The Innocence Project

"Today, the Innocence Project launches "200 Exonerated, Too Many Wrongfully Convicted," a month-long national campaign to create state Innocence Commissions and enact other reforms that can address and prevent wrongful convictions."

On the 200th DNA Exoneration in the U.S.

"These 200 people are a remarkably diverse group - they include a rich man's son in Oklahoma, homeless people, school teachers, day laborers, athletes and military veterans. But mostly they are African-American men without money to hire good lawyers (or, sometimes, any lawyers).

Combined, these 200 people have served about 2,500 years in prison - that's roughly a million nights in prison."

....

"The 200 DNA exonerations nationwide give us irrefutable scientific proof of the flaws in the criminal justice system. We look at every exoneration to determine what caused the wrongful conviction in the first place, and we see clear patterns. More than 75% of the wrongful convictions involved eyewitness misidentification (often cross-racial misidentification, and often from more than one witness); nearly two-thirds involve forensic science errors (from simple mistakes to outright fraud); 25% were based on false confessions (as the result of coercive interrogations or defendants' limited mental capabilities)."

Human food contaminated?

It is possible that along with pet food wheat, rice, corn gluten, human food is also contaminated. However the Chinese government is not cooperating with the US Food & Drug Administration investigation.

I think the US Government should impose a blanket ban on Chinese agricultural products until the Chinese overcome their recalcitrance.

Impeach Cheney! Who is Cheney????

Here's something from the NYT that I had meant to previously mention, but couldn't find - it is the results of a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center of 1502 American adults.

"Americans may have more news outlets today than two decades ago, but they still don’t know much more about current events than they did then, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

But here’s one big difference: the survey respondents who seemed to know the most about what’s going on — who were able to identify major public figures, for example — were likely to be viewers of fake news programs like Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”; those who knew the least watched network morning news programs, Fox News or local television news.

Only 69 percent of people in the latest survey could come up with Dick Cheney when asked to name the vice president; in 1989, 74 percent could name Dan Quayle . Fewer could name the governor of their state (66 percent now compared with 74 percent in 1989) and fewer could name the president of Russia (36 percent now compared with 47 percent before).

In 1989, fully 81 percent of people knew that the United States had a trade deficit; today, only 68 percent knew.

The survey found that education was the best predictor of who would do well on the questions. “However,” it said, “despite the fact that education levels have risen dramatically over the past 20 years, public knowledge has not increased accordingly.” About 27 percent of Americans are college graduates. "

Corn gluten contaminated too!

Corn gluten from China, used in pet food, is also found to be contaminated with melamine.
(via dkos).

So far we know that this was fed to pets and to hogs (people eat hogs).
The big question is, has contaminated (wheat,rice,corn) gluten entered directly into the human food supply?

VA Tech Prof

My Virginia Tech Professor, RIP

"I remember on the first day of class Professor Loganathan had a photographer come to the class to take a picture of the class from the front of the room. He then had us fill our names into a seating chart. Professor Loganathan must have studied the photograph and seating chart quite a bit because within a short period of time, he called on us by name without any hesitation to think of the name. No other professor that I had cared that much about learning our names. "

Twisting in the breeze

Senator Coleman (Republican, Minnesota) can't decide just how much he supports US Attorney Rachel Paulose (via talkingpointsmemo.com).

How the White House plays politics

"Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I have to declare myself absolutely a series of things: furious, double-crossed, misled, minimized--in terms of my role as a Senator and as chairman of the Intelligence Committee--shocked by the arrogance of the technique that was used
between the White House and the minority leader to say to Republicans, after weeks in which Vice Chairman Bond and I worked out a compromise on a managers' amendment on which we worked in good faith--I dropped things he did not like, he dropped things I did not like--but it was a genuine effort.

Vice Chairman Bond, whom I respect greatly, stood here praising the managers' amendment. Then the word came down from the White House--not from Vice Chairman Bond but from the White House--through the minority leader, that this vote was to be a test of Republican Party loyalty and that therefore all Republicans were instructed to vote against it. In all of my years in the Senate, and certainly all of my years on the Intelligence Committee, I have never seen something so repugnant, putting politics over national security. That is the bottom line.
Politics was put over national security."

Read the whole story here.

Pet food recall expands to rice gluten

Human-grade rice gluten is implicated in the growing pet food recall.

I think that the safest thing to do is to not eat processed foods at all.

---
BTW, my dog in India was a vegetarian daal-roti (and mangoes) dog, and I was amused to find that that was true of a desi colleague's pet as well.

Is he goofy?

From Russel T. Johnson's The Arkansas Roadside Travelogue

"THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTING

I've written on this subject before, but here it goes again. Every time I point this out, people roll their eyes and act like I'm goofy, but....

These shootings always occur right after a public health crisis, in this case a big pet food recall. The last school shooting, the one at the Amish school, came right after the big ecoli/green onion scare."

------
Today's NYT has a list of such "notable rampages":

May 18, 1927 Bath, Mich. - a school board official kills his wife and then blows up the school killing 40, including himself.

Aug 1, 1966 Austin, Texas - A gunman kills 16 and injures 31 shooting from the Univ. of Texas tower.

Dec 1, 1997 W. Paducah, Ky. - A 14 year old shoots three classmates and wounds five at a school prayer meeting.

Mar 24, 1998 Jonesboro, Ark. - A 13- and a 11- year old kill four girls and a teacher and injure 11, when they open fire outside a middle school.

May 21, 1998 Springsfield, Ore. - Boy shoots to kill four and wounds dozens.

April 20, 1999, Littleton, Col. - the Columbine massacre - two boys kill 13 and wound dozens and then themselves.

Mar 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minn. - Boy kills grandfather and a companion, five students, a teacher and security guide before killing himself.

Oct 2, 2006, Nickel Mines, Pa. - Man shoots and kills four girls and wounds seven at an Amish school.

---

I can't find a good way to figure out public health crises.

Did you know?

NYT: Japanese, at Times English, Rules the Blogs

"What is the Internet’s most blogged in language? It depends on the month. English and Japanese have leapfrogged each other in the last couple of years.

In November 2005, it was Japanese by six percentage points; in April 2006, English. And over the last quarter of 2006, Japanese accounted for 37 percent of all postings, compared with 36 percent in English, according to a report by the blog tracking firm Technorati. (The data omitted password-protected blogs and are known to undercount French and Korean for technical reasons.)"

---
There were other interesting facts in Monday's NYT, but I've misplaced the section. Somehow, finding them in the online NYT is not exactly easy.

More on Rachel Paulose

More on the young Malayali-descent US Attorney Rachel Paulose.

Please note that I'm not entirely convinced that the prayer for "standing in the gap" is legit. Nevertheless, makes for interesting reading. Note that the prayer is about as fundamentalist and you can get. It is not - "God, give our leaders wisdom, etc...", it is "God, our focus on politics to solve our problems is wrong".

Me, I'll continue looking to Parliament, and not to Jehovah for practical solutions to practical problems.

Garden pics

A snapshot of Daily Kos recommended diaries

BREAKING: Gonzales caught in perjury by new e-mail
Email has been found which seems to contradict US Attorney General's prepared written testimony submitted to Congress.

Now Do You Understand?
The Virginia Tech shooting in which more than 30 were killed, which has shocked the nation, is, in scale, a daily occurrence in Iraq.

I Live In Blacksburg, And Instapundit Is Pissing Me Off -UPDATED
A Blacksburg, VA resident (where VA Tech is) is incensed that a conservative commentator is trying to score NRA points over the VA Tech shooting tragedy.

Former Republican Presidential Candidate Turns Blue
A long-time Republican gives up on the GOP and joins the Democrats.

Famous 82-year-old ex-CEO sh*ts a brick over Bushco
Lee Iacocca's blistering criticism of the Bush Administration.

UPDATED: France told CIA about hijacking plans pre-9/11
In the months before September 2001, French intelligence had informed the CIA about al Qaeda plans to hijack an airplane.

A British Mark of Respect and Sorrow
Condolences for the VA Tech shooting.

Shooting at Virginia Tech
News about the VA Tech shooting.

Frank Rich errs

About Don Imus:

"Of course I was aware of many of his obnoxious comments about minority groups, including my own, Jews. Sometimes he aimed invective at me personally. I wasn’t seriously bothered by much of it, even when it was unfunny or made me wince, because I saw him as equally offensive to everyone. The show’s crudest interludes struck me as burlesque. "

Frank Rich falls back on the tired old excuse that since someone is offensive to all, he is not an offender.

