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Everything posted by JayB
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Dang! For some reason I thought that this event was going to be held on Thursday!
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Lost my paddle on the class quattro rapid below the dam on the Elwha today and am looking for a replacment. If you've got a 195-205cm fiberglass or composite shaft whitewater, right-hand control paddle gathering dust in your garage I am interested. Also feel free to post links to anyplace with good deals on paddling equipment if you know of any. My price range is $100 or below for a used paddle or $175 or below for a new paddle, but these ranges are flexible depending on the brand and condition/. Many thanks.
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Regardez, Mes Amis... Oil-for-fraud Apr 22nd 2004 From The Economist Global Agenda A scandal surrounding the UN’s former oil-for-food programme in Iraq has begun to heat up, just as the Bush administration is approaching the UN to take a greater role in the country IT COULDN’T be a worse time for a scandal. George Bush’s administration recently praised a proposal for greater involvement by the United Nations in Iraq’s political future. The plan, drafted by the UN’s special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, would let the UN choose, in consultation with America, ministers to run Iraq after the June 30th handover of sovereignty. Yet just as the Bush administration and the UN are starting to cosy up to each other, allegations of massive fraud in the UN’s former oil-for-food programme for Iraq have heated up. On Wednesday April 21st, the Security Council unanimously approved a resolution requiring all UN members to co-operate with an official probe into the affair, led by Paul Volcker, a former head of America’s Federal Reserve. American conservatives who dislike the world body can hardly contain their glee. The oil-for-food programme was established in 1996 to allow Iraq, devastated by years of sanctions, to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian supplies, principally food and medicine. The programme was run out of the UN secretariat, and supervised by members of the Security Council. It is often described as the biggest humanitarian programme in history, delivering over $30 billion-worth of goods to Iraq. The programme ended in 2003, after the war that toppled Saddam’s regime. The United Nations announces its measures for an independent inquiry into the oil-for-food programme. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee posts transcripts of its review of the programme and Dick Lugar's opening statement. The GAO publishes its latest report, which was presented at the hearing. See also a US Embassy report from May 2003. The French Embassy to the US issues a response to the allegations. Allegations of wrongdoing in the programme are nothing new; Britain and America complained of this before the war. But the breadth and depth of the alleged fraud now go far beyond what was thought at the time. In January, an independent Iraqi newspaper, al-Mada, published a list of 270 names (of individuals, companies and institutions) it claimed to have found in Iraqi oil ministry documents. Those named were said to have received oil contracts under the programme, either as thanks for political support for Saddam’s regime, for turning a blind eye to corruption or in payment for illegal imports. Those who were handed these contracts could then sell them on to legitimate oil traders. The scheme appeared to allow its beneficiaries to say they had never taken money from the Iraqi government. The list of alleged beneficiaries includes a senior UN official and top French, Indonesian and Russian politicians. The documents behind the list have yet to be authenticated, however. In addition to allegedly buying political support through the oil contracts, Saddam’s regime itself looks to have profited enormously from the scheme. The General Accounting Office (GAO), an arm of the American Congress, reported last month that prices for humanitarian imports were inflated by some 10%. This allowed the regime to sell 10% more oil to pay for the imports and to cream the extra money off for itself. In addition, the GAO said that the regime managed to sell over $5 billion-worth of oil illegally outside the programme. In all, Saddam’s government may have netted almost $10 billion from its chicanery. The accusations have triggered a round of finger-pointing. Richard Lugar, the head of a Senate panel conducting one of three congressional probes into the scandal, said on April 7th that, to pull off the scam, Saddam would have needed members of the Security Council to be “complicit in his activities”. The French ambassador to America, Jean-David Levitte, noted in response that America sat on the sanctions committee that approved all contracts. John Negroponte, America’s ambassador to the UN, admitted that while sitting on that committee, America had been more worried about keeping military goods out of Iraq than about corruption. The Iraqi Governing Council, for its part, is conducting its own investigation through KPMG, a consultancy. This all comes at a delicate time, when America is hoping that a new UN resolution on Iraq will convince more countries to offer troops or financial support. A reconciliation between the United States and the UN has been slow in coming after the Bush administration’s decision to go to war without the backing of the body, and given its continued wariness towards multilateralism. Congressional conservatives and right-wing journalists have long warned against giving the UN a major role in Iraq. According to these critics, the organisation is at best inefficient and at worst corrupt; and the Security Council is an unrepresentative relic of the 1940s, where France and Russia wield vetoes despite their fall from global pre-eminence, while big players like Japan, Germany, India and Brazil clamour in vain for the same privilege. Moreover, opponents pin a number of abject humanitarian failures, from Rwanda to Bosnia, on the UN. Just this week, a report on a “reign of terror” by the Sudanese government in the western region of Darfur was kept out of a meeting of the Commission on Human Rights. This was because the UN has only just been given permission to visit Darfur. Human-rights groups accuse Sudan of manipulating the world body to play for time. Of those named in the oil-for-food inquiry, few, if any, are expected to come out unscathed. Mr Volcker hopes to give an update in three months. He has said that if there is any substance to the accusations, best to “get it out in a hurry and cauterise the wound”. Given the depth of divisions at the “United” Nations, this looks optimistic. Source
