Stacking The Damn Deck.

Conditions: Cold.


Justice?

In 2004, the wife to a University of Buffalo professor died suddenly of a heart attack. When the police arrived, they found a bunch of biology gear and some bacteria that the professor was using in an art project. The FBI were called in and before you could say shazaam the professor was being prosecuted as a bioterrorist. Well a mere four years later the charges have been dropped.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ''insufficient on its face.''

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

''Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years,'' said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria. ''The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist.''

- NYTimes.com

Indeed. In fact, he's something much more dangerous: an artist with a political bent. Something the powerful will do anything to crush. Frankly, I think he got off lucky.



Entreprewarial.

Let's pretend your family smokes a lot. And your neighbours happen to own a tobacco farm, and like to party all night. And one day you decide that all the hooting and hollering and staying up all night has got to come to an end, and so you and your family take over your neighbours farm, for the purposes of forcing them to quieten down. But unfortunately it costs your family so much money to 'pacify' your neighbours house that it looks like you can't afford to buy cigarettes anymore. So you all sit around the new house, pondering your new financial problems when suddenly cousin Joe in the corner has an idea. "What if", he says as the gears grind in his head, "instead of buying cigarettes we just make 'em, from the tobaccy plants down the back yard?" Genius!

An April 14 Associated Press article by Anne Flaherty reported that US senators and representatives are finding common ground in asking that Iraqis begin picking up the tab for the cost of war. The lawmakers are troubled that Iraqis might experience windfall surpluses of revenue generated by rising oil prices, while Americans bear the burden of paying for the Iraq war. "In hearings last week," Flaherty writes, "Joseph Lieberman (I-Connecticut) asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Baghdad should start paying some US combat costs, and Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) raised the possibility that an anticipated Iraqi budget surplus this year could be used to help Afghanistan, whose $700 million in annual revenue represents a small fraction of Iraq's $46.8 billion budget."
[...]

In February, Iraq produced 2.4 million barrels per day of oil, of which about 1.6 million barrels per day are exported from the south (the rest being for domestic consumption). Assume a price of $100 per barrel of oil; multiply it by 1.6 million barrels; and multiply again by 365 days and you get $58.4 billion in annual revenue from oil. Iraq's budget for 2008 is about $54.3 billion, according to the International Monetary Fund.

This is a pretty nifty idea. Instead of going to all the trouble of dealing with bad empire building, you can simply take over the assets the conquered country just happens to have, and use that to pay for all the damage. I wonder if this would work in a retail situation? You accidentally break a vase in a gift store, so you simply take another vase off the shelf, sell it to someone, then use that money to pay for the damages. Brilliant! But of course, the naysayers have to weigh in.

Before US lawmakers imagine ways to spend Iraq's possible "surplus," they should be asked about the "rights" of an aggressor nation that illegally invades another country. The US waged an unprovoked war of choice against Iraq, a country which posed no threat whatsoever to Americans. Did Iraq have any "rights" after it invaded Kuwait? An aggressor nation has no rights. Period. Indeed, the international community - via the UN Security Council - continues to punish the Iraqi people for the crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime by requiring Iraq to pay five percent of its oil revenues as "war reparations" for the prior regime's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91 (with virtually all of the remaining payments going to the governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia or those country's state-owned oil enterprises).

Commenting on suggestions that the US impose financial obligations on Iraq, Lando writes:

"This begs the question as to whether a country can invade another country - which inherently destroys the capital, political and societal infrastructure - poorly spend both occupying and occupied funds, unilaterally create conditions of chaos requiring ongoing security and reconstruction funds, and then bind the occupied country to make reparations and take out loans from the occupying country?"

- Truthout.org

Takes 'Stop Hitting Yourself' to a whole new level, don't it?





Watching the Watchers.



