drat fink
View current page...more recent posts
mais oui
what better way to study up on your parlez vous than a bilingual franglais blog. been around for a while. surprised i didnt bump into it before.
via buzz machine
baghdoodads
"As three U.S. combat divisions and assorted forces bear down on Baghdad, the big question of the war now is, how will U.S. troops take the Iraqi capital? This is a matter U.S. war planners pondered long before President Bush launched the war. Last summer, a secret team of high-level military officers and senior civilian Pentagon officials designed a tactical playbook for presentation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff "war-fighting group," a Pentagon outfit that oversees war plans. Titled "Joint Urban Operations," the report was developed by the team to study and enhance U.S. combat abilities in an urban environment. But a classified summary PowerPoint presentation of the study—made available to us by a source with access to the document—focused exclusively on one particular urban area: Baghdad. And this summary shows the various ways U.S. military planners considered conquering the city."
diplomania
"Welcome to H-Diplo, the H-NET discussion list dedicated to the study of diplomatic and international history."
via altercation
laurel canyon
anybody catch the joni mitchell episode of American Masters on pbs? heres a robot wisdom timeline of her life. i was at the 1986 amnesty international show where she was nearly booed off the stage. i never knew she was a last minute replacement for pete townsend.
got me thinking about who were the most influential women in music history. looks like vh-1 has had a series this past month with their list of The 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. pretty good point of departure although any poll that has lucinda williams at 96 and alannis morissette at 52 is troubling. ill see if i can find other resources. anybody care to proffer a top 10?
open road
"Welcome to OSS.NET. Since 1992, we have championed open source intelligence (OSINT), intelligence reform, and the creation of Smart Nations. Beginning in 2002 we are also championing a global intelligence grid that brings the seven tribes of intelligence (national, military, law enforcement, business, academic, NGO-media, and religious-clan-citizen) into effective relations with one another, in part through the creation of ISO standards for those elements of intelligence that are open, ethical, legal, and generic."
via kos
century marketers
"100 People Who Changed New York"
via gawker
prim objective
"You will be happy to learn that the former head of the KGB (the secret police of the former Soviet Union), General Yevgeni Primakov, has been hired as a consultant by the US Department of Homeland Security. Do you think he will share his expertise in "security" to prepare US citizens for domestic internal passports under the pretense of fighting the never-ending "War on Terrorism"?"
via american samizdat
defense poet laureate
"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know. "
interesting prospects
congrats to matt for climbing out of the primordial blogosphere into the bright sunshine of paychecks and future bylines. and what a novel concept too, having a job lined up before you graduate. next time i go to college ill have to consider that route.
back to iraq to the future
"He makes a phone call to the Sirnak jandarma post, the regional HQ, apparently. They’re checking our press credentials. He smiles at me. “In five, ten minutes, Christopher, you go to Cizre.”
“Great!” I said, and stood up.
“You will sit down, please,” he said. I did.
The major wanted to ask me a few more questions.
“Your name is Christopher, no?”
I nodded. “Evet,” I said. Yes.
He paused to think for a moment. Then he looked at me again.
“Who is that actor, in ‘Back to the Future’? With Michael J. Fox?”
“Christopher Lloyd?”
“Yes!” he said."