Saturday, 07/07/07, a unique date which has manifested itself 6 times already, each time in a slightly different form no less and which will appear 5 more times before we're rid of the damned phenomena came and went. Despite the best efforts of 770+ couples locally and 150 music acts playing to an estimated audience of 2 billion people worldwide the planet grinds ever so remorselessly on it's path to a drop in internal core temperature.
Saturday morning brought with it a good old fashioned tropical thunderstorm, lightning and all. I know this because I had to fetch the wife to work. I imagine it must have played havoc with quite a few schedules and nerves but alas to my disappointment the storm abated after a bit and the rest of the day was pleasantly cool. I had such glorious visions of absolute chaos at the ROM. Dang it. Sidebar article on frontpage of 6th July's edition of ST was a story on the 700 odd couples who would tie the knot the following day and the usual inane examples of how numbers play an altogether too significant part in some people's lives. As for me, I'd just like to give a big shout out and Hello! to Mr. Sparks Ng of SIA! Must not...oh hell, /roflmao. Anyhoo, grats to the 700 odd couples who tied the knot on this very special, very unique day ya? Just you, your special other and 1,400 other people. Sparkingly! Twas probably a good weekend for Durex I'm betting.
Live Earth was the other highlight of the day. Well, for 2 billion other people anyways. Heavily tax households who have more than 1 car, tax vehicles which have big engines, bigger rebates for hybrids, make cycling a safe and viable form of transportation, put out more recycling containers in HDB estates, drop your secondary school going kids outside of the all boys school gate and let them walk in, they'll make it to their classrooms just fine I promise, and that's just in Singapore. I don't need convincing that global warming is real, oil interests and countries like China and India do. The US? Yeah, probably but in a generation what China alone will put out will make the US look like Greenpeace if nothing changes. And on a personal note. Fuck, like wearing green and showing solidarity with other tree-huggers-for-one-day while watching acts who waltzed in courtesy of private jets and police escorted tour buses will change anything. You doing anything different today from last friday on the green front?
Showing posts with label Dateline: Earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dateline: Earth. Show all posts
Monday, 9 July 2007
Thursday, 18 August 2005
The beginning of the end?
Gaza Strip - Something Paul Gascoigne used to wear when he played football.
- Two Cheers, BBC
Merkavas loaded with flechette rounds which are used against civilians, an organisation which convinces young men and women into blowing themselves up in sidewalk cafes and in buses full of civilians. Neighbours that have publicly declared they wanted to annihilate me, neighbours who routinely blow up suspected terrorists using Longbows, never mind if they got a few bystanders too. No white or black here, it's all shades of grey.
Midnight of 17 August 2005 marked the deadline set by the government of Ariel Sharon for Israeli settlers to voluntarily leave the Gaza Strip. Named after the main city in the area, it is home to approximately 1,300,000 Palestinians and 8,000 Israeli settlers, all snuggled up nice and warm on a piece of land 360 km². Well, it's not home to the Israelis anymore. Under a unilateral disengagement plan, all settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank are to be closed down in addition to the military installations and personnel built to protect the settlements.
55,000 Israeli soldiers and police yesterday moved in on foot to remove the more hardcore of the 8,000 who had refused to leave voluntarily. Strengthened in numbers by people sympathetic to their cause, the settlers were still no match for the IDF. I had expected some violence and possibly gunplay but happily the latter did not materialize. The IDF clearly did it's homework and applied overwhelming numbers in order to encourage, cajole, order and finally physically carry out those who did not want to leave.
Of course, being called Nazis by your fellow Jews was probably something that didn't occur everyday to the soldiers and police involved in the operation. The BBC showed a clip of a group of girls wearing paper Star of Davids on their chest as they walked out of their settlement crying and wailing, a terribly low and cheap shot in my book. Playing around with the Holocaust like that just insults the memory of the event and is an all too common trump card used by too many Jews when painted into a corner (but that's another story). Other shots of men yelling at impassive soldiers were commonplace. And of course, there's that nutjob who dangled his baby boy out a window Jackson style. You'd have to be inhuman not to let it get to you and several men and women in uniform did break down. Soldiers who disobeyed orders to do their duty were promised court martials, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Still, it seems that by and large, the men and women of the IDF and police did a sterling job of getting it done. Of course, the cynic might ask where were the cameras and reporters when Palestinian homes were razed eh? It's not as if the IDF came in behind armoured bulldozers and shot first and asked questions later.
