Let's Get Some Sleep!

Conditions: Who the hell knows.



Iraq Still On The Ropes.

In the continuing quest to get the hell out of Iraq while yet still remaining in it, The British forces have handed Basra over to Iraqi security forces. But don't go declaring victory and peace in our time just yet.

There has been an improvement in security in large parts of central and northern Iraq, although how irreversible the decline in the insurgency is, remains as yet unproven. More than 260 Iraqis have been killed so far this month, showing that if the violence can be turned off, it can just as easily be turned on again. US attempts to undermine the insurgency by arming Sunni militias in the north and west of Baghdad have helped counter the al-Qaida campaign. But no one should see in this stand-off a victory.

It is not difficult to foresee the future regrouping of armed forces in Iraq or future targets for them. The major oil companies are lining up for contracts to exploit the world's third largest oil reserves. The government of Nouri al-Maliki is poised to award contracts for existing oilfields, as it is unable to get a national oil law though parliament. A substantial US military presence will be left behind to protect a vital US national interest. To talk of peace, reconciliation and the Iraqi government's determination to rid the land of foreign troops in these circumstances is stretching it. We should stop talking about who won and who lost in Iraq. We should stop imagining it will become a pro-western democracy. We should start addressing ourselves to Iraq as it really is. Not least because we share a major responsibility for it.

- The Guardian

Much like most big responsibilities though, they quickly pass from merely being a burden to being a full-on resentment, before being abandoned. Much like pet alligators.



Iran: Still Irrationally Wanting To Learn To Fish.

For a long time, Russia has been working to supply Iran with Uranium fuel for their Nuclear power plant in Bushehr. Additionally, Iran has been trying to refine their own Uranium, the better to be more self-sufficient in their quest for Nuclear power. Now that Russia has started delivering the fuel that was agreed on, America has jumped back into the argument again.

Washington says Iran has no need to continue its own nuclear programme now that Russia has started delivering fuel to the Bushehr power plant.
[...]

Confirming that Moscow had notified the US about the shipment, President George W Bush said the Russian shipment proved the Iranians did "not need to learn how to enrich" uranium for themselves.

He said that Iran remained a "threat to peace" if its own enrichment, a crucial step towards constructing nuclear weapons, was not stopped.
[...]

Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's atomic energy agency, said the plant would begin operating some time in the new year.

He stressed that nuclear enrichment work would not stop as a result of the Russian deliveries, saying fuel was needed for a reactor under construction in Darkhovin, south-west Iran.

- BBC.co.uk

Frankly, I consider it an insult to everyone's intelligence that the U.S President would say that Iran doesn't need to learn how to do it themselves. Obviously in Bush's world, he is the only one with a fishing pole, and everyone else has to ask him for something to eat. An attitude that is mirrored in so many American foreign policies.




The Human Calendar.

Tired of looking at a digital calender of just numbers? Wish there was a more humanised version of an online character? Want to hurry up and get to the point? Click thus: http://www.humancalendar.com/



Fun With eBay.

Here's an odd way for someone to spend a vacation: terrorising some random person for money. Postcard Attack.



Hi 8 us.

As 2007 draws to a merciful end, thoughts inevitably gather about how it went, how it could have gone, and how we go about fixing it next year. Looking back over the year that was, it strikes me just how willfully stupid and ignorant the human race has yet again demonstrated itself to be, fighting unwinnable wars on abstract concepts like terror or oppression, pretending to support global environmental campaigns whilst in the background doing everything to prevent having to actually reduce emissions, and generally just running about and acting like a pack of total assholes. With various parts of the world either in conflict with other parts, or suffering through economic or climactic disasters, and no real hope on the horizon of humans finally waking up to the obvious and working together to find peace and support, I must say it amazes me that we don't all just wander off in disgust. If only. So, with no hope of improvement, and the likelihood of further conflict and suffering in the near future, not to mention the prospect of spending 2008 watching the world economy rapidly collapse yet again while a new bunch of politicians make a run for the White House, I retire to my xmas bunker in the hopes of shutting out everyone's problems for a few weeks at least. Try to keep your heads down in the meantime.



Last Word.

"The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we kill those people."

- Bill Hicks

And Finally.

Peace Out.

