Saturday, October 25, 2003

[Colin Glassey] This blog has a New Home This blog is going to continue at a new web site: www.teleologic.com. I will have the old content there at some point in the future. This blog will cease to be operational in less than a month. See you there! 12:15:07 PM

Friday, October 24, 2003

[Colin Glassey] North Korea Reconsidered A typically good essay from Den Beste about what not to do about North Korea. He lays it out: there are no good solutions. We aren't willing to pay the price of fixing North Korea. So, we let the situation stay the way it is. I agree in that I don't see any viable alternatives at this time. All we have are bad choices. BTW: This blog is going away. Check out Teleologic.com my new blog home. 10:43:57 PM

Friday, October 17, 2003

[Colin Glassey] What is Fascism? This is always hard for me, one might think, having read history for 30 years, that I would know what Fascism is. Michael Ledeen of the National Review has a new essay which talks about Defeating Fascism, Again. Here is an interesting quote from Ledeen: They shared a wildly optimistic vision of human potential and a common political style. Above all, fascism foresaw a transformation of man from a supine servant of modern bourgeois society to a creative warrior who would transform the world in his new image. The fascists believed that the prototype of the "new fascist man" had been forged in the trenches of the first world war — above all, the willingness to risk all, and sacrifice all, for the cause — and that only such men were worthy of positions of power and prestige ...one of fascism's most vexing paradoxes [is] that while the political doctrine emphasized individual creativity, the actual practice of fascist regimes imposed a monotonous conformity, enforced in the name of the collective, whether it be nation, race, or people. I have a hard time seeing the difference in real terms between Fascism and Communism. Yes, their ideas were different and they surely treated private property differently (Fascist said private property was OK, Communists opposed it) but in real terms, how do they differ? Its always about the veneration of one man as the supreme authority on earth, the glorification of the military, and the designation of some group as the hateful other who needs to be eliminated by any means. One can argue that the U.S.S.R. after Stalin died was still communist but not a dictatorship. The same thing happened after Deng died in China. China is still nominally communist but it is not dictatorship. I don't know how to describe China today, Mr. Ledeen says some are calling China a the world's first mature fascist state. As to the article, is Khomeini best described as a clerical fascist? Certainly Castro is and Kim Il Sung of North Korea. And Assad of Syria was a fascist, just like Saddam. But Khomeini? A radical Shiite. A religious dictator. But a fascist? I'm having problems seeing fascism in religious terms. Its true Khomeini is something new by Shia standards but he is hardly the first religious dictator. 2:30:25 PM     [Colin Glassey] History May Not Repeat but Criticism of America Does You will not believe this article, first published in Life Magazine in January, 1946 by the famous novelist John Dos Pasos called Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe. Mr. Dos Pasos makes a critque about our handling of Europe since the end of the war and you litterly can't see the difference between this attack of what is now universally recognized as a huge success and our handling of Iraq. This is NOT a parody. Here are some priceless quotes: Friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American... Never has American prestige in Europe been lower... We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease...our mechanical de-nazification policy in Germany is producing results opposite to those we planned. Have you no statesmen in America? they ask. 60 years later, having destroyed Saddam's evil, monsterous, tyranny we see the exact same arguements about how America is doing such a bad job. Really? And I suppose our occupation of Germany in 1945 is now regarded in the same light as the Russian occupation of East Germany? OK, now for the truth. Germany was litterly bombed into the earth by the time Hitler committed suicide in April of 1945. We took over half of Germany, the British assumed control of about 20% of the country and we had our hands full trying to fix things. Germany was in very bad shape for many years after the war, the ruined buildings had to be cleared away (on the Russian side, some buildings were still in ruins when the Berlin wall fell in 1989!), the roads had to be rebuilt, the factories had to be repaired, the many, many refugees had to be settled and fed. The problems of Iraq don't even compare to the problems we faced in Germany in 1945. Yes Germans went hungry in the years that followed, yes our soldiers looted a fair amount of objects from the Germans, and yes we weren't really ready to rebuild Germany once we took it over. In fact there was real debate about doing ANYTHING to help the Germans after the war. But as we know from history, what we did worked. West Germany became a hugely successful country by any rational standard within 20 years. So all these people who are shouting about how Iraq is a disaster area, they should learn some history. Nation building takes time and money. Time is most important. We can't be expected to fix everything instantly. We live in the real world. 1:36:44 PM

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Standing Next to Fat Person is Bad for Your Image I'm not joking. This from an English study (also from today's CNN): In the English study, psychologist Jason Halford and colleagues from the University of Liverpool tested 144 female students' reactions to two prom photos. One showed a dapper, thin young man standing next to a svelte ringlet-haired woman. The other was the same photo altered to show the guy arm-in-arm with a very large, nicely dressed woman. The volunteers took a quick look at one or the other of the pictures and then were asked their opinion of the man. They rated him from 1 to 5 on 50 negative adjectives -- called the "fat phobia scale" -- that people often use to describe obese people. The man with the big woman was rated 22 percent more negatively than the same man with the thin companion. When seen with the large woman, he was more likely to be described as miserable, self-indulgent, passive, shapeless, depressed, weak, insignificant and insecure. "It shows that people project negative attitudes associated with obesity not only on the obese but all those who associate with them," Halford said. The study also found that students who were themselves overweight were more likely than usual to rate the man harshly when pictured with the obese partner. So, if you want to look good, don't even be SEEN in the company of a fat person. Is this fair? No. Is it instinctive, it sure seems that way. 2:04:25 PM     [Colin Glassey] Fat is Medically Recommended Most experts are totally baffled by this study (from CNN today): In the study, 21 overweight volunteers were divided into three categories: Two groups were randomly assigned to either lowfat or low-carb diets with 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 for men; a third group was also low-carb but got an extra 300 calories a day. The study was unique because all the food was prepared at an upscale Italian restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so researchers knew exactly what they ate. Most earlier studies simply sent people home with diet plans to follow as best they could. Each afternoon, the volunteers picked up that evening's dinner, a bedtime snack and the next day's breakfast and lunch. Instead of lots of red meat and saturated fat, which many find disturbing about low-carb diets, these people ate mostly fish, chicken, salads, vegetables and unsaturated oils. "This is not what people think of when they think about an Atkins diet," Greene said. Nevertheless, the Atkins organization agreed to pay for the research, though it had no input into the study's design, conduct or analysis. Everyone's food looked similar but was cooked to different recipes. The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat. The rest got 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 30 percent fat. In the end, everyone lost weight. Those on the lower-cal, low-carb regimen took off 23 pounds, while people who got the same calories on the lowfat approach lost 17 pounds. The big surprise, though, was that volunteers getting the extra 300 calories a day of low-carb food lost 20 pounds. "It's very intriguing, but it raises more questions than it answers," said Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania. "There is lots of data to suggest this shouldn't be true." Greene said she can only guess why the people getting the extra calories did so well. Maybe they burned up more calories digesting their food. Dr. Samuel Klein of Washington University, the obesity organization's president, called the results "hard to believe" and said perhaps the people eating more calories also got more exercise or they were less apt to cheat because they were less hungry. Any questions? Lots. Does the Atkin's diet work? Based on this really, really good study, yes it does. Wow. 1:54:21 PM

Friday, October 10, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Sex is medically recommended This article from Forbes.com is just filled with various studies which all suggest sex is not just good fun but good for you. Who would have guessed? I can't resist linking to this post by Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries. Its all about various attitudes towards dating Hong Kong (and other Asian) women. The comments section was pretty humorous. I do have an opinion on this subject. The following is a vast over-simplification. European-American women in my limited experience were somewhat off-putting due to their lack of ability to explain what they wanted out of a relationship. My wife did not have this trait. I knew she wanted a family, a loyal husband, and honesty in her life within a week of meeting her. My job was to convince her that I was the best man with the best family for her. I thought we were perfect for each other, both middle children, both loners with a love of reading. I've known my wife for more than 20 years now (I met her on the Berkeley Campus in September, 1983) and I was right. 3:52:39 PM

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Val Dorta on Who the Enemy Really Is Val Dorta has a very insightful essay on who our enemy really is. Val says our enemy is not terrorism (a means of conflict), or terrorists (those who use a means of conflict) but rather Islamic Fundementalism. Until we clearly identify our enemy we will not be able to create a rational, coherent military or political response. Val's article is very long and he quote Clauswitz, accurately. I'm still amazed at the degree to which Clauswitz is still the ultimate authority on the nature of war. Anyways, I recommend Val's essay. 1:59:14 PM

Saturday, October 04, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Saddam DID have Weapons of Mass Destruction This is from Andrew Sullivan's blog The administration claimed that Saddam had used WMDs in the past, had hidden materials from the United Nations, was hiding a continued program for weapons of mass destruction, and that we should act before the threat was imminent. The argument was that it was impossible to restrain Saddam Hussein unless he were removed from power and disarmed. The war was legally based on the premise that Saddam had clearly violated U.N. resolutions, was in open breach of such resolutions and was continuing to conceal his programs with the intent of restarting them in earnest once sanctions were lifted. Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. This war wasn't just moral; it wasn't just prudent; it was justified on the very terms the administration laid out. And we don't know the half of it yet. Absolutely right. The interum report proves it. Sullivan has a lot more on his site right now. 1:44:38 PM     [Colin Glassey] Steven Den Beste on the Tragedy of the Commons Here is another brilliant essay by Den Beste on the Tragedy of the Commons. Really nice read, lots of good examples. I already knew them but it was still fun to read. 1:03:10 PM     [Colin Glassey] An Idea of Mine Becomes Real I just found a web site that tries to create a database of the world's population. It can be found at One Great Family.com. Back in 1997 when I was working at Broderbund on the Family Tree Maker product I had this same idea, one giant hypertext database for all human family data. I tried to convince the vice presidents of this idea but they were not willing to move in that direction. Since I knew what the ideal solution to the problem of vast isolated geneological work looked like, it was hard to keep working on the inferior PC-based product. So I quit. But I am very pleased to see that a former Novell engineer had the same idea and actually implemented it. Every geneological software product is now obsolete. Welcome to the 21st century! 12:51:51 PM

Thursday, October 02, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The French Finally Discover Their Game is Over Best sellers in France this month plainly say that the French efforts over the last year to stab the U.S. in the back and to try and bend the E.U. to their own needs have essentially failed. Boo hoo. For its intellectuals, France falters by John Vinocur - Thursday, October 2, 2003 (International Herald Tribune) PARIS A growing sense of France's decline as a force in Europe has developed here. The idea's novelty is not the issue itself. Rather it is that for the first time in a half century that the notion of a rapid descent in France's influence is receiving wide acknowledgment within the French establishment. At its most hurtful and remarkable, and yet perhaps its most honest, there is the start of acceptance by segments of the French intellectual community that French leadership, as it is constituted now, is not something Europe wants - or France merits. Several current books, three on the bestseller lists, have focused discussion on the country's incapacities, rigidities and its role, they say, in the context of the Iraq war, in dividing the Western community and fracturing notions of Europe's potential unity. The books, with titles that translate to phrases like "France in Free Fall" or "French Arrogance," are merciless in their accusations of the fantasy-driven ineffectualness of French foreign policy and the extent of the country's economic breakdown. Or they more specifically target what one of books, "Le Pouvoir du Monde," by Bernard Poulet, regards as the implosion of the newspaper Le Monde, mirror of the French establishment, from one-time symbol of rectitude to self-appointed "universal mentor and Great Inquisitor"; or what another, essentially a short essay, called "Au Nom de l'Autre" by Alain Finkielkraut, contends is the rise in France of a new kind of anti-Semitism in proportions greater than anywhere else in Europe. Together, they project the image of a decadent France, adrift from its brilliant past, incapable of inspiring allegiance or emulation and without a constructive, humanist plan for the future. Of all the books, the current No. 2 on the bestseller list of L'Express, "La France Qui Tombe," by Nicolas Baverez, has been the focus of unusual attention. Baverez, a practicing attorney and economist who has a strong place in the Paris establishment, argues that France's leadership hates change. Rather, it "cultivates the status quo and rigidity" because it is run through the connivance of politicians, civil servants and union officials, bringing together both the left- and right-wing elites. They are described as mainly concerned with preserving the failed statist system that protects their jobs and status. Although he has little patience with the American role in the world (it is branded unilateral, imperial and unpredictable, yet flexible and open to change) Baverez charges that the failure of French policy on Iraq and Europe - resisting the United States with nothing to offer in exchange, and attempting to force the rest of Europe to follow its lead - "crowns the process of the nation's decline" and leaves France in growing diplomatic isolation everywhere. Over the past year, said Bavarez, "French diplomacy has undertaken to broaden the fracture within the West, and duplicate American unilateralism on the European scale by its arrogant dressing down of Europe's new democracies. It has sustained a systematically critical attitude that flees concrete propositions in favor of theoretical slogans exalting a multipolar world or multilateralism." As for Europe, Bavarez maintains that France has been discredited by its reticence to transfer any kind of meaningful sovereignty to the central organization, its resistance to giving up its advantages in the area of agricultural policy and its disregard for the directives and rules of the European Union executive commission. He does not stop there. Of a united Europe, Bavarez said, France has "ruined what might have remained of a common foreign and security policy, deeply dividing the community and placing France in the minority." His country was at the edge of marginalization in Europe and the world, he claimed, because of its "verbal pretense of having real power" that is "completely cut off from its capacity for influence or action." In a real sense, none of this is new. But this time, the provenance is a respected establishment figure talking, so to speak, from the belly of the beast. The echo has been striking within in national debate. Over the years, foreign journalists, free of establishment pressures, have made Bavarez's points one by one without denting French public discourse. Talk circulated during the presidential election campaign last year about French decline, coming largely from Jacques Chirac, but it was basically dismissed as political taunts aimed at the Socialist government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Now, in response to the Bavarez book, there is public rage from the Chirac camp, which the Bavarez book charges with having neither the courage nor the competence to confront the basic problems. But the density of Bavarez's factual argumentation, bolstered by the presence of the other books, all treating France's pride-of-rank and French conceits with brutal disrespect, have given the notion of French decline a legitimacy, reality and currency that it lacked before in public debate. Alain Duhamel, perhaps the most consensual of France's mainstream political commentators, has praised Bavarez for launching "a legitimate debate on a subject that merits one: French decline." He said it touched "a sensitive point in the national subconscious that set off an intellectual hullabaloo." An ardent advocate of limited surrender of French sovereignty so that the EU can become the vector of French worldwide ambitions - he too has written a new book whose title translates to France in Disarray - Duhamel acknowledges that France no longer pulls Europe along behind it, although he insists Europe will not advance without France. Indeed, Le Monde, which normally makes French ambitions, or distress about their failures, synonymous with Europe's, made some rare admissions this week about the French descent in Europe's eyes. Daniel Vernet, a former senior editor of the newspaper, wrote, "We often irritate our partners because too frequently we have the tendency to want to impose our views, or only to consider as truly European those positions that conform to a French vision, however much in the EU minority it may be." That resulted in a dilemma without an obvious exit, Vernet said. "The European partners don't want to hear about European policy independent from the United States," he wrote. "So, either France acts alone, and, regardless of what's claimed, its influence remains limited. Or it seeks a common denominator with its partners and it has to give up its ambitions." Even Chirac may have given a sign that he understands the changing vision of France's real possibilities. In two major speeches on world affairs since the end of the summer, he dropped any references to multipolarity, the French notion of a world of competing poles with Europe set up as a rival pole to the United States. In the sense that they project the picture of a country that has lost its way, the other books complemented the Bavarez thesis and set the tone of discussion. In "Ouest contre Ouest," by Andre Glucksmann, one of the few leading French intellectuals to challenge the country's position on the Iraq war, France is described as a nation, with others in Europe, that fled the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, on the United States in panic and attempted to set up a sterile biosphere away from the world's realities. The book, also a bestseller, maintains that this flight from confronting trouble carried with it an attempt to create two opposing notions of the West: a serene Europe, sheltered from terrorist kamikazes, and a warlike, imperialist, autistic United States. Glucksmann wrote that the central question of the future was not hegemony or multipolarity, the key French terms illustrating the Chirac government's seeming obsession about the United States and its desire to counter the Americans, but civilization versus nihilism, and whether the West together could make a fight to protect civilization. Glucksmann believes that France's leadership has wanted to bring Russia into its project to counter the United States, with France promising in the bargain a return of Russia's lost rank and prestige. "What does France gain?" he asked. "The possibility to continue its siesta. It would be up to Russia to counterbalance America, and keep the Islamist and Eastern hordes away. It would be the United States' job to chase down all the worldwide risks that we want to avoid. Paris, in all this, gives itself the role of directing the world by proxy. Once the Euro-Asiatic bloc is cemented through the inspiration of the Elysée Palace, Washington, put in its just place and counterbalanced, will conform." These messages converge with that of "L'Arrogance Française," by Romain Gubert and Emmanuel Saint-Martin, whose chapter and section headings - How France Lost Europe or Narcissistic Blindness - well sum up a book that holds that French foreign and European policy is guided by "obsessive concern with its standing, and terror in the face of its decline." France's essential arrogance, the authors suggest, is in continuing to act as if the world community and its European partners do not comprehend that for the French leadership, the "EU serves as the means for France to recover its influence and to reconquer its lost power." In this light, although the writers of "L'Arrogance Française" do not say so specifically, it is possible to see French policy in relationship to Iraq as a temporary instrumentalization of Germany in an effort to recapture European primacy - an attempt understood and foiled by the vast number of its NATO and EU partners. Months later, the fact is, after Sweden's rejection of the euro (in part because of France's refusal to conform to the economic performance standards it set up itself for the currency's credibility), and the likely splintering of the EU into groups of several speeds without any semblance of a unified foreign or defense policy, France has come up empty. The sum of the messages of the books, in French to the French, is that this vision of the country's current circumstances is not a French-bashing invention from afar, but a home truth. For Bavarez, France is threatened with becoming a museum diplomatically and a transit center economically. To do anything about it, it must revive itself internally first, getting away from what he calls its "social statist model." To advance, it must end the dominant role of a "public sector placed outside of any constraint requiring productivity or competitiveness." The reform of the rest of French policy, based on genuine integration into Europe, should follow, he argues. He recommends what he calls shock therapy, a forced march toward modernity that involves the risk of a clash among French interest groups and an end to the "sinister continuity" that unites the presidencies of François Mitterrand and Chirac in a kind of angry immobility. But for Bavarez, and most of the other writers now gaining the nation's attention, the present reality is harsh for France. "Overtaken by the democratic vitality and technological advance of the United State," Bavarez concludes, "downgraded industrially and challenged commercially by China and Asia, the decline of France is accelerating at the same rhythm as the vast changes in the world." People here in the U.S. have been saying this for more than a year. That France was trying to play with the major powers in the world "on the cheap". I'm glad the total failure of their efforts has come to haunt them so soon. Maybe there is hope for actual change in France. Simply reading these books isn't going to be enough. The people of France actually have to DO something about their government. I'm not holding my breath about that happening. 11:46:18 PM

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Real Nature of Suicide Bombers This interview was published on the Discover Magazine web site (October, 2003). Interesting read. Certainly fits with the profiles of the terrorists we have gathered so far. The Surprises of Suicide Terrorism - It's not a new phenomenon, and natural selection may play a role in producing it - Interviewed by Josie Glausiusz Scott Atran fell in love with anthropology in 1970 when he went to work with Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and found himself surrounded by a collection of thousands of skulls. He has spent the intervening years studying human cultures all over the world, dwelling among the secretive Druze sect in Israel, documenting conservation customs among the Maya of Guatemala, and analyzing the evolution of religion everywhere, a topic he explores in his book In Gods We Trust (Oxford University Press, 2002). He is based both at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and at the University of Michigan. His recent work has focused on suicide terrorism. He has marshaled evidence that indicates suicide bombers are not poor and crazed as depicted in the press but well-educated and often economically stable individuals with no significant psychological pathology. Q:You recently chose to write about the genesis of suicide terrorism in the journal Science. Why should suicide terrorism be the object of a scientific investigation? A: Within a few days of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I started listening to the stuff that was in the media and from the administration--for example, President Bush's speech on September 11th and the next he gave on September 20th before Congress. I thought, "What utter nonsense"--this idea that these people were crazed or they're doing it out of despair or hopelessness. The whole history of these kinds of acts goes against this. I decided to write an article and get it into the scientific press, because governments, I believe, would take up what their scientists tell them, since there is a huge respect for science. Q: Why do you regard the popular stereotype of the suicide terrorist as nonsense? A: The CIA released a report in 2001 on the psychology and sociology of terrorism, and they basically said these people are perfectly sane. If you look at the history of these kinds of extreme acts, they're pretty much directed by middle-class or higher-middle-class intellectuals. They always have been. Never have they been directed by wacky, crazed, homicidal nuts. The Japanese kamikaze of World War II were, by the way, extremely intelligent guys. If you read their diaries, they were German romantics, reading Goethe and Schiller, and quite conscious of the efforts of the state to manipulate them. Q: What sort of scientific research indicates that suicide bombers are sane? A: Some of the earlier research was by Ariel Merari, who is a psychologist at Tel Aviv University and also a terrorism expert. He interviewed suicide bombers--survivors who were wounded and didn't die or whose bombs didn't go off--as well as their families or recruiters. Like most psychologists in the 1980s, he thought that this was individual pathology, like the idea that racists come from fatherless families or have a history of family trouble. He made a 180-degree turn and found out that no, the bombers span the normal distribution and were slightly above it in terms of education and in income. Nasra Hassan, who is a Pakistani relief worker working in Gaza for a number of years, interviewed about 250 family members, recruiters, and survivors, completely independently. She was not aware of Merari's work, and she found exactly the same thing. Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, has done long-term studies with Hezbollah and Hamas. His research shows that not only are suicide terrorists significantly more educated than their peers, they are also significantly better off. According to Krueger, although one-third of Palestinians live in poverty, only 13 percent of Palestinian suicide bombers do; 57 percent of bombers have education beyond high school versus 15 percent of the population of comparable age. The Defense Intelligence Agency also gave me profiles of all these people they were interrogating at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. They divide them into Yemenis and Saudis. The Yemenis are sort of the foot soldiers. And they found that the Saudis, their leaders especially, are from high-status families. A surprising number have graduate degrees. And they are willing to give up everything. They give up well-paying jobs, they give up their families, whom they really adore, to sacrifice themselves because they really believe that it's the only way they're going to change the world. Q: So what's the root cause of suicide terrorism? A: As a tactical weapon, it emerges when an ideologically devoted people find that they cannot possibly obtain their ends in a sort of fair fight, and when they know they're in a very weak position, and they have to use these kinds of extreme methods. Q: What's the typical profile of a suicide terrorist? A: Generally, it's not someone who is off the wall. They can't be effective killers. Usually it is someone who is smart, who shows a willingness to give up something, who is patient, who is quiet. Competent people who don't draw attention to themselves, and who are perfectly willing and able to meld into society. Q: How on earth does anyone sane work up the gumption to blow himself up, together with what is often hundreds of bystanders? A: Exactly the same way that you get soldiers on the front line of an army to sacrifice themselves for their buddies. What these cells do is very similar to what our military, or any modern military, does. They form small groups of intimately involved "brothers" who literally sacrifice themselves for one another, the way a mother would do for her child. They do it by manipulating universal heartfelt human sentiments that I think are probably innate and part of biological evolution. In fact, I think most culture is a manipulation of innate desires. It's the same way that our fast-food industry manipulates our desires for sugars and fats, or the way the pornography industry manipulates people to get all hot about pixels on a screen or on wood pulp. Q: Wood pulp? A: Yeah, paper in a pornography journal. I mean, it has no adaptive value. In the case of something like Al Qaeda, you've got these people in groups of three to eight people, for 18 months, isolated from their family, getting this intense and deep ego-stroking propaganda. You do that to anyone, and you'll get him to do what you want. There are all these studies that psychologists have done of torturers on all sides of the political divide. A very famous one is on ordinary Greeks who became torturers during the military junta of 1967 to 1974. They found they were perfectly ordinary--in fact, above-average intelligence. They'd get them to be torturers by indoctrinating them, by showing them how necessary they were for their societies, and getting these people to believe it. Q: You seem to be suggesting that natural selection may be playing a role in generating the feelings that enable people to become suicide terrorists, but blowing yourself up is hardly a good strategy for propelling your genes into the next generation. A: Natural selection gives us all sorts of dispositions and desires that were adaptive in ancestral environments. Now, our cultural milieu picks certain of these adaptations or their by-products and is able to trigger them to produce behaviors that have nothing to do with what they originally evolved for. Kin altruism (the theory that individuals are willing to sacrifice their lives to save closely related kin) evolved through natural selection. If you listen to most political and religious discourse in societies, it's always done for a brotherhood--brothers and sisters. So you create a fictive family. How else are you going to get people to die for one another when they're non-kin-related? You've got to trick them into believing they are kin-related somehow. Q: Why does it matter whether we understand the making of a suicide terrorist? A: Huge amounts of money were being offered, at least on the horizon, for science-related defense research, most of it going to things like bioterrorism prevention. There were all these harebrained schemes--they're still around--to have a Radio Free Arabia. They're going to bombard these people with information about how good our society is, our goals, and that's supposed to win the war on terrorism. If you look at the February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, you'll see they plan to introduce programs against poverty and illiteracy. These ideas seem to me just completely wrong. First, the people who carry out terrorist acts are already educated. Second, they're not poor, so reducing poverty isn't going to do a thing. Q: So what's your strategy for combating suicide terrorism? A: I think it has to be a multilayered strategy. You've got to be able to--and this I'm all for--go after the guys who operate the cells. Take them out. Get rid of them. Jail them or kill them, because they are not willing to compromise. What do you do with somebody who says, "All Americans and Jews have got to die"? The point of talking to such people has passed. Whatever the grievances were that caused such people to have such ideas, if they show that they're willing to implement them, then you've just got to make a decision whether you want to see this guy survive or you and your people survive. Q: What else? A: Another thing is, yes, protect some of the vulnerable targets, but I think that actually is less important than trying to stop this phenomenon from becoming adopted, like a sort of virus, by these populations. How do you prevent the ideology of suicide terrorism from attaching itself to the populations that support it? How do you get the people themselves to stop harboring the suicide terrorists? You've got to talk with them. You've got to address their grievances. Not the grievances of Al Qaeda, but the grievances of these people. Then there's got to be support for moderate groups. Alan Krueger in his last study looked at poverty and civil liberties as two factors in suicide terrorism. He found that poverty is not an appreciable selection factor but that the lack of civil liberties is a predictor of where you'll find suicide terrorism. When you don't give these people any political space to express themselves, they become radicalized. Q: In your book In Gods We Trust, you call religion an evolutionary riddle. Why? A: Think about it. All religions require costly sacrifices that have no material rewards. Look at the Egyptian pyramids. Millions of man-hours. For what? To house dead bones? Or the Cambodian pyramids. Or the Mayan pyramids. Or cathedrals. Or just going to church every Sunday and gesticulating. Or saying a Latin or Hebrew prayer, mumbling what are to many people incoherent words. Stopping whatever you're doing to bow and scrape. Then think about the cognitive aspects of it. For example, to take alive for dead and weak for strong. I mean, what creature could possibly survive if it did these kinds of things systematically? Look at the things that religion is said to do. It is said to relieve people's anxieties, but it's also said to increase their anxieties so that elites can use them for political purposes. It's supposed to be liberating. It's supposed to encourage creativity. It's supposed to stop creativity. It's supposed to explain events that can't be explained. It's supposed to prevent people from explaining them. You can find functional explanations, and their contraries, and they're all true. Q: Why then has religion survived in so many cultures? A: Because humans are faced with problems they can't solve. Think about death. Because we have these cognitive abilities to travel in time and to track memory, we are automatically aware of death everywhere. That is a cognitive problem. Death is something that our organism tells us to avoid. So now we seek some kind of a long-term solution. And there is none. Lucretius and Epicurus thought they could solve this through reason. They said, "Look, what does it matter? We weren't alive for infinite generations before we were born. It doesn't bother us. Why should we be worried about the infinite generations that will be after us when we're gone?" Well, nobody bought that. The reason that line of reasoning didn't work is because once you're alive, you've got something that you're going to lose. Another problem is deception. Look at society. If you've got rocks and stones and pieces of glass and metal before you, and you say, "Oh, that doesn't exist," or "That's not really a piece of metal," or "That's not really a tree," someone will come along and say, "Look, you're crazy; I can touch it; there's a piece of metal there; I can show you it's a piece of metal." For commonsense physical events, we have ways of verifying what's real or not. For moral judgments, we have nothing. If someone says, "Oh, he should be a beggar and he should be a king," what is there in the world that's going to convince me this is true? There is nothing. If there is nothing, how are people ever going to get on with one another? Especially non-kin. How are they ever going to build societies, and how are they ever going to trust one another so they won't defect? One way that humans seem to have come up with is to invent this minimally counterintuitive world developed by these deities, who are like big brothers who watch over and make sure that there will be no defectors. Q: Do you think science will ever replace religion? A: Never. Because it doesn't solve any of the problems that religion solves, like death or deception. There is no society that survives more than a generation or two that isn't religiously based--even the Soviet Union, where half the people were religious. Thomas Jefferson's unitarian God fell by the wayside. The French Revolution's neutral deity also fell by the wayside. People want a personal God, for obvious reasons, to solve personal problems. Q: What have you learned about conservation from studying the Maya people of the Petén? A: We took three groups that live in the same place--native lowland Maya, the Itza'; highland Maya, the Q'eqchi' that are forced down into the lowlands; and ladino immigrants that come up from all over Guatemala. We found that the group that actually preserves the forest, the Itza', is the one that has no institutions to speak of. The people don't monitor anything. They fight with one another constantly. They're extremely individualistic. And yet they protect the forest. The people with the strongest communal institutions, the Q'eqchi', who monitor one another in the forest and punish violators, they're destroying it at five times the rate of the others. They see the forest as a commodity, and they think it's open-ended. They don't think it needs protection. They don't see it as a threatened system. For them, it's relatively open jungle. Q: What do the Itza' do differently? A: They don't treat the forest as a commodity. They treat it as a relational item, like a friend or an enemy. There is no objective utility metric, like money value, that can be attached to it. We also found that the men who go out into the forest have this notion of what the spirits are doing, and they are scared to death of violating the spirit preference. They're real believers. Then we found that what the spirits prefer--not what the people think is important but what they think the spirits think is important--actually predicts species distributions. Q: What do you mean? A: Those trees most valued by the spirits--the Brosimum alicastrum, or "breadnut," and the chicazapote, the tree that yields the resin that is the natural base for chewing gum--are actually those trees with the widest distribution, which produce fruit all year round and which have the largest number of ecological relations with other animals. We're able to predict, just on the basis of the Itza' spirit preferences, all sorts of ecological things happening on the ground. What I think is going on is that these spirits represent human preferences built up over generations. 5:07:39 PM

Monday, September 22, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Max Boot on the New American Way of War Great essay by Max Boot which does an early analysis on the U.S. Iraq War of 2003. Mr. Boot wrote a book last year about the U.S. Military, he knows what he is talking about. Bottom line: the U.S. military really has figured out a new way to fight. The impossible is now possible for us. But there are still ways we can improve and we need a larger army. Also, both the Air Force and the Navy need to rethink what they are spending their money on. Supporting the Army should be far more important to them. Phil Carter of the blog Intel Dump has a nice set of essays. I liked his summary of problems for Donald Rumsfeld. Germany backs down, looks like they might be allies after all. I missed this Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Prime Minister Schroder. He says: It is true that Germany and the United States disagreed on how best to deal with Saddam Hussein's regime. There is no point in continuing this debate. We should now look toward the future. We must work together to win the peace. The United Nations must play a central role. The international community has a key interest in ensuring that stability and democracy are established as quickly as possible in Iraq. The international mission needs greater legitimacy in order to accelerate the process leading to a government acting on its own authority in Iraq. In addition to its current military involvement in Afghanistan, the Balkans and elsewhere, Germany is willing to provide humanitarian aid, to assist in the civilian and economic reconstruction of Iraq and to train Iraqi security forces. Sounds like a back-down to me. Looks like we were right to treat Germany differently from France. 12:48:40 AM

Thursday, September 18, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Gregg Easterbrokes New Blog Gregg (creator of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, now on ESPN's web site) has a new blog at: Gregg's Unnamed Blog. I like Mr. Easterbrook a great deal. This is my favorite quote about 9/11, its by Mr. Easterbrook, from September 25, 2001: Matchup Note: Their side has people whose idea of manhood is to murder unarmed women and screaming children. Our side has people whose idea of manhood is to run into a burning skyscraper to save lives. Our side will win. The margin of victory will be large. That sums it up for me. FDNY and the NYPolice are heroes to me. They proved it. 1:35:39 AM

Monday, September 15, 2003

[Colin Glassey] John F. Burns on Media Corruption in Iraq Before the War You can not find a more devestating portrait of media gone bad than this commentary by John F. Burns (of the New York Times) in Editor and Publisher.com Burns pulls few punches accusing many, if not all, of his fellow journalists of lying about Saddam's Iraq so as to stay in Baghdad to "get the story". The reporters in Baghdad lied about how bad things were in Iraq. Quote: We now know that this place was a lot more terrible than even people like me had thought. There is such a thing as absolute evil. Saddam's Iraq was such a place, and nearly all the world's media, from CNN to Al Jazeria lied about how bad it was. It is clear to me that "big media" is not trustworthy. The quest for ratings has corrupted the profession of journalism. They will say anything just to stay in a "hot spot" and get "flashy video". 11:37:57 PM

