“The first anthrax attack outside the US has been confirmed in

Kenya. Three people in Nairobi have tested positive to the

bacterium after coming into contact with a contaminated letter sent

from the US.” New Scientist

Ambidextrous tendencies may mean better memory: “Having a close left-handed relative makes right-handers better at

remembering events than those from exclusively right-handed

families, new research suggests. There is a downside, however, as

members of these ambidextrous families may be relatively

impaired in their ability to recall facts.

According to the study, having a left-handed sibling or parent means

the organisation of your brain is intermediate between a pure ‘lefty’

and a pure ‘righty’.

Specifically, Stephen Christman and Ruth Propper at the University

of Toledo, Ohio claim that people with ‘lefties’ in the family have a

larger corpus callosum – the connection between the brain

hemispheres. This makes you better at certain memory tasks, but

worse at others, they believe.” New Scientist

Car that detects driver’s emotions unveiled in Tokyo: “…gets to know its driver and can warn them to calm

down or cheer up…” New Scientist

Welcome to any new readers coming our way by virtue of the gracious mentions given by Bellona Times and CuriousLee.

“In the latest move in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) quixotic crusade against cannabis in any form, the agency has published administrative rules that effectively “ban the consumption of food products containing hemp oil, hemp seed, or any other product containing any quantity of THC — no matter how miniscule. THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, but is found in only low concentrations in cannabis plants bred to produce hemp. A common formulation for gauging the consciousness-altering capacity of hemp is “you’d have to smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole to get high.”

In announcing the rules, DEA chief Asa Hutchinson explained that “many Americans do not know that hemp and marijuana are both parts of the same plant and that hemp cannot be produced without producing marijuana… While most of the THC in cannabis plants is concentrated in the marijuana, all parts of the plant, including hemp, have been found to contain THC. The existence of THC in hemp is significant because THC, like marijuana, is a schedule I controlled substance. Federal law prohibits human consumption and possession of schedule I controlled substances. In addition, they are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for medical use. The rules that DEA is publishing today explain which hemp products are legal and which are not. This will depend on whether the product causes THC to enter the human body. If the product does cause THC to enter the human body, it is an illegal substance that may not be manufactured, sold, or consumed in the United States. Such products include ‘hemp’ foods and beverages that contain THC. If, however, the product does not cause THC to enter the human body, it is a non-controlled substance that may lawfully be sold in the United States. Included in the category of lawful hemp products are textiles, such as clothing made using fiber produced from cannabis plant stalks. Also in the lawful category are personal care products that contain oil from sterilized cannabis seeds, such as soaps, lotions, and shampoos.” Drug Reform Coordination Network

The All Species Inventory: “A Call For The Discovery of All Life-forms On Earth… The aim of the All Species Inventory is simple: within the span of our own generation, record and genetically sample every living species of life on Earth. This audacious goal will be accomplished by using one billion or more dollars of philanthropic wealth to fund and train a network of local collectors and naturalists throughout the world, and to employ the latest in information technology to manage this surge of bio-information.”

Yesterday was Jam Echelon Day — why in the world over a weekend when people are less likely to be using the net I don’t know — but it’s probably not too late anyway, since disseminating awareness about Echelon sounds like a more realistic purpose of the event than actually jamming the system:

The primary goal of Jam Echelon Day 2001 is to raise public awareness of the existence of Echelon and stimulate scrutiny of the world’s government agencies that operate it.

We are offering substantial resources for people to educate themselves about Echelon and what it is capable of. This is an educational campaign sponsored by concerned netizens that value personal privacy and firmly believe that everyone has a right to privacy without government intrusion.

The 2001 “Jam Echelon” campaign has kept the name of it’s 1999 predecessor both to honor a great idea and to state an ideal. We acknowledge that the current level of technology being utilized by the Echelon group far exceeds our ability to actually impact it in this manner. We do not intend, nor do we encourage attempting to overload Echelon’s surveillance systems with spam.

In the past, different organizations and individuals have sent out mass emailings using “keywords” designed to trigger Echelon’s filters. In reality, it is unknown if this tactic actually jammed up Echelon’s systems but it is likely that this would only produce an abundance of Echelon related spam and be counter productive. It is our opinion that more can be accomplished by sending people to one of the Jam Echelon mirrors for information.

Our recommendation for action on October 21st is for you to email everyone on your personal mailing list informing them of the existence of Echelon. Then, direct them to one of the “Jam Echelon” sites [full list at the linked site –FmH] for further information. Include some of the “keywords” in your email; it can’t hurt. Who knows? We might get lucky.

anti-RobotWisdom rant at Bloghop.

By the way, you can now give me a Bloghop rating. Somewhere over in the left sidebar you’ll see the series of little face icons, smiley and otherwise:

Vote early, vote often…

Gesture: The Living Medium: announcement of the forthcoming First Congress of the International Society for Gesture Studies, June 2002, Austin Texas. ‘As inaugural congress of the International Society for Gesture Studies, Gesture: The Living Medium is intended to convene the “state of the art” in research and theory on gesture and to serve as a forum for a broad and lively interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, observations, and research findings. One aim of the conference is to take stock of what we know about the transformation of bodily experience and embodied knowledge into gestural symbolism and conceptual patterns in social interaction, work, and other realms of everyday life. However, we invite proposals for papers, panels, and other programs from all disciplines, including technology and the arts, and covering all aspects of the practice of gesticulation.’

David M. Friedman’s A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis “…convincingly suggests that humankind’s various and contradictory attitudes toward the penis have been instrumental in mapping the course of both Western civilization and world…” forthcoming from Amazon

Conservative Texas Rep. Ron Paul suggests the use of that old anti-piracy tool, Letters of marque and reprisal as an anti-terrorist tool: “This constitutional tool can be used to give President Bush another weapon in the war on terrorism. Congress can issue letters of marque against terrorists and their property that authorize the President to name private sources who can capture or kill our enemies. This method works in conjunction with our military efforts, creating an incentive for people on the ground close to Bin Laden to kill or capture him and his associates. Letters of marque are especially suited to the current war on terrorism, which will be fought against individuals who can melt into the civilian population or hide in remote areas. The goal is to avail ourselves of the intelligence of private parties, who may stand a better chance of finding Bin Laden than we do through a conventional military invasion. Letters of marque also may help us avoid a wider war with Afghanistan or other Middle Eastern nations.”

Review of Peter Singer’s Writings on an Ethical Life — ‘The New Yorker has called Singer “the most influential living philosopher,” while his critics sometimes call him the most dangerous man in the world. Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values, has challenged our most closely held beliefs on infanticide, euthanasia, and the moral status of animals. This volume presents a comprehensive collection of his best and most provocative writings on animal rights, environmental accountability, abortion, euthanasia, and the ethics of our responsibility for the world’s poor.’ British Medical Journal

The Tehran Times has an alternate view of why the US bought the exclusive rights to images from Space Imaging’s Ikonos satellite, about which I reported below. Since military imaging is already estimated to be 6-10 times more precise than Ikonos’ 1-meter resolution, there’s no intelligence need; the US must be trying to hide something. If the US had used its legal “shutter control” authority instead of buying out the marketing rights to the pictures, the media could have challenged it as ‘prior restraint censorship’. What are they censoring? The Tehran Times suggests it must be evidence that civilian casualties have been far greater than reported. [thanks, Holden]

‘The idea of k.i.s.s. of the panopticon is to give people a quick, user-friendly, one-stop shopping guide to …cultural/critical theory (critical theory, cultural theory, media literacy, new media literacy, visual literacy) and its relationship with communications and new media, including the Internet. It might also help to get people thinking and maybe, just mebbe, provide a fresh perspective on how this stuff really affects our lives.

‘One of the cool things you might realize from this site (if you hadn’t already done so) is that a lot of the postmodern European intellectual stuff that sounded just plain crazy a few years ago is now actually starting to make sense in the age of the Internet. Baudrillard’s and Eco’s ideas on hyperreality, just to grab one example, suddenly seem a little more real and a lot clearer within the computer-mediated realm of hypertext and hyperlinks. At the same time, we need to understand the older paradigms of mass media and society (Marx and all that lot) before we can really get a grip on the “new” stuff. ‘

And now for the humorous segment of our show: (we can do that again, can’t we??)

Paul Krassner: ‘ I reminded the audience that ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts had been asked if there was any opposition to the war. “None that matters,” she replied. “Well,” I continued, “would you all care to join me in saying, ‘Fuck you, Cokie Roberts’ when I count three? Okay, one . . . two . . . three . . . ” And it came at me like an audio tidal wave — thousands of voices shouting in unison: “FUCK YOU, COKIE ROBERTS!!!” ‘ LA Weekly

Sample of Larry Ellison’s new National ID Card

Germ Expert Says Panicky People Can Iron Mail Reuters

First US ground mission a failure: report: “More than 100 US special troops which landed from helicopters in Kandahar’s western outskirts near Babashahi hill, found themselves in an area densely controlled by the Taliban and had to retreat without achieving the main goal of the operation to attack their secret airfield, the Interfax source said.” The Times of India On the other hand, there are reports that this action was a cover for a more covert special ops incursion.