Thirty Seconds To Vacation.

Conditions: Raining, awful.



CIA Tortures, Lies, Destroys Evidence, Has Coffee For Breakfast.

The big news this week has been the revelation that the CIA destroyed some videotapes that portrayed them torturing detainees for information back in 2005, despite being under a court order to not destroy evidence of detainee abuse.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books - and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."

- Truthout.org

Are we surprised? Really? One would think it quite obvious that the CIA would get rid of these tapes. It seems to me that the scandal now isn't so much that the CIA is torturing people, but that they had the gall to try and cover it up - as if the crime itself is forgiven but the attempt to not get caught is even worse. But there may be a flow-on effect to the destruction of the record of what the men said under torture.

When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day-and the definition of the enemy in this war on terror that George W. Bush launched in response to the tragedy-comes from the CIA's account of what those prisoners told their torturers. The commission was never allowed to interview the prisoners, or speak with those who did, and was instead forced to rely on what the CIA was willing to relay.

On the matter of the existence of the tapes, we know the CIA lied, not only to the 9/11 Commission but to Congress as well. Given that the Bush administration has for six years refused those prisoners any sort of public legal exposure, why should we believe what we've been told about what may turn out to be the most important transformative event in our nation's history? On the basis of what the CIA claimed the tortured prisoners said, President Bush launched a "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT), an endless war that threatens to bankrupt our society both financially and morally.

How important to the 9/11 Commission Report were those "key witnesses"? Check out the disclaimer on Page 146 about the commission's sourcing of the main elements laid out in its narrative:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. ... Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses ... is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogation took place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

- Truthout.org

So, it's possible we're through the looking glass here. The reasons for the global war on terror were based on things that were said under duress (problem number 1), which are no longer available as evidence, meaning we'll have to take what was said (and so the conclusions made from it), on faith (which is problem number 2).



The Danger of Misinformation.

Back during the run up to Gulf War 2: Oil Harder, President Bush and his cabal made mention of how Iraq probably had something to do with the attacks on 9/11. Of course that was a pack of lies, and surely by now we all are aware of th...

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

- crookedtimber.org

And this is what happens when giant lies are swept under the carpet: the carpet starts rotting.



Mission:Afghani Freedom Update.

What's the latest from Afghanistan you say?

It is now a year and a half since British briefers in Kabul were giving absurdly optimistic forecasts about the ease of suppressing the Taliban. American bomb-search-and-destroy, said the first Nato joint commander, General David Richards, would be replaced by his strategy of winning hearts and minds. It was a sure-fire winner, he said, and would need no more than 3,000 British troops. John Reid, the then defence secretary, even talked of completing the Helmand deployment "without a shot being fired", and eliminating the opium harvest as "vital to the defeat of terrorism". The whole Helmand expedition has from the start been a suicide mission. Since last year, 81 British troops have died and untold numbers been maimed for life. The United Nations calculates that violent incidents have risen by 20-30% since the British took over Nato command, with as many as 5,000 local deaths. The policy of using high-altitude bombers did not cease, despite the pleadings of Afghanistan's elected ruler, Hamid Karzai, who knows that every bomb recruits 10 Taliban.

This week Musa Qala was attacked with B52s before the Americans and British entered what was left of the town. Who knows how many civilians have died? As the Americans found with Falluja in Iraq, there is no way you can "conquer" an urban settlement unless you intend to colonise it for ever. You can only stun it into temporary submission and long-term antipathy. There is no military solution in Afghanistan, not even a military start to a solution. Can Brown not see this?

Last year the British cut a deal with tribal leaders in Musa Qala that was clearly a dud - except insofar as cutting deals is going to be the only exit strategy from this morass. Gen Richards's model required an intensive follow-up of aid to win hearts and minds. This did not happen. The Taliban simply walked back in. Does nobody hold inquests into these murderous mistakes? And what now but a return to the status quo ante? A "small British platoon" cannot hold Musa Qala, nor can the Afghan army. The Taliban can go wherever they like outside the Kabul area.

- The Guardian

So in summary then: everything's going normally!



Word Of The Year: w00t

Merriam-Webster, a leading world dictionary, has announced the the most-voted-for word of the year for 2007, is "w00t", a term used by gamers to express joy.

