Good news & bad news

Arkadag gets his hand smooched

First the good news. I've complained a few times that the former dentist, and current President for Life of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has too long of a name. For some time I've wished he had a shorter and snappier nickname like his predecessor the Turkmanbashi. 

Much to my embarrassment I discovered that he had been awarded a nickname during a military parade in October of last year. His new nickname is Arkadag, which means the Protector. 

Now the bad news. In doing research for my moribund Free Ma-Ro blog campaign, I've discovered that The Askabag has declared a New Renaissance in the art, literature and music of  Turkmenistan. As an example, this decree probably explains why, if you're a painter, you really, really want to paint horses.

Having apparently demolished the visual arts, Turkmenistan’s Ministry of Culture, Television and Radio Broadcasting has stated that all songs should now be orientated towards promoting the New Renaissance epoch. Of course, it goes without saying, the best way to do that is to sing the praises of the Arkadag.

The Askadag and the Turkmenbashi

As the Chronicals of Turkmenistan report in their article Patriotic repertoire for restaurants and cafes, this even goes so far as dictating to dining extablishments that that are "responsible for the content of the songs, performed during staff parties, weddings and other festivities which are held at their venues." In other words, it's now all Askadag praise, all the time. 

As one of the case owners sarcastically said, “I am afraid that according to the next instruction we will be forced to have two menus. One would have names of dishes whereas the other - the names of the songs devoted to the President!"

The Turkmenbashi was certainly an enormous lunatic and he'll be hard to top, but, sadly for the citizens of Turkmenistan, it looks like the Askadag is willing to give it the old college try.

The Besler Steam Plane

Steam has at last triumphed in the air; the successful flights that have taken place at Oakland in California have prove beyond the shadow of doubt that steam is destined to play a most important part in the history of aeronautics. It is little to be wondered at that experts are watching the progress of this invention of the Besler Brothers with keen interest, when one realizes what it means to Aviation to possess a silent plane capable of being started up by simply closing a switch in front of the pilot, which without any other effort or thought on his part, starts the burner, appraises the required working pressure of steam in the generator, in the space of thirty seconds or so, sufficient to send the airscrew whirling at 1,625 revolutions per minute. [source]

In April of 1933 two brothers, George and William Bresler, demonstrated the first successful flight of a steam powered airplane. The airplane was a Travel Air 2000 that was modified by the addition of a 2 cylinder steam engine. Above is a newsreel recording that day.

They made several takeoffs and landings during the demonstration. What impressed spectators the most was the silence of the airplane. That was an important selling point, because in those days before radar planes were located and tracked acoustically.

Here are two 1933 articles about the plane  from Popular Science and Scientific American which include more details, as well as photographs and diagrams of the plane and its engine. The above quote's source link also has a number of articles, diagrams and pictures.

Elaborately designed tea bags

Tons of yucks at your nest tea party

Above is an ad for a tea bag disguised as a cigarette. In place of the tobacco are tea leaves and the filter act as a float. To be honest, I'm not sure they thought that concept through. Would the image of dunking a cigarette into a cup of hot water really appeal to a tea affectionado?

If the Cigarettea tea bag isn't your cup of tea (groan), there are several other unique tea bags listed at tozel.com's post Clever and Creative Tea Packaging. Some of them veer much too far into being overly contraption-like or cutesy, but others are appealing. The Tea Forté, Tea Stick and Origami Tea Bags are all nice.

Still, it is an interesting, albeit obscure, corner of the design universe. It is always interesting to see such thought put into things you never think about.

Stratfor and Peta Wilson

This Stratfor discusses jihadism after the death of Osama Bin Laden. Since he appears to have been capped, I decided to mine Hollywood's rich vein of female assassins for this article's Hot Stratfor Babe. 

After an exhaustive search I selected Peta Wilson from TV's La Femme Nikita for the honor.

In the movie Nikita is a drug addled teen who is a cop killer. They cleaned her up for the TV show, turning her into an innocent young flower who had been framed, then had her suicide faked, so they could recruit her into program where they turned her into a deadly assassin.

Aside from catching snippets of it while channel surfing, I never actually watched the show for any length of time. However, it gets pretty good reviews. Apparently there was a lot of ambiguity in both her character and the Organization she worked for between the 'ends justify the means' approach in their service of a good cause and some of the characters bumping against the struggles with their conscience when required to do some truly nasty things.

As an aside, Joel Surnow, the creator of 24, was a script writer on La Femme Nikita, so I guess Nikita is perhaps a bit of a proto Jack Bauer. It sounds interesting -- has anybody seen it? Was it any good? 


BIN LADEN'S DEATH AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR JIHADISM
By Scott Stewart, May 3, 2011

U.S. President Barack Obama appeared in a hastily arranged televised address the night of May 1, 2011, to inform the world that U.S. counterterrorism forces had located and killed Osama bin Laden. The operation, which reportedly happened in the early hours of May 2 local time, targeted a compound in Abbottabad, a city located some 31 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital. The nighttime raid resulted in a brief firefight that left bin Laden and several others dead. A U.S. helicopter reportedly was damaged in the raid and later destroyed by U.S. forces. Obama reported that no U.S. personnel were lost in the operation. After a brief search of the compound, the U.S. forces left with bin Laden's body and presumably anything else that appeared to have intelligence value. From Obama's carefully scripted speech, it would appear that the U.S. conducted the operation unilaterally with no Pakistani assistance -- or even knowledge.

As evidenced by the spontaneous celebrations that erupted in Washington, New York and across the United States, the killing of bin Laden has struck a chord with many Americans. This was true not only of those who lost family members as a result of the attack, but of those who were vicariously terrorized and still vividly recall the deep sense of fear they felt the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as they watched aircraft strike the World Trade Center Towers and saw those towers collapse on live television, and then heard reports of the Pentagon being struck by a third aircraft and of a fourth aircraft prevented from being used in another attack when it crashed in rural Pennsylvania. As that fear turned to anger, a deep-seated thirst for vengeance led the United States to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 and to declare a "global war on terrorism."

