Thursday, May 08, 2003

Complacency On SARS   The SARS epidemic seems to be going through several phases of public attention. First, we had the 'total mystery' phase. Then we had the 'yippee, we know what it is' phase. We're still in the next one, which one might call 'we don't know what the hell to do about it if you get it, apart from lock you up' phase. Quarantines are all very fine for containment, and seem to have worked in Vietnam, Canada, and here in the US. But we do urgently need to develop either a vaccine -- which will take two or three years, even at breakneck pace -- or find some more effective therapies. On a scale of one to ten, this is a real threat. SARS's mortality rates greatly outstrip the 'flu epidemic of 1918-19, and make it a bigger menace to public health than malaria, TB or AIDS, combined. It'll kill >50% of older people, maybe 14-15% overall. But all I see are WHO and other officials congratulating themselves on what can only be called scant progress. Clearly, the epidemic is much worse in China than the dishonest government admits, and now it's out in the provinces, where health care is primitive, it's going to get much worse.  11:39:07 AM    comment []

Time To Wake Up & Smell The Plutonium   The New York Times leads off today with a big piece on concerns about Iran's nuclear program, which by definition can't be 'peaceful.' But aren't we missing something here? What about the North Koreans, a known gangster state, which is bristling with hostility? A quick rewind: first these guys decided that the 'ceasefire is over'. Then they started making threats about what they might do. An 'unofficial spokesman' claims it has over 100 nukes, maybe even 300, targeted on the US, rather then the one or two the CIA believes. Do we really believe that is possible? Well, perhaps someone in the administration does, because we're not doing very much about them, are we? At the 'summit' in Beijing a couple of weeks ago, one of the NK generals apparently said to the US delegate: "Yes, we have nuclear weapons. What are you going to do about it?" How could the NK's gang have gotten so many? Not by making them, for sure. Were they a 'gift' from someone? Or sold by the Russian mafiyosi? Failing to treat NK as a threat is a big mistake. What they do and don't have in the long of missiles or nukes right now is not as important as what they might get up to, given their attitude. Turning attention to Iran is all well and good, but the #1 problem on the nuke front is NK. Even the Clinton administration -- a gang of losers -- had the sense to warn them it would take out the facilities, before it cravenly caved in and signed a foolish aid treaty with these war monkeys. In military terms, NK is a pushover, a one-week wonder. Who cares how big the army is? Just more meat targets in hi-tech warfare. What we do seem to be lacking is proper intelligence from inside the country about exactly what they're up to on the nuclear front. Time to find out! 11:29:24 AM    comment []

Sunday, May 04, 2003

Mother Nature's Little Practical Joke On Cloners   Missing from their online edition, New Scientist had a very interesting piece on the editorial page of April 28 ... remember cloning? That's what we may find ourselves saying, soon. It seems, according to soon-to-be-published work by researchers at North Carolina State and Texas A&M, that when you clone multiple copies of an original organism, you don't get the same results. In fact, the siblings are as different as they would be in an ordinary generation, litter or whatever. And, the variations are not purely behavioral, but cover a whole range of possibilities. Reason: 'epigenetic' variations. Genes don't all click on it order, like some computer program. Some things are left to chance. Thus genes don't determine everything, but nuture and environment play a part. This finding ought to sink several hundred million dollars worth of opportunist research grants. And of course, give some encouragement to others. It certainly tells you that the old 'nature versus nurture' debate has been resolved in the most obvious way: neither is strictly true, and only the unimaginative thought so. Oh, and forget cloning humans or favorite pets, or cloning yourself for 'spare parts.' This finding demonstrates it won't work with our present state of knowledge, and quite possibly, never will. It also torpedoes the idea of cloning 'identical' lab test animals. Can't be done! Walking this morning with an academic buddy, he commented on this, after I described it, as "the best news we've had in a while." 7:01:52 PM    comment []

Something We Intuitively Know Is True   Back from a one-week vacation, with some assorted (non-Iraq or such stuff) items. Starting with this one, from New Scientist, telling us something 'we all knew,' but decided to suppress for the usual political correctness motives ... : "Songs with violent lyrics increase aggressive thoughts and emotions, suggests a study in US college students. The study contradicts a popular suggestion that music loaded with violent imagery, such as some rap and heavy metal, are cathartic in venting aggression. Craig Anderson at Iowa State University and colleagues found that students who listened to songs with violent lyrics were more likely to make aggressive associations in subsequent psychological tests. Although, the effects were measured over a short time only, the team believes listening to violent lyrics could have a long-term effect - contributing to the development of a more aggressive and confrontational personality. "Aggressive thoughts can influence perceptions of ongoing social interactions, colouring them with an aggressive tint," said Anderson. "Listening to angry, violent music does not appear to provide the kind of cathartic release that the general public and some professional and pop psychologists believe." Anderson stresses that "content matters" when it comes to violent media - a finding backed by many other studies on the effects of violent television or video games. "The message is important for all consumers, but especially for parents of children and adolescents," he said." As in, oafish music and oafish behavior are associated. The full story tells you more about the methodology, which seems fairly reasonable. 6:33:36 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

Springtime In Maine: 3   Yes, the state with two megaseasons ... well, the arrival of spring has been much delayed. At least the daylight hours are longer, but it's stuck in the high 40s (unseasonably, I should add). And tonight, snow showers are forecast! Roll on summer (to be honest, we don't get a spring: it lasts about two days, years like this). 12:57:55 PM    comment []

