How Auburndale, Massachusetts Got WMD Capability

The image above is an aerial photograph of the intersection of Commonwealth Avenue and Lexington Street in Auburndale, Massachusetts. Various businesses there have been labeled. The liquor store has an excellent selection of French, Californian, and Austrilian wines, along with a few but quite choice wines from Chile, New Zealand, and South Africa; the drug store staff is pleasant and remembers your name; and everyone agrees that the Star Market has gone downhill since the chain was bought by Shaw's. As for the gas stations--well, they're gas stations. All in all, it's a nice little shopping district for a quiet suburban town in New England.

Or is it?

Colon Pow: A Political Laxative

Q: What do you get when you cross a doveish reluctant
warrior with the mouthpiece of a reckless hawk president?

A: The need to find a bathroom - quickly.

It upset my stomach watching Colin Powell's speech to
the U.N. Like Curtiss, I agree that the evidence was
underwhelming, though it is enough IMHO to hold Iraq
in material violation. Seemed to me that Powell has
bent over to pick up the soap for the administration and
his integrity is the first casualty of this war. Too
bad - I always liked him.

I'm anti-war in the general case, but I think we have
to get rid of Saddam. Why? Because he's a dangerous
scud-tossing menace? No. Because he's stock-piling
WMDs and has used them? No. Because He gives to the
Al-Qaeda boy's club? No.

The reason is that like a fool, our President invested
so much political capital (both foreign and domestic)into
this war after 9/11 that if we don't follow up, the rest of
the world will laugh at us for years. The fact that Bush
would lose the next election doesn't trouble me at all,
though it adds fuel to the fire. And of course we've
already sunk big bucks into deploying all of our forces
around the region and this is a brink we can't step back
from. Which is unfortunate because the brink is our true
enemy, not Iraq.

So I say let's do it; do it quickly, try not to massacre
many innocent Iraqis (who are certainly way up there on
the scale of people who deserve a break today) and turn
the country into a parking lot for the new Virgin Mega-Store
in Kuwait (or whatever equally high-minded goal we have in
mind for them).

But be forewarned: the only thing more dangerous than a
cornered snake is a cornered snake that you've been poking
with a stick for months.

And be fore-forewarned: This is what you get when you elect
a leader who believes that he is doing God's work in the
world and is not smart enough to detect any gray areas in
the areas of morality and ethics.

Throw another civillian on the fire - it's getting cold in here.

Repressed Memory Syndrome: Nicaragua's MiGs (First in a series)

On November 6, 1984--election night--not too long after the networks called Reagan's victory and maybe just after Mondale conceded, I remember dire reports coming over the airwaves that our intelligence satellites had picked up evidence that the Soviet Union had shipped MiG fighter planes to Nicaragua. There was chatter about the nature of the evidence, that it had been deduced from the types of shipping crates photographed by the satellites, and that we actually had experts on such things who were called "boxologists" or something equally idiotic. I went to bed depressed by the election results and worried about what Soviet fighter planes in Nicaragua might portend for us. The story turned out to be false, and even by the next morning, the administration was equivocating about it, but for myself and many others, the combination of satellite photos and expert analysis of such was enough to remove any doubt.

Apres moi, le deluge

If you were reflexively hitting the refresh button on your browsers at about midnight on Saturday, you might have noticed the web log going through a series of changes. If not, I congratulate you on having healther priorities than I do; if so...well, then you must be me, and I already know what was going on. But in case you're curious about or annoyed by the changes, let me explain: I upgraded from Movable Type 2.11 to 2.51 a few weeks ago, but was still using the same templates and stylesheets. Since I promised that I would be changing the look of the blog, I grabbed new ones from moveabletype.org, decided to give the Clean Style a try, and plunged myself into about an hour and a half of hell. After the dust settled, I was back using the current version of the Georgia Blue style, had rearranged the links, and discovered that Peter had made this post as well as this one. As someone once said, if you can't decently memorialize the dead, you can at least abuse those who indecently turn tragedy to their own advantage.

If you find the text is now too large or too small--and you're using IE--you can now change this by selecting View->Text Size from the browser menu bar. Teeny fonts drive me crazy, but if you like 'em, you can have 'em. The blog is also now searchable. Web log links for folks I look at on a regular basis are now categorized. If I link to you and you don't like the category I've put your work in, please let me know. Web log links for folks I look at intermittently are maintained in a blogrolling list. Last but certainly not least is a list of resources that will grow as time goes on.

