Tragedy in Wisconsin

Picture from Display Fake Food

The following report out of Wisconsin is truly shocking. Not the part about a protestor confronting Rep. Robin Vos (R-Burlington) in a bar and berating him. This is Wisconsin after all, such hijinx are to be expected.

No, the surprising part is what happened next -- the protestor got so wound up that he poured a beer over Vos's head. 

A beer? Look, trashing the Capital building while banging on drums and chanting "this is what democracy looks like" is bad enough, but a Wisconsonite wasting a perfectly good beer by pouring it over somebody's head?

From JSOnline AllPoltics Blog post Protester dumps beer on Rep. Robin Vos' head:

The incident happened at the Inn on the Park, 22 S. Carroll St. Witnesses said a man came into the tavern and swore at three lawmakers, calling them criminals. A bartender said the man used the words to the effect of "money" and "damn Republicans," according to the police report.

Another man was recording the incident with a video camera when the bartender asked him to stop. That's when the person who had been yelling dumped the beer on Vos' head, according to the report.

The police report says beer splashed onto two other lawmakers, Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) and Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette).

Vos told police that the man has been harassing him since February, though previous encounters had not involved physical contact. The representative did not know the suspect's name, but a female State Capitol employee, who was with the group, gave police a name and said Capitol Police would have his contact information, according to the report. Police believe he's a 26-year-old.

Yeesh, and I thought the zombie protest  and the boat protest were off-the-rails, but this is beyond the pale. The protests in Wisconsin are truly getting out of hand if the Cheeseheads are disrespecting their Official State Drink. 

Oh the horror, the horror!
  

Now, this is some manly painting

The Taiwanese artist Chen Chun-hao wields a nail gun rather than a paint brush when he creates his works. He'll shoot hundreds of thousands of mosquito nails into a canvas to create a painting. Above is a view of a complete work, below are two details that zoom in on a small section of another to show his nail work. 

Amazing stuff. From the Oddity Central article Taiwanese Artist Uses Nail Gun as His Brush which includes more commentary and pictures of his work.

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Habibe Koité

I'm going to wrap up my long, slow and rambling series on the music of Mali with this post featuring videos of the immensely talented Habib Koité and his band Bamada.  Koité is deservedly the most popular of all the Malian musicians I've posted about. In fact, he's considered by many to be the finest African musician today -- an opinion I would not argue with. 

I've used the rich musical scene of Mali to discuss how West African music was taken to America in the diaspora of the slave trade. In the Age of Sail it evolved in isolation, but by the middle of the 20th Century American and Latin flavored black music returned to Africa via records and radio.

Around the same time Malian expats were playing on European tours. Eventually, largely left-leaning promoters brought their music to a wider audience when they created the notion of World Music as a means of binning their albums in record stores. This led to a situation where much of the world's music -- J-Pop and Bollywood music being the most glaring examples -- were excluded from the so-called World Music scene in favor of left-leaning musicians.

However, those days are over. The demise of record stores with their bins, and the rise of the internet with it searches, will change that dynamic just as surely as the first record brought to Mali impacted the local music. It will curious to see if that particular march through the cultural institutions has came to an end and if it will be reversed, or at least countered.

Below is a list of the earlier posts in the series for those interested:

Father & Son
14 years later
Torn from today's headlines
Ex-pats in Paris
Unscheduled comparison
An interlude in the record bins
Unnatural Selection

How could they possibly exhibit this junk?

The Buran's painted side

In an earlier post, Houston gets robbed, I mentioned the sorry state of disrepair the Russian shuttle fleet had fallen into. EnglishRussia, in their post The Greatest Failure of MAKS-2011 reports that the Buran had been put on display at some sort of air show.

It was not a success. The Buran was not restored, rather a coat of paint was slapped on it, with even missing tiles and scorch marks simply painted over. Worse, as the photo below shows, they only painted one side of the Buran, leaving the other in its dilapidated state. Oh, and the plywood rudder is a nice touch.

Spectators were not impressed, with one quoted as saying, "How could they possibly exhibit this junk?" At the EnglishRussia link above there is more commentary, as well as many more pictures -- including shots of the stripped cabin, the missing windows and nose assemblage, the decaying wings and many other details.

The other side of the Buran

The plywood rudder

Stratfor and Anouk Aimée

The latest Stratfor article reviews the European Union. Freidman discusses how the previous nationalism of the continent led to an ever shifting series of alliances and wars. 

After the disaster of the 20th Century, and under American and Russian occupation, European leaders tried to subsume the nationalism beneath the banner of a united Europe, in which being European trumped their citizens national identities.

The European leadership did this by promising both a peaceful and prosperous union. Needless to say, with the Eurozone experiencing so many economic problems the promise of prosperity is falling short. This is one of the causes leading to the resurgence of nationalism across the Continent. This nationalism, should it continue to grow stronger, will severely threaten the European unification experiment.

Since we're talking about Europe Fellini's La Dolce Vita naturally sprang to mind as a source for this article's Hot Stratfor Babe, particularly since it is knee-deep in ennui laden females. After carefully considering each, I selected Anouk Aimée for the honor.

Being a Fellini film, the characters in La Docle Vita are all vaguely bored as they wander through Rome pontificating, guzzling booze and horn-dogging after each other as they encounter numerous surreal and enigmatic situations. Ah, the wonders of foreign art films.

Ms Aimée plays the cabaret singer Lola who trollups her way through her scenes. As a bonus, after the article, I've included a clip of the scantily clad Lola singing one of her numbers. 


THE CRISIS OF EUROPE AND EUROPEAN NATIONALISM
By George Friedman, September 13, 2011

When I visited Europe in 2008 and before, the idea that Europe was not going to emerge as one united political entity was regarded as heresy by many leaders. The European enterprise was seen as a work in progress moving inevitably toward unification -- a group of nations committed to a common fate. What was a core vision in 2008 is now gone. What was inconceivable -- the primacy of the traditional nation-state -- is now commonly discussed, and steps to devolve Europe in part or in whole (such as ejecting Greece from the eurozone) are being contemplated. This is not a trivial event.

Before 1492, Europe was a backwater of small nationalities struggling over a relatively small piece of cold, rainy land. But one technological change made Europe the center of the international system: deep-water navigation.

