Iraq War Era Events Timeline

This is a collection of links and dates that I stopped updating in 2003. Many of the external links from it are probably dead by now, but since I just found it browsing through the archives, I thought it might be worth posting.

Date	Event
11 Sep 1951	Liaquat Ali Khan shot dead while addressing public meeting in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, by Afghan fanatic. 50 years later to the day? Nah this may be a dud link, I am not as yet an expert on Pakistan's international relationships in the 50's. but there's a lot of digging to do.
Mar 1982	Dr. Keith Bowden, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies.
19 Dec 1983	Rumsfeld meets Saddam Hussein with message from Reagan supporting Iraq in the Iran / Iraq war.
1984	Reagan wins US election
5 Mar 1984	US State Department issues statement saying “available evidence indicates that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons.”
24 Mar 1984	Rumsfeld meets Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz the same day the UN reports Iraq using chemical weapons against UN.
1985	Americas CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) sends samples of a strain of West Nile virus to Iraq. European explosives cartel around 1985 and 1986 smuggled arms and explosives to Iran and Iraq in cooperation with Bush and Ollie North in the USA, working closely with with the KGB and STASI who helped them to smuggle weapons to the Middle East and to the Contras in Nicaragua
1986	Americas ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) ships three strains of anthrax, six strains of the bacteria that make botulinum toxin and three strains of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene to Iraq.
Aug 1986	Vimal Dajibhai, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies.
28 Oct 1986	Ashaad Sharif, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies.
22 Feb 1987	Peter Peapell, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies.
Mar 1987	David Sands, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies.
1988	Americas ATCC ships four anthrax strains and one strain of Clostridium botulinum to Iraq. George H. Bush wins US election
Aug 1988	Alistair Beckham, British scientist working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative--better known as Star Wars dies. A total of 22 scientests working in this field are reported to have died in various circumstances.
2 Oct 1989	National Security Directive 26 signed by G Bush issued.
Dec 1989	Dick Cheney (then the Secretary of Defense), sets up project to study role of US after the Cold War. Participants include Paul Wolfowitz (then Deputy Secretary of Defense), Lewis Libby (then Cheney's chief of staff), Eric Edelman (Senior foreign-policy adviser) & Colin Powell. The Five-Twenty-One brief.
9 Nov 1989	The fall of the Berlin wall.
21 May 1990	The Five-Twenty-One participants present to Cheney. Wolfowitz's vision is embraced.
2 Aug 1990	Bush Senior presents foreign-policy address based on Cheneys Five-Twenty-One think tank. Iraq invades Kuwait.
1991	Zalmay Khalilzad joins Cheney's team. His views (from "From Containment to Global Leadership?"), "preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future." ... "It is a vital U.S. interest to preclude such a development—i.e., to be willing to use force if necessary for the purpose."
1992	William J. Clinton wins US election The Pentagon, under Cheney's direction, pays Texas-based Brown & Root Services a total of $8.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies -- like itself -- could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world.
Spring 1992	Draft of the Defense Planning Guidance(DPG) released, arguing that the core assumption guiding U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century should be the need to establish permanent U.S. dominance over virtually all of Eurasia. (Wolfowitz and Libby at work).
27 Jul 1992	Henry Gonzalez revealed that George Bush signed a top secret National Security Decision directive, known as NSD 26, ordering closer ties with Saddam Hussein and Iraq before congress.
Jan 1993	Dick Cheney produces Defense Strategy for the 1990's: The Regional Defense Strategy suggesting that the US shape the rest of the world, and prevent the rise of rival superpowers.
1996	William J. Clinton wins US election After Bill Clinton's election cost Cheney his government job, he becomes CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant -- which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. (See 1992)
1997	Khalilzad, as paid adviser to the oil multinational Unocal, takes part in talks with Taliban officials regarding the possibility of building highly lucrative gas and oil pipelines. At the same time, he urges Clinton to take a softer line on the Taliban.
Spring 1997	The Project for the New American Century is formed.
Dec 1997	Khalilzad joins Unocal officials at a reception for an invited Taliban delegation in Texas.
26 Jan 1998	Rumsfield, Khalilzad, Perle, Wolfowitz and others send a letter to Clinton from the Project for the New American Century stating that a war with Iraq should be initiated even if the United States could not muster support from its allies in the United Nations.
29 May 1998	Rumsfield, Wolfowitz & Kristol send a letter to Newt Gingrich stating that the U.S. should establish and maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the (gulf) region and be prepared to use that force to protect our vital interests in the Gulf—and, if necessary, to help remove Saddam from power.
26 Aug 1998	Scott Ritter resigns as UN inspector as Clinton reigns in the weapons inspectors in Iraq.
1999	Haliburton has by now registered 44 subsidiaries in tax friendly locations giving Haliburton (Cheney's company) an $85 million rebate in taxes.
7 Jan 1999	The Hawks continue to press for an assault on Iraq [PDF]
2000	Cheney and his wife Lynne pump $35,361 into Bush's campaign. George W. Bush wins US election
Jun 2000	Taliban chief Mullah Muhammad Omar bans poppy (opium) cultivation in Afghanistan.
Aug 2000	Scientists at USAMRIID see Steven Hatfill taking some old biosafety cabinets from a hallway, throwing them in the back of his car, and driving off. Theoretically, the cabinets could have enabled a knowledgeable user to cultivate deadly germs off-site.
27 Nov 2000	Henry Gonzalez dies of unknown causes (see 27 Jul 1992).
2 Mar 2001	Dr. Paul Wolfowitz sworn in as Deputy Secretary of Defense
23 May 2001	Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad appointed as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Gulf, Southwest Asia and Other Regional Issues.
19 Jul 2001	Wolfowitz welcomed as the deputy secretary of Defense and the head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The administration has chosen, in Secretary Wolfowitz' words, to "move beyond" the treaty (ABM Treaty)
11 Sep 2001	World Trade Center destroyed in terrorist attack. Pentagon also suffers damage. Wolfowitz suggets immediate action against Iraq to the President.
16 Sep 2001	Anti-terrorism bill proposed.
18 Sep 2001	Envelopes containing letters and granular substances (anthrax) are sent to NBC News in New York and the New York Post. Both are mailed from Trenton, N.J.
20 Sep 2001	G W Bush declares "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen." ... "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime" The Hawks present Bush with a letter naming Iraq, Iran, and Syria as potential targets, the letter also addresses Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
7 Oct 2001	America attacks Afghanistan.
13 Oct 2001	President Bush says: “The anthrax attacks might be tied to Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network.”
