Category Archives: Middle East

Links of the day

Online censorship hurts us all. “Protecting” artists makes things worse, argues Cory Doctrow. (Guardian/Boing Boing)

Monster steals email addresses and spams it@cork membership. (Tom Raftery)

Walking for a good cause without ever leaving home. Virtual walks allow raise money for charity. (Reuters)

Ebay admits overpaying for the internet phone company Skype. It paid $2.6bn in 2005 and is taking a $1.43bn charge relating to the deal. That’s gotta hurt! (International Herald Tribune)

Woman gives birth to her own grandchildren. Egads… (AP)

News on the al-Dura front: Israeli finding that it was staged. Mohammed al-Dura was reportedly shot by the Israeli army while his fathered tried to shield him. It seems this did not happen. (James Fallows)

Musharraf: Spy chief to lead army. Looks like Pervy might actually step down this time. (CNN)

And simply because I’m feeling nostalgic, here’s the theme to The Secret of Monkey Island played on electric guitar:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM8_uyvL4sk[/youtube]

I smell a look back at some classic games coming here soon. 🙂

Links of the day

Seven tips for resolving conflicts quickly and peacefully. We all go up against at least one nutjob in our lives, here’s a remarkably common sense guide to dealing with them. (Pick The Brain)

US regrets if women and children killed in Baghdad raid. But they were going after some fellas using a mortar so it’s all right. Collateral damage and all that. (AFP)

Clever uses for dental floss: beyond teeth. I love finding new uses for ordinary things. (Gadling)

Backpacker turns Burma activist via Facebook. I’m a member of his group, to which people are flocking. (Reuters)

Yet more on CNN, Burma and Myanmar. The name you use reflects the stance you’re taking. (James Fallows)

Renovating the biblical psalms. They’re beautiful poems as well as having religious significance. (Slate)

Man, 24, weds 82-year-old bride. “I’ve always like mature ladies.” (BBC)

Links of the day

Somalia, Burma, Iraq top corruption blacklist. I’m not surprised. Denmark, Finland and New Zealand are the least corrupt nations while Ireland comes in at 17th. (AFP/Transparency International)

New snake and orchids discovered in Vietnam. Let us never think we have seen all we can see on this planet. (Reuters/Environmental News Network)

Did they not look at the blueprints? A US naval barracks in California — built in the 60s — is shaped like a swastika. Huzzah for Google Earth! (CNN)

Russian woman’s 12th baby weighs in at 7.75kg. That’s about 17lbs if you’re thinking imperial. (Reuters)

Delegating: The case for personal outsourcing. Hmm. (Lifehacker)

The shooting won’t stop. “I say give the GardaĂ­ whatever weapons they want. Bazookas, flame throwers, whatever. Just don’t send them out with sticks.” (Twenty Major)

Links of the day

PC users still prefer XP to Vista. For some reason The Daily Telegraph doesn’t realise XP and Vista are two versions of Windows.

Giuliani’s advisor Peter King: “Too many mosques in this country”. Another idiotic quote by a gobshite politician. (Crooks and Liars)

Making carbon markets work. It could be an effective way of limiting climate change from CO2 emissions. (Scientific American)

A child’s guide to Iran-US relations. The article makes one or two suspect claims but it’s a good backgrounder. (Scholars and Rogues)

Diabetes breath test may be possible. Every little bit helps. (CNet)

Swedish game show hostess vomits live on air. Only to get back on her seat and finish working. What a pro! (Breitbart.tv)

Osama

binbollix.jpg

(Pic: Associated Press)

So much for him being dead, huh?

The latest video — the first the al-Qaida boyo has released in three years — contains references to the subprime crisis, the Hiroshima bombing anniversary (August) and Nicolas Sarkozy (elected in May) so it seems Osama is still hanging on in there, wherever “there” is these days.

I love how much focus his beard is getting. Some US networks — which interrupted regular broadcasting to show a report on the footage — are making quite a big deal about how it’s black now as opposed to being grey in previous videos.

