The Magic Lantern (s)

Sea Point 31 July 2007

Over a 60-year career as either writer or director and usually as both, Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish filmmaker who died Monday, created a body of work that's unmistakable and unique in its depiction of the soul's inner struggle. Using a medium that records surfaces, he captured the private, the elemental, the unspoken longings and shattering terrors that define the real experience of life on this planet. And he did so with more raw intensity and uncluttered truth than any filmmaker before or since.


Sea Point 31 July 2007

Bergman, who was 89 and died at his home in Faro, Sweden, was a towering, unsurpassed figure in world cinema and one of the dominant and defining artists of the 20th century. His pursuit of truth was unyielding and lifelong. From his first film to his last, he saw life as a series of mysterious circumstances, and he would not yield to any facile attempt to define it. Instead, he used his camera to record the nature of that mystery, by cutting through the clutter of hope, worry and ego to perceive life as it is.

His fascination was, as he put it, "the wholeness inside every human being," and his subjects were love, death, God, lust, emotional alienation and cruelty -- basic emotions and concerns that give the lie to the pervasive impression of Bergman as a cerebral, austere filmmaker.

San Francisco Chronicle | Ingmar Bergman, director who captured life's emotion, dead at 89

And sadly...

Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian maestro new word whose films of modern alienation captured aspects of human consciousness previously unexplored by cinema, died at his home Monday in Rome. The director of such classics as "L'Avventura" and "Blow Up" was 94.

His death, coming a day after the death of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, served to remind film lovers of the richness and invention of European cinema in the 1960s and '70s and how very little that has followed can match that era, both for its sheer ambition and for its faith in the possibilities of film.

San Francisco Chronicle | Filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni dies at age 94

Brown-nosing Bush

Brown by the nose...

In April, Des Browne told MPs that "the UK has received no request from the US to use RAF Menwith Hill for missile-defence-related activities". That, until last week, was all that parliament knew. Now we discover that the proposition had been made and accepted before MPs had a chance to discuss it. Browne was in the house on Wednesday, when he made some announcements about aircraft carriers and the military budget. These - because they were delivered in person - could be discussed, though (shamefully) neither of them provoked any opposition. But knowing that the Menwith Hill decision would be furiously opposed, Browne released it in the form of a written statement, which cannot be debated.

Like everyone on the left in Britain, I wanted to believe that Gordon Brown's politics would be more progressive than Tony Blair's. But as he grovels before the seat of empire, I realise that those of us who demand even a vaguely sane foreign policy will find ourselves in permanent opposition. With his appointment of Digby Jones as trade minister and his plans for deregulation, Brown demonstrated that the government is still mesmerised by big business. By proposing that suspects be held for up to 56 days without charge, he appears to share Tony Blair's distrust of liberty. Now, in one furtive decision, he reveals both his contempt for parliament and his enthusiasm for the neocon project. What, I wonder, is there left to hope for?

George Monbiot | Brown's contempt for democracy has dragged Britain into a new cold war

Brown, Blair, Brown, Blair, Brown, Blair? Spot the difference? I can't. Call it what you like; it's still Brown-nosing Bush.

The Hard Stuff

Blasted before takeoff...

The panel report says that on two occasions astronauts flew even after doctors and other astronauts warned they were a flight risk because they were drunk.

The report also talks of "heavy use of alcohol" by astronauts within the 12-hour period before launch.

Globe and Mail | NASA's latest blunder? Astronauts driving drunk

Meanwhile, engineers checking the shuttle Endeavour, which is on the launchpad at Florida's Cape Canaveral space centre ahead of its scheduled lift-off to the international space station on August 7, found electrical wires on a computerised monitoring device had been cut.

[...]

The miserable day for Nasa was rounded off last night when a veteran worker at the Kennedy Space Centre pleaded guilty in court to stealing $150,000 (£75,000) of agency money. Elizabeth Osborne, 52, who had worked at Cape Canaveral for more than 30 years, faces up to 10 years in jail.

Guardian | Drunk astronauts go from Right Stuff to the hard stuff

Passing Out...

