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Saturday, May 25, 2002
Josh Chafetz offers something appropriate for Memorial Day. Not all American heros wear uniforms, but we should honor them just the same.
Most Europeans don't acknowledge the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Instead, they have come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to the pacific ideals Europeans now cherish than Iraq or Iran. Americans, in turn, have come to view Europe as annoying, irrelevant, naive and ungrateful as it takes a free ride on American power. This is not just a family quarrel. If Americans and Europeans no longer agree on the utility and morality of power, then what remains to undergird their military alliance?
...Whatever else we do, let's stop pretending that we agree. That pretense has done little for the alliance since the end of the Cold War than create more confusion, misunderstanding and anger. Better that we should face our differences head on. That is the necessary first step on the road to recovery.
Useful Robert Kagan article for WaPo. The conclusions will no doubt be disturbing to some, but they need to be faced: Europe intends to try "peace, love, and granola" as a geopolitical strategy because it is incapable of any other. Unfortunately, that strategy depends on the United States not taking the same approach. The EU has to face the paradox that their rule of law is utterly dependent on the US's carrier battle groups. But to admit that is to admit how impotent Europe really is, and that is a bitter pill for them to swallow. Easier to heap vitriol on the "American cowboys." Stupider, too.
The CIA is dispatching personnel to help the FBI upgrade its ability at headquarters in Washington to analyze intelligence and criminal data for use in preventing terrorist acts, according to senior FBI officials.
Man, oh man. Given the legendary turf wars that have been waged between FBI and CIA, I'll bet the Fibbies just love this turn of events.
A raft of new terror warnings about scuba divers, small planes, subways and trains are getting to be ridiculous, Sen. John McCain said yesterday. "I worry that over time, with so many warnings with such frequency, Americans begin not to take them seriously," McCain (R-Arizona) told CNN.
Hmm. And why does the administration now feel constrained to release every possible warning of a terror attack it might have, do you suppose? Maybe to head off any more "Bush Knew" smears from the Democrats? Do you think that might be a possibility, Senator McCain?
The Daily Standard's "Special K" team, Bill Kristol and Bob Kagan, think GWB is waffling so hard he looks like he's drenched in butter and maple syrup.
Well, darn. Now one of my fave bloggers, Don McArthur, is pulling out of the game. Fare you well, Big D. I'll keep an eye out for you. (It'll be in that water-glass on the bedside table).
Josh Chafetz makes the rather interesting assertion that, with his executive order that allows a sitting or former President to indefinitely delay the public release of the former President's papers, George Bush is breaking the law. I've said several times before that one of the least appetizing things about President Bush is his almost visceral urge toward secrecy. Josh is right. Somebody needs to call him on this one. A lawsuit would be ideal.
There are a bazillion permanent links off to your left there, and quite frankly, though I try, I no longer am able to read all of them either thoroughly or regularly. I don't hold with dividing them up in rankings, though, because at the time I added them to the links I did so because I felt the blogs were worthy of attention. That said, some have fallen through the cracks of my attention (which many have charged is very cracked, indeed), and a blog called Rhetorica is one such. I was there today, though, and came across this article on media bias:
Is the news media biased toward liberals? Yes. Is the news media biased toward conservatives? Yes. These questions and answers are uninteresting because it is possible to find evidence--anecdotal and otherwise--to "prove" media bias of one stripe or another. Far more interesting and instructive is studying the inherent biases of journalism as a professional practice--especially as mediated through television.
Commercial bias: The news media are money-making businesses. As such, they must deliver a good product to their customers to make a profit. The customers of the news media are advertisers. The most important product the news media delivers to its customers are readers or viewers. Good is defined in numbers of readers or viewers. The news media are biased toward conflict because conflict draws readers and viewers. Harmony is boring.
Temporal bias: The news media are biased toward the immediate. News is what's new and fresh. To be immediate and fresh, the news must be ever-changing even when there is little news to cover. Visual bias: Television (and, increasingly, newspapers) is biased toward visual depictions of news. Television is nothing without pictures. Legitimate news that has no visual angle is likely to get little attention. Much of what is important in politics--policy--cannot be photographed.
Bad news bias: Good news is boring (and probably does not photograph well, either). This bias makes the world look like a more dangerous place than it really is. Plus, this bias makes politicians look far more crooked than they really are.
