Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
I just placed an order for a nice little program called ecto that helps me work on the website far more efficiently than through a browser. It is only $18, and as I rarely buy software unless it's really top notch, this was a considered purchase.
Interesting things, then:
1. The Richard Clarke terrorism fiasco. I am overjoyed that everyone is watching this now, and the Administration is finally getting exposed as the Office From Hell that we sensed it always was. I want to pick up his fine book. Condi Rice has been brutally forced to testify publicly, and Bush and Cheney will appear sparkin' an L--I mean, jointly--before the committee. These are Good Things.
Finally, Sen. Tom Daschle is showing a little guts. Today he really spoke out against their political assassinations:
Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible.This is wrong-and it's not the first time it's happened.
.....
There are some things that simply ought not be done - even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger.
...
This is not "politics as usual." In nearly all of these cases, it's not Democrats who are being attacked.Senator McCain and Secretary O'Neill are prominent Republicans, and Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay, Joe Wilson, and Eric Shinseki all worked for Republican Administrations.
The common denominator is that these government officials said things the White House didn't want said.
The response from those around the President was retribution and character assassination -- a 21st Century twist to the strategy of "shooting the messenger."
If it takes intimidation to keep inconvenient facts from the American people, the people around the President don't hesitate. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, found that out. He was told he'd be fired if he told the truth about the cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan.
This is no way to run a government.
The White House and its supporters should not be using the power of government to try to conceal facts from the American people or to reshape history in an effort to portray themselves in the best light.
......
Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay ... when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end?When will we say enough is enough?
The September 11 families - and our entire country - deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it.
2. The emerging situation in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was a massive bombing at a central market in Tashkent where my Geography professor used to go every day. The Argus is a fine site that's been closely following the Uzbekistan story as it's unfolded. There's a little speculation the whole thing was a "wag the dog" type incident invented by their President, but who knows? By all accounts, he is a wicked, tottering Soviet holdover who has been abusing Muslims left and right. Why wouldn't he generate an excuse to repress further?
3.Wal-Mart offers Nazi propaganda films, but refuses to stock a film critical of the government's role in Iraq. Thanks, Wal-Mart, you sure know how to be morally authoritative! (via the hilarious Jesus General and Atrios) See also Republican Jesus!
4. Obviously things are still going badly for Israel and Palestine. Ariel Sharon may finally have to bow out, and we'll probably be reintroduced to that paragon of integrity, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I suggest the following opinion pieces from Haaretz. They capture the mood that many Israeli s feel :
Haste is not waste: The suspicion that Sharon's actions are linked to the indictment hanging over his head is giving the country nightmares about the free-for-all at the top and the way decisions are made around here. Were the considerations behind the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, with the bloody revenge that is bound to come, cold and disinterested? Or was Sharon trying to hint to the attorney general how absolutely essential his leadership is at this time?A civilized country cannot be run by a leader living under the dark cloud of criminal allegations like bribery and breach of trust. But in the nightmare existence we live, it is happening. Stalling is no longer an option. If an indictment is brought against him, Sharon will be forced to resign, in keeping with the Deri precedent.
Why is the country striding along on a march of folly which has seen few precedents in human history? Why is it being swept from one idiotic decision to another? Why does it repeatedly act in explicit contradiction to the interests of its inhabitants? In these past three years in particular, there is no mine that Israel has failed to step on, no opportunity it hasn't missed, no path it hasn't embarked on in the certain knowledge that it will be harmful.
.....
The attempt to explain rationally and conventionally the dynamics at work here has long since failed. So much so, in fact, that the only explanation the political and military analysts on television could come up with this week was: "They're doing XXX and hoping something good will come of it."
....
Maybe there's a mole. Yes, a mole. A kind of planted spy - a destructive worm virus, a Trojan horse.Let's put it this way: We have here a march of folly that is so systematic, so consecutive and so determined that there's no way it's happening by itself. Because if it were accidental, wouldn't there have to be the occasional random success as well? So maybe it's really not accidental. Maybe there's someone who's running the show - craftily, brilliantly.
At every stage, our friend will ask himself: How else can I be harmful? What haven't I done yet? What extra dimension can I inject into the conflict? What new layer can be added to it? We succeeded in elevating the conflict from a territorial dispute into a war of chaos involving decentralized communities and organizations. Well done, yes, but now it's time to elevate it to the religious plane, the apocalyptic level, so that the damage will extend not only into the next generation, but for untold generations down the line.
Our friend looks around and asks himself: What single action can I take in order to place Israel at the cutting edge in the war of civilizations against the whole of Islam? How can I upgrade the existential threats: from mere bombs and shooting by local ragamuffin groups to the gunsights of Al-Qaida? And how can I, by the same twist of the blade, cause the most effective publicity damage? His eye catches sight of the most adored religious leader, who is also old, sick and crippled. And the rest is the un-end of history: today the war of Gog and Magog; tomorrow the Apocalypse.
....
And again he looks around: what else, what else ... A mischievous glint in his eye: the Temple Mount?
....
Who's the mole? And furthermore: why is he doing it? In whose service is he operating? A messianic organization? Spectra? Smersh? The cult of the devil? The angels of hell? One might think he's working in the service of the Palestinians, were it not for the suspicion that an equally malicious mole is operating at their highest levels, too, and is constantly undermining their best interests.So, who is he? And, above all, what's his motive? What's he after? It's not clear. It might all really be just an unfounded theory, a ridiculous thesis with no foundation of any kind. But tell me, in the light of what's going on, does anyone have a better explanation?
Unfortunately, the evil programs roaming the Internet, spreading pointless, obscene garbage, have finally found my site and inserted about a dozen comments advertising penis pills and that sort of garbage into old stories.
Fortunately, there weren't too many, and I was able to delete them and ban the four IP numbers they were coming from. Is more garbage on the way? Certainly.
Since I got back from Europe, I have felt oddly unsettled. This weekend I felt exhausted and twitchy, much to the chagrin of those around me. Sorry about that. I am not sure if it is the radical, public disintegration of the President's credibility, the waves of terror attacks sweeping more sectors of the world, writing a report on Richard Perle's wretched book, or the fact that many of my friends are acting weird. Maybe it's the willful collapse of Twin Cities public transit and the disarray caused in the light rail project. Maybe it was finally seeing a NadeRedux voter.
On Friday there was a great hip-hop show at the campus center. It opened with some spoken word from Suheir Hammad, then came Immortal Technique and Jean Grae. I haven't gotten hardly any music lately, so I made a choice and picked up Revolutionary Vol. I and Bootleg of the Bootleg, which I haven't listened to yet. Grae signed my CD to "the really tall guy." I appreciate it!
My only criticism would be on Grae and I.T.'s stage costumes. By some coincidence they both sported Che shirts, while I.T. also wore a military fatigue type hat and pants. I saw Technique at a peace concert benefit with Atmosphere and the Coup last year, just prior to this horrible war. He was also sporting the Che shirt then, if I recall.
Some drunk jackass hollered "cliche" several times. I wasn't sure if I should have decked the guy or argued with him. Our society today whittles down, flattens, the experiences of colonial people and the disenfranchised. From within, looking out at the Che's and Allende's, they cannot look like anything but cartoon characters. If a Latino dares to hold up Che, it can't possibly hold real meaning. Only Sean Hannity's casual dismissal of the whole reality makes sense to them anymore.
