Posting Break

I may as well just make it official rather than spend countless, fruitless, frustrating hours in front of the screen trying to post. As you probably know, Blogger is having some issues these days, so I'm going to give the blog - and myself - a rest for a little bit. Please feel free to explore my sidebar and my "best of" posts. See you some time next week.

UPDATE: As of Sunday morning, it looks like the folks at Blogger are making a lot of progress on fixing this problem. I expect to take the rest of Sunday off and return to regular posting Monday. See you then.

Morning Report: March 18, 2005

Ukraine sold missiles to Iran. Debka reports: 'Iran has at least 12 Kh-55 strategic cruise missiles with 3,000km range capable of carrying 200 kiloton nuclear warheads. Ukrainian prosecutor-General Piskun admitted in Kiev that this “missile technology” from former Soviet nuclear arsenal had “leaked” to Iran in 2001 – albeit without nuclear warheads. He could not explain how sales occurred. Six missiles also reached China. Read more about this in the News Box below Headlines. DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources add: Ukrainian shipment to Iran included radioactive materials for making “dirty bombs.” US embassy in Kiev is “closely monitoring” investigation and demands findings be made public.' (Debka)

Bush nominates Wolfowitz to head World Bank. President Bush has nominated Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank. Joe Gandelman has some thoughts and a round-up of reaction. Judith's is, perhaps, in a class by itself. (Command Post, Kesher Talk)

Iraq the model. Al-Sabah reports (March 17): 'Washington stressed its procedures imposed on Syria , demanding it implicitly  through several letters to stop backing terrorism from Syrian lands as these terrorist  activities hinder political process in Iraq, despite US administration welcome over  steps of Syrian forces quick withdrawal from Lebanese lands. Syrian affairs political analysts said that these economic and political procedures consider as a gesture for Syrian government to follow in step Iraqi democratic example and stop freedoms' suppressions inside Syria . Notably, demonstrations took to Syrian streets demanded dissolving Baath party there. Moreover, US Congress referred new more stressed proposal against Syria to its committees to be discussed as an initiation for liberating Syria .' (Sabah)

Subpoena to save Terri Schiavo's life. In a last-ditch bid to give Terri Schiavo a new lease on life, House leaders issued a subpoena to prevent Florida doctors from removing the feeding tube that is keeping brain-damaged patient Terri Schiavo alive. 'n a last-ditch attempt to stop the court-ordered removal, a House committee on Capitol Hill here decided early Friday morning to start an investigation into Schiavo's case and issue subpoenas ordering doctors and hospice administrators not to remove her feeding tubes and to keep her alive until that investigation was complete.' (AP via Fox)

UN to report on rapist peacekeepers. The United Nations will issue a report on how to hold accountable peacekeepers accused of crimes against women and children in war-torn areas. 'The report's release later this month is the culmination of months of investigative work by Prince Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein of Jordan. Its release is supposed to help the United Nations regain an even keel after being rocked by reports of the rape of women and children by peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Peacekeepers have also been linked in the past to sex crimes in East Timor and prostitution in Cambodia and Kosovo. The allegations are not the only problem facing the United Nations. They come as several investigations probe what happened to the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, a multi-billion dollar scandal that has led some to question the very legitimacy of the organization.' (Fox)

No, it isn't green.

But I did tweak the blog template just a little bit; I suppose I was overcome with the festive spirit of St. Paddy's day. I had fun with those lavender links. (You like?)

There's a very helpful book called "Publishing a Blog with Blogger" by Elizabeth Castro that tells you all kinds of stuff about the Blogger template. She also has books on HTML and other internet-related stuff.

Changing the color scheme really isn't rocket science. Colors are represented by a 6-digit hexcode (a base-16 number) giving the RGB brightness: the first two digits represent red, the next two green, and the last two blue. Just in case you weren't one of those total geeks who learned base 16 (or hexadecimal) numbers in third grade, it's a system that goes in cycles of 16 instead of ten. The "units" column represents values from zero to 15 (written with the letters a-f for 10 thru 15), and the next column represents groups of 16 (instead of ten like with normal numbers). So 00 represents the lowest value and FF the highest (255) for a two-character hex number. In RGB code, black is 000000 (no colors at all) and white is FFFFFF. Pure red would be 110000, or 880000, or FF0000, depending on how bright you want it. Elizabeth Castro's HTML book gives examples of some common colors.

Normal blogging wlll resume tomorrow. Have a great St. Patrick's Day, and party safely.

Update

This Thursday is the day of my Physics final; it's also Saint Patrick's Day, and I'm hoping for a little of the "luck of the Irish". However, my Scottish side says it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to study.