16 Oct 2001	U.S. Senate offices close as hundreds line up for anthrax tests. It is announced that the anthrax mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is a pure and highly potent version.
24 Oct 2001	House passes the final version of the Patriot Act (anti-terrorism bill) and other previously unpopular Bush projects: Alaska oil drilling, $25 billion in tax cuts for corporations, taps into Social Security funds and cuts in education.
29 Oct 2001	Tests in Florida on cars used by two of the Sept. 11 hijackers found no traces of anthrax.
31 Oct 2001	Kathy Nguyen dies from anthrax exposure (see 14 Dec 2001) she has no connection with postal anthrax attacks.
9 Nov 2001	The FBI says it is increasingly convinced that the person behind the recent anthrax attacks is a lone wolf within the United States who has no links to terrorist groups but is an "opportunist" using the Sept. 11 hijackings to vent his rage.
12 Nov 2001	Dr. Benito Que, a cell biologist working on infectious diseases like HIV, is found dead outside his laboratory at the Miami Medical School
16 Nov 2001	Dr. Don C Wiley, one of the United States foremost infectious disease researchers declared missing (dies in unexplained circumstances)
23 Nov 2001	Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, a former microbiologist for Biopreparat, the Soviet biological-weapons production facility found dead following submitting research into anthrax to the government.
10 Dec 2001	Dr. Robert M. Schwartz (Founder of the Virginia Biotechnology Association) found murdered in Leesberg, Virginia. Dr. Schwartz was a well-known DNA sequencing researcher.
14 Dec 2001	Set Van Nguyen a skilled microbiologist killed at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation's animal diseases facility in Geelong, Australia.
31 Dec 2001	Bush Administration announces appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as special envoy to Afghanistan
Jan 2002	Bush Administration issues a "Nuclear Posture Review". The report openly discussed the possible use of nuclear weapons, naming seven countries that could be targets of the American nuclear arsenal: Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria
29 Jan 2002	Bush's State of the Union Address names North Korea, Iran and Iraq and their terrorist allies "an axis of evil" and warns that America will use pre-emptive force. Also mentioned is the raising of Americas missile defense shield, along with the largest increase in defense spending for two decades.
11 Jul 2002	Protesters gather in front of the Fort Detrick military base in Frederick, Md., to demand an end to U.S. germ warfare programs and call for a people's investigation into the anthrax deaths of postal workers.
20 Jul 2002	Scott Ritter (Ex-UN inspector) publishes article in Boston Globe dismissing potential chemical / biological weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
5 Feb 2002	CIA reports no evidence Iraq has engaged in any terrorism directed at the US or its allies.
22 Feb 2002	John Bolton (Arms control and disarmament office at the State Department) - tells Washington Times that: that the world had changed so dramatically on Sep. 11, 2001, that it was no longer unthinkable to use nuclear arms against rogue states thought to possess weapons of mass destruction.
13 Jun 2002	USA formally withdraws from the 1972 ABM Treaty.
12 Oct 2002	A New York Times reported leak reveals that Wolfowitz sees war with Afghanistan falling short of turning the “war on terrorism” into a full-blown “Clash of Civilizations". The aim being to turn the Islamic religion into the next cold war enemy. In case you didn't know, Wolfowitz has been described as a "nut" by certain senators. Sadly I am unable to find a direct link to this article yet, although it is widely quoted. (NYT is pay for view).
2 Oct 2002	American Gulf War Veterans Association call for the resignation of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after he denied the U.S. sent biological weapons to Iraq during the 1980s.
13 Nov 2002	Scott Ritter (ex-UN inspector, resigned 1998) believes that the UN inspectors destroyed 90-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the seven years they spent there. He also argues that it would be impossible for Iraq to build new weapons in the three years since inspectors left, without being detected. (The audio is worth a listen)
6 Feb 2003	British government accused of basing its latest Iraq dossier on old material, including an article by an American post-graduate student.
26 Feb 2003	The UN International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) reports that Afghanistan produced 3,400 tonnes of heroin last year, up from 185 tonnes in 2001. 95% of heroin in Europe is believed to come from Afghanistan. The heroin trade is a well established financial resource for terrorist and criminal activity.
Mar 2003	Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.
20 Mar 2003	War on Iraq begins
7 Apr 2003	US troops enter Baghdad.
8 Apr 2003	Ole Rothenborg reports American soldiers initiated looting in Baghdad.
9 Apr 2003	The "historic" toppling of the statue of Saddam. The looting of Baghdad begins. Any records that survived the bombing are destroyed by looters wrecking government buildings and stealing computer hardware.
11 Apr 2003	Russian President Vladimir Putin puts the pressure on the US to begin the UN role in Iraq, supported by French and German allies at a summit in St Petersburg. Looting in Baghdad continues, fear of civil war increases. Kurdish forces report withdrawal from Kirkuk. Rumsfeld looses rag over media coverage of looting in Iraq.
12 Apr 2003	Chaos continues in Iraq. Sunni Muslims fight gun battles with their Shia neighbours. Kurds and Arabs fight in Mosul. The People's Mujahedin reports fighting near its camps in north-eastern Iraq. It accuses Tehran of sending agents into Iraq. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warns civil war could erupt in Iraq unless American and British forces restore law and order.
13 Apr 2003	Bush declares that Syria holds chemical weapons and warns against Syria harbouring Iraqi fugatives. It's nigh on official Syria will be next. Iraq remains in turmoil leaving hospitals in Baghdad looted and with no water or electricity.
28 Apr 2003	General Tommy Franks under investigation for war crimes in case using Belgian international law. North Korea "mis-reported" during talks with America. North Korea warned of extraordinary measures if the United States played its "usual tricks."
29 Apr 2003	Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas announced as new Palestinian prime minister. (The US favoured option). The "Road map to peace" looks hopefull. US announces withdrawal of troops from Saudi Arabia 13 dead and 75 wounded Iraqis after American troops open fire on demonstration in Fallujah, Iraq.
Now	No Weapons of Mass Destruction uncovered. Saddam not found dead or alive. Iraq in turmoil. What were the mission aims again? Syria?
11 Jun 2003	Next OPEC meeting. Will America play Iraq's hand?
References	THE NEXT WORLD ORDER by NICHOLAS LEMANN 25th Mar 2002 Zalmay Khalilzad - Envoy for Islamic Terror U.S. Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strike Plan War and Oil The Saddam in Rumsfeld's Closet US supplied the kinds of germs Iraq later used for boilogical weapons The Road to War Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for US UK accused of lifting dossier text Cheney's Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door Bush-Cheney Contributions Testimony Before the House Armed Services Committee on Ballistic Missile Defense Wolfowitz Looks Forward to Future Without ABM Treaty