The character Fez on That 70s Show is a perfect representation of how the media, FOX in this case, bulldozes the entirety of subjective experience into one friendly, fuzzy, ignorant outsider. Really, I don't see how they could have written an actual South American from the 1970s without bringing forth all the ugly ghosts. Instead, only an unreal Latinoid can fill the role.
If Che is a "cliche," what is "real?" Where does this cultural authority of "the real" begin? Does it have its own cable network?
Again, anyone can understand that war and conquest without and the encroachments of despotism within give each other mutual support; that money and men are habitually taken at pleasure from a people of slaves to bring others beneath the same yoke; and that conversely war furnishes a pretext for exactions of money and another, no less plausible, for keeping large armies constantly on foot, to hold people at awe. In a word, anyone can see that aggressive princes wage war at least as much on theis subjectts as on their enemies, and that the conquering nation is left no better off than the conquered.
--Rousseau
(from New & Old Wars by Mary Kaldor, p. 19)
There was a big news story today about a very young Palestinian boy who apparently was strapped to a suicide bomb, and the Israelis had to get it off him, a tragic example of the conflict consuming the young, for sure. There are some rumors the whole thing was staged but I don't really believe it yet. Looking around the threads at agonist.org, I happened upon one talking about child soldiers and children thrown into conflicts, where one poster found info critical of Palestinian society for putting its kids on the 'front lines' of the fighting and having kids near militants. That, and an article I read in an academic journal today, got me thinking about how the conflict harms Jewish kids forced to grow up in the West Bank (and how hypocritical it is to blame the occupied for their occupation). I responded:
(crossposted to DKos diary)
Firstly, I'd like to respond to Marquis de Sod's post about Palestinian children perched next to armed militants. Where that site imperiously claims that "the Palestinian leadership... accuses Israel of committing human rights violations... while evading its own responsibility for the orchestrated appearance of children at the front lines of the conflict," we have a classic example of blaming those darn Palestinians for being foolish enough to exist under occupation.
The front lines are everywhere, the tanks and snipers are outside the door, down the street, at the checkpoints between the city and the villages. If only the Palestinians would somehow make themselves vanish, they wouldn't shamelessly dare to place their children there.
Of course it's terrible when kids are pawned into the conflict. They are innocent, they didn't choose to be there. They should not have to throw the stones and get shot at.
But everyone forgets civilian life on the flip side of the West Bank, the hundreds of thousands of Jews living there, raising families. Many of them are actually trapped, by Israel's shaky economy and a sort of tax-incentive honeypot that ensnares lower-middle class families in War Zone Mortgages.
It is here that the fertility rate is pushed ever higher, higher even than within Israel proper. The settlements are filled with children; many hold more children than adults. It is held up as a spiritual duty for mothers to be fruitful and multiply in Judea and Samaria.
I would argue that it is grossly immoral to force Jewish children to grow up in the warped, apocalyptic atmosphere of the West Bank settlements (although I'm sure seaside Gaza is really a peach). I am appalled that my country is plunging deeply into debt to offer Israel economic assistance which eventually finds its way into reinforcing this domesticity of madness.
These Jewish kids do not have any choice about where they grow up. The Likud deliberately sets policies to paralyze their parents in Judea and Samaria. Many of them ride armored school buses back across the Green Line to school, and of course many, many have been killed, wounded and traumatized while their moral framework is bent around into a pretzel to serve messianic right-wing power fantasies.
Are the Hebrew children of Judea and Samaria destined to lead disrupted lives, never fully able to tease out the darkness they gasped in? Are they the next ones to give up on the future and turn to violence? Marquis de Sod, have you heard of the "Hilltop Youth"?
Many of the young ones raised around Hebron and Kiryat Arba are truly dangerous. They attack Arabs--actually fighting to occupy portions of Hebron's downtown city blocks--and all too frequently the Israeli police and armed forces. I can't blame them for failing to see who they are and where they are--their whole government has orchestrated an all-consuming, fictional mythos of Jewish redemption and supremacy. It's a terrible thing to do. It's murderous to steal childhood.
Today I found a stunning story in the Journal of Palestine Studies by a researcher named Tamara Neuman, who went to live in Kiryat Arba for several months, and learned how maternity becomes co-opted and absorbed into the politics of the Israeli settlement process. Maternity assumes a pre-dialectal, almost automatic position of fundamental moral authority in discourse. In particular, one woman in the 1970s snuck into the Tomb of the Patriarchs to have a circumcision performed on her son, the first to be born in the settlement. The child later died young, and upon returning from Jerusalem she marched down to where they surmised the old Hebrew cemetary in Hebron was. Using her dead baby as a political flag, she managed to inter the child. More recently, another infant being raised--through no choice of her own--in the settlement was apparently shot by a Palestinian sniper. The child, Shalhevet Pas, was not buried by her father immediately, in order to successfully expedite the political goal of reoccupying the Arab hill neighborhood of Hebron where the shots were supposedly fired from. Eventally, Shalhevet's unhinged father was exposed as a member of a Jewish terror cell.
I'm 20 years old. So many of the Palestinian militants--terrorists--suicide bombers--are my age. So are the draftees manning checkpoints in the IDF. So are the American soldiers sent to find Weapons of Mass Destruction that our president now mockingly looks under his couch for. ALWAYS, it is my age group forced to die for these absurd totems of militarism and blind power.
When you roll your eyes at the wounded Palestinian children foolish enough to throw rocks at the troop carriers, where the Israelis return with live fire, you should remember that they have known nothing but life under the occupation.
They are on the front lines of the war because Israeli settlement blocs exert "pressure" on Palestinian urban areas. Ever looked at a map of Gush Katif and Rafah in the South Gaza Strip? The "front line" where Rachel Corrie lost her life to a bulldozer is an expanding no-mans land facing the Katif bloc.
I should add that Israelis happily apply an old Ottoman land law which declares that land unused for 5 years reverts to the "sovereign" i.e. occupying power. Hence, to gain control of agricultural land in the West Bank and reallocate to settlements, build a fence and interfere with farmer access. This wipes out the future of those impudent Palestinian children before their very eyes. And then they hire Palestinian teenage laborers to pour concrete in the hilltops. That's where the children are, dumping their own futures into the ground.
I have been very busy this week working on a group paper for International Security class responding to Richard Perle and David Frum's horrible book, "An End to Evil." The whole thing filled me with dread. I never want to look at it again.
Having said that, it has been most entertaining to watch CNN these days, as Dick Clarke brings down the Bush Administration's American Grandstanding about their competence in confronting terror. By his account, the Administration's first months were like a special cubicle hell, an inert bureaucracy staffed by cold war geriatrics "encased in amber" who invented task forces that never met and demoted Clarke, the nation's supposed counterterror guru, who tried to put the government on high alert, but found the shell of evildoers around the president almost inpenetrable. Happily, Bush's poll numbers seem to be taking a hit.
I don't quite grasp why the conservatives issue catcalls and deny credibility because Clarke has written a book about it. This is the information age. How is the public supposed to become informed, if not by the printed word?
