I just switched my commenting system from Enetation to Haloscan. Enetation has become pretty unreliable and recently a glitch has prevented me from logging in as administrator to edit or delete users’ comments. (Fortunately, I haven’t been hit by a comment spam attack — grateful that FmH isn’t popular enough to attract that kind of attention — so deletions are rare and mostly used to eliminate duplicates, which has been another problem with Enetation.) Haloscan has been around for awhile now, is stable and quick, and offers trackback as well as commenting.

The Enetation comments you have so graciously entered are for the moment inaccessible, but my discovery of a way to export them all from Enetation was the final goad I needed to switch systems. So I have them archived, and it will probably turn out to be possible to import them into the Haloscan system. I’ll figure that out when I have a little more time.

If, for some reason, Haloscan does not end up being satisfactory, I still have the option of going back to Enetation or forward to a different commenting system. Why not try out the Haloscan system by leaving me comments here about how you find the Haloscan system to be working?

Even if you are a P2P music trader, this is one for which you ought to pay the purchase price, IMHO.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, outspoken former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter’s provocative thesis is that the Iraqi resistance is a well-orchestrated affair run by Saddam Hussein’s lieutenants, the culmination of a decade of meticulous planning by Saddam.

“The traditional Baathist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the Shiite majority – which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 – but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.

The most visible symbol of Saddam’s decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words “God Is Great” to the Iraqi flag.

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, went largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the attention of the Bush administration. And the recent “transfer of sovereignty” to Allawi’s government reflects this lack of understanding.”

Saddam’s security service melted into the population when the US invaded, waiting to reemerge. And the recent attacks on US forces in Fallujah and Ramadi “were carried out by well-disciplined men fighting in cohesive units, most likely drawn from the ranks of Saddam’s Republican Guard.”

“The truth is that there never was a significant people-based opposition movement inside Iraq for the Bush administration to call on to form a government to replace Saddam. It is why the United States has instead been forced to rely on the services of individuals tainted by their association with foreign intelligence services, or drawn from opposition parties heavily infiltrated by agents of Saddam’s former security services.

Regardless of the number of troops the United States puts on the ground or how long they stay there, Allawi’s government is doomed to fail. The more it fails, the more it will have to rely on the United States to prop it up. The more the United States props up Allawi, the more discredited he will become in the eyes of the Iraqi people – all of which creates yet more opportunities for the Iraqi resistance to exploit.” [via dangerousmeta]

While some of what he says is not surprising — e.g. that lack of constituency the Allawi government has with the Iraqi people — I must say that Ritter’s thesis explains some facts of the resistance, such as the seeming inexhaustability and coordination of the attacks and the utter evaporation of the Republican Guard when the US invaded. It seems quite plausible to me that the crafty Saddam anticipated the rise of fundamentalism and attempted to co-opt it with the modifications to Baathist pan-Arabism Ritter describes in order to maintain his stranglehold. But whether he succeeded is another matter. It seems that al Sadr’s forces, for example, are hardly in league with the reemerging Baathists, and probably neither are the foreign Islamist ‘mujahideen’ coming into Iraq to fight the American devils. While elements of the uprising may be skillfully coordinated, there is certainly a nationalist aspect, a populist uprising against an occupying force already reacting to the illegitimacy of the Allawi government.

Does anyone read the “Now playing in iTunes” window to the left? Is it of any interest? I know that it probably slows down the page loads somewhat (although by the time it is rendering, the content here in the main column is already up). Now that I know I can do it, the questions is, should I?

