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.
Population: One
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:
- Widespread civilian casualities
- Evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
- Iraqi forces rolling over and surrendering en masse
- Worldwide terrorist attacks
- The fall of Tony Blair’s government
- Coalition troops in the streets of Baghdad
- Saddam’s head on a pike
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?)
The new War News sidebar on the right is because I got tired of typing in URLs by hand; I’m gonna be glued to the news for a while and I may as well admit that and make it easier on myself. It’s not a permanent feature.
I’ve mentioned most of those sites. Flit belongs to a former Canadian military guy (vague, but that’s all I know) and has some excellent unbiased analysis. Sorry about the namespace collision.
E! Online has this to say about Polanski’s Oscar: “Only in Hollywood can Roman Polanski be a convicted felon and an Oscar winner.” True enough, since — as far as I know — Hollywood is the only place they give out Oscars. It would be difficult to be any kind of an Oscar winner in, say, Des Moines.
David Neiwert updated with another post on fascism, this one discussing the risks of abusing the word itself. Like the rest, it’s good reading.
Sometimes people do amazing things.
The Spokesman Review has a warblog with some cool material — there’s a nice piece on archeologist concerns regarding the war, for example. The Agonist is still my choice for up to the minute news, but the Spokesman folks are taking some interesting byroutes. Also, in the spirit of disclosure, I am tickled pink by the fact that they’re linking to me.
Addendum: the Spokesman infographics are nice. Hope they keep up that level of quality.