Finally, if anybody out there can tell me just what the hell the "SYNDICATE THIS SITE" link does and why I shouldn't remove it from the template, you'll eat and drink on my tab for an evening at my favorite Brooklyn restaurant/watering hole. Not that I need an excuse to overeat, but it sure helps sometimes.

Science for the Masses

In the wake of the Columbia tragedy I'm watching CNN and Miles O'Brien (not to be confused with Miles O'Brain) is standing there holding a model of the shuttle Challenger, assuring us that it looks just like the Columbia except for the decal on the side. I'm surprised that they don't have models of every shuttle ready to whip out at a moment's notice at the first sign of smoke.

Anyway, he's addressing a comment by a viewer concerning debris falling from the shuttle and looks into the camera in a knowing way and says something like, "well the shuttle is surrounded by plasma, but I'm not going to get too far into Newtonian physics now..."

Newtonian physics! Newton never heard of plasma! And classical Newtonian physics is often at odds with plasma theory and other elements of modern physics. But boy - it sounded great when Miles O'Brain said it was true. I'm sure that had the topic been brain surgery he'd also instantly become an expert in Renaissance-era EEG brainwave analysis.

The shuttle may indeed have been surrounded by plasma, but Miles and his reporting are certainly surrounded by Spasma - not a form of matter, but a form of doesn't matter that manifests itself in the universe as a by-product of a strained attempt to bring concepts into being from complete nothingness.

Garbage in, garbage out, America. Don't be surprised if they're running old footage of the Gulf war and Miles is telling everyone that the war's on again.

God's Vengeance

This morning, when the crew of the shuttle Columbia failed to make it home, several things happened quickly. The media (CNN in my experience) immediately raised the spectre of terrorism. Could it be....Iraq? Of course any country that can hide anything from us must surely be able take out an object at 200,000 ft. travelling at 18x the speed of sound. I've heard they have some camel-mounted missle systems that can do this. Iraqi officials then commented publicly that the shuttle perished in an act of vengeance by God against America and Israel. It was a winning day in the field of objective communication. We had the U.S. media telling us that we're gonna get it -we're not safe anywhere - even in space, and Iraq claiming that justice has been served against the great Satan. Hmmm? Could it be that subconsciously the media feels like America deserves to have its toys shot out of the sky? That we collectively are not fit to live? That perhaps their own self-serving profiteering from tragedy and false patriotism may just be feathering a bed in the Cronkite suite of the 9th circle of Hell? We wonders my precious....Next thing they'll make Richard Lewis a reporter and he can tell us we lost the shuttle because we're all guilty of thinking about our mothers naked.

More Updates

Contributors: With Simon's appearance, you, gentle reader, have now met all the contributors to this weblog. If I can get the five of us together in a room, I'll post photos, a brief vita, and list of interests for each contributor.

Links: Over the weekend, I intend to redo the links on the main page http://www.panix.com/~hncl/HectorsJournal. I'll continue to add people using blogrolling.com, but I'll also make some new perma-link catagories, and drop certain links.

Link Policy: A long, long, long time ago, Hector wrote of the web as the promise of Freedom of the Press realized: "no one noted that, coming so late and requiring so much technology, this only confirmed the adage that Freedom of the Press is only available to those who can afford one." Many popular political weblogs only propagate the received ideas of liberoids, libertarioids, and conservatrons--which is to say they're doing for free (or donations) what the lapdogs of these established forces at least have the sense to get paid for, so they're a waste of our late and long overdue patrimony of Free Speech. I'm looking for distinct voices who offer something other than a dozen-a-day InstaKneeJerk-"So-and-so has an excellent idea for a PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE."-style posts.

Links to Look At: Having said that, I'd like to point out two links worth your attention:

• Lisa English's Ruminate This! Ruminate This! is unusual in that it's both frequently updated and substantial--and provides resources for making yourself an activist. Want to complain to your representative? Lisa's got the House of Representative's toll-free switchboard number, and will give you reasons a-plenty to call. "But I'm just one person!" So what? TELL YOUR FRIENDS!
• Mark Anderson's The American Sentimentalist. Mark takes his title from comments by Nelson Algren--author of The Man with the Golden Arm, and perhaps Simone de Beauvoir's greatest love (and that includes Sartre)--that sentimentality is a necessary to achieve "a true picture of people," and his essay "If weblogs were to matter, what would they look like?" gave me the resolve to try seriously to research and write on current events in depth. That may sound strange considering that I'm generally inclined to long, detailed posts, but I had been embarassed by the vast output of the InstaKneeJerk news referrers. No more.

