I was listening to Midday on the car radio yesterday. Having come into the program midway, I didn’t catch who the speaker was, but he was saying something that interested me. He said that there is no war on terrorism. We’re waging war on terrorists, on individuals, not on the culture from which terrorism is spawned. Until we begin fighting the root causes of terrorism, we will never eliminate terrorism. As one terrorist is eliminated, another will replace him. You can only eliminate terrorism by removing the urge to commit terrorism. If the folks in the White House would only look at our decades-old “war on drugs”, they would see that this approach has failed before.

I later learned when I checked the online schedule that the person I’d been listening to was none other than Thomas Friedman, the conservative globalization-hugging columnist. He and I have never agreed on anything. Mr Friedman seems to not understand that trade globalization–in the widely-used model he so enthusiastically endorses–not only destroys the economies of struggling, smaller nations (Venezuela) but damages our own economy when we outsource to rising economies such as India. Studies performed with real-world models have shown that when a highly developed country with high wages (the US, for example) outsources to a rising economy with lower wages (India, for example), the wages of the developed country will decline as the wages of the underdeveloped country rise until both achieve a median wage. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but in a nutshell the end effect is that American wages will decline while the price of goods rise or remain the same. For those of you who don’t remember the ’70s & ’80s well, that’s called “inflation”, and it’s bad for an economy.

BTW, Mr Friedman’s speech can be heard here.

I’ve been offline for a while. Real-life adventures have left little time for this particular waste of bandwidth. However, that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped tracking current events.

–I’ve been keeping an eye on the Electoral Vote Predictor. The folks there use national polling data to predict how many electoral votes Bush and Kerry stand to win, were the election held today. At the moment, Kerry appears to hold a commanding lead of 117 EVs (322 vs 205). However, I get a bit nervous when I look at the numbers each candidate holds in weakly-held and barely-held states. Of Kerry’s 322 EVs, fully 2/3 (202) are from weakly- or barely-held states. In contract, only about 1/4 of Bush’s EVs (55) are from weakly- or barely-held states. If those states were to tip between now and the election, Kerry would suffer more than Bush.

Wanna see something really scary? The site has recently mapped county-by-county election data from the 2000 vote. The sharp line between rural and urban voters is, to say the least, startling. I believe this shows that we are a country divided not only by wealth, but by ideology as well. Of course, we’ve always known that, but I’ve never seen it literally drawn up.

When we do finally go to the polls, a lot of us will find ourselves using new electronic voting machines. The states say that using them will prevent a lot of the problems that made us the laughing stock of the world in the 2000 elections. But not everyone agrees. You’re sure to hear a lot more about e-voting, both here and in the news, as the election nears.

‘Course, this is all assuming that you even get to vote. In line with a prediction I made months ago in the wake of comments made by Gen Tommy Franks, the ministry of Homeland Security announced that it has looked into the option of postponing the elections should terrorists strike near Nov 2. You know, if I were a cynic, and the president had previously ignored information that could have prevented a terrorist attack here, I’d suspect that they might allow an attack to occur, then declare martial law, suspending both the constitution and the elections. Just the fact that I can now even consider my government capable of doing such a thing is pretty scary, and says a lot about how far into the Twilight Zone this country has veered. Didn’t it used to be only in Orwellian fiction that you read about such police-state actions as people being arrested for wearing t-shirts that criticize the president?

–Also in politics this week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report stating that most of the intelligence we used as an excuse to overthrow Iraq was, well, wrong. And they placed the blame squarely on the CIA. The report, perhaps not coincidentally, was released on Director George Tenet’s last full day of work.

Where does the White House fit in with all this? So far, they have been content to allow Tenet to throw himself on his sword for every intelligence misstep thus far. Admittedly, he did not come off very well in Richard Clarke’s book, “Against All Enemies” when he throws his arms up in the air during a national security meeting and declares that the case against Saddam is “a slam dunk”. However, there are many entities to blame other than Tenet. Most certainly, a major factor was the White House’s “stovepiping” of raw intelligence, which bypassed the standard fact-checking filters in favor of expediency. Unprecidentedly, intelligence was delivered directly to the Vice-President’s office, shutting out the State Department’s intelligence officer, whose job was to report the vetted intelligence himself. It was a direct result of this process that caused the White House to accept the infamous “Nigerian uranium” claim. When the documents cited were exposed as forgeries (possibly whipped up by MI6 themselves, a claim for which I unfortunately lack solid proof), the White House blamed Tenet, and Tenet acceded. In fact, the CIA made multiple attempts to prevent the White House from using the information.

