Actor Sean Penn has published another open letter in the NYT.

Who'd have thunk it, part II

(Edited version of my spleen-vent on Daily Kos):

The stupidity of the Bush administration is breathtaking. What did they think was going to happen? That the global opposition to the war would morph overnight into a willingness to send troops to keep the Iraqi people in line while Bush's cronies looted the place of its oil?

To quote the beer commercial, "yeah, right".

The countries that normally provide peacekeepers tend to do it because they have some commitment to multilateralism and to the UN. It's no surprise then that they're unwilling to put their soldiers lives on the line for a unilateralist US administration whose attitude to the UN is to ignore it unless it acts as a rubber-stamp to their hegemony.

The lesson to the US: if you want to ignore world opinion, you're going to have to clean up your own messes. And if you don't like doing that (if for example you don't like the cost in "blood and treasure" of occupying Iraq, or the thought that it's your own guys dying to keep that oil), then perhaps you should be more careful about making messes in the first place.

Fisk Catchup

'The heads that emerged were cracked, the bullets having broken open each skull'.

Still no real alternative source available, so only one of four this week.

Other kiwi blogs

While surfing around, I've discovered another Kiwi blog: KiwiPundit. Right wing, but nowhere near as Redbaiter-esque as NZPundit.

They also have a handy list of other NZ blogs - most of which seem to be run by Libertarians and ACTolytes. I've checked out Darkness, Anton Kelly and Silent Running, and it's wall-to-wall whining about taxes, guns, and why we should be sucking American cock rather than thinking for ourselves. Ah well, at least there's always Hard News...

Who'd have thunk it?

After insulting the rest of the world and dismissing their concerns as irrelevant, the US administration is now surprised that noone wants to help them occupy Iraq. Other countries have offered only 13,000 troops, when the US is looking to bring most of its 150,000 strong invasion force home.

No doubt this'll be spun to the US domestic audiance as yet another example of "foreign ingratitude" towards the country that defended them from Saddam. You know, we never thanked them for Saving The World during the Cuban missile crisis either...

And on a related note, US forces in Iraq have just suffered ther first defeat at the hands of a popular uprising, and have been driven from the town of Hit. Though "defeat" is probably too strong a word - the US forces were faced with a crowd of angry civillians, and wisely chose to withdraw rather than massacre them. Still, it doesn't bode well for the future.

Hitting the big-time

Via CalPundit: Salem Pax, the Blogger From Baghdad, is getting a column in the Guardian.

Some interesting news reports

Canada's National Post calls the American empire 'fascistic':

The American Empire is fascistic: It bypasses international law to impose its will. It uses violence to effect change. It dresses up self-interest as universal benefit.

The only difference from all previous empires, fascist and otherwise, is its degree of hypocrisy. [...]

Meanwhile, UPI reports that the Iraqis have formed a formal organised group to resist the US occupation. So much for "liberation".

Piss-poor reasons

The day after Rumsfeld practically admitted that there were no WMDs in Iraq, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz is now trying to downplay their importance by saying that they were emphasized for "bureaucratic reasons". The same BBC article also cites him introducing another "reason":

The other factor he describes as "huge" was that an attack would allow the US to pull its troops from Saudi Arabia, thereby resolving a major grievance held by al-Qaeda.

"Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to a more peaceful Middle East," Mr Wolfowitz is quoted as saying.

I don't know about you, but I think that "needing somewhere to move your troops to" is a pretty piss-poor justification for invading another country, trashing its infrastructure and killing over 5000 civillians (not to mention an unknown number of actual soldiers). Couldn't they have simply been moved back to the US instead?

The dim dark ages

Where did that photo of Patrick Stewart with hair come from? Well, when he was much younger - twenty five years ago, in fact - he was in the BBC's adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius - a historical drama covering the life of the Julio-Claudian emperors, from Augustus to Claudius. I'm watching it on DVD at the moment, though since it's over ten hours, there's a lot to wade through. So far I'm only up to the death of Augustus, so there's a long way to go yet.

The weird bit is seeing famous British actors when they were young, or in roles that are completely different from their stereotype, or with hair. Claudius is played by Derek Jacobi (probably better known to people as Brother Cadfael), and he just looks weird when he's young. Brian Blessed plays Augustus, and he's a damn sight less psychopathic than when he was King Richard IV in the original series of Blackadder. And who is Patrick Stewart? Lucius Aelius Sejanus... he's not bad as the silent psycho, but I'm waiting for a few more episodes to see if he can really carry off the air of menace I expect.

