Tick, Tick, Tick  

While I've been trying to ignore it, the news flow this week has been astoundingly ugly (and getting worse by the day), so I'll leave the second half of my omnibus post on clean energy technology until tomorrow and instead indulge in some Friday Night Fear Mongering (which normally takes selective eye for news but today will pretty much come straight from the front pages).

Pretty much everywhere (well at least the sorts of sites I frequent) has picked up on 3 weird tales this week - 2 unexplained bird dieoffs (in Esperance in WA and Austin in Texas) along with strange smells in New York. There was also a slightly strange appearance of a large number of dead fish in Gippsland.

Mobjectivist and Past Peak both pointed to conspiracy "writer" Wayne Madsen for an explanation of the New York smell (no clear explanations have ben offered for the bird deaths), with Mr Madsen offering a truly alarming scenario - underwater methane deposits are melting (although he didn't seem to remotely understand the implications - look up the permian extinction for an example of the last time the methane hydrates melted).

RealClimate would be the best place for a guess at the likelihood of this occurring (I would presume it is low - I think it took a 5 degree C swing back in the past to trigger the clathrates) but they are just pontificating on the absence of winter in the US NorthEast.

From Mr Madsen (whose pronouncements need to be treated with some care):

January 8, 2007 -- The environmental "surge" you're not hearing anything about.

According to U.S. maritime industry sources, tanker captains are reporting an increase in onboard alarms from hazard sensors designed to detect hydrocarbon gas leaks and, specifically, methane leaks. However, the leaks are not emanating from cargo holds or pump rooms but from continental shelves venting increasing amounts of trapped methane into the atmosphere. With rising ocean temperatures, methane is increasingly escaping from deep ocean floors. Methane is also 21 more times capable of trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

In fact, one of the major sources for increased methane venting is the Hudson Submarine Canyon, which extends 400 miles into the Atlantic from the New York-New Jersey harbor. Another location experiencing increased venting is the Santa Barbara Channel on the California coast.

Meanwhile, a strong natural gas odor was reported this morning in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Jersey City, Weehawken, and Newark. The strong odor was also detected in Union City, Secaucus, and Hoboken. Last August, a similar unexplained gas odor sent people to the hospital in Staten Island and Queens. Although methane is odorless, natural methane venting is often accompanied by the venting of acrid hydrogen sulfide, a byproduct of bacterial decomposition.

The US Coast Guard sent a message to ships and tugs in the bay and ocean south of New York requesting any reports of the odor being detected at sea. There were also an unconfirmed report of a similar strong odor being detected this morning on the Delaware coast near Lewes. This morning, the prevailing winds in New York and New Jersey were southerly at 5 to 10 miles per hour.

In other global warming news, the warm temperatures on the U.S. East Coast are resulting in early blooming of the cherry trees and azaleas in Washington, DC and New York City, apple and peach trees in Maryland, and roses, forsythias, and crocuses in Connecticut. A number of people along the East Coast are suffering from allergies usually experienced in April. Monk parakeets from South America have invaded the Chicago area.

George W. Bush continues to insist that global warming is "silly science" based on "fuzzy math." Corporate news media masters are pressuring plastic-faced and neatly-coiffured TV weathermen to treat the current abnormal warm weather as an unexpected "gift" for their viewers. The latte-sipping and SUV-driving yuppies in Washington, DC are certainly taking the current weather abnormality in stride -- they almost appear ecstatic about the weather, obviously unaware that the future of our planet is hanging on a thread.

Energy Bulletin points to an article on Global Public Media called "The rise of “the Axis of Oil”— big trouble for the U.S.".

Richard Bell, Communications Director for Post Carbon Institute, reports on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources' hearing into “The Geopolitics of Oil.”

Just how bad are the geopolitics of energy, from the perspective of the United States?

This morning the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources launched its New Year with an unusual hearing into “The Geopolitics of Oil.”

The consensus conclusion of the witnesses: the United States is in deep, deep trouble, facing the emergence of an “axis of oil” that threatens to recreate the bi-polar world of the Cold War, complete with Russia as a principal actor.

Normally the Committee deals with less weighty matters, like fuel efficiency standards for cars. But the incoming chairman, Senator Jeff Bingaman, decided to go for the big picture, and the big picture is not pretty. There was an almost palpable sense of graveness and alarm that lent a chill to the room.

The Pentagon is extending active duty limits for soldiers sent off on the fools errand of controlling Iraq's oil, sent another 21,000 off there as part of Bush's "surge", and announced plans to recruit another 90,000 troops. Presumably the phrases "staggeringly large budget deficits", "inflation" and "reinstitute the draft" got lost during the editing process somehow.

For the first time since President Bush mobilized the National Guard and Reserve after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon is abandoning its limit on the time a citizen-soldier can be required to serve on active duty.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Thursday that the change would have been made even if Bush had not ordered an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq, further straining the Army and Marine Corps.

The Pentagon also announced it is proposing to Congress that the size of the Army be increased by 65,000, to 547,000 and that the Marine Corps, the smallest of the services, grow by 27,000, to 202,000, over the next five years. No cost estimate was provided, but officials said it would be at least several billion dollars.

John Murtha is saying that the "surge" is unacceptable.

A year ago, I said this was a failed policy wrapped in an illusion. The President has finally acknowledged this.

Five months ago, we put an additional 10,000 troops in Baghdad. Attacks increased and a record number of Americans and Iraqis were killed. I see no difference between this and the President's plan to "stay the course."

I am particularly disappointed that there are no credible benchmarks and no way to measure the military and economic progress of this operation. There is no incentive for the Iraqis to take over.

All of us want stability in the Middle East, and Iraq is an important element in achieving that stability. But the military and their families deserve an achievable mission. It is unacceptable to me that we are sending troops back to Iraq who have not completed their training cycle and that we are extending troops who are battle-weary from the intensive combat in Iraq.

The "surge" was preceded by a Bush speech that sounded the alarm bells ringing warning of an attack on Iran and/or Syria. Apparently protests against the looming attack on Iran are planned in the US, errr, now or thereabouts. Hopefully the demented clown doesn't manage to start World War 3 next week. The Iranians have summoned Swiss and Iraqi diplomats to complain about the subsequent detention of their mission in northern Iraq.

