What a line-up!

MSNBC signs Michael Savage (MSNBC press release)

... talk radio phenomenon and best-selling author Michael Savage has been signed by MSNBC to host “The Savage Nation”   ...   It will feature penetrating and provocative commentary and opinion from Savage ...

... Savage is brash, passionate and smart,” said [MSNBC president Erik] Sorenson.   ...   "[It will] become destination television for those looking for compelling opinion and analysis with an edge”

The graphic above was inspired by Ted Barlow's comments about Savage.

posted by Quiddity at 2/13/2003 01:42:00 PM

Another fleecing of California:

From the Okland Tribune (06 Feb 2003):

According to AAA statistics, the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Oakland was $1.82 on Wednesday, up 14 cents from a month ago.

California is the second-most expensive place in the country to buy gasoline, after Hawaii, according to AAA statistics. The average price for regular unleaded in California on Wednesday was $1.74 a gallon. That's 20 cents above the national average of $1.54.

From the Los Angeles Times (10 Feb 2003):

... a host of special circumstances in California keep oil supplies ahead of demand by the thinnest of margins. The state's oil companies, for example, cannot rely on outside sources for gasoline because California's strict emission standards prescribe a fuel formula like no other. And that difference could be exacerbated by the state's replacement of the gasoline additive MTBE with ethanol, a transition already underway.

From the Los Angeles Times (27 Jan 2003):

Gas Prices Rise Nearly 1.5 Cents a Gallon in 2 Weeks

Contributing to the price rise was the oil production strike in Venezuela; a fear of war against Iraq; the cold weather on the East Coast, which is prompting some refiners to produce more heating oil; and the use of a costlier gasoline additive in California, said analyst Trilby Lundberg, who is based in Camarillo.

California is phasing out the use of methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, an additive that is blamed for polluting drinking water. Some refineries are replacing it with ethanol, which is more expensive ...

From CBS News (12 Jun 2001):

The Bush administration said Tuesday that California must continue to use ethanol or other gasoline additives to protect air quality. The Environmental Protection Agency rejected state arguments that an additive isn't needed and will increase fuel costs.

... the oil industry and California air pollution control officials maintain that refiners can produce blends of gasoline without using an oxygenate and still meet the state's stringent air pollution requirements. William Rukeyser, a spokesman for the California Environmental Protection Agency, said state officials are convinced ethanol-free gasoline will not jeopardize air quality.

posted by Quiddity at 2/13/2003 10:19:00 AM

Lucky Ducky!

Once again, Ruben Bolling comes up with a great cartoon about our favorite low-income fellow.

• Episode 4 (and this week, a related Troubletown cartoon)
• Episode 3
• Episode 2
• Episode 1

posted by Quiddity at 2/12/2003 10:15:00 PM

It's all in how you select the material:

Eric Alterman writes:

Speaking of blinkered editors, Michael Kelly, who managed to outdo Andy as TNR’s worst editor ever, is now competing for the hard-to-win title of worst Washington Post columnist ever. In this column, he takes Paul Berman’s brilliant 25,000-word-essay-that-should-be-a-book about German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and shamelessly manipulates it into implying exactly the opposite of Berman’s nuanced and complex article. Robert Novak, call your office. (By the way, the Berman piece is one of the single greatest works of journalism to appear anywhere in the past decade. Offhand, I can’t think of a better one. Set aside some time to read it if the topic even remotely interests you.)

We agree with Alterman that the TNR article was fascinating. It covered the variety of positions and changes that have taken place within Europe's New Left over the last 35 years. The overall message of the article was that Fischer had witnessed the extreme left's violence, turned away from it, developed a deeper respect for human rights, and as a result was inclined (as a Green!) to use military force in places where necessary (e.g. Kosovo). But you wouldn't get that from Kelly's essay. Kelly cherry-picks entries and ignores other facts in order to present Fischer as a (nearly) unrepentant radical leftist. Kelly's entire essay is in the left column below, and excerpts from the New Republic article are in the right column.

