Is This Thing On?

The G2 section of yesterday’s Guardian led with a very well written piece about the 24 hour news coverage of the war in Iraq: “And now over to Fairford where there is nothing to see“. The front cover of G2 featured a mock-up of a Sky News style screen with the caption along the lines of: “Poorly sourced rumour elevated to status of major news event”.
A ticker running along the bottom of the screen said: “insignificant development presented out of context”.

All very biting and onion-esque, you might say. Unfortunately, the fact that the front page of the main paper contained both these things somewhat detracted from the point (the “3AM news” story about a “massive convoy” breaking away from Basra, that later turned out to consist of 3 tanks).

In other developments, I was having a quick look through the log files for the Paste website yesterday, and I noticed something interesting… in the list of domains from which people have been accessing the website is one particularly intriguing domain: usmc.mil (that’s the US Marine Corps by the way). Somehow, I suspect that this is not a marine with a penchant for creative writing (although if it is, why don’t you get in touch; maybe there’s something you’d like to submit to the magazine?). Anyway, I had a look back through the old logs to see where this domain first appears, and it’s in the logs for February and March this year, but not before. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I suspect there is some echelon-style system at work here, crawling the web for keywords and flagging certain sites for further investigation. So what changed on the site in February that started ringing alarm bells on the US military computer systems? Me slagging off the Brit awards? Linking to the Guardian? Or could it perhaps be the entries for the 17th and 13th February, where I refer in passing to the “security measures” at Heathrow. Should I expect the Feds to turn up on my doorstep tomorrow? (If so, lads, could you leave it till after 10:30? I’d like a bit of a lie-in. It is Saturday, after all…)

Oh well, if Big Brother really is watching, why don’t we give them something to do. Altogether now, in a “Father Jack” style: GUNS! TANKS! BOMBS!

Oh, and here’s a link you might be interested in:

Bushwhacked 2 (from the genius that is Chris Morris, you’ll need Quicktime for this one).

Clearly the IT department really do know what they’re doing, as they just shut down my email account nearly a month early. Well if you don’t want me to do any work in the meantime, that’s just fine with me lads…

As an addendum to the whole Amazon debacle of last week, Ikea seem to be getting in on the act. Check out the price of the STURE storage unit. Hmm. I’ll have 200 please….

[UPDATE: This page of the Ikea website has now changed. There used to be an item on this page priced at £0]

It’s been a long time coming, but there’s new TV Go Home. Ah, lovely.

UPDATE: Oh, I almost forgot to mention. It was my absolute pleasure over the weekend to see the first episode of The People’s Book Of Records from Zeppotron, the people responsible for TV Go Home. It looks like it could be the worst programme ever, but it’s actually very, very funny. The record for “Getting closest to Idaho in 20 seconds” was my personal favourite.

Oh, and this isn’t very funny. It’s just a bit sad, really.

Nice to see the BBC acting sensibly as always. The track “Bandages”, by Hot Hot Heat, has been removed from the Radio 1 playlist, because of a “prevalence of the word ‘bandages’ in the song”.

Hmm. 3:50pm, and I finally have network and email access back. Now there’s an IT department that knows what it’s doing. It’s not like this company makes network management software or anything.

Something has gone wrong with the network connection on my work laptop this morning, so I’m reduced to surfing the Internet on one of the departmental Solaris machines while I wait for it to be fixed. Ordinarily, I might be concerned about my inability to work, but given that I’m just counting down my notice at the moment, the care factor, as you might say, isn’t really there anymore.

Then again, somehow any minor gripes I might have seem rather inconsequential at the moment. I try to watch the news, but it just makes me feel sick. Of course, it’s easy for me to be sanctimonious from half a world away. I can turn the TV off. Not everybody has that luxury.

“IT’S WAR – and, thanks to round-the-clock TV news channels, you can watch it all as it happens.” (London Metro, 21st March 2003)

Hmm, when does it start? Maybe I’ll get a few beers in for that, shall I?

If there’s one thing worse than being at a war that you don’t agree with, it has to be the barely disguised glee with which some sections of the media have greeted the conflict. It’s bad enough that politicians might be using the deaths of innocent civilians in a far away country as an easy way of boosting their poll rating and preserving their place in history, but there is something truly sickening about the delight some of the press and TV stations take in reporting the war. There’s a radio ad for the Evening Standard on at the moment that boasts about the fact that they are the only paper that updates 4 times a day, so you should really buy their paper for the latest war news.

The revolution will not be televised… but the war will be covered in full glorious detail on GMTV.

“…below decks, crew in the operations room said they tracked the missiles on their radar then watched TV news to see where they would land.” (London Metro, 21st March 2003)

Today’s Metro (and I really should stop reading this appalling rag; it just depresses me, frankly) has the following quote from Brigadier Jim Dutton during a visit to the men of the 42nd Commando at Camp Gibraltar on the Iraq-Kuwait border. I think this is supposed to be a pro-war statement [On the same page is a small piece about how France and Germany export more goods to Iraq than any other country, according to a “Government report”. Really? That’s awfully convient then isn’t it?] Anyway, I think there is little doubt where the paper’s loyalties lie. You or I, however, might be able to read between the lines of this quote. The Brigadier “told Iraq”:

“Surrender as quickly as you can and allow us the chance to bring aid to your people. If Saddam is overthrown we can work together so you can realise your potential as one of the world’s richest countries.”

So this is it, I suppose. The “pre-emptive response” is about to start (or may have already done so depending on your news reporters of choice). Well we’ve had a war against an abstract noun, so why not an oxymoron? Blatant disregard for the English language aside, however, what scares me most about this imminent war is the fact that we are doing this without the backing of the United Nations.

Sure, you can argue until the cows come home whether resolution 1441 gives you technical legitimacy for a strike, but the fact remains that the majority of the international community do not support it, as evidenced by the way the push for a new resolution explicitly authorising force was unceremoniously dropped. Frankly, taking the case to the UN but then withdrawing it, pretending you had legal grounds for this pre-emptive response all along, and blaming the French, when you can’t get the result you were looking for, sets a rather worrying precedent for international relations: the United Nations is only a useful tool when it agrees with you.

What kind of a precedent does this set? Can whoever has the biggest guns just attack whoever they choose when that enemy doesn’t fit their worldview? (which certainly seems to be the – objectionable – crux of the argument in Robert Kagan’s notorious 2002 essay Power and Weakness, which argues that the US advocates military intervention in conflicts of this nature because it is militarily strong, while Europe advocates peaceful solutions and diplomacy because it is militarily weak).

Of course, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this will all be settled quickly with an obviously evil dictator removed from power, democracy restored to a troubled country with minimal civilian casualties, ushering in a new era of peace in the Middle East.

But somehow I doubt it.

What if this is a horribly messy conflict, with many civilian deaths, that ultimately destabilises the region further, creating a breeding ground for generations of future terrorists with a grudge against the US and Britain? In fact, shouldn’t war really be an absolute last resort, used only when all the other alternatives have been explored? If the weapons inspectors want more time, shouldn’t we at least let them have it? Shouldn’t we give everything we possibly can a try before taking the decision to go to war? Should we really be rushing into a conflict when there’s a possibility that it could be avoided just because it suits the American political calendar (of for some other similar reason)?

For that matter, what happens afterwards? Does the plan for a post-war Iraq extend beyond who gets the oil fields? I suppose Claire Short is probably right to stay in the cabinet. For all the vilification she has received, at least there will be a voice of sanity helping to determine the future of post-war Iraq, and hopefully helping to prevent the potential humanitarian crisis that will face the international community when the bombers have gone home.