Myths and Legends? - In the New York Times, Stephen C. Pelletiere writes

. . . as the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf.

and continues:

headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned.

There's much more. Pelletiere is not by any means saying Saddam is a nice guy. Indeed, he writes:

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

Beyond the question of Halabja, which he seriously problematizes, he speculates intriguingly that Iraq's real treasure is not its oil at all - it's the water.

Analyze That - Earlier this week I wrote about a notorious picture of antisemitic protesters at the Davos Conference in Switzerland. A European reader writes

I think you're partially wrong here.

I don't know if it's the same in the US, but over here in the Netherlands, the golden calf is a symbol of blind greed (the veneration of Mammon and all that) and has nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or Israel (apart from it being a biblical story, of course). As such, it's an obvious symbol for protests against the World Economic Forum (a group of rich bastards blinded by greed etc.).

It's the yellow star "Rumsfeld" is wearing that makes it anti-semitic.

I take my reader's point, though the Golden Calf in conjunction with the yellow star would compound the antisemitism by signifying the canards about money-grubbing, market-manipulating Jewish financiers.

On reviewing the picture, however, it's at least possible that the masked marchers are a separate group from whoever is carrying the Golden Calf. The angle makes it hard to tell, and the Calf is big. That would tend to make the "Calvers" lesser assholes. (Nothing can exculpate the Yellow Star pair.) Against this possibility must be set some visual evidence: a figure to the rear of the Calf carries a wooden club that looks similar to the club "Sharon" carries. That suggests that it's all one big group, no?

Finally, there's an outside chance that "Rumsfeld" is just a moron, and imagines that the yellow star somehow indicts Rumsfeld for antisemitism rather than participating in it. You'd have to be really clueless about symbols and pretty muddleheaded as a thinker, but we are talking about anti-globos. Verdict: Guilty until the guy appears on my door with a plausible account of how I completely misinterpreted his art.

Department of Fabulous Writing - With penetration, care and moral seriousness, Colby Cosh responds to Michael Fumento's New Republic article attempting to debunk ADHD skepticism. I suspect that when most people think of Colby Cosh they think "Funny!" (or "Curling?!?!?!?!") but this essay demonstrates how much more there is to him as a writer and thinker.

TalkLeft on the Richard Reid conviction:

The lesson is this: Our federal courts and our criminal justice system are well equipped to handle terror cases. There is no need to keep the suspects in military custody, cut off from lawyers --or to try them in secret military tribunals. Reid pleaded guilty to all counts and received no promises of leniency or other sentence concessions. Reid had excellent appointed counsel and a U.S. District Court Judge presiding over his case. The proceedings were open to the media and public. Important court filings by both the Prosecution and the Defense were available on the Internet. The Government got the conviction and the life sentence it sought.

Our criminal justice system and federal courts have succeeded in trying and convicting numerous terrorists. Yet the Justice Department is seriously considering dropping its federal case against Zacarias Moussaoui in favor of a military tribunal proceeding. It's not necessary and it's not right. We can't trust in the integrity of a secret proceeding conducted by the military. If we can't trust in the integrity of the proceeding, we can't trust the end result.

Meanwhile, bucking for the 2003 Unqualified Successes award for Best Non-Libertarian in a Libertarian Role, Aziz Poonawalla attempts to drive a stake through the heart of the "SUVs cause terrorism" myth. (Psst!Aziz! check out this Radley Balko analysis!

It Ain't Over - AP reports that "A powerful bomb destroyed a bridge outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Friday, killing 18 people on a bus, a deputy police chief said.

[Deputy police chief] Jan said he believed Afghan soldiers were the target of the explosion, which went off barely half a mile from an Afghan army post. Soldiers from that unit are loyal to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai and routinely patrol the area, he said.

The classic guerilla strategy would be to keep pricking at the US's local allies like this until the US has to expose more of its own forces.

A brief account of more rumors of war in Afghanistan can be found on the Hi Pakistan site.

This curious Australian Broadcasting audio report bears the headline "Al Qaeda dropped dirty bomb in Afghanistan: UK intelligence." Well I wondered what they dropped it from in an environment of allied air supremacy, so I listened to the Windows Media audio. Lots of talk about Al Qaeda constructing a dirty bomb from materials supplied by the Taliban in 1999, but nothing about using one.

That this weapon hasn't been recovered lengthens the Things Undone list from when the War on Terror became the War on Saddam Hussein.

Note: the audio report says that MI6's documentation of the Al Qaeda dirty bomb tends to strengthen the Bush Administration's argument that leaving Saddam in power increases the risks of him giving terrorists Bad Things. Given that the report details Al Qaeda getting Bad Things from somewhere else entirely, it seems rather to substantiate the argument that Iraq is the least of our problems, terror weapon-wise.

We Get Letters and sometimes we get them damned fast. Bruce Baugh writes:

Dude, the first 10 issues of Zot! were published in color. I assure of this, as I have some of them. It was after the hiatus that followed that he switched to black and white.

My considered response to Bruce's claim: Oh!

Um, forget what I said earlier. Makes it pretty clear I picked up on Zot! after that hiatus . . .

Christopher Tong writes:

Just so you know, most hydrocarbon powered vehicles (y'know, those that run on diesel and gas) already spew loads of steam into the air.

Furthermore, fuel cell vehicles (which is what I assume you are referring to when you are referring to hydrogen-powered vehicles) don't burn hydrogen... the reaction is rather more controlled than that (http://www.ballard.com has some good info on this stuff). Essentially, energy from a reaction is used to charge a battery which in turn drives a DC motor. The byproduct is water, not steam. I'd be more concerned with ice on the road than steamy cities.

Joining the Collective - Like all the other libertarian bloggers, I'm going to link David Boaz's essay on how to be "pro-choice" for real - because it just rocks.

Speaking of other libertarian bloggers, Julian Sanchez has great analysis of the Presiden't State of the Union address and Jesse Walker has a concise "Neoconservatism for Dummies" overview. And that's all I'm saying about that.

Wilderness of Well-Connected Oil Barons - Patrick Nielsen Hayden says he would like an excuse to be less paranoid. He doesn't have one.

Your Cheap Imperialism Metaphor of the Day Item from the USA Today: "U.S. Coast Guard sending forces to the Gulf." The US coasts themselves are staying put.

Little Miss Understanding - Mrs. Offering called me at work today to find out if it was me who had purchased "Hardcore Movies" via Paypal ($5 - such a deal!) or if someone had hacked my account. (My password is - doh!)

Questioned, she allowed that what it actually said was "Hardcore Mo," then the field cut off. Turns out she was looking at my purchase record for a gaming supplement, Charnel Gods, from Scott Knipe's Gilded Moose Games. Scott, who would probably get my vote for the most innovative roleplaying game designer alive, is given to using Hardcore Moose as an e-mail address/account name. Why? I can only assume he likes to get men in trouble with their wives.

This is your "The problem with bloggers is that they don't have editors" post for the week.

We Get Letters but sometimes we protect the letter-writers by not bringing names into it:

Jim --

>From your quote of Independent --

"...when 1,500 American troops spent eight days trying to winkle out hundreds of Taliban ..."

To winkle them out? How does one winkle? Are we about to winkle Iraq? Is it fun? Can we play with our winkle?

Best,

********

ps -- wait found this:

"WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- A small number of U.S. troops have been inserted in northern Iraq, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed Wednesday."

Does winkling then require insertion? Or can you winkle all by yourself without any inserting?

"We have tracked down al-Qaeda around the world, round up 3000 terrorists, and the rest shall soon be winkled."

I just figured it was a cricket term or something.

It Ain't the Heat . . . - A question I don't know the answer to but would like to:

Say we had hydrogen-powered cars. Spewing steam out of their tailpipes. In a major metro area. At rush hour. In high summer.

What would this mean for local humidity? An insignificant effect? Significant? Sounds like a job for a physics blogger. Or a meteorology blogger? Is there one?

A Fanboy's Notes: Bloggage - Rock Scissors Blog, the group blog featuring Bruce Baugh and other gaming pros, has some interesting stuff on it already, like "Moulin Rouge, Anti-Naturalism, Puppetland and Victoriana." I wish they hadn't picked one of the ugliest available blogger.com templates (an undeservedly popular one at that). And I wish they edited their template so that author names appear at the beginning of the post rather than the end. We did this for Stand Down and I think it's the way to go for multi-author blogs generally. (Samizdata and Asymmetrical Information do it that way too.)

Via the Comics Journal's Journalista blog, I discovered Fetus-X, a culture and pop culture blog by Erik Millikin and Casey Sorrow. They are not into item-specific anchors, but there's a good account of the grotesque Independent cartoon that the Israeli Embassy in London protested posted at 6:17PM on January 29. As I type this it's the top item, but presumably that will change. Also this:

HUTCHINSON [Kansas] -- A 102-year-old Hutchinson High School chant made up of apparent nonsense words was yanked after the school board deemed it potentially offensive.

That's right, students can no longer use "potentially offensive" nonsense words?!

From other items, it looks like Millikin and Sorrow are, well, liberals, but it takes all kinds.

From Fetus-X I discover that Scott McCloud has a blog. McCloud is best known for his books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, but I cherish him for Zot!, a black-and-white comic he wrote and drew in the early 1980s about a twelve-year-old girl (the real hero of the book, though her quasi-boyfriend from an alternate universe, Zot, got to be the title character).

There was one particular splash page at the beginning of one issue that was a work of sheer genius: Jenny is repining in the shallows of a pond, knees and shoulders sticking out of the water, high summer. On the surface of the pond, a reflection of Zot, in the middle of a jacknife dive, boyish, carefree. My description will not capture the delicacy of the composition and may even mislead those who haven't seen the picture: the reflection of Zot on the surface of the water appears between Jenny's legs. What makes this perfect is that the ongoing subtext of the entire series to that point has been the undercurrent of naive romance between two budding adolescents and a sexual tension that does not even recognize itself.

