CIA World Fact Book The World Factbook, produced annually by the CIA, has become the ultimate, authoritative source of information on all the nations of the world. It provides current data for more than 250 countries and territories, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Topics addressed include the political climate, natural resources, environment, population, ethnic groups, GDP, agriculture, industries, defense expenditures, literacy rate, religion, legal system, and much more. Key data are grouped under the headings of geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues.
	National Geographic Atlas of the World Combining state-of-the-art cartographic technology and information with dynamic and diverse physiographic and cultural content, this edition is NG's most accurate and interesting record of the world yet. The opening section, Ninety Years of Mapping at National Geographic, traces the founding of Geographic cartography to the present advances in technology and the practice of compiling and organizing geographic information. The atlas truly begins with three stunning new, full-spread world maps, that drape Earth's surface seamlessly with satellite imagery, then physical and natural features, and finally today's political world of countries and growing cities.
	State of the World 2005 Since September 11, 2001, many governments have reasserted the centrality of traditional, military-focused security. Yet the aftermath of the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq underlines once more that lasting security is not found in soldiers, bullets, and tanks. "Security" concerns are only in part about violent conflict, a worst-case outcome that results from a broad range of underlying vulnerabilities: the complex interactions between environmental degradation, poverty, and inequity; growing human populations; and the international proliferation of deadly weapons.
	The Statesman's Yearbook 2005 For one hundred and forty-one years The Statesman's Yearbook has been relied upon to provide accurate and comprehensive information on the current, political, economic and social status of every country in the world. The 2005 edition is fully updated and contains more information than ever before. A foldout color section provides a political world map and flags for the one hundred and ninety two countries of the world. In an endlessly changing world the annual publication of The Statesman's Yearbook gives you all of the information you need in one easily digestible single volume.
	Vital Signs 2005 The award-winning Worldwatch Institute reveals the often overlooked key trends that define the true health of our planet. It tracks the major indicators that show social, economic, and environmental progress, or the lack thereof. Vital Signs 2005 presents up-to-the-minute information on environmental and sustainable development topics, such as climate change, world population, energy, transgenic crops, HIV/AIDS, trade, and Internet use. Each trend is presented in text and graphics, providing a thorough, well-documented, and accessible overview. Vital Signs is an excellent companion to Worldwatch's acclaimed State of the World series.

[Headphones] :: Doesn't Remind Me - Audioslave

When New Orleans officials issued a mandatory evacuation order, some speculated at the time that about eighty percent of the residents of The Big Easy had already fled ahead of Hurricane Katrina's arrival.  Now as rescue and recovery operations continue, the scale of the displaced evacuee situation is starting to be calculated.  It is estimated that up to one million people are scattered across the country because of Hurricane Katrina.  It's very good news that more Department of Defense (DoD) assets and personnel have arrived on scene.

In New Orleans, many tens of thousands of people have already been rescued and relocated to Red Cross shelters in nineteen states, but twenty thousand more people could still be hunkered down in individual homes and apartments.  Baton Rouge has instantly replaced New Orleans as the most populous city in Louisiana because of Katrina.  Officials in Texas alone report that they have received over 200,000 evacuees.

With about one million evacuess scattered to the wind in the chaotic environment caused by Katrina, finding loved ones is a problem that is now being addressed on a large scale.  While the news outlets poignantly report some feel-good, human interest stories of a few individual families being reunited to raise the mood of their viewers, other private and public organizations are creating real methods for people to reconnect with each other in the aftermath of Katrina.

If you evacuated before Katrina hit and you are somewhere safe, check these sites and register with the Red Cross so people looking for you will know you are okay.  If you are looking for neighbors, friends, and loved ones that may have been evacuated to a shelter, check the list often as the Red Cross is continually updating it.

Red Cross Family Links Registry  or call 1-877-568-3317

Here are some other helpful sites from various organizations in the area where you can read messages, leave messages, and simply get more information about specific areas affected by Hurricane Katrina:

NOLA.COM - Help, evacuee forums, photos and news for New Orleans.
WWL TV - Help, forums, photos, live stream and news for New Orleans.
CNN Safe List - Alphabetical listing with evacuee status.
NOKR.ORG - The National Next Of Kin Registry
WLBT.COM - News, forums, housing and helpful info for Mississippi.
Clarion Ledger - Great section for help and info for Gulf Coast residents.
Sun Herald - News, evacuee forums, helpful info for South Mississippi.

If you find some helpful info on other sites not listed here for the Where's Waldo evacuee situation, please leave a comment with the web address (URL) in the comment form.

Some of the web sites listed above have links concerning long term housing.  Here is an inital list of websites dealing with housing:

Craig's List - Katrina section
Hurricane Housing
Katrina Housing
Home Flood Forums
Open Your Home

If you have housing available or are looking for housing, check those websites.  If you find additional web sites with housing information, please leave a comment with the web address (URL).

