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Let the Christianization Begin

Sunday: PRAY that the President and his advisors will seek God and His wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding.
Monday: PRAY that the President and his advisors will be strong and courageous to do what is right, regardless of critics.
That's "A Christian's Duty", from the good people at In Touch Ministries. The Australian ABC is reporting that the pamphlet was distributed to US troops in Iraq. It's unlikely that the government had anything to do with it, but it's also unlikely that a quarter million copies of Harper's would reach the troops.

House Shelves Honors for Djindjic

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was recently assassinated, but won't receive condolences from the US House of Representatives despite leading his country through a series of important reforms and its reconstruction after Milosevic. Why? Last Sunday, while you were watching Six Feet Under, Ed Bradley was on 60 Minutes with documents that indicate Yugoimport, the government's arms export company, was providing equipment and services to Iraq. One memo to the Iraqi Ministry of Defense gives instructions on avoiding UN weapons inspectors. It's unclear exactly how much support was being provided, but it's probably in the neighborhood of US$1.5 billion and US$3 billion. This includes jet engines, artillery shells, and anti-aircraft technology. There's some question as to exactly how much control Djindjic had over Yugoimport, since it is still largely in the hands of the generals of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) who ran it before the war. Most agree that the Prime Minister was at least aware of the deals. This scandal has also taken down the Serb member of the ruling triumvirate in Bosnia. Do you get the feeling that the United States was the only country that honored the sanctions?

Parameters

If you're under the impression that the military is a monolithic, unthinking, unquestioning bureaucracy, you'll be surprised by Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College. Think of it like Foreign Affairs for senior Army officers. Many of the articles are very relevant right now, including The CNN Effect: Strategic Enabler or Operational Risk? and The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack, which discusses the moral and practical issues surrounding "noncombatant immunity" and the Pentagon's "effects-based" bombing strategies. The Bush Doctrine and War with Iraq is a wonderfully candid analysis of the new National Security Strategy. This is a wonderful resource, and unbelieveably, it's free.

War for Oil, But Not What You Think

It turns out that this may be a war for oil after all, but not in the way that you think. The United States has made it pretty clear that it's not interested in Iraqi oil, but the opponents of the war seem awfully interested: scroll down to Section 2(b) of this Cooperative Research report on Iraqi Oil and Gas Reserves. It mentions a Department of Energy report documenting Iraqi oil contracts with "Italy (Eni), Spain (Repsol YPF), Russia (Tatneft), France (TotalFinaElf), China, India, Turkey, and others." We've hinted at this before, but now we'll come out and say it: could it be that some opposition to this war isn't high-minded internationalism, but a craven attempt to ensure these contracts pay out?

US Bungled Turkey Diplomacy

The front page of the Washington Post has a piece on how the Bush Administration completely screwed up its negotiations with Turkey. The Administration was foolish, setting a number of fictional deadlines without consequences. It was clumsy, allowing Turkey to think that they were far more important than they actually were. Finally, it was arrogant, asserting that we didn't need Turkey anyway. This screwed up the war, the UN vote, and did permanent damage to the US relationship with Turkey -- who will be desperately needed as Iraq's reconstruction begins.

"One week into the war, the administration's inability to win Turkey's approval has emerged as an important turning point in the U.S. confrontation with Iraq that senior U.S. officials now acknowledge may ultimately prolong the length of the conflict. It is a story of clumsy diplomacy and mutual misunderstanding, U.S. and Turkish officials said. It also illustrates how the administration undercut its own efforts to broaden international support for war by allowing its war plan to dictate the pace of its diplomacy, diplomats and other experts in U.S.-Turkish relations said."
"Turkey's rejection not only forced a rewrite of the war plan, but it undercut the administration's broader diplomatic efforts to win international support for an invasion. Diplomats said the image of Turkey resisting U.S. pressure emboldened smaller countries on the U.N. Security Council to reject a proposed U.S.-British resolution authorizing military action. The failure of that resolution in turn made it impossible for the United States to recruit such close allies as Canada and Mexico to join the fight against Iraq, since they had tied their support to a new resolution."

Nasiriya as Harbringer

It hasn't been posted yet, but one of CNN's embeds just reported from inside the city of Nasiriya, which he said was occupied by the coalition. I'm posting a summary of the report here, because it seems like it's typical of what's going on in the contested cities right now. The embed said that the mission, which was supposed to take 6 hours and has lasted six days, has been slowly winding down over the last three days. He made it sound as though the coalition had taken control of the town, and that the guerilla problem was relatively under control. This is in stark contrast to the reports from the BBC. He said militias on both sides are fighting in the streets. This is also interesting, because I haven't heard any reports of a pro-coalition militia there. These pro-Hussein militias have hidden their weapons inthe fields surrounding the cities, and the reporter described a big effort to remove the weapons caches. This part is a scary. Knowing that the coalition will not attack civilians, the pro-Hussein militia members shoot at the coalition units, and then immediately drop their weapons and disappear into the crowds. Finally, he described the friendly fire incident covered earlier today, and cited 20 injuries and no casualties. He described thefirefight between three different coalition units, all of whichthought the others were Iraqi military. The embed said he wasshot in the head, saved only by his helmet. The embed made it sound like friendly fire was a chronic problem during the five day fight for the city.

