A Different Drummer

Executing him on the first day of Eid Al-Adha was stupid and provocative, but what can you expect. Eid Al-Adha is the Islamic holiday celebrating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his own son Ishmael if God commanded him to, and on the first day of Eid Muslim families will symbolically slaughter a sheep as Abraham did. I wrote about this in more depth on my blog back in 2004...

Seems a funny day to execute Saddam. If it was meant to be a symbolic sacrifice, then first, I think they have their symbolism all screwy, and second, what a terrible idea. If it was meant to be some kind of secular "up yours" to Muslims (2.5 million of whom were gathered together in Mecca for the Hajj on the same day), then the asshole who thought of doing it should be next in the gallows. If it was just a coincedence (which is pretty much impossible) then it was just bad, bad management from Iraqi and coalition authorities to let it happen on the Islamic equivelant of Good Friday.

Regardless, the Middle East now has one less asshole, and the worst people in Iraq have one less person to look toward for leadership. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, mate.

For a long, detailed, excellent read, check out his obituary in the New York Times:

"Saddam Hussein was born on April 28, 1937, in a mud hut on stilts near the banks of the Tigris River near the village of Tikrit, 100 miles northwest of Baghdad. He was raised by a clan of landless peasants, his father apparently deserting his mother before his birth. (Government accounts said the father died.) “His birth was not a joyful occasion, and no roses or aromatic plants bedecked his cradle,” his official biographer, Amir Iskander, wrote in “Saddam Hussein, the Fighter, the Thinker and the Man,” published in 1981.

Mr. Hussein told his biographer that he did not miss his father growing up in an extended clan. But persistent stories suggest that Saddam’s stepfather delighted in humiliating the boy and forced him to tend sheep. Eventually he ran away to live with relatives who would let him go to school.

Mr. Hussein’s first role in the rough world of Iraqi politics came in 1959, at age 22, when the Baath Party assigned him and nine others to assassinate Abdul Karim Kassem, the despotic general ruling Iraq. Violence was a quick way for a young man who grew up fatherless in an impoverished village to get ahead; bloodshed became the major theme of his life.

During the failed assassination, Mr. Hussein suffered a bullet wound to the leg. The official version portrayed him as a hero who dug the bullet out with a penknife, while the other version suggests that the plot failed because he opened fire prematurely.

He sought asylum in Egypt, where President Gamal Abdel Nasser nurtured the region’s revolutionary movements. Mr. Hussein recalled studying law and ignoring Cairo’s attractions. Others remember differently.

“He was what we call a troublemaker,” said Hussein Abdel Meguid, the owner of the Andiana cafe that Mr. Hussein frequented, recalling years later in an interview with The New York Times that the Iraqi once turned a brawl into a knife fight."

Read the whole obit for much, much more, on one of the worst people of the 2oth Century.

UPDATE: The times they are a changing - you can watch Saddams execution, shot on mobile phone cam, online:

(obvious warning: video of a person getting executed ahead...)


Saddam Hussein Execution (Amateur Footage) - video powered by Metacafe

The image that proves it:



20 hours left until I go somewhere much, much colder....

News editors wait their whole lives for headlines and leads like this:

"World's tallest man saves dolphin

The world's tallest man has saved two dolphins by using his long arms to reach into their stomachs and pull out dangerous plastic shards." (BBC)

I anxiously wait for the day that the worlds smallest woman saves a kitten in similar circumstances.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has has an article up making fun of the shambles that was known as the Cairo International Film Festival, and although I had kind of mentally blocked all memories of this trainwreck of a festival, the Haaretz piece inspired me to pile on and have some fun. It was a shambolic, disorganised, random, clusterfuck of a festival, and its smouldering remains should be wrapped in barb wire and shot into the sun.

I had written a big entry about how bad the festival website was and how it was practically impossible to find a proper movie listing - but that is boring administrative stuff, and I deleted it. Just check out the wesbite, try and find the film times and descriptions, and marvel at how awful it is. I will save your time and write more about a particularly memorable film screening that we attended.

Last Thursday night, along with a couple of friends, I went to see the film "Everything", by British director Richard Hawkins. As you can see on the website, the plot of "Everything" is:

"The Palestinian Bashar works as a taxi driver in Los Angeles, but he dreams of becoming an actor in Hollywood. He also entertains the hope of returning back home one day, since he was an actor with Al-Qasaba Theatre in Ramallah. In Los Angeles, a film audition typecasts Bashar to play an Al-Qaeda terrorist role. When Bashar gets home, he realises the utilities are due and he has 24 hours to make the money. For the remaining hours left until tomorrow, an increasing flow of passengers ride in Bashar's taxi ........"