McCloud doesn't believe in item anchors either. (What is it with these comics bloggers?) But at least I learned that there's an online version of Zot! It's in color, but at least it's meant to be in color. (The original book was black and white and drawn to be black and white. The fact that there is a colorized reprint collection of the first ten issues just shows how far the standards of civilization have fallen.)

Finally, Neilalien says "A problem with UO's criticism [of the Bast miniseries] is that it only has legs if you're assuming the Vertigo label really means Adult, or Good.

Administrivia - Hopefully DNS has finally propagated to the lands of all loyal readers. I was still getting the old UO at work as recently as lunchtime yesterday and I got e-mails from a couple of people having similar problems.

One downside of the move is that the stat reports are not so useful. Particularly I haven't found any way to filter my referral list down to the daily level. All I have is an ever-lengthening monthly list. That makes it hard to spot new referers, which means if you have a blog and bust my chops or say nice things about me I may miss the fact. Apologies in advance.

Meanwhile, Back in the JungleMountains - More action in Afghanistan, per the Independent:

American officials told reporters that the fighting in hills near the Pakistan border was their biggest engagement with armed opponents since "Operation Anaconda", when 1,500 American troops spent eight days trying to winkle out hundreds of Taliban and al-Qa'ida fighters from mountain caves in eastern Afghanistan.

The battle yesterday saw the American forces call in B-1 bombers, AC-130 gunships, F-16s and Apache helicopters in an attempt to crush a large band of fighters, who American intelligence analysts believe are loyal to the former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – a man who fought in the American-backed mujahedin against the occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s.

Hekmatyar, a nasty piece of work, was not part of the Taliban but is now thought to be allying with them:

There have been reports from United Nations officials that al-Qa'ida and Taliban fighters have set up mobile military training units near the Pakistan border. Other reports suggest that Hekmatyar is organising suicide squads. Matters are further complicated by the depth of anti-American and pro-Taliban sentiment across the border in Pakistan – including within the Pakistani security forces with whom the US is supposed to be jointly waging the "war on terror".

We should probably flood the area with our best troops and - oh.

The Warblogger Drinking Game - This one you can play alone. After your spouse leaves you, you'll have no choice. Rules are simple:

1. Every time a hawkish blogger uses a variant on the word "appeasement," drink.

2. There is no rule number two.

If you don't drink, try

Warblogger Mad Libs - In every article referring to "appeasement," the allies, and Hitler, substitute "Austria-Hungary" for the allies and "Serbia" for Hitler. Change "WWII" to "WWI." Laugh till the pee warms your calves.

War: What It's Not Good For - I've had a nice, questioning e-mail from Godless Capitalist of Gene Expression in my in-box since November. It seemed like a good excuse for reviewing my reasons for opposing the military conquest of Iraq. So I wrote a long "back to first principles" piece and posted it to Stand Down, where I invite you to read it.

Modest Proposal - Gene Healy has a suggestion for the hawks:

I understand people who argue for war with Iraq because they want to (1) liberate Iraqis; and/or (2) help Israel; and/or (3) spread democracy. I think those are illegitimate reasons in a constitutional republic whose governing document speaks of the "common defence" of the United States, and not the general good of the world at large. More important, I think they're damned frivolous reasons for killing American soldiers, innocent Iraqi civilians, and, for that matter, Iraqi conscripts. But I understand the arguments: if these Wilsonian goals are worthwhile to you, invading Iraq is something you might want to do.

But I'm having an increasingly hard time understanding why any rational person would argue that invading Iraq is something we need to do in order to protect the lives, liberty, and property of Americans (you know, the legitimate goals of American foreign policy). Invading Iraq will, in all likelihood, increase our vulnerability to attack . . .

So here's a suggestion for the folks on the other side of this debate. Drop the national security rationale--it won't wash . . . Instead, make your case for war based on goals 1 through 3, above. And argue that the increased risk to Americans--soldiers and civilians--is worth it.

There's more, including a link to an interview with war skeptic Norman Schwarzkopf.

Still the Same Old Story - Right-Wing Voter Effect wins again:

The projections gave Sharon a much greater victory than had been predicted in recent opinion polls, which had foreseen a Likud showing of some 31 seats. With 56 percent of the vote counted, the Likud was on 38 seats, Labor on 20, Shinui on 15, and Shas had 10 seats. Final results are expected at 6 A.M.

Always, always take final pre-election polls and give the "conservative" party a 5-8% boost anywhere on the planet. You'll go wrong only rarely. (USA2000 being the glaring contrapositive.) As I've noted before, it's a conservative world.

Aside: Israeli elections seem more fun than ours somehow. I can't argue that they produce better results though.

More from Ha'aretz:

In the past, right wing governments were stable and have led to dramatic diplomatic moves, Shalom said, pointing to the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian Camp David accords, in which the Likud's Begin signed the nation's first peace treaty with an Arab nation, and Shamir's participation in the landmark 1991 Arab-Israeli talks in Madrid. "Together with the Americans, who are working for change within the Palestinian Authority, we can reach that possibility of peace."

Of course, this is what I told Mrs. Offering when Sharon was elected the first time. However, there is another iron law about to come into play: Whenever the US does something it thinks will tend to piss off the Arab world, it immediately thereafter tilts against Israel at least tactically. That's a big reason those 1991 talks took place at all - the US needed to show "progress" on the Arab-Israeli front after Gulf War Phase I.

So bet on something happening. Just don't bet on its lasting significance. (The 1991 talks accomplished little. The real action was out of sight of everyone, even the United States, in Oslo. And even there . . . )

Hashemite Restoration? - Ha'aretz has a somewhat confusing report about possible Jordanian rule of Iraq on a "temporary" basis. The article reads a little like it went through the Babelfish Hebrew-to-English module - in particular, I'm having trouble quite following this sequence:

According to the estimates of sources in Davos involved in preparations for the war in Iraq, the realistic scenario is that commanders of Iraqi forces will surrender shortly after the U.S.-led attack begins and will come to American military headquarters waving white flags.

The American government will select from among those commanders the leaders of the interim Iraqi government that will rule the country until a more permanent arrangement is found, the sources added.

After an interim period of 2-3 years, they said, if the temporary regime in Iraq asks from the Jordanian monarchy to extend its auspices over Iraq, King Abdallah would likely consider the request favorably. But Jordanian officials examining U.S. overtures on the matter made clear that Abdallah would need to carefully consider the repercussions such a move would have on Jordan's stability.

The sequence seems to be

1. Surrender.
2. Military rule by Iraqis who surrender.
3. Rule by King Abdallah after an Iraqi request.

And yet the article begins

DAVOS, Switzerland - Jordanian King Abdallah would favorably consider an American request to extend the auspices of the monarchy over Iraq for a temporary period after the expected U.S.-led attack on Saddam Hussein's regime, if the Americans ask, according to senior political sources participating in the World Ecnomic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The article lede indicates an immediate governing role for Abdallah for a period of time. The sequence suggested by the meat of the article is eventual Jordanian rule with no cutoff mentioned.

What does it all mean? The death of newsblogging, basically. For at least a period of time there will be next to no point in linking to "breaking news" because so much of it will be contradictory and disinformative by intent. If I had to guess, the entire Ha'aretz article might come out of "Offeringfish" as:

DAVOS, Switzerland - Jordanian King Abdallah would love to control Iraq's oil wealth, Jordan proper being short of the stuff. He suggested that previous dire warnings from his government about the undesirability of war with Iraq should be considered entirely provisional.

That's based on a reading of the article that suggests that this interregnum idea comes from the Jordanian monarchy rather than the US. It's all "if the Americans ask" with no suggestion that the Americans have asked.

(Link via antiwar.com.)

Oaf Deutsch! Okay, cheap pun. But an old pal of mine, Gregor "Pedro" Gross, has started a blog called "So It Goes." It's in German, and if you'd ever read Pedro's english you'd know why. The blog is largely about . . . stuff in German. German makes me nervous, ever since I searched far and wide to find someone to translate a passage from a scholarly monograph that dealt with one of my poems only to learn - what the author thought of my poem. But if you read German, this recovering Ostlander's blog might be just the thing for you.

UPDATE: Finally fixed the link. Must have been some kind of brain spazz.

More Shock! More Awe! - Your Talking Dog e-mails:

I must say I am in shock and awe at the "operation" by that name. I can only suggest that since Operation "Infinite Justice" was deemed too offensive to the God-fearing Taliban and Al-Qaeda members whom we were bombing the crap out of in Afghanistan, perhaps we can recycle the name for the more worldly and secular Iraqis. Let's face it: "Infinite Justice" is a much cooler name than "Enduring Freedom" or "Shock and Awe" (which will of course generate neither, except possibly that of Christine Amanpour) . . . One must never isunderestimate the Bush Administration and the black and white noise it generates. The Administration's psy-ops people are top-notch. I don't know how they've made Saddam Hussein feel, but they've managed to scare the bejeezus out of me.

Well, God help us all.

Gary Farber weighs in on the relative scale of WWII-era terror bombings compared to present plans.

Dept. of You May Not Be Interested in War, But War is Interested in You - I've become an unwitting pawn in a titanic struggle between Dirk Deppey and Franklin Harris.

Don't Lie Back and Enjoy It - Welcome evidence that the Bush Administration is giving some serious thought to the coming Bioterror Age. Per the London Times

"There is going to be an attack. Whether it is in western Europe, the US, Africa, Asia or wherever, you have got to anticipate that there is going to be a bioterrorism attack and the only way to defend yourself is by getting prepared," said Tommy Thompson, health secretary.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said the wave of arrests in Britain, France, Spain and Italy, and the uncovering of terrorists' attempts to make the deadly poison ricin, made the issue more urgent. Countries were not doing enough, he said.

