One of Ours

Intellectually Disarmed

2004-07-30T04:40:00.000-07:00

"Because the Cold War is over does not mean that we are not in a war situation. We are - but our enemy's attack may come at any time, in unexpected form and on unannounced pretext. Our readiness to meet the threat is undermined by the legalistic mood that infects judiciary, police and government. The rhetoric of human rights now predominates over the dictates of defence necessity. We are intellectually disarmed, perhaps the weakest security posture in which it is possible for people to confront danger."

John Keegan

Democrats: Too Nice For Their Own Good

2004-07-29T05:54:00.000-07:00

Washington Post
TV Networks Continue to Fail the Public On Coverage of Politics

...the Democrats' namby-pamby decision to go positive -- not to attack the arguably very, very vulnerable administration of George W. Bush -- has put a pall of niceness over the proceedings that, try as they might, cranky-minded TV commentators haven't done much to dispel...

But a little hard-core, down-and-dirty political colloquy would seem more than appropriate for a time in which Americans are threatened by international terrorism on one side and economic woes on the other...
[...]
A viewer could have come away from the speech with the impression that Edwards was saying "a Kerry-Edwards administration will be even better than Bush-Cheney" rather than "the current administration has got to go." He didn't offer enough motivation for changing leadership in the middle of an apparently intractable war.
[...]
...Katie Couric told viewers of yesterday's "Today" show on NBC that Illinois legislator Barack Obama had "electrified" the crowd with his stunningly eloquent speech Tuesday night. Too bad NBC refused to show it. Too bad profit-mad NBC-Universal was determined to air its lame reality shows and sitcom reruns instead. And then Couric tells us we really should've been there. The networks are just plain nuts.
[...]
Coverage by cable networks lasts longer but strays often from whatever is happening on the vast stage (with the vast screen behind it) in Boston's FleetCenter. On Fox, gabby and opinionated commentators occasionally will allow a few minutes of a speech to air, but then they return to the spotlight they love so much for their own use.
[...]
...The networks have got to look for a better convention story than the hoary old bore about how conventions don't matter any more. It makes them sound like shills for the corporate front offices, who hate to lose an hour of profit-making pap even in the middle of summer.

Edwards' speech was nice, but 12 hours later I can't remember a significant phrase from it. Maybe "not in our America"? This makes it sounds like non-Democrats might be living in an America that is different than the one everyone else lives in. Sheesh.

It may seem trivial, and it is, but the Dems really need to come up with a campaign slogan with some resonance. Remember "putting people first" & "end welfare as we know it", "Building a bridge to the 21st century", "Are you better off than you were four years ago?", "it is morning again in America", and "compassionate conservative" & "leave no child behind"? I do. And I can tell you who said them in and for which winnning campaign (Clinton '92, Clinton '96, Reagan '80, Reagan '84, Bush 2000). These lines are memorable for a good reason. They told us something compelling about the specific candidate that made you want to vote for them, even if it wasn't true.

What is Kerry's theme? "Let's Restore America to...something", maybe? Who knows? God knows possibly but the public doesn't.

In tomorrow's speech I hope he tries for something compelling and superficial, as opposed to something serious and quickly forgetable. This is a big opportunity to connect to the people and he can't blow it.

Allies and Security

2004-07-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

"The best security we ultimately have is the spread of freedom and democracy and justice throughout the world…We are the ally of the US not because they are powerful, but because we share their values."

Tony Blair

Federal court: privacy policies mean nothing

2004-07-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica (tech news)
Some Judges are Nuts

Following 9/11, commercial airlines were asked to turn over passenger data they had collected to government agencies. These Passenger Name Records (PNRs) can include everything from a passenger's home address to their meal preferences and credit card numbers. In this particular case, Northwest Airlines turned over PNRs of many of its customers to NASA as part of an effort to study ways to increase airline security. A group of Northwest customers sued the company, pointing out that sharing their personal information with NASA is a direct violation of the privacy policy on Northwest's website. U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson disagreed, dismissing the case on June 6. Part of the rationale was that

. . . the customer's "personally identifiable information" -- the stuff that the airline agreed to protect -- did not belong to the customer, because the customer "voluntarily provided some information that was included" in the information given to the government, and that when Northwest "compiled and combined" this information with other data it "became Northwest's property." The court concluded "Northwest cannot wrongfully take its own property." This analysis is not limited to airlines. Any company or entity is now free to say anything in order to induce you to part with your personal information (don't worry, it's secure, or we won't sell it), because once you give it up, it "belongs" to them.
Needless to say, this case (PDF) has far-reaching implications for privacy policies, both online and on paper. Further, Judge Magnuson decided that online privacy policies don't constitute a contract between the company and the customer:

The final part of the district judge's opinion threatens to derail a long established body of law regarding the enforceability of language on websites. All companies have them -- you know, the burdensome and oppressive terms on a website that nobody reads (or is capable of reading) that limits the company's liability, or contains grandiose claims of superiority of their vaporware. In this case, the court held that Northwest was not bound by contract to do what it said it would do because there was no evidence that the consumers "actually read the privacy policy."
Essentially, what this means is that all those long-winded fine print agreements you have agreed to may not protect your personal information at all. Without judges who will step up to defend the privacy rights of consumers, it won't matter even if everyone starts reading the fine print thoroughly. By dismissing this case, Judge Magnuson has established that the personal information of online customers is not protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or deceptive trade practices laws. Nor does sharing customers' personal information amount to an invasion of privacy or a breach of contract. With E-Commerce growth showing no signs of ebbing, the question of how confidential customer information is handled online is going to become increasingly urgent. Without any privacy protection at all, you are at the mercy of the company you are doing business with to honor the agreement. If they do not, then according to Judge Magnuson, you have no legal recourse at all.

This opinion is so outrageous that I can't imagine that it won't be overturned on appeal. Then again, sometimes "the law is an ass".

Wierd Stuff From Japan #12

2004-07-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

J-Box

Another hop across the Pacific, and I'm back in Japan again. Arriving at Narita, I unconsciously opened myself up to all the little changes that would greet me as I switched modes. Immediately I was impressed with how well-mannered all the Japanese around me were -- around the baggage carousel there's a "no cart" zone, and everyone was politely waiting for their luggage with their carts outside the zone. Several of the girls I saw waiting for their luggage sported "yaeba" (YAH-eh-bah), the famous cute crooked eye teeth that Japanese females often have, since Japanese very rarely get braces on teeth here. To combat the sweltering heat and humidity of the air around me, I went to buy a drink. While there were many choices familiar to anyone from the States -- Coke, Pepsi, even Mello-Yellow, which is being sold in "retro" bottles here this summer -- more than half the drinks available were varieties of bottled Chinese oolong or green tea.

As usual, I lost a day in my return trip to Japan, leaving on Monday afternoon from California and arriving on Tuesday night. It's only fair since I get a day free when I go the other way, leaving Japan at 2 p.m. and arriving in America at 8 a.m. on the same day, in effect arriving before I'd even left. Jumping from one side of the planet to the other means dealing with jet lag, which is never fun. Jet lag is really bad going from Japan to the U.S., since you have to stay awake a whole day before it's time to sleep, however going the other way isn't so bad: you just wake up too early the next day, and start to get dull around the edges in the afternoon.

Japan's cold northern region is home to enka, the blues-like "country music" of Japan that has a very unique sound and is enjoyed by truck drivers and everyone over 50 years of age here. Filled with themes of one's wife running away to marry another man, of images of the cold Tsugaru Straits between Honshu and Hokkaido, and of sake-drenched loneliness, it plucks at the heart in ways few other kinds of music can. Sung by both men and women, enka songs capture the sweet pain that we all feel in life. Enka, which probably originated in Korea, often employs tremolo vocals, singing while changing the pitch of your voice (not totally unlike yodeling) to express the emotion of the singer. Because enka songs are the last thing Japanese would expect a gaijin to be able to sing, I made it a point to learn many songs when I came to Japan, great fun while singing karaoke. Here are some samples of enka if you'd like to hear what it sounds like:

http://www.quixium.com/enka/ayako_fuji.mp3

http://ar.geocities.com/badfish19u/bokyosakaba.mp3

NOTE: This item is part of a continuing series based on weekly emails I have recieved for many months now from this guy from San Diego who now lives and works in Japan. The link listed above is a comercial link to his company. I am sure he would like you to look at it.

Intelligence

2004-07-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

“The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.”

Marya Mannes

Iraqi Minutemen

2004-07-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

USMC News Release
Iraqi soldiers' sacrifice in Marine zone saves lives of 250

The quick reaction of two Iraqi National Guard soldiers cost them their own lives, but saved those of 250 recently.

"The people who did this are against the advancement of Iraq. They are only trying to start violence and cause a nuisance," said Sgt. Ali Al-Hamdani, a spokesman for the Mahmudiyah ING. "These soldiers were very good at their duties. Their sacrifice is necessary for the security of Iraq."

More than 250 Iraqi men had gathered outside the front gates of the compound here during the morning of July 17. Many were interested in joining the newly formed Iraqi National Guard and working to rebuild their country. One terrorist saw this as the best time to strike.

A taxi approached the front gates at 7:45 a.m., according to witnesses. One of the Iraqi soldiers on duty at the gate that morning was Adil Abed, a young man who was planning to be married next week. He would never see his ceremony or his bride-to-be again. Abed attempted to stop the suspicious taxi. When the driver failed to respond, Abed fired his AK-47 and the driver returned fire with a pistol, hitting Abed.

The soldier's comrade Sadaam Obeeid rushed forward to help his friend when the taxi, packed with explosives, detonated. The blast sent shrapnel and debris a hundred meters in every direction killing the two soldiers, the driver and injuring many of the civilians standing near the gate. The engine block of the taxi landed 80 meters away from the blast. It landed on top of a parked car.

When the confusion caused by the attack died down, the soldiers took time to reflect on what they'd lost a few days later.

"We are very sad. They were our friends and now we've lost them. They were good men," said Deputy Sgt. Thaid Hadiph, an ING soldier from Mahmudiyah. "The sacrifice they made for Iraq will not be forgotten."

The Iraqi solders' actions weren't surprising for the Marines dedicated to training them to take a greater role in security and rooting out terrorism. Lt. Col. Rick Jackson is a 46-year-old from Allendale, N.J. Marine serving as the deputy director of Iraqi Security Forces for 1st Marine Division. He said the actions, while tragic, are telling of the dedication of Iraqis sworn to protect their nation.

"These guys are out training with us every day," Jackson explained. "We do joint patrols together. To hear they stood their ground and acted the way they did isn't that surprising at all."

Jackson refuted rumors that ING soldiers were unwilling or unable to perform their missions. He compared their training to that of Marines.

"If you enlisted a Marine in February, when these guys stood up, he wouldn't be to his first unit by now," he said. "Now, they're not Marines, but if you look at the amount of formalized training and the threat, they're doing a pretty good job."

The soldiers of the ING here showed some sadness when they talked about their friends killed in the explosion. However, through the loss, they also found new resolve to continue protecting the people of Iraq.

"They are holy victims of the war on terrorism," said Iraqi Sgt. Haair Ahamy, an ING soldier. "They stood up and were brave, protecting their people. They were cowards, the terrorists who attacked us."

[...]

Every hour, men approach the gate to join the ING. One recruit said he did not like the deaths of the soldiers but he was not afraid of it.

"The terrorists were trying to discourage people from joining the ING with their attack," Ahamy said. "In the days following it we have had many, many men come to us wanting to join. They see the attack as proof they are needed. Terrorists will not win here."

via Blackfive

Despite the near certainty of mortal danger, young Iraqi men are volunteering in large numbers for the security forces such that they have continued to exceed the capacity to train them. Even hearing near daily stories of men in line waiting to join up being attacked by suicide car bombers, these brave young men continue to go into public places and stand in these vulnerable lines for hours.

I am awed by the bravery and determination of the Iraqis to build a normal country. It is to their great credit.

Good news from Afghanistan, Part 2

2004-07-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

Chrenkoff

...If there is one place where good news is harder to come by than Iraq, it's Afghanistan. For that we should partly blame our poor understanding of Afghan realities, and consequently, unrealistic expectations. An isolated, poor, largely rural country with harsh landscapes and limited natural resources, Afghanistan has been for the past quarter of a century cursed with constant violence and oppression. Good news from Afghanistan will not in any foreseeable future mean mushrooming shopping malls and health care clinics in every village. For the people who have suffered so much for so long, relative peace and absence of theocracy are a good start.

But, as is the case with reporting from Iraq, we shouldn't let the media off the hook so easily, either. For all the fashionable talk about Iraq distracting the Bush Administration from the war on terror, it's largely been the media who have ignored Afghanistan except for the occasional story about another skirmish with the Taliban remnants or the explosion in opium cultivation.

CBS's veteran journalist, Tom Fenton, recently had this to say about the work of his media colleagues: "You know the old saying: No news is good news. But in the news business, it is just the opposite: Good news is no news - which is why you have been hearing so little from Afghanistan recently.

"Iraq has been grabbing the headlines. Even the most confirmed optimist would find it hard to see a ray of light there today. But there is a growing body of evidence that things are beginning to improve in Afghanistan. To see why, you need to travel around Afghanistan a bit. That's something the media find hard to do in Iraq now - many news crews rarely venture out of their hotels in Baghdad."
Not to mention in Kabul. If they did, they would arguably find more stories like these:

DEMOCRACY: The Afghanis eagerly await their chance to participate in free and democratic elections...

The Afghanis are growing increasingly optimistic about the future of their country and approving of its current political direction. According to a poll conducted by Chaney Research, AC Nielsen India Org-Marg and the Afghan Media Resource Center for the Asia Foundation, Hamed Karzai remains popular in Afghanistan, enjoying favorable opinion of 62% of those polled. The interim government's performance gets a tick of approval from 57% of Afghanis. In other results from the same poll, 64% of Afghanis believe that their country is moving in the right direction (versus only 11% who think Afghanistan is moving in the wrong direction). More significantly, two thirds of those polled support the United States, and only 11% still favor Taliban. 81% plan to vote in the coming elections, although majority expresses concerns whether the poll will be completely fair...

SOCIETY: Afghani refugees continue to vote with their feet: "The pace of return to Afghanistan remains strong, with thousands of refugees going back daily. So far this year, we've seen some 450,000 refugees repatriate."...

...And the government seems to be succeeding [in improving the status of women]: "Now, a good share of the women have shed the burqa the Taliban forced on them and instead wear scarves draped loosely around their faces. Many have gone back to work in the capital, Kabul. More than 2 million have registered to vote, and a few hold high-level government positions."...

...After the puritanical Taliban rule, Afghanis are enjoying an entertainment explosion:
"...many shish-kebab restaurants and ice cream shops now play music videos and foreign films on DVD, giving new meaning to the idea of dinner and a movie. And unlike the films shown at both government and privately owned theatres, these films are uncensored and can be seen in the evenings."

RECONSTRUCTION: In a huge vote of confidence and a sign of optimism, the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce is formed in Kabul: "Three hundred people were expected; 2,500 showed up to vote. Obvious was their energy, their enthusiasm, their pride and their strength. They were creating one of those institutions that becomes a pillar of a free society, an economic power independent of the state."

The trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan stood at just $20 million two years ago, but today it's $700 million...

SECURITY: For the Coalition troops things seem a lot calmer than in Iraq. "People are more apprehensive about us in Iraq... Here, they stare at us like we're a circus act, but they accept us," says Michael Englert, a Navy bomb-disposal expert who travels with the Marines to help detect roadside explosives and mines.

Meanwhile, the new US-trained Afghan Army continues to grow steadily, and it now numbers 13,000 men...

...Let's never forget that none of this would have been possible without the United States and allies who two and half years ago helped to bring peace and freedom to the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. Let's hope that, with the world's help, the Afghanis will now make the most of it.

The most essential next steps are the elections, and building the new Afghan national army to about 80,000 men in size. These two items will do more to build stability in Afghanistan than anything else that can be done.

Terrorists' Strongholds

2004-07-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

Hammorabi (from Baghdad)

There are several outlawed groups working inside Iraq. Al-Qaeda represented by the Jordanian Fadhel Nazal Al Khalaylah (Zarqawi) and the remaining of the security forces of the previous regime are on the top two on the list...which includes the Baathists especially among those from the previous security systems who were involved in murder and torture and knew they will have no where to go or hide once the security issue settled. Most of these people are illiterate or semiliterate. Wahabists of course are the main moving drive for Al-Qaeda and the nescient and uncultivated people.

Among the other outlawed groups are the real criminals including those released from prison by Saddam. The last group includes killers, rapists, robbers, and money seeking but masked under religion or resistance. Most important and among these groups especially Al-Qaeda and the Wahabists are many Arabs insurgents like Syrians, Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, Somalians, Sudanese, Libyans reaching up to 75% in some cases.

The problem started in Falluja and some other parts of what is called the Sunni triangle...They succeeded to convert Falluja into a city under Talaban like rules and they then tried to create another stronghold inside Baghdad in Al Adhamyiah but to some extent they failed there with few seats. They are certainly supported by what is called Hiyat Uolama Al Muslimen (Sunni group from those Mullahs appointed by Saddam and joined by the Wahabists then) lead by (Sheikh Hareth Al Thari). The later are supported by (Sheikh) Karthawi in Qatar and the Oil (Sheikhs) in Dubai plus Al Jazeera as their mouthpiece.

