perfidy

In relation to Johno's comment in a previous post:

1) You are the first person to plausibly explain how a rise in attacks might be considered a "good thing." Thanks for that. And you are right-- it IS good in a sick way, if at all.

2) In the run-up to war, we discussed the possibility that Bush wanted to whack Saddam's government as an example to others. It's not a thesis you hear very often, which is weird because it seems to me to be the single most logical of all reasons for the war. It's like we're the action hero who steps into a room of thugs who've done something bad to him and beats the shit out of the guy nearest the door-- breaks ribs, knocks out teeth, bleeding scalp, disclocated knee, swirly-- and then looks up with blood on his chin and says, "now who's next?"

1) Thank you.

2) While I have been often distracted by the minutia of why this or that reason is right, wrong, or disengenuous; at root my basic support for the war comes from that conclusion. While I think all the reasons that have been given for invading are valid to one degree or other, the core principle at work is that we needed to throw somebody against the wall after 9/11. In a sense the reasons given for the war are not justifications for an invasion of Iraq, they are merely the reasons we picked Iraq to invade.

The war on terror is a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations - on a relatively modest and restrained level. It is a clash of lifestyles. War, on one level, is merely a demonstration that our mojo is stronger than their mojo. If we are to defeat terror - it will happen because we have convinced the Islamic world that:

1. Attacking America is a supremely bad idea. That we will ruin the day of anyone who attacks us, supports those who attack us, or even looks at us funny when someone attacks us.
2. That the Islamic Fundamentalist/Baathist - Pan Arab Nationalist/Let's blow things up because we haven't got our way set of memes is a really bad way to organize your society. Because it either results in 1) above, or because it results in poverty and oppression even when your land sits atop stupendously valuable natural resources.
3. We have created at least one example that a Muslim nation can be reorganized on western lines without destroying the essential muslimness of it.

The terrorists themselves have told us how our limpwristed, ineffectual responses to previous terrorist attacks only encouraged them. It made us look weak. So, the obvious corrolary is that we must look puissant. The political wisdom that covers this situation goes back to Roman times. Be nice, until its time not to be nice. But once you change your MO, go biblical on the m-fs so that they get the idea.

War is a bad thing. But it is often better than all of the alternatives.

If the aliens arrive and challenge the human race to a rock/paper/scissors match.

In a sick way, the recent shift in targets is a positive sign. It means (hopefully) that the holdover Baathist thugs and imported jihadists are finding that attacking American soldiers and Marines is a very, very, dangerous thing. One thing that the media has been less than efficient in broadcasting is that when one or two American soldiers die in an ambush, the cost to the attackers is often far higher. And many attacks are foiled without American loss of life.

It also means that the counterrevolutionaries are going to be even less popular with the general populace, which can only be a good thing from our point of view.

If we continue to hunt them down, and the people continue to help us do so, things will get better. Remember, we were in a similar situation in Germany for well over a year. Operation Werewolf was killing American and British soldiers from ambush into '46.

What I remember from the pre war build up is that the administration focused on Iraqi efforts to develop WMD. Note that the consensus of all western intelligence agencies (including the French) was that Saddam either had them, or had the capability to develop them. And, of course, he had used them in the past which is certainly an indication that the idea wasn't out of left field.

The other reasons were on the back burner, but never discounted - violation of UN resolutions (18 if I recall correctly), the brutality of the regime, and support for terror. The administration never said that Saddam was directly connected to Al Quaeda, and never said that the WMD threat was imminent.

I think the central point is that after 9/11, we had to whack somebody just to establish a deterrent. Afghanistan didn't count, as it was to small, too weak. Saddam was a perfect target, because of all the reasons that were given. If we are to eliminate terror - and the war was always cast as a war on terror in general, then we have to make large scale changes in the region that is the source of the terror that has hit us hard and that continues to be (albeit smaller) threat today.

We know that Saddam's regime supported terrorists. Groups with links to Al Quaeda are in the northeast of that country, and were before we got there. The connections to Palestinian terror were more obvious.

