The courtroom provided a telling introduction. I had recently arrived as British ambassador in Uzbekistan's old Silk Road capital of Tashkent, where I was watching the trial of a 22-year-old dissident named Iskander Khuderbegainov. The gaunt young man was accused with five other Muslims of several crimes, including membership in a terrorist organization linked to al-Qaeda. The six sat huddled in a cage guarded by 14 Kalashnikov-wielding soldiers. The judge made a show of not listening to the defense, haranguing the men with anti-Islamic jokes. It looked like a replay of footage I'd seen of Nazi show trials.

The next day, an envelope landed on my desk; inside were photos of the corpse of a man who had been imprisoned in Uzbekistan's gulags. I learned that his name was Muzafar Avazov. His face was bruised, his torso and limbs livid purple. We sent the photos to the University of Glasgow. Two weeks later, a pathology report arrived. It said that the man's fingernails had been pulled out, that he had been beaten and that the line around his torso showed he had been immersed in hot liquid. He had been boiled alive.

That was my welcome to Uzbekistan, a U.S. and British ally in the war on terror. Trying to tell the truth about the country cost me my job. Continuing to tell the truth about it dragged me into the Kafkaesque world of official censorship and gave me a taste of the kind of character assassination of which I once thought only a government like Uzbekistan's was capable.

Her Majesty's Man in Tashkent

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Olbermann blasting Rummy and the administration, with the video available.

Full text of Rumsfeld's speech at the American Legion Convention is available. Here are a few excerpts:

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

* With the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?
* Can folks really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?
* Can we afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply law enforcement problems, like robbing a bank or stealing a car; rather than threats of a fundamentally different nature requiring fundamentally different approaches?
* And can we really afford to return to the destructive view that America, not the enemy, but America, is the source of the world's troubles?

These are central questions of our time, and we must face them and face them honestly.

...

It seems that in some quarters there's more of a focus on dividing our country than acting with unity against the gathering threats.

It's a strange time:

* When a database search of America's leading newspapers turns up literally 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers who has been punished for misconduct -- 10 times more -- than the mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror;
* Or when a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our armed forces -- the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard -- as a "mercenary army;"
* When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists; and the once CNN Baghdad bureau chief finally admits that as bureau chief in Baghdad, he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein's crimes when he was in charge there so that CNN could keep on reporting selective news;
* And it's a time when Amnesty International refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay -- which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare -- "the gulag of our times." It’s inexcusable. (Applause.)

Those who know the truth need to speak out against these kinds of myths and distortions that are being told about our troops and about our country. America is not what's wrong with the world. (Applause.)

...

The good news is that most Americans, though understandably influenced by what they see and read, have good inner gyroscopes. They have good center of gravity. So, I'm confident that over time they will evaluate and reflect on what is happening in this struggle and come to wise conclusions about it.

...

The question is not whether we can win; it's whether we have the will to persevere to win. I'm convinced that Americans do have that determination and that we have learned the lessons of history, of the folly of trying to turn a blind eye to danger. These are lessons you know well, lessons that your heroism has helped to teach to generations of Americans.

Rumsfeld's Address at the 88th Annual American Legion National Convention

While you're waiting for Acidus to finish his book, read this one.

"If you're even thinking of doing any security engineering, you need to read this book"
-- Bruce Schneier

"Even after two years on the shelf, Security Engineering remains the most important security text published in the last several years"
-- Information security Magazine

Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems

Follow through for the full text. Selected excerpts are provivded below for those too hurried or too afraid to click through.

Terrorism, at a deeper level, is about psychology and the "propaganda of the deed." And as far as al Qaeda is concerned, it is also about economic warfare: Osama bin Laden personally has stated that one of the group's strategic objectives is to "bleed America to the point of bankruptcy."

There is a similar economic angle to attempts at protection against cheap missiles.

Officials naturally want to be perceived as doing everything possible to prevent future acts of violence; therefore, every threat -- no matter how seemingly ridiculous -- is treated seriously. Overreaction becomes mandatory. Politicians and executives cannot afford to be perceived as doing nothing.

