red herring - situations like that just don't occur with any frequency. The real question lurking in the background - implicit in Mr Danziger's complaint that journalists imagine themselves to be "above the shared obligations of citizenship" - is whether journalists who expect the protection of the US military in the field hadn't better remember whose side they're supposed to be on and run their stories through the filter of what promotes American national interests. This betrays, I think, a rather shallow conception of what the "obligations of citizenship" entail.

So we're still debating the kind of box the cat went into...but at least we're getting to some kind of a point. Well, backhanding the point - that the journalists in the field do damn well depend on the protection by (in this case - note that this doesn't just apply to 'America') their own troops may just owe some reciprocal obligation to those same troops.

At the risk of belabouring the obvious, there's an obvious objection - we might call it a Kantian objection - to a more nationally partisan press. Just as widespread promise-breaking would ultimately destroy the very institution of promising, a more "patriotic" press corps would soon lose the very credibility that makes it seem advantageous. In a conflict between Iran's state-controlled news outlets and reports leaking in from the international press, what reason does the average Iranian have to regard those foreign sources as anything more than the propaganda their leaders aver it to be? In part, perhaps, because they see that foreign news outlets reveal abuses by their own governments - even when, as in Abu Ghraib, the backlash from that reporting threatens to harm national interests.

This is where my 'puh-leeze' above turns into 'give me a friggin' break.' This is a half-baked argument from authority that flatly misreads Kant as well as ignores the modern political philosophers - say, Arendt and my man Habermas. Let's take a moment; the root of Kant's liberalism is it's universality - the notion that we apply the same rules to all people, and in turn expect them to be applied to us (see "categorical imperative" in 'Metaphysics of Morals'). Now my critique of the journalists behavior wasn't just that they were 'unpatriotic' or 'unAmerican' - not in the least. It was - in the case of this specific post that - they weren't dealing from a universalist perspective, and that, as I put it in the post itself:

The other problem is, if anything, more serious. And it is the simple fact that we are increasingly living in a society that plays by Ottoman rules; meaning that what the rules are depend - of course - on who you are. That's not something we will survive for long, and simply put, it needs to be exposed and stamped out anywhere we see it.

And yes, there is a conflict in roles that must be addressed, and - not that DA was likely to have read all the other posts I've done on the subject - I repeatedly acknowledge that it's a complex one, fraught with traps.

Am I agreeing, then, that journalists are "above the shared obligations of citizenship"? On the contrary: I am suggesting that sometimes the obligations of citizenship are not shared, but role specific. We assume, in most cases, that a good citizen is obligated to inform the authorities when he learns a friend or colleague has committed a serious crime. An attorney, by contrast, is often obligated not to share such information, at least when the criminal happens to be her client. This is not a case of a conflict between the norms binding on someone qua citizen or qua attorney. Rather, the special rules binding on attorneys are how they carry out their obligations as citizens, not because every defendant deserves to be acquitted, but because the right to representation by counsel is crucial to our legal system. Someone who argued that public defenders ought to remember whose side they're really on and throw guilty clients to the wolves would betray a stunningly shallow view of the public defender's role. Equally myopic is the insistence that a journalist observes the "obligations of citizenship" only by viewing the news through a nationalist lens.

The reality is that there's a complicated balance between the need of journalists to look at society from the outside so as to be able to comment, and on the other to be able to participate through journalism in the creation of the communicative space that occupies the center of the polity.

Now there's a whole interesting discussion to have about the case where the communicative space is - as it is for much of the media today - is bigger than the polities that create the legal/jurisdictional forms of citizenship that we each must have.

There's a pull in the educated classes to, as Schaar aptly diagnosed, say that:

"Patriotism is unwelcome in many quarters of the land today, and unknown in many others. There is virtually no thoughtful discussion of the subject, for the word has settled, in most people's minds, deep into a brackish pond of sentiment where thought cannot reach. Politicians and members of patriotic associations praise it, of course, but official and professional patriotism too often sounds like nationalism, patriotism's bloody brother. On the other hand, patriotism has a bad name among many thoughtful people, who see it as a horror at worst, a vestigial passion largely confined to the thoughtless at best: as enlightenment advances, patriotism recedes. The intellectuals are virtually required to repudiate it as a condition of class membership. The radical and dropout young loathe it. Most troublesome of all, for one who would make the argument I intend to make, is the face that both the groups that hate and those that glorify patriotism largely agree that it and nationalism are the same thing. I hope to show that they are different things--related, but separable. Opponents of patriotism might agree that if the two could be separated then patriotism would look fairly attractive. But the opinion is widespread, almost atmospheric, that the separation is impossible, that with the triumph of the nation-state nation. Nationalism has indelibly stained patriotism: the two are warp and woof. The argument against patriotism goes on to say that, psychologically considered, patriot and nationalist are the same: both are characterized by exaggerated love for one's own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders. In addition, advanced political opinion holds that positive, new ideas and forces--e.g., internationalism, universalism; humanism, economic interdependence, socialist solidarity--are healthier bonds of unity, and more to be encouraged than the ties of patriotism. These are genuine objections, and they are held by many thoughtful people."

But the kind of reflexive 'cosmopolitanism/good, patriotism/bad' position that DA takes is undermined by the fact that the communicative space which DA occupies is maintained in large part by the civic structure of the nation-state that DA wants so badly - and that many of the journalists want to badly - to transcend.

It's a kind of Brentwood (California) cosmopolitanism; a fervent belief in the brotherhood of man, as long as the checks keep coming in, the wine is good, the gardener and maid show up, and the scary people are kept away - they're all for it. Over to you, DA.
Edited for embarrassing grammar slip
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« ok, I'm done now

Only a handful of Web sites and blogs--for more than half a year -- noted the incident, it remained out of mainstream news. It appears other news outlets that knew of the abduction adhered to the Times' request.

