Channel 4 News is doing an excellent job of reporting the invasion of Iraq, and John Snow’s interview [video] (possibly too mild a term) of ex-ambassador Paul Bremner yesterday was marvelous. John Snow asked how the US could complain about the treatment of POWs when its own recent record was so poor. The interviewee looked like a flustered idiot. It’s all down to uniforms, apparently.

It looks as if the “my country right or wrong” lot aren’t happy about this. How dare a journalist be impolite to our allies! Criticism of our allies is aiding our enemies!

Well, frankly, that’s utter bollocks.

British soldiers are at war. We are, however, still a democracy, and quite frankly, the press have a duty to question the motives and methods of “our” own side, to make sure we are behaving properly. Blogs and campaign websites are all very well, but most people can’t get a chance to question those running the war directly. We can easily get all the official press releases we want, but we depend on the few journalists with courage to act on our behalf. I want journalists to be passionate, and to ask difficult questions, and there aren’t many issues more important than this.

From this BBC News article today:

“Elsewhere, four heavy bombs have been dropped by US planes in northern areas controlled by the extremist Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, which is suspected of having links with the al-Qaeda network. ”

Ansar al-Islam do not seem to be a particularly pleasant group of people, but the first significant aspect of this attack is that they’re Kurdish nationalists. So now Turkey attacks Kurds, Iran attacks Kurds, Iraq attack Kurds, and the US attacks Kurds.

This group contains many veterans of the war against the USSR in Afghanistan. What are the odds that this was yet another US funded terrorist group?

The other interesting aspect of this, of course, is that the US is yet again preemptively attacking because it ‘suspects’ something.

All this makes the US attack rather dangerous, I think.

Silly. Flash. Fun. Use it now, before dry lawyers who don’t understand viral marketing shut it down. Or…

Link: PowerPuff Girls Portrait Studio 2

Wonderful Japanese art.

I wish the images here were bigger - it’s so tantalising to see thumbnails without larger images too.

Link: The Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) Project

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

On the other hand, be careful.

Was press access the greatest mistake of the Vietnam war? The US military thinks so.

I suspect threatening to kill Kate Adie isn’t a good idea either.

Link: Pentagon Threatens To Kill Independent Reporters In Iraq

Slapheaded, fortean, alpha geek blogger arsehole?

As if!

Link: Oxford English Dictionary (Scroll down)

Somewhere in three years of studying political theory I missed some important bits, but I’ve had the gaps in my education filled in recently by clever Labour Party people.

• The bit where disagreement somehow destroys the whole point of a (pseudo)democratic process. How dare the French disagree! They’ve ruined everything.

• Today a USA spokesman mentioned the “right” of the USA to invade other countries whenever it wants to. I’m not aware of this one, but looking back over the past 100 years, other people are. From the Aleister Crowley school of diplomacy, maybe. It certainly makes things simpler. If only Saddam had got himself this right before invading Kuwait, there wouldn’t be all this fuss.

• The bit where killing lots of people and destroying civilian infrastructure defeats terrorists rather than encouraging them. If only the UK had bombed Dublin and Belfast! D’oh!

• American Veto Good. French Veto Bad. British Veto Good. Chinese Veto Bad. Lots of America Vetos Good. A few French Vetos Very Bad.

• If terrorists are based in a country, it can be attacked (see Afghanistan). But, if you prefer, you can attack an unconnected country nearby instead. (see Saudi Arabia & Iraq). Not a lot of people know that. For instance, since terrorists were based in Florida and Germany, it would probably be OK to bomb, say, Cuba or France instead. Neat.

• We wouldn’t have to go to war now if the French had agreed to us going to war now. Bad France! Bad! You’ve made us invade Iraq by telling us not to.

No, hold on… I’m still struggling with that one. With any luck Mr Prescott and Mr Straw will explain it again.

It’s hard to believe these are real. To celebrate yet another President launching an illegal war to aid the struggling elite of his country, here are some books to enlighten and entertain the young.

George W. Bush and His Family Paper Dolls Oh my god… nooo…

and for the brave,

Mass murderer grins as he wears really big pants.

I recently managed to lose my large and messy web bookmark list. This happened despite an automated, daily, incremental backup. For some baffling reason I can’t get my bookmarks back.

It’s rather upsetting. I’ve lost my ‘things to blog’ links, my list of neat blogs to include with Hippo, my list of Perl modules, but most of all, I’ve lost part of my own “external memory”. A friend of mine recently said that someone’s data is part of their life, and I think this is true. Information, when created, stored or found by someone, becomes part of them; it’s more than just an intangible possession.

I was going to add a few source types to Hippo that deal with bookmarks, but they’re now higher priority. In the meantime, here is the Daioh Temple of Daioh Mountain, which holds Memorial Services for Lost Information.

Irony: This is the second time I’ve typed this. I accidentally opened another page in this browser window, and destroyed the original post before I’d saved it.