Geodog

Read this week's Talking Points Memo

I've been caught up with my SARS blog, and the news from Washington and Iraq has been too depressing to read much of it (to say nothing of the SARS news). You know, I would much rather have been wrong. I would much rather that the Iraqi people had greeted the US troops as liberators. But they didn't. The best analysis that I have seen on the whole Iraq situation comes from Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall. He is doing some great writing.

I hope my luck is better with SARS, but it looks like my fears are getting closer to reality every day.

SARS: CDC says we may be in the very early stages of what could be a much larger problem

DR. GERBERDING: Well, from the standpoint of CDC, I would say that we are very concerned about the spread of this virus, particularly in Asia. We recognize this as a epidemic that's evolving differently, in different geographies, but nevertheless, it is a respiratory virus, it does appear to be transmitted very efficiently, and what we know about respiratory viruses suggests that the potential for infecting large numbers of people is very great. So we may be in the very early stages of what could be a much larger problem as we go forward in time. On the other hand, this is new, we don't know everything about it, and we have a lot of questions about the overall spread.
...
We have no evidence, unfortunately, right now, that any specific anti-viral therapy, or steroid treatment, or other agents that are targeting this virus, are of any benefit to patients. We hope we'll learn more as we go but that is the status of clinical care today.

... if there's any good news in SARS right now, it's that the majority of patients do appear to recover and that the death rate is actually lower than what we see with epidemic influenza, about 3.5 percent of the patients have died from the illness

Tonight I read the transcript of CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding's media briefing, which the CDC was nice enough and smart enough to put on the web. The money quote is above -- while Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) isn't spreading rapidly in the US at this time, it could very easily do so. And we have no treatment for it.

In case you haven't noticed from my earlier posts, I'm very nervous that SARS could spread throughout the US and the world, and I'm concerned that the CDC and government are one step behind the disease, and will stay that way until it is too late. I hope not. In the meantime, I intend to follow the progress of the disease daily, and to call up my congress critters to urge them to follow this disease closely.

I have set up a new blog, www.sarswatch.us, where I will be providing useful links and posting information and news that I find on the disease. The name may not propagate for 2-3 days, in the meantime check http://sars.twjb.com/. You may be able to see the weblog there. You can always check out the CDC's SARS page, which has lots of information, updated on a regular basis.

I've excerpted other useful bits from the press conference below.

DR. GERBERDING: We believe, based on what the investigations have shown us so far, that the major mode of transmission still is through droplet spread when an infected person coughs or sneezes and droplets are spread to a nearby contact. But we are concerned about the possibility of airborne transmission across broader areas and also the possibility that objects that become contaminated in the environment could serve as modes of spread.

Coronaviruses can survive in the environment for up to two or three hours ,and so it's possible that a contaminated object could serve as a vehicle for transfer to someone else.
...

We know that the individual with SARS can be very infectious during the symptomatic phase of the illness. We don't know how long the period of contagion lasts once they recover from the illness and we don't know whether or not they can spread the virus before they have the full-blown form syndrome.

But most of the information that the epidemiologists have been able to put together suggests that the period of contagion may begin with the onset of the very earliest symptoms of a viral infection, so our guidance is based on this assumption.

...

WHO is not issuing any travel restrictions. We are not issuing any travel restrictions either, but WHO has also implemented procedures for screening passengers before they leave the country of SARS origin. They're asking countries to evaluate departing passengers for respiratory illnesses or other signs that could represent SARS. In part, this is because there are some early reports that passengers traveling with a SARS patients on board could be at risk for acquiring this infection, and we don't want to have any cases acquired during flight or during transfer on a ship or other vehicle.

...

QUESTION: The Canadian health authorities have issued quite a restrictive quarantine, now expanding to a second hospital.

Why are you not issuing any quarantine? Is it because you can't or because the situation is not so dire?

DR. GERBERDING: Well, first of all, we have been in constant communication with Canadian health authorities and they are not actually issuing a quarantine. They are issuing a voluntary self-isolation policy which is slightly different than a regulated quarantine.

The main reason we are not taking this step right now, in this country, is because the epidemiology of our problem is very different than the outbreak that Canada is experiencing in Toronto.

Although I reported 62 cases under investigation here, two of those cases are in health care workers and there have been no further signs of spread in that particular cluster. Five cases have been in household contact and the rest of the cases have all been in travelers coming in from SARS areas.

So we are not experiencing any sign of community transmission at this point in time, but we are alert to it, we are monitoring potential contacts very carefully, and if we see evidence that our infection control measures are not containing spread within communities, then we will have to reconsider whether additional steps are necessary.

...

DR. CITRON: this is a virus that's routinely susceptible to commercially available, normal types of disinfectants that are used in hospitals, and that's basically what you'll see in that guidance. So there's not need for taking extraordinary measures or using extremely caustic or dangerous types of materials, but the routine types of disinfectants are available and the specifics are on the Web site announcement.

