Hoarse Speak

From the American Conservative magazine…

http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html

And my favorite passage, in the last paragraph

"George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies—a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies—temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election—are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support."

Finally finally finally!!! I got my dlink 520 revD card working under Linux. This is the first connection this partition has had since moving to Hillview St. When I moved here I had the "brilliant" (or not so brilliant) idea not to run cat5 cable all over my damned house since the DSL modem was going to have to be by the kitchen and my machines in the office on the opposite side of the house. Well, Fedora Core 1 didn't like the wireless B card that I got. I tried ndiswrapper and the windows drivers to no avail — spent at least a week dickin' around trying everyone elses solutions.

This weekend I upgraded to Fedora Core 2 (luckily no Windows XP dual boot problem though I was ready for it) and that didn't seem to help even after reinstalling ndiswrapper and the RT-8180 drivers. So I finally poked around some more and found someone who had had the same problem as I had, but when they updated to the latest ndiswrapper and new XP drivers it worked for them, so going back and forth from laptop to usbkey to desktop I got the new ndiswrapper package installed and the new 8180 drivers and lo and behold …

Now it will just take the frickin' rest of the evening to update everything with yum. Its only been 3 months since this partition has been active. Core 2 looks great though.

The illness and potential death of Yasir Arafat is extremely significant today for reasons beyond what the talking heads are babbling on about w/r to who will inherit the reigns of "power" over the Palestinian "governement". The Palestinian constitution has a clear successor marked but again, this is not the point. Arafat's death will truly herald the end of an era of Arab nationalism because Arafat's brand of nationalism is a secular. The PLO/PLA was rooted in the nationalist anti-colonial liberation struggles that began in the 60's which was rooted in socialist (sometimes Stalinist as in the case of Hussein and Assad) ideology (commonly called "Arab Socialism") rather than religious ideology. This was a nationalism was plenty flawed as any nationalism can be, but it was secular, and as seen in Egypt was successful.

Though one could say that Qaddafi in Libya and Mubarek in Egypt are inheritors of the Pan-Arabist dream, Qaddafi appears much more concerned with consolidating more around Pan-Africanism right now and Mubarek has his hands full keeping ahold of his "Presidente for life" (something Musharraf would love to consolidate - another "good friend" of the U.S.). Mubarek inherited his mantle from Sadat who inhereted his from Nasser.

The PA (Palestinian Authority) has been effectively neutered and has no real police control in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza (the first thing the Israelis did in 2000 at the outbreak of the current Intifada was to destroy and dismantle most of the Palestinian police force). The PA has been diplomatically isolated by the U.S. and Israel the primary state actors in the area. And consequently though older Palestinians still may view the PLO->PA-leadership as a symbol of Palestinian Liberation some view them as "outsiders" and call those who were in exile in the '80's "Tunisians" and the group on the ground doing the most both in terms of resistance and action in the community has been Hamas.

The death of Arafat will form a large power vaccum for and lead to a struggle (hopefully of words) over who has the "mandate" of the Palestinian people. I fear that unfortunately, those who will step into the breach will be the Islamic Fundamentalists (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.) who articulate their brand of nationalism and in much more absolute terms (anti-Jewish as opposed to anti-Zionist and religious rather than colonialist). This bodes very poorly for any sort of solution. I do not know much about Hamas or what its view of a "resolution to the conflict" would be. If Hamas comes to the fore as an organization that "leads" the Palestinian struggle, they will have to articulate some sort of view that then can be negotiated. Israel's responsibility in encouraging the development of Hamas in the Occupied Territories and Hizbullah in South Lebanon in the 1980's (as the U.S. encouraged the Mujahedeen -> Taliban/Al Qaeda to combat the "evil" of the Soviet Empire) is well documented, and this will come back to haunt them tremendously. Not negotiating with Arafat has served Sharon well up until now, but who is his negotiating partner if Arafat dies? Do the secularists maintain any sort of legitimacy or has the fight degenerated to the point that the Islamisists now hold the keys to power? Apparently one of the few people who is a secularist and has some popular support among the Palestinians is Marwan Barghouti who is rotting in an Israeli jail.

There have already been power struggles within Palestine and within the PA for reform and inclusion. Should those power struggles heat up again who knows what will happen.

From http://www.livejournal.com/community/bikepirates/741426.html or the 10th annual messenger race in NYC. If anyone out there is in NYC on saturday I highly recommend witnessing, participating, or at least being at the end race bar because it will be a scene.

From our fine local paper:

Contractors in Iraq make costs balloon Extensive paramilitary work earns profit on several levels

The U.S. Taxpayer is getting raped by profiteering corporations who not only are not disclosing how much profit they are making, are disincentivized to be "efficient" because all contracts are "Cost + " - meaning their costs (no matter what they are) plus 2% profit. In this case, Haliburton subs to KBR subs to German company ESS subs to Kuwaiti Hotellier subs to Blackwater USA. Blackwater Pays $600 to its men, charges the Kuwaiti Hotellier $815 who charges ESS $1,200 or $1,500 (its unclear because its private) who charges KBR $1,500 + "X" who charges Haliburton ($1,500 + "X") +"Y" who charges the U.S. DOD (the taxpayer) all that + 2% profit. FUCKING CRIMINAL

And all this is protected by privacy clauses between companies - meaning they sign an agreement not to disclose the nature of their agreement. And here's the kicker:

" Contractors wanting to work for Blackwater in Iraq, such as Zovko, must sign contracts that compel them to pay Blackwater a quarter of a million dollars in instant damages if they violate their contract for doing things such as discussing details of the contracts or work."

- every mercenary working for Blackwater signs an agreement saying that if they disclose any information about their contract they'll pay.

These fuckers need to be booted out of office then sent to Leavenworth. G.W. and Co. are some of the biggest most hypocritical crooks this country has had to deal with. Haliburton should have their corporate charter revoked and their assets siezed by the public - same for KBR. Corporations efficient? Yeah, efficient at robbing people. Jesse James was an efficient train and bank robber too and they put out several lovely wanted posters for him.

Due to ongoing nonsense at work, we are now required to submit weekly progress reports to management. In response, I created my own workblog at http://www.unc.edu/~zito/worklog/ as I am an employee of the State of North Carolina, all the work I do at UNC belongs to the public, so here you go, the Public may now see what I do as I log it. btw, I did the artsy fancy stuff for it "off clock".

To preserve some modicum of anonymity this will appear on the left side under "other blogs" and named "transparency"