[...]

The terrorists then succeeded recently to get the second strongest hold in Samarra!...For the last few weeks until now Samarra is under the terrorists' control. They are mixture of all above mentioned groups. More than 300 of them are armed and controlling the city completely now. About 45% of the residents have been forced or moved by their choice to Baghdad and other areas. The government and coalition troops tried to solve the problem peacefully to avoid creating another Falluja but the insurgent get the benefit and enforced their control. They not only controlling the city but imposing their Talaban like law on the inhabitants.

Stories about this have been mentioned by the immigrant families. They are imposing their jungle law on the people including the colour and type of dress, the Wahabists women Hijab, the way to walk or talk or listen to music and so on. In one story the armed thugs stopped a school aged boy and after they pointed a gun to his head they asked him not to wear blue jeans next time and to cut his hair or they will shot him! The boy went to the hairdresser and cut his hair before he goes home to change his jean!

Samarra is close to Baghdad and the terrorist will use it in any scenario to extend their grip over the region...

Our surprise is why the government don't like to take the issue seriously! We think that the more time pass without treatment the more serious the cancer will be. The cancer has to be treated early with very imperative and radical therapy or you will get the consequences. We believe that enough time has been given to the terrorists and outlawed in Samarra and Falluja and those supporting them in Baghdad from the Mullahs. The situation is an Iraqi issue and it have to be solved by an Iraqi way. Toady they attacked the oil supply to a power station in Baghdad just near Samarra.

The criminals in Sammara should be dealt with immediately. First we need to give them a 3 days truce to surrender to the authorities of course after surrounding the city from all sides with tanks and armoured vehicles and heavy guns supported by air. Drop leaflets to warn the civilians not to hide any insurgent or face consequences and to leave the city (only children and women and old allowed. All others are suspect until proved otherwise.) The number of insurgents is 300-500 armed thugs, so if they refuse to surrender wipe them out once and forever. Only by this way we will be able to prevent this from happening again. On the same time any media or logistic or inciting for terrorism or helping it should be arrested including the Mullahs of the previous regime and those who broadcast for Al Jazeera.

On the other hand if you want the law to be respected there should not be any discrimination in applying it. The suspected killers should be tried and either convicted or freed by the justice...Yesterday; this happened with Muqtada Sadr who speak in public after 2 month hiding. He attacked Alawi for allowing his newspaper to be published again after it was closed by the CPA! We think that Alawi deserve such attack because he is the one who allowed Sadr paper to open again! If there are evidence against Sadr that he killed some one before why the law is not applied on him?! ...

The issues need to be solved to get security is from inside and not only from outside countries. Falluja, Samarra, the Black Triangle, Sadr, Al Thari, the Mullahs of Saddam, and the other criminals all need to be dealt with by determination and capability.

Since Samarra became stronghold for the terrorists the attacks and the kidnapping increased significantly. On the other hand Falluja lungs start to breathe in and out strongly. The news coming about decapitated bodies found here and there, assassinations, killing, kidnapping, attacks, and other crimes on daily basis are countless.

For how long is the government postponed dealing firmly with these areas and its thugs?!

The Iraqis are certainly more willing to deal strongly with the insurgents and the terrorists than we ever were.

Eventually the Iraqi government will have to retake Samarra and Fallujah, and when they do the results will be very bloody. Fewer civilians would have been killed if we had done it instead of waiting for the Iraqi security forces to do it.

I suspect the delay in dealing with these issues is mostly due to the relative weakness of the Iraqi security forces. It will take 6-12 months before they have the sufficient capacity to handle an operation such as the siege of Fallujah.

"Thank You"

2004-07-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

“One time, while out on a patrol in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq I had a small little Iraqi girl hand me a flower, and say the words: ‘Thank you.’ That's something the protesters back home will never understand.”

CBFTW

Wierd Stuff From Japan #11

2004-07-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

J-Box

Transliteration is the act of transcribing from one writing system into another, for example from Japanese to the Roman alphabet. There are several aspects of Japanese that make writing Japanese words in English an inherently vague and challenging process. For example, there are long vowels in Japanese that are meaningless when written out in English and which don't affect the pronunciation of words at all. The correct way to write "pretty girl" in Japanese is "bishoujo" with the extra 'u' in the middle, and yet it's often shortened to "bishojo" for brevity's sake. Is it better to leave the long vowels in the word, which complicates pronunciation and makes the words harder to remember, or should they be omitted? There's no simple answer. Famous place names like Tokyo and Osaka also have long vowels that are cut to avoid making the name needlessly long -- actually, Toukyou and Oosaka would be more accurate ways of writing the names, but it would be silly to do this. Another area where there is vagueness about how to write Japanese words or names in English is L and R. Is Japanese AV idol Aoi Sora better written as Aoi Sola? There's often little agreement and so both names are used sometimes -- there's no "right" way to write it. It can be very confusing, especially to search engines that can't tell that two similar words are the same.

Another problem is how to transliterate some Japanese syllables into Roman characters. Japanese is syllable-based: you can express sounds like ka, ki, ku, ke, and ko in Japanese, but not the consonant "k" all by itself. Three of the syllables in Japanese are pronounced "shi" "tsu" "chi" and thus, it's natural that they be written that way. This is part of the Hepburn system of transliterating, and most gaijin favor it because it makes the word easier to pronounce when read by English speakers. Another system, the Nihon system, forces these three syllables into neat "consonant + vowel" pairs, producing "si" "tu" and "ti" for the above three syllables even though the sounds aren't pronounced like that at all. As with computing platforms, the inferior system has been adopted as the official standard, and millions of Japanese children are forced to learn the Nihon system in Japanese schools -- a girl whose name was Chikako would be taught to write her name as Tikako, rendering it so that no one could pronounce it properly. Typical...

Dying for your country

2004-07-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

General George S. Patton

Wierd Stuff From Japan #10

2004-07-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

J-box

One aspect of child-rearing in Japan I've been surprised at is how much
responsibility is given to kids. My son had to take off school a few days
earlier than the other kids to come to the U.S. with me, and I was
surprised to see that it was his own responsibility to write a note and
deliver it to the principal to get permission to leave school early, not
his mother's. In Japan, public school isn't completely free, and parents
have to pay around $100-150 each month for various school-related expenses,
and his money is delivered each month in cash by my kids, even though
they're only in the second and third grade. Kids also are more free to make
important decisions about their future than they would be in the U.S., too.
My own son, for example, made the decision to go to the new experimental
English school that's opening up next April, and if he'd said he didn't
want to go, we wouldn't have forced him. When kids are in their last year
of Junior high school, they have to decide what to do next: study hard and
try to get into a good high school, which will help them get into a
top-name college; go to a less challenging high school that's easy to get
into; or, in very rare cases, not bother with high school and just get a
job, since compulsory education ends after the ninth grade. Of course
parents and teachers have input in the child's decision about his future,
but in general I've been surprised to see that the child is usually the one
making most of the decisions.

It's fun to live in Japan, and I really enjoy it, but you do without some
things from home. There's no central heating in Japan, and so on rooms are
either heated or cooled as you use them. This is great for conserving
energy, but it's hard to walk from a very warm room to one that's below
freezing in the winter. Often you learn to make do with what's available to
you. You make do with what's on television, too: I was never
really a fan of Beverly Hills 90210 or all the films of Steven Segall, but
when that's all that's on in English, you'd be surprised what you can
watch.

All gaijin seem to have a special love of Kyoto. Built in 794 A.D., it's
built in a grid pattern that's very logical and easy to navigate, amazing
for a city so old. Originally named Heiankyo, the life and times of ancient
Japanese court life are recorded in the famous book (considered to be the
first modern novel), Genji Monogatari, A Tale of Genji. One of the most
famous sights of the city is the amazing Golden Pavillion (Kinkakuji),
rebuilt after it was burned down in 1950 by a young monk who thought that
the gaudy building didn't mesh with the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism.
Amazingly, the city is one of Japan's most modern cities, with a recently
completed large train station of gleaming glass and steel girders.
Foreigners are always captivated by the city when they go there the first
time, and Kyoto holds a special place in the hearts of everyone who visits
the city.

The Japanese language has a great many kotowaza or old proverbs, recounting
the wisdom of past generations. It's fun for gaijin to study these
proverbs, because no one expects a foreigner to know archaic Japanese
sayings. One of my favorite kotowaza is "ningen banji saiou-ga-uma" which
means "All things are like Saiou's horse." This refers to an old Chinese
story about a man named Saiou whose horse broke his leg -- making everyone
say how unfortunate he was. Because he had no horse, though, he didn't have
to go off to battle to be killed, so this was a good thing. The moral of
the story is, when something good or bad happens, no one can say for sure
if it is truly a good or bad thing in the end. Another proverb you hear a
lot is "ishi no ue ni mo san-nen" which is translatable as "Three years
sitting on a stone makes it comfortable." In other words, if you're going
to try something new, keep at it for at least three years before you give
up. Also: "suki koso mono no jozu nare" which means "What one likes, one
does well," or, you become good at doing things you actually like doing, so
choose your career based on what you like to do. If you want to see more
Japanese proverbs, here's an interesting page:
http://www.ite.ie/proverbs/jproverb.htm

Real Heroes

2004-07-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

“Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they've stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments.”

Kevin Costner

Be Back Thursday

2004-07-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Bad news folks. I will be out of town for the next three days so you won't see an update here until Thursday.

God Bless America, Baseball & Apple Pie

Zayphar

Victory and Defeat

2004-07-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model

Our Muslim and Arab leaders are good at making their worst defeats look like great victories and they’re great experts in this field. And I see that the free world is an expert in making their great victories look like defeats and this is the reason why Arab leaders lose again and again while the free world triumphs again with less sacrifices.

The sharp criticism to each process enables you to avoid the mistakes of the previous experiments and turns errors to useful lessons, and this is great. But this time I see that the western media has went beyond the limits of objective criticism and rational pursue for truth.

The media are not displaying their view point leaving the decision making to the audience. I see that the media are pushing us to adopt their opinions and this is totally unacceptable.

The media is losing credibility among the audience and this is happening so fast and it is a huge mistake.

I want to say to the media: by continuing like this you’re taking the dictators and terrorists’ side and you’re feeding their arrogance when you say "We were wrong when we went to Iraq" or "Iraq was better off before the war and Iraqis and the world are suffering because of the war" and you’re using the failure to find the Iraqi WMDs and the casualties among Iraqi civilians as a weapon in this media war.

[...]

...I’m going to list what I see as the most important questions that must be asked to verify whether the operation was a success or not and whether it served Iraqis and the world or not.

- Do you think that Saddam had he been left alone would have developed WMDs?
- Do you think that Saddam’s regime represented a danger to his people, the region and the whole world?
[...]
- Do you think that dealing with such threats, if you believe they existed, was a matter of urgency?
[...]
- Do you think that Iraqis were going to revolt against Saddam soon and what would it have cost Iraq?
[...]
- Do you think there’s a real possibility for a totalitarian regime or a dictatorship to rule Iraq and kill millions of people again?
[...]
- Do you think the fact that Iraqis keep volunteering to serve in the new army, police, National Guard; doing their jobs in every field; preparing for elections despite the terrorist attacks is a good sign that gives hope in the future?
[...]
- Do you think that future governments in Iraq will be an ally for terrorists or make Iraq a training base for terrorists?
- Do you think Iraq now has a better chance to be a democratic peaceful nation that will not threaten anyone than before?

We always support the free media as they watch the authorities, criticize them and expose their faults and corruption but it seems that the media's role has increased considerably lately and about to become more like a first authority rather than the fourth one as its role in affecting governments decisions and policies has expanded and this great expansion in power has given the opportunity for corruption to creep in...I want to say to the media: keep watching them and we’ll keep watching you.

This has always been my big peeve. The media is reflexively reactionary when it comes to progressive economic and social policies, and radical when it comes to national security issues.

I prefer the old way -- Guns and Butter. Instead the media seems to prefer cap pistols and hardtack.

Iraqi Celebrations: A Rain of Lead

2004-07-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model

...Shooting in the air in funerals or weddings-or when something important happens-is an old tradition used in Iraq...

When I reached the health center I discovered that not only one man was dead; a woman was killed and three other people (one of them is a 7 year old kid) were injured by the falling bullets. In addition to that, a bullet had penetrated an eight thousand gallon gasoline tanker that was waiting to be evacuated near the gas station and it blew up causing a huge damage to the station (the suburb suffered from a severe shortage in gasoline for 5 days after that).
I also discovered that this wasn’t the first time for such accidents to happen. People told me that several similar accidents took place in the last several months but I wasn’t aware of those because I spend a considerable portion of my time in Baghdad.

This accident made me believe that strict measures must be taken to avoid the recurrence of such unnecessary loss because sometimes this random shooting in the air in a residential area can cause casualties not less than those caused by a car bomb and actually it did more than once; I recall that in 1988 when the war with Iran ended there was enormous shooting that lasted for a whole night and the result was catastrophic; hundreds were killed and more than a thousand were injured and last year, when Uday and Qussay were killed, sources from the ministry of health reported that over 70 people were killed and a larger number injured. This wasn’t because of some clashes or bomb attacks, it was because of the free falling bullets...

The problem with traditions is that they are very hard to stop even when they are obviously stupid and self-destructive traditions (e.g. clitoridectomy in Africa, wife-stealing from central Asia, smoking tobacco, etc.).

The only way to combat this is through a sustained public education campaigns by the athorities. As in the example of smoking, this campaign may need to be sustained for a generation or more (20-40 years) before substantial reductions in the behavior are realized.

Accusation: Iraqi PM executed six insurgents

2004-07-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

Sydney Mornning Herald
by Paul McGeough in Baghdad

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.

But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.

Iraq's Interior Minister, Falah al-Naqib, is said to have looked on and congratulated him when the job was done. Mr al-Naqib's office has issued a verbal denial.

[...]

There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's capacity for brutality...

...the witnesses did not perceive themselves as whistle-blowers. In interviews with the Herald they were enthusiastic about such killings, with one of them arguing: "These criminals were terrorists. They are the ones who plant the bombs."...

Since only the SMH has this story (not even Al-Jazeera), there is no way to balance it off of other news souces.

More Arab conspiracy theory nonsense I suspect.

Not enough troops in Iraq?

2004-07-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

Anonymous wrote "They should have stationed more troops in Fallujah and throughout Iraq to suppress the insurgency."
Anon, you are making a common mistake, which you often hear parroted wrongly on the TV news.

The Army had plenty of troops in Fallujah. First the 3ID then the 82nd. But the local people rioted when the 3ID clamped down on insurgent activity. When the 82nd Ariborne division took over, in order to avoid a fight or be seen as being opressive, the US commanding general decided to move his troops to bases outside of town. The local leadership and IP promised that they would contain the radicals within the town (the general bought a bridge).

This was a huge strategic blunder on the part of the commander of the 82nd. There were always plenty of troops. The problem was that most of them were sitting around doing nothing, or patrolling areas that were removed from the actual hot spots.

Let us be bold and name the guilty party: Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack, Jr.

There were always plenty of troops. The problem was poor intelligence, poor operational deployment, and too many troops carrying out cold war jobs that were basically useless.

Occupation

2004-07-16T06:18:00.000-07:00

PBS News Hour
The News hour did an extended interview with the Iraqi Ambassador to the US, Anbassador Rend Al-Rahim Francke.

JIM LEHRER: How can there not be occupation when there's still 140,000 foreign troops in Iraq?

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: Well, there are troops in Japan, there are troops in Germany, until recently there were multi-national troops in Germany. There are troops in Korea, and in various other parts of the world. Do we deny that Japan is a sovereign nation? Do we deny that Germany is a sovereign state, or South Korea?

I do not think that the presence of troops in the country undermines sovereignty. The Iraqi government is sovereign to the extent that it determines the disposal of its resources, of its funds, it determines its own political development. And it also organizes its relationship with the multinational force that is in the country. And that is what sovereignty means to us.

She also discusses the creation of and expected efficacy of the new internal security forces, the nature of the insurgency, the believed existance of WMDs, the neccesity of removing Saddam and his sons from power.

Read the rest of this interview with this very composed and well spoken lady. The transcript includes pictures of the interview.

Our ongoing detainee release missions

2004-07-16T06:07:00.000-07:00

Dagger JAG (US Army JAG lawyer in Tikrit, Iraq)

In the late morning we took part in one of our ongoing detainee release missions. I remember reading some newspaper articles when we first started the large releases from Abu Ghraib but you don't hear too much about them anymore.

Our convoy left FOB DAGGER and drove to a link up point on the outskirts of Tikrit. There, after a short wait, we met an Iraqi bus carrying about 25 Iraqis that were being released from Abu Ghraib. We escorted the bus to a more secure location and then started to process the detainees. As we drove through downtown Tikrit the detainees on the bus were leaning out of the windows waving to everyone on the street. And everyone on the street was waving back, police men, iraqis on bicycles, kids, they were all waving smiling and yelling encouragement. Cars were honking their horns. They must all have known what was going on.

