Posts from — September 2013

Position: 13.9N 25.9W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West-Northwest [285°] near 10 mph [17 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Wind Gusts: 70 mph [110 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 80 miles [130 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1000 mb ↓.

Currently about 120 miles [ 190 km] West-Southwest of the Cape Verde Islands.

The warnings for the Cape Verde Islands has been discontinued.

Humberto is on track to become the first hurricane of the season.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

The first huge clue that action against Syria was a terrible idea was the letter from the Chickenhawk Cheerleaders, the ‘experts’ who helped the Shrubbery invade Iraq.

Let’s add in the Likud, who want to use Syria to promote their real aim, an attack on Iran. If they can sucker Zero on his ‘Red Line’ in Syria, they will create a ‘Red Line’ for Iran, and then provide the intel to ‘prove’ Iran crossed it.

Then you have the problem faced by even Congresscritters like Alan Grayson, to find out what happened in Syria. He can’t tell anyone, or even try to verify, what he learned because everything is classified. This is the same problem that prevented Senators Wyden and Udall from telling people what Snowden has revealed.

Alan Grayson has made a lot of money as an attorney. He can recognize a good case when he sees it. He knows what is needed to convince a jury, and even if he can’t say what he’s seen, he is making the point that it isn’t going to convince the jury.

The real problem that both Digby and Marcy have written about, is that there is no direct evidence that the Assad government approved or even knew about the chemical attack before it happened. They are making the assumption that it was carried out by the government based on very spotty intelligence on activities before the attack. They don’t have continuous coverage of the government’s activities.

Another thing that bothers me is the claim that 1400 people were killed. I first heard that number in a report from Doctors Without Borders, which was given as 1400 casualties of whom 400 had died, that was based on doctors reporting from the hospitals in the area. Four hundred is bad enough, there is no need to embellish the number, and a lot of reasons not to, with credibility on the top of the list.

At this point I think the House will vote against the use of force, led by Democrats who don’t think it will do any good, and Republicans who will oppose anything Zero proposes.

Position: 13.2N 21.9W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: West [275°] near 12 mph [19 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 35 mph [ 55 kph].
Wind Gusts: 45 mph [ 70 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1006 mb ↓.

Currently about 160 miles [ 260 km] Southeast of the Cape Verde Islands.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the southern Cape Verde Islands of Maio, Santiago, Fogo, and Brava.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

To Elayne on her eleventh blogiversary™ yesterday, one of few archæobloggers still on-line.

Both Jill and Fallenmonk are another year older today.

Time flies, and I hope someone’s having fun.

Tony Abbott will be the new Prime Minister of Australia, but that’s at the head of a coalition of conservative parties, with his party, the Liberal Party, the largest.

The Wiki on the Parliament of Australia is a place to start, but don’t expect to really understand it unless you live and vote in the country, after going through school there. They do things differently, borrowing from Britain, the US, and anyone else they thought had an interesting idea.

They have 150 members in their House of Representatives and 76 in their Senate.

It looks like Australia is in for ‘interesting times’. People apparently wanted a change, and I suspect they are going to get one.

Update: From Kryten in comments – the Guardian as a brief explanation of the Australian voting system.

Google is rushing to complete a project to encrypt the links between their server farms with a TLS 128-bit AES system, obviously to counteract the impression that they are handing client data to NSA. Of course, if they receive an order from the FISA court, they will hand over their client data to NSA, so this is more about PR than reality.

It is a good and necessary thing that they are doing, and something they, and every other Cloud seller should have done before to protect their systems from non-government intruders, but this is transit encryption, and users should be encrypting their own data, using their own systems.

Bruce Schneier has a couple of posts up on what we now know about NSA activities and some basic things you can do to protect your data.

The best current solution is to use Open Source software, things like GPG [Gnu Privacy Guard], based on Open PGP, is a good place to start. There is no corporation that can be strong-armed into providing a NSA backdoor, and a lot of paranoid people looking at the source code to make sure one doesn’t ‘magically’ appear.

Bear in mind – there is no unbreakable code. When I was in codes were graded on estimates of how long it would take to break them, e.g. there were 1-day, 1-week, 1-month, and 1-year codes. Given the advances in computers and algorithms I would assume that my 1-month codes are now 1-day codes.

Something like targeting information only needed to be secret for a limited time – I mean, after you drop the bombs it isn’t exactly a secret that the area was a target. The purpose of the encryption was to make the information worthless by the time it was decrypted, because the assumption was that it would be decrypted.

If you are in business you want codes that will hold until the statute of limitations runs out. 😈

Digby has found another example of the militarization of government agencies – a water quality inspection team dressed up like a SWAT team to inspect mining claims in Chicken, Alaska.

The claim is that the EPA was told there was human trafficking and drug activity in the area, so they dressed for a possible hostile situation.

First off, they were dressed to die. Their body armor wouldn’t have stopped the guns everyone in the Alaskan interior has for hunting moose and caribou, as well as chasing off bears and wolves.

There is no abundance of humans or traffic along the Taylor Highway, which is closed in the winter. The area is just to the south of the Yukon Quest route. As for drugs, the problem drug in the Alaskan interior is alcohol, and it’s legal.

