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On the radio this morning I heard some reports that, according to senior US government officials, ElBaradei’s communicaitons are being tapped to gather evidence that would pressur him to resign from the IAEA. It would seem that a part of this pressure is the leaking of information that his communications have been tapped. Would you leak the fact that someone is being wiretapped if you had anything useful on them?

ElBaradei is seen by the US Administration as soft on Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Ironic, given it supported his initial nomination in 1997 in no small part because he was a US-based academic aligned with US administration policy. In particular it seems they’re still unhappy his lack of support for US goals before and during the Iraq invasion.

It seems that now ElBaradei is trying for his 3rd term heading the IAEA, the White House would like ElBaradei to resign, so they can nominate someone a little more … friendly to US policy.

Enter Alexander Downer. The wording of this passage indicates he’s willing to run if ElBaradei steps down, but running against ElBaradei is out of the question.

Several months ago, the State Department began canvassing potential candidates, including Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, two Japanese diplomats, two South Koreans officials and a Brazilian disarmament expert.

But the South Koreans and Brazil’s Sergio Duarte are now considered to be problematic candidates because both countries are under IAEA investigation for suspect nuclear work. Downer, who is not willing to challenge ElBaradei, still remains the administration’s top choice. The deadline for submitting alternative candidates to ElBaradei is Dec. 31.

To resign as Australia’s Foreign Minister at the beginning of a new parliamentary term without being sure to be offered the new position would be a little rash. It’s understandable that Downer doesn’t want to challege a popular incumbent.

Last resort tactics might be to try and intimidate ElBaradei into stepping down.

And if Downer gets the job, the US wouldn’t use these tactics on him if they needed him to go… would they? It’s not like wiretapping UN officials is fair game… is it?

If I were Alexander Downer, I might find my interest in the position waning.

GlobalSecurity.org is one of those sites that you go to and it makes you feel like you’ve stumbled on something like James Bond’s personal international intelligence portal. It looks like it’s maintained by evil geniuses (and maybe it is). It’s a huge mine of information about the world’s trouble spots with a catalog of reporting, primary sources and images.

There are so many detailed, recent, surveillance images scavenged from public sources I wonder if they have their own satellites. The catalog of background information and images give you a real sense of place and history.

Some examples.

Darfur is a sad and desperate place mostly ignored by the west. Angry about Darfur? Find out about the stakeholders and their recent history.

The attack on the US consulate in Jeddah by the Arabian Peninsula Al-Qaeda and what happened there.

Where do you lose thousands of tons of high explosives in Iraq? Al Qa Qaa.

How many casualties have the US suffered in Iraq?

Explaining how to identify phishing is one of the recent challenges of knowing anything about computers in the company of relatives and non-computer literate friends.

I have resorted to saying “If the Bank, eBay, Qantas, yada yada ever email you asking you to go to a site which requires you to enter your username and password IT’S A TRAAAAAP!!. Always type the URL in yourself!!!(1)”

Once you encounter a few phishing masterpieces you have to wonder how hard it is to keep your own brain switched on, let alone explain what a phishing email looks like in terms that are clear, helpful, and engaging enough to keep Aunt Ethyl awake until you punctuate you explanation with “it’s that easy!”

Via Making Light, it’s the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test. It’s like a Museum of Modern Art that can drain your bank account. It’s a fun quiz that must help arm your friends with crap detectors.

(1) I find careful use of exclamation marks in conversations with Aunt Ethyl helps. A lot.

The West Wing returns to Australian television at the “we bought the series, but we don’t know what to do with it” time of 10:30pm Mondays on Nine.

Will it live up to the previous four series? Will it feel sans Sorkin? Stay tuned!

However, avoiding spoilers I looked at NBC’s The West Wing site and found a future episode that I had to read twice to believe:

PENN AND TELLER BURN AN AMERICAN FLAG IN THE WHITE HOUSE — ALAN ALDA JOINS THE CAST AS A REPUBLICAN SENATOR WITH PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS — At a Bartlet family birthday, Penn and Teller burn an American flag in the White House, prompting a political and publicity nightmare. Aboard Air Force One, Bartlet (Martin Sheen) is stricken by a paralyzing episode of MS. Josh (Bradley Whitford) is approached to run the Vice President’s presidential campaign. Allison Janney, Richard Schiff, Dule Hill, Kristin Chenoweth also star. TV-PG

Mmmmm Penn and Teller meet Alan Alda… on the West Wing. How could that fail? Oh please don’t let it fail.

Listening to the radio one afternoon a few weeks ago, the host (Richard Glover, if I remember) interviewed a visiting FBI agent who was a forensic linguist (again from memory) in Australia to help train local police with the clues that led to the capture of the Unabomber. The conversation turned to the use of language in the profiling of the Unabomber.

It turns out that the interviewee picked Ted Kaczynski as a well educated pedant, rather than the overenthusiastic peasant luddite his manifesto and letters sought to portray. The Unabomber railed against “college-educated” people, but something caught the attention of Ted Kaczynski’s brother David. When he read the Unabomber’s published manifesto he noticed that the author used the same unusual term that his mother had always used “you can’t eat your cake and have it too.”

This form of the proverb is almost extinct from the English language. The form that survives is “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” but if you are well read you know what’s right:

In the English language, there is a proverb: “You cannot have your cake and eat it too.” This saying expresses the idea that one cannot always have the best of everything and is sometimes forced to make an either/or choice. The first appearance of this saying is trace to John Heywood’s A Dialogue Conteynyng Prouerbes and Epigrammes (1546): “Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?” In the United States, it first appeared in the 1742 Colonial Records of Georgia in Original Papers, 1735-1752. In the beginning of his poem On Fame of 1816 , John Keats cites the proverb: “You cannot eat your cake and have it too.”

David Kaczynski’s recognition of the uniqueness of this use, helped to eventually confirm that his brother was the Unabomber.

I think I have an overabundance of whatever gene it is that causes any situation to be reduced to a dumb simile.

Chris describes a meeting where managers were trying to vigorously defend their turf at the same time as they are profusely complimenting and deferring to each other.

I reduce it immediately to “Like watching two sea slugs fighting?”

At this point I think Alastair jumped in with “…or mating.”

And who could tell? Certainly not the sea slugs.