1776-2008: The sound foundation persists.

Mouthing the principles, tenets and ideals of America is a threadbare substitute for patriotism.

Living them, constantly practicing them, and unfalteringly supporting and bolstering their equal application to all is truly functional patriotism.

Such dutiful engagement is the glue which binds the past with the future and stands as both the welcome boon and the innate demand incumbent upon all who benefit from the shelter built upon that foundation.

The universality of the essential toolbox of liberty today has been reiterated.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) was an almost rhapsodic review of the history of the Great Writ. The Suspension Clause, he wrote, “protects the rights of the detained by a means consistent with the essential design of the Constitution. It ensures that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the ‘delicate balance of governance’ that is itself the surest safeguard of liberty.” Those who wrote the Constitution, he added, “deemed the writ to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme.”

Even though the two political branches — the President and Congress — had agreed to take away the detainees’ habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.” Source

A bit more:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” Article

That 5-4 margin for the supremacy of the Constitution — of it being a living documentation of inalienable creed — is, once again, a key reason why the occupant of the White House should not be an adherent nor espouser nor enabler of dogmatically retrogressive ideological blather (i.e., John Sidney McCain III). Who were that dissenting 4 who raised the flag of fear above the flag of law? Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts (attribution).

Lady Liberty cannot — must not — be waterboarded; her torch once quenched allows — nay, encourages — the reign of darkness.

#172,311 in a woebegone G. Walker administration series. Collect Reject them all.

Once again, oozing from the putrid corridors of the dastardly, absolutely corrupted First Dick’s office: Science? We don’t need no ess-stinkin’ science.

After 4 years straight (with the rare exception of a day here or there), circumstances at this side of the keyboard have changed and ye old scribe simply cannot muster time in sufficient chunks to keep up here as would be preferred. Thus the hiatus.

However, with diligence shall be able to straighten out the knots impeding blog threading and resume.

Multitudinous thanks to all visitors and readers here. Don’t neglect to check in occasionally as to the status of this blog, please.

In the meantime, be well.

Have an enjoyable holiday weekend. Back here on Monday or Tuesday.

Things seem to have returned to at least a semblance of normalcy on this side of the computer screen, so will be attempting to maintain a more regular schedule.

Testing the waters for more vigorous splits with the U.S.?

A top Gulf state police chief [Tuesday] surprised an international security forum by accusing the United States of increasing support for Al Qaeda and its allies by demonising Muslims. “We the Arabs are charged with terrorism no matter how much we try to reassure them (the Americans),” Dubai police chief Lieutenant-General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told the Middle East: Homeland and Global Security Forum at the Ritz-Carlton Bahrain Hotel and Spa. Tamim’s comments shocked the audience of past and present ministers, ambassadors and other officials from the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the US. He complained of the change in the US attitude to Arabs since the September 11 attacks which, together with the invasion of Iraq and a perceived “war of civilisations” with the West, he said, had made Muslims more radical.…

[snip]

Referring to the alleged US role in once helping Osama bin Laden’s activities when he was with the mujahideen fighting the Soviet presence in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Tamim said “you created the Satan” and Western experts had taught the Al Qaeda forerunners “how to make and explode bombs”.

His speech was applauded by Middle East participants in the audience but surprised Western observers. Article

Keeping up with doings in Nigeria’s restive oil region.

Shell reported that a pipeline feeding one of its export terminals was attacked and ruptured by a group of assailants.

The pipeline supplies crude oil to the Forcados oil export terminal. Shell confirmed that the attack on the pipeline occured November 15 during the early morning hours and that the pipeline was ruptured. Article

Any comment made here would be superfluous, so noted FYI:

the new Japanese woman, according to the fashion critic Ikuko Hirayama, is: “strong, robust, bursting with energy. She takes care of her body but is not obsessed with being thin. She’s proud of her biceps and also proud of her sexuality.” Accordingly, the most popular relaxation sport for single working women nowadays is “boxercising,” or the combination of boxing moves plus aerobics, which is said to increase adrenaline flow by 80 percent and is an ideal way to blow off aggression and stress.

