Iraqis fake celebration of fake US withdrawal, Obama interview, and other news of the week

Well, I got my Internet connection back, and I got my cable TV back, all is right with the universe. At least my little corner of it. Lots of news this week, though it’s more and more apparent to me that what passes for news in the mainstream media is little more than talking points issued by the administration on behalf of their corporate handlers. So with that in mind, a random look at the week’s “news.”

US soldiers withdraw from Iraqi cities! This was touted as some sort of big moment for Iraqis, the Iraqi government even went so far as to declare it a national holiday. This is just another in an endless series of stage managed events for the benefit of the American taxpayers. Pretty much the story of our occupation of Iraq from the get go, when the Pentagon bussed a handful of Kurds around to have pics of happy Iraqis welcoming our troops. Or the Saddam statue pull-down. The reality is that packing up your tent and moving it a few miles down the road doesn’t constitute a “withdrawal” of any sort. We still have a massive (and mind numbingly expensive) military presence in Iraq with no sign it’s going anywhere soon. And the Iraqi “government” is a puppet government at best, a quisling government at worst.

Moving right along, I read an article about an interview with President Obama. I was shocked by a few points, so I’ll comment on this news article. It starts with Obama lecturing the Russians and telling them “The Cold War” is history. Excuse me? Yes, for Russia it’s history. For the USA and its allies, the Cold War never ended. NATO wasn’t dissolved, it in fact has been expanded right up to Russia’s borders with plans to expand it into the former Soviet Union on the table. NATO is fighting in Afghanistan. In other words the US Cold War policy of encircling, isolating, and weakening Russia continues to this day. As long as NATO still exists, the USA is in Cold War mode, that Obama can say this sort of insulting nonsense with a straight face shows what a consummate politician and liar he is.

The article goes on to say “With most experts in agreement that there’s a good chance Iran could have a usable nuclear bomb sometime during his presidency.” Actually, the experts say precisely the opposite, the USA’s own intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran stopped working on bombs years ago. And yet here is a “news” article basically stating as fact that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. In the same vein Obama said that Iran cannot be allowed to become a “nuclear power,” whatever that was supposed to mean. More effort to conflate Iran’s nuclear program with a weapon’s program, so that the demonisation of Iran can continue apace. As I have stated before, Iran’s nuclear program is completely legal under international law (unlike, say, Israel’s covert nuclear program,)  perfectly sensible for them in an economic sense, and even if they did build a few nukes, so what? The USA and Israel’s vast modern nuclear arsenal is more than a match for a few fifties eras nukes and will be for generations to come.

In any event I will post more on Iran and the situation there sometime next week. Unlike most people who simply regurgitate talking points (TV really has destroyed most people’s ability to think for themselves) I try to look at as much of the picture as I can and come to my own conclusions. And there’s a whole lot of “big picture” when it comes to Iran, so I will be doing a lot of research this weekend. I may even change my mind about aspects of the situation, it’s been known to happen.

To be fair, the article did end with one Obama quote that I am in complete agreement with. When it was pointed out that  since he signed the $780 billion economic stimulus bill in February, the economy has lost more than 2 million jobs, Obama said: “What we are still seeing is too many jobs lost, …” As the expression so crudely puts it, no shit Sherlock. All the various stimulus packages around the world did was shovel more money upwards, basically bandaging the problem while the foundation of the economy continues to rot. No matter how much lipstick and perfume you use, a stinking corpse is still a stinking corpse.

Next week, Iran, maybe more on the economy, the Battle of Gettysburg, and watever else pops up. Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s almost certainly public domain, is an historically important image, and its use here in no way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. I don’t even know who to credit it to, if anyone knows let me know and I will properly attribute it. The image is from Catherine the Great’s grand tour of newly acquired lands in Crimea in 1787. It was alleged that General Potemkin built fake villages to impress the Empress with the value of Potemkin’s conquests. How much truth there is to the story is debateable, but it does nicely illustrate that the idea of using spin to legitimize invasion and conquest has been around for a awhile.)

Still Standing on a Chair in my Kitchen to Access the Internet

Dammit though, I’m still going to post. It’s annoying this had to happen when I was getting my muse back, but such is life. On the plus side, several of my favourite TV channels also went out (I don’t think the neighbours had anything to do with that) so at least I’m not wasting time watching TV anymore. My apartment is as clean as a whistle as a result. It’s really nice staggering to the kitchen in the morning and not having to scrounge for a clean coffee mug and counter space. I should have done this years ago.

OK, so Wednesday is science day or weird science day. Since I’m not a scientist I don’t have any science stories, and without reliable Internet access I can’t really research and write one. So we’re stuck with weird science, and fortunately I have  a few of those. And what could be weirder than UFOs? So here, published for the first time, my one and only UFO encounter.

This was in the late eighties when I lived in a  big old flat roofed house in the Berkeley hills. I was doing some remodelling in the house to defray my rent costs, and this one night I had my crew of two sleeping over in the spare bedroom. (They didn’t have a car so this was very convenient for them, plus it meant I could get them working at a good early hour.) Couple of young girls, 18 or 19 I think. In any event, I went to sleep in my room and they in theirs.

Well, during the night I was awakened by a police helicopter flying around the neighbourhood using a searchlight. This happened sometimes in the hills, looking for a burglar no doubt. The noise and the light woke me up, but sometimes when I’m awakened in the night I’m just so damn tired that I simply can’t get up to investigate. So I just lay there awhile while the helicopter circled, then I fell back asleep. The next morning passed without incident and I pretty much forgot what I thought was basically a non-event.

