Month: June 2010

Steve Jobs' iPhone presentation FAIL. And yes, this was the keynote.

The Israeli government has walked back a statement connecting the activists on board the Mavi Marmara to al Qaeda. Bret Stephens reiterates it:

So a bunch of “peace” activists teams up with a Turkish group of virulently anti-Semitic bent and with links both to Hamas and al Qaeda …

IHH denies this; Washington says it has no evidence; the IDF conceded that:

“We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the [Israeli] National Security Council.” (The Israeli National Security Council is Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet of advisors).

The source for Stephens’ assertion, however, is this Danish Institute study (PDF) that does indeed persuasively show links between IHH and al Qaeda in the 1990s:

An examination of IHH’s phone records in Istanbul showed repeated telephone calls in 1996 to an Al-Qaida guesthouse in Milan and various Algerian terrorist operatives active elsewhere in Europe – including the notorious Abu el-Ma`ali, who has been subsequently termed by U.S. officials as a “junior Osama Bin Laden.”

During the later Seattle trial of would-be Al-Qaida Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressam, federal prosecutors called French magistrate Bruguiere to the stand as an expert witness. Bruguieretestified that IHH had played “[a]n important role” in the Al-Qaida Millenium bomb plot targeting LAX. Under repeated questioning, Bruguiere insisted that “[t]here’s a rather close relation”:

The IHH is an NGO, but it was kind of a type of cover-up… in order to obtain forged documents and also to obtain different forms of infiltration for Mujahi- deen in combat. And also to go and gather[recruit] these Mujahideens. And finally, one of the last responsibilities that they had was also to be implicated or involved in weapons trafficking.

It’s important to note the Islamist ties of IHH, and its past relationship with al Qaeda. What we cannot say is if any al Qaeda members were on board the ship, the Mavi Marmara. In fact, we simply have no evidence to back that up at all. One might have thought that taking the word of Cheney’s Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet  about al Qaeda links might be a little radioactive after the Iraq war. But no. We’re back where we were.

A reader writes:

Oddly enough I thought of your blog the other day when I was petting a friend’s cat. It is rare for me ever to dislike an animal. But it’s just as rare for an animal to form an immediate bond with me. Upon first meeting my friend’s cat, it immediately took to me. Over the last few weeks it has become evident that this cat and I understand each other on an intuitive level. She acts as though she’s my cat and we’ve know each other forever. And I understand her feline mood swings better than any other cat I’ve been around. There is something deeply intuitive about our relationship.

The only thing I can compare it to is the love I feel for my best friends and for my childhood dog: there is absolutely no effort to the relationship, all love and immediate compassion.  And it made me think of Montaigne, and then your blog. I imagine this is where you see the divine, trumpets blaring. And if there were anything that I were to consider divine, it would be this special, rare connection. 

Divinity aside, what appears most important to me is that many (all/most/few?) of us have had this feeling of a deep friendship; a feeling that is not privy to any one one faith. Whatever the reasons for this connection – and we must all surely have an explanation – I am just thankful that I have felt it and that it exists even without me.

Friedersdorf tweaks Chris Beam's formula:

[E]ven today BP’s leadership lacks adequate gender diversity, its board of directors being made up of fourteen persons, only one of them who self-identifies as a female, and all of whom earn significantly more than the median income in Louisiana, Alabama, and even the relatively privileged residents of coastal Florida.

Chait approves, this time:

I foresee a progressively less-amusing internet trope. By the time this devolves into "What if biologists wrote the news?," we're all going to want to kill ourselves. In the meantime, Friedersdorf's piece is pretty darn good.

Meh.

"So far, at least, the US public seems to be demonstrating more patience and maturity than their op-ed writers," – Clive Crook.

In case you were wondering what the next generation of MSM investigative reporting will look like. Parody to follow.

Flowing Data has made a few eye-opening info-graphics:

BP processes about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, across six refineries in the United States. In total, 150 refineries in the United States process just under 18 million barrels per day, so BP processes about 8.5 percent of it. However, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity, 97 percent of the most dangerous violations found by OSHA were on BP properties.

"Orly Taitz, the original birther, may be the GOP nominee for Secretary of State in CA," – Ambers.

Jeff Wise tells of an encounter with a mountain lion:

When the danger is far away, or at least not immediately imminent, the instinct is to freeze. When danger is approaching, the impulse is to run away. When escape is impossible, the response is to fight back. And when struggling is futile, the animal will become immobilized in the grip of fright. Although it doesn't slide quite as smoothly off the tongue, a more accurate description than "fight or flight" would be "fight, freeze, flight, or fright"­ or, for short, "the four fs."

(Hat tip: Schneier)