It's just a freaking phone!

Conditions: Raining. So, warmer.


Bush: I too are above the law!

Proving that there's no depth Cheney will go to that Bush won't follow along obediently behind:

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information.

An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn't specifically say so, Bush's order was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said. - LATimes

I could've sworn there was a part in the Constitution that laid out what had to be done when the leaders became corrupt, tyrannical, and couldn't be trusted anymore. Or has that been erased too?


Angler: Cheney Up Close

So who is Dick Cheney, really? And what does he do, really? Well in an attempt to throw a flaming torch down the darkened mineshaft that is the Vice President, the Washington Post is running a four-part series that threatens to pry into just who this man, this myth, this ...guy, is.



Read it here.




Blair walks out proudly?

You know, if you think about it, Tony Blair should be walking around with his jacket over his head. He has taken part in one of the biggest political gambles ever, and lost, at the cost of over half a million lives, and has forever diminished his other achievements by being seen to be Bush's lapdog. But instead of any kind of shame or apologetic resignation, Blair has gone out on a final farewell tour of the world, where he got to have many photographs taken of him happily saying goodbye to a whole bunch of important people. And the Pope. The hell?

Even if he was not culpable of deception, as he insists he was not, even if he only ever did what he thought was right, he was guilty of the grossest misjudgment - one that has led to the deaths of at least 118 British service personnel, along with as many as 655,000 Iraqis. For that mistake alone, even if it was an honest one, he should have paid with his job. It is a badge of shame for the parliamentary Labour party and the cabinet (and indeed his successor), who between them could have driven Blair from office, that they did not do so earlier. But it also reflects a moral failure by Blair that he leaves today believing himself to be a star, going out on a high.

His expected appointment as the Middle East envoy of the international community suggests he's pulled it off, winning instant rehabilitation, at least from the club of world leaders. The likeliest outcome is that he will not succeed in the job, if only because the circumstances are so utterly unconducive to progress. Indeed, the role could be a painful reminder of the most unhappy aspects of his premiership, as he encounters Arab suspicion that he is merely a lackey of George Bush, and Arab anger over Iraq and the Lebanon war of 2006. If he was to defy those odds, and achieve success, providing the dogged, daily application of pressure and pursuit of detail that the Israel-Palestine conflict requires (and which he demonstrated in Northern Ireland), then he will deserve enormous credit. Indeed, he will have gone a large way towards redeeming his reputation. Maybe that's why he's so keen to do it.
- The Guardian

Well, I suppose I hope he does try to succeed in his new ventures, but it's telling how powerful the spin is when the facts of an event are out shined by the perception of that event.



Can you hear me now?

Yes. Speaking of spin. At the end of this week, Apple are going to launch their new iPhone. And lo, the people hath rejoiced, and are queuing already - which means they're going to be queuing for a week. Standing line. For a week. On a sidewalk. For a phone. A PHONE! For Pete's sake. I want walk down the queue, to shake these people, yell at them for being so shallow, and so stupid. And can you imagine the champagne parties the Apple executives must be having as they watch these poor saps stand out in the rain for a week for the honour of buying their phone? Just imagine that for a second. Just close your eyes and imagine a lush boardroom filled with execs sipping drinks while the huge table is laden with food and more drink. And in the corner the enormous TV screen is tuned in to a camera trained on these idiots standing patiently cow-like out on the sidewalk. For them. Imagining it? Yeah.

On Tuesday, Rodriguez became the fourth person to line up outside Apple Inc.'s Fifth Avenue store in New York. The 24-year-old college student wants to get a belated birthday gift for her sister as soon as the iPhone starts selling Friday evening. - Seattlepi.nwsource.com

You know, I actually take a little heart that as of Tuesday there was only four of them. You're standing in line to buy a phone! Don't you understand that?! And get the tourist who was walking past, saw the line and decided to join in. Oy.


Update:
Proving that the net is the alpha and the omega, or the Ford and the Holden, here's a link to a blog being written by a guy, in fact that tourist guy, who's at the head of the queue, and the various adventures he's having, standing in line, for a week, for a... for a phone.

Sample entry:

This morning, I woke with a start at around 5am to find a spotlight from a news camera shining on my face. It was CBS or some such local affiliate looking for a story. I was up until nearly 4 with my fellow linemates.

