History, Memory, Trauma: Problems in Representing the Extreme. Exploration of an essential and untrivial question: “how do extreme events function as traumas?” –Michael Roth, Getty Institute for the History of Art and Humanities. [via Red Rock Eaters]
Monthly Archives: October 2001
Debka (“we start where the media stops”) reports that the US and Russia have agreed to allow one another to deploy tactical nuclear weapons; the US in the Afghani action and the Russians in Chechnya, and that the weapons are already being deployed in their respective theatres. Wired reports that this “freewheeling Israeli news site… is beating out big-name American and international news sources” on key storiees related to terrorism and counter-terrorism. Caveat: “Like the Drudge Report, which it resembles, Debkafile clearly reports with a point of view; the site is unabashedly in the hawkish camp of Israeli politics and has partnered with the far-right news site WorldNetDaily… That slant, combined with Debkafile’s breakneck pace – its eight-person staff updates the site as often as 5 or 6 times per day with terse, one-line tips and sparse news briefs — means it often airs unfounded, inaccurate rumors while breaking legitimate news.” It’s some solace that, if correct, such Debka stories as this or their report that China is bringing Muslim troops into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban, will appear in the mainstream press in a matter of days.
In a related story, the Washington Post reports: U.S. pressed on nuclear response.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York have invigorated national security strategists inside and outside the government who favor using nuclear arms to deter and respond to chemical or biological attacks.
Conservatives outside the administration have been calling on the administration to make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons to respond to a biological or chemical attack. This would change a long-standing U.S. policy of refusing to rule in or rule out use of nuclear weapons in the event of such an attack.
In echoing several links from wood s lot yesterday, I forgot to congratulate Mark on the first anniversary of his deep-excellence blog.
En Banc 9th Circuit to Review Abortion Speech Case — ‘The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Wednesday to rehear en banc a case that could outline the limits of provocative speech under the First Amendment.
The case was brought by abortion providers who were depicted by anti-abortion activists on “Wanted”-style posters and a “Nuremberg Files” Web site that accused them of crimes against humanity. The key issue is whether context can be used to judge whether such speech crosses the line from provocative into a threat. In light of a climate of violence over the abortion issue, the abortion providers charge the Web site and posters are an incitement not protected by the Constitution.’
<img src=”http://www.warresisters.org/images/grief_rifle.jpg” border=”0″ alt=”our grief is not a cry for war!” title=”courtesy of War Resisters League”>
Lord help us; Lord help Afghanistan…
Carried out under a clear sky lit brightly by a three-quarters moon, the strikes involved single heavy bombs thunderously detonating on individual targets. Each impact lit up small sections of the plain and sent concussions echoing off the surrounding mountains for a full 15 seconds.
American jets could not be seen or heard here. The bombs fell silently from the sky, appearing with no warning. New York Times
Becoming What We Detest: Bush Says ‘Time Is Running Out’ as Forces Move Into Place. Rapid action is necessary both for reasons of logistics, with the proverbial harsh Afghan winter approaching, and for U.S. credibility. The Times quite correctly discerns that behind the words about consensus and coalition is the U.S.’s momentum toward acting alone. Rumsfeld’s trip this week resulted in no public permission from five “friendly” nations for us to use their territory to launch attacks, but the U.S. “insisted that it had what it needed —
overflight rights, limited basing rights and open political support…” Unnamed sources concede that one reason for unilateral action is “that the United States is determined
to avoid the limitations on its targets that were imposed by NATO allies
during the 1999 war in Kosovo, or the hesitance to topple a leader that
members of the Persian Gulf war coalition felt in 1991… A senior administration official put it more bluntly: ‘The fewer people you
have to rely on, the fewer permissions you have to get.’
A sign of Washington’s insistence that its hands not be tied was its rejection
of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s entreaties that any
American military action be subject to Security Council approval,
administration officials said. At the same time, the Bush administration
decided it was not necessary to make public its evidence against Mr. bin
Laden. .At first, the Pentagon was even unwilling to have NATO invoke the
alliance’s mutual defense clause requiring members to defend one other
against an armed attack, senior administration and European officials
said. “The allies were desperately trying to give us political cover and the
Pentagon was resisting it,” one senior administration official said. “It was
insane. Eventually Rumsfeld understood it was a plus, not a minus, and
was able to accept it.” “
It seems clearer that, despite the legitimizing ‘spin’, the U.S. is embarking alone on as irresponsible and dangerous a path as some of us have been dreading all along. From 9-11 onward, we eschewed mechanisms that might have legitimated and framed bringing the perpetrators and their backers to justice as police actions under the rule of international law. Even granting that we take a military rather than a law enforcement approach, we have ignored legitimate vehicles for international action such as the U.N., utilizing which could have strengthened existing mechanisms for world peace and security that instead we scoff at. The much-vaunted international consensus we claimed to build for U.S.-led action now sounds like so much smoke and mirrors. (My speculation is that, in its injured entitlement after the attack, the administration expected other nations’ full cooperation out of the goodness of their hearts. Now that it is clear that, instead, almost every nation expects something in return, we are unwilling to accept the demands of mutuality.) We have made a travesty of establishing the credibility of our accusations before the court of world opinion. We seem to be intent on evading rules of engagement on which the civilized world agrees. In essence, we become after all the rogue state we claim to detest…
Orwell Was Right: A Cautionary Tale for a New Age of Surveillance:
“What Britain’s surveillance experiment can teach us about our coming security state.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”] Alarming description of the complacent acceptance of pervasive surveillance even coupled with the recognition that it directly shapes public behavior in chilling ways. Rationalized as a response to Britain’s terrorist threat, the slippery slope of surveillance has been quite a swift ride downhill into monitoring a multiplicity of more prosaic social activities. The article estimates that the average Briton appears on a surveillance camera no lesss than three hundred times a day. Apparently, not one terrorist has been caught yet by the system, authorities concede, although it has identified a handful of scofflaws and petty thieves. There has been no control over whose data gets into the authorities’ databases; and the profiteer of an entrepreneur who has developed the predominant face recognition system they are using (seen here sewing seeds of public panic about terrorist threats with no scruples) attempts to assure the reporter that Britain could not abuse the database without going through him first. The essay suggests that because the British, in contrast to Americans, have traits such as a greater degree of craving for social class distinction and thus classification, and less litigiousness, we might not accept such surveillance as readily as they do. And, oh yes, we should feel reassured because those sitting in front of the monitors have a tendency to turn their cameras on large-breasted women. Whistling in the dark, I fear…
As we embark on the latest war to “protect our freedoms”, we should be careful what freedoms we are protecting. They include, apparently, the freedom to be unresisting subjects in the greatest experiment in the perfection of subtle transparent unrecognizable social control in the history of the world, all the while convinced we are fighting against the authoritarian regimes.