In any case I wanted to post a link to this amazing story about the graffiti found all over the walls of Baghdad, meticulously collected and translated by an old Iraqi. It's riotously funny. Here are a some that the old man captured:
SADDAM WILL RETURN!
And written underneath:
THROUGH MY ASS!ANARCHY IS GOVERNING THROUGH A PARLIAMENT AND AN EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY
SADDAM SWALLOWED ALL THE PRICKS OF THE WORLD, AND HE STILL SAID HE WAS VICTORIOUS
SADDAM IS A WORD THAT MEANS A DISEASE THAT HITS DONKEYS
EVERYONE, SADDAM CRAPPED IN HIS TROUSERS
EVERYONE, SADDAM PIMPED HIS WIFE SAJIDAH
DEAR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, SADDAM ATE FROM THE KAADAH! [a child's potty]
DOWN WITH AHMAD CHALABI, MAN OF CATS!
CHALABI IS THE ENGINEER OF DEMOCRACY
And underneath is written:
ZIONISTS SAID THAT!OUR WEALTH IS OUR OWN, OUR OIL WILL ENRICH US IF WE CAN GET IT BACK INTO OUR HANDS
THE GOVERNING COUNCIL IS A COUNCIL OF AGENTS, TRAITORS, SPIES, AND MERCENARIES
DONKEYS PISS HERE!
And underneath is written:
AND PIMPS AND BAATHISTSACHIEVEMENTS OF THE POST-LIBERATION IRAQ:
105 NEWSPAPERS (ALL LIES)
110 FAILED PARTIES
300 THIEVES' ORGANIZATIONS
500 UNIONS WITH NO WORK
600 HEADQUARTERS FOR PLUNDERING AND STEALING
700 MOVEMENTS WITH NO BLESSING OR GOOD
25,000 SPIES FOR THE AMERICANS
4,000 EMPLOYEES IN OFFICIAL OFFICES, ALL THIEVES
5,000 DOUBLE AGENTS FOR THE AMERICANS AND FOR SADDAM AT THE SAME TIME
2 MILLION HOMELESS FAMILIES WITH NO DIGNITY
25 MILLION IRAQIS THAT WANT TO LEAVE IRAQ
--Anonymous pavement newspaper tacked up on a wall near Medical CitySADDAM ATE BEANS AND EMITTED STINKY AIR
LONG LIVE SADDAM, IN SPITE OF HIS FOOL CRAZIES!
And underneath is written:
SADDAM IS A PIMP; ASK YOUR SISTER!PATIENCE, BAGHDAD, PATIENCE, SADDAM IS COMING BACK SOON
And underneath is written:
TO FINISH OFF WHAT REMAINS OF THE IRAQI PEOPLE OR TO FUCK YOUR MOTHER?LET YOUR HEADS APPEAR, YOU BAATHISTS. WHERE ARE YOU HIDING? IN THE SEWAGE PIPES?
IRAQ IS THE MUSTACHE OF EVERY HONORABLE MAN--The Army of Mohammed
WE SWEAR WE WILL MAKE MASS GRAVES FROM IRAQ'S LAND FOR ALL THE TRAITORS AND ALL THE AGENTS OF THE AMERICANS AND THE ZIONISTS--Army of Mohammed
And underneath is written:
WE ALREADY KNOW MASS GRAVES ARE YOUR SPECIALTY; GOD IS OUR WITNESS ON THATINCREASE IN RATION SHARES:
100 KG. SADNESS, PAIN, AND MELANCHOLY FOR EACH CITIZEN
50 KG. WORRY, GRIEF, AND SORROW FOR EACH HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD
10 PROBLEMS PER FAMILY
4 VOLTS ELECTRICITY PER HOUSE
1 MASS CEMETERY PER CITY DISTRICT
5 RANDOMLY SHOT BULLETS PER STREET, INCREASED TO 50 BULLETS ON THURSDAYS
1 GAS CANISTER PER FAMILY PER MONTH
2 KEROSENE BOTTLES PER FAMILY PER MONTH
10 CANS OF FOOD PER FAMILY PER MONTH: VARIOUS OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN AND FULL OF DIFFERENT POISONS
NB: TRANSPORTATION COSTS ARE BORNE BY MR. BREMER
--Anonymous pavement newspaper tacked up on a wall near Medical CityEVERYONE WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT OF IRAQ, EVEN THE PORTERS AT THE SHARJAH BAZAAR
BE FRIGHTENED OF GOD, PROSTITUTE OF JORDAN! AND YOU THE TURBANED MEN OF IRAN, AND YOU GRANDSONS OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS
WE WILL RETURN SOON!--The Baath Party
And underneath is written:
AND WE WILL WAIT FOR YOU WITH SLIPPERS, YOU DREGS!--The Al Daawa Islamic PartyKIRKUK IS FOR THE KURDS
This has been crossed out and written instead:
KIRKUK FOR THE TURKMEN
And this has been crossed out and written instead:
KIRKUK IS FOR THE IRAQIS, YOU TRAITORS!BREMER! IF YOU DON'T KNOW, IT'S A DISASTER, AND IF YOU KNOW, THE DISASTER IS GREATER
IF SADDAM SPENT THE OIL REVENUES ON THE WELFARE OF HIS PEOPLE IRAQ WOULD BE:
THE RICHEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY
EVERY IRAQI WOULD HAVE TWO HOUSES: ONE FOR WINTER, ONE FOR SUMMER
EVERY IRAQI WOULD HAVE THREE CARS: ONE FOR WORK, ONE FOR HIS FAMILY, AND ONE FOR PICNICS AND TRAVELING
EVERY IRAQI WOULD TRAVEL THROUGHOUT THE WORLD ANNUALLY
EVERY IRAQI WOULD BE EDUCATED TO THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN SCIENCE, KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING, AND EDUCATION
IRAQ'S POPULATION WOULD BE 50 MILLION
--Anonymous pavement newspaper tacked up on a wall near Medical City
There are some days when you wish that they would just put out the real damn story for a change. But now, let's go to the Laci Petersen case. You can always tell when the narrative is dissolving, because somehow Scott Petersen's symbolic crucifixion becomes the hottest thing in American cable news. *CLICK*
While the Bush administration visibly flakes into a dozen pieces on TV under fire from the Clarke Battleship, we have a whole menu of items from the post-9/11 bloodsphere. From the furthest 'Bled al-Siba' (Lands of Insolence), we learn that the wicked Governor of Herat in western Afghanistan has regained control of his city, after someone killed the Aviation Minister and everyone ran a little amuck. Roughly 50 to 100 factional warlord fighters were killed fighting each other over this historic (formerly besieged) gateway to Persia. See it fall again next Thursday on live satellite!!
The problem with Afghanistan is that it's more an aggregate of ethnically jarred city-states than a coherently governed nation. The U.S. plan pretty much hyper-Balkanized it by installing worthless factional warlords with no oversight in every major city, kind of a government glued together like toothpicks. Wildly xenophobic, tribal toothpicks.
