If I’d had any sense after 9/11, I would have gone into business producing portable concrete Jersey barriers; you can’t pass almost any federal government building, even such unlikely terror targets as national guard armories and Corps of Engineers buildings, that doesn’t have a few dozen of the things around it.

We’re in a bit of a box with the Gitmo detainees. [Their ambiguous status is] [n]ot of our own making, to be sure, but we are left to deal with it. Jeralyn wants to see all of them released, though given the recidivism rates of the others that have been released, it seems like a bad idea. We release these guys, they perpetrate acts of terror and we send the military after them. These guys are a bunch of fucking skulkers to begin with—they don’t wear unforms and hide among civilians—which will result in further civilian deaths either from their acts or our response to their acts. Probably both. I doubt this is what Jeralyn really wants. And no, sitting back and taking it, or making excuses for future acts of violence, is not an option.

There could be a middle ground. We could simply concede that they are POWs—even though they are in violation of the Geneva Conventions—and tell them that they will be released when hostilities have ceased in Afghanistan. That alone will take a decade or more and, once the entire country has been secured, we can turn them over to the government of Afghanistan. Fewer civilians will die—ours and theirs—and we’ve stuck to the letter of the conventions, even if it ambiguous.

Apparently, the reason global warming has been all over the news is that Tony Blair will be heading the G8 for 2005, and he’s decided to make it an issue. The Financial Times has a pretty balanced write-up on the issue:

Polar bears could be extinct by the end of this century, scientists predict, if nothing is done to halt global climate change. Already, the Arctic ice sheet is half the thickness of 30 years ago and 10 per cent less extensive, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the work of more than 250 scientists over four years. They blame global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and warn of consequences all over the world if ice covering solid ground melts and sea levels rise.

Warnings such as these and fears that the heat waves, floods and hurricanes of last year could have been early consequences of global warming have prompted Tony Blair, the British prime minister, to make tackling climate change a priority for world leaders in the coming year.

“Our effect on the environment, and in particular on climate change, is large and growing . . . We cannot afford to ignore the warnings,” Mr Blair told business leaders in September when he announced plans to put climate change high on the agenda during Britain’s tenure as chair of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations from January. Mr Blair will also make the issue one of the main themes of the UK’s six-month presidency of the European Union from July 2005.

[....]

But the science behind predictions of global warming has come under fierce attack. Sceptical scientists have brought out their own reports to show that though some regions are warming, others appear to be cooling. They also argue that the world experienced many periods of warming in the past much greater than those we are witnessing today. Such warming allowed vineyards to flourish in England in the Middle Ages. Malaria affected northern Europe and cattle grazed in Viking settlements in Greenland that were subsequently abandoned as the “little ice age” took effect in the 14th century, lasting until the 19th. Any increase in global temperatures could therefore be the result of a natural variation in the earth’s climate, rather than the effect of any human activity. Sceptics also attack the scientists whose computer models predict dangerous levels of global warming. Others contend that although global warming is happening, and will be costly, there is little we can do about it and therefore we should concentrate our efforts instead on more pressing issues, such as the HIV epidemic and poverty. The champions of this view are the Copenhagen Consensus, a group of economists led by Bjorn Lomborg, professor of political science at Aarhus University in Denmark. He says: “We can only do very little about global warming, very far out into the future, and at a very high cost. If we spend a large amount of money on global warming, we are taking away money that could be spent elsewhere to do much more good.”

Methane isn’t the only substance to which global-warming policymakers should pay more attention. Hansen’s work suggests that strict regulation of a few rare industrial gases, whose emissions have no economic utility, would also be more cost-effective than carbon dioxide rules. Short-term reform, he also suggests, should focus on heat-absorbing industrial particulates, or “black soot,” which has been nearly eliminated in the West (which boomed during the elimination, evidence that economic growth and soot regulation are fully compatible), but which spews from the factories and power plants of developing nations by the millions of tons. The resulting pollution-caused diseases annually kill more children under age five in the developing world than all deaths from all causes at all ages in the United States and the European Union combined. Any money the West spends on global warming would be far better invested in reducing industrial soot in the developing world than in the carbon crash programs environmental orthodoxy demands.

I suspect that’s about the most Mr. Blair can hope for in the coming year. Joe Gandelman has more.

I’m not dead, I just have nothing much to say—particularly on the wrong end of a 56k dialup line. Happy New Year to all our readers; I expect to have some things to say in a few days, probably including a review of one of my Christmas presents, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by Economist writers John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.

In the meantime I’m trying to relax my brain—and my separated shoulder—so I won’t look like a babbling fool when I try to teach three new courses (public opinion, civil liberties, and an independent study course in southern politics) in addition to a revamped Introduction to American Politics class in the spring.

