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Archives
give us this day our daily photograph
Start your morning here, Costa Mesa, California
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oil
thanks to 321energy
100 dollars a barrel here we come!
give us this day our daily photograph
Palm trees and ramp, Costa Mesa, California
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the perils of the printer
This is getting ridiculous. Don was to bring over the printer yesterday. Tuesday he emailed me that he wasn't picking up the printer until today. His sister had it in storage and they hadn't even put the ink in it. Then yesterday Don lets me know that his sister's fiancee has decided he wants to do the printing after all once he saw the printer again. And Don's sister has delusions of having her fiancee showing her how to do the printing. Neither really has the time for printing. Don's sister seems to think that you just need to load the paper in the printer, call up the file and then select print. She doesn't begin to realize the preparation that needs to be done to get the digital file ready for printing that is part of the printing process. She doesn't know what a good print looks like. Don knows what a good print looks like and knows that he coldn't run the printer. He goes over to talk to his sister Saturday. Don's not happy either. Unfortunately, Don's sister put up the money for the printer so Don has to tread lightly. It will end up here but I don't know when.
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Wednesday October 24 2007
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give us this day our daily photograph
Sunday morning at the Inka Grill, Costa Mesa, California
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How do they know what the ancient Inkas ate? Did they really have grills?
give us this day our daily photograph
Sunday morning at the DelTaco, Costa Mesa, California
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give us this day our daily photograph
San Diego Style, Costa Mesa, California
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iraq
The Real Iraq We Knew
By 12 former Army captains
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Against this backdrop, the U.S. military has been trying in vain to hold the country together. Even with "the surge," we simply do not have enough soldiers and marines to meet the professed goals of clearing areas from insurgent control, holding them securely and building sustainable institutions. Though temporary reinforcing operations in places like Fallujah, An Najaf, Tal Afar, and now Baghdad may brief well on PowerPoint presentations, in practice they just push insurgents to another spot on the map and often strengthen the insurgents' cause by harassing locals to a point of swayed allegiances. Millions of Iraqis correctly recognize these actions for what they are and vote with their feet -- moving within Iraq or leaving the country entirely. Still, our colonels and generals keep holding on to flawed concepts.
U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much "battle space," are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks -- on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.
Iraqi security forces would not be able to salvage the situation. Even if all the Iraqi military and police were properly trained, equipped and truly committed, their 346,000 personnel would be too few. As it is, Iraqi soldiers quit at will. The police are effectively controlled by militias. And, again, corruption is debilitating. U.S. tax dollars enrich self-serving generals and support the very elements that will battle each other after we're gone.
This is Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality we experienced. This is what we tried to communicate up the chain of command. This is either what did not get passed on to our civilian leadership or what our civilian leaders chose to ignore. While our generals pursue a strategy dependent on peace breaking out, the Iraqis prepare for their war -- and our servicemen and women, and their families, continue to suffer.
There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.
America, it has been five years. It's time to make a choice.
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[more]
thanks to firedoglake
book recommendation
The Siege of Mecca:
The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda
by Yaroslav Trofimov
We have gone to war to beat the shit out of Afghanis and Iraqis. How many Afghanis and Iraqis were on board those planes that flew into the World Trade Center? 0. The were mostly from Saudia Arabia. And why would that be? Is there something that our fearful leaders don't want to admit? Or are they just to stupid to know? Here is a bit of history that explains quite a bit of why there were so many Saudi Arabians. This event was a really big domino that toppled many other dominos right into the World Trade Center. From Amazon:
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Trofimov, a Wall Street Journal writer and observer of the Muslim world (Faith at War), tackles an incident unreported in the West: the violent takeover of Islam's holiest shrine by Muslim fundamentalists in 1979. Carrying out his investigations in one of the world's most closed societies, Trofimov has crafted a compelling historical narrative, blending messianic theology with righteous violence, and the Saudi state's sclerotic corruption with the complicity of the official religious institutions. Trofimov aptly points out endemic regional problems with enduring repercussions for fighting terror, but is hampered by his sensationalist style (The world was twelve months away from the tumultuous events that would cover the mosque's marble courtyard with blood, spilled guts and severed limbs). In 1979, the Saudi intelligence services apparently had no accurate blueprints of the Grand Mosque, and knew nothing of the underground labyrinth where many of the militants took shelter; they eventually received plans to the site from Osama bin Laden's older brother. Ringleader Juhayman and his followers have inspired al-Qaeda and countless other Islamic revivalist movements to ever greater acts of violence, even though they were mesmerized by their limited understanding of an obscurantist theology and were convinced that that one of their unassuming members was the Messiah. Casual readers will be well served by this introduction to Muslim fundamentalist terrorism.
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There is a really informative website to along with the book.