Even when the Times won five Pulitzer Prizes in April, including one for international reporting in Pakistan and Afghanistan that essentially honored Rohde's among others, the paper had to bite its collective lip.

When E&P became aware of the kidnapping several months ago, Editor Greg Mitchell and I discussed the issue on several occasions, but declined to report. We talked to journalism ethicists and editors or reporters at other top outlets for guidance. When approached about the matter, several Times editors, including Executive Editor Bill Keller, were candid (off the record) about the situation, but with a request that we maintain a blackout.

That was in this case the right thing to do, the actors in the media felt. Strupp says:

As Keller said today on the Times' Web site, the paramount importance was for Rohde's' life and the belief among those aiding the paper, and his family, was that publicity could do more harm than good. "We decided to respect that advice, as we have in other kidnapping cases, and a number of other news organizations that learned of David's plight have done the same. We are enormously grateful for their support," he said in the story today.

And Greg Mitchell adds, at Huffpo:

I wonder now if a great debate will break out over media ethics in not reporting a story involving one of their own when they so eagerly rush out piece about nearly everything else. I imagine some may claim that the blackout would not have held if a smaller paper, not the mighty New York Times, had been involved. Or is saving this life (actually two, there was a local reporter also snatched) self-evidently justification enough?

The problem, of course, is that this was largely a matter of professional courtesy.

Because it's not the first time; when a CBC reporter was kidnapped last year, the media did the same thing:

Fung, who was on her second stint reporting in Afghanistan, was kidnapped from a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul while there reporting for a story she was working on. She was taken to mountains west of the city and kept in a small cave for 28 days.

News of her abduction was kept secret and the CBC and other media outlets did not make public the fact that she had been kidnapped. Upon her release, CBC publisher John Cruickshank said:

"In the interest of Mellissa's safety and that of other working journalists in the region, on the advice of security experts, we made the decision to ask media colleagues not to publish news of her abduction. All of the efforts made by the security experts were focused on Mellissa's safe and timely release...We must put the safety of the victim ahead of our normal instinct for full transparency and disclosure."

Some journalists, such as Michèle Ouimet, a columnist with Montreal's La Presse, questioned whether the Canadian media showed more solidarity toward Fung than it did for freelancer Amanda Lindhout, who was kidnapped in Somalia last summer. Ouimet wrote:

"Journalists are the first to invoke the public's right to information, but they become awfully sensitive when it comes to one of their own."

Do a NY Times search for "kidnapped Afghanistan" and you'll find this January 2008 story about an American woman and her driver who'd just been kidnapped, this September 2008 story about an Afghan official who was kidnapped in Pakistan, a November 2008 story about a French aid worker who was kidnapped in Kabul.

Now that doesn't mean they cover every kidnapping -just that they cover some.

And that's not to mention the national security stories they happily and proudly ran (the Swift program, a perfectly legal program for tracking international financial transactions which they uncovered, among others).

I've got two massive problems with this.

The first, and obvious one, is covered in the Fallows piece I cite above, after Mike Wallace has explained that he'd stand by and roll tape as a guerilla force ambushed and wiped out an American patrol, because - in his exact words:

Didn't Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don't have a higher duty. No. No. You're a reporter!"

A member of the US military responded:

A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, "I feel utter . . . contempt. " Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces--and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn't be "just journalists" any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. "We'll do it!" Connell said. "And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get ... a couple of journalists." The last few words dripped with disgust.

And I can imagine how, when Rohde's saw the uniforms of the US troops and knew that meant he was now safe, his heart must have lifted. And what's wrong with that, of course is that he wants - as the Col. Connell suggests - to be able to claim sanctuary from his countrymen. Now I don't know Rohde's work, and I'm not going to claim that he's remotely where Wallace claimed to be while sitting in the comfort of a videotaped seminar. But his institution is. And that's a problem to me. Because it was US soldiers who gave Rohde's sanctuary, not some mercenary force fighting in the name of the NY Times or international journalism.

The other problem is, if anything, more serious. And it is the simple fact that we are increasingly living in a society that plays by Ottoman rules; meaning that what the rules are depend - of course - on who you are. That's not something we will survive for long, and simply put, it needs to be exposed and stamped out anywhere we see it.

So I'm glad that the NY Times and journalists could sit on an exciting story to help save one of their own. In the future, will they do this to save some random civilian, or some US soldier?
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« ok, I'm done now

What's amazing to me, as a student of corporate behavior is this:

By June 9, Colby could no longer be transported to a theater and her family feared she would die without having seen the movie.

At that point, [family friend] Orum-Moore, who desperately wanted Colby to get her last wish, began to cold-call Pixar and Disney to see if someone could help.

Pixar has an automated telephone answering system, Orum-Moore said, and unless she had a name of a specific person she wanted to speak to, she could not get through. Orum-Moore guessed a name and the computer system transferred her to someone who could help, she said.

Pixar officials listened to Colby's story and agreed to send someone to Colby's house the next day with a DVD of "Up," Orum-Moore recalled.

From first contact to someone on a plane in less than 24 hours. Freaking amazing.

All I can say about this is that I'd gladly send a bottle of Windward Pinot to whoever made this decision...anyone have a name?
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« ok, I'm done now

And, sadly, here's Greg Sargent today:

...Walpin, a Bush appointee, alleges he was axed for doing his job - in particular, probing a nonprofit run by a big Obama backer. The conspiracy-mongering has been in full swing, with Walpin even scoring an appearance with Glenn Beck. Senator Chuck Grassley and even Dem Claire McCaskill are turning their attention to the case.

In an interview with our reporter, Amanda Erickson, Walpin turned up the heat in a way that's likely to earn plaudits on the right, demanding that Obama 'do the right thing' and admit he made a 'mistake.' He called for a hearing at which witnesses would 'testify under oath as to what's happening.' He said the matter should be left to the 'good judgment' of Congress.