I’ve raised the issue of the power of treaties in the past, and it appears that at least one of our founders thought they were bound by the Constitution:

“I say… to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless: If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives.”—Thomas Jefferson to Wilson Nicholas, 1803. ME 10:419

I like the New Year’s resolutions for others over at IMAO, but I liked it even better when Spoons did it two years ago. For one thing, Spoons knows that bloggers are a self-regarding bunch (he included me, right?) and used it to great effect. After all, it’s two years later and I’m still talking about it. His entry this year is here.

And this is different than The Day After Tomorrow in what way?:

Killer hurricanes, towering tidal waves and destructive lightning storms are all meant to prove the scientists’ point about the deadly effects of global warming. The environmentalists are the villains. The corporate shills who have been paid big bucks to debunk the global warming community are the good guys. According to Crichton, global warming is a myth.

In today’s world of increasing corporate control of almost every facet of our public and private lives, Crichton’s screed against the environmental movement should come as no great surprise.

After all, the publisher of “State of Fear” is Harper Collins, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the same people who feed Americans and people around the world a daily dosage of right-wing propaganda billed as 24-hour news.

Murdoch can wave his big money around and always expect to find some novelist; screenwriter; movie director; journalist; left, center, or right-wing magazine editor; cartoonist; or research institute fellow to allow himself or herself to become human versions of coin-operated nickelodeons or Laundromats.

Crichton made a speech last year that addressed many of my concerns on politicizing science. The speech is referenced here, and here’s an excerpt from another column:

“Several thousand of the earth’s scientists,” it says at one point, “agree that global warming caused by greenhouse gas pollution from human activities represents a profoundly serious threat to human civilization and to even the most robust and insulated natural ecosystems. Their comments are echoed in the Draft Scientific Consensus Statement on the Likely Impact of Climate Change on the Pacific Northwest prepared by scientists at Oregon and Washington universities in the fall of 2004.”

The red flag is the reference to thousands of scientists and “consensus.”

The factual truth of anything never depends on how many people agree with it.

Michael Crichton, the author, made that point in a lecture last year.

“I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks,” he wrote. “Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.”

I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had time to post much. If you’re looking for something to read, take a look at Vox Baby for discussion on Social Security and other economic matters. Also, you might be interested in reading Econ Journal Watch, which should be available off college campuses. Quite interesting.

In addition, you might want to take a look at this post by Kate at OTB. Oddly, I haven't been able to get her to add SN to her blogroll under "Blogs I Read Naked While Eating Cherry Ice Cream" over at Small Dead Animals. Apparently that spot is reserved for Jeff.

The Powerline guys are addressing the recent EU ascendancy meme; it’s still not persuasive. Europe is in decline, despite their posturing in recent years. I’ve discussed it elsewhere (here and here).

This post is a test.

The new year brings a new blogospheric home for yours truly. This is my final post at Signifying Nothing. I’ll now be co-blogging with fellow Linux geek, philosophy geek, and Memphian, Len Clevelin, at Dark Bilious Vapors.

I’d like to thank both my co-bloggers, Chris and Robert, for putting up with me. And I’d especially like to thank Chris for hosting the blog, and writing the software that runs it, especially when he was humoring my feature requests.

And thanks to all the readers out there who took the time to read, comment on, or link to my posts, whether you agreed or disagreed with me. You know where to find me, if you want to read more.

I’ve been seeing Michael Scheuer, or Anonymous, author of Imperial Hubris, all over the place recently—apparently his resignation from the CIA has released the muzzle somewhat—and I don’t quite know what to make of him. I would venture to say that he’s one of the more inscrutable people in the news these days, with Kerry being in retirement and all.

Depending on who is quoting him—or if he’s doing the writing—he is either opposed to President Bush’s policy in the Middle East or thinks it needs to be ratcheted up; thinks we are losing our soft power or will have to resolve to do more of the dirty work ourselves. He’s referenced in the former capacity in an FT article that could have been written by Brad DeLong:

The self-serving fallacies of the they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms industry have been criticised in recent books from, for example, the former CIA official in charge of pursuing Osama bin Laden, Michael Scheuer (Imperial Hubris), and the Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi (Resurrecting Empire). Both argue it is the policies of the US and its allies that have ignited such rage in the Arab and Muslim world.

Simply put, the thinking that expects others to do our dirty — and very bloody — work should have died with the fall of the Berlin Wall. If America is to win its worldwide battle with Islamist insurgents and terrorists, it will have to do its own dirty work whenever it has a chance to do so, even at the cost of heavier human casualties than we have suffered to date. This is not to say we do not need allies, for we surely do. What we need, however, is a consistently commonsense perspective that sees that no two nations have identical national interests; that no country will ever do all we want; and that to survive we must act with U.S. military and CIA assets whenever a chance arises, even if supporting intelligence is not perfect. This modus operandi will take a steady application of moral courage at a level unseen in Washington for 15 years.