  As an aside to this, The American Sentimentalist may be offline shortly due to problems with its hosting company. If so, I can only hope it's just a brief disruption. Go take a look now.

Coming Attractions: My last post against the war, a new look for the web log, Ad Reinhardt's cartoons brought up to date, and maybe even more contributors. Stay tuned.

Tough Boy George

One thing struck me about George Bush's State of the Union speech: the callousness and self-aggrandizement that passes for "tough talk."

"All told," Bush said, "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way, they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies….We have the terrorists on the run…One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice."

Chilling: American justice, the same justice that imprisons without due process anyone with a remote connection to their roots in the Muslim world? Didn't the U.S. chuck so many captured Taliban fighters in Guantanamo Bay, without due process, neither POWs nor criminals, and then simply let most of them go? And a few days ago didn't we fight one of our bloodiest battles in Afghanistan against an enemy that was supposed to have been all but vanquished? American Justice seems both bigoted and ineffective.

Sabri Samirah is a good example of that. Click on this link to read about his case. The suburban Chicago-based activist got permission from the INS recently to visit his native Jordan, which he hadn't seen since 1990. But, on his way back home after a three-week visit, he was detained in Ireland, thrown in jail, and told that the U.S. didn't want him.

They revoked their permission because he was a "security risk."

Samirah is the president of the United Muslim American Association, a group responsible for such subversive action as voter registration, good enough reason for a President who believes in rule by fiat.

"Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary," Bush said. "I will defend the freedom and security of the American people."

Ah, the old "L'Etat C'est Moi" trick. Bush standing alone with a six gun in his hand. It's good to be the king.

ATTENTION GOOGLE USERS!

If you're looking for information on a breed of dog, please check your spelling and try again.

A ROTTWEILER--note only one "L" there--is a breed of dog.

HECTOR ROTTWEILLER, JR--note the two "L's" there, not to mention the given name and 'Jr'--is the name of a dog--who may or may not actually be a Rottweiler himself--whose web log this is.

No personal information on Hector is available here, except for his opinions, which start with this post and end with this one.

Thank you, and I hope you find the information you're looking for.

More on Afghanistan, again courtesy of Micah Holmquist

Micah Holmquist (go to the main page for the web log, click on the permalink for his page, and just bookmark it, OK?) today found this AP article on our on-going military actions against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Before you nod in sad assent--or grumble "there he goes again, beating a dead horse"--click on the link and read the article. I'll wait.

Annals of Inanity: Thomas Friedman Almost Gets it

One of the most memorable lines in the movie This is Spinal Tap was "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever." In this article from Sunday's New York Times, Thomas Friedman walks that line, teetering perilously to the clever side before falling firmly on the stupid side. To whit:

Let's start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been sealed shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the late 1960's. Therefore, one needs to have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what sorts of bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies remove the lid. Think of it this way: If and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope inside. It will tell us what we have won and it will say one of two things.

It could say, "Congratulations! You've just won the Arab Germany — a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural resources, but with an evil dictator, whom you've just removed. Now, just add a little water, a spoonful of democracy and stir, and this will be a normal nation very soon."

Or the envelope could say, "You've just won the Arab Yugoslavia — an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist. Congratulations, you're the new Saddam."

If Iraq really were a black box, most would forget about the envelopes entirely and ask Monty Hall for what's behind door number 3, where the lovely Carol Merrill is standing. But Iraq is not a black box; we know the Kurds have warred with each other since the imposition of the northern no-fly zone, that Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath party is Sunni while the Kurds and southern Iraqis are Shi'ites, and that we do not plan to partition Iraq or displace the Ba'ath party. In short, you don't have to be Carnac the Magnificent to know that the envelope says "Congratulations! You're the new Saddam!"

