2 incredible stories on the NY News tonight.
First, a young man (about 15 years old) heard a rustling sound in an enormous dumpster in Queens.
For those not here, it is currently in the teens in NY, with gale force winds.
The boy climbed onto the dumpster and looked into a paper bag. He saw a newborn baby, so young that the umbilical chord was still attached.
Thank g*d, the baby is doing well, but can you imagine what kind of mind, and situation could leave a newborn in a dumpster, in this weather!
The second story occurred in New Jersey.
Governor John Corzine signed a bill outlawing the death penalty in the state.
It means that those on death row, currently 8 inmates, have had their sentences commuted.
Polls show that the majority of New Jerseyite's (ine's?) do NOT support the bill.
But, among those whose sentences were commuted was Jesse Timmendequas the rapist and murderer of Megan Kanka.
The name may be familiar to those who don't remember the case for the law that was named after Megan. Megan's law requires sexual offenders to register their locations with the police.
Timmendquas was a repeat violent sexual offender who kidnapped, raped and murdered 6 year old Megan and was sentenced to death.
The irony of the situation, is that with the way prisons deal with child murderers, he may now go from the relative safety of his death row cell (no inmate has been executed in NJ in many decades) to the general prison population where he will be hunted by other prisoners.
Monday, December 17, 2007
640:1 (Thanks to the Harvard Crimson)
How Much Land is Enough?
Ruth R. Wisse - Dec 03, 2007
The Harvard Crimson
Before you begin reading this, please have before you on screen, paper, or wall, a reliable full-scale map of the Middle East, one stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Aden. You will note that the territory covering 5.25 million miles belongs to states of the Arab League—18 independent Arab states and three part-Arab Muslim states, Mauritania, Somalia, and Djibouti. There is one holdout in that hegemony: Along the Mediterranean, south of Lebanon, east of Egypt, and west of Jordan, is the 8,000 square mile Jewish state of Israel—the only Jewish homeland that ever was and ever will be.
The population of Israel, 7 million, is 20 percent Arab. The ratio of Arab to Jewish land is 640:1. If I were an Arab Muslim in, say, Saudi Arabia (830,000 square miles, population 23 million) with its wealth of oil fields along the Persian Gulf, I might wonder why Jews, who blend ethnicity and religion just as Arab Muslims do, should claim so little land when we cover so much. Why does my country house two holy cities—Mecca and Medina—whereas Jews claim but one—Jerusalem, site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod? What accounts for the astonishing disparity between how much land the Arabs got in history and how little was left to Jews?
Were I a Palestinian Arab citizen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (34, 495 square miles, population 5.8 million), with its magnificent city of Petra, I would wonder why we didn't federate with the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank when that territory was in our possession until 1967? Why didn't we settle our refugees as the Jews did theirs in a territory one quarter the size of ours? Since the number of Arab refugees from Israel equaled the number of refugee Jews fleeing Arab lands, why didn't we accept this population exchange? Why did we join the Arab wars on Israel with the aim of driving the Jews into the sea?
As an Arab in Egypt (386,874 square miles, population 74 million), I'd be troubled by the Arab movies I saw on television, one charging the Jews with world conspiracy, the other showing a cabal of Orthodox Jews slitting the throat of an Arab boy, pouring his blood into a basin, and making Passover matzah that they boast tastes much better than the ordinary kind. Why does our media repeat and recreate these anti-Semitic images, even as we object to anything that touches Muslim honor? Why are we fed this scummy hatred of Jews instead of being encouraged to visit Israel and to study Hebrew?
And then there's Iran, not Arab but Muslim, hence not included in the above statistic (613,660 square miles, population over 65 million). Why does our leader rant at the Jews—"There was no Holocaust!" "There will be no Israel!" —when no Jew ever raised a hand against him? What purpose is served by this posturing against a country and a people so much smaller than ours? And why can't we Muslims can't solve our own rivalries instead of ganging up on a country/that functions fairly well?
Not being an Arab or a Muslim, I can only wonder why students raised in those societies do not ask these questions, encouraging their governments to change their policies. More than that, I marvel at the fact that some of my colleagues apparently share the assumption that Arab and Muslim leaders are entitled to over one-tenth of the world's land surface, while questioning the right of Jews to land about one-ninth the size of Syria. Do they really believe that Arabs and Muslims are innately so much worthier than Jews?
Much has changed in the Middle East during the past six decades, but one political feature remains disturbingly constant. The Arab League formed in 1945 to prevent the emergence of Israel, launching the most lop-sided war in human history, a war that continues hot and cold to the present day, pitting multiple non- and anti-democratic regimes against the Jewish State.Israel and the Jews became a means of deflecting attention from the mounting failings and weaknesses of those regimes, very much the way that scapegoating the Jews served some Christian and anti-Semitic rulers in their time. Arab leaders who sought peace with Israel, such as King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, were assassinated by rivals.
Religious and secular factions competed with one another over whose aggression against Israel was bloodier and more intimidating. Moreover, the war against Israel required the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to permanent refugee status, lest their productive redeployment mean (as Cairo radio put it in 1957) "the final disposal of a moral asset." The Arab world fueled its war against Israel with the permanent misery of Palestinian Arabs—and ascribed that misery to the "oppressor Jews" in a more perfect moral inversion than any literary Satan ever proposed.
Postmodernism adores moral inversions, which may be why some Harvard professors have so eagerly joined the "devil's party." But let's not get ahead of ourselves: Look again at the full-scale map. Keep it always within reach and often within sight. Don't let any course or discussion of the Middle East proceed except in its presence. And if the need arises, ask why Arabs and Muslims think they deserve odds greater than 640:1.
Ruth R. Wisse - Dec 03, 2007
The Harvard Crimson
Before you begin reading this, please have before you on screen, paper, or wall, a reliable full-scale map of the Middle East, one stretching from Morocco to Afghanistan, from the Caspian Sea to the Gulf of Aden. You will note that the territory covering 5.25 million miles belongs to states of the Arab League—18 independent Arab states and three part-Arab Muslim states, Mauritania, Somalia, and Djibouti. There is one holdout in that hegemony: Along the Mediterranean, south of Lebanon, east of Egypt, and west of Jordan, is the 8,000 square mile Jewish state of Israel—the only Jewish homeland that ever was and ever will be.
The population of Israel, 7 million, is 20 percent Arab. The ratio of Arab to Jewish land is 640:1. If I were an Arab Muslim in, say, Saudi Arabia (830,000 square miles, population 23 million) with its wealth of oil fields along the Persian Gulf, I might wonder why Jews, who blend ethnicity and religion just as Arab Muslims do, should claim so little land when we cover so much. Why does my country house two holy cities—Mecca and Medina—whereas Jews claim but one—Jerusalem, site of the Temple of Solomon and Herod? What accounts for the astonishing disparity between how much land the Arabs got in history and how little was left to Jews?
Were I a Palestinian Arab citizen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (34, 495 square miles, population 5.8 million), with its magnificent city of Petra, I would wonder why we didn't federate with the Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank when that territory was in our possession until 1967? Why didn't we settle our refugees as the Jews did theirs in a territory one quarter the size of ours? Since the number of Arab refugees from Israel equaled the number of refugee Jews fleeing Arab lands, why didn't we accept this population exchange? Why did we join the Arab wars on Israel with the aim of driving the Jews into the sea?
As an Arab in Egypt (386,874 square miles, population 74 million), I'd be troubled by the Arab movies I saw on television, one charging the Jews with world conspiracy, the other showing a cabal of Orthodox Jews slitting the throat of an Arab boy, pouring his blood into a basin, and making Passover matzah that they boast tastes much better than the ordinary kind. Why does our media repeat and recreate these anti-Semitic images, even as we object to anything that touches Muslim honor? Why are we fed this scummy hatred of Jews instead of being encouraged to visit Israel and to study Hebrew?
And then there's Iran, not Arab but Muslim, hence not included in the above statistic (613,660 square miles, population over 65 million). Why does our leader rant at the Jews—"There was no Holocaust!" "There will be no Israel!" —when no Jew ever raised a hand against him? What purpose is served by this posturing against a country and a people so much smaller than ours? And why can't we Muslims can't solve our own rivalries instead of ganging up on a country/that functions fairly well?
Not being an Arab or a Muslim, I can only wonder why students raised in those societies do not ask these questions, encouraging their governments to change their policies. More than that, I marvel at the fact that some of my colleagues apparently share the assumption that Arab and Muslim leaders are entitled to over one-tenth of the world's land surface, while questioning the right of Jews to land about one-ninth the size of Syria. Do they really believe that Arabs and Muslims are innately so much worthier than Jews?