In weighing the foregoing, readers might ask themselves two questions: 1) How can it be that Pakistan’s military has suffered far more casualties than U.S. forces in the war on bin Laden?; and 2) Whatever happened to the “Major 2004 Afghan Spring Offensive” that the Pentagon’s multi-starred general-bureaucrats leaked news of to the media back in January 2004? At least one answer to each question is that our governing elites are still desperate to find others to do our dirty work.

Good article from the WaPo on the threat of nuclear terror. The first two paragraphs alone are infuriating:

Of all the clues that Osama bin Laden is after a nuclear weapon, perhaps the most significant came in intelligence reports indicating that he received fresh approval last year from a Saudi cleric for the use of a doomsday bomb against the United States.

For bin Laden, the religious ruling was a milestone in a long quest for an atomic weapon. For U.S. officials and others, it was a frightening reminder of what many consider the ultimate mass-casualty threat posed by modern terrorists. Even a small nuclear weapon detonated in a major American population center would be among history’s most lethal acts of war, potentially rivaling the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The closing paragraphs provide a good case for regime change in Saudi Arabia:

Al Qaeda has been on the run since the United States deprived it of a haven in Afghanistan, making it more difficult for the group to operate on such an ambitious scale.

“At this moment, they are less capable of carrying out an operation like this because it would require so many different experts and operatives,” Benjamin said. “But even a depleted group could do it if they got the right breaks.”

(þ: Winds of Change)

Another sentiment borrowed from Spoons, though he said it in relation to Muslim countries. I would say it applies to theocrats and other tyrants equally well, including Stalinists:

North Korea on Friday threatened to cut off diplomatic contact with Japan amid a controversy over the communist state’s abduction of Japanese citizens.

Tension between the two countries has increased since Japanese officials alleged that purported human remains of two kidnapping victims recently returned by the North were proven by DNA tests to belong to other people. Some Japanese politicians have called for sanctions against Pyongyang, a move that North Korea has warned would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

North Korea has insisted the remains are authentic and repeated its call Friday for their return, and has alleged the controversy was manufactured by right-wing Japanese politicians.

“Now that it has become clear that the Japanese government has openly joined the ultra-right forces in their moves against the DPRK it no longer feels that any DPRK-Japan inter-governmental contact is meaningful,” an unnamed spokesman from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said, referring to the country by the abbreviation for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Title stolen shamelessly from Spoons. He objects to reserving positions for Sunnis, as does Kris. I’m not as concerned with it at the moment because it is just another interim government which will draft a permanent constitution.

Over the longer run, they have a point, though I suspect Kris would disagree with me; maybe Spoons too. Iraq seems like a country that screams out for federalism. In their case, establishing states (or provinces) to act as a counterbalance to the central government. If they created a Senate that represented these provinces it would insure de facto representation for the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds at the federal level.

As for permanently setting aside “Sunni” positions in the executive? Seems like a bad idea, though giving them equal representation in the Senate is a good idea—after they’ve ceased the violence and allowed elections to proceed in their area.

Apparently Norm Mineta can’t figure out why the legacy airlines are in such big trouble. (þ Brian J. Noggle)

He could save us taxpayers a bit of money by just reading Virginia Postrel’s weblog. More succinctly: U.S. Airways sucks monkey balls, and they’re tightwad scum too.

Belhaven College wants to upgrade its home football field, which it shares with Jackson Public Schools, to have better facilities and artificial turf.

Left unmentioned is that Belhaven’s generous offer to pay for most of the renovations might have something to do with field envy for the new surface at Harper Davis Field a few hundred yards west. It’s gotta stick in those Presbyterians’ craws that us Methodists have ourselves a better football field.

I apparently have a love-hate relationship with my students; in my mailbox at work today were a Christmas card from a student and my abysmal (at least by Millsaps standards) course evaluations. Four students in my intro class apparently thought it would be amusing to give me the lowest possible ranking on all 19 questions, even such procedural items as “gives clear directions” and “presents [material] in a clear sequence.” Ah well, at least I “demonstrate knowledge” of what I’m teaching…

My response to all this, of course, was to finish my SPSA paper on voting in recent presidential elections and continue getting organized for my trip to Florida tomorrow.

I’ve never understood the fascination with electing judges. I’m a political junkie and I usually leave the ballot space for judges blank simply because I don’t know enough about them to make an informed decision. More reason to have governors appoint judges ($):

Nine out of ten American judges stand for election. The theory is admirably democratic: if the people who make laws are elected, why shouldn’t those who interpret them be too? But that theory is increasingly coming into conflict with the idea that judges should be impartial.

Until recently, judicial candidates were usually prevented from saying much, on the basis that it could later raise questions about the courts’ independence. Conservatives have long fumed that such curbs have let “activist judges” hide their views on subjects such as abortion; the restrictions, they add, infringe free speech. In 2002 the Supreme Court agreed: in Republican Party of Minnesota v White, it struck down Minnesota’s “announce clause” prohibiting judicial candidates from airing their views on disputed issues.

