lloydtown 

Chalabi, Niger, Italy

Kevin Drum is careful to describe this story as unproven, but it's too delicious not to run with. Is it possible that every single piece of the most outrageous crap about Iraq uttered by Bushies came from Chalabi and/or Iran?

[blockquote]The story of Italian military intervention in Iraq begins [in late 2001] when the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, sponsored by Defense Minister Antonio Martin, debarks in Rome with Pentagon men in tow to meet a handful of “Iranian exiles.” The meeting is organized by SISMI in an agency “safe house” near Piazza di Spagna (however other sources told us it was a reserved room in the Parco dei Principi Hotel).[/blockquote]

Twenty men are gathered around a large table, covered by maps of Iraq, Iran and Syria. Those who count are Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans, Michael Ledeen of the AIE, a SISMI station chief accompanied by his assistant (the first is a balding man between 46 and 48 years of age; the second is younger, around 38, with braces on his teeth), and some mysterious Iranians.

In Need of Comic Relief? It's Chalabi Time!

I think I saw this first on Kevin Drum's blog:

[blockquote]I asked [Christopher Hitchens] if he thought Chalabi had been passing American intelligence to the Iranians. "No," he insisted. "It's possible that with his training, you know, at [The University of] Chicago that with his own ability he was able to crack the codes. He is a mathematical genius. His expertise is cryptology. It is possible that he broke the codes himself."[/blockquote]

Drum asks, more or less, if Hitchens can possibly be that stupid. Josh Marshall adds more:

...even a math fool like me knew enough to laugh out loud when I read that. I'd love to hear Hitchens give a ten minute description of how he thinks modern cryptography works exactly.

In that article you linked to by the blogger who saw Chalabi speak at the AEI, Hitchens claims that Chalabi may have broken our or the Iranians' codes (it isn't clear which) himself. That is quite simply the most preposterous story I have ever heard in my life. Chalabi would have about the same chance of breaking our or the Iranians' codes as of building his own nuclear bombs.

Moreover, Chalabi did not specialize in cryptology but in group theory. There is no evidence that he is a mathematical genius, either -- his publication record is not impressive.

I am a research mathematician who works in an areas pretty close to cryptology.

Quite simply, there is no way to take anything Hitchens says seriously ever again. Next to him, Scotty Mac is a paragon of credibility.

Aside from Hitchens' speculation that Chalabi sat around using our diplomatic or military codes (some encrypted diplomatic cables he'd pulled out of the air, I assume) as some brainiac's version of a Rubik's Cube to pass the time while he wasn't busy with embezzlement or forgery, this really is an example of the dingbat personality cult Chalabi managed to assemble around himself in DC.

Can You Have a Circus Without Elephants?

The question comes from Allan Bloom, who used to say in class that all 19th century novels are about adultery. At least one brave student "objected that she knew some which were not. My co-teacher, Saul Bellow, interjected, 'Well, of course, you can have a circus without elephants.'" (Love and Friendship, 209)

The most famous circus today is Cirque de Soleil, originally from Quebec: no elephants. Thispiece in Slate from a few months ago points out that there has been a trend toward no-elephant circuses, even without Cirque. But Cirque is now in a class by itself.

When Cirque begins a Beatles-themed show in Las Vegas' Mirage Hotel next year, its transformation from street performance to rock concert will be complete. This is the magic of Cirque: It's artistically pure enough to please the aesthete, and yet crass enough to thrive on the Las Vegas Strip.

Finally, there's the matter of exoticism. A great deal of Cirque du Soleil's magic comes from its unapologetic Frenchness. Or, if you prefer, its Quebecoisity. By this, I mean that Cirque du Soleil's shows make absolutely no sense at all. I studied the plot of Varekai for a solid hour before attending the performance, but by the end of the second act I was blubbering the same nonsense as the goat-man. But bafflement has its advantages. As with Blue Man Group and De La Guarda, audiences relish the idea of watching something queer and foreign—it gives the impression of highbrow culture, even if the underlying principle is nothing so much as bedlam. (Cirque motto: "Take comfort in the chaos.") As Cirque grows into a global behemoth, queerness becomes a two-way street: It reflects the cultural displacement of audience member and performer alike.

Pandemics, Fear of Pandemics, and Education

Is it just faintly, ever so slightly possible, that Bush is fomenting fear of a flu pandemic in order to drive up his poll numbers?

Glenn Reynolds posted part of an e-mail he received a couple of weeks ago:

As a medical researcher, I want to make a gentle but sincere plea to the blogosphere to calm down this flu hysteria just a bit. The main way that flu kills is by predisposing its victims to "superinfection" by bacterial illnesses - in 1918, we had no antibiotics for these superimposed infections, but now we have plenty. Such superinfections, and the transmittal of flu itself, were aided tremendously by the crowded conditions and poor sanitation of the early 20th century - these are currently vastly improved as well. Flu hits the elderly the hardest, but the "elderly" today are healthier, stronger, and better nourished than ever before. Our medical infrastructure is vastly better off, ranging from simple things like oxygen and sterile i.v. fluids, not readily available in 1918, to complex technologies such as respirators and dialysis. Should we be concerned? Sure, better safe than sorry, and concerns about publishing the sequence are worth discussing. Should we panic? No - my apologies to the fearmongers, but we will never see another 1918.

Patrick Cunningham M.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Section of Nephrology
University of Chicago

Cheney and Rumsfeld

If you were actually brilliant, or a genius, wouldn't you expect someone to take notice of that fact before you were 70 (or whatever)?

Woodrow Wilson

I'm reading a very good short bio by Louis Auchincloss, part of the Penguin Lives.