Much has changed in the Middle East during the past six decades, but one political feature remains disturbingly constant. The Arab League formed in 1945 to prevent the emergence of Israel, launching the most lop-sided war in human history, a war that continues hot and cold to the present day, pitting multiple non- and anti-democratic regimes against the Jewish State.Israel and the Jews became a means of deflecting attention from the mounting failings and weaknesses of those regimes, very much the way that scapegoating the Jews served some Christian and anti-Semitic rulers in their time. Arab leaders who sought peace with Israel, such as King Abdullah I of Jordan and Anwar Sadat of Egypt, were assassinated by rivals.
Religious and secular factions competed with one another over whose aggression against Israel was bloodier and more intimidating. Moreover, the war against Israel required the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs to permanent refugee status, lest their productive redeployment mean (as Cairo radio put it in 1957) "the final disposal of a moral asset." The Arab world fueled its war against Israel with the permanent misery of Palestinian Arabs—and ascribed that misery to the "oppressor Jews" in a more perfect moral inversion than any literary Satan ever proposed.
Postmodernism adores moral inversions, which may be why some Harvard professors have so eagerly joined the "devil's party." But let's not get ahead of ourselves: Look again at the full-scale map. Keep it always within reach and often within sight. Don't let any course or discussion of the Middle East proceed except in its presence. And if the need arises, ask why Arabs and Muslims think they deserve odds greater than 640:1.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Surprise! Dennis Ross agrees with me!
Dennis Ross, the special envoy to the Middle East for both the first President Bush and President Clinton agrees with me that whether or not the Iranians have halted their weapons program, the continued pursuit of fissionable material is the critical factor.
The Can't-Win Kids
The dunderheaded public roll-out of the NIE.
Dennis Ross, The New Republic Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran presents an interesting paradox: Though almost certainly the product of rigorous assessment and questioning, it may actually leave us less secure over time. How can such an improved product of spycraft have such a negative effect? It can when it frames the issue mistakenly and is not combined with statecraft.
I don't question the assumptions or analysis in the NIE, or for that matter, its main conclusion. I accept that the Iranians suspended their covert
nuclear weapons program in 2003. But I am afraid that misses the point. Weaponizing is not the issue, developing fissionable materials is. Because compared with producing fissionable material, which makes up the core of nuclear bombs, weaponizing it is neither particularly difficult nor expensive.
In other words, the hard part of becoming a nuclear power is enriching uranium or separating out plutonium. And guess what? Iran is going
full-speed ahead on both. With over 3,300 operating centrifuges for spinning
uranium gases at its facility at Natanz (and more centrifuges on the way)and the building of a heavy water plant for plutonium separation at Arak, the Iranians will be able to master both by 2010 at the latest.
Perhaps that's why, in 2005, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani told a visiting group of American experts, including George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment, that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons research. According to Perkovich, Rafsanjani said: "Look, as long as we can enrich
uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don't need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions."
Maybe, as Rafsanjani was suggesting, the Iranians will be satisfied only to foster the appearance of having nuclear weapons without actually producing
them; for Rafsanjani, so long as Iran's neighbors assume it has nuclear weapons, they'll become responsive to Iran's wishes. But can we count on
Iran's maintaining such a posture indefinitely? And even if we could, what would the Middle East look like if Iran gained far greater coercive leverage over all its neighbors? Wouldn't oil production policies be used to separate
us from our allies or further manipulate the world's economy? Wouldn't we face a region increasingly hostile to our interests? Wouldn't we see the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace diminish as Iran worked to weaken, isolate, and demoralize the Jewish state? And to avoid being at the mercy of Iran, wouldn't the Saudis decide to go nuclear--and wouldn't that impel the Egyptians to do the same?
The point is that even the image of Iran as a nuclear power carries with it very dangerous consequences, including that the Middle East might become a nuclear-armed region. It is not an accident that the British, the French, and the Germans have sought to get the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. Similarly, it is not an accident that two U.N. Security Council
resolutions have imposed limited sanctions on Iran to get it to stop its enrichment efforts.
Consider the irony that the sanctions resolutions adopted by the Security Council were not about Iran's covert nuclear arms program. The Russians,
among others, have not believed that the Iranians had one. Instead, the international community in these resolutions was making it clear that it saw
Iran's enrichment program--and its rejection of offers of light water reactors for purely civil nuclear purposes--as indicators that Iran intended
to develop a nuclear weapons capability at some point.
While nothing theoretically has changed, the NIE has created a new story line. It framed the issue differently and shifted the attention away from
enrichment to the weapons program. Well, if the weapons program has been halted, can't we relax? Certainly, that is the conclusion that the Chinese
are drawing, given their mercantilist approach to Iran and foreign policy in general. They are now saying there is not a need for another sanctions
resolution against Iran. The Russians, too, are joining them, no doubt reflecting, at least in part, Putin's desire to demonstrate in the Middle
East and on the international stage that Russia is an alternative to America.
If nothing else, this means that it will be far harder to get an additional sanctions resolution in the UN any time soon. We could always seek to go outside the Security Council for sanctions. The European Union, Japan, and South Korea are all attractive options since they're far more important to Iran's economic well-being. But here again, the NIE has made that harder. None of the countries in Europe or Asia can appear to be tougher toward Iran than the United States, particularly given the highly negative perceptions
of the Bush administration in these places. It matters little that President Bush is still urging pressure on Iran--his intelligence agencies have
created the impression that Iran is not a near-term threat.
Once again, one sees irony. The subtext of the NIE is that the Iranian leadership makes its decisions on a "cost-benefit approach"--and that the nuclear weapons program "probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure." But the way the NIE has framed the issue, it will now be harder to apply the very pressure it concludes worked in 2003.
One can criticize the intelligence community for framing the NIE around the wrong issue, but the intelligence community was not responsible for the
public roll-out of its estimate. President Bush and those around him made the decision to publicize it--after all, NIEs are not typically publicized. No doubt, the president and his advisors understood that once the NIE was
briefed to the congressional oversight committees on the Hill that its findings would leak, and they wanted to get out in front of the leaks.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, their presentation was not only poor in terms of framing, but also because it blindsided our allies. The British, French, and Germans have led the diplomatic efforts at the U.N. and in the E.U. on Iran;
it was important for them not to be exposed on this issue since each country's population holds such grave doubts about anything the Bush Administration portrays as threat. How could we not go to them in advance of the release of the NIE, explain the key judgments, and work out a common public approach? Had there been such coordination on the public message, it is hard to believe that the public presentation of the findings would not have been better presented--leaving all of us better positioned today.
Sadly, it's now easier for Iran to proceed unimpeded with its nuclear plans. It is far less likely to face the economic (or potentially military) pressures that in 2003 might have persuaded those in the Iranian leadership that the costs of developing their nuclear capabilities were too high. Who in the Iranian elite will argue that or oppose Ahmadinejad's approach to nukes now? No doubt, that is not what the authors of the NIE sought, but here poor statecraft has trumped our improved efforts at spycraft.
The Can't-Win Kids
The dunderheaded public roll-out of the NIE.
Dennis Ross, The New Republic Published: Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran presents an interesting paradox: Though almost certainly the product of rigorous assessment and questioning, it may actually leave us less secure over time. How can such an improved product of spycraft have such a negative effect? It can when it frames the issue mistakenly and is not combined with statecraft.
I don't question the assumptions or analysis in the NIE, or for that matter, its main conclusion. I accept that the Iranians suspended their covert
nuclear weapons program in 2003. But I am afraid that misses the point. Weaponizing is not the issue, developing fissionable materials is. Because compared with producing fissionable material, which makes up the core of nuclear bombs, weaponizing it is neither particularly difficult nor expensive.
In other words, the hard part of becoming a nuclear power is enriching uranium or separating out plutonium. And guess what? Iran is going
full-speed ahead on both. With over 3,300 operating centrifuges for spinning
uranium gases at its facility at Natanz (and more centrifuges on the way)and the building of a heavy water plant for plutonium separation at Arak, the Iranians will be able to master both by 2010 at the latest.
Perhaps that's why, in 2005, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani told a visiting group of American experts, including George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment, that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons research. According to Perkovich, Rafsanjani said: "Look, as long as we can enrich
uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don't need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions."
