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"Your Liberty is Our Interest"
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Jefferson Review |
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"Your Liberty is Our Interest" |
January 26, 2004 | |
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Reason's Weekly Dispatch January 20, 2004
1. UN Bomber 1. UN Bomber The car bomb that killed 30 at the headquarters of the Coalition Authority in Iraq was clearly intended to keep the United Nations from returning to the country. A similar blast in August sent the UN out; even with all the diplomatic handholding from the U.S., Kofi Annan still may deem the situation too dangerous for UN personnel. One interesting mystery remains to be explained: Why the U.S. thinks the UN can help fix things in Iraq. All it could possibly do is provide diplomatic cover for the U.S. plan to transfer power to the Iraqis, but maybe that is all the Bush administration thinks it needs over the next few months. There are obviously still elements in Iraq who want to keep the transition of power from gaining either legitimacy or momentum. A UN stamp of approval for Coalition efforts could be a nudge that gets the process rolling, but it does nothing to change the hard task of dispersing political power among various Iraqi factions in a manner that leaves the country relatively stable. http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2004-01/19/article04.shtml 2. Fly By Night Operators The news that yet another batch of airline-passenger data was secretly handed over to the government contains a pair of revelations. The first is that the search for some sort of anti-terrorist magic bullet -- in this case a magic algorithm from NASA, no less ? continues unabated with more likely pitfalls ahead. The second, that the Freedom of Information Act remains a vital check on government power; it's a tool that must remain functional despite calls for ever-greater government secrecy. It is hard to tell what the Northwest Airlines data was used for, but it appears that the Transportation Security Administration believes that it may be able to use past travel patterns to predict future terrorist activity. Either that, or the TSA wants to try to model the behavior of someone who wants to look like a normal, everyday traveler, so as to protect its planned color-coded traveler-classification system from being gamed by savvy bad guys. In any event, if the Electronic Privacy Information Center hadn't filed its FOIA request, we couldn't even try to even guess what the government is up to. Officials at Northwest claim they had no idea the feds even had the info, which is just the kind of on-the-ball thinking you like to see in people whizzing jet planes across the skies. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/national/18NORT.html 3. Recessed Panel The 9/11 investigative panel was never going to answer all the questions about what did or didn't happen that day, but it did have a fair chance of offering closure to the victims' families. Now, with the administration opposed to giving the commission more time to complete its work, even that modest goal is in jeopardy. Avoiding the release of an unpredictable panel report late in an election year makes political sense: It eliminates the chance of a surprise bombshell. However, confidence in the panel was already ebbing with reports that some commission members were being interviewed as part of the investigation. In effect, they were so close to the events of 9/11 that they have had to investigate themselves. That situation left the families feeling that they were losing a chance at an objective inquiry. With the panel stuck with a May 27 deadline and struggling with the remaining workload, the families are left to wonder if something crucial will simply be missed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28025-2004Jan18?language=printer 4. Quick Hits Quote of the Week "It's a sex museum. What am I supposed to do? It could not be PG." -- museum curator Eric Singley on protestors who objected to his new Hollywood Boulevard attraction featuring $900,000 worth of exhibits.
Not So Secret Agent Artillery shells found in the Iraqi desert were originally thought to contain mustard gas or some other blister agent; they don't. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3407853.stm Speak and Spell Mike Rowe gets in trouble with Microsoft for putting up his own Web design shingle at mikerowesoft.com. Mike is in high school in Canada. http://www.officialspin.com/main.php?action=recent&rid=1222 Georgia on His Mind New Georgia leader Mikheil Saakashvili has a new flag; lots of people are worried about what direction his government will take. http://www.oscewatch.org/LatestNews.asp?ArticleID=30 How Does This Movie End? Scientists in Taiwan create a two-headed, glowing zebrafish. By accident. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/01/16/2003091577 5. New at Reason Online Just Say No Again 6. The Print Edition Get your personal copy of the latest issue of Reason's print edition each month -- before it hits the newsstands and before it's posted on the Web! Subscribe Today! 7. News and Events Buy Reason T-shirts and coffee mugs! Click here for the latest on media appearances by Reason writers. Want even more Reason? Sign up for Reason Alert to get regular news from Reason Magazine and Reason Public Policy Instiute, as well as advance notice about media appearances and events. We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe. It's Free! ---
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