From the Washington Post Op-Ed by Michael Kelly	From the New Republic article by Paul Berman
Mr. Rumsfeld may have convinced the leaders of 18 European nations, but not you, Mr. Fischer. It's personal. This seems to me the right way to look at it. The question of failing to convince must be seen in the context of whom we have failed to convince. Sometimes "who" explains "why."
Mr. Fischer, who are you? You are the foreign minister of Germany. You have been that since 1998, when Germany's left-wing Greens party, of which you are a leader, won enough in the polls to force the Social Democratic Party into the so-called Red-Greens coalition government.
But for the formative years of your political life, you were no man in a blue government suit. You were a man in a black motorcycle helmet. That is what you were wearing on that day in April 1973 when you were photographed, to quote the New Left historian Paul Berman, "as a young bully in a street battle in Frankfurt."
In 2001, Stern magazine published five photographs of you in action that day. What these pictures depicted was described by Berman in a deeply informed 25,000-word article, "The Passion of Joschka Fischer" (The New Republic, Sept. 3, 2001). The photos showed you, Mr. Fischer, inflicting a "gruesome beating" on a young policeman named Rainer Marx: "Fischer and other people on the attack, the white-helmeted cop going into a crouch; Fischer's black-gloved fist raised as if to punch the crouching cop on the back; Fischer's comrades crowding around; the cop huddled on the ground, Fischer and his comrades appearing to kick him . . ."	German newspapers began to fill with dispatches from middle-aged worthies from the business world and the learned professions who confessed that they, too, had waged the revolution back in the years around 1968, and then had grown up and had sanded down the sharp edge of their views, just as Fischer had done, and Germany's foreign minister ought not to be persecuted for what happened long ago. ... The most amazing vote of support came from Fischer's own victim, the white-helmeted policeman in the photographs from 1973, whose name turned out to be Rainer Marx. Fischer telephoned Marx to apologize for the gruesome beating in the Frankfurt parking lot, and Marx found admiring words to say about Fischer's conduct of foreign policy.
As Berman reported, Mr. Fischer, you rose in public life as an important figure in the anti-American, anti-liberal, neo-Marxist, revolution-minded German radical left of the generation of 1968. This was the left that produced and supported the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Red Army Faction), which, as Berman wrote, "refrained from nothing," including "kidnappings, bank holdups, murders." You were not a terrorist yourself, but you were a good and active friend to terrorists, weren't you, Mr. Fischer?	... the New Left was never especially powerful in the Federal Republic of Germany as a whole ... But in the universities and the counter-cultural districts in Frankfurt and Berlin and a few other places, [the Baader-Meinhof Gang] drew on the active and even enthusiastic support of a not-so-small number of people, plus the passive support of far larger numbers, the leftists who would never have endorsed a program of violence and who wanted nothing to do with murders, but who would have said that, even so, the Red Army Fraction did have reason to despise German bourgeois society, and Marxist revolution was an excellent idea, and state repression posed a greater threat to society than any guerrilla resistance from the left. And shouldn't we progressives and reasonable leftists worry chiefly about civil liberties? And so forth: the many arguments and apologetics that people offer in circumstances when, out of confusion and moral timidity, they are too frightened to applaud the murders and the kidnappings, and too frightened to condemn them.
In 1976, to protest the death in prison of Baader-Meinhof founder Ulrike Meinhof, you planned and participated in a Frankfurt demonstration in which, Berman wrote, "somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail at a policeman and burned him nearly to death." You were arrested but not charged. In 2001, Meinhof's daughter, Bettina Rohl (who gave those damning photos to Stern) told the press that you were responsible for the throwing of that firebomb. Other contemporary witnesses, Berman reported, said that you "had never ruled out the use of Molotovs and may even have favored it." You denied it, for the record.	No one came up with any sort of indisputable confirmation. But Fischer was obliged to rise from his seat once again and, in his dignity as foreign minister, deny all connection to a very ugly event from long ago ("Definitiv nein!" he told Stern) ... [I went to the website for] fans of the Baader-Meinhof Gang ... and was interested to read about the curious case of Horst Mahler ... one of the founders of the group back in 1970. [H]is view, as reported on the website, right-wing and left-wing counted for nothing as far as the behavior of Meinhof's daughter. The real animus against Fischer bubbled up instead from a daughter's anger at her inadequate mother, the prison martyr. Or else, as was more widely said, Röhl's anger at Fischer derived from a still vaguer resentment against the entire era of 1968 ... For what was 1968 to Bettina Röhl? It was the era that had deprived her of a childhood.