Mr Thompson met health ministers and officials from the G20, the leading industrialised and developing countries, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Sunday night to try to step up international efforts in research and vaccine-sharing and agree mutual assistance pacts to support a country that was attacked.

Since the anthrax panic of 2001, the US has increased measures against bioterrorism. Last year it spent $1.1bn (£700m), and is spending $4.5bn this year with a similar amount planned next.

The raw dollars alone don't mean the money is being spent as effectively as possible, of course. The article continues:

It has purchased enough smallpox vaccine for the entire population, stockpiled antibiotics and other drugs at 12 sites within seven hours' reach of any community, and is seeking new vaccines for botulism, haemorrhagic fever viruses, plague and anthrax.

The bad news version of the above is: "We don't have vaccines for a lot of things that might be used. Also, the strategy is to take the initial hit and rush palliatives to the area around the outbreak." There may not be a better plan available, though, as you have to balance the risks of mass vaccinations against the product of the likelihood and lethality of a biological attack. Me, I'm still not sure. The case for mass vaccination is not just that it theoretically protects more people ahead of time but also that it inhibits the spread of any infectious disease among the largely vaccinated population.

Antiwar War - NYT article on tensions between ANSWER/Worker's World Party and the rest of us.

In an interview today, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a spokeswoman for Answer, said questions raised about the group's role were "classic McCarthy-era Red-baiting."

"When you select out the Socialists or Marxists," she said, "the point is to demonize and divide and diminish a massive, growing movement."

You've got to love the far left: it's okay to call virtually anyone a fascist, but to call Lenin himself a communist would be "red-baiting."

An article from Jewish Week quotes leaders of various Jewish peace groups taking ANSWER to task for packing the speaker's platform with anti-Israel speakers. Michael Lerner - no Likudnik to say the least - says

“In my view, the organizers of this demonstration have allowed far too many speakers who believe that this war is being done because Israel wants the war, far too few who share my view that this war is not in the best interests either of Israel or of the United States.”

Lerner declined to speak at the January 18 March because the organizers wouldn't give him fifteen minutes to present a more nuanced case than "Israel bad! Palestinians good!" I didn't attend the San Francisco march, but my impression from the DC march was that nobody got more than a couple of minutes to speak. Surely a professional writer and editor could manage to say "This war will be bad for Israel and the US, as many Israelis and Americans realize" in less than two minutes. That would be a real test of ANSWER's bona fides. (And one a lot of us suspect they would fail.)

Those of us who are not communists or obsessively anti-Israel have to hope that United for Peace presents a more ecumenical roster of speakers at its February 15th protests. While the speakers matter little to the marchers, most of whom pay no attention, they do get covered by the media and can reflect badly on the event as a whole.

The tougher issue is how to handle hateful freelance participants, like the assholes in this picture from the Davos protests linked by many bloggers. Beating them with sticks - the protesters, not the bloggers - holds considerable appeal, but it's against the law. Would march organizers who wished to keep people like this out of an event have the authority to eject them?

It seems to me that IF the organizers have the authority to keep counter-protesters out of the event itself, they have the authority to deal with people like the ones in the picture. And the creeps in this picture are expressing obvious antisemitism. The symbolic elements are not specific to the government and state of Israel. The star on Israel's flag is not yellow; the Golden Calf is a religious symbol, not a national one. It would be like incorporating watermelon and nose bones into a demonstration against Robert Mugabe. Vehement criticism of Israel's government as a government is in bounds. "Axis of Evil: Bush Sharon Blair" is legitimate, whether right or wrong. Yellow stars and Golden Calves with money hanging from them are obviously not.

Note: I saw nothing like it at either the October or January marches in Washington DC. ANSWER's website makes no mention of this year's Davos meeting, if Google is to be trusted.

Shock and Jive? - My fellow anti-warriors spent my downtime contemplating "Shock and Awe," a leaked plan to pound Baghdad over the first two days of the war with about 10 times as many cruise missiles as have ever been fired in that time span. Micah Holmquist discusses the plan on his site, while Jerry Brito comments on Stand Down. Here's the CBS News report they're working from.

"You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2,3,4,5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted," Ullman tells Martin.

Whoever lives will then, Andrew Card informs us, react with jubilation.

The first thing to be said about Operation Shock and Awe is that it is nothing but a logical extension of the terror-bombing principles used by both sides in World War II - ideas developed by the Nazis and adopted with enthusiasm by the Americans and British. CBS informs us that "In this war 80 percent [of munitions] will be precision guided," which means nothing more than that we'll be hitting civilian targets with precision-guided munitions. ("Power," "water," and whatever doesn't sound quite innocuous enough on first listen to mention to the news media. You can be sure Iraqi media outlets will be hit right away, as Serb outlets were hit in 1999, and that Al Jazeera's facilites will be "accidentally" bombed. Bridges seem a certainty.)

"There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," said one Pentagon official who has been briefed on the plan.

The second thing to say is that it may all be a crock - the "shock and awe" may be intended to come from the leak itself. (Curious, seemingly defensive coda to the CBS article: Statement from CBS News Anchor Dan Rather: "We assure you this report contains no information that the Defense Department thinks could help the Iraqi military.") The powers that be may still be hoping to inspire a coup.

Speaking of coups, the notion is occasioning fear and disgust among many hawks. (Here's an example.) There are a handful of reasons for this.

On the noble side, those who believe that the coming conquest of Iraq will lead to freedom, democracy and something like capitalism worry that a coup will just leave the Iraqi people under the thumb of a different despot, which is true enough. There are hawks for whom talk of liberating Iraq through war is not a smokescreen for other motives. I think these people are naive, but they exist. Meanwhile, your hardcore imperialist, national-greatness types want the occupation as much as they want the war. It's not enough that Saddam go or even that a successor government hand over every weapon bigger than a pellet gun: they want American troops in Iraq to start putting pressure on the rest of the countries on the regime-change list. These latter types might still hope for a coup - they can always announce that coalition troops have to enter Iraq to prevent "chaos." But there's a danger that the French, Russians and Chinese make a quick deal with Saddam's successor and freeze the US and Britain out.

Well, don't believe what you read in the papers.

Imitation Diet Blog Post - 198 this morning, only a pound off last week's number and well within the uncertainty of the scale. Waist about an eighth-inch narrower. Last night my mother took La Familia Offering out for a celebratory dinner (I got that new job I needed) and I decided to splurge - onion petals and cheesecake to go with the steak, salad and mushrooms.

Now for the exercise portion of our program. I discovered a truly affordable strength training regimen: go to Galyan's (or Sports Authority or wherever) and "try out" the dumbbells. I did an entire routine. Granted, I ended up buying a pair of twenty-pounders (which I don't expect to incorporate into my Heavyhands routines!). But it was fun to think about just going from sports store to sports store using their weights for free.

Cost is a big issue for me when it comes to considering fitness regimens. Diana Moon has been booming Superslow, which has also "inspired" a spinoff called Slow Burn. And Glenn Reynolds argues for the importance of weight training. But these things cost real money. I don't have budget room for a health club membership or house space for a home weight station, however low-tech. Heavyhands is cheap! Less than a hundred bucks in weights and a pair of shoes will take you far. I'm eyeing a heart monitor but haven't committed to the purchase yet. (I did pump my twenty-pounders between Galyan's and the parking lot yesterday, but that was only a one-minute walk.)

All that said, my exercise routines were somewhat thrown off by last Saturday's march - my legs were really sore for a couple of days after - and the cold. On the plus side, my work on the stairs at work (five flights) has really been helping my knees - almost no soreness on the descent this last time.

Meanwhile, the Harvard University School of Public Health published an article in JAMA last fall claiming that "A take-home message is that the more the better when it comes to exercise, and that adding weight training to an aerobics routine may be most beneficial of all." So hey, why not incorporate weights in an aerobics routine like Dr. Schwartz said?

Back . . . in the new home of highclearing.com. I switched to Hosting Matters on the advice of Kathy Kinsley. It will be cheaper and more robust than my old host. To celebrate the move I did a clean install of Movable Type 2.51 and reimported all my items into a fresh mySQL database. (I kept the old archive pages so nobody's permalinks would be broken.)

The whole thing took a day longer than I thought it would, largely because the Sapphire Worm attack from Friday-Saturday slowed HM's processing of my credit card and kept Verisign from updating DNS entries until last night. E-mail successfully cut over too - you can still use the "supplanter" address to reach me.

Ducking Out - I'm giving up blogging - until I get my site moved. If things go smoothly you won't even notice. If they don't, well . . .

Right now I expect to be blogging tomorrow sometime. But that's as may be. If I get hung up I may find time to add an Iraq-related item or two to Stand Down. To keep yourselves amused, consider . . .

Glenn Reynolds at his best in this essay from his corporate blog: Who's right about what's wrong, Walter Olson or Arianna Huffington. Or do we even have to choose?

What if it’s both? (“That’s why we have a two-party system,” is one cynical reply). And, as is often the case, the cynics are probably right.

Two substantial musings on abortion, from opposite perspectives, by longtime UO favorites Ginger Stampley and Justin Slotman.

Julian Sanchez has a meditative wrapup of the John Lott Affair. For anyone who followed the case, it's essential reading. He also has tons more great stuff - just keep scrolling.

On Stand Down, Matt Hogan deals with the famous Condolezza Rice op-ed:

I too read Condoleeza Rice's NY Times accusation "Why We Know Iraq Is Lying". It has one major problem: as an argument, it really sucks.