QUESTION: Just a follow up. To follow up. What about disinfection in the home? Do you have guidelines for that? Is it just a question of chlorine or--

DR. CITRON: I think it's the same kind of principles that are going to apply, you know, standard household disinfectant agents to clean surfaces and bathroom areas, and things that may have come in a lot of contact with a potentially-infected patient, ought to be adequate.

...

DR. GERBERDING: We have no evidence, unfortunately, right now, that any specific anti-viral therapy, or steroid treatment, or other agents that are targeting this virus, are of any benefit to patients. We hope we'll learn more as we go but that is the status of clinical care today.

...

QUESTION: Hello, Dr. Gerberding.

Given what's happened in Hong Kong, and southern China, and given what's happened in Toronto, how concerned are you about the possibility of a community outbreak in the United States?

DR. GERBERDING: We are very vigilant about the possibility of spread. We recognize that there are at least some patients with SARS that are extremely efficient transmitters. We don't know to what extent all patients are particularly infectious but there are clearly some who appear to be very highly infectious, and, for example, in Hanoi where there was one patient who was a source for health care worker transmission and approximately 56 percent of the health care who had direct contact with the patient appeared to have acquired SARS.

So given that high degree of contagion and what we know about spread of cold viruses, I think we are very alert to the possibility that this could spread outside of the confined populations that I've mentioned, travelers to the affected areas, close household contacts, and health care workers. But we are not seeing that now and we are looking for it very closely.

So if we begin to appreciate that, we will have to expand our recommendations to be more inclusive of special protective measures for contacts.

...

DR. HUGHES: Well, many laboratories here at CDC, as well as around the world, have been hard at work at this for some period of time. A week ago today, there were no antibody tests which could be used to diagnose this infection. It's a result of considerable hard work. We now actually have two antibody tests that look quite promising and seem to be reproducible in different laboratories, and among the things we're doing is working to get ready to transfer diagnostic testing capacity to public health laboratories around the country, so that before too long, I'm hoping that tests will be available much more locally.

...

DR. GERBERDING: Well, from the standpoint of CDC, I would say that we are very concerned about the spread of this virus, particularly in Asia. We recognize this as a epidemic that's evolving differently, in different geographies, but nevertheless, it is a respiratory virus, it does appear to be transmitted very efficiently, and what we know about respiratory viruses suggests that the potential for infecting large numbers of people is very great.

So we may be in the very early stages of what could be a much larger problem as we go forward in time. On the other hand, this is new, we don't know everything about it, and we have a lot of questions about the overall spread.

....

right now the largest number of patients [12 cases] are in California. That's not surprising since California is one of our largest states. But that's also a point of a lot of travel to Asia and so it makes demographic sense, that that would be an area where there would be perhaps an increased risk.

In fact if there's any good news in SARS right now, it's that the majority of patients do appear to recover and that the death rate is actually lower than what we see with epidemic influenza, about 3.5 percent of the patients have died from the illness.

Mr. Gillmor, how do we get ready?

An open letter to Mr. Gillmor:

Dear Mr. Gillmor,

In your second to last weblog post, Mystery Pneumonia Grows More Worrisome, you talked about the mystery pneumonia, SARS, and closed by suggesting that "We'd better get ready".

As someone who two years ago stumbled across Laurie Garrett's great books, The Coming Plague and Betrayal of Trust, I have been acutely sensitized to the potential danger from epidemics, and the hollowing out of our public health infrastructure. I've been following the posts on the IP list with interest and fear, plus I've been reading other articles online and writing about them at Geodog's MT Weblog and The Midnight Blog. What isn't clear to me is what we can do to "get ready" for the epidemic.

It seems highly unlikely that anyone will find a treatment for the disease anytime in the near future, so what's left are the traditional public health measures that were developed in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Tracing sources of infection, and isolating and quarantine people who may have been exposed. On the public health front, it seems like we should be agitating to get our political and public health leaders to be much more aggressive about taking measures to contain the disease, such as shutting down plane flights from China and Southeast Asia until those countries manage to contain the epidemic. The one time that we want the government to act in an authoritarian manner, it is totally distracted by the War on Iraq.

On the personal level, it seems like we are almost at the point where we should start playing survivalist, buying up supplies and staying in our houses. Do it too soon, and you will be perceived as an idiot, like the people who were convinced that the world would come to an end with Y2K. Do it too late, and your chances of getting the disease will be significantly enhanced. Myself, I'm checking over our earthquake kit, adding gloves and surgical masks to it, and checking The CDC's SARS page and media sources, especially Laurie Garret, every day.

What are your recommendations for getting ready? What are you doing?

