It’s Saturday again, and I am getting very psyched for another radio show on BlogExplosion Radio! I recharged my account at the local mp3 download store, and have been downloading tunes for the past few days, and now I just can’t wait to get some tasty tracks out to all the bloggers out it BE land.
I’m also looking for sites to run contests from. Basically, let me know your site address and a piece of information listeners can look for on your site, and BE will give credits to bloggers for going to your site and finding the info. How can you beat free traffic that’s actually looking at your site? If you want to host a contest, just let me know.
Most importantly, though, we want you to be listening to the show, and if possible hanging out with other listeners in the BE Chat Room, ShoutBox. The show is guided by the listeners, and the excitement in the room is definitely reflected on the air. So help make the show the first truly interactive radio show for bloggers on the internet, and have some fun while doing it.
Posted by Scottage at 1:49 AM / | |
OK, maybe I’m beating a dead horse, but I just read the Yahoo Answers poll on Sarah Jane Porter. For those of you who don’t know, Porter was infected with Aids by an Afro-Caribbean man, the father of her son, and subsequently attempted to have unprotected sex with as many Afro-Caribbean men as possible to get revenge. She continued this while on parole awaiting trial, and refuses to give the authorities a list of the men she slept with.
So I have changed up the poll on the right side of my screen to examine your opinions on this issue. Tell me what you think is the appropriate punishment for Sarah Jane Porter. Also, feel free to elaborate on your argument in the comments section of this post, and be rewarded with BE credits (I’ll give credits to all who respond, and 250 credits to the best response)technorati tags: Sarah Jane Porter, Aids, HIV, Afro-Caribbean, Sex, Murder, Poll
Posted by Scottage at 9:21 AM / | |
The One Percent Doctrine: How Suskind Chose the Name and Why it makes us Less Safe
Let me start by mentioning that so far I am only reading excerpts from “The One Percent Doctrine”, and they have been the source for this post and my two previous posts on the book. Hopefully my copy of Ron Suskind’s book will arrive from Amazon tomorrow. But in the interim, there have been some excellent excerpts to write on. 
According to Gellman, Suskind writes that the title is derived from a doctrine by VP Dick Cheney that was written in response to a report in 2001 that two Pakistani scientists who, in years gone by, had offered to build a bomb for Libya were then meeting with Osama bin Laden. Cheney’s doctrine dealt with “a low-probability, high impact event” such as the scientists building a bomb for Al Qaeda. The Cheney Doctrine states:"If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response."
Suskind states that the Cheney Doctrine allowed Bush to ignore debate about the government’s actions against Al Qaeda, basing the government’s war on terror on “impulse and improvisation” to unprecedented levels. From Suskind’s perspective, this course of action prevented counter-terrorism and intelligence agents from accomplishing their jobs and fighting terror.That approach constricted the mission of the intelligence and counterterrorism professionals whose point of view dominates this book. Many of them came to believe, Suskind reports, that "their jobs were not to help shape policy, but to affirm it." (Some of them nicknamed Cheney "Edgar," as in Edgar Bergen -- casting the president as the ventriloquist's dummy.) Suskind calls those career terror-fighters "the invisibles," and he likes them. His book is full of amazing, persuasively detailed vignettes about their world. At least a dozen former intelligence officials speak frankly in public here.
The Gellman article sites numerous examples from “The One Percent Doctrine” where the views and discoveries of intelligence agents took a back seat to Bush’s policies, often with catastrophic results. Gellman focuses on the capture of Zubaydah, but perhaps more poigniant is the report of the meeting between Tenet and Bush at the Bush ranch on August 6, 2001.The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
In interviews with intelligence officers, Suskind often finds them baffled by White House statements. "Why the hell did the President have to put us in a box like this?" one top CIA official asked about the overblown public portrait of Abu Zubaydah. But Suskind sees a deliberate management choice: Bush ensnared his director of central intelligence at the time, George J. Tenet, and many others in a new kind of war in which action and evidence were consciously divorced.
technorati tags: The One Percent Doctrine, Ron Suskind, Barton Gellman, George W. Bush, Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Pakistani, Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Cheney Doctrine, Abu Zubaydah, George Tenet, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Tora Bora, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Terror
Posted by Scottage at 12:29 AM / | |
13. The Eagles – I had always wanted to see the Eagles, but had never been in the right place at the right time, so when they started touring again a few years ago, I made a point of seeing their show in Boston. They weren’t as tight as they once were, and I think that Joe Walsh has lost a bit of the passion that made the group so incredible, but it was a great nostalgic concert nonetheless. 
