A moment of rest

So, Christmas has been and gone again for another year, New Year's nearly here, and I've found myself with surprisingly little time to write anything. This is the first day since Christmas Day that we haven't had people staying over. Even this morning I was up at 07:30 with the kids and one of Willow's friends who stayed over.
In fact with all the visits and parties; being a bit under the weather; the need to cook and clean and drink too much, there's been very little time so far to actually do anything. Or rather, I should say, to do nothing. Because that's one of my great pleasures - putting my feet up and doing nothing for hours on end! Or sit here at my computer and listen to music and write nonsense perhaps.
Tomorrow we're supposed to go to Sprookjeswonderland, which I've been promising to take the kids to for ages. But I'm a little wary of the weather alarm that has been put out for tomorrow afternoon, so we'll make a call on that in the morning I guess.
Frankly, I feel like sitting here and drinking a couple more beers. I've just upgraded this box, so it's running more pleasantly - and quietly - than it has done in ages. (I used to have a ATI 7500 Radeon All-in-Wonder in here, which was quite a reasonable card for its time and price, but made an unbearable fucking racket!)
Well, I don't have to get up super early - I daresay I can manage an hour ot two yet :-)
After all, the coming six months is going to be a fucking hard slog - unless Es wins us that lottery money she's already dreaming about...

WinMX

I know it's not as quick as torrents, but there's two reasons I'm still smitten with WinMX.
Firstly, it's a passive, patient application: it rewards those who are willing to wait and encourages an open sharing of files. I like that, rather than the frenetic ratio-counting world of torrents.
Secondly though, and mostly, it's so sweet because it's now completely autonomous. Since the RIAA shut down WinMX in September, it has been revived by its users. It's now got no centralised body at all for RIAA to attack. (Theoretically, they could go after users, but as a) it's pretty difficult to identify users with WinMX and b) they would be using an application they claim is illegal to track people anyway! then that seems unlikely.)
The users have taken over the means of production, it's a little bit of true online anarchy.
It's a beautifully distributed, example of Out of Control software. So it may not be the best application in the world, but it's showing us the direction of the future!

2 more thoughts

Good luck to the NY Public Transport workers on strike!
You might have heard that this is happening, but you're buggered if you can actually find anything in the mainstrream media about *why* they're actually on strike.
So, on the principle of supporting striking workers, I wish good luck to them and a happy christmas without crazy drunk people and working bad shifts when everyone else is off work; and I shall try find out what the actual strike's about! This picture on the left gives at least a hint.

And, I see the Dutch have finally agreed to join the British assault on Afghanistan scheduled for next Spring. Sorry - hadn't you heard about that? It's been planned for almost a year now.
Basically, the Yanks are pulling out, not being into this whole nation-building deal, and NATO, led by the Brits, is going to try expand its control to the entire country, starting, if I remember correctly, with Kandahar province.
Should be fun and games and blood and guts. Makes you wanna party like it's 1842. So carry on up the Khyber chaps.

Yule

So Iwas trying to explain some of the idea of Yule to Willow today. Basically, I want to get across to her the idea that Christmas is not a Christian holiday, but a deeply pagan one. I think this is our most important holiday, the resonances of feasting in the face of potential famine, of death and rebirth, of rest and recuperation and escape from the industrialised timeclock, of blood and redemption, and of giving and receiving, are so deep and profound that even in these shallow times the archetypes swim and swirl around us.
If you want a look at the whole history behind Father Christmas, or Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus, or however you know him, this book is well worth a read. A bit of a dry historical-anthropological text sometimes, but it might make you believe again :-)
Of course, the real excuse that our ancestors had to party at this time of year, before the christians came along with their birthday party, was the Winter Solstice. And that's today - a couple of hours ago, as I write. So, as we go into winter, we are in fact, moving back towards the Sun.
And then, there's the real reason that the folks long ago partied at this time of year, and it's beautifil in its simplicity. Just that, there wasn't much to do in the fields at this time of year - all the harvest was in, and the ground would freeze, so no need to do anything there. Perhaps animals would need taking care of, but there'd be no young and no shearing. So it was a time of relative relaxation, and if you were lucky enough as a village to have some supply from the harvest, you'd have some idea by now how much of it you could lash out on a party. Probably the mead with the year's grains had fermented enough by now too :-)
I guess lots of kids got born in the autumn back then.
It's one of the main things I love about this time of year still - that even this nasty, narrow-minded capitalist world is brought to a halt. Not as effectively here in Holland as in England or Germany perhaps, but there's even here a bit of space for silence and contemplation.
So kick back, take a glass of whiskey, and enjoy another Christmas special on TV.

