Someone at Vandenberg Air Force Base and at the Department of Homeland Security turned up in my referral logs this morning. Whoa.
Two Gems from the East Bay Express
“Comin’ up,” Deputy Bob Brandt called out to his partner, John McDonnell. He nudged the throttle with his right hand as the August Vollmer, Alameda County’s antiterrorism gunboat, lifted its nose and motored away from its Alameda berth toward the Bay Bridge. It was just after 10 a.m., and the boat skipped over tiny ripples in the green bay waters, which resembled a rumpled sheet of AstroTurf. To the left, San Francisco was still capped in morning fog. To the right, Oakland’s downtown skyline was obscured in a cottony haze. Twin outboards buzzed from the Vollmer’s stern as it cut through the water.
The day’s primary mission was the same as it has been since the boat first launched in January 2004: To protect the county’s forty linear miles of coastline from terrorists. The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department believes it is the only county agency in the nation that defends its residents with a fully manned gunboat. The Vollmer is only 37 feet long, but is mounted with two belt-fed machine guns that can rattle off eight hundred rounds per minute. Beneath their life jackets, Brandt and McDonnell sport dark-blue fatigues like those worn by SWAT team members. Each deputy carries a hunting knife and a sidearm. Brandt also carries aboard an automatic machine gun, McDonnell a single-barrel shotgun.
The morning’s patrol began quietly as usual. Despite the heavy artillery and the gravity of their duty, Brandt and McDonnell looked as relaxed as two buddies going fishin’. A few days earlier, as the scare from the London subway bombings faded, the Department of Homeland Security had lowered its terror-alert level from orange to yellow, signifying an elevated risk for terrorist attack. If today was typical, Brandt said, we’d spend it poking around the bay, perhaps reminding fishermen to steer clear of the bridge’s new pillars, or shooing away absent-minded boaters who floated too close to the runways of Oakland International Airport.
But the bay is a busy place. The Port of Oakland, the nation’s fifth-largest, is second on the state’s list of most likely terrorist targets, behind Los Angeles International Airport. On this late-summer day, 335 cargo-bearing vessels were scheduled to use the port, not to mention hundreds of sailboats, yachts, rowboats, and windsurfers. Amid this hustle and bustle, Brandt cautioned, anything that looked out of place was cause for immediate investigation. “As for homeland security,” the deputy said over his shoulder, “it might not look like anything at the time, but it can turn into something down the road.”
“And sometimes,” McDonnell added, “those little things are what lead to bigger things.”
and, even more shockingly:
If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for letting him post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography.
At Wilson’s Web site, you can see an Arab man’s face sliced off and placed in a bowl filled with blood. Another man’s head, his face crusted with dried blood and powder burns, lies on a bed of gravel. A man in a leather coat who apparently tried to run a military checkpoint lies slumped in the driver’s seat of a car, his head obliterated by gunfire, the flaps of skin from his neck blooming open like rose petals. Six men in beige fatigues, identified as US Marines, laugh and smile for the camera while pointing at a burned, charcoal-black corpse lying at their feet.
The captions that accompany these images, which were apparently written by the soldiers who posted them, laugh and gloat over the bodies. The soldier who posted a picture of a corpse lying in a pool of his own brains and entrails wrote, “What every Iraqi should look like.” The photograph of a corpse whose jaw has apparently rotted away, leaving a gaping set of upper teeth, bears the caption “bad day for this dude.” One soldier posted three photographs of corpses lying in the street and titled his collection “DIE HAJI DIE.” The soldiers take pride, even joy, in displaying the dead.
MSU School of Packaging?
So I’m reading Wired News this morning and I see that there’s a reference to the Michigan State University School of Packaging. Huh?
And as with people, clothes (or the lack thereof) can make the computer. Customers respond to Apple’s packaging for the same reasons they respond to the user-friendly machines within, said Laura Bix, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s School of Packaging.
So not only is there a School of Packaging, but you can get your Master’s of Science in Packaging ONLINE! Anyone want to fund this for me so I can try it out?
So exactly which part of “Thou shalt not kill.” didn’t you get, Pat?
AP:
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 24, 2005; 4:02 PM
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson insisted Wednesday that he did not call for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, despite comments broadcast on his program two days earlier.
“I didn’t say ‘assassination,'” Robertson said Wednesday on his Christian Broadcast Network show “The 700 Club” about remarks reported by The Associated Press and other media outlets.
“I said our special forces should ‘take him out.’ ‘Take him out’ could be a number of things including kidnapping.
