May 03, 2003

ROGER SIMON HAS SOME THOUGHTS on how to deal with Iraqi war criminals.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Here's a guy who was never charged with a crime, but who lost his job because of a call from law enforcement telling his employer that he was on a Homeland Security memo naming suspicious persons.

Who will speak out against this resurgence of McCarthyism?

Georgia Bureau of Investigation special agent John Lang, who was assigned as a threat analyst to the Department of Homeland Security, saw the memo and decided making note of the information was not enough. He called the gun shop owner and told him about the memo concerning his employee. Wynn was fired.

Wynn, who has been mostly unemployed since he was laid off from Lucent Technologies in late 2001, did not know why he lost his job until last week when he was told by a reporter. He said he has never advocated violence against the police or government officials.

He was angry when he learned why he was fired. He said he "was done plain dirty and the system is still trying to set me up in order to make their blunders look as though they have some semblance of truth."

Funny that we haven't heard more about this case, while we've heard so many cries of "McCarthyism" when all that was involved was criticism of Tim Robbins.

You don't think it's all political, do you?

STEVEN DEN BESTE HAS THOUGHTS on network effects, blogrolls, and Rolls-Royces.

I DON'T REALLY HAVE MUCH TO SAY about this plagiarism scandal at the New York Times. In general, I'm slower to call things plagiarism than some people, but this seems to be a classic case. I'll just note that this sort of thing happens both in the blogosphere, and in Big Media, which at any rate is evidence that having editors isn't any guarantee that it won't happen.

UPDATE: Susanna Cornett and Laurence Simon blame affirmative action. Well, maybe -- but I seem to recall seeing a post somewhere to the effect that Johnny Apple had an even higher percentage of corrections. So maybe the problem goes deeper.

THE ROAD OF THE BONES: David Carr reports.

EVERYBODY'S LOOKING FOR PROBLEMS IN IRAQ, but what might things be like if the U.N. were in charge? Hmm, let's see:

Despite the arrival of UN peacekeepers, there are new reports of tribal killings in northeastern Congo. Uganda reports a surge of refugees entering the Ugandan district of Bundibugyo (DRC border area). One source says Lendu tribal warriors attacked a refugee group near the Semliki River, and killed 60 to 100 civilians. One Ugandan official as reported that 10,000 refugees are inside the DRC, just across the border from the Ugandan town of Paidha (West Nile province).

Funny how these killings aren't getting as much attention.

BAD REPORTING IN BAGHDAD: Jonathan Foreman reports that most reporters there are missing the story:

There are frequent small demonstrations in the blocks outside the Palestine and Sheraton hotels--partly because that is where the press corps is congregated, but also because it's an area that many Baath party officials fled to after the war began. Anyone who assumes that the atmosphere of that downtown area is in any way representative of the city would be gravely mistaken. However, many reporters have chosen to do just that rather than venture further out to places where they would have seen that far more typical and frequent "demonstrations" involve hundreds or even thousands of Iraqis gathering to cheer U.S. troops. Admittedly, some of those crowds include people begging for money, desperate for aid, or just curious about these strange-looking foreigners. "Most children here have never seen a foreigner" one Iraqi civilian explained to me, "that is why they are so excited." Another told me with a smile, "Everyone here wanted to go to America; now America has come here!"

Then there's this:

To an amazing degree, the Baghdad-based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population--most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city.

Well, I've met hundreds of Iraqis as I accompanied army patrols all over the city during the past two weeks and I've never encountered any such fury (even in areas that were formerly controlled by the Marines, who as the premier warrior force were never expected to carry out peacekeeping or policing functions). There is understandable frustration about the continuing failure of the Americans to get the water supply and the electricity turned back on, though the ubiquity of generators indicates that the latter was always a problem. And there are appeals for more protection (difficult to provide with only 12,000 troops in a city of 6 million that has not been placed under strict martial law). But there is no fury.

Given that a large proportion of the city's poorest residents have taken part in looting the Baathist elite's ministries, homes, and institutions, that should tell you something about the sources preferred by the denizens of the Palestine Hotel (the preferred home of the press corps). Indeed it's striking that while many of the troops I've accompanied find themselves feeling some sympathy for the inhabitants of "Typhoid Alley" and other destitute neighborhoods and their attempts to obtain fans, furniture, TVs, etc., the press corps often seems solidly on the side of those who grew fat under the Saddam regime. (That said, imagine the press hysteria that would have greeted a decision by U.S. troops to use deadly force against the looters and defend the property of the city's elite.) Even in the wealthiest neighborhoods--places like the Mansoor district, where you still see intact pictures of Saddam Hussein--people seem to be a lot more pro-American than you could ever imagine from reading the wires.

Foreman names names and, in some cases, pretty much calls some big-time correspondents liars. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: I'm watching CNN's Rym Brahimi, who's going on about the difficulties Iraqis are facing getting passports and drivers' licenses. Drivers' licenses?

ANOTHER UPDATE: By the end of her report, Brahimi actually got to some real complaints about water, etc. But her tone was, frankly, hysterical: astonishingly high-pitched and breathless in her delivery, and saying things that are entirely at odds with what Foreman reports above. Who's right? I can't know firsthand, of course, but CNN's track record in Iraq doesn't exactly build confidence.

May 02, 2003

AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING LIKE DR. JOSH MARSHALL, I have to wonder "What the Hell is CNN doing flacking for Mark Geragos?" I've had the TV on here in the palatial InstaSuite at the hotel, and they keep mentioning that he's representing Scott Peterson.

So what? That's not news. Certainly not this kind of news. Is CNN pulling an Eason Jordan in exchange for access?

Back later. In the meantime, read the many Iranian updates over at Jeff Jarvis's blog.

WELL, I ACTUALLY DID VISIT THE WHITE HOUSE IN 1974, but I don't remember anyone taking this picture. But I was there with the National Spelling Bee, so I guess I was just too hyped for the competition to notice. . . .

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON writes about the future of Europe.

WHEN IRAQIS RIOT, it's supposed to be a sign that the United States is blowing it, and doesn't know how to operate in that part of the world.

The alternative explanation, of course, is that it's the critics who don't understand how things tend to work out in that part of the world:

BINGOL, Turkey, May 2 — Security forces clashed with earthquake victims protesting the government's relief response today, but an uneasy quiet hung over a flattened boarding school on the outskirts of this regional capital as rescuers continued poring through the rubble for surviving students.

Gunfire filled the air outside the governor's office as heavily armed troops tried to disperse rampaging protesters, upset at what they said was inadequate assistance for quake-affected residents.

Maybe the Turks just don't have enough troops. As for the notion that Iraqi Shiites are turning against the United States, Amir Taheri begs to differ:

Throughout Arba’in, small bands of militants, some freshly arrived from Iran, were posted at the entrance of streets leading to the two main shrines. They carried placards and posters calling for an Islamic republic and shouted anti-American slogans. But it soon became clear that few pilgrims were prepared to join them.

All the pilgrims that this reporter could talk to expressed their "gratitude and appreciation" to the US and its British allies for having freed them from the most brutal regime Iraq had seen since its creation in 1921.

Needless to say, however, most television cameras were focused on the small number of militants who had something "hot" - that is to say, anti-American - to say.