Meanwhile the hi-value baddies got away and Pakistan's military took quite a toll (roundup) in the mountain campaign. Strong counterattacks from guerillas, and it seems Muslim leaders there are quite angry, reports the Asia Times:
Flames of war loom large The present offensive in South Waziristan is not merely a hunt for a few fugitive guerrilla fighters (including Osama bin Laden and his number two, Ayman al-Zawahri). It is a fight to control their bases in the whole eastern tribal belt that borders Afghanistan. Any ceasefire, therefore, assuming even that it holds, will be temporary at best, and a prelude to the next battle.On Sunday, 70 of the country's most popular religious clerics, in a religious ruling issued from the federal capital Islamabad, called the Wana operation (Wana is the headquarters of South Waziristan agency) an "unjustified war" by the Pakistan army on their Muslim brothers. The clerics said that since the war had been unleashed on the mujahideen in support of the US cause in the region, anyone who died resisting the Pakistani forces would be a martyr, and any Pakistani soldiers killed would die "Motul Haram" - in other words, they would go to hell. The ruling also prohibits funeral prayers for soldiers killed in the conflict.
The ruling is a major setback for the Pakistani ruling class, and even information minister Sheikh Rasheed, who is famous for his outspoken nature, has refused to comment.
What began, therefore, as an operation to force al-Qaeda and the Afghan resistance from their base in Shawal - a no man's land .... is rapidly escalating into a major crisis for the whole country.
Meanwhile in Iraq, it is interesting that despite all the professed technocratic skill of the new administration, somehow they cannot supply the military and police equipment necessary to police and defend Iraq from hostile forces and secure the Syrian border. Among the missing items include "Life Saving Body Armor" of talking points fame, guns, radios, etc.
I find it incomprehensible that in today's titanic military-industrial complex, with its many satellites and airplanes and assorted schemers, it cannot fill in a few thousand police stations and medium-level military divisions with some kind of expediency. If this were the Roman days, you would just shoot a few pokey arms traffickers and things would move along.
14 British soldiers in Basra, Iraq were injured when 'petrol bombs,' as they call them, were launched during a protest over jobs, although some protesters supported the late Sheik Yassin or Saddam Hussein, as well. The Guardian says, "One soldier was seen with his head and shoulders covered in flames." The British forces, having a modicum of rigour about their techniques, claim to have fired only baton rounds but not live ammo or tear gas.
Among the wake of the Madrid bombings, the 9/11 commission's tidbits, the Afghans riding every which-way, and an expanding inquiry into Ariel Sharon's shady finances, Israel somehow saw the time was right to wipe out HAMAS' Sheik Yassin. Why not round out this curious March with a good heap of civil disorder moving into an April of profound anarchy in the Holy Land?
The latest spot reports from a constantly updating page at the Israeli paper Haaretz, which unlike other Israeli media tends not to become totally anesthetized when Israel launches major operations. It is 11 AM there now, but today will surely hold more news.
Five Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, were killed and dozens injured, Palestinian sources said, in riots that broke out in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip...Also Monday, Palestinians fired a series of mortar shells and rockets at Gaza Strip settlements and the Negev. Four Qassam rockets fell in the Negev Monday evening. Palestinians also fired several home-made rockets at an IDF checkpoint in Gaza, two mortar shells at a settlement in the Gush Katif settlement bloc, and an anti-tank rocket at an IDF outpost near Rafah in the south of the Strip, close to the Egyptian border. Two apartments in the Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim were damaged due to rocket attacks earlier in the day.
IDF tanks moved into northern Gaza late Monday, Israeli security officials said. Palestinian security officials said the tanks were moving toward the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.
In the Khan Yunis refugee camp in southern Gaza, IDF soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, during clashes with hundreds of angry protesters. The demonstrators flocked to a roadblock west of the refugee camp, near [Jewish settlement] Neveh Dekalim, and threw stones at the soldiers guarding it. Witnesses said the soldiers fired live ammunition at the crowd, which consisted mostly of schoolchildren.
In the West Bank refugee camp of Balata in Nablus, hospital officials said soldiers shot dead a Palestinian journalist. They said Mohammed Abu Khalimi, a 22-year-old reporter for Al Najah University radio, had just broadcast a report about the army entering the camp when he was shot. They said he was standing near a group of stone-throwing youths.
Some 15,000 people, including more than 40 armed men, gathered in the center of Nablus. About 15 armed men, wearing masks and Hamas headbands, fired shots into the air.
"Dozens of people came to us this morning volunteering to be suicide bombers," said one masked militant. "We will send them in the right time."
A Palestinian man was shot and wounded in the West Bank city of Bethlehem after throwing firebombs at IDF troops, Army Radio reported.
In Jenin, another militant stronghold in the West Bank, more than 10,000 people demonstrated. Several dozen armed men from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades joined the crowd.
"Dozens of people came to us this morning volunteering to be suicide bombers," said one masked militant. "We will send them in the right time."
Ten Palestinians were injured in the West Bank city of Hebron in clashes with IDF troops. Soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters. Twelve demonstrators were injured in Bethlehem during clashes with IDF forces near the Tomb of Rachel near the city.
Calls for revenge emanated from mosque loudspeakers. One Hamas activist said that a new phase in the Israeli-Palestinian fighting had begun.
Shopkeepers called a one-day strike throughout the West Bank, closing virtually all stores. Palestinian schools were closed.
Jerusalem Post analyst simply says "Assassination will increase anarchy."
The settlers have an ethical code. Yay. Thanks, guys.
Hezbollah attacked Israeli positions from Lebanon.
Now Hamas could align with Al-Qaida.
Israel is barring journalists with Israeli citizenship from the Gaza Strip.
I am on a few odd Israeli e-mail lists, but one of the most interesting is surely GAMLA, a settler newswire featuring the insights of DEBKAfile. There's a certain direct style in today's analysis:
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has fired the Israel-Palestinian war up to a new plane. The targeted assassination of Hamas founder, leader and moving spirit, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Monday, March 22, was the prime minister's thunderous reply to the critics who argue that his disengagement strategy would hand the Gaza Strip over to Hamas control. It signals his determination to purge Gaza of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists ahead its evacuation. Yassin's death is but the precursor to liquidating the violent movement he founded in 1987 to "cleanse" Middle East of Jewish sovereignty and replace it with an Islamic republic.This cleanout of Hamas strength will take time. Until it is done, Israel cannot pull out of the Gaza Strip or even begin the process of disengagement.
Nothing else is quite as wretched today as David Brooks: "Understanding what the phrase 'one nation under God' might mean -- that's the important thing. That's not proselytizing; it's citizenship."
You wanted a Global War on Terror, Mr President.
You got one.
I have been recovering for a couple days from my circuit around London, with an exciting day trip to Paris on St. Patrick's Day! I experienced so many things out there, it's still difficult for me to boil down at all. I saw a number of key things on the trip, but I didn't want to follow the standard tourist adherence to tour buses and rapid runs around cathedrals and Sites of Interest.
I wanted to try to really get the texture of the places, so instead I put on my New Balance sneakers and walked all over, assisted by my friends who knew the lay of the land.
In London, since my last message, I saw Parliament in session, the Tower Bridge, the Globe Theater, the Tower of London, Canary Wharf, places like historic Bank and Liverpool Street, the Greenwich Observatory (where I set my watch) and Downing Street, on the very day the Spanish announced they would ditch "Blair's war alliance," as the tabloids called it.