It's getting ridiculous. I'm trying to sleep and I have cameras trained at me at every second. My body is starting to shut down. Can you understand why I would want a break?

And if you'll excuse me, I think I need to lie down for a moment.




Car Update

Surprisingly, the car seems to have finally been repaired. The trick, apparently, is not to take old(er) cars to today's mechanics. Mechanics today do not know, nor care, how to repair anything made before 1993. Instead, find some old guys who front an auto electricians shop and plead for help. So now the battery charges properly, and all is right with the world again.



Film Review: Fantastic Four 2

Well. I will say that this is a movie that is very well marketed. Instead of the film you thought you were going to watch, you get a 90 minute movie full of colour and flashy things and Jessica Alba. Seriously, that's why she was cast. The plot is nonsensical. The characters are even shallower than they were in the last film, quite the feat there. And the action sequences look easy, and safe. You can't have drama when the characters seem unable to be harmed at all.

Comic book movies have to take themselves seriously in order to work. A character must wear their darkside like a cape in order to get the audience over the whole 'spandex and super-powers' issue. It has to be 'well, he can punch through a wall, which is stupid, but he's very tormented about it, so it's good'. These FF guys have, or are allowed, nothing in this department. They're all shiny happy superheroes, and the whole things comes across shallow. Real shallow. I think this film is really aimed squarely at kids, which is fine if they'd put that in the trailer. As it is, it's not enough for those of us who've seen an X-Men film or two. Half a giant hole out of five.


Summer super season blockbuster deathcount score: 1/4




Peace out.

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

In memorium

Jerusalem


And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the holy lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills
And was Jerusalem builded there
Among those dark Satanic mills

Bring me my bow (my bow) of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire

I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my (my) sword sleep in hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
'Til we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land



Dancing Queen

You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen

Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing
You come in to look for a king
Anybody could be that guy
Night is young and the musics high
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine
Youre in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen

Youre a teaser, you turn em on
Leave them burning and then youre gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
Youre in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...

You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, dig in the dancing queen

Missing the Cold War

Conditions: Cold.

There's something very odd going on in Europe. The Americans want a missile defense shield, and are prepared to ratchet up the old cold war tensions in order to get it. Putin keeps getting pressured over something that makes no sense. Quoth Truthout.org:

Russia President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would take retaliatory steps if Washington proceeds with building a missile defense system for Europe, promising to restore the strategic balance of the world.

Putin assailed the White House plan to place a radar system in the Czech Republic and interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland. He was speaking to foreign reporters days before he heads to Germany for a summit with President Bush and other leaders of the Group of Eight.

Putin said neither Iran nor North Korea have the rockets that the system is intended to shoot down, suggesting it would be used instead against Russia.

"We are being told the anti-missile defense system is targeted against something that does not exist. Doesn't it seem funny to you, to say the least?" an irritated Putin said.

Why is it that Putin is making complete and total sense, and everyone acts as if he's crazy? Am I crazy too? Is this opposite month, where we all walk around on our hands and talk about how warm it is?


What's really going on?

Of course at the G8 Putin pulled a brilliant move, offering a partnership with the Americans where they would jointly run a missile shield out of an old Russian radar station. This obviously is not what the Americans wanted, because if it was just about defense they would have jumped at the chance of cooperation. For more about what in hell is going on over there we go to Straight.com for some analysis.

The proposal that the Russian president sprang on George W. Bush at the G8 meeting in Germany on June 7 was a classic political ambush. You claim to be putting interceptor missiles and X-band radars into Eastern Europe to intercept nuclear-tipped, long-range missiles coming out of Iran, asked Putin of Bush?

So why don’t you make our radar station in Azerbaijan, which overlooks all of Iran from its perch high in the Caucasus mountains, part of the system?

The Bush administration has no intention of letting Russia share in its beloved Ballistic Missile Defense system, nor does Russia believe that the system is either necessary or functional, but Putin’s negotiating ploy was brilliant. If Iran had either nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles (which it doesn’t), and if the United States had the technological capability to intercept such missiles (which it doesn’t), then access to a Russian radar station in the mountains north of Iran would be exactly what Washington wanted.

