Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to address the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Sixty years ago, representatives from 16 nations gathered to begin deliberations on a new international bill of rights. The document they produced is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it stands as a landmark achievement in the history of human liberty. [continued]
"keep out of this betty. it's man talk."
meanwhile, with no instructions to the contrary from igor...
i like the animation as minimal as it is, with the drawings clean and bold. the narration style is like the radio program, unshackled. the last line is great, too: "... or will he die?"
in 2005, the BBC released a great documentary, the power of nightmares, about the origins and rise of the neo-conservatives and the islamists, the war in afghanistan, the failure of the revolutions each group wanted to cause in their home countries, the shift in tactics of each group as a result, and the consequences of the invasion for each group. it is very interesting how the two groups worked against each other for goals that they, to some extent, shared.
the documentary is split into three parts, all of which can be seen here, where you can also download them for free.
(another cool thing is that the documentary uses the theme song to 'Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion' throughout the film, which fantomas covered on their the director's cut album.)
link to BBC description of documentary
but pretty similar if you remove the guitar distortion and add some swans; from iceland 13 years ago.
Curver - A
Label website
check out this video of maynard james keenan from tool's side project, puscifer.
he can't hep it!
there is a great op-ed in today's new york times, which is have pasted below; the last couple paragraphs are great. the chinese attitude friedman describes is exactly what i experienced in kunming. no chinese person i spoke with in casual conversation knew about the glasgow airport incident in early summer, the iranian nuclear issue, or was aware of the july 7 bombings in london two years ago. i assume their ignorance is more likely a result of the chinese media's focus on domestic issues rather than international.
Dalian, China
It's nice to be in a country where Iraq is never mentioned. It's just a little unnerving when that country is America's biggest geopolitical and economic rival these days: China.
I heard China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, address an international conference here in Dalian, and what impressed me most was how boring it was — a straightforward recitation of the staggering economic progress China has made in the last two decades and the towering economic, political and environmental challenges it still faces.
How nice it must be, I thought, to be a great power and be almost entirely focused on addressing your own domestic problems?
No, I have not gone isolationist. America has real enemies that China does not, and therefore we have to balance a global security role in places like the Middle East with domestic demands.
But something is out of balance with America today. Looking at the world from here, it is hard not to feel that China has spent the last six years training for the Olympics while we've spent ourselves into debt on iPods and Al Qaeda.
After 9/11, we tried to effect change in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world by trying to build a progressive government in Baghdad. There was, I believed, a strategic and moral logic for that. But the strategy failed, for a million different reasons, and now it is time to recognize that and focus on how we insulate ourselves from the instability of that world — by having a real energy policy, for starters — how we protect our security interests there in more sustainable ways and how we get back to developing our own house.
By now it should be clear that Iraq is going to be what it is going to be. We've never had sufficient troops there to shape Iraq in our own image. We simply can't go on betting so many American soldiers and resources that Iraqis will one day learn to live together on their own — without either having to be bludgeoned by Saddam or baby-sat by us.
So either we get help or get out. That is, if President Bush believes staying in Iraq can still make a difference, then he needs to muster some allies because the American people are not going to sustain alone — nor should they — a long-shot bet that something decent can still be built in Baghdad.
If the president can't get help, then he has to initiate a phased withdrawal: now. Because the opportunity cost this war is exacting on our country and its ability to focus on anything else is out of all proportion to what might still be achieved in Iraq by our staying, with too few troops and too few friends.
Iraqis can add. The surge has brought more calm to Iraq largely because the mainstream Iraqi Sunnis finally calculated that they have lost and that both the pro-Al Qaeda Iraqi Sunnis and the radical Shiites are more of a threat to them than the Americans they had been shooting at.
The minute we start withdrawing, all Iraqis will carefully calculate their interests. They may decide that they want more blood baths, but there is just as much likelihood that they will eventually find equilibrium.
