lloydtown 

Michael Jackson, 1993

So I'm watching a video of Fleetwood Mac at Clinton's Inaugural in 1993. "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," the sound not the greatest, but a lot of emotion. Bill and Hillary getting up on stage, and: who's this? I did a double take. Michael Jackson.

I found some of the discussion about Jackson on Slate recently quite interesting. At one time, Jackson was actually an interesting musician, an innovator who never forgot "the business" of selling records/CDs, but wanted to bring genuine ideas to life within a somewhat restricted medium. In a way it was quite modest of him to call himself "King of Pop." He didn't claim to be a star of R&B, soul, or rock--and that's a good thing. He actually objected when an earlier album (Living Off the Wall?) was ranked, and nominated for awards, only as R&B. Jackson knew, and everyone knew, this was a way of saying ghetto stuff--not up for the really big awards. The truth was he wasn't an R&B musician--he was aiming successfully for the huge "pop" market, to some extent a global market that welcomes Abba and, I don't know, Tina Turner (although she can get rocky, or sound like James Brown).

Up to a point his weirdness, sexual and otherwise, seems to be owing to his terrible childhood--the way he was treated by his family. But now, sadly, he is probably seriously mentally ill.

Would any President, even a Democrat, have him up on stage today? Probably not.

Sistani: Statesman of Iraq

Maybe this is the best the U.S. can expect from a truly popular leader in Iraq (or any Arab country?):

In responding to the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, who has been given a dominant position in at least the south of Iraq by the U.S. invasion, first "called for the Danish government to take measures against those who blaspheme Islam."

Then a fuller statement:

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, condemned the cartoon depictions in a posting on his website Jan. 31.

"We strongly denounce and condemn this horrific action," al-Sistani said.

However, the cleric did not encourage any protests and he even placed some responsibility on militant Muslims for the negative way that Islam is depicted, AP reported.

He said some segments of the Muslim community were "misguided and oppressive" and that their actions "projected a distorted and dark image of the faith of justice, love and brotherhood."

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Iraq, told Newsweek that talks had already started between the US and the Sunni insurgency at a military base in Anbar province. He said, "Now we have won over the Sunni political leadership. The next step is to win over the insurgents."

Raptors: Jalen Rose for A.D., 3 Wins in a Row

Feb. 3: 104-90 over the Knicks, Rose's new team.

Bosh: 29 points, 7 rebounds.
Villanueva: 18 points, 9 rebounds.
Peterson: 21/4.
James: 15/2, with 10 assists.
Sow: 6/4.
Woods: 4/8.

The Raptors actually only shot 43% in 2-point field goals, as against 49% for the Knicks. Much better in free throws, and out-rebounded the Knicks 42-34. 15-3 in fast break points.

Jan. 29 in Toronto, 124-123 over the Kings. Rose scored the buzzer-beater for the win, despite having a 4 for 14 game with 13 points.

Feb. 1: 117-112 over the Wizards. Bosh 33, 13 rebounds. James 29, Villanueva 18.

Raptors now 17-30. Teams with worse records in Eastern: Knicks, Atlanta, Charlotte. Western: Portland and Houston also have 17 wins.

Was Revealing NSA Program Dangerous? A Crime?

Gabriel Shoenfeld weighs in, on the Commentary website. (via The Corner).

Lots of learned commentary about national security/espionage type legislation and court decisions; and freedom of press type decisions.

Shoenfeld makes as much as possible of the truncated prosecution of the Chicago Tribune in 1942, for alleged violations of the Espionage Act of 1917. According to Shoenfeld, there is little doubt the Tribune ran stories that could only have resulted from successfully breaking secret Japanese communications. This means that someone leaking to the Tribune had access to messages that had been deciphered by the U.S.; if the Japanese had studied the stories closely, they could reasonably have concluded the truth that the U.S. was able to decipher any Japanese message. The case was dropped--Shoenfeld says because the prosecution itself would have disclosed state secrets, and the Japanese apparently never clued in. But there have been other successful prosecutions under the Espionage Act--in 1984 and January of this year, with the latter case still playing out for other accused persons.

Should the New York Times be charged under the Espionage Act? There is a somewhat long argument:

The real question is therefore not whether secrets were revealed but whether, under the espionage statutes, the elements of a criminal act were in place. This is a murkier matter than one might expect.

Thus, one subsection of the Espionage Act requires that the country be in a state of war, and one might argue that this requirement was not present. Although President Bush and other leading officials speak of a “war on terrorism,” there has been no formal declaration of war by Congress. Similarly, other subsections demand evidence of a clear intent to injure the United States. Whatever the motives of the editors and reporters of the New York Times, it would be difficult to prove that among them was the prospect of causing such injury.