Woo-hoo!

Holidays have started. 2 weeks off work - so there will be more blogs a-coming. And I really need a break. As it looks right now, the next one will be August - positively American in its austerity.

Happy Christmas everyone! And especially to Judge John Jones, who has just ruled against "Inteliigent Design" being taught in Pennsylvania schools as a scientific equivalent of evolution, as apolicy of "breathtaking inanity". He could have been channelling Steven Jay Gould.

Climate and the Edge of Destruction

It's a bit weird being a long-distance weather geek. I can't be a stormchaser, because I'm in Europe being merely an observer. So what's the point?
Well, I think that it's more relevant to watch the weather these days than to watch politics. The whole "government" performance is just a shadowplay, a piece of dull puppetry. The only thing that can possibly come from it is negative and predictable, so i guess even I'd be better off watching one of those atrocious "reality" shows.
Weather, on the other hand, is signalling to us the truth about what we are doing with our planet, our lives, and our childerns' futures. I cannot imagine a bigger or more serious topic deserving of our attention. But - if you'd rather watch a rerun of "Idiots Undressed" -well, help yourselves.
I read a piece last week that said an event of more than 35cm of snow falling in Holland, only happens once or twice a century. (This is a very unsnowy land!)
It's happened twice this year.
Unfortunately, it didn't happen here last time, 2 weeks ago. but then, it did happen here in Alkmaar twice intwo days back in March, so we can't complain :-)

More seriously though, and going back to my post at the end of November; there was an article in Nature last week, that the North Atlantic Conveyor had weakened. This was widely reported, but as usual, the details seem to have been misinterpreted to provide the feather bed of security to the readers.
Basically - the North Atlantic Conveyor is part of the mechanism that creates a warm climate in Western Europe that is apparently inappropriate to its latitude. The article as reported in the newspaper, said that it has been faltering over the last 30 or 50 years. In fact, if you look a bit closer, the change might in fact have occured over the last few years. I haven't got the data to hand, so please bear with me. For something like this to happen over 50 years is climatologically speaking potentially disastrous. If it is actually happening on an almost visible level, then the results are catastrophic. To put it mildly.
If the movement of warm water from the Western Atlantic to Western Europe was failing, I believe the first thing we would see would be more intense, major hurricanes.
So, on that, the conclusions are prettily easily drawn.
It is though, one small example of what appears to be the gathering evidence that climate change is now not merely theoretical, but is happening ona scale that is about to inundate us. Here's the Independent, which in Britain is leading the newspapers' attempts to put Climate Change on the political agenda:
"It is as if we were living on two planets. Here, in the real world, the evidence that global warming is already doing immense damage to the earth is mounting with terrifying speed. In the past two weeks alone, we have learned that the Greenland ice cap appears to be on the point of irreversible meltdown, that the Kalahari Desert is to double in size, that sea and bird life has collapsed dramatically off the US Pacific coast and that the mighty Gulf Stream (which keeps Britain habitable) has abruptly weakened. This year is expected to be the hottest ever, and hurricanes are breaking all records. It is impossible to dispute the conclusion last week of the Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, that this is "the greatest threat facing mankind".
The other world, that they refer to, is the "UN Climate Change Conference" that has just finished in Canda. That it was an absolute fucking joke is being circumspect in my judgement. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
And this is led by America, who continues to deny the truth of climate change, whilst its oil platforms are receovering from the assault in the Gulf and its young people are dying in a genocidal war to protect the interests of the oil capitalists.
My mother-in-law just came back from Egypt. There, she could pick up fossils of sea creatures in the Sahara, which just 40,000 years ago was the bottom of the ocean. The Earth is in constant flux, and it seems that we've lived ina relatively quiet period, but that's all over now.
I guess we're going to have to get to La Gomera real quick, and try not to be one of the refugees trying to escape the cold and the unnamed storms and HN51.

