Why I wouldn't mess with Colbert

Do these morning people realise how silly they look? They do now.

FUBAR

A Whole New War

President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley yesterday for the first time publicly acknowledged the momentous shift in the role for U.S. troops in Iraq, from fighting terrorists to trying to suppress religious violence.

This sea change was described in such understated terms that it was eclipsed by news about the crisis in Lebanon. Bush described a change in tactics; Hadley called it a repositioning.

But it's a historic admission: That job one for many American troops in Iraq is no longer fighting al-Qaeda terrorists, or even insurgents. Rather, it is trying to quell an incipient -- if not already raging -- sectarian civil war, with Baghdad as ground zero.

The way academic work should be

Free. JSTOR's Open Africa Program

As part of JSTOR's mission to create an archive of scholarly literature and extend access to the archive as broadly as possible, we are proud to announce that JSTOR has adopted a plan to waive participation fees for any academic or not-for-profit institution on the continent of Africa. This plan affects new participants, as well as institutions that currently participate in JSTOR.

More nobel peace prize winners

China accuses Dalai Lama of CIA links

The Apocalypse

59% in the US believe that it will happen in their lifetimes...

Irish Stew

Peace prize winner 'could kill' Bush

NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren.

Campaigning on the rights of young people at the Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Ms Williams spoke passionately about the deaths of innocent children during wartime, particularly in the Middle East, and lambasted Mr Bush.

'I have a very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent,' said Ms Williams, 64.

'Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.' Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

When did that happen?

1/2 of all Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S. invasion (up from 26% in Feb 2005) and almost 2/3rds think Saddam had strong links to al-Qaida.

See the Harris poll

Iraq as a political project

Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admits officials

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.
...
In the past two weeks, at a time when Lebanon has dominated the international news, the sectarian civil war in central Iraq has taken a decisive turn for the worse. There have been regular tit-for-tat massacres and the death toll for July is likely to far exceed the 3,149 civilians killed in June.

Read and then act

Save the constitution

I hope Dodd's right

Dodd promises 'bruising' fight over Bolton

Moral clarity

For Troops, A Sense of Moral Clarity

Nothing like a nice simple Clausewitz-ian state-a-state war to give people clarity.

1982 versus 2006

A moment of clarity

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, American officials said Friday.

Don't worry it is all part of Bush's master plan

President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors.

When hostilities have broken out in the past, the usual U.S. response has been an immediate and public bout of diplomacy aimed at a cease-fire, in the hopes of ensuring that the crisis would not escalate. This week, however, even in the face of growing international demands, the White House has studiously avoided any hint of impatience with Israel. While making it plain it wants civilian casualties limited, the administration is also content to see the Israelis inflict the maximum damage possible on Hezbollah.
...
In the administration's view, the new conflict is not just a crisis to be managed. It is also an opportunity to seriously degrade a big threat in the region, just as Bush believes he is doing in Iraq. Israel's crippling of Hezbollah, officials also hope, would complete the work of building a functioning democracy in Lebanon and send a strong message to the Syrian and Iranian backers of Hezbollah.

"The president believes that unless you address the root causes of the violence that has afflicted the Middle East, you cannot forge a lasting peace," said White House counselor Dan Bartlett. "He mourns the loss of every life. Yet out of this tragic development, he believes a moment of clarity has arrived."
...
"He thinks he is playing in a longer-term game than the tacticians," said the former official, who spoke anonymously so he could discuss his views candidly. "The tacticians would say: 'Get an immediate cease-fire. Deal first with the humanitarian factors.' The president would say: 'You have an opportunity to really grind down Hezbollah. Let's take it, even if there are other serious consequences that will have to be managed.'

Meditation for kids

and solve ADD without a pill

Studies in adults have shown that the brain's prefrontal cortex (a region at the front of the brain) plays a big role in focusing attention. People with attention disorders display less activity in this region than people without the disorder.

Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA, said willfully directing attention increased activity in the prefrontal cortex. And mindfulness meditation, with its emphasis on paying attention, appears to strengthen the prefrontal cortex, said Schwartz, whose own research has examined how mindfulness techniques can be used to overcome obsessive compulsive disorder.

"That's what's so exciting for so many people about doing this [meditation] with kids," said Inner Kids' Greenland. "If you can start early on to help them train their ability to pay attention, the brain will become a stronger muscle."

But because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last regions of the brain to develop (usually not until the 20s), some psychiatric experts caution against applying such evidence to children.

