Darfur update

Yes, the massacre in Darfur is still going on. Don't take your eye off the ball.

It is claimed African Union observers are being prevented from investigating bombing in Sudan's Darfur region that is believed to have been carried out by government planes.

African Union officials say government troops told observers it was too dangerous to enter the area where yesterday's bombing took place.

Of course it's too dangerous. You mean like some bomb falling from the sky or something? Now why would we have to be afraid of something like that?

About 100 people are believed to have been killed in the air raids near the border between north and south Darfur.

The attacks mark a serious escalation in conflict in the region which has been operating under a shaky ceasefire since last April.

African Union troops are also investigating whether rebel groups are responsible for burning villages earlier this week.

United Nations monitors say around 10,000 people have fled from the area.

I kind of wish the UN would do something other than count people fleeing from the area, like sitting at the fish ramp on Bonneville Dam counting salmon. DO SOMETHING!
This is getting rediculous. The AU continues to investigate burning villages. But it's obvious at this point that there is a terrible attrocity going on and the local government, at the very least, is doing nothing to stop it. The government is probably involved, considering the cultural divide, and everything I've read up until now.
So keep investigating, boys. I'm sure you'll find something eventually.
What a world we live in.

Hamas does well in Elections

The terrist group Hamas has a political wing, it seems, and that wing did really well in local elections in Gaza.
While the US can't be happy about this, the state dept is saying they don't care because the real action is at the higher level of the Palestinian Authority, currently headed by Abbas. Really there is nothing the US can say about this, as this was a pretty clean election and the will of the people spoke in this way.
The reasons might be that local Palestinians don't feel that the PLO has handled local issues well, and were sloppy in their administration.
I can't help but wonder if Hamas, being in the political process now, will realize that it can win by popular will through the political process instead of a militant process. If that's the case then Democracy wins again.
It's funny that we had to wait for someone to die in order to be hopeful about a region and it's seemingly never ending bloody conflict.
Which brings to mind a large island off the coast of Florida.

Iraqi voting

Instapundit has several posts on the Iraqi elections, and continues to add more.
Just keep scrolling and checking back with his site.

Iraq on the election

If you read Michael Totten you will note that he is filing daily reports on the Spirit of America's Friends of Democracy site during the week before the Iraqi elections. They describe it this way:

We have more than a dozen local Iraqi correspondents, at least one in each province, filing daily reports. These reports include news, interviews, quotes, photos, whatever they can get in a day. They aren’t professional journalists. They are more or less ordinary Iraqis.
The site is called Friends of Democracy: Ground level election news from the people of Iraq. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing else like it anywhere out there, at least not in English. (We also have a site in Arabic here.)

I'll be reading this for the rest of the week.

Election problems

Instapundit has been following all the cases of election fraud that have been alleged in the past couple of weeks. Here is one in Wisconsin.
Here is one in East St. Louis.
For the election issues in the Washington Governor's race, go to Sound Politics.

The push for election reform must begin now in order for it to be up and running for the next elections in 2006 (and 2008). Arizona has started the challenge by passing a law (and getting it federally confirmed) that in order to be registered to vote you must show proof of citizenship.
Unsurprisingly, the Democrats there oppose the bill.

The legal defense fund, in objections filed with the Department of Justice, said the proof of citizenship requirement will do away with registration drives, where volunteer party workers sign people up to vote.

They cited figures saying that these drives are one of the main methods of getting minorities registered.

They also argued that minorities are less likely to have various forms of identification required to register and vote than others.

Waaaaaaaa! We can't get lots of extra Democratic-leaning voters on the ballot. I think this change is welcome, and it doesn't descriminate. ALL CITIZENS have to show their IDs at the voter booth, not just minorities. Minorities who are citizens should be able to identify themselves with the proper identification. If they can't what's the chance that they aren't citizens.
Besides, as an Oregonian (who opposed the vote by mail initiative), I am dis-heartened that we have to resort to voting by mail and having registration drives in order to get people to actually vote. Voting is a privilage, and part of what makes this country great. Get off your butts!

Racism in the Senate

Power and Control points out the stunning decision to choose Sen Robert Byrd as the spokesman against Condi Rice for the Sec. of State.
Check that again. An ex. KKK member opposes a black woman from a high political office.
This was probably not the wisest choice of speakers by the Dems.
P&C also pulls out a few facts that make it look like Sen Byrd may not have completely left the beliefs of the organization he was once a part of.

The Grich's GIS Page

I have a new blog, which for many of my millions of readers (that was a joke) will not be interesting. It is devoted to Geographic information Systems (GIS), which is what I do for a living. I am going to post GIS related stuff over there. Mostly thoughts about software (primarily ESRI stuff, which is what I use), cool industry news, sites with interesting data (I just posted on the FAO site's GIS data for the Tsunami affected areas), and event blogging (when I'm at conferences and seminars).
For those of you in the GIS world, check it out.

Feinstein economics

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed an alternative to Bush's Social Security privatization bill. Bush's idea is that taxpayers divert some of the money they currently would be paying to Social Security in the way of payroll taxes, and put it into their own private accounts. The private accounts would have to be 401k-like. No risking your social security on commodities and such.

Problem is, here is Feinstein's plan. She want's privatization, she says "The only thing I would consider -- and it needs to be thought out -- is private accounts in addition to Social Security."
That's interesting. So she wants the same payout in taxes, but wants people to put additional money into some sort of private account.
You mean like a 401k or something like that, Dianne? Like we already do now?
How do you reconcile these two things the article above states:

Economists say it's harder for low-income workers to save more in part because 12.4 percent of their wages goes to pay for Social Security, which taxes all wage income up to $90,000.

Feinstein's idea points to a middle ground between Bush's plan and leaving the system as it stands now -- so-called add-on accounts, where workers would contribute money for their own accounts in addition to their payroll taxes, rather than using part of their payroll taxes.

Think about that. If low-income people are having a tough time putting money away because they are taxed 12.4 percent, how in the name of all that's holy are they going to be able to have some sort of "add-on account" in addition to that 12.4 percent?

Social Security taxes now take just over 2 working stiffs to pay for one benificiary. What people commonly don't know or recall is that the working stiffs only pay about half of the actual funding for Social Security. The funding comes from other sources too, mostly from employers themselves. Even if employees were allowed to take ALL of their payroll taxes and divert them to private accounts, there would still be money in there to pay for current retirees. Sure, the system would go into the red faster, but by the time the bonds finished paying out, a lot of the people retiring would not need as much help, as they had the opportunity to fund their own accounts for a couple of decades.

The senator cited reports that show of the 4 million Californians who now receive Social Security, about one- fifth have no other source of income and about half would be in poverty without Social Security.

Ok, at some point we have to, as a society, realize that providing for the welfare of the people in our nation does not mean handing out money and allowing them to be lazy and ignore their own welfare. But with 12.4 percent of their income being extracted to provide for their retirement, they can't very well do it now, and 12.4 percent isn't much, but I'd be willing to bet that putting that money in an interest bearing account, starting at 20 years of age, would produce much better returns than waiting to see what Uncle Sam has planned for you.
People also forget what Social Security was designed to do, and in what type of environment it was created in. Social Security was created when most people did not live to the ripe age of 65. Therefore SS was more of a life insurance that only paid out if you happened to be lucky enough to make it that far. With a larger percentage of the population making it past that point, a restructuring of the program is indeed necessary and vital.