Countries Lag in Treating Mental Illness, W.H.O. Says — “Globally, countries do a poor
job of treating depression and other mental and
brain disorders, leaving most of the 450 million people
afflicted without even basic help, the World Health
Organization says in a new study.
Governments devote paltry sums — less than 1 percent
of their health budgets in 66 percent of the countries
surveyed — to mental illness and brain disorders,
according to the report, Mental Health: New
Understanding, New Hope.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Becoming What We Detest: Bush Says ‘Time Is Running Out’ as Forces Move Into Place. Rapid action is necessary both for reasons of logistics, with the proverbial harsh Afghan winter approaching, and for U.S. credibility. The Times quite correctly discerns that behind the words about consensus and coalition is the U.S.’s momentum toward acting alone. Rumsfeld’s trip this week resulted in no public permission from five “friendly” nations for us to use their territory to launch attacks, but the U.S. “insisted that it had what it needed —
overflight rights, limited basing rights and open political support…” Unnamed sources concede that one reason for unilateral action is “that the United States is determined
to avoid the limitations on its targets that were imposed by NATO allies
during the 1999 war in Kosovo, or the hesitance to topple a leader that
members of the Persian Gulf war coalition felt in 1991… A senior administration official put it more bluntly: ‘The fewer people you
have to rely on, the fewer permissions you have to get.’
A sign of Washington’s insistence that its hands not be tied was its rejection
of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan’s entreaties that any
American military action be subject to Security Council approval,
administration officials said. At the same time, the Bush administration
decided it was not necessary to make public its evidence against Mr. bin
Laden. .At first, the Pentagon was even unwilling to have NATO invoke the
alliance’s mutual defense clause requiring members to defend one other
against an armed attack, senior administration and European officials
said. “The allies were desperately trying to give us political cover and the
Pentagon was resisting it,” one senior administration official said. “It was
insane. Eventually Rumsfeld understood it was a plus, not a minus, and
was able to accept it.” “
It seems clearer that, despite the legitimizing ‘spin’, the U.S. is embarking alone on as irresponsible and dangerous a path as some of us have been dreading all along. From 9-11 onward, we eschewed mechanisms that might have legitimated and framed bringing the perpetrators and their backers to justice as police actions under the rule of international law. Even granting that we take a military rather than a law enforcement approach, we have ignored legitimate vehicles for international action such as the U.N., utilizing which could have strengthened existing mechanisms for world peace and security that instead we scoff at. The much-vaunted international consensus we claimed to build for U.S.-led action now sounds like so much smoke and mirrors. (My speculation is that, in its injured entitlement after the attack, the administration expected other nations’ full cooperation out of the goodness of their hearts. Now that it is clear that, instead, almost every nation expects something in return, we are unwilling to accept the demands of mutuality.) We have made a travesty of establishing the credibility of our accusations before the court of world opinion. We seem to be intent on evading rules of engagement on which the civilized world agrees. In essence, we become after all the rogue state we claim to detest…
Social Cognitive Neuroscience Goes Hollywood. Thanks to wood s lot for pointing to the American Psychological Association’s coverage of the recent first Social Cognitive Neuroscience conference in Hollywood; these are the people grappling with how minds and social environments are linked. Let me take this one step further, and recommend that you scroll down until you find the section called Mirror Neurons, which IMHO is the heart of the matter. First discovered in the ventral premotor cortex of macaques, these neurons fire both when the monkey does something and when she sees another doing it; as the reporter cunningly says, they are “monkey see” and “monkey do” neurons. Human analogues have been found in both visual and vocal areas and are hypothesized to exist in other cortical areas as well. If, as speculated, they form the neural basis for understanding others’ actions, experiences, intentions and emotions, then they may be the neural underpinning for a host of social phenomena such as imitation, social learning, empathy, sympathy, ‘theory of mind’ ( a hot topic in cognitive philosophy to explain how we understand anyone else), altruism and guilt; indeed, cultural transmission as a whole. I wrote long ago about mirror neurons, pointing to a long commentary about their significance by V.S. Ramachandran which appeared at The Edge (with subsequent discussion here), but all this is worth repeating as, perhaps, the most significant development in cognitive neuroscience in a long time. In my earlier blink, I called it an “intriguing but overreaching theory.” Since I’m in a more speculative mood today, I’m not as bothered by the stretch.