Sounds great. Once the film started (the fact that it started 45 minutes late should be taken for granted and hardly merits a mention), the credits rolled, the film was indeed called "Everything" and it was indeed directed by Richard Hawkins. That is where the similarities ended.

"Everything" is about a strange, lonely, introspective British man who makes repeated visits to a prostitute in London. He just wants to talk, but she wants to screw, so she spends a lot of time taking her clothes off and trying to turn him on, and he spends a lot of time trying to coax her into a game of monopoly or putting the kettle on.

The Cairo Film Festival people had screwed up, and pasted the description of another movie (I did some searching and it is "Driving to Zigzigland" by US director Nicole Ballivian) into the info page for "Everything".

Now this is a considerable screwup, but not a totally fatal one. What magnified the fuckup was that the plot of the "Zigzigland" movie is quite friendly, if not attractive, to a mainstream Egyptian Muslim audience - Palestinians, Ramallah, taxi driving, the evils of US homeland security etc. There was quite a few people in the audience who seemed uncomfortable at the very beginning of the film when a scantily dressed prostitute answers the door, and explains that she "takes it in the mouth, in the arse, and everywhere else". These people were considerably more upset and walked out of the film in numbers about 20 minutes later, when the same prostitute stripped naked, spread her legs and started faux-masturbating, in an effort to tempt the guy into sex.

Not that I have a problem with any of this. Nude touchy touchy prostitutes? Fine by me. But imagine a bunch of dudes showing up to see Mission Impossible 4 and instead getting greeted with the deleted, too hot for cinema scenes from "Brokeback Mountain". They would be disappointed in varying degrees, from "dude lets get out of here" all the way through to righteous demands for refunds, apologies etc.

Now replace "bunch of dudes" with "Egyptian Muslims", replace "Mission Impossible 4" with "a film supposedly about, and sympathetic to, the Palestinian diaspora in America", and replace "too hot for cimema scenes from Brokeback Mountain" with "semi-pornographic arthouse garbage about British prostitutes". I think some fury and disappointment is pretty justified.

Read the whole Haaretz article - this was not an isolated mess-up in an ocean of smooth organisation. It was the norm, rather than the exception. Perhaps Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, who oversaw this joke of a festival and it's multi-million dollar budget, should put more effort into hiring some competent festival management, and less effort into baiting the fundamentalist Muslims, even if the second part is much more fun and gets him the international headlines.....

"Well, while I'm here I'll do the work - And what's the work? To ease the pain of living... Everything else, drunken dumbshow"
Allen Ginsberg, on the death of Jack Kerouac

Huy and friends made a bad drunken commitment to build a giant hamburger to ease the pain of recovery on the morning after. And by jeez and by jolly, they delivered:

127 hamburger patties, 127 slices of cheese, and a bunch of guys who will always have shaky hands on the way into the cardiologist's office. Truly the fabric of a great nation. Click here to see the monstrosity from conception through to construction, and the epic endgame. Once you are there, check out the "PAR-T" photoset of another one of their projects - a pizza made with the traditional Australian toppings - 4 quarter pounders, a couple of large serves of McDonalds fries, bacon and good old Australian cheese.

I'm sure that doing this is illegal in certain parts of the world...

One the same day we have two interesting announcements of just how perverse the rules of the international system have become:

1) It is completely wrong, dangerous and immoral to develop nuclear weapons outside of the established Non Proliferation Treaty, unless the US says it isn't wrong and does a back-room deal with you.

2) Democratic elections are the only way for a government to legitimately claim power, unless the US and Europe don't like the result of the elections, in which case the country must be isolated and punished until power is handed back to the old, corrupt cronies who were previously in charge.

One day we will look back on these years and marvel that the would could ever have been led by such moral vacuums.

Doubleplusgood! The new Pain Machines are working flawlessly!

The US Military has certified as "safe for use in Iraq" the new "Active Denial System", which, from the sound of it, shoots invisible rays of burning hot pain in the direction of crowds, who will do anything to get away from it after a few seconds of the excruciating burning sensations on their skin. Read all about it in Wired news...

"The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

'It will repel you,' one test subject said. 'If hit by the beam, you will move out of it -- reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.' "

"Highly Motivated Escape Behavior" has to be up there with "Faith Based Melee" as one of the best neologisms of 2006.

