FIFTH COLUMN?

The leader of a Muslim charity in the United States has been sentenced to 11 years in jail after being convicted of fraud. Syrian-born Enaam Arnaout, 46, admitted diverting thousands of dollars from his Benevolence International Foundation to Islamic militants in Bosnia and Chechnya. . . .

US District Judge Suzanne B Conlon said there was no evidence Arnaout supported terrorism, although she said his alleged links to Bin Laden raised suspicions.

During the investigation, US Attorney General John Ashcroft said documents found in Arnaout’s charity’s Bosnia office tied him directly to Bin Laden, and Arnaout admitted having met the al-Qaeda leader.

It’s not entirely clear what’s going on here, though there was obviously fraud involved at the very least.

UPDATE: This is troubling, too. Either these guys are guilty, which is troubling, or they’re not, which is troubling in a different way.

READER JAMES SMITH EMAILS FROM BAGHDAD regarding this AP story:

I’m now working in the public affairs office in Baghdad for the CPA. Got here three weeks ago. Fascinating experience. I thought I’d forward you a good example of reporting that starts with the premise that everything is the fault of the Coalition and ignores facts simply to prove that point. Here is a humble fisking of an AP story now on the wire, which I fear will become yet another myth unless you dispell it on your blog. Feel free to use any or all of my commentary below. I think you’d agree that flaw five is truly weird.

Click “More” for the rest. I suggested that the CPA start a blog of its own, allowing it to “Fisk” stories directly, but I thought I’d reproduce this email just as an example of how this sort of thing could work. Why not?

(more…)

JAMES MORROW:

THEY SAY THAT COCAINE is God’s way of telling you you have too much money. I suppose blogging is His way of telling you you’ve got too much time on your hands.

I can quit any time.

CLAYTON CRAMER has some interesting history regarding Cruz Bustamante’s associates.

UPDATE: David Neiwert says that charges against Bustamante are overstated, “though Bustamante himself would probably do everyone a favor by clearing it up definitively.”

IN WHAT’S EITHER A COINCIDENCE, OR BRILLIANT MARKETING, the copy of one of my regular tool catalogs that showed up in the mail on Saturday had home generators splashed across the cover. Paul Boutin has more on these.

I’ve never bought one, even though the idea of making my own electricity seems, well, very cool. One reason is that they’re somewhat dangerous — in fact, during the little-noted but massive Memphis power outage last month, the son of an acquaintance was asphyxiated when the people he was staying with ran a generator — indoors. Don’t do that!

The other is that you need a big honking generator to really run things like air conditioners or heat. I’d like one of those automatic start-up, tri-power (natural gas lines, backed up by propane, also capable of running on gasoline) versions, with about 15-25 kilowatts. I could’ve had one, too, if I hadn’t bought a car.

Short of that, well, I’ve got flashlights, and a big UPS to run the DSL modem and the wireless node for hours. But the generators Paul points out are kinda slick-looking. . . .

In the meantime, I’ve got more thoughts on self-reliance over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: Noted survivalist Amy Langfield has suggestions for what you ought to keep in your blackout kit.

LYNN KIESLING HAS A COLUMN ON DEREGULATION AND BLACKOUTS:

First, the “deregulation” that has occurred in electricity has primarily been in opening up wholesale markets for power generators and their customers (i.e., utilities), enabling people in Manhattan to continue consuming power (and clamoring now for more regulation) without Con Edison having to build more power plants on the island itself. The existence and growing vitality of wholesale electricity markets has created substantial value in the past decade, through encouraging generation where it is cheapest and sales of power to where it is most needed.

But this limited amount of market liberalization has left the industry in an awkward place. Generation is largely governed by market processes, but transmission and retail distribution remain heavily regulated.

Read the whole thing. And visit her blog.

SUSANNA CORNETT points to an interesting anti-agricultural-subsidy blog by The Guardian, and has some thoughts on the future of blogging generally.

SPINSANITY HAS TWO POSTS, here and here, about Bush critics playing “fast and loose” with the facts. Molly Ivins appears. That’s no surprise — Ivins’ claim to accuracy is about as well-founded as her claim to humor. but so does Clinton arms-control official Peter Zimmermann, who gets busted for making false claims about what Bush said regarding Saddam’s nuclear capabilities. Conclusion: “critics of the administration’s truthfulness need to be just as honest with the public as they ask the president to be.”

STUART BUCK WRITES: “300 SAMs. Headed for America. Found only because a Hungarian bureaucrat randomly happened across them.”

On the other hand, this happened almost two years ago, and nothing since. Perhaps this suggests that the Homeland Security campaign is going better than I’m giving it credit for.

FUNNY, I got less spam during the blackout, too.

THIS may well be true. That’s okay — I can live with being replaced by a robot.

ZSA ZSA SADDAM: One word: Heh.

I AGREE WITH DOCTOR FRANK on the important question of modulation in songwriting.

And, by the way, you should go to Dr. Frank’s and just start scrolling if you have the least interest in music or record production.