Maybe, as Rafsanjani was suggesting, the Iranians will be satisfied only to foster the appearance of having nuclear weapons without actually producing
them; for Rafsanjani, so long as Iran's neighbors assume it has nuclear weapons, they'll become responsive to Iran's wishes. But can we count on
Iran's maintaining such a posture indefinitely? And even if we could, what would the Middle East look like if Iran gained far greater coercive leverage over all its neighbors? Wouldn't oil production policies be used to separate
us from our allies or further manipulate the world's economy? Wouldn't we face a region increasingly hostile to our interests? Wouldn't we see the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace diminish as Iran worked to weaken, isolate, and demoralize the Jewish state? And to avoid being at the mercy of Iran, wouldn't the Saudis decide to go nuclear--and wouldn't that impel the Egyptians to do the same?
The point is that even the image of Iran as a nuclear power carries with it very dangerous consequences, including that the Middle East might become a nuclear-armed region. It is not an accident that the British, the French, and the Germans have sought to get the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. Similarly, it is not an accident that two U.N. Security Council
resolutions have imposed limited sanctions on Iran to get it to stop its enrichment efforts.
Consider the irony that the sanctions resolutions adopted by the Security Council were not about Iran's covert nuclear arms program. The Russians,
among others, have not believed that the Iranians had one. Instead, the international community in these resolutions was making it clear that it saw
Iran's enrichment program--and its rejection of offers of light water reactors for purely civil nuclear purposes--as indicators that Iran intended
to develop a nuclear weapons capability at some point.
While nothing theoretically has changed, the NIE has created a new story line. It framed the issue differently and shifted the attention away from
enrichment to the weapons program. Well, if the weapons program has been halted, can't we relax? Certainly, that is the conclusion that the Chinese
are drawing, given their mercantilist approach to Iran and foreign policy in general. They are now saying there is not a need for another sanctions
resolution against Iran. The Russians, too, are joining them, no doubt reflecting, at least in part, Putin's desire to demonstrate in the Middle
East and on the international stage that Russia is an alternative to America.
If nothing else, this means that it will be far harder to get an additional sanctions resolution in the UN any time soon. We could always seek to go outside the Security Council for sanctions. The European Union, Japan, and South Korea are all attractive options since they're far more important to Iran's economic well-being. But here again, the NIE has made that harder. None of the countries in Europe or Asia can appear to be tougher toward Iran than the United States, particularly given the highly negative perceptions
of the Bush administration in these places. It matters little that President Bush is still urging pressure on Iran--his intelligence agencies have
created the impression that Iran is not a near-term threat.
Once again, one sees irony. The subtext of the NIE is that the Iranian leadership makes its decisions on a "cost-benefit approach"--and that the nuclear weapons program "probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure." But the way the NIE has framed the issue, it will now be harder to apply the very pressure it concludes worked in 2003.
One can criticize the intelligence community for framing the NIE around the wrong issue, but the intelligence community was not responsible for the
public roll-out of its estimate. President Bush and those around him made the decision to publicize it--after all, NIEs are not typically publicized. No doubt, the president and his advisors understood that once the NIE was
briefed to the congressional oversight committees on the Hill that its findings would leak, and they wanted to get out in front of the leaks.
Fair enough. Unfortunately, their presentation was not only poor in terms of framing, but also because it blindsided our allies. The British, French, and Germans have led the diplomatic efforts at the U.N. and in the E.U. on Iran;
it was important for them not to be exposed on this issue since each country's population holds such grave doubts about anything the Bush Administration portrays as threat. How could we not go to them in advance of the release of the NIE, explain the key judgments, and work out a common public approach? Had there been such coordination on the public message, it is hard to believe that the public presentation of the findings would not have been better presented--leaving all of us better positioned today.
Sadly, it's now easier for Iran to proceed unimpeded with its nuclear plans. It is far less likely to face the economic (or potentially military) pressures that in 2003 might have persuaded those in the Iranian leadership that the costs of developing their nuclear capabilities were too high. Who in the Iranian elite will argue that or oppose Ahmadinejad's approach to nukes now? No doubt, that is not what the authors of the NIE sought, but here poor statecraft has trumped our improved efforts at spycraft.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
The Mitchell Report
I am taking some time to digest the Mitchell Report before writing a full post.
However a few initial points.
First, please go back and read my previous posts The History of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports.
First, Mitchell did try to correct one frequently cited mistake. He stated correctly that steroids have been illegal since 1971 and the controlled substances act. Use of a prescription medication for any purpose other than it's FDA approved usage is illegal.
Steroids are currently not approved for use in the United States for any purpose.
Hgh is ONLY legal for conditions of low growth hormone. Not injury rehab or anything else.
Second, the names. He also correctly stated that the names are simply the beginning.
However, the report itself will create a situation in which people think this is it.
As many of you will note in my previous posts on the issue of Drug use in sports, Roger Clememns stands out, and is an obvious user of HgH.
However, as I have pointed out repeatedly, their use is far more rampant, not just in baseball, but in all sports than anyone would like to believe.
For anyone working in the health and fitness field, it is quite simple to detect a Drug user.
Unfortunately, their use has become so ubiqitous, that most people no longer recognize them.
Steroids became prevalent in the 1950's and '60's.
Yes, 50 or sixty years ago.
Their use in baseball became obvious, not in the 1990's as Major League Baseball would have you believe, but in the late 1970's and 1980's. They were used during my time in the sport.
They became rampant in the late 1980's. People have forgotten the home run year of 1987. Formerly known as singles hitters, people like Brady Anderson of the Orioles, Lenny Dykstra, Juan Samuel, all became home run hitters.
Finally, what continues to be overlooked, is the ease in beating the tests.
Regardless of how often, how unannounced, or otherwise secure the tests are, as long as a ratio of 4 to 1 epitestosterone to testosterone is used (see my previous posts on the explanation of this) the tests will always be a joke.
However a few initial points.
First, please go back and read my previous posts The History of Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports.
First, Mitchell did try to correct one frequently cited mistake. He stated correctly that steroids have been illegal since 1971 and the controlled substances act. Use of a prescription medication for any purpose other than it's FDA approved usage is illegal.
Steroids are currently not approved for use in the United States for any purpose.
Hgh is ONLY legal for conditions of low growth hormone. Not injury rehab or anything else.
Second, the names. He also correctly stated that the names are simply the beginning.
However, the report itself will create a situation in which people think this is it.
As many of you will note in my previous posts on the issue of Drug use in sports, Roger Clememns stands out, and is an obvious user of HgH.
However, as I have pointed out repeatedly, their use is far more rampant, not just in baseball, but in all sports than anyone would like to believe.
For anyone working in the health and fitness field, it is quite simple to detect a Drug user.
Unfortunately, their use has become so ubiqitous, that most people no longer recognize them.
Steroids became prevalent in the 1950's and '60's.
Yes, 50 or sixty years ago.
Their use in baseball became obvious, not in the 1990's as Major League Baseball would have you believe, but in the late 1970's and 1980's. They were used during my time in the sport.
They became rampant in the late 1980's. People have forgotten the home run year of 1987. Formerly known as singles hitters, people like Brady Anderson of the Orioles, Lenny Dykstra, Juan Samuel, all became home run hitters.
Finally, what continues to be overlooked, is the ease in beating the tests.
Regardless of how often, how unannounced, or otherwise secure the tests are, as long as a ratio of 4 to 1 epitestosterone to testosterone is used (see my previous posts on the explanation of this) the tests will always be a joke.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Perhaps the most important post any of us will read any time soon
Those of you who read my blog regularly know that my attitude on the war in Iraq is one of "no matter how we got here, we have to deal with the current situation".
I have actually never explicitly stated my views on the war and it's origins, although I have made clear that anyone that belittles Sadaam's WMD programs, or his support of terrorism (not 9/11) just wasn't paying attention for two and a half decades.
The first and second intifada's in Israel were largely financed by Sadaam. He cut $10-25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers. This was well known. That may not seem like a lot to you, but even in Israel, an annual income of $25K is fairly significant. In the territories, it is a small fortune.
In addition, every intelligence agency in the world, from the Russians to the British, Chinese, etc. all believed there was an active weapons program.
So, while I don't state my opinion on the war, I do believe the conversation is usually about the wrong things.
For that, I blame, largely, the American press.
Along those lines: One of my new readers, and a valued regular here in Blogland, is just back from serving in Iraq.
I asked him to write a piece for all of us. While I have spent quite a bit of time in what is known as the Levant, basically, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, I, like most Americans, have not been to Iraq.
chester4440 has. This is his piece, with no input from me. Whatever you think of the war, those who fight have my eternal respect and admiration, as they should yours. Please thank him for his service, and visit his blog.
Chester modestly titled his piece:
A grunt's eye view
I was stationed at Al-Taquaddum Air Base in Al-Anbar province. It is located near the town of Habbineah, between Ramadi and Fallujah. My company was a convoy escort company that provided armed escorts to logistics convoys of military and civilian contractor vehicles. These are my observations of my own small portion of the situation in the war in Iraq. These words are my own.