No one of the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq was perhaps compelling enough to justify an invasion alone. But collectively, and in light of the overall threat from terrorism, Iraq was the logical and necessary choice. The best analogy, I think, for the war on terror is the British crackdown on piracy in the 19th Century, which the United States sometimes collaborated on. Sometimes it involves direct action against pirates, sometimes against the nations that support it - even if those nations didn't help the particular pirates that attacked you. Terrorism is a threat to the west, and it is not localized in one terror group.

This letter, from Cuban dissident Oscar Biscet Gonzalez, should be getting the same kind of attention that Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail got. It is sad the Castro gets a free ride from so many.

Read it.

I won't make cracks about Canadians having beady eyes and flapping heads whenever I disagree with Ross.

This is truly sick.

The SNP Museum in Slovakia recently held an exhibition of photographs of women, Jewish and non-Jewish, in the death camps of the Holocaust. On September 7, 2003 a group of Arabs visited the exhibit and signed the guest book:

1. This exhibit testifies to the quality of organization and handling [of the mission]. From a historical perspective, what Hitler did to the Jews is exactly what they deserve. Still, we would have wished that he could have finished incinerating all the Jews in the world, but time ran out on him and therefore Allah's curse be on him and on them.
-- Khaled al-Zahraya from Saudi Arabia, 07.09.03

2. This is a museum showing a restaurant [specializing in] Jewish meat, which is what they deserve. Sons of apes and pigs. The day after the attempt to murder Ahmad Yasin.
-- 'Umar al-Da'm, Yemen. 07.09.03

3. The most beautiful sights of Jews.
-- Ibrahim al-'Arimi, Sultanate of Oman, 07.09.03

4. I say what they all say, and will just add that they [Jews] are cursed in this world and the next.
-- Madih, Yemen. 07.09.2003

These individuals went to a Holocaust museum to gloat. Truly sickening, in a completely literal sense. Gives the argument in this Daniel Pipes article a human face. This article, by Charles Jacobs, covers some similar territory. Links via lgf.

[wik] Mark Steyn chimes in with a story about disappearing Sudanese penises. (Now there's a sentence you won't see every day.) Read the whole thing, but this part was interesting to me:

For one thing, a week after the Malaysian Prime Minister told an Islamic summit that their "enemies," the Jews, control the world and got a standing ovation from 56 fellow Muslim leaders, it's useful to be reminded that the International Jewish Conspiracy is comparatively one of the less loopy conspiracies in the Islamic world...

It is, in that sense, the perfect emblematic tale of Islamic victimhood: The foreigners have made us impotent! It doesn't matter that the foreigners didn't do anything except shake hands. It doesn't matter whether you are, in fact, impotent. You feel impotent, just as -- so we're told -- millions of Muslims from Algerian Islamists to the Bali bombers feel "humiliated" by the Palestinian situation. Whether or not there is a rational basis for their sense of humiliation is irrelevant.

One of the things I'd feel humiliated about if I lived in the Arab world is that almost all the forms of expression of my anti-Westernism are themselves Western in origin. Pan-Arabism was old-school 19th century nationalism of the type that eventually unified the various German and Italian statelets. Nasserism was transplanted European socialism, Baathism a local anachronistic variant on 'tween-wars Fascist movements. The Arabs even swiped Jew hatred from the Europeans. Though there was certainly friction between Jews and Muslims before the 20th century, it took the Europeans to package a disorganized, free-lance dislike of Jews into a big-time ideology with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf and all the rest.

Even Islamic fundamentalism, though ostensibly a rare example of a homegrown toxin, has, as a practical matter, more in common with European revolutionary movements than with traditional expressions of Islam -- an essentially political project piggybacking on an ancient religion to create the ideology of choice for the world's troublemakers.

There's something pathetic about a culture so ignorant even its pathologies have to be imported. But what do you expect? The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away.

It becomes harder and harder for me to believe that the nastier strains of Islamic thought are actually limited to the lunatic fringe, as we are repeatedly told. This kind of thing is far more pervasive. And eventually, it is going to bite us in the ass if we keep ignoring it. This kind of malicious bile needs to be fought.

Over here, I found this:

The Jerusalem post has an interesting interview with Richard Perle. Particularly interesting was the story the interviewer told about Bush's visit to the WTC. Read the whole thing.