ENDNOTE:
The above list is intended as a means of drawing the various threads together into a cohesive form. Some of the threads may not be attributable to America, however I felt they were worthy of inclusion in the timeline, and I hope the friends and families concerned someday find an answer.

In creating this page, I am constantly amazed at how easy it is to dig dirt on the current American ruling elite. I am also suprised and alarmed to find Bush and Powell appear as Doves amongst the Hawks.

Last updated 21 Apr 2003 unless I forgot to change this line! DOH!

[See? Apart from this line at the bottom and the header edit at the top, unchanged since 2003]

Why Brand is a Dangerous Fool

A few days ago, a certain Russell Brand appeared on Newsnight. Much to the delight of the generally disillusioned left wing viewer, here was a charisma with a rant about revolution, everything being wrong, and why vote for anyone?

A worryingly large chunk of my left leaning twitter cloud seemed to latch on this call to not vote out of protest. Hence this short blog.

His argument here was that voting for the system gave it legitimacy it doesn't deserve, and what was needed was revolution, not a slightly different brand of politicians.

Like all persuasive arguments, it has some basis in truth. There is little difference between the UK's two major parties .. BUT ..

Let's look at the NHS. If you seriously believe a Labour government in power would be selling off the NHS on the quiet as the Tories are, then maybe you have a point. I however, despite being willing to admit there is little in major reform policies between the two parties, can't see it myself. So let's assume I'm right here and if Labour was in power right now, the NHS would not be being dismantled.

Let's also take ATOS. A scheme introduced by the right wing that has arguably caused multiple early deaths and suicides. This is important. It's not a minor policy quibble. It's something else I don't believe Labour would have implemented that has and is causing very real damage to people.