Thanks,

We have lost the battle for hearts and minds

"If this is a war to win Arab hearts and minds, then the U.S. is in deep denial of the reality," said Hani Shukrallah, managing editor of the al-Ahram weekly, the English-language version of the al-Ahram newspaper in Cairo.

If this article, Osama must be laughing, is true, the United States has already lost the battle for "hearts and minds" in the Muslim world. According to the article,

Cairo's Al Azhar University - the most respected institution of religious learning in the Muslim world - has issued a fatwa, or religious edict, advising "all Muslims in the world to make 'jihad' against invading American forces". The statement warned that Islam itself is the direct target of the "new crusaders' invasion", aimed at humiliating and subjugating Arabs and controlling their resources. Given the university's historical and religious symbolism and weight, this ruling is likely to resonate with the faithful.

Prominent Muslim clerics and political leaders have echoed Al Azhar. Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, a reformist who, as the grand sheik of Al Azhar University, was one of the first clerics to condemn the September 11 attacks and to dismiss Osama bin Laden's jihadi credentials as fraudulent, ruled that attempts to resist an American attack are a "binding Islamic duty", and he asked Arab leaders to block any aggression against Iraq.

Imagine that the Pope said that Catholics had a moral duty to resist and even fight against Bush's War on Iraq. This is the closest equivalent in the Muslim world. Bush's ham handed policies and actions have managed to anger our last friends in the Middle East, Muslims who wanted to be pro-American. The secularist Saddam Hussein was the natural enemy of the Muslim clerics, but Bush's arrogant crusade has managed to drive the two together.

According to this AP article, "Mustafa Hamarneh of the Strategic Studies Institute at the University of Jordan ... estimated opposition to war at nearly 100 percent in most Mideast societies. In January, he said, a poll showed only 2 percent of Jordanians thought King Abdullah II should assist the United States against Iraq. Now, he said, even that tiny fringe has evaporated. "Anyone who supports the American position is now in hiding," he said."

I spent two years living in the Middle East as a child. Now I would be both embarrassed and afraid to show my face there.

Way to go, Dubya. Now America is more secure?

Dead People, a lot of them

The brave folks at the Memory Hole put up a page, This Is Gulf War 2, of EXTREMELY graphic pictures of dead and wounded people from the war. Americans, Iraqi's, and Brits. Soldiers and civilians. Men, Women and Children. War sucks. Bush and Hussein suck. Humans suck.

Midnight Blog is down

My linklog, the Midnight Blog, can't be reached via its domain name at the moment, because of problems with the Al-Jeerza.net domain being hijacked and stuck on the same nameserver as mine, which of course is now totally overloaded. It can be seen at http://midnight.thebishop.net/. Enjoy.

Brilliant article by Josh Marshall

I usually save links for my linklog, The Midnight Blog, but I just finished reading Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo's new Washington Monthly article, Practice to Deceive, and felt the need to plug it a little more. It's brilliant and important. Marshall ferrets out the Bush administration's plan for the Middle East, as conceived by the Armageddon seeking neocons led by Richard Perle et al. It's not what Bush has been telling the American public. Iraq is just the beginning. The United States isn't done until political Islam is wiped out. A few samples:

When I asked Perle's friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."

This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we've ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won't get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies. ...

"We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."

What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics...

Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.

It's a long article, not for the faint of heart, but it is very highly recommended. Very well written, and Marshall has the good journalist's gift of eliciting some very telling quotes.

Better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness

Working for Change, the website affiliated with the lefty business working for social change, Working Assets, has a list of 5 things you can do about Iraq. From their website:

1. Help Iraqi civilians
2. Buy more billboards with the message "Support our troops -- Bring them home now."
3. Tell Bush No nukes!
4. Support our Troops - Tell Rumsfeld to bring them home
5. Come together - Join Peaceful People in Your Community We urge everyone to find some way to join with friends and neighbors to oppose this war in a visible way. This is not a time to be alone and watch television coverage of the war.

I think some of the suggestions are simpleminded, and I have doubts about their efficacy (an email to Donald Rumsfeld?), but at least they have constructive suggestions for doing something about this awful mess that Bush has gotten us into. I'm not even sure that I agree with their suggested course of action, but on the theory that it is better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness, I recommend heading over to their website and giving them a donation or taking the time to write an email. You might feel better. I did, a little bit.

They aren't watching what we are watching

The Bush administration may be able to influence US media coverage of Bush's War on Iraq, but it is not going to be able to control what the rest of the world sees. It isn't the 1990's any more, and the days of CNN as the only worldwide news network are long gone. According to an article today in the Guardian, 4 million people in Europe signed up to subscribe to the al-Jazeera network in the last week, adding to the 35 million Arabic-speaking viewers it already had. According to the article, al-Jazeera is planning an English speaking channel. The dominant image over the last week? "The head of a child aged about 12 that had been split apart, reportedly in the US-led assault on Basra." That may help teach people to fear the U.S., but it isn't going to do a lot toward winning anybody's heart or mind. Expect to see the CIA help launch a competing Arabic news network in the near future.