And here are links to the weblogs:

• MyDD.com
• OxBlog
• Opinions You Should Have
• Pacific Views
• Political Wire
• MathewGross.com
• Centerfield
• People of Faith for Kerry
• Greater Democracy
• American Amnesia
• WestportNow.com
• Pandagon.net
• Burnt Orange Report
• LarsonReport.com
• Dinner for America
• TalkLeft
• The Command Post
• Afro-Netizen
• Campaign Web Review
• PressThink
• NotGeniuses.com
• BlogforAmerica.com
• Reinvented
• LiberalOasis.com
• Weinberger at Boston.com
• Hit & Run
• Librarian.net

Related? Kerry’s Wife Tells Reporter to ‘Shove It’:

McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, all spunkily confident of Kerry’s victory and exultant at the impending rehabilitation of the term ‘liberalism’, gather in Boston on the eve of the convention, even though the DNC is keeping these painful living reminders of its prior trouncings out of the spotlight. (Salon)

I love the lead paragraphs of New York Times Magazine articles.

In a briefing whose candor defies precedent and which was surely prompted by the 9/11 report, the CIA describes its penetration of al Qaeda, which it turns out is not very impressive. (Washington Post)

Jesse Friedman, convicted (and now paroled after serving thirteen years) subject of Capturing the Friedmans, and his older brother have made their own film bearing on the events of the earlier documentary. (New York)

Note the boy’s clenched fists. What do you think he is going to want to do to US occupying forces when he gets older?

Actually I do not find it odd at all. Art expresses the zeitgeist, and the level of anger and contempt for our current President is unprecedented.

“Republicans are trying to blame 9/11 on Clinton, but the official report shows that he responded to al-Qaida threats far more effectively than Bush.” — Joe Conason

And: Byrd vs. Bush: “Sen. Robert Byrd blasts fellow senators for believing ‘the garbage that was being spewed out by the administration’ on Iraq, and thanks the airline passengers who ‘died to save this Capitol, my life and my staff” “. (Salon)

Risperdal had originally been marketed as an “atypical” antipsychotic, a term used to denote a new generation of antipsychotic medications without the severe side effects of the classical antipsychotic medicines like Haldol and Thorazine. But psychiatrists have been aware since we started using the drug that Risperdal’s freedom from those side effects only occurs at low doses which may be insufficient to control the symptoms for which it is prescribed. At effective doses, it behaves much like Haldol, including causing Haldol-like side effects. Psychiatrists have been lulled by the “atypical” label into preferentially prescribing this medication to the point where it has become the largest-selling antipsychotic medication. Furthermore, “atypicals” as a class have other metabolic and cardiovascular side effects that the classical antipsychotics did not. Partly because of the claims of safety, atypical antipsychotics have been used not only for the severe psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia and psychotic mania for which antipsychotic drugs were intended but also for a far broader variety of more benign indications than those for which psychiatrists would have dared prescribe the older medications. So the pool of patients potentially exposed to the complications of their use is vastly expanded. Finally, they have been indiscriminately used in children as well as adults, despite the lack of specific studies in the very different nervous systems of that age group demonstrating safety or effectiveness.

New Bush strategy: stand-up comedy on the campaign trail?? (Yahoo! News )

From Underreported I learned about Pfc. Jeremy Hinzman, now seeking asylum in Toronto after deserting his Iraq-bound unit. He had reportedly applied for conscientious objector status but was told by officials they had ‘lost’ his application. [It is a good thing we did not put them in charge of Dubya’s military service records, or they might have been ‘lost’ as well. Oops; they were.] As you might surmise, Underreported is focusing on the scant notice taken of this “watershed event in forming a parallel to the Vietnam War” in the press (Hinzman has been in Canada at least since March). I am not sure I can go along with the speculation that the New York Times and the Washington Post are purposely not covering this phenomenon so as not to encourage a flood of desertions to Canada; it seems more like one of the myriad ways in which they have just dropped the ball in covering the post-9/11 climate altogether and give short shrift to all things ‘unpatriotic.’