Chicken was founded during the glory days of the Yukon Gold Rush. There was a decent amount of gold in the area, so the town was born. They wanted to name it for the local bird, a type of grouse, that fit the place of the chicken in their diet, but they couldn’t agree on how to spell Ptarmigan, so they went with Chicken. The town dwindled with the gold. There is still gold in the area, but it isn’t easy to get and can’t support a big operation.

Checking the water quality in Chicken was a job for a summer intern from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks, not a pseudo-SWAT team. They would have probably had a rifle in their truck, but they wouldn’t have brought along an attitude.

Property Backlit

I’m bored …

[Editor: For reasons known only to her, Property decided to jump on the back of my computer desk and stare at me.]

Friday Ark

Well, as official as anything can be coming from James Clapper, according to Marcy we didn’t report on the content of the intercepts until after the attack.

That’s a really great system we have, given that the raison d’être for the National Security Agency was to avoid the situation we encountered in December of 1941 when a Japanese diplomatic cable was intercepted and decoded that revealed the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the report sat in a State Department in-basket from Friday afternoon, when it was delivered, until Monday morning when it was finally read.

If Syria is so important, why is Syrian intel such a low priority?

Speaking of intel, we still have no real understanding as to why the Assad regime would have decided to make the attack on the Damascus suburb. They knew the UN inspectors were due to arrive, and would want to inspect the area. The attack took place at the wrong time to achieve maximum efficacy, at night, instead of midday. Where is the motive?

Further, we have the administration including Israeli intel without identifying it as such. The Israelis have a history of creative writing in their intel, and they want the US to blow things up in Syria.

Position: 19.0N 68.5W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: North-Northwest [335°] near 9 mph [15 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 30 mph [ 50 kph].
Wind Gusts: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Minimum central pressure: 1010 mb.

Currently about 30 miles [ 50 km] North-Northwest of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

The storm has lost its organization and become a remnant low. This is the final NHC advisory.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Most of the people who drop by seem to agree that blowing up more of Syria doesn’t seem to be the most intelligent solution for the current problem. So, what would be a better solution?

The root cause is a lack of water, and Badtux mentioned a desalination plant as a solution to that problem and it sounds good to me?

This needs to be as local a solution as is possible to really work. This can’t be something imposed from outside, so how do we get there?

Both Iran and Qatar want to run natural gas pipelines through Syria to the Mediterranean to export to Europe. Currently Europe is heavily dependent on natural gas from Russia. The Europeans would certainly like the pipelines. Since the gas is coming from a field that is shared by Iran and Qatar, perhaps they would consider a single, shared pipeline to reduce costs and overhead.

With the pipeline, Syria would have the energy source for a desalination plant, and they might want to consider a power generation / desalination combination facility.

As the world apparently has no problem coming up with tens of millions dollars to blow things up in Syria, wouldn’t it make more sense to use it to build something the entire area really needs – a reliable source of water for people and agriculture?

The governments of the Gulf states and Iran have a lot of experience with desalination and have working examples of most of the different types, so they have the people that can put this deal together, if they want a solution. When there was rain, Syria grew enough wheat for export, so the water will benefit the region with lower food prices.

The politics can sort themselves out after it is certain that something has been done about the underlying cause of the war in Syria, because the lack of water is going to be a continuing problem in the area.

I don’t have the training, but I wonder if it is feasible to feed the clean water into the existing aquifer and use that as a natural storage tank and distribution system, rather than a network of pipes? There are already wells drilled into the aquifer, and if the level can be elevated they will function.

Position: 17.0N 66.6W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [320°] near 8 mph [13 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 40 mph [ 65 kph].
Wind Gusts: 50 mph [ 80 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 45 miles [ 75 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1008 mb.

Currently about 70 miles [ 110 km] South of Ponce, Puerto Rico.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for Puerto Rico and the coast of the Dominican Republic from Cabo Engano to Cabo Frances Viejo.

A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for the coast of the Dominican Republic from Santo Domingo to Cabo Engano.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]

Happy 5774!

At sunset Rosh Hashanah begins, so get your honey, challah, and apples ready.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved a resolution to give Zero 60-90 days to blow things up in Syria, but there will be no US troops on the ground. The debate was so intense that überHawk John McCain played poker on his iPhone [verified].

Now it goes to the full Senate for more ‘serious debate’ and possibly a vote.

This is not going to affect the use of chemical weapons by Assad. The conflict is existential, a matter of survival, for both sides. The ‘winners’ will massacre the ‘losers’ and both sides know it. The Saudis have released their ‘dogs of war’, the charming group that cuts out hearts and bites out a chunk. Hezbollah remembers these fighters from when the Saudis sent them into Lebanon.

This isn’t about politics, it’s about survival. If the Opposition ‘wins’ it will be a replay of the ‘Reign of Terror’ that followed the French Revolution. The ‘dogs of war’ are already talking about killing all of the non-Sunni inhabitants of Syria, not just the Alawi. If Assad’s forces win, they will make sure there is no one left to oppose them.