In stark contrast, it’s the men who want to be slender, vulnerable and protected. Young males between the ages of 18 and 30 make up the slimmest segment of the population and the ideal fashion weight as decreed by the apparel industry is 57 kilograms, or about 125 pounds, for a height of 175 centimeters, or 5 feet 8 inches. Many men try to adhere to that figure and some claim they want to be even skinnier.

Twenty-five-year-old Junichi Shirakawa, who works at the denim boutique 45 RPM, said that his goal is to get his weight down from 57 to 55 kilograms, although his height is 182 centimeters. “Being really skinny is essential, not just for fashion and work purposes but also because girls seem to go for thin guys,” he said.

Both Shirakawa and his girlfriend like the fact that she weighs more than he does, and is the leader of the couple. “She’s a lot stronger than I am, can lift heavy things and go drinking until dawn. I admire that about her, and feel protected when I’m around her,” he said. Older than he by five years, it was Shirakawa’s girlfriend who made the approach, started the dating process and decided what course their relationship would take.

“Frankly, I think women should be in the driver’s seat. Society and relationships work better that way,” he said. Shirakawa likes to wear his girlfriend’s clothes and often shows up for work wearing her blouse and jeans, to the general approval of his co-workers.

Hirayama said: “For young men, wearing women’s clothes has almost become a status symbol - a confirmation of being slim and pretty and, therefore, desirable.… Article

Necessity and health concerns dictate taking some time off. With fingers crossed, the amount of time away will not be too long.

Thank you.

The closer (and smaller) we become capable of looking, the more solid the pedestal upon which Einstein stands.

Back online. Still not anywhere near up to the norm, both health- and time-wise, but getting there. In the meantime, will try to keep things short and succinct.

Nigeria oil region update (laying the “T” word in the tble for all it is worth).

Thanksgiving is coming 𓴼 save room for the cranberries.

Cranberry sauce is not the star of the traditional Thanksgiving Day meal, but when it comes to health benefits, the lowly condiment takes center stage. In fact, researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) have found that compounds in cranberries are able to alter E. coli bacteria, which are responsible for a host of human illnesses (from kidney infections to gastroenteritis to tooth decay), in ways that render them unable to initiate an infection. Article

Shall be taking several days off. Have been like a clock run down all this week — out of sorts and just plain exhausted from work, health and life issues in the ‘real world.’ Frankly , have been having trouble over the past few days concentrating and just focusing the ol’ eyeballs.

Your understanding is appreciated. Hope to be back on the beam sometime early into next week, if not sooner.

Any other considerations aside, got to give him bonus points for chutzpah.

Former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab said his money could improve Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s looks and help put President George W. Bush in an asylum.

“I offer them my money in the United States - half of it to Rice so she can embellish her looks and the other half to President Bush because he will soon enter a mental institution,” Wahhab said.

“Bush is obsessed with power, destroying the world, killing and aggressing against people,” the pro-Syrian Druze opposition politician said.

On Monday, Washington slapped sanctions on four people, among them Wahhab and a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Article

The global fallout of the policies of the woebegone G. Walker administration — a veritable nuclear political winter.

Japan’s opposition parties will persist with their plan to block the Fukuda Government’s anti-terrorism law despite a damaging row at the weekend that almost toppled opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.

Mr Ozawa was reconfirmed by his colleagues as Democratic Party of Japan leader last night, after withdrawing the resignation he submitted on Sunday under criticism of his dealings with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

[snip]

Japan’s Washington ambassador, Ryozo Kato, said at the weekend the US-Japan alliance relationship was in its most “difficult and delicate” condition in his six years at the post.

There is concern in Washington that the Fukuda Government wants to cut financial support for US military bases in Japan.