I don’t precisely recall the tenor of press coverage of war resisters early in the Vietnam War (before the phenomenon was of a magnitude when it could no longer be ignored) either. As a conscientious objector applicant involved with organizing efforts to resist the draft, I was among those who found it important to spread awareness of the possibilities (avoiding the draft by going to Canada; desertion; c.o. status; or ‘just saying no’ and going to prison on grounds of conscience) to those facing induction who might, despite nascent objections to the immorality of the war, not know what options they had or how much support might be out there for them (“Women say yes to men who say no.”). In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, I posted some material here about options for resistance that I hoped might find its way to enlistees. There was some back and forth with other webloggers, particularly Rebecca Blood, about whether you could actually call it conscientious objection in a volunteer army. Whatever the semantics, Hinzman is right; we again face an immoral and illegal war in which the US is committing war crimes on a scale that I am certain remains untold. My hopes of spreading awareness of resistance options to those enlisted or considering enlistment are undiminished. Bravo to Hinzman; spread the word.

In fact, we don’t know that Hinzman is the only soldier to opt out to Canada, but he is the first to ‘come out’ about his principled opposition to the war. (It doesn’t exactly fit with administration spin-mongering to publicize desertions and other acts of war resistance. That is probably why they describe Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun as being in an ‘extended repatriation process’ or some other similar jargon rather than what may really be going on, that he is in custody and being investigated for possibly deserting and staging his own Iraqi captivity.) Here is Hinzman’s website; among other things, he needs financial support to pursue legal maneuvers toward securing refugee status in Canada. (I wonder if Canada is going to need encouragement to take a stand similar to that it took during Vietnam, that it would not extradite draft resisters back to the US.) Perhaps more than finances, however, he needs a movement, and a community of expatriate resisters similar to that which arose in major Canadian cities during the ’60’s.^* In fact, perhaps some of those who went to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam are still there?

Will the US military prevent the GIs serving in Iraq from reading about enlistees who have fled the war, as they prevented soldiers access to the details of the Abu Ghraib atrocities (e.g. issuing an order forbidding them from reading Gen. Taguba’s report on the Internet)?

^*Is anyone familiar with any historical or sociological studies of the Vietnam-era Canadian draft resisters? any compelling novels about them? There is Tim O’Brien’s Going Aftter Cacciato and the short story “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried; others?

No postponement, just bedlam at the polls and a low turnout on the West Coast is Bush’s plan for ‘victory’. This Online Journal piece by the wonderful Wayne Madsen suggests a provocative scenario. I have previously written about my puzzlement over why Ridge would publicize that the government is making election postponement plans even if they are. Many have noted the implausibility of a postponement even in the midst of a national emergency. So okay, the point of such a dramatic announcement at this time wasn’t that the Republicans really plan to pull off a postponement, I concluded, but merely to sow terror. This article suggests that they are setting the stage for a particular strategy. The Republicans will wait for the polls to close in the East to see how they did in the contested states in the early time zones. If they need to, he suggests, a properly-timed announcement of an imminent threat of an attack in California would allow them to win the state even without closing down the polls there, because the pandemonium it would precipitate would disproportionately disrupt working-class voters’ ability to get to the polls at the end of their work day. Low voter turnout is Republican turnout. If they needed to, they could do the same to Washington State as well. Can’t happen here, you say? The illegal disenfranchisement of thousands of predominantly African American voters in Florida won Bush the White House in 2000, so why not? Madsen doesn’t want to be in the position of saying ‘I told you so’; he suggests steps that democratic-minded (with a small ‘d’) people can take now to stop a plan of this sort. There’s no harm in being prepared. Since it is unlikely that too many California or Washington legislative or gubernatorial staff read Online Journal, readers there ought to bring this to their attention….

“I’m sure you will think me hyperbolic, shrill, and hysterical when I suggest that that we should be preparing ourselves to communicate in a political environment where a fellow who writes a blog post like this one might find himself indefinitely interred without access to counsel or due process.”

U.S. continues to ‘liberate’ Iraqis; doing a bang-up job. (Yahoo!)

