BlackHat's Journal: /Swastika nightingales croon tongue in cheek/

A pair of quotes, some news, and the rest of the usual stuff.

Quote(1):
October 11, 1915. TO R.K.

I have just seen in the Times that Charles Lister died of his wounds. It really is heart-breaking. All the men one had so fondly hoped would make the world a little better to live in seem to be taken away. And Charles was a spirit which no country can afford to lose. I feel so sorry for you too: he must have been very dear to you personally. How the world will hate war when it can pause to think about it.

I had quite a cheerful letter from Foss this mail. I wonder he wasn't more damaged, as the bullet seems to have passed through some very important parts of him. I am rather dreading the lists which are bound to follow on our much-vaunted advance of three weeks ago. As for the Dardanelles, it is an awful tragedy. And now with Bulgaria against us and Greece obstructed by her King, success is farther off than ever.

No, Luly is not with me: I was the only officer with the draft. As for impressions of our surroundings they are definite but not always communicable.

If this neighbourhood could certainly be identified with Eden, one could supply an entirely new theory of the Fall of Adam. Here at Amarah we are 200 miles by river from the sea and 28ft. above sea level. Within reach of the water anything will grow: but as the Turks levied a tax on trees the date is the only one which has survived. There are little patches of corn and fodder-stuff along the banks, and a few vegetable gardens round the town. Otherwise the whole place is a desert and as flat as this paper: except that we can see the bare brown Persian mountains about forty miles off to the N.N.E.

The desert grows little tufts of prickly scrub here and there, otherwise it is like a brick floor. In the spring it is flooded, and as the flood recedes the mud cakes into a hard crust on which a horse's hoof makes no impression; but naturally the surface is very rough in detail, like a muddy lane after a frost. So it is vile for either walking or riding.

The atmosphere can find no mean between absolute stillness--which till lately meant stifling heat--and violent commotion in the form of N.W. gales which blow periodically, fogging the air with dust and making life almost intolerable while they last. These gales have ceased to be baking hot, and in another month or two they will be piercingly cold.

The inhabitants are divided into Bedouins and town-Arabs. The former are nomadic and naked, and live in hut-tents of reed matting. The latter are just like the illustrations in family Bibles.

What I should be grateful for in the way of literature is if you could find a portable and readable book on the history of these parts. I know it's rather extensive, but if there are any such books on the more interesting periods you might tell Blackwell to send them to me: I've got an account there. My Gibbon sketches the doings of the first four Caliphs: but what I should like most would be the subsequent history, the Baghdad Caliphs, Tartar Invasion, Turkish Conquest, etc. For the earlier epochs something not too erudite and very popular would be most suitable. Mark Sykes tells me he is about to publish a Little Absul's History of Islam, but as he is still diplomatising out here I doubt if it will be ready for press soon.

As for this campaign, you will probably know more about the Kut battle than I do. Anyway the facts were briefly these. The Turks had a very strongly entrenched position at Kut, with 15,000 men and 35 guns. We feinted at their right and then outflanked their left by a night march of twelve miles. (Two brigades did this, while one brigade held them in front.) Then followed a day's hard fighting as the out-flankers had to storm three redoubts successfully before they could properly enfilade the position. Just as they had done it the whole Turkish reserve turned up on their right and they had to turn on it and defeat it, which they did. But by that time it was dark, the troops were absolutely exhausted and had finished all their water. Nobody could tell how far the river was, so the only thing to do was to bivouac and wait for daylight. In the night the Turks cleared out and got away. If we could have pressed on and seized their bridge, we should have almost wiped them out: but it was really wonderful we did as much as we did under the circumstances. Our casualties were 1243, but only 85 killed. The Turkish losses are not known: we captured about 1400 and 12 of the guns: we buried over 400, but don't know how many the local Arabs buried. Our pursuit was delayed by the mud-banks on the river, and the enemy was able to get clear and reform in their next position, about ninety miles further north. We are now concentrating against them and it is authoritatively reported that large reinforcements have been sent from India. This means they intend going for Baghdad. It seems to me rash: but I suppose there is great need to assert our prestige with the Moslem world, even at the expense of our popularity: for B. is a fearfully sacred place.

I should also like from Blackwell's a good and up-to-date map of these parts, i.e. from the Troad to the Persian Gulf.
  -- Robert Palmer(ed).

Quote(2):
The form and texture of the coming warfare--if there is still warfare to come--are not yet to be seen in their completeness upon the modern battlefield. One swallow does not make a summer, nor a handful of aeroplanes, a "Tank" or so, a few acres of shell craters, and a village here and there, pounded out of recognition, do more than foreshadow the spectacle of modernised war on land.

War by these developments has become the monopoly of the five great industrial powers; it is their alternative to end or evolve it, and if they continue to disagree, then it must needs become a spectacle of majestic horror such as no man can yet conceive. It has been wise of Mr. Pennell therefore, who has recently been drawing his impressions of the war upon stone, to make his pictures not upon the battlefield, but among the huge industrial apparatus that is thrusting behind and thrusting up through the war of the gentlemen in spurs.