–A report claims that Pakistani officials are being pressured by the White House to announce the capture of a “high-value” terrorist to coincide with the Democratic convention. So be on the lookout for the announcement during the last week of July. And remember, act surprised!

–Anyone who thinks that the AIDS horror of the ’80s has subsided any, think again. The UN released a report last week that shows that global AIDS infections have gone up by another 5 million. This country has done a wonderful job of supressing and stigmatizing an unpleasant subject. A few thousand people worldwide catch SARS and they close down the airports and shut the borders. A few million people worldwide have AIDS and they cut research funding and argue over why $2/pill isn’t a fair price to sell to victims in 3rd-world, famine-stricken countries. It’s a pandemic folks. So was the bubonic plague, and AIDS has a higher mortality rate than the black plague did. (In fairness, Bush has pledged $3billion/yr for the next five years to assist needful countries. However, the money has yet to materialize, and knowing this administration, they will make it contingent on a number of unrelated factors, probably to include “abstinence-only” sex education and parental planning.)

–I can’t decide if this is funny, sad, or if it just pisses me off. StorageTek (a maker of network tape backup systems) has successfully claimed in court that a third-party service violated the DMCA for doing maintenence work on their units. The ruling essentially means that vendors can hold a monopoly on service and maintenance of their equipment. What does this potentially mean for companies that choose–for budgetary reasons or otherwise–not to keep a maintenance contract with the vendor? Will they be forced to pay per-incident for an “approved” service tech to come do even the simplest maintenance procedures, such as, say, a firmware upgrade? Credit to Jason Schultz’s LawGeek blog for reporting this story, and to bOINGbOING for flagging it.

A few quick lighter stories before I go:

–The longest concert in history is a couple of notes closer to completion. A church in Germany has taken John Cage’s instructions to play his “Organ2/ASLSP” “as slowly as possible” literally, staging a performance that will take 639 years to complete. The performance has been going since Sept 5, 2001, but since the piece begins with a rest, there was only silence for the first year and a half.

–To the delight of Lovecraftians everywhere, a report in Australasian Science finds that squid have overtaken humans in total bio-mass and are on track to become the dominant life form in the oceans, if not the planet. Ia! Ia! Cthulu fhtagn!

–Finally, I apparently missed all the net chatter about the excision of a cameo appearance by Colin Farrell’s penis from his upcoming movie. “A Home at the End of the World” was supposed to feature full-frontal nudity by Mr Farrell, but apparently his ample endowment caused the women in the audience to become “over-excited” and the men to be “uncomfortable”. (Does that sound straight out of a 1950s Hollywood press release, or what?) Anyway, by the time I came upon the story, it was old hat–so to speak–but Neva Chonin has a nice essay stemming from the incident on the discrepancy between what is expected of male and female actors.

As I walked out of a downtown building the other day, I heard sirens coming down the street to my left. I glanced, saw the fire trucks screaming down the street, and didn’t give it a second thought (sirens and emergency vehicles are a too-common sight in my town; they quickly blur into the background). I turned to the right and began walking down the sidewalk just in time to see a running man disappear into the alley. Black dress slacks, blue shirt, glasses, dark hair. Somehow I knew that as he jogged through the alley that he was pulling his dress shirt open to reveal a red “S” on blue background. I avoided looking into the alley as I passed. I wanted my imagination to remain my reality. I want there to be superheroes flying around the city, forever one corner out of view.

Remember when comic book and movie heroes fought the bad guys because they were good, and noble. They fought because evil was evil and they didn’t need any more reason than that. Now they have to have a personal stake in the battle. The hero’s girl must be kidnapped by the bad guy. Someone close to him must be hurt or killed to provoke vengeance. Why doesn’t the good guy go after the bad guy simply because he’s bad and it’s the right thing to do?

