Night of the Short Knives. Terry Egan passes this along to me; lunacy from the Euro­pean Union: The Adam Smith Insti­tute has denounced the lat­est… [Sur­vival Arts]

It seems the EU has decreed “that the max­i­mum length of knife blades per­mit­ted within the EU after 1 Jan­u­ary 2004 will be 10cm (approx 4 inches).”

I won­der if this is some bizarre round­about scheme by veg­e­tar­i­ans to reduce meat con­sump­tion, by forc­ing butch­ers to make do with totally inad­e­quate tools?

Raid Finds Al-Qaida Tie to Iraq Mil­i­tants [AP World News]

The title is a bit mis­lead­ing. The “Iraq mil­i­tants” men­tioned are Ansar al-Islam, the ter­ror­ist group located in the Kur­dish ter­ri­tory. The arti­cle men­tions that no link to Sad­dam had been found, but they were appar­ently receiv­ing aid from Iran. No doubt the Cru­saders will use that as part of their pro­pa­ganda effort to pro­mote was with Iran.

News­day.  The inter­nally con­flicted US pol­icy on Iraq con­tin­ues to do dam­age.  On the one hand we need local sup­port (par­tic­u­larly from the Shi­ites in the south and cen­tral Iraqi cities), yet we aren’t will­ing to talk, nego­ti­ate, or work with the per­son that that could make this hap­pen (and the per­son who will likely be a major polit­i­cal player in a post-Saddam Iraq):  Aya­tol­lah Muham­mad Bakr al-Hakim.  Our inabil­ity to work with this spir­i­tual and polit­i­cal leader of Iraqi Shi­ites has resulted in the fol­low­ing:

… al-Hakim has sent instruc­tions to his sup­port­ers and secret cells in Basra, Najaf, Kar­bala and other south­ern Iraqi cities not to start an upris­ing or sup­port the American-led coali­tion in any way, accord­ing to two of his top advis­ers. Al-Hakim also issued a “mes­sage to the Iraqi peo­ple” last week urg­ing them not to side either with the United States or the Iraqi régime.

This has not stopped the Kurds from work­ing with al-Hakim’s forces, the Iranian-housed Iraqi Shi­ite Badr Brigade:

A senior Kur­dish offi­cial said the Badr forces were invited by the Patri­otic Union of Kur­dis­tan, which con­trols the east­ern part of the Kur­dish self-rule area. The group invited al-Hakim’s forces in prepa­ra­tion for send­ing Iraqi oppo­si­tion mili­tias into the strate­gic north­ern city of Kirkuk, which is home to some of Iraq’s rich­est oil fields. The Kurds want to send some Arab fight­ers into the city so that it would not appear that they are try­ing to take it over for them­selves, the offi­cial said.

It’s dis­heart­en­ing to think that the US mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship assumed that there would be pop­u­lar sup­port for US mil­i­tary action in Iraq with­out work­ing hand in glove with extremely pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion lead­ers.  Granted, these meet­ings are start­ing to occur, but they are in many ways too lit­tle, too late.  In my view, a face-to-face meet­ing between Bush, Barzani, Tal­a­bani, Cha­l­abi, and al-Hakim should have been a pre­req­ui­site for any mil­i­tary action in Iraq. 
[John Robb’s Radio Weblog]

I think it’s good for the Iraqi peo­ple that the Shi­ites and Kurds are work­ing together like that. Together the two groups rep­re­sent about 80% of Iraq’s pop­u­la­tion, and it’s nice to see signs that they don’t intend to start killing each other the first chance they get.

On the other hand, this is bad news for the US gov­ern­ment. If the main Iraqi oppo­si­tion groups are already work­ing together, it doesn’t bode well for the Proconsul’s rule once the con­quest is complete.

Peter Arnett Can’t Win. First he gets fired for doing a story that was false. Now he’s been fired for say­ing what every­body knows is true. The brick­bats keep com­ing. In this Howard Kurtz story, dec­o­rated for­mer Marine Rich Lowry, who has spent decades trav­el­ing the Mid­dle East and mas­ter­ing the region’s polit­i­cal and cul­tural nuances, gives the canned Kiwi what-for. [Hit & Run]

Hope­fully this will dis­cour­age jour­nal­ists from their annoy­ing habit of inter­view­ing each other and pre­tend­ing it’s news.

Politi­cian Urges Bush War Crimes Trial [AP World News]

bq. The United Nations must try Pres­i­dent Bush (news — web sites) and his allies as war crim­i­nals, a top Indone­sian politi­cian demanded Mon­day as pro­test­ers else­where denounced the war in Iraq as ille­gal and voiced con­cern for its victims.

The UN and their “war crimes” non­sense can get lost, but the Pres­i­dent, his cab­i­net, and all of Con­gress (except Rep. Ron Paul) should be impeached for vio­lat­ing their oaths of office.

I lay in bed most of yes­ter­day and read the entire 409 pages of Jeff
Head’s

Dragon’s Fury — High Tide. It cov­ers the crest­ing and
turn­ing back in 2008 by Amer­i­can allies of the high tide of the
Chi­nese and Islamic forces by cruise mis­siles fir­ing hun­dreds of
thou­sands of .17 cal­iber hyper-velocity depleted ura­nium
pro­jec­tiles. It includes fic­tional sci­en­tific proof that life begins
at con­cep­tion and the rever­sal of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court.
All-in-all an enter­tain­ing read. [End the War on Free­dom]

That sounds about like what I’d expect. I read the first two books, and found them to be ridicu­lously improbable.

Big Brother Is Watch­ing You Shop. Com­mer­cial data­bases, such as credit card records, gro­cery pur­chases and hotel bills, are the lat­est pool of infor­ma­tion the gov­ern­ment says it has a right to col­lect. Mer­chants and lenders have been doing it for years. [Wired News]

A good rea­son to pay cash when­ever pos­si­ble, and avoid using those gro­cery store “dis­count” cards.

Pow­ell Gives Warn­ing to Iran and Syria [AP World News]

Com­bined with Rumsfeld’s ear­lier threats, it seems that the gov­ern­ment is start­ing the push toward war with Syria and Iran. The real ques­tion is, which will they attack first?

Push to stamp out gun crime. The own­ers of ille­gal firearms are urged to hand them in with­out fear of pros­e­cu­tion as part of a nation­wide amnesty. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edi­tion]

Oth­er­wise known as “National Evi­dence Dis­posal Day.” If the British gov­ern­ment actu­ally cared about reduc­ing crime, they would try to get more peo­ple to carry guns, not fewer.

British Sol­diers Refuse to Fight. Two British ser­vice­men have been sent home from the Mid­dle East after refus­ing to fight in the war against Iraq, The Sun­day Times reported. They said they would refuse to fight because of the civil­ian casu­al­ties being caused by the US-British attack. They face pos­si­ble court mar­tial and up to two years in jail for dis­obey­ing orders. [Al Jazeerah]

Some­how I doubt that the Cru­saders who recite mean­ing­less slo­gans about “sup­port our troops” will actu­ally be will­ing to sup­port these troops. I won­der if they will need any money for their legal defense?