Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Friday, September 21, 2001 WHAT TRUMPS PATRIOTISM? The Wal-Mart megacorporation has decided that crushing any attempt to unionize is more important than national solidarity in the face of the worst crisis the U.S. has faced in 60 years. According to an article about the situation: While Wal-Mart boasted record sales of American flags from its stores, workers at Sam?s Club 6382 (a Division of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) in Las Vegas, Nevada were forced by managers to remove American flag stickers from their name badges because the stickers were given to the associates by a Union. ... The actions of the managers on September 17 th not only made the employees deeply upset but also angered customers in the store who were shocked and appalled to see employees being forced to peel off American flags. ... The stickers were passed out by representatives of the United Food & Commercial Workers Union. Sam's Club employees had asked the Union for assistance in helping co-workers demonstrate solidarity with the victims of the terrorist bombings, especially the hundreds of union firefighters, police officers, construction and hotel workers injured, missing and dead at the World Trade Center disaster, and the unionized pilots and flight crews of the four downed jetliners. Yep, that even the idea of unions is utterly evil was amply demonstrated by the 250 unionized firefighters who died after selflessly rushing into a disaster waiting to happen. As soon as we bust that union we'll get a hell of a lot better performance out of the lads, and they'll work a lot cheaper, too. Talk about a win-win synergy! Such actions speak to the continuing realities of corporatethink more than anything they or their spokestoadies could possibly say. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 04:45:26 PM | link MONEY LAUNDERING In another about-face, the Shrub administration is changing its mind about going after the sort of money laundering reportedly used by Osama bin Laden, along with international drug and crime cartels, to finance their operations. According to a NYTimes article by Time Weiner and David Johnston (reprinted over at Smirking Chimp): Until last week's attacks, the Bush administration was not much more enthusiastic about new money laundering laws than Mr. Gramm. Led by its chief economic adviser, Lawrence B. Lindsey, the administration did not want to pressure international banks in the United States and elsewhere to open their books. Now the White House is setting up a new agency, called the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, run by the Treasury Department with help from law enforcement and intelligence services, to try anew to track bin Laden's finances. The Gramm mentioned is Phil Gramm, one of the more grating loudmouths in the GOP, who singlehandedly killed proposed Clinton administration legislation to provide more power to investigate money laundering. Congress is now reviving a proposal killed last year by Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who was then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. The bill, introduced by the Clinton administration, would give the Treasury secretary broad power to bar foreign countries and banks from access to the American financial market unless they cooperated with money-laundering investigations. It was strongly opposed by the banking industry and Mr. Gramm. "I was right then and I am right now" in opposing the bill, Mr. Gramm said yesterday. He called the bill "totalitarian" and added, "The way to deal with terrorists is to hunt them down and kill them." That's right Phil. It's okay to send in the troops to kill hundreds or thousands of soldiers and innocent bystanders to feed your rage, but it's "totalitarian" to go after your pals in Big Finance who would gladly and knowingly handle money from Genghis Khan, Torquemada and Stalin if the amount contained a sufficient number of zeros. One of the least known shameless aspects of the Holy War on Drugs has been its obviously class-based nature. Billions are spent on capturing and housing millions of low-level drug users and dealers, while scant millions, if that much, are available to investigate the money laundering end of it. To put it bluntly, if the $40 billion per year figure traditionally dragged out to horrify us about the huge nature of the "illegal drug industry" is anywhere near accurate, then someone's doing one hell of a lot of laundering and making one hell of a lot of money from it. And those bank presidents and CEOs who knowingly launder such money are every bit as culpable of endangering the "precious children" as any of the millions of poor blacks, hispanics and whites who've been put away for decades for doing so. As someone said in an excerpt I published a few days ago, if the words "truth" and "justice" are to mean anything at all, then it's going to have to be "truth" and "justice" for everyone rather than the "business-as-usual" scenario of punishing the bejesus out of the pawns while the kings and queens get fatter and richer. We'll find out soon enough if it's going to truly be either "you're either for us or against us" or "you're either for us, against us, or a big enough contributor to do as you damned well please." I wouldn't bet the farm on the former. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 03:59:01 PM | link SATIRE BECOMES REALITY Someone just pointed out an article wherein a satirical proposal to give the U.S. spooks vouchers to purchase intelligence information - since they're not doing so good at it themselves - has come true. The article details a build-up of nearly 20,000 Russian troops and ancillary equipment along the Tajikistan border with Pakistan. The punch line is delivered in paragraph eight: The Izvestiya newspaper in Moscow said the intelligence gathered from a fibre optic spy station could be shared with the Americans. "The purchase of information from this station will inevitably become one topic of negotiations between Russia and the United States," the newspaper said. The build-up at that particular location is due to a couple of things. First, Tajikistan is much more of a Russian client state than either Uzebekistan or Turkmenistan, the other states bordering Afghanistan. Second, most of the Afghan territory on the other side of the border is under control of the Taliban's major internal opposition, the Northern Alliance forces. The Alliance is funded by Iran, India and Russia. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 03:40:03 PM | link LIES, DAMNED LIES AND ARI FLEISCHER As I suspected and wrote about a few days back, the weird story concocted by the administration about how the White House and Air Force One were additional targets was bullshit. The story was concocted immediately after Shrub was criticized for taking a grant tour of the midwest rather than return immediately to the White House. The phrase "real and credible" was pulled out of someone's sphincter in the "brain trust" (i.e. Karen Hughes, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Dick Cheney), spun by Lying Head Fleischer at a news conference, and repeated ad nauseum by the complacent media lapdogs. To be fair, I did hear one of them ask Fleischer what the "real and credible" evidence was before meekly bowing out after hearing the predictable and inevitable "national security" mantra. According to a story by Don Phillips in the Washington Post: The primary target of terrorists who hijacked an American Airlines flight from Dulles International Airport appears to have been the Pentagon, not the White House or Capitol, sources close to the investigation said yesterday. Aviation officials have developed this theory after reviewing radar tapes showing that Flight 77 made a rapid, descending turn over Northern Virginia, nearly completing a full circle before it slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, officials said. The plane never approached restricted airspace around the White House or Capitol and turned off a course toward the White House when it was about 10 miles away, according to radar tracks of the aircraft's movements obtained by the Washington Post. The story about Air Force One also being a target was also bullshit. This was quietly admitted and not widely (if at all) repeated on Nightline a few nights ago when the administration said about the Air Force One report that, "It was a misinterpretation." The most fundamentally absurd aspect of the original story was that if it was known that Air Force One was a target, then why the hell was the President on it at all? Such blatant and silly fabrications wouldn't be such a big deal during peacetime, but they're extremely disconcerting when you realize that the administration that Congress just gave nearly unlimited and unchecked power to made them up for no other apparent reason than to prevent Shrub from being perceived as less than a Big, Manly Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy ready, willing and able to protect the nation from the evil injuns. That is, they lied and lied badly solely to stave off embarassment. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 03:15:45 PM | link CALLOW OCTAVIAN Chris Floyd's column in the Moscow Times shows that the scribblers in that part of the world have maintained their rhetorical chops even through the end of Cold War I. He's writing about the Congressional Joint Resolution of Sept. 15 that basically gave the Shrub near dictatorial power. Never has a president been given such sweeping authority. It's true that some have taken it: most notably Abraham Lincoln, who used what he called his "inherent powers" to quash civil liberties, jail dissidents, even suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the cornerstone of 800 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence. But these draconian measures -- imposed, after all, when the Union was under sustained assault by a million homegrown rebels, not 19 God-maddened criminals on a suicide run -- were met with violent protests, Congressional investigations, bitter partisan invective and court challenges. Yet there was nary a peep out of the modern guardians of the Republic in the Senate as they voted Caesar this dictatorial power. For note carefully that it is Bush alone who decides who is a terrorist; it is Bush alone who decides what constitutes the "aiding" of terrorism. The Congressional lambkins of course believe that Bush will not abuse these powers. And no doubt he and his Praetorians will show the same tender concern for liberty, legality and constitutional authority they displayed last year when they sent hired thugs to break up the vote recount in Miami, then successfully urged the Supreme Court to strip Congress of its clearly defined constitutional responsibility to resolve disputed elections, thereby shutting down the vote and transforming callow Octavian into the manly Augustus who rules today. Poor lambkins, so trusting. But what else can they do? What can any of us do? We must all now trust that this man who can't hold his liquor