Crude is the only language adequate to discussing the price of crude. I paid $1.83/gallon for gas yesterday. There's a big wooded lot behind our house that belongs to the church around the corner. There are deer there, and possibly some roots and tubers. So instead of driving to the grocery store, we can forage. We have the internet, TV and each other for entertainment. If I can talk the office into letting me telecommute, we could just about ride this out.

Spree Graphs - Item in the Washington City Paper's media column about misreporting of evidence in the sniper case. The thrust of the article is the different approach to making corrections at the Post and the Times. (Thanks to Hesiod for e-mailing the link.)

A Casket of Amontillado - The Institute for Justice has won two more economic liberty cases. In one, the US Court of Appeals affirmed that a Chattanooga minister may indeed sell affordable caskets to his poor parishioners without

a funeral director’s license. To obtain such a license, individuals had to either attend school for two years, apprentice for two years, or a combination of both. During that time, they would have to help embalm 25 bodies and master vast amounts of utterly irrelevant information.

Bad news for a state-protected funeral home cartel that habitually marks up coffins as much as 600%. A twofer for decency and free enterprise.

A federal district court says Virginia vintner Juanita Swedenburg can ship wine directly to customers in New York State, rather than having to sell to (possibly indifferent) in-state wholesalers only.

The Institute for Justice challenged New York’s law under the Commerce Clause. We argued that the power to regulate alcohol given to the states under the 21st Amendment (the amendment that repealed Prohibition) did not give states authority to engage in naked economic protectionism. That principle, while dealing with wine and the 21st Amendment in this case, is one of profound significance to free trade within the United States.

Attorneys for the other side? Princes of Darkness C. Boyden Gray and Robert Bork, among fourteen others - lacking only David Boies to constitute a Legal Axis of Evil.

Discussing the casket case, author Chip Mellor explains the Institute's Cunning Plan:

This licensing scheme was a classic example of laws that arbitrarily limit economic opportunity. It lacked any fit between the asserted goals behind the law—safety and consumer protection—and the licensing requirements supposedly established to achieve the goals. Courts call this the “rational basis test.” IJ’s economic liberty litigation is dedicated to establishing that this fit under the rational basis test must be a tight one. We argue that courts must not merely rubber stamp any economic legislation and defer to legislatures completely. Such abdication of judicial responsibility guarantees that protectionist legislation will proliferate.

For a lot of conservative business interests, "right to work" means no more than "right to get fired by your employer." For libertarians, "right to work" means what it goddam says: the right to employ your talent and resources in peaceful industry for such gain as others choose to pay. State and local laws are full of prohibitions on that kind of dangerous behavior. By taking those laws on, IJ is probably doing more concrete good than any other libertarian institution.

Like We Did in Afghanistan - From Reuters today:

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Rival commanders squabbling over scrap metal traded mortar fire near the U.S. headquarters in Afghanistan on Thursday after President Hamid Karzai appealed in Washington for subsidies to placate unruly militias. U.S. military spokesman Roger King said the exchange occurred north of Bagram Air Base, for the second time this week.

"There are two sub-unit commanders who both operate north of the base and they are in a dispute over who owes who money and who should have access to the profits generated by some scrap metal," King said.

"They are attempting to settle it with mortars."

Some background:

The latest clash comes after at least six people were killed in fighting between forces from opposing warlords which broke out in the north of the country at the weekend as Karzai was in Japan seeking funds for a program to disarm warlord armies.

Karzai was pledged $51 million but the program is expected to cost nearly three times that.

A warlord who gets X million dollars to disarm and does so is no longer a warlord. He has lost power and status and gotten only money in return. I would imagine the program has the best chance of working if the money goes not to the warlords but directly to his troops. (Warlords already have money if they can afford men and weapons, and the men and weapons afford them a way of getting more money.) You can expect the warlords to resist the program pretty hard, and for it ultimately to have about as much effectiveness as the various "money for guns" programs US cities run from time to time.

In Washington on Wednesday, Karzai asked U.S. senators to support a request that the United States subsidize his budget to allow him to pay 100,000 irregular provincial militiamen.

He said this would be to ensure "they remain well-behaved" until the Japanese-led disarmament drive took off.

That would be money even without disarming.

New Europe = Old Warsaw Pact - Jon Utley of Americans Against Bombing sends a copy of an Investor's Business Daily article by Brian Mitchell that is apparently only available to subscribers. Mitchell goes into great detail about the backgrounds of the leaders of the "Coalition of the Billing" as Matt Hogan calls them. Money quote:

"It's not just that they were Communists - anyone could have been a communist - it's that they were very senior Communists," said John Laughland of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group. "In three or four of the cases, they were actually the Communist bosses in their country."

Examples:

Estonia's President Arnold Ruutel was president of the country's Supreme Soviet.

Lithuania's Primier Algirdas Brazauskas was the first secretary of his country's Communist Party.

Romania's President Ion Iliescu founded Romania's Communist student union. He later served as secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee.

Bulgaria's President Georgi Parvanov was too young to get far in the Communist Party, until the party changed its name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party in 1990. Parvanov is the first ex-Communist to be president since the end of communism.

Slovakia's President Rudolph Schuster was a member of the Central Committee of Czechoslovakia's Communist Party for 20 years. He attended his last Communist Party meeting in 2000, boasting to the delegates, "I am proud of what I did under the former regime."

The struggle to end communism in Poland pitted Lech Walesa, hero of the Solidarity labor movement, against Aleksander Kwasniewski and Leszek Miller. Kwasniewski was a career propagandist for the Communist regime. Miller was a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Today, Walesa is out, and Kwasniewski and Miller are back in . . .

Hungary's prime minister is Socialist Peter Medgyessy, who spied for the Soviet-era secret police under the code name D-209.

Mitchell notes that surveys of actual public opinion in "New Europe" resemble nothing so much as public opinion in - Old Europe. Per Mitchell, 45% of Romanians favor war - the highest level of support in the countries in question - while opposition to the war goes as high as 84% in Bosnia. Bosnia, having had firsthand experience of being liberated, seems a bit short on gratitude and enthusiasm. (Romania had the bloodiest and dirtiest transition to "post-communism.")

"But," Mitchell notes, "since when did public opinion matter in Eastern Europe?"

"They're all a bunch of Commie hacks who are used to giving into to whomever is the biggest bastard on the block," Laughland said.

UPDATE: Fixed link to Americans Against Bombing.

News of the Weird - A reader sent me the premium subscription version of Stratfor's daily Iraq briefing. The public version teases

Following a fast visit by former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is said to have agreed to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors. Sources also say that U.S. energy companies could be invited back to Iraq after a 30-year hiatus -- but Washington's reaction to the proposal, to be delivered by Russian diplomat Vladimir Voloshin -- is anything but clear.

Details missing from the teaser:

o Primakov and Saddam are said to be old friends. (Ick.)
o Saddam told Primakov he would "scrap [Iraq's] al Samoud 2 missile program by March 1."
o Saddam will invite UN peacekeepers in to assist the inspectors - essentially volunteering for the currently stillborn "inspections plus" program.
o Here's a pisser: Per Stratfor, Saddam has asked Primakov to convey an invitation to US and British oil companies to return to Iraq for the first time in thirty years.
o Overall goal:

The ultimate goal of [envoy Vladimir Voloshin's follow-up] visit [to the White House] is to persuade the Bush administration that Iraq will be disarmed to such a point that it not only will be unable to threaten U.S. and Israeli forces for years to come, but would be unable to resist a U.S. invasion if Washington deems it necessary to attack Iraq in the future.

The first thing to wonder, as always with Stratfor, is "How reliable is the report." Can't say. The second thing to wonder is, "Will it work?" That is to say, will it stave off war, as the Russians and Iraqis hope? Stratfor is skeptical, which makes sense to me. Stratfor notes, "The proposal would not achieve Washington's two main goals in Iraq: regime change and a new base for U.S. forces in the Middle East." Now we already have bases in the Middle East (Oman and Qatar come to mind), but not bases from which one can launch land invasions of Iran and Syria, so keep this "new base" goal in mind when evaluating Kenneth Pollack-style arguments that Iraq is uniquely worse than other rogue states. (Lynxx Pherret, as so often, does the best job of stating that case.) This war is not designed to end in Iraq. Stratfor's formulation also implies that "regime change" has become an end in itself, not a means to greater US security.

Stratfor (and I) also think that the domestic political situation still tilts in favor of a decision to invade. While the public remains split, there's an activist Republican Party constituency, centered in the think tanks and magazines, insistent on taking Saddam down. All the scribblers have to do is to turn the head of a potential primary-challenge glory hound, and Bush's reelection chances almost disappear. Contrariwise, if Bush decides to invade, he can hope that the "cakewalk scenario" comes to pass, or that all the bad stuff is out of the way by summer 2004. Then the soft opposition in the public at large goes away, the base is happy and he cruises to reelection.

Also, the oil company thing is so transparently cynical on Saddam's part it could backfire on him politically.

But watch this space.

Note from Home - Tired and a touch under the weather. Over the next few days, reader mail, Kenneth Pollack and whatever comes to me while I'm sitting at the computer. Now, decongestant and a pillow.

War of the Kurdish Suppression Update - Per the pro-war Telegraph:

Kurdish leaders in Iraq gave warning yesterday that American-sanctioned deployment of Turkish troops in northern Iraq would lead to fighting.

What kind of fighting?

But [Nasreen Mustafa Sidiq, the minister of reconstruction and development in Irbil] too gave a warning about unforeseen consequences if the Turks entered the area. "If Turkish soldiers come here, to Irbil, I will hate the Turks. We will use what we have, even our lives, if we have to."

"Even our lives?" Is that an oblique reference to . . . suicide bombing?

Okay, but why do the Turks want to do this in the first place?

The Turks say they want to prevent a repeat of the mass exodus to their territory after the failed Kurdish uprising of 1991, and to protect the Turkoman minority in Kurdistan.

But Mam Qassem, a Turkoman money changer whose family has lived in Irbil for generations said this was a pretext and that his people enjoy equal rights under Kurdish rule.

"The Turks are only coming for oil," he said, "those Turkomen who ask the Turks to come here; we don't like them, they are like spies for the Turkish government."

Mr. Qassem apparently hasn't heard that it's not about oil, dammit.

Anyway, developing . . .

Daredevil - I feel like a bit like a Star Trek fan - I realize I'm forgiving a lot for the sake of my enjoyment. (Note to self: stop making fun of those people.) But there's a lot I liked. One thing: in most superhero stories, endless contrivances prevent anyone from unmasking the hero. Here everybody takes Daredevil's mask off at some point. Elektra does it, the Kingpin does it, Matt Murdock's priest does it. I liked Matt's "solution" to the Kingpin discovering his identity. It makes a nice change from the default. (Contrive to have the villain die through no fault of the hero's.) It felt right that the one person in on Daredevil's secret identity from the beginning is his priest. The fight with Bullseye atop the pipe organ was pretty fine. The courtship/fight with Elektra: primo. Foggy Nelson: perfect.

What's not to like? The costume. The somewhat jerky pacing. The editing of some of the fight scenes. I wasn't wild about the CGI rendering of Daredevil's radar sense. The only partially-successful response to the problem of Batman Envy.

Batman Envy was even a problem during Frank Miller's legendary first run as series writer, and Miller's work on Daredevil changed the way superhero comics were written. (Miller was the first "good" writer to script comics, where "good" means not confusing overwriting with merit.) Miller did the logical thing and went off to write Batman instead (The Dark Knight Returns). On his return to Daredevil, he actually freed the character from "avenger of the night"-hood. A lot less of the cowardly, superstitious lot calling him " 'Devil!" and quaking at his shadow. The reprint of those issues, Daredevil: Born Again, is well worth your time. I spent an enjoyable hour with it last night in Barnes & Noble after the movie. Miller and "Born Again" artist Dave Mazzuchelli then made "Batman: Year One." I would argue that to read Dark Knight, Born Again and Year One together is to see that by that point the two heroes are utterly distinct in Miller's mind. He's identified a core sweetness in Matt Murdock and his world that just doesn't exist for Bruce Wayne. (He identifies the sweetness with Christianity.)

You could make the case that the movie is about Matt Murdock making the same discovery in himself Frank Miller made for him - the movie Murdock decides his core value is not vengeance but mercy. The decision makes him happier and gives him strength. (It'll make confession easier too.) One problem is that, despite what I wrote about the evolution of Frank Miller's approach to the character, the evolution from avenger to defender is not Daredevil's story - not the character's ur-text from the beginning of the series. Miller never confused Murdock with Bruce Wayne, exactly. He employed Darknight Detective tropes in the reaction of characters to Murdock's costumed identity. A Comics Code baby, Daredevil never had a "killer phase" to grow out of.

The other problem is that it means most of the movie becomes "The Dark Knight Walks with a Cane." At the end, Daredevil decides not to be Batman, but to be Chandler's "man who is not himself mean." But that means we still don't have a Daredevil movie, because it's only at the end of the movie that Matt Murdock becomes Daredevil.

Better Gaming, Better Living - Bruce Baugh's RPG designer's manifesto is worth a general audience. Excerpt:

Yes, I craft entertainment. But entertainment is important. The demands of living a decent and humane existence are tough: it takes work to be a good child and parent, spouse and friend, employer and employee, neighbor and citizen. Life is seldom altogether delightful. Our entertainment time is our chance to renew our sense of enjoyment, and in gaming to do so with friends in a really pretty unique kind of way. Having as much fun as possible in gaming is, or can be, part of living life responsibly, recharging energy and enthusiasm ground down by duty and happenstance. Gaming seldom gives anyone new ideas, and indeed anyone who gets their ideas about life from gaming has some other problems. But good gaming can build us up in a bunch of ways, including the sense of rising to a challenge: "I wanted to do this, and I prepared for it, and I made it work. We did something cool together, and it happened because I made it." Those of us who create games are the collaborators-at-a-distance with all the folks reading and playing the games in their various and sundry ways. If I fail to pursue options for adventure, intrigue, drama, tragedy, and mystery just because they weren't done right or at all 20-odd years ago, I'm being an irresponsible steward of the money and time I'm asking you to invest in my products.

Weekly Fitness Blog Post - Those not into the weight loss thing may enjoy A heavy girl's guide to success, by Kerry Daniels.

This week's title change simply acknowledges what everyone else undoubtedly decided weeks ago - there's nothing "imitation" about this regular feature any more. Of course, I just checked and there's nothing weekly either - despite clear memories of writing a fitness item last Sunday morning, no such post exists in the database. Suddenly Eric Mauro's recent e-mail - "PS no diet posts lately?" seems less cryptic.

So last week we were at 194 pounds, 37 3/4" waist, same as the previous week. This week, 190 pounds, same pants size. From a plateau to a big drop, both of which are expected features of any diet. That drops the BMI to 26.5, still officially (and genuinely) overweight, but making me now slightly thinner than my age-gender cohort (49th percentile). But as I've said before, the heck with those slackers - I'm after better.

(Define better? Okay, two goals - one sensible, one absurd. A few years ago, at a poetry conference, one of the grad students working the conference allowed that he was forty years old. I was stunned. I want to be that guy. Not in a making my hair less gray sense - I don't care about that. In a how can he be in such good shape at that age sense. Second, if I make my weight and am plausibly athletic by this fall, I get to wear a superhero costume at any Halloween parties. I haven't decided which one yet.)

New statistics: Yesterday I used the blood pressure chair by the supermarket prescription counter. These things are nowhere close to definitive and it was my first use. Still, I got 123/76, with a 72/minute heartbeat. Those are the best readings I've had in years. I have to see the doctor this week about something else, so we'll see if these numbers hold up.

Now for the exercise portion of the item. I would say that I continued to pursue a weightlifting-only strategy this week, but I'm not sure that's strictly true - after all, I spent a couple of hours shoveling snow. Snow shoveling is such high-demand activity - which is why people die doing it - that Leonard "Heavyhands" Schwartz actually recommended "practice shoveling" as an exercise in his first book. It was the only exercise that did not involve small dumbbells. Instead, he suggested holding an actual snow shovel and engaging in rhythmic shoveling movements at your target heart rate for several minutes during your workout. Two hours of shoveling can easily burn 800 calories. (For perspective, though, that's only about a quarter pound of fat.)

What I can say is that the snow provided a useful fitness test. I did three sessions over three days. Arms, legs, abs and heart held up fine. That's quite a change from the early winter snows, where my heart rate shot right up and I had to take frequent rests and walked like a zombie for days afterward. I suffered some mild soreness in the back muscles, but thanks to those stiff-legged deadlifts, even that wasn't as bad is it's been after previous snows. (Another thing Schwartz and the slow-cadence weightlifting gurus would agree on: the solution to America's back problems is not to avoid using our backs. The solution is to train our backs.)

Hey. not having a heart attack while shoveling snow is a major fitness goal for men my age.

Am I convinced yet that slow-cadence weight training really is all the exercise one needs? No, not yet. I've felt subjectively less conditioned in the chest area toward the end of the week - two weeks since my last heavyhands session. That could be a cold I've picked up, though. And I posted those good blood pressure and heartbeat numbers regardless. I plan to give the weight's-only program another month.

The part of this post that isn't obsessively about me. I do, I should mention, get fitness-blog e-mail. Eric Mauro writes:

I tried out your plan, don't know if I'm any stronger, but it does leave more time for the fam. I'm counting on you to clear my conscience. Certainly there must be a better way to do this than chipping off those calories on the stairmaster. I'm only 33 and already my joints are going. Oy my sciatica...

The numbers one more time. Running a mile uses up a hundred calories. A pound of fat is 3500 calories. Run a mile, in place or on the go. Eat 3 oreos. You've lost ground. Plus, the stairmaster does nothing for the upper body. (At least elliptical trainers provide for arm work, though it looks like the range of motion is nothing spectacular. But I've never used one.) Eric: I clear your conscience. Build muscle. Weights do that.

Now, what the weight training enthusiasts may not appreciate is that there is an aerobic way to burn a lot more than a hundred calories at a time and build muscle too. You all know what it is by now. Schwartz's tables in the first Heavyhands book suggest that a 170# man can burn 1.5 calories per minute per MET. (1 MET is the work the body does at rest.) A trained heavyhander can sustain workloads of 10-15 METs over a half hour. That's 15-22 calories per minute. Four half-hour sessions of that a week could burn a half to three-quarters of a pound of fat and would also, if you keep working in some aerobic intervals with heavier dumbbells, build muscle mass over your entire body. That means that, unlike the stairmaster, it will keep working between sessions.

I saw a jogger along Sligo Creek Parkway yesterday, her little arms up in front of her like a squirrel's, and I just wanted to stop the car and shout "Stop that!" (Fred Hahn claims that studies have found that runners have as much of the brain protien S-100B in their system as boxers, suggesting that they're bouncing their brains around while exercising.)

I'm sure now that slow-cadence weight training builds muscle, and at a faster rate than Heavyhands alone. I can feel it. Like I said, ask me in a month weather my breathing and heart rate are where I feel they should be. The problem is that, if slow-cadence weight training turns out not to be all one needs or wants from an exercise program, it's hard to combine it with anything else. All the slow-cadence gurus stress the importance of recovery time. That's when the body actually builds muscle. So far, my legs are taking most of a week to recover between sessions. (I plan to try out a new squat this week that might alleviate the leg problem.)

I'm automatically suspicious of the fitness advisors who say "You need to do all the exercise types" - it sounds political. But if they're right, slow-cadence weight training makes it hard to fit those other exercises in - you don't want to ruin recovery time. The slow-cadence gurus I've seen all say, "You don't need to do aerobics, but if you really want to, wait four or five days after your weight workout."

Here's a possible alternative. Call it "Fortnightly Fitness Fun": Do a slow-cadence weight session Sunday. Rest all week. Next week, do three four intense sessions of Heavyhands. Then start the cycle over. The week of Heavyhands should at the very least prevent muscle atrophy, allowing one to continue to make strength gains after the weight sessions.

But that's for later.

