Korea ready to go nuclear?

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How long until Bush’s utterly ludicrous “cowboy diplomacy” results in some real casualties? Bad enough that we’re still averaging one or two soldiers a day being killed in Iraq, but now it looks like North Korea is about ready to start testing nuclear weapons.

…officials in Washington told CNN that North Korea was preparing to publicly declare itself a nuclear power and had threatened to prove its capabilities by conducting a nuclear test.

What would it take to stop this? According to North Korea, not much at all.

The package of solutions includes the U.S. signing of a non-aggression treaty with the DPRK (North Korea), the establishment of diplomatic relations with the DPRK, the guarantee of DPRK-Japan and inter-Korean economic cooperation, the completion of light-water reactors,\” Xinhua said in a dispatch from Pyongyang.

“In return, the DPRK will not manufacture nuclear weapons and allow in inspection, realise the ultimate dismantlement of nuclear facilities and stop the export and experiment of missiles,” it said.

The US, however, continues to treat North Korea as if it were a snotty nosed kid on the playground making empty threats.

…the White House tried to play down the North’s warnings saying it was getting “excellent” cooperation from its partners in the talks and that North Korea has a “history of making inflammatory comments that serve to isolate it from the world.”

The question from the U.S. administration standpoint, the official said, is “whether this is a serious and irreversible statement or part of their past pattern of starting every conversation by being threatening to see if it wins them something.”

At this rate, we’ll be seeing mushroom clouds again before we know it. If we’re lucky, they’ll be confined to test sites — if we’re unlucky Bush’s steadfast and stubborn intransigence just may score a body count the US hasn’t been party to in decades.

(via Daily Kos)

Military accounting

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We keep hearing more and more about how much the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq is going to cost (on top of the billions already spent so far for the invasion and occupation). Wouldn’t it be nice if we could cut those costs a bit? Oh, but to do that, we’d have to be fiscally responsible, which wouldn’t allow us to pass out fat government contracts to US companies…

One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- \$300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost \$1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- \$50,000,000 !!

Given all the mid-80’s ruckus about thousand dollar hammers, screws, and toilet seats, I probably shouldn’t be surprised at things like this, should I?

(via Atrios)

Interview Me III: From Jonas

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The third of a few interviews with me, this one with questions courtesy of Jonas. Rules come first…

  1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me” (or something that gets that point across).
  2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
  3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
  4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
  5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

…the interview comes next:

Which was the first, and the most recent, live concert you went to? Any plans for the near future?

My first: Bon Jovi. I was in Jr. High, I think. At the time, my mom was working for Covenant House, a shelter for runaway and abandoned children that Jon Bon Jovi supports. When the band came through Anchorage, Covenant House was given some number of tickets so that some of the residents kids could see the show. Enough were left over that my entire family was able to go — Mom, Dad, myself, and my little brother Kevin. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time, so Kevin would have been 9 or 10.

I remember having a lot of fun, even moving down out of the seats and onto the main floor to get into the press of the crowd in front of the stage. Bon Jovi put on a good show, and the next day at school, I was informed by one of my female friends that I was incredibly lucky, as I’d just gotten to see “the best ass in the world.”

Most recent: A couple months ago, a bunch of friends and I went to see Bile, Zeromancer, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Pigface at the Catwalk here in Seattle. Bile and Zeromancer were good, but not great; MLWtTKK sounded good but had disappointing stage presence, and Pigface tore the place up.

Coming up: This weekend is Seattle’s yearly Bumbershoot music and arts festival — four days, 20 stages, 2,500 artists. Some acts I might be able to see (I won’t be able to see all of them due to scheduling, but I’ll do my best): Modest Mouse, Maktub, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Macy Gray, Bonnie Raitt, Maxi Priest, Dusty 45s, Blind Boys of Alabama, The Catheters, The Dandy Warhols, Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, Cold, Evanescense, American Hi-Fi, Supersuckers, Nickel Creek, Wilco, R.E.M., Daniel Lanois, Carissa’s Wierd, The New Pornographers, Pedro the Lion, DJ Donald Glaude — and more as I run across them, those are just the ones that I’ve heard of enough to know that their shows might be worthwhile.