...with distinction

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll | We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing | As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds | Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing

It didn't concern me that he was sleeping under a shop awning — many do up and down Main Road; what bothered me was that he was sleeping under the synoptic chart below. I gave up on lightning shots around midnight — just as the sky cracked in two, light ripped the clouds, and rain came down in sheets. "Ah, fuck it," I thought, put the camera away and went to bed.


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Today, tens of thousands of Capetonians, more susceptible to TB than the residents of any other city, are facing a weekend of abject misery — cold, wet, and homeless. The townships and informal settlements on the Cape Flats are floating atop a frigid lake of freezing, potentially poisonous water.

I'm not kidding when I say "People are dying out there."

567 CapeTalk, at the behest of the City's Disaster Management Committee, is calling for blankets, food, money, or whatever those not drowning can give. If you have something to spare, visit The 567 Cape Talk Blanket Drive and give as generously as you can. We don't have squat for refugees, so we're speaking newborns and geriatrics up to their necks in freezing mud.

I'll now settle down to a nice, warm supper.

Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight | Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight | An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night | An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Bob Dylan | Chimes of Freedom

Silent Green

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Few of the rosy futurists foresee anything but ever-greater peaks of affluence among an ever-larger pool of players. I think they have been watching too many installments of "Richistan" on cable TV. My own notion is that capital will dry up quicker than rain on a Scottsdale patio as our energy predicament becomes apparent, since expectations of future growth (of economies and the capital representing them) are keyed to an assumption of unlimited energy resources.

When the truth finally hits — that there are real limits to the things of this world — it will knock the capital markets on their asses. We will see large numbers of men wearing Rolex watches weep into crumpled certificates as the tranches of hallucinated wealth dissolve in the mists of their hopes and dreams. This means, at least, that investment in technology R and D on the grand scale will probably not meet our current expectations.

In any case, it is getting pretty late in the day for us to just kick back and nurture fantasies about the future of technology while the prospect of an oil export shock resolves more vividly before us — the first symptom of an industry that will shortly fly to pieces. Of course the very last thing we should be doing — which everyone from the Nascar morons to the Ivy League "greenies" is doing — is focus all effort on how to keep the American automobile fleet running by some magic means other than gasoline.

I say, just as a mental jump-start, let's put at least some of that effort into getting the choo-choo trains running again — but this is too silly for the boys at MIT or even the Pentagon.

James Kunstler | Peak Tech?


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A couple of weeks ago (?), somebody was probing Telkom or Eskom (our telecoms and electricity supply monopolies) for details of their environmental programme. Nothing was forthcoming and, despite reassuring words from government, it seems nobody with any clout gives a damn about Al Gore's ticket to ride, i.e. global warming.

At work, it seems people think local in the hope that their practices will be adopted globally, much like our suppliers. We have paper, plastic and glass recycling bins throughout the office and our chief paper manufacturer and supplier, Nampak, proclaims loudly on the side of its bins:

The Earth can't keep giving. Put something back.

You can tell where I'm going with this, can't you?


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What a bunch of hosers. What lame-brained losers. What fuckwits. Jesus, their naivety is matched only by Nampak's greed-driven cynicism, demanding that its ever-voracious customers pay for and collect its waste paper for it. (Their customers also pay for their export of pulp, huge shareholder dividends and middle-management luxury German sedans.)

Are these in-house recyclers as naive as they appear at first glance?

Like Kunstler, I consider vehicular traffic. It's the bane of my life. It represents everything that is mediocre about us. Queues, toxic emissions, environmental destruction and degradation, ghastly dealerships and equally noxious salesmen, inflated profits, noise, road rage, and death of the most violent and tragic kind are its stock in trade.

With a cigarette in my mouth, I strolled through a mall some ten years ago. A passing woman made as if to evade me, muttering "Disgusting habit." I spun around. "Go suck your exhaust," I responded. It's one of those times you say what you think when you want to say it.


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Rounding on smokers, increasing numbers of motorists are doing irreparable harm to the environment. So-called utility trucks roar by leaving in their wake gases more deadly than Depleted Uranium. What would it take to stop the insanity? If science is to be believed and a Martian future to be avoided, we need to park our motor vehicles this evening, throw away the keys, and get ready to deal with the ramifications of our past follies, a lifting of global dimming and an inevitable increase in global warming.