Well, a month or so later something reminded me of it, and I mentioned the night the helicopter circled the house to the girls, the two who had been sleeping up on the hill with me that night. Well, they got real quiet and looked at me funny. Turns out they most definitely remembered that night, but not the way I remembered it.

In their version they were awakened in the middle of the night by a bright light shining in the window. They had no idea what it was, but it definitely wasn’t a police helicopter. They spent the night cowering under the covers, afraid to even venture forth and investigate.  Even worse, when morning came, they ventured downstairs and met me. And what did I reportedly say when they talked about the bright light in the window and being terrified. I allegedly said to them “Don’t worry about it, a UFO landed on the roof during the night.” They were so freaked by my nonchalant reply that they dropped the subject, at least until I brought it up some weeks later.

The problem of course is that I remember nothing of a UFO nor do I remember saying any such thing. It’s not really the sort of joke I would make, at least off-the-cuff like that. And the girls knew nothing of me or my interests, so it seems unlikely that they made the story up. I mean, something did happen that night, I do remember laying in bed more or less too tired or paralysed to investigate the lights, but that’s all I remember.

So what happened that night? Beats me, it’s still one of the great mysteries of my life. It has many of the elements of a classic UFO abduction story, so it’s a common human experience, many other people have similar stories. Some combination of suggestibility, cultural conditioning, unreliable memory, and police helicopter flying around the neighbourhood I suppose. Or the girls had a more wicked sense of humour than I gave them credit for? There of course was no empirical evidence, so this is just another UFO anecdote.

On the other hand, maybe a UFO did land on the roof and conduct nefarious experiments on me. My favourite UFO conspiracy theory goes like this … The USA government was contacted by aliens in the forties. (Roswell, etc.) And they made a deal with the US government. In exchange for permission to conduct a few secret experiments on US citizens, they would give the USA advanced technology. The US government eagerly accepted the deal. Hell, the government of the time was conducting germ warfare experiments on US citizens, what would a few more alien experiments matter?

It did matter. The aliens double-crossed the US government. The technology they gave the USA proved to be almost worthless in application, and they proceeded to conduct bizarre nocturnal experiments on millions of unsuspecting Americans, experiments that continue to this day. It’s a beautiful theory becasue it explains everything. UFO abductions, Roswell, why the B-52 is still in service 60 years later … and most of all why the USA government is so adamant in their denial of any knowledge of aliens. I mean, Americans may be sheep, but if we found out that the government had given aliens permission to experiment on us in our sleep … well, things could get ugly.

Sleep tight.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, it’s a low resolution version of the original, and it is an historically important image. Credit: George Adamski (1891-1965). It is a photo of a UFO taken by Adamski on December 13 1952. He was one of the original alien contactees, and had many stories of meeting with aliens and travelling to nearby planets with them. Some considered him a  great man, others considered him deluded or an outright fraud. His stories have not stood the test of time well, and few regard Adamski terribly seriously today.)

How did I find out my neighbours were moving?

My neighbours that I was paying for my wireless connection I might add. Well, about ten yesterday morning their wireless hub abruptly vanished leaving me high and dry. I wandered over to see what was up, and they were packing up and moving. Gee, nice of them to give me a heads up that they were going to turn off the wireless hub and leave town. As I’ve said before, common courtesy is a lost art. I got back at them though, I put some open cans of tuna in their furniture when they weren’t looking.

So that’s why there is no post on battles or history or some such today, I’m using some wireless hub across the street on the other side of the building, and my connection is tenuous at best. No bars, no signal. Amazing I’ve gotten this far. On Wednesday with any luck I should be able to resume regular posts again, I’ve already made arrangements with a nice couple downstairs, they are having a Comcast wireless hub installed Tuesday. I hope. Otherwise I’ll have to try and post from my kitchen, which is where I am now. It’s not a pretty picture.

A few random notes on the world. I saw how some talking head in the Pentagon said that the Iraqi army is ready to “take charge” of Iraq’s cities. Um, if the “Iraqi army” has to “take charge” of its own cities, it’s a pretty good bet that many Iraqis don’t view the Iraqi army as their legitimate army. This statement is also a nice admission that things are still FUBARed in Iraq, but Americans are so used to their bleeding sore overseas empire now that it doesn’t really matter how bad things get in Iraq or Afghanistan. And the fact that there is essentially no anti-war movement, at least according to that mainstream press, is another fine example of how the mainstream press simply reports what Washington wants it to report.

Well, I guess my connection is still good enough to slip a rant in, go figure. I should comment on Iran and Honduras at this point too I suppose, but such requires Internet research, which my current Internet access can’t handle. (I’m standing on a chair for God’s sake.) This is also why I haven’t replied to any recent thought provoking comments. And just in general this is a very annoying situation.

The picture above is a Mappa Mundi, a medieval map of the world. I’d uploaded it for a prior post that never got posted, so this almost random post seemed like a good place for it. It’s rather stylized and would not have been much use for navigation. This was at time when people thought that the tropics were uninhabitable and that humans would never be able to visit the southern hemisphere, so only the northern hemisphere is shown. (People have known the world was a globe since well before Christ, the idea that Columbus set out to prove the world is round is a nineteenth century myth, like horns on Viking helmets or Marco Polo.)

And lastly, the latest Micheal Jackson news.: He’s still dead. Yeesh, this is as bad as  when Princess Di bought the farm. Have a great week everyone, I hope to be back up to speed here in a few days.