David Adesnik at Oxblog has a post on this, where his concerns mostly mirror my own. He has some good links to essays on the subject of SS, including links to essays by Jeffery Brown, Economist at Univ of Illinois, arguing for private accounts replacing some SS taxes and benefits, and Laura Tyson, former Clinton advisor, arguing Sen. Feinstein's platform.
I agree with him that Bush's idea has some strong short term funding problems, and unless Bush can remedy that (or point out where the money is supposed to come from) I don't see how the Democrats or any moderates are going to go along with it.
Still I don't think Feinstein's idea is an appropriate compromise to Bush's plan. Compromise is OK sometimes when you need to get things done, but it's not good to compromise on an idea that obviously didn't take a lot of thought.

Update: Adesnik as his own update, with some interesting bits about SS that I didn't know. That trust fund that will keep solvent SS through 2042 is made up of government bonds. So the federal government has to come up with 11 trillion dollars between 2018 and 2042 in order to keep SS solvent. That's almost 1/2 trillion dollars a year added to the federal budget.

Comparing Chile

I find Marc Cooper, who is anti-war left, a bit refreshing in that he doesn't pander to the left, but for what I've read so far keeps it real. I disagree with many of his posts, but he is not frothing at the mouth, and it sounds like he will actually argue his points with sanity, and will also hold the left accountable when they act like idiots.
GM Roper, who is a conservative, wrote a piece on Cooper that's worth reading, calling him the "Last honest Progressive in America." He puts it much better than I just did.

I have to make a comment about something Marc posted though. In one post he compares the tourturous regeme of Pinochet of Chile, where people were regularly tourtured for political reasons with the US's current scandal.
That's a bad analogy. It's true that some of the same methods of coersion (mild tourture; the harsh methods US agents are accused of have not been proven yet as far as I know) have been utilized by Americans on terrorists and other militants over the last couple of years. You might find equivilant if you believe that all coersive treatment should be banned. But there is a problem with comparing us to Chile. The problem is that we are not doing this to otherwise innocent people in order to terrorize the general public, or hold down resistance to your dictatorship. We are using coersive tactics to get information from terrorists that will aid us in the war and prevent the deaths of some of our soldiers (and Iraqi citizens).
I think that difference is significant.

For Iraqi political junkies

Chrenkoff has a list of all the major political parties participating in the Iraqi elections next week. Included are origins and major members and candidates.

UN comes out against genocide!

OK, really, they're just repeating the retoric the UN was speaking 50 years ago after we all found out about the Holocaust after WWII. I guess today is Holocaust Memorial Day, and the UN had a general assembly Special Session on the Holocaust of WWII. Some great things were said, but when you think of genocide prevention do you think of the UN?
Me neither.

The article doesn't make it clear if anything was actually decided at this special session, or if they just had a plethora of speaches about how genocide is bad and we should all hate it.
By the way, it's interesting to note that it was the US ambasador, John Danforth, that called for this session.

Rogue Pundit on the loose

I always enjoy RoguePundit for his insights into the workings of rural (and small city) Oregon, and Oregon as a whole. I've just caught up with some of his investigative musings, and they are very worth reading.
He examins one of the latest laws to hit our state, the speed limit changes in school zones.

The following is an editorial from today's Grants Pass Daily Courier (dead tree only).

During breaks in their session in Salem, legislators might do well to drive around neighboring communities and see what confusion Senate Bill 179 from the 2003 session has wrought.

The bill was intended to simplify the speed limits around schools, so drivers would know better what speed to drive.

Previously, the rule was 20 mph "when children are present.

Driving the right speed through school zones in Oregon today is anything but simple, thanks to the 35 pages of rules produced by the School Zone Task Force for the new law.

He talks about the Caspian Tern. That variety of Tern occurs in most parts of the world, but the largest colony is in the Columbia River. And boy do they loooove salmon. Which presents a conundrum for environmentalists.

He looks at how school systems (specifically incidences in Oregon and Washington) protect teachers to the detrement of students when sexual molestation accusations are made.

A common theme in enabling predatory teachers to molest again is excessive secrecy. One can understand the need for secrecy, both to protect the victims and the potential harm false allegations can do to teachers. But, closed settlements can easily conceal guilt.

Lastly I liked this post on the League of Women Votors' statement about the "Ins and Outs of State Finance." The LoWV sometimes suffers from a pro-tax agenda and fiddles with the numbers.

...credit to the LWV for putting a lot of good tax and government spending information in one place. It's too bad they had to dent their credibility with some obvious errors, bias, etc.

I suppose it's hard to get funding to write such pamphlets if you don't pander to your supporters.

Iran with Nukes

This post from Done With Mirrors is a sensible take on why we don't want Iran to possess nukes, and why that doesn't make sense to some in Europe and the rest of the world.

Israel has nukes, that's an open secret. Do Europeans really fret over that? Do they think Israel's going to lob one into Damascus someday, just for the hell of it? Do they not think, as I do, that Israel wants this ultimate deterrent because they live in a, what is it?, 19-mile wide strip of hillside beset by enemies on all sides who perpetually vow to drive Israel into the sea and kill or enslave all the Jews?

We're talking about the ultimate weapons here. Better off if they never existed, but they do. The genie doesn't go back in the bottle. Yet there seems to be a view at work in Europe that regards possession of nukes as a natural right, at least of every nation that claims to feel threatened by Uncle Sam.

Seriously, now, isn't that like arguing that all your neighbors have a right to own automatic sub-machine guns? Doesn't matter if they're decent folk or hallucinating drug addicts or hardened criminals or decent folk who have the bad habit of leaving their doors unlocked and getting robbed by psychopaths.

Even in the U.S., where gun ownership is a constitutional right (and the Europeans think we're dingbats for that), not everyone can own one. Hell, you can't even drive a car without taking a test and getting an official certification that you know how to drive a car. But they seem to seriously want to hand out nukes to everyone who's afraid of Israel.

If I have to, I can accept these ultimate weapons in the hands of the Soviet Union, the U.S., Britain, India, modern China, France: more or less stable, conservative, secular, self-interested states. The dreadful balance of power implied in "mutually assured destruction" was sufficient to restrain the Cold War powers when simple human sanity was not. Even without the threat of retaliation, they operate with sufficient restraint. In 1982, a nuclear power, Great Britain, went to war. Nobody worried that Thatcher would nuke Buenos Aires.

But we're talking about Iran. We're talking about a nations whose leadership class considers suicide attacks not just an acceptable tactic but a religious duty. A county whose quasi-independent military openly recruits its citizens to be car-bombers to kill foreign construction workers building sewage plants in Iraq, or blow up Israeli buses full of school children.

He also reminded us that the Iranian parliament stood up in unison last year and chanted "Death to America" repeatedly during one session. No I don't want them to have nukes. Yes, I hope reports that the US is secretly inspecting suspected nuclear sites whithin Iran as we speak are true.

Inside Ukraine

Here's a great inside look at some of the power struggles that proceeded the 2nd election and protests in the Ukraine in November. It was the choice between crackdown and backing off.
Daniel Drezner blogged about this in November and said

When a government facing a popular uprising, there is a moment when all of Burke's "pleasing illusions" about power fade away, and the rulers face a choice between using raw coercion or backing down. At this juncture, there is one of three possibilities:

1) The leadership backs down;
2) The leadership cracks down;
3) The leadership tries to crack down but the coercive apparatus splits.

Read the NYT article. Very interesting.

Peace Protestors

I couldn't ignore this one. Washington Post has set up an inauguration blog posting comments and pictures of the event and related events in Washington DC. There are several references to various protestors who got out of line and had to be subdued. There's one where people stood outside a Metro (subway) station and protested Forks for some reason:

One protester asked, "Were forks mentioned in the Constitution? No!" A sign read, "Jesus hates forks."
The young men identified themselves only as members of the anti-fork movement.

