:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 4.17.2003 ::
:: War Diary ::
From The Guardian UK:
Roll credits
By Jason Burke
The men were moving through a grey urban landscape
under a flat, leaden sky. I had suddenly walked into the opening
sequence of the second section of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal
Jacket. In the film, marines fan out and move into broken,
bombed-out urban rubble under a sky the colour of smoke.
Overhead, both in the film and in real life, Huey helicopters (the
1960s version and the 1990s version respectively) wheeled
overhead. This, I thought, is completely ludicrous. Stop thinking
about films and concentrate on what you are doing. Any
moment some sniper might open fire.
That's what happened in the film. But now it might happen for
real. Or not. It was a girl who shot all the soldiers in the film. The
Ba'ath party don't have barely pubescent female snipers. Or
maybe they do? I was rapidly becoming more concerned by my
own pathetically unprofessional responses, and clear Vietnam
film fixation, than on reporting the fall of Tikrit and the final death
throes of Saddam's regime.
We stopped and took up positions behind a long, low wall (like
they do in the film). The radio crackled. The marines surveyed
the rubble ahead of them. Vroman (19 years old, from New
York), and Norr (21, from Michigan), were told to "get on point".
And Specialist Hemming turned to me. "You seen that film Full
Metal Jacket?" he asked.
ALSO from The Guardian:
Iran attacks US and braces for nuclear dispute
The Iranian president Mohammad Khatami yesterday lashed out
at America for its aggressive stance, stating that Tehran would
not recognise a US-installed administration in Iraq and warning
Iran would support Syria were it attacked.
World waits to see which way US will jump
The Blair government believes that in the next few weeks it will
be clear how the Bush administration has been influenced by its
military victory in Iraq, and what kind of superpower it wants the
United States to be in the post-war world.
The administration went into Iraq at war with itself over its role in
the world, and there are abundant signs that conflict has not
been settled with the fall of Saddam Hussein.
posted by me
:: 9:38:00 AM [+] ::
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