Over at boing boing, Cory Doctorow exerts some consumer clout I wish I had. This post tells a simple story of being treated rudely in an overpriced café in Brighton, UK. He may reach enough readers who have occasion to go looking for a place to sit and sip in Brighton that his recommendation of a friendlier more considerate place just steps down the street could have a discernable effect on the P&L statements of these two establishment.

In an era when the expectations customers could once have of considerate service from businesses are rapidly vanishing, I often find myself wishing I had an effective way of letting others who might vote with their wallets know when I have been outraged or, to the contrary, delighted by the service I’ve received from a store or an eatery.

As the weblogging phenomenon has grown, it has usually seemed appealing to me to have a disembodied presence building a community unfettered by geographic limitations. But, while someone like Cory is a globetrotter with worldwide readership, I am at the moment more thinking about the web being a vehicle for the extension of local community. It would seem to be a natural medium for collaborative, community-based exchange of civic views, organizing around community issues and local politics, and, yes, simple consumer recommendations.

I am not talking about the online presence of the local community newspaper, like the Brookline TAB we have here where I live. Just as weblogging has created a populist, grassroots-based track parallel to the mainstream media in the discussion of matters of national and international importance, it would appear to be an effective parallel medium on a community scale. The way I read weblogs, at least, they are an efficient medium for sifting through an enormous amount of opinion and information to drill down and explore the details of areas that grab my attention or interest me. Why hasn’t this developed as a component of the penetration of the WWW into everyone’s lives over the past decade? Or am I missing something? Do other communities have “community bulletin board” types of public weblogs that mine doesn’t appear to?

[Are there any Brookline readers of FmH? Would you be interested in exploring this further? If so, drop me a line.]

Isn’t it overwhelmingly likely that we would have had a major press

conference with unrestrained crowing from Ashcroft and Ridge if they

had found that the Arab men detained at the end of this flight had been

involved in midair bomb-making? So we can safely say that this piece is

about the writer’s in-flight terror but has nothing to do with

in-flight terrorism; I am confident the men described in the

article were a bunch of Syrian musicians and nothing more. The real

issue is whether the fact that she was supposedly terrorized by her

experience has anything to say objectively about our security. Her

observation that

strikes me as likely a preconception that shaped her perception of what happened to her that day rather than the conclusion she presents it as. In any case, it is precisely that which a government

interested in the absurd prosecution of a neverending WoT® hopes people

will reach. For this reason, my bet is that no government agency will

ever reply reassuringly to her persistent requests for followup with

the information that the “Middle Eastern men” were innocent of the

suspicions against them.

Right-wing bloggers like Reynolds are linking to this piece admiringly (and Lileks does a typical bleat on the issue), but there are obvious questions about the writer’s

judgment and agenda. In defiance of the likely truth, she makes the

implausible assertion that these suspicious passengers’ carry-on items

were not searched and, furthermore, that it was because of fears of

‘racial profiling’. She draws some outlandish conclusions about

how an interest in preserving civil liberties will inevitably defeat

any efforts at airline security. One frequently-flying weblogger proclaims this a hoax (scroll down to July 15; I couldn’t find a permalink)

simply on the basis of the description of the behavior of the flight

crew. I realized what we were up against, if not before, when she

offered a quotation from Ann Coulter in support of her argument. (Good

for Reynolds; wondering if it is a law enforcement training exercise

rather than a de facto threat

at least betrays some doubt.) Another weblogger who identifies

himself as involved with law enforcement investigations on both

federal and local levels is skeptical of the level of detail Jacobsen puts into her account. As a psychiatrist experienced in the evaluation of traumatic memories, I agree with his assertion that the amount of adrenaline flowing in a terrorized observer usually obliterates their eye for detail, even if they are a trained writer.

