Security Hippo

Palin's Critics Refudiated

2010-10-05T00:10:00.010+02:00

Well gosh-darn... turns out Sarah Palin wasn't the first to coin the term "to refudiate". Reading Alan Moore's excellent Watchmen (written 1986-1987), this is what I found:

This is at the end of Chapter 4, in the excerpt from "Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers" by Professor Milton Glass. A quick reminder: In an interview with douchnozzle Sean Hannity, the half-term quitter from Wasilla had called on Barack Obama to "refudiate" the NAACP's statement of the obvious, namely, that the Republican Tea Party is a bunch of racist halfwits.

Note to Palin: Read Watchmen, you might like it and would certainly benefit from reading it. There are some interesting points there about the dangers of a black-and-white worldview and how that Manichaean mindset can quickly bleed over into cryptofascism.

Also: Unlike you, Dr. Manhattan really can see Russia from his backyard. Regardless of where his house is.

Thought for the Day

2010-09-25T23:41:00.003+02:00

"I have been too much of an idealist about America, had set my hopes too high, had formed too fair an image of what she might become. Never had a nation such an opportunity; she was the hope of the world. Never again will any nation have her chance to raise the standard of civilization."

- Charles Eliot Norton

My name is Phil Davison and I'm MAD AS HELL

2010-09-10T00:57:00.006+02:00

Sarah Palin hasn't said yet whether she will be running in 2012, but if so, her running mate should be Republican Councilman Phil Davison of Minerva, OH. Here he is trying to convince his audience that he is the right choice for Stark County treasurer. It is the funniest (unintentionally) speech I have ever come across, and I immediately switched by party affiliation to "(R)".

As Davidson rightly says, politics is about winning, or rather: "POLITICS IS ABOUT WINNING!!" The kicker: he has a masters' degree in communication - as one commenter said, probably from the University of Mordor...

BBC Apostrophe 'A Cheap Cop-Out'

2010-08-14T00:36:00.021+02:00

Hear ye, hear ye: Unto us a young hippo is born!

Verily, a Happy Little Hippo. Which goes some way towards explaining why we have not been posting, and also why this is going to be a short post.

The emergence of a next generation always tends to put all experiences into perspective. Also, in very real terms, we realize that this mudflat is doomed; thus, we are biased as to posting comments on the world in general and the world of security policy specifically that might be read, if not by anyone now, then possibly 25 years hence by a bright young lady in the throes of a struggle with her parents, in a world much worse than the present one.

Having framed the matter in terms of generations and eons to come, it seems frivolous now to comment on punctuation. Nevertheless, on this Friday night of our Lord 2010, I would like to say why I am bothered by quotation marks in headlines, especially RSS feeds. First, some examples, all culled from the BBC:

Writing headlines is a difficult and delicate matter, subject to the dictate of pithiness - accuracy and brevity. Not everybody can do it. Nevertheless, we would like to think that the legions of highly trained hacks at the Beeb would be the masters of this art. Not so.

There are basically three reasons for placing apostrophes in a news headline. The first is when the headline consists of a direct, highly relevant quote by somebody cited in the article (Defense Minister: Trident 'Not Needed'). The second is when the information cited in the headline is attributed to a source considered unreliable, and the authors wish to distance themselves from the claims stated therein (Iraq Had 'Flying Saucers', Said Curveball). The third is when the author chooses to highlight a specific phrase used by somebody in the article because the wording, rather than the substance, of the citation is highly unusual (British Economy 'Fucked', Says UK Treasury). Let us consider the examples cited above - all picked at random on a slow Friday news night in the midst of a summer slump on 13 August 2010. They account for eight out of 27 headlines tonight, just under 30% of the top RSS feeds on the BBC website.

The first, Germany in 'record' 2.2% growth, refers to the latest GDP figures in the German economy, based on official figures. Why the quotation marks? When we look at the article in question, we see that the stats are attributed "to the national statistics office, Destatis". Destatis is the Deutsches Statistisches Bundesamt, or the German Federal Office of Statistics, so the source is prima facie a credible authority. Is the author questioning the legitimacy of the source? If so, we are not told so, or why.

The second headline is Plea for 'blood diamonds' return. One might think that the author disagrees with the term "blood diamond" or wishes to make clear that this is a non-scientific term. Such a view would seem to be supported by the fact that the phrase is once again placed in quotation marks in the article itself:

The war crimes trial of Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor has heard claims he gave [supermodel Naomi Campbell] "blood diamonds" thought to originate in Sierra Leone.

But why use the quotation marks in the headline? The term itself has entered common parlance, and if anywhere, a condensed headline would be the appropriate place to use it without punctuation, while the body of the text could make clear that questions remain over the assertion that the diamonds were given to Campbell. The term blood diamonds per se is uncontested. Further complicating matters, the headline should have a possessive plural apostrophe (diamonds' return). Did a junior copy editor make a mistake here?

Headline number three is a simple cop-out: Israeli 'agent' freed in Germany. The BBC has so far not made up its mind, and failed to research, whether the person in question is an agent or not. Some say yes, others say no: how would the Beeb know? This would be fair enough if the story were breaking news and all other news outlets apart from the one that published the scoop were following up on the first report. But the Dubai assassination story has been public knowledge since January of this year. Should the BBC not at this point have determined whether or not there is any substance to the "agent" angle of this story? Also, if we are giving Israel the benefit of the doubt in this report, why not say 'Israeli agent' rather than Israeli 'agent'? It's a small, but essential difference.

The next headline is simply a lame attempt at humour, with "good show" being a direct quote attributed to the BAA...

John Mason from the British Astronomical Association (BAA) told BBC News: "Weather-permitting, we should be in for a very good show across the UK.

... as well as a common phrase suggesting gentlemen at the races at Ascot or at a pugilistic competition under the Marquess of Queensberry's rules. "Good show, old boy," indeed, but the implied bathos does not do the story, or the BBC, justice; that is, unless Pimm's and strawberries with cream be served during observation of the Perseid shower.

Iraq 'not ready' for US pull-out is a difficult one. On the one hand, this story is based on a specific accusation of coitus interruptus made by an Iraqi general, as the full headline (Iraqi general says planned US troop pull-out 'too soon') on the BBC website makes clear. However, the story again fails to take a stance on what is actually happening in Iraq. All three subheaders in the story also have quotation marks, seemingly absolving the unnamed reporter of the responsibility to establish the truth for the benefit of his/her readers:
Security 'void'
(according to Iraqi top army officer Lt Gen Babaker Zebari)

'Significant improvements'
(according to US Gen Ray Odierno)

'Wrong signals'
(according to Faleh Abdul-Jabbar, the director of the Baghdad-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies).

Who is right? Well, the BBC won't tell you.

Even more ridiculous, misleading, and uninformative is the headline Iran stoning woman 'confesses'. Here, the quotation marks serve as a "wink, wink" to the reader, so that the BBC journalist can infer, without saying it in so many words, that the confession was obtained under duress. But apparently it is too much to ask for the journalist to stake out a position on whether or not the confession - sorry, 'confession' - was legitimate. Most laughable is this section:

The woman, whose face was pixelated, admitted her part in the 2005 killing, despite Ms Ashtiani having earlier told Western media that she had been acquitted of the charge.

The accompanying footage shows a pixelated person (woman?) wearing a chador, speaking in Azeri, dubbed into Persian, allegedly confessing complicity in her husband's killing. Also, the accused (who may or may not be the person in the video) has since reportedly denied any part in the murder; she now accuses her lawyer, who has fled to Norway, of releasing the video against her wishes; she now may be hanged, according to the report, which further calls into question the already outrageously stupid epithet Iran stoning woman. Thus, considering all the uncertainties involved here, a slightly less misleading headline might be 'Iranian' 'woman' 'retracts' 'confession'.

Did I say this was going to be a short post? Let's leave the other headlines for now and conclude that the quotation mark is grotesquely misused by the BBC and other news outlets (yes, I'm looking at you, Guardian: Gulf oil spill 'may be over' and Telegraph 'Dead girl' [i.e., not-dead girl] sparks panic after photographed lying down). First of all, journalists: Do your job and research what happened. Then tell us what really transpired, not what somebody may have said or thought they had seen. Is that too much to ask? Thanks.

UPDATE: While I was writing this, the BBC outdid itself with this cretinous headline: Obama backs 'Ground Zero mosque'. Referring to Obama's backing for religious freedom, in the case of the not-exactly-mosque, to be built on the hallowed ground of the former Burlington Coat Factory. Thanks for pointing that out, Beeb!

Money Talks: The Riyal Truth

2009-12-14T03:25:00.017+01:00

Ingenious Iranian opposition members are apparently using paper money to disseminate anti-regime propaganda and challenge the authority of the state on its very own symbol of power, the national currency. According to the Iranian exile website Payvand.com, run from Mountain View in California, opposition activists

"have taken their expressions to another high circulation mass-medium, banknotes. The Central Bank of Iran has tried to take these banknotes out of circulation, but there are just too many of them, and gave up. For the activists’ people it’s a way of saying “We are here, and the green movement is going on”.

In times like these, the "green movement" idea of letting the money do the talking might be worth a try in other countries too. Certainly, this type of free speech is a most felicitous marriage of form and substance - the medium is the message.

Assuming that these sample images are genuine and represent a sense of what a significant part of the Iranian public think, it is particularly interesting to see that the regime is being challenged on the basis of its deals with other countries. Khamenei is accused of being a "servant of Putin" and the government is charged with having passed on the nation's oil revenues to Chavez. The government's relations with China (from where it imports garbage) and India (to where it exports gas) are also slammed.

But the slogans also hit pretty close to home on domestic policy issues. Particularly irksome must be this quote from Ali Shariati, the chief ideologue of the 1979 revolution (all quotes based on the info provided by Payvand.com - I don't claim to know any Farsi):

"Don’t believe what a government says if that government is the only entity that has the right of expression."

Ouch... it's got to hurt for any corrupt, violent, fundamentalist regime that draws its legitimacy from a revolutionary heritage when it is reminded by its own population of its long-lost ideals from 30 years ago. Meanwhile, in my own neighborhood, I will be looking out for Swiss franc banknotes with hand-scribbled demands for nationalization of UBS and Credit Suisse, and calling for the head of Marcel Ospel.

In other news from the Siamese twins of crime and politics (conjoined at the head), The Observer reports that over US$350 billion of drug money were injected into legal circulation (read: laundered) at the height of the financial crisis last year when no other liquid assets were available, keeping several unnamed banks afloat; and last night, somebody wiped that smirk off Silvio Berlusconi's face - throwing shoes is so 2008:

Not that I endorse that kind of behavior. Pronta guarigione, Silvio!

Mine/Thine

2009-11-27T01:41:00.005+01:00

What can I say... this kind of thing wouldn't fly back in the old country... but I am currently in Switzerland, where people still juxtapose words like "Lebensraum" and "Heimat" quite innocuously - in the Migros supermarket.

Back in Germany, the store would be considered to have gotten off lightly if it was only subjected to a boycott and occasional firebombing. I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore. Incidentally, these plastic bars are known in German variously as

Transportbandwarentrennleiste
Kundenseperator
Warenabtrennhölzchen (according to Max Goldt)
NäKuBi (short for "nächster Kunde, bitte" - "next customer please")
Miendientje ("mine-thine-let", in East Frisia)

Aoristed Development

2009-10-10T04:53:00.006+02:00

Wait... huh?

France has arrested a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) for suspected links with al-Qaeda, officials have said.

"He was not a Cern employee and performed his research under a contract with an outside institute. His work did not bring him into contact with anything that could be used for terrorism".

So: will he, or will he not, have been being bringing about the end of the world as we will have been knowing it? I'm confused. Everything will have been being changed after 9/11! Or does that not apply where aorist is invalid?

What can a terrorist not do?

2009-08-08T16:05:00.019+02:00

While doing research on cybersecurity I came across an article in the Guardian that discussed a study revealing how "terrorists could soon use the internet to help set off a devastating nuclear attack". This study, commissioned by the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), basically warned that without greater efforts to secure global information infrastructure, these so-called terrorists could hack into computer systems and create havoc in the form of a mushroom cloud.

That's right, according to this study there is no longer the need to acquire the nuclear materials when you can simply find the right whiz-kid to hack, hack, and hack away.

Interesting - and yet this study does what so many have done before it... it presents yet another potential, catastrophic way that 'terrorists' could circumvent the system and carry out some asymmetric, dramatic, Hollywood-style attack that would significantly disrupt our world as we know it... well, that is until Arnold Schwarzenegger comes in to save the day. Meanwhile, most groups are relying on classic bombing campaigns (IEDs, roadside bombs, suicide bombing, grenades, etc.) and the more recent swarm-based tactics that we've seen in Mumbai and elsewhere. While the Western world continues to develop more fantastical ideas on what these individuals could do, at this point I'm wondering: what can terrorists not do? A quick internet search of "what could terrorists do" rendered all types of fantastic things; for instance, they could, of course, carry out a nuclear attack (this was the most popular), use insects to carry out biological attacks, employ killer robots, launch satellite attacks, poison our food or drinking water, breed new types of pox, and the list goes on.

Not bad.

Another thing that this article, or rather study, manages to do is follow a much deeper tradition of scenario-construction and 'what ifs' in the world of counter-terrorism that will likely never be held accountable. Like the killer robots or insects, the potential that 'terrorists' could hack into government computers and hit the nuke button continue to feed into a threat-spectrum that grows by the day. However, like most scenarios, they never come true. What they manage to do is construct and distort the capabilities of what a non-state actor is able or even willing to do to communicate a political message. I'm not saying that scenario building is necessarily bad or that we should not look at how dual-use technologies can be exploited, but that we should be tempered in our analysis and look deeper into what today's violent non-state actor is doing and how they're leveraging their environment to achieve their objectives.

Sworn Statements on Murky Blackwater Deeds

2009-08-05T13:42:00.018+02:00

According to two affidavits deposited in a federal court in Virginia on 3 August, the then-CEO of the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater and now rebranded as "Xe", Erik Prince, "murdered or had murdered" Blackwater employees who were cooperating with a government inquiry about the company's criminal conduct in Iraq. Both sworn statements, posted as part of an article in The Nation by Jeremy Scahill, were given by former employees of Blackwater named only as "John Doe One" and "John Doe Two" for their own protection. The second affidavit also says that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe" and intentionally deployed mercenaries to Iraq who "shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis."

