Ken Mehlman is Dark Brown?

     Ken Mehlman, just now, is speaking in front of Howard University.  He's doing some pretty sleazy stuff, serious pandering going on, but I'd like to point out something that no PINK GUY should be allowed to get away with.  Especially no Harvard educated pink guy.  What Mehlman said was this, "When you think about black history [pause] We stand on the shoulders of great men and women, some of whom went to Howard University."

     As Tonto allegedly said, after the Long Ranger had said "We're surrounded by Indians, I think we're done for!"  "What you mean 'we,' pink man?"

Kyrgyz Weirdness from the Guardian UK

     Apparently the Guardian UK has picked a side in the Kyrgyz situation.  The Guardian mentions Bakiyev's name ten times, but never mentions the name of Kadyrbekov, even as the article is about the conflict over the Presidency.

Elizabeth Cheney is the Czar of Democracy!

     That's supposed to be funny because a Czar is a corruption of the word Caesar (so is the German Kaiser).  A Caesar is an unelected, unlimited ruler, a totalitarian.  From the Washington Post

A meeting Thursday, hosted by new State Department "democracy czar" Elizabeth Cheney, brought together senior administration officials from Vice President Cheney's office, the National Security Council and the Pentagon and about a dozen prominent Syrian Americans, including political activists, community leaders, academics and an opposition group, a senior State Department official said.

The opposition group comes from the Syria Reform Party, a small U.S.-based Syrian organization often compared to the Iraqi National Congress led by former exile Ahmed Chalabi. The INC, which led the campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, had widespread U.S. financial and political support from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, as well as Congress.

     So, the WaPo engaged in some dumb wordplay, is that much to write about?  Certainly not.  The real issue is the nature of the (expatriate) Reform Party of Syria.  Scrolling down to the bottom of the home page we see brief indictments of the current Syrian government.  What do they say about Bashar al-Assad(the Lion)'s brother-in-law?  "The evil of Syria. Behind the scenes. Plays w/CIA. Supports terrorism."  And what do they say about Ghazi Kanaan, the Interior Minister?  "Good relations w/CIA. Wants to be the new Syrian Intelligence Tsar. Corrupt."

     Hard for me to draw parallels between the Chalabi linked CIA and the anti-CIA linked Reform Party of Syria. 

     Color me unimpressed.  Not that honest expatriates shouldn't have a role in critiquing the current government (which is Monarchic in nature, despite RPS referring to al-Assad as the "illegal President"), but simply that these folks, sincere as they might be, don't resemble what I'd call the core of a new government.  I'm sure the RPS leader, Farid Ghadry, sees himself that way, but that's not how I am struck.

     Czar of Democracy, daughter of the Vice-President, positively surreal.

The Kyrgyz Situation

     Important things to know include some background information. Map of Kyrgyzstan (notice the strange arrows, showing patches Uzbekistan inside Kyrgyz territory).  Also important to note is the long Kyrgyz border with China. 

     Kyrgyz, like Uzbek, Kazakh, and Turkmen, are speakers of an Altaic language, specifically, the Turkic sub-family.

     The country is home to some regional (North vs South) strife.  The opposition are almost all from Southern areas. 

     The country is home to some religious strife, pitting the secular versus the Islamists, the main underground group is known as Hizb-ut-Tahrir.  The Islamist support is also in the South.  I haven't read anything that directly links the political opposition with the Islamists.

     The main players are former President Ayakev, coup-leader Bayikev, and new President Kadyrbekov (although Bayikev reported he was President).  Ayakev was known as the most liberal leader of the Five-Stans, but that is not saying much.  Ayakev instituted many free market reforms.  The economy is very bad now.  I can hear free market critics already saying "It would have been fine if only they'd done more."

     Although its obvious that Ayakev was no saint, he was the guy who appointed Bayikev to the Prime Minsiter's post in 2000.  Bayikev appears to have lost his election bid to parliament, and things have been getting hairy ever since.  Kadyrbekov was banned from a run-off election based on alleged fraud on his part.    Details on the protests and pictures available here.  Ayakev is criticized in this older Human Rights Watch report.

     I'm partial to the Swiss as reporters.  This peice from the usually very fact-based Swiss Info includes the following, perhaps telling, comments, in comparing the CIA-inspired coups in Geogia (Shaskavili) and Ukraine(Yuschenko).

