Seems like a first step:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said his people should drop their weapons in the struggle for a state, marking out a clear change of strategy for peace with Israel after Yasser Arafat's death last month.

Abbas, near certain to win a Jan. 9 election to succeed Arafat, made the comments in an interview published on Tuesday, two days after militants showed their muscle with the deadliest attack on Israeli troops since May. Fresh violence killed a Palestinian policeman and a Thai farmer at a Jewish settlement.

Abbas, a U.S.-favored veteran leader had previously shown his opposition to armed attacks in a 4-year-old uprising, but not in such strong terms since Arafat's death on Nov. 11.

"The uprising should be kept away from arms because it is a legitimate right of the people to express their rejection of the occupation by popular and social means," Abbas told the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

"The use of arms has been damaging and should end," said Abbas, who took over as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization after Arafat's death.

Despite Abbas's stance, growing violence in the occupied Gaza Strip has dampened hopes of a peace breakthrough after Arafat's death. Israel ordered more efforts to target militants after an attack that killed five Israeli troops on Sunday.

"We will continue this fight against terror until someone else fights the terror," Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told reporters, alluding to Abbas's Palestinian Authority.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (1)
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And two more captured.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (2)
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Well, she doesn't really like it, but I do! Hopefull you guys will too.

There's still a couple of issues -- I'm aware that it's hard to highlight specific text, for example, and that bothers me -- but overall I think the design is pretty good.

I'm not sure about that "slitting throats" being in red in the quote in the banner; I know others have expressed reservations about the whole quote, given the times we live in, and the fact that some don't take Mencken's words as metaphor. Let me know.

Thanks for all your donations; they did, after all, pay for this overhaul. I signed up for the Andrew Sullivan Special Design Package, which means it only cost me six-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And, you know, I'll just be needing that money from you now.

Like, right now. I've got kids to support. Somewhere, I'm sure. Little illegitmate brats cost me a proper penny, I'll tell you that. My ex-girlfriend Lucille calls them her "Little Emotional Support Brigade." I call them "My Little Bastards," because, legally, that's what they are. I don't believe in sugar-coating things.

Anyway. Hope the new design pleases. Any garishness or goofiness in this design is my doing, not Web-Diva's. Pretty much the entire process was me saying "How about a burning skull? Can we do that? Huh? A burning skull would be fucking WICKED!" and her saying, "Um, okay, if that's what you really want."

Coming soon: My own new-Drudge siren. A burning FUCKING SKULL! Just like Ghost Rider, but even more fucking hard-core!

How awesome is that?

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 PM | Comments (32)
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Very good article about very bad people-- or at least the first half of the article is, before it all gets a little, well, crazy.

Psychopathy may prove to be as important a construct in this century as IQ was in the last (and just as susceptible to abuse), because, thanks to Hare, we now understand that the great majority of psychopaths are not violent criminals and never will be. Hundreds of thousands of psychopaths live and work and prey among us. Your boss, your boyfriend, your mother could be what Hare calls a "subclinical" psychopath, someone who leaves a path of destruction and pain without a single pang of conscience. Even more worrisome is the fact that, at this stage, no one -- not even Bob Hare -- is quite sure what to do about it.

Why? This is kind of interesting:

For his first paper, now a classic, Hare had his subjects watch a countdown timer. When it reached zero, they got a "harmless but painful" electric shock while an electrode taped to their fingers measured perspiration. Normal people would start sweating as the countdown proceeded, nervously anticipating the shock. Psychopaths didn't sweat. They didn't fear punishment -- which, presumably, also holds true outside the laboratory. In Without Conscience, he quotes a psychopathic rapist explaining why he finds it hard to empathize with his victims: "They are frightened, right? But, you see, I don't really understand it. I've been frightened myself, and it wasn't unpleasant."

In another Hare study, groups of letters were flashed to volunteers. Some of them were nonsense, some formed real words. The subject's job was to press a button whenever he recognized a real word, while Hare recorded response time and brain activity. Non-psychopaths respond faster and display more brain activity when processing emotionally loaded words such as "rape" or "cancer" than when they see neutral words such as "tree." With psychopaths, Hare found no difference. To them, "rape" and "tree" have the same emotional impact -- none.