We were combating an enemy that I saw once in a year. And that was a group of five that the Marines were detaining after finding six AK47's a RPK light machine gun, a couple of RPG launchers and approximately 10,000 rounds of ammunition in their vehicles. The insurgents blended almost perfectly with the civilian population from our perspective, and stayed close to the civilian population to negate the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. Military. They maintain their position in the civilian population mainly through intimidation and reprisal killings. The U.S. is slowly removing these cells, and the Iraqi government and civilian population is coming around to ending the insurgency.
There are many strategies that were working at the time I left. The surge helped by simply providing enough troops to deny the insurgents access to the countryside. A simple fact is that if there are more soldiers on the ground you can spend more time going through an area. This also provided enough time to properly train Iraqi police and military. as we witnessed in 1991 and 2003, yes they really were that bad. The Iraqis are now capable of holding areas that the U.S. clears. The Iraqi people and the Sheiks who lead them have determined that the insurgents have had the tide turn against them and have decided to back the U.S. and Iraqi forces. An example of this was early this summer when the Sheiks of Al-Anbar declared their support.
I have a first hand knowledge that, despite what the news says, despite what the politicians say, things are improving in Iraq. To prove this i will use a simple grunts yardstick. When we first arrived we were being mortared on average every ten days and were finding IED's five miles from the gate of our camp. When we left we hadn't been mortared for months and Had to go almost to Baghdad to find IED's with any regularity. Iraq will never be a Jeffersonian democracy in my opinion. It is just too different of culture. But we cannot abandon it to fall apart either. These are my observations and beliefs. You may agree or disagree but either way you may sleep safe at night knowing that me and people like me are willing to give our lives to defend your right to do either.
Chester,out
I have actually never explicitly stated my views on the war and it's origins, although I have made clear that anyone that belittles Sadaam's WMD programs, or his support of terrorism (not 9/11) just wasn't paying attention for two and a half decades.
The first and second intifada's in Israel were largely financed by Sadaam. He cut $10-25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers. This was well known. That may not seem like a lot to you, but even in Israel, an annual income of $25K is fairly significant. In the territories, it is a small fortune.
In addition, every intelligence agency in the world, from the Russians to the British, Chinese, etc. all believed there was an active weapons program.
So, while I don't state my opinion on the war, I do believe the conversation is usually about the wrong things.
For that, I blame, largely, the American press.
Along those lines: One of my new readers, and a valued regular here in Blogland, is just back from serving in Iraq.
I asked him to write a piece for all of us. While I have spent quite a bit of time in what is known as the Levant, basically, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, I, like most Americans, have not been to Iraq.
chester4440 has. This is his piece, with no input from me. Whatever you think of the war, those who fight have my eternal respect and admiration, as they should yours. Please thank him for his service, and visit his blog.
Chester modestly titled his piece:
A grunt's eye view
I was stationed at Al-Taquaddum Air Base in Al-Anbar province. It is located near the town of Habbineah, between Ramadi and Fallujah. My company was a convoy escort company that provided armed escorts to logistics convoys of military and civilian contractor vehicles. These are my observations of my own small portion of the situation in the war in Iraq. These words are my own.
We were combating an enemy that I saw once in a year. And that was a group of five that the Marines were detaining after finding six AK47's a RPK light machine gun, a couple of RPG launchers and approximately 10,000 rounds of ammunition in their vehicles. The insurgents blended almost perfectly with the civilian population from our perspective, and stayed close to the civilian population to negate the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. Military. They maintain their position in the civilian population mainly through intimidation and reprisal killings. The U.S. is slowly removing these cells, and the Iraqi government and civilian population is coming around to ending the insurgency.
There are many strategies that were working at the time I left. The surge helped by simply providing enough troops to deny the insurgents access to the countryside. A simple fact is that if there are more soldiers on the ground you can spend more time going through an area. This also provided enough time to properly train Iraqi police and military. as we witnessed in 1991 and 2003, yes they really were that bad. The Iraqis are now capable of holding areas that the U.S. clears. The Iraqi people and the Sheiks who lead them have determined that the insurgents have had the tide turn against them and have decided to back the U.S. and Iraqi forces. An example of this was early this summer when the Sheiks of Al-Anbar declared their support.
I have a first hand knowledge that, despite what the news says, despite what the politicians say, things are improving in Iraq. To prove this i will use a simple grunts yardstick. When we first arrived we were being mortared on average every ten days and were finding IED's five miles from the gate of our camp. When we left we hadn't been mortared for months and Had to go almost to Baghdad to find IED's with any regularity. Iraq will never be a Jeffersonian democracy in my opinion. It is just too different of culture. But we cannot abandon it to fall apart either. These are my observations and beliefs. You may agree or disagree but either way you may sleep safe at night knowing that me and people like me are willing to give our lives to defend your right to do either.
Chester,out
Friday, December 7, 2007
The New Republic (and Israel) on the National Intelligence Estimate
As I wrote in an earlier post, the press has focused on basically one line from the National Intelligence Estimate with regard to Iran's plans.
The estimate claims new intelligence, conversations between several high ranking generals in Iran, discussing the suspension of a nuclear warhead program.
***Please note, this does not mean a suspension of the missile programs, or the nuclear program***
TO me, the significant factor is the recognition that Iran continues it's pursuit of enriched uranium, with yellow cake. A process used principally in the production of nuclear weapons, not energy.
With the missile technology, once the Iranians begin to approach sufficient levels of enrichment, the production of nuclear warheads is a matter of days. So, whether or not the program is currently suspended is irrelevant. Even if they had the warheads, they don't have the nuclear capability yet to produce nuclear weapons.
What follows is a piece from the New Republic by Yossi Klein Halevi on the Israeli view of the issue.
An Insult to Intelligence
The Israeli defense community responds to the NIE.
Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic Published: Thursday, December 06,
2007
Since the early 1990s, when Israel first began preparing for a possible military strike against Iran's nuclear program, its security establishment has been divided not about the threat Iran posed--which was almost universally agreed upon to be grave--but about whether America and the international community would have the will to stop Tehran. Optimists noted the near-total Western acceptance of the Israeli intelligence assessment that the goal of the Iranian nuclear program was a bomb. In the last year, they have also pointed to the growing strength of the American-led sanctions effort, along with repeated warnings by American, French, and British leaders about a possible military strike if sanctions failed. The pessimists, for their part, insisted that the sanctions were too little too late, that America was in the grip of a new Vietnam-like trauma in Iraq, and that the mullahs' will to attain the bomb was stronger than the West's resolve to stop them.
Now, with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, the argument apparently has been resolved. If sanctions fail to stop Iran from achieving the potential to produce nuclear weapons, the dirty work will be left to Israel, just as it was left to Israel to stop Saddam Hussein from going nuclear. America, even under George Bush, is hardly likely to go to war to stop a program many Americans now believe doesn't exist.
Until now, pessimists here could console themselves that a last-resort Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would likely draw wide international sympathy and even gratitude--very different from the near-total condemnation that greeted Israel's attack on Saddam's reactor in 1981. Now, though, the NIE will ensure that if Israel does attack, it will be widely branded a warmonger, and faulted for the inevitable fallout of rising oil prices and increased terror.
The sense of betrayal within the Israeli security system is deep. After all, Israel's great achievement in its struggle against Iran was in convincing the international community that the nuclear threat was real; now that victory has been undone--not by Russia or the European Union, but by Israel's closest ally.
[B]What makes Israeli security officials especially furious is that the report casts doubt on Iranian determination to attain nuclear weapons. There is a sense of incredulity here: Do we really need to argue the urgency of the threat all over again? The Israeli strategists I heard from ridicule the report's contention that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs." Is it, asks one Israeli analyst sarcastically, a cost-benefit approach for one of the world's largest oil exporters to risk international sanctions and economic ruin for the sake of a peaceful nuclear program?[/B]
No one with whom I've spoken believes that professional considerations, such as new intelligence, were decisive in changing the American assessment on Iran. What has been widely hailed in the American media as an expression of
intelligence sobriety, even courage, is seen in the Israeli strategic community as precisely the opposite: an expression of political machination and cowardice. "The Americans often accuse us of tailoring our intelligence to suit our political needs," notes a former top security official. "But isn't this report a case study of doing precisely that?"
Adds a key security analyst: "The report didn't surprise me. The [American intelligence] system isn't healthy. It has been thoroughly politicized. I saw it when I brought hard evidence to them through the 1990s about how the Palestinian Authority was violating its commitments. Their responses weren't professional but political. This report only deepens the crisis of confidence we feel."