He gives us the splendours and immensities of forge and gun pit, furnace and mine shaft. He shows you how great they are and how terrible. Among them go the little figures of men, robbed of all dominance, robbed of all individual quality. He leaves it for you to draw the obvious conclusion that presently, if we cannot contrive to put an end to war, blacknessess like these, enormities and flares and towering threats, will follow in the track of the Tanks and come trampling over the bickering confusion of mankind.

There is something very striking in these insignificant and incidental men that Mr. Pennell shows us. Nowhere does a man dominate in all these wonderful pictures. You may argue perhaps that that is untrue to the essential realities; all this array of machine and workshop, all this marshalled power and purpose, has been the creation of inventor and business organiser. But are we not a little too free with that word "creation"?

Falstaff was a "creation" perhaps, or the Sistine sibyls; there we have indubitably an end conceived and sought and achieved; but did these inventors and business organisers do more than heed certain unavoidable imperatives? Seeking coal they were obliged to mine in a certain way; seeking steel they had to do this and this and not that and that; seeking profit they had to obey the imperative of the economy. So little did they plan their ends that most of these manufacturers speak with a kind of astonishment of the deadly use to which their works are put. They find themselves making the new war as a man might wake out of some drugged condition to find himself strangling his mother.

So that Mr. Pennell's sketchy and transient human figures seem altogether right to me. He sees these forges, workshops, cranes and the like, as inhuman and as wonderful as cliffs or great caves or icebergs or the stars. They are a new aspect of the logic of physical necessity that made all these older things, and he seizes upon the majesty and beauty of their dimensions with an entire impartiality.

And they are as impartial. Through all these lithographs runs one present motif, the motif of the supreme effort of western civilisation to save itself and the world from the dominance of the reactionary German Imperialism of modern science. The pictures are arranged to shape out the life of a shell, from the mine to the great gun; nothing remains of their history to show except the ammunition dump, the gun in action and the shell-burst. Upon this theme all these great appearances are strung to-day.

But to-morrow they may be strung upon some other and nobler purpose. These gigantic beings of which the engineer is the master and slave, are neither benevolent nor malignant.

To-day they produce destruction, they are the slaves of the spur; to-morrow we hope they will bridge and carry and house and help again.
  -- H.G. Wells.

News served with a mackeral gateau:
Nine one Juan.
ZNet Sustianer: Dear Noam, There is much documentation observed and uncovered by the 911 families themselves suggesting a criminal conspiracy within the Bush Administration to cover-up the 9/11 attacks (see DVD, 9/11: Press for Truth). Additionally, much evidence has been put forward to question the official version of events. This has come in part from Paul Thompson, an activist who has creatively established the 9/11 Timeline, a free 9/11 investigative database for activist researchers, which now, according to The Village Voice's James Ridgeway, rivals the 9/11 Commission's report in accuracy and lucidity (see,http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0416,mondo1,52830,6.html, or www.cooperativeresearch.org).

Noam Chomsky: Hard for me to respond to the rest of the letter, because I am not persuaded by the assumption that much documentation and other evidence has been uncovered. To determine that, we'd have to investigate the alleged evidence. Take, say, the physical evidence. There are ways to assess that: submit it to specialists -- of whom there are thousands -- who have the requisite background in civil-mechanical engineering, materials science, building construction, etc., for review and analysis; and one cannot gain the required knowledge by surfing the internet. In fact, that's been done, by the professional association of civil engineers. Or, take the course pursued by anyone who thinks they have made a genuine discovery: submit it to a serious journal for peer review and publication. To my knowledge, there isn't a single submission.
Fear rules... , alas.

BrownLeatherJacket also has a new item on Darfur. Nevertheless, Darfur remained relatively quiet during the dreadful war (two million dead in the past twenty years) between the African ethnic groups of southern Sudan, where most people are Christians or animists, and the Muslims of the Arabised north who dominated Sudan's government, army and economy. It was the peace settlement between north and south in 2003 that triggered the revolt in Darfur. That peace deal gave the southern rebels a share in the central government, a half-share of the oil revenues now pouring in from wells that are mostly located in "southern" territory, and the right to a referendum on independence from Sudan in six years' time. So some leaders of the Zaghawa and the Fur decided to emulate the southerners: launch a revolt in Darfur, and try to cut a similar deal with Khartoum in return for ending it.

In a Pythonesk way this is only to be expected. Palestinian PM Ismail Haniya collapses while addressing tens of thousands of supporters in the Gaza Strip.
 
/Do you love me?/ Yes we do/ On this, the birthday/ Of the founder of our tribe/ Saddam Clinton Powell/ The Nigerian army has carried out a series of raids on oil militants after the reported deaths of 17 soldiers in the Niger Delta, several sources say. The militants say a village in the oil producing area was razed to the ground but this was denied by the army. The militants claim to have killed the troops in two attacks but this has not been independently confirmed. They are now threatening further attacks.

Mayor of Kabul flaps his gums for his idiot puppet masters.
 
/Oly-ma-kitty-luca-chi-chi-chi/

Simon's Tory encounters in Bat Country. Then we had a handful of delegates, none of whom said anything remotely worrying for the leadership. Next we were on even safer ground with a speech from Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google. An uber-nerd! Without a shadow of doubt, a nerd out-nerded only by Bill Gates, an anorak's anorak. "I have always wanted to climb Mt Everest," he told us, adding that he knew he never would. But thanks to Google Earth, he could climb Mt Everest in the comfort of his own office! "I've made it!" It was the perfect metaphor for the conference. They plan to win the next election - virtually! Dr Schmidt also told them - if I understood correctly - that before long it would be possible to fit the sum of all human knowledge on to an iPod. It would make a change on trains: that annoying chunka-chunka noise from the next seat would be an analysis of Cartesian dualism rather than Arctic Monkeys.

Free and not dead press.

AirStrip One report: Looking ahead to the summit in Lahti on October 20, the PM said migration, energy policy and the importance of innovation in Europe's economy would be on the agenda.

And over at Oceanside Park there's another game of SD Daily Press Briefing Softball:
QUESTION: Do you have any details of this meeting at the NSC, I believe it was Tuesday? What officials from the State Department were there? I guess they were talking about options for, I guess, convincing North Korea not to test and what would happen if they did test.

MR. CASEY: There are discussions that go on all the time internally on this matter and on others. I don't have anything on meetings that have taken place elsewhere, and in terms of anything that happened at the NSC I'd refer you over there. But I believe their general policy is not to comment on internal deliberations.

QUESTION: What -- well, I guess -- what about the idea of a naval blockade? I guess that came up in the meeting.

MR. CASEY: Again, I'm not aware of any decisions that have been made on policies and certainly I wouldn't be in a position to describe for you what, if any, options were being discussed in particular.
The usual strike one. Anyone[surely!]. Play Ball.

QUESTION: Is there any progress towards the holding of this P-5+1? I know Secretary Rice today raised some questions, said a couple of ministers didn't seem to be able to go. I mean, other people are -- and the Russians said they were going, the French are talking about going. Do you know where this stands?

MR. CASEY: Well, I think in terms of the Secretary's schedule I don't have any announcements for you. What I can tell you is Under Secretary Nick Burns will be in London tomorrow. He intends to meet there with the P-5+1 political directors. Certainly, as you've seen, there have been statements by Mr. Solana among others about where the process stands. What we expect the political directors will do is take account and take stock of the situation and review where this process is and what our next steps might be. Certainly I would expect that in the future there will be opportunities for the Secretary to consult with her colleagues on this as well.

QUESTION: The political directors will be continuing their talks on the specific list of sanctions in a first UN resolution?

MR. CASEY: Well, as I said, the political directors will look at and take stock of where the situation is. Certainly I expect that discussions of how to proceed in terms of a sanctions resolution, as called for under Security Council Resolution 1696, would be part of that discussion.

Sue.

QUESTION: The fact that there is unlikely to be a meeting of the ministers, does that indicate that there is not consensus then among the political directors as to how to proceed if they're still talking about it?

MR. CASEY: No, my understanding is there are some scheduling issues involved and I wouldn't read anything more into it than that.
Two and one. Moving quickly on.

QUESTION: Tom, it appears that Russia is continuing to ramp up sanctions against Georgia, various ways of isolating that country and this despite the release of the Russian prisoners that were in Georgia and also appeals for restraint from a lot of places, Washington. I wonder if you have any further reflection on that?

MR. CASEY: I really don't have anything new to offer on that for you, David. Actually, I'd just refer you back to what I said previously. Again, what we really want to see happen is that both these countries work together and resolve their differences in a peaceful way. And we certainly want to see good neighborly relations between Georgia and Russia. They share a common border, they share a common history in many ways, and we certainly want to see them be able to maintain good relationships with one another.

QUESTION: Are you in touch with the Russians on that?

MR. CASEY: We continue to be in contact with both the Russian and Georgian Government on this issue. And again, our discussions with them are the same as the comments I've made here previously, encouraging both of them to deal with this issue in a positive way and resolve their differences peacefully.
And Casey is left swinging repeatedly after the ball. More funnies in there, as usual.

TYAITJ:
86117 : A new buzzword-- Green cutting, QUESTION: So let me just state it. There is nothing in this report to call into question that Saddam represented an untolerable threat to the United States?

MR. ERELI: Our conclusion is that Saddam Hussein, by his demonstrated capability and his intent, represented a threat to the United States that we needed to act upon.

TYAITJ:
48293 : /Rollup for the Misery tour/ ... /Is this lump outta my head?/I think so!/

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of George W. Bush speaking to the press in front of the faux ranch set; "Susan Ralston? Never heard of her. Next question."