4th of july

Well, it's the 4th of July, observed. Better late than never.

The Declaration of Independence
The Want, Will, and Hopes of the People

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

[more]

This is worth reading. And re-reading.

12:18 PM - link

astronomy

Cassini-Huygens
Mission to Saturn and Titan

Cassini Captures the Cassini Division

I wonder if they will find any Sirens on Titan?

11:37 AM - link

the war against some terrorists

This is just so pathetic.

An Interview with Sibel Edmonds
FBI Whistleblower Talks to Antiwar.com

Sibel Edmonds began working for the FBI shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, translating top-secret documents pertaining to suspected terrorists. She was fired in the spring of 2002 after reporting her concerns about sabotage, intimidation, corruption and incompetence to superiors. She first gained wide public attention in October of that year when she appeared on 60 Minutes on CBS and charged that the FBI, State Department, and Pentagon had been infiltrated by Turkish individuals suspected of ties to terrorism. On October 18, 2002, at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft imposed a gag order on Ms. Edmonds, citing possible damage to diplomatic relations or national security. Edmonds is a key witness in a pending class-action suit filed by 9/11 families against the government. The following interview, conducted this past weekend for almost three hours by telephone, reveals sordid new details about U.S. intelligence practices. [...] SE: Well, as for Kevin – he was this poor little guy who was very nice, his only fault as a translator being that he, well, didn't speak English. CD: Really! Where was he from? How did he get that job, anyway? SE: Kevin was from Turkey. He had met an American woman there, married her, and moved to America. But his lower-elementary-school-level English was only enough to get him a job as a busboy/dishwasher in a restaurant. However, his wife worked in the languages testing center at FBI headquarters in Washington. Hers was the office that takes in the applications of aspiring translators and schedule language proficiency tests. CD: So in other words, she used her connections to get him a job in the FBI, even though he wasn't qualified? SE: Correct. There was an Arabic language supervisor in our department, who had about seven or eight family members under his wing, working away in the Arabic language section even though several of them weren't qualified, hadn't passed the proficiency test in either English or Arabic… CD: So they made a bargain? SE: Yes, he had made a deal with this woman, Kevin's wife. She had approved all of his extended family members to work for the FBI translations center, and so she then asked to do the same with her poor husband. And I can't really blame him at all, he was just a nice guy who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. But that's not likely to happen when you're working as a busboy for $6.50 an hour. [...] CD: Do you know what happened to Kevin in Guantanamo? SE: He didn't come back till mid-April [2002]. But surely while there he had heard information he wasn't able to convey properly in English. Maybe clues about 9/11, or about future terrorist attacks in the works. Or maybe information proving that some detainees had been wrongfully imprisoned. That's another thing. What if a military detainee is on trial? You have to, you simply have to double-check the translations that are being used as evidence against the detainee. After all, you might be sending someone to his death based on faulty evidence! But all too often, they just put the stamp of approval on anything that says "FBI translation," because that is supposed to indicate automatically a certain unassailable level of quality. CD: After coming back, and after the story broke proving he wasn't a qualified translator, what happened then? Did he get fired? SE: No. After all that, he is back in Washington D.C., and is the head of the Turkish department in the FBI translations center. As far as I know, he is the only Turkish-speaking translator there now. Even after all this. CD: Good God! One translator – and an incompetent one at that! Isn't that a national security liability? SE: Yes, but you have to look at it from their perspective. What if they let him go, and he starts talking about what he knows? Either way, it's about control. If they fire someone, they might either corroborate my story, or even release documents that could prove damning for the FBI … it works out to be more of a liability for them to fire someone than to keep them in the office, where they can continue to compromise our national security.

[more]

  thanks to Yolanda Flanagan

11:30 AM - link

photography

990000.com

  thanks to WitoldRiedel.com

11:19 AM - link

iraq

Iraq combat: What it's really like over there

"Well, I'm here in Iraq, and I've seen it, and done it. I've seen everything you've ever seen in a war movie. I've seen cowardice; I've seen heroism; I've seen fear; and I've seen relief. I've seen blood and brains all over the back of a vehicle, and I've seen men bleed to death surrounded by their comrades. I've seen people throw up when it's all over, and I've seen the same shell-shocked look in 35-year-old experienced sergeants as in 19-year-old privates. "I've heard the screams - 'Medic! Medic!' I've hauled dead civilians out of cars, and I've looked down at my hands and seen them covered in blood after putting some poor Iraqi civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time into a helicopter. I've seen kids with gunshot wounds, and I've seen kids who've tried to kill me. "I've seen men tell lies to save lives: 'What happened to Sergeant A.?' The reply: 'C'mon man, he's all right - he's wondering if you'll be OK - he said y'all will have a beer together when you get to Germany.' SFC A. was lying 15 feet away on the other side of the bunker with two medics over him desperately trying to get either a pulse or a breath. The man who asked after SFC A. was himself bleeding from two gut wounds and rasping as he tried to talk with a collapsed lung. One of them made it; one did not.