It is one thing to tolerate and even defend offensive speech because one believes in the freedom of speech; but it is quite another thing to support it, e.g., by repeatedly appearing on the show. I think Frank Rich is tone-deaf in that regard.

David Kamp (via James Wolcott) puts it well:

"But I’ve always winced at anyone who bills himself (or has his representatives bill him) as an “equal-opportunity offender”–which is the tack that the defenders of Don Imus have taken. Any true aficionado of comedy and comedians knows that “equal-opportunity offender” is apologist code for “hack entertainer trading in dated ethnographic material.” Jackie Mason comes to mind (he actually has a DVD out called Equal Opportunity Offender ), as does Carlos Mencia. A corollary to this, which I learned from my old Spy boss Kurt Andersen , is that anyone who uses a construction along the lines of “I treat people all the same; I don’t care if they’re black, white, purple, or green”–who uses colors that no human being can actually be –is inherently a racist bastard.* "

Wolcott quotes a standup comic to the same effect:

"People say,'Black, white, purple, polka-dot, makes no difference to me, I don't believe in discrimination.' They're so proud of themselves. Like some nice polka-dot family is going to move in next door, come over to borrow things. Hell, anybody can be tolerant of imaginary beings ."

Weekend Greetings!

Wolfowitz

While waiting for Wolfowitz to step down from the World Bank, you may like to read these:

Wolfiegate
Col. Lang writes at turcopolier

IMO, he is a war criminal. Men were hanged after WW2 for "planning and waging aggressive war." What did he (PW) do? IMO, he was at the heart of the conspiracy to persuade GWB to invade Iraq (for whatever set of reasons that you prefer), depose its ruler, destroy its government and substitute another more to our liking. Is this not "planning and waging aggressive war?"

Paul Wolfowitz's "Hours" May be Numbered at World Bank
Steve Clemons, at The Washington Note

"Paul Wolfowitz has now admitted to helping his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, get positions outside the Bank, including "seconding" her to the US State Department that have helped up her salary to levels that clearly violate World Bank rules (i.e. nearly double her salary ). This is the kind of personnel nepotism and corruption that Wolfowitz has stated he is trying to wipe out at the Bank and in the client governments of the Bank."

Steve Clemons also provides information on how to convey your opinion to the decision makers.

Imus Nation

The Rutgers women's basketball team makes the news by reaching the NCAA finals (and not for any of the scandalous reasons so common with sports teams these days); Don Imus makes a seriously derogatory remark about them, and triggers public protest.
Who gets the hatemail?

The Rutgers team! (from Don Imus's fans).Don Imus's wife had to appeal to fans not to send hate mail to the team.

This poisonous audience is sitting out there, and the corporate and political types will find another vehicle to cater to their low tastes.

Meanwhile, read this, with a 1995 criticism of the Imus show:

Late 'Daily News' Columnist Foretold Don Imus Conflict -- In 1995

"If you have never heard the Imus show, listen in. It is a cross between an endless infomercial and a bunch of 8-year-olds telling doo-doo jokes into a tape recorder. It is rescued only by increasingly rare moments of inspired, hilarious brilliance.

Tune in any morning and you'll hear Imus or one of his sidekicks joking about having "lipstick on the dipstick" and much worse. This is nationwide morning radio.

Lieberman worries, on the Senate floor, that the increasing vulgarity of network TV "is lowering the standards of what we accept on television, particularly in what used to be family programing hours."

But he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. This week's moments of supposed humor on Imus, broadcast at an hour when children are rising for school, included a reference to Attorney General Janet Reno in crotchless pantyhose, an interview with Screw Magazine's Al Goldstein and a drunken woman saying "s---" over the air. Teehee."

Human trafficking of Indian guest workers

Human trafficking of Indian guest workers

The Raw Story investigative piece by Linda Beyerstein and Lara Alexandrovna, about the trafficking of Indian guest workers to the Gulf Coast under the H-2B visa program.

On the shredding of sovereignty

Scott Ritter:

....

"As an American, I said, I appreciated each nation’s embrace of the United States as a friend and ally. However, as a strong believer in the rule of law, I deplored the trend among America’s so-called friends to facilitate a needless confrontation which would severely harm the U.S. in the long run. These nations were hesitant to stand up to the United States even though they knew the course of action planned for Iraq was wrong."

......

"[In the face of American imperial power] If a nation was incapable of defending its sovereign values and interests, then it should simply acknowledge its status as a colony of the United States, pull down its disgraced national flag and raise the Stars and Stripes."

.......

"This new Democratic leadership has failed egregiously. Not only has the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, been unable to orchestrate any meaningful legislation to bring the war in Iraq to an end, but in mid-March she carelessly greased the tracks for a whole new conflict. By excising language from a defense appropriations bill which would have required President Bush to seek the approval of Congress prior to initiating any military attack on Iran, Pelosi terminated any hope of slowing down the Bush administration’s mad rush to war."

........

"So if we are to continue to permit AIPAC to operate as an undeclared agent of a foreign nation, and to influence American foreign and national security policymaking at the expense of our Constitution, then we should acknowledge our true status as nothing more than a colony of Israel, pull down the Stars and Stripes and raise the Star of David over our nation’s capitol. While representing the final act of submission, it would also be the first truly honest act that occurred in Washington, D.C., in many years."

Fired!

Just a couple of months ago, Senator Christopher Dodd (Democrat from Connecticut) saw it fit to announce his run for the Presidency on the "Imus in the Morning" radio program. Today, CBS fired Don Imus, the host of that program. Imus had said something very nasty - derogatory to women in particular - about the Rutgers women's basketball team on his program, and eventually corporate sponsors started pulling advertising from the show, not wanting to be tarred with Imus's remarks.

The Rutgers team was in the news for the only reason a sports team should be in the news - the team came from nowhere and reached the NCAA finals - the pinnacle of college sports. (They did not win.) This was an inexperienced team consisting of many freshmen. And in what is uncommon in college sports, these young ladies were also, from all accounts, academically sound.

So, why the nasty remarks? It was just Imus being his normal self. The man has a long history of inflammatory statements.

So what is my reaction? Indifference, mostly. The culture hasn't changed. The same corporate honchos who helped elevated Imus are now burying him. The audience that made Imus so influential is still out there. In a decent world, an Imus would at best have a niche market, and everyone could safely ignore his rantings. Dogs bark at street corners, who pays attention? The problem is with the culture that turned Imus into a celebrity in the first place - and that culture is not going away.

Two pieces by Balu

The first two parts of a continuing series:

Translations or Travesty of Traditions?

"In one sense, the title of the piece captures the nature of the tasks facing the contemporary generation, whether in India or in the Diaspora. This generation, unlike many from mine, is confident and self-assured; perhaps, it is proud too about the strength of its culture and traditions. Rightly so. However, personal convictions about the value of our traditions and culture do not automatically guarantee the truth of such convictions. Not only that. It is also the case that the history of India, and that of the entire humankind, requires of us that we are able to say and show what is valuable and what is not in our traditions. This history is the history of colonialism, subservience, and is further weighed down by the scientific, technological, economic and the military weight of the western culture. Today, we need more than a mere practice and a further continuation of our traditions; we need also to examine them honestly and critically in order that we may transmit what we found valuable in them."

...To Follow Our Forefathers - the nature of tradition

While reading this contribution and all the others I hope to write, we need to keep the context in mind. The context is this: many intellectuals, both in India and among the NRIs elsewhere, appear bent on transforming our multiple traditions into a single ‘religion’ called ‘Hinduism’. The problem does not lie in the transformation of variety and diversity into a unity. Rather, it lies in trying to fit our traditions into the straightjacket of ‘religion’. While calling ourselves ‘Hindus’ might be a convenient way of talking, the danger lies in going further and trying to develop ‘doctrines’, ‘theologies’, ‘catechisms’ and ‘Ten Commandments’ so that those around us in the West could recognize us as followers of a religion called ‘Hinduism’. (These reflections are also applicable to ‘Buddhism’, ‘Jainism’, ‘Saivism’ and all such entities.) In the course of my future contributions, I will look at some of the compulsions that force us to manufacture ‘Hinduism as a religion’. In this piece, I want to focus on the nature of traditions. What is a tradition? What differentiates religions from traditions? The second question will remain implicit until the end. By that time, we should have a better understanding of what it means to speak of a tradition.