For instance, the ABC report you can find here contains the dialogue:

The FBI believe it is authentic… the one mystery is why is his beard black when in previous videos there was so much grey. That’s something that’s got people scratching their heads.

And when the reporter is asked how bin Laden looks, apart from the beard, he says:

His beard is completely black, his eyebrows are black… that’s the dominant feature you see, it’s hard to get any sense of his health it’s either a fake beard or a beard that has been dyed… That’s what stands out, the eyebrows and the beard.

Actually, he looks quite ashen faced. This could purely be down to the quality of the footage, which some analysts say could have been made on a mobile phone, or could indicate some sort of health problem. Quite why the ABC correspondent failed to pick up on this — or even mention it in passing — is beyond me

I also would have thought the “mystery” was his location, but there you go.

Content-wise it’s fairly humdrum. America bad, Islam good. ABC described it as a “broad, rambling” discourse against the US and the democratic system. He talks about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by either escalating attacks on foreign troops or Americans converting to Islam and abandoning democracy. He also takes a shot at capitalism and the role of corporations in elections.

From AP:

He also shows a grasp of current events, dropping mentions of global warming and saying Americans are “reeling under the burdens” of a mortgage crisis.

And he praises author Noam Chomsky, an early critic of the Iraq war, as well as Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, who has said poor US leadership was losing the war against terrorist groups.

It was released to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the World Trade Center attack, and also serves as a useful PR tool to let the American public know he hasn’t gone away. I’m not sure they’d forgotten about him but he’s certainly back in their conscious minds now.
I await proper analysis of the footage, which should emerge in the next few days.

Iran attack plan

Interesting stuff in The Sunday Times:

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

The expert in question is the Nixon Center’s director of terroism and national security, Alexis Debat. The article doesn’t cite his sources, but presumably he knows a person or two within the military establishment.

If he’s supporting such a measure rather than just noting it, he’s taken a rather interesting interpretation of his institution’s “enlightened pursuit of the national interest”. But then the Center’s “specific goal… is to explore ways of enhancing American security and prosperity while taking into account the legitimate perspectives of other nations”. Note the word “legitimate”; it’s a handy escape clause in case of controversy.

This supposed strategy against Iran sounds an awful lot like the “shock and awe” tactics employed in Iraq, although that rapid dominance strategy was a lead-in to a ground invasion and occupation. There’s no indication here that the US is preparing to attempt this in Iran (it doesn’t have the manpower, anyway).

From the scant detail in the Times article, it’s impossible to say if this is more sabre rattling or prelude to an offensive. If it’s the latter, the Pentagon has done a piss-poor job of keeping its plans secret — unless it wants Iran to feel the pressure. But then you have to wonder if what Debat mentioned is the actual strategy, and not a smokescreen or case of misdirection.

The story comes shortly after George W Bush stepped up the rhetoric, saying Iran had put the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”:

Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.

At least his speech writer had the good sense to insert “economic sanctions” before “confront”. Bush seems to be favouring diplomacy, which would indicate that the attack plan outlined by Debat is a fall-back should the US feel Iran is close to, or has developed nuclear weapons. (We must also be aware that he was addressing a veterean’ organisation, so strong military talk should be expected.)

As a strategy, wiping out the enemy’s military in a brief time is sound. However, it depends on knowing exactly where every piece of equipment is at any given time and also that the defending forces keep their materiel in the same place over three days. Leaking the strategy only gives Iran a chance to redeploy its military. Satellites and other technology are no substitute for on the ground intelligence.

It is logical for the US to be drawing up such plans. Most militaries would have an array of strategies for any number of scenarios; it’s their job after all. Presumably Iran has a strategy in place should it be attacked.

Plans, however, are merely ideas committed to paper. They have a nasty habit of not working as intended; the Schlieffen Plan springs to mind, along with the German invasion of Russia.

I’m sure you can think of many, many more.