Kick The Scoundrel Out   Reading the NYT Op-Ed page is a depressing experience; especially on days when the moronic Maureen Dowd runs off at the mouth with her uninformed, unperceptive, kneejerk liberal horseshit. She's so convinced that she is 'witty.' Duh. But today, Thomas Friedman -- often not right, but never illiterate or trivial -- makes a good point about the thoroughly evil, two-bit gangster Yassur Arafat ... he wants Old Beaverchops Marrowfat gone too ... "There is a natural deal here among America, Europe and the Arabs: the Europeans and Arabs use their influence to force Mr. Arafat to accept Mr. Abbas on his terms, and the Americans use their influence on Mr. Sharon to produce an immediate settlements freeze, the rollback of all illegal settlements and a resumption of negotiations after a new Palestinian security force, under a new prime minister, is in place. The Europeans and Arabs missed their chance to be part of Saddam's removal. But they can contribute now by being part of the easing aside of Mr. Arafat. At the same time, U.S. conservatives who supported war against Iraq need to understand that if they miss this chance to help nurture an alternative Palestinian leadership — by refusing to make demands on Mr. Sharon — not only will Israel be less safe in the long run, but chances of President Bush succeeding in Iraq will be diminished. " 12:45:06 PM    comment []

Regime Change Update   Here's a couple more that really need it ... Tibet. No question about it. Palestine. Boot Arafat out, once and for all. The time is ripe. 10:29:20 AM    comment []

All Change   Joe Queenan is a funny fellow, very non-PC, and in today's WSJ takes on the issue of Katy 'Insipid' Couric swapping jobs with Jay 'Humorless' Leno for a night ... he comes up with this little classic ... "Public television's Jim Lehrer hasn't been able to get a straight answer out of anyone in the State Department in years, so my vote for a one-night replacement is Tom Arnold from Fox Sports Network's "The Best Damn Sports Show, Period." Always ready to say the first thing that comes into his head, and not afraid to approach the limits of good taste, Tom's in-your-face approach might finally intimidate Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joe Biden or Tom Ridge into telling us something we don't already know. How Mr. Lehrer fares with the likes of Charles Barkley and David Wells on Mr. Arnold's show is anybody's guess; these guys both claim to have been misquoted in their own autobiographies. On the other hand, Mr. Lehrer did spend eight years talking to people in the Clinton administration, so it's not like he's a complete stranger to mind-boggling deceit."   10:26:24 AM    comment []

Negotiating With North Korea   So, we're chatting with the Pyongyang gangsters in Beijing. Personally, I'd have picked some more hygienic place, in view of the SARS epidemic. Blodgett style diplomacy would say it all in two sentences: "Have you been watching CNN lately? Well, you're next, if you don't cut this shit out." 10:22:05 AM    comment []

They're Still Weasels Another brief 'holiday' -- working -- for Blodgett, but I have the sense that nothing much has happened ... except, the 'return of the stooges': The WSJ got it right this morning ... "French audacity has it charms, but sometimes even they get carried away. Consider President Jacques Chirac's transparently self-interested generosity yesterday in suddenly proposing that U.N. sanctions against Iraq be "suspended." At least the French are figuring out that it doesn't look good for them to fight openly to maintain Saddam-era sanctions on newly free Iraqis. But in proposing merely to suspend, rather than lift, sanctions, the French also suggested leaving the U.N. in control of Iraqi oil revenues. A final lifting of sanctions would then have to wait for a clean bill of health from . . . Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors. Really." Yes, it was truly amazing to see Blix defending his 'credibility' at the UN yesterday. The round-shouldered old troll is quite convinced of this. Well, his credibility for not finding any damned thing, and his ability to be bamboozled is not in doubt. "At least the French are smoother spin-artists than the Russians, who don't even bother to conceal their Iraq agenda. "We are not at all opposing lifting of sanctions. What we are insisting on is that Security Council resolutions must be implemented," Russian U.N. Ambassador Sergei Lavrov asserted. In other words, the two countries that did the most to erode sanctions against Saddam Hussein's dictatorship are now joined at the pocketbook in attempting to maintain them in some form on a newly free Iraq. They were only too happy to do business with Saddam. But now they're just as pleased to use sanctions as leverage to get some Iraqi affirmation of their odious debts and oil contracts from the Saddam era. If Iraqi redevelopment is held back in the meantime, so what? The polite word for this is blackmail. And on Manhattan's east side, it doesn't hurt their cause that the corrupt oil-for-food program helps the U.N. itself (the 2% or so its bureaucracy skims off the top for "administrative" expenses) or that the U.N. is desperate to prove its own relevance in post-Saddam Iraq." The oil for food program was a cruel hoax, a complete scam. The money went into the pockets of French, Egyptian, Chinese, Jordanian and (especially) Russian suppliers. The food in return was grabbed by Saddam's goons -- why else were there warehouses stuffed with food and medical supplies in Basra, where people were starving? "President Bush has for now delegated this thorny little problem to Foggy Bottom, which at least seems wise to the game. Sanctions should be lifted rather than suspended, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte said yesterday. But we hope Mr. Bush is also prepared to make a moral issue of the sanctions, and from the Presidential bully pulpit if need be. Holding hostage the only major source (oil) of hard currency for a newly liberated people isn't exactly an attractive position. But the French and Russians may get away with it so long as the U.S. remains reluctant to rebut the idea that either its occupation in Baghdad or any new Iraqi government require any kind of U.N. imprimatur." I had thought that the administration -- and the US population in general -- were so pissed about the weasels, and the UN in general,  that this was not in any doubt. "Mr. Bush could start by pointing out the extent to which the oil-for-food program served as little more than an instrument of Baath Party control. One reason American relief workers haven't been able to administer oil-for-food is because the Baath workers who previously ran it all melted away. General Tommy Franks's description of it as "oil-for-palaces" was entirely apt. The money intended for food and medicine went instead to finance, among other things, Uday Hussein's Olympic Committee. As this truth leaks out, even the French may find this hard to defend. There is also a strong legal case to be made that the sanctions can simply be declared null-and-void, having been imposed on a regime that no longer exists. Russian oil companies and their lawyers are blustering that they will challenge any new oil sales. But the idea that it will be difficult to find buyers for Iraqi oil absent a U.N. seal of approval isn't credible; oil is a commodity and a slight price discount should find enough willing buyers." Well, there's the main point: the sanctions were against Saddam, and he's history. This is farcical! And who can stop oil being sold? You bring the tanker to the terminal, you ship it. It'll get bought ... "The other U.N. game of the moment is to get Hans Blix and his U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq. No one should deny Mr. Blix a tourist visa, if he wants to see for himself the wreckage of Saddam's rule. But Mr. Blix has made clear his hostility to the war so many times in recent weeks that one suspects he has a vested interest in not finding the weapons he didn't find the first time around. The search for chemical and biological weapons is also about future security even more than past vindication. Something happened to Saddam's stockpiles of anthrax and botulin toxin, and it's vital that the U.S. learn if they were destroyed or moved somewhere else. That news is likely to come from interviewing Iraqi scientists and generals, and the U.S. needs to get that information first before it gets to U.N. inspectors (and perhaps other intelligence services)." Right. The stuff is there, somewhere. Or, it's in Syria. We can put the squeeze on these gangsters, and find out the truth. What will a bunch of incompetent inspectors accomplish? "Having liberated Iraq, the U.S. has no reason to be defensive about removing the U.N.'s sanctions and oil-for-food chokeholds over the Iraq economy. As for the validity of Saddam's debts and oil contracts, that should be up to a new Iraqi government to decide. Once that principle is established and declared non-negotiable, French and Russian behavior is likely to improve in a hurry." Non-negotiable is right. Bystanders don't get to vote, period. 10:10:30 AM    comment []