Dave Lull writes

PS: I've been THINKING about Super Slow for a while, but have never done it. I think a lot about things before I try them. I haven't done an exercise program since I got out of boot camp at the age of 22. I've been thinking about exercise, in various forms, since then, i.e., for about 32 years now. Someday I may actually do some. Well, actually, I did do some exercises a while ago to help alleviate some pain I was suffering. Of course, when the pain subsided, so did my bout with exercise. But the success I had with these exercises made me interested in the ideas behind them. So now I'm THINKING about them.

Dave's suggested reading is this article from trainer Pete Egoscue. Egoscue theorizes about pro athletes that injure themselves:

Despite all the hours of practice and weight training, high school and college ball and endless drills, these athletes are still products of their own culture, and that means they've been running a motion deficit since infancy. The great thieves of bodily function are cars, desks and television sets. Technology is robbing us of a precious legacy. We are losing our life-support system.

The Synopsis of the Egoscue Method contains this spectacularly bad sentence:

That decrease in performance could be expressed in the way you deliver a curve ball to a person having difficulty rising from a chair.

That's just cruel.

I Get a No-Prize - Everyone complains about the scene at the beginning of Daredevil where defense attorney Matt Murdock is "prosecuting" a rape case. By everyone, I mean Franklin Harris. Probably others, too, but I haven't been obsessive about reading the reviews.

The problem vanishes, though, if you assume that the rape trial is a civil case Murdock is bringing on behalf of the victim. (He refers to her as "my client" in the courtroom.) The only minor difficulty is afterwards, on the steps of the courthouse, when Matt and Foggy regret that another rapist is still on the streets. But you can put that down to loose talk. Really. You can. I just did.

More on the movie later. Mrs. Offering wanted to know how Matt could afford a fancy isolation tank and all the equipment if none of his clients ever pay him. I promised to tell her when she's older. For my part, I was distracted by the conviction that Ben Affleck looks remarkably like a cross between NEA head Dana Gioia and Adam Sandler. But I suppose everybody felt that way.

Imitation Tech Blog Post III - More from PC World's twentieth anniversary issue.

"Americans spent an average of 157 hours (6.5 days) using the Internet at home in 2002."

157 hours a year??? Some of you are not holding up your end.

Internet sales taxes creep closer.

Step One, the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, is near completion. In itself, that wouldn't compel retailer compliance because the states can't regulate interstate commerce. So step two involves Uncle Sugar:

Once ten states representing 20 percent of the U.S. population pass the tax rules, the governors and state legislatures of all the states participating in the SSTP will ask Capitol Hill for laws to make seller compliance mandatory, says Diane Hardt, cochair of the SSTP. In the states' most optimistic scenario, federal laws enforcing collection could appear as soon as 2004.

Appeasement Watch:

As of this writing, a group of at least five national retailers has approached state offices about voluntarily collecting sales taxes by February 1, independent of the SSTP. These vendors have negotiated with the various states amnesty deals that grant them immunity from liability for missed or improperly collected taxes on previous sales. The SSTP proposes a similar deal for vendors that voluntarily comply within a year of SSTP law enactment in their state.

Of PC World's Five Free Tips, I especially appreciated the fourth one. All sorts of programs want to set themselves to launch on startup, including some that have no business doing so. The fourth tip explains how to get them off the Startup list.

Non-PC World Item. I'm using Opera a lot more lately. The unwanted popup suppression is wonderful. I'm not fond of its insistence on running full screen. And I haven't convinced myself to switch over to its mail client, M2, which a lot of people really like. But I'm moving more and more toward using IE only for Movable Type and Opera for everything else. (The formatting buttons in the edit window don't appear in Opera or Mozilla/Netscape.) Strangely, I'm using the free, ad-supported version of Opera rather than the $39 ad-free version. But I'm getting no ads.

Hosting Matters. In the for what it's worth department, here's how I feel about my first month on the new host. Reliability has been excellent. Blog posting goes much faster and I haven't lost a post yet. On the other hand, the statistics available suck. You can't set the date range you want in any of the available stat engines. Referrer stats accrue on a month-to-date basis only. Consequently it's essentially impossible for me to spot new referrers after the first week of the month. The bright side is I'm less obsessed with what others are saying about the blog (assuming they're saying anything). The downside is that I feel less connected to "the weblogging community" and have a harder time being a good blog citizen than before.

Historical Spam - PC World also reproduces the first known unsolicited commercial e-mail. "Early Internet users say that a marketing rep at Digital Equipment Corporation sent the first unsolicited commercial e-mail on May 1, 1978. The message invited all 594 people with Arpanet accounts to product demonstrations. This is one innovator who's probably happy to go unremembered: Only the offender's e-mail address, THUERK at DEC-MARLBORO, still appears in the online record. "

Remember, as the poet said, the mighty oak was once a nut like you. (The actual e-mail image is hard to read.)

Spam Mail From Some Flounder? - For PC World's twentieth anniversary, the magazine assigned writer Scott Spanbauer to go computer-free for twenty days. The experiment resulted in a somewhat predictible article (computer-free life has good points! Bad points too!) but what struck me was the passage on what happened when he checked his e-mail for the first time in 21 days:

The time has come to reenter the 21st century. I take the Sony out of the safe, boot it up, and start downloading mail. I find more than 2000 messages--including 1571 pieces of unsolicited commercial e-mail. Hallelujah, baby, this is productivity.

Three-quarters of his e-mails are spam? This dumbfounds me. I hear people complain about spam all the time, but I never give it much thought. I don't pay by the message, it's usually pretty easy to delete unread and the ones I'm not quite sure of take about a second to figure out once I open them. My in-box strategy is, generally, to do a pre-read delete pass, then read new unread messages in order as received. I have no use for spam, but I've never found it the bother that others seem to.

But I'm pretty sure that three-quarters of my e-mails aren't spam, either. I'd guess that one out of ten, perhaps as many as one out of five, e-mails I get qualify as spam. But now I'm wondering. So starting tomorrow, I'm going to keep count for a week.

By No Means Duty-Free - Apparently the Bush Administration has finally succeeded in buying Turkey's cooperation in the conquest of Iraq. Cost we know about, $6 billion in direct aid "with the idea that this financing could be leveraged into an additional $20 billion in loans from international institutions.

The haggling also reached into such details as to which side should pay the cost of the plastic identification badges American troops stationed here would be required to wear, how much American soldiers would pay for gasoline at Turkish pumps and whether U.S. soldiers would have to pay Turkey's value-added taxes, according to Turkish officials close to or familiar with the talks.

Costs we don't know about yet:

These officials insisted, however, that the argument was not all about money. They said equally important were issues such as the role and command of Turkish troops who would participate in a U.S. operation in northern Iraq and guarantees that Iraqi Kurds would not come over the border into Turkey as happened in 1991.

In other words, what news for the War of the Kurdish Suppression? Answer: mixed news.

Another outstanding issue was American plans to give more weapons to Iraqi Kurds, with Turkey concerned about its own Kurdish minority and fearful of a revival of the PKK Kurdish independence group. Foreign Minister Yakis told Turkish NTV television tonight: "The Kurdish groups will need light weapons to defend themselves. Negotiations with the U.S. about how we can collect them, can we collect them, are continuing."

What the Kurds might think of the hated Turks "collecting" their weapons is left as an exercise to the reader - not a hard exercise, mind you. Also, are "light weapons" enough for the Kurds to fulfill their planned offensive role of providing the bulk of the manpower for the drive south on Baghdad?

"In 1991, these weapons fell into the hands of the PKK," he said. "In order to avoid a similar situation this time, we prefer that these weapons are taken back."

Because there can be no "safe zone" for the Kurds of Turkey.

A senior U.S. official said the American side will continue to insist that Turkish troops inside Iraq must report to U.S. commanders. But Yakis said on NTV, "The Turkish troops in Northern Iraq will have their own commander. However, this does not mean that the Turkish troops and American troops will act totally separate without any coordination."

A U.S. official in Washington also said no Turkish troops will be permitted a role in the Iraqi oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

It's not about oil. Kirkul and Mosul just kind of keep coming up, is all. It's a train wreck waiting to happen, with the Turks saying the Kurds mustn't take Kirkuk and Mosul, the US saying the Turks mustn't take Kirkuk and Mosul and the Kurds saying, "They're ours, baby." Meanwhile all parties know that the Northern Alliance proved with the capture of Kabul that Who dares, wins.

Something that occurs to me this morning, though - there's an outside chance that we're not going to shaft the Kurds at all. Maybe we're going to shaft the Turks. What if the plan is to let the Kurds keep their autonomy against Turkey's insistence? Once the invasion has been concluded and the US no longer needs Turkey to provide the logistical tail, what could they do? This administration has shown that they do not appreciate demurrals even from allies, and they hold grudges. They may wish to punish Turkey for holding them up so long.

Odds: damned low. If the idea is to turn next to Iran and Syria, as it surely is, Turkey remains too useful. So continue to place your bets on the Kurds taking it in the shorts at the end of this process.

Could It Happen Watch - The conservative and generally pro-war Capitol Hill Blue reports White House advisors looking for a "way out" of war with Iraq:

Some strategists within the Bush Administration are urging the President to look for an "exit strategy" on Iraq, warning the tough stance on war with the Arab country has left the country in a "no win" situation.

Why? The UN problems, for one. And, interestingly, this:

In addition, Republican leaders in both the House and Senate are telling the Presidently privately that he is losing support in Congress for a "go it alone war" against Iraq.

"The President's war plans are in trouble, there's no doubt about that," says an advisor to House Speaker Dennis J. Hastert. "Some Republican members want a vote on military action and some of those say they would, at this point, vote against such action."

Have no fear, though, or hope depending on your inclinations:

President Bush, however, is reported to be "hanging tough" on plans to invade Iraq, even though his closest advisors tell him such a move could be "disasterous" politically.

Your usual interpretive options are available, from pure charade through meaningless jitters to watch this space. I wouldn't give much chance of Republican lawmakers actually carrying out what would be a colossal rebuke to a sitting president of their own party, but the rumblings, combined with the uncertainties in Britain and Turkey, are interesting.

Hawks Unclear on the Concept - Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is shocked, shocked to discover that French politicians act in . . . French interests:

So France in recent decades has chosen to express its power negatively -- by opposing actions that it believes are not in France's interest.

and

The United States has been the principal target of French negativism, but it is hardly the only one. Many of France's European allies have felt the sting of its refusal to compromise on what it regards as its interests.

Zut alors! as Batroc zee Leepair might put it.

A Slough of Subsidizers - The Institute for Justice has opened a North Carolina chapter. First target: that state government's policy of giving its citizens money to wealthy out-of-state movie studios:

The IJ-NC represents Raleigh small businessman Edward Jones and the Wake County Taxpayers’ Association in the lawsuit.

“As a small businessman who built a company, pays taxes and provides jobs to North Carolinians, I say handing over our tax money like this brings no benefit to the public and is just wrong,” said Jones, a remodeling contractor whose Eastern Surfa-Shield and Facelifters employs a crew of six. “I never expected or received a $200,000 check from the State to build my business. My business relies on hard work and good service to our customers to survive, not on government handouts. The North Carolina Constitution is supposed to prevent that kind of giveaway.”

Article V, Section 2 of the North Carolina Constitution states that the taxing power shall be exercised “for public purposes only . . . .” Although the North Carolina courts traditionally enforced this provision as a barrier to state subsidies of private businesses, the General Assembly in recent years has eroded that constitutional protection. Recent so-called “incentive” programs—passed under the guise of “economic development”—result in private businesses being subsidized by the public purse for purposes unconnected to traditional public matters. Moreover, the North Carolina courts have given more leeway to the General Assembly’s actions in this area—a trend the plaintiffs in this lawsuit hope to help change.

In Maryland we have a similar policy: keep corporate taxes high; then, when a large company threatens to move out of state (like Marriott did a few years ago), negotiate a tax incentive package directly with them. Doing so concedes the essential point: high taxes tend to drive employers away, low taxes tend to retain them. But you can't just lower taxes for everyone because that would leave less for the state's own employees to do. A general policy of low taxes provides few opportunities for public officials to hold press conferences announcing that they've "saved" a particular business. (No press conferences are held to commemorate the departing employers that they don't even try to save.) Plus, official favoritism drives campaign contributions from corporations who stand to benefit.

It's a win-win for everyone but, you know, almost everybody.

Gioa Division - This San Francisco Chronicle profile of new NEA head Dana Gioia is, all in all, not so bad. It gets off to a very rocky start, implying that Gioia was still in the corporate world at the time of his nomination and talking about what it might mean if Gioia is confirmed. (The Chronicle piece ran February 16. Gioia was confirmed two weeks prior. Later in the article the author notes that Gioia left his business career in 1992.)

Other cavils: The article is correct that Gioia identifies himself as a member and supporter of the New Formalist movement, but overstates when it continues

Gioia's own work exemplifies New Formalism. Along with three published volumes of poetry - "Daily Horoscope" (1986), "The Gods of Winter" (1991) and "Interrogations at Noon" (2001), which won the American Book Award - he has published translations, essays, literary anthologies and reviews. And he has founded two poetry conferences, one at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and "Teaching Poetry" in Santa Rosa.

But Gioia's own collections probably contain less metrical verse, proportionally, than any other new formalist. Compare one of Gioia's volumes to a book by Timothy Steele or R.S. Gwynn, to name two poets I admire, and the distinction is obvious. Publishing "translations, essays, literary anthologies and reviews" is not a sign of "new formalism." It's the sort of thing many poets do. The two (poorly-formatted) poems the article reprints at the end, "Money" and "Planting a Sequoia," are probably Gioia's best-known poems. (Garrison Keillor read "Money" on the radio.) Neither one is formal verse.

But the profile gets some important things right. It correctly identifies Gioia's origins as working class. He spent much of his youth in the corporate world, but he didn't start there. It identifies Wallace Stevens as his career inspiration. It doesn't (quite) convey the energy Gioia has brought to supporting poets and fostering interconnecting cells of sympathetically-minded writers, but the full force of Gioia the instigator may be beyond description, something you just have to experience.

His appointment doesn't give me any more faith in the NEA than I had previously, but the Bush Administration had to appoint someone, and I doubt they could have done better.

You Like Me! You Really Like Me! - Wow. Your Talking Dog undertook the herculean task of actually providing a capsule description for every link in "the Dog Run," aka "The Best Damn Links Section on the Internet." One of his tricks was to pick a breed of dog for each blog. And I'm honored to report that instead of assigning a breed to Unqualified Offerings, he awarded it "Best in Show." Given my admiration for TD's own writing, this means a lot. I haven't felt this swell-headed since I realized I was the top blog on Gene Healy's link list.

Axis of Tryptophan - So is Turkey in or out? Right now the alleged sticking point is cash, because, as you know, our supporters are morally superior in every way to our (weasel) antagonists, and moral superiority costs good money.

Rights to Iraqi oil in Kirkuk and the future of a Turkish military presence in northern Iraq also were part of the negotiations, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Keep in mind that it's possible that this is all mummery, that the deal is done and the public proceedings are an attempt to achieve tactical surprise on the northern front. To return to our ur-text, William Kristol's Washington Post column of October 12, 2002:

The president's audience is no longer the American public, or even our allies. It is Hussein. Deceiving him as to the timing of the war and the manner of attack is crucial to success. We obviously cannot achieve real strategic surprise; Hussein knows an attack is likely. But tactical surprise remains possible and, especially given Hussein's arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, very much desirable, if we are to minimize casualties and risks.

When it comes to "minimiz[ing] casualties and risks," the northern front would seem to be crucial. That's certainly true if the plan really is to hit Baghdad with airmobile troops early on in a race to kill Saddam, as the London Times maintained earlier in the month:

AMERICAN war planners believe that they have little more than 48 hours from the start of a ground war to kill President Saddam Hussein if they are to avoid a protracted conflict and a complicated peace.

What the Times calls a "rush to Baghdad" carries at least the risk of becoming "Arnhem II." The more directions the US hits Iraq from, the less chance, one would think, that Saddam can successfully concentrate his defenses.

So, is the Bush administration 1) that reckless or 2) do they secretly have the Turks sewn up already or 3) is this one more snafu that may stop the conquest entirely? (Can't say "stop the war." As the Times notes, "US special forces and CIA teams are already operating on the ground in Iraq." In quainter times, "operating" military forces in the territory of an adversary was called, you know, war.) My considered opinion: hey, who can tell with these people. But my bets are on 2, 3 and 1 in that order. But one is last because I still, despite everything, would like to think the Administration wouldn't blithely launch "Operation Market Souk."

A Rorschach of Regulators - Congressmen have to take classes in McCain-Feingold, notes the New York Times, and even then many of them say they can't follow it. Robert Matsui, who voted for the thing, told a reporter after his class, "I didn't realize what all was in it." Radley Balko writes

Now, if Rep. Matsui votes for and vigorously endorses legislation directly affecting him, without reading or really understanding said piece of legislation, imagine how much attention he gives legislation that affects only you, or me -- or minutia-laden OHSA or HIPAA regulations -- before he blindly casts his vote.

Well I'm sure he has people for that. Whee.

This Land is not Your Land - Ramesh Ponnuru gives props to the Institute for Justice, which has been, among its many good works, fighting abuses of "eminent domain." Often cities condemn the property of small businesses, homeowners and even churches, not to build roads or parks or even government buildings, but to give it to much bigger businesses. Ponnuru:

The economic-development justification for property seizure is a license for abuse. It will always be possible to dress up the appeasement of powerful financial interests in an area in this fashion. The best economic-development strategy for cities, in any case, is not to attack property rights but to maintain their roads, apprehend and punish criminals, keep taxes low, and fix the schools.

The IJ donations page is here. It gets 4 stars out of 4 from Charity Navigator.

Crazy Talk - Matt Hogan e-mails about this morning's item on war skepticism in the US military:

American arrogance? peacenik talk indeed! What true military guy would use such leftyspeak? Next thing they'll tell me is that Dwight Eisenhower made up "military-industrial complex"!! They'll stop at nothing, I tell ya.

In further comments on his now active weblog, Matt writes

What is most scary is that it appears that our military status and political risks in invading Iraq match what can be called the “Bin-Laden doctrine."

He then explains how. Worth reading. Be even more worth reading when he discovers the wonders of the BLOCKQUOTE tag.

How Many Chances? - Jeff Taylor of Reason Express asks:

Let's pretend that the Federal Bureau of Investigation came into being on September 12, 2001. How long would it be reasonable to wait before it got its anti-terror act together? How many utterly absurd blunders would we tolerate before top-level FBI managers were fired and replaced with non-FBI talent?

Taylor thinks the FBI is missing something basic:

When a terrorist in FBI custody makes claims about future attacks, and those claims result in police with fully-automatic weapons deployed to street corners and cabinet officials advising Americans to construct safe rooms with duct tape and plastic sheeting, that terrorist has successfully committed an act of terror. And the FBI was his unwitting accomplice.

A captured terrorist has no conceivable interest in supplying the FBI with accurate information on future attacks. He does, however, have an interest in diverting resources from actual attack plots, scrambling security assets so his cohorts still in the field can observe how they operate, and inducing general panic via grand claims about a "dirty bomb" set to explode in New York or Washington.

Taylor puts more faith in polygraphs than I do, but he's surely right that the principle - captured terrorists are not your friend - is essential, and basic. Hell, even I figured it out. (See Paging George Smiley at this link.)

Department of Just Not Being Cynical Enough - I've realized this evening that my "War of the Kurdish Suppression" pieces have been far too sunny and far too kind to official policy. Even Mr. Jimmy's dismantling of the so-called humanitarian case for the no-fly zones has been letting the government slide. How can that be, you ask? Let's ask the Providence Journal:

Topping a list of other embarrassments the Pentagon refuses to talk about is the contradiction between the official reason for the no-fly missions in northern Iraq and way the Turkish Air Force is allowed to make a mockery of them.

Basile and other pilots interviewed by The Providence Journal have confirmed that they have had to make way, from time to time, for what other U.S. pilots flying out of Incirlik Air Field in Turkey euphemistically call a TSM -- a Turkish Special Mission.