Something 2 Die 4? John McWhorter, controversial professor of linguistics at UC Berkeley and author of Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America, examines whether we ought to remember Tupac Shakur as a reverently-embraced ghetto saint or a foul-mouthed punk rapper. The New Republic

Psychological implications of chemical and biological weapons: long term social and psychological effects may be worse than acute ones. The most relevant model may indeed be mass sociogenic illness (the technical term for “mass hysteria”; emphasis added).

The ostensible purpose of chemical and biological weapons is to endanger lives. Biological agents, however, are particularly ineffective as military weapons, while chemical weapons have only limited uses. This may be why armies have generally acquiesced in international treaties to contain these unpredictable weapons and feel capable of waging war without them. Instead, chemical and biological weapons are quintessentially weapons of terror. The now routine journalistic association between chemical and biological weapons and the word terror confirms that the purpose of these weapons is to wreak destruction via psychological means — by inducing fear, confusion, and uncertainty in everyday life. These effects will take two forms, acute and long term. It is customary to expect largescale panic if such weapons are ever effectively deployed or thought to be deployed.

We do not, however, know whether such panic would materialise. Media stories emerging from the United States in the past few days are not encouraging, but we should remember that history teaches us that civilian populations have been able to withstand previous “terror” weapons such as aerial bombing, despite warnings to the contrary. However, one psychological reaction that can be anticipated, because it has already started to materialise, is mass sociogenic illness. On 29 September 2001 paint fumes set off a bioterrorism scare at a middle school in Washington state, sending 16 students and a teacher to the hospital. On 3 October over 1000 students in several schools in Manila, Philippines, deluged local clinics with mundane flu-like symptoms such as cough, cold, and mild fever after rumours spread via short text services that the symptoms were due to bioterrorism. On 9 October a man sprayed an unknown substance into a Maryland subway station, resulting in the sudden appearance of nausea, headache, and sore throat in 35 people. It was later determined that the bottle contained window cleaner.

Examples of mass sociogenic illness remind us of the dangers of inadvertently amplifying psychological responses to chemical and biological weapons and thus adding to their impact. One example is the routine use of investigators clad in space suits to assess possible terrorist attacks. Another is that the United States government is considering placing detectors to identify chemical warfare agents on the Washington DC subway system. It is possible that these alarms will in practice cause greater disruptions to transport systems than the attack itself, given the high probability that such detectors may give false alarms. There were 4500 such alerts in the Gulf war and none was associated with a confirmed attack.

The long term social and psychological effects of an episode of chemical or biological attack, real or suspected, would be as damaging as the acute ones, if not more so. For example, a serious physical impact of the accidental discharge of sarin nerve agent during the destruction of an Iraqi weapons depot after the end of the Gulf war has not been documented, but the psychological, social, and political consequences have been substantial and continuing. Even if the short term consequences of an attack with chemical or biological weapons turn out to be less than some of the apocalyptic scenarios currently being aired by the media, the long term disruptions may be worse than anticipated. Experience from other incidents involving confirmed or alleged incidents of toxic contamination suggests that these might cluster around four major health concerns: chronic injuries and diseases directly caused by the toxic agent; questions about adverse reproductive outcomes; psychological effects; and increased levels of physical symptoms.

The general level of malaise, fear, and anxiety may remain high for years, exacerbating pre-existing psychiatric disorders and further heightening the risk of mass sociogenic illness. The current uncertainty over the chronic health effects of low level exposure to toxic agents will further increase anxiety in the affected communities. Because health officials cannot provide blanket assurances that no harm will result from brief or non-symptom producing exposure to toxic agents, frustration and then a growing distrust of medical experts and government officials may result, robbing state institutions of the trust they need to manage recovery. Lastly, unconfirmed or controversial hypotheses about the health effects of exposure to chemical and biological weapons will probably become contentious scientific and media issues in the years ahead, as has occurred after numerous chemical and radiological incidents, the Gulf war, and the Balkans deployment.

British Medical Journal

Weapons-grade anthrax? Think Russia, not necessarily Iraq: ‘ If the finger of suspicion falls on any one country “the obvious

one is Russia, it’s a league ahead of Iraq”, said David Kelly, a

senior adviser to UN weapons inspectors for Iraq…

Unemployed top Russian scientists who helped to run the

Soviet Union’s illegal and secret germ warfare programme

appear to be a likely source of the anthrax outbreak in the

United States. It is known that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’ida

network has tried to buy ingredients for weapons of mass

destruction in Russia in recent years.’ Independent UK

Andrew Sullivan’s jihad: This is interesting. On the one hand, Salon’s founder and editor in chief, David Talbot, harbors Andrew Sullivan’s bile at Salon but wants to show he doesn’t have to like it. On the other hand, castigating Sullivan seems an excuse so he can go on at length blowing his own horn about how tolerant Salon is. On the third hand, in touting Salon’s defense of Sullivan against the recent scandal over the exposure of his sexual orientation and charges of sexual hypocrisy, Talbot repeats the claims, surely mudslinging no matter how delicious this particular mud will feel to many in his audience. Crafty devil.

In recent weeks, Sullivan has taken it upon himself to evaluate whether his fellow writers and commentators are sufficiently patriotic. He broods darkly — in the pages of his native British press, on his Web site and on the Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal — that America harbors nests of traitors, or in his words “decadent left enclaves on the coasts [that] may well mount a fifth column.” And like all Manichaean guardians of national security, from the days of the Alien and Sedition Acts to those of Joseph McCarthy, Sullivan has turned his pumped-up and disproportionate rhetoric toward rooting out these disloyal Americans in his midst.

Since Sullivan has unleashed the hounds of patriotic fury, I’ll respond with some nationalistic zeal of my own. It’s repellent to be lectured about my commitment to America, which is deep and true, by an arrogant and self-important Brit. And it’s equally galling to be scolded about my supposed intolerance of conservative dissent in Salon when I have made a consistent effort to include Sullivan’s own voice and that of many of his fellow conservatives in our pages. Sullivan has often fallen to his own knees before President Bush in Salon. In fact there is no political journal in the country — on the left or right — that publishes as eclectic a mix of opinions as we do. The same week we published the interview with Sontag, Salon ran a cover essay by her son, David Rieff, blasting the Berkeley City Council’s anti-bombing resolution and the “depraved rationalizations of the American left.” When Sullivan seeks ideological variety, does he eagerly reach for the latest National Review or Weekly Standard? His own site is rigorously monochromatic — one-note blasts from the increasingly narrow confines of his own head.

Saudis consider asking US military to leave. Ending US military presence would alleviate intense pressure from Islamic opposition. Two rivals to the throne, Crown Prince Abdullah and Defense Minister Prince Sultan, are on opposing sides of the iddue. Middle East Newsline [via Ethel]

Novel Security Measures: carrying no carry-on baggage but the wrong book can get you bumped off your flight for interrogation these days. Philadelphia City Paper

Columbine Shooting victims’ families sue maker of anti-depressant Luvox (fluvoxamine). Here we go again. As much sympathy as I have for their loss, this is slummin’ avarice. Reaching for the deep pockets of the pharmaceutical industry in their grief is thoughtless and unscrupulous. Just as in the Paxil-induced murder claim lawsuit I wrote about last year, the grounds for suing revolve around the claim the the firm fails to warn doctors about side effects. This is specious on several accounts:

• violence is not a side effect of fluvoxamine or other SSRIs
  

• the manufacturer does warn of side effects, in the form of its prescribing literature. Ironically, companies set themselves up for added liability because they are overinclusive in listing potential side effects.
  

• If there were liability (and I don’t believe there is), it would be on the prescribing physician instead, who is responsible for adequate familiarity with the assessment of the effectiveness and complications from a drug s/he prescribes.
  

• Claiming that “manic and psychotic” effects of the drugs caused the gunman’s violence is a slur on those with mental illness, who are less violent than the population at large, and perpetuates fear-provoking, ignorant, unjust prejudices.

Of course, whether the case has merit bears no relationship, in the scheme of things, with whether a ‘jury of peers’ having ther heartstrings plucked by ambulance-chasing three-piece suits will bring back a just finding. Ananova

Ralph Nader to HHS Sec’y Thompson: “We were shocked by your comments in the October 17, 2001 Washington Post, indicating

that you do not have the legal authority to authorize generic production of ciprofloxacin, a

drug used to treat victims of an anthrax attack. This, of course, is not true. As your own

staff is well aware, you may use 28 USC 1498 to issue compulsory licenses for patents,

and you could immediately authorize the five companies who have already satisfied U.S.

FDA requirements for the quality of their products to speed the manufacturer of

ciprofloxacin, and indeed this could and should be done for any other medicine needed to

confront the current crisis.”

Eavesdropping, U.S. Allies See New Terror Attack — “In interviews over the past week,

intelligence officials in six countries in the Middle East and Europe said

they were unsure where to expect the attacks or whether they would be

with explosives or with chemical or biological weapons. But they said their

intercepts and other tools convinced them that a second and possibly a

third wave of attacks were planned.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

“UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing and allow time for a huge relief operation.

UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the

deteriorating humanitarian situation in the country – in part, they

say, caused by the relentless bombing campaign – has forced

them to take the radical step. Aid officials estimate that up to

7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with starvation.

‘The situation is completely untenable inside Afghanistan. We

really need to get our point across here and have to be very bold

in doing it. Unless the [US air] strikes stop, there will be a huge

number of deaths,’ one UN source said.” Guardian UK

Military analysis: U.S. Got a Chance to Show It Learned Lessons of the Past: “The United States commando

raid in Afghanistan reflected the start of a new, fast

paced and, the military hopes, determining stage of the war.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

The Return of Teach-Ins: “Those who remember the bitter

recriminations and violence that

convulsed campuses during the Vietnam

era will welcome the searching tone of the

discussion at universities about America’s new war. Faculty members and

students alike ought to take advantage of this moment to rekindle the

study of subjects that have traditionally been neglected at American

schools.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Keeping Panic at Bay: Prof. Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel: the fate of human societies, on what we can learn from ancient terrorist tactics. NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”] And the parallels with the war against piracy of two hundred years ago. Washington Post

Is Camel Pox Coming? Maureen Dowd in the NY Times about the state of modern fear.

Washington is rife with contradictory signals. The White House urges us to

go out while Dick Cheney is under wraps. Congress urges us to stay calm

and go about our business while the entire House takes a powder at the

first sign of powder. We are supposed to shop till we drop, literally, as

the F.B.I. and C.I.A. warn of major attacks at any moment.

The capital is the heart of confusion. The U.S. has been at war with the

Taliban for two weeks so . . . we can reinstate the Taliban? The Post

Office is sending us mail warning us . . . about opening mail?

Nothing seems to track: Gov. George Pataki said he was taking Cipro but

wouldn’t get tested. Senator John Breaux said he got tested but might not

take Cipro. Dan Rather said he hadn’t been tested or taken Cipro. Tom

Brokaw ended the NBC news with “In Cipro we trust.”

I went to the White House, seeking some answers from Tom Ridge at his

briefing on Friday. But he looked a bit like a big Pennsylvania deer in the

headlights. He didn’t even know what CNN had been running — that an

assistant to a New York Post editor had contracted anthrax.

When Mr. Ridge said they didn’t know if the anthrax came from a foreign

or a domestic source, he was slapped around by Helen Thomas, doyenne

of the homeland. “And why are you so slow in finding the actual source?”

she asked tartly. “I mean, is it that difficult really?”

Tommy “Plenty for Everyone” Thompson was still buddying up to the

pharmaceutical industry, refusing to break Bayer’s patent to ensure

generic Cipro for everyone…

Psychological implications of chemical and biological weapons: long term social and psychological effects may be worse than acute ones. The most relevant model may indeed be mass sociogenic illness (the technical term for “mass hysteria”; emphasis added).

The ostensible purpose of chemical and biological weapons is to endanger lives. Biological agents, however, are particularly ineffective as military weapons, while chemical weapons have only limited uses. This may be why armies have generally acquiesced in international treaties to contain these unpredictable weapons and feel capable of waging war without them. Instead, chemical and biological weapons are quintessentially weapons of terror. The now routine journalistic association between chemical and biological weapons and the word terror confirms that the purpose of these weapons is to wreak destruction via psychological means — by inducing fear, confusion, and uncertainty in everyday life. These effects will take two forms, acute and long term. It is customary to expect largescale panic if such weapons are ever effectively deployed or thought to be deployed.

We do not, however, know whether such panic would materialise. Media stories emerging from the United States in the past few days are not encouraging, but we should remember that history teaches us that civilian populations have been able to withstand previous “terror” weapons such as aerial bombing, despite warnings to the contrary. However, one psychological reaction that can be anticipated, because it has already started to materialise, is mass sociogenic illness. On 29 September 2001 paint fumes set off a bioterrorism scare at a middle school in Washington state, sending 16 students and a teacher to the hospital. On 3 October over 1000 students in several schools in Manila, Philippines, deluged local clinics with mundane flu-like symptoms such as cough, cold, and mild fever after rumours spread via short text services that the symptoms were due to bioterrorism. On 9 October a man sprayed an unknown substance into a Maryland subway station, resulting in the sudden appearance of nausea, headache, and sore throat in 35 people. It was later determined that the bottle contained window cleaner.

Examples of mass sociogenic illness remind us of the dangers of inadvertently amplifying psychological responses to chemical and biological weapons and thus adding to their impact. One example is the routine use of investigators clad in space suits to assess possible terrorist attacks. Another is that the United States government is considering placing detectors to identify chemical warfare agents on the Washington DC subway system. It is possible that these alarms will in practice cause greater disruptions to transport systems than the attack itself, given the high probability that such detectors may give false alarms. There were 4500 such alerts in the Gulf war and none was associated with a confirmed attack.

The long term social and psychological effects of an episode of chemical or biological attack, real or suspected, would be as damaging as the acute ones, if not more so. For example, a serious physical impact of the accidental discharge of sarin nerve agent during the destruction of an Iraqi weapons depot after the end of the Gulf war has not been documented, but the psychological, social, and political consequences have been substantial and continuing. Even if the short term consequences of an attack with chemical or biological weapons turn out to be less than some of the apocalyptic scenarios currently being aired by the media, the long term disruptions may be worse than anticipated. Experience from other incidents involving confirmed or alleged incidents of toxic contamination suggests that these might cluster around four major health concerns: chronic injuries and diseases directly caused by the toxic agent; questions about adverse reproductive outcomes; psychological effects; and increased levels of physical symptoms.

The general level of malaise, fear, and anxiety may remain high for years, exacerbating pre-existing psychiatric disorders and further heightening the risk of mass sociogenic illness. The current uncertainty over the chronic health effects of low level exposure to toxic agents will further increase anxiety in the affected communities. Because health officials cannot provide blanket assurances that no harm will result from brief or non-symptom producing exposure to toxic agents, frustration and then a growing distrust of medical experts and government officials may result, robbing state institutions of the trust they need to manage recovery. Lastly, unconfirmed or controversial hypotheses about the health effects of exposure to chemical and biological weapons will probably become contentious scientific and media issues in the years ahead, as has occurred after numerous chemical and radiological incidents, the Gulf war, and the Balkans deployment.

British Medical Journal

Scaring My Readers: Dan Hartung, unbidden, always watches out for my coding problems for me (thanks!). He comments:

‘Regarding the message:

“This page is accessing information that is not under its control. This poses a

security risk. Do you want to continue?”

The reason is that IE6 warns by default on cross-site scripting.

Your javascript “edit if permitted” icons point to blogger.com, so it’s

probably picking up on that and letting surfers know that your site

could be trying to run javascript that tries to access information

on another site (e.g. certain Hotmail exploits: if you’re cookied in to

Hotmail, a script could have messed around with your mail).

Google on XSS for more information.

It also might be because of the base href on gelwan.com, where

my browser at least thinks it’s still looking at std.com — I’m not

certain of the internal mechanisms of this warning.’

[The base href is at world.std.com because the gelwan.com domain is ‘parked’ there… -FmH]

Pentagon Denies GPS to Taliban — ‘ “We have demonstrated the ability to selectively deny GPS signals on a regional basis, particularly … when our national security is threatened,” said Lt. Jeremy Eggers, a spokesman at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. That’s home to the 50th Space Wing, which oversees GPS.

That would mean only military GPS receivers — in planes, ships and in the hands of U.S. special forces — would work within the targeted area.

Eggers wouldn’t say if a selective denial would be precise enough to hit just Afghanistan, or if neighboring nations like Pakistan and Uzbekistan would be affected too. He’d only say that the “region can be very well defined.” ‘ Wired

A reader with links to the radical right in the Pacific Northwest writes to say he has seen none of the increased interest in, or recruitment efforts from, militia groups that Reuters reports (below). This is in contrast to the millennial effect the rollover to Y2K had, he observes.

Double blast this weekend: On Friday, twisted magnetic fields above sunspot 9661 erupted powerfully — not once, but twice — at 0105 UT and again at 1640 UT. Both explosions unleashed category X1.6 solar flares and hurled lopsided coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. The expanding clouds will likely strike Earth’s magnetosphere on Oct. 21st and possibly ignite Northern Lights during this weekend’s Orionid meteor shower. spaceweather.com

Virus villains: “While the world worries over the threat of viruses being spread by terrorists, strange things seem to be happening in the less real world of computer viruses.

Rob Rosenberger, editor of the V-Myths website and a critic of fire engine-chasing anti-virus companies, claims he was treated to an early morning visit by the FBI last weekend. He says he was forced to pull a column he was planning to run that would have caused embarrassment to one of the anti-virus vendors. Many have been quick to jump on the back of post-September 11 security fears to sell their services.” Guardian UK

A Scramble to Counter Any Threat of Smallpox: “After announcing plans to stockpile

300 million doses of smallpox

vaccine, the government must now

determine where it can quickly get so

much.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Anthony Lewis: The Inescapable World — “After Sept. 11 it was said by many that

our world had irrevocably changed. That

is true in a sense that we have not yet

grasped.