After days of talking to Shiites in Karbala and Najaf, it is clear that there is virtually no undercurrent of anti-Americanism in the heartland of Iraqi Shiaism. Even some clerics who have just returned from exile in Iran were keen to advertise their goodwill towards the US. All that, however, could quickly change.

That last warning is something we need to take to heart, of course, but it's hardly a harbinger of disaster, or a sign of bungling. Meanwhile, both Hossein Derakshan and Charles Paul Freund argue that a Khomeinist Iraq isn't in the cards.

OKAY, SO BLOGGING WAS LIGHT ALL DAY: My flights -- Knoxville to lovely Minneapolis, Minneapolis to San Jose -- were both comfy and on time, with minimal security hassle. As luck would have it, the weather in Minneapolis was better than the weather is in California at the moment. But air travel does seem to be getting its act together. That may just be because fewer people are flying -- neither plane was close to full -- or it may be that they've moved up the learning curve. Either way, I'm grateful.

BLOGGING WILL BE LIGHT FOR THE MORNING: As this ungodly hour demonstrates, I'm catching an early flight for the West Coast, and the Foresight Institute's nanotechnology conference. I'm taking the laptop, but sadly inflight blogging isn't yet feasible.

Scroll down as several posts have been updated. And go read Lileks, whose enthusiasm for the Macintosh is so crazed that he doesn't mind traumatizing small children while in the throes of ecstatically worshipping his machine god. (Am I trolling? You betcha! And boy are people snapping at the bait.)

May 01, 2003

SURPRISE:

The two British suicide bombers who blew up a seafront bar in Tel Aviv, killing three people, had posed earlier as peace activists, acting as "human shields" for Palestinians, sources in the Gaza Strip said yesterday. . . .

A Western pro-Palestinian activist said the two later took part in a protest march in Rafah to commemorate Rachel Corrie, an American "human shield" killed by an Israeli bulldozer last March.

At least the story says "pro-Palestinian activist" instead of the manifestly-untrue "peace activist." And the Israelis have noticed:

Israel will from now on bar pro-Palestinian activists from entering the country and will try to expel at least some of the dozens of activists who are already here, according a new plan drafted by the Israel Defense Forces and the foreign and defense ministries.

Most of the activists, who come from Europe, Canada and the United States, belong to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

Yes, and they're not "peace" activists, they're just on the other side.

SURPRISE:

RAGEH OMAAR, the BBC’s star correspondent in Baghdad during the Iraq war, developed a close and potentially embarrassing relationship with the director of Iraq’s Ministry of Information, who was responsible for controlling foreign correspondents.

Documents retrieved by The Times from the ministry show that Mr Omaar wrote effusive letters to Uday al-Taie, who was close to Saddam Hussein and once expelled from France for spying. . . .

Mr Omaar, who was nicknamed the “Scud Stud” for his vivid reports, declined to comment on the letters, but the BBC said that they showed him behaving in an entirely professional manner.

“These are the kind of letters that a journalist sends when he is building up a relationship with an individual who controls the access to allow him to report,” a spokesman said. “He is asking for something and doing so in an entirely professional manner.”

So there.

CLAYTON CRAMER POINTS to a story of FBI Crime Lab incompetence in the McVeigh case, and notes that it makes him skeptical of the death penalty.

LOOTING UPDATE: Ken Layne explains math to the New York Times. But what's 169,975 out of 170,000 among friends?

UPDATE: Rand Simberg suggests that the ever-shrinking toll from the Baghdad looting incident resembles the bogus Jenin "massacre."

JUST WATCHED BUSH'S SPEECH FROM THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN: I'm not crazy about it. The speech was actually good, stressing the changes in warfare that technology has brought ("the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent" was a good line, and so was "men and women need liberty like they need food and air"), and the setting was fine: he was telling these guys what they've been fighting for, which is a President's job. Overall, a better-than-average performance.

The jet-pilot arrival, on the other hand, rang false. The whole leader-who-flies-jets thing seems, somehow, Third World to me. People say that it'll make great campaign footage in 2004, but I actually doubt it -- or at least, I think it will backfire if they do too much of this. The President is commander-in-chief, but he's a civilian leader, and Americans want him to be one.

UPDATE: A lot of email in response to this post already. Most readers seem to disagree with me:

The jet landing didn't ring hollow at all to me. On the contrary: if a 33-year-old man may be permitted to use this phrase, it was cool.

Why? Well, why not? There was nothing false about it, because a carrier landing is no walk in the park. But I don't think it was a stunt. Bush is a piolt, and I'm sure he loved getting behind the controls for a brief moment - it was an expression of who Bush is, not a PR stunt.

Well, that's not my impression. I'll be interested to see how it shakes out. Donald Sensing has a transcript of the speech.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, Jeff Jarvis thinks I'm wrong, too. Well, hell, maybe I am. But I still didn't like the jet-pilot thing. But reader Gavin Kirk says:

I read your analysis of Bush landing on the U.S.S Lincoln opining it was "too third world". I think you miss what I saw. I saw a guy having some fun after what must have been 3 hellish months of tension as he navigated our country through war. My initial reaction was not all that different from yours, but as I saw him eagerly walk the flight deck shaking hands and having his photo taken I saw a smile on him that I had not seen for a while. That made me feel good.

I'm getting a lot of mail like this, for whatever it's worth. And another reader suggests that it was sending a message:

The landing thing was supposed to be third world, its for Al Jazeera and Co. Bush is remembering to talk to the rest of the world here, its his bit for those that don't dig the nuances of 1st world foreign policy. Quick translation: I'm the "swingingest" alpha male on the block, all that stuff about American cowardice by Al Queda, et al was as accurate as Bagdad Bob's press conferences.

Interesting take.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Sheesh, everybody so far thinks I'm wrong about this. I still say that this is right out, though.

MORE: Well, Andrew Sullivan agrees. So does N.Z. Bear. Bill Quick, though, thinks I've got things backwards.

YET MORE: Now Sullivan says he's getting hatemail over agreeing with me from people who call him anti-Bush and anti-American. I didn't really get any email that took quite that harsh a tone (the closest was "you don't get it because you're a professor," which is dumb, but not terribly mean).

Nick Denton emails that this is the kind of thing you can expect from a country that elects ex-generals as President. But that's actually my point: when Eisenhower was President, he made it very clear that he was an ex-General. I don't object to Bush's taking a ride on a jet, which I'd do too if I could. And I'm sure that the troops love it. It's the blurring of the lines that bothers me here. The President is the civilian commander-in-chief of the military, not a part of the military himself. (Clinton, you may recall, tried to argue otherwise in order to use the Soldiers and Sailors' Civil Relief Act to stall off the Paula Jones suit, and was quite properly laughed out of court.) Yeah, it's not a big deal -- but it will be if he does it very often.

CINCINNATI IS DROPPING ITS LAWSUIT against gun manufacturers:

Lawyer Stanley M. Chesley told Cincinnati City Council on Tuesday that he could not justify moving forward with the city's 4-year-old lawsuit against the gun industry, dealing a major disappointment to gun control advocates across the nation.

Cincinnati's lawsuit accused 25 gun makers, distributors and trade groups of marketing guns in such a way that they were destined for children and criminals.

