Everything Burns.

Conditions: Waterworld.


Let's Talk About ...Having A Discussion On ...Impeachment.

The House Judiciary Committee had themselves a hearing. A hearing that turned into a discussion. A discussion that was about impeachment. Impeachment of the President of the United States.

As it happened, impeachment was mentioned dozens of times during the hearing, often in significant detail and frequently as a necessary response to lawless actions of the president and vice president.

King's statement addressed the uncertain character of Friday morning's attempt by the relevant committee of the chamber empowered by the founders to impose accountability on presidents and vice presidents to tackle what Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, D-Michigan, referred to as "numerous credible allegations of serious misconduct by officials in the Bush Administration."

Conyers explained that "to the regret of many, this is not an impeachment hearing." For that to happen, Conyers argued, the committee would need clearer authorization from the full House.

But members of the committee, the Democrats and the Republicans, as well as a bipartisan panel of House members and another panel of former House members, and academics and activists, repeatedly put the impeachment on the table of a chamber where the speaker had once denied it a place.

There's a real worry here about setting a precedent in time to stop another wasteful unnecessary war with Iran.

It was that sense of urgency that motivated committee member Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, to say explain that, "What this Congress does, or chooses not to do in furthering the investigation of the serious allegations against this administration - and if just cause is found, to hold them accountable - will impact the conduct of future presidents, perhaps for generations."

"Mr. Chairman," Baldwin continued, "there are those who would say that holding this hearing - examining whether or not the president and vice president broke the law - is frivolous. I not only reject this, I believe there is no task more important for this Congress than to seriously consider whether our nation's leaders have violated their oath of office. The American public expects no less. It is, after all, their Constitution. No president or congress has the authority to override that document, whereby ëWe the People' conferred upon the branches of government limited and defined power, and provided for meaningful checks and balances."

- truthout.org

And so Baldwin then outlined the next steps for a committee to take. I'm not yet sure just how serious this is, remember that people in Washington have hearings about all sorts of things all the time. But seeing some fundamental ideas put officially 'on the table', so to speak, is an interesting development.

More: How Should the Next President Deal with the Bush White House's Crimes?



Finally Dealing With The Obvious.

The Olympic games, due to start in days, are being held in Beijing. Unfortunately for the many athletes, Beijing exists today under a semi-permanent fog of pollution from it's many sources, be it car, bus, train, industrial processing unit, or army of pipe smokers. Now everyone has been very clear about this problem since the get-go, with Beijing officials promising that if things were too polluted they could simply ban all the cars from the city, or shut down all the industrial sites. How's that going?

Beijing's Olympic organisers are planning new emergency measures to reduce pollution after the draconian steps introduced a week ago failed to stop a grimy haze from smothering the host city.

Air quality has failed to reach national standards for four of the seven days since the city took more than 1m cars off the roads and shut hundreds of factories.

With less than two weeks until the opening ceremony, organisers are planning more drastic steps to ensure that the "Greyjing" tag does not undermine the promise of a green Olympics and force endurance events such as the marathon, triathlon and 10km open-water swim to be postponed.

According to the China Daily, all building sites and more factories in and around Beijing may be temporarily closed if the air quality deteriorates during the games.
[...]

After a few days of clear skies following the recent traffic controls, air pollution has built up amid heavy humidity and a lack of wind.

According to the Beijing authorities, the amount of particulate matter in the air did not reach the national benchmark of 100mg a cubic metre for the past four days. Today, it rose to 113, more than double the far tougher standard of 50 set by the World Health Organisation.

Now, bear in mind that this isn't the weekly meeting of the Lego modellers club, or the monthly city council picnic and jamboree, this is the Olympic Games, still facing a fairly large problem that everyone has known about since the host city was announced.

"Despite the efforts of the government, Beijing air quality probably is still not what the world is expecting from an Olympic city," said Greenpeace campaign director Lo Szeping. "The athletes will be breathing 150 litres of air per minute ... So for athletes this is a particular concern."

The organisers are seeking solace from the heavens. A storm front is heading towards Beijing, with a 90% chance of rain. "This is a blessing. It could not happen at a better time.


- guardian.co.uk

Oh, yes, the weather! Hopefully a timely storm will wash the soot away and the Olympic games won't take place in a foggy stadium featuring athletes coughing their lungs out. Good plan.




Surging Into Peace.