But the one that I really thought stood out was this one.

Hundreds of people gathered at both ends of Meridian Hill Park in Northwest Washington for a peace rally sponsored by the D.C Antiwar Network.

But there were interlopers: Thirteen members of ProtestWarror, supporting the Bush administration and its policies in Iraq. When the Bush supporters arrived, about 20 black-clad, self-described anarchists emerged from the crowd, shouting profanity and epithets and demanding that they leave the peace rally.

When the Bush supporters refused to leave, the anarchists tore the signs out of the Bush supporters' hands and stomped on them. When ProtestWarrior leader Gil Kobrin objected, several male anarchists knocked him to the ground, kicking him in the back and punching him. Other anarchists punched and shoved Kobrin's 12 colleagues.

After D.C. Antiwar Network members broke up the fight, the Bush supporters heeded their order to leave the park. Kobrin then called D.C. police, who are now guarding them at the entrance of the park as they hold up their pro-war signs. "We're going to hang tight," Kobrin said. "We're expressing our freedom of speech just as they are expressing theirs." --Robert MacMillan

Peace protestors?

Dirty Posting

In honor of the dirty bomb scare in Boston, here are some posts from Winds of Change looking at all the fuss and investigations. They also have a link to an article on what would happen if a dirty bomb hit London (short answer: not as much as you would think).
And also a nice discussion about how US cities that are most likely to be targets are probably to secure to be easy targets. This story should illustrate it.

"Take, for example, an incident involving a Washington lawyer of a certain age who went to his doctor a few months ago for a routine heart checkup. (No, no, despite his profession, a heart was indeed located.)
The exam included a stress test with injection of a radioactive isotope -- most likely technetium or thallium -- which helps illuminate the heart muscle during exercise. The doctor told him he passed.
The elated lawyer says he left work several hours later and was driving along I Street NW between 16th and 17th when a police car with lights flashing zipped up behind him. An officer on a bicycle pulled alongside.
What could this be? Couldn't be speeding, a red light or a stop sign.

"Sir," the officer explained, "you were not pulled over because of a traffic violation. You were pulled over because you are radioactive."

Islam non-violent

I've heard this before. It's hard to tell for an infidel like myself, what exactly the Koran says about violence and how Muslums are to treat others who do not hold the same faith. Al-Qaida and hardliners preach death to the infidel.
However there are many high ranking religeous figures that preach non-violence, and that violence is a misguided interpretation. Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudeis, the state appointed preacher at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, is one of them.

More Washington Election

Powerline has been singing the praises of Stefan Sharkansky for a while now. This blogger makes his name with the governor's race in Washington, by highlighting voting problems in King County (Seattle) and calling for a new election because of them.
Note that the link is to an article he wrote for the Seattle Times.
I don't really agree with the Shark man. I do think that King county, and probably Washington needs to review it's election procedures and find a better way to count votes, but I don't think a re-election would be healthy for the public.
Think about this, Sharkansky found about 2,000 (at the outside) over votes in the city of Seattle. However, Gregoire (D) won by only about 129 votes. The previous tally had Rossi (R) winning by something finer, like 30 votes. That means that there is a good spread of Republican and Democratic votes in that pile of overvotes.
When you are talking about 30, or 100, or 200 votes in a state with over 2 million voters, you are talking statistical tie. Every time you count the votes (remember, these votes are going to be counted by human beings) you are probably going to get a different tally. Either of these candidates has 50% of the vote and either is qualified to be there.
Now, if there was some sort of conspiracy to get those 2000 votes counted, then yes, have it out. But I'll bet that there are always about 2000 votes or more that needed to be thrown out in any election. The only reason we noticed is because it was so close.

Justice Debate

I would like to make a little post regarding all the banter about the Scalia/Breyer debate that was had earlier today. Here's a link to the debate (hat tip to Powerline and Howard Bashman).
I read some of it and what Powerline had to say, and I'm appalled that a justice like Breyer is making pivotal decisions for the USA right now. What's all this malarky about conforming to the "enlightened opinion" as it exists in the world community?
Hindrocket makes it sould like Scalia wiped the floor with Breyer on this topic, and of Breyer, Michael Hertzberg wrote:

Breyer offered no coherent framework for making decisions on constitutionality, so his only justification was that it was generally educational to read what other smart people had to say.� He reminded me of a labor arbitrator I once appeared before, who, asked to interpret a collective bargaining agreement, pleaded, "Can't I just decide what's fair?"� Pathetic, really.

For those of you who are curious, here is a list of all current justices on the court and who appointed them. This should further prove that just because a Republican nominates a justice doesn't mean they are going to be heavy conservative, or even all think alike, as many decisions end up being 5-4.
Rehnquist (Nixon)
Stevens (Ford)
Scalia (Reagan)
O'Connor (Reagan)
Kennedy (Reagan)
Thomas (Bush Sr.)
Souter (Bush Sr.)
Ginsburg (Clinton)
Breyer (Clinton)

Bush admits mistake!

That's my AP variety freak out headline. So Bush makes a concession (Bush admitted that some phrases he used in press conferences had unintended consequences) and everyone acts like they are shocked and surprised that he finally has. This isn't so crazy really. I've always found that Bush is straight forward and honest about things. He just doesn't want to admit mistake when the facts still might suggest he might still be right. Bush's version of what is correct and what the media think is correct have often been two different things. And the media is definitely not always correct.
But leave it to the AP to spin the story like this:

During a round-table interview with reporters from 14 newspapers, the president, who not long ago declined to identify any mistakes he'd made during his first term, expressed misgivings for two of his most famous expressions: "Bring 'em on," in reference to Iraqis attacking U.S. troops, and his vow to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."

That reference that Bush "Declined to identify any mistakes" comes from the debate with Kerry where Bush was asked what three mistakes he had made during his time in office. Now, while this was unfair by itself because Kerry was not asked the same question and then just attacked Bush about the same question, saying that Bush declined to identify any mistakes he'd made during his first term is shallow. He said that the big decisions, going to Iraq and Afghanistan, were not mistakes, but left room for history to judge him, not the Democrats:

And in a war, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say: He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right.

Here's the text of the 2nd debate.
Like I said, it was an extremely unfair question during an election. Candidates aren't going to outright say that things they did were mistakes during a campaign. Why give the opposition a gift? So the press' treatment of Bush on the "admit your mistakes" issue is dispicable.
I don't even think Bush really needed to appologize for those phrases he used that he is regretting now. But he does, and the statements were taken wrong by the press from the beginning. It just goes to show you what a razor's edge the President has to walk, verbally, all the time.

Enviro-friendly Tsunami

James Glassman of Tech Central Station puts environmentalist doom sayers, who claim that the tsunami was caused by human's corruption of the Earth, in their place. There is little effect humans can have on something as massive as a 9.0 earthquake.

The truth is that terrible, terrible things happen that can't be blamed on George Bush or any other human. The only way to mitigate them is through wealth and technological progress. As Glenn Reynolds wrote recently on TechCentralStation.com: "The best protection against catastrophes is a society that is rich enough, and diverse enough, to be well-prepared for all sorts of contingencies. Which means that economic growth, and the freedom that produces it, may be the best guarantor of safety for us all."

Government Unions

Roguepundit looks at the tendency of government unions to thrive when private industry unions are flailing, and how that might explain the budget crises we experience here in Oregon. Oregon state employees make much better than the average oregon income.