The Siege of Mecca
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On November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning—the first of a new Muslim century—hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam’s holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times. Led by a Saudi preacher named Juhayman al Uteybi, they believed that the Saudi royal family had become a craven servant of American infidels, and sought a return to the glory of uncompromising Islam. With nearly 100,000 worshippers trapped inside the holy compound, Mecca’s bloody siege lasted two weeks, inflaming Muslim rage against the United States and causing hundreds of deaths.
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The Siege of Mecca
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There has been such a tsunami of lies, diversions and dissembling from the Bush Administration over the years, it is baffling as to where to begin to unravel the truth.
But when it comes to the major demagogic tool of the Busheviks to stay in power and make the Democrats on the Hill cower in fear, there is nothing like the cudgel of Al-Qaeda to conquer the truth.
The truth is that Al-Qaeda is a creature born and nurtured in Saudi Arabia and by Saudi Arabians. Although the Saudi Arabian government officially is an "ally" with the Busheviks in the so-called "war on terror," the royal family,the military and the police are riddled with behind-the-scenes supporters of radical Islamists. Furthermore, the Saudi royal family has allowed the most extreme Wahhabi mullahs to spread anti-Western hate through the creation of radical schools throughout the Middle East. This buys the royal family time to stay in power by giving extremists a lot of running room to promote terrorism against the West.
The attack on Iraq was one of the biggest bait and switches of all time when it comes to dealing with Al-Qaeda. Saddam had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda; they posed a threat to his tyrannical rule in a basically secular state. Saudi Arabia has had everything to do with Al-Qaeda, including funding the small Al-Qaeda force in Iraq (less than 5% of the insurgency by most accounts; 95% of the opposition to the occupation is indigenous Iraqi.) In fact, the largest percentage of the small Al-Qaeda force in Iraq is composed of Saudi Arabian fighters, following in the path of their Saudi Arabian leader who Bush perhaps intentionally let get away, Osama bin Laden.
But "The Siege of Mecca" is not about recent events, although it is a new book, published this September.
It is about the pivotal historical event in 1979 that gave birth to the modern Al-Qaeda movement, the siege of Mecca by Islamic extremists.
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Did 'Siege of Mecca' Give Birth to Al-Qaida?
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All Things Considered, September 22, 2007 · In November 1979, gunmen in Mecca seized Islam's holiest shrine to proclaim the arrival of the Muslim messiah. It took Saudi forces, aided by French commandos, two weeks to flush the rebels out of Mecca. Author Yaroslav Trofimov argues that the way the rebellion was quashed helped spawn the birth of al-Qaida. Trofimov discusses his book with Jacki Lyden.
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Yaroslav Trofimov on the Siege of Mecca
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Fresh Air from WHYY, September 27, 2007 · A foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Yaroslav Trofimov traces the beginning of the global jihad to Nov. 20, 1979.
It was the first morning of the new Muslim century, and hundreds of fundamentalist gunmen seized Islam's holiest shrine — the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The event and its ringleaders have since inspired militants, including al-Qaida.
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Grand Mosque Seizure
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
remember afghanistan?
The War on Afghanistan Was Wrong, Too
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Another major problem with the attack on Afghanistan was the one that most U.S. presidents and, alas, most Americans, have chosen to ignore for the past several decades: that the U.S. Constitution requires the president to secure a congressional declaration of war from Congress before waging war against another country. Bush failed to do that.
Why did Bush order an invasion of Afghanistan? Not because he believed that the Taliban had conspired with al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks and not because he felt that the Taliban had committed some act of war against the United States by knowingly “harboring” a known fugitive.
Instead, Bush ordered the invasion of Afghanistan for one reason: the Taliban government refused to comply with his demand to unconditionally deliver bin Laden to the United States. He always made it clear that if the Taliban delivered bin Laden to the United States, such action would spare Afghanistan from a U.S. invasion. The “offer” that he made to the Taliban was not significantly different from that made to Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf, a close friend of the Taliban, after 9/11: play ball with us and you stay in power; refuse to do so, and you’re history.
So why did the Taliban refuse to turn over bin Laden? For one thing, there wasn’t any extradition agreement between Afghanistan and the United States. And there is a long tradition in Muslim countries to treat foreign visitors as guests. Nevertheless, the Taliban did express a willingness to deliver bin Laden over to the United States or to a third country if U.S. officials provided convincing evidence that bin Laden had, in fact, been complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Was the demand unreasonable? Well, it would be nothing more than any government, including the United States, would expect in any extradition proceeding.
Bush’s response was that U.S. officials would not furnish any such evidence to the Taliban government. The Taliban simply needed to follow U.S. orders and turn bin Laden over to the United States, with no guarantees of what would happen to him once he was in U.S. custody. That is, there were no assurances that bin Laden would be brought back to the United States for trial for terrorism in federal district court instead of being turned over to the CIA for torture and execution.
