The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.

First of all, I don’t believe for an instant that this is a diplomatic crisis, at least not between governments. I’m sure that they already know most of this. What’s upsetting to the US is that the general public might find out. But really, any halfway intelligent person is not going to be surprised by any of this information.

the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran

Then do it your goddamn selves, you motherfuckers. Why should the United States be the one to shoulder the financial burden and the deaths and materiel loss, and the international backlash? Oh right, because you’re all a bunch of fucking cowards who don’t want to upset the terrorists because then you will be the ones dying and getting your shit blown up.

US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN’s leadership.

Everybody spies on everybody. This is the way of things.

These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world.

Not really. I mean, the whole thing about Middle Eastern nations secretly wanting to destroy Iran is sort of embarrassing, but shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Among scores of other disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:
• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme

Color me surprised.

• Alleged links between the Russian government and organised crime.

*Yawn*

• Devastating criticism of the UK’s military operations in Afghanistan.

Oh, you mean like how the US and everybody else have also been totally ineffective at fixing that messed up country?

• Claims of inappropriate behaviour by a member of the British royal family.

Gosh, that could be just about any of them except maybe the Queen herself. Don’t UK tabloids exist mainly because of inappropriate behavior of the British royal family?

The material includes a reference to Vladimir Putin as an “alpha-dog”

This is both obvious and unimportant. I think Putin would be amused by the comparison, since he tries so hard to convey it in his public activities.

Hamid Karzai as being “driven by paranoia”

I’m not sure how it’s paranoia when everybody really is out to get him.

Angela Merkel allegedly “avoids risk and is rarely creative”

She’s the German Chancellor. It’s her job to avoid risk. Creativity is also not one of the important traits for someone in her position to have.

There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.

Let’s see…encouraging citizens to have more children, encouraging women to stay home and keep house, price controls, military expansion, secret military buildup, obsession with superweapons, having a personal army under his direct control separate from the national military, imprisonment/torture/murder of political dissidents, persecution of anyone deviating from the proclaimed ideal in beliefs or personal behavior. Oh, and all that anti-Semitic ranting and obsessions with the “Zionist agenda”.

Sure sounds to me like they have a lot in common.

The cables name countries involved in financing terror groups

Once again, this is common knowledge, or at least unsurprising. I’m sure that Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan…well shit pretty much everybody over there…are on the list.

US ambassadors in other capitals were instructed to brief their hosts in advance of the release of unflattering pen-portraits or nakedly frank accounts of transactions with the US which they had thought would be kept quiet. Washington now faces a difficult task in convincing contacts around the world that any future conversations will remain confidential.

This will be yet another motivation for the rest of the world detaching from the United States. They’re already doing it economically. That it would also be diplomatic is not surprising.

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Well DUH. What do you think embassy networks are for? You really think diplomacy is all they do? Anyone that naive shouldn’t be voting. All countries do this. Every. Single. One.

So far I’m having trouble getting excited about this new WikiLeaks release. As with the previous information they released, it’s really not that big of a deal. Nothing in it (so far) is surprising. Certainly not a smoking gun.

Why does anybody, anywhere, think that anything anyone SAYS matters a damn?

Kyle, in the other room, responds, “Because they believe in magic?”

The United States, Clinton said, is increasingly concerned about the rise of military power in Iran, the main U.S. adversary in the Middle East.

That’s wonderful, Hillary. We’re concerned. And how long have we been concerned? I, for one, can remember us being concerned as far back as when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State. The word “Ayatollah” has always been an epithet for my generation. We remember the hostages taken in Tehran in 1979, and that wasn’t the Shah who was in power at the time.

“But the early advocates of it said this would be a republic. It would be an Islamic republic, but it would be a republic. Then we saw a very flawed election and we’ve seen the elected officials turn for the military to enforce their power,” she said.

“Republic” is just a word. And to suppose that it is even possible for a government to be Islamic and have any semblance of liberty in its operation is, at best, naive. To permit any religion to dictate the functioning of government is an inherently bad idea. With Islam it is especially pernicious, because of how hostile Sharia law is to the idea of freedom and individual rights. While I understand that there are many regional variations of Sharia, and the extent to which it is implemented may vary, I will firmly claim that it is not a system under which anyone should be forced to live simply because it denies individual rights and equal treatment under the law.

