Month: September 2004

Lord Butler, yesterday:
“Although none of us on the committee doubted or doubt today the prime minister’s and the government’s good faith in concluding that Saddam Hussein had concealed stocks of chemical and biological weapons – that was a view shared by most other countries and indeed by [chief weapons inspector] Dr Hans Blix – the government’s dossier in September 2002 did not make clear that the intelligence underlying those conclusions was very thin.”
Also: “The link between the Iraq regime and the spread of international terrorism was really not one supported by the intelligence.”
Translation: yes, Tony believed it, but the evidence wasn’t really there. And the Iraq – Al Qaeda thing wasn’t there either.
Just like the anti-war left’s been bloody saying all along.
And yet the Butler report, like the Hutton report before it, have somehow become weapons for the pro-war faction. Aaaargh. War with Eastasia, etc.
From Guardian print edition, my favourite:
“We did not of course say that no one was to blame for the shortcomings. At the press conference, I said that no individual was to blame.”
Oh! Silly us for being confused and not challenging all the pro-war pundits who misrepresented your meaning! Such a pity you didn’t feel the need to step up and clarify your position until now, huh?
Pretty much everything the anti-war left said about Iraq has come to pass. The fact that this isn’t recognised just shows how much traction the pro-war caricature of the anti-war position has gained. And it makes me mad. (Cue Twisted Sister riff.*)
*I admit it, when I first saw the video to ‘we’re not gonna take it’, I was scared by it. But won over. Strangely, a career in glam metal didn’t follow, but such are life’s mysteries.

they just get you your latte when you come in the door – that’s where I’m at with a couple of the cafes around the place. Pretty cool. Neither one holds a candle to my beloved Eva Dixons (RIP), of course, but they’re not bad places to hang out and write.
I’m doing that thing of ‘one hour every day’ and its sort of working. Its a bit slower than I’d like but I’m writing Ron longhand and there are no worktables at home, so I can only work on it out of the house. There are plenty of other things to occupy me in the counter-hours, anyway.
I’ve retooled my website. I’ll launch it soon when I have a bit more content in hand. It has a key position in The Plan.
I’m hearing enthusiastic noises about a couple of game magazine articles, but I’ll reserve my happiness until I receive a cheque or I see my name in print. Preferably both.
I’m shying away from the world at large a little at the moment. The horror of what happened in Russia is something I’ve only slowly walked up to, days afterward. More storms and freaky weather all over the world indicate climate change isn’t slowing down. And I don’t want to think about what it means that Bush is currently holding an electoral lead in the US. It is all a bit much right now.
Some stuff I want to draw attention to:
kids from the Rocinho favela in Brazil photograph their world – linked to by my host David.
Jenni‘s entry on body image – and the comments that follow. “It gets me down that some of my friends can’t also be happy with their bodies. I don’t see them as bodies, I see them as beautiful girls.” When we look at body image we can see how, in a mediated society driven by consumerism, feedback loops can fundamentally distort our notions of what is proper for humanity. This is going to be a bigger and bigger battleground in the coming years. No Logo and Supersize Me are the groundwork of a massive argument to come.
(I might note that Supersize Me is having an effect on people far larger than I expected – I mean, surely everyone knows already that eating only McDonalds supercombo meals is going to be bad? I’ve realised that the genius of Spurlock’s doco is simply that it demonstrates the relationship between what we eat and how healthy we are. It is a relationship that we know intellectually – but the fact is that human behaviour just doesn’t think that’s enough sometimes. Through this doco we can understand the relationship viscerally, and the two together are much more powerful than one alone. It doesn’t matter that none of us eat McD’s and only McD’s – its real influence is helping us realise that what we eat really does matter, just like our pesky book-learnin’ keeps telling us.)
Talking about big documentaries, the inimitable dreadbeard points out the elephant in the living room re: Fahrenheit 9/11:
“In my opinion, Fahrenheit 9-11 is directed explicitly to the American non-voting poor, aimed at explaining what is going on to them and why they should not allow Bush to be re-elected. The entire manner of the film is structured as a conversation to these people from one of tehir own, saying the President is an incompetent liar serving the interests of his friends the wealthy elite who is willing to lie and manipulate you and send you off to fight and die in service of his agenda. The opinion of any other demographic is irrelevant.”
I’m kinda wondering how we all managed to miss that.

[Cass talks about her grandmother]
Judith, though, was worth it. Story: she was out for a walk one night and came across this kid spraypainting some anti-Thatcher graffiti on a council wall. “I told him, you, I said, sharpish. Give that here, I said.” And she would have too in that nails-hard voice you just wouldn’t ever want to cross. And she took the spraycan from the kid and slapped his arm and then she fucking rattled it – “They make a little rattle” – and she sprayed in an apostrophe. Christ knows what the kid thought. I checked it out the next day and sure enough, ‘Thatcher’s Britain is HELL’. Fuck I laughed.

Because I thought I was.
But I have no Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD.
Nor any Freaks & Geeks.
Not even any Twin Peaks.
And yet I seem to have three seasons of Dawson’s Creek on DVD.
This is a sobering moment for me.