The State of the Union Address — annotated

Lovely idea — Dubya’s SOTU address, hyperlinked and annotated by James Fallows.

Experts: Microsoft security gets an ‘F’
CNN story.

“SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) — Computer security experts say the recent “SQL Slammer” worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft’s year-old security push is not working.

“Trustworthy Computing is failing,” Russ Cooper of TruSecure Corp. said of the Microsoft initiative. “I gave it a ‘D-minus’ at the beginning of the year, and now I’d give it an ‘F.”‘

The worm, which exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft’s SQL Server database software, spread through network connections beginning January 25, crashing servers and clogging the Internet. ”

With friends like the Saudis, who needs an Axis of Evil?

Ever since 9/11/01 I’ve been convinced that the real concern of the US Administration is to ‘sort out’ Saudi Arabia, which it sees as the fons et origo of Islamic terrorism. But sorting out Saudi would endanger the US’s supplies of oil, so an alternative source has to be secured first. Enter Saddam, who sits on almost as much oil as the House of Saud next door. For an interesting insight into the essence of the Saudi regime, see Paul William Roberts’s review of Stephen Schwartz’s book about the Saudi regime from the Globe and Mail. A quote to give some of the general flavour:

“What Schwartz terms a “vast mafia of princely parasites” also began to make problems for the Kingdom as the 20th century rolled by and the petro-dollars kept pouring in. Once known for mixing religious piety and political opportunism, the Saudi aristocracy had become an unparalleled symbol of debauchery, ostentation and waste, as well as ignorance, prejudice and brutality.

“Their tastes,” writes Schwartz, “led them to taverns, casinos, brothels. . . . They bought fleets of automobiles, private jets, and yachts the size of warships. They invested in valuable Western art they did not understand or like and which often offended the sensitivities of Wahhabi clerics. They spent as they wished, becoming patrons of international sexual enslavement and the exploitation of children. Yet at the same time, they dedicated a large proportion of their wealth to the promotion of international Wahhabi radicalism, in a desperate attempt to bridge the gulf between pretense and reality.”

How was it that the grotesque duplicity of the Saudi regime — fostering official Puritanism and unofficial degeneracy, proclaiming loyalty to Islam while rooting out its traditions, and agitating for the wholesale destruction of Israel while proclaiming its loyalty to the United States — was ignored for so long by Western leaders and public opinion? A closed society and the political demands of the oil economy are insufficient explanations, although the Aramco partners and the American political and media elites that have served them can take most of the responsibility for the continuation of dishonesty and injustice in Arabia, as well as, eventually, the rise of Islamic terrorism.

If the princes squandered their share of the oil loot, the Wahhabi clerics invested theirs wisely. They controlled schools all over the world; they controlled Islamic publishing almost entirely; they controlled most of America’s mosques, which had their Friday sermons faxed directly from Riyadh. And most of all, they funded terror campaigns, along with the training camps that turned out the warriors for jihad along with the suicide-bombers to spark it. Most of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis and, furthermore, mostly from the same impoverished province of the kingdom famed for the churlish ignorance and witless courage of its inhabitants.

Schwartz devotes the last third of his book to a detailed analysis of the means by which the Al Sa’ud achieved their feat of double-crossing, and although he tries to be optimistic about the current Washington regime’s determination to fight global terror, his breakdown of George W .Bush’s staff and their links to Big Oil is not especially inspiring. Particularly when his account of the meeting between Bush and Saudi Ambassador Prince Sultan also alludes to a rumour that the prince threatened the president with a Saudi-Iraqi alliance and an oil embargo unless the United States stopped its allegations against the Al Sa’ud of collusion with the terrorists of September 11. ”

Who says peace campaigners have no sense of humour?

Here are a few of the signs that appeared at the Washington Rally.

1) These colors don’t run the world.
2) One nation under surveillance.
3) How did our oil get under their sand?
4) Go Solar, not Ballistic.
5) Who would Jesus bomb?
6) Start Drafting SUV Drivers Now.
7) Don’t blame me, I voted with the majority.
8) Buck Fush!
9) It’s NUCLEAR, not NUCULAR, you idiot!
10) Patriots are idiots – Matriarchy Now!
11) Resistance is Fertile.
12) (Pictures of sheep carrying flags) Stop Mad Sheep Disease Now.
13) (UFW sign) Pick Fruit, not Fights.
14) (On a five year old) More Candy Less War.
15) Say can you see my democracy?
16) (With pictures of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) Asses of Evil.
17) It’s the oil, stupid.
18) War is expensive, Peace is priceless.
19) Read between the Pipelines
20) No More BuShit.
21) Smart weapons, Dumb president.
22) The only thing we have to fear is Bush himself.
23) How many Lives per Gallon?
24) Peace Takes Brains
25) Anything War can do, Peace can do better.
26) Negotiation Not Annihilation.
27) Make touchdowns, not war – Go Raiders!
28) Another patriot for peace.
29) Oh Say can You Cease?
30) Star Spangled Bummer
31) Don’t Arm a Son of a Bush
32) Don’t do it George, Dad will still love you.
33) Power to the Peaceful
34) The last time we listened to a Bush, we wandered in the desert for 40 years.