At his monthly press conference . . .

In following Bush's war on Iraq, I've been reading a lot of the British press. I was reading an article on the BBC website tonight and ran across the phrase "At his monthly news conference on Tuesday, Mr Blair said he would discuss..." I had never known that Prime Minister Blair holds a monthly press conference, as well as responding to questions in Parliament. What a difference.

Can you imagine if Bush was required to hold a monthly press conference, instead of the two he has had so far since he took over the Presidency? While it might just provide lots of material for the late night comics, I fantasize that it would force him to respond more to people's concerns, and hew a line a little closer to reality. Given the press corps supine fawning in last week's scripted press conference, I am probably just adding one fantasy on top of another, but a man can dream, can't he? How different our systems has become. It truly is the imperial presidency that Nixon dreamed of.

Hearts and Minds

The Guardian has an article saying that the Marines are losing the battle for hearts and minds. I don't buy that -- it is much too early to tell how long and how many Iraqis will actively fight against the occupation of their country. It is clear that the neocon fantasy of American troops being greeted everywhere as liberators was just that, at fantasy. Not that I expect they will ever admit that. But it isn't clear yet whether there will be a critical mass of people willing to fight on after the occupation is established.

What scares me about the article were the echos of the Vietnam war that it evoked in the quotes from the Iraqis and the American soldiers. Fundamentally, the problem is:

Question: How is the American soldier supposed to distinguish between a "good" (supports American occupation of his country) Iraqi and the "bad" (willing to fight against American occupation of his country) Iraqi.

Answer: He or she can't. Therefore, from the soldier's point of view, the only realistic thing to do is to assume that every live Iraqi is a "bad" Iraqi. No matter what the higher-ups order, in order to maximize his or her chances of survival, that is the default premise that the soldier will operate on. This would be true of any soldier from any country occupying a foreign country.

Result: Easy for a few guerrillas to provoke American soldiers into devastating responses, further alienating general population from Americans, and making American soldiers more suspicious and less careful about shooting civilians. Cycle intensifies as it repeats

Not many hearts and minds get won over this way. Ask the French in Algeria, the Russians in Chechnya (and before that Afghanistan), the Israelis on the West Bank, or the Americans who served in Vietnam.

Read the article and see if you can find the parallels. Highly recommended.

Don't you think this is getting a little incestuous?

Weblogs commenting on media stories commenting on weblogs commenting on media stories commenting on web...

Or is the word l am looking for tautological?

Anyway I am glad that weblogs are getting some press, and they are getting away from the stupid "Are weblogs journalism debate?" and focusing more on the benefits (and drawbacks) of weblogging in bringing unmediated experiences, building community, and enabling people as creators of content, not just consumers. Still, there is something incestuous about it.

And media become more like weblogs ...
Improved Tools Turn Journalists Into a Quick Strike Force: "Some media critics say the technology's potential benefits can be undermined by the pressure it places on reporters to be filing continually simply because it is possible to do so." Sounds a lot like a weblog.

Googling phone numbers

I just found out via Dave Farber's IP list that if you type your phone number into Google, 510-843-0610, you get a reverse directory listing with your name and address, if you have divulged such to the phone company. This is another example of how technology is changing the boundaries of our privacy, and how a difference in degree can also be a difference in quality. Reverse phone directories have been available to businesses for many years, but they were not particularly advertised or easy to get. Now anyone on the planet can find out a lot about me from my phone number. Security experts scoff at security through obscurity, because the obscurity often conceals flaws in the security, and because a determined person can almost always penetrate the obscurity, but they forget that our social interactions often rely on obscurity to create boundaries. Usually, when we give people our phone numbers we don't assume that we are giving them our home addresses as well. Now we are.

Google does provide a fairly painless, although not well advertised, page that lets you opt-out, but unless you know the feature exists, you aren't likely to opt out. I wonder why Google is willing to take the PR hit it will get for this?

Why Bush sticks in my craw

Bush's worldview is extremely rigid, circumscribed by the good-versus-evil religious convictions to which he has adhered since his recovery from alcoholism seventeen years ago. "Practically," Brookhiser writes, "Bush's faith means that he does not tolerate, or even recognize, ambiguity: there is an all-knowing God who decrees certain behaviors, and leaders must obey." While this clear-cut belief structure enables him to make split-second decisions and take action with principled confidence, it also means that he is limited by "strictly defined mental horizons." ... Abstract, imaginative thinking, Brookhiser emphasizes, is not the President's strong suit.

