Rothbardite on foreign policy, but otherwise pretty good stuff.

10:38 video

Because we failed to persuade the locals that they were really defeated in a war, before we empowered them and allowed them to form their own government. We now have a terrorist convicted of bombing US and French embassies sitting in Iraq’s parliament as a member of the governing coalition, while operating as an Iranian agent.

CNN.

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq’s parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed’s seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki’s government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, whom it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as “a conduit for weapons and political influence.”

“Charlie Hebdo Must Be Veiled!”

Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical weekly which was the only publication in France to reprint the Danish Mohammed cartoons, is appearing today before the Correctional Tribunal of Paris facing accusations by Islamic Organisations of France and the Grand Mosque of Paris that reprinting the cartoons was a violation of French laws prohibiting politically incorrect expression.

AP:

Charlie-Hebdo and the publication’s director, Philippe Val, are charged with “publicly slandering a group of people because of their religion.” The charge carries a possible six-month prison sentence and a fine of up to $28,530.

Guardian

New Straits Times

Al Jazeera reports:

In an act of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, French newspaper Libération printed the contested cartoons once more on Wednesday.

“It is not words which wound, or pictures that kill. It is bombs,” the daily said, calling the trial “idiotic”.

Never Yet Melted 8 Feb 2006

Michael Geist, in the Toronto Star, points out some things about Microsoft’s new Vista operating system, which are enough to make me think twice about my future OS plans.

For the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista’s “fine print.” Those communities have raised red flags about Vista’s legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.

The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the “user experience” from the user.

Vista’s legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user’s knowledge. During the installation process, users “activate” Vista by associating it with a particular computer or device and transmitting certain hardware information directly to Microsoft.

Even after installation, the legal agreement grants Microsoft the right to revalidate the software or to require users to reactivate it should they make changes to their computer components. In addition, it sets significant limits on the ability to copy or transfer the software, prohibiting anything more than a single backup copy and setting strict limits on transferring the software to different devices or users.

Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for “spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software.” The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software.

Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated “high” or “severe,” even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted.

For greater certainty, the terms and conditions remove any doubt about who is in control by providing that “this agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights.” For those users frustrated by the software’s limitations, Microsoft cautions that “you may not work around any technical limitations in the software.”

Those technical limitations have proven to be even more controversial than the legal ones.

Last December, Peter Gutmann, a computer scientist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand released a paper called “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.” The paper pieced together the technical fine print behind Vista, unraveling numerous limitations in the new software seemingly installed at the direct request of Hollywood interests.

Guttman focused primarily on the restrictions associated with the ability to play back high-definition content from the next-generation DVDs such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD (referred to as “premium content”).

He noted that Vista intentionally degrades the picture quality of premium content when played on most computer monitors.

Guttman’s research suggests that consumers will pay more for less with poorer picture quality yet higher costs since Microsoft needed to obtain licenses from third parties in order to access the technology that protects premium content (those license fees were presumably incorporated into Vista’s price).

Moreover, he calculated that the technological controls would require considerable consumption of computing power with the system conducting 30 checks each second to ensure that there are no attacks on the security of the premium content.

Good grief! I can just imagine how many programs will get removed by Defender.

Things are not going so well for Conservatism today. The movement has fragmented here and there. Libertarians like Glenn Reynolds don’t want to consider themselves conservatives these days. Former comrades-in-arms, like Andrew Sullivan and John Cole, have jumped the fence to the left. And the inimitable Taki Theodoracopulos has wandered off into the Paleocon fever-swamp where Pat Buchanan got lost.

The New York Post today reports that Taki is starting his own blog, titled Taki’s Top Drawer, with a self-described mission “to shake up the world of so-called ‘conservative’ opinion.”

For the past ten years at least, the conservative movement has been dominated by a bunch of pudgy, pasty-faced kids in bow-ties and blue blazers who spent their youths playing Risk in gothic dormitories, while sipping port and smoking their father’s stolen cigars. Thanks to the tragedy of September 11—and a compliant and dim-witted president—these kids got the chance to play Risk with real soldiers, with American soldiers. Patriotic men and women are dying over in Iraq for a war that was never in America’s interests. And now these spitball gunners, these chicken hawks, want to attack Iran—which is no threat to the U.S. at all.

One thing I can tell you for sure, there may well be some atheists in foxholes—but you’ll never find a neocon. They prefer to send blue-collar kids out to die on their behalf, so they get to feel macho—and make up for all the times they got wedgies in prep school. It shall be our considered task to take on the chicken-hawks of this world, and give them wedgies again.”

We want to reflect a traditional conservatism that prefers peace with honor to proxy wars, Western civilization to multicultural barbarism, Christendom to the European Union, and Russell Kirk to Leon Trotsky. This will undoubtedly infuriate many in the mainstream ‘conservative’ movement, who have transferred their loyalties elsewhere. It’s time to raise their blood pressure a few points—and help them burn off some of those five-course meals they’ve been eating down on K Street.

It doesn’t look like all this is going to work out well at all. A highly dyspeptic Justin Raimondo is leading off today with an attack on loveable old Rush Limbaugh (!), along with lots of others on the Right. But I’ve always liked Taki, so I linked it in the Sound Blogs category (for now). We will make a point of giving Taki a chance, before exiling him to join Kos and Andrew Sullivan.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

Ralph de Toledano, circa 1950

Ralph de Toledano, one of the most prominent figures of the Conservative Movement during the 1950s and 1960s, died in Washington on Saturday at 90 years of age. He wrote a major newspaper column, appeared on radio and television, was one of the founders of National Review, served for twenty years on the editorial board of Newsweek, and published 25 books.

Toledano was born in Tangier, Morocco to American parents of Shephardic Jewish descent. He attended Julliard, and graduated from Columbia University in 1938.

In the 1930s, he joined the Socialist Party of America, and was made youth leader of its anti-Communist “old guard” faction. He became editor of the old guard magazine New Leader in 1934. Under Toledano’s editorship, it became one of the most forceful and effective anti-Communist journals of that era.

He served in the US Army, and in the OSS during WWII.

Toledano was one of the most prominent of a very small number conservative voices in 1950s and 1960s America. He was an extremely prolific journalist and his nationally syndicated column was highly influential in the rise of the Conservative Movement. He deserves to be remembered with affection and respect for his passionate anti-Communism and devoted service to the cause of Liberty.

New York Times

Washington Times

Wikipedia

The Telegraph explains why the Bush Administration’s promised news conference of Iranian activities in Iraq has been delayed. It’s the State Department and the CIA footdragging again.

America’s military chiefs are at loggerheads with the country’s diplomats and spies over tactics for confronting Iranian agents in Iraq over their role in lethal attacks on US forces.

The rift has spilled over into a dispute about how and when to publish alleged evidence of Iranian backing for Iraqi militias and Iran’s provision of supplies and technology for roadside bombs, the biggest killer of American soldiers in Iraq, a White House adviser revealed…

Angered by the mounting toll of troops killed by ever-more sophisticated devices, US commanders insisted last month that the White House give them authority to target and kill Iranian operatives in Iraq as part of the new 21,500-troop “surge” strategy ordered by Mr Bush.

But the State Department, headed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the CIA had argued against openly targeting Iranian agents, most of whom claim to be diplomats based at Teheran’s network of consulates, liaison offices and cultural offices in Iraq.

They contended that this approach could escalate into direct armed conflict with Iran, which is under intense international pressure to give up its nuclear programme.

The State Department and the CIA, which both objected to the way the Bush administration used pre-war intelligence on Iraq, also wanted to publicise clear evidence of Iranian interference in Iraq as a way of justifying the US stance.

“The military’s highest echelons really do not want the release of details of what Iran is up to as they don’t want the Iranians to know what’s working and what’s not,” the administration adviser said.

“The military and the State Department and CIA are coming at this from very different approaches. State and the CIA believe we should respect the supposed diplomatic immunity of these Iranians. But the military has had enough and they say ‘to hell with their fake diplomatic immunity’.”

The splits within the administration come as reports emerge of new variants of “explosively formed projectiles” allegedly made with Iranian help.

The Pentagon said the first soldier was killed by one of the devices on Jan 22, but it is refusing to give further details of their use because it wants to limit the information available to its enemies.