Hare made another intriguing discovery by observing the hand gestures (called beats) people make while speaking. Research has shown that such gestures do more than add visual emphasis to our words (many people gesture while they're on the telephone, for example); it seems they actually help our brains find words. That's why the frequency of beats increases when someone is having trouble finding words, or is speaking a second language instead of his or her mother tongue. In a 1991 paper, Hare and his colleagues reported that psychopaths, especially when talking about things they should find emotional, such as their families, produce a higher frequency of beats than normal people. It's as if emotional language is a second language -- a foreign language, in effect -- to the psychopath.

It's not really political, except for this bit:

Hare's research upset a lot of people. Until the psychopath came into focus, it was possible to believe that bad people were just good people with bad parents or childhood trauma and that, with care, you could talk them back into being good. Hare's research suggested that some people behaved badly even when there had been no early trauma. Moreover, since psychopaths' brains were in fundamental ways different from ours, talking them into being like us might not be easy. Indeed, to this day, no one has found a way to do so.

"Some of the things he was saying about these individuals, it was unheard of," says Dr. Steven Stein, a psychologist and ceo of Multi-Health Systems in Toronto, the publisher of the Psychopathy Checklist. "Nobody believed him thirty years ago, but Bob hasn't wavered, and now everyone's where he is. Everyone's come full circle, except a small group who believe it's bad upbringing, family poverty, those kinds of factors, even though scientific evidence has shown that's not the case. There are wealthy psychopaths who've done horrendous things, and they were brought up in wonderful families."

"There's still a lot of opposition -- some criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists don't like psychopathy at all," Hare says. "I can spend the entire day going through the literature -- it's overwhelming, and unless you're semi-brain-dead you're stunned by it -- but a lot of people come out of there and say, 'So what? Psychopathy is a mythological construct.' They have political and social agendas: 'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay.' "

And it's also political in the sense that you're going to find this piece cited favorably on Democratic Underground within, oh, say twenty minutes or so, with the usual suspects named as "subclinical psychopaths."

Heck. When George Bush talks about reforming Social Security, he's really beating the shit out of his wife. Without a pang of conscience.

The article seems to get a little out of hand near the end, as it endeavors to demonstrate that your boss or the office charmer down the hall is probably a psychopath of some sort. Are you an executive who likes power? How about a guy who "manages" his boss by flattering him so he won't fire you? Well, there you go: You're psycho.

Still, the earlier stuff is interesting.

Posted by Ralphie at The Perfect World.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 PM | Comments (8)
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Jed Babbin may have a big article tomorrow. Not earth-shattering big, but certainly interesting.

Joshua Micah Mellencamp Ezekiah Boutros-Boutros Marshall may not be in such a lather about "illegally leaking national security information" tomorrow.

Or, rather, he might have to lecture us on the sort of thing that high-ranking politicos are permitted to illegally leak versus the "serious stuff" they're not.

Background: Here.

More Background: Here.

We'll see.

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 PM | Comments (20)
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I didn't post this earlier because, really, what is there to say at this point?

But just in case you missed it:

Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.

Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.

"We think he was a major player in this — a central figure," a senior law-enforcement official told The Post.

Investigators are looking into a series of deals that took place in the months after his pardon from Clinton. If criminal wrongdoing is established in these deals, he could be subject to prosecution.

Here's one guy who's really, really, really hoping for Hillary Clinton in '08.

And just in case anyone's forgotten:

In January 2001, in the final hours his presidency, Clinton bypassed law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to wipe the books clean for Rich after being subjected to intense lobbying from former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Rich's jet-setting ex-wife, Denise, who donated more than $1 million to Democratic campaigns — including Sen. Hillary Rodham's first Senate race — along with an additional $450,000 to Clinton's library fund.

Investigators still do not know how recipients of the vouchers led to Rich, but say his relationship with Saddam goes back more than a decade.

