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The Foundations of Barad-Dur The leniency of Bali bombing mastermind Abu Bakar Bashir's sentence -- 30 months for the murder of 202 people -- has shocked the Australian public , not in the least because after long labor the mountain has brought forth a mouse. Former magistrate Brian Deegan, who lost his son Josh, 22, in the Bali bombing, said Bashir's sentence was outrageous. "It equates to a bit over a week (in jail) per man, woman and child that were hurt," Mr Deegan said today. "You get no closure out of this, it's absolutely insulting." Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty is warning that the kid-glove treatment of Bashir has not satisified his supporters, who regard the slightest inconvenience to their 'spiritual leader' for the mere act of murdering infidels a mortal insult. New terrorist attacks are possible in a backlash by supporters of Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir over his jailing, Australia's...

New Comments Policy In response to complaints about the tediousness of the Blogger registration requirements, unregistered commenters are now enabled . However, if we get an influx of trolls and other unsavory characters, the 'registered users' policy must come back on. Let's see how it goes. Update In deference to the wisdom of the commenters, who note that anonymous comments will attract trolls, things are back to their previous settings.

Hanson Versus Edsforth Victor Davis Hanson recently debated Dartmouth History Professor Ronald Edsforth on the subject of whether the war in Iraq  or any war, for that matter, could ever be justified. (Hat tip: DL) By attacking Iraq, Edsforth said, the United States had usurped the authority of the United Nations, in which the world community can take action to promote the common good. Since treaties like those that established the U.N. are held in the United States to be “the supreme law of the land,” he said, the American government has effectively abrogated its own Constitution. He noted, for example, that a White House lawyer drafted guidelines regarding torture, even though the U.S. is party to the Geneva Conventions. ... “War is terrible,” Hanson agreed. But in a rebuttal, he said the United Nations has historically not intervened for the common good, even against the worst abuses. The U.N., much of which he said is “populated by thugs and brigands” li...

The Beat Goes On The Chicago Tribune describes a new method for detecting nuclear material. The Los Alamos-developed detector relies on measuring the interaction between cosmic rays and and the material being scanned. The different materials have interaction signatures which identify them. By placing detectors above and below a vehicle, scientists can monitor muon interaction with different materials in the vehicle's cargo. The higher density a material is, the more muons will scatter when they make contact. A computer uses the scatter data to create an image of the different materials in the vehicle. High-density materials, such as plutonium or uranium, are flagged. The system is said to require only 20 seconds to scan a shipping container and because it simply measures cosmic rays which are present in the everyday environment, the method does not pose a risk to users, even illegal immigrants who might be hiding within the container. The Homeland Security site at Ohio...

The theater widens Austin Bay links to Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens ' view of events sweeping across the Middle East: Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt and possibly Syria. It is a reminder of why Iraq was commanded through CENTCOM. During the days when the overt action was centered on Iraq, it was easy to forget that it was one battlefield within a theater. Now the theater itself has come to the fore and the atmosphere is one of 'breakout and pursuit'. The breakout creates a new set of opportunities and problems. These can be described as 'emergent phenomenon',  -- the result of interactions between individual elements within the Middle East and Southwest Asian theater that are now bouncing off each other. Worse -- or more exciting -- is that these recent developments now have linkages into Europe and Russia. France and the EU, for example, are getting engaged in Lebanon while going in the other direction, Russia has declared interest in supplying technolog...

Posting will be light Real pressure at work these past days has left me with no time to post. Pretty exciting stuff is happening in Lebanon though. Go to the Syria Comment site for additional info. Across the Bay is another excellent site.

Betrayals The Denver Channel reports that 200 University of Colorado faculty members have published a petition in a local newspaper asking that the investigation against Ward Churchill be dropped. The faculty members paid for the ad to run Monday in The Boulder Daily Camera . The ad says the review of the professor, expected to complete by the middle of March, should be stopped immediately. The ad says the inquiry is the result of political pressure and not based on "any prior formal complaint of specific professional or academic misconduct on his part." ... CU's Arts and Sciences Council passed a resolution Feb. 10 protesting the investigation, and said administrators should know that faculty members are serious about their opposition to what some consider a witch hunt. Margaret LeCompte, an education professor, said, "It is going to be extremely difficult, if academic freedom is on the block, for us to hire and keep good faculty members....