We'd buy ourselves some time. But at what cost? Our economies would probably take a day or two to collapse and we'd be wise to use the time stocking up on whatever food, water, and arbiters of safety and security we could. Big guns would be good. Anarchy would break out before the evening news and, over months, who knows how many would die?

We'd be without all that which we now take for granted; we'd have regressed a century or two in a matter of weeks. And few would survive the transition.

But better that than a lunar future, eh?


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I think not.

And, deep down, I think the paper recyclers know it too. Their idiotic tipping of their caps to a sustainable way of life belies their determination to carry on as usual. Kunstler's fools, those who believe tech will deliver the goods, are as smart as my workmates. Tech is most of the problem and none of the solution, but it's something we dare not do without.

They know that and, like George W. Bush, wield their duplicity as a virtue.

And so we indulge the irrational, the psychotic, the lame, and the insane. We pretend to be that which we are not. And most of us are damned good at it. Eventually though, we start believing our own propaganda. Saps. With increasing numbers of role models populating the Earth, stripping it of its resources, we are becoming our irrationalities and psychoses and, given their nature and pathologies, we cannot deal with them.

Put simply, as the planet dies beneath our feet, we'd rather go nuts than do anything meaningful to resuscitate it. As a species, we're remarkably dumb. Sure, we're capable of great things, but so are cockroaches — in their own way. Even our brightest are usually clueless, destined to burn out nameless, faceless and graceless.


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I don't mind. It's not my problem. I can always get out of the city and find a quiet spot to park off. My loathing of litter has less to do with being "Green" than it has to do with detesting mess and being reminded of others' thoughtlessness or indifference.

The militant Greens? I dig 'em. They ensure our hypocrisy is writ large on the walls of our psyches. We eulogise them as we despise them. They remind us that although we could do something about it, we choose to die with our MP3 players clamped to our brains, our eyes glued to our monitors.

There's no blame here, by the way. We are, after all, human and entitled to determine the time and nature of our extinction. So that we may save the whales, or the dolphins, or the bald-headed eagle. Or something.

Naturally.

The tech world's modern, shiny, gleaming carapace relies on the aging infrastructure of the now-aging information era and the rusting and creaking late industrial era below that. We are only a few tremors — or a tsunami or hurricane — away from dropping back into a pre-wired reality.

Stowe Boyd | Power Outage At The Epicenter

Questions

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What good am I then to others and me | If I've had every chance and yet still fail to see | If my hands tied must I not wonder within | Who tied them and why and where must I have been

What good am I if I say foolish things | And I laugh in the face of what sorrow brings | And I just turn my back while you silently die, | What good am I?

Bob Dylan | What Good Am I?

I dig monkeys, by the way. This little guy's from the Buffels Bay Chacma baboon troop. I've been chatting to Leslie about them. She's stellar. I'd fight in her army any day — Madame's that is.

Frenchy and The Brain

Click to increase your I.Q.

I could be wrong, but I think that revolution is coming — and it’s coming sooner than you think. The American people have been hoodwinked and intimidated for a long time, but we’re reaching a tipping point where public outrage will overpower fear. And that’s what revolution is — organized rage directed at the government. That’s why they want to keep us apart, and spy on us, and follow our every movement. They want absolute power. It’s their dream. It is the dream of evil men everywhere. But it will fail — because everything they’ve tried so far has failed. And because the culture of freedom is stronger than the cynical schemes of demagogues.

Mike Whitney | "We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy"

Whitney, Jamail and Floyd. Three reasonable men trying the impossible. What a blinder. Great writers, they're part of the new breed succeeding the Fisks, Pilgers, Cockburns, Kleins and Chomskys to try ramping up the Fourth Estate to a position of respectability.

They're doomed. Whitney allows that he "could be wrong" and, in the context of his article, is. First, these guys see a bit further down the road than most ordinary folk. I've little time for ordinary folk. They're like the French civil servant with the cranium filled with bottled water. His brain is the size of a bacon rasher and, though he has an IQ of 70 (reports differ), he's not considered remedial or retarded.