Symbolically, the withdrawal from the Strip by the Israelis is a milestone. The Israelis don't give up anything easy, especially land they grabbed way back in '67. Doing it unilaterally gives Sharon a lot of brownie points. Sacrificing the homes of 8,000 or so settlers is a small price to pay for gaining the moral upper ground, sort of, "there, now I've done my part, you (Palestinian Authority) do yours and stop all those terrorists running around your backyard". Which gives him all the more reason to blast them back past the Stone Age if the Hezbollah and company decide to start up again. Tack on to that, the money saved from maintaining all those military installations and the spare manpower that can be redeployed elsewhere, we got us a winner here.
What would be interesting would be to see what develops from here on. The West Bank is home to 230,000 Israeli settlers and that's a whole new ballgame from 8,000 baby. I can't remember the last time the Hezbollah blew up something or shot at someone, so someone somewhere must be doing something right, but what happens the next time they do? Too much blood has been spilled for things to go on as smooth as they have for this long a time. Witness the shooting to death of 3 Palestinians by a settler in the West Bank, what happens to people like him anyway?
- Two Cheers, BBC
Merkavas loaded with flechette rounds which are used against civilians, an organisation which convinces young men and women into blowing themselves up in sidewalk cafes and in buses full of civilians. Neighbours that have publicly declared they wanted to annihilate me, neighbours who routinely blow up suspected terrorists using Longbows, never mind if they got a few bystanders too. No white or black here, it's all shades of grey.
Midnight of 17 August 2005 marked the deadline set by the government of Ariel Sharon for Israeli settlers to voluntarily leave the Gaza Strip. Named after the main city in the area, it is home to approximately 1,300,000 Palestinians and 8,000 Israeli settlers, all snuggled up nice and warm on a piece of land 360 km². Well, it's not home to the Israelis anymore. Under a unilateral disengagement plan, all settlements in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank are to be closed down in addition to the military installations and personnel built to protect the settlements.
55,000 Israeli soldiers and police yesterday moved in on foot to remove the more hardcore of the 8,000 who had refused to leave voluntarily. Strengthened in numbers by people sympathetic to their cause, the settlers were still no match for the IDF. I had expected some violence and possibly gunplay but happily the latter did not materialize. The IDF clearly did it's homework and applied overwhelming numbers in order to encourage, cajole, order and finally physically carry out those who did not want to leave.
Of course, being called Nazis by your fellow Jews was probably something that didn't occur everyday to the soldiers and police involved in the operation. The BBC showed a clip of a group of girls wearing paper Star of Davids on their chest as they walked out of their settlement crying and wailing, a terribly low and cheap shot in my book. Playing around with the Holocaust like that just insults the memory of the event and is an all too common trump card used by too many Jews when painted into a corner (but that's another story). Other shots of men yelling at impassive soldiers were commonplace. And of course, there's that nutjob who dangled his baby boy out a window Jackson style. You'd have to be inhuman not to let it get to you and several men and women in uniform did break down. Soldiers who disobeyed orders to do their duty were promised court martials, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Still, it seems that by and large, the men and women of the IDF and police did a sterling job of getting it done. Of course, the cynic might ask where were the cameras and reporters when Palestinian homes were razed eh? It's not as if the IDF came in behind armoured bulldozers and shot first and asked questions later.
Symbolically, the withdrawal from the Strip by the Israelis is a milestone. The Israelis don't give up anything easy, especially land they grabbed way back in '67. Doing it unilaterally gives Sharon a lot of brownie points. Sacrificing the homes of 8,000 or so settlers is a small price to pay for gaining the moral upper ground, sort of, "there, now I've done my part, you (Palestinian Authority) do yours and stop all those terrorists running around your backyard". Which gives him all the more reason to blast them back past the Stone Age if the Hezbollah and company decide to start up again. Tack on to that, the money saved from maintaining all those military installations and the spare manpower that can be redeployed elsewhere, we got us a winner here.