All of the detainees had been detained by 4ID before we had arrived in country so we didn't know too much about them. We were only supposed to release eleven individuals here in Tikrit and the rest were going to go up to Kirkuk...

After getting the bus sorted out we sat our eleven guys in some bleachers, gave them water and a new dishdasha (the robes that are popular here) and an Iraqi National Guard major welcomed them back to society. The speech wasn't translated into english but I imagine he told them that, now that they are free again, they needed to keep out of trouble and help support the new government's efforts at establishing security.

At previous releases we've had Al Jazeera and CNN reporters present and filming the release. Yesterday we had two Iraqi reporters for Agence France Presse. They were videotaping everything and got to interview a number of the released detainees. I would be curious to see if it makes it on the air and what kind of angle they put on it.

It is good to hear about a normal day for some of our guys over there. It is easy to forget that they have normal days.

Tikrit is Saddam's home town but there has been little trouble there because the Army assigned an entire brigade to hold the city and therefore the insurgents have not had a chance to get started there.

Why do our fellow Arabs wish us Iraqis harm?

2004-07-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

THE MESOPOTAMIAN (Sunni from Baghdad)

...it would be nice if they could become less selfish, less hypocritical, less addicted to lying, treachery and jealousy. That would be nice. And perhaps they could show a little more concern about the murder of our people, the destruction of our livelihood, the sabotage of our national assets and infrastructure. It would be even nicer if they could actually stop perpetrating these rather unfriendly acts.

Also, somewhat it seems to us that cutting the heads of hostages is not a particularly good way of illustrating the Arab and Islamic nobility of spirit; especially if it is done in the name of Allah. I mean we are puzzled, because we thought that Allah was The Merciful; the Compassionate. But hard as we try to understand our brothers, we don’t seem to be able to comprehend the merciful nature of their actions. Perhaps we are not sufficiently well trained philosophically and too ignorant to appreciate the finer points of theology and the relationship between beheadings and various forms of murder to monotheism and Jihad in the name of The Merciful, the Compassionate.

...We have yet to appreciate that the true way of the Lord calls for drenching the earth with human blood. We seem to remember that the Gods of paganism craved for human sacrifice; “The Gods are thirsty – Les Dieux Ont Soif”. Do we have sneaking suspicions that these ancient creeds have crept back into your system of belief?...

The bitterness shown here by Alaa shows an essential truth.

It seems strange that the Arab public thinks it perfectly fine to cheer on the slaughter of Iraqi civillians in the name of liberating Iraq from an occupation that no longer exists. This appears to show a sense of blood-thristy cruelty that is very disconcerting to observe.

Judge strikes down Washington state's violent video game law

2004-07-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica (tech news)

In May 2003, Washington state passed a law that prevented sale of video games to minors that portrayed "realistic or photographic-like depictions of aggressive conflict" against law enforcement officers. Retailers would have been subject to a $500 fine per violation of the law. The ban never went into effect after Judge Robert Lasnik ruled the law was likely unconstitutional and issued an injunction against its use. Now, a year after that injunction was handed down, Lasnik has ruled the law is a violation of free speech. The judge called the law too narrow because it banned violence against police officers and not violence against others. He also called the law too broad because the law guidelines were unclear on what would trigger a ban. Would Yosemite Sam be considered a law enforcement officer?
"Would a game built around 'The Simpsons' or the 'Looney Tunes' characters be 'realistic' enough to trigger the act?" he wrote. "The real problem is that (a store) clerk might know everything there is to know about the game and yet not be able to determine whether it can legally be sold to a minor." Lasnik also noted that violence against tyrannical or oppressive police officers would likely fall under the ban.

To obey the law, he said, store clerks would tend to be overly cautious in selling games to minors and game makers would tend to be overly cautious in designing them - resulting in a chilling effect on free speech.
The state had argued that the law was important in helping curb violence among youths, including that against law enforcement officers.

Another bit of idiocy from my revered State Legislature bites the dust.

What a waste of time. Don't those idiots in Olympia have anything better to do?

Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act signed into law

2004-07-16T05:41:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica (tech news)

Identity theft has become one of the fastest-growing crimes in the United States. Depending on the source, it is estimated that between 7 million to 10 million Americans are victims of identity fraud at a cost over a billion dollars a year. For victims of identity fraud, it may mean months of headaches trying to recover monetary losses and repair credit. For perpetrators, if caught and prosecuted, it may only mean probation with restitution. That may change with today's signing of the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act (ITPEA). The new law strengthens penalties against identity fraud by setting up sentencing guidelines for those who possess another's identification-related information with intent to commit a crime.

I am not a big fan of mandatory sentancing, but the goverment has to make a stand of some sort because this has gotten way out of control.

Wierd Stuff From Japan #9

2004-07-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

J-Box

When you become bilingual in a second language, you actually develop a second personality that's "turned on" when you speak that language. My Japanese personality is much more humble and polite than my English one, and I get laughs by the J-List staff when, during phone conversations in Japanese, I accidentally bow to the person on the other end of the line. I've noticed a strange development in the Japanese side of my brain, too: a ridiculous sense of humor. For some strange reason that I can't comprehend, my brain comes up with incredibly corny jokes in Japan (called "ojisan gag" or jokes that a middle-aged man would make), which I constantly torment the J-List staff with. For example, I'll observe that "Pyramids are zig-zag shaped" (in Japanese, "Piramiddo wa giza giza suru"), marginally funny because "giza giza" describes the zig-zag shape and the most famous pyramids are in Giza. Or I'll use the word for "properly" ("kichin to," which sounds like the English word "kitchen") on purpose when asking someone to clean the J-List kitchen, thus making a really bad gag. The word for manual transmission in Japanese is "mission" and when my wife complained that she couldn't drive my stick-shift car, I made a bad joke involving the movie "Mission Impossible." I don't make these lame jokes in English, but the Japanese side of my brain can't help spitting a few out every day. I guess I must be an "ojisan."

All language is fluid, and when a word is passed from one country to another, it's common for meanings to change slightly. In Japan, for example, the term manga can describe both comics and anime on TV, but in English, the meaning has been redefined to refer only to Japanese comics. When I came to Japan I was surprised to see advertisements recruiting girls to work as "companions." This seemed vaguely unsettling to me -- was it some kind of prostitution? I learned later that attractive girls who work at various public events, serving customers or working at information counters (or in one case I saw, smiling while holding a no smoking sign for several hours), are called companions in Japanese. Also, when men have a party, they'll often hire pretty girls who smile and pour drinks for them and act interested in their conversations -- these girls are also called companions. Although the concept of girls being paid to smile and look pretty isn't the most progressive one, at least there was nothing nefarious in the concept.

We hold these truths...

2004-07-16T05:20:00.000-07:00

“We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson (from the Declaration of Independence)

Starting to repeat myself

2004-07-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

I hate original thought.

My blogging has slowed down recently as I am constantly repeating the same arguments about the same type of news stories. It is a it frustrating.

For example I could go into the stories involving the latest attacks in Iraq, and how they are in fact a sign of weakness by Al-Qaeda and the Baathists, but I have already covered this point several times already.

Two things are true: we are winning in Iraq, and this guerilla war will go on for at least another 5-8 years.

Any war looks like a nightmare on TV because all wars are a nightmare, even the wars you win.

I will try again later today.

Thank you for your patience.

Achieving Security

2004-07-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

Men of Harlech

2004-07-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Melody and lyrics to the Welsh battle anthem "Men of Harlech"

Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming
Can't you see their spear points gleaming
See their warrior pennants streaming
To this battlefield

Men of Harlech stand ye steady
It can not be ever said ye
For the battle were not ready
Welshmen never yield

From the hills rebounding
Let this war cry sounding
Summon all at Cambria's call
The mighty foe surrounding

Men of Harlech on to glory
This will ever be your story
Keep these burning words before ye
Welshmen will not yield

Wierd Stuff From Japan #8

2004-07-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

J-Box

Another Japanese election is behind us, and all across the country you can hear the sighs of relief from foreigners happy that they won't have to endure politicians in loudspeaker cars shouting at them for a while. The big winner in Sunday's election was the Democratic Party of Japan, the largest opposition party, which picked up the most seats as Japanese voters showed their anger at the deployment of the Japanese self-defence forces to Iraq and nervousness over the future of the National Pension Program. The ruling LDP still maintain their hold on the government thanks to their alliance with the Komeito (a political party that was started by the Sokka Gakkai religion, modern flavor of Buddhism not unlike Mormons), but it's a blow for Prime Minister Koizumi, who is working hard and beginning to turn the Japanese economic situation around. A big part of the problem for Mr. Koizumi, my wife says, is that he's too charismatic for his own good. There's a famous Japanese saying that "the standing nail is driven" (deru kui wa utareru), which means that individuals who stand out too much in Japan will be hammered back into place by their peers, and Koizumi, who is tall, unmarried and likes rock music, is the closest thing to JFK Japan may have ever had. Because he stands head and shoulders above his opposition, something you're not supposed to do in a country where 80% of people consider themselves middle class, he presents a big political target for everyone.

The Japanese do like English, and use it to add spice and cuteness to their speech. A lot of the English words the Japanese use are simplified so much that their meaning would be hard to puzzle out. A convertible is an "open car" and a mortgage for a person's home is a "my home loan." A child's crib is a "baby bed," and the universal word for full-time employees is "salaryman." Screwdrivers come in "plus" and "minus" varieties, and when a man no longer wants children he's likely to get a "pipe cut." Titles of Western movies can also be hard for Japanese to remember, so they're sometimes reduced into simpler English. "You've Got Mail" was released here as "You Got Mail," and "Apt Pupil" became "Golden Boy."

The Japanese are a meticulous people, and one famous area where their attention to detail really shines are the delicious wax food replicas you see in windows in Japanese restaurants, placed so that customers can see how good the food is before going in. These food replicas are hand-crafted by Japanese artists who train for many years, and Japanese wax food is famous all over the world.

Iraqi Poll: I am For and Against the Americans

2004-07-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

Australian

A public opinion poll found today that almost two-thirds of Iraqis oppose the presence of the US-led military in their country, but a majority do not wish them to leave because their departure would lead to even greater violence.

The survey by the private Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS) reflected once more Iraq’s contradictory feelings about US troops and the parlous security situation across the country...

This has been consistant with all the polls of the Iraqi public in the last year, although only the first part is usually reported in the media.

Victory for Terrorists

2004-07-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Boots on the Ground (US Army soldier in Iraq)

Manila has now given in to the growing sentiment going on in it's own country to leave the United States. I didn't even know these guys were in the "Coalition of the Willing." So, now a hostage is being released. This sounds like a victory for the terrorists. Is there any nation that exists today that has the balls to fight something worth fighting for? Frankly, seeing that the Iraqis seem more than ready and willing to pick up where the Coalition left off and are doing most of the tough grunt work. What is really pathetic is this country can't even band together during a war. I mean, in WWII, there was no better way to unite us than to attack us and start a war with us. Now, if you attack us, we will be united for a few months and then we'll start fighting with each other again. How pathetic is this, this must be really encouraging for terrorists to watch on TV.

This will be long counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq. It will last until around 2010-2015. I expect US combat fatalities to be in the 3000+ range. This fight is more a battle of wills rather than strength.

The question is -- are the terrorists right? Has our wealth and social advancement made our society so decadent that it cannot resist an attack by barbarians who will fight for decades, and without any tactical limits? Are all advanced societies doomed to go the way of Rome? Is the Progressive goal of social, economic and political progress an illusion that will always fail?

The only way we can lose is if we choose not to win.

It is going to be a long war.

"America saved my life"

2004-07-13T10:26:00.000-07:00

Blackfive

...Each day that I am here my resolve stiffens to the fact that we do need to be here. I have listened to story after story of how Saddam tortured, killed and destroyed individuals and their families. He had an extreme control of the population, the average person never traveled far and he would sentece people to die with a nod of his chin.

Not to long ago I visited with an Electrical Engineer. He graduated from Baghdad University and started his own electrical company. His business grew and he wanted to be able to order parts more effectively than doing it through the mail system. So he purchased a cell phone on the black market. With that phone he was able to order parts easier and help his customers out faster. What used to take months would only takes weeks. He did get caught and was hauled off to prison where he was sentenced to die. He was scheduled to be shot the day the American Coalition liberated the ABU Gihrab Prison. He now is a major contractor for the American Forces for some projects we are working on for the Army Corps of Engineers. In his own words, "America saved my life, I will do everything to save them and help them, help me." He also stated "American's are good people, those who don't want American's here are those that have something to personally gain by them not being here. They want civil war, they want power, they want death. I am tired of death, I want life, I want America as my friend."

Iraq is a substandard place, we are not rebuilding Iraq, we are building it. For the last 30 years this country has been so neglected it often brings a sadness to my heart and the souls of my soldiers as we look at the poverty, trash and the mindset of the people. There are those among the few, mostly the young who want the dream and are willing to stand up to the Cleric's and power mongers who only want to control as Saddam has controlled. I am proud of those individuals for they are willing to take a chance and as I have worked with them side by side they truely do have a wonderful heart and a chance to make a better life for themselves.

Once again thanks for making my day a little brighter and I will pass on some of the gifts you have given me to some of the Local Iraq natives I see on a regular basis.

Thanks

CPT Derick Quinlan
116th Engineer Company (CSE)

Pslam 23

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake.

Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, But I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.

Making a difference

2004-07-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference. Marines don't have that problem"

President Ronald Reagan, 1985

Antisemitic Attack Shocks France

2004-07-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

Reuters (original in French)

The latest antisemitic attack in the Paris region is perhaps the most disturbing to date. On Friday morning, six young men attacked woman and her 13-month old baby on a crowded suburban train.

The woman, aged 23, was at first pushed around by the men. When they found papers in her bag which suggested to them she was Jewish, they pulled knives and began to slice her clothing. The attackers then cut her hair and drew swastikas on her stomach. The attackers then stole the woman's cash and bank cards before kicking over her pram - where her baby was sleeping - and left the train at the notorious Garges-Sarcelles RER station north of Paris. No other passengers assisted the victim.

The attack has caused widespread outrage in France across the political spectrum: Jewish groups have called for tougher action from the government to combat rising anti-semitic violence - which is mainly perpetrated by young men of North African origin: Friday's attackers were no exception. The sinister parallels between the young woman's attackers deducing her religion from her ID papers were not lost on Jean-Paul Huchon, president of the Ile-de-France region, who linked the lack of intervention by fellow passengers with France's complicity in the death camp deportations in the 1940s.

The attack comes as France begins another period of soul searching following intelligence reports that over 300 of its housing estates have become "ghetto-style" breeding grounds for religious extremism. France has failed to integrate the descendents of north African immigrants who came to the country in the 1960s. Now, egged on by fanatical preachers and Arab-language propaganda channels, antisemitism has become common and casual.

In the past six months in France, 95 violent acts of racism against non-Jewish groups have been recorded. For the same period, 135 attacks on Jews have been reported - there are only an estimated 600,000 Jews in France.

The Arab Gettos of northern Paris are no-go zones for the police. They are like Fallujah. The police don't enter these housing complexes because of the likelyhood of civil unrest as a result. So far, despite much hand-wringing and public denounciations, nothing has been done to address this problem.

So far this year over 2000 French Jews have emigrated to Israel. That is the highest level of emigration in the last 30 years. If the situation in Israel were more stable I expect the level of emmigration would be even higher.

This land is your land...

2004-07-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

Jib-Jab

Very funny stuff.

Click on the link and wait for the 4MB flash file to download and play.

Veteran gets rude welcome

2004-07-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

Seattle Post-Intelligencer (daily newspaper)

Think about the Seattle area -- Bainbridge Island to be exact -- and you think scenic views and liberal-minded tolerance.

At least the killer views are still there.

The bucolic island's deep reputation for civility got a gut check this week during the annual Grand Old Fourth of July celebration.

That's when Jason Gilson, a 23-year-old military veteran who served in Iraq, marched in the local event. He wore his medals with pride and carried a sign that said "Veterans for Bush."

Walking the parade route with his mom, younger siblings and politically conservative friends, Jason heard words from the crowd that felt like a thousand daggers to the heart.

"Baby killer!"

"Murderer!"

"Boooo!"

To understand why the reaction of strangers hurt so much, you must read what the young man had written in a letter from Iraq before he was disabled in an ambush:

"I really miss being in the states. Some of the American public have no idea how much freedom costs and who the people are that pay that awful price. I think sometimes people just see us as nameless and faceless and not really as humans. ... A good portion of us are actually scared that when we come home, for those of us who make it back, that there will be protesters waiting for us and that is scary."

On the Fourth, Jason faced his worst fear.

It was such a public humiliation -- home front insult after battlefield injury...

...Have we so quickly forgotten the painful lessons of Vietnam?

...a female parade announcer locked eyes on [Jason] who was walking behind a pro-Republican group called Women in Red, White and Blue. The group supports President Bush and the troops in the fight against terrorism...the female announcer sarcastically asked Jason: "And what exactly are you a veteran of?"

The perceived mocking...set off some people in the crowd, loosing a flood of negative comments, "like a wave... a mob-style degrading."...

What makes it even worse is that these people are not even ashamed of what they have done. I am certain that they went home with a self-satisfied feeling after having successfully confronted the Bush war machine and its advocates. Yeah! They really stuck it to Bush.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Someone said this election will be like 1968.

