The Onion, sharp as always..

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Do you agree or disagree that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 terror attacks?	OVER-ALL	DEM	GOP	IND
Agree	46%	32%	65%	39%
Disagree	50%	65%	30%	56%

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On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack that devastated a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. And the United States rose in righteous fury, immediately declaring war on Thailand. Because, you know, it was in the same part of the world as Japan and the people kind of looked alike and besides, the Thais had been getting a little uppity and were due for a smackdown.

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President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of previously secret CIA prisons around the world where key terrorist suspects have been held and questioned.

He said the “small number” of detainees that fall into this category include people responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“The most important source of information on where the terrorists are hiding and what they are planning is the terrorists themselves,” Bush said in a White House speech with families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks making up part of the audience. “It has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held in secret, questioned by experts and, when appropriate, prosecuted for terrorist acts.”

The announcement from Bush is the first time the administration has acknowledged the existence of CIA prisons, which have been a source of friction between Washington and some allies in Europe. The administration has come under criticism for its treatment of terrorism detainees. European Union lawmakers said the CIA was conducting clandestine flights in Europe to take terror suspects to countries where they could face torture.

I wonder how Fox will cover this?

Bruce keeps putting must-reads online:

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This is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in how the U.S. is prosecuting terrorism. Put aside the rhetoric and the posturing; this is what is actually happening.

Among the key findings about the year-by-year enforcement trends in the period were the following:

• In the twelve months immediately after 9/11, the prosecution of individuals the government classified as international terrorists surged sharply higher than in the previous year. But timely data show that five years later, in the latest available period, the total number of these prosecutions has returned to roughly what they were just before the attacks. Given the widely accepted belief that the threat of terrorism in all parts of the world is much larger today than it was six or seven years ago, the extent of the recent decline in prosecutions is unexpected. See Figure 1 and supporting table.

• Federal prosecutors by law and custom are authorized to decline cases that are brought to them for prosecution by the investigative agencies. And over the years the prosecutors have used this power to weed out matters that for one reason or another they felt should be dropped. For international terrorism the declination rate has been high, especially in recent years. In fact, timely data show that in the first eight months of FY 2006 the assistant U.S. Attorneys rejected slightly more than nine out of ten of the referrals. Given the assumption that the investigation of international terrorism must be the single most important target area for the FBI and other agencies, the turn-down rate is hard to understand. See Figure 2 and supporting table.

• The typical sentences recently imposed on individuals considered to be international terrorists are not impressive. For all those convicted as a result of cases initiated in the two years after 9//11, for example, the median sentence — half got more and half got less– was 28 days. For those referrals that came in more recently — through May 31, 2006 — the median sentence was 20 days. For cases started in the two year period before the 9/11 attack, the typical sentence was much longer, 41 months. See Figure 3.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) puts this data together by looking at Justice Department records. The data research organization is connected to Syracuse University, and has been doing this sort of thing — tracking what federal agencies actually do rather than what they say they do — for over fifteen years.

I am particularly entertained by the Justice Department’s rebuttal, which basically just calls the study names without offering any substantive criticism:

The Justice Department took issue with the study’s methodology and its conclusions.

The study “ignores the reality of how the war on terrorism is prosecuted in federal courts across the country and the value of early disruption of potential terrorist acts by proactive prosecution,” said Bryan Sierra, a Justice Department spokesman.

“The report presents misleading analysis of Department of Justice statistics to suggest the threat of terrorism may be inaccurate or exaggerated. The Department of Justice disagrees with this suggestion.”

How do I explain it? Most “terrorism” arrests are not for actual terrorism; they’re for other things. The cases are either thrown out for lack of evidence, or the penalties are more in line with the actual crimes. I don’t care what anyone from the Justice Department says: someone who is jailed for four weeks did not commit a terrorist act.

on a side note, wtf does “proactive prosecution” mean? Sounds like something a pre-crime department, or thought-crime department does

From the comments:

I found an exceptionally amusing instance over at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0905/p01s04-usju.html

“For instance, the case of a Kentucky businessman who pleaded guilty to lying about selling forklift parts to an Iranian truck manufacturer was categorized as a successful prosecution related to “international terrorism.” The businessman was sentenced to 50 hours of community service and a year of probation.”

Yep, an “international terrorism” conviction leads to … 50 hours of community service.

Do you feel safer already?

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While the Middle East has far more problems than dysfunctional borders alone — from cultural stagnation through scandalous inequality to deadly religious extremism — the greatest taboo in striving to understand the region’s comprehensive failure isn’t Islam but the awful-but-sacrosanct international boundaries worshipped by our own diplomats.

