Crude oil climbed above $82 a barrel to a record in New York after the Federal Reserve reduced U.S. interest rates more than economists expected.
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Israeli Strike hits North Korean concrete shipment.
A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel’s recent air strike on Syria.
An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as “cement” on Sept 3.
This was three days before Israeli jets attacked a site in the north eastern desert of Syria, not far from its border with Iraq.
North Korea is famous for its exports of concrete.
In other news, I think Israel has taken a step up with their new defenses minister Ehud Barak. He made some calls when he was a prime minister that might seem questionable to conservative types. But his decisions as defense minister are at least understandable. That is more then you can say for his predecessor.
As an example, read this article in The Times….
Early in the summer Ehud Barak, the defence minister, had given the order to double Israeli forces on its Golan Heights border with Syria in anticipation of possible retaliation by Damascus in the event of air strikes.
Sergei Kirpichenko, the Russian ambassador to Syria, warned President Bashar al-Assad last month that Israel was planning an attack, but suggested the target was the Golan Heights.
Israeli military intelligence sources claim Syrian special forces moved towards the Israeli outpost of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights. Tension rose, but nobody knew why.
At this point, Barak feared events could spiral out of control. The decision was taken to reduce the number of Israeli troops on the Golan Heights and tell Damascus the tension was over. Syria relaxed its guard shortly before the Israeli Defense Forces struck.
That is an exercise in deception that you would expect from a guy who dressed as a woman in order to assassinate people in downtown Beirut while it was controlled by PLO.
You could argue he should have kept the troops on the border just in case. But I can understand not wanting to do anything to jeopardize the air strike if it was really a nuclear target. Israel can handled Syrian conventional forces in almost any conceivable situation. But if you flub an attack on a weapon of mass destruction, you might not get a second chance.
In that context, making it look like Israel was backing down was probably the right decision. You don’t expect an enemy who is withdrawing troops from your border to attack you.
H/T The Belmont Club which also has satellite photos of possible targets. Apparently, Syria’s nuclear research agency is big on doing agricultural research
Poem of the Week: 9/16/07-9/22/07
Almost everytime I read a modern critique of art or someone explaining a modern work of art, I think of this poem.
Rant of the Week: 9/16/07-9/22/07
In this rant, Andrew Cusack argues that architects hate us and he provides evidence to back up his claim. Myself, I am not sure if they hate us or if they are so evil they just can’t tell the difference between good and bad.
Essay of the Week: 9/16/07-9/22/07
It is taken for granted by most people that the rule of law requires a state. Spencer Heath MacCallum challenges that assumption in an essay entitled “The Rule of Law without the State.”
Mr. MacCallum’s proof case is none other then Somalia. This might be a little hard for some people to swallow, but the fact is that Somalia has done better by all relevant statistics since its central government was abolished. It has even improved relative to other African countries.
Now correlation does not prove causation, so Macallum’s statistics don’t prove anything. But reading this essay reminded me of Samuel’s lecture to Israelites when they asked for a king. Especially since customary law the world over tends to have a lot of similarities with the Old Testament law.
US Farmers facing fuel shortages
Sometimes the world is just so sick that even I can’t laugh at it. Though perhaps I am overly sensitive due to the fact that food is near and dear to my heart.
What ever the reason, I can find no humor in the fact that this country subsidizes the burning of food for fuel while at the same time slapping such heavy environmental regulations on fuel that farmers are facing shortages. This from Fox News…
NEW YORK — Fuel shortages in the U.S. Midwest are raising concerns corn farmers may have trouble harvesting their bumper crop this autumn.
Farmers planted the largest corn crop since 1944 last spring after prices hit a 10-year high of $4.37 a bushel in early 2007. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated a record crop of more than 13 billion bushels.
But farmers said supplies of the ultra low sulfur diesel needed for harvesting equipment are running low, particularly in the corn-growing regions of Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa.
In Iowa, fuel shortages are anticipated as retailers report having only about 80 percent of their normal supply, said John Scott, a corn and soy farmer in west central Iowa.
“Worse case scenario is our crop stands in the field until we have fuel to harvest it,” said Scott, who has stored about one week’s supply of fuel in anticipation of shortages, but not enough to tide him over for the six-week harvest season.
Curt Watson, the President of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, said the fuel terminal that usually supplies his area is dry. His supplier has to drive to another area, where long lines with a wait of four hours are not uncommon.
Government officials who should be shot
So according to this article, the checks that America Home Mortgage Investment Corp sends out to pay the property taxes are bouncing. That means that the people in those houses need to pay their bill themselves if they don’t want to lose their houses. So what has that to do with shooting government officials? Well read this….
Baltimore City received bad checks for 53 properties – a total of about $63,500. Baltimore County said American Home Mortgage checks bounced for 21 properties, totaling $41,000. Taxes are due at the end of the month.
Finance officials in the rest of the region – Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties – reported no similar problems.
