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The US reaction to 9/11, invading Iraq, played directly into bin Laden's hands. The US was engaged in a theater of operations for five years as al Qaeda recruited fighers from all of Iraq's neighbors to engage the US.

Now that the Iraq debacle is about to come to a close, we're going to focus our energies on Afghanistan and finally pursue the mastermind of the attacks-- the mastermind who very well may have had a hand in the Mumbai incidents.

Unfortunately, Indian PM Manmohan Singh appears to be committing some similar errors as Bush did with 9/11 and Iraq.

If your goal is to try to destabilize Pakistan, with the intent to bring Islamist parties to power there (it worked in Afghanistan in 1996), that's probably the fastest way to get al-Qaeda a nuclear weapon.

(As an aside, this is a classic example of why it's inappropriate to bring democracy to any religiously fundamentalist nation. The world would do well to learn the lessons of Ataturk. A benevolent dictator, he curbed many religious rights because he knew that without a strong anti-fundamentalist stance (like prohibiting parents from sending their kids to private (read: religious, aka madrassa) schools), Turkish republican nationalist pride would never take root.

Countries like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan need leaders like Simon Bolivar, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or Abraham Lincoln, who had to roll back many civil liberties in order to try and establish a country on the verge of permanently splitting in two...)

If you had your choice of militants to conduct the Mumbai attacks, what country would you choose them from? That's right, you'd choose Pakistan, to try and incite regional conflict and distrust. (In fact, it now occurs to me, selecting a bunch of Saudis for 9/11 could have been bin Laden's attempt to undermine the cozy US-Saudi relationship)

For family/historical reasons (the Bush/Saud family ties go back several decades), if not because it would constitute a poorly executed strategy, Bush never made a statement like "These attacks have been conducted with the help of Saudi linkages" or "A group which carried out these attacks based in Saudi Arabia came with single minded determination to create havoc in the commercial capital of the country" or "We will take up strongly with our neighbours that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated and that there would be penalties for lack of suitable measures not taken by them."

Yet each of these phrases were-- here modified to contrast them against 9/11-- uttered by Indian PM Manmohan Singh (full transcript). I know very little of Indian politics, so I don't know if he is loved or reviled by his people (in parliamentary systems, rule is generally by vote of confidence, so he probably has majority support via the legislature), but I think what he's saying is badly misguided.

A much better strategy would have been to come out with a statement that undermines the terrorist aims, that undermines their message, and reinforces that they are fighting a losing battle.

Imagine if he'd issued a statement closer to the following:

I've just finished conferring with Pakistani PM Gilani who expressed his deep condolences and strongly condemned the terrorist acts. Indian and Pakistani intelligence services will be working together to bring those responsible to justice.

The cowards who undertook these acts are fighting a losing battle that we, along with the rest of the civilized nations around the globe, will ultimately win.

Terrorism is a blight on the face of civilized nations like Pakistan and India, and PM Gilani and I are today announcing a multi-national anti-terrorism task force which will usher an age of renewed peace and cooperation between our nations.

There is nothing more that the terrorists want than to drive a stake between us and our neighbors, hoping to destabilize the region, and our duty is to deny them the opportunity of using tragedies like this to further their evil agenda.

India needs to realize that Pakistan is not their enemy, they need to get past the conflicts of the past, and join together to fight religious fundamentalist terrorism.

Terrorists will always strike at the softest tactical (US bases, ships, hotels, nightclubs, airports, tourism centers, etc.) and strategic (i.e. unrest and distrust between India and Pakistan, etc.) targets, hoping to magnify the greatest sources of instability in the world.

That's why Iraq was such a boneheaded idea (plays into al Qaeda's strategic ploys while giving them thousands of tactical soft targets that can be exploited by little more than an IED), and why it doesn't make sense to make Pakistan out to be the bad guy today.

Time is running an article today called Mumbai: The Perils of Blaming Pakistan which echos my blog post from yesterday. Here's a snippet:

Most Pakistanis reacted with horror to news of the Mumbai killing spree starting Wednesday, having lived through equally devastating attacks on their own soil. But that initial sympathy quickly gave way to hostility as the focus of blame landed on Pakistan — a knee-jerk first reaction, rather than one based on any solid evidence. "It is a tragic incident, and we also felt bad about it as Pakistan is going through the same problem," says Abdur Rashid, a 67-year-old retired government servant in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. "But it was really unfortunate to see that even before the operation [to clear out the attackers] was finished, the Indian government stated that Pakistan is involved. It sounds that the entire incident was concocted to punish Pakistan."

I'm glad to see the MSM covering this angle.

In the mid 1500s merchants would trade a bird called the “Guinea fowl” (Genus Numididae) imported from Madagascar, via the region of Turkey. Of course, Guinea is a Western African nation, and Madagascar is an Eastern African island, so clearly the people who were attributing names to the creature were pretty well already confused.