Among the other charges cited in the affidavits and in the article by Scahill - who has written a book on Blackwater's activities - are the following:

Erik Prince smuggled illegal weapons ("sawed off semi-automatic machine guns with silencers") and ammunition ("designed to explode after penetrating within the human body") into Iraq in bags of dog food.
Blackwater knew some of its staff intentionally used excessive force to injure and murder innocent bystanders, and did nothing about it. Both John Does cite numerous cases where innocent passersby were killed apparently "as a sport or game".
Some of its mercenaries used M249 Squad Automatic Weapon ("SAW") machine guns in violation of State Department rules, which only allowed them to use pistols or M4 automatic carbines.
Against the advice of other company executives, Prince insisted on deploying to Iraq men who were patently unfit to serve, due to their stated intention to rack up "body counts" of "ragheads", due to alcohol and steroid abuse, or because they ignored safety regulations in operating weapons.
Prince also ignored the advice of mental health experts who warned him against deploying mercenaries who were psychologically unfit to serve.
He "knowingly hired two persons who were previously involved in the Kosovo sex trafficking ring to serve at relatively high-levels [sic] within his companies."
Blackwater ran a "Man Camp" where employees were supplied with prostitutes, including child prostitutes. Prince, the "Christian crusader", also visited the camp.
Many top Blackwater executives in the company's North Carolina headquarters took part in an "ongoing wife-swapping and sex ring", which caused so much trouble among the top management that a special investigation was undertaken.

Needless to say, Prince is a generous financial backer of fundamentalist Christian groups, having donated millions of dollars to causes such as The Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Council for National Policy, and Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. Naturally, he is also a large donor to the American Enterprise Institute and the Republican Party. The company's excellent relations to the Bush administration are further illustrated by the fact that the former director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Cofer "Flies on their Eyeballs" Black, has been a vice chairman of Blackwater/Xe since 2005.

The company has won government contracts worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars since 2001.

Arrested for Watching the Watchers

2009-06-24T01:02:00.006+02:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The British police officer used to be regarded worldwide as the epitome of fairness and the protector of the public peace. That was rubbish even back in the old days of course. But, as they say (all together now): EVERYTHING CHANGED AFTER 9/11... Looking at this footage of women being arrested for monitoring the police at Kingsnorth climate camp, I am a lot less enthusiastic at the thought of travelling to the UK next month... welcome to the authoritarians' paradise created by New Labour. The two ladies in question were involved with Fit Watch, the organization that watches the British police's Forward Intelligence Teams (whose job is to harass demonstrators at protests in the UK). More information about the cops in this video and their identities (they are required to provide badge numbers if requested by members of the public) is available at The Guardian and at this Fit Watch blog entry. Oh... need I add that the women were of course cleared of all charges in court, having spent a total of four days in prison without bail or access to their lawyers - just for asking the cops for their badge numbers?

Did Nokia Siemens Network Give Iran Surveillance Technology?

2009-06-23T22:14:00.008+02:00

The Wall Street Journal and WIRED magazine are reporting that Nokia Siemens Network, a subsidiary of the German and Finnish telecom companies, supplied technology for monitoring and censoring communications as part of a larger deal for a mobile phone network with the Iranian government late in 2008. According to the WSJ, the deal included provisions for "deep packet inspection", which involves not only the ability to block or restrict access to specific websites, but also the capability to inspect the content of individual communications. The company confirms the deal, but denies that the technology provided allows deep packet inspection, instead claiming that the contract included what it refers to in lovely newspeak as "provision of Lawful Intercept capability":

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran.

Whether the requirement by EU and US bureaucrats to include spying/censorship backdoors for law enforcement in telecommunications software is itself legitimate and commensurate to democratic standards relating to the rule of law is of course highly questionable (for the record, I say no). Another matter is whether a European company should sell such equipment to a regime with a record like that of the Islamic Republic, which suppresses free speech (and may have manipulated the elections of last week) as a matter of course. Yet the two issues are closely related. Had the European and US governments decided to defend democratic/civil-rights principles even under pressure from "security experts", it would be much more difficult for companies like Nokia Siemens Networks to defend their decision to trade integrity for profit.

I found this an interesting question to consider in the context of the important role of mobile communications technology for documenting eand coordinating events during the current unrest in Iran.

N.b., not to unfairly single out Iran for violations of privacy, whether clandestine or "legal": It turns out that the NSA, which is able to read the e-mails of all US citizens without court orders using the Pinwale software, has also been accessing the personal communications of former US president Bill Clinton.

Feel free to communicate with Nokia Siemens Networks and their damage control man Ben Roome at this address or via e-mail at ben.roome@nsn.com. They will certainly be delighted to hear from you provided you state your opinion respectfully.

Fox News Obliquely Smears Obama as Jew-Hater

2009-06-15T01:44:00.010+02:00

FoxNews.com accompanied its coverage of the speech by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with one stock picture of Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University, and one picture of US President Barack Obama wearing a keffiyah. The latter image was obviously photoshopped; what is interesting is the provenance of this not-very-subtle smear, with its blatant overtones of Obama being a "secret Muslim" and similar debunked nonsense: It is cropped from this picture of a poster seen in Israel, which proclaims "Barack Hussein Obama" (of course!) to be an "Anti-Semitic Jew-Hater":

Now, this is clearly not an error; somebody in the FoxNews.com newsroom intentionally selected this picture of Obama to accompany the report on Netanyahu's comments, in which he stipulated that any future Palestinian state would have to be demilitarized and accompanied by security guarantees for Israel. (While it goes without saying that the second of these demands is perfectly reasonable, the first will be unacceptable to the Palestinians and at this point constitutes a de-facto rejection of real Palestinian statehood in the occupied territories.)

The picture was pointed out by a commenter on the extreme right-wing discussion board Free Republic, who called the choice of image "pretty stunning" and said quite rightly that it "seems to be an editorial decision". The next commenter asks "Is there a FReeper working for Fox? I nearly fell off my chair seeing that!", while others gleefully respond with "Wow...is that a real picture? I like it!" and "Whoa! At first I thought you were pulling my leg but the picture really is on Fox’s site! I wonder how long it’ll be there?".

At the time of writing, the picture was still there, cf. the following screenshot:

By promoting the idea that Obama is a "Jew-Hater" and antisemite, FoxNews.com is further stoking the fire of those nutjobs who already feel tempted to take the law into their own hands. Without going into the details of the delicate relationship between right-wing extremists and philosemites (among many militant conservatives in the US, philosemitism frequently appears to be constantly on the verge of tipping over into prejudice against Jews), suffice it to say that casting Obama as a new Hitler, while obviously completely crazy, will egg on those who believe any means are justified in stopping him. FoxNews knows no shame, of course, but they should be called out on this.

File under: Misheard Lyrics

2009-04-23T23:20:00.003+02:00

Charles Manson asks the question that's been bugging me for some time now:

Easy to see how he might have misunderstood some of the lyrics on the Beatles' White Album.

A Hollow Man in the White House: The Lost Bush Decade

2009-01-21T03:00:00.011+01:00

Just before New Year’s Eve, I began reading “The Final Days” by Woodward and Bernstein on the last weeks of the Nixon administration. Not because of any conscious awareness of the imminent end of the Bush era, but simply because it was the first book that jumped out at me from the bookcase in my brother’s spare bedroom in Malta where we were spending ten days escaping from the icy winds that tore across the continent in late December and early January.

The impression one gains from this account and other descriptions of Nixon is that, though he was a crook, he was also a complex person with deep-seated neuroses and obsessions that he was able to harness as vehicles to advance his political career. Even Hunter S. Thompson, probably the most outspoken critic that Nixon ever had, acknowledged in the summer of 1973 that the true loathsomeness of Watergate was to be found not in the person of the president, but in the broader implications for the nation as a whole:

The slow-rising central horror of “Watergate” is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.

Only 27 years later, George W. Bush was elected the 43rd president of the United States. It is already clear that his sole lasting achievement and bequest to the Republican Party will be the rehabilitation of Richard Milhous Nixon. And while the legal and moral corruption of the Bush administration is immeasurably greater, making Tricky Dicky’s many crimes seem almost petty by comparison, Nixon himself now comes across as a larger-than-life figure – a tragic character in the full sense of the word, brought down by his own hubris and destroyed by the same traits of personality that made possible his ascent to power. Bush by comparison is a hollow man, a cardboard cutout, a two-bit tinhorn gambler who bet the ranch and lost. His legacy will be that of an idiot child who was somehow hoisted onto the throne and spent his days cycling, playing with his train set, and invading other countries in wars of aggression, ending in failure on an epic scale that was previously inconceivable.

I like children, but they can be stupid and cruel, as Bion of Borysthenes knew well:

It was the saying of Bion, that, though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport but in earnest.

Ultimately, Bush remains a mystery to us; maybe the only ones who can fathom him are those of us who have stared down the drooling, vacant-eyed monster inside of us that occasionally returns our gaze in the mirror at 3am. If so – and we would do well never to forget that Bush was re-elected in 2004, despite all the information that was publicly available at the time already – he represents not the most evil aspects of our political system and ultimately of our nature as political beings (that honor would have to be reserved for criminals of Nixon’s stature), but the most bland, careless, unthinking manifestation of human interaction. Could this be because Nixon came from a poor farming family of Quakers and had to claw his way to power and infamy, while Bush is a Fortunate Son of the establishment and was handed the keys to the White House by a coalition of the super-rich, the foreign-policy hawks, and the Christian Right?

Possibly the worst aspect of the Bush years has been not the political shit sandwich that he has tried to force-feed to all of mankind, but the way in which he has made cretinism and mediocrity fashionable, or at least acceptable in polite society. On the other hand, this development is already beginning to be reversed by the current economic devastation, which has disabused the world of the notion that the emperor’s new clothes are oh so pretty. Thus it is that in the run-up to Barack Obama’s inauguration, the residents of Washington, D.C. were throwing shoes at a blow-up doll of Bush/Pinocchio, even as the jailers guarding “shoe assassin” Muntadhar al-Zeidi in Baghdad threw a birthday party for him (after severely beating and torturing him, it should be added).

“So for him it does not matter for how long he would be imprisoned,” his brother said, “because the important thing is that he restored the honor of the Iraqi people.”

As for Bush, he can take solace in two deserved awards recently bestowed upon him: The Bishop John T. Walker Service Award, which he earned (in all fairness – though it is a shame he did not muster the same level of dedication when New Orleans was drowning) for his efforts to improve the lives of Africans, and a well-deserved label devised especially for Dubya by the esteemed Sean Bedlam:

“He is the Swiss army knife of being a fuckhead”

Celebrating Victory With Barack Obama

2008-11-09T22:14:00.027+01:00

It was a long night on Tuesday, but worth the wait. We went to the Democrats Abroad pre-election party and had a few beers to loosen up nerves that were tense even though we were all pretty confident about the outcome of the vote. Comrade Jen G. had to take it easy because she had been selected to debate the head of Republicans Abroad later in the evening. The debate took place at GZ Riesbach here in Zurich, at an SP election night party. The Republican dude was let off easy because everybody knew his sorry ass was going down anyway, and the other panelists were (unnecessarily) gracious, leaving the booing and ridicule to an audience of 99% Obama supporters. Jen turned on her considerable charm while the Republican became increasingly irritated, ending up with a beet-root red face (tsk, tsk, those angry white men).

I went home at 4:30am local time, when Pennsylvania and Ohio were called for Obama and it was increasingly clear that McCain was not just going to lose, but was losing in a landslide. Walking home along the lake in the cold November morning, I felt very tired but cheerful - not necessarily elated... but as I came home, my dear lady (who had left the party early and nodded off watching the election coverage on the sofa) told me that CNN had just officially declared Obama the President-Elect.

John McCain gave a remarkably graceful concession speech before a crowd that was visibly reeling between shock and anger that the impossible had happened - enraged bellows were heard as McCain said he had called Obama "to congratulate him on being elected the next president of the country we both love". Buh-buh-but... isn't he a Muslim communist?! Like many others, I felt that the race would have been a much closer one had McCain not pandered to the lunatic base of his party by insinuating that Obama was some kind of strange, radical alien - and nominating a dumb Pentecostal gasbag for VP, of course.

Obama's acceptance speech was tremendous in form and delivery. It allowed even me, a cynical political junkie, to set aside for a few minutes the terrible disappointments, shortcomings, and mistakes that the next four years will undoubtedly bring, and to imagine for a brief moment that change for the better is possible - that the problems we are currently facing can be resolved with intelligence and goodwill, and that as both Abraham Lincoln and Bob Marley have observed:

It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time;
you can even fool some of the people all of the time;
but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Anyway, on Wednesday morning or rather around noon, I woke up feeling quite good about the world I live in, and after work, Jen (who hadn't slept all night), Manu, and I decided the time was right for a glass or two of celebratory prosecco at Safari... and since Obama deserved a few beers after two years of hard campaigning, we thought it would be a nice gesture of our appreciation to ask him to come along. Imagine our surprise when Barry said he was going to leave the nomination of his chief of staff for another day and hit the bar with us.

It didn't take long before old Barack was more than a little sozzled and started mumbling into his beer about how "that honky bastard Dubya" had stuck him with a country in tatters, a divided society, and an economy that was "totally roached", and how once again it was the black man who was going to have to "clean up their shit after them". Fortunately, he soon cheered up and started flirting with Comrade Jen, who was not completely averse to his advances (she likes tall dark guys, which is why George Clooney didn't stand a chance with her at the Geneva fundraiser held by the Democrats Abroad).

After we had left the Safari Bar, Barry wanted to go to a strip club, but we convinced him this was probably not a good idea (though part of me was screaming at myself that we could take photos and sell them to Fox News for a fee that would put not just our children, but our grandchildren through university).