Friday, April 18, 2003

Fingering The Syrians & Saudis   Another perceptive piece from the WSJ today, by author Steven Emerson, also of the Investigative Project. Eighteen years after the execution of American Leon Klinghoffer on the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, the U.S. has demonstrated by the capture of Abu Abbas that it will not wipe the slate clean on international terrorism. For years, however, diplomatic niceties and misplaced State Department priorities subverted this principle, enabling purveyors of terrorism to literally get away with murder. The war of liberation in Iraq now provides the U.S. with an opportunity to ensure that those Arab leaders and regimes who have carried out or threatened attacks against this country and its citizens are subject to American justice. * * * Because of its conspicuously brazen support for Saddam Hussein in transferring military supplies to Baghdad and providing sanctuary to Iraqi Baathists, and in encouraging Arab fighters to go to Iraq to kill Americans, Syria's role in supporting terrorism and threatening American interests has finally come into focus. That it took actual complicity in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq for us to finally confront Damascus is a measure of how successful Syria was in deceiving the world, with the connivance of even the U.S. All one has to do is read the State Department's annual reports on international terrorism which have stated with mantra-like repetition, that Syria has not been involved in "international terrorism" since 1986. Given the fact that the Israeli borders with Syria and Lebanon are international borders, I have always failed to see how the State Department could portray Damascus in this light given its direct support, training, supplies and sanctuary extended to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, to name just a few of the groups that serve as de facto members of the Syrian foreign service. Since 1988, more than 1200 Israelis and some 30 Americans have been killed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza by groups headquartered in, or sponsored by, Damascus. Recently, the U.S. indicted the head of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, on charges including murder. Shallah continues to receive sanctuary in Damascus, where he routinely issues threats against the U.S. After Sept. 11, Syria pretended to be helping the U.S. in the war on al Qaeda, as evidenced by Damascus' arrest of a senior suspected al Qaeda operative. The State Department even issued a statement lauding Syria's role in the fight against al Qaeda. But the reality was different. Testimonies, court records and wiretaps introduced in Italian trials of al Qaeda and other militant Islamic leaders show that Syria has been working hand-in-hand with Islamic extremists in Europe for years, providing transit, sanctuary and training for al Qaeda terrorists traveling between Iraq and the Arab world. An eye-opening expose, by Sebastian Rotella in this week's Los Angeles Times, shows in incredible detail how Syria served as a hub for al Qaeda terrorists shuttling between Iraq, Syria and Europe. U.S. officials believe that at least one of the primary 9/11 plotters spent extensive time in Syria and that Syrian front-companies in Europe worked intimately with al Qaeda. According to U.S. intelligence, conspirators in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen met repeatedly in Syria to plan the terrorist operation -- meetings that could not have taken place without the knowledge of the Syrian regime. Syria's role in attacking Americans goes way back. In 1983, Syria -- together with Iran and the Hezbollah -- coordinated the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. The capture of Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Abbas has provoked demands from the Palestine Authority that he be immediately released and claiming that the slate had been wiped clean by the Oslo Accords. Under the PA's reasoning, compliance with treaties need only be one-way since both Abbas and the PA brazenly violated the terms of Oslo by continuing to carry out terrorist attacks. Since October 2000, Abbas's group, the Palestine Liberation Front, has transferred millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Abbas has dispatched terrorists trained in his Iraq-based training camps to the West Bank to carry out major attacks on Ben Gurion airport, poison Israel's water supply and attack schools and other civilian targets. The Palestinian Authority's defense of Abbas is not just symbolic; it's self-protecting. If Abbas goes down, so could Yasser Arafat. If Abbas is prosecuted for Achille Lauro, or for the funding given to the families of suicide bombers (some of whose victims included Americans in Israel), Arafat's complicity in these terrorist plots would almost certainly be exposed. And if a true accounting were to be made, the role of the Tanzim and the al Aqsa Brigades -- terrorist groups directly sponsored by Arafat -- would show their roles in the killing of hundreds of Israelis and at least 15 Americans in the past 30 months. As for the mass murder carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PA today continues to protect the killers and masterminds. The duplicitous role of Saudi Arabia in extending support to al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups also needs to be fully exposed. In the buildup to the war, Saudi Arabia demonstrated where it really stood on al Qaeda by releasing Sheikh Saeed bin Zuair, a militant Islamic cleric whose release had been demanded by Osama bin Laden in a tape distributed last year. (The other person whose release was demanded by bin Laden was Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, convicted for his role in the WTC related conspiracies in 1993.) In unprecedented ways, the war of liberation of Iraq has provided a unique opportunity to see exactly where Arab nations and Islamic leaders have stood on the issue of international terrorism. If anything, the war has enabled Americans to see an unvarnished reality of true attitudes toward the U.S. 11:00:45 AM    comment []

