40 To 1

The Prime Minister of Lebanon has just revised his initial claim of massive civilian deaths in an Israeli strike on a town. Initially, Fuad Saniora announced that 40 civilians had been killed, generating screaming headlines this morning. It turns out the count was a tiny bit off.

By about 39.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Lebanese prime minister said one person was killed in an Israeli air raid Monday in the southern border village of Houla, lowering the death toll from 40. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said at a news conference that he had based the initial tally on unspecified information that he had received.

He offered no other explanation for the error.

He had announced that 40 were killed in the attack during an emotional address during opening remarks at a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers.

"It turned out that one person was killed. They thought that the whole building smashed on the heads of about 40 people and it turned out, thank God because we are not happy if someone is killed, they have been saved," Saniora told reporters.

So, who gave him the original information? Hezbollah or Reuters? Inquiring minds want to know.

UPDATE: CNN actually corrected in rather quick fashion. Good for them.

Beaten, Not Stirred

A popular new bar in China has a tough staff. How tough? If you pay them, you can beat them up. The trendy Rising Sun Anger Release Bar actually allows customers to pay for the privilege of whacking the heck out of it's staff of 20 men. They'll act it out anyway you want, even dressing up as women if necessary.

In addition to getting a drink, customers at the "Rising Sun Anger Release Bar" in Nanjing city are able to pay money to beat up staff, smash glasses, shout and scream, the China Daily said.

If these anger management techniques do not work, the customers can also receive psychological counselling, the paper said.

The bar employs 20 well-built men in their 20s and 30s who have agreed to be hit. Customers can specify how they want the men to appear — they can even be dressed up as women, the China Daily said.

The bar charges 50 to 300 yuan (6.35 to 37.50 US dollars) for customers to release their anger, depending on their demands.

The bar was set up in April by Wu Gong, a 29-year-old man who got his inspiration from similar bars in Japan, according to the paper.

Wu insisted the models were fully equipped with protective gear, and the bar gave them regular physical training so they were prepared for the attacks.

Also, most customers are women, particularly those working in the service and entertainment companies, such as karaoke bars or massage parlors.

Well, it's certainly different. However, if you should happen to get in a bar fight, this may give you an alibi. Just tell the cops you thought you were at the anger release bar. Let us know how that works out for you. After you make bail, of course.

Poor Planning

The Baltimore Sun has an article detailing problems with electrical power at the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. The problems have been apparent since at least 2000 when a blackout occurred.

Agency officials anticipated the problem nearly a decade ago as they looked ahead at the technology needs of the agency, sources said, but it was never made a priority, and now the agency's ability to keep its operations going is threatened. The NSA is already unable to install some costly and sophisticated new equipment, including two new supercomputers, for fear of blowing out the electrical infrastructure, they said.

At minimum, the problem could produce disruptions leading to outages and power surges at the Fort Meade headquarters, hampering the work of intelligence analysts and damaging equipment, they said. At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency, paralyzing the intelligence operation, erasing crucial intelligence data and causing irreparable damage to computer systems — all detrimental to the fight against terrorism.

Estimates on how long the agency has to stave off such an overload vary from just two months to less than two years. NSA officials "claim they will not be able to operate more than a month or two longer unless something is done," said a former senior NSA official familiar with the problem, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Agency leaders, meanwhile, are scrambling for stopgap measures to buy time while they develop a sustainable plan. Limitations of the electrical infrastructure in the main NSA complex and the substation serving the agency, along with growing demand in the region, prevent an immediate fix, according to current and former government officials.

"If there's a major power failure out there, any backup systems would be inadequate to power the whole facility," said Michael Jacobs, who headed the NSA's information assurance division until 2002.

"It's obviously worrisome, particularly on days like today," he said in an interview during last week's barrage of triple-digit temperatures.

…

The agency got a taste of the potential for trouble Jan. 24, 2000, when an information overload, rather than a power shortage, caused the NSA's first-ever network crash. It took the agency 3 1/2 days to resume operations, but with a power outage it could take considerably longer to get the NSA humming again.

The 2000 shutdown rendered the agency's headquarters "brain-dead," as then-NSA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden told CBS's 60 Minutes in 2002.

"I don't want to trivialize this. This was really bad," Hayden said. "We were dark. Our ability to process information was gone."

Having spent a goodly amount of time in the utility business, this sounds like a combination of poor planning on the part of the NSA and the utility company, BGE. Typically, the utility owns everything up until the facility's own power distribution. So it sounds like the utility hasn't built enough circuits or enough capacity, but the NSA has also failed to upgrade their internal distribution equipment.