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Iraq's basic services worse now than before war, GAO says

In a few key areas — electricity, the judicial system and overall security — the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released yesterday.

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Karpinski joining our Hall of Fame?
by Helena Cobban

She told the BBC Radio-4's "Today" program that she met an Israeli working as an interrogator inside the prison: "I saw an individual there that I hadn't had the opportunity to meet before, and I asked him what did he do there, was he an interpreter - he was clearly from the Middle East," she said in the interview. "He said, 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here. I speak Arabic but I'm not an Arab; I'm from Israel.'"

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11:12 AM - link

fixies

My friend Blaine, who's been helping me on my stalled fixie project (it's getting close to being unstalled), has his own fixies up at Fixed Gear Gallery. I first met Blaine in the early 70s. I had been laid off from Boeing and was working as a bicycle mechanic. Blaine was one of the other mechanics in the same shop. We both rode Peugeot PX-10s, Peugot's racing model. I crashed mine during a sprint with Blaine. That's another story. We went on our separate ways and then crossed paths here on Whidbey Island years later. He lives less than a mile from Honeymoon Lake. As another example of how great minds run in the same sewers, I told him of my fixie project only to find that he was thinking of building one, too. His is done and it's based on a PX-10.

Blaine's fixie

In the mid 70s, Blaine commuted on a fixed geared bike — a 1953 Schwinn Paramount track bike. It was partially consumed in a fire. He keeps making noises of resurrecting it. I hope to see it back on the road some day.

Blaine's Schwinn fixie

Blaine also has a technological sense of humor.

Blaine's oddball fixies

This is a very good speach by one of the most important Israeli journalists. One who is not afraid to speak to power.

Monitoring Power
by Amira Haas

The official Israeli version, propagated by the political echelons around the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak of Labor, and adopted by a great part of the Israeli Jews, ran as follows: Arafat planned, initiated and orchastrated the armed conflict from the start; Arafat did not accept the generous offers of Barak at Camp David, Camp David talks reached a deadlock because of Palestinian insistence to demand the Right of Return of all Palestinian refugees; Arafat is anyway aiming at the gradual destruction of the state of Israel ; from the start of the present Intifada Palestinians resorted to using arms against the Israeli soldiers; Palestinians who were killed were killed in armed clashes between the two parties. Each such statement, which was actually accepted, if not presented, as a purely objective fact, has been contradicted and challenged by articles and reports published by Israeli papers. I well remember an article which the Israeli political sceintist, Menahem Klein, published in Haaretz. By the way he is a religious jew who teaches at Bar Ilan university, and he participated in negotiations over Jerusalem. It was a few weeks after the outbreak of the Intifada. He offered the solidly logical argument, that had Arafat really secretly plotted to eventually destroy the State of Israel, he would have accepted Barak's offers at Camp David, and proceeded from there, gradually, to his final goal. Arafat, wrote Klein, could not accept Barak's offer as a final deal, because he genuinly clinged to the two states solution, along the borders of June the 4th, 1967. An exceptionally poignant writer, is Bet Michael - another observant Jew, who has a weekly column at Yediot Aharonot, which enjoys the largest circulation in Israel. What he derives from Judaism and Jewish thought is a deeply moral logic. Sometime during the first year of the current bloodshed he commented about the military and the intelligence boasting that their assessments about Arafat and Arafat's plan to escalate the bloodshed had proven correct. If I am not mistaken, he referred directly to the present Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon. He wrote the unforgettable sentence: "He (Yaalon) did not foresee the future. He created this future". [...] Palestinian activists were interviewed by several Israeli writers. Marwan Barghuti, now in prison, was interviewed, among others, by Gideon Levi of Haaretz and Yigal Sarna of Yediot Aharonot. He - and others - reiterated their support of the two states solution, he insisted the Intifada started spontaneously. he reminded the Israelis that during the previous years Palestinans had warned over and over again that by failing to progress with withdrawls, by the continueous construction of settlements etc. Israel was pushing the Palestinians to a new revolt.

[more]

  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog

The Jewish Divide on Israel

These events reveal a stubborn political fact: that AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents, along with their powerful fellow travelers, Christian Zionists, have forged a bipartisan consensus in Washington that Middle East policy must privilege the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. In practice, this solid consensus means putting Israeli security before peace; supporting even such extreme Israeli measures as the separation wall and assassinations; and delegitimizing the Palestinian leadership. In AIPAC's view, even Bush's unambitious Middle East "road map" conceded too much to the Palestinians. Until the late 1980s, when the PLO publicly affirmed Israel's right to exist, such positions may truly have represented the vast majority of American Jews. But ever since the 1993 Oslo Accord proved that negotiations were possible, surveys have consistently found that 50 to 60 percent of American Jews favor ending the occupation and dismantling settlements in return for peace.

[more]

  thanks to Undernews

10:29 AM - link

tour de france

That July bicycle madness is back — the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong is going for an unprecedented 6th win. In a row, no less. Three stages down and 18 to go. Lance had a strong showing in the Prologue, which was an individual time trial. It shows he is still a force but there is some very serious racing between now and the finish in Paris on July 25. The early stages are flat and favor the sprinters. It isn't until the peleton hits the mountains that the leaders make themselves known. The first mountain stage won't be until Stage 10 on the 14th. Until then the sprinters play while the big boys bide their time. There will be two interesting stages before then. Tomorrow, Stage 3, will be raced on cobblestones. Lance needs to stay upright and hope that he doesn't have any equipment failures. Stage 4 will be the Team Time Trial. That will measure the strength of the teams. We will see then how Lance's team, US Postal, measures up. They usually measure pretty well.

Here are two sites and a blog for following this greatest of sporting events.

Velonews 2004 Tour de France

BBC Sport — Cycling

Tour de France 2004

Lance is currently in fourth, 18 seconds behind the leader. His main rival (at this point) is Jan Ullrich. He's in 17th place, 33 seconds behind the leader.

10:20 AM - link

american mythology

America has a dangerous self-delusion that the world should be thankful we beat Hitler. It didn't happen that way. We have a lot of delusions, as a country.

THE IMPORTANT OF GETTING HISTORY RIGHT.

Until the Normandy invasion—from June of 1941 to June of 1944—nearly the whole Nazi war machine was concentrated in the East; even two months after D-Day 2.1 million Germans were fighting the Red Army while one million opposed Allied operations in France. Ambrose devotes more space in The Good Fight to D-Day than to any other event, and he clearly sees that operation as the pivot of the war and of his narrative. In fact the turning point of the war in Europe was not at Normandy or anywhere else Americans fought but either at Stalingrad, two years before D-Day, where the Red Army eradicated some fifty divisions from the Axis order of battle, or at Kursk, nearly a year before, where the Soviets smashed the Wehrmacht's strategic tank force, breaking the Nazis' capacity for large-scale attack. Ambrose lavishes a section of The Good Fight on the U.S.-British invasion of Sicily, which drove 60,000 Germans from the island, but completely ignores Kursk—the largest battle in history, in which at least 1.5 million Soviets and Germans fought, and which occurred at exactly the same time. Neither Ambrose nor we need honor Russia's war dead as we do our own, but simple honesty demands that we acknowledge the Red Army's awesome achievement. And as much as it may make us squirm, we must admit that the struggle against Nazi Germany (which Brokaw asserted was "testimony to America's collective and individual resistance to tyranny") was primarily, as the great military historian John Erickson called it, "Stalin's war."

[more]

  thanks to Bad Attitudes

09:54 AM - link

baby art

A new high resolution ultrasound...

Ultrasound Gallery

  thanks to allied

09:40 AM - link

the temperature at which freedom burns

Farheinheit 9/11 continues to roll.

MichaelMoore.com

From Time...

The World According To Michael;
Taking aim at George W., a populist agitator makes noise, news and a newkind of political entertainment

My First Wild Week with "Fahrenheit 9/11"
by Michael Moore

Friends, Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is Bush packing? Each day this week I was given a new piece of information from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head: ** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all the people who saw "Bowling for Columbine" in 9 months. ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III’s" record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in less than a thousand theaters. ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening weekend of "Return of the Jedi." ** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to #2 on the all-time list for largest per-theater average ever for a film that opened in wide-release. How can I ever thank all of you who went to see it? These records are mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through Hollywood – and, more importantly, through the White House. But it didn't just stop there. The response to the movie then went into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on the Fox broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last Sunday to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the announcers were talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his crew to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” the night before. FOX sportscaster Chris Myers delivered Earnhardt’s review straight out of his mouth and into the heartland of America: “He said hey, it'll be a good bonding experience no matter what your political belief. It's a good thing as an American to go see.” Whoa! NASCAR fans – you can’t go deeper into George Bush territory than that! White House moving vans – START YOUR ENGINES!

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Fahrenheit 9/11 Breaks Records in Military Town

"Fahrenheit 9/11," a left-sided documentary that bashes the Bush administration's war on terrorism, wouldn't find much of an audience in a military town. Or so they thought.

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09:34 AM - link

i know I packed it in a box somewhere

Things are not quite back up to full speed here. Still wrapping up the last details of the move and trying to find which box I packed the thing that I need *right now*. At least I'm on the downhill side of the move.

09:02 AM - link