sy4 posted this lovely little find:

An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. At least 175 people were slaughtered on Tuesday and more than 200 wounded when four suicide truck bombs targeted people from an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq, officials said. (AFP/Wissam al-Okaili)

In order to counter allegations that his foreign policy stance is naïve, today Barack Obama threatened to invade Pakistan.

Boy, he sure countered that allegation. Does he intend to conquer and hold a country of 157 million people, largely in hard-to-access mountain regions? Or is the plan simply to invade hostile areas like Waziristan, so that we can drive the people there slightly further into the mountains (which they've practiced holding by guerilla warfare for the past three thousand years or so) and in the process destabilize and delegitimize the central government until Musharraf's fragile grip on power fails, and the increasingly strong Islamist movement in the Pakistani military takes over?

I do like him as a "fresh face..." but seeing him on the last debate, he came across as an amateur. If he wants to get serious support in the primary, he's going to need to fill in his foreign policy background with some real understanding, not half-assed grandstanding.

From Reuters, a story about a fundraiser. Starts off innocently enough:

A planned Republican fundraiser in New Hampshire aims to promote gun ownership in America by letting supporters fire powerful military-style weapons -- from Uzi submachine guns to M-16 rifles.

Local Democrats say the event is in poor taste amid a spike in violent crime in Manchester and seeks to glorify the use of machine guns for political gain.

Hold on, I just realized that the past few news stories may give Orwell an unfair advantage. So here's one more (although it's good news, relatively speaking): The (very conservative and usually government-friendly) 4th circuit court of appeals in DC ruled today that the government must allow Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention to see the evidence against them. No formal response yet from the administration, but I'll give you one guess as to what it will be.

Yesterday, I was listening to the radio, (transcript and recording) and heard Gen. David Petraeus (who's acting as the President's mouthpiece, not the Army's) defending how well we're doing in Iraq. There were a few interesting changes in the official administration line:

• The main source of our problems isn't sectarian violence, it's al Qaeda. News to me, and apparently news to US forces too; CIA director Michael Hayden recently listed them as the fifth biggest issue, behind the local insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality, and general anarchy. (Good CSM article here)


• He said that it's far too soon to be asking for benchmarks about the "surge," and that benchmarks aren't that meaningful anyway, because the surge has only had one month to operate in so far. That's odd; I recall the surge first being ordered this January, and the 30,000 additional troops were deployed in February. (Detailed order of battle; the new units were the 2nd BDE 82nd Airborne, 1st BDE 34th Infantry, 4th BDE 1st Infantry; they were followed by 3rd BDE 3rd Infantry in March, 4th Stryker BDE 2nd Infantry in April, 2nd BDE 3rd Infantry in May, as well as extension of deployments for various Marine units (including the 15th MEU), and deploying the USS Stennis group) So how exactly does that translate as only having had a month to prove it? (Answer: Because we said so. This administration has a disturbing tendency to make public statements that directly contradict their previous statements, and state that what they say now has always been their policy.)


• And in related amusement, Lt. Gen. Odierno gave an interesting briefing where he gave as evidence for how good things are in Baghdad that he walked a thousand meters there.
  
  Just to get this straight: Several months after we deploy 30,000 additional troops and move troops from all of Iraq into Baghdad (and thus cede control of more land back to civil war and insurgency), a 3-star general visits (with all of the attendant security precautions), and with a full armed escort, can walk a full thousand meters on foot through the defended area without being shot. This constitutes a significant improvement in the conditions in Iraq and evidence that our strategy is working.
  
  Working at what, exactly, I'm not sure, but it's apparently working.

No, I'm not kidding.

For those of you who haven't been following the case of the fired attorneys, Congress recently subpoenaed several former White House aides to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about their role and their knowledge of the actions of others. The President ordered the former aides not to testify, citing an executive privilege. Congress replied that he has no right to do such a thing, and started criminal contempt proceedings against the people who refused to appear.

Today, the administration made an interesting reply: they argued that "Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases... in which the president has declared... executive privilege." The idea is that the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch, and so if the President has declared something to be the policy of that branch (e.g., claiming executive privilege) the DoJ cannot be forced by anyone else to act contrary to branch policy.