Indeed, the WWS editor’s description of ‘long and hard’ editorial deliberations

about ‘how to handle this information’ sounds like code for questioning its veracity, which would not be out of the question. Although she is identified as a writer for WWS, a Google search on the (somewhat common) name

comes up with numerous references to the ‘Terror’ article but nothing

else that I could clearly associate with this particular Annie

Jacobsen, certainly nothing else she has published for WWS before. In

what I find an ironic comment, a link to her ‘last ten articles’ on FrontPagemag.com,

where she is listed in the company of other right-wing poster children

like Coulter and David Horowitz, shows nothing but the ‘Terror’ piece.

Michelle Malkin, a credulous conservative weblogger lauding Jacobsen’s story, is dismayed by the news that the Washington Post

did not deem it fit to print. She did a phone interview with Jacobsen,

who is puzzled by the mainstream media’s ignoring her story. Jacobsen

claims to have received ‘thousands’ of corroborating emails from

airline passengers and flight crews who have had similar experiences on

other flights. To reiterate, this clearly speaks to the danger we are

in, but not the danger from bearded Middle Eastern men (regardless of

whether they do suspicious things like going to the bathroom, reading

the Koran, or eating their fast food onboard); rather the dangers of

insistently implanted irrational memes poisoning credulous people’s

minds with hatred and fear. And the pitiful victims do not realize they

are the dupes of a beleaguered lying administration terrorizing them to

win reelection and further its megalomanic agenda.

The funny thing is that Jacobsen’s argument that we cannot simultaneously

protect civil liberties and prevent terrorist attacks on the US is

probably true. But we cannot prevent such attacks with draconian

restrictions on our civil liberties either. Regardless of whether

airline security is becoming more lax (which though I am not a frequent

traveller I would dispute, although arguably it is becoming somewhat

more reasonable), all the

airline security in the world is not going to prevent some group of

enraged, dedicated and resourceful men from their next attempt at mass

devastation by a different, non-airborne means. And we are of course

making the next attack far more likely by the discord our grandiose and

bigoted international adventurism is sowing in its wake.

Also: Here is one weblogger’s transcription of Hersh’s remarks.

Related:

Red Cross Suspects U.S. Is Hiding Detainees Worldwide:

And nine reasons why Kerry won’t be much better:

And some are suggesting that Powell might even consider running with

Bush if he dumps Cheney?? If he were so craven an opportunist as to

ditch that many of his principles, he would have done so long ago…

“Here’s a fun game… First, look up the most popular and critically-acclaimed books, movies, and music on Amazon. Click on ‘Customer Reviews,’ and sort them by ‘Lowest Rating First.’ Hilarity ensues! It’s the Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game!” (waxy via boing boing) F’rinstance:

Miles Davis, “Kind of Blue”

• “This is one of the worst albums I’ve ever bought. It’s so boring and lifeless. Good to fall asleep to.”
  
• “its boredom,nostalgia and scarcely concealed contempt make it the perfect background music for this narcissistic age of ours.”
  
• “I found Mr. Davis’ playing to be laughable at best. Finally, it’s irritating; and confusing that so many people laud it.”
  
• “If pretension, tedium, and self-indulgence are your idea of what should animate music, then this is the album and Miles Davis is the ‘artist’ for you.”
  

Make July 6th President Bush’s last birthday in the White House. “Being a well-read man of leisure, you know he must be a fan of the ancient art of haiku. Flex your creative muscle and write George a haiku… The best and worst haiku will be featured on this site, and they will all be delivered to Bush/Cheney HQ.”

“Combining the two hits of the summer to create one mega-blockbuster…Spider-Man 9/11!” (Tom the Dancing Bug @ Salon)

Related:

“George W. Bush loves dressing up in uniform and being called commander-in-chief. You have to look to Saddam or Fidel for another head of state who spends as much media time before military backdrops.” (mediachannel) But he could not do it without the media’s collaboration.