Although the Air Force officially denies any knowledge of them, the Turkish missions became an open secret among U.S. flight crews after American pilots, returning from their patrols over northern Iraq, noticed Turkish jets -- laden with bombs and missiles -- streaking past in the opposite direction.

Within a half hour or so, the once-heavily armed Turkish jets would fly out of Iraq empty, leaving behind smoldering ruins where Kurdish villages once stood.

In 1999, Turkish and U.S. military authorities established separate air corridors so that U.S. aircraft would no longer have to cross paths with the Turkish jets heading in to bomb villages that the Turks suspected were being used as bases by a Turkish faction of Kurdish separatists.

Perhaps the folks at Samizdata can find pictures of the dead to post.

The same Providence Journal author apparently wrote an earlier article on the subject, dated March 25, 2001 and reproduced here. Excerpt:

At Otis Air Force Base, where more than 200 members of the Air National Guard returned last December after a two-week deployment in the no-fly zone, Major Marty Richard is slightly more guarded.

Asked if the no-fly missions over northern Iraq are still geared toward protecting the Kurds, Richard concedes, "The focus of that mission has changed drastically."

Shortly after the Gulf War, during Operation Provide Comfort, he says, the goal was to protect the Kurds, "but what we're doing now is no-fly-zone enforcement. The subtle nuance," he says, "I will leave to you."

Asked directly if U.S. patrols over northern Iraq get cancelled or cut short in advance of Turkish incursions into the no-fly zone, Richard says they do.

"Suffice it to say," he adds, "that when the Turks are involved with the Kurds well, we've got a political football."

And a bunch of dead Kurds:

Last August, a spokesman in Dubai for one Kurdish faction the Kurdish Democratic Party told Agence France- Presse News Service that in one such raid, 38 Kurdish civilians were killed and 11 were wounded.

Like I said before, war in the name of the Kurds, but not for the sake of the Kurds.

On the Sharp End - There's a pretty good article in, of all places, the Nation about war and empire doubts among the US officer corps. One of the things that makes it good is that it acknowledges that there's a sector of the officer corps that is as enthusiastic about Pax Americana as the civilian leadership, in addition to two groups of skeptics. We might justly term these skeptical camps "conservative" and "liberal." Here are your three groups in order:

Within military ranks, according to one midlevel officer, "one group believes that our Constitution is the right way to go for everyone and that we have a moral imperative to give everyone the world over the opportunity to have that device. You have another group that sees our military as a defensive weapon to use in the face of an actual threat to the nation, which means in this context enthusiasm about taking on Al Qaeda but not Iraq. Then there's a smaller group that believes political leaders, instead of really addressing problems and resource issues, are going to go out and empire-grab and disguise it as something else so we can feed a warped version of the American dream, in which we continue to consume more resources and produce more waste, rather than really struggle with what it takes to keep the American dream viable and inspirational in a world of 6 billion people."

A big concern for all the skeptics is resources. For one thing, as usual, they're lying to us about official estimates of the size and duration of the occupation. (Students of ancient history may recall that we were only going to be in Bosnia for "a year." Same with Kosovo. And Haiti. But you get the idea.)

Despite the wishing-will-make-it-so qualities of some in the pundit class (perhaps best summed up in one Slate contributor's declaration that "a condition of the new imperialism" is that troops "will not stay too long"), the most conservative estimate for the number of troops required in a post-Saddam Iraq is 50,000 for at least one year. Many military officers and civilian analysts--including some leading hawks--privately acknowledge that the number and time requirement will be vastly greater, perhaps lasting years and requiring forces that run to six digits. British troops have been told to anticipate at least three years of post-Saddam occupation duty.

Count on it: "at least" is more significant than "three years" in that advice. Meanwhile, what else is going on?

Officers also have real concerns about anti-US backlashes or acts of terrorism down the road--not just against occupation forces in Iraq but against Americans all over the world. These situations may require the dispatch of anything from small special operations detachments to scores of smaller expeditionary forces.

Yet today, infantry forces--to take just one part of the military--are less than half their Vietnam-era strength. An August 2002 Army conference found that two-thirds of the Army's Special Forces are currently spread out over eighty-five countries, and that "the rate of increased employment since 9/11 cannot be sustained within current structures." The conclave also concluded that "many military occupational specialties and organizations that are important...for winning the global war on terrorism, are of low density," and that the current force structure does not meet "the exigencies of the global war on terrorism," let alone long-term operations in Iraq.

One possible solution? Janissaries:

Indeed, the manpower situation is so tenuous that in a recent issue of the Army War College's journal Parameters, one officer essentially called for accelerated outsourcing of war to entities that some refer to as "private military corporations" (PMCs) and that others less charitably characterize as mercenaries.

Well, what's wrong with that?

Given the dubious track record of PMCs (for example, DynCorp's women-trafficking in the Balkans; Airscan's involvement in the Colombian Army's bombing of civilians), this is the type of suggestion that cries out for more debate and consideration. "Is this really the direction we want to be going in, philosophically and practically?" asks one Special Forces captain who's seen service in the Balkans and Afghanistan. "Speaking from experience, locals can be hostile to or alienated by the sight of American troops. Put people in who are seen as America's Hessians, and it adds another dimension to perceptions of American arrogance.

That's peacenik talk, "American arrogance." But that's the military for you. There's a lot more in the article - well worth reading.

This is London - More on the British situation from the UK tabloid, the Mirror:

Jack Straw today conceded that the enormity of the anti-war protests at the weekend made it "very difficult" to launch an invasion of Iraq.

The Foreign Secretary acknowledged the sheer size and strength of feeling against a potentially devastating new Gulf war.

He told the BBC: "It was a very, very large demonstration, probably the largest one we've seen in our recent democratic history in London. We have to take account of public opinion."

When asked if the government could start a war without public backing, Straw said it would be "very difficult indeed in those circumstances".

Will it be Straw who leads the revolt? Will there be a revolt? Will the loss of Britain really kill the invasion (if Britain is lost)? All of a sudden things are interesting again.

I Got Your Smoking Gun Right Here - Australia's The Age has the definitive case on the Bin Laden-Saddam "nexus."

Doves of the Bourse - From CNNMoney:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Global investors aren't the likeliest group of peaceniks you'll come across. But Monday they appeared to have joined the millions who protested this past weekend in hoping that war with Iraq would be avoided.

U.S. markets were closed for Presidents Day -- just as well considering the snow drifts piling up on Wall Street -- but markets around the world suggested that traders have come to feel that war is less imminent.

The major international stock exchanges saw big rallies. Gold -- traditionally a safe haven for skittish investors -- saw its price tumble, as did oil. The dollar strengthened.

Analysts credit both the relatively soft line of the Blix report and the turnout at the weekend's peace rallies.

These were not the protesters who ran amuck in Seattle in the fall of 2000. They may not represent the consensus, but they represent something more than the fringe.

"I'm astonished how many people I knew, Labor and Tory, who went," said Lehman Brothers global economist John Llewellyn, who works in London. "I don't think you would have a million people out in the street just to say war is bad. What tipped it toward such big numbers is this idea that the U.S.'s approach is such a misdiagnosis."

"Not the consensus but more than the fringe" sounds about right. The article also sounds a familiar theme to readers of Unqualified Offerings:

The strength of the anti-war rally in London, in particular, may have some effect, forcing Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has thus far been the United States' staunchest ally, to soften his stance.

As Foreign Exchange Analytics currency strategist Dave Gilmore pointed out in a morning note on Monday, "In the U.K. in particular, the notion of Blair leading Britain to war with Iraq alongside the U.S. without U.N. backing is political suicide."

Not everyone agrees, though:

"I see no officials saying a war is less likely," said HSBC currency strategist Marc Chandler. "I don't think the protesters in Western Europe and the U.S. are enough to change policy makers' minds."

Nor did Chandler put much stock in the general interpretation most observers were gleaning from market movements Monday, believing that they said little about what was going on in the world.

"Lower gold prices and a lower euro means there's less likely to be a war with Iraq? That's politically naive," he said.

I think Chandler has it backwards - a marginally smaller chance for war means lower gold prices and a lower euro, not the other way around. But we'll see.

Fun if you are Unqualified Dog, is had thusly:

Wait for snow.

Go out with the pack leader when it's time to shovel snow.

Have the pack leader toss shovels full of snow right at you.

Leap into the spray like a dolphin breasting a wave.

Alternately . . .

Have someone throw snowballs at you.

Try to catch the snowballs in your mouth.

Tip for dogs and would-be dogs among the readership . . .

If the snow is powdery, by romping across the barrier between shoveled and unshoveled parts, you can knock significant amounts of snow back where the pack leader already shoveled.

Bonus tip, which apparently needs to be re-learned with every snowfall:

Do NOT try to bite the moving shovel! It hurts!

The Awful Truth - MSN has one of those "Why Men Won't Commit" articles. It offers four typical reasons, but, speaking as a guy, who knows guys, I haev to tell you ladies that the last one is the only one that matters:

4. They feel they aren't with the right woman Ouch! This could be for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they see something about a person they don't like, or they may just feel they aren't compatible. Maybe they're too set in their single ways, or maybe they just don't love the woman enough (ouch again!).

As Tony Kornheiser would say, "That's it! That's the list!" Everything else is men being polite. Sorry.

Update - You should be reading John Smith's Lincoln Plawg every day. I would go so far as to say that he is the best antiwar blogger going. I wouldn't append "except for me of course" to that either.

Here he tackles Tony Blair's "morality."

Don't Get Huffy - Jane Galt does a nice job of setting Arianna Huffington straight about tax policy. Money quote:

As long as there are different rates on different kinds of income, people will spend time and money trying to take their income in the form that has the lower tax rates.

Actually, there are two money quotes. Here's the second:

Unless she is making sure that all her income comes as highly taxed wages and salaries, refusing to take more than the standard deduction, and otherwise making sure that she pays what I consider to be her "fair share", I'm not really interested in hearing her carp about how people even richer than she is are getting away with something.

Given that Arianna is a woman who complains about SUVs while flying charter planes and driving an enhanced light truck of her own, I suspect the odds against her tax purity are pretty long.

War of the Kurdish Suppression Update - Newsweek reports on the latest horse-trading among the "coalition of the willing":

        BUT NOW, NEWSWEEK has learned, Turkey is demanding that it send 60,000 to 80,000 of its own troops into northern Iraq to establish “strategic positions” across a “security arc” as much as 140 to 170 miles deep in Iraq. That would take Turkish troops almost halfway to Baghdad. These troops would not be under U.S. command, according to Turkish sources, who say Turkey has agreed only to “coordination” between U.S. and Turkish forces. Ankara fears the Iraqi Kurds might use Saddam’s fall to declare independence. Kurdish leaders have not yet been told of this new plan, according to Kurdish spokesmen in Washington, who say the Kurds rejected even the earlier notion of a narrow buffer zone. Farhad Barzani, the U.S. representative of the main Kurdish party in Iraq, the KDP, says, “We have told them: American troops will come as liberators. But Turkish troops will be seen as invaders.”

        The White House did not respond to requests for comment; officials elsewhere in the administration played down the Turkish demands as bargaining tactics: “We told them flat out, no.” But independent diplomatic sources in Ankara and Washington with knowledge of the U.S.-Turkey talks say that while the precise depth of the “security zone” has still to be agreed, the concept is “pretty much a done deal,” as one observer put it. These sources add that the main U.S. concern has been that U.S., not Turkish, troops occupy the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, and that Turkish troops merely surround but not enter the heavily Kurdish cities of Erbil and Sulemaniye. To get Turkey’s assent to this, these sources say, the United States had to “cave” on its demand that Turkish troops be under U.S. control.

Once the war is under way, of course, the Turks can occupy Mosul and Kirkuk anyway, much as the Northern Alliance occupied Kabul during the early part of the Afghan war.

Stray thoughts:

There are pictures of Kurdish dead over on Samizdata. I wonder how quick they'll be to post the next batch.

In the "Cross-blog debate" on the war, one of the pro-war questions is

3) American and British military force has allowed Northern Iraq to develop a society which, while imperfect, is clearly a freer and more open society than existed under Saddam Hussein's direct rule. Do you agree that the no-fly zones have been beneficial to Northern Iraq --- and if so, why should this concept not be extended to remove Hussein's regime entirely and spread those freedoms to all Iraqis?

Apparently the questioners never heard of Erbil. (See also Mr. Jimmy on the topic.) But our message to the Kurds seems to be Enjoy it while it lasts, fellas!

The Winter We Had Winter is all I can think to call it so far. The Washington area ought by rights to come up with a better name for this extraordinary season when we recall it in after years. We've had a sizable snowfall every month since November, a rarity, and occasions where the last snow hasn't melted by the time the next snow came, also a rarity. Now the biggest single storm since at least 1996 - about 18 inches through yesterday evening, followed by a nice coating of sleet, and now another 3 to 6 inches on top of that before the day is out.

Say it with me now: It's good for the fish.

A quick tour of Delaware and Maryland trout streams for spring, from Midatlantic Game and Fish magazine.

If bass are more your thing, here's an analogous list of hotspots for them.

Back to trout: In-Fisherman suggests that what works in the high waters we can expect in the next couple of months are big lures. Same magazine warns, however, against rigging that larger lure on a heavy line in "Downsizing for Spring Trout." And while I usually haven't got the patience to fish live bait, if you do, you might profit from their tips on bait fishing for trout in spring.

Violent Protesters - The hawks take it to the streets:

As the parade of local protesters wound around the downtown sidewalks of Athens [GA], pedestrians stopped and stared, motorists blasted their car horns in support and passengers waved the V-shaped peace sign through their car windows. A few drivers seemed annoyed by the delay and an occasional passer flashed a vulgar hand gesture.

Witnesses said a passenger of a white car threw a piece of cinder block into the crowd gathered in the median of Broad Street, striking the 10-year-old. The car then looped around the block and another piece of brick was thrown. That piece struck a protest organizer, but he also wasn't injured.

Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas, guys. (Link via Antiwar.com.)

Reading Around - Stuff I seen lately:

Matt Hogan has a new economic model for blogging.

Orifice World considers British politics and the war. Doing so, he sounds a theme, "I wish they'd get on with it," also taken up by

Under a Blackened Sky, who says the whole inspections thing has been a sham in a different way than hawks mean when they say it. Also, and this will shock you, spendthrift Canadian politicians.

Eve Tushnet on forced sterilization in Mexico. Plus, a Valentine's Day soundtrack.

Through the Looking Glass - A bunch of liberal stuff. (Why did Charles Dodgson never become the liberal alpha blogger? Yeah, I know, he doesn't post enough. But that's a feature with liberals!) Plus NATO and political retaliation, and John Poindexter holds the football while Congress comes running up and kicks it.

The Illuminated Donkey offers Great Events in Romantic History, plus a cryptic reprint of the lyrics to an old David and David song.

Listen, Missy has a Winter of '02 report from downtown DC and a dance item.

Seablogger reports from his sailing vacation. Those of us enjoying the biggest single snowfall in years should head to Seablogger quick.

Perverse Access Memory moderately disses Shrek, as well it should. Plus, sex in roleplaying games. (NOT roleplaying games in sex.)

Sara Rimensnyder thinks happy thoughts for V-Day. Really.

Julian Sanchez looks into the Abyss of Operation Northwoods, and it looks also into him. Plus, the history of the claque and its relevance to Austin Powers.

Jerry Brito advises the French on how to honorably oppose the US/British push for war.

Glenn Reynolds comes out in favor of war with Iraq.

Have Conflict Will Travel says you never forget your first - Nigerian spam e-mail. He's apparently too young to remember when they came by fax, though. (He also doesn't do item-specific anchors.)

Flit suggests that Canada's Iraq policy may be . . . smart. Wise, even.

Colby Cosh takes on the CBC

March (Doesn't) Matters - Salam Pax deconstructs the Baghdad march:

Actually most of the people in Baghdad were stuck in the streets waiting for any kind of public transport. This is the first sign of a big organized demonstration. All buses, state and privately run lines, are grouped in various spots in the city to transport the "demonstrators" from their work places to where the show is supposed to take place.

Drop them at point "A" and pick them up at point "B", school kids would just disappear between these two points. There are a couple of excellent ice-cream places in al-manusr where one of the "demonstrations" took place.

This is what it looks like when you are in one of these affairs: you get out of the bus, wait for a mind-numbing couple of hours until they tell to march, you start walking until you see the guy in the front of your group (usually an eager party member) start jumping and try to pump some life into the bored group of people behind him, you shout the obligatory things, pass the stand where the officials and press are waiting then you get back to whatever you were discussing with the person next to you.

Now an attempt to put two-and-two together. This Telegraph story (link via Instapundit) notes that only 3,000 demonstrators turned out. Since demos in Iraq are compulsory and, per Salam, rely on public transportation, a theory: Iraq's transportation infrastructure is otherwise engaged. Moving troops, basically. Your dictator-under-the-gun perspective on the world is surely Demonstrators nice, rifle companies nicer.

March Sanity - Your Talking Dog has a firsthand report from the NON-march in NYC. He e-mails:

Really-- a "march" would have been less disruptive, and, naturally, had there been less effort to stifle this, I'm guessing 80-90 per cent of the crowd wouldn't have been there.

UPDATE: Diana Moon has a non-protester's perspective of the day in Manhattan away from the march. Apparently the riot missed her.

You're Either with Us and You're Against Us (sic) - Atrios hits an Iran-news slit filter and tries to decide if he's a wave or a particle. Kind of.

Me, I think the Bush Administration is just trying to see how dumb the Iranians are.

March Matters? - For literally the first time since the summer, I think it might not happen. Not because of the rally in New York, where a large and, from the reports I've seen, largely peaceful crowd stretched for thirty blocks. It's the London protest that may tell the tale - a million people by reasonable estimates. (Perry de Havilland was forced to commit a 90-in-a-60-mile-per-hour-zone violation of Godwin's Law.)

Please don't mistake me: I don't think for one second that Tony Blair gives a shit about "democracy," and if he were a Tory I don't think the crowd would delay him for a minute. But he's a Labourite. Isn't that his party's constituency out there? Doesn't he have to calculate a real possibility that his government falls if he goes to war without the UNSC on board? In a two-party parliamentary system, it's those internal party revolts that'll do you in quicker than anything.

And if Britain goes, the soft support from most of the rest of the nominal allies goes too, and now the Bush Administration is staring down the barrel of political consequences even they may not wish to face. And suddenly we're in What the hell do we do now territory.

Maybe. This Channel 4 poll, while generally bad news for Blair and the Bush Administration re British public opinion, has one bit that may give Blair heart:

So would a second UN resolution do the trick? If Tony Blair had UN backing for war instantly his problem would be solved 82% would back military action. Without any UN support only 28% would back an attack alongside the Americans.

But here's something very interesting - if Tony Blair got a majority of the Security Council to back military action - even if one or two countries vetoed a second resolution - 62% would go to war.

(Link via The Grille via Instapundit.) My hunch is that Blair shouldn't make too much of these numbers, ironically because of criticisms Eugene Volokh made of another British poll:

What struck me most was this line from the story:

Nearly nine out of ten voters think the UN weapons inspectors should be given more time to establish whether Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, as France, Germany and Russia have urged. Meanwhile, just a third think that Britain and America have so far put forward a convincing case for military action against Iraq.

"Whether Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction" -- is there really a credible debate remaining about that?

Volokh concludes, "I hope British public opinion is not being accurately reported here. But if it is, then just reflects the errors of the British public, not the errors of a hawkish policy." That's as may be. Here's how I parse the response Volokh analyzes:

1. The British public says they want to give inspections more time to prove that Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction."
2. It's seems pretty clear that Iraq has so-called WMDs - at the very least, gas, and probably germs. (The Channel 4 poll suggests that 9 out of 10 Brits believe this, Eugene Volokh believes it, and I do too.)
3. Inescapable conclusion: when Brits tell a pollster, "We want to give the inspectors more time," what they really mean is "We don't want to go to war."