Superficial

I was watching some adverts and TV earlier tonight. It was one of those unpleasantly revelatory experiences, because the level of intelligence that was assumed and preached for in the audience was disappointing, even after years of being constantly amazed that people would watch the total tosh on offer. This synapse-numbing "makeover housemate get-a-brain retard on sale for the lowest bidder, would you meet my mother and blow my spaniel" reality show special that seems to be the point of TV these days. Is there any fucking wonder I don't want to work in that industry?
So, congratulations to my brother-in-law, whose first job after we stopped making indy documentaries together, was as cameraman on the first ever series of Big Brother, where it was invented, here in Holland! Not exactly the spawn of Satan that show, but spawn of a type, for sure.
Of course, the middle class wannabe intellectual stuff is, if anything, even more nauseating. I just caught a piece of "Newsnight Review" on BBC, a sort of "arts" review show for the ironically-challenged subnormal set from Islington and its associated hopefuls. I may be Northern, but I don't think that's the only reason why I'm not sure if those accents are caused by them talking out their arses or not.

And it's such a shame, when there's so much hidden culture in the world. And the last bit I heard before posting this, was Marilyn Monroe, singing 'Santa baby'. Possibly the sexiest thing in the world: "Come and trim my Christmas tree...Santa baby, hurry down the chimney tonight".

Weather

It's cold sat here behind the screen. The weather's turned suddenly, from unnaturally hot to unusually cold and suddenly wintry. Exactly as I mentioned happened in the Arctic recently.
It's been a strange day in Holland today. Here in the North of the country, we've had exceptional rainfall. Dijks - levees to Americans - are being sandbagged in some parts of the province. In the West, there have been sustained windspeeds around hurricane strength, and gusts over 100mph. In the east, there has been heavy snowfall. Tonight there are emergency shelters set up and motorists being rescued from their snowbound cars, trapped in the worst evening rush hour on record (despite Friday being traditionally the quiet day).
Now bear in mind we're not talking about a wilderness place here. The Netherlands is the most man-made, overdeveloped landscape in the world. It's not a place of extremes and unpredictability, yet this storm - although expected for a few days, has turned out to be much more unusual and savage than was expected. The thing with being such a small country, is that relatively minor changes in the path of a storm can have major national-level impacts. And, whilst I'll have to wait and see more detail, it seems this storm has curved around the country rather strangely, it seems the temperature differentials have been more severe than predicted, and the cold has been colder so we've had big wind and dry snow.
It's as nothing to the hurricane season in the North Atlantic that is now drawing to a close of course. At the moment, it looks like Tropical Storm Delta - or its remnants - is going to hit the Canaries at the end of next week, having meandered for a while and then done a turn around and headed back towards the African coast. Which should make it an ideal companion for the unprecedented Vince, the only Tropical Storm ever to hit the Spanish mainland.
Vince was one of the weirdest storms on record, but the next one along was even more bizarre: Wilma. I think the thing every storm geek will remember about Wilma is the mind-blowing period of intensification, when she went from a Tropical Storm to having the lowest recorded storm pressure on record. This despite heavy shear, and even more unbelievably, having an eye that shrank to little more than one nautical mile across. (Bear in mind that a hurricane of this intensity would normally have an eye more than 40 miles across). I think Steve Gregory captured it best, describing it at one point as basically a Cat 5 tornado.
Wilma wasn't the first hurricane in the season to produce this phase of rapid intensification. Rita did it earlier, also blowing up to a terrifying Cat 5 that barreled across the Gulf. And if there is one place that can really be said to have dodged the bullet this season, it's Galveston. The place that was destroyed by a storm in 1900 was in the crosshairs of Rita for quite some time, but luckily for the large urban centres, Rita turned at the last and smashed into the bayou of West Louisiana. Some small towns down there were decimated, like Cameron, La. which have been sadly under-reported.
Equally under-reported was the most destructive hurricane of the season, with the tragi-comic name of Stan. Thousands died in Central America, primarily in Guatemala, where a couple of villages were decimated in landslides that basically wiped out the entire population.
Above all, though, the 2005 season will of course be remembered for Katrina. There are books to be written about this, and I'm sure those books are probably already out there. So I'll try not to turn this into another one.
The first thing I remember is Katrina being another storm hanging off Florida, but even then we knew she would cross Florida and intensify. The waters of the Gulf were already warm enough to expect a major hurricane, and the other weather conditions were already presuming a landfall anywhere between Eastern texas and the Florida Panhandle. That's a big margin of error, but this was clearly going to be a big storm, and this was more than a week before landfall.
By the time she'd crossed Florida, taking a bit of an unexpected wander, and killing 11 people in the process, the period of intensification began. Now, by Thursday evening our time, this storm had blown up into an absolute monster. Huge, enormous, she'd become an absolute holy terror! The crosshairs were narrowing, and they were close enough to New Orleans that I told the wife that I was getting really worried, that I felt the authorites in New Orleans were becoming criminally negligent in not evacuating the city.
She thought I was exaggerating and worrying too much, but already the movement in the forecast was swinging from the Panhandle across to Nola and it just seemed that it was going to keep on going that way across. And thanks to the guys at the Weather Underground blogs who educated me alot about the nature of these storms this year. But everyone was seeing the possibility of a monster coming, even if the National Hurricane Center was being cautious back on that Thursday.

