It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
In news that will no doubt have a profound effect on the war — almost as profound as the initial announcement — the Solomon Islands have pulled out of the coalition. In fact, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister says he was completely unaware that they were even in the coalition.
I mean, no, of course it doesn’t matter. But how do you add a nation to the list without checking first? Did they just hope the little guys would be too embarassed to contradict them?
Via the Spokesman Review.
You see these occasional speculations as to why France might have opposed a US-led war on Iraq. I personally think the answer is pretty obvious; France does not want the US to have a free hand to do whatever it wants in the world. “Aha,” cries my hypothetical right wing strawman. “So you think France is in the right?” No, I just think it’s a perfectly natural reaction to have when confronted with a hyperpower. It doesn’t mean they’re acting in the best interests of the United States, and it doesn’t mean they’re really allies after all. It just means that I don’t think they’re malevolent, evil, or otherwise deserving of censure.
However, there are plenty of people who simply don’t get that. The train of thought appears to go something like this: the US has noble motivations, and if you sympathize with the desired ends who cares if the US is running the show? Nobody; thus, anyone who objects to US actions must not sympathize with the desired ends.
Yeah, well. I like having a clean living room, but if Cheney broke into my apartment while I was at work and neatened everything up, I’d still be pissed off.
Anyhow, one of the common speculations is that France has a financial motive to oppose the war. This speculation contains within it the implicit assumption that if France participated in the war on Iraq, the US would still screw it out of redevelopment contracts; otherwise, why wouldn’t France just help out? Well, some say, France has been arming Iraq and violating sanctions. William Safire said so.
OK. So the next time someone makes that claim, here’s your takedown.
I got another bit of spam today, entitled “bryant, mountain view lender with 4.5% low interest rates”. The body of the spam was this:
Envy, spit thy gall;
Plot, work, contrive; create new fallacies,
Teem from thy Womb each minute a black Traitor,
Whose blood and thoughts have twins conception:
Study to act deeds yet unchronicled,
Cast native Monsters in the molds of Men,
This is an excerpt from A most pleasant comedy of Mucedorus the King’s son of Valentia, and Amadine, the King’s daughter or Arragon, Act V Scene II. It is attributed to Shakespeare, but this is apocryphal. I must say, my spammers choose interesting texts.
The mystery was solved when I checked the message for additional parts. There turned out to be an HTML page embedded within; my mail reader doesn’t show those unless there’s no text alternative. The HTML page speaks glowingly of low interest rates. I’m thinking that this is from the same people who sent me that other odd one, although I didn’t save the other one to check. Clever attempt to get through my spam filters, but alas, my spam filters check HTML documents and it was thus filed in my spam folder where I plucked it out for my own amusement.
Whoever is choosing the masking texts for these spams has a great sense of humor.
The Globe and Mail reports that friendly fire killed 52 Kurds in the last few days. The dead were members of the Islamic Group of Kurdistan, which is an Islamic Kurdish group that has worked with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan at least up until now.
This does not constitute an emergency, but it does further unsettle the situation in Northern Iraq. The Islamic Group of Kurdistan was theoretically willing to help fight Ansar, the Al Qaeda-related group that holds another patch of Northern Iraq — but now there’s more tension and we could wind up with additional anti-American sentiment up there. The more tense things get, the more likely it is that Turkey will decide to just move in.
We tend to think of the Kurds as a united group, and allies, but the truth is that you’ve got Kurds who just want to be Kurds, Islamic Kurds, and (in Turkey particularly) Marxist-Leninist Kurds. They all want an independent Kurdish state but that’s as far as the agreement goes. Right now, you’ve got Iran, Turkey, the US, the PUK, the IGK, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Ansar all jostling around in one small chunk of the world.
The Balkans didn’t settle down too quickly either.
CafePress wants to know what size books you want. They discuss the sizes they’re considering, and it looks to me like the consensus will settle in around the right area. I continue to be excited about all this.
There is much discussion elsewhere on the message board about the need for CafePress to support Word documents. Five years from now, there are going to be countless CafePress printed volumes of badly formatted poetry at yard sales across American. I hope we’re ready for that as a nation.
Pakistan and India are testing missiles again. South Korea is sending troops to Iraq — or maybe not. Curse that public opinion. North Korea is getting more isolationist.
Busy times.
I just added Intel Dump to the War News list. It’s intelligent commentary from an ex-officer, now UCLA law student. Conservative blogger but without much of a conservative slant, which nicely balances the slightly liberal slant of (say) The Agonist. Read and enjoy.
In the first week of the war, we haven’t seen:
On the other hand, North Korea’s still rattling the old sabers, so some expectations haven’t been confounded.
Unrest continues in Southern Iraq; there are reports of an uprising against Saddam in Basra, however. While the quick dash for Baghdad failed, it’s not clear that this represents a serious setback. It looks like the next few days are going to be dedicated to shoring up the coalition position before we launch the attack on Baghdad proper. The troops badly need rest.
Northern Iraq, meanwhile, is a big question mark. Anyone’s guess as to what’s going on up there.
A while back I noted the Pattern Recognition annotation effort. t.rev pointed out that it sucked so far. It continues to be more criticism than annotation, but you know, it’s the kind of thing obsessives like me read. And it’s done, except for the Themes section.
“You are obviously trying to get around the fact that you are Canadian.” Yeah, I see that kind of thing all the time. Sneaky Canadian bastards. Apparently there’s an EBay seller who won’t sell to Canadians — or anyone else who isn’t part of the anti-Iraq coalition. Mind you, if you dig up their EBay policies page, it looks like they’ve never shipped anywhere outside the United States. Which would make this fuss about not shipping to non-coalition countries look a lot like a marketing scheme.
Link courtesy of the non-Canadian kodi. (Or is he?)