[8 December 2004]

This years books, roughly in the order they were read.

[4 December 2004]

So here we are approaching Christmas. Not much has changed in the last couple of months, I have carried on reading and trying to look at things a little differently. I am finding it more difficult to understand why things are the way that they are. I find it more and more difficult to understand things I have always taken for granted. For example, the role of the nation state in our lives. It appears many problems around the world are based solely on concepts of nationality which at best can be described as arbitrary (did you chose where to be born)(?).

How can people turn to violence over such inane idea's as who owns an area, which in itself is almost an arbitrary accident of history. I feel I have much more to understand. How can you be proud of where you were born? Take "God Bless America". If you believe in God how can you ask for blessing when your beliefs in themselves are that God created everyone(?) God bless America, how? If God created everyone why would he bless America with its values of Moral Equivalence rather than say some poor Afghani family struggling to deal with the aftermath of being taught who is in charge?

I had a very strong memory reawakened recently, it is as far as I am aware my very earliest memory. I was maybe 4, sat in my bedroom with the morning sun shining in. I was looking at cupboards that my farther had made in which I kept several buttons in a plastic tray. These buttons were very ornate (although probably cast from a base metal) and to a young child they were of such value I can not put it into words. While I sat there sun glaring in I remember distinctly wondering why buttons were not used instead of money? After all, to me they were far more valuable. I think it was this moment that a door was slammed shut for me. I was sat transfixed as something left me. I remember a resigned sort of sadness as I slowly started to understand. Looking back now it was possibly an understanding of "possession's" and "money" or simply the realization that value was relative and subjective. Even so young, I remember believing something was wrong with the way things were (and are). All these years later I am starting to feel that was the last "clear" thought I had.

[14 October 2004]

I have spent the last month reading up on ethics and more Chomsky of course. The Puzzle of Ethics, is a very good book, but does leave you with the impression that it is a school book as it tests you at the end of each chapter with questions about what was in the previous chapter (most odd). Also you are left with the distinct impression that philosophy was at its height with Aristotle and once he was gone everyone just started making stuff up ;) The difference between science (Math) and Science (Social sciences?) is telling.

[12 September 2004]

Chechnya is still rumbling on, much as 9/11 did. Now the infighting has started. It was clear at the time it was happening that either the Russians were misleading the press or the press were misleading us. One of our more credible news channels questioned the original estimates of 324 hostages showing that locals were heckling officials making these claims. Also the claims that video's were released that turned out to be blank were generally ridiculed. Hostages shot running away always sounded like crossfire.
HOWEVER who cares? There seems to be an assumption that we are entitled to know what is going on, I am not sure we are. I hope we are entitled to know what went on. But if delaying information on what was happening within the school was deemed important by the Russian negotiators then maybe it really was important.
Now we appear to be looking at the Russian handling of the situation and criticizing, just what could the Russians have done? They were not going to pull out of Chechnya maybe if the terrorists had been asking for a few million dollars and safe passage there would be room for questioning actions, but the terrorists wanted withdrawal from Chechnya. Surely this can not happen as the result of intimidation?
There also seems to be concentration on the fact that Russians are claiming this was international terrorism yet have provided no proof that the terrorists were anything other than Chechen and Ingush (sounds like English, came as a shock). This shows double standards by the press as well as a lack of care for international reporting. Post 9/11 it was clear it was international terrorism yet the nationality of the hijackers was not bought into question. In fact it was 12 Saudi's, 1 Egyptian, 1 UAE, 1 Lebanese, 3 Unknown. So we attacked Afghanistan. So what has the nationality of the Beslan terrorists got to do with whether it is international terrorism? Nothing at all.

[11 September 2004]

The thing that really gets me is that I work in the IT industry, I am exposed on a daily basis to all the news in the IT industry. Yet this slipped(?) by.

[September 2004]

I do not understand what has happened in Chechnya. The Russians seem to be facing an impossible situation. How did Russia get to this point? what could they, did they do? Is this radical international Islam conducting a cosmic war against a once mighty imperial state or chechan's....<it is difficult to describe what chechan's might be>.
Is it because it is so fresh that this seems unlike the terrorism seen until now? Is it the targeting of children that makes it seem so much worse? I am sure Children died in bombing raids from Dresden through Nagasaki to Kabul & Bagdahd but for all the comfortable manufactured ignorance and public relations rhetoric of "smart bombs" even the most ardent anti war campaigner would believe anyone would deliberately target children (would they?). Maybe I am simply naïve sheltered from the realities that exist in places where brutal repression is taken as a "norm", but I simply do not believe in "evil"....so what was this?
From what I read there seems no great celebration in Chechnya of these acts, this is not Palestine. What is happening....

[31 August 2004]

I was a little shocked at being accused of having an anti-American bias to my rants, so I decided that my first "flash" rant would reflect a British theme. I decided to look in detail into something that has dominated our political scene, the death of Dr David Kelly.