True, several sections of the Act rest on neither a state of war nor on intent to injure, instead specifying a lower threshold: to be found guilty, one must have acted “willfully.” Yet this key term is itself ambiguous—“one of the law’s chameleons,” as it has been called. Does it mean merely acting with awareness? Or does it signify a measure of criminal purposiveness? In light of these and other areas of vagueness in the statutes, it is hardly surprising that, over the decades, successful prosecution of the recipients and purveyors of leaked secret government information has been as rare as leaks of such information have been abundant.

In a statement on the paper’s website, Bill Keller asserts complacently that “we satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program . . . in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record.” In his book, James Risen goes even further, ridiculing the notion that the NSA wiretapping “is critical to the global war on terrorism.” Government officials, he writes, “have not explained why any terrorist would be so naïve as to assume that his electronic communication was impossible to intercept.”

But there are numerous examples of terrorists assuming precisely that. Prior to September 11, Osama bin Laden regularly communicated with top aides using satellite telephones whose signals were being soaked up by NSA collection systems. After a critical leak in 1998, these conversations immediately ceased, closing a crucial window into the activities of al Qaeda in the period running up to September 11.

If these statutes mean what they seem to say and are constitutional, public speech in this country since World War II has been rife with criminality. The source who leaks defense information to the press commits an offense; the reporter who holds onto defense material commits an offense; and the retired official who uses defense material in his memoirs commits an offense.

Another Liberal Scandal?

Since 1993, the Liberals have been saying they won't go for the same helicopter deal the Tories signed just before they left office. The Tories may have been in the wrong in signing a final deal during an election campaign, but....

The Liberals have apparently failed to line up a better deal. Worse, they paid almost half a billion, with a b, to get out of the Tories' deal, and now the new Tory government may be looking at paying $1 billion in damages to the provider who won the Tory deal, and may still appear on objective grounds to have the best offer.

Another billion, and still no new helicopters?

Global Warming, 2006

The Democrats seem to think--or hope--that this will be one of their big issues. See Kevin Drum in the blogosphere, Bill Clinton, Al Gore.

What exactly do they propose? Is Kyoto the be-all and end-all? What about the recent findings that trees produce methane--which is at least as serious a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide? Part of Kyoto is a scheme to credit countries with a lot of trees--which apparently can function as carbon sinks. This may not be a good strategy:

[blockquote][The new] nugget of data becomes especially significant when taken in the context of recent discoveries that indicate the effect of CO2 on global warming is being offset almost completely by the introduction of aerosols into the atmosphere via the operation of power plants, according to a report in the Financial Times.[/blockquote]

The aerosols, it turns out, reflect solar-generated heat and have a cooling effect on the planet.

This means that methane may well be the primary driver of any warming trend in overall climate, as argued by Earth Save, which notes:

That, in turn, suggests that the methane production of trees is of far more importance to global warming, at least in the short term, than any CO2 consumption benefit they may offer -- and at least on a par with the threat posed by livestock, something the government has alread been very clear about.

Thankfully for foresters -- and not so happily for climate scientists -- Dr Lowe may have articulated the ultimate fall-back position when it comes to almost every assertion about anthropomorphic contributions to climate change.

"People who prepare the emission budgets use a bottom-up technology. Someone will make a measurement in a swamp somewhere and simply extrapolate that measurement upwards to represent all the world's swamps. They'll measure emissions from a cow or a sheep and extrapolate that upwards to include all of the world's animals," he told National Geographic.

"As you can imagine, there are huge errors. The science is so inexact that you could easily fit a new source like this into the estimates."

There is no longer any serious debate about the reality of global warming. Some may still quibble about its causes, but the focus is on what nations should do to ameliorate the effects of climate change. And this is precisely what makes the new research so disturbing. For how could so basic a source of global warming have gone undetected until now?

In fact, evidence pointing to huge holes in the science of atmospheric methane has been circulating for years. In 1998, Nature carried a study showing global increases in methane were mysteriously levelling off. Now it seems that deforestation - that bête noire of the environmentalist movement - may have helped combat the rise of this greenhouse gas. While no one is suggesting chopping down the world's trees to save the planet, the new research highlights the astonishing complexity of environmental science. Measures to combat climate change that once seemed simple common sense are turning out to be anything but.

Everyone knows fossil fuel power stations are hefty producers of CO2 and need urgently to be replaced. Yet they are now also recognised as hefty producers of aerosols - tiny particles in the atmosphere that play a key role in reflecting the sun's heat back into space. The scientific consensus was that this is a minor benefit of fossil fuel burning. But last month Nature published new research showing aerosols may be twice as effective at keeping the earth cool as was thought. Suddenly, wholesale closure of power stations no longer seems such a good idea.