[SPIDERMAN SPOILER]
There’s a wonderful moment in Spiderman 2 where, having given up the role of Spiderman because the toll on his personal life is too heavy, Peter Parker comes upon a burning tenement building. Someone says that there is a child trapped inside. Selflessly, Peter runs inside and, using only human courage and none of his Spiderman skills, he rescues the child and brings them both out ok. But later, after choosing to resume being Spiderman, Doc Ock kidnaps Mary Jane, and that provokes Peter to action. It would have been so much better if MJ had been left out of it and Spiderman had gone after Doc Ock simply because he’s a raving lunatic who’s going to destroy the city.
[/SPOILER]

Somewhere out there the heroes of my comic book youth are patrolling the cities and the skies, looking out for you and I even though they don’t know us. Naive perhaps, but the idea of a world where we are all on our own is too discouraging.

–Saddam Hussein had his day in court yesterday. Or rather, his first of many days in court. I find it interesting that one of the charges he faces (in addition to the obvious ones for killing innocents) is for invading Kuwait. Am I the only one that sees the irony (I will refrain from saying “hypocrisy” for now) in invading Iraq so we can put him on trial for invading Kuwait? If his invasion of Kuwait in an unforgivable crime, how can we justify our own invasion of Iraq?

If anyone thinks that the Iraqis are really running this trail, think again. They’re using prosecuting materials drawn up by the US Justice Dept. Ashcroft & co have made sure that nothing comes up that would be potentially embarrassing to the US. Like, uh, the fact that we sold him the chemical weapons that he’s accused of using?

–A Florida state court ruled that the state has to turn over the list of nearly 50,000 voters who were declared ineligible to vote in 2000 due to supposed felonies. Perhaps–just perhaps–this means that a thorough analysis of the will be done and we will finally know exactly how many Florida residents were unjustly and illegally prevented from casting votes in the 2000 election. And perhaps–just perhaps–the public will give a shit.

None of this is news, of course. Greg Palast tried to alert the media when he first learned of the scheme back in late 2000. The news outlets could have just gotten the list from him; he has a copy. Of course, his copy was not obtained through proper channels, but so what? Someone tried to blow the whistle on Jeb Bush and Kathy Harris, and the American media ignored it. I appreciate the value of a legal ruling against the state, but the American media has lost all credibility with me. The days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite are over. They now know only how to shoot the wounded.

Courtesy of bOINGbOING, I was inspired to go digging–so to speak–for urban subterranean hideouts. Today, bOINGbOING reported on the Portland Tunnels, used in the 19th century to transport drugged victims to waiting ships, thus coining the phrase “Shanghai’d”. You can tour the tunnels, if you want.

Seattle has a most unusual city-beneath-a-city, reminiscent of layered ancient cities like Ilium and Rome. This site has the rather amusing story of how the Seattle Underground came to be. I’ve known about the Seattle Underground for a long time. Oddly, I first learned of it by watching a Scooby-Doo episode as a kid!

Closer to home, St Paul is partly famous for its network of subterranean passages, notably the Wabasha Street Caves. Both natural and man-made, the tunnels were most heavily taken advantage of by the mob during the ’20s and ’30s. The gangsters used them for smuggling to and from the Mississippi river, and set up speakeasies down below. Today, much of the network lies unused, caved-in, or sealed off. Following the recent deaths of three teenagers who broke past barriers and died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fire they built, the city has been considering filling in or otherwise destroying the caves altogether. I think that would be a great loss for the city. St Paul should find some way to use the caves, which have been a part of the city’s history for well over a hundred years.

Although technically tresspassing, the Minneapolis Urban Adventurers Action Squad has done an amazing job of exploring the Twin Cities’ hidden underground passages. As long as they aren’t vandalizing, I say may the cops forever remain one twisty dark passage behind them.

In other news:
–Sneeze for me, baby! This woman has an, um, unusual fetish, to say the least. I’m normally pretty good at seeing others’ appeal in their particular kinks/fetishes, but this one truly eludes me. I am reminded of the handful of actual medical cases of women who experience orgasms whenever they sneeze. Alas, web-based documentation eludes me. Either situation (fetish, medical condition) qualifies as one of the few in which a pepper grinder could be employed as a sex toy.

–The Ministry of Homeland Security has organized a gestapo–er, I mean the nation’s truck drivers to watch for and report suspicious activity, especially regarding furriners. Not to be stereotypical, but isn’t the idea of a traditionally conservative, slightly xenophobic and usually armed demographic looking for terrorists just a teeny bit worrisome? Again, link credit to bOINGbOING.

–A woman in Singapore has set a new record by keying in a 26-word text message in just 43 seconds. That’s roughly 34 words/minute.

In far less important news:
–The supreme court today sent the idiotic Online Child Protection Act back to the lower court from whence it came.