Does anyone know or care who is winning the world series?

In a newly released bio of Canadian PM Jean Chretien, it is revealed that the Canadian gov't was prepared to take a much harder line than it ever admitted if Quebec sovereignists had achieved a referendum victory in 1995. In an interesting quote, we hear the opinions of the Canadian Defense Minister at the time, David Collanette:

Earlier in the chapter, Martin suggests Collenette was also prepared to come to the aid of federalists still in Quebec.

" 'My view,' Collenette would explain in a later interview, 'was that these guys aren't going to get away with this. This is my country. I don't care what the numbers are. It's one thing to say you want to separate. But now we start playing hardball. Because we're not going to abandon all those people who want to stay in Canada.' "

"...A negation of the verdict in front of tens of thousands of celebrating Quebecers would have risked a bloody backlash. But in fact that is what Chrétien planned to do,"

Considering how opinion in Quebec was running, a repudiation of the referendum would have caused some havoc. The government felt that the constitution had no provision for leaving, and that therefore the referendum was merely a "consultative exercise." In an interview for the book, Chrétien admitted he would not have recognized a close vote.

"You know, at 50 (per cent) plus one, I was not about to let go the country. You don't break your country because one guy forgets his glasses at home."

Jacques Parizeau, then the premier of Quebec, revealed in his book Pour un Québec Souverain that he was prepared to declare unilateral separation if Ottawa refused to accept the referendum result. Throw in Chrétien's stance and Collenette's willingness to call in the troops, Martin speculates, and you have the elements for a possible civil war.

It has always been my belief that we have let far too much time pass since the last invasion of Canada. Almost two centuries, in fact. The thought that Canada might spare us the trouble by conveniently dissolving itself is, well, delicious. We could easily absorb the good parts, and then seal the borders around Quebec, and give laser weapons to the Indians. Sorry, First Nations.

On a disturbing note, the article closed with this quote:

Frulla and other Italian Canadians in her riding were being warned they would "have to go back to your own country," when the sovereignist side won.

No this isn't from some Buchananite wacko. It's from Italy's reform minister, Umberto Bossi.

Mr Bossi, leader of the Northern League, said Brussels was "transforming vices into virtues" and "advancing the cause of atheism every day". He denounced the European arrest warrant as a step towards "dictatorship, deportation, and terror, instilling fear in the people, a crime in itself". It would lead to a Stalinist regime "multiplied by 25".

One day Italian citizens would be locked up on the orders of Turkish judges, he told Il Giornale newspaper, which is owned by the family of the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. He added that the euro was a "total flop", its inflationary effects costing ordinary people "a fortune" in lost purchasing power.

I don't know if I agree completely, but I have my suspicions - on bad days, I agree with Rachel Lucas, and wish that the EU would just declare itself a fascist dictatorship so we could go over and kick their ass and get it over with.

The new draft EU constitution contains none of the protections for individual liberty that we enjoy here. The tendency of EU bureaucrats to take action without consulting the public - or even thinking about consulting the public, is worrisome as well. The unelected officials who form the nascent European federal government are completely removed from any kind of accountablility to the citizens of the several European nations.

It might be a good thing if some Europeans got together with a copy of the Federalist Papers, the Notes from the Constitutional Convention, and a lot of red pens.

It is surprising to me that the drafters of the new European constitution have paid so little attention to the lessons of our constitution - given that there are so many parallels. In both cases, there are a number of different soveriegn states, varying in size, population and wealth. There are issues of free trade and common currency. There are debates about the optimal miz of central and state power.

Of course, they may have paid attention, and decided that a representative democracy that devolved power to the masses and allowed maximal freedom for the individual; and enshrined notions of limited government inviolable rights is not what they wanted.

This, by way of her, by way of him. He also has a very funny picture. Click the more link, and don't look if you're an easily offended PETA freak.

*Bah-whooooosh!*

Woah. Did I make it flush twice? I didn't move. That's some flush. Like a jetski in a koi pond. Why make the flush so powerful? What the fuck do people here eat ? " Yes, I'll have the innards of six Baby Ruths, some olestra, two wheels of cheddar, and the small bag of hair, please."