You know, when you watch the news on television these days, you expect a little spin from whatever network you're on. The mad war-mongering flag-humping quacks on Fox, the elitist stuck-up Brits on the BBC, even the pro-ruling party sensibilities of the local news can become obvious if you pay enough attention. But still, there's something to be said for an independent expert who is invited onto a news show to give his opinion about something important. Such a person could for instance be a retired military officer, who's asked to commentate on the latest doings in the War On Terror. It's certainly a common enough sight, and we the viewers tend to give such experts some respect because a) they've been there and done that, and b) the implied loyalty they have to their fellow soldiers. Surely they, in amongst the propaganda of the modern news studio, will be a voice of independence and wisdom?

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

And so it seems yet again that what one thought was something of value in an otherwise jaded and biased world, was actually just another form of control. The corporations have backups to their backups, and we are deceived again.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

- NYTimes.com

Oh, *he's* been hosed. Right. Yes, some analyst who's been paid handsomely, has been flown all around the world, and become semi-famous, yes he's the real victim in all this.

The actual victims, of course and as always, are those who cannot read these articles, either because they're now too poor to ever see a TV or an edition of the NY Times, or are too dead to ever know what happened. 'Information' is put out to the public, who then define their opinions based on it. Those opinions are then acted on by the politicians, so it's fairly obvious how important the truth of that initial information really is. And once again we see how inadequate and corrupt the old 'new media' is at conveying information to the public, a service that is even more important than ever in a world so tightly connected at every level.

More:
- Truthout.org
- Huffpost.com



Quotes 'O The Week.

We can see how sad this really is, though, because, again, if we really want to tell the truth in a fallible way, we’ve got corporate greed running amok; you don’t have enough jobs with a living wage for fellow citizens; unavailable health care and child care for millions, disgraceful school systems, failing infrastructure; and then you have a political sphere where you can’t have a critical debate or dialogue about these issues. And then we’ve got imperial occupation in Iraq. Now, that – that’s the makings of the collapse of an empire.
- Dr. Cornel West

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

Now, at the end of last week when Barack Obama ignited the "bitter-gate" scandal, you would have thought that he had scaled Mount Rushmore, dick-slapped Jefferson in the face--and spray painted "God damn America" over Lincoln. But, he wasn’t lying. The truth is that religion and guns and hating gays and immigrants, are crutches that people lean on. So are fast-food, crystal meth and child beauty pageants, but we don’t have time to tackle all of America’s addictions in one night. So, let’s focus on the big thing. That the people who claim to be the "non-elitists," are the ones who constantly shift tax burdens from the people who fire you, to you. John McCain voted to repeal the estate tax, voted against raising the minimum wage, has no health care plan, and is fine with keeping the working class in Iraq for a hundred years. But, he’s a real "man of the people." And the president went to Harvard and Yale, and inherited your country from his dad. But, he’s not an elitist because he can neither read nor write. What does it take to label someone "elitist" these days anyway? They wear shoes? They don’t buy their groceries at the gas station? Their dog has a name and their truck doesn’t?! You know who is bitter in America? I am. Because shit-kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with, and everybody else had to suffer the consequences!
- Bill Maher

Film Review: Street Kings.

There are two types of people in the world, those who like Keanu Reeves and those who do not. The second type believes him to be a terrible actor who couldn’t emote his way out of a wet paper bag, and has ruined many a good film over the years. However I’m in the former category. I think he’s a pretty good actor, when he’s got a good character to play. And that’s the catch. When his character has a defined focus, a thing for him to figure out or do, then he’s great. That’s why he’s so good in cop movies: cops always have something to do. Street Kings has him as a L.A cop, and for anything involving cop stuff he’s his dynamic self. But the movie throws his character a moment or two when he flails.