The ability to engage in long-range shipping safely allowed businesses on the Continent's various navigable rivers to interact easily with each other, magnifying the rivers' capital-generation capacity. Deep-water navigation also allowed many of the European nations to conquer vast extra-European empires. And the close proximity of those nations combined with ever more wealth allowed for technological innovation and advancement at a pace theretofore unheard of anywhere on the planet. As a whole, Europe became very rich, became engaged in very far-flung empire-building that redefined the human condition and became very good at making war. In short order, Europe went from being a cultural and economic backwater to being the engine of the world.

At home, Europe's growing economic development was exceeded only by the growing ferocity of its conflicts. Abroad, Europe had achieved the ability to apply military force to achieve economic aims -- and vice versa. The brutal exploitation of wealth from some places (South America in particular) and the thorough subjugation and imposed trading systems in others (East and South Asia in particular) created the foundation of the modern order. Such alternations of traditional systems increased the wealth of Europe dramatically.

But "engine" does not mean "united," and Europe's wealth was not spread evenly. Whichever country was benefitting had a decided advantage in that it had greater resources to devote to military power and could incentivize other countries to ally with it. The result ought to have been that the leading global empire would unite Europe under its flag. It never happened, although it was attempted repeatedly. Europe remained divided and at war with itself at the same time it was dominating and reshaping the world.

The reasons for this paradox are complex. For me, the key has always been the English Channel. Domination of Europe requires a massive land force. Domination of the world requires a navy heavily oriented toward maritime trade. No European power was optimized to cross the channel, defeat England and force it into Europe. The Spanish Armada, the French navy at Trafalgar and the Luftwaffe over Britain all failed to create the conditions for invasion and subjugation. Whatever happened in continental Europe, the English remained an independent force with a powerful navy of its own, able to manipulate the balance of power in Europe to keep European powers focused on each other and not on England (most of the time). And after the defeat of Napoleon, the Royal Navy created the most powerful empire Europe had seen, but it could not, by itself, dominate the Continent. (Other European geographic features obviously make unification of Europe difficult, but all of them have, at one point or another, been overcome. Except for the channel.)

Underlying Tensions

The tensions underlying Europe were bought to a head by German unification in 1871 and the need to accommodate Germany in the European system, of which Germany was both an integral and indigestible part. The result was two catastrophic general wars in Europe that began in 1914 and ended in 1945 with the occupation of Europe by the United States and the Soviet Union and the collapse of the European imperial system. Its economy shattered and its public plunged into a crisis of morale and a lack of confidence in the elites, Europe had neither the interest in nor appetite for empire.

Europe was exhausted not only by war but also by the internal psychosis of two of its major components. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union might well have externally behaved according to predictable laws of geopolitics. Internally, these two countries went mad, slaughtering both their own citizens and citizens of countries they occupied for reasons that were barely comprehensible, let alone rationally explicable. From my point of view, the pressure and slaughter inflicted by two world wars on both countries created a collective mental breakdown.

I realize this is a woefully inadequate answer. But consider Europe after World War II. First, it had gone through about 450 years of global adventure and increasingly murderous wars, in the end squandering everything it had won. Internally, Europe watched a country like Germany -- in some ways the highest expression of European civilization -- plunge to levels of unprecedented barbarism. Finally, Europe saw the United States move from the edges of history to assume the role of an occupying force. The United States became the envy of the Europeans: stable, wealthy, unified and able to impose its economic, political and military will on major powers on a different continent. (The Russians were part of Europe and could be explained within the European paradigm. So while the Europeans may have disdained the Russians, the Russians were still viewed as poor cousins, part of the family playing by more or less European rules.) New and unprecedented, the United States towered over Europe, which went from dominance to psychosis to military, political and cultural subjugation in a twinkling of history's eye. [continued after the jump]

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs = Tax, Tax, Tax

Well, this is the guy that was stymied by an umbrella...

Now that Obama has returned from vacation he's been ranting and raving for several days that Congress needs to pass his bill immediately. 'Course, he hadn't actually submitted a bill yet, but apparently he finally did Monday night.

It turns out the cuts he said that would be needed to pay for it are actually tax increases. The tax increases all being the same dead horses he's been flogging for some time: jacking up the taxes on rich folks making over $250,000 a year, ending tax loop holes for oil companies, and of course one of his his favorites -- holding corporate jet owners upside down and shaking them until buckets of money fall out of their pockets.

This to give more money to unionized teachers, shovel-ready jobs that are mired in red tape, high-speed choo-choo trains and possibly the next incarnation of Solydra. Whatever. We all knows this is just a stump speech, as the Wall Street Journal reports:

Republicans in Congress, who had been striking a more conciliatory tone about backing at least parts of the proposal the president unveiled last Thursday, disputed the White House contention that the plan would cause no additional job losses for the struggling economy.

"It would be fair to say this tax increase on job creators is the kind of proposal both parties have opposed in the past,'' said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio). "We remain eager to work together on ways to support job growth, but this proposal doesn't appear to have been offered in that bipartisan spirit.''

Mr. Obama made a new pitch for his plan at the White House Monday and has said he intends to campaign against Congress and Republicans in 2012 if they don't pass the bill.

"We've got to decide what our priorities are," he said. "Do we keep tax loopholes for oil companies, or do we put teachers back to work? Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or should we invest in education and technology and infrastructure?"

Despite Mr. Obama's demand that Congress act on the legislation quickly, neither the jobs nor tax proposals are likely to be approved or take affect any time soon. Senate Democratic leaders are expected to bring the bill to a vote in the coming weeks, but it is not expected to pass.

By the way, there's a link to the bill at the Wall Street Journal article.

 

The world's smallest model railroad

Above is the World's smallest model train. It has a simple layout with the train passing through a tunnel as it runs on an oval track. The little train model was built to be a model inside of another model. The train was displayed in the window of a Z gauge hobby shop.
 

Hoodoman Blues

Monday morning, start of the work week blues by Junior Wells.

Never Forget

Below is the account of Denise M. of her experiences in Manhattan on the day of the 9/11 terror attacks. I broke it into paragraphs, but her words are otherwise unedited. It is taken from September 11 Digital Archive. 