The Taliban refused to accede to Bush’s unconditional demand. The result was the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the ouster of the Taliban from power, the installation of a U.S.-approved regime, a nation ruled by regional warlords, the deaths of countless Afghanis, the failure to capture bin Laden, and an ever-growing terrorist movement generated by ever-deepening anger and hatred against the United States.
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book recommendation
Desert Queen:
The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell:
Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
by Janet Wallach
My library has a website where I can search the entire system for books and authors, put books on hold, check on due dates, etc. Very wonderful. But searching a database means that you need to know what you are looking for. The other day I was in the library with a few minutes to spare so I started searching the stacks of actual books. I was interested in a book on Lincoln but started to see what else there was in the history section. I came across this book. It's illuminating that, as we oversee the destruction of Iraq, we look at the creation of Iraq for it was Gertrude Bell that was the impetus in the creation of Iraq. A remarkable story of a remarkable woman in the age where women didn't go out in public without head covered and with a male escort. It's also another place to look for the cause and effect of history. More toppling dominos. More meddling violently in Middle Eastern affairs. From Amazon:
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To Sir Mark Sykes, the pre-WWI British Foreign Office Arabist, "that damned fool," Miss Bell, created an "uproar" wherever she went in the Middle East and was "the terror of the desert." Three social seasons were all a young lady of good family was allotted to snare a husband. Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) had thrice failed and received the consolation prize, a trip to Teheran to visit her uncle, the British envoy there. After that, she could not be kept close to the dank family manse in Northumbria but was drawn to the sun-drenched Middle East. Dominated even there by her Victorian father, head of a family-owned ironworks, she was denied permission to marry a moneyless diplomat. She refused?to her later regret?a married lover in the military and assuaged her disappointment by pressing British interests in Arab lands east of Suez, becoming in effect the maker of postwar Iraq. The first woman to earn a first-class degree in modern history at Oxford, she wrote seven influential books on the Middle East and, following WWI, was named oriental secretary to the British High Commission in Iraq. Not just another book about an eccentric lady traveler, this colorful, romantic biography tells of a woman with an inexhaustible passion for place that did not always substitute successfully for continuing heartbreak. Despite some maudlin passages, Wallach, coauthor with her husband, John Wallach, of Arafat, vividly evokes a memorable personality.
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The prose does get a little purple at times but it's well worth reading. Not only was she a king maker but whe was an archeologist and photographer. She founded the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad, which we let be looted. She also took photos of her travels which are on the web along with her writings.
The Gertrude Bell Project
Men, horses and mules crossing desert water course
Near El Muwaqqar - Jordan
February 1900
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Gertrude Bell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gertrude Bell, a Masterful Spy and Diplomat
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The extraordinary British diplomat and spy Gertrude Bell was buried 80 years ago today. After World War I, she was almost single-handedly responsible for the founding of modern Iraq, where her grave is still located.
Bell was the first woman to graduate with a history degree from Oxford and became one of the country's leading Arabists. She rode camels with the Bedouin in the Arabian desert and dined on sheep's eyes with tribal sheikhs.
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israel/palestine
Rice-Olmert-Abbas: End of the Affair
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A few months ago I noted that the Bush Administration’s claims to be pursuing a Middle East peace process was equivalent to The Emperor’s New Clothes fairy tale except for one important detail: “In the fairy tale, the emperor’s courtiers are careful never to let on that they can see their monarch’s nakedness; in the case of U.S. Middle East policy, there is what playwright Bertolt Brecht might have called an epic gap between some of the actors and their lines. Plainly, very few of them believe the things that the script requires them to say. In this absurdist take on the old fairytale, whenever anyone points out that the emperor has no clothes, they are simply told ‘duh!’ before the players get back acting as if it’s fashion week in the palace.”
None of that has changed, of course, but now Bush has gone and spoiled it by declaring his intention to host a Grand Ball in Annapolis this coming November, at which he’s expecting Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his pet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, as well as the Arab regimes most dependent on Washington not only to show up and dance under ministrations of his naked eminence, but also to strip down to their own birthday suits. And it is in prospect of this grotesque spectacle that the illusion begins to break down: Pretending that Bush is fully clothed and serious about Middle East peace as he scoots naked around the White House is one thing; the pretense of sartorial substance cannot be sustained at the naked grand ball that Condi Rice is currently organizing — Condi’s apparently bottomless capacity for self-delusion notwithstanding. (In Russia last week she was shocked and offended at the suggestion by a liberal anti-Putin dissident that the U.S. had lost the moral high ground — no we haven’t, she insisted…)
Earlier this year, motivated more by its designs on aggression against Iran than anything else, the Administration appeared to convince itself — and no one but itself — that Hamas’s ejection of Fatah security forces from Gaza earlier this year created an “opportunity” for a process that would achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians at the same time as isolating the likes of Hamas, Hizballah, Syria and Iran.
