9/11, the sequel

Here is Christopher Hitchens in Slate on the Mumbai atrocity. It's a depressing contribution. Hitch is searching far and wide for rhetorical enemies. The people who renamed Bombay as Mumbai, for example. There's a gushing tribute to India --

An impressive thing about India is the way in which it has almost as many Muslim citizens, who live with greater prospects of peace and prosperity, as does Pakistan. This comity and integration is one of the many targets of the suicide killers, and it is another reason why firm, warm solidarity with India is the most pressing need of the present hour.

A passage that could just as easily have been written by John McCain or Rudy Giuliani, and which is blind to the subtleties and flaws of India and Indian policy as captured by serious analysts of the country (see e.g. Pankaj Mishra). There's stuff like

It is a strong regional counterweight to Russia and China.

exactly the kind of Great Game shite that explains in no small way the present mess in Pakistan and Afghanistan (and thus India itself). But Hitch's real target is only apparent towards the end --

perhaps there will again be enough Western saps—as with the attacks on the United States and Britain and Turkey and Tunisia—to claim that none of this would have happened if not for the foreign policy of Bush and Blair. (I do not hold my breath, but as of the time of writing, this moronic faction has—amazingly—not yet been heard from.)

In other words, it's September 12, 2001, and the search is on for anyone insufficiently vigorous in their condemnation of the attacks or lack of endorsement of the bombs-away approach for responding to it. Also up to this in the last few days was William Kristol, finding a LA Times op-ed to be as offensive as the Mumbai attack itself. And Victor Davis Hanson is also complaining about moral paralysis. Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal says it's all the fault of the BBC World Service.

You might think that after 7 years of their preferred approach to terrorism, they'd be wondering why events like Mumbai can still happen. You'd be wrong.

India's 9/11, indeed

Condi Rice, during her truncated shopping trip to Brussels --

QUESTION: ... did the United States provide a warning to India in the month before the Mumbai bombings that you believe that they were – they would soon succumb to – have an attack?

SECRETARY RICE: ... As to the reports that I have seen, as you have, I don’t really know the source of them, and I’m always reluctant to speak to unnamed sources who are speaking on background, because one never knows what they’re talking about. That’s one of the problems with the unnamed source issue. But we obviously – we try to pass information to countries all around the world if we pick up information. But I’ll tell you, having been on the receiving end of information sometimes which one could constitute as, quote-un-quote, “warnings,” they are often difficult to act on, sometimes not very concrete. And I would just note that the problem with terrorism is that information is useful, but it isn’t always something that can prevent.

So the real problem we have with terrorism is that terrorists can be right once and we have to be right 100 percent of the time. And in that regard, I have some not just sympathy, but empathy for what the Indian Government has gone through.

The context of course being the lazy hazy summer of 2001, when warnings about a major al Qaeda attack on the USA were being ignored. Note also the return of the old IRA taunt which unintentionally found its way into the Bush litany of excuses.

The photo above is a screenshot from 1996's Executive Decision, in which Arab hijackers, one trained as a pilot, take over a US-bound passenger jet, and pack it with WMD, with the intention of crashing it into Washington. Despite the title, the US president doesn't do much in the film.

Conflict of interest

We were going to let the following pass as just garden variety news conference flattery but it's gotten more irritating with subsequent developments so here goes. Condoleezza Rice and David Miliband, from whom the quote below comes, yesterday --

It’s not like it’s a quiet time in foreign affairs at the moment, so I don’t want to tempt fate by saying this is necessarily your last visit to London, but it may be the last occasion I get the chance to say publicly what I’ve said privately, which is that you have had a record of incredible distinction in all of the posts that you’ve held in U.S. Government, first National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State.

His assessment of her performance as National Security Advisor is shared by just about nobody. Not even Condi. Here she is, just a few months ago, responding to multiple damning assessments of her time in that job --

“I told Steve Hadley once, I frankly prefer being coordinated than coordinating,” she said, referring to the current national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley. National security advisers, she said, end up spending their time thinking: “Let me see if I can get Secretary X to do Y, and Secretary Y to do X, and let’s see if we can get both to do it.” She gave a nod. “I prefer line responsibility,” she said, echoing perhaps the biggest complaint about her time at the National Security Council, that she was more follower than leader.

