Offshoring the offshoring
Offshoring the offshoring
Tensions were high: Weeks earlier, on Sept. 1, Soviet fighters had shot down a Korean airliner, killing all 269 people aboard. Petrov was in charge of the secret bunker where a team of 120 technicians and military officers monitored the Soviet Union's early-warning system. It was just after midnight when a new satellite array known as Oko, or The Eye, spotted five U.S. missiles heading toward Moscow. The Eye discerned that they were Minuteman II nuclear missiles. Petrov's computer was demanding that he follow the prescribed protocol and confirm an incoming attack to his superiors. A red light on the computer that read START! kept flashing at him. And there was this baleful message: MISSILE ATTACK! Petrov had written the emergency protocol himself, and he knew he should immediately pick up the hot line at his desk to tell his superiors that the Motherland was under attack... |
| Google Suggest, the latest bag of tricks from Google Labs, is a perfect example of how modern web applications are breaking out of the mold and becoming more interactive. It uses XMLHttpRequest to run queries against Google as yout type, proving an auto-complete box with the most likely results. As you might expect from Google, it's slick, intuitive and fits right in to their bare-bones interface. The JavaScript that powers the feature is pretty well obfuscated, so if you want to see how it works your best bet is to install the Firefox/Mozilla Live HTTP Headers extension, set it up as a sidebar and watch what happens when you use the site. Basically, for every character you type it retrieves a page like this and evals the resulting string of JavaScript. It's the same kind of technique they use for Gmail. XMLHttpRequest is a technology with amazing potential, and this is just the tip of the iceburg. The web's about to get a whole lot richer. |
| For one night only, it'll be spitballs and Swift Boats together on the same stage — a who's who of Sen. John Kerry bashing. The American Conservative Union on Thursday announced it has tapped Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., to present the "Courage Under Fire" award to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth at the Conservative Political Action Conference's Feb. 18 banquet. Miller and the group of Vietnam veterans were behind perhaps the campaign's two fiercest and most memorable attacks on Kerry's unsuccessful presidential bid. Miller, who is retiring next month, scorched Kerry in a Republican National Convention keynote address in which he suggested the four-term Massachusetts Democrat had voted to cut so many weapons systems, it appeared he wanted to send the military to war with only spitballs. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran ads after the Democratic convention questioning whether Kerry was in fact the decorated Vietnam War veteran that he claimed to be. "The swift boat veterans performed an invaluable service to America," Miller said in a statement. "These veterans took a lot of undeserved criticism for daring to speak the truth...". |
| PARIS (Routers) Long-time critics of the Roosevelt administration declared themselves vindicated today, as the Germans began a renewed offensive yesterday in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, opening a huge hole in the "Allied" lines and throwing back troops for miles, with previously unimaginable US casualties.
Early yesterday morning, eight German armored divisions and thirteen German infantry divisions launched an all-out attack on five divisions of the United States 1st Army. Hundreds of heavy guns, howitzers and multiple-rocket launchers were fired on American positions. The 5th and 6th Panzer armies, consisting of some eleven divisions, broke through the Loshein Gap against the American divisions protecting the region. The 6th Panzer Army then headed north while the Fifth Panzer Army went south. The latter army attacked the U. S. VIII Corps some 100 miles to the south, which was quickly surrounded, resulting in mass surrenders of unprepared American soldiers. By any reasonable and objective standard, it was an utter military disaster for the "Allied" forces. It all came as a complete shock to the Roosevelt administration who, rumor has it, had been informed by the head of OSS that the imminent collapse of the German army was a "lead-pipe cinch." This only confirmed reasonable pre-election suspicions that the administration and General Eisenhower were operating on flawed intelligence, and led the nation into an invasion of Europe on clearly false pretenses... |
She admitted that she underestimated the effect of the Swifty ads, but the telling line of the story follows:
You can picture both Mehlman and Cahill answering this question about the effectiveness of the new media, namely the blogosphere. Mehlman would have a big smile on his face as he answered, and Cahill would be ready to spit. But now a little word about the writer of this story. Steve LaBlanc filed the story for AP, and it is hysterical that he cannot use the words blog, blogger, or blogosphere. Emerging news technologies? What kind of sterile description is that? In LaBlanc-ese, would John Kerry be considered a wooden presidential campaign unit? What would the Global War On Terror translate to? Planetary Failure of Strife Resolution? It's okay, Steve. Say the word. Say blog. We do exist. We have a name. We aren't necessarily coming after your job...yet. We are simply making sure you do yours. You need not fear us, but camouflaging who we are and the role we played behind political correct speech is pretty ridiculous. |
Besides, I knew it was over when the judges suddenly started enforcing their draconian set of "rules". That's how Republicans steal elections, boys and girls. Whenever people are forced to vote a certain way, at a certain place, at a certain time, it's the democrats who get the short end of the stick. We saw it in Florida four years ago, when the GOP exploited "election laws" to invalidate thousands of "improperly or vaguely punched" ballots. Many ballots which would have otherwise been counted were thrown out simply because they weren't punched at all. We're seeing the same sort of shenannigans here in my own state, where the Reichpublicans are invoking bizarre, archaic voting regulations to disenfranchise honest Americans who didn't "follow instructions" and vote "correctly". We may live in a big Melting Pot, but if your vote doesn't fit in with their WASP, Aryan, Master Race idea of perfection, it gets shipped off to the furnaces with the rest of the undesirables. It never used to be that way. The founding fathers were intentionally vague when writing election laws into the Constitution, for fear that that strict adherence to a concrete set of rules would lead to a fascist dictatorship. Election laws were merely meant to be "suggestions", like the Ten Commandments or traffic signals. In order to insure that Every Vote is Counted, it would be necessary to "bend the rules", and speed through a red light every once in a while, t-boning a Ford Mustang and killing everyone inside for the sake of democracy. It wasn't until white slaveholders concocted a "Poll Tax" to supress the Black vote that Republicans learned to manipulate elections through the strict interpretation of election laws... |
| The 300 men filling out forms in the offices of an Iranian aid group were offered three choices: Train for suicide attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, for suicide attacks against Israelis or to assassinate British author Salman Rushdie.