The implication of this exercise for the support Channel 4 currently finds for war in the case of a majority vote by the UNSC (with vetoes by some permanent members) seems obvious. As soon as that condition presents itself, a great number of Britons will switch their answer.

One is free to think well or ill of the British public on this count. But if Tony Blair can add, shouldn't he be feeling nervous?

Guaranteed Bias-Free - Man-Mountain Max Sawicky, announcing that he will defend President Bush against Andrew Sullivan:

I really don't have an axe to grind here. If Bush was increasing spending, I could say bravo and make fun of his conservative base. If he wasn't, I'd revert to standard issue liberal criticism of inadequate public spending. So the facts are of paramount interest.

Whether Permitting(sic): New York States of Mind - Different perspectives from New Yorkers. Jane Galt sent a long e-mail:

I don't know what the standard is for issuing parade permits, but I've been toDC, and I've been to New York, and no, I'm not surprised it's harder to get a permit to march here. The people writing about the protest seem largely unaware of how costly a march would be to the City and the people who live there, in money and inconvenience, something it's wise to keep in mind if your aim is to generate support rather than bonding.

Unlike Washington, for one thing, there are no alternative routes around a march. I've spent many a happy hour stuck on the wrong side of a parade, waiting to get across town without having to contrive some bizarre subway route through Queens to get back to my apartment.

We have more traffic than Washington. People from Washington claim otherwise, but hah! You don't know from traffic. On a weekday or a weekend night, on one of the central avenues (which is where, I guarantee you, they want to march), traffic moves about one block per light. That's about 1/20th of a mile every 2-5 minutes, and yes, you read right; it can easily take an hour to go a mile in a car. It speeds up some on the weekends, but only some. And since it's straight up and down, the parade also blocks cars and shoves an enormous amount of traffic onto the other arteries. It's no fun driving all the way down to 14th street to go around a rally when traffic is moving at the aforementioned speeds. This gets even worse because many of the people coming from all over to attend the rally come in, you guessed it, cars.

Washington shuts down on weekends, at least in the places where marches are held. The marchers here, on the other hand, will be marching straight through heavy residential and commercial districts that do a lot of business on Saturdays (I don't know where the march is being proposed, but there are few districts in Manhattan that don't fit that description, and I don't see them staging the march in Harlem, 11th Avenue, or the Garment District. They almost always want to go right down Madison or Park, where EVERYONE can enjoy a few happy hours with friends and family as they wait to be allowed to cross onto the other half of the island.)

Marchers here want to go through the heart of the most populous residential/commercial neighborhoods; that's how they get attention. But it also generates enormous hassles and expense; police have to redirect traffic, essentially cutting off crosstown flow for several miles (depending on the size of the march), garbage has to be cleaned, security has to be provided. This involves an enormous amount of police overtime, etc, which has to be budgeted for. Storekeepers will lose business, which will cost tax revenue. Many people will not come into the city for the day, and the marchers will not replace their spending. You may not have heard, but we have a $5b deficit. So while I do not think that a police permit should be denied for a rally (nor for a march, if it turns out to be standard practice to issue such permits in the described time for a march of this size), I'm much more sympathetic to restricting the movement than I am to preventing it from taking place. There are just too damn many people in a very small place; any sizeable activity is hideously expensive and disruptive. It's not unreasonable for the City to keep the activity on a scope it can deal with/afford.

On the other hand, having seen these things, and attended them in my misspent youth, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more exuberant protesters try to cause a riot if they're penned in, with some idiot idea of overrunning the police and taking it to the streets. So maybe it's better just to let them march and damn the inconvenience.

Meanwhile, Your Talking Dog writes

I remain troubled by how easily we are willing to err on the side of "security" over liberty.

Fact:  the United States proper has not suffered a terrorist attack (that anyone besides me is willing to classify as such) since 9-11-01 (and we had not suffered one before since 1995 at Oklahoma City and 1993 at, well, the World Trade Center). Bad stuff happens; we can't protect everyone against everything.  All the social trends are bad:  everyone wants protection from everything (and will sue anyone in sight, even for things that are one's own fault; not to be outdone, those BEING sued are pressing for liability caps and restrictions...responsibility is in effect no longer in our lexicon.)  So: we demand that our government "protect us" from "terrorists".  To do so, it says, it must restrict our (centuries' old) liberties.  There seems to be no outcry of: THE HELL YOU DO!  Well, folks, it’s time to put up or shut up, because we're well along the slippery slope.  If this be treason, make the most of it.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden is with your TD on the matter.

Arthur Silber catches the Sun trying to spin out of its earlier position. As to the separate issue of the City's conduct, he writes

With regard to that ruling, and whether the judge's reasoning is entirely convincing, I view it as a pretty close call about the safety issues concerning the march. Since the protesters are being allowed to have a stationary rally, I don't view the ruling itself as a big issue one way or the other.

Colin's Gulch - When Patrick Nielsen Hayden called the Bush Administration "Hubris in search of Nemesis," he didn't just mean Donald Rumsfeld, but it looks like the shoe may fit:

Powell also paid for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s unfortunate jibe at “Old Europe” at week ago, a remark that turned into a hilarious football at the Security Council, mostly at America’s expense. De Villepin, the first of the permanent five to speak, gave an eloquent defense of the U.N. (and the inspections regime), concluding, “In the temple of the United Nations we are all guardians of an ideal, the guardian of a conscience,” he said. “This message comes from an old country, France, that does not forget ... all it owes to freedom fighters that came from the United States of America and everywhere.” His statement brought a sustained ovation from all parts of the chamber, including the press gallery. The Chinese foreign minister, speaking next, referred to his country as “an ancient civilization,” and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw comically countered with: “Britain is also a very old country. It was founded in 1066—by the French!” Powell, improvising, came back with: “America is a relatively new country, but it is the oldest democracy around this table ...” Unfortunately, that appeared to snub America’s most stalwart ally, Great Britain, which has had an operating parliament that outdates America’s founding by many years.

That's Michael Hirsh in MSNBC.com. I'm sure that Rumsfeld felt good when he said it, and Hawkish Punditry has relived that moment with the relish of groupies recounting a special view of a favorite singer's codpiece, and far be it from me to deny the pleasures of the snarky jibe (like the one I just made).

I'm not Secretary of Defense though. And there's nothing I particularly want from these people. Meanwhile other members of the Administration engaged in counterproductive, hubris-oriented behavior appropriate to their personal styles:

One reason for the French victory Friday was Powell’s rather laid-back diplomacy during the week since his broadside at the Council. While Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Vladimir Putin and de Villepin have spent the week traveling to and fro, forging coalitions, making speeches, Powell (who doesn’t like to travel) and Bush have stayed put.

As of now, France, Russia and China are so opposed to a second "serious consequences" resolution - a green light for the US and UK to launch the conquest - that the US won't even bring it up. Therefore

For now, it looks as if the Americans will have to either wait an undetermined number of weeks for inspections to continue (Blix’s next scheduled update is on March 1, when Guinea takes over the presidency from Germany), or go to war to defend the honor of the U.N. Security Council while in defiance of the majority of U.N. Security Council opinion.

Which could well happen. Will probably happen. Which is too bad, and not just because the war is a bad idea. It's too bad because what we have here, thanks to about seven kinds of irony, is the opportunity of an era. To switch myths for a minute, this is the chance for Icarus to make a soft landing.

Here is what the Administration could say:

For sixty years, the United States has striven to defend freedom and keep the peace throughout the globe. We have fought in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and the high seas. We have risked our own nuclear annhilation for the sake of friendly nations, helped repel invaders from Panmunjom to the Panjshir Valley, fought famine and forced resettlement. When an entire country, Kuwait, was erased, we redrew it by the force of American arms. Our critics have pointed out that we have benefitted economically and politically, and this is true. They have complained from time to time of our methods - the arms we've sold to whom, the tactics we've countenanced among our clients, our attention span and understanding of local dynamics - and they have from time to time been right to complain, though make no mistake about it, everywhere we've gone or thought to go, there were local actors eager to have our cooperation, and our critics have as often damned us for our non-involvement in one place as our involvement somewhere else.

We couldn't, in other words, have done it without you. What is clear from this week's action in the UN is that the implicit terms of our bargain are no longer acceptable to the bulk of the international community. Our role has been to make an outsized contribution to the military force required to staunch the bleeding of the world's trouble spots. In return, we have demanded an outsized say in where and how to apply that force. For reasons this Council has considered at length, we have insisted in the disarming and removal of the present leadership of Iraq. We can accept that other nation's don't see it our way. But not that our blood and treasure should be spent to enforce their vision at the expense of ours. The plan for 'continued inspections' rests, we believe, on the continuing, expensive and dangerous presence of US troops in the Iraqi theater. We decline to support this. Similarly, on the Korean Penninsula, we can understand if Japan and South Korea disagree with our estimate of the appropriate response to North Korea's threat to them, but we can not commit our troops to what we consider to be a wrongful policy.

So we will not. Today we begin removing our troops from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey. We have also begun removing the troops we don't have in Jordan - just a trick of the desert sun, folks. As sealift capacity becomes available we will be closing our installations in Korea, Japan and Okinawa too. Now that France is back in NATO's military program, there should be no problem with our pulling out. We continue to prosecute a war against al Qaeda and those who aid al Qaeda, so we will maintain our operations in Afghanistan, and we will keep our regional command post in Qatar - the Emir has already expressed his pleasure that this should be so.

You said you don't want the US to "rule the world." This Council's actions - and inactions - this week have made that unmistakeable. Then we won't. We wish you the best of luck in ruling yourselves. We won't be the hammer you wield, however. This is not a withdrawal from the world, just from a distorted and distorting relation to it. Nor is this a capitulation. Tread where we sleep and you will know our fangs.

Now my fellow anti-interventionists may find the above summary of US conduct since WWII to be self-exculpating to an almost Nixonian degree. But the point is to spin it the way a US official could plausibly spin it. The problem since the massacres of September 11, 2001, has been to figure out a disengagement strategy that does not look like bowing the knee before Osama bin Laden. Old Europe has handed us that chance.

Here are a few of the ironies:

I've written a lot about how the Administration's national security strategy would tend to unite grand coalitions against us. I never appreciated that this could happen in a lucky way. What I mean by this is, we've inspired in the first instance not an alliance of military adversaries, but a "soft coalition" of parliamentarians whose "success" would actually preserve us from the bigger fall waiting at the end of "Preemption Road." In other words, we can choose to meet a lesser Nemesis now rather than a greater Nemesis later.

A subsidiary irony: this means the French et al could be doing us a favor, though that is probably not their intention. (It can't be China's intention.

Final, unfortunate irony: the administration that brought us to this point did so in a way that probably makes them unsuited, by temperament and discernment, to seize it.

UPDATE: The final irony is that if we put it like this, they'd probably let us have the invasion after all. Because I think it would scare the shit out of them.

Let's Be Careful Out There - Cold in New York today. For friends and others going to the non-March near the UN: Stay warm, and behave yourselves. There's apparently been some rumbling by the usual anarchist assholes about doing asshole anarchist things. After two well-behaved events in DC since the fall, it would be nice to think that the New York organizers can keep their acts together. By denying a march permit, the NYPD may have made its job harder, as instead of one big march down a known street a lot of constituent groups are planning "feeder marches" along a variety of sidewalks to the protest site. But nothing the city has or hasn't done justifies destroying the property of retailers who, it must be remembered, are not the ones trying to drag the country into war and destroy the plain english meaning of the word "preemption" besides. As I'm pretty sure Dorothy Day once said, though you couldn't prove it by Google, Let's leave violence to our opponents - the US government.

Not that I think the readers of this site are the window-smashing sort.

Never Mind! - From ABCNews.com:

Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

Here comes the good part:

It was only after the threat level was elevated to orange — meaning high — last week, that the informant was subjected to a polygraph test by the FBI, officials told ABCNEWS.

"This person did not pass," said Cannistraro.

Does that mean we can take the duct tape back if we kept the receipt? Not necessarily:

Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted.

Still, there's a lesson here:

It's not the first time a captured al Qaeda operative has made up a huge story and scared a lot of people.

The FBI concluded the information that led to a nationwide hunt for five men suspected of infiltrating the United States on Christmas Eve was fabricated by an informant, and the agency called off the alert sparked by the information.

And Colin Powell's UN report relied heavily on intelligence from defector debriefings and captive interrogations. Hm.

Some people get offended at the notion that Colin Powell might, you know, lie. But actually, Powell has people for that. He doesn't even have to know he's lying. All that has to happen is that, under ferocious pressure from the White House, the intelligence agencies regrade selected interrogation reports from UNRELIABLE to RELIABLE. Bingo. You now have "intelligence" connecting Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. You had the same reports the day before. You just thought the detainees and defectors were full of shit, probably for good reason. But your bosses want results.

Anyway, be careful out there:

Officials said this one got so far because it coincided with other intelligence, that officials still believe points to a coming attack, timed to hostilities with Iraq.

And maybe they're right.

So What Happened - Much consternation among doves the last two days about the evolving story of the contents of the latest Osama bin Laden broadcast. Early in the day there were reports that in the tape bin Laden called for Saddam's overthrow. This was later removed from reports and blamed on a translators' error. Given the possibly odd provenance of the tape, with a US government official (Colin Powell) revealing the existence of the tape arguably before al-Jazeera actually got a copy, suspicions ran high. Atrios has a screen shot and a chronology; Justin Raimondo devoted his column to the issue. Moderate Mark Kleiman tries to make sense of the story here. (This is easiest to do, apparently, if you assume Glenn Reynolds is an Iraqi agent. I have not made this accusation myself, but others have!)

The most sinister explanation is that the tape is a fake, the USG kept switching the translation around until they found one they liked and the major media went along with it. I suspect that what actually happened is that, when it comes to fast-breaking stories, the early reports are never to be relied on. We saw this over and over during last fall's sniper case, for instance. And remember the thirty-three pounds of plutonium siezed along the Turkish border?

So it's just a normal media snafu. Note that that doesn't change the fact that the various White House claims that the tape proved a "partnership" betwen Saddam and al Qaeda were ridiculously overdrawn and unsupported by any plain reading of the text. That's the real scandal.

So what is bin Laden really up to on the tape? I think a couple of things, possibly. The first theory comes from a Stand Down commenter, Dave, in this comments thread:

Osama is putting himself in the same position that Mao's Chinese Communists were in when Japan invaded China in WWII: the government can't fight the invaders, so the insurgents do the job, prove their worth, and end up the winners in the end.

While Dave has clearly forgotten that there is no history other than 1938-1945, his explanation makes a hell of a lot of sense. I would argue that the other possibility, which need not be exclusive of Dave's, is seduction - specifically the attempted seduction by bin Laden of Saddam or anyone in the Iraqi hierarchy who might be convinced to give bin Laden's people Bad Things.

Regardless, if you enjoyed the last tape controversy, you won't have to wait long for the next one.

Imitation LiveJournal Item - This is true: This morning I dreamt I was one of Michael Jordan's personal assistants. It was some kind of holiday - All Star Game or something, but not basketball, because we ended up in an outdoor stadium in the snow - so we were all getting much of the day off, we assistants. Christmas was coming, because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out "What the hell do you get Michael Jordan for Christmas? Particularly on a personal assistant's salary." I decided to get him a copy of Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom, a mystical fable about playing golf in Scotland, on cassette. I didn't figure he'd read the book if I bought that, but I thought he'd like the tape. I felt really good about my choice, even - hey, Phil Jackson was into the Zen thing, so the interest might be there.

But before that, at the morning meeting, we were all sitting around the table, we assistants. Michael was standing. He tossed me a dollar to "get a soda at the game."

"Like I could buy a soda for a buck at this stadium," I said.

"Here then," he said, and peeled off a hundred and a twenty, folded them over and put it on the table in front of me. "This should work."

"Jeeze, boss," I said, half offended, half embarrassed. "I wasn't trying to get more money out of you."

But I pocketed the hundred twenty bucks as I said it.

(Note to LiveJournal users: We kid because we love!)

Worth Thinking About - Dr. Manhattan has been mulling over such details of the Code Orange alert as we have, particularly the mention of "Jewish-owned hotels and motels" as possible targets, and has a theory that makes a certain amount of sense. It's worth putting out there, since it's the kind of thing that could actually be guarded against by the forewarned:

In a couple of months, thousands of Jews will be in hotels to celebrate Passover. Many large, well-known hotels have programs for Passover that attract hundreds of Jewish families. Those in NY can pick up a copy of the Jewish Week to see an amazing array of advertisements for such programs.

The schedules are known well in advance; it's not like Passover's scheduling can be changed, and the Seder ritual feast is always held the first two nights of the holiday (outside of Israel) after sundown. and the Seder is long enough that its conclusion on the East Coast can overlap with its commencement on the West Coast - which makes it easier to plan multiple attacks in different places.

Since 9/11, what has been the most "successful" episode of Jew-killing? Last year's "Passover Massacre" in Israel. That atrocity was perpetrated by Hamas, but al-Qaeda has been willing to crib techniques and tactics from other terrorist groups.

In a comment on Dr. M's site, Meryl Yourish opines that Passover is too far away to be the subject of the current alert, and maybe it is. But there may be others down the road.

Wrong A.N.S.W.E.R. - David Corn of the Nation has been obsessed with the flaws of the antiwar movement for some time, but if this column about plans for A.N.S.W.E.R.'s February 15th San Francisco protest is accurate, things just aren't improving at the rate the rest of us doves need.

So it was natural that [Michael Lerner's] name was floated as a speaker for the protest. Not In Our Name and United for Peace & Justice were two of the four coalitions behind the event. (According to Lerner, he did not ask to address the San Francisco rally. "You can't say much in three minutes," he notes.) But International ANSWER, another of the organizers, said no.

Lerner's crime: he had dared to criticize ANSWER, an outfit run by members of the Workers World Party, for using antiwar demonstrations to put forward what he considers to be anti-Israel propaganda.

I hold no brief for Michael "Politics of Meaning" Lerner. But he's no worse than any of the other speakers the groups plan to put on stage, like the creepy

Abdul Malim Musa, a Muslim cleric. On October 31, 2001, Musa had appeared at a news conference at the National Press Club with other Muslim activists and members of the New Black Panther Party, where speakers asserted that Israel had launched the 9/11 attacks and that thousands of Jews had been warned that day not to go to work at the World Trade Center. At that press conference, Musa blasted the "Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C." who "all collaborate" to put down blacks and Muslims.

who was allowed to speak in Washington. (Bright side: the sound system sucked that day.)

I won't pretend to be able to peer into the soul of any given "anti-Zionist." I'm as sure there's plenty of antisemitism on the left and among Israel's opponents as I am that plenty of Israel's opponents are not motivated by antisemitism. But as one of my readers wrote a few weeks ago, George Washington didn't just warn of passionate attachments to other nations; he also inveighed against passionate antipathies.

You can't separate the question of the government of Israel's national security strategy from the question of the Iraq war. But you can for damn sure separate the blanket acceptance of the program of Israel's direst enemies from opposition to the war. That A.N.S.W.E.R. refuses to do this would be disturbing if their shortcomings weren't already well known. The question now is will the other groups at the top of the movement have the guts to take them on?

One World - Mrs. Offering woke me last night to ask me where the heck we're supposed to find a room we can seal off in the unprepossessing split-level house that serves as the World Headquarters of Highclearing.com. Of course, lots of people have the same worries, as we can see by reading Salam Pax and Imshin. I daresay they've got it worse, though the hassle factor is universal.

Here's some terror advice from Top Federal Officials.

At Last! An Effect on the World! - Couldn't stop the war. Not a good enough writer. But at least I inspired Chris Newman to sunset the word "idiotarian," which he does in this well-written sayonara.

Sympathy for the European Devils - Two readers spoke up on behalf of the French (and Germans and Belgians). Nick Sweeney writes

You're missing the point a little, Jim: the French/German/Belgian argument is that the decision to push through contingency measures on Turkey's defence capabilities is deliberate designed to escalate the momentum towards war: that is, to create a situation whereby Turkey is *less* safe. The complaint (rather more well-founded now, in light of the stock market boom) is that if you talk something up, it makes it much, much more likely to happen, no matter what underpins it.

d-squared talks about this phenomenon here.