Instead, we went to the Kon-Tiki Bar, where Obama has some fans too. While the Safari bartender had offered him a beer on the house, the pierced/tatooed/redheaded lady behind the Kon-Tiki bar stood us a round of suspicious-looking red drinks that seemed to be vodka-based. By this time, Barack was totally relaxed and decided he wanted to play some good music on the jukebox. He put on "Paint the White House Black" by George Clinton and started laughing hysterically, shouting something about how he would have liked to "buy that crazy-ass bitch Hillary a quart of rye whiskey if she were here right now."

Afterwards, we went to the Regenbogen Bar, where the election night warm-up party had taken place. All night long, we had been making new friends and getting big smiles from absolute strangers. In this bar, we got into an argument with a belligerent jerk who took the whole thing a little too seriously. The less said about that conversation, the better - all I want to add is that apparently you can hang out in a chic gay bar and still be a nasty, uptight, angry asshole. Who knew.

In traditional continental European style, we wrapped up the night in a kebab shop, where the döner jockey announced that Obama was "far too thin" and needed to "get some meat on that skinny frame". By this point, Barack seemed to be getting a little bleary-eyed (he had taken off his glasses, as you can see) and his grin was starting to look unnaturally fixed, so we decided to head home after one more round of beers. Outside, another group of complete strangers (they looked decidedly Middle Eastern) begged him to have their picture taken with him.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable night out with Barack (or "Hussein", as we, his friends, call him), and to paraphrase his already legendary acceptance speech in Grant Park on the night of 4 November... if there is anyone out there who still doubts that this is a president you would like to have a beer with, tonight was your answer!

The 35 Articles of Impeachment

2008-10-14T14:59:00.004+02:00

... and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush, by Dennis Kuchinich with David Swanson and Elizabeth de la Vega, available as a paperback from Feral House and available for free download as a PDF from the same publisher. Read it and pass it on, then lobby your local Democratic Party to push for impeaching the Chimp when Obama takes office in January.

In the best case, we will see GWB and his coterie sentenced to long prison sentences. Do I believe this? No, because even though I am supporting Obama, I think he is an establishment candidate and will not violate the unwritten rule that incoming administrations let sleeping dogs lie. But even in the worst case, you will be able to tell your grandchildren that it was through no fault of your own that Bush got away with murder.

"Kärntens 9/11" - Zum Tod von Jörg Haider

2008-10-14T00:33:00.005+02:00

Heute ausnahmsweise mal in meiner Mutter- statt Vatersprache, denn es geht um ein Thema, das primär den deutschsprachigen Raum betrifft. De mortuis nihil nisi bene, sagt man, und meint damit, dass man von den Toten nicht sprechen soll, wenn man nichts Nettes über sie zu sagen hat. Nun dürfte es vielen schwerfallen, etwas Gutes über Jörg Haider zu sagen, und selbst seinen unterbelichteten Anhängern fällt laut Basler Zeitung nichts wirklich Eloquentes ein. Sprüche an der Unfallstelle wie "Wir leben durch dich!" oder "Danke, dass du mir einmal die Hand gereicht hast" bringen den Schmalspur-Führerkult des dauergrinsenden Caudillo von Kärnten noch einmal auf den Punkt, während das flehentliche "Bitte Jörg, du musst noch einmal vorbeikommen" ein frommer Wunsch bleiben dürfte.

Die Umstände von Haiders Tod - als Raser auf der Überholspur - sind von einigen Kommentatoren als bezeichnend für seine politische Karriere gedeutet worden: "Bevor er sich mehrmals überschlug, rammte der VW Phaeton ein Schild mit Tempolimit 50", heisst es in dem obigen Artikel, und wenn man des weiteren darauf hinweist, dass der Jörgl mit 142 km/h unterwegs war, werden wir mal wieder daran erinnert, dass gerade für Law-and-Order-Politiker der Grundsatz gilt: "Do as I say, not as I do," was auch die CSU-Politiker im benachbarten Bayern ein ums andere Mal demonstriert haben - siehe die zahllosen Titanic-"Briefe an die Leser", die sich mit diesem Thema über die Jahre beschäftigt haben.

Apropos Titanic: Natürlich hat sich das Pflichtblatt für Rechtsabbieger auch mit dem Haider-Exitus in gewohnt pietätvoller Manier beschäftigt. "Rechtsruck in Österreich" war die Schlagzeile bereits am Sonntag, während die folgende Meldung unter dem Titel "Wie Jörg Haider vom rechten Weg abkam" eine Grafik präsentiert, wie wir sie bereits vom Tod der Prinzessin Diana kennen ("1.: Haider blinkt auf der Überholspur mehrere Jahre lang rechts. ... 3.: Haider versucht, das Steuer in Österreich herumzureissen...").

Als ich die erste Meldung von seinem Crash gelesen hatte, war ich zunächst verwirrt, weil ich dachte, es sei dies wieder ein Haiderscher PR-Stunt, genauer: eine neue Runde im Streit über slowenisch- und deutschsprachige Strassenschilder gewesen, mit dem der Landeshauptmann immer wieder bei den Deppen und Arschgeigen unter den Wählern in seinem Bundesland zu punkten wusste:

Mit dem Umsetzen des Schildes will Haider erreichen, dass das Verfahren vor dem Verfassungsgericht neu aufgerollt werden muss (...) Ausgelöst hatte das Verfahren in Wien ein Anwalt aus Klagenfurt. Der bekennende Slowene war mit überhöhter Geschwindigkeit durch eine geschlossene Ortschaft gefahren, wurde geblitzt und bezahlte sein Strafmandat nicht. Das Ortsschild, das auch in Österreich "Tempo 50" bedeutet, sei, weil einsprachig, nicht korrekt und das Tempo-Limit somit nicht rechtmäßig gewesen.

Dies schien mir dann aber eher nicht plausibel, zumal Populisten vom Schlage eines J.H. solche Kampagnen ja meistens eher auf dem Rücken anderer austragen, anstatt selber mit gutem Beispiel voranzugehen bzw. zu -fahren.

So bleibt Haiders Tod letzlich komplett sinnfrei und schliesst auch in dieser Hinsicht nahtlos an sein Leben an. Nur eines blieb mir in der ganzen Berichterstattung völlig unerklärlich: "Öfters fällt das Schlagwort von 'Kärntens 9/11'", so die BAZ - wieso? Erstens war Haider kein Muslim, und zweitens ist er nur in die Leitplanke und nicht in ein Hochhaus gebrettert.

Rensselaer County "Mistakenly" Mislabels Election Ballot For "Osama"

2008-10-11T05:52:00.005+02:00

I have just voted for Obama as an overseas voter, and am happy to have done so. Now this... does anybody believe the "Barack Osama" ballot handed out by Rensselaer County was the result of an honest mistake? Yeah, right, just one of those mistakes that happen from time to time. I'm sure the good people administering Rensselaer County will appreciate your honest and respectful criticism at this address.

McCain Must Really Hate America

2008-10-08T16:45:00.012+02:00

Last night, watching the presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, I was disturbed to note that while Obama displayed a US flag lapel pin, his opponent did not. Apparently, McCain's brazen rejection of all the values America stands for went unnoticed by Fox News, which had previously spoken out on behalf of all red-blooded freedom-lovers thusly:

Some Americans, however, say they question the patriotism of a candidate who makes such a choice, a sentiment that shows up in polls.

Perhaps McCain could have borrowed US$2,500 from his beer heiress wife to purchase one of the lapel pins on sale by his own campaign management. Surely, that would not be too steep a price to show a little pride in the country he wants to lead.

Update: Raquel Laneri of Forbes magazine noticed, too.

Dear Boy

2008-09-08T23:44:00.012+02:00

Keith Moon died 30 years ago yesterday. Besides being the greatest drummer of all times with The Who, he also earned a reputation for inventing the rock-star cliche of smashing up hotel rooms on an epic scale. I remember when I was about 11 years old visiting my family in Scotland, I stayed in the room of my older cousin. Every inch of this room was completely covered in Who memorabilia, and what particularly impressed me were the clippings from The Sun and other tabloids describing the various exploits of Moon the Loon - how he had crashed his Rolls into the pool of a Holiday Inn hotel, how he habitually destroyed his drum kit on stage, and - most memorably in the mind of this pre-pubescent kid - how a naked stripper had emerged from his birthday cake (I was almost as impressed by the fact that my cousin was allowed to have the article, with photo of the lady in question, up on his wall; my mom would have had my head on a stake had I suggested redecorating my room in similar fashion).

When, several years later, I started getting seriously into the music of The Who myself, it was Moon's drumming that convinced me this was the best band ever. Especially in recordings of live concerts, his power and speed are unreal (just listen to his drumming on I Can See For Miles - and I still consider Live at Leeds the best live album ever recorded by any band).

On a trip to the UK, my buddy Felix (if at all possible, an even bigger Who fan than myself) bought Full Moon, a biography of Keith by his driver, bodyguard, and drug purchaser Dougal Butler. In addition to introducing me to the concept of cockney rhyming slang, this account of life as a rock star also made clear that besides Moonie's charming and comical personality, he also had a vicious Mr Hyde side to him that came out when he was drunk, i.e., near-permanently as his career evolved. After hurling a bottle of champagne at his wife, which thankfully missed and became embedded intact in the wall of their living room, he framed the corpus delicti, turning violence simultaneously into a joke and into a work of art, perfectly encapsulating his approach to life and the two sides of his increasingly psychotic personality.

A 1970s cartoon showed a hotel lobby with what looks like a fire alarm and the notice, "In Case of Keith Moon, Break Glass". The Wikipedia entry on Moonie contains the following anecdote:

According to Townshend, Moon's reputation for erratic behaviour was something he cultivated. Once, on the way to an airport, Moon insisted they return to their hotel, saying , "I forgot something. We've got to go back!" When the limo returned, Moon ran to his room, grabbed the TV while it was plugged in, threw it out the window and into the pool. He then jumped back into the limousine, sighing "I nearly forgot."

Another nice story is recounted by Graham Chapman:

"He had a little bit of a problem in a hotel in Los Angeles, in the Hyatt House on Sunset Strip in fact it was, he was returning home one afternoon after rehearsing with the band, and was walking through the lobby at the hotel listening to this old cassette recorder - listening to the rehearsal of the band that morning, in fact, and evidently there was some kind of complaint about this, because the manager approached him and told him to turn that noise off, please. Well, Keith immediately complied, turned it off, and went up to his room, where he happened to have a large supply of detonator caps. He'd been saving these up for the acts later on in the week. And he spent the next 20 minutes meticulously wiring these up to the back of his door. He then rang down to the manager's office and told the man that he wanted to see him immediately. He popped his head out of the door to check that the manager had indeed got out of the elevator, popped back in again, and the manager subsequently arrived just outside of Keith's door to see the whole thing blown off its hinges in front of his eyes, and Keith, stepping out of the rubble and smoke, holding up this little cassette recorder, saying: 'That was noise, mate; this was The Who.' He certainly had a way with authority".

Not the kind of person you would wish to married to, then; but certainly if I had the choice of which resurrected dead rock star I could spend a night of drinking with, I would have to go with Keith, no contest. If you are unfamiliar with his drumming style, the difference between noise and The Who is showcased in Cobwebs and Strange on the album "A Quick One", and this video gives a good impression of both his mastery of the drums and of the charming part of his personality (with a cameo appearance by Steve Martin, from the movie The Kids Are Alright). The other side of the Moon, the bombastic stadium rock power drumming, can be seen in the final scene of the aforementioned movie as The Who give a monster performance of Won't Get Fooled Again. At 7:37 minutes, Moonie breaks into the synthesizer track with a fantastic extended drum roll that still gives me goosebumps every time I hear it.

But there can be no better way to honor his memory than with this clip of Moon the Loon performing his beloved surf music: a lovely smile, terrific drumming, and atrocious singing (though his version of Barbara Ann still better than John McCain's obscenity)... we shall not see his like again.

Recommended reading: Tony Fletcher, Dear Boy - The Life Of Keith Moon, London: Omnibus Press, 1998.

Wikigroaning

2008-08-21T21:15:00.003+02:00

Wikigroaning is an amusing way to point out the obvious bias of Wikipedia towards pop culture as compared to other subjects of serious academic discourse. Compare, for example, the length, incisiveness, and relative value to the general public of the Wikipedia articles on God and on Kevin Smith (don't worry, I had no idea who Kevin Smith was, either). Looking at the examples collected by Something Awful, I marvel both at the brevity with which many important topics are treated by Wikipedia authors, and at the level of detail devoted to completely irrelevant stuff like anime characters, storylines from computer game plots, or other ficititious items (cf. the respective articles on lizards and dragons, for example).

Here's one I found myself: Monopoly (economic term) vs. Monopoly (board game) - examples abound once one starts looking, and many hours of boring office time can be killed this way. Feel free to submit your own example in the comments.

(Found via Encyclopedia Dramatica)

Phrase Cloud

2008-08-15T03:13:00.004+02:00

Wordle.net lets you create a cloud of most frequently used words for a given website. It's not only a nice little free gimmick, but also an interesting visualization tool for written content. For example, The Boston Globe finds that John McCain's blog has an unhealthy fixation on Barack Obama and on negative terms... by the same token, it could be said that Security Hippo is skewed towards the term "counterterrorism" - certainly something to consider.

Maybe in a few months' time I will try this out again to see whether the semantic center of gravity, and thus the focus of my attention, has shifted at all.

Thought for the Day

2008-08-06T01:55:00.003+02:00

As of the time of writing, Bush has 167 days, 4 hours, 4 minutes, 27.2 seconds left in office. Not a fifth of a second too soon.
I'm not a believer in end-times prophecy, but H.L. Mencken saw this coming:

“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Making the World Safe for Business

2008-07-25T00:40:00.008+02:00

Two unrelated stories that may nevertheless be linked on a deeper, karmic level (or, since this blog is run from the heartlands of the Occident: on the level of what Boethius might have recognized as a fati series) have recently failed to make the headlines.

