A telling quote from US President George Bush’s State of the Union address: “The course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.” For anyone still not convinced of Bush’s hidden agenda, keep in mind: even though it is a despotic and repressive regime, the Hussein government in Iraq has never threatened the freedom or security of American civilians in America, and has in fact been an important US ally in the Middle East over the past two decades. US allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, while also despotic and cruel regimes guilty of human rights infringements, have been proven to be the true perpetrators of those alleged to have commited the most recent terrorist attacks on American soil. Bush deserves the benefit of the doubt: he’s not stupid, he’s up to something. Do those who support him have a similar defence?
Archive for January, 2003
Probably the most insightful piece of journalism I’ve read since the start of the White House campaign to clear Dodge of varmints and critters was written by Robert Fisk in the British Independent newspaper. Responding to White House agitprop equating Saddam Hussein with Hitler and US assurances that oil plays no role in all this, Fisk writes: “How can the sane human being react to this pitiful stuff?”
”...I have never been so struck by the absolute, unwavering determination of so many Arabs and Europeans and Americans to oppose a war,” says Fisk. But, “British democracy is not permitting British people to stop a war for which most of them have nothing but contempt [...] How soon before we see real people power – 500,000 protesters or more in London, Manchester and other cities to oppose this folly?”
In closing, he writes: “More and more Americans – aware that their President declined to serve his country in Vietnam – realise that their newspapers are lying to them and acting as a conduit for the US government alone. More and more Britons are tired of being told to go to war by their newspapers and television stations and politicians.” Yes, Westerners are indeed waking up and smelling the coffee, and this cup of java smells fishy.
As everyone know by now, Robbie Williams turned around and bit his recording industry masters in the ass by half-heartedly endorsing piracy. “I think it’s great, really I do,” he said. Not that I like his music, or really care what he has to say on anything, but it’s still a mighty fine example of… of something that needs examples. It’s always fun to watch the opposition running around in mindless circles. The folks over at Plastic weigh in on Robbie Williams and copyright.
Salon has a review of the latest Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne film, The Boy. It gets an A for quality, but a D for trying too hard and being a tad too arty.
Five seasons (Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy and The Aftermath), five days of the week (Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-Prickle and Setting Orange). And it makes at least as much sense as Monday and June.
The Nederlandse Film Database has a listing of more than 20,000 short and full-length films with a (mainly) Dutch connection, among which are many Flemish films. It’s an excellent mechanism for linking your favourite director to a studio and finding other, lesser known directors.
Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass has nothing good to say about George W. Bush. In an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag Grass refers to Bush as a danger to world peace, a Shakespearean character standing by his father’s deathbed and declaring that he has fulfilled his great task. “Hinter der Forderung nach einem Irakkrieg stecken vor allem politische und ëkonomische Interessen.” Behind the demand for a war on Iraq lie—above all—political and economic interests.
[An English translation can be found on the SF Indymedia site.]
“Even if it means we’re going to break some of your apps, we’re going to make these things more secure. You’re just going to have to go back and fix it.” The kind of scary talk you would expect from a Linux weenie proposing to fix all that’s wrong with the world, but here terrifyingly spoken by Craig Mundie, the head of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative. Apart from the clear disregard Microsoft is showing (and always has shown) for its customers, this also proves that the software vendor believes it “owns” its users, to use and abuse for profit.
And profit will be involved.
“We’ll continue to make progress in the security area. New versions of many products will come out,” Mundie promises. As users upgrading their Windows machines to Windows XP had to experience, a simple upgrade often entails a major switch. Owners of Norton Antivirus and Roxio/Adaptec software had to fork out for an upgrade to both applications, as they weren’t compatible with Windows XP. No free patch, no free upgrade.
And so, despite the fact that we own applications that do what they’re supposed to do (why else would we have purchased them?), consumers will once again be forced to pay up for more bloated upgrades and unwanted “innovations”. Forced, sadly enough, by Microsoft purposely installing software that will break our apps.
In 1976 Lake Superior State University started publishing a list of “banned” words and phrases, popular utterances accused of “Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness”. This year several Bushisms also made it to the list, such as “make no mistakes about it” and “homeland security”. And others such as “frozen tundra” and “reverse discrimination” are clearly redundant, once you think about it. The full list of 23 terms are available on their website.
“People are opposed to the things America stands for. Freedom. Justice. Democracy. In America you’re free to choose your own religion. In America, if you want to be a Taleban, you can be a Taleban.” – A Whitehouse Special Adviser on Newsnight, explaining why freedom of religion doesn’t necessarily mean being free from idiocy.