It's also weird seeing how they made television back in 1976. It comes across very stilted, as if they're filming traditional theatre.

Anyway, I've actually studied the period in question, and this seems to be pretty historically accurate. The central conceit is that Claudius - widely reported by contemporary sources as being a club-footed twitching imbecile - was playing the fool to avoid being dragged into his family's deadly politics. And given that he also wrote several books and wasn't such an idiot as Emperor (and in fact was smart enough to try and avoid being Emperor in the first place; he was dragged to the throne from his hiding place at the back of the library by the Praetorian Guard after they'd topped Caligula), this isn't exactly unsupported. The most notable flaw so far is that Augustus is cast as a putz - he's totally ignorant of his wife's part in setting up and murdering all his potential successors. I find this difficult to believe, but at least it makes things easy for the audiance (and gives them someone to hate - Livia is a spectacularly evil bitch :)

Next stop: the reign of Tiberius. I expect I'll be strongly opinionated about that, given that Tiberius is one of my favourite Emperors.

Rumsfeld: Saddam 'may have destroyed weapons': Will his evil never cease?

Unnatural

Yes, that's Patrick Stewart - otherwise known as Captain Picard of Star Trek: TNG - with hair. It's unnatural, isn't it?

Bollocks to all that

In the (current) US view, our role is to be subservient. To open our markets to their goods, while not complaining about their subsidies and trade barriers. To send our soldiers to fight and die for them whenever they demand it. To back them in any international dispute, even putting our credibility on the line for them (as Colin Powell put his on the line in front of the UN Security Council). In short, to sacrifice our mana for the hegemon.

None of the above is in our interests. None of it. Which is why I'm with Jim Anderton in saying "bollocks to all that".

Rather than being an obediant little proxy for the US, we should be advocating for our interests. For the past fifty years we've stood up for a multilateral international order, for universal human rights, for peace and (more recently) free trade. We should continue to do so. If this annoys the current US administration, then we should tell them where to go, just like we did in 1984. Governments change, long-term interests don't. Bush will eventually be replaced by someone less mean-spirited and petty, and at that stage we may be able to mend some fences. But until then, a US administration that demands total submission is simply not one that we should deal with.

Saint Jim speaks...

Judging from the outrage coming from the Nats, ACT, and Winston First over Jim Anderton's message to the USA, you'd think it was the end of the world. Piffle. Now that the US has scotched any talk of a free trade deal, we can say whatever the fuck we like. After all, what are they going to do? Invade us?

In order for Opposition talk of the US threatening to withhold carrots to be credible, they'd have to be offering us some in the first place. They're not, and never were. So what's to gain by sucking up to them? A larger portion of nothing?

Anderton is right. We've pulled our weight; the US is acting like a bully. They should be apologising to us.

Iraqis say "get out"

On the news this morning I heard that two US soldiers had died in seperate attacks in Iraq; on BBC tonight I read of another dying in a third attack, in Falluja. The BBC articles talk of "fears of growing lawlessness in the country". This isn't "lawlessness", it's armed opposition. The Iraqis want their country back, and are going to keep killing Americans until the latter leave.

Thoughts on Sir Ed

As the media is constantly reminding us, it's been fifty years since Hillary and Norgay climbed Everest. But Hillary isn't a "kiwi hero" for climbing the mountain; he's a kiwi hero for what he did afterwards.

To the victor, the spoils?

The US-run Iraqi administration has started cancelling foreign oil contracts. So far they've cancelled contracts with Russia and China - neither of whom backed the US invasion - and France is almost certainly on the list as well. The de-facto oil minister says that all contracts will be "re-evaluated", but is anyone in any doubt about who is going to get them in the end?

Fisk catchup

It's been difficult to get regular Fisk since The Independent went pay-per-view, but here's links to a couple of the articles we've missed:

So what was the war for?
Defiant Khatami insists Tehran still supports Hizbollah

Hopefully some new web source will pop up soon.

Why America needs the world

Ex-President Bill Clinton gave a commencement address at Syracuse University on this topic earlier in the month, and the transcript has just been posted on Salon. Using the examples of the multinational stabilisation force in Afghanistan and WHO's battle against SARS, he argues that in the long term the United States needs the active cooperation of the rest of the world in order to ensure its safety. Interesting reading.

Escher's "Waterfall" revisited

While those computer scientists can't get water to flow uphill, inventor James Dyson can...

Significant Dates

Today is Friday, May 23rd, a day sacred to Discordians. And I'm going to celebrate by consuming sacramental hot dogs and contemplating my sacred chao.