Winning the military struggle against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban

protectors, if and when we do, will not end the threat of terrorism against

the United States. That will require, in the long run, something more

difficult than military action: a profound effort by America and the West

to ease the poverty and misery of the developing world.” NY Times op-ed [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Maybe Anthony Lewis hasn’t grasped this yet, but not because it hasn’t been said. Every blog I read which comments on the aftermath of 9-11 has said, or linked to, variants of this revelation so many times already in just six weeks that it is mind-numbing in its familiarity and banality, so much so that I’ve pretty much stopped linking to expressions of this sort of sentiment. They’ve become truism, especially to progressives accustomed to thinking this way since… forever? Yet we know that the world at large, and the alarmingly clueless administration they half-voted into office, hasn’t grasped this notion. Pundits have been proclaiming, indeed, that we’ve already lost the real war ahead, essentially because we haven’t grasped this. I agree, the prospects are distressingly grim. The people with this perspective are, unfortunately it appears, largely talking only to one another, a community of already like-minded.

NPR this morning had a piece on the adverse effect 9-11 is having on charitable giving. As people divert their donations to the relief funds, more prosaic but no less urgent social causes feel the pinch. My family and I, reflexively, gave as deeply as we felt we could to 9-11-related efforts. The acceleration of the downturn in the domestic economy partly precipitated by the attacks may add to the downturn in giving. (In Massachusetts, we’ve already been told, for example, that the budgetary impact of 9-11 is going to force the state to put on the back burner any planned expansion of funding for placements for mentally ill children ‘stuck’ in mental hospitals, a problem with which I’ve been preoccupied professionally.)

Perhaps the message that has to get out, particularly to people moved compassionately to give for the first time in the face of the emergency, is that making the world a place where these things don’t happen requires us to not lose sight of other compassionate needs. I suggest that this is a time for anyone who donates to rethink their limits, to dig deeper, and start their own version of a matching fund. For every dollar, or every hour of time, we have given to help the direct aftermath of this disaster in NY or DC, perhaps we should truly consider giving an equivalent amount to each of these other categories of need, more urgently now rather than less:

• domestic efforts against poverty and social injustice which might otherwise get ignored just now, as NPR’s piece suggests
  

• the effort to assist the Afghani people, within their country and in refugee camps, ravaged by the current war effort
  

• efforts to address the impoverishment, the human rights crisis, and the public health emergency (including AIDS) in the developing world, as Lewis’ column and a myriad of other sources suggests.

I’m under no illusion that charitable giving (of time or money) is the solution. In scope, its impact is limited. More than that, it is not straightforward; giving has a complicated and sometimes paradoxical effect both on the giver and the recipient, in both a practical and a spiritual sense. Certainly, it’s worth reflecting on whether a given relief or social action agenda is actually slapping a ‘bandaid’ on problems that will perpetuate or worsen the underlying inequities of the world. But we can turn 9-11 into an opportunity to consider these issues and make a start at meaningful transformation of the world into a place where, if it is to be judged globally by how we treat our most unfortunate, it is worth living in.

Art Imitates Life, Perhaps Too Closely: “(London) — An installation

that the popular and pricey British

artist Damien Hirst assembled in the

window of a Mayfair gallery on Tuesday

was dismantled and discarded the same

night by a cleaning man who said he

thought it was garbage.

The work — a collection of half-full coffee

cups, ashtrays with cigarette butts, empty

beer bottles, a paint-smeared palette, an

easel, a ladder, paintbrushes, candy

wrappers and newspaper pages strewn

about the floor — was the centerpiece of

an exhibition of limited-edition art that the

Eyestorm Gallery.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

A Crucial Question for Tom Ridge: “The frustrating element of the briefing was its failure to clarify whether the

anthrax sent to Senator Daschle was a highly sophisticated preparation,

even weapons-grade material… What alarmed the Senate and sent the House scurrying for cover were

indications that biological warfare analysts were deeply concerned after

analyzing the Daschle material. Yet at yesterday’s briefing an assistant

secretary of defense described it as ‘run of the mill’ anthrax. He said the

suggestion that it had been processed in some way was not yet

confirmed, nor could he comment on whether it had an aerosol-like quality

or was weapons-grade anthrax.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

I continue to be interested in how the extreme right might be reacting to current events. Please send any relevant links. Reuters reports that militia appeal is growing since the attacks.

‘ “America’s anti-government militias, on the wane since the Oklahoma City bombing and the Y2K scare, are trying to drum up new interest and

members after the Sept. 11 hijack attacks, experts and militias say.

While people who track militias are skeptical of a sustained revival, militia leaders say the suicide attacks in New York and Washington and the ensuing anthrax scare

have been a “wake-up call” to the public that has left their phones ringing off the hook.

“There’s a general fear now that we may be attacked again or the lights may go out, so people think they should go to the people who know how to handle survival and

weapons,” said Rick Hawkins, commander of the Missouri 51st Militia in Kansas City, Missouri.’

Recall that I blinked below to the detention of an Aryan Nation type with a microbiology degree and a nasty habit of obtaining lethal cultures from low-security labs. Now Australia’s leading antiterrorism expert speculates that the original, media-directed anthrax attacks are more likely due to the US paramilitary movement than ObL, with a spate of copycat episodes by “mentally unbalanced people” following. He was speaking in response to the spread of anthrax panic to Australia. Although such actions readily spread terror, it is difficult to cause mass casualties without the hard-to-obtain “weaponized” preparation of the anthrax spores. Terrorist groups have shown little interest in acquiring and using biological agents for terrorist attacks, he states. Aum Shinrikyo’s biochemists gave up trying to develop biological weapons using anthrax after nine attempts and turned instead to chemical agents. The Times of India

From Hell reviewed: “The Hughes brothers’ portrait of Jack the Ripper and Victorian England misses the intricate

and disturbing nature of the graphic novel on which their film is based.”

The movie is big on fire-red skies and black clouds, wet cobblestones, flickering gaslight, and cloaked figures moving through the fog. In

other words, it revels in exactly the sort of horror-movie clichés that held no interest for Allan Moore or Eddie Campbell. “From Hell”

evokes nothing so much as a pair of small boys given the budget to make their own version of the Hammer horror movies they’ve gorged

on. Which would be fine if the result weren’t such a brain-dead version of a dark and complex work. — Charles Taylor in Salon

On the other hand, Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times, says that “…the Hughes Brothers’ thriller

about the trail of terror left by

Jack the Ripper is one of the most

breathtaking leaps of directing skills in years… (T)he

directors, the twins Allen and Albert

Hughes, find (many ways) to complement, and then top,

the apocalyptic narrative weaving that

Mr. Moore is best at.

…Like Mr. Moore, the Hughes Brothers are interested in large-scale

paranoid fantasies, though they work closer to the real world. Although a

period film set in late-Victorian London might initially seem outside their

purview, what else is the Jack the Ripper tale but a tableau of urban

violence, filled with characters who don’t know where to turn? The tale is

the European antecedent of the Hughes Brothers’ Menace II Society and

Dead Presidents.”

War veterans: Afghan

bloodbath if US troops

invade: “Hard-bitten Russian veterans of the

disastrous Soviet intervention in Afghanistan have

warned of a bloodbath if the United States sends in

ground forces in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, wanted for last

month’s US terror attacks.

Alexei Zelenyov, now a deputy in the Russian parliament but

seen by some as the Soviet Union’s last action hero, predicted

the worst for US troops in the event of a protracted land

campaign.

“The US special forces will be up against people who have

been fighting for 20 years and who have grown up as warriors.

The Afghans have an immeasurable love of freedom. Every

province is a state in itself,” he said. The Times of India

Mark Morford, SF Gate columnist: Evil Evildoers Of Evil — How to feel calmly patriotic and yet not the slightest bit reassured by Bush & Co.

This much is true: It really is possible to

love your country and value your freedoms

and still believe the government is full of

fools and prevaricators and BS artists and

Dick Cheney. Really.

It is still possible to feel warmly patriotic in

personal and important ways and yet believe

the military and the generals and the war

machine do not have your best interests at

heart and really couldn’t care less what

those interests are anyway but thank you for

sharing now please sit down and do as we

tell you and by the way, thanks for all the

flags and the money.

And it is still possible to feel unified and

spiritually connected to all that is good and

righteous about your generally nonviolent

Americanism — you know, wine and sex and

good music, large dogs and literature and

clean water and tongue kissing in the streets

— and still be depressed when our famously

nonintellectual president talks to the

country like we’re all five years old and

heavily dosed on Ritalin.

When Bush employs phrases like “bring the

evildoers to justice” over and over, 17 times

in one speech alone, and he furrows his

brow like a serious Muppet and offers

carefully scripted reassurances deliberately

lacking in polysyllabism and detailed

explanation because that would be, you

know, complicated.

When he delivers very earnest speeches he

had no part in writing, and when he is

forced to speak extemporaneously, sans

script or TelePrompTer, and is reduced to

simplistic good-guy/bad-guy platitudes and

flustered, rapid blinking, and who cannot

for the life of him articulate a complex idea,

some sort of nuanced elucidation of our

nation’s motives and positioning, that

contains more than one possible level of

meaning. [via Looka!]

