End of the Affair

Conditions: Sunny, Warmish


Cheney: I am above the law!

In response to requests from the Information Security Oversight Office, who have the unenviable task of keeping track and keeping secure the nation's secrets, the office of vice president Dick Cheney has responded that they apparently and suddenly are not a part of the executive branch of the U.S government, and so therefore no longer have to inform the office about what national secrets it is dealing with.

Bill Leonard, head of the government's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), told Waxman's staff that Cheney's office has refused to provide his staff with details regarding classified documents or submit to a routine inspection as required by presidential order, according to Waxman.

In pointed letters released today by Waxman, ISOO's Leonard twice questioned Cheney's office on its assertion it was exempt from the rules. He received no reply, but the vice president later tried to get rid of Leonard's office entirely, according to Waxman. - truthout.org

Now, we've long known that certain elements of the Bush administration tend to think of themselves as, shall we say, super-human, but Cheney is really starting to push the boundaries.
Will Congress just let Cheney to continue to be a law to himself, or will someone finally start to push back?



State of the nation

The UN special envoy to the Middle East, Alvaro De Soto, has written a scathing end of mission report regarding the policies of the Bush administration, and the attitude of the Americans to the plight of the Palestinians.

Bluntly, what does Alvaro de Soto say? That this chaos and this violence are - apart from the result of an unshared Fatah reign dominated by corruption - the product of the blindness that seized the West after Hamas's electoral victory. He accuses the United States - more than ever aligned with Israel - of having been resolutely hostile to "constructive ambiguities," the only means apt to convert the Islamists to political realism, and of having "pushed Hamas and Fatah to a confrontation." In the course of his account, the United Nations's emissary reports the satisfaction of a senior American diplomat at the fratricidal confrontations. "I love this violence", he thrilled, convinced that he was witnessing the beginning of the end for Hamas.

This American obstinacy has precipitated the failure of the Palestinian national unity government and ruined the global peace offer advanced by Saudi diplomacy, which provided for a complete normalization of relations between Arab countries and Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders. Mr. de Soto deems that from now on it is ever more difficult, even "impossible," to create a Palestinian state. He denounces the "roofless prison" that the Gaza Strip has become. - truthout.org

I cannot understand how any of this profits either Israel or the U.S in the long run. Surely even politicians can understand the importance of long term consequences when thinking in the short term. Hell, I'm not even sure how this helps anyone in the short term. Yes, the fundamentals are currently focusing on each other instead of you, but that doesn't mean that their attitude towards you has changed. In fact, in time when they learn what part you had to play in everything their attitudes might (somehow) get worse. Unless this is some wacky scheme to get them to work together?



What if they held an inspection and nobody came?

Word reaches us that the Iraq Arms Inspection Unit is about to close themselves down.
Awwww. You know, I bought all their albums, and really liked their music, but eventually once most of the band members had left you really just have to accept the point that the band, she is dead. Oh wait, that's the blurb for Guns & Roses.

The United States and Britain have circulated a new proposal to the members of the United Nations Security Council to “terminate immediately the mandates” of the weapons inspectors. Staff meetings on the latest proposal have already taken place, and officials say that the permanent Council members, each of whom has veto power, seem ready to let the inspection group — the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission — meet its end.

In the heat of the debate leading to the Iraq invasion, the commission’s vaguely Slavic-sounding acronym, Unmovic, rang out almost nonstop through the halls of the United Nations. Its inspection teams, at the very center of the worldwide debate over the war, supervised the destruction of rocket engines and fuel tanks.

But the inspectors left Iraq in March 2003, shortly before the invasion, and have not been allowed to return. October will be the third anniversary of the American-led Iraq Survey Group’s finding that the Hussein government had destroyed its stockpiles of illicit weapons just months after the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
[...]

For the time being, Unmovic remains on a form of life support, not searching on the ground for weapons in Iraq but not going away either. A skeleton crew still analyzes satellite photographs and issues regular quarterly reports to the Security Council. The entire presence in Iraq consists of just two local staff members who, according to the most recent report, released at the end of May, “continued to perform routine maintenance on the office support equipment” left behind there.

Man, that sounds like a sweet gig. Getting paid for nothing, and you get to introduce yourself as a Weapons Inspector. Well so long, Iraqi Weapons Inspectors. We had some great times, back in the day. You'd be all "Well, there are no WMD's", and then I'd be all "See, they say there are no WMD's! See?", and then others would say "Well that's because they're all liars, and the WMD's are hidden in huge underground caves, and on the dark side of the moon." and then I'd spend a few hours headbutting my desk in frustration. Good times.


Choose your ...movie?

Remember the books you could buy that would allow you to pick what you wanted the character to do, you know "If you want to go through the red door go to page 34. If you want to jump out the window go to page 78. If you want to skip to the end go to page 2"? Well, the geniuses in Hollywood are going to try to do this as a movie, specifically a series of DVDs, all under the wise and all-knowing guidance of film uber-producer Joel Silver.

We’ve seen DVDs with branching features that allow access to a few deleted scenes in the flow of the film, but there still hasn’t been an interactive film in some time. Silver’s Dark Castle banner is looking to change that somewhat with the HD-DVD version of Return to House on Haunted Hill, one of several new titles he’ll help to churn out for the Warner Premiere direct-to-DVD line.

With the HD release of this movie, you’ll have access to “navigational technology” that allows you to make a whopping seven major choices that will ultimately lead to approximately 90 different versions of the film. - Chud.com

It sounds like a neat idea for home theater, in that the film will stop every now and then and all the people watching it can have a talk about what should happen next. I'm just not sure that, after the initial wow factor fades away, people will come back to it. Movies are great for just sitting back and relaxing. Depending on the audience, having to interrupt the film in order to decide what happens next may just be annoying rather than entertaining. Still, at least they're trying.




Film Review: Ocean's Thirteen

After the confusion of Ocean's Twelve, where the plot actually took place away from the film itself, and the whole thing played out like a too-obvious Hollywood in-joke, the producers decided that what they needed to do was just make a heist film set in Vegas. Again. And, they delivered. What we have here is an actual sequel to Ocean's Eleven.

Surprisingly, the only thing that actually worked nicely in 12 is missing in 13 - the scenes at the start where we learn what all the characters have been up to. Instead, they all simply arrive at the same time, and the plot begins. I guess I'm not really disappointed at the lack of character development in an Ocean's movie, but I just thought it a little jarring. Anyway, the only real problem with this movie is that the characters do not really seem to be taking things seriously. The first film worked because all the characters were focused on making the heist work. Like really focused. As in, this is the most important thing ever. The third film still works, but the characters seem to be taking things somewhat less importantly. Things roll along, getting more outrageous, but there's never the sense of the stakes being all that high. Therefore, it's not something the audience cares about all that much. Will they steal the diamonds? Will they break the Bank? Will they get caught? It doesn't really seem all that vital.

In the end, it's a fun zippy heist movie with a bunch of charismatic actors all playing off each other. If you liked the first film, you'll probably like this one as well. 3 and a half dice out of 5.

Summer Blockbuster Super Season Deathcount Score: 1/3



Peace out