In Iraq, apparently, there is more peace now than there used to be. Oh, sure, it's no Sunday afternoon at the old folks home, but apparently it's not really, well, Monday morning in Baghdad anymore, either. Various politicians now talk about how this can be accredited to the brilliant success of "The Surge", an increase in troop numbers over the last year or so. But, is that actually what happened? Is calm in Iraq due to the highly publicized 'Surge' strategy, or is there more to it than just a few thousand more troops? In an article for alternet, Juan Cole says there's much more to it than that:

Proponents are awfully hard to pin down on what the "surge" consisted of or when it began. It seems to me to refer to the troop escalation that began in February 2007. But now the technique of bribing Sunni Arab former insurgents to fight radical Sunni vigilantes is being rolled into the "surge" by politicians such as McCain. But attempts to pay off the Sunnis to quiet down began months before the troop escalation and had a dramatic effect in al-Anbar Province long before any extra U.S. troops were sent to al-Anbar (nor were very many extra troops ever sent there).
[...]

As best I can piece it together, what actually seems to have happened was that the escalation troops began by disarming the Sunni Arabs in Baghdad. Once these Sunnis were left helpless, the Shiite militias came in at night and ethnically cleansed them. Shaab district near Adhamiya had been a mixed neighborhood. It ended up with almost no Sunnis. Baghdad in the course of 2007 went from 65 percent Shiite to at least 75 percent Shiite and maybe more. My thesis would be that the United States inadvertently allowed the chasing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs out of Baghdad (and many of them had to go all the way to Syria for refuge). Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods.
[...]

In al-Anbar Province, among the more violent in Iraq in earlier years, the bribing of former Sunni guerrillas to join U.S.-sponsored Awakening Councils had a big calming effect. This technique could have been used much earlier than 2006; indeed, it could have been deployed from 2003 and might have forestalled large numbers of deaths. Condi Rice forbade U.S. military officers from dealing in this way with the Sunnis for fear of alienating U.S. Shiite allies such as Ahmad Chalabi. The technique was independent of the troop escalation. Indeed, it depended on there not being much of a troop escalation in that province. Had large numbers of U.S. soldiers been committed to simply fight the Sunnis or engage in search-and-destroy missions, they would have stirred up and reinforced the guerrilla movement.
[...]

The Mahdi Army militia of Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr concluded a cease-fire with U.S. and Iraqi troops in September 2007. Since the United States had inadvertently enabled the transformation of Baghdad into a largely Shiite city, a prime aim of the Mahdi Army, they could afford to stand down. Moreover, they were being beaten militarily by the Badr Corps militia of the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and by Iraqi security forces, in Karbala, Diwaniya and elsewhere. It was prudent for them to stand down. Their doing so much reduced civilian deaths.
[...]

The vast increase in Iraqi oil revenues in recent years, and the cancellation of much foreign debt, has made the central government more powerful vis-a-vis the society. Al-Maliki can afford to pay, train and equip many more police and soldiers. An Iraq with an unencumbered $75 billion in oil income begins to look more like Kuwait, and to be able to afford to buy off various constituencies. It is a different game than an Iraq with $33 billion in revenues, much of it precommitted to debt servicing.

- alternet.org

So, as expected, the easy answer is the incorrect one. The surge clouds what actually has happened in and to Iraq in the last few years and, essentially, the post-war turmoil may have calmed down due to the supply of victims running low. You have made a desert and called it peace.

So that brings us to the next issue: Is Iraq actually calmer now than, say, a year ago, or is it just deceptively calm?

Despite the Optimism of the Neocons, which has pushed mainstream media coverage to be increasingly flowery about Iraq's political progress, in fact the country is poised to explode. Even before the November election. And for McCain and Obama, the problem is that Iran has many of the cards in its hands. Depending on its choosing, between now and November Iran can help stabilize the war in Iraq -- mostly by urging the Iraqi Shiites to behave themselves -- or it can make things a lot more violent.

There are at least three flashpoints for an explosion, any or all of which could blow up over the next couple of months. (Way to go, Surgin' Generals!) The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq's Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa ("Awakening") movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

- truthout.org

All three of these issues are a potential powderkeg waiting to go off. And almost on cue, adding sparks to the powder, three female suicide bombers took a heavy toll in Bagdhad this week.

Baghdad - Three female suicide bombers killed 28 people and wounded 92 in Baghdad on Monday as Shi'ite pilgrims flooded into the Iraqi capital for a major religious event, police said.