The Chicago convention broke the Democratic Party. Over the next 30 years the Democratic Party got consistantly weaker and the Republican Party got consistantly stronger.

I hope to god that 1968 has not come again.

The Americans are stealing the wealth of Iraq

2004-07-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model (Sunni from Bagdad)

No one defends the occupation better than an Iraqi who lived through it.

...As the discussion heated up, one from the old generation burst out saying “nothing happened but the worst, the war destroyed us, our fortune was robbed and the ruins are everywhere. We haven’t seen in our lives a situation worse than this...” and went on in a criticism that was so bitter to reach the grade of despair which as I said I’ve always considered as a destructive attitude that achieves nothing but hindering, delaying and even destroying our efforts to pursue our future plans. He was parroting Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiyah.

I became really angry, however I waited for him to finish then I asked him if I could answer. “Sure I want to see how you’re going to answer” he replied, putting a challenging face.

I said:
-you claimed that Iraq’s fortune was robbed an that you didn’t see a real change or any reconstruction and I will answer you with a picture that you have to see everyday because it’s within a circle of one kilometer around your house and you have to see this picture every morning while you walk out of your house for whatever business you want to do.

He looked at me and said:
-What do you mean!?-Ok, let’s start with the first thing you see when you get out of your house . The first building you will see is that of the law institute for higher studies which was destroyed after the 9th of April. Was it destroyed by an American bomb? No, it was destroyed by criminals who carried out Saddam’s plan in “burning Iraq before handing it to the Americans” joined by some selfish people and other ignorant and simple Iraqis who didn’t understand that soon after the 9th of April all the state belongings that were Saddam’s have become all-Iraqis’ belongings. Alright, this institute was rebuilt few months later and now it functions in a way better than before and help to create a new law system that is honest and independent and to me this is another and more important addition.

Ok, now let’s move for few tens of meters and you can find the publishing house that used to publish Uday’s hateful newspaper (Babil) this one also was not destroyed by American missiles and we all remember how the thieves left it as mere walls with the vents missing their robbed air conditioners. Ok, what happened later; it’s working now with full power after it was reconstructed and now it’s printing Al-Sabah news paper that you buy every morning. To me this one was also rebuilt twice; once as building and equipments and once as a trust worthy press instead of the pathetic old propaganda machine.

Now I’m going to move for only another ten meters to find the (open educational college) where teachers improve their teaching methods, this one, uncle was also not destroyed by American bombs but by the same way as the former two buildings and now we can see that it was soon reconstructed and a few days ago they celebrated the graduation of a new bunch of their students.

Ok, let’s take a look at the adjacent building which is for the transport department in the ministry of trade. We watched that building being robbed in the same way. Do I have to remind you sir that this building was rebuilt and it’s back to work? I don’t think I have to; you see it every morning.

I’ll move for another 50 meters and cross the street where lies one of the former evil military institutes that was used to train professional butchers; it wasn’t a target for American missiles but was robbed by some sick people who left it as ruins, and you know uncle how the American unit in charge of this area turned it into a residency for students who come from other governorates to study in Baghdad. Now they have air conditioning, hot and cold water and decent bedrooms.

Ok I’m still walking within this single kilometer that you see every day and I’ll walk for another 100 meters to find the ministry of labor and social affairs; this building was not destroyed by American missiles but the thugs attacked it and ruined and robbed everything they found in it. Don’t you see this building every day with its new look after it was rebuilt and started to function again.

I’ll walk for a couple hundreds of meters in another direction to take a look at the beautiful building of the ministry of financial affairs; looting and fire caused more damage to this building than what a missile would cause, look at it now and enjoy its new look without Saddam’s portrait that was covering a whole side of the building.

Here my father tried to interrupt me but I insisted on going to the end with my speech and I added addressing everyone:
I didn’t exceed an area of one kilometer-that we all see and pass by every day-in this round. I have mentioned a lot of things but I also forgot a lot more like all the schools and public clinics that were rebuilt within this area. Now, do you still have doubts about where our oil money went?

And I’m not talking about the whole country here, have you asked yourselves why the exchange price is 1500 now instead of 2200 in Saddam’s days?

And do you think that a 100 times raise for some employees salaries doesn’t represent a part of the money you were talking about? Don’t you notice the private businesses that are starting and those that are booming?

Here one of my friends turned to our pessimist guest asking him “haven’t you turned an old dirty shop into a network gaming hall?”

Here I turned back to my father’s friend:
Isn’t this an addition to your country? And I see that you’re carrying a cell phone that rings every now and then, don’t you consider this an addition? Don’t you see that goods in Baghdad’s streets are being stockpiled and shown on the sidewalks because stores can’t hold all that stuff. Isn’t this telling you something?

Here I end my speech uncle and I’m not going to mention freedom of speech, pluralism and more than 200 newspapers and a satellite dish for nearly every house and hundreds of internet cafe’s to bring you hundreds of views instead of one.

You’re looking with one eye closed and this will do us no good, we need two eyes, two ears and an open mind if we wanted to locate mistakes and find solutions during this phase. Giving up and whining is no criticism, it’s destruction.

If you had the chance to make some calculations for what was spent till now I’m sure that you’re going to find out that oil revenues were not enough and I’m sure that someone had given us a hand!. I wonder who would that be? Russia? France? Germany? Or probably Syria? No, no wait, it must be Iran, right?

Then I told myself: if some Iraqis, living in Iraq, watching the changes being done under their noses fail to see the truth and still depend on the media to tell them what’s going on in their own country then how can we blame people who live thousands of miles away for thinking similarly!?

Iraqi army takes initiative

2004-07-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model (Sunni from Baghdad)

...It appeared that my guess and what my friend told me was right as yesterday it was announced that it was a very well planned attack carried by the Iraqi national Guard and resulted in killing and capturing several terrorists. Here’s Al Sabah story:

In an operation to attack dens of terrorism in Baghdad, a platoon of the Iraqi National Guard has carried out a successful operation Wednesday against groups of Saddam's remnants and a number of Al- Zarqawi followers who were gathered in four buildings in the said street. That operation comes as a practical indication to transfer the initiative of the attack to the hand of the National Guard.

"An accurate intelligence information reported a group of Saddam's men and Al- Zarqawi followers were crowded in four buildings in Haifa street" Mr. Hazim Sh'lan the minister of defense elaborated, adding that the operation started in installing search points in front of these buildings for instigating the hostile elements who thought they could control the battalion of the national guard.

Clarifying the details of the operation, the minister said that the battalion was able to be sheltered and specify the hostile fire sources further for cordoning the four buildings in pure Iraqi efforts, saying that the multi–national forces took the role of the monitor by the helicopters. Fighting were occurred from floor to another, from flat to another, about 19 terrorists killed and nine others arrested. Meanwhile one member of the National Guard was killed and 12 others wounded. Among the prisoners and dead were a number of Arab infiltrators.

The Iraqi security forces are going to be able to be much tougher than we ever were. They are much less subject to criticisms of excessive force. This is one of the main reasons that Iraqi security forces will be much more effective in fighting the Baathists and Al-Qaeda than we ever were.

HEARTS AND MINDS

2004-07-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

THE MESOPOTAMIAN (Sunni from Baghdad)

"...this fight is as crucial for the Western World and the future role of America in the World this century, as it is a matter of life and death to us."
...have you ever stopped to consider why the attack against the Iraqi people, their livelihood, and their infrastructure is by far more ferocious and spiteful than the assault on American and allied forces. Why is that necessary, if the population was really seething with hatred and animosity against the “occupiers”. Why indeed are they attacking the Iraqi people with such cruelty? Just think about that. Such thing has precedence neither in Vietnam nor any other conflict, including the WWII. I mean the Germans were never known to attack their own people, nor did that happen in Japan or Vietnam. The naïve blockheads of the antiwar movement, the well meaning ones, I mean, and not those with hidden motives, just don’t see this. The attack on the Iraqi majority is simply an attack on their intrinsic underlying support for this thing. That is the simple truth. As one simple tribesman once put it: “had it not been for this thesis of liberation, the Americans would have found it impossible just to stay on the ground”. Yes indeed, the hatred of the Zarqawis of this world is much more poisonous towards the Iraqis as it is towards the Americans. And if you read again his famous letter you will see this explicitly expressed. The U.S. policy makers and forces on the ground themselves underestimated this crucial factor and have acted in many instances with foolishness that contributed a great deal to the present troubles.

Nevertheless, the basic underlying grass root support is still there despite all the suffering and troubles; for the heart of a people is a profound phenomenon. Just look at the failure of Muqtada Al-Sadr movement to ignite the kind of conflagration amongst the Shiaa population that many were expecting, despite the fierce confrontation between his supporters and the American forces.

American and Allied strategists, should understand this clearly and appreciate that it is the main asset and essential strength of this campaign, and that success hinges on rectifying the errors and restoring this popular current to its initial strength and enthusiasm. And that is doable and possible And it will be the people who are going to defend their gains against both internal and external enemies.

The US can only provide backing and assistance to the Iraqis.Only the Iraqis can win this type of guerilla war.

This campaign can only be won via politics, that is a free, peaceful and indenpendant democracy. It doesn't really matter to the US who wins the election -- any legitimate government is a clear victory for the Coalition.

The Measure of a Man

2004-07-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

“The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.”

Marcus Aurelius

Iraq's Rebellion Develops Signs of Internal Rift

2004-07-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

New York Times

Tension appears to be rising between the homegrown Iraqi resistance and the foreign Islamist fighters ...This is one reason, experts speculate, that Iraq has not had the kind of spectacular attack meant to spread terror and defy the American agenda for a long two weeks, even during the transfer of formal sovereignty back to the Iraqis.

Evidence has emerged in sniping between groups on Arabic television and Web sites, and in interviews with Iraqi and American officials, as well as members of the resistance and people with close ties to it. All speak of rising friction between nationalistic fighters and foreign-led Islamists over goals and tactics, with some Iraqi insurgents indicating a revulsion over the car bombs and suicide attacks in cities that have caused hundreds of civilian deaths...

Large car-bombings — thought to be carried out more often by foreigners, who make up a tiny percentage of the rebels — have "disgraced the reputation of the resistance," said Dhary Rasheed, a professor at the University of Baghdad who lives in Samarra, a center for the resistance. "And the resistance has worked just like the government has been trying to, to curtail the influence of the foreigners."

[...]

...it is not uncommon these days to hear comments disdainful of the foreign fighters, like those from a young fighter in Falluja, whose relatives hold high positions in the resistance. "Iraqis do not need Zarqawi or Al Qaeda members to help them,"...

The good news keeps on coming from Iraq. Even the Times can't ignore it. Though they can try to bury it buy printing it on Saturday, the least read edition of the week.

France Plays Down Sudan Slaughter

2004-07-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

BBC

Paris will block US plans to impose sanctions on Sudan's government, says French junior foreign minister Renaud Muselier.

The United Nations security council is debating a US-backed resolution which hopes to block travel and arms sales to the militia groups responsible for the massacres in Sudan's Darfur region. UN representatives describe the slaughter as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

Washington has threatened to extend the sanctions to Sudan's government if it does not work harder to bring an end to the violence. The Arab militia groups are said to be backed by Khartoum, with many black villagers - who are on the receiving end of the violence - claiming that their settlements are bombed by government planes before the militia ride in on horses to kill and destroy whatever is left.

Over a million refugees have fled the region.

Nevertheless, Khartoum's complicity in the slaughter does not seem to have unduly worried the French. Muselier says that in Paris' book, tens of thousands deaths and one million displaced people does not constitute ethnic cleansing:

"I firmly believe it is a civil war" he said, "and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier than for a few armed horsemen to burn things down, to kill the men and drive out the women."

Muselier added that it would be better to "help the Sudanese get over their crisis so their country is pacified" rather than risk sending the government back to its old ways by imposing sanctions.

This is the diplomatic equivalent of putting trouble down to "high spirits."

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, France also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

A bit hyperbolic, but the French deserve it in this instance.

via EURSOC

Thank You Tony Blair

2004-07-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

thankyoutony.com

Blair is not only the smartest and best spoken world leader, he is by far the most courageous.

I wish I could vote for him.

Wolrd Court urges Security Council to consider action to stop fence

2004-07-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Haaretz (liberal)

The International Court of Justice ruled Friday in The Hague that the separation fence being built by Israel in the West Bank was in breach of international law, and called on Israel to tear it down and compensate Palestinians harmed by its construction.

"Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated," said the ruling, read by the court president, Judge Shi Jiuyong of China.

The court's non-binding advisory on the legality of the fence called on the United Nations Security Council to consider "further action" to stop the construction of the barrier.

"The court is of the view that the United Nations, and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council, should consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall," said the court president.

He also urged the UN to "redouble its efforts" to end the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which it said posed a threat to international peace.

In the ruling, the court said that Israel's security needs did not merit the construction of the barrier, stating that it "cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order."...

This was very unwise of the Wolrd Court. Issuing a decision that they know before hand will be denounced by the US, defied by the Israelis, and most important, never implemented, can only weaken the authority of the court.

In leadership training the first thing they tell you is "never give an order that you know before hand will be disobyed", becuase it injures both the person giving the order and the institution and authority they represent, and those who will defy the order will become less willing to accomodate themsleves to the future expectations of that authority, thus forcing them into a confrontation that should have been and could have been avoided.

The CIA is bad at its job

2004-07-09T09:19:00.000-07:00

Associated Press

The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons - were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, concluded a bipartisan report. Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community - which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.

"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.

"This was a global intelligence failure."...

If this is a surprise to you then you haven't been paying attention.

This is not just a US problem, but a problem with the global intelligence community. The UN, UK, Germany, France, Russia and Israeli intelligence services all agreed with this assessment. In fact the Germans stated as an unequivocal fact that the Iraqis already had a nuclear weapon.

But this is not a valid excuse. The CIA must be better than these other intelligence services. The American people deserve better.

Tenant has proven himself unwilling to reform the CIA. The lack of any significant human intelligence program (i.e. CIA agents undercover in enemy territory), is best illustrated by the fact that in September 2001 the CIA had no agents inside the borders of Afghanistan or Iraqi controlled territory.

The CIA policy of not putting agents into any situation that presents the possibility of personal danger to CIA employees is totally absurd. Most agents fail and are killed. It is a cruel fact of life.

The unwillingness of the CIA to take risks has placed the lives of the US civilian population in danger.

Hope

2004-07-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”

Helen Keller

The Media getting the story wrong again

2004-07-08T17:08:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model (Sunni from Baghdad)

After the authority handover at June 28, Ali wrote a post about that event and included a description about Paul Bremer’s farewell speech to the Iraqis. We were surprised that it wasn’t covered by the major media and moreover the Los Angeles times even went as far as saying that Mr. Bremer “ left without even giving a final speech to the country — almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year”.

A day after that Mohammed wrote another post in which he included some of what Bremer said in that speech. Still there was no mention in the media to that speech and some readers started to question- and they have every right to-whether we were not telling the exact truth, as how could it be possible that such a story is not only ignored by all the major media but also some of them reported the opposite in the front page and refused to change their statement!?

[...]

Finally and after more than a week, the Los Angeles Times corrected their statement about the story. Maybe they received many mails and letters driving their attention to the “mistake” they’ve committed. It could be true that this was an unintended mistake but it would be a very strange one.

It seems that some people in the major media still think they’re the only ones who have eyes and ears and cameras and that ordinary people cannot have access to the information except from the major media outlets...

I am constantly amazed at how the media can write such nonsense about the military and Iraq.

Either they don't know, don't care or are doing it on purpose. I suspect #2: they are just a bunch of lazy bastards, whose editors might check grammer and spelling but know just as little about the topic and so they print what their reporters write, not knowing whether or not it has any basis in reality.

Mr Alawi use your Emergency Law on Sammara Immediately

2004-07-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

Hammorabi (Shia from Sammara)
There is no need to think twice and no worse than the thugs of Sammara.

...It is also announced today that a group of Arab terrorists has been arrested trying to prepare for terrorist attacks against Iraqi civilians and buildings and or coalition forces. The first list of these thugs contains 29 Arab terrorists. They are 6 Saudis, 6 Jordanians, 4 Syrian, 2 Yemenis 1 Palestinian, 1 Lebanese, 1 Turkish, 1 Iranian and 1 Morocco with Israeli passport. The last was arrested with Mahmed Barzan Al Tikriti the son of the half brother of Saddam. Many other Arabs and Iranian have been captured preparing for attacks in different parts of Iraq. It has been noticed that the suicidal are now frustrated and in many instances killed or failed before achieving their targets.

[...]

One last thing to mention is a little story about Aoudi the expired son of the Arab hero; this man was a rapist. One day he asked his pimps to get him some nice, pretty and sexy Italian girls. The later did a good job and found a group of artists or dancers and brought their pictures to him. They send the invitation immediate with millions of dollars under the cover of art. The sexy Italian girls arrived in Baghdad and then invited to Aoudi special house. He asked them to perform an HIV test!

The Italian girls shrugged their shoulders; and asked why this idiot and fool man asked them to do so?! They refused and complained to their embassy and returned home immediately. It was probably sorted out by lot of money!

We mentioned this story as an example to show what kind of hero those Arab thugs is having!