I also wanted to mention something of urgent need for the evacuation centers.  The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has put a call out for medical professionals of all disciplines and relief workers to register and volunteer.  [Secure Volunteer Registration Form]

Also, Noah's Wish has updates and important information concerning pets left behind.


[Headphones] :: Evil Stevie: Activate! - JfZ

Make a comment

In response to the hurricane tragedy, NBC will air a live benefit special, "A Concert For Hurricane Relief," in high-definition on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC tonight at 8:00pm (ET), it was announced today by NBC Universal.  The hour-long, music and celebrity driven broadcast will air live.  From Rockefeller Plaza, the special will feature performances by artists with ties to the affected areas, including Tim McGraw, Harry Connick, Jr. and Wynton Marsalis, and an appearance by Leonardo DiCaprio.

Some corporate donations are coming in according to the American Red Cross:

Target has announced a $1.5 million donation to the American Red Cross, with $500,000 going for immediate relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina, and an additional $1 million for ongoing disaster relief and preparedness.

In addition to cash contributions, Target is offering much-needed real estate in Louisiana to the Red Cross to establish a central command center supporting the most heavily impacted areas of the storm. Target is also looking into real estate availability in Alabama and Mississippi.

Target is coordinating large-scale distribution of essential products requested by the Red Cross, including such items as water, ice, energy bars and bug spray. Stores in the affected areas have been given additional funds to provide in-kind product donations and grants to local nonprofit organizations. Our teams also will provide volunteer support.  [press release]

Grainger (NYSE: GWW), North America's leading distributor of facilities maintenance supplies, has pledged more than $1 million in cash and emergency supplies such as tarps, gloves, flashlights and batteries to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund to help communities and businesses recover following the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. The company also is encouraging its employees to contribute to the recovery efforts by providing a four-to-one match of employee gifts to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.  [press release]

BP Foundation has donated $1 million to the Red Cross and will also match the contributions of BP employees to the disaster relief effort.  [press release]

Chevron Corporation today announced it is making a commitment of $5 million to support recovery efforts in the communities affected by Hurricane Katrina. This includes a $3 million contribution to the American Red Cross in support of disaster relief efforts in Louisiana, Mississippi and other affected areas following further analysis of the devastation. The remaining $2 million will go to local charities and relief efforts near Chevron businesses in affected states, as determined by the Company.   [press release]

These are just a few examples of good corporate citizens stepping up to the plate to aid in the Hurricane Katrina Relief activities.  More are being added daily.  Celebrities like Diddy and Nicholas Cage have also made large financial donations.


The most important and valuable person that can give financial aid is you.  Millions of us acting together, just giving a donation that we can afford, can cumulatively eclipse all the financial donations by the large donors.  We can step up and help.

Just this morning, I read a comment on Interdictor's blog about the students at Deland High School, here in Central Florida, who have simply banded together and donated one dollar each to their local Red Cross chapter.  This is how we all band together to make a difference.

The following retailers continue serving as Red Cross Official Cash Donation Sites where members of the public, during their everyday errands, can conveniently make a contribution to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund:

• Coinstar coin-counting machines, located in 10,000 grocery stores nationwide are accepting donations for the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, just as they do 365 days per year as part of a long-time partnership.
• Lowe's Companies, Inc. introduced a customer donation program in all 1,125 stores nationwide, matching donations up to $1 millions
• Food Lion, LLC has started a customer donation program
• Winn-Dixie began a customer donation program in all stores

[Headphones] :: Evil Stevie: Activate! - JfZ

I try to blog serious or snarkastic article-length entries here about politics, news, and society on Dark Skies, but I created the the Junk Drawer topic to blog about more trivial or personal things.  I've a mandate not to heavy-load this blog with the graphical elements you see on my first-ever blog, Thunderstorms in the Imajica.  I embrace the learning experience given to me here.  Not being a professional writer, I've never struggled with the English language more than I have here, in order to communicate exactly what I want to say.

For the last week of August 2005, I had several entry ideas digitally scribbled down in one of the dozens of notepad text files littering my PC desktop.  One possible topic upon which I was going to opine was racism.  I grew up and lived most of my life in Detroit, MI -- a city verified by 2000 census data as being the most segregated major U.S. city and popularized by Eminem's movie "8 Mile."  And recently, I had had a brief and unexpected conversation with a total stranger as I was locking up my bike at the Winn-Dixie store.  It left me shaking my head in confusion.

Another topic I was researching was some of the additional and ongoing information oozing out into the public domain about George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts.  Personally speaking, he looks like he's a Stepford Judge, but apparently there are more serious issues being brought up about Roberts that various organizations advocate be explored.  Senate confirmation hearings will be coming soon.

So.