Latin Update

From Winds of Change we get a briefing on current events in Latin America. Just in case, with Iraq and Tsunami news, you forgot that region even existed.
Things of important note:
1. Left leaning leaders are getting elected all over the place down there. Bush could be critisized for letting this region go a bit while being consumed with Iraq and the war on terror.
2. One interesting fact is that the front runner in Chile's elections this year is former defense minister Michelle Bachelet. So the most conservative country in latin America might just elect a woman president for the first time.

Eminem values

Oxblog has an interesting take on family values expressed by rappers, such as Eminem, and modern rock stars. Conservatives often profess distain for these performers because of explicit lyrics. Oxblog, along with Mary Eberstadt in Policy Review, offer another perspective.

Eberstadt never apologizes for the violence, misogyny, drug abuse and casual sex glorified by the lyrics of Eminem and others. But she points out that the rappers and heavy metal bands who revel in such behavior constantly insist that there is one reason and one reason alone why they are so maladjusted: because they didn't grow up in stable, two-parent homes.

OK, I'll buy that there is something to learn from all of this. However, I still don't want my kids listening to it until they can open up the lyrics and understand where these guys are coming from. I also don't want to have to repress the cussing and attitudes that come with teenage idol worship. Teens from two parent households don't understand that the reason these rappers talk and act the way they do is because of how they grew up, not because they are just being rebelious. The teens might pick up on the later part, but not the former.
The reference to the grunge movement of the 90s is also very instructive. Although I think that many kids, like myself (although I wasn't a kid) picked up on the music just because we liked the riffs, not because we identified with the singers (although it seems many did).
I don't know, I'm just ranting. I can't blame the rappers themselves. I can't even blame the record companies (ok, maybe I can a little), for this type of expression has a cause, and an audience. The real culpret is our loss of family values in this country.
My friend told me a story about his time in Germany recently. It seems there is a growing industry there: paternity testing. Studies show that 1 in 5 children in Germany don't have the biological father that they think they do.
Some German legislators have introduced bills to limit or eradicate these facilities saying that they are ruining German families (by resulting in divorces I would presume), but my friend rightly pointed out that it's not the paternity tests that are ruining German families.
It's not the rap music that's screwing up the lives of America's youth.

Abbas wins!

Mahmoud Abbas won the Palestinian elections in a landslide. Israel and Sharon express intent to work with the new Abbas administration toward peace.
Turning point?

Take the Torture Test

Mudville Gazette has an Abu Ghraib torture test. See how many actual facts you know about what really happened.

Penalty for killing a pregnant mother

The Oregon Senate Democrats have come up with an alternative to the growing push by conservatives to treat crimes involving the murder of a pregnant woman as two crimes: one for the mother and one for the unborn child.
Their response is to make the penalty for attacking or killing a pregnant woman more serious instead. Try death penalty for killing mom. Most likely inspired by and a reaction to the Peterson case.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Kate Brown, D-Portland, has scheduled a news conference at 1:30 p.m. today to unveil her bill, which enhances penalties for all violence against pregnant women, from assault to murder.
"I think what we would like to do is keep the focus on domestic violence," Brown said.

Or off the abortion issue.
But this isn't just about domestic violence.

Still, Gayle A. Atteberry, executive director of Oregon Right to Life, says her organization, an important Republican ally, opposes the Democratic bill. She said it does not address the real issue.
"If you've killed two people, you've killed two people," Atteberry said. "We're talking about a baby that the mother is wanting."
If the two sides stick to their positions, the House could pass one bill and the Senate another. A spokeswoman for Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a Democrat, said he prefers Brown's approach, but it is not clear that either bill can get through both chambers.

I generally side with the republicans on this issue, but I wonder if fighting what the Democrats are trying to do is worth while. Gees, this is a big step for Democrats actually proposing a bill that advocates the death penalty for any crime.
Anyway, say the Republican House can't get the bill through the Senate that equates the crime with two counts, one for mom and one for baby (which is the likely outcome). Why strike down the one that creates larger penalties for attacking pregnant women. Does it really set up that difficult a precident that the Republican issue could not be taken up again at a later date when political waters are more favorable?

Limiting Police Car Chases

Decided to blog about local events today.
Apparently there is some controversy regarding a technique that police use to prevent suspects from fleeing by car. The technique is called the "PIT maneuver" (Precision Immobilization Technique) and involves deliberately bumping the getaway car on a rear corner, causing the vehicle to spin out of control.
There are obviously limits to this method, and the police have restrictions as to when they can use it, like not after the chace gets high-speed.
But according to the attorney general of Oregon, the crash should go on the officer's personal driving record.
However, the DMV does not agree.

That wasn't exactly the answer cops around the state, or even DMV officials, expected. At this point, the DMV is choosing not to follow the state's legal advice. Instead, it plans to lobby alongside police officers to change the law this year.

The Multnomah County sheriff's office says that the maneuver is "the best way to end pursuits quickly and safely before they reach high speeds." Considering how dangerous chases are, I'm surprised that the state is making their job more difficult in this matter.
This maneuver is used in most states. Here's a better perspective from policedriving.com, explaining why training is necessary to execute the maneuver correctly and that restrictions must be followed. Doing this at high speeds to cars with higher centers of gravity can cause the car to roll and kill the passengers.

Evangelicals and Liberals

I for one have been thinking that, over this last election year, the lines between liberals and conservatives have grown pretty fuzzy. Democrats are saying things that have long been tenets of conservatives and Republicans are saying and doing things that I used to chide Democrats for. What's a poor boy to do?
Well now, via Powerline, here comes William Stuntz to tell us that he believes that intellectual liberals and evangelicals will soon come together in an odd political coalition. He explains that the things that will bring us together, in the end, are 1. Abortion (yes you heard that right), 2. Poverty at home, 3. Poverty abroad and 4. Spreading freedom and nation building.
Read it. I think it's totally interesting and worth pondering.

Update: Powerline responds, and doesn't necessarily agree.

Country of the week: Siberia

Series returns. After this post I will no longer call this series the country of the week, as I was never really posting every week. That had been my intent, but is hardly practical for my lifestyle.
During the past few months, with the election and then being severely busy during the holiday season I didn’t spend any extra time doing any reading up on countries or anything else.

I have recently picked up a book on Siberia. Specifically it is called “In Siberia” by Colin Thubron. Colin makes a living traveling the world and writing about his travels. Specifically he describes the places he goes, the people he meets, and conversations he has with those people. It’s a great book and is a deeper look into this remote region of the world, at least from one man’s point of view.
And yes, I'm aware the Siberia is not a country, but a region of present day Russia. The area is so geographically distinct from European Russia that I wanted to treat it as such just for this post.

One thing about the book that I felt was missing was the several year gap since it was written. Colin appears to have taken this journey just after the Soviet Union dissolved. So things could be dramatically different over there after 5-10 years.

First the geography.
Siberia is thought to originate from the word Sibir, ancient Mongolian for “the calm land.”

Siberia, if it were it’s own country, would still be the largest country in the world. It’s 9.6 million square km and 32 million people is comparable to Canada. It occupies 9 time zones, spanning almost 1/3 of the circumference of the earth at that latitude.

Siberia may be divided into either it’s four distinct zones of vegetation (tundra, taiga forests, mixed forest belt and steppe) or geomorphologic areas (west Siberian lowland, Central plateaus, southern mountains and northeast mountain systems). It’s main drainages, the Ob, Yenisei and the Lena, all drain from south to north and all empty into the Artic Ocean. Except for small aircraft the rivers are the primary north/south transportation system. The primary east/west system is the Trans-Siberian railway.