David B. Rifkin, who worked in the Justice Department and White House counsel's office under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, praised the position and said it is consistent with the idea of a "unitary executive." In practical terms, he said, "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will." And in constitutional terms, he said, "the president has decided, by virtue of invoking executive privilege, that is the correct policy for the entire executive branch."

Very interesting op-ed piece by Shankar Vedantam in the Washington Post today about the effect of "campaign contributions." He argues that the main impact of these contributions on elected officials isn't to get them to change their mind about issues (which is why groups rarely contribute to politicians on the opposite side of the aisle from them) but rather to change their prioritization. He gives an interesting example, recounted by a former aide to Sen. Daschle about how they were working on a hunger relief bill when a drought started in South Dakota, and they context-switched to work on a relief bill for dairy farmers. According to this aide,

Daschle did not stop caring about hunger because he was working on dairy issues. And he did not start working on dairy issues merely because of campaign contributions. He genuinely cared about dairy issues, too. Money that people in the dairy industry spent on campaign contributions and lobbying did not have to buy Daschle's views -- he was in their corner to begin with. But what campaign contributions and the subsidization of legislative work that lobbyists provide do obtain is a subtle alteration in politicians' priorities

(I know I should be writing about politics now, but that's going to be an extremely involved post)

1. Traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, with certain exceptions noted below.


2. Lane markings, if present, are purely advisory. Cars should drive wherever there is not already another car.


3. Turn signals and hazard lights don't convey any information, so don't use them. The horn works instead.


4. Parking occurs wherever one manages to stop the car, typically as far right as the car can get. Depending on the circumstance, this means either on the sidewalk, in the parking lane, in the rightmost traffic lane, or in some other lane of traffic.


5. Two-wheeled motorized vehicles (motorcycles, Vespas, etc) travel wherever they can get away with. This is one of the exceptions to the rule about right-hand driving.


6. Getting ahead is very important. If two lanes are about to merge (or rather, if the road is narrowing so that merging is pretty much necessary) head right and accelerate; see if you can pass the person in front of you before it's too narrow.


7. Do not let anyone get in or pass you. The repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with many players and no repeat interactions has only one stable equilibrium, and Tel Aviv is in it. If you let someone in, not only will several people force their way in, but other people will pass you from the left and the right simultaneously to get into the gap.

This post is going to be short on newsy links, because I'm a bit swamped for time right now. But just a general FYI... things are heating up in the Middle East in several important ways. So here are a bunch of disjointed snippets that may be of interest.

• In the region of Israel, there's a ramp-up to the real war for which the earlier Lebanon war was a dress rehearsal. But it's a bit less clear what form this war will take.
  
  • The internal fighting between Hamas and Fatah for control of the Palestinian territories has heated up, but I don't see any clear evidence of heavy outside involvement in it; this could be a bona fide internal matter. It does ensure that Fatah is pretty irrelevant to the outside world for the near future, although Hamas has enough capacity to continue firing a steady barrage of rockets into Israel. Israel's patience is wearing thin once again, which is why it started actually counterattacking a few days ago, and Olmert warned that nobody is immune. This is a not-subtle reference to saying that even Hamas members of the Palestinian Parliament are legitimate targets if they're actively involved in making war against Israel, which you would think would be an obvious sort of statement. Nonetheless, certain media outlets (notably Al-Jazeera and Le Monde) portray this as a horribly inflammatory act by Israel. (Odd little tidbit: The news story about Olmert's announcement kept getting revised in the English edition of Al-Jazeera, so that as the day went by the phrasing sounded more and more gentle.)
  
  
  • The internal fighting in Lebanon is heating up as well. This appears to be a fight between the official Lebanese Army (relatively speaking, good guys; they represent in some way the general Lebanese population) fighting against Sunni forces inside the refugee camps. These Sunni forces are apparently being backed by al-Qaeda, which is a bit odd because since when does al-Qaeda give a rat's ass about the Lebanese field? Something odd is up here and I haven't quite figured it out. Meanwhile, Hezbollah (which is a Shi'ite force in Lebanon, maintaining its own 20,000-strong army mostly under the control of Iran) is trying to rearm as fast as possible, with significant arms purchases from Russia in the past few months. (These are technically being sold to Syria, which means that both Syria and Hezbollah are likely to end up with them.) This includes significant quantities (100's of units) of C-802 shore-to-ship missiles.
  