Narrative bias: The news media covers the news in terms of "stories" that must have a beginning, middle, and end--in other words, a plot. Much of what happens in our world, however, is ambiguous. The news media applies a narrative structure to ambiguous events suggesting that these events are easily understood and have clear cause-and-effect relationships. Good storytelling requires drama, and so this bias often leads journalists to add, or seek out, drama for the sake of drama. Lastly, this bias leads many journalists to create, and then hang on to, master narratives--set story lines with set characters who act in set ways. Once a master narrative has been set, it is very difficult to get journalists to see that their narrative is simply one way, and not necessarily the correct or best way, of viewing people and events.
There is considerably more on the Rhetorica site, including a standard blog under the "Comments" section, and other intellectual tools to help you detect falsehood and other problems with modern media rhetoric. This is a fine site. I'll make a point of visiting more often.
Contrary to popular legend, Playboy has never published a list of the most babelicious college campuses. Now they have. See how your school rates here. (Warning: as Playboy puts it: "Nudity.") Link courtesy edu specialist Michael Lopez, which just goes to show the subject isn't entirely dreary.
LETTERS FROM MY HOMETOWN: In recognition of the nature of the Memorial Day weekend, I had hoped that, instead of the usual anti-American, anti-Bush, anti-semitic, or anti-rational drivel that generally clogs the SFChron's letter column. I might print a letter from a SF Bay Area citizen expressing pride in the sacrifice of our brave soldiers over the years, or a patriotic love of America. Unfortunately, there were no such letters in the paper today. Since I just don't have the heart to defile the memories of the brave men and women who sacrificed so that fools and idiots could write the sludge they did today, I won't be posting anything. If something that indicates the writer understands the nature of this weekend does appear in the next two days, I will gladly post it. Otherwise, out of respect if for no other reason, it is better to let the short-sighted, selfish, profoundly stupid rantings customary to the SF Chron lettercol pass in appalled silence.
Rowley wrote that the careers of high-ranking FBI officials have in the past been ruined by poor decisions in high-profile cases. "This in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions," she wrote. She said this atmosphere stems from the FBI's organization as a large hierarchy with numerous layers of supervisors who don't want to risk facing criticism from Congress and the public for their decisions.
It's long been known that a prime bureaucratic mantra is that you can't get in trouble for saying "No." Let's hope in this case that saying "No" destroys a few careers.
But FBI staff there resisted trying to obtain search warrants and scolded agents for seeking last-minute help from the CIA, she alleged, according to sources.
She wrote that resistance to requests from Minneapolis was so fierce that agents there joked that Osama bin Laden must have infiltrated FBI headquarters.
Hmm. Is that really a joke?
An FBI official in Washington said the incident is open to interpretation and that there was no effort to undermine the request.
No official effort. Just the standard bureaucratic do-nothing effort.
Rowley maintained that even without the Phoenix memo, Minneapolis agents had enough evidence to secretly search Moussaoui's laptop by securing a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
But because FBI lawyers had nixed the idea, Rowley argued in her letter this week, the Phoenix memo would have bolstered the effort to open the computer, which was later discovered to contain detailed information about jetliners, wind patterns and crop-dusting aircraft.
Listen, the FBI is a bureaucracy made up of lawyers. Can you think of a better recipe for doing nothing, and doing it superbly?
FBI attorneys in Washington maintain that Rowley's letter is mistaken, and that the FBI did not have enough evidence to proceed prior to Sept. 11. Senior U.S. officials told The Washington Post in January that Rowley had agreed with that assessment; one official stood by that account yesterday.
As the chief division counsel for the Minneapolis office, Rowley was the agent who helped prepare warrant applications and dealt directly with headquarters staff.
Rowley's letter is very specific, according to sources who have seen it, and names those who Rowley alleged threw a "roadblock" into the Moussaoui investigation.
Names names? Her FBI career is over. Let's hope Congress ends a few other FBI careers as well, starting with those names she named.
Rowley personally delivered her letter Tuesday to the offices of Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the staff of the joint House-Senate intelligence panel conducting the investigation.
Because otherwise the FBI would have classified it utter top secret and nobody would ever have heard of it again.
Friends and colleagues describe Rowley as sharp and serious. "She's not a crackpot or anything; she's a good agent and a sharp lawyer," one former colleague said.
Another former co-worker agreed: "She's very straightforward. She's intelligent, thoughtful and outspoken, but she's not out of control. . . . If she sees something she believes is wrong, she is not going to sweep it under the carpet."
Wonder why they made a point of denying that she was a "crackpot...out of control?" Do they know that's what the FBI brass claim about anybody who doesn't toe the FBI line?