Sunday, September 14, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Rebuilding Germany in 1945 was no picnic People have very little historical memory. The facts are: we bombed most large German cities back into the stone age. Millions of civilians were killed or injured, the basic infrastructure of transportation, power plants, even water distribution, destroyed for huge cities like Hamburg, Munich, and Berlin. Germans were litterally starving to death in the months following Hitler's death. This is what Doug Sanders writes in the Globe and Mail: Six months before, the world had cheered as the statues of the dictator came crashing down. The Americans had seemed heroic. But now things were going very badly. The occupation was chaotic, the American soldiers were hated and they were facing threats from the surviving supporters of the dictator, whose whereabouts were uncertain. Washington seemed unwilling to pay the enormous bill for reconstruction, and the president didn't appear to have any kind of workable plan to manage the transition to democracy. European allies, distrustful of the arrogant American outlook, were wary of co-operating. To many, it looked like the victory had been betrayed, since the American values of democracy, equality and well-being seemed unlikely ever to emerge. That's how it looked in Germany in November, 1945. In our memories, history tends to become compressed: There was V-E Day, then the American soldiers were cheered by the people of Berlin, then the president announced that hundreds of millions would be spent on the Marshall Plan, then Germany became the prosperous and democratic place it is today. That is not how things unfolded. The United States has always been good at removing dictators from power, but the tedious, dirty work we now call "nation building" has never come naturally, or quickly. The enormous success of European and Japanese reconstruction did not even begin to emerge until long years of pain and disorder had passed. Six months after V-E Day, The New York Times reported that Germany was awash in "unrest and lawlessness." More than a million "displaced persons" roamed the country, many of them subsisting on criminal activities. The heavy-handed presence of American soldiers was deeply resented by many Germans, especially young men, who had come to believe that the G.I.s were stealing their women. ... The Marshall Plan, in which the United States spent the equivalent of 100 billion of today's dollars rebuilding Europe, was not passed until late in 1947, more than two years after the war's end, and did not deliver a penny to Germany until 1949. It faced harsh political opposition from Republicans in the United States. The other great instrument of postwar reconstruction, the World Bank, did not begin handing out money until 1947 either. It took two years for the United States to begin taking its nation-building responsibilities seriously. Those two years hadn't passed well. By 1947, Germans were dying of starvation. In some cities, the ration had dropped to 750 calories. And the aid may never have arrived had it not been for the threat of communism and the promise of profits: The Marshall Plan was sold to Americans as a trade and marketing opportunity for U.S. business, and as a firewall against the Soviets. But whatever the motives, it was the cornerstone of today's Europe, a stunning success Yes, it would be nice if Iraq was a happy peacefull place immediately after the war ended. Yes our army could be bigger and we could have another division in Iraq doing useful things like securing the border. But the truth is, rebuilding a country is hard work. We are better at it than just about any other country in history, but we still aren't good at it compared to the ideal. Sorry, but we live in the real world. 10:48:44 PM

Wednesday, September 03, 2003

[Colin Glasey] What the BBC Did Wrong The following is a brilliant editorial by a writer for the Daily Telegraph (based in England). It refers to the recent war between the BBC and the Government of Tony Blair. I personally think the BBC is completely in the wrong, and for the reasons expressed in this editorial. The BBC is playing at power games - By Janet Daley - (Filed: 03/09/2003) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/09/03/do0302.xml There can be little question now that David Kelly was sacrificed - in the vulgar phrase, "hung out to dry" - by all the principal players in this great public drama. The question that remains is, at what point did the chain of events become inexorable? When did this appalling process take on the inevitability that made it the stuff of high tragedy, rather than simply misadventure? First, Andrew Gilligan created a story out of their private conversation that Dr Kelly found (as he told everyone, with stunning consistency, from the foreign affairs select committee to his own daughter) virtually unrecognisable. Gilligan then effectively unmasked him as the source of Susan Watts's account and therefore of his (Gilligan's) own, in an email to David Chidgey, a Liberal Democrat committee member, whose party was sympathetic to the anti-war position. Then Dr Kelly's employers at the MoD participated in his exposure, despite having given him explicit assurances that they would not do so. Was this under pressure from Downing Street that, apparently ruthlessly, demanded that his identity be made public? Almost undoubtedly. But given what had transpired, how could the Prime Minister's office have done otherwise? The charge that the Gilligan story had made against Tony Blair and later, by name, Alastair Campbell, was the most serious allegation that it is possible to make against a government. What was being claimed was that the country had been sent to war, and British lives had been lost, on the basis of a lie. This is practically tantamount to accusing the Prime Minister of murder. It is far more grave than any accusation of financial corruption or even criminal misdemeanour in office. To make such an assertion was effectively to say to every British family that had lost a serving soldier in Iraq: your son, or brother, or husband, died on false premises, to serve the vanity of a deceitful political leader. It is absolutely inconceivable that this could have been allowed to stand as a story having the imprimatur of the BBC. It is vital to note this point. Had Gilligan simply published his piece in the Mail on Sunday, the whole farago could have been dismissed as tabloid sensationalism. But because it was broadcast on the BBC and never retracted, it flew round the world, and became the substance for a million queries of the Government's veracity in the run-up to war. It is appalling, but almost irresistible, to conclude that, if Gilligan had not broadcast his original report and if its implications had not then been picked up and spun out by the media - especially the BBC itself, which led its news coverage for weeks on "the suspicious case of the WMD that haven't been found" - Dr Kelly might still be alive. But most crucially: if the BBC had agreed promptly to some sort of correction or retraction of its earliest version of the Gilligan story, the entire train of events would have been stopped in its tracks. There is some degree of mystery as to why the BBC did not do this. A newspaper caught in a similar position - that is, with a story it cannot stand up - would certainly be advised by its lawyers to print a correction and an apology. I have seen no reference to any advice the BBC's lawyers may have given, in any of the material released thus far to the Hutton Inquiry. Instead we see the minutes of meetings with the BBC Board of Governors, in which doubts about the soundness of the Gilligan story are buried under an avalanche of rather puerile defiance of "government pressure". The chairman of the governors, Gavyn Davies, seems to have interpreted the furious demands by Mr Campbell on behalf of the Government for an explicit correction as illicit political pressure that threatened to compromise the BBC's independence. In an email to the members of the board, he writes: "I remain firmly of the view that, in a big picture sense, it is absolutely critical for the BBC to emerge from this row without being seen to buckle in the face of government pressure." This was in spite of the fact that the Today programme had itself decided to change the substance of that early contentious report. Indeed, the question of the truth of the Gilligan story seems to fall right out of the picture in this round of mud-wrestling with the Government. One BBC governor, Fabian Monds, rises to Mr Davies's call to arms with the extraordinary statement that any doubts about the Gilligan account should be deliberately overlooked: "There does appear to be some uncertainty of the claim by Andrew Gillgan's source. But this is less important than responding vigorously to the extravagant accusations of lying from Alastair Campbell and others." (My italics.) The truth of the story is "less important" than that the BBC should be seen to stand up to government pressure? What kind of journalistic standards are these? And government pressure to do what? Simply to admit what you have already done - which is to say, change the story as it went out on later broadcast reports. And, given the gravity of the charge, were Mr Campbell's accusations against the BBC "extravagant"? Did the governors - while they played out their power game with Downing Street - have any conception of the gravity of what the corporation had done? It would seem not. Mr Davies, in his testimony to Hutton, wondered why Mr Campbell had not simply taken his dissatisfaction to the BBC complaints unit. (Presumably he should have rung the duty officer at White City and filed his complaint in the usual way.) The arrogance - not to say, the amateurishness - of it all is simply breathtaking. The key to me in this issue is that the BBC, when it was attacked for pushing a story which accused the Blair government of lying to the people, choose to circle the wagons and defend vigorously, rather than try to figure out if the story was true! The BBC no longer considers itself to be a news organization, instead it seems to be a quasi-government, more concerned with standing up to the British government than saying what is true and what is false. The directors of the BBC themselves were not sure if the story was true but rather than admit some doubt, they felt it was necessary to deny the government had any reason to be upset. I personally don't trust the BBC any longer. 4:34:58 PM

Thursday, August 14, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Why the Iraqi Army Failed in 2003 This is an article from the L.A. Times which basically confirms what was predicted before the war: chaos, confusion, and a widespread disinterest in dieing for Saddam. By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer (8/11/2003) - BAGHDAD — Saddam Hussein and his son Qusai crippled the Iraqi military through a multitude of erratic orders and strategic miscalculations, while its fighting units barely communicated with one another and were paralyzed from lack of direction, according to detailed interviews with more than a dozen former Iraqi commanders and servicemen. These woes — compounded by incompetence, poor preparation, craven leadership and wholesale desertions of thousands of soldiers unwilling to die for Saddam Hussein — contributed to the Iraqi military's quick and stunning collapse against invading U.S. forces in early April, the former fighters said. Typical of the erratic orders were those imposed by Qusai upon a Republican Guard unit outside Baghdad. As American forces approached the city in late March, the unit received a new order every morning to reposition its tanks. Each order contradicted the one before, infuriating local commanders, Col. Raaed Faik recalled. But the orders had to be obeyed. They arrived by courier on slips of paper signed by Qusai, Saddam's younger son and commander of the Republican Guard. Every time the tanks were moved from their bunkers, Faik said, a few more were exposed and destroyed by coalition air power. Meanwhile, he said, another commander was ordered to disable all three dozen of his tanks for fear they would be captured and used by Kurdish militias hundreds of miles north. "These were the orders of an imbecile. Qusai was like a teenager playing a video war game," Faik, 33, said in the cool reception room of his Baghdad home, gesturing to his teenage son banging away on a computer combat game. In the end, Saddam and Qusai were reduced to issuing commands from a convoy of civilian vehicles that retreated as U.S. tanks rolled into the capital, the former fighters said. Iraqi troops were largely without radios and maps. Field commanders dropped their weapons and fled. And soldiers waited in bunkers for orders that never arrived — in many cases, unaware even that Baghdad had been invaded, the fighters said. Before the invasion, Saddam Hussein's forces had been expected to put up a fierce defense of Baghdad, and U.S. officials warned that the Iraqis might even use chemical or biological weapons. Instead, the former Iraqi fighters said, orders to use chemical or biological weapons were never given because no such weapons existed. Iraqi forces, who did not anticipate Americans would use tanks in urban combat inside the capital city, were largely unprepared for the ensuing armored onslaught. An eventual guerrilla war — now being waged by remnants of Iraqi forces and other Arab fighters — wasn't planned for because Hussein didn't think it would be necessary, the former Iraqi servicemen said. And tactics that could have slowed U.S. forces, such as the mining of roads leading into Baghdad, were not employed because Hussein was confident his forces would repel the Americans. "We should have mined the roads and bridges. We should have planned a guerrilla war," said retired Gen. Ahmed Rahal, 51. "We were crippled by a lack of imagination." The command structure was confused from the start. Hussein was wary of concentrating power in one military force in case it might launch a coup, so he had created a number of jealous rival fighting groups — including the Republican Guard, Special Republican Guard and the Fedayeen Saddam militia — that never spoke to one another. While the elite units were well armed and well paid, many regular army infantrymen were poorly paid and given just a single magazine of ammunition, former soldiers said. Regular army commanders schemed to undermine elite units, hoarding information and avoiding confrontations with U.S. forces. And many units were segregated by tribe or ethnic group, inhibiting coordination. "We were like 10 different armies fighting their own private wars," said Nabil Qaisy, 31, a Baath Party militiaman who said he spent the battle cowering in a north Baghdad bunker, unaware that combat was raging in the city center a few miles away. The military's limited communications — only special units received reliable phones or radios — fell apart early on, the soldiers said. Cut off and confused, commanders resorted to sending out soldiers in vehicles to scavenge scraps of information — usually from other hopelessly uninformed units. One officer's car was crushed by an American tank on such a mission, one commander said. The entire military was plunged into chaos. Just before the U.S. assault, soldiers said, some officers ordered military vehicles spray-painted in civilian colors, intending to drive them home for personal use after deserting. A Republican Guard unit fleeing the city descended on a regular army camp and stole its vehicles, they said. And a Republican Guard unit armed only with automatic rifles was sent to confront U.S. tanks and "was absolutely slaughtered," Col. Faik said. Desertions soared. As U.S. forces sped toward the capital, soldiers requested — and were granted — leaves to visit their families. Units listed on paper as full strength actually were less than half that, soldiers said, and many ceased to exist overnight. "I woke up on the morning of April 5 and an entire battalion was gone. They had become vapors," said Maj. Jaffer Sadiq, 38, a special forces commander who said desertions depleted his company from 131 men to 10 between April 2 and April 5. After being ordered April 2 to rush to Baghdad from the northern city of Kirkuk, Sadiq said, he was told that he would be joining 4,000 Republican Guard troops defending a site in central Baghdad. But when he arrived, he counted fewer than 1,000, he said, and most had deserted by the time the first U.S. tanks cut through southwest Baghdad three days later. In several cases, soldiers said, they were ordered to desert. On April 4, they said, a Republican Guard tank brigade commander was told to abandon his tanks south of Baghdad and have his men change into civilian clothes. Minibuses took them to the northern city of Mosul, their home base, where the soldiers simply quit and went home. The only forces that stood and fought, soldiers said, were Fedayeen Saddam militiamen and 4,000 to 5,000 guerrillas recruited from other Arab countries, who were armed chiefly with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Some of these fighters detained — and threatened to shoot — deserting Republican Guards, soldiers said. These fighters, along with former Baath Party militiamen, are behind most of the ongoing attacks against U.S. forces, according to the former soldiers. They said the current guerrilla campaign was not planned but emerged as these fighters regrouped after Baghdad fell. At times in early April, these elite units went to great lengths to project a facade of invincibility — even as they were going down in defeat. After U.S. tanks smashed through southwest Baghdad on April 5, killing nearly 1,000 Iraqi soldiers according to U.S. commanders, Fedayeen militiamen claimed victory and celebrated downtown. They displayed charred corpses they claimed were bodies of U.S. soldiers, Faik said. "I looked closer and saw they were Republican Guards, still in their uniforms with insignia," Faik said. "I spent 12 years in the Republican Guards. I know the difference between a Republican Guard soldier and an American soldier. I was appalled." When he returned to headquarters an hour northeast of the capital and told fellow commanders that American tanks had penetrated Baghdad, Faik said, they called him a liar. Rumors swept through Iraqi units that the Fedayeen were hoisting American corpses on bayonets and that Qusai had been presented with severed heads of U.S. soldiers, commanders said. But the truth was becoming inescapable. By April 7, according to two former soldiers, Saddam and Qusai Hussein had been reduced to commanding the military from a roving convoy of vehicles trying to stay one step ahead of American tanks pouring into the city center that morning. A former Republican Guard general and division commander said he met with Saddam and Qusai at the 14th of July Bridge in central Baghdad early on April 7. The two leaders were in separate gold, four-wheel-drive Toyotas, said the general, who answered questions relayed by an aide on the condition that he not be identified, saying he feared arrest by U.S. occupation forces. At that moment, the general said, the two leaders realized that most Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard soldiers assigned to defend the main palace complex had deserted. Told that U.S. tanks were advancing on the strategic Jumhuriya Bridge, the general said, Saddam Hussein ordered 12 pickup trucks of Fedayeen to the bridge to hold off the column. "Imagine — a few pickup trucks against two battalions" of American tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, the general said. Later that morning, the general said, Hussein changed cars, getting into an orange-and-white Nissan taxicab. Harith Ahmed Uraibi, 24, an archivist at the Republican presidential palace who was also a Baath Party militiaman, said he fled on foot when U.S. tanks overran the palace early April 7. He stumbled upon Hussein's convoy in front of a falafel restaurant near Jumhuriya Bridge. He said the president shouted at him: "What's going on at the palaces?" "I told him, 'Mr. President, everything is finished,' " Uraibi said. "He didn't say anything. His convoy just took off across the bridge, away from the palaces and all the tanks." Most top officers knew nothing of Hussein's whereabouts, commanders said. And those who remained at their posts rarely received orders of any kind. "The only order I got was to dismantle my airplanes — the most idiotic order I ever received," said Brig. Gen. Baha Ali Nasr, 42, an air force commander who said Iraq's entire fleet of MIG-23s, MIG-25s and Mirage fighters was ordered taken apart and buried. Dirt and grime in the pits and berms where the planes were buried ensured that they would never be airworthy again, he said. The few commanders who realized how desperate the situation had become were afraid to relay honest battlefield assessments up the chain of command. "It was well known that President Hussein did not care to receive bad news," one former general said. Others were deluded by the regime's own propaganda. Many commanders said they actually believed Hussein's hapless minister of information, Mohammed Said Sahaf, who brazenly denied that U.S. forces had entered Baghdad on April 7 and described the slaughter of Americans. Talal Ahmed Doori, 32, a burly Baath Party militia commander and former bodyguard for Hussein's older son, Uday, recalled turning a corner in his car early April 7 and coming face to face with an American M1A1 Abrams tank posted next to a tunnel in central Baghdad. "I was absolutely astonished," Doori recalled. "I had no idea there were American tanks anywhere near the city." When he slammed on his brakes, a vehicle behind him smashed into his car, Doori said. Both he and the other driver sped away as the tank swung its main gun toward them. After the information minister claimed that Iraqi forces had retaken the Baghdad airport from U.S. troops, two former commanders said, Republican Guard Gen. Mohammed Daash was dispatched to check out a rumor that four or five American tanks had survived the Iraqi counterattack. Daash returned to his headquarters in a panic. "Four or five tanks!" the commanders quoted Daash as telling his fellow generals. "Are you out of your minds? The whole damn American Army is at the airport!" Nasr, the air force general, said that many commanders refused to believe the situation was dire until April 7, two days before Baghdad fell. When a terrified courier arrived at his Baghdad headquarters that day and described U.S. tanks overrunning Saddam Hussein's palace complex, he said, "the looks on the faces of the officers were like each one had just discovered his parents had died." Because each rival fighting force responded only to orders from the regime leadership, commanders were paralyzed with indecision. "Initiative was discouraged," the former Republican Guard general said. "No one dared make a decision." In retrospect, commanders said, it is easy to see how overconfidence and erroneous assumptions about the U.S. battle plan left the Iraqis unprepared for the assault on the capital. Hussein, convinced that Republican Guard units posted south of Baghdad would repel American tanks, had decided not to mine highways or blow up bridges leading into the capital, commanders said. The infrastructure was left intact so that it could be used by Iraqi forces mounting counterattacks. But entire Republican Guard divisions were ravaged, first by coalition warplanes and then by tanks approaching the capital. Hussein also was counting on high American casualties and captured U.S. soldiers to turn the American public against the war, commanders said. Video crews and interpreters were standing by to interview any captured Americans, said retired Gen. Juwad Dayni. Commanders interviewed for this article said they were issued no orders regarding chemical or biological weapons. And they denied that Iraq ever possessed such weapons. Iraqi military planners assumed that Americans would dare not send tanks into an urban area and did not anticipate a direct tank assault on the capital, retired Gen. Rahal said. Several commanders said that American casualties inflicted by Somali fighters in 1993 convinced the Iraqi leadership that U.S. forces had no stomach for a prolonged urban fight — apparently overlooking the fact that the U.S. had no armor in Somalia. The Iraqi leadership prepared instead for an airborne assault on selected regime targets, building a network of defensive bunkers and trenches. "We weren't prepared, but it didn't matter because the tank assault was so fast and sudden," said Gen. Omar Abdul Karim, 50, a regular army commander. "The Americans were able to divide and isolate our forces. Nobody had any idea what was going on until it was too late." In fact, Karim said, he did not realize the regime had collapsed until looters attempted to break into his headquarters April 9. The former Republican Guard general who spoke on condition of anonymity was told by Qusai Hussein at the 14th of July Bridge on April 7 to retreat with other senior commanders to a secret, prearranged site in Baghdad to await instructions. Some generals waited there until the 9th, he said, then decided to go home. The general said that he and a few others remained. At 4 a.m. April 10, the day after Baghdad fell, Qusai arrived. He told them to await orders for a counterattack, then sped away in a convoy. "I never heard from Qusai again," the general said. Today, the former soldiers say they are humiliated and ashamed. They spend their days brooding at home, adrift and unemployed. Those with the rank of colonel and above are ineligible to join the new Iraqi army now being trained by the U.S. Col. Faik, wearing jeans and sandals, said he passes most days playing with his two sons and daughter in the capital's middle-class Yarmouk district. He said he is proud of his 12-year Republican Guard career but feels betrayed by his leaders. "Professional soldiers can't fight without orders and inspiration from their leaders," he said. "But we had clowns for leaders. This is our tragedy." Faik said soldiers used to hear Hussein say in speeches: "Saddam is Iraq and Iraq is Saddam." So in the end, he said, "when the time came to fight for this guy who sends us unprepared to fight a superior American military, no one was willing to die for Saddam." Karim, the regular army commander, fears the 30 years that he served have been negated by the way the military capitulated. Yet still on display in his comfortable home in central Baghdad is a framed photo showing him as a young lieutenant receiving an award from then-Vice President Saddam Hussein. When the end came April 9, Karim recalled, he simply got into his car and drove home, still in his uniform and still carrying his rifle. Along the way, soldiers who had stripped off their uniforms shouted at him: "Take off your uniform! It's over!" He refused, he said, clinging to his professional pride. Now, sitting on a sofa, an air conditioner rattling behind him, Karim said he cannot stop thinking about how the army he loved had been so humiliated. "It happened so fast," he said, his head in his hands. "I think I'm still in a state of shock." Sorry Mr. Karim, Iraq's army was not a professional army. The top leadership of the army, including the people quoted in this article were cowards, and yes-men. Proof of that is self-evident: they were top officers and they are alive today. A real professional army with real military leaders would have been a threat to Saddam's stupid and evil leadership. 6:43:24 PM

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Buggy Professor A good blog with some interesting, if rather long-winded, essays on various topics of economics, politics, and philosophy. Thanks to Porphyrogenitus for the link. 3:42:55 PM

Thursday, August 07, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Schwarzenegger for Govenor? Well, up until yesterday I was going to vote against the recall of Govenor Davis but with Mr. Schwarzenegger in the race, I've changed my mind. Try this message (as construed by blogger Omphalos: Gray sold California to the special interests and I'm here to take it back. I don't care what you do in your private life, and I don't want to impose my values on you. I want a state government that works and doesn't break the backs of the average taxpaying citizen, and a society that offers opportunity and hope as it did to me as a humble but legal immigrant. Schwarzenegger has been one of my favorite actors ever since he made Conan. He is, by any reasonable standards, a political moderate. Lately that seems to have been a sure ticket to failure in the Primaries (look at Riordan's campaign from last year). So this recall campaign is the moderate republican's big chance to get into the office. I voted against Bill Simon last year and would do so again. Richard Riordan, former mayor of Los Angeles, was a good cantidate but at age 73, he is getting a bit old to take over California in this time of trouble. BTW: Dan Weintraub (columnist for the Sacramento Bee) thinks Schwarzenegger will win the race 2:46:20 PM

Tuesday, August 05, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Visible Earth I found a great site run by NASA called The Visible Earth. I was looking to find out the context behind the news that a new dam is going to be created to save the northern part of the Aral Sea. This image is from October of 2002 and it gives a very good idea of how much of the sea is gone. The Aral Sea is now predicted to disappear completely by 2020. With the possible exception of the northern part which might be saved by this dam. Back in the 1960s, the plan was to reverse the course of some of the great Siberian rivers so that they would flow south into the Aral Sea, instead of north into the Artic ocean. That plan was ended by Gorbachov in the mid-80s. Too bad for Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, they were using up all the river water which used to flow into the Aral Sea to grow intensive-water-using crops like cotton. It was obvious in 1985 that this wasteful water usage had to stop if the Aral Sea was to be saved. But they didn't. So here we are, 20 years later and a terrible ecological disaster is happening and no one is doing anything to stop it. I guess the Uzbeks don't really care, after all, the Aral Sea isn't in their country. This excuse doesn't hold for the Kazakhs, I guess you have to blame a failed system of government which lets this happen. 1:15:23 AM

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Chinese Movie Hero This film seems to me to have been made in part because of the success of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. While it shares many good qualities with the famous Ang Wang film, "Hero" is not successful as a coherent film. Hero has many beautiful scenes, it seems to have been created by a painter as different scenes are dominated by one color then another. However, to my eye it seemed far too formal, to arty. For me, Ang Wang's fight scene staged in the bamboo forest works, while Hero's fight scene at a lake just left me unmoved. While parts of the film are enjoyable to watch, the film has many flaws. Among these are (spoilers ahead): 1) Jet Li's character is uninteresting. He is called "Nameless" and he has no past, no loves, no hates. There is almost nothing to explain him or his behavior in the film. Jet Li is a an actor with almost no emotional range but I thought he did well in this film, he just had almost nothing to work with. 2) The army of the soon-to-be Emperor of China attacks a town by shooting arrows at it. This is really, really, silly. You use arrows to harass and kill enemy soldiers, you don't "shell" a town with arrows because it won't do any harm and arrows are expensive and time-consuming to make. You don't waste them by making pin-cushions of wooden buildings. 3) We see Flying Snow stab and seriously wound her (former?) lover Broken Sword three times. Once as Jet Li tells it, once as the soon-to-be Emperor imagines it, and once again as Jet Li tells it (supposedly the truth this time). This is too many times. It didn't mean much the first time, it meant less the second time and the third time the director showed the event I couldn't have cared less. 4) The most interesting character turns out to be Broken Sword who actually has a change of heart as a result of fighting the future Emperor and chooses not to kill him when he had the chance. This pivotal event takes place in the past and we only learn of it near the end of the film. Broken Sword's change of heart is really the emotional heart of the film (since Tony Leung really CAN act). By the end of the film I wished the film was about Broken Sword, not Mr. Nameless. 5) Mr. Nameless's story turns out to be a tissue of lies, his skills are largely unknown, all his fights are "fake" and by the end of the film I had no interest in his fate. What a terrible choice it was to make Mr. Nameless the main character of the film. 6) The first emperor was, by all accounts, a ruthless monster. It is no accident that the ruling power in China (nominally the Communist Party) supported this film. Just about the only tangible benefit they brought to China back in 1948 was unification. Millions dead, decades of economic failure but at least they united the country. In the film this human monster is presented as a misunderstood noble idealist. Dream on... Now I understand why this film was never released in theaters in the U.S. 11:17:39 PM

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Freeman Dyson on the Global Biosphere Mr. Dyson, a man who gets my vote for best mind in America (now that Feynman is dead), has another brilliant book review in the New York Review of Books. This time he is reviewing The Earth's Biosphere by Vaclav Smil. Dyson points out very carefully how much we don't know about the earth's biosphere. Take a look at this paragraph on so-called global warming: The physical effects of carbon dioxide are seen in changes of rainfall, cloudiness, wind strength, and temperature, which are customarily lumped together in the misleading phrase "global warming." This phrase is misleading because the warming caused by the greenhouse effect of increased carbon dioxide is not evenly distributed. In humid air, the effect of carbon dioxide on the transport of heat by radiation is less important, because it is outweighed by the much larger greenhouse effect of water vapor. The effect of carbon dioxide is more important where the air is dry, and air is usually dry only where it is cold. The warming mainly occurs where air is cold and dry, mainly in the arctic rather than in the tropics, mainly in winter rather than in summer, and mainly at night rather than in daytime. The warming is real, but it is mostly making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter. To represent this local warming by a global average is misleading, because the global average is only a fraction of a degree while the local warming at high latitudes is much larger. Also, local changes in rainfall, whether they are increases or decreases, are usually more important than changes in temperature. It is better to use the phrase "climate change" rather than "global warming" to describe the physical effects of carbon dioxide. Freeman doesn't point out the fact that Alaska has seen a warming trend that extends back to 1970. Nor does he mention that 65 million years ago Alaska was forested and ice-free, just like Antartica. In these two paragraphs, Dyson contrasts the two views on man's relation to the biosphere: The biosphere is the most complicated of all the things we humans have to deal with. The science of planetary ecology is still young and undeveloped. It is not surprising that honest and well-informed experts can disagree about facts. But beyond the disagreements about facts, there is another deeper disagreement about values. The disagreement about values may be described in an oversimplified way as a disagreement between naturalists and humanists. Naturalists believe that nature knows best. For them the highest value is respect for the natural order of things. Any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil. Excessive burning of fossil fuels, and the consequent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, are unqualified evils. Humanists believe that humans are an essential part of nature. Through human minds the biosphere has acquired the capacity to steer its own evolution, and we are now in charge. Humans have the right to reorganize nature so that humans and biosphere can survive and prosper together. For humanists, the highest value is intelligent coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are war and poverty, underdevelopment and unemployment, disease and hunger, the miseries that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in The Threepenny Opera, "Feeding comes first, morality second." If people do not have enough to eat, we cannot expect them to put much effort into protecting the biosphere. In the long run, preservation of the biosphere will only be possible if people everywhere have a decent standard of living. The humanist ethic does not regard an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as evil, if the increase is associated with worldwide economic prosperity, and if the poorer half of humanity gets its fair share of the benefits I couldn't have said it better. I'm a humanist. And I'm willing to express the heretical view that global warming is a good thing. 11:20:06 PM

Monday, June 16, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Good set of Posts from the Belmont Club The Belmont Club is a new blog to me but they have a good set of posts lately. Here is one I agree with and it echoes a post by Donald Sensing. The bottom line is: to have a successful political effort you need to defeat or otherwise control the radicals who will not settle for anything less than total success. I'm reminded of the fact that the Irish government in 1921 had to fight a civil war to defeat and kill the radicals that wanted nothing less than the total control over all of Ireland. The Palestinians need to do the same thing, NOW. They need to fight a civil war and destroy the radicals who are following a plan which is going to fail. If they don't, then ALL the Palestinians are in danger of being forced out of the West Bank and into Jordan. 11:37:09 PM     [Colin Glassey] More about Larry, Moe, and Curley These were three positions occupied in downtown Baghdad by U.S. forces and fought over in some of the toughest fighting of the U.S.-Iraq war. Here is an e-mail about them from a U.S. solider who has been doing after-action interviews. This is absolutely worth reading if you care about how the U.S. Army fights against enemies. 11:03:17 PM

Monday, June 09, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Pixar Pulls Another Rabbit out of its Hat I saw Pixar's newest film Finding Nemo with the 3 boys on Friday. I liked it a lot. It was much better than Monsters Inc. and perhaps as good as Toy Story. I didn't have high hopes for Nemo before the film came out. Just how entertaining can fish be? Really? No hands. No technology. Well, I was wrong. Fish can do a lot of entertaining things even without hands. More importantly, Nemo has a lot of heart. It is a great combination of humor and drama. Without a doubt Dory, the fish with a mental problem is one of the best characters Pixar has created, right up there with Buzz Lightyear and Woody. The moment late in the film when Dory begs Marlin to stay with her and he doesn't is a scene more filled with pathos than any scene I can remember for years. Chris Suellentrop writes a very well done analysis of what this means for Pixar at Slate.com. I think he is correct, this is the moment when Pixar becomes recognized as one of the greatest artists of our time. I remember seeing all of Pixar's early works from Luxo Junior (in 1987) to Tin Toy to Knicknack. I wish I could say that I recognized John Lasseter's genius from the begining. I didn't. I thought they were neat demonstrations of what could be done with computer animation but not much more. It took seeing Toy Story (in 1995) to make me realize how great Lassester was. 2:08:09 PM     [Colin Glassey] The Future of France It doesn't look good. Steve Den Beste has a very good post about the problems France is up against. This is part of a long set of posts and e-mails. Bottom line: France is at this time committed to paying more money out to its retired citizens than it will make by any reasonable projections. The problems are: retirement age is too low (55 for many union members) and pensions that are too high (90% of their final pay level for many workers). Given France's demographics they are litterly expecting two workers to pay for every one non-worker. So far as anyone can tell, this can't work. So the French government projections about future expences and revenues are worse than bleak, they are a train wreck waiting not far down the time track. I wish I had some handy solution for this but the obvious solution: turn France into a country more like the U.S. where the state is not the solution for all problems, seems even less likely than the resumption of power by a member of the Bourbon family. 1:40:18 PM

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Proposed European Constitution is a Recipe for a Totalitarian State Porphyrogenitus has a pair of long posts on the newly released draft E.U. constitution. To put it bluntly: the proposed document removes the power of the member states. The natitional governments are unable to take any independent actions. The power of the E.U. Central Government has no limits. The people of Europe will not be able to choose their leaders. There seem to be no no checks and balances in the E.U. constitution. This looks to me to be a disaster for Europe. If this consitution is passed (which I think is likely given how nothing has stopped the E.U. so far), then I predict we will have to fight to free Europe sometime in the next 100 years. The document, as Porphyrogenitus points out, is most similar to the U.S.S.R. constitution. All power to the state, ordinary people can just shut up and live with the rules issued by their wise leadership. Why did the European Commission come up with such a stupid, wrong-headed design? OK, I'm an American I support our system of government, but really, is it that hard to figure out that our system of government really does WORK! The E.U. constitution should be: no longer than 20 pages long. It should spell out clear limits to the power of the goverment. It should say very clearly how the people control their government. Frankly, they should have started with the U.S. Constitution and then made some European-specific tinkering. This 200 page monster is a recipie for concentration-camps and war in the future. We in the U.S. should actively try to prevent Europe from adopting this model. 2:22:16 PM     [Colin Glassey] And What if Iraq Had No Nuclear Program? Well, I do think that Colin Powell put his personal reputation on the line when he asserted that Saddam was concealing weapons of mass distruction. If that proves to be wrong, then Powell's reputation will suffer. However, that fact is that Saddam could not be trusted. Perhaps his weapons programs were all halted by 1996. Perhaps Saddam really didn't order a secret resumption of the nuclear program after the inspectors all withdrew in 1998. I don't think it matters much. Saddam should NOT have been left in power in Iraq after his defeat in 1991. The choice then, to leave Saddam in power, to avoid the possible break-up of Iraq, was wrong. He was an international criminal by virtue of his unprovoked conquest of Kuwait and he should have been replaced when we beat him in the First Gulf War. The fact that we didn't was a mistake then and we finally corrected that mistake in 2003. The blood of ten's of thousands of Shias who rose up against Saddam in 1991 and were then killed by his forces is, to some degree, on the hands of the first Bush administration. At the time I agreed with the decision not to send our forces to Badhdad in 1991 but I hoped that Saddam would be overthrown and I hoped that we (the U.S.) would provide support to Iraqis seeking to overthrow Saddam. In retrospect, I was wrong. We should have recognized that after throwing Saddam out of Kuwait, we couldn't live with him in power in Iraq and continued military operations into the rest of Iraq. It would have been easy and it would have avoided most, if not all, of the subsequent problems that resulted: the massive flight of the Kurds and the resulting deaths of many who tried to flee Iraq the deaths of 20+ thousand Shias in southern Iraq the destruction of the land of the Marsh Arabs the cost of establishing and maintaining the northern and southern "no fly zones" the continued large-scale deployment of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia Hopefully we will learn from the mistake of 1991. The next time we intervene militarily, we will NOT leave the cause of intervention in power. 1:06:55 PM     [Colin Glassey] The Beagle 2 is on its way The Beagle 2 is a very nice science robotic lander developed by British scientists. You can read all about it at its own web site. Basically, this lander and the equipment on it is a direct attempt to assess the claim, made by NASA some years earlier, that a Martian meteorite contained fosilzed life. The equipment on it is great and should provide great data, if only it arrives safely. About 60% of all expiditions to Mars have been near or total failures. Good luck Beagle 2! 12:51:48 PM