I took the Eurostar (Chunnel high-speed train) to Gare du Nord station in Paris, where I wandered into my first immersion in a city where I didn't speak the language. Following a map obtained at some difficulty from the gift shop, I ran into the Pompadou Museum and shortly thereafter purchased an all-important Royale with Cheese, which I ate on a quiet bench next to the Seine. Across from me was the Louvre, where I gazed at the glass pyramid and the grandiose adjacent garden.
Toward the Eiffel Tower, I wandered into an area full of embassies and ministries, eventually reaching Emmi via a confusing French phone card. I took too long to get ahold of her, so naturally she had afternoon class. I went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa and other assorted art and antiquities. We met up in St. Sulpice with some other Mac kids, and sauntered over to the Luxembourg gardens, where we decided to visit the Church of the Sacred Heart on a hill overlooking the city (as featured in the happy flick Amelie). Then Emmi and I wandered off to see the Moulin Rouge on a classic filthy sex street, and finally the Arc de Triumphe. We also got around to the Notre Dame as well as the hangouts of Sartre and the Impressionists. I ended up at a youth hostel that night. One of the most magical days of my life.
I made some mistakes along the way but it mostly went smoothly until the return trip. I had problems getting ahold of people like Rob Beahrs in Paris--really wanted to hang out--and Boz and KJ in London. Telecom was really a pain.
Worst of all, I probably managed to destroy or severely damage 4 of the 5 rolls of film I shot, which is all but Paris in the evening and a couple pictures in London. This made me very sad, because there were tons of incredible pictures. Some people tell me that rolls in checked baggage have survived, but Alison says that they are pretty much certainly wiped out.
This photo loss (so far not confirmed) was because I, like a fool, didn't know that they use much more powerful scanners on checked luggage. At O'Hare, I was very stressed out, because I was already delayed many hours and trying to jump onto a departing flight. At O'Hare, a nice guy at the check-in desk tried to get me onto a flight just leaving for Minneapolis, but the horrible security people wouldn't let my big bag pass, and wouldn't even listen to me.
At that point I forgot that my film was in the big bag. When I gave it to the grinning Chicago bastards at the giant post-9/11 mega-scanner, they specifically asked me about the film, and I thought it was all in my backpack. My bag was fed into the machine and all those nice snaps of the Tower bridge and the Pompadou probably turned into another silver emulsified slate of sludge. Thanks, Homeland Security!
The tragic thing is that I might not have missed the first flight all along, if I hadn't forgotten my camera in Nick's room, then run back to get it, consuming several minutes. I might have been able to hop the previous Tube train to Paddington station, where another train, the Heathrow Express, took twice as long as advertised to get me to Heathrow.
So in other words, everything went well until the return circuit, where my Tube train "terminated" one stop before Paddington, delaying several minutes. The 11:10 Heathrow Express was supposed to get me from Paddington to the airport in 15, but instead it stopped dead and took 30. Then I got put on standby for a flight at 2:15, and I didn't make it on until 4:15. Had a beer at the TGI Fridays in the Duty Free lounge.
Cleared customs at O'Hare and nearly made it to a quick 8:30 flight to Minneapolis, but lost my wits a bit and willfully zapped my photographic record.
I will say that I learned a lot from how ugly that whole sequence was. Leave more time to get to the airport, and make sure not to check the film. How obvious.
But it only really rounded out once I got back to Minneapolis and the buses are still on strike. Upon making a withdrawal for a taxi, my bank account turned out to be wildly overdrawn, naturally. The suspenseful thing for Monday is to see if the money I dumped in Saturday night--to make my account well positive again--will be enough to avoid a whole barrage of overdraft fees. They'll have the last laugh, I'm all too sure.
Likewise, Nick's flatmates and other friends were all very gracious hosts who went out of their way to deal with my silly questions and late night showers. Seeing as how my pictures might be no more, I have only all those moments with them in my mind now, and I will never forget this exceptional adventure as long as I live.
Sorry about the lack of updates since I rolled in from O'Hare at 11:55 PM on Friday. Comcast gave our cable modem a new IP number on Thursday which caused HongPong.com to get disconnected.
It should be working now, but it's a very annoying problem. Comcast has rather pokey DNS servers, so even when I fix my number, it still takes them forever to update their system. Right now I am using the University of Minnesota's fine Domain Name Server at IP 128.101.101.101 to get at my own damn site!
If you ever want to use a different DNS server than your Internet Service Provider's, go to your network control panel or network system preferences and set "DNS server" to 128.101.101.101. Dang nabbit!
(please forward this to everyone not on the list-i don't have my address book)
Hullo to all from the merry land of the Angles and Saxons!! I am having a great time here in London staying with my friend from high school, Nick Petersen, who went to the U of M before coming here for a year. We have been all over much of the city already.
Arun, you should get the hell over to this school, Queen Mary University of London (http://www.qmw.ac.uk/) because it is *mostly* British Indians. (although apparently the London School of Economics has a lot too) It also has the largest medical school in England. There's a canal which runs all around north London and goes right in front of Nick's hall. There is a little lock and dam and canal house right here. They look very old.
The neighborhood, Mile End, has a lot of Punjabis and Pakistanis as well as East Enders. It is ironic that the British partitioned India then the Indians and Pakis came around and partitioned the neighborhood!
You have to be very careful about the Pakis on Saturday night, as there are *a lot of fights* but little serious crime in this neighborhood, as they say. If not for the heavy traffic on the main road I might have had a bad encounter on Saturday night. They want to fight, so Arun, I think you would fall in love on the first day and then get knifed on Friday!
There are a lot of police cameras here and also a huge number of very polite instructions all over. In particular "mind the gap" i.e. the yellow line is written on the subways. The Tube is one hell of a piece of engineering. A weeklong pass for zones 1 and 2, the heart of town, is about 20 £.
When i arrived at victoria station downtown from the airport, i went into the tube and asked this little old guy in a traditional red station attendant outfit with brass buttons if the train before us with its doors open was the "district" line. He glared at me and sort of jumbled said "Yarr don talk ta me i'm not with the railway!!!" and i quickly backed off and jumped in the train. It turned out to be the right one. I think i've heard of this guy before. He may be sort of like the Wally the Beerman of the London Underground.
The pubs close at 10:30 on Sunday nights, which is extremely lame. Pints are about $3. Most things seem to be cost about as many pounds as dollars at home, so in other words dollars don't get too far. Nick and his friends and flatmates know how to stretch their money so it hasn't been too expensive too far.
We saw Starsky and Hutch at the movie theater in Canary Wharf last night and it was excellent, I highly recommend.
As a student of the geography of cities i have to say that the street layout is incredibly weird here. The main street in Mile End is called Mile End road here, but that name only runs about 2000 meters and then it becomes something totally different, and of course its sort of bendy. I feel that the roads are so convoluted so that A-the postal addresses rarely get above 100 B-because they didn't want to redraw the midaeval street system and divvy up property after the great fire C-it keeps people from trying to cut through neighborhoods because they know its impossible. In this sense the topology is a more like Woodbury than minneapolis, but there is far more mixed development and pedestrian walking paths between everything.