It looked at first glance like a gathering on the fringes of a society divided between moderates, who want better relations with the world, and hard-line Muslim militants hostile toward the United States and Israel. But the presence of two key figures — a prominent Iranian lawmaker and a member of the country's elite Revolutionary Guards — lent the meeting more legitimacy and was a clear indication of at least tacit support from some within Iran's government. Since that inaugural June meeting in a room decorated with photos of Israeli soldiers' funerals, the registration forms for volunteer suicide commandos have appeared on Tehran's streets and university campuses, and there is no sign that Iran's government is trying to stop the shadowy movement. On Nov. 12, the day that Iranians traditionally hold pro-Palestinian protests, a spokesman for the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement said the movement signed up at least 4,000 new volunteers... ..."At a time when the U.S. is committing the crimes we see now, deprived nations have no weapon other than martyrdom. It's evident that Iran's foreign policy-makers have to take the dignified opinions of this group into consideration," said Mr. Kouchakzadeh, who also is a former member of the Revolutionary Guards. ...In general, Iran portrays Israel as its main nemesis and backs anti-Israeli groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah. It says that it has no interest in fomenting instability in Iraq and that it tries to block any infiltration into Iraq by insurgents — while pleading that its porous borders are hard to police. ...Mr. Samadi said that 30,000 volunteers have signed up and that 20,000 of them have been chosen for training. Volunteers already had carried out suicide operations against military targets inside Israel, he said. But he said discussing attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq "will cause problems for the country's foreign policy. It will have grave consequences for our country and our group. It's confidential." As devoted Muslims, members of his group were simply fulfilling their religious obligations as laid out by Ayatollah Khomeini, he said... "With this religious verdict, we don't need anybody's permission to fight an enemy that has occupied Muslim lands." |
Feel the bias! Republican-funded? How often have you heard MoveOn.org referred to as a “Democrat-funded” organization? And notice how the Swifties are described as “Vietnam War veterans who patrolled the same Mekong Delta in Swift boats similar to the ones piloted by Navy Lt. John Kerry.” No mention of the fact that they all served in the same unit. Or that John O’Neill took over Kerry’s Swift boat when Kerry left Vietnam. Or that Steve Gardner was Kerry’s gunner. You’d think Kerry was a complete stranger to the Swifties. It gets worse:
Debunked?? When did that happen? Every one of the Swifties’ charges still stands. The only debunking has been of Kerry’s Excellent Cambodian Adventure. And the lying liberal media wonders why we don’t listen to them anymore. |
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...It helps to understand the full scope of Syrian malfeasance [in Iraq]. So far, the U.S. has accused Syria only of allowing foreign fighters to transit to Iraq. But a report in the Washington Post notes that a global positioning signal receiver found in a Fallujah bomb factory "contained waypoints originating in Western Syria." Fedayeen interviewed by Western media say they received training in light weapons, explosives and hit-and-run operations at camps in Syria. These camps are likely financed by the $2.5 billion Saddam Hussein is believed to have stashed in Syrian banks before the war. In April, Jordanian intelligence captured an al Qaeda cell as it planned a chemical-weapons attack in Amman. That cell, too, was apparently trained in Syria. ...In an interview in the Lebanese paper Al-Safir, Syrian President Bashar Assad was no less explicit when he offered Lebanon circa 1983 as an example of how the U.S. was to be fought in Iraq: "Lebanon was under Israeli occupation, up to its capital, but we did not consider that a disaster. Why? Because it was very clear there are ways to resist. The problem is not the occupation, but how people deal with it. . . . [In Iraq] the solution is resistance." ...Mr. Assad's calculation is that the U.S. is too tied down in Iraq to entertain any action against Syria. Maybe. But the fact remains that Syria is providing material support to terrorist groups killing American soldiers in Iraq while openly calling on Iraqis to join the "resistance." So far, the Bush Administration has responded with mixed political signals and weak gestures. That's not something that impresses the Assad family, as the Turks found out. But as the Turks found out as well, there are ways to get the message across to this regime. |
Of course, we agree. Here is the response from Major Phelps that Mr. Stones forwarded to us:
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Sarah at trying to grok makes an excellent point:
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We hear both sides of the story. On abortion, the environment, gay marriage, war, and taxes, we hear the liberal side from the national media, and we hear both sides in the local media and radio. Sure, we hear the liberal side twice, but at least we hear the conservative side once. Another reason liberals never hear the other side is that they're such bullies. Intellectual bullies, that is. I'm sure Manhattan has conservatives, but they live in such an intolerant environment, they probably keep quiet. Things like this are hard to quantify, but you can detect it in how liberals argue their political positions. Consider hate crimes laws. They criminalize thought. We can all agree that things like assault, murder, and theft should be illegal, but only an intellectual bully is interested in whether you had the correct thoughts about those you were murdering or assaulting. Or consider sex education. Liberals oppose laws requiring abstinence education. These laws don't forbid schools from continuing on with the traditional "we know you're going to have sex, so here's a condom" philosophy, they merely require that schools also inform kids of the benefits of abstinence. Only intellectual bullies would feel so threatened by the idea of students hearing both points of view. Another trademark of intellectual bullies is that they can't resist calling people names. They honestly think their opponents are evil or stupid. We're homophobes. Patriarchs. Greedy. Fundamentalist. Bigots. Gun-toters. White trash. Bible-thumpers. It's hard to listen to new ideas with these thoughts in your head... ...These city folk are victims of a new cultural hegemony in America. Whenever we turn on the TV or watch a movie, we learn all about life in their little corners of the world. They seldom get a glimpse at us. I tried to think of current TV sitcoms or recent movies which tell our story. There aren't many. The closest I came was "Northern Exposure," a '90s show about a New York medical school graduate forced to practice in a small town in Alaska. But I ruled that one out. It was about a New Yorker. And towards the end, the story line was hijacked by two gay men who moved to town to operate a bed-and-breakfast and an environmental wacko who lived in an air-tight dome and claimed he could sense releases of toxic gasses thousands of miles away. Those plots are really about Hollywood life, not ours... ...I think the TV series "Roseanne" was set in a red state, hence the blue staters' belief that we're mostly fat, poor, and stupid. It's very hard to think of a recent movie or TV show which sympathetically portrays our lives. "The Waltons," "The Andy Griffith Show," and "Petticoat Junction" were set in red states, but they're all set in the past. A few movies, like "A Walk to Remember," are sympathetic portrayals of contemporary rural American life, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule. If you want to see a small-town southern preacher who is wise and compassionate, watch this movie. You won't see it again soon. But every election day, our stories and our values count just as much as those in blue states. And for just a little while, they notice us. |
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| However mixed or misguided our intentions were in launching this war, we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people.
Despite the numbers of Iraqi dead and the travesty of Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi insurgents know that we did not come to their country to rape their women or to kill innocent civilians. Every thinking person in the Muslim world understands that if our goal had been to kill Iraqis and steal their oil, millions of Iraqis would now be dead and their oil would be flowing. The terrible truth about our predicament in Iraq is that even if we had invaded with no other purpose than to remove Saddam Hussein from power and make Iraq a paradise on Earth, we should still expect tomorrow's paper to reveal that another jihadi has blown himself to bits for the sake of killing scores of innocent men, women and children. The Iraqi people have been traumatized by this war and by decades of repression. But this does not explain the type of violence they wage against us on a daily basis. War and repression do not account for suicidal violence directed against the Red Cross, the United Nations, foreign workers and Iraqi innocents. War and repression would not have attracted an influx of foreign fighters willing to sacrifice their lives merely to sow chaos. We are now mired in a religious war in Iraq, and elsewhere. Our enemies, as witnessed by their astonishing willingness to slaughter themselves, are not principally motivated by political or economic grievances... ...Anyone who imagines that terrestrial concerns account for terrorism by Muslims must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers. They, too, suffer the ordeal of the Israeli occupation. Where are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers for that matter? The Tibetans have suffered an occupation far more brutal than any we or the Israelis have imposed on the Muslim world. The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific doctrines about martyrdom and jihad that directly inspire Muslim terrorism. |
| Clifford Arnebeck won’t let it go. He can’t let it go. Not, he says, while America refuses to recognize that John F. Kerry was elected president Nov. 2.
Arnebeck, a Democratic lawyer here and co-chairman of a self-styled national populist alliance, is petitioning the state’s highest court to throw out official results that favor President Bush and instead hand Ohio’s 20 electoral votes — and thus the White House — to Kerry. Or, at least, order a revote. The bid appears quixotic, to put it politely, as Bush has been officially declared the winner by 119,000 votes and Arnebeck is arguing before a Republican-dominated Supreme Court in Ohio. Nor is the Massachusetts senator helping him out, said Arnebeck. "I can’t for the life of me understand why Kerry isn’t fighting harder for this. Maybe it’s some secret Skull and Bones tradition, where you’re not supposed to show up the other guy," Arnebeck said, referring to the Yale secret society of which Bush and Kerry were both members... |