(The above image predates 1927 and is claimed as public domain under US copyright law. I got it here. It’s from the 15th century and this is what wikipedia has to say about it: “MAPPA MUNDI in JEAN MANSEL La Fleur des Histoires. Valenciennes, 1459-1463, manoscritto, penna, inchiostro e colori su pergamena, 30 X 22 cm (carta). Bruxelles, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS. 9231, fol. 281v. Mappa attribuita a Simom Marmion.” I haven’t a clue what that means.)

From Michael Jackson to Markarian’s Chain of Galaxies

Another week, another tiny blip of time in the greater scheme of things. And another “Through Thick and Thin” post on Doug’s Darkworld. Yes, a tiny blip on a tiny blip, nothing like admiring the universe to feel insignificant. In any event, two bits of blog news. The first a repeat, there is now a Doug’s Darkworld twitter. And no, that means nothing as far as this blog goes, the blog is staying right where it is. (Apparently some people aren’t familiar with twitter, who knew?) More importantly, henceforth there is going to be a bit more order to my posts. Monday I will post a history post, usually about  a battle or war, but not always. Wednesday I will post a science post, or a weird science post as the spirit moves me. And Fridays, such as today, I will ramble about various things, mostly current events. There will also be random posts about other subjects on other days when I have the time. And of course when events transpire such as the Georgia War or Israel’s latest military action in Gaza, I will make a flurry of posts. My muse will let me do nothing less.

Which comes to the question, why aren’t I making a flurry of posts on the situation in Iran? I mean, the mainstream media is still playing this up as this huge important event. After reading a few articles on the subject, pretty much the same reasons as I didn’t say anything last week. This is factional infighting in domestic Iranian politics, not some incipient popular revolt. The rioting however fits the USA’s narrative of how the Iranian government is somehow not legitimate, so it’s getting played to the hilt. What the media rarely reports is that Mousavi, widely touted as some sort of liberal reformer, is nothing  of the kind. He was highly placed in the Iranian government of the eighties, where he played a role in such things as the creation of Hezbollah and the attack on the Marine barracks in Lebanon. He is also reputed to be deeply corrupt, in fact that’s one of the reasons Ahmadinejad is favoured by the clerics.

In any event I don’t think this Iran situation will amount to much, I certainly hope it doesn’t  at least. More instability in the region the world doesn’t need, however much it serves the interests of the global oil industry and the militarist faction running Israel. It’s a shame Rachel Corrie’s death didn’t get as much coverage as that of Neda Agha-Soltan. One must remember that the USA government doesn’t really want democracy in the region. True democracies would immediately nationalize their oil industries or at the very least insist that the contracts be renegotiated. The USA can’t have that. America’s wars in Asia are the new world trying to recolonize the old world, it’s bizarre really. A interesting comparison can be made between the current USA regime and the Spanish Empire at its height. Fodder for a history blog I suppose.

And speaking of America’s Asian wars, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue apace. An American “drone strike” (it sounds so harmless doesn’t it?) killed another pile of civilians in Pakistan. The Pakistani government is starting to request that we like, stop, since they’re doing more harm than good. You’d think that we would learn from the Israeli example, they’ve been assassinating people from the air for decades, has it bought them peace and security? A death squad is a death squad whether it is thugs with guns or some guy with a joystick in Kansas, counter-productive evil incarnate no matter what it’s called.

OK, so I meandered a bit there. I’m going to cover a lot of ground on Fridays. In any event, speaking of deaths, both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died yesterday.  I’m not really big on celebrities and entertainment figures, it’s always been my Achilles’ heel in Trivial Pursuit. I never quite understood the fascination with either of them,  still, it’s kind of an odd feeling when big fixtures of one’s youth pass away. Kind of puts things in perspective, like today’s picture above. Click on it for the full size version, that’s Markarian’s Chain of Galaxies. At least seven of them are indeed travelling together through the cosmos. You are looking at trillions of stars, a number so large it’s almost inconceivable. And while their may be beings something like us out there looking back, there isn’t another Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett … or you, gentle reader. The laws of statistics dictate that beyond all doubt.

We may be minuscule, but we’re unique. See, a Doug’s Darkworld post with a happy ending. (OK, I lost a bet.) Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It is not being used for profit and it’s use here in no way interferes with the copyright holder’s commercial use of the image. It’s from the APOD site, credit and copyright: Piotrek Sadowski. And yes, I did catch that North Korea threatened to blow up the USA this past week. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, I recommend my readrs do the same.)

My Ten Favourite Cryptids

What the hell is a cryptid? A cryptid is an animal unknown to science, unknown in the sense that their existence has not been proved. The study of cryptids is the science of cryptozoology. As a kid I thought cryptozoology was fascinating … Nessie, Bigfoot, sea monsters, the list is endless. As an older and wider fellow, the subject has lost some of its luster. While I still find cryptozoology fascinating, and there’s no doubt that there are animals out there still to be discovered … I find the average cryptozoologist is a little too undisciplined for my tastes. And the evidence for most cryptids is at best, anecdotal.  Not to mention the endless hoaxes, some of them so obvious they couldn’t fool a fourth grader. You’d think. Nonetheless, it’s an still interesting topic from a number of perspectives,  not the least of which, is that the skeptics are often even more illogical and emotion  driven than the cryptozoologists. What’s that all about?

In any event, just for grins, in no particular order, my ten favourite cryptids. And for even more fun, I’ve rated them on a one to ten scale. One being a cryptid that frankly I don’t think exists, to ten being a cryptid that deserves a lot more investigation because there might actually be a real  unknown creature, however prosaic, lurking out there somewhere behind the folklore and the tall tales. The last reason I like cryptozoology though is the most important, it’s lots of fun. Enjoy!