will be able to hold near-absolute power without getting drunk on it. We must trust that he will somehow ignore the counsels of the conservative faithful who have heretofore molded his thinking and guided all his actions. For these wise guides have been busy defining just who is a terrorist -- and a terrorist sympathizer. In U.S. newspapers, on radio and television, in weighty journals, they're naming and shaming the guilty. The list is long: Anyone who criticizes the president in this time of crisis. Anyone who has ever criticized him before. Anyone who gives information to the American people about what has happened to them and what is being done in their name -- including a conservative senator like Orrin Hatch, who was publicly slapped down by the White House for speaking without permission. Anyone who suggests that there may be a complicated historical context to the tragedy, one in which America is not entirely without a tincture of culpability for helping create the scenario that belched forth this hell. All of these constitute a "fifth column," an "internal enemy," a "corps of traitors," we are told by Bush's patrons and mentors. Every day, they pour this poison into Caesar's ear -- but we must trust that he's not listening. We must trust that although he has always believed and embraced their Talebanic precepts before, he will now, miraculously, discard them. We must trust that Caesar will only sip at the cup of power that's been given him, just enough to rouse his spirits without disordering his senses. For it's entirely up to him now; Congress has abandoned its ancient duty to represent the people. If he decides you're a terrorist -- you are. If he decides you helped them -- you did. Vengeance is his; he will repay. Don't you feel safer already? Now that's what I call corking good agitprop! I'm sure they can find someone to explain the tricky bits to Shrub. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 03:06:44 PM | link PAKISTAN THE ALLY? As the U.S. gets more and more into bed with Pakistan in a war supposedly against terrorism, it's a good idea to find out exactly who's lying in that bed. The following is part of a letter written by B. Raman, an Indian, to the U.S. Congress on September 4 (as reproduced at From the Wilderness). It details the involvement of the Pakistani government in terrorism and the drug trade. "For more than a decade, the people of India have been living in a state of half-war and half-peace due to the depredations of a large number of terrorists, outrageously called jehadists, who have been trained, armed and funded and infiltrated into the State of Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India by Pakistan in order to make the people of India and its security forces bleed in the name of religion. "More people belonging to different religions -- Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others -- have been killed in India by these mercenary-terrorists sponsored by the State of Pakistan than by any other terrorist groups anywhere else in the world." "Many other States have suffered and have been suffering due to the depredations of terrorists, made in and exported from Pakistan and the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan -- [these include] Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian Republics, the Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia, the Xinjiang province of China, Bangladesh, the Arakan area of Burma and the southern Philippines..." "After his [1993] removal, [as official head of Pakistani intelligence, trusted advisor to Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf] Lt. Gen. Nasir traveled to Somalia, Chechnya, Dagestan, the Central Asian Republics, China, and the Southern Philippines as a preacher and helped Islamic organizations, including the group which killed U.S. troops in Somalia." "It was he, who, during his tenure as the DG [Director General] of the ISI has entered into an agreement with the LTTE of Sri Lanka [which secured] LTTE's assistance in smuggling Afghanistan produced heroin in its ships to West Europe, the USA and Canada." "Another reason for the ISI's helping the LTTE, despite its anti-Muslim policies, was to use it for smuggling heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. During Zia-ul-Haq's regime in the 1980s, heroin had become a major source of extra revenue not only for the State of Pakistan, especially the ISI and Pakistan's nuclear and missile establishment, but also to many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, including [Musharraf et al]." "The way Mr. Sharif before October 1999 and Gen. Musharraf since then have been using the heroin money to prevent the Pakistani economy from collapsing has not received due attention in the U.S. ..." "If one goes purely by economic indicators, Pakistan's must be in as bad a shape as that of Russia, or even worse, since Russia has been in receipt of Western and IMF assistance." "Where does the money come from? From the smuggling of heroin to West Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The U.S. Government might have stopped economic assistance from the taxpayers' money. But why should the Noriegas of Pakistan be worried when they get billions of dollars from the heroin sale in the U.S. " It's an exceedingly tangled web that was woven throughout the world by many players over the latter half of the 20th century. Good guys become bad guys become good guys etc. ad nauseaum. First it was a struggle of political ideologies, then a supposed struggle against drugs, and now a supposed struggle against militant religious fundamentalism. By the way, does anyone remember Abu Nidal, i.e. the terrorist "flavor of the month" immediately preceding Osama bin Laden? posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 02:10:17 PM | link WWIII So what's going to be happening in the near future? Michael Ruppert offers one scenario, conspicuously lacking in star-spangled parades and Lee Greenwood ditties. Only a few, as yet, grasp the dynamics already in motion that will almost certainly produce a long and protracted war, as well as huge economic and perhaps physical dislocations in the United States and around the world. Additional attacks on Americans are almost a certainty, even -- as I am about to describe -- a necessity. The rhetoric from President Bush and his Administration contains messages for the American people, which they do not yet grasp, and for terrorist organizations, which they most certainly do. "This is a war and it will not be a short war." "This will not be over quickly." ... "Americans need to be prepared for more sacrifices and more casualties." "Just removing bin Laden won't suffice. We are going after terrorism in all of the countries where it resides." The last statement is the first great lie of this war. As the U.S. government has announced its partnership with the drug-financed government of Pakistan, which has supported terrorist groups from the Middle East to the Balkans, to China, to Southeast Asia, the deception begins. Indeed, after Afghanistan, Pakistan should have been the first great enemy in this war. It's long support of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan ended only as the Taliban destroyed most of that nation's opium crop in February of this year. As in every conflict since World War II, the drug trade will now see a new day of freedom. And I guarantee that terrorist groups are well aware of one fact that we, as Americans, have not yet grasped. George W. Bush carries on his shoulder the political memory of a father who waged a war against Sadam Hussein and then left him in power. He can afford no such image in the current context and the military he commands must become engaged in a do or die battle. They too, will accept no less. hat said, the terrorist groups in or from Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, Algeria, Somalia, Turkey, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Germany, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Albania, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico know that they are now in a "use it or lose it" position. For, not knowing where and when the industrialized nations may strike, they now realize that almost any action against any political group will go unchallenged in the world press. Even separatist groups not posing an immediate threat can be conveniently eliminated in the months and perhaps years to come. As evidenced by the almost immediate admission of China into the World Trade Organization, after 15 years of unsuccessful attempts, the warp drive for globalization - unfettered by any need to respond to public opinion - has now been engaged. The most cynical part of me hopes that the headline for this war will not be, "The G-8 Wipes Out Poverty." In this model I must say that the long discussed, but rarely acknowledged, alleged plans for massive global population reduction are no longer a "back burner" issue. Therefore, in this context, the American people must expect additional attacks that may even include biological warfare or nuclear devices on American soil. And these attacks, already being hinted at by the Administration, will serve an additional purpose. Two days after the attacks every street and highway was a sea of American flags. Now, a week after the attacks - at least in Los Angeles - they are hard to find. Whether we admit it or not, what the vast majority of the American people really want is for this to go away. Only sustained attacks on the American people will provide George W. Bush with the political mandate to wage the war he has committed to fight - to the bitter end. As the economic impact sinks in, and as Americans feel the pain in their wallets, the willingness of American citizens to experience the carnage that has been raging around the world for decades - in the name of prosperity and for the benefit of the G-8's largest corporations - is, in my opinion, a big question mark. Do not expect a quick recovery in the stock market based upon emotion. As we describe in this issue, the fundamental weaknesses in the U.S. economy were not blown up with these attacks. And the markets, if they can still be called that, are driven by one 800 pound guerilla above all others - earnings. With the exception of defense contractors, there is absolutely nothing hopeful to report and I, for one, cannot and refuse to be an advocate for investing in the destruction of the planet. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 01:53:39 PM | link AFGHAN HISTORY Mohsen Makhmalbaf tells of the history of Afghanistan in an article dated June 20, 2001. The article is very long and very much worth reading, especially since Gary Condit never visited Afghanistan and consequently it hasn't been the subject of much "news" coverage until just recently. Afghanistan emerged when it separated from Iran. It used to be an Iranian province some 250 years ago and part of Greater Khorasan province in the era of Nadir Shah. Returning from India, one midnight, Nadir Shah was murdered in Ghoochan. Ahmad Abdali, an Afghan commander in Nadir Shah's army fled with a regiment of 4,000 soldiers. He declared independence from Iran and thus Afghanistan was created. In those days it was comprised of farmers and overwhelmingly ruled by tribes. Since Ahmad Abdali belonged to the Pashtoon tribe, naturally, he could not have been accepted as the absolute authority by other tribes such as the Tajik, Hazareh and Uzbek. Thus, it was agreed that each tribe would be governed by its own leaders. The rulers collectively formed a tribal federalism known as the "Loya Jirga". Since then until the present, a more just and appropriate form of governing has not emerged in Afghanistan. The Loya Jirga system reveals that not only has Afghanistan never evolved economically from an agricultural existence, it has never moved beyond tribal rule and failed to achieve a sense of nationalism. An Afghan does not regard himself an Afghan until he leaves his homeland. He is regarded with pity or suffers humiliation. In Afghanistan each Afghan is a Pashtoon, Hazareh, Uzbek or Tajik. In Iran, perhaps except in the province Kurdistan, we are all Iranians first. Nationalism is the first aspect of our perception of a common identity. But in Afghanistan all are primarily members of a tribe. Tribalism is the first aspect of their identity. This is the most obvious difference between the spirit of an Iranian with that of an Afghan. Even in presidential elections in Iran, the candidate's ethnicity has no national significance and draws no special vote. In Afghanistan since the era of Ahmad Abdali until today as the Taliban rule over 95 percent of the country, the main leaders have always been from the Pashtoon tribe. (Except for the nine months of Habiballah Galehkani's rule known as Bacheh Sagha and the two years of the Tajik Burhannuddin Rabbani respectively, Tajiks have not otherwise held power.) The people of Afghanistan, however, since the time of Ahmad Abdali, have always been content with tribal federalism. ... The reason for Afghanistan's perpetual tribalism rests with its agrarian economics. Each Afghan tribe is trapped in a valley with geographical walls and is a natural prisoner of a culture stemming from a mountainous environment and farming economy. Cultural tribalism is the product of farming conditions rooted in the deep valleys of Afghanistan. Belief in tribalism is as deep as those valleys. The topography of Afghanistan is 75 percent mountainous of which only 7 percent is suitable for farming. It lacks any semblance of industry. The country is solely dependent on farming, as grasslands (in non-drought years) are the only resources for economic continuity. Again, farming is the foundation of this tribalism that in turn is the basis for deep internal conflicts. This not only stops Afghanistan from becoming a modern country it also prevents this would-be nation from achieving a national identity. There is no intrinsic popular belief in what is called Afghanistan and Afghans. Afghans are not yet ready to be absorbed into a bigger collective identity called the people of Afghanistan. Contrary to the misnomer of religious war, the origin of disputes lies with tribal conflicts. The Tajiks who fight the Taliban today are both Muslim and Sunni -- as are the Taliban. The intelligence of Ahmad Abdali is yet to be appreciated for having creating the notion of tribal federalism. He was smarter than those who fancy the ruling of one tribe over all others or one individual over a nation -- when tribalism and the economic infrastructure was still intact. Pashtoons with a population of about six million make up Afghanistan's largest tribe. Next are Tajiks with about four million people and third and fourth are Hazarehs and Uzbeks with populations of about four million and one to two million respectively. The rest are small tribes such as the Imagh, Fars, Balouch, Turkman and Qezelbash. The Pashtoons are mostly in the south, the Tajiks in the north and the Hazarehs in the central regions. This geographical concentration in different regions will lead either to complete and final disintegration or the continued connection from the head of the tribe through the Loya Jirga system. The only alternative to these two scenarios necessitates changes in the economic infrastructure and the replacement of a tribal idenity with a national one. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 11:09:02 AM | link IT'S THE OIL, STUPID Another suspect in the blame game, as nicely detailed by Johnny Angel. Once again, America's twin addictions, that of its people to cheap gasoline and its corporations to billions of petro-dollars, has led us right into the proverbial pit. Having learned very little or forgotten a lot in the wake of the oil embargoes of the 1970s, America is as strung out on the fossil-fuel jones as any Bonnie Brae Street junkie is on Mexican tar heroin. Even though American dependency on oil from the Middle East has fallen to about 17 percent of national consumption, Saudi Arabia remains the cornerstone, producing 50 percent of the whole world's supply. So in order to keep this economic balm flowing, to keep the status quo static and the balance sheets of the major oil companies brimming, we've installed our military as a kind of mega police force in the region. Our official reason for being there is to ensure "stability," one of the great buzzwords in the history of business, but this is nothing more than spin - the military is in the Middle East to guarantee that whatever comes out of the ground is exploitable and controlled by American multinationals. ... Oil has been the prime mover behind any and every political decision in that region since the First World War, when trucks, tanks and planes replaced horses and camels. Once the internal-combustion engine became the technological centerpiece of the century, keeping it going by any means necessary became a most profitable business venture. And despite the myth that has been rammed down America's psyche for eons, American business loathes competition and aims for monopoly. Sure, they'll partner with the Saudi royal family (because the government that they dominate owns all of its oil), but in exchange, anyone in the region who actually believes in the rights of the people of that country to share in the wealth of their homeland is shut out. And forcefully, with the aid of the American military and CIA, as we saw in Iran and during the Gulf War. This dusty, empty part of the world was basically nothing more than a bedouin crossroads for 1,300 years, between the end of the Crusades and the early 1900s. During the period when America endured revolution and a civil war, and Europe tore itself apart, the Middle East was downright peaceful. Tell me why the United States and Great Britain reflexively back the state of Israel in its battles with its neighbors. Were it not sitting strategically close to vast pools of viscous crude, no one would give a rat's ass about either side. posted by Steven Baum 9/21/2001 10:33:01 AM | link Thursday, September 20, 2001 MISSILE SHORTCOMINGS According to Stratfor, missiles aren't going to be the magic bullet to cure the world of terrorism. Though cruise missiles are accurate, they pack relatively little punch. An effective strike on Afghanistan would require hundreds of missiles. Although the U.S. military has a large inventory, the replacement rate for cruise missiles is extremely slow. Thus, the United States must hold a substantial number in reserve to counter other potential threats, such as Iraq. ... To have any real effect, the United States would need to inundate Afghanistan with cruise missiles, firing off hundreds in hopes of hitting a few dozen valuable targets. But the United States cannot simply empty its store of 2,000 Tomahawks and 200 to 250 ALCMs. Missile replacement rates are far too slow, especially since defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon have been gearing up for the initial production of next-generation cruise missiles. The United States needs to maintain a missile reserve in case it wants to take further action against Afghanistan or against a different enemy such as Iraq. During Operation Desert Fox, the United States used more than 400 cruise missiles in four days -- more than were used during the entire Persian Gulf War. The Kosovo campaign started briskly as well, with 160 strikes in the first week, but then slowed to about 440 strikes over 70 days as cruise missiles became a supplement to NATO air forces. Unlike the Afghan scenario, both of these were limited campaigns directed against discrete, vulnerable targets. Both cases illustrate high numbers of cruise missile used in a relatively short time. Simply put, the United States cannot inflict significant damage on Afghanistan without depleting one of its most valuable weapons systems. At best, Washington could "spin" a cruise missile strike as the first battle of a long campaign. This is one reason why the U.S. may be refocusing on Iraq as an easier target, as detailed in another report. Even though the evidence against Iraq is much sketchier than that against Afghanistan, the former may get hit first. Afghanistan hosted bin Laden. Iraq facilitated his operations at various points. But the fact is that although Washington can bomb Afghanistan, it cannot do so in a truly punishing manner. Iraq, on the other hand, is very convenient for an air attack. Such an attack would have the added benefit of striking at someone who, in the long run, is much more dangerous to American interests than are the Afghanis. Extending the list of nations that supported the attackers from one to two would solve a number of problems for the United States. One of those "problems" being the need to "draw blood" before the high poll numbers for Shrub II start shrinking. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 05:15:40 PM | link GUMMINT NO LONGER EVIL Jeff Faux makes some good points about the relentless bashing of the government and deifying of the private sector over the last couple of decades, especially during the presidential campaign of Shrub II, the boob now demanding $40 billion worth of taxpayer money with absolutely no strings attached. A second insight revealed by the awful gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline was how ill-served we have been by a politics that perpetuates the illusion that we are all on our own and, in particular, that holds the institutions of public service in contempt. For two decades, politicians of both parties have celebrated the pursuit of private gain over public service. Shrinking government has become a preoccupation of political leaders through deregulation, privatization, and cuts in public services. One result is that the U.S. is the only major nation that leaves airline and airport security in the hands of private corporations, which by their very nature are motivated to spend as little as possible. So the system was tossed in the lap of lowest-bid contractors who hired people for minimum wages. Training has been inadequate and supervision extremely lax. Turnover was 126 percent a year and the average employee stayed in airline security for only six months. Getting a job at Burger King or McDonald's might represent upward mobility for the average security worker. In an anti-government political climate the airline corporations were able to shrug off the government inspections that consistently revealed how easy it was to bring weapons on board. The competition for customers sacrificed safety to avoid any inconvenience. How else to explain the insane notion that a 3-1/2 inch knife blade is not a weapon? Private provision of public services has been the dominant philosophy of government in our time. Only natural, the economists told us. People were motivated by money. It's human nature. "Greed is good," said the movie character in the send-up of Wall Street -- a sentiment echoed by politicians of both parties: 'Collective solutions are a thing of the past. The era of big government is over. You are on your own.' Public service was "old" economy, just for losers. A teacher in New York City schools starts at $30,000. A brand new securities lawyer starts at $120,000. Does anyone believe that this represents sensible priorities? And does anyone believe that the firefighters who marched into that inferno did it for money? Does anyone think that people working for a private company hiring people for as little as possible would have had the same motivation -- would have been as efficient at the moment when efficiency really counts? When the chips are down, where do we turn? To the government's firefighters, police officers, rescue teams. To the nonprofit sectors' blood banks and shelters. And to Big Government's army, navy, and air force. During his campaign, the president of the United States constantly complained that the people knew how to spend their money better than the government did. But overnight, we just appropriated $40 billion for the government to spend however it sees fit. Who else would we trust? The stock market itself made one point. Despite calls for investors to exercise patriotic restraint, the market opened with an avalanche of sell orders, driving the Dow to its largest point loss in history. As one broker said, "This is how capitalism is supposed to work." Just so. The market is about prices, not values. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 04:37:16 PM | link SHARON AND ARAFAT BACK DOWN According to the Guardian, the U.S. has forced Ariel Sharon to both call off the tanks and allow a meeting between Yasir Arafat and Shimon Peres, the Israeli foreign minister. I was hoping that someone in the adminstration, probably Colin Powell, would be smart and pragmatic enough to know that Sharon had to be reigned in and fast. President George Bush last night overcame a major hurdle to building an international coalition against terrorism when he forced the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to agree to a long-sought Middle East ceasefire. He used America's enormous economic and political clout to bring Mr Sharon in particular to heel, fearful that Israeli incursions into the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza during the past week would wreck his attempts to include Arab and other Muslim countries in the coalition. As part of a total rethink of the Bush administration's foreign policy since the New York and Washington attacks, the president is taking a tougher line with Israel in an attempt to secure a speedy end to a conflict that feeds Arab hatred of the United States. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, after speaking to Mr Arafat and Mr Sharon, welcomed the ceasefire as "an encouraging development". "We see some promise this morning," he said. Under the agreement, the Palestinians will call off their fighters and Israel will pull its tanks back from flashpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Ah, so it was Colin Powell doing the "encouragement". I wouldn't think either Arafat or Sharon would have enough respect for the Rootin' Tootin' Cowboy President to listen to him. Sharon's attempt to provoke a major Palestinian reaction by illegally sending in the tanks has failed, i.e. As part of a choreography worked out with the US, Mr Sharon responded by ordering the Israel army to pull its tanks and troops from Jenin, Jericho, Ramallah and Hebron, all in what are known as area A, under the control of the Palestinian authority, and which Israel should not enter. he Israeli army said: "The forces which are in Area A will leave completely." It added that its forces in Gaza and the West Bank had been told to "avoid any attacking activities against the Palestinians". Arafat's concession was also sweeping: Mr Arafat's truce announcement was the most unequivocal yet. Speaking from his office in Gaza, he urged Palestinian fighters to exercise maximum restraint, even under Israeli fire. "I instructed all leaders of the security forces to work intensively on a ceasefire... and to abstain even in self-defence in response to Israeli attacks," he said. This is the first sign I've seen that this administration is serious and smart enough to actually do something right, i.e. to base at least some foreign policy on reality rather than on what Roger Ailes and the shrieking heads at Fox tell them to do from their base on Mars. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 04:00:18 PM | link SHADES OF VIETNAM So where's Osama bin Laden going to hide? In a tunnel complex funded by the spooks. Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's attacks on New York and Washington, could escape an American revenge mission in Afghanistan by hiding in tunnels that he built with funds from the CIA. At the height of the Afghan war against the Soviet invaders, the CIA provided money for a very ambitious project. A series of defence tunnels were built in 1986 near the town of Khost in the mountains of Paktiya province, a few miles from the border with Pakistan. The aim was to store weapons and create an underground field hospital as well as to provide shelter against Russian air attack. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 03:44:47 PM | link MORBID NUMBERS A current estimate (as of Sept. 20, and culled from "a number of wire service accounts") of the dead by country has 2589 dead from the U.S. and 3061 dead from 54 other countries, including 10 from Israel. That last number contrasts with a Washington Post estimate of 133. The figures also do not include any numbers for Canadians. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 03:01:19 PM | link HE'S BROWN! KILL HIM! Chuck Colson (yes, the one from Watergate) has a Christian news site called BreakPoint, which seems to be mostly free of the fundamentalist insanity one sees on most such sites. He writes: Sher Singh was born in India and has lived in the United States for two years. On [Sept. 12], when his train from Boston to Washington, D.C. stopped in Providence, R.I., he was arrested - suspected of involvement in the terrorism that rocked the country [Sept. 11]. Alerted by television reports, a crowd gathered outside the train station. As police led Mr. Singh from the station the crowd whooped and jeered. 'Kill him!' yelled one man. 'You killed my brother,' shrieked another. Mr. Singh, who had absolutely no connection with the terrorism, is a Sikh and wears a turban, a long beard, and a ceremonial dagger strapped to his shoulder. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. Reading this reminded me of buying gas a couple of nights ago at a local convenience mart owned by a Sikh family for several years now. The owner wasn't wearing his turban, and felt the need to explain to me - someone who's been stopping to get gas there for about 4 years - that he was a Sikh and not one of those who bombed the WTC and Pentagon. I knew he was a Sikh the first time I saw him and wouldn't have demanded any kind of explanation from him even if I'd known he was a member of the Taliban. It probably didn't help his state of mind that the local mosque, located midway between his station and my house - about three blocks away from each - had been plastered with "GO HOME, RAGHEADS!" signs a couple of nights after the bombings. I remember when that mosque was built about 6 years ago. The steel beams making up the superstructure were capable of supporting a structure at least twice as high. One might say it was built to handle the impact from at least one huge pick-up truck. The knuckle-dragging, religious fundamentalist quotient here at Texas A&M is a lot higher than in most places. Hell, the locals consider their fellow Texans at the University of Texas to be, if not godless foreigners, then highly questionable liberals, and anything out of state might as well be across the oceans. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 02:46:09 PM | link HACKER STORM A group called the Dispatchers is going after Palestine and Afghanistan ... that is, ISPs in both countries. According to the Washington Post: The group is calling itself the Dispatchers, and, in a letter posted to the Web on Sept. 12, the group said it has already disabled ISPs in Palestine and is targeting ISPs in Afghanistan with the explicit goal of destroying them. The Dispatchers, claimed to be approximately 300 strong, said they will also go after Pakistan, Iraq and several other Middle Eastern countries. "Right now, we're trying to get as many computers as possible," said "Dawgyg," a cracker from World of Hell. "You remember the Mafiaboy thing? We're basically going to do (the same thing) to their routers and destroy their Internet connections throughout the Middle East. We're not going to deface their pages this time. We're going to down their Internet." I hear they've already gotten all 2 ISPs in Afghanistan, and all 3 of the ones in Palestine the Israelis haven't already destroyed with tanks, missiles and helicopter gunships. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 02:36:20 PM | link BUSH ON A STOLEN ELECTION From a press release by the U.S. Embassy in Minsk, Belarus. This has to be the funniest thing I've read in years. I keep double checking to make sure I'm not reading the Onion. President Bush believes that Belarus and its people can and should be a part of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. Unfortunately, severely flawed elections undermined chances that Belarus will have the opportunity to be a part of this vision for Europe in the near future. Not only did Aleksander Lukashenko, Europe's last dictator, steal the elections from the Belarusian people -- for the moment, he also stole their opportunity to return to a path towards democracy and free market economy. This was a sadly-missed opportunity and a sad moment for a brave people, who suffer under a climate of fear. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 02:22:14 PM | link CHICKENHAWKS The above term (at least in this context) was invented a decade ago in an article in the Village Voice. Nothing much has changed, as is evidenced in the following list supplied by Fred Crawford: The Democratic leadership in Congress: House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt - Served his country in uniform, 1965-71 House Minority Whip David Bonior - Served his country in uniform, 1968-72 Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle - Served his country in uniform, 1969-72 The Real President Albert Gore - Served his country in uniform, 1969-71 The Republican leadership in Congress: Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve Majority Leader Dick Armey- avoided the draft, did not serve Majority Whip Tom Delay - avoided the draft, did not serve Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott - avoided the draft, did not serve Actually Fred's list is a bit outdated. It should currently read: House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt - Served his country in uniform, 1965-71 House Minority Whip David Bonior - Served his country in uniform, 1968-72 Senate majority leader Tom Daschle - Served his country in unform, 1969-1972 Majority Whip Harry Reid - avoided the draft, did not serve The Republican leadership in Congress: Vice President Dick Cheney - avoided the draft, did not serve (sought deferments FIVE times) Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - avoided draft, did not serve (replaced Gingrich, who resigned House to fool around on second wife with third wife) Majority Leader Dick Armey- avoided the draft, did not serve Majority Whip Tom Delay - avoided the draft, did not serve Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott - avoided the draft, did not serve Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles - avoided the draft, did not serve This might be useful when confronting the fire-breathing, bloodthirsty chickenhawks in the GOP about how eager they are to send young men in to do what they wouldn't do, although I suspect that even the non-chickenhawks are going to be breathing in a fire-like manner. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 01:48:41 PM | link TRAINING TERRORISTS So we're going after those dastardly terrorists and those who harbor them, eh? How about those who train them? The SOA (School of the Americas) - which recently underwent plastic surgery and rose out of the sewer as the renamed WHISC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) - has been training terrorists (that is, terrorists by any reasonable definition) for a very long time. So where is it? Pakistan? Iraq? Afghanistan? Nope. It's at Fort Benning, Georgia. As the SOAW (School of the Americas Watch) site summarizes: The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians. Their Graduates in the News section provides further tidbits about recent social activities in which the SOA graduates have been engaged in Columbia, Guatemala and Bolivia: SOA Graduates in the News, 2000. SOA Graduates in the News 2000/2001 COLOMBIA SOA Graduates Cited for Recent Human Rights Atrocities and Paramilitary Ties According to the 2000 State Department Report on Human Rights in Colombia, SOA graduates Major David Hernandez Rojas and Captain Diego Fino Rodriguez are being prosecuted in civilian courts for the March 1999 murders of Antiqua peace commissioner Alex Lopera and two others. Both men are members of the Colombian Military's 4th Brigade, which has been extensively linked to paramilitary groups. SOA graduate Colonel Jorge Plazas Acevedo is being tried by the Prosecutor General of Colombia for the 1998 kidnapping and murder of Jewish business leader Benjamin Khoudari. Plazas is the former chief of intelligence for the Colombian Military's 13th Brigade. The State Department reports that Colonel Jesus Maria Clavijo, a graduate of the SOA, is currently under investigation for collusion with paramilitary forces in 160 social cleansing murders from 1995-1998. In addition to the information provided by the State Department Report, a 2001 Reuters article reports that Clavijo has been accused of ties to a paramilitary death squad responsible for the massacre of at least 100 people in 1996 and 1997. Clavijo is currently in prison awaiting his trial. In February 2001, SOA graduate Hernan Orozco was sent to prison by a military tribunal for complicity in the Maripan torture and massacre of 30 peasants by a paramilitary group. General Mario Montoya Uribe, an SOA graduate with a history of ties to paramilitary violence, commands the Joint Task Force South, which includes the 24th Brigade. The 24th Brigade is ineligible for U.S. military aid due to its complicity in paramilitary violence. A leading Colombian newspaper identifies General Montoya as "the military official responsible for Plan Colombia". The year 2000 brought genocide cases against two former Guatemalan dictators trained at the SOA. In March, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Nobel Peace Prize winner, filed suit in a Spanish court against SOA graduate General Efrain Rios Montt, who took power through a coup and governed Guatemala at the height of a counter-insurgency campaign that wiped hundreds of Mayan villages off the map, left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands into refuge or exile. The case also cites SOA graduates General Angel Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, the Minister of Defense and Colonel German Chupina Barahona, Director of the National Police. Now what do you suppose the Shrub II March to Save the Planet would do if presented with this kind of evidence about any other country (with the names of the perps of course changed to sound more Arabic)? posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 01:22:16 PM | link YOU WANT BLAME? WE'VE GOT IT! Since Clinton, reductions in the defense budget (i.e. Clinton), and a decline in moral standards (i.e. Clinton) leading to divine retribution have all been blamed for the recent bombings, let's see in what other directions we can sling mud. Let's try some of the bigger mouths in the GOP (via AmPol): One major failure has been the handing over of airline regulation to the industry. Two of the most vocal proponents of the "blame Clinton faction of the Republican Party have been Orrin Hatch and Dana Rohrabacher. It is therefore interesting to note that Orrin Hatch -- whose position on the Judiciary Committee could have assisted recognition of the Gore Commission's recommendation that airline security be treated as an element of national security-- received $31,000 (2% of the PAC total) from the air transport industry in the 2000 election cycle, according to FEC records accessed through the Center for Responsive Politics (opensecrets.org). Those included PAC contributions of at least $1,000 from American Airlines, Boeing Co, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Northwest Airlines and FedEx Corp. Among individual contributors, at least $7,500 in large contributions from employees of Airbus, Delta, Continental and Skywest can be identified. Dana Rohrabacher also has feasted on air transport largesse, receiving $18,500 (18% of the PAC total) from air transport PACs and additional funds from air transport or related industries such as tourism, and plenty of Money from the Muslim Council, Arab World and other sources that evoke the phrase "glass houses". Several of his contributors only exist on the Web as contributors and at least one (AirTrac of Chicago) has been the target of regulatory action. George Bush and John McCain were the number 1 and number 2 recipients of the largesse of the air transport industry in 2000 and 16 out the top 20 recipients were Republicans. The question, of course, is what that money bought the industry. It certainly bought the industry weaker regulation and the inadequate airport security that was a laughing matter before September 11. The article also mentions that, since the end of the Cold War (or at least Cold War I), the portion of the $30 billion spook budget spent on counterterrorism has doubled from $6 to $12 billion. That bastard Clinton! He should have tripled it! No hell is deep enough for him! posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 01:11:37 PM | link STREAMLINING SPOOKERY Bouncing off an item included herein yesterday, The Tomb of Horrors makes a screamingly funny proposal: After the continued failure of our Intelligence agencies to provide us with the data necessary to save lives, Tomb of Horrors proposes modifying our current, deeply flawed intelligence system. Rather than relying on the current, malfunctioning system of Public Spooking, this new system would encourage other agencies (the FAA, IRS, ATF, etc) to seek out intelligence reports from the best available sources, and give them vouchers to purchase it from them. Perhaps the CIA might be the ones to know about the drug routes from central America to Texas, in which case DEA officials might choose to stick with them. But suppose the Mossad have better sources on Islamic terrorists? What if you think the agency formally known as the KGB might have a better read on Russia? Then the concerned agencies and corporations, rather than rely on our failing CIA, could choose to do business with this new group, and use public money to do so. The sides nearly split when I read that. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 12:51:29 PM | link RELIGIOUS FANATIC TERRORISTS There's one group of fanatical religious terrorists being left out of the current discussion on how to "wipe out terrorism around the world." They're called fundamentalist christians, specifically those who oppose abortion. If you doubt this, then check out the so-called Nuremberg Trials site wherein doctors who perform abortions, clinic owners and workers, judges, politicians, law enforcement personnel, and even the relatives of the above are all posted on "wanted lists". Even the current president just made their "wanted list", for chrissake! The names of the "working" are given in a black font, the "wounded" in a red font, and the "fatalities" in a strikethrough font. That these people have killed doctors, blown up clinics, harassed (e.g. stalked, trespassed at and attacked homes, killed pets, etc.) clinic personnel, and obviously plan to continue to do so shows in no uncertain terms that they're more than willing to do what is needed to put more names in red and strikethrough fonts on their web site. What possible rational definition of "terrorism" would not include the actions of these people? And what possible definition of "fundamentalist religious fanatic" would exclude these people? And if we're going to profile, detain and harass anyone who looks remotely like a "raghead" in the name of stopping terrorism, then why don't we do the same for anyone in the anti-abortion movement? If the former are all potential terrorists because of their religion, then the latter certainly are as well. The Reagan and Shrub I administrations did all they could to avoid investigating the domestic killings and bombings, i.e. terrorism. And the Clinton administration only started putting effort into investigating these home-grown terrorists when one of them made the mistake of bombing the Olympics rather than a clinic. Heaven forbid you should try to befoul a symbol of America's power and dominance, rather than a legal business disliked by the lunatic fringe of the Official State Religion! The word "terrorism" as it's currently being bandied about is almost completely meaningless. It's used in a post hoc fashion as an epithet to brand official enemies, and not used at all to describe those whose actions are identical. Violent, deadly religious fanatics are only branded as such when they aren't members of the Official State Religion, just as in the past when violent, deadly political fanatics were only branded as such when they didn't hove to the Official State Ideology. It's quite simply absurd. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 11:12:06 AM | link INTERNAL SQUABBLES The NYTimes reports a a split within the current administration over how to make America feel good again. The mega-ultra-hawks want to bomb everybody and everything that annoys them NOW!: Some senior administration officials, led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, are pressing for the earliest and broadest military campaign against not only the Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan, but also against other suspected terrorist bases in Iraq and in Lebanon's Bekaa region. These officials are seeking to include Iraq on the target list with the aim of toppling President Saddam Hussein, a step long advocated by conservatives who support Mr. Bush. A number of conservatives circulated a new letter today calling on the president to "make a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power" even if he cannot be linked to the terrorists who struck New York and Washington last week. Recall that the main reason Hussein wasn't killed (besides his talent for avoiding the grim reaper) and, indeed, the reason he was supported by the west for the decade prior to being declared "the modern-day Hitler" by Shrub I, was that he was considered a buffer against the radical Islamic fundamentalist movement in the Middle East ... you know, those guys the administration is saying bombed the WTC and the Pentagon. I'm surprised they haven't mentioned nuking Khaddafy. Perhaps that's just a temporary oversight. Meanwhile, the ultra-hawks want to make some phone calls before they bomb everybody and everything that annoys them: In response to these efforts, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell argued during weekend meetings with Mr. Bush that the administration must take the time to prepare the diplomatic groundwork for American military action, first in Afghanistan, by consulting with allies and building the case to justify American actions under international law. "We can't solve everything in one blow," said an administration official who has sided with Secretary Powell. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 10:45:41 AM | link STOCK TIP An old friend has just sent me a stock tip: If you bought $1,000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49. If you bought $1,000 worth of Budweiser (the beer not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the deposit, you would have $79. My advice is to start drinking heavily. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 10:37:13 AM | link FURTHER PROBLEMS Ahmed Rashid in Lahore (not to worry, he's one of the "good ones" seeing how he's writing for the Daily Torygraph) describes additional problems that must be solved before a land invasion of Afghanistan can be begun. "The US armed forces do not have a single soldier or officer who speaks Pushtu [the principal language of the Taliban]," said a senior Western military official. "They will have to first hire hundreds of Pushtu speakers. That shows how much they lack on the ground for this upcoming battle in Afghanistan." Pushtu, or Pashto, is the language of the Pathans and of the Taliban, who come from southern Afghanistan. Although the US army has people who speak Farsi, or Persian, is also extensively spoken in central and northern Afghanistan, bin Laden is hiding among Pushtu-speaking Afghans. According to authoritative reports, before the current crisis the CIA had no agents on the ground inside Afghanistan, and the State Department has no high level contacts with the anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan. The lack of intelligence stems from Washington's decision effectively to ignore developments in Afghanistan from 1989 after Moscow withdrew its forces. [In other words, the rebels fighting against the Taliban were abandoned as quickly and completely as were the Kurds in Iraq after they served their political purposes, with similar effects.] Its only major intelligence source is satellite imagery, which cannot clearly differentiate between Taliban and Arab fighters nor between fighters and civilians. America is expected therefore to rely on intelligence provided by Afghanistan's neighbours and other allies such as Britain which will take time to collate and evaluate. The key to obtaining intelligence on Taliban and bin Laden troop movements and their whereabouts is the degree to which Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which has been the principal backer of the Taliban, will co-operate with the CIA. Or the U.S. could simply adopt the "kill 'em all and let G*d sort 'em out" policy that was basically adopted in Vietnam when they got impatient trying to distinguish between the good and bad "gooks". The theological complications of just which g*d sorts out which bodies are left to those more qualified in such matters. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 10:28:57 AM | link NO EASY PATH Robert Fisk describes how tricky it would be to invade Afghanistan by land, and in the process describes how it would be not unlike kicking a dog when it's down ... and already dead for a decade. Ground troops may be necessary to seize Osama bin Laden but they will be entering a country containing one tenth of the world's land mines, left by Soviet occupation forces across 80 per cent of the land. Besides, anyone who wants to invade Afghanistan needs friends. The Russians had the communist government of Babrak Karmal. But, with the murder of the only serious opponent of the Taliban, Shah Masood, by Arab suicide bombers nine days ago, the United States hasn't a single friend in that cemetery of foreign armies. So, are the Americans planning a mere attack by cruise missiles? They fired 70 missiles at Osama bin Laden's camps after the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam ­ they knew where they were, of course, because the camps were built by the CIA during the Afghan-Russian war ­ but they did not touch Mr bin Laden. Do they plan to use special parachute units to descend on the areas around Kandahar where Mr bin Laden has been known to live in the past? And what about those mines? If the Americans are even contemplating a ground force, it can enter only from Pakistan ­ the most dangerous main supply route it would be possible to find ­ and up the Kabul Gorge from Jalalabad. But the Russians seeded the perimeters of Jalalabad, Kandahar, Khost and Herat with anti-armour mines. There are, in Afghanistan today, more than 10 million mines. They lie in fields, on mountainsides, beside roads, around the big cities, along irrigation ditches. On average, between 20 and 25 Afghan men, women and children are blown up by mines every day ­ even if we take the lower figure, this indicates 73,000 civilian casualties from these mines in the past 10 years alone. A military incursion would, therefore, need an army of mine clearance specialists as well as soldiers, men who would have to inch their way over the roughest terrain in the world ­ while under attack ­ to make the roads and countryside safe for the Americans and their allies. Of Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 27 are littered with mines. During their savage 10-year occupation, the Russians also planted thousands of mines in "security zones'' around Afghanistan's airports, power stations and government installations. Western non-governmental organisations working in the country two years ago estimated that it would cost £80 per mine to clear Afghanistan's 10 million mines ­ and 45 days to clear merely a square mile of land. There are now two million disabled men, women and children in Afghanistan. No infantry can march across this territory. If a land invasion is indeed in the works, truth sure as hell isn't going to be the only casualty. By the way, it costs about an order of magnitude more to remove a land mine than it does to plant one. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 10:17:54 AM | link CONDI PINCHES ONE OFF Condoleeza Rice, the U.S. National Security Advisor for the rootin' tootin' cowboy president (and affectionately known as Condi to the cognescenti), has been quoted as saying, "America is threatened less by Russia's strength than by its weakness and incoherence." This was the sort of paralogical babbling being used by the current bloodthirsty administration to justify developing and testing new nuclear devices even before the WTC/Pentagon attacks gave them carte blanche to develop and probably even deploy as many nukes as they want. Sanely pondering that statement for even a brief moment reveals its utter absurdity. For decades the supposed unified strength and nuclear arsenal of the Soviet Union made them supremely dangerous, but now somehow the weakness and disunity of the former Soviet Union makes it even more dangerous. If that part of the world utterly vanished from the face of the Earth, to be replaced by an expanse of ocean, one can imagine the clinically insane seriously stating that, "America is threatened less by Russia's absence than by the supremely powerful space aliens that made it disappear." Rice's inane babble was the sort of statement utterly unchallenged by the docile sheep of the Fourth Estate before the bombings. One can't imagine any sort of idiocy they won't swallow now that they're lubing up with Vaseline and putting their ankles behind their ears. P.S. Yes, we know we're pointing four fingers back at ourself. Truth is, after all, the first casualty. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 09:39:11 AM | link LEISURETOWN UPDATE Tristan Farnon has updated Leisuretown, although the new material is a quickie about recent events (at the bottom of the given page). He promises a new framework called the Leisure Town Activity Book in October, though. posted by Steven Baum 9/20/2001 09:19:45 AM | link Wednesday, September 19, 2001 OTHER SUSPECTS Jane's reports that Osama bin Laden may not be the mastermind behind the bombings: Israel's military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world?s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden. The two men have not been seen for some time. Mughniyeh is probably the world?s most wanted outlaw. Unconfirmed reports in Beirut say he has undergone plastic surgery and is unrecognisable. Zawahiri is thought to be based in Egypt. He could be Bin Laden's chief representative outside Afghanistan. The Iraqis, who for several years paid smaller groups to do their dirty work, were quick to discover the advantages of Al-Qaeda. The Israeli sources claim that for the past two years Iraqi intelligence officers were shuttling between Baghdad and Afghanistan, meeting with Ayman Al Zawahiri. According to the sources, one of the Iraqi intelligence officers, Salah Suleiman, was captured last October by the Pakistanis near the border with Afghanistan. The Iraqis are also reported to have established strong ties with Imad Mughniyeh. ... "Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mughniyeh," says an Israeli who knows Mughniyeh . "The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation." ... It was the assassination of one man in March 1984 that is said to have made Mughniyeh the CIA?s most wanted terrorist. Mughniyeh allegedly kidnapped the head of the CIA station in Beirut, William Buckley. The kidnapping triggered what later became known as "Irangate", when the Americans tried to exchange Buckley (and others) with arms for Iran. However, the attempt ended in a fiasco. By one unconfirmed account, Mughniyeh tortured and killed Buckley with his own hands. A year later, in a combined CIA/Mossad operation, a powerful car bomb went off at the entrance to the house of Hizbullah's spiritual leader, Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Seventy-five people were killed. One of them was his brother. Hunted by the CIA and the Mossad, Mughniyeh hid in Iran. In February 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships attacked the convoy of the then head of Hizbullah, Sheikh Abas Musawi, in South Lebanon. Musawi, his wife and children were killed and the revenge attack followed a month later. According to press reports, Mughniyeh was called back into action and, in a well-planned and devastating attack, his people blew up the Israeli embassy in Argentina. The building was demolished and 92 were killed. Only last year, after a long investigation, did Argentina issue a warrant for Mughniyeh's arrest. The reprisal for the attack in Argentina came in December 1994, when a car bomb went off in a southern Shi'ite suburb of Beirut. Four people were killed. One of them was called Mughniyeh, but to the deep disappointment of those Israelis who planted the bomb it was the wrong one. Mughniyeh's life was saved, but his other brother Fuad was killed. Mughniyeh waited for his opportunity for revenge. If it is indeed Mughniyeh and not bin Laden, will the U.S. go after the former rather than the latter, or is the former's name too hard for Bush to pronounce? Not to mention that all the unsold "Fuck Bin Laden!" and "Kill Bin Laden!" t-shirts, bumperstickers and coffee mugs will have to be written off. posted by Steven Baum 9/19/2001 01:47:11 PM | link BUT IF YOU OUTLAW ENCRYPTION ... Fred's a fountain of information today. He points to a Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker about the decline of the National Security Agency (NSA), a long and detailed history about which can be found in James Bamford's classic The Puzzle Palace. So why the decline? The digital revolution, i.e. The decline of the N.S.A. is widely known in Washington's national-security community. "The dirty little secret is that fibre optics and encryption are kicking Fort Meade in the nuts," a recently retired senior officer in the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations told me. "It's over. Everywhere I went in the Third World, I wanted to have someone named Ahmed, a backhoe driver, on the payroll. And I wanted to know where the fibre-optic cable was hidden. In a crisis, I wanted Ahmed to go and break up the cable, and force them up in the air"-that is, force communications to be broadcast by radio signals. The number of daily satellite-telephone calls in the Arab world, many of which are encrypted, is in the millions, creating severe difficulties for eavesdroppers. The mobile-telephone system used by Saddam Hussein at the height of Iraq's dispute last year with a United Nations arms-control inspection team operated on more than nine hundred channels. Each channel was separately encrypted, with multiple keys, and Saddam's conversations bounced from channel to channel with each call. A U.N. intelligence team eventually gained access to the telephone system's technical manuals and other data, and was able to record the encrypted conversations, but without these materials it could not have made sense of the intercepts. The code-makers are leaving the code-breakers far behind. And what's the NSA's short-term solution to the encryption dilemma? Get the CIA to engage in more human intervention (i.e. "humint"). If you can't break the encryption, then steal the codes. But the CIA begs to disagree: Unfortunately, several C.I.A. officers I spoke with found the proposal too ambitious. One retired case officer told me that while he was on a clandestine assignment years ago in the Third World, "I was designated to get a certain black box. I worked on it for three and a half years, and I got nowhere. If I had worked on it for ten years, and with a true stroke of luck, I might have gotten within ten feet of it." Another retired operations officer, similarly skeptical of the C.I.A.'s chances of obtaining cryptological intelligence, told me that sometimes the clandestine operatives in the field have to report back, "This is too hard." According to encryption expert Whitfield Diffie, they may just all be crying wolf: When I brought up the N.S.A.'s problems with new technology, he replied, "What bothers me is that you are saying what the agency wants us to believe-they used to be great, but these days they have trouble reading the newspaper, the Internet is too complicated for them, there is so much traffic and they can't find what they want. It may be true, but it is what they have been 'saying' for years. It's convenient for N.S.A. to have its targets believe it is in trouble." And the spook world goes round and round and round ... posted by Steven Baum 9/19/2001 01:30:05 PM | link MOSSAD WARNING Fred's pointed out a story in the Jerusalem Post about the Mossad (the Israeli spooks) attempting to warn the American spooks about an imminent attack. Mossad officials traveled to Washington last month to warn the CIA and the FBI that a cell of up to 200 terrorists was planning a major operation, according to a report in the Sunday Telegraph here yesterday. The paper said the Israeli officials specifically warned their counterparts in Washington that "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent." They offered no specific information about targets, but they did link the plot to Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden, and they told the Americans there were "strong grounds" for suspecting Iraqi involvement. A US administration official told the paper that it was "quite credible" that the CIA did not heed the Mossad warning: "It has a history of being over-cautious about Israeli information." But the official noted that "if this is true, then the refusal to take it seriously will mean heads will roll." He also provides another link to a story about how the German spooks picked up information three months ago about planned upcoming hijackings. The information was obtained using the Echelon system, i.e. the controversial electronic information gathering system. While I realize there are good reasons to be suspicious of Israeli intelligence - e.g. the spies of theirs we've caught, etc. - disregarding warnings with consequences of this magnitude seems more than stupid. Now why again was it we should increase the $30 billion CIA budget? Fred also provided a link to a Washington Post item about more than 50 countries losing people in the WTC, wherein Israel is listed as having reported 113 missing. posted by Steven Baum 9/19/2001 10:49:23 AM | link POLITICAL MACHINATIONS An column by Andy Clarno at CounterPunch provides a glimpse at the internal maneuverings between the U.S. and Israel, the former attempting to persuade Arab states to join a coalition to battle terrorism, and the latter insisting on actions that would alienate those states. All of this must be seen in the context of a heated phone conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon on Friday. Sharon demanded that the Palestinian Authority and Syria be officially and publicly excluded from the American-led coalition to fight terrorism. He stated that these two governments support and harbor terrorists. Instead of being encouraged to join the coalition, he said, they should be branded as enemies and destroyed by the coalition. But Bush faces a dilemma: he desperately wants the Arab states to join his coalition, but they have agreed to do so only if the coalition focuses on Bin Laden and not on the Palestinians. Israel, on the other hand, wants to included the Palestinian Authority, along with Syria and Iraq, on the list of states that sponsor and harbor terrorism. A terror attack by a Palestinian faction right now would effectively seal the link. It would provide Israel with exactly the opportunity it is looking for to argue before the world that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist state. The Palestinian resistance would be deemed terrorists by the world and could be openly crushed by the Israelis, with the assistance of the U.S.-led coalition. This is exactly what Sharon is pushing for right now with his assault on the West Bank and Gaza. He is attempting once again to provoke a response from Palestinians - a response that will give him an opportunity to convince the world to help him crush the Palestinians once and for all. Clarno mentions a candlelight vigil held on Friday night by Palestinians in Jerusalem for the victims of the attacks in the U.S. It received no press coverage from CNN, which prefers to repeat a single clip of some people celebrating in the streets of Nablus. So what actions are being taken by Sharon to calm things down in these incindiary times? Israeli forces have besieged almost every Palestinian city over the last week. On Tuesday, the very same day as the attack on the United States, 15 Israeli tanks, along with attack helicopters and ground troops, rolled into the Palestinian city of Jenin. Its been nearly a week and they are still there. On Wednesday, 22 tanks with ground and air support besieged Jericho. Nablus remains surrounded and under fire. On Saturday, Israeli tanks, helicopters, and boats launched missiles on Nuseirat, Gaza City, Beit Hanoun, Rafah, and the beach - all in the Gaza Strip. On Saturday night, tanks pounded Beit Sahour, killing an ambulance driver. Ramallah has been invaded on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights - with the siege expected to continue. As of 4:00 PM on September 17, 26 Palestinians have been killed by occupation forces since the attacks on the United States. The siege shows no sign of letting up as long as the attention of the world is directed elsewhere. One might almost think that Sharon is attempting to provoke something. posted by Steven Baum 9/19/2001 10:21:43 AM | link Tuesday, September 18, 2001 TALEBAN ATTACK ALREADY PLANNED? A BBC Report (via Ampol) states that the U.S. was planning military action against Osama bin Laden and the Taleban before last week's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The planned operation would have