Sitting In The Dark

Conditions: Colder.


Stepping Out.

If anyone is interested in seeing what will probably happen in Iraq when the Americans are yanked out of the country, one need look no further than the events of the last couple of weeks in the southern town of Basra. Run by Shiite cleric Al-Sadr's militia (after the Americans negotiated a ceasefire), and for the most part keeping the peace reasonably well. But al-Sadr is not technically the Iraqi government, and for some unknown reason, new Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki decided to throw his forces into Basra to keep the peace that was ...already being kept? Unfortunately the official Iraqi army didn't have any more luck than the American or British one, so guess what happens next?

Baghdad - American aircraft struck militia targets in Basra on Friday, the first time that airpower has been called in to aid a faltering ground offensive there against armed groups that operate outside government control.

The U.S. military reported killing 78 "bad guys" in Baghdad in the past three days; American forces backed by combat helicopters continued Friday to battle members of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in Baghdad, while Iraqi forces took them on in the south.

Militiamen fired rockets and mortar shells three times Friday at the fortified Green Zone, the location of the U.S. Embassy and Iraqi government offices. Mortar shells hit the offices of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, killing two guards and wounding four others, officials reported.

Green Zone attacks this week have killed two Americans; embassy personnel are sleeping in the thick-walled former palace of Saddam Hussein for protection.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched the offensive with his troops in Basra on Monday. He has said the goal is to oust dueling Shiite militias and criminal gangs that controlled the city. But Sadr's followers call the offensive a politically motivated attempt to dismantle the Mahdi Army and thwart Sadr's influence in the country ahead of provincial elections this year.

U.S. officials say Maliki launched the push without consulting them. With the Mahdi Army fighters putting up stiff resistance, American forces have been drawn deeper into the conflict to support their Iraqi allies, in some places taking the lead.

- Truthout.org

...And then...

Further British troop withdrawals from Iraq have been delayed indefinitely amid renewed rocket attacks on British forces in Basra, and a looming showdown between Iraqi government forces and Shia militias.

The Government has already admitted that a timetable set out by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for the process of disengagement from Iraq has slipped. The remaining force was to have been cut from 4,100 to 2,500 by next month, but this reduction will not now take place. Instead the Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, is expected to announce this week that the next rotation of troops, in May, will see roughly the same number arrive as those they are replacing.

- Independant.co.uk

Is it possible the upcoming Iraqi elections have anything to do with the current Iraqi Prime Minister suddenly trying to take back control of the oil-rich south from the popular al-Sadr, or am I just being paranoid?



The Ringing Timebomb.

Every single person with a job and an income has, somewhere about their person, a folded over plasticy gadget full of electronic trickery and magic. To start with it was a toy just for the elite, but precious capitalism has brought the cellphone to the people, who have embraced it wholeheartedly. In fact, those of us who refuse to enslave ourselves to the little electronic homing beacon of choice have become the distinctive minority. But, according to yet another recent study by an award-winning cancer expert, that minority status may change. The study...

draws on growing evidence – exclusively reported in the IoS in October – that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long.

Earlier this year, the French government warned against the use of mobile phones, especially by children. Germany also advises its people to minimise handset use, and the European Environment Agency has called for exposures to be reduced.

Professor Khurana – a top neurosurgeon who has received 14 awards over the past 16 years, has published more than three dozen scientific papers – reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that "there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours". He believes this will be "definitively proven" in the next decade.

- Independent.co.uk

How ironic would it be that a large segment of our society accidentally wiped itself out over it's striving to be ever more connected with each other? But there's a significant problem. It's difficult to say 'I told you so' when everyone's got brain cancer.



Sending The Wrong Message.

I was amused recently to discover the WWF had launched a world-wide movement to get people to turn off their electrical appliances for an hour last weekend. Actually, amused is the wrong word, 'annoyed' is a far better one. Ads on TV and the newspaper (both things ironically that are a: good for civilization, and b: requiring electricity in order to be made) encouraged us to 'switch it off' for an hour from 8pm to 9pm. City councils even pledged to turn off street lights, all to put forward the message of people conserving their energy use, for the good of the environment.

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Millions of people in cities across the U.S. and around the globe turned their lights off for one hour last night to make an unprecedented and highly visible global statement in support for action on climate change.
[...]

Like a giant wave, lights went out at the Sydney Opera House, Wat Arun Buddhist temple in Bangkok; the Coliseum in Rome; the Royal Castle in Stockholm, the Parliament building in Budapest, London’s city hall, the CN Tower in Toronto, the Westin Peachtree Plaza – the tallest hotel in the western hemisphere, Sears Tower in Chicago and Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. In Israel, President Shimon Peres turned the lights of the city out with the flick of a switch.

“The true power of Earth Hour can be seen in the tremendous opportunity for individuals, governments, businesses and communities around the world to unite for a common purpose, against a common threat which affects us all,” said Carter S. Roberts, president and CEO of World Wildlife Fund. “As the world witnessed on Saturday night, the simple action of turning off lights can inspire people around the world to action, and to making a serious long-term commitment to living more sustainable lives.”

