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America Unbound

I really liked this book review from the Times, looking at a few books about the excesses of the Bush Administration.

the Only Superbad Power: It is inevitable that a foreign policy couched in biblical symbols, eschewing subtleties and advanced by Texans, oil-men, neocons and industrialists would be insufferable to liberals, doves, internationalists and New Englanders (conversely, remember what Bill Clinton did to conservatives). One suspects that even the senior George Bush occasionally looks out from his crag at Kennebunkport on the policies of his firstborn with some misgiving. Still, it is difficult to explain the level of loathing that the junior Bush and his government have achieved among otherwise rational liberals. The assaults in these books range widely in theme and quality, and Bush's defenders are likely, with some justification, to dismiss the more strident writers as congenitally allergic to any manifestation of American power. But the urgency with which they sound the alarm requires attention. History is too clear on what unconstrained power can lead to.

...Among the books here, ''America Unbound'' deserves the closest attention... The research is admirable, the arguments are well marshaled, and the absence of stridency adds considerable authority to the portrayal of Bush as a president whose ''worldview simply made no allowance for others' doubting the purity of American motives.''

Of the others, in the order of my preference, ''The Sorrows of Empire,'' by Chalmers Johnson, an Asia scholar and onetime consultant for the Central Intelligence Agency who has become a fervent critic of Washington's military policies, is an exhaustive -- sometimes exhausting -- study of the spread of American military and economic control over the world. Johnson produces voluminous research on the many United States military and intelligence outposts unknown to most Americans, and weaves a frightening picture of a military-industrial complex grown into exactly the powerful, secretive force that Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against -- made more dangerous by an aggressive executive branch, creating a state of perpetual war and economic bankruptcy. His assessment is chilling: ''It is not at all obvious which is a greater threat to the safety and integrity of the citizens of the United States: the possibility of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction or an out-of-control military intent on displacing elected officials who stand in their way.'

''The Bubble of American Supremacy,'' by George Soros, the billionaire investor... is more an extended essay than an academic study. He proclaims at the outset that his purpose is to do whatever he can to prevent Bush's re-election. In a deliberate, didactic style, he indicts the administration for hijacking 9/11 for its own ''radical foreign policy agenda,'' and then concealing its true goals behind a facade of freedom and democracy. ''When President Bush says, as he does frequently, that 'freedom' will prevail, in fact he means that America will prevail,'' Soros writes, adding: ''I am rather sensitive to Orwellian doublespeak because I grew up with it in Hungary, first under Nazi and later Communist rule.''....

I have saved a discussion of Emmanuel Todd's ''After the Empire'' for last, not because I deem it least but because it is the view of an outsider, and a highly troubling view at that... I often wonder whether Americans are aware of the depth of the dread and revulsion in which Bush's United States is held by many foreigners. In Todd's study, translated by C. Jon Delogu, a relentless condemnation of everything American arises from an acute sense of betrayal. A French historian and anthropologist trained at Cambridge University in England and descended from Jews who were refugees in America, Todd says he used to see the United States as a model, as his ''subconscious safety net.'' Now, he declares, it is solely a ''predator,'' living way beyond its means, racking up video-game victories over defenseless nations and undermining human rights... Todd's solace is also his main thesis, that American power is fast waning because of the country's profligate spending: ''Let the present America expend what remains of its energy, if that is what it wants to do, on 'war on terrorism' -- a substitute battle for the perpetuation of a hegemony that it has already lost.''...

Though I have lived abroad for many years and regard myself as hardened to anti-Americanism, I confess I was taken aback to have my country depicted, page after page, book after book, as a dangerous empire in its last throes, as a failure of democracy, as militaristic, violent, hegemonic, evil, callous, arrogant, imperial and cruel. Daalder and Lindsay may be constrained by an American sense of respect for the White House, but they too proclaim Bush's foreign policy fundamentally wrong. It is not only Bush's ''imperious style,'' they write; ''The deeper problem was that the fundamental premise of the Bush revolution -- that America's security rested on an America unbound -- was mistaken.'' The more moving judgment comes from Soros, a Jew from Hungary who lived through both German and Soviet occupation: ''This is not the America I chose as my home.''

