Let Them Die

Conditions: Overcast.


Taking Stock

One of the more troubling moves by the American military over the last few years has been the push towards wanting to develop new types of nuclear weapons, in anticipation of the current crop of nukes becoming either ineffective or disabled through age. The upshot of that is a new dangerous period of nuclear development and testing that could well upset the applecart of peace surrounding the decades-old nuclear mutually-assured-destruction standoff with nukes. Happily, an advisory panel has taken the wind of of the sails:

WASHINGTON -- A top-level independent advisory panel has told the Obama administration that the aging U.S. nuclear arsenal could remain viable for years to come using standard warhead life-extension approaches

If embraced by Washington, the finding would suggest that the United States could avoid building an expensive new generation of nuclear warheads to replace those currently fielded.

"Lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss of confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed" in maintaining the stockpile to date, according to JASON, a panel of senior scientific and technical experts frequently consulted by the U.S. government.

The findings are already proving controversial, though more than a year has passed since Congress twice denied Bush administration funding requests for developing a new series of weapons -- called the Reliable Replacement Warhead -- aimed at modernizing U.S. nuclear arms

President Barack Obama's national security team remains split over how best to keep the stockpile functioning, even as the White House embarks on an ambitious agenda aimed at eventually eliminating nuclear weapons

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and some of his top generals have insisted that at least one or two vintage warheads would have to be replaced with more modern designs if the nuclear arsenal is to remain functional

- globalsecuritynewswire.org/

Yes, but I think it's safe to say that the Generals would say that, really. In reality, with Washington trying to preach a non-proliferation line of thinking for the future of international relations, it'd be a bit rich for the military to start designing new bombs for themselves. And so it's quite possible this could be a win for the calm and rational. About time.




Film Review: 2012

In his time, Roland Emmerich has blown the world up in one way or another on many famous occasions, with everything from aliens to giant lizards to global warming. So it seems logical to have him helm the latest installment in the disaster film genre: 2012. This time around it's in the form of mutated neutrinos heating up the Earths core and eventually causing global earthquakes the scale of which has never been imagined. It's down to writer John Cusack to save his family before everything is destroyed. And that's kind of the problem. See, unlike previous disaster films, here there is nothing that can be done to save everyone, no monsters to fight, no puzzles to solve. The world is going to end, billions of people will die, and all we have is the plight of this small family to try and offset the spectacular and detailed downfall of an entire civilisation. And despite how cute the little girl is, or how touching it is that John's ex-wife still loves him, or whether the dog survives or not, this is one hell of a downer to hang a story on.

The action sequences are spectacular, as you would image and frankly, in this day and age, come to expect. We didn't come to watch the end of the world without experiencing it in high-definition and surround sound. But if there's one thing that Roland has taught us in his previous films, is that spectacle itself is hollow and worthless if it doesn't have some heart and some hope to pin it on, and so it is most surprising that from the outset this film lacks both. It's not as if Cusack isn't trying, as are the other cast members, they're just not being given anything to do other than run, scream on cue, and look disheveled. The only sliver of hopes lies with the B story, wherein Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton and Oliver Platt organize how to save the human species, and which pieces of artwork will be preserved.

To this end, giant ships have been built in China, and it is to China that the lucky and the rich make their way as the seas begin to rise and the cities fall. John and co scrap their way there as well as best they can, and so for a finale, with billions already dead, we essentially have a mini Poseidon Adventure as the giant ark ships get knocked around and Cusack has to half-drown in order to save the day. Who the hell builds a ship where the engine can't be started until the doors are closed? The only real drama among all this is Chiwetel's anger at his bosses decision to keep the whole 'Armageddon' thing a secret from the masses. And it's a fake-feeling kind of anger, one that prison guards might express at the revelation of prison abuse. I mean, come on. Frankly, the lack of any good options makes the ending a real bummer, despite all the dawn rosiness the Hollywood computers can render. There's almost a sense here of the director just not really caring anymore. As if as long as he can drop an aircraft carrier onto the U.S President as he stands in front of the White House, then to hell with anything else. It's hard to believe this is the same director that made us care about a drunken crop duster. One collapsing skyscraper out of Five.