Of course, no adjustment of borders, however draconian, could make every minority in the Middle East happy. In some instances, ethnic and religious groups live intermingled and have intermarried. Elsewhere, reunions based on blood or belief might not prove quite as joyous as their current proponents expect. The boundaries projected in the maps accompanying this article redress the wrongs suffered by the most significant “cheated” population groups, such as the Kurds, Baluch and Arab Shia, but still fail to account adequately for Middle Eastern Christians, Bahais, Ismailis, Naqshbandis and many another numerically lesser minorities. And one haunting wrong can never be redressed with a reward of territory: the genocide perpetrated against the Armenians by the dying Ottoman Empire.

I think the author is way, way to optimistic about the situation. After all, here’s the map Rummy has in mind:

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The news of the Pakistani government signing a truce agreement with the Taliban in North Waziristan is far worse than being reported.

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The “truce�? is in fact a surrender. According to an anonymous intelligence source, the terms of the truce includes:

– The Pakistani Army is abandoning its garrisons in North and South Waziristan.
– The Pakistani Military will not operate in North Waziristan, nor will it monitor actions the region.
– Pakistan will turn over weapons and other equipment seized during Pakistani Army operations.
– The Taliban and al-Qaeda have set up a Mujahideen Shura (or council) to administer the agency.
– The truce refers to the region as “The Islamic Emirate of Waziristan.�?
– An unknown quantity of money was transferred from Pakistani government coffers to the Taliban. The Pakistani government has essentially paid a tribute or ransom to end the fighting.
– “Foreigners�? (a euphemism for al-Qaeda and other foreign jihadis) are allowed to remain in the region.
– Over 130 mid-level al-Qaeda commanders and foot soldiers were released from Pakistani custody.
– The Taliban is required to refrain from violence in Pakistan only; the agreement does not stipulate refraining from violence in Afghanistan.

The truce meeting was essentially an event designed to humiliate the Pakistani government and military. Government negotiators were searched for weapons by Taliban fighters prior to entering the meeting. Heavily armed Taliban were posted as guards around the ceremony. The al Rayah – al-Qaeda’s black flag – was hung over the scoreboard at the soccer stadium where the ceremony was held. After the Pakistani delegation left, al-Qaeda’s black flag was run up the flagpole of military checkpoints and the Taliban began looting the leftover small arms. The Taliban also held a ‘parade’ in the streets of Miranshah. They openly view the ‘truce’ as a victory, and the facts support this view.

Looks like the war against Al Qaeda is going swimmingly indeed.

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Que would happen if, wenn Du open your Metafilter, finde eine message in esta lingua? No est Englando, no est Germano, no est Espano, no est keine known lingua – aber Du understande! Wat happen zo! Habe your computero eine virus catched? Habe Du sudden BSE gedeveloped? No, Du esse lezendo la neue europese lingua: de Europanto!

During the 2004 election, the electoral-vote.com Website tracked the state polls in all 50 states and presented a red/blue map of the U.S. updated every day. It drew 700,000 visitors a day and was in the top 1000 sites in the entire world. Slashdot even thought it was under attack. Now it is back, tracking the 2006 Congressional elections, with a red/blue map for the Senate, descriptions of all 33 Senate races and the top 40 House races, pictures of the candidates, a wealth of polling data available for download, and over 1000 links to other political Websites. Like 2004, the Votemaster is Andrew (“Andy”) Tanenbaum, the author of five popular computer science textbooks. He is also the author of MINIX , the ancestor of Linux, and supervisor of the students who wrote the RFID virus that caused a media sensation in March.

full disclosure: I’m helping Andy a bit

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It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 — without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.�?

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.�?

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media�?—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,�? President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.�?

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick�? is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?�?

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Republicans who were once cozy with President Bush are distancing themselves from both the president and their party in campaign ads.

Consider Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record), the fourth-ranking House Republican struggling to hold onto her seat in an evenly split district in central Ohio, near Columbus.

In 2004, her campaign Web site featured a banner of her and Bush sitting together, smiling. But in her latest television ad, Pryce is described as “independent.”

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

—President Bush

*cough* (waves hand) *cough* Please come talk to us here in the Netherlands.

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The Dutch know a thing or two about staying dry. Most people in the Netherlands live below sea level, and the country’s major cities are in continual danger of being washed away. Or they would be, if Dutch engineers weren’t so good at designing levees and floodgates to keep storms at bay. The Netherlands hasn’t suffered a catastrophic storm-driven flood since the 1950s, when it began building the current system. Over the decades, North Sea storms have battered the country, and the dikes have held. The Dutch are, no argument, the world’s experts. Which raises a question as U.S. politicians and bureaucrats dicker over whether and how to fortify New Orleans against future storms: why not hire the Dutch?