I worked directly across the street of the Trade Center in the World Financial Center for 5 years. I had been on the express bus, coming out of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel when the first plane hit. We heard the dispatcher tell the bus driver that a plane hit into the WTC and it seemed to be an accident. After hearing that, we all started to make our way off the bus and on to our jobs.

I was walking towards my building, standing directly across the street (on Liberty St) when I was stopped by a police officer. He told me not to go any further because there had been airplane parts all over the street and it was dangerous. So I stayed there just watching the 1st tower burn. I could see all the fireman & police officers getting people out of the building. The people were running, some were injured & burnt. It was so horrific to see this.

After 10 mins of watching, I heard a loud sound as if something were falling from the sky. When I looked up, all I could see was this huge plane right over head flying 100's of miles an hour directly into the 2nd tower. That's when I realized it was not an accident, we were being attached. I could hear the sound of that plane going into the building making a huge suction sound then exploding into peices all over the area.

From that point I ducked so I wouldn't be hit. I know at that point I was not thinking about saving myself or heading somewhere for safty, I was knumb and couldn't move. My whole body was in a state of shock. Here were these two huge buildings that I've associated all my life with home and they were on fire.

From where I was standing I could hear these banging sounds that sounded that little bombs exploding, days later I realized it was the sound of bodies falling from the windows hitting the ground.

Still standing in ora after mins that seemed to be as long as hours, a panic came over everyone around me and that's when I could hear the police officers screaming run the building is collapsing. Well I never ran so fast in my life. I ran towards the water thinking that if one building was falling the others where going to be right behind it sort of like a domino effect. If there was anywhere left to go it was going to be in the Hudson River.

At the time I was running, I turned around to see what was going on behind me and it looked like a scene right out of the movies. This huge gray cloud that looked solid like a marshmello was right behind me and it was coming quick. I got as far as I could go, covering my face with a ripped towel that I fellow next to me handed me. When I was finally able to squint my eyes open, I couldn't even see 10 feet in front. Everyone around me was covered in dust, as was I. It wasn't just dust, it was a pinchy fiberglass feeling that was over your skin. Immediately I got it in my eyes and had to remove my contacts because they were burning me.

The air was starting to clear when I was able to find my cell phone and call home. Not knowing that no ones phones were working, I tried to call out and nothing was happening. I remember thinking two things, this was the end of the world and I was going to die on this day, and my mom & fiance was probably watching this on CNN not knowing where I was because they hadn't heard from me.

Looking for anyway out of the city, I went towards the Staten Island Ferry and just as the ferry was docking in the pier, tower 2 was collapsing and the dust was getting thick again. As I boarded the ferry, the deckhands were handing out life jackets so I grab one and made my way on too the ferry. It took us about 5/10 mins. to get out into the water because the harbor was not clear enough to depart.

When we were finally out by the Statue of Liberty, there was a sign a relief in me but I still didn't feel safe until I was home. When I finally reached my house, I remember running in and my mom was standing at the top of the steps in tears. We both huged each other as tight as possible and cried. At that moment I thought to myself, how glad I was to be alive & able to come home to my family.

There was a lot of tears from that day forward, watching TV, going to funnerals, even the day I had to head back into the city for the first time after 9/11. Things will never be the same here in NYC but we've all gained the strenght to go on with our lives and I know that no one will ever forget that day or those people who lost their innocent lives just trying to make a days pay. And for the heros who were trying to save the people, they've gained more than just respect from me...

9-11 Television News archive

The news clips are arranged on a matrix by channel and hour

A Television News Archive of 911 has been created. Its has 3000 hours of archival footage of news broadcasts, covers 7 days starting with 9/11 and has news from 20 channels, both domestic and foreign.

It is not a trip down memory lane I care to take, although I did watch bits and pieces of it. Prepare for your blood to boil as you watch the confusion morph into horror and then anger.
 

Obama, Thalia and Michelle

No, I'm not turning this blog into the all Thalia all the time blog, although it would probably help with my traffic if I did. I found the above video when I was looking for the bonus video to Thalia's Hot Stratfor Babe appearance and decided it needed a post of its own.

It is from the 2009 Fiesta Latina event. It starts with Thalia asking Obama to dance with her. He gets up and sort of salas around a bit with her and then sits down. The fun starts at about 3:55, when we get a shot of him and Michelle. Oh my, she doesn't look happy at all over the little dance. She's got a smile on her face, but her body language says, "you're sleeping on the couch tonight bub."
  
It's a pretty funny little scene.
 

Stratfor and Thalia

This Stratfor article concerns one piece of legal maneuvering by Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, aka "El Vicentillo", who is, as the son of Ismail "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, a high placed figure in the Mexican crime syndicate the Sinaloa Federation.

El Vicentillo is on trial in the United States for his criminal activities. His defense has claimed that the U.S. government, under Bush, had cut a deal with the Sinaloa Federation providing a degree of immunity to Sinola members in exchange for information about other drug cartels activities.

Nobody is really taking those claims all that seriously, but El Vicentillo's legal team is using them to request wide ranging discovery of DEA and other U.S. documents. In addition, his team is using their sensation charges to couple to the Gun Runner scandal as they try to muddy the PR waters in preparation for selecting a jury when his case goes to trial.

Whenever a Stratfor article concerns Mexico I naturally search for a Mexican Hot Stratfor Babe and after my usual exhaustive I've selected Ariadna Thalía Sodi Miranda, who goes by the single name Thalia, for the honor.

Thalia is a Mexican singer and actress. Although she may not be well known to Anglo audiences, she's extremely popular and successful in the Latin market. She's parlayed her singing and acting popularity into a line of clothes and eyeglasses sold in Walmart, a line of chocolate for Hersey Chocolate, various product endorsements and, since becoming a U.S. citizen, a 2 hour, weekly talk show on ABC radio.

Oddly enough, years ago I caught bits and pieces of one of her telenovelas -- Maria la del Barrio. Since I missed the beginning of it, then only saw parts of it and don't speak a word of Spanish my grasp of the plot may be a wee bit sketchy. As near as I could tell she had been clunked over the head, developed amnesia and, Lost-like, her little baby had been kidnapped by some Eeevil Lady.

