Wampum

I'm getting a chuckle out of the somewhat self-inflicted vapors of some bloggers over the Clinton campaign's lastest paid media outlay -- the 3am ad. If "it" happens while the kids are awake, then either (a) Canada has just invaded, or (b) Uruguay is melting. Most of the world is many, many time zones away from where ever one is. My wake-up in Delhi skype home was to MB at bed time, and my bed time skype home always caught MB making coffee and toast. Between us in timezones is either Pakistan melting or shedding its own murderous cowboy, Afghanistan in bloom (poppies) or boom (not), Iran, the former Soviet-stans, some wicked interesting, the Persian Gulf, the Zionist Entity, Moscow, and the European Market. Looking the other way, also into every North American's night-time dreams, is Burma, Beijing, Indonesia, the Asian Market, and just as much pre-dawn fun. Did I forget North Korea???

Here's a game to play. It's 3pm and the phone rings in the Oval. Where is "it" and what is "it".

Points for originality and verve.

Posted by EBW at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Fairly frequently, we're questioned by fellow travelers as to how we came to live the vagabonding life we now lead. I think at this point, I can recite my schtick in my sleep; how, from my experience as an armchair econoblogger, I realized the housing market was about to pop, and, having foolishly opted for an ARM due to our subprime FICO scores, knew that we needed to cash out at peak, and before reset, so as to not lose the extensive sweat equity we'd built up in our 1913 American Foursquare. How some homes similar to our which went on the market the week after ours sold (after only ten days and three offers) are still for sale, three years later. Even Eric, who kindly refrains from critiquing my inability to balance our checkbook, now agrees that my instincts were well founded. He even asks my advice on investment possibilities.

So I wasn't surprised that two of my favorite econoblogger sites, Calculated Risk and the Big Picture, have been talking up the jingle mail theme for months now, and have both pointed out the creation of YouWalkAway.com, a website that promises, for $995, to help underwater homeowners to walk away from their mortgages. This morning, over a month after blog readers were introduced to YouWalkAway.com, the New York Times discovered it.

My prediction is that left econoblog readers will come out of the pending recession/depression well ahead of their counterparts who depend upon the Times/WSJ/WP/[insert favorite MSM outlet.]

Posted by MB Williams at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

His bio can be found here. It is an impressive read.

We've added categories for Nader/Gonzales, and for McCain.

Posted by EBW at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If the Indian vote in the early primary contests was anything near the African-American vote, if Santa Fe and Albuquerque, not Reno and Las Vegas, were the third cache of mid-winter voters to open and consume, to analytically crack the bones and suck out the marrows -- canvas, message, poll, vote, spin -- then everyone, non-Indian as well as Indian, would be thinking through the meanings of this:

Obama's campaign said he believes tribal gaming should be decided on a case-by-case basis with consideration for the wishes of the states involved¹.

The most exculpatory construction, to which Molly Ball devotes several paragraphs, is that the Obama inner-circle of 2007 hadn't given any thought to the issue and recycled the non-surprising policy of most non-Indians in state-level electoral politics -- state's rights, not in the 10th Amendment sense of a covert undermining of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but the even more corrosive sense of nullification of the first Indian Nonintercourse Act (Act of July 22, 1790, 1 Stat. 137) and its sequella, 25 U.S.C. § 117, which hold that a sale of Indian lands was not valid unless "made and duly executed at some public treaty, held under the authority of the United States." Oklahoma after the 1906 Act. All of Indian Country from 1947 to 1961.

Howard Dean, while governor of Vermont, used state money to lobby the BIA to reject or delay the application for Federal Recognition made by the Swanton Band of Abenakis. His administration argued in state, and federal courts, for Vermont's jurisdictional exclusion of any Tribal standing in the state or the federal courts. That came back to haunt him in the New Mexico and Oklahoma primaries, which in the '04 cycle were neither early nor late, where he was defeated by the candidate I advised, Wes Clark, who was unconditionally for the Nixon model (the Gold Standard for the Tribal-Federal relationship) -- Self-Determination.

But what if the Obama inner-circle of 2007 had considered Indian Gaming, not as a policy problem, but as a political tool, a device to motivate demographics that reject "special rights", and who may not be able to reject "special rights" such as Affirmative Action, or Non-Discrimination, or Disabilities, could safely go after Indian Gaming as unfair, unequal, un ... American.

Does anyone have any indication that the Obam a inner-circle of 2007, or the Obama inner-circle of 2008, has a policy position on the Federal-Tribal relation, a policy position that envisions substantive changes to the contours created by a hostile Court over the past three decades?

If not, then its time to click through to a 10 minute read on the use of a political tool, a device to motivate demographics, by the Obama inner-circle in late 2007 and early 2008, and reflect on what this means, for Tribal Executives looking at either a McCain, or an Obama Administration, and for the fragile coalition of the historically disadvantaged who simply must have accommodation, or sink back into the conditions that caused Truman to send federal troops to Little Rock. Via Avadon, who's hesitation to post this is surprising. Sean Wilentz's piece in TNR, How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton.

Now reflect on the Land-into-Trust issue, the likely trajectories of the USET tribes, the California gaming and not-yet-gaming tribes, the Great Lakes and Upper, Middle, and Lower Mississippi gaming, and not-yet-gaming tribes, the Oklahoma tribes, and the Federal-Indian policy goals, and political goals, of an Obama Administration formed by the past, and present Obama inner-circle. Will the non-gaming issues like gas, oil, coal, and mineral rights, or energy corridors, be treated any differently?