“I knew…” “…friend of mine” “you are no…”

U.S. Under Pressure to Sustain Coalition in Iraq: “Four nations have left while four more prepare to leave international force; others quietly planning to depart.” (Washington Post)

And The Nation‘s Tom Englehardt describes how the US is increasingly scraping the bottom of the barrel to get international contributions to the ‘multinational’ effort (TomDispatch)

And among other recent observations of note in his column, Englehardt remarks that US troop deaths in Afghanistan/Iraq recently passed the one thousand milestone with almost no media notice. He also comments, “In the thirteen days before the surprise early “transition” non-ceremonies, there were 19 American military deaths in Iraq. In the thirteen days since, there have been 31.” And he notes that, in all the talk about possible ‘July-‘ or ‘October-surprises’ (and the most recent conspiracy theories about Republicans scenarios for a government-of-national-unity type refusal to hand over power by postponing the elections citing a terrorist threat), no one seems to be thinking about what Bush-Cheney might do in the period between an election defeat in November and Kerry’s inauguration in Jan., ’05.

Capital Buzzes, Denials Aside: “The Washington summer clamor about Vice President Dick Cheney’s future on the Republican ticket has greatly intensified.” (New York Times) Of course it has, in the run-up to the conventions. Not a joke candidate like Dan Quayle was, Cheney is nevertheless increasingly seen as a liability to the reelection effort, even in Republican circles. For the Democrats, he is a convenient way to get to the President, so much so that many relish the prospect of his remaining on the Republican ticket. I do; I pray Bush doesn’t choose this issue as the one on which to get over his constitutional inability to admit he made a mistake or rethink a decision. Part of Bush’s problem maybe that it is difficult to see whom he might tap for the job — who would be willing to take it, is a prominent enough Republican but sufficiently devoid of polarizing baggage. That lets out the most-commonly discussed possibilities such as McCain, Powell or other cabinet members. My God, what could be worse than Bush-Cheney ’04… Bush-Ashcroft! But a more important reason Bush wouldn’t dump Cheney is that… it is Cheney who has always made such important decisions for Bush.

Nationwide Day of Action July 13, 2004: “Across the U.S., awareness is rising about the dangers of paperless electronic voting and the need for election integrity. Rallies nationwide on July 13 will deliver petitions to top election officials in each state and ask state election officials to sign a pledge.”

Study says gene encourages monogamy. A single gene, which controls the expression of a receptor for the neuropeptide vasopressin in the ventral pallidum region of the prairie vole, apparently makes all the difference between the monogamous mating behavior of this species and the promiscuousness of the closely related meadow vole species. Inserting the vasopressin receptor gene in the proper brain area in meadow voles makes them strongly prefer their current mate just as the prairie voles do, and blocking the effects of vasopressin at the newly expressed receptors makes them revert to their noncommittal behavior. The implicated region is involved in mediating the brain’s reward system, and it is hypothesized that prairie voles feel a sort of reinforcing pleasure with their mates that is absent in the meadow vole. (Boston Globe)

When conspiracy buffs talk sinister scenarios, creating a state of emergency to postpone the lawful succession of power is always a big part of it. Given how much this dysadministration has done without giving a damn about the will of the people or the rule of law, with a philosophical position that they and only they can best make decisions for the country and that their ends justify any means, this is the first time I can believe in this possibility.

U.S. News obtains all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib:

U.S. News obtains all classified annexes to the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib:

Washington Post analysis is headlined, “As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large“, while the New York Times says, “Senate Report Does Little to Still Debate on C.I.A.’s Prewar Data“. Here is the full text of the report (New York Times). From the beginning it was clear that the dysadministration would try to limit the scope of the inquiry to avoid any focus on the uses to which the intelligence was put and scapegoat the CIA. The explicit conclusion of the report — that evidence for Bush & Co’s main rationale for the war, the hope to find WMD to which they absurdly continue to cling to this day, has been utterly lacking and intelligence to the contrary was a failure — has been unsurprising to anyone who has been anywhere near a news outlet for the past sixteen months. But The Times knows how to read between the lines. Here is its editorial:

“…The report is a condemnation of how this administration has squandered the public trust it may sorely need for a real threat to national security.