wood s lot also points you to Prescription For Scandal: Biological Psychiatry’s Faustian Pact by Athony (sic) Black, without further comment. Allow me. This is one more in a series of pieces decrying biological psychiatry and drug treatment, all of which seem to be emanating from the dawning realization of the degree to which the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry are in bed with each other, Make no mistake about it (as George W. likes to say), I decry this trend too from my vantage point practicing and teaching psychiatry. But this piece also sets up a reductionistic straw man rendition of what modern psychiatry is in order to savage it as — ironically — reductionistic and “riven with pseudo-scientific claims and evidential suppression.” It is not clear what the author’s scientific credentials are, but on the basis of some of his reasoning they do not appear to be very robust. Some specifics:
He is disturbed by the demographic trends for ECT; “over two thirds of these patients are women, and almost half are the elderly.” Well, duh, more than two thirds of patients seeking treatment for depression are women. And ECT is more readily an option for the elderly because they are particularly responsive to and tolerant of it and less responsive to and tolerant of antidepressant medication. In cataloguing the risks of psychiatric medications, he calls tardive dyskinesia (a neurological complication of antipsychotic medication) “Parkinsonian-like” (not true) and “indicative of permanent brain damage” (not true). He cites discredited overblown prevalence estimates and does not seem to understand that “tardive akathisia” is not a new, different syndrome but included within the spectrum of tardive dyskinesia. He claims that patients exposed to this risk of antipsychotic medication are not informed of the risks they face. In fact, sensitivity to the requirement for informed consent is deeply ingrained in modern psychiatric practice. Someone may be too psychotic to understand the issues and not capable of consenting; in this case, a special court proceeding to obtain permission to give antipsychotics is required. “…these drugs are routinely employed in institutional settings on clients that are patently not psychotic.” First of all, one would like to know if Mr. Black’s understanding of what constitutes psychoticism, and of the range of indications for antipsychotic medication, is sophisticated enough to make this assertion. Secondly, he conflates the old, risky antipsychotics, for which the risk-benefit ratio did largely restrict them to severely psychotic patients, with the newer, so-called atypical antipsychotic medications. The development of the newest generation of ‘atypical’ antipsychotic medications has been the greatest advance in my profession since Prozac and the post-Prozac new generation of antidepressants (although one about which you hear alot less, as their constituency is far narrower). These newer antipsychotics work through a different neural mechanism than the older drugs, one which makes them largely free of the insinuation of alarming neurological side effects. It is for this reason that they can be more broadly applied, and they have demonstrated safe effectiveness in ‘borderline’ psychotic and quasi-psychotic presentations, severe character pathology, extreme mood instability, uncontrollable aggression and rage, treatment-resistant anxiety disorders and aspects of dementia. He claims that antidepressants and “minor tranquilizers” (an outmoded term that shows he has not read any psychiatric literature, if ever, that is less than a decade or more old) have a “shadowy reputation” because of the potential for severe side effects. This straw man argument ignores the fact that therapeutic measures throughout medicine have dangers and untoward consequences if not managed properly. It is part of what physicians do. Tricyclic antidepressants do not produce “severe withdrawal symptoms” ; an ignorant and highly inaccurate mistake. He falsely represents claims for the popularity of SSRI antidepressants (Prozac etc.) as based on “the theory, widely embraced by the general public, that depression involves a well defined point source, or sources, in the brain upon which anti-depressant drugs act like magic bullets surgically targeting the offending region(s).” Perhaps embraced by the public, but I don’t know of any psychiatric source that claims anything vaguely as reductionistic as this. And, if there was any doubt about his neurophysiological ignorance, the following statement — “They act, in other words, non-specifically to block emotional (limbic system) and higher cognitive (frontal lobe) connection. They don’t ‘target’ anything other than a generalized splitting of psychic functioning” — is pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. He appears to have just enough of the jargon, dangerously as the saying goes, to appear to know what he is saying. He next asserts that their mechanism of action is analogous to that of cocaine and amphetamine, which is utterly absurd. Disingenuous and scurrilous, this comment can be designed for no scientific purpose but only propagandistically, to alarm prospective users. This author bbegins to sound more and more like a Scientologist. “…in light of the widespread concern about biochemical imbalances in the brain, the only known such imbalances … are those caused by the drugs themselves.” The author chooses to reshape his reality by ignoring an enormous body of rigorous scientific knowledge which establishes alterations in neurochemical balance and function in psychiatric illness. How disingenuous and selective is it to emphasize the supposed neurochemical mechanisms in the adverse effects he attributes to the medications but leave no room for neurochemical mechanisms in the symptoms of the illnesses? Condemning the pre-approval studies of new drugs: “It is natural to ask at this point, why, given their potential danger, we haven’t witnessed an epidemic of adverse reactions and brain damage related to these new generation drugs.” Uh, maybe because the pre-marketing research often does adequately assess safety and efficacy? The FDA approval process is indeed often criticized as more complicated than it needs to be, needlessly delaying the introduction of potentially useful medications in comparison with European standards. In the last decade alone, in fact, marketing plans for several potential new antidepressants and antipsychotics (whose introduction I and many other psychiatrists familiar with new-drug development were anticipating eagerly) have been killed because of FDA nonapproval due to adverse safety findings. As is usually the case, the author is stuck in an “us-vs.-them” paradigm which is outmoded in modern psychiatry. He views with alarm choosing medication instead of psychotherapy and “giving up on personal growth”, “substituting helplessness for mastery,” etc. No responsible psychiatrist I know believes that medication is a substitute for psychotherapy; personal growth and mastery are facilitated by helping a person too distressed to otherwise grapple with the emotional issues in their life. If he wants to point a finger, it should be at the primary care doctors who have never, in contrast to psychiatrists, been trained in or understood the psychotherapeutic process, assuming from their own experience that it is just an extended version of the supportive and sympathetic ear they lend to their patients’ complaints and are impatient to be done with to get to the ‘real’ practice of medicine. With the development of safer medications in the last two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has hit upon the ingenious marketing strategy of convincing primary care physicians (PCPs) that they can easily prescribe these medications without recourse to psychiatric referrals, a trend that my readers know I decry as the true greatest disaster in the modern care of the psychiatrically ill. I’m convinced, for example, that behind the controversial assertion of increased suicides among Prozac-treated patients, and other similar claims is the fact that PCPs do not have the time, the training, or the expertise to adequately assess the mental state of their patients — not so much the drug as the gift wrap it’s coming in these days. “Thus, there is hardly a shred of experimental evidence to buttress such trendy childhood ‘disease’ entities as Minimal Brain Dysfunction, Learning Disorder, or Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. No underlying local organic malformation, physiological malfunction or chemical basis has ever been clearly demonstrated for these syndromes and no well controlled clinical studies have ever unequivocally supported them either.” To start with, does he realize that MBD and ADHD are the same thing; the former is the previous psychiatric generation’s term for the latter? Moving on, this assertion is simply untrue, as anyone familiar with functional MRI studies will understand. “Culturally, the notion that we should conceive ourselves primarily as biochemical mechanisms is not only dangerously dehumanizing and spiritually stunting, it leads inevitably to both a dismissive and escapist attitude towards many genuinely psychological and social problems.” Of course, the answer to this is not to stick our heads in the sand and avoid a sophisticated model of the human being that properly embraces its complexity by including the neurobiological dimension. Many of the most thoughtful psychiatrists — who as a profession have always been interested in grappling philosophically with the complexities of human nature — have struggled in their writing and teaching with the balance between promise and danger in sharing a biological notion, as well as a psychosocial one, with our patients, with the sensitivity necessary to approach that complicated issue adequately, far from being “inevitably … dismissive.” See, for example, the writings of Gerald Klerman MD. “In having suborned, in other words, a substantial proportion of the population into believing their behaviours are dictated principally by their genes and their biochemistry, biological psychiatry has not only set back the psychological paradigm a hundred years, it has also fanned the flames of a simplistic, reductionist view of human nature and of human society.” It is a reductionistic straw man of a biological psychiatry that he sets up for ridicule and, in so doing, demonstrates that he is the real reductionist.