Merriam-Webster's president, John Morse, said "w00t" was an ideal choice because it blends whimsy and new technology.

"It shows a really interesting thing that's going on in language. It's a term that's arrived only because we're now communicating electronically with each other," Morse said.

Gamers commonly substitute numbers and symbols for the letters they resemble, Morse says, creating what they call "l33t speak" — that's "leet" when spoken, short for "elite" to the rest of the world.

- Yahoo.com

I guess it's inevitable that language evolves, but snce we are in fact sentient beings and not a bunch of granite rocks dotted about a large beach I think we should be carefully dictating how that evolution occurs, rather than letting a bunch of oafs grunt out new bywords that we're supposed to take seriously. W00t? An actual proper word? Well then why don't we just go whole-hog and start clubbing each other over the head in order to express ourselves instead of using these newfangled voice boxes?



Not That Great A Lesson For The Kids.

Rock God Slash, formerly of Guns and Roses, talked in an interview about style of where he got his signature top hat from.

I always had a thing for hats; it really completes a look. Around 1985, early in Guns n' Roses career before we had a record deal, I was down on Melrose looking for something cool to wear to a gig that night at The Whiskey. I didn't have any money so that meant basically [it had to be] something I could steal. So I went to a store called Retail Slut and I saw this top hat and it just spoke to me. And, you know, once you decide that you actually like something, there's no turning back: you just have to get it. I put it on and it looked cool, but then I thought, "How do you steal a top hat?" It's not just something that you put in your pocket. So I grabbed it and walked out of the store and I got half way down the block and no one chased me down the street, so I got away with it.

- Huffpost.com

Okay, I'm down, he stole a cool hat and it turned into an icon. It's not exactly noble but it's at least a funny story. But what I found odd is that there was no indication in the interview of a) stealing being, you know, wrong, and b) Slash at some point paying them back after becoming an insanely-rich rock star. Just you know, putting it out there. For the kids.





Car Update.

Turns out the stuttering problem was just a broken wire under the distributor. I knew it was something electrical. So now we're back to normal. W00t!!



Breaking News: The Moon Still Looks The Same.

China's mission to the moon has brought some shocking results: the moon is in fact still there, and still looks the same as it did back in 1969. Shock!

BEIJING (AP)--China displayed the first image of the moon captured by its Chang-e 1 lunar probe at a gala ceremony Monday, marking the formal start of the satellite's mission to document the lunar landscape.

Unveiling the image at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, Premier Wen Jiabao hailed it as a major step in "the Chinese race's 1,000-year-old dream" of exploring the moon.

China hopes the probe, launched late last month, will have surveyed the entire surface of the moon at least once by early next year.

- Space.com

So this then answers the long-standing question we had about the moon reconfiguring itself every 20-odd years. Thanks, China!



Film Review: Hitman.

Hitman is the stylish new film of the stylish video game. Unfortunately, it seems that playing the game is a prerequisite to watching the film. It must be, since this film is completely and totally empty. Stylish to a fault indeed, but much like a cardboard-cutout of a supermodel. As if that's not enough, it compounds this problem by making the worst mistake it could: playing the end of the film at the start. Why do filmmakers do this? Now we know from the start that the main protagonists are going to survive the whole film in order to get back to this point at the end. So you might as well nap through all the gunfights and explosions, because we know who's going to show up at the end. What a wasteful, stupid thing to do.

A film needs certain things to actually work as a film. It needs characters, who have back stories and emotions and ideas and hopes. It needs a plot, where the characters try to do things and are either successful or not. And it all needs to make a certain amount of sense. Oddly, Hitman decides to not do these things. Instead, it puts forward this idea where a secretive multi-national corporation recruits and trains orphans in order to build it's own army of assassins. It then presumably contracts these assassins out to the highest bidders anywhere in the world. And yet each of these assassins are all easily identifiable not only by the bar codes tattooed into the back of their skulls, but also in that they all sport shaven heads, the better to show off their tattoos I guess. It's like if James Bond wanted to go on a mission while wearing a '007' cap on his head.

