Category: Networks

Well actually, you see, there ARE:

Islamic militants planned to detonate an explosion that would have sent a cloud of toxic chemicals across Jordan, causing death, blindness, and sickness, a chemical expert testified in a military court Wednesday in Amman. Col. Najeh al-Azam was giving evidence in the trial of 13 men alleged to have planned what would have been the first chemical attack by the al-Qaeda terror group. In his televised confession, prime defendant Azmi Al-Jayousi said his group had plotted the attack under instruction from al-Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi.

Oops.

When Rasheed plays well, the Pistons play well:

With the Pistons clinging to an 89-86 lead with just under two minutes to play, Ben Wallace elevated high to block Manu Ginobili’s driving layup attempt at the rim. Detroit then ran a pick-and-roll at the other end, with Rasheed Wallace (right) setting a bone-crunching pick on Tony Parker to free up Chauncey Billups for a drive to the basket. Billups’ shot rimmed out but Rasheed slipped in for a killer put-back that silenced the SBC Center crowd and forced Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to signal for a timeout. San Antonio would never get closer the rest of the way. It was one of several clutch plays down the stretch by Rasheed, who bounced back nicely from his Game 5 screw-up to help Detroit keep alive its season.

In game 7 we’ll probably see him crack under pressure, but it’s going to be a fun game.

This is downright sickening:

TOPOCK, Ariz. — In the Mojave Desert, just west of the California-Arizona border, an ancient pattern of lines inscribed on the desert floor marks out the pathway to heaven for a small group of American Indians.

Once covering 50 acres, the so-called Topock Maze is held sacred by the Fort Mojave tribe as a place of final atonement, the destination of a soul’s lifetime journey along the Colorado River from Spirit Mountain, 40 miles to the north in Nevada.

These days, however, tribe members say that modern civilization — in the form of a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. water treatment plant — is blocking their road to the afterlife. The tribe claims that the plant, completed but not yet operating, is close enough to a surviving portion of the maze to disrupt their spiritual journeys. It is suing the utility and state regulators in an effort to have the facility torn down or moved.

It’s revenge for the smallpox.

And on another front, we see the same sort of squirreliness:

When a science museum is loath to show an IMAX film because it refers to evolution, we need to ponder the role of religion in our society.

“Volcanoes of the Deep Sea” has been rejected by some IMAX theaters in the South out of fear that it might offend people with fundamental religious beliefs, The Associated Press reported.

“If it’s not going to sell, we’re not going to take it,” said Lisa Buzzelli, director of an IMAX theater in Charleston. “Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution.

How do we defeat religiously-motivated terrorists when we have this sort of crap in our own backyards?

Fortunately, the NBA owners and union made a deal and averted a strike:

NEW YORK (AP) — NEW YORK (AP) — A one-year increase in the minimum age to be eligible to play in the NBA was part of a new six-year collective bargaining tentatively agreed to Tuesday by owners and players, averting the possibility of a lockout.

Why is it that strikes are the only things that ever get “averted” anyway? Meanwhile, the Spurs have a chance to seal the championship tonight, thanks to some superhuman play by Big Shot Bob Horry in game 5, capped by a three-pointer with seconds to go in overtime.

BSB saved Tim Duncan’s bacon because the star was struggling on his rickety ankles in the OT. I think the Spurs will win tonight, but if the Pistons can avert elimination all bets are off for game 7. It seems like I should have predicted this to be a 6 game series but I don’t think I ever got around to it.

Game Four was another blowout, this one by 31 pts. The Spurs are in big trouble even though the series is now best of three and they have home court advantage:

Once again, it was a double-digit victory — the series’ fourth in as many games. The difference this time was the degree of dominance shown by the Pistons, a mix of suffocating defense and varied offense that left the Spurs completely befuddled.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told his team at halftime that they had played the worst half of basketball he’d ever seen by an NBA playoff team.

The longer last night’s game progressed, the further behind the Spurs fell. It was as if the Pistons were doing voodoo on our heroes. Let’s hope they find some offense in game five or the return to SA is going to suck.

As we’ve said before, one of the keys to this series – perhaps the biggest – is Rasheed Wallace’s head. He’s capable of shot-blocks, steals, assists, and three-pointers when his head is right. But just a little frustration and he melts down like Dick Durbin. He’s been together the last couple games, and you see the results. Popvich needs to figure out how to press Rasheed’s meltdown switch. San Antonio’s lack of a real point guard was plenty apparent last night as well, even with Udrih in the game.

OK, the Pistons had a good game for a change:

The defending champions summoned the spirit and spunk that had been missing in the first two games of the NBA Finals, changing the complexion of the series in a way many thought impossible.

Spunk not withstanding, Ben Wallace played way over his head last night, and he can’t maintain the pace for another three games.

But isn’t it odd that Miami star Dwayne Wade was seriously injured in the Heat’s playoff series with Detroit, and so was Spurs star Manu Ginobili? Just a coincidence, of course, nobody would accuse the Pistons of being a bunch of thugs.