“Let’s let our experts have a look at it,” said President Bush about Putin’s “interesting proposal”, and that’s the last anybody will hear about that, but it did give Putin the opportunity to show that the new U.S. bases in Eastern Europe are not about what Washington says they are about. So what are they about?

That is a lot harder to answer, because the whole BMD boondoggle is a weapons system in search of a threat.

Yes, turns out the missile shield is a bullshit system, that has cost too much money, and taken too long to build, for it to ever go away. More at the link.


America can't help themselves

Well, after Putin extended the hand of cooperation to Bush in the face of weeks of rhetoric, will America work with their Russian allies in the War on Terror?

Yeah, right.

U.S. Won't Drop Czech Radar Site After Russian Offer

By James G. Neuger

June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's offer to let the U.S. use a radar site in the Caucasus won't lead to a scaling back of the planned American missile-defense installations in eastern Europe, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

The U.S. still wants to build an anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic and station interceptors in Poland, and won't replace the system with a radar in Azerbaijan that Russia has offered to share, Gates said.

``I was very explicit in the meeting that we saw the Azeri radar as an additional capability, that we intended to proceed with the radar in the Czech Republic,'' Gates told a press conference after a NATO gathering in Brussels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the missile- defense cooperation last week, in a departure from months of rhetorical assaults on the U.S. for extending its influence into the former Soviet sphere.

From Bloomberg.com.

That's great. Way to work together, guys. I'm sure I'll convert my fallout shelter to an outdoor lounge any day now.


Online justice?

It didn't take long for all the internet batmen to get started. After Google came out with a streetview function to go with Google World, people started a-snoopin'. And look what they found.


Now the media pay attention

Before the war, politicians could talk about Saddam's weapons of Mass Destruction all the time. And it drove me crazy, because it was obviously bullshit. Well finally everyone's all caught up, or at least mostly everyone. But at least now when someone says it, there's someone else who can all bullshit.

Mitt Link 1.
Mitt Link 2


Go Smokey!

Everyone knows know the story of the kid in the wheelchair who got taken for a wild ride in front of a truck (here). Now full tribute can be paid, in the only way the internet knows how:

http://eastbound.ytmnd.com/



Car Update

Car not good. Weather very cold. This kinda sucks.



And finally





Peace out.

Requiem

He had a lot to say.
He had a lot of nothing to say.
We'll miss him.

We'll miss him.


He had a lot to say.
He had a lot of nothing to say.
We'll miss him.

We'll miss him.

We're gonna miss him.


So long.
We wish you well.
You told us how you weren't afraid to die.
Well then, so long.
Don't cry.
Or feel too down.
Not all martyrs see divinity.
But at least you tried.

Standing above the crowd,
He had a voice that was strong and loud.
We'll miss him.
Ranting and pointing his finger
At everything but his heart.
We'll miss him.

We'll miss him.


We're gonna miss him.

No shoot fire-stick in space-canoe!

Conditions: Sunny and warm., Yes, really.


Bush Appointees at USDA screwing with the system

Firedoglake.com

Last week the USDA unveiled their new “standards” for 39 food materials. Amazingly enough, all 39 proposed “standards” simply declare chemicals or chemically grown foodsstuffs can now be hidden in foods labelled “organic”. The comment period ended Tuesday, May 22.

You know, recently the head of China's food and drug agency was sentenced to death because he accepted bribes from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for allowi9ng dangerous drugs into the market. These drugs caused untold amounts of sickness and even death amongst the unsuspecting people. While an extreme, perhaps the USDA should keep this in mind when they're messing around with something as fundamental as food standards


The Museum of Creation

The problem with most museums is that they all agree on fundamental things. Where did we come from? What did the first humans look like? Could dinosaurs ride bicycles? Wouldn't it be great to visit a museum that put forward new answers to these age-old questions? Well there is! Let's all go to the Creation Museum!

Creation Museum Sneak Peek

Yes, where we can see the Noah's Ark Construction Site, witness the Adam Naming the Animals exhibit, and even take in the Six Days of Creation Theater. Huzzah!



Now, I know what you're thinking, but these guys even address the differences in the various exhibits! You don't see that in normal museums. To whit:



See? Everyone gets along nicely.



Cluster Bombs in Iraq

This is how stupid we really are: we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. A Cluster Bomb, as most people know, is the weapon that keeps on killing. A collection of deadly bomblets that scatter over a wide area. Not all explode on impact, so you're left with a bunch of explosives lying around, ready to detonate should they be nudged by wildlife, or picked up by someone. Now the laws of armed conflict (like America cares about those) state that you can't use weapons like this in an area that you know is populated by civilians. And when combat operations are over, it's the responsibility of the occupying force to remove these weapons where they have fallen, so to minimize any further danger to civilians. Now historically the U.S has been bad at this, and there's a long long tradition of people in other countries continuing to get blown up by old munitions from old wars.

Well guess what? It's happening again in Iraq.

Asked about CBU usage by the Air Force in Iraq in 2006, Ali al-Fadhily, an independent Iraqi journalist, commented: "The use of cluster bombs is a sure thing, but it was very difficult to prove because there were no international experts to document it." In the past, however, international experts have actually had a chance to examine some locations where a fraction of the bomblets that coalition forces used have landed.

On a 2004 research trip to Iraq, for instance, Titus Peachey visited numerous sites which had experienced such strikes. At a farm in northern Iraq, he was shown not only impact craters from exploded bomblets on a farmer's property but also unexploded bomblets, by a team from the Mines Advisory Group, a humanitarian organization devoted to landmine and bomb clearance. While "the de-miners expressed frustration that the farmer had planted his field before it had been cleared," Peachey explained that this was a common, if dangerous, practice in such situations. The U.S. used similar ordnance in Laos during the Vietnam War, he pointed out, noting:

"The villagers of Laos waited more than 20 years for clearance work to get started in their fields and villages. During that time they had no choice but to till soil that was filled with bombs. Otherwise they could not eat. In Iraq, the several visits that we made confirmed this very same dynamic. People could not afford to wait until clearance teams made their farms safe for cultivation. They had to take great risks in order to survive."

Evidence of these risks can be found in U.S. military documents. Case in point: a June 2005 internal memorandum from the U.S. Army's 42d Infantry Division which describes how a 15-year old Iraqi boy, working as a shepherd, "was leading the sheep through north Tikrit, near an ammo storage site, when he picked up a UXO [unexploded ordnance] from a cluster bomb. The UXO detonated and he was killed." Asked to pay $3,000 in compensation for the boy's life, the Army granted that his death was "a horrible loss for the claimant," his mother, but concluded that there was "insufficient evidence to indicate that US. Forces caused the death."

See article for more, including debate over the extent of the air war in Iraq, an aspect that has been kept secret from the American public




Dissent spreads through U.S. military ranks

If America defines itself so completely by it's armed services, and how could anyone in the Middle East not think that is the case these days, then that definition is starting to crack around the edges. From workers.org:

Growing anger over the U.S. war in Iraq and growing understanding that the occupation is a complete failure are spreading through all ranks of the U.S. military. This dissidence shows itself in different ways among the rank-and-file troops and among the lifers and officers. But from an increase of angry letters to anti-war publications like GI Special to an increase of courts-martial, the signs of resistance are growing.

Various soldiers have either tried to go AWOL, or have been prosecuted for trying to do what they think is the right thing, but the biggest fish thus far is apparently Admiral William Fallon, chief of CENTCOM.

Some of the top officers, who normally have no trouble ordering strategic bombing strikes that will cause hundreds of thousands of casualties, and who certainly have no moral compunctions about starting a war, are beginning to balk at following Bush administration leadership. An Inter Press Service story released May 19 reports that Admiral William Fallon, chief of CENTCOM and a Bush appointee himself, expressed “strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking.”

According to this unnamed source, Fallon said that he was not alone, and that, “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.” This statement, publicized a week after Vice President Dick Cheney threatened war with Iran from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Gulf off the coast of that country, and about the same time that Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz was forced to resign from heading the World Bank, has the ring of truth even if there is no easy way of checking it.

How mad is it that now it's the military guys who are trying to say "now hold on, maybe more war isn't the right idea"?