First of all, The Washington Post tells us that:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

In order to be able to fight evildoers in style, the US Air Force generals decided to take taxpayers' money that was earmarked for counterterrorism and spend it to ensure that

each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

Over the past three years, the Air Force has demanded that over US$16 million be taken from funding from the "war on terrorism" and spent instead on more comfortable "capsules" for air travel in the style that its commanders deserve.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

Never mind that Congress has told the USAF - not once, but twice - that the funds reserved for counterterrorism should be spent on "higher priority" needs, meaning something more useful than cushy seats and in-flight entertainment systems, such as, oh, let's say, counterterrorism. Despite the hysteria we have been subjected to in the past seven years of madness and cretinism, and despite the billions of dollars that have been taken away from essential state services, and despite the fact that bin Laden and al-Zawahri have not yet been found, the main funding priority at this point in time seems to be that some top Air Force brass are provided with

what one (lower-ranking officer) described as "world class" accommodations exceeding the standards of a regular business-class flight.

Oh, sorry, did I say "despite"? Seems I may have gotten the causality inversed here, which happens to me occasionally after a long day. What I meant to say was that in order to justify the splooging-out of unfathomably huge quantities of cash for the benefit of their buddies in the oil and arms industries, while "starving the beast" of the welfare state, the Bush administration has turned the US into a nation of bedwetters, transfixed by the specter of an undefined and ominous threat to All that is Good and Right. Those generals must be having a grand old chuckle as they hook up the X-Box 360 to their 37" flatscreen for another few hours of "Call of Duty 4", killing time in non-stop transit from Andrews AFB to Diego Garcia for another round of waterboarding some poor Afghan goatherd.

The second and prima facie unrelated story makes the above "comfort pod" look like a tame joke by comparison. The New York Times' Eric Schmitt reports that:

The Bush administration plans to shift nearly $230 million in aid to Pakistan from counterterrorism programs to upgrading that country’s aging F-16 attack planes, which Pakistan prizes more for their contribution to its military rivalry with India than for fighting insurgents along its Afghan border.

So again, we see the diversion of funding reserved for counter-terrorism (and let's save the discussion on how effectively that money has been used so far for another time), but this time, the money isn't being spent on hi-tech travel capsules. The US$16 million of de-facto embezzled funds wasted by the Air Force are peanuts compared to the almost quarter of a billion dollars that will not be available for combating al-Qaida. Instead, the money will go to Lockheed Martin, the makers of the F-16 (who, in another of those strange coincidences, are among the top donors to the Republican Party this year).

There has been an ongoing debate over whether air power is useful or even sufficient for subduing insurgencies, but the experiences made by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon in 2006 and since the withdrawal from Gaza seem to have more or less settled the matter: While tactical air superiority may be useful, an insurgency cannot be defeated without boots on the ground. Why, then, would the US want to use its counterterrorism budget for Pakistan to upgrade fighter jets that have so far not been used against militant in the North-West Frontier Province? After all, as the NY Times notes,

The financing for the F-16s would represent more than two-thirds of the $300 million that Pakistan will receive this year in American military financing for equipment and training. Last year, Congress specified that those funds be used for law enforcement or counterterrorism. Pakistan’s military has rarely used its current fleet of F-16s, which were built in the 1980s, for close-air support of counterterrorism missions, largely because the risks of civilian casualties would inflame anti-government sentiments in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Even by the obscene standards of the US military, that's quite a lot of money that will not be spent on securing the Pakistani-Afghan border region. However, the upgrades will go some way towards restoring parity between the Pakistani and Indian air forces.

The US sold Pakistan F-16s in the 1980s, but then cut off Islamabad from further arms deliveries due to its nuclear weapons program. In the meantime, India had acquired Russian MiG-29s and Sukhoi-30s, as well as French Mirage fighters, which had given it an edge over the Pakistani Air Force's F-16s in the 1999 Kargil crisis.

A new deal was struck after the Sept. 11 attacks to allow Pakistan to buy newer models, in part to reward Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting terrorism. In 2006, Pakistan was a major recipient of American arms sales, including the $1.4 billion purchase of up to 36 new F-16C/D fighter aircraft and $640 million in missiles and bombs. The deal included a package for $891 million in upgrades for Pakistan’s older F-16s.

The current delivery and upgrade of F-16s is not a recent decision, but the financing of the deal using funds earmarked for counterterrorism and law enforcement contravenes assurances made by the White House to Congress. The Bush administration, in addition to ensuring that its financial aid to Pakistan flows back to the US arms industry, is also calculating that the deal will help stabilize the political leadership of Pakistan vis-à-vis the army, and will prevent India from acquiring a strategic edge - especially with non-US weapons systems - in a possible future conflict over disputed territory with Pakistan.

All of these considerations are, of course, not part of polite conversation in American public discourse, where expenditures on security and especially "counterterrorism" go largely unquestioned.

Does that make you sad, depressed, or even fill you with despair when you consider the prospects for the survival of democracy, not to mention human existence as we know it?

If so, you may now view the following short video clip, which will make you feel much better. It has been approved by the Security Hippo for all audiences.

Neighborhood Patrol II

2008-05-24T22:52:00.066+02:00

Hmmmmm. Where to begin. Maybe by saying "so much for New Year's resolutions". I had promised in January to write more, but somehow that didn't work out. It is now the end of May, the smell of summer is in the air, and even at 11pm, it is still comfortably warm out on the balcony. And the last blog entry was in mid-January. Sometime in the past two weeks, the page registered 1,000 hits. Nice! Know that the Security Hippo loves and cherishes every single visitor to the old mudflat.

Maybe the best thing to do is simply to act as if nothing had happened, and to carry on as before. The first item will therefore be a traditional "what I did on my holidays" effort, a short pictorial review of some impressions gained during the past weeks and months.

When we moved to this flat, I decided to throw out some old T-shirts that had only nostalgic value, but weren't being worn any more. I decided this one had to be documented for posterity, fondly picturing the chap (for some reason I am sure it was a man) who came up with this extremely hip statement of near-haiku quality: "Acting Up/Who Make The/First Move/The Dramatic/American/What Guys Think".

What guys think, indeed. You have to wonder sometimes. No less amusing was this shirt seen last year while visiting the Locarno Film Festival, on sale at a market in Luino across the border in Italy:

"Die Liebe/Sommer ist/Nur Geschlecht" ("Love/Summer Is/Only Gender"). Note the elegant layout and typesetting. No doubt somebody found this to be a profound statement on the nature of human attraction and the passing of the seasons.

Anyway, here are some more bits and pieces seen while walking in my neighborhood - graffiti, art, stickers, and other stuff that caught my eye.

The offer still stands, by the way, for the next person to leave a comment (see last post) - you can win original art featuring the above observation, plus the chance to set a topic for the next blog entry.

This poster, calling for a strike in the construction business, states that your boss can never be your partner. Somebody left comments indicating their agreement.

EIMER's panda asks the cassette tape: "Soll ich in den Wald gehen, um als Räuber zu leben?" - "Should I go and live as an outlaw in the forest?" - No, you should publish a book of awesome cartoons and get really rich.

More graffiti can be seen on this short stretch of fence along a construction site:

Kreis 4 in Zurich is kosher city, baby. Just across from this Jewish supermarket was more nice graffiti:

The lovely lady accompanying me thought this mural was spooky - it reminded her of the little girls in "The Shining", which is admittedly one of the most crap-your-pants terrifying scenes in the history of cinema. Still, the effect for me was different. These ladies exude a self-assured serenity that I find enviable and reassuring at the same time. Then again, a very similar atmosphere may also be part of what makes the scene in "The Shining" so scary.

The Art of Security

Anyway... more bric-a-brac on this blog's theme of "Security in Everyday Life", or "Why You Should be Very Very Afraid" follows here, no comment necessary.

Actually, the last two are worth commenting on. The lock, on sale at the Swiss Post Office near Zurich main train station, is advertised as follows: "Lock for travel to the USA. Allows American security personnel to examine luggage without damage to lock or bag". The lock can apparently be opened with a skeleton key held by US airport security, so that they can graciously refrain from completely destroying your luggage while they rifle through it. Oh, great, that makes me feel much safer. The second picture was taken outside a meeting room of the Taliban Grand Shura in Kandahar. As you may know, many Taliban commanders are (multiple) amputees, in some cases dating back to the mujahideen struggle against the Soviets. No doubt the "international community" has now added to their number. Oh, and just in case it wasn't clear: That was a joke. The picture was actually taken in the second-hand store around the corner from our house. If you need cheap crutches, this would be the place to go.

When in Rome...

I saw lots more interesting graffiti when we went to Rome over the Pentecost weekend. A lot of political stuff, obviously, since there had just been an election a few weeks earlier, which the utterly corrupt Silvio Berlusconi won with support from self-styled "post-Fascists" and Lega Nord separatists.

Amusingly, the transparent attempt to establish a sense of continuity between the Roman empire and Mussolini's Italy through the use of Latin (in the bottom picture) fails completely. "Semper Dux Mea Lux" would translate roughly as "The Duce is forever my light". However, "sempre" is not Latin. Proximus, sed abest banana - close, but no cigar.

The origins of the term "fascist" are nicely illustrated by this part of a frieze we saw near the tomb of the noblewoman Caecilia Metella Cretica alongside the old Appian Way (Via Appia Antica) south of Rome's ancient city walls: It shows the insignia of Roman state power, the fasces, which were bundles of birch rods tied around an axe, symbolizing the authority to mete out corporal and capital punishment. They were carried by Roman civil servants known as lictores.

It seems that old-school polical propaganda is generally held in high esteem in Italy, however; I could not tell whether these posters were Communist or (post-?) Fascist or something completely different. Which is also interesting in a way, maybe:

Other messages included the following lovely sign at the entrance to St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican,

and a sign indicating the next bunker, presumably intended for blasphemers to take cover from bolts of lightning -

why is it that in Catholic countries, profanities are mainly based on blasphemy, while Protestant regions of the world swear using words related to sex and bowel movements? Does anybody know what swearing in Muslim countries is based on? Of course there was also anti-US graffiti:

Why oh why do they hate us? I am reminded of this picture recently found on the web, advertising an old arcade game from the late 1960s or early 1970s; unrelated to any of the above, of course. Res ipsa loquitur:

"Rifle gallery featuring Realistic Running Indians - Continuous Action! 17 Different Moving, Spinning, Vanishing Targets"! Looking at this vintage training equipment, one would think that the US should have been well prepared to make Iraq safe for profits ("Double Mirrors" - how prophetic). But I digress... getting back to the wonders of Rome, here are some assorted pictures of the fantastic art that can be found just about everywhere in the Eternal City.

The last two of these pictures are quite interesting as the sculptures of Moses depict him with horns, due to Jerome's mistranslation of Exodus 34: 29-35 in the Vulgate version. The Hebrew root letters kof, resh, and nun can be vocalized in different ways to spell the Hebrew words for "ray of light" or for "horn".

I had been to the Vatican several times before, but there is always more left to discover. For example, who knew that there is a sculpture of Attila the Hun in St Peter's?

This frieze shows Attila being told, in no uncertain terms, to get lost by a pope whose name I failed to note, and by the Apostles Paul and Peter, who are swooping down from on high, as they were apparently wont to do - Peter of course always having been handy with the sword (John 18: 10-11), and to judge by this statue of St Paul outside San Paolo Fuori le Mura, he was no slouch either when the chips were down:

The inscription reads "To the Preacher of Truth and the Teacher of the Gentiles". Certainly he seems to have taught Attila a thing or two, as the Huns took his message to heart and never came back ("Verily, I say unto you, speak softly and carry a huge sword; and now, scram!"; Paul's Epistle to the Huns, 12:23-24). Of course, Caesar - a certified nutcase and degenerate sex maniac (Suetonius tells us he was "every woman's man and every man's woman") -

had a few things to say on that matter too in his account of his dealings with the Helvetii tribe in De Bello Gallico. They were made up of four sub-tribes, who spoke Latin, Gaulish, Germanic, and an unintellegible dialect that nobody else understood, which didn't matter afterwards, because Caesar slaughtered every last one of them. No relation to my present-day neighbors the Swiss, who are very nice people, and adherents of the words of the Apostle Paul to the Huns - every Swiss male has a sword, pike, or halberd stored at home, yet they enjoy a fully deserved reputation as peaceful folk.

Which kind of brings me full circle; much as we enjoyed Rome, there were certain moments when, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I had a sudden feeling of "Toto, I don't think we're in Switzerland any more":

It's nice to be back in Zurich, a town that is always beautiful, but at its best in summertime. I am looking forward to BBQ on the balcony, nighttime bars on the lake, and of course I will continue to promote the cause of Bara Bröst; in conclusion, I offer the following evidence that theirs is an ancient and time-honored prerogative (statue of Diana of Ephesus, originally from the mind-blowing Villa d'Este in Tivoli, now in the Vatican Museum).

That's it for now; watch this space, and feel free to leave your comments - the Hippo wants to hear from you.

Manboobs for The Filipino Monkey

2008-01-14T23:43:00.001+01:00

The year 2008 is only two weeks old and already it looks like it's going to be comedy gold. But first, let us welcome the new year with this bit of good news from the civil liberties/topless Swedish women department:

A swimming pool in northern Sweden has said it will allow women to bathe topless, following a campaign by feminists.

Since I am very much in favor of civil rights in general, and of womens' lib in particular, I would like to state that I support the stance taken by the Sundsvall municipal leisure center wholeheartedly.

A spokesman for the pool (...) said that employees there had decided they would not act if women tried to bathe semi-naked.

The Bara Bröst (Bare Breasts) Blog offers the following manifesto:

Bara Bröst is not committed to any political or religious views.

We demand:
That women should be allowed to be topless in situations where it is accepted for men to be topless.
That the breast should not be considered to be a part of the female genitalia.
That the gender discriminating rules at the swimming pools are removed.
That the norms that discriminats against women are worked with in schools and at workplaces and so on.
That the politicians take their responsibility and act in this question.

Our goals:
A gender equal society where
it is socially accepted for women to be topless in situations when it is accepted for men to do so.
male and female bodies get an equal amount of space and on the same conditions.
female bodies are not sexualized.
no one has to feel like an object.
women are not being discriminated against.