Teaching children a technique their brains are not ready for could potentially frustrate them, creating or aggravating anxiety instead of allaying it, said Amishi Jha, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania who served as a scientific advisor for the Garrison Institute report. Her own research focuses on the brain patterns related to memory and attention.

Furthermore, said Jha, it's possible that meditation techniques could help one type of attention at the expense of others. Meditation strengthens selective or focused attention, which is crucial for, say, reading a book. But improving only selective attention might hurt the development of flexible or open attention, she said, which people use to monitor their environment as a whole. Both types are critical for learning. Children need selective attention to stay focused, but if their flexible attention is weak, they'll have trouble taking in more than one piece of information at a time.

Big Dog

Barking up the wrong tree: Bill going to stump for Joe

cognitive computing

Note: Artificial Intelligence is now called 'Cognitive Computing'

Bush gives Merkel the Vulcan death grip

Thankfully she survived.

Bring it on

Rove, Scooter, and Cheney sued by the Wilsons

As the suit reads, it "arises out of a conspiracy among current and former high-level officials in the White House and actions taken by and on behalf of those officials in 2003 to violate the constitutional and other legal rights" of Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Because of the administration's "whispering campaign" against the Wilsons, they say that they've suffered "gross invasions of privacy," that they "fear of their safety and for the safety of their children," that Valerie Wilson's career was ended, and that both of them "have been impaired in pursuing professional opportunities."

An explanation here.

Insight

Bush Expresses Frustration With Diplomacy

"And it's, kind of - you know, it's kind of painful in a way for some to watch, because it takes a while to get people on the same page," Bush said. "Not everybody thinks the exact same way we think. Different words mean different things to different people. And the diplomatic processes can be slow and cumbersome."

Feel the love

U.S. block entry at border via 'ideological exclusion' policy

The ACLU and NYCLU obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in coordination with PEN American Center and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Although the documents are heavily redacted, the records suggest that the government used the ideological exclusion provision to exclude from the country, among others, an Italian woman residing in Colombia, a mother and daughter residing in Canada, a businessman from Venezuela, and a woman from Costa Rica. The names of the individuals have been redacted.

The ideological exclusion provision permits the government to exclude anyone from the country who, in the government’s view, "endorses or espouses" terrorism or "persuades others" to support terrorism. While the provision is nominally directed at terrorism, the government appears to be using the provision to censor and manipulate debate, said the ACLU.

Other documents released through the FOIA confirm that the Departments of State and Homeland Security are interpreting the law broadly. One document states that the law is directed at those who voice "irresponsible expressions of opinion." Another states, somewhat bizarrely, that an individual can be excluded under the provision even if he or she endorsed terrorism unintentionally.

Israelis invade Lebanon

after soldiers are seized

Send offs

When I go, this is what I'd like to leave in my wake.

'Magic Mushroom' Drug Study Probes Science, Spirituality

Volunteers who tried the hallucinogenic ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms during a controlled study funded by the U.S. government had "mystical" experiences, and many of them still felt unusually happy months later.

Rethinking design

It is 45 minutes long, so wait till you have some free time, and then watch. It is worth it.

The Immigration Equation

The Economics of Immigration

On Development

Hans Rosling - debunks many development myths and provides a very entertaining presentation.

The Fight Over Presidential Power

The Gitmo Fallout

Cheney just wanted to create a place for the detainees that was out of this world! What a sweetie.

Delay Redux?

It is looking more and more like Delay will run

Zidane

What the hell was that all about?

Granfalloon tactics

People Who Drive Silver or Blue Cars Should NOT Read This

Nice piece, although I disagree with a part of the conclusion;

You are not the brand of car you drive. You are not the label on your shirt. You are not the political party you vote for, the stores you shop at, nor the type of house you live in. You can adore sports and hate Gatorade, you can love God and not be a member of their church, and choosy mothers don't necessarily choose Jif.

You are the stuff of your deeply held beliefs, the stuff of the accomplishments you worked hard for, the stuff of whatever you and you alone define as truly important.

The second paragraph above is where he is wrong. You are not your deeply held beliefs, nor are you the "stuff of the accomplishments you worked hard for", or "stuff of whatever you and you alone define as truly important". His position is problemmatic for two reasons.

First, your deeply held beliefs and the accomplishments you work for and view as important can and are manipulated by advertising and other types of psycho-social manipulation. As if you really have a choice. He is violating his own combating the first rule of marketing rule., that is "that nobody believes they can be manipulated by marketers all that much. But that's the key reason why marketers can manipulate them so much." The author thinks that he can really define who he is.

