“An indoor mall next to the [Camp Doha, Kuwait] finance office includes the Pamas Souvenir Shop, with carved wooden camels and T-shirts displaying a mushroom cloud with the caption, “Weather Forecast: Baghdad 32,000 Degrees and Partly Cloudy.” Other shops offer Iranian carpets, custom engraved wedding bands and Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200s. Enormous lines form at the Subway, Hardee’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken counters.” Rick Atkinson, writing in the Washington Post.

In today’s Washington Post: 100 people protested at the mall where a guy was arrested for wearing an antiwar t-shirt, as I mentioned yesterday.

There’s an interesting two-way radio network being set up in Washington for use in the event of a terrorist attack or other emergency (such as, around here, a 1/2 inch of snow).

CBS News had three translators for the Dan Rather interview with Saddam Hussein, but then had a fourth guy do the on-air translation, who had a nice Arab-sounding accent to add authenticity to the whole thing. That fourth guy was Steve Winfield, member of the Screen Actors Guild, who also does Spanish, French, Italian, Portugese, and German authentic accents.

There’s a new PayPal scam arriving by email. Reminder: never click on an email-supplied link to go to a financial site; they can take you to a spoof site instead with the goal of getting your account details and draining your account.

Update, 3/7/03: more news, including a copy of the offending letter for comparison to what’s showing up in your mailbox.

internetnews.com has more information about the CAPPS program to monitor airline passengers, currently being rolled out in test phase on Delta Airlines. PrivacyActivism is a coalition against this “massive secret database.”

“The closer you get to war, the less practical it is to write a balanced story. While traveling with a Marine patrol, you can’t get comments from Iraqi troops. It’s not journalism at its finest.” Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald, in a Slate article on the impossibility of objective war reporting.

Slate runs a fascinating article on super-vision and how science might make this something we pick up at the local doctor’s office. Part of a 5-part superman series, starting today.

The argument for why Colin Powell should resign.

“We have not seen such systematic distortion of intelligence, such systematic manipulation of the American people, since the war in Vietnam. Until this administration, it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president, I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.” John Brady Kiesling in his resignation letter from the US Foreign Service, quoted in Salon. Complete letter available here.

Bush bribes Americans $300 for war support. Well, not really.

“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion.” Jed Babbin, former (Bush I) Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, from snopes.com

And this just in from today’s Washington Post: $300 million in tax breaks on a new spending bill stems from a GOP invitation to add a wish list of pork for favored lobbyists. Among the breaks: it’ll be cheaper for Canadians to bet on US horses. Meanwhile, the price of the newest Bush tax cut has gone up $35 billion. New cost: $726 billion.

Can you guess which incident resulted in the indictments of 10 members of the SFPD? More brilliance from the K Chronicles.

A boycott is up and running against Delta Airlines over their test run of the CAPPS system which will make sure that you’re not a terrorist. How? Credit checks, running you through secret government databases, that sort of thing. Fail the check, and you won’t be able to fly for 50 years.

“”If you want to take down a website but simply confiscate the servers, operators can always buy other servers. But if they take the domain name away, then they’ve put the person out of business.” Michael Overly on DoJ confiscations of domain names in recent drug paraphernalia cases, quoted in Wired News

The next version of Windows in early alpha has “leaked” onto the Net. Leak? No mention of lawsuits in the article, so I’m guessing that this was a strategic play for media. Anyway, if you want to see what you’ll be forced to use in 2004, here are details.

Toshiba has a working laptop fuel cell that runs on methanol. Still not quite laptop-battery size, still a few years away from end-use, but looks pretty peachy. Someday you’ll walk into your local bar and say, “A Guinness for me, and top off my PowerBook.”

Yet another arrest for wearing the wrong T-shirt at the wrong time. The subversive message: “Give peace a chance.”

In a surprise move, the White House announced today that prior to the invasion of Iraq, American military forces will be directed towards another nation that is closer to home, and a far greater threat to national security. That nation: the United States of America.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld released the shift in policy at a hastily arranged press conference at Camp Pendleton, California, which stunned official Washington and left Democrats scrambling to avoid gibbering on live television.

“After reviewing our reasons for the invasion of Iraq,” said Secretary Rumsfeld, “we applied President Bush’s war on terrorism doctrine to other nations that we thought might pose a greater threat to homeland security.”

Rumsfeld laid out the reasoning behind the decision. “First, as we’ve said before, there are known Al-Qaeda operatives working within United States territory, and actions taken by the current government have been insufficient to stop them. Second, this is a nation that has one of the largest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction on the planet, and has made clear that they intend to improve and increase this arsenal, possibly placing those weapons among their ‘Axis’ allies abroad.”

“Third,” he continued, “this country flouts the authority of the international community and shows no respect for international law. All they respect is raw, military force. We’re going to show them that we have that force, and the will to use it.”

Rumsfeld’s speech was interrupted by a cacophony of questions shouted from the press pool. In response to a shrieking CNN correspondent, Rumsfeld said, “Yes, we have compiled information on where Al-Qaeda is most likely to be, and we will be concentrating our forces where the enemy is located.”

“We have divided the country into ‘red’ states and ‘blue’ states. Red states show little or no Al-Qaeda activity; blue states are far more dangerous.” Again stopped by the press, this time by a Washington Post correspondent standing on a chair and waving her arms, he added, “Well, we thought that the five-color threat assessment was too complex to present to the American people in this case, so we decided to simply divide the country into those people on the side of freedom, and those people who hate freedom.”

Rumsfeld said with a large, unruly grin, “We have a large base of contiguous states which are safe locations from which to start operations. Our early attention will be in the Northeast, where there are large populations over a small territory; this will make it simple to establish early air dominance and then move in and eradicate the terrorist factions.”

When asked for details about the nature of the military operation, Rumsfeld said, “I have that information. And you do not. That’s all there is to it.” The room fell entirely silent. Then he barked, “Wusses. I can’t believe you get paid for this. Our first target is complete containment of this region,” gesturing with a laser pointer at New York state and leaving smoldering tracks on the map.

“We will run an amphibious landing down the Hudson River from the east. Unfortunately, from the west the Great Lakes region is almost entirely blue state, so if we can’t move our forces through Ohio, we’ll be looking for support from Canada, the Uzbekistan of North America.”

[Contacted by reporters in Ottawa, Canadian Defense Minister John McCallum said, “We’ll be discussing the American request with Prime Minister Chrétien, and of course we want to provide all necessary assistance to our neighbors, but frankly we think they’ve lost their minds.” Then he looked around nervously and left the Peakes Building in a black, unmarked limousine.]

A Guardian reporter asked Rumsfeld mellifluously, “What do you think the reaction will be abroad to your declaring war on a democratic state?”

Rumsfeld responded, laughing, “Democratic state? The Zimbabweans hold more responsible elec…”, before he was cut off by Karl Rove whapping him in the back of the head with a copy of Roll Call.

Rumsfeld called an end to the press conference and started to leave the podium, when the New York Times asked, “When will you be providing more information about your plans?”

Rumsfeld glowered and growled, “It’s a safe bet that the Times will very shortly be getting an exclusive.”

One more reason, as if any were necessary, why Senate and House Democrats need to grow a backbone sometime between now and November 5th.

10 quid for a microbial food cell that runs on household scraps. No word on when you’ll be able to run your laptop on rabbit food.