Even so, it surely makes sense to use renewable sources of energy whenever possible. Well, up to a point: new research suggests hydroelectric schemes can be worse than useless in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A study by the National Institute for Research in the Amazon in the current issue of the journal Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change shows that the vast lakes used to feed hydroelectric turbines are a rich source of rotting vegetation - and thus methane. One such scheme in Brazil is now believed to have emitted more than three times as much greenhouse gas as would have been produced by generating electricity by burning oil.

Climate scientists would have us believe there is no doubt about the basics of global warming and the time for action is now. The recent spate of large revisions of the facts tells a different story. Yet politicians are still being pressed to do the impossible: modify the huge, chaotic system that is the earth's climate in ways guaranteed to be beneficial for all.

The Causes of World War I

It's a bit late to do anything about it now, of course, but we might learn something...

I've had my eye on a pair of books in a local used book store, literally for years: Twent-Five Years: 1892-1916, by Lord Grey of Fallodon. I finally got the two volumes for Christmas.

He was British foreign minister at the outbreak of World War I, and for some years before. There has been a kind of two-bit criticism of him in circulation: if he had persuaded the Germans that Britain would fight, they would have backed down; if he had persuaded the Russians that Britain wouldn't fight, they would have backed down.

It's obvious as he writes that the war horrified him, and he is concerned as to whether he and his Cabinet colleagues made the right decisions or not. On the whole, he points to a long-developing German militarism as the real cause of the war. The Kaiser and various political leaders in Germany were certainly capable of saying and doing provocative, somewhat crazy things. Generally they would find a way to back down, or settle for one specific gain in the "balance of power." But for decades the military kept growing, and making plans to conquer Europe. By 1914 they were confident that they could do so, and they were much more in the driver's seat than people who were nominally in charge.

There's lots of interesting stuff in these volumes. I've just come to the part about how Grey is still convinced that "side shows," including Gallipoli and Antwerp (both involving Churchill) were a waste of time and effort--Britain should have simply concentrated everything it had on the trenches in France. I have tended to be pro-Churchill on this: it made sense to try something daring, and different.

The most sobering part may be when Grey, still in Volume I but clearly anticipating his story of the war itself, reflects on how Bismarck would have judged the German leaders who led their country to war.

The Franco-Russian agreement was signed in January 1894, partly in response to the "Triple Alliance" of Germany, Austria, Italy. Grey has Bismarck say:

[blockquote]After the Franco-Russian Alliance was made I should have foreseen that, in spite of an English Minister's boast about 'splendid isolation,' the discomfort of England's position must bring her to Germany, and when the offer came, as come it did to you [in a speech by Joseph Chamberlain in November 1899], I would have made sure that it did not come to nothing. [There would either have been no Anglo-French agreement, or none that would have prevented Germany from building a fleet greater than France's].[/blockquote]

Then, if I thought the time had come for war, I should have remembered how, in 1870, the British Government required me, as a condition of neutrality, to sign an agreement to respect Belgium, and what English statesmen said about it at the time. I should have made sure whether English feeling was still the same, and have told the General Staff that they must have a plan that did not involve Belgium, or else they must have no war. With England neutral, I should have been sure of Italy; with France and Russia unable to maintain supplies of munitions, or even to purchase them from abroad, the war would not have been long and victory would have been certain. Then easy terms for France and Russia, as for Austria in 1866, and Germany would have been supreme on the Continent. England would, meanwhile, by the development of modern weapons and aircraft, have lost much of the safety she once had as an island: she would have had no friend but Germany, and Germany could have made that friendship what she please.

Small Canadian Political Joke

News:

Scientists say they have discovered the world's smallest known fish in threatened swampland in Indonesia.

The fish, a member of the carp family, has a translucent body and a head unprotected by a skeleton.

According to researchers, the little fish live in dark, tea-colored water at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater. Such acidic swamps was once thought to harbor few animals, but recent research has revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many unique species.

Hugo Chavez--Al Qaeda Link?

I hadn't thought of that:

Corruption and bad government -- a recipe for disaster. And, God knows, Nigeria has both in copious quantities. On the other hand, if you put this together with trouble in Iran, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it almost looks as if somebody is trying to put a lot of oil sources under pressure simultaneously.

Gore: Be Ye Men of Valour

From Al Gore's long speech on Monday:

Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: "Men feared witches and burnt women."

The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk.

Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights.

Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.