I’ve finally gotten around to checking in on this thing. I arrived in LA about two weeks ago with my sanity and my car somewhat intact after an interesting 3,200+ mile trek across the country.
I don’t have phone or Internet service hooked up in my new apartment yet, so am currently limited to checking my email and reading papers and blogs at school computers. Once my computer is set up, it will be back to regular blogging.
Cheers…
I’ve finally gotten around to checking in on this thing. I arrived in LA about two weeks ago with my sanity and my car somewhat intact after an interesting 3,200+ mile trek across the country.
I don’t have phone or Internet service hooked up in my new apartment yet, so am currently limited to checking my email and reading papers and blogs at school computers. Once my computer is set up, it will be back to regular blogging.
Cheers…
After a frenzied weekend, I’m almost packed up and ready to go. The movers are coming for the furniture today and after that I’m going to relax before the long trip that begins tomorrow.
The current plan is to go to Denver and stay at my cousin’s place for a day or two, then continue on to LA to make it there in time for August 10th, which is when I’m going to move in to my new apartment. I’ve come up with four different routes to get to Denver through the Midwest or the South, I haven’t yet decided which one I’m going to take.
I don’t know what kind of Internet access I’ll have on the way, so my blogging (if any) will be very sporadic. I will be keeping a journal with detailed notes of the trip and am also bringing along a digital camera. I’ll refer back to the journal for writing the entries from each day of the trip and will upload photos as soon as I get the chance.
In the meantime, I will steal a line from Jack Bauer: “I’m going dark.”
I’ve been out of town the past few days so I have not been able to get my regular dose of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.
Stephen Colbert took the morning shows out to the woodshed and proceeded to systematically tear them apart using sarcasm alone over their handling of his “interview” with Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida).
Moral of the story: Did everyone forget Colbert’s skewering of President Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner earlier this year? If you mess with this man, you do so at your own peril, and it won’t be pretty.
I’ll be off this thing for the next couple of days while I pack up my apartment in anticipation for the big move next Monday. Once all my stuff is packed up and ready to go, if I have time I’ll sit down and do some writing before I leave town.
In the meantime, I’ve updated the playlist in the right hand column. All of the songs contain references to or are about California or Los Angeles, some good (by that I mean positive, happy, cheery, etc.), some not.
The Onion takes us through the highlights of Dan Rather’s career at CBS.
Henry Schuster has a new column this week exploring the reasons behind the popular support for Hezbollah within the Lebanese Shiite community.
Schuster sums it all up in one sentence:
People here see Hezbollah as a political movement and a social service provider as much as it is a militia that delivers the goods for its followers, in this traditionally poor and dispossessed Shiite community.
The solidarity with Hezbollah is not limited to purely religious grounds. Schuster reports that a CNN crew found Hezbollah had moved into a school in a Christian neighborhood of Beirut that was being used as a shelter by refugees and were organizing relief efforts.
The Counterterrorism Blog has an entry from its special correspondent on the ground in Beirut reporting that Hezbollah has penetrated Christian areas in Lebanon.
This is as much a failure of fulfilling basic social services by the government as it is a good PR and grassroots outreach and recruitment effort by Hezbollah. Until the Lebanese government and the international community tries to break the goodwill and long standing relationship between Hezbollah and the Lebanese Shiites by offering them other options to Hezbollah, it will continue to be business as usual even after the current crisis is over.
From Editor and Publisher:
‘Wash Post’ Error: Ran Sex Phone Number for Lebanon Evacuees
By E&P Staff
Published: July 21, 2006 12:25 AM ET
NEW YORK The Washington Post ran an article Thursday that included a phone number for evacuees in Lebanon to call — but it turned out to be a number for a sex line.
The paper corrected it online but the number already appeared in print on A19.
The Web site Wonkette first reported it. A staffer called the “800” and got, the site said, this message: “Feeling horny? Try these red hot lines from National. Live hot fun at just 69 cents per minute.”
The lesson, it said: “Americans seeking information about evacuations of US citizens in Lebanon should just relax, man.”
