A changing dynamic in Iraq

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Iraq's Rebellion Develops Signs of Internal Rift

The establishment of the sovereign government may have set in motion a subtle but real shift in perceptions among some Iraqi rebels. Some argue that Mr. Allawi's Baathist past — he was a hard-liner before he ran afoul of Mr. Hussein — is swaying some former Baathists toward loyalty to the new government.

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A separate article describes the return of jihadi to Saudi Arabia -- from Iraq.

I've wondered what deals were done to get Sistani to accept Allawi. Bush was right to stick to the transition date (one decision I never criticized -- because I agreed with it). If the Kurds and Shias can live with Allawi, then he's the key to reassuring the Sunni. The next step to watch is what Allawi does with Falluja. By focusing on "foreigners" there he seems to be preparing for an attack.

I'm Osama bin Laden and I approve this message ...

Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose July 11th, 2004 The July 11 Doonesbury is wicked. And so true. If Osama knew how to reelect GWB, he would.

Informed Comment : 07/01/2004 - 07/31/2004

Informed Comment : 07/01/2004 - 07/31/2004

The US military and possibly Coalition partners have in many cases taken women and children hostage in order to force their male relatives among the guerrillas to surrender. Since this practice is a form of collective punishment and was undertaken while the Coalition occupied Iraq, it is a war crime.

From Der Spiegel:

IRAQ: US soldiers are said to have abused arrested children.

More than hundred children have been detained in Iraqi prisons--including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, according to information provided by the international red cross. According to the TV magazine show "Report" Coalition troops are may also have abused children and young people. "Between January and May we registered altogether 107 children, during 19 visits at six different prisons", the spokesman of the International Red Cross (IKRK), Florian Westphal, said in a Geneva interview with the SWR magazine "Report Mainz". She said that these places of detention were controlled by coalition troops. The number of the children imprisoned held could also be higher, according to Westphal. In addition, the TV magazine reported references and testimonies, according to which US soldiers in Iraqi prisons also abused children and young people.

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I'd seen mention of this as an aside earlier. Guerilla's fight from home, and frequently fight as a family. They may even consider such tactics to be harsh, but rational.

For the rest of us though, war crime sounds about right.

A new world of vendor lock-in: encryption authentication of batteries

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

NEC's 'smart' batteries: invitation to monopolistic DMCA nightmare

NEC has announced that its batteries will have cryptographic authentication schemes to prevent 'low-quality counterfeits.' Jason Schultz comments on the way that the DMCA turns such a sytem into a license to screw your customers by shutting out competitors who make cheaper batteries:

The software will be introduced in Japanese digital cameras by year's end and is expected to be used in 50 million units by 2007. The software is ideal for use in mobile phones and batteries, but NEC Electronics is also considering extending this technology to 'smart' keys, printers and ink cartridges, as well as bundling the technology into hardware options.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, software-based authentication is the wave of the future. And now, with the DMCA, a near-monopoly! Future, here we come.

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Lock-in is binding customers to your products. Microsoft built its monopoly on binding customers to their proprietary (now DMCA protected) file formats.

In the old days hardware lock-in required patented oddball connectors. Now it's much easier and cheaper. To be fair I think this would have happened without the DMCA; the DMCA just makes it illegal to break the encryption.

update: Thinking about this a bit more, the best guide to what we'll see is HP ink jet printers. HP printer heada are keyed (by patent) to their printers. HP can (and does) give away the printers; they make their money on the consumables.

Cheap encrypted interfaces for physical devices extends this strategy. Ultimately many consumer electronic devices may be very cheap or free -- but we'll pay for them through the batteries. The battery manufacturer has complete control over product life-cycle -- if they stop making the batteries the device becomes garbage.

Any sort of consumable that's bound by encryption keys to a dependent device may have the same effect. If cars end up being run by fuel cells ...

I don't think we can imagine where this will end up. The only thing that will slow this down are (I hope!) high fees for use of this (certainly) patented innovation.