KATRINA IS EXPECTED TO STRENGTHEN TO 90 KT BEFORE
LANDFALL OCCURS IN THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE. THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH
THE SHIPS INTENSITY MODEL AND THE TREND IN THE GFDL MODEL...
ALTHOUGH THE LATTER MODEL MAKES KATRINA A 118-KT CATEGORY 4 STORM.

By the Saturday afternoon, it was clear that disaster was looming for New Orleans, and still they were pissing around with not ordering a mandatory evacuation. Already by then it was also becoming clear that if this was the dreaded nightmare scenario, then the authorities were approaching a state of criminal neglect.

The day Katrina struck was the day after my birthday. Andrew struck on my birthday 13 years earlier, so I guess we know when the peak of the season is :-) I was camping with the family, and listening to news reports from downtown French Quarter New Orleans of how this could all have been much worse. It didn't ring true to me, and later of course I discovered that even while they were making their positive reports, the Lower Ninth was already flooding from the overtopping of the levees, and the canal at English Avenue was reaching saturation point.
When I got home, I got to see some raw news footage, unedited, of a helicopter flight over Gulfport and Biloxi, and the state of those places reminded me most directly of Banda Aceh after the tsunami last Christmas. An unnerving scene of rubble, of hotels and casins ripped apart, thrown onto highways, of private homes blown apart as if they had been bombed. I saw that chopper footage and knew this was way beyond anything America had experienced in living memory. Even Andrew wasn't like this, and someone reminded me that after Andrew moved off, the initial reports there too were positive, until the real extent of the mess was unveiled.

As to what happened afterwards, well, that's not something I'm going to go into now. That Bush had the nerve to say "nobody expected the levees to fail" really says enough.
The best analysis of the situation came from a meteorologit, Jeff Masters. This is a guy who flew into Hurricane Hugo with the Hurrican Hunters and damn near died. Not an activist then, but his piece on Katrina is incendiary, is something Chomsky could be proud of. Tonight on the National Geographic Channel is the special 'Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster'. That was the name of Jeff's piece too, but I doubt if NGS will be quite this blunt:

"...there was little effort given to formulate a plan to evacuate the 100,000 poor residents of New Orleans with no transportation of their own for a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. To do so would have cost tens of millions of dollars, money that neither the city, nor the state, nor the federal government was willing to spend. Why spend money that would be wasted on a bunch of poor people? The money was better spent on projects to please the politicians' wealthy campaign contributors. So the plan was to let them die. And they died, as we experts all knew they would. Huge numbers of them. We don't know how many for sure. Since the plan was to let them die, the city of New Orleans made sure they had a good supply of body bags on hand. Only 10,000 body bags, but since Katrina didn't hit New Orleans head-on, 10,000 will probably be enough."