But if you're David Miliband, what matters in this case is not Condi's actual performance, but the fact that your wife is headed later that evening to participate in a musical recital with Condi for the Queen. Is this the kind of personal relationship clouding professional judgement that we need at a time of war? (as the rightwingers would normally say)

Lying to the finish

From the George Bush interview with Charlie Gibson of ABC News --

GIBSON: You said you were not going to be in the business of nation-building. And so much of what you had to do was nation-building.

BUSH: Well, what I said was, in the course of a debate, I said the military shouldn't be used to build nations. In this case, it turns out the military, in my judgment, was needed to remove threats to our security, and after that removal, the military, as well as our diplomatic corps, needed to help rebuild after tyrannical situations.

He ran against nation building. Condi Rice helped him do it. Now he says, to the extent one can determine what he meant, that he was only against it when the military was being used for nation-building without diplomats -- which is not what anyone has ever proposed.

But he really took off on the Iraq war --

GIBSON: You've always said there's no do-overs as President. If you had one?

BUSH: I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?

BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.

GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn't.

BUSH: Oh, I see what you're saying. You know, that's an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can't do. It's hard for me to speculate.

Note that Bush took the hypothesis to be that Saddam had WMD and then claimed that Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in. But Hans Blix and the inspectors were in Iraq. Bush ordered them out.

He then claims not to know the answer to Gibson's followup -- if the intelligence had correctly said that there was no WMD, would he have invaded? He has answered this question repeatedly, and again just last week in Kentucky: that removing Saddam Hussein was "the right decision then, and the right decision today". Which can only mean that knowing as he now does that Saddam didn't have WMD, he would still have invaded. The only doubt is whether he would have had Tony Blair along for the ride, since WMD were crucial to the UK legal rationale.

Workers need not apply

Amity Shlaes in the Wall Street Journal, blaming Paul Krugman and workers for worsening the Great Depression and the current financial crisis --

employees continue to pressure firms to spend on health care, without considering they may be making the company unable to hire an unemployed friend.

Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations --

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages.

Not their problem

Isn't there something a bit unseemly about this particular staple of terrorist disasters, the cheering, smiling, phone-yakking Westerners flown out of the blood-spattered mess that the locals will have to deal with?

And yes, we've made this complaint before.

UPDATE: To be fair, the picture selected by Andrew Sullivan from another group of returning Spaniards has the appropriate emotion.

Photo (returning Spanish nationals from Mumbai): AP Photo/Paul White

It speaks for itself

Does anyone else have the impression of the Bush presidency that George Bush has? --

Q How do you want to be remembered, and what are you most proud of?

THE PRESIDENT: I would like to be a person remembered as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values. And I darn sure wasn't going to sacrifice those values; that I was a President that had to make tough choices and was willing to make them. I surrounded myself with good people. I carefully considered the advice of smart, capable people and made tough decisions.

I'd like to be a President (known) as somebody who liberated 50 million people and helped achieve peace ...

And he [Bush Snr] also taught me -- and I think you [sister Doro] and Jeb and Neil and Marvin -- that you can go into politics with a set of values and you don't have to sell your soul once you're in the political system. And you can come out with the same set of values. ...

Q What role does faith play in your day-to-day life?

THE PRESIDENT: I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the President, and I have been affected by people's prayers a lot. I have found that faith is comforting, faith is strengthening, faith has been important....

He said it

George Bush statement issued from Camp David (and seen here modelling his new wooly jumper) on the Iraqi parliament's approval of the non-treaties with the USA --

The Strategic Framework Agreement sets the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship between our two countries, and the Security Agreement addresses our presence, activities, and withdrawal from Iraq.

George Bush 2 years ago --

The changes I have outlined tonight are aimed at ensuring the survival of a young democracy [Iraq] that is fighting for its life in a part of the world of enormous importance to American security ... Victory will not look like the ones our fathers and grandfathers achieved. There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.

They won't be a surrender ceremony because the agreement automatically pulls out all US troops during 2011!

UPDATE: As if to drive home the point, the status of forces agreement includes in its title "Organization of their activites during their temporary presence in Iraq".

FINAL UPDATE: Article 24, Section 1 of the agreement: "All the United States Forces shall withdraw from all Iraqi territory no later than December 31, 2011". That's it. No conditions, no aspirational timelines. It's a flat-out deadline.