  
  • Note that Syria is arming up in that story. Bashar al-Assad seems to have gotten his domestic issues sorted out reasonably well, so if war flares up he may try to take advantage of the situation by getting involved. Jordan probably won't, which means that Syria is going to try to up its creds with the Islamist world and weaken Jordan's by comparison. That would give a huge bonus to Islamist groups that have been trying to recruit in rural Jordan, at the expense of making those groups more openly opposed to the Jordanian government, and if King Abdullah isn't careful that could end up with a coup. Let's see if he knows how to handle this hot potato. (I'm guessing it won't be by fighting with Israel; his best move is probably to do some combination of cracking down on militants and providing better economics to the countryside. Which is going to be hard, so if we can arrange for financial support to Jordan for peace in the near future there's likely to be a good dividend in it. Their countryside is already one of al-Q's prime recruiting grounds)
  
  
  • Meanwhile in Israel, there's going to be a runoff for the Labor party leadership, but it looks like Ehud Barak is the favorite to win. And thank God -- he's one of the few people there whom I trust to both know how to use force and to know how to make peace. If he wins the Labor party, that means there's a good chance of forcing elections reasonably soon, or otherwise jiggering things so that he ends up as PM again. Which would be good for regional stability in all ways. (Other countries are a lot less likely to invade if they know he's in charge. Olmert as PM and that idiot Amir Peretz as Defense Minister was practically an invitation to come cause trouble)
  
  
• Meanwhile, further East...
  • The US had high-level talks with Iran about Iraq. So here's the back story: Iran has offered the US a deal, which basically amounts to the US giving Iran free rein in Iraq (approval over high-level government appointments, their military can "help maintain peace," etc), as well as not putting up any serious opposition to the Iranian nuclear program (I'm assuming that public loud statements are fine, so long as there's no actual action), in exchange for Iran making sure that the US withdrawal from Iraq goes reasonably smoothly and the country doesn't descend into chaos. Now, I don't know exactly what the US said back to this, but I did notice a few important things: First, we had high-level talks with them, which is really the biggest thing they wanted -- to be treated as a top-level regional power. Second, from the announcement it seems that we're implicitly accepting the Iraq portion of the deal, although the public phrasing of it makes it sound very nice and like both sides can claim victory. (It isn't; pay attention to what the US and Iran are actually getting out of the deal they're announcing, and you'll notice a certain asymmetry. Well, that's what happens when you get into wars you can't win.) Third, the official line is that we only discussed Iraq and not the nuke program, but I don't quite buy that -- from what I've heard of the Iranian proposal, it tied the two together, and I can't imagine any reason why Iran wouldn't want to do so. The lack of discussion may mean that the nuke issue was simply tacitly accepted by the US, or that they just really don't want to talk about the fact that they're talking in public. Which is understandable.
  
  
  • This suggests that we'll start a significant troop drawdown in Iraq in a few months, and modulo various diplomatic niceties Iran will basically start increasing its diplomatic and military presence there. This means that Iran will end up with solid control over Iraq, Syria and (through Hezbollah) Lebanon, as well as a completely ineffectualized Afghanistan, thus giving them a complete arc of control across the entire Middle East. They won't be playing a direct part in the coming war, but they're sure going to be pulling the strings behind it.
  
  
  • The US wasn't entirely stupid in these negotiations, though. As they were starting, the Fifth Fleet sent two carrier groups (the Stennis and the Nimitz) into the Persian Gulf for war games, just as a hint to Iran: We still have the military power. You're getting away with this, but that does not mean you're getting away with whatever you want.
  