11. James Taylor – I’ve seen JT a ton of times, but sitting on a lawn in Cincinnati on a hot summer day with Taylor strumming old favorites and a beautiful woman beside me is about as good as it gets in my book.
9. Aerosmith – The group had been on my list for years, but I didn’t get to see them until they played Darien Lake amusement park last summer. Wow, they really punched it out. Great show!
6. Billy Joel/Elton John – I saw the two piano players together in Boston in 2002, and they were fantastic together. I had seen Elton John many times, and he’s clearly my favorite of the two, but together they showed talent, fervor, and a real connection with the crowds. I was glad to catch them.
4. Stevie Ray Vaughan – I saw Stevie Ray in late August 1990 in Cincinnati, and the guy just jammed. His opening act was Robert Cray, and the two jammed together for 4 of 5 songs. The concert was amazing. Less than a week later, Vaughan died in a helicopter crash, a huge blow to the music world.
2. Eric Clapton – I finally saw Clapton in 2002 in Philadelphia, and what a show that was. He was always my hero, and I had only seen him when I was too young to remember the show. For me, a long time Clapton fan, it was one of the most thrilling moments of my life to me front row center at the Spectrum with Eric Clapton seemingly playing his guitar right to me.
1. JFK Jam I – In 1980, 110,000 people attended the first Jam at JFK, consisting of local legend George Thoroughgood, Journey, and The Rolling Stones. The Stones played for nearly four hours, with most of the concert being caught on video, later made into a movie called “Let’s Spend the Night Together”. At one point, Mick Jagger is on a catwalk which is moving out over the crowds, and he reaches out and grabs the hand of a kid on crutches who is propped up on milk crates, and indeed the kid is me. How could I not have rock and roll fever after that?technorati tags: Concert, Rock & Roll, The Eagles, Harry Chapin, James Taylor, Three Dog Knight, Aerosmith, The Grateful Dead, Styx, Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, Santana, The Clash, The Who, Eric Clapton, George Thoroughgood, Journey, The Rolling Stones
Posted by Scottage at 3:27 PM / | |
More on Sarah Jane Porter, the Aids Assassin
A Quick Follow-Up to the post I ran last night on Sarah Jane Porter, the woman who, after being infected with aids by an Afro-Caribbean man, went on a spree attempting to infect as many Afro-Caribbean men as possible.'If you've slept with her you could be HIV positive, you could be passing the virus to your wife, your girlfriend or boyfriend.' Recalling their affair, Paul said: 'I'd seen her a few times before, and we got talking in the club.
'I was really surprised when she gave me her number. She seemed really into me. Sarah is a very, very good dancer. She has real presence and doesn't have to work hard to attract men. 'I really thought I had met the girl of my dreams.'
'I was having what I believed was a breakdown and at this stage I could not cope with life,' he said. 'I did not care for myself and stopped washing and cleaning my clothes. At times even making dinner was too difficult.
Kojak in MySpace reports on an editorial in The Guardian today was not endangering the lives of other people, but rather denying her condition and her racist digs. Fortunately, Kojak agrees that Porter is a sociopath, and that endangering others is the real crime here. Not so for Beautiful Soul’s friend, who felt Porter didn’t tell people she was sick because she thought they wouldn’t want to sleep with her, and she would be unloved. Crazy, huh?technorati tags: Sarah Jane Porter, Aids, HIV, Sex, Test, Suicide, Afro-Caribbean, Dance, Club
Posted by Scottage at 3:14 AM / | |
In 2000, Sarah Jane Porter was diagnosed with Aids will giving birth to the child she had conceived out of wedlock with an Afro-Caribbean man. Upon learning this tragic news, Porter could have taken the brave way, and found a way to live her life. Or perhaps she could have taken the defeatist way, and decided she didn’t want to live. But Porter found a third way: she went out for revenge!