Mandatory tithing (zakat) is described by Sharia. Inheritance is dictated, rather than being chosen by the owners of the wealth. Virgin women have their husbands chosen for them, and Muslims in general may only marry other Muslims. Any sexual intercourse outside the confines of marriage (and with the spouse) is forbidden and carries heavy penalties that include flogging and death. It is notable that women are typically punished more severely than men.

Court proceedings under Sharia are conducted by a judge only. There is no jury, no attorneys, no discovery process, and no punishment for perjury. Witnesses are considered more important than empirical evidence (modern law enforcement has long since known how unreliable even honest witnesses can be). Most of the legal protections and precedents codified in modern Western law are not recognized in Sharia.

I could go on at length about this. But my point is that talking about how much we dislike Iran doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. It won’t change Iran’s behavior. It won’t change their beliefs. It won’t do anything to address the threat that country is to its neighbors and the world at large. Clearly we are going to have to learn the hard way. Again. Iran is going to build a functioning nuke and deliver it to a major city, probably Tel Aviv.

What will we do then? Keep talking? Wring our hands and whine like we always do? Israel can probably be counted on to bomb the shit out of them, and anyone who tries to claim they shouldn’t will have absolutely no moral standing.

You would THINK that flying three airplanes full of people into 3 buildings full of people (and I can only wonder if the fourth plane was meant for the Capitol Building), causing the deaths of several thousand human beings and destroying a major cultural landmark in one of the world’s most prominent cities would wake people up. Especially people who remember it like I do. The enemy tried it once before in 1993 with the underground parking garage at World Trade One and Two, and failed, and we all went “ho hum”.

But no. We’ve forgotten. Politicians have let themselves feel safe again, and gone back to petty bickering about money and their own reelection. The President is babbling about another economic “stimulus” (which won’t work any more than the last one did, and will actually make things worse. Again) or some shit. Maybe if Flight 93 had destroyed the Capitol Building and killed 90% of Congress, we would have taken it more seriously. Somehow, with this level of apathy, I doubt it.

A New York couple is suing a Catholic high school for refusing to grant a religious exemption that would allow their 14-year-old son to enroll in ninth grade without state-required vaccinations, claiming immunizations are a “violation of God’s supreme authority.”

They claim their son . . .should be granted an exemption to public health laws that require children to be inoculated for diseases including mumps, measles, rubella, hepatitis B and others.

“[W]e are all created in God’s image,” reads a letter the Polydors sent to the school on Feb. 13, according to the lawsuit. “Therefore, we must not defile our blood and our bodies with diseases and other impure substances. As the divine Architect, God designed our bodies to have immune systems that must not be defiled by vaccines. Immunizations are a violation of God’s supreme authority, and therefore, unholy. Since immunizations are unholy they violate my religious beliefs.”

The Polydors also claim that using vaccines would show a “lack of faith in God, and His perfectly designed immune system,” according to the lawsuit.

Okay…so…God created a perfect immune system for mankind. And that’s why nobody ever gets sick. Oh wait, is that only supposed to apply to people whose faith is strong enough? Or does it only apply to people who never “defile” their bodies from the time they’re born?

If the latter, it’s not very perfect, is it?

I’m used to reading about parents’ whaargarbl about their snowflakes being entitled to an education in a public school regardless of whatever ridiculous exceptions and special cases they insist upon. But for this whaargarbl to extend to a private school is a whole new level of entitlement. “I DEMAND THAT YOU TAKE MY MONEY AND MAKE AN EXCEPTION TO YOUR RULES”.

What the hell, guys? Find another school. That’s unlikely, however, given that God’s perfect immune system seems vulnerable to measles, mumps, rubella, polio, diphtheria, hepatatis B, and a variety of other dangerous illnesses.

Schools are ideal transmission vectors for diseases like this. For a school to not require immunizations is an invitation to epidemic among its students. It’s precisely because of the vaccine hysteria that diseases like measles are being seen again in outbreak clusters.