The case, City of Cincinnati v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp., was at the forefront of about a dozen similar lawsuits from across the country. It survived an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, several City Council resolutions to kill it, and even a taxpayer attempt to block the lawsuit.

But Tuesday, Chesley told City Council that it should concede defeat and drop the case.

Interesting.

DANIEL DREZNER says that the war on terror is going well, but that things are deteriorating in Afghanistan.

StrategyPage has a more optimistic assessment of the Afghanistan situation. I don't know which assessment is right, but I suspect that Afghanistan has been a relatively low priority, given the holding-action treatment in light of the run-up to war in Iraq. That's okay, I guess, but now that the war in Iraq's over, we can't be giving it the holding-action treatment again on the basis that now we're busy with the reconstruction of Iraq.

WHY TECHNOLOGY IS A LIFESAVER:

Thank goodness that SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) broke out in the Genomics Age. The malady has already infected 5,000 people and killed 327 since it broke out in China last year. A decade ago, scientists would likely not have a clue yet as to what was causing the deadly disease.

We may be lucky in another way. SARS is serious enough to get attention, but, as best I can tell, probably not a major plague. It will thus encourage people to get public-health systems (and information sharing) in better shape, something that we'll need if, or more likely when, something worse comes along.

Austin Bay has some thoughts on how the tendency of dictatorships (which China, as some are remembering, is) to hide bad news has cost the region, and the world, dearly. Ralph Peters has some thoughts on that, too.

ERIC MCERLAIN PUBLISHES a letter from Iraq. Interesting stuff.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: VIA EUGENE VOLOKH, I discover that The University of Tennessee is violating the First Amendment. Looks like it to me, too.

What can I say, I'm embarrassed. I don't hire the administrators across the street, and I can't fire 'em, either. But I think that this will produce more bad publicity for the University, which is the opposite, presumably of what they intend. And, more importantly, it's just plain wrong for a public university to punish people for speech that it dislikes.

THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE LOOKS AT GERMAN PREDICTIONS regarding the war and concludes that in hindsight they look like an anti-American feeding frenzy:

POLNot so long ago, prominent German politicians were outdoing each other forecasting worst-case scenarios for the Iraq conflict. The predictions ranged from "millions of victims of U.S. rockets" to "millions of Iraqi refugees desperately fleeing the country."

While few are willing yet to eat their words publicly, the media is having a field day with the wildly inaccurate pronouncements.

"They were all wrong with their horror scenarios," snorted the Bildzeitung, Germany's largest nationally distributed newspaper. Under the heading "The embarrassing predictions on the war by our politicians," the paper recently listed some of the most erroneous ones.

On March 21, Social Democratic parliamentary President Wolfgang Thierse, one of the country's most influential leaders, told a Cologne newspaper, "Millions of people in Baghdad will be victims of bombs and rockets."

Environmental Minister Juergen Trittin of the Green Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's coalition, grandly declared on Feb. 26, "The German government possesses various studies expecting up to 200,000 victims of military operations in Iraq. And it is feared that another 200,000 persons will die from indirect results of the war."

Greens Co-chair Angelike Beer predicted that "U.S. aggression in Iraq will result in the explosion of the Near and Middle East."

The ZDF TV network, considered one of the prime practitioners of anti- American war coverage, is also playing the postwar blame game.

"All the so-called experts were wide of the mark with their forecasts," noted Theo Koll, moderator of the prime time news feature show "Frontel." Among the footage shown to prove his point was Development Minister Heidemarie Wielczorek-Zeul, a Social Democrat, emotionally predicting on a talk show that "3 million Iraqi refugees will be flooding neighboring countries." . . .

Television's role in molding public opinion was underscored by a recent survey of youngsters at a Meunster high school who had taken part in anti- American peace marches.

None knew where Iraq is located geographically. Nor did any of them know anything about Hussein's brutal regime. All said they got their information about "the American barbarity" from German media reports -- chiefly those of ARD and ZDF.

One of Germany's great literary figures, author-playwright Hans Magnus Enzensberger, 73, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "The great compassion shown by the media for the relatively few victims of the Iraq war stands in bizarre contrast to its lack of interest for the victims of 30 other and often far crueler wars currently being fought all over the world."

And we're always hearing how ignorant Americans are. Heh. On the other hand, while they drastically overestimated the consequences of the war to the United States and Iraq, they drastically underestimated the hostility among Americans that their behavior caused. And I think they still do.

IS GEORGE GALLOWAY BENEFITING FROM A MEDIA COVERUP?

I'm pretty sure that if he'd been getting payments from Halliburton in exchange for supporting the war, the story would get more attention.

LORD BEN SAYS I'M TOO HARD ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION regarding secrecy issues.

I don't think so. I don't trust agencies to investigate themselves, generally, and I think that experience tends to support my position here.

STILL MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT:

Four University of Miami conservatives say the student government is blocking them from starting a club and say the college's president, former Clinton Cabinet member Donna Shalala, has refused to intervene.

The students say they were told by student leaders that since the university already has a College Republicans chapter, there was no need for another conservative group. Shalala, who was Clinton's Health and Human Services secretary, has ignored a letter asking for help, the four women and their supporters say.

They call the decision discriminatory, because along with a Democratic club, the school has several groups that they say represent liberal beliefs and causes, such as Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet.

"There's a difference between Republican and conservative," said Sarah Canale, 19, the would-be club's co-president. "But they kept telling us there's too much overlap with the College Republicans."

A university spokeswoman said Thursday that neither the school nor the student government would comment.

Sounds pretty embarrassing.

HERE'S THE LATEST INSTALLMENT of an ongoing debate about the relevance of the United Nations.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Eugene Volokh reports on the curious behavior of Prof. Francis Boyle, an adherent of the "free speech for me, but not for thee" school of thought. Perhaps Prof. Boyle should get a job in Hollywood.

JOHN HOWARD: An appreciation.

JEFF JARVIS HAS AN UPDATE, and some comments, regarding imprisoned Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi.

ARTHUR SILBER HAS SOME PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS on gay history.

FOR SOME REASON, I hadn't stopped by Charles Murtaugh's excellent blog in a while. So I did. You should, too.

IN LAST WEEK'S TECHCENTRALSTATION COLUMN, I argued that the Bush Administration's penchant for secrecy might actually be hurting homeland security. Judging by this Newsweek item, though, the Bush Administration wasn't listening:

AT THE CENTER of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks—including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of “findings” with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six months later, a “working group” of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to “reclassify” some material that was already discussed in public testimony—a move one Senate staffer described as “ludicrous.” The administration’s stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report—Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The Administration's unwillingness to look into who dropped balls -- and, more importantly, why -- before September 11 only makes fixing things harder.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: The Boycott Hollywood site is being shut down -- by legal muscle from Hollywood. There's a copy of the threat letter on the site. Here's the response:

I can say only this - - the fact that we're being shut down because of the William Morris Agency tells me that we truly touched a raw nerve in someone, somewhere. At the very least, it tells me that our message was recieved by the people that it was intended for. The very fact that we cannot express our opinions regarding the views of these stars/celebs shows me, yet again, the double standard that exists in Follywood.

Yes, if you even criticize these guys they scream "censorship" -- but Hollywood is censoring more speech in America than John Ashcroft has.

