When the threat of a Covid-19 epidemic emerged the infectious disease epidemiologists began to build their mathematical models to predict how it would develop. They had to work with low quality data mostly from China and later from Italy. The main parameters where the replication rate R of the disease and the percentage of severe cases. Using the available numbers they predicted a high peak of serious cases that would overwhelm the health care system.

Their next step was to look at non-pharmaceutical measures that they hoped would lower the peak of cases. Some of these were less controversial than others. Closing cinemas and bars is a bit inconvenient but can be done without much protest. Closing down public traffic or schools is more controversial as the effects on the public and personal lives are way more serious.

We have little experience in taking such measures. The model builders do not know how much each of those restrictions will contribute to the lowering of the peak. They have to estimate those parameters. Until this month it was not even clear if children could get infected or were infectious. Arguing for closing schools without knowing that is quite difficult.

Clinical epidemiologists, who mostly work on randomized trials which produce hard data, are often critical of the model builders. They dislike the many assumptions that go into modeling and demand more hard data. Stanford's professor John Ioannidis, who ran the Santa Clara antibody study, is one of them. He is somewhat right. All models are wrong, but some are useful. A recent Boston Review piece looks at the differences between the two tribes of epidemiologists. It finds that we need both.

When the politicians take measures they are only in part based on the predictions the modelers made. They also have to look at economic outcomes, at other security issues and they have to take public opinion into account. Quite strict measures were taken in many western countries. They worked well in some of them. Germany has hardly any 'excess deaths' from Covid-19. Other countries, like Britain, acted too late or not to a sufficient degree and had to pay the price for that.

As the epidemic now starts to recede a bit there is quite a lot of criticism of the lockdown in Germany.  'The models were wrong,' some people claim. 'The lockdown measures were unnecessary.' This is followed by demands for the immediate lifting of most restrictions.

"There is no glory in prevention" is the frustrating aspect in the life of an epidemiologist. If they do their job too well everyone will bash them.

A month ago Max Abrams saw this development coming and commented:

Cont. reading: “There Is No Glory In Prevention.”

The fleet of Boeing 737 MAX planes will stay out on the ground longer than anticipated. Boeing promised a new software package to correct the severe problems with its Maneuver Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The delivery was supposed to be ready in April. A month later it has still not arrived at the Federal Aviation Agency where it will take at least a month to certify it. The FAA will not be the only one to decide when the plane can come back into the flight line. Other country's agencies will do their own independent review and will likely take their time.

The 737 MAX incident also revealed a problem with older generations of the 737 type of plane that is only now coming into light. Simulator experiments (video) showed that the recovery procedures Boeing provided for the case of a severe mistrim of the plane is not sufficient to bring the plane back under control. The root cause of that inconvenient fact does not lie with the 737 MAX but with its predecessor, the Boeing 737 Next Generation or NG.

This was known in pilot circles for some time but will only now receive wider public attention:

The Boeing 737 Max's return to commercial airline service is reportedly being further delayed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

US government officials told The Wall Street Journal's Andy Pasztor that the FAA is evaluating the emergency procedures for not only the Max but also the older generations of the 737 including the [once] hot-selling Boeing 737 NG.

According to the officials, the broadened evaluation will take a look at how pilots of all 737 variant are instructed to respond to emergency situations.

Here is a detailed explanation why the FAA is now looking into the pilot training for older 737 types.

The 737 NG (-600/-700/-800/-900) was the third generation derivative of the 737 and followed the 737 Original (-100/-200) and Classic (−300/-400/-500) series. The first NG flew in 1997. Some 7,000 were build and most of them are still flying.

Two technical modifications that turned out to be a problem during the recent incidents occurred during the redesign of the 737 Classic into the New Generation series.

In the NG series a new Flight Management Computer (FMC) was added to the plane. (The FMC helps the pilots to plan and manage the flight. It includes data about airports and navigation points. It differs from the two Flight Control Computers in that it has no control over physical elements of the plane.)

