Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Ralf Goergens Bugbear-B, a particularily nasty mass-mailing worm is spreading rapidly and may even hide in emails that seem to be sent by colleagues or others inside your own organization/network.
The Register reports on Bugbear-B and links to more detailed information at the McAfee website.
The New Atlantis is a new conservative quarterly magazine, with contributors like Victor David Hanson and Leon R. Kass (chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, among other positions). Found via Innocents Abroad.
Slashdot.org now has a new games section to make more room for games related content than available at the main site. Readers can submit gaming-related news to the editors.
Because of Schroeder’s anti-war stance the German contribution to the war on terror remains largely unmentioned or even unknown, so here are some links on that issue:
“Afghan force changes leaders Germany and the Netherlands have formally taken command of the international security force in the Afghan capital, Kabul”.
The link above lacks concrete numbers, so there’s this one:
“ISAF is made up of 4,900 soldiers from 22 nations. The German contingent is limited to 2,500, including personnel stationed at an airbase in Termez, Uzbekistan. The Netherlands have a deployment of 630 armed forces personnel”.
“Germany’s KSK (Kommando Spezialkraefte, or “Special Commando Force”), was created in 1994 and became operational in 1997, is getting it’s first combat experience in Afghanistan. About a hundred KSK troops are in Afghanistan, and more are expected”.
“German Defence Minister Peter Struck arrived in the Horn of Africa state of Djibouti on Saturday for a one-day tour dedicated mainly to visiting German troops patrolling the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the official radio reported”
“Germany has based three frigates, five fast motorboats, four supply ships and a helicopter contingent with a total troop strength of 1,600 to 1,800 in Djibouti as part of the US-led “war on terrorism.”
“a 250-man, highly-specialized German NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) warfare battalion equipped with “Fuchs” (fox) armored vehicles has been in Kuwait since early this year”.
(This unit has been largely withdrawn after the war).
“With a total of roughly 5,600 soldiers Germany provides one of the largest contingents for KFOR, in second place alongside Italy behind the US. Germany is one of the nations which has to date kept all its promises, has not made any unilateral reductions and has only a very few, legally based reservations regarding the tactical deployment of its troops”.
These deployments make the German contribution to Operation Enduring Freedom the second largest after the American one.
After winning his reelection by campaigning on an anti-war platform last fall Gerhard Schroeder is anxious to mend relations with the Bush Administration. He ended his stay in Asia a day early so he could meet Colin Powell on Friday, even though Powell was in Berlin for a informal, ‘working visit’, not an official state visit. Meanwhile George Bush is also cultivating German-American relations, but he is doing so by approaching the German opposition while ostentatiously giving Schroeder the cold shoulder. Roland Koch, Premier of Hesse and a member of the opposition Christian Democrats, had an appointment with Dick Cheney on Thursday when GWB surprisingly joined them for about a quarter of an hour. Bush voiced his concern that Germany seems to put its relations to France ahead of those to America and also didn’t forget to criticize Schroeder for his opposition to the war on Iraq.
In contrast to this he still won’t even talk to Schroeder on the phone, and there also have been hints that as long as Schroeder is Chancellor the climate between both governments is going to remain pretty cold. GWB can’t even be accused of letting this interfere with the war on terror, because cooperation on the military, intelligence and law-enforcement levels works as well as ever (Schroeder’s opposition to the war never went beyond the rhetorical), so Bush is reaping the advantages from that while demonstratively marking time until he gets to meet Schroeder’s successor in office.
Bush’s brief meeting with Koch was interpreted as a personal affront to Schroeder and set the downright cold tone for Powell’s meetings with Schroeder and Foreign Minister Fischer yesterday. Even so they agreed with Powell that the UN sanctions against Iraq should be lifted as soon as possible, to make the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil available for reconstruction. This is somewhat surprising since the Bush Administration has so far failed to persuade France and Russia to go along; Russia, especially, insists on having its financial considerations taken into account before it will approve such a resolution. It’s obvious that Schroeder is now inching away from both Putin and Chirac to avoid any further strain on German-American relations, but this won’t be enough to repair the previous damage. Powell demanded more cooperation – both with the reconstruction of Iraq and the war on terror – as a precondition for better relations, but cautioned that it would take time until things could get back to normal (he was tactful enough to omit ‘not with you, Gerhard’, at least in public). As a first step in that direction Schroeder promised to consider an expansion of the German peacekeeping-force in Kabul, but since the German military is already over-stretched by commitments in Afghanistan and elsewhere this will be difficult to do.
The most interesting aspect of the whole affair is that Bush seems to personalize politics and international relations, not just by taking slights personally, but also by directly approaching individuals he sees as worthwhile partners. This goes beyond playing “divide and rule” (although it’s part of it), he is cutting out both foreign governments and the American foreign policy apparatus for some pretty effective networking. He doesn’t have to do much more than meet people; just being seen talking to him raises their status, as it just did for Roland Koch, so they’ll be eager to stay on his good side. Conversely, those who don’t get on very well with him either manage to make up or find themselves becoming increasingly lonely (there is a reason why Schroeder is concentrating on domestic problems all of a sudden). By now he manages to integrate the Machiavellian and the personal* very well so that he seems to be completely at ease with himself, after looking somewhat awkward at the start of his presidency.
*This might be the more important aspect for GWB; Machiavelli never mentioned nicknames in ‘Il Principe’; Pooty-Poot indeed.