Delivering a much-anticipated address in Washington yesterday, Mr Bush accused Iran and Syria of aiding the insurgent attacks on US troops in Baghdad. And he vowed to "seek out and destroy" any terror networks supporting the insurgency, saying the move was an essential step towards securing victory in the war, which has claimed more than 3000 US lives and cost more than $US400 billion ($511 billion).

The US appears to have already moved to carry out its threat, with American troops yesterday raiding the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq, detaining five staff. ...

Many in the foreign policy elite in Washington - including the bipartisan panel known as the Iraq Study Group - had recommended Mr Bush step up a diplomatic push to try to engage Iran and Syria for assistance in helping secure Iraq's future.

Yesterday he said succeeding in Iraq required defending its territorial integrity and stabilising the region in the face of extremists. This, he said, began with addressing Iran and Syria, which were allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops," Mr Bush said. "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

Billmon predicted this would happen in his posts on the flight forward and, just before he retired, on "total war" - who knows - maybe he decided the end was nigh and anti-war bloggers don't have any future - the "shut up or get locked up" time has arrived...

There is another possibility – a new twist on the classic madman theory. As Kaplan notes, the current nuclear blustering may actually be aimed at U.S. and global public opinion, in hopes of making a conventional bombing strike against Iran seem, well, almost sane:

It's a variation on the game that national-security advisers sometimes use in laying out options to their bosses. Option 1: Declare all-out war. Option 2: Surrender. Option 3 is the course of action that the adviser wants to pursue. Hersh's story might be serving the same purpose. Option 1: Nuke 'em. Option 2: Shut your eyes and do nothing, like the Europeans would prefer. Option 3: Attack Iran's facilities, but with 2,000-pound smart bombs, not 5-kiloton nuclear bombs.

Perhaps. Although if this is true the administration appears to have an even lower opinion of the American public, and the democratic process, than I do.

The manuever that Kaplan describes – i.e. options 1,2 and 3 – is usually played out behind closed doors, not as part of a national PR campaign. There's always the risk that the public (and Congress) will basically geek out at the thought of nuclear war, and will try to do something to stop it, making the administration's job of planning and preparing for conventional war that much harder.

But these attempts to explain the seemingly irrational may all be going off on the wrong tangent. The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to suspect that the madman theory – and its weaker sister the "saber rattling" scenario – are the wrong concepts for understanding the tragedy that may be playing out in front of us.

What we are witnessing (through rips in the curtain of official secrecy) may be an example of what the Germans call the flucht nach vorne – the "flight forward." This refers to ta situation in which an individual or institution seeks a way out of a crisis by becoming ever more daring and aggressive (or, as the White House propaganda department might put it: "bold") A familar analogy is the gambler in Vegas, who tries to get out of a hole by doubling down on each successive bet.

Classic historical examples of the flucht nach vornes include Napoleon's attempt to break the long stalemate with Britain by invading Russia,the decision of the Deep South slaveholding states to secede from the Union after Lincoln's election, and Milosevic's bid to create a "greater Serbia" after Yugoslavia fell apart.

As these examples suggest, flights forward usually don't end well – just as relatively few gamblers emerge from a doubling-down spree with their shirts still on their backs.

But of course, most gamblers don't have the ability to call in an air strike on the casino. For Bush, or the neocons, or both, regime change in Iran not only may appear doable, it may also look like the only way out of the spectacular mess they have created in Iraq.

The logic is understandable, if malevolent. Instead of creating a secular, pro-American client state in the heart of the Middle East, the invasion of Iraq has destroyed the front-line Arab regime opposing Tehran, installed a pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and vastly increased Iranian influence, not only in Iraq, but throughout the Shi'a world. It's also moved the Revolutionary Guard one step closer to the Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields – the prize upon which the energy security of the West depends.

By the traditional standards of U.S. foreign policy, this is a fiasco of almost unbelievable proportions.

A Patriot missile battalion and another aircraft carrier group are headed for the Persian gulf (maybe the war won't start until next month).

As part of Bush's plan for boosting U.S. troop strength in Iraq, a brigade of National Guard soldiers from Minnesota will have its yearlong tour in Iraq extended by 125 days, to the end of July, and a Patriot missile battalion will be sent to the Persian Gulf next month, the Army said Thursday.

Maj. Randy Taylor, a spokesman for the 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment, at Fort Bliss, Texas, said the Patriot unit was aware of the announced deployment. He said no formal order had been received Thursday.

The dispatching of a Patriot missile battery, capable of defending against shorter-range ballistic missile attacks, appeared linked to Bush's announcement Wednesday that he ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East, which would be in easy reach of Iran, whose nuclear program is a U.S. concern.

Navy officials said the carrier heading to the Gulf region is the USS John C. Stennis, which previously had been in line to deploy to the Pacific. It was not clear Thursday how the Pentagon intended to compensate in the Pacific for the absence of the Stennis in that region.

The Daily Kos also has a diary on carrier movements.

Five days ago I had dinner with one of the officers on a ship in one the carrier groups heading to the Gulf. He is an officer who has served at the Pentagon and spent time training at the War College. He is not a gung-ho type, rather he is the type of considered, intelligent officer who gives you hope for the military and pride in our country. Like all of us here and DKos he thinks the war is a huge mistake for many reasons. But during converstaion, the subject of casualties in Iraq came up and his wife began looking nervous so I said, "Well, at least Iraq has no Air Force." The officer turned to me with a look that suggested I was the dumbest person on the planet and said, very slowly and clearly, "Yes, but Iran does."

The following conversation made it painfully clear that much of the hardware being pushed into the Gulf has no possible use against Iraq. He assumes the mission he is being sent on is aimed at Iran. He was not convinced a decision had been made to attack, but at the very least it was a show of force to let Iran know we meant business.
I also asked him how well carrier groups are at operating in a relatively confined space like the gulf. He said they were not designed for such purposes but they had been praciticng a lot and were getting very good at dealing witht he lack of space. Finally, he wanted to point out the amount of long term damage being done to the military due to the costs of the war in Iraq - specifically the cost of all the equipment and the damage to the personell structure.