I had this interesting idea.  There are so many people on Blogdrive whose experience, education or life has given them an expert witness level of information to some topics. Do you have strong feelings about some of these topics?  Would writing about these things be an exception to your personal, fluffy bunny blog and not fit?  Would you like to be a guest blogger here?

Here's how I plan to explore the guest blogger idea:

People who wish to guest blog need only to use my [contact] form.
After I get the contact mail that you wish to write an article (entry), I'll reply.
You then simply submit your entry via email to me.
Text and html links only. I'll do the formatting.
If you are a blogdriver, simply bounce your entry off of your own editor.
Copy from your clipboard to a text file and attach it to email to me.
You won't be added as an author, in the blogdrive management sense.
You can write as many or as few entries as you wish.
You do not have to be a user of blogdrive. Although, I'd encourage it, of course.
You (or your site) will be listed on my side panel as a guest blogger in perpetuity.
If you don't see a topic under which you'd blog, I may create a new one for you.

In the meantime, and the short term, I will be focussing most of my blogging on hurricane Katrina, over on Thunderstorms in the Imajica.  I encourage you to read that blog, and if you have some way of helping the millions of people affected by donating online, please do so.  I've posted links.

Right now, I'm watching live video of a New Orleans resident struggling to walk toward high ground through neck-deep and nasty water, while carrying his mountain bike.  That would be me, in that unimaginable situation, except I'd likely also have the Skiddy perched on my head, claws deep in my scalp and howling her kitty howl.

Snarkastic?!  I think I just made up another word. Murble.


[Headphones] :: Hurricane Jeanne is Gone! - JfZ

The media seized upon the idiotic remarks and subsequent spin by Christian Broadcasting Network's 700 Club founder, Pat Robertson, in which he basically endorsed yet another coup attempt by the U.S. upon the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez.  His careless remarks have re-opened a blood-stained, 55-gallon-sized oil barrel of worms.  Call it a "Pandora's Barrel" of failed U.S. foreign policy decisions dreamt up and propagated by right-wing neocons and then blindly supported by right-wing socially conservative nutbags, like Pat Robertson:

"You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he [Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson told his audience. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability."

With Christian Fundies like him, who needs Islamic Fundies to terrorize the world?  I think when the American public can go berserk over Janet Jackson's floppy tit for months, you'd think the FCC would investigate Robertson's call to kill the leader of another country.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said Robertson’s call for violence should be condemned by American officials.  “It is deplorable for a Christian preacher to go before his vast audience and urge the American government to murder a foreign leader,” Lynn said. “His bloodthirsty commentary is over the top, even by Pat’s rather elastic standard. “This is just the kind of religious fanaticism that the world does not need more of,” Lynn continued. “President Bush should immediately disavow Robertson and his extremist rhetoric.”

But, no.  As a matter of fact, the Bush Administration practically defended Robertson, saying, "they were remarks made by a private citizen."  Really, now?  Just how private or public a person is Pat Robertson?  According to intelligence reports by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, I would conclude that Pat Robertson has been polluting media, religion, domestic politics and U.S. foreign policy for decades:

• CBN's flagship program, "The 700 Club," was started by Pat Robertson on radio in 1961 and on TV in 1963.  By 1975 the ministry had gone international, airing the "The 700 Club" in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, the West Indies, Europe, and Nigeria.  By the mid-1980s it had an estimated 28.7 million regular U.S. viewers.
  
  
• Robertson, according to investigative reporter Sara Diamond, used his tax-exempt broadcast license to hold a fundraising telethon in the United States for the Guatemalan military and the Nicaraguan contras.  On "The 700 Club," Robertson has interviewed Adolfo Calero and Steadman Fagoth, contra leaders; Efrain Rios Montt, then-president of Guatemala known for massive human rights abuses; Jeremias Chitunda, an Angolan guerrilla leader; Ray Cline, former CIA deputy director of intelligence; several Israeli cabinet members, and even President Reagan in an exclusive interview.
  
  
• Robertson's campaign for the presidency brought many rightwing Christians into the political process and made pentecostal Christianity a policy force to be reckoned with. However, his run for public office also brought Robertson some controversy and embarrassing moments, such as when he was forced to admit that his son was conceived out of wedlock. He filed libel suits in response to allegations that he used the influence of his father, a U.S. senator, to avoid combat duty in Korea.  [ sound familiar? - JfZ ]
  
  
• The U.S. operation of CBN was considered one of the top private funders of the contras. As of 1987 Robertson reported that Operation Blessing had sent more than $3 million in aid to the Nicaraguan refugees. CBN gave the $3 million to the contra's Houston-based Nicaraguan Patriotic Association, according to Juan Sacasas, Vice President of the group and representative of the FDN contra force. Robertson denies any connection with Sacasas. However, there is little question that the Operation Blessing donations reached the contra forces. Robertson was so popular among them that one group named itself the Pat Robertson Brigade.

