New York Times/CBS News Poll Watch

3. How about the economy? Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the economy?

...

3/20-21/03          48            40            12

3/22/03             46            45             9

3/23/03             53            38             9

3/24/03             51            37            12

3/20-24/03          50            40            10

White               55            35            11

Black               21            70             9

6. Do you approve or disapprove of the United States taking military action against Iraq to try and remove Saddam Hussein from power?

...

3/20-21/03               76             20          4

3/22/03                  76             22          2

3/23/03                  80             17          2

3/24/03                  75             23          2

3/20-24/03               77             20          3

White                    82             15          3

Black                    44             51          4

8. Do you think George W. Bush did everything he should have to avoid war, or should he have done more?

                    Done everything   Should have done more   DK/NA

3/20-21/03               61                    34              5

9. Which comes closer to your opinion? 1. The United States should not attack another country unless that country has attacked the United States first, or 2. The United States should be able to attack any country it thinks might attack the United States? ASKED OF HALF THE RESPONDENTS

                   Should not attack   Should be able to attack   DK/NA

9/2-5/02                 47                 41                     12

...

3/20-24/03               37                 54                      9

10. Which comes closer to your opinion? 1. One country should NOT be able to attack another country unless it is attacked first, or 2. One country should be able to attack any other country it thinks will attack first?

ASKED OF HALF THE RESPONDENTS

                   Should NOT be able   Should be able    DK/NA

10/3-5/02             56                    33              11

...

3/20-24/03            40                    46              14

11. Do you think removing Saddam Hussein from power is worth the potential loss of American life and the other costs of attacking Iraq, or not?

                 Worth it    Not worth it       DK/NA

8/6-7/02 CBS        46            43             11

...

3/20-24/03          64            29              7

White               71            21              8

Black               27            66              7

12. Do you think the United States made a mistake getting involved in the current war against Iraq, or not?

                      Mistake   Not a mistake   DK/NA

3/22/03                  24            70             6

Check the link for all the wacky hijinks. Sure to be fun to graph. Interesting racial split. Also, look at the swing in opinion on pre-emptive strikes. The world is a safer place!

Bush Flatly Declares No Connection Between Saddam and al Qaeda

[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can’t make that claim.

THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.

Peter Arnett’s ‘Baghdad Diaries’ to Broadcast Worldwide.

For those who’ve missed out on the bruhaha (Geraldo told to leave). You decide if Arnett was full of it or not: full Peter Arnett Iraqi interview transcript.

Where is the major news coverage on Mike Hawash? A US Citizen, family man, and software designer for Intel, he’s been detained in solitary confinement by the FBI as a ‘material witness’ for almost two weeks now. First seen yesterday on Warblogging.com.

Mike has not been charged with a crime and all of the evidence used against him has been sealed by a federal court at the request of the Department of Justice. He will not be judged by a jury of his peers. He as not even been accused of doing anything wrong. He is being detained based on a twisted application of the material wtiness statute, which was originally intended for use to prevent witnesses to a crime from fleeing to avoid testifying in court.

This is ricockulous. This is shameful. This is unacceptable. This is unamerican.

Went to an Annenberg War Discussion, where I became pegged as a left-wing looney. All the same, I suppose, after all, I was listening to an army officer talk about how he feels guilty he’s not there, like he’s missing out on the Super Bowl, and a bunch of big-J bigwigs talk about how they feel the US journalism hasn’t been that bad and they’d have to watch out so they can remain unbiased (they mentioned Arnett being out of line for actually, God forbid, speaking the truth). There was some talk about international journalism, but there seemed to be mystification more than clarification. A student mentioned that in Italy, they were just reporting about the bombing and about the dead civilians, but coming back to the US it was all about the soldiers cradling babies.

By that time, I didn’t even bother to say anything [I’d been marginalized by then], but perhaps that skewing of coverage has to do with Iraqi civilian casualties outnumbering Anglo-American Coalition troop casualties by, oh, about ten to one (651:69 at the moment). [see also WMD sites uncovered: 0]

Iraq lost Internet access over the weekend.

US forces’ use of depleted uranium weapons is ‘illegal’

According to a August 2002 report by the UN subcommission, laws which are breached by the use of DU shells include: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the Charter of the United Nations; the Genocide Convention; the Convention Against Torture; the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980; and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which expressly forbid employing ‘poison or poisoned weapons’ and ‘arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering’. All of these laws are designed to spare civilians from unwarranted suffering in armed conflicts.

That’s 11 conventions, including the Geneva Conventions that the media was all hyped up about last week. Of course, the army says they’re safe, but with street fighting inevitable, we’ll see what happens with all this exposure.

Iraqi cancers, birth defects blamed on U.S. depleted uranium

[Karen Parker, UN consultant,] said there are four rules derived from all of humanitarian law regarding weapons:

• Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle, defined as legal military targets of the enemy in war. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.
• Weapons can only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that is used or continues to act after the war is over violates this criterion.
• Weapons may not be unduly inhumane.
• Weapons may not have an unduly negative effect on the natural environment.

Depleted uranium fails all four of these rules,” Parker said last week.

More about: Depleted Uranium w/ BBC infographic, Depleted Uranium Information Page, CSMonitor: Trail of a Bullet, The National Online: Depleted Uranium

Noticed yesterday dpreview has a full Canon EOS-10D review up online. It’s currently on sale and shipping for $1,500 US. Specs: 6.3MP CMOS (1.6x), RAW+JPEG, better AF, ISO 3200 push, 2800-10000K white balance (in 100K increments), DiGiC processing

Ritz Camera has em for $1500. No tax/shipping. $456 for ESP…

Future reference (via Linux Kernel Tuning):

In addition to the number of shared memory segments, you can control the maximum amount of memory allocated to shm at run time via the /proc interface. /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax indicates the current. Echo a new value to it to increase it.

echo "67108864" > /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax

To double the default value.

Some recent interesting class referers to free_culture:

• MIT: ESD.10 Introduction to Technology and Policy
• Furman: IDS 59 Emergence & Collaboration (with a blog and wiki too!)
• Oneonta: PHIL 231 Media Ethics