*Hiss!*

It's angry. I think it's angry. Looks angry. I shouldn't have mocked it. Do they make telepathic toilets? Probably. Damn Japanese. I know this is a Japan thing. Japan has way too much free time.

What perplexed my wife was, did someone see the cat, then make the sign, or did this sicko take the time to make the sign and just kept it in the car until he found a suitable cat?

In the comments to Robert Prather's post China In Space (which he originally posted as a result of a comment I made on The Spoons Experience ain't the blogosphere grand?) Robert asked about space based kinetic energy weapons:

I saw a story last year about space-based missiles that used kinetic energy -- no warhead -- and hit the earth with all the destructive force of a nuclear weapon, minus the radiation.

Seeing as the post was a bit old, I decided to email him, but here's what I thought:

Robert,

The system you're looking for is THOR. It was featured in the novel Footfall, by Niven and Pournelle. Pornelle came up with the idea in the sixties, and advocated it when he became a member of the Citizen's Advisory Council on Space back in the early eighties. (The council included several sf writers, including Niven, Pournelle and Heinlein; as well as scientific and military types.) Here's a link to Jerry's description on his site, here's another article that references Pournelle and THOR, and here's a RAND corporation study, rather long and technical but juicy, nevertheless.

We've actually seen precursors of this concept in operation in Iraq - the concrete bomb is essentially the same concept, just airdropped instead of from space. With sufficient accuracy, and GPS gives us that, we don't always need explosives. When you have orbital weapons, the speed of reentry gives the weapon enormous power. However, it's not quite on the nuclear level. You'd need a very large projectile to approach Hiroshima grade impact events, or else accelerate the projectile to much higher speeds.

I was thinking some more about the militarization of space, and in one sense it has been militarized almost from the start - reconnaissance satellites are certainly performing a military function. But for the last forty years we've been frozen at the equivalent of 1914 for aircraft. What we're really thinking of is turning space systems from intelligence gathering and communications platforms into weapons platforms. While to the best of my knowledge we have never done it, it would be very easy to design a small manned, armed space capsule. We have invested substantial effort in developing unmanned ASAT weapons, they are still very limited in capability. With the advances in UAVs, this may change, but despite the weight penalties of carrying a pilot and his life support, the advantages of having intelligent direction are substantial.

When you think about potential Chinese moves into space, it becomes clear, I think that this is where it's going. For the Chinese to have any serious ASAT capability, which they would need to degrade our overall capabilities in any potential conflict, they would have to go with a space warship, however simple. Their technology would not enable them to develop the automated weaponry necessary. But, once they have made the space warship, their space capabilities could very well be greater than any collection of unmanned weapons platforms we have at the time. We would need manned space platforms to face the threat. (That assumes that they develop a reliable launch capability in addition to whatever space hardware they come up with.)

I posted a link to an article about the imminent arrival of serious battlefield lasers recently, and when you combine that concept with all the ideas for space to space and space to ground weaponry, you have some incredibly kick ass potential. We are already years if not decades ahead of any potential peer competitor militarily. Once this stuff comes on line, (and no one else is spending the money to develop it) we might be talking Nineteenth Century British v. Zulus or US Army v. Indians types of lethality differentials. Of course, just having the weapons doesn't guarantee victory - Custer left his Gatlings at base, and the British commander at Isandalwanda was a complete idiot. But with even moderately good military leadership, these weapons will give us enormous power. 

Variety is reporting that Gibson has finally found a US distributor for his movie Passion. After being stiffarmed by wary studios, Gibson has reached a deal with Newmarket, where Gibson essentially is renting their distribution system for a cut of the gross. Gibson self financed the movie to the tune of $25 million dollars.

Personally, I am happy that we will be able to see the movie. (And also happy that the movie will now have subtitles. My Aramaic is a bit rusty...) While the usual suspects were up in arms with charges of antisemitism, every review I've read from someone who has actually seen the movie was overwhelmingly positive. A movie that has an unabashedly Christian message is not by definition anti-semitic. I look forward to seeing it.

For its expose of the Gest/Minnelli nightmare.