Believe me, this is just the tip of the frackin' iceberg concerning Pat Robertson.  The man has his dirty fingers in more pies around the globe than the average CIA section chief.  Read his profile compiled at Interhemispheric Resource Center and then realize that it is not even current, by any means.  It does not include Robertson ties to the deposed and exiled Liberian dictator Charles Taylor and Robertson's 8-million-dollar gold mining investments, his jingoist anti-Islamic foments, or the recent Chavez flap.

And, don't even get me started on the two decades of political and religious pollution caused by Robertson's Christian Coalition political action group!  Nowadays, however, it's fairly apparent that Robertson's brilliant business and scheming mind is a cart whose wheels have now flown off.  As much as I dislike people like Pat Robertson (and Jerry Falwell), it's just sad -- but perhaps comforting to some -- that this man is clearly sliding down the slippery slope of atrophied brain dementia in an exponential way.


[Headphones] :: Democrusader - JfZ

I watch the news.  They talk about the reasons for record high gas prices in the U.S.  I always think they are lying.  The price of gas in a free market system is based upon supply and demand.  That is the starting point, anyway.  After that, non-economic factors seem to be tossed into the equation -- price fixing by OPEC, tariffs, etc.  In fact, oil exporting countries still make a profit if a barrel of oil costs anything over (US)$15 - $18.  So, Saudi Arabia is making a 400% profit selling their SUV crack to the rednecks and soccer moms in the United States.

I haven't completely finished reading an english translation of the Qu'ran, but it just seems to me that the prophet may indeed have a sharp, sarcastic sense of humor, after all.

But inevitably, some energy expert will come on the news broadcast and then say that the unrest in the middle east has driven the price of crude oil to record levels.  Some talking-head experts point to the war in Iraq as the reason. That can not be true on a supply/demand basis because U.S. importers didn't purchase significant amounts of Iraqi oil in the recent past because of the United Nations sanctions.  Even considering the war in Iraq -- the sanctions have been lifted and the opportunity to import oil from Iraq has actually increased -- despite the obvious security problems.

If the prophet Mohammed has a sarcastic sense of humor, Jesus Christ must be busting a gut laughing at the irony of the United States twice electing a president and vice-president so soaked in the oil business their entire lives that both of them likely piss light sweet crude in the executive bathrooms at the White House.  It's just bad karma for a greedy oil man to have the ear of the commander-in-chief of the largest military force on our increasingly shrinking, little spinning ball of mud -- especially when he is so well-known for failed business plans and evangelical delusions.

Meanwhile, using the Way Back Machine, let's eavesdrop on some conversations:

Cheney: "Hey, Dubya, let's invade Iraq."
GWBush: "Sure, Saddam made my daddy mad."
Cheney: "Rummy says we've been half-ready since the Gulf War."
GWBush: "Really?"
Cheney: "Yeah, we've kept him in a no-fly-zone box for you."
GWBush: "God Bless America."
Cheney: "Uh, sure ... whatever."
GWBush: "I'll have to ask Karl Rove first."
Cheney: "No problem.  I'll make some calls, too."
GWBush: "I'm going on a bike ride to pray about it."


Cheney: "Hey, Colin. What's up, my brother?"
Powell: "Not much.  I'm checking out shower surveillance videos of Condi."
Cheney: "Yeah, that's good stuff."
Powell: "How's Gilligan?"
Cheney: "He just left to ride his bike."
Powell: "John Bolton just told me Iraq has WMDs."
Cheney: "Yeah.  George Tenet will say the same thing."
Powell: "What are we going to do?"
Cheney: "The usual dog and pony show.  I'll get back to you."


Cheney: "Hey, Ken. I think I have a plan."
Ken Lay: "I'll bring some friends."
Cheney: "We should talk about this in my office."
Ken Lay: "Let's roll."


JfZ's advice: Do as the Dubya does, not as he says.
Ride a bike.  It may just save a soldier's life.

[Headphones] :: Dancing with the Dubya - JfZ

Last Summer, I urged people to check out the various blogs written by the Jarrar family members in "BBSes to Blogs" on Thunderstorms in the Imajica.  Unlike the U.S. news media hiding in the Green Zone in Iraq, Raed Jarrar was blogging about the Baghdad street.  His little brother, Khalid was complaining about school and the craziness of trying to be a young person caught in a war zone.  From my periodic reads of their blogs, the Jarrar family seems very much like any other Iraqi family I have met in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit.

Some Iraqis are Sunni or Shia Muslim of varying degrees of practice and some Iraqis are Christians who fled way back when Saddam Hussein first took power.  Some families are mixed, like the Jarrars: where one person is Sunni, one is Shia, one is devout, one is not.  They might be business owners, usually very well educated, and speak two or three languages.  The Jarrar family reminds me of some of the families that I might have talked to in the Detroit area.