The quote above goes a long way to explaining why Bush sticks in my craw so badly. It comes from Sage Stossel's write-up of an interview that he did with Richard Brookhiser, a historian and journalist for the National Review who just did a long and mostly sympathetic profile of George W. Bush, "The Mind of George W. Bush", for the Atlantic Magazine. I was struck by the quote because it describes exactly the quality of Bush's that I find most repellent. George W. Bush is so sure that he is right that he can't even hear other points of view, much less imagine that they might be correct. Besides the fact that I often disagree with Bush's policies, I find the arrogance of his certainty infuriating, and a fatal flaw in a leader. It has nothing to do with religion -- that is a red herring. The excesses of the dot com boom are only the most recent reminder that the religious have no monopoly on arrogance and hubris.

I gather that people besides just partisans of Bush actually find this rigidity and lack of tolerance for ambiguity attractive (at least until they run into it on some point where they disagree with him on something). I understand that it stands in stark contrast to his predecessor Clinton, who seemed to lack a moral compass, and who was portrayed (unfairly, I suspect) as not being able to make a decision without consulting his pollster. I also understand the hunger people have for a politician who stands for something, almost anything. I occasionally find myself supporting John McCain, a right-wing Republican, for those reasons. However, in Bush's case, I fear that people are confusing the necessary qualities of decisiveness and judgment with the fatal qualities of hubris and arrogance.

In my experiences as a leader, from being a project manager, then running a division of a small public company, then helping run a small start-up, being decisive was very important, but being a good listener and seeking out other points of view were equally important. A little humility goes a long way. I've found the old saw by Mark Twain, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so" is right on. As a leader of a strongly hierarchical organization, like a business or a government, you have to seek out other points of view and listen to them. Those points of view will not come to you, because of the nature of hierarchy makes most people tell you what they think want to hear. And without those points of view, you miss important information and you make big mistakes. You also need to be humble enough to open up your mind to the possibility that you are wrong. If your mind is closed in the first place, other points of view will not try to make themselves heard, and not only are you guaranteed to make big mistakes, but people who might have been your natural allies helping you out will actively work against you instead. We can see this happening today, in the world's reaction to Bush's War on Iraq. When Bush gave the impression of listening as well as talking, and being willing to work through multilateral institutions, countries supported US policies, with modifications of course. When it became clear that Bush had no intention of changing his course even a single degree, and that his method of working with multilateral institutions was to issue ultimatums to them, people lined up to oppose his policies, even when they agreed with his ultimate objective.

Bush's arrogance doesn't serve him well, and more importantly, it doesn't serve America well.

No dead American's or POW's on TV. Only dead or happy Iraqis

I have no desire to look at pictures of dead Americans (or dead Iraqi's), or to see and hear scared young Americans say whatever they think will please their captors and not get them in too much trouble with the US military. I watched about 30 seconds of one video clip, and that was enough for me for this year. I don't usually watch TV, and I haven't read anything about this war that would make me change my mind.

However, I deeply resent Rumsfeld trying to intimidate the American media into not showing pictures of American POW's and American dead, as evidenced by this Reuters Story.

Sources at Central Command in Qatar said the U.S. had e-mailed media organizations to formally ask them not to broadcast the pictures of the U.S. dead or captured...."The Geneva Convention indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war," Rumsfeld said. "And if they do happen to be American or coalition ground forces that have been captured, the Geneva Convention indicates how they should be treated."

Interviewed later on CNN, Rumsfeld said, "and needless to say, television networks that carry such pictures are, I would say, doing something that's unfortunate."...

Despite the controversy over showing pictures of U.S. prisoners, images of Iraqi prisoners have appeared in U.S. and British media in the past days, although some had their faces deliberately blurred.

These clips are being shown all over the world today. Clearly, what Rumsfeld is afraid of is that having Americans see the beginning of the cost that we will have to pay for Bush's War on Iraq may start to reduce the support for it. The neocon's remember the whole Somali experience, where the photographed death of American soldiers and the desecration of their bodies turned the American public against "nation-building in Somali. Wars, even high-tech wars, are expensive in more than money. They cost people. If you care to look at the evidence, you should be able to. With that in mind, I offer the following links. I have not looked at them myself, trying to keep to my no TV pledge.

Sources for the video clips:
One
Two

Stills (some very graphic)
One
Two

I'm not a praying person, but I have found it helpful to go to the site of a praying man, pen-named Real Live Preacher. He has written some helpful things.

Update 3/25/2003: The rest of the world has noticed our hypocrisy in this regard, furious about American prisoners on display while putting Iraqi prisoners on display. For instance, see this English article on Al Jazeera, and this editorial in the UK Mirror. Our hypocrisy doesn't serve us well in our supposed battle for hearts and minds.