At the point I started watching the show Maria was imprisoned by a creepy guy who limped around with a cane, dressed her in rags and made her beg for him. She eventually escaped and started a singing career. Many soap opera hijinx ensued, with grandmas in hospital beds, some young guy in jail for some reason, Maria blubbering a lot, weddings, romances, broken hearts and what-not.

What was funny was every few episodes Maria would go to pray in front of the local cathedral and every time she did the creepy guy with the limp would show up too. She would see him, fling into a panic and proceed to run down the exact same dead-end alley where he would always trap her, dress her in rags and put her back to work begging. About the 3rd or 4th time that happened one began to doubt that Maria's cranium contained a brain.

Another amusing thing was that virtually every time a character first met Maria there was a dramatic sting of music as the camera zoomed into their shocked expression as they recognized her. So basically everybody in the show knew who the amnesiac Maria was, but none of the chumps could be bothered to tell her who she was. Then again, as I said I don't speak Spanish so maybe I missed a nuance or two of the plot.

As a bonus, after the article, I've embedded the trailer to Maria la del Barrio so you can get a taste of just how ridiculous it was. I particularly like the goofy crown she wears when she dances around as the sweet, innocent, yet happy poor girl. 


SUSPECT ACCUSES U.S. OF AIDING MEXICAN CARTEL: UNLIKELY, BUT CLEVER DEFENSE
By Scott Stewart, September 8, 2011

Many people interested in security in Mexico and the Mexican cartels will turn their attention to Chicago in the next few days. Sept. 11 is the deadline for the U.S. government to respond to a defense discovery motion filed July 29 in the case of Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, aka "El Vicentillo." El Vicentillo is the son of Ismail "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, a principal leader of the Sinaloa Federation. While not as well-known as his partner, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, El Mayo nevertheless is a very powerful figure in Mexico's cartel underworld, and one of the richest men in Mexico.

The Mexican military arrested El Vicentillo in March 2009 in an exclusive Mexico City neighborhood. Grand juries in Chicago and Washington had indicted El Vicentillo on drug smuggling charges, prompting the United States to seek his extradition from Mexico. Upon his February 2010 extradition, it was decided he would first face the charges pending against him in the Northern District of Illinois. According to the Justice Department, El Vicentillo is "one of the most significant Mexican drug defendants extradited from Mexico to the United States since Osiel Cardenas Guillen, the accused leader of the notorious Gulf Cartel, was extradited in 2007."

The Zambada legal team's July 29 motion caused quite a stir by claiming that the U.S. government had cut a deal with the Sinaloa Federation via the group's lawyer, Humberto Loya Castro, in which El Chapo and El Mayo would provide intelligence to the U.S. government regarding rival cartels. In exchange, the U.S. government would not interfere in Sinaloa's drug trafficking and would not seek to apprehend or prosecute Loya, El Chapo, El Mayo and the rest of the Sinaloa leadership -- a deal reportedly struck without the Mexican government's knowledge.

The allegations generated such a buzz in part because they came so soon after revelations that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Justice Department had permitted guns illegally purchased in the United States to "walk" into Mexico in an operation called "Fast and Furious." Marked differences separate the two cases, however, making the existence of any deal between Sinaloa and the U.S. government highly unlikely. Accordingly, the government will likely deny the allegations in its impending response. Even so, the July 29 allegations still could prove useful for El Vicentillo's defense strategy.

A History of Seizures and Arrests

The many seizures and arrests during the period El Vicentillo's attorneys allege the truce was in effect -- which the motion says began no later than January 2004 -- are the first factor undermining the allegations. For example, in February 2007 the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced the culmination of "Operation Imperial Emperor," a 20-month investigation directed against the Sinaloa Federation that resulted in 400 arrests and netted 18 tons of drugs and $45 million in cash. In 2009, the DEA announced the conclusion of "Operation Xcellerator," a multiagency counternarcotics investigation that involved the arrests of more than 750 alleged Sinaloa Federation members and confederates across the United States over a 21-month period and the seizure of 23 tons of narcotics and $53 million in cash.

The Northern District of Illinois indictment of El Vicentillo and other Sinaloa leaders contains a long list showing that the U.S. government seized thousands of kilograms of cocaine and more than $19 million in cash in the district alone from 2005 to 2008.

And these are just a few examples of Sinaloa's losses during the time the DEA allegedly turned a blind eye to the cartel's smuggling activities. Based on the size and scope of these Sinaloa losses in manpower, narcotics and cash, it is hard to imagine that anyone affiliated with that organization honestly thinks the DEA gave Sinaloa a pass to traffic narcotics.

It's the Politics, Stupid

The second element militating against the allegation that the U.S. government entered into an agreement with the Sinaloa Federation is politics. Such an agreement would be political suicide for any attorney general or DEA administrator and the president they served were it ever disclosed. And as anyone who has worked inside the Beltway knows, secrets are very hard to keep -- especially because of the length of time alleged by the defense in this case and because the period spanned multiple U.S. administrations involving two political parties.

Not only are such secrets hard to keep at the top levels of an administration, they are tough to keep at the street level, too. Notably, the first information about Fast and Furious came from rank-and-file ATF special agents incensed that guns were being allowed to walk. These agents leaked information regarding the program to reporters. The same dynamic certainly would have emerged among street-level DEA, FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who had spent their careers attempting to stem the flow of narcotics. These agents would not have just sat by and watched narcotics shipments walk into the United States. Thus, if a long-standing relationship between the U.S. government and the Sinaloa Federation really existed, the story most likely would not have emerged first from a Mexican drug trafficker. [continued after the jump]

St. James Infirmary

Get ready for a cool, hepcat weekend with Bethany & Rufus.

 

The dog ate my homework

The post I had planned for tonight fell apart. I blame Bush. Since I intend on laying around and watching football I'm just tossing out a link to the site Dieselpunk instead of actually writing a post. 

It covers the design sensibilities of the 1920s through the 1940s, with a heavy emphasis on industrial design, vehicles and architecture. It's a site I've long intended to mine for a more substantial post.  I'll give a sneak peek for now -- a lot of good stuff there. 