- Peace out

When The Light Comes

Conditions: Warm.

Fear of Justice?

So, the Obama administration has decided to take it's five top aces from Gitmo and try them in open court in New York. That's a fairly brave decision there, and not without it's risks. For what do we really know about the top dog, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?

Mohammed has admitted to interrogators that he was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He allegedly proposed the concept to Osama bin Laden as early as 1996, obtained funding for the attacks from Mr. bin Laden, oversaw the operation and trained the hijackers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was born in Pakistan's Baluchistan province and raised in Kuwait. He also has been charged in a 1995 terror plot to bomb or hijack 11 US-bound flights originating in Asian countries. He was arrested March 1, 2003, during a raid by Pakistani officials in Rawalpindi, a city outside Islamabad.

Wow, that's a pretty damning statement. I wonder how he came to make it?

Where to prosecute Mohammed and al-Nashiri has been particularly problematic for the Obama Administration, since it is now widely known that both men were waterboarded multiple times while being held in secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Ah. And there lies the problem. For if these guys are to go in front of a court of law, said court is going to have to consider the fact that any evidence of admissions of guilt are also accompanied by the point that these guys were tortured. How do you get around that?

But legal authorities consulted appeared to agree that the Justice Department must have a high degree of confidence in the strength of these cases, even though one of the central issues will be admission of evidence obtained through torture. Holder said the DOJ has substantial evidence not yet made public and, presumably, not obtained through coercion.

So, there's other evidence they have. Secret evidence. That perhaps wasn't obtained through torture. Well, since this will be an open court case the evidence must presumably made public and then we'll know for ourselves. But it still doesn't really address the who torturing part of the deal.

The Bush administration filed charges against the men last year before a military commission, asserting that it would be difficult to successfully prosecute the men in federal court in part because that might force the US government to disclose and defend the prisoners' treatment in CIA custody.

- truthout.org/

And the full disclosure of just what the CIA and the military and who knows who else were up to in the war on terror just might be enough to derail court cases focusing on these suspects. But that's the price you pay for freedom, I guess.




Film Review: Capitalism. A Love Story

Michael Moore has taken on a lot of big targets in his films, but his latest one seems like a mountain too high, or a bridge too far. Moore's latest target is capitalism, that bedrock of American civilization. Moore sets out to illustrate, basically, how capitalism was good, how it's now bad, how it was changed or mutated into what we have now, and essentially how it should now be replaced with Socialism. Throughout, in his bumbling, common-man fashion, Michael interviews common folk who have become victims of America's latest recession, using them and their tears to illustrate his wider points.

So where did capitalism go wrong? Basically back in the eighties, when the regulators were taken out of the system, a process that has set in slowly over many years, and the effects of which are starting to be felt more and more with each crisis. According to Moore, Reagan started the rot when he allowed Wall Street guys to start calling the shots from inside the White House, and it's been downhill ever since.

What's particularly chilling, more than the scores of people who have become victims by not reading the fine print of their mortgages and debt payments, is the background information regarding the massive 700 billion dollar bailout that was given to companies that had friends and or former employees as advisers to the White House. No one seems to know what happened to that money, as it was voted in in a climate of fear that the economy was about to go bust, and so had no strings attached to it, and no requirement as to how the money would be used. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, a saying that now applies to the system that Capitalism has become in America. Moore's documentary is powerful, but it's aimed against a system so big and far reaching it really struggles to encapsulate the full breadth of the problem, especially since Moore insists on spending a large amount of time personalizing the economic crisis. Still, it's a worthy film. Not as powerful as Fahrenheit 9/11, but strong in it's own way. Four Fat Cats out of Five.



- Peace out

Un-Terminator

Italy Makes A Call

So, what's the latest call on illegal rendition? Well according to Italy, it's a "bad thing". This revelation comes after the public airing of the story of Hassan Nasr, who was abducted from Italy in order to be "interrogated" in the glorious war on terror.

The abducted man, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, was taken from Italy by U.S. intelligence agents and handed over to Egyptian officials, where court testimony indicates he was repeatedly tortured.