This guy hates the Baathists and all their sympathizers with a passion.

Wierd Stuff From Japan #7

2004-07-08T16:53:00.000-07:00

J-Box

Japan is a great place, with wonderful people and something interesting at every turn, but the weather is not the best in the world. Winter seems to last from November to April, followed by a short pleasant spring (famous for cherry blossoms in early April). May and June are the rainy season, when it rains most every day, and after that comes the full weight of Japan's humid summer. Gunma prefecture is located as far from the sea as you can get, yet is part of the low-lying Kanto Plain, so it really gets hot here. Thankfully, Japanese air conditioning is the best in the world.

Recently, the Japanese have really been active in international sports like baseball, soccer and golf. But they're also distinguishing themselves at eating contests too. For the fourth year in a row, Takeru "the Tsunami" Kobayashi has won the Hot Dog Eating Competition on Coney Island, wolfing down 53 1/2 wieners (with buns) in 12 minutes. Eating contests are popular in Japan, and every once in a while we'll turn on the television to see variety shows featuring people stuffing their faces with bananas, sushi, cheesecake, and so on. Our own Tomo is quite an accomplished eater, too. Despite being skinny as a pole, he can easily handle the 1300 Gram [almost 3 lbs.] Curry Challenge at our favorite curry restaurant. If customers can finish a huge plate of curry rice (which is nearly 3 pounds of steamed rice and curry) in 20 minutes, the meal is free.

Many famous Japanese companies were founded in the amazing years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), when Japan was undergoing its program of rapid modernization. Paradigms were changing, and Japanese were wearing Western clothes and developing tastes for Western things like beer (Sapporo Brewery, founded 1886). They were developing a sweet tooth around this time, as well. In 1899 the Morinaga Confectionery Company was founded by Taichiro Morinaga, a Christian missionary who had spent several years in the San Francisco, home of the original See's Candies, learning about candy making. After several years of struggling to make sales with a single candy push-cart, he perfected a delicious recipe for milk caramels that were a big hit in Tokyo. The company still makes the caramels with the same recipe.

Are you a swinger?

2004-07-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Here is a pretty concise graphic showing the play of states in the upcomming Presidential election.

At First Sight

2004-07-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.

But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.

Robert Graves

A Survey of Armed Groups in Iraq

2004-07-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

This is an excellent overview of the faction militias, insurgent organizations and jihadi terrorist gangs operating withing Iraq today. Concise and informative.

It's only weakness is that it does not include a discussion of Zarqawi's Al-Qaeda terrorist organization (know as 'The Islamic Revoutionary Movement Against Jews and Crusaders').

War Causing Positive Change in US Military

2004-07-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Intel Dump

...The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the military in many ways, from personnel to equipment to the number of JDAM bombs in the Air Force inventory. But, I think there's also a very credible argument that these wars have made the military better. The impact of combat experience in the ranks is hard to understate; it really does sharpen the combat readiness of a unit to have so many combat veterans. It's also hard to underestimate the impact of these wars on Army doctrine, because of the awesome extent to which the Center for Army Lessons Learned has gathered after-action reports from the battlefield. The hard question is how long these effects last, and what the long-term effects will be.

Every war either improves or breaks the military that fights it. Vietnam shattered the US military for a decade, while WWII left the US military in a strong postition for the next fifteen years.

The US military, and the Army in particular, seems to be adapting well to the new situation. The incessant talk of "breaking" the Army seems to come from those among the old guard who wish to prevent significant change in US military institutions.

US Imperialism in Sudan

2004-07-07T06:35:00.000-07:00

WSJ
The alternative to U.S. "unilateralism" and "hegemony" is catastrophe.

Colin Powell has just made a high-profile trip to Sudan to examine at first hand the abominations in Darfur, the western province that is the world's latest killing field.

The Secretary of State's visit also throws a spotlight on another unfortunate global reality. Once again the world is calling on the U.S. to stop a horror that the United Nations and everybody else have failed to act against. The killing of black Muslim tribesmen by government-backed Arab militias has been going on since February of last year. But while the world's moralists are in full cry about the threat of "another Rwanda," no one sees fit to actually do something. No one, that is, except the U.S.

...not until two weeks ago did the Security Council call for an immediate halt to the fighting. This being the U.N., the resolution was toothless. Permanent members China and France are worried about jeopardizing their business interests in Sudan. Pakistan and Algeria, which hold temporary seats, refuse to impose sanctions on a fellow Muslim nation even as it is engaged in the mass killing of Muslims.

Rather, the event that finally caught the attention of the government in Khartoum was the Bush Administration's threat last month to impose serious sanctions on Sudan and refuse visas to Sudanese officials...

[...]

A better measure of Europe's concern about Darfur was evident at the recent European Union summit, where one has to turn to page 18 of the summit conclusions to find a small paragraph about Darfur. The most forceful language the EU could muster was "deep concern" regarding Sudan's "humanitarian crisis," as if what is happening in Darfur is a tragic act of nature rather than a rampage by murderous, ruthless men...The Arab League statement at its May summit didn't mention Darfur at all.

[...]

The lesson of Sudan is that the world is a Hobbesian place outside the U.S. sphere of influence. Sudan's social contract is straight out of "Leviathan"; citizens are guaranteed security only if they abide by the absolute authority of a monarch.

The real problem, as everyone knows but no one will admit, is Sudan's murderous regime. But Mr. Annan and company can't abide regime change, and in any case the U.S. military is too preoccupied to make that happen. That means we're left with diplomatic pressure and visits like Mr. Powell's, which are better than nothing but don't solve the long-term problem.

It is fashionable these days to express distaste for American "unilateralism" and "hegemony." The unfolding catastrophe in Darfur offers a chilling view of what the alternative really looks like.

Never again...again.

Iranian Intelligence Officers Captured in Iraq

2004-07-07T06:18:00.000-07:00

FOXNews
American and Iraqi joint patrols, along with U.S. Special Operations teams, captured two men with explosives in Baghdad on Monday who identified themselves as Iranian intelligence officers, FOX News has confirmed.

Senior officials said it was previously believed that Iran had officers inside Iraq stirring up violence, but this is the first time that self-proclaimed Iranian intelligence agents have been captured within the country...

The arrest of the two Iranians suspected of attempting to carry out a vehicle bombing has focused new attention on how Tehran is trying to protect its interests in the country...

So far, Iran is believed to have used money, not guns, to influence Iraq — particularly by spreading wealth among Shiite political factions [the Al-Mahdi millitia et al]...

[...]

Since Saddam's fall, Washington has repeatedly accused Tehran of sending money to various Iraqi groups, dispatching intelligence agents and allowing foreign anti-American fighters to travel to Iraq through its territory...

Freedom is a virus.

It is good to be...

2004-07-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

“It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.”

Euripides

John Edwards on the War

2004-07-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

Command Post (Australian war news)

September 12, 2002: Edwards gives a speech on why the “IRAQI DICTATOR MUST GO,” coinciding with Bush’s speech to the UN:
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I firmly believe that the issue of Iraq is not about politics. It’s about national security. We know that for at least 20 years, Saddam Hussein has obsessively sought weapons of mass destruction through every means available. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today. He has used them in the past, and he is doing everything he can to build more. Each day he inches closer to his longtime goal of nuclear capability — a capability that could be less than a year away.

I believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime represents a clear threat to the United States, to our allies, to our interests around the world, and to the values of freedom and democracy we hold dear.

[snip]

What’s more, the terrorist threat against America is all too clear. Thousands of terrorist operatives around the world would pay anything to get their hands on Saddam’s arsenal, and there is every possibility that he could turn his weapons over to these terrorists. No one can doubt that if the terrorists of September 11th had had weapons of mass destruction, they would have used them. On September 12, 2002, we can hardly ignore the terrorist threat, and the serious danger that Saddam would allow his arsenal to be used in aid of terror.
2. October 10, 2002: Edwards gives a speach as a co-sponsor of the declaration authorizing the use of force in Iraq:

Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies, including our vital ally, Israel. For more than two decades, Saddam Hussein has sought weapons of mass destruction through every available means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons. He has already used them against his neighbors and his own people, and is trying to build more. We know that he is doing everything he can to build nuclear weapons, and we know that each day he gets closer to achieving that goal.

Iraq has continued to seek nuclear weapons and develop its arsenal in defiance of the collective will of the international community, as expressed through the United Nations Security Council. It is violating the terms of the 1991 cease-fire that ended the Gulf War and as many as 16 Security Council resolutions, including 11 resolutions concerning Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

By ignoring these resolutions, Saddam Hussein is undermining the credibility of the United Nations, openly violating international law, and making a mockery of the very idea of collective action that is so important to the United States and its allies.

We cannot allow Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons in violation of his own commitments, our commitments, and the world’s commitments.

This resolution will send a clear message to Iraq and the world: America is united in its determination to eliminate forever the threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

[snip]

[W]e must be prepared to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once and for all.

Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts: that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a menace; that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons; that he has supported terrorists; that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States; and that he is thwarting the will of the international community and undermining the United Nations’ credibility.

As I said, I like Edwards.

Iraqi vigilantes tell Zarqawi 'leave Iraq or die'

2004-07-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

BBC

A group of armed, masked men have issued a public warning to Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to leave Iraq on pain of death. The video message was broadcast on the Dubai-based al-Arabiya TV network by a previously unknown group calling itself the Salvation Movement.

Describing Mr Zarqawi as a criminal, the men said unless he left immediately he would be hunted down and killed. Mr Zarqawi is the prime suspect in a string of attacks around the world.

“We have started preparing … to capture him and his allies or kill them and present them as a gift to our people,” one of the men in the video is reported as saying. The warning extended to the friends, followers and protectors of the Mr Zarqawi. “This is the last ultimatum to those who give him shelter. This is the last warning,” the masked man says.

The radical 38-year-old Jordanian is believed to have strong links to al-Qaeda and is accused by the US of being behind a spectacular string of suicide bombings in Iraq. Mr Zarqawi’s group has also claimed responsibility for the beheadings of an American and a South Korean hostage.

This is a tremendous success for American counter-insurgency operations. It may take as many as 5 to 10 more years, but it seems clear that we can win in Iraq.

Senator John Edwards for Vice President

2004-07-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

Political Animal (liberal)

...So far, everyone seems pretty pleased with the choice.

I am too. Edwards was my personal second choice in the primaries, so obviously I think he's qualified to be president — which certainly ought to be the uppermost consideration. What's more, he's a good speaker, he has generally good policy instincts, he's a Southerner, and while he may not be an attack dog, he can throw some pretty good barbs on the campaign trail when necessary.

The fact that Kerry was willing to choose someone who's a more charismatic speaker than himself — and will inevitably take some of his spotlight away — speaks well for him. Like they say, first rate people hire other first rate people. Second rate people hire third rate people. This was a first rate choice.

I still think Gephardt would have been a better choice, but I like Edwards a lot. The problem is that the VP won't have any real effect on voters, especially since his home state of North Carolina is a lock for Bush. You pick a VP to show you can make good decisions (Kerry accomplishes this point), and to get someone who could step in to the VP job and help your administration in some way.

Gephardt would be very helpful in dealing with congress, while Edwards has no particular area of expertise other than campaigning.

Anyway, this is all water under the bridge. Edwards will do a good job for Kerry duting the campaign, and you've got to get elected before you can govern.

This is a good beginning.

Another item: based on historical comparisons of the "who do you intend to vote for" question, Kerry should now begin to significantly pull ahead of Bush. Even contenders who have lost have had a 5-8% lead over the sitting President by the end of the party convention. Contenders who win usually have an even larger margin (12-14%).

Since this margin has historically rapidly dwindled as the election neared, it is essential that Kerry build as big a lead as possible. If Kerry doesn't have a least an 8% lead (about 52% vs 44%), than Kerry is just so much dead meat and has no chance of defeating Bush. On the other hand, if Kerry can come out of Boston with a 14% lead (about 55% vs 41%), then he has a good chance of winning.

Check the polls on the first week of August. That will tell the tale.

Iran; an enemy or a potential ally?

2004-07-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Iraq the Model (Iraqi Sunni from Baghdad)

An Iraqi military check point that is situated at the western bank of Shat El Arab north to the city of Faw at the Iraqi-Iranian border named Shehan was subjected to Iranian fire on Friday. The same thing happened to some Iraqi army patrols between Gazeel and Hadida north to Basra.

Colonel Dhafir Sabah Al Timemi mentioned that this was the 4th time the Iranians have opened fire on Shehan check point during the last week in addition to several other aggressions along the line from the north of Basra down to Al Shalamja.

Colonel Timemi said also that Iraqi border guards have captured 83 Iranians who were trying to cross Iraqi-Iranian borders illegally. He said that these Iranians were detained in Al Shalamcha border check point, interrogated and then were handed over to the Iranian side.

The Colonel who’s the Iraqi border guards chief in Basra said that the Iraqi side showed discipline and did not respond to the Iranian aggression in the same manner...

... I think this issue is very serious and it shows clearly that Iranian authorities attitude is a clearly aggressive one and they don’t seem to be keen on at least keeping their efforts to hinder the progress in Iraq a secret. They seem to be very frightened (and they should be) by the democratic changes in Iraq that they have lost their caution and are not considering how dangerous it is what they’re doing.

...not to forget the support and instructions they offer to their puppet Sadr through the evil Iraqi cleric "Al Ha’airi" who lives in Iran. This particular Mullah has been the source of many “Fatwas” that were printed and posted everywhere in Iraq and that encouraged violence against not only the coalition but also the Iraqi Arab Sunni in an attempt to start a civil war. It is refreshing though that they have ‘picked’ this idiot (Sadr) as their man, as there is no one who could possibly make all their efforts go in vain other than this retard...

..How to take advantage of these mistakes is a matter of strategy and the tactical points should not weigh against the ultimate goal of democratizing the Islamic world. One just have to imagine how wonderful it would be to have strong allied democracies in Iraq and Iran and the enormous effect this will have on the entire Muslim and Arab world. I know it’s a dream now but I do think it can come true.

A free and democratic Iraq would spell the doom of the theocratic fascist regime in Iran, and they know it. They will do anything they can to prevent the appearance of a new Iraq.

The Philosophy of Sexism

2004-07-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

"The debility to which Nature condemned women incontestably proves that her design is for man, who then more than ever enjoys his strength, to exercise it in all the violent forms that suit him best, by means of tortures, if he be so inclined, or worse."

Marquis de Sade (1740-1814)

Anti-war actress changes her mind after visiting Iraq

2004-07-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

...Another adventure that [Rebecca] Romijn-Stamos is unlikely to have made as a model was a recent trip she and De Niro made to visit US troops in Iraq.

Staunchly anti-war, Romijn-Stamos said the visit had been a real eye-opener and it seemed to have given her a slightly different perspective on life.

"It was unbelievable and I'll never forget it," she said. "I grew up in Berkeley, California, which is the most liberal, left-leaning place you could ever find and I had zero contact with our military.

"So I had a pre-conceived notion they would all be rednecks who were only there because their daddies had been in the army. But I was wrong and I met the most amazing people over there.

"It was 130 degrees [Fahrenheit] and they were walking around in full fatigues and we'd get there to find out they'd been waiting in that heat for three or four hours. And they had so much perspective on it, they were really deep and smart and had a lot of opinions."...

Another convert to reality

Army Takes Its War Effort to Task

2004-07-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

LA Times
Report says U.S. forces prevailed in Iraq despite deep supply shortages and bad intelligence

American soldiers who defeated the Iraqi regime 15 months ago received virtually none of the critical spare parts they needed to keep their tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles running. They ran chronically short of food, water and ammunition. Their radios often failed them. Their medics had to forage for medical supplies, artillery gunners had to cannibalize parts from captured Iraqi guns and intelligence units provided little useful information about the enemy.

These revelations come not from embedded reporters or congressional committees but from the Army itself. In the first internal assessment of the war in Iraq, an exhaustive Army study has concluded that American forces prevailed despite supply and logistical failures, poor intelligence, communication breakdowns and futile attempts at psychological warfare.

The 542-page study, declassified last month, praises commanders and soldiers for displaying resourcefulness and resiliency under trying conditions, and for taking advantage of superior firepower, training and technology.

But the report also describes a broken supply system that left crucial spare parts and lubricants on warehouse shelves in Kuwait while tankers outside Baghdad ripped parts from broken-down tanks and raided Iraqi supplies of oil and lubricants.

"No one had anything good to say about parts delivery, from the privates at the front to the generals" at the U.S. command center in Kuwait...

This journalist is obviously pretty ignorant about the nature of warfare. While the above is technically true -- in actuality, the performance of the military in the Iraq war was much better than any other war in history. War is inherently chaotic and confusing, and this war was not an exception to this rule. But in comparison to the expected screw-ups, things went very well indeed.

When I worked operations staff I wrote several of these papers. The heads of various departments would send me a memo and I would incorporate it into the overall lessons learned paper. Even exercises and operations that everyone was talking about as being outstanding successes would read like total disasters if you read nothing about the operation but the lessons learned report.

Lives are at stake, so no one is as self-crtical as the military. After action 'lessons learned' studies such as this one are designed to be as critical and nit-picky as possible. This is an essential tool for trying to change the system until next time. It is considered a bit of a taboo for a military person to say anything nice in public about an operation. It is always, "well, it wasn't a complete disaster". This is considered high praise.