If the links take forever to load, try going to india-forum.com.

Radio shock jocks

That we know the names of people like Imus, Limbaugh, Coulter, Stern, Savage, etc. - that they are mainstream instead of niche - speaks to an utter lack of taste in the general culture, and of the awesome ability of the free market to find and cater to such.

Gwen Ifill has a thoughtful piece on the latest Imus nastiness.

"...I’m a big girl. I have a platform. I have a voice. I’ve been working in journalism long enough that there is little danger that a radio D.J.’s juvenile slap will define or scar me. Yesterday, he began telling people he never actually called me a cleaning lady. Whatever. This is not about me.

It is about the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. That game had to be the biggest moment of their lives, and the outcome the biggest disappointment. They are not old enough, or established enough, to have built up the sort of carapace many women I know — black women in particular — develop to guard themselves against casual insult.

Why do my journalistic colleagues appear on Mr. Imus’s program? That’s for them to defend, and others to argue about..."

---
Why do people listen to the Imus show? Self-indulgence?

For-profit healthcare?

Gina Kolata, in the NYT writing about heart disease, wrote (emphasis added by me) -

"Studies reveal, for example, that people have only about an hour to get their arteries open during a heart attack if they are to avoid permanent heart damage. Yet, recent surveys find, fewer than 10 percent get to a hospital that fast, sometimes because they are reluctant to acknowledge what is happening. And most who reach the hospital quickly do not receive the optimal treatment — many American hospitals are not fully equipped to provide it but are reluctant to give up heart patients because they are so profitable."

Free markets and the profit motive are all very well and good, but the problem is that a person (and his or her family) who is in the midst of a medical emergency cannot be an effective free-market player - e.g., is not in a position to make a fully informed decision. The care provider must have sufficient incentive to take care of the patient's best interest, even if it spoils the bottom line.

Childhood misbehavior is criminal

Bob Herbert, in the NYT tells us (you can also read it here)

"Last spring a number of civil rights organizations collaborated on a study of disciplinary practices in Florida schools and concluded that many of them, “like many districts in other states, have turned away from traditional education-based disciplinary methods — such as counseling, after-school detention, or extra homework assignments — and are looking to the legal system to handle even the most minor transgressions.”"

What does that mean? Bob Herbert tells us that too.

A six-year old girl threw a tantrum at her elementary school. When teachers could not quiet her down, they removed her from the class. The little girl kicked and pulled a teacher's hair. When the girl did not calm down, the teachers called the police. The police arrested the girl, handcuffed her (around her biceps, because the handcuffs would slip off her wrists), drove her to the county jail, took a mug shot and fingerprints, and charged her with felonious battery and two misdemeanors - disruption of school and resisting a law officer. (On seeing the police, the little girl had hidden under a table, and resisted being pulled out).

Bob Herbert protested to the police chief:

"“But she was 6,” I said.

The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: “Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”"

----------

Only in this God-And-Common-Sense-Forsaken US of A!!!!!!

Rice vs Cheney

My previous post had Rumsfeld and Bremer contradicting each other.

Now, via talkingpointsmemo.com we have the following:

"Last year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked [Prime Minister of Israel] Olmert into a 48-hour cease-fire during the war with Hezbollah to allow humanitarian relief, but within hours Israeli planes were bombing again, to Rice's surprise and anger. Olmert had received a call, apparently from Cheney's office, telling him to ignore Rice."

-------

Nice crowd we have in the Bush Administration. I also wonder what kind of insult it will take to have Rice resign in protest? Maybe where there is no honor, there is no insult that cannot be swallowed?

Iraqi police as per Bremer

On October 2, 2003, Lt. General Sanchez gave a congressional delegation headed by Kentucky (R) Senator Mitch McConnell a briefing, where he said that the Coalition had almost 54,000 Iraqi police on duty.

Bremer writes

"After that ... session, I asked Doug Brand, our lanky Yorkshire police officer who was now acting Senior Adviser to the Interior Ministry, to come in with Clay to discuss police training.

"Let's review the situation, Doug. At the end of August, Bernie Kerik said that many of the 35,000 police then on the rolls would have be dropped for incompetence, corruption or previous human rights abuses. Now Sanchez reports that we've got 54,000 police officers on patrol a month later. How the hell could that happen?"

"Apparently General Sanchez is operating under an order from General Abizaid to recruit 30,000 police officers in thirty days," Doug said. "The Army is sweeping up half-educated men off the streets, running them through a three-week training course, arming them, and then calling them 'police'. It's a scandal, pure and simple."

"You know the military, Clay. Can you find me the order they're using to do this hiring?"

"I can get it," Clay said simply.

The military seemed to be proceeding with its plans to replace American combat units with ill-trained Iraqi police. But before I could raise this problem during that afternoon's secure call to Rumsfeld, he asked me to find some positive, newsworthy "interim steps" that we could take to "migrate" political authority to the Iraqis. "We've got to show some forward motion on the political front, Jerry."

That's Feith's Defense policy shop-talking.

.....

"Mr. Secretary, I have to be frank," I said. "You're seeing inflated numbers on police rosters. We shouldn't kid ourselves thinking that the Iraqis are better prepared than they are. We needed a professional police force here, one that's trained to a high standard. That's the whole point of the program in Jordan."

Rumsfeld did not seem convinced. He said that it was better to get the "process started quickly" by having our Army bring in these extra police.

I disagreed. I told him of Doug Brand's description of the Army pulling guys off the street and running them through a short "training" course.

At the end of the call, Rumsfeld seemed to understand, saying he would "push back" on the police in the total-force projection numbers when his office announced them the next week.

-------

We can actually check that:


Department of Defense Briefing, October 16, 2003

Q In the wake of the bombing of the Baghdad Hotel in Iraq, U.S. officials both here and in Baghdad touted the effectiveness of the Iraqi facility's protection force trained by the United States. But subsequent to that our -- CNN's people in Baghdad tell me that, in fact, the people guarding the hotel were contractors from the DynCorp company. Is that the case? And are any of these Iraqi protection forces actually up and protecting anything at this point?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Sure.

GEN. MYERS: Yes.

SEC. RUMSFELD: There are site protection Iraqi forces. There are border patrol Iraqi forces. There are some starting in the Army. There are any number of Iraqis in police forces. The total number keeps going up. About a week ago it was 56,000 with another 14 (thousand) in training, up to 70,000 -- 16 in training, 17 in training. And now it's something in excess of that. They have a variety of responsibilities. I would guess that in addition there are contractors hiring Iraqis with -- for the -- to work for the contractor, which would be a different -- still different category.

DeBaathification of Iraq

CIP wants to know who was behind Paul Bremer's (America's Proconsul in Iraq) decisions to fire anyone who was a "senior" Baathist, to abolish the Iraqi Army, and to abolish the Iraqi police force. These decisions led to the complete unravelling of Iraqi society, and the current disastrous situation.

CIP doesn't want to purchase the book and put any dollars into Bremer's piggy bank. Nice fellow that I am, I got the book from the public library. I can't post my answer there, 'cause Haloscan is down (Why anyone chooses to use that abomination of a comment system is another question, it is a Bremer-like decision, IMO.)

Here are some quotes from the book obtained by looking at the index for "Baath Party, elimination of".

"On May 9 [2003], my last day of preparation at the Pentagon, Don Rumsfeld had given me my marching orders in a memo. Among all my other instructions, Rumsfeld's memo emphasized: "The Coalition will actively oppose Saddam Hussein's old enforcers - the Baath Party, the Fedayeen Saddam (the irregular fighters that had harassed our forces on the march to Baghdad), etc. We will make clear that the Coalition will eliminate the remnants of Saddam's regime."

That morning, Under Secretary Douglas Feith had shown me a draft order for the "De-Baathification of Iraqi Society." He had underscored the political importance of the decree. "We've got to show all the Iraqis that we're serious about building a New Iraq. And that means that Saddam's instruments of repression have no role in that new nation." Although there was no mention in the draft of the regular army, I know that Walt Slocombe, the Coalition's senior adviser for Defense and Security Affairs, had begun discussing the army's future with Feith now that it was clear the force had broken ranks and disappeared.

I had scanned the decree. General Franks had already outlawed the Baath Party in his "Freedom Message" of April 16. This more sweeping order was to rid the Iraqi government of the small group of true believers at the top of the party and those who had committed crimes in its name, and to wipe the country clean of the Baath Party's ideology.