So Greg, it'd be useful for those of us who don't put little party flags on our cars (like Laker flags) if you'd do an explainer on why that firing was a scandal ,and complaining about this firing is a partisan hatchet job.
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« ok, I'm done now

"Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

...Our plan utilizes a provision in the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that permits employers to differentiate premiums based on behaviors. Currently we are focused on tobacco usage, healthy weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Safeway's Healthy Measures program is completely voluntary and currently covers 74% of the insured nonunion work force. Employees are tested for the four measures cited above and receive premium discounts off a "base level" premium for each test they pass. Data is collected by outside parties and not shared with company management. If they pass all four tests, annual premiums are reduced $780 for individuals and $1,560 for families. Should they fail any or all tests, they can be tested again in 12 months. If they pass or have made appropriate progress on something like obesity, the company provides a refund equal to the premium differences established at the beginning of the plan year.

At Safeway, we are building a culture of health and fitness. The numbers speak for themselves. Our obesity and smoking rates are roughly 70% of the national average and our health-care costs for four years have been held constant. When surveyed, 78% of our employees rated our plan good, very good or excellent. In addition, 76% asked for more financial incentives to reward healthy behaviors. We have heard from dozens of employees who lost weight, lowered their blood-pressure and cholesterol levels, and are enjoying better health because of this program. Many discovered for the first time that they have high blood pressure, and others have been told by their doctor that they have added years to their life."

Like I said, ridiculously obvious. They're apparently in talks with the union to add similar provisions to their other contracts, and want the ability to offer larger rewards to employees who test well.

Something they're currently prohibited by law from doing. Which is just ridiculous.

Getting this stuff down is not easy, and I speak from personal experience. You'd never guess by looking at me, but my cholestrol levels are naturally quite high, despite a thin body type and a baseline diet that was already better than most. Thankfully, my carotid artery ultrasound was about perfect, one of the best my cardio-specializing doc has seen in a couple of years. That has bought us the time to do things without using statin drugs. Something I'd rather avoid, even though my genotype means they'll be more effective on me than on most people.

The last 3 months have involved more exercise, a lot of things I no longer eat, and a couple of non-medication dietary supplements like tasteless fish oil capsules (for Omega-3 etc.). Not there yet, but some of the reductions in a recent re-test (HDL IIIa/b, triglycerides) were pretty dramatic. The next 3 months are going to be about driving them further, into the "green" area if possible, without prescription drugs. Which may be possible. We'll see.

Is this fair? No. Life handed me a stacked deck, and it's one that could eventually kill me. If I worked at Safeway, it would increase my insurance costs.

It isn't about "fair." The deck you get is the deck you get. It's about health. It's about the rewards of living a better life. Which requires responsibility, cooperation, and effort. Less if you start with a good deck, more if you start with a bad one.

Personally, I'd like to be able to go back to eating those pizzas and bacon cheeseburgers now and then, and not care, knowing that I wasn't going to gain weight doing it. Which, admittedly, wasn't "fair" either - I was often reminded of that.

But the point is the goal, not the effort. Maintaining my health isn't anyone else's responsibility. It's mine.

Ultimately, whatever we do as a nation in this area has to be affordable (a metric that shrinks by the day, for all government programs, under current economic policies). But it also has to reward people for making good decisions - decisions that will improve both systemic costs, and their own lives. Research shows that the rewards approach is psychologically more effective, and it's more politically palatable too.

It ought to be front and center in the current health care debate.

« ok, I'm done now

These guys are playing chess at 1.5G and 200mph...amazing.
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« ok, I'm done now

Let's see what he has to say about the North Korean missile and nuke tests:

As for Iran, the leadership's motives may be more mixed. U.S. foreign policy expert Flynt Leverett says Washington needs to do more to reassure Iran, because despite President Obama's calls for improved relations, Tehran believes the U.S. is still pursuing the policy track of former President Bush.

"What I'm concerned about is that the promise of this early rhetoric will be undermined by this lack of new initiatives, and particularly if the administration continues to try and use its professed willingness to engage Iran, to muster more international support for intensified sanctions, I think that's going to undermine the credibility of any diplomatic initiative," he explained.

Let's see what he has to say about Bush's policies:

We got into this dilemma because we essentially don't have a strategy for dealing with the Iranian nuclear issue. By "we" I mean the United States and the Bush administration. The Bush administration has deliberately ruled out direct negotiations with Iran either over the nuclear issue or over the broad range of strategic issues that you would need to talk to Iran about if you were going to get a real diplomatic settlement on the nuclear issue.

The administration has, literally for years, ruled out that kind of strategic dialogue with Iran. In the absence of that sort of approach, that sort of channel, the administration is left with two options, one of which is to try and get something done in the Security Council. It has been foreseeable literally for months, if not for longer, that Russia and China at a minimum were not going to be prepared to support serious multilateral sanctions or other serious multilateral punitive measures on Iran. This is not a surprise. As I said, it's been foreseeable literally for months, but the administration, without a strategy, is going down this feckless road anyway.

(He goes on in this interview to extol the apparently fraudulent Swiss Memo)

And what does he have to say about the Obama Administration?

President Obama...should not be excused for [his] failure to learn the lessons of recent history in the Middle East - that the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics and that even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation. The notion of an Israeli-moderate Arab coalition united to contain Iran is not only delusional, it would leave the Palestinian and Syrian-Lebanese tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict unresolved and prospects for their resolution in free fall. These tracks cannot be resolved without meaningful American interaction with Iran and its regional allies, Hamas and Hezbollah.

...What is hard about the Iran problem is not periodic inflammatory statements from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or episodes like Ms. Saberi's detention. What is really hard is that getting America's Iran policy "right" would require a president to take positions that some allies and domestic constituencies won't like.