Today, I was saddened to hear about the trials and tribulations of the Jarrar family that occurred back in July.  Basically, it seems Khalid was on his way to pay his school tuition, when through a series of unfortunate events, he was snatched up by the interior ministry for reading his own brother's and mother's blogs while killing time at the university internet cafe.

Here are a few excerpts from Khalid's blog entry describing that day:

The whole thing started when I went to the university to pay my tuition fees, the thing is that the engineering campus is separated from the rest of the university with few kilometers, but for such administrative issues, students should go to the headquarter, and this is what I did. I entered the main campus and went to the financial department to pay money. I started the paperwork process, and then reached to a point where we needed the director’s signature to finish the paperwork, but she was in a meeting. So, the employee asked me to go and waste an hour inside the campus till the meeting is over, and I did. ... Of course, what is better than the internet to kill time?

After doing some surfing and reading the blogs of his mother and his brother, Khalid attempted to return to the tuition office, but instead was quickly detained by security.  Shortly thereafter, Khalid describes how he was searched, interrogated, humiliated, handcuffed, had a bag thrown over his head, and then tossed into a van.

Given the well-known history of the Iraqi government's atrocious record of human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein, Khalid was definitely justified to be frightened for his life.  It seems little has changed in that regard.

I was so lucky that I was taken to the Mokhabarat directly. Usually you have to go through a police station or a center of the national guards to get there, where the standard procedure of torturing is hanging people upside down and beating them with cables for hours, pinching their bodies with electrical drills, burning them with hot water, ripping out their finger nails, breaking bones, using acids on the wounds after whipping them, the dead bodies that are found in the dumpsters in Baghdad even had their eyes taken out of them, and a lot of these things happened with people that I know, or with people that were detained with the people that were with me in this jail, before they were brought here, and the list of torturing techniques is long, and you don’t want to hear them or know about them if you want to sleep at night.

Khalid describes his days in the prison in detail.  He tells some of the stories of other prisoners in his cell.  Since I first had the opportunity to read Khalid's blog a year ago, I have noticed several things.  Khalid's fluency in English has improved a great deal.  The tone of his blog has changed from a typical teenager's style of writing in text message slang with fairly light topics to a more articulate, but darker disdain for the U.S. occupation of his homeland.  It's sad, but not entirely unexpected to me, to see the devolution of his spirit.

There are several things contributing to the mess in Iraq.  Despite the Bush Administration's constant "stay the course" and "we're making progress" chants, things are not getting better for the people of Iraq in real, everyday ways.  In fact, in many ways, the situation is deteriorating.  You may have noticed that no one from Bushworld has uttered the familiar phrase "we are winning hearts and minds" in the last year.  Even Dubya's evangelical ability to deny reality doesn't allow him to try and put that one slogan past the U.S. public any longer.

It's difficult to win hearts and minds when the lack of public security and contractor fraud has left Baghdad without basic services, like reliable electricity.  It's hard to win hearts and minds when the U.S. military often goes on blind insurgent hunts and ends up killing thousands of innocent bystanders.  Much of the blindness in intelligence in Iraq is due to historic political animosity between Sunni and Shia.

There is increasing evidence that the Iraqi police forces, now under Shi’ite control, are carrying out systematic revenge killings against Sunnis in Baghdad. The bodies now showing up at the morgue have obvious signs of handcuffing and blindfolding and evidence of being tortured before death. U.S. sources indicate that the suspicious killings have reached the rate of almost 700 per month. The police are supervised by the Shi’ite-run Ministry of Interior, which claims that the killings are being carried out by insurgents wearing stolen police uniforms. But American intelligence sources disagree, noting that many of the killers appear to be actual policemen carrying the expensive standard-issue Glock automatics and driving official Toyota Land Cruisers.

-- Philip Giraldi (ex-CIA) in American Conservative Magazine

Unfortunately for Khalid, who happens to be a Sunni Muslim, the new ruling Shia officials can be quite revengeful.  Despite the fact that his mother is Shia and his best friend is Kurdish, there is a high level of ethnic killing in Iraq.  I fear that ten years from now  -- when the body count is finally tallied in Iraq -- it will likely eclipse the racially-motivated lynchings of the 20th century in the Southern United States perpetrated against the blacks by the whites.

[Headphones] :: Bush and Brando Debate - JfZ

Some of the stories are tragic on their face.  Someone is injured or even killed by acts of pure stupidity or criminal intent.  Investigations ensue that peel back the past activities of the person involved like a glass onion. Why did the person do this thing?  Who is really to blame for all the sorrow and grief?  For some grieving people who are't finding closure or satisfaction with the criminal justice system in the United States, more and more are looking to the civil court system in order to find deeper pockets to blame.