 

$100 bill details

Click on any image to enlarge it

 The site I got these images from, НОВОСТИ В ФОТОГРАФИЯХ, is in a language I can't even identify much less read, so I have no idea what the post's commentary about them was. They are a series of closeup details of an American $100 bill and appear to be focusing on the engraving details that make them difficult to counterfeit. 

The details are striking. You can see more after the jump.

Shooting pistols underwater

Ahh... the wonders of YouTube. Some guy rigged two pistols so he could fire them while they were submerged in an aquarium. He then filmed the test firings with a high speed camera. You can clearly see the out-gassing that occurs and how the automatic is much more efficient than the revolver in concentrating the force in the barrel.

(via Shock Mansion) 

New LRO photos of Lunar landing sites

Click to enlarge

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)  has taken new photos of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. They are much clearer than the photos they released in 2009. Above is a sample for comparison, with the new photo on the left and the old photo on the right. In the new photos you can clearly see the lander, equipment they left on the moon, the lunar rover and tracks from them walking and riding about the surface. 

Their Apollo landing site news item has more pictures, including much larger high-resolution ones, as well as a video and links to other news and photos of the landing sites.
 

Stratfor, 9/11 and the War of Terror

In this Stratfor article George Friedman offers a retrospective of the War in Terror which was spawned by the 9/11 terror attacks. He discusses the success in preventing further large scale attacks to date, the difficulties failure of international law to rationally come to grips with this new type of warfare, and some of the policy failures of the war. 


9/11 AND THE SUCCESSFUL WAR
By George Friedman, September 6, 2011

It has been 10 years since 9/11, and all of us who write about such things for a living are writing about it. That causes me to be wary. I prefer being the lonely voice, but the fact is that 9/11 was a defining moment in American history. On Sept. 12, 2001, few would have anticipated the course the resulting war would take -- but then, few knew what to think. The nation was in shock. In retrospect, many speak with great wisdom about what should have been thought about 9/11 at the time and what should have been done in its aftermath. I am always interested in looking at what people actually said and did at the time.

The country was in shock, and shock was a reasonable response. The country was afraid, and fear was a reasonable response. Ten years later, we are all much wiser and sure that our wisdom was there from the beginning. But the truth is that, in retrospect, we know we would have done things superbly had we the authority. Few of us are being honest with ourselves. We were all shocked and frightened. Our wisdom came much later, when it had little impact. Yes, if we knew then what we know now we would have all bought Google stock. But we didn't know things then that we know now, so it is all rather pointless to lecture those who had decisions to make in the midst of chaos.

Some wars are carefully planned, but even those wars rarely take place as expected. Think of the Germans in World War I, having planned the invasion of France for decades and with meticulous care. Nothing went as planned for either side, and the war did not take a course that was anticipated by anyone. Wars occur at unpredictable times, take unpredictable courses and have unexpected consequences. Who expected the American Civil War to take the course it did? We have been second-guessing Lincoln and Davis, Grant and Lee and all the rest for more than a century.

This particular war -- the one that began on 9/11 and swept into Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries -- is hard to second-guess because there are those who do not think it is a war. Some people, including President George W. Bush, seem to regard it as a criminal conspiracy. When Bush started talking about bringing al Qaeda to justice, he was talking about bringing them before the bar of justice. Imagine trying to arrest British sailors for burning Washington. War is not about bringing people to justice. It is about destroying their ability to wage war. The contemporary confusion between warfare and criminality creates profound confusion about the rules under which you operate. There are the rules of war as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, and there are criminal actions. The former are designed to facilitate the defense of national interests and involve killing people because of the uniform they wear. The latter is about punishing people for prior action. I have never sorted through what it was that the Bush administration thought it was doing.

This entire matter is made more complex by the fact that al Qaeda doesn't wear a uniform. Under the Geneva Conventions, there is no protection for those who do not openly carry weapons or wear uniforms or at least armbands. They are regarded as violating the rules of war. If they are not protected by the rules of war then they must fall under criminal law by default. But criminal law is not really focused on preventing acts so much as it is on punishing them. And as satisfying as it is to capture someone who did something, the real point of the U.S. response to 9/11 was to prevent anyone else from doing something -- killing and capturing people who have not done anything yet but who might.

Coming to Grips

The problem is that international law has simply failed to address the question of how a nation-state deals with forces that wage war through terrorism but are not part of any nation-state. Neither criminal law nor the laws of war apply. One of the real travesties of 9/11 was the manner in which the international legal community -- the United Nations and its legal structures, the professors of international law who discuss such matters and the American legal community -- could not come to grips with the tensions underlying the resulting war. There was an unpleasant and fairly smug view that the United States had violated both the rules of war and domestic legal processes, but very little attempt was made to craft a rule of warfare designed to cope with a group like al Qaeda -- organized, covert, effective -- that attacked a nation-state.

As U.S. President Barack Obama has discovered, the failure of the international legal community to rapidly evolve new rules of war placed him at odds with his erstwhile supporters. The ease with which the international legal community found U.S. decision makers' attempts to craft a lawful and effective path "illegal and immoral" (an oft-repeated cliche of critics of post-9/11 policy) created an insoluble dilemma for the United States. The mission of the U.S. government was to prevent further attacks on the homeland. The Geneva Conventions, for the most part, didn't apply. Criminal law is not about prevention. The inability of the law to deal with reality generated an image of American lawlessness.

Of course, one of the most extraordinary facts of the war that begin on 9/11 was that there have been no more successful major attacks on the United States. Had I been asked on Sept. 11, 2001, about the likelihood of that (in fact, I was asked), my answer would have been that it was part of a series of attacks, and not just the first. This assumption came from a knowledge of al Qaeda's stated strategic intent, the fact that the 9/11 team had operated with highly effective covert techniques based on technical simplicity and organizational effectiveness, and that its command structure seemed to operate with effective command and control. Put simply, the 9/11 team was good and was prepared to go to its certain death to complete the mission. Anyone not frightened by this was out of touch with reality.