Eminent Islamofascist Arab wannabe and Beirut resident Robert Fisk says
Each morning now, I awake beside the Mediterranean in Beirut with a feeling of great foreboding. There is a firestorm coming. And we are blissfully ignoring its arrival; indeed, we are provoking it.
Quite correct, Robert. And if you look carefully at the planes that deliver that storm, you'll see the stars and stripes stenciled there. My advice would be for you and your good friends to stop provoking it, and in your case, you might even consider moving out of ground zero. Not that I give much of a damn myself whether you do or not. In fact, come to think on it, perhaps it's just as well that you go on blissfully ignoring it.
Fact is, the notion that the WOT and US operations in the Middle East would benefit Europe more than the US is ludicrous. Firstly, it doesn't remotely square with the notion of acting out of America's national interest, and secondly the benefit relationship is the other way around: a Europragmatist could argue that in fact participation in these things is mostly for the benefit of the US, that it is Europe acting to protect America, not the other way around, and in fact by so participating Europe is taking an enormous risk with its own security. I'm afraid the notion that Europe is being protected by the US is itself a Cold War relic that I would have thought all these American New World Order gurus would have discarded by now. Apparently not.
This is absolutely correct. NATO has become a classic example of the free rider problem, and I expect that the pragmatic solution is for the US to really begin acting unilaterally and effectively, if not officially, withdraw from the alliance. We could start by beginning to prepare to move the two heavy divisions currently wasting time in Germany. We'll need them in Iraq when we go in there anyway.
Our interests are really not those of Europe's - at least insofar as they are perceived by European elites to be subservience to the "superiority" of the old countries - and probably the sooner we recognize that, the better. Our future involves the Russian alliance and the Pacific Rim. Europe, with its rapidly increasing slide toward inward-oriented mandarin-socialism and self-chosen military impotence, is a distraction.
Europe can do nothing about the states that sponsor terrorism - it can't even project power within its borders, let alone to the middle east - but the sort of intelligence services and intrusive security systems that gigantic smothering nanny-statism tends to foster are well-suited to deal with individual terrorist cells, and the past thirty years or so show that a few exploding buildings or cars every once in a while are considered business as usual in the old countries. We may find this notion of "security" a bit strange, but, as the French are wont to shrug, "c'est la vie."
At least in theory, our relationship with the Russian bear should keep it from gobbling a helpless Europe as its own military strength (even now vastly superior to a Europe minus the US contribution) returns, although without effective means to resist Russian diplomatic pressure founded on military superiority, Europe will likely continue its disastrous collapse in real influence on the world stage, ending up as little more than a diplomatic appendage to Russian aims. As for the role of Europe vis the rest of the world, what price an International Criminal Court if every two-bit dictator with a few surplue US planes to rub together can tell it to kiss off, or simply cow it into submission with the threat of a bit of terrorism?
Rome once paid homage to Greece, at least intellectually, but that faded away as Greece itself lapsed into irrelevance and impotence after Pyrrhus's defeat. There is a new world order in the process of establishing itself, one based on realities Europe evidently prefers to ignore, and Europeans apparently wish to opt out of it. As far as I'm concerned, if that is their desire, I certainly think we should oblige them.
Recently, when the Agency learned that some Senate Intelligence Committee staffers faulted the CIA for failing to grasp the significance of an April 2001 meeting in Prague between 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed al-Ani, the CIA suggested that the meeting probably never occurred. (Had they grasped its significance, they might have investigated Atta and found that he was in the United States.) Unfortunately for Langley, Czech intelligence is standing by its story, and a Czech member of parliament briefed by that nation's intelligence service believes airport security cameras caught the meeting.
In other words, that little propaganda blurt that leftist fellow travelers and dupes like Robert Scheer were putting out not so long ago, to the effect that the Czech government had "long since withdrawn, that it had evidence of the Prague meeting," was, and still is, a lie, most likely propagated by the CIA itself to cover up its own blunders.
And, of course, that meeting directly links Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the 9/11 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon, which makes the notion that the United States can't - or won't - move against Saddam one full of potentially suicidal risk.
In other words: Killing American soldiers? Well, that's news. Killing reporters? That's tragedy. When Peter Jennings reported Danny Pearl was dead, he said, "Very sad news for everybody in the journalist community, of course. Sad news for Americans at large." At least he was honest about the order.
I don't usually blog Jonah Goldberg because pretty much everybody does, and Jonah's got about as big a horn in NRO as anybody, anyway. But I make the exception here because Goldberg speaks, as a journalist, a dirty little truth that most journalists would never think of saying, even though their actions indicate they believe it: American lives aren't that valuable, unless the Americans also happen to be journalists.