Read it and weep.
Then get angry. Because it's not just this twisted eugenics leading to negligent homicide that is the problem, but the climate change that Americans - even liberals and storm bloggers - seem all too keen to deny. The reason that someone like me on the other side of the world is now looking really closely at what's going on with the weather in the North-West Atlantic. My North Atlantic Conveyor starts over there, so I'm really hoping those Americans are going to wake up to the damage their overconsumption is doing real soon. But more of that on another blog.

Coherence

I should really try and maintain at least some semblance of coherence in some of these posts. Comes of doing most of them at the weekend after a few beers - the only chance I get to blog :-)
There's the first nip in the air this morning, and by next weekend we should be positively chilly. The skating season has just started, and we should be getting our first ice in a week. I think every Dutch, or sort-of-Dutch person would like to see a cold winter, even if like me, they can't skate! (And yes, this year, I will try to learn).
In fact, what we'd really like is a really cold winter where we can have an Elfstedentocht again. Look here if you don't know what it is. But it's a sight to behold - when the reserved cosmopolitan Dutch revert as a nation to their primal farming roots and let a century of technology and cushy living behind them for once.

Cricket

It was the second day of the First Test between England and Pakistan in Multan today. Totally England's day, and it seems like after a session and a half yesterday to remember what Test cricket is, they've picked up where they left off again. It's unbelievable really - I think this guy expressed it most succinctly for those of us of a certain generation:

"Whether it’s due to years of my own agony in watching England capitulate, much like Pakistan had done today, or whatever - I can’t imagine the day where I expect England to perform like they did today."

Next thing you'll be telling me that England thrashed the Aussies at rugby too and snatched an injury time winner against Argentina.
Oh.

And on the bright side

The kids went round for Sint Maarten's this evening. Bags full of candy - and for those who don't know, it's like a cross between trick-or-treat and carolling.
And tomorrow - today now, in fact - the goedheiligman arrives, Sint, Sinterklaas. Party season is in full swing, and we can all put our shoes out tomorrow evening...

Getting warmer

I'm meaning to write a piece about global warming. There's a lot of aspects involved - the variations in climate that are little discussed, from global dimming to the Greenland glaciers - the American popular attitude to the greenhouse effect - feedback loops, desertification and polar shifts.

What is clear is that there's no consensus, and no way to accurately forecast the devastation that is about to be wreaked. Having two kids, I'm frankly embarrassed about the state of the planet we're leaving to them, and I only marvel that my parents' generation don't share that embarrassment for what they've done and allowed to happen.
Lately, I've been getting concerned that there may be a feedback loop happening, and the more I hear and read, the more I'm afraid that this has begun. For instance, there was quite a bit in the papers a few weeks ago that the Arctic ice shelf was at its lowest spread in summer since records began. Which was evidence of the thinning of the ice cap and the heating of that area. This effect can be evidence of feedback - the reduction in ice cover can absorb more heat instead of reflecting, for example.
In the last few weeks though, apparently - almost since that article was published - the ice cover has spread beyond its normal extent for the time of year. Which is an incredibly quick freezing of the area.
And these wildly oscillating extremes are exactly the sort of behaviour we should be predicting from a system moving across the event horizon of a catastrophe curve. The system will attempt to self-correct, which will involve more and more extreme states, as it attempts to regain a stable state, before suddenly settling into a new balance.
The weather here has been warmer than ever before in recorded history for the time of year. Now it's starting to get colder, towards normal temperatures, and perhaps below normal. In fact, i expect that we are about to go into a cold phase (and whether this is related to the Easton winters concept, I've no idea). It seems by the time a climactic effect is noticed, there's already a swing towards the opposite occurring in the Earth's macrosystem.
Climatologists need to stop thinking in terms of lateral cause-and-effect, and start considering the strange phenomenon as strange attractors. Look at the hurricane season that has just passed in the States. Come November 30th or so, I'll write a proper piece about that too, but it was without doubt the strangest sequence of weather phenomenona most weather watchers have ever seen. That the last cane of the season (so far!) was followed by a deadly twister in the midwest, which itself followed the first winter storm of the season, should give us some idea of the rubber band effect that seems to be happening.
That most Americans seem to think global warming is an unproved theory, only illustrates the power of the neocon media over there, as well as the gullibility of a population that allows 'intelligent design' to be seriously proposed as a scientific concept.