1. Lake Monsters: Champ, Nessie, and Ogopogo would be the big three, but lake monsters have been reported in dozens of lakes around the world. In fact the above image, part of a recent video purportedly taken of Champ, is what inspired this post. Click on the image to see the video. What’s does it look like to you? If you said it looks like a swimming deer or moose, grats, you’re probably as old and wise as I am. While Nessie and such may make fun stories, the idea that some sort of large animal could be living in comparatively small lakes without the odd carcass washing ashore or a good photograph being taken, well, doesn’t float. Doug’s believability rating: Zero

2. Bigfoot: I’ve blogged about Bigfoot before. There’s also Alma and Yeti. In fact like Lake Monsters, it seems that people see wild hairy men in woods all over the planet. Again, the lack of corpses, the lack of photographs taken by wildlife trap cameras, and just plain lack of anything other than anecdotal evidence makes this one hard to swallow. Still, the world is a big place, if such near-humans did exist they might be pretty smart and even bury their own dead, so this one at least is worth investigating. Barely. Doug’s believability rating: Two

3. ABCs: This stands for Alien Big Cat, and no, not that kind of alien. While primarily an English phenomena, ABCs have been sighted all over the world. This is the one that answers the age old question: “Can someone mistake a big house cat for a huge beast?” Apparently the answer at least sometimes is, yes. Moggies gone wild. While some of these in remote areas of the world might actually be yet undiscovered species of wild cat, for the most part,  I find this one difficult to believe. Especially the sightings in Britain and such. My believability rating: One

4. Thunder bird: An American cryptid, sometimes enormously large birds have been reported throughout the west. One even purportedly tried to carry away a child in Illinois in 1977! This one is a favourite because there was a small spate of such sightings in my part of Illinois during my halcyon youth, it made a big impression on me. Granted the existence of a large unknown bird in North America defies credulity, and while these sightings can be explained away as hysteria, hoax, or misidentification … it’s not completely impossible that some small relict population of ancient giant birds went extinct in the nineteenth century before it could be observed and identified by naturalists. Believability rating: One

5. Buru: Did Indian settlers wipe out a species of unknown crocodile or giant monitor lizards in a valley in the Himalayas? Possibly, the Buru is another favourite from my childhood. It’s pretty clear they wiped out something in the last few centuries, what it is remains to be discovered. It’s pretty clear that we won’t find any alive, a shame really. The most recent guess, prosaic as it may be, is that the buru was a species of giant lungfish. This one gets a ten, while it may indeed turn out to be a myth, this one is reasonable enough to look into far more carefully. Rating: Ten

6. Lewis and Clark’s Lion Cat: A subset of number three, this historical mystery from Lewis and Clark’s journals has never been identified. In late March, early April of 1805 a large lion like maned cat was seen to be circling their camp at night. It was much larger than a puma, with which the expedition members were very familiar. There have been suggestions that it was an American lion, possibly part of a now extinct relic population? There have also been suggestions they made the whole thing up, since references to the lion sightings do not appear in the final report on their expedition, published in 1814. Believability rating: Zero

7. Tatzelwurm: Does a big worm-like lizard exist in the Alps? Probably not. However, at one point there were a lot of sightings of an unknown lizard-like animal in the Alps and other European mountains. While many of the details are contradictory or ridiculous, it’s not impossible that these sightings were inspired by any number of possible lizards or giant salamanders. The Tatzelwurm is probably a myth, but if a cave full of their skeletons is found, we won’t have to rewrite and textbooks. Believability: Six.

8. Ropen: This one is curious, there are reports of a mysterious flying animal from deep in the New Guinea jungles. An unidentified large species of flying fox, a type of bat? A spiritual animal misidentified as real by credulous western explorers? Some have even claimed it is an extinct pterosaur. This ones claim to fame: Creationists have mounted several expeditions to search for the ropen, hoping to find a living pterosaur to bolster their claims that dinosaurs were only  recently wiped out in Noah’s Flood. Pseudoscience meets pseudoreligion, OK then. Doug’s believability rating: Flying Fox: Nine. Living pterosaur: Zero

9. Mokele-mbembe: Another favourite of my youth, or the cryptozoology books of my youth to be more precise. This is a large dinosaur-like  animal reported by the pygmies deep in the African jungle. This one is interesting in that there have been literally dozens of expeditions into this incredibly remote and inaccessible part of Africa in search of Mokele-mbembe. None of the recent ones found a damn thing, and even the older expeditions never found more than purported footprints and anecdotal accounts from natives. I’m with the people who think this is a mythical animal that locals reported as real because the silly  white people were so damn easy to fool. Doug’s believability rating: One

10. Nandi Bear: Africa’s biggest and baddest cryptid, this one has been  reported for a long time and is known by many names. It has a habit of eating the brains of its victims, so this is a cryptid that one might not want to famous for discovering.  It is described as a huge black hyena or bear-like creature, it hunts at night. There are currently no bears in Africa, what could this be? Well, a hyena or some form of mad brain-eating hyena is a good bet. This one bears more investigation: Eight

During the course of research for this article, I discovered that there are a number of cases where people suppose that an extinct animal may not be extinct after all. Marsupial tigers, giant ground sloths, woolly mammoths, and a whole host of supposedly extinct beasts have been reported in the odd corners of the globe. So coming someday, my ten favourite possibly non-extinct animals.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit, is central to illustrating the post, and only one frame of the clip has been reproduced. Credit: YouTube. The film clip is actually a classic example of a hoax in my opinion, I’ve seen hundreds. The creature is just far enough away that no real detail can be discerned, and the film ends just before the creature would have reached shore. It’s inconvenient details like this that add up to misidentification at best, hoax at worst.)