Posted by EBW at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Periodically MB asks me what are my differences with Juan Cole. I reply that for Juan, the firing of Qassam rockets, powered by sugar and potassium nitrate (the same fuel mix I used as a teen rocketeer), with payloads of TNT and urea nitrate (which I passed on), ranges less than 10km, and payloads of less then 10kg, from Gaza, or the firing of 122 mm Katyusha artillery rockets, ranges less than 30km, and payloads less than 30kg, from ad hoc launch points in Lebanon, are sufficient to excuse or justify or ... limited and unlimited response by a sophisticated combined-arms military with effectively infinite depth.

Juan calls them terrorists. I call them opfors.

We don't talk alot about WK2. We don't talk about the balance of forces. We don't talk about what happened twenty five years ago as if it happened in someplace under a "friendly regime", attacked by a Soviet proxy. Or as a failed attempt at "popular liberation" by armed forces, Soviet proxy or organic to some remote, exotic peoples. We don't even talk about what happened twenty five years ago as if it were "terrorism", state-sponsored or otherwise.

A few days ago Tim Giago wrote No celebrating at Pine Ridge Reservation. Tim grew up in Wounded Knee. However, no where in his thousand words is there an awareness that a military operation was planned, and executed, within the boundaries of his childhood.

To Tim, his childhood was flooded by foreigners who had no claim on the boundaries of his childhood. I know I could have written a similar piece too, 99 people out of 100 can't trace their ancestry in California to when the Lembkes came to grow beans in pre-irrigation Los Angeles. But I don't think I ever have, or ever will. Age is experience remembered, not title to land.

Not long after, Richard Powers wrote a reply Defending the AIM occupation.

This is where I have to raise something, an empty hand will suffice, and point out that no one is writing history, Tim, and everyone, including myself, are writing politics. The AIM/NAIM split is still present, and even those who damn both the AIM/NAIM factions, can damn the pre-split AIM/NAIM, and external to that is the tribal vs (the 4th) pan-tribal conflict, and even beyond that is the ... are urban mix-bloods Indians question.

I fall somewhere within that mass of fissures of a thousand practices of accommodation and resistance.

Richard correctly places WK2 in a militarized context. There was a "dirty war". About a company strength of men and women were killed by gunfire during the sporadic exchanges of fire. Most of the casualties were inflicted by the US and its proxy, the Dick Wilson "Guardians of the Oglala Nation", whom we all called "GOONS", then and now.

Richard also correctly places Tim's piece in a larger universe of Anti-AIM writings, and he also correctly places the composition of the pre-split AIM's cadres, armed and unarmed, in the pan-Indianism of 1969-1971 occupation of Alcatraz. A Cherokee died at the Knee. A Mic'mac also died at the Knee.

Tim errs, whether he rejects that, inherently armed pan-tribalism, or the present legalistic pan-tribalism, in alienating the armed, unarmed, and other, including non-Indian, who came -- from most directions -- into the boundaries of his childhood. Wounded Knee does not belong to those who camp, or throw up buildings, roads, and business on a massacre site. Monk's Mound does not "belong to" the Indian living closest to it, and if it does, "accommodation and resistance" does not encompass the totality of continuity and transcendence.

Tim supports Chad Smith. I don't. But that is just theft and graft over several administrations. Not life, and death, in and around Pine Ridge, the Rosebud, and so on.

Posted by EBW at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Darryl Pearce was a regular commenter here. He made made several nominations during the Koufax Awards, and never for his own blog, but for talkleft, horseass, Jesus' General, Crooks an Liars, Daily Kos, Orcinus (expert and single-issue), BagNewsNotes (best post, wider recognition), echidne of the snakes.

He contributed $$ to MB's campaign for the Maine Legislature, and cheered her on with a chorus of "hip,hip Hurrah!, hip,hip Hurrah!, hip,hip Hurrah! when she posted the Election Day post-mortem, after a loss of 25 votes.

He contributed $$ to our fundraising in our 4th year of doing the Koufax Awards, pushing us over $1,000 in a thread which invented disenvowelment for a Wampum troll.

He left us this comment:

The way many republicans and their ilk spit out the words "liberal" and "democrat" as epithets, curses, or worse--well, there seems to be a group of people with an inherent, emotional need to bully others.

--ventura county, ca

My own highly-functioning autistic (Asperger's?) son wandered off when we visited relatives at Big Bear Mtn in California... in November for Thanksgiving.

We found him in the market about a 1/2-mile from the cabin... eating popcorn.

He is now 18 and we're trying to get him into an ASL class at college. And we're trying to get him to pass the written portion of the California driving exam....

...hang in there!

--ventura county, ca

The last entry of Fuming Mucker: A curmudgeon amongst tyrannies, conspiracies, thieveries and charities is here. Darryl's passing is noted in several other blogs he contributed to over the years, Duncan Black's, Avedon Carol's, and others.

Posted by EBW at 09:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe is going to allow Magic Lantern for a very small number of anti-terrorism investigations.

The Austrian government is looking at the possibility of allowing remote keystroke logging as well, but as the writers at le Monde point out, its in the United States where the use of similar technical mechanisms is most common.