Here you have another data point that tends to show the 9/11 conspiracy nuts are completely deranged. A vital agency with a vital mission is so inept that it cannot plan it's power needs. And this government supposedly pulled off a massive conspiracy and kept it quiet?

Yeah, right.

Hezbollah Continues

To try to set a world record for war crimes totally ignored by the world's press. Over 80 rockets were launched by Hezbollah into civilian areas on Monday with absolutely no attempt whatsoever to target anyone but civilians.

 At least 80 rockets rained down on northern cities on Monday, with over 50 landing in Kiryat Shmona. Several people were lightly wounded in the attacks, and four houses were damaged by direct hits in Kiryat Shmona and Safed. One of the rockets fired at Safed landed in the city's industrial district.

Five people were hospitalized in Nahariya as a result of the attacks. One person was lightly wounded by shrapnel, three suffered from smoke inhalation, and one other was treated for shock.

Throughout the morning, warning sirens were heard in towns all over the North, as rockets landed in Kiryat Shmona, Tiberias, Safed, Nahariya, and towns in the upper Galilee, among others. The Home Front Command urged residents to enter shelters or inner rooms in their homes.

The latest rocket barrages followed Sunday evening's devastating attack on Haifa, in which a woman and two men were killed and at least 189 people were wounded by a massive barrage of rockets that struck at least six sites in a crowded residential area.

Two were critically wounded and died of their wounds shortly after. Several others were listed in serious condition. All of the wounded were evacuated to local hospitals within some 30 minutes.

Two of the victims, Hanna Hamam, 62, and Labiba Mazawi, 67, both Haifa residents, will be laid to rest in the Christian section of the Haifa cemetery; the funeral procession will leave from the downtown Catholic church at 5 p.m..

The third victim, Roni Rubinski, 30, from Kiryat Motzkin, will be laid to rest at 2 p.m. in the Tel Regev cemetery, Israel Radio reported.

One building sustained a direct hit and collapsed, trapping dozens of people inside. Emergency workers labored to extract the victims.

Note the lack of wall to wall pictures of rescue efforts when Israelis are involved rather than Hezbollah. Interesting, isn't it? Rather revealing as well, I think.

Note the lack of wall to wall pictures of rescue efforts when Israelis are involved rather than Hezbollah. Interesting, isn't it? Rather revealing as well, I think.

When The Circus Comes To Town

Well, Cindy Sheehan is taking time off from her romance with Hugo Chavez to attend the grand opening of the new Sheehan Circus and Sideshow® in Crawford, Texas. She and a huge crowd of supporters. all 50 of them, marched toward president Bush's ranch.

Under the blazing Texas sun, Sheehan and more than 50 demonstrators again marched a mile and a half toward Bush's ranch, stopping at a roadblock. As Secret Service agents stood silently, Sheehan held up her California driver's license and said she wanted to meet with the president.

"It doesn't say my new address, but I do live here now," said Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and recently bought land in Crawford for war protests. "My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son."

The group then chanted, "This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy sounds like!" and a few people sang "This Land Is Your Land" while standing near the roadblock before returning to the protest site. (Ed note: democracy looks like a freak show? Who knew?)

White House spokesman Tony Snow has said that neither Bush nor his staff plan to meet with Sheehan.

"I would advise her to bring water, Gatorade or both," Snow said when asked about Sheehan during a press briefing Friday. "Honestly, when you're talking about the kind of issues that we're talking about, Cindy Sheehan hasn't risen to the level of staff meetings at this point."

Earlier Sunday, about 50 protesters attended an interfaith service Sunday on the 5 acres that Gold Star Families for Peace recently bought with insurance money Sheehan received after her oldest son, Casey, died in Iraq in 2004.

Wow, 50 supporters. Is the world finally tired of Cindy?

Meanwhile, the local burger joint reports a huge run on their stocks of the new menu favorite, the rack of lamb with mint jelly smoothie™. Sheehan apparently bought out the entire stock for her midday snack, in strict accordance with her fast.

One Reason

I've seen a lot of "Conventional Wisdom" in the past couple of days that pretty much says Lieberman will lose the primary. I wrote a while back that I personally would not count an old pro like Lieberman out too easily or too quickly. And the most recent poll shows Lieberman gaining a bit on Lamont. Funny how that works, isn't it? That's one reason I never count out a candidate too soon. Things can turn around very quickly.

HARTFORD, Conn. — U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, fighting for his political survival, appears to be cutting into challenger Ned Lamont's lead the day before Connecticut's Democratic primary election, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday.

The poll shows Lamont, a wealthy Greenwich businessman, leading Lieberman 51 percent to 45 percent among likely Democratic voters heading into Tuesday's primary.