Faced with rising costs in Japan and its own budgetary problems the Pentagon had asked Japan to increase support in its so-called “sympathy budget”, which last year amounted to Y218 billion ($2.04 billion).

However, an unconfirmed report in the Japanese press last month had the Government wanting to reduce base support payments by Y10 billion. Article

A veritble tsunami of competing “don’ts.”

A century ago, the fatwa department at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University issued fewer than 200 edicts a day. Now it turns out about 1,000.

The university, a center of Islamic learning for more than a millennium, isn’t alone. Around the world, an explosion in the number of fatwas — pronouncements by religious leaders intended to shape the actions of the faithful on everything from sex to politics — is sparking efforts by prominent Muslims to rein in the practice. That’s proving a nearly impossible task, given Islam’s decentralized nature and the growing number of outlets for the edicts.

Muslims in Egypt seeking religious guidance may now turn to satellite television and the Internet for opinions from as far afield as Indonesia and Morocco — unless they follow the fatwa issued in 2004 by the Dar ul-Ulum, India’s largest Islamic seminary, that ruled Muslims shouldn’t watch TV.

With no pope or patriarch to arbitrate orthodoxy, “it’s the nature of Islamic thought to have many options,” says Abdel Moti Bayoumi, who heads the Islamic Research Compilation Center in Cairo. “But there are too many unqualified opinions being spread, and this is wrong.”

The result is what MENA, Egypt’s official news agency, calls “fatwa chaos.”

[snip]

“The real problem is that religion is being put out front at all times and injected into everything,” says Aly Elsamman, head of Al-Azhar University’s Dialogue and Islamic Relations Committee. “This makes the need for knowledge more pressing, but the need isn’t met.” Article

Remote mind-reading as a tool of state policy? Bedlam, sheer bedlam.

When Alexander Sibert told President Vladimir Putin that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had said Siberia held too many resources for Russia alone, Putin dismissed the statement as “political erotica.” Albright might have found “political fantasy” more appropriate.

Putin said he was not aware of the comment, Albright denies ever making it, and no one else seems able to provide any evidence that she did.

But this hasn’t stopped Putin and others from attributing these thoughts to foreign figures who they say wish Russia harm.

Sibert, 70, a mechanic who works at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, brought up the purported statement in a question during Putin’s annual call-in show last month.

“I know some politicians entertain such ideas in their heads,” Putin replied, adding that Russia was able to and would protect its natural resources.

The only problem is that Albright, who is now a principal at the Albright Group strategic management and lobbying firm, denied through a spokeswoman that she ever entertained the idea.

“I did not make that statement, nor did I ever think it,” she said.

On Tuesday, Sibert was unable to provide a source for the alleged quote, or even a guarantee that he had heard it.

[snip]

In perhaps the strangest part of the story, there are those who argue that it doesn’t matter what Albright said — they know what she was thinking.

Boris Ratnikov, a retired major general who worked for the Federal Guard Service, said in a December 2006 interview with government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that his colleagues, who worked for the service’s secret mind-reading division, read Albright’s subconscious a few weeks before the beginning of the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Albright, who as secretary of state played a major role in the lead up to the attacks, was one of the main targets of Russian criticism of the bombing campaign.

Apart from her “pathological hatred of Slavs,” Ratnikov said “she was indignant that Russia held the world’s largest reserves of natural resources.”

On Tuesday, Ratnikov, 62, said he hadn’t been part of the mind-reading experiment but had worked as an analyst on the data produced by his colleagues in the study. He said the mind-reading process involved using a picture or some other image of the person under study.

“By tuning in on her image, our specialists were able to glean these things,” he said. Article

Following up on the Spanish king’s tour of African coastal enclaves mentioned here last week:

Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi condemned on Wednesday Spain’s “occupation” of two disputed enclaves, in the wake of a visit by Spain’s King Juan Carlos which prompted Rabat to recall its ambassador to Madrid.

[snip]

El Fassi insisted that only negotiations could save relations with Madrid following Juan Carlos’ two day visit this week to Ceuta and Melilla — where he also reasserted Spain’s sovereignty.