What would be interesting would be to see what develops from here on. The West Bank is home to 230,000 Israeli settlers and that's a whole new ballgame from 8,000 baby. I can't remember the last time the Hezbollah blew up something or shot at someone, so someone somewhere must be doing something right, but what happens the next time they do? Too much blood has been spilled for things to go on as smooth as they have for this long a time. Witness the shooting to death of 3 Palestinians by a settler in the West Bank, what happens to people like him anyway?
Thursday, 28 July 2005
IRA gives up armed struggle
Hopefully, with this statement more than 30 years of low intensity conflict which saw the deaths of more than 3,500 people all told will be brought to a close. Civilians, royalists, republicans, military and members of the security forces.
Having grown up in a time when the mention of the IRA would strike fear into the hearts of people the end seems like a cop out. This was the organisation that introduced knee capping with a drill to the world. Being a Roman Catholic, I remember being horrified to learn the IRA was born of the Roman Catholic community when I was in Secondary School. What the IRA did flew in the face of everything I had faithfully absorbed about the Church. How could people who professed the same faith as I did turn around and gun down innocents? Like all children and teens, I was an idealist. It was disheartening and left me terribly disillusioned. Just one of the many bitter lessons of the realities (and general wackjobness) of life to come.
Here's hoping this one will finally stick.
A Timeline
Having grown up in a time when the mention of the IRA would strike fear into the hearts of people the end seems like a cop out. This was the organisation that introduced knee capping with a drill to the world. Being a Roman Catholic, I remember being horrified to learn the IRA was born of the Roman Catholic community when I was in Secondary School. What the IRA did flew in the face of everything I had faithfully absorbed about the Church. How could people who professed the same faith as I did turn around and gun down innocents? Like all children and teens, I was an idealist. It was disheartening and left me terribly disillusioned. Just one of the many bitter lessons of the realities (and general wackjobness) of life to come.
Here's hoping this one will finally stick.
A Timeline
Wednesday, 27 July 2005
Jean Charles de Menezes (1978 - 2005)
The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by plainclothes police officers of the London Metropolitan Police in a Tube station on 22 July was shocking to say the least. Police justified the shooting by saying he had come from a block of flats which was under observation for being a suspected bomber hideout as well as being dressed in a heavy jacket on a warm day, 17°C being the temperature of the day in question. Jumping over the ticket barrier and running for the train didn't help his cause. Coming a day after 4 bombs fizzled in a botched attempt at a second wave of bombings targeting London's transport system it seemed as if the authorities had finally scored one for the good guys when they announced the shooting was "directly linked" to the bombing investigations.
The next day, the Met revealed the identity of Menezes along with the even more shocking revelation that he wasn't remotely linked to the attempted bombings and more damningly, wasn't carrying any explosives at the time of his death. The Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, apologised to the Menezes family and called the death a "tragedy" but maintained the "shoot to kill" policy concerning suspectedsuicidee bombers would stay.
How Jean Charles de Menezes came to die on the floor of a Tube train presents us all with a little problem. An innocent died at the hands of the police. To be sure, he's not the first. Amadou Diallo comes to mind, but we can explain Diallo away as a case of trigger happy policemen who shot first and asked questions later.
But wait, Menezes looked like a bomber, acted like a bomber. He was shot because he looked like a threat to the policemen of an already frazzled city which had suffered two bomb attacks in the space of two weeks. No matter which way you cut it, Menezes was in the wrong place at the wrong time and wearing the wrong thing. Then again, he's Brazilian, where I'm from, 17°C is pretty damn cold to me, I'm sure it was to him. Okay, so why did he run when police told him to stop? Men dressed in plain clothes start waving guns at you. English isn't your first language. Maybe the accent wasn't didn't help. I don't know. Whatever the case is, Menezes was shot in the head because he looked like a suicide bomber, acted like a suicide bomber. Hindsight is 20/20, don't diss the cops for doing their job.