The debate over the report within the Israeli security network is whether the motive of its sponsors was ideological or opportunistic. Was the NIE a back-handed way of implementing the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for engagement with Iran? Or, ore simply, was the NIE motivated by fear among intelligence analysts not to be caught exaggerating another WMD crisis?
Ironically, an Israeli reading of the report only confirms the anxiety here, felt across the political spectrum, about Iranian intentions and capabilities. Responding to the NIE, the left-wing newspaper, Haaretz, sounds like a neo-con organ: "While Iran continues threatening to annihilate Israel, what American intelligence thinks about Iran's nuclear capability is irrelevant.... The report establishes that if Iran wants to produce a bomb it can do so, and if it doesn't want to, it won't. This evaluation may have a restraining effect in internal American politics. But in Israeli politics it should cause the opposite reaction."
After all, the NIE affirms not only that attaining nuclear weapons remains a central goal within the Iranian leadership, but also that, by continuing to enrich uranium, Iran has maintained efforts to make that goal achievable.
For Israeli security analysts, the suspension in 2003 of Iran's covert nuclear military program--the NIE's defining issue--is hardly pivotal. Partly that's because the working assumption in Israeli intelligence is that the Iranians have resumed their covert military program. "The Syrians were working on their nuclear project for seven years, and we discovered it only recently," says one security analyst. "The Americans didn't know about it all. So how can they be so sure about Iran?"
The more compelling reason, though, for minimizing the significance of a suspension of the covert military program is that the program itself is of secondary importance at this stage in the development of an Iranian bomb. The Iranians have continued to vigorously pursue two other programs--uranium enrichment and missile delivery systems--whose success would ensure them relatively quick access to military capability, even without a weapons program already in place. Says Shabtai Shavit, former head of the Mossad: "My assessment is that, after they decided to aim for nuclear weapons, they advanced on three parallel tracks: enriching uranium, creating components for a bomb, and developing missiles. The missiles are ready for operation. As for enrichment, they have encountered all kinds of problems, like exploding centrifuges. I estimate that they made great progress, and very quickly, on the military track. Since they have problems with the uranium enrichment track, they can allow themselves to delay the military track, and wait for progress with uranium." Given that world attention has been focused on the military track, a tactical Iranian concession made sense.
Shavit notes that the problem with the NIE isn't in its facts but its deliberate ambiguity. "The whole report is filled with assessments of 'high probability,' 'middle probability,' 'low probability.' I don't need that." And if he had written the report? "I would have based my assessment on the facts and said unequivocally that Iran is going to create the ability to make a bomb."
Nor do senior analysts here take seriously the NIE's vague assessments of when Iran will reach the point of no return: beginning in 2010, it says, though not likely until 2013 or even 2015. Israel's point of no return is when Iran attains the potential to produce sufficient fissile material for making a bomb. And they believe that is likely to happen--barring continued mishaps, accidental or not, in the Iranian nuclear program, like exploding centrifuges--somewhere within the next two years.
Once the material is available, the final step toward constructing a bomb is the least complicated part of the process. "Making bombs is a much shorter process than uranium enrichment," explains Ephraim Asculai, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and a 40-year veteran of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. "Today the Iranians are enriching uranium at four percent; to make a bomb, you need 90 percent. From there, the transition doesn't require a lot of time. Most of the work has been done to get to the four percent. It is a matter of months, not years."
That sense of urgency is evident in the highest ranks of the Israeli military. A recent letter circulated by Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli Air Force, to his officers offered a textual comparison between quotes from Hitler threatening Europe's Jews in the 1930s with quotes from Iranian President Ahmadinejad threatening Israel today. An accompanying letter, signed by an officer identified only as "responsible for the Iranian arena," noted laconically, "We can rely only on ourselves." With the release of the NIE, that old Israeli sentiment has become far more acute.
The estimate claims new intelligence, conversations between several high ranking generals in Iran, discussing the suspension of a nuclear warhead program.
***Please note, this does not mean a suspension of the missile programs, or the nuclear program***
TO me, the significant factor is the recognition that Iran continues it's pursuit of enriched uranium, with yellow cake. A process used principally in the production of nuclear weapons, not energy.
With the missile technology, once the Iranians begin to approach sufficient levels of enrichment, the production of nuclear warheads is a matter of days. So, whether or not the program is currently suspended is irrelevant. Even if they had the warheads, they don't have the nuclear capability yet to produce nuclear weapons.
What follows is a piece from the New Republic by Yossi Klein Halevi on the Israeli view of the issue.
An Insult to Intelligence
The Israeli defense community responds to the NIE.
Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic Published: Thursday, December 06,
2007
Since the early 1990s, when Israel first began preparing for a possible military strike against Iran's nuclear program, its security establishment has been divided not about the threat Iran posed--which was almost universally agreed upon to be grave--but about whether America and the international community would have the will to stop Tehran. Optimists noted the near-total Western acceptance of the Israeli intelligence assessment that the goal of the Iranian nuclear program was a bomb. In the last year, they have also pointed to the growing strength of the American-led sanctions effort, along with repeated warnings by American, French, and British leaders about a possible military strike if sanctions failed. The pessimists, for their part, insisted that the sanctions were too little too late, that America was in the grip of a new Vietnam-like trauma in Iraq, and that the mullahs' will to attain the bomb was stronger than the West's resolve to stop them.
Now, with the release of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, the argument apparently has been resolved. If sanctions fail to stop Iran from achieving the potential to produce nuclear weapons, the dirty work will be left to Israel, just as it was left to Israel to stop Saddam Hussein from going nuclear. America, even under George Bush, is hardly likely to go to war to stop a program many Americans now believe doesn't exist.
Until now, pessimists here could console themselves that a last-resort Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would likely draw wide international sympathy and even gratitude--very different from the near-total condemnation that greeted Israel's attack on Saddam's reactor in 1981. Now, though, the NIE will ensure that if Israel does attack, it will be widely branded a warmonger, and faulted for the inevitable fallout of rising oil prices and increased terror.
The sense of betrayal within the Israeli security system is deep. After all, Israel's great achievement in its struggle against Iran was in convincing the international community that the nuclear threat was real; now that victory has been undone--not by Russia or the European Union, but by Israel's closest ally.
[B]What makes Israeli security officials especially furious is that the report casts doubt on Iranian determination to attain nuclear weapons. There is a sense of incredulity here: Do we really need to argue the urgency of the threat all over again? The Israeli strategists I heard from ridicule the report's contention that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs." Is it, asks one Israeli analyst sarcastically, a cost-benefit approach for one of the world's largest oil exporters to risk international sanctions and economic ruin for the sake of a peaceful nuclear program?[/B]
No one with whom I've spoken believes that professional considerations, such as new intelligence, were decisive in changing the American assessment on Iran. What has been widely hailed in the American media as an expression of
intelligence sobriety, even courage, is seen in the Israeli strategic community as precisely the opposite: an expression of political machination and cowardice. "The Americans often accuse us of tailoring our intelligence to suit our political needs," notes a former top security official. "But isn't this report a case study of doing precisely that?"
Adds a key security analyst: "The report didn't surprise me. The [American intelligence] system isn't healthy. It has been thoroughly politicized. I saw it when I brought hard evidence to them through the 1990s about how the Palestinian Authority was violating its commitments. Their responses weren't professional but political. This report only deepens the crisis of confidence we feel."
The debate over the report within the Israeli security network is whether the motive of its sponsors was ideological or opportunistic. Was the NIE a back-handed way of implementing the Baker-Hamilton report, which called for engagement with Iran? Or, ore simply, was the NIE motivated by fear among intelligence analysts not to be caught exaggerating another WMD crisis?
Ironically, an Israeli reading of the report only confirms the anxiety here, felt across the political spectrum, about Iranian intentions and capabilities. Responding to the NIE, the left-wing newspaper, Haaretz, sounds like a neo-con organ: "While Iran continues threatening to annihilate Israel, what American intelligence thinks about Iran's nuclear capability is irrelevant.... The report establishes that if Iran wants to produce a bomb it can do so, and if it doesn't want to, it won't. This evaluation may have a restraining effect in internal American politics. But in Israeli politics it should cause the opposite reaction."
After all, the NIE affirms not only that attaining nuclear weapons remains a central goal within the Iranian leadership, but also that, by continuing to enrich uranium, Iran has maintained efforts to make that goal achievable.
For Israeli security analysts, the suspension in 2003 of Iran's covert nuclear military program--the NIE's defining issue--is hardly pivotal. Partly that's because the working assumption in Israeli intelligence is that the Iranians have resumed their covert military program. "The Syrians were working on their nuclear project for seven years, and we discovered it only recently," says one security analyst. "The Americans didn't know about it all. So how can they be so sure about Iran?"