“There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time.”
But a video of Monday’s telecast shows that Robertson’s exact words were: “You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”
Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer within 100 years, scientists say
University of Arizona: The current warming trends in the Arctic may shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free state not seen for more than one million years, according to a new report. The melting is accelerating, and a team of researchers were unable to identify any natural processes that might slow the de-icing of the Arctic.
Such substantial additional melting of Arctic glaciers and ice sheets will raise sea level worldwide, flooding the coastal areas where many of the world’s people live.
Melting sea ice has already resulted in dramatic impacts for the indigenous people and animals in the Arctic, which includes parts of Alaska, Canada, Russia, Siberia, Scandinavia and Greenland.
“What really makes the Arctic different from the rest of the non-polar world is the permanent ice in the ground, in the ocean and on land,” said lead author University of Arizona geoscientist Jonathan T. Overpeck. “We see all of that ice melting already, and we envision that it will melt back much more dramatically in the future as we move towards this more permanent ice-free state.”
Army Officers Stage Coup in Mauritania
Ed: Ok, here’s my idea for the next Slate explainer. How do you start a bloodless coup? Really, do you just waltz in and say, “Ok, I’m taking over.” and all the mindless lackeys look up from their desk and say: “Yeah, ok.”
AP:
NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) – A military junta overthrew Mauritania’s U.S.-allied president while he was abroad Wednesday, prompting celebrations in this oil-rich Islamic nation that looked increasingly to the West amid alleged threats from al-Qaida linked militants.
The junta promised to yield to democratic rule within two years, but African leaders and the United States were quick to condemn the coup, declaring that the days of authoritarianism and military rule must end across the continent.
President Maaoya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya, who himself seized power in a 1984 coup and dealt ruthlessly with his opponents, was out of the country when presidential guardsmen cut broadcasts from the national radio and television stations at dawn and seized a building housing the army chief of staff headquarters.
Life Imitates Art. Call Phillip K. Dick.
BBC: Japanese scientists have unveiled the most human-looking robot yet devised – a “female” android called Repliee Q1.
She has flexible silicone for skin rather than hard plastic, and a number of sensors and motors to allow her to turn and react in a human-like manner.
She can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human. She even appears to breathe.
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University says one day robots could fool us into believing they are human.
via Saheli Datta.
Exploding Clear Plastic Containers
[Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s antiterrorist branch] said the containers that held the explosives — 6.25-liter models made of clear plastic with white lids and bearing the brand name Delta — were imported from India and sold at 100 outlets. He urged any shopkeepers who sold five or more at the same time or to the same customer to contact police.
Ok, I’m no anti-terrorism expert or anything, but is this really what we’ve come to? That we’re going to start monitoring when people are buying plastic containers? And assuming that the terrorists read mainstream media, wouldn’t it be relatively easy for them to just not buy them from the same shop in quantities of five or more? And why five? There were four bombs each time. Why isn’t four the magic number? *sighs*
I’m not an “Arabic” terrorist, I just play one in rap songs
So three points on the Arabic Assassin story.
1) Clearly, this guy isn’t all that bright if he thinks that as a Palestinian-American his rapping about terrorism isn’t going to raise any red flags. Oh, and he’s a baggage screener, too? In the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston? Yeah, no red flags at all. (That being said, what exactly is an intercontinental airport?)
2) He does have a point that he’s not the first to write crazy lyrics for shock-value:
Khalaf said his terrorist-themed rhymes are more about marketing. He called his songs art and pointed to other rappers who have rhymed about terrorism. He specifically cites Eminem’s song, “My Dad’s Gone Crazy,” which discusses blowing everything on the map up except Afghanistan and says: “There’s no tower too high, no plane that I can’t learn how to fly.”
3) But then again, he calls himself “Arabic”. I hate to break it to you, buddy, but Arabic is a language, not an ethnic group. You are Arab (and for Rich’s sake, “not Persian”), not Arabic.
Arab is a noun for a person, and is used as an adjective, as in “Arab country.” Arabic is the name of the language and generally is not used as an adjective. Arabian is an adjective that refers to Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Peninsula, or as in Arabian horse.
Something tells me I’m not on the short list.
NYT:
WASHINGTON, July 13 – President Bush said today that his nominee for the Supreme Court may be someone who has never sat on the bench before.
“Would I be willing to consider people who had never been a judge?” Mr. Bush said. “And the answer is, ‘You bet.’ “