Sir Ian Blair says Menezes may not be the last, the "shoot to kill" policy stays. To put it crudely, the first time was a freebie, but Menezes Part II? A bit much innit? Where does one draw the line? Locking people up without need to show cause is already a bit much, especially if they're innocent. But to shoot me in the head just because I happen to fit the profile of a suicide bomber? Remind me to wear a singlet if I ever manage to get to London and ride the Tube. Some stuff I rather not regurgitate here and here.
And to top things off, just this morning, Brit police apprehended a suspected bomber of the 22/7 bombings, apparently he had on him a backpack with a "device" in it at the time of his arrest. Uniformed officers took him down with a Taser. Food for thought.
Technorati tags: Singapore, Jean Charles de Menezes
The next day, the Met revealed the identity of Menezes along with the even more shocking revelation that he wasn't remotely linked to the attempted bombings and more damningly, wasn't carrying any explosives at the time of his death. The Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, apologised to the Menezes family and called the death a "tragedy" but maintained the "shoot to kill" policy concerning suspectedsuicidee bombers would stay.
How Jean Charles de Menezes came to die on the floor of a Tube train presents us all with a little problem. An innocent died at the hands of the police. To be sure, he's not the first. Amadou Diallo comes to mind, but we can explain Diallo away as a case of trigger happy policemen who shot first and asked questions later.
But wait, Menezes looked like a bomber, acted like a bomber. He was shot because he looked like a threat to the policemen of an already frazzled city which had suffered two bomb attacks in the space of two weeks. No matter which way you cut it, Menezes was in the wrong place at the wrong time and wearing the wrong thing. Then again, he's Brazilian, where I'm from, 17°C is pretty damn cold to me, I'm sure it was to him. Okay, so why did he run when police told him to stop? Men dressed in plain clothes start waving guns at you. English isn't your first language. Maybe the accent wasn't didn't help. I don't know. Whatever the case is, Menezes was shot in the head because he looked like a suicide bomber, acted like a suicide bomber. Hindsight is 20/20, don't diss the cops for doing their job.
Sir Ian Blair says Menezes may not be the last, the "shoot to kill" policy stays. To put it crudely, the first time was a freebie, but Menezes Part II? A bit much innit? Where does one draw the line? Locking people up without need to show cause is already a bit much, especially if they're innocent. But to shoot me in the head just because I happen to fit the profile of a suicide bomber? Remind me to wear a singlet if I ever manage to get to London and ride the Tube. Some stuff I rather not regurgitate here and here.
And to top things off, just this morning, Brit police apprehended a suspected bomber of the 22/7 bombings, apparently he had on him a backpack with a "device" in it at the time of his arrest. Uniformed officers took him down with a Taser. Food for thought.
Technorati tags: Singapore, Jean Charles de Menezes
Monday, 25 July 2005
Flashbacks
The London bombings of 7th July were quite the nasty epilogue to the city's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Four bombs, three placed on Tube trains and 1 on a double decker bus, went off within minutes of each other around 0900hrs local time killing 50 odd commuters and wounding over 700. Compared to the Madrid bombings of a year and a half ago the Brits got off pretty lightly. The Spaniards lost more than triple the number in dead and over 900 wounded on an above ground system. Considering the Tube has had several incidents of station fires where there was loss of life due to suffocation and/or smoke inhalation someone must be counting their blessings.
Scenes of streets being filled with emergency services vehicles and personnel dressed in all sorts of bright colours with their job designation spelt out at the back of their jumpsuits was a site to see. No scenes of mass panic, somewhat frazzled commuters being herded away from incident sites by simliarly frazzled police was about as panic stricken as you could get. Some credit the famous stiff upper lip of the Brits, others the wave of bombings by the IRA in the 80's, others still the relatively small impact the bombs made to explain the relative calm exhibited by the majority of Londonors in the immediate aftermath and days following the attack.
For me, the defining scene of this sorry episode was a shot of an ambulance just outside the doors of a hospital ER, a paramedics performing CPR on a stretcher case as they offloaded the poor sod off the vehicle and into the hospital. Someone's life was slipping away as I was sitting down to dinner half a world away. Made me really mad at whoever did it. Made me want to rail at the injustice of it all. But then I got around to reading this a couple of days after.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9422.htm
Quote:
"It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid."
