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Here’s a conjunction of stories that bears investigation. Both Chevron and Exxon are bidding for a stake in YukosSibneft (original). YukosSibneft is the biggest oil company in Russia (original), and one of the biggest in the world. Meanwhile, the US and Russia are discussing Russian oil contracts in Iraq. The obvious question is whether or not we’re seeing some quid pro quo here. Would the Kremlin speed up the Yukos/Sibneft merger and expedite the purchase by either Chevron or Exxon if the US agreed to honor Russia’s oil contracts? Would the US find it more worthwhile to make that deal if Chevron was getting a chunk of the revenues via a Russian company? ...

Juan Cole has more to say about the second order effects of getting too close to Pakistan. It’s unclear to me that Pakistan is that close to fundamentalist destabilization, but the effects of such destabilization would be pretty serious, so it behooves us to keep being careful.

Partial credit for this one. “There’s no question that Saddam Hussein had al-Qaida ties…. We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11 attacks.” — George Bush Well, 50% accuracy on those particular facts is a step up for him. But what’s that imply about his determination to go after Iraq as soon as possible post-9/11? And isn’t it clear that Pakistan had much stronger Al Qaeda ties? So why Iraq first?

More saber-rattling for the benefit of Syria the last few days. The timing is impeccable; nothing will tell Syria we’re serious like making threats at the same time we’re telling Iran to shape up (original). Cause we’ve got all those available troops sitting around doing nothing. In related news, the White House slip of the day (original) comes from Press Secretary Scott McClellan: David Kaye, who’s leading the Iraq survey group, which is — they’re interviewing people, they’re talking to Iraqis, they’re gathering all the intelligence to pull together a complete picture of Iran — of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program and their weapons of mass destruction. ...

Hey, wasn’t Ann Coulter gonna start keeping a blog (original)? The date on that first post in the archives, by the way, is a lie. That sucker’s been there since late June, when they first claimed Ann was about to start blogging.

VeriSign, the curators of the .org and .com domains, just abused the living hell out of their power. As of this morning, any time you try to look up a domain name that doesn’t exist, you get an IP for one of their hosts. In layman’s terms, this means that if you mistype the domain portion of a URL in your browser — let’s say you type http://www.yankeeessuck.com — it’ll redirect to a VeriSign page. It also means that if you mistype the domain portion of an email address, your mailer will attempt to deliver that email to a VeriSign server. Most likely it’ll just bounce… but there’s no guarantee. Hope you weren’t trying to send mail to a user who happens to exist over there. ...

I have no idea how Into The Night managed to show up on DVD without me noticing, but it’s about time. Best damned yuppie goes through hell movie ever.

Hey, kids, Warren Ellis is taking the pulse of the Internet again (original). He wants your picture. I sent him mine.

I love Sundays. You get talking heads on Sundays. Here’s Secretary Rumsfeld on that 87 billion dollars. “On the other hand, if you cast it [$87 billion dollars kplzthx] directly, that the $87 billion is part of the global war on terror, and that it is a lot better to be fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan than it is in the United States, and that the effort is one that has not as its purpose, I think, as you phrased it, rebuilding Iraq. Iraqis are going to have to rebuild Iraq.” ...

The Sunday London Times reported today that the US/UK WMD report is being shelved (original). (Here’s the direct link, but it’s only useful if you live in the UK or want to pay some money.) 1,400 people spent four months scouring Iraq for evidence of WMD, but found nothing. So little did they find that they won’t even publish the report. Now, at the beginning of August, David Kay was talking up his progress. At the time, it was pretty clear (original) that he was setting up the argument that Saddam was maintaining the “capacity” for WMD, rather than having any actual weapons, despite what Bush said before the war (original). ...