Seriously, it's hard to argue with any of the above points. Women should be allowed to go topless in all situations where it's OK to do so for men, without being gawked at. Since most men are now able to handle the sight of bare female ankle without spontaneously blowing their wad, there is no reason why we shouldn't come to terms with the sight of female breasts too. OK, it may take a while, but experience shows that if we stop making a big deal about bare skin, our libido learns to handle itself. It will be a good day for all of us (including men) when "no one has to feel like an object". Amen.

The alternative course, in the interests of fairness, would be to consider the male breast part of the masculine genitalia and ban the public display of manboobs.

A proposal that also has its merits. Anyway, more power to the ladies of Bara Bröst... oh, and I almost forgot: stick that in your pipe and smoke it, fundies. European values at their best.

Having thus inaugurated the new year in a way that will hopefully endow this blog with an agreeable level of karma, let us now turn again to the usual survey of human idiocy... as so often, displayed in admirable fashion by the US armed forces. The latest call for tenders by the Freedom Fighters of America is for a celebrity rock band to entertain US forces in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of "war". Nothing wrong with that, after all, a hard-working occupation force needs to unwind after a long day of getting its ass whupped by the locals (see the USO scene in "Apocalypse Now"), but is this really what the troops want to see? A "Celebrity Rock Music Tour - QUANTITY 1" whose show will be subject to the following restrictions:

Any criminal conduct, unexcused tardiness or absence which prevents timely starting of the performance(s) required hereunder, indecency or obscenity, drunkenness, damage to Government property, failure to discharge indebtedness to the Government, influence of narcotics or hallucinatory drugs, threatening breach of national security, violation of the rules and regulations of the Host Nation, Government or TFF MWR are grounds for termination of this contract.

Boooo-oring! Also,

The Offeror shall submit details, such as a biography or other promotional or media articles relating to the proposed Professional Celebrity Rock Group, identifying the “professional celebrity” status of at least one member of the group.

So if you were hoping to make a quick buck with your buddies in the garage band, forget about it, unless you believe you can get Paris Hilton to sing (the chihuaha would qualify as a promotional article identifying the "professional celebrity" status under the above guidelines). No, I think the setup they are thinking of is more along the lines of The Halliburtons, Inc., or maybe Capitol Offense feat. Mike "End Times" Huckabee on bass.

However, The Huckster's proposal is likely to be rejected due to violations of Clause 2.4.4.1 of the solicitation:

An acknowledged deity will not be referred to in a manner that would offend a follower of any faith.

So maybe HQ USAREUR should try out a local band that has had many years of experience playing both large and small venues all up and down the Fertile Crescent, has a strong fanbase both in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well as that one country in between... what was it called again... ah, never mind. You know, of course, who I am referring to: That blockbuster boy group The Rolling Imams that has recently landed another top ten hit with "You Will Explode In A Few Minutes" (apparently a coded reference to premature ejaculation in the presence of uncovered Swedish ankles). They are reportedly bidding to appear at USOs in the region with their new frontman, The Filipino Monkey, who is filling in the professional celebrity slot due to the unavailability of singer and guitarist The Imam, currently in occultation due to previous engagements.

To round off the latest news in security-related lunacy, here are a few small choice bits that may make you look afresh with wonder and amazement at your fellow human beings. The first story comes to us from China, where Wang Zhendong has been sentenced to death for bilking more than 10,000 investors to the tune of US$390 million with a giant ant farm scam. It was both a giant scam involving ants, and a scam involving giant ants (used in traditional Chinese medicine). That's really all I can say about this sad story.

The next report lacks a dateline, but is almost certainly from the US.

Bullet Proof Baby Stroller Product Test

While I am not certain that this is not a bogus video, the depressing thing is that you can never know. It might be real. This even as the American obsession with guns is reportedly "fading":

The number of households with guns dropped from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 34.5 percent in 2006, according to NORC, and the percentage of Americans who reported personally owning a gun has shrunk to just under 22 percent. (...) President George W. Bush this week signed into law a bill meant to prevent people with a record of mental disease from buying weapons.

I will refrain from making the obvious joke at this point and simply point out that you don't need a firearm to settle your differences, as one unfortunate young man in Vienna found out the hard way over the weekend:

The body of a young man was found in an elegant Vienna square with a rake embedded in his head, Austrian police said Saturday.

So please, my fellow Europeans, stop pointing fingers at the cousins over in the US of A for just a very brief moment of silence while we consider the fate of this poor soul, at least until the next submachine-gun killing spree at an American primary school/ university/ McDonald's/ post office reminds us that the advantage of rakes is it's hard to run amuck with one.

I'm still waiting for your feedback. Remember that the first person to comment on this or another story in the next few days gets a free piece of artwork plus the right to choose the topic for the next post. Come on, you can do it. My hit counter went over 400 (!!) for the first time this week, so I know you are out there.

Update: Check out Steve Bell's cartoon on Bush's Middle East visit and The Filipino Monkey.

Happy 2008

2007-12-27T02:29:00.000+01:00

Well, it's been nearly two months since my last post; does that mean that I have now gotten a life? Sadly, that is not really the case, although there have been some interesting developments in my life.

First of all, though, I would like to wish all of my visitors a happy new year for 2008. This site has now been viewed more than 300 times. While that doesn't exactly make me a big-time player on the innertubes, it does give me a certain satisfaction to know that I have contributed a bit of my own to the information pollution that we all enjoy so much.

If I could make a wish for the coming year, it would be for more comments on my posts. There have been ony two comments so far, both uncritical statements of adulation (or so they were perceived) from good friends of mine. So they don't really count. Sorry, Tom and Sergio.

In order to stimulate intellectual debate on this page, I would therefore like to announce the following incentive. The next person to submit a comment (on this or any past or future post) will (a) receive an original hand drawing done by myself, on the theme of a graffiti I noticed today on my way to a friend's house here in Zurich: "There is too much caffeine in my bloodstream and not enough spice in my life". My sentiment exactly. The next submitter of a comment will furthermore (b) get to suggest a topic for the next post. This may, but need not, be related to my areas of interests, which are language, security/defense, international relations, and religion (or any combination of these).

I do promise I will attempt to blog again more regularly in the coming year - how is that for a new year's resolution. One reason for my long absence was that I have moved to a new flat that features a nice big balcony, which the old one didn't have. This should allow me to catch more fresh air and take in a broader perspective... Furthermore, I will be working from a proper study room. Finally, I am happy to count myself as a newly converted Mac user, so you should be able to discern a new sense of stylishness and panache in this blog that could not be achieved courtesy of Bill Gates.

Although I must say that for some reason my new wireless keyboard has trouble with the letter "L".

What can we expect in 2008? It will be the last year in office for the Chimp-in-Chief, and then, hallelujah, we shall be released, unless Cheney decides to go for broke and install a military dictatorship. We also most likely won't see war between the US and Iran, now that the US intelligence community has rediscovered its cojones. China's invasion of Taiwan will also be postponed for another year so as not to disrupt the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which will no doubt be lovely and of course completely free of doping scandals.

Let me reiterate that: This lady does not take performance-enhancing drugs and, together with her co-athletes, will ensure that the Taiwan Strait will remain invasion-free for another year or so. Thank you, Mu Shuangshuang.

Now if only we could bring the Olympics to Belgrade, the Serbs might feel a little less sore about the imminent declaration of independence by Kosovo. Then again, probably that wouldn't make much difference. Chinese irredentism towards "Formosa" is as nothing compared to Serbia's sentiment towards the good old Blackbird Field. Not even Olympic gold medals for Serbian athletes will suffice to bring them out of their sulk (and the prospect is unlikely, since Serbia's national sport of Muslim-Slaughtering is no longer an Olympic discipline). The good news is that invasion is out of the question for the foreseeable future. Now Serbia has announced it will refuse to join the EU if Kosovo's independence is recognized. While I do have a certain amount of sympathy for the Serbian point of view, this is a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Sorry, Serbs. Not that you would have been ready for EU accession for a long time yet.

Well, that's it for now. If the above is not controversial enough to get some comments going, remember the irresistible offer I made for the next commenter (free original artwork plus right to pick the topic for the next post - within reason; requests such as "Why Kosovars/Serbs/Taiwanese/Chinese weightlifters are subhuman scum" will not be considered). Have a great new year's party, and a terrific 2008... and remember:

WAR IS OVER (IF YOU WANT IT)

Whistle blown on whistleblowers

2007-10-29T15:17:00.000+01:00

The Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives has begun, in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding the dismissal of US attorneys, to collect tips from whistleblowers inside the Justice Dept. Tipsters were promised that the Committee would deal with their information in "strictest confidence", though it would not take into account information submitted anonymously.

Unfortunately, as TPM Muckraker reported last weekend, that anonymity has been blown for many informers. The Judiciary Committee sent an e-mail to all contributers with their e-mail addresses revealed in the "to:" field, instead of using the "bcc:" function.

As if that wasn't bad enough, TPM reports,

[c]ompounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

The only thing that could have been worse would have been to send this correpondence, with the full e-mail addresses of all internal critics of the Justice Dept, directly to Dick Cheney himself. Well, not even such spineless and brain-dead idiots as the Judiciary Committee members would have made such a terrible... oh oh:

Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, but there's also, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to public email address of Vice President Cheney.

N.b., these are the representatives of the people, whom we rely on to function as a corrective to the abuses of executive power by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the American people seems to be represented by the bastard offspring of the Keystone Kops and the Three Stooges:

The purpose of today's mis-sent email was, ironically enough, to announce careful new procedures about to be put in place by the committee for reviewing the tips received through the committee's website.

The headline for the above article by Paul Kiel says it all: D'Oh. The entire e-mail from the Judiciary Committee can be read on the Talking Points Memo (TPM) website, though minus the incriminating e-mail addresses (not that that makes any difference, as Evil Dick has been cc'd).

Stasi archives staffed by ex-agents

2007-10-06T02:41:00.000+02:00

Wikileaks has published an internal confidential memorandum by the German Federal Government Delegate for Culture and Media, reporting on the permeation of Stasi Archives (BStU) staff by former members of the East German secret service. The authors are concerned about how many former members of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit are employed by the BStU. They question the constitutionality of the BStU's position within the structure of the German public administration. They also criticize the lack of accountability and of truthful testimony by the heads of the BStU in their information to the parliament, the external authors of this expertise, and to the public.

Among the highlights of this report are the fact that former high-ranking Stasi officers were charged with analyzing the potential Stasi involvement of leading East German politicians such as Lothar de Maizière, Manfred Stolpe, and Gregor Gysi; and the fact that former high-ranking Stasi officers were charged after 11 September 2001 with analyzing the extent of information and training provided by the Stasi to international terrorist groups including the RAF, the Carlos Group, and the Abu Nidal Group in the 1980s. Their conclusion, in classical Socialist dialectical style, was that East Germany only ever supported "freedom fighters" in their "armed struggle", but never terrorists...

Read the entire 114-page report (in German; PDF format) here. A detailed English-language summary/ analysis is available at this page.

Merciful Mongols

2007-10-06T01:13:00.000+02:00

John W. Dean, former White House legal counsel to Richard Nixon, was on Countdown with Keith Olberman yesterday to talk about the latest revelations about US government-sanctioned torture. Now, it stands to reason that he didn't do such a great job counselling Nixon on legal matters, or at least his counsel wasn't heard. He was one of the Nixon minions referred to in this quote by the good Doctor Gonzo:

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

(Read Hunter S. Thompson's entire obituary for Nixon, if you haven't yet, and bear in mind that the legacy of George W. Bush will be such that he will make Nixon look saintly by comparison.) Dean did jail time, but with a greatly reduced sentence, for his many crimes in connection with Watergate; his sentence was cut back because he turned witness for the prosecution and spilled the beans on Nixon and the Plumbers, and revealed the existence of the White House tapes.

Anyway, Dean has since declared himself an "independent" and has become a darling of the progressive camp in the US, especially since his book "Conservatives Without Conscience" was published. In this work, he charges that the Republican Party has been shanghaied by right-wingers with authoritarian personalities.

In the interview with Olberman on Countdown yesterday, Dean made some interesting points (check out the video at Crooks and Liars). After discussing the recently revealed existence of a new, shameful torture memo from the Bush/Gonzales Justice Department, Olberman and Dean talk about the Republican/conservative tendency to believe that reality can be adapted to their own requirements merely by choosing the right words to describe it: "We're not doing it cause we say we're not doing it"; or even "this is not torture because [the Bush administration] are not the kind of people who torture".

Dean points out that this is not just a matter of deficient perceptions, but that the White House is trying to change the laws that ban torture and other violations of the Geneva Conventions. He calls on Congress not only not to approve these changes, but to extend the Statute of Limitations on such crimes from five to ten years, in order to highlight the fact that "indeed, these are real laws". Of course, that would be very bad news indeed for Gonzales, Rumsfeld and other war criminals who are now or have been involved in policymaking and ordering prisoners to be beaten, waterboarded, and otherwise tortured.

But Dean goes on to make another critical point that is often missed and rarely, if ever, mentioned in the traditional media outlets:

Well, let me tell you, one of the thoughts in conservative thinking and circles today is that they felt very bad when Ronald Reagan left office with a 60 per cent approval rating. They thought: "That's just a waste!" They want their president to not be loved, to not be particularly respected. They want him to drive their agenda. And so Bush, as he heads on down with these kinds of policies that are being revealed, is doing exactly what the core of his party wants him to do. So, I don't... it may get down to single digits, and then he won't "die rich", so to speak.

So much for bipartisanship; what the Democratic Party needs in order to emerge from its present doldrums (and historically low approcal rates for its members of Congress) is the balls to push for flat-out partisanship in progressive issues.

Another example of this kind of Republican thinking can be found in the reasoning underlying Bush's veto against the State Children' Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) on Wednesday. Bush has argued that state support for children's health insurance would put the US budget on a slippery slope towards Communism. This program would be financed through higher taxes on tobacco. So, while SCHIP would be very efficient in providing healthcare for poor children, it would violate at least three mainstays of Republican ideology: No state-funded healthcare; no new taxes; and avoidance of anything that could hurt the tobacco industry, wherever possible.