Porter, pictured right, decided to make it her mission to infect as many Afro-Caribbean males with HIV as possible. She began by entering a relationship with a man we’ll call Mr. B, and lying to her partner when he asked that they both be tested. She said she had recently been tested, and refused to take the Aids test. Her partner believed her, and they engaged in a five year exclusive relationship which included unprotected sex.
Or at least the boyfriend thought the relationship was exclusive; but in reality, Porter was going out regularly to dance clubs, picking up Afro-Caribbean men (and only Afro-Caribbean men), and having unprotected sex with them. Mr. B discovered her vendetta in 2005, and reported it to the authorities, who believe that Porter has had sex with dozens of men during her relationship with Mr. B.
So how do you resolve a situation like this? Is jail for a woman like this cruel and unusual punishment, considering her disease? What punishment could even be worse than the disease she’s contracted? And how can you let a woman like this, with no concern for the health of others, run free in society? I have no answers, only questions, including how a person can be so cruel. Your opinions are welcome!technorati tags: Sarah Jane Porter, Aids, HIV, Sex, Afro-Caribbean, Punishment
Posted by Scottage at 8:38 PM / | |
The One Percent Doctrine and NY Subway Attacks: What You Need To Know!
On Sunday I wrote a post on an excerpt from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine that talks about the potential 2003 attack on the NY Subway system that was called off by Ayman Zawahiri. And today Richard Clarke, former White House chief of counter-terrorism said there was reason to be skeptical of the reported incident, indicating that even if it was true it was one of hundreds of threats recorded during Clarke’s tenure."There's reason to be skeptical," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, who is the former chief of White House counterterrorism. "Just because something is labeled in an intelligence report does not mean every word in it is true." He said the information describing the plot would have been just one of the hundreds of threats that would have been collected in 2003.
At the same time, my friend and talented writer Soccer Dad sent me a link to a fascinating article from May 2001, reporting on the trial of four defendants in the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The article is well worth a read, especially considering its timing. The basic premise is that, despite locking up these four Al Qaeda operatives, the U.S. had become no safer.Unfortunately, the trial does almost nothing to enhance the safety of Americans. The Qaeda group, headed by the notorious Osama bin Laden, which perpetrated the outrages in East Africa, will barely notice the loss of four operatives. Indeed, recent information shows that Al-Qaeda is not only planning new attacks on the U.S. but is also expanding its operational range to countries such as Jordan and Israel.
Perhaps the real importance of the New York trial lies not in the guilty verdicts but in the extraordinary information made public through court exhibits and trial proceedings. These have given us a riveting view onto the shadowy world of Al-Qaeda-though you'd never know from following the news media, for this information was barely reported. Tens of thousands of pages from the trial transcript provide a full and revealing picture of Al-Qaeda, showing it to be the most lethal terrorist organization anywhere in the world.
They demonstrate that Al-Qaeda sees the West in general, and the U.S. in particular, as the ultimate enemy of Islam. Inspired by their victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the leaders of Al-Qaeda aspire to a similar victory over America, hoping ultimately to bring Islamist rule here. Toward this end, they engaged in many attacks on American targets from 1993 to 1998. One striking piece of information that came out in the trial was bin Laden's possible connection to the World Trade Center bombing in New York in 1993. A terrorist manual introduced as evidence was just an updated version of an earlier manual found in the possession of the World Trade Center defendants.
So the question that begs to be answered is: what is the value of Suskind’s report on the potential NY subway bombing? Because, even if it is only one of hundreds of potential attacks reported, there is some value in this report.