In the northern oil city of Kirkuk a bomb killed at least 22 people and wounded 150 at a protest against a controversial provincial elections law, Iraqi health and security officials said. The U.S. military said initial reports showed the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The blasts marked one of the bloodiest days in months and underscored the fragility of recent security gains in Iraq, where violence is at its lowest level since early 2004.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the Baghdad blasts, but al Qaeda has often targeted Shi'ite pilgrims taking part in religious events in Iraq. It considers Shi'ism -- the majority Muslim denomination in Iraq -- heretical.

"These blasts that happened today will increase our determination to finalize the ceremony of this visit and defeat terrorism," pilgrim Taher Abd-Noor said.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has urged foreign dignitaries and firms to come to Iraq, citing stronger Iraqi security forces more able to keep the peace with less U.S. military help.

- truthout.org

Yeah, not really sure Iraq is ready for firms and foreign dignitaries sans flak jackets and heavy sandbagging just yet. But this hasn't stopped President Bush from desperately trying to capitalize on a less-heightened sense of chaos in Iraq. This is a golden opportunity, lasting or not, and the iron is hot.

George Bush opened the way for US troop cuts in Iraq yesterday when he said security gains in the country were durable and cut the length of deployments.

In the first significant US reduction since Bush launched the "surge" early last year that sent an extra 30,000 troops to Iraq, he ordered tours of duty be cut from 15 months to 12, effective today.

His televised statement from the White House came in advance of a review by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, later this month or early next. Petraeus is expected to recommend troop withdrawals. The shift also came after a month in which US casualties in Iraq were nine, the lowest since 2004 and down from 79 the same time last year. But casualties among Iraqi civilians are still high, with suicide bombers killing 57 people on Monday in Kirkuk and Baghdad.

- guardian.co.uk

Of course, even if Petraeus announces cuts, it wouldn't be physically possible to make any real dents in troop numbers before the end of Bush's term, but you can bet that won't stop both Bush and John McCain from using this as a key point to undermine Obama's policies regarding Iraq. So, has Bush really done the impossible? Has he invaded a sovereign nation, destroyed their leadership, forced democracy on them and then withdrawn in time for him to write about it in his memoirs? Is this what it was all about, or just what he could get?



Fought The Law.

The law must be logical. The breakdown of this rule is shown by an incident this week in Ozark, where a boy apparently fell off an overpass and was then tasered by cops while still lying on the ground.

By the time officers arrived, the teen was off the 30-foot overpass, lying on the shoulder below along U.S. 65, with no good explanation as to how he got there.

“According to the doctors, all injuries are consistent with a fall,” said his aunt, Samantha.
[...]
His aunt says he is undergoing major surgery for a broken back and broken heel. While he was lying on the ground, she wonders why Ozark police used an electric stun gun on him up to 19 times.
[...]

“He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he's also making statements such as, ‘Shoot cops, kill cops,’ things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers,” said Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset.

- ky3.com

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "how horrible to taser a poor boy who's just broken his back." But you're wrong. The cops couldn't have know his back was broken. No, the horrible thing is the use of a taser to force people to do things that do not make sense. The boy was lying on the ground. A taser, administered to a human, causes that human to lie down on the ground. So by using the taser, police are forcing people to lie down on the ground. So what exactly did the cops want this boy to do that would be accomplished by tasering him, OTHER than having him lay on the ground? That's the horrible part, the point that the authorities presumably wanted him to do something other than lie down, and so forced him (via the taser) to lie down.

Authoritarianism can be tolerated as long as it's logical. Don't walk on the grass. Don't drink and drive. Don't think about scuba diving. But when authoritarianism becomes illogical 'Don't talk, do you understand?', then things rapidly get out of control.


Blaming The Tools.

The British are building themselves a database of people's D.N.A. Everyone who breaks the law gets put in this thing, and apparently it's been used to arrest bad guys. And British people hate it.

A generation of young Britons is being criminalized for life by the relentless expansion of the national DNA database, ministers are warned today.

Alarm and hostility over the massive scale of the collection of DNA has been uncovered by groundbreaking research funded by the Home Office among panels of members of the public.

The Human Genetics Commission found there was widespread mistrust among people presented with evidence of the size of the database, which now contains the genetic records of more than four million people. It called for the database to be taken out of the control of the Home Office and police altogether, with one panel member warning that the database was a "first step towards a totalitarian state".
[...]

Genetic material is now taken from all people arrested by police, regardless of whether they are subsequently charged or convicted, and remains on file for life.

Offences covered include begging, being drunk and disorderly, taking part in an illegal demonstration and minor acts of criminal damage caused by children kicking footballs or, in one instance, throwing a snowball.