Only Kyrgyzstan's revolution was violent and only its opposition government immediately won the backing of Moscow which once ruled the region.
And, unlike the new leaders in Georgia and Ukraine who have irked Moscow, Kyrgyzstan's opposition has shown no interest in shifting Westwards away from Russian influence.
...
Most of the opposition leaders were themselves top officials at some time during Akayev's 14-year rule.

     One last thought.  Ayakev was thinking of doing more trade with China, since Russia has signed on, and the official US position seems to be favorable, there is the off chance this was a joint anti-China move.

War Monger Report: BBC UK

     Strangely enough, I hear the UK is far from supportive of Bush's efforts in Iran.  Anyway, BBC is bringing up this old, discredited peice of "War Monger Iran Disinformation" (Campaign, Set Peice 1).  I guess a story doesn't run unless they can find a real fool to report on it.

     What is Set Peice 1?  A swab of highly enriched U-235 that IAEA inspectors found during inspections of Iran's facilities.  At the time, Iran claimed two years ago that the material in question was simply leftover from the previous owner.

     Then, less than six months ago, as I blogged at the time, the IAEA experts decided that the contamination from previous owners "the imported components can probably account for all of the particles in question" (Arms Control Today).  Not, this was not some hasty decision, but one that was made after eighteen months had been available for study.

Is this news?

     On advice of extralegal counsel, Robert Lindsay, I've been informed that Miyoko Watai is not a man, but a woman, thus removing from my mind the idea that Fischer is gay.  The quote, from this newspaper peice that fooled me is as follows: "Miyoko Watai, his long-time companion, said he was "very happy" after hearing the news."  I had mixed my antecedents, and been fooled by the use of the term long-time companion.  Original post can be found in HTML comments.

Romance V Germanic

UPDATE: As of 2008, please refer instead to this site

     This morning I woke up and I had the answer to a question that had been bothering me, namely, why did Protestantism flourish where it did, and why did Catholicism remain in other places?  I had heard economic arguments which I didn't like, or knew to be untrue.  Nor did I prefer to think of religious people as picking and choosing based on the basis of cash flows, a mild bias, and one which I could ignore if I had been presented with good evidence.

     It turns out to have been linguistic.  If you have been following my blog, or clicked on the links in the sidebar, you'll learn about my theory of the linguistic basis of terrorism, which I have been hoping will dominate the debate for the last year or so.  Now I find that religion, at least once, operated on the same principles!  Thanks to the dozens and dozens of people who disagreed, and only convinced me further (the most ironic being a Slovenian, who rejected the idea, even after we discussed how modern Slovenian borders were linguistic).

     The Religious map matches the linguistic.

     A couple notes.  The Treaty of Augsburg, 1555, was what gave Lutheran German Princes and Peasants the right to be Lutheran within Germany.  That date is not on the map.  The linguistic map is the modern map.  I think I know where to get a ~1648 linguistic map of Europe, but I'm afraid it isn't nearly as clean as these other two maps, nor does it distinguish between Romance and Germanic families as sharply.

Wowie

     Do you care about Iraq?  You MUST watch Leonard Downie and some of the Washington Post staff cover foreign policy on C-SPAN.  Now, I know what you are thinking. "WaPo, Why Bother?" and generally I'd say you were right.  Two or three of the four speakers are, well, predictable.  One, however, was simply mind-blowing for me.  Do you care about the troops?  Just thank goodness Wolfowitz is OUT of the Defnese Department, and that Rumsfeld will retire before too very long.  Thank goodness Bolton is out of State, too, come to think of it.  Karen Hughes back in?  Not really the worst sign.  She's got a lot of the Eisenhower Republican in her (Hey, I'm talking about improvements here, not absolute goodness).  May the world become a better place.

The Law Bush Signed, Relating To Terminal Care

     A lot of chatter is about concerning a law Bush signed in 1999 relating to the right to die.

     The bill in question has no official title, but was numbered SB1260 of the Texas State Legislature's 1999 session.

     In short, if this mess of legalese can ever be described shortly, it includes the following, some of which is scary.

     § 166.006 The law makes pains to insure that Insurers and Health Care Providers can't force you to sign an "advance directive" concerning your wishes if completely and terminally incapicated. No penalties are mentioned.  One can easily imagine how it would keep costs down to have Insurers push people into signing advance directives.

     § Directives are valid even if not notarized.  Happy Forger's Day!  The charges, however, are "attempted homicide" for doing it.

     Generally outlines the forms that would have to be signed for an advanced directive.