If you're wondering why undetectable remote keystroke logging hasn't turned up a single 101st Fighting Keyboarder banging out "kill some domestic enemies" screeds or a single AutoAdmit stalker of female law students, so am I.

Posted by EBW at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Obama does not represent me. From the Boston Globe (via Avedon, who seems pretty peeved as well):

"Let me tell you something. There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. That is common sense. There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure [our soldiers] are treated properly when they come home . . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has healthcare. We are spending more on healthcare in this country than any other advanced country, but we've got more uninsured. There's nothing liberal about saying that doesn't make sense, and we should so something smarter with our healthcare system."

Yes, I am a liberal. And proud of it.

Update: It seems JFK understood the meaning:

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'liberal'? If by 'liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then...we are not that kind of 'liberal.' But if by a 'liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people--their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties--someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'liberal' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'liberal.'

I wonder if Teddy Kennedy is rethinking his endorsement of the man who runs from the "label" his brother proudly embraced.

Posted by MB Williams at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

General Musharaff may resign before the restored judiciary (60 justices and the Chief Justice) are re-instated, which now seems a certainty as members of the PML-Q in the Senate are now forming a "forward block" (split from the party leadership) and joining the PPP+PML-N+ANP. When the justices and the CJ are re-instated, General Musharaff's "re-election" last November will be nullified, leaving him ... in need of a non-governmental job.

Just like the election in Gaza, Bush and Rice have gone overboard to keep Musharaff after 3/4ths of a 40% turn-out voted to dump him.

Robert Gates is in New Delhi, along with 50 of his closest fiends from the DoD and the Iron Triangle. via Dawn:

Speculation is rife that Mr Gates will be offering the Indian Navy the soon-to-be decommissioned USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier if the Indian Navy agrees to purchase 65 of the newest model Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to be operated off of it.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is expecting to purchase almost 130 new fighter aircraft, with Boeing and RSK-MiG both in the field of six contenders. A comment reported from Tuesday's interaction in Delhi saying that Mr Gates "made it clear that India and the US military-to-military ties will continue independent of the civil nuclear agreement" may hold the key to the high pressure parleys between the two sides.

For an intelligent shoppers comparison of the RSK-MiG vs F/A-18E/F, I suggest Venik's Aviation. Venik has prices.

Posted by EBW at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Today Olympia Snowe, Bill Nelson, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, and Ted Stevens, the guy who made "intertubes" famous, introduced a bill "aimed at ending the deceptive practice known as phishing".

The dumb way to proceed is to attach some liability to the actual practice of phishing, from the banal stuff like putting "looks similar" characters in a domain name, like the famous crylic "a", so that urls that look like "paypal.com" go to someplace novel, where credit cards are harvested, to the slightly less banal stuff like putting html glop into "html enhanced email" and urls that look like "paypal.com" also go to someplace novel, where credit cards are also harvested, and lots more variations on the theme of misdirection.

The better way to proceed is to reduce the time each phish pitch can work from the weeks-to-days, which is the present operational art, to minutes, which is both technically possible, and administratively possible. In fact, it is something I've been working towards for several years (phish is only a recent use of domain names and network addresses for black-hat fun and profit), and encouraging the institutional framework that can cause such a reduction in the time-to-live for crap that drops into your inbox or otherwise arrives at your mouse's nibbly nose via one of a number of behavior profiling applications (aren't ads kwel?) would be wicked useful.

The interesting challenges are things like double-fast-flux, where the name servers for the urls used by the thousands of attack assets for "where the money goes" are rotated across many name servers and many, many more hosts and ... all wicked quick. We can effectively engage that too, and with relatively thick fingered and clumsy policy tools, as simple as putting a fee on name server changes, a fee as small as a penny, in addition to the smarter bits we use to measure it.

Registrars sell domain names. Registries publish domain names. We operate on a time-scale of seconds to minutes, and we can, if ICANN (our regulator, your incorporated-in-California 501(c)(3) successor-in-interests to DARPA, ARPA, the NSF and the Department of Commerce) assists us, do to the use of domain names for spam, phish and lots of other applications of idle hands and criminal minds, what the simple application of a 20 cent fee did to the domain tasting sub-industry (another industrial strength scam, on trademarks and typos generally, all fueled by Google Ads (aren't ads kwel?).

My point here is the same point I made over a decade ago to the then Chief Scientist at the NSA, geeks beat heat. He took my point, which is why there is a Computer Emergency Response Team, to ask us what to do when something really awkward happens. Phish isn't really awkward, its just a big heap of small robberies.

We know (a) that what was unorganized crime using computers, aka "cyber-crime", is now organized. In fact, there is a market for attack assets, just like there is a market for AK-47s and RGPs. We know (b) that gaming the system can be fixed. We know (c) that very, very few computer scientists want to work with or for John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales or Michael Mukasey, and that the "other side of the shop" went non-linear under Donald Rumsfeld et seq., and everything under DNI Mike McConnell is "complicated" by pervasive wiretap, about which we have spoken authoritatively in RFC 2804 IETF Policy on Wiretapping.

But it takes non-dumb on the public policy side of the table. That was the most attractive bit about the idea of Larry Lessig running for the seat vacated by Tom Lantos' death. Someone in the lower body who actually has clue, not about real estate or used cars or banks or big law, but about the anomaly we call the net.