This powerful mandate on the defensive side is met, asymmetrically, on the offensive side by a force whose only requirements are to survive, issue threats and, occasionally, strike -- chiefly as a means of perpetuating its credibility.

Terrorist acts do not have to be tremendously successful (in terms of physical casualties or damage) in order to be terribly effective.

One wonders why they even bother with all of the conspiracy, training, and preparation.

Al Qaeda measures its progress in the war of attrition not only by the number of American servicemen killed, but in terms of American treasure expended in furtherance of the war. In essence, bin Laden and his planners adopted a concept that is familiar to Americans: "It's the economy, stupid!"

Al Qaeda long ago took the risk-aversion factor into account, as it embarked on its war of attrition against the West. In such a war, what matters most is not how many times a fighter is bloodied and knocked down, but how many times he picks himself up and returns to the fight. It is dogged determination not to lose that can lead to victory. This is, in essence, how the Mujahideen won against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and how al Qaeda views its contest against the United States today.

Stratfor seems to left out the part about how much the Mujahideen relied on us for financing and supplies. Today, Hezbollah is similarly reliant on its sponsors.

Conspiracy may be cheap, but waging a persistent, violent insurgency is generally not.

When we recognize the futility of a force-on-force battle against a certain class of threat, we will walk back the cat toward the state sponsors, because we think we know how to confront them (and have the tools to do so). Is this a successful strategy?

Stratfor: Al'Q wins in London even though the attack was foiled.

The barriers to entry have dropped sufficiently so that, as long as anyone has the will to fight, they'll be able to continue fighting. I think that's the strategic picture that's most pertinent to our time."

What if the Iranians could launch swarms of hundreds of missiles simultaneously? All bets might be off. In such a scenario, the Iranians could conceivably devastate an American naval force. Do the Iranians possess enough missiles to do that? The truth is that we don't know. In the longer term, the trend seems clear.

This is the second half of an article recently discussed here.

The democratization of cruise missile technology, part II

Someday, there will be an article about television in which no executive uses the word "relatable," industry jargon for something with which viewers are supposed to identify or connect. Alas, this is not that article.

That was funny, actually.

Does this statement make any sense to you?

Branding a network is becoming increasingly important, because of the growing ability of consumers to watch shows "in more than one place."

What they seem to be saying is

"As a network, we are a middleman in this world, and an increasingly irrelevant one, at that. So, 'branding' is an important way for us to confuse people into believing we still matter."

These people don't seem to understand the difference between ESPN and CBS, or between MTV and NBC. They think that because those funny ESPN ads are "successful", they can get a broad, young demographic to watch all of the same programming.

Can you say Long Tail?

Free to Gain Traction for About $50 Million

Quick and funny, at Ahmadinejad's expense. What's not to like?

My friends, I am a simple man. That is why you elected me. I have never been anywhere other than our beloved country. I actually haven’t even been to that many places here in our beloved country. I have pretty much been here in my beloved house, non-stop, since the seventies. In my beloved room. With the door locked. Having nightmares in which Hulk Hogan is waiting outside my room—look, as for Hulk Hogan, do not mention his name ever again! He will be referred to, if we even need to refer to him, which I doubt, as “Blond Blondie, Big Blondie!” In this way, we will disrespect him! In this way, he will be driven from my dreams! No more sneaking up behind me, “Blond Blondie, Big Blondie!,” and putting me in a headlock, and I am naked, and have forgotten to study for all my exams!

PROCLAMATION | Shouts and Murmurs in The New Yorker

Malcolm Gladwell's latest is now ready for you.

In this edition, he introduces you to the economic power behind separation of church and state. And also, why boom-bust is yin yang, and thus why the long boom was always bunk.