Again: so much for bipartisanship. Bush's posturing as a fiscal conservative is all the more ridiculous considering he has blown the biggest budget surplus in the nation's history on an illegal war. Note: the US defense budget for FY2007 was increased by 7 per cent to US$439.3 billion, about 13 times the amount that the SCHIP bill would have cost. Look up "Starve the Beast" on Wikipedia for more on the thinking behind this strategy.

What does all of this have to do with the latest torture memo? The overall picture makes a mockery of the concept of "Compassionate Conservatism". It is just a shell of a phrase, a propaganda label used to sell policies that are not conservative in the Goldwater tradition and certainly not compassionate. What "Compassionate Conservatism" does is alliterate; no more and no less. As a catchphrase, it may serve its purpose among lazy thinkers. As a label for current White House policies, it is about as thoughtful, and appropriate, as if Ghengis Khan had promoted his conquest of the West as "Merciful Mongolism" - merely adding insult to injury.

The Neocon Tin Man Gets a New Heart

2007-10-04T19:58:00.000+02:00

Unfortunately, only in fiction. From The Onion, without any doubt America's finest news source:

New Heart Device Allows Cheney To Experience Love

WASHINGTON, DC—Recovering from minor heart surgery Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney stunned both the medical and political establishments when he mysteriously began to experience love for the first time in his life, sources reported Tuesday.

It is believed to have been the first recorded incident of Cheney exhibiting compassion for his fellow man.

[...]

According to Reiner, Cheney left the hospital under his own power, but returned minutes later complaining of unfamiliar chest palpitations and sensations of warmth for others regardless of political affiliation or income.

Jihad, Hired Guns, and the Camberwell Carrot

2007-09-18T00:06:00.000+02:00

Because I have been busy recently, I won't have the time to write exhaustive comments on each of the following links that caught my eye over the past week, so just a few remarks on each.

The Beeb reported last week that a US citizen was jailed for 24 years for "attending an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and lying about it". The prosecution offered what Amy Waldman in an article for The Atlantic Monthly last year aptly called "an accretion of circumstantial but ugly evidence" of his "jihadi mind", including expressions of "hatred towards the United States", praise for the murder of Daniel Pearl, and calling George W. Bush "the worm". Other evidence included his owning extremist literature. The Atlantic Monthly article gives a good overview of what is interesting about this case, namely the notion of "preeemptive prosecution" and the admissibility of belief as evidence for the prosecution in court. Also interesting is the clash of expert witnesses brought by the prosecution and defense alike, who duelled in the courtroom over the finer points of Islamic theology. Notably, the witnesses for the prosecution included this chap:

Walid Phares, a Lebanese Christian academic who emigrated to the United States in 1990, at the end of Lebanon’s civil war between Muslims and Christians. In Lebanon, Phares’s political activities included participation in the Lebanese Forces, a coalition of right-wing Christian militias that the defense said the U.S. State Department had labeled anti-Muslim. El Fadl, his fellow prosecution witness, calls Phares an “Islamophobe,” and at trial the defense sought to demonstrate as much. By his own characterization, Phares, an associate professor at Florida Atlantic University, was outside the academic mainstream until 9/11.

What the article fails to mention is that Phares is also on the salary list of Benador Associates, a prominent part of the right-wing spin machine that sold the "Global War on Terror" and the Iraq invasion to the American public. He can therefore hardly be regarded as an independent, impartial, or disinterested professional in the matter. Another interesting expert witness - Waldman's article doesn't say whether for the prosecution or the defense - is Reuven Paz, formerly of the Israeli Shin Bet internal intelligence service and more recently the academic director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism in Herzliya, Israel.

Next, a quick look at this video posted at Crooks and Liars, a CNN interview with Jeremy Scahill, the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. Mercenaries working for Blackwater were shelled while travelling in a convoy in Iraq on Sunday. They opened fire on passersby on the street, killing 11 people, including one policeman, and injuring 13, according to the WashPost. A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry announced that Blackwater's license to operate had been withdrawn and that the responsible employees would be prosecuted. This will be an interesting test of the Iraqi government's sovereignty - after all, foreign "security contractors" in the country have so far been largely immune from prosecution. Scahill points out that

...the Bush administration failed to build a coalition of willing nations to occupy Iraq, and so instead, the administration has built the Coalition of Billing Corporations. Right now, in Iraq, private personnel on the US government payroll outnumber official US troops. There are about 180,000 so-called "private contractors" operating alongside 165,000 to 170,000 US troops. So really, now, the US military is the junior partner in this coalition. The mercenary component of that private-sector involvement has been totally unaccountable. They operate with impunity, they kill Iraqi civilians, and no charges are ever brought against them in Iraqi law, US law, military law.

He correctly points out that this is not the result of an oversight, but "political expediency on the part of the Bush administration" because dead mercs are not included in the official US death toll and they can act with free rein as their acts go unreported and undocumented. Scahill also notes, in the context of the current Petraeus/"surge" debate, that "there’s been a surge on for four years of the private sector in Iraq, this mercenary army that the Bush administration has built up all over that country."

Also, just to wrap up today's post on less of a bum note, here is a report from today's Guardian (and you may consider this either good or bad news):

The unpublished results of authoritative research into cannabis confirm the "skunk" now on sale in England is stronger than it was a decade ago, but demolish claims that a new "super-strength skunk" - which is 20 times more powerful - is dominating the market.

The recent Europe-wide campaign of hysteria surrounding the alleged "schizzo skunk" was really getting on my nerves. The allegation circulated by politicians and research-averse journalists alike, just as efforts to legalize weed were getting under steam in a number of countries, has been that today's weed is exponentially more powerful than the grass smoked by the hippies, i.e., today's parent generation.

But the findings of the two studies to be reported in Druglink, the drugs charity magazine, contradict recent claims that most of the skunk on sale in Britain now routinely has a THC-content of more than 30%. One of the studies showed that only 4% of the skunk that had been seized by the police had a strength level higher than 20%.

Having, at an earlier stage of my life, experienced the hassle and likely ripoff associated with procuring weed (read: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) in England, I almost broke into uncontrollable and hysterical laughter at reading the above paragraph, but then remembered that those days are over.

The claims earlier this year that a new strain of "super-strength skunk" cannabis that was up to 20 times more potent was dominating the British drug market and triggering mental health fears led Gordon Brown to order a new review of the legal status of the drug in July.

OK, this is really ridiculous. Notions like "20 times more potent" being openly discussed in public, when the actual figure is one-tenth of that... either people were just making wild and uneducated guesses, or they actually knew better and were counting on people's complete gullibility. You may argue that such "experts" only have in mind the protection of young people, but these policies - and the media campaigns to back them up - ensure that teenagers are criminalized, ostracized, and lose all faith in a public health and policing system that clearly cannot be trusted to be truthful and honest. Not to mention the many adult smokers who can make responsible decisions about their own health without government interference. No, cannabis is not a harmless drug, and there is some really heavy shit circulating out there, but as anybody can imagine, it is possible to put less weed into a joint if you know it is of stronger potency. The same applies to alcohol - which is why we drink some kinds of alcohol out of glasses like this

and other kinds of alcohol out of glasses like this:

Likewise, joints can be adjusted in terms of both size and potency, as demonstrated by Dan the Dealer in the excellent British movie, "Withnail and I":

Withnail: What are you going to do with those?

Danny: The joint I am about to roll requires a craftsman and can utilise up to twelve skins. It is called a Camberwell carrot.

Marwood: It's impossible to use twelve papers on one joint.

Danny: It is impossible to roll a Camberwell carrot with anything less.

Withnail: Who says it's a Camberwell carrot?

Danny: I do. I invented it in Camberwell and it looks like a carrot.

Cut to Danny on the sofa. The Camberwell carrot is complete and is indeed of prodigious proportions. As Danny lights it we see only the end but as he hands it to Withnail we see the true size. It is enormous.

Danny: This will tend to make you very high.

Fart in the Duck

2007-09-11T01:17:00.000+02:00

Less than a month into its existence, this blog already features an excessive bias towards serious and sometimes depressing issues. Many of the security and international relations topics covered here originally arose due to people having misunderstood, misconstrued, or sometimes simply misheard what someone else said. Like the time Bush thought Tenet had assured him that there was a "slam dunk" case for Saddam having WMD, when what Tenet actually said was that such reports were all "damn bunk".

To illustrate the perils of such misconstrued words, especially in a transatlantic context, and for some lighthearted diversion on the sixth anniversary of the terrible events of 7/11, please have a look at this video, which comes to you via Boing Boing and OK Future, from Youtube.com. Probably the most misheard lyrics ever - phonetically transcribed from a Belgian children's television show. More evidence, if any was required, that there is something seriously wrong with the Belgians.

Gear list for US forces in Afghanistan leaked

2007-09-11T00:28:00.000+02:00

Wikileaks has just published a set of documents detailing "the full equipment register of every US Army managed unit in Afghanistan from psychological operations ("PsyOps") and interrogation units to Kabul headquarters". This documentation complements an earlier leak of corresponding equipment list for all US units operating in Iraq, which can be found here.

According to the Wikileaks analysis,

The document reveals that half of all US army equipment purchases in Afghanistan have been diverted to dealing with home made mobile phone and radio bombs ("IEDs"). Not since the US 1945-1951 nuclear build up has there been such a decisive shift in military purchasing priorities. The 2007 May-July period saw 203 US military deaths from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, accounting for 66 percent of all US combat fatalities.

Among the equipment used for protection against IEDs, the gear list includes the following items:

at least 2,769 “Warlock” radio frequency jammers, which prevent radio signals from triggering explosives;
1,734 “Acorn” improvised explosive device jammers;
42 portable explosives detectors;
61 “PSS-14” mine detecting sets and 86 other mine detecting sets;
6 “Boomerang” sniper detection sets;
42 portable explosives detectors;
9 “Husky” mine detection vehicles;
5 “Meerkat” mine detection vehicles.

A Congressional Research Service report recently detailed US military spending in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other theaters of operations since 11 September 2001. Wikileaks estimates that there is currently about US$1.1 billion worth of equipment in Afghanistan. This equipment also apparently includes "M7 Grenade Dischargers" for gas grenades as well as FN303 riot guns made by Belgian arms company Fabrique Nationale, which "can fire pepper-spray impregnated projectiles", according to Wikileaks. The WL analysts also extracted the prices for about 5/8ths of the items from the database at the CECOM (Communications & Electronics Command) website and found that three rocket launchers were delivered at a price of US$0.01 per piece, though the ordinary listing price is US$822. (Sounds like the Pentagon finally got a bargain, after paying one million bucks for two plain washers in a recently discovered scam... see my post last month on "Screwing the Pentagon")

In total, this is a huge volume of information; the analysis supplied in the appendix alone runs to 300 pages, and can be found here.

Acording to Wikipedia, the Wikileaks project "allows whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, allegedly without possible retribution. It claims that postings are untraceable by anyone attempting to do so." There have also been some accusations that the project may in fact be a CIA front to solicit classified information; however, I have seen no conclusive evidence that this is more than just a rumor.

The Guardian recently ran a story on "The Looting of Kenya", based on material made public by Wikileaks.

A Drunken Liar

2007-09-10T10:48:00.000+02:00

Robert Draper's new book on George Bush, "Dead Certain", claims that Bush believed until last year that WMDs would be found in Iraq - that is, two-and-a-half years after the Interim Report of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) headed by David Kay, and one-and-a-half years after the ISG's Duelfer Report, both of which made very clear that there were no such weapons in Iraq.

"Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card’s departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs." [p. 388]

[h/t Think Progress] NB, this was after Bush had publicly conceded that the Duelfer Report invalidated his stated pretext for going to war:

BUSH: The chief weapons inspector, Charles Duelfer, has now issued a comprehensive report that confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.

Now this: According to Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Salon.com, Bush was told by former CIA chief George Tenet in unequivocal terms, in September 2002, that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs, as confirmed by a top-level source inside Saddam's inner circle of advisers, namely Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri.

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail.

The headline of the Salon article, "Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction", is misleading; a more accurate, though less pithy version would probably be "Bush was told Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, but refused to believe the best available intelligence, instead choosing to trust in the words of a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer", the source now known as "Curveball":

According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar' by his friends [... A] US official was surprised to find Curveball had a hangover and said he 'might be an alcoholic.' By early 2001, the Germans were having doubts of their own, telling the CIA their spy was 'out of control'.

A "crazy" man described as a "congenital liar" even by his friends, assessed as an "out of control alcoholic": Could it be that Bush felt a certain kinship with this man, since they have so much in common? In fact, the headline of the Guardian/Observer story quoted above, "US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify war", had me thinking of Bush before I realized it referred to the Curveball source. But let us return to Blumenthal's story:

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD [...] The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD [...] Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert.

Powell apparently also realized, without having access to Sabri's views, that the information he was given was not holding up to scrutiny. Preparing his testimony to the UN Security Council in February 2003, which he delivered with George Tenet sitting directly behind him, Powell reportedly

tossed several pages in the air. "I'm not reading this," he declared. "This is bulls- - -."

The French and US intelligence service reportedly paid Sabri "hundreds of thousands of dollars" for information about Iraq's banned weapons programs. Blumenthal's CIA sources confirm that Sabri stated Iraq had no such weapons. However:

Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation of the cause for war.

Dearlove must have suspected he was being treated to a snow job, since the notorious "Downing Street Memo", of which, he is believed to be the author, noted that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Bush's determination to overthrow Hussein was such that he decided to ignore the intelligence provided by Sabri and presented to the president by the CIA director:

The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. "Tenet told me he briefed the president personally," said one of the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush's response was to call the information "the same old thing." Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. "The president had no interest in the intelligence," said the CIA officer. The other officer said, "Bush didn't give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up."

I have long refused to believe that the rationale for invading Iraq was based on a genuine error, which is the version being spun by the neocons today - that the White House did believe it had solid evidence for Iraq's alleged weapons programs, and that the "intelligence failure" was the fault of the CIA. Instead, the "best available evidence" now indicates that the US government either actively manipulated the intelligence or - and this is the most charitable interpretation possible - came to believe in its own propaganda. You decide which is worse.