With an IQ of 70 or 75 he may make an ideal civil servant but, in my book, he's as dumb as a pike.

I'm intolerant. Bigoted. And I don't give a damn. Too many dumb people have been given too much respect for far too long. Look where it's got us. Mike Whitney predicts revolution in the U.S.A. Ho ho ho. 300 million Twinky-guzzling slugs taking to the streets, manning the barricades, and torching the Capitol? You betcha. The average USian is quite content to let George Inc. feed his or her insatiable appetite for more of the same. Americans (like most of us) follow the piper, no matter his tune.


Click to enlarge your brain...

In one of their leaflets, the members of the White Rose wrote, "We are your bad conscience." They were asking Germans to rise above the old, degenerate concept of patriotism that entailed blindly supporting one’s government in time of war. They were asking German soldiers to rise above the old, degenerate concept of blind obedience to orders. They were asking Germans to confront openly the rumors of what German officials were doing to the Jews in the concentration camps. They were asking German citizens, both civilian and military, to make an independent judgment on both the Hitler regime and the war, to judge both the government and the war as immoral and illegitimate, and to take the necessary steps to put a stop to both.

They were asking Germans to embrace a different and higher concept of patriotism — one that involves a devotion to a set of moral principles and values rather than blind allegiance to one’s government in time of war. It was a type of patriotism that involved opposition to one’s own government, especially in time of war, when government is engaged in conduct that violates moral principles and values.

Jacob G. Hornberger | Why Germans Supported Hitler

Most considered Hans and Sophie Scholl brainless. Hindsight tells us they weren't. While most Germans reasonably took Hitler at face value, members of the White Rose — at odds with their society, pointed out, "Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes ... reach the light of day?" Like our Whitneys and Floyds, they saw down the road a ways. And let's not give mentally challenged people too hard a time. As an astute reader of Wired's take on the French DeadHead pointed out, "Probably make a better president then the one we got."

Tom Feeley's collated these articles over at InformationClearingHouse. Their juxtaposition is remarkable.


Click to take over the world...

George Bush entered office with an approval rating around 50%. It rose a little at first, then slumped moderately as the Cook Report suggested. Everything changed dramatically September 11. Bush's rating skyrocketed instantly hitting a temporary high around 90% and remained above 80% through year end. That momentous day transformed a mediocre president overnight with some observers incredibly comparing him to Lincoln, FDR and Churchill combined.

It was laughable then and ludicrous now for a pathetic caricature of a president and man so hated he's barely able to hang on to avoid what growing vocal numbers in the country demand - his head and removal from office by impeachment along with Vice-President Cheney.

Stephen Lenderman | Saving a President

Now that the troops have been dispatched to fight another war for vested interests, fun, and profit, who can blame the average American for not turning against an administration that has abrogated to its executive absolute power? I don't. But that doesn't let anybody off the hook. Even our French civil servant, no matter how quietly lobotomised, is expected to behave as a normal, functioning human being. He did. And does.

Would he stand for this?

At his July 12 news conference, George Bush raised the specter of Al-Queda's threat to the US citing the above-mentioned intelligence report as supposed evidence. He then resurrected a timeworn long ago discredited golden oldie saying "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September 11. That's why what happens in Iraq matters to security here at home." Unmentioned anywhere in the mainstream, of course, is the long-standing relationship between "Enemy Number One" bin Laden, Al-Queda and US and allied intelligence and how they're used in the fraudulent "war on terrorism" to manipulate and scare the public enough to go along with anything.

These comments, published assessments from The National Intelligence Estimate, inflammatory remarks from officials like Michael Chertoff, and accompanying dominant media hyperventilating effectively stoke public fear and may point to a major terror attack ahead on US soil. It will trigger a Code Red Alert if it happens signaling the highest terrorist threat level followed by the likely suspension of the Constitution, imposition of martial law, and end of the republic. The rule of law will be suspended, dissent no longer will be tolerated (it's already illegal), the military and other security forces will be involved on US soil in strength if needed, and an unmasked full-blown fascist police state will, in fact, henceforth exist.