So much for the much crowed about double digit lead. I am not at all a big fan of polls and polling in general, as any long-term reader knows. My personal advice to anyone who is contacted for a poll is to lie to the pollster, on general principles. Polls like this one, even if really well constructed are usually highly suspect, especially in a primary. We'll know by tomorrow night, won't we?

Peretz On Lieberman

Martin Peretz, the editor of The New Republic, writes about Lieberman and Lamont in today's Opinion Journal. He echoes many of the same themes I have posted about over the months I have been writing about this primary.

Yes, Mr. Lieberman sometimes sounds a bit treacly. He certainly is preachy, and advertises his sense of his own righteousness. But he has also been brave, and bravery is a rare trait in politicians, especially in states that are really true-blue or, for that matter, really true-red. The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont's will be if Mr. Lamont wins, have made Iraq the litmus test for incumbents. There are many reasonable, and even correct, reproofs that one may have for the conduct of the war. They are, to be sure, all retrospective. But one fault cannot be attributed to the U.S., and that is that we are on the wrong side. We are at war in a just cause, to protect the vulnerable masses of the country from the helter-skelter ideological and religious mass-murderers in their midst. Our enemies are not progressive peasants as was imagined three and four decades ago.

If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength. Of course, they cannot touch Hillary Clinton, who lists rightward and then leftward so dexterously that she eludes positioning. Not so Mr. Lieberman. He does not camouflage his opinions. He does not play for safety, which is why he is now unsafe.

Already unpopular with the Koz Kidz, Peretz is sure to be vilified for this piece even further. But he is absolutely spot on in his assessment of Lamont and of Lieberman.

Now Mr. Lamont's views are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be done about Iran's nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressive diplomacy. I'd like to bring in allies when we can. I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate." Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing. It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in, but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is precisely what has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamont continues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keeping the military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong with that? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that we had disposed of the military option in favor of more country club behavior?

That Lamont's position here shows an amateurish understanding of the world is beyond question. The problem with any single issue candidate is that they simply don't grasp the fact that there are other things in the world than the one thing they believe is important.

Proportion And International Law

Writing in the Opinion Journal, Orde Kittrie, a professor of international law at Arizona State University and alumni of the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2003, discusses the concept of proportionality, and it's current misuse by opponents of Israel.

Geneva Convention Protocol I contains one version of the proportionality test, the International Criminal Court Statute another; neither is universally accepted. As a result, the proportionality test is governed by "customary international law," an amalgam of non-universal treaty law, court decisions, and how influential nations actually behave. It does not hinge on the relative number of casualties, or the force used, however, but on the intent of the combatant. Under customary international law, proportionality prohibits attacks expected to cause incidental death or injury to civilians if this harm would, on balance, be excessive in relation to the overall legitimate military accomplishment anticipated.

At Qana, Israeli aircraft fired toward a building to stop Hezbollah from shooting rockets at its cities. The aircraft did not deliberately target civilians; but Hezbollah rockets are targeted at civilians, a clear war crime. U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland last week called on Hezbollah to stop its "cowardly blending" among women and children: "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this." If Hezbollah used Lebanese civilians in Qana as "human shields," then Hezbollah, not Israel, is legally responsible for their deaths.

If Israel was mistaken and Hezbollah was not firing from or hiding amongst these civilians, the legality of its action is assessed by the proportionality test. Because the test is vague, there have been few, if any, cases since World War II in which a soldier, commander or country has been convicted of violating it. In the absence of guidance from the courts, determining whether Israel's military has failed the proportionality test depends on an assessment of what civilian casualties it expected, what its overall military goals are, the context in which the country is operating, and how the international community has in practice balanced civilian risk against military goals.

Israel did not expect civilian casualties; it warned civilians to leave Qana, and Israel's official investigation has concluded its military attacked based on "information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists." The law of war recognizes that mistakes are inevitable, and does not criminalize soldiers who seek in good faith seek to avoid them.

Israel's overall military goal is to survive attacks by enemies determined to annihilate it. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has stated: "Israel . . . is an aggressive, illegal and illegitimate entity, which has no future. . . . Its destiny is manifested in our motto: 'Death to Israel.' " Thus Israel is attempting to prevent Hezbollah from using its 10,000 remaining rockets, and to implement the requirement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 that Hezbollah be disarmed.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah and Iran–which provides this terrorist group with arms, direction and over $100 million a year–are in continual violation of international law. Their calls for Israel's destruction violate the international genocide treaty's prohibition of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide." Iran's effort to develop a nuclear arsenal that could obliterate Israel, or deter its responses to future Hezbollah attacks, violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iranian (and Syrian) support for Hezbollah violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 1373, requiring states to "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts." Hezbollah began the armed conflict with rocket attacks on Israeli towns and the abduction of Israeli soldiers: unprovoked acts of war violating an internationally recognized border.

