It’s time (Updated)

One month before grad school starts. Work beckons. House needs a ton of attention. Family could use some attention, too.

I really enjoyed blogging. I mean really, really. And I really appreciated people coming by and reading the site. I mean really, really, really.

But now it’s time to hang it up (again) and focus on life for awhile. Hopefully I’ll still have time to comment all-too-profusely at other people’s sites.

UPDATE: I turned off comments on the site, since all I was getting was spam. Thanks for all your kind words.

Gone for a few days

The family and I are heading out to Kansas City to help my brother move. I’ll be back in the blogging saddle Sunday night, most likely.

It’s Cold War II, with all the trappings of the original

I’ve been calling it a Cold War for awhile, but it didn’t have that Cold War feel without the old Soviet probing and prodding. Not to worry – the Russians haven’t lost a step:

While the Kremlin hesitated before responding to Britain’s expulsion of four diplomats, the Russian military engaged in some old-fashioned sabre-rattling.

Two Tu95 “Bear” bombers were dispatched from their base on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle and headed towards British airspace.
…
Two Tornado fighters, part of the RAF’s Quick Reaction Alert, took off from RAF Leeming, in Yorkshire, to confront the Russian aircraft, after they were shadowed by two F16s from the Royal Norwegian Air Force, The Times has learnt.

“The Russians turned back before they reached British airspace,” an RAF spokesman said.

Brings back old memories, doesn’t it?

Ron Paul 2nd in Iowa?

Insty pointed out this prediction by Patrick Ruffini:

Ron Paul Will Place Second at Ames

You heard it here first.

He leads the second tier in cash-on-hand. He was able to get 1,200 people out to the Hy-Vee (has any candidate done something that big on their own, not at an RPI event?). His home base in Texas isn’t that far of a drive, and his people are motivated enough to come in from out of state for him. And he’s making a big push on his Web site, which for all intents and purposes, is his campaign.

Really. Let’s start with “his home base in Texas isn’t that far of a drive.” It’s about a thousand miles from Houston to Ames. I like driving long distances, but I would consider that a fur piece – a two-day drive for most people.

A “big push on his Web site?” Yeah, me too. “Pushing” on your site doesn’t mean “pulling” the voters in. And as veterans of the Internet have long realized, while bloggers and web sites may enjoy a disproportionate influence in political affairs, they still constitute only a tiny fraction of voters. And his rally was great, but again, insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

I appreciate the fact that Ruffini is going out on a huge limb here and making a very, very bold prediction. He’s probably right in that Paul may do better than expected. But 2nd?

I don’t think so.

[Speaking of which, are we putting together some bets on the primary outcomes?]

Combining public surveillance systems to watch you in real time

I’ve mentioned in several previous posts that traffic surveillance systems such as those in London (and almost implemented in NYC) don’t appear particularly intrusive when proposed and first used, but when linked to other systems and agencies, these systems can provide door-to-door real-time surveillance.

And so it begins.

“Big Brother” plans to automatically hand the police details of the daily journeys of millions of motorists tracked by road pricing cameras across the country were inadvertently disclosed by the Home Office last night.

Leaked Whitehall background papers reveal that Home Office and transport ministers have clashed over plans for legislation this autumn enabling the police to get automatic “real-time” access to the bulk data from the traffic cameras now going into operation. The Home Office says the police need the data from the cameras, which can read and store every passing numberplate, “for all crime fighting purposes”.

The system is currently operated by the Department for Transport. Now the police want to add the information generated by the 2000 traffic cameras to their other systems, to improve their real-time surveillance capabilities. This sort of amalgamation of data and cross-agency cooperation is a natural trend in government, and should normally be encouraged.

In this case, however, it is leading directly down the Orwellian path.*

Many cities in the US are starting to install public surveillance systems as part of anti-terrorism and anti-crime efforts. This needs to be balanced with a fair expectation of privacy and anonymity.

*I wonder if the specter of 1984 brings the same horror that it once did. With the advent of reality TV shows based on very intrusive coverage of participants, including shows titled “Big Brother,” I think the public has lost much of its sensitivity to the threat envisioned by Orwell.