Photo from the Nuclear Weapon Archive.
The Washington Post has a front page story today on the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.
From the article:
Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region’s arms race.
Satellite photos of Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan’s current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.
…
The assessment’s key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.“Pakistan’s nuclear program has matured. We’re now consolidating the program with further expansions,” the official said. The expanded program includes “some civilian nuclear power and some military components,” he said.
The development raises fresh concerns about a decades-old rivalry between Pakistan and India. Both countries already possess dozens of nuclear warheads and a variety of missiles and other means for delivering them.
This is coming from the same country that was the hub of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, which sold nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
This is also a country with a social element that has strong Islamist, anti-Western sentiment bubbling under the surface. The head of state, General Pervez Musharraf, is caught in a very delicate political balancing act, where he has to try to keep the United States and its allies happy with assistance, intelligence, and cooperation in the fight against terrorism and rebuliding Afghanistan, as well as the more extreme elements of Pakistani society which have already plotted to assassinate him three times and tried it twice.
About a year ago, CNN Presents did a one hour program on the possibility of a terrorist attack involving nuclear or radiological material. One of the scenarios explored in the program as to how a terrorist organization might get the materials for an attack was through Pakistan. One worst case scenario for this would be if Musharraf is overthrown or assassinated, and a new Islamist government hostile towards the west takes power. If that happened, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would effectively be at its disposal to use against whoever it wants.
Also worth keeping in mind is the historical cultural and political tensions between India and Pakistan which have flared up from time to time. It wasn’t too long ago that Pakistan and India came very close to breaking out into a full-fledged war, and both sides had nuclear weapons stockpiles ready to go.
More recently, you had President Bush’s visit to India back in March which resulted in a landmark deal with the Indian government on its civilian nuclear program, and the train attacks in Mumbai which killed 174 people a few weeks ago, leading some to speculate whether Pakistan was involved.
Other than in the Middle East, I couldn’t think of a worse possible scenario where two opposing countries with a history of conflict that also have nuclear weapons aimed at each other and ready to fire at any moment.
The Counterterrorism Blog offers some insight into a disturbing potential development in the current violence in the Middle East, attributed to news first reported by the Jerusalem Post: that Hezbollah sleeper cells set up outside of Lebanon with backing from Iran have been placed on standby to possibly carry out terror attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets around the world.
I’m copying and pasting their analysis here, but if you want to read the relevant excerpts of the original Jerusalem Post story, head over to their site.
A word of caution: At this point, there’s no source for the claim that Hizballah cells have been put on standby. The first paragraph states that the Jerusalem Post learned this today, but leaves out any mention of who the Post learned this from. Although the second paragraph cites Shin Bet as a source, this is only for confirmation that it “instructed embassies, consulates and Jewish institutions it was responsible for abroad to raise their level of awareness” — it doesn’t state that Shin Bet told the Post that Hizballah cells were put on standby. Putting these institutions on alert seems a wise move even if there were no evidence that Hizballah cells were on standby.
Counterterrorism consultant Dan Darling comments in an e-mail to me: “I expect that Hezbollah cells, sleeper or otherwise, were put on notice that they might be called upon to carry out attacks in the event that things started to get nasty. If you’re running an international terrorist organization, this would seem to me to be a prudent move before you engage in an unprovoked cross-border raid and kidnapping that seems almost certain to spark a regional conflict. I’ve been operating under the assumption that they had cells in place to carry off attacks at least in Europe should they desire to utilize them since the conflict first started . . . .”
This story is worth following, as Hizballah’s activation of sleeper cells would substantially raise what are already large stakes.
This is not the plot to an episode of 24. This is a very real and disturbing possibility which if true, could escalate the violence even further in the hornet’s nest that is now the Middle East. Given their background and track record (see pages 8-9 of the file), and more info available here, I would not take this lightly if I were involved in any counterterrorism, intelligence, or diplomatic circles working on a solution to this crisis.
Icepicks and Nukes 