Ashcroft delcares translator's expose to be a "state secret" ...

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Bush Administration Silences FBI Whistleblower

Boston Globe: Translator in eye of storm on retroactive classification. Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English.

Edmonds, 34, who is fluent in Turkish and Farsi, said she quickly reported the mistake to an FBI superior. Five months later, after flagging what she said were several other security lapses in her division, she was fired. Now, after more than two years of investigations and congressional inquiries, Edmonds is at the center of an extraordinary storm over US classification rules that sheds new light on the secrecy imperative supported by members of the Bush administration.

In a rare maneuver, Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered that information about the Edmonds case be retroactively classified, even basic facts that have been posted on websites and discussed openly in meetings with members of Congress for two years. The Department of Justice also invoked the seldom-used ''state secrets" privilege to silence Edmonds in court. She has been blocked from testifying in a lawsuit brought by victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and was allowed to speak to the panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks only behind closed doors.

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The now top secret, for your eye's only, must be removed, letters are here.

This administration is getting whackier all the time. Maybe Moore isn't as much of a crackpot as I'd assumed.

The July surprise: bin Laden on demand?

The New Republic Online: July Surprise?

... This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism. In April, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, publicly chided the Pakistanis for providing a "sanctuary" for Al Qaeda and Taliban forces crossing the Afghan border. "The problem has not been solved and needs to be solved, the sooner the better," he said.

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar ... But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections." Introducing target dates for Al Qaeda captures is a new twist in U.S.-Pakistani counterterrorism relations--according to a recently departed intelligence official, "no timetable[s]" were discussed in 2002 or 2003--but the November election is apparently bringing a new deadline pressure to the hunt. Another official, this one from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, which is responsible for internal security, explains, "The Musharraf government has a history of rescuing the Bush administration. They now want Musharraf to bail them out when they are facing hard times in the coming elections."...

A third source, an official who works under ISI's director, Lieutenant General Ehsan ul-Haq, informed tnr that the Pakistanis "have been told at every level that apprehension or killing of HVTs before [the] election is [an] absolute must." What's more, this source claims that Bush administration officials have told their Pakistani counterparts they have a date in mind for announcing this achievement: "The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington."... according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

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Emphases mine. Sweet. The New Republic may have a serious scoop. If true it's an incredible sign of how ruthless and desperate the Bushies are. Can they be driven only by the lust for power, or do they fear what might come out if they lose?

To assign capture of America's deadliest enemies to their electoral calendar ... I wouldn't have given this much credence two years ago, but the Bush regime has a knack of making ridiculous conspiracies seem all too plausible.

Department of Homeland Security: Don't use IE, try another browser

US CERT: UN-Cast News Wire

There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relating to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME type determination, and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a different web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites. Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites that require IE-specific features such as DHTML, VBScript, and ActiveX. Note that using a different web browser will not remove IE from a Windows system, and other programs may invoke IE, the WebBrowser ActiveX control, or the HTML rendering engine (MSHTML).

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Firefox (Win/Mac), Mozilla (Win/Mac), Opera (Win/Mac), Camino (Mac only), Safari (Mac only) are good alternatives. I use FireFox on PCs, and Safari on my Mac. FF and Safari have a lot in common. Apple is tying Safari improvements to the operating system, so when I stop upgrading my aging iBook I expect I'll switch to using FireFox on both platforms.

Blogger tips: too cute, but useful

Blogger Knowledge

Millionaires and Billionaires against Bush

ob4.org

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This web site is the creation of Mitch Kapor of spreadsheet fame and some of his silicon valley colleagues. I don't know all the contributors, but I suspect they're worthy sorts and quite wealthy. They're also the sort of people who tended, historically, to be relatively apolitical or libertarian.

They are united, however, in the belief that GWB is a disaster for the nation and the world.

The site may or may not be interesting, but it's noteworthy as a marker for a societal transformation.