It's actually a good way of comparing the true definition of "anticipation" -- acting ahead of something that's *going* to happen -- with the looser modern take, of acting to deal with something that might happen. And the French are quite right to argue that sabre-rattling right now, while Blix and co are writing their reports, is nothing short of obscene.

And Kevin Maroney writes:

You've probably heard this from a dozen people already, but what the French, Germans, and Belgians voted for was to disallow the use of NATO troops to defend Turkey *in the eventuality that Turkey is attacked because it's helping the US attack Iraq*.

This is, in fact, not a disgrace; NATO is not an offensive alliance, but a defensive one. If NATO were to "defend" Turkey in such a situation, it would be like the police threatening to beat someone up for the crime of not paying protection to the mob.

I still think the NATO dispute will get worked out - that's how bureaucratic self-perpetuation works. But that doesn't mean the organization isn't way past its smell date.

Thought for the Day - Attack is apparently so inevitable now that, on the snippet of NPR I heard from Mrs. Offering's clock radio this morning, the speakers weren't even imagining that it might not happen.

Does Saddam have a doctrine of preemption?

In "His" Own Words - Reader Jonathan Hendry found the full text of bin Laden's (if it is bin Laden) message on the Beeb site. I haven't had the chance to read it in detail yet - it's pretty long. Meanwhile, Julian Sanchez writes on his own site that

You have to be a little nuts to be the leader of a massive terrorist organization like Al Qaeda, but you don't last as long as bin Laden has by being a dunce. At a time when Russia, France, and Germany are pushing back against a war that had seemed increasingly inevitable, this is precisely the sort of thing needed to overcome that opposition and guarantee that an invasion takes place. Surely bin Laden realizes as much: so then why would he broadcast such a message just now? Why, unless that result is precisely what he's attempting to encourage, in hopes of enflaming further hatred against the United States, and getting rid of the hated Hussein in the process? If the pair truly were in "partnership," you'd expect bin Laden to be rather more discreet about it, for his partner's sake.

This makes a great deal of sense, though if OBL is already convinced that war is inevitable now, as a lot of the rest of us are, he might throw caution to the wind even if he were Saddam's partner, since he wants the political capital of publically opposing the Great Satan. I think Julian's reading is far more likely, but you never know.

I certainly agree with this part:

Some folks have speculated that this tape is a fabrication of an administration hungry for war, that the timing is just too convenient. The timing is convenient. But that doesn't mean the tape is a fake, because the one person more eager for invasion than George W. Bush is Osama bin Laden.

So It Begins - Some doves have warned that the Administration's policy would tend to drive our antagonists together. Also that Al Qaeda would attempt to capitalize politically on any US conquest of Iraq. Well, Al Qaeda's trying. I can't find a transcript of the tape yet, but this alternate story (from AP) includes the following:

In Tuesday's tape, the speaker urged the Iraqis to stay strong against a U.S. attack and blunt the force of a U.S. aerial assault by "digging large numbers of trenches and camouflaging them."

He described al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan withstanding heavy U.S. bombardment by hiding in trenches. "With all the might of the enemy, they were unable to defeat us and take over that position."

"We advise about the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and tiring fighting, taking advantage of camouflaged positions in plains, farms, mountains and cities," he said. He said the enemy is terrified about urban warfare "because they will have big casualties."

Am I the only one who can't help thinking of Richard Nixon and the Redskins?

The Playmaker?: The Redskins made the playoffs but lost in the first round to the San Francisco 49ers on December 26. During the game, Allen used a play that Nixon had suggested that resulted in a loss of yards. With the Redskins’ season over, he decided to root for the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl, figuring that his residence in Key Biscane made him a sometime Florida resident. On January 3, 1972, he called Miami head coach Don Shula at 1:30 in the morning and suggested the Dolphins use a quick slant pass in the game.
Source: The Washington Post, January 5, 1972

(From Nixon and Sports Images.)

It should be noted that the US could give the arab world free ice cream and Osama bin Laden would try to use the act to attack the United States. I just think a war is a whole lot easier to get people upset about than free ice cream.

UPDATE: Matt Hogan thinks bin Laden should adopt the slogan, JIHAD NOW, SOCIALISM NEVER! I'm allowed to write this "as long as put in context" - the context being, I suppose, that if Matt and I had a chance to shoot bin Laden in the stomach and settle back to watch him bleed to death, we'd be willing to play mumblety-peg, well, I wonder if I could blog live from the scene.

Honor Roll IV - I've updated the honor roll of pro-war writers who have denounced the awful New York Sun editorial. I want to stress that I meant it when I chose the name. I never intended to imply that the list comprised "the only honorable hawks." This list was intended as a sincere appreciation. I've never made an exhaustive inspection of the hawkish internet press either - there could be people out there that have weighed in and I just don't know it. Not denouncing the Sun doesn't make someone a fascist. Supporting the Sun would make you a fascist, but I haven't seen any such pieces, nor do I particularly wish to.

Rift Wars - From MSNBC.com:

The head of NATO urged France, Germany and Belgium to reconsider their veto of defense preparations for Turkey ahead of a possible Iraq war, saying the decision would have grave consequences for the alliance.

If you get a chance, put money on this dispute being worked out. It's up against a serious institutional dynamic, after all. Were it to destroy NATO, NATO would perforce no longer exist. That flies in the face of the self-perpetuation imperative driving any institution. It would also represent a radical change for all the parties involved, and radical change is scary.

Whether Permitting II - Lynxx Pherrett has also been following the UFPJ case. He offers a sympathetic reading of Judge Jones' decision, noting, correctly, that Judge Jones' ruling agrees strongly with his and Diana Moon's view of the difference between an annual parade, scheduled months in advance, and a more sudden event like the February 15th march. And as he mentions, he gets extra credit for managing to find data for a comparison with A.N.S.W.E.R.'s practices.

What we have here is a direct contradiction between Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU and Chief Esposito of the NYPD, with Ms. Lieberman averring in my interview that the lead time was "well within" normal tolerances for an event of this size, and Chief Esposito saying the opposite. The way to settle this would be to find out if the NYCLU can provide a list of marches this large that were approved on 25-days notice.

Meanwhile, Justin Raimondo e-mails to ask

. . . don't you find it a bit odd that NYC is imposing a "no movement" rule on political rallies, and Washington, D.C. isn't? After all, both cities were attacked, both are presumably under the same "orange" alert as the rest of the nation.

I'd say I find it significant but not odd. If anything, NYC's infrastructure may be better equipped to handle a sudden influx of people than DC. On the other hand, New York City suffered far worse during the attacks than DC, which will have an outsized effect on the minds of its officials and residents, and the last two city administrations have had strong control tendencies anyway.

But I still think that, while defensibly wrong, the decision is wrong. That is, I read the judge as striking the wrong balance. Reader Steve Cohen stengthens a point I intended to make more strongly in last night's item. (That item got hosed halfway through and had to be reconstructed from scratch.) A blanket ban on political parades disproportionately favors the interests of whoever happens to be in power, because it is whoever happens to be out of power who will be most inclined to march. Writes Steve Cohen:

have to disagree with you in your partial endorsement (or is it tepid disapproval) of New York's refusal to allow a march permit. The point about no political marches being allowed overlooks that the War Party doesn't need to march. All they have to do is turn on the TV and watch their president validate their views.

Marches are an important way for our side to make the point that the people don't want this war and need to be listened to. Need to be listened to. That's a controversial point, by the way. Yesterday's Chicago Tribune contained an article by a radio personality who said that he shared many of the anti-war crowd's fears about the war, but he hopes the president will not listen to the people - that he was put in office to do a job and he should be allowed to do it. Pardon me, but he wasn't elected to do THAT job.

I also can't help but notice that after all the ANSWER parades were allowed and then criticized for their affiliation with ANSWER, here we finally have a non-ANSWER parade, and it's being disallowed.

That's the tragedy. But it's still an open question whether this is substantially the result of UFPJ's late start. Jason Kafoury told me that the group held its first meeting January 7. UFPJ tried, very quickly, to assume the burden of coordinating the antiwar movement. Judge Jones obviously thinks it's too quick. Perhaps she can enjoin the White House to delay the war.

Party All the Time - Julian has pictures from last Thursday's DC blogarama. (None of me.)

UPDATE: Picture page now with More Unqualified Offerings. I only look semiridiculous, I like to think.

Music Notes - Billboard reports:

Zevon Reissues Tout Bonus Material

Warren Zevon's back catalog will get a boost March 25 when EMI/Capitol reissues the singer/songwriter's 1969 debut "Wanted Dead or Alive," as well as his two Virgin Records efforts, 1987's "Sentimental Hygiene" and 1989's "Transverse City."

All discs house varying degrees of bonus material, with "Wanted" boasting a second, previously unreleased 10-track album titled "A Leaf in the Wind."

More details in the article.

So What Did You Learn Today? That it's easier for a blogger to get people on the phone and get them to answer questions than you might think. I just told people my name, that I ran a political weblog named Unqualified Offerings and that my call was a "press inquiry." Tomorrow I will bug Donald Rumsfeld about a couple of things . . .

Whether Permitting (sic) - A follow-up to last night's discussion of the NYC march permit controversy. The day's news is that US District Judge Barbara Jones upheld New York City's decision to allow the February 15th protesters to assemble for a rally but not to march. Newsday reports that the New York Civil Liberties Union says it will appeal. Newsday:

Jones concluded that the city’s need to protect the public and ensure the safety of the UN in this “time of heightened security” overrides the demonstrators’ rights to march by the Secretariat Building on First Avenue.

“The heightened security concerns posed by an unorganized, large scale march threaten the city’s interest in maintaining the public safety,” Jones wrote. “This is significant governmental interest that warrants the city’s denial of a parade permit in this case.”

I was able to interview representatives of the NYCLU and United for Peace and Justice today. I also reached the very helpful Lisa Zebrowski of the New York City Law Department, but her boss was traveling today and Ms. Zebrowski was authorized only to release an official statement, which she e-mailed within five minutes of concluding our call. The statement pertains only to today's court decision and is . . . short:

Statement from Jeffrey D. Friedlander, First Assistant Corporation Counsel, New York City Law Department, on the ruling of United for Peace and Justice v. City of New York, et al.

We are gratified that Judge Jones agreed with the Police Department's assessment that a march proposed for Saturday by United for Peace and Justice would have put the public's safety at risk. We will continue to work with the organizers so their voices can be heard consistent with the First Amendment and the interests and safety of the City.

NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told me the following:

o The January 22 phone call was the initial approach to the NYPD.
o This lead time (three-plus weeks) is well within the normal, acceptable range for securing a permit for an event of this size.
o At no time did the NYPD refuse to authorize a rally as opposed to a march.
o In her judgment it is "not clear" that the offered site is big enough to accomodate the size of gathering envisioned.

I asked her why a rally with no march would not be sufficient. She said a march would enable the protesters to convey their message to more places around the city, including the UN, and that marches are a classic and effective form of protest.

She also said that the NYPD testified that it has refused all requests for political marches since last fall, a statement independently verified by this Leonard Levitt column in today's Newsday:

[Assistant Chief Michael] Esposito, who testified at the hearing, said that since last fall the department has not issued a single permit for a protest march anywhere in Manhattan south of 59th Street.

The NYPD has continued to approve non-political parades, including very large ones, as discussed in the NYCLU complaint. Ms. Lieberman said that the news of the policy came as a shock.

I next spoke with Jason Kafoury, media coordinator for UFPJ. He said that all their contacts with the City were through the NYCLU and deferred to them regarding dates. He said that the police initially offered an alternate parade route, but rescinded it at a later meeting, which also jibes with Levitt's column:

[Michael] Esposito also testified that he had offered an alternative plan for Saturday's planned protest, allowing a march north on Third Avenue to 47th Street, then east to an assembly point near the UN. But that plan, he said, was rejected by Chief of Department Joseph Esposito because, he said, the UN was considered a "sensitive" area.

I asked Jason Kafoury if he thought the rally site was adequate to the anticipated size of the event. He expressed a couple of concerns:

o The geometry would make it hard for many people to hear the speakers [a plus for someone like me, but a minus for other demonstrators]
o It's a hilly area, making it hard for many people to see the platform [see above]

His response to the "Why NOT just a rally?" question:

o Weather. It's winter and it would be best for the crowd to have movement.
o A march is more visual.
o A march would also be the best way to show the participants' "diversity."

As I wrote last night, I called International A.N.S.W.E.R. to try to get comparison information on permit-application timelines for their own events. They never called me back.

Before we get into whatitallmeans, some further reading: Diana Moon's long, disdainful response to my item of last night, and Eugene Volokh's blog item about the Constitutional issues in play, CONTENT-BASED AND CONTENT-NEUTRAL SPEECH RESTRICTIONS, which we'll have occasion to return to.

Herewith the opinionated part of this post.

Based on what I heard today from the City's legal adversaries and what I read in the press reports, I think it's unlikely that the Bloomberg Administration has been engaged in malicious thwarting of the UFPJ event - that is, I am much less inclined to believe that the Republican city administration is carrying water for the Republican federal administration and attempting to sabotage this particular march. Newsday's article on the hearing decision:

Jones also noted that since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the city has banned all demonstrations, parades and other public events in front of the UN and U.S. Mission across the street.

By refusing to allow the UFPJ march to pass the UN, the City is being consistent with its recent policy rather than inconsistent. Could anything change my mind back? Yes. The NYPD testified in court that they have denied all political parade permits since last fall. If that turned out not to be true, we'd be back to differential treatment of political groups within their own self-declared time frame.

Something else I suggested last night was that the timeline suggested that the NYPD was stringing the NYCLU along, taking three or four working days to fax a requested parade permit. Certainly it took Lisa Zebrowski (in a different office) mere minutes to perform the equivalent task of e-mailing me an official statement. "They must have been busy with other things" doesn't seem to have much power as an explanation.

But I can offer a plausible, benign interpretation of the delay, on a speculative basis: Before June 22, this march already was well-publicised. That meant that the people on the receiving end of the NYCLU's early inquiries knew they were getting a hot political football kicked their way. "No political marches" was about to collide with "big political march." Serious pileup possible. It's the kind of thing one would hand off to someone who would hand it off to someone who would rather not think about it right then. And the days go by. (Note: none of my interviewees endorse or have been asked to endorse this notion.)

That leaves us with what I'd argue is a defensibly bad policy and a defensibly wrong judicial decision, based on my understanding of Professor Volokh's criteria:

First Amendment law has long (and correctly) recognized a distinction between

1. content-based speech restrictions that suppress speech precisely because of the information or ideas that the speech communicates, and

2. content-neutral speech restrictions that suppress speech because of its content-independent side effects, such as excessive noise, traffic obstruction and the like.

Content-based restrictions are generally unconstitutional, unless they fall within certain categorical exceptions that don't apply here. Content-neutral restrictions, though, are often constitutional if they leave open ample alternative channels for communication.

It seems to me that

The City does not appear to be discriminating among political parades. To the best of our knowledge they have not, say, approved a "Free Iraq" or "Down with SUVs" march since their stated time frame of last fall.

The City does appear to be discriminating between political and non-political parades, having approved major "non-political" marches. ("Non-political" earns scare quotes since political controversies seem to frequently envelope events like the Saint Patrick's Day parade.)

This discrimination certainly seems to constitute a content-based restriction.

Non-political parades also require extensive security and present the same risks - occupation of resources, presentation of targets etc. - that political parades do.

Is there a harm in restricting a political group to a rally rather than a march? I think so. Marches are a different order of protest:

A rally makes most of the participants spectators, while a march makes them performers. That is, a march enables the participants to present their message - chants, signs, floats - to theoretical onlookers.

A march clarifies the stance of the participants in a way a rally does not. Someone listening at an antiwar rally may simply be listening to the presentation rather than endorsing it, may even actively oppose it. Someone walking in an antiwar march is clearly expressing opposition to the war.

The word "diversity" sets my teeth on edge because it's become such a jargon term, but there's a non-jargon sense in which Jason Kafoury's use of it makes sense. A march gives every participant visibility at every point along a parade route. The theoretical onlooker - perhaps on the steps of the UN - gets serially exposed to a wide variety of antiwar messages. Many may not resonate, but some may.

There can be freedom of association within a march. I wouldn't want to march in close proximity to a group brandishing the Palestinian flag, for instance. In marches I've participated in, I've been able to keep my distance from groups I didn't much like.

So, it's worse to rally than to march. Against that set the government's real security concerns. Against that set all the events it has authorized in the last year and a half - the marathons, the parades and so on. Again, I think the NYPD and the Court's positions are defensible but wrong.

I also have a couple of structural concerns about the policy, concerning the government's relation to its citizens.

First, and less importantly, one distinction between political and nonpolitical parades is that the latter tend to be opportunities for politicians to show themselves to advantage, while the former tend to quite another character. The city government's policy is self-serving at both ends.

More importantly, the policy marks out political speech as inherently more dangerous to the public than nonpolitical speech. It deprecates the distinction between political speech and political violence, and implies that political expression is inherently threatening. It's a problematic attitude for a government to have.

How Do They Go? - This MSNBC article purporting to explain the economics of the airline business seems a) never to discuss the cost of fuel; b) doesn't explain that ticket pricing is so wildly variable even within a single flight because airline seats are essentially commodities. When you buy a ticket on a plane, you and the airline are engaging in the same sort of speculation found in a pork belly trade. This is largely why so few people on either side of the deal are ever happy.

Death of NATO - I thought we should have sunsetted this particular "entangling alliance" almost a decade ago, but this wouldn't have been the way I chose:

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 10 — France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey, deepening the rift between those countries and the United States over the Iraq crisis. The move infuriated U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who called it a “disgrace.”

Not often I get to agree with Donald Rumsfeld.

THE ALLIANCE would have automatically begun planning for the defense of Turkey — which fears retaliation from neighboring Iraq in case of an invasion — at 4 a.m. EST if no country protested the move. France beat the deadline by an hour with its veto, and Belgium backed the move as expected. Germany expressed its support as well.

I consider our Iraq policy to be deeply unwise. But that doesn't excuse a supposed alliance for leaving a member state exposed to that policy hanging. What's Turkey supposed to do, pick up and move?

Orange Crush - Glenn Hauman of View From Above e-mails:

One note you may not be aware of: NYC has been at Orange ever since the system was inaugurated, and has never gone off it.

Now this is interesting. (I haven't been able to confirm it independently, but on the evidence of his weblog, Glenn is a careful fellow.) It would seem to mean that:

a) the City disapproved the UFPJ march under Code Orange;
b) the City approved the St. Paddy's Day march under Code Orange.

That looks like game and set already if not game, set and match.

Patrick Hynes writes:

And you propose to inquire of the principals "When did the City first offer a
rally?"

It seems to me that your question might not be the right one. If I understand the situation correctly, the request was for A (a march) + B (a rally), and the City said no only to A. The City never said no to B, and so it would not have made sense for the City to "offer" B as an alternative to the denied A. In addition, it looks like the City believed that even after it had denied the "march," there was still going to be an "event," which would presumably consist of the non-denied "rally." If my reading of the facts is correct, your question should be, "Did the City ever deny permission to conduct a rally?"

This sounds like an excellent and appropriate modification.

Creeps - We've had a lot of false alarms about Homeland Security, but if this MSNBC report is accurate, it confirms that al Qaeda are some twisted racist fuckers. (But you knew that.)

But Foxman said the FBI did appear to focus on one area: to identify hotels that are owned by Jews. The issue of possible attacks on Jewish-owned hotels was specifically raised by senior FBI officials with field-office chiefs during a 90-minute conference call on Friday, officials said. During the conference call, a senior official cited the recent Al Qaeda attack on a Bali nightclub that killed nearly 200 people last October, saying that the bureau now believes the facility was targeted because the owner was Jewish. NEWSWEEK could not independently confirm that assertion. Another recent Al Qaeda attack in Mombasa, Kenya, was aimed at a hotel that was frequented by Israelis. In addition, sources said, German law-enforcement agencies have collected information from defectors indicating that terror suspect Abu Moussab Al-Zarqawi, a Palestinian whom the Bush administration says is the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, had recently been inciting followers in Europe to attack Jewish targets.