The goals of Earth Hour, Roberts said, were to raise awareness of climate change, encourage participants to make long-term commitments to living more sustainable lives, and demonstrate that by working together individuals can make a difference in the fight against this global issue. That awareness shone clearly through the darkness Saturday night.

- Businesswire.com

What annoys me is this is precisely the wrong way to try and help the environment. The environment is not helped by people being bothered into switching off their lights for an hour. Seriously, what is the occasional extra light bulb being turned off by the odd family going to do for overall city power consumption? Do they seriously expect us all to sit in the dark? They're going about this the wrong way. The environment is helped by finding better ways of generating the amounts of power we as a civilization require. And that is where the hard choices lie, choices like nuclear power fueling our cities, and eventually the electricity fueling our cars, trucks and trains. So, instead of making people do something stupid for a good reason (why not have everyone close one eye for an hour? It'll have the same effect.) why not make people aware of the real practical solutions to this global problem, and what we need to do to start implementing them?

And the reason they won't do that is simple: because it's complicated. Trying to educate the people about difficult choices in order to safeguard our future is hard, thankless work. And usually ends up being misinterpreted or ignored. So instead of anything adult, they just settle for a world wide holding-hands wishy-washy 'turn off your lights for the environment' hour. This is not a solution.




Cutting The Nose To Spite The Face.

Furthermore, let's talk about Ethanol. It has been staking a fairly serious claim as the fuel of the future, and a lot of people are putting a percentage of it in their cars already. Made from grain, the bio-fuel has been touted as the answer to our dependance on fossil fuels. Well it may well work in a petrol tank, but what is becoming clear is what happens when a portion of the food market is diverted to producing energy.

"This is the new face of hunger," said Josetta Sheeran, director of the World Food Programme, launching an appeal for an extra $500 million so it could continue supplying food aid to 73 million hungry people this year.

"People are simply being priced out of food markets . . . We have never before had a situation where aggressive rises in food prices keep pricing our operations out of our reach."
[...]

It is the perfect storm: everything is going wrong at once. To begin with, the world's population has continued to grow while its food production has not. For the 50 years between 1945 and 1995, as the world's population more than doubled, grain production kept pace - but then it stalled. In six of the past seven years, the human race has consumed more grain than it grew. World grain reserves last year were only 57 days, down from 180 days a decade ago.

To make matters worse, demand for food is growing faster than population.
[...]

Then there is global warming, which is probably already cutting into food production.
[...]

But the worst damage is being done by the rage for "bio-fuels" that supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. (But they don't, really - at least, not in their present form.) Thirty per cent of this year's U.S. grain harvest will go straight to an ethanol distillery, and the European Union is aiming to provide 10 per cent of the fuel used for transport from bio-fuels by 2010. A huge amount of the world's farmland is being diverted to feed cars, not people.

- Nugget.ca

So it seems, in it's current form, Ethanol is not the solution we're looking for, and the longer we take in understanding that, the more people in this world are going to starve because they are being priced out of the food market.



Art In Odd Places.

- Woostercollective.com

What you're seeing is a plastic bag fashioned by an unknown artist to look like an animal and attached to a subway grating. The subsequent rush of air animates the bag. Awwww.



Film Review: Rambo 4.

You know, I have a lot of respect for the Rambo movies. The first is a legitimate classic, creating a character interesting enough to have a couple of still interesting sequels made. And the sequels weren't just cash-in affairs, either. They were legitimate attempts to continue to evolve the character, make a statement about the worlds they were set in (Middle America, Vietnam, Afghanistan) and America's relationship to that world, and just pretty damn good stories in and of themselves.

Rambo 4, however, is a surprisingly shallow, empty film. Both politically and story wise. It's set in Burma, but that, amazingly, is as far as it goes in making either a political statement or a personal appeal. The only thing we learn, and I seriously mean the *only* thing we learn, is that Burma is a terrible place to be. The plot is as simple as they come. A bunch of American missionaries cajole Rambo (working as a snake finder) into taking them to a Burmese village to do God's work. Naturally, they're all caught by, I dunno, 'army bad guys', and it's up to Rambo and a bunch of mercenaries to save the day. And that's it. No surprises, no setups, no double crosses, not even a helicopter chase. The whole entire reason for the film seems to be a long violent sequence where Rambo fires a big gun and chops approximately 200 people into mince. Um, excuse me, but what's the point?

And that, probably, seems to be the point, the whole point. Rambo is a legend of war. War is bad. And so Rambo is sad. The end. What else is there? Stallone directed and co-wrote this film, and as far as acting is concerned he's still pretty darn good. But unlike the previous entries, there's just nothing here. And using the shaky-camera does not cover that up. One and a half flying limbs out of Five.



End transmission.