IT’S A KIND OF MICROFICTION: 100 Words or Les Nessman.
Archive for 2005
July 10, 2005
MILLIONS OF EYES AND EARS over at GlennReynolds.com.
HURRICANE HYPE: I’m watching some woman from Fox trying to make a big deal out of 30 mph winds on Lake Pontchartrain. Jeez.
UPDATE: The Mudville Gazette has been turning a critical eye on the hurricane coverage.
MORE VIDEO FROM IRAQ: Check out Faces from the Front, which has lots of cool stuff. Meanwhile, Michael Yon has posted more reporting.
JUST REMEMBER, IT’S A PROCESS NOT AN EVENT: Gateway Pundit has more on democratization in Azerbaijan.
THIS WEEK’S BRITBLOG ROUNDUP is posted.
SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR as Chief Justice? Seems unlikely to me.
I think that Eugene Volokh would be the ideal pick for Chief, given his ability to manage the often-fractious collection of constitutional law professors on his Conlawprofs list. 8 other justices would be a walk in the park by comparison.
UPDATE: It looks like the Draft Eugene movement is taking off!
JOSEPH BRAUDE WRITES IN THE NEW REPUBLIC about Muslim groups’ slow and inadequate response to the London bombings:
Yesterday’s attack on the British people gave Muslims everywhere a chance to distance themselves from the radical Islamists who claim to have perpetrated it. While Muslim governments have taken the opportunity to speak out against the killing of innocents, Muslim Brotherhood offshoot groups failed to rise to the challenge. What they offered instead were statements full of equivocation–in marked contrast to other Arab politicians.
Not impressive at all.
UPDATE: Of course, as Nick Cohen notes in The Observer, lots of people have been unimpressive on this front:
In these bleak days, it’s worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that ‘we had it coming’. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.
All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we’ve got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair’s fault but there wouldn’t be indiscriminate murder because ‘the threat’ was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him. . . .
But it’s a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West – and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.
Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.
Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I’m afraid that’s what the record shows.
Yes, and were it spread by Christians, these people woudl have no trouble recognizing it for what it is. It’s only the peculiar strain of anti-Westernism that infects so many people in the West that makes it hard to notice, I think.
Meanwhile, Charles Moore wonders, “Where is the Gandhi of Islam?” Read the whole thing.
THIS IS OLD NEWS TO MOST BLOG READERS, but the Washington Post has a lengthy article on how London has become a haven for radical Islamists. Excerpt:
Abu Hamza Masri, for years a blood-curdling preacher at a North London mosque allegedly visited by shoe bomber Richard Reid and hijacker trainee Zacarias Moussaoui, listened silently Friday as his lawyer argued about his indictment last January on nine counts of incitement to murder for speeches that allegedly promoted mass violence against non-Muslims. In one speech cited in a British documentary film, Masri urged followers to get an infidel “and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat. Forget wasting a bullet, cut them in half!”
Masri’s case is just one of several dozen that describe the venom, sprawling shape and deep history of al Qaeda and related extremist groups in London. Osama bin Laden opened a political and media office here as far back as 1994; it closed four years later when his local lieutenant, Khalid Fawwaz, was arrested for aiding al Qaeda’s attack on two U.S. embassies in Africa.
As bin Laden’s ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became “the Star Wars bar scene” for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers.
Today, al Qaeda and its offshoots retain broader connections to London than to any other city in Europe, according to evidence from terrorist prosecutions. Evidence shows at least a supporting connection to London groups or individuals in many of the al Qaeda-related attacks of the past seven years. Among them are the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; the assassination of Afghan militia leader Ahmed Shah Massoud on Sept. 9, 2001; outer rings of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, involving Moussaoui and the surveillance of financial targets in Washington and New York; Reid’s attempted shoe bomb attack in December 2001; and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
I suppose that some British authorities have thought it better to keep these guys where they can watch them, but I suspect they’ll be rethinking that approach. I think that we should treat Islamic hate groups the same way we’ve traditionally treated Nazi or racist hate groups: With reluctant tolerance, but with a willingness to bring the hammer down fast and hard if they cross the line, and without even pretending that there’s anything admirable about them. It’s hard to imagine the British government tolerating Christian preachers who called for the murder of Muslims in such terms for long.
Here’s more on the subject from the New York Times, which is now only about 3 years behind, say, Charles Johnson on this topic . . .
UPDATE: Dan Gillmor notes the gleeful response from many young British Muslims.
