Scores die in raids on Gaza

Israel’s military killed at least 54 Palestinians yesterday - almost half of them civilians, including four children - in its most violent assault on the Gaza Strip since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power last June. The latest deaths bring to more than 80 the number of Palestinians killed since a rocket fired from inside Gaza killed a 44-year-old Israeli in the town of Sderot last week. Two Israeli soldiers also died in the fighting.

The latest bloodshed comes as an Observer investigation revealed how Israel is again deliberately obstructing the transfer of urgent medical cases for treatment outside Gaza in the latest extension of its policy of collective punishment of Palestinians.Guardian

Gitmo: There won’t be acquittals, period

Ross Tuttle at The Nation has some interesting background on the upcoming Kangaroo Court down in Guantanamo. Long quote, but it’s important:

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department. “[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’”

(…) Haynes, a political appointee and chief legal adviser to Defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, was nominated in 2006 by the Bush Administration for a lifetime seat as a judge in the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. But his nomination never got out of committee, primarily because of the opposition of Republican Senator (and former military lawyer) Lindsey Graham and other members alarmed over Haynes’s role in writing or supervising the writing of Pentagon memos advocating the use of harsh interrogation techniques the Geneva Conventions classify as torture.

Currently, in his capacity as Pentagon general counsel, Haynes oversees both the prosecution and the defense for the commissions. The Nation

what are we fighting for?

Iraq is a mess. Thank god (pun intended) Afghanistan is so much better. Or is it?

An Afghan journalist has been sentenced to death by a provincial court for distributing “blasphemous” material.

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested in 2007 after downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.

A primary court in Balkh province said that Kambakhsh had confessed to blasphemy and had to be punished. BBC

29

A 102-year-old will become Britain’s oldest emigrant this weekend when he leaves to start a new life with his wife in New Zealand.

Eric and Doris King-Turner, 87, will start their “wonderful new adventure” on Saturday when they set off on a cruise liner from Southampton.

“I would say to anyone that if you want to do something you should do it straight away while you can,” the retired dentist told Friday’s Daily Mail.

“What’s important is that when I’m 105 I don’t want to be thinking: ‘I wish I had moved to the other side of the world when I was 102.’” (…) Reuters

I’m turning 29 tomorrow and couldn’t agree more. Especially because I just moved back.

stand up comedy

April 10, 2006:

I am a Radiohead (on a hill)

Since March of this year I have been living on a mountain/hill near the city centre of Aachen, Germany. I absolutely love it here because I can walk into town in 10 minutes (walkability, new urbanism and some other terms that cause me to giggle, come to mind). What’s even nicer though is to just have to walk out the front door and farther up the hill to have some quality-alone-time. So when the new Radiohead album came out a few weeks back, that’s where I went to listen to it. Especially the song Faust Arp fit extremely well with a sunset/rain clouds backdrop on this hill (smoking materials optional). It fit so well I was even thinking about putting together a video, but didn’t because of obvious copyright issues. Now I really which I had done that.

Why? This past weekend the Radiohead gang did a web-stream that included some experimental videos. Including this one:

Pretty cool “Jigsaw falling into place” video after the jump.
Read entire entry

New Radiohead Album in 10 (!) days

Radiohead has always played by their own rules. They just announced that not only is their long awaited 7th studio album finished, it also is a double album consisting of 18 tracks and includes a book. It’s called In Rainbows and ships in 10 days.

More info at their new and increasingly slow site www.inrainbows.com or the best Radiohead fansite there is: atease.com.

No thanks

Imagine there’s a war and nobody shows up. Courtesy of the Washington Post:

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration’s difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

“The very fundamental issue is, they don’t know where the hell they’re going,” said retired Marine Gen. John J. “Jack” Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. “So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks,’ “ he said. Washington Post

US vs. THEM

I never thought I’d have to give the Bush administration a primer in propaganda, but doesn’t it seem obvious that the U.S. is looking mighty bad even compared to Iran?

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Upstaged by The Bad Guy™ once again. Maybe it would help to be somewhat ethical when trying to always claim the ethical high ground?

A Yuletide greeting

Re-spelling the war

This is beyond absurd. Now the Bush administration is huffing and puffing about whether the war in Iraq is a civil war or not.

What I am waiting for is the realization that the Bush administration had no plan for either a civil war or any large scale resistance of any kind.

It really does not matter what you call it because the Bush team did all the same amount of preparations for all eventualities: nothing. The whole thing about “this is not a civil war” is just a diversion from that simple fact.

Bush disses Rove

George Bush dissed his political chief strategist Karl “The Architect” Rove during a press conference Wednesday:

Question: Thank you, sir. During this campaign season some religious conservatives expressed support and appreciation for the work you’ve done. But some also expressed that they felt like they expended a lot of effort on your behalf without a lot of results. I wonder if you could tell us what parts of their agenda are still on your radar screen, and if you think they’re right to be frustrated? And also, Mr. President, may I ask you if you have any metrics you’d be willing to share about your reading contest with Mr. Rove.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m losing. I obviously was working harder in the campaign than he was. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE: Oooooh! White House transcript

Burn!

But seriously: Karl did a “heck of a job.” (snicker)

Ok, but seriously now, Rove’s tactics saved the Republicans from losing even bigger. He muddied the waters enough for it not to be even more apparent what a horrible mess the GOP has whipped up all by itself. It should have been crystal clear to even more voters, but he gave them enough reasons not to vote for Democrats.