Thursday, April 17, 2003

See How They Run   There's a saying of criminals which is so true: "you can run, but you can't hide." And it seems to be working in Iraq, lately. First, Abu Abbas, a known Palestinian 'guerilla' -- read, an anti-semitic thug who shoots an unarmed, disabled old guy and pushes him off a ship in his wheelchair -- and now, another of Saddam Hussein's murderous family. I am relatively confident that, over a few months, we'll track down and find (or kill) a good few more of the Iraqi repressors. Yes, some may have wriggled out to Syria, or escaped the country in other ways). But a 'hot pursuit' is likely. Can you imagine the US putting up with these scumbags retiring in luxury overseas, and continuing to plot their comeback? It's not going to happen. And, if the Syrians or whoever else don't cooperate, then the hammer will come down in the form of special ops, or precisely targeted Tomahawks from far away. That's just the way it's going to be ... without a base, without hangers-on waving AKs and chanting arabic nursery rhymes, these terrorists and gangsters have no power. And that's just how we need it. 5:09:25 PM    comment []

More Weaseling   Quite often, WSJ Europe thinkpieces don't show up here for a while (and not at all, if you don't pay for them!). Here's an excerpt from a piece by Jeffrey Grdmin, Aspen Institute Berlin. Which pins down why the Germans are feeling as foolish as the French ... [what do I think? Screw 'em, of course] "BERLIN -- "There were no dead bodies lying on the ground nearby when we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall," says Wolfgang Thierse, president of the German parliament. Donald Rumsfeld was making "an absurd comparison" when he likened the fall of Baghdad to the collapse of the East German communist system, according to Heinrich August Winkler, a leading historian at Berlin's Humboldt University. A German television journalist told me recently that "CNN was just selecting handfuls in Iraq that were cheering -- this is not representative of the whole country." Some Germans are unhappy -- again. They did not like the way George W. Bush argued for optimism about building democracy in Iraq. The U.S. president had recalled that there were naysayers, too, about the prospects for German democracy after the failure of Weimar and misery of Nazi rule. "Compare Iraq with Germany?!" I heard countless times. Nor have Germans been rushing in droves to celebrate the coalition victory. Gernot Erler, the Social Democrats' foreign-policy spokesman in the Bundestag, says the war is still a mistake; the loss of life needless. Mr. Thierse agrees, adding: "with all due respect for the enthusiasm of the people [in Iraq]." Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, never at a loss for words, is mostly silent these days. The Schroeder-Chriac-Putin axis may be eroding. For Germans this always seemed to be something "strategically insane," as one senior official in Washington put it. But it may not be so easy putting the old alliance back together. "Things will be different now," says another administration official. It's surely true in the case of Germany. It's hard to overlook the mighty investment that Germans made in America's failure. Germany's environment minister, Juergen Trittin, opposed the war and confidently forecast up to 200,000 casualties, with "another 200,000 who will die as a direct result of the war." Angelika Beer, chairman of the Green Party, insisted that the region would "explode." In the run up to the war, Stern magazine cheered its readers by the news that Germans were being seen as heroes at the U.N. for standing up to the U.S. According to the popular weekly, Germany's U.N. Ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, would walk through the corridors of United Nations headquarters in New York and "other diplomats would pat him on the back and say: 'keep it up.'" The German mission received "70,000 emails coming in from around the world" underscoring the same point." "... Of course, allies have the right to dissent. But like France, Germany did not merely abstain. It will now be important to discuss whether there are not limits to disagreement if we wish to have a functioning alliance. What does it mean, asks Henry Kissinger, when the U.S. president identifies a "vital" interest, for which Americans are prepared to sacrifice their sons and daughters, and a key ally like Germany works actively and energetically to contribute to the failure of the enterprise?" Yes indeed, it has not worked out well for the Axis of Losers. And let's hope it stays that way. Keep the boycotts going till they learn some manners. 1:15:37 PM    comment []