"We're thinking of having Jay [Garner] issue the order today," Feith had said.

"Hold on a minute," I said. "I agree it's a very important step, so important that I think it should wait 'til I get there."

Feith agreed to hold off but encouraged me to issue the order as soon as possible after my arrival in Baghdad. He underscored another point in Rumsfeld's memo stating that the decree was to be carried out "...even if implementing it causes administrative inconvenience."

....

Our concern was only the top four levels of the party membership, which the order officially excluded from public life. These were the Baathist loyalists who, by virtue of their positions of power in the regime, had been active instruments of Saddam's repression. Our intelligence community estimated that they amounted to only about 1 percent of all party members or approximately 20,000 people, overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs.

But I realized that the "administrative inconvenience" Rumsfeld mentioned could prove a lot more than inconvenient. Senior Baathists had formed the leadership of every Iraqi ministry and military organization. By banning them from public employment, we would certainly make running the government more difficult. On the other hand, I was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that apolitical technocrats were usually the people who made organizations work."

-----------

"On May 9, 2003, the day before our departure, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld, copied to Wolfowitz, DOD's policy office and the General Counsel, summarizing these discussions [with Walt Slocombe and Paul Wolfowitz and other "top Pentagon officials"on the Iraqi army] and the tentative conclusion that we should formally dissolve Saddam's army as well as the security and intelligence services as a prelude to establishing Iraq's new security services. I attached to the memo a draft order doing that but told the secretary, "I will show the draft order to CENTCOM this weekend and send back any suggested changes."

------------

"To launch this delicate process, we had first formally to abolish the old regime's intelligence and security services. Doing so would not send home a single soldier or disband a single unit. All that had happened weeks before. But it would formally dismantle the old power structure and signal that the fall of Saddam and the Baathists was permanent.

We carefully coordinated this critical process with the Pentagon. On May 19, I sent a memo to Secretary Rumsfeld detailing our recommendations for the dissolution of the Iraqi Defense Ministry and its "related entities", including Saddam's intelligence, security and propaganda services as well as the army, other military units, and paramilitary forces. The action, I said, would be "a critical step in our effort to destroy the underpinnings of the Saddam regime, to demonstrate to the Iraqi people that we have done so and that neither Saddam nor his gang is coming back."

I also advised Rumsfeld that we proposed to offer severance payments to hundreds of thousands of former soldiers, excluding only the most senior Baathists and intelligence and internal security types, many of whom had in any case fled the country. This meant that we would be paying people who had only weeks before been killing young Americans, but that was a cost that had to be borne. Before sending this message to the Pentagon, Slocombe and I discussed the plans with the appropriate Coalition military commanders and civilians, including McKiernan in Baghdad and CENTCOME forward headquarters in Qatar.

At the Pentagon on May 22, Feith carefully reviewed our draft order, which would formally abolish Saddam's security and intelligence services. He asked us to clarify some of the wording, which we did to his full satisfaction. My press spokesman, Dan Senor, stayed up the entire night coordinating the text of the announcement and press plans with Rumsfeld's chief of staff, Larry Di Rita. Later that day, when Rumsfeld authorized me to proceed, I informed the president of the plan in a video teleconference."

-------------

More from the zoo

Re: the performance of the camera - notice the moire effect in the background.

TPM on Rachel Paulose

The case of the US Attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose, becomes more and more interesting. TalkingPointsMemo.com provides the best summary of the news and the issues involved:

1. Link 1
2. Link 2
3. Link 3
4. Link 4

A summary of the summary is that career attorneys find working under Paulose impossible and so are resigning/moving to lesser positions. The Bush Admin. is then attacking these with their usual smear tactics.

Update on Rachel Paulose

Despite US Attorney Rachel Paulose being on the opposite political side from yours truly, I had hoped, as a fellow desi, that she would justify her appointment as the youngest US Attorney ever, etc., by doing a good job.

Unfortunately, apparently not!.

From Father's Garden

Some pics from the zoo

Thiruvananthapuram is going through a hot, dry spell, and the only green grass at the zoo is where it is irrigated. It has rained only once in the two weeks I've been here. The animals and the human visitors were all panting in the heat.

On the positive side, the Sony DSC-HDX (where X=2,5,7,etc.), a point-and-shoot camera with an image stabilized optical zoom varying from 12x to 15x, seems to perform about as well as a p&s can. Here are some pics from the zoo. As you might imagine, in all cases, the animals were quite far away from the camera ( a DSC-H2).

More on the contaminated wheat

This story in dailykos provides further information on the contaminated wheat gluten. The US Food & Drug Administration [FDA] has issued an import alert notice:
Import Alert.

The author of the story says (and I agree):

"I believe they [the FDA] may know more about the wheat gluten's whereabouts than they are currently admitting to publically. And now let me speculate that indeed this gluten MIGHT be in the human food chain, and the FDA does not want to set off a stampede of paniced consumers."

_________________________________________________________________________________

This dailykos story should also be read.

“There was a sizable amount of melamine. You could see crystals in the wheat gluten,” said the FDA’s top vet. Amazingly, no one noticed. Not at Menu Foods, not at Hills, not at Purina, not at Del Monte — all companies who are busy touting their high quality."

and

"Under the President’s proposed 2007 budget for FDA, the funding gap between responsibilities and capacity will grow again, to 56%. This harsh budget reality is a real threat to FDA’s ability to effectively oversee nanotechnology. It means among other things that FDA lacks the resources it needs to build its own expertise, to develop the safety-testing protocols and detection methods needed to evaluate new nanotechnology products, to conduct its own risk research, to gather the necessary premarket data required to get ahead of commercialization and to oversee products after they have entered the market."

Say No to McCain!

Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain is not worthy of anyone's respect. He forfeited my respect permanently when he embraced George Bush even after the smear campaign in the 2000 Presidential campaign, described below, four years later.

McCain cannot be said to stand for anything except raw ambition. As subsequent events 2000-2007 have shown, McCain's "straight talk" is about as straight as a Sierpinski gasket.

Richard H. Davis, The Boston Globe, March 21, 2004

"Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.

In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.

It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.

Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.

Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.

Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"

____________________________________________________________________________________

The story of this smear was told during the 2000 primary season itself, and yet the nation let G.W. Bush be elected/selected President. All I can say is - serves the nation right!

Not just pets!

In North America, more than 60 million cans of pet food of over 70 brands have been recalled by the manufacturers, because they contain contaminated wheat gluten. The contaminant can cause kidney failure and death in cats and dogs.

Now it turns out it is not just the "feed grade" wheat that is contaminated. "Food grade" wheat is also contaminated.

E.g., read this.

"Del Monte Foods has confirmed that the melamine-tainted wheat gluten used in several of its recalled pet food products was supplied as a "food grade" additive, raising the likelihood that contaminated wheat gluten might have entered the human food supply."
.....
"The FDA announced today that it has traced the contaminated wheat gluten to a single processor, Xuzhou Anying Biological Technology of Peixian, China, but has not released the name of the U.S. distributor who supplied the product to Del Monte, Menu Foods, Nestle Purina, and Hills Nutritional. In all, more than 70 brands and over 60 million cans and pouches of dog and cat food are now part of this massive recall, as well as at least one brand of dry cat food."
.....
"Public statements have indicated that the contaminated gluten was distributed by a single U.S. company, but since the FDA refuses to name the supplier, it is not yet known if this company also supplies human food manufacturers. It is also not yet known if Xuzhou Anying sells direct to food manufacturers in the U.S. or abroad."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Among other mysteries is why is the US buying food-grade wheat from China?

Needless to say, the absence of any security in the quality of the food supply is alarming. I can only hope that all the companies that sold the contaminated product suffer such heavy financial losses that testing of food and detection of problems before the fact becomes the market solution.

Enlightenment!

Via A.M. :

This Aspen Has Turned, by Nancy Greggs

It begins thusly:


This is my farewell post on DU. I have finally seen the light, and have no choice but to throw my lot in with the RepubliCons. And I do mean no choice; it literally just happened on its own.

It started when I heard President Bush’s Saturday radio address, and finally realized what an articulate statesman he is. Suddenly putting food on my family started to make sense, along with the War on Terror, the need for wire-tapping US citizens, and the necessity of doing away with quaint concepts like freedom in the pursuit of spreading democracy.