Neither the “mind-ers” or the “brain-ers” will be the winners in this type of tortured debate based on specious reasoning and a dearth of facts — I’m rooting for the “brain-mind-ers” myself. Read this article, if you must, with a massive grain of salt. I’m serious in suggesting that the author might be a Scientologist, by the way… Disputing articles like this which pass for thoughtful criticism of modern psychiatry makes me sound embarrassingly like an uncritical booster (either defensive about maintaining my livelihood or perhaps brainwashed by the pharmaceutical industry?), which I am by no stretch of the imagination. Remind me to try to blink some worthy, credible critiques of the predominant psychiatric paradigm for you, if I haven’t in awhile. Your comments are welcome.
As is randomWalks, I’m eager to point you to some downloadable printables, including “Our Community is a Hate Free Zone” posters and a variety of messages from the War Resisters League.
Idiocy Watch: “Ed. note: This is the first installment in what we hope will be a regular feature at TNR Online: The Idiocy Watch. We ask you, our readers, to send us the dumbest and most outrageous comments made about America’s war on terrorism by politicians, pundits, movie stars, athletes, etc. Send your submissions, your name, and your hometown (if you want credit) to online@tnr.com.” The New Republic In noting the arrival of Idiocy Watch, Making Light‘s entry of Friday the 5th explores the brand of idiocy embodied by one of TNR‘s premier examples, Ann Coulter, in detail.
Joe Conason: “The Bush administration told an outrageous lie that the president was a target of terrorists — and Americans deserve an explanation.” Salon
Saudi Arabia: Confidence shaken by link to attacks. Anguished that as many as 15 Saudis numbered among the 19 hijackers, Saudi reactions are complicated. The fearful government has officially disowned forbidden mention of bin Laden’s Saudi origins. Rumors blaming Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, for engineering an anti-Arab U.S. reaction include the myth that 4,000 Jews were warned out of the World Trade Center towers minutes before the attacks. There may be more truth, however, as I’ve previously written below, to the idea that the identifications of the hijackers are specious, resulting from identity theft. While in the US the confusion over Arabic names has received scant attention, it’s all over the Saudi press and tapping into massive public mistrust of the US and its attitudes toward the Arab world. A great deal of legal action for defamation is likely to follow.
“It’s impossible for us to believe [the United States] anymore,” said Taha Alghamdi, a salesman in Jeddah whose brother Saeed was mistakenly confused with another man by the same name who hijacked United Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
“What sort of intelligence agency doesn’t know that there are thousands of Saeed Alghamdis in Saudi Arabia?” Alghamdi said. “It is like accusing Tom from New York.” Chicago Tribune
The genesis and propagation of the 4,000-Jews story is explored here. Slate
Soviet anthrax lying unguarded on test island: “One of the world’s largest dumps of the biological weapon agent anthrax has been left unguarded.
The dump is on Vozrozhdeniye (Renaissance) Island in the middle of the Aral Sea, on what was once a Soviet open-air biological weapons test site. It is about 600 miles from Afghanistan.
Now divided between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the island was abandoned nearly 10 years ago, but enough anthrax spores remain to kill the world’s population several times. It is buried in metal drums a few feet below the surface.” Telegraph UK
Ashcroft: “Be Afraid, Very Afraid.” The attorney general fans public fears of another attack to win quick passage of anti-terror bill.
“NYC officials have told celebrities to stay away from the rescue efforts at the World Trade Centre after a parade of well-known personalities brought work to a halt while they were shown around.
…Among the celebrities who have come to Lower Manhattan to see the ruins of the Twin Towers are the former boxing champion Muhammad Ali, the singer Bette Midler, the Sopranos actor James Gandolfini, the boxing promoter Don King, members of the Yankees and Mets baseball teams, the new Miss America Katie Harman, the comedian Chevy Chase, and the actors Billy and Alec Baldwin and Candice Bergen.
Some celebrities have been invited; others have talked their way on to the site. It is a test of a person’s celebrity to see how far through the security cordons they can go before being turned back.” The Times of London
New plan to destroy Taliban — “The international community, led by the US and Britain, is working behind the scenes on an elaborate plan to topple the tottering Taliban as quickly as possible through diplomatic pressure and replace it with a broadly based government that is to some degree democratic.
The diplomatic drive, which western officials said would accelerate in the next few weeks, is designed to depose the Taliban, preferably before any military strike against Osama bin Laden, the main suspect for the New York and Washington attacks.” Guardian Observer
Attention turns to the other prime suspect. “Osama bin Laden is not the only target of George W Bush’s war on global terrorism. The Saudi renegade’s reputed deputy, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, a lifelong Egyptian radical who many believe is the real brains behind the loose-knit network of Islamic militants, is also a prime suspect. It may be that the USA would find it prudent to go after al-Zawahiri first if it wants to eliminate the enemy it has identified. Indeed, the genesis of what the USA thinks it is coming to grips with may well lie more in Egypt than in Saudi Arabia.” – Jane’s International Security News
“The golden age of intelligence is before us” The author of The Coming Anarchy, Robert Kaplan (whom I heard on an NPR talkshow this week making intelligent but polemical comments in reference to the famous Samuel Huntington thesis about the clash of civilizations we’re in for) ‘says fighting terrorism will require new rules for spying, but he predicts that fighting an “almost comic book evil” will lead to a revival.’ Salon
More on African American reactions: ‘Some bluntly ask the race question, “Is this a black man’s fight?” A white friend of mine asked me, “I hope you’re not calling this a white man’s war?” Before I could catch myself I responded, “It is!” And almost immediately after the words came from my mouth I thought: those planes didn’t distinguish by race. But then again, America distinguishes by race.’ –Kevin Alexander Gray, a South Carolina civil rights organizer CounterPunch
Shower Curtain Rises on Ig Nobels: “…(S)ome of the new Ig Nobel laureates, who were honored at a ceremony on Thursday evening at Harvard University, solved a few of the most vexing questions of our time. For example, why does a shower curtain billow inwards when the shower is on?” Wired
The 2,988 Words That Changed a Presidency: An Etymology: ‘When Bush didn’t seem lost, he often seemed scared. When he didn’t seem scared, he often seemed angry. None of this soothed the public. ”It was beginning to look like Bring Me the Head of Osama bin Laden starring Ronald Colman,” one White House official remembered.
The president knew he had not yet said the right things. He returned from Camp David the weekend after the attacks with an intense desire to make a major speech. His aides agreed.’
