Update: One thing about being on lockdown is I probably know less than people can get from the news. Lots of sirens throughout the day, but we're told to stay inside. More here, including increasing casualty numbers as information gets updated.
I posted this here rather than at my own site because it seemed to make more sense, but no rational reason.
Update II Local newsreader mentioned "chaos" on Fort Hood. I think just a throw-word used regardless of its meaning. Suffice to say there's no chaos: It's like the news people who speak about "people panicing in New York during 9/11". There wasn't really panic - natural fear and people were understandably upset and moving rapidly, but without panic.
There is no chaos here that is detectible, everything is very orderly and people are doing what they need to. The use of the word "chaos" just set me off. There will probably be a lot of bogus descriptions used by the ignorati we rely upon for information.
Now 12 dead, 31 wounded reportedly.
Live Feed here.
Moronic: Drudge currently has this photo up on his front page:
Note that's not an image related to the current event at all; it's a stock photo of the urban warfare training site. I have no idea why he would use that except for pseudo-dramatic effect. That site is nowhere near where the shooting took place and its use gives a misimpression of what's going on.
I don't have any special information, but I can tell something of what isn't accurate.
Update III: 1740 local time (CST) MPs were out with weapons drawn searching all vehicles in the parking lots nearby.
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Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.
(Poetics, Part 6)
I asked last Friday, theoretically more than practically, whether it was time to invade Burma, inviting readers to have their say on whether coercive relief operations could be realistically considered in the wake of the Burmese junta's refusal to allow foreign aid or relief workers into the country.
Today Time.com asks the same question.
Like my piece, the Time piece does not actually propose invading Burma (though it could be read as coming close to it), but points out that "the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible." I would also point out that Time seems to think that parachute drops of supplies, without prior permission of the junta, constitutes "invading," which is silly. But let that pass for discussion's sake.
Of course there is a sort of cognitive dissonance in thinking about shooting your way in to deliver food and medicine. But not really - exactly how is the plight of the Burmese of the disaster area different than that of a concentration camp? As I said Friday, "This catastrophe may not fall under the legal umbrella of genocide, but it is a distinction without a difference."
Look, Newt's position on the cause of this tragedy is just silly (skip ahead to 3:38). The rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the US was 5.1/100,000 in 1960 (surely the idyll of the Country Club Republican). In 2004 it was 5.5. We're hardly Sodom, Newt.
I'm someone who thinks there are interesting intersections between anomic young men and modern philosophical thought that may lower the barriers to bad behavior, and provide a kind of ideological armature for the nihilistic acts of rage they choose to commit. But to blame the kind of acts the VT murders represent on any philosophical position - be it postmodernism, liberalism, or Rotary membership - is just stupid and foolish and skirts being disgusting. The killer was an insane young man who could and should have been identified and helped (or at least stopped) long before last week, and no philosophy, political position, or educational fad made him crazy and evil.
We have had evil people who have done horrible things since there have been people. Newt's a Christian, he ought to get that.
('The Devil In A White City' is the violence-porn bestseller about a charming mass murderer active in Chicago during the World Fair of 1893. I'd also suggest 'Everything Bad Is Good For You' as a followup.)
(h/t The Moderate Voice)
Just passing this along for the Pessimism Department:
Google 'planning total storage'
Web giant Google is planning a massive online storage facility to encompass all users' files, it is reported.
The plans were allegedly revealed accidentally after a blogger spotted notes in a slideshow presentation wrongly published on Google's site.
The GDrive, previously the subject of chatroom rumour, would offer a mirror of users' hard drives, Reuters said.
Google declined to comment on the reports but said the slide notes had now been deleted.
In the notes, chief executive Eric Schmidt reportedly said Google's aim was to "store 100%" of users' information.
The notes said: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc; and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)."
When I saw that intro trumpeted in the 1950s on our black and white Hoffman TV as a "special report" I knew, with the certainty of gravity, that the headline would somehow grab me up in the sweep of history. This happened some time before I reached puberty, and I can't recall the exact year, but I knew those events would profoundly affect my life. That's the way I now feel about The Recent N. Korea Nuke Test.
I sincerely hope I'm just a dumb ignorant human who can't see around corners, but my guts are giving me the same message now that they did then. This is ugly. We've passed a point of no return.