Shadow Boxing for the Rubes

2007-09-07T00:09:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine who is a reserve officer in the Swiss army mentioned today over lunch that some of the older brass in the general staff were "quite happy and relieved" to see Russia return to its old menacing form, making threatening noises and underlining its aspirations to be treated as a superpower. For armies everywhere, an assertive Russia means a return to bigger budgets for tanks and other expensive hardware. Then later this evening, I saw a news report saying that Norwegian F-16s and British Tornado jets had been scrambled to intercept eight Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers heading towards the UK:

The RAF scrambled to intercept eight Russian nuclear bombers heading for Britain yesterday in the biggest aerial confrontation between the two countries since the end of the Cold War.

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? Whenever you see the words "nuclear bombers" and "confrontation" in the same sentence, that can't be good news. Of course, there was no "confrontation" at all:

Defence sources said that the Russian pilots turned away as soon as they spotted the approaching Tornados and did not enter British airspace.

This is the second time that has happened in recent weeks; in August, two Tornados were sent from Scotland to head off another Bear in a similar situation. So what is this all about? As noted, Russia wishes to be treated as a global force to be reckoned with, and has recently started resuming air patrols of the sort that were discontinued at the end of the Cold War. On 9 August, two Tu-95s flying out of Blagoveshchensk in southwestern Russia made a 13-hour round trip just to buzz the US base on the island of Guam in the Pacific. So for whose benefit are these sorties being flown, since they serve no real military purpose? They are primarily in order to convince the Russian public that their Dear Leader Putin is just as much of a macho man as his US counterpart. Of course, we in the West are mature enough to see right through such blatant manipulation by the government and the military, right? Er...

MoD officials at the time played down the incident last month as a "picture-led story" and an opportunity to show off the air defence role of the Typhoon, an expensive and long-delayed aircraft originally designed during the cold war to engage in dogfights with Soviet planes over northern Europe.

"Quite happy and relieved" that the Bolshies are back in business, that just about sums it up, I think. Again, for whose benefit are these sorties being flown, on both sides? For you and me, the gawkers at the air show, the suckers at the carnival, the rubes at the circus (there's one born every minute). And, naturally, For the Benefit of Mr. Kite, as John Lennon put it:

In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!

Mr. K. in this case being Messrs. Putin, Brown, Bush, and all the others in varying need of self-assertion. And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!

In any case, I have decided to seize the opportunity to mess around with embedded video for the first time; here is "Mr. Kite" by the Beatles, unfortunately mainly audio, since the picture is only the cover of the Sgt Pepper album for the duration of this song, together with the no less genius-soaked "Within You Without You" from the same album. If you think that the visuals are kind of boring, compare this video, which inexpicably features Freddie Mercury and Queen halfway through.

A splendid time is guaranteed for all. But please, Vladimir, Brownie, Dubya... careful with that Hogshead of Real Fire.

The Horror! The Horror!

2007-08-29T15:14:00.000+02:00

The Iraq/Vietnam analogy that was launched as a new talking point last week by the White House has had holes torn into it by far more competent people than myself, but I would like to add a few thoughts nevertheless - inspired by Mr. (Colonel) Kurtz and Joseph Conrad as well as other luminaries that motivated this blog in the first place.

No doubt President Bush, from his hard-won frontline experience with the Texas Air National Guard, has better first-hand knowledge of the horrors of war than I, who was too young to be drafted into the US armed forces at the time. As the Vietnam War drew to a close, I was but a wee Hippo frolicking with other amphibious mammals of my age, many of whom were American army brats. My conception of war in 1975 was limited to playing with Marx plastic soldiers.

My level of understanding at that age as to what armed confrontation was all about can be gauged by the fact that the difference between "soldiers" on the one hand, and "cowboys and indians" on the other, was still pretty blurry to me. Nevertheless, I have a clear memory of my parents explaining to me in hushed tones one day that my friend was having a bit of a rough time, as his dad had just returned from Vietnam and was behaving strangely. What was Vietnam, and how was he behaving strangely, I wanted to know. I was told that Vietnam was a place where American soldiers, like my friend's dad, were fighting in a jungle (a big forest, as far as I understood) and had bombs thrown at them on a regular basis. And my friend's dad was exhibiting unusual behavior because he had had bombs thrown at him too many times. It seems that the first night after he returned, a police car went by their house with its siren blaring. The next morning, when his wife woke up, he was nowhere to be found. After searching the whole house for her husband, she finally found him fast asleep under the bed. He had heard the siren in the night and, without waking up, had rolled off the bed and back under it to take cover from the "incoming shells".

Before discussing the merits and flaws of a comparison between the Vietnam and Iraq wars, a few words about the White House spin machine. It is notable that up until last week, anyone who compared the two conflicts was dismissed by the neocons as a defeatist or worse, since the ignominous end of America's engagement in Southeast Asia is still remembered as one of the deepest humiliations of US military power ever - until Iraq, that is. Although... there are some who still insist that it was not a defeat for the US, and their worldview is captured pretty neatly in this dialog between Archie and Otto in A Fish Called Wanda:

- You know your problem? You don't like winners.
- Winners?
- Yeah. Winners.
- Winners like... North Vietnam?
- Shut up! We did not lose Vietnam! It was a tie!
- I'm tellin' ya, they kicked some ass there. Boy, they whupped your hide real good!
- No, they didn't.
- Yes, they did.
- Oh, no, they didn't.
- Oh, yes, they did.
- Oh, no, they... Shut up!

The highest form of propaganda consists of not just distorting the truth a little bit, but of proclaiming the opposite of what everyone knows to be true. (Thus, for example, commenting on the resignation of disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has the gall to accuse the Democratic Congress of "dangerously politicizing the Justice Department", which is of course exactly what Gonzales has been doing.) So it should come as no surprise that after years of pooh-poohing any resemblance between the Vietnam debacle and the Iraqi quagmire, the White House now turns around and cites the example of Vietnam as a reason for supporting the continued occupation of Iraq. You gotta hand it to these guys: They distort reality at breathtaking levels of altitude, where most ordinary mortals would find it difficult to operate even with oxygen masks and sherpas carrying their bundle of lies for them.

Of course, such obviously false parallels can easily be shown to be wrong by anyone with even the most basic knowledge of history and international relations. Refuting the lies of the Republican spin machine is easy; but one wonders whether it is worth the effort, since by the time their claims are exposed as false, the spin doctors will have moved on to the next mind-boggling distortion. Nevertheless, here goes; we will first of all discuss why the parallels that Bush drew between Iraq and Vietnam in his recent speech are wrong, and then look in detail at some of the real differences and similarities between the two conflicts.

Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) association in Kansas City, Missouri, Bush claimed that

“America’s withdrawal was paid for by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat people,’ ‘re-education camps,’ and ‘killing fields.’”

Concerning the vengeance of the Communist regime on Southern Vietnam after the US retreat, it is worth noting that the Viet Minh movement was not always an implacable enemy of the US or the West. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor organization of the CIA, cooperated with Ho Chin Minh and the Viet Minh against the Japanese occupiers of Vietnam in 1945. It was only when they realized that the US would not support their bid for independence that the Viet Minh and their successors of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam turned towards Communism. That is to say, the refugee crisis and re-education camps were largely an outcome of US intransigence since the end of the Second World War and Washington's sustained support for a corrupt South Vietnamese regime after France pulled out of Indochina; to blame these deplorable developments on the US retreat is simply a reversal of cause and effect.

It is similarly ahistorical to attribute the "killing fields" to the US withdrawal from Southeast Asia. The rise of the Khmer Rouge to power in Cambodia, culminating in the capture of the capital, Phnom Penh, on 17 April 1975 (a mere two weeks before the fall of Saigon), can largely be attributed to the US bombing capaign against Cambodia during the previous years. In order to interdict North Vietnamese resupply routes through the neighboring country, Nixon ordered a secret strategic bombing campaign against Cambodia, which in turn enhanced the popularity of the Communist Khmer Rouge guerillas, whose rule of terror later led to hundreds of thousands of deaths on the so-called killing fields. Notably, it was the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that ultimately ended the reign of Pol Pot with an invasion of Cambodia in 1979. Again, the notion that the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Cambodians were due to the US withdrawal from Vietnam is a gross distortion of reality.

Having established that it was US interference in Southeast Asia, not the decision to withdraw, that caused the phenomena wrongly attributed by Bush in his recent speech, we should also look at some of the actual historical similarities and differences between Vietnam and Iraq.

The main difference is that the Iraqi resistance has no support from a superpower, unlike North Vietnam, which received supplies and diplomatic backing from Moscow as a Soviet proxy in the context of the Cold War. Despite the attempts by the neoconservatives to frame Iran as acting in such a manner, both the Maliki puppet government in Iraq and the Karzai regime in Afghanistan report that Iran has been a constructive force in the recent regional turmoil, meaning that Tehran has not been extending significant support to insurgents in either country. On the one hand, Iran certainly retains that option if certain parameters should change - for example, if it should become the target of US attacks. On the other hand, Tehran's long-term interests include the establishment of a stable situation in the region, preferably with an enhanced role for itself.

A secondary difference is one of geography. Iraq has no forests offering cover and retreat areas for large bodies of insurgent fighters, and the various militias and armed groups cannot move across the desert in sizeable formations. Of course, that means that there are no massed targets for the US military to attack and destroy in open engagements. This is also why most of the US casualties have been incurred in urban environments, and due to roadside bombs. The densely built-up areas of Iraqi cities are the contemporary equivalent of the Vietnamese jungle.

Conversely, the similarities between America's two worst military debacles in the past 50 years are fairly evident.

In both cases, the justification to go to war was based on patent lies. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing US President Lyndon B. Johnson to use force in Southeast Asia was obtained by distorting and inflating a minor or non-existent confrontation between the US Navy and Vietnamese ships; the Iraq War Resolution was based on many months of sustained propaganda and disinformation campaigns directed at the US Congress, the American public, and a skeptical world at large. Among the outright lies disseminated by the White House were

the claims about 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta having met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague;
lies about alleged Iraqi attempts to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger (leading to the Plamegate scandal);
Bush and Blair referring to a non-existent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency supposedly claiming Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon;
plagiarized reports on Saddam's Iraq, some of which referred to the state of affairs 12 years earlier.

None of the above falsehoods were due to "faulty intelligence"; they were all known to be wrong at the time they were made.

Also, just as in the case of its support for the Diem regime in Southern Vietnam, the US is repeating its mistake of over-reliance on weak and corrupt local allies that lack legitimacy among the Iraqi population. Ahmed Chalabi, the designated puppet at the start of the war, was convicted of bank fraud in Jordan after the collapse of his Petra Bank. He managed to convince the neocons surrounding Bush in 2002 that his opposition group of Iraqi exiles, the Iraqi National Congress, should be installed as the new government as soon as Saddam was overthrown. He was reportedly exposed in 2004 as a spy for Iran. Chalabi's nephew Iyad Allawi was subsequently named prime minister, but has since fled the country and now lives in London.

Perhaps the most dangerous misjudgement both in Vietnam and in Iraq has been a near-complete misconception, or perhaps misrepresentation, of the US enemies' motivation. Concerning Vietnam, US defense secretary Robert McNamara claimed that if the country were allowed to fall into the hands of the Communist Ho Chi Minh, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow (the "domino theory"). Of course, that never happened; even after the ignominous defeat of the US, most of the neighboring Asian countries remained safely in the capitalist camp, and until the 1990s, the "Tiger states" of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan displayed some of the world's biggest economic growth levels. Vietnam today has become a de-facto capitalist state, though it retains its one-party government. Most historians agree that Uncle Ho was fighting a war of national liberation, which had started with resistance against China and Japan and continued through the French colonial period until the conquest of Saigon and the US withdrawal. That is, Communism was an ideology used for mobilizing the Vietnamese people against foreign domination, but the National Front was essentially a national liberation movement rather than conceiving itself as part of a global movement or aiming to export revolutionary fervor to the region.

Similarly, the Bush White House insists that the armed groups resisting the US occupation of Iraq are "jihadists" (the latter-day "Commies") and al-Qaida franchises, since acknowledging that most are local sectarian militias opposed to the US presence would undermine the rationale for the war effort, which has been implicitly, and wrongly, linked to the 9/11 attacks. Bush claims that "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here"; that narrative would implode if it were acknowledged that 95% of the Iraqi resistance have no ties to al-Qaida or other foreign Wahhabi groups.

This blog post is growing far longer than intended, so I will sum up a few of the other more important similarities in brief. The Iraqi militants, like the Vietcong, are flexible and employ asymmetrical tactics against the US occupation forces; as a result, after losing its sense of invulnerability in the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US is now experiencing the destruction of its myth of invincibility on the battlefield, together with its international reputation, both of which it had painstakingly rebuilt after the humiliating experience of Vietnam.

"The smell of victory"

Some other obvious similarities between Iraq and Vietnam were noted by Martin van Creveld, one of the leading military historians of our times, as early as September 2004 in an article on "Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did". This paper describes a trip to Vietnam undertaken by Israeli general Moshe Dayan in 1966 at the invitation of Walt Rostow, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, and McNamara. Having spent several weeks in the country, including patrols on swift boats as well as on foot with the Marines and the 1st Air Cavalry Division, Dayan came to the following main conclusions: The US effort was going badly because it

lacked intelligence,
was losing the battle for hearts and minds, and
was seen by global public opinion as a bully "beating down on the weak".

Van Creveld also offers this stark assessment of how Dayan, who had a great degree of admiration for the US in general and especially for the US troops he had encountered, regarded the justification for the war:

As to what he was told of the war’s objectives, such as defending democracy and helping the South Vietnamese people, he considered it “childish” propaganda; if many of the Americans he met believed in them, clearly nobody else did.

In conclusion, I would like to refer to Barbara Tuchman's excellent book "The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam", which dissects America's blunder into the Vietnam conflict as an example of why and how governments pursue policies that are contrary to their own interests. She attributes the mistakes of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations to "follies", including over-reaction ("the invention of endangered 'national security', the invention of 'vital interest', the invention of 'commitment' which rapidly assumed a life of its own..."); the "illusion of omnipotence"; "wooden-headedness", which she also describes as the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts habit"; a refusal to "take the enemy's grim will and capacity into account; and "'working the levers' as a substitute for thinking", or the "absence of reflective thought about the nature of what we're doing".