Steven Den Beste thinks that Yasser Arafat has reached the end of his string. I think he might be right - but only "might," because Arafat's poll numbers were nearly as low a couple of years ago as they are today, and he survived. The real question is why those numbers are so low. I fear it's because the Palestinians feel that Arafat has not been successful enough, savage and brutal enough, in waging war against Israel, and they want to elect somebody who will give them more suicide bombers, more exploding tanker trucks, more slaughtered five year old girls and dismembered harmless old men. I don't think there is anybody who can do that, but that doesn't necessarily mean the poor, deluded Palestinian street is aware of that fact.
The Conservative Economist offers a smart and useful perspective on at least one reason why my earlier prediction about a decline in the dominance of leftist thought on our campuses might turn out to be accurate.
Arizona State University (ASU), responding to serious concerns raised by FIRE President Alan Charles Kors, will eliminate a racial restriction on enrollment for a "First-Year Seminar" in history. ASU's deputy general counsel, Mary C. Stevens, has assured FIRE that ASU would immediately remove the limitation from the 2002 course catalog. FIRE is relieved that race will cease to be an official and explicit barrier to learning at this public university. In March 2002, a student at ASU contacted FIRE with concerns about a limitation on enrollment for History 191, Navajo History. ASU's catalog of First-Year Seminars listed the course as an introductory seminar for first-year students only, in which "class enrollment is limited to Native American students."
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM WATCH: I've already noted one piece of faulty assurance: that since 9/11, an aroused citizenry will never permit another successful airline hijacking. Well, when the odds are 150 to 1, as with the Shoebomber, that may be true. But we have no assurance it will work against ten, or twenty terrorists, or against a terrorist who manages to smuggle a gun aboard (definitely not an impossiblity).
Here's something else I've been wondering about. We hear everywhere that if al-Qaeda had effective weapons of mass destruction - diseases like smallpox, or nukes, or dirty bombs - they would have used them already. But why do we believe that? Supposedly al-Qaeda has goals, the main ones being US out of Islam, Iraq, and Israel. Also supposedly, the leaders of al-Qaeda are reasonably intelligent. So if they did have that capability, they must be smart enough to know using it would result in the sudden acquaintance of much of the middle east - including their supporters - with American nuclear weapons. If they were smart, wouldn't they first emplace their WMDs in the US where they could be triggered on a moment's notice, then get the American attention with something like WTC to show the seriousness of their intentions? Then perhaps a quiet explanation of the situation ("We have smallpox" would be sufficient), followed by a decent interval while the US gives in to their demands and backs off from invading Iraq, gets ready to be "kicked out" of Saudi Arabia, and prevents Israel from destroying the Palestinian Authority?
Such a scenario would certainly explain a lot, even though it isn't very close to the conventional wisdom.
A large residential complex was rocked by an explosion and swept by flames today. There was no immediate word on whether anyone was hurt.
There was no indication of what caused the blast, nor of any connection to a recent federal warning that terrorists could target the nation's apartment buildings, but the FBI responded to the site.
"We have a bomb technician going to the scene with several agents, as is routine in a situation like this. But it's just a precaution. There is absolutely no indication there's any link to terrorism," said FBI spokeswoman Laura Bosley.
Sure. The FBI issues a warning that terrorists could target apartment buildings, and a few days later a large complex explodes on the first day of a long holiday weekend while every agency around is talking of increased terrorist chatter. But why would there be any suspicion of terrorism here?
Remember how idiots like John Magaw, Norm Mineta, and Fritz Hollings assured us that airline pilots don't need to be armed, because at least in part we'll all be protected by those air marshals on every one or two of a hundred flights? Well, as it turns out, even those marshals aren't very competent.
The issue is highly sensitive because the crimes of xenophobia and racism, which do not exist as such in Britain, are among the offences covered by the EU's new arrest warrant, and Europol has a mandate to launch Union-wide xenophobia inquiries.
More on this issue, which I first mentioned yesterday. And one more reason to be glad the US has repudiated the International Criminal Court treaty. (Link courtesy Randall Parker).
About that tempest on Teen Sex [Hit whore-ed. Am not!] currently ongoing at Instapundit and NRO's The Corner: Is anybody factoring in the influence of the advent of effective methods of contraception on the issue?
I think that those who believe there is any material difference between al-Qaeda terrorists and the Palestinian variety are badly mistaken - and so does Solly Ezekiel. In fact, the two have very likely become one and the same. Any proof of that hypothesis would give George Bush and "partner for peace" Yasser Arafat a bit of a problem, wouldn't it?