The Booker Prize for Fiction 2001: goes to The True History of the Kelly Gang by the enthralling Australian novelist Peter Carey, who becomes wih JM Coetzee one of the only two authors to win the Prize twice. Carey won the 1988 Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda. Two of his non-Prize-winning novels, Jack Maggs and The Unusual Life of

Tristan Smith , have been more to my taste. Here’s the shortlist.

Neuropsychological Performance in Long-term Cannabis Users: Investigation of the question of residual deficits in cognitive functioning after longterm heavy cannabis use has been inconclusive. A new study by Harrison Pope and associates from McLean Hospital compared active heavy users, abstinent but formerly heavy users, and non-cannabis-using controls on a comprehensive neuropsychological battery including measures of general intellectual function, abstraction

ability, sustained attention, verbal fluency, and ability to learn

and recall new verbal and visuospatial information. Findings: “Some cognitive deficits appear detectable at

least 7 days after heavy cannabis use but appear reversible

and related to recent cannabis exposure rather than irreversible

and related to cumulative lifetime use.” Archives of General Psychiatry

Our first line of defense: Laurie Garrett, the investigative reporter who wrote two excellent (and massive!) books pertinent to current events, The Coming Plague and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, is interviewed on responding to the threat of bioterrorism.

“Our government is buying ciprofloxacin, and we’re buying tons of it. We’re buying so much cipro that Bayer in Germany has to reopen a long-shutdown factory to accommodate the American demand. That seems to be the primary thrust of this administration’s commitment at this point.

In my book, purchasing massive quantities of ciprofloxacin is a medical response, not a public health response. The appropriate public health response, it seems to me, would be to look for the most frontline primary antibiotic that appears to be effective. As far as we can tell, the stuff that’s floating around right now in people’s envelopes is completely penicillin-susceptible. It would make a whole lot more sense and it would save hundreds of millions of dollars — not to mention you wouldn’t be breeding broad-spectrum, drug-resistant bacterial disease in millions of Americans — if you use penicillin. Why in the world are we going for the world’s most expensive, broad-spectrum, highly resistance-prone antibiotics?” Salon

“To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.” — George Santayana

A Closer Look At Weblogs from law librarian and legal researcher Cindy Curling. [via Fred]

I idly worried the other day about whether the Freedom of Information Act was going to be gutted in the current climate of ‘giving up freedoms for liberty’ (or is it vice versa??}. Well, lo and behold, Attorney General John Ashcroft is now insisting that a new standard allowing rejection of a FOIA request whenever there is a “sound legal basis” for such DOJ opposition will replace the former, Reno-era standard that noncompliance with a FOIA request would need to be justified by a “forseeable harm” standard.

The article about Bellesisles’ research and the gun ownership controversy generated alot of comments from Followers. It seems Bellesisles’ work has been seriously called into question, to judge from these links I’ve been sent. However, let me make it clear that I found the issue noteworthy not so much because of my belief in his work as due to the degree of ongoing controversy, and the apparent conversion of some former gun control advocates by the new legal commentary. Thus, these responses are less corrections than corroborations of my point.

• “People who have checked Bellesiles’ claims against the probate records that he says he consulted have found that he drastically under
  
  > states the number of guns they show.” Fox News

• “The government steadfastly maintains that the Supreme Court’s decision in
  
  United States v. Miller, 59 S.Ct. 816 (1939), mandated acceptance of the
  
  collective rights or sophisticated collective rights model, and rejection of
  
  the individual rights or standard model, as a basis for construction of the
  
  Second Amendment. We disagree.” [Decision text], [news reports], [more].

• “Today, at Harvard Law School, Bellesiles’s most adamant critic, Northwestern
  
  University law professor James Lindgren, plans to detail evidence that
  
  Bellesiles may have stretched or distorted the historical record in trying
  
  to prove his claim.

  The Boston Globe has reviewed substantial portions of records Lindgren will
  
  cite: 18th-century probate records in Vermont and Rhode Island. The Globe
  
  has also checked into Bellesiles’s claim to have studied certain records in
  
  San Francisco, records county officials say were destroyed by fire in 1906.
  
  In each case, the records appear to support Lindgren’s accusation and
  
  suggest a disturbing pattern of misuse of data by Bellesiles in his book and
  
  in an article defending his thesis which he published on his Web site.” Boston Globe, 9-11-01

• “I thought that you might be interested
  
  in a recent report of some critiques of Bellesiles’ study, done by Glenn
  
  Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. You can find the
  
  piece at:

  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,36122,00.html.”

• 
  site_name=GunCite

  site_url=http://http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_bellesiles.html

  comments=”This is a pro-gun site, but refreshingly free of paranoia, as these sites generally go. The URL points to a long article which attempts to demonstrate how Michael Bellesiles is more of a propagandist than a historian. I don’t know how much of it is true, but I always find it interesting to see how much disagreement a single issue can generate.”

Thanks to everyone who wrote in. Yes, FmH can be a conversation.

Mail Delivery Shows Limitations of Anthrax Attack — “The delivery method of the anthrax spores — via the postal system — offers some insight into the capabilities and motives of the perpetrators. At the same time, it reveals technical and perhaps even political limitations constraining broader, more indiscriminate attacks.”

Large-scale anthrax attacks on the United States would only serve to further weaken bin Laden’s position among Muslim nations. Even Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has condemned anthrax attacks, calling anthrax a “weapon of mass destruction,” according to Reuters*.

Political leaders and their mouthpieces in the media, however, could be considered more legitimate military targets. This would allow a continuation of the terror war in America without driving Islamic nations closer to the United States. Given these political restraints and the technical difficulties of deploying anthrax, a widespread anthrax attack on a major metropolitan area remains unlikely. For the average American, the chances of getting anthrax remain extremely low.

StratFor

______________________________________

*(Coverage of Gadhafi’s remarks is here. However, I can never seem to get into Yahoo! anymore.)

Empowering or Cowering?: “Years ago, in a justifiably famous essay titled ‘Politics and the English Language,’ George Orwell pointed out that the way politicians use language tends to confuse the public and destroy the clear communication that is the basis of a true democratic politics. His novel 1984 shows how a totalitarian state can destroy people’s understanding of the meaning of words in order to keep those people in a state of oppression… For some reason, academic writers on the left, who, like Orwell, used to be champions of the plain style, today have hidden themselves in the thick jungle of some of the most impenetrable prose on the planet.” The Vocabula Review

“War and destruction cannot stop us from playing – our job is to play cricket.” Afghans pad up for peace. A link sent by a bemused reader who cited the incongruity of mentioning Afghanis and cricket in the same breath. BBC When I was in Afghanistan a quarter century ago, the national sport was buzkashi. I wonder if it’s still played…

Text of a U.S. propaganda radio broadcast into Afghanistan:

“Attention Taliban! You are condemned. Did you know that? The instant the terrorists you support took over our planes, you sentenced yourselves to death. The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead. Highly trained soldiers are coming to shut down once and for all Osama bin Laden’s ring of terrorism, and the Taliban that supports them and their actions.

“Our forces are armed with state of the art military equipment. What are you using, obsolete and ineffective weaponry? Our helicopters will rain fire down upon your camps before you detect them on your radar. Our bombs are so accurate we can drop them right through your windows. Our infantry is trained for any climate and terrain on earth. United States soldiers fire with superior marksmanship and are armed with superior weapons.

“You have only one choice … Surrender now and we will give you a second chance. We will let you live. If you surrender no harm will come to you. When you decide to surrender, approach United States forces with your hands in the air. Sling your weapon across your back muzzle towards the ground. Remove your magazine and expel any rounds. Doing this is your only chance of survival.”

Mark Halpern: Two Bad Papers on Language Usage: “They are both, in very different ways, bad papers. Wallace’s makes some sound points in support of traditional good English, but is itself so badly written as to make the thought cross one’s mind, at least for a moment, that it was written by a clever enemy of good English in order to discredit the notion. Winchester’s is a little ? not much ? better written, but makes no sound points at all; its thesis is so nonsensical as to suggest that it was written by his bitterest enemy, out to ruin him professionally. The Vocabula Review

A Journal of Academic Life Halts Publication. Disappointing news in todays New York Times that Lingua Franca is out of business. I have always found something rich and deep whenever I have read it. On the one hand, I think that if anything I have linked to it too little, but perhaps we should’ve been buying subscriptions to the print edition instead of reading it online. Thank heavens, at least, that the related site Arts and Letters Online will continue.[via R.H.]

Wired is running two articles about yer drugs of abuse today, first the illicit and then the licit. In How Safe Are Your Illegal Drugs?:

“Terrorists could poison drug supplies and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration probably can’t do anything about it.

Politicos have warned that dirt-cheap, high-potency heroin will soon flood world markets and cause an epidemic of overdoses in the wake of the Taliban evacuating opium supplies before the first bombs hit Afghan soil. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Because the drugs are illegal, health officials are not authorized to monitor the purity of such substances — not just heroin, but marijuana and ecstasy and other illicit drugs. This coming at a time when authorities are on high alert against bio and chemical attacks.”