Lost

Now that’s what I call a cliffhanger. Bastards! (If you don’t watch the TV show Lost, get season one from somewhere and start watching.)

Fiction

With names like this (Nebel is the german word for “fog”), in a story like this, who needs fiction?

The operation’s alleged mastermind, John Nebel, “should have been the CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” said his attorney, Steve Zissou. AP

“Value” voters feel taken for granted by GOP

The so called “value” voters came out in droves in 2004 and helped the Republicans retain control of Congress, as well as the presidency. Or so they say.

Whatever happened in ‘04, this time the “value” voters are catching on to the tiny fact that Republicans may say they stand for values, what they do is something different altogether. What’s worse (for Republicans anyayway) is that these “value” voters feel duped and don’t seem to have any qualms about telling the general public about that.

A news release from one of Amerca’s largest “faith based” organizations, the Christian Defense Coalition:

There is a strong feeling that the Republican Party courts evangelicals to vote in elections but fails to act aggressively on fulfilling campaign promises.

Many are also asking why they should work so hard for republican candidates when after years of controlling the House, Senate and the White House Republican leadership has accomplished so little?

The 2006 mid-term elections are demonstrating to the Republican Party they can no longer take the faith communities vote and support for granted. Christian Defense Coalition

Traffic

You may not find this as funny as I thought it was (I am an Urban Geography major after all), but since you needed a smile I posted this especially for you. All you others, look away.

Traffic jams in Moscow forced footballers from the city’s Spartak club to abandon their team bus and take public transport to a match on Tuesday. The players and coaching staff had to run to a nearby metro station to catch a train to their Champions League fixture with Inter Milan. Moscow police blamed the traffic jams on a number of factors, including fans on their way to the match. The team lost the match 1-0, and are now likely to exit the competition.(…) BBC

Ronald D. Moore interview

Back when I was opinion editor/columnist I wrote a column about how relevant the commentary of the new Battletar Galactica is (link), a view that’s only re-affiremed by an interview show-maker Ronald D. Moore gave a few days ago. Some excerpts:

Q: The parallels to the Iraqi war I think are very clear. Did the parallel come from you or some sci-fi executive?

Moore: Fundamentally it came from me and I felt okay from that first weekend of thinking about it, okay this is going to deal with 9/11 and it’s going to deal with a lot of things that we’re going through in this society at that moment. It was just part of the premise. It was always going to be in the show and once you were on that path it just felt like we’re just going to keep doing this.

We’re going to deal with things that happened in our contemporary reality, but just you go through a different prison. The show would never be a direct allegory. Laura Roslin is not going to be George W. Bush. The Cylons are not going to be al-Qaeda, but they were going to have elements of it and part of the opportunity of the show was to move pieces around the game board a little bit. Say, okay well we’ve all experienced this set of events, this set of emotions. What if I move this piece over here and what if I put you over there? How do you feel about it then?…One of the foundational elements of the show is the religious conflict between the two civilizations. The monotheism of the Cylons. The polytheism of the Colonies. You know what is God? What is human? What does it mean to be alive? commingsoon.net

Read the full interview here.

Pigeon v. Pelican

About ten years ago I sat in a park in London and wondered out loud if the pelicans ever eat any of the pidgeons that kept pestering them. Today I read this on the BBC Web site:

Pelican swallows pigeon in park (article includes picture)

One more mystery solved.

12,953

For the record, I just deleted 12,953 versions of this on this site:

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The spam bots have been fornicating quite incessantly this month. That’s also while the comments are down for the time being. Just send me a mail instead.

Five years ago

Five years ago today the world got its first peek at the iPod. Has it really been five years? (Must have been… the Apple Store in Tampa opened on the Thursday after a certain Tuesday: 9/11/01. The iPod came out a few weeks later and I was second in line to buy one that morning. Geesh, time flies when you’re having fun.)

Watch the original introduction by Sir Steve Himself here. That was the prettiest brick I’ve ever had the fortune of lugging around. Best. Product. Ever. Truly Insanely Great™.

If you’ll excuse me now, I have some “Lost” podcasts to catch up with while playing poker on my iPod. (insert geeky giggles here)

Son completes unfinished Tolkien

He did a pretty good job on posthumously releasing most of the appendices, so this better be good:

An unfinished book by JRR Tolkien has been edited into a completed work by his son for publication next year.
Christopher Tolkien has spent 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, which The Lord of the Rings author started in 1918 and later abandoned. BBC

SciFi?!?

Man am I pissed at the SciFi Channel. One bright point of my weekly routine is (soon was) watching Stargate-SG1 on the SciFi Channel but SciFi (the people who also cancelled Farscape) cancelled that show and refuse to give any other network the rights to continue producing the show.

So today, on Star Trek’s 40th anniversary, what does SciFi have on? Ripley’s Believe it or Not! I also hear they have wresting shows.

UPN was bad, but the so called “SciFi” Channel has lost any sense of direction. They should know better.

No comment

“Homeland Security” head Chertoff keeps stressing that “the investigation is ongoing” and that their “british colleagues” are on their job.

Nice, now they don’t even have to answer any tough questions.

Bush didn’t know there are two kind of Islam in Iraq prior to invasion

I wish I could say this was incredible, but I don#t doubt it for a second:

A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress (and two months before the invaion of Iraq) President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.

Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam–to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”RawStory