The web-logging question: how do you see your weblogging? A way of communicating, navel-gazing, or evangelizing? A bit of each? Or completely different?

All of the above, probably. When I started weblogging (back when I didn’t even realize there was a special word for what I was doing), it was primarily a way for me to keep my family updated on what was going on in my life. A static HTML page, hand-updated every time I wanted to add something. After a while I found a package called NewsPro that allowed me to run my page through a script, archive entries — cool! After a while, I found out that I was a “blogger”, and things kind of took off from there.

I still haven’t settled on any particular format for what I post, nor do I really expect to. Some communicating with whatever catches my eye or ticks me off, especially as I’ve gotten more into paying attention to the world around me. Some evangelizing — I just can’t quite pass up a good dig at Microsoft when I find one. And, of course, the occasional requisite introspective navel gazing. In the end, it’s a mishmash — but I’ve had people tell me it’s a fairly readable mishmash, so I suppose I’ll just keep going with it.

Boxers or briefs?

Briefs. Unless I’m lazy and just toss pants on without bothering with underthings, but that’s fairly rare — usually restricted to weekend when I’m doing laundry. Two pair of boxers kept around for decency’s sake when someone is crashing here, as I normally sleep in the buff, but I’ve never liked wearing them as underwear — too much material to bunch up.

Comic books? Do you read them? Which series is, or was, the epitome of good comic writing and inking?

Actually, I’ve never been a huge comic fan. Nothing against them at all, it’s just not a medium I ever really got into. I’ve picked up and really enjoyed a few collections and graphic novels (the two that pop into my head immediately are Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga), and I’m a big fan of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

The one comic series I did get into for a while was The Tick. A friend and I were browsing through a comic store, and I saw this odd looking blue face smiling at me, so I picked it up and started browsing through — and proceeded to crack up right in the middle of the store. I ended up collecting the first ten issues (2nd printing of number one, but first printings of 2 through 10), and then got frustrated when Ben Edlund was taking forever to get the next issue out, and quit collecting them. That’s the extent of my comic book knowledge, however.

You just won a million bucks. What’s the first thing you’ll spend some of the money on?

Hrm. Knowing me — two of these. :)

'Stay away from MS'

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According to the Register, the Department of Homeland Security is being urged to avoid using Microsoft products.

THE US Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has urged the US Department of Homeland Security to avoid using Microsoft software.

The Washington based association, which represents members that generate over \$300 billion, has issued an open letter to Tom Ridge, Secretary of the department, urging him to review his decision to choose Microsoft for its desktops and servers.

It claims that last week’s events relating to the Blaster and SoBig worms, have highlighted problems in cybersecurity.

(via MacBytes)

Howard Dean, rock star

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The last time I got to see Henry Rollins do a spoken word performance, I picked up his most recent spoken word album, Talk is Cheap (Vol. 1, Vol. 2). About halfway through the track titled “Getting Snippy With It”, there is a section that I keep thinking about whenever I see people getting really excited about Howard Dean, or when I see articles such as the Stranger article I linked to earlier describe him as a “rock star”.

And wouldn’t it be great, every country has the same problem, wouldn’t it be really bitchin’ if you had a political leader who was running for the big office, if he or she — I don’t care, whoever has the best idea, I don’t care about the sex — where you could like them as much as you like your favorite musician? So instead of like, “Okay, time to vote,” you could be like, “Fuckin’ A, this guy fuckin’ rocks! This guy’s awesome!” It would be like if you were voting for Ozzy, or Bob Dylan, or someone really bitchin’, “This fuckin’ guy is so cool, I can’t wait for this, it’s gonna be bitchin’!” I’d love to be stripped of my political cynicism for just one time, it would be so refreshing to be so into somebody and to trust them and know that they want to do the right thing.

This is exactly what’s going on, and this is exactly why people are gathering around Dean in such staggering numbers. I think that the wish that Henry expresses here is a wish that many of us have had for a long, long time, and Dean’s straightforwardness, charisma, energy, and fire have tapped into that.

Bitchin’ indeed.

That hurts

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So…I noticed that you’ve been an American Express cardholder since I was two.