There is at least one strange provision: Article 7: The use and storage of such [US military] equipment shall be proportionate to the temporary missions of the United States Forces in Iraq pursuant to Article 4 of this Agreement and shall not be related, either directly or indirectly, to systems of weapons of mass destruction (chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, radiological weapons, biological weapons, and related waste of such weapons).

Why does Iraq want a prohibition on US WMDs in Iraq?

White House photo by Eric Draper

Mumbai terrorist attacks

As usual the rolling news coverage is a mixed bag, especially the hybrid form that results with US and UK news channels often picking up coverage from their Indian equivalents. So you get strange TV scenes like cricket updates on the screen crawl underneath the images of hotels on fire. While the news outlets try to put a clearer picture on things, it's really worth taking a look at this article from the Guardian in August by Pankaj Mishra. It captures the wishful thinking and delusions that feature prominently when one of these attacks hits the news.

UPDATE: Consider this opinion from National Review's Cliff May --

Terrorists like these would be thrilled to pull off a similar attack in the U.S. Aggressive surveillance and other tough policies will be necessary to prevent them.

The Fox News analysts are expressing a similar sentiment -- that America is at risk from madmen with guns opening fire in crowded places. The sort of thing that wouldn't happen otherwise? The sort of thing that a tough policy like, say, gun control might prevent?

FINAL UPDATE: Consistent with our initial theme above, note that the focus of PM Manmohan Singh's address today was on blaming external forces for the attack -- before the situation is even resolved, let alone investigated.

ONE MORE THING [2 DECEMBER]: Very interesting opinion piece by the aforementioned Pankaj Mishra in today's New York Times.

He shovelled brush in Crawford

Is the White House using photo angles to allow George Bush to compare himself to General Patton as he addressed troops in Kentucky yesterday? Perhaps they didn't dare go all the way to the iconic shot of Patton in front of the flag.

Using the government provider

Pentagon announcement --

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25, 2008 – The government-issued Bank of America official travel charge card that’s been used for years by Defense Department military and civilian employees will be deactivated effective Nov. 30, Defense Travel Management Office officials said.

Citibank has the new contract, and eligible defense military and civilian travelers should have received their new Citibank travel charge cards in August or September. The switchover to Citibank is slated to occur at midnight the morning of Nov. 30.

It makes a lot of sense. The government owns a big chunk of Citibank. And under the newly announced TALF (not to be confused with the TARP), it will probably own a big chunk of Citibank's credit card loans. So it might as well use Citibank for the actual card business as well. But shouldn't Citibank be waiving the fee income and late charges?

Still 2 months of this to go

George Bush did his favourite type of speech today in Kentucky -- before a cheering audience of troops. The speech is noteworthy for its completely unreflective, let alone unrepentant, expression of his view on Iraq. But here's the part that's also typical Bush --

I appreciate all the local and state officials who are here today. I particularly want to point out one person -- Staff Sergeant John [sic] Forbess. I had the honor of meeting John [sic] at the base of Air Force One. He was severely wounded in a helicopter crash in Iraq in 2003. Yet, despite his wounds, he volunteers in the Fisher House.

The dude's name is Josh, not John. He hitches his wagon to a wounded veteran and can't even get his name right.

Those Egyptians all look the same

This is the picture that appears with the Times (UK) story on the alleged death of "top al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Zubair al-Masri" in the US missile attack in Pakistan that also killed supposed liquid bomb plot mastermind Rashid Rauf.

There's at least one problem. That picture has previously circulated as being of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, whom the US military in Iraq has claimed is the "real" leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and thus would have been nowhere near the similarly named individual in Pakistan. The only thing that the two different al-Masris have in common is the part of their name signifying Egyptian family links, but this is a feature possessed by many Egyptians -- albeit one that continues to make air travel difficult for the American air transport securocrats, always on the lookout for people named al-Masri.

Incidentally, the Iraqi terrorist al-Masri is something of a mystery, since the US only identified him as the head of AQI after declaring the apparent holder of that job, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, to be an imaginary figure. This came after two reports of the latter's death and one of his capture. So perhaps this picture is simply kept around as a handy random Islamo-dude to be put into play when the full truth about who was or wasn't killed in a particular strike is more awkward. Gotta keep everyone focused on their 100ml liquid bottles in a clear plastic bag.