  
  • Thoughts: We don't really want to fight a land war against Iran right now. Nobody's up to the challenge, and Russia will definitely be giving them equipment backing etc.; Putin has been aching for some opportunities to flex Russian power against the US. (He's been doing it a good deal against Europe with fuel supplies etc...) None of the post-Cold-War presidents have done a good job of making Russia feel that it's getting proper respect as a world power, and we're paying the price in that Russia is now determined to earn its creds by showing how much power it actually has.
    That said, we can still screw with Iran in various ways if push comes to shove. They can hide their nuclear installations, for example, but their oil installations are pretty visible. If it comes time for a military operation, one could always bomb the living hell out of those. (Drive the price of gas up, sure, but that may not be an entirely bad thing anyway.)
  
  
• On the subject of terrorism, there are a lot of vague rumors but nothing concrete. This summer would definitely be a time that various groups would be very happy to pull off some major attacks, but it's not clear if they're logistically prepped for it. Various foreign-involved or oil-related facilities in Saudi Arabia are major targets and will probably be attacked, but they can also defend themselves better than most targets. There may be attempts in Europe or even the US, but my crystal ball doesn't have enough information to say anything useful about that. So I'll keep a weather eye open and see what transpires.

There are two things on the internet which are very worth your time at the moment.

The first one has to do with US politics. I'll simply refer you to this post by Brad Hicks, since he wrote an excellent summary of what's really important. It has to do with James Comey's testimony to Congress a few days ago. The short version is that, when John Ashcroft was AG and critically ill, Alberto Gonzales (then the top White House lawyer) and Andrew Card (Bush's Chief of Staff) went in to the hospital to try to force Ashcroft, while under sedation, to re-authorize mass wiretapping, even though he had concluded (while conscious) that it was illegal. Comey was acting AG while Ashcroft was sick, and rushed to the scene to try to stop them. He succeeded, the program was declared illegal, and the next day Bush ordered it to continue anyway, despite the formal advice of the Department of Justice. Comey's testimony is stunning, and you should at least read the transcript -- but if you have 20 minutes, it's worth watching the video and seeing for yourself. If this is not cause to open an impeachment hearing -- the deliberate and knowing violation of laws, the doing of such an action to attempt to expand police powers in direct and specific contravention to a law (FISA) designed to prevent that, and even the simple human action of browbeating a man under sedation to abet them in so doing -- then nothing is.

(Edit: The most moving section of the testimony may be the earlier part, where Comey talks about the night meeting in the hostpital. But the key statement happens at [end of tape minus 4:31])

The second one is a bit lighter, but really great: The 26 Most Common Climate Myths. From the New Scientist, a detailed discussion of the 26 most common misconceptions about climate change, together with explanations, figures, graphs, and references to the original papers. This is a great bit of science journalism.

If you have any free time today, and are at all interested in either the political future of the US or in climate change, these are good things to look at.

Media companies are getting antsy about Web companies, as you've probably heard. At a recent conference, various representatives of the media talked about this. The quote that caught my eye was:

"The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation," Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed "Custer's Last Stand".

"They will lose this war if they go to war," Parsons added, "The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion."

From the Daily Herald, a bit about the Utah County Republicans convention.

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan's influence on illegal immigrants... Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won't do." Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact," Larsen said.

Lots of interesting tidbits about the Lebanon war.

First of all, a very well-researched article by Marvin Kalb about how Hezbollah manipulated the media during the Lebanon war. It gets the key point: Israel is running an open society, and so the media could hear all about disputes, problems, etc. Hezbollah is a secret society; the journalists only got to see what Hezbollah wanted them to see. And that was a bunch of peaceful Lebanese getting bombed by the Israelis. They painted an almost entirely false picture of what was going on, but because journalists had no real opportunity to investigate further, they got to completely control media presentation of the war worldwide. Link from sy4, who has some more good discussion. (This article is an excellent read for anyone interested in media manipulation in general - highly recommended!)

However, media manipulation or not, Olmert (Israel's PM) is in trouble. He commissioned a blue-ribbon panel to analyze Israel's handling of the war. Their results basically say that the civilian and senior military staff fucked up severely, endangering national security, by doing things like entering a war without a clear strategy, letting Hezbollah get away with all sorts of things, exhibiting insufficient creativity in military operations, etc. It's very damning, and the Israeli public generally agrees with it: there was a rally tonight in Tel Aviv with 100,000 protesters calling on Olmert to resign.

