March 31, 2003
i feel sick
here's wonderful british editorial that does an excellent job spelling out the evils of the conservative regime in washington. after reading it i had two reactions one was to go out in the street and fight, the other was to move.
the canadian's respond
the canadians respond to our ambasador's idiotic comments. pardon me, i'm going to quote liberally:
"There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would not be ready, willing and able to help with," you are quoted as saying. "There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation. We would be there for Canada, part of our family."
Codswallop. And that's being diplomatic.
The primary threat to Canadian security has always been the United States. A monument in Quebec honours my earliest Canadian ancestor for repelling an invasion from your home state of Massachusetts in 1690. The very first instance of military co-operation among the 13 colonies occurred in 1745 under the leadership of James Shirley, your predecessor as governor of Massachusetts, whose army invaded Nova Scotia and captured the Fortress of Louisbourg.
Thirty years later, during the American Revolution, your privateers sacked our ports. We were at war once more in 1812-15. The birth of Canada in 1867 was prompted by fears of a U.S. invasion. That's why our railroad runs along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, far from the U.S. border.
Do you remember manifest destiny, the 1840s U.S. doctrine which held that your country had a God-given mission to rule all of North America? Do you remember "Fifty-four-forty or fight," the slogan that rallied Americans to threaten an invasion in 1902 over the Alaska boundary? Yours is the only country that has ever invaded ours, and it would do so again in a wink if it thought its interests here were seriously threatened.
william saffire actually has a good idea
Since [Lt. Gen. John] Abizaid [General Franks deputy] speaks fluent Arabic, why doesn't he hold a cool news conference with angry Arab journalists?
good question.
back in school
krista and i drove back up from reno yesterday. it was a pretty fun spring break. i'll have some pictures up pretty soon.
March 30, 2003
preflight checklist
this is making the internet rounds: it's the Vietnam 2 Preflight Checklist:
- Cabal of oldsters who won't listen to outside advice? Check.
- No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
- National boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
- Unshakable faith in our superior technology? Check.
- France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
- Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
- China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
- SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
- Fear we'll look bad if we back down now? Check.
- Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
- Land war in Asia? Check.
- Rightists unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
- Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
- Soldiers about to be dosed with our own chemicals? Check.
- Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
- Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
- B-52 bombers? Check.
- Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
- Infighting among the branches of the military? Check.
- Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
- Local experts ignored? Check.
- Local politicians ignored? Check.
- Local conflicts since before the USA has been a country? Check.
- Against advice, Prez won't raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
- Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
- Use of nukes hinted at if things don't go our way? Check.
- Unpopular war? Check.
Vietnam II, you are cleared to taxi.
March 29, 2003
how about this war?
been watching the news again. it doesn't appear the "cakewalk" predicted by pre-attack conventional wisdom has come to pass. i'll admit i bought into it. a year and a half ago everyone got done talking about how afghanistan was going to be the next vietnam ended up with egg on their face. people started to think that rumsfield actually knew what he was talking about. it's a good thing tommy franks got his way.
at this point i don't really consider myself anti-war. i'm anti-"bush and his administration". i'm anti-saddam. at this point though we've incurred the major diplomatic costs and if we stop it now saddam's in that much stronger of a position. my big question is what happens when the troops get to baghdad. they've got to get saddam and if we had a clue where he was we'd have bombed the hell out of it. it seems like they ought to just replace the little star they use to mark baghdad on the tv maps with a big question mark.
quote that's making the rounds
"You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don't want to go to war!"
March 28, 2003
quick hits
- short news links
- background on the video uplink the embeded reporters are using.
- first the french, now the canadians are in for it.
- the fuckups with our turkish diplomacy, point-by-point.
- clear channel communication's role in the pro-war rallies.
- The president, this young congressman argues, would have "gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him."
March 25, 2003
arab news
i've been looking at some of the english versions of arabic news sites. daralhayat seems to have a good range of articles on most world events. the english translation (or writing) is very readable and they seem to present a wide range of arab views. it actually comes off as about as balanced as your average american news outlet (obviously not including fox news) and their bush critiques are actually very insightful. it'd be nice if we could get some of that over here.
server upgrade
i'm going to be finishing upgrading the server to the new version of freebsd tomorrow so if the server is down for a bit that's why. i don't anticipate any trouble though.
March 24, 2003
the peace activist killed in israel
salon has a story about the peace activist from washington that was killed when the isreali army ran her over with a bulldozer. the israeli's claim it was an accident but after looking at these pictures it's a bit hard to believe that.
the npr stations up in portland picked up the story because she was a local but i don't think it got much notice in the rest of the country. i'd really like to go over there and spend a semester acting as an observer.
one pissed off cat
i'm not usually one for the cutesy links my mom forwards me but this one is different. tell me that isn't a funny picture of that cat.
March 22, 2003
one moldy truck
got into my truck this morning after maybe two months of the carfree lifestyle and found a supprise. i hadn't rolled up one of the windows completely and out of nowhere some grad students started a mold research project in there. i hit it with the simple green the smell of the cure might be worse, i'm going to stop and buy enough airfreshener to have it smelling like a jeek cab.
spring break
school finished up on tuesday. well see how the finals went. i'm a bit worried about two of them.
tomorrow i'm headed down to see my grandma in california, then over to reno for spring break. krista's going to fly over on wednesday and meet the folks and see the sights. i'm really looking forward to it. she made me promise three times that i won't forget to pick her up at the airpot.
the way republicans talk you'd think they like veterans
you've got to wonder how the gop sets their priorities. in the middle of a war they started they're now looking to slash veteran's funding to pay for tax cuts.
super bug comes to america
i've been following the sars "superbug" as it's spread from asia and i've got to tell you it scares me a lot more than the thought of any terrorists. next thing you know george will be telling us sadam's wmd project caused it.