Ex-leftist Colin Meade reproduces a translated version of a letter from Dr Mounir Herzallah that appeared July 30th in the Berlin daily newspaper Die Tagesspeigel:
"Until 2002 I lived in a small village in southern Lebanon near Marjayoun, the majority of whose inhabitants were, like me, Shiites. After the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, it was not long before Hezbollah were in control in our village as they were everywhere else. Hailed as victorious resistance fighters, they seemed to be armed to the teeth, storing missiles in bunkers in our village. The social work of the Party of God consisted in building a school and some housing on top of the bunkers! A local sheikh laughingly told me that whatever happened the Jews would lose out, because either the rockets would be fired at them or, if they attacked the camp, international public opinion would condemn them for the civilian deaths. These people have not the slightest interest in the Lebanese civilian population; they use them as shields and, when dead, as propaganda. As long as Hezbollah are there, there will be no peace."
Emphasis mine. The question isn't why would Hezbollah do this - they're the Condor Legion of Iran's Islamofascist movement, with all of the murderous death-wish behaviour such allegiances to fascism always entail. The question is why so many in the West, mostly but not exclusively on the Left, would work so hard to make this evil so profitable for them.
The image below is from Google Earth, of the south Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil (Bint Jubayl).
I've included the snapshot because this is currently the site of intense "close quarter" fighting between the IDF and Hezbollah, covered by Stratfor in this podcast. Stratfor presents the conflict as a trigger for a critical debate beginning in Israel. The "internal debate" concerns whether Israel has the fortitude to continue fighting under conditions where its forces sustain heavy casualties. It's ironic, in some ways, that Bint Jbeil is the locus of such a "bloody angle", because the town has prospered during peace, rapidly developing into a small city and commercial/administrative center. It even has its own website here. The text is in Arabic, but there's an English version here. The large red iconic letters introducing the town to the world send the message: "Resisting!"
This is how small towns in the age of the Terror War are likely to present themselves, if their culture is what the philosopher and sociologist, Ernest Gellner, called "charismatic." These places have the promise of economic growth and prosperity that could create a middle class, and a substrate for civil society and democracy, but they've "resisted" that fate in favor of another.
Where Israel stuggles with the hot dilemma that a legal/rational society endures when faced with horrible sacrifice in a war it would prefer never to fight, Bint Jbeil (a city whose name literally means "daughter of byblos") has a self-image, lodged in its deepest heart, of a miniature Stalingrad.
Al Qaeda says Zarqawi's successor personally beheaded two American soldiers
According to Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Muhammed-Jassim, head of operations at the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, the two American soldiers found dead last night in Yusifiyah had been tortured and "killed in a barbaric way." Pfc. Kristian Menchaca and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker had been tortured by their captors, according to Iraqi officials.
Army Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, murdered by al Qaeda in Iraq Monday night
Michael Reynolds of The Mighty Middle travelled a great distance to join those standing up against genocide in Darfur. Lucky for us, he packed his passionate yet skeptical worldview along with his toothbrush. The result is this keeper of a post (which has a much funnier title on his home site):
If we’re seriously opposed to genocide it seems to me we have to be ready to think very seriously about having the means, and the will, to send troops to shoot some of these evil bastards in the head. As it happens, we’re in the middle of just such a head-shooting venture. However muddled the thinking, however disastrous the planning, however dishonest the sales job, Iraq is in part about taking out a murderous thug who was, without question, the moral equal of any Janjaweed rapist or child killer.
Three years ago, today. The end of that bronze masterpiece best described as "The Great Leader Hails a Cab."
The end of creatures who bear the official title "violator of womens' honour" (i.e. official rapist). Of torturing small children to make their parents confess. Of the people-shredders, into which victims were fed feet first. So the operators would not be deprived of the pleasure of their screams. The end of The 10 Plagues of Iraq.
A day that also included the liberation of a childrens' jail and torture facility, thus reminding us forever of the opportunity - and the justice - represented by that statue's fall. As Michael Totten reminds us - with pictures - it was not the only one.
Exposes of the love life of tyrants (complete with haiku), the fall of the inhuman monsters and would-be successors Uday & Qusay Hussein in a shoot-out with US forces, and Saddam's own ignominious capture would all come, in time. He sits now in Baghdad courtroom, charged with genocide.
Whatever happens, this is something America will always be able to be proud of. Sic Semper Tyrannis.