Grocery Cards

Turns out those irritating grocery cards don't even save you money overall. They just make you feel like you're saving money and let stores boast of savings they don't offer to everybody. The Poynter Institute has a good summary on the latest on the cards, which includes a WSJ story comparing savings in stores with and without cards and a Businessweek story on the privacy issues. http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=2 Those Annoying Grocery Cards It does annoy me that I now have three -- count them, three -- grocery cards to carry around so I can pretend I am saving money. You probably use them too, those little "discount" cards they swipe at the grocery checkout to "save" you money. But do cards save money? You might have guessed the answer is no. Stores use them to track your purchases. The Wall Street Journal reports, "How much cash are you really saving by shopping at a supermarket that has a card, instead of a noncard store? To find out, we went shopping at both types of stores and talked to a range of card experts. We found that, most likely, you are saving no money at all. In fact, if you are shopping at a store using a card, you may be spending more money than you would down the street at a grocery store that doesn't have a discount card. We learned this the hard way, by going on a five-city, shop-till-you-drop grocery spree. In each city, we shopped at a store using its discount card, and afterward went to a nearby grocery store that doesn't have a card and bought the same things. Then we rolled up our sleeves, unrolled our receipts and crunched the numbers. In all five of our comparisons, we wound up spending less money in a supermarket that doesn't offer a card, in one case 29 percent less. The bottom line: Sale prices -- which were once available to all shoppers -- are now mostly restricted to cardholders in stores with cards and are called "card specials." In our experience, items not covered by card discounts tended to be more expensive than at nearby noncard stores. As a result, we paid more at card stores than at noncard stores. Supermarkets strongly defend their programs. The cards let stores "target savings" to their most loyal customers, says Ertharin Cousin of Albertsons. Still, according to industry experts, the WSJ shopping experience was typical, because cards are designed to make customers feel like they got a bargain, without actually lowering prices overall. Less income, higher prices? BusinessWeek also explored the issue in a thoughtful article. BusinessWeek said: Longer-term, the impact of data collection could be far more disturbing. Using cards to track purchase histories, stores are beginning to segment customers into groups based on how much and how often they purchase. Such information will help stores target desirable -- read: profitable -- customers and cater to their needs. This is high priority in the grocery business. After all, the top 30 percent of customers account for 75 percent or more of sales, while the bottom 30 percent account for just 3 percent, according to independent grocer Gary Hawkins, who also serves as president of the Syracuse (N.Y.) consulting firm DataWorks Marketing. Ultimately, the information could be used to tailor prices to individual shoppers -- much the way airlines charge vastly different prices for two seats on the same flight. While that makes economic sense, under a worst-case scenario, the system could discriminate against lower-income shoppers who may simply have less money to spend. The strategy is called customer-specific marketing, and it's the supermarket industry's Holy Grail. The reason? In a nutshell, Wal-Mart. As grocery stores see revenues and profits flatten, Wal-Mart, with its low prices and huge selection, continues to lure shoppers. Supermarkets need to fight back. But they don't want to compete on price, says DataWorks' Hawkins. "They need to extend special prices, but only to certain customer segments," he says. "As stores begin to better understand the data they're collecting, they'll use it not just for marketing but to develop new metrics to manage and serve customers." Some stores even rate their customers. They have a system that gives more discounts to people who shop more.

Microsoft

Looks like big companies are finally getting involved in the fight against spam and pop-ups. Today Microsoft said it wouldn't let hotmail subscribers send more than 100 messages a day -- at least not unless they paid for more storage. It's half-hearted, but still a start. Even a small fee might be deterent enough since spam only works by being essentially free. AOL and other providers are now getting into the act. Mainly their efforts are lame, like the totally ineffective pop-up blocker I have from Earthlink. With spam now making up half of all email, it's about time for corporate America to get involved. REDMOND, Washington (AP) -- To cut down on junk e-mail, Microsoft Corp. is capping the number of e-mails that users of its free Hotmail service can send each day. By limiting to 100 the number of messages that could be sent in a 24-hour period, Microsoft's MSN division hopes to stop people from using its service to send the unsolicited messages, known as spam. "MSN is strongly committed to helping stop the widespread problem of spam and this change is one way we are preventing spammers from using Hotmail as a vehicle to send the unwanted e-mails," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager. Microsoft said it viewed the limit as a reasonable cap that would affect less than 1 percent of its active subscriber base of 110 million. The company would not disclose its previous cap. The limit took effect earlier this month. It does not apply MSN 8 subscribers or those who purchase extra storage on Hotmail.

Russian Aid to Iraq

Fox News cited this article, but it's missing from their website. No coverage on CNN. A collection Russian companies shipped night-vision equipment, radar jamming, and and antitank missles to Iraq. The State Department has been talking to the Russian government about this for over a year, but the effort was complicated by the nuclear weapons treaty negotiations and their bid to get Russian help in North Korea. The Russian government said the company doesn't exist, then said they were watching the company closely, then that the goods were legal, then that they couldn't stop the shipments if they wanted to.