I can't help but think of the anti-internet-gaming bill introduced by the GOP member from the IA 2nd. Null content but lots of happy applause. Punished credit card companies for doing what credit card companies weren't doing anyway. Bag of hammers dumb.

Here's the lnk to Olympia's technology staffer's latest PR gimmik.

Posted by EBW at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via outages:

=======
Grid status:
An apparent massive equipment failure at a Florida Power & Light substation in the Miami area triggered the two nuclear reactors at the company's Turkey Point to halt. The Fla Nuclear Commission confirmed this. The shut reactors caused sub grids 4,5, 6, 7 and 8 to drain power from up state and west state, as the Dade/Broward counties have a high demand. Restoration time update: between 06:00 and 07:00 PM near to normal operation is expected.

There was indeed a squad off McDill in the air near the coastal plant, but that's a daily routine. There is NO reason to assume this has anything to do with the reactor closing.

Rgds
FTM/Ray Jones

=======

Contrary to news reports on CNN and AP there were NOT eight nor five reactors affected. We haven't got that many:) The Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors (fossil and gas) have not been affected, though all have noticed the drain dip of course.

Operations at Turkey Point is now near back to normal with less than 100,000 customers state wide to be restored. Full completion expected around 07:00 PM this evening.

Rgds
FTM/Ray Jones

=======

See also: Florida Power and Light

Posted by EBW at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I found the quote below in the comments section of Frank Rich's latest diatribe against Senator Clinton. I guess it sums up my current ambivalence.

The analysis of Clinton's mistakes seems to be correct. It doesn't make Obama anymore appealing to me. Personally, I (non-New Age, foreign-born, history sensitive) don't need "hope, inspiration, unity, etc." talk from someone who can't grasp the concept of universal health care, even if he maneuvers well. I don't need Obama to outmaneuver me, just to represent.

-- anna, New York

Posted by MB Williams at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Step one on the path to a 1U in a rack "away".

Posted by EBW at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Origanlly posted on July 6, 2004. If we'd known then, what we know now, that MoveOn and SEIU wouldn't endorse Edwards, that Florida would be repeated in Ohio, that all those flashes, Dean (ok we knew that by February) Lamont, any of the specials, in fact, the entire '06 miracle, wouldn't throw as much light as the steady candles of the Catholic Workers or the American Friends Service Committee ... well, we might be changed by that knowledge.

North Korea and Iran are treated as a nuclear ensemble in the common-to-both-parties political lexicon. I'm going to try and seperate out the Iran part, and try and delineate that part of the JRE text that differs from the standard Axis-of-Evil text. New readers please keep in mind that I write about Iran from time to time, in a series called Return of the ... One True King. A link to the last part is here.

In his major primary piece on pre-emption and nukes, the only "justification" offered by the Bush/Cheney administration for its Iraq War with any theoretical legs, Edwards thoughtfully listed the Soviet-era warhead inventory management problem first.

60 percent of Russia's nuclear material remains unsecured. That country has 20,000 nuclear warheads and enough material to produce 60,000 more Hiroshima-size bombs.

Edwards' first "post-Soviet" talking point is establishment of a new Global Nuclear Compact (GNC) to reinforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The implementation language is overtly multi-national and repeats the explicit mechanism of assistance for peaceful use in exchage for strict controls over waste and reprocessing of the Clinton/Gore administration. While not explicitly a UN or an existing Treaty Organization, "leading nations" and nuclear technology overlaps with the Permanent Members of the Security Council, which means France, the Federation of Independent States, and China, as well as Japan and Germany. Broadly, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' second "post-Soviet" talking point is a UN Security Council vehicle to make economic sanctions easier to apply when the requisit condiditions arise. The "carrot and stick" approach of the GNC institutionalized by the primary Treaty Organization. Again, an approach distinct from the Bush/Cheney record, and one Tehran appears to seek.

Edwards' third "post-Soviet" talking point is to triple the spending on securing the "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union", and to end development of two new weapons technologies -- "bunker buster" nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missiles. This is as anti-Bush/Cheney as one can imagine, and Tehran has no interest in "loose nukes in the former Soviet Union" finding any use in West Asia.

Edwards' fourth "post-Soviet" talking point is to strengthen our intelligence capability, and no sane person in Tehran or anywhere else wants to see another US military adventure based upon bad intelligence. This approach is inconsistent with the administrations punitive and criminal outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Edwards' fifth "post-Soviet" talking point is creating a high-level NPT role in the administration. Again, a position Tehran is more likely to appreciate than the current incoherence and outing of working WMD covert intelligence officers.

Having less time than Professor Cole to write (I've a housefull of unruly post-vacation weasels to mind and lots of washing to attend to, not to mention paid work) my Edwards-and-Iran thinking is that he's wicked better than the BC04 war-rhetoriticans. Granted, the US-Iran war hasn't happened, yet, but the insane desire for war has been bubbling under the surface of both states since the fall of Reza Shah and Jimmy Carter, and it is only one accidental or one calculated act away. As Vice-President of the United State, John Edwards seems more unlikely than most to succumb to the lure of the ongoing phoney war with Iran, let alone let the fiction escape from its confines and consume whole armies and cities, as the phoney war with Iraq has. I will sleep better at night when he is Vice President.