You Have To Laugh, Really   So, the French try to be ever-so-politically-correct, then someone catches on that they too have a "Trojan Horse" (see Tuesday's blog on this) ... From Today's NYT ... of all places ... of course, you may ask, why do they need a 'national council of Muslims (sic)'? PARIS, April 15 — France's interior minister threatened today to expel any Muslim religious leader considered extremist after a fundamentalist Muslim organization unexpectedly won a large number of seats in an election for the country's first national council of Muslims. Nicolas Sarkozy, a law-and-order interior minister who pressed hard for the creation of the council, told Europe 1 radio that he would make sure that the council would not be used to spread views that run counter to French values, particularly the promotion of Islamic law. "It is precisely because we recognize the right of Islam to sit at the table of the republic that we will not accept any deviation," Mr. Sarkozy said. "Any prayer leader whose views run contrary to the values of the republic will be expelled." At another point he said, "Islamic law will not apply anywhere, because it is not the law of the French republic." Representatives of nearly 1,000 mosques and prayer centers went to the polls on April 6 and last Sunday to elect representatives to a council that will represent the country's five million Muslims. The goal, Mr. Sarkozy said repeatedly, is to create an "official Islam for France" that will take France's second-largest religion out of the "cellars and garages" and demonstrate that most Muslims are mainstream, law-abiding citizens. About 20 percent of France's mosques declined to take part. The group that made a surprisingly strong showing in the election is the Union of Islamic Organizations in France. It preaches a strict, conservative interpretation of Islam, derives much of its support from the poor suburbs of Paris and other major cities and is said to derive its inspiration from the banned fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt. It won 14 of 41 seats in the governing administrative council.   1:05:22 PM    comment []

Talking About Road Kill From AP. Hilarious, were it not so pathetic ... Just what we need: "White Stix" Blix and His Blixstone Kops, back in the spotlight. One good thing though: if he's sure that the Syrians are innocent, then they're as guilty as hell... BERLIN - The chief U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq urged the U.S.-led coalition to allow his team back into the country to look for weapons of mass destruction, saying that would increase the credibility of any discoveries, a magazine reported Thursday. Hans Blix, who was in charge of searches for chemical and biological weapons and long-range missiles in Iraq, also challenged President Bush's administration to present proof of its allegation that Syria has chemical weapons. "Whoever claims this should, in the interests of credibility, very quickly present the relevant proof," Blix said in an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel. "For my part, I doubt that the Syrians would have been enthusiastic to serve as a depot of weapons of mass destruction for Baghdad." 12:12:08 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Legal Wranglings So, the Palestinians think that Abu Abbas -- the known killer of Leo Klinghoffer -- should be exempt under the Oslo Treaty. The what? How good has their compliance with this treaty been? And the Italians want to put him on trial for his part in the Achille Lauro hijacking. So they can give him a five-year sentence? Since this guy is in the hands of the US military, simpler solutions come to mind. We could even try him ourselves, could we not? 12:12:45 PM    comment []

Stand-Up Comedy An amusing little piece from the BBC today ... (excerpt) The notorious Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahhaf may no longer be making his daily TV appearance but his memory lives on. A website called We Love the Iraqi Information Minister, carrying soundbites about the Iraq war, has become an internet phenomenon. The website was set up by a group of New York friends, who found that the only thing they could agree on about the war in Iraq was that they liked Mr Sahhaf. "We would have arguments about the rights and wrongs of the war but we would all make sure we didn't miss the daily press briefing from the information minister," explained Konn Nugent, editor-in-chief of the website. Compulsive viewing Mr Sahhaf, dubbed Comical Ali by the media, caused amusement and confusion to journalists and TV audiences across the world for his forthright and often skewed view of the conflict with Iraq. It was as if a Monty Python character had been parachuted into the lobby of the Palestine Hotel Konn Nugent, website editor Classic lines include: "Our initial assessment is that they will all die," delivered at the beginning of the war, and "there are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!", spoken as US troops surrounded the city All guaranteed his place in history. It includes this amusing graphic of Baghdad Bob at Waterloo, a battle Iraq's allies didn't do so well in ... Actually, the other horror show of the media, the UN ambassador made a charming exit from New York late last week. Did you catch it on CNN? He kissed the (male) CNN correspondent whose dismal job it was to ambush him and ask for quotes ... So, it was all an act, it seems. 11:26:22 AM    comment []

Babes, Babes, Babes: 18   Oh, enough liberal-bashing for a while. We moderates have to give them a break: they're almost an extinct species except among the young and misguided ...  Instead, let's give a hand to Dorothea Roschmann, a German soprano of great skill. A bit under-recorded, IMO. And certainly much better looking than this b/w handout pic from her agents and/or the website for the Bach Cantatas she participated in ... 11:19:19 AM    comment []

