Prometheus 6

Robert W. Nelson, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that based on the recently released plutonium studies, the submarine-launched warhead up for replacement under the RRW program, the W-76, has a minimum age for reliability of about 85 years. Production of the W-76, the warhead for the Trident I and Trident II sub-launched missiles, began in 1978 and ended in 1987, during which time about 3,000 were turned out. The Trident I can carry up to eight warheads, the Trident II up to 14. 

New Nuclear Weapons Program To Continue
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 2, 2006; A07

"Nigga," on the other hand, is like chitlins. I understand where it came from and why it exists, but damn, can't we do better by now? "Nigga" is dirty laundry. "Nigga" is a window on the conflictedness of our people. Not that we don't have a right to be conflicted. Shit. We reserve that right.

Afro-Netizen pointed out an article on Alternet by Derek Jennings on if it's ever okay to say the N-word. That's in the title anyway...the article has more subtlety than the title would lead you to suspect. Damn good article.

I first heard the term as a child. I'm not sure exactly where I was, it may have been the playground, but I recall hearing it in a "black on black" context, as in don't "act like a nigger." I grew up in a small, mixed, but mostly African-American town in South Jersey. I remember using it my first time and being chided by my uncle, Gregory, who told me it was a bad word. "Why?" I remember asking. He told me, using a definition he'd no doubt gotten from Grammom Wilson (my maternal great-grandmother), that a nigger is an "ignorant person."

OregonLive.com

Ridley's Game
Screenwriter, novelist, talk show host and NPR commentator John Ridley has written, under a pseudonym, a nasty piece for "Esquire" dealing with his painful adventures writing a script for "Bobby," the film directed by Emilio Estevez which deals with the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

The snark lives here.

It's a pretty random weekend.

I cheeck the referral logs and found myself on one of those blog searchs, looking for reactions to Ward Connerly's spiritual heir and his Esquire screed. Spent a little time on at Richard Prince's joint.

The current issue of Esquire magazine—"Man at His Best"—features an essay called "The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger" that argues before Esquire's white, male, affluent readership that the people the author labels with that description are "the oppressed minority within our minority" and that "we need to send niggers on their way."

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy."

MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill
By Ryan Singel
02:00 AM Dec, 01, 2006

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

Back when we were concerned about warrantless wiretaps I wrote a longish post talking about England's project to track every car in the country's location in real time and similar possibilities in the USofA. The Electronic Freedom Foundation noted a Federal judge reversed precedent, allowing the feds to track your cell phone location without probable cause.

Bad Ruling on Cell Phone Tracking: What a Difference a G Makes

December 21, 2005

Yesterday, Magistrate Judge Gorenstein of the federal court for the Southern District of New York issued an opinion permitting the government to use cell site data to track a cell phone's physical location, without the government having to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause.

Judge Gorenstein's flawed legal analysis is in sharp contrast to three other federal court opinions strongly rejecting the government’s legal arguments, including a decision by Magistrate Judge Orenstein in the Eastern District of New York. While Judge Orenstein referred to the government's legal arguments variously as "unsupported," "misleading," and "contrived," and a Texas court called the convolutions of the government’s theory “perverse” and likened its twists and turns to a "three-rail bank shot," Judge Gorenstein bought the government's arguments hook, line and sinker.

My concern at the time was

This will be great...we already have a major head start with all the cars eqipped with OnStar...all cell-phone equipped and so all immediately trackable. Much cheaper, and people voluntarily carry the tracker. No need for those camera thingies and best of all, no government bill. YOU pay for it when you buy your car. And of course there's the cell phone in your pocket...we get to follow you to that tryst with your co-worker as a side effect of tracking cars. Because your co-worker's cousin lent a cell phone to a guy who is related to a student that studied the Middle East with a foreign exchange student whose uncle was in the Iraq military makes her a person of interest.

With that in mind...

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
By Declan McCullagh
Story last modified Fri Dec 01 18:46:27 PST 2006

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

About two weeks ago I spotted an essay by Clay Shirky called, Social Facts, Expertise, Citizendium, and Carr. Citizendium is a "wikipedia" with volunteer expert editors. What caught my attention was the discussion of seperating authority from expertise. It's a common problem...in fact, it's called management. It's inherent is the insistance on data without 'bias.'

I had no intention of visiting Citizendium for a while. I figure I'd hear about it if it took off.

Well, I heard of them. This is Kali Tal, one of the recruited experts (and as of this writing the newest registered user of P6).