What Russell Brand has just called for, as an appeal to the disillusioned left was in effect "Forget it lefties, don't vote. Let the Tory's win". This annoys me, and this is why I call him a dangerous fool.

If as part of your left leaning thinking, you believe cash flow perhaps isn't as important as avoiding human suffering where possible, then even if the existing Labour party doesn't represent your ideal government, it's still the option to vote for. Basically, that you should have got off your ass and voted for *something* if you wanted to help avoid needless human suffering, premature deaths and suicides. Otherwise you are complicit.

If you really hate Labour? Sure. Set up your own party representation, give it a shot. While you're grumbling about lack of representation, your wish for an ill-defined revolution though .. you might want to actually turn up at a voting station every once in a while and stick two fingers up at the right wing in which ever way you wish to do so.

One step further. I've heard a few times the argument that you have to let the right wing win, so that things get really bad, and this mythical revolution can occur. This .. will only take a moment.

So what these people are saying is, the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur in pursuit of a revolution are valid. Whereas the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur due to an unchecked free market / right wing agenda are evil. I'll go a step further. I think the needless suffering and hastened deaths that occur because left thinking people decided to not vote out of apathy or some form of ill judged protest are just as disgusting as the other options.

Read that last paragraph back. Can you see what I see? Where's the evolution in thought to a more caring society? Nowhere. If that's your basis for revolution, I don't want to have anything to do with it. You're just as demented as the people you claim are demented.

Yup. Russell Brand is a dangerous fool indeed.

Something Smells

On the apparent launch of two ballistic missiles in the Mediterranean area.
3rd Sept 2013

Here's how it went on the information I saw go by, in the order it appeared:

Launches detected by Russia, identify two missile launches from mid to East Med area.
A bit of silence.
Reports of gas pipeline in Syria destroyed in explosion (story later vanishes).
First story appears that this is a US test, along with rumour that it was an accidental launch.
Pause
Israel report no record of any missile launches.
Pause
France reports no knowledge of missile launches.
Then almost together:
Sky News reports that it was a US test launch.
Russia speculates that they may be weather testing related launches.
Much longer pause...
Israel claims it was a joint exercise with the US to test missile defence systems.

I missed the point where the US claimed it had no knowledge of missile launches, I'm only seeing that come in now in retrospect, so don't know where that would be on the time line.

But hang on here...
Israel / US launches missiles in the Mediterranean area, apparently at Syria (from Russia's initial analysis of the flight paths) .. with absolutely no press / media preparations? Nothing at all? Hours passed between launch detection news and the final Israel / US story appearing. Result? I don't believe the official story on this one either.

Something here stinks.
As does virtually all the information concerning Syria at the moment.

Syria

It won't fit on twitter, and I don't like monologuing so much on there, so...

It's not about Assad.
The aim of any surgical strike (if it happens) on Syria, will be to destroy weapons that Israel believe to be threatening to themselves whether in the hands of Assad OR whoever might gain power following Assad's removal.

This explains in part the US & allies readiness to strike. They really don't intend to get dragged in to an Iraq war scenario here. It's just destroy the weapons then leave Syria to fight it out again.

But it raises some issues:

Firstly Israel must not only believe that it's strikes on Syria earlier this year were unsuccessful or limited in scope so a risk still remains. That or Russia has recently supplied Syria with more advanced weapons that Israel can't confidently deal with.

Next that it has reached a point where Israel doesn't believe it's safe for them to strike again to remove this threat as they have done in the past. Far safer for Israel to get America & chums to do it for them to avoid direct retaliation.

Next up? That Russia has knowingly provided more advanced weapon capabilities to Syria presumably in response to Saudi and US constantly funding the rebels for dubious reasons.

So if you stand back and take a look at it, it's once again super powers that be using another country as the playground of political gain with messy results.

This time however, there are some problems. The Syrian military has already said it would view an act of aggression by the US as an attack directed by Israel and would fire on Israel in retaliation. Bluff? Bit of a gamble? Israel / US counting on the fact they can neutralise the entire Syrian threat to Israel in one strike? Well ... If Syria does respond with a successful strike on Israel, all hell will break lose.

Now .. it's at this point I get a bit worried.

In the UK in recent days there's been a dramatic up turn in immigration control stopping and "taking away for interview" any ethnic minorities they can scoop up off the streets. Today it was Victoria station in London, and Oxford that I heard of. Want to minimise the risk of terrorism in response from within? Strike first and round up all you can?

Tenacious perhaps. But then there's the build up of military planes in Cyprus today. Easily the preferred point for US attack on Syria ... But ...

Look back up at the top there? We started this ramble on the assumption the original strike was simply to remove arms that Israel regards as a threat. Now all of a sudden, we're looking at contingency plans going in to place for a prolonged engagement and presumably a successful retaliation from Syria against Israel. If that does happen and it is being planned for as a side effect of the initial strike? Then the term "All hell will break lose" is very carefully chosen.

The Egypt Problem

Just for the sake of own sanity faced with the barrage of tweets on the subject.