been launched from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with 17,000 Russian troops on standby. It also states that this pre-existing plan would now be implemented in two or three weeks. posted by Steven Baum 9/18/2001 04:42:09 PM | link A POTENTIALLY EXPLOSIVE REVELATION Another item from the Progressive Review that, if true, wouldn't exactly shine a favorable light on Israel. With the announcement of the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, the international media, particularly the Israeli one, hurried to take advantage of the incident and started mourning 4,000 Israelis who work at the two towers. Then suddenly, no one ever mentioned anything about those Israelis and later it became clear that they remarkably did not show up in their jobs the day the incident took place. No one talked about any Israeli being killed or wounded in the attacks. Arab diplomatic sources revealed to the Jordanian al-Watan newspaper that those Israelis remained absent that day based on hints from the Israeli General security apparatus, the Shabak, the fact which evoked unannounced suspicions on American officials who wanted to know how the Israeli government learned about the incident before it occurred, and the reasons why it refrained from informing the U.S. authorities of the information it had. Suspicions had increased further after Israeli newspaper Yadiot Ahranot revealed that the Shabak prevented Israeli premier Ariel Sharon from traveling to New York and particularly to the city's eastern coast to participate in a festival organized by the Zionist organizations. posted by Steven Baum 9/18/2001 04:35:04 PM | link SUCCESS AFTER SUCCESS Frances Saunders (via the Progressive Review) on the astounding success record of the $30 billion per year CIA that now demands more money. How come it is that the reactionary mantra "throwing money at a problem won't solve it" apparently only applies to education and feeding and sheltering the poor? But what intelligence has this uber campus produced over the years? In June 1950, communist forces from the North invaded South Korea. The CIA failed to acquire any advance notice of this aggression. More recently, it failed to warn of the hijacking and destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, or the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Perhaps it has been too busy installing a succession of repressive military regimes led by neo-Nazis (Greece, 1949), ultra-right monarchists (Iran, 1953), death-squad dictators (Guatemala, 1954), and pro-Falangists (Lebanon, 1959), while also substantially aiding such regimes as the government of South Africa (recent disclosures prove that it was the CIA that first turned Nelson Mandela over to the police force in South Africa for incarceration). Additionally, and in breach of its own charter which forbids activity on domestic soil, it spied on and harassed tens of thousands of American citizens. Bruised by successive exposes of its spectacular failures, and disorientated by the end of the cold war it was initially created to fight - and whose denouement it also failed to predict - the CIA has struggled to maintain its credibility and budget with Congress. "Like Dorothy Parker and the things she said, the CIA gets credit or blame both for what it does and for many things it has not even thought of doing," a CIA officer once complained. For what it failed to think of, heads will now certainly roll at the highest levels of America's incompetent intelligence establishment (and this includes the CIA's jealous older sibling, the FBI). But it would be a mistake to believe that the future of America's intelligence services now lies buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center. After the recriminations, the CIA's bona fides will be enhanced, rather than diminished, by this event. It's possible to imagine the private optimism of many of its embattled officials: for if ever there was a case for renewed political and financial investment in this institution, it will find vigorous advocacy now. posted by Steven Baum 9/18/2001 04:21:56 PM | link FOLLOWING THE MONEY From an article in Scotland on Sunday (via Progressive Review): ONE of Britain's biggest banks has been named as holding money belonging to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi dissident blamed for last week's terrorist attack. Barclays is among a string of international banks said to have handled funds belonging to Al Qaeda, bin Laden's shadowy terrorist group, which has been accused of attacks against US citizens over the past decade. The link to a London bank account, and other British connections to Al Qaeda, was uncovered by a Scotland on Sunday investigation into the global business empire - reaching more than 50 countries - which funds bin Laden's terrorist activities. It has also emerged the paymaster is using a transnational network of up to 80 "front?"companies in shipping, financial services, real estate, agriculture and investment banking to conceal his terrorist activities. These firms, which are largely run by trusted aides of bin Laden, are used to build on the terror chief's estimated $300m personal fortune and to launder drugs money from Afghanistan, where he is a major player in the opium trade. Our investigation also uncovered links between Al Qaeda and the Russian mafia. The mafia bought weapons for bin Laden in the Ukraine and secretly shipped them into the Gulf and the Horn of Africa. US officials believe the Russians are laundering Al Qaeda funds in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. It has also emerged that money gifted to relief charities has been syphoned off to the organisation and that wealthy Saudis have paid him protection money. posted by Steven Baum 9/18/2001 04:13:45 PM | link WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE? David Friedrichs offers one of the most intelligent and rational answers I've seen to this question. The first step, and it may already be too late for us this time, is to make a declaration of this nation's intent in clear and specific terms. Before America became involved in WWII, Roosevelt help craft the Atlantic Charter, which among other things guaranteed the right of self determination and called for the end of "fear and want". This would be a good start. Add to that a declaration that all support for any terrorist organization or those with terrorist elements would end and you'd really have something for other nations to get behind. However, we, the United States of America, would have to be good to our word. All of the taverns in Boston that have mayo jars for IRA donations sitting on their bars have to go. All private support for the PLO must go. Support for Israel must end. Our own homegrown terrorists must be hunted down and eliminated. Our house must be clean or we can not expect others to follow us. We must show that we have zero tolerance for hate. If we did this, others would follow. Second, we need to establish strong economic ties with those who sign onto this "new Atlantic Charter". Economic stability is the first key to insuring a population that is content. This could start with debt forgiveness or expand to a "Marshal Plan" for the world. This single act of generosity will pay huge dividends in the long run. Third, if we must take direct action in another person's nation, we must respect the people who live in the combat zone. Their personal safety and the safety of their families must be guaranteed. These people must know that their rights will be respected - especially their religious beliefs. Our soldiers must respect their customs, respect their women, respect them as humans. They must be assured that there is nothing to fear from our military. They must be assured that we operate with the consent of their legal government and we are not there to take over and prop up some puppet government we control. We must show that justice and truth are more than words. From this all else flows naturally. Finally, we need to unleash our assassins. There is no nice way to say it. If terrorist organizers and bands can not be brought before the bar of justice, they must be killed. This can only be done with oversight by our political leadership, with guidance from the judiciary, but if we are serious about combating terrorists, it must be done. Bombs and cruise missiles are simply too crude a weapon for this type of warfare. This is dirty war, it is messy war, but, when a nation will not participate in the community of the world, it becomes a necessary war. Given that the phrase "and the nations that harbor them" is a euphemism for "any amount of 'collateral damage' is acceptable this time as long as we can feel good about ourselves again", the above probably ain't gonna happen. posted by Steven Baum 9/18/2001 04:02:45 PM | link TRIVIALIZING OURSELVES TO DEATH James Higdon offers some perspicacious commentary about the Fourth Estate: But perhaps the biggest failure of the Fourth Estate was their failure in the months prior to this outrageous attack. As Arianna Huffington so rightfully criticized in her commentary about the press in the months since George W. Bush has moved into the White House, the press has focused on nothing but the trivial. While former senators Hart and Rudman had completed their report on securing our boarders against terrorism, and were desperately attempting to get congress and the White House to act, the press focused on whether or not Clinton sold a pardon to Rich (he didn't), whether his administration had trashed the White House on their way out (they hadn't), whether Condit was guilty of murdering Chandra Levy (he was never a suspect), and what should be done about shark attacks off the Florida coast (there were no more than usual). I've read the Hart/Rudman report over the last week. I didn't even know of its existence prior to Huffington's commentary. It is/was a careful analysis of our susceptibility to an attack such as this one. Indeed, the report came so close to predicting this attack that it couldn't have been closer without picking the date and the number of aircraft. It offered a three tiered list of recommendations, including a system for intelligence that was respectful of civil liberties, added security for airports and government buildings, and an independent agency designed to gather intelligence from all national and cooperating international intelligence agencies to watch the movement of terrorist groups. It even offered a system of redress for foreign peoples, offended by US government actions that would have stripped terrorists of the rational for such drastic measures. The bipartisan commission that wrote this report had been working on it for two years prior to Bush entering the White House, and it was completed on January 31, 2001. By April, congress was almost ready to act on this report when Bush notified congress that he was disregarding it. His rational was that he wanted Dick Cheney to form his own commission to study the issue, and while Bush was busy selling an ill advised tax give back to the richest Americans, the issue was completely ignored. After th