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Al Qaeda's Poison Gas The foiled attack in Jordan might have killed thousands. Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT Jordanian authorities say that the death toll from a bomb and poison-gas attack they foiled this month could have reached 80,000. We guess the fact that most major media are barely covering this story means WMD isn't news anymore until there's a body count. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi--the man cited by the Bush Administration as its strongest evidence of prewar links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the current ringleader of anti-coalition terrorism in Iraq--may be behind the plot, which would be al Qaeda's first ever attempt to use chemical weapons. The targets included the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Yet as of yesterday, most news organizations hadn't probed the story, if at all, beyond the initial wire-service copy. Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Jordan's King Abdullah called it a "major, major operation" that would have "decapitated" his government. "Anyone who doubts the terrorists' desire to obtain and use these weapons only needs to look at this example," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. More details of the plot emerged Monday night with the dramatic broadcast on Jordanian television of confessions from the terror cell's leader and associates. The idea apparently was to crash trucks--fitted with special battering rams and filled with some 20 tons of explosives--through the gates of targets that included the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian Prime Minister's office and the national intelligence headquarters. The explosions notwithstanding, the real damage was reportedly to come from dispersing a toxic cloud of chemicals, which included nerve and blister agents. Anonymous U.S. officials have been quoted playing down the WMD wrinkle, suggesting the chemicals may have been meant to merely amplify a conventional explosion. But then much of our "intelligence" bureaucracy is still wedded to the discredited notion that secular tyrants and fundamentalist terrorists don't cooperate (see Hezbollah). They may also be defensive about their earlier, dismissive assessments of Zarqawi's significance. Plotter Hussein Sharif Hussein was shown on Jordanian television saying the aim was "carrying out the first suicide attack to be launched by al Qaeda using chemicals." A Jordanian scientist described a toxic cloud that could have spread for a mile or more. So was it really a foiled WMD attack? Here's hoping someone is trying to get to the bottom of this. The provenance of the operation is also of note. The bomb trucks and funds are said to have entered Jordan via Syria. Last fall General James R. Clapper Jr., director of satellite intelligence for the Pentagon, said there had been an unusual amount of traffic--including possibly WMDs--between Iraq and Syria in the lead-up to war. The terror cell's ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayyousi, said he was acting on the orders of Zarqawi, whom he first met at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: "I took courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Mr. Jayyousi said this attack had been plotted from Zarqawi's new base of operations in Iraq. A Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death this month for plotting the 2002 murder of U.S diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. Prime Minister Blair has said it's simply "a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together." According to Jordanian authorities, that sometime was intended to be last week. That strikes us as news.
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Oh fucking please. Word. to JJA for the retort of the day.
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Cloudveil's synthetic belay jacket has worked out pretty well for me so far.
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I found this list rather depressing. This is not because I disagree with the specific points that they are attempting to make -which I do - or that the snide nihilsm masquerading as sophistication which pervades the piece grates on me, which it does. It's just that the entire piece has nothing even bearing a slight resemblance to independent thought and analysis within it - despite the author's evident desperation for it to be taken as a serious, incisive critique. It is, if anything, a rather tedious roster of the articles of faith that people with a particular mindset have been chanting to one another in an intellectual echo chamber for decades, modified ever so slightly to suit the times. Weak.
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Yup.
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I'm not sure that having a uterus endows one with any special insights into the ethical and philosophical matters that lie at the heart of this debate, such as the one concerning when life begins. If you were talking about ovulating, labor pains, or nursing then that would be another matter.
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I've thought about this option too. Seems feasible if the snow is firm and you don't need flotation on the way up or down, but could well be useless in soft conditions.
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If you ever plan on riding them with downhill boots on the lifts the extra expansion range may come in handy. Has for me.