Awareness of the tactics of terrorists was growing in England when I lived there. Citizens were paying more attention to their surroundings, and we less shy about notifying officials when seeing unusual activity. As such, more IRA attacks in England were being prevented, and terrorists were being captured, leading to further information on their cells.technorati tags: The One Percent Doctrine, The One Percent Doctrine Ron Suskind, Ron Suskind, Ayman Zawahiri, Richard Clarke, Counter-Terrorism, Subway, 2003, Intelligence, Al Qaeda, Steven Emerson, Daniel Pipes, Kenya, Tanzania, Embassy, bin Laden, Mubtakkar
Posted by Scottage at 7:00 PM / | |
To a person who’s never been there, the answer may never be found. Sure, people can talk about the history, the tangible proof found everywhere of the stories found in the bible and our own heritage, regardless of your religion, but that’s not it. Others speak of its geographic location, as a keystone of three continents, a trade route between Africa, Europe and Asia. But while Israel’s location makes it strategically valuable, this has little to do with what makes Israel so special.
But while Israel’s appeal may elude the rational thinker, it is crystal clear to the person who has walked the sands of the country with an open heart: it’s because in Israel you can feel something special, something which I have no terminology for other than “the power of God”.
The power of the city is almost tangible, you can feel it and taste it, and it seems as if it emanates from the Temple Mount itself. I believe it is no accident that the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are in such close proximity to each other. There’s something special there, something indescribable that makes the Mount and Jerusalem itself the true capital of all religion?
I can hardly imagine what a person who reads this post and has never been to Israel is thinking at this point; perhaps they believe I’m crazy or imagining things. But people who have spent time in Jerusalem and have lived in the Holy Land know exactly what I’m talking about. We have all felt it, and the feeling is too powerful to ignore.
Oddly enough, the same feeling felt by the Jews who have spent time in Israel is felt by the Muslims and Christians who have spent time in the country as well. It reminds us that the Jewish God, the God of the Old Testament, is also the God of Islam and the God of Christianity; there is One God, there is none else.
I can’t tell you what the future holds for Israel, who will wind up running the country, or how the present dispute will be settled. But I can say definitively that it’s a special country, with a power like none other I’ve felt in the world. And I can also say that if you haven’t been there, haven’t experienced what Israel has to offer, you are missing something glorious in your life. Make it a point to get to Israel; you will be glad for the experience.technorati tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Islam, Muslim, Jew, Christian, God, Dome Of The Rock, Church Of The Holy Sepulcher, Religion, Western Wall
Posted by Scottage at 8:14 PM / | |
Haveil Havelim Now Posted
Posted by Scottage at 5:10 PM / | |
Deadly Terror Attack on NY Subways Called Off
Time Magazine has printed a book excerpt from Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind’s new book “The One Percent Doctrine”, and it documents a potentially brutal attack on the NY subways that was called off at the last minute by Al Qaeda #2 Ayman Zawahiri. The attack would have dispersed a poison gas equivalent to that used in the concentration camps inside the subway system, killing any who breathed it. One current and two former US officials have confirmed most details on the attack."In the world of terrorist weaponry," writes Suskind, "this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot – and then kill everyone in the store."
A mole inside of Al Qaeda, known by code-name “Ali” indicated that the attack was only 45 days from being implemented at the orders of Yusaf al-Ayeri, the top Al Qaeda operative in the Arabian Peninsula. However, when al-Ayeri reported on the attack to Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman Zawahiri, he called the attack off. There is no indication as to why Zawahiri did not want the attack to be carried out.Two of the officials said that the device was actually quite primitive put together with beer cans and soda bottles. Still, the officials say, models of the device built from Al Qaeda designs by U.S. authorities appeared to work. The weapon was not regarded as the type of device that could cause large-scale, 9/11-style carnage, the officials told the magazine. But if set off in a crowded theater or arena was capable of killing hundreds of people.
technorati tags: Terror, New York, Subway, Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine, Time Magazine, Al Qaeda, Zawahiri, Mubtakkar, Inventive, Hydrogen-Cyanide, Ali, Bin Laden, Ayeri, Saudi Arabia
Posted by Scottage at 6:36 AM / | |
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