News Brief: Off the Record Edition
Lance on Apr 16 2007 at 11:23 pm | Filed under: Humor, Lance's Page, Uncategorized
In response to a flurry of vicious e-mails from his attorney over my repeated thefts of his News Brief, and due the inadequacy of our counsel (a certain Virginia based attorney who will remain nameless to hide the fact that he is one of our bloggers [hint, hint]) I have agreed to a settlement.
Therefore, Joshua Foust will now have his News Brief as a regular feature here at A Second Hand Conjecture. This evening he will be given access to set up his own account and share the news with all of us that he gathers from the odd corners of cyberspace and the odd corners of his mind, and those are big corners. For more of Josh’s thoughts please visit his own blog The Conjecturer because we won’t have them here.
Rather than make you wait until I have him set up, todays brief is below the fold. I think he and Michael need to talk about this whole Wolfowitz matter right away. Also, I suggest Joshua needs to be careful about insulting the Reasonoids, Keith is packing.
The Pentagon
- The V-22 Osprey is slated to be deployed to Iraq, only in limited non-combat roles. I don’t know why they bother, save the salvaging of an insanely expensive, deadly defense acquisition project: it’s far less maneuverable than the helicopters it is replacing, meaning it is much more vulnerable to AA weapons. The NYTimes has some rather stomach-sinking footage of the hybrid aircraft simply falling out of the sky during development testing. Is this really worth it, right now?
- A fascinating look at the role of preemption in the weaponization of space, and how the U.S. has abandoned its own defensive or ASAT capability in return for ever-more-powerful global first-strike. In other words, China’s pursuit of anti-satellite weaponry is leading to an increased focus on the U.S. long-reach first-strike capabilities, which in the medium term might even include space lifting Marines.
Around the World
- From Russia With Love: an abandoned bio-chem lab, and the remains of the Kursk, the Russian submarine that exploded and sank in the North Sea, supposedly while testing the Skval, a supercavitating torpedo.
- Oh yeah, and Russian police have arrested Gary Kasparov, among hundreds of others, for the crime of opposing Putin.
- The debate in Turkey is symbolic on many levels: of the tension between Islam and Ataturk’s vision of modernity, the tension between Europe and the East, and so on. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems frustrated with Europe’s foot-dragging on the ascension issue, though Turkey could make its case easier by laying off the Kurds, ending the use of torture, and negotiating a solution to its illegal occupation of Cyprus. It should be interesting to watch.
- Thabo Mbeki has received much of the blame for South Africa’s less than stellar debut at the UN. He is accused of abandoning the moral imperatives of the anti-apartheid movement through his tacit support of Robert Mugabe, easily one of the top five worst dictators on the planet (who has now caused a massive refugee flight as people flee not just government violence but 4000% inflation). This criticism, however, is misguided: while the anti-apartheid movement was indeed a moral one, it can more accurately be seen as a form of national liberation, rather than a moral movement for human rights. Human rights played a role, but they were not its sole purpose. When viewed this way, Mbeki’s behavior makes more sense, as he doesn’t want a destabilized neighbor.
- Sudan, though, remains terrible. Like an inkblot, the horrendous ethnic cleansing is spreading outward from Darfur, into Chad and the CAR. The world’s continued refusal to take concrete action (up to, yes, a bombing and occupation) threatens to permanently destabilize all of East Africa.
- A series of amazing posts on the violence in Waziritan, the push-back against Pakistan’s creeping Islamization, and a pair of posts (here, and here) about the prospects of Benazir Bhutto’s drive to return civilian rule. I will try to address these in a longer post later.
Back at Home
- Not-single (!) Paul Wolfowitz insists he is okay to stay on the job, but Doug Bandow makes a convincing case for his termination. Nick has related thoughts on how Wolfowitz’s policies at the World Bank have impacted Uzbekistan. I have to admit to my own cynicism on the topic: I really only express emotion, and mostly only surprise, when current or former members of the Bush administration don’t act like brazen criminals. Wolfowitz hooking up his live-in girlfriend (notice the silence from the Religious Right on his living in sin) with an unusually high paying job at the State Department seems par for the course these days.
- Wonkette posts the usual depressing poll data about how politically retarded America is, and notes this bit: not only are the readers of political satire better informed (score!), but, “[p]eople who regularly watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report could correctly answer more political trivia questions than those who watch CNN or Fox News or especially the teevee network news — those people were only barely cognizant of their own arms.†Now I don’t feel quite so bad about plopping down in front of Comedy Central every night. I need to be more diligent in reading Wonkette every day.
- Horrible, deadly shooting at Virginia Tech have left dozens dead. I feel a bit of guilt being grateful my friends who went there have graduated, as a sizable number of them did. Of course, the Reasonoids can’t even wait for the blood to dry before they’re preaching about how armed students would have ended the killings quicker (just as others are already screaming for more gun control). Perhaps. They might even have a point. But maybe everyone should chill the @$?# out until the bodies are counted.
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2 Responses to “News Brief: Off the Record Edition”
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That’s funny (and I appreciate it, I really do). But if I was worried about you skarking my posts, I would have raised the issue. I might sue you anyway, though, just for the helluva it.
"V-22 Osprey" Didn’t Cobra Commander have a few of those?