Let's go back a few years, to a point where it was widely regarded that Morsi supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, was without a doubt the US backed preferred government in Egypt.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-struggles-to-install-proxy-brotherhood-in-egypt/31552

Now since then. On a wave of optimism that the Morsi solution would hold, one of America's big five buddies, the UK, has been busy selling arms to Egypt. All sanctioned and approved by American political interest in the region. (I don't have this kind of info for other countries, I'm sure the UK wasn't the only one).

http://www.caat.org.uk/resources/export-licences/licence?rating=Military&region=Egypt&n=0&date_from=2010-01-01

Most if not all of that weaponry and body armour goes to the police and armed forces in Egypt. In the eye's of America and it's arms dealing buddies, that was all totally fine because Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood had the power and therefore the arms.

So what happened yesterday? The Egyptian Army moved to clear out a large Muslim Bortherhood protest encampment. There were preceding reports that the MB camp was getting heavily armed in readiness for a fight. If you dig through the AP post on what happened today, you'll find buried in there:

"Authorities said the encampment had been heavily armed and footage aired on state TV showed security forces uncovering stashes of ammunition and hand guns after storming the site."

Now I can't tell you which side is exaggerating the truth in their own favour here. I'm sceptical of the largely pro-US media coverage we get in the West, and I'm finding it a little hard to believe the Army just decided to go on a killing spree one day for no particular reason. If they did? America has problems, because someone high up in Egypt has decided to declare war on the MB using the very arms that America and it's allies have been happily selling them. It's worth also noting here, that many in Egypt reportedly view the Muslim Brotherhood as "terrorists". So in the eyes of much of Egypt, not a lot of sympathy is felt. They were told they had to clear the encampment, they didn't so ...

All in all, it's a complete mess, once again with a root cause looking like Western interests meddling in foreign affairs for many years leading to a complete breakdown.

So that's why I'm holding back on comment on the situation unfolding in Egypt on Twitter. It's simply too complex an issue to fit in to 140 characters and there's little I can link to that demonstrates my point of view. I don't trust the media bias in the official news sources that I have access to. I don't trust the knee-jerk reactions of many twitter posters on the subject. I don't trust Obama's intentions either. Many of the Egyptian tweets I've seen are virtually the opposite of the slant of the AP or VICE news reports for example.

Calls to end financial support or military aid are short sighted. The military aid has already been supplied with intent to give Morsi the fire-power to retain control (Ooops). Cutting more general financial aid is likely to harm the citizens that everyone claims they are most concerned about.

The media machine and Western government official lines are a bit stretched here. Obama condemns the violence mainly because it's focused on his own pet project the MB. A sane person would condemn the violence simply on the grounds that violence doesn't solve anything. However, Obama and his supporting nations have been arming and funding Morsi and his supporters precisely to gain control through violence, and then to retain that position via violence if necessary. The word "hypocrite" springs to mind again.

Also worth noting here, that amongst some, the assumption that all protesters must be the good guys is a little jarring. It wasn't the MB protesting that caused the coup that wasn't a coup. That was most of the rest of Egypt against the MB / Morsi. But people seem to like thinking in little boxes without too much analysis, so somehow, the MB protesters are now the good guys because it was a protest. Sure there should always be a right to peaceful protest, but that doesn't mean the protester is always right. Sigh. Anyway. That's one example of the kind lazy thinking that got me to write this.

If you blindly cheer for the MB on this one, you're cheering for America's interests against the will of Egyptians that was shown by the largest turn out for sustained protest in human history just weeks ago. If you cheer for the Army, you're cheering for what does seem to be unjustifiable force from an outside perspective. Who knows? What if the MB was shooting at the Army and police from an encampment containing women and children? Who gave the orders for the Army to move in? As yet, I don't know. What we lack as usual is clear unbiased reporting.

For now, it simply looks like both sides are deeply in the wrong.

It's a horrible mess. The best I can do is hope that somehow out of the smoke, Egypt manages to emerge with a non US installed government and some form of peace. Some in Egypt are predicting civil war and an eventual geographic divide. I hope not. But I guess those in Egypt probably have a better insight in to what's going on than I or most the commentators I've seen in the West do.

Yet Another Game Review...

Sorry guys & gals.

I'm making a real effort not to spend my entire life bound up with the frustrations of injustice and petty run downs. So I still find the time to play games.

Most of the time, I'm even frustrated in that simple pursuit, but recently, I chanced some time with "Kerbal Space Program". And this one is something of a gem. Well a gem for anyone who ever dreamt of launching a rocket anyway.

It's a game in development, currently only with a sandbox style approach, and actually? That's moar than enough to have managed to give me some of the biggest laughs from a computer game for a long long time. It's self challenging. You don't need a plot. It's more ... well ... what can I do with this next?