Fiddling while Baghdad burns

I couldn't take any more of the war after a while today, so I buried myself in blogtech. I redid the design of my link log, The Midnight Blog, to make 3 columns using CSS. Let me know what you think of it, and if you find any bugs. I've only been able test it with IE 5.5 and Mozilla 1.1 on Win2K. I've been thinking of redoing the design of this site as well, so this is sort of a test run. I have gotten really tired of the relative fonts that took me so long to hack in, so know I am considering going with a multiple stylesheet solution, like Daily Kos and I Me Michael have.

Speaking of comments, I know that I have some regular readers, and according to my referrer logs a fair number of people stop by. Do me a favor and leave me a comment, will ya? While I've had a lot of readers recently, I haven't had many comments. Comments and conversation are a large part of what this is about for me. I don't really care what you say, just react somehow. It's too much work to write all this if it isn't part of a conversation.

Phil Ringalda. Nice guy

I check Phil Ringnalda's site daily, because he is always finding cool new blogtech toys, and he is a fount of information about Movable Type. Plus he tends to run into the bugs before I or most other people do. Coward that I am, I never download a new version of MT until I see that Phil has been using it for a few days first. He is also very responsive to questions left in comments on his site. An all around nice guy, at least in his blogging incarnation. (I know nothing about Phil in real life. I thought I was reticent about my personal life, but I am a blabber mouth compared to Phil. For all I know he is the evil CEO of a company that makes its money using third world slave labor to extract scarce resources that are used to make weapons for dictators, polluting the environment and stealing from shareholders as he goes. But I doubt it.)

I was browsing his site last night and noticed that he was linking to an interview with him. I read the interview (a good read, with some blogger history I didn't know), which concludes:

Recorder: Finally, if Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say about your blog at the Pearly Gates?

Phil: That's a really scary thought, Judgment Day based on your blog. How about "sometimes, you really were capable of being a nice guy"?

In my experience, Phil is an incredibly nice guy, and his blog is very useful. I thought I'd use the two minutes it would take to tell him so, since my efforts at stopping Bush's War on Iraq and bringing World Peace to the Earth don't seem to be working. So I wrote a gushing fan mail comment, and appended to it an idle question about pMachine. I occasionally toy with the idea burning up still more formerly billable hours by switching over to a PHP based weblogging tool, since I am totally intimidated by Ben's Perl code, but I can hack around a bit in PHP.

In response, I got 2 pages of reviews of PHP based weblogging tools, with detailed pros and cons, from Phil and from another visitor to his site, Michael, posted on Phil's site. If that isn't being a nice guy, I don't know what is. Thank you, Phil.

3rd US diplomat, Ann Wright, resigns over Iraq policy

Ann Wright, a career Foreign Service officer and colonel in the Army Reserves, who served America for almost 30 years in some of the roughest places in the world, resigned Friday in protest over Bush's policies. She is the third career Foreign Service officer to resign over Bush's Iraq policy in the last two weeks, joining John Brady Kiesling and John H. Brown, who I have written about earlier. Given my experience with the State department, if there have been 3 resignations then I'd guess that anger over Bush foreign policy idiocies is boiling over inside the State Department building in Foggy Bottom. Maybe America could take a minute to listen to the Americans who have the most experience dealing with the outside world? For instance,

I strongly disagree with the use of a “preemptive attack” against Iraq and believe that this preemptive attack policy will be used against us and provide justification for individuals and groups to “preemptively attack” America and American citizens.

Ann Wright was the number 2 in our embassy in Mongolia, and she was a decorated veteran of some of the toughest places that the US State Department sends people. Before her current post, she helped reopen our Embassy in Afghanistan in October of 2001. She also served in Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Sierra Leone, so she has some experience with Muslim countries. She served in the Army and Army reserves before becoming a diplomat. Due to the timing of her resignation, it hasn't gotten nearly the publicity of the earlier ones. I think her record entitles her to a hearing. Here are some excerpts from her resignation letter:

Countries of the world supported America’s action in Afghanistan as a response to the September 11 Al Qaida attacks on America. Since then, America has lost the incredible sympathy of most of the world because of our policy toward Iraq. Much of the world considers our statements about Iraq as arrogant, untruthful and masking a hidden agenda. Leaders of moderate Moslem/Arab countries warn us about predicable outrage and anger of the youth of their countries if America enters an Arab country with the purpose of attacking Moslems/Arabs, not defending them. Attacking the Saddam regime in Iraq now is very different than expelling the same regime from Kuwait, as we did ten years ago.

I strongly believe the probable response of many Arabs of the region and Moslems of the world if the US enters Iraq without UNSC agreement will result in actions extraordinarily dangerous to America and Americans. ... I strongly disagree with the use of a “preemptive attack” against Iraq and believe that this preemptive attack policy will be used against us and provide justification for individuals and groups to “preemptively attack” America and American citizens.

We should not give extremist Moslems/ Arabs a further cause to hate America, or give moderate Moslems a reason to join the extremists. Additionally, we must reevaluate keeping our military forces in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Their presence on the Islamic “holy soil” of Saudi Arabia will be an anti-American rally cry for Moslems as long as the US military remains and a strong reason, in their opinion, for actions against the US government and American citizens...