You Could Also Call Them Whiners & Losers   Nice editorial from the WSJ today, under the heading 'Pessimistic Liberalism'  ...   [some selected excerpts...] "With the Pentagon declaring the end of "major combat" in Iraq, most Americans are responding with relief and pride. Our troops have performed with skill, courage and even honorable restraint in deposing a dictator half a world away in less than a month. The puzzle is why some Americans, especially media and liberal elites, continue to wallow in pessimism about this liberation. Two weeks ago these elites were predicting a long war with horrific casualties and global damage. Then at the sight of Iraqis cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad, they quickly moved on to fret about "looting" and "anarchy." Now that those are subsiding, our pessimists have rushed to worry that Iraqi democracy and reconstruction will be all but impossible. What is it that liberals find so dismaying about the prospect of American success? In discounting these gloomy new predictions, it helps to consider their track record. Among the anticipated disasters that haven't come true: a "nationalist" uprising against U.S. troops, à la Vietnam; the "Arab street" enraged against us; tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a refugee and humanitarian crisis; bloody house-to-house urban combat; Iraq's oil fields aflame, lifting oil prices and sending the economy into recession; North Korea ("the greater threat") using the war as an excuse to attack; the Turks intervening in northern Iraq and at war with the Kurds; and all of course leading to world-wide mayhem." "... today's left has become a self-insulated elite convinced of its own virtue. In this view, these members of "the anointed" operate in an echo chamber that listens to and rewards one another to the point that they refuse to admit contrary evidence. If you repeat often enough that Iraqis couldn't possibly welcome Americans as "liberators," you can't process those TV images in Baghdad. Instead of freedom, you see only "anarchy" and American troops that somehow "allowed" looting. We aren't saying that all liberals have succumbed to this pessimism about American purpose. Many have seen Iraq's evil squarely for what it is and have supported the Bush Administration's attempts to remove it. They include the Washington Post editorial page, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Democrats Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, such writers as Christopher Hitchens and Bill Keller, and above all Tony Blair. But the majority of the American left, and especially its leading media voices, remain flummoxed if not embarrassed by America's Iraq victory. These include most Democrats in Congress, the editors (though not all reporters) of the New York Times and its acolytes at CNN and the major networks, and of course most academic experts. They can barely bring themselves to celebrate the downfall of a tyrant before predicting the awful challenges to come."   8:46:46 AM    comment []

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Dont Stop Now   So, one reads that a lot of the Iraqi leadership and goons are indeed popping up in Syria ... Mrs Saddam Hussein in in Latakia. I can find it on a map, how about the USAF and Navy? And how difficult would it be to inject some special ops troops into this militarily feeble, full-of-itself little fascist country, to take care of unfinished business? Don't repeat the mistakes of 1991! 2:20:44 PM    comment []

Pretty Remarkable   Don't you think it's pretty remarkable that two research groups managed to unravel the genome of the SARS coronavirus in just a few weeks? Considering that this is supposedly an unknown organism, crossed over from some unspecified animal (my bet: domestic pigs in rural China) it's quite amazing how quickly the technology bashed its way through the sequencing. Now, of course, biologists have to sift through the code and figure out which elements there open themselves to some kind of attack ... envelope proteins, or something along those lines ... enabling disruption of its reproduction. It certainly makes one feel more optimistic about the prospects of us neutralizing the disease's spread now. Although, to be fair, quanrantines seem to have been very productive in this regard ... 11:54:44 AM    comment []