In any case, the English began calling the bird (Numididae) "turkey" because of the supposed country of origin. The Turks meanwhile, believed the same bird originated from India, and thus called it “Hindi” (incidentally the Turkish word for the country India is Hindistan). But this isn’t the only geographical association with Numididae. The dutch/norwegians have a name that associate the bird with Calicut, Macedonians “bird of Egypt”, and others “Dutch bird”, “bird of Greece” and “bird of Ethiopia”.


Things got somewhat more confusing because the Spaniards returned from the New World with a very similar, but distinct, bird that we commonly call “turkey” today (Genus Meleagrididae), which is indigenous to the Americas. As these birds appeared in Spain, also assisted by the common misunderstanding that the New World was “India”, the New World bird Meleagrididae took on the name applied to its eastern African cousin, Numididae.

As a bilingual speaker of Turkish and English, I have to smile when I hear the bird referred to as “turkey”, whereas in Turkish they call the word “India” (Hindi)... I’ve always wondered... “What do the Indians call it?”

Speaking to my coworker Krishna who hails from India, the name for "turkey" in his local dialect (many of the Indian states have their own dialect) is "Guinea" (or Guinea chicken). At least they got the right continent. :)

Read more at wikipedia:
Meleagrididae Numididae

A couple of my friends are posting about politics. My friend Keith mentions Obama and campaign promises:

The reality of ruling is much harder than making campaign promises. More importantly you can tell everyone what they want to hear but in the end, you can only deliver one path. Someone is going to be disappointed.

I agree completely. I alluded to this idea in my previous post about taxes. Now that Obama's in office, the very sticky situation of Guantanamo is going to be first on the block. Now that he gets to read the dossier on some of the evil people who are stored there-- and the sensitive nature of the intelligence we have to hold them on-- is it going to be as open-and-shut case as some on the left have made it out to be?

This is just one gray area here that Obama is going to have to face, partly because the current administration has refused to. Situations like Iraq, the environment, the economy.. All of these will pit Obama between his campaign promises and the stark reality that requires specific actions that may be contrary to them...

My friend Rus writes about Prop 8. He points out that the LDS church is often being singled out, whereas if the very populace that helped get Obama elected, particularly the black and latino vote, voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8. Without their votes, he argues, Prop 8 would have failed.

This is a valid point, but I think the reason why the focus is on the conservative organizations that helped finance Prop 8 (principally the Knights of Columbus and Focus on the Family rather than LDS-- see californiansagainsthate.com) is because the rank-and-file Obama supporter (who happens to be black or latino) is just expressing their personal opinion. Believe it or not, I think much of the "left-leaning" community doesn't have a problem with expression of personal political opinion. What is outrageous is that religious groups organize to inflict their religious views on others through the political process.

Rus quotes the LDS church:

It is important to understand that this issue for the Church has always been about the sacred and divine institution of marriage - a union between a man and a woman.

The fact of the matter is that the LDS church has only been in existence for less than 200 years, whereas the institution of marriage is many thousands of years older. Marriage predates the birth of Jesus Christ. Marriage predates the Jewish faith which is estimated to have appeared at 2000 BC. Marriage has been around longer than any particular religious faith's assertion of its sanctity and divinity.

If marriage was so beholden to the gods of these faiths, then perhaps it would have been important enough for these faiths to have received word from God predating marriage on what marriage meant? Yet no such historical record exists that warns people from entering into a marriage that God opposes. In fact there is no mention of marriage in the Genesis story (that I can recall), which would have been the perfect place for God to have defined it for the judeo-christian-muslim faiths.

The reality of the situation is that humans, like many mammals, establish a pair-bond for evolutionarily obvious reasons. And when religious faiths took over, much like Christmas was selected to coincide with the Roman winter solstice practices of Saturnalia (and much of the folklore with it), Judeo-Christian adoption of the "institution" of marriage was actually co-opting a concept that predated these faiths.

So I find it hard to believe that somehow, these faiths that have come several millenia too late to predate marriage, can insist on the divinity and sanctity of it.

We're left with the valid political debate about Prop 8. If it's what society defines it to be, as I've been arguing, and society (in California) has taken a very restrictive view of it, then let's talk about it on the merits of the argument.

Rus actually makes this point:

I subscribe to the political philosophy that rights can only be secured by legislative or plebiscite action primarily because I believe in honoring the fundamental principle of a constitutional republic... that the majority rules, subject only to those minority rights which are written down in the Constitution. If you discover a "new" right that you'd like included, you have available to you the process of amendment (or, uh, succession... or revolution). This involves a lot of work as your fellow citizens must be convinced, by way of persuasion and debate, that your cause is worthy of a majority vote.