Viva Argentina

So at the moment people are trying to tear down the barriers between them and Bush in Mar del Plata in Argentina. Hardly surprising really, in a country that neo liberalism well and truly fucked. Add to that that America is trying to revive the Free Trade Area story - which unlike even the EU, is not of relatively comparable countries signing some trade agreement, but purely a story of corporate colonialism - well, not really surprising that there's one or two people a tad pissed off.

Spam

Cor, there's some serious spam on blog coments. I dunno whether word verification or membership will prove to be the best way, but O guess I'll find out.
That's from Calivn & Hobbes above, BTW. The best strip ever written.

More Persons Unknown

I just found out about the two women who refused to give up their seats on a Montgomery bus before Rosa Parks.
They were Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith.
Fascinating what you can learn. Apparently Claudette Colvin was a High School student, and she resisted arrest less than non-violently. So she was convicted on an assault charge, and not the Jim Crow laws. Seems the same group of people that were behind Rosa Parks, were also there behind Claudette Colvin, including Martin Luther King, but they figured this wasn't as politically an appealing case as Rosa's later. See here. In fact, according to this site, she was 15 and pregnant, so obviously totally unsuitable for the Christian face of passive resistance! In fact, she was discriminated against by the middle class leaders of the Black community - not only was she working class, but she was also of a dark colour, and she got pregnant by something she now describes as 'Statutory Rape'. I don't know what she means by that.
But she wasn't dumb - her reasoning was "I do not have to get up. I paid my fare...It's my constitutional right." This is also a good site for a few other untold stories.
And here's a real interesting article. In fact, Claudette Colvin is bloody amazing. What's also interesting is the way she tells the story - shorn of the mythology of Rosa and her tired feet. She was sat with a pregnant woman, whose name is remembered only as 'Mrs Hamilton'. But what I noticed in her story was this: "I thought he would stop and shout and then drive on. That's what they usually did." So there wasn't a case of this one off act of rebellion at all, but this was a regular thing. They "would stop and shout and then drive on". This is what I truly appreciate - that the things that change the world are not some mythological acts, but tiny moments of coincidence, incidents of mood and human interaction.

Then there's Mary Louise Smith. Definitely NOT this woman - the first and only woman to chair the Republican National Committee.
There's little to be found about Mary Louise Smith. She was only18, and was arrested in October 1955, just weeks before Rosa Parks, but apparently her father was rumoured to be an alcoholic - a wino, in other words - and so she was not deemed to be a suitable candidate for martyrdom. Yet she said he was teetotal, so what the story was there, Ihaven't yet found.
It seems, there was a campaign awaiting to happen for months in fact, involving not just King, but very influentially, a guy called Edgar Daniel Nixon (unfortunate surname really!). (For links - here and here) There's also two other women who were apparently also involved, who I haven't got time to investigate now: Aurelia S. Browder and Susie McDonald.
All of which does not diminish the bravery of Rosa Parks, but points clearly in the direction that she was seen as a suitable candidate by the (male) political leadership of the Black community, who wished to find some way to oppose the racist laws in Montgomery, Alabama at the time. In fact, as Rosa Parks was a faithful member, and Montgomery Secretary, of the NAACP and King's church community at the time, I'm now presuming that this was all a bit of a set up!
And then, here's a bit from The Guardian article: "Betty Shabbaz, the widow of Malcolm X, was one of them. In a letter published shortly before Shabbaz's death, she wrote to Parks with both praise and perspective: "'Standing up' was not even being the first to protest that indignity. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested in protest of bus segregation in Montgomery.
"When ED Nixon and the Women's Political Council of Montgomery recognised that you could be that hero, you met the challenge and changed our lives forever. It was not your tired feet, but your strength of character and resolve that inspired us."