The two towns on Morocco’s Mediterranean cost have been held for centuries by Spain.

[snip]

Despite the war of words, both sides seemed keen to avoid any long-term fallout from the dispute.

In Cueta, Juan Carlos spoke of Spain’s “sincere friendship with its neighbors,” while Morocco’s King Mohammed VI on Tuesday urged a “responsible dialogue which guarantees our rights of sovereignty and takes into account the interests of Spain.” Article

The Oregon Supreme Court becomes embroiled in a Solomonic situation.

With the presidential election to take place one year from today, a peek in on the so-called Top 3-D’s in Iowa.

Progessivity is a relative concept.

In its own way, parsing Ronald Reagan’s brain.

Recognizing the nobility of having the conscience and the fortitude to do the right thing: Jerome Eisenberg.

Posts between this one and the next Housekeeping item are late-posted from Monday.

What’s up in the restive oil region of Nigeria:

Controller of the Movement of the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND) in Bayelsa and Rivers states, Commander Ebi, yesterday, warned that militants would blow up the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC)’s Bonga Oil Field in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa state and other oil installations in the Niger-Delta region in the next few weeks if the Federal Government failed to swear-in ministerial nominee from the South-South, Mr. Godday Orubebe, who was left when others were inaugurated recently within a reasonable time.

Commander Ebi disclosed the planned onslaught while speaking with Saturday Vanguard on phone just as the national co-ordinator of the Movement for Peace and Sustainable Development for Niger-Delta Communities, Mr. Joseph Hitler called on the Federal Government to swear-in Orubebe to avert the plan by those he described as commercial militants to wreak fresh havoc in the region.

According to the MEND leader, “I am Commander Ebi, a militant controlling Bayelsa and Rivers states. Tell the Federal Government that they should swear in Orubebe who is from the Niger-Delta since President Umaru Yar’Adua have sworn-in others that were screened by the Senate, if not, we are going to make the Niger-Delta states to be ungovernable by destroying oil pipelines and oil installations. We will even go to the Bonga Field”.

[snip]

Speaking on behalf of the Movement for Peace and Sustainable Development for Niger-Delta Communities, Mr. Hitler asserted, “The exclusion of God-day Orubebe during the recent inauguration of ministers is what some commercial militants now want to use to start another trouble in the region, the federal government should avert this looming danger by swearing him in”. Article

Topically related:

Nigeria plans to alter terms at Royal Dutch Shell PLC`s (RDSA) deepwater Bonga field next year when the contract comes up for revision, a Nigerian oil official said Thursday.

Tony Chukwueke, head of Nigeria`s Department of Petroleum Resources, said that the Bonga concession — originally awarded under a production-sharing contract to Shell in 1993 and operated in partnership with Esso, a unit of ExxonMobil Corp., (XOM), Eni`s (E) Agip and France`s Total/Elf (TOT)– had a provision allowing for terms to be revised after 15 years if oil prices rose above $20 a barrel.

“The government is actually giving notice,” that the government will call upon that provision in 2008, Chukwueke told reporters on the sidelines of an oil conference in Cape Town, South Africa. Article

So go outside and look, already.

300 years — and phfft.

“The purer something is,” he said, “the dirtier it will become.” Article

What happened to today’s postings?

Due to personal commitments and a pile of paperwork to get through first, they will be showing up late here. Don’t expect to have time to collate and code ‘em before sometime Tuesday morning afternoon.

Ye old scribe is not happy about such a delay either, but sometimes it is unavoidable.

More than enough of the ludicrous and the overzealous to go around — the dismal panic born of the ‘T’ word.

A man in Sweden who was angry with his daughter’s husband has been charged with libel for telling the FBI that the son-in-law had links to al-Qaeda, Swedish media reported on Friday.

The man, who admitted sending the email, said he did not think the US authorities would [be] stupid enough to believe him.

