Posts from — December 2006

Annoyed

You will pay for the bright light, photographer boy!

[Editor: For some reason my cats never seem to be happy when the flash goes off.]

Friday Ark

If you would be interested in how the situation in Lebanon is viewed by a German ex-pat who has lived in Beirut for several years, check out EDB’s lastest post at Anecdotes from a Banana Republic. She expresses sympathy for Shi’ia based mainly on their social status in Lebanon, and is not impressed with the power sharing electoral system in the country that divides the parliament based on religion.

As for the major players, without regard to their religion, she thinks they are all a bunch of wankers, including the Shi’ia politicians. To be honest, I don’t think she likes politicians of any kind or nation.

In the CNN report you will learn:

Niyazov had led the desert nation since 1985, when it was still a Soviet republic. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, he retained control and began creating an elaborate personality cult and turning Turkmenistan into one of the most oppressive of the ex-Soviet states.Statues of him were erected throughout the nation. He is listed as the author of the “Rukhnama” (Book of the Soul) that was required reading in schools, where children pledged allegiance to him every morning.

Earlier this year, the eccentric leader announced he would provide citizens with natural gas and power free of charge through 2030. But he has also tapped the country’s vast energy wealth for outlandish projects — a manmade lake in the desert, a cypress forest to change the desert climate, an ice palace outside the capital, a ski resort and a 40-meter (130-foot) pyramid.

Surprisingly Saparmurat Niyazov, President for Life, Turkmenbashi [Father of all Turkmen] has reportedly died of a heart attack. The smart money would have doubted the existence of a heart or brain. Niyazov was on the same level as only one other leader in the world, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, in terms of human rights and sanity.

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At 6:22PM CST the winter solstice occurred marking the longest night of the year. If everyone has been good, the days start getting longer tomorrow. Locally, the sun rose at 6:39AM and set at 4:50PM for a total of 10 hours and 10 minutes [the seconds work against that extra minute] of daylight, but tomorrow will be a whole second longer.

This also marks HogWatch, so don’t forget to put out the turnips.

It’s official the last book in the series will be called: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I was successful in locating two Englebert Humperdinck Christmas CDs my Mother wanted [although Amazon.com will never permit me to forget it] as well as the Chia Cat and Mark Martin NASCAR T-shirt. I would note that the CDs are for her, but the Chia thing and T-shirt are gifts for a neighbor whose has been very helpful. I might even get to finish my shopping before Sunday.

The battery in my UPS died Tuesday, so I had to buy a new UPS because you can’t buy just the battery locally, and I can’t run a computer without a UPS. Then the new database software I had to buy to comply with a client’s preferences refused to install until I updated to Win-XP service pack 2, something I have been avoiding because it is a resource hog and flaky when first released, so I have been crawling under tables and watching mindless update screens for hours.

In dealing with sheetrock repairs in the rehab project I discovered that there is 3/8-inch sheetrock in two rooms and 1/2-inch in two others. The joy of old construction.

Everyone wants things finished before the end of the year, but they don’t mention it until after Thanksgiving.

Until further notice you can find Duncan / Atrios / Eschaton at eschaton08.blogspot.com.

Apparently the plan to update a major blog to the Beta model didn’t work quite as easily as the techs at Blogger assumed.

Terry at Nitpicker provided the link.

The CNN article, Blair urges tougher action on Iran, covers the main points and I heard bits and piece from the BBC coverage earlier this morning.

Tony “the poodle” Blair is in the very undemocratic United Arab Emirates complaining about Iran interfering with the promotion of democracy in the Middle East the day after an election in Iran.

The head of Fatah calling for new elections less than a year after Fatah lost at the polls promotes democracy, but Hezbollah calling for new elections 18 months after the last election is a coup attempt?

Iran is interfering with democracy by supporting political parties in the region in which it is located, but the US and UK is promoting democracy by supporting opposing political parties in those countries which are on different continents?

The friends of the US and UK in the region are not exactly beacons of democracy, most are autocratic regimes or monarchies, which is why most of the people in the region don’t believe us when we say we are promoting democracy. Iran is one of the more democratic governments in the area with elections that actually cause a change in policies and the people in charge. This is why the US and UK have a major credibility problem with the Arab street.

Over at Blonde Sense the Jersey Cynic combines information from The Carpetbagger Report and a Paul Kiel post at TPM Muckraker to produce a list of government reports and information that is no longer available because the facts didn’t agree with the press releases produced by the Shrubbery.