This mimics the concept of a "social contract", where individuals negotiate their rights and restrictions in the interest of creating a "more perfect union", for example. I find it hard to disagree with this line of reasoning. However, it's undeniable that religious organizations had their impact on the outcome of Prop 8, and that reasoning-- that these religions have designs on the definition of marriage that serve to define it for everybody else-- is what I fundamentally disagree with.

It's a really good question that, when you sit down at the table, you need to ask before you order the bottle of Cristal and the caviar.

With all of these Wall St. bailouts, somebody needs to pay the bill.

Who should that be? The taxpayers? Or our children and grandchildren?

I believe we have a moral obligation to pay that debt ourselves, and that's the discussion we should be having right now.

I think Barack Obama should be leading that conversation, but obviously raising taxes would be exactly what the Republican's would want right about now. It's almost as if the last few months of the election was actually more of a strategy to bring the nation as close to bankruptcy as possible, such that it would require a widespread increase in taxes, just so the Republicans can say "See, I told you so..."

So if raising taxes is out of the question, then the only other answer is to cut back on spending... Sure there are a few true fiscal conservatives in Congress, but let's face it, the bulk of our elected officials are closer to endorsing the largess of Ted Stevens than the frugality of Ron Paul.

The question all of us should be asking our elected officials is "All this talk about bailouts is fine and good, but how are we going to pay for it?"

Until we get a clear answer to that question, the bailouts need to stop. At some point, the insolvency of poorly run businesses like GM will preclude their ability to pay back any "loans" and now the taxpayers are in the hole. .

I can never get enough of the holiday season, so I've been listening to Comcast channels 900, 923 and 978 (in my region, the Christmas music stations), and it's become a Klatt tradition to go shopping for a Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend.

I began to think of how much of the winter solstice holidays have been coopted by Christian faiths, and was reminded of my post about three years ago when I touched on the supposed "war on Christmas".

At the time, I had written:

Nobody is diminishing the magnitude nor the breadth of your celebration of Christ's "birth" by calling what you put in your living room a "Holiday Tree". If you want to call it your Christmas tree to the people who come to your home to admire it (and the presents you bought from Walmart), more power to you.

As Shakespeare pointed out, "a rose by any other name..."

I think the same concept applies to the "institution" of marriage.

If you want to define marriage as between a toad and a frog, go right on ahead. I don't recall any of the ten commandments suggesting that thou shalt not redefine marriage as being anything other than between one man and one woman...

If fundamentalist Mormon sects want to define marriage as between a man and many women, so be it.

If marriage is so sacrosant, then the people who would vote to take away another's right to practice it, ought to abide by the permanence of what marriage is supposed to mean. After all, if you're going to stand before your God and swear that "till death do you part", then you should either have to die, commit suicide, or murder your partner to get out of it (and 2/3rds of those options have consequences in most religions).

I've got a certain amount of disgust for anyone who's in favor of Prop 8 who...

• ...has ever been divorced
• ...who believes that divorce should be allowed
• ...who is married but has ever cheated on their wife/husband
• ...who is married but is otherwise unfaithful to his/her wedding vows

In my view, people in favor of Prop 8 are fundamentally making an argument that marriage is a sacred activity. So anyone who would simultaneously demean the "institution" of marriage, yet then withhold the rights of others to exercise it, is a special kind of hypocrite.

513,453 votes determined the Prop 8 victory, and I'm of the opinion that at least that many people who voted "Yes" in California have been divorced, wouldn't like it if divorce wasn't allowed, or have been unfaithful to their partners or the vows they took.

So congratulations to those hypocrites in California, who would raise Marriage up onto a pedestal out of the reach of homosexuals, but not high enough that they wouldn't stoop to crap all over it.

According to Scott McClellan, his former press secretary, George W. Bush was responsible for outing Plame.

Another reason to hate the spineless democrats, led by the gutless Nancy Pelosi.

It's not too late to impeach, and if anybody in Congress actually thought the Constitution was worth the paper it was printed on, we'd proceed with throwing the bum out now.

I joined tens of thousands of like-minded protestors on Saturday in marching in protest of the passage of Prop 8.

"If you are going to talk about immortality, talk about hunger. That is immoral. Talk about war. That is immoral. But do not tell me when two people love each other that's immoral. It is right."

King County Executive Ron Sims

I took several dozen pictures of the Prop 8 protest which I posted on Flickr.



I noticed a few anti-LDS signs at the event ("Joseph Smith had 25, Brigham Young had 55, all I want is one"), which is interesting because LDS is only one of several parties that organized for Prop 8, but today I did some research to read what the LDS church had to say for itself.

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

Once again, we call on those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

Source: LDS.org, News Release, 7 November 2008

I think they doth protest too much.

At first, I was concerned-- what did they mean when they say "target the Church"... Were overzealous opponents of Prop 8 egging temples, or keying cars or assaulting templegoers?