His character, Tom, is essentially a soldier. He’s sent out to do the dirty work, get the really bad guys who have to be taken down hard and then stitched up nice and clean for the official reports. It’s a familiar excursion into the world of dirty cops who trust each other in a paranoid crazy environment to bend the rules but not break them. - Not the official rules, they were broken a long time ago, but the real rules that say you can kill bad people because they are bad. Tom lives for it, at the expense of a family or even a life. Inevitably he finds out he’s being used, and people above him are as bad as the monsters he’s sent after. Predictably, there’s lots of gunfights and action, and apart from the terrible shaky cam it’s fine. The problem is when things slow down. Tom has trouble in social situations, and Keanu plays this so well it actually makes most people think he’s not acting at all, he’s just being awkward. But it’s actually his character that’s awkward around people. The problem for this film then, really comes down to the fundamentals of script and direction.

The story is garbled, yet too easy. Some cops are dirty, some are clean, some are dirty trying to get clean, some are clean trying to get dirty, it’s relatively easy figuring out who's who in the opening moments, so the point seems to be to wait for Tom to figure out what we already know: always a tough thing to enjoy. The audience should never be two steps ahead of the lead character. The issue is really in how poorly it’s all conveyed. Plot points seem overly simple, like it’s cribbing from many other films and T.V shows. The dialog is very clichéd, maybe that’s to be expected, but scenes seem poorly thought out, and poorly shot. You want things to be a bit more subtle, or more grand, or even more talky so that the characters can just say what they’re trying to say, it’s like everyone in the film has a secret. Unfortunately the overly-familiar plot and garbled characters lead us down the road to mediocrity. Two buried bodies out of Five.



Peace out.

Shaving Toward Oblivion.

Conditions: Rain's a-comin'.


Back In Iraq.

A series of insurgent attacks in Iraq this week put the lie to the reports about the success of 'the surge' and the developing safety of the Iraqi people.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber struck the funeral of two Sunni tribesmen who joined forces against al-Qaida in Iraq, killing at least 50 people Thursday and reinforcing fears that insurgents are hitting back after American-led crackdowns.
[...]

Insurgents also struck against Awakening Council members in Baghdad on Thursday. Two council members were gunned down in the Sunni district of Azamiyah. Hours later in the same area, five council members and a civilian were killed by a roadside bomb. And the head of the Awakening Council in the southern Baghdad area of Dora was killed by gunmen who sprayed his car with bullets, also wounding his son, police said.

The violence came two days after a string of suicide bombings in four cities of northern and central Iraq killed 60 people _ attacks that U.S. officials blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.
[...]

The sudden spike in bloodshed this week adds to the other worries now piling up in Iraq: violent rivalries among Shiites and persistent cracks in the Iraqi security forces.

Violence across the country has declined since seven months ago, including dramatic suicide bombings like Thursday's funeral attack. American officials credit the change to the U.S. troop buildup and the rise of Sunni tribal groups known as Awakening Councils that have turned against al-Qaida-linked militants. A truce called last year by anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has also helped.

But the new bloodshed highlights how fragile those gains are.

- HuffPost.com

Far be it for me to criticize the military commanders in Iraq, but it seems that every time anyone starts talking about how the situation is becoming calmer, or the latest military strategy is working, or a corner has been turned, that should really be the signal for the Iraqis to all hide under their beds for a week or two.



Falluj-ian Update.

The Iraqi city that stood up to the American invasion, was turned into a holding area for bad guys before being clusterbombed back to the stone age, how goeth the war there?

FALLUJAH, Apr 14 (IPS) -- Fallujah remains a crippled city more than two years after the November 2004 U.S.-led assault.

Unemployment, and lack of medical care and safe drinking water in the city 60 km west of Baghdad remain a continuous problem. Freedom of movement is still curtailed.
[...]

Now a less visible form of destruction is being spread, he said. "The new wave of destruction is represented by tearing the social tissue apart. The Americans are paying tremendous amounts of money to get people of Fallujah to fight each other."

The road into Fallujah from the main Amman-Baghdad highway is safer today, but nobody is allowed into Fallujah who is not from the city and can prove it by providing elaborate identity documentation. That can only be obtained by undergoing biometric identification by the U.S. military -- a process which includes retina scans, body searches and finger-printing before issuance of a bar-coded ID badge.