In 2001 the German government put on trial your old friend Hans-Joachim Klein, who had been an underground "soldier" in the Revolutionary Cells, an ally of the Red Army Faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Revolutionary Cells helped in the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, and Klein himself took part in a 1975 joint assassination operation with Carlos the Jackal in which three were killed.	Fischer was called to testify, not in his capacity as foreign minister but as a private citizen. He was asked about his relationship to Klein back in New Left times. Fischer explained that in those days he tried to talk Klein out of joining the terrorists.
During your testimony at Klein's trial, you were accused of having harbored Red Army Faction members in your Revolutionary Struggle house, the Frankfurt center for the group Revolutionary Struggle, which you co-founded with housemate Daniel "Danny the Red" Cohn-Bendit. You were forced to admit there was some truth in the accusation after it was revealed, as Berman reported, that Margrit Schiller, "who had served jail time for her connections to the Red Army Faction," had in her memoirs "plainly stated that she had spent a 'few days' in the early 1970s living in the Revolutionary Struggle house."	The [revelation of visitors to the house] did not seem especially damning. All kinds of visitors were always traipsing through the house in Frankfurt. Abbie Hoffman was there; Jerry Rubin came to visit. Who could remember every last person who had ever stopped by? [Cohn-Bendit's] hair was flaming red in those days, and he was witty and impish, and he became known as Danny the Red.
(After your testimony, you shook hands with your old terrorist friend Klein. Sweet.)	And when Fischer had finished making his statement, he walked over to Klein in his defendant's chair and shook the man's hand. The handshake seemed innocent enough, given that, as Fischer had just testified, Klein was an old friend, and the old friend had long ago denounced his own crimes and was now about to expiate them.
In 1969, you attended the meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization in which the PLO resolved that its ultimate aim was the extinction of Israel -- that is to say, the extinction or expulsion of the Jews of Israel. Seven years later, Revolutionary Cells terrorists led by your Frankfurt colleague, Wilfried Boese, hijacked an Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda. The hijackers intended to murder all the Jewish passengers on that flight but were killed by Israeli commandos. "Suddenly," Berman wrote, "the implication of anti-Zionism struck home to [Fischer]. What did it mean that, back in Algiers in 1969, the PLO, with the young Fischer in attendance, had voted the Zionist entity into extinction? Now he knew what it meant."	Now he knew what it meant. Fischer seems never to have gotten over the shock of Entebbe. Even in the early weeks of 2001, at the height of the scandal provoked by the photographs in Stern, the memory of the Air France hijacking came back to haunt him. He spoke to a reporter from that same magazine and cited the hijacking and especially the "selection" of Jews as part of his Desillusionierung with the violent left. A few months later, in his capacity as foreign minister of Germany, he happened to be in Israel at the very moment when a terrorist blew up a Tel Aviv disco; he was close enough to hear the blast. It was Fischer, more than any other foreign minister or religious leader or world figure of any sort, who took it upon himself to confront Arafat in person, who (so it has been reported) berated Arafat ferociously and even forced him into declaring some sort of a cease-fire. The erstwhile militant for the PLO, now militant against Palestinian terror.
So, that's who you are, Mr. Fischer, the man we haven't convinced. You are the man for whom Munich wasn't enough, the man who needed Entebbe to convince him that murdering Jews was wrong. You ask to be excused. You have been excused.