These assassins, trained in all forms of combat, willing and able to kill anyone at any point for any reason, do not even have names, let alone lives. The main one in this film, played stonily by Timothy Olyphant, reacts to having a girl sit on his lap by rendering her unconscious with a nerve pinch. The plot seems to have something to do with the corporation trying to fix the Russian presidency by having the president killed and a lookalike planted in his place. And then killing the assassin to keep it secret. And throughout it all an Interpol detective chases after this shadowy killer. There's stuff about the Hitman maybe softening a little, thanks to a prostitute he identifies with stumbling into the story at some point, but it's all half-baked. Does the assassin care that the corporation that made him set him up? Do we? No on both counts, I think. Dehumanize the hero of a film and you get a movie where no one cares what happens to anyone. One and a half slutty dresses out of Five.



End transmission

Runaway Trains Cannot Change Tracks.

Conditions: Sunny, warm, even breezy.


Exactly How Much More Clear Can We Be About Iran?

In a move just short of whacking President Bush over the head with a newspaper while asking "Are we learning yet?", the intelligence agencies have published another N.I.E report stating clearly that Iran actually are not about to break out a bunch of nuclear weapons kill everyone on the planet.

In a stunning reversal of Bush administration conventional wisdom, a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies concludes Iran shelved its nuclear weapons program over four years ago.

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," reads a declassified version of the National Intelligence Estimate key findings.

- blogs.abcnews.com

------------------

US intelligence agencies undercut the White House yesterday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified yesterday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates. "Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005," it said.

The disclosure makes it harder for President George Bush, to justify a military strike against Iran before he leaves office next year. It also makes it more difficult to persuade Russia and China to join the US, Britain and France in imposing a new round of sanctions on Tehran.

Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney have been claiming without equivocation that Tehran is bent on achieving a nuclear weapon, with the president warning in October of the risk of a third world war. They were briefed on the national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Wednesday.
[...]

In a startling admission from an administration that regularly portrays Iran as the biggest threat to the Middle East and the world, the NIE said: "We do not know whether [Iran] currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." That contradicts the assessment two years ago that baldly stated that Tehran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons".

- The Guardian

Now, you'd think something like that would take the wind out of President Bush's sails, but Ha! You see, Bush didn't get to where he is today by changing his mind about things.

Defending his credibility, President Bush said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite a blockbuster intelligence finding that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Bush said the new conclusion _ contradicting earlier U.S. assessments _ would not prompt him to take off the table the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran. Nor will the United States change its policy of trying to isolate Iran diplomatically and punish it with sanctions, he said.

"Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," the president told a White House news conference a day after the release of a new national intelligence estimate representing the consensus of all U.S. spy agencies.

- Huffpost

Knowledge? That's right, regardless of what the intelligence agencies, or anybody else thinks, simple things like facts are not about to stop President Bush from fighting the evildoers wherever they may be. A graphic from defectiveyeti sums up Bush's thinking process nicely:




So, where does that leave us? According to arms expert and former chief U.N weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, still strapped beneath the point of Bush's mighty sword, set to drop fairly soon irregardless of what Iran does or doesn't do. Bush may have to change the focus of the fear mongering, but the point will remain the same.

Because now you have the difficulty of both the IAEA saying there is no nuclear weapons program and the CIA saying pretty much the same thing. So the Bush administration needs to redefine the Iranian threat, which they have been doing successfully, casting Iran as the largest state sponsor of terror, getting the Senate resolution calling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command a terrorist organization, and creating a perception amongst the American people, courtesy of a compliant media, that talks about the reason why things are going bad in Iraq is primarily because of Iranian intervention.

They have been working very hard to get back on track. I still believe that we are seeing convergence here. The Bush administration is moving very aggressively toward military action with Iran.
[...]

"What should the United States be doing in regards to Iran?" I think we should be seeking to normalize relations with Iran. We should be seeking stability in the region. This concept that the United States gets to dictate to sovereign people the makeup of their government is absurd. First of all, the theocracy in Iran, while not a model, for instance ... it's an Iranian problem, not an American problem. The day of the exportation of the Islamic revolution is long gone. The Iranians are not seeking to convert by the sword anybody. It's a nation that has serious internal problems. Economic. Huge unemployment. It's a nation that recognizes these problems. And they are in desperate need of not only political stability but also the economic benefits that come with this stability.