Recently, a $160 million lawsuit was filed against the makers of the Grand Theft Auto video game.  Apparently, an 18-year-old Alabama man shot and killed three people, two of them were police officers.  The investigation revealed that he had bought Grand Theft Auto when he was sixteen.  Grand Theft Auto is also the focus of an investigation initiated by Senator Hillary Clintoon after the discovery of some explicitly sexual scenes hidden in the game.

Blaming video games is not a new trend.  You might remember that in the aftermath of the tragic Columbine High School shooting incident in Colorado, some people found it possible to blame the first person shooter video game, Doom II, as some sort of violent inspiration for the killers.  Similarly, investigations revealed that some of the September 11th hijacker's may have played Microsoft Flight Simulator to practice flying into the World Trade Center buildings.

Another ridiculous lawsuit has been filed against Lucas Arts by a couple blaming a Star Wars video game's flashing screens for inducing a grand mal seizure in their epileptic child.  Hey, parents! I'm not happy your kid has epilepsy, but don't blame the force for your own stupidity for not reading the manual.  In addition, someone really should shove a hot light sabre up the greedy, ambulance chasing attorney's ass for even filing this lawsuit.

So, remember kids, save your allowance money to buy as many video games for your collection as you can.  That way, when you do something incredibly stupid or criminal in your teenage years, you'll be more likely to have a video game to blame it on.  And then -- you, your parents, or the victims of your acts can sue for millions!  This is America.  Nothing is your fault.

[Headphones] :: Evil Stevie: Activate! - JfZ

One of the things about the controversy surrounding Karl Rove leaking classified information to the press that irritates me the most is that some of the right-wing media outlets seem to excuse away the gravity of his criminal behavior.  From my own specific training in military digital communications systems and subsequent years of experience dealing with highly classified information, I can only hope I might have developed a knack for explaining some of the most basic concepts about this topic in simple terms.

In the circles of government, information is either commonly called open source or closed source. In other words, information is either unclassified or classified. Open source information is basically defined as anything anyone in the public can read or know. This information may originate from sources such as press releases and required public reporting from government agencies. It can be original information published in books, professional trade journals, and newspapers. Opposingly, closed source information is classified information shared only among those government officals and other persons holding a certain level of security clearance and also typically having the need to know it.

If information is classified, by its legal definition, it then falls under three main categories: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. An example of information classified as Confidential might be the home address and telephone number of a government official. Sometimes very unusual and normally benign stuff becomes classified during a time of overt war like in Iraq, or during covert in-theater activity, like some of the Special Operations field trips across sovereign borders. While in-theater, an army cook's recipe sheet for meals could become classified as Confidential or Secret. The justification for classifying such a normally benign thing could be the fear of the enemy discovering or deducing the local in-theater vendor for produce. This information would then become a point of high vulnerability to the force should the enemy poison the milk, for example.

In addition, access to documents and information (usually Secret and above) can be then further limited by specially compartmentalizing it. An official communique' from a U.S. embassy to agencies in the U.S. government may only be classified as Secret, but then be tagged with what we used to call NoFo status, meaning No Foreign Dissemination.

As you can imagine, the highest security classification for information is Top Secret. Specially Compartmented Information (SCI) is usually first classified as Top Secret. Then, the information is tagged with a unique code word, compartmentalizing it. The logic behind this information security system is the principle of need to know. Although you may have already heard the term 'need to know' in a movie or have read it in a book, it is the actual logic behind, and terminology used, in government and the military in regards to classifying information.

Tagging documents and other information with a specific SCI code word limits the access to that information to only those people who have the need to know the information or activity, or have been "read on" (past tense) to see it. Here's an example using code words Kermit, Bert & Ernie:

Scientist Kermit has a Top Secret security clearance and is researching the tactical feasibility of a directed electro magnetic pulse weapon deployed from satellite platforms. Army General Bert also has a Top Secret security clearance and is talking with an Iranian dissident with knowledge of the logistical support needed for the underground railroad of suicide bombers entering Iraq. U.S. Senator Ernie also has a Top Secret security clearance and sits on the appropriations committees for Science and Technology and Armed Services.

In this example, although Scientist Kermit and Army General Bert have both gone through the arduous process of investigation by federal and military investigative agencies to hold (or renew) their top secret security clearance, neither person really has a need to know each other's business, so they do not have access to one another's work. On the other hand, Senator Ernie likely has the need to know both the Scientist's and Army General's work, so he is "read on" (past tense) to have access to the information tagged with all the SCI code words Kermit, Bert and Ernie.

When General Bert retires, or Senator Ernie is not re-elected, those people are then debriefed, or "read off" (past tense). Unless the defense department or goverment has radically changed its policies since Bush and his cronies have stumbled into offices of power, neither Bert nor Ernie can divulge any of the classified information to which they previously had access during their service to the country, let alone while they held their jobs.