I don’t even want to talk about the “autism is caused by vaccines” issue. It’s stupid and doesn’t have a shred of evidence to support it.

This situation highlights the problem with the whole “religious exemptions” concept in our society. These people are just making up something that they want a religious exemption for. Is that the same thing as Muslim Sikhs who want to wear a kirpan (which, regardless of its symbolism, is a knife) to school or work? Is it the same thing as Catholics insisting on having Christmas Day off because it’s a high holy day for them?

I would argue that it is the same thing. Businesses and schools have rules. If you don’t like the rules, you should be free to find another business or school (yeah I know, the public education thing is another conversation entirely). Now personally I happen to think people should be allowed to carry daggers, even if they’re not Sikhs. Want Christmas Day off? File for vacation time.

But if you’re not willing to abide by the rules of a place, then that place should have the right to exclude you. Yes, I’m including things like disabilities, too (in some cases it’s a dick move but that’s part and parcel with private property rights and freedom of association). Courts should not even entertain a case like the Polydors’, because it should be an open-and-shut example of “private owner gets to make the rules on use of their own property”.

A police officer runs towards the fire (Getty Images: Justin Sullivan)

San Bruno is a small town just south of San Francisco, on the peninsula. Apparently, a couple of hours ago, a neighborhood exploded.

Witnesses reported hearing a huge explosion. An entire neighborhood is engulfed in flames, and so far 12 homes have been confirmed destroyed. PG&E has just confirmed that it is a ruptured natural gas line under Sequoia Ave and Sneath Lane.

Another view of the San Bruno fire. (Photo by osxdude via SFist.com)

Photo by RodrigoBNO via SFist.com

Current updates indicate the fires are moving from house to house, and the nearby hospital has reported a large number of people with injuries. Flights in and out of SFO are operating and on time. Residents displaced by the fire can find food and shelter at the Veterans Rec Center at 251 City Park Way in San Bruno.

This is just incredibly weird. I can’t help but wonder if there are shenanigans, because a gas main blowing up is just something that doesn’t happen with any regularity. The last one I can even recall reading about was in New York City several years ago. Kyle speculates that this would be a good pilot project for a terrorist attack on infrastructure. A test run on a soft target (residential neighborhood in a low-risk area) would be one logical step toward such an attack.

On an entirely unrelated note, when I drove to class this morning, the entire campus was blocked off and posted “campus closed until further notice”. The emergency turned out to be a campus-wide power outage. I suspect the construction crews that are working there. Last semester they kept setting off the evacuation alarm. It wouldn’t surprise me overmuch to learn that they somehow severed power for the whole college.

A firefighter walks from the scene of three destroyed homes in Detroit Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Kathleen Galligan)

Normally when a major city in the United States is swept by more than 85 fires over the course of a single night and 74,000 people have a power outage, the national news media talks about it. High winds overnight may have been the initial cause:

Detroit Fire Commissioner James Mack addressed questions from reporters who asked how all of these fires started. Commissioner Mack said the high winds and the downed wires played a major role in the outbreak of the house fires. However, he says at least two fires may have been the work of an arsonist.

Some of the worst damage is on the city’s east side. At least 20 homes burned in the area of Robinwood and Van Dyke. The fire spread across the city block to Robinwood Street. Firefighters say it’s possible the blazes in this neighborhood were ignited by a faulty transformer spraying sparks. Those sparks were carried by strong winds and started fires at a number of other houses.

A home is engulfed in flames on Detroit’s east side Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2010. (AP Photo/Detroit Free Press, Marcin Szczepanski)

The number of buildings affected is currently estimated in the dozens, and it has been noted that many of those buildings are abandoned or uninhabited (which is not unusual in Detroit these days).

More interesting, however, is the possibility that there were known, preexisting problems with the power grid that residents reported and which were ignored by the utility company:

The family of a Detroit couple whose home was burned in one of dozens of fires that swept the city Tuesday night said they had been trying to get DTE Energy to the home to check on power surges and service interruptions since last week, but no one from the utility came.

