From Malaysia, a columnist wonders why the
bombers
picked the Sari Club, which he describes as a dirty, run-down place that discriminated
against locals.
ISSN 1534-0236
Technology and ideology alike are exercises in applied imagination.
From Malaysia, a columnist wonders why the
bombers
picked the Sari Club, which he describes as a dirty, run-down place that discriminated
against locals.
He describes Bali as a place that appears to welcome foreigners, while carefully controlling where they wander on their lotus-eating ways, an isolated, safe corner of Indonesia, mostly avoiding politics. He speculates on motives that have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda:
[T]his may not have been the work of a global terrorist network, conspiracy or alliance, but a smaller, meaner act; an act of local vengeance. No doubt tapping the corrosive new resources of the global "War on Terrorism" for the material and gumption for mischief, but basically assailing local grievances.The Bali bombings may be linked to global affairs only in that America's blunderous new war is giving every garden-variety thug, hoodlum, malcontent and troublemaker in the world an excuse to make trouble and blame it on the Americans, the Muslims, the Elders of Zion, Osama Bin Laden, corrupt politicians, capitalism, globalisation, drunken Caucasians in general or the bossa nova, for all they care.
There's a
new form of
West Nile disease: sudden-onset paralysis, usually of one limb.
Muscle weakness is also much commoner in US cases than in Europe
and Africa, leading to speculation about different levels of
resistance, or changes in the virus.
Chaotic
interactions explain why two of Saturn's small moons, Pandora and
Prometheus, are 20° away from their predicted locations, two decades
after they were first discovered.
This
review
of Daniel Ellsberg's new memoir, Secrets includes a good
overview of the Pentagon Papers affair. In passing, the reviewer mentions
that if Nixon had been less paranoid, he could have used the documents--which
were about lies and errors committed by Kennedy and Johnson--politically,
instead of getting into trouble by trying to suppress them.
"Secrets" also offers a scathing critique of the system of secrecy that Ellsberg worked in and eventually challenged. This system came into being in World War II, became entrenched during the Cold War and resisted post-Cold War challenges, even to declassify decades-old documents. It is still alive and doing well in the George W. Bush White House, considered by many the most secretive administration since that of Nixon.[registration required, but they haven't spammed me yet]In Ellsberg's words, it is an "apparatus of secrecy, built on effective procedures, practices and career incentives, that permitted a president to arrive at and execute a secret foreign policy to a degree that went far beyond what even relatively informed outsiders, including journalists and members of Congress, could imagine." Few would deny that some information must be withheld, but Ellsberg insists that classified material far exceeds the essential demands of national security and that it is being used by top officials to cover their mistakes. It is "paternalistic to the point of being undemocratic," he writes; officials keep the press, the public and Congress in the dark and then use that ignorance to ignore them.
The astronomy
picture of the day has a gorgeous
artist's
conception, David Hardy's idea of what might be around Fomalhaut, today.
Quaoar ("kwa-oh-war")
is the largest object found in the Solar System since Pluto. It's out in the
Kuiper Belt, with an almost circular orbit, and will probably be used to
support the arguments that Pluto shouldn't count as a planet. The more
scientifically
interesting question is whether anything formed more than about 7.5 billion
kilometers from the sun: astronomers are searching, but "so far everybody has come up blank".
Ariana Huffington
summarizes the
White House case on Iraq as "we don't need no stinkin' proof".
"You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," said President Bush in the Oval Office last week.Really? He can't differentiate between a group of evil ultra-radical Islamic fundamentalists that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and an evil secular nationalist who, despite the frantic efforts of the Bush administration, has not been directly linked to 9/11? He'd better start making such distinctions -- and fast. When every expert who knows anything about the Mideast can distinguish between the two, is it too much to ask that a president who's ready to go to war look a bit closer?
Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are equally unwilling--or unable--to distinguish between the two, or offer evidence for their claims.
Rumsfeld, who memorably rebuffed a reporter late last week by saying, "That happens to be a piece of intelligence that either we don't have or we don't want to talk about."
World Wide Wounds is a too-cute
name for a serious online technical journal. This isn't first aid: this is articles
on selecting dressings for serious injuries, and "maggot therapy" for burn
patients. (I suspect anyone reading this Weblog who has a real use for
this stuff already knows about it, but sometimes I can't resist.)
Elaine Scarry analyzes the September 11 attacks and sees
inherent flaws
in 50 years of US defense policy:
The difficulty of defense on Sept. 11 turned in large part on the rapid pace of events. But as we look carefully at the timelines and timetables of that day, it is crucial to recall that the word "speed" did not surface for the first time on Sept. 11. It has in fact been at the center of discussions of national defense for the last 50 years....The most frequent argument used to excuse the setting aside of the Constitution is that the pace of modern life and technology simply does not allow time for obtaining the authorization of Congress, let alone the full citizenry. Our ancestors who designed the Constitution - so the argument goes - simply had no picture of the supersonic speed at which the country's defense would need to take place. So the congressional requirement is an anachronism. With planes and weapons traveling faster than sound, what sense does it make to have a lot of sentences we have no time to hear?
One of the many revelations that occurred on Sept. 11 was a revelation about our capacity to act quickly. Speed - the realpolitik that has excused the setting aside of the law for 50 years - turns out not to have been very real at all....
On Sept. 11, the Pentagon could not defend the Pentagon, let alone the rest of the country.
By most measures, the US military had precious little time to respond on Sept. 11. But by the standards of speed that have been used to justify setting aside constitutional guarantees, the US military on Sept. 11 had a luxurious amount of time to protect the Pentagon.
The point isn't that the military should have done better--given the situation and their actual resources, they did well. But all the reasons they couldn't intercept the plane that hit the Pentagon would apply even more so if enemy missiles were launched: no army puts transponders on its missiles to make them easier to shoot down, for example.
A third crucial explanation for the failure to protect the Pentagon is that the US military cannot shoot down a passenger plane by arrogating to itself the right to decide whether the lives on board can be sacrificed to avert the possibility of even more lives being lost on the ground. Yes, that is true - and yet for decades we have spoken about actions that directly imperil the full American citizenry without ever obtaining the American citizenry's consent to those actions.
It's possible we would consent: that, after an open debate (or what passes for one in these spin-laden times), the people of the United States would say that yes, the Air Force should shoot down planes that don't respond if there's even a possible threat. But if this is a democracy, we should hold that debate.
[Thanks to Tony von Krag for this one.]
Galileo data
suggest that
Europa's ocean
may resemble the Arctic Ocean
Europa too seems to have surface-to-ocean connections via cracks, thermal vents, and tidal displacement, according to the Arizona team.Another intriguing possibility is that sulfur emissions from Io are reaching the ocean of Europa.
One problem with overthrowing the Iraqi government is
what to replace
it with: the CIA appears to be looking at an extremely motley
collection of war criminals.
[via Red
Rock Eaters]
There might be
life on
Venus, lurking in the cooler cloud layers. The hints are chemical:
missing carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide in the
same place, not a stable combination.
No. This is not acceptable. This is not the country we want to be. This is not the world we want to make.It's arrogant, it won't work, and it will guarantee us more enemies: Molly Ivins on the Bush doctrine, formerly known as a "Defense Strategy for the 1990s", brought to us by people who not only didn't foresee the fall of the USSR, but didn't believe it after it happened. "The final absurdity is that the plan is supposed to Stop Change. Does no one in the administration read history?"The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.
The
dangerous
hubris of the Bush doctrine.
[via editrix]
Copyright 2002 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page or my online journal.