Because of this sense of fulfilled vengeance, the death of bin Laden will certainly be one of those events that people will remember, like the 9/11 attacks themselves. In spite of the sense of justice and closure the killing of bin Laden brings, however, his death will likely have very little practical impact on the jihadist movement. More important will be the reaction of the Pakistani government to the operation and the impact it has on U.S.-Pakistani relations.

Foundations

To understand the impact of bin Laden's death on the global jihadist movement, we must first remember that the phenomenon of jihadism is far wider than just the al Qaeda core leadership of bin Laden and his closest followers. Rather than a monolithic entity based on the al Qaeda group, jihadism has devolved into a far more diffuse network composed of many different parts. These parts include the core al Qaeda group formerly headed by bin Laden; a network of various regional franchise groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); and last, a broad array of grassroots operatives who are adherents to the jihadist ideology but who are not formally affiliated with the al Qaeda core or one of the regional franchises. [continued after jump]

The rebel yell

The rebel yell was the war cry of attacking Confederate troops. In books about the civil war it will almost always be discussed, with the caveat that nobody knows what it sounded like. It has been described as being like an animal's cry, derived from the Scottish Highlander's war cry, and often as a sort of Indian whoop.

What's interesting, in spite of all the mystery lavished on it, is that it has been recorded. The end of Ken Burn's The Civil War has perhaps the best example. In it, during footage of a reunion at Gettysburg, Confederate and Yankee veterans are shaking hands over stone wall. A whooping sound starts, and on of the Confederate veteran's turns to the camera and says, "that's the rebel yell."

The clip above is that scene. The person who put it together ends the clip by overlaying the whoops to create a chorus of what it would have sounded like being yelled by a mass of men. Of course younger lungs would have given it more punch, but you can still imagine how intimidating it would sound if you were on the receiving end of the charge.

Along with the video above, there is audio recording of a rebel yell. This recording is of a single veteran demonstrating the rebel yell and can be listened to at the 26th North Carolina Regiment's website. It has a different sound, more of an animal yipping sound than the Indian-type whoops of the video. 

There were regimental differences reported in the rebel yells, and this would explain the differences. However, the pulsating rhythm of it is the same between the two, and perhaps that is the key to it,. At any rate, that's as close as we're ever likely to get to hearing a rebel yell, but at least we have some idea how it sounded after all.

Video released of Osama's last moments

Not exactly SFW, but I quite liked the nature of the 72 virgins.

(HT: from a comment by Fredrick Bloggs in a Biased BBC thread) 

Bin Laden finally gets his raisins

Adios Osama, and good riddance to you. As they say in the Navy, "a hearty handshake and a job well done" to the folks who conducted this mission.

Early reports state that the Navy SEALs were in Obama's compound for about 40 minutes. Along with killing Bin Laden, they captured several people: his youngest wife, as well as some of his children at a minimum. There has been no word as to whether any of his aides were also captured.  Presumably any laptops and papers that were in the compound were also secured.

The compound was apparently then set on fire. Perhaps this was done to complicate Pakistani efforts at untangling what happened in the fight and what was taken.  

In the past such raids yielded intelligence that led to other people. It's hard to know how much Bin Laden was still in the loop, but I imagine there are a lot of nervous people today. Al-Zawahri and other Al Qaeda leadership will have to move, and I imagine there are some Pakistani muckity-mucks who are sweating bullets this morning.

At any rate, good to see Osama's been sent to the Great Beyond to collect his raisins. With luck we'll be able to send a few more down the same path because of this raid. 

Here's looking at you kid...

photo by Oleksandr Hnatenko

The Illustrated Children's Clausewitz

Introduction, in Which We Meet the War Tutor

Ich heiße Carl, aber für Sie mein Name ist Herr Clausewitz.
I am Carl, but you will call me Hare Clausewitz.
I will be teaching you about war.
I will not waste time on trifles.
I will not teach you how to shoot your gun.
I will not teach you what tactics to use.
I will not tell you why you go to war, or what to do once the war is done.
There are many who can teach you these things.
What I will teach you, many people cannot teach you.
I will teach you about strategy.
I will teach you what war is for, and what it takes to achieve your end.
I will teach you about vision, about what is important in war, and what is not.
It is likely that none of you will understand me, let alone be that rare creature who can be a great leader of war, but I will do my best to teach you what I know.

The blogger/tweeter/internet person caidid has decided to create the Illustrated Children's Clausewitz. As she explained, "This led to a brief conversation among me, Jason, and Adam about the dearth of good strategic training tools for the playground set (however strong their tactical skills might be, and it sounds like the younger Mr. Fritz’s are pretty solid), and concluded with an agreement that a children’s book version of Clausewitz would be awesome."

I concur.

Above is her introduction to the book, and the illustration is Hare Clausewitz himself addressing the other characters. You can follow her work on the project as well as offer advice, criticism or help at her website The Illustrated Children's Clausewitz.

The staff of life

Ancient Egyptian wall carving of stalks of wheat

In an earlier post, The way to a man's heart, I discussed how large areas of North Africa and the Middle East have low food self-sufficiency. That is, they have to import food to feed their populations. Further, they have to spend a far greater percentage of their per-capita income on food, which means any strain to the world's food supply will greatly worsen their situation. 