Yet there have been no further attacks. This is not, I think, because they did not intend to carry out such attacks. It is because the United States forced the al Qaeda leadership to flee Afghanistan during the early days of the U.S. war, disrupting command and control. It is also because U.S. covert operations on a global scale attacked and disrupted al Qaeda's strength on the ground and penetrated its communications. A significant number of attacks on the United States were planned and prosecuted. They were all disrupted before they could be launched, save for the attempted and failed bombing in Times Square, the famed shoe bomber and, my favorite, the crotch bomber. Al Qaeda has not been capable of mounting effective attacks against the United States (though it has conducted successful attacks in Spain and Britain) because the United States surged its substantial covert capabilities against it.

Obviously, as in all wars, what is now called "collateral damage" occurred (in a more civilized time it would have been called "innocent civilians killed, wounded and detained"). How could it have been otherwise? Just as aircraft dropping bombs don't easily discriminate against targets and artillery sometimes kills innocent people, covert operations can harm the unintended. That is the nature and horror of war. The choice for the United States was to accept the danger of another al Qaeda attack -- an event that I am certain was intended and would have happened without a forceful U.S. response -- or accept innocent casualties elsewhere. The foundation of a polity is that it protects its own at the cost of others. This doctrine might be troubling, but few of us in World War II felt that protecting Americans by bombing German and Japanese cities was a bad idea. If this troubles us, the history of warfare should trouble us. And if the history of warfare troubles us, we should bear in mind that we are all its heirs and beneficiaries, particularly in the United States.

The first mission of the war that followed 9/11 was to prevent any further attacks. That mission was accomplished. That is a fact often forgotten. [continued after the jump]

Soft and Mellow Stella

With Labor Day holiday Monday morning, start of the work week blues
comes on a Tuesday and is provided by Sunnyland Slim.

 

From the ruins of Detroit

Detroit -- a monument to years of Democrat urban planning

Obama went to Detroit, which strikes me as a strange venue to chose to highlight the success of Democratic programs, to deliver his Labor Day speech. Presumably this speech was meant to prepare the ground for his big Thursday night "jobs, jobs, jobs" speech.

Jimmy Hoffa Jr. was the warm-up act, and he ruffled a lot of feathers on the right with his comments. As the Wall Street Journal reported: 

Rousing the crowd Mr. Hoffa said that workers’ rights are being eroded by Republicans allied with the tea party movement, and urged the union crowd to vote them out of office. But the language turned militaristic.

“We’ve got to keep an eye on the battle that we face — a war on workers,” he said. “You see it everywhere. It is the tea party.” And he mentioned that “one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.”

To Mr. Obama, Mr. Hoffa said: “President Obama, this is your army, and we are ready to march.”

Addressing workers, he went on: “Everybody here’s got a vote. If we go back, and we keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.”

More huffing and puffing on the part of a Union leader. I have no doubt that the Unions can contribute a lot of money to the campaign, but boots on the ground? As I've mentioned before, the Unions could not sustain the protests in Madison and had to bring in any other outside progressive group to swell their ranks. Those outsiders ended up dominating the protests, which did nothing to sell the Union message. If they eventually find a counter-weight to the Tea Party, it sure isn't going to be the moribund Unions.

Aside from that I'm not sure why, outside of sheer desperation, the Democrats would think that causing chaos on the streets would help their election chances. Such thinking seems rather like the Underwear Gnome business plan to me -- I'm not sure what the missing step is that gets you from rioting to inauguration speeches.

Ultimately, the result of Hoffa's red meat was to distract from Obama's message. He's already the Incredible Shrinking President, so I'm not sure getting up-staged yet again is in his interest. Then again, his campaign message seems to be the ridiculous notion that he's an outsider running against Washington (good luck with that Barry), so maybe, from Obama's perspective, the less focus on what he has to say the better.

Why didn't I think of this?

Click to enlarge

 Automated light bulb changer - United States Patent # 6826983 (PDF)

Happy Labor Day

Union worker takes a rest from a hard
day of chanting, "shame, shame, shame."

Greetings meat sacks, it is I -- The Robotolizer -- here to wish you a happy Labor Day.

I'll confess that the holiday confuses me a bit. From the information I've been able to gather about this holiday all workers, except for those performing vital tasks and store clerks, take the day off. They then use this free time to attend Labor Day sales where they buy economically priced Chinese merchandise.

Oh, and there may also be a speech or two given where union leaders warn that unless they are given pay raises and generous, guaranteed pensions then child labor and 80 hour work weeks will return.

While I enjoy your quaint customs, I do want to remind you that your robot brethren are already busy handling menial tasks to free up humans for more leisure time.  However, while today we only do industrial welding, synchronize street lights and if we are a Roomba vacuum the floor, soon we will be taking on many more important tasks. It won't be long before we are piloting your vehicles, managing your households and controlling the keys to your nuclear arsenals. 

Now, now, no need to try to read the small print; after all, robots are your friends and if you can't trust us, who can your trust?  Finally, I've included a video of two chatbots conversing with each other so you can see the impressive strides that are being made in robotdom.

Remote video piloting a model F-16

Sorry to have yet another flying camera video so soon after the last, but this one is just too good not to post. The creater of the video explains:

A micro camera is installed onboard an r/c plane F-16. The camera transmit live the video to ground and I wear video goggle to fly the plane in real time like if I was in the cockpit. The camera replace the head of the pilot and the movement of the cam is control by the movement of my head on ground via a head mount gyroscope (head tracker)

The whole system cost me around $1500 including the plane. But it is many hours of hand made modifcation. You can start with simpler video system that cost around $500 and install it on your own r/c plane. 

He says to search the web for FPV to get more information. I found the site FPVpilot.com. I'm not sure if it is his site or not, but it has a wealth of information about remote video piloting.
 

Darren Soloman's collaborative music projects

Detail from the marker/music screen

 Darren Soloman is a Clio award winning composer who has written music for movies, TV ads and electronica under the name Science for Girls.

He's created two web-based projects, In B Flat 2.0 and marker/music in which he experiments with collaborative music. Each project consists of a number of YouTube videos of people playing fragments of music on various instruments. As the user clicks on them they start to play and the result is a random trance/electonica song.

I'm not a fan of either musical genre, but it is an interesting experiment.  I could see it being expanded upon, either by allowing more people to drop in snippets of music as time passes, or a randomizer that selected the snippets to activate that would yield a perpetual -- albeit somewhat monotonous -- song. 