Wednesday, May 28, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Can A Country with Two (or more) Languages Exist? Today's question, which goes directly towards the just-published European Constitution, is: can a country exist if the people in the country speak different languages? To some degree this question has an answer: Yes. Switzerland has been a viable country for at least 300 years and the people there speak German or French (with one Italian speaking Canton). Other countries which contain multiple languages are: Belgium (Dutch and French) around since 1815. India (many languages) around since 1946. Many countries alive today have ethnic and linguistic minorities. Still, I wonder how well these multi-language states do? Belgium doesn't really exist as a single country. India is massively divided as the different provinces jockey for power and alliances. The European Union is headed towards the creation of a United States of Europe. But can it really work? Should it really work? How much essential trust can exist between people who don't speak the same language? Austria-Hungary was a multi-language state, it broke up at the end of World War One. I've always had a nostalgia for the Austrian Empire. And yet, the bottom line is that the Hungarians never liked the other members of the Austrian Empire, with the exception of the Austrians in Vienna. My theory is that a multi-language state can't really work. At a deep level you have to be able to talk to the other citizens of your country before you believe they are part of your country. Here is a good essay by Iain Murray on the new E.U. constitution. In this essay Steve Den Beste argues strongly against the E.U. and its attempt to take over England. Here is an editorial in today's London Times about the constitution. Simon Jenkins, a general purpose conservative, attacks the E.U. You can read the current draft document right here. Personally, I am not in favor of United States of Europe if it going to based on the statist model of France. The role of power in the proposed U.S.E. should be "power not granted specifically to central government belongs to the member states". 1:49:41 PM

Saturday, May 24, 2003

[Colin Glassey] And you think I have bad things to say about France? Try reading this essay by the French academic Françoise Thom. He totally blasts the French diplomatic policy of the last 2 years. This is from the end of the essay: We declare that France does not believe in the “clash of civilizations,” as if denial were enough to erase it. For greater security, we go as far as abolishing the idea of civilization. This is why we seek to deny at all costs the fact that France shares the same civilization as the United States... Our foreign policy thus expresses a sort of preemptive capitulation. France takes the initiative of breaking with the Western camp in the hope of avoiding a battle of wills with its wild and fanatical youth after having failed to tame it. This profound cowardice is hidden behind the exhibited panache of a little country that oppose a big one. By other accounts it seems that France's vaunted integration of Arab and Moslem minorities has been a total failure. Rather than trying to fix this problem, the French choose to give in to the hatred coming out of their slums. (Thanks to Porphyrogenitus for the links). 11:58:10 PM

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Den Beste Explains how Ben Franklin Thought Steve Den Beste's latest essay is a wonderful explaination of how a rational person makes decisions. As far as I know, the first person to use this method (or to explain what they were doing) was Ben Franklin. He said that to make hard choices he would put down on paper in two lists all the reasons he could think of for, and against, the choice. Then he would compare reasons and strike out those of equal weight. Some reasons would be weak and two or three could be removed by just one reason on the other side. At last, one side has reasons remaining, and the other does not. Then he would choose the side that "won". Den Beste's method is more modern and fairly easy to do with a spreadsheet. 10:55:30 AM     [Colin Glassey] Volokh beats up on Landsburg Here is Eugene Volokh's rejoinder to Steven Landsberg's idea of rewards and punishments for juries: The jury system is foreseeably inefficient in many different ways. The main argument for having it (and I'm not saying this is necessarily a sufficient argument, just that it's the main one) is not that jurors are more accurate decisionmakers than judges. Rather, the argument is precisely that jurors are not answerable to government officials, and neither hope for reward nor expect punishment based on whether government officials see their views as "right" or "wrong." (Cf. Bushell's Case (1670), holding that jurors cannot be punished for rendering the "wrong" verdict.) If you take that away, you give jurors an "incentive" not just to reach a factually accurate conclusion -- you give them an incentive to reach a conclusion that their reviewers will like, and you thus destroy the one greatest merit of the jury system. The chief complaint about attempts to apply economic arguments to real life -- and especially to law -- is that economists create models that ignore too much about the real world. In their haste to try to create a simple and therefore useful model, they create a radically oversimplified and therefore useless model. If the Slate argument is serious, then it's an excellent example of this phenomenon. I agree with Mr. Volokh. 10:18:03 AM

Monday, May 19, 2003

[Colin Glassey] When is a missing person dead? Found at The Volokh Conspiracy. This short legal opinion delves into that mystery of when is a person legally dead? The court ruled that when common law asserts a person is legally dead after being missing for seven years, that is ALL the law is doing. Common law does not say assert that the person was dead at the start of the 7 year time period, nor does it assert that the person was alive up until the 6 years and 354 days after they went missing. In effect, the person was in an indeterminate state, neither alive nor dead. 12:58:29 PM     [Colin Glassey] Economic Incentives for Juries This essay in Slate.com by Steven Landsburg is quite thought-provoking. He argues that juries should be given rewards for getting verdits right and punishments for getting verdicts wrong. I can't see anything wrong with his thinking but historically we have never seen anything like this in world civilization. That means this idea will never be tried, I think. Steven DenBeste has a lengthy essay on inductive vs. deductive reasoning and it all leads him to his arguement that no religious faith can be arrived at deductively. Den Beste is an atheist but it is a position that does not allow for certainty. This was a wonderfully entertaining essay and I learned something from it. Here is his take on the scientific method ...humans have, in the last three hundred years or so, developed a metasystem on top of personal induction which is designed to conserve the best conclusions induction offers us while having the best chance of rejecting and discarding its mistakes. It's a sort of collective and collaborative inductive process called "the scientific method". For instance, if there are alternative hypotheses about something, proponents of each may try to argue for why the data others relied on might be less reliable or persuasive than previously thought. Or perhaps someone may be able to propose a way of collecting and evaluating new evidence which would strongly support one theory over another. It's been highly successful, and if mathematics is the triumph of deduction, science is the triumph of induction. It consists of a body of theories which are not provably true (in the mathematical sense of "proof") but which in the best cases are so inductively certain as to be indistinguishable from fact. On the other hand, there are other theories within that overall body whose reliability is open to serious doubt, such as the current state of predictive climatology, or which are inductively at the "total horseshit" end of the scale, such as "creation science" or the ether theory of light or the phlogiston theory of combustion. Thanks Steven. 12:45:52 PM

Saturday, May 10, 2003

[Colin Glassey] X-Men 2 Saw the 1st new huge movie of the summer: X-Men 2. It was good fun, a few foolish logical errors but overall a tight, action-packed improvement over the first film. One point I think is worth debate: was Wolverine justified in killing all the "special ops" people who were sent in to paralyze the sleeping mutant children in Doctor X's school? I argue that when mysterious people sneak into your house, dressed in black with night-vision headgear and assault rifles, you have every right to use deadly force to protect your house from invasion. These "special ops" forces were obeying what seems to me to be an illegal order to attack a location in advance of the local police. They failed to identify themselves and failed to notify the residents of the legal authority which permitted the operation (if any). For all the residents knew, the attack was conducted by military arm of some mutant hating group (which, in the movie, is not far removed from the truth. Will there be an X-Men 3? Its hard to see how they can top this film. 11:15:23 PM

Friday, May 09, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Code Breakers Diamond Geezer has a nice post about the aniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. He justly celebrates the British code breakers who, day after day, broke German codes. I remember the first time I ran into this secret, it was published in a book called "The Ultra Secret" and I didn't believe it. I could not believe that we had so much detailed information about the German war plans. Now I know we did have this information and it helped us throughout the war. As a software engineer I have the greatest respect for Alan Turing, the top brain behind the code breakers. Here is a good site on the code breakers of Bletchley Park 2:34:32 PM

Thursday, May 08, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Art and Interaction A very interesting article in the Sunday New York Times magazine (May 4th). The author is complaining about DVDs and what the real movie is when DVDs are released with different cuts and extra scenes. That part of the essay was not interesting to me. However here is the most interesting idea: The more "interactive" we allow our experience of art - any art - to become, the less likely it is that future generations will appreciate the neccessity of art at all. Interactivity is an illusion of control; but understanding a work of art requires a suspension of that illusion, a provisional surrender to someone else's vision. To put it as simply as possible: If you have to be in total control of every experience, art is not for you. Life probably isn't for you either. I agree that art does invovle a surrender of your vision to someone else's vision. That is why I like art. But I also enjoy moving through alternate landscapes, exploring someone else's vision. I view interactivity like looking deeply into a painting and then becoming part of it. Is interactivity the enemy of art? I don't think so. Yes you only have an illusion of control, but how is that different from the illusion an artist creates when making a detailed painting of say Napoleon's Coronation. Its an illusion. Seeing it is like you were there yourself at the great moment. But you aren't. How would the experience be lessened if instead of a huge painting, David had created a 3-D environment so you could walk through Notre Dame and seen all the people there, dressed in the fantastic costumes of that day? 2:51:12 PM     [Colin Glassey] Blame Russia I can't resist the temptation to say something about the First World War (I've been studying it for the last two months for my Teaching Unit). I blame Russia. Now this is a fairly non-standard take on the cause of the First World War but here is my argument. Obviously when Serbian terrorists killed the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Austria had to do something. Serbia had been actively working against Austria for more than a decade such as publishing anti-Austrian propaganda in Newspapers, supporting anti-Austrian Serbs within Bosnia, and more. By-the-way, Serbia had been a protectorate of Austria for some years but gained full independence from Austria some 35 years before 1914. Austria's response to the death of the Arch Duke was essentially to demand Serbia submit to being a protectorate of Austria again. Serbia knew that elements within its government were responsible for stirring up anti-Austrian feelings in Bosnia. Later it turned out that members of Serbia's Intelligence Organization actually organized and armed the assassins. Initially Serbia was willing to submit to Austrian demands. They were weak, they were in the wrong and they had gained their independence once before from Austria, likely they could do it again. Now Russia enters into the situation. Russia sent a telegram to the Serbian government after the Austrian demands were made public. The telegram said two things: 1) Russia considers the Austrian demands unacceptable and 2) The Russian army is going to mobilize. This was an amazing thing for Russia to do. Their security was not threatened in any way by a resumption of Austrian control over Serbia. Yet the Russian government was so wrapped up in its support for their Slavic cousins that they choose to mobilize their army before anyone else did anything. And I do mean anything. Russia issued mobilization orders, then Serbia, then Austria, then Germany! The mobilization orders are critical to understanding the situation. Russia in peace time had the largest army in Europe of some 1.5 million. But when fully mobilized Russia’s army was an enormous 6 million strong. Germany’s peace time army was 750,000 strong, divided between the French border and the Russian border. Germany was really in danger of being conquered if its peace-time army in Prussia were to come under attack from a fully mobilized Russian army. In other words, the Germans were OK being outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Russian army. But being outnumbered 6 to 1 or more was too dangerous. So, when Germany learned Russia was mobilizing its army, the Kaiser sent a critical telegram to the Czar saying essentially "if you don’t stop mobilizing, Germany has no choice but to mobilize as well". The Czar sent back a telegram saying “it is technically impossible for us to halt the mobilization.” As a result, Germany mobilized and declared war on Russia. And, as a result of fantastically detailed war plans, Germany attacked France. It makes some sense but I wouldn't have done that. So, why did Russia order a mobilization? Didn’t they know this would provoke Germany into going to war? Did they think they could mobilize without consequences? Bottom line: Russia caused Germany to go to war by a stupid mobilization order in support of a country that was of no strategic importance to Russia. Serbia was playing a dangerous game in supporting Serb terrorists in Bosnia. They went too far and needed to demonstrate they would no longer work to destabilize Austria. Austria is partly to blame for not getting Russia to agree with some sanctions against Serbia, but Russia is the real cause of the war. Russia made the key choice to support a minor country, one that supported terrorists operating against its large neighbor (Austria). Russia could easily have walked away from this conflict. But they choose to mobilize. They started World War One. 11:53:04 AM     [Colin Glassey] I'm Back Everything at school came due this week so I have been too busy to post for a couple of weeks. Its all done now. But enough about me. This essay by Rob Roy of the Orlando Sentinel is not to be missed. (Thanks to Command-Post.org for the link.) Here are some exerpts: Before the war, I'd never spent much time with the Marines, and I wasn't sure what to expect when I was assigned to them. I think I understand Marines better now, but I'm not sure I can explain them. They tend to do things the hardest way possible. They call each other "devil dog" and say "Hoo-rah." They are loud and rough. They have lots of tattoos. They'll ignore you or torment you if they think you're a fake. They'll do anything for you if they like you. They'll believe the wildest rumors. One told me, early in the war, that he'd heard the Army, rather than the Marines, would occupy Baghdad because the Marines "break too much stuff." Marines tend to think and travel in a straight line. ... I saw Marines who didn't have any extra food or water give what they had to Iraqi children begging on the roadside. But the same Marines laughed like crazy when they heard about a Marine who filled an empty MRE bag with sand, sealed it up and threw it to begging children. One Marine officer I knew liked to call his Marines "the most demented young people our society can produce." He wasn't really kidding, but he still admired them, and I did, too. ... One fascinated by their quirks was Maj. Jeff Eberwein, an oil-company executive in civilian life who has a degree in medieval literature from Boston College. The books he'd brought to read during the war included Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Eberwein liked to joke about how Marines did things the hardest way. Since they'd arrived at Camp Saipan in January, the Marines had to wear their full battle gear -- flak jackets and helmets and carrying their weapons -- even to the mess hall and latrine. I thought the conditions at Camp Saipan were bad, with tents that didn't keep out the dust storms and foul-smelling portable toilets. But it was luxury compared to conditions after the war started. And the Marines, who had assumed they would be using holes for toilets and eating standing up even in camp before the war, thought it was great they had toilets and a mess tent with chairs. Eberwein did a hilarious version of a sergeant's reaction to any Marine who complained about the mess hall food, which was actually awful. "Do you think they had strawberry jam on Tarawa, Marine?! Did they have orange juice at Iwo Jima?!" One day at the big Marine base south of Baghdad, Eberwein and I watched a Marine take a wrong turn with his LVS, a monster all-wheel drive truck, and come up to a ditch with a berm beyond it. The Marine could have backed up a little and turned to avoid the obstacle. But the shortest path was straight ahead, and after sizing it up the driver just gunned the motor and the big truck plowed over it, tires spinning and steel groaning. Eberwein liked to say that Marines think finesse is a French sports car. But the truth is he admired their single-mindedness to getting the job done. That day as the truck disappeared through the cloud of dust, he just shook his head and said, "Mission accomplished." People have argued that, as a whole, Marines are the best fighting force in the world. Obviously there is something to their training which takes somewhat unusual Americans and turns them into selfless, single-minded, obey-orders-at-all-costs, warriors. One thing is certain, when you train to do things the hard way, war itself becomes something you can live with. One thing I'd like to repeat, our forces did so well in Iraq because they train hard under nearly realistic combat conditions. Training is the key to performance in battle and we do it well. Traing must never be sacrificed to get the latest and greatest gadgets. 11:17:26 AM

Monday, April 21, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Let Mr. Sparks Count the Ways the U.N. Has Failed This is a very nice summary of problems and failures of the U.N. over the last 40 years by Adam Sparks. Here are some quotes: The organization has never removed a single tyrant or replaced one with a constitutional democracy, because doing so is simply not a part of its charter. The U.N. and the American Left both want one-world government brought to you by an organization that is by and large composed of representatives from tyrannical, nondemocratic nations. Why should Americans want to emasculate their own sovereignty in order to be run by the likes of Syria, Libya and Sudan, each of which has a vote in the U.N.? Is the Left so tranquilized it doesn't know that despotic member nations of the U.N. outnumber the constitutional democracies? ... In 1994, Rwanda underwent the worst episodes of genocide since the Nazis. At the time, the U.N. had a sizable presence in that country, but when a debate over the issue bogged down in the U.N. Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan recalled the organization's peace-keeping forces and, in less than 100 days, more than a million Tutsis were brutally massacred. Subsequently, the Security Council approved a French-led military intervention, which ironically provided a safe haven for the Hutu killers. ... In July 1995, in Srebrenica, Bosnia, a U.N. peace-keeping battalion in a U.N.-declared "free zone" handed over 8,000 Muslim civilians to the Serbs, who promptly slaughtered them all. There was no U.N. inquiry to review that terrible human atrocity. Instead, soon after this massacre, Kofi Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. ... Moreover, the U.N. has failed to resettle the dislocated Palestinians since Israel's creation 55 years ago. These "refugees" continue to live in squalid ghettos under U.N. supervision -- and largely at U.S. expense. More than 50 years later, these are now the world's oldest refugee camps -- occupied by second, third and fourth generations from the original refugees -- whose inhabitants still refuse to be integrated into neighboring Arab countries. And, considering that these refugee camps are also headquarters for several terrorist factions, why, then, does the U.N. still feel compelled to pick up the tab? Why exactly does anyone support the U.N. now? The U.N. needs to be replaced by an international organization that is only open to constitutional democracies. Further, it needs to allocate votes based on population, not based on nations. Finally, it needs a constitution itself which contains the means of reforming it. 5:18:32 PM

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Looting of the Iraq Museum I'm upset at the coverage of this event in the media. Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies was on KQED radio this morning blaming the United States for the looting of the Iraqi Historical Museum. I'd like to say she has no right to critique our soldiers in the city of Bagdad who were fighting (and sometimes dieing) to overthrow the Saddam government. Blame for the looting of the museum goes to the following parties: The Saddam government for failing to live up to its signed treaty obligations to disarm after the 1991 War. The head of the museum for not hiding or otherwise securing the most important artifacts of the collection. It was obvious for nearly a year that war was likely. The museum has been closed to visitors for several years so hiding the collection is a trivial task, if you cared. The looters themselves. It wasn't U.S. Troops that looted the museum. We don't know who it was but we can be sure it wasn't our soldiers. So, do we have any share of blame? In an ideal world our forces would have been followed instantly by a well trained, non-Saddam Iraqi police force who would have backed the U.S. Troops and prevented looting in the newly liberated city. Well, guess what, we don't live in an ideal world. In the real world most things happen differntly than planned. The fall of Bagdad is one of those events which happened faster than expected. Should we have stationed some of our military units outside the museum to protect it? That is a military choice, made on the ground by officers who had a job: defeat Saddam, conquer Bagdad, and keep our soldiers alive. Keeping the museum safe from Bagdad's citizens is not and should not have been on our commanders list of top 5 priorities. Frankly, I think it is yet to be proved that the museum was looted by the citizens of Bagdad. Take a look at this essay from The Villiage Idiot. Main points: 1) The museum has been closed to the public for years. 2) Saddam and his cronies were looting the country of Iraq for more than a decade. 3) The museum is suddenly looted in the middle of the night, all the vaults are opened, the muesum director is wailing. Was it common for the people of Bagdad to loot at night? I thought the streets were desterted at night in Bagdad. Thanks to Instapundit for the links (as usual). 1:48:04 PM

Monday, April 14, 2003

[Colin Glassey] One of the Toughest Fights in the Iraq War The 10-hour battle for Curly, Larry and Moe By Adam Lusher, with the United States 2nd Brigade Combat Team (Filed: 13/04/2003) Published in the The Telegraph I saw some of the footage from a reporter who was also with this unit. It was incredible. Later, much later, Lt Col Stephen Twitty, the commander of the 3rd Battalion 15th Infantry, would look at the map of Baghdad. "Objectives Curly, Larry and Moe - named 'em after the Three Stooges. Those three intersections will go down in history. They were three hellacious battles." As they rolled north along Highway 8 towards Baghdad's southern suburbs, the men had no idea that ahead lay desperate, 10-hour firefights against suicidal enemy soldiers - most of them Syrians intent on fighting a jihad rather than regular Iraqi army troops. They did not know that victory would allow a single infantry brigade effectively to capture the Iraqi capital in a day. All they knew was that Bravo Tank Company of the 2nd Brigade of the American 3rd Infantry Division was to hold a key road junction Larry in the south of Baghdad. Alpha Mechanised Infantry Company would hold another junction - Moe - to the north. Meanwhile, the battalion would set up its command post at Curly, a crossroads about two miles south of Larry. As Capt Dan Hubbard, 34, a Desert Storm veteran from Tennessee, led his tanks north, he claimed to have long ago lost the butterflies in the stomach that come before combat. There was plenty, however, to worry a less experienced soldier. The streets were littered with burnt-out Iraqi cars, trucks and abandoned anti-aircraft guns. Flames licked the bottom of one three-storey block of flats. An Iraqi, covered in blood, lay by the side of the road. He rolled over, clutched his head and lay still again. He was barely alive. Long before they reached Larry - an intersection by a flyover - the men of Bravo Tank Company came under attack. It was impossible to work out where it was coming from. An Abrams tank from another unit, damaged by enemy fire, hove into view. We moved on. At about 7.20am, Bravo Tank Company reached Larry and immediately came under attack from rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Lt Hunter Bowers, 23, the rugby-playing commander of White platoon, was first on the radio. "My lead tank's been hit. He's on fire on top of the overpass." As flames took hold on the back of the turret, ammunition inside started "cooking off" - blowing up. Thanks to the strengthened doors of the ammunition compartment, Staff Sgt James Lawson and his crew were finally able to escape, dousing the flames with fire extinguishers. The men were alive, badly shaken, but still able to fight. For the next 10 hours, they had no choice but to do so. Wave after wave of seemingly suicidal soldiers, driving civilian cars, trucks and even buses, armed only with AK47s and RPGs, threw themselves at the US tanks. These fighters were, in large part, Syrians. "They drove straight at you at 70 miles an hour, one after the other," said Lt Mike Martin, 24. "They would see about a dozen or more cars already on fire, but that wouldn't put them off." Lt Col Twitty had positioned himself at Objective Larry as the best place from which to control the battle. Instead, the commander known to his men as "the black John Wayne", had to co-ordinate three separate firefights while also taking his turn at the hatch of a Bradley infantry-fighting vehicle, blazing away at swarms of attackers with his 25mm cannon. "They were coming at us like bees," said Lt Col Twitty, from South Carolina. "We would kill one lot and then more would appear. It was the most amazing thing." At 11am, four hours into the fight, Lt Bowers warned that smoke from burning vehicles was making it impossible to see the attackers. "We can't identify anything until it's 300-400 metres away," he said over the radio. "By then they are right on top of us." Engineers went out in ACEs - armoured combat earthmovers - to shift the wreckage, giving the tanks a clear line of fire and allowing vehicles from other units to push further up the line. Sgt Jason Reis, 23, from Pennsylvania, returned with his ACE sporting five dents where AK47 bullets had failed to penetrate. Days later he was still shocked, but not by the bullets. "There were bodies burning," he said. "You could smell them and you had to move them out of the way. There were arms and legs lying on the road." The troops at Objective Moe met equally fierce resistance. "We had four tanks, 10 Bradleys and seven personnel carriers," said First Sgt Jeff Moser, 35, from Detroit. "Just about every vehicle took three or four RPG hits. They were everywhere. They were even firing from the mosque. "We fought all day and night and took out about 300 [enemy soldiers]. They would come on foot in waves, three at a time. It was almost comical. These guys would be trying to dodge 25mm high-explosive rounds from the Bradleys, which take out everything in a five-metre radius." The fight was fiercer still at Objective Curly - supposedly a relatively safe location for the battalion's tactical operations centre - which involved about 80 men: staff officers, an infantry platoon and some scouts, who had four Bradleys and a few scout cars armed with 50-calibre machineguns. The moment they arrived they were set upon by up to 600 fanatical, well-dug-in fighters. Supply sergeants, who never imagined they would fire their weapons in anger, found themselves shooting back for hours on end. Even the battalion chaplain, Steve Hommel, ended up shouldering an M16 rifle. Sgt Major "Blackhawk Bob" Gallagher, a former special forces solder and veteran of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" mission in Somalia, quickly lived up to his other nickname, the "Metal Magnet". An RPG exploded nearby, causing a shrapnel wound to his ankle, to add to the collection begun in Mogadishu - bullet wounds in both arms and shrapnel in his back. Sgt Major Gallagher, 40, remained standing and carried on firing, ignoring the medics bandaging his legs. (I saw that on the video footage - Colin.) Despite the fanatical opposition, Lt Col Twitty ordered his men to follow normal rules of engagement, firing warning shots to avoid innocent casualties. "This is bullshit," cursed one lieutenant. "This isn't the time for finger-pointing." While Lt Col Twitty's battalion fought to keep the route of advance open, other units in the brigade swept on to Baghdad. By 9am, they had secured their highly symbolic objective: Saddam's official palace and his parade ground. Back at Curly, Larry and Moe, the fighting showed no sign of abating. The medics and mechanics moved to what was once a petrol station, but was now a broken mess. As the day wore on it was here that men started to arrive: exhausted and worried, not the easy-going army sure of a swift victory. Staff Sgt Lawson rolled up, no longer red-faced but ashen, blackened debris visible on his tank after it took an early RPG hit. He blew out his cheeks, shook his head. The day before, the war had still been an adventure, in Lawson's words "an adrenaline rush". Capt Hubbard came in to refuel his tank, its gun brightly decorated with his wife's name, Rhonda Denise. He discarded hundreds of spent machinegun cartridges in the manner of a motorist emptying an ashtray. "It's a madhouse," he said. Then he was gone. A single black body bag lay on the grass while, in a makeshift aid station, Capt Mike Cutler, the battalion medical officer, attended to the living. Pte Chris Nauman, 20, of St Louis, Missouri, lay on a stretcher, wounded in the knee. It was either the morphine or the shock, but he couldn't stop repeating his story. "We took some incoming. I pushed my buddy down so I took something in the leg myself. My buddy, he's still fighting. They're all fighting. "I dropped my M16 but there was no way I was letting go of my 12-gauge shotgun. I was pulling security all the way back on that stretcher. Just as well. This guy pops up four feet away. I just leaned over on the stretcher and I was, like, 'boom!' - I got him." (I saw that also, amazing. - Colin) Slowly it became clear what had been happening on other parts of the battlefield. A rear element of the brigade command had been hit by a missile, with 17 casualties. Three soldiers were killed, two reporters died and two soldiers were critically injured. American vehicles had started to run out of both fuel and ammunition and the enemy attack showed no sign of abating. "We didn't have a choice," said Chief Angel Acevedo, 36, a maintenance technician who had to attempt to re-supply the unit. "Two tanks were black on [out of] ammo. We had to go but they ambushed us on the way up and it was a good ambush." Chief Acevedo was in a personnel carrier when his friend, Staff Sgt Robert Stever, 36, from Oregon, was hit and killed as he engaged the enemy with his machine-gun. "He died doing what he had to do, shooting, doing his duty," said Chief Acevedo. "He was a good guy, a happy guy. He had an 11-year-old daughter." Later, Lt-Col Twitty supplied some conservative battle statistics. About 750 of his men had faced 900 enemy fighters. The only American fatalities were the two men killed when the fuel train was ambushed. There were 30 American casualties. Not until 7.45pm was the radio finally quiet. Sporadic fighting continued throughout the night and in the days to come. The Americans, however, continued to hold Saddam's palace. Curly, Larry and Moe were also held, at a heavy cost to the Iraqis and Syrians. Lt-Col Twitty said that only 50 enemy prisoners had been taken. "They preferred to die," he said. "We killed most of those who faced us." In our personnel carrier, Staff Sgt Bradley Leone, 35, a hard-fighting soldier from Indiana, mused: "All those Syrians. Ain't no one going to tell their wives, their families that they're dead. They just won't come home." Analysis: 1) The Syrians did some big fighting here. Do you think we shouldn't be upset with Syrian government? 2) The enemy suffered upwards of 900 losses, we suffered 30 injured, 2 dead. And this was in very close quarters with no air support. Our Bradley's are supurb infantry killers. 3) Without supplies of ammo and fuel, one or all of the positions would have been overrun by the Syrians. Logistics, its something the U.S. has been very good at. It helps us win battles, and wars. 4) Our soldiers were excellant. Well trained, no panic, doing their mission. 6:07:58 PM

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Failure of Special Forces to Win on Northern Front Not a Surprise Well, its not a surprise to Dr. Biddle. I just finished reading his essay on Afghanistan. Look at this: The results thus suggest that where the troops on the ground are comparable—either both skilled or both unskilled—American precision fires can make the difference. But where an unsophisticated ally is pitted against an enemy with the skills and motivation to survive precision engagement and fight back when attacked, then poorly trained allies will be unable to take advantage of the enormous potential that precision fires bring. Even with precision air support, indigenous allies thus need a combination of skill, motivation, and equipment at least broadly comparable to their enemies’ to prevail. In other words, special forces plus air power can turn the tide when special forces are working with allied forces that are at least the equal of the enemy. But, if the enemy is better than the allied troops, the special forces and air power won't be able to make up the difference. In the Northern Front it is clear that the Peshmerga of the Kurds have much less equipment than the Iraqi army. No heavy artillery, no tanks, no combat engineers. By contrast the Iraqi army does have tanks, troop carriers and artillery. The result should be (and is so far) a stalemate. Hats off to Dr. Biddle. 10:52:41 PM     [Colin Glassey] U.S. & British Performance was Impressive in 1991 Also Thanks to Intel Dump for this pointer to this wonderful paper on military history by Stephen Biddle called Victory Misunderstood. Here is a quote from the early part of the paper: ...About 4 p.m. on the afternoon of February 26, the regiment's lead troop, under the command of Captain H.R. McMaster, made contact with the main Iraqi position. Launching an immediate assault, McMaster's troop of 9 M1 tanks and 12 M3 Bradleys subsequently destroyed the entire defensive belt in front of them, hitting 37 Iraqi T-72s and 32 other armored vehicles in about 40 minutes. The adjoining troops immediately followed suit. Before stopping to regroup at around 5 p.m., this nominal scouting mission by three U.S. cavalry troops had overrun and wiped out an entire Republican Guard brigade. Subsequent Iraqi counterattacks were beaten off with heavy losses, leaving a total of 113 Iraqi armored vehicles destroyed at the cost of one U.S. Bradley lost and one crew member killed by Iraqi fire (with a second vehicle loss attributed to fratricide). Some 600 Iraqi casualties were removed from the battlefield. The other actions followed a similar pattern. The largest of these, the Battle of Medina Ridge, pitted the 2nd brigade of the U.S. 1st Armored against the 2nd brigade of the Medina Luminous division. In 40 minutes of fighting, the U.S. brigade annihilated the Iraqi armor in place, took 55 Iraqis prisoner, and killed another 340. No U.S. casualties were suffered. At Objective Norfolk, two battalions of the U.S. 1st Infantry division destroyed more than 100 armored vehicles of the Iraqi Tawakalna and 12th Armored divisions with the loss of two U.S. Bradleys. In the Battle for the Wadi Al Batin, a battalion of the U.S. 3rd Armored division wiped out an Iraqi brigade, killing more than 160 armored vehicles while losing less than a half dozen of its own. By the morning of February 27, the Iraqi blocking force had been effectively wiped out. In all, VII Corps destroyed as many as 1,350 Iraqi tanks, 1,224 armored troop carriers, 285 artillery pieces, 105 air defense systems and 1,229 trucks. VII Corps itself, by contrast, lost no more than 36 armored vehicles to enemy fire, and suffered a total of only 47 dead and 192 wounded. I didn't realize that we fought so many engagements against strong forces in 1991 with such incredible results. As the author points out, the loses suffered by our forces were low in an historically unprecedented way. The Coalition's Gulf War loss rate was lower by at least a factor of ten than the Israelis' in the Six-Day War, or the British against the Italians in North Africa in 1941, or the Royal Marines against Argentine Army conscripts in 1982. Of course, it is hard to measure skill differentials precisely. But it is far from obvious that the difference between Coalition and Iraqi skills in 1991 dwarfs the imbalance between any of these armies. In each case the attacker enjoyed a major advantage in personnel quality and motivation, yet in no case were the attacker's losses anywhere near as low as during the Gulf War. Dr. Biddle argues that superior training by the U.S. Forces, coupled with superior equipment combined with poor training by the Iraqi army led to these incredible margins of victory (remember, this is the 1991 war). Based on losses so far in 2003, it is clear that the differential in training between our soldiers and Iraqi soldiers has widened. Here is another essay by Dr. Biddle on the Afghanistan War. This is an essay on the 2003 Iraqi war by Tom Ricks of the Washington Post. 10:22:15 PM     [Colin Glassey] How to At Least Try to Beat the United States I think its safe to write this now. The obvious method for dealing with a narrow-front attack is to get behind the attacking forces and cut their supply lines. Since the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) avoided most of the enemy formations it came near on its Blitzkrieg to Bagdad, in theory, these bypassed Iraqi formations could have moved to block the supplies which were coming all the way from Kuwait. Such a move, if successfull, would have shut down the forward progress of the 3ID. The Marines, heading up along the river, were more methodical and captured or destroyed most of the Iraqi forces in their way. As a result, their supply lines were tougher to cut, but they moved slower as a result. Also, if Iraqi divisions along the border with Iran had moved away from the border towards the rivers, behind the Marines, their supply lines would have been in trouble also. What stopped any movement (and I do mean ANY movement) of Iraqi forces? We don't know yet. Some obvious possibilities: Saddam's command centers were destroyed in the early days of the war. And without orders, the idiot leaders of the Iraqi divisions simply stayed put. Remember: dictatorships have terrible military leaders (except, rarely for the man at the top). Example: Erich Von Manstein (Germany's greatest general) sat out the last two years of World War II at his estate in East Prussia while useless fools like Sepp Dietrich were in command of an SS Panzer Army. Even if the mobile divisions had tried to move, they would have been destroyed by U.S. air power. While this might well be true, that is not much of an excuse for not even trying to cut off the 3ID. Don't get me wrong, I'm damn glad we won and I salute the members of our army, the finest army in the entire world, but, we beat an army that didn't even try to engage us operationally. Not every army we fight is going to as stupid as this one. For example, would we try this attack agains the Russian army? I sure hope not, the Russians proved they can play that game back in 1942 (though today the Russian army is a pale shadow of what it once was). The Iraqi Army did not want to fight. I have believed for a long time now that dictatorships are very fragile. From the inside, they are all terror and death squads and iron control. But when confronted with an outside force, what man wants to die for Saddam? Obviously some fanatics have died for Saddam. The Iraqis who have died for Saddam are in large part militarilly untrained (as their idea of attacking Abrams seems to be charging forward inside Toyota Land Cruisers, which is really dumb). The people who actually know something about fighting have all mysteriously disappeared from the war. By that I mean the people who know about combined arms attacks with artillery, tanks and infantry. So, again, what man is willing to die for Saddam? A person who thinks he does better when Saddam does better. A person who is close enough to the power to taste it. This excludes 95% (or more?) of the Iraqi population. There are plenty of historical examples of people fighting (and dieing) in huge numbers to support dictatorships, so I'm on thin ice in saying dictatorships are fragile to outside force. But looking at recent history and we see seemingly powerful dictators destroyed by fairly small shocks. Milosevic of Serbia in 1999, Ceausescu of Rumania in 1989, and now Saddam in 2003. Its not a huge list but even so, predictions that Police States are hard to remove seem wrong now. 7:03:43 PM     [Colin Glassey] The Liberation of Bagdad All sorts of stories are filling the web today about the liberation of Bagdad. This is a great story about the capture of Iraq's main nuclear labs and the discovery of a vast underground complex which no one outside of Iraq was aware of!. So, to all those people who were confidently saying the U.N. Inspectors didn't find any new nuclear weapons production, so it wasn't happening. I say welcome to the real world. Local woman lands her A-10 Attack Plane after taking heavy damage. The daughter of San Jose Councilman Chuck Reed was nearly shot down over Bagdad but flew her plane back to base. Our women did great in battle. Arabs that insist on putting women behind veils are robbing their own countries of fully half of their possible brain power and a good share of courage as well. Here is a photo that made me laugh out loud. Its part of a great collection of photos here. People in U.S. and British military circles are now saying that Saddam was the worst military leader in history. His army was deployed badly, his forces disintegrated on contact with our forces, and they never mounted an actual counter-attack on U.S. or British troops. The largest action by the Iraqi army that we have seen in the entire war is company-sized (in other words around 100 men with 6 or 7 tanks). An example of the Iraqi army simply vanishing has just occured. See this article about the Iraqi 10th Armored Division's vanishing act. Our special forces men have not been able to beat the Iraqi north. Take a look at this report. To the surprise of some Special Operations soldiers, American air power alone has not been enough to force the Iraqis to retreat. An infantry truism — that tanks and soldiers are needed to seize and hold ground — is apparently being reinforced here. In a three-day period on the front line due east of Mosul, Special Operations soldiers had American planes drop more than 200 bombs on Iraqi positions in Khazir. The Iraqis did not budge from the route, the shortest into Mosul from the Kurdish-controlled enclave in northern Iraq. In fact they reinforced their positions and retook some lost ground. "Two companies of light infantry attacked us," a Special Operations soldier said, referring to roughly 200 troops. "We fought them off with light machine guns and rifles." This means that our Special Forces are not able to pull of their Afghanistan conquest against the decent troops which seem to be in the north of Iraq. If this is true it suggests several things: We aren't treating the Northern front with the same seriousness as the Southern front in terms of air strikes. The Kurdish Peshmerga don't have tanks, artillery, or even much combat experience. Contrast this to the Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan, who had fought with the Taliban continuously for five years and did have tanks and artillery. The next time someone says we can do any job with 12 special forces men and an air wing to back them up, tell them about the Northern Front of Iraq in April of 2003. Combined arms works. Get the Abrams and Bradley's on the ground, with some 155mm self propelled artillery to back them up, some helos for scouting, and A-10s for air support and you would see the North front collapse. 6:09:11 PM