NOTE: We think that some issues, such as the Molotov coctail incident, are subject to debate. Fischer was in close proximity with the radicals back then. But the fact remains that Kelly didn't present a complete picture of the man. He ignores the 2nd half of the TNR article, which covers Fischer's struggles within the Green party and the "liberal case for intervention". And as we show in the table above, Kelly paints a portrait quite different from that by Paul Berman.

posted by Quiddity at 2/12/2003 07:49:00 PM

Dig trenches and pray:

Here is an outline version of bin Laden's most recent pronouncement (from the BBC):

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq, may God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you. O you who believe fear Allah, by doing all that He has ordered and by abstaining from all that He has forbidden as He should be feared. Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam [as Muslims] with complete submission to Allah.

We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders' preparations for

• war to occupy a former capital of Islam,
• loot Muslims' wealth,
• and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments.
• This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel.

Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs. Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values:

First, showing good intentions. This means fighting should be for the sake of the one God. It should not be for championing ethnic groups, or for championing the non-Islamic regimes in all Arab countries, including Iraq. God Almighty says: "Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil." So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan. Second, we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad. God Almighty says: "Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly." We must rush to seek God Almighty's forgiveness from sins, particularly the grave sins. Prophet Muhammad, God's peace be upon him, said: "Avoid the seven grave sins; polytheism, sorcery, killing, unless permitted by God, usury, taking the money of orphans, fleeing from combat, and slandering innocent faithful women." Also, all grave sins, such as consuming alcohol, committing adultery, disobeying parents, and committing perjury. We must obey God in general, and should in particular mention the name of God more before combat. Abu-al-Darda, may God be pleased with him, said: "Perform a good deed before an attack, because you are fighting with your deeds."

Third, we realized from our defence and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat,

• they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have.
• They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers.
• Those soldiers are completely convinced of the injustice and lying of their government. They also lack a fair cause to defend. They only fight for capitalists, usury takers, and the merchants of arms and oil, including the gang of crime at the White House.
• This is in addition to crusader and personal grudges by Bush the father.

We also realized that one of the most effective and available methods of rendering the air force of the crusader enemy ineffective is by setting up roofed and disguised trenches in large numbers.

I had referred to that in a previous statement during the Tora Bora battle last year. In that great battle, faith triumphed over all the materialistic forces of the people of evil, for principles were adhered to, thanks to God Almighty. I will narrate to you part of that great battle, to show how cowardly they are on the one hand, and how effective trenches are in exhausting them on the other.

We were about 300 mujahideen [Islamic militants].We dug 100 trenches that were spread in an area that does not exceed one square mile, one trench for every three brothers, so as to avoid the huge human losses resulting from the bombardment. Since the first hour of the US campaign on 20 Rajab 1422, corresponding to 7 October 2001, our centres were exposed to a concentrated bombardment. And this bombardment continued until mid-Ramadan. On 17 Ramadan, a very fierce bombardment began, particularly after the US command was certain that some of al-Qaeda leaders were still in Tora Bora, including the humble servant to God [referring to himself] and the brother mujahid Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri. The bombardment was round-the-clock and the warplanes continued to fly over us day and night. The US Pentagon, together with its allies, worked full time on blowing up and destroying this small spot, as well as on removing it entirely. Planes poured their lava on us, particularly after accomplishing their main missions in Afghanistan. The US forces attacked us with smart bombs, bombs that weigh thousands of pounds, cluster bombs, and bunker busters. Bombers, like the B-52, used to fly over head for more than two hours and drop between 20 to 30 bombs at a time. The modified C-130 aircraft kept carpet-bombing us at night, using modern types of bombs. The US forces dared not break into our positions, despite the unprecedented massive bombing and terrible propaganda targeting this completely besieged small area. This is in addition to the forces of hypocrites, whom they prodded to fight us for 15 days non-stop. Every time the latter attacked us, we forced them out of our area carrying their dead and wounded. Is there any clearer evidence of their cowardice, fear, and lies regarding their legends about their alleged power. To sum it up, the battle resulted in the complete failure of the international alliance of evil, with all its forces, [to overcome] a small number of mujahideen - 300 mujahideen hunkered down in trenches spread over an area of one square mile under a temperature of -10 degrees Celsius. The battle resulted in the injury of 6% of personnel - we hope God will accept them as martyrs - and the damage of two percent of the trenches, praise be to God. If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world? This is impossible, God willing, if people adhere to their religion and insist on jihad for its sake.