“This is just another chapter in what is a very difficult time for the mortgage industry,” said Donald I. Mohler III, a spokesman for Baltimore County, which no longer accepts checks from American Home Mortgage.
“It’s an unfortunate situation and we certainly hope these individuals will be able to work out some kind of agreement with their mortgage company,” Mohler said.
Anthony McCarthy, a spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said the city does not plan to notify the affected homeowners. They will get a notice in November along with all other delinquent taxpayers if the problem isn’t resolved by then.
Baltimore County said it has sent bills directly to the property owners to alert them.
Now Baltimore County is doing things right. I don’t feel any particular need to see them shot. But what excuse is there for the city of Baltimore? If the City alerted people like the county did, then people could avoid penalties.
The plane that almost flew into the Eiffel Tower
In spite of man’s bungling nature, what can go right occasionally does so. The problem is that man typically draws the wrong lesson from when things go right. Long before 9/11, a group of highjackers almost succeeded in using a plane as a bomb. But because they were stopped, no one took the threat very seriously.
But if you read up on Air France Flight 8969, you realize how close it came to crashing into the Eiffel Tower. Or maybe how close the highjackers came to blowing up a plane over Paris. The information that is available to the public is not very clear on that point.
All that is known for sure is that Air France Flight 8969 was high jacked in Algeria in December of 1994 and the highjackers wanted to fly it to Paris. At a pit stop in Marseille the highjackers demanded 3 times as much fuel as was needed for the flight to Paris. And something convinced the French that they needed to storm the plane as soon as possible.
Why the French felt that they needed to storm the plane is not very clear. Some sources say that the French knew that the Highjackers intended to fly the plane into the Eiffel Tower. Others only say that the French suspected that this was the Highjackers aim.
Regardless, this plan might have succeeded had the French government’s original plan been carried out.
In the beginning the French government did not seem to realize that this was a suicide mission. So they made a deal with the highjackers; in return for releasing the woman and children, the plane would be allowed to fly to Paris. But at first, Algerian government would not allow the plan to take off. It seems that this delay enabled French intelligence to overhear the highjackers talking about the best way to blow the plane up over Paris.
At that point everything got fouled up in bureaucratic infighting. The Algerian government and the French government both wanted to storm the plane. In fact, the Algerians had been against letting the plane takeoff from the very beginning.
But the French government did not want the Algerian commandos to storm the plane. Instead, they wanted their own Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (most commonly referred to by the acronym GIGN) to handle to problem. Naturally, Algerian government wanted its own commandos to do the storming since the plane was on Algerian soil.
After much French arm twisting, a compromise was reached. The Algerians let the plane take off, and the French tricked the highjackers into landing at Marseille on the excuse that the plane was low on fuel. There, the GIGN intended to storm the plane. But once again things started going wrong.
The Highjackers must have realized that something was up because they suddenly took the plane close to control tower and opened fire on it. This forced GIGN to charge the plane instead of sneaking up on it as they were intending to. If it had not been for their heavy body armor, the GIGN agents would have been massacred. As it was, they were initially driven back, and many of them were seriously injured. But they managed to keep the highjackers occupied while the passengers were evacuated.
After that, they just kept on shooting until all the highjackers were dead. They must have been shooting blind because the pilots who where cowering in the cockpit had to tell them to stop shooting when all the highjackers dead.
Watching the video below of GIGN storming the plane makes you realize how badly everything could have turned out. They were very fortunate.
(One annoying thing about the Video is that the narrator does not understand anything. For one thing, he keeps saying that GIGN was throwing explosives and he makes it sound like it was an explosive that ended the fight. In reality, only the highjackers threw a grenade which injured many people. GIGN was only throwing flash bangs as there were still pilots in the cockpit. The “explosive” that GIGN throws into the cockpit at the end of the video was flash bang. The GIGN guys were running because of the well aimed hostile fire. Once flash bang went off, they started advancing again. You can see a higher quality version of this same video here. Also this clip is longer but there is no sound.)
"Fashion Shows Are No Longer About Clothes"
I am sometimes a little afraid of sounding a bit like a broken record. But it’s been more than a year since I did a post like this, so I think I can comment on Thursdays (Sept. 13, 2007) WSJ article, “Shunning the Runway at Fashion Week”. I have long felt that my interest in Click Here to continue reading.
What we have lost…
We have gone from this….
Click here for the picture in its original glory.
And this….
Click here for the picture in its original glory. It broke my heart to cut it down to reasonable size.
To this….
Click here if you to see the original size.
Part of the blame for this decline lies with the architects. But the biggest problem is that there are not that many skilled tradesmen left. And without skilled tradesmen, it is hard to make fine buildings.
I am deeply indebted to the above photographers for putting their work out on a creative commons license. Also check out Curious Expeditions awesome collection of photos of beautiful libraries (h/t Marginal Revolution).