Wheat rust is one of the most common diseases that infects wheat and other grains. Normally, up to 20% of a crop can be lost to the disease. However, in Uganda in 1977 an even more virulent strain emerged. Called Ug99, it caused crop losses of 80% in Kenya. Ug99 has since spread to North Africa, the Middle East and as far east as Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

As the VOA article Wheat Rust Threatening Crops in Africa, Asia and Mideast explains, recently another strain of wheat rust, this one a variation of stripe rust, has emerged. Like Ug99, the new pathogen has spread quickly through North Africa and the Middle East.

In April an International Wheat Stripe Rust Symposium was held in Syria to discuss the problem. At that meeting Michael Baum, the director of ICARDA and one of the meeting's organizers, pointed out the following:

There is a stark difference between its consequences in poor and rich countries, said Baum. Last year Syria lost up to half of its wheat to the infection whereas neighbouring Turkey, a richer country, lost none.

In Syria, monitoring is weak; three-quarters of the crop consists of a single variety; and there is not enough fungicide available, he said. Turkey, in contrast, has good monitoring; a wide variety of plants, some of which are resistant to the current rust; and substantial supplies of fungicide. (source)

So, it would seem that agricultural methods, combined with a variety of wheat strains, have a lot to do with successfully mitigating the outbreak. It was felt that alleviating this problem, through diversifying wheat strains and improving monitoring, would take three to five years to fully address.

That may be too long of a time frame because, although nobody wants to say it, a combination of a significant loss of grain crops in the region coupled with spiking global food prices is a disaster in the making. At best we'll see a food crisis, at worse famine. How that would blend with the spiraling violence in the region is a frightening thought.

Carter rants at a North Korean press conference

Which brings us to Jimmy Carter in a 'round about sort of a way. While touring North Korea he had the following to say about that country's growing famine:

"One of the most important human rights is to have food to eat, and for South Korea and the US and others to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people is really a human rights violation."

That comment raised a lot of eyebrows, but it shouldn't have been that surprising. The UN, through its Human Rights Council and various Progressive NGOs, has long been banging the drum for Food Justice, sometimes framed as Food as a Human Right.

This is a movement that encompasses the usual bugaboos: climate change (so arability rather than farming practices becomes the culprit for food shortages), sustainable farming, organic farming, cultural diversity, GM food, corporations, exploitation, oppression and lately the much touted obesity epidemic. 

They make no bones about the fact that they want to change, from seed to table, which foods are grown and how and to who they are distributed.

Make no mistake, if the Middle East does slide towards famine there will be loud voices, accompanied by pictures of big eyed children with empty food bowls, blaming it all on Western capitalism and demanding free food from the same Capitalists as payment of a fine for their guilt. How that will play with grocery prices going up is easy to imagine, but the agitation will be there none-the-less.

I'll end this long post with a couple of images from Kittiwat Unarromhas, Flares' favorite Thai baker.

Helloooo visitors from Instapundit.

His farewell trip to that promised land

On this day 111 years ago a passenger train, with the engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones driving, rounded a blind curve. Ahead of him, and only partly off the main track because of a blown air hose, was a stopped freight train. 

Casey, who's train was traveling at 75mph, yelled at his fireman to jump from the train as he reversed the throttle and applied the airbrakes. He could not stop in time. His locomotive smashed the freight's caboose and plowed through a car carrying hay and another loaded with corn before derailing.

Casey was killed in the accident. However, aside from his bruised fireman who had jumped from the train, there were no major injuries among the train's passengers. People attributed the lack of other fatalities to Casey staying in the cab and giving his life to slow the train as much as possible before the collision.

His obituary would have long since been forgotten, but a friend of his, a black engine wiper named Wallace Saunders, wrote lyrics he called "The Ballad of Casey Jones" and set it to the tune of the then popular song "Jimmie Jones". It made its way to vaudeville, and was shortly after published and recorded. 

There are a lot of versions of the lyrics. You can read some of them at Trainweb. He was generally portrayed as a hero in them, although cheap shots were sometimes taken at the widow he left behind. There was also a version written by Union members who portrayed him as a scab riding to hell on a death trap of a train.

The song has been widely recorded. If you search YouTube you can find versions recorded as early as 1910, the Scab version, a Johnny Cash cover of it and even one sung by Buster Keaton of all people. The version I embedded above is a very lively version with wonderful vocals by the Jubalaires from 1948.
 

Are you looking for a career change?

Do you feel like you're stuck in a rut? Are you tired of the same old rat race day after day? If so, you might be interested in an exciting and rewarding career as a Thereminist. 

Oh, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking there can't be that many job openings for thereminists. While that's true, you can always look at the bright side -- there won't be much competition if a job for a thereminist every becomes available. Besides, you may decide you just want to wile away the hours making spooky, sci-fi music.

Whatever your motive, I've pulled together a series of instructional videos on the basics of therminology which were created by Thomas Grillo. Lesson One, which introduces the basics is embedded above. You can also view Lessons Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven at your leisure.

If you want to get a theremin you can head over to the website Theremin World's store to start your hunt for one. They start at $300 (amplifier not included). If that price is too rich for you, you can always head over to Maker Shed  -- a website I suspect I'm going to regret stumbling upon -- and check out their theremin kits and DIY page. 

Finally, if you're just looking for a toy theremin to play with, there's always the Gakken Mini-Theremin kit (shown below) which only costs $29.95.

Stratfor and Sara Malakul Lane

This Strafor article discusses the Kaspersky kidnapping and gives tips, should you be a possible target of a kidnapping for ransom, as to how to minimize your risk. Ivan Kaspersky, who's kidnapping is discussed in the article, is the son of Russian billionaire who was kidnapped and successfully rescued. 

Naturally, that brought to mind Sara Malakul Lane, Steven Seagal's kidnapped daughter in his cinematic masterpiece Belly of the Beast as this article's Hot Stratfor Babe. 

In the film she's been kidnapped in Thailand, or some such place, but luckily for her Dear Ol' Dad is a retired CIA assassin turned zen mystic (or something like that, his movie characters tend to blend together). Of course, he has to unretire and battle his way across Asia to save her.

As an aside -- Sara Malakul Lane was to go on to appear in a movie called Sharktopus. I wonder, would that be considered a step-up or a step-down from being in a Seagal movie? Regardless, I think we can all agree that getting named a Hot Stratfor Babe is most definitely a step-up.

After the article I've embedded a video of a fight scene from the movie. It starts with some ninjas types showing up and menacing Seagal and his sidekick by standing on one foot like cranes and waving their swords around. Then they attack, and mayhem ensues.


THE KASPERSKY KIDNAPPING - LESSONS LEARNED
By Scott Stewart,April 28, 2011

On April 24, officers from the anti-kidnapping unit of Moscow's Criminal Investigation Department and the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) rescued 20-year-old Ivan Kaspersky from a dacha in Sergiev Posad, a small town about 40 miles northeast of Moscow. Kaspersky, the son of Russian computer software services billionaire Eugene Kaspersky (founder of Kaspersky Lab), was kidnapped on April 19 as he was walking to work from his Moscow apartment. A fourth-year computer student at Moscow State University, Kaspersky was working as an intern at a software company located near Moscow's Strogino metro station.

Following the abduction, Kaspersky was reportedly forced to call his father and relay his captors' demands for a ransom of 3 million euros ($4.4 million). After receiving the ransom call, the elder Kaspersky turned to Russian law enforcement for assistance. On April 21, news of the abduction hit the Russian and international press, placing pressure on the kidnappers and potentially placing Kaspersky's life in jeopardy. In order to defuse the situation, disinformation was leaked to the press that a ransom had been paid, that Kaspersky had been released unharmed and that the family did not want the authorities involved. Kaspersky's father also contacted the kidnappers and agreed to pay the ransom. Responding to the ruse, four of the five members of the kidnapping gang left the dacha where Kaspersky was being held to retrieve the ransom and were intercepted by Russian authorities as they left. The authorities then stormed the dacha, arrested the remaining captor and released Kaspersky. The five kidnappers remain in custody and are awaiting trial.

According to Russia's RT television network, Russian officials indicated that the kidnapping was orchestrated by an older couple who were in debt and sought to use the ransom to get out of their financial difficulties. The couple reportedly enlisted their 30-year-old son and two of his friends to act as muscle for the plot. Fortunately for Kaspersky, the group that abducted him was quite unprofessional and the place where he was being held was identified by the cell phone used to contact Kaspersky's father. Reports conflict as to whether the cell phone's location was tracked by the FSB, the police anti-kidnapping unit or someone else working for Kaspersky's father, but in any case, in the end the group's inexperience and naivete allowed for Kaspersky's story to have a happy ending.

However, the story also demonstrates that even amateurs can successfully locate and abduct the son of a billionaire, and some very important lessons can be drawn from this case.

The Abduction

According to the Russian news service RIA Novosti, Kaspersky's abductors had been stalking him and his girlfriend for several months prior to the kidnapping. This pre-operational surveillance permitted the kidnappers to determine Kaspersky's behavioral patterns and learn that he did not have any sort of security detail protecting him. Media reports also indicate that the kidnappers were apparently able to obtain all the information they required to begin their physical surveillance of the victim from information Kaspersky himself had posted on Vkontakte.ru, a Russian social networking site. According to RT, Kaspersky's Vkontakte profile contained information such as his true name, his photo, where he was attending school, what he was studying, who he was dating, where we was working for his internship and even the addresses of the last two apartments where he lived. [continued after jump]

And the winner is...

President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov hogs the spotlight

As we all know, last Sunday was National Horse Day in Turkmenistan. An important part of the festivities was the Horse Beauty Contest. I have no doubt that you've all been waiting with bated breath to learn which horse won.

The Herald Sun reports that the lucky winner is a stallion named Khanbegler entered by  Ovlyaguli Sheripov, who won a new Toyota Land Cruiser with the inscription "a present from the respected president of Turkmenistan" for his efforts.

I would like to show you the lovely horse, but all of the articles about the competition I could find were instead illustrated with pictures of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov riding his horse while dressed in a fancy horse riding costume. That's him on his horse above. 

I wish I could tell you more, but as you'll discover if you read the Herald Sun article, aside from a brief mention of Sheripov and his mighty steed, the article primarily focuses on President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's activities during the contest; which included him galloping around, a dove landing on his outstretched hand, and the 19 year old student Maral gushing, "It's like a fairy tale. It's so touching. I've only ever seen this in a circus."

Well, the circus part sounds about right.

Considering the focus on Berdymukhamedov instead of the winner throughout the article, and the fact this is Turkmenistan after all, the last two paragraphs of the article weren't at all surprising:

Berdymukhamedov began cutting back on some of the excesses of Niyazov, known as the Turkmenbashi, and last year removed a golden statue of his predecessor that rotated to face the sun.

But observers have noted a budding personality cult, with giant banners of his face hanging on government buildings, and critics complaining that his attempts at reform so far amounted to little more than window dressing.

Oscar Wilde meets Jersey Shore

The cast of a New York production of The Importance of Being Earnest stage scenes using transcripts from Jersey Shore. I've never watched that show, but it doesn't matter, the results are funny none-the-less. Above is Part 1, you can watch all 5 parts at Playbill.com.

(via Open Culture)

Whew, I dodged a bullet on that one

Weeee... I'm a Predator drone!

Had I, like I planned on doing this morning, published my  'Is Obama the Love Child of OJ Simpson?' birther expose I would have certainly ended up looking silly with the release of his birth certificate.

All I can say is, "Thank God for procrastination." It's the only reason that my carefully crafted image as a serious and impartial internet journalist is still intact tonight.