Information Security (infosec) and Operational Security (opsec) are both like a locked door guarding a roomful of classified dominoes. Classifying information into one of the three confidential, secret or top secret categories is a process which is bound by specific legal definitions that evaluates the possible harm to United States should the security of that information be compromised. Inappropriately, accidently, or purposefully disclosing classified information has grave legal and criminal consequences. At mininum, disclosures or leaks cause a huge clean-up or sanitizing operation for all the information that has suddenly become falling dominoes in a room whose size is sometimes not even knowable. During a time of war, disclosure or leaks of classified information can even be prosecuted as treason, and as such, death can be the penalty.

I'll follow this up with some personal anecdotes.  I didn't want to break the dreaded attention-span barrier again, like I did with the Mullahs with Nukes and On Life and Death entries recently.

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Iran has had numerous political defectors warning "The West" about the clerical leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran developing nuclear weapons for over twenty years and as recently as November of 2004.  Colin Powell, during his last official trip as the U.S. Secretary of State, told reporters in Chile that the intelligence community had recently been given a gift -- a walk-in Iranian defector carrying with him about a thousand pages of documents detailing the technological efforts of the Iranians to marry nuclear warheads with the missile already in Iranian inventory.

It would seem to me that those kind of technological efforts are one of the last steps one does to become a nuclear power.  In other words, there really should be no doubt that Iran has already developed nuclear warheads.  The fact that the Mullahs with Nukes are not driving them around Tehran in a proud Soviet-style military parade for the western intelligence agencies to photograph shouldn't be of any comfort to anyone.  One of the many problems the Bush administration has created for itself -- and by extension, all of us -- by their pre-emptive and prolonged romp around Iraq is that now if Condoleeza Rice stands in front of the United Nations Security Council with polaroid pictures of Iranian nuclear weapons, there are few people in the world that would believe her since the Bush administration lied, and lied again, concerning Iraq.

Why didn't we see this coming?  Why do they hate us?

We have and we have not.  They do and they don't.  One of the many primary failures in the administrations of the last three U.S. presidents (Bush-Clinton-Bush) is simply not taking this Mullahs with Nukes problem seriously enough, and a mistaken presumption concerning the relationships between the enemies of the United States.  Old school, Cold War warriors in the CIA evaluated everything about most of the countries in the Middle East as simply a logistical problem whose only strategic considerations were boiled down to the question of, "Can we fuel our war machine there?"  I can personally affirm, from my own experience, that that was the general mindset of the intelligence and defense crowd in the 1980's, even from the limited, personal keyhole through which I had access to know about the bigger picture of the world at that time.

First, let's not forget that Iran officially declared war with the U.S. way back during the 444 days of the U.S. embassy hostage crisis more than 25 years ago.  Have the Iranian clerics somehow changed their minds about their desires to kill Americans since that time?  No, not at all.  As a matter of fact, I just watched a very tedious speech by the leader of Iran in front of an audience of Iranian military that was broadcast on C-Span this year which concluded with everyone in the room chanting, "Death to Israel, Death to the Zionists, Death to America!"  Second, let's not forget that the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein's side of the regionally devastating Iran-Iraq war.  The Iranian Mullahs with Nukes have ample historical and current points to justify their reasons for wanting to strike a devastating blow to the United States, or any of its closest allies.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

Despite the obviousness of this old Arab proverb, the head of the middle-eastern bureau at the CIA operated under the assumption that Sunni Wahabbi terrorists would never covort with the Shia Iranian Mullahs with Nukes.  A very under-reported fact that was brought out during the extensive work of the 911 Commission (perhaps because it is in the classified portions of that report) is that nearly half of the Saudi terrorists perpetrating their 911 terror were helped and fascilitated by Iranian intelligence agents at many earlier points along their way to 911.

The Iranian - Al Qaeda intelligence reports were literally discovered by the 911 Commission staffers a week before their report was due to be published.  They found a CIA summary report at the bottom of document box that caused them to request 75 more intelligence reports at the eleventh hour detailing Iranian and Al Qaeda collaboration.  As a matter of undisputed fact: an Iranian defector told a CIA section chief at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijian that "Arab fighters" (before they were tagged with the Al Qaeda name) were training to hijack commercial airplanes in a facility, north of Tehran, in the Spring of 2001.

Do you remember the last three years of "unspecified" threats that made the Secretary of Homeland Security raise the stupid color code alert system based upon terrorist chatter?  Guess what?  The very same man in Azerbaijian that warned of a major hijacking operation planned for the U.S. also told our man from the CIA exactly what date it was to occur, very specifically, September 11th.  He was ignored and discredited by the CIA.  However, if it is any consolation to the relatives of the thousands of 911 victims, this top-level bureaucrat was just fired by Porter Goss.