Not to mention that a number of DEA personnel have been transferred to FAA duties after the hijackings.

In Pushing pills to the anxious? concern is raised about whether manufacturers of psychopharmaceuticals useful for the treatment of anxiety are trying to profit from the climate of fear in New York and elsewhere with their current marketing strategies.

“With fears of anthrax in the mail running high, postal inspectors in St. Paul have given their colleagues a heads-up that Publishers Clearinghouse is sending out packages of powdered detergent.” ABC

“Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race.” Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking: ‘The human race is likely to be wiped out by a doomsday virus before the Millennium is out, unless we set up colonies in space, Prof Stephen Hawking warns today.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Prof Hawking, the world’s best known cosmologist, says that biology, rather than physics, presents the biggest challenge to human survival. “In the long term, I am more worried about biology. Nuclear weapons need large facilities, but genetic engineering can be done in a small lab. You can’t regulate every lab in the world. The danger is that either by accident or design, we create a virus that destroys us.

” ‘

King’s Ransom. Seymour Hersh writes: “Since 1994 or earlier, the National Security Agency has been collecting electronic intercepts of conversations between members of the Saudi Arabian royal family, which is headed by King Fahd. The intercepts depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country’s religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to overthrow it.” The New Yorker

Thanks to Fred Lapides for this, which relates to the photos we’re being shown of the target sites in Afghanistan.‘The US Government has bought all rights to all the pictures of Afghanistan

and surrounding areas taken by the privately operated Ikonos high-resolution imaging satellite… Under the terms of the contract, Space Imaging, the company that operates Ikonos, will not “sell, distribute, share or provide the imagery to any other entity”.

Although Ikonos images can be sold commercially, the US Government has the right to impose such restrictions, which are known as “shutter control”.

The objective is for the US Government to obtain an additional pair of eyes over Afghanistan to supplement its own spy satellites and, more importantly, to deny others the use of the images.

Space Imaging’s two-year-old Ikonos satellite provides black-and-white images capable of seeing objects one metre (3.2 feet) across. It also takes colour pictures with 4-m (13.1-ft) resolution. The detail in the Ikonos images already taken show a line of trainees from the al-Qaeda network marching between camps in Jalalabad.’ BBC

Scaring some readers? An FmH reader writes:

‘Whenever I visit your page now I get the following message box:

“This page is accessing information that is not under its control. This poses a

security risk. Do you want to continue?”

I assume it’s some security setting on my computer (Win2K PC, IE6), but I thought I’d let you know just the same. You might be scaring some readers.’

Thank you, Microsoft; I’m looking forward to continuing to provide you with information that is not under my control. Hope you don’t find that too scary…

Little Big Man — Jim Holt, Wall Street Journal science and philosophy book reviewer and author of the forthcoming Worlds Within Worlds: How the Infitesimal Revolutionized Thought asks, “Which, from the point of view of the universe, is more contemptible–our minuteness or our brevity? Cosmically speaking, do we last a long time for our size or a short time? Or, put the other way, are we big or small for our life span?” Lingua Franca

Showdown! There’s a struggle raging over interpretation of the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” message. Recent legal scholarship has won over a number of prominent liberal former gun control proponents. Michael Bellesisles’ historical examination showing that only a small proportion of Colonials owned guns contributes by turning the romantic image of the Minutemen on its head. Here’s an overview of the dispute. What’s at stake is enormous — the entire right-to-rebel principle embodied in the individual liberties reading of the Bill of Rights (not that the extreme right cares about historical or constitutional law scholarship!).

Nor, says Michael Bellesiles, a historian at Emory University, should the American romance of the militia and minutemen blind scholars to the truth about early-American gun culture. It is a common assumption that both gun ownership and militia membership were near universal at the time of the nation’s founding, as suggested by these words of the Declaration of Independence signatory and Anti-Federalist Richard Henry Lee: “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms.” This notion of universality is crucial to Standard Modelers, who object that the National Guard cannot be the militia meant by the Second Amendment because its membership is selective, like that of the hated standing army. But Bellesiles, who… has extensively researched antebellum gun ownership and regulation, argues that only a small percentage of the colonial elite possessed firearms in the first place.

In fact, Bellesiles says he has surveyed more than eleven thousand highly detailed probate records (inheritance lists for white males) from the years 1765 to 1850 from New England and Pennsylvania. His results, which will be published in this spring’s The Origins of America’s Gun Culture (Knopf), were astonishing: “Roughly 14% of all adult, white, Protestant males owned firearms. Fourteen percent. That translates to about 3% of the total population of the United States at the time of the Revolution. This percentage holds fairly constant up through 1840. So that in other words, all this talk about universal gun ownership is entirely a myth that I can find no evidence of.”

Lingua Franca

I’m going into far more detail about this article than simply posting a blink because I think it’s urgently important to understanding the basis for current U.S. policy in the conflict. Blind Faith: Dubya’s official advisor on Islam, David Forte, is not Muslim, does not speak Arabic, and describes himself as a “student and not an expert”, but Dubya has adopted his line whole hog. He’s also a conservative Catholic who serves on a Vatican committee to strengthen the family and whose scholarship is in Catholic legal theory, although he has reportedly become passionate about Islamic persecution of Christians. His insistence that al Qaeda are theological heretics who take their inspiration from a “seventh-century sect of puritan thugs called the Kharijites” may be motivated by the ulterior desire to

“redeem religious orthodoxy… or, at least, cleanse it of the extremist stain. ‘Nothing this evil could be religious,’ he is fond of saying. It’s a bromide that jibes perfectly with Bush’s own unabashed fondness for religiosity of all stripes. Unfortunately, it may be wrong,”

writes political commentator Franklin Foer in The New Republic. Serious scholars of Islam scoff at his analysis as mistaken and oversimplified, and he ignores the influence of

“Wahhabism, one of modern Islam’s central movements. Emerging in eighteenth-century Arabia, Wahhabism called for a new asceticism, violently opposing decorations in Mosques and celebrations of the prophet’s birthday. And it has at times sanctioned violence against “infidels,” both outside the religion and within.

For decades the Saudi royal family has aggressively promoted Wahhabism by, among other things, financing Wahhabi religious schools throughout the Muslim world. Bin Laden was born Wahhabi, and the Taliban–who graduated from some of those Saudi-funded Wahhabi schools–have undergone a period of what Olivier Roy, an Islamologist at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, calls “Wahhabisation.” (Witness their destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha, in keeping with Wahhabi prohibitions against graven images.) You can even see traces of the sect’s influence in hijacker Mohammed Atta’s will, which requests Wahhabi burial rites. But you wouldn’t pick up any of this from Forte, who never mentions Wahhabism in his analyses. As Deeb told me, “He misses the real story.”

Perhaps that’s because, unlike the Kharijites, Wahhabis aren’t marginal. Within the United States, according to Hisham al-Kabbani, head of the Washington-based Islamic Supreme Counsel, almost 80 percent of mosques are presided over by Wahhabi Imams. The vast majority of them, of course, don’t support bin Laden. But understanding Al Qaeda’s Wahhabi roots exposes the simplicity of Forte’s distinctions between good and bad, or real and fake, fundamentalist Islam.

Understanding that bin Laden and al Qaeda are not as demonic and marginalized in the Muslim sphere as we would prefer to see them will help us understand what to expect from the Islamic world.

Contrast the trouble we’re getting ourselves into from the mistaken appeal — and influence — of a rigid failure of imagination unable to embrace relativism (if you believe the signs and symptoms and the diagnosis) with this important apologia for postmodernism by Stanley Fish, from this New York Times op-ed piece: Condemnation Without Absolutes:

During the interval between the terrorist attacks and the United States response, a reporter called to ask me if the events of Sept. 11 meant the end of postmodernist relativism. It seemed bizarre that events so serious would be linked causally with a rarefied form of academic talk. But in the days that followed, a growing number of commentators played serious variations on the same theme: that the ideas foisted upon us by postmodern intellectuals have weakened the country’s resolve. The problem, according to the critics, is that since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back.

Not so. Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one. The only thing postmodern thought argues against is the hope of justifying our response to the attacks in universal terms that would be persuasive to everyone, including our enemies. Invoking the abstract notions of justice and truth to support our cause wouldn’t be effective anyway because our adversaries lay claim to the same language. (No one declares himself to be an apostle of injustice.).

Later, he adds:

But of course it’s not really postmodernism that people are bothered by. It’s the idea that our adversaries have emerged not from some primordial darkness, but from a history that has equipped them with reasons and motives and even with a perverted version of some virtues. Bill Maher, Dinesh D’Souza and Susan Sontag have gotten into trouble by pointing out that “cowardly” is not the word to describe men who sacrifice themselves for a cause they believe in.