The anemic NIE

Just finished reading the Key Judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate. Here are the highlights:

• Al Qaeda has a home in Pakistan, and is dangerous because we haven’t gotten to bin Laden or Zawahiri. They still, really, really want to attack us and won’t hesitate to use WMD if they can.
• Terrorist groups are using the latest technologies to organize and communicate.
• Other groups also want to attack us.

That’s it.

The only halfway definite speculation was that Al Qaeda might use Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to attack us, because AQI is their “most capable affiliate.” Of course, AQI is getting its hiney handed to it (26 AQI leaders killed or captured in May  & June), so it is probably going to have to concentrate on a membership drive before it manages to look beyond Iraq. So in addition to being vague, it’s dated.

This intelligence report was 3 years in the making, and involved 16 intelligence agencies (which is part of the problem right there). This is all they can come up with? Even in the unclassified version?

I want my money back.

Another “everybody hates us” article

I thought there was no more room to fall in the global attitudes polls, but apparently there is no bottom:

Since 2002, “the image of the United States has declined in most parts of the world,” according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey. “Favorable ratings of America are lower in 26 of 33 countries for which trends are available.” The numbers have dropped even among many of our traditional allies. For example, 13 percent of Britons now hold a “very unfavorable” view of the United States.

But how come nobody ever asks us what we think of the rest of the world? Let me tell you, the rest of the world has, for the most part, fallen far short of my expectations. To emphasize my disappointment, I shall look upon it with disfavor.

That ought to have the same impact on the world that the Pew poll has here.

Italy sees the Second Cold War coming

Haven’t posted on Cold War II in a while, though everything is moving forward on SCO’s side (SCO = Shanghai Cooperation Organization). In April, SCO announced that it was giving invitations for full memberships to Iran, India, Mongolia, and Pakistan. That will pretty much sew up Central Asia.

Yesterday an Italian fellow woke up to the threat:

The Pact (SCO) is an intergovernmental organisation founded in 2001 and its full members are Russia, China and four central Asian republics. Over the last two years the organisation has made great strides, coordinating numerous aspects of policy among the six members and reaching significant military agreements between Moscow and Beijing. Some American analysts describe it as “the NATO of the East” and for some time now Russia and China have been voting together in the UN Security Council.

So even if it’s not a Cold War yet, it could become one in the not too distant future. Russia and China also have the means to bring Europe to its knees economically, the one by turning off gas supplies and the other through the unstoppable flow of its export goods.

He’s quite correct, though I’m obviously willing to call it a Cold War already, based on China’s and Russia’s substantial military and technological aid to Iran (and Syria).

Deadbeat Iranians behind on nuclear power plant payments

Iran’s complacency with regard to their new nuclear power plant is a bit odd (this is the entire article):

Iran’s nuclear aspirations may not end with a bang or even a whimper. Instead, their demise may be due to a stack of unpaid invoices. By the end of May, the Iranian government owed Russia’s RosAtom more than $100 million for work done on the Bushehr nuclear power plant. And the Iranians have no apparent desire to pay their bills. In late May, a RosAtom official said that “it seems that the Iranians have lost interest” in the Bushehr plant, continuing that the “project has become unprofitable for us.”

There have been ongoing squabbles over payment. Under the contract terms, Iran is supposed to pay RosAtom about $25 million a month. In late 2006 after months of non-payment, Iran resumed payments and assured that it would stay current. RosAtom resumed construction at Bushehr, sending 2,000 Russian workers on-site. But the money problems continue. Sergey Kirilenko, the head of RosAtom, has said that the Bushehr plant could be finished within a few months, provided that Iran pays its bills.

I see three possible scenarios: 1) Iran doesn’t have the cash (unlikely – $100 million is nothing); 2) Iran wants to use the plant as a bargaining chip and has no interest in dumping more money into something they’re just going to trade away; or 3) Iran never wanted a nuclear power plant – it wanted nuclear technology, which it has now acquired.

I sure hope I’m missing something.

Curry to the rescue

The wondrous healing powers of curry:

There is good news for curry fans after scientists claimed to have found an ingredient that may help stave off Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers say they have isolated a compound in turmeric which helps stimulate immune system cells that gobble up the brain-clogging proteins that mark the disease.

And it’s in curry? That’s like finding the cure for the common cold in ice cream!

The researchers said it is not clear if people can eat enough curcumin to get this level of activity.

