Why I was out
A little over three months ago, on September 2, I was told I was to be laid off on September 16. I obviously kept blogging for a while after that, but lost enthusiasm; both my situation and my doubts that I had anything useful to say were a bit disheartening. So my October 8 "Off blogging" post wasn't the last post for a week or two, but for a couple of months. I couldn't even bring myself to read my own blog, much less anyone else's.

This week, I finally found new (and, I'm optimistic, better) work, which will begin in the new year. Until then, I'll blog sporadically, but once work starts, I'll probably stop for at least a week or two while I adjust to a new worklife.

I've cheered up because of the new job, and because I've reminded myself that I don't have to be useful, just honest.

However, I'm also considering focusing my spare time on upgrading my training; if so, writing as a hobby (i.e., blogging) will need to take a back seat to that. I'll try to keep you, my online friends, better posted when and why my writing activities taper off. posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:57:00 PM -- |    

 
Newsrack updates
Being a review of recent developments in various stories I've mentioned in this blog...

Anti-semitism respectable in UK: The British Political Cartoon Society anointed David Brown's cartoon of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon devouring a baby as the top political cartoon of 2003. The prize was no doubt intended as a thumb in the eye of critics like the American Jewish Committee, which denounced the prize:

"This image conjures up some of the most vile stereotypes imaginable," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. "Not only should this grotesque cartoon never have been honored, but it should never have been published in the first place by The Independent. It is not about legitimate political criticism. It is all about incitement against a people."

Amen. The cartoonist, Dave Brown, feels he was clever to use a motif by Goya, "Saturn devouring his children," to plausibly dress up a clear bit of anti-Semitic blood libel in intellectual garb. That makes its author, publisher, and honorers more repulsive to me, not less. (Noted via this Gary Farber item and a recent comment to this blog.)

Boeing air tanker lease deal: Wow, has this one spiraled out of control -- "Mayday, mayday!" As this Forbes summary (by Andrea Shalal-Esa) indicates, the story has led to the dismissal of two top Boeing officials -- Chief Financial Officer Michael Sears and former Air Force acquisitions official Darleen Druyun, and contributed to CEO Phil Condit's decision to resign. On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that the Pentagon may cancel the deal after all, quoting Pentagon comptroller-general Dov Zakheim:

It doesn't make much sense to put dollars in for a [program] that is under investigation.

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated the original deal to lease 100 planes cost U.S. taxpayers about $5.6 billion more than a simple purchase of the planes would have. The smell test for the amended deal (lease 20, buy 80) failed even by Pentagon standards once suspicions developed that Air Force official Druyun had greased the skids for the complicated financial arrangement just before stepping through the revolving door to a high level Boeing position.

According to CFO Magazine, the details of the lease arrangement's "special purpose entity" (SPE)-- described accurately by Senator John McCain as "Enronesque" -- seem to have been designed to shield Boeing from all risk involved in the lease:

The CBO also found that because the government (through the Air Force) would both direct the trust's financing activities and benefit from them, those activities should be recorded in the federal budget as federal outlays as they occur—not as operating lease payments.

Because the trust is essentially an extension of the government, the CBO stated, the deal meant the government would be leasing the planes from itself. The lease deal further failed to meet government criteria that any leased military items must be general purpose in nature and not built to military specifications—a position in the case of the KC-767A that the Air Force has disputed. [...]

While Enron used SPE's to obscure the amount of debt being incurred, in the Air Force's case it would be the taxpayers, not shareholders, for whom the financial realities are obscured, however.

The deal seems to point to a disappointing focus on creative accounting rather than creative engineering by Boeing, and an Air Force all too willing to bend its own procurement rules to accommodate a supplier.

On the other hand, I've had a reader e-mail me that the higher capital costs of the deal are offset by lower maintenance costs -- since Boeing was to take care of this as part of the deal, instead of Air Force personnel. I haven't seen this angle discussed yet in the news. This may take the "rent-a-soldier" stories out of Iraq -- companies hired to carry mail, ship supplies, and the like -- to a new level. Air tankers are a crucial part of the United States' military forces; there should be a debate about whether to outsource their maintenance to the private sector. It may be (or may have been) cheap in the short run, and unwise in the long run.