This relation between the number of people who aren’t of working age and the number of people who are is captured in the dependency ratio. In Ireland during the sixties, when contraception was illegal, there were ten people who were too old or too young to work for every fourteen people in a position to earn a paycheck. That meant that the country was spending a large percentage of its resources on caring for the young and the old. Last year, Ireland’s dependency ratio hit an all-time low: for every ten dependents, it had twenty-two people of working age. That change coincides precisely with the country’s extraordinary economic surge.

In other words, to unleash the wealth of nations, you must restrain the forces of nature.

Demographers estimate that declines in dependency ratios are responsible for about a third of the East Asian economic miracle of the postwar era; this is a part of the world that, in the course of twenty-five years, saw its dependency ratio decline thirty-five per cent. Dependency ratios may also help answer the much-debated question of whether India or China has a brighter economic future. Right now, China is in the midst of what Joseph Chamie, the former director of the United Nations’ population division, calls the “sweet spot.” In the nineteen-sixties, China brought down its birth rate dramatically; those children are now grown up and in the workforce, and there is no similarly sized class of dependents behind them. India, on the other hand, reduced its birth rate much more slowly and has yet to hit the sweet spot. Its best years are ahead.

The children may literally bury their parents, but if there are too many parents, they will bury their children, as well.

THE RISK POOL | The New Yorker

Anthony Lane on Factotum.

The film will not cheer you up, but there is no denying the expertise with which it invites you to join the club of the cheerless. As Chinaski informs us, on a betting spree, “The racetrack crowd is the world brought down to size. Life grinding against death, and losing. Nobody wins, finally. We are only seeking a reprieve, a moment out of the glare.”

Yay! It's like traveling!

“Factotum” | The New Yorker

For several years, Javed Iqbal has operated a small company from a Brooklyn storefront and out of the garage at his Staten Island home that provides satellite programming for households, including sermons from Christian evangelists seeking worldwide exposure.

Mr. Iqbal’s home, a modest two-story stone and brick house on Van Name Avenue in Mariners Harbor, stands out because among the children’s toys in the backyard were eight satellite dishes.

But this week, the budding entrepreneur’s house and storefront were raided by federal agents, and Mr. Iqbal was charged with providing customers services that included satellite broadcasts of a television station controlled by Hezbollah — a violation of federal law.

Yesterday, Mr. Iqbal was arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held in $250,000 bail. The Hezbollah station, Al Manar — or “the beacon” in Arabic — was designated a global terrorist entity by the United States Treasury Department in March of this year.

One wonders whether MEMRI, SITE, and LinkTV would be arrested for reposting selected segments from Al Manar. (Presumably not; the Wikipedia entry suggests MEMRI played a role in having the bans put in place.)

I don't know if this link will work for you, but you can see where LinkTV has featured them in the past (though not within the last two years):

Al Manar TV, Lebanon
Israeli Aggressions Leave Palestinians Dead

A new Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip area of Khan Yunis left five Palestinians dead and at least 15 injured. The Occupation army also demolished several houses. This came after PM Arial Sharon predicted that his planned withdrawal from Gaza would lead to new negotiations with Khan Yunis.

BTW, Al Manar is also banned in France, as has been covered by LinkTV:

Al Manar to Remain Banned in France

Al Manar TV chain will remain prohibited in France. This decision came after a request contesting an earlier decision taken in 2004 was rejected. The French state council, the highest administrative body in the country, declared yesterday that Al Manar’s editorial society had called for the annulment of the higher audio/visual in December of 2004 forbidding the transmission of al Manar in France. In its verdict, the state council considered that Al Manar did not have the right to request the annulment of the higher council's decision taken on December 17, 2004, which sanctioned the Lebanese station for transmitting "anti-Semitic messages." The Higher audio/vision council decision followed an order of the state council which on December 13, 2004, called for the society operating the satellite which diffused in France to stop transmitting the chain for 48 hours. However, the state council ordered the halt of the transmission after realizing that taken as a whole the programs were diffused in a militant perspective and carried anti-Semitic connotations.

New York Man Charged With Enabling Hezbollah Television Broadcasts