Monthly Archives: December 2006

Security

Techno-fibbing

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Two stories were posted in the news today that have an interesting relationship. First, Reuters has reported on a UK study that people find it easier to tell lies when they do not have to be in the physical presence of their audience:

Just over half of respondents said using gadgets made them feel less guilty when telling a lie than doing it face to face, the study on behalf of financial services group Friends Provident found.

[…]

The survey found that while people were dishonest, most told lies with the best intentions and to spare others’ feelings.

Sounds like proof of common sense to me. Everyone likes to justify their actions in the best possible light, and it’s definitely less encumbered to speak freely into a piece of plastic than to interact with a real live person.

Second, the Associated Press has reported on a Fire Department in Tennessee that told a white lie to a caller in order to unravel a string of prank 911 calls:

After receiving a false report of a gas leak on Dec. 14, firefighters compared notes.

They confirmed 15 fake 911 calls over a two-month period, including four house fires, six car crashes and various other medical emergencies. All came from the same cell phone.

So they called the number and left a message saying the phone’s owner had won a gift card from a major retailer, Fire Capt. Brent Seymour said.

With so many people up in arms over privacy as it related to their cell phone, I find it notable that the fire departments may be the last group in America to have access to data. They probably just do not have the kind of leverage (what, with saving lives and property?) that large marketing and advertising companies will as they cozy up to telecom providers.

Needless to say, as the study above suggests, the prank 911 caller tried to say he had the “best intentions”:

Harms, 29, told authorities he thought he was doing taxpayers a favor by drawing otherwise lazy firefighters out of their cozy fire halls, according to court papers.

Security

US Strip Search Apology

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Another case of airport security in America gone horribly wrong:

The Homeland Security Department sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip searched at a county jail.

Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained on April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to England.

Why England?

Jawad was traveling to Clearwater to visit her 16-year-old son, who lived with her ex-husband, Ahmad Maki Kubba. Kubba, an Iraqi exile and American citizen for 27 years, was praised last year by Gov. Jeb. Bush for organizing a group to vote in Iraq’s election.

Kubba said his ex-wife’s detention prompted his son to move to Spain.

“I lost my son because of what happened,” Kubba said. “My son wanted to be in the U.S. Navy, and he speaks both English and Arabic. He would have been just what they are looking for. What they did to Jawad was unfair and is hurting America.”

Of course no one at the jail was found in violation of the rules, because the rules indicate you can do just about anything to anyone in the name of security. At least the rule enforcers didn’t send her off to one of the non-existent CIA “black sites”.

History, Poetry, Security

Identity and the Slovenian Euro

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Preseren EuroNice that the Slovenian’s have decided to honor their most well known poet France PreÅ¡eren by putting his likeness on their new Euro coins. The bank has an amusing story (PDF) behind the reason for adding a signature below the likeness of someone so famous:

Unfortunately, PreÅ¡eren’s image remains largely unknown, despite the great number of “well known portraits”. For that reason we have decided to put his handwriting on the coin, as a sure confirmation that it is authentic PreÅ¡eren. We use the poet’s silhouette in releif (after Dremelj’s portrait) because it attests to the “poetic character” of this little-known representation in a contemporary manner.

And even if you look closely at the coin, I suspect his true image will continue to remain largely unknown. Funny and rather strange twist of identity logic. “Officer, please note that I consider myself a poetic character so my identity card has a rather ambiguous photo on it instead of the normal portrait.”

Should we recognize his signature any more than an image?Trubar apparently has a more well-known portrait, despite being alive hundreds of years earlier, and so they only put examples of his typography on the coin.

Speaking of identities, I also noticed that the Carinthian stone was given a place on the Slovenian currency, although Carinthia is actually an area that spans an informal Slovenian province and an Austrian federal state.

History, Security

Ethiopia rolls 1950s tanks into Somalia

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I was just reading a story about how the Ethiopian-backed forces are “rolling in the tanks” and quickly pushing back resistance in Somalia.