The Battle of Stirling Bridge

The more I study the history of war, the more it becomes apparent that most military leaders got their position through politics or connections, rarely through military prowess. The results are usually predictable, in fact for the most part I think victory in most wars and battles is determined by who made the fewest stupid mistakes. Even worse, I think just by chance some people win a few and then get promoted far beyond their capability, thus ensuring an eventual catastrophe of  historical proportions. If a Sargent makes a dumb mistake, him and dozens of others may die. If a general makes a dumb mistake, the sky’s the limit. Battles have been lost, wars have been lost, nations have been lost … all because someone in charge did something so stupid as to defy belief.

Believe it. Here, in the first of a series, battles where the people in charge made mistakes that were obvious to those around them. Yes, in every one of these battles there were intelligent educated people (like the readers of Doug’s Darkworld for example) standing around saying “This is a bad idea my Lord.” In this case they were saying it in an thick English accent while standing in the mud and gorse near the town of Stirling, Scotland. Yes, the Battle of Stirling Bridge is about to begin, and no, it’s nothing like how it was depicted in Braveheart.

OK, brief background. England had conquered Scotland in 1296. The Scots revolted, and the First War of Scottish Independence was on. A British army under the command of the Seventh Earl of Surrey, John de Warenne, was advancing into Scotland. The Earl had crushed the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar, and seemed to believe he was facing only rabble. And he was accompanied by one Hugh de Cressingham, the King’s treasurer for Scotland. Cressingham was along to make sure no money was wasted and the war was won cheaply and quickly. He was despised by the Scots, and not particularly well liked by the English either. When Surrey’s army got to Stirling, the gateway to the Highlands,  there was one small bridge across the River Forth. The Scots army under the command of William Wallace was on the other side. The British clearly had a vastly superior force, several thousand mounted knights and ten thousand or more infantry. The Scots had a few thousand pikemen and maybe a few hundred mounted knights. Both armies stared at each across the river for several days, the British hoping that the Scots could be talked into surrendering.

No such luck. On the morning of September 11th the Earl decided to cross the river and deal with this Scots rabble. Apparently under intense pressure and advice from Cressingham, who was eager to press forward and win this quickly. I mean, all these soldiers were costing money! This is the point where people standing around started saying things like “Um, my lord … a word.” One turncoat Scottish knight in particular, Sir Richard Lundie, pointed out that just a  few miles away was a ford where sixty riders could cross abreast. Wouldn’t it make sense to send some knights to cross there  and flank the Scots, instead of sending everyone across a narrow wooden bridge? Cressingham however would have no more delays, and the army began to cross the river.

The Scots could hardly believe their luck, and far from being a rabble, they were a displined fighting force under the able command of William Wallace (he wasn’t even a knight then.) Wallace bided his time and struck. In fact by some accounts the bridge had been previously weakened and Scots soldiers were hiding under it to knock it down when the time was ripe. In any event, after about half the British army had crossed, Wallace and his men charged. They quickly seized the bridgehead, preventing more British troops from crossing, and forming a wall of pikes facing any British soldier trying to flee. Exactly one British knight, Sir Marmaduke Tweng, managed to fight his way through the Scots pikemen and across the bridge to safety.  Now that must have been some scene, like something out of Lord of the Rings.

The British army on the safe side of the river, upon seeing their brethren trapped and being massacred by rampaging Scots, did what so many armies have done under similar circumstances. They turned and ran back to England. Very few of the British who had crossed the river made it back alive to join them. The Earl was left with the unpleasant task of explaining to the King just how badly he had screwed up. He managed to do so though and continued to command armies for the King. Wallace was knighted for his stunning victory, and though he eventually lost the war and was captured and executed, his place in history was secure.

Hugh de Cressingham however was spared the trouble of explaining himself to anyone. In his eagerness to move things along, he had been one of the first to cross the bridge. He was not one of the few that made it back to safety. In fact, by all accounts, his skin was flayed and cut into souveniers by the victorious Scots. Some accounts even claim that William Wallace had a sword belt made from a strip of Cressingham’s flayed skin. That’s one way to go down in history I suppose.

(The above image of William Wallace is believed to be public domain under US copyright law as it predates 1927. It’s an eighteenth or nineteenth century woodcut of unknown origin. Can you see the resemblance to Mel Gibson? Me neither. And no, Scots warriors stopped wearing blue face paint about a thousand years before the Battle of Stirling Bridge. And on a final curious note, William Wallace’s sword still exists, the damn thing is five foot six inches long, Wallace must have been a big guy.)

Iranian government overthrown by peaceful pro-democracy protesters, jubilant Iranians elect Obama as their next leader, Ahmadinejad flees to North Korea.

Well, that’s more interesting than my usual Friday “Through Thick and Thin” headline, eh? While I have written a fun post about the battle of Stirling Bridge,  possibly history’s best example of why accountants should never be put in charge of armies, today I will restart my Friday review posts. There’s always something to review. History unfolding, scientific breakthroughs, cat news, stock market tips, End Times omens, what have you.