Posted by HongPong at 09:13 PM | Comments (0) Relating to The White House

Cheney likes leaked intel reports, hooray!

One of the central underpinnings of Iraq's invasion was the supposed link between Saddam and al-Qaeda. This link was never conclusively proven to the American public, but insinuations from the war agitators came steadily. Finally, the Weekly Standard published a secret memorandum from Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith, a compilation of raw intelligence reports--not evaluated, that is to say approved by experts--which supposedly proved the link. The very release of this information was quite possibly illegal, and its contents disavowed by the Pentagon. Yet Cheney finds it a fabulous article. (Keep in mind the Weekly Standard is a neo-con organ run by Bill Kristol). Seem convoluted? Tease apart the loops and we can see a problem. Reported by Eric Bohlert in Salon.com:

Cheney's favorite leak: Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that a magazine article, based on leaked and unevaluated intelligence, definitively proved links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden has triggered a new round in the Bush administration's conflict with the intelligence community. 

"It's disgusting," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA chief of counter-terrorism. "It's bullshit," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who served in the agency's Near East division....

The conservative Weekly Standard published its article on the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, "Case Closed," by Stephen Hayes, in its Nov. 24, 2003, issue. The piece, released on Nov. 14, was instantly promoted as providing proof for the Bush administration's assertion that Saddam was long involved with Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes trumpeted the article on Fox News. "These are hard facts, and I'd like to see [skeptics] refute any one of them," he said. 

But the Department of Defense did just that. On Nov. 15, the next day, the Pentagon issued an extraordinary statement calling the story "inaccurate" and explaining it was based on raw intelligence ... that had not been evaluated.

The assertion that Saddam and al-Qaida were in league was a major justification for the Iraq war. Indeed, a majority of Americans came to believe the alliance was real as a result of the administration's persistent suggestion that Saddam was behind 9/11, and it was the reason they gave for supporting the war. 

However, no proof was ever offered, and the administration's continuing effort to press the point led the press corps to question President Bush about it. "There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties," Bush said on Nov. 18, 2003. But he added, "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11" attacks. Yet on Jan. 9, Cheney, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, spontaneously lauded the discredited Weekly Standard article and described it as "the best source of information." ....

The Weekly Standard article was drawn from a "top secret U.S. government memorandum" that the magazine depicted as proving bin Laden and Saddam had an "operational relationship" that dated back nearly a decade. The memo was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who also oversaw the unique Office of Special Plans within the Pentagon. This small office of handpicked operatives was created under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to act as a counter to the CIA and other intelligence agencies that were seen as insufficiently loyal in providing material to help make the administration's case about Saddam's imminent threat. Since its inception, the OSP has worked outside established intelligence channels, rarely sharing its intelligence information for peer review, and has been a direct source of information, often faulty, for the White House. 

Following Feith's testimony about alleged ties between Saddam and external terrorist groups before Congress last July 10, he was pressed in a follow-up letter from Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., respectively the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to provide the evidence that backed up his assertions. In response, Feith's office cited 50 instances of raw intelligence that suggested ties between Iraqi dictator and the al-Qaida leader. Meanwhile, Feith's report also found its way to the Weekly Standard. 

The article, which gave credence to Feith's report and suggested it had conclusively confirmed the Saddam-al-Qaida connection, never informed its readers that the report was simply a laundry list of uncorroborated data. 

Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Cannistraro explains that hundreds, if not thousands, of raw reports from first-, second- and third-hand sources flood into the CIA offices around the word every day. But these are of little or no use until they can be analyzed...Cannistraro is stunned that Feith's office, out to prove linkage between Saddam and bin Laden, relied on raw intelligence summaries and not evaluated intelligence. "It's just amazing, because it's the antithesis of the intelligence process," he said. 