So I did a search for articles, and while I'm not suggesting these things aren't happening, I couldn't find any.

What I did find was this blog post which suggests that there is more anti-gay violence and hate crimes than religion-based, and those based on religion are typically anti-Semitic in nature, not anti-Mormon.

So (until I hear evidence of really despicable "targeting") it would seem the Church is complaining that they are now the target of anti-Prop 8 protestors, who are peacefully making their displeasure known outside of LDS temples.

The church leadership shouldn't be surprised, and it's galling to hear them bemoan the attention they are getting.

You can't organize activities to pour millions of dollars into a political action (found this story on a Mormon family's experience in their ward) and expect that the community against which you are organizing is going to take it lying down.

As one protestor who is calling for skiers to choose any state but Utah and for Hollywood actors and directors to pull out of the Sundance Film Festival put it: "They just took marriage away from 20,000 couples and made their children bastards... You don't do that and get away with it."

Personally, I think boycotts need to be as targeted as possible (boycotting Utah skiing and Park City are too broad), but I certainly comprehend where the sentiment is coming from.

Faith. The very word undermines the certainty that many who have it pretend to demonstrate.

Yet with quite a bit of certainty, the majority of the electorate in California voted for Prop 8, which literally "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry".

Last I checked, no religion has a 51% lock on morality to demand our obeisance, and in fact, the beliefs of any particular faith is a minority compared to the non-believers of that faith.

But the certainty in ones faith is apparently so strong, that apparently facts simply can't hold a candle to it.

Universal facts, such as the matter that love is a fundamentally human trait, the love that a parent has for a child, the love that my wife and I share.

Universal facts about our human nature, such as the deep sense of loss our fellow man feels at the departure of a loved one, whether they're away on travel, or to a more final destination.

Universal facts about our human nature, such as the repudiation, by any sane person, that no class of person is beneath basic human rights, whether they are Jews, or Africans.

Universal facts about our human nature, such that no government should ever deny them to its citizens.

Yet, the same people who agree on these universal facts of human nature, and thus human rights, would deny to certain others among us the same rights we enjoy.

Those of faith who supported Prop 8 betray a turpitude that undermines the moral high ground they assume they hold, because this legislation, as history will eventually disambiguate, is fundamentally equivalent to the hateful laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Some misguided sense of purity/superiority dictated that certain perishable norms exist such that people's liberties needed to be restrained. Marriage is apparently some kind of old cheese that needs to be wrapped in the plastic wrap of Prop 8 for fear that gays will cast their moldy spoilage upon it.

Any institution that can be spoiled by the egalitarian participation of everyone is one which needs no government intervention to protect.

Is this the America we want our children to grow up in? One where we tell them that love and hope are the greatest weapons against fear and despair-- unless it turns out that they are gay, in which case we tell them "sorry, these liberties we cherish for ourselves... they don't apply to you..."?

That's what slave owners told the slaves, and what the Nazis told the Jews. Is that extreme? Perhaps-- but not nearly as extreme as telling loving couples that they can't enjoy the same freedoms that other loving couples, whose only differential characteristic is gender, do!

Does anybody really think that homosexuality is a choice anymore? Does anybody think that someone would choose a life of being ostracized and have their rights taken away, just for the sake of some kind of misguided perversion? Anyone who believes that homosexuality is like smoking where you can get a patch or undergo hypnosis and "be cured", or is equivalent to drug addiction, where all someone needs are a sufficient number of steps and an intervention program, needs to get out a little more, and talk to (and imagine! befriend!) some gay people and get to know them.

No, they'd rather throw millions of dollars into the mail from across the nation to abrogate the rights of people whose shoes which they've never bothered to walk a mile in.

If $5.7 million was poured into California to affect the outcome of Prop 8, then you bet this is something that each and every righteous American across the entire country ought to find offensive. Go to Californians Against Hate, find out about the organizations and groups that organized to support Prop 8, and join us on Saturday in Seattle at Volunteer Park to march in protest of Prop 8!

Two-score and five years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, within walking distance of the White House.

Today, with the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land, we've entered into "an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality". To be certain, this is only one chapter in Dr. King's dream, but across many of the states in this nation, freedom has rung and a historic ascent by a transformative leader is at hand.

Two definitions of unbelievable include "so remarkable as to elicit disbelief" and "not to be believed".

I'm not sure which of the two definitions this matches, but it certainly matches one of them.

Two radio comic-jocks called the Palin camp and convinced them they were being called from Nicholas Sarkozy, the President of France.

Palin, if that's her (and I'd put 51/49 odds that it is), basically gets duped into thinking it's him, and doesn't even get wise when the comics ramp it up with even more outrageous mockery until they basically run out of material and tell her she's pranked.


Update: The Vancouver sun is carrying it now. Palin gets pranked