Sunday, April 06, 2003

[Colin Glassey] It seems that the U.S. has gone with Chalabi According to this article in the Washington Post, we have just moved Ahmed Chalabi's 700 man military unit into Nasiriyah, Iraq. The unit has a new name: 1st Battalion of Free Iraqi Forces. This is a very strong vote of confidence in Chalabi and it shows that the Pentagon is running things in Iraq right now, just as the Army ran Japan in 1945. Chalabi is strongly supported by people in the Pentagon and disliked by people in the U.S. State Department. Speaking of people in the Pentagon, here is a very good essay about Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading thinkers in the Bush administration, especially about Iraq. If Mr. Wolfowitz's ideas win out (as I think they will), then I'm very hopeful about the future. 9:43:30 PM     [Colin Glassey] Welcome InstaPundit Readers - More Analysis Some additional analysis of the Iraq war of 2003. As we have come to expect, United States soldiers performed as befits the finest army in the world. 20 years ago, the U.S. army was not rated so highly. In the first edition of James Dunnigan's book How to Make War he gave numerical ratings to various armed forces of nations. Back in 1985, Dunnigan did not rate the United States as the best army. Dunnigan may have been wrong even in 1985. I think its been obvious since the Gulf War of 1991 that the U.S. Army is the best, and it has improved in the intervening years. Gold Stars to the men and women of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). The 3ID has added to its proud divisional history in this war. The drive from Kuwait through the Karbala gap and into Bagdad Airport will be studied for many years to come as a texbook example of a perfect attack. Gold Stars to the Marines, driving their Amphibious assault vehicles all the way to Bagdad through several strongly defended towns. The soldiers of the 1st MEF (Marine Expiditionary Force) have lived up to their impressive history as Marines. Although the U.S. has not revealed many details, the U.S. Special Forces seem to have gotten the job done in the desert of Western Iraq and in the Northern Kurdish area, though the Northern Front is still a scene of serious fighting. The Special Forces proved their worth in Afghanistan. With good air support, the Special Forces can accomplish seemingly impossible missions considering the tiny number of men in their units (12). It seems as though the British Army is working a new tactic for taking over a large city. Steve Den Beste has a essay in which he argues that the attack on Basra is not a siege but instead something new. I think he is right. I salute the British Army for their innovative tactics. They certainly seem to have done a great deal of damage to the defenders of Basra while leaving the town and civilian population largely unscathed. I agree with Mark Steyn's article in which he says the big news was the Iraqi military failed to do much of anything. The various divisions of the Iraqi army pretty much stayed in place, except for some internal movement last week (from Tikrit south to Bagdad). The fact that Iraqi army essentially stayed in their positions for the duration of the war doomed them. There really was a possible counter to the U.S. attack. I don't think it is quite safe to discuss it openly now. Even if the Iraqi mobile divisions had tried the tactic, it would likely have failed. But so far as I can tell, the Iraqi army tried nothing. If Saddam wasn't killed in the first attack on March 19, either he failed to issue any orders in the following days, or his orders never made it to the mobile divisions. 8:26:08 PM

Saturday, April 05, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Victory! The United States has won the war with Iraq. Operations started late on March 19, 2003 and the war was won with U.S. military forces in control of Bagdad International Airport on April 4th. OK, the war isn't actually over and may not be over for some weeks. But as far as military operations are concerned, almost all serious organized military units of the Iraqi government have been destroyed. So far, everything has worked out as well as could be hoped. No use of chemical weapons by the Iraqi army. No use of nuclear weapons by Iraq. No attack on Israel, provoking an Israeli counter-attack. No terror attacks against the United States in support of Iraq. No "seize the day" attack on South Korea by North Korea. No mass revolt by Arab demonstrators in any Arab country. The fact that we have essentially won the war with just over 100 of our people killed is astoundingly light losses. In the near perfect first Gulf War of 1991 we lost around 250 dead. We may yet lose that many soldiers by the end of this war, but it doesn't seem likely now. Gold Stars are awarded to: Gold Star to the M1-A1 Abrams Tank. Still the best tank in the world. Although we lost several in this war it is still, essentially, unbeatable. Gold Star to the Bradley. This war has really proved the worth of the Bradley. Nearly all critiques of the Bradley are baseless. The Bradely kept its crew alive in the face of rifle fire, machine gun fire, artillery fire, and RPG attacks. In addition, its 25mm chain gun proved able to destroy all the targets it needed to destroy, up to and including tanks. Gold Star to General Tommy Franks. General Franks battle plan has proved to be bold and completely successfull. As I said in an earlier post, his attack was very bold, and if it works, he will go down in history as one of the great commanders. Well, it worked. General Franks' invasion of Iraq can best be compared to the German Blitzkrieg of France in 1940. The Third Infantry Division, spearheaded by the 7th Cavalry Regiment, nearly flew across Iraq, avoiding the obvious routes, bypassing some units, destroying others, until they arived at Bagdad Airport, smashing their way through the Republican Guard divisions like a hot knife through butter. Gold Stars to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. Without the courage and conviction of President Bush to do the right thing in the face of determined, perfidious resistance from France, Germany, Russia, and Turkey, in the face of apathy and disapproval from Mexico, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and China; this war would never have been launched. Without the steelly determination of Blair, we would have only some 1,000 Austrialians to join us in the war. Blair proved, once again, that when the chips are down, England is our ally. So is Australia. Thank you. Gold Star to the U.S. Air Force for hitting the right targets at the right time. While air power didn't win this war on its own, it sure did a great job. Black marks are given out to: France. For pretending to being our ally while secretly trying to stab us in the back. For giving aid and support to Iraq. For helping to destroy both NATO and the Security Council of the U.N. A Black Mark to Turkey. For not granting us permission to launch the 4th Infantry Division out of Turkey into Northern Iraq. For not granting us overflight rights until a week after the war started. For throwing away 50 years of U.S. aid and support in exchange for promises and threats from the French. I'm sure they will find the French are loyal and trustworthy allies, as we have found them to be. A Black Mark to the U.N. Security Council. For failing to head the lessons of history and listening to the French government. The U.N. has become no better than the League of Nations. It is a debating society which is no longer of any value in the cause of improving life for humans around the world. Force has to be used against "actors" who violate the laws of the "community". Any community that does not enforce its laws, is anarchy. We here in the United States learned our lesson from the 1930s. Toothless resolutions and general expressions of dismay do not work against dictators and terrorists. What good is the U.N. if it passes resolutions but then won't try to enforce them? What good was the U.N. to the people of Srebrinica? Or to the people of Rwanda? Or to the Kurds and Shias and Marsh people of Iraq? If the U.N. isn't a force for good in the world, then it needs to make way for a new organization that will improve human life on this Earth. 10:57:40 PM

Monday, March 31, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Bill Whittle on History Bill Whittle is one of the best essay writers of the Blogsphere. This essay, titled History is his most recent. It is a wonderful piece of writing. Here is a section from the middle of essay: No sane person wants to fight a war. But many sane people believe that there are times when they are necessary. I believe this is one of those times. For it seems to me that if you are against any war – if you believe that peace is always the right choice -- then you must believe at least one, if not both of the following: 1. People will always be able to come to a reasonable agreement, no matter how deep or contentious the issue, and that all people are rational, reasonable, honorable, decent and sane, or, 2. It is more noble to live under slavery and oppression, to endure torture, institutionalized rape, theft and genocide than it is to fight it. History, not to mention personal experience, shows me that the first proposition is clearly false. I believe, to put it plainly, that some people have been raised to become pathological murderers, liars, and first-rate bastards, and that these people will kill and brutalize the good, meek people and steal from and murder them whenever it is in their personal interest to do so. You are, of course, free to disagree about this element of humanity. I, however, can put a great many names on the table. History is littered with people and regimes just like this: entire nations of murderers and thugs, savage and brutal men who could herd grandmothers and babies into gas chambers and march to battle with guns in the backs of old men and teenage girls for use as human shields. I believe these people are real, and that they cannot be reasoned with. I believe that there are entire societies where dominance and force are the norm, and where cooperation and compromise are despised and scorned. Again, history gives me quite a sizable list, and that list is evidence of the first order. There are people – pacifists – who do not deny this, and these are the people who I really do find repulsive and deeply disturbing, for these are people who acknowledge the presence of evil men and evil regimes, and yet are unwilling to do anything about them. These are the people who cling to fantasies about containment and inspections and resolutions, people who acknowledge that barbarism and torture are rampant but who desperately cling to these niceties as long as nothing bad happens to them. When you point out to them that 9/11 showed that bad things can happen when you ignore such people, they simply point out that Hitler or Stalin or Mao is not as bad as all that, that they haven’t done anything to us yet, that action against them is unconscionable and illegitimate. There are also people who say “better Red than dead,” people who would rather face the possibility of slavery – for ourselves or others -- than the certainty of a fight, with all it’s attendant blood and misery. I’m sorry to say it, but to me that is nothing but sheer cowardice and refined selfishness. We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having. Slavery is peace. Tyranny is peace. For that matter, genocide is peace when you get right down to it. The historical consequences of a philosophy predicated on the notion of no war at any cost are families flying to the Super Bowl accompanied by three or four trusted slaves and a Europe devoid of a single living Jew. It would be nice if there were a way around this. History, not merely my opinion, shows us that there is not. If all you are willing to do is think happy thoughts, then those are the consequences. If you want justice, and freedom, and safety, and prosperity, then sometimes you have to fight for them. Wonderful stuff. Read it all. 5:05:39 PM

Sunday, March 30, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Luttwack Argues that the War must be Absolute In this opinion piece for the Telegraph, Edward Luttwak writes that Long ago, Karl von Clausewitz, the supreme theoretician of war, explained why every attempt to prettify its essential violence with inconsistent acts of moderation, every refusal to use maximum force when it can be purposeful and no mere rampage, adds to the human costs of war by extending its cruelties and deprivations, and even more by delaying the arrival of the desired peace that is the only possible goal of any rational war. ...(We should be) using the strongest possible tactics right at the start of any urban warfare - demolishing tall buildings, for example, rather than fighting through them floor by floor - as well as by denying all use of mass media to the regime by cutting electricity. Again, not only American and British soldiers would avoid injuries and deaths but also far greater numbers of Iraqis. If the Bush Administration does not have the stomach for that, preferring to endanger Allied troops (including Captain Jonathan Luttwak US Army) rather than accept the odium of bad publicity from scenes of ruined buildings and the inevitable civilian casualties that go with them, it should not have chosen to start a war in the first place. Well, Luttwak's summary of Clausewitz is correct. However, the logical result of this thinking, as I see it, is that we should drop nuclear bombs on Bagdad right now. Sure we would kill a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians but the war would be over sooner and everyone would be better off in the long run. If, as he says, there is no way to prettify war then why not use the most powerful weapons we have? I know Mr. Luttwak is not arguing for that. He is arguing for a less interference from superiors in fighting the war. I agree with him on this. I however do think there is a role for moderation in war. I'm sorry to say this to Mr. Luttwak but I'm willing to have more of our soldiers die so that we kill fewer Iraqis. After 10 days, I think this war is way to young to be called a failure. I still remain convinced that murderous dictatorships like Saddam's Iraq are fragile. Everyone in Iraq knows people who have been murdered or disappeared because they looked at a Saddam poster the wrong way. Eventually the people of Iraq will realize that Saddam will fall. We need to convince them of that fact. 12:20:10 AM

Saturday, March 29, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Lee Harris Argues that Cosmopolitanism is an Illusion An interesting essay from Lee Harris in which he attempts to destroy the idea that a person can in fact be Cosmopolitan (i.e. a person who considers their obligation is too the whole human race, not just their accidental family, community, and nation). This is worth reading, especially if you are thinking about teaching... 11:59:17 PM

Friday, March 28, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Next Cold War: France vs. The United States This is a war unlikely to be fought with weapons but here some some very interesting articles on the subject. This post by Wild Monk is a very lengthy analysis of Modern European thought in relation to philosophers of the past. This post by Bite the Wax Tadpole is part of his continuing work to figure out what France is up to. 5:34:31 PM     [Colin Glassey] A Map of the War This map from the Agonist.org is the best available online. Right now, the situation is a mess. As I said yesterday, the U.S. Commader Tommy Franks has a lot of guts. I would never deploy my forces like this, but then, I've never seen or wargamed an army like the U.S. has right now. 4:19:42 PM     [Colin Glassey] Did France Push Turkey to Work Against the U.S.? If this article is true, then French behavior is effectively in alliance with Saddam's Iraq. For the French government to actively work against our efforts to base troops in Turkey is appalling. Revolting. If true, then its time for an economic blockage against France. Who do they think they are? 3:35:20 PM     [Colin Glassey] Prophyrogenitus on European Union Policy This essay by the well known blogger Prophyrogenitus (named for the royal family of the Byzantine Empire I assume). His essay is long but worth the read. He takes on the big question of why it is that three nations (France, Germany, and Belgium) are "multilateral" while 18 nations are "unilateral". He comes to the disturbing conclusion that France thinks of itself as being on "the vangard" of history, much like the Communists of old did. 2:11:45 PM

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Chirac and Blair: An Analysis Really good analysis here on the dispute between Chirac of France and Blair of the U.K. Its by By John O'Sullivan, UPI Editor in Chief. I've seen some good articles on the UPI web site, about one good one a week or so. For me though, the UPI site is not worth looking at to find the nuggets amoung the dross. 4:53:49 PM     [Colin Glassey] Daniel Patrick Moynihan is Dead One of the great men of American has died today. Moynihan was a man who gained respect from just about everyone he met. He served the U.S. Government, off and on, from 1960, till he retired from the Senate in 2000. Here is an obit from The Washington Post. Rest in Peace Mr. Moynihan. You served your country well. 4:50:14 PM     [Colin Glassey] Hats off to the British Reporter I have to say, three nights ago CNN showed about 3 solid hours of war footage live, from about 10 PM to 1 AM PST. The coverage was from a British war reporter with his camera-man, CNN just picked up the video feed. It was riviting to me. Here was a real operation as it happened, the Marines prone, M-16s at the ready. The M1-A1 tanks rolling along and then shooting up Iraqi positions. The whole thing captured the war, the tedium, the uncertainty, the sense that this was deadly serious. Tactically I have some critique of the Marine's performance (I would have ordered the infantry to advance to the tanks location and not let the tanks do all the scouting but I wasn't there and the Marine commander may have felt confident that the tanks wouldn't run into anti-tank mines or anti-tank missiles). BTW: This was part of the clearing operation of the port of Um Qsar. 1:41:15 PM     [Colin Glassey] War Reports Here is some of the best reporting on the war: Massive and Rapid Information from: The Command Post A brilliant war correspondent with the 1st Marines, Mathew Fisher of the National Post. Here is his account of the firefight on March 25. You can't get better war reporting that this. John Keegan has been writting nearly daily for the The Telegraph of England. This link might or might not work for you. Otherwise try this link and then search for "John Keegan". His latest essay (March 26) has the following quote: ... the truth has to be faced that the allies are trying to capture a country the size of France with one heavy division, one airborne division, and a US marine force of roughly two light-divisions. The British division is committed to subduing Basra. In 1944 France was captured, admittedly from a far more formidable enemy, only by landing 50 divisions on two fronts. Keegan is correct. We are doing something that strikes me as really gutsy. I personally think we need more troops in Iraq, and soon. However, I don't know where the 101st Airborn division is, and I don't know where the 82nd division is, and I don't know what our plans are. All I can say is, I wouldn't have attacked Iraq with just 3 divisions. If this works out, Tommy Franks will go down in history as a military genius and everyone will have to re-evaluate just how powerful the U.S. Army is. Ralph Peters agrees with me in his latest column for the New York Post. He says "Despite the warnings - even the pleading - of his generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to send as many heavy ground forces to the Gulf as our military planners requested. In many ways an admirable and inspiring leader, Rumsfeld let himself be persuaded by a gang of civilian theorists and by mercenary defense contractors that airpower could win this war and that ground forces would just go in to tidy things up." Gregg Easterbrook has writen daily essays for the last week, you can see a list at this link. The March 26 essay is very good, its about the M-1A1 Abrams and the Bradley. The writer of this blog Mental Blocks seems to have a good idea about military affairs. 1:04:38 PM

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Tony Blair's Speech to the House of Commons This is a speech that should be read by everyone. Blair lays it all out, what he tried to accomplish, and what the world should look like in the future. I personally think he is too optimistic about the future of the U.N. but read it for yourself. This is the text of prime minister Tony Blair's speech opening today's debate on the Iraq crisis in the house of Commons, as released by 10 Downing Street. Tuesday March 18, 2003 I beg to move the motion standing on the order paper in my name and those of my right honourable friends. At the outset I say: it is right that this house debate this issue and pass judgment. That is the democracy that is our right but that others struggle for in vain. And again I say: I do not disrespect the views of those in opposition to mine. This is a tough choice. But it is also a stark one: to stand British troops down and turn back; or to hold firm to the course we have set. I believe we must hold firm. The question most often posed is not why does it matter? But why does it matter so much? Here we are, the government with its most serious test, its majority at risk, the first cabinet resignation over an issue of policy. The main parties divided. People who agree on everything else, disagree on this and likewise, those who never agree on anything, finding common cause. The country and parliament reflect each other, a debate that, as time has gone on has become less bitter but not less grave. So: why does it matter so much? Because the outcome of this issue will now determine more than the fate of the Iraqi regime and more than the future of the Iraqi people, for so long brutalised by Saddam. It will determine the way Britain and the world confront the central security threat of the 21st century; the development of the UN; the relationship between Europe and the US; the relations within the EU and the way the US engages with the rest of the world. It will determine the pattern of international politics for the next generation. But first, Iraq and its WMD. In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD. Saddam had used the weapons against Iran, against his own people, causing thousands of deaths. He had had plans to use them against allied forces. It became clear after the Gulf war that the WMD ambitions of Iraq were far more extensive than hitherto thought. This issue was identified by the UN as one for urgent remedy. Unscom, the weapons inspection team, was set up. They were expected to complete their task following the declaration at the end of April 1991. The declaration when it came was false - a blanket denial of the programme, other than in a very tentative form. So the 12-year game began. The inspectors probed. Finally in March 1992, Iraq admitted it had previously undeclared WMD but said it had destroyed them. It gave another full and final declaration. Again the inspectors probed but found little. In October 1994, Iraq stopped cooperating with Unscom altogether. Military action was threatened. Inspections resumed. In March 1995, in an effort to rid Iraq of the inspectors, a further full and final declaration of WMD was made. By July 1995, Iraq was forced to admit that too was false. In August they provided yet another full and final declaration. Then, a week later, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. He disclosed a far more extensive BW (biological weapons) programme and for the first time said Iraq had weaponised the programme; something Saddam had always strenuously denied. All this had been happening whilst the inspectors were in Iraq. Kamal also revealed Iraq's crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon in 1990. Iraq was forced then to release documents which showed just how extensive those programmes were. In November 1995, Jordan intercepted prohibited components for missiles that could be used for WMD. In June 1996, a further full and final declaration was made. That too turned out to be false. In June 1997, inspectors were barred from specific sites. In September 1997, another full and final declaration was made. Also false. Meanwhile the inspectors discovered VX nerve agent production equipment, something always denied by the Iraqis. In October 1997, the US and the UK threatened military action if Iraq refused to comply with the inspectors. But obstruction continued. Finally, under threat of action, in February 1998, Kofi Annan went to Baghdad and negotiated a memorandum with Saddam to allow inspections to continue. They did. For a few months. In August, cooperation was suspended. In December the inspectors left. Their final report is a withering indictment of Saddam's lies, deception and obstruction, with large quantities of WMD remained unaccounted for. The US and the UK then, in December 1998, undertook Desert Fox, a targeted bombing campaign to degrade as much of the Iraqi WMD facilities as we could. In 1999, a new inspections team, Unmovic, was set up. But Saddam refused to allow them to enter Iraq. So there they stayed, in limbo, until after resolution 1441 when last November they were allowed to return. What is the claim of Saddam today? Why exactly the same claim as before: that he has no WMD. Indeed we are asked to believe that after seven years of obstruction and non-compliance finally resulting in the inspectors leaving in 1998, seven years in which he hid his programme, built it up even whilst inspection teams were in Iraq, that after they left he then voluntarily decided to do what he had consistently refused to do under coercion. When the inspectors left in 1998, they left unaccounted for: 10,000 litres of anthrax; a far reaching VX nerve agent programme; up to 6,500 chemical munitions; at least 80 tonnes of mustard gas, possibly more than ten times that amount; unquantifiable amounts of sarin, botulinum toxin and a host of other biological poisons; an entire Scud missile programme. We are now seriously asked to accept that in the last few years, contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence, he decided unilaterally to destroy the weapons. Such a claim is palpably absurd. 1441 is a very clear resolution. It lays down a final opportunity for Saddam to disarm. It rehearses the fact that he has been, for years in material breach of 17 separate UN resolutions. It says that this time compliance must be full, unconditional and immediate. The first step is a full and final declaration of all WMD to be given on 8 December. I won't to go through all the events since then - the house is familiar with them - but this much is accepted by all members of the UNSC: the 8 December declaration is false. That in itself is a material breach. Iraq has made some concessions to cooperation but no-one disputes it is not fully cooperating. Iraq continues to deny it has any WMD, though no serious intelligence service anywhere in the world believes them. On 7 March, the inspectors published a remarkable document. It is 173 pages long, detailing all the unanswered questions about Iraq's WMD. It lists 29 different areas where they have been unable to obtain information. For example, on VX it says: "Documentation available to Unmovic suggests that Iraq at least had had far reaching plans to weaponise VX ... "Mustard constituted an important part (about 70%) of Iraq's CW arsenal ... 550 mustard filled shells and up to 450 mustard filled aerial bombs unaccounted for ... additional uncertainty with respect of 6526 aerial bombs, corresponding to approximately 1000 tonnes of agent, predominantly mustard. "Based on unaccounted for growth media, Iraq's potential production of anthrax could have been in the range of about 15,000 to 25,000 litres ... Based on all the available evidence, the strong presumption is that about 10,000 litres of anthrax was not destroyed and may still exist." On this basis, had we meant what we said in resolution 1441, the security council should have convened and condemned Iraq as in material breach. What is perfectly clear is that Saddam is playing the same old games in the same old way. Yes there are concessions. But no fundamental change of heart or mind. But the inspectors indicated there was at least some cooperation; and the world rightly hesitated over war. We therefore approached a second resolution in this way. We laid down an ultimatum calling upon Saddam to come into line with resolution 1441 or be in material breach. Not an unreasonable proposition, given the history. But still countries hesitated: how do we know how to judge full cooperation? We then worked on a further compromise. We consulted the inspectors and drew up five tests based on the document they published on 7 March. Tests like interviews with 30 scientists outside of Iraq; production of the anthrax or documentation showing its destruction. The inspectors added another test: that Saddam should publicly call on Iraqis to cooperate with them. So we constructed this framework: that Saddam should be given a specified time to fulfil all six tests to show full cooperation; that if he did so the inspectors could then set out a forward work programme and that if he failed to do so, action would follow. So clear benchmarks; plus a clear ultimatum. I defy anyone to describe that as an unreasonable position. Last Monday, we were getting somewhere with it. We very nearly had majority agreement and I thank the Chilean President particularly for the constructive way he approached the issue. There were debates about the length of the ultimatum. But the basic construct was gathering support. Then, on Monday night, France said it would veto a second resolution whatever the circumstances. Then France denounced the six tests. Later that day, Iraq rejected them. Still, we continued to negotiate. Last Friday, France said they could not accept any ultimatum. On Monday, we made final efforts to secure agreement. But they remain utterly opposed to anything which lays down an ultimatum authorising action in the event of non-compliance by Saddam. Just consider the position we are asked to adopt. Those on the security council opposed to us say they want Saddam to disarm but will not countenance any new resolution that authorises force in the event of non-compliance. That is their position. No to any ultimatum; no to any resolution that stipulates that failure to comply will lead to military action. So we must demand he disarm but relinquish any concept of a threat if he doesn't. From December 1998 to December 2002, no UN inspector was allowed to inspect anything in Iraq. For four years, not a thing. What changed his mind? The threat of force. From December to January and then from January through to February, concessions were made. What changed his mind? The threat of force. And what makes him now issue invitations to the inspectors, discover documents he said he never had, produce evidence of weapons supposed to be non-existent, destroy missiles he said he would keep? The imminence of force. The only persuasive power to which he responds is 250,000 allied troops on his doorstep. And yet when that fact is so obvious that it is staring us in the face, we are told that any resolution that authorises force will be vetoed. Not just opposed. Vetoed. Blocked. The way ahead was so clear. It was for the UN to pass a second resolution setting out benchmarks for compliance; with an ultimatum that if they were ignored, action would follow. The tragedy is that had such a resolution issued, he might just have complied. Because the only route to peace with someone like Saddam Hussein is diplomacy backed by force. Yet the moment we proposed the benchmarks, canvassed support for an ultimatum, there was an immediate recourse to the language of the veto. And now the world has to learn the lesson all over again that weakness in the face of a threat from a tyrant, is the surest way not to peace but to war. Looking back over 12 years, we have been victims of our own desire to placate the implacable, to persuade towards reason the utterly unreasonable, to hope that there was some genuine intent to do good in a regime whose mind is in fact evil. Now the very length of time counts against us. You've waited 12 years. Why not wait a little longer? And indeed we have. 1441 gave a final opportunity. The first test was the 8th of December. He failed it. But still we waited. Until January 27, the first inspection report that showed the absence of full cooperation. Another breach. And still we waited. Until February 14 and then February 28 with concessions, according to the old familiar routine, tossed to us to whet our appetite for hope and further waiting. But still no-one, not the inspectors nor any member of the security council, not any half-way rational observer, believes Saddam is cooperating fully or unconditionally or immediately. Our fault has not been impatience. The truth is our patience should have been exhausted weeks and months and years ago. Even now, when if the world united and gave him an ultimatum: comply or face forcible disarmament, he might just do it, the world hesitates and in that hesitation he senses the weakness and therefore continues to defy. What would any tyrannical regime possessing WMD think viewing the history of the world's diplomatic dance with Saddam? That our capacity to pass firm resolutions is only matched by our feebleness in implementing them. That is why this indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us. Dangerous if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us. Dangerous because one day they will mistake our innate revulsion against war for permanent incapacity; when in fact, pushed to the limit, we will act. But then when we act, after years of pretence, the action will have to be harder, bigger, more total in its impact. Iraq is not the only regime with WMD. But back away now from this confrontation and future conflicts will be infinitely worse and more devastating. But, of course, in a sense, any fair observer does not really dispute that Iraq is in breach and that 1441 implies action in such circumstances. The real problem is that, underneath, people dispute that Iraq is a threat; dispute the link between terrorism and WMD; dispute the whole basis of our assertion that the two together constitute a fundamental assault on our way of life. There are glib and sometimes foolish comparisons with the 1930s. No one here is an appeaser. But the only relevant point of analogy is that with history, we know what happened. We can look back and say: there's the time; that was the moment; for example, when Czechoslovakia was swallowed up by the Nazis - that's when we should have acted. But it wasn't clear at the time. In fact at the time, many people thought such a fear fanciful. Worse, put forward in bad faith by warmongers. Listen to this editorial - from a paper I'm pleased to say with a different position today - but written in late 1938 after Munich when by now, you would have thought the world was tumultuous in its desire to act. "Be glad in your hearts. Give thanks to your God. People of Britain, your children are safe. Your husbands and your sons will not march to war. Peace is a victory for all mankind. And now let us go back to our own affairs. We have had enough of those menaces, conjured up from the continent to confuse us." Naturally should Hitler appear again in the same form, we would know what to do. But the point is that history doesn't declare the future to us so plainly. Each time is different and the present must be judged without the benefit of hindsight. So let me explain the nature of this threat as I see it. The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically. But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order. The threat is chaos. And there are two begetters of chaos. Tyrannical regimes with WMD and extreme terrorist groups who profess a perverted and false view of Islam. Let me tell the house what I know. I know that there are some countries or groups within countries that are proliferating and trading in WMD, especially nuclear weapons technology. I know there are companies, individuals, some former scientists on nuclear weapons programmes, selling their equipment or expertise. I know there are several countries - mostly dictatorships with highly repressive regimes - desperately trying to acquire chemical weapons, biological weapons or, in particular, nuclear weapons capability. Some of these countries are now a short time away from having a serviceable nuclear weapon. This activity is not diminishing. It is increasing. We all know that there are terrorist cells now operating in most major countries. Just as in the last two years, around 20 different nations have suffered serious terrorist outrages. Thousands have died in them. The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror. Round the world it now poisons the chances of political progress: in the Middle East; in Kashmir; in Chechnya; in Africa. The removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan dealt it a blow. But it has not gone away. And these two threats have different motives and different origins but they share one basic common view: they detest the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life. At the moment, I accept that association between them is loose. But it is hardening. And the possibility of the two coming together - of terrorist groups in possession of WMD, even of a so-called dirty radiological bomb is now, in my judgement, a real and present danger. And let us recall: what was shocking about September 11 was not just the slaughter of the innocent; but the knowledge that had the terrorists been able to, there would have been not 3,000 innocent dead, but 30,000 or 300,000 and the more the suffering, the greater the terrorists' rejoicing. Three kilograms of VX from a rocket launcher would contaminate a quarter of a square kilometre of a city. Millions of lethal doses are contained in one litre of Anthrax. 10,000 litres are unaccounted for. 11 September has changed the psychology of America. It should have changed the psychology of the world. Of course Iraq is not the only part of this threat. But it is the test of whether we treat the threat seriously. Faced with it, the world should unite. The UN should be the focus, both of diplomacy and of action. That is what 1441 said. That was the deal. And I say to you to break it now, to will the ends but not the means that would do more damage in the long term to the UN than any other course. To fall back into the lassitude of the last 12 years, to talk, to discuss, to debate but never act; to declare our will but not enforce it; to combine strong language with weak intentions, a worse outcome than never speaking at all. And then, when the threat returns from Iraq or elsewhere, who will believe us? What price our credibility with the next tyrant? No wonder Japan and South Korea, next to North Korea, has issued such strong statements of support. I have come to the conclusion after much reluctance that the greater danger to the UN is inaction: that to pass resolution 1441 and then refuse to enforce it would do the most deadly damage to the UN's future strength, confirming it as an instrument of diplomacy but not of action, forcing nations down the very unilateralist path we wish to avoid. But there will be, in any event, no sound future for the UN, no guarantee against the repetition of these events, unless we recognise the urgent need for a political agenda we can unite upon. What we have witnessed is indeed the consequence of Europe and the United States dividing from each other. Not all of Europe - Spain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Portugal - have all strongly supported us. And not a majority of Europe if we include, as we should, Europe's new members who will accede next year, all 10 of whom have been in our support. But the paralysis of the UN has been born out of the division there is. And at the heart of it has been the concept of a world in which there are rival poles of power. The US and its allies in one corner. France, Germany, Russia and its allies in the other. I do not believe that all of these nations intend such an outcome. But that is what now faces us. I believe such a vision to be misguided and profoundly dangerous. I know why it arises. There is resentment of US predominance. There is fear of US unilateralism. People ask: do the US listen to us and our preoccupations? And there is perhaps a lack of full understanding of US preoccupations after 11th September. I know all of this. But the way to deal with it is not rivalry but partnership. Partners are not servants but neither are they rivals. I tell you what Europe should have said last September to the US. With one voice it should have said: we understand your strategic anxiety over terrorism and WMD and we will help you meet it. We will mean what we say in any UN resolution we pass and will back it with action if Saddam fails to disarm voluntarily; but in return we ask two things of you: that the US should choose the UN path and you should recognise the fundamental overriding importance of re-starting the MEPP (Middle East Peace Process), which we will hold you to. I do not believe there is any other issue with the same power to re-unite the world community than progress on the issues of Israel and Palestine. Of course there is cynicism about recent announcements. But the US is now committed, and, I believe genuinely, to the roadmap for peace, designed in consultation with the UN. It will now be presented to the parties as Abu Mazen is confirmed in office, hopefully today. All of us are now signed up to its vision: a state of Israel, recognised and accepted by all the world, and a viable Palestinian state. And that should be part of a larger global agenda. On poverty and sustainable development. On democracy and human rights. On the good governance of nations. That is why what happens after any conflict in Iraq is of such critical significance. Here again there is a chance to unify around the UN. Let me make it clear. There should be a new UN resolution following any conflict providing not just for humanitarian help but also for the administration and governance of Iraq. That must now be done under proper UN authorisation. It should protect totally the territorial integrity of Iraq. And let the oil revenues - which people falsely claim we want to seize - be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. And let the future government of Iraq be given the chance to begin the process of uniting the nation's disparate groups, on a democratic basis, respecting human rights, as indeed the fledgling democracy in Northern Iraq - protected from Saddam for 12 years by British and American pilots in the no-fly zone - has done so remarkably. And the moment that a new government is in place - willing to disarm Iraq of WMD - for which its people have no need or purpose - then let sanctions be lifted in their entirety. I have never put our justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in resolution 1441. That is our legal base. But it is the reason, I say frankly, why if we do act we should do so with a clear conscience and strong heart. I accept fully that those opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? Iraq is a wealthy country that in 1978, the year before Saddam seized power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia. Today it is impoverished, 60% of its population dependent on food aid. Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine. Four million people out of a population of just over 20 million are in exile. The brutality of the repression - the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented. Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others. I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam. "But you don't", she replied. "You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear." And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to live. We must face the consequences of the actions we advocate. For me, that means all the dangers of war. But for others, opposed to this course, it means - let us be clear - that the Iraqi people, whose only true hope of liberation lies in the removal of Saddam, for them, the darkness will close back over them again; and he will be free to take his revenge upon those he must know wish him gone. And if this house now demands that at this moment, faced with this threat from this regime, that British troops are pulled back, that we turn away at the point of reckoning, and that is what it means - what then? What will Saddam feel? Strengthened beyond measure. What will the other states who tyrannise their people, the terrorists who threaten our existence, what will they take from that? That the will confronting them is decaying and feeble. Who will celebrate and who will weep? And if our plea is for America to work with others, to be good as well as powerful allies, will our retreat make them multilateralist? Or will it not rather be the biggest impulse to unilateralism there could ever be. And what of the UN and the future of Iraq and the Middle East peace plan, devoid of our influence, stripped of our insistence? This house wanted this decision. Well it has it. Those are the choices. And in this dilemma, no choice is perfect, no cause ideal. But on this decision hangs the fate of many things: Of whether we summon the strength to recognise this global challenge of the 21st century and meet it. Of the Iraqi people, groaning under years of dictatorship. Of our armed forces - brave men and women of whom we can feel proud, whose morale is high and whose purpose is clear. Of the institutions and alliances that will shape our world for years to come." I can think of many things, of whether we summon the strength to recognise the global challenge of the 21st century and beat it, of the Iraqi people groaning under years of dictatorship, of our armed forces - brave men and women of whom we can feel proud, whose morale is high and whose purpose is clear - of the institutions and alliances that shape our world for years to come. To retreat now, I believe, would put at hazard all that we hold dearest, turn the UN back into a talking shop, stifle the first steps of progress in the Middle East; leave the Iraqi people to the mercy of events on which we would have relinquished all power to influence for the better. Tell our allies that at the very moment of action, at the very moment when they need our determination that Britain faltered. I will not be party to such a course. This is not the time to falter. This is the time for this house, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this house to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing. I beg to move the motion. 12:49:44 PM

