Calm down dear, calm down

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Informed Comment: On How al-Anbar isn't that Safe and on How its "Calm" is Artificially Produced
Now the 'good news' appears (I swear to God) to be that you can "walk" in Iraq. That's the good news. The 7 billion people in the world walk every day, in most of the world's locales. Now it is an achievement to walk. That's good news of the highest order. Only, if you are American in Fallujah you might need a company of Marines with you so that you can . . . walk.

One of the ways "calm" has been produced in the city is to simply forbid vehicular traffic. Since May, if you wanted to get somewhere in Fallujah, you have had to walk. So when the National Review tells us things are suddenly miraculously "calm" in al-Anbar, this is being produced artificially. Things would be calm in most hot spots if you could ban all forms of locomotion save walking. The problem with producing calm by banning traffic is that it leaves you with a Somalia level of economic activity.

IPS notes, ' Residents say unemployment is above 80 percent. Most of the rest who have some work are government employees. The huge industrial area has been closed by U.S. and Iraqi Army units ' 80 percent unemployment?

Now that is calm.


Migration

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The move from BT to ADSL24 went absolutely smoothly. There was a moment when I felt anxious as I checked our sync speed to see that it had dropped by over two megs but we quickly discovered the problem was a missing filter on some equipment downstairs. The line is now humming along at a sync speed of 8.1 megs and we should be getting the maximum throughput rate of 7.2 megs within the next 48 hours.

It's 10pm and I'm getting four times the speed I got from BT at this time of the day.  And we are not running at max yet!  What I really like is the upload speed of over 760 kbps.  And the super-fast ping at around 35 ms is good news for gaming. So far I'm pretty pleased with the move.

If you're tired of slowdowns, traffic throttling, port blocking or capping during peak times by BT and the other big boys  take my advice and move. Check the forums and decide on a new ISP for yourself or (in the UK) give ADSL24 a try.

 

Prime Minister NOT President - Doh!

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Some bloke from Human Resources:
The opportunity to win a General Election and negate the fact that he has seized power in a bloodless coup has just whizzed past Gordon Brown.
Yawn, yawn, fucking yawn. Tony Blair was voted into parliament as an MP by his constituents, just like all the other MPs and the leadership of the Labour party was (and is) decided by, erm, the Labour party. It's not undemocratic and to call Brown's election to the leadership a 'bloodless coup' , even with tongue firmly in cheek is risible.

It's got fuck all to do with anyone outside the Labour party whether Gordon Brown is leader (and therefore PM) or not. It certainly has fuck all to do with members and supporters of You Kip.

And do any of the Tories yapping on about legitimising his leadership with an election honestly believe that their gormless Old Etonian stands a cat-in-hell's chance of winning if he did? Maybe they just want to get it all over with so they can start the hunt for the next poor Tory Twat to lead them. Boris anyone? Ha ha!


The 'silent global crisis'

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Dirt Isn't So Cheap After All
Soil erosion is the "silent global crisis" that is undermining food production and water availability, as well as being responsible for 30 percent of the greenhouse gases driving climate change. "We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth," said Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service.

"Soil and vegetation is being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change," Arnalds told IPS from Selfoss, Iceland, host city of the International Forum on Soils, Society and Climate Change which starts Friday.

Along with many other international partner institutions, Iceland is marking the centenary of its Soil Conservation Service by convening this forum of experts. Every year, some 100,000 square kilometres of land loses its vegetation and becomes degraded or turns into desert. "Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind," Arnalds said.


Somewhere, orbiting The Sun in a parallel universe...

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The Sun Online - News: The job's done for Our Boys
British troops took the first steps towards handing power back to the Iraqis last night — feeling proud of a job well done...Brigadier James Bashall told The Sun: “It is entirely unfair and untrue to say Basra has been lost, or that the British Army has been defeated here. “There is no crisis here, and there is very little gangland violence. Ninety per cent of the violence in Basra is directed by militias against us.

So, they're not fighting each other in Basra just the British troops and they have turned Basra into the most dangerous posting for British troops anywhere, including Afghanistan, and now the troops have left Basra under cover of darkness in the most heavily fortified British armoured column ever seen there , and this in spite of the fact that the Mehdi Army has instituted a ceasefire. But this is not a defeat, on the contrary, it's a 'job well done'. Jeeeeeez.




Suffer Little Children #285

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Jews sans frontieres: Why Israel kills children
Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz:

The IDF does not care whether its victims are liable to be children. The fact is that it shoots at figures it considers suspicious, with full knowledge - according to its own contention - that they are liable to be children. Therefore, an IDF that fires at launcher collectors is an army that kills children, without any intention of preventing this. This then is not a series of unfortunate mistakes, as it is being portrayed, but rather reflects the army's contempt for the lives of Palestinian children and its terrifying indifference to their fate.


All the purple fingers Where do they all belong?...

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Some see 'coup' as Iraq's best hope - Chicago Tribune
In the lobbies of luxury hotels and the apartments of exiles, an assortment of Iraqi politicians has been spending the summer vacation plotting a new Iraqi coup -- a non-violent, parliamentary coup to be sure, but a coup nonetheless, that would oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, declare a state of emergency and install a new government.

At the forefront of these efforts is former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite who was Washington's first choice to lead Iraq after the U.S. occupation authority ended. He now is being presented by his followers as the best hope of saving Iraq from what they say is certain catastrophe.

But Allawi  is by no means the only name in circulation. Another former prime minister, two current vice presidents, a former planning minister, an Iraqi general from the old regime and an independent Sunni parliamentarian are among those being mentioned as potential alternatives.Related links * Bush hears Joint Chiefs on war "Everyone is desperate to be prime minister," said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni politician who has thrown his support behind Allawi but who has also been mentioned as a potential candidate. "Iraq is producing prime ministers."

Via BuzzFlash

No, I invented Facebook! from: The (non) Life of Aaron

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Who Invented Facebook…And Who Cares?
Aaron Greenspan is so important that at age 24, he has already written an autobiography. In it, he explains how he - not Mark Zuckerberg or the ConnectU founders - was the original creator of Facebook, a site now worth many billions of dollars. “This book is partly a search for justice”, he writes of his struggle...Greenspan has yet to find a publisher for his autobiography.
I loved this updated piece on the drawn-out Facebook saga from Mashable:
It began back in 1997, years before Zuckerberg even considered his Facebook project. I was considering a way to include high school or college photographs in a printed book, and came up with a concept I called Faces Book. Now that may sound a little similar to the “yearbooks” that existed at the time, but this had a totally different name. And notice how similar that name is to what Zuckerberg would later develop!

Now I didn’t actually produce this Faces Book, just thought about it, but I just created the image above to show what it would have looked like. Another startling fact: I had considered letting people write sentiments on each other’s Faces Books - pretty similar to “The Wall”, don’t you think? Since two people never think of the same idea at a similar time, I can only conclude that Zuckerberg used a mind-reading contraption to literally steal the idea from my brain. This will be the basis of my $1 billion lawsuit to be filed later this month.