To sum up our long and disturbing conversation:

1. The much if not all of our carrier capacity in the Gulf is pointed at Iran, this is what they are wargaming and what the officers are worried about.
2. The Persian Gulf is not a great place for carriers. For all of our power and the capacity of our officers, any ship in the Gulf is very exposed to missile fire.
3. Even if not one solider had been killed or wounded in Iraq, the costs of the war in equipment, damage to recruitment efforts, readiness erosion, and morale would still take at least a decade to revoer from, likely longer.

As we well know many in the military are as concerned as we are.

Senator Joe Biden has warned that an attack without congressional approval would trigger a "constitutional confrontation".

Sen. Joe Biden just informed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that, should the Bush administration attempt to cross over into Iran without Congressional approval, such action will provoke a "constitutional confrontation." Sen. Biden is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

(I was just listening to the Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing on Iraq, via C-Span3. It just concluded. I thought his remark so significant you needed to know right away, rather than wait for a news story to appear.)

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Sen. Biden further told Secretary Rice that Bush's escalation plan is a "tragic mistake." And he implied, best I could tell, that Bush's unilateral (unitary executive) escalation of the Iraq War was done without consultation and approval of the U.S. Congress. As Biden was speaking, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) inserted a remark that the Marines have already been told that their stays in Iraq will be extended. Sen. Biden reiterated that every senator supports the troops and is amazed by the "overwhelming commitment" of the troops.

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There have also been reports about submarine activity in the Persian gulf (like this one that collided with a Japanese oil tanker), which have prompted the Russians to speculate about an impeding attack.

Former Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Admiral Edward Baltin said Tuesday that the presence of so many nuclear submarines in the Arab Gulf waters pointed to likely plans for a US attack against Iran.

Baltine, who was quoted by Interfax news agency, said the presence of US submarines in Gulf waters meant that Washington was contemplating a strike against Iran.

“The presence of the submarines indicates that Washington has not abandoned plans to launch a sudden attack against Iran,” the admiral said.

Salon has a post on other Senators telling Condolleeza Rice "the president has lost us".

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich writes letters to the families of fallen U.S. soldiers. Until now, he's said in those letters that the sacrifices Americans troops are making in Iraq are every bit the equal of those U.S. soldiers made in World War II. But Voinovich told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this afternoon that he's going to have to change his letter now. "I've gone along with the president on this, and I've bought into his dream," Voinovich said, his voice choking with emotion. "At this stage of the game, I don't think it's going to happen."

The Ohio Republican's delivery was more emotional than some of his colleagues', but the sentiment he expressed this afternoon was pretty much the same as the one Rice heard from most members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: The president has lost the American people and their representatives, and the new "way forward" he put forth last night isn't enough to win them over again.

Barack Obama told Rice that the Bush administration "took a gamble" in Iraq, staking "American prestige and our national security on the premise that it could go in, overthrow Saddam Hussein and rebuild a functioning democracy. And so far . . . it appears to have failed. And essentially, the administration has repeatedly said, 'We're doubling down, we're going to keep on going. Maybe we lost that bet, but we're going to put a little more money in.'" ...

Some highlights from the day's session:

Sen. John Sununu: The New Hampshire Republican warned Rice that "if we don't see more specifics and a time frame" for progress in Iraq, "then Congress is probably going to step into the void and set a time frame." ...

Sen. Russ Feingold: The Wisconsin Democrat said that that it is time for Congress to use "the power of the purse" to cut off funding for the war -- not just for the escalation, but for the entire war. "By setting an end date for funding for the war, we can give the president the time needed to redeploy troops safely from Iraq." Feingold's words drew a rare round of applause from some of those gathered to watch the hearing.

Sen. Bill Nelson: The Florida Democrat said that although he has supported Rice and the Bush administration on the war in the past, he can do so no longer. "I have not been told the truth," he said. "I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses. And the American people have not been told the truth."

Sen. Barbara Boxer: The California Democrat mocked Rice for telling the committee in 2005 that she had "no doubt" that Iraqi forces would be talking control of their own security and that American soldiers would be coming home in a "reasonable time frame." Boxer told Rice: "From where I sit, Madame Secretary, you are not listening to the American people. You are not listening to the military. You are not listening to the bipartisan voices of Congress; you are not listening to the Iraq Study Group."

Sen. Chuck Hagel: The Nebraska Republican said the president has "set in motion" a "very, very dangerous" series of events. "I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam," he said. When Hagel referred to the president's plan for an "escalation," Rice said that she and the president preferred the term "augmentation," and that it was important for everyone to have the right "image" of what's actually happening on the ground in Iraq. When Hagel said he had a pretty good "image" of the situation already -- "Iraqis are killing Iraqis ... we're in a civil war" -- Rice responded lamely: "Not all of Baghdad has fallen into a civil war."

The American Conservative has an article from William Lind on the danger of escalation and risks for the US army in Iraq called how to lose an army.

The Bush administration, for its part, will be tempted to do what small men have done throughout history when in trouble: try to escalate their way out of it. The White House has already half-convinced itself that the majority of its troubles in Iraq stem from Iran and Syria, a line the neocons push assiduously.

The departure of Donald Rumsfeld, which was greeted in the Pentagon with joyful choruses of “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” may help to avert an invasion. His successor, Robert Gates, has no background in defense and is therefore likely to defer to the generals, for good or for ill. In this case for good, as the generals emphatically do not want a war with Iran. But for Gates to block White House demands for an attack on Iran, he would have to threaten to resign. Is he the sort of man to do that? That’s not how bureaucrats build their careers, an observation that holds for the generals as well.

The elephant in the parlor is, of course, the fact that Israel wants an attack on Iran, and for Republicans and Democrats alike, Israel is She Who Must Be Obeyed. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ran to Washington as soon as the election was over, and the subject of his discussions with President Bush is easy to imagine. Who will do the dirty deed and when? Iran has already announced that it will consider an attack by Israel an attack by the U.S. as well and respond accordingly, so the difference may not much matter.