Link via Letter from Gotham.

Shall We? - Hesiod suggests, "Surely, if allegedly lying under oath about whether you had sex with an intern is grounds for impeachment, [Hell yes! - UO] allowing a terrorist training camp to operate for months, even after one of its 'graduates' allegedly killed a U.S. diplomat last year, qualifies for a 'high crime,' or a 'misdemeanor' of office."

Gee it would seem so.

UPDATE: But his strained attempt to link support for the Second Amendment with support for preemptive war is silly. For one thing, the analogy is just poorly drawn. For a second, anti-interventionist libertarians like me, the CATO mafia, the paleos at LewRockwell.com and the crowds around Reason and Liberty are every bit as pro-gun rights as the neolibertarians are. For all I know, we are moreso. Heck, I've essentially applied a gun rights-based analysis to the level of the nation-state in arguing against the wisdom of "militant nonproliferation" and I'm not the only one.

Truth Commission - I agree with Avedon Carol's point that the burden of argument lies with those counseling war. But she makes some ancillary claims that don't stand up:

These are people [the Bush Administration national security brain trust] who thought they could fix things by playing "Let's you and him fight" between Iraq and Iran. These are people who thought creating an insane army of religious fanatics (the Mujahadeen) was a cool way to deal with a USSR that was already trying to move toward democracy anyway.

Actually, aid to the mujahideen began under Jimmy Carter. Zbigniew Bzrezinski even says that the Carter Administration began its covert support of the Afghan resistance before the Moscow-led coup and invasion of 1979. (I wrote about it here and here.) And while the Reagan Administration ramped up the program, in cooperation with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, throughout the 1980s, it's very hard to say that the Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko era was characterized by "already trying to move toward democracy anyway." That takes us up to 1985 or so - more than an entire Reagan term. Then comes Gorbachev, but it's an open question just how "democratic" he intended things to get before they slipped out of his control. Googling Gorbachev "black berets", for instance, turns up this interesting Time Europe analysis from 1991. Avedon would have a hard sell with the "trying to move toward democracy anyway" argument among an audience of Latvians or Lithuanians.

What the history of the muhahideen really tells us is that there can be a heavy, stubborn cost to strategic games undertaken for even the most serious of reasons, and that foreign interests are not labor-saving devices the US can switch on and off as it chooses. This matters terribly for the current situation, where any number of deals the government has made with the "Coalition of the Bought" have the potential to go very, very sour. And those are just the ones we know about.

The Myth of Media Deregulation is Jesse Walker's Reason article about the real causes of "media consolidation":

What do all these battles have in common? They all involve either new regulations or new problems caused by an old regulatory structure. And they all have the effect of reducing our media choices—put another way, of reducing our alternatives to Clear Channel.

Honor Roll III - Neel Krishnaswami writes

Sure. I'm a pro-war libertarian[*], and my reaction can be summed up as: Bloomberg and the NYC administration are idiots. You can't defend freedom by suppressing it.

[*] Sorry, I'm not a neo-libertarian. My belief that Murray Rothbard spoke garbled nonsense is just a sign that my intellect is in working order.

I've gone into my own problems with Rothbard and his most devoted followers before, but anti-interventionism among libertarians goes way beyond Rothbard himself.

Aaron Haspel of God of the Machine writes, "I'm pro-war, and I want in." And so he is.

Arthur Silber has a long, fulsome deprecation of the Sun's position.

Diana Moon says the Sun's editorial is "abysmal. But it's irrelevant" She also points out, correctly, that the current position of the Bloomberg Administration is to allow a rally but not a march. She links directly to the NYCLU's complaint, which is useful for parsing the chronology.

Diana defends the Bloomberg Administration on the grounds that our current Homeland Security Code is Orange. This would seem to make New York City luckier than they knew about the results of their last election: the Bloomberg Administration is not just prudent; it's prescient.

Because according to the NYCLU motion, the city government denied the permit on February 4th. The Feds declared Code Orange on February 7th. And on the evidence, that February 4th decision came at the end of two weeks' runaround. Item 17 notes that the NYCLU first contacted the NYPD for a parade permit on January 22nd:

The NYCLU specifically informed the official that the group wished to assemble near the United Nations; to march past the UN on First Avenue, across 42nd Street to Sixth Avenue, and up Sixth Avenue to near Central Park; and then to stage a rally at a suitable location near Central Park. Counsel further informed the NYPD official that the plaintiff expected between 50,000 and 100,000 participants, and perhaps more. At the conclusion of the conversation, counsel asked for an immediate meeting with the NYPD to discuss the planned event, as is customary in circumstances such as this.

We interrupt this chronology: it will bear researching tomorrow if the NYCLU's 1/22/03 contact was the first attempt to secure a permit for the march. If it is, that might reflect poorly on UFPJ. I doubt you'd catch the communards at ANSWER waiting until three weeks before the event. However, I don't know what's typical in the march permit-securing business in New York - I'll try to find out. In any case, the NYCLU, an organization that I infer to have some social standing in the City and to be somewhat familiar to its government, seems to have encountered a bit of a responsiveness problem:

18. The NYCLU repeated its request for a meeting with the NYPD on Thursday, January 23; Friday, January 24; and Monday, January 27. On Tuesday, January 28, the NYCLU spoke with the head of the NYPD's Legal Bureau and then sent by facsimile to that official a letter detailing the plaintiff's request for a parade permit as originally conveyed in the phone conversation that took place on January 22.

And you thought big cities were turning to Republican mayors out of a hunger for more responsive governments!

19. Late in the day of January 28, the NYPD informed the NYCLU that the Department would not issue a permit for the march requested by the plaintiff. The NYCLU promptly informed the Department that the plaintiff would consider changing the route of the proposed march or changing other aspects of the planned event to address any reasonable concerns the NYPD had about the march. At the conclusion of this conversation, the NYCLU asked the Department to propose alternatives that would be satisfactory to the NYPD, which the Department routinely does in circumstances such as these.

20. On Wednesday, January 29, the NYPD informed the NYCLU that it would not allow the plaintiff to conduct any march in conjunction with the February 15 anti-war event, regardless of the route of the event and regardless of any other aspect of the planned event. The reason given for the denial was congestion and related concerns arising out of a march.

No stipulation that a stationary rally was offered at this time. (Also worth checking.) Then the NYCLU threatened to sue:

21. Following receipt of the NYPD's decision on Wednesday, January 29, the plaintiff, through counsel, informed the City that it intended to file suit in this matter. The Office of Corporation Counsel then notified plaintiff's counsel that it and the NYPD wished to meet with the plaintiff to discuss possible march options, and plaintiff's counsel agreed not to file suit pending that meeting.

So everybody had a meeting:

22. A meeting took place on Thursday, January 30 with high-level officials from the NYPD and the Office of Corporation Counsel at which the NYPD informed United for Peace and Justice that it would consider allowing a march to take place in the vicinity of the United Nations. Though the parties discussed various march routes and various assembly and rally areas, the NYPD officials at the meeting informed the plaintiff that they had no authority to offer any route or assembly area and first would have to consult with higher level NYPD officials before being able to agree to any march. The plaintiff requested a meeting the following day, but NYPD officials stated that they would not be able to meet again until Monday, February 3. The plaintiff agreed to refrain from proceeding with litigation pending that meeting.

Seems like a cooperative bunch, the NYCLU. Meanwhile, the police put them off until after the weekend. (And do these guys knock off at 5:30 or what? That's not how we do things in River City.)

Okay, not Friday, Monday, right? Wrong:

23. On Friday, January 31, 2003, a senior member of the Office of Corporation Counsel informed plaintiff's counsel that the City wished to postpone the February 3 meeting to Tuesday, February 4 because Mayor Michael Bloomberg needed to be part of the decision-making process but would not be available to do so until Monday afternoon at the earliest. The plaintiff agreed to postpone the meeting and agreed further to refrain from proceeding with litigation pending the February 4 meeting.

And that's when the City offers the stationary rally. (Item 24.) And three days later, the National Mood Ring turns pumpkin-colored.

I'll spare you links to all the columnists, webloggers, editorialists and cartoonists who put a lot less stock in the National Mood Ring than Diana seems to in her item. But I'll mention that I just had a brief conversation with my friend Toiler (in the national security bureaucracy), and his offhand assessment of the threat-level codes was . . . unkind. There are a couple more things to consider:

a) The threat-level is going up, among other reasons, because of the proximity of the war. And the Bloomberg Administration and the Sun seem to think it also makes it too dangerous to allow protest marches against that very war. That's a little too convenient.

b) The City has already issued a permit for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in March (NYCLU Item 2). So here's my question: Does anyone think that, if the threat level is orange at that time, which it may well be, the City will revoke its permit for the march? If not, then the conclusion that the City's decision regarding this march is a political decision, and thus contrary to the First Amendment, would seem to be inescapable.

So here's a to-do list, and I'll try to get to them tomorrow:

Questions for UFPJ/NYCLU:
When did you first approach the NYPD for a March permit?
When did the NYPD first offer a stationary rally?

Questions for NYCLU:
What is the normal, acceptable time frame for applying for a permit for a large march? (Note: I don't plan to ask UFPJ - I wouldn't trust their answer unverified by an independent source.)

Questions for ANSWER:
How far in advance did you apply for permits to the DC rallies?
Speaking as experienced protest organizers, what would you consider to be a competent time window to give New York City to approve a permit?

Questions for the NYPD and Office of Corporation Counsel:
When did you first offer UFPJ/NYCLU the option of a stationary rally?
Will you cancel the St. Patrick's Day Parade if the HSA threat level is orange at that time?

That would seem to cover it. We shall see.

Reading Around - Walter in Denver gives Atrios what-for about Big L and small l libertarians and the Bill of Rights. The only thing I'd add is that there's more to the Constitution than the Bill of Rights, too, little of which supports the mammoth regulatory state so beloved of modern liberals.

Hawkish blogger Lynxx Pherrett has an interesting piece speculating about just whom the Franco-German "armed inspections plan" is supposed to "contain."

Marie Gryphon says conservatives and libertarians shouldn't be so blase about school bullies.

Missy has a report on Thursday's DC Blogarama, plus photos. (None of me. I'm not bitter.)

Chris Newman loses points for using the long-past-its-smell-date term "idiotarian," but gains points for actually engaging Gene Healy's definitive case against the Iraq conquest, something I haven't seen done much. I hope Gene will have a chance to respond to Chris.

Seablogger is - at sea. But he has a nice report of a visit with the great poet (and former laureate), Richard Wilbur.

Jeanne d'Arc watches Oprah's audience react to the news (delivered by Tom Friedman) that "war with Iraq will have to be followed by a twenty year occupation when it hits the real world." The "Don't Miss" blog item of the week. Link via Charles Murtaugh, who adds, "Almost a year ago, I suggested that proponents of war . . . needed to start making their case more explicitly and more publicly. From [Jeanne d'Arc's] account . . . late might not be better than never." al-Muhajabah weighs in on the same item. She's got lots of links to articles about possible shapes of post-conquest Iraq.

Zack of Procrastination considers honor killings. There's more here. And al-Muhajabah cites Islamic sources forbidding them.

Wendy McElroy has good links to critiques of the Bush budget. I also enjoyed Jane Galt's remark about what she might end up writing about the budget if she found time: "For one thing, I'm far more likely to slam the President for increasing spending than for decreasing taxes, which I don't think is what my correspondants had in mind." Put me down for that, too.

Honor Roll II - Justin Raimondo e-mails:

Before you go handing out awards to the War Party for doing what ought to come as a matter of course -- supporting the right of antiwar protesters to oppose this rotten war in a public demonstration -- why not ask them to come out unequivocally for the granting of the parade permit to the United for Peace group? Volokh's piece in NRO nowhere mentions this, and neither do any of the others.

Justin notes in a follow-up that Tacitus does unequivocally call for the permit to be issued. So does Kathy Kinsley. I read Volokh's essay as tantamount to calling for NYC to issue the parade permit. ("I firmly support a war against Iraq, but it's vital that the people have a right to oppose it . . . " In the context of responding to an editorial about Bloomberg's parade policy, that seems pretty clear.) I invite others to help me lengthen the list. Justin concludes:

And, isn't it funny (funny/weird, not funny/ha-ha): the commies of ANSWER never have ANY trouble getting those permits, but, suddenly, when a more mainstream group tries to hold a rally, the permit is denied. Hmmm.....

To coin a phrase: Indeed.

Foods Touch Item - So I am reading Dr. Doug McGuff's articles on slow-protocol weight-lifting and I find among the articles the striking titles, "Stasis Versus Dynamism," "Stasis vs. Dynamism Part II" and "Stasis vs. Dynamism Part III." Well that sounds familiar. And the first article begins:

Recently I attended a lecture and book signing by Virginia Postrel. Ms. Postrel is the editor of Reason magazine and author of the new book The Future and Its Enemies.

Huh.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post - Firstly, those who habitually skip the fitness items may prefer to go here. Or maybe not. (Link via Making Light, who writes, "They're not art. In truth, I'm not sure what they are.")

This morning's vitals: 194 pounds, 37 & 3/4" waist. Both are slight improvements over last week. I nevertheless suspect I'm coming to a crucial point in my program, where the temptation to pocket current gains (and thus guarantee losing them) overrides discipline. This week I gave in and had some chips Wednesday night at gaming, some pizza Friday afternoon and cookies and cake - awful cake - at Offering Boy's annual Cub Scout dinner last night. Having reached the point where I no longer look ridiculous clothed, and since I'm still improving even with minor cheats, there could be a tendency to push the envelope, splurge-wise. In truth I'm just over halfway to my goal weight (170) and not close to a weight that would support reasonable blood pressure and cholesterol levels. (I haven't had these tested, but I'm still overweight, so . . . )

Before we get to the exercise portion of the weekly fitness item, here's the Fitness Blogwatch:

John Ellis has given up dietblogging because "the nearly universal reaction to daily weight posting was negative." His final posted weight (as of February 3) was 224. I'd like to say 1) Congratulations to John Ellis on his progress (down from 236 during the holidays), and 2) Wimp! Let people skip the freaking diet posts if they don't like them.

Joy and Rob, whose workout blog started up the first week of January, seem to be attempting a very draconian calorie count. Also many posts about intending to exercise.

The Weigh Better Webring site page is ideal for people who like reading yellow type on a white background.

Now: Exercise. This week I kicked off my experiment in a pure weight-training approach to fitness, doing a slow-protocol version of Krista's dumbbell workout that I discussed last week. I really wracked up my legs doing this. I think this is how it happened:

Recall: slow-protocol lifting requires that you

1) Lift and lower the weight at ten-second/ten-second rate. Frederick Hahn usefully explains that three seconds in each direction should be spent moving the weight the first inch, to make absolutely sure you're not cheating the start, turnarounds and finish with momentum.

2) Work to failure, meaning you can't do it no more, with a heavy enough weight that failure occurs within about two minutes' worth of reps.

3) Only exercise every five to seven days. (Once into the program: they tend to start trainees out with twice-weekly sessions.)

So the first thing I did Monday was dumbbell squats, with a pair of 20-pound dumbbells, to failure. And the next thing I did was the rest of the routine, mostly with 20-pound dumbbells, standing up. Then, since my legs weren't killing me, I took the steps two at a time up from the rec room - slowly.

Which is to say, I pushed my legs as far as they would go with the very first exercise, then continued to stress them through the subsequent exercises. By not sitting, I continued to work the legs through the shoulder shrugs, curls and presses, plus the grandstanding on the steps.

Oops! By the next morning, my charley horses had charley horses. My quads still had some residual soreness yesterday. Out of concern, I did no legwork at all in Friday's workout.

There are two possibilities here: One is that I just did it wrong. Live and learn and do better next time. The second is that, without fancy machines to successfully isolate muscle groups, slow-protocol lifting isn't viable. (Isolating muscle groups has two functions. It forces the target muscles to do all the work, and it protects the non-target muscles from strain.) I suspect it's the former, but I don't rule out the latter.

Still too soon to tell, dept. Whether slow-protocol lifting is "all the exercise I need," which is the claim that slow-protocol enthusiasts put forward. The argument made by Slow Burn/Super Slow/Power of 10 advocates is that one session of slow-protocol weight work a week is sufficient. They actually call for a ramp-up rate of two sessions a week while you're learning to do the exercises right, and Fred "Slow Burn" Hahn's book all but says the ideal rate is every five days, rather than every seven. But "every five days" is a far cry from the five times a week urged by the aerobics party.

Anecdotally, I didn't gain any weight this week, and I definitely feel more muscular. Subjectively, I feel kind of restless, the kind of restlessness I'd have invested in a Heavyhands session prior to this. I did my second upper-body strength workout Friday - no squats while the legs recover - so it'll be awhile before I've given slow-protocol lifting a fair shake. One thing the slow-protocol programs seem light on is exercises that work torsion - using the girdle of muscle from hips to ribs to pivot on the axis of the spine, for instance. When I do Heavyhands, I'm confident that, if I've got a muscle, it's getting worked. (Whether it's getting worked to maximum effect or with greatest possible efficiency is an open question.)

More data points are coming, though. Friday, my mother signed up for authorized Super Slow training at Total Results in Sterling, VA, and my sister is planning to sign up at the same facility this week. I was impressed by the proprietor, Tim Rankin, who answered all my mother's and my questions forthrightly and put her through the demo exercises with focus and care. Price: about a third of what Hahn charges in Manhattan. (Note: If, by some miracle, anyone reading this ends up joining Total Results, make sure to tell them that my mom gets free sessions!)

The machines sure are cool-looking.

Ultimate Exercise in South Carolina has a lot more articles on slow-protocol training from an advocacy perspective. Next week I'll try to find some critiques to review.

The Untouchable Menace - The Los Angeles Times reports that many Congressmen are asking, if this Ansar al-Islam camp is so dangerous, and we have a doctrine of preempting terrorist threats, and we're in the neighborhood (Iraqi Kurdistan) anyway, why the hell haven't we taken it out? They and the LAT get various responses:

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

. . .

"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. "If you take it out, you can't use it as justification for war."

. . .

A White House spokesman said Thursday he had no comment on the matter.

. . .

U.S. officials said the Pentagon and the CIA considered plans last summer for a covert raid on the compound, but that administration officials decided against pursuing the plan.

Officials would not say why the plan was scrapped but rejected reports at the time that activity at the camp was not seen as significant enough to warrant the risks.

SUN of a Bitch - Your Talking Dog, on the infamous New York Sun editorial:

I had no plans to attend said protest, until now. As Patrick Henry said, "If this be treason, make the most of it."

There are some updates to the Honor Roll of pro-war writers who have denounced the Bloomberg Administration and/or The Sun.

Counting to Three - From the LA Times: "U.S. Tells N. Korea It Can Wage 2 Wars."

From the Washington Post, Friday:

SARAVENA, Colombia -- The arrival of U.S. Special Forces trainers in this battered town last month signaled the beginning of a change that gives the United States more direct military involvement in Colombia's long civil war and could lead the country's two leftist guerrilla armies to broaden attacks against U.S. targets . . .

Over the course of this year, Arauca province is scheduled to become the center of gravity for a $470 million-a-year U.S. effort to help President Alvaro Uribe cripple the enduring leftist insurgency by strengthening Colombia's military. The training program will emphasize counterinsurgency rather than the anti-drug techniques that had been the focus of U.S. aid to date.

In expanding the training beyond counter-drugs, the United States has abandoned an ambiguity that was once carefully cultivated by U.S. officials, promising to make the United States a higher-profile player in Colombia's 39-year-old war.

This month, U.S. officials will begin shifting military resources previously used in anti-drug operations in southern Colombia to this province, which lies on the Venezuelan border and is 220 miles east of Bogota, the capital. Helicopters will be used directly against the two guerrilla armies, which the State Department considers terrorist organizations. Under the program, the Colombian military is scheduled to buy additional helicopters and other military equipment.