Stephen Lenderman | Saving a President

I doubt it. The worm will not turn and there will be no revolution. Things will get far worse before they get any better.


Click because George told you to...

The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals ... Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty!

Hans and Sophie Scholl | The White Rose

On The Beach...

Muizenberg sunrise...

Girls' faces formed the forward path | From phony jealousy | To memorizing politics | Of ancient history | Flung down by corpse evangelists | Unthought of, though, somehow. | Ah, but I was so much older then, | I'm younger than that now.

I despise the internet. It's irresponsible and, often, a net of hate. And I don't have time for Blogopops. But here's a tale of two gutless newspapers which explains why more and more people are Googling rather than turning pages.

First the Los Angeles Times. Last year, reporter Mark Arax was assigned a routine story on the 1915 genocide of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. Arax's report focused on divisions within the local Jewish community over whether to call the genocide a genocide.

Robert Fisk | No Wonder the Bloggers are Winning

Dunno what old Fisky would do without the Internet but, given that even the "best and brightest" are known to make mistakes, I suspect he means the Web. And the lowercase 'i' leads me to suspect it to be irony rather than ignorance.

Given most of the shite on the Web, I don't blame Fisk. Given the good stuff, I think he's an asshole for dismissing it (or despising it) so easily and readily. I mean, Chrissakes, he'll find me on facebook.

Never mind. It's the substance of his article — the supine obsequiousness of the mainstream press, that matters. Fisk left The Times because they censored his laboriously researched article on the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passengers and crew, by the inept, irresponsible, and overly aggressive officer corps of the U.S.S. Vincennes. That he worked for them in the first place is not Fisky's best recommendation, but his move to The Independent commends both the paper and, probably, its most irascible journalist — I imagine him to be a rather "prickly fella".

In his superbly compiled tome, The Great War for Civilisation, Fisk argues as passionately as he is able to for recognition of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust. Understandably, global duplicity and deceit surrounding Holocaust Memorial Day horrifies a person of his standing, profession, and integrity. It should mortify most so-called journalists working the international scene today.

One thing our intrepid Middle-East correspondent seems to incidentally note is the relationship between "hate" and what he calls the "Blogopops". Typically, most successful blogs are one-sided and shallow, spewing a vicious, ill-educated hatred of any view other than that which they espouse. Intolerance has been globalised and nowhere more so than on the Web.

And here, I suppose, I should admit to both a darker side of myself and to being a part of Web duplicity. I profess a loathing of Zionists, the Bush administration and, as far as people are concerned, I have roundly condemned neocon apologist Thomas Barnett. If truth be told, I hold nothing personal against Barnett. Ad hominem attacks are made easy by the Web, but they are as virtual as their target. I don't know the man from a bar of soap in a Grimsby-on-Grime washroom, so cannot pronounce on his character or lack thereof.

However, his views echo those that gave us Iraq, the Occupied Territories, Vietnam, WWII, "The Holocaust", and the Armenian Holocaust. So I do take issue with his propaganda.

Fisk's second example is a piece of reportage in the Toronto Globe and Mail that exposes the hypocrisy of francophone Quebec. It was swiftly wrapped in the editor's weasel words and buried in platitudes by Hydra-headed Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.

So, yeah, Fisky. The blogs might — for the most part — be shite, but they are winning the integrity battle, aren't they?

Now I happen to know a bit about the Globe's "quality control process". Some time ago, I discovered that the paper had reprinted an article of mine from The Independent about the Armenian genocide. But they had tampered with it, altering my word "genocide" to read "tragedy".

The Independent's subscribers promise to make no changes to our reports. But when our syndication folk contacted the Globe, they discovered that the Canadian paper had simply stolen the article. They were made to pay a penalty fee. But as for the censorship of the word "genocide", a female executive explained to The Independent that nothing could be done because the editor responsible had "since left the Globe and Mail".

It's the same old story, isn't it? Censor then whinge, then cut and run. No wonder the bloggers are winning.

Robert Fisk | No Wonder the Bloggers are Winning


The S.S. Thomas T. Tucker...