So, little or no posting until Thursday afternoon. Morning Report will be on administrative leave. For those who contacted me about the Portland-area liberal hawks group, I will be getting back to you soon, hopefully tonight before I turn in.

In an unrelated development, a big meteor passed over the Northwest Saturday night. I saw it out of the corner of my eye on the way to the Blue Moon. Michael Totten saw it too, and has a post on it here.

Don't miss these great recent posts: Ali on terrorism and Wahhabism (these are some of Ali's best writing ever, and that's saying a lot); Bear Left on the media's reluctance to use the T word; Regime Change Iran for the latest on the revolution; Auntie Cracker for some homegrown insights and observations (be sure to scroll down for her thoughts on the Boy Scouts!); Straight Up With Sherri for the latest on the fight to save Terri Schiavo; all those who love small government will find a home in Fagistan.


And finally, please welcome Neo-Neocon to our humble blogroll. Enjoy!

Morning Report: March 14, 2005

Debka: Washington's grand design. Israeli-based analysis site Debka offers its report on US plans for the Middle East. Debka sees parallels between the Bush Administration's uncompromising stance on Syria and its firm demands on Israel: 'Administration leaders seem to be treating Israel’s pull-back from the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the same spirit as their insistence on complete Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon. It is possible to conjure up a grand design charted by the Bush administration to simultaneously squeeze Israel and Syria into sharply constricted molds sized by its perception of the two nations’ true dimensions.' The report details a quiet, multilateral agreement among the US, UK, Egypt, and Jordan to jointly administer the West Bank (US/Jordan) and Gaza Stip (UK/Egypt). It also explores the ramifications of Bush's "Road Map" plan, which demands the removal of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, and which much of the Israeli Right - including Debka's editors - have adamently opposed. Read the full article at the link. (Debka)

Debka: Washington vs. Iran regime. Also at Debka, a report on US actions against the IRI regime in Iran. The report (also posted at Regime Change Iran) indicates that joint US/Israeli missile-defense exercises - a biennial operation codenamed Juniper Cobra - will, this year, reflect a perception of 'possibility of an Iranian Shehab-3 missile reaching Israel in the near future armed with a nuclear warhead.' Debka notes that the US actions are not only defensive, concluding: 'The United States, according to our military sources, is pressing ahead with its development of infrastructure for an Iranian underground opposition. A Revolutionary Guard unit in Hur al-Azim, near the Iraqi border, recently captured a band smuggling thousands of handguns into Iran. In recent months, thousands of rifles and masses of ammunition have got through to Iranian tribes near the Iraqi frontier. These tribes have a long history of rebellion against central government in Tehran and are practiced in guerrilla tactics.' (Debka via RCI)

Talks between United Iraqi Coalition and Kurdish Alliance collapse. Iraq the Model reports that negotiations between the Kurdish Alliance and the United Iraqi Coalition have collapsed, with UIC leader Ahmed Chalabi finding KA's demands "unrealistic". (ITM)

Update

Many thanks to Michael J. Totten for some stimulating conversation, and for the link. Thanks also to Judith at Kesher Talk for the encouragement and the linkage! And thanks especially to the many visitors from these two major bloggers, as well as to my regular readers. I hope my site does not diappoint.

Readers who contacted me in my comments section, in Michael's, and via e-mail: I'll start putting together an e-mail list for "liberal hawks" in the Portland, Oregon area. I've been very encouraged by the response on this, and I think it might be fun to meet in person for dining, movies, and political and/or non-political chat.

My schedule this week will be dominated by studying for my physics final, but I do expect to find time to post (as well as starting the aforementioned e-mail list).

Next Tuesday evening, I'll be attending a talk by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi ("Reb Zalman" to his followers), who is generally regarded as the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement (along with the late Shlomo Carlebach, the charismatic cantor). Special thanks to Gila for notifying me about this event! For those not familiar with it, Jewish Renewal is a loosely affiliated group of individuals and organizations pursuing a semi-traditional approach to Jewish spirituality and mysticism. The movement also includes Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, Rabbi David Zaslow, and Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine. I'm not affiliated with JR, but I have greatly admired Kushner's books and Zaslow's essays. I'll post my impressions of the Reb Zalman talk next week.

"Armies of Liberation" Marches On

Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani has some friends. And, thanks to Jane Novak at Armies of Liberation, the imprisoned Yemeni journalist knows it. If you've been following this blog, you've already read al-Khaiwani's letters (and, I hope, signed the petition at the bottom). Jane's words of encouragement to Mr. al-Khaiwani have now been published on the front page of Sout-Alshoura (not the banned Al-shoura) in Arabic. Instapundit has also picked up the story. So, if you haven't yet, read it and sign. And thanks, Jane, for all you're doing.