A blow-by-blow of the deliberations of Bush’s speechwriting team in shaping the address to Congress. They contended with problems including the lack of resolution about how the U.S. would respond, administration reluctance to share too much information with its own speechwriters, and Shrub’s ineloquence, which would mean that some of their finest writing would seem too strange emanating from his mouth. For all the talk about how reassuring the speech ended up being, the emperor truly has no clothes on. The inherent premise of a “presidential” speech ghostwritten by a group of speechwriters has always felt like a jarring charade more than anything else. Doesn’t the public feel the effrontery of being so much victims of inherent spin and manipulation by the image-mongers? Do they really think that these are the ideas of the man in front of the camera? “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” he might as well say. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Satellites scan entire Afghan territory every week — “Military and commercial satellites are taking new images of the whole of Afghanistan every week, according to military experts. US intelligence services will also be examining pictures taken at least once a day from areas of known significance.” New Scientist
The Florida man infected with pulmonary anthrax has died. Here, a CNN medical consultant comments on the case and the disease.
I think many would agree that it would be a strange coincidence that we’ve had our first case of inhaled anthrax in over 25 years, with everything else that’s going on. Having said that, it’s also important to keep in mind that the public health systems, along with medical hospitals, are very sensitive to this possible infection. Because of the fact that we’re really looking for it, it may be easier to find. To be more specific, some would argue that we did have more cases of anthrax over the last years, but they’re often named as unknowns, since anthrax was such an obscure possibility. We may see more cases, as our screening is heightened, but that won’t necessarily mean terrorism. The public health system deserves mention in this case, since they were able to find it, diagnose it, and treat it, despite the fact that no one has seen it in over a quarter of a century.
And “frantic laboratory work is underway in the US this weekend, as scientists try to find out how a 63-year-old man developed a rare form of anthrax. The tests should reveal whether the bacteria were left by a dead animal half a century ago, escaped from a laboratory – or even formed part of a terrorist attack that might claim more victims.”
Anthrax is primarily a disease of animals. Humans get it mainly from infected meat or wool. Bacteria from animal carcasses can also lurk as spores in the soil for decades.
But animal anthrax has been eradicated east of the Mississippi River in the US. The last cases in Florida were in 1956. The Florida man may have inhaled dust harbouring spores from a long-dead animal – or spores that strayed accidentally from anthrax research labs at Duke…
The Al-Qaeda group suspected of the 11 September terrorist attacks is allied to Iraq, and to Chechen rebels in the former Soviet Union. Iraq and the Soviet Union both developed anthrax weapons consisting of aerosolised spores that would cause pneumonic disease. New Scientist
And here‘s New Scientist‘s intelligent bioterrorism and bioweapons special report.
In Suspect’s Luggage, a Suicide ‘Will’ — “Most of the items were found in two bags that Atta checked on his
flight out of Portland, Maine. But the bags never made it onto the
connecting flight out of Logan International Airport in Boston that
Atta and others hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in
New York.” LA Times Every news reference to Atta’s luggage says the bags “never made it” onto his deadly flight from Logan, without further explanation. What do you make of that?
Troops Could Face Missiles U.S. Sent Afghanistan in ’80s Taliban may have 100 American Stingers, used against low-flying aircraft. LA Times
Discovery of ‘Baby Galaxy’ a Clever Feat: “Using a clever technique that pushed two of the world’s most
powerful telescopes to their limits, a team of scientists has discovered
a “baby galaxy” so small, faint and distant that it may be one of the
long sought-after building blocks of modern galaxies.” LA Times
F.B.I. Limited Inquiry of Man Now a Suspect in the Attacks — ‘Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan
descent, was arrested on Aug. 17 on immigration charges after
he tried to learn how to fly large jet aircraft, but expressed no
interest in mastering how to take off or land.
Senior officials at F.B.I. headquarters rejected requests from
agents in Minneapolis for a wider investigation on two occasions,
even after a French intelligence agency warned the bureau in a
classified two-page cable on Aug. 27 that Mr. Moussaoui had
“Islamic extremist beliefs.” ‘ New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Whether the declared
war against terror will amount to a new cold war I’m not sure. The war
against Communism had a definable end, where ending terrorism is a
goal without a goal line. And I wonder if we have the patience for
another 40-year war. … There is, of course, no Soviet Union of terrorism, but … there are striking parallels.
…If we are serious about this, it is one of those conflicts that can realign the
world. Like the cold war, this one, while it lasts, will assert a gravitational
pull on everything. It will determine who our friends are, revise our
priorities and test the elasticity of our ideals. It will influence which
departments are suddenly overenrolled in our colleges and who the bad
guys are in our movies. It is siphoning our charity from a hundred
important but suddenly less topical causes, and turning grade- school fire
drills into the modern equivalent of my childhood duck- and-cover
exercises. It will provide — already is providing — a new, opportunistic
national-interest spin for lobbyists peddling everything from corporate tax
cuts to medical research to farm subsidies. It may, belatedly, reshape our
lumbering military and our neglected intelligence services. In the cold war,
we trained soldiers to fight on great battlefields and spies to pass for
diplomats. Now, if we’re smart, we’ll be buying agility and shrewdness
and daring. We’ll be featuring Islamic Americans in our Army enlistment
ads and maybe recruiting some of those bright Saudi college kids from
the prolific bin Laden family. New York Times commentary
Sharon’s Remarks Draw U.S. Rebuke: ‘The White House scolded Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon on Friday, dismissing as “unacceptable” his assertion
that as the United States builds international support for its war on
terrorism, it was prepared to sell out Israel the way Britain and
France betrayed Czechoslovakia before World War II.
… The juxtaposition of friction with Israel and cooperation with
Uzbekistan demonstrated the delicate nature of President Bush’s
attempt to build a coalition that will convince the Muslim world that
Washington’s fight is with Bin Laden and his extremist followers,
not with Islam. Bush has tried to soften his government’s image as a
one-sided supporter of Israel in an effort to temper anti-American
sentiment on Arab streets.
So far, the effort does not seem to have convinced many in the Arab
community. But it clearly worries Sharon.’ LA Times
Supreme Court of Georgia Voids Use of Electrocution: “Georgia’s Supreme Court became the first
appellate court in the country today to rule that electrocution is an
unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, leaving Alabama and
Nebraska as the only states using the electric chair as their sole method of
execution.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
No Sympathy for Terrorists, but Warnings About Overreaction: The New York Times’ overview and critique of leftist opposition. Curiously enough, this is in the Arts section of the Times.