About 60% of the population of Siberia is contained in the Southwest lowlands. This area contains much of the industrial complexes of the region as well as agriculture. The largest city in Siberia is here, Novosibirsk, and is generally thought of as the capital of Siberia.

Then the history.
Siberia has been populated by nomadic peoples for thousands of years. Some say that it extends back more than 30,000 years. The native peoples west of the River Yenisei are thought to originate from eastern Europe and the peoples east of the Yenisei from Mongol and Turkic peoples.

The Mongols invaded in the 13^th century and the region became a Khanate, operated autonomously for centuries until the growing power of Russia started to move slowly across the land. By the mid 17^th century Russia controlled territory all the way to the Pacific.

One thing to note here is that although these powers invaded and conquered, they didn’t actively subjugate the peoples all the time. Siberia is a harsh environment, and most of the activity of ruling powers operated in the southern parts near Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan.

Russia’s domination of the region is a history of conquest. Except for some disputes with China, Russia has ruled over this area for the last 400 years. They created ports on the Pacific: Vladivostok, Kamchatka, Sakhalin, and used those ports to continue on to Alaska, which was just an extension of Siberia until the US bought it in the 19^th century.

During the 19^th century, and then the 20^th century the czars and the communists used Siberia as a place for exiling those that they didn’t want interfering in the politics of the day. Criminals and Political prisoners were sent here. Some to colonize and work the mines. Some, like the Jews, to get out of the mainstream of Russian life in the west. Eventually exile meant the Gulag, sending prisoners to places barely livable by human beings. Read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago for a detailed explanation of what that was like under communism during Stalin’s time.

Siberia is still recovering from the fall of Communism. Things are hard there as people had to stop relying on Moscow for needs and realize grabbing the reigns of capitalism and re-creating the economy. Many people moved elsewhere or are living in poverty because of the adjustment.

But generally things are looking up. Here is a great series done by Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post after he took a month long journey through Siberia in 2001. He describes optimistic prospects, as well as outdated infrastructure and corruption that still inhabit all of Russia.

Here’s a great page on DNA and tracking the migration of the various native populations of Siberia over history (Smithsonian). The page itself doesn’t have concrete conclusions, but there is a great intro to some of the major ethnic groups and where they might have originated.

There’s been a lot of talk about a pipeline transporting oil from Taichet, in Siberia, to the Pacific ocean for export to the US and Japan. It’s unknown when the construction will take place, or how it will affect oil markets. It will be built by the state oil monopoly.

The UN and aid

Mark Stein has an article in the Washington Times lambasting the UN for critisizing the US on generosity and "unilateral" aid to tsunami victims, while doing close to nothing themselves.

Yet, even though Mr. Egeland's office has a permanent bureaucracy dedicated solely to humanitarian relief work, a week after the disaster it didn't seem to have actually done anything other than fly in some experts to assess the situation. Reporters on the ground have noted the lack of activity in Colombo and Sumatra. But the U.S. government already had ships and troops and water and medicine on the way.

Ouch.

Palestine redux.

OK, just when I thought that Abbas was our guy. That he was a moderate leader, sure to be elected by the Palestinians this year and lead them to peaceful relations with Israel, he says this:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that he wants to shield Palestinian militants from Israel and indicated he has no plans to crack down on gunmen after upcoming presidential elections.
"When we see them, when we meet them, and when they welcome us, we owe them," Abbas said. "This debt always is to protect them from assassination, to protect them from killing, and all these things they are subject to by the Israelis."

Have I stepped into some alternate universe? He's even saying that he is against the Israeli pullout of the occupied territories. What next?
Hat tip to Michael Totten.

Iraqi responds

Powerline points out an interesting article by an Iraqi in Front Page Magazine online. Naseer Flayih Hasan has been mystified by the left and peaceniks in Iraq since the beginning of the war.

I asked her how long she’d been in Iraq and, through a translator, she answered, “Three months.”

“So you were here during the war?”

“Yes!” she said. “To see the crimes of the Americans!”

I was stunned. After a moment, I replied, “What about the crimes of the regime? It killed millions of Iraqis. Do you know that if the regime was still in power, the conversation we’re having now would result in our torture or death?”

Her face turned red and she angrily responded, “Soon will come the day that the Americans will do worse.” She then went on to accuse me of not knowing what the true facts were in Iraq—and that she could see the situation better than me!

Perhaps this is the answer:

It’s worth noting, as well, that the general attitude of peace activists I met was tension and anger. They were impossible to reason with. This was because, on one hand, the sometimes considerable risks they took to oppose the war made them unable to accept the fact that their cause was not as noble as they believed. Then, too, their dogmatic anti-American attitudes naturally drew them to guides, translators, drivers and Iraqi acquaintances who were themselves supporters of the regime. These Iraqis, in turn, affected the peace activists until they came to share almost the same judgments and opinions as the terrorists and defenders of Saddam.

Update: I hate the way that copying some text fiddles with my fonts. Sorry about that.

Al Yanukovych

If we aren't careful we might end up feeling like soul mates with the Ukrainians, when one of them feels that when the election doesn't go his way that a nice lawsuit is a morally OK option.

Iraqi Blogger

Totten is asking us to link to this new Iraqi Blogger. So I will. His name is Ali, he lives in Bagdad, and he desperately wants the freedoms he is enjoying now to remain long term.

SE Asia coastline change

At the Tsunami News and Help website I noticed a reference to an article telling about how satellite photos are showing massive coastline damage and change due to the tsunami. I wish I could find some of those pics, but the article only mentions them.

Update: Totten noted in the LA Times that the earthquake moved the entire island of Sumatra about 100 feet to the southwest.
Mike said: Whoa!
I say: Yikes!
Bart says: Eye Carumba!

Local voices on Earthquake

Via Instapundit, visit these sites to get information on what's happening from people who are there.

Malaysian blogger Rajan Rishyakaran is posting numerous updates, with links to bloggers from around the region. And here's more from Indian blogger Nitin Pai.

UPDATE: Historical perspective, from Amit Varma, who remembers the Maharashtra quake of 1993. And Malaysian blogger Jeff Ooi has more, and a huge roundup of links to other bloggers in the region. Fellow Malaysian blogger Peter Tan is posting regularly, too, with reports from the affected areas.

World events

Many of you are following the Ukrainian elections, and it seems that, unlike the past couple of U.S. elections, Victor Yushchenko has overwhelmingly won the election. Like the past couple of U.S. elections, the spectre of lawsuits looms over Yushchenko's victory.
The Russian reaction is mixed. Here are the Russians:

One communist newspaper, Pravda, says the result means "the complete loss of our gas and oil export routes to the USA or the European Union". It also voices the fear that Mr Yushchenko's election means "Russia no longer exists as a world-class power". Pravda blames Washington for this.

However, other Russian Centrists ponder the effects of this election on Russia itself.

A writer for business publication Kommersant claims the outcome of Ukraine's political crisis means "the Orange Revolution virus will now spread to Russia".
He writes: "It will not take long to dismantle the new Russian totalitarianism".

Hat tip to Instapundit on the quotes, which are from the BBC.

A giant 9.0 earthquake hit the southeast asian countries this weekend, sending 33 foot tidal waves into many surrounding countries. If any of you don't know what 33 foot tidal waves can do just look at some of the pictures. Tidal waves are not just like bigger versions of the waves you see surfers cruising over. They are longer and the wave might be 33 feet high (think three story building) but also can be thousands of feed wide, so that they just keep coming after the initial hit. I'll try and find some good maps of the devistated area.
Update: Glenn Reynolds has some perspective on Catastrophes, including possible asteroids colliding with the earth. He also has this link-fest for more on the Tsunami and it's after affects. He includes links to agencies that are accepting donations.