Windchill factor negative thirty-five

I was reluctant to leave for work this morning when they said the whole state is around 0 degrees. Here it's 10 F below, with a windchill of -35 F. It is so cold that the Fahrenheit windchill number is nearly down to the Celsius number, -37. On the way to school, my glasses immediately grew a layer of frost from my breath. The lab is extremely quiet this morning...

Kerry sweeping; roommate sticking with Dean

Some scattered thoughts to expand on tomorrow: Yes, the New Hampshire primary is finished and John Kerry continues to rock the voters. Howard Dean finished in a fairly strong second, which he needed to keep from evaporating. But the magic's off for Dean. I feel that he messed up a lot of things by labeling the DLC as Republicans, for example. I don't like them, but its still wasn't fit for him to say. The Iowa Perfect Storm led to the Iowa Perfect Roaring Screech which tsunamied all over the damn place. Iowans aren't the only ones who appreciate tact from those taking third.

Both Dean and Kerry look so tired, worn, nearly ill on television. Dean caught a little break tonight, as did Wesley Clark. Clark's win at the tiny midnight towns was a clue: independent conservative voters think he's all right, because that's who his image has been crafted for. I don't think his job is to win the nomination, but to become burnished and popular brass for Defense Secretary or VP. (let's not underestimate the Vice President's office these days: Cheney has his own National Security Council. Clark could have one too?)

Alison is satisfied with Dean because he captured an all right second place. She's still on the wagon. I have not been impressed with anything Dean has done all over January. He just got way too negative against Gep the Torpedo--and suddenly the magic was gone.

Kerry is the most likely to succeed against Bush, according to a majority of New Hampshire voters. That's not so bad, if the ticket can be rounded out with something southerners find compelling. Edwards might be the smash hit in South Carolina, and Clark has everything to lose there.

Yet Sharpton, Clark and Edwards all must fear the Steamroller of Joe-mentum sweeping through the country this very night.

Here's one interesting thing. Cheney's polled unfavorability ratings have stayed about the same for quite a while. But his favorability has plunged as he's seen as Halliburton's inside man, just to begin with. Cheney may yet be a liability, especially since he led the way claiming the vanished illegal weapons--even inspector David Kay now admits they never were.

The Daily Show was excellent tonight as Jon Stewart deployed the fabulous clip today of Bush stumbling over the talk of "Gathering Threats." The Daily Show is making golden material these days. And then a creepy interview with Richard Perle?! Very A-list, all the way.

More later...

Too junky to work

I am sad to say that this old computer is not going to work, because it has some kind of horrible technology called an "ISA plug-n-play network card" Linux has a hell of a time using the device. It is theoretically possible to get these things going but it would be pretty ugly, and the very old BIOS also seems bad. This is the problem with PCs, the commodity parts aren't good. Granted, this junker was very old and messed up to begin, but I like to recycle such things if I get ahold of them. Maybe a PCI Ethernet card could fit in it. Those are cheap.

Also the weird IBM monitor quietly makes sparking noises every few seconds.

Snow storm garbles cable modem

The problem is that whenever we get harsh weather the cable modem connection seems to get dropped. It's happened several times in the last few days. Cheng says that his has been dropping in Lake Elmo too.

Just now I got the chunky old PC's Slackware Linux installation to boot up correctly. Hooray, I thought it might be impossible!! (Dumb LILO settings)

Possible new server

Alana has an old generic PC that she's letting me erase and install Linux onto. It is a 200 MHz Pentium I which had Windows 95 on it, but didn't even boot. I just tried to get Slackware Linux running on it. It installs, but doesn't seem to start up correctly. Also it has very old BIOS on it, which might make it impossible for Linux to boot unless I hazard an upgrade. These sorts of things are mostly alien to me, from a lifetime of avoiding fiddling with PCs. Heck, it might not even be Y2K compatible. But if it works, it will be a good enough server.

Winter storm

It hasn't stopped snowing since this morning, and we are all staying put. The roads are surely terrible everywhere, and Cheng Diggity is tryin to get through it..... he just got here and traffic is pretty bad, he says.

There may be a snow emergency tomorrow. Look at St. Paul's official website to get e-mail alerts on snow emergencies.

