Day: January 27, 2006

Now call me a right-winger if you want (says I, aghast at being called a liberal by someone before), but I think that that this opening paragraph of the ABC News article really puts this whole thing into perspective:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of “leveraging” their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

So let me get this right: the US Army, in the three years it has been operating in Iraq, and the thousands of people it has arrested, detained, imprisoned, questioned etc., has arrested just two wives of suspected insurgents and the media is clamouring that this was a form of “leverage” to get their husbands to surrender. Note part of the Hammer of Truth‘s quotation, from an Iraqi human rights activist (Hind al-Salehi).

Two.

Out of thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand. Just two. And that’s a pattern of “leverage” because a civilian intelligence officer suggested it in his memo (pdf)? Isn’t this like saying acts of violence were occurring in the middle of a war? The law of statistics surely would allow for one or two arrestees to be related to suspected/known terrorists.

Here’s the thing, if you or I, the average person, gave shelter to a murderer on the run, we would be committing a felony. Why would it be any different for the wife of a terrorist? Does that law not exist in Iraq right now? Seems to me that it would.

Human Rights Watch sent a letter to Donald Rumsfeld indicating that the US had violated the Fourth Geneva Convention by arresting relatives of Iraqi fugitives (their wives). But again, I contend that in the US such a thing would be commonplace, if they were giving assistance to known criminals (which, the terrorists could be considered, in Iraq).

Finally, something from that article which I wanted to point out, by the brigade’s deputy commander…

Two days later, the brigade’s deputy commander advised the higher command, “As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have some info and/or will result in getting the husband.”

He went on, “These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation.”

… and this by Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a US Army spokesmam…

Of this episode, Johnson said, “It is clear the unit believed the females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and warranted being held.”

’nuff said.

Crossposted at The English Guy.

Well, perhaps.

Apple’s recent announcement that it’s building PC clones with Intell-based chipsets prettily painted over with a veneer of OS X is really just making lemonade out of a whole big bunch of sour lemons. Why choose Intel chips? Well, cos Motorola and IBM have been wanting out of the PowerPC chip business for years-development had languished and setting up to fab new runs of the things for Apple wasn’t great business, since Apple has such a small market share in its idiosyncrastic hardware.

Sooo… go with Intel. The chips are good, their characteristics well-known and not at all difficult for Apple to port OS X to (after all, nearly every other OS will run on Intel chipsets), they’re just not “Apple” hardware…

Oh, and this: Apple’s Switch to Intel Could Allow OS X Exploits

The recent move by Apple Computer to begin shipping Macintosh computers that use microprocessors from Intel could open the door to more attacks against computers running the company’s OS X operating system, security experts warn.

The shift to Intel processors from the Motorola Power PC processors will make it easier to create software exploits for Macintosh systems, and could result in a steady stream of Mac exploits in years to come.

Yeh, the Law of Unintended Consequences. Caught between a rock and a hard place with its perennial chip fabbing problems, Apple bit the bullet, forsook its hard line stance on hardware (like, you couldn’t see that coming, as Apple had already adopted the PC’s PCI bus, PC-style memory architechture and all the other trappings of a regular old PC) and adopted an Intel chipset.like you’d find in any beige box. Sure Apple dressed it up in pretty, cutsy (impractical) iMac clothing, presented it as “setting the Intel chip free” (in qa Mac OS straight jacket) and loudly trumpeted “Pay no attention to the man behind the cutain!”

But really. Apple’s become just another Intell PC choice. Spend an arm and a leg on an Apple Intel box… or get very similar functionality (and expansion limited to snaking a buncha wires around your worspace) by spending $300-$400 at WallyWorld for a Mandriva Linux box.

And have the same security issues all Intel-based boxes have. Sure, Wintel boxes more than most, in part because M$ is still not really serious about security (can anyone say “Internet Exploder” and “WMF flaw”?) and even more because nobody bothers to steal from the guy who has nothing worth stealing… When there’s an almost overwhelming wealth of Wintel boxes to choose to attack, concentrating on a niche market like Mac users is naturally less appealing.

But now, if Apple makes this run, similarities at low-level-even machine code level-code base could make attacking Apple machines more appealing. And it’s not as though Apple users were automatically secure, anyway, as my recent check of Mac security sites rvealed when one of the highly-referenced Mac security sites turned out to have been hacked.

Not a really security-conscious group, as a whole… In fact, Mac users as a class (note: I do know some very sharp, intelligent, competent Mac users who simply like the interface) seem to me to have more in common with AOL users than any other group…

There, now I’ve slammed both Mac users and AOL users. *heh* That feels pretty good. If I could add enviro-cultists who do their computer faking modeling on Macs I’d have a hat trick.

linkposted at Stuck on Stupid, cos it just seemed appropriate…

Yet another 0pen Post. Check the OTA link below for more information about Open Posts, if the concept’s new to you. Otherwise, links away! Oh, and once you’ve linked to this post, trackback to it so I don’t have to go hunting down your brilliant prose, ‘K?

See for more linkfests, as well as the Open Trackback Alliance

What is it with the Dems, anyway? I mean, seriously: at the national level there are NO real liberals left. No, not one. You may have been thinking of someone like Joe Lieberman, but if you look closely, you can see a mostly empty suit with ocassional relapses to humanity, even a flash or two of recognizable liberal tendencies. What passes for liberalism nowadays is tyranny cloaked disingenuously in self-righteous doogooder nannyism. Every single damned one of ’em (and I use the term theologically to refer to habitual liars) lies about their own positions and the actions of their political opponents. Oh, yeh, there are a couple who seem to have some shreds of shame, but given their track record, I am reluctantly compelled to believe that’s a sham as well.

*sigh*

And oh, those wonderful Republican’ts! While there remain a few with some sort of backbone and committment to principle (mostly in the administration), not a one can truthfully call themselves conservatives, as far as I can tell. (Please prove me wrong!)

Leadership in neither party is willing to actually do what’s necessary to fulfill the primary Constitutionally-mandated functions of the federal government: the securing of our borders, and only the Republican’ts are willing to in any way defend this country’s citizens against attack by foreign agents who intend to do them harm.

Both parties leadership seem committed to the continued destruction of public education.

Despair, I am often reminded, is a deadly sin. But this year is an election year. And once again, I fear being presented with more choices of “the lesser of two evils” to vote for. And that’s the problem: choosing the lesser of two evils still makes me complicit in voting for evil…

*sigh*

Cheer me up, wouldya? Link to this post and trackback with some good reads, ‘K?

A voice crying out in the wilderness at a buncha places once the lazy bums get their open posts up… including Adam’s Blog,