The city remains sealed. Many residents refer to it as a big jail.

The city remains tense in the face of power struggles and turf wars between tribal chiefs and Awakening group commanders, in Fallujah and in other areas of the volatile al-Anbar province. Disputes between the Iraqi Islamic Party and Awakening groups are also creating security tensions. The Awakening forces are former resistance fighters that the U.S. pays to be now on its side.

- Alternet.org

Hmm, well it's bad news for the Fallujans, but potential good news for the potential makers of Rambo 5: Fallujah Follies.



Killing For Fun And Profit.

Back when traffic lights were invented, people were effectively trusted to stop when the lights turned red. Which obviously was never going to work, because people can't be trusted. So after video cameras were invented it didn't take long for the two to be combined, in order to fine and therefore punish people who ran red lights. Now here's the catch: If people make money from other people running red lights, then would the first people want to make it more difficult for the second people to *not* run red lights?

Six U.S. cities have been found guilty of shortening the amber cycles below what is allowed by law on intersections equipped with cameras meant to catch red-light runners. The local governments in question have ignored the safety benefit of increasing the yellow light time and decided to install red-light cameras, shorten the yellow light duration, and collect the profits instead.

- Leftlanenews.com

Of course if this was just restricted to figures on a spreadsheet we could all have a laugh about it. But in reality shortening the amber cycles lead to collisions, which lead to injuries and deaths. So in a very real sense, these cities have put profits before peoples lives. And not foreign anonymous 'brown' people in some far-off land, either. Put that in your profit column.



The Small Voice Of Common Sense.

Some very large defense contractors in The U.S would very much like to charge billions of dollars for the opportunity to build a Missile Defense System. The only real problem is that people keep saying that the thing won't work. What kind of people?

Washington - A group of prominent scientists who have been critical of missile defense plans told lawmakers Wednesday that a system being built by the United States cannot protect the country.

They also questioned whether the Defense Department has misled the public and European allies about the system's capabilities.

"The program offers no prospect of defending the United States from a real-world missile attack and undermines efforts to eliminate the real nuclear threats to the United States," Lisbeth Gronlund, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told lawmakers at a House oversight hearing on the missile defense program, according to prepared testimony. Gronlund's group has long expressed skepticism about missile defense.

The hearing was called by the panel's chairman, Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., who has sought to step up oversight of the missile defense program since the Democrats took control of the House last year. Missile defense traditionally has drawn more support from Republicans.

- Truthout.org

Will the mad rush to massive profits be stymied by small details such as it not working? Not bloody likely. It's new, it's shiny, it has words like 'missile' and 'defense' in the title, and they can charge several arms and legs for the thing. There's no way the corporations are going to abandon it now.




Careful What You Look For.



Every scientist likes to think that what they're working on could change the world, but few really are. And at the moment a few who might just change the world are busy at work in an 17-mile long underground tunnel, under the Franco-Swiss border.

The most complex piece of scientific equipment ever built, the collider will send particles crashing into each other at just a wink shy of the speed of light, generating energies more powerful than the sun.

Scientists like Mangano believe that this instrument, when it begins operating as early as this summer, will peer into a looking-glass world that could contain entrances to extra dimensions and super-massive partners of the familiar particles that make up our world. One creature that must be hiding there, the scientists say, is the Higgs particle, one of the most exotic undiscovered objects since the yeti.

Critics think the collider could also spawn a black hole that will swallow Earth.

See, that would be bad, since we also happen to live on Earth, and therefore are within approximately 2 light years of any possible black hole. Are the scientists worried about this?

Mangano, who is part of the CERN group studying the safety of the collider, doesn't deny the scant possibility that the collider could yield a mini-black hole.

By smashing protons and lead ions together at energies reaching 14 trillion electron volts, the Large Hadron Collider will dwarf the world's other atom-smashers, including the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's mighty Tevatron in Batavia, Ill.

But that energy, Mangano hastened to add, would be concentrated in a space thinner than a human hair. Any black hole would be so tiny that it wouldn't be able to get its teeth around a bit of local chevre cheese, let alone the world.