No disrespect at all to Rosa Parks, and it was a totally worthy cause, but what I'm reading justifies even more my point that it isn't "one individual's actions changing history" as is often put about. It is, in fact, the result of a carefully considered political campaign of action.
The problem with that "one person changing the world" thing, is it's basically the same as the "kings and queens" attitude to history: that only powerful or super-able individuals change things, and the rest of us can basically rot in hell for all our capacity to change things. Without getting into a rant on dynamics, that's obviously a load of tosh, as - apparently - an examination of the Montgomery, Alabama movement in 1955 would show!
At the end of the Guardian article, Claudette Colvin, summarises the change in the last 4 decades: "What we got from that time was what was on the books anyhow. Working-class people were the foot soldiers, but where are they now - they haven't seen any progress. It was the middle classes who were able to take advantage of the laws." And she concludes: "There is no closure. This does not belong in a museum, because this struggle is not over. We still don't have all that we should have. And, personally, there can be no closure. They took away my life. If they want closure, they should give it to my grandchildren."

I think I'm a bit in love with that woman.

Persons Unknown

Just thought I'd add this photo . Rosa Parks' body will be lying in state at the Capitol; the first woman this has ever happened to - after presidents and soldiers.
Which I guess makes her semi-officially the most important woman in American history. Fair assessment I'd say.

Antici-pation!

Civilization IV was launched a couple of days ago in the States. It's not even out over here till next month, but I'm going to be waiting even longer. That's my big Christmas present from the wife this year. It looks fantastic though, so I'm pleased I've got a week off after Christmas to give it a good go.
Just before Christmas, Peter Jackson's 'King Kong' is out. It's just been reported that it's a 3 hour epic - like his Rings films - and from following the production diaries, it looks about as perfect as I could have hoped. I'm an old Kong fan too - like Jackson, it inspired me to make films. My old mate Jon, who I first made films with, was also a huge Kong fan. Unfortunately, neither of us had quite Jackson's career! I haven't made a film in 7 years, and the last I heard Jon was attempting his comeback as a stand-up comic.
Anticipating these entertainments is fun, but it's as a kid that you truly experience anticipation. This weekend kicks off the two month party period that stretches from Halloween to New Year. Willow is now familiar with the sequence "Halloween, Sint Maarten's, Sinterklaas, Willow's Birthday, Christmas, New Year". At it's best this time of year can be one of dark nights, a nip in the air and the cosy indoors, the lure and danger of the unknown. It's the only time left in a modern, Western, atheist's life when we celebrate the magical, and I like to retain that feeling for the kids. To give them the understanding that life is bigger than 24-hour TV and junkmail advertising.
Willow's full of beans this morning, because she knows that I'm taking her to see "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit" this evening. Seems like a perfect start to the party season.

Maintenance

I haven't got round to fiddling withthe formatting and possibilities of this blog yet - after all, it's not yet public! To be honest, I'm on a week's holiday from work, and I'm kind of enjoying doing little, staying up late and drinking too much beer (hence th late posts :-)