Immigrant groups used to be anxious to prove their patriotism, in part because they feared the consequences if they were thought disloyal. That seems not to be the case today.
HURRICANEBLOGGING from Cuba.
JEFF JARVIS wants advice on video-on-a-chip for blog newsgathering. I’ve had excellent results using this cheap Sony, which produces 640×480 30fps video, and can put about 15-20 minutes on a 512MB memory stick. (This newer model
Another reason for using video-on-a-chip is that it’s easier to deal with. Video from tape has to be captured at realtime speed; video from a chip can just be copied to a hard drive. And the lower capacity of the chips is actually something of an advantage as it forces you to be selective. Austin Bay shot some cool video on his recent trip to Iraq, Djibouti, and Afghanistan, but he’s finding it a pain to sort through the 7 hours of tape and find what he wanted. A half dozen memory sticks might have been easier.
The thing that everyone ignores, but that is very important, is sound quality. Some cameras take an external microphone (my Toshiba does) but the quality of the builtin mike is key, because using an external microphone is a pain. Best advice: Get close to your subject! I’m very impressed with the high quality that my Sony’s matchhead-sized builtin microphone produces, even against considerable background noise. Try to test that out with anything you buy.
Related thoughts on this subject here. Some earlier reflections here.
UPDATE: Reader Andrew Cohill emails:
I’ve discovered that my Canon A85 takes astoundingly good video clips, and I just bought a 512 meg card a couple of weeks ago so I could take video. And like you, I think the limited space forces you to focus on what is really important, rather than just turning on the camera and letting it fill up an hour of tape.
As you pointed out, the post processing is where this really pays off. I plug the A85 into my Mac, and iPhoto automatically grabs the video just like still shots and stores it, ready for viewing or sorting.
One click and I can export an editable version that goes straight into iMovie for titles, edting, etc.
Yes, Windows XP does the same thing, and the Canon cameras are excellent. The downside of the Canons — and lots of other cameras — is that they don’t use AA batteries, meaning that if your rechargeables run out you’re screwed until you can recharge ’em. It’s nice to be able to pop in some alkaline AAs, available anywhere, in a pinch.
ERROR-CORRECTION UPDATE: Reader Mara Schiffren writes that I’m wrong, and that some of the Canons — including the one mentioned above — do accept AA batteries. She’s right, I’m wrong. I had read the contrary somewhere a while back, and either it was always wrong, or Canon has changed. Anyway, I should have noticed. Sorry.
One of the biggest failures in the war on terror is rarely heard about. This is the inability of the U.S. government to do prompt background investigations for newly hired translators, analysts and investigators. This investigation procedure was always long and cumbersome, and often the target of ridicule and calls for reform. After September 11, 2001, this problem was recognized, but the solution was to move the work from the Department of Defense to the Office of Personnel Management. That just made the situation worse, as the Office of Personnel Management was not prepared to handle the flood of new work. Currently, there is a backlog of 185,000 background investigations.
The number, and intensity, of complaints from counter-terrorism organizations (both government, and civilian contractors), makes it clear that the problem is bad, and is not getting any better. Desperate for skilled personnel, many are allowed to work on sensitive material without security clearances. Officially, this is not done. But, with lives at stake, corners are being cut to get the work done. Meanwhile, the Office of Personnel Management has made little progress in doubling the number of investigators (another 4,000 are needed), in order to clear up the backlog.
That’s troubling.
INTERESTED IN BECOMING A LAW PROFESSOR? You might want to read this post, and also this one (and this one) over at PrawfsBlawg. And Christine Hurt has more advice that’s worth reading, too.
If you’re interested in applying this coming year, it’s already late, though there’s still time — the first deadline to sign up with the AALS as a faculty candidate is August 5, and you’re well-advised not to miss it. Go here for more information.
And this article provides a useful overview of the process, which is quite different from what’s followed in many other academic disciplines.
July 9, 2005
Investigators now think that the attacks were carried out by homegrown extremists using low-tech explosive devices.
The attacks of 9/11/01 were highly sophisticated and killed thousands. The attacks of 3/11/04 in Madrid were somewhat less sophisticated and killed hundreds. The attacks of 7/705 appear to have been the work of amateurs and killed dozens.
Anyone see a pattern here?
Let’s hope.
LOTS OF INTERESTING STUFF AT TIM BLAIR’S PLACE — just keep scrolling. Be sure to visit the Wolcott-inspired Angry Gaia post!
