Author Archives: the editor

Naming Names

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From the Long War Journal…..

The identity of the other handlers has not been provided, but India has accused elements within Pakistan’s intelligence service and the military of supporting the attack. The handler identified as “Major General” implies the involvement of a current or former military officer. The Inter-Service Intelligence agency is a branch of the Pakistani military. The ISI chief and Army corps commanders achieve the rank of Major General or Lieutenant General.

A senior US military intelligence official familiar with the dossier said that the “Major General” is indeed Hamid Gul, the retired former chief of the ISI. “It’s Gul,” the official told The Long War Journal. “This is why the US is trying to get him on the UN list of terrorists.” In December 2008 the US attempted to get Hamid Gul and other former military and intelligence officials added to the UN list of designated terrorists but has so far been rebuffed.

The whole post was very interesting in a sick sort of way.

The Monster Is In The Closet

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Just a reminder that life could turn into a horror story in a heart beat. From the International Herald Tribune…..

Virtually all the flu in the United States this season is resistant to the leading antiviral drug Tamiflu, and scientists and health officials are trying to figure out why.

The problem is not yet a public health crisis because this has been a below-average flu season so far and the chief strain circulating is still susceptible to other drugs — but infectious disease specialists are worried nonetheless.

Last winter, about 11 percent of the throat swabs from patients with the most common type of flu that were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for genetic typing showed a Tamiflu-resistant strain. This season, 99 percent do.

“It’s quite shocking,” said Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, director of infection control at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “We’ve never lost an antimicrobial this fast. It blew me away.”

Pakistan Is A Mess And It Is Getting Worse

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From the Wall Street Journal….

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani on Wednesday sacked the country’s national security adviser, Mahmood Durrani, for confirming that the sole surviving Mumbai attacker, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, is a Pakistani citizen.

The unexpected move exposed deep strains in the shaky civilian administration. President Asif Ali Zardari, who appointed Mr. Durrani to his post, wasn’t consulted on the decision to fire him and learned of it only after it had been made public, according to presidential aides.

A Dangerous Power

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From the Wall Street Journal….

One can spend a long time in jail in the U.S. without ever being charged with a crime.

It happened to H. Beatty Chadwick, a former Philadelphia-area lawyer, who has been behind bars for nearly 14 years without being charged.

Businessman Manuel Osete spent nearly three years in an Arizona jail without ever receiving a criminal charge. And investment manager Martin Armstrong faced a similar situation when he was held for more than six years in a Manhattan jail.

All three men were jailed for civil contempt, a murky legal concept. Some scholars say it is too often abused by judges, to the detriment of those charged and their due-process rights. “These results of too many civil-contempt confinements are flatly outrageous and often unconstitutional,” says Jayne Ressler, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

For All The Romantics Out There

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From News Day….

Stony Brook University researchers looked at the brains of Bernstein and 16 other people who had been married an average of 20 years and claimed to be still intensely in love. They found that their MRIs showed activity in the same regions of the brain as those who had just fallen in love.

“It’s always been assumed that passionate love inevitably declines over time,” said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University and one of four authors of the study, presented in November at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

“But in survey after survey we always have these people who have been together a long time and say they are intensely in love. It was always chalked up to self-deception or trying to make a good impression,” he said.

This study suggests that’s not the case, said Bianca Acevedo.

Rockets Fired At Israel From Lebanon

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Rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon. From Belmont Club….

The NYT reports that 3 rockets have been fired into Israel from the North. This raises a number of questions: is Hezbollah opening, or threatening to open a second front? Has UNIFIL been effective in preventing the reoccupation of the border towns and Hezbollah’s rearmament?

I don’t agree with the Belmount Club on this one. I think that Abu Muqawama has it right when he says……

For once, I am inclined to believe a Hizballah spokesperson. (Although this particular spokeswoman is most certainly “Madam No” herself, quite possibly the worst spokesperson in the history of spokespersons. Or speaking.)

a) I honestly do not believe that Hizballah has an interest in sparking an Israeli counter-attack (just yet) through an action of their own.

b) If this was Hizballah, I would think it would be a little more spectacular than three to four rockets.

c) This has happened before. Some rogue Palestinian group or Sunni group will manage to launch a few rockets into Israel. Hizballah will get a case of the red ass because, hey, resistance along the Blue Line is their territory — and theirs alone. And as long as the Israelis play it cool, no one else gets hurt.

Best Off Hand Slam Of The Week

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Not a regular feature but perhaps it should be. From In The Pipeline…

One of my favorite parts of the paper is the mention (found in much of the recent high-energy materials literature) that high-nitrogen compounds are worth investigated as “green” explosives, which makes me think that the whole environmental-rationale business must be reaching its end points. The notion of a more environmentally friendly way to blow things up aside, I have to salute the paper’s authors.

You have to read the whole post to really get why that is so funny. Somebody was really reaching to come up with a worthwhile justification for some really dangerous stuff.

This nation deserves to be bankrupt

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From the LA Times….

Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children’s clothing.

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger — including clothing — be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven’t been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

“They’ll all have to go to the landfill,” said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.

(H/T Rod Dreher

Erin Manning makes a good point in the comment section of Rod Dreher’s post saying….

So while only toys and child care articles might (though it’s not clear) be subject to the phthalates ban, *all* consumer products “designed or intended primarily for children 12 years of age or younger” are supposed to be subject to the mandatory third-party testing. The law is written so vaguely that some used bookstores which carry children’s books, as well as some small homeschool curricula providers, are wondering if they are also supposed to test their products before selling them–in which case, they’ll have to stop carrying materials for children under 12 or go out of business altogether.

Anything for the children, no matter what it costs. This country is insane.