Detailed consultation on the database by the commission, the Government's genetic watchdog, found the public believed samples provided by the innocent should be destroyed and those of people convicted of lesser offences removed after a few years.

- truthout.org

There comes a point where the cock-eyed builder must be separated from the wonky hammer. This database, by itself, provides a rich resource for police to track down leads and go after bad guys. The fact that there are likely innocent people on this database does not and should not lead to people considering them as guilty. They're not, they're just part of a list. Much like being on a book of the month mailing list doesn't mean you love every book that is sent to you. I realize everyone is worried about Big Brother, and the issues of privacy and abuse of power, but these issues do not apply to the database, they apply to the way the database may be used. That is where caution should be directed.



Confirmed: Water On Mars.



Well, it's been considered since about the time people first understood what Mars was, but finally this week Nasa has officially confirmed that there is water on Mars, thanks to the Phoenix Lander. Currently on Mars.

The soil sample was scraped out of the roughly five-centimetre deep "Snow White" trench on Wednesday. Two previous attempts to deliver fresh material to the lander's on-board oven failed when the soil became stuck in the scoop. This time the scientists exposed most of the material in the sample to the air for two days, so some water vapourised, thus making the soil easier to handle. The find fulfils one of the Phoenix lander's two main objectives - to "study the history of water in the Martian arctic". The other is to study the potential for life in the ice-soil boundary.

- guardian.co.uk

Things are going so well with the Phoenix Lander that Nasa has decided to extend the mission another 5 weeks. See, this is the advantage to sending robots into space as opposed to humans: robots won't grumble and rebel if you break the deal.

So, water on Mars. I guess the atheists are feeling pretty smug about this. I mean, it's unlikely God decided to both sprinkle Mars with water and to bury dinosaur bones under parts of Arizona. That seems a little excessive, even for God. Or, is it?...




Film Review: The Dark Knight.

"Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I am an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? It's fair."

I watched this film from the front row, crammed in next to a "patron" who spent the duration stuffing himself with sugar and, when he wasn't conversing with his friends, coughing ever 24 seconds. Yes I timed it. And despite all that, I greatly enjoyed this film.

As you know, Comic Book Movies have quite the hard, colourful shell to bite through before you can get to the soft chocolately center. Director Chris Nolan knows this, so he and Christian Bale have given us a very real interpretation of Gotham's superhero, along with a very strong (*very* strong) supporting cast to flesh everything out. For his sequel, Nolan has truly taken us inside the comic book. We can turn and look outward, and see the old cliches, the labels, the outfits, and be suitably wowed by them. But what's neat is if we stay here, and look around, we can also see the people. The people who wear the outfits, resent the labels, and fight the cliches. People with ideals, with morals, with plans and with torments. Who try and fail, who plan and stumble. It's fascinating, to watch the sixth sequel to Batman and to have this rich of a film to enjoy.

The plot is huge, and in the beginning it feels like Nolan is in a rush to tell it to us, and that pace never really lets up. But what you'll remember are the motivations each character grasps onto, and how they interact. Ultimately, the film questions cliches like 'goodness' and civilization itself, and puts forward some troubling, interesting ideas that will hopefully resonate with the audience even after the popcorn fare has worn off. Of course the big story going in is the Oscar-hype surrounding Heath Ledger's last role. The question I had was: how could anyone think a Batman actor could win an Oscar? But after watching the film, you can see where it's coming from. It's a big meaty role, full of character and great speeches, and Heath consumes it wholeheartedly, becoming more than just a cartoon character, but rather an embodiment of an idea, an 'agent of chaos' as he himself puts it. He squares off flamboyantly against the dark (k)night, and it's the principles they stand for that really clash, and even mesh, together. It's quite something. Also worthy of praise is Arron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, the white knight that Gotham needs even more than the dark one. Harvey's arc is really the central pillar of the film, seemingly solid while The Joker and Batman revolve chaotically around him. And of course you have Michael Caine, and Gary Oldman. Both are naturally solid but, along with Christian Bale (who also is brilliant), perhaps unfairly overshadowed by the scale and style of the film they find themselves in, and the characters they are up against.

There's one last point that bothers me. One final niggle. And it's the shaky cam. Nolan continues to jog the camera around during action sequences, and it's still as annoying and frustrating, and unnecessary as ever before. Luckily, the strength of this film lies in it's characters and dialog, but still. Hold the frakking camera steady. Four and a half Laughs out of five.



- Peace out