Food for thought. While I don't remember anyone calling Iraqi civilian deaths "collateral damage" I also don't remember hourly coverage of the latest car bomb casualties or if anyone did a story on the survivors of the last family car to get blown away cos they were approaching the American manned checkpoint a little too quickly. In this age of 24/7 coverage, how the media chooses to project a story can greatly influence the perceptions and opinions that people take away from the story. Witness the aftermath of 9/11 and the London bombings, endless coverage, live briefings from authorities. Juxtapose that image with a ten second shaky video shot of the remnants of the latest car bomb to hit Baghdad in the distance and accompanying sound bite, something not right, can't quite figure out what. I know! The danged cameraman! They need to get someone who isn't high on hashish or something when he's filming. Sheesh, shaky video images, you'd think the BBC/CNN could do better.
I also picked up something from the July 12 edition of The Daily Show, well, not the whole show, just the clip on onegoodmove.org. Never really noticed the newscasters on CNN being like that before, or maybe I did but could never really put my finger on it. BBC rocks in any case.
Still, CNN is only guilty of sensationalising or at most, spinning a story so people could point to London and say "See? We got 'em on the run, that's why they're bombing London." Fox News on the other hand.....where in the hell do they get these people?
Footnote, the botched attempts at Wave 2 on July 21st totally blindsided everyone, you'd think lightning never strikes twice, perhaps that's what Wave 2 was all about, a sucker punch from a direction you never expected. ie. the same place. Not that it's any comfort to the poor sod that got shot cos he was wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of summer and refused to stop when plainclothes police officers told him to. More on this when I've had time to organise my simple mind.
Scenes of streets being filled with emergency services vehicles and personnel dressed in all sorts of bright colours with their job designation spelt out at the back of their jumpsuits was a site to see. No scenes of mass panic, somewhat frazzled commuters being herded away from incident sites by simliarly frazzled police was about as panic stricken as you could get. Some credit the famous stiff upper lip of the Brits, others the wave of bombings by the IRA in the 80's, others still the relatively small impact the bombs made to explain the relative calm exhibited by the majority of Londonors in the immediate aftermath and days following the attack.
For me, the defining scene of this sorry episode was a shot of an ambulance just outside the doors of a hospital ER, a paramedics performing CPR on a stretcher case as they offloaded the poor sod off the vehicle and into the hospital. Someone's life was slipping away as I was sitting down to dinner half a world away. Made me really mad at whoever did it. Made me want to rail at the injustice of it all. But then I got around to reading this a couple of days after.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9422.htm
Quote:
"It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid."
Food for thought. While I don't remember anyone calling Iraqi civilian deaths "collateral damage" I also don't remember hourly coverage of the latest car bomb casualties or if anyone did a story on the survivors of the last family car to get blown away cos they were approaching the American manned checkpoint a little too quickly. In this age of 24/7 coverage, how the media chooses to project a story can greatly influence the perceptions and opinions that people take away from the story. Witness the aftermath of 9/11 and the London bombings, endless coverage, live briefings from authorities. Juxtapose that image with a ten second shaky video shot of the remnants of the latest car bomb to hit Baghdad in the distance and accompanying sound bite, something not right, can't quite figure out what. I know! The danged cameraman! They need to get someone who isn't high on hashish or something when he's filming. Sheesh, shaky video images, you'd think the BBC/CNN could do better.
I also picked up something from the July 12 edition of The Daily Show, well, not the whole show, just the clip on onegoodmove.org. Never really noticed the newscasters on CNN being like that before, or maybe I did but could never really put my finger on it. BBC rocks in any case.
Still, CNN is only guilty of sensationalising or at most, spinning a story so people could point to London and say "See? We got 'em on the run, that's why they're bombing London." Fox News on the other hand.....where in the hell do they get these people?
Footnote, the botched attempts at Wave 2 on July 21st totally blindsided everyone, you'd think lightning never strikes twice, perhaps that's what Wave 2 was all about, a sucker punch from a direction you never expected. ie. the same place. Not that it's any comfort to the poor sod that got shot cos he was wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of summer and refused to stop when plainclothes police officers told him to. More on this when I've had time to organise my simple mind.
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