Still, one wonders why he dragged that out for so long?

Maybe he is just be goofily secretive by nature, but I tend to suspect -- and it is just pure supposition on my part -- that he has some dirt in his past that he is hiding. I think he calculates that if he stonewalls everything it will conceal where people should be looking for the good stuff.

Regardless, he made what should have been an easy climb down a difficult one. I watched part of his announcement this morning and he was putting on his Exasperated Dad act. I suppose he thinks it will all blow over, and any other questions about his past can be wrapped in the tainted aura of the birth certificate situation and be safetly ignored.

However, a lot of people have to be wondering, especially after seeing how harmless the birth certificate is, why he fought its release so hard and long?  Call me a cynic if you must, but I know I would still like to see his college transcripts and, perhaps of more interest, find out what sort of financial aid and/or scholarships he received.

Stratfor and Julanne Johnston

In this Strafor article George Friedman discusses the evolving situation between Iran and Saudi Arabia in light of the looming withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. 

The U.S. is working to modify the Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Iraq to allow troops to remain, but even if they could get an agreement to leave a small trip-wire force in place, there would still exist a power vacumm in the Gulf area. Naturally, Iran seeks to fill that vacuum if possible.


For this article's Hot Stratfor Babe I selected Julanne Johnston, who starred with Douglass Fairbanks in the 1924 film The Thief of Bagdad.

I don't know much about the movie, but in preparing these comments I watched bits and pieces of the film. The sets, large cast of extras and the special effects are pretty impressive for their day. Although I'm not much of a silent film fan, I would like to see a good print of this movie someday. 

As a bonus, at the end of the article I've included a brief video of Fairbanks and Johnston whizzing out of the palace, flying above the cheering throngs and over the city walls as they sail off into the finale. It gives some feel for the scale of the sets and level of the special effects of the film.


IRAQ, IRAN AND THE NEXT MOVE
By George Friedman, April 26, 2011

The United States told the Iraqi government last week that if it wants U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond the deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, as stipulated by the current Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, it would have to inform the United States quickly. Unless a new agreement is reached soon, the United States will be unable to remain. The implication in the U.S. position is that a complex planning process must be initiated to leave troops there and delays will not allow that process to take place.

What is actually going on is that the United States is urging the Iraqi government to change its mind on U.S. withdrawal, and it would like Iraq to change its mind right now in order to influence some of the events taking place in the Persian Gulf. The Shiite uprising in Bahrain and the Saudi intervention, along with events in Yemen, have created an extremely unstable situation in the region, and the United States is afraid that completing the withdrawal would increase the instability.

The Iranian Rise

The American concern, of course, has to do with Iran. The United States has been unable to block Iranian influence in Iraq's post-Baathist government. Indeed, the degree to which the Iraqi government is a coherent entity is questionable, and its military and security forces have limited logistical and planning ability and are not capable of territorial defense. The issue is not the intent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who himself is enigmatic. The problem is that the coalition that governs Iraq is fragmented and still not yet finalized, dominated by Iranian proxies such Muqtada al-Sadr -- and it only intermittently controls the operations of the ministries under it, or the military and security forces.

As such, Iraq is vulnerable to the influence of any substantial power, and the most important substantial power following the withdrawal of the United States will be Iran. There has been much discussion of the historic tension between Iraqi Shia and Iranian Shia, all of which is true. But Iran has been systematically building its influence in Iraq among all factions using money, blackmail and ideology delivered by a sophisticated intelligence service. More important, as the United States withdraws, Iraqis, regardless of their feelings toward Iran (those Iraqis who haven't always felt this way), are clearly sensing that resisting Iran is dangerous and accommodation with Iran is the only solution. They see Iran as the rising power in the region, and that perception is neither unreasonable nor something to which the United States or Saudi Arabia has an easy counter.

The Iraqi government's response to the American offer has been predictable. While some quietly want the United States to remain, the general response has ranged from dismissal to threats if the United States did not leave. Given that the United States has reportedly offered to leave as many as 20,000 troops in a country that 170,000 American troops could not impose order on, the Iraqi perception is that this is merely a symbolic presence and that endorsing it would get Iraq into trouble with Iran, which has far more than 20,000 troops and ever-present intelligence services. It is not clear that the Iraqis were ever prepared to allow U.S. troops to remain, but 20,000 is enough to enrage Iran and not enough to deal with the consequences.

The American assumption in deciding to leave Iraq -- and this goes back to George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama -- was that over the course of four years, the United States would be able to leave because it would have created a coherent government and military. The United States underestimated the degree to which fragmentation in Iraq would prevent that outcome and the degree to which Iranian influence would undermine the effort. The United States made a pledge to the American public and a treaty with the Iraqi government to withdraw forces, but the conditions that were expected to develop simply did not.

Not coincidentally, the withdrawal of American forces has coincided with tremendous instability in the region, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula. All around the periphery of Saudi Arabia an arc of instability has emerged. It is not that the Iranians engineered it, but they have certainly taken advantage of it. As a result, Saudi Arabia is in a position where it has had to commit forces in Bahrain, is standing by in Yemen, and is even concerned about internal instability given the rise of both reform-minded and Shiite elements at a time of unprecedented transition given the geriatric state of the country's top four leaders. Iran has certainly done whatever it could to exacerbate this instability, which fits neatly into the Iraqi situation.

As the United States leaves Iraq, Iran expects to increase its influence there. Iran normally acts cautiously even while engaged in extreme rhetoric. Therefore, it is unlikely to send conventional forces into Iraq. Indeed, it might not be necessary to do so in order to gain a dominant political position. Nor is it inconceivable that the Iranians could decide to act more aggressively. With the United States gone, the risks decline.