The FMC on the NG version has two input/output units each with a small screen and a larger keyboard below it. They are next to the knees of the pilot and the copilot  They are located on the central pedestal between the pilots right below the vertical instrument panel (see pic below). The lengthy FMCs did not fit on the original central pedestal. The trim wheels on each side, used to manually trim the airplane in its longitudinal axis or pitch, were in the way. Boeing's 'solution' to the problem was to make the manual trim wheels smaller.

737 NG cockpit with FMC panels and with smaller trim wheels (black with a white stripe)
bigger

737 Original-200 cockpit with larger trim wheels (black with a white stripe)
bigger

The smaller trim wheels require more manual force to trim with the same moment of force or torque than the larger ones did.

Cont. reading: Boeing 737 MAX Crash Reveals Severe Problem With Older Boeing 737 NGs

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.
George Orwell, Looking back on the Spanish War, Chapter 4

Last week saw an extreme intensifying of the warmongers' campaign against individuals who publicly hold and defend a different view than the powers-that-be want to promote. The campaign has a longer history but recently turned personal. It now endangers the life and livelihood of real people.

In fall 2016 a smear campaign was launched against 200 websites which did not confirm to NATO propaganda. Prominent sites like Naked Capitalism were among them as well as this site:

This website, MoonofAlabama.org, is now listed as "Russian propaganda outlet" by some neoconned, NATO aligned, anonymous "Friendly Neighborhood Propaganda Identification Service"  prominently promoted by today's Washington Post. The minions running that censorship list also watch over our "Russian propaganda" Twitter account @MoonofA.

While the ProPornOT campaign was against websites the next and larger attack was a general defaming of specific content.

The neoconservative Alliance For Securing Democracy declared that any doubt of the veracity of U.S. propaganda stories discussed on Twitter was part of a "Russian influence campaign". Their 'dashboard' shows the most prominent hashtags and themes tweeted and retweeted by some 600 hand-selected but undisclosed accounts. (I have reason to believe that @MoonofA is among them.) The dashboard gave rise to an endless line of main-stream stories faking concern over alleged "Russian influence". The New York Times published several such stories including this recent one:

Cont. reading: The Media War On Truthful Reporting And Legitimate Opinions – A Documentary

Yesterday the U.S. Justice Department indicted the Russian Internet Research Agency on some dubious legal grounds. It covers thirteen Russian people and three Russian legal entities. The main count of the indictment is an alleged "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States".

The published indictment gives support to our long held believe that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S. election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote. The size of the operation was tiny when compared to the hundreds of millions in campaign expenditures. It had no influence on the election outcome.

The indictment is fodder for the public to prove that the Mueller investigation is "doing something". It distracts from further questioning  the origin of the Steele dossier. It is full of unproven assertions and assumptions. It is a sham in that none of the Russian persons or companies indicted will ever come in front of a U.S. court. That is bad because the indictment is build on the theory of a new crime which, unless a court throws it out, can be used to incriminate other people in other cases and might even apply to this blog. The later part of this post will refer to that.

In the early 1990s some dude in St.Petersburg made a good business selling hot dogs. He opened a colorful restaurant. Local celebrities and politicians were invited to gain notoriety while the restaurant served cheap food for too high prices. It was a good business. A few years later he moved to Moscow and gained contracts to cater to schools and to the military. The food he served was still substandard.

But catering bad food as school lunches gave him, by chance, the idea for a new business:

Cont. reading: Mueller Indictment – The “Russian Influence” Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme

In 2006 the U.S. was at war in Iraq. Some of the enemy forces it very much struggled to fight against were coming in through Syria. The same year Israel lost a war against Hizbullah. Its armored forces were ambushed whenever they tried to push deeper into Lebanon while Hizbullah managed to continuously fire rockets against Israeli army position and cities. Hizbullah receives supply for its missile force from Syria and from Iran through Syria. Its long-term plans to attack Iran and to thereby keep supremacy in the Middle East depend on severing Hizbullah’s supply routes. The sectarian Sunni Gulf countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, saw their Sunni brethren defeat in Iraq and a Shia government, supported by Iran, taking over the country. All these countries had reason to fight Syria. There were also economic reasons to subvert an independent Syria. A gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey was competing with one from Iran to Syria. Large finds of natural gas in the coastal waters of Israel and Lebanon make such finds in Syrian waters quite plausible.