When i got here on saturday morning somehow the horrible winter weather completely ended and the sun came out. Everyone was happy and it must have been about 60 degrees fahrenheit. We went to a number of places in the middle of town by Trafalgar Square, then we went over the Millennium Bridge to the London Eye, a giant ferris wheel-type device that takes you above the whole city for 30 minutes, right in front of Parliament and Big Ben, the iconic part of the river. We had dinner with another friend from high school, Victoria Simmonds (who is in Wales instead of the U of M this semester) and her mom, little bro and sis who came to visit her for a couple days. Vics mom bought us dinner, the Eye tickets and nice wine. They were staying at the top suites in the County Hall Marriott, which is right across from parliament. The room on the 6th floor had this amazing little balcony with a perfect, basically textbook view of the whole night-time Parliament/Westminster Big Ben tower scene. That was awesome but it was too dark for pictures to work. :( But incredibly memorable!
I would like to complain that in this advanced part of western civilization, telecommunications is expensive and hard to get at. There is no internet in the dorms and no phones either, since flat rate local service doesn't exist. The library is inexplicably closed at like 7 on sundays and the computer lab won't let you in without campus ID on sunday. Yes this computer lab has Novell, too. It seems to be configured better than ours though.
Yesterday (sunday) i went to the Tate Museum of Modern Art, http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/default.htm which is in a former power plant across the river from the famous St Pauls cathedral. (apparently the plants smokestack, which is a huge brick tower, cooled the smoke and made it descend right on top of st pauls, polluting it very rapidly until the plant closed) there was this marvellous installation of a giant orange neon sun disc in a centralgallery several stories tall, with jets of fog making an all encompassing warm orange glow. There were wobbling mirrors on the ceiling that intersected the midlevel of the sun, so everyone laid on the floor looking up at the mirrors. One free gallery upstairs called 'ideals' or something started with classic Soviet propaganda, moved on to a Warhol room with Jackie Elvis and Marilyn Monroe pieces, art on Northern Ireland, the classic 'The Kiss' and other works by that sculptor. What a sequence! I might go back on a weekday to get into the pay galleries when it's quieter. The millennium footbridge which goes between the Tate modern and St. Pauls was very windy.
The weather reminds me of the north shore of Minnesota in the summer although its a little windier and the rain comes in very short bursts of fine mist. It was far better than this blustery snow we've been getting. It actually felt cleansing and refreshing to lean in the wind and get a little bit of water instead of that cutting cold.
|It is quite disturbing that apparently al-qaeda has been tied to the train bombings in spain. I saw news that said there was heightened security in the underground here, but i don't really see it. There certainly aren't cops around with M 16s like we feel we need to have in the US. If i get hit in a bombing please tell the news media that i blame richard perle for it.
Nick's friends and flatmates here are very nice people. Some of them are from MN, some from california and Whitman college, one from India via London and another from Kazakhstan.
Well i have to roll on now. I am trying to see Greenwich, the incredibly named Imperial War Museum (when will we get one of those in Washington?) and the National Art Museum today.
I hope everyone else is having a really nice break!!! I will be flying back Friday but probably won't be in until Sat. Afternoon around 6 or 7, i think.
Dan
In less than 12 hours I'll be winging it out of this country for the first time in many years. The last time I flew out was Jamaica in high school. Since then, I've driven into Canada and Mexico, which is an entirely appropriate way to learn how the country ends at a line. I've given a lot of attention to what happens elsewhere but i haven't been elsewhere in so long, which is plainly negligent or even hypocritical.
Meanwhile, rumors are flying that Al-Qaeda bombed Madrid in retaliation for Iraq, an entirely reasonable idea when we remember that Al-Qaeda means "the base." So who knows what branches of the base might be involved in bombing European public transportation? There have been bomb threats against French trains, as well. It is safe to say that the security apparatus will be out in full. I haven't flown since 9/11. I'm a little edgy that there might be another incident in London during this season of the unexplained.
Yet that is why it's so important for me to go away for a while. The negative forces on the TV tell us that order is crumbling all around, that The Terror is On Our Doorstep. We Must Cower, they say.
Before Madrid, I saw that the dark thunderclouds of baseless fear and malicious disinformation were finally starting to drift away in this country.
It feels much better to step out when things are finally turning the corner than when the forces of evil blow right on your back. America this spring already seems a safer place with the idea of another four years of Bush Imperium sounding more farcical and remote by the week. Their nasty vision is falling apart.
So with that, let me round up a few key things to look for:
Wait for the good Colonel, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkoski, to start making the rounds on cable TV. The bombshell piece "The New Pentagon Papers" in Salon.com is part of a grand liberal media offensive incorporating Salon.com and the UK's Guardian. Her writings thus far, including the regular column, are an excellent expression of profoundly alarmed everyday conservatism. "Soldier for the Truth: Exposing Bush’s Talking-Points War ." Funny how it sounds like the whole Iraq war (mainly via the Salon piece) was propelled by one Straussian (Mr Shulsky) deploying an array of threatening talking points memos.
There is the unfolding story of the stolen Congressional computer documents.
There is (another) Halliburton investigation.
Juan Cole puts it all too well when he asks: "US Intelligence Follies: Why Haven't Cheney, Feith and Chalabi been Impeached?
Whatever happens on this trip, by the time I return, I'll be changed. It will be a before-vs.-after experience, no matter what happens. And what better moment for the clean break than now?
I might see more clearly these things which puzzle me so. I have to go.
I've been wrapping up all kinds of things before break. This is shaping up to be a fantastic trip. Here are some scattered results of today:
After class today I helped Dan Schned work on the material he is putting together for the Hiawatha Line program, where he interns this semester. He has very exciting giant orthographic aerial photo composites of the Minneapolis-Bloomington route and all sorts of info on the planned corridor developments. I really like to see all these new development plans up close. If it works, then Minneapolis will start to grow up again, not further out.
Unfortunately, they were on schedule to open most of the light rail line in April, but the transit strike prevents drivers from training and the cars from being tested sufficiently. This really makes it hard for the LRT people to keep anything going.
With some time to waste this afternoon, I drove into Minneapolis to look at the rail line, along with a potential extension into the U of M. Both these places would benefit greatly from improved access. I went up to see the VA Hospital stop, as well. I'm not sure if people will enjoy riding in the big tunnel under the airport, though.
This evening, David has been over here adjusting his great artwork for the living room. Now he's adding colored chalk on some of the characters. I will post a photo of this when it's finally completed.
Arun is truly an iconic mack daddy of our times. That is all I can say.
I haven't done much reading about what the hell to do in London. Brits have advised me to ask at the pub.
Also I may try to go somewhere else for a day like Paris or Amsterdam. Wouldn't that be nice?
Sadly I won't have a digital camera to document things. I'll get a PhotoCD made, though.
I am probably going to stay up really late again tonight to adjust myself towards London time--I mean GMT.
Everything got pretty risky there for a little while, and many bits of the system were fouled up, including important Perl files. I decided to install OS X fresh on the machine, and in turn rebuild all the site's MySQL hookups, Perl modules and everything. Fortunately it somehow only took about 90 minutes to do all this. Is it flawless? I'm not sure, but it should work.
On Friday I am flying off to England. How sweet.
