The Christain Science Monitor must have a huge number of people in Iraq right now from all of the interviews they are doing. They are digging up some amazing stories though. They got the interview of the guys that tried to off Uday in the late 90s. I guess he runs a political party now.
After having just gotten into him for the first time recently, I am saddened to read that Edward Said has died. Life and death continue.
So the other day I posted about finding WMD in my hometown. But how much harder is it to find them in a place that you don’t speak the language, and are viewed with suspicion. This story follows the travails of some reporters trying to figure out the story behind a video tape speaking of a canister filled with nerve gas. I’ll be amazed if the inspectors are ever able to find anything at all.
I actually think that focusing on the WMD at this point does a disservice to the Iraqi people. How many mass grave have been found now that families are allowed to search for their disappeared loved ones? And how much more effort will it take before they are truly free and not having more people disappear to common banditry? The fact of the matter is the country is not going to produce any more WMD, and now there are bigger fish to fry.
I suppose from a domestic standpoint it is still important. “Well if they never had any WMD then Bush lied to us!” Guess what folks. Bush lies all the time! So did Clinton! All politicians do, or they won’t get elected. And the way the economy is going, and the more contracts that Haliburton gets, the less likely it is that Bush will get reelected anyway. So I guess I am back to my initial idea: the hunt for WMD is overrated.
BTW, Punchline to the article: It appears that in this case, the Iraqi secret service found some precursor chemicals loose, retrieved them, and properly disposed of them, by turning them over to a factory where they could be used up for industrial purposes.
This is an interesting article about how the IMF can be used to help combat terrorism and forward peace in the middle east through transparency of financial transactions. And now that I know that $900 million dollars of Palestinian money, yes that is money that was donated to them through various means, as well as their own hard earned tax money, was spent directly by Arafat, I begin to understand why people believe that nothing can happen until he is gone. He was personally responsible for more than half of all the PA spending! The PA really is a dictatorship. *sigh*
I just saw an interesting article on multi dimensional space from the Christian Science Monitor. They suggest that gravity could be so weak because it is acting in 11 dimensions and everything else just works in three. I had always hoped that we really did live in a high dimensional universe. That always seemed the best way to beat the speed of light problem. If we are on a membrane of four space that curves, they may be places where we can punch through a higher dimension for a much shorter trip. Much like taking a piece of paper and folding it back on itself. Two points can almost be touching, but if you are constrained to travel on the piece of paper, you have a much longer trip. And we are always constrained to our three dimensional piece of paper.
Interesting take on life in Iraq. I can’t even imagine how hot it is over there. It is interesting to see how the military commanders see the violence around them. It is very … technical. Most of what I read are from the locals which have a very different view of the raids. And the soldiers a different view altogether, but this is the first one I have seen from the point of view of someone organizing them. Very telling.
Just watched Chicago!. (I think you get to put the period in on a musical since the exclamation point is clearly part of the name of the production.) I kept expecting it to turn into one of those “women’s prison pornos.” Especially with all those bondage outfits. The thing that sort of got me about it was the fact that Roxy killed the guy for lying to her. When the fact of the matter is she was lying to her husband the whole time. And the “happy” ending is the devoted husband/”sap” gets used for his money to get her out of jail even though she is guilty. *sigh* Art imitates life. I do like though that Richard Gere was just in it for the money and not the sex. That was pretty funny to see the rumor going around the prison that he was in it for the ladies, when really he was in it for the cash. He was just good at working the juries in the ladies’ favor.
Jimi Hendrix died today in 1970 at 28. Rolling stone just voted him the greatest guitar player ever. I don’t know about that, certainly the most influential, but greatest? The Loop is doing a memorial day for him, where they play his music a lot today. Listening to it on the way in… he certainly was amazing. Here’s to you Jimi.
Which country has indicted more people in conjunction with September 11th than any other? Spain. It seems to me that Spain is doing more in the war on terror than we are. A quick read through that article also tells me that they are a bit less concerned about civil liberties than we are. Holy crap: “universal laws” are crimes which if committed can be tried in Spain no matter where they were committed. Pretty wild stuff.
“A judge indicted Osama bin Laden and nine others Wednesday for their role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks, saying al-Qaida terrorists used Spain as a base. It was the first known indictment of bin Laden for the 2001 terrorist strikes.
Investigative magistrate Baltasar Garzon indicted a total of 35 people for terrorist activities connected to bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization.
[...]
Along with Germany, Spain is known to have been an important staging ground for the Sept. 11 attacks. Accused ringleader and suicide pilot Mohamed Atta visited Spain in July 2001 and is believed to have held a key planning meeting with other participants in the northeastern Spanish region of Tarragona.