In late 2006 the United States started to finance an external opposition to Syria’s ruling Baath party. Those exiles were largely members of the Muslim Brotherhood which had been evicted from Syria after their bloody uprising against the Syrian state between 1976 and 1982 had failed. In 2007 a plan for regime change in Syria was agreed upon between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aim was to destroy the “resistance” alliance of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

By 2011 three years of drought, caused by global warming and Turkey’s upstream dams and irrigation projects, had weakened the Syrian economy. Large parts of the poor rural population lost their means of living and moved into the cities. They provided the fertile ground needed to launch an uprising against the Syrian state.

Cont. reading: A Short History Of The War On Syria – 2006-2014

by Malooga
lifted from a comment

One must not forget the disgraceful petition put out by what calls itself the "Left" in the name of "dignity and freedom" last week, the so-called "Global Campaign of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution". The geo-political analysis of the screed would not pass the muster of a child, and the empty verbiage comes straight out of a George W. Bush or Barak Obama speech — without exaggeration. In any event, don't mislead yourself into thinking the timing was accidental in the face of the collapse of the mercenary Takfiri front. Because it wasn't. When the empire finds its back against wall, it will not hesitate in pulling out all stops — even if it means trotting out a brigade of tired old leftists in its dirty service.

And if ever there was evidence that the entire moribund left intellectual class is bought and sold, this is surely it. One should carefully examine the list of names and publicly excoriate them for their now public complicity in international war crimes and the use of chemical weaponry. Tariq Ali, Norman Finkelstein!, Richard Seymour (author of "The Liberal Defence of Murder," "tracing the descent of liberal supporters of war…"), Anthony Arnove (Howard Zinn's boy), Fredric Jameson, Vijay Prasad, Ilan Pappe, Stephen R. Shalom, Alice Walker and so on down the line, over 220 Benedict Arnolds in all. Laudable behavior in the past is no excuse for lying while supporting Takfiri murderers in the present. May every single one of them know what it is like to be exposed to DU — in the name of freedom and democracy, of course!

Cont. reading: Syria: The Feckless Left

Updated below

The Washington Posts alleges that the IAEA says foreign expertise has brought Iran to threshold of nuclear capability. This is of course, well, a lie. The IAEA has said nothing like that. It is simply an assertion made by the reporter and some "nuclear Iran" scare propagandists based on misinterpreting some factual points in the IAEA "evidence". What that "evidence" says is: Iran is working on nanodiamond production.

(And what would "to threshold of nuclear capability" actually mean? That Iran would be capable, like Japan, Brazil, the Netherlands or some 40 other countries, to build a nuclear bomb if it would choose to do so? What would be new, wrong or dangerous with that?)

The WaPo piece goes into some details, provided mostly by chief nuclear scare monger David Albright, about allegedly "new" stuff some secret services handed to the IAEA. To see how misleading these allegations are lets look at just one detail.

The report describes an Ukrainian expert for creating nanodiamands as "weapon scientist" and "nuclear scientist" even when all his published work is about the synthesizing of very small diamonds, not about nukes. Writes WaPo:

Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the officials and experts said.
…
According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran’s Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country’s nuclear program. Documents provided to the U.N. officials showed that Danilenko offered assistance to the Iranians over at least five years, giving lectures and sharing research papers on developing and testing an explosives package that the Iranians apparently incorporated into their warhead design, according to two officials with access to the IAEA’s confidential files.

Dr. Vyacheslav Danilenko is a well known Ukrainian ("former Soviet") scientist. But his specialties are not "weapon" or "nuclear" science, indeed there seems to be nothing to support that claim, but the production of nanodiamonds via detonations (ppt). According to the history of detonation nanodiamonds he describes in chapter 10 of Ultrananocrystalline Diamond – Synthesis, Properties, and Applications (pdf) he has worked in that field since 1962, invented new methods used in the process and is related with Alit, an Ukrainian company that produces nanodiamonds.

This is a detonation tank to create nanodiamonds, not a nuclear device.