Update: There is in fact a snow emergency tonight. They towed Sev's car to one of the "connected lots" in St. Paul.

A fine day to sit at the desk

It's the first day of classes and I find myself as usual at the Library computer lab. This semester the support staff (such as me) has to work the desk, which is just as well because Support is very boring when everything is working and we have to sit in Ron's windowless office at $6.50 an hour. At least at the desk we can chat with people and fill up the glorious printers, Jay and Silent Bob.

Peter got back from his Geography expedition to Tunisia, but he refuses to lay out the story until his pictures come back.

Classes this semester look like they will be really entertaining, but it is somewhat up in the air so far. It was snowing like hell on the way to school today, a proper day to sit down here, nice and toasty.

Image gallery software

I found some good-looking software called MTPhotoGallery, which will let arrange the picture galleries nicely. That can probably be installed tomorrow. In the meantime this is Lucy and the Severances enjoying a very chilly night's pucho. It was so cold that the couch fabric crunched when Lucy hopped on it. (I did a little Photoshop pokin' to emphasize the yellow hat)

HongPong5 is rolling!!!!!

On this early snowy Friday morning I have finally decided to start HongPong.com again, now that I can devote some attention to it, and some key software is finally en route. This is the fifth redesign of HongPong.com, by my count. I will have to recount here the many tribulations and evolutions my websites have had since the old days...

I have new server software called MovableType, which replaces the old system, Scoop. My big goals this time:

• More pictures: I have the Casio digital camera for now, and a new iSight desktop camera as well. I always thought that the pictures which this site had back in the day were excellent and one of its best features. Therefore I will try to post pictures and small videos more often. The protest photos from this spring will be back very soon, possibly in a nice new online photo album.
  
• Open comments: I let the registration system get all fouled up before--so no one could really comment. Now there are anonymous comments very easily available on all stories. I really hope people take an interest. I don't care if you want to use anonymous pseudonyms: it really doesn't matter at all!!
  
• Cleaner layout: If you knew how scoop worked you could see how lazy I was last time. That software was too tricky to make it lay out pages how I really wanted them. It relied on very complex tables full of Perl code. MovableType, the new system, relies on Style Sheets for layout. This is very easy to fool around with. I got this layout roughly hacked together in only a few hours.
  
• Faster visits: MovableType doesn't have to do Perl each time someone visits, and it also doesn't require the Apache Perl module installed. This means that you can bounce from one page to another much more quickly without slowing mine down. I may be able to get a dedicated server soon, though.
  
• TrackBacks: The site is becoming more ordinary and bloggish-rather than its more complex former self. Part of these are Trackbacks- the link you see below next to "comments." A Trackback is simply a way for people with weblogs to reference each other. If someone else writes an entry about my entry, they would "ping" my TrackBack link so it's listed here. This gives the general public an idea of who is interested in my site.
  
• A richer array of stories:What drove me nuts about Scoop was how i couldn't really write about random things that came my way. Everything had to be in some big category. This software lets me make categories in 10 seconds. Also I clearly made the headline size MUCH too big before, which encouraged these wildly overlong posts. They were interesting but also often boring and unwieldy. Therefore I am reconfiguring to have much smaller posts. The idea is to post at least a couple times a day. (If I am not going to be around, I can even schedule stories to fill future gaps!)
  
• Searches and easy categories: MovableType helps me set up Keyword searches my website, so you can easily search for all past mentions of, say, "Atmosphere." I WILL import everything from 2003 into this site, so you can search. look back and everything connects nicely, but I haven't yet. (it's frickin hard!). This software also can easily whip up nice pages of all the posts from one category.
  
• Innovative new idea organization:The site you are looking at now will only be one side of my web project. The other will be where all the political research and such will be channeled and organized. Therefore that site will eventually have much of the news postings, while this site will have more colorful and personal sorts of things.
  
• Contributors: I always wanted people to write in, but no one did basically. This software also supports many authors, but I suppose over time HongPong.com has come to be my turf. That's no surprise, really, but I am still interested in getting people to write. I know quite a few people who regularly have smart things to say, but they are reluctant to do so on the Web. Perhaps something can be arranged.
  