This is what Detroit hopes to avoid:

The only defending NBA champions who were swept in the Finals the following season are the 1983 and 1989 Lakers.

I’d like to see a Spurs sweep because they didn’t chicken out on the Olympics like the Pistons did. Those big, strong guys were afraid of terrorists, unlike the little girls on the gymnastics team who went. Yeah, their coach was there but so was Popovich.

Go Spurs!

This is for all you muesli-eating Guardian readers:

The author of Wild Swans and her historian husband, Jon Halliday, have torn away the many masks and falsehoods with which Mao and the Communist party of China to this day have hidden the true picture of Mao the man and Mao the ruler. Mao now stands revealed as one of the greatest monsters of the 20th century alongside Hitler and Stalin. Indeed, in terms of sheer numbers of deaths for which he responsible, Mao, with some 70 million, exceeded both.

Far from being the first Chinese communist leader to stand up for the Chinese peasantry and to respond to their needs and lead them out of exploitation, Mao is exposed as a man who disdained the peasants, despite his protestations to the contrary. He is shown during his command of armed forces in the countryside in the late 1920s and early 30s to have lived off the produce of the local peasants to the extent of leaving them destitute. He consciously used terror as a means to enforce his will on the party and on the people who came under his rule. In the course of the Long March, Mao is shown to have had no qualms in sacrificing thousands of scarce fighting men in fruitless diversions to serve no other purpose than to advance his bid for leadership.

His callous disregard for the lives of comrades and fellow Chinese became more evident once he commanded the larger stage of China itself. Against the advice of his commanders on the ground, Mao persisted in prolonging the Korean war in the expectation of tying down hundreds of thousands of American troops, regardless of the disproportionate sacrifice of far greater Chinese casualties. The livelihood of China’s peasants was tightly squeezed through most of Mao’s rule, not simply to meet the needs of industry and the urban population, but also to pay the Soviet Union and the east Europeans for the development of advanced weapons – especially for the development of nuclear weapons.

More people need to know this.

What does it mean when a Brit says something is “fixed?” Mark Memmott speculates:

MARK MEMMOTT: Britain and the United States are separated by a common language, I think is the cliché. To someone in Britain, it’s possible that that phrase, fixed around, could mean attached to or bolted on, not necessarily skewed. It’s possible that that phrase, fixed around, could also mean, well they selectively take good intelligence, and that’s what they emphasize, to build their case. So that’s where the argument comes down to why it’s so important to find out exactly what the person who wrote that meant.

Like we said.

Now the interesting thing about this bad intelligence is this: we count on the CIA to tell the administration what goes on in the world, but we’ve been systematically castrating it since the Carter administration, when we feared it was too powerful and too effective (remember Allende, allegedly deposed by 200 CIA agents?)

Now that we need a serious, bad-ass intelligence service we have a bunch of boy scouts afraid to step on multicultural toes. You try running a country with intelligence agencies feeding you bullshit.

Somebody needs to take a little responsibility for that.

A stopped clock is right twice a day, and even big fat lying liar Al Franken occasionally has a guest worth taking seriously. Larry Diamond is a former CPA adviser in Iraq who’s written on the Administration’s blunders in post-liberation Iraq. Mainly these come down to: 1) Not enough troops to secure order; 2) Disbanding the Iraqi army; and 3) Massive de-Baathification. His essays and books are worth reading because he was there and he saw the screw-ups.

Diamond’s analysis highlights another of our problems in America: we don’t have a serious opposition party. They’re still carrying on about Bush’s chimpiness, the WMDs, and Abu Ghraib instead of dealing with serious issues such as the nation-building task in Iraq. As long as the Democrats are out to lunch, the Republicans get a free pass, and that’s wrong.

The call for a timetable for troop withdrawal isn’t a serious piece of work, it’s just posturing. The Congress should be pushing for achievement of the milestones that will enable us to withdraw.

The main thing we need to do now is get the job done:

Like many CPA officials, I found many Iraqis to have a deep ambition to live in a decent, democratic, and free society and found them prepared to do the hard work that building a democracy will require. Above all else, Iraqis want security: they want to be free from the terror that disfigured their lives under Saddam and that has continued, in a different form, since the war. But most favor achieving this security through democratic means, not under some “benevolent” strongman.

Because of the failures and shortcomings of the occupation-as well as the intrinsic difficulties that any occupation following Saddam’s tyranny was bound to confront-it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq. The post-handover transition is going to be long, and initially very bloody…

The transition in Iraq is going to need a huge amount of international assistance-political, economic, and military-for years to come. Hopefully, the U.S. performance will improve now that Iraqis are in charge of their own future. It is going to be costly and it will continue to be frustrating. Yet a large number of courageous Iraqi democrats, many with comfortable alternatives abroad, are betting their lives and their fortunes on the belief that a new and more democratic political order can be developed and sustained in Iraq. The United States owes it to them-and to itself-to continue to help them.

OK?

On the subject of Mr. Diamond, see his exchange of letters with leftist academic Tony Smith following the publication of the essay we quote above. Smith takes the standard “imperialist aggression” line and Diamond delivers a spanking.