There has been a ton of news lately about the spoofed Iraq intelligence I love so dearly. Finally, Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski (Ret) has written her definitive expose on what she witnessed in the Pentagon and around the Office of Special Plans. Everything here reinforced what I have been saying all along. I am really happy that the Kwiatkowski is living up to the exacting standards of personal integrity that all armed services people should strive for, and not enough have in this time of lies.
I have heard about her story for quite some time, and she has been referred to in a few stories I've linked to. A key passage from "The Lie Factory" which Senator Kennedy recently repeated on the Senate floor:
"It wasn't intelligence-it was propaganda," Kwiatkowski says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials-including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February-that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.
This is some weird stuff. I found a whole bunch of system files with lots of garbage. This would affect compiling programs, which could explain why the compiler's been weird all along. Compiler said:
/usr/include/mach/exception_types.h:61:39: invalid suffix "s" on integer constant
/usr/include/mach/exception_types.h:61: error: stray '\10' in program
/usr/include/mach/exception_types.h:61:47: invalid suffix "R" on integer constant
/usr/include/mach/exception_types.h:61: error: stray '\352' in program
Meanwhile inside exception_types.h:
z W @ ÜìÑôôifilÜìÇ ?ËìÑôô9003ÜìÇ ?ÙìÑôôA
000ÜìÇ ?? ìÑôô0213ÜìÑõú?©ÜìÑôô¬©
makÜìÑôôCASIOÜìÑôô0112ÜìÑõú?©ÜìÑ
ôôA300ÜìÑıí¥ÜÜìÇ ???ìÑ¢?ÉAó=” úf?ÜìÇ
02020006.JPGÜì??ìÑõú?•ÇJPEGÜì?ìÑììÑñíìòìÑõúùù-ÜÜÜ
ÜÜì??ìÑõú®¢Å ÜÜÜûìÑ??ìÑñíì»ìÑñíìÇ ¶ÀìÑõúÅ Á?Ç?céÜìÇ ¶?ì
Ñ¢?ÉAó= ??ÜìÇ ¶¢ìÑ–íìÑôô 02020006.JPGÜìÑôô 02020006.JPGÜÜìÇ ¶—ìÑ–í ÜìÇ ¶”ìÑõúÅÍíÇ ÕGÜìÇ ¶’ìÑôô
02020006.JPGÜìÇ ¶?ìÇ ¶€ìÇ ¶?ìÑıíÅ? appl scnrRGB XYZ ” acspAPPL appl ?÷ ”-appl rXYZ gXYZ bXYZ 0 wtpt D chad X ,rTRC Ñ gTRC Ñ bTRC Ñ desc î =cprt ‘ @dscm ?XYZ tK >
ÀXYZ Zs ¨¶ &XYZ ( W ?3XYZ ÛR ?sf32 B fi??Û& í ˝ë???¢??˝£ ? ¿lcurv 3 desc Camera RGB
Profile Camera RGB Profile text Copyright 2003 Apple Computer Inc., all rights reserved.mluc
Things inside /usr/include/mach are the "hooks" for compiled programs to "include" to talk to the computer correctly. If garbled, they won't work. This means I may have to go scanning the directory system to see if it is writing garbage all over. Ohhh dear. Site may go down tonight for checking this stuff.
There are also some indicators (CASIO, JPEG) that this stuff is related to the digital camera. There were some strange buffer overflows when the camera's image card was attached to my computer, so were things being written all over the drive? How alarming.
Alison sent me this weird spam she got:
I am a single serving friend. The continuation of our species matters more than you can imagine. It is the single most important thing we can do. I want you to hit me as hard as you can. I want you to hit me as hard as you.
Suddenly, he disappeared. I'd seen many of the same things I've seen before. He wanted to know more. I didn't have to say: can we change the meeting from 6 to 11? My kids have a music recital and I dont want to miss it for the world.
Don't do that, the cat pointed out. We're going to regret this, my friend said. My job was to apply the formula. Why do guys like you and me know what a duvet is?
This was a place without the internet, without email, without the rush of business meetings and untapped desires. That could well be the answer. But this was a long road, and should I walk down it, I might never come back. What is the answer? What are we going to do tonight? I asked.
YV9ub3JtYW44M0B5YWhvby5jb20=
I am eagerly looking forward to spring break this year. For the first time, I'll fly over the big pond to Europe and hang out with Nick Petersen in London for a week. That's this Friday.
During that time I'll leave the site turned on, and I'll probably find some time to post back to here, but it can't be frequent.
This week, I have several mid-term exams and a giant group paper to contend with, so I can't spend a great deal of time writing here.
On the plus side, I realized that the Apache server which comes with OS X has a built-in Perl module (mod_perl), but deactivated. The Perl module runs the site's Perl code much more quickly than a server without the module. To turn it on I just had to enable it in the configuration files and restart the server. *Bingo*, just like that my site's dynamic stuff runs about 3x-4x faster. It was really necessary, and I only put it off because I was too busy and I thought I would have to go through the mess of recompiling Apache. So far I am using Apple's default Apache server with no problems.
This week I am experimenting with a slick program called ecto which allows me to write entries without using a web browser.
As far as the news is concerned, those new Bush ads are just so marvellous I don't really need to add anything. But imagine if Lincoln or FDR had tried to exploit similar images. This site is run by a legal professor with a spectacular sense of humor. (via the DKos)
The NY Times is running a huge Kerry op-ed blitz today. Maureen Dowd is clearly sugar-coating a nice image of a candidate with rich interests. A DLC totem suggests that "reform" should be Kerry's word of the campaign. A Clinton-Gore poll guru says that Kerry can take Bush on all kinds of issues.
For now, however, only 40 percent of voters think the country is headed in the right direction. According to nearly all public polls, Mr. Kerry is the preferred choice for president, and that prospect may well keep Mr. Kerry from focusing on the larger choice before America. That would be a shame, because voters would respond to such a challenge.The choice is between an America inspired by John F. Kennedy and one shaped by Ronald Reagan. When the alternatives are framed this way, Americans choose the Kennedy vision by a striking 53 percent to 41 percent. It brings increased support for Democrats among voters from across the political spectrum — in small towns and rural areas, in older blue-collar communities, among low-wage and unmarried women as well as young voters and women with a college degree.
Rather than simply criticizing specific policies of the Bush administration, Mr. Kerry should emphasize the worldview it represents. Mr. Bush favors tax cuts for business and the wealthy as the best way to bring about prosperity. He heralds individualism as the key to a healthy community. In his tenure America has retreated at home before our shared problems, but advanced alone abroad. If Mr. Kerry challenges this worldview, Mr. Bush will be forced to defend it.
For more election news, Electablog is pretty darn good.
There is some weird stuff going on in Afghanistan, as the long-awaited Spring Offensive between the allies and the Taliboid forces (al-Qaeda types, probably ISI people, who knows?) springs into action. Bin Laden may have narrowly avoided a Pakistani raid. US snipers killed a bunch of "suspected Taliban."
I never thought the Republicans were 31337 hax0rs, but apparently they can steal filez and r00t a judicial computer system better than anyone thought. Their head judicial aide apparently helped steal around 4,670 secret Democratic documents. As the trolls on Fox News have been commanded to point out, many memos indicated the D's were working with outside groups to keep conservatives off judicial panels for specific cases, a hoorrrible, oh so hoorrible, infringement of judicial power. Or something like that.