The nightmare scenario

The Pentagon has already war-gamed the nightmare scenario that the Pakistani nuclear guru A.Q. Khan has given the Iranian clerics his rolodex of black market nuclear technology suppliers from France to North Korea.  Iran has nukes, but since Iran doesn't want a traditional confrontation with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf, they prefer to fascilitate plausibly deniable actions against its enemies. Porter Goss had an accidental slip of the tongue this year when he exclaimed that the CIA knew where Osama Bin Laden was located but he was unfortunately being protected by a sovereign state.

That probably doesn't mean Afghanistan.  Karzai has been openly battling Al Qaeda for several years.  It probably doesn't mean Pakistan either, unless Bin Laden is tucked away in the Kasmir region, where Musharev has little control.  I think after seven assassination attmepts on Musharev, he's not Osama's buddy, anyway.  The fact that no one seems to want to talk publicly about Iran is telling.

When Iran publicly admitted their nuclear capabilities after the U.S. showed up in Iraq, it was an obvious warning to anyone paying attention to this tidbit in the news.  The Bush administration isn't making Iran a focus to the American people simply because there are not any easy cookie cutter Karl Rove outcomes to this problem.

The one nightmare scenario that worries most people is the one where Iran gives an Al Qaeda cell one little nuclear weapon, an anonymous ocean vessel, and a scud missile launcher for it.  A small team could literally sail up next to Cuba, and toss a scud missile-propelled nuke at Washingtion, D.C., or any major city on the eastern seabord.  Within 3-5 minutes, a quarter million people would likely be vaporized and our military would be left scratching their collective heads as to whom to retaliate against since there is no specific country of origin for the nuclear attack.

The Dark Ages

More and more though, I am seeing lawmakers on C-Span discuss in committee and give speeches on the floor of their legislative bodies concerning a topic about which any casual fan of Sci-Fi already knows.  Despite the obvious Hiroshima-style aftermath of a quarter-million cooked Americans in some city, a nuclear blast at around 100 miles above a city would produce an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP).  It is thought that the after effects of an EMP blast might actually cause enough chaos and mayhem to kill many more hundreds of thousands of people.

An EMP would shut down all electrical devices that were not hardened against that threat over the entire region of the country.  In other words, if D.C. got nuked, the EMP from that nuke could shut down everything containing any electronics from Miami, FL to Bangor, ME, depending upon the size of the nuke and its detonation altitude.

What does that mean?  That means that we all get to go back to Dark Ages.  Most major U.S. cities only have about three days worth of food unless interstate trucking can resupply a city's hundreds of grocery stores.  Millions of people without water, or food, or even transportation to leave the city could turn New York City and many other places into a gruesome place to be.  It also means that whatever city on the eastern seaboard that gets hit by the actual nuclear blast will burn until fire trucks from somewhere like Kansas arrive, since all vehicles within the EMP radius will be rendered useless.  People who get paid to imagine the worst don't call this the "nightmare scenario" for lack of a better name.

What can be done?

Taking the problem to the United Nations probably will not be very helpful in the short term.  The other countries on the U.N. Securitiy Council will likely blow the United States off.  First, because of the previously mentioned lies about Iraq that will kill our credibility about any future wolf cry, even if it is the truth.  Bush squandered our international credibility there.  But, second, the European Union has had a good grasp of the Iranian nuclear problem for ten years.  And frankly, they and the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council feel safe that Iran and Al Qaeda are fairly focussed on the U.S., or Israel, for anything so spectacular as a nuclear attack.

Leaders of a number of countries wouldn't care about this threat because the Mullahs with Nukes have clearly stated that the U.S., and Israel, and those shadowy Zionists are Iran's enemies, not anyone specifically in the European Union.  Their only real concern would be the possible shutdown of many world markets from the knee-jerk U.S. retaliatory response of nuking Iran.  But, when the shit does hit the fan, it will likely be in New York City or even Los Angeles that suffers from a nuclear strike.  The modern technologically entrenched cities in the U.S. are more vulnerable to the lifestyle change coming from an EMP blast than the rural, agricultural areas on the planet that might not even have an electrical grid.

You'd think that Israel might get nuked first, but that may not happen because of the unblinking scrutiny of everyone's satellites and intelligence services focussing on that region.  Yet, some group of guys can sail a vessel from Sudan almost up to the port of Miami fairly little interference in international waters.

The long term solution must be embarked upon.  The U.S. government must fund and support the many Iranians wishing to reform their current government of Iran.  It is a hopeful sign that the last election in Iran was boycotted massively by many Iranians.  If a regime change by Iranians is not put forward, the only other option for stability and peace will be a military one.  Iran is a serious national security problem for the U.S. for which the Bush administration does not have many good answers so far.

Further reading:

Countdown to Crisis : The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran
by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America... and How the CIA has Ignored it
by Curt Weldon

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