The more compelling reason, though, for minimizing the significance of a suspension of the covert military program is that the program itself is of secondary importance at this stage in the development of an Iranian bomb. The Iranians have continued to vigorously pursue two other programs--uranium enrichment and missile delivery systems--whose success would ensure them relatively quick access to military capability, even without a weapons program already in place. Says Shabtai Shavit, former head of the Mossad: "My assessment is that, after they decided to aim for nuclear weapons, they advanced on three parallel tracks: enriching uranium, creating components for a bomb, and developing missiles. The missiles are ready for operation. As for enrichment, they have encountered all kinds of problems, like exploding centrifuges. I estimate that they made great progress, and very quickly, on the military track. Since they have problems with the uranium enrichment track, they can allow themselves to delay the military track, and wait for progress with uranium." Given that world attention has been focused on the military track, a tactical Iranian concession made sense.
Shavit notes that the problem with the NIE isn't in its facts but its deliberate ambiguity. "The whole report is filled with assessments of 'high probability,' 'middle probability,' 'low probability.' I don't need that." And if he had written the report? "I would have based my assessment on the facts and said unequivocally that Iran is going to create the ability to make a bomb."
Nor do senior analysts here take seriously the NIE's vague assessments of when Iran will reach the point of no return: beginning in 2010, it says, though not likely until 2013 or even 2015. Israel's point of no return is when Iran attains the potential to produce sufficient fissile material for making a bomb. And they believe that is likely to happen--barring continued mishaps, accidental or not, in the Iranian nuclear program, like exploding centrifuges--somewhere within the next two years.
Once the material is available, the final step toward constructing a bomb is the least complicated part of the process. "Making bombs is a much shorter process than uranium enrichment," explains Ephraim Asculai, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and a 40-year veteran of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. "Today the Iranians are enriching uranium at four percent; to make a bomb, you need 90 percent. From there, the transition doesn't require a lot of time. Most of the work has been done to get to the four percent. It is a matter of months, not years."
That sense of urgency is evident in the highest ranks of the Israeli military. A recent letter circulated by Eliezer Shkedi, commander of the Israeli Air Force, to his officers offered a textual comparison between quotes from Hitler threatening Europe's Jews in the 1930s with quotes from Iranian President Ahmadinejad threatening Israel today. An accompanying letter, signed by an officer identified only as "responsible for the Iranian arena," noted laconically, "We can rely only on ourselves." With the release of the NIE, that old Israeli sentiment has become far more acute.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
N.I.E. and Iran - can you see the smoke?
So the National Intelligence Estimate released this week claims that Iran gave up it's weapons program 4 years ago.
Or so said the headlines.
Critics, of course, claim this is just another example of the Bush administrations misuse of intelligence in prep for war against Iran.
There are several problems with this scenario.
First, there were no plans for military action, or at least invasion, of Iran.
At most, the only discussion centered on air strikes to take out the Iranian nukes.
But that is for another time.
What does the N.I.E. really say?
Well, most significantly, it states that the Iranian enrichment program is steaming full speed ahead.
As those who understand, know. The critical component to a nuclear warhead is not the missile technology, but rather the gathering of sufficient fissile material for the warhead.
The method of enrichment that the Iranians are using is most commonly used for producing nuclear weapons.
In addition, the improvement and production of their ballistic missiles continues unabated.
Their hardening of the missile silos also continues.
Finally, it is acknowledged that they purchased the plans for a nuclear weapon from the rogue Pakistani nuclear arms dealer A.Q. Khan.
What does it take to produce the final weapon? About 5 minutes and the turning of the final screw.
Observations of military activity, discussions of pre emption on the part of the Iranians and their own descriptions of acceptable losses in nuclear exchanges continue to point out the inevitability of their entering the nuclear weapons community.
This horse is out of the barn. What needs to be discussed is how to deal with a nuclear Iran, not whether they will be nuclear.
Or so said the headlines.
Critics, of course, claim this is just another example of the Bush administrations misuse of intelligence in prep for war against Iran.
There are several problems with this scenario.
First, there were no plans for military action, or at least invasion, of Iran.
At most, the only discussion centered on air strikes to take out the Iranian nukes.
But that is for another time.
What does the N.I.E. really say?
Well, most significantly, it states that the Iranian enrichment program is steaming full speed ahead.
As those who understand, know. The critical component to a nuclear warhead is not the missile technology, but rather the gathering of sufficient fissile material for the warhead.
The method of enrichment that the Iranians are using is most commonly used for producing nuclear weapons.
In addition, the improvement and production of their ballistic missiles continues unabated.
Their hardening of the missile silos also continues.
Finally, it is acknowledged that they purchased the plans for a nuclear weapon from the rogue Pakistani nuclear arms dealer A.Q. Khan.
What does it take to produce the final weapon? About 5 minutes and the turning of the final screw.
Observations of military activity, discussions of pre emption on the part of the Iranians and their own descriptions of acceptable losses in nuclear exchanges continue to point out the inevitability of their entering the nuclear weapons community.
This horse is out of the barn. What needs to be discussed is how to deal with a nuclear Iran, not whether they will be nuclear.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Gulliver's Travels.... or My Brush with Death or... My Repeat with the TSA
I love to fly. Flat out. I will take any excuse to do so. I am not a frequent a flyer as those that do so for business, but my passport is full.
This weekend of course, I had the best excuse I could ever have and I was one motivated m'er f'er to get on a plane.
However, divorce, changing my life plans and prepping to once again become a student means I have to do it on the cheap.
So, this weekend it meant driving 160 miles to Atlantic City to catch the flight that gave me the sale price that meant flying 1000 miles would be roughly one third the cost of driving that 160 miles to the airport.
So, my flight left at 7:55am. Which meant boarding at 7:25.
Which of course, means a normal person would leave about 3 am to catch the flight.
But I drive FAST. So, I left at 4:30. Just in time for the first serious snow storm of the year.
But the flight down was fun, and I had a wonderful 2 days (despite my friend being sure I didn't!!). In fact, for much of the time I was feeling as relaxed and happy as I have been in quite some time.
So here's the rub. On the way home events started to unfold like a bad Macaulay Culkin movie. I ended up being dropped off at the airport about 8 hours before my scheduled departure.
OK, no prob. I'll read, do some work on the computer, etc. As it turned out though, I was still so exhausted from my early morning the previous day I really couldn't, but still everything was hunky dory.
Then, I hit security.
Yes, you remember my last post about airport security.
Now, it's not that I think the TSA is incompetent but follow this one.
For some reason, despite never having been stopped for my shaving kit, when I was asked (for the first time mind you) if I had any "liquids or creams in containers greater than 3 ounces", I stupidly answered in the affirmative.
So, I was made to remove them.
With a look of disgust, the TSA officer took my 3 oz tube of crest, Palmer's cocoa butter moisturizer and The Body Shop Shave cream, and put it in a dish.
He then proceeded to tell me that I could not go through screening area with these.
Why? I inquired. "That is SOP".
"Explain" queried I, the weary traveler, now a mere 5 1/2 hours early for my flight, but anxiously watching the time tick away.
"Those are the rules" replied my helpful friend, who I had begun to refer to as Shakespeare b/c of his deadpan wit and way with the English language.
Suddenly, the dreaded "supervisor" appeared. Shakespeare told the boss that I had a problem with the "SOP".
I quickly stated that I had no problem with it, despite my experience with the Secret Service, Mossad and other various agencies around the world and the fact that these little tubes of personal products, happily volunteered, were highly unlikely to be the tools of terrorists, particularly in the destination where the conversation was taking place.
"I only have a problem with the fact that I went through this same line 2 weeks ago with the same items, that I did not voluntarily produce, and no one said anything or stopped me". "I would just like to know why, Mr. Supervisor?"
"SOP" replied Shakespeare's literary muse.
"You have to place these items in a 1/2 quart or smaller, resealable, see through plastic bag."
My frustration reaching a boiling point, I put my shoes back on, packed the laptop up and jammed it into my overstuffed briefcase, put the wallet in the left pocket, keys in the right, change in the back right, replaced my watch carefully on my left wrist, closed my overnighter, careful not to let my liquids come in contact with each other for fear of the inevitable explosion (caught you!!), slung my fleece jacket over the briefcase shoulder strap and lifted my bag before trundling off to find a baggie.
Oh wait, forgot to put my shoes back on. The ones that were purchased specifically so that I would not have to remove them at the airport security check. Everything went down on the floor, the shoes were put back on, and the waltz began again.
Well, I hunted down the rare, and quickly disappearing, clear plastic baggie.
