Seems like some kind of sticky bomb -- men on motorcycles drove by and slapped the bombs on the scientists' car windows. In two separate attacks, one nuke scientist was killed, another seriously injured.

Iranians were quick to deny Americans any credit, pinning it on Israel.

I sure would like to think my government was capable of stuff like this. Or had the balls to do it. But I don't.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (83)
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Liberals love to talk about how nutty neo-cons only want to bomb Iran to save their masters in Israel or something. Well, that little talking point took a big hit yesterday, unless the King of Saudi Arabia is really Jewish or something.

There was little surprising in Mr. Barak’s implicit threat that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. As a pressure tactic, Israeli officials have been setting such deadlines, and extending them, for years. But six months later it was an Arab leader, the king of Bahrain, who provides the base for the American Fifth Fleet, telling the Americans that the Iranian nuclear program “must be stopped,” according to another cable. “The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it,” he said.

His plea was shared by many of America’s Arab allies, including the powerful King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who according to another cable repeatedly implored Washington to “cut off the head of the snake” while there was still time.

The fact that Gulf state Arabs arenÂ’t thrilled with the idea of the Persians in Iran having nukes and want to see their ambitions checked isnÂ’t new to anyone who has paid the least bit of attention to this stuff for going on 10 years now. Of course, that eliminates most rank and file Democrats and every leftist who thinks the US is simply trying to gin up a war with Iran for fun and Halliburton profits.

If youÂ’re looking for some of the highlights of the WikiLeaks dump, scroll around this Twitter feed, thereÂ’s information both news worthy and gossipy.

Overall, it seem this is something that will be forgotten quickly for the most part. There doesnÂ’t seem to be much thatÂ’s shocking or we didnÂ’t know (or at least strongly suspect). Yes, some of the personal characterizations are embarrassing but itÂ’s not like every government (or hell any group of people) donÂ’t talk more candidly in private than they do in public. People will get over it.

The real damage is that future sources of information may be reluctant to come forward in the future for fear of becoming an inadvertent star in some future mass leak. In a lot of places in the world that will lead to far worse things than some embarrassment.

Along those lines Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and currently the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, is urging Attorney General Holder to charge Assange with a crime and for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to designate WikiLeaks as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

From the letter to ClintonÂ…

We know terrorist organizations have been mining the leaked Afghan documents for information to use against us and this Iraq leak is more than four times as large. By disclosing such sensitive information, WikiLeaks continues to put at risk the lives of our troops, their coalition partners and those Iraqis and Afghans working with us.

The WikiLeaks releases provide valuable information and insights to FTOs throughout the world on U.S. military and diplomatic sources and methods and allow our enemies to better prepare for future U.S. and allied military, intelligence, and law enforcement operations targeting them. In addition, the leaks allow nation-states such as Russia, China, and Iran access to information regarding how the United States collects, analyzes, and produces intelligence products.

WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. I strongly urge you to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the U.S. government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks.

Maybe IÂ’m just a cynic but I doubt this administration is going to do anything of the sort. In fairness, the Bush administration didnÂ’t come down on officials who leaked information to the NY Times, the Washington Post or other outlets either. Funny how they get a pass but your average airline passenger gets a virtual strip search or groped for having the temerity to want to go home for Thanksgiving.

(Thanks to Baseballcrank for the King link)

Posted by: DrewM at 10:40 AM | Comments (48)
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A few points.

Genghis speculates that this fire might actually have been set by a member of the Religion of Peace -- certainly it's possible. That sort of thing happens a lot. Aggrieved minority stages "hate crime" to garner sympathy... and license.

No evidence that that's what happened, but then, no evidence really running in any direction, so I'm not crossing that one out.

Muslims at the mosque, meanwhile, are worried about... terrorism.

"I've prayed for my family and friends, because obviously if someone was deliberate to do this, what's to stop them from coming to our homes and our schools?" said Mohamed Alyagouri, a 31-year-old father of two, who worships at the center. "I'm afraid for my children getting harassed from their teachers, maybe from their friends."

Welcome to the party, pal. I don't like terrorism directed at anyone but I do appreciated pointed irony.