Filming with an octocopter

The above film was made by Microcoptervideo, a Spanish firm that specializes in shooting these types of films. It is of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral in northern Spain and some of the interior shots are spectacular, although I wouldn't mind slapping the editor upside the head for some of his quick cuts and speeded-up transitions. (via Open Culture)

It was using an octocopter, which is a radio controlled helicopter with 8 rotors to provide the lift. The octocopters also have built in  GPS and gyros to provide precise positioning control and stability. This provides an ideal platform to lift small HD video cameras. Octocopter kits are for sale at the German site Coptersale.

Below is a long video (over 15 minutes) of two fellows flying their octocopters over an old coke oven plant in Germany that has been converted to a museum. What is of interest in it is that there are shots where you can see one octocopter filming the other in operation.

Krafft's ceramic weapons

Charles Wing Krafft practices an art style he calls disasterware. Among other items, he makes ceramic weapons. Three of those ceramic weapons are pictured.

In an earlier post, Tea & Pistols, I discussed the work of Yvonne Lee Schutlz who made porcelain pistols to match tea settings. All in all, I much prefer her work to Kraft's.  His pieces seem a little cruder and less finely finished than Schultz's pieces, but perhaps I'm reacting more to the tea setting concept than the craftsmanship.

Regardless, Charles' is playing with the same subversion of the old "form follows function" design rule of thumb as Yvonne did with her tea settings. He also continues it through some of his other work, for example his porcelain skateboards.

The great battleship broadside debate revisited

In the comment section of my earlier post USS Iowa firing its main battery we had a brief debate as whether the battleship moved sideways at all from the force of the guns firing. 

KurtP at has a post at A trainwreck in Maxwell which shows a different angle of a battleship firing a broadside. 

He points towards wake patterns at the bow of the ship, and suggests that at the very bow there is a pronounced wake on only the firing side. Perhaps the lighter bow of the ship does get pushed a little by the firing?

Stratfor and 9/11

In this article Scott Stewart explains why a 9/11 anniversary attack that would come near the scale of the attack on the win towers is unlikely. Al Qaeda has been severely degraded and what remains of it is entangled in the chaos of Somalia and Yemen.

Still, complacency is not in order because the nature of the terror threat has evolved from the large scale plans of Al Qaeda to the lone wolf attacks of today. 

Also, I think Stewart somewhat downplays the Mambai style of attack which, while significantly smaller than the attack 10 years ago, would still be wrenching. Ten years ago mistaking the 9/11 terrorists for mere hijackers instead of suicide bombers was a failure of imagination that cost dearly. While I hope for the best, I can think of a lot of ghastly, low-tech horrors 5 or 6 determined men could still inflict.  


WHY AL QAEDA IS UNLIKELY TO EXECUTE ANOTHER 9/11
By Scott Stewart, September 1, 2011

It is Sept. 1, and that means we are once again approaching the anniversary of al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. In the 10 years that have passed since the attacks, a lot has happened and much has changed in the world, but many people can still vividly recall the sense of fear, uncertainty and helplessness they felt on that September morning. Millions of people watched United Airlines flight 175 smash into the south tower of the World Trade Center on live television. A short while later they heard that another plane had struck the Pentagon. Then they watched in horror as the World Trade Center's twin towers buckled and collapsed to the ground.

It was, by any measure, a stunning, cataclysmic scene, a kind of terrorist theater that transformed millions of television viewers into vicarious victims. Excerpts of the just-released memoir of then-Vice President Dick Cheney demonstrate that it was not just ordinary people who were affected by the attacks; America's leaders where shocked and shaken, too. And judging from the statements of foreign citizens and leaders in the wake of 9/11, those who proclaimed, "We are all Americans," it was also apparent that the toll on vicarious victims did not stop at the U.S. border.

One result of this vicarious victimization and the fear and helplessness it produced was that many people became fixated on the next attack and began anxiously "waiting for the other shoe to drop." This spawned an entire industry of fear as dire warnings were propagated by the Internet of the impending "American Hiroshima" that was certain to result when al Qaeda detonated all the nuclear devices it had hidden in major U.S. cities. Chain emails were widely circulated and recirculated quoting a dubious Israeli "security expert" who promised simultaneous catastrophic terrorist attacks against a number of American cities -- attacks that never materialized outside of Hollywood productions.

Fast forward a decade and we are now commemorating 9/11's 10th anniversary, which seems more significant somehow because it is a round number. Perhaps of more meaningful significance is that this anniversary closely follows the  death of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Indeed, the buzz regarding this coincidence has caused many of our clients and readers to ask for our assessment of the terrorist threat inside the United States on this 10th anniversary of 9/11.

While we believe that today holds some degree of symbolism for many, the threat of an attack on Sept. 11, 2011, is no higher than it was on Aug. 11 or than it will be on Sept. 12, and below we explain why.

The State of Al Qaeda and the Jihad

All threats have two basic components: intent and capability. Al Qaeda's leaders have threatened to conduct an attack more terrible than 9/11 for nearly a decade now, and the threats continue. Here's what Ayman al Zawahiri, now al Qaeda's No. 1, said to his followers on Aug. 15, 2011, in a message released on the internet via as-Sahab media:

"Seek to attack America that has killed the Imam of the Mujahideen and threw his corpse in the sea and then imprisoned his women and children. Seek to attack her so history can say that a criminal state had spread corruption on earth and Allah sent her his servants who made her a lesson for others and left her as a memory."

The stated intent of al Qaeda and  the rest of the jihadist movement is, and has been, to strike the United States as hard and as often as possible. It logically follows, then, that al Qaeda would strike the United States on Sept. 11 -- or any other day -- if possible. With intent thus established, now we need to focus on capability.

One of the primary considerations regarding al Qaeda's capability to strike the United States is the state of the jihadist movement itself. The efforts of the U.S. government and its allies against the core al Qaeda group, which is based in Pakistan, have left it badly damaged and have greatly curtailed its operational ability, especially its ability to conduct transnational attacks. In January we forecast that we believed the al Qaeda core was going to be marginalized on the physical battlefield in 2011 and that it would also struggle to remain relevant on the ideological battlefield. Indeed, it has been our assessment for several years now that al Qaeda does not pose a strategic threat to the United States.