Saudi Arabia's Problem

The country that could possibly counter Iran in Iraq is Saudi Arabia, which has been known to funnel money to Sunni groups there. Its military is no match for Iran's in a battle for Iraq, and its influence there has been less than Iran's among most groups. More important, as the Saudis face the crisis on their periphery they are diverted and preoccupied by events to the east and south. The unrest in the region, therefore, increases the sense of isolation of some Iraqis and increases their vulnerability to Iran. Thus, given that Iraq is Iran's primary national security concern, the events in the Persian Gulf work to Iran's advantage. [continued after jump]

Raw Intelligence Report: A View from Syria

 

 The following is a brief item from Stratfor giving the observations of a person in Syria. I'm posting it without comment.

(STRATFOR) Editor’s Note: What follows is raw insight from a STRATFOR source in Syria. The following does not reflect STRATFOR’s view, but provides a perspective on the situation in Syria.

People are scared. An understatement, no doubt, but my friends — both foreign and Syrian — are worried about the developments. Almost all of my foreign friends are leaving and many have moved departing flights up in light of the recent events. Most Syrians don’t have this option and are weighing their options should sustained protests move to inner Damascus. Everyone is thinking along their sect even if they aren’t open about it. Much of the violence is attributed by Syrians to these mysterious “armed gangs.” Many are still placing hope in “Habibna” (literally “Our Love,” a nickname for the president) to bring about enough reforms to placate the demonstrators. A point that I was forced to make over and over is that a lot of the people protesting are doing so because someone they knew was killed and not because they were anti-government, although they are now. Privately, my Syrian friends admitted that Bashar [al Assad, the Syrian president] needs to make some major, major concessions quickly or risk continued protests and bloodshed of which would be attributed to him and not merely “the regime.”

By now we are all familiar with the cycle of protests reaching their high point on Fridays, after prayers. This Friday, however, was different for Syrians. Having seen the infamous emergency law lifted, albeit with serious caveats, Syrians were hoping for a relaxing of the security responses to the demonstrations. What they got was half as many demonstrators killed in one day as in all the days of demonstrations preceding it combined. It was almost as if things had been safer when the emergency law had been in effect. (On a side note, my friend guessed that maybe two out of every 100 Syrians could actually tell you what the emergency law was.) What was most striking about the demonstrations was that there were two in Damascus itself (Midan on Friday, April 22, and Berze on Saturday, April 23). While not in the city center these are by no means the far suburbs and countryside of Daraa or Douma. There were also protests in Muadamiyeh, which is right outside town next to the main bus station. I’ve heard that tanks along this road were seen April 24 pointing their guns not in the direction of the road but toward the city. The regime and everyone is terrified about protests in the city itself. [continued after jump]

Advanced slingshot technology

Above are two videos of Jorge Sprave's Gatling Slingshot Crossbow. The bottom of the two shows it in slow motion and, while the target isn't that far away, it still has an amazingly tight pattern. I would hate to get beaned by that thing.

If you go to his Slingshot Channel YouTube page he has some other pretty nasty and/or clever looking slingshots.

Some of his other videos are: Shooting Machetes with the Slingshot, Turn your christmas tree into a deadly slingshot crossbow, How to make a Zombie slaying arrow shooting slingshot, Winch Operated Portable Slingshot Cannon and Hunting Vampires With The Slingshot among many more.

He also has a Slingshot Channel Blog where he discusses slingshots and his projects.

(via Neatorama)

Tut's Trumpets

James Tappern plays Tut's trumpet for a 1939 radio broadcast

Two if the items found in the Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb were trumpets, one of silver and one of bronze. During the looting of the Cairo during the recent demonstrations the bronze trumpet was stolen. However, it was recently recovered in a bag on the Cairo Metro. 

With the trumpets back in the news, the BBC has published the article Recreating the sound of Tutankhamun's trumpets which recounts the time they were played for a 1939 BBC radio broadcast. They were fitted with a modern trumpet mouthpiece and bandsman James Tappern played a few notes on each instrument.

If you want to hear what they sound like, follow the above link to the BBC article. It contains a link to an audio of the broadcast and you can listen to the portion where both trumpets are played.  

(via Never Yet Melted which has a nice picture showing the carvings on the horn of one of the trumpets)

Happy Easter

Acoustic Gangster's Paradise

An acoustic cover of Coolio's old song. The sideways hat is a nice touch.

Stratfor and Rachel Weisz

This Stratfor article returns to Yeman to further discuss that country's disintegrating situation. The breakdown in Yeman is providing an opening for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) which greatly complicates the U.S. and Saudi response to the crisis. 

If you missed it, be sure to read the earlier Startfor Yeman article for more context on the situation. 


Sticking with the Hot Stratfor Babe selection criteria of the earlier Yeman article, I looked at movies that had deserts in them and settled on Rachel Weisz of the Mummy movies for the honor. Yes, you don't think of temple complexes and mummies when you think of Yeman, but a desert is a desert and and so the locale will do just fine as a stand-in. 

Rachel plays Evelyn 'Evy' Carnahan, a klutzy librarian who doubles as an Egyptologist, er... I mean Yemantologist. She hooks up with the slightly disreputable Rick O'Connell, played by Brendan Fraiser, and over the course of the Mummy movies they manage to keep releasing an ancient mummy that threatens to destroy the world. As silly as they are, the Mummy movies are entertaining, popcorn munching fun to watch. 


ISLAMIST MILITANCY IN A PRE- AND POST-SALEH YEMEN
By Reva Bhalla, April 21, 2011

Nearly three months have passed since the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, first saw mass demonstrations against Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, but an exit from the current stalemate is still nowhere in sight. Saleh retains enough support to continue dictating the terms of his eventual political departure to an emboldened yet frustrated opposition. At the same time, the writ of his authority beyond the capital is dwindling, which is increasing the level of chaos and allowing various rebel groups to collect arms, recruit fighters and operate under dangerously few constraints.