That response should concern us, to put it mildly, for that is where a war with Iran and the war in Iraq intersect. The Iranians have said that this time they have 140,000 American hostages, in the form of U.S. troops in Iraq. If either Israel or the U.S. attacks Iran, we could lose an army.

How could such a thing happen? The danger springs from the fact that almost all the supplies our forces in Iraq use, including vital fuel for their vehicles, comes over one supply line, which runs toward the south and the port in Kuwait. If that line were cut, our forces might not have enough fuel to get out of Iraq. American armies are enormously fuel-thirsty.

One might think that fuel would be abundant in Iraq, which is (or was) a major oil exporter. In fact, because of the ongoing chaos, Iraq is short of refined oil products. Our forces, if cut off from their own logistics, could not simply fuel up at local gas stations as German Gen. Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Corps did on its way to the English Channel in the 1940 campaign against France.

There are two ways, not mutually exclusive, that Iran could attempt to cut our supply line in Iraq in response to an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The first would be by encouraging Shi’ite militias to which it is allied, including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, to rise up against us throughout southern Iraq, which is Shi’ite country. The militias would be supported by widespread infiltration of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, who have shown themselves to be good at this kind of thing. They are the people who trained and equipped Hezbollah for its successful defense of southern Lebanon against the vaunted Israeli army this past summer.

The Shi’ite militias already lie across our single supply line, and we should expect them to cut it in response to Iranian requests. We are already at war with the Mahdi Army, against which our forces in Iraq have been launching a series of recent raids and air strikes. A British journalist I know, one with long experience in Iraq, told me he asked the head of SCIRI, which controls the Badr Brigades, how he would respond if the U.S. attacked Iran. “Then,” he replied, “we would do our duty.”

Iran has a second, bolder option it could combine with a Shi’ite insurrection at our rear. It could cross the Iran-Iraq border with several armored and mechanized divisions of the regular Iranian Army, sever our supply lines, then move to roll us up from the south with the aim of encircling us, perhaps in and around Baghdad. This would be a classic operational maneuver, the sort of thing for which armored forces are designed.

At present, U.S. forces in Iraq could be vulnerable to such an action by the Iranian army. We have no field army in Iraq; necessarily, our forces are penny-packeted all over the place, dealing with insurgents. They would be hard-pressed to assemble quickly to meet a regular force, especially if fuel was running short.

The U.S. military’s answer, as is too often the case, will be air power. It is true that American air power could destroy any Iranian armored formations it caught in the open. But there is a tried-and-true defense against air power, one the Iranians could employ: bad weather. Like the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, they could wait to launch their offensive until the weather promised a few days of protection. After that, they would be so close to our own forces that air power could not attack them without danger of hitting friendlies. (This is sometimes know as “hugging tactics.”) Reportedly, the Turkish General Staff thinks the Iranians can and will employ this second option, no doubt in combination with the first.

Perhaps the greatest danger lies in the fact that, just as the French high command refused to consider the possibility of a German attack through the Ardennes in 1940, Washington will not consider the possibility that an attack on Iran could cost us our army in Iraq. We have made one of the most common military mistakes—believing our own propaganda. Over and over, the U.S. military tells the world and itself, “No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We are the greatest military the world has ever seen!”

Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it’s bunk. The U.S. Armed Forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second-Generation militaries. They are today being fought and beaten by Fourth-Generation opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third-Generation opponents who can react faster than America’s process-ridden, PowerPoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by superior strategy, by trick, by surprise, and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships: they are unsinkable until something sinks them.

Mother Jones has a relatively reassuring blog post that speculates that the surge may just be a machiavellian plot by Henry Kissinger to make it look like the US is winning before holding peace talks.

As usual, observers are grasping wildly for an explanations as to why Bush is doing what he's doing. No matter what one thinks of the President, when push comes to shove, it's hard to believe he really wants to drag out the war so it can be handed over to a successor in 2008; or that he is such a psycho he can't stop referring to defeat as victory. That's not the kind of stuff the Bush family legacy is made of.

There may well be a much more sinister game plan here, one that centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an adviser to Bush and other top officials in Washington. Gareth Porter, the historian who ran the Indochina Resource Center in the early 70s, points out in a January 11 article in Asia Online that "although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi'ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the U.S. position in the war is actually weak and unstable."

Porter continues, "One of Kissinger's accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration's propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing." Moreover, it was Kissinger who figured out how Ford could claim a Vietnam victory and blame the whole mess on the Democrats.

So, it's quite possible that Bush will plunge into a counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, and then amidst mass civilian carnage, declare victory and announce negotiations -- which sooner or later will have to happen. But things may not work out that way, as the Haifa Street firefight Tuesday -- in which American troops found themselves in the middle of an ongoing ethnic cleansing operation by Shia militias -- made clear.

GIs call Haifa Street "grenade alley." As Juan Cole points out, Haifa Street has become a fixture of the civil war, twisting and turning in one pacification effort after another. In July 2004, U.S. commanders deployed 3,000 troops in a mini-surge called Operation Haifa Street. A police station got blown up in a major bombing there. In March 2005, reports had things calming down a bit, and some said the tide had turned. Today Haifa Street is once again considered a terrorist stronghold -- thus the U.S. operation -- but things are getting ever more complicated, with at least one report in Arabic claiming Shia invaded the area Sunday, killed residents, and threw their bodies into the street. "In this context, some Sunni Arabs see the U.S. as having been duped by the Shiites to join in the ethnic cleansing of the Karkh district," says Cole. And now there are reports that Shia militias are worming their way into the Green Zone, a feat long attempted unsuccessfully by Sunni insurgents. So is the Bush administration simply throwing in its lot with one set of death squads over another? It wouldn't be the first time.

There has been a "'Terrorist' attack on the US embassy in Athens".

Attackers fired a rocket into the US embassy in Athens in what police labelled at "act of terrorism" but no-one was hurt. "This is an act of terrorism. We don't know where from. There was a shell that exploded in the toilets of the building ... it was fired from street level," Attica Police chief Asimakis Golfis told AP.

Another senior police official told Reuters: "This was a rocket attack launched from a building across the street. It landed inside a toilet on the third floor of the embassy." A US embassy spokesman said: "There are no injuries from the blast."