Second, and much more profoundly, it is absurd to define yourself as he describes at all. You are you thoughts, your beliefs? As your beliefs change do you? Are you really a different person (ontologically speaking) when you are in a good mood or bad mood, or if you covert religions? What the heck would it mean to say we are our beliefs? The beliefs in our brains connected with our bodies that are influenced by our environment? Where would these beliefs begin and end. I think you get my point.

The same can be said for his other statements. You are the stuff you work hard for? This is even more absurd. Besides such an unclear definition (stuff?) this position quickly unravels under scrutiny. What about all the stuff of the stuff I didn't work hard for. What about the stuff I got for my birthday? The point here, I guess, is not just how arbitrary his choice of self-identification is, it also has nothing to do with who you really are in any non-superficial sense.

Now, am I going to tell you I think you really are? No. I could give you my theoretical mumbo-jumbo about it, but you wouldn't believe me. So, this is what I recommend if you are interested. Sit down and try to think it through. Ask yourself, who am I? And try to come up with an answer, and then follow it through until its logical conclusion. Are you your thoughts? If so, where do they start and where do they end? Try it, it is an interesting exercise.

Me or your lying eyes?

Bush says report CIA bin Laden unit closed is 'incorrect'

QUESTION: So you're still looking? [for Bin Laden]

BUSH: Absolutely. No ands, ifs or buts. And in my judgment, it's just a matter of time, unless we stop looking. And we're not going to stop looking so long as I'm the president, not only for Osama bin Laden, but anybody else who plots and plans attacks against the United States of America. We're going to stay on the offense so long as I'm your president. And my judgment is, if we let up the pressure on him, the world's more dangerous.

In the short run, we will bring these people to justice. We'll use good intelligence, we'll share information with our allies, we will work with friends, we'll bring people to justice. In the long run, the way you defeat this enemy is the spread of liberty. And that's what you're seeing unfold.

So there, in your face!

Fun

Mad cow v. Dolphin crazy eyes

DeLay on ballot means problems for Texas GOP

DeLay on ballot means problems for Texas GOP

Just in case you didn't know, a District Judge ruled that DeLay must appear on the Nov. 7 ballot as the GOP nominee.

This is bad

Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

SPLC report here. And it isn't just bad for the Iraqis, it is bad for the US as well,

Military extremists present an elevated threat both to their fellow soldiers and the general public. Today's white supremacists become tomorrow's domestic terrorists.

"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project.

"We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."

US violates international human rights

'Shadow' human rights report to accuse United States of violating international human rights treaties

What is strange here is that this report appears to not be about Iraq or Guantanamo Bay... it is about Katrina, US treatment of prisoners and the death penalty.

Why does America hate itself?

After 9/11 highs, America's back to good ol' patriotism

Britons see US as vulgar empire builder

This is the UK we are talking about...

Britons have never had such a low opinion of the leadership of the United States, a YouGov poll shows.

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence tomorrow, the poll found that only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite.

and not to spoil any generalizations, the American embassy responds

We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still terrorizing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq's borders.

Uh, that sh-t won't fly in the UK buddy (or anywhere in the world except on US tv).

Democratic primaries

Don't really mean much to Joe.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman announced today he will petition for a place on the November ballot as an 'independent Democrat,' giving him a chance to stay alive politically should he lose an Aug. 8 primary for the Democratic nomination.

Funny thing is, actually he won't be able to use the term independent Democrat, or any name with Democrat in it. So, if you lose the primary you jump parties.

Here's a video of joe explaining how he is taking out a insurance policy... I think his opponent has the best take on it.

England loses to Portugal on penalites in the quarterfinals of the FIFA World Cup, but coach Sven-Goran Eriksson pledges that his team will play France on Wednesday anyway as a "petitioning semifinalist."

Burning questions

....an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Why indeed. Someday when I set up an ICT policy course, I will show this transcript to my students to discuss. (mp3 here)

"Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works"...

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service isn't going to go through the interent and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [...]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [?]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[...]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

If you want to know more about Ted Stevens, here is a Daily Show primer and some more here.

Kennedy to sue

two leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines

Kennedy, meanwhile, is preparing to up the ante on those he believes abetted the GOP's electoral theft. In July, the outspoken attorney plans to file 'whistle-blower' lawsuits against two leading manufacturers of electronic voting machines. According to Kennedy, company insiders are prepared to testify that the firms knowingly made false claims when they sold their voting systems to the government -- misrepresenting the accuracy, reliability and security of machines that will be used by 72 million voters this November.