     § 166.039 includes a the both dubious and relevant subsection (f),

(f) The fact that an adult qualified patient has not executed or issued a directive does not create a presumption that the patient does not want a treatment decision to be made to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment

     § 166.045 (halfway down!) is when the discussion really begins.  It basically says that if the doctor does not want to provide treatment, the decision must be reviewed by a board the doctor is not on(§§ a) then the patient has 10 days(§§ e) while the physician (or facility personnel) will make "reasonable efforts" to find a new physician(§§ d)

     What I have not discussed is what was going on before that in Texas, and I'm not really clear.

Bush's Judges

     "Slavery was God's gift to white people."

     "The purpose of a woman is to be subjugated to a man."

     Another judge who ruled that a doctor who put a white coat on a salesman and brought him in to a breast exam was within the law.

     I'm the kind of person who wants to have a white van with those quotes (maybe one on each side) and drive around the South and Mountain States with a loudspeaker saying "Support Bush's Nominees!" "Slavery was God's gift to white people." "Women should be subjugated to a man." "Support Bush And Support His Nominees!"

     Anyone want to fund the trip?

Canada and Haiti

     Our peaceful neighbor to the North was helping organize and co-ordinate the overthrow of Aristide, and is now being asked to clean up after the effort by the US.

     Another Chomskyian effort on the pages of Haîti Progrès.

Are YOU Tough On Crime?

     If you aren't, then you are likely one of those "freedom-lovers."

It would be an easy matter to prove that in all, or almost all, the governments of Europe, penalties have increased or diminished in proportion as those governments favored or discouraged liberty.

[The Spirit of Laws, Vol I, Book VI, Sec IX]

Feith Relisten, Today

     More than once Feith repeated mention of "countering ideological support for terrorism."  He later described it as "The only way we are going to win the war on terrorism is, as a country, by dealing with the ideological support that the terrorists get."  No one asked what this might entail.

     There was far more interest in the preventive/preemptive war talk, and Feith flat out lied when describing America as a country with even a preventive war past.  He makes two absurd comments on this matter.  He brings up tsunami relief.  FYI, we didn't pre-position relief forces before the tsunami, there was no preventative or pre-emptive angle.  He also brought up Haiti, where US-funded rebels were creating anarchy and wouldn't stop until Aristide left.  Likely Aristide would win 60+% in an election today, especially if the race was between him and the scumbags running the country now.

    

Bombing of SS Norway, almost two years ago

     It was al-Qaeda terrorism, I'm convinced.

     That's updated information from before, and I was cruising around and found this little tidbit concerning international worker rights

Claimants of victims in the May 25 explosion in Miami could get only 10,000 dollars (about 530,000 pesos) if the case were transferred to the Philippines from Florida, where they could get as much as one million dollars (53 million pesos), a Miami Herald report said last month.
A seafarers' contract negotiated by the Philippine government with the Malaysian-owned Norwegian cruise ship and other Miami-based cruise liners, allows the transfer of such cases to Philippine courts

---

UPDATE: More on the worker's rights angle of the story (unrelated to the succesful al-Qaeda attack in America which no one seems to care about) here

Aside from the unscrupulous practices in FOCs, Bayoneta also cited the practice of blacklisting of seamen by manning agencies and ship owners. These prevent seafarers who criticize anti-worker practices and unsafe conditions on a ship from boarding again.
"The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) engages in a similar practice except they call it 'watchlisting'. For us, it's the same thing because both practices prevent seafarers from being employed again just because they dare speak out against the unjust conditions they are subject to," said Bayoneta.

Doug Feith Today

     I only caught the last ten minutes of Doug Feith, Deputy (Under?)Secretary of Defense for Policy.  Mr. Feith, true believer in the Iraq War, and the most shameless peddler of Iraq/Al-Qaeda links theories, didn't say much.

     He talked a bit about "not knowing" what the future might hold.  He tried to draw a comparison with the Cold War, where we apparently knew the Gulf of Tonkin event was to occur, where we knew the North of Korea would invade the South, where we knew in advance about revolutions and counter-revolutions around the world.  Certainly planning for all-out war with the Soviets would have been job one, but at no point did we ever know how it might start, or how it might go.

     Doug Feith is trying to get the press to justify extra-funding, and to have him seen as a very smart person, by referring to the unknown.

     The Reuters and VOA questions sucked.  I think I would have asked if there as much certainty before as he asserted, or as much uncertainty now.  Are we thinking that there is liable to be need for military action in the Western Hemisphere, or Western Europe?