Updates

• On the 23^rd, Condolezza Rice, the adminstration's National Security Advisor, published an essay on the New York Times OpEd page that did that paper's reputation as our foremost source of received ideas proud. In "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying," she begins by asking, "Has Saddam Hussein decided to voluntarily disarm?" an example of the fallacy of petitio principii that may replace the nortorious "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Where an answer to the latter question will affirm something that needs be proven and might be so--namely that the unfortunate hypothetical husband has ever beaten his wife in the first place--an answer to the former will affirm an out and out falsehood: that Iraq has ever claimed that it wanted to disarm. Divesting itself of its Weapons of Mass Destruction has been forced upon it by the United Nations, and either the National Security Advisor doesn't know this or is lying. (So much for my short-lived respect for authority.) But more to the point, the UNMOVIC weapons inspectors know that they are working with an uncooperative regime, and, as UNSCOM before them did, will develop their own counter-strategies to circumvent Iraq's recalcitrance: establishing apparent patterns of inspections and then departing from them, appearing to search for certain items while investigating and gathering intelligence on others, etc.

  As if she wants to leave no question as to her compromised intellect and integrity, Ms. Rice then goes on to recycle the weak charge that Iraq has not documented their attempts to purchase uranium; unlike the State Department's "Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council," she doesn't bother to give a source for these potential purchases, likley because the State Department's claim that Niger was the object of Iraq's entreaties was easily refuted by a Google search that yielded this article from the BBC.

  The awful and inexplicably popular Andrew Sullivan (type in the URL yourself, because I won't link to the bastard) called this essay a "Home Run,"  and asked if "anyone can seriously refute Rice's case here?" An argument that proceeds from a fallacy and makes unsupported and easily refuted claims doesn't merit serious refutation: it needs to be ridiculed and scorned, and I'm only too happy to do this for my country.
  

• Only two days after the National Security Advisor gave what's supposed to be the definitive argument for war, the Washington Post printed an article entitled "Continued Arms Inspections Get U.S. Nod," what seems to be an attempt on the part of administration sources to outdo J. J. Hunsecker's boast that his right hand hasn't seen his left in years. Unnamed administration sources quoted therein assert that this is in no way a departure from the President's policy, that "events will drive the timetable," and that the extra time will soften France's opposition. Never mind that if inspections are extended into March, the window for a ground invasion will have shrunk, or that Tony Blair is coming under increasing pressure to supply a credible case for on Iraq. If one were of a truly cynical bent, one might venture that the Bush adminstration, tough talk to the contrary does not want to enter into a conflict with Iraq without allies, and once the opportunity for a ground war with Iraq this year passes, will blame the United Nations, all to save face with the bellicose sector of the electorate. Of course, I would abjure such callow mistrust of our government, and hope that you too, gentle reader, will dismiss out of hand any suggestions that our government's policy in international relations are driven by concerns of mere domestic popularity rather than principle.

• If the end of that last item sounds a bit like Hector's prose, it's because he's nowhere to be found, and I miss the dog. The last message I received from him was this:
  

  
  
  Curtiss:
  Your focus on the idiocy of a potential war with Iraq is praiseworthy, yet the breadth of the journal is suffering because of your tendency towards serial monomania. Steps must be taken, and sooner rather than later. We are pleased to see you using the journal as a forum for the less dissapated, if not indeed perspicacious, of your acquantances, and enjoin you to urge them to contribute on topics of their choosing. Sidney Falco is now plying his dishonest trade among war-mongers; we imagine that even the gossip columnists, those fish-wives of journalism, have had their fill of his inaccuracies, but the credulity of the bellicose knows no limits.

  A good war makes just any cause,
  Hector
  

  Since then, nothing. So bear with me as this blog becomes more a group effort. I won't happen overnight, but it will happen. More information on my prospective comrades will soon appear; watch this space for further developments.

"Besides, Afghanistan is much better off now than it was under the Taliban!"

Oh?

KARACHI - A new round of carpet bombing and reinforcements of United States troops is likely for Afghanistan as the writ of the administration of President Hamid Karzai is under threat from a fierce guerrilla war that is intensifying in the mountainous terrain of the cities and towns located in the east of the country near the Pakistani border.

Given the pace of guerrilla activities, as the snow starts to melt towards the end of March, the capital Kabul can expect to come under rocket and missile attacks.

This and the rest of the article can be found at the Asia Times, online at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EA17Ag01.html, link courtesy of Micah Holmquist.

"But aren't women better off in Afghanistan today?" Yeah, sure, abso-fucking-lutely.

NB: the title of this post is usually given as a subsidiary justification of war against Iraq, usually in response to the claim that the US has a poor record when it comes to allieviating oppressive conditions in the countries it invades; that's why it's in the "Posts Against War in Iraq" catagory.