Italy, which among America's European allies was more sympathetic than most to the broad "long war" strategy of the Bush administration, nonetheless became the first to challenge the rendition strategy when details of Nasr's abduction became public.

Nasr, who was living in Rome in 2003, was suspected of involvement in terrorist plots in Europe. He was a known member of the Egyptian terrorist organization, Gamaat Islamiya, which had assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 and which murdered 58 foreign tourists at the Temple of Luxor in 1997.

The details of the decision to abduct Nasr remained vague throughout the trial, in part because the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that data on coordination between Italian spy agencies and the CIA was inadmissible.

But enough evidence existed to prove the abduction happened and to broadly implicate a range of American operatives. Other testimony established that Nasr had transited through Germany (an embarrassing revelation for a government which had been openly critical of the practice), and that he was tortured repeatedly upon his arrival in Egypt.

And this week an Italian court decided to do something about it.

The court convicted two Italian intelligence officials, plus 23 American intelligence agents - all of them in absentia - of aiding the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian-born cleric from the streets of Rome. Among those convicted was the CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert Lady, who received an 8 year sentence and, like the other Americans, will now be considered a fugitive from justice and subject to arrest on European extradition requests if they travel abroad.

- truthout.org/

So take that, anonymous American CIA officials. If you wish to travel to Italy on your current passports, you may well be put in an Italian jail.

At least for a little while, anyway, until the whole thing is eventually dropped.




The Future Is (Not) Set?

The Large Hadron Collider, under the fields of Switzerland and currently starting up again after technical troubles, has been the focus of a lot of conspiracy theories over the years. Huge explosions, black holes, destruction of the earth and so forth. But the latest one is a doozy. The primary goal for this device is to isolate the elusive Higgs Boson particle, a particle that not a lot is really know about. If the latest theory is correct, there may be a good reason for the lack of knowledge.

A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Holger Bech Nielsen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and Masao Ninomiya of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics in Kyoto, Japan, put this idea forward in a series of papers with titles like “Test of Effect From Future in Large Hadron Collider: a Proposal” and “Search for Future Influence From LHC,” posted on the physics Web site arXiv.org in the last year and a half.

According to the so-called Standard Model that rules almost all physics, the Higgs is responsible for imbuing other elementary particles with mass.

“It must be our prediction that all Higgs producing machines shall have bad luck,” Dr. Nielsen said in an e-mail message. In an unpublished essay, Dr. Nielson said of the theory, “Well, one could even almost say that we have a model for God.” It is their guess, he went on, “that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

This malign influence from the future, they argue, could explain why the United States Superconducting Supercollider, also designed to find the Higgs, was canceled in 1993 after billions of dollars had already been spent, an event so unlikely that Dr. Nielsen calls it an “anti-miracle.”

- nytimes.com/

Despite I myself not believing in Time Travel, I have to say I find this theory fascinating, and kind of hope it's correct. A technology so fearsome it would doom mankind (assuming that hasn't already happened) being able to transmit it's effects through time as well as space, and prevent it's own discovery. You gotta admit, there's a certain poetry to it.



Film Review: Moon.

Moon is pure Science Fiction, and could quite effortlessly be an episode out of a larger franchise, perhaps something from a collection of Arthur C. Clark stories. Set in the future, it is concerned with the plight of one man, Sam Bell, and his solitary existence on a farm on the dark side of the moon. Giant automated machines dig chemical compounds out of the lunar soil and load up canisters that, when full, is Sam's job to retrieve and fire them off to the grateful earth and his employers. On a 3 year contract, Sam is approaching both the end of his scheduled time on the moon, and the end of his tether. He begins to see things, and get distracted by things, leading to an accident which uncovers a great secret.

Without giving away the twist, it's difficult to clarify exactly what this film is about, other than the obvious themes of loneliness and corporate inhumanity. But Sam's character arc is disjointed and, disappointingly, cut short. Despite we wanting him very much to succeed in his final quest, we don't actually get to witness him doing so. Despite wanting to see him find peace, we don't get to see that either. Instead we're restricted to both a glimpse of a man changing his attitude when confronted with the concept of solitude, and a look at a man falling apart, without really being there at the end.