I'll also note that there's a lame subject-verb disagreement in the threat letter. Uneducated philistines!

UPDATE: Hollywood Half-wits is still going strong!

ANOTHER UPDATE: CleverHack notes that Boycott Hollywood put phony information into its WHOIS database entry. Yeah, but I don't think that makes this any less of an effort to shut down criticism.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Levy notes that IndyMedia has a rather suspicious-looking WHOIS entry and asks:

Does it matter? Would that make it acceptable to shut down Indymedia? Of course not.

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Whois information above isn't quite right. Go here to read more.

BORIS JOHNSON ON CIVILIAN CASUALTIES:

And since it is time to put the good news into our utilitarian scales, here is a statistic that you should be aware of, all you Fisks and Pilgers and Robin Cooks, who prophesied thousands and thousands of deaths. I went to see Qusay Ali Al-Mafraji, the head of the International Red Crescent in Baghdad. Though some name-tags have been lost, and though some districts have yet to deliver their final tally, guess how many confirmed Iraqi dead he has listed, both civilian and military, for the Baghdad area? He told me that it was 150, and he has no reason to lie.

Of course it is an appalling sacrifice of life. But if you ask me whether it was a price worth paying to remove Saddam, and a regime that killed and tortured hundreds of thousands, then I would say yes. What do you see now when you walk past Iraqi electrical stores, which are opening with more confidence every day? You see satellite dishes, objects forbidden under Saddam. One man told me he had sold ten in the last four days, at between $200 and $300 a go.

Snooty liberals, and indeed many Tories, will say that this is vulgar and tawdry, and make silly, snooty jokes about the poor Iraqis now being subjected to Topless Darts and Rupert Murdoch. What such anti-war people don’t understand is that the Iraqis are not only being given their first chance to learn about other countries. They can now learn about their own. They can now watch channels not wholly consecrated to the doings of Saddam.

Read the whole thing, which also suggests that the Allies are ruling Iraq with too light a hand, especially where the Shia clerics are concerned. And there's this:

As George Bush gave his speech on Tuesday night, I happened to be watching it with three Iraqis. When he said that ‘the windows are open in Iraq now’, meaning that people could talk without fear for their lives, they laughed and banged the table. I can imagine the anti-war lot in Britain, with their low opinion of Bush, also laughing at his folksy rhetoric. But when I asked the Iraqis what they thought of the speech, I found I had completely misunderstood their laughter.

‘We agree with Bush 100 per cent,’ said one, and they all passionately agreed. Really? I said. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are free now.’ Iraq has huge problems, including colossal debts. It is barely governable. It would be unthinkable for America and Britain to pull out. But he says that his country is now free, and that, to me, is something that was worth fighting for. Saddam may be a ghost, but that is all.

Interesting.

LILEKS has discovered the dirty secret: blogging is a lot easier than column-writing.

He's also having trouble with video editing. That, you see, is because he's using a user-unfriendly Mac. I set up Vegas Video 4 from Sonic Foundry, got the backup master for my wife's documentary, captured the clips I wanted, and produced a trailer that Ken Layne says has "an X-Files/Twin Peaks feel." All in a weekend. The interface is easy and intuitive, and the program doesn't crash. And it edits in uncompressed mode, which is a Good Thing. Layne also informs me that Betsy Layne High School, which figures prominently in the film, is named for a relative of his. Somehow, that seems fitting.

UPDATE: I knew someone would rise to the bait. This is pretty funny, though.

MICKEY KAUS is dissing Gary Hart's blog. This is a test for Hart: now that he's a blogger, he needs to respond with a "Fisking." And Kaus could be the first journalist Fisked by a Presidential candidate! (No, Bush's remarks about Adam Clymer don't count).

APPARENTLY, WE HAVEN'T BEEN ALL THAT DISTRACTED:

The State Department, in its annual report on global terrorism, says the number of terror attacks declined sharply last year due to increased international cooperation and resolve. Seven countries - Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan - were again listed as state sponsors of terrorism, though Iraq may soon come off the list.

The State Department says there were 199 terrorist attacks last year, a 44 percent drop from 2001 and the lowest figure in more than 30 years.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Unfogged says that the State Department report doesn't provide quite as much good news as it seems to at first.

April 30, 2003

GO HERE to see how you can help save Amina Lawal from being stoned to death.

BRITISH SUICIDE BOMBERS:

TWO British citizens were responsible for the suicide bombing of a pub in Tel Aviv early yesterday that killed three civilians and wounded 46 others.

A hunt was under way for one of the bombers, who did not detonate his charge and was believed to have it still in his possession. He is thought to have fled the scene when he saw his accomplice being blocked by a security guard.

Israeli police released an image of the passport of the dead man, Asif Mohammed Hanif, who detonated his explosives at the door. He was born on 2 August, 1981, in Bhowanj, Pakistan. The passport photograph of the wanted man, Omar Khan Sharif, born on 13 March, 1976, in Derby, was also released.

The security guard was seriously wounded as were another five people.

Reports in Jerusalem said the bombers were members of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah.

The British turned a blind eye to Islamic fundamentalism in Britain for a long time. This is the fruit of that policy.

ANATOLE KALETSKY WRITES:

Today is May 1, the International Day of Labour. It seems appropriate, therefore, to devote this column to the triumph of global capitalism. For if there is one social principle on which all economists, historians and politicians must now surely agree, it is that capitalism has done more than any other human construct to benefit working people around the world.

He's right, of course. Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the real question is whether the lovely Lily Malcolm will find the right special someone under her cherry tree.

MISSING TOURIST UPDATE: According to this report, they've been found:

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- Thirty-one European tourists who vanished in the Sahara Desert are being held hostage by terrorist groups, a ranking Algerian official said Wednesday.

The official said the tourists had been located by the Algerian army. Some 5,000 Algerian troops and 300 local guides were brought in to track down the tourists. . . .

No one has claimed responsibility for the disappearances, and there has been wide speculation about who might be behind them.

A name that regularly surfaces in the press is Mokhtar Benmokhtar, an Islamic insurgent thought to be a trafficker in arms, vehicles or cigarettes in the vast desert region between Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.

Interesting. I think there's more involved in this region than mere cigarette smuggling. I think someone's trying to set up a shadow state.

HOORAY FOR THE ALABAMA LEGISLATURE: They've managed to render their obscenity law illegal -- and they did it knowingly!

COLIN POWELL IS FLOATING THE IRAQI OIL-TRUST IDEA:

"It is under consideration, we're looking at that," Powell told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. "It's a concept that applies in the case of Iraq at least for consideration."

Absolutely. I'm glad somebody's thinking about it.

ORSON SCOTT CARD IS WORRIED: What if everything goes right in Iraq? No, really, he has a point, sort of.

SEVERAL PEOPLE have emailed me this story from AlterNet about a "Patriot Act" raid. It seems a bit odd to me: 5 NYPD officers come in with drawn guns -- but then they're followed up by "officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department." I'm no expert on how federal raids are conducted, but I've never heard of one conducted in this fashion. The feds generally have their own guys with guns.

Does anyone know if this M.O. makes sense?