Anonymous callers have claimed the Greek leftist guerrilla group Revolutionary Struggle was behind the attack, Greece's Public Order Minister said. "There are one or two anonymous phone calls which claim that the Revolutionary Struggle was behind the attack," the minister, Byron Polydoras, told reporters outside the embassy.

Some US troops have reportedly entered Somalia.

A small team of US military personnel entered southern Somalia to try to determine who was killed in a US airstrike targeting suspected al-Qaeda figures, The Washington Post reported, citing US sources.

The report said the search team marked the first known case of US military boots on the ground in Somalia since a disastrous peacekeeping mission ended in 1994 after Somali militiamen downed two Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 US soldiers in Mogadishu. It was unclear whether the US search team remained inside Somalia, The Washington Post reported.

Asian leaders are pushing 'energy co-operation' - seemingly eager to follow the EU's lead in escaping from fossil fuel dependency (and all its unpleasant side effects that I'm wallowing in tonight).

Asian countries will hold a summit to discuss a common energy policy, according to the draft of a final statement to be issued by leaders at a regional meeting in the Philippines. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) along with China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand will discuss reducing their dependence on fossil fuels at the proposed summit, a copy of the statement obtained on Friday by Reuters showed.

The 16 leaders are set to meet on the central Philippine island of Cebu on January 15, when they will also issue a separate declaration on energy security, calling for joint energy exploration and production, the draft showed. Other measures proposed include investments in ethanol and biodiesel plants and the adoption of standards for biofuels.

The Philippines, which holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, is anxious to put energy at the top of the summit's agenda as it strives to reduce its reliance on imported oil and boost biofuel production, using local crops such as sugar and coconut. The Southeast Asian country, which is the world's biggest exporter of coconut oil, had wanted East Asian countries to adopt a uniform 10-20 per cent biofuel blend on their fuel by 2015 but most members were cool to the idea, a government official said.

The European Union, which ASEAN would like to emulate, proposed a bold new energy policy this week that included ambitious new targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In local news, the Govt plans to build a dam on the Murray River (our largest) if rain doesn't fall soon.

If it does not rain in the next two months in South Australia, the Federal Government plans to build a temporary weir near the mouth of the Murray River. The temporary weir is planned for Wellington to ensure communities along the Murray - including Adelaide - do not run out of water. The weir still has to be approved by the South Australian Government and could be built within 12 months.

But environment groups and the local community do not want the weir, saying it will put further pressure on the river system and the Coorong. There are 33 towns and cities in the lower Murray Darling Basin and over 2.5 million people who rely on the river system for their water.

If 2007 is as dry and as hot as last year, the water will run out.

However, locals in Wellington do not want the weir - and an action group has already sprung up in the town. Gary Hera-Singh is a member of the group and president of the Southern Fishermen's Association. He says the weir will be an ecological disaster.

"It doesn't have any fish passage, and will not have any navigation for any passage at all for boats," he said. "So it will basically separate the river from the lakes and the lakes will become an evaporation basin. "And I see massive fish kills, of unseen proportions in Australia, tens of thousands of fish will just roll over because of increased salinity, because of algal blooms that will take oxygen out of the water. "It will just be a stinking, rotting, cess pool."

He also doubts the weir will be temporary. "To build half the weir - there's somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 tonnes of rock is required - so you're looking at $140 million-plus to build the bloody thing, and they're calling it temporary?" he said. "How much do you think it's going to cost to remove it if we do get a flow? They're not going to bother."

The Murray Darling contingency includes sacrificing some wetlands along the river system.

Alternet has a review of George Monbiot's "Heat".

The bulk of Heat is an exhaustive sector-by-sector, hardheaded examination of the near-term technical and economic capacity for wealthy, industrialized nations to achieve the necessary reductions. The examination relies on an immense volume of technical studies and primary research. Monbiot concludes that the UK can indeed achieve sufficient reductions within the time frame, but just barely, and at a high cost.

Although none of the reductions will be easily achieved, Monbiot's analysis concludes that those related to transportation may be the hardest of all. To reduce ground transportation emissions sufficiently, he suggests the need to severely lessen individual shopping trips. To accomplish this, he proposes that goods be delivered. He cites a UK Department of Transportation study that notes, "a number of modeling exercises and other surveys suggest that the substitution of private cars by delivery vehicles could reduce traffic by 70 percent or more." Every van the stores dispatch, in other words, takes three cars off the road. Monbiot also proposes to transform out of town superstores into warehouses, to be visited only by vehicles that pick up supplies. That will save even more energy, because warehouses use only 35 percent as much heat and 29 percent as much electricity as do stores.

In only one sector does Monbiot fail to identify a technical solution at any cost: air travel. Flying generates about the same volume of greenhouse gases per passenger mile as a car. But, of course, flights are many miles longer than drives. Fly from New York to California and back and you will generate as much greenhouse gas emissions as you will by driving your Prius all year.

Monbiot reluctantly concludes, "(T)here is simply no way of tackling this issue other than reducing the number, length and speed of the journeys we make." Knowing the audience for whom the book is intended, he acerbically adds, this will mean the end of "shopping trips to New York, political meetings in Porto Alegre, long distance vacations."

He urges his readers "to remember that these privations affect a tiny proportion of the world's people. The reason they seem so harsh is that this tiny proportion almost certainly includes you."

Monbiot sums up his findings, "I have sought to demonstrate that the necessary reduction in carbon emissions is -- if difficult -- technically and economically possible. I have not demonstrated that it is politically possible."

Is it politically possible? The last paragraph of Heat is not hopeful. "(T)he campaign against climate change is an odd one. Unlike almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves."

Which may be why we hear so much talk about the problem but so little talk about sacrifice.

For those who favor aggressively expanding renewable energy, dramatically improving efficiency and abandoning our dependence on imported oil, but remain unconvinced about the timing and severity of climate change, the disconnect between rhetoric and reality doesn't matter. They can view the threat of global warming as a means to an end, a rhetorical device to stimulate people and governments to aggressively embrace these objectives. If we do get 25 percent of our expanded energy consumption from renewables by 2025, they will be satisfied. Indeed, they will be ecstatic.