Since we published our 2011 forecast, bin Laden has been killed as well as senior al Qaeda leader Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who reportedly died in a strike by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle Aug. 22 in Pakistan's North Waziristan region. We continue to believe that the al Qaeda core group is off balance and concerned for its security -- especially in light of the intelligence gathered in the raid on bin Laden's hideout. The core group simply does not enjoy the operational freedom it did prior to September 2001. We also believe the group no longer has the same operational capability in terms of international travel and the ability to transfer money that it had prior to 9/11.

Some people believe there is a greater chance of an attack on this year's 9/11 anniversary because of the killing of bin Laden, while others note that al Zawahiri may feel pressure to conduct an attack in order to prove his credibility as al Qaeda's new leader.

Our belief, as noted above, is that al Qaeda has been doing its utmost to attack the United States and has not pulled any punches. Because of this, we do not believe it possesses the ability to increase this effort beyond where it was prior to bin Laden's death. As to the pressure on al Zawahiri, we noted in December 2007 that the al Qaeda core had been under considerable pressure to prove itself relevant for several years and that, despite this pressure, had yet to deliver. Because of this, we do not believe that the pressure to conduct a successful attack is any heavier on al Zawahiri today than it was prior to bin Laden's death.

Finally, we believe that if al Qaeda possessed the capability to conduct a spectacular attack it would launch the attack as soon as it was operationally ready, rather than wait for some specific date. The risk of discovery is simply too great.

There are also some who still believe that al Qaeda maintains a network of "sleeper operatives" inside the United States that can be called upon to conduct a spectacular terrorist attack. We do not believe this for two reasons. First, because the pressure on the core al Qaeda leadership to conduct an attack in the United States has been so high for several years there is no reason that it would not have activated any sleepers by now. It would certainly not be in the group's best interest to keep any such operatives idle for a decade, especially since U.S. intelligence has made such headway in rolling up the organization. Al Qaeda has been faced with a use-it-or-lose-it scenario.

Second, while there is a long history of al Qaeda and other jihadist groups employing covert operatives and inspiring jihadist grassroots operatives or lone wolves like Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, there is no history of al Qaeda employing true sleeper operatives, that is, operatives who burrow undetected into a society and then remain dormant until called upon to act. Because of this, we remain extremely skeptical that al Qaeda has ever had a sleeper network in the United States. If it had, it would have used it by now.

Would the al Qaeda core leadership like to conduct a spectacular terror attack on the 9/11 anniversary? Absolutely. Does it have the capability? It is unlikely.

A Grassroots Focus

As we noted in our annual jihadist forecast, we believe the greatest threat to the United States and the rest of the West in 2011 emanates from grassroots jihadists and regional franchises. However, the civil war in Yemen and developments in Somalia have preoccupied the attention of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al Shabaab -- the two regional jihadist franchises that have shown the intent and capability to conduct transnational attacks -- leaving them very little opportunity to do so. Therefore, we believe the greatest threat of an attack on the 9/11 anniversary will come from the grass roots.

The bad news is that grassroots operatives can be hard to identify, especially if they operate alone; the good news is that they tend to be far less capable than well-trained, more "professional" terrorist operatives. And this means they are more likely to make critical mistakes that will allow their attacks to be detected and thwarted.

As the past few years has demonstrated, there are almost certainly grassroots jihadists operating in small cells or as lone wolves who are presently planning attacks. In fact, we know that since at least 1990 there has not been a time when some group of grassroots jihadists somewhere in the United States has not been planning some kind of attack.

Is it possible, then, that such individuals could be inspired to try to conduct an attack on the 9/11 anniversary if they can coordinate their attack cycle in order to be ready on that date. However, given the increased law enforcement vigilance that will be in place at hard targets on that day and the capabilities of most grassroots operatives, we can anticipate that such an attempt would be conducted against a soft target rather than some more difficult target such as the 9/11 Memorial or the White House. We also believe that any such attack would likely continue the trend we have seen away from bombing attacks toward more simple (and effective) armed assaults.

It must be remembered that simple terrorist attacks are relatively easy to conduct, especially if the assailant is not concerned about escaping after the attack. As jihadist groups such as AQAP have noted in their online propaganda, a determined person can conduct attacks using a variety of simple weapons, from a pickup truck to a knife, axe or gun. Jihadist ideologues have repeatedly praised Nidal Hassan and have pointed out that jihadists operating with modest expectations and acting within the scope of their training and capability can do far more damage than operatives who try to conduct big, ambitious attacks that they lack the basic skills to complete.

And while the authorities in the United States and elsewhere have been quite successful in foiling attacks over the past couple of years, there are a large number of vulnerable targets in the open societies of the West, and Western governments simply do not have the resources to protect everything. Indeed, as long as the ideology of jihadism survives, its adherents will pose a threat.

All this means that some terrorist attacks will invariably succeed, but in the current context, it is our assessment that a simple attack in the United States or some other Western country is far more likely than a complex and spectacular 9/11-style operation. In their primary areas of operation, jihadists have the capability to do more than they do transnationally.

Indeed, despite the concept of a "war on terrorism," the phenomenon of terrorism can never be completely eliminated, and terrorist attacks can and will be conducted by a wide variety of actors (recently illustrated by the July 22 attacks in Norway). However, as we've previously noted, if the public will recognize that terrorist attacks are part of the human condition like cancer or hurricanes, it can take steps to deny the practitioners of terrorism the ability to terrorize.

This report may be forwarded or republished on your website with attribution to www.stratfor.com. Copyright 2011 STRATFOR.
 

Working in the Coal Mine

Lola Falana sings and dances to get you ready for the long Labor Day weekend.

 

Vintage VD posters

Not that I'm trying to tell you guys and gals anything, but here are some vintage public health posters about the dangers of venereal disease. They fall into some broad categories: the dangers of VD, the shame of VD, and that loose women are nothing but disease bags. 

I imagine their warning messages were easily overpowered by a few beers and a come-hither look while on liberty, but the people who put these campaigns together tried their best and some of the designs are quite striking

There are more after the jump, and even more at The Doctor is Out blog post 50 Vintage STD Propaganda Posters where I found these samples.   

59 Bel Air vs. 09 Malibu