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I'd go somewhere remote and torch it up there.
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first ascent [TR] Summit Chief Mountain- North FAce 4/18/2004
JayB replied to Colin's topic in Alpine Lakes
Killer. -
Sweet. Sounds like the right call.
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You've got a point FF, but there's a fine line between being an intrusive wanker and doing nothing amidst an accident waiting to happen at sometimes. I think the things that make the difference for me are: 1)The seriousness of the mistake/oversight that they are attempting to correct. Is this simply them trying to broadcast their preference as gospel "NEVER attach your nut tool directly to a carabiner!!!!!!!!!!!," or is there really a grievous/dangerous error that they are addressing. 2)Their motivation for making the correction. Is this a self-aggrandizing gesture to heighten their status amongst the gaggle of gumby-disciples that they are taking out for a day of TRing or is this someone who appears to be acting out of a sincere concern for the correctee's well-being. 3)The tone in which they deliver the correction. Courteous and self-effacing or condescending and overbearing. 4)Their competence. I've found that 1,2,3 and 4 are usually closely intertwined with one another. I've seen beligerent gumbies hustling over to admonish their fellow climber's for the most trivial deviations from UIAA standards in order to compensate for the fact that they can't climb worth a damn, and low-key old-schoolers amble over just in time to avert a potentially tragic technical mistake as gently and courteously as possible given the circumstances, but I've never seen combinations of the two occur. I'm sure it happens, but nine times out of ten this is how the correction/intervention ritual seems to go in practice.
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Yeah - my bad. My understanding was that you should credit a photo if it's taken off of someone else's personal/professional web page but if it's dumped on a public site it's not as critical, but I stand corrected. Many apologies. The funny thing is that I originally had the credit in there originally , but then stopped and asked myself "Is anyone really going to care if I poach this photo from summitpost" and I edited it out. Shows you what I know.
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Climb: Red Mountain Ski Descent -South Face to Commonwealth Basin Date of Climb: 4/17/2004 Trip Report: The original plan was to head up to Camp Muir, but a look at the temperatures displayed in the forecast left us haunted by visions of clattering down an endless continuum of filling-loosening chunks of refrozen spring snow, so the hunt for an alternate destination was on. After scouring the report for warmer temperatures, we were stunned to see Snoqualmie Pass at the top of the list. So it would be off to The Pass and Red Mountain the next morning. We further resolved that not only would there be no alpine start, we would make it a point to delay our departure in order to allow the snow to adequately thaw itself in preparation for our arrival. The forecast didn't actually call for freezing temperatures overnight, but when you are out avoid the nightmare that is the refrozen slop o' death, you can never be too careful. Shortly after exiting the parking lot we encountered the one and only significant objective hazards of the day - the festering minefields of recycled purina besotting the first hundred yards of snow beyond the trailhead. After navigating this treacherous strait with nary a skin tainted by our passage through the fecal gauntlet, we felt unstoppable and cruised along Commonweath Creek for a while, then veered just a bit east until we found ourselves just right of the base of the ridge that joins the south and southwest faces. We broke left and skinned to the crest of the said ridge on old spring snow that was decidedly less than frozen, and slogged our way to the ridge's junction with the southwest face. From here we zig-zagged through a variable procession of rain, mist, and snow flurries towards the summit, skinning through snow that varied from isothermal slop to an inch of late spring powder on the way to the summit. After taking in the view, rehydrating, and unwittingly ingesting a pack of long-since-expired beef-sticks, it was time for the descent. The nausea induced by the consumption of the said beefsticks generated a state of mind roughly akin to alitude sickness, which from this point forward lent the outing a more alpine feel. The new snow lasted for all of one-hundred vertical feet of the descent, followed by a corn-harvest for the next several hundred feet, beneath which point it was non-stop crud-busting and chunk hopping down a gulley to the skiers right of the summer route up the ridge. A brief detour to the skiers left put us on a more open aspect leading to the base of the south face and eventually the basin floor. Toss in a mile or two of skinless touring down a gradient that's almost continuously working in your favor and another safe passage through the minefield and you've got yourself one hell of a pleasant day in the mountains. Line O' Descent.. PAUL KLENKE PHOTO!!!!!!!!!!! Squigly red line by Jay Brazier Gear Notes: Usual BC Stuff, keen ability to distinguish between feces and pine cones.