Despite the care that's gone into it, it's not really a fulfilling film, yet I get the feeling it was meant to be. Sam Rockwell does a great job as a normal, flawed human cut off from the rest of the world and put into this crazy situation. The atmosphere is great, the music is great. It's just a pity the ending couldn't have been drawn out a bit more so we could get a better payoff for our investment. Three and a half Copies out of five.


- Peace out

Curmudgeon.

Conditions: So Very Tired.


Iran Still Being Iran-ish.

Over the last few months a lot of heat has been brought to bear on Iran. Accused over and over again by other nations of developing, or at least wanting to develop, nuclear weapons, they have been forced to issue multiple denials, and agree to inspections. The latest deal surrounds an offer made to have Iran's uranium processed in France and then shipped back to Iran so they can use it in their reactors. This is so the powers that be can be absolutely sure that the Uranium can only be used for power, and not for a weapon. And despite the fact that this really is kind of an overbearing big-brotherish sort of insulting thing to have to agree to, Iran is currently mulling it over. How dare they!

Tehran says it needs more time to decide. It may be playing for better terms, but in wavering on the Iran nuclear deal, it could lay the groundwork for sanctions.

Washington - Is Iran doing its customary diplomatic haggling – or preparing to slam the door on the international community?

By balking at a Friday deadline for a decision on a plan to move much of its enriched-uranium stockpile out of the country, Iran may be playing for better terms in a deal it will ultimately accept.

But by standing up the three world powers – the United States, Russia, and France – that had already accepted the deal negotiated with Iranian officials earlier this week, Iran may be unwittingly laying the groundwork for tougher international sanctions aimed at its nuclear program.

- truthout.org/

Yes, despite all the backdowns and the bending-over backwards that Iran has been doing to satisfy the international community that they are not in fact a bunch of insane suicidal fanatics, the thrust of the news stories has consistently been that Iran is evilly dragging it's evil heels, trying to find an evil way out of the spotlight so that they can go back to their evil plan of evil. Seriously, is there anything Iran could do that would make the international community relax?




Film Review: Surrogates

Back in the nineties this new fad called the internet started to catch on, and people began spending a lot of time online, and a lot of people warned about us all becoming a generation of shut ins. Surrogates is sort of a half-baked attempt to take that idea to it's ultimate conclusion, positing a world where people (well, rich people) live their lives in their houses, sitting in chairs wearing equipment that allows them to interact with the world using robots, that happen to look better than they do. The idea is that society becomes a safer place, an idea that's totally undermined when a couple of robots are gunned down in the street, and the weapon used also turns out to have killed the operators at the same time. It's up to FBI agent Bruce Willis to figure out what's going on.

Sigh.

There just doesn't seem to be much of a spark here. Jonathon Mostow directs this "weak tea" of a Sci Fi action film and, much as he did with Terminator 3, he makes a pedestrian affair out of an interesting concept. It's based on a graphic novel, yet it's the flatest, dullest looking film I've seen in a while. And while it does star Bruce Willis, it's the sad, old Bruce Willis. Sad Willis is no fun. Angry Willis is fun. Wisecracking Willis is fun. Sad Willis is just a downer. Now, that can work when the characters are balanced, but he's the sole focus of this film, and there's not much going on without him. He shouldn't be the sole focus of the film, there's enough stuff going on here to warrant an extra 20-30 minutes of running time and expand out some of the other characters, but instead it's all tamped down and buttoned up.

Naturally the plot is fairly convoluted. The guy who invented the technology, initially for crippled people to be able to interact "normally" again, was kicked out of his company because he hates the idea of normal-people using robots and avatars. It's James Cromwell essentially revisiting his I, Robot character. So he decides to invent this weapon for the purposes of killing everyone who's using a Surrogate. Ok, that's a spoiler, but I don't much care. See, it's the switch from being a kindly old inventor to a mass-murdering sociopath that is both a little surprising and completely unexplained here. A good movie bad guy needs to make sense, and here he just flat out does not. And when it's time for him to finally explain himself, he kills himself instead. Thanks very much. Two eye sockets out of Five.


- Peace out