Additionally, I cannot support the Administration’s position on North Korea. With weapons, bombs and missiles, the risks that North Korea poses are too great to ignore. I strongly believe the Administration’s lack of substantive discussion, dialogue and engagement over the last two years has jeopardized security on the peninsula and the region. The situation with North Korea is dangerous for us to continue to neglect.

Further, I cannot support the Administration’s unnecessary curtailment of civil rights following September 11. The investigation of those suspected of ties with terrorist organizations is critical but the legal system of America for 200 years has been based on standards that provide protections for persons during the investigation period. Solitary confinement without access to legal counsel cuts the heart out of the legal foundation on which our country stands. Additionally, I believe the Administration’s secrecy in the judicial process has created an atmosphere of fear to speak out against the gutting of the protections on which America was built and the protections we encourage other countries to provide to their citizens.

Mary A. Wright. Diplomat, Soldier, and American Hero.

Why a deadly disease might be coming your way soon

Slate has a terrifying article on the state of the public health system, and antiviral and antibiotic drug development. It is basically a review of the U.S. Institute of Medicine's report, Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response. The conclusion: we have been gutting our public health infrastructure for years, and have not provided the drug companies with incentives to develop antibiotics and antiviral medicines. As a result, we are primed for a worldwide pandemic.

Does anyone think that $762 billion dollar tax cuts are going to help? I guess it will be like terrorism - aside from a few professionals and a few nuts, nobody will pay attention until we have a massive epidemic, and then we will probably do the wrong things, as the biggest pigs push their way to the troughs.

I guess my reading tonight hasn't made me very optimistic. Sorry.

When Bush has a bad hair day, the world suffers

I finally found a video clip of that that news feed that I referred to yesterday, where the BBC showed video of Bush having his hair blow-dried immediately before making his unilateral declaration of war. More background at We begin combing in five minutes.

The Smoking Gun has a 10 second excerpt from the clip.

On one level, it is unfair to Bush. Every politician has gotten made up and coiffed before going on TV, ever since Richard Nixon became convinced he lost the 1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy because of his 5 o'clock shadow during the presidential debates (this was before Don Johnson and grunge). On the other hand, the juxtaposition between looking good for TV and unilaterally declaring a war that will cost umpteen lives and dollars is startling at best, criminal at worst. Bush did say the equivalent of "the bombing begins in 5 minutes," but unlike Reagan, he wasn't joking.

Enjoy.

Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness and Scum, cashes in on Pentagon role

Richard Perle, Prince of Darkness, is scum. This man's past achievements include being the preeminent foe of arms control treaties and international organizations in the Reagan administration, serving as a lobbyist for Turkey and Israel, being the intellectual godfather of Bush's War on Iraq, and recently calling one of America's best journalists, Sy Hersh, "the next thing to a terrorist". Today he was revealed to be cashing in on his position as head of the Defense Advisory Board and his closeness to the Pentagon. According to an article in the NYT, Pentagon Adviser Is Also Advising Global Crossing, Perle will be paid more than half a million dollars if he can convince the Pentagon that it's OK for the Chinese to own the fiber network that the US uses for communications. Some quotes:

Perle is to be paid $725,000 by the company [Global Crossing], including $600,000 if the government approves the sale of the company...Perle has taken on a particularly important role, they said, since the company recently pulled back its request for the government to clear the sale in the face of opposition from the Defense Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those agencies have said that the proposed deal presents national security and law enforcement problems, because it would put Global Crossing's worldwide fiber optics network — one used by the United States government — under Chinese ownership... Mr. Perle and his lawyers were preparing to file an affidavit dated March 7 and a legal notice dated today, March 20, that said he was uniquely qualified to advise the company on the matter because of his job as head of the Defense Policy Board...Mr. Perle's fee was largely contingent on the deal's being approved, an unusual arrangement in Washington legal circles.

Mr. Perle, who as chairman of the Defense Policy Board has been a leading advocate of the United States' invasion of Iraq, spoke on Wednesday in a conference call sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which he advised participants on possible investment opportunities arising from the war. The conference's title was "Implications of an Imminent War: Iraq Now. North Korea Next?"

Perle and his lawyers claim that there is nothing in Perle's deal with Global Crossing that violates ethics rules. If there isn't, then there certainly should be. Perle certainly isn't the only one involved in such slimly dealings, nor are such dealings limited to Republicans. Not to be outdone, some Democratic scum are in the deal too:

Among others who have been retained to gain approval of the proposed deal are Thomas F. McLarty III, the former Clinton chief of staff; Stuart E. Eizenstat, a former deputy Treasury secretary

Excuse the soapbox here, but legalized corruption like this is destroying our Republic, and it is destroying citizen's confidence in government and in our other institutions, and their willingness to contribute to society. Why get in involved in politics, why contribute to the common welfare, if shady crooks like the folks who ran Global Crossing can always hire former government slime like Perle & Co. to buy their way out of trouble.