Still, if a black hole were produced at all, "that would be an extremely spectacular result," he said, a half-smile creeping across his face.

And this is why scientists should be thoroughly vetted before they're allowed to tinker with things that could end existence. I'm not denying that the questions they're trying to answer aren't interesting, and it's obvious in order to figure out how the big bang worked you likely need to create one yourself, but isn't this where common sense steps in?

Harvey Newman, a Caltech physicist who was one of the discoverers of the gluon and is leader of the U.S. contingent on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, said the collider could theoretically produce a mini-black hole by packing a tremendous amount of energy into a tiny space.

But he said the black hole would pose no threat because it would last only 10-27 seconds before decaying -- hardly enough time to start gobbling up the French countryside.

Critics are not convinced. Just last month, Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho filed suit in U.S. District Court in Honolulu to block the start-up of the new collider until CERN produces a comprehensive safety report.

Speaking from Hawaii, Wagner said that despite assurances from scientists at CERN and around the world, there was no proof a mini-black hole would disappear. No one has ever seen it happen, said Wagner, who studied cosmic ray physics at UC Berkeley as a young man.

It's just as possible that the tiny black hole would be stable and start chewing up normal matter, he said.

It could take years for it to become large enough to gobble up the Earth, but there's no evidence that can't happen, he said.
[...]

"Look," Mangano said, leaning forward in his chair at CERN's sprawling complex, "what if I told you tomorrow when you shave you will blow up the world? You laugh. You say that can't happen. But how do you know?

- LATimes.com

Um, what? Look, I like to pretend I'm as open-minded as the next man, but I cannot see how my old Philishave in any way shape or form could collide particles at near the speed of light. Your device can, and will. Instead of making stupid analogies that actually obscure any concerns, how about you actually wait a bit and let people think things through before your little science experiment accidentally dooms everyone. The higher the potential mistake, the more care must go into the process. A sentence that should be tattooed onto every scientist and politician's arm, I think.



Peace out.

Like a Falling Star.

Conditions: Appropriately Overcast.


Shine On.

The big news this week was the controversial progress of the Olympic Torch, winding it's gloomy way across the various big cities of the world, shining it's light in order to draw attention to the upcoming Beijing round of the Olympics. Not because it's a noble tradition or even a nice change from the regular news, but because of the constant opportunity for high profile protests!

Clashes between pro-Tibet protesters and the British police have led to 37 arrests, as the Olympic torch made its way through London.

Protests over China's human rights record began soon after the relay started at the British capital's Wembley Stadium, and prompted an increasing police presence through the city.

One protester tried to snatch the torch from former children's television host Konnie Huq -- one of the torch bearers in Sunday's chaotic relay.

Another demonstrator tried to snuff the flame with a spray of white powder from a fire extinguisher. Others threw themselves in the torch's path with the police tackling or dragging them off. Authorities said 37 people were arrested.

- Presstv.ir

-------

PARIS — The Olympic torch relay in Paris was cut short yesterday amid rowdy protests against China's human rights record and its crackdown in Tibet that forced police to temporarily extinguish the flames several times during its 17½ mile journey across the French capital.

Some 500 demonstrators brandishing Tibetan flags were massed at Trocadero Square across from the Eiffel Tower, where the relay began shortly after midday, guarded by 3,000 French police who followed the flame"s path on roller blades, bikes and police cars.
[..]

Security officials were also forced to temporarily put out the flame three times and put the torch on a bus for safety during its journey across the city.

- Washingtontimes.com

-------

Democracy took a dive in San Francisco yesterday.

Earlier this week, the International Olympic Committee was considering scrapping the entire Olympic torch run due to the controversy and protests surrounding it. Apparently, PR-value and face-saving prevailed over common sense, and rather than cancel the contentious run, the IOC, the City of San Francisco, and the Chinese government collaborated to make the run happen in the only way possible -- they transformed the City into Beijing for a day.