One difference between dissent during the Vietnam War era and now,
however is that nobody feels any sympathy for the forces decreed by the
American government to be the country’s enemies. The arguments are not
that Mr. bin Laden’s organization, or the Taliban, are progressive or
revolutionary forces, but that war fever, as some critics have
characterized the American response so far, will only lead to no good.But has war fever really taken over? As the week ended, there was no
full-scale invasion or massive bombing of Afghanistan; the White House
has been talking of a carefully calibrated response. It seemed as though
the recommendations of some supposed critics of American policy were
indistinguishable from the actual policies being carried out. The Bush
administration’s announcement that it would send $320 million in food and
medicine to Afghanistan, for example, seemed consistent with the belief
of Katha Pollitt, a columnist for The Nation, that the United States should
take the money it would spend on bombs “to help the wretched Afghan
people and support those among them who favor democracy.”
Historians are already grappling with the place the attacks will have in history, in the long view. Discussions of 9-11 are expected to dominate today’s first Gotham History Festival, “a free series of more than 100 panels, papers, films
and exhibitions in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York” which was planned long before the attacks. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Why Chechnya Is Different — “Vladimir Putin has made remarkable progress in his campaign to conflate his brutal military campaign in Chechnya with the new U.S.-led war against terrorism. Last week President Bush publicly agreed with Mr. Putin that terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden are fighting Russian forces in the predominantly Muslim republic, and said they should be “brought to justice.” Since then the Bush administration quietly has begun taking concrete action in support of Moscow.” Washington Post
They Rule: explore the power elite from variety of angles [requires Flash 5]
Florida Man Is Hospitalized With Pulmonary Anthrax: “A 63-year-old Florida man has contracted pulmonary anthrax and
has been hospitalized with the infection, health officials said
yesterday.
But, the officials said, there is no evidence that the man’s disease was
caused by a terrorist attack and there is no public health risk.” [until proven otherwise…] According to the Centers for Disease Control, there have only been 18 human cases of pulmonary anthrax in the U.S. in the 20th century, and none for a quarter century. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Army of Afghan Refugees Could Spread a Deadly Virus. A tick-borne hemorrhagic fever (vaguely like that caused by the deadly Ebola virus) endemic to the southern Afghani border region could be spread by refugee exodus, especially to Pakistan. New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Where to find old growth forests that the loggers have overlooked in the Northeast New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
Show Us Your Evidence: ‘It is a relief to see the new emphasis on evidence after the seesaw of recent weeks on the issue. Secretary of State Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and others initially said that a compelling case would be made against Osama bin Laden, both to coalition allies and to the public at large. They (and President Bush, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and others) then retreated from that commitment, pointing instead only to previous threats bin Laden made, his indictment (not conviction) in the 1998 embassy bombings case almost three years ago, and the belief that the hijackers were linked to bin Laden. Since none of that amounts to evidence in the current case, questions arose regarding the strength of the administration’s case, and even whether the political need for reprisal was taking precedence over the need for careful identification of the actual culprits in this instance.
It didn’t help that the administration failed to disclose the expected evidence at last week’s meeting of NATO defense ministers.’ –Joe Pitts, The American Prospect
US: Russian Plane May Have Been Hit by Missile — “A Russian plane that crashed into the Black Sea with more than 70 people on board may have been hit by a surface-to-air missile, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The plane could have been a victim of a tragic accident rather than of an act of terror, said the officials, who asked to remain unidentified.” Reuters
Some Things To Consider About Afghanistan — From Those Who’ve Been There. Makes the following points, in convincing detail:
Consider Pakistan an ally in name only, and appreciate that all dealings with Pakistan are fraught with peril .
Appreciate that getting rid of Osama Bin Laden will not “win the war,” and a war on Bin Laden’s organization, Al Qaeda, means a war with the Taliban.
Current U.S. military doctrine is not suited to this kind of war and must be changed.
Know the enemy and the environment, and apply lessons learned from everyone’s past mistakes.
All military operations should be coordinated with, and in support of, the Northern Alliance.
The civil component of any intervention in Afghanistan is crucial. The American Prospect
Understanding turbans: assistance with your racial profiling. Seattle Times [via rW]
Abit belatedly for Wallace Stevens‘ Oct. 2 birthday, here’s a small, mystical masterpiece, “Tattoo”:
The light is like a spider.
It crawls over the water.
It crawls over the edges of the snow.
It crawls under your eyelids
And spreads its webs there–
Its two webs.
The webs of your eyes
Are fastened
To the flesh and bones of you
As to rafters or grass.
There are filaments of your eyes
On the surface of the water
And in the edges of the snow.
Review of Meat-Eating and Human Evolution, ed. by Craig Stanford and Henry Bunn. “Meat-eating maketh man? Of all our relatives among the monkeys and apes, we humans eat the most meat. It forms between 20 and 50 per cent of our diet, while our cousins are predominantly veggies. Common chimps are one of the few relatives who also like the odd steak tartare, but it’s only a tiny part of their diet–about 5 per cent. Because we share a common ancestor with them, it is likely that an ancient relative, living around 6 million years ago, also had a taste for raw flesh.
Meat-Eating and Human Evolution asks when our ancestors became serious meat-eaters and what impact the carnivorous habit had on our evolution.” New Scientist
Afghan Women Speak from Behind the Media Veil ‘ “Now that the U.S. and the Taliban are on two opposite sides in a war, you’ve probably heard a lot about how the Taliban treat women,” said Tamina. Tamina is a member of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, and her mother was a founding member of the group back in 1977. “You probably know a lot about the restrictions on women in Afghanistan, but maybe you’ve heard less about what Afghan women want instead.” ‘ AlterNet
Reminds me of the joke I was just emailed.
Because killing bin Laden would only create a martyr for the cause and imprisoning him would only inspire further hostage-taking and other terrorist actions to get him released, the message goes, wouldn’t it be a fitting punishment for his crimes to have him scooped up by US special forces, whisked into a U.S. hospital for a complete sex change operation, and then restored to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban?
NOAA’s remote sensing capabilities “have mapped the wreckage of the World Trade Center in support of recovery and cleanup efforts following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The data are being used to provide a very accurate geographic network. Building and utility engineers will be able to determine the location of original foundation support structures, elevator shafts, basement storage areas and building utility connections enabling them to concentrate their digging and recovery efforts in the proper location.
These images will also provide very accurate height measurements as the recovery efforts descend into the basement, to mitigate possible flooding from the surrounding rivers as well as to determine the volume of debris and the reach needed by cranes to remove it.”