Damn shame.

Palestinian leader weighs options with after declaring coalition talks at 'dead end'
Posted 12/1/2006 9:00 AM ET

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas convened the PLO's top decision-making body on Friday to map out a strategy after declaring that talks to form a more moderate government with ruling Hamas militants had collapsed.

Abbas has two options, both problematic for him — fire the Hamas-led government or hold a national referendum on whether to call early elections.

Recent polls have shown that Abbas' Fatah Party would not have enough support to oust the militantly anti-Israel Hamas in new balloting. But if he dismisses the Hamas Cabinet, the Hamas-dominated parliament would veto any new government he appoints, leading to a constitutional crisis that could force elections.

...Modafinil is not a traditional stimulant; rather than bombarding various parts of the brain with arousal signals, it apparently nudges the brain toward wakefulness through specific pathways, perhaps by increasing serotonin levels in the brain stem. The precise mechanism is still not well understood.

The temptation for healthy people to use such a drug is tremendous; some individuals report that a dose leaves them as refreshed as a short nap....

Nothing better than a mood-modifying drug that we have no idea how it works.

Juicing the Brain
Research to limit mental fatigue among soldiers may foster controversial ways to enhance any person's brain
By Jonathan D. Moreno

Physicians have long tinkered with ways to "improve" the human brain, but as our understanding of that organ's inner workings quickly grows, artificial enhancement is becoming more feasible. Military research is at the forefront of this work, much of it focused on drugs. The goal is to produce a better soldier, but the emerging techniques could just as easily be applied to any individual.

Check this.

President George W. Bush has continued to reject assertions that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. But with the President set to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, to discuss the country's continuing sectarian violence, some human rights experts are worrying about a different, worse fate for Iraq: genocide.

Gregory Stanton, a professor of human rights at Virginia's University of Mary Washington, sees in Iraq the same troubling signs of preparation and execution of genocidal aims that he saw in the 1990s in Rwanda when he worked at the State Department. Sunni and Shiite militias are "trying to polarize the country, they're systematically trying to assassinate moderates, and they're trying to divide the population into homogenous religious sectors," Stanton says. All of those undertakings, he says, are "characteristics of genocide," and his organization, Genocide Watch, is preparing to declare the country in a "genocide emergency."

A second danger is that the United States could appear to be taking sides in the escalating sectarian strife....A decision to step back from reconciliation efforts would also be highly controversial among America's closest allies in the region, which are all Sunni governments. Sunni leaders in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms have been pressuring the United States to ensure that their brethren are included in Iraq's power structure and economy.

U.S. Considers Ending Outreach to Insurgents
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006; A01

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.

This book review refers to the Kalashnikov assault rifle as a 'low cost weapon of mass destruction.' This is the second time. The book's author did a three page piece in the Washington Post this weekend wrapped around the phrase.

It disturbs me.

It disurbs me because the USofA pwns the global arms industry. But worse, it further dilutes the WMD term into uselessness.

I don't care whether you believe me or not, but the very first time I heard the term in the news I knew trouble was coming. It's like hearing a commercial telling you about a new three-letter acronym for a collection of symptoms...you know a new drug is about to hit the market.

Because delivery is just plain inefficient, biological and chemical weapons struggle to be worthy of the WMD appelation. If we now start calling a thing "weapon of mass destruction," not because one kills en masse but because masses of them are used to kill, how long before Saturday Night Specials qualify?

Anyway... 

The Reliable Killer
AK-47
The Weapon That Changed the Face of War
By Larry Kahaner

Here's today's puzzler: Name a Russian innovation that whips most everything America and Western Europe throws against it, has astounding firepower, and is unaffected by heat, cold, and sand. (No, it's not Maria Sharapova.) Need more hints? It's easily transported, and its familiar silhouette has made it a must-have fashion accessory certifying the rebel status of figures from the anonymous Viet Cong to Osama bin Laden. Give up? It's the Kalashnikov assault rifle, also known as the AK. Since its first large-scale production in 1947, this low-tech weapon of mass destruction has spread across the globe, doling out death from Afghanistan to the U.S.

AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War author: Larry Kahaner asin: 0471726419

The chief dangers of marijuana, practically, seem to spring from only one of its features: it's illegal. People get beat up, shot up and locked up because of the great amount of money that rides on selling the stuff, stuff that would be about as expensive as lettuce if it weren't against the law. I have treated people seriously hurt by the illegality of pot.