plus these two:

Empty Warheads Found (pictures of Bush and Cheney below)
Drunken Frat Boy Drives Nation into Ditch. Uses War as Coverup

Thanks to Kathleen Shepherd for these. I particularly like the idea of drafting SUV drivers.

Would you buy a used lover from, well, a car salesman?

Well, apparently Edward VIII did. According to secret official documents which were released yesterday, at the same time that Wallis Simpson was pleasuring Eddie she was also having it off with one Guy Marcus Trundle, described by Inspector Knacker as “a motor engineer and a salesman and is said to be employed by the Ford Motor Company. It is not known what salary he gets … “. According to the tireless sleuths who dogged Wallis’s every move, “secret meetings are made when intimate relations take place”… Still, knowing what little we do about Edward’s infantile tastes, maybe Wallis needed some stronger medicine. But a car salesman! No wonder the Royals couldn’t stand the woman.

Dubya’s arithmetic

For my money, Paul Krugman of MIT is the best writer on economics currently appearing in the public prints. Here are the opening paras of his analysis of Dubya’s tax-cutting proposals:

“A liberal and a conservative were sitting in a bar. Then Bill Gates walked in. “Hey, we’re rich!” shouted the conservative. “The average person in this bar is now worth more than a billion!” “That’s silly,” replied the liberal. “Bill Gates raises the average, but that doesn’t make you or me any richer.” “Hah!” said the conservative, “I see you’re still practicing the discredited politics of class warfare.”

Am I caricaturing the debate? Alas, not at all. Whenever anyone points out the systematic tilt of the Bush administration toward the rich, the administration and its defenders immediately raise the cry of “class warfare.” Yet when you look at the arguments the administration actually makes on behalf of its policy, they are as silly as that of the conservative in the bar. The difference is that the administration knows exactly what it’s doing. …”

What to do about copyright — the Economist‘s modest proposal

Interesting editorial, arguing that we should go back to the original idea embodied in the US Constitution, but also give the content industries the draconian powers they seek to enforce a 14-year term. Hmmm…

Irish lad writes superfast browser

Intriguing Wired story by Karlin Lillington about an Irish teenager who appears to have come up with an elegant and efficient browser. It includes a search facility involving 120 search engines. And to think that up to this moment I was content with having Google on my Safari menu-bar. Sigh.

The reality of war: something about which Bush and Blair know zilch

Wonderful piece by Robert Fisk, one of the few journalists one can believe when it comes to the Middle East. His book on Lebanon is a scarifying masterpiece. Thanks to Gerard de Vries for the link.

How low can you go?
Andrew Sullivan is outraged at how personal the vitriol against President Bush can be:

Those of us with memories that stretch back to the 1990s will remember that we first descended into the trenches of “coarseness” and “personal demonization” when Bill Clinton took office. Here at Salon we took years of unbelievably “coarse” and vicious e-mails from Clinton-haters: They dreamed up elaborate fates for us, the president and most particularly his wife, deranged fantasies of four-letter-word-driven vitriol, detailing sexually explicit and bloody scenarios that would make a drill sergeant blanch. The anti-Clintonites took the politics of “personal demonization” to incredible new lows in American life, and, fueled by the rise of the Net and right-wing media, made it the norm.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, and I’m sure that the fringe of the opposition to Bush uses rhetoric and imagery that goes overboard in unpleasant and unjustifiable ways. But it was the Clinton-haters — outraged first at a supposed financial scandal that never amounted to anything and then at a sex scandal involving consenting adults — who rolled us into this gutter. The people who are mad at Bush, by contrast are upset about, first, an election that was arguably stolen, and now a likely war that has yet to be justified. There may be no excuse for “personal demonization,” and I won’t defend it, but at least there’s some substance behind what Bush-haters are mad about. [Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment]