Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4757964.stm

...as violence is escalating in the country, with dozens of people being killed on a daily basis.
The USA is making the usual tut-tut pronouncements about the people of Iraq having to choose between order or chaos. However, there is a fundamental fallacy that underpins the US administration's view of the situation in Iraq, namely that Iraq is a "country" in an accepted Western sense of the word, with a fairly monolithic culture, an established legal system, and a well-organized government.
None of the above ideas apply to the area currently known as Iraq. Iraq is not a cohesive country. Like the former Yugoslavia, and Belgium, it is a manufactured country.
The country that we currently know as Iraq was assembled in the 1920's, when the United Kingdom and France, under the auspices of the League of Nations, took charge of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire and carved it up among themselves. France took Lebanon and Syria into its sphere of influence. The UK created Jordan (imposing a new monarchy), and Iraq was formed out of three former Ottoman vilayets (regions): Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. The British gave the new area the name Al-Iraq, a name which was previously applied only to the southern region of the Basra vilayet. The word irak in Turkish means far or distant and this is where the name originated.
The British created a new Hashemite monarchy for the country, although this was subsequently overthrown in a coup, and Iraq thereafter was ruled by a succession of "strongmen" of various levels of ineptitude and venality, of which Saddam Hussein was merely the most recent (and the most unpleasant).
Iraq has never been a unified country with any homogeneous culture. The three separate regions have always kept their own distinctive worldviews and religious affiliations. When Saddam Hussein took over the country, he continued to maintain the illusion of a monolithic country to the outside world, just as Josep Tito managed to maintain the illusion that Yugoslavia was an ethnically and nationally unified country (and we all know how that evolved after his death). Hussein managed to maintain the illusion of unity by the occasional application of carrots and the frequent brutal and murderous application of sticks. He was also aided by the long War with Iran, which was an expensive stalemate, but provided a convenient rallying cry for national unity and cohesion. When the Iran war ended, Saddam picked a fight with Kuwait to further cement national unity and also to burnish his pan-Arabist credentials (the Ba'Ath party, which Saddamn helped to grow in Iraq, has always had a secular pan-Arabist philosophical base).
Once Saddam was removed from the scene, Iraq was always likely to behave like an overstressed pressure-cooker. The numerous tensions and resentments have now surfaced, with the results that we see right now.
IMHO, it is time for a lot of people to stop pretending that there is a single country called Iraq. It was not true when the country was formed, and it is not true today. Any policies and strategies must take this into account. One question that needs to be on the table for discussion (but seems to be regarded as "the question that must not be asked") is whether Iraq should be allowed to split into its three former regions. That may be the best solution to address the current tensions between the ethnic and religious groupings.

...who has died at the age of 81.
Although most people know Dennis Weaver as a TV show actor, I actually knew of a different Dennis Weaver. He was a deeply committed environmentalist, who put his money where his mouth was. His home in Ridgeway Colorado was a custom-built Earthship. At the time of his death, the home had been put up for sale, possibly due to his health issues. Here is a tour of the house. Weaver spent most of the last 20 years of his life working for environmental causes and projects.

Link: http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/13950130.htm

...in the Ohio legislature, a Democratic member is going to introduce a bill to forbid any household with more than 1 Republican voter from adopting children...this is a direct response to the pathetic piece of legislation already proposed to prevent gay people from adopting children.
I like it. It's about time that we employed the arts of satire and ridicule against bigots and mean-spirited jerks.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,,1704954,00.html

...Sweden has asked a collaborative task force to assemble a plan to make the country independent of oil imports.
The contrast with the current pusillanimous farting about on renewable energy sources in the USA could not be more striking...

While some folks get excited about the VP bagging a lawyer instead of a quail, not very far from us a series of tales of deceit, double-dealing, backstabbing, financial avarice, public posturing, bullshit and other examples of human mendacity is starting to unfold.
I refer of course, to the NFL off-season.

This is when clubs fire unwanted or suddenly-too-expensive-despite-the-mutual-protestations-of-undying-love-and-admiration-when-we-signed-you-to-that-19-year-10-gazillion-dollars-contract players, finagle their salary caps (twice), make backroom deals for the NFL draft lottery, and generally alter their player, coach and personnel landscapes.
Sit back, ladies and gentlemen, because this off-season promises to be a lot more interesting than usual.

The main reason is the imminent expiry of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. The main impact is that if the CBA expires, 2007 will be an uncapped year. This will, one suspects, favour certain owners (with names like Jones and Snyder) who have big egos, big franchise values and big checkbooks. According to prevailing orthodoxy, they will open their checkbooks and hoover up all of the available talent.
This is only superficially plausible. One notes that the New York Yankees, despite having an owner who spends millions on free-agents at about the same frequency I spend money at Starbucks, still tend not to win the World Series every season. However, it will certainly upset the applecart in terms of the players union, which is unlikely to be in favour of a salary cap after some of the marquee players literally get buried in vast quantities of guaranteed cash (roster bonuses? deferred salary? Phhht. Give me the cash NOW, dammit!)

It seems that the NFL may be about to agree a new CBA before the expiry of the Free-agent signing period, which may also be extended past March 2, both to allow the CBA to be extended, and also to head off the potentially unpleasant scenario of some free agents signing under the old CBA rules, only to find that their team-mates have signed under the new (presumably much more generous) rules. To paraphrase Paul Tagliabue, there may yet be a deal at the fifty-nineth minute of the eleventh hour...
Anyway, onto the more juicy stuff:


Duante Culpepper appears to be in the process of gaining a ticket out of Minnesota to somewhere else. Put it this way - any quarterback who plays poorly, suffers 3 torn knee ligaments in mid-season, finds himself charged with misdemeanours after, ahem, some allegedly interesting events aboard a boat, and then (rumor on) asks for a $10 million dollar salary raise for 2006 (rumor off), after firing his agent and now representing himself, has to be either (a) smoking some mind-altering material (b) trying to get traded or cut, or (c) both of the above. (One is also reminded of the old adage that any lawyer who represents himself has a fool for client, but I digress).

Culpepper has next to no leverage in contract negotiations with the Vikings, who have a capable backup (Brad Johnson) under contract already, and who can even afford to take the salary cap hit of releasing him if all else fails. He has been unwilling to accept any public culpability for the boat incident; indeed, he is taking it to a jury trial and hoping to be found not guilty. Even if this results in his acquittal, it merely drags the whole incident up in the media and public eye again, which is not something that the Vikings want or need. The severity of his knee injuries make him unlikely to be ready to play until some time in the 2006 season, and it is unclear whether he will be anywhere near as mobile as he used to be. For that reason, the Vikings are unlikely to ge able to trade him for anything other than a couple of conditional draft picks. The roster bonus owed him is also a sticking point.
My verdict: Culpepper is done in Minnesota. He may end up signing as a backup at another club for 2006 and hoping he can work his way back to being a starter over time.


Over in New Jersey, the boot is on the other foot, as the New York Jets attempt to renegotiate the contract of Chad Pennington, whose recent playing time of 18 games in 2 seasons has cost the Jets around $22m, since it involved 2 rotator cuff surgeries on his throwing arm along the way.

The boot is on the other foot here because, unlike the Vikings, the Jets are currently way over the 2006 cap, so cutting Pennington is not an option. The Jets could not afford to carry that amount of "dead" money on their books and still have something approximating to a team in 2006. Pennington and his agent therefore hold most of the cards. The Jets have asked him to convert his guaranteed salary and roster bonus for 2006 to the minimum base salary plus a deal to make make up most of the money through incentives. However, Pennington is under no obligation to say yes, and the Jets have no veteran backup QB waiting in the wings to use as leverage. This one may yet get ugly.


Kyle Vanden Bosch, on the other hand, is probably about to sign a very nice contract with the Tennesse Titans (for whom he played in 2005) or another club. After several years when he seemed to be felled by season-ending injuries every year (including 2 torn ACLs), Vanden Bosch recorded a large sack total, went to his first Pro Bowl, and is now a free agent at precisely the right time; with his efforts visible on all of the clubs' highlight reels from 2005. Expect him to sign a very lucrative contract with a large amount of guaranteed money at some time in the next 2 months. All power to him.


T.O. - The Saga Continues. The Eagles gave his agent permission to seek a trade, and Rosenhaus is busy testing and talking up the market in any way possible. While there seem to be a few clubs that are interested (and a larger number who claim that they are not), I still expect no trade, and T.O. to be released by the Eagles after March 2. I don't believe that any club wants him enough to give up more than one or two conditional low-round picks. T.O. has blown up two locker-rooms already. However, maybe (like marriage) some club genuinely does believe that third time's a charm...The question that every NFL player is probably dreading this offseason is "would T.O. fit in at your club?". It's become the new NFL equivalent of "when did you stop beating your wife"? Almost impossible to answer without digging yourself into some sort of interrogative hole.


Buffalo Bills. Dick Jauron has already done one smart thing by announcing that anybody who wants to start at QB in 2006 will have to earn it. I expect Kelly Holcomb to emerge as the starter again. He may not have the arm or athleticism of J.P. Losman, but when he is on the field the players seem to stop fidgetting and start doing the right things. Losman needs to work on his pocket presence, because based on last season, he has about as much pocket presence as Rob Johnson (and we know how that story ended).