A self-ordained professor's tongue | Too serious to fool | Spouted out that liberty | Is just equality in school | "Equality," I spoke the word | As if a wedding vow. | Ah, but I was so much older then, | I'm younger than that now.

The American Bureau of Shipping tells us 2,751 Liberty vessels were built during WWII. The Liberty ship was a large, unwieldy, slow and ugly production-line, rapid-build cargo and troop ship. Built in modular, pre-assembled, interchangeable sections, average production time dropped from 108 days in 1942 to 50 days in 1943.

Wikipedia says the 269th Liberty ship, the 7,000-ton SS Thomas T. Tucker was laid down in Houston on June 16, 1942 and launched 76 days later, on August 31, 1942. Eighty-eight days thereafter, on her maiden voyage from New Orleans to Suez and without loss of life, she stove into the forbidding coast at Olifantsbos Point, a couple of miles from Cape Point.

This summer, long after most of the other 2,750 Liberty ships built have disappeared, you'll be able to visit her in the berth she has occupied for 65 years.

Initially christened an 'ugly duckling' by Roosevelt — who later (and publicly) called the ships 'dreadful looking objects', the Liberty fleet's custodian, Rear Admiral Emory S. Land of the U.S. Maritime Commission, bluntly referred to them as 'the expendables'.

About a kilometre away from the Thomas T. Tucker, on the other side of the point, little remains of the Nolloth, a 500-ton Dutch coaster carrying a cargo of liquor and other goods that struck Albatross Rock on April 30, 1965. Her crew lifted ashore by a Westland Wasp, the Nolloth and her cargo were salvaged, the goods and materials being carted to the Cape Town road along a purpose-specific path. Most of the visible wreckage either washed ashore or was left by the salvors.


The Nolloth...

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand | At the mongrel dogs who teach | Fearing not that I'd become my enemy | In the instant that I preach | My pathway led by confusion boats | Mutiny from stern to bow. | Ah, but I was so much older then, | I'm younger than that now.

While some dream dreams, others live them. Perhaps Caspar dreams of a family, children and the settled routine of suburbia. By the time I was 23 I was living that one. I've subsequently learned that it's a dream without end, one from which I'll never awaken. So what? I have other dreams, one of which Caspar is living.

We met at around age six. We were, as I've noted elsewhere, beaten by nuns and grounded in virtue and vice at the kindergarten adjoining the then-imposing Christ the King Catholic Church. It was a harsh start, but we survived and, from what I can gather, both went on to become highly successful reprobates.

I lost touch with Caspar some 40 years ago, but a mutual friend put us back in touch. I remain in Cape Town; he is undergoing his apprenticeship (a la Gordon Sumner and Paul Simon) as a shaman in the Amazonian jungles of Peru.

I have written often of travelling the river, of nubile young women of unquestionable virtue, of savage hordes of Guatemalan pygmies, of surfing the great waterfalls of central Africa, of the spiritual quest we all — in one form or another, undertake. I intend, over the next few days, or weeks...reproducing some of them here, to honour a friend who did not dream the dream. He went out and lived it.

I was thinking of this when Zonker and the Dutch Boy came around Saturday evening. I'd fallen on some rocks while taking some snaps of shipwrecks in desert spaces and so had my left forearm strapped into my skateboard wrist guard. It eased the pain, but I could not go out.

We smoked a couple of spliffs and then, as befits elders who have either reached or will soon reach their fiftieth year, considered the state of the world. We then considered the state of my neighbours, who might or might not be up to the crazed conversations of old men jabbering away at two o' clock in the morning.

"They moved out last month," Wendy reminded me. "Somebody's been cleaning the place this past week. I think it's being let it from the end of this month."

"They'd better not allow a bunch of kids move in," observed Zonker.

He had a point. Quite what it was, I forget.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats | Too noble to neglect | Deceived me into thinking | I had something to protect | Good and bad, I define these terms | Quite clear, no doubt, somehow. | Ah, but I was so much older then, | I'm younger than that now.

Bob Dylan | My Back Pages

Just Us Served

Refusing to play the Plame game...