But for those who truly believe that widespread and perhaps irreversible ecological disaster is imminent, for those who believe we have only a 10-year window of opportunity before disaster becomes inevitable, expanding renewable energy and improving efficiency is not sufficient unless it is done at a scale and on a pace that dramatically reduces global carbon emissions by 2030, with emissions by nations like the United States and United Kingdom being reduced by upwards of 90 percent.

John Lebkowsky has a post on the American lifestyle, and quotes Cory Doctorow, who thinks it sucks.

In response to Worldchanging's question, "What's Next," I wrote

What I'd like to see is a clear plan that explains how 6 billion people coexist on earth with a very high-quality standard of living. I want that plan to explain how to overcome the resource issues, and how to work through the political and distribution issues, to make that world possible. I want this to be more than a hopeful idea that fuels a lot of blog posts or a book like ours, which does include fragments of this kind of thinking. I think the biggest challenge here is coming up with, and describing effectively, a global political model that will support this kind of evolution.

I was riffing off a question about the earth's lack of resources to support the American version of "a high standard of living" for everybody. Bruce Sterling points to resonant comments from Cory Doctorow:

SFRevu: I've heard varying numbers on how many planet Earth's it would take to provide everyone with an "American" standard of living, ranging from 10 to 20 or so. That's always seemed bogus to me since a) Americans suffer from over-abundance and b) information doesn't consume resources to be replicated. Mostly. What's your take?


Cory: Well, America has lots of weird consumption inefficiencies, especially away from the coastal cities where we're encouraged to own a lot more house, car and material goods than we need. I'd be more interested in how much it would take to provide every person in the world the kind of life they enjoy in one of the moderate-priced European "B" cities like Florence. Walkable places with incredible food, design, manufacturing, schools, racial diversity, etc. Places with great public transit AND a high level of private vehicle ownership, as well as universal health-care, cheap or free universities, and refreshing absence of paranoid security theater aimed at eliminating abstract nouns like "terror."

The American lifestyle frankly sucks. The media is generally shit. The food stinks. We spend too much time in traffic and too much time taking care of a badly built McHouse that has the ergonomics of a coach seat on a discount airline. Add to that the lack of health care (just listened to a Stanford lecture about the American Couple that cited a study that determined that the single biggest predictor of long-term marital happiness is whether both partners have health care), the enormous wealth-gap between the rich and poor, blisteringly expensive tertiary education, an infant mortality rate that's straight out of Victorian England, and a national security apparat that shoves its fist up my asshole every time I get on an airplane, and I don't think that this country is much of a paragon of quality living.

America has lots going for it -- innovation, the Bill of Rights, a willingness to let its language mutate in exciting and interesting ways, but the standard of living is not America's signal virtue.

"The Straight Dope" has an article pondering "the dawn of the dead" - in particular, when the zombies take over, how long till the electricity fails?" (at least this is a more abstract and less alarming topic than the real news). This isn't serious of course, but it does look at the need for constant human intervention keeping power plants running - something to beware of in times of war, pandemic or environmental collapse.

Dear Straight Dope:

After watching Dawn of the Dead, I am left to wonder about one thing: If we were to suffer an apocalypse where most of the living became flesh-eating zombies, how long, assuming I survived, would I continue to receive hydroelectricity from my power company? Is it a mean-time-before-failure situation, or would the system automatically shut itself down after a few days? (I am assuming that most of the people who were supposed to be maintaining things at my hydro company would be out looking for brains, and that the surviving hydro employees would be busy digging shelters, etc.) Also, what's the outlook like for people whose chunk of the power grid is supplied by coal, nuclear, and other types of energy? Just wondering how many solar panels I should be putting on my roof! —Jason, Vancouver, BC, Canada

SDSTAFF Una replies:

Believe it or not, this is a question I've been asked before. Many people wonder how key parts of civilized society might continue after a post-apocalyptic Dawn of the Dead / Night of the Comet / Omega Man / Teletubbies Go to Paris scenario. Your question has two possible answers depending on which scenario of zombie conquest you envision.

In Dawn of the Dead, the zombification process doesn't happen all at once. We can imagine a gradual scenario in which the infrastructure systems controllers plan ahead for shortages of personnel and try to keep the power going as long as possible. Alternatively, zombification could happen fairly quickly – say, over a few hours. I'll address the second, more dire scenario in detail first, then the first, slightly less alarming one briefly.

How long the power supply would last in the most critical zombie situation depends on two key factors – first, how long a given power plant can operate without human intervention, and second, how long before enough power plants fail to bring down the entire transmission grid. I'll ignore the side issues of whether the zombies would want to try to run the power plant themselves, or if they would be a union or non-union shop.

Power plants are incredibly complex facilities with an enormous number of controls, and consequently an enormous number of things that can go wrong. The level of complexity and reliability of the plants is a function of the type of power plant, the control systems installed, and the plant's age and condition. In addition to the possibility of unplanned events causing shutdowns, there is also the problem of maintaining a fuel supply without human intervention. Given all these variables, coming up with hard and fast numbers is difficult. To address your question as well as I can, I'll break down power plants by type (coal, nuclear, hydro, and natural gas) and discuss each one separately, focusing on the U.S. and Canada, since their electrical systems are closely tied. I'll ignore oil-based plants because, contrary to popular belief, oil provides only a small fraction of total utility power generation in North America.

About 51% of U.S. and 16% of Canadian electrical generation comes from coal-fired plants. Coal power plants are generally the most problematic in terms of supplying enough fuel to remain in operation, and I could write (and have written) hundreds of pages about them. Mercifully, I'll summarize. At most coal power plants the coal is stored in a huge outdoor pile, where it is typically pushed by bulldozers onto a conveyor and carried to large silos or bunkers at an upper level of the plant, from which it is fed to the burners. When the plant is operating at full output, these bunkers theoretically have a capacity ranging from 8 hours to more than 24 hours. As a practical matter, depending on the amount of coal in the bunkers and the way the plant distributes coal to the burners, the plant may start losing power in as little as 2-4 hours. Whether or not this initial reduction in coal flow shuts the plant down depends on the sophistication of the control systems and the ability of the plant to continue at partial power output without operator intervention.