The first challenge is simply building your own rocket and getting something, or some hapless Kerbal in to space. The Kerbal's and running humour in item descriptions work well. Your budding astronauts don't have a huge splay of skills and experience. They have bravery and stupidity. I'm not sure which serves them best as I accidentally curse them to a fiery death or life in a perpetual orbit I can't rescue them from, but the stupid grin or freaked out "ARGH!" on their faces has finally persuaded me to stop laughing snot bubbles out of my nose and send more unmanned test launches instead.

The first challenge is simply to build your own rocket and launch something or someone in to space. It's ... well ... it should be easy. Actually it's a nice little first lesson in rocket design, staging and structure. When you eventually manage it, it's either a lesson in ... ohhhh that's that the parachute's are for! Or ... Yeah ... it's relatively easy to launch something in to a meaningless orbit round the sun.

And that's where it starts to really shine beyond the absurd hilarity of the initial rocket designs going wrong in all kinds of unimaginable ways. No really. Watching your own "That's my best idea yet!" design destroy itself in new and original ways just doesn't seem to get old. The physics engine in this bit of code is just fantastic. So yes, sometimes things don't place where you want them, and sometimes it's best to just save it, reload it and .. ta-da! It works more like it did before! But overall, glitches aside (it's still in development), physics are the cruel jester as you try to wrestle with gravity again and again.

Anyway. Having escaped the upper atmosphere, putting something in to stable orbit around your own planet becomes the next challenge. This is where you begin to learn about apoapsis and periapsis happens. In other words .. yeah .. actually? How do you chuck something in to orbit and adjust the orbit?

Then it only expands beautifully. Kerbal's own moon "mun" is a nice target, as is the insanely difficult challenge of building your own orbiting space station. The challenges of sending your homebrew payload across gravity wells of other planets and moons begin to beckon.

It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Raw around the edges. Yes you can find fault with part placement. Yes sometimes that previously good design needs a retouch on the launch pad, but somehow even those glitches add to the Kerbal derp humour level as you try to figure out work arounds.

For anyone who ever dreamed of being an astronaut or launching a rocket. This is one fantastic, time absorbing, oh so simple, oh so fun and yet oh so incredibly complicated bit of fun.

Tips

Take it small steps. Each challenge you set yourself and learn from helps a lot when you reach for the next milestone. Figure out the basics of staging and launching, then simple orbit, then adjusting orbit. Add in how to get your derpy Kerbal home again, and before long you've spent hours laughing like a loon and got a pretty good grip on what you can cope with.

The orbital view will blow your mind to begin with. What the hell are all these little symbols when I add an adjustment waypoint?!?! Start simple. The basic tutorials are minimal but put you in the right direction. When you do understand the challenges of orbital flight, the little symbols all suddenly begin to make sense. When that happens you suddenly find the orbital view is incredibly clever for conveying what you want to do next.

Back on the orbital view. If you've messed up a target flight path and can't get a delete X on it, just grab the inner circle and drag it to one side. When it turns red, let go and it's gone. Now try again derp head! What is this? Rocket science?

And...

What can I say? It's just a fantastic bit of coding. Physics become the challenge. What you want to achieve next becomes the aim. Even with it's basic graphics, the satisfaction of your first stable Kerbal orbit is fantastic. Watch the sun rise in true NASA style, launched from your own designed rocket. Then stretch it to managing a near miss with the Mun, then your first stable orbit of a nearby body, and eventually, your first non Kerbal landing. Then ... you begin to wonder ... which planet is easiest to get to next? Can I get a Kerbal to land and plant a flag on the Mun and then get them home again?

The game expands itself. It's beautifully done. Right down to your own space debris kicking you in the ass from time to time.

Don't pirate this one. If you do? Then it taught you that these guys deserve the payout. Now go buy it and enjoy the updates.

I've not enjoyed a game this much since discovering Grand Theft Auto III back in 2002. So this is my once in a decade "Oh hell yes that's goood!" game!

``Never Whistle While You're Pissing''

Excerpts from ``Never Whistle While You're Pissing''

by Hagbard Celine

From the Illuminatus! Trilogy

Seventh Trip, or Netzach (the SNAFU Principle)

"The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded,
condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed,
robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual
human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist,
sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of
industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are
perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared
blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not
fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and
try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish
it. the psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still,
the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.

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Appendix Teth: Hagbard's Booklet

" I once overheard two botanists arguing over a Damned Thing that had
blasphemously sprouted in a college yard. One claimed that the Damned Thing
was a tree and the other claimed that it was a shrub. They each had good
scholary arguments, and they were still debating when I left them. The
world is forever spawning Damned Things- things that are neither tree nor
shrub, fish nor fowl, black nor white- and the categorical thinker can only
regard the spiky and buzzing world of sensory fact as a profound insult to
his card-index system of classifications. Worst of all are the facts which
violate "common sense", that dreary bog of sullen prejudice and muddy
inertia. The whole history of science is the odyssey of a pixilated card-
indexer perpetually sailing between such Damned Things and desperately
juggling his classifications to fit them in, just as the history of
politics is the futile epic of a long series of attempts to line up the
Damned Things and cajole them to march in regiment.

