Day: May 30, 2002

I’m pleased and a little baffled to have an announcement of sorts to make.

My piece “Back in the Day”, which was previously posted here as a weblog entry, has been accepted for publication by You can now find it here, in all its actually-published-by-a-real-magazine glory. This is my first professional sale, and I have to admit to being a bit dazed by the whole thing. (I’m not doing a very job of acting all blas

Remember when folks were that the FBI needs to be blogging to improve their communications (search on ‘FBI needs a blog’ — I still haven’t figured out if Mickey doesn’t do permalinks now that he’s hit the bigtime or if I’m just clueless.)?

Well, looks like the military end of the war on terror already is:

“…the Tactical Web Page, (is) a secret, secure Web site being used in combat for the first time, through which American commanders at Bagram air base and in the United States can direct the fight in Afghanistan.

The system collects all information and communication in one place. Commanders confer in chat rooms and pass on orders; messages scroll across the screen, alerting developments from the field; maps show friendly and enemy positions. “

Cool. Not quite blogging, but close enough…

There is now a site that New York City bloggers to place themselves on an online NYC subway map , which can then be browsed by subway stop to find the nearest blogger.

I find this deeply, deliriously cool.

I am, however, damned jealous. Although I can’t claim to be a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, I did spend about five years there, and enjoyed it greatly. My fianc

warns of shoulder-fired missiles threat.

I’ve been saying this was one of my biggest worries since last September. Glad to see it only took the FBI eight months to catch up.

The real problem is, I have no bloody clue how you defend against this kind of an attack on a commercial jet. I’m afraid the answer is, “you don’t.”

Russia wins Miss Universe title

Damn. My money was on that hot little six-armed number from Alpha Centauri.

Bush is Rummy to South Asia to give India and Pakistan a stern talking to. I suspect top on the list of topics will be politely explaining to them that it is positively rude to interrupt somebody else’s war.

SecDef is also going to be giving a press briefing in about 30 minutes (9:30 am PDT), so you’ve got a few minutes to go grab some popcorn. I suspect he’ll be in a grouchy mood — mainly because, well, he’s always in a grouchy mood, and besides, I hear India is miserable this time of year…

VodkaDude a very simple, but very important point regarding the reports that Pakistan is drawing its forces away from the hunt for al Qaeda leaders and focusing on their cross-border shennanigans with India:

It

From the “isn’t he dead yet?” file comes a story from MSNBC indicating that Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (who makes even look good) has called for a holy war against the U.S. and Great Britain. According to MSNBC:

Locking the gun cabinet

Has it occurred to anyone else that the fact that the September 11th terrorists were trained at American flight schools actually has a bright side?

Sure, it was a massive intelligence failure; we’ve been through that discussion. But I find some comfort in the fact that to gain the skills and knowledge required to carry out their attacks, the Islamofacists had to come to America to do it.

Why is that good? Two reasons.

First, because it reinforces the point that has been made before: that this is a war between the modern civilization of the West and its allies, and an essentially medieval subculture that does not, within itself, contain anything resembling the scientific knowledge required to thrive in the modern world. And you don’t have to be a serious scholar of history to know how that type of conflict always turns out.

Second, and more significantly, it means that the power to stop the next attack is most likely in our own hands. There are no al Qaeda scientists huddling somewhere coming up with a new weapon that we’ll have to counter. The weapons that they have used — and will continue to use — are ours.

This means that the problem we face isn’t analogous so much to a homeowner attempting to perfect his home security system with an alarm, private security guard, and watchdog — it’s analogous to that same homeowner simply ensuring he puts a padlock on his gun cabinet.

There will be future terrorist attacks; guaranteed. We will never be able to lock up the weapons of retail terror: small arms, light explosives, and the like. But the weapons of wholesale terror — nuclear arms, bioterrorism agents, radioactive material — these things are possible to ‘lock up’. And that’s where our focus needs to be.

I’m very optimistic that this can be done. I’m less optimistic that it will be done. Issues such as keeping Russia’s nuclear materials safe are non-trivial to say the least, as the Report to Congress on the Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities and Military Forces (from the office of the Director of Central Intelligence) shows. The report, released in February 2002, includes such reassuring statements as:

“Russian facilities housing weapons-usable nuclear material

Patio Pundit does the numbers and a math lesson on newbie blogger Eric Alterman

In case you had any doubts, the Washington Post lays out the connections between al Qaeda and ongoing violence in Pakistan:

“Local and al Qaeda footprints have been found” in every major strike against so-called soft Western targets in Pakistan this year, said a senior Pakistani security official. Officials have connected al Qaeda to the kidnapping and murder of American newspaper reporter Daniel Pearl in January, a grenade attack on a church in Islamabad on March 17 that left two Americans and three others dead, and a car bombing May 8 outside a hotel in this southern port city that killed 14 people, including 11 French technicians.

In addition, raids by Pakistani and U.S. security agents have uncovered evidence that extensive al Qaeda operations are being planned and carried out from inside this country, a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism.

There’s a shuttle launch today, and unusually, it’s scheduled at a time rather convenient for viewing: 7:44 pm EDT this evening.

The weather looks like it might not cooperate, but assuming it holds out, here’s some links of interest:

Space Shuttle page at NASA
– Basic information on the mission

Shuttle Countdown Status Page at NASA
– Cool page with a java applet showing the realtime countdown, with links to lots of detailed information on the launch procedure. Want to know exactly where the Hazardous Gas System Engineers sit in the control room? This page is for you.

Kennedy Space Center Video Feeds at NASA
– Nice page that has links to the actual RealVideo and Windows media streams from NASA (which presumably will broadcast the launch itself), but doubly neat in that it has a large gallery of still images, updated every minute or so (it’s configurable, too!) taken from various NASA cameras.

Shuttle Mission STS -111 Special Report from Space.com
More info on the mission from Lou Dobbs’ other gig.

Clear skies and the best of luck to the mission team…