The effort has been presented as a way to help Colombian troops protect an economically important government oil pipeline from guerrilla attack. But it is clear from the training taking place on an army base here that defending the pipeline will mostly entail offensive operations against the seasoned guerrillas who have prospered on this swampy stretch of oil and coca fields. The first military unit selected for training, for instance, is a counter-guerrilla battalion, not a unit whose principal task is to protect the pipeline.

"I look at this [program] more as one that is trying to establish security in an area where there just happens to be a pipeline," a U.S. official said.

From the Washington Post, May 6, 1996:

But U.S. troops did come under fire in El Salvador, and fired back, as U.S. authorities now acknowledge. Dozens of soldiers who were there, many of them still in uniform, watched yesterday as Salvadoran children, escorted by U.S. commandos, placed tiny American flags beside the names of 21 killed in action.

Later at an Arlington hotel, about 50 of the more than 5,000 U.S. veterans of El Salvador's civil war also were honored for service in sometimes hazardous operations for which they have never received the kinds of badges and patches normally issued to U.S. service members after combat . . .

Officially, there were only 55 American advisors in El Salvador at any one time, and their rules of engagement prohibited them from participating in combat operations. But none doubted he was in a combat zone. They carried weapons, received combat pay, accompanied government troops in the field and were targeted by guerrillas who had decided U.S. troops were fair game.

Call it yesterday's news, tomorrow, if you get my meaning.

We Do the National Greatness St - Well, You Know - Striking comments from Jesse Walker's Hit and Run item:

"It's times like this that legislative immunity really pisses me off. All we should need is two witnesses standing in Congress watching the vote..." (Brian Trosko)

"Every once in a while I have to do a little test to see if I've gotten too cynical. Here's today's test: Is it not possible that the leaking of this proposal has some connection to today's elevation of the terror-warning status to deer-hunter orange?

Ok. Just the right level of cynical." (d'Herblay)

"Here's another comforting thought. Bush designated U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft to stay away from his State of the Union speech, making Ashcroft the successor to head the government should catastrophe strike at the Capitol." (Lefty)

"Sorry to everyone else who finds Lefty as shrill and irritating as I do, but I have to agree with him on this point. George W. Bush has never had any kind of genuine libertarian tendencies, even if some of his economic policies are consistent with libertarian viewpoints." (Unnamed)

One thing jumps out at me from the parts I didn't quote: several commenters averred that Ashcroft is a "menace" and Bush needs to "fire him."

During the Zhdanovshchina and other Stalin-era crackdowns, Party members would ask each other, "Does Stalin know?" Stalin knew. It occasionally suited him, after the fact, to pretend he did not, and to feed his previously chosen instrument to the machine said instrument had until then been running.

John Ashcroft serves at the pleasure of George W. Bush. Keep that word in mind: pleasure.

More on That British Report - From the notorious antiwar rag, the Daily Telegraph:

It was the refusal of Britain's spies to disclose what they knew about their Iraqi counterparts that led to the fiasco surrounding the latest British dossier.

The dossier was drawn up in January, not by intelligence officials but by four government information officers, two from the Downing Street press office and two from the Coalition Information Centre (CIC).

Which, in some cases, is no biggie:

Part 1 of the document dealt with Iraqi intelligence service's operations to disrupt the weapons inspectors' work and conceal weapons of mass destruction. Part 3 dealt with the effect of the Iraqi security apparatus on the local population.

Although not compiled by intelligence officials those two parts included information from secret intelligence, and government officials insisted yesterday that they were "entirely accurate".

And in some cases is very big indeed:

It was Part 2, which claimed to give "up-to-date details of Iraq's network of intelligence and security", that caused the problems.

Britain's intelligence services have pushed what they were prepared to release to the limits, despite very serious concern that sources would be identified and lost just at the moment they were most needed.

They have also been irritated by the use of some of their material to prove points that are simply not true, such as the alleged firm links between al-Qa'eda and the Iraqi regime.

To repeat, this is the Daily Telegraph talking.

Tabloid Terror News - Britain's Sun reports

COPS have been issued with a chilling manual telling how to trap and kill suicide bombers in Britain.

Snipers will be deployed as soon as a suspect is spotted.

But if marksmen cannot get to the scene, an officer with an automatic pistol will kill the terrorist with a bullet in the brain at close range.

Ebony and Ivory - NME reports that

Hip-hop star DR DRE is to team up with easy listening legend BURT BACHARACH for a series of collaborations.

The 74-year-old star says he's working on samples sent to him by the controversial rapper.

I'm one of a handful of people around the world who found Bacharach's collaboration with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, to be moving and effective. So as to Dr. Dre and Burt, why the hell not?

A Fanboy's Notes - A few years ago, a friend gave me his manuscript to read. A few days later, I told him, "I just started your novel. It begins on page 73." He had, as many of us do in early drafts, frontloaded the thing with way too much preamble.

I can now say that Vertigo's Bast miniseries (I complained about the first issue last month) begins on the next-to-last page of the second issue. The hell of it is, I think the miniseries proper (Issue #3, essentially) may be pretty good. Just short.

Patriot II Revisited - Reactions . . .

You know, if people spent half as much time paying attention to stuff like this as they did to who was sponsoring this week's peace rally..

.. nah, what am I thinking? It still wouldn't change a damn thing.

Under a Blackened Sky

Section 517: "Police to Wear Invisibility Cloaks." An officer will be able to walk right up to a likely terrorist and, as long as he breathes very quietly and doesn't sneeze or cough, to observe and listen at close range.

Scrappleface

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings hypothesizes that "the Justice Department leaked the maximalist version on purpose. That way, after all the outrage and compromise, they'll get a 'moderate' version that will still be plenty bad." If that sounds too cynical to you, consider the alternative: that the administration wants to pass the entire bill. Which is worse?

Jesse Walker, Hit and Run

There's a lot wrong with this draft, but what strikes me is the proviso for stripping someone of US citizenship at government discretion. I'm no foe of two-tiered justice (which is why indefinite, warrantless detentions of Pakistanis and Saudis in Guantanamo don't bother me much), but once you're an American, you get to stay an American until you choose not to. Taking that away is a power the government simply should not have.

Tacitus

The White House has insisted, ever since news of DSEA leaked, that the bill is just a "draft" and that the White House hasn't even seen it yet. That is a lie. An Office of Legislative Affairs control sheet (PDF) shows without doubt that Vice President Richard Cheney received a draft of DSEA on January 10, 2003. "Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003," said the memo from the Office of Legal Policy.

George Paine

I don't see anything so bad about it.

Saddam Hussein

Most of the links have good additional material, especially George Paine and Under a Blackened Sky.

Honor Roll - The New York City government is obstructing permits for the February 15th march against the war sponsored by United for Peace and Justice. The New York Sun, in an odious editorial, praises the obstruction. Here is a list of pro-war writers that have troubled to stand up for thr the freedom we're supposed to be defending. My hat's off to these people:

Eugene Volokh
Mindles H. Dreck
Jane Galt
Glenn Reynolds
Tacitus
Arthur Silber
Gary Farber
Lynxx Pherrett
Diana Moon

There may be more, and I'll add names as I get them.

UPDATE: Added Glenn Reynolds Saturday morning.

UPDATE: Added Tacitus Saturday afternoon.

Stray thought: Remember when I said that the virtue of ANSWER was that they were good at applying for permits . . . ?

UPDATE: Added Arthur Sulber Saturday evening. Nominations are still open, people. There's no guarantee I'll find everyone on my own. I'd also be keen to be informed of any non-blog hawks who weigh in.

Split-Screen Republicanism Watch

We do the national greatness stuff abroad, and the leave us alone stuff at home. Sign me up.

Andrew Sullivan

You asked for it! You demanded it! It's -

USA-PATRIOT II!

a secret draft of which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

An Office of Legislative Affairs “control sheet” that was obtained by the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers" shows that a copy of the bill was sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Vice President Richard Cheney on Jan. 10, 2003. “Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003,’” the memo, sent from “OLP” or Office of Legal Policy, says.

But really, how bad can it be? Oh.

Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution, reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation “raises a lot of serious concerns. It’s troubling that they have gotten this far along and they’ve been telling people there is nothing in the works.” This proposed law, he added, “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”

Question: Whatever happened to, "If we have the war, we won't have to give up any more of our civil liberties?" We're obviously going to have the war . . .

Link via an e-mail from Hesiod, who asks:

How can any self-respecting libertarian support this administration?

Beats the fuck out of me, dude.

Hypothesis: The Justice Department leaked the maximalist version on purpose. That way, after all the outrage and compromise, they'll get a "moderate" version that will still be plenty bad.

Where's Mary Rosh When You Need Her? - British Intelligence ought to make up one of those personae to defend itself on the internet, because John Smith of LincolnPlawg has more about this week's fishy British intelligence document on Iraq (the one that Colin Powell called "the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday.") Turns out that the report's borrowing from often-stale open sources goes beyond the paper of California student Ibrahim al-Marashi (see item immediately below).

The Guardian suggests that the problem is that "What Whitehall may not grasp is the horror with which unacknowledged borrowing of material - the crime of plagiarism - is regarded in American academic and media circles, even though successive US governments have a poor record of misleading their own citizens on foreign policy issues at least since the Vietnam war." But I think the real problem is that we're finding that so many of the report's sources are past their sell-by date. al-Marashi (who offers a qualified defense of Whitehall in the Guardian article) based his report largely on documents captured in 1991. The more recent sources noted in his footnotes run to books and articles that are at least a couple of years old, which will themselves have been through a lengthy publication process and may be drawing on similar sources.

There's a remaining what it all means question to deal with: why did this happen? Why did the British functionaries charged with putting this document together hand Tony Blair a time bomb waiting to go off? They think we're too stupid to notice is a possibility that can't be discounted. But there's another one: maybe Whitehall has had enough of Blair on this issue. Fed up with the pressure, the report authors (and possibly their bosses) may have constructed the time bomb knowingly, waiting for it to go off in the PM's face.

I'd Feel Better If They Tried Harder - This is a hell of a note:

On Monday, the Government released a 19-page intelligence document designed to help win over sceptics by detailing Iraq's alleged efforts to hide its weapons of mass destruction.

However, Channel 4 News has claimed the document - hailed by Colin Powell at the UN yesterday - was mostly copied from three different articles - one of them allegedly written by a postgraduate student.

The article's original author is Ibrahim al-Marashi, from Monterey, California, the programme said. He was researching documents relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War and not to the current situation, it was alleged.

Channel 4 News reported that Glen Rangwala, an academic at Cambridge University, spotted that large chunks of the student's paper had been copied to form parts of the No 10 dossier called Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation.

That's from Britain's ITV. More:

Channel 4 News' website detailed the alleged plagiarism: "No 10 says the Mukhabarat - the main intelligence agency - is `spying on foreign embassies in Iraq'. The original reads: `monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq.'

"And the provocative role of `supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes' has a weaker, political context in the original: `aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes.'

"Even typographic mistakes in the original articles are repeated."

But repeating mistakes is par for the course.

Back from the Blogarama - Tons of fun. Julian took pictures, which he'll undoubtedly post once he a) finishes dancing at the after-party, and b) sobers up. Hung with the CATO boys. Max Sawicky braved the largely right-wing crowd, so he got to meet many Stand Down colleagues. Colby Cosh sent Kelly Jane Torrance as his official representative, which is nice because she's a lot better looking. Speaking of better-looking, I got to meet the legendary Missy and Marie Gryphon. Plus, I got to meet Jesse Walker. This was a real treat because I've been reading Jesse Walker for years - before there were blogs, let alone this one. Jesse's writing went a long way toward assuring me that libertarianism could be, you know, cool. Turns out Jesse's cool too. Sat around with Matt Hogan, Gene Healy and James Landrith. A couple of people assured me that they skip right over the fitness blog posts, which is too bad, since other readers know that I frequently slip into them the keys to lasting wealth and ultimate sexual fulfillment.

Not just Eve Tushnet but her posse were missing, as was Dave Tepper. I'd hate to think that some people were intimidated by a little snow. Speaking of which, the drive home was quite the adventure. To paraphrase Alan Bock, I've always been better advocating Capitalism than practicing it. Plus, cars just don't do much for me. So the trip home was in La Familia Offering's '91 Escort with no heater/defrost and bad wipers. Matt Hogan rode shotgun and had the official task of regularly handing me the snow brush. I would reach around from the driver's side window and clear what the wipers were missing. Hey, it worked!

More on Zarqawi - Hesiod has not been taking it easy this week, and he's found some interesting things that Colin Powell never mentioned:

It turns out that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, was actually helped quite a bit more by a member of the Qatari royal family, than by Saddam Hussein. Or at least, that's what the EVIDENCE shows . . .

And there's a lot more. I have two letters in my in-box that I've been meaning to get to. Both say, in similar words, "But we have to do something. What's your alternative?" But "we have to do something" is precisely what I'm not convinced of.

Because they lie. Routinely and often and deliberately. They said there were 100,000 people in mass graves in Kosovo. That was a lie. They said Iraqi soldiers were tossing babies out of incubators. That was a lie. They said Iraqi troops in 1991 were massing on the Saudi border. That was a lie. They said Saddam's attack on Kuwait was a total surprise. That was a lie. They said US troops had no combat role in Central America in the 1980s. That was a lie.

Right through the Gulf War, I believed that shit. By the time of Kosovo, I knew better. I'm 42 years old, I knew the Middle East existed before September 11, 2001, and if today's bunch sounds a lot like previous bunches that turned out to be full of crap, my conclusion is that this bunch is full of crap too.

REASONing On Powell's Speech - Tim Cavanaugh on Tuesday at the UN:

How you viewed Powell's address depends on whether you always wanted to attack Iraq anyway. For those who believe there remain many methods available short of war, or that none of this is worth involving American forces in yet another foreign entanglement, or that this is the wrong war at the wrong time, Colin Powell's address seemed like a formality for a deal that was sealed some time ago.

AWOLPundit - So I'm on vacation this week. I haven't gone anywhere, but it turns out to mean reduced posting anyway. Stuff around the house to do for one thing, and I'm writing a roleplaying game in my spare time. Tonight I'll attend the Blogarama at Kalorama. (There's one in NYC tomorrow too, which I'll have to miss.)

Meanwhile Colin Powell has argued at the UN that Al-Qaeda and Iraq have been cooperating for the last eight months or so, while Britain's Defense Intelligence Staff Agency has told Tony Blair that that's not true.

Whom to believe? It's worth noting a number of things:

Much of Powell's brief relies on the movements of one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has spent much of his post-Afghan time among the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam in Northeastern Iraq. "Northeastern Iraq" may ring some bells. That's the Kurdish "safe area," sheltered by the US/British no-fly zones to keep Saddam's bloody paws off the Kurds. It is, in other words, already our part of Iraq. Apparently it's worth using our power over the no-fly zones to bomb Iraqi air defense installations every few days for the last twelve years, but not to attack the outposts of al Qaeda affiliates.

Trying not to herniate himself by pushing the evidence too obviously far

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also sought to back up Mr Blair's line by insisting that intelligence had shown the Iraqi regime appeared to be allowing a "permissive environment" "in which al-Qaeda is able to operate".

which is to say that Saddam hasn't strained himself picking up al Qaeda types who have ended up in Iraq. This may be true, I don't know. It's also consistent with the concerns of those of us who have argued that US policy since the "axis of evil" speech has created incentives to drive our real and potential adversaries together rather than split them.

We missed a chance back there. It may or may not have worked, but it would have been the smart thing to do. Remember Bush's famous "You're with us or you're against us" speech? It's worth recalling what he actually said:

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

(My emphasis.) That original speech was clear and smart. There was, if you will, a new deal. The Administration knew that the Taliban were a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pakistan's ISI, and that Pakistan's support for al Qaeda was extensive. It knew, even if it would never, ever admit, the depth of Saudi involvement with al Qaeda, and the winks and nods of a dozen other states. That was then, was what the President actually said, and this is now.

What the Administration never did was offer Iraq the chance to get in on the game. It might not have worked but it would have been smart to try. Instead, a snap decision, made before the flesh of the victims of the Pentagon attack had ceased to bubble, to use the massacres of September 11 as an excuse for the conquest of Iraq no matter what.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

"Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

It's amazing, given the perverse incentives the Administration has set up, that, on the evidence, Iraqi-al Qaeda "cooperation" amounts pretty much to "live and let live." (The most detailed reports they've been able to offer point to nothing more than what has been described as a "non-aggression pact.") That's got a lot more to do with our luck than the Administration's skill.

Big Enough to Admit When I'm Wrong - The evidence for war is now irrefutable.

A Guilty Thing Surprised - This pretty much says it all.

(Link via Stand Down.)

TardyPundit - I know I'm the last antiwar blogger to link to this Iraq War II Shockwave game. But if by chance you haven't checked it out yet, now's your chance.

Neolibertarianism Again - A sharp and sympathetic analysis of interventionist and anti-interventionist impulses in libertarianism by - and this will surprise some people who see him as a pure bomb-thrower - Hesiod. I feel a bit abashed about recommending a piece that is so complimentary to me, personally, but it really is worth reading.

Music Notes - You can hear a song from the upcoming Richard Thompson album here. Sounds pretty good, is my official one-listen evaluation.

Department of Short and Sweet - From Pandagon.net:

CalPundit links us (through a Volokh post) to a story about a professor's refusal to give a student a recommendation in biology because they're a Creationist.

Well, duh.

I mean, if I'm applying to graduate school in economics, and I don't believe supply and demand exist, chances are I'm not going to get a good recommendation - my unwillingness to accept the basic tenets of a discipline would make me unfit to practice that discipline at an even more skilled level.

Another Online Quiz - I would have hoped for blank verse, I think, but this makes a certain sense:

I'm terza rima, and I talk and smile. Where others lock their rhymes and thoughts away I let mine out, and chatter all the while. I'm rarely on my own - a wasted day Is any day that's spent without a friend, With nothing much to do or hear or say. I like to be with people, and depend On company for being entertained; Which seems a good solution, in the end. What Poetry Form Are You?

Link via Making Light.

Over There - There was more "Gulf War Syndrome" stuff in the news recently and it got me thinking. Now as to Gulf War Syndrome, I think a couple of things: 1. GWS probably is a phenomenon of social psychology rather than biochemistry, as Michael Fumento has argued. You can call it "psychosomatic" or "group hysteria" if you want - I prefer "shell shock." 2. Shell shock casualties are casualties. Their suffering is real and a certain proportion of "psychic wounded" are an expected and reliable outcome of any war. GWS sufferers must thus be reckoned when calculating the cost of Gulf War Phase I.

But that's something I've believed for awhile now. What it finally occurred to me to wonder was if they have something akin to Gulf War Syndrome in Iraq. I searched long and hard for a source inside that country, since, you may have seen on TV, it's a totalitarian hellhole and you can't just read the bad news in the free and lively press. I finally came in contact with an Iraqi we'll call "Aloha Paz" just to be cute about things, because he said I could use his "real" name if I wanted. He writes:

you realize that this is not a country in which any sort of disease/epidemic/whatever is disscused openly. the government still says that Iraq is %100 AIDS free which is stupid for any country to say. so instead of information about the disease we get to call it the curse on the west.

the same goes for what has been called the gulf war syndrome, but in this case we have something much nastier to throw at the "west" than saying this is allah's revenge, we blame it on depleted uranium.

We have been having the strangest diseases and ailments showing up, the number of abnormal births is definitely higher than it was before, and if any starnge symptoms crop up they will be blamed on the depleted uranium. how much of this is true I can never tell. I am sorry I can not give you a clear answer on this. because if the syndrome has depression, fatigue and feeling of pain in various bodyparts as symptoms, then you might have just described %70 of the Iraqi people :) we should get prozac on the food for oil program.

All FWIW. For the record, I don't know what I think about Depleted Uranium either.

How's That Again? - Reader Gary I. Selinger copied several bloggers on an e-mail to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ombudsman. He writes:

Dear Sir: As you surely know, a reporter for CBC Newsworld asked -- of all people -- a science fiction writer whether the Columbia disaster could be attributed to "American arrogance." The reporter also appears to have linked such "American arrogance" to current tensions and conflict in the Middle East.

I might expect to have this tendentious claptrap disseminated on Pacifica Radio, or some other far-left/lunatic fringe organization. I am sickened to learn that it was, in fact, a product of the CBC.

Implicit in his argument is the notion that the CBC is not a "far-left/lunatic fringe organization." Strange.

Glenn Reynolds has more on the famous "American arrogance" interview, including an attempt by the innocent party to the conversation to defend the interviewer. I don't find the defense especially convincing.

Department of Unintended Consequences - Reader Grant Gould sends an interesting letter:

Ever since I heard the idea reified and the term invented, I've had a bad opinion of "neolibertarianism." But with your synopsis of it yesterday ("governs best which governs elsewhere"), I find myself re-evaluating.

The governing classes seem inescapably to exist: Perhaps it is a matter of personality type or a structural property of human civilisation or some stange genetic perversion, but any group larger than 30 or so people has someone who wants to start making rules, and beyond about 150 people someone's talking about saving people from their own ideas and desires.

Moreover, no constitution seems to be adequate to prevent them from wheedling themselves more power; no amount of popular education seems to prevent their ideas from suckering the public; no threat seems to dissuade them unless it is the threat to replace them with a new and even more rapacious governing class like clerics or soldiers.

That being the case -- that there will be government, and that it will govern -- perhaps the best that we can hope for is that it governs elsewhere. Perhaps empire provides a way to distract and occupy those energies of the governing class whose exercise at home infallibly stifle liberty.

It's possible that empire will merely whet their appetites; the main course will still be domestic liberties, and they will approach them with even greater hunger. The British bureaucracy grew as its empire grew, and grew faster as its empire shrank. Still, it might be worth a try. If imperial projects can distract government-types from the home front then I say more power to them.

What can I say but, heh. Still, there are problems. Empire and "neo-empire" are expensive, for one thing. And TIPS and Total Information Awareness (and USA-Patriot, and the Padilla case, and . . . ) suggest that "Our Enemy, the State" won't keep its aggrandizement abroad. It still looks to me like statism abroad leads to more statism at home. For instance, suppose we not only can "rebuild Afghanistan" (which I doubt), but do. Liberals will then demand "How about some 'nation-building' in our [inner city/distressed agricultural regions/declining industrial areas]?" Conservatives will want to know why we shouldn't insist on the same respect for authority at home as we do in the provinces.

It's a shame too, because Grant sure looks to be right that "no constitution seems to be adequate to prevent them from wheedling themselves more power." I'm not sure what the answer to the problem is, or if there even is one, but I'm pretty sure neo-imperialism isn't one either. I suspect that the best characterization of empire's relation to the domestic state might be: practice.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post II - Reader/snowbird Mary LaCroix responded to my concerns last week about the expense - in money and/or space - of weight training by suggesting the website of Krista Rustukles of Toronto. Krista has pages of no-weight and dumbbell-only programs - the no-weight page covers strength training using "things you may already have around the house" - and a page of advice on outfitting a home gym. Krista says get a "power cage," which looks like a box frame designed to let you lift free weights without dropping them on yourself. Power cages seem to cost in the low hundreds of dollars and take up about 18-20 square feet. Add to that the cost of bench, barbell and weight plates and you're still well below the cost of a Bowflex or home Nautilus machine or - heaven forfend - a treadmill.

Krista's program is pitched toward encouraging women to train seriously, but Mary writes "lots of guys swear by her methods, too."

Again, I'm not knocking weight training and I expect to do more of it (see item below), but a quick review of the cost of Heavyhands shows:

Book, used $10-30
Shoes $80-150
Dumbbells $5 on eBay for a set of the official AMF weights with handguards, one and two-pound caps, plus up to a dollar a pound for fancy dumbbells in larger sizes, total well under $100
Trainer - Once you have the book, the very notion of paying a trainer is absurd
Club membership - Needless expense
Metronome or pacer, $40

Keep in mind you need athletic shoes no matter what. You can probably skip the metronome too. (These days I just work to my target pulse range and keep pushing myself to improve range of motion and weight size from week to week.) You can get everything you need for less than $200.

Which may have something to do with the program's virtual disappearance from the fitness media since the 1980s.

Of course, cheaper yet is to use "things you may already have around your bones," per this workout page from Bryce Lane.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post - 195 pounds, 38" waist as of this morning. As I had concluded from previous benchmarks, on my frame every 10 pounds is a pants size. This does not mean that I get to go out and buy new pants, because 38" is what I was imagining (pretending? hallucinating?) my waist size to be even before I started dieting. Sure I had to - cHuooooooh! - inhale a little to get them on, but dammit they were my 38" pants, and to actually buy a size 40" (or, ahem, 42") would have been an admission that Something Was Wrong.

And speaking of wrong, this notion that only women agonize over their body shapes - where the hell did that come from? I'll venture a guess: women think only women agonize over their body shapes because they talk about it all the time, while men don't. Ladies! Think about this for a minute! We're the gender that doesn't talk about our feelings, remember?? This is just one more feeling we ain't talking about.

So, this handy BMI calculator tells me I'm down to a BMI of 27.2. While I've been exercising, I'm nowhere close to the level of muscularity that would invalidate BMI as a measure. I'm still officially overweight, and about 4% over the median for men my age, but screw those slackers. I'm thinking much bigger. Er, smaller.

Exercise. This week I did a lot more reading up on weight training, including as much as I could find about the SuperSlow method that Diana Moon has been so enthusiastic about. Stated briefly, Super Slow holds that you should

o Do one set of reps per muscle group
o Use equal, ~10-second movements in both directions - frex, for a bicep curl, take ten seconds to raise the weight and ten seconds to lower it. No jerking, involving other muscles etc.
o Push the muscle to complete failure within about 100 seconds
o Do this at most every five days or so.

There's more detail on the protocols here. Hutchins and his school famously consider aerobics to be not just unnecessary but counterproductive and therefore evil.

What I've discovered while researching various fitness claims are, first, you're dealing with a lot of people who hate each other, partly because money is at stake, but more because theories are at stake, and there are a lot of people who care more for their theories (i.e. being right) than they could ever care for money; second, that there's an awful lot of lousy reporting about fitness claims. The situation seems to be this: the layman can't trust that anything he reads will be accurate or pointful, and the expert is so invested (in the several senses) in a viewpoint that he can't trust himself either.

A for instance: In this long, friendly interview with Super Slow founder Ken Hutchins, he mentions, "Wayne Westcott has obtained a lot of press for his favorable reports on SuperSlow, but I do not like to reference exercise physiologists that I do not respect, even when they say good things about SuperSlow."

Well that's a pretty harsh thing to say, but continued Googling determined that in 1993 and then 1998, Westcott conducted studies that determined that slow-lifting athletes enjoyed "50% greater increase in strength compared to regular speed training" over the course of the study. I saw this claim repeated around the web several times, including stories in major media, such as this Men's Health magazine story on ABCNews.com. Only Clarence Bass of RIPPED points out the essential problem with Westcott's findings:

One important detail is that the slow lifters were tested using the slow 14-second cadence, and the regular-speed group was tested using the regular 7-second cadence. There was no comparison using a common cadence. For example, the two groups could have been tested using an intermediate 4 or 5 second lifting phase, but that was not done. Each group was tested using only the reps and rep speed they used in training.

The authors of the report acknowledge that the absence of a common testing protocol was a possible flaw; it may cast doubt on the validity of their findings. In effect, they compared apples and oranges. One can’t help but wonder what the result would have been had they tested for 8-rep maximum, allowing the participants to use whenever rep speed they chose. In other words, what would the result have been in a real-world strength comparison.

Or if the study had measured before-and-after muscle mass, which I believe can be done, or some other neutral set of fitness measures (resting pulse, blood pressure at rest, body fat composition etc.)

Bass's critique doesn't invalidate Super Slow itself, just the test - and most health reporting. And he offers an explanation for Hutchins' dissing of Westcott that would go beyond mere arrogance.

The curious consumer has to sort among the claims and counterclaims of numerous true believers, most of whom argue that the "conventional wisdom" is wrong and the establishment blind. In this last, they may not be wrong. Kenneth "Aerobics" Cooper himself now says that the older you get, the more emphasis you should place on strength training relative to "cardio" exercise. That's a significant revision to the conventional "Aerobis uber alles" wisdom that Cooper did so much to erect in the first place. Meanwhile, Newsweek's newest new diet article of the other week notes the following:

How did the government get it so wrong? Basically by trying too hard to simplify its message. Scientists have known since the 1960s that the saturated fat in red meat and dairy products can raise cholesterol levels and promote coronary heart disease. Though the USDA had long downplayed those risks to appease the cattle and dairy industries, it had also acknowledged them. When the USDA staff started building the Food Guide Pyramid in the late 1980s, its main objective was to get that message out. Earlier food charts had shown four basic groups—meat, dairy, produce and cereal grains—and encouraged people to eat everything in moderation. The pyramid introduced the notion that some foods (fats) required more moderation than others (carbohydrates).
Scientists were well aware that fats could be healthful and that carbs could cause harm. Studies had shown that unlike butter and lard, the oils found in fish, nuts and vegetables helped protect against heart disease—and that cereal grains had all the nutritional value of table sugar when milled into flour.

Your federal government at work, loyal reader. But this is why you can't just turn to the USDA or NIH or CDC for the "real" answer. Their answers too will be a compound of commercial pressure, paternalism, bureaucratic intertia and ass-covering.

The problem is that just because the conventional wisdom is suspect doesn't make the radicals right. I still have no idea whether Super Slow or Heavyhands or "explosive lifting" or Pilates is right for everyone. I do think pure strength training is more important than I gave it credit for in earlier years. I think Super Slow might help my mother a lot. (It was originally developed as a geriatrics program, according to the Hutchins interview.) I think Leonard "Heavyhands" Schwartz and Ken Hutchins would agree on some important things - the importance of training the upper body and the virtue of building muscle mass. They take two radically different approaches to the issue - Schwartz developing a whole-body aerobics system and Hutchins championing pure weight training. (Schwartz is not flabby in this picture.)

I'm not sure there's a pure "isolation-based" lifting approach for training those rib and lower trunk muscles that protest if you fold laundry for a couple of hours. I doubt any more that aerobic, Heavyhands-style small weight training will give you all the muscle power you need to move the couch when it comes time to redecorate. I know, as I discovered this afternoon, that real-world fitness means being able to carry the Littlest Offering a half mile after she gets tired of walking but refuses to go back in the stroller. Then there are all the things we don't want that comprise what we think of as fitness:

o stroke
o essential hypertension
o diabetes
o heart attack
o bad back
o bad knees
o obesity

Is all that so hard? Maybe so.

For the Devil's Dictionary, Next Edition

Neolibertarianism - n. A political philosophy that holds that that government governs best which governs mostly elsewhere.

Shuttle II - Lyrics to the filk song, "Fire in the Sky," by Jordin Kare that Buzz Aldrin recited can be found here. You can also here a performance.

We Get Letters - Jonathan Hendry writes to criticise Colby Cosh's ADHD article:

Evidently he is unaware of, and didn't bother googling for, research showing actual evidence:

A 10-year study by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) scientists has found that brains of children and adolescents with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are 3-4 percent smaller than those of children who don't have the disorder – and that medication treatment is not the cause. Indeed, in this first major study to scan previously never-medicated patients, they found "strikingly smaller" white matter volumes in children who had not taken stimulant drugs. Still, the course of brain development in the ADHD patients paralleled that of normal subjects, suggesting that whatever caused the disorder happened earlier.

It's a persuasive article, and if the data hold up it suggests a clear biological marker at the population level. It would still leave us without a means of making a biological diagnosis of ADHD in individuals, but might point the way to one.

Your Talking Dog e-mails about the conviction of Richard Reid:

Nice post on TalkLeft's take on the Richard Reid case, and how the federal court system should be entrusted with terrorist cases because it can work fine on terrorist cases, yada yada yada.

The system worked on Reid- a pretty easy case, with witnesses and everything. The feds got lucky, BTW, that Johnny Walker Lindh decided to take his lumps and a 20-year sentence. In the immediate post 9-11 aftermath, a jury would probably have tried to lynch him, to be sure, but I wondered about the quality of evidence against him. Its unclear to me how Zaccarias Moussaoui will play out, though I'm sure he'll be convicted, and get his life sentence.

But these guys are all different from Padilla and "unlawful combatants" (such as potentially you and I; you still have dibs on the bunk, big guy). These guys are ACTUALLY GUILTY. The federal system is REALLY GOOD at convicting people who are GUILTY. As a Texas prosecutor (with a perfect homicide record of something like 19-0) was fond of saying: a good prosecutor can always get a guilty man convicted; to get an innocent man convicted-- that takes a GREAT prosecutor.

So if our goal is arbitrarily to detain people for political benefit (such as the attorney general's ability to score points as we equate a pathetic Chicago gang-banger with the Rosenbergs when visiting MOSCOW) , the federal courts are JUST TERRIBLE! They require things like probable cause (or, hell, EVIDENCE of ANY KIND), and defendants get, like, CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS, like arraignments and the right to counsel and to confront the evidence against them. Jim, as an attorney myself, I don't have to tell you just how dangerous those things can be in the hands of the wrong people.

So with all due respect, I have to respectfully disagree. If we start giving people that the President wants locked up RIGHTS, the terrorists will have won.

To coin a phrase: Indeed.

Shuttle - Reader Mary Kay Kare has a request related to the following Usenet post:

This was posted to rec.music filk earlier today by Rilla Heslin:

I am still listening to the news, and they just were talking to Buzz Aldrin. He said he wanted to read an excerpt from a song by Dr. Jordan Kare and even spelled Jordan's last name. He read the last (?) verse of Jordan's, "Fire In The Sky, .... and they passed from us to Glory riding Fire In The Sky." And as he read his voice started trembling and he began to cry.

Mary Kay asks:

we'd [the Kare family] desperately like to have a tape? Anyone who could help us out should email me at marykay@kare.ws or Jordin at jtkare@attglobal.net

Glenn Reynolds has a lot of shuttle coverage on Instapundit.com.

Diana Moon has all the response required for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter who ascribed the shuttle crash to "American arrogance."

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has links, including this one to a fine William Gibson meditation.

Mark Evanier writes:

About all I can add is that around 10:00 AM, when I sat down at my computer and saw the awful news, I made a quick tour of major news sites, and then of some of the political message boards and weblogs. I was pleased to see that the latter were not filled with attempts to spin the tragedy as a failing of George W. Bush or William J. Clinton, or of either of their parties, or of a particular political philosophy. Everyone I saw had risen above trying to exploit this tragedy to advance their personal causes.

About 90 minutes later, I surfed through all those sites again, and it was starting.

Caitlin R. Kiernan: " I watched CNN this morning and kept thinking, We're never going to get off this planet. The thought may have been unwarranted. I'm trying to think, instead, about the seven men and women on board."

Halabja Revisited Revisited - Tim Dunlop of The Road to Surfdom has found a preexisting rebuttal to Stephen Pelletiere's argument that it was the Iranians who attacked Halabja with poison gas in March 1988. The rebuttal author, Glen Rangwala, goes through the time sequence and the forensic evidence and concludes

So, in summary, either the atrocity at Halabja was carried out by the Iraqi military against their enemies - with a set of chemical warfare agents that they had a record of use prior to Halabja, and with a proven reputation for using chemical weapons in large amounts against civilians (the mustard gas attacks on Majnun island in September 1984 are estimated to have killed 40,000 people) - or by the Iranians, against their own allies and soldiers in an attack using chemicals that there's no evidence that they ever have had.

I find Rangwala convincing. That said, his own account makes clear that Halabja was a battlefield in the war between Iran and Iraq at the time:

Even that seems unlikely: the PUK captured Halabja on 15 March 1988. They were accompanied by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard who coordinated PUK actions. The town was fully under PUK/Iranian control 4 hours after they entered the town. The eyewitness testimony collected by Physicians for Human Rights and by British filmmaker Gwynne Roberts, who was in Halabja & captured the attack and aftermath on film, confirms this: the PUK controlled all exits to the town, and were preventing civilians from leaving as they thought that the Iraqis would not spread their artillery bombardment of surrounding areas to the centre of the town if it was fully inhabited (human shields). I find it hard to believe that with Iranian troops in the town for 36 hours before the chemical weapons attacks, the field commanders still thought that Iraqi forces were still in possession of the town.

The actual attack began at nightfall on the 16th, when 8 aircraft dropped chemical bombs; they were followed throughout the night by 14 aircraft sorties, with 7 to 8 planes in each group. Intermittent bombardment continued until the 18th (some reports say the morning of the 19th).

Summary: Iran and its Kurdish military allies capture Halabja on Day One. Iraq attacks with chemical and conventional weapons on Day Two. And the PUK kept the civilians confined as human shields. (That will work against someone like Saddam . . . ) Since it was a chemical attack, it definitely broke the laws of war that the US showed no interest in enforcing at the time. It was brutal and callously indifferent to the civilians present. It's hard to call it genocide, though.

However, the 1988 Anfal campaign against the Kurds bears all the hallmarks of the the sort of savage "pacification" campaign that is tantamount to genocide. Iraq faced a genuine armed insurgency, led by the PUK, but fought it by means familiar from the history of totalitarianism and dire - collective reprisals, relocation camps, the roundup and murder of all able-bodied males in target areas and chemical attacks. (See this Human Rights Watch Report.) It resembles, in fact, nothing so much as the lessons that Vegard Valberg drew from the history of European colonialism and commended the US to follow in this celebrated essay of last September:

You speak of will, of taking countries down and rebuilding them, but are you willing to bomb cities, kill enemies, breaking their objects? Are you willing to accept the massive loss of enemy civilian life? Are you willing to attack large concentrations of civilians, because among them there are many combatants, and indeed many of the civilians become partisans at night? Are you willing to round people up into camps, new villages, relocation camps, and keep them there and relocate them in order to get rid of guerrillas? Are you willing to take advantage of the various rights the Geneva Convention gives you when it comes to dealing with terrorists, spies, and guerrillas? Are you willing to make visible and terrifying examples of the enemy? Are you willing to have Nurnberg trials instead of TV-circus trials, AND to stomach the out roar if you do?

Now remember this, you must be willing to do this after Bush has been replaced, for this will take more than a decade, and you must remember that if you back down or flinch even once most or all of your previous labour will be for naught.

I should note that while Valberg doesn't sound nearly as uncomfortable with "the lessons of history" as I might wish, his essay stands as a clear warning of just what a real campaign to "transform their culture" would entail. On this he is absolutely correct. That it makes a mockery of everything we've always told ourselves the country stands for, and tell ourselves even still, is one more reason I oppose this war.

Subdued is how I feel about news of the space shuttle loss. The rest of it is harder to express, but I'll try.

We belong in space, and the signal accomplishment of the space program (one of the few, alas) has been to normalize our presence there. Most of the time I couldn't tell you whether there's a shuttle on mission or not. Now and then the news media note that this or that foreign astronaut will be his country's first man in space, but for the most part the shuttle program ticks over as unobtrusively as a car engine.

When I learned that the Challenger blew up, I was at 4845 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington DC, running a bookstore that no longer exists, halfway along the wooden stairs from the main floor to the stockroom in the basement. A coworker, whose name I recall, got a call from a neighbor and announced the news with anguish. It was morning, and sunny.

Already today I'm certain that I will never remember this morning's terrible news with that vividness. That's an injustice to Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon. To their shades, my apology. But too much has changed since the Challenger days. Space is one more place humans live. Like the highways, the air, the seas, it is a place where we go, and sometimes go wrong. Where there is human purpose, there is accident and loss. Where there is human life, there is death. The sorrow of Columbia is familiar sorrow, ordinary, inescapable. The death of the decent and brave has been long with us and will long remain.