One point that can't be forgotten is that there's a pretty decent chance that his fellow worshippers actually tipped the FBI to his hot talk of terrorism.

A little more irony: Portland is one of those jackass liberal cities that resisted Bush's anti-terrorism efforts to save America or something.

In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force -- because Barack Obama is in the White House.

...

In the Mohamud case, it appears that Portland's anti-law enforcement stand might actually have influenced Mohamud's decision to undertake an attack in the city. According to the FBI affidavit, the undercover agents asked whether he worried that law enforcement would stop him. "In Portland?" Mohamud replied. "Not really. They don't see it as a place where anything will happen. People say, you know, why, anybody want to do something in Portland, you know, it's on the west coast, it's in Oregon, and Oregon's, like you know, nobody ever thinks about it."

Among the wisest bits of advice for liberals Bush offered was Just because you're not interested in terrorism doesn't mean terrorists aren't interested in you.

Of course, they ignore it. They're so lovey-dovey and hippy-dippy no terrorist would ever consider bombing their precious little hug-huddles.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (192)
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Captain Ed plucks out this telling detail from a Guardian report:

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

...

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

This seems crazy, but the government really only has two options: Either be overly restrictive with sensitive information, denying important information out of bureaucratic inertia to people who could use it for good purposes, or be overly free with sensitive information, putting it into the hands of any jackass with a Lada Gaga CD-RW and a grudge.

The obvious answer -- redact everything proper and set up rational and effective protocols about who can see precisely what and for what reasons -- really isn't an answer. All that evaluation of what's too sensitive to be shared takes human intelligence, and an awful lot of it, a lot of people making a lot of decisions which then have to be approved by their supervisors. That regime leads to pretty much everything being classified and not shared, which was the default status of this all before 9/11, because if you're a lower-level bureaucrat tasked with such a routine, repetitive task, the safest move you can make, in terms of your career and CYA-ism, is just to mark everything as Tip-Top Secret.

On top of that, the huge number of people thus required to process all this information and choose the appropriate classification levels and need-to-know protocols becomes the next big security risk, since each of these people could leak their little treasure trove, if they wanted. And they would all be sort of low-level, marginal sort of employees, not professional spymasters, because do you want your top professional spy-guys out collecting and analyzing information or do you want them sitting in a cubicle in a huge room making routine classification decisions?

The only way this can work is if each person who sends a report creates three or four different versions of the same report. The first, the unexpurgated version, only for higher ups; the alternate versions, one scrubbed and one seriously scrubbed. Each person would be responsible then for classifying and redacting his own report, which makes sense, 1, because it's pretty easy to scrub your own report (and takes about five or ten minutes of additional work) and 2, because the person writing the report is in the best position to judge what's truly sensitive and what can be freely disseminated.

The raw versions of the reports wouldn't even be digitally accessible. Only someone specifically asking for the raw version would get it, and only after whoever is entrusted with that version decides the person asking needs the information.

It also makes sense because then you don't have a huge bureaucracy of low-level people making these decisions, but the professionals who collect information making a decision they're uniquely qualified to make.

This probably seems pretty obvious, like duh, so obvious I'm a little worried that a spy-type is going to say in the comments Ace you cloth-eared dunce that's precisely what we do!, but I don't think people are doing that-- because if they were, only the scrubbed version of these reports should have been accessible by Private Manning, by and large (allowing for the occasional slip-up), and obviously that's not the case.

Could it be this easy? Am I missing something?

Oh: And hi again! I've missed you.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 AM | Comments (148)
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Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:21 AM | Comments (278)
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OK, pretty eventful episode this week. Let's go right to the "spoilers" more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 09:10 PM | Comments (64)
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Jason Bell, a biochemist working in biophysics.