At first I watched with mild amusement as police officers, secret service, and Chinese officials went to comical lengths to disguise the torch route and prevent protesters from approaching. Like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, the torch was hurriedly moved from one mode of transportation to the next, from boat to van to ... Duck Truck? However, my amusement soon gave way to anger, as the charade developed into an ugly display of first amendment violations and thuggish police tactics, and everything the City of San Francisco stands for was trampled on. People's Armed Police -- the same force implicated in the shootings of unarmed Tibetans on the Tibet-Nepal border -- roamed freely through the streets. Tibetans with flags were forced to vacate public gathering spaces while Chinese nationals were allowed to remain. A phalanx of riot cops -- five deep -- guarded the torch at every step, shoving protesters out of the way.
- Alternet.org

And the official response to these protests by the Chinese?

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Beijing insisted Tuesday that the international Olympic torch relay would go on, despite calls to cut it short amid chaotic anti-China protests.

Chinese officials on Tuesday issued a "strong condemnation to the deliberate disruption" by the pro-Tibet protesters along the relay route in London and Paris, but they said while their "despicable activities" may "tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit," the tour will not be stopped.

The reaction from China came as International Olympic Committee members were meeting in Beijing to discuss the growing discord over the international leg of the Olympic torch relay.

As the Olympic torch flew to San Francisco on Tuesday, a member of the IOC said protests that disrupted the Olympic torch relay in London and Paris may make 2008 the last time such an ambitious global torch relay is attempted.

- CNN.com

A little research tells us that the Olympic flame represents "The light of knowledge, life and spirit and symbolises the handing down from generation to generation". Originally first introduced for the 1936 Berlin games, the torch relay itself is all about spreading the Olympic principles ('faster, higher, stronger') which are the basis for sport, all around the world. And one of the major aims of Olympism is "to improve the human race, not only physically, but to give it a greater nobility of spirit, and to strengthen understanding and friendship amongst peoples."

Therefore it seems to me that protesting the illegal occupation of Tibet should be in the finest traditions of the principles of the Olympic Torch relay. The opportunity to use a global event to shine a light upon something that deserves attention. And yet instead of honoring the spirit of the relay, the authorities arrest anyone who gets close to it, even snuffing the torch out on occasion in order to smuggle it past demonstrators. And they're the ones who are in charge of the Olympics? Shouldn't the protesters be the ones carrying the torch? Waving it wildly back and forth while shouting 'Free Tibet' at the top of their lungs as they jog through London, Paris and San Fransisco?

If I wasn't so cynical of the International Olympic Committee I might suspect that they awarded the games to China for this very purpose. But no, of course not. It's just old-fashioned incompetence. But even old-fashioned incompetence can sometimes illuminate important things.

The IOC has indicated that the rest of the international torch run will go through as planned. They are meeting in Beijing today to discuss whether to continue with plans to run the torch through TIbet. I'm not sure if the 'apolitical' IOC fully grasps that they are on the verge of creating an international political crisis. People around the world have shown little tolerance for China's torch run in free nations; the international community will not easily stomach the sight of the torch being paraded through downtown Lhasa accompanied by tanks and PLA army squads. The Governor of the Tibet said yesterday that anyone attempting to disrupt the torch would be dealt with "harshly and with no leniency." Activists groups have indicated that they will hold the IOC responsible for any Tibetan detentions or deaths that occur.

- Alternet.org

This could just become the most important Olympics ever.



Surge Without End.

General Maximus Petraeus visited Washington this week to talk about the military situation in Iraq. This is the man who, ages ago, argued for the surge that presumably would be a temporary increase in troop numbers that would pacify Iraqi neighborhoods. So, how's that going?

Both Petraeus and Crocker, praised extravagantly for their service to their country, had to admit that the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki ordered an assault on Shiite militias in Basra, instigating more violence, without consulting them.