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence, by speaking with members of the press is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

Washington Post | Plame's Suit Against Top Officials Dismissed

If they expose your war crimes, they die.

Cheney, Libby, Rove, and Armitage are, when all is said and done, honorable men. They were just doing the job for which you were elected. 'Sides, what are a few dead spooks between friends when hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead or dying for you to bring democracy to their land?

They need help; not spoilers. You need oil, not peaceniks. Hence your chokehold on Iran. Here's what you need to do.

Send more troops to Iraq. Pump up the al-Qaida myth, put the military into Pakistan now that you've bought India and squeeze the Ayatollah's men from the east. Move the 'best and brightest' into Africa to counter the Chinese economy. Broaden the war in the Middle East to level the playing fields and anything else in sight.

Bomb Beirut and rip the Horn of Africa to shreds. Run false-flag operations everywhere. Set up missile defense shields around the Caspian and demand democracy for Kosovo. Get Ban Ki-moon to sort it out. Make no mention of Pyongyang and swap Taipei for Tokyo.

Tear up some treaties. Protocols. Whatever...

Get Blair, Brown, and every other tinpot dictator and CIA asset on to Abbas and Hamas. Let 'em kill each other. For Arik's sake. Torture people whenever possible and boil 'em alive when necessary. Attend a military funeral or go laugh at the freaks at Walter Reed. Just for fun. Destabilize Lebanon, divide Palestine, demonize Syria and threaten Russia. Send HK and the good ol' boys from Carlyle to whack Putin.

Create 'international incidents' whenever you can; even when laughable. Get Chertoff to come up with some outlandish terror threats and Intelligence Estimates. Send Dostum a gift, send more bombs to Israel, and clear some brush down at Crawford. Fatten Dick's friends with outsized no-bid contracts, strip the domestic economy, screw Medicare, drill Alaska, tear up the EPA, and give the proceeds to the rich.

Sow terror and legislate accordingly.

Repeat 'homeland', 'Al-Kayda', and 'Eye-rak' without cease and, above all, keep those oilfields in mind. Kill Chavez and send his head to Morales. Pump the export of security to keep the economy going.

Ensure Diebold put that Clinton bitch into the White House and, before you go — if you decide to — take Bin Laden out to lunch and nuke Tehran.

After that, deny everything. It works every time.

Who the fuck are these Plame people anyway?

The Romany Line

"Like some raven..."

Gypsy gal, the hands of Harlem | Cannot hold you to its heat. | Your temperature's too hot for taming, | Your flaming feet burn up the street. | I am homeless, come and take me | Into reach of your rattling drums. | Let me know, babe, about my fortune | Down along my restless palms.

I'm intrigued by the origin of my name. Cathryn pointed out an interesting link to the Golbys of southern England — apparently the Golbys are a well-known Gypsy family (among 130 or so names).

My grandfather, a midlander, came out to South Africa at age 19 in 1910. I know he had a half-brother named Frank (probably Francis) and his father was Thomas Golby, who, an old newspaper clipping tells me, retired as Chief Constable of Coventry. That's as far as it goes. After that, and besides a link to the Gobles — another Gypsy name providing a link between north and south — through my paternal grandmother, nada-zippo-zilch. I'm keen to find out more.

We're Midlanders, Gypsies, consummate professionals, and bloggers to boot. Perhaps myriad more besides.

Irish for starters and thanks to my maternal grandparents — clerics rather than tinkers. We make for a broad church indeed.

I been wond'rin' all about me | Ever since I seen you there. | On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I'm riding, | I know I'm 'round you but I don't know where. | You have slayed me, you have made me, | I got to laugh halfways off my heels. | I got to know, babe, will I be touching you | So I can tell if I'm really real.

Bob Dylan | Spanish Harlem Incident

The Surge

The Bombing of Baghdad

"Rebellion must have an unassailable base ... in the minds of men converted to its creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.

"It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active in a striking force, and 98 per cent passively sympathetic ... Granted mobility, security ... time, and doctrine ... victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain."

T.E. Lawrence (1917) quoted by Robert Fisk in TE Lawrence had it right about Iraq.