Great line of the day

Tbogg makes some interesting observations about Harry Potter-mania:

Aside from those who truly love the books, and obviously millions do, I think this is part of the Big Event nature of our culture, the same thing that causes people who don't watch football to spend the day at a Super Bowl party and pretending to care who wins. We don't have many literary Big Events, since our Big Events seem to be limited to sporting championships and television season or series finales, so we should be happy about the Pottermania. More so, when you consider that the next literary Big Event is probably going to be the release of the Dan Brown's next book.
Oh dear. Kill me now.

They're not "Al Qaeda" anymore, Toto

This Air Force press release about a plane crash in Iraq uses a terminology I don't think I have heard before.
Lately, the preferred US military term for the people they are fighting in Iraq has been to call them all "Al Qaeda", a profoundly misleading term designed to make Americans think that the war is being fought against the 911 hijackers. And media criticism of this transparent tactic has been rachetting upward.
But in this press release, the US air force is now using the term "anti-Iraq forces".
Well, this may be even more inaccurate really, considering that these people are the actual Iraqis while it is the US military itself which could more accurately be described as an "anti-Iraq force".
Be that as it may, however, is "anti-Iraq forces" just another way of trying to switch the focus to Iran? Or does the US Air Force really believe that they are destroying Iraq to save it?

I know you are but what am I

How far around the bend are some conservatives? Dana at The Galloping Beaver links to Jonathan Hari's report on the National Review cruise, AKA Ship of Fools. Listen to some of the hysterical paranoia which Hari found:

A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. "Is he your only child?" I ask. "Yes," she says. "Do you have a child back in England?" she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. "You'd better start," she says. "The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they'll have the whole of Europe."

I lie on the beach with Hillary-Ann, a chatty, scatty 35-year-old Californian designer. As she explains the perils of Republican dating, my mind drifts, watching the gentle tide. When I hear her say, " Of course, we need to execute some of these people," I wake up. Who do we need to execute? She runs her fingers through the sand lazily. "A few of these prominent liberals who are trying to demoralise the country," she says. "Just take a couple of these anti-war people off to the gas chamber for treason to show, if you try to bring down America at a time of war, that's what you'll get." She squints at the sun and smiles. " Then things'll change."

So, you're a European, one of the Park Avenue ladies says, before offering witty commentaries on the cities she's visited. Her companion adds, "I went to Paris, and it was so lovely." Her face darkens: "But then you think – it's surrounded by Muslims." The first lady nods: "They're out there, and they're coming."

[Norman Podhoretz] is a bristling grey ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been "an amazing success." He waves his fist and declaims: "There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria ... This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." He wants more wars, and fast. He is "certain" Bush will bomb Iran, and " thank God" for that.

"The civilized countries should invade all the oil-owning places in the Middle East and run them properly. We won't take the money ourselves, but we'll manage it so the money isn't going to terrorists."[said by Jim O'Beirne, husband of right-wing nutcase Kate - he's the guy who hired 20-year-old Republicans for the Coalition Provisional Authority to run Iraq]

And here is the most bizarre story of the cruise, a disturbing but entirely credible juxtaposition.
First, Hari describes the cocktail party which started the cruise, at which he encountered retired Ontario judge Reuben Bromstein. Bromstein is president of Canadians Against Suicide Bombing, which aims to make suicide bombing a crime against humanity and which describes suicide bombing as "pathological bloodlust" :

I adjust and stiffly greet the first man I see. He is a judge, with the craggy self-important charm that slowly consumes any judge. He is from Canada, he declares (a little more apologetically), and is the founding president of "Canadians Against Suicide Bombing". Would there be many members of "Canadians for Suicide Bombing?" I ask. Dismayed, he suggests that yes, there would.

Yes, well apparently there are also a few "Americans for Suicide Bombing" and some of them are actually on the cruise. Hari next recounts a conversation at the first dinner on board:

To my right are two elderly New Yorkers who look and sound like late-era Dorothy Parkers, minus the alcohol poisoning. They live on Park Avenue, they explain in precise Northern tones. "You must live near the UN building," the Floridian says to one of the New York ladies after the entree is served. Yes, she responds, shaking her head wearily. "They should suicide-bomb that place," he says. They all chuckle gently.

And a good time was had by all.

CNN is sicko

CNN just can't stand it.
Michael Moore is right and CNN is wrong.
CNN, through their medical reporter Sanjay Gupta, tried their very best to do a big hit-piece on Moore by "fact-checking" his movie Sicko. But instead they made two gigantic clangers themselves -- first Gupta hammered Moore for a supposed error on Cuban health costs when it was actually Gupta which made the error, and then when Gupta interviewed a critic about Moore's film he didn't mention the man's employment in the American health care industry. Even most of the people commenting on Dr. Gupta's own blog about the Moore piece accuse Gupta of nitpicking.
So now CNN thinks it has had the last word -- an unnamed "spokesperson" from CNN has released a whiney "response" which purports to reply to Moore's reply by accusing him of creating controversy.
Well, it was the tone and language of Gupta's original report which created the controversy -- Gupta said that Moore had "fudged" his facts on the US health care system, but he didn't. It is CNN which is now fudging the fact that the US health care system is failing the American people.