The report was heavily censored by the administration and is too narrowly focused on the bungling of just the Central Intelligence Agency. But what comes through is thoroughly damning. Put simply, the Bush administration’s intelligence analysts cooked the books to give Congress and the public the impression that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was developing nuclear arms, that he was plotting to give such weapons to terrorists, and that he was an imminent threat. “

Not that the committee made it easy:

“Sadly, the investigation stopped without assessing how President Bush had used the incompetent intelligence reports to justify war. It left open the question of whether the analysts thought they were doing what Mr. Bush wanted. While the panel said it had found no analyst who reported being pressured to change a finding, its vice chairman, Senator John Rockefeller IV, said there had been an “environment of intense pressure.” But the issue was glossed over so the report could be adopted unanimously.”

“US President George W. Bush walks away from a briefing with the media, refusing to answer questions after he was asked about Enron and the reported indictment of former CEO Kenneth Lay, who was a close adviser and fund-raiser for Bush and his father, earning him the presidential nickname of ‘Kenny Boy.'” (Yahoo! News – Top Stories Photos)

Had to get this taken care of forthwith as the campaign against a distinguished military veteran ramped up: Pentagon Says Bush Records of Service Were ‘Destroyed’:

Republican procedural hanky panky to keep the rollcall open until the measure was defeated prompted uncharacteristically heated outbursts on the House floor. But I wonder if the real dirty trick to ensure the defeat of this vote wasn’t going on across town with the announcement of the usual ‘credible evidence of a major terrorist threat’ by ‘al Qaeda’ to ‘disrupt the democratic election process’ this summer or fall. The real purpose of the timing of this threat assessment, however, relates to the Presidential campaign, of course. And could the emphasis on bin Laden’s role in planning another attack be seen in light of the ‘October surprise’ many are expecting, whose timetable may actually be being moved up? Administration pressure on Pakistan to deliver bin Laden before the November elections has considerably ramped up (New Republic).

However, you cannot trust this report. Not only was it in TNR but it was co-written by a man with an Arab-sounding name.

In my own field, the drug will be investigated as a treatment for schizophrenia, although I think the hypothesized mechanism is such a longshot that it is medically implausible, unlike possible benefits to other CNS pathologies such as stroke or Alzheimer’s Disease.

Ironically, the original purpose of the drug, to boost the body’s production of red blood cells, becomes a liability if used in someone who is not anemic, as it can thicken the blood to the point of increasing clot risk. (Athletes who have used EPO to increase their blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity — it is one of the drugs implicated in the ‘doping’ scandal — place themselves foolishly at this risk.) With the discovery of these added potential benefits, a modified version of EPO which does not generate RBC production but still seems to protect tissue is under development.

Mitch Kapor writes:

Some science news you might find fascinating or useful:

• Brain implants ‘read’ monkey minds: “Subtle, higher level thoughts have been captured by researchers – the step could lead to better devices for people with paralysis”
  
• Lifestyle causes myopia, not genes: “Epidemics of short-sightedness in east Asia are due to children’s lifestyles, not their genes, suggest researchers”
  
• Vaccine scandal revives cancer fear: “Long after it was supposed to have been made safe, Soviet polio vaccine contained a virus linked to cancer, reveal US scientists”
  
• Super-fit bird flu evolved in China: “The genetic history of 2004’s deadly avian flu suggests it evolved recently in China – meanwhile the flu is re-surfacing in southeast Asia”
  
• Peat bogs harbour carbon time bomb: “The world’s peat bogs are haemorrhaging carbon dioxide – accelerating global warming, warns a new study”
  
• Milk may protect against bowel cancer: “Drinking at least one big glass of milk a day can cut the risk of colon cancer, suggests a large study”
  

Review of An Alchemy of Mind by Diane Ackerman:

The writer, coming back for her twentieth, finds no one there like herself and wonders if she ought to be looking forward instead of back… or more ashamed of what she had (not) become in the face of everyone else’s success. Oh, yes, and of their financial support of their alma mater.