Carefully ripped off 99% of it - that's right - it was a 50 gallon garbage bag that the kindly porter in the coffee shop provided to me - tied off the top and proceeded to once again meet the Bard.
So, the repeat performance began.
It seemed my "baggie" did not Federal standards for clear plastic baggie reseal-ability. Apparently my hastily hog tied top of the 55 galloner, did not qualify on the carefully codified section of the Transportation Administrations lengthy treatise on the Federal guidelines on ziploc and other qualifying brands of reusable, non bomb making thermo plastic storage devices.
"Why?" I rudely inquired yet again. No real security cares about Crest toothpaste.
"Because we have to be able to see what you have in the bag".
The screeching of wheels stopping could be heard for miles.
"Excuse me? You mean you have to be able to see the objects that you are currently holding in your hand,... but inside a plastic bag?"
"That's right"
"So is there some magic bomb diffusing characteristics of the ziploc bag that we mere mortals do not grasp?"
That one, he didn't appreciate!!
So, once again I put my shoes back on, packed the laptop up and jammed it into my overstuffed briefcase, put the wallet in the left pocket, keys in the right, change in the back right, replaced my watch carefully on my left wrist, closed my overnighter, careful not to let my liquids come in contact with each other for fear of the inevitable explosion (caught you!!), slung my fleece jacket over the briefcase shoulder strap and lifted my bag before trundling off to find a true baggie but with the unique ability to reseal the fissile material contained within.
Thankfully, the kindly old lady at the information booth just happened to have a box of ziploc bagggies for those of us not up to snuff of the TSA guidelines on transporting deadly explosives.
So, once again, I proceeded through the security check.
Should I tell you that now, on the third time through the x ray machine in under 20 minutes they decided that my briefcase was "suspicious". And that it needed to be wiped down and analyzed with those handi wipes masquerading as mysterious bomb wiping tissues they use?
No, we'll save that for later.
So up the escalator I proceeded, after having once again, redressed myself, picked up my items, packed everything away and issued a final harumph.
I enter that privileged lair that only those lucky enough to have actually purchased a $13 ticket to Atlantic City were permitted to share.
Almost immediately, I began to hear delay announcements.
Seems that the snow storm I had left, had morphed into fairly violent winds.
Planes were stacked all over the Northeast.
But I did not hear any announcements about the Atlantic City flight. I thought, hoped really, that it was far South enough that it wouldn't be affected.
Then, as I was approaching my seventh hour in the terminal, I went to the gate to double check.
And there I saw it - my flight, originally scheduled to leave at 8:55 was now delayed (supposedly) until 11:30. Seems wind had so delayed flights that everything was affected. My plane was actually going from Detroit to LaGuardia and then down to my location, before returning to Atlantic City.
Suffice to say, it was actually 12:30 when we took off.
The pilot told us that the flight would be smooth, but that there was turbulence on our descent.
So, when we began our descent the turbulence hit.
But, I have been in turbulence before. This was something special. Not really turbulence since it was not bumpy. Just a mere total loss of control of the plane.
The only way I can describe it is as if we were on ice, and someone was shoving first the back and then the front of the plane.
We were literally sliding around the sky and the pilot was desperately trying to keep us on course.
Now, I have flown to the Middle East literally dozens of times. Once on the very day that a plane was brought down over Nairobi by a SAM. I was on a plane on 9/16/01 to Pakistan for business, but I have never been scared on a plane before.
This, I knew was serious.
We continued the buffeting as the captain desperately tried to bring us down.
As we approached the runway, the wind got even worse, and the plane was sliding off course, then being literally shoved back on line by the captain.
Of course, the cabin looked like a scene from the 1970's disaster epic Airport. People holding hands, praying, crying, some laughing, and of course the guy next to me sure that the Captain was incompetent and he was cursing him out.
We got lower and lower, struggling to maintain equilibrium.
The pilot raised the nose of the plane and prepared to touch down.
Suddenly the entire plane listed to the right as if the captain was attempting to imitate the Great Waldo Pepper and do a full body roll with an Airbus A-390.
The left wing dipped to almost 45 degrees. The pilot fought it and righted us.
There was now just a matter of the ground, just feet below the speeding plane.
The pilot gunned the engines and attempted to accelerate out of the landing.
Luckily for all of us, he did. I had never been in an aborted landing before.
He brought us back up and we took a scenic tour of the greater Philadelphia area before we were able to turn successfully to try another landing.
This time, the pilot went into the landing at almost full speed with engines racing, to fight our way through the wind.
At this point, the cabin was dead silent.
Once again, the plane slid around, left to right, feeling like nothing more than that horrible moment when you are driving a car and you hit black ice. You first try to stop the skid but then you have that sick moment when you realize that you can't control the vehicle and you just wait for the inevitable collision with whatever will stop your progress: another car, pole, guard rail.
The captain gunned the engines once more and powered the wheels to the ground. He immediately threw everything into reverse to stop the excessive speed that he had to use to simply fight his way to the ground.
It was now 2 am. My relief at being alive was immediately replaced by worry about the driving conditions and the fact that if I averaged 80 miles an hour with a stop for gas (that means driving between 85-100mph or 140-170kmph) I might make it home by 4 am. And I had to be in Manhattan at 9:30 that morning!!
Well, I made it. The ride home was hairy, but there were no cops and I was able to drive at my freedom, although the wind was vicious still.
Then this morning, it was snowing again on the way into Manhattan.
Whew!! What a trip. Would I do it again? You bet. Not just for the flying, but the treat that I had at the other end of the flight!!!
This weekend of course, I had the best excuse I could ever have and I was one motivated m'er f'er to get on a plane.
However, divorce, changing my life plans and prepping to once again become a student means I have to do it on the cheap.
So, this weekend it meant driving 160 miles to Atlantic City to catch the flight that gave me the sale price that meant flying 1000 miles would be roughly one third the cost of driving that 160 miles to the airport.
So, my flight left at 7:55am. Which meant boarding at 7:25.
Which of course, means a normal person would leave about 3 am to catch the flight.
But I drive FAST. So, I left at 4:30. Just in time for the first serious snow storm of the year.
But the flight down was fun, and I had a wonderful 2 days (despite my friend being sure I didn't!!). In fact, for much of the time I was feeling as relaxed and happy as I have been in quite some time.
So here's the rub. On the way home events started to unfold like a bad Macaulay Culkin movie. I ended up being dropped off at the airport about 8 hours before my scheduled departure.
OK, no prob. I'll read, do some work on the computer, etc. As it turned out though, I was still so exhausted from my early morning the previous day I really couldn't, but still everything was hunky dory.
Then, I hit security.
Yes, you remember my last post about airport security.
Now, it's not that I think the TSA is incompetent but follow this one.
For some reason, despite never having been stopped for my shaving kit, when I was asked (for the first time mind you) if I had any "liquids or creams in containers greater than 3 ounces", I stupidly answered in the affirmative.
So, I was made to remove them.
With a look of disgust, the TSA officer took my 3 oz tube of crest, Palmer's cocoa butter moisturizer and The Body Shop Shave cream, and put it in a dish.
He then proceeded to tell me that I could not go through screening area with these.
Why? I inquired. "That is SOP".
"Explain" queried I, the weary traveler, now a mere 5 1/2 hours early for my flight, but anxiously watching the time tick away.
"Those are the rules" replied my helpful friend, who I had begun to refer to as Shakespeare b/c of his deadpan wit and way with the English language.
Suddenly, the dreaded "supervisor" appeared. Shakespeare told the boss that I had a problem with the "SOP".
I quickly stated that I had no problem with it, despite my experience with the Secret Service, Mossad and other various agencies around the world and the fact that these little tubes of personal products, happily volunteered, were highly unlikely to be the tools of terrorists, particularly in the destination where the conversation was taking place.
"I only have a problem with the fact that I went through this same line 2 weeks ago with the same items, that I did not voluntarily produce, and no one said anything or stopped me". "I would just like to know why, Mr. Supervisor?"
"SOP" replied Shakespeare's literary muse.
"You have to place these items in a 1/2 quart or smaller, resealable, see through plastic bag."
My frustration reaching a boiling point, I put my shoes back on, packed the laptop up and jammed it into my overstuffed briefcase, put the wallet in the left pocket, keys in the right, change in the back right, replaced my watch carefully on my left wrist, closed my overnighter, careful not to let my liquids come in contact with each other for fear of the inevitable explosion (caught you!!), slung my fleece jacket over the briefcase shoulder strap and lifted my bag before trundling off to find a baggie.
Oh wait, forgot to put my shoes back on. The ones that were purchased specifically so that I would not have to remove them at the airport security check. Everything went down on the floor, the shoes were put back on, and the waltz began again.