The family also suspected a neighbor was trying to hook into the electric line illegally and told DTE as much, Michelle Denton said.

It would not surprise me much to learn that there is a lot of illegal power grid tapping going on in Detroit these days, given the abject poverty and decay of the city.

Also at issue is the fact that Detroit doesn’t have enough firefighters on the payroll to deal with an emergency of this magnitude.

“We’ve had aid before, just to help out in a specific area, but this time is different. We don’t have anyone available,” said Detroit Fire Capt. Dan McNamara, a 33-year veteran of the department who is president of the Detroit Firefighters Association. “It used to be we could throw enough resources to knock something big down and work our way into it. The day of reckoning has come.”

Though the city does not have enough fire trucks, McNamara said the main concern is the city doesn’t have the firefighters to staff them. Eight or nine fire companies out of 65 are shut down each day, he said.

A Detroit firefighter looks through the smoldering yards of burned homes and garages on East Robinwood in Detroit, Michigan Sept. 8. Dozens of fires swept across Detroit Tuesday night, fanned by high winds and downed power lines with as many as 20 of the fires on East Robinwood and adjacent streets. (Reuters, Rebecca Cook)

Even after firefighters arrived at the scene of a fire, they had to wait for DTE to send people out to deal with the high voltage power feed.

So why is the mainstream press apparently uninterested in this story?

UPDATE: Here’s some raw video. No voiceover.

I was recently challenged on another forum to cite examples of my own writing where I have denounced various Bush era activities and policies. I was surprised to find that I was not able to give such citations, as they exist only in my mind. I have never committed it to print. So I will rectify this.

GUANTANAMO BAY
The capture and detention of prisoners of war is acceptable. What was not acceptable was the fact that the facility simply imprisoned them and then did nothing more. The prisoners should have been investigated according to military procedures to establish their crimes and involvement (to make sure we didn’t imprison actual innocent bystanders).

Prisoners of war captured on the battlefield are not entitled to the protections of the American civilian justice system.

But as a prison for convicted terrorists, I don’t have a problem with it.

IRAQ
Wrong target. Although it is nice that Saddam Hussein is no longer around to torture his people, that was never our job or our responsibility. We should not have invaded Iraq. We should have invaded Iran.

AFGHANISTAN
Although terrorists do hide in and are supported by Afghani forces, Afghanistan is not the main target. It is peripheral. Establishing “democracy” in Afghanistan is not going to solve the problem.

IRAN
Iran is the hornet’s nest, the source of the funding and training of most Islamist terrorists. We should have invaded Iran and wiped out that support infrastructure, but we didn’t.

THE MIDDLE EAST IN GENERAL
We should not be trying to “liberate” the Middle East. For one thing, what Bush/Obama want to do is not liberty. Secondly, the cultures of the Middle East don’t know how to be democratic (nor do they really want to be). Sometimes various factions hate their governments, but tyranny is okay. They just want it to be their kind of tyranny.

Dictatorship, especially Islamic dictatorship, has been the government of choice in that part of the world for centuries. Various religious factions vie for supremacy. They don’t want to get along — they each want to be the one in charge.

Even if we free them and give them democratic choice, they will just choose to install another dictator, and be back to square one. We are seeing this pan out in Iraq right now.

PATRIOT ACT / WIRETAPPING
I am not an expert on the contents of the Patriot Act or the implications of it. But in general I do not endorse the restriction of individual rights and/or liberty. Government invasion into personal freedoms never has an innocent motive and never has good results.

TSA / AIRLINE SECURITY
All this new “security” at airports in the US is a farce, a dog and pony show some call “security theater”. It doesn’t actually make us safer. There are still many obvious loopholes that would allow a determined terrorist (or even a halfway intelligent one) to destroy an airplane and kill everyone on board.

The failure to apply proper profiling further reduces it to a circus. That 82-year-old white grandmother from Iowa is not a terrorist. But that 27-year-old Arab guy from Turkey might be.

DEFICIT / NATIONAL BUDGET
Bush’s military spending would have been justified if we had actually fought the right war, in the right place, against the right enemies (Iran). But we didn’t.