Very small diamonds are useful for many purposes, like polishing optics or PC hard disks. That is why, for example, Drexel University in Philadelphia invited Danilenko for a talk at its Nanotechnology Institute:

Cont. reading: On “Nuclear Iran” Allegations: Nanodiamonds Ain’t Nuclear Bombs

Headlined In Defense of Genocide the neoconned WaPo editors condemn the Arab league for hosting Sudan's President Bashir while at the same time accusing Israel of war-crimes. The polemic includes this sentence:

T]he United Nations has reported more than 300,000 civilian deaths in Darfur as a result of the genocidal campaign sponsored by Mr. Bashir.

There are three false claims in this one sentence. As these false claims are often repeated from the far right to the interventionist left, let me try to dispel them once and for all.

1. The number of 300,000 is false.
2. The UN did not 'report' that number.
3. There was no genocide in Darfur.

The 300,000 number is simply taken from hot air. It is based on a exaggerated statement by the UN's humanitarian chief John Holmes:

Cont. reading: The False Darfur ‘Genocide’ Numbers

Estimates on the productivity advantage of granite countertops and CDS’ were too optimistic.

The Paulson plan is useless as it only tries to address the degraded value of Asset Backed Securities.

These are neither the source nor the reason for the very real threat of a total financial crash.

Credit Default Swaps of a nominal value of $65+ trillion are in real danger to implode any minute in a chain reaction that will take down half of the worlds financial infrastructure and impair the real economy for a long, long time.

There is only one possible way to avert this event:

International legislative action that immediately declares all Credit Default Swaps null and void.

Here is why:

Cont. reading: Declare All Credit Default Swaps Null And Void

On August 15 Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Russian Federation of having used cluster bombs in the conflict with Georgia. These accusations were widely repeated in the ‘western’ media. The Russian Federation consistently denied any use of cluster ammunition. As it now turns out the repeated HRW accusations were wrong. The ‘evidence’ provided by HRW was based on pictures and misidentified ammunition in those.

The ammunition in question is of Israeli origin and was used by the Georgian military. The Georgian Ministry of Defense has now admitted as much. HRW now also acknowledges this in a new press statement. But it continues to claim Russian use of such weapons. It does so by pointing to its own older reports which clearly misidentified Georgian cluster ammunition as Russian made. HRW has still to show any proof for its continuing accusations against the Russian Federation.

While reviewing the story as documented below, notice the special role of HRW’s ‘senior military analyst’ Marc Garlasco in this propaganda effort.

An August 15 HRW press release claimed:

Cont. reading: HRW Continues False Cluster Bomb Accusations

Isn’t it  funny how some ‘western’ politician still bluster about the signed ceasefire agreement over Georgia and Russian peacekeepers in Georgia. But they do this, of course, with a purpose. They want to change the accepted and signed ceasefire agreement.

To understand what is happening here, one has to go back to the phases that led to the ceasefire agreement. I will try to do so below and unfortunately it will be a bit longish.

So here is the short version:
The United States tries to change the signed ceasefire agreement over Georgia.

After Sarkozy negotiated with Russia and the ceasefire was agreed upon by both sides, the U.S. was very disappointed (and mad with Sarko).

Rice went to Paris and pressed Sarkozy to write a letter to Saakashvili that gives a very lopsided U.S./Georgia friendly interpretation of the ceasefire agreement. Legally that letter is completely without merit.

But now the U.S. wants this lopsided interpretation laid down only in a letter from Sarkozy to Saakashvili to became a legal part of the ceasefire agreement via a resolution at the UN Security Council.

It uses the ‘Sarkozy letter’ to make propaganda against legal troop movements and checkpoints the Russians are operating within Georgia. The media, of course, falls for it.

Russia of course will never agree to that outcome. It has no reason to do so and still most of the pressure points.

The situation on the ground:
The Russians have pulled their troops back into or near South Ossetia and Abkhasia along the peacekeeping lines that were agreed upon in the 1990s. They additionally keep lookout posts at Georgia’s main port Poti and in Senaki as well as near the major east-west road north of Gori.