Arianna Huffington argues at Alternet that tapping Edwards “wasn’t based on looking at a map and trying to figure out who could deliver the most Electoral College votes… It was based on who was the best choice for the country.” She goes on to list five reasons to be enthusiastic about Edwards which strike me, quite to the contrary, as being about delivering the votes, with no mention of his suitability for his leadership role after the election:

This slacktivist post takes on the furor over John Edwards’ being a trial lawyer, which has been by far the most interesting facet of Kerry’s tapping him for the Democratic ticket. As a physician, I am supposed to be all for “tort reform” and contemptuous of attorneys, but I don’t stand with the stereotype of my profession in this respect. Some of my best friends are lawyers… Seriously, though, since a segment of my profession seems to answer only to monetary concerns and not at all to an ethical standard based on the privilege and burden of fulfilling the sacred trust bestowed upon them by their patients, the threat of a lawsuit may be the only effective barrier between them and negligent practices — or legitimately compensating for the damages when nothing stands as a barrier. As this post points out, “Americans despise lawyers, but only until they need a good one on their side.” And they can tell the difference between an advocate and a bloodsucker. Perhaps Edwards’ background will make for a more truly polarized campaign in which “tort reform” finally gets exposed for the corporate shill that it is and populism finally gets pitted against the Republican pro-corporate agenda in the way it has been painfully obvious it has needed to for a long time. If the RNC does not figure out how unwise that route would be. The slacktivist post describes his Republican opponent’s efforts to tar him with the “lawyer” brush in his 1998 Senatorial race. It backfired, with voters coming away impressed with Edwards’ advocacy for the people, and the post goes on to note with amazement and glee the Republican conclusion that they simply hadn’t attacked lawyers hard enough. On the other hand, the North Carolina race didn’t have Karl Rove holding the leash of the attack dogs. In any case, it will be interesting to see how the GOP balances the need to attack Edwards with the need to defend that big mutha liability of ’em all, Dick Cheney. I certainly look forward to the fall’s vice presidential debates; it will be especially fun to see Edward’s legendary oratorical skills from the courtroom used against Cheney.

The NY Times bought Bush’s lies in reporting on his laudatory comments about Uganda’s AIDS prevention policy as if he supported condom use. Just one week earlier, Bush’s Centers for Disease Control had issued vicious anti-condon regulations denying federal HIV-prevention funding to any organization that failed to include information on the lack of effectiveness of condoms in their educational efforts. And it was not as if the Times would have had to look hard to find criciticism of the CDC stance. And this is not just another story about the bottomfeeding dishonesty of our dysadministration. Discouraging condom use kills.

Correction: Rivka did the responsible thing; she looked at the actual CDC guidelines, and concludes that Ireland’s position in The Nation is a distortion. The central point stands — Bush’s compliments to Uganda are hypocrisy. It is not as if Bush actually does support condom use, but the CDC regulations are not the place to look for the evidence.

I am glad to see someone is tracking these incidents. I hadn’t heard of the Las Vegas or Florida events but readers of FmH may recall that I posted items about the Bremerton, Wash. occurrence when it happened. Speculation at that time related to the possibility that some radio technology employed by Navy warships coming and going in the area was interfering with the keyless entry systems (and, as I recall, garage door openers etc.). The frequency range of these devices falls in a waveband primarily registered for military and law enforcement purposes. Obviously, military derring-do is implicated in the Florida situation as well, and I am certain the Las Vegas area is well-endowed with military installations.

An engineer at an AT&T microwave tower in Waldorf made mysterious allusions to the use of the tower at times for broadcasts for secret government purposes.

On the other hand, of course, all of these incidents may be related to alien disruption of the conveniences of modern earthly life as a prelude to their invasion… or merely to teach us a lesson from their own experience about the perils of overreliance on technological inoovation.