The Economist obituary for Abu Nidal is worth reading. Perhaps he is best remembered as proof that Yasser Arafat is not a worst case scenario. The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who target their violence toward driving Israel and the Palestinians away from the negotiating table rather than toward it are his spiritual descendants. However, not even they ocncentrate on killing Palestinians rather than Israelis to achieve their ends as Abu Nidal did.

A big stash of weapons grade uranium was secured under heavy security in Yugoslavia today. Needless to say, unilateralism wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere at all on this one.

The secret FISA court that rules on intelligence-related federal wiretaps released publicly yesterday a decision they made in May that denied the feds the right to share information with law enforcement. They denied the request because of the problems they’ve had in the past with dishonesty on the part of the Justice Department, both in the way applications for wiretaps were filed and in what was done with the information gathered through the wiretaps. The barrier for obtaining permission to get a wiretap through FISA is low, so it’s critically important that the court not be used to make an end run around due process in regular criminal cases. I’m glad to see that the FISA court takes its role seriously in that regard.

For those of us trying to keep up with what’s happening on the subcontinent, the Economist offers this update on Pakistan, India, and the United States. Pervez Musharraf is tightening his grip on power more every day, but at the same time he’s helping us fight the war on terrorism. On the other hand, India says that Pakistan isn’t doing enough to stop terrorists from causing trouble in Kashmir, and there are reports of a major shootout between Indian and Pakistani forces earlier today. In the meantime, we’re sending an envoy back over there to settle things down, but we don’t seem to be doing anything to persuade Musharraf to give in to democracy even a little bit. What a mess.

A friend sent along a link to this 8/16 article from Army Times that includes a lot more detail about the rigged Millenium Challenge 02 wargame that I mentioned earlier. I was a bit dubious about the article, being that it was from The Guardian … the Army Times seems a heck of a lot more reliable.

I found a pointer in Joe Conason’s journal to a story which claims that the retired Marine general who was commanding the faux opposing forces in a giant military exercise quit in disgust after his orders were overridden by military brass because he was doing too well. The exercise was designed to test new tactics advocated by Donald Rumsfeld, and according to the story, the opposing forces were manipulated to insure that the tests were a success. It probably goes without saying that the opposing forces were playing Iraq. Of course, the fact that we’re running rigged military exercises doesn’t mean that we’d lose a war in Iraq, there’s no doubt in my mind that General Van Riper is a superior military commander to those we’d face in Iraq, and furthermore, the real American soldiers who served as opposing forces are no doubt better trained and equipped than real Iraqi soldiers. That said, using boneheaded tactics would doubtless cost lives on both sides of any conflict. It seems to me that if someone really wanted to improve the overall operations of the military, they’d crack down on the various bogus tests and exercises that seem to be run all the time. It amazes me that anything actually works when we go into battle, given the fact that every time we test something, it seems to be rigged.

Pervez Musharraf has been a dictator for as long as he’s been in power, so to say that he’s moved further toward dictatorship would be incorrect. However, what today’s constitutional amendments enacted solely by Musharraf show is that he’s wielding his dictatorial powers ever more brazenly as time goes on. Many people (myself included) were willing to give Musharraf the doubt because despite the fact that he’s a dictator, he seemed willing to face down the Islamist elements that wield so much power in Pakistan. However, it seems that he’s just a plain old tin pot ruler. I fear what will replace him, though, when the time comes.

Georgia voters managed to boot both of their dimwitted incumbents from the House in the primary yesterday. They gave the boot to the Clinton-obsessed Bob Barr (who really has no role to play now that Bill Clinton is out of politics anyway) and whack-job consipiracy theorist Cynthia McKinney. Good riddance to both.

Microsoft may have taken down the core fonts, but they’re still available via SourceForge. (Thanks, Po.)

By the way, the instructions on that page worked to perfection for me under Red Hat 7.3.

Microsoft no longer allows you to download their core fonts for the Web. Can we assume that this is because pretty much everyone now has a computer that came with them in the first place? In any case, for those people that downloaded these fonts to use under Linux or whoatever, this pretty much sucks. I wonder if this is Microsoft’s thumb in the eye to them? Any further details on this would be appreciated for sure.