A BBC reporter who travelled with Taliban militia reports that they “secretly loathe their leaders and bin Laden.” ‘He’s mad, you know…’: “I spent two months in Afghanistan. I left with an overwhelming sense of humanity surviving in hardship beyond our imagination. The Taliban, although feared and loathed in equal measure, are in some ways a natural outcome of the chaos that existed in Afghanistan. But just as they have preyed on the plight of the Afghans to impose order they, too, have become easy prey for Bin Laden. He has used their homeland as a launching pad and now, like so many times before, Afghanistan is once again to become a battleground for other people’s war.” The Sunday Times of London

If war is not the answer, what is? Here’s what the Quakers (the Friends’ Committee on National Legislation, in particular) propose, with which I largely agree:

• mobilize law enforcement means of pursuing the perpetrators;
• empower the UN to intervene in states that harbor and encourage terrorists;
• preserve domestic civil liberties;
• enhance compassionate aid to the people even of offending states, and to refugees from war zones;
• resume efforts toward a just lasting peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict;
• lead a worldwide effort to reduce CBNW stockpiles and prevent their unauthorized dissemination and use;
• robust economic assistance to those who have lost jobs or income in the aftermath of the attacks.

Here’s their “grassroots toolkit” for encouraging non-military alternatives and supporting those in the US government who might take a similar stand. Here’s the FCNL’s official position paper on the U.S bombing of Afghanistan.

President Bush has said that the attacks of September 11 changed everything. Perhaps, but the thinking of our government officials and their response to violence remains unchanged. The U.S.-led military campaign is merely a high tech and more destructive version of a 19th century military strategy, and promotes the law of force over the force of law. By leading a military campaign in Afghanistan, the U.S. has fallen from its internationally recognized moral high ground to a much more morally ambiguous position in the eyes of many around the world. This response is inadequate to the demands of the 21st century and is unbecoming to America.

Noemie Emery: Look Who’s Waving the Flag Now: one of the more childish, name-calling tantrums about progressive dissent I’ve seen on an op-ed page; e.g. : “A healthy skepticism about the uses of power is always in order, but a smartass contempt for one’s country and one’s fellow citizens is something quite different. Most Democrats now get this; some students are learning. And one day, it may dawn on the chattering class.” Entitled to her opinion as she certainly is, is there any excuse for taking up column inches with such poor writing?? The Weekly Standard

“The photographs released by the Pentagon this week depicting pockmarked runways and shattered aircraft portray a successful U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan, but military experts warn that the carefully selected images reveal far less than meets the eye. Los Angeles Times

Private Ryan, Amnesiac: How apt are the analogies to World War II? Don’t they just act to shut off discussion and dissent? ‘The case for avoiding depth was made best, however, by Dan Rather, who was asked by David Letterman to comment on the sources of Islamic rage. The dean of American journalism dismissed the idea summarily. “Hate is hate,” he said, and then followed that up by saying, “George Bush is the president. He makes the decisions…Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he’ll make the call.” There was no need, in other words, for journalism, for skepticism, or even for thought. The situation was that simple. Like World War II.’ Freezerbox

Thomas Friedman: Saudi Royals and Reality — ‘Attention, Prince Alwaleed: These young men came from your country, and while the Palestinian issue no doubt angers them, it does not compare to their hatred of what Mr. bin Laden called the corrupt, “hypocritical,” “hereditary” Arab regimes, starting with Saudi Arabia.’ NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Cyanide threat reportedly foiled in Europe: “Secretly recorded tapes have revealed plans by followers of Osama Bin Laden for a chemical weapon attack in Europe using a poisonous invisible gas that security sources say was cyanide.

A gang of terrorists active in Britain, Germany and Italy plotted to use tins of tomatoes to transport ‘a liquid that suffocates people’. The plan was foiled after a Libyan at the centre of the plot was arrested in Munich on Wednesday.” The Sunday Times of London

Burning question: Are Russian troops fighting in Afghanistan? “Moscow denies rumors that Russia has gone beyond intelligence, logistics support.” Christian Science Monitor

Oxfam emergencies – Crisis in Afghanistan

“They are just covering their ass…” The war on terrorism is being run by lawyers — “The United States has for some time been prepared for a war where achieving moral superiority is as important as military victory. The aim is to conduct an “ethical” war. But not quite up to programming a “smart” bomb with the appropriate theological dimension, they have settled for a very American solution: lawyers.

Every time a commander at headquarters selects a target there is a judge advocate general by his side to assess the ethical merits of the strike. This is a development in practice since the Gulf war.” Guardian UK

U.S. to Target Elite Taliban Assault Force In Next Phase: Running out of bombing targets, the U.S. will bring in helicopter gunships and special forces. Part of strategy is to “signal that the U.S. military is engaged on the ground in pursuing terrorists” Washington Post so that Dubya’s grandiose war pronouncements are not seen as the fatuous empty promises they are. Even our allies are cautious on what is being called the ‘Bush Doctrine’, whose essence is “that the United States will be the unilateral judge of whether a country is supporting terrorism, and will determine the appropriate methods, including the use of military force, to impose behavioral change.” Washington Post

“Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. . . . In the empty immensity of earth, sky, water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.”

–Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

The Puzzling Watts Towers, Restored but Not Revealed, “… like

the exclamation points at the end of an only half

articulated sentence.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

Anthrax News:

• In Shift, Officials Look Into Possibility Anthrax Cases Have bin Laden Ties
  

  “Federal
  
  authorities say they are now investigating
  
  the possibility that followers of Osama bin Laden
  
  were behind the anthrax cases around the nation.

  This represents a significant shift in the thinking of
  
  investigators, who had earlier speculated that the
  
  initial case in Florida was an isolated criminal act
  
  unconnected with the Sept. 11 attacks.

  The shift of the investigation is based not on
  
  definitive proof but on circumstantial information drawn from cases diagnosed in recent days, like the
  
  postmarks on the letters known to contain anthrax. Each one was sent from places near where some of the
  
  terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks lived or visited.” NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

• On the other hand, Anthrax is reportedly easy to grow and distribute by mail.
  

  “Growing this organism is no problem,” said Norman Cheville, dean of Iowa State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine. “It grows readily. It grows overnight.”

  Until last week, the threat of anthrax had been couched largely in terms of its use as a weapon of mass destruction–and how difficult that would be…

  
  Bioterrorism experts said the use of the U.S. Postal Service to transmit lethal bacteria is significant and should trigger changes in how mail is handled. Los Angeles Times

• “The bacterium that causes anthrax is a hearty, fast-growing microbe that is relatively easy to isolate and identify from the blood and tissues of people who have fallen ill with the disease. But the bacterium can be difficult to detect at the earliest stages of exposure or infection. And some of the tests that have been drafted into use to offer speedy diagnoses during the current spate of apparent acts of bioterror were not designed for the purposes to which they are being put.” Washington Post
• 
  Here’s an official Centers for Disease Control (CDC) advisory on how to handle anthrax and other biological agent threats. And Experts Offer Advice on Handling Potentially Dangerous Mail NY Times [“FMHreader”, “FMHreader”]

• Here’s March, 2000 COngressional testimony by Dr. Stephen M. Ostroff, Associate Director for Epidemiologic Science, NCID-CDC, about the “plans for and management of the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile Program (NPSP), one component of CDC’s overall public health response to the threat of bioterrorism.” Although I’m under no illusions that the isolated psychiatric hospital south of Boston where I’m the medical director is a prime terrorist target, I’m currently investigating with my pharmacy staff what stockpiling of antibiotics we ought to do there.
• CNN reports (toward the bottom of this roundup of anthrax-related news) that “ninety offices of Planned Parenthood and at least 80 clinics of the National Abortion Federation across the United States have received envelopes containing unidentified powdery substances and letters with threatening language, according to spokesmen for the groups. Both groups support abortion rights and provide abortions in at least some of their offices.” Although it’s not exactly what I was looking for in asking the other day for links to anything about the reactions of the right wing paramilitary movement to 9-11, one would wonder if this is the response of another faction of the rabid right.
• I missed this one. A 46-year-old Ohio Aryan Nations member with a degree in microbiology who pleaded guilty last year to having fraudulently obtained cultures of bubonic plague via mail order (interestingly, from the same laboratory from which Saddam Hussein had reportedly ordered biological agents!) is one of two men detained by the FBI. Larry Wayne Harris has self-published a 131-page book that The Southern Poverty Law Center has called ‘a do-it-yourself manual for mass destruction through biological terrorism’. Although Harris says he is merely alerting the US to the Iraqi threat,
  

  in an interview with U.S. News & World Report last November, Harris said his associates in the white supremacist movement would strike at government officials with biochemical weapons, if provoked. ‘If they arrest a bunch of our guys, they get a test tube in the mail,’ he told the magazine.
  
  And he suggested that worse could come if the separatists? dreams are denied. ‘How many cities are you willing to lose before you back off? At what point do you say: “If these guys want to go off to the Northwest and have five states declared to be their own free and independent country, let them do it.” ‘ ABC

• And, not surprisingly, the Boston Globe‘s investigations reveal that lax security eases access to lethal strains. “Scores of low-security labs store the deadly bacteria with little oversight.