Decline and fall

Steve Clemons at The Washington Note just got back from Europe and this is what he observed:

. . . the Germans are angry at Bush and America as a whole for so badly screwing up a number of collective efforts -- particularly on climate change -- but also in the Middle East. They are angry that Europe is not in a position to fill the void America is leaving and focus their frustration not on their own leadership problems but at the U.S. for undermining the dynamics of global order.
A widespread view among elite Germans and the non-elite normal types I spoke to is that America is in fast decline -- sort of like Britain after World War II. I think that the impressions foreigners have of this decline is "overshooting reality" as there are many substantive realities about America's ability to deploy force and purpose in the world that remain formidable.
But conversation in some serious circles is turning to what Europe can do to help America stabilize in some position of "lesser global stature." There is also a sense that the nation that is filling much of America's previous geopolitical space is China and that Europe feels tension in its strong alliance with U.S. power in decline and its strategic distance from China clearly ascending.

A few of the commenters to this post disagreed with what Clemons said.
But everyone from outside the US thought Steve got it just about all right -- they objected only to Clemons' assertion that America still remained "formidable" in some ways.

Great line of the day

The downside of going away was that I missed some good stuff on the internets.
Here's Rabble columnist Duncan Cameron, from Friday, talking about the Security and Prosperity Partnership:

The SPP is a poorly disguised attempt to remove economic decisions from public view and democratic oversight. Security does not mean improving pensions, or providing health care for all. Prosperity does not mean alleviating poverty, or improving access to public services. And partnership does not mean partnership.
It means whatever the U.S. decides, goes.

Alison at Creekside has more here and here.

I'm baaaack!

Great holiday but also great to be home.

Summer holiday

Well, we're off on our holiday on Thursday -- flying to Victoria for a few days, then to Vancouver, then home on July 14th.
I don't think I'll be able to blog, or even keep up with reading anyone else's blog -- unless I happen upon an internet cafe.
So see you in a couple of weeks!

Who ya gonna call?

Here are some of the construction problems at the new US embassy in Baghdad:

... when the kitchen staff tried to cook the inaugural meal in the new guard base ... Some appliances did not work. Workers began to get electric shocks. Then a burning smell enveloped the kitchen as the wiring began to melt.
... The 252 prefabricated residential trailers, with either two or three rooms each, filled with formaldehyde fumes. The trailer manufacturer, a Saudi company called Red Sea Housing Services Co., confirmed to the embassy it had used the toxic chemical in preparing the housing. Red Sea told the embassy to keep the windows open and use charcoal in the rooms to absorb the odor, but "the fumes are still prevalent," the cable said.
...The embassy cable noted that five people had been identified at various times as the project manager, and that it was all but impossible for embassy officials to obtain information from them, with no one seeming to be in charge.
...fire hazards in the dining hall's wiring that were so serious that the few guards who had moved into the base's new residential housing were sent back to Camp Jackson.
"It was unknown as to whether similar wiring was present in the residential trailers," the cable said.
... KBR found that the reworked wiring "is still substandard," the cable said. The embassy also said that it believes it has discovered counterfeit wiring, labeled as 10mm when it was actually 6mm.
... First Kuwaiti provided only "minimal spare parts" for the power generators and "less than minimal spare parts" for the water-treatment plant, the cable said.
Finally, on May 25, a KBR hazardous-materials expert discovered that all 10 generators had developed leaks. The fuel tanks were installed without corrosion protection or leak detectors, and fuel had begun to saturate the soil around the tanks. The cable said that Teflon tape designed for water pipes had been used on the fuel tanks, and that such tape "will dissolve on contact with diesel fuel." KBR refused to operate the power generators unless its liability was waived.

How much does everyone want to bet that the largest and most expensive embassy in the world will turn out to be uninhabitable due to shoddy construction?
Here's who they're going to have to call:

Great line of the day

Oliver Stone, on being denied permission to shoot a movie in Iran about Iranian President Ahmadinejad:

"I wish the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours."

Shorter

Shorter Gordon Campbell:

Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who.

Music for the occasion

Yankee Doodle Dandy


American Pie

War by PowerPoint

Here's another one of the Scary Iran news stories. This time its about how the US military briefers in Baghdad are saying Iran is getting Hezbollah to kill Americans in Iraq. Apparently, the US has some documents or something, which they are allowing reporters to view in glimpses. McClatchy notes that:

...there was no way to verify the authenticity of the documents independently, some of which Bergner presented on a large-screen monitor.

I'll bet it was PowerPoint slides.
This reminded me of another US slide show back in February in which the US military briefers in Baghdad were saying Iran is supplying explosive devices to kill Americans in Iraq. The reporters got a better look at this presentation, and it apparently fell pretty flat.
I think its the slides -- the US military is apparently entranced with PowerPoint, which is really just a communications tool, sometimes not a very good one.
In Yale professor Edward Tuft's discussion page about powerpPoint and military intelligence, one of the commenters describes the military reliance on PowerPoint:

1. Briefings are often not created by the actual person who will deliver the brief. Subject Matter Experts are tasked with developing content, which then is briefed to a military officer who then is tasked with briefing up the chain of command.
2. When briefing up the chain, information must be put in "words a colonel can understand." And when a colonel briefs a general, the brief must be put in "words the general can understand." This is usually referred to in terms of elevations: from 10,000 feet, or the 50,000-foot view, etc. I've been told to "keep it out of the weeds" -- limit detail, only make general statements.
3. The expectation is that the handout is also simply a printed copy of the briefing slides themselves, so that while the PP slides are being projected on screen, the participants in the meeting are simultaneously reading the printed versions. The projection is used for debate reference once everyone reads the printed slide.
4. Since PP is often used for a "decision brief" only the words that will be approved are to be included in the slide.

Another commenter describes how a slide can become a military order. He refers to an excerpt from the Thomas Ricks' book Fiasco:

McKiernan had another, smaller, but nagging, issue: He couldn't get Franks to issue clear orders that explicitly stated what he wanted done, how he wanted to do it, and why. Rather, Franks passed along PowerPoint briefing slides that he had shown to Rumsfeld. . . . That reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld's amateurish approach to war planning. . . . It was like telling an automobile mechanic to use a manufacturer's glossy sales borchure to figure out how to repair an engine.

Here is one of those slides -- it shows how Iraq reconstruction was supposed to work:


Just flash on that for 10 seconds. With mythical faux-precision, the little marching arrows and stars show that every day in every way things are going to get better and better in Iraq until everybody reaches Strategic Success, at which point the Tooth Fairy will shoot an arrow down from heaven and...well, Phase Three.
Here's another one, from October, 2006


What could anyone make of seeing such a mess on a screen? Here are some of the things Tufts says about this slide:

The slide reports performance data--a list of phrases, with each phrase accompanied by a measure of performance. This is what the tables in the sports section, mutual fund page, and weather page of newspapers do very well. Those designs are much better for reporting performance data than the slide format here. In sports and stock market tables, each phrase is accompanied by multiple measures of performance, often over varying time-periods. All that won't fit on the slide; this suggests that we should use better reporting method than PP, instead of abbreviating the evidence to fit the slide. As the millions of readers of sports tables each day demonstrate, people can easily manage large tables of information. Thus those being briefed in the military should ask: Why are our presentations operating at 2% of the data richness of routine tables found in the sports section? Let the viewers read and explore through a range of material; different eyes will search for different things in the evidence. The metaphor should be the cognitive style of the sports section (or weather or financial newspaper pages) not the cognitive style of PowerPoint.
There is no cloud of uncertainty or error history associated with the editorializing color. At times, such color codings suggest an excess of certainty.
The Iraq slide above provides some relevant but thin and overly short-run time-comparisons: 2 arrows on the left showing "change since last week," and the "Index of Civil Conflict (Assessed)", which sort of compares "Pre- Samarra" with "Last week" and "Current". And there's a potent time-comparison in words: ". . . violence at all-time high, spreading geographically."

Then again, maybe its not just the PowerPoint. As one of Tufte's other commenters notes:

As someone who remembers watching US military briefings during the VN war, I can confidently state that PowerPoint is not a necessary requirement for producing obfuscated piles of meaningless crap.
There is a story in the biography of John Paul Vann by Neil Sheehan in which Vann's map of precincts in his district is returned by central command for having too few precincts colored in "white" (our side) and too many red (them) and pink (in issue). How's that for graphical information.

Speaking of who's winning, the British say they have lost Basra.

Ya think?

Jesse Wendle at Group News Blog asks:

What would the response have been of all the Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) -- who in the days ahead will be saying what a righteous and proper move the President has made -- had President Bill Clinton pardoned the aide of Vice President Al Gore who'd been convicted of perjury over outing a CIA agent?

Did you have to ask?

Hey, Mr. Minister

Hey, Mr. Minister?
Hmmm?
Minister!
Umm -- yes, just a sec, I'm drafting another press release. So what is it, Deputy?
Can I get a supplement?
No, no, you don't need one, You're not being fired! Far from it, you've been a great Deputy -- you've done everything I asked you to do, even when it was pretty stupid . . .
Yes, Minister, I know. But now I'm going to retire and I want my supplement!
You're not really entitled to one, you know.
But Minister, all the other deputies are getting them!
Now, now, that's not really the case. Why there are only 20 deputies who qualify ... hmmm, well, actually, I guess its closer to 50... no, actually, I guess its 79... 79? Seems like a lot...
So, Minister, why can't I get one too?
Well, come to think of it, why not? You're a good guy and you've taken the blame when I screwed up, so sure, here's your supplement -- after all, its not coming out of MY pocket!