UPDATE: A few more references. Here is an April 2008 US military press conference which mentions Abu Ayyub al-Masri as the AQI leader and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as fictional. Here is a recent press release which again refers to the AQI leadership position.

Which disaster will be "the first day at school"?

A new metaphorical concept stalks the rhetorical land. First, Condi Rice during the disastrous Israel-Lebanon war of 2006 --

What we're seeing here, in a sense, is the growing -- the birth pangs of a new Middle East

Now, Gordon Brown in his speech to the Confederation of British Industry in the context of the global financial crisis --

The challenge is for each of us in the spheres of influence that we have, to surmount the insecurities and risks and to manage the teething troubles of this new global age -

These constructions seems a tad detached from the underlying misery that they are meant to describe, and held to their strict meaning, imply that the misery is a necessary part of progress. Is that what Condi and Gordon really mean to imply?

UPDATE 20 DECEMBER: In his news conference yesterday, Brown used a Condi-like "birth pangs" metaphor for the financial crisis.

That could be awkward

White House press briefing --

The President early this afternoon will have a photo opportunity with recipients of the 2008 Nobel Awards. These are the American Nobel Laureates. The recipients who will be here are Dr. Martin Chalfie, the Chemistry Prize Laureate; Dr. Roger Tsien, Chemistry Prize Laureate also; and Dr. Paul Krugman, Economics Prize Laureate.

UPDATE: The body language doesn't look so bad. At least not Bush-Rudd bad.

Bride of TARP

The Citigroup bailout -- in which the government takes all the downside risk after about $40 billion in losses on $300 billion in assets -- is the consequence of the breakdown in the ability of the magical free market to set a price. No one could figure out how to price this stuff, so the original troubled asset relief program couldn't work. The only thing to do was have the government take the worst of the risk and see what the market makes of the rest of it. For these financial assets, the hand is invisible because it's not there at all.

There he goes again

How strange it is that every time that we might be close to hearing from Rashid Rauf about the still unproven Heathrow liquid bomb plot, for which American claims still form the main basis, something happens to him. This time, permanently. He is gone now, but don't forget your 100ml liquid limit and your clear plastic bag when headed to airport. Who are we to doubt the George Bush version of the intentions of a dead man?

UPDATE APRIL 2009: Rauf may not be dead after all. Note the extent to which his alleged career as a terrorist as been associated with bizarre security lapses and pre-empted investigations.

Are pirates enemy combatants?

At the minimum it's a question with some intellectual interest, because the idea that the government might need the power to designate certain people as being outside normal criminal or military law first arose with the law of piracy. Pirates were stateless actors, committing their crimes in areas with unclear jurisdiction.

But one problem with taking this framework and applying it to terrorism was the claimed need to interrogate terrorism detainees. There can't be much of a need to interrogate pirates. After all, if you have them in custody, you probably have their entire ship. The crew is the cell. The plan was to do pirate stuff. There's no thread to be pulled on a vast conspiracy. Terrorism may not be like that -- or at least that's what the Pentagon said. But then the interrogations, conducted without the rights of a criminal suspect or POW, make an actual prosecution more difficult. Hence the Guantanamo Bay shambles that Barack Obama will have to sort out.

This may be one reason why the Pentagon rarely mentions the legal options for dealing with piracy, instead emphasizing the security aspects. Because resurrecting the old piracy laws (which must still be on the books?) might remind people of how the framework got corrupted through application to the war on terror. It's the kind of thing that Edmund Burke might have warned about.

UPDATE 5 DECEMBER: In the New York Times, Douglas Burgess says that pirates are terrorists but not quite enemy combatants, and recommends a combination of universal jurisdiction and the International Criminal Court (or something like it) to deal with them. Of course one problem is that Bush administration has been opposed to both vehicles -- perhaps thinking about their personal legal peril from the War on Terror.

Party like it's 2000

One issue with Barack Obama -- inevitably -- tapping some Clinton era veterans is that the media get to relive their pathetic standards of the Clinton era. Before there was much of an Internet to keep them in line (Media Whores Online excepted). So here's National Review's Byron York doing some of the issue-digging on Eric Holder (Obama's nominee to be Attorney-General) --

About two weeks before the raid [on the Miami home where Elian Gonzalez was being kept by relatives], Tim Russert asked Holder, "You wouldn't send a SWAT team in the dark of night to kidnap the child, in effect?" Holder answered, "No, we don't expect anything like that to happen." Then the Department did precisely that.