As the Sunday Comics reader said in the famous radio blooper, "There. That ought to hold the little bastards."

TTFN!

UPDATE: My God! I almost forgot to boom this superb Colby Cosh consideration of Richard Thompson, one of my favorite musicians. You can still get an entire Richard Thompson concert in streaming video as a soundtrack to Colby's essay.

Creation Science and Pseudo-Econ - In the latest issue of Virginia Postrel Magazine (a meme that is spreading!) is a fine article about how, as in biology, people from outside the field are turning critiques from within the field to their own unscientific purposes.

Being a Hawk Means Never Having to Say You're Surreal - James Taranto of Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web writes

And while the "old Europe" is falling back into old patterns--Germany embracing a genocidal dictator, France appeasing him--America has no shortage of allies on the Continent. "The new Nato allies of eastern Europe are lining up behind Washington in offering to join a war against Iraq with or without a UN mandate," London's Guardian reports from Prague

and writes

Earlier this week ABC's Peter Jennings interviewed Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister. . . No questions about Iraq's defiance of the U.N., support of terrorists or brutalization of its own people.

in the same column!

Department of There's Good and Bad in Everyone - GOP Senator Charles Grassley, whom I recall making a real ass of himself during the Iran-Contra hearings, has joined the fight against full funding for Total Information Awareness. He's not on the "zero it out" team, but

Grassley filed a proposal in the Senate that would limit the use of funds for the program to foreign intelligence purposes. He said he wanted to "protect against abuse that could violate the privacy of our own people."

A Grassley spokeswoman said he was talking to Senate Democrats in hopes of fusing their approaches and getting a bipartisan vote on curbing the data project later this week.

From Wired News.

90% of Blogging is Showing Up - Does Paul Helgesen of the newish CenterPoint have too much free time, or inspiration and perspiration to spare? Don't answer until you see what he did to Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web.

Paul is another of several bloggers kind enough to link to this site but, well, confused enough to list me among left wingers. I don't think many people would be making that mistake if we had a Democrat in the White House.

Which reminds me of the story Patrick Nielsen Hayden told on Saturday. He and Teresa participated in some kind of inaugural protest in 2000. Before we continue, I'll mention that my opinion on the 2000 mess tracks much more closely with Newsmax.com than with Patrick, Teresa and the Democratic Party faithful, but this story isn't about me. As Patrick put it

We were carrying a sign that said "WE WILL NEVER FORGET." Some onlooker accused us of holding a grudge.

Thing is, he was wearing a Confederate uniform at the time.

And speaking of Saturday, Ginger Stampley has her own ANSWER to March Madness: "Friend of Friends, Enemies of Enemies, and Just Plain Trolls." Interesting comparison with clinic defense work she took part in during the 1992 Republican Party convention in Houston included:

There were a number of Republican women who came out to defend clinics who didn’t agree with Planned Parenthood on a lot of issues, and certainly didn’t agree with some of the fringe pro-choice groups and assorted hangers-on on what was purportedly their side. There were people on “my” side in ‘92 who made me nervous. I’m glad the Republican women thought the issue was important enough to overcome their dislike of the organizers of clinic defense and some of the people on “my” side and come out to do their part.

From pro-choice to pro-life (or from pro-abortion to anti-choice if you prefer) Eve Tushnet files a march report of her own - from Wednesday's March for Life in even colder DC. She also responds to a popular canard about abortion foes as a class. (For my part, I remain pro-choice, but not because of the way pro-choicers argue.)

And while we're still "All About Eve," she formally declares herself

tentatively anti-war, because I think MAD works, and the World Hideousness Level calculation favors Saddam with nukes over US invasion. (You can assume that my reasons there are largely Healy's.) But I'm not certain of my position enough to, for example, go to last weekend's anti-war rally. I don't like this half-stance at all but it seems to be where I'm stuck right now.

Which is too bad only because we could sure use her on Stand Down. The whole thing is very much worth reading.

And just to tie all threads together, one last march sight: Just past what passed for the counter-demonstration, a lone woman holding up a sign that read

PRO-LIFE AND ANTI-WAR

God I love heterodoxy! Though Eve could probably knock off a dozen paragraphs on the lack of contradiction there without even having to crack open her Collected Chesterton.

Like I Was Saying - Trent Telenko has an
interesting item on Seymour Hersh's New Yorker report on nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and North Korea. Telenko focuses on whether Hersh has apportioned blame properly between the Bush and Clinton administrations, but I was more struck my this excerpted passage of Hersh's:

A former senior Pakistani official told me that his government's contacts with North Korea increased dramatically in 1997; the Pakistani economy had foundered, and there was "no more money" to pay for North Korean missile support, so the Pakistani government began paying for missiles by providing "some of the know-how and the specifics." Pakistan helped North Korea conduct a series of "cold tests," simulated nuclear explosions, using natural uranium, which are necessary to determine whether a nuclear device will detonate properly. Pakistan also gave the North Korean intelligence service advice on "how to fly under the radar," as the former official put it--that is, how to hide nuclear research from American satellites and U.S. and South Korean intelligence agents.

and this one

An American intelligence official I spoke with called Pakistan's behavior the "worst nightmare" of the international arms-control community: a Third World country becoming an instrument of proliferation. "The West's primary control of nuclear proliferation was based on technology denial and diplomacy," the official said. "Our fear was, first, that a Third World country would develop nuclear weapons indigenously; and, second, that it would then provide the technology to other countries. This is profound. It changes the world." Pakistan's nuclear program flourished in the nineteen-eighties, at a time when its military and intelligence forces were working closely with the United States to repel the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The official said, "The transfer of enrichment technology by Pakistan is a direct outgrowth of the failure of the United States to deal with the Pakistani program when we could have done so. We've lost control."

which is to say, the nuclear genie is well and truly out of its cliched little bottle. It's also an illustration of some of the criticisms I made of the viability of nonproliferation last week. To pull a Paglia, I wrote

Nonproliferation is slowly failing. North Korea has won already, and other countries will win too. Why? Because the entire international community simply is not going to follow a course of nonproliferation in concerted cooperation. The "international community" is more fictitious than most "communities" that get invoked in domestic politics. Just as the United States is not, pace what you hear when the Democrats hold their conventions, "like a family," the nations of the world are not a meaningful community - or, if that offend thee, say rather that that community only extends so far. It's never going to be in every nation's interest to keep a given country from getting the bomb.

There's another illustration in the news. If you view, as the hawks do, the drive for conquering Iraq as militant nonproliferation in action, then the current behavior of France and Germany at the UN can also be seen as highlighting differential interests even among the nuclear haves (France, in this case). You can like it or not - and I don't like putting American security questions in the hands of other countries - but whether we like it or not is not the point. France is playing the game by the rules we ourselves wrote up (the UN charter) according to its view of What's Good for France. Germany has no veto, but its ruling party knows why it won the last election.

It's all very well to say "This proves France and Germany are no longer our allies." Hey, Washington warned us that those entangling alliances weren't going to last forever. But once you've established that, then what? (Both are hinting broadly that the US may convince them to withdraw cooperation against Al Qaeda too. It's a self-indulgence to bring it up, but I warned people about this almost a year ago.)

I don't like the idea of France making our decisions for us and I'd have had us out of the UN years ago. (How come nobody asked me?) But you couldn't ask for a clearer warning that the present aggressive course has the potential to unite a substantial, diverse opposition. It is already doing so.

Welcome Back - Yes, another database crash this morning as a kind of parting gift. I should have the site on a new host this weekend and all this will be a thing of the past (moving from Windows to Unix and Berkeley DB to mySQL).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled miscellaneous stuff.

One, Two, Three, Many - Chad Orzel calculates the fermi numbers on the count of people visible at the end of the march route. He shows his work on his blog. He comes up with roughly 25,000 who made it to the end of the march, which is in line with a 30,000 figure the police offered.

The question then becomes how many additional people showed up at the Mall but didn't march, or didn't march all the way or were around the bend at the terminus where I couldn't see them. I officially have no idea.

Letting the Air Out - Nice post from Jane Galt explaining the difference between good deflation and bad deflation.

Sanity Scores an Marginal Victory - From the Washington Post:

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of New York children that claimed McDonald's food caused them to suffer health problems including diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

"If consumers know (or reasonably should know) the potential ill health effects of eating at McDonald's, they cannot blame McDonald's if they, nonetheless, choose to satiate their appetite with a surfeit of supersized McDonald's products," U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet said in a 65-page ruling.

Hey, case dismissed, right? What's "marginal" about that? Here's my problem:

It took the judge 65 pages? In a sane legal culture, a single sheet with the word PL-EASE! in 144-point type would suffice. And clowns on stilts would dribble the plaintiffs' lawyers out of the courthouse.

(Link via Franklin Harris.)

I Want an Opinion That Looks Like America - Matt Welch finally writes about the, you know, war. I suspect his opinions and uncertainties accord more with the bulk of the country than do the opinions of we partisans (of whatever view). Worth reading.

Meanwhile, speaking of Ken Layne, he writes

Iraq: A few people want a war, a few people don't, and the rest of us ... ah, who knows? How about we give the job to Israel? If Saddam strikes anybody with anything, Israel gets to smash Baghdad. It's a solution everybody won't like!

Which is startlingly close to the month's-old Offering Plan.

Worth Listening To - Ken Layne tells Salon what they should be doing. It seems for the most part like excellent advice. The only quibble I have, and it's an uninformed one, is that Layne seems to advise shutting down all the interactive parts, especially the fora (The Well and Table Talk). It seems to me that fora draw traffic, though.

But they could sure do worse. Highlight:

Finally, go to Apple or Sun or whatever Bay Area tech company and say, "We want $2.5 million a year. You're the sole sponsor." Then fire four of the remaining six business people.