My prediction: Olmert will make a lot of noise saying how he shouldn't resign. In a few days, his defense minister will resign (and about time, too -- I still have no idea why that half-wit got the minstry of defense). Unless that magically satisfies everyone (it probably won't) Olmert will have to resign, since if he doesn't there's going to be a vote of no confidence, new elections, and his party is going to get creamed. If he does resign, the foreign minister Tzipi Livni will become PM, and she'll have a few months to desperately try to restore confidence in this government. I'd put her odds of success around 1 in 3. If it fails, there will be elections a few months afterwards, which Likud and Israel Beiteinu are going to do very well in. That probably means that Netanyahu will come back as PM -- unless, gods forbid, Israel Beiteinu does really well, and Avigdor Lieberman becomes PM instead.

In all my years, I never thought I would miss Ariel Sharon this much. Where are the old lions when we need them?

Happy May Day, everyone. And it's not just May Day -- it's the fourth anniversary of our victory in Iraq. (No, really! Remember "Mission Accomplished?")

As my office-mate just said, "Wow. Sounds like a reason for a parade in Red Square or something."

Polar ice retreating much faster than climate models predict.

Something I've been saying for a while: The ice modeling in the current gold-standard models (like GISS-E) is Just Plain Wrong: it doesn't adequately account for positive feedback in ice-melting, such as the way meltwater changes the ambient environment for ice, or the way that ice melt affects ambient atmospheric properties. A calculation like that is pretty much guaranteed to predict that ice melts only very slowly and adiabatically, instead of quickly and with marked "tipping points".

Conclusion: We're going to have a seasonally navigable North Polar Sea a lot sooner than many people anticipate.

Right now, Alberto Gonzales is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firing of 8 US Attorneys. And what a difference. The last time I heard him testify about potential serious wrongdoing was before the election; the chair of the committee basically said "oh, we can trust him, we don't need to swear him in" (and didn't), the Republicans on the committee basically used their time to make speeches about Gonzales' probity and judgement, and anyone who asked hard questions got evasive - and I suspect, outright false - answers.

Now? He was sworn in immediately and without discussion, and Sen. Leahy started asking him detailed, factual questions ("when did you have this conversation?" "on dates X and Y you publicly stated your absolute faith in [US Attorney] Iglesias; on date Z you stated that you dismissed him because you had lost faith in him. When and why did you lose faith in him?"). And Gonzales was on the ropes from question 1.

We'll see what comes out of this. But it's damned good to see our Congress taking their oversight role seriously.

Monica Goodling, Alberto Gonzales' senior counselor, took the fifth and refused to testify before Congress about the prosecutor scandal. It's a bit surprising, since nobody's mentioned criminal charges as yet, but as Sen. Leahy (D-VT) said, "The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling's concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the committee under oath."

Horse-race coverage of the upcoming (as in, almost two years from now) election is going on in full force. Clinton brought in $2.6M at a fund-raiser, twice what Obama got at his recent fund-raiser, and this is of course worth being in the papers right now.

Please, in the name of the dog, if we are doomed to have a campaign season that lasts two years, could we at least spend the first part of it -- say, the first year or so -- finding out something about issues and people's platforms, instead of watching the daily statistics? (My urge to strike pretty much the entire media in their collective nuts is waxing again, and I suspect it's going to get pretty high before this is over)

My current take: Edwards, as always, has well-thought-out and well-conceived plans about things like health care, poverty, and so on, far above the rest of the field. I'm not convinced that he has any deep plans for things like foreign policy, though. Times like this, I wish we could have two presidents. I can't actually tell you what any of the other candidates stand for, because they seem to be carefully avoiding discussing any real issues this far in advance -- after all, why alienate potential voters? The media stories about Clinton raking in the money suggest to me that the press may start describing Obama's campaign as "insurgent" (which is a kiss of death, meaning that it will be popular among younger voters and not have enough support from the party elites -- cf. Howard Dean) and coalescing behind something like Clinton / Edwards as "inevitable" early on in the game; which, given the primary schedule, would make it so. It could be worse, I suppose, but I'm really sick of having to say that every election cycle.