These questions aside, the raid seems heavyhanded, but not dreadful. (Certainly not as bad as this pre-911 raid, which wasn't even especially famous.) It's hard to know more, since the story has few specifics, and we never learn what the feds were looking for.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr is skeptical -- there was a raid, apparently, but this account raises doubts:

The idea that the author was told that he was "being held under the Patriot Act" sounds particularly unlikely to me. I can't find a section of the Patriot Act that could conceivably apply to this.

It's not impossible, of course, that a cop would claim to be acting under a law that, in fact, offers no such authority.

TRAFFIC FOR THIS MONTH is a hair above last month (which had one more day) at about 3.5 million pageviews. I suspect that it'll be lower next month. And given that this traffic peak came about because of war, that'll be just as well.

HERE'S AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH NANOTECHNOLOGY PIONEER ERIC DREXLER about various claims regarding nanotechnology safety.

(Via NanoDot).

SLATE'S DAVID EDELSTEIN has a fascinating review of a documentary about the National Spelling Bee by Jeff Blitz, called Spellbound.

I was in the National Spelling Bee, and the documentary sounds like it rings true. I'll have to order a copy when it becomes available.

MORE ON THE JOHN LOTT -STANFORD LAW REVIEW ISSUE: There's an update here.

ALPHECCA'S WEEKLY CHART OF MEDIA BIAS ON GUNS is up.

JUDGE GILBERT MERRITT, THE JUDGE I CLERKED FOR, is going to Iraq to offer advice on setting up a real judiciary there. He's a thoughtful guy with a lot of experience in this sort of thing, and I think this bodes well.

TENNESSEE'S STATE LEGISLATURE is looking at some truly dreadful DMCA-like legislation. But grassroots opposition is growing. Bill Hobbs has more.

SOME THOUGHTS ON SPACE SETTLEMENT, over at GlennReynolds.com. And scroll down for some reader email on Star Trek, in a post that I neglected to plug over here.

Of course, why should you listen to me, when I only rate the three of freakin' clubs? I mean, you'd think that one of the Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse would rate at least a face card. But I'm not bitter.

JUAN PAXETY NOTES that two can play the frivolous-Belgian-complaint game. Except that I'm not sure that he's being frivolous.

ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE have been weighing in on Norman Mailer's latest remarks, but fellow novelist Roger Simon has it nailed:

Talk about white boys who still need to know they're good at something--how about NM and political analysis? Mailer continues to see everything as sports--fills the article with stale athletic references--as if, unconsciously, he were still in competition with Hemingway. (I doubt Hemingway, wherever he is, thinks much about Mailer.) That is also probably part of the reason he personifies the war in Iraq as Bush's affair. There always has to be some kind of human adversary for Norman. Issues are not the point because they are not, never have been, Mailer's forté. He prefers the boxing match and the ready opponent on the other side. But this time it's interesting, despite the fact he's writing in the London Times, Mailer didn't dare take on the real heavyweight in town -- Tony Blair. I guess even Norman knows when he's over his head.

It was another novelist, Pietro Di Donato, who once said that for all their tough talk, Mailer and Breslin couldn't punch their way out of a paper bag. Nowadays, that's true even with regard to their rhetorical skills.

SMALL WISDOM FROM PRINCE CHARLES: My TechCentralStation column, inspired by Prince Charles's comments on the dangers of nanotechnology, is up.

UPDATE: And note this post by David Appell on how disappointing it is when even science writers aren't ashamed of ignorance about basic scientific facts.

ORIN KERR has your 2002 wiretap roundup, just in case you were wondering.

VIRGINIA POSTREL WRITES THAT BILL MCKIBBEN ISN'T "BRAVE:"

This is an abuse of language. McKibben's book may be sincere, forceful, impassioned. It may be well written. But it is not brave. It will offend absolutely no one who matters in Bill McKibben's world. To the contrary, it will reinforce the righteous self-image of those who promote his career. By writing this book, McKibben can count on attention and praise. That doesn't make him a coward. But neither does it make him brave--or the reviewers brave for praising him.

But if you say it often enough, maybe no one will notice.

What really interests me is that people think that they've made a moral argument against genetic engineering when they say that the idea "sickens" them. The idea of sodomy "sickens" some people, too. So does the idea of interracial marriage.

So you feel ill. Why should I care? After all, pompous, empty-headed moralizing sickens me, and nobody's stopping that.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW WRITES that America is ready for a political axis-shift.

THE ELF-AQUITAINE SCANDAL REACHES INTO SOME ODD PLACES:

One of the largest private shareholders in BNP Paribas , the French bank that holds more than $13 billion in Iraqi oil funds administered through the United Nation's oil-for-food program, is an Iraqi-born businessman who once helped to arm Iraq in the 1980's and brokered business deals with Saddam Hussein's government, according to public records and interviews.

The involvement of the businessman, the British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, raises questions about how carefully the United Nations has vetted the bank in its continuing role as repository of oil-for-food funds. . . .

Earlier this month, Mr. Auchi was arrested and released on bail in London pending a court hearing next week on fraud charges involving the French oil giant TotalFinaElf. French prosecutors have accused Mr. Auchi of helping channel bribes to Total's executives, a charge Mr. Corker denies.

We keep hearing about Halliburton, but it seems to be TotalFinaElf that's at the center of all the really shady stuff.

UPDATE: Reader Kathleen deBettencourt emails with an excellent suggestion:

The United States should propose that a full audit of the Oil for Food program be conducted by an international team of independent auditors immediately. This proposal should be done in open session. It will be very illustrative to see who objects.

Indeed.

DANNY PEARL: Killed because he knew too much?

PARIS (AP) - Islamic extremists killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl because he had discovered dangerous secrets about their ties to the Pakistani intelligence community, according to an investigation by a respected French writer. . . .

Levy believes that Pearl was about to complete an article revealing that the al-Qaida terror network was close to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside Pakistan's scientific establishment.

"Pearl's conclusion, like my own, was that in Pakistan there are atomic scientists who are also committed Islamic extremists," Levy said in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Wednesday.

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

April 29, 2003

HOWARD VEIT has some thoughts on why celebrity anti-Americanism seems particularly offensive.

DR. WEEVIL is playing "Ba'ath poker," and seems to have more cards to play with all the time.

GARY FARBER has good news and bad news. The good news: he doesn't have SARS, and he didn't have a heart attack. The bad news: he does have pneumonia, and high blood pressure.

Drop by his blog, and leave him a little love. Heck, hit his tipjar if you're in the mood.

TERRORISM, PORN, AND SAUDI MONEY in The Netherlands: DiLacerator has a post.

The Saudis have been waging low-key war against the West for decades; this is just more evidence of that.

MIKE HAWASH HAS BEEN CHARGED as a terrorist coconspirator. I don't know how strong the evidence is, but at least he's not being held without charges now.

HERE'S AN ENCOURAGING REPORT on the humanitarian situation in Iraq, though I don't know a lot about the sourcing other than that it comes from the UN. But they wouldn't be likely to paint a rosy scenario here. Excerpt:

Basrah - An UN inter-agency mission reached Basrah on 27-28 April, to carry out a humanitarian assessment and to identify office premises. In Basrah, the situation is improving but is still tense. Water and power supplies are provided at 90% capacity, and are expected to reach 100% shortly. This constitutes a higher level than before the war. UNICEF is in dialogue with local water companies to gradually take over the water tankering operations in the city. Garbage collection is problematic. All hospitals are functional and guarded by military.