And this week, protests in Iran. This is actually fairly easy to understand. Everything the mainstream media says about Iran is garbage, so that immediately really simplifies my analysis. Basically, there’s always people rioting and demonstrating about something somewhere. We can’t rely on the media to tell us what they are rioting about, but the coverage of such events is revealing. To wit:

If foreign demonstrations get extensive media coverage and are portrayed as  popular “pro-democracy” movements, this means the government in question has told the USA to fuck-off and they aren’t about to let the UN and the IMF run their countries to expedite western looting of their resources. This of course would be the case in Iran. If the demonstrators are opposing a US backed toady government, they will get zero mainstream media coverage. This would be the case in Georgia or Thailand.  And if the demonstrators are actually opposing the hyper concentration of wealth and power that epitomizes the modern era, such as the protesters at the recent G20 conference, they will be portrayed as radical anarchist thugs. See, one can learn something from the mainstream media, one just as to know how to interpret it.

Back to Iran, I don’t really know what’s going on, and I have no idea how this will turn out. The fact that the protests are even allowed would indicate that it’s probably not the horrible dictatorship that some would like us to believe. It’s also a pretty good bet that whatever the  actual results of the election, Ahmadinejad still has a lot of supporters, again, a point that one will rarely see in the western press. And lastly, one has to realize that a lot of the media is using exiles, radicals, and outsiders for their information about Iran. Um, these people might not be the most unbiased sources. In any event, here’s an interesting blog that goes into a bit more detail about western media coverage of foreign unrests: Penny For Your Thoughts. And lastly, despite the endlessly repeated claim that the Iranian election was stolen, it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t. Personally I suspect this will all blow over and Ahmadinejad will continue as Iran’s president, but we’ll see.

In our other foreign policy demon-de-jour, North Korea is making threats again. Of course they aren’t the only one. Obama has called North Korea a “grave threat to the world.” See, that’s the secret to Obama’s success, the man can say stuff that’s absurd beyond all measure, and do so without smirking, laughing, or choking. North Korea is a threat to South Korea, not the world. For the record, North Korea is a small, impoverished, badly run country on the other side of the planet. I’d say that Hollywood has destroyed the typical American’s ability to assess the magnitude of foreign threats, but sadly the American people’s penchant for over-reacting to threats pre-dates the mass media. At one point in the nineteenth century about 20,000 men, fully one third of the US army, was engaged in trying to catch Geronimo and his band of a few dozen braves. Their crime? Refusing to stay on the reservation and cattle rustling. Hmm.

In other world news, a 14 year old boy was recently struck in the hand by a meteorite. This is only the third time in recorded history where a person has been struck by a meteorite, the second being a boy in Uganda who was struck in 1992. The first was the Hodge’s meteorite that came through a roof in Alabama in 1954 and struck a woman napping on a couch. She was badly bruised but able to walk, and the story received world wide media attention at the time. Granted, three hits in fifty years means that people have probably been struck fairly often by meteorites, but it either wasn’t recorded or no one knew what had happened. I mean, if a person was out and about one day, and a rock hit them, most people would assume some miscreant had thrown it from the bushes. There is also a note in a medieval (or older) Chinese archive about an event where “thousands of people”  were killed by “iron falling from the sky.” It’s pretty safe to say if this occurred as described, it was a meteor fall.

In one last note, I have started a Doug’s Darkworld twitter: DougsDarkworld. For one thing I will be using this to announce updates to Doug’s Darkworld. Primarily though this will be a place where I will post links to articles and such that I thought were really interesting or instructive, but was unable to fit them into a post. I suppose I might also make the occasional trenchant remark about ongoing world events … no screaming though, I promise. It’s bad enough my neighbours and cats have to hear me screaming when I watch the news on TV.

Have a great weekend everyone!

(The above image predates 1927 and is public domain under US copyright law. Courtesy of the National Archives. This is one of my all time favourite pictures,  I apologize if I’ve used it before. This is Geronimo and his band photographed while they were being hunted by the US Army. This is significant because this is the only photograph ever taken of a native American military force operating in the field against the US Army. Whether one calls them freedom fighters or criminals, brave or foolhardy, it’s a remarkable moment captured in time.)

The Road Goes Ever On

Well, I’m back from my Sierra mountains vacation. I got back some time ago in fact. Unfortunately, due to circumstances entirely under my control, completely foreseeable, and so stupid as to beggar belief (I’ve waited decades for an opportunity to use that turn of phrase)  my vacation was a stressfest rather than a vacation. So I had to take another vacation when I returned, hence the lateness of my return to Doug’s Darkworld. I needed to de-stress and instead made my situation worse. I wonder, is there any career potential to being a stress counsellor? I could give people advice on how to make their lives more stressful! Face not properly lined? People saying you look too relaxed? Your life a tapestry of ennui due to lack of stress? No worries, Doug can set you straight! Just send me buckets of money and I can guarantee more stress in your life! Especially if you borrow the money! Is this not a cool business plan or what?

Moving right along, there are going to be some changes in Doug’s Darkworld due to the aforementioned stress, not to mention some personal health issues. I have realized that concentrating on the appocalypse unfolding around us for the past year has had a non-salubrious effect on me. Granted I still think that Georgia/Afghanistan/Iraq is the high water mark of the American Empire, and that our economy (snort) is based entirely on toilet paper money and none of this is going to end well, but there’s no reason to dwell on it. So I’m changing the focus of Doug’s Darkworld again this summer.  I will be going back to semi-random posts on history, science, and weirdness. When major events unfold like the war in Georgia or Israel’s recent operation in Gaza occur, I will of course cover them. Otherwise, I will refrain from politics until the next election cycle. Wow, it felt good just to type that.