— Kristin, our 21-year old receptionist, to Fred, our boss

Flying High

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From this week’s The Stranger: Flying High, Howard Dean has gone from nobody to the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now he’s a political rock star, and he just went on a coast-to-coast tour to prove it. The Stranger tagged along for the ride.

Toward the end of the tour when one of the other reporters aboard the Grassroots Express asked Dean to describe the most important personal moment, Dean brought up the Seattle rally–I didn’t ask him the question and I wasn’t standing by taking notes; I got this quote from the reporter later, so Dean wasn’t pandering to his Seattle supporters when he said this about last Sunday’s rally in Westlake Center:

“Seeing all those people out there [in Seattle],” Dean said. “The enormity of it all really struck me. For the first time I realized what it really means to be President of the United States–seeing all those people out there, counting on you.”

Reading this article reminded me of one of the primary reasons I’m supporting Dean: for the first time I can remember, I’m seeing a politician who actually strikes me as being honest. When he gives his speeches, I believe him — and coming from someone who’s quite cynical about all this political mumbo-jumbo, that’s saying a lot.

Yahoo! News RSS feeds

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Jeremy notes today that Yahoo! News now has RSS feeds available. A good thing for finding news — but not for linking to news. For once, I’m in complete agreement with Dave Winer:

There’s another concern, linkrot. Links into Yahoo News rot relatively quickly, as compared to News.Com, for example, which is near perfect. So, until I hear something has changed, I’m going to use Yahoo to read news but try hard not to point to stories on Yahoo from my weblog.

I noticed this quite a while ago. Anytime I find or am sent a link to a Yahoo! News story that I want to link to, my first step is to copy the title of the story, head over to Google News and search for that story. Usually I can find a link to another news source that doesn’t delete its pages after a time. Yahoo! News and the corresponding RSS feeds will be quite handy for finding stories — but until they start keeping their archives online, they’re essentially worthless for linking stories.

Blatant propaganda

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The Village Voice takes a look at the upcoming “docudrama” DC 9/11:

The upcoming Showtime feature DC 9/11: Time of Crisis is a signal advance in the instant, ongoing fictionalization of American history, complete with the president fulminating most presidentially against “tinhorn terrorists,” decisively employing the word problematic in a complete sentence, selling a rationale for preemptive war, and presciently laying out American foreign policy for the next 18 months. “We start with bin Laden,” Bush (played by Timothy Bottoms) tells his cabinet. “That’s what the American people expect. . . . So let’s build a coalition for that job. Later, we can shape different coalitions for different tasks.”

[…]

The “Battle Hymn of the Republic” swells as Bush flies into ground zero, where he astonishes even Rove (Allan Royal) by spontaneously vaulting a police barricade to hop on the rubble and grab the microphone. A nearby fireman, compelled to tell the president that he didn’t vote for him, swears allegiance, mandating Bush to “find the son of a bitch who did this.” Once Bush realizes that “today, the president has to be the country,” Rove considers the image problem solved. Bush, he explains, has become commander in chief and taken back “control of his destiny.” The climax is Bush’s televised, prime-time September 20 speech—a montage of highly charged 9-11 footage that ends with the real-life, now fully authenticated Bush accepting the adulation of Congress as he fingers the talismanic shield worn by a fallen New York police officer.

What’s really scary is that people will eat this up, and accept it as the truth — and it’s a far, far cry from what really happened.

(via Len)

Outsourcing fund raising?

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You’d think that if Bush was really concerned about keeping jobs in America, and getting Americans back to work, his campaign wouldn’t be outsourcing fund raising phone calls to India.

The US Republican Party now has a band of young and enthusiastic fund-raisers in Noida and Gurgaon.

HCL eServe, the business process outsourcing arm of the Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies, has bagged a project to undertake a fund-raising campaign for the US Republican Party over the telephone.

This is the first time such a project has been handed out to a company outside the US. The market research and public relations companies engaged by the party usually undertake such projects.

HCL eServe has put in place a team of 75 people to work on the project out of its call centres in Noida and Gurgaon. According to industry sources, the number of seats could be ramped up depending on the success of the campaign. These operators are required to call up people in the US seeking their support for President George W Bush and a donation for the Republican cause.

(via Tom Tomorrow)