According to this article the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is on the verge of developing some kick ass solid state lasers. Within ten years at the outside, U.S. armed forces will begin to be equipped with laser weaponry.

The first and most obvious use for these weapons would be point defense against missiles and artillery rounds - given that lasers are nearly instantly retargetable, a ground based, radar guided laser system could knock out incoming artillery barrages, missile strikes and enemy aircraft. The advantage over conventional systems is that the ammunition is merely electricity rather than say, a $3mil patriot missile. It will become far more difficult to saturate a laser defense system, because as long as their is adequate electrical power, it could shoot at anything in the air, shifting targets every second, and not worrying about wasting expensive ammo on decoys.

The Air Force has been working on a large chemical laser system - mounted in a modified Boeing 747 - designed for missile defense. This system would shoot down missiles during the boost phase, when missiles are slowest and most vulnerable. But the equipment required weighs many tons, and requires toxic and explosive chemicals to fire.

The new lasers being developed are solid state, and require only a plug into an electrical system. They could be powered by generators, and mounted on Humvees or in jet aircraft. The DoD says it needs at least 100kW for a useful battle laser - and the researcher in the story, Yamamoto, says he'll have 25 by Christmas and double that early next year.

Interestingly, the problems with heat have led the developers at Yamamoto's lab to adopt a gatling-type principle - when a stack of laser crystals gets to hot, it can be rotated out and replaced by another so that it can cool. Gatling lasers. Sweet. And the lasers are pumped by diodes - LEDs, which are much more efficient than flashlamps:

In theory, that means a liter of everyday Army diesel fuel costing as little as $1 will generate enough rapid-fire laser pulses to destroy a standard airborne missile. The job now falls to Patriot missiles costing $3 million apiece.

The only real defense against laser weaponry is dust, which degrade the beam - limiting range. But just because lasers don't shoot through smoke, doesn't mean bullets won't.

Considering that we are effectively the only nation in the world investing in new military technology, we should have a years, even decades long monopoly on battlefield lasers once we put them in the field. Imagine, functional invulnerability to artillery barrages - historically the most lethal of all weapons systems - causing half of all casualties in American wars of the last century. Jet fighters that can't be shot down with missiles. AC130 gunships with lasers that can fire at a hundred targets a second.

Sheesh.

I will not be watching the world series. I was indoctrinated from birth to hate the Yankees. That will never change. The only time I would ever cheer them on is in a purely tactical situation where a Yankees win over some other team would advance the prospects of the Indians. The fact that they have won basically all of the last twenty world series only adds to my hatred.

I also hate the Marlins. This ridiculous expansion team, only in existence for eleven years, has already won one world series, defeating the Indians. They do not deserve another. And for the pain they inflicted on me back in '97, they should go another 100 years without having a winning season.

The only way I would watch the series is if they changed the rules in such a way that it became possible for both teams to lose. The Yankees and Marlins collectively represent all that is wrong in baseball and the world at large. Fie on them both, fie.

One, two and three.

I have been conflicted on this whole issue - on the one hand, file trading is certainly illegal, and likely wrong as well; but on the other hand, the RIAA is a nefarious organization whose ham-handed strongarm tactics have won it no sympathy from me or the general public.

I believe that in the not too distant future, this debate will be rendered moot by the advancement of technology. Someone will come along with a new distribution method and a sound legal and business strategy. Some of the old recording industry giants will adapt, others will not and will fade away. Consumers will be able to buy music by the song or in bulk, on physical media or over the interweb for much less money; and their selection will be vastly greater. The only real question is whether the artists will get a better deal from the new regime.

About an hour ago, the Chinese launched their first manned mission into space, with one Chinkonaut aboard. (Okay, that's the last time I'll use that. They made it into orbit, they deserve some props.) The Chinese government decided not to broadcast the launch live, but apparently all went well, and taikonaut Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, 38, is now circling the globe. He will return to Earth sometime tomorrow.

The Washington Post has some good coverage, or just go to the drudge report and use one of his several links. I'll have more on this tomorrow. 

I hope those two fans who blocked the catch make it out of Wrigley Field alive. Helpfully, the network kept putting their picture up on the screen.