These reports sound pretty good to me for the immediate aftermath of a decisive war.

MORE EURO-SCANDAL AFOOT:

Prosecutors said on Thursday that they were dropping their probe of the massive destruction of computer data in the Chancellery just ahead of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's departure from office, and would not lay any charges.
The prosecutors' office in Bonn said that despite almost three years of investigations it could not prove that there was criminal intent behind the erasure of thousands of sensitive files in the weeks following the defeat of Kohl's Christian Democratic Union in the September 1998 election.

Complaints by the new Social Democratic Party government were muted during the transition, but the issue took on new resonance a year later when prosecutors in Bavaria found financial irregularities in CDU finances. Ultimately, it was revealed that Kohl and other top Christian Democrats had maintained an elaborate system of secret bank accounts.

Of particular interest to prosecutors were links between the CDU slush funds and some $51 million in bribes that prosecutors in Switzerland and France said had been paid during the early 1990s to German Christian Democrats in connection with the privatization and sale of eastern Germany's Leuna oil refinery.

But many of the files pertaining to the sale of the Leuna facility to France's state-owned Elf-Aquitaine were found to be missing from the Chancellery.

Do tell. I'm sure there's nothing to it.

MALAYSIAN CATBLOGGING: Well, why not?

LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LAB is missing thousands of computers. Ouch.

FROM WARBLOGGING TO SARSBLOGGING: Will Femia has a roundup of SARS-related blogs.

DEAN PETERS RESPONDS to my earlier post about pitch correction with a resounding "who cares?"

Well, quite a few, to judge from my email. Here, by the way, is the kind of thing we're talking about.

MARK STEYN ON THE IDIOCY OF THE UNITED NATIONS:

Got that? Last month, the Russians were opposed to war on the grounds that there was no proof Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This month, the Russians are opposed to lifting sanctions on the grounds that there's no proof Iraq doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. . . .

You don't have to be a genius to see that, since September 11th, we have entered a transitional phase in world affairs. But reasonable people are prone to reasonableness and, as I mentioned the other day, they're especially vulnerable to the seductive power of inertia in human affairs. The wish not to have to update one's Rolodex burns fiercely in the political breast. Brent Scowcroft, George Bush Sr.'s National Security Advisor, wanted to stick with the Soviet Union even after the Politburo had given up on it. The European Union was committed to the preservation of Yugoslavia even when there had ceased to be a Yugoslavia to preserve. In the Middle East, clinging to the status quo even as it's melting and dripping on to your shoes is one reason why the region is now a problem. . . .

Now another Middle Eastern war has come and gone, and the bien-pensants are anxious that once again an obsolescent institution be glued back together and propped in position. This time it's the UN. The editors of Britain's Spectator concede it has more than its share of "irritating do-gooders," but surely even that's a euphemism: The do-gooders are, in fact, do-badders. The "oil-for-palaces" program (as Tommy Franks calls it) is a grotesque boondoggle even by UN standards: It was good for bureaucrats, good for Saddam's European bankers, good for his British stooge George Galloway, but bad for the Iraqi people. A humanitarian operation meant to help a dictator's beleagured subjects has instead enriched the UN by over $1-billion (officially) in "administrative" costs. There's no oversight, no auditing, nothing most businesses would recognize as a legitimate invoice, and, although non-essential items can only be approved by the Secretary-General himself, Kofi Annan (Mister Legitimacy) has personally signed off on practically anything Saddam requested, including "boats," from France.

He's right, of course. The United Nations is not a force for good in the world. To the very modest extent that it's a force at all, it's a force for corruption and the propping up of tyrants.

RANDY BARNETT HAS SOME THOUGHTS on ending the confirmation standoff

If the Democrats don't think they like "stealth" candidates like Miguel Estrada, just wait until they experience the delights of judges Richard Epstein, Lillian Bevier, Bernard Siegan, Lino Gragia, and dozens more like them on the Courts of Appeals. Or how about Morris Arnold, Alex Kozinski, Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, Edith Jones, or even Robert Bork as recess appointments to the Supreme Court? For the White House, the point of the exercise would be to propose a list of bright and articulate judges who are far more ideologically objectionable to the Democrats and their activist support groups than the president's current nominees.

Interesting.

UPDATE: Philippe De Croy has a response.

I CAN'T VOUCH FOR THIS SOURCE, which I'm unfamiliar with. And the email with the link came via a Russian anonymous-remailer service. So keep that in mind as you read this report:

Well placed sources tell Mineweb that sensitive records and correspondence related to the oil-for-food programme have been purged from the computer system at UN headquarters in New York. For detail of the sums involved, see the table at the end of this article.

Mineweb’s sources dismiss assurances by oil-for-food programme director, Benon Sevan, that current audits are sufficient. “These audits are sometimes used to cover-up real problems in programmes such as the UN’s Chief Resident Auditor in the Congo who was removed and his audit blocked when it alleged possible fraud involving communications equipment procured for that mission,” the source said.

Perhaps some other journalists will be inspired to take a look.

DEMOCRACY! WHISKY! SEXY! Well, so far we've got two out of three!

"The movie is much more beautiful now because there's sex," said a beaming Mohammed Taher, 18. Since Saturday, when the theater reopened with a freshly uncensored version of the low-budget flick, he has seen "Blue Chill" three times.

Baghdad has gone through a revolution in the past three weeks, casting off decades of censorship and state control. Banned books, satellite dishes and video CDs are now sold on the street - as are alcohol and women.

Nobody knows how long the permissiveness will last. Iraq's American governors brought together Iraqi political leaders yesterday to discuss a new government, and many Baghdadis believe that once it's in place, some of their freedoms will disappear.

Conservatives are counting on it. "Everything against Islam, everything we hate, has been imported by the Americans like a disease," said Abbas Hamid, a 60-year-old merchant. "We'll fight them. We're tired now, but we'll rest up and use our guns to drive the Americans out."

For now, Hamid appears to be in the minority as Iraqis excitedly discover worlds of vice - and virtue, too - long forbidden by the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein.

Christina Aguilera's belly button: irresistible force for freedom!

(Via Zach Barbera).

UPDATE: And Kylie Minogue is doing her part (er, parts?) for liberty, too!

IS FEDERALISM CONSERVATIVE? Robert Alt says not necessarily. I agree.

UPDATE: So does Juan -- and he's got good examples.

HERE'S A PIECE ON BLOGGING JOURNALISTS from the Online Journalism Review. I still like Ken Layne's take best.

PERRY DE HAVILLAND thinks that Democrats' efforts to win over libertarians are going to need more thought if they are to succeed.

Hey, it's not just the Brits who can do understatement, you know.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, this is an interesting thought experiment.

OUCH. Those Gawker folks can be mean.

WHENEVER I POST PIX OR DESCRIPTIONS from Knoxville, I hear from homesick Knoxville expatriates around the world. For those folks, here's a picture taken looking across the river from Cherokee Boulevard this morning.