Sad but true

This Modern (Media) World

Furthering Democracy in Mexico

Election coming up

Summary: As it approaches its first presidential election in the post-PRI era, Mexico is at a crossroads: it could either consolidate democracy and proceed with needed reforms or fall back into a familiar state of crisis. Which way it goes will depend above all on the candidates of the three major political parties, who must rise above their short-term interests to further the nation's progress toward democratic stability.

U.S. Dept of Defense to study blogs

Blogs Study may Provide Credible Information

If you build it, they will use it... For tracing terrorists, and... well,
you and me...

Conspiracy theorists, arise!

NSA set up domestic call monitoring 7 months before Sept. 11, 2001!!

If this is true, holy hole-y story, batman...

How will it be spun:

Republicans: See Bush was trying to get those terrorists before 9-11, but the Libruls held him back

Conspiracy Theorists: 9/11 was just step 2 (or 3 or 4) in a well thought out plan of [insert here: secure oil, isreal zionist project, world domination...]

Democrats: Um.. that's bad. Spying's bad. Okaay.

and meanwhile, homeland security spends its time tracking peaceful protests like "the don't kill those sweet seals you bloody canadians" people.

Where's the trust people?!?

On globalisation

I've already posted this - but Kiran reminded me of it, so I thought I'd just quote a bit from it for fun.

Is globalization really a new Western curse? It is, in fact, neither new nor necessarily Western; and it is not a curse. Over thousands of years, globalization has contributed to the progress of the world through travel, trade, migration, spread of cultural influences, and dissemination of knowledge and understanding (including that of science and technology). These global interrelations have often been very productive in the advancement of different countries. They have not necessarily taken the form of increased Western influence. Indeed, the active agents of globalization have often been located far from the West.

To illustrate, consider the world at the beginning of the last millennium rather than at its end. Around 1000 A.D., global reach of science, technology, and mathematics was changing the nature of the old world, but the dissemination then was, to a great extent, in the opposite direction of what we see today. The high technology in the world of 1000 A.D. included paper, the printing press, the crossbow, gunpowder, the iron-chain suspension bridge, the kite, the magnetic compass, the wheelbarrow, and the rotary fan. A millennium ago, these items were used extensively in China--and were practically unknown elsewhere. Globalization spread them across the world, including Europe.

A similar movement occurred in the Eastern influence on Western mathematics. The decimal system emerged and became well developed in India between the second and sixth centuries; it was used by Arab mathematicians soon thereafter. These mathematical innovations reached Europe mainly in the last quarter of the tenth century and began having an impact in the early years of the last millennium, playing an important part in the scientific revolution that helped to transform Europe. The agents of globalization are neither European nor exclusively Western, nor are they necessarily linked to Western dominance. Indeed, Europe would have been a lot poorer--economically, culturally, and scientifically--had it resisted the globalization of mathematics, science, and technology at that time. And today, the same principle applies, though in the reverse direction (from West to East). To reject the globalization of science and technology because it represents Western influence and imperialism would not only amount to overlooking global contributions--drawn from many different parts of the world--that lie solidly behind so-called Western science and technology, but would also be quite a daft practical decision, given the extent to which the whole world can benefit from the process.
...
Our global civilization is a world heritage--not just a collection of disparate local cultures. When a modern mathematician in Boston invokes an algorithm to solve a difficult computational problem, she may not be aware that she is helping to commemorate the Arab mathematician Mohammad Ibn Musa-al-Khwarizmi, who flourished in the first half of the ninth century. (The word algorithm is derived from the name al-Khwarizmi.) There is a chain of intellectual relations that link Western mathematics and science to a collection of distinctly non-Western practitioners, of whom al-Khwarizmi was one. (The term algebra is derived from the title of his famous book Al-Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah.) Indeed, al-Khwarizmi is one of many non-Western contributors whose works influenced the European Renaissance and, later, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. The West must get full credit for the remarkable achievements that occurred in Europe and Europeanized America, but the idea of an immaculate Western conception is an imaginative fantasy.
...
Indeed, we cannot reverse the economic predicament of the poor across the world by withholding from them the great advantages of contemporary technology, the well-established efficiency of international trade and exchange, and the social as well as economic merits of living in an open society. Rather, the main issue is how to make good use of the remarkable benefits of economic intercourse and technological progress in a way that pays adequate attention to the interests of the deprived and the underdog. That is, I would argue, the constructive question that emerges from the so-called antiglobalization movements.

Tyger

Inspired by William Blake's the Tiger