Afternote: Since "breach of the NPT" gets so much attention in the Axis-of-Evil demonology, it is useful to read Article X of the NPT:

1. Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.

Posted by EBW at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the SCOTUSBlog:

In the Rhode Island land dispute case, the Court will be ruling on whether, after Congress extinguished a tribe's title and interests to land, the Secretary of Interior may nevertheless create "Indian country" status and place disputed land in trust for the tribe's benefit. The Secretary in 1998 approved the Narragansett Indian Tribe's application to have a 31-acre parcel of land owned by the tribe and located in Charlestown, R.I., to be taken into trust for the tribe.

The three cases are expected to go over for argument to the Term starting on Oct. 6.

This case has very serious implications: Scores of tribes were declared "extinct" in the last 300 years, only to be "re-recognized" either by the BIA or Congress.

More from the AP (via Indianz.com):

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court agreed Monday to resolve a dispute over the federal government's ability to take land into trust for American Indian tribes.

Indian rights groups fear that the case involving the Narragansett Tribe in Rhode Island could undermine tribal land across the country. The justices will hear the case in the fall.

The state argued that a 1934 federal law prevents the government from taking land into trust for tribes recognized after the law took effect, unless Congress specifically authorized it. The Narragansetts became a federally recognized tribe in 1983.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston rejected the state's claim.

At issue is whether a 31-acre lot in Charlestown purchased by the Narragansetts should be subject to Rhode Island law, including a prohibition on casino gambling, or whether the parcel should be governed by tribal and federal law.

The dispute dates to 1991, when the Narragansetts purchased the land to build an elderly housing complex, which remains incomplete.

The state objected when the tribe asked the U.S. Department of the Interior to take the land into federal trust, which would place it largely under tribal and federal control.

Update for our POA readers: The SCOTUS refused Blanchard v. Morton School District:

It denied review of a claim that parents be allowed to sue for damages under an 1867 civil rights law to enforce their right to a free public education for their disabled child.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every once in a while a mailing list I subscribe to explodes. In the past 24 hours the NANOG list exploded over the YouTube in Pakistan event.

Here's the most accessible technical presentation I'm aware of yet, Martin Brown's Pakistan hijacks YouTube at the Renesys blog.

Highly recommended.

Posted by EBW at 01:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's good to know that we non-aligned interests here at Wampum are not alone in finding the Clinton-Obama infighting rather revolting. From my favorite capital eschewing marsupial:

who needs repubbblicans when we can fight with ourselves? or, can't we all just get along? we have said several times before we don't have a dog in the clinton-obama fight.

but we have to say that we are most unsettled by manifestations of that fight that have been creeping more and more into otherwise reasonable people who write here in blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase.

we don't mind when bloggers, who have chosen one side or another, point out various insufficiencies and hypocrisies on the part of the opposing candidate; that is, after all, why bloggers blog.

but as of late people whom we admire and respect have begun silly sniping towards each other, simply because of what has been said on blogs about the two dem candidates.

and folks aren't just pointing out bad logic or inconsistent arguments; there are a lot of personal digs being thrust about. things have gotten so bad that it's almost as if we don't even need the hardly-ever-right wing bloggers as targets for our wrath. it seems that we'll all be happy hating other progressives, simply because of whom they endorse for the dem nominee.

Eric and I are down to our last two episodes from the seventh season of the West Wing. If the melodrama in the lefty blogosphere doesn't end soon, I'm pulling out seasons one through six and a pox on both campaigns' houses.

Posted by MB Williams at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Imagine having a cabinet level post for disarmament. New Zealand has one, Phil Goff is the current Minister for Disarmament, and he announced today that 82 of the 122 countries represented at the conference this week signed the draft treaty banning cluster munitions.

Now independent of whether or not the US inventory of cluster munitions are banned under both the Geneva Conventions Protocol I, Article 85 and Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, there is the assertion routinely offered, this week by Janine Burns, who does PR for the US embassy in Wellington, for military utility and legal necessity:

The United States shares in the humanitarian concerns that have been raised about cluster munitions but is opposed to any ban on them because of their demonstrated military utility,

The U.S. is concerned that any criminalization of cluster munitions would harm NATO and coalition joint operations and interoperability, and could adversely affect humanitarian missions by militaries.

The United States stockpiles over one billion submunitions in weapons currently in service. Nearly three-quarters of this stockpile of submunitions are contained in MLRS rockets and 155mm artillery projectiles. Given reported failure rates, a stockpile of that size creates the specter of well over 100 million explosive duds, each posing a danger to civilians similar to antipersonnel landmines.

A typical fire mission of 36 MLRS rockets could produce an average of 1368 unexploded submunitions. A battalion-2 (24 cannon firing 2 rounds each for a total of 48 rounds) with a 95 percent submunition reliability produces, on average, 212 unexploded submunitions, per football field sized area.

In a nutshell, cluster munitions are anti-personnel mine delivery systems. Anti-personnel mines are no longer legitimate weapons, so cluster munitions are also no longer legitimate weapons. That won't slow supermen like the current SecDef, but command level officers have to plan for manuver and tempo in an UneXploded Ordinance (UXO) environment, and some even think about the field after the battle moves on, or ends, and year after year, UXOs lop the limbs off of civilians.