Trojan Horses   I often get criticized, or at least old-fashioned 'PC' looks, when I point out that some expatriate Arab communities are a hotbed of anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and fanaticism ... some chunky excerpts from a piece in today's WSJ that go to prove the case a little ... and tell us something about 'our friends', the Saudis A Saudi Group Spreads Extremism In 'Law' Seminars, Taught in Dutch IAN JOHNSON and DAVID CRAWFORD Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EINDHOVEN, Netherlands -- In late February, more than 300 young men from across Europe gathered for a weekend seminar on Islamic law put on by the Al-Waqf al-islaami Foundation. In the bright, austere rooms of this city's Al-Furqaan Mosque, they heard sermons on the hell that awaits unbelievers and the benefits of resisting Western ways of living. The language was Dutch, but the message was imported from Saudi Arabia, via Saudi books and lecturers who taught a strict, orthodox interpretation of Islam. Mourat, an attendee who offered only his first name, said: "I don't want a separation of state and religion. I want Shariah [Islamic law] here and now." For years, the Al-Waqf foundation's seminars have drilled extremist messages into the heads of thousands of young Muslims from across the Continent: Mixing with unfaithful is a form of pollution, Jews are to blame for much of what's wrong in the world, and the rest can be laid at the doorstep of the U.S., according to foundation literature and interviews with attendees. The seminar's most famous graduates: half a dozen members of the group of young men from Hamburg, Germany, who plotted the Sept. 11 attacks. As European government investigators explore the roots of terrorism, they are discovering foundations such as Al-Waqf. Muslim foundations and charities initially came under the microscope for channeling money to terrorists. Now, investigators are taking another look at whether these groups are encouraging terrorism by teaching an intolerant and xenophobic strain of Islam. In France, investigators have raised concerns about L'Institut Europeen des Sciences Humaines at the Chateau-Chinon in the Burgundy region. One member of the Hamburg cell took a correspondence course offered by the institute, the investigators say. In Germany, the Haus des Islam in the small town of Lutzelbach near Frankfurt is under observation, according to German intelligence officials. This organization was set up in the 1980s with cash smuggled into the country from the Middle East, the officials say. Wolfgang Burgfeld, who heads the Haus des Islam, says, "We're just a normal teaching institution." The French institute declined to comment. Of these groups, Eindhoven's branch of the Al-Waqf foundation stands out. Its courses have been attended since the late 1980s by self-styled holy warriors from across Europe. Attendance has become a critical credential for those aspiring to jihad, according to terrorism investigators. Like many of the foundations, Al-Waqf is tightly linked to Saudi Arabia. Its headquarters are there, and wealthy Saudis dominate the board of the Dutch branch. Its courses reflect the puritanical strain of Islam promoted world-wide by the Saudi government." later... "... [In Eindhoven] The readings centered on an extremely narrow interpretation of Islamic law. A key message: mixing with nonbelievers is taboo. A handout from a 1999 conference during the holy month of Ramadan, for example, warned participants not to visit Christians in their homes or accept Christmas cards or gifts. "According to the scholars' consensus, this is forbidden," stated a handout in Arabic that German police seized during a search of the home of El-Hassen Ragi, a Hamburg resident currently under investigation for possibly aiding the Sept. 11 attackers. The 1999 Ramadan conference had an electric effect on Mr. Ragi, his wife, Beate Ragi, said in a sealed deposition taken by police last year and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. He began to spout hateful slogans, blaming Jews and the U.S. for the world's problems, Beate Ragi said. She is separated from her husband but still lives in Hamburg and shares custody of their child. "Afterwards, he was completely changed," she added. "He demanded that food be put on the table. Then he'd leave us some, and take the rest to his friends. He was hardly home anymore." Condemnation and abandonment of Western influences are central to the extremist Islamic seminars, a German terrorism investigator says. "If you teach that people are inferior, then it's easier to justify killing them," the investigator says." still later: "The Saudi Embassy in Berlin denies that its government sponsored this or any other seminar abroad. On March 24, however, new links came to light between the Saudi Embassy, Eindhoven and the Hamburg cell. " .... The Saudi Foreign Ministry recalled Mohammad J. Fakihi, director of the Islamic Affairs Department at the Saudi Embassy in Berlin. German police say that earlier, they had found Mr. Fakihi's business card among the possessions of convicted Hamburg cell member Mounir Motassadeq. The Saudi Embassy declined to comment on the recall of Mr. Fakihi. Mr. Raji placed Mr. Ragi, Mr. Motassadeq and Zakaria Essabar at the 1999 Ramadan seminar. Mr. Motassadeq was convicted in February in Germany for aiding the hijackers. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Mr. Essabar, who is wanted as a principal organizer of the attacks, is believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan. He left Germany shortly before the attacks. Not long after attending the 1999 Ramadan seminar, Mr. Motassadeq traveled to Afghanistan to train in an al Qaeda-run camp, according to German court documents used to convict him. He later stayed in contact with clerics who spoke at the seminar, according to court records. And earlier that year, according to German investigators, alleged Sept. 11 pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi came to a conference in either Eindhoven or Amsterdam. They subsequently went to al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Another man who attended an Al-Waqf seminar in Eindhoven was Ibrahim Diab, a regular at the Al-Quds mosque in Hamburg attended by Mr. Atta and his friends. Mr Diab left Germany the day before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to German court documents. He was detained about a month later at the Afghani border by Pakistani police." and: [after some comments about the funding allegedly coming from 'poor Moslems,' but really coming from rich Saudis...] "Whatever its financial associations, Al-Waqf has helped create a milieu where the world is divided into Muslims and inferior non-Muslims, European investigators say." "... Speaking in the spartan Al-Furqaan Mosque [a teacher] warned some 300 listeners against accepting the secular, non-Islamic world. At times he was humorous, declaring: "Tawhid is not Steven Spielberg, Hollywood; it is reality." But his message was at core serious and uncompromising: sacrifice everything for Islam. "He who understands what tawhid is will find a place in paradise," [he] told the young men, many of whom were taking notes. "All acts [supporting Islam] will be rewarded. All initiatives, even when they are bad, will be rewarded." 11:05:45 AM    comment []

Regime Change Candidates   So, who else needs a 'regime change'? A partial list ... North Korea Syria Iran Libya China Venezuela Cuba Saudi Arabia Myanmar Zimbabwe Malawi Russia France Germany Canada Mexico Belgium Turkey Egypt Malaysia ... and a few more pisspot little countries whose governments haven't quite been sufficiently annoying enough. Yet. Ideally, the 'people' should take care of these themselves ... but ... 10:29:17 AM    comment []

Humor From The Inbox: 9 Could be urban legend here, but it's amusing enough.... "The Washington Post publishes a yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for various words. The following were some of this year's winning entries: Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. Esplanade (v.),! to attempt an explanation while drunk. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavoured mouthwash. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam! Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist." 10:22:01 AM    comment []

Grudging Acknowledgements   Dorothy Rabinowitz is as amused as I have been by the Quisling press ... an excerpt from today's WSJ ... "[T]here is no inadvertence in the ill-concealed hostility now coming from the antiwar camp -- only a kind of awkward pretense to give credit to the American and British forces that won so swift a victory. And grudging credit it is, replete with arguments that, of course, everyone knew they would win overwhelmingly. That assurance did not, of course, keep this crowd from issuing their dire predictions the first day or two of the war, about the "quagmire" and new Vietnam. The latest entry in the grudging acknowledgments department comes from Saturday's New York Times editorial that first pays tribute to the great skill of the American forces, credits Mr. Rumsfeld's push for a smaller more agile force, and then goes on to the main point: whether the victory could really be attributed to U.S. military excellence. The Iraqis, it notes, fought poorly and ineptly -- perhaps this was simply "a lopsided fight." The most noteworthy specimen to date, though, must be the lead Talk of the Town item in the April 14 New Yorker, in which Hendrick Hertzberg writes: "By the end of last week -- even though American troops who, by all accounts, have fought honorably and without undue cruelty, were at the gates of Baghdad -- it was too late for the rosy scenario of the cakewalk conservatives." We may take it, from that "undue cruelty" reference, that Mr. Hertzberg is willing to credit American troops mainly because they failed to perpetrate war crimes. It is a pronouncement worth remembering, and not for what it says about the troops. 10:17:56 AM    comment []