The bill to strip the President of the authority (granted by the PATRIOT act) to appoint prosecutors without consulting Congress, the abuse of which is part of the current scandal in Washington, passed the Senate on a vote of 94 to 2, with four abstentions. Here's the roll call.

Interestingly, one of the two "Nay" votes came from Chuck Hagel, R-NE. Hagel is very likely to run for the Republican nomination for President, and is considered one of the strongest candidates in that field. Remember this vote for future reference. This scandal is probably going to expand somewhat more, we'll have some high-profile resignations, and probably a few prosecutions for perjury or obstruction of justice. So later on, if and when Hagel enters the race full-force, this will be a good question to ask him: Why, even after the nature of the abuses of authority became publicly clear, did he vote against restoring to Congress the right to approve the appointments of federal prosecutors?

Unfortunately, the Democratic party -- at least, the main machine part of it, that's pushing so hard for Clinton -- seems to be run by spineless fools, and I seriously doubt that they will have either the presence of mind or the courage of their convictions enough to actually remind the American people of the details of a scandal once the media is no longer focused on it. They'll make it sound like a question about his vote on some minor technical issue, and the larger issue, of subversion of the democratic process by a sitting president and Hagel's tacit encouragement thereof, will go unnoticed.

On the subject of the machine of the Democratic party, I don't know how many people have seen this ad that some unknown person made for Obama. (It wasn't made by Obama's organization, as far as anyone can tell) It's based on Apple's famous "1984" ad:



Apart from being a lovely little hatchet job, it's been making me realize how strongly I dislike the idea of Clinton running for president. (Which, media furor to the contrary, has nothing to do with Clinton's gender, or Obama's race, or whatever the fuck else is the "interesting topic" of the moment) Clinton represents what in my mind is a failed generation of Democratic leadership, one that Bill Clinton succeeded in as a shining exception rather than by any design. I see her as the emblem of a party that's incapable of defending itself against even idiotic accusations, that allows another party to lie, cheat, and harm the interests of the country without having the brains or the balls to publicly say that this is wrong, and that in general has no clue of which way it would like to lead the country. Nothing that Sen. Clinton has said or done in the 15 years that she's been in national public life has convinced me that she's any different.

This isn't to say that I don't think she's a good senator -- in fact, I think she has the potential to be an extraordinary one, a powerful force in that house for many decades to come, and a key player in making the United States successful. But I don't think she's a good leader for the party, much less for the country as a whole. Her entire generation, AFAICT, has blown it badly, with one side running half-witted demagogues and the other side unable to tell why that's a bad idea.

I don't know much about Obama's politics, yet. His speeches are all well and good, but he hasn't really gotten down to brass tacks so far. But I do know that he seems to have a clear understanding of the mess, and to not be infected with the mental malaise that seems to permeate the party. If the primary were held today, he would get my vote. For basically the reasons that this ad hints at.

Bush affirms his "strong backing and support" for Gonzales. Let us hope this is the latest equivalent of the "heckuva job" kiss of death. (For those who haven't been following the news: Congress is investigating the firing of 8 US attorneys, apparently as part of a scheme to force prosecutors to actively investigate charges against Democrats, especially ones in the midst of reelection campaigns, and ignore charges against Republicans. The White House's explanations of this have shifted on a day-to-day basis, but at this point it's become clear based on internal memos that Rove and Gonzales were both intimately involved in the process, and the process was very explicitly based on the attorneys not being "loyal Bushies." (The words of a memo) Gonzales' chief of staff has already resigned, and the cover-up alone is likely to bring various charges of perjury)

Interesting editorial by Nicholas Kristof on Cheney and Iran (requires real subscription) The gist is that Cheney's actions as VP have been so systematically towards Iran's benefit (deposing the governments of all of Iran's chief enemies, dismantling the Ba'ath party and installing a pro-Iranian regime in Baghdad, etc) that it brings up questions about his loyalties. Brad Hicks has an editorial suggesting much the same about our President, titled "George Bush: #2 in al Qaeda?," which requires no special login and frankly is somewhat better written than Kristof's.