Monday, March 17, 2003

[Colin Glassey] On the Benefits of Trying the U.N. Route I'm sickened by the foolishness and lack of seriousness in the U.N. It is clear to me that it is no better than the League of Nations regarding the big issues of war and international order. France and Germany are especially blameworthy but I am not impressed by the performance of our nominal allies Mexico and Chile in the Security Council. However, Steven Den Beste has a very insightful essay on the advantages we have gained from following the U.N. route. He lists three major advantages: The Bush administration gained a vote from Congress that authorized war without the requirement of an additional U.N. resolution. Den Beste argues that this was much less likely to occur if the Bush administration had said from the start "screw the U.N.". I agree, the correct Congressional legislation which passed would have been less likely. Because we went down the U.N. path (and did not succeed), during the time that we built up our forces in Kuwait, Saddam did not attack our forces. Den Beste thinks this is an obvious strategy but I disagree. Attacking the U.S. forces in Kuwait would have ended all debate instantly. We would have taken more losses but our counter attack on Iraq would have been unrelenting. The debate flushed out the weasels. This is a huge issue and I agree with Den Beste that this is crucial over the long term. We can now clearly see how far France is from being an ally of the United States. I think it is clear to many people in Europe how much France had taken upon itself the role as the unelected leader of Europe. I fervently hope that the French fail in their efforts to become the ruler of the United Europe. I hope that the behavior of the French will persuade other nations to limit the power of France in the future. Other weasels we have found are the Germans under Schroder and the Turks under the new "Justice and Development Party". How these two governments can turn their backs on 50 years of alliance with the United States is beyond me. I think our bases in Germany should close permanantly. I also think our bases in Turkey should close for good. As far as I'm concerned, these countries are no longer the allies the United States. People used to say that a weakness in the U.S. form of government was our foreign policy changed with every new administration. Well, we have been allies and supporters of the German and Turkish state ever since 1950. 50 long years and 11 different presidents. Yet the parliments of both these countries were willing to throw off that alliance with little apparent consideration of the consequences, with no thought as to the cost/benefit analysis. This is democracy in action as the opinion polls show the governments are very much in line with popular feeling in both countries. Sometimes leadership invovles doing the right thing even when it is unpopular. 11:40:45 PM     [Colin Glassey] War with Iraq War with Iraq is now unavoidable. There is no chance that Saddam will just pack his bags and head out of town, giving up his life of power and his ability to order the torture or death of anyone who looks at him funny. I'm glad. I'm glad that the weasels didn't manage to derail this plan. I hope France reaps the whirlwind from their opposition to us. I'm glad that the Iraqi people will finally be rid of one of the worst dictators still living (though not for much longer). I'm glad that our President has stood firm and not buckeled under the vicious attacks by the scared, the pacificst, and the just plain stupid. Two years ago I voted for Al Gore for president. Knowing what I know now, I would not have cast that vote. Bush has exceeded my expectations, vastly exceeded them. Right now, as a registered democrat, I don't see any cantidate who can get my vote in the next election, other than President Bush. I say this knowing that he is profoundly wrong and mistaken on a wide range of issues such as: Taxation, Abortion, Energy Policy, and, even Global Warming. But all those issues don't match up to one issue: the role of the United States in dealing with terrorist nations who seek nuclear weapons. Attacking and deposing Saddam is the right thing to do and I'm reasonably certain that Al Gore would never have mustered the sheer guts to do this in the face of French, German, Russian, and Chinese opposition. The right man won the election of 2000. I was wrong. Like Truman, this president is doing the hard thing, but the right thing at the right time. 6:11:26 PM

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Lee Harris Asks some Really Big Questions This essay by Lee Harris called Our World Historical Gamble is one of the most brilliant essay's I have read in the last six months. Mr. Harris is on quite a roll because his previous essays have been brilliant also. The new essay is quite long but it pulls together some of the ideas from his previous writing and makes a more coherent whole out of them. I'm still digesting it but here are some choice quotes. When people are forced to create their own material world through their own labor, they are certainly not setting out to achieve a greater insight into the nature of reality - they are merely trying to feed themselves, and to provide their children with clothing and a roof over their heads. And yet, whether they will or no, they are also, at every step of the way, acquiring a keener grasp of the objective nature of world. A man who wishes to build his own home with his own hands must come to grips with the recalcitrant properties of wood and gravity: he must learn to discipline his own activities so that he is in fact able to achieve his end. He will come to see that certain things work and that others don't. He will realize that in order to have A, you must first make sure of B. He will be forced to develop a sense of the realistic - and this, once again, is a cultural constant, measured entirely by the ability of each particular culture to cope successfully with the specific challenge posed by the world it inhabits. But all of this is lost on the man who simply pays another man to build his home for him. He is free to imagine his dream house, and to indulge in every kind of fantasy. The proper nature of the material need not concern him - gravity doesn't interest him. He makes the plans out of his head and expects them to be fulfilled at his whim. If we look at the source of the Arab wealth we find it is nothing they created for themselves. It has come to them by magic, much like a story of the Arabian nights, and it allows them to live in a feudal fantasyland. What Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have in common is that they became rich because the West paid them for natural resources that the West could simply have taken from them at will, and without so much as a Thank You, if the West had been inclined to do so. They were, by one of the bitter paradoxes of history, the pre-eminent beneficiaries of the Western liberalism that they have pledged themselves to destroy. Their power derives entirely from the fact that the West had committed itself, in the aftermath of World War II, to a policy of not robbing other societies of their natural resources simply because it possessed the military might to do so - nor does it matter whether the West followed this policy out of charitable instinct, or out of prudence, or out of a cynical awareness that it was more cost effective to do so. All that really matters is the quite unintended consequence of the West's conduct: the prodigious funding of fantasists who are thereby enabled to pursue their demented agendas unencumbered by any realistic calculation of the risks or costs of their action. Or this section on nation-states: There is, of course, nothing to keep one from applying the purely honorific title of "state" to the Palestinians, for example, just as the English are perfectly entitled to dub a popular singer a Knight, though it would be dangerous to rely on him to defend the realm. But merely to call the Palestinian community a "state" does not and cannot transform it into a viable subsistent entity if those who govern and decide its course are utterly lacking in a sense of what is realistically available to them. And nothing highlights this more than the official explanation, on the part of Palestinian spokesmen, for those acts of terrorism committed by the suicide-bombers, the assertion that these are acts of war. For the bitter truth is that if the Palestinian people were indeed a genuine state fighting a genuine war, they would have long since been annihilated root and branch - or else they would have been forced to make a realistic accommodation with the state of Israel, based on a just assessment of the latter's immense superiority of resources, both military and political. And the reason for this superiority, by a paradox typical of history, is not American aid or funding, but the fact that the state of Israel has been forced to struggle for every moment of its existence from the very day of its birth - and it is this struggle that has made them into what no assembly of nations can ever bestow - a viable state. And unless the Palestinians as a people can set aside their fantasies of pushing a vastly superior enemy into the sea, instead of seeking out a realistic modus vivendi with him, they may demand a state, and even be "recognized" as a state. But it will exist as a viable entity only by virtue of the liberal conscience - and seemingly inexhaustible forbearance - of the Israeli people. This captures it exactly. The Palestinians are living in a dream world where they say they are fighting a war on Israel and so all actions are justified yet the reality is that if they were fighting a real war, they would have lost it already. This is from the end of the essay: At the heart of the dialectically emergent concept of neo-sovereignty is precisely the double standard that Mr. Butler denounced - a double standard imposed by the U.S. on the rest of the world, whereby the U.S. can unilaterally decide to act, if need be, to override and even to cancel the existence of any state regime that proposes to develop WMD, especially in those cases where the state regime in question has demonstrated its dangerous lack of a sense of the realistic. What the critics of this policy fail to see is the simple and obvious fact that if any social order is to achieve stability there must be, at the heart of it, a double standard governing the use of violence and force. There must be one agent who is permitted to use force against other agents who are not permitted to use force. The implementation of the fashionable myth that all violence is equally immoral and reprehensible would inevitably result, in a typical dialectical reversal, in the Hobbesian state of universal war. Every civilized order, precisely in so far as it is a civilized order, relies on such a double standard. The only alternative to this is the frank and candid acceptance of anarchy, the state in which all recourse to violence is equally legitimate. But what Mr. Butler and others fail to realize is that anarchy with clubs and sticks is a much preferable to anarchy with nuclear weapons. Bottom line: if the world comprises a social order, then it needs some entity which can enforce the law. Otherwise you have anarchy not order. We are the only country which can "enforce the law". If we don't, the social order will collapse. It is as simple as that. If we don't police the world, no one else will. 11:31:52 AM

Monday, March 10, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Last Year has brought some Good This was an interesting editorial from Bruce Anderson of the Independent (a UK based newspaper). Bruce argues that the delay in attacking Iraq has resulted in two significant changes: The United States is now commited to a grand vision of rebuilding the Middle East along democratic lines. The problems with the idea of Europe have now been laid bare for all to see. France sees Europe as a means to regain great power status without really working. Europe was to become a super state with France in charge. I actually don't agree that there has been much, if any, delay. Getting rid of the Taliban was obviously job one after 9/11/2001. Spending a year to get our forces in place to conquer Iraq is perfectly reasonable. This last year has been most enlightening, in the following ways: France has been revealed as not our ally, but our opponenet. The U.N. has turned out to be useless on matters of International Law and Security. The United States government has reaffirmed its commitment to democracy throughout the world. These are all things worth knowing. 11:42:49 AM

Friday, March 07, 2003

[Colin Glassey] We can Fight Iraq Without Turkey News that the Turkish Parliament turned down the U.S. proposal for basing U.S. Army forces inside Turkey prior to an invasion of Turkey has been seen by some as a cause for alarm. I'm not at all sure it is a problem for the U.S. or for the people of Iraq, specifically the Kurds. In late 2001, Will Safire proposed a thought experiment in which he suggested we allow divide Iraq into multiple regions. The northern region of Iraq would be given to Turkey, the southern region given to Kuwait, and the central area would stay "Iraq". This was the "take out Iraq on the cheap" option. We don't (yet) live a world where the countries are carved up like slices of cake like they were 100 years ago. So, the U.S. Government never made this offer to Turkey and instead we told Turkey our forces were going into Iraq and they needed to stay out. Turkey seemingly didn't much like this proposal (nor the 25 billion dollars in direct aid and loan guarentees), or at least they didn't like it enough to pass the authorization in parliament. Is this bad? I think not. The truth is that 15% of Iraq is already free from Saddam, its under the control of the two Kurdish "mini-states" (this is a map of both "mini-states"). These Kurdish mini-states have their own armies, governments, press, internet cafes, and not too much political repression. To some degree democracy has already sprung up in Iraq, and Turkish troops in northern Iraq would only cause trouble. This is a (now rare) good editorial from the New York Times on Turkey and Kurdistan. Bottom line: Turkey should stay out of Iraq and if the Kurds (like the Kosovars in souther Serbia) want to live independently of a nation that has in times past brutally treated them, we should not prevent this. 12:42:13 PM     [Colin Glassey] Camille Paglia on Religion in the United States Paglia has a long, somewhat rambeling essay on religious cults in the United States, starting with the 1960s. As is usual for Ms. Paglia she is facinating to read and has an unusual take on history. In summary Paglia compares the 1960's cultural movements to the Mystery Cults that permiated the Roman Empire. The Mystery Cults have largely vanished from knowledge but they were real and quite significant in the lives of people 2,000 years ago. The major mystery cults were those of Mithras, Dionysus, Demeter, and Isis. Here is quote from Camille's essay: Yet a major source of cultic energies in twentieth-century America was the entertainment industry: the Hollywood studio system, cohering during and just after World War I, projected its manufactured stars as simulacra of the pagan pantheon. Frenzied fans (a word derived from the Latin fanatici, for maddened worshippers of Cybele) had already been generated by grand opera in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when castrati sang female roles and were the dizzy object of coterie speculation and intrigue. Modern mass media immensely extended and broadened that phenomenon. Outbursts of quasi-religious emotion could be seen in the hysterical response of female fans to Rudolph Valentino, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and the Beatles. Eroticism mixed with death is archetypally potent: there were nearly riots by distraught mourners after Valentino’s death from a perforated ulcer at age thirty-one in 1926. The rumor that Elvis lives is still stubbornly planted in the culture, as if he were a demigod who could conquer natural law. 12:00:06 PM     [Colin Glassey] A Short History of Modern Arab Governments This is an excellant essay on the history of Arab governments since 1919 by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri is an Iranian living in Paris writting from the Jerusalem Post. He wrote another article today on the nature of Iraq's army. Sorry to say the Jerusalem Post requires (free) registration. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the link. This is an exerpt from early in the essay: Most of the states where the model developed had come into being in the aftermath of the First World War and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In every case, Britain and France, the two European colonial powers that had inherited the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, played the central role in shaping the new states. These new states, at times described as "Sykes-Picot" offspring, were almost invariably shaped as instruments for protecting and/or furthering some specific strategic interest of the colonial power concerned. Iraq, for example, was created around the oilfields of Mosul and Kirkuk. The Egyptian state's task was to help protect the Suez Canal. Lebanon was carved out as a state to safeguard the interests of the Christians of the Orient under French protection. Transjordan was a British military outpost with the task of keeping an eye on the Arabian Peninsula to the south and east, and providing a base for intervention in the Levant. 11:52:34 AM

Thursday, February 27, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The President on Democracy in Iraq Good speach here by President Bush on The Future of Iraq. He says straight out, the goal is to do for Iraq what we did for Germany and Japan at the end of World War II, transform the country, give it democracy. Hear hear! For a more complex analysis of U.S. motivations, try this editorial from the Hindustan Times, by Pramit Chaudhuri. Thanks to Steve Den Beste for the link. 2:27:22 PM

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

[Colin Glassey] James Robbins on Iraq After the War Good article at the National Review Online on how we might rebuild the government of Iraq. Worth a read. Once again the Federalist Papers ride on. 2:33:48 PM

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Chirac Losing His Mind I can't believe that this isn't bigger news. Steve Den Beste has a posting about it but not many other U.S. newspapers have mentioned it so far. Chirac, the Prime Minister of France, said the following after meeting of the EU: I think they have behaved with a certain frivolity, because entering the EU requires a modicum of consideration for the others, a modicum of consultation. If on encountering the first difficulty, we start asserting our own view without regard for others that are part of the integrated whole that we wish to join, then it is irresponsible behavior, not well brought-up. In conclusion, I think the candidates have missed a good occasion to keep silent. This is from the B.B.C.'s news site Eight former communist countries are set to join the EU next year, but Mr Chirac was particularly critical of the poorest applicants, Romania and Bulgaria, which will have to wait until 2007. Their position is already very delicate, he said, and if they wanted to diminish their chances of joining the EU they could not have chosen a better way. So, Chirac is saying to the new members of the EU "if you don't follow France's lead, you will be in trouble in the EU". And he threatened Rumania and Bulgaria directly because they dared to express an opinion at varience with that of France. Who does Chirac think he is? The President of the EU? The leader of Europe? Who the hell voted for him in any country outside of France? No one. So what gives him the right to speak for the other nations in the EU? What gives him the right to tell them to "shut up"? Since when in the EU charter does it say that France has the authority as a senior member of the EU to tell other nations what to do? Here is a small selection (also from the B.B.C.) of responses by other countries to Chirac's outragous statement. My take: France is a 3rd rate country with delusions of grandure. It has been a failure in just about every foreign affair since 1939. The French leadership felt that the EU was going to be a path for them to rule Europe on the cheap. The French government thinks that an anti-American policy is the only reasonable policy for Europe. I'm glad to see that the other nations in the EU have governments that aren't so despicable. Hats off to our real allies: Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, and Latvia. France is no ally of the United States. They are attempting to become an enemy, and doing it by dragging the EU with them. Its time to remove France from the Security Council of the U.N., remove France from NATO, and reconsider our trade relations with them. Its time to let the French government know that they can not work against the United States without negative consequences. Here is a quote from the Latvia: All right, Monsieur Chirac. Perhaps we are poor. Perhaps we were not raised properly. We do not know about fine wine and the various directions of avant-garde art. But we do not repay those who have helped us and who continue to help us with ingratitude. Neatkariga Rita Avize Also, I wish the Germans would hurry up and kick out the useless fool Schroeder. I do blame the opposition party for not firmly and clearly stating their support for the United States. Here is an attempt to mend fences by the new leader of the opposition: Angela Merkel. It strikes me as pretty wishy-washy but its better than "Hell no we won't go" Schoeder. 11:45:27 PM     [Colin Glassey] Why Study History Another attempt on my part to explain (to my hypothetical students) why they should study history. Is this too preachy? Let me know if you have any comments. What is History and Why Should You Learn it? History is the study of our past civilizations. History is an attempt first to find out what happened, accurately, then to try and explain why things happened. History starts essentially where anthropology ends. History starts with civilization and civilization starts with the written word. Prior to written records, history has very little to say. History is, as a result, completely bound up in the nature of humans. Koala bears have no history. Lava rocks have no history. Humans, once they developed civilization, have a history. There is about 5,000 years of human history. At 20 years per generation, that means approximately 250 “parents” ago, your distant ancestors first started down the path that leads to us here today. So, that is what history is, but why do we learn it? What use is it? Henry Ford once said “History is bunk.” Now Henry Ford is a very great man in the history of America, and, as an historian, I honor his memory (though I can’t say I’ve bought any of his company’s cars). Some people care too much about history, certain Arab terrorists say they want to bring back the golden age of their civilization, they want to return to a time about 900 years ago. This is a real problem for them because the past isn't coming back. Americans are always accused of paying too little attention to the past, we are a nation that in many ways has ignored the past and just moved on. This is why we need to know history: We need to know history because without that knowledge our world makes no sense. As I have said, history is the study of human civilization. We need to know history because our civilization is built on things that were created by other people, just like you and me, but in the past. Humans of 5,000 years ago weren’t different in any significant way from humans today. They were our size, they had our feelings, our fears, our loves. Nothing separates us from the first Egyptians who carved hieroglyphs on the tombs of their Pharaohs, nothing but 5,000 years and the steady accumulation of knowledge. Today, in America, we live better lives than the gods the Egyptians worshiped. Think about that for a moment. The ancient Egyptians thought about paradise and the gods who lived in that paradise and what they would have: food, wine, musicians, messengers, a celestial boat for taking cruises in the sky, the occasional fight with a rebellious god (that would be Set) but not much else to worry about. Now think about our lives. Thanks to 5,000 years of human civilization we have PlayStations, jet airplanes, cell telephones, the Mars observer, and the Internet. Thanks to humans over the last 250 years we Americans have a great deal of personal freedom, the ability to elect our own leaders, and the freedom to worship the god of our choosing. Thanks to the humans of the last 100 years, your parents, your grand parents and your great grand parents, we Americans live in the most powerful nation the world has ever known. If you don’t know our history you would have no idea why you get to elect the president. If you don’t know our history you would have no idea why you can read 100 different newspapers. If you don’t know our history you would have no idea why people from every spot on this planet live in this country. These are all remarkable, strange things. In most countries humans don’t choose their leaders. In many countries you have to believe what the government tells you to believe (or say you do). In many countries you only get to read what someone in the government thinks it is ok for you to read it. And no other country in the world has a population like the United States. Not one. So, only by knowing the past can we make any sense of the present. By knowing the past we can get some understanding of the world around us. But that isn’t all. Because by knowing history, we can become aquainted, in a limited way, with the greatest people who have ever lived: Ahkenaten of Egypt, the man who invented the idea that there was one supreme god who we should worship. Confucius, the man who invented the idea of man living in harmony with other people not because some god laid down the law, but because it made sense. Or my favorite: Aristotle, the smartest man of his age, the man who literally invented logic, science, and the way we think about the world today. History is filled with the stories of people who lived lives of adventure that are more impressive than Indiana Jones, people like Francisco de Orellana, the Spanish Conquistador who explored the Amazon River. He set off on an expedition with no idea how far the rain forest stretched or what lay between him and the Atlantic Ocean. And consider George Washington, the man who could have become king of America, if only he had wanted the title. Instead he gave up his power and lived his remaining years on his farm in Virginia. How many people in history have ever done such a thing when the choice was freely offered them? Its not just men that made history. Cleopatra was a woman who ruled Egypt and nearly broke the Roman Empire in two. And the Empress Wu, the one and only Empress in Chinese History. How about Queen Elizabeth of England? The queen of Shakespeare and our own Renaissance Fair? Or Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists who ever put pen to paper? In the last hundred years there have been some amazing people as well: Mohandas Ghandi, Albert Einstein, Teddy Roosevelt, Madame Curie, Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Jon Von Neuman, Thurogood Marshall, Richard Feynman, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Jerry Rice. The history of these people’s lives, their deeds, will remain with us as long as our civilization survives. So long as libraries exist and people have the freedom to read books, the lives of these people can inspire us, years, centuries after they are dead. I am, and you are, the spiritual heirs of people like Ben Franklin, who more than any other person, set American on the path which we still travel today. A land of freedom and tolerance, a land where people openly seek happiness. By learning history we can make sense of the world in which we are living. By studying history we can meet some of the greatest people who have lived. By studying history we can learn what humans can do. However, as Aristotle said, everything in moderation. Too much history can hem you in. Make you fearful of the future, make you dream only of the past when there were parts of the world that were unexplored, when there were lost cities of gold, when barbarian hordes roamed the steppes of Russia. Too much history can make you forget that you have a life to lead here and now. But I’m not worried that you will become too wrapped up in history. As Americans we forget much of the past and dream about the future. It is who we are. It is a defining trait. Learn about the past, dream about the future. Everything in moderation. 10:44:09 PM

Thursday, February 13, 2003

[Colin Glassey] David Remick writes about Vaclav Havel Vaclav Havel gave up his position as President of the Czech Republic this last week. David Remnick (editor of The New Yorker) writes this wonderful appreciation of the great Czech. For me Havel is an notable figure in World History. He is living proof that you can be a moral, thoughtful, decent, self-doubting, leader of a modern nation. I strongly suspect that he could not have held office in earlier times but we live in a more civilized age. We live in an age where playwrites can be political leaders. This is a sign of hope for me. May we see his like in the future. Here's to you Vaclav. 12:04:07 PM     [Colin Glassey] Fouad Ajami on Iraq This is the article which Danial Pipes refered to in his comment for the New York Post last week. Its a long read but very insightful. I must say it is very sad that for all the money we have given to Egypt over the last 25 years (more than 50 billion dollars so far), the net result is Egypt is a military dictatorship where the majority (?) of the people hate America, especially the young. Hopefully we can do better in Iraq. 11:57:28 AM

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Another W.W.II Soldier Dies of Old Age This is one a number of obits which I have enjoyed reading in the London Times over the years. This obit is for a tank commander who escaped on several occasions from the Germans. Hail Major Fane-Hervey. Its men like Major Fane-Hervey who won the war for all of us. 6:14:45 PM     [Colin Glassey] Why Buddhism Doesn't Work for John Horgan Good article in Slate by Horgan on why Buddhism doesn't work for him. Here is a paragraph: For many, a chief selling point of Buddhism is its supposed de-emphasis of supernatural notions such as immortal souls and God. Buddhism "rejects the theological impulse," the philosopher Owen Flanagan declares approvingly in The Problem of the Soul. Actually, Buddhism is functionally theistic, even if it avoids the "G" word. Like its parent religion Hinduism, Buddhism espouses reincarnation, which holds that after death our souls are re-instantiated in new bodies, and karma, the law of moral cause and effect. Together, these tenets imply the existence of some cosmic judge who, like Santa Claus, tallies up our naughtiness and niceness before rewarding us with rebirth as a cockroach or as a saintly lama. My take on Buddhism is as follows: Buddhism relies on a fundemental belief that the world we live in is essentially bad (life is pain). I reject that assumption. I admit that 2500 years ago when the Buddha lived he might well have been correct but things have changed. Life for an American circa 2000 C.E. is pretty nice. My children aren't likely to die before I do. I have access to the world's greatest artists, both visual and musical at the tip of my fingers. I have access to vast amounts of knowledge and the thoughts of the wisest people alive today. I'm part of the greatest, most just, most peaceful civilization the Earth has ever known. Compared to the life of even a prince from 500 B.C.E. my life is vastly better. Buddhism further relies on the idea that people don't die permenantly in a real sense but are reincarnated, over and over again, unless they find the Buddha's way out. I reject this assumption also. I see no evidence for this belief. It may well be true but no one can prove it. Its not a belief I would want to rest my religion on. As far as I'm concerned, when I die, the future of my consciousness is totally unknown. Reincarnation is no more likely than nothingness. Bottom line: I'm not concerned with escaping this life, nor am I worried about the prospect that I might be reincarnated. I admire a great deal about Buddhism, but I'm not Buddhist. 5:57:46 PM

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

[Colin Glassey] A Compendium of Nearly Useless Information Here is a web site (Art with an Attitude) that contains information only of interest to people like me who might someday need the names of the Celtic gods :-) 2:28:36 PM     [Colin Glassey] Dan Pipes on What Next? Here is Danial Pipes on the current debate, After Saddam?. Pipes describes the two major options in one corner: Fouad Ajami at Johns Hopkins who writes: Above and beyond toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein and dismantling its deadly weapons, the driving motivation of a new American endeavor in Iraq and in neighboring Arab lands should be modernizing the Arab world. In the other corner we have Andrew Bacevich, at Boston College who argues that the United States should confine its attention to Iraq itself and not make grand plans to bring democracy to the Arabs. Put another way: which example from history should we follow? Germany, Japan, South Korea post World War II? Or Vietnam post 1960? Like Dan Pipes, I'm firmly in the more than Iraq camp. Here is a quote from Stephan Ambrose's last book To America: I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education, women's rights, freedom of relgion, democracy, an openness to all ethnic groups, the will to admit that terrible mistakes have been made - slavery, imperialism, segragation - and a determination to correct those mistakes. Its time to extend this American ideology to the rest of the world. 12:59:33 PM     [Colin Glassey] May You Live in Interesting Times This is a Chinese curse (of sorts). We are indeed living in interesting times. Its scary and depressing also. Last week I said that NATO was dead. Yesterday that was proved when Belgium (supported by France and Germany) blocked the planning for movement of equipment to help protect Turkey from Iraq. How can Germany, France and Belgium be so stupid as to work to destroy NATO? It boggles the mind. Did they get nothing from NATO over the last 50 years? Here is a short comment from Wax Tadpole in which he quotes a German former General Klaus Naumann. Here is an update from Eamonn Fitzgerald who works in Muich. I'm saddened by the breakdown of NATO. Here is some speculation by Admiral Quixote, based on speculation by Steve Den Beste. However, all things must pass. And the truth is the French, the Belgians, and Germans are just hurting themselves by blowing up NATO (or at least their membership in it). 11:07:18 AM     [Colin Glassey] Hail Caesar Two pseudo-blogs have been created lately, one is the supposed blog of Julius Caesar as he conquers France. The other pseudo-blog is that of Samuel Pepys. Both are interesting historial blogs. The Pepys blog is historically accurate (a rendition of his diary). The Caesar blog is more of an invention. On the other hand, Caesar had a rather more interesting life. 10:43:44 AM

Friday, February 07, 2003

[Colin Glassey] An American Empire? Here is a good essay by Collin May called If anyone has a better idea than an American empire, I’d certainly like to hear it. Here is the opening paragraph: Over the last couple of days, I’ve been watching some French political discussions on television, and the one thing that struck me was, no matter the issue, one thing was clear: the United States and the United States alone has the necessary resources to deal with international problems. Indeed, I would go even further to say that recent events, especially as regards Europe in general and France in particular, demonstrate that the rest of the world is almost entirely unable to deal with any international crises. As a result, one could almost say that the contrast between the United States and the remainder of the world is equivalent to the difference between order on the one hand and almost complete chaos on the other. While some may seek an alternate world order to that guaranteed by the United States, I would state simply that no such alternative now exists. There is American order or there is disaster. I agree. If the United States choose to follow Pat Buchannon and ignore the rest of world, no other coutry would be able to do anything about Iraq. Not Russia (which can't even control Chechnya), not England, not France, not China, not India, not Germany, no one. 6:17:26 PM     [Colin Glassey] New Words WordSpy.com is a very good web site which lists new works that are barging their way into the English language. Try some of these words out: Bitter-blocker, Bridezilla, and Joy-to-Stuff ratio. 4:30:31 PM

Thursday, February 06, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Rational Self-Interested French Government Here is a good essay by Mark Steyn of the National Post in which he argues that French foreign policy is quite rational. Here are the closing paragraphs: Meanwhile, the peacenik predisposition of the other Continentals is a useful cover for French ambition. Last year Paavo Lipponen, the Finnish Prime Minister, declared that "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests." This sounds insane. But, to France, it has a compelling logic. You can't beat the Americans on the battlefield, but you can tie them down limb by limb in the UN and other supranational bodies. In other words, this is the war, this is the real battlefield, not the sands of Mesopotamia. And, on this terrain, Americans always lose. Either they win but get no credit, as in Afghanistan. Or they win a temporary constrained victory to be subverted by subsequent French machinations, as in the last Gulf War. This time round, who knows? But through it all France is admirably upfront in its unilateralism: It reserves the right to treat French Africa as its colonies, Middle Eastern dictators as its clients, the European Union as a Greater France and the UN as a kind of global condom to prevent the spread of Americanization. All this it does shamelessly and relatively effectively. It's time the rest of the West was so clear-sighted. I'm a bit pleased by this analysis. At least it suggests the French aren't mere cowards. Their government is (under this analyis) amoral and self-rightous but at least there is some reason behind their behavior. However, it is quite clear they are NOT our ally. Such is life. 1:01:17 PM     [Colin Glassey] Greg Benford on the Future of NASA Benford is a member in the group of "Science Fiction writer shuttle opponents". Here is his latest comment on called Beyond the Shuttle. I agree with him in every respect. BTW: Greg has been writing some nice SF over the last decade. I enjoyed Eater and Cosm a great deal. 12:52:30 PM