Then I noticed a new Reuters image of a Soviet-designed T-55 tank entering Jowar (90 km north of Mogadishu):

T-55

All the more impressive, I suppose, that even 1950s-era technology is able to make such an impression in the news as well as forge inroads in the conflict. Clearly the Ethiopians have gone from last to first in terms of military strategy in the region and/or the Somali Islamist forces are ill-equipped when compared to other groups like the Hezbullah. Oh, and I keep seeing vague references to foreign troops working within the Ethiopian forces:

The second round of deliberations broke down over Qatar’s insistence that the statement urge Ethiopian and other foreign troops to withdraw from the country.

More specifically:

Kenya has denied Muslim allegations that Ethiopian and U.S. troops were operating in northern Kenya, The Daily Nation reported Monday.

The leaders of Muslim organizations in Kenya, at a meeting in Nairobi Sunday, had alleged the troops were in the country in preparation for a war against Somalia’s powerful Union of Islamic Courts militia.

From another perspective, Ethiopia has been planning a “defensive” offensive (sound familiar?) bolstered by lingering disputes with Eritrea:

Medhane Tadesse, an Ethiopian historian, says that Ethiopia has been forced into a corner by its neighbors, and will have to come out fighting.

“The idea of Eritrea is to get back at Ethiopia. The Arab bloc are doing this as part of a global Islamic issue,” says Mr. Tadesse, director of the Center for Policy Research and Dialogue in Addis Ababa.

So the real question is what Eritrea’s role is and will be in the coming days. Were they brokered out of the conflict in advance, perhaps even by Europe or the US? They may be accused of playing a similar role as Syria in Lebanon, but right now the effect has been less pronounced. Were they unable to provide enough supplies and/or maintain cohesion of the Islamic forces? Or maybe they advocate a return to classic guerrilla tactics to increase nationalist fervor while bogging down the occupying conventional forces?

EDITED TO ADD (28 Dec 2006): Just read in the New York Times that the US government is trying to spin reports to downplay the role of the Ethiopians:

The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia,�? the guidance said.

Shame. The reality of the Horn of Africa is that Ethiopia and Somalia have longstanding territorial disputes, fueled by secessionist movements (Tigray, Ogaden, Eritrea), and it makes perfect sense why Ethiopia would be itching at the trigger to send forces deep into Somalia and commandeer the main roads, if not control the coast itself.

I now expect the major news sources in the US to start saying things like “the Somali forces, backed by an international force, are making inroads against the Islamic armies”. That’s about as accurate as saying the US-led offensive using special forces backed by Ethiopian conventional troops has successfully destroyed the stable government established by Islamic rulers. Both are extreme views, but my guess is the emphasis on downplaying the Ethiopian role is to prevent political trouble from the Arab and African organizations who will argue against an occupational force controlling Somalia. In other words, like yet another Cold War flashback, this could be another case of destabilization of sovereign states by the Bush administration to gain unfettered access to search and destroy suspected anti-US elements. The New York Times goes on to suggest that the US may have been intimately involved in angering Islamic forces and leading them to assert control over the region:

This year, the C.I.A. began a covert operation to arm and finance the warlords, who had united under the banner of the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counterterrorism. Operated from the intelligence agency’s station in Nairobi, Kenya, the effort involved frequent trips to Mogadishu by case officers from the agency and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to the warlords.

The operation backfired. When the payments to the warlords shifted the military balance of the country in their favor, the Islamists started a strike against the American-backed coalition and ran it out of Mogadishu.

Compare that to the news now coming out of the BBC:

Transitional government spokesperson Abdirahman Dinari told the BBC the majority of the forces poised to retake Mogadishu were Somali, not Ethiopian.

He added: “The government is committed to restore law and order and to implement institutions.”

Why does that first statement remind me of “…on the third Day of Christmas, the US sent to Somalia, three French advisors, two Ethiopian doves, and an American in a pear tree”? By day four the majority of the forces “poised” were Somali? We have to realize that the Islamic forces, whether we love or hate them, had recently established order to the point where markets were functioning again and even the airport was reopened. To tear all that down again in order to restore it under the pretense of establishing order…