TORTURE / WATERBOARDING
I do not and have never endorsed torture (including waterboarding) as a method of interrogation on prisoners. It doesn’t work. A torture victim will say anything to avoid more torture. Information thus gained is not reliable.

SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS
On November 13, 2001, Bush suspended the right of habeas corpus by executive order. Basically, habeas corpus means that detainees have the right to seek relief from unlawful imprisonment. This is tied up in the right to a hearing, a trial, legal counsel, and the right to be free from detention if not charged with a crime.

This was to be used on “enemy combatants”, to allow the government to capture and indefinitely detain terrorists. The status of “enemy combatant” has been applied to American citizens, effectively suspending their rights to due process.

Foreign enemies are not “tried in courts”. They are captured on the battlefield and dealt with as prisoners of war by the military. The people waging war on the United States are typically not Americans. They may be here on visas, but that’s not the same thing. They are usually citizens of a foreign nation, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, etc.

I do not support the suspension of habeas corpus. An American citizen who wages war on the United States (such as John Walker Lindh) is guilty of sedition and treason, and should be charged and tried appropriately, with all rights normally due to citizens in an American court.

TARP / BANK BAILOUTS
This was never a good idea and I opposed it entirely from the first moment it was mentioned. “Too big to fail” is ridiculous. The banks should have been allowed to fail and recover on their own. Yes it would have impacted the economy. But it has anyway because TARP doesn’t work and was never capable of working.

AUTO INDUSTRY BAILOUTS
That’s Obama’s mess, not Bush’s.

I will add more material later as necessary.

This video is NSFW, so wear headphones and don’t watch with other people around.

I’m so, so sorry.  (No I’m not).

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Obama’s biological father was Kenyan.  His mother was born in Kansas and has always been an American citizen.  All very well.

‘So what’s the problem?’ you might well ask.  That’s pretty much what I want to know.

But there are a number of people, apparently enough of them to form a named group (”Birthers”), who claim that Obama is not a natural-born citizen.  The primary claim, as far as I can tell, is that he was born in Kenya.  This, despite the fact that the man has a birth certificate from Hawaii (which is where he was actually born) and that the certificate’s authenticity has been verified numerous times by multiple parties.

Birthers claim the Hawaii certificate is forged.  Okay, then where is his Kenyan one?  Assuming, of course, that there is even any evidence that the Hawaiian one is a forgery.

Here’s the best part: it doesn’t matter if it is.  Obama’s mother, being an American citizen at the time of his birth, makes him a natural-born citizen no matter where in the world he is born.  That’s the way American law works.  No one disputes Ann Dunham’s citizenship (as far as I’m aware).  His father’s country of citizenship doesn’t matter.  It wouldn’t even matter if Obama had been born in Kenya.  He’d still be a natural-born citizen.

But Birthers are pretty adamant about this:

These people are crazier than squirrels with their heads stuck in a dog food can.

But it got me to wondering.  In the face of such obvious evidence, to persist in their vitriol suggests that the real motive for their anger is not Obama’s country of birth.  It must be something else.  In this video, the touchstones are “my ancestors fought in wars for this country” and the Pledge of Allegiance (the meaning of which obviously escapes these people).

Are we seeing nothing more than pure racism?  “I don’t want a nigger for President”?  But they know they can’t say that out loud.  Or, more precisely, they’re afraid to admit to themselves what really motivates them.  Is this apparent insanity the logical manifestation of a culture where it is believed that changing how people talk will change how they think?  Outlawing the word “nigger” doesn’t make people stop being racist.  It just sends that racism underground, to seethe and foment and seek other avenues of expression that are more acceptable.

I don’t know a great deal about Delaware’s social customs or cultural origins, but I wouldn’t generally call them Southerners (despite the accent of the shrill woman in the video).  The Southerners I’ve encountered over the years are pretty blunt about their racism (if they are racist, which most of them are not) and are not afraid to use the words that go with it.

Birthers are, then, a possible window into the consequences of a culture where speech is regulated (and don’t kid yourself about that).  They may also be an example of jingoistic craziness, which is also still alive and well in this country.