Sounds like a challenge to me.

Those spunky little devils in the EU try to catch up…

…but they’re still eating our Senate’s dust. The EU has been working on a referendum-proof constitution:

Mr Amato, who is now interior minister in Italy, has been a central figure in all stages of the year-long process of reviving the constitution, heading the 16-strong group of politicians that helped prepare the new EU treaty.

In comments posted on YouTube yesterday he said “EU leaders had decided that the document to be drawn up by an intergovernmental conference should be ‘unreadable’.

“If this is the kind of document that the IGC will produce, any prime minister – imagine the UK prime minister – can go to the Commons and say ‘Look, you see, it’s absolutely unreadable, it’s the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum’.

“Should you succeed in understanding it there might be some reason for a referendum, because it would mean that there is something new.”

Very impressive, but I think it pales in comparison to the Senate’s immigration reform bill. That bill wasn’t even written during most of the discussion and amendment voting. Perhaps the end result is the same, but I give the edge to the Senate for making it physically impossible to read, instead of just impossible to understand.

Update on civilian casualties in Iraq (7-15-07)

Time for the bimonthly update on civilian casualties in Iraq. Except for the awful death toll in Amerli (150 dead), the casualties outside Baghdad have been modest. Baghdad has not fared as well, as it heads back up to its 30/day average.

Lessons learned from Pakistan

There has been a lot of consternation and remonstration over the forthcoming intelligence assessment that says that Al Qaeda is back up to its pre-2001 strength. Let’s take that as true, even though the media has a poor track record with regard to the context and accuracy of their pre-release information (not to mention the abysmal track record of the intelligence agencies themselves). I think it shows two things:

1. Law enforcement alone cannot deal with the terrorist threat. Many people claim that military responses are not needed in the GWoT, but despite the best efforts of law enforcement and diplomacy, the terrorist threat is apparently growing. It should be obvious, but I guess it bears repeating: there are things law enforcement can and cannot do.
2. The crowd who continually harps on our failure to capture bin Laden should take note that, without permission to operate inside Pakistan, we can’t even stop the Taliban and al Qaeda from growing. This has been frustrating for years, but this growth problem only occurred after Musharraf made his mephistophelian deal with the Taliban last year. Diplomacy and covert ops have been the only tools we can use in Pakistan, and they have fallen short. The bottom line: without direct military access to Pakistan, we’ll never catch bin Laden or stop the Taliban and al Qaeda from regrouping. And without direct military access to Pakistan, sending more troops to Afghanistan would be a waste of time.

A couple of months ago Defense Secretary Gates said US forces were operating in Pakistan, a charge quickly denied by Pakistani officials. I hope they were just covering their fannies, and that Gates was right. Otherwise there’s an invasion of Pakistan waiting in the wings (when Musharraf falls).

The Sun-Times joins the ranks of the oracles

An insipid editorial from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Americans of all political leanings want to understand when our involvement in Iraq will end. We have waited patiently for the positive results the president has repeatedly promised. We have looked for improvements following shifts in military strategy, the approval of benchmarks, the last-ditch surge.

“The last-ditch surge?” For one thing, there shouldn’t be anything “last-ditch” about it – the only reason it’s “last-ditch” is because of people like the Chicago Sun-Times. And have we really failed to see improvements in security “following … the last-ditch surge?” Well, since we aren’t yet “following” it, of course not. The surge has been fully manned for one month, and has resulted in the military operations in and around Baghdad over the past month.

The Chicago Sun-Times is as prescient as Harry Reid, forecasting failure months in advance of even the September progress report.

You can complain that the reconstruction of Iraq has not shown sufficient progress, even though there is no precedent to show us what “sufficient progress” should be. You can complain that the Bush administration has not been as responsive as it should have been, even though they substantially revised their strategy in Iraq after only a year. You can complain that the Iraqi government is hopelessly ineffective, corrupt, and mired in tribal and sectarian differences, even though it’s less than 14 months old.

But you can’t even start to complain about the success of the “Surge.”

Beeg bruzeer is vetcheeng yuoo

[Thanks to the Encheferizer for the title]

Some people – doubting, trusting, technological naifs like See-Dubya – have asked why I find new public surveillance systems so threatening. Well, take a look at what Sweden is up to: