October 2006 Archives
Sunday, 01 October 2006
And The Rest, As They Say, Is Ancient History
NYT op-ed Pirates of the Mediterranean by Robert Harris. (Via William Edmusen.) Fantastic.
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Advice By Understatement
Note to self, must try to keep up with this blagging
craze thing. Now ABC (a network television station, I believe) has a blag
called The Blotter. From thence, GOP Staff Warned Pages About Foley in 2001.
Matthew Loraditch, a page in the 2001-2002 class, told ABC News he and other pages were warned about Foley by a supervisor in the House Clerk’s office.
Loraditch, the president of the Page Alumni Association, said the pages were told "don’t get too wrapped up in him being too nice to you and all that kind of stuff."
Via Crooks and Liars via Lindsay Beyerstein. Ogged has the AIM thing.
I second Hilzoy: yuck.
The members of the Republican leadership who knew about this were not protecting their political hides. They didn’t need to lose anything politically. If they had chosen the quiet route and things leaked out, they would probably have gained politically.
They just didn’t care enough about the children in their charge to rock the boat. And that’s a disgrace.
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Monday, 02 October 2006
Remember, Remember
This may not last four centuries:
Remember, remember the 28th of September
The torturous Congressional plot;
I know of no reason why Congress-€™s treason
Should ever be forgot.
Via Bad Jim.
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The Missed Opportunity
When I saw the first non-Cameron podcast on webcameron.org.uk was with US Senator John McCain, I was impressed. Man of the moment and all that. It’s about the environment. I know it’s a big issue, but it’s not the big issue of now, is it? Guantanamo gets mentioned, as does the Geneva Convention, but it’s not nearly enough.
David Davis the Shadow Home Secretary, said to tehgrauniad, I am in no doubt that the defence of civil liberties is not to our electoral advantage.
But he’s going to do it anyway, so good for him. (I’m still convinced that the tactical vote I intend to use at the next election will have to go to the Tory. News like this makes that more a pleasure than a duty.)
The Reactionary Snob is very good on Jack Straw and John Reid.
People want to know that the government is on the side of the victim, not protecting the criminal.
No, no, no. You aren’t talking about criminal and victim though, are you? In a court of law, we are talking about somebody who is accused of a crime (and who must be presumed innocent) and a victim. The law should protect the victims of crime, of course, but the law should also protect the innocent.
It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people.
I always promised that this blog would never turn into a legal blog. And it won’t. But re-read the sentence above. Does Bruiser even know what on Earth he is talking about? This is the sort of gibbering nonsense you’d normally hear at a far right hustings. Why aren’t the mainstream media highlighting on this?
Well said sir, well said indeed.
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The Rights Of An Individual Suspected Terrorist
It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people
tehgrauniad: Tortured Canadian wins battle for truth. Obsidian Wings has a whole category on Maher Arar. I once called Katherine’s series the most important journalistic endeavour of the past few years
. I’m glad the mainstream press has caught up.
In other news, They Passed the Torture Bill, Gave Bush Wiretapping, and America is Dead.
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Did Rice Lie?
Yow! What John Cole said:
But what we do know, and what the American public now knows, is that the party that has spent the past few years demagoguing safety and security and law and order is now known as the party that has screwed up the Iraq war, that has codified torture, that has been filled to the rim with criminals and crooks fleecing the treasury, and who knows what else, is now known as the party that at its most basic can-€™t be trusted, because they are the party that has middle age perverts trying to bugger your kids, and the House Leadership didn-€™t give enough of a shit to do anything about it because it might get messy or it might get in the way of their desires for power.
And they did worse. Remember the fun Clinton interview where he reminded everyone how often he tried to kill bin Laden? Via Tim F, Andrew Sullivan asks Condi in Peril.* His source is Condi Rice vs. Bob Woodward: Let the Battle Begin by Greg Mitchell.
A few years ago, President Bush, refering to Osama bin Laden, told Woodward for one of his previous books:
I have no hesitancy about going after him, but I didn’t feel that sense of urgency and my blood was not nearly as boiling. Whose blood was nearly as boiling prior to September 11?We now know, thanks to the new Woodward book, that two months before 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet and his counter-terrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, did feel theirblood boiling,but Rice, in an urgent meeting they called, brushed them off -- about a coming attack on U.S. soil.Responding to the Woodward book, Rice (who was en route to Saudi Arabia) told The Washington Post for Monday’s edition that an aide was checking on the meeting, but added,
What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told--as this account apparently says--that there was about to be an attack in the United States. The idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible.According to a later AP account, she said, a little less definitively,
It kind of doesn’t ring true that you have to shock me into something I was very involved in.
For fans of David Horowitz, the great loon tried to smear Woodward. Not very convincingly.
And Wow. Just wow.
*I still hate the use of Condi
by the way. I know the spelling of her first name was a question on the BBC’s weekly quiz once: I got it wrong, which is why I’m not going to repeat it here. And I know we refer to Tony Blair
, but still using the familar contraction when she’s also black and a woman - well, if I didn’t know you, I’d worry that it was patronising, that’s all.
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Little Miss Sunshine
Frank: [recounting his unrequited love for his student] But he went and fell in love with a colleague of mine; Larry Sugarman, the number 2 expert on Marcel Proust in America.
Richard: Who’s number 1?
Frank: That would be me, Richard.
I’ve been meaning to write about Little Miss Sunshine since I saw it last week. I couldn’t come up with a snappy title, and I’ve decided there’s no way to do this without spoilers. So if that bothers you, skip this.
I’m pleased that John Brissenden liked it as much as I did. As did Ebert and Roper (NB audio MP3 podcast). I have one quibble with - I think - Roper’s analysis, which I’ll go into below. I’m much less comfortable that one of the most favourable reviews came from Michael Medved (via Wikipedia). I thought - still think -he was a hack. But he’s mostly right.
Their periodically painful adventures come cushioned by abundant laughs, culminating in a host of believable surprises at the compellingly creepy and climactic contest. Each of the characters in the superb ensemble cast counts as a certified (and certifiable) loser but in the course of the picture these lost souls manage to come together to create a familial unit that strengthens each of them, ending their isolation in unexpected, enriching ways. No matter how different your own family experience may be, the relationships feel relevant, real, even familiar. First-timer Michael Arndt provided a screenplay of peerless intelligence and originality, with many lines of dialogue so cleverly crafted that you savor the words at the moment they’re spoken.
He’s right - except about the ending their isolation
bit. The ending is really bleak. I can’t think of a reason for Collette and Kinnear not to divorce. I don’t think they touch each other once in the whole movie. I’ll certainly buy the DVD and watch it an anal number of times to find out. Significant? Well, Toni Collette embraces Steve Carell in an opening scene (and says, I’m so glad you’re still here
, to which he replies, unforgettably, Well, that makes one of us
), Alan Arkin puts his hand on Greg Kinnear’s shoulder when he praises him, Olive (Abigail Breslin) hugs her mom (Collette) and her older half brother (Paul Dano), and is stroked by her grandfather (Alan Arkin). There isn’t much physical contact, but what there is, is significant. Frank (Steve Carell) is still jobless, apartmentless, at best the #2 Proust scholar in the US, and generally fucked. Dwayne (Dano) can’t fly the jets he wants to (because he’s colour blind). There is some bonding, but everyone remains in a hole.
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Tuesday, 03 October 2006
Blowhards And Blowback
Gary Farber celebrates the perfect storm: It’s not just Foley; it’s Iraq, or Frist on the Taliban, or cumulative frustration over lots of stuff.
He links to the nutcase Misha
so I don’t have to.
The only, repeat the ONLY reason that was left for His Imperial Warmongeriness to continue supporting the GOP was that they promised to kill terrorists and blow their shit up.
He may be nuts, but he speaks for much of the warblogosphere there. What he objects to is this U.S. Senate majority leader calls for efforts to bring Taliban into Afghan government.
Those are the animals that you’ve decided that it is
hopelessto fight and that we now need to court and tease to the negotiating table so that we can make concessions to them?For YEARS His Majesty has been mocking liberals claiming that the GOP weren’t serious about fighting terrorists, for YEARS he has been supporting you RINO assholes against his better judgment because you were the only ones promising to NEVER forgive, NEVER forget, NEVER waver, NEVER relent and NEVER compromise.
... You page-buggering, pork-barreling pissheads in Washington can’t be trusted with it, NONE of you, and you are now well and truly useless to us. Live or die, get re-elected or thrown out, we don’t give a good Imperial Shit anymore.
That was nutcase Misha
not Frist, if you thought the language was unparliamentary.
But I like NEVER forget
. Because those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.
Ronald Reagan praised them [the Afghan mujahideen] as freedom fighters, and the 1988 Rambo III portrayed them as heroic. This connection is ironic, in light of the future turn of events in which many of the same men would end up as a major threat to the United States. This sort of blowback, in which a state helped to create a force to fight another state, only to have that force turn against them, was seen earlier in the 20th century, e.g., the German support for the Bolshevik underground in Russia which led to a Soviet Union and the eventual occupation of East Germany by the Red Army.
Following the Soviet retreat, many of the larger mujahideen groups began to fight each other. After several years of this fighting, a village mullah organized religious students into an armed movement, with the backing of Pakistan, who was being funded by the United States, which found the existing government to be too Russian-influenced, even following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This movement became known as the Taliban, meaning "students", and referring to the Saudi-backed religious schools which produced Islamic fundamentalism along the pacific coast of Asia. With each success the Taliban had, their popularity and numbers grew.
Let us not forget that. Nor, indeed this.
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Must Buy!
Speaking from the heart, not from the brain, this legendary Commander in Chief takes us on a journey through his momentous life, including his hardscrabble beginnings as the child of West Texas oil millionaires, the remarkable academic performance that earned him entry into the finest East Coast schools, and his proud service to the country as an occasional member of the National Guard some time around 1972 or 1973.
Also, according to the cover, the just-published book is the Winner of the Super Special PRESIDENTIAL AWARD for Biographizing
. Via PZ.
Of course, laughing at Bush is all very well. But beating them at the polls will be something else. I want Tony Blair to stay in office at least until November.
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Wednesday, 04 October 2006
In Which I Write To Ayatollah Khameini
As suggested by Lindsay.
Draft letter courtesy of Ali Eteraz, who also argues that punishment for stoning to death does not exist in the Quran
[sic]. But who cares?
You can write too.
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Reprehensible And Disgusting
That is this (NB Link uses Deep Quote).
Via the this comment on Foley! Shut Up!. I’d like to see liberals show a little more tolerance of Mark Foley. He’s a hypocrite, and borderline paedophile, and he abused his power. Sebastian makes this last point in the comments.
Just to be clear, because I haven’t commented on the case much. I’m not nearly as appalled by the sexual advances to a 17-year old per se (though I still think it is creepy in itself) as I am by the abuse of power. A page is your subordinate. You shouldn’t hit on your subordinates (no matter what the age).
But Foley is clearly a damaged, unfortunate individual. He should have sought therapy. I’m sceptical about therapy, but giving it a shot has to be better than taking your issues out obsessively. Glenn Greenwald.
When this scandal first broke, I spent a few hours researching federal law with regard to Internet sexual activities and "minors" and, while I knew that Foley was involved in enacting some of these bills, I was really amazed how far beyond that it went. Mark Foley was literally at the center of virtually every activity and law and program over the last 10 years ostensibly designed to battle the evils of Internet sex and minors. Mark Foley spent 12 years in Congress and it is not an exaggeration to say that he basically devoted his whole Congressional career to adding decades of imprisonment on to the mandatory punishments for those who use the Internet to talk about sex with children. He didn’t just condemn that which he was doing. He made the crusade against it his life’s work, in the most vocal and public way possible.
There’s a book in this.
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Saturday, 07 October 2006
But Everything He Touched Turned To Shit
tehgrauniad this morning:
Until his resignation, David Blunkett was one of the most brilliant, natural politicians in the cabinet. Now he is back with a controversial account of life in the corridors of power
(’Controversial’ is another word hacks should be fined 50 quid for using. Find another adjective, guys.)
David Blunkett, brilliant politician: the man who made Sheffield ’nuclear free’. That made a big difference, Dave.
Blunkett wizard scheme: hey, let’s do an online university, and let’s do it right here. Never mind that we had a state-funded open access university which was online called the Open University. That was old Labour stuff. No one would remember that was there, who would use that when there New Labour had a shiny new interwebby thing? I bet Blunkett had some clueless Yank advisor, who’d never heard of Harold Wilson the OU. Twat.
A natural politican - just one who would up people who worked with him: Blunkett was ’anti-police’ says Stevens.
And, of course, a liar. But all politicians are. Just that most are better than David Blunkett.
But back to our fawning interviewers. It takes two people to write an introduction like the one above of course: now each can say the other idiot was responsible.
Among his adversaries, at times, were both traditionalists and liberals who, for instance, opposed his antiterror laws in the House of Lords. "Bishops and judges are some of the best politicians in the world. They know how to manipulate the political process," he says. "I am against the judiciary believing that they are another arm of government and that they can therefore say they dislike what parliament has done and overturn it."
Though this wasn’t what the judiciary did. You’d think after describing Blunkett as ’brilliant, natural politician’ and writing he defied the Thatcher revolution and went on to share and shape hopes for a fairer Britain when Tony Blair won in 1997
[my emphasis], there might be some examples of this brilliance. But there aren’t. Like everything else about DB, it’s true because he says so.
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Dark Veils
This is a bit late, but whatever. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about John Reid on The Sharpner. At the time, I thought it was odd that Trevor (or Omar) Brooks aka Abu Izzadeen had even been present during John Reid’s speech in Leytonstone which had been trailed in the Torygraph as delivered to an audience of specially-invited Muslims
. The BBC Report video format says that Mr Brooks had got past the very limited security
(don’t MI6 protect Ministers then?) and called him an univited guest
.
Still, Mr Brooks’ presence guaranteed headlines, and he pretty much acted out the unreasonable bogeyman role. I can’t find a transcript now, but Brooks said something like How dare you come here
- which I took to mean ... and lecture us
. This would have been a reasonable heckle. Hypocrite
, Liar
and so forth may be unparliamentary but they’re part of knockabout at Speakers’ Corner or on what Americans call the stump.
Dr Reid is not an idiot, and he turned Brooks’ statement to his own advantage with his there are no no-go areas
reply. This has become the orthodoxy: Nick Cohen now refers to Abu Izzadeen, the Islamist who wants no go areas and calls John Humphreys interview with him shockingly soft
. The Times has a transcript which reads to me as Humphreys merely paying out rope to Brooks. This is precisely why Humphreys is a good interviewer:
JH: - Are you telling me that 9/11 and the subsequent attacks, including the attack on this country, are justified?
AI: I’m talking about the reality of Muslims being attacked after 9/11. The numbers of casualties are much greater on the Muslim side.
JH: I’m asking you whether they were justified?
...
AI: - reality is so clear, even the blind man can see when they kill Muslims they go under the guise of the crusade.
Some may take that as a ’yes’.
But now, somewhat late, as I said, comes another account of Mr Brooks’ performance at that meeting. Darcus Howe:
Like all Stalinists, Reid presumed that, as the commissar for security in the central committee of the politburo, he was all-knowing and his audience backward and ignorant. The elderly people present seemed puzzled. They thought, perhaps, that Reid had come with a grovelling apology for the brutal performance of his uniformed officers who had fired a bullet, busted a head and slapped an innocent woman around.
Not a word of this emerged from the lips of the commissar. He solemnly warned his audience that in their midst are those who seduce their grandsons into committing suicide bombings in which innocent civilians are murdered.
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Like Some Horrible Time Warp Catastrophe
The Onion really excels itself with President Bush Attends Christening Ceremony of the George H. W. Bush. The photoshopping is really good, it would fool even the Little Green Fedayeen, and I’m really not sure they should use the Seal of the President of the United States like that.
And a joke’s a joke, but surely the ’our father’ bits are too much even for satire.
Via P O’Neill who’s pretty boggled as well.
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Sunday, 08 October 2006
Cognitive Dissonance Hell
Title from Randy Paul in a comment on Marc Cooper’s post Deja Voodvard. Marc isn’t impressed with the latest developments in the Iraq thing*.
Not that Woodward’s revelations are likely to have much of a political impact. With or without his book, the folly of Iraq can easily be glimpsed by anyone willing to read a newspaper. At this point those who are
supportingthe war, those who want to stay the course, are likely to be about as unresponsive as my fictional coma victim. Their pro-war position is but a product of preconceived ideology. The facts be damned.
Randy Paul and Josh Legere think Christopher Hitchens is going to have a hell of a time with this one.
Hitchens usually posts on Slate on a Monday, but this week he had a second column on Friday - The Return of Henry Kissinger: Will we never be free of the malign effect of this little gargoyle? He starts with manqué Dickens.
Bob Woodward’s disclosure of the influence of Henry Kissinger on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy both is and is not a surprise.
If that doesn’t make any sense to you, you’re not alone. He’s having a hard time with that old Cognitive Dissonance.
After all, we have known for a long time that the bungling old war criminal has his admirers within the White House. Did not the president, almost but not quite incredibly, call on him as the first chairman of the 9/11 commission?
Yes indeed: in 2002. Before the Iraq invasion. If this anvil-sized hint dented Hitchens’ conviction in the good faith of the Bush administration, he hid it well.
Kissinger’s initial acceptance of that honor was swiftly withdrawn after it was pointed out -€” first of all in this space, if I may say so-€”that he would have to make a full disclosure of the interests of Kissinger Associates in the Middle East.
Hitchens is in the right here; and Kissinger’s version as reported by CNN looks disingenous to me.
Hitchens had doubts about former Kissinger Associates employee Paul Bremer as soon as he was appointed Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. But only now does he begin to doubt the intentions of the White House.
Slate helpfully provides links to related articles, such as Calling Henry: Kissinger ducks the New York Times, again. But the NYTimes, remember, is the dreaded MSM, the journalistic fifth column, the bullies of the hard-working White House.
As Kissinger watchers know, the man loves to hold forth on TV’s political and news shows when the subject resides in his comfort zone. But whenever reporters want to ask questions about his personal and professional conduct, he invariably retreats to the
traveling, can’t be reachedexcuse. Late last week (Aug. 27), Kissinger ducked the Times’ Schemo again. She reported that newly declassified documents show that Kissingerraised no protest against human rights violations that were the start of Argentina’sduring a 1976 meeting with that country’s new military junta.dirty war
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Well Done To Nick Barlow
Nick has finished his walk and arrived in Land’s End in one piece. He took lots of good photos too.
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Monday, 09 October 2006
Hatred And Bitterness
tehgrauniad continues its somewhat strange policy of printing pieces attributed to more than one author. It takes Nicholas Watt and Julian Glover to precis "today’s extract from [David Blunkett’s] diaries". Do you think that one read them aloud while the other typed? Today, they reveal how feuds rocked the cabinet. See they can’t even do newspaper speak between two of them. Blunkers: my cabinet feud hell
- that’s what the public want. Anyway, this is the good bit.
Days before Mr Blunkett resigned as home secretary in December 2004, he was given a taste of Mr Prescott’s feeling when he turned up for the annual "Old Lags" Christmas dinner at Westminster. "Everyone who cared for me said they had never seen John Prescott look at me with such hatred and bitterness," he recounts.
For once, I’m with David Blunkett here. I can see where Prescott was coming from: Kimberly Quinn was a lot more comely as well as intelligent than Tracey Temple. This may explain Prezza’s other appearance in the paper Prescott leads ministers disagreeing with Straw over call to remove Muslim veils. Indeed, if all women wore veils, such intra-Cabinet rivalry would be diminished. That would be a sexist solution. But if the Deputy Prime Minister were to wear a bag over his head, and refuse to remove it, he would set an example for countless other ugly bastards. Ugly bastards vote.
Bonus headline (changed but it’s still in the article’s title): Reid to unveil emergency prisons policy and it’s still in the first paragraph:
The home secretary, John Reid, is to unveil emergency measures to hold inmates, including the use of police cells, as the prison system nears the limits of its capacity.
And Will Woodward wrote that by himself! Perhaps that explains the need for two bylines. One writes and the other censors.
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Circumlocution And Circulation
It’s not often (well not too often, anyway) that I disagree with Daniel D2
Davies, but I think he’s wrong about the US commentary market being more competitive. And here’s an example. The Pagina Monologues, Chris Clarke’s reaction to David Brooks. Via Michael Bérubé who has a few suggestions of his own.
Chris Clarke is a professional writer; Bérubé is a commercially published academic. Both are far superior writers (and thinkers) than Brooks. Brooks just has to be an illustration of who you know
rather than what you know
.
Part of the failure of tehgraniad’s Comment is Free is that it’s the professionals who write the vapid pieces which are recieved with remarks which amount to Idiot
said several ways. The bloggers and academics and others who write occasionally aren’t perfect, but they have a far better hit rate.
Perhaps competition is the problem. Steve Poole remembers that George Orwell (a professional book reviewer) suggested it would be a good thing if more novel reviewing were done by amateurs.
In my life so far, I’ve only heard of one columnist who made any difference: as Christopher Bray tells it, Clive James performed so well [as TV critic of the Observer] that, when he quit, the paper’s hitherto rock-solid million-plus circulation went into free fall
. There aren’t many journalists who make a difference to circulation. Perhaps Bernard Levin, Jeremy Clarkson, Brian Sewell were or are indispensable. The trick is obviously to pick a subject many readers are interested in to read you in the first place. Nancy Banks-Smith is the finest writer on tehgrauniad but gets almost no credit from the paper.
I can’t see a market, or anything like a market, at work on either side of the Atlantic.
Come to think of it, Graham Norton and Ruby Wax take turns writing the advice column in the Saturday Torygraph. Dear Graham Norton, I would like to take up drugs, but I don’t wish to appear staid and middle-class or overly gay. What would you recommend?
That’ll boost the circulation.
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Battlestar Galactica
I watched three of the catch-up videos on the (US) Sci-Fi Channel. My verdict: it looks crap. I was going to post to that effect at greater length, but it’s been discussed on more sensible blogs - and none of them have convinced me to change my mind.
Jon Swift seems to like it, Scott McLemee is a fan, even if the thread degenerates into a discussion of the lameness or importance of robotic dogs, a Kossack calls it brilliant television
, and Jim Henley raves; PZ Myers needs convincing, but seems sceptical. However, most of the fandom seems to come down to it’s an allegory of Iraq
, which is all very well, but the degree to which you appreciate the allegory is clearly directly related to your understanding of Iraq. So what’s the point? Battlestar Galactica Can Go To Hell says the same thing from the other side as it were.
My hostility isn’t helped by this silly Salon article (usual ad shenanigans) which manages to sneer at the West Wing
and William Shatner. Just the picture of the cast puts me off: uptown DC in Space: eight whites and one Asian. Star Trek
at least tried to look the UN.
I didn’t watch the original series either but Lost In Castration is rather fun.
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Live By Satellite
This is one of the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen. High-resolution satellite imagery of objects about one meter in size
. At the top left of the image is an inset of the whole photo an enormous 20 Megabytes. Nope, no life there.
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Tuesday, 10 October 2006
Alastair Campbell Is Unhappy
He doesn’t get any sympathy from Sam Leith.
He gets more from Nick Johnstone (and a lot less in the comments). This is the most interesting.
The newspaper you allude to that Campbell worked on was Today newspaper in the late 1980’s. He was the chief news reporter[*] at the time and I worked there with him. Amanda Platel was a down table features sub. Feck, she was sexy then too.
At the time, most nights in the Lord High Admiral on the Vauxhall Bridge Road, Campbell’s alcoholism was evident but in the surroundings wasn’t unusual and was tolerated, perhaps even more than tolerated. With greater experience from life now I can see how much he was depressed as well but unless you know what you’re looking for you don’t really see it. This is what accounts for the ’prejudice’ Johnstone encountered from that editor. There is not a generic depressed ’look’ but there are signs in speech, behaviour etc which mark depressed people out for those that know how to look.
So it’s good that he’s talking about it now, the more people that do that the better. I’ll never forgive him or Bliar about Kelly and WMD though.
[*Ie not the editor as stated in the article, but CiF wouldn’t be CiF without the obligatory non-fact.]
And this is a good comeback to anyone who thinks that those us with no sympathy at all are unfeeling buggers.
No they’re not being cynical, and I write as someone who’s suffered from full-on clinical depression.Mental anguish and suffering can and do affect anyone, regardless of political affiliation, BUT it is thoroughly disheartening when folk play the mental health card inapprpriately or in an opportunistic manner to evoke sympathy and/or a more lenient judgement upon their actions.
Also working in mental health there are too many ’user-lites’ who may well have had some MH problem, but seek nonetheless to exploit the fact, e.g. when faced with punishment under the criminal justice system.
I’d like to think Campbell was utterly sincere in just speaking up to redress the stigma too often attached to MH issues, but given his track record for spin and deceit, the strong suspicion remains that it’s a very belated attempt to win sympathy and continue his prominence/influence, as his beloved NuLabour project hits the rocks.
I’ve got full-on clinical depression
, and I don’t feel for Blunkett or Campbell. (Mind you, I don’t feel much of anything at present.) They’re just a pair of opportunists. Campbell probably is telling the truth, and I believe that the clues were there if anyone looked. During my bad periods, I’ve always thought that everyone knew, but mostly they don’t.
The best thing is finding Daniel Finkelstein and Matthrew Turner in agreement.
I wonder what Linda Grant thinks of Big Al now?
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Thursday, 12 October 2006
Insert Dick Cheney Joke Here
tehgrauniad: Blunkett: PM suffered heart trouble since his 30s .
Tony Blair began suffering from heart problems in his mid 30s, casting doubt on Downing Street’s statements about his health, David Blunkett says today.
I’m shocked, shocked that Downing Street statements are ever anything but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Blunkett is rather fun: Blunkett: PM was ready to sack Brown over Iraq. Both Brown and Blair deny this, and I find it incredible: you think the divisions in the party are wide now?
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Blunkett Does It Again
Mirror Blunkett: We Must Bomb Al-Jazeera TV (Deepquote link because the Mirror doesn’t archive, AFAIK).
DAVID Blunkett has admitted he urged Tony Blair to break international law and bomb al-Jazeera’s Baghdad TV transmitter during the Iraq war.
The disgraced ex-Home Secretary makes his astonishing revelation in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, to be shown next week, saying he viewed the Arab television station as a legitimate target.
He brushes aside protests that, as a civilian organisation, the bombing of al-Jazeera would have been illegal under international law.
Via Gordon of Harry’s Place who, rightly, deduces that David Blunkett is clearly never planning to return to office.
Unless ...
[Five years hence] John Humphreys: George W Bush once said that he couldn’t remember his mistakes, yet five years ago, Prime Minister, you admitted that your greatest mistake was, and I quote
For the rest of my life, I will regret speaking to Stephen Pollard.Have you changed your mind about that?Prime Minister Blunkett: Oh yes, oh yes indeed I have. Talking to that bint on Dispatches nearly ruined my career. She said it was for a television show, but how was I to know that I was being recorded?
And if you think I’m mean, try Kevin Maquire.
After he complained of his rough treatment by the press, I pointed out he was feeding from the hand that bit him.
You’ve got to stop attacking me,he growled back.I think I will. After reading his memoirs, I realise he’s doing a grand job of it himself.
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Like They Say, You Can’T Fight City Hall
I think everyone has seen this Email from Iraq by now, mostly for this:
Most Profound Man in Iraq - an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines (searching for Syrians) if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied
Yes, you.
Though this is remarkable:
Best Chuck Norris Moment - 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in the small town of Kubaysah to kidnap the town mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor’s hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machinegun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can’t fight City Hall.
Did you hear about that? Me neither. How violent does a place have to be before Mayor kills five kidnappers
is not news?
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Friday, 13 October 2006
Muckracking Wingnuttery
I believe the Yanks may be having some sort of election soon. That may explain this hateful piece of crap. (Sorry, I forgot where I found it.)
This is barely worth blogging save to note the effort that went into stretching a few facts into something totally ridiculous.
The mystery man at the center of the scandal, Jeff Trandahl, is supposed to be a "lifelong Republican" who is gay. But Trandahl, who supervised the congressional page program as House clerk and knew about the controversial Foley emails many years ago, has a strange way of showing his Republicanism. A search of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records over the last six years shows no financial contributions to the Republican Party or Republican candidates. Instead, Trandahl in 2000 gave $1,200 to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which gives over 80 percent of its political campaign money to Democrats.
Well, I looked up the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and they say on their about page:
The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund provides strategic, technical and financial support to openly LGBT candidates and officials. We’re the only national organization committed to increasing the number of openly LGBT public officials at federal, state and local levels of government. Victory Fund support is acknowledged as the determinative factor in the successful election or appointment of endorsed LGBT candidates.
My emphasis. They back Gay and Lesbian candidates; if they give more money to Democrats could there be a reason for that beyond the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy to elect Democrats (and then rape us and murder us in our beds)?
Trandahl is so much of a Republican that he joined the board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, another gay political action committee that commits most of its funds to electing Democrats. Its latest list of "winning candidates" is all Democrats, except for Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, who admits not voting for President Bush in 2004.
Again, most candidates are Democrats because the Democratic Party supports gays coming out and the Republican Party doesn’t, for crying out loud.
If you are getting the idea that gay Republicans may be closeted Democrats, then you are beginning to understand how the Mark Foley scandal could have been a Democratic Party dirty trick.
Oh god, no. How?
In response to the scandal, a representative of the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual activist group, has been on cable channels like CNN and MSNBC expressing the fear that the Foley scandal will be used to root out homosexual influence in the Republican Party. But the Log Cabin Republicans are so Republican that its board voted 22-2 against endorsing President Bush in 2004 because of his stand against homosexual marriage.
Believe it or not, even the Republican Party is democratic; being a member of a party means supporting most of its core views: it doesn’t mean blanket agreement with everything. This is what the Log Cabin Republicans said at the time.
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What’S The Weather Like Up There?
BBC: ’Most distant’ weather pictures. But Centauri Dreams is more detailed Watching the Weather on Upsilon Andromedae b. But the weather is surprising, NASA puts it best. (You need to know that the planet is so close to its star that it is tidally locked, that is, like the moon on side always faces the body it orbits.)
According to the astronomers, the observed temperature difference between the two sides of Upsilon Andromedae b is extreme -- about 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,550 degrees Fahrenheit). Such a large temperature difference indicates the planet’s atmosphere absorbs and reradiates sunlight so fast that gas circling around it cools off quickly. This is unlike Jupiter, which is even-temperatured all the way around.
Oddly, no report makes any mention of which gas(es) Upsilon Andromedae b is assumed to be composed of. Hydrogen (like Jupiter) would seem to be an obvious candidate, but in Jupiter’s case it clearly conducts heat very effectively. So why not on Upsilon Andromedae b? Perhaps Upsilon Andromedae b, like Uranus its axis is tilted so it rotates at 90° to the solar plane - in other words, it keeps one face to Upsilon Andromedae not because of tital forces but for the same reason the North Star is always (more or less) above the North Pole. If it had bands of storms like Jupiter, these would stick to either "the hot substellar (day) and cold antistellar (night) faces" and not flow between them.
"If you were moving across the planet from the night side to day side, the temperature jump would be equivalent to leaping into a volcano," said the project’s principal investigator, Dr. Brad Hansen of the University of California, Los Angeles.
But if the planet is a gas giant - if it has an atmosphere at all - the temperature gradient should cause the hot gas to expand and move into the colder region (or rise and create a vacuum). I think the word "jumping" is misleading. There’s unlikely to be a boundary as clear as that. This is a very big planet, and perhaps the heat doesn’t make it all the way around. So is the reason the Jovian temperature is fairly even is because its rapid rotation (a Jovian day is just under 10 hours) aids convection somehow?
These aren’t put forth as serious theories, merely curiousities.
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Sunday, 15 October 2006
Sympathy Vote Of The Day
Matthew Parris ’understands’:
I AM VERY sorry that Alastair Campbell was depressed while he was in charge of Downing Street’s communications machine. I recall that Lady Macbeth developed mental difficulties too.
And Hitler!
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Tuesday, 17 October 2006
In Which I Am Objectively-Pro Prison Riots
Believe anything about David Blunkett so long as it’s bad Department. Blunkett ’told prisons boss: machine-gun rioters’ aka ’The Blunkett solution to overcrowding’.
Mr Narey said when he told the then Home Secretary that he would not order staff back into the jail if it put lives at risk, Mr Blunkett
shrieked at me that he didn’t care about lives, told me to call in the Army and.machine gunthe prisoners and - still shrieking - again ordered me to take the prison back immediatelyWhen Mr Narey refused, he claimed that Mr Blunkett hung up on him.
Blunkett denies this. But then see Sam Woolaston’s account of the Blunkett ’memory’.
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Lancet Roundup
This is just a list, more or less, of good posts on the Lancet and Johns Hopkins University study of mortality in Iraq Large PDF.
Much fun has been made of Christopher Hitchens response. I can’t think why, surely a measured response to unpleasant facts naturally starts with an examination of the name of the publication where they appear. This is a well-known rhetorical gambit which never fails, is it not? And Hitchens’ next stroke is masterful, why the Lancet once published a letter he didn’t like. Bloody leftists!
And this certainly convinced me ... that the study must be broadly right.
No really, there are some good posts.
Tim Lambert has several.
Steven Poole thinks that Hitchens didn’t even try to read the study, and anyway moves [f]rom a vague protestation that we are killing the right people, Hitchens moves miraculously to a claim that, anyway, we aren’t killing anyone at all.
Glenn Greenwald on Counting Iraqi deaths.
Lindsay Beyerstein says Innumerate cowards recoil from the facts: 655,000 dead Iraqis.
Innumerate vs. Non-innumerate criticisms of the John Hopkins Mortality Study.
Unsurprisingly, Daniel Davies cropped up more than once The numbers do add up and Death rates and death certificates.
There is informed stuff on Effect Measure and Good Math.
Of all of these, I think the clearest and the best place to start whichever side you wish to argue is Anthony Wells’s summary and if there’s one point to take away, it is this:
The study is based on a survey in a country in a state of near civil war and without accurate population estimates, it is not a perfect situation to be working in and obviously there are going to be question marks here and there. Surveys in developed countries aren’t perfect, let alone in war zones. The bottom line though is that the study suggests that the increase in deaths since the invasion is indeed far higher than estimates from other sources suggest.
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Thursday, 19 October 2006
Dupey-Dupey Doo, Where Are You?
Christopher Hitchens, labelled The Dupe
by Norman Geras, doubtless for his credulous prostration before Ahmed Chalabi (see here and here) is contemptous of anyone who believes there are precendents for the Iraq mess. Here he expectorates at those who cannot engage their minds on any foreign-policy question without using the word
Vietnam.
Vietnam remains the US’s greatest foreign policy disaster. Unpopular and unsuccessful, it at least represents what interventions should not be like.
Now Bush draws parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. GWB also seems to think that al-Qaeda are active in Iraq (which they may be now; they certainly weren’t before the war).
Dana Perino, a Bush spokeswoman, said in a statement. ...
The president also believes the American people understand the importance of beating our enemy who is determined to kill innocent freedom-loving people.
So - just like Vietnam.
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Saturday, 21 October 2006
For Future Reference
I blog for various reasons, and one is a sort of public note-taking. Sometimes when I want to look something up, I know I wrote a post about it, and have a useful link to whatever it is.
Anyway, this may be material for a long post, or it may not.
Jon Ronson writes about Deal or No Deal in tehgrauniad and notes this:
According to the Cult Information Centre’s pamphlet Cults: A Practical Guide, cult leaders routinely employ 26 skilful techniques to keep their followers under their spell. One of the main ones is
Isolation: inducing loss of reality by physical separation from family, friends, society and rational references.
Now, for some reason that reminds me of all the bloggers who say that the media is biased, everyone else they meet is biased, and they thought they were alone until they discovered Little Green Footballs or whatever. Of course anyone who can use reality-based community
dismissively has already admitted to problems.
Come to think of it, I’m writing this in a t-shirt and boxers, because I can’t see the point of getting dressed yet. Who am I to complain?
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This Is The Way Iraq Ends
How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
Quoting from myself in a comment in Alex’s post.
I think they all miss the obvious explanation. (OK this is more than a bit paranoid.) Blair does more than agree with Dannatt. He invited the general to speak his mind. We’re going to withdraw from Iraq, and we’re going to do it soon. The Yanks are fed up, and know that it’s over and that we’re making it worse. This is Blair covering his back. This is how we get out.
Iraq mayhem triggers hunt for exit strategy in US and UK. This comes after 11 dead in Baghdad TV station attack and We’ve lost battle for Baghdad, US admits.
Will someone have the guts to arrest Donald Rumsfeld now?
You may wish to view the YouTube video in this post sceptically. (Via Ellis Sharp.) If you understand Arabic, you’ll know more than I do. Specifically, I can’t tell when or where this is. It could be a broadcast from ’Shock and Awe’; it could be outside Iraq entirely. But if it is what the links suggest: U.S. ammo dump explodes in Baghdad - it’s very bad. Also reported in the Sunday Herald. If, as the post suggests the camera is 11 miles away, the claim that no one was hurt is unbelievable.
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Somehow
Kevin Tillman volunteered to fight in Afghanistan along with his brother.
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few
bad applesin the military.
He’s not happy.
(Did someone say bad apples
? I wonder which dupe that was.)
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Monday, 23 October 2006
Day Of Silence
What Bérubé said. I’d only recently discovered Creek Running North and I liked it. But even if I hated it, threats are unacceptable. I assume the commenter chose to remain anonymous: I hope the spineless good-for-nothing is properly outed.
Actually, yesterday was a day of silence, so if I forget later, that was it.
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All Over By Christmas
Don’t bet against it.
Via, wait for it, WAIT FOR IT, Andrew Sullivan. Via John Cole. The latter claims a surprising thing, via a partisan source but there is a video and Dan Bartlett really does say It’s never been a
Watch Jon Stewart again.stay the course
strategy.
I did not have sexual relations with that invasion
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43 Or 1
Take your pick: there is 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. or there are 43 people with my name in the U.S.A.. I think that makes 44. I’m Dave
to everyone I know, but I use ’David’ on the census, etc. Duh!
99.75 percent of people with the first name David are male
but
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Dave are male
So that’s why they call me Dave
!
Anyway, I decided to check my middle name.
There are 72 people in the U.S. named Ross Ross
That is too weird.
And yes, Dr Who fans, I have noticed that the first three letters of my first name and the first three letters of my second name spell a Baddie.
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Saturday, 28 October 2006
Don’T Call It Crapney
Oh, sorry, not Hackney,
Crapneyas Phil claims Londoners call it. Can I just go on record saying that I have lived in London for over ten years (and have hung about Hackney for all of them) and have never, ever heard anyone call it Crapney. That piece of info wasn’t based on facts and figures, Phil, it was based on simple prejudice.The thing that annoys me most about this show is the constant mantra that if you’re stuck in a UK blackspot - say you’re that person in the graffiti flat in the nastier part of Crapney beside the broken shopping trolleys - then you should simply leave. Little Miss Posh Sofie Allsopp must have said it a hundred times last night, without ever explaining exactly how people ingrained in poverty can go anywhere at all.
It must be nice to live in a world of infinite possibility. A world where if you don’t like your home you can simply go somewhere better. Or if you don’t have any experience of being a TV property pundit you can walk into a primetime TV job standing in for your sister. Next week I might go to the pub and get really drunk, in that case TVOD will be written by my brother David in Carlisle, who has no journalistic experience whatsoever and actually doesn’t watch that much telly, though does have the same surname as me so that’s OK. Enjoy.
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Peace Process
Torygraph: Irish police ’foil Republican bomb plot’. If it had happened in London Ian Blair and Ruth Kelly would be ordering the interment of all Muslims NOW. Fortuneately, it didn’t. Still all darkies are terrorists, and all terrorists are darkies. I blame religions preaching hate.
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