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Two Faces of Islam This is a wonderful book review of the new book titled The Two Faces of Islam. The book goes into the history of Wahhabism, a cultic travesty of Islam. Frankly, I didn't know just how bad the Wahhabis were. They (and the Al Saud family) rose to power in the late 1700s, murdering and stealing from all the Moslems around them. The Wahhabis argued that since they didn't follow the Wahhabi teachings, their fellow Arabians weren't real Moslems and so any ill treatment was perfectly justified. This first surge by the Wahhabis was stopped by the famous Egyptian military leader Muhammad Ali, who was authorized by the Ottoman empire to go to Arabia and crush the Wahhabis. Ali did this, but (saddly) failed to wipe out the Wahhabis or the Saud family. And so, 70 years later, in 1880, the Sauds returned to Ryad and Ibn Saud then conquered Saudi Arabia, bringing with him the hateful Wahhabi clerics. There is more, and in leads directly to 9/11/2001. Bottom line: Bin Laden is a Wahhabi fanatic, the Saudis have supported Wahhabi clerics for 225 years, he is their man. Period. 12:33:57 PM     [Colin Glassey] A Strong Arguement for Going into Space Here is an essay by James Pinkerton about the need to go into space. He puts it strongly: For Freedom and Survival. I agree with him. The Earth is fragile. Human civilization is destroyable. Human freedom can and likely will be eroded over time by laws and regulations. For now the Oceans are free, but given time, even they will fall under regulations and laws (in fact I think the sooner the better as far as fish populations are concerned). We need to start on building colonies outside the Earth. Mars is the easiest and most obvious place to go. Then Europa (perhaps). We need to do it and we might as well get started sooner rather than later. I also agree with this essay by Charles Krauthammer, which he calls Its Time to Dream Higher. Here is the best quote: The risk of catastrophe for a commercial jet is 1 in 2 million. For a fighter jet, it is 1 in 20,000. NASA's best estimate for the shuttle was 1 in 240. Our experience now tells us that it is about 1 in 50. That is a fantastic risk. It can be justified -- but only for fantastic journeys. The ultimate problem with the shuttle is not O-rings or loose tiles but a mission that makes no sense. The launches are magnificent and inspiring. But the mission is to endlessly traverse the most dangerous part of space -- the thin envelope of the atmosphere -- to get in and out of orbit without going anywhere beyond. Yet it is that very beyond -- the moon, the asteroids, Mars -- that is the whole point of leaving Earth in the first place. As usual, thanks to InstaPundit for the links. 12:04:42 PM

Monday, February 03, 2003

[Colin Glassey] A Short Comment on the Space Shuttle NASA has been claiming that they are very concerned about safety. That safety is their top proirity. That the shuttle won't fly again until the problem is solved. This is a load of horse manure. This is the truth: if all the tiles on the shuttle were to fall off during the lift-off, littering the ground with broken ceramic, there is NOTHING that NASA could do about it. That's it. The shuttle can't be repaired in space, we don't have back up systems that can reach the shuttle in time to save the crew, and if the shuttle isn't scheduled to rendevous with the space station, it can't get there on its own from any other orbit. The crew of this hypothetical shuttle would be faced with two alternatives: die from lack of oxygen in the shuttle, or die on re-entry as the shuttle burned up. If NASA has considered this scenario and come up with a solution for it, I would like to hear about it. As far as I know, there is no solution for this problem. On this last mission, NASA could have asked DoD to take high quality photos of the Shuttle to check for damage to the left wing. They didn't because, in my opinion, it wouldn't have made any difference. This is hardly what I would call a safe system. It could be better on several fronts: The shuttle should have a space-ready propultion system that allows it significant manvourablity after it reaches it initial orbit. It should be able to dock with the space station from any orbit. The space station should have some spare parts for the shuttle so that limited repairs can be made to the shuttle while docked with the station. If we are going to keep our current low-earth-orbit space station then the shuttle itself should be redesigned along several paths: cheaper to fly, more reliable, easier to repair especially in low-earth-orbit. Since we have spent 30 billion dollars on a space station and its up now with a crew, why can't we use it as a parts/repair stop for the shuttle itself? Why isn't every mission of the current fleet scheduled to orbit past the space station? To claim that safety is important to NASA today may be true in a narrow sense, but from a broad perspective, it would be laughable, if it weren't tragic. 11:39:53 AM     [Colin Glassey] The End of the Space Shuttle There are many people in the Space community who are not fans of the Space Shuttle. Within the Science Fiction community, the Space Shuttle has far more enemies than friends. The problems with the Shuttle are important: its too expensive, its too complex and risky to fly (we now have two fatal accidents in 113 launches for a failure rate of 1 disaster for every 60 successes), and it doesn't go high enough (it only makes it to low earth orbit, it can't get to the really usefull Geosynchronous orbit). Gregg Easterbrook has a good article in Time about the space shuttle. Why Easterbrook? Because back in 1980, Gregg Easterbrook wrote a detailed article in which he savaged the Space Shuttle program and he was right. See Gregg's original article here. Gregg's 2003 recomendations are sound: end the Shuttle program now. End the Space Station now. Work on developing a modern, state-of-the-art, safe, reliable, and cheap earth-to-orbit cargo rocket. Work on developing a new, less complex, human carrier. The truth is: after spending 30+ billion dollars on the Space Station, what do we have show for it? A lab for studying the effect of low-Earth-orbit micro-gravity on humans. Its not even that good a test bed for a travel by humans to Mars because it is too close to the Earth, it is protected by the Earth's magnetic field. Just think: for 25 billion dollars we could have a human expedition to Mars! Instead all we have is 3 fairly unsafe space shuttles and a space station that is too close to the Earth to do really useful space research. NASA has done some wonderful things over the last 30 years. But most of them have resulted from the work by the underfunded robot probe division. The space shuttle and the ISS (space station) have been given the majority of the funding and have under-performed in producing good science. The two big things the shuttle did was: 1) Launch and repair the Hubble space telescope, and 2) Launch the Chandra X-Ray telescope. The loss of the Columbia is sad, and a tragedy for everyone in NASA. It adds insult to injury that the space shuttle has been a poor use of U.S. tax dollars ever since the program began in 1970. Update: I'm re-reading Gregg Easterbrook's 1980 article and here is a direct quote from 23 years ago: The external fuel tank, for instance, is full of oxygen and hydrogen cooled to -400ƒ F. to make the gases flow as liquids. Ice will form on the tank. When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia. So insulation was added to the tank. Now we know the following: 80 seconds after launch, long-range photos showed a chunk of what looks like the insulation fell off the main tank. Further images show this chunk colliding with the left wing of the Columbia and then disappearing. If this chunk of insulation was actually covered by ice (speculation here) then it is easy to imagine that causing damage to the left wing's tiles. And damage to the tiles of the left wing of the shuttle would explain the failure of so many sensors on that wing during re-entry and potentially, the failure of the wing along with the destruction of the shuttle. 12:09:27 AM

Thursday, January 30, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Freeman Dyson on Nano-Technology This great essay by one of the finest minds of the 20th century (that would be Dyson) starts out as a review of the new book Prey by Michael Crichton. It then changes into a defense of the advances in nano-technology by arguing that, as with other technologies, we can handle the future best by understanding it. 2:54:44 PM     [Colin Glassey] Free Will and Islam Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping writes in this essay that Islam has a basic problem with the idea of free will, with the idea the humans have the right to choose what to do and what to believe. Here is a quote: Liberty as we conceive it is at the heart of the conflict. For Muslims, the most desirable state of human society is not one that is free, in the Western sense, but one that is submissive to Allah, according to the dictates of Quran. This state of society is dar al Islam, the world of peace. Anything else is the "world of war." Hence, Islam does not use terms such as free or unfree to refer to nations, but at war with Allah or at peace (through submission) to Allah. And because of the deterministic model of Allah, any form of political repression conducted under Islam's banner is seen as Allah's will. Think Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Taliban. I can think of very few things that are more harmful to the creation of just society than the belief that humans don't have free will. If we are all just puppets, following a pre-ordained path, then moral choice is impossible, and any attempt to make the world better is very likely to meet with indiference and the stock expression "as god wills it". Why bother to try and change things of everything that has already happened and everything that is going to happen has already been decided? I'd like to point out what a wonderful thing the Jewish religion was because the Jews were the first people to argue that man could effect real change in the world. The Jews don't really have much concept of the "After Life" because for them, what is most important is making the kingdom of heaven on Earth. In other words, the most important thing to do is to change the world that we live in into something that would please god. This is such a powerful idea. It assumes that change is not only possible but desireable. It assumes that man is capable of changing the world, of making it better. What a remarkable idea this was, 3,000 years ago. In America, we still believe in this idea. 2:28:13 PM

Tuesday, January 28, 2003

[Colin Glassey]To Make the World Free! An impassioned essay here which I agree with. Entitled simply War it goes on at some length on why war with Iraq is justfied. Here is a quote from the end of the essay: I am not an ideologue in this regard, and I certainly don’t want to send our sons and daughters out to fight and die for anything less than our safety and survival. But that, to me, is looking like what it might come to. Each success makes the next case easier, and each triumph further shames and silences our critics. ... If we have the courage of our convictions, if we do indeed feel that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth fighting and dying for, then we may find that freeing the world is in our national interest, regardless of the cost. This is what I believe. For too long we have watched as other people lived in failed countries ruled by tyrants. Its time for that to stop. For us to live in peace and safety, the rest of the world must be free. No more toleration of tyrants and dictators. No more accepting the rights of kings and dictators. That time is over. Live free, or die. 3:08:19 PM     [Colin Glassey] Why is Housing in Palo Alto so Expensive? This is an insightful essay by John Nye about Irreducibile Inequality. Put simply, as incomes rise, the best things that can not be mass produced (like real estate in Palo Alto) will be more expensive. The same sorts of people will buy it (i.e. the richest 1% of the population) but they will have to pay more for it. The down side is that the rest of the population which is gaining income (and may even be gaining slightly on the top 1%) will not be able to afford the best. I'm giving up on living in Palo Alto myself after reading this :-) BTW: Blogging has been curtailed to some degree due to my course work at San Jose State. 2:01:00 PM     [Colin Glassey] Pragmatic Pacifism In this new essay by Lee Harris, he argues for Pragmatic Pacifism. Lee Harris argues (amoung other points) that the reason why the U.S. let Saddam stay in power after the Gulf War of 1991 was that we didn't know what to do. We were in a new world, a world where we were operating not for our own national interest or survival, but to perserve a world moral order. Here is the ending of his essay: If the international community supported the First Gulf War overwhelmingly, which clearly it did, it is morally committed to supporting the current policy of the United States and the failure to realize this connection can be most charitably ascribed to intellectual dishonesty. Since the United States is the only nation in the world that is willing to play this role, let alone capable of playing it, there are only three ways that it can relate to the international community: either as its lackey, or as its leader, or as its tyrant. The world cannot really expect the United States to be its lackey, and certainly doesn't want it to be its tyrant. And this leaves them only one choice. Those who are now currently refusing to accept America's moral right to lead at this point are betraying the very ideals they pretend to champion—you cannot have world peace until someone enforces it; but no one who is powerful enough to enforce it can be persuaded to enforce it like a flunkey—it is utopianism to think otherwise. Thanks (as usual) to InstaPundit for the link. 1:53:37 PM     [Colin Glassey] Science News This Week Great article about the Dry valleys in Antartica which once were buried under glacial ice but now have an exposed rocky surface. The glacier ice appears to have simply disappeared, sublimated into the air, leaving behind some odd terrain which is very much like some terain we have photographed on Mars. Bottom line: glaciers like the ones that used to be in the dry valleys could have existed on Mars. A really wonderful science mystery shows no signs of being solved as the study of the Leaf Cutter Ants continue. Leaf cutter ants discovered farming some 50 million years ago (they farm mushrooms). Now we know the ants are constantly seeking to defeat a mold which will destroy their mushrooms and we have learned the ants fight the mold with antibiotics produced by a bacterium that lives in a patch on their skin. This is the most complex symbiosis we have (yet) discovered. The mysteries keep piling up. Read the article. :-) 1:48:03 PM

Friday, January 24, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Athena vs. Ares This was a great post by Glenn Reynolds (Mr. InstaPundit). Well worth reading if you haven't seen it before. Bottom line: Athena is a Goddess of War, just like Ares was the God of War. But Athena is the smart Goddess, while Ares is vain, stupid, and a coward to boot. Periodically the people who follow Athena have to fight wars. 5:51:24 PM

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Nuclear Power Space Propulsion System This is good news, according to this article NASA is serious about creating a nuclear power space system. Robert Zubrin (founder of the Mars society and a hero of mine) is quoted as saying this is a good idea. Hear hear! Its high time we developed better propulsion systems than WW2-era super V2 Rockets. 6:59:04 PM     [Colin Glassey] NATO is Dead Today, NATO died. Not offically. But it is now defunct. Last week the United States last week formally asked NATO to provide indirect military assistance in case of a war with Iraq, mainly to protect NATO ally Turkey against possible Iraqi attacks. Today, Germany and France offically blocked this resolution. So, we told NATO in no uncertain terms that we were going to war against Iraq and we wanted their help in a limited way. Today Germany and France said no. Thanks to Steve Den Beste for the links. While the end of NATO is sad, it did serve a large purpose, to defend Western Europe against the U.S.S.R. With the demise of the Soviet Union there were real questions starting in 1991 about the future of NATO. I think those questions are now answered. NATO has no future purpose. I think we will remove all our troops from Germany within the next two years. So what killed NAT0? In part it came down to a divergence of national interest between the United States and the Franco-German alliance. The end of the Cold War ment that NATO was no longer necessary. Now that a real test has come we see the difference of opinion between the United States and the Franco-German alliance is large. Too large for France or Germany to be allies of the United States. What I really think is that France and Germany are afraid. Scared of the change. Scared of the future. So worried about the upsetting the status quo that they would rather see Sadam Hussein remain in power forever in Iraq. I say the governments of Germany and France are composed of gutless cowards. I say the governments of Germany and France are more sympathetic to the Iraqi dictatorship than they are to the government of the United States. Time for us to go our seperate ways. NATO might continue to exist as a security blanket for Eastern European countries but as long as Germany and France remain a part of it, NATO is useless to the United States and the United Kingdom. 5:43:04 PM

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Cloned Cat Does Not Look Like the Original This article from CNN about the cat that was cloned last year by scientists at Texas A&M is quite interesting. The cloned cat has a different fur coat from the original, and has a different cat personality from the original. Maybe common DNA is very unimportant? 5:53:23 PM     [Colin Glassey] RNA and other Science News Good science articles in the New York Times today. The big one is about RNA, or micro-strands of RNA which can act as very effective blockers of gene expression. This was only recently discovered, previously research showed that RNA was only used as a messenger. Now we see more behavior out of RNA. One researcher suggests that our whole model of the cell is wrong and that RNA is the doing the important work in the cell while DNA and proteins are just building blocks. I'm leaning towards the RNA is much more important camp myself. The sequencing of the DNA for humans, mice, flat worms, etc. has shown up lots of so-called junk DNA. Actually, current reseach suggests that 95% of human DNA is "junk" or, more accurately, non-coding DNA. While I don't think everything in DNA has a purpose, evolution is more efficent than 95% junk to 5% usefull. I suspect we will learn that a good deal more than 5% of the DNA is used in large organism creation. More bad news about the fish in the ocean. Yes, this is a tragedy of the commons, and yes, the same thing is playing out. No one has an incentive to reduce fishing, so everyone over fishes and we are well on our way to destroying EVERY good tasting ocean fish. The article by the brilliant Carol Kaesuk Yoon profiles the Daniel Pauly the creator of Fishweb.org a database of all the world's fish (37,000 and counting). This story has more details on how the amazing radiation resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans. This bacterium is able to withstand a radiation blast of 1.5 million rads. Nothing else we have found can survive even 200,000 rads. This bacterium is a prime cantidate for the pan-spermia theory since no nothing living on this planet needs to survive anything close to this sort of radiation. But in space, or on other planets, radiation levels are much higher than here on Earth. 4:09:30 PM

Friday, January 17, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Turkey and South Korea Both of these countries are allies of the United States. They are/were both front-line states, Turkey on the front-line against the U.S.S.R., South Korea on the front-line against North Korea. Now that trouble is on both their borders (Iraq and North Korea) both countries have elected governments which are much less pro-U.S. than previous governments. So what does this tell us? Well, it seems pretty clear that neither front-line country wants a war fought on its border, though Turkey's fear is a lot less reasonable than South Korea. It is also clear that the Cold War is over and the alliances which we built up to fight Communism seem to have run their course. Yes, both countries can end their alliance with United States and both countries seem well on their way to ending it. In fact the United States seems to have lost its allies Germany and France over the last decade. One obvious question is: were they ever really our allies or did they just threw in with us because the alternative was worse? Now that the choice isn't between the United States and the U.S.S.R. but between the United States and the International Community. I would say that as the world changes, national self-interest comes to the fore. The bottom line is that the United States does have a national self-interest which is different from, and to a limited degree opposed to that of other nations. I'm disappointed with all of our erst-while allies. I see them putting their state's needs too far ahead of the world at large. I see them too casually throwing away the United States alliance in exchange for some short-term benefits. How can everyone on this planet be expected to work together for a common good if every choice is just being made based on national self-interest? Nearly every country has benefited from these last 50 years of peace, and this was directly resulting from the actions of the United States. Now that we are seriously considering going to war against Iraq, largely because of the threat Iraq posses, not just to the United States, but to the world as a whole, we get actively attacked by Germany, and Turkey says it will only help us in exchange for 10 or 20 billion dollars. Well, no one like the police. That is what we are becoming, the world police. 1:15:47 PM     [Colin Glassey] Television without Pity A site for those who are really interested in TV without having to go through the bother of actually watching the TV show. Yes its Television without Pity. I enjoy reading about some shows that I don't watch. Saves time, no commercials. Still, why bother? Keeping up with modern culture? 12:33:22 PM

Thursday, January 16, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Antartica : A View from Below My brother sent me a link to a wonderful web site called Big Dead Place. Its a web site about Antartica writen from the perspective of the people who work there. There are many great stories there. 1:04:49 PM

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Orson Scott Card on North Korea (Thanks to InstaPundit for the links today) Here is a great essay on North Korea by the well known SF/Fantasy writer, Orson Scott Card. Mr. Card has two main points: 1) We can't treat North Korea like Iraq because North Korea is actively supported by one of the major powers on the planet: China. If we intervented militarily against North Korea, there is too much chance that the Chinese government would respond with military force. 2) Iraq has no patron state which will prevent us from destroying its government. Card goes on to suggest that a diplomatic solution with the Chinese should be possible. I think Mr. Card overestimates the support China is willing to give to North Korea, but I admit the chance of China going to war over North Korea is real, and they have done it before. I also don't think China has much leverage over North Korea, nor do I think they are much interested in using their power to topple Kim Il Jung. However, one idea Card mentions is pretty good: give South Korea its own nuclear weapons. Josh Marshall (of Talking Points Memo fame) has some blistering comments about the Bush administration's mis-handling of the North Korean problem. He calls it strategic ridiculousness. His says: [The] Bush administration solved the vexing problem of preventing the NKs from becoming a nuclear power by announcing that they already are a nuclear power and it's probably something we can live with... ...In order to take a tough line against North Korea's nuclear jawboning, the Bush White House is now prepared to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and contemplate the unilateral withdrawal of all American forces from the Korean Peninsula. If that's the hardline approach, I'd hate to see what appeasement might look like. I'm sad to admit it but this is very reasonable attack. Time to get rid of Dick Cheney, the mastermind of nearly all of the Bush administration's miscues. See Josh Marshall's article about Cheney here. 12:01:23 PM

Monday, January 13, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Jim Henley Argues That Containment of Nukes Has Failed. Live With It. Here is a great essay by one Jim Henley (here is the follow-up essay). He argues that the cat is out of the bag when it comes to nuclear weapons. Non-nuclear states have both the means and the motive to build nuclear weapons. The means is due to the fact that nuclear bombs are 1940's technology. In other words, what was really hard in 1940 is pretty easy in 2002. They have the motive because it is quite clear that nuclear powers don't get pushed around by the U.S. like non-nuclear powers are (think Serbia in 1998). In the last 20 years we have spent billions to make sure that one country doesn't aquire nuclear weapons (Iraq). During that time India, Pakistan, and (according the the CIA North Korea) have all developed nuclear bombs. Aside from the declared nuclear states we know that South Africa and Brazil both started a nuclear weapon program. They both announced they had abandoned their programs in the early 1990s. I still argue that we (the United States) should try to actively stop other states from aquiring nuclear bombs. I suspect we will fail over the long term but I think the consquences of acting to halt various evil states from developing nuclear bombs is not as bad as just letting them build them. In other words, active intervention to preserve the nuclear power status quo is the lesser of two evils. The greater evil would be to give up and have every major (and minor) state build nuclear bombs. The likely consequence: terrorist groups with no obvious base of operations aquire one or more nuclear bombs and blow up a large city of their choice. The evils which fall from my lesser of two evils choice are: the United States becomes an object of hatred for much of the rest of the world. Other countries attempt to build nuclear weapons secretly and when these attempts are reveals, it becomes yet another test of American resolve to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States spends a great deal of money (and lives) trying to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and fails to achive much (if anything). I'd rather be hated than give Al Queda a better chance to nuke New York. 12:06:49 AM

Sunday, January 12, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Canada Put Japanese into Internment Camps During WW2 also How is this for some history (from InstaPundit) "The Canadian record is much darker than Robin Goodfellow's post indicates. Japanese-Canadians were not only moved inland from BC and interned, their property was seized and sold off, the proceeds used in part to pay for their own internment. Worse, thousands were stripped of Canadian citizenship and deported ("repatriated") to Japan, even after the war had ended." Here is a link to an essay on the topic. Gee, weren't those Canadians nice to their Japanese citizens? 11:41:59 PM

Saturday, January 11, 2003

[Colin Glassey] North Korea I'm getting a bit worried about North Korea. While I agree that it is not the same as Iraq, the prospect of this country producing multiple nuclear bombs per year for the next decade worries me. North Korea sells its missiles to other countries (Yeman most recently). North Korea seems to have helped Pakistan (and according to Debka.com, Iran) with their nuclear weapons programs. The CIA estimates that North Korea has one or two (untested) nuclear bombs already. With the raw materials at Yongbang they could make 6 more within a year. If the Yongbang nuclear plant goes at full blast, they could make six or more nuclear weapons per year as long as they run that nuclear plant. Given that North Korea's dictator Kim Jong Ill is a in total control of the country and that North Korea is in desperate economic straits, it seems likely that North Korea would attempt to sell these weapons to the highest bidder. Any terrorist Islamist group would kill to have such a weapon. Bottom line: North Korea can not be allowed to develop more atomic bombs. This means we must destroy their ability to build more bombs. Based on the last 8 years of deception, it is clear that treaties are of no use in halting their activities. I don't see much alternative to sending a number of cruise missiles into Yongbang and other North Korean weapon production facilities. I don't think this will result in a North Korean attack on South Korea as that would be suicide for the North Korean government. However, I can't be sure the dictator will not choose the stupid path and the resulting war would be horrible. In the short term, the countries most threatened by North Korea's nuclear bombs and missiles are South Korea and Japan. But in the medium to long term, the entire West is threatened because the growing chance that North Korea will sell one (or more) of their nuclear bombs to a terrorist group. We can wait till after Iraq is defeated, but we don't have years. In fact I think we have to bomb North Korea in less than a year. Yea. 11:40:23 PM

Friday, January 10, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Best PC-Computer Games Ever Here is my current list. It hasn't changed a lot in the last year. Master of Magic: everything and the kitchen sink. Great game. [Not really playable on current PCs. Free if you find the game file on the Internet. Nearly as good in the same vein are: Warlords 2, and Age of Wonders (a new game).]. Civilization: I still think the first version was the best. It was cleaner than the later versions. Understandable, addictive. [Not really playable on current PCs but Civilization 3 is close enough so you can get a good feel for the original. The game Alpha Centauri is nearly as good.] Planscape Torment: This game was like reading a novel, and it was a great story. The setting of the game was new, the character, an immortal yet not a god, was facinating. The other characters you could add to your party were wonderful with their own personalities. [Barely playable on current PCs. Cheap too. You can pick a copy up for under $10.] Ultima Online - 1998, EverQuest - 2000, Dark Age of Camelot - 2002. These are the three best online massively multiplayer games. When Ultima Online started it was the best game ever made. Sadly it quickly degenerated because the designers didn't fully understand what they had done and couldn't react to the flood of players. It had features which no other Online game implemented until the just-released Sims Online, five years after Ultima Online. [This game is still active and playable.] EverQuest, while I was playing it, was both a great game and a deliberatly frustrating game. Yes it is the most popular game (so far) but part of its popularity is due to the frustrating nature of the game design. You must be willing to devote a large piece of your life to the game and while this can be very enjoyable, like anything taken to an extreme, it rapidly destroys your life. EverQuest offers a lot but only to those who have 30 to 40 hours a week free of any other commitments. [This game is still active (its the most popular as of 1/2003).] Dark Age of Camelot is a great game. It is better than EverQuest in nearly every respect. It isn't a game that you are passionate about (ulike EverQuest) but it is a game that supports both casual play and serious play. Also it has a great deal of realism which adds value. To a limited extent you can learn some history and mythology from playing the game. [This game is still active and very popular.] Fallout One of the first games to offer players the chance to make moral choices. You can play a character who tries to make the world a better place, or a character who is evil and wreaks just about everything and everyone he comes in contact with. This is a game with real freedom. The setting (a post-nuclear-war) California is great. [This game is still playable on PCs. And dirt cheap.] Fallout 2 This game is like its predecesor, you have moral choices to make. Lots of them. Some are really hard. You interact with characters who have their own agenda and you need to figure out if you will help or hurt them. This game is huge, much bigger than Fallout. [Like Fallout, this game is still quite playable and dirt cheap.] Master of Orion 2 This is the best explore, research, manage your star empire, and destroy enemy races games ever done. Period. The design is clean, the choices are hard but fair, the random map makes each game a great new challange. [Still quite playable and very cheap to buy.] Jagged Alliance This is a game of small unit tactics with serious resource allocation issues to solve. You need to: manage battles to take over zones, manage your money so you have fighters, manage your equipment so guns don't jam and armor is not full of holes, and finally manage your fighters so that people who don't hate each other are not in the same place at the same time. Marred by poor graphics. [Unknown if it still plays on current PCs. Not for sale.] Jagged Alliance 2 This game more than doubles the complexity of Jagged Alliance. The fire fights are more complex due to night, height, and sneaking. The resource allocation game is more complex due to the large number of weapons and equipment which you must get to the right place at the right time and in good condition. Also you need to manage the towns you conquer so that your money keeps coming in. The random elements added to the game give it good replay value but the main reason why this is such a great game is due to all the elements which you need to manage. Everything makes sense but you can't do everything at once. StarCraft: The best real-time strategy game ever made (so far). The units are varied and interesting. Each of the three races has their own strengths and weaknesses. The scenarios are challenging and varied. StarCraft is a perfect game. WarCraft 3 while very good, is just not as good as StarCraft. Perhaps due to the limited number of missions? Perhaps due to the small number of units in WarCraft 3? Perhaps the hero units unbalance the sense of the game? Bottom line: StarCraft is still better than WarCraft. Deux Ex: An experience that still remains in my mind. First person shooters offer you the chance immerse yourself into a world different from the real world. A well done game gives you a reason to want to play. Deux Ex has a plot which offers all the player some facinating environments drawn from the real world but altered. This is a real role playing game as you can solve the problems offered by the game in different ways and your character attains new abilities as they find technology which enhances their bodies. Near-future science fiction done better than anything else before. Baldur's Gate 2 This is the finest game created so far. Just about everything in the game is perfect. The plot, the art direction, the variety of quests, the monsters you face (from Beholders to Dragons), and especially the characters you meet, both those that join you and your opponent: Jon Irenicus, voiced with real depth of feeling by the English actor David Warner. The music is also great (by composer Michael Hoenig). The settings, ranging from a haunted forest, to a Dark Elf city, to an under-sea palace, are fantastic and wonderfully drawn. 12:10:40 PM

Thursday, January 09, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Vampire Bats Use a Chemical Which Prevents Clotting The fact that Vampire bats use a chemical which prevents clotting is not a surprise. What is interesting is that this chemical has a medical use: to help people who suffer from a stroke. Yet another reason to keep other creatures around, nature has done lots of interesting experiments, we can still learn from them. 5:30:01 PM

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Year in Ideas The New York Times Year in Ideas was the best thing since sliced bread. I had a blast reading up on new ideas from the previous year. Here is my pick from their list: The Ambulance-Homicide Theory. This theory suggests that homicide rates have declined in the United States only because of advances in emergancy medical technology. Which would explain why cities now have lower murder rates than rural areas. Climate Jumping. More evidence that when climates change, they do it suddenly, not gradually. What fun. Global Warming is our friend, right? Cooling Athletes from the Inside Out. Here is the key insight: putting hot people into cool rooms is actually the wrong thing to do. The cool temperatures will cause the blood vessels near the surface to constrict, heat is trapped and the core body temperature spikes. This can kill you. Some smart doctors at Stanford have a solution. Early-Detection Revisionism. There is good evidence that early detection of some cancers is a wash. Yes it can save a few lives but many cancers which are detected early are harmless. Overall death rates for people whoes cancer was detected early vs. detected because the person was feeling ill prove to be nearly the same. Blind People Can Draw. It was proved this year that blind people draw in the same basic way as artists who can see. In other words, perspective, foreshortening, and the vanishing point are hard-wired into our brains when we try to construct a mental image of the world. The 239 MPG Car. VW built a demonstration car which gets 239 miles per gallon of gas. Wow. Really. Beckham's Soccer Kick. Serious analysis went into figuring out how it was possible for David Beckham's kick to both go over the wall of Greek defenders and then drop into the goal for a score. Its about as complex as how bumble bees can fly. Initial analysis says it can't happen, but there they are, buzzing around. Agrawal's Prime Number proof (he came up with a means of proving if a number was prime or not). The algorithm fits neatly on a single sheet of paper and uses polynomial math. Japan's cultural power. Japan is the Pokemon Hegemon. Seriously, Japan is making in-roads into the youth culture of the world, so long dominated by the United States. Starting with SquareSoft's Final Fantasy 10+ years ago, then Nintendo's Pokemon, and now Yu-Gi-Oh, Japanese games and Anime is all over the place. I have to admit, Miyazaki is a genius. Both Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away are monumental works of art. I also think Pokemon Gold/Silver is one of greatest games ever created. Yu-Gi-Oh is a decent game as well. The Remote Controlled Rat. Scary new brain science allows scientists to control a rat with a very simple control system of electrodes in the rats brain. Yes, you can stimulate the pleasure center in a rat's brain. Yes, there is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing to people. Welcome to the new world of remote controlled people. Robot Warfare. Unmaned planes (robotic warplanes) killed people last year. Soon we will have unmaned ground vehicals that are armed. In the future, the United States will be able to fight a war when almost no one from our side gets killed. Does this worry you? As far as I'm concerned, its going to happen, the only question is, will the U.S. use this power for good or evil? The First Scramjet. An Australian team, working on a shoestring, have created the first working scramjet. Scramjets offer the possibility of much faster speed than any other known technology. 5:52:00 PM     [Colin Glassey] SUVs Dangerous to Drive for All Good article here in AlterNet by Stephanie Mencimer, reviewing the book High and Mighty by New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher. Bottom line: SUVs are bad vehicals by all standards. They are poorly put together. They are way overpriced (hugely profitable for Detroit). They handle poorly in bad weather or on rough roads. They tend to roll over and kill their passengers. And worst of all, they are much more likely to kill the occupants of cars they hit. Bradsher says monsters like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe. So, those of you who own these SUVs, you are making the road much more dangerous for everyone else, you are polluting the air more than other drivers, you are giving more money to Saudi Arabia than other drivers. Thanks. 5:30:46 PM     [Colin Glassey] Star Trek : Nemesis Saw the latest Star Trek movie today. I liked it. The move to computer generated ships has certainly freed up the script writers to do some things that were never done before (crashing one starship into another is one example). The movie also was much more intelligent in how it handled the ship to ship combat. The writers have actually played some Star Trek games based on their handling of shield strengths and ship orientation. As a Star Trek movie, it was very good, as a science fiction film it was still only barely in the range of a decent Babylon 5 episode. Problems: The enemy ship was bigger, faster, had more weapons and had a perfectly undetectable cloaking system. What has the Federation advanced weapons research team been doing for the last 15 years? Playing footsie with the Betazoid women? The Federation is the economic powerhouse of the galaxy (outside of the Borg) and much stronger than the Romulans. Obviously the Federation is an analog for the United States. So why is it the Romulans have a ship which is a better warship than the best ship in the Federation fleet? OK, the Romulans poured all their resources into this one super ship, just like the Japanese put a great deal into their super battle ships the Yamato and the Musashi. This should mean that while the Romulans have one Scimitar class ship, the Federation has lots of Enterprise class ships. The best chance for the Enterprise is to join up with other Federation ships and hope that massive numbers will help defeat the enemy super ship. This is talked about in the movie, but when battle is joined, the rest of the Federation fleet is never mentioned again (well, they are in a "rift" which stops communication but still, rational strategy has most of the Federation ships converging on a single location). Another problem is the way Commander Troi is able to spot the enemy ship telepathicly. This was silly. The enemy ship is zooming around in space all around the Enterprise. It certainly can't be spotted better by Deanna Troi than by scattered phaser fire (which is well done in the film). Still, these are minor nits. Overall this was the best Star Trek film since Star Trek 4 (The Voyage Home) back in 1986. 4:58:46 PM

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The United States Policy in the Middle East Historian Barry Rubin in an essay for History New Network argues that the United States policy for the last 50 year has not been anti-Arab by any reasonable standard. It is a good essay and worth the read. Bottom line: the United States has helped Arabs and Moslems in general over the last 50 years. Only the radical Islamists can argue that we have opposed them, but they are not by any means the only Arabs or Moslems in the Middle East. Here are some things we could have done but didn't: We could have taken over the Kuwait oil fields for our own in 1991. Instead we gave them back to the Kuwaiti government. We could have let Israel, France, and England take over the Suez Canal in 1956. Instead we forced them to give back the canal to Nassar's government. We could have intervened militarily to support the Shah of Iran in 1978. Instead we prevented the Shah from using our military equipment against the revolutionaries. We could have intervened militarily in the Lebenon civil war, the Yeman civil war, the Baath revolution in Iraq, the Baath revolution in Syria, etc. Instead we let these countries try to sort out their own affairs. 11:47:30 AM

Friday, January 03, 2003

[Colin Glassey] The Great Wall of China I've read a huge book of photos and text about the so-called Great Wall of China. Its history is interesting and quite different from what is commonly thought. At the begining, the Great Wall was built by the first Emperor of China Shih Huang Ti. This was a very long earthen rampart which streched from the coast of China (near the Manchurian border) far into Asia, roughly following the border of what is called Mongolia. In addition to the earthen "wall", watch towers were built at regular intervals. The military value of this wall was nearly non-existant. The nomads north of the wall could ride over it with ease. The watch towers could be burned and destroyed individually. What the wall says about China is far more important than what it did for the Chinese. What the wall said was that this is the northern border of China. Beyond this point is land we don't care about. Only the nomads, uncivilized barbarians lived north of the wall. Various walls of earth were built by later Emperors. Time and the wind eroded them down as the decades and centuries passed. China was attacked frequently by the northern barbarians. The walls and the watch towers may have been more useful than nothing, maybe they were even worth the money. What is curious to me is that the walls kept on being built even after it was clear they kept failing to keep the barbarians out of China. Why didn't the Chinese figure out a better solution than just rebuilding the wall every 100 years? The Chinese strategy for dealing with the northern barbarians fell into three categories: 1) bribe them to stay away from Chinese territory; 2) attack them with military forces; 3) try to defend their lands once the barbarians launched an attack over the wall. The obvious strategy which occured to the Russians was to just take control over everything. The truth is, you don't have to go too much farther north before you get into Siberia. And you don't have to go to much further into Siberia before you run into land which just doesn't support anything other than tiny bands of hunters. The Inuit people of northern Siberia simply cannot become a military threat. So, in order for China to have eliminated the problem of the northern barbarians, they just needed to exert political and military control over a region which is now called Mongolia and Manchuria. It is worth pointing out that two of the last three rulers of China came from Mongolia and southern Manchuria. The story of the last great wall is quite interesting. The last great wall is the one everyone thinks of because (a) large sections of it are still standing and (b) it is made of stone and looks very photogenic. However, this had led people to false assumption that all the great walls of China looked like the last one (they didn't). The story is this: the Ming Empire (the last Chinese dynasty actually run by ethnic Chinese) had a problem with the Mongols. A large, powerful army of Mongols had crossed over the Yangtse River and occupied the Ordos plain. Nominally this was part of China (it was on the Chinese side of the Great Wall). The first response by the Ming was military, they sent a large army against the Mongols. It was defeated and the Emperor leading the army was killed. At this point the Ming made a fateful choice, they decided to build a new wall, different from earlier walls, and built along the new defacto frontier, walling off the Ordos plain from the rest of China. The new wall was expensive to build, really expensive. By the time it was completed (around 1650) the Ming were bankrupt and popular discontent swelled into a revolt which controlled the capital. The leader of the Chinese army stationed on the side of the wall next to the Manchu was ordered back to Peking. He made a deal with the friendly Manchu warriors and so they marched with his army in a combined force back to Peking. The Manchu proved to be much more clever than the Chinese and quickly seized control over Peking and soon, they controlled the entire nation. The net result of the great Ming wall was: they kept the Mongols pinned in the Ordos, they bankrupted themselves, they provoked an internal revolt, and shortly after the wall was finished they lost control to another barbarian tribe, the Manchu. The Manchu ruled China for the next 250 years. There is no question in my mind that the final Ming wall was better than the previous walls. But was it worth the cost? Was it the wise thing to spend their resources on? The events of the day strongly suggest the answer to that is no. Still, the remains of the wall which can still be seen today are most impressive. Thus the folly of kings becomes tourist attractions of the modern world. Still, the deep question remains: why build walls in the first place? Why didn't the Chinese repond to the threat of the northern barbarians in a better fashion? Why did the Chinese keep losing battles to the barbarians? Certainly the Europeans lost battles to the barbarians. The Roman Empire was destroyed by barbarian invaders. 600 years later the east European armies were slaughtered by the Mongol army, the same Mongols which had conqured northern China and most of the rest of Asia over the previous 20 years. But that was the end of the barbarians dominance over Europe. From then on, the Europeans were not beaten by the barbarians. Unlike the Chinese, the Europeans made use of gun powder to make better and better weapons. Unlike the Chinese (who invented gun powder but then used it for nothing more than fire works), the Europeans made better and better cannons, then shrank them into hand held cannons called muskets. The barbarians with their supurb horsemanship and skill at killing were not able to fight against small light cannons and muskets. If a European army had attacked the Mongols in the Ordos plain in 1600, there is no doubt in my mind that it would have defeated them and driven the remainder over the river back into Mongolia. So, the Chinese under the Ming, faced with barbarian threats and the recent history of conquest by the Mongols, responded not by military innovation, but with the same old army they fielded 1,000 years earlier. When that army was defeated they built a huge new stone wall and hid behind it. Curiously, the Chinese were aware that gun powder could be used for more dangerous weapons but they refused to try and copy the Europeans. They litterally turned their backs on more advanced weapons technology and as a result, they were conqured. Oddly enough, at around that same time, Japan was also turning its back on advanced weapons (muskets and cannon which the Hideyoshi and Tokugawa used to take over all of Japan) but the Japanese did not suffer the same fate as China. Thanks, I'm sure, to the fact that Japan was an island and the barbarians had no fleets. 12:58:02 PM

Thursday, January 02, 2003

[Colin Glassey] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Thanks to the Circuits section of the Thursday New York Times I found a great new web site: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. This is a free site and its not done but many important articles have already been writen. Here is one that I found quite interesting: Comparative Philosophy: Chinese and Western. Applause to the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. 3:59:02 PM     [Colin Glassey] Movie: Catch Me If You Can This was a great film from one of the master film directors, Spielburg. Steven Spielburg's direction is so good here, its almost scary. Every shot seems clear, logical, tells a part of the story that needed to be told, leads onto the next, etc. The main actors, DiCaprio and Hanks are perfect in their roles. Tom Hanks was especially funny, I'm not sure why but I found myself chuckling at nearly every one of his lines. In short, this is a perfect film. 3:54:49 PM     [Colin Glassey] Happy New Year Best wishes to all for a new year. While 2002 was not a bad year, I've known better. Good things from 2002 were: the growth of blogs and reasoned debate by many people who I would never otherwise have come across; movies, the greatest art form, continues to be highly enjoyable. Favorites from last year: Barbershop, The Two Towers, Minority Report, Lilo and Stich, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Monsoon Wedding, and Catch Me If You Can. 3:40:06 PM

Monday, December 23, 2002

[Colin Glassey] On Moral Systems Steve Den Beste has another facinating essay on morality up on his site which he calls consequentialism. My take on ethical systems diverges from Steven on a few points. I believe that social biology shows us, to some degree, why people think they way they do. Ethical systems for humans must acknowledge that we are individuals with social goals. These social goals can not be satisified by all people at the same time. In other words, we all want things (children, desirable mates, possesions, fame, social standing) and we can't all achieve them. I believe that choices should, in general, be made with the goal of providing the maximum benefit over the long term. This is roughly speaking what Steven calls Rule Utilitarianism. Rule Utilitarianism says that you should follow a rule which, if always applied by everyone in a similar situation, would maximize happiness even if it does not do so in this particular instance. I believe there are some absolutes in morality, in the sense there are acts which are immoral but may be less evil than all other choices. Perhaps this really doesn't change much from Rule Utilitarianism, but in the real world, we don't have the time or knowledge to figure out all the consquences of our actions. So, as a rule of thumb, the moral absolutes serve as a kind of moral shorthand. For me these are: don't lie (without good reason); don't steal (without a really good reason); don't injure/kill others (without a really really good reason). Do treat other people with respect; do not pay attention to their skin color. Try to think how the effects of your decisions will echo into the future, try to make sure choices will add to world in the future. I believe in the importance of intelligence and knowledge. The maximization of reason and learning is, to my mind, an absolute good. To the extent that people add to intelligence and knowledge of the world, they are good. To the extent they reduce reason and knowledge, they are bad. Ultimately this belief in the value of reason and knowledge allows my morality to transcend species. The extent to which other species are intelligent is the degree to which we should value them. Wanton destruction of slime mold is no problem for me morally. Killing of chimps and dolphins does bother me. I'm human centered in that it will have to be proved to my satisfaction that other animals have intelligence equal to that of humans before I'm willing to accord them human rights. However I don't reject the possibility that one day this will occur. Until that day comes, I judge treatment of others based on a sliding scale: more intelligent, more respect. I believe there is a point to human existance. In my opinion the goal of human existance is to spread the earth's biosphere throughout the galaxy. We have spent 5,000 years of human civilization getting to the point where we are today, with near god-like powers over of the earth. We are in charge of our planet. The moral systems which gave meaning to humans have nothing more to say to us now. Spreading intelligent earth-like life throughout the galaxy should be a sufficiently large goal for the next 5,000 years of human civilization. Given this goal to human existance, there are some moral consquences. 5:42:44 PM     [Colin Glassey] Invasion of Iraq I don't see any way for Iraq to avoid an invasion by the United States and Great Britain in January of 2003. I don't really want to see Iraq avoid being invaded but still, Saddam is such an idiot. For me this just shows, yet again, how bad dictatorships are as a system of government. Saddam was nothing much even at the begining, just a killer who got far thanks to clever friends and huge ambitions. But really, staring in the teeth of the United States armed forces, who does he think is going to save him? What I hope to see is: a powerful, intelligent attack swiftly executed. A demonstration to the whole world (and especially the radical Moslems) that the United States is no paper tiger but the real thing: the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And finally, the creation of a democratic secular government in Iraq. Free the people of Iraq. Next in line for freedom from tyranny are: the people of Iran, the people of North Korea, and the people of Saudi Arabia. Will other people hate and fear the United States? Yes. Should we sit back and let dictators ruin their countries and impoverish and kill their people? What do you think? Did we win the Cold War against the U.S.S.R. to become the world's policeman? To some degree, yes we did. 5:01:34 PM     [Colin Glassey] All Music Web Site I found an amazing web site today thanks to the sad news of Joe Strummer's death at the age of 50. The site is All Music Guide. Like the necessary Internet Movie Database, this is a super use of hyperlinking to create a database of everything in the world of music. Its great! 4:50:55 PM

Thursday, December 19, 2002

[Colin Glassey] The Two Towers I saw it earlier today. I liked it a great deal. Its a huge long film that is gripping and intense for most of the film. The set design for Edoras was incredible, a really well realized Scandinavian settlement circa 900 AD. I didn't like the changes made to the book. Why Peter Jackson thinks he can come up with better thought out character motivations than Tolkien is beyond me. Some of his changes (and there are quite a few) are inferior in thought process to what Tolkien wrote. I'll name the most glaring: In the movie the Ents choose not to fight Saruman. Instead Treebeard takes Merry and Pippen to the border of Fangorn forest and only then discovers that Saruman has been chopping down trees and then Treebeard orders the attack on Isengard. Suddenly all the Ents appear (what had they been doing? Following Treebeard around?) and destroy Isengard in a fantastic onslaught of computer generated attack trees. (Which was great, the computer animated Ents were super). In the book, the Ents know about the destruction of their forest by Saruman and at the Entmoot they learn from Merry and Pippen that Saruman is now using Orcs to do his bidding. That settles it for the Ents and so they go off, en mass, to destroy Isengard. The book makes more sense than than the movie. In the movie, Faramir swiftly realizes that Frodo has the ring of power and he takes Frodo with his forces, under guard, to Osgiliath, with the stated intention of handing him, and his ring, over to his father, Denethor. Then, after a very nice speech by Samwise, he relents and sends them on their way, letting another Gondorian commander in on what he is doing. Frankly, this makes very little sense. The book is better. In the book, Faramir suspects that Frodo is carrying Isildur's Bane and suspects that it might be interesting to his father, but sends Frodo on his way secretly. Only he knows what he is doing, his men don't question his orders. He himself goes back to Gondor and tells his father what he did. This shows Faramir to be a true hero and worthy of the hand of Eowen. In the book, two men resist the lure of the ring, Aragorn and Faramir. As for the actor playing Faramir, all I can say is: bring back Sean Bean! The battle of Helms Deep is very exciting and emotional. The ending is nearly perfect with Gandolf the White charging into the line of orcs. That is mythic material there. Some of Peter Jackson's changes are fine and work. A party of Elven archers from Lothlorien show up and aid in the defence of Helm's Deep. Nice touch. Screen time for Arwen, Elrond, and (very briefly) Galadriel. Good to keep them invovled in the plot. An early fight between Riders of Rohan, Aragorn, and some Warg Riders: good battle. Finally, considering this movie is called The Two Towers, it is amazing that the climactic scenes from the book are not in the film. No Shelob's Lair, no confrontation between Saruman and Gandolf at the foot of Orthanc. This really was a disapointment to me as the confrontation between Gandolf and Saruman is one of my favorite scenes in all the books. All of that has been pushed off to the third movie. How long is the Return of the King going to be? 5 hours long? They have lot of events to go through in the third film. Are they going to skip Saruman's attempt to ruin the Shire at the end of the story? That would be sad. Still and all, a great film. Monumental, epic, staggering, even better than the first film. 8:25:30 PM

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

[Colin Glassey] One Man Against A Criminal 1000 Miles Away My brother Peter sent me a link to a great true story about one man's quest to bring a criminal to justice. He succeeds in large part due to the Internet and also due to the help of Mac fans around the country and due to the fact that some police are actually willing to arrest criminals. The Internet is a two edged sword, sure it can be used by terrorists but it can also be used by ordinary citizens to learn a great deal about people who try to scam them. 5:13:12 PM     [Colin Glassey] The New World Trade Center The new World Trade Center designs were unveiled today and several of them are wonderful. The main web site for the projects has been really slow today (it is here at www.renewnyc.org) but CNN and the NYTimes (and I would imagine the other New York newspapers) have selected images from the various presentations. I like Foster and Partners kissing towers the best. United Architects design of several towers that fuse together seems technically impossible to me but I like the design. I also like the cut-glass design from Studio Libeskind. However, the Foster and Partners design seems to capture something special. I see it as two towers that have moved next to each other to offer support to one another. Yes, they are big (huge actually) but they aren't standing alone like the old towers. The original towers stood independent, isolated from each other and the world around. The Foster towers are bent in places, they almost look like they need each other to stand. Visually they are interesting to look at while they strongly hint at the original towers. All in all a supurb design and I hope it is built. Note: Foster and Partners is an English design firm. Go England :-) I admit that my feeling is that really tall buildings are not safe enough for people given todays technology. However I think an exception should be made for this building. Why? I see this as a symbol, as an act of defiance and a demonstration that we Americans and especially New Yorkers will not be cowed by terrorists. And the United States, the birth place of the sky scraper, should be home to the tallest building in the world. Interestingly, after 180,000 votes on CNN's quick poll, the Foster design is the leader with 26% of the vote. The THINK design is in second place with 18% of the vote. I find the THINK design to be wierd and too much of a mermorial with its two huge skeleton towers that are not designed to be used. 4:34:52 PM

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

[Colin Glassey] David Brin . Com I stumbled upon David Brin's personal web site. What a joy this is to read through. There is tons to read, it would take days to go through it all. Here is what sparked the discovery. Brin published two essays in Salon.com, one essay from 1999 critiques the new Star Wars film and the Star Wars ethos in general. The new essay takes on Tolkien's anti-modern attitudes. It is a wonderful essay, but anyone who read Glory Season by Brin would not be surprised by his attack. I myself recognize the attack for I have felt it myself. On the one hand I love the Lord of the Rings but on the other hand I oppose the entire philosophical underpinnings of the book. I'm in favor of democracy, against elites. I'm in favor of progress, against unchanging rural life. I'm in favor pluralism, or Otherness as Brin puts it and against rule by a single race. So how can I love this book so much while being against some of the core elements of the book? Brin himself tries to explain why the stories of heroic fantasy are so attractive. I'll let you read his essay to see his arguements but I will add my own comment: part of why I love Tolkien is that I recognize there are costs to the modern world. The Lord of the Ring expresses some of these costs, gives them form and substance. Any rational historian would rather live in todays world than any previous era based on the availablity of good medicine, rapid travel, and access to so much information. But I think we all regret the passing of previous ways of life. There are things other cultures had which we don't have: certainty about the future, time to think (if you were wealthy), a sense of solidity to the world, the facts that you learned weren't overthrown a decade later. Ah well. Those days are gone. 11:02:59 PM     [Colin Glassey 6 PM] Looking at the World's Mind Since Google has become the main search engine for the Internet, looking at the searches Google handles is almost the same as looking at what the people of the world are thinking about. Here is a link to Google's 2002 Zeitgeist. It makes for interesting reading. Watch how the world mind takes shape, this is its first baby steps. 5:28:58 PM

Monday, December 16, 2002

[Colin Glassey 4 PM] Goodby to Some Old Ideas Last week Bishop Law, the most powerful member of the American Catholic Church resigned. Also, Henry Kissinger resigned from the 9/11 pannel. Lastly it seems likely that Trent Lott will be forced out of his position as Republican Senate leader. These are all good things. First the Bishop. It is quite clear that the Catholic Church in America brought this upon itself. Their insistance on celibacy in modern America had an obvious consequence, men with an interest in women as sexual partners would be less likely to join the priesthood. My short comment is: celibacy in the priesthood of the Catholic church is not justified on any grounds. It is not justified based on the example of the founders of the church: several of the disciples of Jesus were married men. It is not justified based on the teachings and example of Jesus: he officiated at a wedding, he personally blessed a marriage, ergo marriage is a good thing). It is not justified by the example of history: for the first 1000 years of the church's existence there was no celibacy requirement for priests in the church. As to Mr. Kissinger resigning from the 9/11 commission, the problem with Kissinger is that he is well known as someone is quite willing to lie in order to protect the best interests of the United States. This is a fine trait to have as a diplomat but it is far from a desirable trait in the head of a pannel to investigate the events that led to the 9/11 tragedy. The purpose of the 9/11 commission is to find the areas where we could (and should) have done better. The feeling one gets with Mr. Kissinger in charge is that if they had found out things that current powers in Washington didn't like, these things might have been supressed. After all, what reputation for honesty and impartial dealings does Kissinger have? None would be about right I think. Lastly, Mr. Lott. The more I've read about Strom Thurmond's Dixicrat campign, the less I like it. The Dixicrats were racists, disguising their hatred of blacks behind code words like states rights and police state when all they really wanted to do was keep blacks as unfree, non-voting, 2nd class citizens in their states. Take a look at this essay by Dave Koppel if you want the full details. For any person in the United States government to stand up in 2002 and say "Strom Thurmond's ideas back in 1948 were good" is revolting to me. Strom Thurmond was wrong in 1948 and with 50 years gone, it is even more obvious how wrong and evil his ideas were. Mr. Lott should be forced out of his position of power in the Senate as soon as possible. 4:23:16 PM     [Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] Hope vs. Fear of Globalization Steven Den Beste has a long attack on a paper from 1999 about ways to reduce global conflict by Randall Forsberg and two others. The pager by Forsberg is pretty dull and unrealistic in its time frame but I think the idea behind it is good. Steven argues that it is unrealistic and it ignores 2000 years of world history. One argument by Steven struck me: And if this happened, and if the resulting world government or world military came under the control of some sort of dictatorial power, it would not be possible to ever overthrow it, and the world would sink into a global abyss ruled by an evil dictator and his heirs which might last decades or centuries. I'd rather not place the entire world's eggs in a single basket, if I can in any way avoid it. I would rather not have the entire world become Myanmar, or North Korea, or Zimbabwe. I certainly do not wish to see the world become more like Myanmar, North Korea OR Zimbabwe but Steven's argument reminds me of the debate against the formation of the United States in the years following 1783. At the time it was argued that the individual states had no need for much formal authority over all the states. Instead simple bilateral relations between the states should work. Hamilton and Madison argued forcefully and persuasively that 13 states would eventually fight if they were not placed under a larger Federal government. The fundamental problem of human political groups: how do you resolve differences between groups without killing each other? I am not saying that people all over the world today can trust each other enough to submit to a common set of laws and government. What I do argue is It would be a good thing if it did happen eventually There are examples in human history of larger states created out of smaller states (so it can be done) Given enough time and the right technology (and the Internet is part of the solution) a global government should be possible To look at the current world and say "I don't trust (insert nation of choice here) so there is no way I would ever submit to those people having a say in our joint laws" is perfectly reasonable. There are at least 50 national governments I don’t trust. However, I can imagine the world 100 years from now where it will be possible to say "everyone on this Earth has access to the same information that I do, they share (roughly speaking) the same ideas as I do, I can imagine letting their representative vote over laws that would effect me." In my opinion, this is a goal Americans should be working towards. The idea that nations are going to continue the way they are, unchanged for the next hundred, 500 hundred, 1,000 years, is absurd. Even the sketchiest reading of history will show you that things change, and technology is forcing this change upon us. Read Robert Wright’s book Non Zero if you want to learn something about how the process of integration has been going on a very long time. I submit that have few choices. Technology is driving us towards closer integration. We can either work to make this process work better, or we can fight it, and by extension, fight the current system of economics and technology which is driving the integration. Given that the United States is the biggest contributor to this economic system, it really boils down to fighting ourselves. I must say that integration is going to be much easier when the whole world adopts American/Western ideals about: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, democracy, and individual rights. There won’t be any integration involving the United States into a system of government that isn’t 90% (or more) like the one we have here today in the United States. I will say this more plainly: if the world is going to integrate it will be based on our model of how people relate to governments. Not China's model, not Saudi Arabia's model, not Zimbabwe's model. The United States is the model for the world of the future. Finally, we (humanity) won’t have all our eggs in one basket. Eventually humans will be living off planet. Mars, the asteroid belt, Europa, Calysto, maybe further. The government we create here on Earth won’t be the only one in existence. Eventually humans will change, diverge, to the point that we will no longer even be the same species. This is not a problem I’m going to worry about, it’s a long way down the line. My descendents are the people who will need to avoid wars between the Earthlings and the Spacers. My worry is how to get from the world of today (multiple nations, vast room for conflict) to the world of the tomorrow: the United States of Earth. 2:40:12 PM

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

[Colin Glassey 5 PM] Why the Left Wants to End Free Speech This is the sort of analysis which you don't run into very often. In this superb essay by Stephen Hicks (chairman of the philosophy department at Rockford College in Illinois) the author provides a detailed analysis of why the modern leftists support speech codes on college campuses, i.e. why does the left support censorship? Here is the key paragraph: [To the Postmodernists] there is no distinction between speech and action, a distinction that liberals have traditionally prized. According to postmodernists, speech is itself something that is powerful because it constructs who we are and underlies all of the actions that we engage in. And as a form of action, it can and does cause harm to other people. Liberals, say postmodernists, should accept that any form of harmful action must be constrained. Therefore, they [Liberals] must accept censorship. It is a brilliant essay and well worth the read but the bottom line is as follows: the Postmodernists are attacking free speech based on the following bedrocks: (1) they believe reason is socially constructed and is not a tool of knowing reality (2) they believe people do not have free will but instead are largely/entirely products of their social environments and (3) they want the world to be egalitarianism and altruistic instead of individualistic where people take responsibility for their own actions. I've certainly had moments when I supported censorship of some types of speech. I'm forced to admit that censorship of speech is incompatible with what I believe. I am not a postmodernist and I believe they are largely wrong about everything. Thanks to Armed Liberal for the link. 5:04:05 PM

Tuesday, December 10, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] A Winning Strategy for Nazi Germany Obviously the Nazi's lost and this is a very good thing for the world. In case anyone cares this is a scenario for the Nazis to win the 2nd World War (and let me say again how glad I am that they lost). In June of 1940, upon signing a peace treaty with the new government of France (creating Vichey France), the Germans should have almost immediately violated the terms of the agreement by deploying their forces to the Spainish border. In July of 1940 Franco is given a stark choice: become an ally of Germany and allow free passage of German troops, or face invasion. It is likely that Spain would have refused (as they did in reality though with less troops on their border) and so Germany invades Spain. England had no army worth speaking of at this time and Spain, with no anti-tank weapons, would have been crushed rapidly by the German army. Gibralter's defence would have been gallent but unavailling and so the key base of the English Mediterranean fleet would have fallen by the end of 1940. It is likely that Egypt falls to Italian attack sometime within the next year. All of 1941 is spent on laying the ground for the invasion of Russia. Eastern Europe is conquered either politically or militarily by June of 1941 (which is what happened historically). With German armies sitting on the border of Turkey, the government of Turkey is given the same choice as Franco was given one year earlier: join the German alliance, or be conquered. I don't know if Turkey would have stuck to their neutrality in this situation. I'm not sure that it matters. Either way German forces end up being deployed on Russias southern border by the end of 1941. The same sort of choice is given to Finland: accept German forces stationed in your country or else. It is hard to imagine Finland refusing this demand from a Germany that had just invaded two major neutral nations that denied this same request. 1942. With German forces in Finland, central Europe, and Turkey, the invasion of Russia starts on May 1st, 1942. Russia loses control of the Baku oil fields early, and German forces over-run Leningrad by the start of the summer. While the additional year (all of 1941) is a help to Russia, the additional year is even more helpful to the Germans now that they control Spain and the entire Mediterranean through their Italian proxy. No panzer divisions have to be redeployed to North Africa, lots more tanks and trucks are available to motorize the Germany infantry divisions, more railroad equipment is ready at the border so the Russian railroads can be converted to the German guage just behind the Germany front lines. Under these conditions, I think Germany would have beaten Russia by the time the fall rains made Russia impassible to German tanks. Maybe the Russians could have held on till the middle of 1943 but without Leningrad, Moscow, Baku, etc. I don't see how they can beat back the Germany army. Once Russia is beaten, its hard for me to imagine a successful invasion of Europe by the United States and Britain. Even defending England is tricky once Russia is beaten. Would the war have continued? If we continued the war we would have built the atomic bomb and been in a position to nuke German cities. Or we could have opted to fortify England and try to contain the Nazis to Europe. Either way, this is as close to victory as Germany was going to get. As I see it, the bottom line for Germany was that they were too nice to the neutral nations. Failure to get Spain and Turkey to join (or be conquered) cost Germany the war. In a real sense, Franco's refusal to bow to Hitler's demands at their meeting in 1940 helped to save Europe. While it is true is that England was (and still is, 60 years later) very unhappy with Turkey for refusing to join with them against Germany during the war, things could have been worse. Turkey as an active ally of Germany in 1941 is a frightful thing to contemplate. So, there is is, the winning scenario for the Nazis in World War II. Its an ugly thought and I every time I think about it I'm glad we won and the Nazi's lost. 5:53:54 PM     [Colin Glassey 5 PM] Money is the Measure of All Things As I was growing up I was told money doesn't buy everything. The idea behind this statement is that there are things, important things, which are beyond the role of money to control. It was said: You can't buy love; you can't buy honor; you can't buy respect; you can't buy happiness. Living now in the United States in 2002 I don't hear this idea much any more, because it no longer seems to be true. It is quite obvious you can buy love for what else is happening when a rich man marries a new young trophy wife? You can buy honor, for that is exactly what happened when the U.S. Navy honored Carl Vinson by naming one of its 12 active aircraft carriers after him. Carl Vinson's only claim to fame is that he was the chairman of the House Naval Affairs committe for 29 years (i.e. he passed buckets of money to the Navy reliably for 29 years). Mr. Vinson may be worthy of some respect but to see his name in the same collection as Nimitz, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Lincoln, makes me sick. You can buy respect for what else is happening when Michael Milken can go from being convicted of securities fraud to being lionized by the TechLearn Association (1999)? While you can't buy happiness, it is also true that rich people are unhappy about very different things than poor people. Rich people are unhappy because they can't buy that wonderful beach house on Maui as well as the mansion in Vail. Poor people worry about paying the doctor. Now, we see in this article from the New York Times sunday magazine that most of the victims of 9/11 are doing their best to get as much money out of the U.S. government as they can. To quote the lawyer and author Phillip K. Howard: We have made money the surrogate for tragedy. But we learn and relearn that it is not a very good surrogate. It is sad that the United States culture should have come to this point. It was, perhaps, unavoidable given our nature (to wit we are a country based not on a common ethnic heritage but instead based on the quest for freedom and happiness). Still, I regret seeing money, the accumulation of wealth, as the final judge on a person's character. I'm going to come out and say it: the highly paid people of Cantor Fiztgerald who died on 9/11 were not better people than the cooks in the Windows on the World restraunt. The families of the highly paid Cantor staff who died do not deserve any more (nor any less) money than the cooks or the administrative assistants who died and left families behind. The government shouldn't be giving money to the 9/11 survivors by the same logic as the government did not give special money to the survivors of Pearl Harbor. We are at war. The dead on 9/11 were not the first casualties of that war, and they were not the last. 9/11 was a defining moment, just like Pearl Harbor was 60 years earlier, but the United States can not be in the habit of giving millions of dollars to every person who dies due to the actions of terrorists. We are all in this together and either every family gets money when a member dies due to terrorism, or no one does. 5:29:04 PM

Friday, December 06, 2002

[Colin Glassey 3:30 PM] Anti-Terrorism Officers Needs to Blog More In a cogent essay Dave Roberts argues in favor of blogging by the people who are supposed to be watching out for terrorists. I agree totally. Its an outrage that the FBI and local police aren't doing this already. Thanks to InstaPundit for the link. 3:28:08 PM     [Colin Glassey 3:30 PM] Why Mars has no atmosphere At last, a question which has vexed us Mars watchers for years finally answered in this essay from NASA's web site. Summary: Mars doesn't have any atmosphere because it doesn't have a magnetic field. No planetary magnetic field means the solar wind can slowly erode the outermost layer of Mars's atmosphere. Given enough time (and 4 billion years is more than enough time), the atmosphere is all blown away by the Sun. Thank you NASA! 3:24:49 PM     [Colin Glassey 12 midnight] Could the U.S. have lost W.W.II? The historian Michael Beschloss has a new book out (The Conquerors) and I heard him speaking on KQED this morning. Twice in the first 15 minutes he made that claim that if xxx hadn't happened, "we would have lost the war". The first time he was talking about what would have happened if Roosevelt had lost the presidential election in 1936, the second time he was talking about what would have happened if Stalin had made peace with Hitler sometime before the end of the war. Frankly, this is wrong, in my opinion. There are very few scenarios which result in us losing World War II, and none of them take place after 1942. Even if Stalin had signed a peace treaty with Hitler in late 1943 (after Operation Zitidel had failed) we still would have beaten the Nazis. It would have taken longer, more people would have died, and one or more German cities would have been nuked but we would have won. The truth is, we beat the Germans with some margin to spare. We invaded France in June of 1944 and less than a year later we had shattered their western army and were well on our way to capturing every city west of Berlin. We didn't suffer a serious reverse during the entire campaign. And yes, I know about the Battle of the Bulge. In the Ardense offensive, the Germans threw every available panzer unit they had at the weakest, most thinly defended portion of our front, and succeeded in advancing a measly 55 miles at their farthest. They attacked with their 12 best divisions and they succeeded in shattering two of our weakest infantry divisions. They couldn't even take the one city we defended in force (Bastogne, held by the 101 Airborn division). Our counter attack ground down their panzers and at the end of the campaign, the Germans were right back where they started but their armored units had suffered 90% losses. They never attacked on the Western front for the remainder of the war. If Stalin had signed a peace treaty, Hitler would have been free to reallocate maybe 20% of the East front forces to the West. To move more would have left German territory too exposed to the dangerous and very angry Russian army. We could have handled an additional 20% stronger Germany army. Yes it would have been tougher, but we still would have won. So, we are pleased that the Russians didn't just give up the fight when they recovered all their territory, thanks Russia! But once Hitler attacked Russia and was beaten at Stalingrad, their defeat was all but certain. As to us losing the war if Roosevelt wasn't elected President in 1936 (or 1940), I'm sorry but I don't see it. I have great respect for Roosevelt and I think he made good choices but the United States is more than just one man. Would General Marshall and Admiral King not be in command in 1941 if Roosevelt wasn't president? Would Eisenhower, Patton, Nimitz and Spruance have somehow disappeared if Roosevelt hadn't been re-elected? Would the huge industrial base of the United States have gone missing if Roosevelt wasn't in the White House? Yes, Roosevelt invested political capital to get the United States preparing for war before December 7, 1941, but the truth is, we didn't do that much before the Japanese attacked, and we did a hell of a lot after the attack. The same things that protected us in 1942 (the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) would have been protecting us under any other president. The aircraft carriers that won the war in the Pacific were not built during Roosevelts 2nd or 3rd administrations, they had been built already. Bottom line: Hitler was doomed the day Stalingrad surrendered, February 2, 1943. The Japanese were doomed from the start of the war (really) but it was certain when on June 4th, 1942, they lost their four fleet carriers at Midway. Even if luck was against us and the Germans were still holding out in the fall of 1945, we were going to build the atomic bomb and we would have been all too pleased to use it against the Nazis. So Mr. Bechloss, how exactly could the United States have lost World War II? 12:11:12 AM

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

[Colin Glassey 7 PM] Misc Links Some web pages I found today: There are still some PBM (play by mail) companies operating today. I spent more than two years playing a wonderful PBM game around 1990 called Global Supremacy run by Schubel and Son. They don't seem to exist any longer but Flying Buffalo is still going strong. Another PBM game company which is new to me is Advanced Gaming Enterprises. In my Global Supremacy game, I ordered the mighty Italian army and fleet into Iceland, then down into the United States, and then into Alaska. It was a wild ride for the swift Italian Armored divisions :-). The real powers in that game were Canada (with the best technology) and the Cape Verde Islands. Hail to my good friends of the Rhine Alliance: Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Another good essay from Lee Harris, this one is an interesting critique/explaination of Marxism. The main focus is an attack on anti-Americanism but his use of Marx against the leftist position is quite entertaining. 6:46:35 PM

Tuesday, December 03, 2002

[Colin Glassey 7 PM] A Defining Moment I was struck by a comment I heard recently by J.M.S. (J. Michael Straczynski, the man behind Babylon 5) when he talked about pivotal events in people's lives. There are events so important that there is life before the event, and life after, and there is a world of difference between them. For me, 9/11/2001 is that pivotal event. I didn't effect me directly, I knew no one who died that day. I don't live in New York city, but that event was crucial to me. It made my life, my work prior to 9/11, pointless. It didn't help matters that in real terms my work for the prior two and a half years was close to being pointless. The Dot Com boom was an enjoyable time but in many respects it was wasteful of money, time, and talent. And I was a part of it, in a small way. 9/11 was profoundly disturbing to me as I thought, what have I been doing with my life? This blog is a small attempt to add some value back to the society which I've come to deeply appreciate. 6:37:03 PM