BRENDAN LOY is blogging about Hurricane Dennis. So is Jordan Golson.
STRATEGYPAGE ON RECRUITING:
The army is scrutinizing every job they have, and deciding which could be done by civilians. While the media reports a “recruiting crises” in the army, they are missing the real story of how the army is reorganizing so that it can get along without the people it is having trouble recruiting. The people who actually do the fighting continue to join up, and stay in. . . .
The army’s solution is to go back to the past, when many of the “non-combat” troops were civilians. Way back in the day, these people were called “camp followers,” and they took care of supply, support, medical care, maintenance and “entertainment” (that’s where the term “camp follower” got a bad name). The majority of these people were men, and some of them were armed, mainly for defending the camp if the combat troops get beat real bad and needed somewhere to retreat to. The army is using a lot more civilians now. In a war like this, it’s cheaper to hire additional civilians, on short term contracts, than it is to recruit and train more troops.
Very interesting.
UPDATE: Steven Den Beste emails:
A switch to the use of civilians by the Pentagon isn’t necessarily good news.
It used to be that those job were done by civilians. Problem was that they were hired under civil service rules, and if they turned out to be incompetent, or lazy, or corrupt, it was damned near impossible to get rid of them. The structure ended up so rotted out that eventually the Pentagon switched over to using servicemen for those tasks. That meant that if they didn’t do their jobs, they could be replaced or disciplined under military rules, so the organization did a better job overall.
Now they’re switching back to civilians. In the short run, it will work fine. But if they go back to hiring those civilians under civil service rules, then in the long run they’ll be back to the same rotted out useless structure they had before.
It may be that by using contractors instead of civil service hirees they can avoid that. That’s really the question.
Yes, it is.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Thad McArthur emails:
Of course, Steven also just put his finger on why the use of private contractors is so widespread in the Pentagon. Hire Brown & Root, let them hire the people. If their people don’t do the job, make them do the firing.
Yes, the harder you make it to fire people, the greater the likelihood that their jobs will be outsourced.
There are more thoughts here, including this observation about experience curves:
The primary reason is that the military duty cycle at a given position is one or two years. In extreme cases it can go as high as four to five, but that is truly extreme and requires special circumstances. On the Civilian side, we commonly work at in a given position 5 to 7 years just like in private industry. We don’t stop being the new guy until a year or two in, but by that time the green suiters are already moving on to their next posting.
The military has realized this. They have been increasingly training civilians in technical and decision making fields because they realize civilians maintain the expertise in a program far longer than with equivalent members of the military. This is also why the National Guard is trained in a lot of technical fields like communications. Their deployment rotation is also much longer than the regular military so they can get very good at their jobs.
Read the whole thing. And reader Floyd Clark notes that Robert Heinlein was ahead of the curve with his novel Starship Troopers:
“While a few M.I. are on desk jobs you will always find that they are shy an arm or a leg, or some such. These are the ones – the Sergeant Hos and the Colonel Nielssens – who refuse to retire, and they really ought to count twice since they release able-bodied M.I. by filling job which require fighting spirit but not physical perfection. They do work that civilians can’t do – or we would hire civilians. Civilians are like beans; you buy ’em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.”
Heinlein, an Annapolis graduate, wrote that in 1959.
Indeed.
THE BLOGHER CONFERENCE: It’s not just for women!
This gives me the chance to make another observation: If you are a man who likes code and software and things that plug in, and is perhaps having trouble finding a girl who likes Java (and knows it’s not just a coffee) and understands your inner Geek, this might be the PERFECT place for you to spend a summer afternoon.
Sounds like it could be the beginning of some beautiful friendships.
OXFORD BLOGGER DEREK CATSAM has more news from London:
Yesterday I talked about al Qaeda’s whitewashing of its own history with the claims that its actions were aimed at British withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Many seem to be buying this line, apparently utterly unaware that al Qaeda long ago declared war on the west, well before we had a military presence in those countries. Today Robert Fisk of the Independent muddles history, misunderstands chronology, and confuses causality with correlation . . .
There is only one real problem with this interpretation: It is utterly wrong.
But of course — it’s from Fisk!
WE’RE NOT AFRAID. A delightful collection of photographs.
CHARLES JOHNSON is back online.
A COUP ALERT in the Phillipines?
CONTRARY TO K-LO, I think this is funny.
MORE MUSLIM BLOG REACTIONS to the London bombings.
MICHAEL SILENCE: “Bloggers, do you see that train coming?”