How far we have come from "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country?"

Kudos to Stephen Labaton of the NYT for some fine investigative journalism. Digging up stories like this is what newspapers are supposed to do.

The Bully Factor

A good Washington Post article (pulled from later editions of the paper) points out that it isn't just international friends who get bullied by Bush -- domestic allies are subject to the same treatment. What's next, an "enemies list?"

The War on the Web

Slate has a nice roundup of places to get news of the war. I've started my own Iraq blogroll, but I'm not particularly interested in following the military campaign, blow by blow, literally in this case. At this point I assume that most of what we will get is "bang bang," heavy on supposed drama, war toys and "entertainment value", light on people's thoughts and analysis.

But the news junkie in me will probably still check twice daily to see what's happening.

Technorati's answer to Google News

And now for some blogtech for news junkies. Dave Sifry has whipped up a cool little addition to Technocrati, Current Events. Find out what stories bloggers have been talking about for the last two hours! Find out what they are saying (after Dave bumps the type size up)!

A fun new toy.

Courage comes in all forms: John Brady Kiesling argues for Preserving America's Moral Capital

I went to hear John Brady Kiesling's talk at the Bechtel Auditorium at UC Berkeley tonight. It was a packed house, a few undergrads but mostly graduate students, professors, and Berkeley townspeople, filling up the chairs, sitting on the floor in front and in the aisles, and crowding around the doorways (I gather some of the undergraduates were out making their unhappiness with Bush's War known in a more traditional fashion.)

Kiesling, author of the now famous resignation letter, was given a standing ovation when he entered the hall. He gave a great talk (although the Q&A, below, had the juiciest one-liners). He said that while he wished he could say that he was happy to be a temporary celebrity and giving talks, he wasn't. He said that last night, when Bush started the war against Iraq, marked a turning point in our history. It is the first time that the United States has struck the first blow. The United States has also imposed its own unilateral judgment that Iraqi freedom from the oppressive regime of Saddam Hussein was worth killing Iraqis for. He said that while he prayed for a quick and bloodless victory by our troops, followed by a rapid physical reconstruction and establishment of democracy, he didn't think it was very likely.

He talked about his experiences since joining the Foreign Service in 1983. Then the United States had vast reservoirs of good will and moral capital. It was seen as strong in wealth and virtuous institutions, and as having avoided many of the vices of imperialism. It was truly the leader of the free world, and that leadership was willingly given to it. Recently, however the United States has been depleting that reservoir at an alarming rate, and not replenishing it, e.g. Kyoto, Test-Ban Treaty, ABM treaty, Trade liberalism, AIDs medicines for poorer countries, etc. Kiesling resigned his position as political officer in Athens because he personally found it intolerable to be defending Bush's policies. Plus, he felt that Bush owed it to the American people to have a real debate on the costs and benefits of his unilateralism, and that debate wasn't happening. He wanted a license to speak, and an audience to listen.

He talked about how much Greek and European perceptions of America have changed. In Greece, Bush is now called "Ruler of the Universe." It is not a complement. The Greeks and many Europeans have become afraid of us, and of what we might do. They believe that the current administration has come to the conclusion that it doesn't need allies, and that it has given up on the values of democracy and international cooperation. They fear that since 911, America has become like a wounded rogue elephant, trampling everything in its path. Kiesling said that he is sure that if the world's people had had a little more trust and faith in the United States, they might have been more willing to join our Iraq policy. The United States seems to have forgotten that most of its foreign policy goals are not attainable militarily.

Kiesling talked about the war, and how "the war that we see on our television screens is not the war that is happening," by which I presumed he meant that is was not true to what the Iraqi's are experiencing. He also said that he hoped the Iraqi people would not react the way that Americans would react to having their country invaded and occupied, but he feared they would. They are nationalists too. Also, "terrorism is the favorite weapon of the powerless." Making war on Iraq is going to increase, not reduce terrorism. He talked about how Bush's vision of democracy has absolutely no legitimacy in the Middle East. Whether you like it or not, the fact is that the Muslim perception of unconditional support by the United States for Israel's leadership, no matter what their policies are, has eliminated our moral authority and credibility in the Middle East. Kiesling was especially scathing about the theory advanced by some prominent neo-conservatives that "Arabs only respect power." He said, in my experience with Arabs, they have the same human nature as anyone else: "Fear breeds hatred, not love."

He concluded his talk on a determinedly optimistic note, saying that in his experience, Americans want to do good, and that the tide will turn. And in the past, when America has offered a positive vision to the world, the world has responded. And it will again.

The question and answer period was as interesting as the t