Monday, December 02, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] More Movie Review I rented Y tu mamá también yesterday. Second time I've seen it. I liked the film a great deal. One reason is that this is the first film I've seen which actually depicts Mexico of today. Hollywood seems to have given up showing us much aside from California and Toronto (the current stand-in for any normal American city). Older Hollywood films seem to have spent more time outside of California. I certainly know the Mexico from the old films. Modern Mexico isn't like that any more. Y tu mamá también actually shows a fair bit of Mexico, from the modern urban landscape of Mexico city to the still impoverished rural lands. The main characters are enjoyable to watch and listen to as well. Good film, glad it was made. The exploration of the modern state of a nation I thought I knew is also found in the wonderful film Monsoon Wedding. This film is set in a big city in modern India, New Dehli (if I'm not mistaken). It also shows a culture and a city that is not like you see in the old films set in India. Both films certainly broadened my horizons. 5:56:49 PM     [Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] Movie Reviews On a lighter note, I enjoyed both new franchise movies, the new James Bond film (Die Another Day) and the new Harry Potter film (Chamber of Secrets). Of the two, the Chamber of Secrets was the bigger surprise as I expected it to be very, very dull. The new Bond film was a lot of fun, about what I expected, a bit more frenetic but entertaining. The Chamber of Secrets was good fun. Much better than the first film which only had one good sequence in it (the first visit to Diagon Alley). By contrast, this film was an adventure in which Harry Potter acts heroicly while his companions are sidelined. Of special note was Ken Branagh as the foppish Gilderoy Lockheart. He was funny just about every time he said something. Given that I had forgetten the plot of the book, the twists in the movie were something of a surprise to me. Special note also goes to Christian Coulson playing Tom Marvolo Riddle. Nice job. The new Bond film had a large number of entertaining set pieces and some clunkers. It was clear to me that the writer had seen Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and so included sword fights. I like sword fights. The first one was good fun, between Pierce Brosnan and Toby Stephens. The second, between Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike was a failure, doubtless because neither woman could actually use a sword. I enjoyed the car fight between Bond with his secret-agent car and Rick Yune with his secret-agent car. However, as they end up driving around in circles inside the ice palace, it went on way too long (and was silly to boot). Still, a good Bond flick, even better than Tommorow Never Dies (though Halle wasn't as good as Michelle Yeoh, prettier though). 2:23:47 PM     [Colin Glassey 1 PM] On Cultural Relativism Here is a great essay by Eric Raymond on Today's treason of the intellectuals. He argues it is a treason by intellectuals to argue: revolutionary relativism — the position that there are no moral claims or universal values that can trump the particularisms of particular ethnicities, political movements, or religions. In particular, relativists maintain that that the ideas of reason and human rights that emerged from the Enlightenment have no stronger claim on us than tribal prejudices. He continues saying: postmodernism — the ideology that all value systems are equivalent, merely the instrumental creations of people who seek power and other unworthy ends. Thus, according to the postmodernists, when fanatical Islamists murder 3,000 people and the West makes war against the murderers and their accomplices, there is nothing to choose between these actions. I'm in agreement here, this is a treason against 2500 years of Western thought. I have long argued that some cultures are absolutely better than others. I've long used the Aztec culture as an example of a culture that was bad, evil, worse than nearly all others. The Aztecs were hated by all their neighbors because the Aztecs believed in the necessity of ritual sacrifice of humans on a daily basis. For the dedication of some of their grand temples, thousands of people were murdered, one after the other. Naturally, most of the people the Aztecs killed were non-Aztec, i.e. people from surrounding areas which they captured in battles and raids so they could murder them later. If, in the face of this example, anyone can argue that the Aztecs were no worse and no better than anyone else, then I have nothing further to say to such people. Either you live in a world where killing thousands of people for the glory of your gods is wrong, or you don't. In other words, if this isn't a self-evident case, then nothing is. 12:51:46 PM     [Colin Glassey 1 PM] The Future of Europe A lengthy and well thoughtful article about the Future of Europe by Karl Zinsmeister in the American Enterprise (thanks to InstaPundit for the link). Summary: Europe is in trouble on three major fronts: Economically, Europe is following a path that seems (based on the last 30 years) to be a failure. Militarily, Europe has traded real force for treaties and diplomats. This, based on the last 2,000 years of human history, is a certain failure just waiting to collapse. Demographically Europe is getting older and smaller. With replacement rates way below what is needed to sustain the population of many major countries, Europe as a whole is likely to be unchanged 50 years from now (about 360 million), while the United States is likely to be at 550 million people. Bottom line: it doesn't seem like Europe is very important in the future. They are following a path that seems wrong in fundementally important ways. 12:37:19 PM

Thursday, November 28, 2002

[Colin Glassey 11 PM] Thanksgiving I'm thankfull for: my wonderful wife and mother of my three children. My mother and father who are and have always been the best humans I know. My sister and her family. My dear brother. The University of California at Berkeley. The state of California (especially Lake Alpine, Lake Spicers, and Yosemite valley). The United States of America and the people who helped create it: Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson. Musicians: Will Ackerman, Steve Tibbetts, Robert Fripp and Loreena McKennitt. Writers: Tolkien, Zelazny, Vernor Vinge, Asimov, Brin, Bear, and J.M.Straczinsky. Games: BioWare, Sir-Tech Software (R.I.P.), InterPlay, Mythic Studio, and the glory that was Origin Systems. 10:43:28 PM

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

[Colin Glassey 1 PM] Intollerant Islam I'm going to jump on the bandwagon of people attacking Islam again. The Prophet of Islam, Mohammed, was, by my reading of history, not an ideal person. [Simply saying this exposes me to fatwas of death from various Islamic fanatics, so be it, it gets worse.] In fact, I would argue that Mohammed is the root cause of Islam's problems today (said problems being largely based on the principle: we are right, you are wrong, we will kill you if you don't adopt our way of thinking). Unlike the other major religious leaders (Moses, the Buddha, and Jesus, in historical order), Mohammed’s life is pretty well known. Considering that some historians argue that none of the other three are real people, Mohammed’s life is nearly an open and shut book. Sure, there are lots of issues, unknowns in his life, but the basic outlines of his story are accepted as fact. He did live, he did found a religion, he died. The book he wrote is almost perfectly preserved from his hand, unlike the Torah, whose many authors are unknown, unlike the New Testament which was created by a voting by Bishops some 300 years after Jesus’ death. The problem is this: Mohammed’s life by the standards of his day (600 C.E. in Arabia) was nearly a paragon of virtue and humanity. I can well imagine how his message spread in that day, considering the barbarism he was trying to reform. However, by the standards of today, Mohammed’s personal history contains episodes of violence, betrayal, and the corruption of power. To my mind he was a man who had great ideas for his culture, but had some weaknesses as well. He was not perfect. I am sure that Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha had weaknesses, character flaws as well. However, none of these flaws survived the myth-making process that followed their deaths. They come down to us as perfect humans, thanks to the editing of the historical records by they devoted followers. Unhappily for the world today, Mohammed was not so lucky. Moslems hold contradictory beliefs about Mohammed, on the one hand they say he was human, on the other hand they say he was perfect. His every word and deed a perfect model worthy of emulation by all humans, now and forever. But was Mohammed perfect? Again, I think not, judging by my standards in the year 2002. The modern indictment of Mohammed is as follows: That he led raids against trade caravans and stole the property of others. That he condoned slavery. That he led military forces and was directly involved in the deaths of people who committed no crime other than they wished to not be ruled by Mohammed. That he ordered collective punishments against people who had the bad luck to be associated with people, who worked against him. These collective punishments varied from enslavement to death. These are all facts, based on the life of Mohammed as written by his followers. By modern standards these are pretty serious crimes. Any Moslem can engage in these same actions and justify them by pointing to these incidents from the Prophet’s life. There are justifications for all these actions, gone over in great detail by the faithful. These justifications all revolve around how it was allowed for Mohammed to do these things, but not for other people, unless, you were in the same circumstances. The bottom line for me is that Mohammed did these things to other people. And since he is the Prophet, the perfect example for all people, followers of him can argue that they are justified in behaving in the same way. Here is quote from Joseph Britt, found on Slate.com: “As a practical matter, the voices of non-Muslims saying that the essence of Islam is peace seem to carry little weight in the Muslim world. What counts there is what Muslims say, and what they do. If even a small minority of Muslims insist that the most depraved forms of violence are sanctioned or mandated by Islam and are not forcibly contradicted by other Muslims, non-Muslims will eventually come to identify the whole religion with terrorism. …what are non-Muslims--not only Westerners but Indians, Chinese and Africans--supposed to think? Why would they not come to regard Islam as a menace, and Muslim minorities in their own countries as a liability? Non-Muslims will make their own judgments about whether "Islam means peace," and they won't make them by studying the Koran. This is why terrorism committed in the name of Islam is ultimately a much greater threat to Muslims than it is to us.” Show me another major religious figure who, after having declared that he was the leader of a new way of life, proceeded to steal from innocent victims, and kill or enslave those who opposed him. All the killing, stealing, enslavement and murder was justified by Muhammed's goal of gaining control over Mecca. In other words, the ends justify the means. This is the fundamental example of morality that Muhammed's life teaches to his followers: Anything is justifiable in the name of a higher goal. Is there anything like this in the life of Jesus? In the life of Buddha? In the life of Confucius? Western morality teaches that there are absolutes, that the ends do not justify the means, that "God's Law" stands above mere circumstance. Buddha taught that killing was both evil and pointless and only hurt your own soul. Muhammed justified his actions by a series of "revelations" which conveniently affirmed every action he took. This, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with Theocracy. When you are the word of God, nothing is off limits to you. I think it is quite clear how this concept of morality can be easily used to suit the ideology of scum like Osama bin Laden. The next time a Moslem talks about how his religion is one of peace and that there is nothing in the religion that justifies the killing of innocents, that person is ignoring a key part of the life history of the "perfect man of Islam". Comparing religions we find that at the core of Christianity, a man who would rather die than fight his enemies. At the core of Buddhism we find a man who opposed killing any living creature and who gave up a life of power and luxury to become a penniless wandering teacher. At the core of Islam we find a man who would rather kill than be killed, a man who did wield political power, a man who justified every action he took on the basis of divine revelation. In short, Mohammed was a Theocratic Dictator. Salman Rushdie wrote the following in the Washington Post (10/2/2001) "There needs to be a thorough examination, by Muslims everywhere, of why it is that the faith they love breeds so many violent mutant strains." In my opinion, they don't have to look very hard to find the source. Unfortunately for them and for us, it lies at the very center of the life of the founder of Islam. 1:20:03 PM

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

[Colin Glassey 9:00 PM]   Vietnam Redux Daniel Ellsberg was on the radio recently, talking about his decision to get the Pentagon Papers into the hands of the public, and about the Vietnam war. I have an opinion on this. I am not a neutral party either. My wife is Vietnamese, born in Saigon to parents who had fled North Vietnam (and likely execution by the not-so-kind Viet Communists). If things hadn't happened the way they did, it is highly unlikely that we would have ever met. So, I have an interest in justifing what did happen. That said, here is what I think about the Vietnamese war. Our support of South Vietnam was reasonable. Our strategyfor fighting the war in South Vietnam was wrong. We could have won the war with a different strategy and kept South Vietnam free from the North. Why was our support of South Vietnam reasonable? There really were people in Vietnam who didn't want Ho Chi Mihn and his communist friends to rule over them as a dictator. Why should we have let Ho and company take over all of Vietnam? Did they deserve to rule the whole country? We know now what they did with their power, no elections, little personal freedom, very little in the way of basic human rights. Many people who fought against the Communists before the French left the north were murdered after the Viet Mihn took over (my wife's uncle was one of them). By contrast, the Southern government was at least no worse than the North and, at times, better. Our strategy for fighting the war in Vietnam was wrong. The problem was that we acted as though the forces working against the Southern government were largely composed of Southerners. This was not correct. By and large, the forces fighting us were Northern. To stop the Northerners from fighting us in South Vietnam we should have invaded and occupied North Vietnam. This was considered but rejected by Johnson who worried about starting World War 3. We know now that Johnson's fears were mistaken, but he made his call based on the available evidence. However, given that we were not going to invade the North, there was an alternate strategy. Theophrastus's strategy for winning the war in Vietnam: build a defensive line from the sea to Thailand, station all U.S. forces along this line and prevent anything from moving from the North to the South. This would involve violating Laos's border. I'm sorry but frankly, I don't care about Laos and we shouldn't have cared back then. Laos is and was just a shadow of a country. Even if they had wanted to (which they didn't) Laos lacked the ability to control its own borders. From the sea around Quang Tri to Khe Sanh (the offical border of Vietnam) is about 40 miles. From Khe Sanh to the Thai border (and the Mekong river) is another 100 miles. If we had fortified this 140 mile border and stationed three or four divisions there, then we would have ended the war in the South. We should have let the South Vietnamese Army and police handle internal resistance. We should never have gotten involved in policing South Vietnam. The only reason why the Southern army couldn't control the south was because of the constant influx of men and supplies from the North. Once that supply was halted, the fighting in the South would have been quite minor and winnable by the South Vietnamese. The essential point is that the war in the South was the product, not of Southerners who were deeply unhappy with the government in Saigon, but instead it was the product of the North Vietnamese government. If we prevent the North from fighting in the South, the South would have been largely peaceful. Sure it would have been expensive in money to station 120,000 troops along this new 140 mile border, but it would have been cheap in lives saved and the Southern government would not have fallen. We helped cause the Southern government to fall by trying to fight a war on the North's terms amidst a civiliam population that started out indiferent to the war but turned increasingly hostile as we bombed villages and fired artillery into free fire zones. In a real sense, we bought into the North's claims that the people of the South supported them, not the government in Saigon. This was a nice lie the Communists spread but it wasn't true, not in 1960, or even as late as 1965. 8:59:37 PM     [Colin Glassey 8 PM] Science News An interesting article from the New York Times about a recently published study (which started more than 20 years ago). The published data shows that people who were happy about their lives and about aging lived 7.5 years longer than other people. This is a huge difference. Another good article about velcro mittens for very, very small babies. The researchers found that when the babies (3 months old) had velcro mittens and had velcro objects around them, they played more with them. 7:55:04 PM

Friday, November 15, 2002

[Colin Glassey 2 PM]   China's Government China has new official leaders. The policy for some 15 years now in China is that political and military leaders over the age of 70 must retire. However, looking at China's history it is likely that the old men will still wield significant power from behind the scenes, just like good old Deng Xiaoping who was making key ruling on Chinese government policy from his death bed. Still, I'm forced to admit a gruding admiration for the Chinese government. Handling transitions of power is one of the harshest tests for any human government. By all accounts, China has managed this task well three times (starting with Deng's retirement). I argue that political transitions are what seperates good governments from bad ones. Kings and dictators may (rarely) make for good leaders in the short run (10 or even 20 years) but over the long run, both forms of government are bad at transitions. Oligarchy's tend to be unstable even over the short term as it is very rare for a group of people to share power equally. Given China's success in peaceful transitions, it is hard for me to classify their government. They look like an oligarchy from the outside but maybe it really is a functional (though severly limited in franchise) democracy? What is hard to deny is that China is moving towards a free market economic system. We know from history that those who have the wealth will attain the power eventually. How long it will take is an open question. Already the Chinese Party of Power (they still call themselves a Communist party) has invited wealthy businessmen to join the party. Maybe someday soon they will actually let all the Chinese citizens vote. 2:22:00 PM     [Colin Glassey 1:30 PM] Heather Hurlburt has written a good essay for the Washington Monthly. Summary: she argues that 1) Democrats don't take security matters seriously and 2) Democrats failed to formulate a coherent policy vis. the rest of the world even though the Clinton administration actually had something. I must say, one reason why I support the Bush administration on foreign policy now is that they seem to have a much better idea of what to do than any Democrat, especially Al Gore. We were attacked because of what we are, not because of anything we have done/not done. The Democrats don't seem to understand this. We are in a state of war. Iraq is an enemy of the United States and is working to develop nuclear bombs. I don't trust Saddam to not give weapons to Al Qaeda. 1:30:28 PM

Thursday, November 14, 2002

[Colin Glassey 3 PM]   Aid workers Another famine is coming to Ethiopia and appeals by various aid organizations are making it onto the news programs. I've very troubled by this based, in part, on the new book Emma's War: Love, Betrayal, and Death in the Sudan by Deborah Scroggins. I haven't read the book yet but I've read several reviews (this is one from the Washington Post). Its a complex story but the bottom line is: the men with guns are using the suffering of the poor for their own ends. To a large extent, the hunger, the orphans, the misery, is created by the local leaders. Aid workers are actually part of the problem. By giving out food, they allow the gunmen to spend their spare money on ammunition and RPGs. By working with the local authorities to set up camps they continue the power of corupt, often evil leaders. Guess who ran the refugee camps in the Eastern Congo after the genocidal Hutus were forced out of Rwanda? Those same genocidal monsters were in charge of the refugee camps. Should we do nothing? Is the right moral stance to let thousands or hundreds of thousands of people starve as a way of convincing the gunmen that they need to worry more about feeding the people in their region than buying weapons? By sending food aid are we encouraging the very behavior which the aid is trying to prevent? It is well known that by paying kidnappers you encourage more kidnappings. Is the same lesson applicable to starving people in Africa? Getting back to Ethiopia, the government there spent hundreds of millions of dollars beefing up their military so they could avenge their loss to Eritria. It worked, they beat Eritria two years ago in a replay of the first war. And for what? 50 miles of disputed territory? And now they don't have the money to buy food for a population which has been unable to feed itself, thanks to stupid government policies. And we, the rich countries of the world, are supposed to help the poor of Ethiopia? Maybe first the government of Ethiopia can sell some of its fighter jets? Maybe the government of Ethiopia can devote more of its taxes to agraculture and less for tank battalions? 3:04:16 PM     [Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] Science news: A fabric which is as effective as lead in shielding humans from radiation? Sounds very interesting. I'd like to know how it works. The reason why we use lead is because of its density. How else can you deflect loose protons/neutrons? A new speed record for data transfer. A team in Canada transfered one terabyte of data in three hours. That works out to one DVD a minute. This doubles the previous speed record. Oh, and the distance? From Vancouver, Canada to CERN in Switzerland. Yet another robot for the home. This robot can move about 40 feet in one minute and detect smoke. Cost? A mere $16,400. Compared to the cost of a smoke alarm, I can't see anyone buying this thing, even in Japan. Still, robots in the home are going to be standard in 20 years (my guess). 2:36:47 PM

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] Yet another well reasoned arguement for why liberals ought to support a war against the murderous dictator Saddam. This essay is by Richard Just, editor of The American Prospect online. Here is my favorite quote: But not one of those arguments [against the removal of Saddam] will lead to the liberation of a frighteningly Orwellian society based on fear and torture. Not one of them will protect the citizens of the Middle East's democratic nations against future attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Not one of them could lead to a beachhead -- however small -- of democracy in the Arab world. Not one of them will help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. Not one of them will allow America to take initial steps toward addressing the "root causes" of terror. Not one of them is worthy of the deeply moral traditions of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And not one of them will lead to progress in the Middle East -- yet these objections are apparently all most "progressives" have to offer. 5:53:08 PM     [Colin Glassey 5:30 PM] Here is a lovely essay by Eric Raymond called Libertarianism and the Hard SF Renaissance. I'm just a little younger than Mr. Raymond and I read just about the same things he did (and liked them just about as much). I also absorbed Heinlein's political philosophy without really understanding that is was a political philosophy. When I read people who argue that Ayn Rand was an important philosopher of the 20th century, I think: If Ayn Rand is, then so is Robert Heinlein. In fact, I believe Heinlein is an even more influential philosopher. Here is how I understand Heinleinian philosophy: racism is stupid and pointless. Pacificism is foolish and dangerous. The universe is fundementally understandable, though our understanding is always going to be imperfect. I don't agree with everything that Heinlein suggested in his three great works of political philosophy (in chronological order: Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress) but I agree with a lot of it, especially There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. 5:30:16 PM     [Colin Glassey 1 PM] Some random thoughts: Halle Berry is a very nice looking woman. Try out this picture from the up-coming Bond film if proof is needed. However, given the fact that her mother is European-American or white why is she considered African-American or black? To my mind she is mixed. Like many people in this country she is not of one race. My children are of mixed race and I don't want to see them grow up in a country where they have to choose between my race or my wife's race. I argue that to call Halle Berry black is racist. It harkens back to the old, racist idea that if you had even one black ancestor, no matter how distant, you were black. This is a stupid, unsupportable idea because if you go back far enough, we are all one race. I really liked this essay about how Harry Potter is a pampered jock and a patsy. I don't much like the Harry Potter series in the first place. I regard it as unoriginal junk. Lacking in the essential otherness of real fantasy. Lacking in any real sense of moral force in the world, where the hero must make choices that mean something. A book I strongly recommend about a young wizard going to school is Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. The problems I have with Harry Potter: he is born famous (thanks to his parents' heroic deaths); he is rich (thanks to his parents); he never has to make any hard choices (in his world the bad guys are called death eaters, gee I wonder which side Harry should choose? Oh, he isn't even given a choice). And to top it all off, J.K.Rowling has made up the stupidest rules for her Quidich game. Its totally absurd. I could go on for 15 minutes on why Quidich is one of the worst designed games ever made famous. But I won't. Today. 12:29:04 PM

Friday, November 08, 2002

[Colin Glassey] 12 noon Victor Davis Hansen, military historian and now writer for the National Review Online (NRO) has an impassioned essay on the moral decline of the American left. (Found through InstaPundit, as usual). I agree with Mr. Hanson completely. What sort of morality do the anti-war people have? They would rather see a vicious-murdering-dictator stay in power than have the United States send in the military to free the Iraqi people? Frankly, I wish Clinton had invaded Afghanistan in 1998 instead of just firing 70+ cruise missiles at Al Qeada training camps. The Taliban were so close to Nazis as to be not worth the time to find out how they differed. By not doing the right thing, Clinton just left the Taliban in place and let Al Qaeda continue its plot which resulted in 9/11. Thanks Mr. Clinton. The left should face facts, the United States has been a force for good around the world for ever since World War II started. Yes we have made mistakes but the world is a better place because of what we have done. And latetly, we have been doing a great deal more good than evil. Deposing Saddam would be a great good thing. Period. 11:30:16 AM

Thursday, November 07, 2002

[Colin Glassey] 1 PM Another good essy from Eric Raymond on what he calls Post-postmodern Politics. He blasts the democratic party (rightly) for not really having anything to say. For really having nothing specific to suggest regarding how the U.S. should respond the Al Qeada terrorists. For the record I hate the use of the word postmodern. Modern means current, present. There is nothing postmodern because that would be in the future. Anything writen today is modern. Material writen in the 1950s is not postmodern. It wasn't then and sure isn't modern now. 12:58:20 PM

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

[Colin Glassey 12 noon] Well, I can't say I'm looking forward to the sort of Judges that President Bush will now get through the Senate thanks to the Republican victories on the 5th. However I can see why people would vote Republican. The Democrats really aren't for a coherent policy, either domestic or foreign. Here is the platform I'd run with: Support for democracy throughout the world. No more treaties with dictators. No most favored nation status with any country that doesn't have democratic elections. Active (military) opposition to countries which are (a) dictatorships (b) are developing weapons of mass destruction (c) support terrorist groups. By this logic, Iraq and North Korea are targets for military action while Iran is not (its not a dictatorship). A simplified tax system. Put an end to government's attempt to shape the behavior of the U.S. population through tax incentives. Elimination of corporate subsidies. Publicly funded election campaigns. A national health care system based on Oregon's cost/benefit model. Simple eh? :-) 11:41:11 AM     [Colin Glassey 11 AM] Here is a remarkable essay on the state of France's outer city zones which are a nightmare land of unemployed, alienated second and third generation African (mostly Algerian) and religious minorities. They seem well on their way to developing a hatred of the rest of French society. The author is Theodore Dalrymple, the article was published in The City Journal, an urban policy magazine. The question as I see it is how can a nation create a shared sense of identity when its reason for existance is based on history? In a real sense, how can a non-French person ever become French? France doesn't exist because of some ideas, it exists because of its long history, its shared story of the people who have lived there for 2,200 years of recorded history. The same problem is found in many other European countries such as Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Italy, etc. Nations built on history can provide a shared sense of identity, of meaning, only to people who share that history. Immigrants, even 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants don't share much history with the native population. Coming at this from the world view of an American, I don't see many good answers. A country like Sweden can't just declare its existance is based on ideals. In a real sense, Sweden only exists because a single, identifiable group of people worked over hundreds of years to create it. Naturally I think this suggests that historic nations as means of giving people identity are in real trouble in a world where so many people move around. I would phrase the problem as follows: immigrants can't join historic nations but rich historic nations can't (or won't) keep immigrants out. My solution is some sort of global human identity (modeled naturally off the United States). 11:05:04 AM

Tuesday, November 05, 2002

[Colin Glassey 2:30 PM] My attitude towards the Palistinian people has shifted ground over the last three years. I well remember my feeling of shock and dismay when Arafat, the dictator of the Palastinian Authority, rejected Barak's proposal in 2000. At the time I thought the Palastinians had a reasonable claim to a large part of the West Bank. I thought the previous eight years of peace had actually laid the ground for a reasonable end to the conflict. I don't think any of those things any longer. Two solid years of suicide bombing by Palistinian terrorists aided and, to a large extent, controlled by Arafat's own government have completely soured me on the legitimacy of their cause. Did the Palistinians have real, legitimate issues with Israel? Yes. Were the Israeli's continuing to expand their settlements in the West Bank during the Oslo peace talks? Yes. Do I now think the Palistinians deserve to control ANY land in the West Bank and Gaza? No I don't. The bottom line is: the Palistinian leadership is complicit in terrorism. In a real sense, they are waging war against the state of Israel. I would never hand over anything to a government that was waging war against me unless I had been defeated, unless I had no choice. The Palistinians took the gamble in late 2000 that they could obtain more by going to war against Israel (a war through terrorism) than they could obtain through diplomacy. I believe this was a stupid choice to make. I further believe that the Israeli government has no reason to continue talking with the current Palistinian government. Until and unless the current leadership is replaced with people who actually don't want to fight a war with Israel, I would ignore the Palastinian authority. There are two ways of gaining your own state: Fight for it and win. Negotiate a settlement, building up a sense of good will and trust so that the people who give you your state feel they can trust you not kill them a year later. The Palistinians were following the negotiate strategy for a while. Then they switched. They are now at war with Israel. I don't think they have a chance in hell of winning. But it was their call. I personally hope they lose. 2:37:37 PM     [Colin Glassey 12 noon] Boeing announced that they created a demonstration project for a pilotless aircraft called the Bird of Prey. It is very cool. About the cost Gregg Easterbrook points out in his football column (yes, its great fun and its mostly about football) Boeing also said that it had funded the Bird of Prey program privately, at a cost of $67 million, so that any technology developed would be proprietary. Meanwhile the F22 fighter development program for the Air Force, run by Lockheed Martin, has burned through $26 billion of the taxpayers' money over a decade and is yet to field operational aircraft Number One. So when a contractor has to spend its own money, it can engineer, build and fly a radi cal new design for $67 million. When the taxpayer is footing the bill on a cost-plus basis, it takes 10 years and $26 billion to accomplish nothing but generating demands for more money. That is a little unfair, but still. A brand new plane for 67 million? I'm impressed. 12:05:42 PM     [Colin Glassey 12 noon] Great science article from the NYTimes science section on how Grandmothers impact the survival rates of their grandchildren. The science is very interesting and not what anyone expected to discover. Summary: a maternal grandmother living with the grand-kids improves their chances of survival. By contrast, a paternal grandmother had no effect and in one study, actually reduced the survival rate of male grandchildren (study from 200 years of data in a small town in Japan). I'd blame this last result on bad child-care practices which were adopted by the people of that region of Japan (and no, I don't know what they were). Remember: culture doesn't always keep the best ideas, some stupid ideas can get embeded in culture also. 12:01:18 PM     [Colin Glassey 11 AM] Steven Den Beste has another brilliant essay on personal morality. I agree with his analysis and conclusions. My comment: what I want to see is a world where the value of every other human on the Earth has a growing value which, over time, approaches the value given to people from their own country. What we have now is an unstable situation, where people have alligence to family, then a region, then to a nation, but nothing bigger. So who takes responsibility for polluting the air which everyone on this planet breaths? Who takes responsibility for the world's oceans? Global problems demand global solutions. 10:52:41 AM     [Colin Glassey 11 AM] This is a very good essay about the problems with International Law. I have the following response: the author states the following: We are very far from having a universally accepted moral code, except for a few very basic principles. It is not clear that such a universal consensus will ever emerge. There is no such thing as a global demos, without which global-scale democracy cannot exist. I disagree. All we need is the basics of a world-wide moral code. We don't need uniformity on thousands of issues. In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, in my opinion, just such a document. I have no problem with imagining a global demos built around the princlples of that document. As I read it, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a modified version of the U.S. Bill of Rights which has proven its values over the last 210 years. 10:37:43 AM

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

[Colin Glassey 5:40 PM] Looks like Napoleon wasn't poisoned after all. Look at this article. The poison theory looked good for a while when it was found that Napolean's hair, at the time of his death, contained high levels of arsenic. But then studies were done on his hair from 1805 and 1814 and they also had very high levels of arsenic. So much for that theory. 5:43:11 PM     [Colin Glassey 5:30 PM] Here is an essay that makes me angry. I can easily imagine being in the same position as the author. Political correctness means you get called a racist these days if you mention Huckleberry Finn favorably? Huckleberry Finn is an important work of art that tries to come to terms with slavery in the United States. Its not my favorite piece of fiction but it is important and, to my mind, morally good. 5:32:45 PM     [Colin Glassey 3:30 PM] A very good essay by Micky Kaus of Slate.com on why he expects Fifty-Fifty Forever. Summary: very fine-tuning of the political messages of the two parties has resulted in very close elections. And, in fact, this was predicted back in 1957 by Anthony Downs. See the comment by Jacob Levy. Bottom line: expect more, not less, votes like we got in Florida in 2000 (hopefully with fewer hanging chads though...). Vodka Pundit has an interesting essay that defends Henry Kissinger. Here is a good quote: There’s also no denying that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is a very, very bad man. And I’m awfully glad we had him on our side when we needed him most. His point: there was a period of time (1968-1983) when thing weren't going that well for the United States. Kissinger helped keep the United States afloat and, in fact, the China card was a brilliant move which neutralized the U.S.S.R. My response: The more I learn about President Nixon, the less I like about him. He was a man who rejected the basic ideas of our government, who tried to run everything out of the White House. Kissinger, to my mind, is fundementally not the guy to praise or blame for the major policy initiates of the Nixon administration, it was Nixon, all the way. The Pentagon actually placed a spy inside the White House because they didn't trust what was said publicly, and Nixon didn't talk to them privately either. So, this whole crimes of Kissinger ruckas (started in no small part by Chris Hitchens), is a red herring. I blame Nixon for running the Vietnam war stupidly. I praise Nixon for the detante with China. I blame Nixon for appointing people to his cabinet and then ignoring their advice. I blame Nixon for the crimes committed during his 1972 re-election and the subsequent cover-ups. 3:27:50 PM

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

[Colin Glassey 6 PM] Some links for today. A good essay by James Q. Wilson titled The Reform Islam Needs. Summary: Islam needs to chart a course already laid by the West which he says is fundementally based on Freedom of conscience. This is, he argues, a development which can be traced back to the late 1600s in England, France, and Germany. It came later to the colonies which became the United States. Yet another news story from the New York Times detailing the destruction and fall of the World Trade Center. Key point: the second tower hit was so badly damaged by the high speed of the plane that the most sophisticated computer models show is should have collapsed immediately. As we know, the second tower hit did fall before the first tower, but it didn't fall instantly. Engineers who built the computer model suggest that office walls provided some additional support or the path of the destroyed plane, once inside the building, can not be known in exact detail. Still, pretty shocking that the building could have been destroyed in one blow. An odd science story also from the New York Times which says that the current analysis of bones show a degradation in health for the American Indians before the Europeans arrived. A couple of questions: is the data set large enough to make the study worth-while? If it is large enough, why would more modern (but still pre-Columbian) Indians be in worse shape than Indians from earlier time periods? Were they, perhaps, degrading their environment? Several news stories today about a new device called The Thermator. This is from Britannica - India: The working principle of the generator is rooted in the crystals that lie between hot and the cold surfaces. These crystals also operate as semi-conductors, which induce an altered energy state when used as a medium of heat flow. Part of the heat gets transformed from heat energy into electric energy. This is known as the thermo-electric effect. 5:45:08 PM

Monday, October 28, 2002

[Colin Glassey 1 PM] There is a an obituary for a heroic woman in today's New York Times. Alina Pienkowska was a Polish Nurse who worked with the Gdansk dockyard workers. Widowed at an early age with a small child she is not a typical hero. But that is what she was when she grabbed a megaphone to rebuke Lech Walesa and the rest of the strike committee for accepting a pay raise that would have helped only the dock workers in Gdansk. She was persuasive and after a few hours, the strike continued in solidarity with the other strikers throughout Poland. Dead at 50 from cancer. R.I.P. 12:54:00 PM     [Colin Glassey 11:50 AM] My comment on the Chechen terrorists being killed (along with 110+ of the hostages) thanks to Russian use of an unknown gas: This was a typical secretive Russian operation. I think the idea behind the operation was correct, a standard special forces assault on the theater would have been a disaster. But the right way to carry out this operation is to tell the hospitals in Moscow as soon as the operation starts what they are doing and how to save the hostages. Instead, in a typically Soviet style, the Special Forces told no one in the medical community what they were doing and told them nothing about how to save the lives of the hostages. As a result some 110 people are dead. Even now, two days later, the gas that was used has not been revealed. Doubtless because the Russians hope to use the gas again the next time hostages are taken. I'm sorry but this is the sort of trick that only works once in the modern world. They want to hide the details, but the information will come out. Still, so long as they saved more than 70% of the hostages, it is a success. On a related note, the Islamic religion took some additonal blows this last week. On the same day we have John Allen Muhammad arrested for murdering 10 people in the D.C. area, we have Islamic Chechen terrorists threatening to kill 800+ civilians in Moscow and their martyrdom tapes show up on Al Jazzira TV station. Sure sounds like a religion of peace to me. 12:01:18 PM     [Colin Glassey 11:40 AM] A good essay on the evolution of Halloween in the United States from Salon.com. Summary: like Christmass in the United States, Halloween is a fairly modern invention with some very old but distant roots. The direct antecedent seems to be Scotish traditions of gathering together on Halloween to try and fortell the future. The relation to Samhain is clear to me, in that Samhain was the time when the spirit world was closest to the world of the living. Here is a longer quote from the essay: The jack-o'-lantern, now an indispensable Halloween motif, didn't emerge until the first decade of the 20th century, although the Scots had a folk tradition of carving lanterns out of turnips -- a much harder job with a much smaller vegetable. Those lanterns were linked to a legendary figure named Jack who was so incorrigible that neither Heaven nor Hell would have him, and so he was condemned to walk