So Rice began forcing a Palestinian leader representative of only a minority of Palestinians to begin holding weekly meetings with an Israeli prime minister who enjoys the approval of no more than one in five Israelis, to build “confidence” in each other’s ability to make peace. Olmert and Abbas, each politically dependent on his relationship with the U.S., had no choice but to go through the motions. At the same time, the U.S. worked to convince Arab regimes that their support was needed for these parties to make a deal, at a peace conference originally intended to be held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September, then moved back to November in Annapolis, and now, we are told, likely to be delayed still further until the Israelis and Palestinians can agree on a joint statement. That may not happen, of course, and so, too, any meaningful peace conference.
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The Open Secret About the Israel Lobby
Follow the Leader
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There is an open secret in Washington. I learned it well during my 22-year tenure as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. All members swear to serve the interests of the United States, but there is an unwritten and overwhelming exception: The interests of one small foreign country almost always trump U.S. interests. That nation of course is Israel.
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book recommendation
Napoleon's Egypt:
Invading the Middle East
by Juan Cole
We tend to view world events out of context. 9/11, for example. Our leaders would like us to believe that the hijackers woke up one morning suddenly hating freedom and decided to attack the country with the most of this despicable attribute. But history is not made up of disconnected events. It's a continuum. Here is Gordy's First Law of History: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. (With thanks to the Newton dude.) Kind of like toppling dominos. Which toppled domino caused 9/11?; which toppled domino caused the toppled domino that caused 9/11?; which topppled domino...you get the idea. Here is an early toppled domino. The first European invasion of the Middle East in July, 1798, by Napolean. Yes, we whiteys have been fucking up the Middle East for over 209 years. But who's counting? The western Chrisitian world certainly isn't. But rest assured, the Middle East is. This account is by Juan Cole who has one of the best blogs on events in the Middle East: Informed Comment. From Amazon:
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In July 1798, Napoleon landed an expeditionary force at Alexandria in Egypt, the opening move in a scheme to acquire a new colony for France, administer a sharp rebuff to England and export the values of French republicanism to a remade Middle East. Cole, a historian of the Middle East at the University of Michigan, traces the first seven months of Napoleon's adventure in Egypt. Relying extensively on firsthand sources for this account of the invasion's early months, Cole focuses on the ideas and belief systems of the French invaders and the Muslims of Egypt. Cole portrays the French as deeply ignorant of cultural and religious Islam. Claiming an intent to transplant liberty to Egypt, the French rapidly descended to the same barbarism and repression of the Ottomans they sought to replace. Islamic Egypt, divided by class and ethnic rivalries, offered little resistance to the initial French incursion. Over time, however, the Egyptians produced an insurgency that, while it couldn't hope to win pitched battles, did erode French domination and French morale. Perplexingly, Cole ends his account in early February 1799, with Napoleon still in control of Egypt but facing increasingly effective opposition. Napoleon's attack on Syria is only mentioned, not detailed, and his return to Cairo and eventual flight to France are omitted altogether. In a brief epilogue, Cole makes an explicit comparison between Napoleon's adventure in Egypt and the current American occupation of Iraq. Though at times episodic and disorganized, this doesn't detract from the value of Cole's well-researched contribution to Middle Eastern history.
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Juan Cole had a very informative blog in support of his book.
Napoleon's Egypt
photography
A story without words in 58 photographs
[more]
thanks to The Online Photographer
oil
In case no one noticed, Oil went over $90 a barrel last week. It's fallen since but I think we can be assured that is only temporary. Here is a good place to track this.
321energy
Soaring oil prices have yet to derail economy
Surge in crude so far has had limited impact at pump, wallet levels
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With oil prices touching new highs above $88 a barrel Tuesday, the financial markets and the economy seem to be largely unfazed — at least so far. And despite the rapid run-up in the cost of crude from about $60 just two months ago, motorists have been watching pump prices fall. What’s going on here?
The question is all the more puzzling because, while strong demand and limited production have kept oil supplies tight for much of the decade, current inventories appear to be adequate to keep the market supplied. U.S. inventories have been falling recently but remain above the five-year average level for this time of year.
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photo gear
I finished the light tents and did some shooting with them. Here they are disassembled.
I made some foamcore gobos to replace the cardboard.
This is the large light tent. I need to glue some black fabric on one side of the foamcore for when I don't want them to be relflectors. I have details at this Flickr set: PVC light tent.
Flickr is great for doing explanation sets. Being able to add notes to the photo is great.
And good news on the printer front. Wednesday I pick up the Epson 3800. Whoo hoo!
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