They had to confess that they have no timetable to offer on when U.S. men and women will stop dying and being injured in Iraq or even when soldiers will no longer face repeated tours to Iraq.

They had to admit that billions of dollars' worth of training and five years of effort have not made Iraqi forces capable of defending their own country. They all but ignored the political benchmarks the Iraqis were supposed to have met by now but have not.

They could not explain why Iraqis greeted the president of Iran, a pariah in most western countries who wants nuclear weapons and hates Israel, with huzzahs and kisses while Bush, their liberator, has to be secretly flown in and out of the Iraq.

Petraeus at one point said about prospects for withdrawing from Iraq, "The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible."

That is the grim reality that Petraeus and Crocker forced us all to face. Having gone into Iraq with naive beliefs and expectations and for all the wrong reasons, we are now stuck there. We eventually will leave, but it will take years. And we will be dealing with the chaos in the Middle East that we helped cause for decades more.

- Scrippsnews.com

So no change there, then.



The Moderator Of My Enemy Is My Enemy.

So, that whole Basra al-Sadr attack thing from last week, how did that work out?

A little war within a war erupted last week in Iraq, and then ended rather quickly in what many are calling a stalemate between rival Shia parties and militias. Said war in Basra ended, according to almost every reliable news source, because of Iranian intervention.

Iran, extremely close to all the Shia politicians and militia leaders in post-Saddam Iraq, brokered a cease-fire between Iraqi security forces and the Mahdi Army, headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, who is currently residing in Iran (commuting between Tehran and Qom to complete his religious studies at the seminaries there), and some reports have suggested that the commander of the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Qasem Soleimani, a terrorist in charge of a terrorist organization by U.S. definition, and someone close to both Sadr and to SIIC (formerly SCIRI) leader Hakim (both of whom his organization supported during the Saddam era) played a, if not the, key role.

However, our man in Baghdad and the top-ranking U.S. civilian in Iraq, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, on Thursday this week claimed that he was "not aware of what role, if any, Iran had played in Sadr's decision" (to call for a cease-fire). Gee, that should make everyone feel good. From the Bush administration apparently being caught unaware of the impending clash, to John McCain's "surprise" at the intensity of it, and now to our ambassador unaware of how the fighting ended, the sheer incompetence of the administration (and those who supported the surge) in its Iraq adventure would be the stuff of comedy, were it not so tragic.

- Huffingtonpost.com

Now, obviously Iran working to keep the peace in Iraq will further it's own interests. But seriously, a) what's wrong with that? and b) isn't that what America has been doing, or trying to do, for itself since 2003? Isn't it waaay past time for Iran to be included in the Great American Plan, rather than treated like an adversary?



Everything Old New Again.

At the end of the cold war, the world breathed a collective sigh as we imagined a future that wasn't dedicated to tanks and ships, submarines and missile systems. A world that could put away stupid things and concentrate our resources on the important things like the environment, health care and t-shirts with cool sayings. Well, the problem with a bloodless war is that all the old soldiers just sit around waiting to warm everything up again. So it shouldn't be much of a shock to hear that since 9/11 the U.S Defense department has been spending like a squadron of drunken sailors.

This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars -- already pushing a trillion -- in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11. In the horror of that moment, the floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible connection with fighting stateless terrorists. Example: the $81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to fight al-Qaida's navy.

That's the huge scandal the media and politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. But as the GAO's authoritative audit details, the costs are astronomical. The explosion of spending on expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to come.

The Iraq war may end someday, but rest assured that major weapons systems, once commissioned, have a life-support system unmatched in any other sector of public spending. Rarely does the plug get pulled on even the most irrelevant and expensive war toy. Not while both Democratic and Republican politicians feed at the same trough, and when so much is at stake in the way of jobs and profit.

- Alternet.org

Does anyone else get the impression that the U.S is starting to look like the solitary kid sitting at one end of a seesaw? But a seesaw, that's capable of destroying the entire playground, somehow. i dunno, maybe the beam is actually a missile, or something.



Peace out.

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.