Since the President doesn't read this web log...

...I signed an on-line petition that allows you to add a small statement by your "signature," such as a name and an email address can be. Of course, no one will read it, but just to show that I can be restrained and respectful to authority--after all, George W. Bush is the legitimately elected Governor of Texas--allow me to reproduce my statement here:

Mr. President:

Judging from my reading of the publically available literature, the threat posed by Iraq's arsenal appears to be greatly overstated, and can be more effectively and cheaply contained by inspections. While I'm certain a military action to remove Saddam Hussein would be a brief and successful one, I'm also equally certain that it would destablize the region, placing the United States in an ambiguous position with respect to Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, and in a possible confrontation with Iran. Nor would a multilateral force avoid these consequences any more than a unilateral one. Regime change in Iraq by military means is ill-conceived and you are ill-served by those advisors and cabinet members who advocate it.

If you're feeling similarly Quixotic, you can sign the petition at http://www.moveon.org/winwithoutwar/. Those of you who are wondering who these folks might be, here's their whois information:

Screw Lou Dobbs

Hi, everyone. I'm Peter and I'm f*cking ticked. It's bad enough to be lied to by coroporations and politicians - that's become white noise, but when the media gets into the act and purports to enlighten but instead obfuscates the truth - well, it makes me want to kill. Not that "getting rid of someone" kind of killing, but killing with pliers and a blunt fork.

Case in point:

On 1/13 Lou Dobbs, host of CNN's "Moneyline" interviewed Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, father of the AOL-Time Warner merger and soon to be ex-numero uno of CNN's parent company. Also known as Lou Dobb's great-great-great-great-great grandboss.

Dobbs portrayed Case's impending resignation as a result of the confluence of external forces - particularly the bursting of the internet bubble, expansion of broadband access and the collapse of the internet advertising market.

Now Lou Dobbs has spent the last year gleefully focusing on corporate crime and impropriety, even putting up a daily scoreboard of the number of company hucksters indicted and convicted. So it shocked me, that with the D.O.J. going through AOL's past accouting and financial records like a star-struck fan through a celebrity garbage can, that Lou mentioned nothing of the allegations these people are on about - like artificially inflating AOL's stock value to put it in a position to merge with T-W. Lou asked Case no toughies. Case got to expound on his wisdom regarding the logic of a merger that cost investors BILLIONS and got to claim his resignation was an altruistically motivated personal decision.

LOU DOBBS - You failed us! You hold yourself up to a higher standard than the average journalist and then you bend over for Steve Case! My heros are all dead. Maybe it's time for the universe to stop expanding and implode into a single point again. There's nothing worth saving out here.

Spam Back!

I received another Nigerian Scam email today, this time at work. At first I thought it might be from a coworker because the name used seemed vaguely familiar-- Oma Bello? Is that someone in a field office?"--but then I clicked on it (we use Microsoft Outhouse Outlook as the mail client here), and saw it was our old friend:

REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP; STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.

Firstly, I must solicit your strictest confidentiality in this transaction. This is by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL and TOP SECRET. Though I know that a transaction of this magnitude will make anyone apprehensive and worried, but I am assuring you that all will be well at the end of the day.

You get the idea. The total sum was $45 million, the carrot dangled in front of the sucker was 20% of that, $9 million. But instead of ignoring it, I did a whois check on the originating domain and replied:

Dear Mr. Bello:

Thank you for your interesting offer. Under other circumstances, I might accept your offer as it stands, but unfortunately I cannot. Given my current commitments to larger, more remunerative projects, I could only accept to undertake these transactions for 20% of the $45M as an initial payment, with the balance of 30% due at completion; I would also require monies for expenses I incur on your behalf, as well as paid accomodations in case travel is necessary to effect the transactions, etc.

Considering the small amount of money involved and the proximity of your Internet Service Provider, zWallet.com, to the Traveller's Building at 388 Greenwich Street where the recent unpleasantness in the securities industries has caused so many deserving young people to fear for their livelihoods, I think you might have more luck sending your proposal to the zWallet.com systems administrator there so he might disseminate it to the various Citigroup employees lunching out in the cold, beneath the cherry blossoms hung with snow. But since to look at things in bloom fifty summers are little room, I will take care of that for you and be happy to forward your missive to admin@zwallet.com.

All the best,
Curtiss Leung

What can I say? It's Monday.