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CBS News says: 5 Arab Men Detained After Flight Lands.

The later CNN story explains: Men detained 3 hours for school materials.

FBI: Israeli, four Angolans on airliner posed no threat
…
Five airline passengers speaking in foreign languages and carrying “aircraft flight materials” were briefly detained Saturday until authorities determined they were simply returning to their home countries after attending a U.S. helicopter training school.

Educated Angolans speak Portuguese, tend to be Catholic, and are definitely not Arabs. As for the Israeli…

Glenn Greenwald reports that the Shrubbery is thinking of appointing General Michael V. Hayden, Negroponte’s deputy, to be the next Director of Central Intelligence.

[It just occurred to me that this is another “Harriet Meirs” appointment – the next name the Shrubbery heard when told of the vacancy.]

Billmon’s article, Rumsfeld Über Alles, talks about the conflict between Rumsfeld and Negroponte over control of the intelligence system.

Hayden is an active duty, serving officer of the military. He may be taking orders from Negroponte at the moment, but Rumsfeld controls his rank and his pension.

The CIA and the DoD do not have a close and friendly working relationship. The CIA is not going to appreciate a serving officer as its head, and Hayden can’t act independently while he is in uniform.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. [Matthew 6:24 KJV]

Scout caught a short piece about Chertoff wanting embed reporters at natural disasters.

It won’t work. Reporters want to be where the action is, and I think Katrina made it quite clear that FEMA and Homeland Security are totally incapable of finding out what is going on. Without independent reporting they wouldn’t have had any idea what was really happening in New Orleans.

It took multiple media outlets and live images to convince DHS and FEMA that there were people at the New Orleans Convention Center.

Given their track record, FEMA will be lucky if anyone bothers to attend their press conferences.

Digby has a post about an active-duty Air Force major general engaged in blatant political activity using government facilities.

Major General Jack J. Catton Jr. has broken his dead father’s code of conduct. His father, General “Black Jack” Catton was commander of the 15^th Air Force when I was in the service, and he was a very “by the book” officer, as befits a product of Curtis LeMay’s Strategic Air Command.

From the Washington Post article:

Catton urged his classmates to support Bentley Rayburn, a recently retired Air Force general seeking the Republican nomination for a House seat being vacated this year by Rep. Joel Hefley (R-Colo.). Hefley’s district around Colorado Springs includes the Air Force Academy, several military bases and the headquarters of Focus on the Family, James Dobson’s Christian broadcasting organization.

Both Catton’s e-mail and an accompanying note from Rayburn portrayed him as a candidate who would represent the military and conservative Christians.

“The lack of any Air Force presence within the Congress was particularly telling over the last few years,” Rayburn wrote, referring to controversy over proselytizing at the Air Force Academy and new Air Force regulations on religious expression. “For those of us who are Christians, there is that whole other side of the coin that recognizes that we need more Christian influence in Congress.”

First of all Congress is lousy with “Christian influence”. The whole Republican Party is beholden to the Religious Reich. You couldn’t swing a dead rat in either house of Congress without hitting someone ready to “speak in tongues”. I realize that criminal investigations are reducing their number, but there is a higher percentage of “Christians” in Congress, than in the country.

If these guys were worried about representing the Air Force, why didn’t they come up with some cash for Michael C. Francisco [Lieutenant Colonel, USAF retired] when he challenged Jeff Miller in the First Congressional District of Florida. Catton was stationed here at the time. Francisco got minimal support from retired officers, and was hurting for money.

Catton needs to be nailed to put an end to this type of misconduct.

At Pacific Views Natasha was talking about the Iran Freedom Support Act in Congress.

She provided a link to a BBC site on the Iran government. If you look at the graphic and follow the links you will discover that the capo di tutti capi of Iran is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. He controls the military.

At number two is Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who was defeated in the 2005 presidential elections by Mahmoud Amadinejad. Rafsanjani is deputy chairman Assembly of Experts and chairman of the Expediency Council. The Presidency would have been icing, but he already owns the cake.

The way the system works, Amadinejad has slightly less power in Iran than Queen Elizabeth has in Britain. He is essentially a contact person for all of those annoying people who want to say something to the government of Iran.

The Assembly of Experts gets to select the Supreme Leader, and the Expediency Council mediates disputes between the legislature and the Guardian Council.

Amadinejad isn’t a cleric, so he’s ineligible to even belong to the real power centers in Iran. This structure shows why the former reformer president, Mohammad Khatami, couldn’t institute any reforms.

Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin was the titular head of the Soviet Union from 1919 until his death in 1946. After 1938 his job tile was changed to President. The name of the city of Koenigsburg on the Baltic was changed to Kaliningrad to honor him. He is buried in the Kremlin. Almost no one knows who he was. That’s the kind of power Amadinejad has, so let’s just ignore him and he’ll disappear into history.

Just in via NPR news on the radio, Porter Goss has resigned as Director of CIA.

You have to wonder if it involves “poker parties” that Goss “absolutely, positively, unequivalently didn’t attend”…really…honest.

Experience the mind of the Culture Ghost.

It’s no fair looking in comments.

Major General Rick Lynch thinks that running a blooper reel helps the cause: Outtakes show al-Zarqawi as poor gunman.

Yo, Rick, if al-Zarqawi is such a loser, why haven’t you caught him? Did he just “accidentally” kill dozens of our troops? Who thought showing your enemy as an incompetent would improve your ratings?

General, al-Zarqawi may be a klutz, but he’s apparently smarter than you are.

The latest CNN “QuickVote”: Would it be a problem for you to be the world’s richest person?

There would be one major problem: I don’t have the money.

If George Soros or Warren Buffett would like to adopt me, I could probably adjust.

I had comments rejected at both NTodd’s and Michael’s the other night, they rejected my blog address. Both are connected to TypePad.

Apparently Blue Security, an anti-spam company, was undergoing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, and to deflect part of the attack they transferred some of the incoming requests to their blog at Six Apart, knocking out that company’s TypePad and LiveJournal services.

This is one of the main reasons to find a tech savvy host that keeps their software updated, and to keep your software updated. A DDoS attack is made possible by people leaving their systems vulnerable. The person initiating the attack uses machines that were compromised at an earlier date. Your computer may be part of the attack and you wouldn’t notice.

I actually felt sorry for the survey taker at the other end of the telephone:

Could I speak to the lady of the house?

The only ladies in the house are cats.

Could I speak to the man of the house?

Speaking.

-Hollywood is terrible and not “family friendly” and putting pornography on television, don’t you think?

I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch television and haven’t for over a decade.

Movies are all about obscenity…

I don’t go to movies either.

How about the danger to your children and grandchildren?

Sorry, life-long bachelor.

The Dove Foundation survey is on-line.

I was nice, I didn’t get into how nothing is located in Hollywood anymore, and most of the production in North America takes place in Canada. I didn’t talk about the centers in Orlando, Atlanta, and Tokyo. I didn’t ask her why the Dove Foundation wasn’t doing something important, rather than carping about TV and movies.

She did give up, and I didn’t have to endure the entire spiel.

CNN has a poll on the Moussaoui sentence with 64% agreeing with the jury.

The BBC explored the sentencing with Jonathan Turley, professor at the George Washington University Law School, and Frank Gaffney, the Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy.

Mr. Gaffney complained that the death penalty in this case would have acted as a deterrent to the terrorists.

I would suggest that the death penalty would have had absolutely no effect on the 19 men who chose to fly aircraft into buildings on 9/11. Exactly what part of the role of “suicide bomber” does Mr. Gaffney fail to understand?

Okay, so people don’t get it. Academia is not a nice place: it is survival of the fittest and filled with some really talented street fighters.

For those of you who have never ventured into the battle zone of a faculty office building, I can assure you that “peer review” is not much different than climbing into a cage with rabid pit bulls. Resources and positions are limited, egos are huge, and no quarter is asked or given. Wit is the weapon and words are the ammunition, but the destruction is real. When you challenge someone at the top of the food chain, you had better have your facts squared away and your logic honed to a razor’s edge or you will be another pathetic stain on the carpet in the faculty lounge.

Fools who wander into the fighting pit of academic challenges and call out a heavy hitter like Juan Cole are not on the fast track of evolution.

Professor Cole’s dismemberment of Jonah Goldberg was properly immortalized by James Wolcott.

Then John Fund decided he would attempt to block a job offer to Professor Cole, in a move that could end up in court, as Mr. Fund did not verify his facts.

And Christopher Hitchens has violated “netiquette” by posting edited comments from a private forum. Initially Cole offered Hitchens the excuse of inebriation, but a “friend” has said “His cups” was miraculously sober when he hacked the list.

Don’t attack an academic’s credibility and expect to walk away unbloodied. These attacks are the process by which academics gain their standing. They are required to defend themselves when they present papers for advancement. The people attacking are their “betters”, experts in the field. You must prevail to move up to the next level. What chance do dilettantes have against such veterans?

Andrew Cohen, CBS legal analyst, presents his view on the Zacarias Moussaoui sentence, and I agree with him.

A dangerous, deluded individual is off the streets forever, to rot in a cell. There is no glory for him in the sentence.