The Battle In Iraq – Electricity

We wonder why Iraq seems to be going poorly, but the issues faced are not always the ones reported on a regular basis. You hear about the issues of roadside bombs, but the terrorists and insurgents are using techniques that are quite simple and yet effective.

They are shutting down electricity coming into the city. That simple. They are blowing up the power lines so that Baghdad has limited power coming in, making the hardships look much worse in Baghdad where the reporters and news media are than in most other parts of the country. You may not like the insurgents, but they do know how to play the twenty first century media game.

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

 The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the lines.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold.What amounts to an electrical siege of Baghdad is reflected in constant power failures and disastrously poor service in the capital, with severe consequences for security, governance, health care and the mood of an already weary and angry populace. via the  New York Times.

Daily Commentary – Tuesday December 19th, 2006

Dana Pretzer in his morning update discusses

• How Sentencing an 85 Year Old Man To 10 Years in Jail For Kidnapping Compares to the Charges Given By Judges for Sex Crimes on Minors

New ePassport Can Be Hacked In 5 Minutes

While we know that international borders and travel need to be closely monitored, the use of technology in passports is truly lacking and will most likely cause more problems than it will solve. The initiative called ePassport is the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) to monitor the passports. While on paper it sounds like a great idea, in reality it is an older technology that has loopholes all throughout it. The signal can be read, copied, and duplicated onto a fake passport with the right tools (available on eBay) in about 5 minutes.

But as we know, governmental officials will force this plan forward no matter how poorly concieved because it is a plan. And terrorists and other “bad guys” will use it to harm others. As one technology expert said “It is almost like writing your pin number on the back of your cashpoint card.”

But this is also the bad thing about them because, as Lukas demonstrated to me, he can easily download the data from his passport using an RFID reader he got for 200 Euros on eBay.
Lukas is less forthcoming about where he got what is called the Golden Reader Tool, it is the software used by border police and it allows him to read the chip on his ePassport, including the photo.
Now for the clever bit. Thanks to a software he himself has developed, called RFdump, he downloads the passport’s data onto his computer and then onto a blank chip.
Using a standard off-the-shelf component you can just buy at a component store you can have a cloned ePassport in less than five minutes.  via the BBC NEWS

Even NY Times Recognizes Air Americas Failings

Ah, liberalism. While trying to find a counterpoint on the radio to conservatives, Air America is living up to everything that liberalism espouses. Idealism vs Reality, Government Intervention as opposed to Tough Decisions. Even the New York Times can not gloss over the mess that is Air America. They tried hard enough, but this is such a mess that even the Times can not put lipstick on it completely.

Lets look at the Finances of Air America:

Some people at Air America assert that, under Mr. Glaser and the team he put in place, the network was top-heavy with management, inept at selling ads, unwilling to make program compromises that veered from the liberal message and overstaffed with more than 100 employees when two dozen would have sufficed.
“What they did for $45 million they could have done for $10 million,” said Sheldon Drobny, an investor with a contentious relationship with the network. Mr. Drobny and his wife, Anita, longtime Democratic activists, are credited with the idea for Air America. via New York Times.

Hmmm… This is not surprising. Now lets look at the bankruptcy. Instead of a buyer saving the company and putting cash into it, the board members wanted the cash to go to them and let the company flounder. What a surprise.

Late in September, the Drobnys tried to buy Air America for $2.5 million, but the deal fell apart because, Mr. Drobny says, the terms were changed. He said he would have had to put the money into Piquant’s operating account, where it could have been tapped by creditors, instead of into a shielded holding company.

In an e-mail message to the board, Mr. Drobny wrote that “one or more of the board members and attorneys have intentionally taken steps to put the company into Chapter 11 and have taken actions that are intentionally to the detriment of the current members and their creditors.”

And for those willing to wade through the whole article, and I will save you the anguish, the truth comes out in the final paragraph:

He disputes the idea that Air America “was a vanity project,” but acknowledged that things may be done differently in the future. “I have come to understand very clearly that the radio component of this requires a radio professional,” he said.

Time Man Of The Year – Daily Commentary – Monday December 18th, 2006

Dana Pretzer in his morning update discusses

• Time Man of the Year and Weblogs