Building a Militia - in America

Boing Boing: Thousands volunteer to spy on fellow citizens

Time has good news for nosy, racist jerks: the Dept. of Homeland Security is enlisting 400,000 people to report on suspicious behavior in public areas.

After the [training] session in Little Rock, two newly initiated Highway Watch members sat down for the catered barbecue lunch. The truckers, who haul hazardous material across 48 states, explained how easy it is to spot 'Islamics' on the road: just look for their turbans. Quite a few of them are truck drivers, says William Westfall of Van Buren, Ark. 'I'll be honest. They know they're not welcome at truck stops. There's still a lot of animosity toward Islamics.' Eddie Dean of Fort Smith, Ark., also has little doubt about his ability to identify Muslims: 'You can tell where they're from. You can hear their accents. They're not real clean people.

That kind of prejudice is hard to undo, but it's a shame Beatty's slide show did not mention that in the U.S., it's almost always Sikhs who wear turbans, not Muslims. Last year a Sikh truck driver who was wearing a turban was shot twice while standing near his tractor trailer in Phoenix, Ariz. He survived the attack, which police are investigating as a hate crime.

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Blackshirts, Red Brigadiers, Klansmen ... they'd recognize this program. It's how you build a militia. In this case, one that votes Republican.

Rumsfeld's Foreign Legion

From the June 26th Economist:

The award of a $293m contract to a British soldier of fortune, Tim Spicer, has also brought thousands of western and Asian mercenaries under America's wing and beyond the reach of Iraqi law.

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If there are 3,000 mercenaries, this comes to $100,000 each -- about right for a year's service. Very odd that this has gotten no press. Sounds like Rumsfeld's alternative to the draft is a new American Foreign Legion.

Kaplan argues against the draft -- on pragmatic grounds

The False Promises of a Draft - Why conscription won't improve the military. By Fred Kaplan

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Kaplan doesn't really argue whether a draft is right or wrong -- he argues that it's impractical and counterproductive. He makes a strong case, though he chooses his arguments carefully. We've got the material for a very good debate now.

Kaplan's position is that we should pay more to recruit our warriors -- possibly a LOT more. I gather he's talking about sizeable tax increases.

Either a draft or a big tax increase. Sounds like the choices are well defined.

Tim O'Reilly on open source, economics, and the future of software

tim.oreilly.com -- Various Things I've Written: Tim's Archive

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A longish and complex talk, with a large helping of Net history. Tim needs to turn it over to one of his editors before it goes to print -- or, more likely, turn it into a book. For the moment, however, it's well worth the thinking work.

Google Gags the Left, but not the Right

Perrspectives: Articles: Google's Gag Order

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Here's what I wrote Google's media contact:

Read this page:

http://www.perrspectives.com/articles/art_gagorder01.htm

This is a big deal. If Google is censoring liberal/left web sites targeted by right wing loons, but leaving far nastier right wing sites untouched, then Google is going to face a firestorm.

Time for me to uninstall the Google toolbar and try Vivisimo's instead.

Gore Attacks from the left: Democracy itself is in grave danger

Salon.com | "Democracy itself is in grave danger"

Even though we are now attuned to orange alerts and the potential for terrorist attacks, our founders would almost certainly caution us that the biggest threat to the future of the America we love is still the endemic challenge that democracies have always faced whenever they have appeared in history -- a challenge rooted in the inherent difficulty of self-governance and the vulnerability to fear that is part of human nature. Again, specifically, the biggest threat to America is that we Americans will acquiesce in the slow and steady accumulation of too much power in the hands of one person.

Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent -- that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty.

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There's been a trend in the Bush reign towards the idea that a war-time president is above the law, indeed, is the law. I wonder if Gore fears that Bush will stage something in October ...

Gore studies history. He knows democracy is not a certainty. Full democracy is only about 34 years old in the US. He's worried that we may lose our soul in the way we respond to terrorism.

I'd expect al Qaeda to launch an October attack with a chemical or radioactive weapon, with the intent to keep GWB in power. If they do, look for GWB to declare martial law ...