Coal plants commonly require a lot of operator input to keep running. The controls at coal plants vary tremendously, from systems that are essentially unchanged since the 1950s to modern closed-loop neural network predictive models. In my experience from many months spent in control rooms of power plants around the world, coal plants on average require some sort of operator response for a "critical alarm" every 1-3 hours. Sometimes this is a relatively minor issue, such as a warning to flush the ash systems; sometimes it's more serious, such as excessively high steam temperature or low coal supply. Whatever the case, if the control room were left unattended, I think it's likely that a large number of coal power plants would "trip" (automatically shut down and disconnect from the electrical grid) within 12-18 hours. ...

The Prometheus Institute has an article on why libertarians should support welfare programs (I really like this pragmatic libertarianism they are preaching) for a number of logical reasons - with the nifty title "Doling for Columbine". As I warned before the last time I quoted these guys, socialist readers who tolerate my free market beliefs may want to avert their eyes from this - I wonder if it will prompt another erratic attack from the demented Objectivist who so objected to the earlier post on the shortcomings of the Ayn Rand Institute by the PI ?

The libertarian rightly distrusts the welfare state. It is, at its core, the politics of illusion, fostering the socialist fantasy that income can or should come as a result of inaction. It is ripe for exploitation by those who wish to free-ride on the system. And it also encourages laziness, depriving the economy of the very productivity that allows the welfare system to exist.

But at these costs, it has important benefits - both as an economic policy and a political position.

1. It keeps criminals off the streets and on the porch. Really

Welfare discourages crime. ... Welfare can also, paradoxically, assist upward mobility. Knowing one has decent welfare to rely on makes, for example, quitting a job to start a business much less risky. While the permanent dolees will always be there, it can be shown that welfare can help those truly interested in upward mobility. Would, say, J.K. Rowling have turned to writing Harry Potter if she were working instead of on welfare?

2. It makes Adam Smith sound relevant

The pursuit of welfare's outright elmination is politically impossible, even for the doctrinaire free-market advocates who think it desirable. The welfare state is political reality, whether we like it or not. Libertarians should no longer reason as if we were crafting policy in the 19th century. We can leave that to the socialists, who so oblige everywhere else.

Libertarians should seek to design the most efficient, market-friendly, and innovative welfare systems. Such is, after all, the true way of the capitalist. We should seek to maximize the empirical benefits of welfare, as the socialists continue to promote their systems that maximize its more emasculating and paternalistic features (see point 4).

But the greatest reason of all to accept welfare is that if we refuse to do so, we preclude ourselves from ever engaging in a politically-relevant discussion.

3. It's worked before, to the satisfaction of economists

While much of Western Europe (e.g. France, Italy, Germany) serves as a glimmering example of how to build a growth-zapping, parasitic welfare state, some countries there have actually gotten it right. Finland, Sweden, Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, and a few others have built (admittedly, thanks to a small and homogenous population) highly effective welfare states. They offer generous benefits, but have strong incentives and requirements to rejoin the workforce as soon as possible. As a result, the countries have been able to weave a strong safety net yet have also enjoyed impressive economic growth and low unemployment. They have been so successful that the OECD now recommends some of their policies as methods of encouraging sustained economic growth. ...

4. America needs help

America's welfare state represents, by contrast, how not to run a welfare state. It is bureaucratic and politicized. We have spent a trillion dollars on welfare programs, and it has barely made progress in reducing deep poverty. ...

5. A good solution is finally here

All welfare programs in America should be replaced by the payment of a single subsidy to every poor American. The payment should be distributed through the IRS, with eligibility determined by taxable income. The subsidy amount should be at or above the government's poverty line, adjusted to local cost of living, and adjusted according to relevant macroeconomic data. ...

Milton Friedman was one of the initial proponents of the negative income tax, where such subsidies are coupled with an flat tax. He recognized the economic appeal of such a system, and so should all who, like him, support free markets.

Whiskey and Gunpowder has a glowing review of Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto". Peter at Karavans also liked this one (a lot).

The essence and drama of the movie is that by the time frame of the Western 16th century, Mayan civilization had, to cite Durant, all but destroyed itself from within. History records that in 1517, the first Spanish explorers landed on the Yucatan Peninsula. And from that point forward, it took only a few thousand Spanish conquistadors, and the passage of not very much time, to finish the job of figuratively, if not literally, killing off the Mayan culture, if not most of the Mayans.

...But I entitled this article a "movie review," so first things first. Wow, this is one gory movie. Blood. And guts. Lots of blood. Lots of guts.

...Between the visual scenes, the sounds, the script, and the worthy cast, all trace of the 21st century is absent from Apocalypto. The viewer is transported back in time to another place, another culture, and immersed in a different world. But how different is this other world, really? Despite the apparent primitiveness and differences of the Mayan world, certainly as compared with ours, Jaguar Paw and Zero Wolf are representatives of a complex society, each playing their respective roles assigned to them by fate.

Mayan civilization was extensive, both in terms of a large population and geographic extent. Mayan civilization ranged from southern Mexico to the Yucatan, and down into areas that are now parts of Guatemala and El Salvador. And as the movie makes clear, Mayan society had numerous specialized social roles incorporated within it. Boiled down to an anthropological essence, Mayan society was heterogeneous and filled with social inequality, so by definition, it was "complex."

...So the movie Apocalypto is more than just an action-packed, head-bashing, blood-and-guts chase film. Sure, Zero Wolf and his gang of merry men raid the village where Jaguar Paw dwells. There is a bunch of killing and hacking, and Jaguar Paw and friends get dragged off to the big city, to be used as sacrifice bait. On the trek to the Mayan equivalent of Gotham City (or is it Las Vegas, what with all the tall temples where people pray for good fortune?), Jaguar Paw sees the horrible environmental devastation that concentrated amounts of Mayan civilization has created and, contemplatively, wonders at it all.