• Making new connections: As the time has gone by this past semester I feel that I've gotten isolated from people, in part because living off campus changes everything about social reality at Macalester. Also, a lot of my most reliable friends have been in foreign lands this year. I've fallen out of touch with a lot of good people for no reason that I can adequately explain. I feel (yes debaters we can think OR feel here) that I am more accountable to everyone, and myself, when I am charting out something for the record.
  

This time around I'm trying to get back to a little bit more to the basics of what made HongPong.com an enjoyable site. I am not exactly sure who has been keeping track of this ridiculous site since Aaron bought me the name for Christmas 2000. It has been a very random, haphazard course for this site since everything ran off the old 6115 with a 1337 hax0red Linux kernel. I feel that this setup should remove some serious barriers, and hopefully encourage people to get in touch more and exchange ideas at an exponential rate!!

To the amorphous blob representing the audience of this site, everyone that has ever swung through here a couple times, or has been with me for the long ride, thanks for coming around. Your support has always been appreciated!

Glorious cleaning day!!!!

Yes the day has finally come for Alison and I to make things look right before the start of the semester. My room is totally messed up-I have been much too lazy to fix it so far. But questions remain: Are we going to chuck the fake plastic tree? What about the weird growing crystal thing next to Buddha atop the TV?
It was snowing like hell earlier. This is no half assed mild January. A lot of people are flying in this weekend, including Alana and Arthur Cheng. w00p w000p!!

New blockquote styles going here

There will be nice blockquotes, because you know how I like blockquotes. Blockquotes are the HTML which surrounds a big chunk of text, usually indented. I like to make it smaller, with a simpler font. Why not throw in nice little lines above and below. FOR EXAMPLE:

The New York Times reports today that Ariel Sharon perhaps shouldn't have taken all those bribes. I just can't believe it, a sleazy Greek resort hotel deal, it will crush him!?!

2 Ministers Say Sharon Will Have to Resign if Indicted: Two Israeli cabinet ministers said today that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would have to resign if an influence-buying investigation eventually led to his indictment.

Mr. Sharon continued to swat that possibility aside, declaring that he would serve "at least until 2007," when elections are scheduled.

As the conflict with the Palestinians abruptly slipped to the sidelines of Israeli political debate, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy playing near the boundary fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel...

An Israeli court on Wednesday indicted a real estate developer on charges of paying roughly $700,000 to Mr. Sharon's son, Gilad, in hopes of bribing the prime minister.

The indictment said the developer, David Appel, told Ariel Sharon that his son was expected to make a lot of money, but it did not lay out evidence that the prime minister knowingly took a bribe.

Style sheet makes it looks better

In an effort to fill up more space on the page I will describe this new system I'm setting up, and why it's better. The old Scoop system which was my site until last November had some things that never worked out well. The layout was made of complicated tables and a lot of bad FONT tags, plus everything pieced together with tough Perl code. And it required Apache with a special Perl module which took a lot of memory and slowed my computer. Besides that, it was not very searchable and I couldn't make up categories as I went along, so I wouldn't write about things that didnt go in categories. The headline was too way too big, which made me avoid putting things down more often. Overall a lot of flaws pile up.

I would like to point out that forcing people to register just to make comments is very annoying and I will never do that garbage again. Again, a Scoop problem.

So now there is this new software which is widely used in blogs all over the place called MovableType, and it is nice and flexible. There are plenty of plug-ins and anyone can say anything without bother.

this software is pretty sophisticated but it doesn't require the computer to process Perl every time someone visits. All the pages are generated HTML. Comments may not work too fast.

Progress on layout

Now I've made some nice background images for texture but it looks like its maybe a little bit too patchy just yet.

New HongPong5 system works!!

I am putting together what is finally by my reckoning the fifth version of HongPong.com. This one will be more fluid and entertaining than before. The software, including updating my Perl system, took only about an hour and a half. Time for bed. Customizations tomorrow!!