I don't quite understand what D's were legitimately doing, except considering impact the judges will have on cases!!! Bad Democrats! Thinking about the effect of judges!! Bad!
Kerry beats Bush by a few points, 49-43, in Florida!!! Time to purge the voter rolls again!
Many Palestinians killed, including 4 children, in massive Gaza raids supposedly designed to draw militants out. What the hell is the point? Apparently Sharon's credibility with the abused Israeli public is at a new low, so this, like many Sharon initiatives, probably has a wag-the-dog logic to it. There is also word that the Israelis may have been asked by the Bush administration to avoid withdrawing from Gaza before the elections because of the potential instability. Uhm, Israeli occupation ==Bush political power? What? This is worth following.
Finally, at long, long last, the pervasive sense of the everlasting nightmare has softened. Yet now we have VP speculations. Bill Richardson or John Edwards seem good right now. Alison caught the McLaughlin Group this morning and McLaughlin predicted that the search for VP would go for ethnic, not regional, balance. We could do worse than Richardson, a popular southwestern Hispanic governor with tons of executive and international experience. Or on SNL, the skilled Darrell Hammond as Clinton put forth his own VP candidacy. He asked how awesome it would be to have him around again with even less responsibility. He said could put the Vice back in Vice President, although Cheney's done pretty well by that measure.
Ok, so now I will say it. My optimism about the outcome of the election and the future of the country has finally shot above 50%.
The glass is indeed half full.
Sitting around at the library and I found a nice Nietzsche piece, the Twilight of the Idols. It starts with punchy little axioms I liked.
You run ahead? Are you doing it as a shepherd? Or as an exception? A third case would be the fugitive. First question of conscience.
#38
Are you genuine? Or merely an actor? A representative? Or that which is represented? In the end, perhaps you are merely a copy of an actor. Second question of conscience.
#40
Are you one who looks on? Or one who lends a hand? Or one who looks away and walks off? Third question of conscience.
#41
Do you want to walk along? Or walk ahead? Or walk by yourself? One must know what one wants and that one wants. Fourth question of conscience.
#42
Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.
#43
What does it matter if I remain right. I am much too right. And he who laughs best today will also laugh last.
#44
The formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.
The word is that Richard Perle got tossed on his butt from the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, supposedly for calling for the firing of the Pentagon's in-house spy agency's chief. The agency, the DIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, is somewhat more towards the "rational" side of intelligence gathering. That is, they were not the ones principally responsible for silly WMD intelligence. Yet Perle blames them for messing it up.
Too much for Rummy, finally at long last.
Pat Buchanan predicted on the McLaughlin group on Sunday morning that he would not be the last kicked out before the election. Ahh Pat.
Aside from that I should explain why I often miss posting Wednesdays on the site. The problem is that I have creative writing from 7 to 10, and of course last week I had to cover the Kerry rally and write the story, which took hours.
Midterms are right in my face here. It's going to be a hella lot of work. I covered the caucus story this week. it was altogether messy but interesting, as Kucinich overwhelmingly won our precinct, and we found out Edwards was dropping out while filling out ballots.
I am going to visit NickP in London in a week!! This is so damn cool, I've never been across the big ocean. Really. (Cheng has just gone the other way to Tokyo. He may make contact one of these days)
Thats about all I have the energy left about right now. Night.
We are about to take off for Empirical Research Methods class this morning. Later today we are going to take entrance polls at the Minnesota Democratic caucuses in St. Paul. Should be good.
There have been a lot of stories flying today about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Seymour Hersh released a major article stating that the U.S. is going into the remote Hindu Kush areas with possibly thousands of troops to seek out Bin Laden. This article is worth reading in its entirety.
Hindu Kush means "Hindu Killer," and as Hersh pointed out today, Alexander the Great lost a division up here to the harsh conditions. These are highly tribal areas, and most people are well-armed.
The problem is that for a lot of the hard-core Islamists in the Pakistani security services--mainly the ISI--the entry of US troops into Pakistan is the real red line, the breaking point. Musharraf has already narrowly avoided death several times.
Should it be a red line for us? As Andy put it, this is massive intervention into a nuclear power we are talking about. Does this kind of thing have to be voted on somewhere? What can this lead to? (What might the North Koreans do?)
Stop.
Ok, alternatively, none of this madness is going on. It's all fiction and spy yarns. Sometimes I worry I am over-reacting, but then I think about how scary nuclear weapons seemed to me back in the day. Back then, we had huge states looking out for their crown jewels, but now its more of an virtual Persian bazaar of clandestine WMD trafficking and shady deals.
Besides that, Reuters reports NATO is planning to sweep through Afghanistan, taking security control of continuous areas in a grand sweep. Yet the Taliban has control of Zabul province now, according to one Pakistani article. The NGOs have been brutally driven off in these parts and the central government, corrupt in many places, is out of reach.
The Pakistani military killed some people a little ways inside Pakistan, in an area they are searching through.
There is an interesting story in the WaPo that the Palestinian Authority might crumble, too.
Something less terrifying about other fuzzy borders in Central Asia. Seems Uzbekistan, kind of a troll state, has been laying landmines well beyond its boundaries. Meanwhile Tajiks have been wandering into Kyrgyzstan and taking resources. It's a very nomadic place, which is part of the reason the land mines are such a problem.
Interesting campaign blog with the Columbia School of Journalism.
I TOLD you that Ahmed Chalabi was dirty dirty stuff, selling bad intel via the neo-cons. The investigations are piling up. Hurrah!
Right now my computer is compiling special image processing software called ImageMagick, which allows my MovableType website engine to generate thumbnails of pictures that I would put in an online gallery. Galleries, it still seems, are not foolproof to set up in MT. The compiler is bitching out right now... fortunately this site offers some help.
Additionally I am planning to add an instant website style switcher, so that you can change colors and text at the touch of a button.
One particular website with a nice gallery setup is AdamPolselli.com. This site also features an instant switcher (at top of right-hand bar) much like I would use.
Another good gallery is "Rob T"'s photo gallery of his military service in the USAF over Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the larger site containing Rob's pics works very differently than mine ever would, but it's still a good setup (and an incredible array of pictures).
The damn compiler is still complaining about something obscure. Arggh! (I may have to install FINK)
Warning: /System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/CORE/libperl.a not found
If you're going to build a static perl binary, make sure perl is installed
otherwise ignore this warning
Writing Makefile.aperl for Image::Magick
make -f Makefile.aperl PerlMagick
.......
"-I/System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/CORE" perlmain.c
make[3]: *** No rule to make target `/System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/CORE/libperl.a', needed by `PerlMagick'. Stop.
make[2]: *** [PerlMagick] Error 2
make[1]: *** [PerlMagick/PerlMagick] Error 2
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
Andy sent me an instant message at about 12:45 this morning saying that I appeared on the policy wonk's lifepartner C-SPAN during the Vote 2004 segment on Kerry's visit to Macalester.
Fortunately C-SPAN has put up a RealPlayer video stream of Kerry's event. It is quite blurry at 128K, but the sound is much more clear than I got with my voice recorder. Kerry and I can be heard really well, actually. I appear at about 1 hour 8 minutes into the clip.