Chromosome Damage From Radiation

On the significance of the type of radiation used:

The TSA has been stating that the X-rays used in the back scatter machines use 'soft' X-rays, which are defined as radiation between 0.12-12 keV (or kilo electron volts) and are generally stopped, or absorbed, by soft tissue or low density matter. 'Hard' X-rays are between 12-128 keV and are absorbed by dense matter like bone. According to the TSA safety documents, AIT uses an 50 keV source that emits a broad spectra (see adjacent graph from here). Essentially, this means that the X-ray source used in the Rapiscan system is the same as those used for mammograms and some dental X-rays, and uses BOTH 'soft' and 'hard' X-rays. Its very disturbing that the TSA has been misleading on this point. Here is the real catch: the softer the X-ray, the more its absorbed by the body, and the higher the biologically relevant dose! This means, that this radiation is potentially worse than an a higher energy medical chest X-ray.

(Emphasis mine.) He has several concerns about the power of the machines in question:

• Based on the limited engineering schematics released in the safety documents, the machines could be easily reconfigured to perform through-the-body X-rays, and the hardware has the capability to output high doses of radiation though failure or both authorized and unauthorized reconfiguration of software and hardware.
  
• The X-ray beam is being rastered across the body--that is, scanned in lines from side to side, top to bottom, like a TV screen. If the machine fails or gets stuck during a pass, there is a possibility a person's eye, testicle, or hand, for example, could receive a dangerous dose of X-rays.
  
• This possibility gives rise to certain questions: What is the failure rate of these machines? What is the failure rate in an operational environment? Who services the machine? What is the decay rate of the filter? What is the decay rate of the shielding material?
  
• Also, what is the variability in the power of the X-ray source during the manufacturing process? The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory noted a significant disparity in their test models--which were supposed to be adjusted to exact specifications.

On the widely publicized claim that radiation from the machines amounts to the same exposure one would receive after two to three minutes of flight:

With respect to errors in the safety reports and/or misleading information about them, the statement that one scan is equivalent to 2-3 minutes of your flight is VERY misleading. Most cosmic radiation is composed of high energy particles that passes right through our body, the plane and even most of the earth itself without being absorbed or even detected. The spectrum that is dangerous is known as ionizing radiation and most of that is absorbed by the hull of the airplane. So relating non-absorbing cosmic radiation to tissue absorbing man-made radiation is simply misleading and wrong.

Much more at the link, including questions raised by scientists about the lack of testing and safety data provided by the government and/or the manufacturers and the lack of independent testing and data. He also points out how stingy the release of information has been, with many things redacted in the material that has been made available. Why?

Link via BoingBoing.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 08:01 PM | Comments (109)
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He was suffering from pneumonia.

His nephew Doug Nielson, told CJOB that Leslie had been in the hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for 12 days and that with family and friends by his side at 5:30pm Sunday “he just fell asleep and passed away.”

What a great guy. I've heard several people say that he was a great guy in person as well, very nice. His work in later years in the comedies was so fantastic that it nearly overshadowed his prior excellent work as a dramatic actor. I think I laughed more and harder watching his movies than any others. He will be missed.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:59 PM | Comments (91)
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Welcome all to the post-Thanksgiving shame spiral. Don't worry - the fumigators are coming tomorrow morning to get rid of all the bedbugs and clear out the openblogger uh, scent aroma.

Welcome To The United States Of Obesity

Mississippi is still the fattest state in the country. And after stuffing ourselves over the recent holiday food binge I doubt the current standings have changed much.

Interesting that Colorado and Utah are the thinnest states. I would suspect that maybe elevation had something to do with it but then how do you explain New Mexico and Wyoming? Maybe it's just cooking styles and activity levels.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:45 PM | Comments (520)
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Well now isnÂ’t this interesting . . . we have been informed that since returning to MSNBC, Keith Olbermann has become cogent and relevant. Well, actually thatÂ’s not what we were told but if that really happened CSPAN would probably be covering such an epic moment of MSNBC sanity. What we were really told by our East Coaster informant is that Mr. Olbermann has been hissing and spitting and is on his game.

Keith Olbermann being, “on his game” - what in the name of novus seclorum does that exactly mean? Before I answer that, let me proceed with the following question: Did I just say novus seclorum, really? Wow, that’s odd because injecting Latin for no other reason than to inject it is kinda weird. Weird it is but weird is entirely germane when discussing MSNBC and actually, required when discussing Mr. Olbermann.

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:55 PM | Comments (147)
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