They may yet do just that. U.S. engineers are impressed by the Dutch system, but so far, bureaucratic sluggishness has slowed reconstruction. Much of the contentious debate over rebuilding the city has centered on what to do about the lowest-lying areas, including the hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward. Early cost estimates made it seem that whole sections of the city would have to be abandoned. But Hans Vrijling, a renowned authority on flood control who designed part of the Dutch system, says it should be possible to protect New Orleans—even low-lying sections—from storm surges more than 10 times Katrina’s. The price tag: less than $10 billion.

Instead, Congress has so far allocated $5.7 billion to repair and rebuild the existing levees to pre-Katrina standards. Those levees, if they had worked, were supposed to have protected the city from a 100-year storm. In other words, the walls would guard against a storm surge so severe it is likely to happen only once every century. If that sounds impressive, consider this: critical flood barriers in the Netherlands are designed to withstand a 10,000-year surge. That may seem like overkill. But storm scientists estimate a Katrina-strength hurricane is likely to wallop the Gulf Coast again at least once in the next 70 years.

Congress has given the Army Corps of Engineers $20 million to come up with a comprehensive design to protect the city permanently. American engineers have been in consultation with Dutch designers, and in the meantime the Corps has asked a Dutch firm to design a 100- to 200-year floodgate system for the western end of Lake Borgne. Dan Hitchings, the Army Corps official in charge of Gulf Coast protection, says it may ultimately bring in more Dutch help. But it likely won’t know for sure for more than a year. The Corps has until the end of 2007 to complete its study, and it shows no signs of speeding things along. Hitchings says the Corps has to give Congress a range of options and price tags, to “make sure the nation wants to do what the Netherlands did.”

Vrijling, for one, can’t understand what the Corps is going to study for so long. The technology already exists and has been tested over decades in the Netherlands. He says Dutch and American engineers, working together, would need only “a couple of months” to draw up a detailed plan. “If we had the will and one month’s money from Iraq, we could do all the levees and restore the coast,” says Ivor Van Heerden, a Louisiana State University hurricane scientist who warned for years about a Katrina-like disaster. “We can save Louisiana. It is very doable.”

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On Friday Sep. 1st my wife took the kids to school and on that day a guest came to the school and read children’s stories to my child’s class. This is not an uncommon thing to have happened. Both my wife and I have volunteered at the school and it is something many parents do. In fact this would not have bothered me except for the fact that the person (unbeknownst to me) was a military recruiter in full uniform. This person was not even a parent of a child in the school.

My daughter came home and told me how this military recruiter (in full uniform) came in to read stories to her class. She told me about how he didn’t just read to them but spoke to them about his time serving in the military and encouraged them to attend the Cleveland Air Show and watch the display of war planes.

Please understand that I don’t just find this distasteful. It is incredibly hypocritical that the “Coventry Peace School” would allow this to happen. Especially considering the schools’ great strides in non-violent conflict resolution, peer mediation, academic performance and other areas too numerous to list.

It is immoral that the school system would allow people that kill for a living to come and market death to children. Whether you see them as defending this country or not, no person can dispute the fact that people in the military are trained to kill and that killing is their primary job even if it is “in defense.” Practicing to kill every day (even at/during the air show) is what they do. There is no place for this in a nine-year-old’s classroom.

I am quite sure Coventry Elementary School in Cleveland Heights was not the only one visited by military recruiters that day. I understand the power of direct marketing to a young, captive audience and what happened that day was nothing less. By sending military recruiters in full uniform, acting as a walking billboard to read to kids you are directly marketing to a young, captive audience. Any marketing person will tell you that.

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The White House funneled millions of dollars through major Republican Party contributors to Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s primary campaign in a failed effort to ensure the support of the former Democrat for the Bush administration.

A senior GOP source said the money was part of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s strategy to maintain a Republican majority in the Senate in November. The source said Mr. Rove, together with Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, directed leading pro-Bush contributors to donate millions of dollars to Mr. Lieberman’s campaign for re-election in Connecticut in an attempt that he would be a “Republican-leaning” senator.

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U.S. Senator George Allen today stole a Department of Defense appropriations amendment written, printed and prepared by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill), and then announced the amendment as his own, moments before Durbin was prepared to introduce the amendment on the Senate floor.

