Posts

Ian Hickson has the best summary of the terms of the AOL/Microsoft deal.

The Department of Defense recorded the Paul Wolfowitz inteview with Vanity Fair reporter Sam Tannenhouse that’s getting lots of play, and they’ve posted a transcript on the DefenseLink Web site. Unsurprisingly, the comments that have been widely quoted seem less sinister when taken in context. In the further interests of fairness, here’s President Bush’s interview with TVP in Poland in which he says flat out that we’ve found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (referring to “mobile labs” that may or may not serve that purpose). He also refers to his coalition of the willing as “standing up for peace” which, considering it was organized solely for the purpose of invading another country, has to be one of the great pieces of Orwellian doublespeak in recent memory. ...

Eric Rudolph, the white supremacist and general purpose hater who is believed to have been behind the bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta and several other bombings has been captured. The most interesting thing to me about this case is that it demonstrates just how hard it will ever be to capture someone like Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar in Afghanistan. It took us over six years to capture Rudolph, and in the end he was captured by accident by local law enforcement. I don’t see the sheriff of some town in the badlands of Afghanistan picking up Osama bin Laden rummaging through a dumpster. ...

Lots of attention has been paid recently to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Congo. Bruce Rolston has the best summary of the story so far over at Flit. I tend to agree with Rolston that kicking the Rwandans and Ugandans out of the eastern part of Congo was a poor idea, and I agree with everyone who says that the current situation cannot be tolerated. As this story, which I linked to last July, points out, part of the deal for Rwandan troops leaving the Congo was that the Congolese government would not tolerate the presence Rwandan Hutu rebels in the area that the Rwandan soldiers were to vacate. That obviously hasn’t happened, and it’s these same people and their ethnic allies that are committing the atrocities in the eastern Congo that they once perpetrated in Rwanda. I’ve been following the Congo situation for a long time, mainly after developing an interest in that region of Africa in general and Paul Kagame in particular after reading about him in Dangerous Places. (The DP piece on Kagame is a bit dated, he’s now president of Rwanda.) The thing that remains consistent in my memory is that things have been so bad for so long that even bad news that isn’t awful can be considered a hopeful sign. ...

Of interest to Java developers: Eclipse Project Draft 3.0 Plan.

Looks like the end result of Microsoft and AOL settling their lawsuit is that everyone else will settle for less competition in the marketplace. Looks like AOL is signed on for seven years of royalty-free usage of Internet Explorer within their craptastic client as part of the case. I wonder whether this means AOL will finally quit funding the Mozilla project?

Christopher Hitchens has made much hay by incessantly pushing the fact that George Orwell is as relevant today as he ever was. It perplexes me then that he would start an article off by referring to our invasion of Iraq as an “intervention.” If that’s not a weasel word, I don’t know what is.

Well, President Bush signed his tax cut yesterday. Hello, permanent deficit spending. Update: a reader sent this important Jonathan Chiatt article on the dangers of deficit spending. Personally, I’m not an anti-deficit absolutist, but I think that slashing government revenue to give a payback to the rich at a time when many important government programs are already threatened we’re increasing military spending is foolhardy.

Spinsanity remains an incredibly valuable site. They posted a useful piece today, sort of an Iraq aftermath FAQ. One thing they leave out is that while the initial estimates of how many artifacts were stolen from Iraq’s national museum were much too high, the fact remains that the National Library and Archives was also looted and then burned to the ground. The current revisionist spin that downplays the cultural losses arises from ignorance or denial. ...

James Howard Kunstler’s Eyesore of the Month feature is a wellspring of vituperation against Modernist architecture, television, cars, and plenty of other things. Quite entertaining, and a bit disturbing to boot (in my opinion, he goes over the top when he digresses from his rants against admittedly hideous buildings to gratuitously slamming a portly fellow sitting in front of a McDonalds for no obvious reason).