The Russians, Again The WSJ Europe carries this little treat, about the Iraq-Soviet/Russian relationship ... The Russian Connection By PAVEL FELGENHAUER Looting in Baghdad seems to be subsiding after a few days of freedom, but the first real booty of any value has now hit the marketplace: Iraqis are offering the multitude of journalists stationed in town secret files and documents they had "found" in government offices. There could soon be a tide of revelations that may implicate different countries and prominent figures that contacted or worked with Saddam during the years. France might well worry about what turns up regarding tight Paris-Baath Party relations. But the first crop to come up implicates Russia. Russian military and intelligence services did cooperate closely with the Saddam Hussein regime before the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991 and the demise of the Soviet Union the same year. After 1991 the relationship didn't end. In fact it may have gotten steadily closer during the 1990s. Now the cloak of secrecy is unraveling and documents implicating Moscow have gone public, which may reflect the multitude of contacts and the mass of related documents. Britain's Sunday Telegraph reports this week on a letter from the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow which included details of Russian arms deals with Syria, Kuwait and other countries. The reported information is accurate: officials have told me that Syria did indeed receive in 1999 "Kornet" guided anti-tank missiles, some of which, apparently, were later sent to Iraq and used against U.S. armor in recent weeks. Israel together with Russia did produce a jointly made AWAC-style plane for China, but Washington pressured the Israelis to stop the delivery in 2000. These arms deals are not much of a secret, but if the arms trade file is authentic other documents in the batch may be genuine too. According to a pro-Kremlin website, Russia and Iraq signed agreements to share intelligence, help each other to "obtain" visas for agents to go to other countries and to exchange information on the activities of Osama bin Laden. Unnamed intelligence officials have told journalists in Moscow that Russian contacts with the Saddam regime aimed at combating terrorism, the narcotics trade and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction were legitimate. Perhaps. But why would anyone in Moscow send to Baghdad a transcript of a conversation held in Rome last year between Tony Blair and Silvio Berlusconi, obtained through intelligence services? It's harder still to imagine why the Kremlin would send Saddam a detailed list of prospective assassins. People in Moscow well acquainted with the activities of the Russian intelligence agencies today do not dismiss any accusations out of hand. But there's a twist. After the demise of the Soviet Union, the state in Russia has been privatized, including much of the intelligence network. One may buy any service, if the price is right. A high ranking government official told me last week that, for half a year or more, Russian secret services, including military intelligence and KGB successor agencies, were lobbying the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin to back Saddam in the coming confrontation with the U.S.-led coalition. I was also told that Russian oil companies and other businesses that trade with Iraq actually contracted Russian spies to do the lobbying. It's impossible to know for sure at present how true this story is. It's a fact that Russian military and other intelligence agencies are manned by people who are genuinely anti-American. Many of them may not need to be bribed much to get deeply involved in activities that could worsen relations with Washington and help Saddam. Cooperating with Iraqi intelligence, selling Baghdad secrets or sensitive military equipment in violation of sanctions, may be considered by many in Moscow a patriotic activity: A way to earn a living and serve one's country at the same time. It's a fact, for example, that till the last days of combat in Baghdad the Kremlin was receiving reports that the U.S. military has been bogged down, its campaign plan is in tatters, and that Moscow together with France might soon have to be called in to organize a ceasefire under U.N. auspices. The Russian Navy has even sent a task force with up to 150 marines to the Indian Ocean to take part in a possible disengagement agreement between allied and Iraqi forces. (Since it had to come a long way, it will arrive in the Gulf later this month. Sometimes never is better than late.) This determined campaign to misinform the Kremlin and Russian public on the course of the war and the possible repercussions of the liberation of Iraq was apparently one of the main reasons Mr. Putin took such a resolute anti-American stand. The sudden collapse of Saddam's regime has not changed the situation much in one sense: The anti-Americanism of Russian military and intelligence officials is even more bitter that before. Russia today does more business with Iran, including nuclear technology, arms sales and arms production, than it did with Iraq in the 1990s. With Saddam out of the way, members of Russian intelligence agencies who are often doing work on the side (like self-employed entertainers, they must supplement their meager incomes) will be flocking to help deepen the ties with Tehran and at the same time make the rift with Washington permanent. In recent years no one has been punished in Russia for illicit arms trade with Iraq or for cooperating closely with Iran or Syria. This is not a coincidence: Informed sources say the Russian counterintelligence service -- the FSB -- was a leading party of the pro-Saddam lobby. Any amount of disclosure in the Western press will not change their mode of operation. It perhaps may be too much to hope that, given how woefully inadequate their intelligence on the situation on the ground in Iraq was, the political clout of the Russian intelligence services will diminish now. But we can at least hope. Mr. Felgenhauer is a Moscow-based independent defense analyst. 10:12:55 AM    comment []

What A Difference A Few Days Makes   Well, after a brief break, I'm back to annoy you again <g> ... What a difference a few days makes, eh? On Friday, we were hearing dire predictions about a bloody battle for Tikrit, and what was going on in Mosul and Kirkuk wasn't clear. Now, it's all over.  And all we have to concern ourselves with is: does Syria get it? Are they listening? Because, if not, I think we might just move on them, sooner rather than later ... certainly, we must have a clue where the Saddam gangsters are hiding there, don't you think? And knowing their decadent mafia syle, it's probably in big villas around Damascus. Hmm, time for a few well-placed Tomahawks, I'd say ... 10:09:34 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Peter Savage.