My transformation into a BushBot escalated quickly – a kind of surge, if you will. Once I started speaking in talking points, I knew there was no turning back. I realized that facts were the enemy, and I had to fight ‘em over there as well as over here. So I bought a gas-guzzler, slapped a W sticker on the bumper, burned my copy of An Inconvenient Truth, and set out to claim my rightful place in the world as an ill-informed idiot. It was time to adapt to win."

_________________________________________________________________________________

Enlightenment is possible in this life itself! By doing away with the necessity of thought, life becomes infinitely simpler, too. Pure bliss!

India's Highway Code

I might have posted this before, but can't find it, so here goes:
American world traveller G.R. Frysinger's humorous take on India's chaotic road traffic.

e.g.,

"Article III: All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail: to stop is defeat. This is the Indian drivers’ mantra."

History - the Congress vs the British

Jinnah's Muslim League made a big deal about the Congress "non-recognition" of it as a major force in the country. Specifically, certain remarks of Nehru were cited, and continue to be cited, as a sign of his arrogance.

I will provide links to demonstrate the above at some later date. In the meantime, it is to be noted: (from The Partition of India, Policies and Perspectives, 1935-1947, editors C.H. Philips, M.D. Wainwright; B.R. Nanda - The Indian National Congress and the Partition of India, 1935-47)

"Nehru was aware of the fact that the Congress was anathema to the official world. In September 1936, he came across a copy of a circular letter from the secretary of the court of wards, Allahabad to all district officers advising them that it was 'essential in the interests of the class which the Court of Wards represents, and of agricultural interests generally to inflict as crushing a defeat as possible on the Congress with its avowed socialistic principles. To this end it is of the utmost importance to avoid to the greatest extent practicable a split in the landlord vote, and a consequent dissipation of the voting power of the elements opposed to the Congress'."

"It was after reading this letter that Nehru issued a statement to the press on September 18, 1936: 'The real contest is between two forces - the Congress as representing the will to freedom of the nation, and the British Government of India and its supporters who oppose this urge and try to suppress it....Let this position be clearly understood by our people as it has been understood and acted upon by the Government. For the Government, there is only one principal opponent - the Congress.'"

"This statement was directed not against the Muslim League - which later was to make much play with it - but against the government. It is noteworthy that Nehru had described the contest as between 'two forces', not between 'two parties'. What he was stating was the obvious truth: the Congress represented the main anti-imperialist force in India."

Reflections on the Indian Traditions

Prof. Balagangadhara (Balu) has begun a series on India Forum of reflections on the Indian traditions.

A central question is - what do we find valuable about the Indian traditions? What should we discard and what should we keep - try to propagate to the next generation?

The first obstacle we hit is that we ourselves do not understand the traditions well enough to answer that question. The framework within which we discuss them is flawed.

Balu mentions as flawed the notions of Hinduism as a religion and of Indian social structure as the caste system. This will be controversial, and will require further explanation and elaboration.

Bush fans in Kerala?

President G.W. Bush and his tax-breaks for the rich policies have their fans in the very Leftist state of Kerala in far-away India.

Purchasers of residential real estate used to pay a tax of 3.1% of the value of the property to register the sale. Under new rules effective from April 1, purchasers of stand-alone houses on their own plots of land will continue to pay the 3.1% tax. Purchasers of apartments or flats, however, will pay at a 15.5% rate.

With the land values skyrocketing in the cities, the type of housing the middle class can realistically hope to own there is apartments.

Why do I like this photograph?

Via fredmiranda.com - sorry I cannot link to the photograph directly, I hope you are able to view it without having to register on the forum.

Why does this black-and-white picture of a freighter appeal to me? I haven't been able to figure it out.

Libertarians Against Shampoo

The Libertarians have launched a campaign against shampoo, thereby preserving key libertarian principles that corporations are free to sell us useless junk and we are free to reject that.

1. Matthew Parris in The Times of London.

2. Richard Glover in the Sydney Morning Herald.

3. Norman Swan interviews Dr. Hugh Molloy on Australian radio.

Physics, then and now

I get into a tin can, and make a long flight to my parents' home. While trying to keep awake to get over jetlag, I see an oldie in my father's bookshelf - "Elementary Particles - A Short History of Some Discoveries in Atomic Physics - The Vanuxem Lectures, 1959", by Chen Ning Yang.

It begins thus (emphasis added by me):

"AT THE TURN of the century the world of physics was clearly coming into the dawn of a new era. Not only did the brilliant achievements of classical mechanics and of the Faraday-Maxwell theory of electromagnetism bring to a successful termination the era of classical macroscopic physics, but there were already in the air everywhere new phenomena, new puzzlement, new excitement, and new anticipation. Cathode rays, photoelectriciy, radioactivity, the Zeeman effect, X-rays, and the Rydberg law of spectral lines were all recent discoveries. What the new era would have in store was of course difficult to predict at that time. Among other things, there was much discussion of the possible atomic structure of electricity. But let us recognize that although the concept of the atomic structure of matter had been speculated upon since early times, such speculation could not be entered into the books of scientific knowledge. For without quantitative experimental verification, no philosophical discussions can be accepted as scientific truth. For example, as late as 1897, Lord Kelvin, a giant in the world of physics in the latter part of the nineteenth century, still wrote that the idea that "electricity is a continuous homogenous liquid" (rather than having an atomic structure) deserved careful consideration."

---
Physics, now, via Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong, where Peter does a great job of recording the atrocities:

Physicist Mark Srednicki:

"We see that the big issue for Brian, and for just about all scientists (though with the apparent exceptions of Lee Smolin and Peter Woit), is what is TRUE. Not what corresponds to some philosophy of what science is or is not. Lee writes that the landscape must be rejected because “it would mean the end of our field” (page 165). It should be obvious that this is not the basis that is traditionally used for accepting or rejecting a theory! Peter’s (essentially the same) argument that string theory must be rejected because (at the moment) it does not appear to be sufficiently predictive (for Peter) is also irrelevant to the question of whether or not string theory is TRUE.

If the landscape is right, we may never get anything more than circumstantial evidence that it’s right. But that’s often the case in science. We’ve been spoiled in particle physics by having extremely precise data and highly predictive and quantitative theories for the past few decades. Most of the rest of science has not been so lucky. Perhaps we will not be so lucky going forward. The only way to find out is to do more work and see where it leads."

------

Bears repeating:

"For without quantitative experimental verification, no philosophical discussions can be accepted as scientific truth."

------

I'll also venture to say that particle physics faces the prospect of a new generation of physicists who actually know less than their predecessors. For all the personal knowledge of the interplay of experiment and theory may vanish as one generation retires, and is replaced by a new generation that knows mainly extremely sophisticated mathematics. We have to hope that Nature is more providential.

Focus

Essential for a camera.
Good for a person.

Yet more on 300

http://www.thestar.com/article/190493

A note on the history of the Partition of India

"...before 1947 the "Hindus" were relentlessly and viciously vilified by Jinnah as being power-hungry for not agreeing to partition India into two independent states as he demanded (this appears to have been Jinnah's single-point political platform in this period). And yet, it is mystifying that after 1947, many have refused to acknowledge this patent fact about Jinnah, preferring to vilify "Hindus" and the Congress as power-hungry for agreeing to partition India into two independent states, while declaring Jinnah completely innocent of wanting any such partition.

The deep sense of tragedy, loss and of "failed" nationalism felt by countless millions in India after Partition occured could be a perfectly understandable reason for this "inconsistency" in the general public. Such an inconsistency is however not quite as understandable where informed historians are concerned, and carries the odor of intellectual dishonesty."

From here

Organ Donation

I read in the newspapers that hospitals are increasingly eager to harvest organs, waiting as little as 75 seconds after heart stoppage to begin taking organs. Further, there are proposals that everyone be assumed to be a donor in the absence of explicit instructions to the contrary.

I understand that organ donation does alleviate death and suffering for people. But it seems to me that the chief beneficiary in all this is the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Cost of a liver transplant

"According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), estimated charges for liver transplantation are:

Estimated First-Year Charge: $314,600
Estimated Annual Follow-up Charge: $21,900".

-----------------------------------------------

Therefore, this is my public statement - in the absence of a signed and witnessed statement from me to donate part or all of my body, I explicitly forbid that any donation of my body parts.

Finally, the only circumstances in which I will execute a statement of organ donation is either for a loved one, or if every step in the organ transplantation is non-profit.

The Privatization of War

One of the neocon products has been the privatization of war.