The following is a chronology of what happened earlier this afternoon:
–At 2:30 PM this afternoon the U.S. Senate began debate of the Department of Defense appropriations for FY 2007.

–Already on the docket was Senator Dick Durbin, who was scheduled to introduce an amendment to the bill providing $19 million in additional funding for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center program, which provides treatment care and research for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries. That meant that Durbin’s amendment had already been written, printed and prepared for introduction by Durbin.

–Yet, before Durbin could take the floor to introduce his amendment, George Allen entered the Senate Chamber and asked for permission to speak before Durbin. When permission was granted ahead of Durbin, lo and behold, Allen introduced an amendment to the DOD appropriations bill that, how could this be, was identical in language to Durbin’s bill with the exception of one word – the word “will�? was changed in Allen’s amendment and replaced with the word “shall.�? Other than that, the amendments were identical – Durbin’s amendment had been printed and set to be formally introduced, Allen’s bill had not been written or been placed on the docket to be introduced.

When asked by Senators Stevens and Durbin if his amendment was the same as Senator Durbin’s, George Allen agreed the bills were identical.

So, what are the odds that George Allen had the exact same idea as Durbin, the exact same dollar figure as Durbin, the exact same language as Durbin (save one word)? And why did Allen seek special permission to speak before Durbin unless Allen was seeking to take credit for an amendment to which Durbin had already prepared and written?

“Geez, Senator, has it really come to this? Are you so bankrupt of ideas that you have to steal another Senator’s amendments and call them your own? It is clear you stole Dick Durbin’s language. There are no odds that you could have written an exactly identical amendment to Durbin’s, save one word – I guess you thought this would allow you to call the amendment your own – that it would have the exact dollar figure and that you would have to run down to the Senate floor and cut in front of Durbin (talk about cut and run, Senator) and introduce a virtually identical amendment. Did you think no one would notice?�? Jim Webb spokesman Steve Jarding said.

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Here [to be] the latest egregious patent application. Microsoft [to be] [to apply] for a patent for [to conjugate] verbs. Future postings [to look] like this.

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On August 17, 2006, there was a class two incident that occurred at the Swedish atomic reactor Forsmark. A short circuit in the electricity network caused a problem inside the reactor and it needed to be shut down immediately, using emergency backup electricity. However, in two of the four generators, which run on AC, the AC/DC converters died. They disconnected, leaving the reactor in a state where the operators did not know what the current state of the system was for approx. 20 minutes. A meltdown could have occurred, such as we had in Tschernobyl.

In Sweden, the government immediately shut down all reactors that were built similarly until the problem could be cleared up. In Germany, people were insisting that Brunsbüttel was built similarly, but the company operating the reactor (in both cases, Forsmark and Brunsbüttel: Vattenfall) insisted
it was not the same. When it was discovered that Brunsbüttel was indeed the same, the German environmental minister, Sigmar Gabriel, threatened to shut it down right away. But he has been pacified and the reactor is still running.

This seems to be a very similar problem to the LA situation – the emergency systems had not been tested with the grid electricity going off. Additionally, it appears that Brunsbüttel has had three incidents in 2002 pertaining to the emergency electricity system.

According to the taz from August 31, 2006, there exists a list of 260 security problems with Brunsbüttel which the ministry in Kiel is keeping under wraps. The ministry says that a list does exist, but refuses to publish it at the same time it is telling Vattenfall that it is not communicating its problems properly.

The risks involved here are very seldom but very lethal – a core meltdown is no joke.

An extremely technical report can be found here:
http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?sectionCode=132&storyCode=2038313

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Why would a company deliberately hide its best product?

Starbucks does.

Why would a company deliberately damage its best product?

Many hi-tech companies do that, and even my favourite local restaurant does.

It doesn’t sound like a winning formula, but it’s at the heart of the way many companies do business.

Take the secret cappuccino, which you can buy in two of the leading coffee chains, Starbucks and Coffee Republic.

The sales assistants know what the drink is and they have a little button on their cash tills to ring it up. It’s cheaper than the other drinks on offer, but it doesn’t appear on the menu.

Starbucks claims that’s because they don’t have room on the menu board. Coffee Republic doesn’t even have that excuse: there’s a blank space with no price where this drink should be listed.

It’s called the “short cappuccino”, and it’s smaller, cheaper and better than the smallest size on the menu, the “tall”.

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They are not alone.

Supermarkets package their cheapest products to look more like famine relief than something you’d want to pay for.

It’s not because they can’t afford sexy packaging even for their cheapest foods – it’s because they want to persuade richer customers to buy something more expensive instead.

Economists call this “product sabotage” and it can reach extreme levels.