(Link via Colby Cosh.)

Poetry Wednesday - I've been thinking about Salam, who appears to be having a rough time.

The Man He Killed

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because –
Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list perhaps,
Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."

- Thomas Hardy, 1902

John Lott Vindicated - I'll have more on this tomorrow, but James Lindgren has found a witness substantiating Lott's claim to have conducted a survey on defensive gun use in 1997. Lindgren interviewed this person at length and finds him credible. Julian Sanchez has some details here. (He uh, also has another item.) Lindgren says he'll be revising his report from "agnostic" to "more positive."

It's worth noting that among the several e-mails I've received from John Lott in the last week, some as part of group mailings, was one from yesterday, stating, "Lindgren¹s role in this process seems to be that of a prosecutor." So as recently as a day ago, Lott considered Lindgren to be no ally. I bring this up because some lefties and gunphobes are likely to dismiss Lindgren's corroboration on the grounds that Lindgren "got" Bellisiles, proving his bias. But having read Lindgren's evolving report on the "More Guns, Less Crime" issue, I get the impression of a dedicated scholar willing to follow the truth where it leads.

Now there remains some real doubt that Lott's sample sizes in either the 1997 or 2002 surveys are big enough to be meaningful. (Julian has an item on that too. His blog is like Teresa Nielsen Hayden's backpack.)

The argument, which makes sense to me, is that he questions enough people for his percentage figure for overall defensive gun uses to be meaningful. Rather than break a prepublication embargo with the real figures, let's use illustrative fakes. Say you surveyed 4000 people and 20 of them said they'd used a firearm in self-defense. And lets say 3 of those twenty said they actually killed their attacker dead with their gun. You'd be justified in saying that, nationally, one half of one percent of all Americans had used guns in self-defense - 20/4000. (This assumes your sample has been properly randomized etc.) You would not be justified in saying that "nationally, only 15 percent of those using firearms in self-defense kill their attackers" - 3/20. Because for this latter claim your sample size is now 20, not 4000, and the law of large numbers no longer applies.

That said, the serious charge at issue was fraud. In light of Lindgren's continued work, there is no reason to suspect that John Lott lied about conducting a survey on defensive gun use in 1997. Until someone comes up with solid evidence the other way, I consider the matter closed. I continue to believe that the "more guns, less crime" theory is largely correct (the English experience is suggestive), and that it is reasonable to expect that nonlethal defensive uses of firearms greatly outnumber lethal defensive uses.

Mutant March Mail - sometimes combined.

Jonathan Hendry writes:

Ya know, I kinda get the impression the judge in the [X-Men action figure] case was of the opinion that it was a stupid law, maybe that a favorable judgement for Marvel might mean cheaper toys for kids (and their overspent parents). So she came up with a judgement that let Marvel get out of the higher-price tariff.

Okay, the cheaper-toys-for-kids thing is unlikely. I'm just trying to imagine this bemused judge getting this case. It'd actually be kind of a fun respite from the dullness of everyday cases. The opportunity to creatively arrange a decision that allows an endrun around a silly law would be extra fun.

What really scares me is the reaction of the comic fans who feel betrayed. Dolts! Cheaper stuff! Courtroom arguments don't qualify as continuity breaches!

PS: I wonder if Tacitus thinks our troops in Central Asia are demonstrating an agreement with the policies of Uzbekistan by using a facility arranged for by that
government.

Matt Hogan writes

ANSWER = Act Now to Stop War and End Racism.

That's all they advertised on their posters. I support all that. Enough said.

If their fine print is commie-dom, I won't sign the fine print. Does it mean I am a Christian if I joined a civil rights march organized by MLK's Southern Christian Leadership Conference? Was every atheist, agnostic, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist co-marcher selling out? If a pro-war left-liberal counterdemonstrated with the Free Republic types, does that make them into libertarians? Are the pro-war Iraqi dissidents who joined the Freepers now neocons or neolibs by default?

PS -- It was sharp to notice 1956 (my undergraduate thesis) as the US birth as interventionists in ME. Technically untrue a bit but mostly dead-on. Actually that was a culmnation of a lesser known queit US-UK confrontational rivalry in Near East.

I've read stuff that suggests Matt is right about this last. The US put deliberate effort into elbowing Britain out of its position as dominant Western power in the Arab world. I can't say that looks like a shrewd move from here.

Eric Mauro finds "more good commies" from the World War II era, meaning Commies, loyal Stalinists and/or Maoists mostly, whom the US worked with against the Germans:

You forgot the French, Italian, Hungarian etc resistance movements, which
were very commie. Also Kim Il Sung, he was resistance. Also Ho Chi Minh?
Now I'm in ANSWER...

Ho actually got a fair amount of support from the US OSS. (Note: by longstanding rule, it is not permitted to write "OSS" without immediately following up with "forerunner to the CIA.") Sadly, those French bastards ruined it all for us. DeGaulle threatened to wreck NATO if we didn't back his effort to hold Indochina. I am making an effort to be nicer (see later in this item), but this is yet another example of the complete lack of gratitude that intervention buys one. That's not an argument for not fighting Germany, but it does mean that sane planners will expect no lasting thanks when contemplating interventions.

Bruce Baugh writes:

The late theologian Francis Schaeffer wrote a lot of hooey, but he also wrote some wise and insightful passages which have stayed with me through all my personal twists and turns. One of these is the notion of "co-belligerents". He wrote that there are one's allies, with whom one shares genuine long-term commitments and priorities, but that there are people you end up working with on specific projects beyond that. He might disagree greatly with, say, liberal Jewish writer Nat Hentoff, but they could end up cooperating on some fronts - their mutual opposition to abortion, for instance, and their mutual concern with freedom of religious practice. Schaeffer introduced to me the idea that it is not just acceptable but actively desirable to be able to cooperate with people very much like unlike yourself, when you share a sense of what's wrong and what would make it righter. They don't become your bosom buddies, but you fight together on this task. Hence "co-belligerents".

Peter Caress addresses a different topic, the Offering Plan for mideast peace:

This reminded me of a columnist who wrote, "I have always quite liked the slogan 'a democratic, secular state of Palestine'. Territorially the thing would look quite elegant, a proper blade-shaped sliver running from Lebanon to Eilat.... And everybody living together: Arab, Jew and Christian. Just as in the (mostly) tolerant days of the Ottoman Empire, except with voting and without an official state religion." To which blogger Damian Penny replied, "And while we're dreaming, I'd like a Mazda Miata. In British racing green. With alligator seat covers and a solid gold gearshift knob. Oh, yeah, it has to have the ability to fly."

I'm all for ending the settlements - in fact, I think it's shameful for the US to be giving aid to Israel while Israel pours settlers into the Occupied Territories. But articles like this lead me to believe that no Palestinian leader could possibly formally relinquish the right of return. I also have little enthusiasm for financial compensation to Palestinian refugees, mostly because I don't think it will do much to close out the issue, but also because I balk a little at shelling out for Arab refugees over 50 years after the 1948 war when Arab states have never offered a penny of compensation to the Jewish refugees they dispossessed after Israel's creation. Coddling the Palestinians' belief that they are the only ones who have suffered doesn't do much to advance peace.

I don't think any serious proposal for financial compensation to the individual Arabs dispossessed in 1948 has ever been made. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.) Peter may well be right that Arafat, at least could never renounce the right of return. But the expulsion of Jewish citizens by Arab governments after the founding of Israel strikes me as a red herring. Yes it happened. Yes it was wrong. (And yes, Israel wanted as many Jews as it could get, for demographic reasons, and still does.) But the last thing the Middle East needs is to mire itself in more collectivist resentment than it already has. Israel's greatest diplomatic successes have come by picking up peace partners one by one as the moment was ripe. IF a money-for-claims deal could be worked out with the Palestinians, it wouldn't make sense for Israel for it to insist on lumping everything into one big indigestible grievance ball.

As I said months ago, Israel has about four options regarding the Palestinians:

1. Expulsion.
2. Extermination.
3. Separation.
4. More of the same.

Your more rabid Likudnik bloggers (or maybe we should call them Kach bloggers) have been hinting or outright urging 1 for months, and a few of them even walk up to the edge of excusing option 2. Diana Moon recently explained why these options are impossible and wrong. That leaves 3 and 4. Four sucks. If a compensation deal will get to 3, a compensation deal should be done.

A British libertarian notes recent efforts at protest coalitions in that country, both the Privacy International and the recent Countryside March. About this latter:

The Countryside Alliance march in September last year, which included a number of libertarians because of protests against bans on hunting. However, many marchers were folk demanding continued government subsidies for farming, planning controls on building development, and other Statist stuff which a free marketeer like me opposes. Does that mean the libertarians on the march were hypocrits or useful idiots? Nope. We hoped once again to spread libertarian ideas at the event. Okay this may be naive but what other alternative do we have?

Maybe the same thing could happen with your involvement in the anti-war campaign. I must say that quite a lot of the folk photographed at the march had some eccentric and offensive views, but surely quite a few are against war for rational reasons. Mind you, it strikes me as depressing that the anti-war case requires dim-bulbs like the ANSWER group to organise a march.

We did run into a nice group of Libertarian activists handing out literature Saturday. (They were hanging with Leonard of Unruled for awhile, or vice verse.) Meanwhile, the next big marches will be sponsored by United for Peace.

Gary Utter writes

I've been reading your blog for quite a while now, to get the antiwar perspective. At one time you seemed to be a reasonable and intelligent human being. Of late, that has changed. As war appears more and more likely, you have become more and more of a reflexive hater.

Where once you would present well thought out reasons to oppose war, you now present sneering critiques of anyone who thinks war is a better step than letting things continue as they are. Useless, and boring.