Why I'm Not Against, Like, Oh Wow Man, Pot
I have yet to see a patient whose health was harmed by smoking marijuana, but I have treated people seriously hurt by the drug's illegality
By DR. SCOTT HAIG

We don't really know how many people smoke it. Some sources say 10 million Americans, others say 35 million. But a lot of people smoke pot and they don't seem very sick. Marijuana just won't go away. Everybody talks about it—many quite fondly. About everyone I know under 55 has smoked it. And they're all right. A few have that pothead "oh wow" personality, but so what? I don't know of one case of serious marijuana-related disease among my friends, family and acquaintances.

Nothing annoys me more than being talked to like I'm stupid by people that know better. It brings the speaker no tactical advantage. The energy raised doesn't blow up, thereby destroying my own structures. I use it to hone and target my response. That's not an advantage to me, because in the end I'm still annoyed...I don't read any Republican sites regularly because my second greatest annoyance is being talked to like I'm stupid at all.

Talking to me like I'm stupid can be done while agreeing or disagreeing with me. Tends to come mostly from the Conservative side of the agora but there's more than enough coming from the liberal side to make it feel like a two-front war on occasion.

Because I'm the Black partisan, not the Democratic, Black Democratic, or Democratic Black partisan, I still have to attend to those of real talent who are, well, wrong. Partly because watching the weaving of a complex bridge connecting undeniable fact (be it physical or social) with desired outcome using processes restricted by political orientation is just interesting. I remember reading some mathematician said something like the more eloquent the proof the less sure its basis. I feel something similar is at work here; and as in mathematics you can learn from interesting failures.

NYPD's Loose Cannon Is Bungalow's 'Undercover Mike'

THIN BLUE LINES Oliver

Certain hard-partying patrons of Chelsea nightspot Bungalow 8 received the shock of their lives Monday when they awoke to find photos of Mike Oliver—the NYPD officer who squeezed off 31 of the 50 shots fired at a carful of unarmed men in Queens last weekend—splashed across the city's tabloids. For the past year, the 35-year-old detective has been a four-night-a-week regular at the Olsen twin-heavy haunt, where he is known to the late-night crowd as "Undercover Mike."

"Everyone there was freaking the fuck out when they saw the Post," says a Bungalow insider. "It was like, 'Holy shit, that's Undercover Mike!'"

Oliver, according to multiple sources, began frequenting the club on a regular basis sometime last winter—whether in the course of his duties as an undercover officer or on his own time was never quite clear. "Sometimes he'd come alone, and sometimes with a young lady, always in plainclothes and always with a gun on him," says another source, who knows Oliver casually from his visits to the club. "The door guys all knew he was a narc and would tell people that, but they had to let him in. We never knew if he was on duty or off."

This is why I like Darkstar, even though he voted for Steele. (I don't expect perfection )

A Couple of "N Words" Walk into a Comedy Club

So, Michael Richards gets heckled, has a meltdown, calls some guys niggers, gives a detailing of a forked-based lynching (?), then gets the public flogging he deserves as he crawls around looking for absolution.

And that's all as it should be.

But a query: what exactly do you call a couple of black guys who go to a public place where people paid money to enjoy themselves and who then begin to yell and scream at the person on stage who is trying to do his job?

In a comedy club, they're called "customers." And I'd write is off as sympathy

As an ex-stand up, I can tell you that a comedy club isn't a place you go looking to get the abuse you just can't seem to find in daily life.

Asked about Abbas' options now, Rice declined to get involved.

"That's for the president to decide _ he's the elected official not me," she said.

Rice Calls for Intensified Peace Efforts
By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 30, 2006; 11:49 AM

JERICHO, West Bank -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Israelis and Palestinians Thursday to step up efforts to achieve a long-stalled peace deal, saying neither side should take actions that would prejudge a final accord.

"Hopefully we can take this moment to accelerate our efforts and intensify our efforts toward the two-state solution that we all desire," Rice said at a news conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Court documents said the government has identified 184 illegal immigrants who falsely received U.S. citizenship from Schofield, but Walutes said the government believes the actual number is in the hundreds. "We have to go out and arrest these people," Walutes said. "It's a huge endeavor."

Immigration Official Pleads Guilty to Falsifying Documents
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006; A16

A Department of Homeland Security supervisor pleaded guilty yesterday to pocketing more than $600,000 in bribes in exchange for falsifying immigration documents to help Asian immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship.