The US Department of Justice did not kidnap Elian Gonzalez. Their special team took him from his relatives to return him to his father, his only surviving parent. It's black-letter law that parents have priority over any other relative in custody disputes, unless some abuse is proven. And the only abuse that the relatives could ever claim was that Elian's father didn't want to leave Cuba and thus wanted to raise Elian there.

In a strange way, the Elian Gonzalez dispute had its echoes (and not just by being in Florida) of the Terri Schiavo fiasco, in which Republicans now sought to deny the priority of a husband to make the life-ending decision for his wife. Both situations have in common the trashing of the supposed primacy of the family for political expediency.

Ownership* Society

Martin Feldstein -- professor of economics at Harvard and recently an adviser to John McCain and a director of AIG -- tells Wall Street Journal readers of his proposal to unlock the US housing market:

The key to preventing further defaults and foreclosures among current negative-equity homeowners is to shift those mortgages into loans with full recourse, allowing the creditor to take other property or a fraction of wages. But the offer of a low-interest-rate loan is not enough to induce a homeowner with substantial negative equity to forego the opportunity to default and escape the existing debt. Substituting a full-recourse loan requires the inducement of a substantial write-down in the outstanding loan balance.

In less technical jargon, he wants negative equity mortgages -- where the value of the house is currently less than the value of the loan -- to have the "walk away" option removed (where one can turn in the keys without being liable for the shortfall) and replaced by a lower value mortgage where the lender can come after the homeowner for any additional shortfall if a further negative equity situation developed down the road. The government and the lender would split the loss on the difference between the old and new mortgages.

Here's the problem. If full recourse mortgages worked so well, you'd think the UK housing market would be looking like a good role model for Feldstein's scheme. It's not. There's still lots of negative equity. All that happens under the full recourse mortgage is a different set of unpalatable choices.

Now lenders can repossess the house and chase after borrowers for the loss in value. So to avoid that, the borrower does some or all of: staying in the house watching the arrears pile up, resisting moving to somewhere else with better job prospects since the mortgage has them chained down, dumps the house onto the rental market, or gambles that the legal and political difficulties of large scale repossessions will let them keep the house for an extended period of time. All of which leads to a huge overhang of potentially distressed houses on the mind of the housing market.

And that's not the end of it. Once you introduce the idea that US mortgage lenders can seize other property or wages to settle a mortgage, all the other lenders who thought of that as their lead option start to panic. Does the credit card company now rush to get an order taking some percentage of the borrower's wages before the mortgage bank gets there first? And, if like many US households with negative equity, your home is in some godforsaken development in California, Michigan, or Florida, why would you give up the right you have now to walk away?

In short, there's no magic rewriting of mortgage contracts that will solve the problem. It has to be done at source: the economic circumstances of the people stuck in these mortgages.

When he was fab

Gordon Brown, 2005 edition: because of my changes, the UK can experience a fall in house prices without a recession, and grow faster than other countries even in tough times --

In each of the past three house price cycles - in the mid 1970s, in the early 1980s and again in the early to mid 1990s - a period of such rapid house price growth has been accompanied by a rapid rise in inflation and sharp increases in interest rates followed by sustained falls in real house prices, rising unemployment and recession. But it is because of the new framework for economic stability - with interest rates low and stable, inflation low and employment at record highs - that the economy is better placed to adjust to the moderation in the housing market. So that instead of the old British stop-go, house prices are adjusting free of recession ...

But no country can insulate itself from the ups and downs of the world economy. With European activity much lower and oil prices much higher, there has been an impact on growth right across the continent, including the UK. We will update our forecasts in the Pre-Budget Report. But while trends so far this year suggest the UK is likely to see growth at or slightly below our cautious view of trend it is because of the tough forward-looking decisions we have taken in monetary and fiscal policy that, even despite the new challenges we now face, Britain is continuing to grow faster this year than the other major European economies, all of whom are forecast to grow by less than 2 per cent with just 1.2 per cent growth in the euro area.

This was not the Gordon who made his G20 statement in the House of Commons yesterday.

UPDATE 17 DECEMBER: More Brown hubris from this era discussed (via Guido Fawkes).

Reunification

Does the map backdrop for the G20 summit show Ireland and Britain as a single island? [see also]

UPDATE: Where's New Zealand?

FINAL UPDATE: Here's a pretty definitive angle. Ireland and Britain show as a blob.

Paging Fox News!

Isn't this Bush Sarkozy G20 greeting a terrorist fist jab?

Photo: REUTERS/Jim Young

One of them doesn't want to be there

You can scroll through the entire set of George Bush grip-and-grin photos with the arriving G20 leaders and not find one where Bush is as stiff as in the one with Australian PM Kevin Rudd. The issue being of course that Rudd almost certainly leaked the details of his October phone conservation with Bush where Bush said "What's the G20"? And that's after 8 years in the job, without even the Palin excuse of inexperience.

One other G20 note. France pulled strings to get in the PMs of Spain and Netherlands, neither of whom are G20 members. Thus one of John McCain's nightmares -- America's adversary, PM Zapetero at the White House, has come true. And the Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende had to turn around and go home due to the death of his father. An awkward start to the weekend.

UPDATE: Rudd was axed from the official photos photo selection, initially, on Saturday.

As bad as things are in Ireland

They used to be worse. The stardust nightclub fire in 1981 killed so many people because of dangerous construction and locked fire exits. Today we find out that the buildings erected on the cleared site had asbestos. That was early 1980s. Other countries knew better. But Ireland was still doing things on the cheap.

That's not much of an endorsement

George Bush, echoing his "commander guy" comment --

I'm a market-oriented guy, but not when I'm faced with the prospect of a global meltdown.

Other powers besides God

A strange usage from Gordon Brown during his pathetic performance today in the Commons --

[Cameron] asked Mr Brown: “Do you agree with me that the Haringey inquiry is completely unacceptable? It is being led by Mrs Shoesmith, who is the council’s own director of children’s services. Do you agree with me she cannot possibly investigate the failure of her own department?”

Mr Brown replied that people were “not only shocked and saddened but horrified and angered” by the case.

“Every child is precious and every child is unique. Every child should have the benefit of support and protection both from their parents and the authorities that be," the Prime Minister said.

Maybe the Presbyterian Gordon heard some different version of the famous phrase from St Paul's letter to the Romans --

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

Of course over the years, the "powers that be" has become a cynical phrase. Did Gordon catch himself as he was about to say it and realize the relevant authority (the useless council) and himself wouldn't sound good under either usage of the phrase, and switch to the less resonant "authorities"? As Guido Fawkes says, it's a long way from how Tony Blair would have handled it.

UPDATE: The council report includes the detail that Child A/Baby P was a "White child of Irish ethnic origin".


FINAL UPDATE: One person has been named and convicted in the case. "Jason Owen". That wasn't his name when he was arrested. Does the legal order that prohibits naming the others extend to being able to lie about names? If it's necessary to lie, why not just keep all 3 names secret until whatever forthcoming proceeding is resolved?

Hootie Madness

Yes we're watching too many music videos. Hotel rooms in strange countries with satellite dishes will do that. But anyway, who amongst us has forgotten the bizarre period when Hootie and the Blowfish were cool? About the only redeeming feature of the video now is seeing a much younger Keith Olbermann.

A MTV experiment

Is it possible to have AC/DC in overheavy rotation?

Yes.

Don't eat the poppies

An impressively loony Wall Street Journal Armistice Day editorial --

But they are also living reminders that much worse was still to come, because the victors failed to prevent the rise of the totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany, the fascists in Italy and the militarists in Japan, and because the U.S. withdrew from its global responsibilities.

Note the implication of the way that sentence is put together: Nazi Germany not fascist. It seems to be necessitated by wanting Hitler and Stalin to have equal degrees of evilitude, so they get grouped together as "totalitarian" leaving only Mussolini as fascist (paging Jonah Goldberg).

And then the closer --

Now we are at a similar pass in Iraq, where the U.S. has effectively defeated Sunni and Shiite insurgents on the battlefield. But whether this costly achievement will hold depends largely on our willingness to support the Iraqi government and steel it against its own fascistic challengers, particularly Iran. If there's one lesson to be learned on this Armistice Day, it's of the price that's paid when we allow victory to slip from our grasp.

It seems that the end of the Bush era demands one more run at overblown historical comparisons, this one taking us from the more typical 1938 to 1919. An interesting presumption of this particular analogy is that the US is already at war with Iran.