– I hope you had a lovely Labor Day weekend. As a downtown resident, I spent most of the weekend avoiding the Bumbershoot and PAX crowds.
– I’m glad Obama is asking Congress for permission on Syria, but other than that, it seems problematic.
– Sometimes our trolls will link to some story ostensibly about a White Trayvon Martin. Oliver Willis provides a handy flow chart for them to see if it holds up.
– Dear WSU fans, you have a problem (h/t to Nick on Facebook).
– Still glad that Mike Kreidler is insurance commissioner.
– That Lt. Governor of Texas seems super nice.
Don’t write off Dewhurst just yet. He has the Bush crime family in his corner, and they have a lot of pull in the local newspapers. What the Bush Mafia wants, it gets.
In NYC, it is apparently illegal for children to use a public park while wearing Hijabs.
That should make our Trolls happy. They love them some Police brutality, especially when is directed at little kids.
The experts on the ground in Syria have concluded chemical weapons (probably Sarin) were used against noncombatant civilians, and that 1400+ people (including many women and children) died. Assad denies his military did it, but where else could these weapons come from? Sarin isn’t something you can brew on a kitchen stove. Only a government has the resources, facilities, and delivery systems to carry out such an attack.
There has been a de facto ban on these weapons for nearly 100 years. If that ban isn’t enforced, it will collapse and the use of nerve agents will become commonplace in third-world civil wars and brushfire wars.
Russia’s Putin is putting up roadblocks to concerted international action against Assad’s regime for purely selfish reasons. Putin is the guy whose government recently passed a law making it illegal to be gay. We shouldn’t even think of letting him dictate our foreign and military policies.
I think a police action, in the form of punitive military strikes against the Assad regime, is justified and essential to deter future use of such weapons by him and other parties. It’s tricky, and a lot could go wrong, so we as citizens will have to put a lot of trust in our foreign affairs and military specialists to get it right. But we don’t have a Republican moron making our policy decisions anymore, so there’s at least hope that we’ll get it right.
I believe an appropriate response is to smash up Assad’s air force and armored and artillery forces, blow up his palaces and try to kill him, and try to kill some of his generals. We should be after two things: (1) Weaken his military ability to mount another such attack, and (2) create a deterrent by sending a signal that dictators and their military hench people will be personally targeted if they use these weapons.
RR @3,
Neat pics of the CW bunkers near Umatilla and the Wikipedia article about it.
I’ve always felt a little nervous when I’ve been in the area. So much safer to live around Hanford, don’t you know.
Where is BUTTPUTTY?
Did his EVIL OVERLORD tell him to stop wasting time on HA?
Did he get caught with a CHICKEN?
Inquiring minds want to know.
@5 Didn’t he say he was going to be vacationing in Europe? I think he was going to Greece to analyze the effects of austerity.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014584364
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014584371
Unfortunately he is going to miss the good news here. Obama’s Economy.
# 3: Unconfirmed reports on the radio this mornig said that one of Assad’s leading forensic examiners is defecting, and he has information confirming that Assad’s forces were responsible for at least the May 2013 sarin attack.
3: I’m inclined to agree it was the Syrian government who launched the attack, but still.. isn’t Sarin what that nutjob Japanese cult used in the Tokyo subway attack? Evidently private actors can deploy the stuff if they are sufficiently motivated.
@3&8
Sarin is not terribly difficult to manufacture, it is an organophosphate that was discovered by IG Farbin in Germany back in the late 1930s. The hazards in manufacturing are that, once mixed, it becomes highly volatile and unless kept under pressure, it tends to degrade quickly. Thats why it is weaponized as a binary, that isn’t mixed until the bomblets are released by the warhead.
The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan had recruited several chemists, pharmacists and physicists including a number of Ph.d’s and was able to amass quite a huge nest-egg through the inherited wealth of leader Shoko Asahara, and the requirement that most if not all personal wealth owned by cult members be turned over to the cult.
The cult also required that members make the cult organization the heir of the estates upon their death. Cult members tended to be personally wealthy, highly educated and were recruited by word of mouth. They were able to manufacture the shit by buying some fairly sophisticated laboratory equipment second-hand at auctions and used equipment suppliers. The precursor chemicals are apparently fairly easy to acquire, as they are also used in the manufacture of common pesticides and fertilizers.
Makes me worry about the Mormons and the Scientologists. Or cousin Kenny’s outfit for that matter.
@4 A friend used to live in that area. The whole area has an alert system that include big speakers to broadcast warnings. He had a great story about how, around Christmas one year, someone hit the wrong button and broadcast that the CW plant was gong to blow and people should shelter in place, but the announcement was only Spanish.
@8 The Japanese cult was a large group with substantial resources. When the Japanese government raided their headquarter after the Tokyo subway attack, they found “explosives, chemical weapons and biological warfare agents, such as anthrax and Ebola cultures, and a Russian Mil Mi-17 military helicopter. … There were stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin to kill four million people. Police also found laboratories to manufacture drugs such as LSD, methamphetamine, and a crude form of truth serum, a safe containing millions of dollars in cash and gold, and cells, many still containing prisoners.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A....._incidents