Allow me another plug for the one, the only, Dead Pool 2005… and tell ’em we sent you. It’s all in good fun, and there’s no fee to enter, although Lair may get testy with you if you don’t have a blog. All you have to do is pick the 15 semi-famous people you think are gonna die in 2005. So, in the immortal (or at least immoral) words of Gwen Stefani, ”what you waitin’ for?”

Jane Galt is amazed to discover Britain’s television police, responsible for ensuring the BBC gets its £121 a year from TV-watching Britons—even if they never watch the BBC. From the article:

The fee is very much a part of British life. It is a criminal offense for anyone with a television set not to pay it, whether they watch the BBC or not. Fee-evasion cases make up 12 percent of the caseload in magistrates’ courts. Although most evaders are fined, 20 people were imprisoned for nonpayment last year.

The BBC took in £3.9 billion ($7.5 billion) from the fee in 1993, but 5.7 percent of television owners still failed to pay. TV Licensing regularly carries out campaigns to warn them about the consequences of inaction that say, for instance, “Get one or get done” – “getting done” being slang for getting caught.

Enforcement officers visit homes and businesses about three million times a year. They have a variety of weapons at hand, including a law that requires retailers to notify the government whenever someone buys a television; a database with TV-owning information about 28 million Britons; and specially equipped vans and hand-held devices that can detect unlawful television-watching.

The predecessor of the TV licence, the radio licence, went away in 1971. For more details, visit the TV Licensing website, where you can learn about the TV licence in 12 different languages.

We finally have a new title for the war on terror: The Long War. The term comes from General John Abizaid and is passed along via David Ignatius. Here’s a clip of Ignatius’s column:

Gen. John Abizaid probably commands the most potent military force in history. The troops of his Central Command are arrayed across the jagged crescent of the Middle East, from Egypt to Pakistan, in an overwhelming projection of U.S. power. He travels with his own mini-government: a top State Department officer to manage diplomacy; a senior CIA officer to oversee intelligence; a retinue of generals and admirals to supervise operations and logistics. If there is a modern Imperium Americanum, Abizaid is its field general.

I traveled this month with Abizaid as he visited Iraq and other areas of his command. Over several days, I heard him discuss his strategy for what he calls the “Long War” to contain Islamic extremism in Centcom’s turbulent theater of operations. We talked about the current front in Iraq, and the longer-term process of change in the Middle East, which Abizaid views as the ultimate strategic challenge.

“We control the air, the sea and the ground militarily,” Abizaid told one audience, and in conventional terms, he’s unquestionably right. From its headquarters near the huge new U.S. airbase in Qatar, Centcom’s military reach stretches in every direction: To the west, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet has its base in Bahrain; to the north, the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and its task force are steaming on patrol in the Persian Gulf; to the east, more than 17,000 troops are working to stabilize postwar Afghanistan; to the south, about 1,000 troops are keeping a lid on the Horn of Africa. And to the northwest lies the bloody battlefield of Iraq, where nearly 150,000 of Abizaid’s soldiers are fighting a determined insurgency.

For all of America’s military might, the Long War that has begun in the Middle East poses some tough strategic questions. What is the nature of the enemy? If the United States is so powerful, why is it having such difficulty in Iraq? What will victory look like, in Iraq and elsewhere in the Islamic world? And how long will the conflict take?

Over the long term, what we are trying to do is alter a culture. To marginalize the radical Islamists, in the same way that Nazis have been marginalized, and show the moderate Muslims of the Middle East that they can practice their religion peacefully and that modernity isn’t something to be afraid of. As the earlier link explains, it won’t be easy. The Muslim culture in the Middle East doesn’t recognize the seperation of church and state and the only way the leaders in the Middle East have succeeded in the past is through despotism. Of course, this served their own ends as well, so I’m not convinced that despotism is the only way to govern in the ME.

A couple of years ago an economist, Alan Krueger of Princeton, ran a test to see if terrorism is tied to poverty, which is a fairly common claim. The answer he got was no. Instead, he found that it’s tied to political repression. Winning The Long War will require undoing the repression of the Middle East and convincing the people that they can live in an open society.

Not a small task, not one that will be won through the military alone and not one that will end any time soon.

I’ve mentioned this before, and I favor evolution over ID, but I thought I would address one of The Evangelical Outpost’s commenters, Mr. Ed:

Why is it that simple? It seems you are making ‘science’ an arbitrary label. What is it that makes ID antithetical to science. And what is so different about the set of deductions that leads to a theory of evolutions and the set of deductions that leads to a theory of ID?

You know, it occurs to me that there is a solution to the teaching of ID in schools: have school vouchers.