Boom! Shake the room!

Conditions: Warm and sunny.


Obama Talks the Talk

During the week, reaction to Barack Obama's statement of effectively invading Pakistan if the leaders wouldn't let them get Bin Laden has been decidedly mixed. To those who thought he represented a different thinking model to the George Bush good ol' boy western-caricatured 'dead-or-alive' leader felt betrayed by the statement. And it is a bit galling to hear. Possibly Obama is threatened by Hillary's experience in the White House, and responds to threats about not being tough or experienced by laying down the law, so to speak. Perhaps he's trying to appeal to the lost Republicans who've given up on Bush, but aren't ready to vote for Hillary. Whatever the reasons are, he needs to stick to being down-to-earthly intelligent, and leave the pathetic tough-guy posturing to the Republicans.

So there are hard practicalities here. Can the Pakistan army occupy and subdue the vast tribal territories along the Afghan border? It has never managed to in 60 years. The army is basically Punjabi: the frontier land is alien. The best Islamabad has contrived in peaceful times is a kind of ad hoc devolution which lets the tribes govern themselves. But these aren't peaceful times. Guerrilla cum civil war is one more potential swirl in the growing chaos.

Obama, for all his experience of growing up in Indonesia, doesn't seem to comprehend how desperate and frail the situation is. Cut off funding and aid to the army? In a trice, that antagonises the only current factor for stability that exists within Pakistan and, worse, increases its radicalisation. The religious right has its sympathisers in uniform too.

Does Obama want to see a huge fighting force turn anti-American overnight? Does he want a general in the presidential palace who vows that Washington is foe not friend? Worst of all, having invaded, his marines under fire halfway up some Waziristan ravine, how does he propose to subdue the very areas that Islamabad itself has never been able to subdue? If you think the Sunni triangle is difficult, then this is simply impossible. Bombing Tehran, by contrast, would be a breeze.
- Comment from the Guardian

Missing Stuff in Iraq

Gee, does this sound familiar? Yes apparently a new government report says that about 190,000 weapons have 'gone missing' in Iraq since 2004. Have they checked the moon?

The United States has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq.
- WashingtonPost

So let me get this straight. Not only did the U.S invade the country illegally, and then essentially allow a civil war to destroy what little infrastructure was left, they've also been inadvertently supplying the terrorists with weapons as well? Gee, is there anything more the U.S can do in the region? Set some oil wells on fire 'by mistake', perhaps? Create a hole in the Ozone layer overhead maybe? Sheesh.


Back to the Future?

Here's two news articles that may answer an old question of old dogs and new tricks. First is a sobering piece by Robert Scheer that contrasts terrorists killing children in Iraq with America bombing children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WW2.

Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.

The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman's rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely by the Soviets' imminent entry into the fight.
- Truthout.org

And the next article concerns an anonymous British commander in Afghanistan who is politely asking that the American Special Forces sod off out of his area of operations in the country, because they tend to kill too many civilians.

Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans' extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.

An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.
[...]

"The Americans are killing and destroying a village just in pursuit of one person," said Mahmadullah, 24, referring to Osama bin Laden. "So now we have understood that the Americans are a curse on us, and they are here just to destroy Afghanistan. They can tell the difference between men and women, children and animals, but they are just killing everyone."
- Truthout.org

So, compare and contrast, as they said back in high school. Compare and contrast.


Galaxies Merging, Without Indicators

Four massive galaxies are colliding in the largest galactic merger ever seen, new observations reveal. The smash-up is shedding light on how the biggest galaxies in the universe form – and why many of them stopped giving birth to stars billions of years ago. - Newscientist.com

Three of the galaxies are the size of the milky way, with the fourth even bigger! That's going to need quite a few tow trucks.


No such thing as Dark Matter?

For years the idea has been that, since galaxies do not have enough matter to keep themselves together, there must be something else that we can't see that stops everything from flying apart, hence: Dark Matter. But a new study is suggesting there might another way of explaining the anomaly without to reverting to Invisible Forces.

Here's the thinking:

Newton's laws of physics explain why our solar system stays together. But the planets are negligible in the overall gravitational scheme, with the Sun being the total ruler and containing 99.86 percent of all the mass.

The same Newtonian physics were long ago applied to galaxies, and the rotation of stars couldn't be explained, so dark matter was invented to make theory work.

But a galaxy is much different than the solar system, Cooperstock explains. The conglomeration of all the matter -- stars, black holes, gas, and dust -- is collectively the source of the galactic gravity. Even a black hole at a galaxy's center typically packs less than 1 percent of the galaxy's overall mass.

The overall galaxy's gravity "feeds its own motion ... unlike the case of the solar system," Cooperstock told SPACE.com.

- Space.com

Well, it is fun to see Science once again throw down an idol. (Seriously, is Dark Matter the "religion" of Astronomers?)


And Finally






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