State sells penknives confiscated at airports at online auction SF Chronicle

The Homeland Security Threat Monitor program for Windows places an icon in the system tray to show the current terrorism threat level and polling the White House web server periodically to be sure there hasn’t been an increase. If there is, the icon flashes to alert you. Be the first on your block to roll out the duct tape! A similar Mac utility is here.

Scare Bear Index

from my neighborhood. MetroWest Daily

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was arrested Saturday in Pakistan, a senior official told The Associated Press.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Mohammed was one of three men arrested in a 3 a.m. raid in Rawalpindi, a city near Islamabad.

A U.S. official said both U.S. and Pakistani agents were involved in the operation.

Mohammed, 37, is one of the FBI’s most-wanted terror suspects, and the U.S. government had offered up to $25 million for information leading to his capture.

U.S. officials have described him as a key al-Qaida lieutenant and the organizer of the terror mission… Nando Times

Pakistan might consider itself under some burden to deliver for the US just now considering that it is a (a) despotically-run (b) hotbed of Islamic foment (c) full of weapons of mass destruction (d) harboring al Qaeda terrorists in droves, and (e) at a strategic geopolitical crossroad, if that sounds familiar. But, on the other hand, they don’t have extensive oil resources, so they’re probably safe. Don’t expect too much followup news about where U.S. authorities have Mohammed in custody, by the way. They’ve whisked him out of Pakistan to an undisclosed location outside the U.S., likely a ship in international wates or a secret military base, where there can be no scrutiny over their ‘interrogation’ techniques. No interference from those pesky ACLU types will stop us from putting him in a world of hurt in payback for what he has allegedly done.

Turkey’s parliament dealt a stunning blow to U.S. war planning Saturday by failing to approve a bill allowing in American combat troops to open a northern front against Iraq.

The decision was likely to seriously strain ties with Washington and marked a setback to U.S. efforts to show Saddam Hussein that he is surrounded and his neighbors support a U.S.-led coalition.

(…) Turkish lawmakers had faced overwhelming public opposition to basing U.S. troops on Turkish soil. Yet Washington had been so sure of winning approval from close ally and NATO member Turkey, that ships carrying U.S. tanks are waiting off Turkey’s coast for deployment and the U.S. military has thousands of tons of military equipment ready to unload at the southern Turkish port of Iskenderun. Nando Times

What, do you suppose, will the vindictive and small-minded dysadministration honchos do to Turkey if this narcissistic blow stands? Add it to the Axis-of-Evil®?

The United Arab Emirates on Saturday called for Saddam Hussein to step down to spare the region war, the first Arab country to do so publicly. Nando Times

What ever happened to the predictions, to which I blinked months ago, that major Middle East players like the Saudis would surely engineer Saddam’s resigning or being deposed to prevent the U.S. intervention?

about the case for war with Iraq; and 26 ways to use the 13 myths. RightWATCH. RightWATCH “organizes responses to antidemocratic distortions of truth” using a unique online collaborative model for researching and editing pamphlets and factsheets. You can distribute their product or use it as a template to generate your own documents countering pernicious political myths.

And:

As a supplement to the facts presented in “13 Myths,” we suggest the following guides to detecting deceptive reasoning:

• Introduction to Propaganda Analysis by Chip Berlet (2-pages)
• Guide to logical fallacies, at Nizkor.org (extensive)
• Guide to logical fallacies, by Stephen Downes complete but succinct)
  

On this day in 1862, Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in Their Alabaster

Chambers” was published. This was the second of only a handful of

poems to appear in Dickinson’s lifetime, all of them anonymously

and, most think, without her knowledge. Six weeks later she sent

her famous letter to the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson: “Are

you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?”

Safe in their alabaster chambers,

Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,

Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,

Rafter of satin, and roof of stone. . . .

Today in Literature

Two from wood s lot that bear repointing to:

Blueprint for a Prison Planet:

The purpose of this piece is to introduce the reader to the possibility that much of what we typically believe about our world, notably its history and its political structure, may be some distance from the truth. In writing it is not my intention to reveal some vast, secret government or destiny, but simply to allow interested readers to indulge themselves in the exercise of re-evaluating just what is going on around us. Whether or not anyone chooses to believe the scenario portrayed is entirely up to him or her. I make no categorical statements about “how the world is” because our interpretation of our world and the events of our lives is ultimately an entirely subjective experience.

In presenting this alternative interpretation of our world, I have simply gone straight into the “conspiracy theory” version of history with scant regard for quite viable alternative explanations for much of what has happened in recent years. Put simply, I have for the purpose of this exercise quite deliberately selected the most negative explanation or outcome for any series of events portrayed. If the reader finds following this piece stressful, then I advise him or her to always keep in mind that there are many other ways of looking at our world and, even if the “worst-case scenario” were true, then simply recognizing the problem would quickly bring about its reversal. — Nick Sandberg

How Apocalyptic and Millennialist Themes Influence Right Wing Scapegoating and Conspiracism. — Chip Berlet, Senior Analyst, Political Research Associates (originally in the Fall 1998 issue of The Public Eye magazine)

“an independent, nonprofit research center that studies antidemocratic, authoritarian, and other oppressive movements, institutions, and trends. PRA is based on progressive values, and is committed to advancing an open, democratic, and pluralistic society. PRA provides accurate, reliable research and analysis to activists, journalists, educators, policy makers, and the public at large.”

Paul McGeough, Herald Correspondent in Baghdad:

United Nations agencies in Iraq have embarked on a desperate drive to “beef up” hundreds of thousands of malnourished toddlers, hoping to enable them to survive a war.

An aid official yesterday said: “The worst-case scenario is that we have only 10 days to finish what is an enormous task.”

The mercy dash, before what many UN staff believe will be their imminent evacuation from the country, follows the leaking of UN assessments that warn of a “humanitarian emergency of exceptional scale and magnitude”.

The “strictly confidential” UN documents, posted on the website of the Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq, warn that 30 per cent of Iraqi children under age five would be at risk of death from malnutrition because of likely war damage to the country’s electricity grid and transport systems. Sydney Morning Herald