O mujahideen brothers in Iraq,

do not be afraid of what the United States is propagating in terms of their lies about their power and their smart, laser-guided missiles. The smart bombs will have no effect worth mentioning in the hills and in the trenches, on plains, and in forests. They must have apparent targets. The well-camouflaged trenches and targets will not be reached by either the smart or the stupid missiles. There will only be haphazard strikes that dissipate the enemy ammunition and waste its money. Dig many trenches. The [early Muslim caliph] Umar, may God be pleased with him, stated: "Take the ground as a shield because this will ensure the exhaustion of all the stored enemy missiles within months." Their daily production is too little and can be dealt with, God willing. We also recommend luring the enemy forces into a protracted, close, and exhausting fight, using the camouflaged defensive positions in plains, farms, mountains, and cities. The enemy fears city and street wars most, a war in which the enemy expects grave human losses. We stress the importance of the martyrdom operations against the enemy - operations that inflicted harm on the United States and Israel that have been unprecedented in their history, thanks to Almighty God. We also point out that whoever supported the United States, including the hypocrites of Iraq or the rulers of Arab countries, those who approved their actions and followed them in this crusade war by fighting with them or providing bases and administrative support, or any form of support, even by words, to kill the Muslims in Iraq, should know that they are apostates and outside the community of Muslims. It is permissible to spill their blood and take their property. God says: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other." And he amongst you that turns to them [for friendship] is of them. Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust. We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States. They should also do so to establish the rule of God on earth. The most qualified regions for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the land of the two holy mosques [Saudi Arabia], and Yemen.

Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam. Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam,

Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons. This is a prescribed duty. God says: "[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush."

Fighting in support of the non-Islamic banners is forbidden. Muslims' doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God's sake.

1. Under these circumstances, there will be no harm if the interests of Muslims converge with the interests of the socialists in the fight against the crusaders, despite our belief in the infidelity of socialists.
2. The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago.
3. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden.

The fighting, which is waging and which will be waged these days, is very much like the fighting of Muslims against the Byzantine in the past.

And the convergence of interests is not detrimental. The Muslims' fighting against the Byzantine converged with the interests of the Persians. And this was not detrimental to the companions of the prophet. Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumours, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement. The prophet said: "Bring good omens and do not discourage people." He also said: "The voice of Abu-Talhah [one of the prophet's companions] in the army is better than 100 men." During the Al-Yarmuk Battle, a man told Khalid bin-al-Walid [an Islamic commander]: "The Byzantine soldiers are too many and the Muslims are few." So, Khalid told him: "Shame on you. Armies do not triumph with large numbers but are defeated if the spirit of defeatism prevails." Keep this saying before your eyes: "It is not fitting for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war until he hath thoroughly subdued the land." "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks." Your wish to the crusaders should be as came in this verse of poetry: "The only language between you and us is the sword that will strike your necks."

In the end, I advise myself and you to

• fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience.
• I also advise myself and you to say more prayers. O ye who believe! When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper.

God, who sent the book unto the prophet, who drives the clouds, and who defeated the enemy parties, defeat them and make us victorious over them. Our Lord! Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire! [Koranic verse]. May God's peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

posted by Quiddity at 2/12/2003 11:31:00 AM

A divider, not a uniter:

You can't follow the game if you don't have a program!




Wall Street Journal 8 - strongly support invasion
Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Denmark
Vilnius 10 - support U.S.
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia
Favoring invasion
Netherlands Turkey
Favor inspections
Austria, Sweden, Russia
NATO 3
France Germany Belgium

(Sources: Guardian, NYTimes, Radio Free Europe)

posted by Quiddity at 2/10/2003 04:44:00 PM

Let's take a closer look:

By now, many have read about the British Intelligence Dossier that contained material which was "lifted from magazines and academic journals". That's an interesting story, but we decided to look at the dossier and see what it had to say. Number 10 Downing Street provides a link to the full report, and there is a facts section, which allows you to read about "Iraq's network of intelligence and security" (200k pdf, 60k Word). Which we did. And then we decided to diagram the information:




The purpose of this exercise was to see how big (and bad) Hussein's domestic police is. From the looks of things, there aren't all that many people devoted to civilian control. Perhaps 20,000 in a country of 24 million. One in a thousand. (We strongly suspect that's a smaller ratio than that which prevailed in East Germany back in the Stasi days.) In any event, it may not be true that the Iraqis are wildly in favor of a regime change. Thus, the quick collapse predicted by administration hawks might not happen - and a longer, more difficult fight may be in store for U.S. troops.

posted by Quiddity at 2/09/2003 10:28:00 AM