March 20, 2003
March 18, 2003
the coming war
i'm a bit alarmed by all the neocon hawks that try to equate opposition to the war with failing to support the troops. this seems like a pretty baseless attack held over from the vietnam era protesters. the majority of people at the rallies and protests i've been to all support the people in uniform, it's the civilian leadership they've got a problem with. unlike in say, turkey, for the most part our military doesn't make policy it just follows orders. the military leadership actually seems to be one of the more responsible actors in bush's war. the white house has consistently given unrealistically low estimates of the costs and number of troops required. (remember laurence lindsey's estimate of $200 billion? odd how he's not around any more eh?). on the few occasion when the military offered estimates that differed from bush's they were rebuked.
i have little doubt or armed forces will be able to prevail in iraq. i think the big unknown will be the casualties. in the first bush's war, all the fighting was done in the open, this time unless sadam just rolls over (unlikely) or iraq's military abandons him (rather possible) we're going to be doing quite a bit more close combat where our technological advantage will be minimized. hence our military's focus on the "shock and awe" hoping to cause a quick surrender.
again, i think we'll have no problem with the fighting itself, what i'm worried about is the aftermath. our allies paid for the majority of desert storm (~$50 of the $60 billion price tag) but at this point we've got, what, five allies? hardly the 26 countries we had on our side in desert storm. we're going to bear the burden of reconstructing iraq and we've got a pretty bad track record. afghanistan isn't doing so well, nor is somalia, and haiti's having a rough time (oh yeah, remember hati?). yugoslavia, which is doing much better, would seem to be the exception, but i'd chalk that up to our and our allies' presence there.
now that it looks like war is a certainty i hope it goes quickly and that there are as few casualties as possible on both sides. i hope we stick around there long enough to set things right but i fear that won't be the case. i imagine in six months bush will have his sights set on iran or north korea, or he'll remember his father's fate and start worrying about the economy. either way the fate of the iraqi people doesn't look so good.
March 17, 2003
more bike trip photos
i've finally gotten around to scanning and uploading all (well, almost all) my photos from the cross country bike trip brad and i took in 2001. if you've got a minute check out the gallery. you might also want to read the journal entries.
what happened to php?
looks like my php went down. not sure why, maybe the gallery got slammed. i'm looking into it. update: fixed it.
March 16, 2003
24 hours
debkafile, a hebrew news site, seems to think that bush's war will start in the next 24 hours:
Israeli hospitals told to complete sealing process of wards and facilities by Monday morning. Sunday noon, Israel's First-Aid rescue service Magen David Adom moved command and communications centers to bomb-proof shelters
...
DEBKAfile's Military Sources: Full-scale US-British offensive against Iraq is scheduled to begin Monday, 24 hours after Azores summit
First stage: Combined bomber-missile strikes against strategic targets, including government centers, military and civilian communications systems, radio and television broadcasting centers, transport hubs.
Preparations wind up Sunday night to fly and parachute ground troops into Iraq from launching bases in and outside Middle East. US 82nd Airborne Division will be flown in from Afghanistan.
March 15, 2003
potest pictures
people turned out in force for the protest today. it was a great time and i took a bunch of photos. some are better than others but they're almost all up in the gallery.
estimates range from 35,000-55,000 people. there were plenty of dirty hippies and people with stupid slogans on their signs but i really didn't care. i was just happy to see this many people out showing their displeasure for the second bush's war (i refuse to call it another gulf war).
i spent quite a bit of time talking to the people counter-protesting. i got really annoyed a the "peace" protesters who went out their way to start shouting matches with the hawks. anyway it was great to see this many people that actually give a shit about what our country does but i don't think it's going to change bush's mind.
get your protest on
big protest againt bush and his war in portland this afternoon. i'm looking forward to it. i'll try to take some pictures and get them up pretty quick.
March 09, 2003
wooohoo faint tickets
got 4 ticket to see the faint on april 16th. it'll be bill spaceman, krista, myself and someone else. stoked.
March 06, 2003
bush is so full of shit
oh man, i've been listening to bush's little press conference and i'm about to have a fucking seizure. i'd love to have a count of the number of times he mentions the word terrorism or terrorist. he keeps taking about it but where is the clear link?
"america's not alone" well were didn't used to be. you fixed that.
i start to hope that someone will just wack him, then it occurs to me that cheney wouldn't be any better.
"we will respect innocent life in iraq" well that'll be a nice change from the last 20 years.
those weapons of mass destruction he's used, those weren't the ones we gave him were they?
his super-optimistic view of the out come of this war makes me very uneasy. remember afghanistan? hear anything about how well stuff's been going there recently?
is he reading these responses? it seems like he's repeating the same answer to each question. i'm constantly amazed at how simple this man is. we've elected a moron. correction: we've elected a christian fundamentalist facioust moron. all this shit about praying for peace. he prays he'll get to start a war and ride it to reelection.
who are the joker reporters and why are they asking such softball questions?
you're afraid north korea's nuclear wepons might end up in the hands of dictators? like the north koreans? you moron.
March 03, 2003
photos of charlie
my brother, master of the self portrait, has a photo gallery and now he's actually posting stuff. everyone should check it out.