Speaking as a writer who's managed, in a twenty five year career, to get noticed by NYT reviewers precisely twice, I'd say that John Bloom gets things exactly right in this painfully hilarious piece. So how come WaPo film critic Stephen Hunter (no mean genre novelist himself) will cheerfully review something like Blade II, but the WaPo book reviewers would never dream of saying much of anything about the lastest Danielle Steele effort? (Link courtesy Gregory Hlatky, who adds further to the list of reviewing euphemisms).
I think Mark Steyn's right, and I think "President Juan Term" knows it, which is why I haven't yet given up hope that we'll do something before another deadly terrorist attack forces us into action.
From the pages of the Wall Street Opinion Journal (hardly a bastion of liberal, anti-Christian thought) comes a column on the Patrick Henry College accreditation controversy that was mentioned in DailyPundit a while back. At the time, quite a few commentators thought I was way off base in supporting the American Academy of Liberal Education's refusal to accredit the school. As it turns out, WSOJ's Naomi Schaefer thinks otherwise.
Hong Kong made a big splash when the colony was transferred to China in 1997. Before that, Beijing would go into a tizzy when Governor Chris Patten attempted to belatedly introduce democracy in Hong Kong. After the transfer of power it was hoped that China wouldn't stifle the process of democratization; if not for any thing else but to lure Taiwan into its embrace. Not that Taipei was keen on it. But Beijing still hoped. But recent developments in Hong Kong would seem to have put paid to any possibility of Taiwan's voluntary unification with China. The reappointment of Tung Chee-hwa (¸³«ØµØ) for a second term (starting July 1), without any pretense of popular selection/election, is increasingly making its autonomy a sick joke. He is simply Beijing's man doing its bidding.
And those who are surprised by this are, um, who, exactly? Anybody who thought the sclerotic Chinese communist dictatorship would permit any meaningful freedom in one of its possessions must have been educated in an American school - one of those that's done away with its history requirements.
The FBI has ordered that the Daniel Pearl execution video be removed from an internet web site. This was the site DailyPundit had linked to. I can understand the inclination to control the distribution of this video, but I can't see how that can legally be done, nor how it can be accomplished practically, either. I expect that the video is now sitting on several thousand hard drives around the world. Censorship and the internet don't fit very well together. (And yes, this is true censorship - it's the government that's trying to suppress here). The end of this article notes that the FBI claims they didn't order or threaten anybody, that all they offered was "advice." I naturally presume they are lying about this.
Uber source Randall Parker sends a link to this Jim Dunnigan Strategy Page article about the probable effects and outcomes of a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. They aren't what you might think they'd be.
DailyPundit will be in New York City on the 9,10, and 11 of June. There are some business meetings with agents and editors on the schedule, but some free time as well. Other than the must-make visit to WTC, I'm open to suggestions.
The Bribe Payers Index 2002 (scroll down to see the index) is an interesting concept, but I think it's wrongheaded. Its emphasis is on the companies that pay bribes, rather than the governments that demand them.
Bribery is a way of life in much of the world, especially the developing world, and what I call the "world of tyranny." Companies don't pay bribes because they want to, they pay because it's a normal cost of doing business. And bribes are usually paid to government functionaries of one sort or other.
It's revealing to note how low the US corporations are ranked. That's probably because we do have laws against US companies paying international bribery money. On the other side of the coin, how many foreign companies doing business here are forced to bribe? Of course, companies of all stripes "contribute" to the campaigns of their "favorite" elected officials, but they don't have to do so to do business in the US. Imagine how many officials you have to pay off to do business in, say, Saudi Arabia. Or any of the other festerinig one-man dictatorships dotted about the globe. (Link courtesy R.S. Ballard).