I’m going to try and include more links to video, as the above link to Georgia’s President Saakashvili eat his own tie on live TV. For example someone sent me this link of Joshua Klein talking about how intelligent crows are. Mr Klein in fact built a vending machine for crows, and they deposit coins to get food. His thinking as that crows could be used for useful things and not just be a pest. It’s an interesting thought, it might be entirely possible to set up some sort of bird vending machines on the edges of cities, and crows would gather trash and trade it in for food pellets. Think about that, parks and streets and yards would be kept free of litter by patrolling crows. The savings on litter pick up would be enormous. And I’m not talking about trained crows, once the first few had figured it out, other crows would learn by watching, and the knowledge of how to turn trash into food would slowly spread through the crow population, as happened in England in the fifties with the Blue Tit and milk bottles. Of course there’s probably a down side. Crows would fly in people’s windows and take papers off desktops for example, that could be a problem.

In any event I’m back and Doug’s Darkworld will resume regular posting. Suggestions for posts are always appreciated, and comments are always welcome. Try to keep the personal attacks in the comments to a minimum though, I cannot and will not approve comments that include insults. Frankly, if a person can’t make their point without insulting other people, they probably don’t have much of a point. And finally, thanks to my readers for simply reading. I hope everyone is having a great summer (or winter for those who live in the antipodes.)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

— J.R.R. Tolkien (British author and scholar, 1892-1973)

(The above image was blatantly used without permission, but since I got it from a realtor’s site and am linking to their page, I am hoping my transgression will be overlooked. Especially since I’m not profiting from the use of the photo and if anything am benefiting the commercial copyright holder’s use of the photo by linking to the fine IDG/Properties/Pete Nevin site. It’s a pic of the Doyle Inn, a fine little grocery store I patronise every time I go to Doyle, CA. And I’m claiming my use of the Tolkien poem as Fair Use under US copyright law, it’s not being used for profit and it’s use here in no way interferes with the copright holder’s commercial use of the work. And it’s the perfect bit of prose to illustrate the post. Copyright: The Tolkien Estate. And crippities, the author has been dead for more than thirty years, there’s something fishy about modern copyright law.)

The Tamil Tigers are No More

Well, looks like the long running Sri Lankan Civil War is over, as the Sri Lankan government has overrun the last rebel stronghold and killed the rebel’s main leaders. The war started in 1983 and there was nothing particularly civil about it. About 90,000 people died, a comparable figure in the USA would be over a million deaths. The war was noted for the rebel’s (The Tamil Tigers) pioneering use of suicide vests and female suicide bombers. There were atrocities committed on both sides though, such is usually (always?) the case in war.

It’s a war I haven’t mentioned much, both because of its ugliness and its long and complex history. I’ll summarize quickly before making  a few points, if I make any egrigious errors I’m sure someone will be kind enough to point them out. Basically the Tamils are a minority group  in Sri Lanka that has been fighting for an independent Tamil state of its own. The Tigers obviously enjoyed at least moderate public support to fight for so long. In fact they were one of the few insurgent groups to field a navy and an air force. The Sea Tigers and the Air Tigers respectively. They, at least many of the Tamils, felt that they were a discriminated against minority in Sri Lanka, and deserved a homeland to call their own.

Whatever the justice of their cause, the Tigers were their own worst enemies. They made some spectacularly ill conceived terrorist attacks and assassinations, in fact the Tigers managed to kill two heads of state, India’s and Sri Lanka’s, a record for an insurgent group I believe. This not only struck all sorts of people as abhorrent and hurt the Tiger’s popularity, it’s also made other heads of state not terribly inclined to throw their support behind the Tigers. In fact a number of nations had classified the Tigers as a terrorist organization. Lack of international support is a huge handicap when trying to form a nation under fire, and in the Tiger’s case it was their ultimate death knell since their funding and weapons all had to come from overseas.

So this war is a rare case of military force being successfully used to destroy an insurgency. The insurgency did last 26 years, though there were long periods where there was little fighting and it seemed diplomacy might end the war. And the insurgency had long ago morphed into a conventional civil war as well. So while this may hearten those enthusiastic about using force to crush insurgencies, this war was special case and there were reasons why a military approach proved successful. Granted it’s not absolutely certain there will be no further troubles, but if the Sinhalese victors are at all magnanimous in victory I suspect the average Tamil is perfectly happy to have the war over.

So why did the Tigers lose? Well, as I explained above, they managed to lose the PR war by ill-conceived terrorist attacks and assassinations. They were also on an island with no bordering states to provide sanctuary and supply. Having to sneak all your weapons in by boat is a severe handicap in a war. The Tigers were also a personality led movement. By that I mean they were created and led by one individual the entire war, one Velupillai Prabhakaran. He got into Tamil politics at an early age, in fact at age 21 he personally assassinated a Tamil leader who he felt had betrayed the Tamil people. I dunno, but I must say that I would have a hard time admiring or following  a leader whose idea of politics was to personally kill his critics. I have a Tamil friend who said Prabhakaran was just a thug, and I certainly wouldn’t argue with her.

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but thugs make poor leaders. I mean, the Tamils had a defacto nation, but from my limited reading they seem to have repeatedly pushed the limits of what they had achieved and precipitated another round of fighting. This last period of fighting seems to have been started by the Tamils cutting off the water to 15,000 villagers in government territories. I think if the Tamil Tigers had leadership that was more diplomatic, there might today be an autonomous Tamil nation in Sri Lanka. That’s just a guess though, and since his  can be said in many situations, not terribly insightful. And the human capacity to make decisions that will continue the violence is our stock-in-trade as a species. Sigh.