Now, both of these editorials are using the allegation as a rhetorical device, saying at the end that they don't really believe that either of these men are traitors. But when the number and scale of derelictions of duty and malfeasances of power (such as, say, the deliberate use of federal prosecutors to manipulate elections by investigating only political enemies and shielding friends) exceeds a certain threshold, at what point does intent become irrelevant? Is there a notion of "willful blindness" in betrayal?

Went to see "300" last night. The NY Times review that described it as "all the violence of 'Apocalypto' and twice as stupid" is pretty much bang on, so if you go in expecting that, you will not be disappointed. The story bears only a passing resemblance to Herodotus, which is a pity -- the actual story of the last stand of the 300 would have made for a much better movie. Probably the biggest surprise from the film was that the thing that broke my suspension of disbelief the most was neither the guy with axe hands nor the armored rhinoceros, nor even the various things that required credits like "über-immortal" and "transsexual (asian, #2);" it was hearing a bunch of Spartans give lectures about the virtues of reason, liberty, and Greek national identity.

(The government of Iran has apparently lodged a protest about the depiction of their country in this movie, and for once I agree with them; the Persians are portrayed as what I can only describe as depraved and both physically and morally monstrous, while the Spartans all look like some weird cartoon versions of body-builders.)

Decompressed a bit more by re-watching "Chungking Express," a movie which I really enjoy for reasons that I can't really put a finger on. (Gods know, it's messy enough, with the plot and set of characters being completely replaced about halfway through)

And then finished reading Rudy Rucker's "Mathematicians in Love," which was absolutely fantastic. It's a novel about mathematicians discovering some equations that allow them to reshape reality, all the while fighting over women, status, and a budding career as rock stars. I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a while, although I have no clue what it would read like to anyone who hasn't done mathematics professionally. But it did answer one question that's bugged me for a while:

"Unger is a point-set topologist turned transfinite set theorist," said Unger. "He can't tell a raven from a writing desk." Pause. "That's a joke. The raven's, ah, digestive tract and two beak-nostrils being homotopic to the three holes formed by the desk's, ah, four legs and three cross-bars?"

From the news today: In response to a mounting scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors for failing to prosecute enough Democratic candidates and political targets, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that "mistakes were made," presumably by space aliens or some other third party.

Halliburton, the contractor formerly run by now-VP Dick Cheney, and recipient of over $25B in no-bid Iraq contracts (several of which are under investigation for things like fraudulent cost overruns) has announced that it plans to move its corporate headquarters to Dubai. Predictably, people are not amused.

And Israel recalled its ambassador to El Salvador after he was found drunk and wearing nothing but bondage gear and a ball gag in the embassy complex. (You know, Israeli politics is just fascinating some days...)

Check out Israel's entry to this year's Eurovision, Push the Button. It's disturbingly catchy. Lyrics (in a combination of English, French and Hebrew) are here. The runner-up, Salaam Salami, is also pretty... um... extraordinary.

(For those of you who have never seen the Eurovision song contest before, yes, pretty much all of the music is that bad. But of course, there's controversy -- the contest organizers want to ban Israel's entry because of "inappropriate political content." This link also has translated lyrics)

Since nobody seems to have translated Salaam Salami, ( here"s a go at itCollapse )

Yes, it's political. And yes, it's about sausage. We live in a strange world.

You may have heard rumors that the US and Israel are planning a joint strike against Iran. I don't have time to read through all the sources now and check on the rumors, but we're definitely building up military strength in the Persian Gulf. Short summary of possibilities:

• This is just some saber-rattling to point out to Iran that it should, in fact, be thinking more seriously about negotiation. If so we're in luck, because that would be a not entirely stupid move. Of course, it's no good if you're not willing to follow through, but that's a legitimate negotiation tactic.


• These forces are actually going to be used in Iraq. That could go well with option 1.


• We're planning some limited sort of operation, or to act in support of an Israeli operation. Possibilities include bombing selected targets or even doing highly targeted ground operations against them. I would have to spend a lot more time analyzing data, and for that matter analyze highly classified data, to get a sense of whether this is workable or not. It's very risky.