This journalist shows a lack of perspective on these issues that comes from having inadequate knowledge of military culture.

Bomb kills oil-for-food auditor

2004-07-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

BBC

An Iraqi official heading an inquiry into alleged corruption in the UN oil-for-food programme was killed by a bomb on Thursday, it has been revealed.

The official, Ihsan Karim, died in hospital after a bomb placed under one of the cars in his convoy exploded.

The board he headed had been given independence from the government as it investigated commissions paid to members of the former regime. In return, the regime allegedly gave billions of dollars worth of contracts.

The General Accounting Office of the US government has said that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his associates raised some $4bn in illegal revenue by imposing oil surcharges and commissions on suppliers of goods to Iraq under the programme.

Mr Karim was appointed by the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Paul Bremer, as head of the Finance Ministry audit board in April. The board tasked international accountancy firm Ernst and Young with investigating commissions paid to the former government...

There are a lot of powerful interests intent on preventing the truth about the greatest fraud in history from coming out.

The UN, France and Russia, in complicity with Saddam, were involved in the largest financial scam in history. Over $20 Billion (yes, billion with a 'B') was stolen from the Oil-for-Food program intended to feed and provide health care for poor Iraqi children and their families.

Disgraceful.

Wierd Stuff From Japan #6

2004-07-05T13:44:00.000-07:00

J-Box

The subject of the Japanese high school uniform is one that often fascinates gaijin, especially Americans, who usually don't experience the concept of school uniforms when attending school. Japan's school uniforms are famous throughout the world, and many Japanophiles have latched onto them as an all-encompassing symbol of Japan -- J-List even sells real uniforms made by Matsukameya, a famous company in Nagoya, and they're very popular with our customers. The sailor uniform first appeared in England in the 1860's as a military uniform. English parents thought it was cute to dress children in miniature sailor suits, and so it became popular as a school uniform for children. When Japan began modernizing after the Meiji Restoration, when power was returned from the last Tokugawa Shogun to the Meiji Emperor, the first girls' schools required students to wear special kimonos called "basha-michi" (which means "a road for a horse and carriage to travel on," meaning that the uniform had to be as proper and straight as a road). As the Meiji era (1868-1912) gave way to the Taisho (1912-1925) period, Japan underwent another wave of modernization and adopting Western fashions, and in 1921, the Fukuoka Girls' School became the first school to adopt the cute English sailor uniform for their students. There are two basic kinds of girls' uniform used in Japan today: the sailor uniform (which consists of a "middy blouse" with grease catcher top and pleated skirt) and the "blazer" (an external vest-like piece over a normal blouse, with skirt). There are two kinds of uniforms for boys, too: the "gakuran" (the traditional Japanese black two-piece uniform with stiff collar and dark pants, and bright gold buttons) and the "blazer" (which basically is a dark suit). Both the traditional sailor uniform and gakuran are in the process of disappearing from Japan, supposedly, replaced in most schools by the more modern blazer type uniforms. Many private schools hire famous designers to create extra-fashionable school uniforms for their students.

There are some interesting school-related customs in Japan, including the custom of "dai-ni button" (lit. "second button"). At graduation, it's customary for a girl to ask a boy she likes to give her the second button from the top of his school uniform, which is tantamount to her confessing that she's in love with him. Often, "kohai" (underclassmen) ask for the second buttons of their "senpai" (senior or upperclassmen) as they graduate. If the boy gives her the second button from his uniform he's affirming that he also has feelings for her, even though they may not see each other again after graduation -- a bittersweet taste of young love that was never to be. If he has some other girl that he wants to give the button to, he has to apologize to the first girl and tell her that he's got someone else he loves. If you want to check out a great story of Japanese-style painful first love, check out Studio Ghibli's wonderful film Ocean Waves, one of my own favorite animated films.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:"

2004-07-05T13:43:00.000-07:00

"That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson (from the Declaration of Independence)

Al Qaeda 'Truce' Deadline Approaches

2004-07-02T11:32:00.000-07:00

Financial Times

Al-Qaeda has warned Muslims to flee Europe before its truce offer expires on July 15th.

A spokesman for the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades - who claimed responsibility for the Madrid train bombings - made the threat in a letter published in a London-based Arabic newspaper.

Muslims were urged to take suitable precautions: "Muslims in the West should depart to Muslim states if they can...Those who cannot should take precautions and live in Muslim areas, have enough food to last a month, find ways to protect themselves and their families, leave enough money in the house to last one month or longer and to pray a lot and put their fate in God's hands."

On April 15 Osama bin Laden issued a statement claiming al-Qaeda would remove Europe from its list of targets if European governments were to "Stop attacking Muslims and stop the occupation of Muslim countries." Most European governments dismissed the terror leader's offer of a truce.

However, only days before, veteran British politician Mo Mowlam urged leaders to "negotiate" with the terror group. And just after the Madrid bombing, which killed nearly 200 commuters, Britain's Guardian newspaper said that European nations had to "get beyond them and us, good guys and bad guys" when dealing with terror.

The more that European political elites ignore the reality of the Al-Qaida threat, the more support from the public is swinging to right-wing anti-immigrant parties. The only way to stop the fascists from owning this issue and continuing to build support is for the political leadership of Europe to wake up to the real and present danger that they face.

Despite the fantasies of the journalistic and political elites of Europe, George Bush, Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft did not invent Al-Qaida.

via EURSOC

Articles of Indictment

2004-07-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hammorabi (Shia from Baghdad)

Slaughtered Innocents

Halabja

Terror and Genocide

The purpose of this trial should be as a sort of 'truth and reconciliation' hearing. Saddam will hang -- that is a forgone conclusion. The public trial should help Iraqis deal with the facts of the nightmare that was the Baathist regime.

Jordan ready to deploy troops in Iraq

2004-07-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

Al Jazeera
Jordan has pledged to send troops to Iraq if the interim Iraqi government makes a request.

..."However, now there's an interim government and, we hope, a fully independent process very soon in Iraq. I presume, if the Iraqis ask us for help directly it will be very difficult for us to say no," King Abd Allah said.

"My message to the president and prime minister is: Tell us what you want, tell us how we can help and we have 110% support for this."

Washington welcomed the prospect of Jordanian troops in Iraq, but was at pains to portray any such move as a service to Iraq rather than the United States...

The Arabs have this 'strong horse' theory. The smart move is to always bet on the strongest horse. While the transition will be long and bloody - and it is possible that Iraq may have to experience a civil war before reaching political stability - it is now clear that the new Iraq will someday come into being.

King Abdallah has always been the most perceptive and forward looking of the Arab leaders. Abdullah can see who will win in the end, and he is not blinded by old ideologies that would prevent him from supporting a winner.

Iraq is a bigger and richer neighbor, and even his own people are sympathetic to helping the Iraqis form a stable society. By making this move before anyone else, Abdallah cements the image among Iraqis of Jordan as Iraq's closest friend, and confirms to the international community that Jordan is the Arab leader of choice to deal with.

Unless Al-Qaida takes over (impossible), or Baathists come back in power (nearly impossible), this is a no lose policy.

Even Al-Jazeera has a hard time making him look bad.

UPDATE: Yemen Willing to Send Troops to Iraq

...Yemen was discussing plans to send forces to Iraq.

But any deployment would have to have U.N. backing and the forces would have to be under the control of the world body...

Wierd Stuff From Japan #5

2004-07-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

J-Box

One sign that my wife and I weren't in our 20's anymore is when we started getting most of our entertainment from NHK, the network of four channels run by the Japanese government. One day we realized that the most interesting shows to us weren't anime or young idols singing on Hey Hey Music Champ, but the excellent content of NHK. The other day we watched a very interesting documentary on "kikoku shijo, or Japanese kids who have lived abroad for many years, then returned to experience culture shock in their own home country. Ally McBeal (which I watch in Japanese with my wife) and Beverly Hills 90210 (which my wife watches in English) are shown on NHK, too. Foreigners living in Japan complain about the 2000 yen they have to pay the NHK man who comes collecting every month, but it's good to have something familiar to watch.

Near our house, we can see the Sphinx, the Statue of Liberty, and many other interesting wonders of world. These are pachinko parlors, a major source of entertainment for many Japanese men and women in Japan. An odd game which I don't pretend to understand, you basically buy a bucket of balls for $50, then sit for hours trying to hold a controller in just the right position to make most of the balls go into certain holes in the pachinko machine. Since "gambling" is illegal in Japan, except for certain events like horse, boat and bicycle racing, you don't win money if you get more balls than you started out with -- you get valuable prizes which you redeem for cash at a shady building next to the pachinko parlor. Pachinko is quite a competitive business to be in, and operators (who always seem to be getting involved with some crime or another) work very hard to bring in the newest machines in -- with little video screens or cute anime-style characters printed on them, for example. They have interesting names to attract customers, like one near us called Al Pacino. Despite the efforts of the pachinko industry to make the activity seem like a friendly and family-oriented thing to do, pachinko always seems to go hand in hand with the yakuza. Pachiko maker Sankyo is trying to change that image, and has hired Nicholas Cage to do its TV commercials. See them here.

Good or Evil?

2004-07-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

“No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish historian and essayist

If the Presidential election were held today...

2004-07-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

Election Projection
...Bush would be re-elected while losing the popular vote.

Electoral Votes: Bush 274, Kerry 264

Popular Votes: Bush 48.7%, Kerry 49.5%

I just don't understand this. This has been a horrible year for Bush. Why isn't Kerry doing better?

If you look at the current numbers, the states that Kerry can win in order to turn this around are:

Arizona (10) - Bush +3.39%
West Virginia (5) - Bush +3.31%
Arkansas (6) - Bush +2.86%
Nevada (5) - Bush +2.22%
Missouri (11) - Bush +1.63%
Florida (27) - Bush +1.14%
Ohio (20) - Bush +1.07%

Local Interest:
Washington (11) - Kerry +7.16%

Communism vs Talibanism

2004-07-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

Tech Central Station
What's an Insurgent? What's a Terrorist? by Steven Taylor

The classic understanding of an insurgency is a situation in which some subset of the overall population seeks to overthrow the existing government due to a severe disagreement that makes other means of settling political disputes untenable. However, the terrorist operating in Iraq are seeking chaos, not revolution, and as such they seek not a better life for Iraqis, or even Muslims writ large. Rather their only earthly goal appears to be death for anyone with whom they do not agree. It is this fact that makes our conflict with these types of groups a war, whether we like it or not.

In comparing the utopian dreams of Marxist rebels to the cult of death that men like al-Zarqawi seem to revel in, I would prefer any day to live in Castro’s Cuba than in the dystopia that the jihadists would bring. While hardly the kind of choice I would ever want to make in real life, it is starkly chilling, however, to note the obvious conclusions that one would reach if one were ever confronted with such a decision.

In a theocratic state dissent is punished by the 'will of God', not the dictates of the state. [shudder] This is the kind of nightmare that even a facsict would fear. So yes, I would likely choose the same as Taylor: one-party facsism is preferable to one-faith facsism.

I would highly reccomend the Afghan film "Osama". This is a brilliant look at the inherrently corrupting influence of a theocratic society.

Quote "the Great Leader"

2004-07-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

CNN

When he was charged with ordering the killing of Kurds in the poison gas attack at Halabja in 1988: “Yes, I heard about that.”

On the Kuwaitis: “They were trying to turn Iraqi women into prostitutes for just $10. How could you defend those dogs?”

On his appearance in court: “This is all theater, the real criminal is Bush.”

Justifying the invasion of Kuwait: “It was for the Iraqi people.”

...There was some concern that Saddam might use this as a political platform. That didn’t really happen. He was downcast; he looked defeated at other times. He kept raising his hand and asking the judge, “Please, stop. Let me ask you a few questions.” He said please a lot, which I’m sure is a change for him. He kept asking, “What are the charges? Why am I here?”

Oh how the mighty are fallen.

via Command Post

Changes on the Afghan Front

2004-07-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

SGT Hook (US Army soldier in Afghanistan)

...Nearly all of the tents have been converted into wood huts with the remaining six currently under construction. I'm reminded of Hogan's Heroes and Stalag 13 when I walk down the rows of identical huts perfectly lined up and dress right dress.

A large blue tractor trailer drove on base the other day and dropped its trailer outside of the Post Exchange. A crowd of Soldiers surrounded the long sheetmetal trailer which of course piqued my curiosity.

"What is it?" I asked a nearby joe.

"Oh, first sergeant, sorry I didn't see you, it's a Burger King," the young Soldier replied.

"A Burger King on wheels eh? I wonder where they'll get the beef to flame broil?"

"Yeah, I never thought I'd see a BK out here in the desert first sergeant," he replied smiling from ear to ear.

"There is always camel meat," I said and walked away. That'll get them guessing.

So we now have a Burger King, sort of, that is not yet open but when it does will serve those delicious American flame broiled burgers from a walk-up window in the large blue trailer sitting in the parking lot of the PX. I wonder how they'll do? Afterall, it is all about location in the restaurant business.

In recent days we've seen truckload after truckload of gravel brought into our camp and dispersed across the ground upon which we walk. Previously, said ground was covered with large, softball-sized rocks that made for quite a few twisted ankles. The gravel is a lifesaver, or at the least an ankle saver, as it makes walking much easier and most importantly still keeps the dust down.

We really can't complain with the improved housing, better walking conditions, and the introduction of fine quisine. However, I just sometimes wish that the bathroom, or latrine as we dogfaces call it, wasn't a football field away. I've been battling an intestinal virus the last day and a half and there is no joy in waking in a panic in the middle of the night and having to put on shoes and sprint 100 yards to salvation. None at all. Still, the camp is shaping up to be quite the vacation place.

The facilities for our troops in Afghanistan is rapidly approaching those found in Bosnia and Kosovo. This makes long-term militray operations much more comfortable for our people.

Thank You Letter to Mr. Bremer

2004-07-01T06:30:00.000-07:00

IRAQ THE MODEL (Sunni doctor from Baghdad)

I was taking a walk in the street with one of my friends when suddenly I heard a shout “Dr. Mohammed!” I turned back to see who it was and I found that it was one of the nursing staff who worked with me in Samawa and got transferred to Baghdad.
After greetings and asking about each other’s health he said “I was just thinking of you” why?, I asked.
“Do you still run that website?” he asked. I said “yeah”.
NURSE-Can you do me a favor?
OMAR-Sure.
NURSE-Do you know Abu Haider’s (Mr. Bremer) e-mail address?
OMAR-No! Why?
NURSE-I want to send him a letter.
OMAR-What for?
NURSE-To say thanks. Actually it’s not only me, it’s my mother Al-Hidjiyah; she made me promise her to send a letter to Mr. Bremer.
OMAR-Me too. I want to do that but unfortunately I don’t have his e-mail.
NURSE-Can you ask your American friends. Because I really feel bad that the man didn’t get the reward he deserves for his great efforts; we could at least make a party for him or a decent celebration. Did you listen to his farewell speech? it was incredible.
OMAR-Yes, it was and I’ll try to get his mail although I think it’s difficult but what did your mother exactly want to tell him?
NURSE-Well, Al-Hidjiya [the nurse's mother] said “son, tell this man that Um Mushtaq says go with the blessings of Allah, you have suffered a lot for the sake of our country and we were not able to thank you in person and this makes us so sad” and she also said “although this is not right, because he is not Muslim but I have to say it and I don’t care what others may say” My friend laughed as he said that.

I should mention that friend is a hard core communist who paradoxically bares strong admiration and gratitude and for America.

[...]

I don’t like to give much credit to an individual no matter who he is, as I believe it’s one of the reasons we’re so behind the others. People in the east generally get attached to individuals more than ideas and the fact that Iraqis support Al-Yawer and Allawi more than they support the government as a whole is just one example of this. However I find myself compelled to write about Mr. Bremer because this man was never given the credit he deserves. That of course includes all the good people who worked with him.

We miss you Sir and we know that it’s been difficult for you too. Your speech has touched the hearts of all the Iraqis I have met just as your efforts have contributed in drawing the outlines of the bright future of Iraq, the new free democratic Iraq and we will never forget you. You worked hard as if you were a true son of Iraq and in fact you’re one of Iraq’s sons, that’s how we look at you.

I never heard anyone talk badly about you, I heard people say a lot of bad things about GWB and the GC members but you were the most respected and loved political character among Iraqis and I can say I’m almost sure that if there was a poll about who’s the most popular person in Iraq, then you would’ve been the winner.

[...]

You were keen on leading Iraq to the shores of peace despite the harsh environment, and most Iraqis recognize that you succeeded in your mission.

Sir, Iraq loved you just like you confirmed your love in your farewell speech. We were touched just as you were. You have taken a place in our hearts just as you said we’ve taken our places in your heart.

[...]

We would like you to live the moment of victory with us as you lived the moment of hardships.

I was never surprised when none of the western media broadcasted your impressive speech because I doubt their interest in showing the world the nature of the relation between you and the people of Iraq. But IÂd like to tell you this: Iraq loves you just as you love her.

To blame the CPA instead of the insurgents for the current difficulties seems quite bizarre to me.