Cont. reading: The Mysterious ‘Sarkozy Letter’

by Chris Marlowe
—
Stolen from a comment with links added by b.
—

There is a certain irony in the Bush administration’s attempt to
"isolate Syria" by complaining about Pelosi’s visit to Damascus. Many
Americans don’t seem to understand it, but on the international stage,
America under the Bush administration is about as popular as Typhoid
Mary.

Sure, everyone wants to do business with Americans, but that’s about
it. Hollywood films are not as popular as they once were, and American
culture and appeal has lost its gloss. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s
symbolize cheap and unhealthy junk food, not fashionable trends.
Americans are thought of generally as consumption hogs, driving big
cars and eating cheap unhealthy foods and as being overweight, arrogant
and ignorant.

The industries America is best well-known for, such as media and
entertainment, are crumbling under the assault of the Internet, which
represents a whole new world which cannot be so easily dumbed and
controlled by four media conglomerates. Many of my acquaintances
celebrate the collapse of the old media model.

Cont. reading: Reflection On America

The LA Times had sent staff reporter Edmund Sanders to report from Sudan. Unlike the usual black and white media installments his reports catch some of the complexities of the conflict.

Some of the latest are:
Search for oil raises the stakes in Darfur, Rebels pose a new threat to Darfur’s displaced and In Darfur, gritted teeth behind smiles.

Today LAT publishes Sanders’ latest – Darfur’s less-known victims:

Cont. reading: Hypocrisy of Genocide

Understanding AFRICOM:
A Contextual Reading of Empire’s New Combatant Command

(This is part one of Understanding AFRICOM. Published now are also part II and part III. A PDF version of the complete series is available. Your comments on this are welcome here.)

by b real

AFRICOM

In early February 2007 the White House finally announced a presidential directive to establish by September 2008 a new unified combatant command with an area of responsibility (AOR) solely dedicated to the African continent. While there had been chatter and debate over a period of years about the form that such a military command should take, the announcement to proceed with centralizing military resources in Africa should not have surprised anyone paying attention for the past seven years.

The U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) will replace the AOR for each of three other geographic combatant commands (there are now a total of six) currently tasked with portions of the second-largest continent, with the small exception of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) retaining AOR for Egypt. Further details on operations have not been made public apart from the usual basic press briefings and the formation of a transition team, though it not a mystery to identify what role AFRICOM will play in both the U.S. and Africa’s future.

Cont. reading: Understanding AFRICOM – Part I

The billionaire has previously said that he is not personally interested in an active political life, but he wants to be the man who determines who becomes prime minister.

The billionaire is Russian-born Israeli Arcadi Gaydamak. The prime minister he wants to install is U.S. neocon’s best friend Bibi Netanyahu.

Gaydamak will start a new party in Israel promising "market economy, increased taxation for high earners and a significantly stronger welfare state." He later wants to join it with Likud.

As his ally Netanyahu is a proven arch neoliberal, the political program is of course a scam. But it helps to buy the needed votes of the hawkish but poor Russian immigrants – a sixth part of the Israeli population.

Gaydamak is wanted for illegal arms-for-oil deals with Angola which fueled the civil war there. He had bought the Angolan government by providing old Russian weapons and bribing it to give him very lucrative oil deals.

The story of that resource war in Angola and Gaydamak’s role is told in All The Presidents Men (this is not the Bernstein/Woodward Watergate book) which I recommend. There are also connections to Cheney’s old company Halliburton, Bush and the GOP.

Politics and policy in Israel are already in bad shape. With a crook like Gaydamak buying himself the Israeli democracy, they will certainly get worse.

Via the National Security Archive we learn of Central Command’s 2002 Iraq plans on Phase IV – Notional Ground Force Composition (pdf). U.S. troop numbers were expected to be down to 5,000 by now.

In my professional life I have seen similar planning lunacy in business plans of U.S. companies expanding their models into Europe. Highly educated managers believing that their solutions would be welcome because they were unique American solutions.

This is not a unique U.S. attitude. The Daimler-Chrysler drama shows similar defects. But on the level of businesses the consequences of such behavior are not catastrophic  and correctable. On the level of war they are not and in a democracy, such mismanagement can not be solely attributed to the CEOs or board members. Especially not when it is repetitive behaviour.

