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This is the Isabel picture I’d been looking for; saw it once, couldn’t find it again, now I have. Amazing. randomWalks has more picture links.
Snopes is tracking that tanker picture. I think it’s Photoshopped; the sea is too calm.
Sep. 19th, 2003
Juan Cole has more to say about the second order effects of getting too close to Pakistan. It’s unclear to me that Pakistan is that close to fundamentalist destabilization, but the effects of such destabilization would be pretty serious, so it behooves us to keep being careful.
Here’s a conjunction of stories that bears investigation. Both Chevron and Exxon are bidding for a stake in YukosSibneft. YukosSibneft is the biggest oil company in Russia, and one of the biggest in the world. Meanwhile, the US and Russia are discussing Russian oil contracts in Iraq.
The obvious question is whether or not we’re seeing some quid pro quo here. Would the Kremlin speed up the Yukos/Sibneft merger and expedite the purchase by either Chevron or Exxon if the US agreed to honor Russia’s oil contracts? Would the US find it more worthwhile to make that deal if Chevron was getting a chunk of the revenues via a Russian company?
Well, there might be a quid pro quo, but YukosSibneft is not among the Russian companies with Iraqi oil interests. So, sure, there’s probably a dealinvolving Security Council votes and oil contracts, but the US doesn’t seem to have much of a stake in the YukosSibneft negotiations. Advantage: “there’s no conspiracy here, citizen.”
Verisign recommends innocence.com as an alternative to the following non-existent domains:
innocentes.net
brokeninnocence.com
visualinnocence.com (actually, the guy searched for girls.visualinnocence.com)
originalinnocence.com
lamented-innocence.com
innocenze.com
blk_innocence.com
www.iinnocence.com (you know, that probably was a legit typo)
I’m actually kind of tempted by a couple of those. Alas, lamented-innocence.com is taken, it just has no nameserver.