Beautiful Beirut

Mihcael Totten posts some beautiful pictures from Beirut here and here.

Like Porkchop said, I wanna go.

New Vetiver Album

Just bought it at End of an Ear, down on South First St (South Austin; they're there because they're not all there...).

Can't wait to put it into rotation, I'm a huge Vetiver fan.

Update: I forgot to add, I chatted with one of the owners, he said his partner owned the old 33 degrees store up in Hyde Park, but because of some friction with his partner at 33 deg. they closed up. By the way, I want to own a record store.

Some notes on Houston

Check out "Houston, we don't have a problem for a unique take on what is by many considered a soul-less city. The money?

"Certain parts of Houston remind me of the laid-back streets of Austin, with its bohemian establishments and its heterogeneous assortment of buildings along the street. Yet Houston, by its large size and international significance, is far more ethnically mixed than Austin could ever be (which for all of its liberal pretense is probably the most segregated city in the state)."

A different description of the immigration issue

From Chicagoboyz, a different description of the immigration issue.

Sun Tzu vs. Iran

From Opfor blog, Sun Tzu vs. Iran, an optional engagement strategy for "the Iranian troubles".

Having read it, I'm most struck by the map of what could have been Kurdistan if Europe hadn't messed up drawing the lines back in the day.

Hat tip Instapundit

One day

I remember talking to my buddy Porkchop about how we would love to one day be able to travel to the Middle East and visit Lebanon. After all, Beirut was once known as "The Paris of the Middle East".

Michael Totten posted this comment from a Lebanese blogger, and called it "How beautiful the Middle East...Could be". Indeed.

The curse is over!

Finally, Finland wins the Eurovision song contest. Has Norway ever won, perchance you may ask? Why of course!

You can listen here.

Via Metafilter

Michael Totten in the ME

Check out his latest post The other side of the Green Line, where he travels to Ramallah to speak with Palestinians about the current political situation.

Also check out The Palestinians of 1948 for a brief look at Palestinians living inside of Israel.

Hit Michael's tipjar to support his writing. He travels to the ME on his own dime and is only able to afford it by contributions.

The shift of American geopolitics

Wretchard points to an interesting Foreign Policy list in his post "The New World".

Wretchard's point is that the US has shifted focus eastward, away from the "Soviet menace" towards Near and Far Asia. In his commentary he also points to the Democrats' "Real Security" foreign policy agenda (available PDF download here), and juxtaposes the similarity between President Bush's current initiatives and the Democrats' agenda.

Foreign Policy list can be found here.

Mayoral elections in NOLA

Check out Bayou Buzz and NOLA.com for the latest on that.

My money is on Landrieu, even though Nagin got the most votes leading up to the run-off.

Update: This is why I'm not a betting man. Good luck to Mayor Nagin.

The new Iraqi government

This seems like good news.

Hat tip Instapundit

The other side of the story

From Foreign Policy online, an excellent article on the lead-up to the Iraqi war, as seen from the Iraqi point of view: Saddam's Delusions.

This first excerpt concerns Saddam's Fedayeen:

"According to Saddam Fedayeen planning documents captured by the coalition, the mission of this militia was to protect Iraq "from any threats inside and outside." Meticulous Saddam Fedayeen records list numerous operations conducted in the decade after the militia's creation: "extermination operations" against saboteurs in Muthanna, an operation to "ambush and arrest" car thieves in Anbar, the monitoring of Shiite civilians at the holy places of Karbala, and a plan to bomb a humanitarian-aid outpost in Erbil, which the Iraqi secret police suspected of being a Western intelligence operation.

The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion."

Italics by me.

Another excerpt, concerning speculation on Saddam's plan for post-invasion insurgency operations:

"Much of the debate on the origins of the postwar insurgency in Iraq has centered on the question of whether Saddam's regime placed munitions around the country to support a future guerrilla war against an external foe. There is no significant documentary evidence to suggest it did so. Rather, what is clear is that the regime ordered the distribution of ammunition in order to preserve it for a prolonged war with coalition forces.

As far as can be determined from the interviews and records reviewed so far, there was no national plan to embark on a guerrilla war in the event of a military defeat. Nor did the regime appear to cobble together such a plan as its world crumbled around it. Buoyed by his earlier conviction that the Americans would never dare enter Baghdad, Saddam hoped to the very last minute that he could stay in power. And his military and civilian bureaucrats went through their daily routines until the very end."

And finally, a footnote from the article regarding upper-echelon regime members own beliefs about Iraq's WMD inventories and capabilities:

"[Footnote #1] For many months after the fall of Baghdad, a number of senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe it possible that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere (although they adamantly insisted that they had no direct knowledge of WMD programs). Coalition interviewers discovered that this belief was based on the fact that Iraq had possessed and used WMD in the past and might need them again; on the plausibility of secret, compartmentalized WMD programs existing given how the Iraqi regime worked; and on the fact that so many Western governments believed such programs existed."

Draw your own conclusions.

Via Foreign Policy

Growing Pains

It's alive!!!

Courtesy Metafilter

Give til it hurts

So I just hit the tip-jar at Protein Wisdom, and I feel really good about it. I finally figured I was consuming so much online content that it was time to pay up. And what better way than to financially support blogs you read on a weekly (if not daily) basis?

Next up? Michael Totten and Wretchard. Give til it hurts.

Now if I can just get off my ass and give to NPR and PBS....

Tire commercial

John Malkovich exorcises a car possessed by...? Naomi Campbell. I am not kidding.

You can see it here.

Courtesy of Metafilter and Ad-age.

A perspective on Che Guevara's legacy

From the Belmont Club comes a post on Che Guevara and myth-making.

If you enjoy Wretchard's writing, I would definitely recommend hitting the tip-jar.

First we fought 'em....

..And now we're training 'em. Pretty f'in cool. Give 'em hell, kid.

Courtesy WSTM.

USMC "For Country"

Here's a recruiting video that appeared on TV and online for a while, I think it was called For Country.

Pretty motivational stuff. Leave it to the Marines to create an advertisement that pretty much says "we're sending you to war, and you know you want it".

Recruiting is up from a slight downtrend in FY05. More monetary incentives never hurt. I say good for the guys and gals joining up, because tuition is going nowhere but up.

Clip courtesy USMC and google video.

Senatorial voting-records on pork

Over at Porkbusters there is a scoring card on Senators' votes on three separate "porky" bills. Kay Bailey Hutchison voted to limit pork only once out of three times, and John Cornyn voted two out of three times to limit pork.

Tale of the tape? I think Kay Bailey is more interested in greasing political wheels in DC than she is in limiting government spending and looking out for the taxpayer. Unless she does something incredible from now until November I will be voting for anyone else that I believe might be able to save taxpayers.

Overall I think we need to clean house, so to speak. Republicans need to realize taxpayers are getting fed up with pork. When a republican congressman from Alaska wants to build a bridge to nowhere for a couple hundred million dollars, on land that belongs to either croonies or his own family, that disgusts me. Makes me embarrased to vote for a political party that has sold themselves as fiscal conservatives.

Porkbusters courtesy of Instapundit.