There is a sort of prologue focussing on the famous stroke that incapacitated Wilson as President. "His stroke, however, had not been his first. He had suffered one in Princeton in his academic days and another in Paris during the peace talks, and though in each case his recovery had seemed complete, there is evidence that these strokes took some toll on his temperament."

Again on the strokes, p. 20: one doctor "believes they may have had a permanent aftereffect in intensifying his natural irritability and stubbornness."

On his first marriage: "...there may be a question as to whether the uncritical adulation that she and her three daughters...lavished on their husband and father was what was really needed by a nature already too prone to construe disagreement as personal hostility."

On the "dual nature" of his personality: "One side was that of the sensible and sensitive man of many interests and activities who conscientiously viewed all sides of a question. The other was that of the self-assured idealist who could hadly conceive, much less admit, that he could be wrong in judging matters that he deemed within his peculiar sphere of expertise: the education of young men, the upholding of moral values, and, as we shall see, the establishment of world peace. This Wilson, with God and his angels presumably ranked behind him, tended to regard opposition as malicious betrayal."

Alito

Alito will surely be confirmed quite easily. The hot button issue, once again, is abortion.

At the circuit court level, Alito wanted to uphold "spousal notification" in the Casey case. Pennsylvania wanted to limit or qualify access to abortion in various ways; one was to require that a married woman seeking an abortion sign a statement to the effect that she had notified her husband; there were various exemptions, including cases where she was afraid of him. When the case got to the Supreme Court, spousal notification was the only restriction the majority, led by Sandra O'Connor did not uphold.

Does this mean Alito was itching to strike down Roe v. Wade altogether, but he limited himself to a lesser goal because he knew the Supreme Court would make another binding decision? Or is Alito in fact quite close to O'Connor?

Perhaps the peak of judiciousness has been achieved by Julian Sanchez, here and here.

Sauce for the Goose?

As the saying goes, if the story came out of Hollywood, even the most credulous movie-goer would reject it.

A Democratic President is impeached. The only actual charge against him is "lying under oath." Not perjury--that would require lying about the facts of the main case at issue--which was Paula Jones. Clinton lied about a different, arguably related case (since it corroborated the idea that Clinton sought casual sex with strangers): Monica.

A few years later, a senior official in a Republican administration faces five charges--two of perjury, and three others related to the same lies. Republicans--including, apparently, David Brooks, line up to say: no big deal, nothing to see here, move along move along. The subtle, lawyerly-sounding point is: there is no evidence yet of an underlying crime. In other words, we don't know why Scooter lied--we don't know that he was covering up something worse.

Underlying crime? No one even suggested Clinton had committed an underlying crime. (Although, in order to hint at such a thing, Republicans circulated a story of an alleged rape, never subject to any criminal proceeding). They literally impeached him for lying under oath about consensual sex. "It's not the sex," they would say. "We're not crazy prudes--it's the lying under oath. That subverts the law."

So if Bill and Hillary had been in the habit of having sex in the Oval Office, and Bill had lied under oath about that, they would have impeached him for that? I don't think so.

Everyone in the U.S. who testifies under oath, it seems, is inclined to say "I don't recall" at least once. Who can prove you recall, if you say you don't? In fact, this is apparently going to be the basis of Scooter's defence.

Out of all the times people say "I don't recall" under oath--including the Republicans who testified about Iran-Contra--how many are lies? 90%? Clinton said a lot of "I don't recalls," and then, perhaps out of vanity, told a lie. For this they impeached him? I've thought for a long time that no serious person should have spent five minutes on Monica--which made the careers of Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg, and others. And now Republicans want (apparently) more serious charges to go away.

Powell vs. Rice

Richard Holbrooke is less than impressed with the followers of Colin Powell who are now turning on W:

Which brings us to an even deeper paradox. It is not surprising that Wilkerson lashed out at Condoleezza Rice, although he failed to note that she was serving the president as he wanted to be served. But, in recent moves rich with irony, as secretary of state she has improved many first-term policies, in such places as North Korea, Iran, Bosnia and Kosovo, and in relations with some of our major European allies. (Powell's friends say with bitterness that when he proposed similar policies, he was thwarted, in part, by her.)

Not everything is better in the second term -- confusion and mixed signals still reign in such critical areas as the United Nations and China -- and then there is Iraq. But things are looking up in foreign policy. The immensely disciplined Rice is seeking to undo damage done in the past four years without ever admitting there was any -- a nifty bit of cognitive dissonance, but one she seems determined to pull off. Events have, of course, pushed her and the president in this direction, and it is easier with Feith and Paul Wolfowitz gone. But -- and this may be the most painful irony of all -- Powell's departure opened the door to somewhat more pragmatic policies, which Bush and the "cabalists" had been opposing.

Cell Phones, etc.

My wife and I each have a cell phone. I use mine mainly to call her; she takes some calls from her friends. We've been on a Bell Mobility plan for years, but we decided to go to Rogers, where we already have cable TV and the Internet, to benefit from a "bundled" price.

Learning curve: a lot of features on these phones. Our son (age 15 and a half) had to get us going. I'm still looking for a ring tone that sounds like a ringing telephone.

The switch has made me reflect that Bell is in trouble. We recently visited with some people we know who work there--and they confirmed this.

Bell started out with better coverage from cell phone towers than anyone else--that difference seems to have disappeared. Their core service was the home telephone--which people would presumably continue to pay for, even though most of them get very little work from Bell out of it. Now young people are prepared to abandon the home phone for a cool cell phone--and Rogers is offering home phone service.

The future of TV? Digital, which Rogers has. Bell offers satellite--apparently, still a profitable business for them.

The future of the internet? AOL, one of the first internet providers, heavily reliant on dial-up, is bankrupt.

I was a meeting some years ago with a guy who had earlier been Bell's VP of pay phones. That's right--pay phones.