Clare Short, who is Tony Blair’s international development secretary, will resign if England invades Iraq without a second UN resolution. Bush needs Blair. Blair needs the UN. How clear does it need to get?
Month: March 2003
A lot of people wanted that memo about the US spying on other UN members to be a hoax. Just something the Observer made up. Today, the Observer came ever so close to reporting that their source was arrested for violating the Official Secrets Act. (Via Electrolite.) Fortunately, nobody really cares about this stuff.
Here’s that London Times article I mentioned yesterday. It reveals that Blix mentions Iraqi drones in his written report, and accuses him of trying to cover this up by failing to mention them in his oral report.
Only problem is, he did mention them in his oral report.
“Inspectors are also engaged in examining Iraq’s programme for Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPVs). A number of sites have been inspected with data being collected to assess the range and other capabilities of the various models found. Inspections are continuing in this area.”
Ooops.
Things I learned from watching Mister Sterling tonight:
Being a Senator gets you laid by the hot actress, plus if you’re noble and honest the sly fellow Senator from Nevada will still be interested in you for your mind. In a carnal way.
Also, if you look agonized and persevere, you can write the letters. Even if you’re so poorly paid you have to live in a group house.
Finally, Strom Thurmond is a Democrat from North Dakota.
More next week, I’m sure.
On my way home from work today, I heard an interesting rumor on NPR. James Bone, a London Times reporter, claimed that Blix left some details out of his oral report. If this story is accurate, Blix’s written report includes a note on the possibility that Iraq has developed unmanned drones. If these drones exist, and certainly if Iraq has tested their range as over 500 kilometers, Iraq is clearly in serious breach of UN resolutions without any escape hatch. They can’t say “Well, we didn’t think those missiles were in breach” with any plausibility.
I’m sure we’ll hear more of this soon in the event that it all turns out to be true.
There are geeky ways to ask someone to marry you, and then there are geeky ways to ask someone to marry you. I think that’s terminally sweet, but it is also terminally geeky. I will now demonstrate my own geek nature by asking if the One Ring isn’t kind of the wrong symbolism for a marriage? But I will come back from the brink at the last moment by not suggesting one of the other rings as a better choice. Phew.
The EBay auction I blogged about earlier turns out to be blocked for a bunch of people — including myself, when I check it from home. EBay has voluntarily blocked German IP addresses from accessing auctions of Nazi memorabilia. Now, the item in question is an Enigma machine, which is not exactly prime fetish material, but I guess it counts under German law. It’s interesting how wide EBay’s net is, though. I’m in Worldcom IP space at home — I wonder if EBay blocks all of Worldcom? Or if not, why the chunk of IP space I’m in?
Eugene Volokh goes over the differences between Iraq and North Korea. He’s right, as far as he goes — but now let’s ask the next question.
“If we can live with North Korea possessing and actively making nuclear weapons, why can’t we live with the possibility that Iraq may get nuclear weapons?”
Or, put differently: assuming inspections fail, and assuming it’s impossible to stand between Saddam and nukes, what makes that world more dangerous than the one we live in? And please. Don’t tell me Saddam is more loony than Kim Jong-il.
As the blogosphere gears up for the Blix report to the UN, Howard Bashman soldiers along talking about legal matters. His post on yesterday’s Supreme Court decisions is so good I felt like linking to it. It ought also to be of particular interest to Californians and Alaskans, since two of the cases decided relate to California’s three strikes law and one of them is about the Alaska sex offenders registry.
Remember, folks, if you’ve previously served jail time for theft, then in California the prosecuter can convert petty theft (a theft of under $400 worth of goods) into a felony. This combines elegantly but unfortunately with the three strikes law. You too can earn life in prison for stealing $150 worth of children’s videotapes, if you have prior offenses.
So Charlie Daniels is explaining life to the Hollywood types. Yeah, well. I don’t know about all these people who keep saying “and you risked lives!”
I grew up, for some of my childhood, in the small state of New Hampshire. I think it had more of an effect on me than I realized at the time: ten solid years of looking at the damned license plates, see.
“Live free or die.”
Four words. Four deeply meaningful, deeply felt words.
I’m so tired of people who tell me that I have to give up my freedom in order to save lives. Sean Penn may be an asshole — I think there are other celebs who would have been a better choice, particularly if you look at what Sean Penn actually said — but that’s really beside the point. He’s got the right to free speech: to freedom. Calling him a traitor because he exercises that right in a way Charlie Daniels doesn’t like?
I’ll tell you what. I call that cowardly. I call that running scared. I call that giving up on freedom.
The second you cross the line from “I disagree” to “You shouldn’t say that,” you’re crossing the line from supporting free speech to opposing free speech. And I think that’s a lousy idea. Charlie Daniels crossed the line. Does it make him a traitor? No. Does he have the right to say what he did? You bet.
But by saying it he reveals himself as a pathetic individual and a coward. He’s so scared of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the like that he’s willing to give up the fundamental freedoms that made this country great, and he’s hiding his fear behind the red white and blue. In my book, that makes him a sad, sorry little man.