The US has also suggested that Iranian operatives may have been involved in the abduction and killing of five soldiers in Kerbala (reported here), a potentially explosive accusation. But Stephen Hadley, Mr Bush’s national security adviser, acknowledged on Friday that the intelligence briefing on Iranian interference in Iraq – publication of which has been delayed twice – was still being refined.

Clearly we need to vanquish America’s adversaries in Langley and Foggy Bottom before we have any hope of successfully taking on Teheran.

Dinesh D’Souza thinks it was the result of the Clinton Administration’s cowardice and passivity.

More than five years after 9/11, the crucial question of why the Islamic radicals decided to strike America remains unanswered. Recall that for at least two decades prior to 9/11, radical Muslims were focused on fighting in their own countries. They were trying to overthrow their local governments and to establish Islamic states under sharia law. America was not their target.

Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, two of the leading Muslim radicals, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden, decided on a new strategy. They abandoned the tactic of fighting the “near enemy” and decided to take the battle to the “far enemy,” specifically the United States. If Zawahiri and Bin Laden had not changed course, 9/11 would not have happened.

Why, then, did they do so? In his book the Far Enemy, political scientist Fawaz Gerges argues that the radical Muslims’ strategy of fighting the near enemy proved unsuccessful, and so they decided to try something else. “When jihadis met their Waterloo on home-front battles,” Gerges writes, they “turned their guns against the West in an effort to stop the revolutionary ship from sinking.” This may be correct as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Gerges fails to explain why Muslim radicals like Zawahiri and Bin Laden, who apparently could not defeat their local governments, came to the conclusion that they could defeat the vastly more formidable United States.

Bin Laden himself supplies the answer to this question. He says he developed the suspicion that despite its outward show of power and affluence, the far enemy was weaker and more vulnerable than the near enemy…

During the mid to late 1990s, the radical Muslims tested America’s resolve by launching a series of attacks on American targets. These were massive attacks, unprecedented in the damage they inflicted. There was the Khobar Towers attack on American facilities in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa, the suicide assault on the American warship the U.S.S. Cole.

Yet in every case the Clinton administration reacted either by doing nothing, or with desultory counterattacks like a missile strike against largely unoccupied Afghan tents and the bombing of what was reported to be a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan. Clearly these responses inflicted little harm to Al Qaeda and actually made America look ridiculous in the eyes of the Muslim world. Consequently, Bin Laden became convinced that his theory of American irresolution and weakness was substantially correct. By his own account he became emboldened to conceive of a grander and more devastating strike on American shores, the strike that occurred on 9/11.

Even so, this strike could have been prevented had the Clinton administration acted on intelligence leads and struck back at Bin Laden, when it had the chance. Former CIA agent Michael Scheuer estimates that during the second term of the Clinton administration America had approximately 10 opportunities to kill Bin Laden, and took none of them…

The conclusion seems unavoidable. The Islamic radicals made the decision to attack America on 9/11 because they decided that America was cowardly and weak. They came to this conclusion largely as a result of the actions—and inaction—of the Clinton administration and its allies on the left. What could have been done to get rid of Bin Laden and avert 9/11 was not done. In this sense liberal foreign policy gave radical Muslims the confidence and the opportunity to strike, and they did.

Quick! Better elect Hillary Clinton, who’s a lot more leftwing than Bill.

From Dr. Sanity:

All politicians are guilty of trying to hedge their bets when they can get away with it. But the rhetoric employed by the Dems has consistently rested on US failure and defeat because it plays well to their leftist base, who have bet their entire ideology on America’s defeat and humilitation.

The Democrat’s dilemma is that they can’t possibly win an election with only that base, so they have to pander to the patriotic Americans just enough not to alienate them completely. Clearly, from their perspective, it would be best if America surrendered and admitted defeat. That would be the best possible outcome. They could keep their lunatic anti-American, anti-Bush, base; and win over those disgusted that the Republicans and Bush managed to lose a war and sacrifice American lives for nothing. But, oh dear. What if things turn around. People will remember any definitive action they implemented to impede success…. So, best to not actually do anything and just talk about doing something and see how things play out. If they took simultaneously committed to both the rhetoric and obvious behavior to ensure a path to surrender– and then that nincompoop Bush managed yet again to pull things out of the fire, they would be DOA in 2008.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Maggies Farm.