To fix our Iran policy, the president would have to commit not to use force to change the borders or the form of government of the Islamic Republic. He would also have to accept that Iran will continue enriching uranium, and that the only realistic potential resolution to the nuclear issue would leave Iran in effect like Japan - a nation with an increasingly sophisticated nuclear fuel-cycle program that is carefully safeguarded to manage proliferation risks. Additionally, the president would have to accept that Iran's relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah will continue, and be willing to work with Tehran to integrate these groups into lasting settlements of the Middle East's core political conflicts.

It was not easy for President Richard Nixon to discard a quarter-century of failed policy toward the People's Republic of China and to reorient America's posture toward Beijing in ways that have served America's interests extremely well for more than 30 years. That took strategic vision, political ruthlessness and personal determination. We hope that President Obama - contrary to his record so far - will soon begin to demonstrate those same qualities in forging a new approach toward Iran.

So, basically, he's all about giving the Iranian regime whatever they want. OK, that's fine - but let's weigh that as we look at his somewhat sketchy claims about the election.

First, to the poll. Flynt says:

But the one poll conducted before Friday's election by a Western organization that was transparent about its methodology - a telephone poll carried out by the Washington-based Terror-Free Tomorrow [A.L. - his employer ,which he doesn't mention] from May 11 to 20 - found Ahmadinejad running 20 points ahead of Mousavi. This poll was conducted before the televised debates in which, as noted above, Ahmadinejad was perceived to have done well while Mousavi did poorly.

Then go read the ABC demolition:

An outfit called Terror Free Tomorrow claims in an op-ed in today's Washington Post that the contested Iranian elections likely were not fraudulent, since a pre-election poll it sponsored showed the declared winner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with a big lead.

TFT's own data, though, tell a different story - as, oddly, did its own previous polling analysis.

The poll, done by telephone last month, found 34 percent support for Ahmadinejad vs. 14 percent for Mir Hossein Mousavi. The incumbent led by "a more than 2 to 1 margin - greater than his actual margin of apparent victory in Friday's election," today's op-ed says. "Our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead."

Strange, then, that TFT's analysis of these same data last month predicted a runoff.

Then he claims that the result - 60+% for Ahmadinejad - is almost exactly what he got in the last election:

They ignore the fact that Ahmadinejad's 62.6 percent of the vote in this year's election is essentially the same as the 61.69 percent he received in the final count of the 2005 presidential election, when he trounced former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Um, he got 61.69% of the vote in a two person runoff, after getting something like 20% of the vote in the preliminary, multiparty election - the one like this one.

Look we could go on, and in reality all of the evidence we're talking about is indirect, circumstantial and incomplete. And none of us - not even the vaunted Juan Cole - really understand the pre-Copernican insane complexity of Iranian politics.

I do know about one subject that's close to this issue, and that's counting votes.

And the claim that tens of millions of hand-written paper ballots were counted in three hours is, like Leverett's flimsy arguments above - simply bullshit.

There are doubtless good arguments made by legitimate commentators supporting the legitimacy of the election outcome. This wasn't one of them.
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« ok, I'm done now

But we, as a people, can do quite a bit. If there ever was a time to let activists, media, and leaders in the Middle East know that "the whole world is watching" that time is now. Follow Twitter, read blogs, share them with your friends. Accept that much of what you read is wild rumor and try as best you can so sift through it for grains of truth.

Find sites where pro-freedom (and by that I mean simply 'pro-fair-elections') Iranians are communicating, read them, and let them know with comments and emails that you are watching.

Let's see how 20th Century repression, in the interests of 14th century ideology, reacts to 21st century open communication tools.

I don't believe that Twitter and Youtube will bring down the repressive religious oligarchy in Iran. I'm not that much of anoptimist. But it will weaken the hold they have on the Iranian people - and in time, that may allow the Iranian people to find their own path to their own brand of freedom.

And - as a side note - all of us will know a whole lot more about the Iranian state a month from now than we know today. So let's reserve the policy suggestions until some dust has settled - please.
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« ok, I'm done now

Having said that, there is a toxic sludge in our public life - that comes up in a variety of ways - on the right, on the left, around issues like animal rights, the environment, gun rights, etc. - that we all need to see, identify and isolate.

Jesse Walker actually has a very good post on this over at Reason:

Why did the DHS report come under such fire? It wasn't because far-right cranks are incapable of committing crimes. It's because the paper blew the threat of right-wing terror out of proportion, just as the Clinton administration did in the '90s; because it treated "extremism" itself as a potential threat, while offering a definition of extremist so broad it seemed it include anyone who opposed abortion or immigration or excessive federal power; and because it fretted about the danger of "the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities." (Note that neither the killing in Kansas last month nor the shooting in Washington yesterday was committed by an Iraq or Afghanistan vet.) The effect isn't to make right-wing terror attacks less likely. It's to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the right, just as the most substantial effect of a red scare was to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the left. The fact that communist spies really existed didn't justify Joseph McCarthy's antics, and the fact that armed extremists really exist doesn't justify the Department of Homeland Security's report.

Let's start talking - all of us - about what it is that distinguishes someone who is vocally unhappy with fiscal policy direction from someone who walks into the Fed with a shotgun. When we get that sorted out, let's see how well that distinction applies across the political spectrum.

And as a side note, let me pass a virtual beer to the guard who shot the whackjob - making a head shot against an active shooter armed with a rifle is good shooting. One for the good guys.
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It's the post from the 'poor me' post that Publius (nee John Blevins) put up 'fessing up and explaining all the reasons why it was important to him to blog under a pseudonym.

Now when I first went into this, I have to admit that Publius wasn't a blogger whose work I could immediately put into a frame, and so my initial (wrong) reaction was that he was a poo-flinging monkey like tbogg, and my thought on his being outed was 'fair cop.' Live by the poo, die by it, I said to myself...

But because I tend to try to check my facts before I take positions, I took some time and read a bunch of publius' work, and he's in a whole different ballpark, league, sport than folks like that. He's a serious blogger, albeit an aggressive liberal, and someone whose posts I've read and admired in the past.