This discussion is going on in one of my comments sections, and I think it deserves wider view, since so many blogs (including DailyPundit) use the YACCS commenting system:
May 23 2002, 06:56 pm Okay, at the risk of being accused of starting some kind of Internet prank, when I clicked on the link to "Just Cuz", my firewall detected that my computer almost sent my Credit Card information to "rateyourmusic.com". I have no idea why thought could be. I did not click on comments, which is hosted at rateyourmusic.com (well, until now, obviously). Anyway, take it for what it's worth. Christopher Kanis [email] [homepage]
May 23 2002, 06:58 pm Okay, I tried it again, and the same thing happened. Anyone else have Norton sent to watch for credit card information going out and getting this error? Christopher Kanis [email] [homepage]
May 24 2002, 01:04 am Norton Internet Security is complaining that rateyourmusic.com is using a third-party cookie to store information on your computer. The cookie contains the name, email, and homepage information of any previous comments that you've made, so that you don't have to type them in each time you comment. In a hysterical fashion, Norton assumes that this is being done for some sort of evil purpose, such as "tracking your activities" or "accidentally sending your credit card information". If you want to physically inspect the cookie from rateyourmusic.com, you can find it on your computer, usually in the c:\windows\cookies directory. If third-party cookies concern you, you can block them altogether in modern browsers such as Mozilla and IE6. Hope I've explained everything sufficiently, but if you have a question, then feel free to email me. Hossein [email] [homepage]
[Hossein is Hossein Sharifi, the creator of YACCS-ed]
May 24 2002, 05:04 am No, I don't think it. It didn't happen when I clicked on a comment. In any event, I've commented a zillion times before, I've got that cookie, and I permit it. It also doesn't happen when I go to any other YACCS-commented site. Norton's firewall has a feature wherein you tell it some of your personal information that you might occasionally send out over the internet, e.g., credit card numbers, bank accounts, social security, etc. It then monitors outgoing traffic from your computer to make sure that rogue programs don't manage to extract that information without your sending it unintentionally. When I try to go to "Just Cuz", the firewall explicitly tells me that one of my Credit Card numbers is being sent, and it gives me the opportunity to stop it. It definitely seems to be more than just the ordinary commenting cookie. Christopher Kanis [email] [homepage]
May 24 2002, 06:48 am Not sure what to say here Christopher. I just signed up with YACCS a few days ago, and a lot of other folks use it. I jsut cut and paste the code from their site. My firewall hasn't indicated anything weird going on when I open the site. Has anyone else experienced this? Dean at Just Cuz [email] [homepage] May 24 2002, 09:03 am
Ok, I've researched this further. Norton Internet security performs its security check by matching numbers that it finds in cookies with your personal information, as you described above. The only problem is that it generates this warning message when only four digits match. Given two 9+ digit numbers a and b, the chances that a four-digit substring in a will match a four-digit substring b is very high. As a matter of fact, it's so high that it will probably catch hundreds of false positives for every legitimate catch. You might want to read a very good post by one of the Seti@home project scientists, explaining how he has faced a number of complaints from people who thought that their credit numbers were being sent to seti@home. You can also read about complaints that AWS weatherbug has received regarding NIS here (read question #3). Finally, you read someone's complain on epinions here; the argument against this feature is similar to the one I described above. My guess is that one of the ID numbers for Just Cuz's YACCS account (either 90000021062 or one of his entry IDs) just happens to be similar to the last 4 digits of your credit card number. In any case, I can assure you that the YACCS is not attempting to access your credit card number, and it never has. It's ridiculous (and possibly libelous) that Norton has presented this claim to you as fact. If you still think that YACCS is transmitting your credit card number, I would be willing to contact Norton and complain, in order to resolve this issue. Hossein [email] [homepage]
I'm pretty much clueless about stuff like this, but maybe some of my readers aren't? About the only thing I can add is that Norton security programs have done some very weird things to my machines in the past. I won't run their software myself, but many others say they have no problems with it.
"It's [armed pilots] not even necessary," Mr. Hollings said. "Just keep the cockpit door closed. You can put up a sign in Arab — this is, say, type-casting, but say 'Try to hijack, go to jail.' Put that in every one of the airports in America so they'll all know hijacking is over with."
Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Alzheimer's) is an egregious fool. Are his constituents listening carefully to this drivel, I wonder? Do they realize what a malignant laughingstock their senator has become?
The uniformed leaders of the U.S. military believe they have persuaded the Pentagon's civilian leadership to put off an invasion of Iraq until next year at the earliest and perhaps not to do it at all, according to senior Pentagon officials.
I hope this is propaganda designed to mislead our enemies. I hope John Derbyshire is wrong. But this kind of news is worrisome. On the other hand,
"They [the military leaders] have been able to defer it, so they've won this round of the bureaucratic battle," said one Republican foreign policy expert who is hawkish on Iraq. But, he continued, "I don't believe you're going to see the president sit back and say, 'Sure, containment's the way to go, keeping him in the box is working.' "
In the end, it's Bush's decision. I hope he makes the right one.
President Bush said yesterday for the first time that he's against having an independent commission investigate pre-9/11 warnings, because he doesn't want to put top-secret intelligence at risk.
I'm in favor of an independent inquiry - I can't see any better way to get the accountability we need on the issue - but only if intelligence secrets can be protected. Which leaves me in a quandary, because too many politicians are either too self-aggrandizing, or just too stupid, to keep from leaking either on purpose or by accident.
