I Clear My Browser Tabs
*Ordinary Life in Baghdad – Not so ordinary, despite what the President tells you.
* Hubris Desperately Seeking Nemesis in FPIF’s article on air and robot war in the GWOT era:
“It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a war without ever leaving the US,” Lt Col David Branham told the New York Times.
The siren song of remote-control war. Somewhere in the Stiftung’s archives he correctly pegs the American security establishment’s mania for robotics as an attempt to escape dealing with foreigners as people. LTC Branham may recognize the deep evil of the future he anticipates; I don’t know. A society that can make wars without leaving home will make too many, and invite a terrible retribution. During the 1999 Kosovo War, for the first time, the government had pilots flying combat missions from airbases in the US and returning home for dinner the same day. Mrs O and I discussed what an awful threshhold we were crossing as a country. War shouldn’t be a normal day for anyone.
* My Man Brett gets interviewed about Apple this and that.
* The other UC Regents controversy. I wouldn’t appoint Summers to run a university but this isn’t that – he’s one speaker out of a dozen or so a year. And while his Harvard tenure was screwed up, he is a former Treasury Secretary and a distinguished economist.
* The Triumph of Fourth Branch according to Frontline.
Comment by NYT —
September 16, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
Not quite robots but the next best thing:
“A Washington Post employee in the area at the time of the shooting witnessed security company helicopters firing into the streets near Nisoor Square in Mansour. Witnesses said they saw dead and wounded people on the pavement”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/16/AR2007091601062.html?hpid=topnews
I read the news reasonably attentively but I had no idea that private contractors were putting helicopter gunships into the skies over Iraq.
Comment by Nell —
September 16, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
It’s been awhile since it’s come up, but I seem to remember a comment thread here about the types of helicopters that the private mil use. As I recall they don’t have mounted guns, but they seat one or two gunners. This discussion was after one or two of them were shot down in Baghdad.
So, not the firepower of the built-to-kill helicopter gunships that the Army and Marines have been using, but pretty much any machine guns shooting into city streets from above are going to be lethal.
Comment by Nell —
September 17, 2007 @ 12:06 am
Here is the comment I was remembering (and the several following).
They’re numerous in Baghdad, and probably regularly go across the country depending on the travel of those they’re providing security for.
I’ve been wondering for a while about the maintenance logistics, given the numbers: do they share facilities at the bases? Or is there a merc-only helicopter/vehicle depot? That seems like too tempting a target…
Comment by NYT —
September 17, 2007 @ 12:13 am
Neil
Thanks
Comment by Nell —
September 17, 2007 @ 12:25 am
“The Dark Side”? You haven’t cleared your browser tabs in more than a year, Jim? ;>
It was one of the rare things I blogged about at the time it happened. For all the fancy charts, a very partial picture, and I think quite misleading.
Comment by Glaivester —
September 17, 2007 @ 6:53 am
What bothers me about the Summers case is that no one has actually bothered to try to refute him – they just yelled “you can’t say that!” and fired him.
Comment by Leonard —
September 17, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
The dangerous thing about the Summers case is that he is persona non grata based on spin about what he said, not whether it was true:
Talk about intentional use of the passive voice to deceive. Summers has come to symbolize gender prejudice because was demonized by academic leftists unconcerned with the truth or falsity of the statements they demonized him for. He is now demonized because he “has come to symbolize” gender prejudice. The circle is complete. No further exploration of his ideas is necessary, nor it is welcome.
Were the statements he made that kicked off the whole thing true? Who cares? The relevant facts are clear: Summers has “come to symbolize” prejudice against women, and thus must be cast out of polite society.
Comment by Nell —
September 17, 2007 @ 1:17 pm
@NYT and others following the Blackwater merc slaughter of civilians in Mansour yesterday:
They don’t just have helicopters (“Blackwater’s distinctive small black helicopters hover in the skies above Baghdad” Reuters), they’re looking to acquire a light attack plane, the Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano:
Lovely world we’re hurtling into, eh?
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 17, 2007 @ 1:23 pm
Decline and Fall had a good entry on the Blackwater Air Force last month.
Comment by Madeline F —
September 17, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
You pretty much have to be arguing from wishful thinking to say not only that studies haven’t proven women are underrepresented in math and “hard” science due to systemic bias, but that the studies haven’t even been done. But then, it’s in vogue these days to think that conservative wishful thinking nullifies science: see, global warming, creationism.