The whole concept of non-lethal weapons for crowd control is theoretically good and practically awful. Obviously it would be better for police and soldiers to have an alternative to a gun when needing to subdue threatening people. The problem is, due to its lethality, using a gun tends to be a last resort kind of thing, and most responsible cops will only use their gun when all other options are gone. Once you put non-lethal weapons in their hands - tasers, stun guns, etc - it becomes much easier to justify their use in less dramatic circumstances.

Has somebody got a funny look in their eye? Some cocky youngster being a bit cheeky and need to learn a lesson in respecting authority? This is exactly what has happened in the States since cops and private security were given access to these kind of weapons. See this, or more scarily, check out this video of cops at the University of California repeatedly taser'ing a student in a library who refused to show his ID - and then threatening angry onlookers "you want to get some too?". Cops in Miami used tasers on a 12 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. And Amnesty International seems pretty pissed off by the whole situation.

I can see how the "Active Denial System" is a much better way for soldiers in Iraq to deal with angry rioting crowds - well better than a machine gun at least. But given the way American cops and private security (many of whom are much more experienced in their work than the average US soldier I suspect) have taken to using non lethal force on pretty much anyone who pisses them off, I don't think its hard to imagine the day when the average Iraqi experiences the sensation of being dipped in molten lava for the smallest of reasons. And I wouldn't want to be a Palestinian if the Israeli's ever get their hands on one.....

The Daily Show had a hilarious piece the other night about the reluctance of the Bush administration to refer to the mess in Iraq as a civil war. Their spoof guest, a "Senior Analyst", offered up some great pieces of typically Orwellian Bush administration newspeak as alternatives to the dreaded C word - including "ongoing scuffle between sectarian insurgent groups", the "internal sovereignity challenge", and my personal favourite, a "faith based melee". Classic.

You can see the clip here, via Huffington Post.

"DUBAI - Damac Holding Group of the United Arab Emirates said on Tuesday it
would start work next year on a 60 billion dirham ($16.3 billion) residential
and tourism project on Egypt’s Red Sea coast." (Khaleej Times)

$16.3 billion dollars gets you about 94.25 billion Egyptian pounds, or 1/20th of Egypt's entire GDP.

These Gulfies really know how to throw their money around - hopefully they hire some decent architects. It would be horrible to see what happened to Egypt's much more beautiful North Coast - with Mediterannean water as gorgeous as you can imagine scarred by thousands and thousands of identical, ugly-as-hell concrete monstrosities, happen to this so far undeveloped area of the Red Sea coast.

Excercise taste and refinement, Gulfies! I guess that is like asking George Bush to take foreign policy advice from the French, but one can always wish....

On the way back from a blissful few days by the Red Sea in Sinai, I got screwed around quite a bit by the guards at a few different checkpoints, who seemed a little more vigorous and enthusiastic than usual. Whatever.

Today, I get this warning in the mailbox, courtesy of the Australian embassy in Cairo. Money quote:

"Recent terrorist attacks in Egypt have targeted foreign tourists resulting in large numbers of deaths and often coincide with local holiday weekends. The security posture of Egyptian security forces remains at elevated levels in the Sinai and throughout Egypt.

You should reconsider your need to travel to the Sinai at this time because of the high threat of terrorist attack. Recent media reports indicate that Israel's National Security Council urged Israeli tourists in the Sinai to leave immediately as extremists may be in advanced stages of preparing attacks against Western targets in the Sinai.

Australians could be inadvertently caught up in any attacks directed atothers. If you are in the Sinai you should consider departing immediately."

(my emphasis)

It looks like me and Doug's recent trip out to Sinai might have have to be my last for a little while until things cool down a little.....

Found via the excellent 3arabawy blog at arabist.net, this BBC news article reveals that the English had a plan to cut the flow of the Nile river during their joint 1956 invasion of the Suez Canal zone along with France and Israel.

The BBC article doesn't seem to give much thought to the probable famine and humanitarian crisis that such a move would have caused, instead quoting some random asshole from the British government at the time who seemed to see starvation as an excellent method of talking to the masses:

"It might be possible to spread the word among the more illiterate Egyptians that 'unless Nasser climbs down, Britain will cut off the Nile'," Cabinet official John Hunt was revealed to have said.

Unbelievable. They seem like really decent people to me these days, but the English political class seem must have been a pack of absolute bastards back in the colonial days. Luckily, the disastrous Suez crisis was the end of all that.....