TIM ROBBINS CENSORED? Media Minded is all over this nonstory. Excerpt:

What this means is that America was actually subjected to an EXTRAORDINARY 11 MINUTES of Robbins' paranoid ramblings, not a longer-than-average nine minutes, as I posted last night. That also means Robbins was granted NEARLY FOUR MORE MINUTES of airtime than the longest recent celebrity interview currently available at the Today Show Web site. (See post below.)

Maybe this is a clever plan to swing American opinion in favor of censorship.

HOWARD KURTZ SAYS THAT bloggers are taking over the 2004 Presidential campaign. Well, yeah.

JACQUES CHIRAC NEEDS TO READ THESE WORDS from LT Smash. Note to journalists: call the French Embassy and see if you can get a comment in response!

UPDATE: Jim Treacher offers this comment.

IRAQIS ARE SOAKING UP FREE MEDIA now that Saddam's censorship is over:

"Now I am a free man," says Salih in halting English. "How could we have lived under this regime?"

How, indeed? But here's the most amusing part:

His friend, Abbas Ali, concurs. "We used to go to sleep at 10 p.m. Now we stay up until 4 or 5 a.m. because we can't get enough." Still desperate for war news, they tune to CNN, BBC, and what appears to be a local favorite, Fox. They like it, people here say, because it has been the most supportive of the war.

For many here, the only foreign channels they can understand are in Arabic, and they are deeply resentful of the most prominent one, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.

Abu Bakr Mohammed Amin, an elderly man in a red-checkered headdress visiting Salih's television shop, gives them a dismissive flick of the wrist: "They only knew how to support Saddam," he says.

Ouch.

SGTSTRYKER IS BACK!

DANG, I SLEPT THROUGH THE EARTHQUAKE last night. Fortunately, SKBubba was awake and has the scoop.

MISSING TOURIST UPDATE:

The tourists have been separated into two groups and are being held in canyons and gullies near the town of Illizi, which lies near the Libyan border some 900 miles south-east of Algiers, a senior security official told the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday.

The 15 Germans, 10 Austrians, four Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede who, while travelling in seven different groups, have gone missing since mid-February, are being held by rebels led by local Islamist leader Emir Ammari.

Well, that doesn't solve the problem, but it does dispel some of the mystery.

April 28, 2003

MINNESOTA JOINS THE GROWING NUMBER OF STATES with "shall-issue" hangun-carry laws, meaning that citizens who qualify must be issued permits, with no discretion (traditionally a source of corruption and cronyism) left to authorities.

JERRY POURNELLE thinks patience will be the key in reconstructing Iraq:

The central question in a democracy is, can you afford to lose the election? If you try and fail, is loss total? Will you be jailed, your property confiscated, your family jailed or killed? If the consequences of loss are enormous, then you don't let the ballot box be the final decision. Nor should you.

The first thing we must do is assure the losers they can afford to lose, and that we will be there to protect them.

I think that Rumsfeld has figured this out. But how many others have?

THE SECRET OF WEALTH (no, really) -- just start here and scroll up.

DON'T SNIFF THE MYSTERIOUS WHITE POWDER: Well, this story isn't really that funny:

An Egyptian merchant-marine sailor met "someone" in Cairo and was given a suitcase. He traveled to Brazil to join his ship, which was loading bauxite intended for Canada. He was supposed to deliver the suitcase to "someone" in Canada, but being curious about the suitcase he opened it while in Brazil, and shortly thereafter died from anthrax. Like as not, having found the legendary white powder he suspected it was drugs, and took a sniff to see.

I don't know if he really sniffed it -- another account I saw suggested that he died of intestinal anthrax -- but this is a rather serious worry.

UPDATE: Here's more, suggesting that worry is appropriate.

GERHARD SCHROEDER'S POLITICAL STAR isn't exactly rising:

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder issued a veiled threat yesterday to resign if his party refuses to back his "Agenda 2010" package of reforms, intended to slim down the welfare state and give desperately needed impetus to the German economy.

It doesn't have anything to do with the war, but it indicates why Schroeder was desperate enough to try distracting people with anti-Americanism.

UPDATE: It's not just Schroeder who's making this threat. (Via Tim Blair).

HERE'S AN UPDATE ON arrested Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi.

JUST WATCHED A TAPE of the PBS Newshour piece on weblogs that I mentioned earlier. I thought it was pretty good, and certainly better than yet another InstaPundit piece would have been. They interviewed a number of bloggers, showed a number of blogs, and featured Joan Connell who was -- until last week -- my editor (only she was called a "producer") at MSNBC. It was actually the first time I'd ever seen her, since we've interacted entirely by phone and email.

The focus was on the blogosphere, not on particular blogs, and that was good -- because the blogosphere is smarter than any individual blog or blogger.

I taped the piece because the InstaWife, InstaDaughter, and I went to a carnival tonight. Bumper-cars, shooting galleries, and Ferris wheels. And caramel apples. It was lovely.

UPDATE: There's RealAudio here.

KEVIN DRUM CASTS DOUBT ON MEDIA ORIGINALITY: But you have to see the photo to appreciate it.

I'M NOT SURE THAT BERKELEY HAS REALLY BEEN LIBERATED YET, but this is surely evidence that American columns can operate at will even in the heart of the city.

UPDATE: Here's more from the L.A. Times. Excerpt:

BERKELEY -- Borrowing a page from this city's radical traditions, a boisterous band of 200 college Republicans demonstrated Saturday in the bastion of American liberalism, staging a pro-Bush administration rally on the UC Berkeley campus and leading a flag-waving procession down Telegraph Avenue.

As street vendors and merchants looked on in disbelief, delegates attending a state college Republican convention here marched two blocks to People's Park, site of a widely publicized protest incident in 1969, where they chanted "Bush! Bush! Bush!" and sang "America the Beautiful."

By Berkeley standards, it was a minuscule procession played out on a balmy Saturday afternoon on a mostly deserted campus. But to the hardy corps of young Republicans, uniting under the theme "Behind Enemy Lines," it was a highly symbolic event. Even grizzled political warriors said they were impressed by participants' moxie. Longtime Berkeley professors said it represented a political drift to the right at California's pioneer state university.

"I never dreamed in my lifetime that I would see this," said a buoyant Shawn Steel, former state Republican Party chairman from Rolling Hills.

Well, it's a man-bites-dog story, for sure. Or maybe a man-bites-geezer story:

The difference is clear at the Free Speech Movement Café, an elegant coffee shop funded by a wealthy 1964 graduate at the base of the new Moffitt Undergraduate Library. One of the walls of the cafe is covered with an enlarged photograph of a Free Speech era sit-in. Almost all of the faces in the photo are white. Recent classes entering Berkeley, however, have been largely Asian, accounting for more than 40% of the entering freshman class.

"As a general rule," said Leonard, "the increase in Asian Americans has pushed the student body more toward the center politically."

In fact, Leonard said, opposition to the campus conservatives is more likely to come from the faculty or aging leftists in the surrounding community. "I get the sense the community is much more into protest than the campus," Leonard said. "There is a culture of protest in the Bay Area that is steadily getting grayer and older."

It seems to be that way everywhere.

THE WAR IS FINALLY OVER, and it's an unconditional victory, according to Rand Simberg.

I like the reference to "bunkum-busting."