Even the writers for The West Wing have worked the military value of landmines into their material. But what is the real value of an area denial munition? Does anyone think that US national policy is made, or unmade, but the presence or absence, of systems designed to scatter 3lb bomblets over 40 acres, leaving on the order of 1,000 unexploded bomblets per 40 acres of "area denied"?

What is Ms. Burns really saying when she refers to each of "joint operations and interoperability", and "humanitarian missions"? What do you think are the actual exculpatory circumstances, the legal use cases for, the real value of, an area denial munition?

There is a claim that this is a substantive issue where Obama is on the right side of the issue, and Clinton on the wrong side of the issue. Those who value such a claim may not want to reflect on whether the hypothetical executive Obama would sign, or veto, a bill to destroy an inventory of over one billion submunitions, and limit the role of MLRS rocket and 155mm gun tube artillery in combat arms. It is one thing to vote "correctly" as a Senator on treaty language that won't become law until Bush is a memory, and another to say "Open Season" to all the Iron Triangle lobbyists, elected or media-gifted, and meet them on the battlefield of ideas during the mid-terms, or on the re-elect calendar. Fundamentally, is a candidate of Wall Street really going to pull down the pillars of overwhelming firepower against dispersed soft targets? The defining characteristic of anti-colonial forces is the ability to field dispersed low armor, low armed forces.

How did Hillary's health care plan do in the first 100 days of Clinton I? Care to wager an arm, or a leg?

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Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys

A simple technique for looking for memory leaks is applied to the problem of determining memory persistence, with the novel assistance of a sharp thermal gradient. Not as photogenic as the liquid oxygen meets oxidants experiments (how to put a backyard barbie into low neighborhood orbit), but there are some pictures.

Enjoy. Something to keep in mind when entering or exiting a "cryptographically challenged jurisdiction" with a laptop at the approach of a White Shirt armed with ... only a can of compressed air.

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We took this photo a year ago. Last night we set up in the same spot, in the dark, by memory. Always fun when backing a 30' trailer. The little photon source is the moon. The current night sky is sweeping storm clouds, and patches of brilliant starts, winds above 20kts and temps below 40^o. We've had 24 hours of high winds, rain and mists.

The truck's fuel pump decided today was a good day to die, so it's sitting outside some garage, contemplating Orion or whatever it is that cars and trucks contemplate at night.

The bottom has fallen out of the Yucca Valley residential property market as well, like that of Riverside, Orange, and San Diego counties. The locals think they've seen the worst and we don't want to make the ones we talk with think otherwise, by several more years of what's already happened.

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The NPR coverage yesterday simply mentioned "an island" ... and I'd forgotten I knew that Diego Garcia is leased by the US. One of the many things I learned in the hours after the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

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Another gem from the anonymous blogger at Dawn -- Need of the hour. In this piece the surface of what I've been writing about since January, 2005, the unresolved structural problem of the relation between Baluchistan and the Punjabi State, and attendant economic problems (who gets access to Gwadar Port and the Sui gas field, the unnecessary military execution of Nawab Akbar Bugti ... The PML-Q "won" in Baluchestan, but the local parties boycotted the election, and had Akbar Bugti not been murdered, and had he contested the election, neither the PML-Q, or the PPP, or even the PML-N would have shown more than a seat. Anyway, enjoy. I know I do. For any read who's forgotten, all the hydrocarbons in PK are in Baluchistan, some of which was part of Oman up until quite recently, and the rest is as close to Tehran as it is to Islamabad.

I wish Shaheen Sehbai was still editing the South Asian Times. His work was outstanding.

There has been much of talk about the need for a government of "national consensus" to deal with the major issues confronting the country. Asif Zardari has said that the federation is under threat due to the discontent of minority groups. He insists that only a national government can alleviate the situation.

At the moment, there is talk of a three-way alliance between PPP, PML-N and ANP. The parties with the strongest showings in Sindh, Punjab and the Frontier would thus be represented in the central government. But such a situation would exclude Baluchistan, where the PML Q, consigned to the opposition benches in the National Assembly, has maintained its position as the largest party.

There is a pressing need to give the Baluchis a strong voice in any future set-up. The Baluchi people have been in a state of agitation, angry at the exploitation of their natural resources and exclusion from the mega-development projects taking place in their own province. The establishment has only been able to control the situation through the ruthless use of military force, killing former Chief Minister Nawab Akbar Bugti when he openly rebelled against the government.

The PML Q's position in Baluchistan, however, is already looking shaky. It has already lost two legislators in the province, one to an unfavourable vote-recount and the other to a heart attack. The PPP is actively seeking to woo independents and members of the PML-Q, some of whom have already expressed an interest in working with the PPP. If the PPP succeeds in forming the government in Baluchistan, its strong position in the centre would allow it to effectively protect the province's interests. One can only hope, for the sake of Pakistan's unity, that the Baluchi people's grievances are quickly redressed.

Posted by EBW at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest entry from Dawn's blog:

February 18 marked a return to accountability and democracy for the Pakistani people. However, not everyone in Pakistan was given the opportunity to express their political will. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas are home to an entire community of people living within the geographical boundaries of Pakistan, who do not receive the benefits of statehood and are restricted from fully participating in the political process.

Education within the region is abysmal. Less than five per cent of women in the region are literate. Economic opportunities are similarly scarce. Up to 60 per cent of the population lives below the national poverty line, relying on subsistence farming for their basic needs. With no other way to generate revenue, many turn to smuggling contraband such as opium and weapons.