One possible answer is to keep congress out of it as much as possible, or at least use retired congressional figures who are out of the political races, and hence don't need to leak to appear important. Instead, use real experts on the issues: former high intelligence ops, or other non-political specialists from outside the intel community who are nevertheless highly knowledgable about it.
We need to get some answers about where we failed and how we can improve. And, if for no other reason than the best forms of motivation consist of a carrot and a stick, I think a few heads need to roll as well.
Editor -- I agree with the government's decision to not allow pilots to carry weapons. When I fly, I want the cockpit crew to do what they were hired to do, that is, fly the plane. I don't want the pilot and co-pilot to be wandering around the aircraft playing cowboy. Many people perceive that it's no longer safe to travel by air, whether or not pilots are armed. When traveling by train, bus or car are also deemed to be unsafe, we Americans can just stop going places. We can sit in our homes or offices, be scared and congratulate the terrorists for having accomplished their goal. Terrorism doesn't just have to be physical -- it can be in our minds, too. REBECCA WOO San Francisco
No, Rebecca Woo, pilots are hired to see that your plane gets safely from point a to point b, and they are trained to use whatever skills are necessary to see that that occurs. By your logic, if a fire breaks out in first class, the pilots should ignore that fire extinguisher sitting next to them in the cockpit, and just "fly the plane." Are you so irrationally frightened of guns that you think the pilots (the large majority of who want them) don't understand their situation, capabilities, and needs better than you do? Or is it that you think pilots have a suicidal urge, and wish to play cowboy with guns in the cabin so they can destroy themselves?
British politicians and the media were warned yesterday to avoid demonising immigrants and asylum seekers after a damning EU report warned of mounting anti-Muslim prejudice across the continent. The government was legitimising racist debate by giving mixed messages, the head of the EU's anti-racism centre said.
A common heritage separated by different universes.
hoise \HOYZ\ (verb) : lift, raise; especially : to raise into position by or as if by means of tackle
Example sentence: Bethany was selected by her Girl Scout troop to hoise the American flag for Monday's Memorial Day ceremony on the town green.
Did you know? The connection between "hoise" and "hoist" is a bit confusing. The two words are essentially synonymous variants, but "hoist" is far more common. You'll rarely encounter "hoise" in any of its regular forms: "hoise," "hoised," or "hoising." But a variant of its past participle shows up fairly frequently as part of a set expression. And now, here's the confusing part -- that variant past participle is "hoist"! The expression is "hoist with one's petard," which means "hurt by one's own scheme." This oft-heard phrase owes its popularity to Shakespeare's _Hamlet_: "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar[d]." (A petard, by the way, is a medieval explosive device that had an unfortunate tendency to blow up the person setting it off.)
Matt Welch links to an LA Weeklypiece about Castro that mercifully doesn't try to pass the Bearded One off as the Marxist Second Coming (how's that for a mangled metaphor?), but as usual, the writer, one John Powers, plays the same off-hand liberal games that drive me nuts. Here's an example of one of my least-favorite tactics from that quarter, the gratuitous anti-Bush lie:
When President Bush flew down to Miami this week to reaffirm his hard-line stance on the embargo, he was motivated less by any great commitment to democracy than by a desire for votes -- brother Jeb is in a tight governor's race.
Yeah, right, tight race. Here's a poll from late March, 2002:
Bush 54% Reno 37
Bush 55% McBride 34
Bush 59% Frankel 26
Bush 58% Jones 24
More recent reports show no indications that those numbers have shifted much. Does that look like a close race to you? It looks like a Jeb Bush landslide to me. Yet Powers tosses off the first lie in support of a second one: That George Bush (who has no "great committment to democracy") has only one motivation for maintaining the Cuban embargo, and it is based on political calculations involving his brother's "tight race."
Man, I'm tired of this crap. And whenever I nail somebody on it, I hear the sweet voice of so-called reason whispering, "Bill, you know there isn't really any bias in the media." Like hell I do. If you want to convince me of that, then stop filling your freaking pieces with flat-out lies.
That said, I do find myself moving, at least somewhat, toward Matt's advocacy of dropping the embargo - if only to shut up the yappers who think it will transform Cuba. It won't. Nothing will, until Castro and his malevolent Communist tyranny are both gone.