Coaching Changes. Expect several teams who change coaches to do no better or worse under their new incumbents next season. Recent NFL history shows that stability is the main key to consistent high performance. This may spell bad news for teams that fired their coaches with marginal records. However, if you finished 2-14 (step forward, Houston Texans) an improvement would be expected, especially with Mike Sherman now assisting new head coach Gary Kubiak.
I will be watching to see if Mike Martz can install the same sort of light-it-up offense in Detroit that he did at St. Louis. More interestingly, which quarterback will he use to run it? He does not have the option of using Kurt Warner, who just re-upped with the Arizona Cardinals, and looks likely to play out his career with them. Off-season in Detroit will be more than a little intruiging...

Link: http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2006-02-09/news/schutze_1.html

Why, it's another one of those mighty weird "hurry up and sign now or you lose out" deals involving Reunion Arena, some other land, a bunch of developers who don't have financing (but we're really close, honest), and...gambling.
Also in the mix is a requirement for...yep, you guessed it, Some City of Dallas Money.
Jeez, I can smell the fragrant odor of deals like this from where I live, which is the other side of Texas Stadium. Contacted for comment, one developer, Michael Anderson of Chavez Properties, summed it up very neatly:

I always get in a three-point stance when people tell me that it's very, very complicated and that it must be done very, very quickly," Anderson said. "When they say it's complicated and it has to be done fast, it's been my history that I usually don't have time or energy for those deals, because they usually don't pan.

I used to wonder why Dallas City Council had such a bad reputation, back in the days of Ron Kirk (the same Ron Kirk whose cheerleader speech at a Fair Park Olympic booster event I attended could have won the competition for the World's Best Cure for Insomnia). Now I understand only too well why the council has a bad reputation. It appears to be largely populated by sectarian doofuses. I guess the good news is that the more Dallas screws up, the better the surrounding cities look. So far the only recent good news in Dallas is that the council did not fall for the "New Cowboys Stadium" pitch by Jerry Jones, leaving Arlington to prove that, when it comes to being suckered by sports franchise owners, once is never enough.

Link: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article345496.ece

...where the second leading opposition figure in several months has been found dead in highly suspicious circumstances.
At the risk of sounding glib, it seems that any country with a name ending in 'stan' always has challenges when it comes to concepts like stable representative government, democracy, objective rule of law etc.

Well, contrary to my earlier posting, it seems that local law enforcement did get involved, questioned both VP Cheney and his shooting victim, and have decided that it was an accident.
The media were not informed until the owner of the ranch where the quail shooting took place informed the local media on Sunday morning, close to 18 hours after the incident. It seems that the delay was more caused by failure to provide information than by the media being asleep. The media are now in a feeding frenzy over the incident.
Here is an opinion from a sometime quail hunter, who opines that VP Cheney, as the person firing the gun, bears most of the share of the blame.
But...where would we be without some humour? Here is your very own Cheney Shooting Game...

Link: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2006/02/taking_aim_at_c.html#c13920852

As has already been observed, think of the fuss that the GOP would have raised if John Kerry had shot somebody while hunting...and where the hell are the media on this story? They were asleep at the wheel...as usual.
Since the NRA is always informing us that "guns don't kill people, people kill people", I am assuming that the same rules ought to apply to VP Cheney. In my world, if you shoot somebody, it's your problem to explain. Strange, therefore, that I have yet to hear any public expression of remorse by the VP. Ah, wait a minute, perhaps he thinks that the normal rules of human engagement don't apply to him...
Lots of questions remain to be answered about this incident, including why local law enforcement did not get involved (I'm damned sure that if I shot somebody while hunting I would be facing at least an uncomfortable interview).
Still, this incident seems to be a pretty good illustration of the metaphor of what happens to an administration that cannot shoot straight in any context.
My favorite part of the Washington Post responses is the guy who wrote in saying that Cheney had plenty of time to learn about gun handling on his 5 tours of duty in Vietnam...er, he had plenty of time to not learn about gun handling during his 5 deferments from Vietnam...

Link: http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/breaking-news-george-deutsch-did-not.html

It seems that a Bush Administration adviser who was reported to have pressured NASA scientists to keep quiet about inconvenient issues has been overstating his qualifications. He claimed to have graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in journalism. The truth is that he never graduated. He left the university in the Summer of 2004 after being offered a job in the administration. However, his resume ignored this inconvenient issue.
The latest news is that he has now resigned from the administration. Scientific Activist has a follow-up on how the story is being covered (or not covered) by the media, including the A&M student newspaper, for whom Deutsch used to work. Sadly, it appears that this newspaper has had an attack of amnesia when it comes to remembering that fact...
Yet another example of the behaviour of members of an administration for whom the phrase "ethically challenged" looks to be polite these days...I just love it when people get trapped by their own bullshit.