The prospect of Saleh's political struggle providing a boon to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is understandably producing anxiety in Washington, where U.S. officials have spent the past few months trying to envision what a post-Saleh Yemen would mean for U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Arabian Peninsula.

While fending off opponents at home, Saleh and his followers have been relying on the "me or chaos" tactic abroad to hang onto power. Loyalists argue that the dismantling of the Saleh regime would fundamentally derail years of U.S. investment designed to elicit meaningful Yemeni cooperation against AQAP or, worse, result in a civil war that will provide AQAP with freedom to hone its skills. Emboldened by the recent unrest, a jihadist group called the Abyan-Aden Islamic Army launched a major raid on a weapons depot in Ja'ar in late March, leading a number of media outlets to speculate that the toppling of the Saleh regime would play directly into the hands of Yemen's jihadists.

Meanwhile, the opposition has countered that the Yemeni jihadist threat is a perception engineered by Saleh to convince the West of the dangers of abandoning support for his regime. Opposition figures argue that Saleh's policies are what led to the rise of AQAP in the first place and that the fall of his regime would provide the United States with a clean slate to address its counterterrorism concerns with new, non-Saleh-affiliated political allies. The reality is likely somewhere in between.

The Birth of Yemen's Modern Jihadist Movement

The pervasiveness of radical Islamists in Yemen's military and security apparatus is no secret, and it contributes to the staying power of al Qaeda and its offspring in the Arabian Peninsula. The root of the issue dates back to the Soviet-Afghan war, when Osama bin Laden, whose family hails from the Hadramout region of the eastern Yemeni hinterland, commanded a small group of Arab volunteers under the leadership of Abdullah Azzam in the Islamist insurgency against the Soviets through the 1980s. Yemenis formed one of the largest contingents within bin Laden's Arab volunteer force in Afghanistan, which meant that by 1989, a sizable number of battle-hardened Yemenis returned home looking for a new purpose.

They did not have to wait long. Leading the jihadist pack returning from Afghanistan was Tariq al Fadhli of the once-powerful al Fadhli tribe based in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan. Joining al Fadhli was Sheikh Abdul Majid al Zindani, the spiritual father of Yemen's Salafi movement and one of the leaders of the conservative Islah party (now leading the political opposition against Saleh). The al Fadhli tribe had lost its lands to the Marxists of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), which had ruled South Yemen with Soviet backing throughout the 1980s while North Yemen was ruled with Saudi backing. Al Fadhli, an opportunist who tends to downplay his previous interactions with bin Laden, returned to his homeland in 1989 (supposedly with funding from bin Laden) with a mission backed by North Yemen and Saudi Arabia to rid the south of Marxists. He and his group set up camp in the mountains of Saada province on the Saudi border and also established a training facility in Abyan province in South Yemen. Joining al Fadhli's group were a few thousand Arabs from Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan who had fought in Afghanistan and faced arrest or worse if they tried to return home. [continued after jump]

Happy Earth Day

Mother Earth thanks you,

especially now that Bolivia has granted her human rights.

One RosettaStone course you'll never see

In the village of Ayapa in the southern state of Tabasco, Mexico live two old men, Manuel Segovia, 75, and Isidro Velazquez, 69. They live a few hundreds yards from each other, but do not talk to each other. No one knows why they're not on speaking terms -- apparently they just don't much like each other.

This would hardly merit mention, but they are the two last speakers of Ayapaneco, which is the Spanish name for Nuumte Oote (True Voice) as it is called in their language.

The children of Segovia can understand it when he speaks it, but they can only pronounce a few words in the language. Segovia has tried to hold classes in the village, but as he explains,  "I bought pencils and notebooks myself. The classes would start off full and then the pupils would stop coming."

When the two die, the language will die with them.

Daniel Suslak, a linguistic anthropologist from Indiana University, is compiling a dictionary of Nuumte Oote. Why? I don't know. It seems like a project that offers little return to me, but I suppoase it will go into a linguistic database and will be of some use in research.

You can read about it at the Guardian article Language at risk of dying out – the last two speakers aren't talking.

UPDATE: I found a video which I think is the two of them. I imagine they speak Nuumte Oote on it, but the narration is in Spanish, which is Greek to me, so I'm not sure if and when they speak the dying language.

Meanwhile, back in Turkmenistan...

Festively garbed Turkmen women admire an exhibit of horse paintings.

While we're preparing for Easter this Sunday, in Turkmenistan they are preparing for one of their most important holidays, Turkmen Horse Day. Throughout Turkmenistan they have festivals, contests and exhibitions in honor of their prized Akhalteke "Heavenly Horses" breed of racing horses.

President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov kicked off the week-long festivities with the following speech:

“I heartily congratulate you on the opening of the “Horse – the Wings of Revival” Exhibition and III International Conference “Turkmen Horse and Art of World Horse Breeding” in honor of the Turkmen Horse Day. I wish good health, long life and family well being to you and every success in work to the exhibition and international conference!”

“The age-old national values have been revived in our country during the years of independence. The wonderful traditions of the Turkmen people, their customs and rites, holidays and festivities have been enriched with a new content and gained a new meaning in the epoch of new Revival and great reforms. The state has created the conditions conducive to reviving former worldwide fame of our ‘heavenly’ horses, which have been a cherished adornment of the celebrations at all times.

“The Turkmen Horse Day is celebrated solemnly and widely in our country each year on the last Sunday of April in honor of horses called the wings of the soul of the Turkmen people. It is encouraging that scientists, horse breeders, experts, connoisseurs of Ahalteke horses from all over the world come to our country to participate in celebra...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..." 