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Most of the French leadership has made comments that suggest that their foremost strategic objective is to limit what they percieve as American hegemony. Whether you think that's a goal that will promote outcomes that are in France's or humanity's interests is a matter of opinion. My own contention would be that if the effort in Iraq fails, this will lead to developments that will threaten both Europe and the Middle East as much if not more than the US. The Kurds will almost certainly begin an armed campaign for independence, which will hardly go over well with Turkey. The Shia, with Iran's assistance, will be equally likely to assert themselves millitarily. Neither development will be welcomed by the Sunnis in Iraq, nor will the presence of a mass of armed Shia engaged in active collaboration with Iran go over well in Saudi Arabia, which sports its own restive and disenfranchised Shia population. Toss in a sizable contingent of suicidal mujahadeen who will only be too happy to turn their attention to the regimes in charge of their respective homelands once the US is no longer providing convenient targets for them to strike in Iraq and you've got yourself quite a conflagration, with potential ramifications that stretch well beyond Iraq's borders. How any one of these developments would benefit either nos Amis in France or the Arabs is an open question, but their collective stance has been such that one can only concludc that their primary objective is to undermine American efforts in Iraq, while mitigating the potentially negative effects of their conduct later. They may well have ample opportunity to just that. Bon chance, mon amis.
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I was there with some friends on the 11th as well, and also enjoyed the healthy dent that mass attendance at religious events put in the crowds this Sunday. This phenomenon was notable due to its stark contrast with every other Sunday of the year. Now, if I was a believer, I would have to ask myself just how likely it is that the omniscient, omnipotent being that I am ostensibly pleasing by my attendance in the said church is overlooking the fact that I am situated somewhere besides the structure erected in his honor on the other 51 Sundays in any given year. I might page through Deuteronomy or The Book of Revelations for a moment or two and reaquaint myself with the manner in which this fellow deals with folks that don't walk the walk - if it were me. I can't say for sure, but some have suggested that there is a firm scriptural basis undergirding the contention that if you set foot outside of your church of choice on any sunny weekend (or powder day) you will fester in the darkest pits of hell for all of eternity. They may be wrong, but is it really worth the risk? Indeed. Think Carefully. Is a little bit of powder under the skis and blue sky overhead worth it? These guys don't think so. On a related note, the ever increasing pressure within his Dark Majesty's Foul Kingdom - first noted in a groundbreaking paper on the thermodynamics of hell (link) - has generated enough heat to begin melting out a few sections of trail in the woods on the approach to the worm flows, all of which will no doubt be quite a bit larger by next weekend if people stoke the fires by falling back on their old ways and skipping out on next Sunday's sermon. You can bypass the trail and one or two of the melted out sections by continuing your descent on deeper snow (still deep enough to muffle the faint hysterical wailing and bitter lamentations of the sinners underfoot that are clearly audible if you stop on the dry patches of the trail and listen for a moment) if you stick to the gulley just a few feet off of the trail on the skiers right when you re-enter the woods. Continue in the gulley until you hit the second short rock step that's big enough to require a few feet of downclimbing.. Once you've cleared the second step, take a hard left up the side of the gulley and look for a blue trail marker, which will put you on the Swift trail, which will eventually take you back to the main trail if you follow it downhill. Don't descend too far though, or you may end up here... Whatever you do, don't end up like these people- Sell your skis and repent.
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What's the size/price for the shorty top?
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There's some climbing just off of the side of the Mesa that most of the folks live on out there, along with some beatiful views of the river valley from the base of the crags. Could be worse!
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There seems to be a fundamental confusion between intelligence and actionable intelligence amongst some of the posters on this board. Vague warnings such as "Al Queda Plans to Attack the United States Within the Next 6 Months" are the intelligence equivalent of the fortune cookie or one of Nostradamus's prophesies. WTF can you do with that? Call a halt to all commerce? In order for such things to enter the realm of actionable intelligence you need specific information before you can do anything constructive to eliminate the said threat. Had the administration had such intelligence and acted upon it, a fusilade of editorials and speeches denouncing their actions as simple fearmongering would have issued forth from the usual mouthpieces. Guaranteed. I've also been amused by the response to Clark's testimory. Every member of the "No Blood for Oil" chorus has come out and hailed Clark, who wanted to invade Afghanistan long before 9/11, as some sort of a secular saint. I would have supported such a measure for a number of reasons, but the fact of the matter is that those on the left who retrospectively support such a measure would have been out in the streets waving placards condemning every single aspect of such an operation.
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Skiing. St Helens on Sunday muchachos.....
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May 1 and I will be there.
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I vote for the weekend after this.....