In Foreign Policy Pat Lang explains:

We, the American people—not the Bush administration, nor the hapless Iraqis, nor the meddlesome Iranians (the new scapegoat) – are the root of the problem.

It’s woven into our cultural DNA. Most Americans mistakenly believe that when we say that “all men are created equal,” it means that all people are the same. Behind the “cute” and “charming” native clothing, the “weird” marriage customs, and the “odd” food of other cultures, all humans are yearning for lifestyles and futures that will be increasingly unified as time and globalization progress.

[…]
Americans invaded an imaginary Iraq that fit into our vision of the world. We invaded Iraq in the sure belief that inside every Iraqi there was an American trying to get out. In our dream version of Iraq, we would be greeted as not only liberators from the tyrant, but more importantly, from the old ways.

[…]
Through our refusal to deal with alien peoples on their own terms, and within their own traditions, we have killed any real hope of a positive outcome in Iraq. Our mission there will be over some day, but there will be other fields for our missionary work, other dreams to dream about: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran …

The Daimler mismanaging of its acquisition is a question of manager incompetence. But as Pat implicitly recognizes, the war on Iraq is a question of collective guilt.

by remembereringgiap
adopted from a comment

A meditation on the release this month of a member of the Red Army Fraction in Germany. She is only one of four people left in German
prisons for actions taken during the ‘années de plomb’ – the years of
lead.

Cont. reading: The Years of Lead

With Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Policy conference, Russia is back.

One wonders what took it so long. Yes, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the catastrophic neoliberal privatization of the Yeltzin years had taken their toll. But under Putin the oligarchs were finally told to behave and rule of law was restored. Increasing commodity prices allowed paying off Russia’s international debt.

Still during the recent years little could be seen of Russia’s international aura. Western financed NGOs stage managed one color revolution after the other. The EU swallowed the economic realm and in its steps, and against all past promises, NATO followed.

Now Russia said "’nuff". The last drop in the bucket were the U.S. plans to install parts of its missile defense system in eastern Europe. This neither makes sense to protect Europe, nor is it geographically relevant against (nonexistent) missiles from Iran or North Korea. The only plausible reason for these new weapons is to break the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) balance that protected against a nuclear exchange during the cold war.

This and the accusations of human rights violations and autocratic behavior, of the U.S. imperialists and Abu Ghraib torturers, brought Russia back to the international scene.

Putin made clear that from now on, the rules are different and further unilateral behavior of the U.S. will not be condoned:

[W]hat is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

Cont. reading: Russia Is Back!

Some thoughts on the wider circumstances of the Palestinian agreement between Hamas and Fatah as brokered by the Saudis.

The background is a new Middle East in which, thanks to the U.S. war on Iraq, Iran has gained a relative better position than before. But the big winner in this war is not Iran at all.

Cont. reading: Saudis in a Bind

From an LA Times report on Lt. Watada we are told in the first paragraph:

The Army had treated him with the utmost respect until the moment it decided to court-martial him. It was nothing personal. The Army does what it has to do.

Later in the same piece:

The Army does what it must to function. Military culture has always presumed that individuals lose certain kinds of freedom when joining the armed forces.

All hail to the Army – it can do no wrong, it does what it has to do.

But then, near the end of the piece, the such lauded Army shows another, ahem – more personal, face:

During what was supposed to be a casual football scrimmage among officers late last year, two majors "accidentally" broke Watada’s nose. One major shoved, the other smacked. Watada for weeks walked around with two black eyes, a crooked beak and a sneaking hunch it was no accident.

As Paul Craig Roberts writes:

A state that cannot tolerate moral conscience in its soldiers is a failed state. The failure of the American state can be seen it its prosecution of Lt. Ehren Watada.

Let me add:

The failure of the American Army can be seen in the handling of Lt. Watada. The failure of the American press can be seen in its propaganda reporting on the case without even touching the basic question involved – the legality of the war on Iraq and the duty of soldiers to refuse taking part in illegal wars.

Number VI of Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunals states:

The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

1. Crimes against peace:
   1. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression
      or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or
      assurances;
   2. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

Lt. Watada is to be lauded for his courage to stand up for the law by refusing to take part in a War of Aggression.

Thank You Lt.