Prosecutors are also examining the theory that Denise Rich has big fat fake plastic boobies, and may be a talentless & tasteless gold-digger of some kind.

If you can believe such irresponsible allegations.

Posted by: Ace at 07:40 PM | Comments (8)
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For some reason I think this one's real:

Researchers at Rutgers University have developed a trio of drugs they believe can destroy HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to a published report.

The drugs, called DAPYs, mimic the virus by changing shape, which enables them to interfere with the way HIV attacks the immune system.

Tests conducted in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson have shown the drug to be easily absorbed with minimal side effects. It also can be taken in one pill, in contrast to the drug cocktails currently taken by many AIDS patients.

“This could be it,” Stephen Smith, the head of the department of infectious diseases at Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, said. “We're all looking for the next class of drugs.”

...

The research has targeted reverse transcriptase, a submiscroscopic protein composed of two coiled chains of amino acids. It is considered HIV's key protein.

“Reverse transcriptase is very important in the biology of AIDS,” Dr. Smith said. “If you can really inhibit reverse transcriptase, you can stop AIDS.”

The optimism about R278474 stems from its potential to interfere with an enzyme that the virus needs to copy and insert itself into a human cell.

“We're onto something very, very special,” Dr. Arnold said.

Posted by: Ace at 07:27 PM | Comments (17)
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He just happened to have dinner with the opposition candidate the night (they say) he was poisoned.

Wow.

Speechless:

UKRAINIAN prosecutors will today begin an investigation into allegations that state officials tried to assassinate opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, following weekend confirmation that he was poisoned in the run-up to presidential elections.

It is an inquiry that is expected to be hugely divisive because the prime suspect is the head of the Ukraine secret service, the SBU.

The official dined with Mr Yushchenko the night he was poisoned, and medical experts say the dioxin is likely to have been administered through the food and drink.

Mr Yushchenko, expected to be elected president in re-run elections on 26 December, yesterday promised a full investigation of the case.

Leaving the Vienna clinic which confirmed, after weeks of uncertainty, that he had suffered dioxin poisoning, he told reporters: "This question will require a great deal of time and serious investigation."

His call was echoed in Washington, where state department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said: "We urge Ukrainian authorities to investigate this matter." She said US officials had also studied the Austrian report and were "deeply concerned about these findings".

Mr Yushchenko yesterday insisted his poisoning would not be the key issue in campaigning ahead of the presidential run-off contest against prime minister Viktor Yanukovich. He said: "I donÂ’t want this factor to influence the election in some way - either as a plus or a minus."

In fact, the timing of the announcement means the issue can hardly be anything else. The poisoning allegations have been the central theme of this election battle ever since Mr Yushchenko was rushed to hospital with a mystery illness on 5 September this year.

His American wife, Ekaterina, said she knew something was wrong when she kissed him the night of the attack, and found a "medicinal" taste on his lips.

The following day, wracked with pain, Mr Yushchenko was rushed to the elite Rudolfinerhaus Clinic. Doctors there saved his life, but insisted in the weeks that followed that they did not know what had made him ill.

Nevertheless, the sight of Mr YushchenkoÂ’s once handsome and now pockmarked and puffy face became the key image of the pro-democracy demonstrations of recent weeks.

If you're going to take a shot at the king, boys, you'd damn better'd kill him.

As the French say, Payback, c'est un bitch.

Posted by: Ace at 06:34 PM | Comments (6)
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Moflicky suggested I read Michael Moore's typically-unhinged bit of political crankery, and it's a corker.* [Emphasis added.]
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:59 PM | Comments (23)
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Breaking.

Unanimous. I guess the jury's recommendation now passes to the judge, who has to decide whether it's actually appropriate and based on sufficient evidence.

My guess? He'll reject the recommendation and sentence Peterson to life, in a sort of compromise verdict. A lot of people don't think there's enough evidence to actually convict Peterson -- although most of those folks are convinced he's guilty -- and I think the judge probably feels similarly.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (24)
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