Film, media and art links

[erudito]

Now books have trailers.

Nice reconstruction of ancient Greek lyre music, a hymn to Apollo and a hymn to the muse.

Senior US journalist makes complete fool of himself in 38 seconds.

The UK Tories thought a Labour poster image of the Tory leader was such a great idea, they adapted it.

About The Hurt Locker being concerned with the experience of

Comments

But he's not gay

[erudito]

He can't be the Antichrist, he is not gay :)

I was getting all excited about the poll, then I noticed it was an online survey, which puts it firmly in the "dubious results" category.

There is also the matter of picking your madness: one third of Democrats apparently believe Dubya knew about 9/11 in advance.

Re: But he's not gay

[erudito]

The notion that parts of the US government apparatus somehow knew about 9/11 in advance and wanted for the purpose of justifying invading, of all places, Afghanistan does not make sense at any level. Iraq does not make much more sense.

As for not knowing: the possibility of keeping that sort of secret indefinitely is pretty remote.

Re: But he's not gay

[erudito]

Let us consider the possibility that

Re: But he's not gay

[erudito]

The West has plenty of willingness to not intervene, there are lots of horrible situations around the planet it does not intervene in.

The Congressional testimony is not a good indication of motive for major acts of public policy. A company explains why the pipeline cannot be built in a situation where there is no widely recognised government and sets out the circumstances in which it would be built (which helps explain why it is not going ahead at that time). 3 years later a massive terrorist attack is launched on the US. The government of Afghanistan refuses to hand over the perpetrators, in fact makes clear it will defend them. Everyone regards that as a casus belli (which is why it is a NATO operation). There are some side benefits of the war, such as the pipeline, but the 1998 testimony does not come close to establishing that the pipeline was the motive for responding to the terror attack.

As for manufacturing a casus belli, Operation Northwoods did not go ahead while the Gulf of Tonkin was taking advantage of a situation (