...If you do not want to see the movie, you should at least read the book. And that book would be the pathbreaking 1988 work The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph Tainter. No, I do not believe that The Collapse of Complex Societies actually formed the basis for Mel Gibson's screenplay, as the previously noted The Jesuits in North America in the 17th Century formed the basis for Black Robe. But in Tainter's remarkable study of the history of collapsed civilizations, including the Mayan, he listed four concepts that help to explain how and why societies collapse:

1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations.
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance.
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita.
4. Investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.

Tainter explains that the "number of challenges with which the universe can confront a society is, for practical purposes, infinite." But complex societies seem to have a sociopolitical inertia that keeps on increasing their level of complexity in order to survive new challenges. In the early stages, societies in the ascendancy can afford to throw resources at their problems. But this cannot go on indefinitely. Or at least, no other society in history has even managed to pull it off over the long haul.

According to Tainter's thesis, there comes a time when what he characterizes as "investments in additional complexity" produce fewer and fewer returns over time, until, eventually, the whole construct reaches a point of precarious stability due to diminishing return. That is, society cannot muster enough energy continuously to fuel its inherent complexity. Past that point, it is only a matter of time before the inevitable collapse occurs. When a new challenge comes along, whether it is exhaustion of a critical resource, climate stress, outside invasion, or some other set of circumstances, the overly complex society will be unable to muster the resources necessary to deal with the crisis. And at this point, society collapses.

If an overly complex society is fortunate, it will merely deconstruct itself and revert to a much simpler form. And if it is not fortunate, the representatives of an unsustainably complex society will encounter a few ships belonging to foreign explorers, anchored offshore and sending small boats toward the beach, just like in the movies. The rest, as they say, is history.

Continuing on the apocalyptic movie theme, Past Peak recommends "Children of men".

Saw an extraordinary new movie last night, Children of Men. Then went back this afternoon and saw it again. It's not a perfect movie — some of the dialog is clunky, and some of the acting, too — but no matter. No other movie comes close in communicating a visceral sense of the dark path we're all headed down. Stuff we've all read about suddenly becomes real. Harrowing, but not to be missed.

And while I'm doing doomer fiction, here's a review of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

Darkness is a perennial McCarthy theme, but here it is in full flower. “The Road” is the logical culmination of everything he’s written.

It is also, paradoxically, his most humane and compassionate book. Father and son are genuinely affectionate toward each other. Each would give his life if it meant the other could live. This is as far as McCarthy has ever gone to acknowledge the goodness in people. And in the light of that relationship, the question that the novel implicitly poses—how much can you subtract from human existence before it ceases to be human?—takes on heartbreaking force.

“The Road” could have been a novella. Almost everything in the story—scrounging for food, hiding from the “Road Warrior”-like evildoers who haunt the highway—happens more than once. But the tedium that creeps in from time to time is integral to the narrative. Hunger and danger and cold are not just one-time obstacles for these pilgrims but things they must confront again and again; their courage lies in their refusal to give in. The boy and his father call themselves “the good guys.” It’s something a father would say to a son he wanted to guide and protect, but the more you see of these two, the more you want to remove the quotes from those words. They’re not ironic. The characters’ lives are gnawed down to the bone: all they have is their love for each other. And that, in the end, suffices.

One measure of a good writer is the ability to surprise. Terse, unsentimental, bleak—McCarthy’s readers have been down that road before. But who would ever have thought you’d call him touching?

Bruce Schneier notes that big brother has helped design the latest release of Microsoft Windows (well - he is being given public recognition for it, though I would guess that this has been the case for previous releases too). A contrarian piece argues that the NSA is unlikely to put backdoors in so it can access people's computers - after all, they would have enough expertise to simply exploit security flaws if they wished to gain entry - and they probably monitor all traffic going in and out anyway...

Is this a good idea or not?

For the first time, the giant software maker is acknowledging the help of the secretive agency, better known for eavesdropping on foreign officials and, more recently, U.S. citizens as part of the Bush administration's effort to combat terrorism. The agency said it has helped in the development of the security of Microsoft's new operating system -- the brains of a computer -- to protect it from worms, Trojan horses and other insidious computer attackers.

[...]

The NSA declined to comment on its security work with other software firms, but Sager said Microsoft is the only one "with this kind of relationship at this point where there's an acknowledgment publicly." The NSA, which provided its service free, said it was Microsoft's idea to acknowledge the spy agency's role.

It's called the "equities issue." Basically, the NSA has two roles: eavesdrop on their stuff, and protect our stuff. When both sides use the same stuff -- Windows Vista, for example -- the agency has to decide whether to exploit vulnerabilities to eavesdrop on their stuff or close the same vulnerabilities to protect our stuff. In its partnership with Microsoft, it could have decided to go either way: to deliberately introduce vulnerabilities that it could exploit, or deliberately harden the OS to protect its own interests.

A few years ago I was ready to believe the NSA recognized we're all safer with more secure general-purpose computers and networks, but in the post-9/11 take-the-gloves-off eavesdrop-on-everybody environment, I simply don't trust the NSA to do the right thing.

The BBC has an article on What every Brit should know about jaywalking in the land of the free.

In the UK no one would bat an eyelid. In Atlanta, you could be wrestled to the ground.

It is a cautionary tale for any traveller - distinguished historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto tried to cross the road while in Atlanta for the conference of the American Historical Association, only to find himself in handcuffs and surrounded by armed police.

"I come from a country where you can cross the road where you like," said the visiting professor of global environmental history at Queen Mary College, University of London. "It hadn't occurred to me that I wasn't allowed to cross the road between the two main conference venues."

The bespectacled professor says he didn't realise the "rather intrusive young man" shouting that he shouldn't cross there was a policeman. "I thanked him for his advice and went on."

The officer asked for identification. The professor asked for his, after which Officer Leonpacher told him he was under arrest and, the professor claims, kicked his legs from under him, pinned him to the ground and confiscated his box of peppermints.

Professor Fernandez-Armesto then spent eight hours in the cells before the charges were dropped. He told the Times that his colleagues now regard him as "as a combination of Rambo, because it took five cops to pin me to the ground, and Perry Mason, because my eloquence before a judge obtained my immediate release".

Now - wasn't that fun to read ?

Back to optimism tomorrow...