2001 - Like Soldiers Do

Yesterday, the Pentagon announced the death of the 2000th dead American soldier in Iraq. Actually, he'd died on Saturday, 4 days earlier, of wounds suffered a couple of weeks ago.
The Pentagon spin merchants had tried to defuse attention to the 'milestone' figure, by saying the 2000th was no more nor less important than any other death; that it should not be hyped, simply put. And of course the usual media repeated the story - after all, they're too scared to go out of their protected little world in Baghdad - and as that is even coming under attack, I guess we'll soon see media withdrawing from Iraq almost completely. Then we'll only get the Pentagon spin, and we can all shut up and swallow what we're told.
So here, for the record, is the 2001st American death. His name was Jonathan "JR" Spears, from North Florida, and he seems to have been about the All-American boy. High School Football star, US Marine, the regular Yankee invader. He was killed by small arms fire in Ramadi, a single shot, "conducting combat operations". He was on his second tour of duty.
Right now then, I'm not going into how Bush's puppeteers started a war of aggression to control oil assets (oil that New Orleans can really be grateful for, BTW, but I'll come to that another day). I'm not going into how there's going to be thousands of other dead American soldiers in the months and years to come, or of how the people sending them over there to die are exactly the sort of rich arsehole that would never be caught dead sending their own children to war. (No, they'd rather pay for their advancement in politics!)
I'll say two things today.
Firstly, JR Spears was a Lance Corporal when he was killed. Which is the rank my own father had on my birth certificate. I wouldn't be here today if my own dad had been a little unluckier, or he'd been sent to an even more suicidal war, and I guess there's a lot of JR Spears future that will never come to pass.
Secondly, alot of Iraqis, and Afghanis, are wondering who the hell is counting their dead. We don't even know. Is it 30,000 or 100,000 - both recent estimates by the way - or is it even more horrific. Does anybody really care or count any more. At what point does the act of war become an act of genocide? When do the hundreds of thousands of dead - of non-combatant dead - become a war crime? Do the Americans remember the 2 million dead Vietnamese? Will there be a brief comment in the evening news and a touch of Pentagon spin on the day the millionth Iraqi dies? Well, no, because nobody's really keeping count - except these guys, who only count direct military casualties. 2,000 Amrican dead seems to equal a hell of a lot more Iraqi dead. And alot more Iraqis will be dead before the next milestone gets a passing mention in the Western press.
Of course - remember Rosa Parks: just talking about things isn't going to make any difference. If you want to stop the war, you've got to act.
Preferably before the next number we stop to remark upon, is 3,000.

Rosa Parks

Rosa Parks died this morning at the age of 92.
She was already 42 when she acted in the way that made her immortal and helped a little bit to change the world.
I don't go for the theory of "one person can change the world". Rosa Parks herself said the only reason her action got noticed is because the masses got behind her. Masses mobilised by Martin Luther King, her church, the NAACP and many others.
She was never alone or isolated; she'd been an NAACP member for more than a decade; and it wasn't as if the Civil Rights movement got born in that instant. Take the Washington march of '47 for instance, the Detroit uprising of 43, and many other forgotten moments of the movement.
And that myth of one person changing the world is a dangerous and foolish piece of propaganda. My clearest image is of the guy who stood before the column of tanks heading out of Tiananmen Square, the morning after the massacre. Everybody knows the shot and the footage. I don't know what happened to the guy - some say he was never caught, some say he was imprisoned or executed, some that a patsy paid for his actions. I do know what happened to the tank commander though. He was executed about 3 months later. For not following orders. For not riding the guy down. For embarassing the state and for unwittingly providing a lasting image of resistance.
I think the concept of idolising one individual is both a result and a function of our culture.
In fact, there had been two women earlier in 1955 in Montgomery who had refused to give up their seats. I don't know their names, and probably you don't either. They had been fined, and not imprisoned; but I believe they also weren't members of the same church as Rosa Parks. But they were heroes just as much as she was.
Still, when Rosa Parks was on that busy bus, and told the driver that she would not give up her seat for a white man, and then that, yes, he could go ahead and call the police to arrest her, that was an act of incredible bravery. Remember - this was a time of casual lynching. Emmett Till had been murdered just over a month earlier and the photos of his disfigured corpse were still being distributed by the NAACP. Still, Rosa Parks sat, and politely explained that the colour of your skin is irrelevant.
She was an amazing woman and the world owes her an enormous debt. Not because she showed that one person can change the world, but because she showed that one person can inspire the world, can move us all to action.
She was a queen. Our own shining, Black Queen.

Well that worked...

I eventually managed to get that uploaded today.
Not much to relate, I'll try to get the links and layout etc... sorted tomorrow.
That's Luna dog BTW.

Debut

This first post is a test, to see how this blogging thing is going to work for me. I guess patience would be advisory. Especially as the blogger.com database seems to be playing silly buggers and i can't get this published!
It strikes me as weird that once people used to keep diaries and they were the most private thing in the world. Today, we keep blogs, and publish them for all the world to see.
I was always useless at keeping a diary, so i presume this will be no different.