But having said that, I think that he's got it completely backward when he talks about why it was important to him to blog under a nom de plume. Here's what he said:

As I told Ed (to no avail), I have blogged under a pseudonym largely for private and professional reasons. Professionally, I've heard that pre-tenure blogging (particularly on politics) can cause problems. And before that, I was a lawyer with real clients. I also believe that the classroom should be as nonpolitical as possible - and I don't want conservative students to feel uncomfortable before they take a single class based on my posts. So I don't tell them about this blog. Also, I write and research on telecom policy - and I consider blogging and academic research separate endeavors. This, frankly, is a hobby.

Privately, I don't write under my own name for family reasons. I'm from a conservative Southern family - and there are certain family members who I'd prefer not to know about this blog (thanks Ed). Also, I have family members who are well known in my home state who have had political jobs with Republicans, and I don't want my posts to jeopardize anything for them (thanks again).

He wrote under a pseudonym to shield himself from the consequences of his words. I think that's exactly backwards.

When I started writing as Armed Liberal - in my very first post - I wrote that

I'm choosing not to identify myself ... right now ... for a variety of reasons. I'll start by standing on the time-honored tradition of anonymous pamphleteering, which I believe blogging fits neatly into. My significant other has a fairly political job (although she doesn't believe so). And finally, I'm trying to disassociate the value of what is set out here from any judgment you might make about me.

[emphasis added]

I didn't believe it was as important to shield myself (and mine) from what I wrote as it was to have what I wrote stand on its own. I'm not insensitive - and I wasn't in 2002 - to the concern that what I wrote might have an impact on my living or on my life.

But first and foremost for me it was a vehicle to put ideas forth deprived of any claim to authority (I was a student of Sheldon Wolin and John Schaar! I'm someone who works inside the process and can explain it!).

And when my real life and my blogging life intersected in a meaningful way, I dropped the pseud and stepped out.

So it bothers me more than a little that the primary defense that Publius wants to mount is that it might impact his work or hurt his family's feelings.

It especially bothers me when he says that

And yes - I criticized Whelan rather harshly. But that's what the blogosphere is about. Blogging is not for the thin-skinned. And you would think that someone who spends their days trying to destroy other people's reputations in dishonest and inflammatory ways wouldn't be so childish and thin-skinned.

I'm sorry, but pitchers who throw at the head shouldn't be shocked when an occasional bat comes loose and soars out toward the mound. People who see the root of blogging as critcising people harshly and offending where they can do forfeit some of the claim to courtesy which is really what weak pseudonymity (it wouldn't be too hard to track down any of the pseudonymous political bloggers, really) is really all about.

So on both of those counts - because I think he was making the claim to pseudonymity for the wrong reasons, and because I think that what he really regrets losing is the freedom to throw elbows and then go sit innocently at his family table, I - a formerly pseudonymous blogger - think that Whelan committed a minor infraction of manners at worst.
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For example, there are pledge forms being passed around to lawmakers by a major labor union that might have attracted takers in budget battles past. The union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wants the legislators to sign statements of support for up to $44 billion in new or higher taxes on the wealthy, oil companies, tobacco and other industries, products and people.

But so far the drive hasn't produced a single signed form, even from the Democrats who normally march into California's budget fights in lock-step with organized labor.

...so today, the labor-sponsored politicians are reading the - forgive me - tea leaves and pushing back.

"Many public employee unions, teacher unions [are] thinking that they were thrown under the bus in the last budget," said Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D- Montebello). "So now they're asking themselves: If these Democrats are not going to stand up for us, then what good is it to have them there?"

The union leaders say they are appalled that Democratic leaders are talking openly now about decimating government programs without first making a stand for bigger, broader tax hikes that could substantially offset budget cuts.

"Democrats came to Sacramento to help people," said Marty Hittleman, president of the California Federation of Teachers. "I know they did not go there to destroy government. For some reason, they are unwilling to stand up and say 'This is not what I was elected for.' "

But even some of the most liberal Democrats say some union leaders are ignoring the reality of an angry public, a sour economy and a state government approaching insolvency. Moreover, more taxes would require Republican support in the Legislature, and the minority party has made clear that there will be none.

When you hear 'reformers' explain that we need to abolish the supermajority for budget and tax approval, remember these words.

In part, this is interesting fallout from the failure of the budget propositions. Then there were differing interpretations of why they had failed: the conservatives said it was the new taxes, the liberals said it was the spending limits. I thought we'd know the truth pretty quickly, and from this article, it seems we do.
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"As for me, I'm not shocked, I'm thrilled. This evil murderous bastard finally at last got what he deserved.

If that makes me an accomplice, as pro-abortionists are labeling anyone who protested against Tiller's medical murder practice, so be it."

I'm sorry, but that's either nuts, or it's treason. We'll start with nuts.

I would not side with the person who killed the slave owner, though I be a strong abolitionist.

The Long murder illustrates why not. In both cases, loyalty to the laws of the United States is cast aside to murder, on grounds of moral conviction, for conduct that is legal. Because those in question cannot win a democratic political argument. The same is true for Jack's thought-experiment.

Newsflash: There are a lot of people out there with ideas that fit these categories. They're not always going to pick the targets you approve of. Once you decide it's OK for group A to do it, anyone and everyone could be a target.

Which is one reason why the rule of law around murder is such a critical component of civilized life. Just as the potential and historic recurrence of its breakdown on these grounds is one of the underpinnings beneath the human right to bear arms.

Back to our Earth First! types for a minute, and animal rights activists who believe that animals and people are morally equivalent, with the same rights. Can they shoot people for torturing and killing thousands of animals in the name of science? If you believed in the Earth First! theology and were a staunch pro-lifer, then based on your premises, an abortionist and an experimental scientist who conducts lethal experiments on live animals wold be exactly the same moral thing. Exactly.