When the Democrats take over Congress, their oversight hearings are going to be eye opening. There are going to be a lot of people testifying that they don’t have the information to answer questions, because the data is no longer collected, even when the collection of the data is required by law.

The current administration doesn’t know what is going on, and doesn’t want to know.

By now everyone should have heard of the New York Times article about Donald Vance, the American in Iraq who was thrown into prison for three months by US authorities after he reported on the illegal weapons trading of the company he worked for in Iraq to the FBI. Mary of Pacific Views calls her post: Guilt by Association.

There is another “evil” that is part of what the military did that goes a long way to explaining why they have made no progress in fighting the insurgency in Iraq: this is no way to treat people who give you hard information about activities you are trying to stop.

The most valuable “tools” an “investigator” has are his/her informants, the people who provide him/her with information about what is occurring on “the street.” If your street is in Baghdad and you are chasing insurgents instead of burglars, you still need informants, especially if you can’t blend in with the local people. What the US military did was punish an informant.

In Iraq there is grave danger if you are seen to be tied to the American military, so providing information requires a lot of risk on the part of individuals. Some people may be willing to take the risk for a lot of reasons, but when you throw them in prison if they volunteer information, you can forget any cooperation. You can’t defeat an insurgency without street-level intelligence. Throwing people in solitary when they provide you with intelligence is not a winning strategy.

From CNN: Pentagon: Militia more dangerous than al Qaeda in Iraq.

Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army has replaced al Qaeda in Iraq as “the most dangerous accelerant” of the sectarian violence plaguing Iraq for nearly a year, according to a Pentagon report.

Attacks by Iraqi insurgents and sectarian militias jumped 22 percent from mid-August to mid-November, and Iraqi civilians suffered the bulk of casualties, according to the quarterly report released on Monday.

Okay, real slowly, Muqtada al-Sadr is the only major figure in Iraq who actually wants Iraq to continue as a single nation. He is also the only major figure who distrusts Iran. He maintains contacts with Sunni and Kurdish factions trying to form a true unity government from people who think that breaking Iraq into separate ethnic states is a bad idea. He is currently the most popular leader in Iraq because of his independence from both US and Iranian influence. He is the last, best hope for Iraq emerging from the violence as a nation. Attacking him would be the ultimate in stupidity, so I expect them to do it because they have consistently made the worst possible choices.

In a statement of the obvious the BBC headline reads: Blair ‘failed to influence Bush’.

The Chatham House report found that, despite military, political and financial sacrifices by the UK, Mr Blair had been unable to influence the Bush administration in “any significant way”.

It said there was no evidence British pressure had led to Mr Bush accepting a two-state solution in the Middle East.

“Blair has learned the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for nothing,” said Professor Bulmer-Thomas.

“And his successor will not make the same mistake of offering unconditional support for US initiatives in foreign policy at the expense of a more positive relationship with Europe.”

Not content to leave well enough alone and acknowledge the obvious: Blair stands by US relationship.

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I was writing a post that was sparked by Ellroon pointing to this article on Media Matters about Robert Pollak being ignorant, but Terry of Nitpicker is subbing for Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory and he covers what I was going to say in his post: There’s easy and then there’s magic.

Update: Also see: Surging To Defeat In Iraq by W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern

The practice of inserting advertisements on stories at news sites using computer algorithms is frequently not a good idea.

The headline: Texas family of 4 dies in plane crash.

The ad: ORBITZ: Texas Family Vacation.

What a crock.

Jonathan Alter writing for Newsweek penned this jewel, Is America Ready?, speculating on the chances of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama becoming President.

Mr. Alter states: “For 220 years, Americans have elected only white male Christians with no hint of ethnicity to the White House.”

Prove it, Mr. Alter. Several of the people who have been President were definitely not “Christian” in the commonly understood meaning of the word, and a few may well have been atheists, although it wouldn’t have been politic to admit it.

As for them all being “white male”, I would like to see the DNA to prove that claim. I might concede “male”, but America is a country of mixed races and bad record keeping. There have been rumors of tampering with National Guard records, criminal records, and educational records at various times.

Now if Mr. Alter would care to change his quote to: “For 220 years, Americans have been under the impression that they were electing white male Christians,” I could accept it. Bigotry in the US has forced this meaningless restriction on the political classes.

After more than 50 million American voters cast a ballot for the current resident of the White House in 2004, I would think that most people would have to agree that the bar to enter 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has been lowered to its Constitutional level of 35 years of age, 14 years of residence in the United States, and a native-born citizen.

Fortunately the Supreme Court will probably not recognize the conversion factor for dogs, or we could have a golden retriever as the next President.