Please compare publication dates and completeness of text:

Never Yet Melted, 10 Nov 2005:

1) The M-16 rifle : Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the Picatinny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits cant be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): .223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly. (that’s fun in the middle of a firefight)….

Read the whole thing.

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Washington Post, (Opinion Section: Tom Ricks’s Inbox by Tom Ricks, “Military Correspondent”) 4 Feb 2007:

1) The M-16 rifle: Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder-like sand over there. The M-4 carbine version is more popular because it’s lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. Marines like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round because of its poor penetration on the cinderblock structures common over there. Even torso hits can’t be reliably counted on to put the enemy down.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon), .223 cal. Drum-fed light machine gun: Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of junk. Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly (not fun in the middle of a firefight).

Read the whole thing.

————————————————————-

Hey! It only took the Washington Post’s anti-Iraq war “Military Correspondent” a week short of 14 months to catch up in coverage with this blog.

Too bad Mr. Military Correspondent lacked the space to reproduce the entire Net-circulated report-from-the-front, and it’s really a pity that his ideological bias caused him deliberately to delete information derogatory to the adversaries of US forces.

Of course, that’s the Paleomedia in action for you, pompous and slow, biased and deceptive.

Wedge-tailed Eagle (Aquila audax)

Reuters:

Britain’s top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of “screeching” wild eagles while competition flying in Australia.

Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 meters (8,200ft) in the air.

“I heard screeching behind me and a eagle flew down and attacked me, swooping down and bouncing into the side of my wing with its claws,” Moss told Reuters on Friday.

“Then another one appeared and together they launched a sustained attack on my glider, tearing at the wing.”

The encounter happened on Monday while Moss — a member of the British paragliding team — was preparing for world titles this month at Manilla in northern New South Wales state.

One of the giant wedge-tailed eagles became wrapped in the canopy lines and slid down toward Moss, lashing at her face with its talons as her paraglider plummeted toward the ground.

“It swooped in and hit me on the back of the head, then got tangled in the glider which collapsed it. So I had a very, very large bird wrapped up screeching beside me as I screamed back,” Moss said.

She said she thought about dumping her parachute-style canopy and using the reserve.

“But then I would have been descending on my reserve as the birds continued shredding it, which I wasn’t happy about,” she said.

Wedge-tailed eagles are Australia’s largest predatory birds and have a wing-span of more than two meters.

Hat tip to Karen Myers.

The Globe and Mail reported yesterday:

VANCOUVER — Scientists have alerted British Columbia’s emergency-planning department to the possibility of a catastrophic earthquake striking the province’s southwest coast next week.

While the probability of a quake is still low, rapid strides in earthquake detection have given federal scientists with the Pacific Geoscience Centre on Vancouver Island greater confidence in their ability to predict when and where one will occur. Garry Rogers, a seismologist at the centre, compared the current earthquake odds to the dangers of driving a car.

“Everyone drives their car every day, and the probability of getting in a car accident is small,” Dr. Rogers said. But during rush hour, the probability of getting into an accident is much higher. “Well, Vancouver Island is now driving in rush hour.”

What prompted the alert was a series of imperceptible tremors emanating from deep beneath the ocean, which scientists now recognize as ominous warnings that the earth is on the move again off Vancouver Island.

They now estimate the long-awaited giant quake will hit closer to the island’s western shoreline than previously thought.

The tremors occurred on what is known as the Cascadia subduction zone, which lies beneath the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast and runs from Vancouver Island to Northern California. The rumblings began last week near Puget Sound near Seattle and made their way north to Vancouver Island in recent days.

The tremors — known in earthquake-speak as an episodic tremor and slip — monitor the ongoing strain between the solid earth on the West Coast and the offshore Juan de Fuca Plate.

As of Sunday morning, the Pacific Geoscience Centre reported that “the current Episodic Tremor and Slip event appears to have stopped. There has been no significant tremor activity on southern Vancouver Island during the past 24 hours.“