In a Imamist fatwa society of whatever flavour, you can go out and shoot people on those grounds. In a civilized society, you cannot. Marxism is fundamentally anti-civilization, of course. Always has been. Its 100-million skulls record within a similar justifying framework is just an expression of that fundamental nature. And that exact fundamental flaw.

In a civilized society, a slaveowner whose practice is still legal is allowed the same basic protections against murder as any other citizen.

Stealing his slaves and putting them on the Underground Railroad is another thing. If you believe they are humans, you cannot be stealing since that only applies to property, not sentient creatures with free will. You still expect to pay the price if caught, of course. And you're morally enjoined to either make sure that those you've freed choose to freely accept the risks under full disclosure, or ensure that you've placed them in a better position. Else you haven't done good, you've done them a direct and personal harm.

But murder is a whole different ball game.

The basic compact of citizenry in a free government ultimately rests on the principle that we will protect fellow citizens, within our agreed laws and fundamental liberties. If you repudiate that, there isn't anything left of free citizenship.

As an aside, the failure to openly grasp that fundamental truth pretty much underlays the liberal-left's position on any form of international or domestic security over the past 40 years.

A congruent lack of judgment lies behind To The Point commenter mwilhite - who stupidly asks, as he defends the Tiller murder:

"Which is more important, the rule of law or saving millions of innocent lives?"

Answer: In societies where it's OK to summarily kill people you disagree with, for doing things that are legal, the record shows a pretty hefty death toll anyway. Defend, then, the Rule of Law around murder, lest you simply move the death toll around.

Which brings us to the next part, treason.

In the subsequent comments, a few TTP members said outright that they were OK with moving the death toll around. That many murders (abortions), they said, justified murder in return.

Which is another way of saying that Muslim jihadists shooting American troops in America is conceptually fine, but they would personally take issue with the gunman's choice of targets. Of course, the fact that people do disagree is why the rule of law is part of free societies in the first place.

To be fair, however, there's actually a coherent moral position one can hold within that framework. TTP reader Kenny frames it nicely, and it's the right follow-up question:

"Would it have been alright to have shot Hitler in 1939 or 1940, and if not, why not? How about an even bigger mudrered, Stalin? Should someone have taken him out while he was in the midsts of murdering millions?"

The answer to both question is yes. In acts of justified armed insurrection against the government as a whole. Totalitarian governments are not legitimate, and armed insurrection against them is justified. This includes killing their leaders, and functionaries. Jack Wheeler spent a lot of time tramping around such insurrectionists all over the globe. He's the person who, more than anyone else, brought the reality of anti-communist liberation movements to the Reagan White House's attention.

In the words of a document many of us are familiar with, however, that's no longer a mere act of murder. To organize and engage in it, in order to change the politics of an established country that has effective control of its own territory, is far more akin to "levying war." Which is one of the US Constitution's definitions of treason.

So be it - insurrections are always treason. You either win and change the government by force of arms, in which case the charge becomes moot. You're now the government, and you were always loyal to yourselves. Or you lose. At which point, trial for treason is nothing less than one should expect.

Along the way, of course, lies civil war. At least once before in America, that meant many thousands of people dead.

In case you're wondering, Jack, later in his own article, extends his historical slavery analogy and wonders if the death toll of abortion could reach a level that could morally justify secession. It's a valid moral question to ask, and it shows that he, at least, understands at some level how high the stakes could go. Shades of Orson Scott Card's novel "Empire".

Fortunately, prominent pro-life groups have been quick and clear in their condemnation of the Tiller murder - a sharp contrast to the positions of Gulf-supported Islamic front groups like CAIR and the AMC on terrorism and terrorist acts.

A government that does not understand or respect that difference risks crossing some pretty important red lines of its own, and is likely to seriously radicalize far more of its opponents. Which is what I fully expect Obama to do: conduct a public witch-hunt without qualification or distinction. All supported by a media who aren't that interested in Islamic terrorism like the inconveniently paired Long shooting, since they'd rather focus on their enemies.

Having said that, those people who do espouse support of the Tiller murder, and especially any organizations that are supportive or equivocal, ought to expect a strong government reaction. Including monitoring and further investigations. The lack of these public square and investigative reactions with respect to organized supporters of terrorism like CAIR and the AMC, is part of the reason that Islamic terrorism is a larger problem than it should be.

I do not support that mistake, and I do not support repeating it elsewhere.

Levying war is a double-edged sword. If you're one of those people who believes that taking up arms is justified - perhaps by the scope of what you believe to be a genocide, because you haven't won the political argument yet in a free society - then so be it.

Just don't kid yourself about what you're doing, or what you've stepped into. On any level. And don't expect my support. On any level.

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David Brooks: Gail, I confess I do shy away from these issues, not because I don't have views but because I find the tenor of the debates so unpleasant. For example, I have the impression that we're in the middle of their weird battle of the murders. Liberal media outlets play up the murder of the abortion doctor by a pro-life extremist. Conservative outlets play up the murder of the Army recruiter by a Muslim extremist. Some people on both sides seem to feel that their view of the world has been affirmed by the atrocities of a certain set of extremists, and so seem to feel a sense of vindication from these crimes.

Brooks - who speaks for the 'average American' in these circles, believes that they really don't think about these things...they just want to be nice to each other:

I think there is a consistency to how most Americans view these Big Three social issues. People are seeking the positions that will help them reserve the invisible bonds of community.

Americans increasingly see gay relationships as just another part of the fabric of connections that make up their communities. As a result Americans are becoming more accepting of civil unions and gay marriage.

People also treasure the specific subcultures they inhabit. Guns are an essential part of life for people who live in rural communities. Well, it's not the guns per se. Rather the threat to limit gun ownership is seen as an assault by urban people on rural life and rural communities. That is the reason gun rights are defended so fiercely and why it is politically dangerous for anybody to challenge them.