The economic and political isolation of the region has created a vacuum which has been filled by radical elements from Pakistan and abroad. In desperation the Musharraf government chose military rather than political engagement in Waziristan. However, as evidenced by the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka, the suppression of a disenfranchised minority is bound to be a failure in the long term. The whole-scale isolation of an entire community from the Pakistani state does not bode well for the health of our political system. What is needed is constructive engagement and a reintegration with Pakistani politics and economics.

How does the emergency unravel? Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who's still under house arrest, telephoned the Sindh High Court general body meeting to notify the newly-elected National Assembly that the Proclamation of Emergency and Provisional Constitutional Order of Nov 3, 2007 are unconstitutional.

Those watching Mushy and the PPP-PML-N aren't watching the hotest pot on the fire, which is the lawyers and civil society.

has warned the newly-elected National Assembly against endorsement of the Nov 3, 2007, proclamation of emergency and the Provisional Constitution Order promulgated under it.

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Maybe if some of the big box blogs read us little guys, they'd have a clue as to why Arizona Congressman Renzi has been indicted.

From Wampum, April 25th, 2007:

The facts surrounding the Renzi situation are somewhat complicated, but here's the gist: Renzi's former business partner owned 400+ acres of land along the environmentally-endangered San Pedro River which Renzi suggested be part of a federal-private land swap, a swap which would allow relatively unrestricted private industry copper mining by Resolution Copper Co., a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, in the Apache Leap area of Arizona. Once Renzi made the suggestion, his partner was able to sell the land at a premium, to investors, which included former DoI secretary Bruce Babbitt, interested in its use in a different land swap.

Still following all this? A more in-depth discussion from last year can be found here.

Renzi was the original sponsor of the legislation on the Resolution Copper land swap, but by mid-2006, he'd developed a case of cold-feet, as the San Carlos Apache Tribe expressed concerns that the transfer of the federal land into private hands would curtail their access to ancestral sacred sites and acorn gathering areas. While industry and most state and local politicians urged the tribe to accept the purported concessions by Resolution, tribal leaders refused to move on the subject until after tribal elections in November...

Just to make the case more intriguing, as I mentioned in the above post, it might be tied to the firing of USA Paul Charlton.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Juan Cole's got a longish piece anyone who doesn't already know the history of Pakistan's civilian and military governments could read and benefit from. Its a rebuttal of John McCain's (and a host of others) ideas about Pakistan, but serviceable as a nutshell political history. Here's the link.

The unfortunate thing about reaming McCain for having been a party to the creation of present (nice photo of Reagan and the pre-cursors to the Afghan Taliban in the White House) is that ... it is a real challenge to discern the differences between McCain, Clinton and Obama on how they frame issues -- all three are Neo-Cons, or trapped in the Neo-Con web of lies.

If you are able to read French, there's three pages of analysis in yesterday's Le Monde, untroubled by any of the artificial favors of koolaide being sloshed around the media outlets and what used to be blogs (now campaign new-media properties) -- Primaires américaines : "le néoconservatisme continue à structurer la pensée des candidats".

Rather than translate, which is a lot of work, cause I can't keep myself from rewriting, I'll steal three happy paras from the WaPo which Cole links to, to show the truth of the assertion that there isn't any distance between Obama's "strikes" and Bush's "strikes". Of course, in Juan's view, this is exculpatory rather than damning. In my view the opposite is true. So (drumroll, circus tent voice) ...

Which of the following is preferable:

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval.

That's the choice shared by McCain, Huckabee, Clinton and Obama. How about this:

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, Abu Laith al-Libi was served with an arrest warrant issued by the North Waziristan criminal courts in Mirumshah [Miran Shah]. The warrant was served by a police officer from Mir Ali, the second largest town in North Waziristan, where Abu Laith al-Libi was in hiding.

The arresting officer was supported by a joint force composed of the Darwesh Khel tribal militia, acting under the authority of the Waziri Jirga and the North West Frontier Corps, acting under the authority of the Pakistani state. Abu Laith al-Libi was taken into custody and transported to Mirumshah for arraignment.

The arrest of Abu Laith al-Libi is the latest in a series of arrests of fugitives under the Collective Responsibility Acts in the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

One answer just bumps the rungs of the chain of command ladder, as everyone who's served in wartime knows, the other has another outcome. One is wicked flashy, and costs a lot of tax dollars that get spent in a couple of safe-Republican districts, and a lot more tax dollars that get spent in the logistical tail across monarchies and dictatorships, and generate excellent-dude kerpowie eye-candy for the safe-Republican media outlets, and the other doesn't have those ... partisan characteristics.

Seen any law-and-order candidates lately?

Its something to keep in mind, unless the French have it totally wrong, and LE PAKISTAN, BAPTÊME DU FEU DU FUTUR PRÉSIDENT is simply a cocktail party gag.

Posted by EBW at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Final NA Results by map

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A little over 24 hours ago, before the early returns were in, enough to give the first contours of the outcome, when massive vote fraud was till a very real possibility, vote fraud sufficient to keep the MMA and PML-Q parties in power, the writer at Dawn's blog wrote this:

Can elections ever be construed as free and fair if a certain segment of society is prevented from partaking in them? In case you are wondering which segment I'm referring to - the correct answer is women.