Cindy Sheehan quits

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a dead American soldier, and probably the first real visible resistance against the Iraq war, even living in a tent outside George Bush's mansion for a few years, has quit her post as ...well, the tireless campaigning against the war in Iraq. Why? Because the Democrats who goto many photo ops with her in her campaign against Bush, who made promises about how they'd get out of the country only if they won the election, haven't lived up to their side of the deal. Sayeth Cindy:

There is absolutely no sane or defensible reason for you to hand Bloody King George more money to condemn more of our brave, tired, and damaged soldiers and the people of Iraq to more death and carnage. You think giving him more money is politically expedient, but it is a moral abomination and every second the occupation of Iraq endures, you all have more blood on your hands.

Ms. Pelosi, Speaker of the House, said after George signed the new weak as a newborn baby funding authorization bill: "Now, I think the president's policy will begin to unravel." Begin to unravel? How many more of our children will have to be killed and how much more of Iraq will have to be demolished before you all think enough unraveling has occurred? How many more crimes will BushCo be allowed to commit while their poll numbers are crumbling before you all gain the political "courage" to hold them accountable. If Iraq hasn't unraveled in Ms. Pelosi's mind, what will it take? With almost 700,000 Iraqis dead and four million refugees (which the US refuses to admit) how could it get worse? Well, it is getting worse and it can get much worse thanks to your complicity.

It's tough to see reality (again) crashing down on the head of someone, like so many anvils, but there's probably some good in this. Cindy (and us) now better understand how politics really work, and that the whole thing isn't worth a damn.



Swimming Tiger

You know those stories about cute puppies licking a burgler to death, or a faithful tortoise alerting Little Timmy to the fact that his bed sheet is on fire? Yeah. Meet Odin, the swimming tiger.




Awwwwww.



Movie 100 count down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpfzIDegtVc

How much free time do you have? How many movies do you own? Want to see the epitome of free time, and a lot of movies? Well some sunny person, whom I hate, has made a clip film from various movies of characters saying numbers. This is what the internet was invented for, people!



Google maps street view

Remember the good old days, when you'd actually have to go somewhere in order to look around? Forget it, Google is now putting together a plan to allow people to walk the streets of cities while safely sitting in front of your computer.

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/index.html

Why ever travel again? And think of the environmental savings.



Microsoft Surface

Wanna see how you'll be ordering your drinks in a bar 5 years from now? Those geniuses at Microsoft have built a table that is a touch-sensitive computer, that can also interact with every device you own. I suspect if you put an iron on it it'll be all like, 'Okay, what kind of water do you want to order for your model XY5521 iron, sir?'

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/18928656
http://www.microsoft.com/surface/



Battleships!

We all remember battleships! Brilliant game. Play it here.
http://www.spikedlemon.com/games/Battleships



Film Review: Pirates of the Carribean 3

The biggest problem with this movie is that it doesn't know who it's supposed to be about. Is it about Witty Jack who (still) wants his ship back, or any ship, as long as he gets to sail off in it? Is it about Will, who's trying to save his father from the Flying Dutchman, and woo Elizabeth? Or is it about Elizabeth, who wants Will, but also wants to ...defeat the English navy, and bring back freedom for the Pirates? Uh, yeah. Anyway, the first film didn't have this problem, it was Jack's tale and everyone else was along for the ride. That's why it was pretty good. But the rot has well and truly set in now.

I suspect the general idea was to show the partnership between these three characters throughout the film, reflected through various double crosses and action beats, but it's so long, and so choppy, and so unfocused that it becomes a big loud mush of moments, rather than any kind of focused story. There's a moment at the end (involving a sword and a heart) that perfectly sums up these three, a moment where each of them makes the same decision at the same time, a decision that greatly affects each of them in different ways, is a sacrifice for each, and confirms the bond they have, but it happens so quickly if you blink you'll miss it. It's thrown away. That's how these pirates roll.

Speaking of which, the obvious undertone of this flick is about the fight for freedom against the tyranny of empire. It's an important point, but how badly is it undermined when it's coming from Suddenly Pirate King Kiera Knightley? No part of that makes sense. It's another good summary for At World's End. A film that's too fast to make a point, and too lightweight to leave an impression. Yet still goes for three hours. Two pieces of eight out of five.

Super Summer Blockbuster Action Movie Deathcount Score: 0/2

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