Author: andy

I’m still glued to the horrible, sickening war, but I just find myself unable to say anything more about it. Just too big and too mad for me to parse. Stop now, please. Okay? #

Saddam Hussain has a blog! No RSS feed, though. That’s just not good enough, Saddam. #

Quote of the day: “Apart from wealth, people are moved by the wish for freedom — which today means American freedom.” Yes, you read that right. American freedom: accept no other. The entire piece is here. #

The UN Environment Programme has a good site with information on the environment and bio-diversity of Iraq, and the effects of the war – including some very cool zoomable maps. #

Al-Jazeera has a new web site in English. It currently seems to be down (for whatever reason), but I gather they have a somewhat different perspective to the Western media. Personally I’ve been checking the Asia Times and the Saudi Arabian Arab News for that kind of slant. #

The BBC has webcam in Baghdad with a live feed. Fascinating. Cars pass. Break-light go on. Sometimes the cars even stop. Except when the bombs are dropping, it looks like anywhere. #

I’m listening to the 10 o’clock news on Radio 4 while I write this. Some pundit just said that, in the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranians failed to take Basra despite throwing a million troops at it. #

A bizarre US campaign to have the statue of liberty returned to France. Is this satire? Or real? I’m confused. #

E-mail reveals real leaders: This is very cool work. Some guys at HP Labs have developed a way to automatically determine organisational and leadership structures (which they call “communities of practice”) by analysing e-mail traffic. The paper (PDF format) is here. I can imagine some people feeling quite threatened by this, because it identifies the real, rather than the nominal, leaders. Good work. #

More news of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong and Vietnam. Don’t need this.

A couple of reports on the financial cost of the war: ?4 billion for us Brits, and $80 for the US. I make the total $86.25, or ?55 billion. On other terms, this is:

• About $5 billion more than the GDP of Ireland.
• 85% of this year’s NHS budget.
• Over 44 times the total annual budget of the World Food Programme.
• Approximately 86? times the total annual budget of the UN High Commission for Refugees.
• The combined national debt of God knows how many African countries.

Add-on the environmental cost, cost to world trade, etc. In the middle of the worst global recession, how can we possibly afford this?

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The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.

– From 1984 by George Orwell, Chapter seventeen.

Its a beautiful Spring equinox day here in Manchester. I’m not going to try that minute-by-minute thing I did last night. I have too much else to do today.

17:30 CNN.com is reporting oil wells are burning on the Iraq/Kuwait border.

I’m listening to the BBC Radio 4 6 o’clock news over the net, but the feed keeps dropping. Their servers must be melting right now.

17:37 BBC reporting troops have started to move over the border into Iraq.

18:00 Yahoo Groups has a new group, gulfwar-2, to collate war news. Too early to say how good the quality of the information is, as it only started three hours ago.The osint (open source intelligence) group also has some good real-time information. In my experience this group is quite reliable.

Gulfwar-2 had a pointer to a blogger in Baghdad. Last post was 4:28 today. Hope he’s okay.

18:25 CNN reporting explosions heared around Baghdad. BBC news video feed seems to be better than Radio 4. Bigger bandwidth allocation, I suppose.

Going to eat now.

21:05 gulfwar-2 seems to have settled for a good ol’ flame war. Useful info coming out of osint, though.

21:33 Reuters is reporting that ricin has been detected in the Gare de Lyon station, Paris.

BBC reporters have a very good weblog here. Last post was 20 minutes ago.

22:47 The San Jose Mercury News has a good war blog. Iranian perspective at IRNA.com.

23:05 Just watched Tony Blair’s address to the country. A good, sincere performance – but, on the basis of what he said, I still don’t understand why Iraq? His central justification was that rogue states will sell WMDs to terrorists who will use them on us. If so, why Iraq? Why not an obvious supporter of terrorism like Iran or Syria, or even Libya? The pieces still don’t connect-up.

Enough! I’m away to my bed. Its a cold, still night here. I wonder what its like out there in the desert?

A few more articles on the coming war:

Just the Beginning: Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world? (American Prospect). An interesting analysis of the possible policy agenda behind the coming war.

A Long, Winding Road to a Diplomatic Dead End (New York Times). How the hell the pols got us into this.

National Security Strategy of the United States of America. How its going to be…

Seven hours to go, now. I hope they can keep a lid on this thing once it starts.

Scary new flu-like disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, spreading in Asia. Reports from the BBC, New York Times, World Health Organisation, US CDC. ProMED has useful information, and a mailing list, on emergent diseases.

Rotisserie – an interesting approach to threaded discussion lists.

Another quiet week, blog-wise. I was up in the Lake District on a short pre-war backpacking trip. It rained almost continuously every day except Friday, which was warm and sunny with a completely cloudless blue sky. It was also the day I had to travel home. Still, an enjoyable and strenuous week. Photos should appear in the photos area soon. #

I spent the evenings simultaneously trying not to worry about the coming war, and re-reading a battered old copy of 1984. Consequently, I now have a solid grounding in the principles of doublethink. #

Some reading material to pass the time before the 24 hour rolling coverage starts:

Farewell to the old world (Guardian). “Momentous events and decisions, each weighty in its own terms, are tripping over each other. There is a sense of history suddenly speeding up, of a loss of control…“

The war of misinformation has begun, by Robert Fisk (Independent).

Project for the New American Century: Statement of Principles. Check out the names at the bottom of the page. Double-plus-scary.

George W. Queeg (New York Times). “But more and more people now realize that even if all goes well at first, it will have been the wrong war, fought for the wrong reasons ? and there will be a heavy price to pay.” (Confused about the title? I was. Try this).

America’s deep Christian faith (BBC). “It’s not uncommon to see White House functionaries hurrying down corridors carrying bibles.“

The Thirty-Year Itch (MotherJones.com). “Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington’s hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf’s oil.“

The day the earth died (The Observer). Victims recall Japan’s WWII bio-weapons tests.

Off to bed now, to try to sleep.