Most troubling is that the contractors seem to be shielded from Congressional oversight. Even less than with the military do Americans know what is done in their name.

Also, until recently, the mercenaries operated outside both civilian law and military law; i.e., they were not answerable to anyone except company management.

More on 300 the movie

Right-wing bloggers and 300 the movie:
Digby is a must-read.

1984 Grammar

The Bush Administration's common "Mistakes were made" is said to be in the past exonerative tense.


Heard on NPR, then googled

"The nonconfessions inspired William Schneider, a political guru here, to note a few years ago that Washington had contributed a new tense to the language. “This usage,” he said, “should be referred to as the past exonerative.”"

300 - The Movie

300 - The Movie is made for stupid people.

PS: what makes it stupid is the speechifying.


For instance, as per Wikipedia,

"The Spartans sent 45,000 men under the command of Pausanias, 5,000 Spartiates (full citizen soldiers), 5,000 perioeci and 35,000 helots; this was the largest single Spartan fighting force ever to appear in battle. Spartan forces typically included relatively few actual Spartan soldiers, and mostly consisted of perioeci, helots (serfs, servants of the state) and soldiers provided by their allies."

Helots?

And elsewhere:

"Every autumn, according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 3–7), the Spartan Ephors (Classical Greek Ἔφοροι) would pro forma declare war on the Helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a Helot without fear of blood guilt. Unarmed, the Krypteia were sent out into the countryside with the instructions to kill any Helot they encountered at night and to take any food they needed. This could be used to remove any Helots considered troublesome and provide the young men with a manhood test and experience of their first kill. Such brutal oppression of the Helots permitted the Spartans to control the agrarian population and devote themselves to military practice."

------

Rotten at the Top

The Glasshouse explains why the Chief Justice of Pakistan is in trouble. You should read the whole piece, but this stands out:

"Previously relatives of the missing people would file writs of habeas corpus in the courts. The judges would then formally request the Interior Ministry for information. Characteristically, the ministry would reply that the secret agencies had no clue as to the person's whereabouts, and the matter would end there.

The Chief Justice changed all this by diligently following up these cases and compelling the authorities to trace the missing citizens. As a result, many missing people suddenly reappeared in the strangest of circumstances; many of them accusing the secret agencies of incarcerating and torturing them. The CJ then put the cat among the pigeons by ordering these agencies to appear in court in front of him."

_______________

So Pakistan's rulers (its military and security agencies) are intent of getting rid of the Chief Justice. And their actions, like nothing else in the last decade, have enraged and energized what remains of civil society in Pakistan.

_______________

But contrary to any belief you may have formed so far, this post is not about Pakistan.

Reaction from Australia

"Thu Mar 15, 4:42 AM ET

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia on Thursday threw its support behind Pakistan's beleaguered President Pervez Musharraf, calling him an important figure in the global fight against terrorism.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he hoped Musharraf could "hold on" in the face of an outbreak of protests over the suspension of the country's top judge."

___________________


If the leaders of the West had any belief in democracy, civil society, liberty or any of that stuff they keep prating about, they'd all unanimously be calling for Musharraf to step down.

Or at worst, maintaining a discreet silence.

It must be dismaying to them to see a magistrate who honors habeas corpus!

How Gandhian!

In the US's most-valued non-NATO ally, the moderately enlightened Dictator has been trying to push out the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It has provoked some public reaction.

(For those that don't follow the news from that part of the world, we have going on a wrestling match of General Musharraf versus Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.)

Whatever the Chief Justice's faults, by all accounts, he was at least activist regarding human rights. It is not clear however why the General is after him. Charges have been brought against him, to be heard by a Judicial Council. In the meantime the C.J. is subject to various harassment.

Dawn columnist Ayaz Amir :

"When the Chief Justice and his wife, Begum Iftikhar Chaudhry, walked out of their house on Tuesday morning, refusing to sit in any official car and insisting they would rather walk to the Supreme Court – where the Chief Justice had to appear before the Supreme Judicial Council to answer the reference filed by Gen Musharraf – the Chief Justice was roughed up by the Islamabad police and pushed into a waiting car."

"....when the car carrying him finally arrived before the gates of the Supreme Court, the people assembled there, unable to keep their emotions in check, lost all control and stormed the vehicle and pulled him out. Amidst deafening cheers and much jostling (but this was jostling of another kind) they swept him towards the doors of the Supreme Court.

They would have broken the doors and entered the building itself but it was the Chief Justice who bade them go back. And you know what? Even in that melee the crowd obeyed. This is what moral authority is all about. With it you don’t need bayonets to have your way. Without it, not all the bayonets in the world can come to your rescue."

------------------------------

Perhaps at this auspicious hour in their history, I should resist reminding them of the cunning Hindu that the Pakistanis detest.

:)

------------------------------
B Raman at saag.org points out that Musharraf's campaign against al Qaeda is a charade, and that many Pakistanis have been "disappeared" on that pretext.

"7. Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhury, who has been suspended by Musharraf as the Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court provoking an embarrassing controversy, suspected that there was a large element of charade in respect of the arrests of Al Qaeda suspects and tried to go into it while enquiring into a large number of petitions regarding missing persons. This is not the first time that Musharraf has tried to intimidate Judges. He has done it at least 20 times since he seized power in October,1999. Whereas in the past he let his subordinates do the intimidation and avoided his personal involvement, this time he personally got involved by calling the Chief Justice to his office and unsuccessfully trying to force him to resign on the ground that he was damaging the reputation of the army and the ISI. His personal involvement this time shows the state of his panic and his anxiety to prevent the truth from coming out. "

______________________

See, being a tinpot dictator is no good! If you want to disappear people without consequences, you have to be the POTUS. Anyway, count Justice Chaudhury among the collateral damage of the "Global War Against Terror".

Bigma and SigMonster

Yesterday's post gave a couple of links to Canon's 1200mm focal length monster super telephoto prime lens.

More practical than that lens are the Bigma and SigMonster - the nicknames supposedly indicate the fondness with which professional photographers regard these lenses.

The Bigma is the Sigma 50-500mm telephoto zoom lens. Some commentary is here.

The SigMonster is the Sigma 300-800mm telephoto zoom lens. Find a paean to this lens here.

You may appreciate better the size of these beasts by going
here, and scrolling down to the picture of the much smaller Canon 500mm prime lens standing alongside a little girl.

One must take up body-building in order to be able to efficiently lug one of these around the countryside for wildlife photography. Or hire a Sherpa.

----

Thanks to Rajan for catching the typo about the SigMonster. Actually, the last link was also from him (pic of the Canon 500mm).

Canon 1200 mm lens

Canon 1200mm monster lens, no longer made. Worth a small house. Or a very nice car.

More about it here.

The Curious Case of Rachel Paulose

The Curious Case of Rachel Paulose.

"Kerala-born Rachel Kunjummen Paulose is the 40th U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota and the first Asian American ever named to that post."

(from an India-West article linked from the link above).


Also from the India-West article:

"Her maternal grandparents, Daniel and Sara Kunjummen, immigrated to the U.S. from Kerala in the 1960s, and raised their family in Minnesota. Her paternal grandparents, both deceased, also lived in Kerala."


From a Powerline Blog article on Rachel Paulose:

"When I spoke with her before she met with Senator Dayton on Wednesday, I told Rachel that if things didn't work out for her in the legal profession, she could always go into modelling. Rachel laughed and recalled her grandparents, who had fled persecution by the Communists in East Asia to come as immigrants to the United States with seven dollars in their pockets. She said she thought it would take a miracle for her confirmation to occur this session, but that her family (devout Christians) believes in miracle."

The FreeP has this:

"Her grandfather, a government official in India, came to the United States to study theology in the 1960s.

"I have a hard time talking about this without becoming emotional," Paulose says, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. Her family, she explains, "came here hoping for the American dream at a time when the Communists were basically sweeping across Southeast Asia."
-----------------

IMO, "fleeing Communist persecution in Kerala in the 1960s" is hogwash. A government official fleeing Communist persecution in Kerala in the 1960s is even more hogwash.

To recall events in Kerala from those days, see, e.g., this
Wikipedia on EMS Namboodiripad:

"India achieved its independence in 1947 and the state of Kerala was formed in 1956 . In 1957 , EMS led the Communists to victory in the first election for the state government, making him the first communist leader anywhere to head a popularly elected government.On5th April 1957 he was appointed as the first chief minister of Kerala.He soon introduced the Land Reform Ordinance and Education Bill . His government was dismissed in 1959 by the Central Government, which invoked the controversial Article 356 of the Indian Constitution . He became the Chief Minister of Kerala for the second time in 1967 . This time his tenure lasted for two years.