[snip]

The son-in-law was arrested upon landing in Florida. He was placed in handcuffs, interrogated and placed in a cell for 11 hours before being put on a flight back to Europe, the paper said.

The FBI contacted Swedish intelligence agency Saepo, which discovered that the email tipping off the FBI had been sent from the father-in-law’s computer.

The father-in-law has been charged with aggravated libel.

He has admitted sending the email, but said he didn’t think “the authorities were so stupid that they would believe anything. But apparently they are.” Article

Blinkered bombast and bull-headed battering ram tactics threaten the political stability of a nuclear-armed sub-continent.

Despite widespread misgivings in India that the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal compromises the country’s sovereignty, the Indian government, under American pressure, appears to be moving forward to finalize it, according to a media report.

The agreement aims to give India access to US nuclear fuel and equipment, overturning a three-decade ban imposed after New Delhi, which has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, conducted a nuclear test in 1974.

“Caving in to intense pressure from Washington and from domestic business and strategic lobbies, India’s Congress party-led coalition government is planning to push through the civilian nuclear cooperation deal with the United States in the teeth of strong political opposition,” the Inter Press Service (IPS) reported from New Delhi.

After a great deal of vacillation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided to take the next step in completing the deal by approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to negotiate a special inspections (safeguards) agreement, the agency said, citing to well-placed sources in his Congress party.

In doing so, it said, Singh risks the collapse of his Congress-led United Progress Alliance (UPA) government, which is critically dependent on the support of the Left for a parliamentary majority.

[snip]

“India has perhaps never before witnessed such concentrated heavy-handed lobbying on any issue.”

[snip]

Going by available indications, IPS report says Singh intends to approach the IAEA in early December, immediately after the end of a brief Parliament session being convened between Nov. 15 and Dec. 7. The UPA government hopes that the IAEA will negotiate a unique safeguards agreement with India in record time.

Armed with this, it said, India expects that the U.S.will get the deal approved by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, which must make a special exception for India to its strict rules regulating nuclear commerce. The deal could then be taken up for ratification by the U.S. Congress early next year, before the Republican and Democratic primaries for the presidential election are completed and President George W. Bush becomes a total lame-duck.

The Bush administration. according to the report, is desperate to have the deal signed and sealed quickly not merely because it has invested a great deal of political capital in it, but also because it could present it in the national elections as the Republicans’ sole foreign policy achievement—in contrast to the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters. Article

Rear-view revisionism? Belated contrition? Or a reach to solidify more paramount regional legitimacy?

Speaking to the Arabic satellite network Al-Arabiya on Thursday, Bandar — now Abdullah’s national security adviser — said Saudi intelligence was “actively following” most of the September 11, 2001, plotters “with precision.”

“If U.S. security authorities had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my opinion, we would have avoided what happened,” he said. Article

Noted FYI:

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia will tomorrow set out on a controversial visit to Spanish enclaves in North Africa. Morocco has already recalled its ambassador from Spain in protest at the trip to Ceuta and Melilla which are embedded in its Mediterranean coastline. Morocco refers to them as “occupied” territories but Spain insists the cities are as Spanish as Madrid or Barcelona.

They are remnants of Spain’s once globe-spanning colonial empire and have been Spanish for more than 400 years, longer than Morocco has been a sovereign state, Spain says. In 2002 the countries temporarily broke diplomatic ties after an incident involving Moroccan troops. Source

Yes, you read that right: broccoli from Greenland.

Keeping up with the miasma of unrest in Nigeria’s oil region:

Two prominent rebels fighting for autonomy in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta have traded insults in a public dispute that has exposed deep divisions before peace talks with the government.

The row between the two militia leaders is apparently over money, weapons and strategy, but analysts say it is a power struggle that will strengthen the government’s hand by isolating militants who want to continue two years of violence that have hit oil exports. Article

Oh please, spare us the nonsense. The purpose of tanks is to be mobile. Hollywoodization of war = crapola.