Of course less the 40% of the electorate actually did vote, but the largest hidden vote suppression is the suppression that doesn't require that names be dropped from the rolls, or that voters be turned away from the polling station, its the suppression that the voter is less than equal, that nothing is on the ballot that actually matters, and that the personification of liberation by the ballot has been shot and bombed in plain sight.

Only 40% of the electorate in Pakistan is literate, and that's males and females, averaged. Parties use symbols. One uses a lantern, to symbolize the light that could come to Pakistan.

Others writing about the election:

Juan Cole published a medium sized piece this morning with analysis and copy also from Dawn.

The Cursor has two paras of links, none to South or West Asian source. I don't read the cursor, but others do.

William Harting has a piece at one of Josh Micah Marshall's sites, unfortunately, its again sources far from Asia and mostly cover for Joe Biden's most recent offer to increase the US contribution to Pakistan without specific condition, specific like engage in disarmament with India or increase the funding of girl's eduction.

That's about it in the greater leftish blogodome for PK coverage.

Posted by EBW at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, the Huffington Post reported Ms. Obama's remarks thusly:

"For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country," she told a Milwaukee crowd today, "because it feels like hope is making a comeback."

Which, frankly, doesn't sound as bad as when I heard only the initial clause. However, the Telegraph has this quote, which feeds my sense of dread:

Speaking at a rally in Milwaukee, she said: "Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change."

Ironically, Fox solves the mystery of the discrepancy.

Barack Obama's wife, Michelle, is under fire for leaving the impression that she hasn't been proud of her country until now, when Democrats are beginning to rally around her husband's campaign.

Speaking in Milwaukee, Wis., on Monday, she said, "People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and ... for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback."

Greeted with rousing applause after making the comment in Milwaukee, Obama delivered an amended version of the speech later that day in Madison, Wis.

"For the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country ...not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change," she said. "I have been desperate to see our country moving in that direction and just not feeling so alone in my frustration and disappointment."

Essentially, she said it not once, but twice, in one day. Oy vay.

I have issues with both campaigns, as I've made very clear over the past year. This is just sloppiness. Please, Ms. Obama, don't feed the Rove machine.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I still view Chris Bowers' "take my baseball and bat and go home" statements regarding PLEOs as pretty silly, but then I've made stupid statements regarding not ever, ever, ever voting for Clinton/Obama/Cthulhu, an action I know to be very unlikely come November. However, Bowers' latest post on is spot on, and should be required reading for even Obamabots and Clintonistas.

Maine is a multi-tiered state. In 2004, both Eric and I were elected as delegates (he for Kucinich, me for Edwards) at the local caucuses in February. Our state convention, however, wasn't until late May. Less than half of the elected delegates even showed up in Portland (Maine is a medium sized state,) and even fewer alternates. Most town and city delegations just appointed random people to fill out their delegations. No one even monitored for whom anyone voted, or even if you voted. Delegate selection to the national convention was even more disconnected from the original grassroots process, as most candidates for delegate began campaigning weeks before the convention and focused their platforms not on their preferred national candidate, but their own personalities. Almost anything could have swung these delegates, as most were state and local politicians (with aspirations) or seasoned political hacks.

Before Eric left for India, we'd just finished, for the first time since it aired on TV, the sixth season of the West Wing. Real life imitates art.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Toast. Gigabit taps in the exchanges and black backhaul capacity a significant fraction of backbone capacity, but to have standing, a plaintiff must prove a communication has been intercepted. Toast.

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I've pretty much pledged to stay out of the remaining fight for the Democratic nomination and thus will focus my political energy on November. So while my pointing out the latest Rasmussen poll of Florida may appear to focus on "electability" in November, it's actually about what happens in Denver in August:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Florida shows John McCain holding a six-percentage point lead over Hillary Clinton and an even larger lead - sixteen percentage points - over Barack Obama. It's McCain 49% Clinton 43% and McCain 53% Obama 37%. This dynamic is the opposite of what we have found in most other states where Obama typically outperforms Clinton in general election match-ups.

The Florida results for a Clinton-McCain match-up are fairly similar to other battleground states -- the race is competitive, Clinton does better among women than men, and McCain leads among unaffiliated voters.

However, the poll contains hints that suggest the controversy over Florida's convention delegates may be hurting Obama. Most notably, just 55% of Sunshine State Democrats say they would vote for Obama over McCain. Thirty-one percent (31%) say they would vote for McCain. These results are especially striking given that Obama leads McCain among unaffiliated voters in the state.

As Eric pointed out a few weeks back in this post, while we all like to believe every Democratic vote counts, the fact is, only those in a handful of states will determine the next occupant of the Oval Office come January, 2009. One of those states is Florida. If McCain carries Florida, then the Democratic nominee will have to carry both Ohio and Pennsylvania. It would be much easier to have Florida "in play", tying up GOP resources, rather than placing it firmly in the red column.

Yes, Florida and Michigan were bad boys - they didn't play by the rules set up by Governor Dean, and he was right to give them a big time out. And, if the Obama victory trend continues, the Credentials Committee in Denver will have slightly more Obama supporters seated than Clinton supporters, providing Obama with the might to deny Clinton of the majority of delegates she won in both primaries. But Obama should urge his supporters on that comm