–Bush met a real reporter, and it wasn’t pretty. His handlers somehow allowed him to be interviewed by a reporter that refused to toss softball questions, and the CEO of America actually begged her to stop.

Today I’m going to turn the focus on politics. There’s a lot going on at once, and some very important things are going to get buried in the backs of the papers unless they are pointed out now.

–First is today’s Supreme Court ruling that the president has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens without charge or trial, in apparent violation of the Sixth Amendment. The only good news is that the court granted the prisoners the ability to challenge the treatment they receive while imprisoned. How they are supposed to do that without access to attorneys is beyond me. This is the third time in two weeks that the court has avoided handing down rulings which could affect GWB’s November election chances (the first two being the Pledge of Allegience issue and Dick Cheney’s energy commission records). If these recent rulings can provide any clue to what may happen in November, it would appear that we are in for a Florida all over again. And if you think that the Florida ballot problems were fixed after the last debacle, think again.

–The US handed over control of Iraq today, two days early. My guess is that this is either a political ploy (“See, we did do it by the deadline. And we did it early! Aren’t we great?”) or we caught wind of some pending massive insurgency attacks and didn’t want to be the ones in charge when it happened. I suspect a bit of both. Blair, at least, displayed a little honesty: ‘Mr Blair’s official spokesman said the accelerated handover was partly designed … simply to “seize the political initiative”.’

–An article this weekend that Iran appears to be the unintended winner of our war on terrorism. It’s seemed to me all along that Iran used us as pawns to eliminate Iraq. Most of our rationale for overthrowing Iraq was based on information fed to us by Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, based out of Iran (information which has since turned out to be false). As it turns out, one of Chalabi’s top men was an Iranian intelligence agent. This agent was probably deliberately feeding Chalabi misleading information to channel to the US, while funneling US intelligence information back to Iran. Chalabi is one of the biggest mules in history. Iran may have lured us into war* in the hopes that the power vacuum in Iraq would allow it (possibly through Chalabi) to instill a Shiite-friendly government, effectively merging the two countries ideologically. Iran is half the size of Iraq, but is ten times as powerful. The thought of an Iraq-Iran allience should scare the hell out of the State Department–and you and I.

* holy cats! did I just reference a Fox News article, written by a member of the CATO Institute? cats and dogs living together–it’s the end of the world!

–A US Intelligence official, writing anonymously, is about to publish a condemnation of the Bush administration’s handling of terrorism. He claims that the US has played into Osama bin Laden’s hands by unstabilizing the Middle East. He also suspects that al Qaida will stage another attack on the US–much as it did in Madrid–in hopes of throwing the election in Bush’s favor. Mad conspiracy-theory stuff, I know, but I have found it increasingly easy to believe the idea of the current people in power developing outlandish plots in order to stay in power. I have believed for some time that if another terrorist attack occured near the November election that the government would declare a state of emergency and suspend the elections.

–Even shadow governments have a shadow government. This article about Karl Rove’s leg man gives some idea of who the people are who are really running the country. (Go to BugMeNot if you don’t have a New York Times registration.)

–Okay, one non-political item: this is a great editorial about SUVs: “They are marketed as off-road vehicles, although more than 90% of them never leave the pavement (unless they roll over).”

–Apparently, vending machines can be turned into weapons of mass destruction.

–Wondering what’s the fashionable way to die today? Check out the World Health Organization’s stats on mortality rates from around the world.

–Today, Microsoft patented skin. Well, the use of skin as a medium to transmit data. All I have to say is, “WTF?” and “get that thing away from me”.

–I’m a little slow with the ball on this one. In a classic example of people in power overreacting to things that they don’t understand, the FBI is investigating a Boulder, CO artist for bioterrorism. When police arrived at Steve Kurtz’s home after he called to report that his wife had died, they spotted equipment and materials that Kurtz uses in his artwork. Not knowing what the stuff was, they automatically jumped to the conclusion that he was manufacturing bioterrorism materials in his home, had him arrested, and sealed off the home. They even confiscated his wife’s body. Now the case is slowly lurching towards trial, and the art community has rallied to his defense.

–The man who helped create ASCII, thus paving the way for giant sig files and dot-matrix renditions of the Mona Lisa, and who happened to notice that the century was eventually going to end, died today.

–“”The churches actually don’t like it so much.” Imagine that.