EMS was the Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Legislative Assembly from 1960 to 1964 and again from 1970 to 1977 . He influenced Kerala society by his vision on decentralization of power and resources ( People's Plan ) and the Kerala Literacy Movement."

--------

Mid-60s was when my parents moved from the US to Kerala.

Daylight Saving Time

The US Congress extended Daylight Savings Time to begin earlier and end later each year, starting this year. DST used to begin on the first Sunday in April and end on the last Sunday in October. It will now begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in April.

DST is supposed to help save energy. This story says that since the energy savings may be negligible, the extended DST may be rolled back, within an year.

PS: corrected typos.

The Death of the Republic - continued

Christopher Manion explains very clearly what has happened to our civil liberties, they now belong to history. He carefully explains the US Court of Appeals (4th circuit) ruling in the El-Masri case, and what it all means.

"Thus, if you are kidnapped, raped, tortured, or even killed by persons "whose identities must remain confidential in the interest of national security," you and your heirs have no recourse under the laws of the Land of the Free.

"But wait," I hear you saying (or, perhaps, screaming), "the judge is able to decide for himself whether the "state secrets" claim is bogus, right?"

Wrong. The Executive Branch, all on its own, has the right to assert that the secrets are so sensitive that even the Federal Judge himself cannot see them."

...

"As always in things governmental, there is a certain irony here. In the Declaration of Independence, our Founding Fathers condemned the insane and tyrannical King George III for the outrages committed by his foreign mercenaries, including, "For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states."

At least the Colonists were given a "mock trial" that exonerated the Hessian criminals. In modern cases involving "national security,"the criminals need not worry about being subjected to any trial at all."

NYT's Sunday Styles

Some of the most putrid stuff in the New York Times is in the supplementary sections.

A seventeen year-old Australian model, Catherine McNeil is taking the fashion world by storm. She opened the Givenchy show in Paris last week, which is supposedly a sign of great favor for a new model.

Here is how Guy Trebay of the New York Times tells the story in his column Fashion Diary, which appears in the Sunday Styles section.

Supposedly "we" (and "we" is a very particular "we", it would not include me or anyone east of the Danube probably) have a long standing, virtually instinctive, Pythagorean standard of beauty, derived from simple mathematical proportions of features. "A forehead should be as high as the nose is long. The space between the nostrils and the upper lip should be a third of the length of the nose." etc.

Then the big bad corporate world, and the growth of markets in China, Japan, Korea, etc., robbed "us" of this kind of beauty. Asian faces started infesting the fashion show catwalks. Then horror of horrors, Russia, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine took over "70 percent" of the castings for runway shows! Designers did not want beautiful faces to draw attention away from their designs, and so were happy to use these non-Pythagorean commodities - "vacant, plain, colorless".

And now Catherine McNeil walks in, and "our" old standard of beauty has been reinstated! "She is beautiful in a way that people used to be".

-------------

The NYT columnist is clearly unhappy with any notion of beauty other than his own. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the rest of us, especially those of us not included in his grand "we", he is a columnist in an increasingly parochial and irrelevant newspaper.

Pruning roses

In principle, pruning roses is simple. One first cuts away all the dead wood. Then one trims away stuff to end up with a neat set of finger-thick straight canes in a neat cone with the apex at the base.

In practice, it is not so simple. I've yet to see a rose bush so obliging as to grow in a fashion that such canes are available. Then, to reach the dead wood, one first has to hack away at other stuff first. And there are thorns. Leather gloves don't help, the thorns break off and work their way through the hide. The thorns cling to the jacket and jeans. It is best to wear eye protection, by the way. The cut branches don't pile neatly into the wheel barrow. As you're carting them off, they cling onto everything on the way, as though actively resisting their fate on the compost heap.

One also worries about cutting off so much living tissue, opening up so many points for pests and infections. Is one cutting too deep and reducing the vitality of the bush? And so on.

And the weather is cold, and the wind blows. And to add insult to injury, the chickadee that frequents the bird feeder hops onto one of the bushes and sings a protest song. That does love to sit in the dense thicket.

Anyway, the job is done, the bushes are down a very naked three feet. Let's see how they do in the spring.

Gardening 2007

A mild first weekend in March marks the beginning of the 2007 gardening season.

Supposedly the rose bushes are dormant now, and this is the time for pruning them - at least according to Roses for Dummies. One is not supposed to prune the roses in the fall, because that supposedly keeps them from going dormant, and makes it likely that they will be injured by the cold.

The pruning can't wait for a week or two, because once the leaf buds awaken, it is too late. Pruning at that point will greatly reduce the vigor the plant.

I note that the fine art of procrastination, which is practiceable by a gardener in the tropics, is simply not possible in the temperate zone. The calender and the seasons are relentless and unforgiving.

Anyway, it takes me about an hour per bush. Two down, five more to go.

Death of the Republic - continued

Prior to the "Patriot" Act, the appointment of US Attorneys required Senate confirmation, otherwise the appointment would lapse after 120 days. After the Patriot Act, the US Attorney General has the authority to make appointments that can serve indefinitely without confirmation.


1. It is not at all clear how this power serves to reduce terrorism.
2. It is another grab of power by the executive.

Since December 2006, eight US Attorneys have been summarily fired, and for no good reason. Only recently, and mainly because of bloggers, has there been focus on this, and a scandal is emerging.

North Korea

Matthew Yglesias summarizes the New York Times on the North Korean nuclear program thusly:

"

The 1994 Agreed Framework froze the DPRK efforts to build a nuclear weapon using plutonium.

In 2002, the Bush administration pulled out of the Agreed Framework, arguing that the DPRK was cheating by running a secret parallel uranium program.

In the intervening years, the DPRK has succeeded in using its now-unfrozen plutonium program to build some bombs.

They have not, however, had any success in building uranium bombs.

This looked like pretty shitty policymaking for the Bush administration.

It looks much worse, however, after we learn today that the uranium program may never have existed.

"

My question is - was the 2002 intelligence also cooked, like that on Iraqi WMD?

The Death of the Republic - continued

The New York Times makes it appear that the Supreme Court Justices are sympathetic to the argument that the citizen can challenge in court only Congressional statutes that seek to establish religion, but cannot challenge actions of the Executive.

To quote the Solicitor General

"taxpayers should not have standing to challenge “an internal government church.”"

And SCOTUS is sympathetic to this.

QOTD

"There simply is no such thing as a fact which is so well-established that it is immune from being denied by Bush followers. They will deny even the most documented realities."

Glenn Greenwald - here.

QOTD

Via dkos, John Dean on the US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"In the history of U.S. Attorney Generals, Alberto Gonzales is constantly reaching for new lows. So dubious is his testimony that he is not afforded the courtesy given most cabinet officers when appearing on Capitol Hill: Congress insists he testify under oath. Even under oath, Gonzales's purported understanding of the Constitution is historically and legally inaccurate, far beyond the bounds of partisan interpretation."

Thank you, Jesselyn Radack!

Jesselyn Radack, Thank you for standing up for our civil liberties!

Her story begins

"In 2001, I was a legal advisor in the Justice Department's Professional Responsibility Advisory Office. On December 7, I fielded a call from a criminal division attorney named John DePue. He wanted to know about the ethical propriety of interrogating "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh without a lawyer being present. DePue told me that Lindh's father had retained counsel for his son.

I advised him that Lindh should not be questionsed without his lawyer. That was on a Friday. Over the weekend, the FBI interviewed him anyway. DePue called back on Monday asking what to do now.

I advised that the interview may have to be sealed and used only for intelligence-gathering and national security purposes, not criminal prosecution."

For that, she was hounded out of her job, and worse.
Among the penalties

"Anonymous government officials branded me a "turncoat" in newspapers, placed me under criminal investigation, put me on the "no-fly" list and referred me to the state bars in which I am licensed. I got the "Guantánamo treatment lite": I was never told for what I was being criminally investigated, the bar complaint was based on a secret report to which I did not have access, and the government will neither confirm that I'm on the "no-fly" list, nor tell me how to be removed from it. The criminal case was dropped with no charges ever being brought. One of the bar complaints was dismissed, and the other is still pending after three years."