Every ideology is a mental murder, a reduction of dynamic living processes
to static classifications, and every classification is a Damnation, just as
every inclusion is an exclusion. In a busy, buzzing universe where no two
snow flakes are identical, and no two trees are identical, and no two
people are identical- and, indeed, the smallest sub-atomic particle, we are
assured, is not even identical with itself from one microsecond to the
next- every card-index system is a delusion. "Or, to put it more
charitably," as Nietzsche says, "we are all better artists than we
realize." It is easy to see that label "Jew" was a Damnation in Nazi
Germany, but actually the label "Jew" is a Damnation anywhere, even where
anti-Semitism does not exist. "He is a Jew," "He is a doctor," and "He is a
poet" mean, to the card indexing centre of the cortex, that my experience
with him will be like my experience with other Jews, other doctors, and
other poets. Thus, individuality is ignored when identity is asserted. At a
party or any place where strangers meet, watch this mechanism in action.
Behind the friendly overtures there is wariness as each person fishes for
the label that will identify and Damn the other. Finally, it is revealed:
"Oh, he's an advertising copywriter," "Oh, he's an engine-lathe operator."
Both parties relax, for now they know how to behave, what roles to play in
the game. Ninety-nine percent of each has been Damned; the other is
reacting to the 1 percent that has been labeled by the card-index machine.

Certain Damnations are socially and intellectually necessary, of course. A
custard pie thrown in a comedian's face is Damned by the physicist who
analyzes it according to the Newtonian laws of motion. These equations tell
us we want to know about the impact of the pie on the face, but nothing
about the human meaning of pie-throwing. A cultural anthropologist,
analyzing the social function of the comedian as shaman, court jester, and
king's surrogate, explains the pie-throwing as a survival of the Feast of
Fools and the killing of the king's double. This Damns the subject in
another way. A psychoanalyst, finding an Oedipal castration ritual here,
has performed a third Damnation, and the Marxist, seeing an outlet for the
worker's repressed rage against the bosses, performs a fourth. Each
Damnation has its values and uses, but is nonetheless a Damnation unless
its partial and arbitrary nature is recognized. The poet, who compares the
pie in the comedian's face with Decline of the West or his own lost love,
commits a fifth Damnation, but in this case the game element and the
whimsicality of the symbolism are safely obvious. At least, one would hope
so; reading the New Critics occasionally raises doubts on this point.

Human society can be structured either according to the principle of
authority or according to the principle of liberty. Authority is a static
social configuration in which people act as superiors and inferiors: a
sado- masochistic relationship. Liberty is a dynamic social configuration
in which people act as equals: an erotic relationship. In every interaction
between people, either Authority or Liberty is the dominant factor.
Families, churches, lodges, clubs and corporations are either more
authoritarian than libertarian or more libertarian than authoritarian. It
becomes obvious as we proceed that the most pugnacious and intolerant form
of authority is the State, which even today dares to assume absolutism
which the church itself has long ago surrendered and to enforce obedience
with the Church's old and shameful Inquisition. Every form of
authoritarianism is, however, a small "State," even if it has a membership
of only two. Freud's remark to the effect that the delusion of many men is
religion can be generalized: The authoritarianism of one man is crime and
the authoritarianism of many is State. Benjamin Tucker wrote quite
accurately:
Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression,
invasion, government are interchangeable terms. The essence of
government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to
control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the
nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it be made by one man
upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one
man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by
all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.
Tucker's use of the word "invasion" is remarkably precise, considering that
he wrote more than fifty years before the basic discovery of ethology.
Every act of authority is, in fact, an invasion of the psychic and physical
territory of another.

Every fact of science was once Damned. Every invention was considered
impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every
artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of
culture and "progress," everything on earth that is man-made and not given
to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow
to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the
first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant,
and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, "Disobedience was man's
Original Virtue."

The human brain, which loves to read descriptions of itself as the
universe's most marvelous organ of perception, is an even more marvelous
organ of rejection. The naked facts of our economic game are easily
discoverable and undeniable once stated, but conservatives- who are usually
individuals who profit every day of their lives from these facts- manage to
remain oblivious to them or to see them through a very rose-tinted lens.
(Similarly, the revolutionary ignores the total testimony of history about
the natural course of revolution, through violence, to chaos, back to the
starting point.)

We must remember that thought is abstraction. In Einstein's metaphor, the
relationship between a physical fact and our mental reception of that fact
is not like the relationship between beef and beef-broth, a simpler
extraction and condensation; rather, as Einstein goes on, it is like the
relationship between our overcoat and the ticket given us when we check our
overcoat. In other words, human perception involves coding even more than
crude sensing. The mesh of language, or of mathematics, or of a school of
art, or of any system of human abstracting, gives to our mental constructs
the structure, not of the original fact, but of the symbol system into
which it is coded, just as a map-maker colors a nation purple not because
it is purple but because his code demands it. But every code excludes
certain things, blurs other things, and overemphasizes still other things.
Nijinski's celebrated leap through the window at the climax of 'Le Spectre
d'une Rose' is best coded in the ballet notation system used by
choreographers; verbal language falters badly in attempting to conveying;
painting or sculpture could capture totally the magic of one instant, but
one instant only, of it; the physicist's equation, Force = Mass X
Acceleration, highlights one aspect of it missed by all these other codes,
but loses everything else about it. Every perception is influenced, formed,
and structured by habitual coding habits- mental game habits- of the
perceiver.