I have previously written of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation

[O]nly anti-civil rights organizations are named more cynically. It should be called the Committee on Capital Markets DeRegulation.

That post was titled Foxes applying for the position of hen house guard, making it the most appropriately named article I've written this year.

The Committee has issued its first report which is important because

The committee has no official standing, but the identities of its leaders and its formation with an endorsement from Mr. Paulson have created an expectation that it may map out the Bush administration’s final two years of strategy in capital markets. President Bush came to office talking of reduced regulation, but the Enron and WorldCom scandals led to passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened regulation and established a new regulator for auditing firms, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

I must keep an eye on this...The Civil Rights Project at Harvard is a major resource.

Professor Edley, reached at Berkeley yesterday, said that Harvard had been “at best, indifferent” to the project’s mission.

“The best that can be said was that they left us alone, and didn’t charge us more than market rates to rent office space,” Professor Edley said. “They didn’t provide any direct material assistance or even access to Harvard donors — although once we had a track record, they were happy to brag about us.”

U.C.L.A. has agreed to provide start-up financing, some research assistants, and university office space at no cost to the project, said Aimée Dorr, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, which will house the project.

Please, please, please make sure all the currently available stuff remains available...I don't mind having to search for them on your new site as long as they are there.

New Home and Issues for Civil Rights Project
By SAM DILLON

One of the nation’s most prominent research efforts focused on race and society, the Civil Rights Project, is moving from Harvard University to the University of California, Los Angeles, the universities said yesterday. The project’s director and co-founder, Gary Orfield, will join the U.C.L.A. faculty.

U.C.L.A. hailed the project’s move to Los Angeles, with a planned expansion of its work on immigration and other issues of concern to California’s huge Hispanic population, as an academic triumph.

The loss to Harvard follows a period in which the university has seen the attrition of prestigious minority faculty, including Christopher Edley Jr., a law professor who co-founded the Civil Rights Project in 1996. Professor Edley left Harvard in 2004 to become dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

The project has commissioned some 400 reports and produced a dozen books on topics including affirmative action, school segregation and the academic achievement gap. The Supreme Court cited its work in the 2003 decision upholding affirmative action in college admissions.

Some said their major concern was that the report might be too late.

“I think we’ve played a constructive role,” one person involved in the committee’s deliberations said, “but from the beginning, we’ve worried that this entire agenda could be swept away by events.”

That, my friends, is the first sign of intelligence as regards our expectations of this panel I've ever seen. Mind you, it's only a sign. Evidence of intelligence would be the open recognition that "this entire agenda" has already failed. 

The decline in our position in the world isn't irreversible yet. But this denial of physical fact will get us to that point in short order...and we're not that far from the tipping point.

Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.

The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.

“This is a transparently hypocritical and cynical letter,” Nicholas R. Burns, under secretary of state for political affairs, said in Washington about the latest letter. “It reflects a profound lack of understanding of the United States.” 

What makes you think it targets the USofA? 

Iran’s President Criticizes Bush in Letter to American People
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 29 — Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told the American people on Wednesday that he was certain they detested President Bush’s policies — his support for Israel, war in Iraq and curtailed civil liberties — and he offered to work with them to reverse those policies.

The call came in the form of a six-page letter in English , published online and addressed to “noble Americans” that discussed “the many wars and calamities caused by the U.S. administration.” It suggested that Americans had been fooled into accepting their government’s policies, especially toward Israel.

...we wouldn't have all this goddamn spam.

Black America: Place demands on Democrats
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Bill Fletcher Jr.

...When President Clinton was elected there was a sigh of relief that spread across this country, much like the sigh that many of us heard-or experienced-on Nov. 8 after the Republican defeat. Having suffered under 12 years of the Reagan/Bush administration, it felt great to have, what appeared to be a different direction for the country. At that point, one movement after another de-mobilized. It was amazing to watch it happen. Clinton was able to get a pass from organized labor as well as the African-American movement and the women's movement. When he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), there was resistance, but his actions were forgotten. When he abolished welfare, there were murmurings of discontent, but little public outcry from the mainstream leaders of liberal and progressive America. When he advanced his anti-terrorism act, there was little concern about the arbitrariness of the provision. When he attacked Yugoslavia, too many of us accepted that this was an alleged humanitarian action. Movement after movement was prepared to stick an apple in its own mouth because any other action would embarrass "...our friend..." in the White House and give ammunition to the Republicans.