I am convinced that the primary cause of the problems in Iraq today are the acts of violence, sabotage and intimidation carried out by Al-Qaida and the former Baathists, and not the incompetence of the dedicated and hardworking people at the Coalition Provisional Authority.

UPDATE: The good feeling among the Iraqi public is not just 'happy talk' by the Bush administration. Omar conveys his optimism quite well. So do these poll numbers from the Washington Post:

68 percent of Iraqis have confidence in their new leaders.

73 percent of Iraqis polled approved of Allawi to lead the new government,

84 percent approved of President Ghazi Yawar
almost two-thirds backed the new Cabinet

Four out of every five Iraqis expected that the new government will "make things better" for Iraq after the handover

two-thirds of Iraqis believed the first democratic elections for a new national assembly -- tentatively set for December or January -- will be free and fair

German Anti-Nazi Law for Iraq

2004-07-01T06:18:00.000-07:00

Hammorabi (Shia from Baghdad)

The law which is implemented in Germany until now which considers any slogan for the Nazis as an offence punished by the law should be used in Iraq against any sloganism for Saddam. It is clear now that the Arab propagandists start to use all means to gather support for Saddam. This is very important point you should think about preventative measures right now.

You should put a law preventing any sloganism for the previous regime especially Saddam. You may have seen Al Jazeera reporter Atwar Bahjat (the woman with scarf) showing prepaid pro-Saddam people from Al-Adhamyiah [district of Baghdad] shouting support for their master Saddam. This will go up as Atwar said she will do more in the coming time to her base in Qatar. She should be arrested immediate for investigation and given a warning if she do it again she will be held responsible.

You got the film so the IP should go and arrest those who did the slogans as a role for the future. You need a law, very strict law or you will sink by Al Jazeera and other hypocritical Arab like the Egyptian commentator who said Saddam is the Master of Iraq and he is the legal president. Then he added that his daughter should set out a government in exile as it is her own right.

Ban & deport Al Jazeera from our land

No to the hypocritical Arabs

New law is needed urgently to consider slogans for Saddam as an offence punished by the law

This sounds severe, but in fact as Sam states, the Germans have a similar law in effect, even today 50 years after the death of Hitler.

Guide to PCI Express

2004-07-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica (tech news)

This is the biggest change to home computer technology in a while. All the old AGP/PCI video I/O slots are being replace by the new PCI Express (PCIe) slot on all new motherboards. Click on the link to read a fairly good summary of this new technology.

Greatness

2004-07-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wierd Stuff From Japan #4

2004-06-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

J-Box

The Japanese language is rather a complex animal because of its long history of being influenced by outside sources. Modern Japanese combines several writing systems, including hiragana (a syllable-based writing system used for Japanese words), katakana (a syllabary for foreign loan words and names), and Chinese kanji characters (which provide visual meaning). There are fundamentally two ways to read each kanji character: the on-yomi or the Chinese reading, based on what the reading for the character was when it was imported into Japan around the 4th century A.D., and the kun-yomi or Japanese reading, an original Japanese pronunciation assigned to the character. No system is perfect, of course, and some kanji have many more than two readings, and the end results it can be quite difficult to know exactly how to pronounce the characters you see. (Chinese people really hate this aspect of learning Japanese -- they can read the meaning of what's written easily, but don't know how to pronounce it out loud.) Sometimes confusion can reign when two words have the same pronunciation, such as the words for "private" and "public" (both of which are pronounced "shiritsu") -- quite confusing when you're asking someone if their child attends a private school or a public school.

Becoming bilingual in a language is fun because you learn so much about how your own brain works. Back in my SDSU days it would be interesting to analyze the process that goes on inside my mind as a new word or grammatical concept was learned, as it went from my short-terrm memory, through longer-term memory until that magic point where the word or concept was fully internalized, and could be called up and used without thought. Then there's what linguists call "interference," when the grammar or pronunciation rules of one language interfere with the operation of another language, sometimes with embarrassing results. We're learning new things about how language and the brain work, still: my third-grade son knows all his timestables back and forth when he's thinking in Japanese, but since he'll be attending an all-English school next year, he has to re-learn everything in English. So far this is proving incredibly difficult for him.

The Japanese are always pleased by foreigners taking an interest in their language and becoming fluent in Japanese, and many of the actors and comedians on Japanese TV are gaijin who have mastered Japanese enough to even be entertaining in the language. There's an unwritten rule that gaijin living in Japan will hate these people, usually because their Japanese is better than ours. Dave Specter, an American who came to Japan as a TV producer, is one such TV personality, despised by all Westerners living here (he actually dyes his black hair blonde to appear more "American" on TV). Thane Camus (pronounced "Sane Kamyu" in Japanese) is a super-cute "gaijin talent" (and grandson of French novelist Albert Camus) who does a show called World's Funniest English, in which Japanese are asked to tell stories in awful English while the exact translation of what they're saying appears on the TV. Appearing with him on the show are three bumbling men from Kenya who speak hilariously mistaken Japanese -- they've become so popular that they appear in TV commercials of their own these days. And then there's Wickie-san, who came to Japan from Sri Lanka and passed the entrance exam to Tokyo University, Japan's top-ranked university. His primary goal is to get Japanese people to learn that Sri Lanka is not part of Africa.

NOTE: This item is part of a continuing series based on weekly emails I have recieved for many months now from this guy from San Diego who now lives and works in Japan. The link llisted above is a comercial link to his company. I am sure he would like you to look at it.

Allawi: Saddam Connected to Al Qaeda

2004-06-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

NBC News

[...]

Tom Brokaw: As long as the United States military remains a conspicuous presence in your country working hand in glove with the new Iraqi government, won’t you always be seen really as an instrument of the U.S. military and therefore of America?

Prime Minister Allawi: Iraq, as everybody knows, is the front state now — as the main theater to oppose and fight terrorism. And, with the help of international community and with the help of the region and with the help of the Iraqi people, we are going to win. We are going to prevail.

Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq. But can’t you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?

Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York. And — the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists. Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.

Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq. The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

Allawi: No. I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida. And these relations started in Sudan. We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism. Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not, I can’t — vouch for this. But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists...

Is Alawi lying? No. He believes it to be true.

This is an issue that will have to be settled by the historians.

The Great Iranian Land Grab

2004-06-30T11:16:00.000-07:00

Telegraph (UK newspaper, conservative)
Attack Iran, US chief ordered British

America's military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory, a senior officer has disclosed.

An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels.

"If we had attacked the Iranian positions, all hell would have broken loose," a defence source said yesterday. "We would have had the Iranians to our front and the Iraqi insurgents picking us off at the rear."

[...]

"Some Iranian border and observation posts were re-positioned over the border, broadly a kilometre into Iraq," a Ministry of Defence spokesman said.

The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran.

Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez then ordered the British to prepare to send in several thousand troops to attack the Revolutionary Guard positions....

Iranian forces later withdrew to their previous posistions after a telephone conversation between Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, and Kamal Kharrazi, his Iranian counterpart.

Congratulations

2004-06-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Iraq at a glance

...thank you very much for the ‘occupiers’.. Those who helped us in liberating our country from the tyranny, the ‘occupiers’ who liberated Iraq on the 9th of April, the ‘occupiers’ who sent Mr.Paul Bremer as we did not have a governor at that time..the ‘occupiers’ who helped us in forming a governing council.. The ‘occupiers’ who helped us in the interim constitution.. The ‘occupiers’ who stood against the terrorists.. The ‘occupiers’ who helped us in forming and training our army......etc.. then those ‘occupiers’ handed over the sovereignty to the Iraqis.... they are the best ‘occupiers’ I’ve ever seen.. I hope they’ll ‘occupy’ the countries who are in need to be improved !
Thank you very much...

Hope is the most powerful force in the universe.

Chivalry

2004-06-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

“Some say that the age of chivalry is past, that the spirit of romance is dead. The age of chivalry is never past, so long as there is a wrong left unredressed on earth.”

Charles Kingsley (1819-75), British writer and clergyman.

Operation Shoe Fly Update

2004-06-29T13:15:00.000-07:00

OSF

Here is the address where you can send children's shoes for distribution to needy children in Afghanistan as I wrote about here and here.

Operation Shoe Fly
c/o Jim Thomson
B Co, 214th Aviation Regiment
APO AE 09354

UPDATE: I sent off some shoes to Sgt Hook today. Everything went off amazingly smooth. WalMart had children's shoes for $5 a pair. Even better they had hard-soled leather boots in children's sizes 7-13. I picked up 20 pairs. Then I was pleased to discover that these 20 boxes of shoes exactly fit the box I was going to ship them in...and I mean exactly. Shipping wasn't too bad either -- coming to about $30 for parcel post.

So, I found exactly the right kind of shoes, at exactly the right price, shipping was easy and fairly cheap -- and all in all everything went very well.

I feel good. Now it is your turn.

Arab Media & the Handover

2004-06-29T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hammorabi (Shia from Baghdad)

Most of the Arab media has been taken by surprise about the earlier announcement of the handover in Baghdad.

The follow up of the activities of Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabyiah, Abu Dhabi and some others indicates that they put and prepared huge Anti-Iraqi & Anti-American propaganda on the 30 June 2004. The earlier take over of power was a big blow indeed for such propaganda. Their papers dispersed all over by the new time

All the Arab media appaeared confused and in disarry while trying to set out propaganda in hurry. They tried their best to get some of the pro-Wahabi mullahs and Anti-American propagandists to full the gabs.

One of the Arabs commentators said the handover happened in the bedroom and not in the outside! He probably forgot that all their Presidents, Kings, and Sheikhs are dictators elected by 99.999% of their people...

On the top of the list is the mouthpiece of the terrorists, Al Jazeera. It appeared confused and spitted all of its hate for Iraq and Iraqis. It showed the Iraqi scene after today as a chaos and invited pro-Wahabi Mullah from Haayat Olamma Musleemens from Iraq to mutilate any hope for new free Iraq...They showed again the film of Alzarqawi in which he threatened to kill Ayad Alawi and other films which showed the terrorists attacking inside Iraqi streets! Al Jazeera showed its real ugly face today without any makeup at all. Below is a story published in Al Sharq Awasat about the direct involvement of Al Jazeera in the terrorist attacks in Iraq?

Al Jazeera TV & the Terrorists

Al Sharq Awsat newspaper (27/62004) has published the story of the Saudi Saaedan who was captured by the terrorists in Falluja.

In 31 May 2004 Mr Saaedan entered Iraq to deliver food supplies for the US army in Falluja after a contract with an American company. When his convoy reached Falluja a group of terrorists [ex]changed fire with the defending guards of the convoy and captured him. Saaedan told that among the terrorists were terrorist were Saudi, Syrians and Iraqis from Falluja.

He was interrogated for 3 days and accused that he works for the US army, a charge which resulted in the death penalty according to Fatwa by one of the terrorists Wahabi Mullah. He was left in a dark room in an abandoned place waiting for his death. He was given the choice to die by execution or to do a suicidal operation against the US and Iraqi forces and police. He refused the later, therefore, the Amer (head) of the group ordered to execute him.

Saaedan added that he heard one of the terrorist calling Al Jazeera TV reporter to come to record a video tape. He was then forced to sit in front of Al Jazeera reporter and camera and one of the terrorists read the statement. He was then moved into another place waiting for the execution on 4 June 2004.
On the early morning of the same day there were an exchange of fire between the terrorists and the US forces which helped Saaedan to escape with the help of one of them.

Mr Saaedan now taking legal action against Al Jazeera TV because they joined the terrorist in his death and have not informed the officials about what it has happened with him especially they know all about it including his place and the execution.

In actual fact Saaedan saw the tape broadcasted by Al Jazeera on 5 June 2004 after his escape as well as by the BBC.

Other Video by Al Jazeera

Just now it showed a video of killing an American solider [US Army Private Keith Maupin, 20] was taken captive few months ago. The video showed him shot dead from the back while sitting by an edge of a dig in which he was then burred.

Saddam & other Killers

The handover of the above mass killers will happen in the next few days.

We need to see Saddam and Tali Chemical and their thugs in a TELEVISED trial direct on air. Our wounds will not heal without seeing Saddam and his thugs in that long awaited trial. Hurry it; let the souls of the victims of mass graves, Halabja and others rest in peace.

[...]

Good luck for Iraq and the civilized people the friends of Iraq.

God bless Iraq and America and their friends and allies.

More details later especially about what the Arab Media said?!

Sam is always passionate and speaks directly from the heart of the Iraqi soul.

US Supreme Court bars enforcement of Child Online Protection Act

2004-06-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

Arc Technica (tech news)

The US Supreme Court wrapped up its session by announcing a decision which bars the enforcement of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The COPA, passed in 1998, was an attempt by Congress to keep pornography out of the reach of children on the Internet by requiring credit cards, access codes, or other means of age verification to access adult content, with fines of up to US$50,000 for violations. By a 5-4 decision, the Court remanded the case back to a lower court for a trial to resolve the issues raised in the original lawsuit filed by the ACLU, saying that the law as written violates free speech:

For now, the law, known as the Child Online Protection Act, would sweep with too broad a brush, [Justice] Kennedy wrote. "There is a potential for extraordinary harm and a serious chill upon protected speech" if the law took effect, he said.

What is especially interesting about the ruling is that the Court was able to recognize the technological issues at hand in addition to the more obvious free speech ones. Kennedy noted the inadequacies of filtering software and felt that a full trial was necessary to determine if there have been enough in the way of technical advances to make the legislation feasible. (Psst, Justice Kennedy: the answer is "no.")...

I must say that I thought the Supremes had a very good year. They seemed to decide correctly on most of the important cases. Even decisions that I wish had gone the other way, such as the HMO lawsuit case, were probably the correct decision. In the HMO case the court basically said that this problem was the cogresses fault for not addressing the issue, and the court wasn't going to do thier work for them. So, even though I diagree on policy grounds, on legal grounds that was probably the correct thing to do.

Happiness

2004-06-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

“Our greatest happiness in life does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”

Thomas Jefferson

Iran to resume nuclear programme

2004-06-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

Gaurdian
Announcement delivers blow to EU's policy of engagement

Iran is to resume elements of its uranium enrichment programme tomorrow in a move which worsens the confrontation with the west over Tehran's suspected ambition to develop a nuclear bomb.

Withdrawing from previous pledges to freeze all uranium-enrichment activities, Tehran said yesterday it would resume manufacturing parts for centrifuges tomorrow and would also restart the assembly of the centrifuges, the machines that refine crude uranium into bomb-grade material or nuclear fuel for power stations.

Iran's decision was criticised yesterday by the EU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and the White House. It will fuel further suspicions about Iran's nuclear programme and increase mistrust at the IAEA, whose 35-strong governing board regularly seeks to come up with a policy towards Iran.

The announcement was a blow to Britain, France and Germany which reached the Tehran Agreement last October, an accord under which Iran promised to freeze its enrichment activity...

The oligarchs of Iran are running a theocratic fascist regime. Of all possible dictatorships, this type is the least suceptable to reason. Fortunately the Iranian public is overwhelmingly on our side and vigorously opposed the clerics. Therefore our policy should be containment and support for political reform. In particular, all World Bank and International Monetary Fund Loans to the clerics should be revoked. No politcal leadership, such as the one in Iran, can long survive with the support of less than 30% of the population. Teh downfall of the clerical regime is inevitable, and we should do what we can to speed up the process from the outside.

View from Iraq #2

2004-06-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

Healing Iraq

The scenes of bloody bodies of Iraqi policemen are painful and heartrending, and there is absolutely NO justification for this...What kills me is that not one of the assailants were killed or captured in the attacks, I just can't possibly understand how a group of armed men can enter and hold several police stations, kill everyone inside and leave without a scratch. How are they supposed to secure the country in a few days from now if they can't even protect their own police stations?

These attacks are all the more reason for handing over the security to Iraqis. I doubt that Iraqi security forces would be able to deal with some places like Fallujah though. Some families have left Fallujah for good and the stories they have to tell are depressing. They say the IP and the Fallujah brigade are helpless and just for show and that in fact several groups now control the city with clerics (some of whom have accummulated extreme wealth from the donations and aid from other areas two months ago) trying to impose Sharia on Fallujah residents, foreign fighter keep a low profile but they are there. Armed clashes between the different groups is common, thy only forget their disputes when they feel the Americans are about to enter town...

No revolutionary movemnt has ever succeeded by killing its own people. This tactic underlies the fundamental weakness of the insurgency.

The View from Iraq #1

2004-06-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

THE MESOPOTAMIAN
by Alaa

...Come rain, come tempest, descend fog and darkness, We Shall Overcome. The Devil is going to be defeated again, as usual, by the very evil of his machinations.

And the enemy is desperate, he is striking left and right, beheading, slaughtering, murdering; blind with the rage of the wounded dying beast. And we have seen them, Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians, our “Brothers”, running amok in our streets, murdering our men, women and children, and for what? What are they trying to achieve? And the whole lot of lying hypocrites, shedding crocodile tears about the “Iraqi People”, it is they who should get out and shut up. That is the invasion and occupation that we want to be rid of.

But We Shall Overcome; have no doubt about that. This, more than anything else, I know with every fiber of my being. And praise be to Allah, and thank you America.

Salaam

A thoughtful and well balanced essay. Definitely worth a read.

I do in fact disagree with him on the issue of disbanding the Iraqi security forces. The view that this was a mistake has become the conventional wisdom among pundits. But the senior Shia leadership demanded that this be done, and since they represent the majority of Iraqis, failing to do so would have led to a severe political crisis.

When confronted of choices between security and political reform, it is always best to choose politcal reform. If the political problems cannot be solved, then the security issues will never be resolved. Just focusing on security is a certain way to cause the situation to spin down into chaos.

Terror Detainees Win Right to U.S. Courts

2004-06-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Associated Press

The Supreme Court delivered a mixed verdict Monday on the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies, ruling that the U.S. government has the power to hold American citizens and foreign nationals without charges or trial, but that detainees can challenge their treatment in U.S. courts.

[...]

Ruling in the case of American-born detainee Yaser Esam Hamdi, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the court has "made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Congress did give the president authority to hold Hamdi, a four-justice plurality of the court said, but that does not cancel out the basic right to a day in court.

The court ruled similarly in the case of about 600 foreign-born men held indefinitely at a U.S. Navy prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The men [held at Gitmo] can use American courts to contest their captivity and treatment, the high court said.

The Supreme Court sidestepped a third major terrorism case, ruling that a lawsuit filed on behalf of detainee Jose Padilla improperly named Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld instead of the much lower-level military officer in charge of the Navy brig in South Carolina where Padilla has been held for more than two years.

Padilla must refile a lawsuit challenging his detention in a lower court.

These were 6-3 decisions, and I am surprised that they were even that close. If the court had rule that it had no authority to oversee this process it would significantly undermine its own authority under the constitution and would have fundamentally changed the balance of power between the three branches of government. The court was never very likely to put forward a decision that would weaken itself.

U.S. Hands Power to Iraqis Two Days Early

2004-06-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

Associated Press

The U.S.-led coalition transferred sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government two days early Monday in a surprise move that apparently caught insurgents off guard, averting a feared campaign of attacks to sabotage the historic step toward self-rule.

Legal documents transferring sovereignty were handed over by U.S. governor L. Paul Bremer to chief justice Midhat al-Mahmood in a small ceremony in the heavily guarded Green Zone. Bremer took charge in Iraq about a year ago.

"This is a historical day ... a day that all Iraqis have been looking forward to," said Iraqi President Ghazi Al-Yawer. "This is a day we are going to take our country back into the international forum."...

This was a very good idea. There was no reason to hold on for a set day since the transfers of authority that were going to be done were mostly completed.

All the pundits are talking about the security issue, or lack thereof, as being the central problem in Iraq. This is fundamentally incorrect. While security is clearly a very serious problem, the insurgents are in fact not a serious threat to success of the new Iraqi government. The obstacles to the government are all primarily political problems. These are the issues that need the highest priority.

The things the new government needs to focus on are: the census, the procedures for the upcoming elections, encouraging the political parties to begin organizing and promoting candidates, and the transparent prosecutions of officials from the old regime.

If these issues are address in a vigorous manner than the security issue will eventually take care of itself. To focus on the security issues while avoiding political reform is a certain recipe for disaster.

Wierd Stuff From Japan #3

2004-06-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

J-Box

It is interesting to observe the differences between Japan and the U.S. For one thing, it's an accepted concept that American companies usually "stick to their knitting" and only make products you'd expect them to make. Dell makes computers, and Ford makes cars, and if Ford started making computers we'd all wonder what they were smoking. But in Japan, it's quite common for companies to enter a wide range of businesses. You know Sony for their home electronics, but in Japan, Sony is also famous for life insurance, online banking and high-end make-up products. Building homes is big business in Japan, and companies like Panasonic and Toyota own companies that build homes under those brands -- there's even a builder called TBS Housing, operated by the Tokyo Broadcasting System, of all people. Mitsubishi is famous for their cars, but they're also busy making trains and home electronics and selling securities, and they are the leading manufacturer of pencils in Japan. All the big beer manufacturers have booming soft drink businesses on the side, so Coca Cola decided to try this process in reverse: they've introduced their first alcohol free beer, called Sky Malt, in the Japanese market.

As a man, living in Japan means being at peace with having women around you when you're in the buff. While some may have the impression that men and women bathe together regularly in Japan, kon'yoku or mixed bathing is actually very rare these days. However, there's an unwritten rule that female staff may enter the men's public bath to clean at any time, despite the natural state of all the men bathing inside. Usually the women are "obasans" (older women in their 50s or so), but every once in a while an attractive younger woman will come in to straighten the buckets or check the bath temperature, causing the occasional dash to hot water by gaijin who shall not be named. Bathing in public baths (sento) and hot springs (onsen) is a fun part of life in Japan, and something my family and I are big fans of. By and large, being in the buff in front of others is something you don't give a second thought to -- it's just part of the culture here.

Memorizing the names of the months in English must be difficult for Japanese, but it's easy going the other way -- the months in Japanese are all just numbers followed by the kanji for month (e.g. ichi-gatsu is January, ni-gatsu is February, etc.). They get their revenge, though: although the days of the month in Japanese are expressed with numbers, just like in English, there are special names for the first ten days of the month, which must be memorized, always a chore for gaijin learning Japanese. The days of the week are interesting, too -- each is associated with a kanji that represents the original European origin. The days of the week are Getsu-yobi (lit. "moon day"), Ka-yobi ("fire day" since the first character for Mars is "fire"), Sui-yobi ("water day," from the Japanese name for the planet Mercury), Moku-yobi ("wood day," from Jupiter), Kin-yobi ("gold day," from Venus), Do-yobi ("earth day," from Saturn), and Nichi-yobi ("sun day," from good old Sol).

This item is part of a continuing series based on emails I have recieved for many months now in weekly emails from this guy from San Diego who lives and works in Japan. The link llisted above is a comercial link to his company. I am sure he would like you to look at it.

Our Cause

2004-06-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

"It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own."

Benjamin Franklin

Saddam and UBL

2004-06-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

New York Times
Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization...

[...]

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic...

This confirms my theory. The Bushies aren't actually lying about a Saddam-UBL connection. They are just wrong about what it means.

I am a touch annoyed by the Times here. They had this for weeks. This is a fairly big story. So why publish it on a Friday instead of Monday, or Sunday? Of course, Friday is not as bad as Saturday, but not by much. Maybe publishing on Saturday would have made it look too much like they were trying to bury it.

I hate editors. I want the news straight, without editorial interference.

"That Was Not a Terrorist Safehouse!"

2004-06-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

Belmont Club
by Wretchard

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's...vow to kill the Shi'ite President of the interim Iraqi government, can be more accurately understood as a desire to fight for leadership of the Sunni triangle. The control of Iraq has slipped forever beyond his grasp. Iraqi blogger Hammorabi's breakdown of the the foreign fighters killed in [the first] US strike on Fallujah underscores the point:

Nationality/Number
Saudi 5
Somalia 2
Emirates 1
Yemen 1
Morocco 1
Algeria 1
Syria 1
Libya 1
Kurdistan 1
China 1
Mauritania 1

From the looks of it, Zarqawi has brought in the Al Qaeda first team to derail the June 30 turnover to Shi'ite Iyad Allawi. But although he has quality, for his fighters are far better than Moqtada Al-Sadr's rabble, he has forgotten that the April upsurge of violence, which some had breathlessly hoped would signal the downfall of the US in Iraq, was only made possible by Teheran's decision to unleash simultaneous unrest in the south, in the hopes that a desperate America would pay any price for relief. But after the US calmly beat back both attacks, grinding Sadr down to a powder, it was no longer faced with a two-front war. There is now no way that the Shi'ites will allow the Sunni-backed Zarqawi to call the shots. The Sunni Saddam had lorded it over them once before; and neither the Kurds nor the Shi'ites will so easily let that happen again. A more attainable goal will be to prevent the emergence of any independent Sunni figure in the new government. Zaraqawi's methods are nothing if brutal...a reminder that any Sunni who breaks with him should prepare to die...

This guy is really good. Belmont Club is always worth the read.

Wretchard is a former Army SF and CIA officer.

The Insurgents of Iraq

2004-06-25T12:32:00.000-07:00

Guardian
In a remarkable essay, Iraqi-born journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad joins the front-line anti-whatever fighters in Kerbala, Falluja and Sadr City, and discovers that they are not always the well-trained, highly motivated fanatics we imagine

By the time I arrive in Kerbala, in the last week in May, the clashes between Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia and the Americans have been going on for weeks...
[...]
...The Shia factions, we work out, are very keen not to allow journalists to go into the centre of the city and report the activities of the other Shia factions - they are not yet fighting each other, but they don't like each other much. After all, it's a family issue, and we Iraqis don't like foreigners to mess with our affairs.
[...]
We finally come out of one alley to find ourselves face to face with three gunmen, their heads wrapped in keffiyehs, Kalashnikovs and RPGs in their hands (this is now considered the new Iraqi dress code, or the "muj style")...
[...]
...Every once in a while someone shouts, "Americans, Americans!", and one or two move into a sniping position, shout at each other, and then come and sit down again. They look tired, hungry and bored, fiddling with their RPGs and rifles.
[...]
This is the front-line elite, a bunch of badly equipped men with rusted AKs and decade-old RPG rockets. When we first arrive they are brewing tea, piles of RPG rockets stacked on the walls two feet away from the fire.

"So how long you have been here?" I ask one of them.

"Three weeks now." He says he is here because he wants to defend the shrine of Imam Ali. "I'm unemployed and have nothing else to do." He is 17.
[...]
Suddenly, there are some explosions, and three of them run towards the corner. We hear heavy machine-gun fire and I see American APCs firing at a building in the street.

"Where's the machine gun?"

"I don't know! You had it yesterday!"

"No, you had it!"

"No, no, it's there with Ali."

"Where's Ali?"

"He went home."

"So where is the machine gun?"

"With Ali."

So they decide to fire RPGs without machine-gun cover. They hop into the street, fire off a grenade, and hop back...

They can't see what they are shooting at but shout Allahu-Akbar all the same, and everyone starts giving numbers of how many Americans they have killed.

Then another man shows up, shortish and in his 40s, and while everyone is ducking or hiding behind columns, he strolls about as if he is in the park. Another fighter loads an RPG for him and the guy turns with the thing on his shoulder as if looking for the direction he should shoot in. Someone shouts: "Push him into the street before he fires it at us!" Another fighter grabs him around his waist and pushes him to the corner where he stands, bullets whizzing around him, takes his time, and - boom! - fires his RPG. He stands there until someone grips his pants and pulls him in.

His eyes are not even blinking at the sounds around him. They give him another one and he spins again and everyone hits the ground...

We wait for the fire to subside and run across the street to the other side, the same dark alleys in which the same bored fighters are sitting doing nothing but chewing over the same old conspiracy theories. The walls and the ground are varnished with fresh blood. In the market a couple of shops are on fire from earlier fighting. A man is hiding behind a pile of empty banana boxes with his eight-year-old son.

That is when we catch sight of a small boy with a stunned look on his face. He says his name is Amjad and he is 11 years old.

"How long you have been here?"

"Ten days. Since my brother was killed. There, at the end of that street."

"And why are you here?"

"To become a martyr like my brother."
[...]
"It is all because of journalists that all this is happening," says a guy dressed in black, sitting behind a big wooden table. He says that the Mahdi are manipulating the media. "They are thugs and assassins, they have paralysed the holy city of Kerbala, they have desecrated the shrines and shoot from behind them, trying to provoke a response.

"But, alhamdulillah [thank God], the Americans are very wise and respect the shrines. Our brothers, the Americans, are taking very good care of this thing, but as far as the Shias around the world and in Iraq are concerned, they hear that the Americans are fighting 'close to the shrines', and that Shias are being killed. They see the smoke on your films so they come en masse to fight and they are immediately brainwashed by Moqtada and his thugs."

If that's the case, I ask, why doesn't the Ayatollah come out publicly and denounce those people, and show his support for these "brothers"?

"Are you crazy? It's haram [forbidden by Islamic law] to support an infidel, even when he is right, against a brother Muslim."

"So what is your strategy?"

"We will pray for Allah to stop this."
[...]

Falluja is very calm by the time I arrive. I have been to Falluja once before, in April during the "great battle", as they now call it up there...

After a devastating military campaign that left more than 800 Iraqis dead, the US liberators established the Falluja brigade out of the former military, some of whom had been fighting the Americans but are now on their payroll. Falluja is now like a deja vu from the good old times of Saddam; there are so many former Iraqi military in khaki uniforms, big moustaches and bellies that I am scared...

...the picture is totally blurred, and no one in Falluja can figure out what the new arrangement actually means...

...for other Fallujans, he who works with Americans is seen as the enemy of God. Which means that we now have Falluja versus Falluja in the biggest stand-off of the year: who really controls Falluja?

The city is now like a loose federation of Sunni mosques and mujaheddin-run fiefdoms. These have become the only successfully functioning "civil society" institutions, although the only form of civil society they are interested in is a 1,400-year-old model.

So they raid houses where sinners are believed to be drinking alcohol, and insist on forcing their own version of the hijab...
[...]
I head towards one of the mosques where people are going to get aid and charity donations. A guy in his 40s approaches me with the famous welcoming smile of the Fallujans - a look of, "What the fuck are you doing here?"
[...]
He opens his drawer and pulls out two sheets of paper: the demands and the strategies of the resistance. One details an American-Shia plot to kill the Sunni clerics, technocrats and former army officers. "Be careful, oh brothers, because the Americans and their traitor allies, the Kurds and the Shias, are planning to come after your leaders." The other is a letter sent by the joint committee for the Iraqi resistance to Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the UN envoy working to form a new government. Its demands can be summarised as a request to hand Iraq to a bunch of wacko Sunni army generals.
[...]
One of the local muj cell leaders, Abu Tahrir ("father of liberation"), is complaining how part of the muj corps has deserted and joined the Americans. He is in his late 30s, overweight and a bit grim; a typical former Mukhabarat [Saddam's secret police] officer who mixes bits of the Koran with chunks of nationalist and Ba'athist ranting.

...As we leave the mosque, he waves to a passing police car and orders them to follow, so that we drive out of Falluja escorted by both the muj and the police.

Sadr City is an easy job for a journalist: all you have to do is cruise around looking for trouble. It is a Soweto kind of slum: rubbish-filled streets, ponds of sewage, and thousands of unemployed kids.
[...]

...a dozen teenagers, three or four of them wearing Arsenal T-shirts and flip-flops, are emptying a car boot of a mortar tube and a sackful of shells...

The target is a police station and three Humvees parked in front. Masked like a western cowboy, the shooter, or the "expert" as they call him, takes measure of the angle and shouts to another fighter: "Give me one!" The other guy produces what looks like a rusted, 2-ft long shell. The fighters here are also Mahdi, and the fighting in Sadr City often feels like one big carnival. All the kids are by now doing their cheering chant: "Ali wiyak, Ali!" "Ali with you, Ali!" If I were an American soldier, I would be expecting a flying shell every time I hear kids cheering in Sadr City. After all, this is the only fun they get, shooting at the sitting ducks.

The expert tosses the shell into the barrel, and a big explosion follows. "Right a bit!" shouts one of the kids at the end of the street. "It fell on a house!"

The second one falls much too far to the left. "It fell on another house, move to the right a little bit!"

The third one falls something like 10 metres away from us, but doesn't explode. The fourth lands by the Americans, and detonates. "Ten dead, I saw it with my own eyes!" shouts another kid. The fifth doesn't leave the tube, and he has to up-end the tube and shake it.

In all, the firefight lasts for an hour, at which, after a few more rounds and a few more civilian houses destroyed,the fighters jump into their car and drive away.

Then the RPG session starts, kids aiming at the Americans and hitting whatever target they fancy. As one prepares to fire his RPG, the rusted rocket doesn't launch.

"Come, you can use mine," says a man who is standing by, watching. Helpfully, he goes to his nearby home and returns with his RPG, as if he were lending a neighbour his Hoover.

Then, "They are coming, they are coming!" and everyone starts to run; the 50 or so kids who have gathered to watch the game, break into a sprint...
[...]
...Everyone jumps to the ground, and Ali is asked once again to show his mercy upon us. "This has been our life for the past few weeks; we don't know when we will be killed and who will kill us," says the father...

...we are sitting with the fighters by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr. We are prepared for a long night waiting for American mortar shells. I think to myself, here we go, another dozen houses gone.

A young muj extends his hand and says: "Do you want a beer?" I am stunned, and what remains of my religious belief rapidly evaporates. But the beer is good and I sit all night with the great religious fighters, drinking beer and waiting for the shells that never come.

These people seem to be mostly a bunch of nihilistic knuckleheads who fight because they are bored. They are a threat mostly to random passers-by.

If they had a substantive ideology, if they were for something, then this behavior could be attenuated via policy choices from the government. Since these morons don't even know why they are fighting, it will be very hard to stop.

Of course, without a coherent ideology, these fighters are unlikely to have any significant political effect, regardless of their numbers.

On the Lighter Side

2004-06-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

EUROBAD '74
An exhibition of Europe's worst interior designs of 1974.

This may not be your thing, but I love architectural humor.

Just look at page 4. It makes you want to go right out and buy a horse.

And what is with the orange and green. Yikes.