Additionally, you seem to think these A.N.S.W.E.R creeps are acceptable allies. Apparently, as your infection with the rabies virus progresses, it impairs your judgement.

I'm sure you could not care less if I read your blog, but if your goal is to do more than just win backslaps from your fellow travellers, you are failing.

You have devolved from a persuasive advocate to a braying ass.

See ya.

My initial assumption was that Gary might have something of a double standard, insisting on one level of decorum for doves and a rather more lax standard for hawks. (The genre of "Fisking" is nothing but sneering as quasiliterary sport.) One notion I reject utterly is the one that many hawks seem to hold, which is that doves are obliged to argue their points in a manner acceptable to hawks and hawks are obliged to argue their points in a manner acceptable to . . . hawks.

However, in a follow-up exchange, Gary wrote that I was in danger of turning into another Misha the Rottweiler, so clearly Gary isn't cutting the hawks any slack either. (As I replied to Gary, "You really know how to hurt a guy.")

I made an overly rude reference to Megan McArdle yesterday, and I regret that. (I was rude about Tacitus too and I'm trying to regret it!) Hell, I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan months ago for reasons similar to Gary's complaints about me. I think there's sneering enough to go around, and hawkish sneering pisses me off. I don't see "nice" hawks spending much effort to distance themselves from the nasty ones, and that gets annoying too. I suppose you could say that "an imperialist metacontext drives me absolutely batshit," to coin a phrase. Also, from my perspective, most of the arguments have already been made on both sides (Gary disagrees with me on this), so during this period of phony war our most readily available pastime is getting on each other's nerves.

Still, it bears thinking about. No promises if the kinder, gentler me will take, or be worth reading though.

UPDATE: Mixed up options 1 and 2 in the sentence about Likudnik bloggers originally. Fixed now.

A Fanboy's Notes: ISO "Adult Themes" - Robert Frost famously wrote, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep." Why? One reason is that darkness and depth are not the same things. While they may coincide, one does not guarantee the other. But try telling many comic book authors this.

I bring this up because I bought and read the first issue of Vertigo's BAST miniseries last week. Bast, the cat-goddess of the Egyptians, was a recurring character in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, and gets her own three-issue story now.

Now stop me if you've heard this one before: two teens with repressive parents become the worldly focus of the supernatural forces. He's the child of born-agains. She's the daughter of a drunken slob who blames her for the loss of their mother. (Dad kills even a kitten.) They're the butt of abuse from thoroughly rotten schoolmates who also torture cats. There's a teen suicide at the end when one tries to escape.

It's all so numbingly familiar, like the author (Caitlin R. Kiernan) had a list in front of her - "Ingredients for Sure-Fire Comic Book Seriousness," drawn up in the late 1980s and never revised - and crossed each item off as she worked it in to the story. It's a shame too, since there's some genuinely good writing in the book, particularly the scenes between the two teenagers in their secret refuge. I don't know what else Kiernan may have done, but she has the capacity to write well. But her story is as much a prisoner of comic book conventions as any superhero story with the villain just back from the dead.

Recommended Reading - Child pornography and the law, by Avedon Carol:

I'm forced to rely on sources from other countries to tell me how much actual child porn is really on the 'net, because there is no legal way for me to do primary research. So I can never give first-person accounts on a matter I'm a relative expert on; I can only report what others have said. I'm certain that the police have made highly misleading statements on the subject; I just can't prove it. Many activists and journalists simply take the cops' word for it and state it as fact. I can't, because a lot of it makes no sense. (A few years ago the cops were claiming that there were warehouses full of child porn up and down the country, but that they had no powers to investigate. Leaving aside the fact that there really wasn't any reason to believe such warehouses existed in the first place, there is no question that if the police had any evidence that they exist, they have had all the power they need to investigate since 1976 when the original child porn laws were passed.)

There's lots more, as she dissects coverage of the Pete Townshend incident in the British press.

Caught in the Middle - Interesting story about ordinary Kurds along the Iraq-Turkey border trying to make a living. From the Saint Petersburg Times. The locals fear war but, if it's going to come, they'd rather get it over with.

The Man Who Sprang Bin Laden is said to be Abdallah Tabarak, aka Abu Omar, according to this interesting Washington Post story:

A Moroccan who was one of bin Laden's longtime bodyguards took possession of the al Qaeda leader's satellite phone on the assumption that U.S. intelligence agencies were monitoring it to get a fix on their position, said the officials, who have interviewed the bodyguard, Abdallah Tabarak.

Tabarak moved away from bin Laden and his entourage as they fled; he continued to use the phone in an effort to divert the Americans and allow bin Laden to escape. Tabarak was captured at Tora Bora in possession of the phone, officials said.

"He agreed to be captured or die," a Moroccan official said of Tabarak. "That's the level of his fanaticism for bin Laden. It wasn't a lot of time, but it was enough. There is a saying: 'Where there is a frog, the serpent is not far away.' "

Tabarak now resides at Guantanamo Bay, where he has attained the status of prisoner poobah:

Tabarak's authority there "comes from his proximity to bin Laden, because of the confidence Osama bin Laden had in him," said a Moroccan intelligence officer, noting that the former bodyguard outranks other senior prisoners including former leading officials in the Taliban administration. "He has charisma, and all the combatants at Guantanamo are deferential to him."

Tabarak, also known as Abu Omar, is respected even more because he helped bin Laden escape, the official said. The ploy involving the satellite phone is widely known and celebrated among the prisoners at the military prison, now called Camp Delta.

Tabarak seems to have a bit of a false modesty problem, though:

Tabarak's dedication to his cause has continued at Guantanamo Bay, where he has steadfastly refused to cooperate with the U.S. interrogators, insisting as he did at the time of his capture that he is a textile trader who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That would be a wrong place, wrong time thing, wouldn't it, being caught with Osama Bin Laden's satellite phone in a war zone heading the opposite direction.

The Moroccans say they'd love a chance to talk to Abdallah in Morocco:

"We could play on our common culture, our religion and use his family," said an official involved in the interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners.

Th-th-th-that's All, Folks - Come back tomorrow and we'll talk about other things. A John Lott windup, most likely, plus whatever else.

Happy Martin Luther King Day - My earliest political memory is from third grade, just after the assassination. A kid I didn't like saying, at lunchtime, "I don't blame that white guy for killing him." This was in north central Pennsylvania for those of you tracking geography. I think there might have been a black person between the West Branch of the Susquehanna and the New York state line at some point or other, maybe when the Lewisburg High football team came up to play the Montoursville Warriors, but I'm damned if I ever saw one. But I already knew that that was a deeply, deeply creepy and wrong thing to say, and I was secretly glad to have my dislike of this kid to be confirmed.

But that's not actually praise for Martin Luther King or even my little eight-year-old self. That's praise for my mother, who reared me right. Because of her, I can not get the N-word past my lips, even when speaking clinically. King's genius was to realize that people like my mother - a lifelong Republican, by the way - could be reached. I admire that. But most of all I admire his courage. And I'm grateful for it.

Ironic ANSWER Redux - Last call, honest, and only because we're way past Godwin's Law violations now anyway.

For the vast majority of the current hawks, the worst imaginable sin of political thought is questioning the wisdom of US entry into World War II. So you figure they look kindly on all those agitating for war in the late thirties and early forties. But there's the rub: except for not-quite two years between late summer 1939 and early summer 1941, the big pro-war movements of the late thirties and the second half of 1941 were heavily involved with real Stalinists, the kind that actually had Stalin around. Much of this effort was Communist-led.

Well, it's tricky, this political stuff.

Last Words - Those twin sappers of writerly energy, boredom and annoyance, are swiftly setting in when it comes to the warblogger-driven tempest about marching in ANSWER-organized events (see this GlennReynolds.com item for representative links), but I have a few things to toss out on the way:

Evidently we go on, as we always have. From day to day. At this moment we work against Operation Dandelion. Later on, at another moment, we work to defeat the police. But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step.

Philip K. Dick, THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE

Those are the thoughts of the Abwehr man, Wegener, back in Germany in a car with Heydrich's men. In concert with the Waffen SS and the people around Heydrich, Wegener figures he can prevent a nuclear first strike against the Japanese home islands. But it means working with Heydrich and the Waffen SS, squalid, squalid people.

I bring this up for a few reasons: firstly because the people who started this have long since violated Godwin's Law in some comment thread or other, so I'm entitled. Second because Dick gets right to it: the need to weigh evils. I believe that an American conquest of Iraq would be nothing less than a disaster for my country in the medium to long term and even, possibly, in the short. There is nothing ANSWER can realistically do to the country that would be as bad. That's why it's fatuous to say, as Tacitus did, that you mustn't work with any group unless you are willing to see their entire vision carried out. (Is that true for the Northern Alliance, I wonder? The Kosovo Liberation Army?) This "principle" would make political coalitions impossible.

Now I am perfectly well aware that Dick's principle cuts both ways, and that the hawks can argue that the half truths, lies and bad faith of the government during the last twelve years of war with Iraq have been in the name of averting a greater evil. That's why I try not to attack the morals and character of the hawks unless responding in kind. This despite

General Nizar al-Khazraji, prominent Iraqi opposition figure, praised by the US government as having "the right ingredients" for leadership. Chief claim to fame? Field commander at Halabja in 1988. (Gassing the Kurds, remember?)

Max Boot, who regretted that so few US troops died in Afghanistan because more blood would be good for our character, and who wrote a book celebrating our various shitty little police actions in Latin America and elsewhere, holding them up as a praiseworthy example of how the country should act in the future.

Michael Ledeen, whose famous doctrine holds that "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business," and who is constantly being favorably, even adoringly, cited by hawkish writers.