If all of the above "follies" are strongly reminiscent of the current US "surge" strategy, it is surely no coincidence. These are the only comparisons between the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation worth making, and the only ones from which tangible lessons for the present quagmire can be drawn. However, I fear that we are soon to see a final historical parallel: As Bush attempts to postpone a withdrawal of US forces into the administration of his successor, we can discern the beginnings of a blame-shifting process.

The White House is trying desperately to pin responsibility for the disastrous course of the neoconservative Iraq adventure on anybody but the neocons themselves. The Republican Party, supposedly the party of individual responsibility, now blames its own catastrophic failure on the Iraqi government, al-Qaida, Iran, and - in a final twist of propagandistic desperation - the Democrats, as well as anybody else who is opposed to the war or dares call for a withdrawal of US forces. And here we can expect a final repetition of history: The Dolchstosslegende.

Just as the German military reactionaries after the First World War blamed the Social Democrats for having signed the peace treaty with the Allies and thus having delivered a cowardly "stab in the back" to the brave soldiers on the frontline, "unvanquished in the field", as the legend went ("im Felde unbesiegt"); and just as the right-wing conservatives in the US until today blame "peaceniks and hippies" for having lost the Vietnam War, the current administration and its lackey pundits will try to pass the buck to those who have tried to inject a voice of reason, rationalism, and realism into the debate.

America must avoid repeating this historical mistake, or its refusal to face up to its own failures may lead to a Weimar Republic scenario. Already today, ultra-conservatives in the US have a good deal of contempt for democracy, pluralism, and progressive politics - including the notion that military force is not always the best approach to solving foreign-policy problems. If the US should choose to continue the present course or even to embark on a military adventure in Iran, for example, and if it should end up suffering a complete defeat in the Middle East, it is not inconceivable that American democracy itself would be under threat, as the nascent German democracy was in the 1920s and 1930s.

Let us hope that 40 years from now, this historical analogy will turn out to be just as flawed as Bush's preposterous remarks before the VFW last week.

***********************

A postscript, 10 September 2007: I am currently reading Pausanias, "Description of Greece", and came across the following passage that I felt should be included with this discussion of Vietnam and Iraq.

About sixty stades from Marathon as you go along the road by the sea to Oropus stands Rhamnus. The dwelling houses are on the coast, but a little way inland is a sanctuary of Nemesis, the most implacable deity to men of violence. It is thought that the wrath of this goddess fell also upon the foreigners who landed at Marathon. For thinking in their pride that nothing stood in the way of their taking Athens, they were bringing a piece of Parian marble to make a trophy, convinced that their task was already finished. Of this marble Pheidias made a statue of Nemesis [...] Neither this nor any other ancient statue of Nemesis has wings, for not even the holiest wooden images of the Smyrnaeans have them, but later artists, convinced that the goddess manifests herself most as a consequence of love, give wings to Nemesis as they do to Love.

Bad Cop

2007-08-26T02:58:00.000+02:00

At the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in June, three masked police officers acting as agents provocateurs tried to incite non-violent demonstrators to attack the uniformed police. Accounts of this incident can be found here and here (in German); a video is available here - the scene of the undercover cop being returned to his colleagues is at 1:40 min.

The leaders of the US, Mexico, and Canada held a meeting of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP; wonder who it is that comes up with these neo-Orwellian names?) in Montebello, Québec on 20 and 21 August. On this occasion, a similar scene was caught on camera and posted on Youtube. The clip shows an elderly man, belonging to a group of people (apparently trade union members) trying to separate the police from a group of younger protesters, telling another guy dressed in black "anarchist" garb to drop the rock he is holding. The confrontation heats up when the older man accuses the man holding a rock and his two buddies of being cops:

For a minute or so, it's just Coles being a good samaritan, trying to stop a potentially violent confrontation and demanding that one of the men who picks up a rock put it down. It's already extremely tense by the time that someone starts pointing at the masked protestors and chanting "policier!" Coles demands that the men take off their masks, and the majority of the crowd join him––some even reach for the bandannas themselves––and accuse the masked men of being cops, police provocateurs hired to start a riot. When Coles actually looks at one of the men dead-on and says, "you're a police officer," the masked men all freeze, seemingly dumb-struck. And then they kind of start being aggressive again, until a little over two minutes in, when there's the weirdest police takedown you'll probably ever see.

The three men then sidle towards the police line until they are gently pulled over, pushed down, and "taken into custody" in a way that is entirely unbelievable considering they are supposed to be violent anarchists who just tried to lob a dangerous missiles at the cops "arresting" them, lending more credence to the notion that they are agents provocateurs.

This is the kind of cynical manipulation that not only increases general distrust of the police - whether in Germany, Canada, or elsewhere; it also raises the degree of cynicism about the idea that the political system we live in can be changed by legitimate public protest. Also makes you wonder how the uniformed police officers feel about their colleagues trying to goad demonstrators into attacking them. Are they pissed off, or looking forward to a bit of aggro?

Protecting the Bush Bubble

2007-08-24T01:11:00.000+02:00

The Washington Post reports on a manual handed out in advance of George Bush's public appearances, to ensure that the Republican Beloved Leader is protected from dissent and to prevent the ugly reality from intruding on the White House's carefully stage-managed events:

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential
advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of "deterring
potential protestors" from President Bush's public appearances around
the country.

Of course all members of the audience are carefully screened ahead of such events, as they should be; it is not inconceivable that someone might so actively dislike the Frat Boy President that they would try to hurt him, which would not only be wrong, wrong, wrong, but the ensuing backlash would actually help his party. So I'm not against tight security at public POTUS appearances. And that is also why I'm not surprised that prospective audience are mainly handpicked ticket-holders, i.e., loyal Bushies, and that placard-wielding hippie types are generally not admitted. But, as the WashPost continues:

that does not mean the White House is against dissent -- just so
long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a
specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their
views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to
designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably
not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

Adds a new twist to the ages-old cop cliche "Move on, there's nothing to see here." Also, the local event organizers are encouraged to set up Conformity Squads (my own label) to prevent any disruption, i.e. dissent:

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to
create "rally squads" of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards
or banners with "favorable messages." Squads should be placed in
strategic locations and "at least one squad should be 'roaming'
throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems,"
the manual says.

However, as the immortal Robert Burns reminds us, even "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men / Gang aft agley". In a worst-case scenario where Islamofascistodefeatocrats have been able to insinuate themselves into a visible spot and are disseminating their heinous opinions, the White House manual recommends that the Conformity Squads move to Plan B:

"These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators," it
says. "The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as
shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the
demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive
chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort,
security should remove the demonstrators from the event site."

Republicans - you gotta love them. Didya hear me, son? You GOTTA love them! Or you're out on your ass!

By the way: The heavily redacted manual was acquired by the ACLU

as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of two people arrested for refusing to cover their anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July speech at the West Virginia State Capitol in 2004.

Remember: They hate us for the freedoms we enjoy.

Neighborhood Patrol

2007-08-21T23:07:00.000+02:00

Random pics

Marg Bar Amrika!

2007-08-20T15:11:00.000+02:00

In the careers of almost all more or less successful bands, there comes a time when one or several members are sick of playing the same old sh*t over and over again. Every night, the fans will be clamoring for the greatest hits, even though the group may think it has moved on and would like to try out some new stuff. Internal disagreements over how to deal with this situation may then lead to the dreaded "creative differences", as often as not causing hiatus or breakup of the whole project. Everybody who has ever played in a band (including this Hippo) can tell a story or two about this phenomenon.

The popular boy group "The Islamic Republic of Iran" is no exception, apparently. In a new biography of the combo, which reached the apex of its popularity under founding member and frontman Seyyed Ruhollah Musavi "Imam" Khomeini, it is revealed that the ayatollah was tired of playing that hoary old chestnut “Death to America” and "favoured dropping the mantra". This is according to Khomeini's successor as band leader Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has just published his memoirs of The Republic's hard-prayin' and hard-rockin' days on the road.

In the end, it was the untimely demise of The Imam that prevented a fatal falling-out among the band members and cleared the way for Rafsanjani to succeed him as singer and lead guitarist. The velvet-voiced Rafsanjani was later ousted from The Islamic Republic by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose gritty singing has been received by rapturous fans as a return to the band's former "ass-kicking" sound. "Marg Bar Amrika" remains the signature tune of "The Islamic Republic" and is heard every Friday in stadiums all over Iran.

Screwing the Pentagon

2007-08-17T23:43:00.001+02:00

The world's two most expensive washers were purchased by the Pentagon at a slightly unreasonable price of US$1 million, according to The Guardian:

The most expensive washers in history were part of $20.5m the company stole from the Pentagon over the last 10 years. The company shipped plumbing and electrical parts to US bases round the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

But oh, wait, that wasn't the price of the washers themselves; it was the cost of sending them to the Pentagon:

The company claimed $998,798 for sending the two washers, which could have been put in an envelope and posted through normal mail for a few dollars.

However, for the scammer, this may have been the most expensive million dollars she ever made:

Charlene Corley, 47, co-owner of the plumbing and electrical firm C&D Distributors, who supplied parts to the military, is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty yesterday to defrauding the Pentagon. She faces 20 years in jail. [...] She admitted her role in the fraud but lawyers placed most of the blame on her sister and co-owner, Darlene, who committed suicide in October after being approached by investigators.

Twenty years in jail and her sister is dead. Pretty costly way of getting rich. Personally, I prefer my peace of mind...

Viking Descendants Say 'Sorry'

2007-08-17T22:04:00.000+02:00

Danish Minister of Culture Brian Mikkelsen, on an official visit to Ireland, apologized last Wednesday for the behavior of the Vikings who raped, pillaged, and looted the British Isles from the 8th to the 11th centuries. His visit to Dublin came on the occasion of the arrival of the replica Viking longship Havhingsten fra Glendalough (Sea Stallion of Glendalough), which sailed from Roskilde in Denmark on 2 July. The 30-meter ship can carry a crew of 60 to 70 Norse pirates and is a faithful copy of the Skuldelev 2, built in 1042 AD from oak beams felled in Wicklow County, Ireland, and now to be seen in the Viking museum of Roskilde.

"In Denmark, we are certainly proud of the ship, but we are not proud of the damage done to the people of Ireland after the Viking invasion. However, the warmth you have shown us today shows us that all has been forgiven," Mikkelsen added.

His apologies may have been prompted by the desire to patch up an emerging disagreement between Denmark and Ireland over the return of historic artifacts under new EU regulations that took effect on 1 April this year. Essentially, the terms of the deal now reached stipulate that Denmark will loan the replica to the Irish National Museum for a year in order to avoid having to return the remains of the original Skuldelev ship (more info on the Havhingsten project website).

Like their warlike forebears, the crew of the Havhingsten sailed to Ireland by circumnavigating the northernmost tip of Denmark, passing by southern Sweden, and crossing the North Sea. From the Orkney Islands (which were under Scandinavian administration for 600 years, beginning in 875 AD) they sailed down the Scottish west coast and across the Irish Sea. This is more or less the same 1.700-km route that in 795 brought the first Viking raiders to Ireland, at the time a European center of early medieval Christian scholarship. The wealthy, but largely undefended monasteries were easy prey for the Norse looters.

In the first few decades, the Vikings only came to Ireland during the summer months, returning to Scandinavia when the raiding season was over in autumn. But from the mid-9th century onwards, they began to build fortified settlements in order to be able to remain in Ireland during the winter months. In addition to significant settlements at Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Wexford, they founded the current capital of Ireland, Dublin. At the end of the 9th century, the Vikings shifted their focus to England and the European continent, but at the beginning of the 10th century they returned to Ireland with a vengeance (the surprisingly effective resistance of the Anglo-Saxons under King Alfred the Great may have contributed to this renewed shift towards the West). The Scandinavians are supposed to have been decisively beaten by Irish High King Brian Bóruma at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 AD.

My professor of Old English, Stephen Tranter, liked to point out the differing viewpoints in the respective Norse and Old English records of those heady times. While the Anglo-Saxon chronicles would state something to the effect that "The evil heathen Norsemen came to Wessex this year, plundering the monasteries, raping our daughters, and exhibiting generally loutish behavior", the corresponding Scandinavian saga would record something like "Snorri and Haakon travelled to England with 12 ships and engaged in profitable trade with the Englishmen all summer long"; i.e., what the Anglo-Saxons perceived as plunder was viewed by the Vikings as simple mercantile activity, though admittedly they got the better deals.

Brian Mikkelsen's apology coincided more or less with the withdrawal of the last Danish troops from southern Iraq. Had the Vikings been able to witness his shameful display of remorse on their behalf - 1200 years after the fact, no less! - I wonder how they might have reacted to this milquetoast character.

Quite possibly, they would have considered him a candidate for what was known as a "Blood Eagle":

The Blood Eagle was reportedly a method of torture and execution that is sometimes mentioned in Norse saga literature. It was performed by cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings, and pulling the lungs out. Salt was sprinkled in the wounds.

Yes, I believe that is what they might well have done.

This strange story had me imagining a distant descendant of George Bush visiting Iraq in the year 3203 to apologize for the shameful invasion, rape, and plunder of the country by the US many generations ago - possibly on the occasion of a replica M1A1 Abrams medium battle tank being donated to the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, which by that time will hopefully have been restored to something resembling its former glory, though certainly minus many of its national treasures which are, at the time of this writing, being flogged off by unscrupulous antique dealers in Europe and the US.

The legacy of the Viking settlement in the British Isles is felt even today - the Scandinavian influence can be traced in the English language; in place-names all across England, Scotland, and Ireland; and even in the English legal system, especially in those parts of England that were under permanent Scandinavian control, known as the "Danelaw". I wonder whether the US influence in Iraq will be similarly long-lasting and deep-rooted, but I doubt it; although there are significant efforts underway to build permanent settlements (read: "army bases"), to rob the country of its national treasures (from Babylonian sculpture to crude oil), and to shape the country's legal system according to the requirements of US "mercantile activities" (in the Viking sense...).

One thing the US can learn from the not-so-warlike Danes of today is this: It's never too late to say 'I'm sorry'.