Year: 2007

USAF Power Grab

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What’s going on here is simple

USAF Says It Would Save 10% As UAS Executive Agent(Subscription Required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
08/13/2007, page 27

Edited by David Bond

Printed headline: UAS Promises

The U.S. Air Force says it can save as much as 10% of the budding unmanned aerial system budget if it becomes the Pentagon’s executive agent for UASs over the objections of its sister services. Savings would come from common training and sustainment processes as well as shared basing. The service also boasts it can save $400-600 million by consolidating its Predator program with the Army’s Warrior, an upgraded Predator. The Army has been furious over this plan, and the Navy and Marine Corps have expressed reservations. ….

What’s going on here is simple. The Air Force is trying a power grab.

If the future of air combat is drones, and it looks increasingly so, you will have unmanned aircraft that will take off and land on their own (the Air Force is behind the other services on this, probably because once you get that automated, you really don’t need a pilot).

The Air Force sees a future where UAVs are by the same sort of soldiers that perform as artillery spotters, i.e. reasonably well trained enlisted men, and they see irrelevance in their future.

This is their attempt to stay on top of these programs, and to keep officers operating UAVs, whether they really need to or not.

What the Content Industry Wants

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Lovely…Some people bought videos through Google, and nowthey’ve been told that that their videos will be taken away.

This is what the RIAA and MPAA want. They want you to buy stuff, and then they want to keep making you buy it again, and again, and a again, and again.

Patents are already hamstringing innovation in the US, and now it seems that actually buying a video is a thing of the past too.

Hopefully, some lawyer will go medieval on Google’s tuchas.

Expanded Surveillance Will Make Our Infrastructure More Vulnerable to Spying and Attacks

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Here is a very interesting article by Susan Landau.

Her thesis is that the actions taken by the Bush administration and our state security apparatus have the effect of making us more vulnerable to spying and cyberterrorism.

Her very valid point is that the surveillance society envisioned by Bush and His Evil Minions™ will require a back door on every phone switch in the country, and once there, it will be significantly easier for state and non state actors to hack into the switches and listen to our communications.

Krugman on the crash

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Hopfully, Times Select will shortly be free, but I found this from last Friday by Paul Krugman elsewhere:

Very Scary Things

Very Scary Things
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist
The New York Times
August 10, 2007

….

What’s been happening in financial markets over the past few days is something that truly scares monetary economists: liquidity has dried up. That is, markets in stuff that is normally traded all the time — in particular, financial instruments backed by home mortgages — have shut down because there are no buyers.

This could turn out to be nothing more than a brief scare. At worst, however, it could cause a chain reaction of debt defaults.

….

But when liquidity dries up, the normal tools of policy lose much of their effectiveness. Reducing the cost of money doesn’t do much for borrowers if nobody is willing to make loans. Ensuring that banks have plenty of cash doesn’t do much if the cash stays in the banks’ vaults.

….

Let’s hope, then, that this crisis blows over as quickly as that of 1998. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Would someone please get him a Nobel?

Old US Tradition: Leave Your Native Allies to Die

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This is sad, and likely repeated thousands of times. Iraqi interpreters and other people who helped US forces are simply being cut loose to be killed by various militias and insurgents in Iraq.

We did the same thing in Viet Nam, and Republicans in the congress are trying to do the same with Filipino soldiers who fought the Japanese during WWII.

If there is anything that we should do, it is allow these people to come to the United States as refugees.

This is Not Just Mortgages.

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It’s clear that even with the massive infusion of cash last week, people are finding it VERY difficult to borrow money.

Lenders in general are pulling back, and highly leveraged operators are holding paper that no one wants to buy.

If the Fed cuts interest rates, it’s likely to boost the Yen, which cause losses and resulting liquidations of people playing the Yen carry trade.

Over the past 35 years we have moved from a production and investment economy to a consumption and leverage economy, and at some point the music will stop, and it will get very ugly, possibly Argentina crash ugly.

Rats and Ship? Pushed? What’s with Rove?

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Karl Rove has handed in his resignation, effective the end of August.

That’s not a whole bunch of notice, so one wonders what the back story is.

He is suggesting that he wants to spend more time with his family, which is such a cliché that no one with half a brain believes this.

I see three possibilities:

  • He has become a political liability, and was given his walking papers.

I find this very unlikely. The Washington press loves him, and if this were the case, it would have been around the time that Libby was convicted.

  • He left because he had a serious disagreement over some policy of the administration.

Likely, and I believe that this dispute might very well be spelled Alberto Gonzalez. I believe that his continued presence is coming from Bush, and not the people around him.

  • He’s getting out because a whole bunch of sh$@% is about to hit the fan, and he’s trying to avoid jail time.

I hope so. It would have to be big, and shattering…but I think that I want this too much to discuss this in an objective matter.

  • He realizes that this is the best time for him to get a lucrative book deal, and leaving for the last 18 months of the Bush administration will insulate him from a lot of the toxic waste that will follow up.

Most likely alternative.

[on edit]There is also the possibility that he’s leaving to join a presidential campaign.

Brits to US: Sod Off in Afghanistan!!!

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This is interesting, it appears that the British operating in Southern Afghanistan want the US to stop operations in their area.

A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.

ther British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.

An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.

The US military has a culture that is disastrous in a counter-insurgency situation.

There is a general disregard for civilian casualties, and an understanding of these consequences that I believe comes from an unwillingness to ascribe basic human motives to the indigenous population, along with an over-reliance on air-power.

This racism (and what else can you call dehumanizing someone in this way) is disastrous in a counter-insurgency situation, and the British are calling the US on this.

I understand the difficulties of dealing with a situation where the insurgents blend into the population, but if a police force were to, as a matter of policy, shoot hostages, there would be justified outrage.

This is worse than wrong, it’s aiding the enemy.

Does the Onion Have a Source Inside the Bush Administration????

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Seriously…It has to…Because I cannot tell the difference between White House press releases and the Onion.

Bush and his Evil Minions™ have decided to send someone to Iraq to help their legal system.

I guess that they need someone there, “To help fashion the country’s legal system”. Who could it be?

I can’t recall.

What name leaps to mind.

I can’t recall.

Oh, yes, I remember, it’s Alberto “Abu” Gonzzlez.

Seriously, this is too far from reality for The Onion’s writers to have dreamed this up.

Impeach them all now.

Boeing Slips 787 First Flight

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I said that this would happen, and I was right. Boeing has delayed the first flight of the 787.

While I don’t think that it is going to slip as much as the Airbus A380, it won’t come in on time.

The company won’t have its existance threatened, but we will see Wall St. analysts wring their hands on cable TV and a dip in stock price.

It will mean nothing in the long term, but stock brokers don’t make money on buy and hold, they make it on churn and burn.

Another Moronic IP Initiative.

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So now the blithering idiots who think that copyright is property want to apply copyright to designer fashion.

Let’s get this straight: It’s for the useful arts and sciences. Says so in the constitution.

What’s more, there is plenty of fashion (most of it sucky) being made out there. There is no need to encourage production of more tacky handbags.

IP is about encouraging production of beneficial things, inventions, arts, etc. It’s not about allowing people to print their own money so that they can make bigger campaign donations to you, senator butthead Schumer.