ANOTHER WALL HAS FALLEN, this one in Cyprus. Christopher Hitchens writes:

I wish I’d been there to see it, having so often traversed this grim border in both directions as a journalist, but I was able to get cell-phone reports from my former sister-in-law, Manto Meleagrou, who was one of the first to make the trip. The sense of exhilaration and liberty was extraordinary, as if people indefinitely confined in a cramped cell had suddenly been allowed to stretch and exercise. And also as if a “no talking” rule in a barren jail had suddenly been relaxed: Conversation that had been impossible for decades was suddenly and volubly resumed.

Germans were Germans on either side of the wall, while Cypriots are either Greek-speaking and Orthodox or Turkish-speaking and Muslim. One of the few benefits of British colonialism is that English is widely spoken on both sides, and the temper of both communities is also heavily secular, but there has been enough mutual distrust in Greek-Turkish history for demagogues to work on. Nonetheless, Manto and others told me that they were greeted very warmly by the Turkish Cypriots and that the local police and army seemed to have taken the day off. The same was true reciprocally: Turks venturing south were embraced by former friends and by new ones. . . .

The fraternization among Cypriots — a people long written-off as hopeless victims of “ancient hatreds” and tribal feelings — is of course mainly a compliment to themselves. Those of us lucky enough to know the island are well aware that the majority is immune to fascistic rhetoric and maintains a long tradition of courtesy and coexistence. However, it must be emphasized that the idea of a democratic, open, law-governed society, represented in part by the “pull” of the European Union, does now constitute an alternative pole of attraction and a challenge to traditional, confessional, and nationalist modes of thought. And this has implications across the region.

Along with the slow but now unstoppable movement among the Palestinians for a democratic “civil society” approach to their common problems and their long battle for statehood, this sudden development in Cyprus shows that there is indeed a “wind of change” blowing in the Middle East.

I hope he's right. It does often seem to be the case that "ancient tribal hatreds" stem from modern demagoguery more than actual longstanding history.

JOHN LOTT HAS RESPONDED to the Ayres/Donohue post below. I've added his email as an update, which you can read here.

HERE'S AN UPDATE ON WHAT'S GOING ON WITH SGTSTRYKER.COM.

MISSING TOURISTS UPDATE:

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) Algerian authorities found a vehicle in the Sahara desert that likely belonged to a German couple who are among 31 European tourists missing in the north African country, a security official said Sunday.

The discovery may provide one of the most important clues into the disappearances since the Algerian military began searching in mid-February, the official said on condition of anonymity.

The four-wheel drive vehicle was ``practically buried under sand'' near the remote town of Illizi, 930 miles southwest of the capital, Algiers, he said. Its battery had been removed.

Interesting.

THE PBS NEWSHOUR FOLKS emailed to tell me that there will be a program on weblogs on tonight. You'll have to check your local listings for the time, but it should be around halfway through the program.

Originally, this was supposed to be a program about InstaPundit, but I persuaded them that InstaPundit had been done to death, and suggested that they branch out to some newer faces, which I gather they've done.

A transcript, etc., will appear here at some point after the show airs.

HERE'S MORE ON AN INSTAPUNDIT STAPLE: scandalous problems at the FBI crime lab.

The AP reported this month that FBI lab technician Jacquelyn Blake quit while under investigation for failing to follow required scientific procedures while analyzing 103 DNA samples over the past couple of years, and a second lab employee was indicted for allegedly providing false testimony.

Inspector General Glenn Fine expanded the Blake inquiry to examine the FBI lab’s broader practices in DNA cases. The FBI has been cooperating, the government officials said.

I wonder how many people were wrongly convicted? I feel pretty sure that some have been.

Here is an oldy-but-goody post on this, and here is another.

DAVID PLOTZ HAS A SURVEY OF IDEAS, all of which seem pretty good to me, on how to rebuild civil society in Iraq.

One useful thing to remember: unlike Russians, Iraqis had a civil society, more or less, as recently as 35 years ago. Iraq is more like Eastern Europe than Russia in this regard: there are still plenty of people who can remember a different way of living.

Here, by the way, is something I wrote on the subject a few weeks ago. And Jeff Jarvis has been all over this question (with special attention to the role the Internet can play) -- just keep scrolling.

HERE'S MORE ON SARS and its impact on China.

DANIEL DREZNER POINTS OUT that there's good news from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Roger Simon wonders if Tariq Aziz was our guy all along.

TALKLEFT is operational again. So is The Daily Kos, which unbeknownst to me was down for the same reason. SgtStryker, on the other hand, seems to be only halfway back. At the moment, I can see the template, but no entries.

PETER OBORNE WONDERS:

It is worth pondering this contradiction, made sharper by the military victory in Iraq. It raises two fascinating questions. Why do British armed forces, with their meagre £25 billion budget, always deliver? But why do the NHS and the education system, though in receipt of unlimited amounts of public money, continue to fail? To put the problem in another way: how come the simple British squaddie — though underpaid, overworked and forced to carry out his or her duties in conditions of appalling danger — always rises to any challenge? But how come so many British schoolteachers, rather better paid, with far shorter hours and long holidays, endlessly whinge and — as the teachers’ union conference demonstrated yet again — block even quite sensible reforms?

But it's the paragraph after this one that demonstrates just how big a challenge Blair faces.

NOAM CHOMSKY AND HOWARD ZINN deconstruct The Fellowship of the Ring movie. I'm pretty sure this is a parody, but, really, how can you tell the difference?

THE GUARDIAN reports on Internet Satire sites and gives Scott Ott's ScrappleFace a lot of attention.

CLAYTON CRAMER NOTES ANOTHER DEFENSIVE HANDGUN USE, pointing out that "These don't get much coverage nationally, but they happen frequently."

IAIN MURRAY REPORTS on a poll suggesting that Brits are developing an astonishingly, well, American attitude toward crime.

SARS UPDATE: A friend in China sends a disquieting report, suggesting that things there are worse than I had realized:

Within the past week, it has finally become evident that the Chinese government's failure to own up to the SARS problem when it began several months ago is coming back to haunt it, at the expense of many innocent people who had no idea that their government was (once again) lying to them. Although we have always known that we were visiting an authoritarian regime that lacks a free press, until this week, the police presence has been relatively low-key and the "news" in the China Daily has been a source of amusement to us. It is easy, in the capitalist mecca of Shanghai, to forget a key fact that the government here plainly wants you to forget but that is now quite clear: This is very much a police state. . . .

[Numerous anecdotes of coverups, "appearance-oriented" strategies, and so on follow. Example: a sick student showing up at a university clinic and being told "There is no SARS at the University. Do you want to be the first case?" after which he went home without treatment. Shanghai is reortedly quarantining anyone who enters the city from anywhere else.]

But for the facts that it is rapidly heading toward martial law and is infected with a contagious and potentially lethal disease, Shanghai is a fantastic city. . . . China is a growing world power with enormous political, military, and economic importance. But it will not be a full-fledged member of the world community until it meets its responsibilities to other countries and to its own people.

The report suggests that things are much worse elsewhere in China, particularly in Beijing and Guangzhou. I should note that my friend was until recently very optimistic about China, and very favorably disposed toward the direction that its government is taking. I suspect that the damage done to China's reputation may, in some ways, do as much harm as the disease itself. China will have to work very hard to get out of this hole.