As Kittrie points out later in the article, Israel's harshest critics have been far more egregious in their own handling of proportionality in recent years. It is only Israel that is held to these artificial standards that have no real existence in "international law". Read the whole thing. Kittrie is a lot more expert in this field than many of the people criticizing Israel.

Prudhoe Bay Oilfield Shut Down

The operator of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, BP, is in the process of shutting down the field completely due to pipe wall thinning in the pipelines used to transport oil. This is, of course, not really good news at a time when oil prices are already high. That takes about 400,000 barrels of domestic oil production (8%) per day off the market.

Steve Marshall, president of BP Exploration Alaska Inc., said Sunday night that the eastern side of Prudhoe Bay would be shut down first, an operation anticipated to take 24 to 36 hours. The company will then move to shut down the west side, a move that could close more than 1,000 Prudhoe Bay wells.

Once the field is shut down, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel.

The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East.

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo. A barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil.

"Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment," Emori said. "But we can't really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced."

But Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said he expected the impact to be minimal since crude inventories are high.

"So while this won't have any immediate impact on U.S. supplies, the market is in very high anxiety. So any significant disruption, traders will take that into account, even though there is no threat of a supply shortage."

All the more reason to get more production on line as soon as possible. On thing in the story is wrong, I suspect:

Marshall said tests Friday indicated that there were 16 anomalies in 12 areas in an oil transit line on the eastern side of Prudhoe Bay. Tests found losses in wall thickness of between 70 and 81 percent. Repair or replacement is required if there is more than an 80 percent loss.

I'm pretty sure that's backwards. I suspect the remaining wall thicknesses are between 70 and 80%. I rather doubt they allow an 80% reduction before taking action. I know in the power Field, we would never allow an 80% wall thickness loss before replacing a pipe.

The Chavez World Tour

Jackson Diehl, writing in the Washington Post describes Hugo Chavez's tour around the world last week. As he points out, most people did not pay any attention to the words of the Venezuelan Castro understudy. I noted his appearance in Tehran, but did not post a whole lot about his other antics. It was a busy week after all.

No wonder Ahmadinejad had just described Chávez as a "brother and trench mate." But the Venezuelan wasn't finished. Israel's acts, he said, reminded him of a time when Simon Bolivar had invoked the story of Cain and Abel to talk about an enemy. "Bolivar said that day: 'God, if you have justice, throw a lightning bolt at the monsters,' " Chávez pronounced. "I would say today: 'God, throw the lightning bolts at the monsters.' Inshallah ."

According to BBC Monitoring, Chávez won a round of applause from his Iranian friends. Curiously, though, his tirade got almost no attention outside Tehran. In a week during which a movie star was pilloried for a somewhat milder anti-Semitic outburst (and Mel Gibson at least could say he was drunk), no one seemed to care about the hate speech of the president of a large South American country and one of the world's biggest oil exporters — a man who has been conducting a frenetic campaign to win his government a two-year term on the United Nations Security Council.

In fact, Chávez's performance was in keeping with the character of an eight-nation tour that took him from Argentina to Benin. But Israel was not his main concern. At each stop, the self-styled "Bolivarian revolutionary" delivered superheated denunciations of the United States and called for a global coalition to combat "the U.S. imperialist monster."

Diehl goes on to describe several of Hugo's greatest hits, so to speak. But a lot of his rhetoric produced the opposite of what he intended, it would seem. Hugged by some dictators, others wanted little to do with him. Russia just wanted access to Venezuelan cash, but Putin literally held him off when Chavez tried for a hug.

What to make of all this? One easy explanation is that Chávez has come unhinged, and his hatred of the United States — not to mention Jews — is pathological. But I find another theory more persuasive: Chávez is betting that resentment and anger toward the United States has become so entrenched around the world that by becoming its champion he can make himself a global leader. First, in his reckoning, Venezuela will brush aside Russia and France to lead the opposition to U.S. initiatives at the United Nations. Then, who knows?

This offers an interesting test of just how far other countries are now willing to go in challenging the U.S. global role. The answer is: not too far, if Chávez is the alternative. In Argentina, South American governments swiftly rejected his suggestion of a joint military force. In Belarus, he got a bear hug from Lukashenko, a diplomatic pariah; but Vietnam's top leaders, who are hoping to host President Bush in November, appeared embarrassed by Chávez's rhetoric, which they pointedly did not second.

Hugo is a very arrogant little man with a very big mouth. He is dangerous only in that he has elected to join hands with the Axis of Egos™ along with Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il. But he can, and is, stirring up trouble for the world. Diehl more or less dismisses him, I would not be so quick to do so.