News Brief, Been Caught Stealing, Once, When I Was Five Edition
Posted by Joshua Foust on 01 Jun 2007 at 10:42 pm | Tagged as: Notes on the war, Military Matters, Developmental economics, Foreign affairs, Domestic Politics
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.
Defense
- Ever wondered why the interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere seemed eerily reminiscent of the Soviet torture methods we so rightly complained of during the Cold War? Well, we did learn from the best.
- An unclassified report suggests 70% of the country’s intelligence activity is performed by private contractors. While DCI Hayden wants to reduce 10% of the “core functions” that are currently outsourced, I don’t know how anyone can overcome such extreme institutional reliance.
- Yesterday I said a reason we shouldn’t rush MRAPs to the front is that they’re one generation of EFPs away from being just as useless and Humvees (and at far higher cost per unit). USA Today today says just that, only more so. The irreplaceable Robot Economist has more.
- Fare thee well, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.
- Here’s an interesting way to look at weapons proliferation: Using solder and an old microwave oven, some guy builds a microwave gun at his house. It works out to 200 feet.Now think about what happens when insurgents and other guerilla units start building their own homemade directed energy weapons to take out non-hardened infrastructure and units – like ambulances, power transformers, and civilian aircraft. To say nothing of the effect if used, say, on a metal fuel canister partially filled with gas vapor.
Around the World
- The top aide to Radko Mladic was caught and charged with war crimes. No word yet if Mladic can be found on his sprawling estate for his trial.
- Does the EU luvs the US? probably. Maybe we can stop calling them Old Europe soon. Meanwhile, we’re still hating on Russia, admittedly with really good reason. How long, you think, before they start mentioning “the new Soviet?”
- Christ, now Russia has joined the “forcing North Korean refugees back to their death” game as well? When is anyone in charge (hell, or even Angelina Jolie) going to directly address the issue? “We believed the United Nations could save us.” How sad. The UN doesn’t care of the unending misery and horror north of the 39th parallel.
- The Moscow Metro paints its cars with flowers. In the DC, we paint our metro cars with SAIC logos advertising their commitment to intelligence operations. The inside of the cars are often plastered with whatever lobbying group happens to be ascendant this month, or with some fancy new weapons system some contractor is either developing or has won.
- China has partially rationalized its bankruptcy laws, and now allows private firms to collapse without state assistance.
- Abaubdullo Rudaki, the greatest poet you never heard of. Tajikistan just celebrated his 1150th anniversary.
- I take a hard look at the questionable arrest of Rakhat Aliyev in Austria just after he requested political asylum. There may be a connection to Nurbank’s sale to Austrian firms. I also dig into the high emotions surrounding opium policy in Afghanistan.
- A fascinating, and haunting, paper on the economics of the Kalashnikov, its commonality, and its use as a common baby name in Africa.
- Who doesn’t love a crazy liberal reporter (who heads the Columbia Review of Journalism and publishes The Nation) defending Hugo Chavez’s censorship as being ultimately good hearted and for a good cause? Ironically, in the current issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. Navasky is quoted on the dangers of self-censorship and a chilling environment… in reference to George W. Bush. With apologies to readers who either are or have family and friends who are impaired: Victor Navasky is a retard, an idiot, a fool, clearly incapable of coherent or logical trains of thought—a complete waste of space, time, energy, and thought. And then my temple exploded.
Back at Home
- Oooh, should I quit my job and become a barely-paid editor at The Washington Monthly? It’s almost tempting… but no.
- Hillary = LOLz0R spelling!
- Not as lolZor is the elimination of the EB-1 Visa, which short-tracks geniuses for permanent residency. It’s like we hate smart foreigners (Albert Einstein), because they might steal jobs from not-as-smart white people (Bill O’Reilly).
- O’Reilly also has a thing for Boulder, a town I eventually grew to love for all its hippie liberal weirdness. The high school students there have learned to hate Bill O’Reilly, for good reason.
- More on how dumb (dumb, dumb, dumb) Dubya was in trying to compare Iraq and South Korea.
- Pat Buchannan blamed Mexicans for a white guy bringing drug-resistant TB to the US from the Czech Republic (despite apparently triggering all the proper warning systems). Not that the immigration debate is really about race or anything.
- But Richard Clarke thinks it’s really all about Palestinians and Iraqis, and creating a big brother national ID.
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