THOSE NAUGHTY NORTH KOREANS. Earlier I posted on German businessmen busted for selling them nuclear bomb-making supplies. Here’s more:

MUNICH, Aug. 15 — The French cargo ship Ville de Virgo was already running a day late when it steamed into Hamburg harbor on April 3, its stadium-size deck stacked 50 feet high with cargo containers bound for Asia. . . .

But within hours after the ship departed, the story of the manifest began to unravel. German intelligence officials discovered that the aluminum was destined not for China but for North Korea. The intended use of the pipes, they concluded, was not aircraft production, but the making of nuclear weapons.

Then there’s this:

The US State Department lauded Taiwan’s government yesterday for forcing the North Korean freighter Be Gae-hung to unload a batch of controlled chemicals before allowing it to leave Kaohsiung Harbor for North Korea.

State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker said during a regular press briefing that the chemical, identified as phosphorus pentasulfide, could have been used to make chemical weapons if transported to North Korea.

Question for the day: Remember those three freighters that Saddam loaded up with mysterious-but-probably-nasty stuff before the war? What ever happened to those?

SOME QUOTES FROM BASRA that are worth reading.

“EUROPE PINES FOR BIG-SPENDING AMERICAN TOURISTS:”

In Britain – the most popular destination for American tourists to Europe – figures for the first half of 2003 show an 11 percent decline in US visitors. In Italy, it’s more than 20 percent, while in France, it’s even worse: an estimated 26 percent drop this year.

“Until Sept. 11, about 45 percent of our clients were Americans,” laments Mauricio Mistarz, head receptionist at a small three-star hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. “Now, on a good day, Americans fill 20 percent of our rooms.”

The protracted slump in US visitors to Europe is alarming for the millions of Europeans who profit from their dollars – from the travel agent to the taxi driver, the postcard vendor to the tour guide.

American visitors tend to stay longer and spend more than any other tourists. In France last year, the Americans spent more than British and Irish visitors combined, despite being outnumbered 5 to 1. In Britain, the average American spends $1,000 a trip, far outstripping European visitors.

All of this means that US reluctance to travel costs European tourism dear.

The Europeans seem to think that it’s fear of terrorism that’s keeping Americans home. I don’t think that’s quite it.

UPDATE: Michael Demmons says he’s done his part to keep European economies afloat. And scroll up for a definitive post on political ideology.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Note to Matthew Yglesias: “a” is a different word from “the.” Just as the Dutch are different from the Danes. . . .

ALGERIAN TOURIST UPDATE: Looks like they may be on their way home soon, though it’s still not entirely clear what’s going on.

CHIEF WIGGLES has more stuff worth reading. Don’t miss it.

STILL MORE ON ELECTRONIC VOTING:

E-voting, once revered as the savior of an antiquated and problematic election system, is slipping off its pedestal. Legislators nationwide are backing off, rethinking their trust in so-called direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting systems. They want answers to mounting allegations of shoddy security.

Diebold maintains its AccuVote-TS voting machine is safe, even though its own Web site sparked the criticism in the first place.

The site’s confidential files gave Johns Hopkins University researchers a rare peek into the secretive world of touch-screen DRE voting systems. And they blasted Diebold, asserting in a July 23 study that the company’s software is unsafe and an easy target for hackers.

Diebold basically called the Johns Hopkins study hogwash less than a week later. The research, the company said, was based on outdated, incomplete material and biased from the start. But the security concerns chief researcher Avi Rubin raised were still more than enough to rattle officials across the nation.

You already know what I think about this.

MARK STEYN DIVES INTO ARIANNA HUFFINGTON:

I was delighted to hear that Arianna’s running for governor of California. Although many dismiss her as a shallow self-promoter driving around in a silly car, I love those big Hollywood billboards of her with that fabulous cleavage you just want to dive into . . .

Oh, wait. That’s not Arianna, that’s Angelyne, the other shallow self-promoting elderly sexpot who’s running for governor.

I told you the recall would be worth it just for the Steyn meanness it would unleash. (Via Kaus, who observes: “I like Arianna Huffington. Really. Any author who can come up with $410,363 in deductions is a friend of freelance writers everywhere.”).

ERIC OLSEN LIKED MAUREEN DOWD’S COLUMN ON BLOGS, but says that she completely missed the lessons of the blackout: “This is just churlish piffle.”

All the piffle that’s fit to print, as they say.

ROB SAMA has a long and interesting post on the power industry.

UPDATE: Read this, and follow the links, too.

TECHNOLOGY IS YOUR FRIEND: Rob Smith reports success. Stop by and congratulate him.

WHY PEOPLE THINK GOVERNMENT IS STUPID:

Yes, you read that right–an officer enforcing a health regulation ordered a club for recovering alcoholics to get a liquor license. But wait–it gets worse.

Yes, it does.

WHAT GRAY DAVIS’S FRIENDS ARE SAYING ABOUT HIM: Ouch.