Ooops, sorry about that. I must have dozed off typing that in. Anyway, I'm sure it was a fine speech.

What interests me about it is that National Holidays are often times days where prisoners are granted amnesty. As near as I can tell the Turkmen government spends the year randomly tossing people into jail and then pardons them to make room to toss other people into jail.

In light of my Free Ma-Ro campaign, which admittedly hasn't exactly caught fire in the blogsphere for some odd reason, I think Turkmen Horse Day would be the first holiday during which the Turkmenstani pop star, his dad, brother and brother-in-law might be granted amnesty. I wish them good luck. 

School lunches from 'round the world

Slovakian school lunch

I've already linked to a weeks worth of food pictures. Izismile has a post Worldly School Lunches (40 pics) that shows school lunches from around the world. I'm part Slovakian in ancestry, so I led off above with a Slovakian school lunch. Looks pretty tasty to me.

I've included a few more of the pictures. At Izismile, many of the countries show more than one of their lunches. Go to there to see all 40 pictures. 

The Brazilian lunch is one I would like to dig into

Who knew that the French feed their kids a plate of Freedom Fries?

Djibouti lunches look pretty grim

Our tax dollars at work -- an American lunch of a dog and fries

The Japanese rice bowl lunch looks tasty

The kids in Ghana look pleased with their simple lunches

The South Korean lunch has a lot of variety

The lunch from Singapore has my mouth watering just looking at it

The evolution of ruins

"The city was desolate. No remnant of this race hangs round the ruins, with traditions handed down from father to son, and from generation to generation. It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction ... all was mystery, dark impenetrable mystery, and every circumstance increased it."

The picture is of an abandoned trailer in the abandoned resort city of Salton City, California. The city was laid out, but it all went wrong. Somebody has since painted the trailer pink. 

The quote is from the John L. Stephens book Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. He had just discovered the ruined Mayan city of Copan. He bought the ruined city for $50.  

Stratfor and Joan Collins

Today's Stratfor article discusses the approaching transition from the fourth to the fifth generation of leadership in China.

For decades China has been ruled by a group that adheres to the leadership principals of  Deng Xiaoping. Deng was the person who guided China  from Mao's Cultural Revolution to its modern state.

The leadership struggle among the various factions is taking place amidst an over-heated economy, an expanding military and an evolving diplomatic posture. Depending of which group emerges on top, they will either continue or supplant the leadership principals of Deng. Needless to say, the consequences of that will have great effect on regional stability and the global political order.

The article refers to Deng, and to the leaders who followed him and maintained his governing priorities as the Deng Dynasty. This naturally led me to the old prime-time soap opera Dynasty as I searched for this article's Hot Stratfor Babe. 

Since conniving is likely taking place in Beijing, I settled on Joan Collins who played Alexis Dynasty's biggest female conniver. I never saw the show, but according to the show's Wikipedia article she engaged in numerous cat fights where she and her opponents were inclined to end up in various pools of water, mud puddles and the like. Sounds like quality entertainment to me.


CHINA AND THE END OF THE DENG DYNASTY
By Matthew Gertken and Jennifer Richmond, April 19, 2011

Beijing has become noticeably more anxious than usual in recent months, launching one of the more high-profile security campaigns to suppress political dissent since the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Journalists, bloggers, artists, Christians and others have been arrested or have disappeared in a crackdown prompted by fears that foreign forces and domestic dissidents have hatched any number of "Jasmine" gatherings inspired by recent events in the Middle East. More remarkable than the small, foreign-coordinated protests, however, has been the state's aggressive and erratic reaction to them.

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy has maintained a furious pace of credit-fueled growth despite authorities' repeated claims of working to slow growth down to prevent excessive inflation and systemic financial risks. The government's cautious approach to fighting inflation has emboldened local governments and state companies, which benefit from rapid growth. Yet the risk to socio-political stability posed by inflation, expected to peak in springtime, has provoked a gradually tougher stance. The government thus faces twin perils of economic overheating on one side and overcorrection on the other, either of which could trigger an outburst of social unrest -- and both of which have led to increasingly erratic policymaking.

These security and economic challenges are taking place at a time when the transition from the so-called fourth generation of leaders to the fifth generation in 2012 is under way. The transition has heightened disagreements over economic policy and insecurities over social stability, further complicating attempts to coordinate effective policy. Yet something deeper is driving the Communist Party of China's (CPC's) anxiety and heavy-handed security measures: the need to transform the country's entire economic model, which carries hazards that the Party fears will jeopardize its very legitimacy.

Deng's Model

Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping is well known for launching China's emergence from Mao's Cultural Revolution and inaugurating the rise of a modern, internationally oriented economic giant. Deng's model rested on three pillars.

The first was economic pragmatism, allowing for capitalist-style incentives domestically and channels for international trade. Deng paved the way for a growth boom that would provide employment and put an end to the preceding decade of civil strife. The CPC's legitimacy thus famously became linked to the country's economic success rather than to ideological zeal and class warfare.

The second pillar was a foreign policy of cooperation. The lack of emphasis on political ideology opened space for international maneuver, with economic cooperation the basis for new relationships. This gave enormous impetus to the Sino-American detente Nixon and Mao initiated. In Deng's words, China would maintain a low profile and avoid taking the lead. China would remain unobtrusive to befriend and do business with almost any country -- as long as it recognized Beijing as the one and only China.

The third pillar was the primacy of the CPC's system. Reform of the political system along the lines of Western countries could be envisioned, but in practice would be deferred. That the reform process in no way would be allowed to undermine Party supremacy was sealed after the mass protests at Tiananmen, which the military crushed after a dangerous intra-Party struggle. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the People's Armed Police would serve as Deng's "Great Wall of steel" protecting the Party from insurrection. [continued after jump]