And to al-Khaiwani, I'll add my voice to Jane's: Good luck, dude.

Meeting Michael Totten

I met Michael Totten this afternoon - for the first, and, I hope, not the last time. Judith at Kesher Talk had invited me to join the NYC LiberalHawks mailing list, and (with disarming naivete) suggested I start a similar group here in Portland, perhaps beginning with MJT. I promised her I would see what I could do, not having the heart to inform her that Portland is not quite, exactly, precisely, New York City.

Michael was kind enough to respond to my invitation, saying that he didn't know of anyone else besides himself and his friend Sean LaFreniere, but would I like to get together for coffee some time? So we met this afternoon, for some two and a half hours, at World Cup Coffee on 18th and Glisan.

Michael is an energetic, articulate speaker. He talked about his awakening to the sickness of leftism in the wake of 9/11 - "it took me one week". Recalling the thrill of his college protest days, he grinned - "I was a moonbat!" We talked about how intoxicating the college experience or the youth counterculture can be for a young person escaping the confines of an upbringing in small-town Oregon, suburban Connecticut, or anyplace else. He pointed out how important it is for young adults to have that kind of intellectual and cultural stimulation.

Both of us share a certain sense of social alienation in being pro-Bush liberals in an anti-Bush environment. I guess I'm fortunate here because I've only been living in Portland five years and I don't have a lifetime of ties to the Northwest; so it's a little easier for me to decide I can do as I damn well please. (In a particularly defiant period last fall, I took to wearing my BUSH/CHENEY '04 sweatshirt to places like Whole Foods and Powell's Books.) And after comparing experiences, we found that the reactions from our friends to our "coming out" as Bush supporters were generally much less hostile than the worries conjured up by our imaginations would have had us believe. (Now, you have to understand that Michael is no lightweight.) To this day, the only overtly hostile reaction I've gotten was from the woman (an anthropology professor, no less!) who walked out on a date, flinging twenty dollars on the table and proclaiming, "I don't eat with people who vote for Bush!"

The internet is great, but it's no subsitute for meeting people in real life and having face-to-face conversations. I think it's especially important for pro-freedom folks to be assertive about their beliefs in social circles whenever possible - remember, whatever inconveniences you or I might face, it's nothing compared to what the brave dissidents in the Middle East are risking by speaking out. And, as I said to Michael, we base a lot of our judgments on the cues we pick up in face-to-face interaction; so expressing our views in person is often more effective than writing them electronically. And as the protesters in Lebanon have shown, there's power in numbers. So I'm looking forward to that meeting with Portland's pro-freedom, pro-Bush liberals.

All three of us.

Update

Blogger has been slow today - that is, even more than usual - and I wasn't able to post at all for most of the day. However, I wasn't lost for stimulating conversation, because I did get to meet Michael Totten this afternoon - an event that deserves, and will get, its own post.

My project for the next week is to get a handle on capacitance and inductance (my textbook helpfully explains that they're analogous to the spring and the block, respectively, of an oscillating mechanical system) in time for Thursday's final. After that, the focus shifts to polishing my computer skills and looking for work.

As for this blog, which is now almost a year old, I've been pondering setting up some kind of posting schedule so that I can better balance my time between blogging and ... uh, whatever it is that exists outside of blogging.

New Afghan Blog

Hat tip: Iraq the Model.

Waheed is the name behind Afghan Warrior, "Afghanistan's First Blog". Waheed is a 20-year-old guy who works for the US Army as an interpreter. In his debut post, he talks about the ANA (Afghan National Army) and about how things have changed since the fall of the Taliban. Go check out his blog - and mark it on your browser.

Protestors Surprise Prince Charles

Protests greet Prince Charles in New Zealand. During a recent visit to New Zealand, Prince Charles was confronted by bare-breasted women protesters. According to the article at This Is London, 'Two women launched a topless protest against Prince Charles during a walkabout in New Zealand. They took Royal security by surprise as they removed their tops within view of the prince in Wellington. One woman, 22-year-old HanaPlant, stood on a wall yards from where Charles was meeting the crowds outside the city hall. As he approached. she took her top off and started shouting "Shame on you, death to the monarchy". On her stomach were slogans including "Get your colonial hands off my breasts". Within seconds two uniformed police officers tried to cover her and she was led away in handcuffs. Minutes later a second woman, Holly Emma Goldman, staged a similar protest even closer to the prince.'

Guns don't shoot people. Cats do.

Just your typical cat-shoots-man story.