Larry Kudlow, who urged President Bush to conquer Iraq for the sake of the stock market.

Those are some pretty loathsome people to have on one's side. But there's a big difference between them and ANSWER: the hawk monstrosities are much better positioned to influence US policy than ANSWER is.

I got bored and annoyed when the Clinton Administration and its allies responded to demands for the truth about Waco and Ruby Ridge by saying, "Well, the Aryan Nations and Tim McVeigh don't like it either, so you're on the side of the racists." I get bored and annoyed when NRO types claim that those of us who support gay marriage are on the side of NAMBLA, and when liberals say that those of us who oppose affirmative action are working for David Duke. And I'm bored and annoyed now.

Thank heavens for Diana Moon, who is less interested in grandstanding than making serious points. Hers is the one j'accuse worth reading. Diana is as always a vigorous writer, so one encounters phrases like "slithers away" and "morally squalid," but she troubles to develop an argument and it merits response.

First, she classes government actions and positions separately from the actions and positions of advocacy groups, on the principle that advocacy groups have more freedom of action. Then:

There is no comparison between the policies of the government of an advanced industrial democracy and the mandate of an advocacy group. This is not thinking: it's wild and desperate attitudinizing, a substitute for thought.

To go to a demonstration organized by ANSWER is to give them legitmacy. To lend legitmacy to an organization is to create an association between you, the individual who makes moral choices, and them, the organization that stands for certain things. You, the moral actor, have consented to take part in a demonstration, a sacred public constitutionally protected activity that they have organized. The association is clear, public and can't be erased.

She continues:

The only morally acceptable answer to Tacitus' charge is to say that you accept the association between you and ANSWER because you think that demonstrating against a US-led invasion of Iraq overrides any reservations you have about ANSWER'S politics.

I actually agree with her here, which is the whole point of that Dick quote above, and for that matter the point of Dick's entire novel and for that matter the whole point of what I said yesterday about "inept and inefficient Stalinists." If you take the product of the downside of the coming war for the United States and its likelihood of happening it is larger than the product of ANSWER's repulsive desires and their chances of bringing them about. My disagreements are twain:

1) I figure any decent person who participates in an ANSWER protest has already made that calculation if he is aware of ANSWER's views, even if he doesn't make a point of telling me about it.

2) I don't imagine that this person owes an explanation to the likes of Tacitus and Megan McArdle.

(pace Diana, Justin Raimondo's response of "Go fuck yourself, Tacitus," is all the response that was owed. Those of us who went beyond that were in Bonus Time.)

Now to the serious philosophical issue. Diana's schema seems to me to be incomplete. As a heterodox conservative, she's going to excuse classes of government action that I, as a libertarian, will not. Perry De Havilland has suggested that what makes a libertarian is the belief that no special rights inhere in Society and the State that don't inhere in individuals. But I see where Diana is coming from. And I see her distinction between the moral positions of the advocacy group and the government. But she seems to be leaving out an essential corner of her moral diagram.

She discusses the moral position of the government, the moral position of the advocacy group and the moral position of the individual choosing to support an advocacy group. But she's silent on the moral position of the individual choosing to support governments, particularly governments in their capacity as doers of what Diana calls "crazy things." Do those people get a pass?

For many years, the US government supported Pol Pot's claim to Cambodia's seat at the UN. A better illustration of moral squalor would be hard to come by. How would we describe individuals who supported this government policy? If General Kazraji ends up running Iraq, how shall we judge the hawks who supported the war that put him there? For my part, I can't accept a moral system that would hold the opponents of government misfeasance to a higher standard of purity than its supporters. The odds favor the House already.

(Sadly, Diana's mother is ill, so she probably won't be returning to the subject any time soon. Please think good thoughts for the two of them.)

Mutie Scum Are Not Human - This is your official wacky humor link of the day. And yet . . . there's something a little unsettling about it:

Judge Judith Barzilay huddled late last year with a telepathic professor and a cast of mutants to ponder an age-old question: What does it mean to be human?

In her chambers at the U.S. Court of International Trade, in New York, the judge examined Prof. X and the rest of his band of X-Men, all of them little plastic figures at the heart of a six-year tariff battle between their owner, Marvel Enterprises Inc., and the U.S. Customs Service.

Her ruling thundered through the world of Marvel Comics fans. The famed X-Men, those fighters of prejudice sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are not human, she decreed Jan. 3. Nor are many of the villains who do battle with Spiderman and the Fantastic Four. They're all "nonhuman creatures," concluded Judge Barzilay.

Mind you, says the libertarian, with true free trade this never would have come up. There wouldn't be a separate tariff rate for dolls and toys and no need to sue. (Go ahead, Liberal Readers! Explain how a benevolent federal government increases the common good by taxing imported dolls more than imported toys.) Still, the Judge creeps me out.

(via Boing Boing via Jesse Walker.)

The Scales Fall - I was pretty set in my view of this ANSWER stuff, but thanks to this item I now see the error of my ways.

Who Knew? - Turns out James Lileks has written novels. That means I have to revise my answer: it's not either/or.

That's It! - Somewhere in this endless comment thread, Tacitus wonders, incredulously, if I'm saying that "It's okay to march at a Stalinist-sponsored event so long as they're inefficient and inept Stalinists?"

Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Ironic ANSWER - ANSWER are unpleasant whackbrains whom no sane person would want to attain genuine political power in this or any other country. Among hawks this weekend there have been many claims that anyone who attended this weekend's marches are sullied by the ANSWER association. After all, if the march is a success, then doesn't ANSWER get the credit, and aren't they Slobo-loving Juche enthusiasts who cheer the Butchers of Beijing? Answers: Not exactly, and Yes.

Yes they are Slobo-loving Juche enthusiasts who cheer the Butchers of Beijing. But as for that "credit," there's a huge irony at work.

A big complaint of the hawks has been that the mainstream press has been downplaying ANSWER's unsavory aspects. But the extent to which the press is giving ANSWER a free ride on Slobo and Kim Jong-Il is also the extent to which ANSWER is failing to get their whole (tedious and annoying) message out. This Post article has it right:

A.N.S.W.E.R., the most radical of the networks mobilized against an attack on Iraq, has been able to reach more moderate groups by sticking to a singular message -- that the United States has not made the case for a unilateral war on Iraq -- and spreading it through the Internet.

When ANSWER hides their full program (or the press hides it for them), ANSWER buries their full program. ANSWER's stances on Korea and China and Yugoslavia don't matter because most marchers aren't looking to ANSWER for guidance on those issues. Many marchers won't even know that ANSWER has positions on those issues. Hell, most marchers aren't looking to ANSWER for guidance on Iraq. They oppose the conquest of Iraq for reasons of their own - some good, some bad - and there's a march to go to, and they go.

You Can't Tell the Players . . . - Matt Hogan of Stand Down has speculated together that the much-maligned Paul Wolfowitz is actually the best of the neocon hawks. Mind you, he has plenty to answer for, having written the blueprint for US hegemony that this administration has been following. But he's also the one who alluded to the suffering of the Palestinians at the pro-Israel rally in Washington last spring (and got booed for it). And now he's making noises about the settlements, according to Ha'aretz. (They seem to be picking up a lot of their material from the David Ignatius column I mentioned Friday.):

In an interview in the Washington Post on Friday, Wolfowitz said, "Our stake in pushing for a Palestinian state will grow" after the war, and he noted that he preferred "concrete steps, like dealing with the settlements" over the advancing of diplomatic issues as part of a "process."

Wolfowitz is the most senior Jewish member of the political and defense branches of the current U.S. administration. He is considered to be the architect behind the current closing in on Iraq, a clear supporter of Israel, and a leading member of the Jewish right in Washington, which includes Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, and the National Security Council adviser on the Middle East, Elliot Abrams.

Ha'aretz reports that the sentiment may be spreading:

However, reports have reached Jerusalem about comments on the settlements made by Elliot Abrams, who is the administration figure for preparations for "the day after." Abrams, known for his sharp criticism of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, has asked, "What do they [the Israelis] want with these settlements?"

That part's easy, actually. The settlements were always intended to make it politically impossible for Israel to give up the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

The problem is that pressing the Israelis to make peace is still Imperium - ideally it would be Israel's business whether holding onto the territories is worth the consequences. However, because Israel depends on US support, Israel's territory decisions also have major consequences for us too. Ideally, a US-brokered agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would enable us to finally get free of the middle east tar baby we so eagerly grasped in 1956. (And isn't that one that, in retrospect, we'd like to have back? We wrecked a functioning Israeli-British-French alliance, resulting, in later years, in an Israel wholly dependent on the US and a Europe and Israel increasingly estranged from each other. In return for warping Israeli and US security policy, the gratitude of the Arab and Third Worlds generally did not, you may have noticed, manifest itself.) Israel would end the settlements, the Palestinians would give up the right of return and the US would spring for financial compensation for Palestinians dispossessed during Israel's founding (what the Fifth Amendment would term a "taking"). What a wonderful world that would be.

A serious criticism that might be lodged is that I want the US to duck out on its "responsibilities." Okay, got me. At the same time, I don't think peace can be successfully imposed from without. I think it only comes when both the warring parties themselves want it more than they wanted whatever they went to war for. And in the meantime, Wolfowitz' confreres will have us in Iraq and maybe "six or seven other countries."

March Madness - More march reports from James Landrith, who marched with veterans groups, and Bob Morris, with a left perspective on the San Francisco march.

Meanwhile war-skeptic Will Wilkinson calls foul on the various DC signs invoking Martin Luther King, since "I have no idea what the man would have thought of our present situation, and I doubt others are in a much better position."