This quick ten-point Quiz on Middle East Geography and History will let you know if you have even a starting point for grasping new geopolitical realities. [via MetaFilter] Don’t forget; Sept. 11th was the first day of the rest of your life…
Dr. John C. Lilly Dies at 86. ” An inventor, author and researcher, Lilly was a member of a generation of counterculture scientists and thinkers that included Ram Dass, Werner Erhard and Timothy Leary, all frequent visitors to the Lilly home. He never failed to stir controversy, especially among mainstream scientists,” said the Washington Post obituary. [Let’s leave Werner Erhard out of this, shall we?] Lilly’s work included the exploration of consciousness through the use of isolation tanks, psychedelics, and interspecies communication, especially with dolphins. His 1972 memoir Center of the Cyclone is a good read. Lilly’s site is here. Funny, after not thinking about Lilly for a long time, his name came up in conversation just last week.
Via rc3, this report from a Pakistani newspaper that bin Laden is dug in at a ‘state-of-the-art’ military base in the Pamir, and that an advance party of US commandos are closing in on the heavily-defended site with ‘very hi-tech and not-yet-used-in-combat weapons’ like this
next-generation infantry weapon not supposed to be deployed for nearly another decade, and other sci-fi-sounding kit. It sounds like the reporter is just confusing the fantasy of some future-battlefield projections with current reality, but what do I know about armaments and munitions?
Help build the Sep11 Attack Archive — “webArchivist.org is working with The Internet Archive in collaboration with the Library of Congress to identify and archive pages and sites related to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. We want to be sure that there is a solid historical record of this time.
We are asking for volunteers to help us identify any web sites or pages that have information or content about the Sep11 Attack. We are especially interested in finding sites by individuals — that record their feelings, experiences or opinions. We are also especially interested in finding non-American sites.” [via wood s lot]
“US called off first attacks. “The United States and Britain yesterday called off military strikes against terrorist targets in Afghanistan at the last minute.
Washington officials say today that a severe attack of last-minute cold feet by some key Arab members of the coalition caused President Bush to postpone the operation.
The waverers are Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Oman, and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is embarking on an urgent mission today to strengthen nerves in these countries.” This is London
Details of the evidence of bin Laden and al Qaeda’s involvement in the 9-11 attacks (given to potential allies seeking proof) is leaking out.Attackers tied to earlier bombings: “Two senior officials, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the commonality in personnel between the September attacks, the (Oct. 2000) bombing of the USS Cole and the (1998) U.S. embassy bombings was a key point made Tuesday in a presentation to NATO allies in Brussels. Afterward, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said that ‘clear and conclusive’ proof of bin Laden?s involvement was presented.” MSNBC
Jonah Goldberg on Ann Coulter: the National Review Online editor’s comments on why Coulter (about whose invade-and-Christianize comments in her syndicated column I wrote below) has been dropped from NRO. She made further comments about how “swarthy” men ought to be subjected to added scrutiny in post-attack America, and remained unrepentant about the hubhub, saying she was enjoying the publicity. Goldberg says it is her unprofessionalism, lack of judgment, and sloppy writing, not the substance of her opinions, that is causing her column to be dropped.
Scan Faces, Not E-Mail: “More extensive background checks when applying for a job or renting a home aren’t so troubling, but more surveillance by law-enforcement agencies of e-mail and phone calls isn’t such a good idea. Those are just some of the results of BusinessWeek Online’s recent interactive poll, “Personal Freedom vs. National Security.” Over the course of three weeks, 1,344 of our readers responded to this poll — which, having used a self-selected sample, isn’t a scientific survey by any means.” Business Week
Greyhound Driver’s Throat Slit; Service Halted. Overnight in Tennessee, a passenger repeatedly approached the front of the bus and eventually, according to witnesses, slashed the driver’s throat. The bus overturned and there are conflicting reports of how many fatalities have ensued. Reportedly, the driver survived. There are also conflicting reports about whether the alleged perpetrator is still alive. Greyhound has halted service nationwide. The Justice Dept. reports that the man carried Croatian identification; they doubt that this action is “terrorist-related” but it is too early to tell. The Boston Channel
Before Attacks, U.S. Was Ready to Say It Backed Palestinian State — “Before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Bush administration was on the verge of announcing a Middle East diplomatic initiative that would include United States support for the creation of a Palestinian state, administration officials said, and it is now weighing how to revive the plan.” New York Times [name: “FMHreader”, password: “FMHreader”]
LinkLust, “a brand-new European community log.” Destined to be a continental metafilter?
What’s Love Got to Do With It? …Everything. Review of Thomas Lewis MD’s A General Theory of Love (2001):
“Social change activists and psychodynamic psychotherapists often believe that
knowledge is power. Freud proclaimed “Where Id was, there shall Ego be,” confident
that rational insight would tame the irrational powers of our unconscious minds.
Activists work to “get their message out,” believing that if people correctly understood
the social inequities in the world, they would change them. Both the therapist and the
activist tend to think that those who see love as the key to change are “flaky,” full of
“New Age mush.” Imagine their surprise when they learn that neurobiological science
is now discovering that the primary problem in both mental illness and social
alienation lies precisely in our damaged ability to love, and that the cure to both lies in
enhancing that ability. Will those believers in scientific rationality, whether they be
liberal politicians and union activists or psychotherapists, embrace these
cutting-edge scientific findings?” –Michael Bader, Tikkun
The Weblogger User Group: “Who is welcome at this user group meeting?
Anyone, but particularly those with an interest in personal journalism (aka amateur
journalism), building weblogs, personal Web sites, putting diaries, photos, or their
own ideas and thoughts on the Web, or people interested in low-cost content
management and dynamic Web site systems.”
“The Spook is the world’s first fully downloadable consumer magazine in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. It features short fiction by some of today’s finest writers, celebrity profiles, and reviews. The Spook is a free publication sponsored by its advertisers…”
The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University — “The Center was founded in 1993 to foster a better understanding of Islam and of Muslim-Christian relations in the West. Now, more than ever, the need for civilizational dialogue between the Muslim World and the West, Islam and Christianity, is evident. Understanding what makes us different — and what makes us the same — can cross the barrier of prejudice and strengthen our common bonds.
The Center’s faculty members are noted scholars on Islam and Christianity, and Mulsim politics, Muslim-Christian Relations, and religion and international affairs.”
How Manhattan’s heroic firemen are finding comfort under the duvet: “It is a simple question women are asking: if the world were to end tomorrow — and it has often felt that way in New York in recent days — would you rather spend your final night with a walking retirement plan or a death-defying hero?” The Spectator UK [via Spike]
Seymour Hersh asks What Went Wrong: the CIA and the failure of American intelligence — “After more than two weeks of around-the-clock investigation into the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the American intelligence community remains confused, divided, and unsure about how the terrorists operated, how many there were, and what they might do next.” The ominous implication of this review of the failure and unpreparedness of the CIA etc. is the likelihood that the war plan that led to the attacks includes a next round. Because the perpetrators could expect that a security crackdown would ensue, one CIA source opines, “whatever they’ve planned for the next round they had in place already.” What’s a CIA to do?