The amount of PR and government spin around Dr David Kelly makes it very difficult to research events in a clear manner. However, It does seem (to me) that everything the man said was true (his claims revolved around the "sexing up" of intelligence reports used to justify war with Iraq).
It is also quite clear he was caught in the crossfire between Alistar Campbell and the BBC (Gilligan). It appears the Gilligan "put his interpretation" in about the 45 minute claim over which Campbell went quite potty. It also looks to me as though Lord Hutton was a doddery old fool who was too stupid to even manage to cover up the scandal in a "believable" way. But what is to be expected of the man who defended the British Soldiers after bloody sunday. Although not covered very much it does appear that the Butler report simply dismisses the Hutton inquiry's findings by detailing the manner in which the intelligence reports were modified and had caveats removed in order to make it more.....well certainly not sexy :)
So if you look at the timeline, you can see that Kelly very much seems caught in the middle of a Whitehall PR war with the BBC. It seems clear that Blair & Campbell were out to destroy Gilligan (possibly the BBC or the Today Programme?), and were going to succeed no matter what the cost. Their PR spin, lies and leaks continued even after Kelly's death when they accused him of being a Walter Mitty Fantasist. This has been the trade mark of this government who suggested releasing bad new under the cover of 911 and continue to spin and lie while looking you in eye.
Anyway afiac, it is not clear there was intent to get Kelly to kill himself (or that he was killed) and history has shown there were no weapons of mass destruction. And it is nice to know that the caveats over the 45 minute claim only talking about battlefield weapons were removed by mistake ;)
Nice one Tony, I really hope your Christian beliefs are real and not spun to win votes. Because we all know what you will face come judgment day (check your bible bub, look under the 6th, 9th and 10th commandments and get your asbestos underpants ready!) ;)
Anyway after all this I decided I could not really put it into a flash....doh! It seemed unfair (and I could not face reading the full text of the Butler report, clever chap writes a report accurate but so deadly dull no one can read it all the way through because of its soporific properties).
So my first Flash rant focuses on the British contribution to the world ;) They will get better as I get used to Flash :)


[24 August 2004]

Spent a while updating the format of the rants page, decided required more space for the ranting as most of it was being eaten by the graphics.

Been listening to Rage Against The Machine. As I do not really listen to a great deal of music I was surprised that everyone I have tried to tell about them had already listened to them (guess that bandwagon got where it is going already) :)

Added a new graphical rant, God Bless America.

[22 August 2004]

Well spent most of this weekend cursing the unreliability of the Internet. It has depressed me no end. I have been unable to find the image of a US Soldier I was after for my latest rant, you would think an image of a soldier looking into the camera in his cool shades would be easy to come by but ohh no, all to small or not looking at the camera (I guess this is fair enough if you are worrying about someone shooting at you). Anyway the image exists in my head only it appears, hence this rant will remain unpublished.

While searching for this stuff I was found myself watching so really cool flash movies however while checking out one it claimed more people had died in the gulf the Vietnam. This seemed an utterly outrageous claim, but being I did not know so I decided to check. Of course it was utter rubbish, by most references there were some >50,000 deaths in Vietnam, and while Iraq is a horrible and unjustified war, the US casualty figures are in the hundreds. I was left really disappointed, because there is really no need to invent facts; what is happening in Iraq is horrible and frightening enough without making up facts that are so easily dismissed, I would guess it came from a misinterpretation (deliberate?) of this story.

While checking out these figures I found these guys on the opposite end of the spectrum, making stuff from a right wing perspective. I have very little knowledge about Vietnam, so was surprised by some of the myths they dispelled until I got to this :

Myth:
The war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers.

All wars are fought by the poor and uneducated, it is a fact of life. It was not only probably wrong, but also if it were right then "disproof" meant nothing as the myth was that the majority of soldiers were uneducated and poor. Oh dear, after research it turns out most of what was on the site was wrong. Anyway again this appears to be a misinterpretation of the fact that the US forces were the most educated the US had ever sent to war (education improving over time; this is as you would expect).

I was more surprised by :

Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972, was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.

I have actually used this image in my "why do they hate us" rant, it is a defining image for many of the Vietnam war. I was surprised to see a myth around this, so what do we see

No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground.

The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village.

Hmm, interesting no American involvement, better get those pesky GI's out of the shot then :) This is really about language and misinterpretation and shows how revisionists attempt to rewrite history even after it is clearly in the public conscience.

Let us look at the facts. Napalm was manufactured by Dow Chemical Co in the US. It was supplied to the US military. Is this no Involvement? Or are the troops in the scene not involved? Or maybe the fact that they were not actually in Vietnam may mean they were not involved?

Or could it be as most people believe : under the US Military command and control and ARVN pilot flying a US manufactured plane, carrying US manufactured napalm in a coordinated US / ARVN action bombed a village full of children while trying to target the VC....I wonder. Really.

So all in all a strange weekend worrying about wars that happened when I was a child. I am still not clear on Hamid Kazari's history Michael Moore claims he worked for UNOCAL he references here.
I am a little skeptical, the most authoritative read I find is this while UNOCAL deny he ever worked for them (they would say that wouldn't they) :) There seems to have been a lot of faith in Le Mond's story, I am not used to stuff not being better sourced than a paper I cant read (I know ignorance of the French language). Here are some assessments :
1, 2,
Anyway it is interesting to read all the despicable way the rich oil companies were fawning all over these guys and the taliban before them, good job the British are beyond being such sycophants.
Anyway it is all a jolly distraction from the thousands of innocent civilians dying in Iraq, Eh there is a coincidence Good job the radioactive sludge is good for you :)