Israel released 159 Palestinian Prisoners in an effort of good faith toward the elections that the Palestinians are about to have. Sharon is putting his eggs on an Abbas presidency and possible future peace in that region. They also released some Egyptians in an agreement designed to ease tension with Egypt as well.
This could all fall down like a house of cards if we get into another round of Terrorist bombings and Israel return strikes, so lets hope it doesn't happen and the Abbas can truly lead his people in the creation of a true Palestinian nation. With borders.
There has been some critisizm that the prisoners who have been released are only short timers and would have been released within a year or two anyway as their sentences finished out. That leaves all the long term prisoners, whom Israel fears may be a threat to them, still in prison indefinitely. I am skeptical that Israel needs to release any of these prisoners in order to commute good faith. Those guys ARE a threat to cause violence and derail the whole process. If Abbas is elected and the Palestinians form something of a stable government, then there will be room to talk about releasing other prisoners.

Pakistan and India are moving as slowly as ever on talks about the region of Kashmir. It seems that, although Pakistan has made a lot of talk about compromise, that India is steadfast in it's insistance that it controls the whole of Kashmir and will not change it's mind. I would welcome some perspective that would indicate that India is not the obstinate brat in the room this time.

And, hey, it's just over a month until Iraqi elections. Put your seatbelts on. Trays in locked and upright position. Seatbacks up. Here we go.

Out for Christmas

Sorry about the lack of posting to this blog. I have been reading blogs and the news, but haven't had the time to create anything. Christmas is always a busy time, and this year was no exception. In fact it was one of the busier runs up to Christmas I can remember. It was the actual week before the big day that we finally started to calm down.
Anyway, there is too much in the news for me not to link some and make some comments. Peace be with you all.

In California

Once again the bloggin has been light. I am on business in Fort Bragg, California. If you have never been to this part of the coast I recommend it. The shoreline is rocky and the water breaks hard against the shoreline. This is a part of the coast where the Great Redwoods grow. If you want to see giant redwoods, you need to be a little further north. Fort Bragg is timber country. Georgia Pacific and Menocino Redwood Co have operated here for years, and Fort Bragg was the home to a large GP saw mill for decades. The saw mill is now closed and the land is owned by the Hawthorne Timber co, but the timber culture remains. It is mixed together with a young environmentalist (almost hippy, but that's just because there are still some comunes in the hills) culture that moved up from San Francisco in the 60s. The bars are tucked up next to the health food stores. It's interesting.
But the coast line is some of the most beautiful I know.

In Defense of the Blog

I have a friend who I have been back and forth on recently about politics and Iraq. He is fairly liberal and very Democrat. I am generally conservative, with some liberal leanings, but not very Republican. In one of his letters he lambasted me for using a link to a blog, as if I was linking to the National Enquirer or something. Many articles and posts have defended the blog over time. I even had one with a link to a great article in Foreign Policy online.
Here is his diatribe:

OK. . . I'm sending you a longer response before the weekend is out. . . but I would like to propose a really important GROUND RULE in all future conversations:

NO F***ING BLOGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Blogs are not reliable sources of information. I don't consider them evidence of anything other than somebody having access to the internet. I want sources with some credentials and a way of verifying what they say. Admittedly, major journalistic outlets fall down on this front sometimes, but at least they try.

Here is my answer to him. Although I now think that it is sooo incomplete.

1. I do read the news, mostly Google, but often Yahoo, Oregonian, Wall Street Journal, but reading the news will only get you part of the way to understanding. For one thing articles are generally written these days to give you a snapshot into what's going on, not the broader context. Also, a lot of the time the articles leave out very important information, be it on purpose or not. I don't think that this is a particularly new development, but rather has been more transparent, partially due to all the independent journalists and writers of the blog world.

I find that blogs, when used properly (and discerningly) are pretty much like reading any columnist in the op-ed. They are not there necessarily to find all the fact and present them, as journalists are supposed to do, but they are there to collect them all and provide context and perspective. I don't find big media columnists any more reasonable or accurate in giving perspective to the situation than most of the bloggers that I read.

2. I don't just listen to any hack (please excuse the Vodkapundit reference, it was an interesting perspective, but I don't read him regularly). Most of the guys I listen to are either journalists (like James Taranto of WSJ, Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus at Slate, Michael Totten writes for Tech Cen station, and sometimes Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly just for Dem perspective), law professors (Glenn Reynolds is a law prof at U of Tenn. Eugene Volokh is a constitutional prof at UCLA), or political gurus and economists (Dan Drezner is prof of political science at U of Chicago). Please don't think that I'm listening to jethro in his Wi-Fi enabled outhouse.

Again, there's so much more to be said about that, and I'm sure I will. In the mean time, if you didn't read the Foreign Policy essay, take the time.

Jihad against Poppies

Afghan President Karzai declares war on drugs.

"Opium cultivation, heroin production is more dangerous than the invasion and the attack of the Soviets on our country, it is more dangerous than the factional fighting in Afghanistan, it is more dangerous than terrorism," Karzai said. "Just as our people fought a holy war against the Soviets, so we will wage jihad against poppies."

Democrat's Next Move

I have been avoiding this issue, mostly because I'm getting bored with it. But this article is getting a lot of attention and so I read it.
It is so worthwhile. It is more of an essay really, by Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic. He spends lots of time comparing the liberal response to 9/11 to the liberal response to communism in the 1940s and 1950s. What he found is that liberals 50 years ago confronted the issues and redefined what they were about. They didn't give up their ideals, but they recognized that the Soviets and worldwide expansion of dictatorial communism was something they needed to fight. (And no.. values was not the defining issue that won the election for Bush)
There are so many good quotes from the article, I can't possibly take the space to put them all here. I'll just leave you with the summary paragraph and let you know that if you are interrested in what the Democrats need to do to find themselves again this article is a MUST READ.

Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling. If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn.

Oh, yeah, and there are two pages, so when you get to the bottom of this one find the "2" link for the second page.

Armed Liberal points out this part of the article:

Like the softs of the early cold war, MoveOn sees threats to liberalism only on the right. And thus, it makes common cause with the most deeply illiberal elements on the international left. In its campaign against the Iraq war, MoveOn urged its supporters to participate in protests co-sponsored by International answer, a front for the World Workers Party, which has defended Saddam, Slobodan Milosevic, and Kim Jong Il. When George Packer, in The New York Times Magazine, asked Pariser about sharing the stage with apologists for dictators, he replied, "I'm personally against defending Slobodan Milosevic and calling North Korea a socialist heaven, but it's just not relevant right now."

And then points out that the democratic party is "They are also mobilizing a base of activists and functionaries - really the bones of the party - who are consciously taking the party to a place where it will be unable to speak intelligently about defense for a generation." And he quotes some comments from liberal blogger's websites to prove it, by noting that some of the readers of those sites claim that there is no war on terrorism at all.
The Dems are going to have to solve this in the next 4 years or the result might be the same.

Open letter to UNSC

This is amazing.
Also from Iraq the Model comes this reference to an open letter from liberal Arabs and Muslims to the UN Security Council recommending that a tribunal be established to try terrorists. Particularly Islamic religious leaders that declare fatwas encouraging terrorist and murderous acts.
This has been impossible because it's just not going to happen that a Muslim country will prosecute a religious leader or Imam or something like that. The international community walks on glass on this issue too. I'd be shocked to see the UN actually create a tribunal like this.