Alleged "ethno- bomb" weapon: A story in the London Times back in 1998 lent credence to the charge that Israel was once developing an "ethno-bomb" -- a bioweapon designed to sicken Arabs rather than or more than Jews -- in part by citing then-Knesset member Dedi Zucker's reaction:"Morally, based on our history, and our tradition and our experience, such a weapon is monstrous and should be denied," he said." But rather than confirming the existence of the weapons research -- the effect of Zucker's statement, especially in abridged wire service accounts -- Zucker may have just been reacting to a statement by a senior aide to then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when questioned about the story: "This is the kind of story that does not deserve a denial." The aide's quote can be found early in Chapter 34 of "The Plague Wars" by Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg.* If I'm right, Zucker was objecting to the "strategically non-denying denial" (to coin a phrase) by the aide, not asserting he knew there was such a program.

Another time: Locke v. Davey; Texasgate, DeLay, etcetera, and much, much more!


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* Footnote number 6, p. 373 in the paperback edition.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:25:00 AM -- |    

 
Blog tool: permanent NYTimes links
Via Peter Praschl of le sofa blog: the New York Times Link Generator, a tool you can drag to your browser toolbar that generates links to permanent archived versions of online New York Times articles. These links usually "decay" after a couple of weeks, i.e., the article no longer appears; instead, you have to pay a fee to see the article. This tool, developed by Aaron Swartz, gets around the problem.

Examples (check back in 3 or 4 weeks to see the difference):

Old fashioned, quickly spoiled link: France and Germany Join U.S. in Effort to Reduce Iraq's Debt

Better, longer lasting Link Generator link: France and Germany Join U.S. in Effort to Reduce Iraq's Debt

I leave it to others to explain how this is done, exactly; there are additional arguments in the URL that refer to USERLAND, a blog software product, so that this seems to be some kind of cooperation between the Times and Userland. But you don't have to be a Userland user to use the link generator.

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UPDATE, 1/22/04: Electrolite commenter Avram explains more about Swartz's code. Elsewhere, I found an "atnewyork.com" item describing the Userland/NYT relationship as a 1 year syndication contract.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:59:00 AM -- |    

 
Debate in a nutshell: Philosoraptor vs. John Hawkins
Philosoraptor:

What we did will probably, on balance, have morally good consequences (unless the administration cuts and runs before the next election, that is). But we don’t get credit for those consequences since we didn’t go to war in order to achieve them. If I’m a tad dim and easily frightened and, as a result, I shoot someone who in fact posed no threat to me, then I don’t get any moral credit for shooting him, even if I saved someone else by doing so. If my reasons for shooting were stupid and cowardly, then I’m a stupid coward--no matter what good is accomplished by my bullet. Actions are morally good or bad on the basis of intentions--on the basis of the goals for which they are undertaken--and we undertook this war not in order to bring justice to Iraq, but in order to eliminate a threat our leaders invented almost out of whole cloth. (via Crooked Timber)

John Hawkins:

So we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hussein once had and used weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, at the time of the invasion, Saddam either had WMD or planned to acquire them. So all this quibbling over WMD is in a very important sense, irrelevant. Worst case scenario, it's like we stopped a serial killer before he could kill again as opposed to actually catching him with a body in the basement. In any case, sensible people who are concerned about what an anti-American tyrant like Saddam might have done with his WMD should be happy that the Butcher of Baghdad is now permanently out of business. (via Instapundit)

I lean more towards Hawkins' views, but it's no "quibble" there were apparently no WMD when the war began. Their existence may have been a bipartisan delusion stretching back into the Clinton administration, but that's not much consolation. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:22:00 AM -- |    

 
Gotcha, you mass murdering bastard
A welcome development: Saddam Hussein captured, looking like hell and without firing a shot. Bravo, U.S. armed forces!

Even if Hussein was a figurehead in the resistance, as seems likely from his raggedy appearance and hole in the ground, his capture doesn't just embarrass that resistance, it weakens it: who is the successor? Who calls the shots? I think Baathist holdouts had a simple vision until now: chase out the US, restore Saddam to power. Now a holdout's plans will also involve cutting the other Baathist holdout guy down to size, whoever he is. May they turn against eachother.

The rejoicing in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq seems like the heartfelt majority opinion, at least at first blush. And with it, any serious comparisons of this war to Viet Nam dissolve for now. It may be possible to completely alienate the Iraqi people in the future -- and we often seem to be building up to that -- but they and the world must surely know that but for the U.S., this day would have never come.

As of this evening, the Iraq Coalition Casualties site counts 456 American and 85 other coalition country dead since the beginning of the war. There are doubtless many times that number wounded. The war has been no cakewalk, and the mission is certainly not accomplished yet.

But this weekend's events go a long way to ensuring that these men and women were not killed or wounded in vain; they helped depose and capture one of the worst and cruellest rulers of the past 50 years. The Iraqi people owe them a great debt, as do we all. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:57:00 PM -- |