Imitation Diet Blog Post - 199 pounds this morning, just one lower than last week's reading and, truth be told, within the range of uncertainty of our crummy bathroom scale. Waist still 39". Temporary slowdown? Exchange of fat for muscle as exercise program continues? Last night's fajitas? Who knows. But I expect the needle to keep moving as I ramp up the exercise routine. I added in ab exercises last week, I'm now doing bilateral dumbbells instead of one at a time, I've begun work on the five flights of stairs at the office in hopes of helping my unfortunate knees and I've worked in some running intervals with the walks. I figure I'm now past the point where walking counts as training. That means I've gone from being in awful shape to being in bad shape! Such are the athletic triumphs of my life. This week: more panaerobics!

Reading Around - eRiposte has a long article arguing that the recent INS roundups of American muslims, and talk of internment, are counterproductive.

Diana Moon, back at her old address, argues that an Israeli "transfer" of the Palestinians would be impossible, worse than useless if not impossible, and bad for American Jews because it would lead to an antisemitic backlash. It goes without saying that if such a thing comes to pass, those of us who oppose US intervention and many of Israel's policies will have a duty to fight any renewed American antisemitism with the vigor we currently bring to protesting the war and the government's "anti-terror" measures.

Bo Cowgill is shocked, shocked to find that the leaders of South Korea act on their own perceptions of South Korean interests rather than reliably following the US line.

Micah Holmquist excuses what we might call the moderate antiwar faction from the fray. Like Max Sawicky and I, Micah has long argued both that "There's no evidence Iraq wants weapons of mass destruction" is a poor argument against war, and that "Iraq wants weapons of mass destruction" is a poor argument for it. Mainstream Democratic Party critics who have based their case on the insufficiencies of the Bush Administration while accepting its premises (existence of weapons = casus belli) are likely to face a point where they either have to give in to the Administration or change their arguments in mid-stream. That won't make them worse than the hawks, who have readily shuffled through arguments for war over the last year, but it won't make them look better, either. Anti-"unilateralism" was never a solid foundation for the case for peace.

And your Talking Dog reports that Amram Mitzna's campaign is going the way of George McGovern's. Bummer. I liked Mitzna.

You Make the Call - Is James Lileks stupid or lazy in this rant against John LeCarre? I haven't got much use for LeCarre's politics myself, which are fairly conventional British Labour variety. (Albeit the wing of the Labour Party that did not sell out to the Soviets during the Cold War.) On many matters my views are surely closer to Lileks than to LeCarre. But gawd, how asinine is this part?

I’m pretty sure Stephen King is skeptical about the war, for example. I know his politics. But he hasn’t made the leap so common to others in the scribbling, warbling and gesturing arts - he doesn’t think we’re all dying to hear his prescriptions for Middle East foreign policy. Oh, interview him on the matter and he might pop off, but I can’t imagine him sitting down, firing up a Winston Light, and telling himself that this 1200 word essay will change the world, because people will think: hey, it’s Stephen KING talking! He wrote “The Stand,” and his fictional account of the repercussions of biological weapons programs gives him a unique perspective. Let’s lend an ear!

Has Lileks actually read John LeCarre's books? Is he aware of the concept of political novelist? Does he know that LeCarre has been writing political nonfiction for years? Has it occurred to Lileks that LeCarre is at least as well-qualified as James Lileks to write opinion pieces, or that LeCarre, whose connections and appetite for research are legendary, may have vastly more of what the average reader would consider to be qualifications to write about international politics than Lileks? (Or me, for that matter?) Has Lileks ever crouched beneath a jeep in Cambodia during a firefight as LeCarre once did? Does Lileks have even the faintest evidence that LeCarre thinks we'll care what he has to say because of his name alone - rather than the default likelihood that he's a writer, and writers write and then try to publish what they write?

In other words, is Lileks ignorant of a whole batch of knowledge, specific to LeCarre and general to literature and journalism itself, that would disqualify him from having an informed opinion on the matter? Or is he just reaching for any stick that comes to hand with which to beat his target, however flimsy and warped from true that stick might be?

Imagine that James Lileks wrote some novels. Would that mean he was no longer qualified to opine about politics? Should readers say to themselves, Wow. James Lileks calls his daughter cute pet names. I'll bet he has marvelous insights into war and peace and what John LeCarre should be writing? For that matter, mightn't some of that research into biological weapons give Stephen King a certain valid insight into some questions, if he chose to opine on them?

Me, I'm voting for lazy. And you can trust me on this, because I refer to my kids by cute pet names too.

The Bondsman's Lash - Lynxx Pherrett says I'm at least partially wrong about human trafficking in Bosnia, but he says much more. This impressive and lengthy item is practically your one-stop shopping point for information on chattel slavery worldwide.

Department of This Really Sucks Post - Once-great singer Carlene Carter, Nick Lowe's ex-wife and Johnny Cash's stepdaughter, has compounded her legal troubles. First a heroin bust in the summer of 2001, now two counts of identity theft. ("She stole a dead man's identity to obtain prescription drugs.")

Dammit, when Offering Boy was riding with me to day care in Virginia a few years ago, we had a Carlene Carter tape that we played every day, singing along so loudly they could hear us in other cars. Human fallibility, the music industry and the war on drugs sure suck.

March Madness: Elsewhere - Max Sawicky has posted his report to Stand Down. He calls the "the dean of real libertarian bloggers." I think that means I'm older than the rest of them, which is true, I think. (Except maybe for Landrith, but even that's uncertain.)

Oliver Willis says what needs to be said.

Duckboy & Company had an item saying the San Francisco crowd was 80,000, but it's been replaced by a photo from the Mall in Washington.

March Madness: A Quasi-Vanguard of Webloggers - My report on the October 26 March contained a fair amount of political analysis that I won't repeat here - unless, in the way of miscellaneous posts, I end up repeating it after all. This is a true after-action report without much time, so far, for reflection.

First off, what about my conditioning? Answer: much much better than last time. The diet and exercise really paid off, as I didn't have to rest during the march even though the route was considerably longer.

Second, how about the social scene? Answer: Primo. I met Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on schedule at the Forest Glen Metro and we hopped a train to Union Station. At Union Station we picked up Matt Hogan, Sam Heldrin, the man I will ever after think of as "Man-Mountain Max" Sawicky and Loyal Reader Ronit Dancis. We ended up separated from Matt and Sam, and separating from Matt meant that I missed meeting James Landrith too. I think I'm spelling Sam's name wrong. He had his son with him, who was very cute. We did meet Nell and the honchos of the Lexington, Virginia contingent, but got separated early. (Sorry Nell!)

Teresa, whose superpower is to have whatever you or she needs in her backpack, used a marker to fill the back of one of my signs with her preferred slogan ("Not THIS War"). She happened to do it at a right angle to the slogan on the front ("Patriots for Peace") so that, no matter which way she held it throughout the march, she was able to speak directly to the Sideways-American community.

I made extra signs in a fit of energy and inspiration last night, with an eye toward giving them away to the sorts of people who didn't feel comfortable bearing NO BLOOD FOR OIL signs but nevertheless needed to do something with their hands. Before we even left Union Station a nice lady happily took possession of the BILL OF RIGHTS YES BILL OF GOODS NO sign. Just before the start of the march proper another woman complimented the NO PROPHYLACTIC WAR sign, so I gave it to her. That left me with PEACE NOW! SOCIALISM NEVER! and BILLIONS FOR DEFENSE BUT NOT ONE PENNY FOR EMPIRE. It was generally agreed among our party - by now, Patrick, Teresa, Ronit and I - that these signs led to the funniest incident of the day.

On the bad news/good news front, the bad news was that my drinking game rules (see two items below) proved not to be practical. The good news was that this was because you could only hear about every third word the speakers had to say. That spared us much boiler plate from Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney, some guy with a British accent (not Tony Blair), some guy from Egypt (not Anwar Sadat, who is dead) and various other pinkos. Really we'd have been just as happy if they replaced the entire speaker's roster with the offstage voice of the adults in the Peanuts cartoons. ("Wonh-wonh-wonhwonh wonh.")

Nor were we alone. It would not be accurate to say that nobody gives a shit what the speakers have to say. In truth, a small minority of attendees groove on it - they pack the area in front of the stage, they chant when asked, they applaud and wave their signs and generally act engaged. But most marchers could care less. It seemed to me that the crowd on the mall behind the stage was vastly larger than the crowd in front of it. While the speakers are saying whatever it is they're saying (usually involving racism and babies, or racist babies, I don't know), most people are wandering around taking in the sights, trying to hook up with friends or talking to the friends they've already hooked up with. (We found Leonard of Unruled, who left for lunch with his brother before the march started, and a Libertarian Party contingent.)

Let me be clear here: I am not saying that everyone ignoring the speakers is a moderate, or a libertarian or a Main Street Republican. A good portion of them are leftist activists and most of the rest are liberals. But any effort to understand, condemn or even praise this march on the basis of what the featured speakers have to say or don't say is beside the point. (And Instapundit is your source for links to these people today.)

Now to the march itself. Our party of four ended up ahead of the official front of the march. This is because we were with Teresa Nielsen Hayden, a woman whose immediate reaction to the calamitous news on the morning of September 11, 2001, was to head for the roof of her Manhattan office building. We were thus more loosely packed than the bulk of marchers, with five to ten yards between us and other pairs and groups. That meant reporters taking our pictures along Pennsylvania Avenue SE, as we were easy to frame, and asking our names and brief other questions since they could do so without getting run over. A nice enough young fellow from Pacifica interviewed us briefly about -

At this point I must confess to an act of branding. Having noticed that the ANSWER signs at the last parade had their website address at the bottom, I puckishly added the URL of Unqualified Offerings to the bottom of one sign and the URL of Stand Down to another. That meant the interviewer quickly wanted to talk abou