One last bit of weirdness, guess where the Sri Lankan military got all the equipment and ammunition they needed to crush the Tamil Tigers? From Pakistan of course. And to make the situation even more bizarre, India is believed to have roiled the pot on occasions by being behind some terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka. The world is a complicated place, and all governments are capable of murderous acts. (They pretty much claim to hold a licence to do so. ) This was an interesting little conflict in some ways, a microcosm of the evil that men do. In any event, I hope that the people of Sri Lanka can put it behind them and rebuild their shattered isle. I mean, they do live in a tropical paradise for God’s sake. God rest the souls of all who died, God heal all those who survived, and Goddammit don’t do it again.

(The above image is being used legally as far as I can determine, it is by the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence and may be used for news purposes so long as it is not modified. It is one of two Air Tiger suicide aircraft that attempted a 9/11 style attack against the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, earlier this year. Both planes were shot down, and only two people on the ground died, which is why it didn’t make the news. It was a futile last gasp by the Tigers, even if the attack had killed a few hundred people this would have just made the Sri Lankans more determined to carry on with their military campaign.)

Goliath, meet David.

What a week. I had a crisis at work so was unable to process various posts I am working on. I will spare my readers the details, but a  former client and I had a billing dispute. I charge well below market value as it is, so it was really annoying to have my very modest charges challenged. And she can’t use the economy as an excuse, she still managed to go on a cruise while I was working. Her loss, I’ve saved her a pile of money through the years. Sometimes the people in charge don’t really understand where their wealth is coming from, a common human failing  suppose.

Moving right along, the USA national budget is going to run at a staggering deficit this year, nearly two trillion dollars in new red ink. For all practical purposes, the government is literally printing money in an attempt to spend our way out of the depression. (And yes, this is a segue from the previous paragraph.) I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to work, but at least think I understand it better. Our economy ultimately depends on growth to generate corporate/financier/investment profit, so the powers that be are desperately trying to jump-start the economy by pouring a huge infusion of cash into it. This is sensible from one perspective, but completely avoids the core issue, does it make sense to have an economy where growth is a structural element?  An economy where if growth stops for whatever reason, the whole economy is crippled? This is a question that rarely gets asked.

And oddly enough in other areas we have these public debates about important issues, but avoid actually debating the core issues. The current debate about prisoner abuse photos is a case in point. There’s debate about the wisdom of releasing these photos, which I won’t go into, because a case can be made either way. What is rarely pointed out is that gee, wouldn’t it be easier to simply not abuse and torture prisoners in the first place? Then the issue wouldn’t even arise. And while there is some debate about the merits of torturing and abusing prisoners, the even deeper issue underlaying that is hardly ever debated, why are America forces going around the world and  imprisoning people anyhow?

Which leads into our current foreign policy. More troops to Central Asia, as Pakistan starts to dissolve. And this is hardly questioned. Since Gulf War One American troops have been present in the Middle East, and after 9/11 American armies have been actively crusading in the Middle East and Central Asia. And I use the word crusade very deliberately, because that’s exactly what these wars are. They are no different than the crusades in the Middle Ages, even some of the same justifications are used. Western armies, convinced of their cultural and religious superiority, are marching through heathen lands to teach these people the benefits of western civilization. We call it nation-building now, but it’s the same old invade and loot it always was. Now our guys ride in armoured tanks instead of armoured horses, and the loot is oil instead of gold, but otherwise it’s the Middle Ages all over again.

Even the term nation-building is delicious, becasue we’re not nation-building at all. In Afghanistan and Iraq, and now spreading into Pakistan, millions of people have been forced from their homes, millions killed and injured, the infrastructure and economy of both nations still shattered years after we “liberated” them. Even in reasonably healthy well established nation-states like post-war Japan and Germany, this kind of damage takes a decade (or longer) of peace to fix. In Iraq Af-Pak we are not dealing with established nation states, and not only are they not a peace, the situation is still getting worse. This isn’t going to end well.

And I don’t mean that this is going to end with the Taliban getting nuclear weapons, though that may eventually happen one way or the other. What I mean is that America’s crusades are going to end the way so many have before, in disaster. A recent study just came out, I read about it in the New Yorker. Simply put, political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft studied every war in the past 200 years where one side had at least a 10-1 advantage over the other. How often did the underdog win? Nearly 30% of the time. That should be a sobering statistic to those who think war is the solution to so many problems, though I doubt they will see it that way. The point being that the underdog always has a chance, usually by changing the rules and not fighting the way the stronger side expected. Will I write about this further in future posts? To quote a recently famous political personage: “You betcha.”

And speaking of Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Germany’s High Court just ruled that double-hyphenated last names would not be allowed. One Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim wanted to take the last name of her husband, Hans Peter Kunz-Hallstein, to become Frieda Rosemarie Thalheim-Kunz-Hallstein! Well, God only knows what terrible fate would befall German civilization if this was allowed, and the judges put a stop to this madness. I suppose this is why I am told that to travel in Germany, a tourist only needs to be able to read and understand one German word: Verboten.

Have a great weekend everyone.

(The above image is public domain under US copyright law as it predates 1927. It’s a colour lithograph by Osmar Schindler (1869-1927): David und Goliath, 1888. As always I chose it because it’s a interesting picture from several perspectives, and it illustrates, at least in my fevered thinking, some of the points in the post.)