========

If our Bush administration officials devoted a tenth of the effort they spend on harassing Americans to catching al Qaida then there would not be a single terrorist left in the world.

NPR Puzzle

The Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle for this week is

Challenge for February 18: The object of this challenge is to develop nine different mathematical expressions that equal eight. You must use the digits 2, 7 and one other. And that other digit must be a one in the first expression, two in the next expression and so on, up to nine. You can use a digit once and only once in each expression.

You may use the four arithmetic symbols: plus, minus, times and divided by, as well as exponents and decimal points. You may use parenthesis as you need them. For example: Using the digits 2, 7 and 1 you can make the expressions 2+7-1= 8.

This week's Challenge is from Robert Waynewright in New Rochelle, N.Y.

--

I'm currently stuck on 2,5,7, and 2,7,7.

Nerd Anthem

This following, the Bell Labs song, might appeal only to the technological types among us (that includes me).





Bell Labs has had a glorious history and one of the indictments of this age of business men and politicians will be how they've let this great institution decay. I hope it will somehow continue its illustrious history.

Health Care Costs in America

Paul Krugman cites a McKinsey & Company report on US healthcare costs in his NYT column today.

Amount of money spent in excessive adminstrative costs = $98 billion/year
(more than half accounted for by marketing and underwriting).

Amount of money paid in excess drug costs and medical device costs = $66 billion/year

Cost of providing full medical care to all of America's uninsured = $77 billion/year

----

Further reading:

nyceve, on dailykos.

QOTD

"No democratic process so completely failed a test of substance as America's after 9/11. No ensuing catastrophe was more consensual. "

- Roger Morris
The Rumsfeld Legacy
Part One
Part Two

Repugnant to the core

Via TPMCafe



GOP House Leader John Boehner made the argument today that the Iraq war did not begin in Iraq or on 9/11 but rather in 1979, with the Iran taking hostages in the American embassy.

Why did he make such a asinine statement?

The answer is that the Repugnicans do not want a debate on the war in Iraq.
Also via TPMCafe, here is an excerpt of the strategy letter sent to Repugnican Congress members:

"We are writing to urge you not to debate the Democratic Iraq resolution on their terms, but rather on ours.

Democrats want to force us to focus on defending the surge, making the case that it will work and explaining why the President's new Iraq policy is different from prior efforts and therefore justified.

We urge you to instead broaden the debate to the threat posed to Americans, the world, and all "unbelievers" by radical Islamists. We would further urge you to join us in educating the American people about the views of radical Islamists and the consequences of not defeating radical Islam in Iraq.

The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose. "

So, as per the Repugnican leadership, the failure in Iraq cannot be examined, and hundreds more of American soldiers and thousands more of Iraqis must continue to be fed into the meat-grinder, because otherwise the Repugnicans will look bad.

Koide Mystery

That fundamental constituent of matter, the electron, has two elder siblings, the muon and the tau.

The electron mass is 0.510998918(44) MeV.
The muon mass is 105.6583692(94) MeV.
The tau mass is 1776.99(+29-26) MeV.

MeV is a Million electron Volts, a particle physicist's unit. For comparison's sake, the hydrogen atom has a mass of about 938.8 MeV. The numbers in brackets are the uncertainties in measurement of the mass. The numbers are taken from links on Tommaso Dorigo's article on this.

What is remarkable about these numbers is that they satisfy the Koide formula with a remarkable precision - a formula with little theoretical justification.



Given the masses of the electron and the muon, this formula predicts the mass of the tau to be
1776.968921( 158) MeV. (from Carl Brannen, linked from Dorigo's page).

How likely is this to be a numerical coincidence?

If we measure everything in terms of the tau mass, then, in the plot below, the red triangle represents the experimental situation and the green curve represents the masses of the electron and muon that would be allowed per the Koide formula. The tau, by definition, has a mass of 1. There are no theoretical constraints on the masses that I'm aware of, and the "theoretically allowed" region of masses is everything between the x-axis and the diagonal black line (and please extend the line to the point {1,1}).



Of course, I could make things look a little less spectacular by measuring everything in terms of the electron mass.

Is it the blog or is it the network?

The big liberal blogs (Atrios, DailyKos) recently did a blogroll purge. (A blogroll is the list of links to other blogs that e.g., I have to the left of my page). That lead to this beautiful rant which boths serves to draw attention, but also obscure the question - is dailykos important on its own, or is it important as a supernode in a network of progressive blogs?

A blog linked from a supernode often gets more attention than it would otherwise. More subtle is the feedback that strengthens the supernode.

We'll surely find out in some time whether the big blogs have destroyed the ecosystem that made them influential in the first place.

Senator Feingold

Senator Feingold is one of the finest, and most courageous senators we have. For example, he was the lone dissenter against the so-called Patriot Act, that has been so damaging to our civil liberties.

He needs our support for this:
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-31.htm
How To End The War

by Russ Feingold



Our founders wisely kept the power to fund a war separate from the power to conduct a war. In their brilliant design of our system of government, Congress got the power of the purse, and the president got the power of the sword. As James Madison wrote, “Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.”

Earlier this week, I chaired a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee to remind my colleagues in the Senate that, through the power of the purse, we have the constitutional power to end a war. At the hearing, a wide range of constitutional scholars agreed that Congress can use its power to end a military engagement.

The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power “[to] declare War,” “[t]o raise and support Armies,” “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy” and “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.” In addition, under Article I, “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” These are direct quotes from the Constitution of the United States. Yet to hear some in the Administration talk, it is as if these powers were written in invisible ink. They were not. These powers are a clear and direct statement from the founders of our republic that Congress has authority to declare, to define and, ultimately, to end a war.

If and when Congress acts on the will of the American people by ending our involvement in the Iraq war, Congress will be performing the role assigned it by the founding fathers—defining the nature of our military commitments and acting as a check on a president whose policies are weakening our nation.

There is plenty of precedent for Congress exercising its constitutional authority to stop U.S. involvement in armed conflict.

In late December 1970, Congress prohibited the use of funds for introducing United States ground combat troops into Cambodia or providing U.S. advisors to Cambodian military forces. In late June 1973, Congress set a date to cut off funds for combat activities in Southeast Asia.

More recently, President Clinton signed into law language that prohibited funding after March 31, 1994, for military operations in Somalia, with certain limited exceptions. And in 1998, Congress passed spending legislation that prevented U.S. troops from serving in Bosnia after June 30, 1998, unless the president made certain assurances.

Congress has the power to end military engagements, and there is little doubt that decisive action from the Congress is needed to end U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq. Despite the results of the election, and two months of study and supposed consultation—during which experts and members of Congress from across the political spectrum argued for a new policy—the president has decided to escalate the war. When asked whether he would persist in this policy despite congressional opposition, he replied: “Frankly, that’s not their responsibility.”

Last week Vice President Cheney was asked whether the non-binding resolution passed by the Foreign Relations Committee that will soon be considered by the full Senate would deter the president from escalating the war. He replied: “It’s not going to stop us.”

In the United States of America, the people are sovereign, not the president. It is Congress’ responsibility to challenge an administration that persists in a war that is misguided and that the nation opposes. We cannot simply wring our hands and complain about the administration’s policy. We cannot just pass resolutions saying “your policy is mistaken.” And we can’t stand idly by and tell ourselves that it’s the president’s job to fix the mess he made. It’s our job to fix the mess, too, and if we don’t do so we are abdicating our responsibilities.

Yesterday, I introduced legislation that will prohibit the use of funds to continue the deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after enactment. By prohibiting funds after a specific deadline, Congress can force the president to bring our forces out of Iraq and out of harm’s way.

This legislation will allow the president adequate time to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq, and it will make specific exceptions for a limited number of U.S. troops who must remain in Iraq to conduct targeted counter-terrorism and training missions and protect U.S. personnel. It will not hurt our troops in any way—they will continue receiving their equipment, training, salaries, etc. It will simply prevent the president from continuing to deploy them to Iraq. By passing this bill, we can finally focus on repairing our military and countering the full range of threats that we face around the world.

As the hearing I chaired in the Senate Judiciary Committee made clear, this legislation is fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States. Since the president is adamant about pursuing his failed policies in Iraq, Congress has the duty to stand up and use its constitutional power to stop him. If Congress doesn’t stop this war, it’s not because it doesn’t have the power. It’s because it doesn’t have the will.

Russ Feingold is a United States senator from Wisconsin.