• Our President has decided to make the First Classic Blunder for a third time in a row, and has no understanding of the relative military strengths of the force he just put in the Gulf and the Iranian military, nor of the consequences of turning Iran into another Iraq. Normally I would rule this out under "even he isn't that stupid," but the past few years have taught me the folly of betting on that.

autumnflames

I'm in the middle of reading The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten, by Julian Baggini, a lovely little compendium of 100 classic philosophical thought experiments discussed in plain English. (I quite highly recommend this book, by the way; it's the sort of thing that could kick off many a late-night philosophy binge with good friends and good food. Although that seems to happen even without this book)

Anyway, I just read through an example that referenced The Matrix, on the old subject of "what if we're living in a simulation? Would it matter?" It reminded me of a few other philosophical questions that movie raised, and so in the interest of sparking some late-night drinkingphilosophy binges, here goes.

1. In The Matrix, Neo discovers that his life is actually a computer simulation, and in the "real world" people are actually kept locked up in vats to power the computers. The few people who have escaped this simulation are ruthlessly hunted down by their robot captors, and have managed to create a marginal existence for themselves, hiding in fortified caves. He is convinced to aid this rebel cause, and free humanity from their artificial prison. Given that at the moment, humanity is living a relatively normal existence, and if this mission were successful humanity would be living in caves on a ruined world, hunted by robots, exactly what is the moral argument for doing this?


2. At the end of the second Matrix movie, we discover that Neo's magical abilities to control the state of the world around him in the simulated world (due to his understanding of its simulated nature) also extends to the real world. Set aside, for a moment, the explanation the movie gave for this;¹ imagine instead that they took the more complicated route, and that these extended abilities were actually the first clue to realizing that the "real world" they thought they were in was also a simulation, and the actual "real world" was one step above. In such a case, would this change Neo's obligations to his original world, and to the world he originally thought was the "real world?" How?


3. To take this to its logical conclusion, there's no reason the number 3 ought to be special. If there were an infinite hierarchy of worlds, each simulating the next (or even a branching tree of simulated worlds, some worlds simulating hundreds of others) so that none of them have a sound claim to being the "real" world, what are Neo's obligations then? Is it right and/or worthwhile to save one world? At the expense of another? (As if he had saved the original "real world" by destroying the simulation where he started out) Or if one world sucks, is it reasonable for him to simply pack up and move to some other world of his choice? And given this infinite spectrum of worlds, in some of which people are systematically and deeply suffering, does he have some moral obligation to try to help people in less fortunate worlds? Given the infinitude of worlds, does this differ in any interesting ways from the ways people in this world are responsible for people in other parts of this world?

A friend recently brought up an interesting point in a thread: the recent Congressional non-binding protest vote against the war in Iraq was a pretty half-assed (in fact, kind of cowardly) measure; it doesn't actually require anyone to do anything. But there's an alternative.

The War Powers Act requires that the Congress explicitly authorize any use of force, either by a declaration of war or other explicit statutory authorization; in the absence of such authorization, the President is required to report to the Congress every 60 days, and the Congress must explicitly (by passing a law) authorize a further 60 days of operations, or the President is legally required to withdraw forces. The Authorization for Use of Force in Iraq is such an explicit statutory authorization.

But what if the Congress were to pass a bill rescinding said authorization, and returning to the 60-day period required by the WPA? It's not clear from the text of the WPA that such a rescindment is possible, but nor is it clear that it isn't, and I think that given a clear Congressional intent to do so the courts would agree that it is within their power (and the spirit of the WPA) to do so. It could be drafted to restart the War Powers Act clock at the effective date of the bill, so that the President would be granted 60 days' authorization immediately, but would need to re-apply at the end of that.

This would give the Congress direct, non-financial control over the conduct of the war: they would have the power, by simple non-passage of a bill, to "terminate any use of United States armed forces." They would have a regular review authority, so they wouldn't be required to simply withdraw immediately or later; in fact, they could even negotiate directly with the President about terms such as when withdrawals would occur. (Hopefully they would have common sense in not trying to micromanage a war, but I suspect that Congress' innate avoidance of personal responsibility for controversial things will protect us from that)

What do people think about this? Should we start trying to prod our representatives to introduce such a measure?