The Iranians want a normalization of relations with the United States that would be inclusive of peaceful coexistence with Israel. They've said this over and over and over again.

So what the United States should be doing is exploiting the olive branch that is being held out by the Iranians. We should be engaging them diplomatically. We should be terminating economic sanctions and seeking to exploit the leverage that comes with having American businesses working inside Iran to try and change them from within. We should be doing everything to get Iran to be a positive player in the region, especially considering the debacle that's unfolding in Iraq. Having the Iranians working with us to engender stability as opposed to being at cross-purposes.

The same can be said in Afghanistan and the entire central Asian region. We keep putting our hopes on allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Saudi Arabia, which produced 14 of the hijackers who slaughtered Americans on 9/11. Pakistan, which was the political sponsor of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and continues to have ties to radical Islamic terror organizations. These are our allies? And we call Iran the enemy? We've got it backward. The Iranians are actually the ones we should be working with to oppose dictatorships like Pakistan and irresponsible governments like Saudi Arabia's.

- Truthout.org

And much like most words of wisdom, this will be ignored. The media isn't interested in changing the public perceptions of Iran any more than they're interested in changing people's perception of nicotine. It's too easy to confuse your audience if you start changing the characters around, and a confused audience is more likely to change the channel. And that threat, above all others, will simply not be tolerated.



I STILL miss my VCR.

Yes, if you can believe it, the VCR that I took to the shop to get fixed TWO MONTHS AGO, is still in the shop. Why, you ask plaintively? Because the parts it needs are in another city/country/district/space-time dimension, and it's "taking a while" for them to get here. Oh, the fun I have when I make my weekly phone call to the shop in question. 'Hi how's it all going' I say. 'Oh it's you again' he says. 'Yes, me again' I say. 'Well, it's still waiting' he says. 'Okay' I say. 'Next week for sure' he says. 'I'd like to kill you and drink the blood from your skull' I don't say.



Car Update.

Well the inevitable happened. Our office has moved, and the daily commute is now quite a bit longer and faster. And I love it, but perhaps the car wasn't ready for the change of pace. It's started to suffer with some kind of ignition problem, the car runs fine but when you slow for an intersection it starts cutting out cylinders. I started cleaning and checking various things, even checked the manual and tried fiddling with the mixture, but to no avail. So it's in the shop, and I'm on the bus. Hate the bus. Don't get me wrong, it's a valuable service, and they all do fine work, but I'm just not a bussing kind of person. Once you soar with the eagles it's kinda hard to accept shuttling along with the turtles. So we hope for the best.



Building Stuff At Work.

Did you know all the stuff on your desk could actually be combined to make cool toys? Watch and learn:




- deeperbeige.com



And Finally.





Film Review: Beowulf.

I don't really care that this is a 3000-odd year old epic poem, one of the first in English. I don't care if it was supposed to be screened in 3D, so that all the flying axes would look more swoopy and less gimmicky. All that interests me is if it's a good story or not, and it falls flat. Apparently the original poem had issues with plot as well, and director Robert Zemeckis has had his writers try to tie things together a bit better, but it's not working. For some reason at the end of the film, Beowulf's peacemaking agreement with Grendel's mother is suddenly revoked, and the big final battle takes place. No reasons, no explanations, no nothing, Fifty odd years of peace, then suddenly a big fight with a dragon to finish off.

I shouldn't be surprised. This film sells itself as being about things like leadership and heroes and weakness and sacrifice and so forth, but it's really about monsters, sword fights and a naked Angelina Jolie. And that's fine, really really fine, but it is only skin deep. Of course the big deal here is Zemeckis's decision to render everything as 'realistic' computer graphics, including the characters. He's tried it before, with The Polar Express. This is always a big mistake. By making the characters look almost real, you're actually making them look like half dead puppets, and in everything they say and everything they do, you can't help but be distracted by thinking first and foremost "wow, that almost looks real." But it doesn't quite look real, and that almost part is as distracting as hell. Actual cartoon characters, or just normal human actors, would have been fine. Trying to find some kind of middle ground just screws it all up.

So, much like it's hero, it's loud, it's boorish, it makes mistakes, it's exciting in some places, boring in others, and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Three curves out of Five.




End transmission.