Hmm, lessee. We've now been warned about attacks on banks, power lines and stations, apartment buildings, railroads, public transit, trucks, nuke plants, airplanes, and probably half a dozen other things I no longer remember. Could we stop with the horse patooties, please? These Islamofascist murderers are likely to attack anywhere, anytime, anything they think can cause a sizeable number of American deaths.
Anybody who hasn't already figured that out is dumber than a Democrat trying to claim that "Bush Knew."
Man, I'm never going to catch up. It's just one damned thing after another. [Damned thing? What a terrible thing to call a blog-ed]. Well, maybe. Anyhow, the current latest damned thing is a fine new blog called Just Cuz. Not hosted on Blogspot, either, so you should be able to read it regularly. Get to it from my permalinks, starting now.
Blogs needn't be only for A-list geekfreeks, or for wannabe pundits. Witness Nancy Crick's blog, an extraordinary and deeply poignant chronicle of her days and thoughts as a pain-wracked invalid suffering from terminal bowel cancer, leading up to her suicide surrounded by family and friends on May 22. (Link courtesy Brian Sinclair).
These friends suggest that West took umbrage at the suggestion that he was underperforming and read Summers' accusation to mean that he was calling West the equivalent of "a lazy negro." Summers later apologized, retracting some of what he said. "Anybody can tell you that I don't miss classes," West said May 7 at a Minneapolis speaking engagement.
"...retracting some of what he [Summers] said." None of which, it must be noted, included calling Cornel West a "lazy negro," as this Strib hack tries disengenuously to intimate he did. Nor did Summers ever "apologize" or "retract" anything. He said, "that he regrets the misunderstanding and that he is sorry that it took place." (How can this disgrace of a newspaper run the gamut from such openly biased "news reporting" as this, to the sublime James Lileks?
"Anybody can tell you that I don't miss classes." So is that all it takes to be Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. University Professor at Harvard, one of the most distinguished professorates in the world, Dr. West? Not missing classes? Jeebus. Harvard's performance inflation problem is worse than I ever imagined.
"All I will say is that Clifton and Irene [West, his parents] didn't raise a fool," West said. Nope, they raised a self-aggrandizing, pompous, overblown, underperforming jerk. Princeton may learn to regret the deal they made to get him, and in the meantime, up in Cambridge, MA, Larry Summers is (quietly) laughing his butt off.
The PA High Court in Ramallah today dropped charges against proven terrorist Fuad Shubaki. The court ruled that due to lack of evidence, Shubaki, considered to have been the mastermind behind the Karine-A weapons smuggling incident earlier this year, was not guilty.
One of the most pernicious popular misconceptions in the west is that, because the PA ran some fake elections several years ago, it is some sort of democracy. It is not. It is a one-man dictatorship headed by Yasser Arafat. There is no such thing as an independent Palestinian judiciary. They do what they are told, or dissenting judges's cars begin to have engine trouble - the engines explode.
Shoubaki was one of those the Israelis demanded custody of before they would release Yasser Arafat from his office captivity. The "truce agreement" brokered (read: forced on Israel) offered this "compromise:" turn the fugitives over to US and other guardians for a trial under Palestinian authorities. This is rather like turning Yasser Arafat's employees over for trial by...Yasser Arafat. Oh, hell. It isn't "rather like," that's what they did.
Nobody is surprised by the results of this cynical little game, least of all the Americans. Or the Israelis. As for the western media, most of them are probably cheering.
Gregory Hlatky wonders why we haven't seen a big upsurge in the usual anti-nuke groups protesting the impending conflict between nuclear powers Pakistan and India. Could it be because neither of those powers is...the United States?
Chris Mathews of Hardball fame has a blog, and he actually seems to understand the form. Short and punchy, a thlinker approach (linking and thinking), and loads-o-links to click on. The only thing is, I can't say I'm exactly sure he'd doing all the work himself. In fact, as regards all those links, I'd sort of guess he isn't. Links are a pain in the ass. If I could afford an assistant, I wouldn't do my own, either.
Joe Katzman pens a superb analysis of the potential Pakistan-India conflict. He delivers an impeccably logical conclusion: No nukes. I think he's right. One reason I haven't written a great deal on the issue myself is that I believed the fears of nuclear war were overblown. The US has troops in Pakistan. The US also has the sheer brute muscle to destroy almost all of the nuclear capability of both belligerent nations if it so desires, and I believe this has been communicated to each side in no uncertain terms. I do expect there will be a war, but I don't expect it to escalate much beyond targeted strikes and retaliations.
Chris Hitchens has been saying this for months now, but evidently he's no longer a voice crying in the liberal wilderness. Other progressives agree with him. (Link courtesy Instapundit).
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