Iraq the Model

I have recently been spending more time reading this Iraqi blogger to get a feel for what's going on and see if my impressions of what news is coming back are close to the truth or not. They may not represent all of Iraqis, but they are native and a better guide than probably our own troops or any imbedded journalist.
I found this quote by one of them very telling as to how ordinary Iraqis may feel about American troops in their country.

We all turned to see what he was pointing to, and we regained some of our confidence as we saw a convoy of several Hummer vehicles patrolling the area.
"They're not as cautious and afraid as we thought they would be. Here are they moving confidently" the driver said. "I don't think they'll stay here after sunset. The terrorists will take over the area at night" another passenger added.
I smiled and thought "we fear our countrymen while we feel safe when the foreigners are moving around! Who's the occupier? Who are the bad guys here?"

My emphasis.

We were also surprised to see that they took positions over the roofs of the near by buildings which made me say "they don't seem to be leaving after sunset, these are fixed stations". It was relieving also to see all the death slogans of the terrorists have been erased and replaced with the slogans of the real heroes, I saw slogans like:
"The terrorists destroyed the bridge and we have rebuilt it""
"Death to terrorism…long live the peace"
"Long live the heroes of the ING, the loyal sons of Iraq"

His emphasis.

Environmentalist Two-step

My political and social philosophy is what is commonly known these days as conservative. It goes without saying (or it should) that this is not absolute and I never agree fully with all conservatives, but agree with most things they espouse.
However there was a time when my views were far more liberal and I was much more likely to vote for a Democrat than a Republican, when I was a member of one or more green-type clubs and organizations. I was even a member of the Young Democrats when I was in college.
A number of things have influenced my opinion over the years. Mostly I would say I just grew up, but getting married, having kids and accepting Christ as my lord and savior had much to do with it.
Working for a timber management company certainly has enabled me to view the other side of things as well.

Now, I have not renounced all of my environmentalist ways. I don't think that I'm anywhere near alone among conservatives when I say that I do care about the environment, recycle regularly (in fact I get pretty uptight when I can't find an appropriate recepticle for cans or paper around) and try not to be wasteful. I enjoy the federal forest and park lands and am glad that there are places where I can walk for 10 hours and not see a single other person.

Which is why many serious environmentalists truly drop the ball and set the whole movement backwards when they use junk science to promote some pet peeve they have. If you think belief in Jesus Christ as God is a stretch, you need to understand that some of the things in the environmentalists' dogma is based on pure faith in the unknown, because the science is just not there.
This happens even on issues that are legitimate, but are handled by the environ community so badly that many people have a hard time accepting anything they say.

It's even harder to move the beaurocracy when real science is involved because the faithful are blind to reason. For example, we have terrible trouble with the State of Washington DNR on the issue of Spotted owls. It is incredibly hard to de-list an owl location on your industrial forest land, even if the owl has not been anywhere near there in years. The Spotted owl in on the decline in Washington, but not because of people. The Barred Owl is moving into Washington from Canada and driving the Spotted owls out, but the DNR refuses to recognize this and instead is pushing for tougher regulations. This is a natural extinction folks.

Anyway, all this came up in my head because of an post that RoguePundit wrote after reading an issue of National Wildlife magazine recently. He is upset by the overtly political nature and bad scientific support of the material these days, as opposed to its roots of, as he puts it, "oustanding efforts that allow one to revel in the beauty and intricacy of nature." The Rogue Pundit critisizes 5 articles in one issue.
This is consistent with material I see from the Audobon society and other big environmental organizations. I once poked through a book published by the Audobon showing large pictures of the ravages of clearcutting in California. I happened to be sitting next to a forester who had worked in California and recognized some of the pictured areas. Many of the cleared areas being used as examples in the book were actually fire ravaged or happened to be natural clearings in the forest. It occurs to me that urban environmentalists probably don't have very good aerial photo skills regarding terreign they don't spend that much time in.

I honestly worry about the state of the environment all the time. But I can't trust those who pop themselves out of a truffula tree and call themselves Lorax until their use of science to back up their positions comes back into the realm of responsability.

Africa updates

Say what you will about my roundups, like the one below. Winds of Change, with their army of contributers, does far more in depth roundups from a wider variety of sources. Check out this weeks Africa Briefing.
And while you are there, check out their East Asia briefing and Dan Darling's series on the Elephant in the Room, talking about Iran's role in Iraq.

UN Scandal and Kofi Annan roundup.

(Update below)
Other bloggers have been following the Ukrainian issue in great detail, or at least constantly linking to people who are, so I don’t feel the need to spend lots of time on that.

Daniel Drezner has some great posts here and here and here and here.

Instapundit has regular updates with links to European and Ukrainian bloggers. I find the whole thing very fascinating and important on a global scale.

However I have wanted to follow the UN scandals with more aplomb. So here you go.

<>Via Instapundit, here’s a link to tomorrow’s WSJ article by Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn) who heads the senate committee investigating the UN Oil for Food program. And also a link to an Asia Times article discussing the politics of Annan, including a mention that he wooed the Kerry team pre-election in the hopes that if Kerry won, he could run for a third term as Sec. General.

Alan Dowd of American Enterprise Online has an article analyzing Annan’s response to all of this turmoil. Kofi appointed a special panel to propose reforms in the UN. Dowd describes it as “Given the UN’s systemic problems, the reform plan is akin to shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic—or perhaps better said, adding chairs to the deck.”

I’ve seen other articles on this panel and their recommendations. The titles of the articles and the content, i.e. what they picked out of the 101 recommendations t talk about, tells a lot about where they are coming from.

There’s the Washington Times, a relatively conservative paper, fronting it as: “UN Panel backs pre-emptive force.” The Voice of America calls it a “Sweeping Reform Proposal.” Some articles note that the panel was hard on America due to the Iraq invasion.

Despite all of this, most of what Alan Dowd referred to covers most of it. The panel couldn’t decide on a change in the membership of the Security Council, which probably means that the divided UN SC and the full membership probably won’t agree on a change there either.

The changes proposed in both recommendations were to add members to the Security Council. Is that really wise? The council has enough trouble deciding things as it is, adding more voters will only complicate that. The real debate should have been who do we add AND who do we remove from permanent positions on the council. The permanent seats on the council are basically the major allies from WW2: US, Britain, France, Russia and China. Of those I can think of one who is not a democracy (China), one who does not exist as the same entity it was during the 1940s and is currently drifting toward autocracy (Russia), one who is economically, militarily, and governmentally (and morally) challenged and is now accused of taking bribes from Saddam under the Oil for Food scandal (France). Shouldn’t these players get re-evaluated as permanent members of the SC?

On military intervention, the panel was obtuse and vague at best. At one point the report says that there are times when force is justified “preventively and before a latent threat becomes imminent.” What the hell does that mean. That sounds like exactly what the USA did almost two years ago. Really the UN and the EU gets on America’s case for invading without a UN mandate, but the only countries that were blocking that invasion were France and Russia. Two countries that had much to lose from us opening that can of worms.

Which brings us to the point that much of what the panel’s report suggests is only slight changes, if not totally cosmetic, to what the UN’s original charter said that it was supposed to do.

In a related article, Japan is not cool with the proposals in the report, all of which state that there will be no countries added to the group that has veto power on the security council. Which means that if Japan gets a permanent seat on the council, which they deserve, they will not have equal voting rights to, say, France.

Legal Affairs online has an interesting debate by Frederick Rawski and Ruth Wedgewood looking at the successes and failures of the UN, and the challenges to reform that exist within. Frankly I think they are both being a little too easy on the UN. Many of the successes they talk about have other problems after the cameras turn off. Reports are coming in like wildfire in places where the blue helmeted troops of the UN run prostitution rings, abuse citizens and don’t really get countries to that nice point where they can run themselves without some fascist taking over and starting this all up again. Let’s just say their nation-building skills have yet to produce much success.