The New Yorker
Hell houses: ‘Some members of the Christian right have taken up the decidedly anti-Christian ideology of “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” They have determined that rather than staying out of the business of Halloween, it is better to give Halloween a real “Christian” meaning: scare the hell out of kids and teens. Since Halloween is most enjoyed by the young’uns, let’s make it the worst experience of their lives. Let’s disturb ’em so bad they never want to have fun again.’ Spark
From within: dissecting the alien subconscious: “Twenty-two years and three sequels (with the promise of more) on, it must surely be said that the alien is in the best of health. With one crucial caveat: the alien is no longer scary. The modern dearth of horror as a serious, rather than a spoof category can be put down to a chronic twenty-first century obsession with overexposure.” Spark
“Along with flag waving and generosity, a less savory American tradition is poised to emerge from the rubble of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks: the lawsuit.” SunSpot
The Feminization of American Culture: “How Modern Chemicals May Be Changing Human Biology” World and I Magazine Editorial [Interesting but a bit of a reach, as the author all but acknowledges, to try to attribute the ‘feminization’ of culture to the effects of environmental estrogens.]
What Bush Said And When He Said It. Journalists dependent on Dubya’s inner circle for backstage details are being fed the unmistakeable message that the president is firmly at the helm. “The fewer people who were in the room, the less likely you are to get a complete picture of what was actually said,” Carney says. “Obviously, like any White House, this White House has come to understand that the telling of the inside story can be useful to them. It’s our job, without being too cynical, to look at what we get with a certain amount of skepticism.” Washington Post
U.S. Believes More Attacks Are Planned: “Federal law enforcement authorities confirmed Saturday that they have received classified briefings dealing with … a situation in which retaliatory strikes are launched by terrorists once the United States begins a military operation aimed at getting Bin Laden, his network and other terrorists.” LA Times
Jerry Ehman wrote me back to say that the Flag of Earth is available here.
Disinformation Dep’t.: George Monbiot shares my skepticism about the documents the investigators are coming up with to build their case — and it’s not just the five pages of notes about which I wrote yesterday. “It’s partly, I think, because they need to show that they are not as clueless as their failure to predict the atrocity suggests. But it’s also because, understandably enough, they want a discrete and discernable enemy to confront, a structure they can penetrate, a membership they can round up, and a figure whose personal evil is commensurate with the crime.
Partly as a result of this wishful thinking, the West found itself in a curious position last week. The Taliban, possibly the most brutal and barbaric regime on earth, was requesting evidence before considering Osama Bin Laden’s extradition: they insisted that he was innocent until proven guilty. The West, in the name of civilisation, was insisting that Bin Laden was guilty, and it would find the evidence later.
For these reasons and many others (such as the initial false certainties about the Oklahoma bombing and the Sudanese medicine factory, and the identification of live innocents as dead terrorists), I think we have some cause to regard the new evidence against Bin Laden with a measure of scepticism. There’s no question that he’s dangerous, and there’s convincing evidence connecting him to previous attacks, but if the West starts chasing the wrong man across the Hindu Kush while the real terrorists are planning their next atrocity, this hardly guarantees our security.” [via Rebecca Blood] Here‘s more about who Monbiot is.
From Making Light: ‘My friend Beth Friedman has a new quote in her .sig: Vs lbh pna ernq guvf, lbh’er va ivbyngvba bs gur Qvtvgny Zvyyraavhz Pbclevtug Npg. It means, “If you can read this, you’re in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.” I dropped her a note saying “What do you do if you can read that without a ROT13 translator?” and she said, “Turn yourself in as a dangerous munition, I guess.” ‘
I like Chuck Taggart’s idea, if we’re going to be flag-wavers, of waving a Whole Earth flag (left), which I’ve always found to be awe-inspiring. Looka!
Taggart also points to this Earth Flag (right), which flies over various SETI Project sites. It is more stylized (that’s the sun, the earth, and the moon, if you hadn’t noticed) and, I think, equally inspiring in its way. I’ve written to see if these are available; if anyone’s interested, I’ll let you know.
India moves to measure its average penis size. “The study is being ordered by the Health Ministry following increasing reports of condoms getting torn during use.
Scientists say condom size could be tailored to requirements if variations in penis size in different regions become apparent.” Ananova
Windows guru Brian Livingston: Your Passport, please: “Windows 9x and Me store your user name and password as plain text in memory every time you dial an ISP and store the text for 10 minutes after you’ve disconnected. Many PCs are silently infected with Trojan horses that can easily read this information. People who use Microsoft’s Passport authentication system, as all Hotmail customers are required to do, are likely to choose the same password for Passport and their dial-up account. With this password, a hacker can access any credit card numbers or other accounts that Passport has recorded.
(Microsoft) apparently decided not to issue a patch because users can upgrade to Windows NT/2000/XP, all of which correctly encrypt the sensitive information.” InfoWorld
From T-Shirts to Terrorism: Roslyn Mazur, former Clinton DOJ appointee, links traffic in counterfeit CDs, movies, computer software (but, also, counterfeit Nike swoosh teeshirts!) to terrorist funding in this Washington Post op-ed piece.
While serving in the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice from 1998 to 2001, I helped catalogue disturbing trends in this area. With cooperation from our copyright and trademark industries — theproducers of software, music, film, books, apparel, pharmaceuticals and other highly sought-after American products — we documented the links between intellectual property (IP) crimes and the even more nefarious crimes they pay for. We found that the post-Cold War landscape of open borders has combined with the anonymity and speed of the Internet, as well as modern telecommunications and the lure of huge, risk-free profits, to give rise to some startling developments.
Supreme Court Suspends Bill Clinton. They didn’t wait long after returning to begin their new session today. “If Bill Clinton ever returns to private law practice — the doors to the Supreme Court may be closed to him.
The justices today suspended the former president from practicing law before the high court. And they gave him 40 days to say why he shouldn’t be permanently kept out.
… The justices didn’t give a reason for today’s action. But disbarment before the Supreme Court often follows a disbarment in lower courts.
And the court action came after it was notified by the Arkansas Supreme Court that Clinton’s Arkansas law license was suspended for five years.” The Boston Channel