I have not been to Dalian in three years. It is not just a nice city for China. It is a beautiful city of wide avenues, skyscrapers, green spaces, software parks and universities.
The president of Dalian University of Technology, Jinping Ou, told me his new focus now is on energy research and that he has 100 doctoral students dealing with different energy problems — where five years ago he barely had any — and that the Chinese government has just decided to open its national energy innovation research center here.
Listening to him, my mind drifted back to Iraq, where I was two weeks ago and where I heard a U.S. officer in Baghdad tell this story:
His unit was on a patrol in a Sunni neighborhood when it got hit by an I.E.D. Fortunately, the bomb exploded too soon and no one was hurt. His men jumped out and followed the detonation wire, which led 1,500 feet into the neighborhood. A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was in the area and alerted the U.S. soldiers that a man was fleeing the scene on a bicycle. The soldiers asked the Black Hawk for help, and it swooped down and used its rotor blades to blow the insurgent off his bicycle, with a giant "whoosh," and the U.S. soldiers captured him.
That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: "Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes."
That is where we are in Iraq. We're wasting our brains. We're wasting our people. We're wasting our future. China is not.
link to surfer saves dog swept off pier story
this could be the background to an air bud movie about air bud needing to learn how to surf to save his hide in the rough waters off the michigan coast.
i wish i could have seen the dog get swept off so i could have thrown food at it in the water. just a couple strips of bacon. the dog would have had to decide whether to eat the bacon i had thrown him or to swim to shore. that is not a decision any dog wants to make. it would be like one of the 'saw' movies, but for dogs. and after (if!) he got onto shore, i would have passed him a soccer ball which he would have rainbow kicked it into a conveniently-placed soccer goal.
wonderfully informative testimonials about what is wrong with today's youf, excuse me, "youth," and what's wrong with the older generation.
Link (originally from BoingBoing)
The complete bin-Laden "video." Notice the video pauses and most of it is just audio. About 30 minutes long. Bin-Laden seems to reject credit for 9/11 at minute 10:21 and surprisingly mentions Noam Chomsky at 11:12. He later mentions Imperial Hubris author Michael Scheuer.* I find it hard to disagree with most of what bin-Laden says, except, of course, all that shit about Islam.
*"On Larry King Live, September 7, 2007, Scheuer alluded to the Fox News Republican Debate of Sept 5, 2007, in a Fox News moderator accused Ron Paul of taking 'marching orders' from Al Qaeda. Scheuer said, 'The truth of the matter is that it is all of the Democrats and the Republicans, except perhaps for Mr. Paul and Mr. Kucinich, who are marching to Osama Bin Laden's drum.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scheuer
in the last two days i have received two favorite junk emails:
1.
Subject: hey2.
From: YMariana Qtovar
hi Bessie
stcks poised to explode,
Ticker:chvc
Get it before it makes a move
Gracie
Subject: seimigemand my mom told me about this great craigslist post. Sphere: Related Content
From: amarith furkasu
http://smokebiz.com
Wassup jlvandenhoek
I started to notice that my penis had grown at least an inch
Shalon kominik
my dad told me about www.slideshare.net, which is basically youtube with slideshows instead of videos and for corporate nerds instead of normal people. nevertheless, i did find this gem there, complete with fully articulated genitalia:
"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/08/world/08hayden.html?ex=1346990400&en=74d799497989b98d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
1) Any of you ever toy with the idea that the CIA manufactures these bin-Laden videos? They're released at such crucial times--preelections for example--and bin-Laden seems to use the very same language that we dangerous American liberals use.
2) Why is it that CIA Director Hayden's address is more terrifying than bin-Laden's?
3) Why does the Times jump midarticle from bin-Laden video to CIA extreme rendition and interrogation?
my great advisor, Mark Harrower, was recently featured on Wisconsin Public Radio discussing how map making has changed lately, and the future of mapping. interview here!
Sphere: Related Content