  For decades, anthrax lab samples moved freely among researchers and universities, from Georgia to California and around the world. Hundreds of samples were traded, copied, and mailed on. Authorities kept few tabs on the transactions, and remain unable to account for many.”

• The above is part of the answer to my curiosity about why investigators weren’t rushing to identify what strain of anthrax was used in the various attacks, whether the strains were identical, etc. Identifying the particular strain of an anthrax culture is difficult and unreliable, and doing so may not aid in a criminal investigation of the origins of an anthrax attack, as cultures of anthrax have been passed around the world freely from lab to lab.

New book says Hitler was gay and killed to hide it. “Eyewitness accounts from Hitler’s former lovers, and historical documents that for the first time illuminate rumours that have circulated for over half a century, are disclosed in Hitler’s Secret: The Double Life of a Dictator .

The respected German historian Lothar Machtan even claims in his book that Hitler ordered the deaths of several high-ranking Nazis to prevent the secret of his homosexuality from surfacing.” Guardian UK

Feds Enlist Hollywood for Theories — “In a reversal of roles, government intelligence specialists have been secretly soliciting terrorist scenarios from top Hollywood filmmakers and writers.

An ad hoc working group convened at the University of Southern California just last week at the behest of the U.S. Army. The goal was to brainstorm about possible terrorist targets and schemes in America and to offer solutions to those threats, in light of the aerial assaults on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.” Washington Post Do you want the US ‘war on terrorism’ to be scripted by the people responsible for Die Hard, Delta Force One, or Missing in Action??

FCC may OK selling ads on some public TV stations: ‘Under the plan, the Federal Communications Commission would let PBS affiliates and other public TV stations show ads on data or subscription services they offer as they roll out digital TV, say people familiar with the matter.

…the FCC also apparently believes that the law’s ban on public TV stations “broadcasting” ads need not apply to subscription or certain other services.’ As if the corporate sponsorship spots on PBS now haven’t already travelled a great distance down the slippery slope toward being ads… USA Today

Loincloth Maestro: ‘A strolling violinist in a gold loincloth and very little else would cause the denizens of most cities to call the police, or at least cross the street. But in New York, such a man can become a minor celebrity, especially when he gains a reputation as the most talented street musician in the city. “In his soloperas, Thoth, a classically trained musician, is the composer, orchestra, singers and dancers. His music has elements of classical, overlayed with primal rhythms, but it defies categorization.” ‘ NY Post Reminds me on first reading of Moondog [more],

a statuesque blind bearded streetcorner presence on the Midtown Manhattan street corners when I was growing up in New York who turned out to be a maverick but classically trained composer, Louis Hardin. A musician friend I made years later (when I was in medical school with his wife), it turned out, was responsible for getting Hardin’s compositions and performances recorded before his death in 1999.

When Writers Attack. The controversy swirls around “previously unknown critic” B.R. Myers’ skewering of much contemporary fiction in the summer Atlantic. Here, Dennis Loy Johnson at Moby Lives takes on highly visible New York Times Book Review columnist Judith Shulevitz for her response to Myers.

The 2001 National Book Award Finalists in children’s literature, poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections makes the list, as expected, and Andrew Solomon’s Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.

Collateral Damage (cont’d.):

Robert Fisk comments that Slaughter of the innocent bolsters view that this is war against Islam.

It’s always the same story. We start shooting with “smart” weapons after our journalists and generals have told us of their sophistication. Their press conferences produce monochrome snapshots of bloodless airbase runways with little holes sprinkled across the apron. “A successful night,” they used to say, after bombing Serbia.

They said that again last week and no one ? until of course we splatter civilians ? suggests going to war involves killing innocent people. It does. That is why the military invented that repulsive and morally shameful phrase “collateral damage”. And they are always ready to smear the reporters on the ground. Independent UK

And not only a war against Islam, but Andrew Rawnsley says it is a war they’re winning. Guardian UK

Cellphones spook British ghosts

Systray.org : Post Your Systray Here. “All your systray are belong to us.”

Some of the attackers did not know they were to die, an FBI investigation concludes. Unlike the eight ‘lead’ attackers who were the trained pilots who undoubtedly knew they were on a suicide mission, the other eleven hijackers “expected to take part in ‘conventional’ hijackings – with the planes flown to distant airports, and the passengers and crew taken hostage while the hijackers presented demands. Items found among the 11 men’s possessions suggest they had been preparing themselves for incarceration. One source said: ‘It looks as if they expected they might be going to prison, not paradise.’

The FBI analysis concludes the 11 may have believed the purpose of the hijackings was to free the perpetrators of previous extremist terrorist attacks on the United States, such as the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993.” On the other hand, could this be FBI disinformation to counter any glorification of the purity of purpose and sacrifice of their actions and, by suggesting that most of the team was kept in the dark about the true plan, rationalize the American intelligence failure to detect the plot? Guardian UK

Patrick Cockburn: The Phoney War Will Get Real Very Soon; options for the Northern Alliance in the coming ground war. CounterPunch

Ethel considers the Office of Homeland Security: “What they’re saying is that since this is a super-agency, which is immune from congressional oversight or judicial review, there has to be some regulatory body above it. That will make this Council extra-legal, extra-constitutional, extra-judicial, and extra-legislative. And it’s even extra-executive. Bush then is essentially assuming supreme power as Chairman of the Supreme National Security Council.” [Now, as everyone else is saying in weblogland, go read the rest of Ethel the Blog as well.]

More on the coming police state. Here in my own backyard, the Worcester Telegram reports on peace demonstrators being photographed by the local police; turns out it was at the FBI’s instructions. Want your five minutes of media fame? It’s off to a peace vigil; time’s a’wastin’! I’ve already had my moments in the limelight, several times in fact. While a high school student in 1969, I refused to shake Gen. William Westmoreland’s hand on nationwide television while in Washington receiving a young scientist award. I was on the front page of the New York Post, I think it was that year too, as an unidentified rain-drenched hitchhiker holding up a sign in New York seeking a ride to the March on Washington against the war. A human die-in in Central Park designed to simulate some body count showed my body in the foreground, in one of the New York papers. And several years later I made the Boston Globe as the “unidentified protester” being attacked on the front page by police dogs let loose against us during a Cambridge civil disobedience action. I wrote a letter to the editor identifying myself on that occasion as well. A string of arrests for civil disobedience got my name in the papers several more times, related to both antiwar activities and the Clamshell Alliance’s efforts to stop the Seabrook nuclear plant on our seacoast. I’ve still got the yellowing clips of all of these somewhere. Funny, Freedom of Information Act inquiries I made years later failed to come up with a dossier about me from those days. Disappointing, actually. Hey, I wonder if the FOIA is still going to be enforceable in the new regime… [Now that I’ve come out of the closet about my sordid and criminal past, you’re forgiven if you get squeamish about continuing to read FmH.]

After complaints from gay organizations, the AP withdrew a photo taken on the USS Enterprise that shows a Navy officer scrawling a misspelled message — “high jack this fags” — on a bomb bound for Afghanistan. [via Cursor]

Security Keeps Dylan From Own Concert. “The security was so good at Bob Dylan’s concert in Medford, Oregon, even Bob Dylan couldn’t get in.

Dylan showed up for the concert last Tuesday and was refused admittance backstage. The guards had strict orders from Dylan’s own security director not to let anyone backstage without an official credential.” The three guards, in their 30’s, were promptly “relocated”. Speculation is that they did not recognize Mr. Zimmerman.

Viewing the brain in whole new light: describes a laser-based brain imaging technique which compares favorably with MRI scanning, the ‘gold standard of noninvasive imaging”, is cheaper, easier to use, more portable, and reportedly “non-damaging.” As you know, I’m a big fan of functional MRI’s ability to elucidate structure/function correlations in the brain in realtime, but certain mental activities just cannot easily be performed inside its stationary massive enclosure.

Hawks try to implicate Iraq by hunting for evidence in UK

“A row has broken out in the Bush administration after it was revealed that hawks in the Pentagon had sent an ex-CIA director, James Woolsey, to Britain, behind the backs of the state department and the current CIA leadership.

News of Mr Woolsey’s travels, have exposed a deep fissure inside the administration over whether to extend the war against terrorism to Iraq.

Last month, the state department, led by Colin Powell, convinced President Bush that there was no clear involvement in the attacks and that Iraq should not be included on the target list as such action might destroy the fragile coalition.

However, hawks in the administration grouped around the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, are determined to ensure military action to topple Saddam Hussein.

According to several sources in the U.S., Mr Wolfowitz paid for Mr Woolsey to travel to Britain last month to look for evidence of prior Iraqi involvement in terrorism.”

From Dawn, which describes itself as Pakistan’s largest-circulation English-language daily newspaper. Look at its light, breezy, thoroughly modern weekly review feature; you’d never know it originates from a deeply divided military dictatorship at the margin of the world’s newest, hottest conflagration. On the other hand, its front page is nothing but war news.

On the topic of efforts to implicate Iraq, some are suggesting that the capability to obtain and disseminate anthrax, if a part of terrorist actions, would not be within al Qaeda’s capabilities, and fits neatly with the assumed Iraqi bioweapons capability.