All authority is a function of coding, of game rules. Men have arisen again
and again armed with pitchforks to fight armies with cannon; men have also
submitted docilely to the weakest and most tottery oppressors. It all
depends on the extent to which coding distorts perception and conditions
the physical (and mental) reflexes.

It seems at first glance that authority could not exist at all if all men
were cowards or if no men were cowards, but flourishes as it does because
most men are cowards and some men are thieves. Actually, the inner dynamics
of cowardice and submission on the one hand and of heroism and rebellion on
the other are seldom consciously realized either by the ruling class or the
servile class. Submission is identified not with cowardice but with virtue,
rebellion not with heroism but with evil. To the Roman slave-owners,
Spartacus was not a hero and the obedient slaves were not cowards;
Spartacus was a villain and the obedient slaves were virtuous. The obedient
slaves believed this also. The obedient always think of themselves as
virtuous rather than cowardly.

If authority implies submission, liberation implies equality; authority
exist when one man obeys another, and liberty exists when men do not obey
other men. Thus, to say that authority exists is to say that class and
caste exis, that submission and inequality exist. To say the liberty exists
is to that classlessness exists, to say that brotherhood and equality
exist. Authority, by dividing men into classes, creates dichotomy,
disruption, hostility, fear, disunion. Liberty, by placing men on an equal
footing, creates association, amalgamation, union, security. When the
relationships between men are based on authority and coercion, they are
driven apart; when based on liberty and non-aggression, they are drawn
together. The facts are self-evident and axiomatic. If authoritarianism did
not possess the in-built, preprogrammed double-bind structure of a Game
Without End, men would long ago have rejected it and embraced
libertarianism. The usual pacifist complaint about war, that young men are
led to death by old men who sit at home manning beaurocrats' desks and
taking no risks themselves, misses the point entirely. Demands that the old
should be drafted to fight their own wars, or that the leaders of the
warring nations should be sent to the front lines on the first day of
battle, etc., are aimed at an assumed "sense of justice" that simply does
not exist. To the typical submissive citizen of authoritarian society, it
is normal, obvious and "natural" that he should obey older and more
dominant males, even at the risk of his life, even against his own kindred,
and even in causes that are unjust or absurd.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade"- the story of a group of young males led
to their death in a palpably idiotic situation and only because they obeyed
a senseless order without stopping to think- has been, and remains, a
popular poem, because unthinking obedience by young males to older males is
the most highly prized of all conditioned reflexes within human, and
hominid, societies.

The mechanism by which authority and submission are implanted in the human
mind is coding of perception. That which fits into the code is accepted;
all else is Damned to being ignored, brushed aside, unnoticed, and- if
these fail- it is Damned to being forgotten. A worse form of Damnation is
reserved for those things which cannot be ignored. These are daubed with
the brain's projected prejudices until, encrusted beyond recognition, they
are capable of being fitted into the system, classified, card-indexed,
buried. This is what happens to every Damned Thing which is too prickly and
sticky to be excommunicated entirely. As Josiah Warren remarked, "It is
dangerous to understand new things too quickly." Almost always, we have not
understood them. We have murdered them and mummified their corpses.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more
precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of "monopoly in the means of
production." Since man extends his nervous system though channels of
communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who
controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of
society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every
individual's brain.

Thus in preliterate societies taboos on spoken word are more numerous and
more Draconic than at any more complex level of social organisation. With
the invention of written speech -- hieroglyphic, ideographic, or
alphabetical -- the taboos are shifted to this medium; there is less
concern with what people say and more concern with what people write. (Some
of the fist societies to achieve literacy, such as Egypt and the Mayan
culture of ancient Mexico, evidentially kept a knowledge of hieroglyphs a
religious secret which only the higher orders of the priestly and royal
families were allowed to share.) The same process repeats endlessly: Each
step forward in the technology of communication is more heavily tabooed
than the earlier steps. Thus, in America today (post-Lenny Bruce), one
seldom hears of convictions for spoken blasphemy or obscenity; prosecution
of books still continues, but higher courts increasingly interpret the laws
in a liberal fashion, and most writer feel fairly confident that they can
publish virtually anything; movies are growing almost as decentralised as
books, although the fight is still heated in this area; television, the
newest medium, remains encased in neolithic taboo. (When the TV pundits
committed le`se majeste after an address by the then Dominant Male, a
certain Richard Nixon, one of his lieutenants quickly informed them they
had over stepped, and the whole tribe -- except for the dissident minority
-- cheered for the reassertion of tradition.) When a more efficient medium
arrives, the taboos on television will decrease.

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