Anyone who thinks that the UN has the moral high ground, or isn’t a weenie when it comes to aggressive nations should read this.

Glenn Reynolds in the WSJ on replacing Kofi with Vaclav Havel.

William Safire is very hard on Kofi, and says that his resignation will only be the end of the beginning of the scandal.

And lastly, here is a post from Winds of Change called, “If you see blue helmets, RUN!”

Update: Story at ABC news' website implicates former Clinton pardonee Marc Rich as accepting millions from Saddam in suspect oil deals, and might have bribed Iraqi officials in order to get future oil contracts. Not one of Clinton's greater moments in office.

School Choice by Tax Credit

Arizona's "Tuition Tax Credit" program is showing promise. It allows dollar for dollar tax deductions for those who contribute to scholarship programs. It's turning out that it might actually save Arizona money in the long run.

Ukranian Election Map

Here's a nice election map for the disputed election going on in the Ukraine. The election has been declared a fraud by everyone, but both sides have come to an arangement, probably a run off election. Thanks to the Polish.

Totten in Tunisia

Michael Totten has a great tale of his visit to Tunisia. He describes what Tunis is like and takes the reader into the desert interior, which is like night and day from the coast. I could do one of my "country of the weeks" on the country, but you wouldn't get the real feel of it. With Totten you get the feel of it. It's a must read.

Attack on Fallujah

Terrorists are attacking with wild abandon and firing missiles into the Green zone in Bagdad. This just shows that they are frustrated by what the US is doing in Fallujah. This article I'm linking to started out talking about how the US is raiding high profile mosques looking for assailants.
This is an interesting turn, that while this article (AP) is kind of down on this whole raiding mosques thing, the feeling among some Iraqis is positive.

Dictator or Democracy?

Saw this on Oxblog. Apparently some professors at Dartmouth have proposed that the "Quagmire" that is Iraq can only be solved by installing a friendly dictator, or a "secular strongman" as they put it. Their premise is that wars against counterinsurgency in the 20th century were all failures (except for the British victory in Malaya).
There's a problem with that, as David Adesnik reveals. He notes that the professors are omitting one war where there was a clear US victory: the Filipino insurgency of the 1950s. He notes:<>

"But the much more interesting thing to note is how the United States and its Filipino allies won. They did it by promoting democracy. In the late 1940s, the extreme corruption of the elected Filipino President, Elpidio Quirino, antagonized rural peasants while undermining the armed forces' ability to perform in battle.

Rather than accepting Quirino as the only alternative to Communism, the United States demanded that Quirino appoint Ramon Magsaysay, a popular reformist, as Minister of Defense. Magsaysay immediately begun to purge the corrupt Filipino officer corps, restrict the use of violence against peasants and implement reforms to increase the government's popularity in the countryside. In addition, Magsaysay prevented Quirino from rigging the 1951 elections for the Filipino House and Senate.

By 1953, the Communists were on their last legs. In order to cement his victory, Magsaysay stepped down as Minister of Defense and ran against Quirino for President. He won by a landslide. Determined to ensure a victory by Magsaysay, the CIA provided extensive financial support to local election monitors in order to prevent fraud. The United States knew that its candidate was the people's candidate.

In the same year that Magsaysay became President, the CIA overthrew a democratic government in Iran. The next year, it overthrow a democratic (but pro-Communist) government in Guatemala. Compare the history of the Philippines, Iran and Guatemala since 1954, and it's not hard to see which strategy served America best.

So, you might say, what good is this one example when our friends from Dartmouth have seven historical examples to support their side of the debate? Well, ask yourselves this: In how many of those seven cases did the great powers involved seek to promote democracy as a means of defeating the insurgents. Answer: zero."

Kissinger complicity

I'll be looking out for this one in the coming months. Since classified documents from the 70s have recently been released, there have been some developments and revelations that make Kissinger appear to have not only allowed that certain dictators in latin America were committing human rights crimes, but he was actually encouraging it.
So claims Christopher Hitchens, writing for Vanity Fair (hat tip: Michael Totten). I am curious if there is much of a defense for Kissinger here, and I've come to trust Hitchens for being an intellectually honest writer, especially for his treatment of Michael Moore and the election.

In South America today, the hidden resting-places of los desaparecidos are being found all the time. New and democratic governments, assisted by principled lawyers and judges and forensic investigators, are disinterring and identifying the maimed and twisted corpses of men and women, and of boys and girls, who were lost to their friends and families about a quarter of a century ago. (The critical resource for this and the rest of the story of Argentina is Martin Edwin Andersen's 1993 book, Dossier Secreto.) At the same time, in Washington, D.C., the declassification process for government documents is entering the disclosure phase. And, in a horrible way that is not being faced, the two excavations have begun to converge. From the standpoint of their victims, the death squads of Argentina and Chile were going about their busy work with the approval-no, the encouragement-of the secretary of state of the United States of America.

What follows is a long look, from the perspective of Hitchens, who covered and interviewed some of these dictators back then, at the United States' policy toward those dictators in the name of curbing communism in those parts of the world.

Kissinger had explicitly told Guzzetti not that he should slow down the rate of kidnappings and murders and disappearances but that he should speed it up. Hill's memo to Kissinger is perfectly plain. Guzzetti was told in June 1976 that "if the terrorist problem was over by December or January ... serious problems could be avoided in the U.S." Get on with it, in other words. The number of desaparecidos in Argentina at that stage has been calculated at 1,022. In October, at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Kissinger told Guzzetti, "the quicker you succeed the better."

Brrrr. That's chilling. Is this truth?
The whole truth?
I certainly can see this in the context of the cold war. The US was deeply concerned about communism spreading in our neck of the woods, and in the decade before Reagan no one thought the war would end anytime soon. This just puts a slimy blood soaked cap on the historical US policy of "He may be a facist dictator, but he's OUR facist dictator." Which I never was quite comfortable with.
I certainly hope there is nothing like this going on in our current administration's worldwide efforts to curb terrorism.

More Electoral maps

Found these on Tech Central Station, with a little help from Instapundit. Patrick Cox is trying here to make an association between population denisty and how people voted in the election. I would say that it's already a given that larger urban areas voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in both 2000 and this year. I'm not sure population denisity is the key here, though. Or, rather, if it is, it's definitely not alone in determining the results.
For instance Dallas and Houston, two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country went strongly for Bush. Home state might have had something to do with that.
Another issue Cox brings up is the relationship between federal spending by state and how states went in the electoral process. I don't buy this one.

Thirty of the U.S. states reap more in federal spending than their citizens contribute to the federal government in taxes. The other 20 states provide more in taxes than they receive in spending. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, George W. Bush won most of the states that are net beneficiaries of federal spending programs, while Al Gore won most of the states that are net contributors to federal spending.

Now, federal spending is usually tied to how much each state contributes to things the federal government needs. It also has a lot to do with what Senators and Reps you have in Washington and how much senority they have. For instance, Oregon's contingent to DC is 2 Repulicans and 5 Democrats. Since the Dems are out of power, and have been the Minority since the 90s, that might be part of why Oregon pays out more money than it gets from the Feds. Our one Republican Senator is a relative greeny, he is just in his second term, and he plays the bi-partisan roll a lot, to the detrement of any possible pork projects he could be bringing here. And yes, Oregon went solid Kerry this election. But I think the bredth of voters here cause both results, not that the results of one (lack of Fed dollars) causes the other (win for Gore and Kerry).