Well, I hunted down the rare, and quickly disappearing, clear plastic baggie.
Carefully ripped off 99% of it - that's right - it was a 50 gallon garbage bag that the kindly porter in the coffee shop provided to me - tied off the top and proceeded to once again meet the Bard.
So, the repeat performance began.
It seemed my "baggie" did not Federal standards for clear plastic baggie reseal-ability. Apparently my hastily hog tied top of the 55 galloner, did not qualify on the carefully codified section of the Transportation Administrations lengthy treatise on the Federal guidelines on ziploc and other qualifying brands of reusable, non bomb making thermo plastic storage devices.
"Why?" I rudely inquired yet again. No real security cares about Crest toothpaste.
"Because we have to be able to see what you have in the bag".
The screeching of wheels stopping could be heard for miles.
"Excuse me? You mean you have to be able to see the objects that you are currently holding in your hand,... but inside a plastic bag?"
"That's right"
"So is there some magic bomb diffusing characteristics of the ziploc bag that we mere mortals do not grasp?"
That one, he didn't appreciate!!
So, once again I put my shoes back on, packed the laptop up and jammed it into my overstuffed briefcase, put the wallet in the left pocket, keys in the right, change in the back right, replaced my watch carefully on my left wrist, closed my overnighter, careful not to let my liquids come in contact with each other for fear of the inevitable explosion (caught you!!), slung my fleece jacket over the briefcase shoulder strap and lifted my bag before trundling off to find a true baggie but with the unique ability to reseal the fissile material contained within.
Thankfully, the kindly old lady at the information booth just happened to have a box of ziploc bagggies for those of us not up to snuff of the TSA guidelines on transporting deadly explosives.
So, once again, I proceeded through the security check.
Should I tell you that now, on the third time through the x ray machine in under 20 minutes they decided that my briefcase was "suspicious". And that it needed to be wiped down and analyzed with those handi wipes masquerading as mysterious bomb wiping tissues they use?
No, we'll save that for later.
So up the escalator I proceeded, after having once again, redressed myself, picked up my items, packed everything away and issued a final harumph.
I enter that privileged lair that only those lucky enough to have actually purchased a $13 ticket to Atlantic City were permitted to share.
Almost immediately, I began to hear delay announcements.
Seems that the snow storm I had left, had morphed into fairly violent winds.
Planes were stacked all over the Northeast.
But I did not hear any announcements about the Atlantic City flight. I thought, hoped really, that it was far South enough that it wouldn't be affected.
Then, as I was approaching my seventh hour in the terminal, I went to the gate to double check.
And there I saw it - my flight, originally scheduled to leave at 8:55 was now delayed (supposedly) until 11:30. Seems wind had so delayed flights that everything was affected. My plane was actually going from Detroit to LaGuardia and then down to my location, before returning to Atlantic City.
Suffice to say, it was actually 12:30 when we took off.
The pilot told us that the flight would be smooth, but that there was turbulence on our descent.
So, when we began our descent the turbulence hit.
But, I have been in turbulence before. This was something special. Not really turbulence since it was not bumpy. Just a mere total loss of control of the plane.
The only way I can describe it is as if we were on ice, and someone was shoving first the back and then the front of the plane.
We were literally sliding around the sky and the pilot was desperately trying to keep us on course.
Now, I have flown to the Middle East literally dozens of times. Once on the very day that a plane was brought down over Nairobi by a SAM. I was on a plane on 9/16/01 to Pakistan for business, but I have never been scared on a plane before.
This, I knew was serious.
We continued the buffeting as the captain desperately tried to bring us down.
As we approached the runway, the wind got even worse, and the plane was sliding off course, then being literally shoved back on line by the captain.
Of course, the cabin looked like a scene from the 1970's disaster epic Airport. People holding hands, praying, crying, some laughing, and of course the guy next to me sure that the Captain was incompetent and he was cursing him out.
We got lower and lower, struggling to maintain equilibrium.
The pilot raised the nose of the plane and prepared to touch down.
Suddenly the entire plane listed to the right as if the captain was attempting to imitate the Great Waldo Pepper and do a full body roll with an Airbus A-390.
The left wing dipped to almost 45 degrees. The pilot fought it and righted us.
There was now just a matter of the ground, just feet below the speeding plane.
The pilot gunned the engines and attempted to accelerate out of the landing.
Luckily for all of us, he did. I had never been in an aborted landing before.
He brought us back up and we took a scenic tour of the greater Philadelphia area before we were able to turn successfully to try another landing.
This time, the pilot went into the landing at almost full speed with engines racing, to fight our way through the wind.
At this point, the cabin was dead silent.
Once again, the plane slid around, left to right, feeling like nothing more than that horrible moment when you are driving a car and you hit black ice. You first try to stop the skid but then you have that sick moment when you realize that you can't control the vehicle and you just wait for the inevitable collision with whatever will stop your progress: another car, pole, guard rail.
The captain gunned the engines once more and powered the wheels to the ground. He immediately threw everything into reverse to stop the excessive speed that he had to use to simply fight his way to the ground.
It was now 2 am. My relief at being alive was immediately replaced by worry about the driving conditions and the fact that if I averaged 80 miles an hour with a stop for gas (that means driving between 85-100mph or 140-170kmph) I might make it home by 4 am. And I had to be in Manhattan at 9:30 that morning!!
Well, I made it. The ride home was hairy, but there were no cops and I was able to drive at my freedom, although the wind was vicious still.
Then this morning, it was snowing again on the way into Manhattan.
Whew!! What a trip. Would I do it again? You bet. Not just for the flying, but the treat that I had at the other end of the flight!!!
Monday, December 3, 2007
Feeling philolologoolooic.al.... aw hell, thinking about shit!!!
I've been thinking a lot lately about a question regarding people, we of the human species.
Do you think we are who we feel we are in our hearts? Or who we present to the world?
And if they are two different personas, why?
Do you use your heart and instincts as a guide or do you behave in ways (in public) that you think meet the standards that whatever position in life you maintain?
Be honest - I'd like to hear what you really feel, not what you think you should say!
Do you think we are who we feel we are in our hearts? Or who we present to the world?
And if they are two different personas, why?
Do you use your heart and instincts as a guide or do you behave in ways (in public) that you think meet the standards that whatever position in life you maintain?
Be honest - I'd like to hear what you really feel, not what you think you should say!
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Beware the Teddy!!
So British school teacher Gillian Gibbons is on her way back to Britain after high level diplomatic negotiations to free the convicted spy for Britain's MI-6.
What you say? She was not a spy? She was jailed because she is a teacher who asked her young students as part of a story writing assignment to pick a name for a Teddy Bear?
Ridiculous!!! Impossible!!! This is the 21st Century, not the 14th!!
That would be as lucidcrous as millions taking up protest around the world at the site of a 3 or 4 satiric cartoons.
So the students in Gibbons class in the Sudan had the temerity to pick the name Muhammed which immediately convinced the education director of her school that she was mocking the great prophet.
She was lucky, she could have gotten 40 lashes and 60 days in jail for this. Instead for the obscene crime of teaching literacy, she got 21 days in jail and was deported, never to return to her beloved students again.
Is it me? Doesn't anyone see the insanity in this religion?
It's not enough to ask you to try and imagine any other religion in the world conducting itself this way, but that the British government actually has to grovel to the President of the Sudan, makes me sick.
The man responsible for the rape and torture of literally millions of non Muslim and Muslim Sudanese women and children has the nerve to declare himself a "devout" anything!!
And we in the West take it bowing and shufflin.
What you say? She was not a spy? She was jailed because she is a teacher who asked her young students as part of a story writing assignment to pick a name for a Teddy Bear?
Ridiculous!!! Impossible!!! This is the 21st Century, not the 14th!!
That would be as lucidcrous as millions taking up protest around the world at the site of a 3 or 4 satiric cartoons.
So the students in Gibbons class in the Sudan had the temerity to pick the name Muhammed which immediately convinced the education director of her school that she was mocking the great prophet.
She was lucky, she could have gotten 40 lashes and 60 days in jail for this. Instead for the obscene crime of teaching literacy, she got 21 days in jail and was deported, never to return to her beloved students again.
Is it me? Doesn't anyone see the insanity in this religion?
It's not enough to ask you to try and imagine any other religion in the world conducting itself this way, but that the British government actually has to grovel to the President of the Sudan, makes me sick.
The man responsible for the rape and torture of literally millions of non Muslim and Muslim Sudanese women and children has the nerve to declare himself a "devout" anything!!
And we in the West take it bowing and shufflin.
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