Finally, on the subject of abortion, Americans are pulled by conflicting communitarian impulses. On the one hand, I think most people sense viscerally that somehow an abortion is a tear in the moral fabric - whether they are pro-life or pro-choice. On the other hand, they don't feel communities can be formed on the basis of compulsion and they are uncomfortable imposing such complex and uncomfortable moral decisions on one another. So they seek out some mushy middle ground, while oscillating, sometimes in a more "liberal" direction and sometimes in a more "conservative" one, as now.

Yeah, we're brainless cattle who decide important issues based on our connections to others...not.

I've spent a lot of time talking to people on a variety of sides of all three (all four, actually) of these issues, and the reality I've experienced is that people think very hard about them, hold deep beliefs about them, and while they may not be able to give broad historic or ideologically grounded arguments for their beliefs - they manage to articulate them - even in passing conversation - far better than the luminaries sucking at the NYT teat. Yes, we're all human, and our opinions are formed in part by our 'tribes'.

But that does not - nearly - mean that we have no ability to articulate our understandings or beliefs, to discuss them, and to move and be moved in those discussions. The hard reality is that many of us have deep-rooted beliefs that, in essence decide those issues for us. Let's look at Gail Collins on gay marriage:

Gay rights is just a matter of time. Look at the polls. Worrying about gay marriage, let alone gay civil unions or gay employment rights, is a middle-age issue. Young people just can't see the problem. At worst, gays are going to win this one just by waiting until the opposition dies off.

Note that to her, there's no ... issue ... around gay rights. They simply 'are'. No one, or at least no one worth talking to, could possibly make any kind of substantive argument against gay rights worth considering.

Yet almost all of us were brought up in a culture that has for a millennium ostracized homosexuality; and it would be good if she would recognize that breaking those cultural bonds is hard - and made harder when the images of what it means to be gay come from Castro Street or Santa Monica Boulevard and not the PTA or house next door. So there's a measure of cognitive dissonance because when the average American family thought about gays, it thought about Sodom, San Francisco bath-houses (not that most people were clear about exactly what was going on in those places...), pedophiles, and that spinster piano teacher and her 'cousin' who lived down the street, and then it became about Will and Grace and then about that handsome and brave young Olympic diver and then about Doogie Hauser MD - and suddenly the cultural messages about what it meant to be gay or be in contact with gays were all confused and suddenly not nearly as clearly negative as it used to be.

In part, I'll argue that was helped along by a substantial change in gay culture itself; it became mainstream and relatively nontransgressive.

She feels the same way about guns (i.e. there is no real substantive issue, only a political one):

Gun control currently feels like a lost cause. If a big Democratic majority doesn't have the will to stop an amendment to the credit card bill permitting people to carry concealed loaded weapons in national parks, I don't have much hope.

The idea that there are people ... me, for example ... who might be able to make a moral and practical argument for why allowing concealed carry in national parks located where concealed carry is itself legal never occurs to her.

It never occurs to Brooks either:

People also treasure the specific subcultures they inhabit. Guns are an essential part of life for people who live in rural communities. Well, it's not the guns per se. Rather the threat to limit gun ownership is seen as an assault by urban people on rural life and rural communities. That is the reason gun rights are defended so fiercely and why it is politically dangerous for anybody to challenge them.

No, no, a thousand times no. I don't live in the country, my neighbors who shoot don't live in the country, we're not a part of some weird secret subculture that only allows membership to those with guns. That's patently absurd.

People who own guns and who think that owning and possessing guns is OK often think that it's a positive good, and can ... shockingly ... make arguments to that effect. The concern about gun regulation has only a little to do with concern that the 'city folk' will dominate; people who fear widespread gun ownership don't believe people can or should be responsible for their own safety, and people who fear banning guns don't believe in anything else.

And here we begin to see why these are fracture lines; not because of some sociological or anthropological explanation, not because of the politics of the issue (although such explanations are available to us), but because people's beliefs are vastly different.

And no where is this more true than abortion, where short of the most dedicated pro-life activists, people I know are perfectly capable of having an 'on one hand and on the other but this is trumped by' discussion about the value and costs of abortion, but where each side - even the uncomfortable committed on each side (like me) have a deep belief about what is right that closes the argument.

Brooks goes on:

I'm not sure I'm expressing myself very clearly, but what I'm trying to say is that people seek to preserve the orderly bonds around them. Most people, even on these hot button issues, gravitate toward positions that seem to best preserve unspoken communal understandings. As a result, I don't expect sharp change on any of these subjects. There is a gradual acceptance of gay and lesbian rights, but I think progress will take longer than people anticipate. On gun control and abortion, I don't see much change of any sort.

There are fewer and fewer culture warriors in America. Most people want order and peace.

Yes, but each group wants the peace that comes from its values being uncontroversially widespread, and on these issues, we're not likely to get that for quite some time.

I'd suggest that these are fracture line issues because they are not 'instrumental issues' where I can horsetrade a little loss here for a little gain elsewhere. They are issues which touch on the deepest values we hold as members of the society - what is an appropriate relationship; who will defend me and as a consequence have power over me; what does it mean to be human and have rights.

I'll suggest that the better, more American solution is one that acknowledges that we are a people who live together who share many, but not all, values, and that those values change over time. That allows for a free competition of ideas and ideals, and that limits what we can and will do to coerce each other.

But most of all, one that acknowledges just exactly what these deep thinkers deny - that the people whohold opposing views to us do so genuinely, and are entitled to respect for those views with which we deeply disagree.
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Rogers, a high school dropout who attributes his skateboarding skills to God, was eventually grabbed by police officers and brought down from his precarious perch.

"It obviously was not an everyday experience," the 24-year-old athlete said. "It was a very out-of-body experience. I've never had an experience like that."