Garzon said the warrants and indictments are not so much aimed at putting bin Laden on trial in Spain as preventing him and other suspects from escaping justice altogether if and when they are caught. “
I don’t really watch much TV. However there are some thing that are just worth it. The Daily Show is one of those. I watch it regularly and find some of the vignettes so finny that I just have to tell someone about them. So I’m afraid that this Blog may become that place. So I’ll just call the snippets from the Daily Show, “Daily Show” so you can ignore them as needed. And without further ado, the first in the series:
John Edwards announced his candidacy on the Daily Show tonight. This is pretty funny because when he was on last time he said that if he were to run, he would announce on the show. So in order to keep his promise, he did! Pretty amazing, and I have to say that trick got him my vote, however the odds don’t seem to be in his favor. (Scroll to the bottom.)
I was walking down the street in Andersonville today when I passed a bunch of people in orange suits wandering the streets, blocking traffic. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but didn’t really want to get involved, so walked into the front of a store on the street. I realized what they were shouting was “Looking for weapons of mass destruction! We heard they were here in Andersonville! We will pay money if you have one, please bring them to us.”
Well I thought that was pretty funny, but the next was even better. The store owner handed someone a balloon with fins attached and a radiation symbol painted on the sign. He said, “give this to them, but please don’t tell them that you found it here, or they will be all over in here.” So out it came, and there was much shouting and cheering. And in the end they paid for the WMD. $150. Picture of the “money”:
Rick Rescorla is a hero by any stretch of the imagination. He died saving hundreds. He came to the US having been in Rhodesia and Cyprus, and was sent to Vietnam, where he commanded his men as well as any could hope. Having seen this video I now also believe he can see something of the future.
Prophesy is an interesting thing. Nostradomus was so accurate because he was so vague. Anyone can look back and put the appropriate spin on an idea to make it fit current events. Sometimes it takes no spin at all. This video was taken in 1998.
“We think we can go out there and be the world’s top cop. It’s impossible.”
Powerful stuff.
A lot can happen in two years. The world can change, but then again, it can stay the same. So many things are different, but are they real changes or just surface changes. We were in a steady state before, and we are in a steady state now, but someone injected a lot of energy into the system. What happened? Are we in the same state now or a different one. It is hard to tell looking from within. Maybe years from now we will be able to tell if this did something, maybe not.
Where were you two years ago? Were you packing for your vacation which you didn’t know you weren’t going on yet? Were you in the middle of a car ride to a new school in a strange city where you don’t know anyone? Were you alone, were you with others?
3000 people. It is hard to understand. It never struck me, because as I watched on TV I was sure that this would be the day that 50,000 people would lose their lives. Of course the miracle is that no where near that many died, and yet, the number, 3,000, is huge. It is hard to imagine, hard to understand. During the course of the current war (or engagement in the war, depending on who you are) in Iraq, between 6,000 and 9,000 civilians have been killed. Think about that, in six months of invasion and occupation, versus one day. One single event. And to think that it could have been so much worse.
What would have happened if it had been later in the day, and the buildings had been full, or if they had fallen sooner. Would that have truly driven our country mad? It is a terrifying thought. But it did not happen that way, and we have made our response, and are now in some form of steady state. And the world is a bit different, but not so much so. Some new friends are stronger than before, and some old ones weaker. But is the world really any different? Since then I have been married and managed to graduate. So I see the world with slightly different eyes. But it is the same world. People are still what matters. And there are still great moments to show our love for those around us with acts of kindness and by helping them. Perhaps our country seems that more now. Maybe the world is the same but there is more of an understanding of what is important. I hope so.
Here’s an interesting op-ed on the state of the war on terror. It’s from the BBC and in the vein of the last post, they do a pretty good job of walking in the shoes of the Americans. It basically looks at how well we are doing in our war on terror, assuming that it is a war on terror, and that it can be won. It also mentions many of the successes, as Americans would have it, but also points out that those successes are often only successes for the Americans, and can lose the war if we are not careful to win over “heart and minds”
I have read much about Edward Said, but very little by him himself. So when I looked over this article I figured I was in for a real whining treat, talking about how horrible the world is, and how the world conspires to make the palestinians miserable. Imagine my surprise when it turns out that not only is he pretty moderate, but he also plainly states a solution of self betterment. It is very easy to show why a current policy (or a idea in the scientific field) is bad, but it is much harder to offer up a valid solution. I think this is one of the reasons that I like Fareed Zakaria so much.
The problem with our foreign policy today is that, as a country, we seem to be unable to look through the eyes of other people. This is clearly not the case for individuals within the country, look at all of the donation activity that happens even in this time of economic hardship, but our country as a whole seems lo lack that insight.
We seemed to be doing a better job of it in Afghanistan than in Iraq, but if this really is a “war on terror” then we really need to do a better job of not making people mad at us. And the first step towards that is walking a mile in their shoes. “Think about how your brother would feel”
Trib op-ed on the subject.
Welcome to my blog. This is currently an experiment to see if I actually want to do this. I certainly hope that no one will read it for a while, until I get the swing of how it all works. Read on to find out what I plan on doing here.
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