Rogers pulled off his boxer shorts about 6:40 a.m. Monday and climbed onto the roof of the two-story house he shares with roommates on Havemeyer Lane and Goodman Avenue.

"It was obviously something I shouldn't have done," Rogers said as he rolled a marijuana joint in his bedroom. "It was just something that happened."

Some of us exist just to be a bad example to others, I'd guess...

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And the important thing to me is that in my mind, to a large extent, this is what terrorism is going to look like for the next decade or so.

I don't envision much in the way of vast conspiracies (maybe, but less likely I believe as the resources they require are choked off - I did a piece I never posted on what it would take to really screw up the US via acts of terror, and it cost about $15 - 20 million. Money at that level is noticed - I hope) There's no central figure - no Osama or Dr. Evil sitting in a volcano lair directing minions.

What we have instead is an Idea - about Islam, about the rights of the unborn, about the rights of animals, about tending the environment, about whatever - and a cadre of people dedicated to pushing that Idea forward, and who use that idea to pull people who are loosely attached to their lives into the belief that their lives will only matter if they give all for the idea.

Now that notion isn't new; it's not even novel in modern America (ask Jim Jones, Cinque, and Andreas Baader or Charlie Manson). There have always been charismatic, murderous thugs who pried people out of their life orbits and sent them crashing into the ground - usually with a few corpses trailing behind them.

And the problem, of course, is that the people who are holding the flame of the Idea in their hands, and blowing on it to keep it burning bright are - rightly - protected. Even as it becomes clear that the incitement of damaged people is something they truly hope to do, our system requires that we protect their right to think and speak freely.

So what do we do about it?

One thing, I believe, is to hold them up to the light - to make sure that every nasty thing they say and do is widely exposed, and so shame them in the public sphere. This is, I believe, the right thing to do - but the reality is that it will also serve to publicize their cause, and to attract the susceptible. So while it's right, there are questions about how effective it will be.

Do we criminalize speech and thought because it might incite deed? My answer is no.

But like all answers, it comes with a cost - and we're seeing that cost today.

I think the core answer is the harder one - and it is make it harder to pry people out of their orbits, to do a kind of COIN within our own country in which we re-establish the concept of legitimacy and revalidate in people's minds the channels through which they are validated and through which they believe they can engage their beliefs; we need, if possible to, declare a war on anomie.

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...yeah, you try that on a Harley, Jimbo, and when you get out of the hospital, you can tell both of your friends all about it...

Jimbo may be sober - it's unlikely - but even so, he's displaying a fundamental misapprehension common to enlisted men. That is simply this. Which is a scarier weapon?


or


Which one would you rather fly against?


or


Yes, the primitive weapon looks scarier and more imposing, and there is a certain - delicacy - found in modern weapon design. And it's understandable how the ... less-developed ... mind might find the primitive weapons far scarier and more imposing.

But they'd be wrong.

In Jimbo's comments, Grim asks "Does he also wear one of those fancy red leather jumpsuits when he's riding that thing?"


Why yes, I do...mine's yellow and blue, though...

On the other hand, here I have spy photos of Jim in the parking lot at Camp Mackall, learning to ride a motorcycle...


...note the stylish Village People getups they are all wearing...

Look, it's a simple thing. Here's Jim:


Here's me:


One is living in a cave, picking nits and hitting things with his club, and one is now the Dread Pirate Roberts, headed for a life of luxury in Patagonia. I think that makes things clear enough, hmmm?
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A week of surfing Craigslist, and I found a mint '08 base model with a Leo Vince exhaust (keeping the catalyst) and 940 miles, and got a great deal on it.

Because the bike was a year and a half old and had barely been ridden, I had SoCal redo a 600 mile service, and add a rear rack. I picked the bike up Wednesday, installed a Givi plate Thurs, and Friday morning we headed out of town. The rack broke Day One - but I'll get it reinforced and remounted; the ability to carry a little stuff will be very useful. But damn, what fun.

To give you a sense of the routes we followed, check the links to Google Maps...

Day 1 - the ride up - 318 mi

Day 2 - 201 mi

Day 3 - (we liked that route) - 245 mi

Day 4 - the ride home - 275 mi

I'm 56, in reasonable shape, and survived the trip with three problems: sore hands (hard small grips - need something a little fuller), a sore butt (sadly Renazco doesn't make a Hypermotard seat...checking my options here), and a slightly sore neck. Plus the facial pain from the continual grinning and hooting with laughter in my helmet.

I tend to name my motorcycles - which is a slightly embarassing affectation, to be sure, but keeps me amused. My Tiger is named 'Monteore' and I named the Hyper 'Maud Gonne' after Yeats' muse - a famous and firey redhead.

I'd worried that the bike was 'too close' to my Tiger - esp since the Tiger has a full Hyperpro/Race Tech suspension and has given a decent accounting of itself on the Streets of Willow racetrack.

Wrong. It's like my old MZ Baghira with serious grunt, and a suspension that feels like it is connected to the ground with titanium plates and little sucker cups. The base rear shock gets overwhelmed occasionally - leaned way over on bumpy roads while hard on the gas, for example - but I got the bike for a good enough deal that I can add all the suspension upgrades I want. I don't feel the need for more power - today - but will def change the gearing to bump the revs a little; I spent a lot of time in tight twisties either bouncing off the rev limiter or lugging a bit.

And I have to - publicly - eat a generous helping of crow about Ducati bikes and their owners. I've always written off the brand attachment as snobbery, plan and simple. I've given friends massive grief over it (Hi, Chris!!). But you know what? Damn, these are just great bikes to ride (or technically, this is a great bike to ride).

A seat, some fiddling with control positions, a sprocket, and I can spend the rest of my money on track time, vacations riding, and having someone try and massage the grin off my face when I'm done.

So if you see a somewhat dirty Hypermotard with a milk crate on the back, scuffed tires, and an old guy in a Hi-Viz Aerostich...wave, please.
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