Stalwarts from Down Under

If the US has anybody who is a closer friend to it in the War on Terrorism then Great Britain, it has to be Australia. The Aussies were one of the earliest countries to offer its support for the US after 9/11, and Australian troops have been involved in fighting in Afghanistan and will probably be engaged in the campaign in Iraq. Not to mention the history of fighting alongside of Americans from World War Two to Korea and Vietnam.

Anyway, Australia also takes seriously a lot less politically correct guff then most nations, which is why they are not afraid to evict people if they have failed to pay their rent, even if they are both immigrants and Muslims. As it turned out, the fellow in question had been stockpiling explosive devices alongside the usual horde of Islamic literature that you have come to expect to find, as well as material to make more bombs. The deliquent in question, a naturalized Australian citizen from South Africa named Gill Daniels, was caught by the local police after coming back to the apartment driving a silver BMW. The local neighbors' description of him includes this particularly charming comment:

""He used to call anyone who wasn't a Muslim a heathen," one neighbour told The Daily Telegraph."

Thanks to Tim Blair and the folks at Little Green Footballs for the heads-up and link to this article.

Dimwit Alert

For some reason, MTV likes to think it has a serious news department (Though how serious can it be when it reports both of Bill Clinton's presidential inaugurations with wall-to-wall, all-day coverage, and let George W. Bush's presidential inauguration go by without any trace of reporting during the entire day.), which handles "serious" topics, like the coming war in Iraq (And not, bless them, Courtney Love's latest all-day TV marathon. That might be cause MTV to fold really fast as people flee from the channel.).

One of the things they do is "man on the street" interview with the young and hip. For the Iraq segment, they managed to get some young lady from Britain (Judging the accent.) who said "we should use peaceful means to resolve it" and "haven't we learn anything from the years?"

Well, yes, we have. We have learned what kind of man Saddam Hussein is (The type that deliberately use nerve gas on civilians as "punishment," who take positive enjoyment in watching people get executed, and who has on the government payroll a man whose official governmental title is "violator of woman's honor," i.e. an official professional rapist.). We learned how trustworthy he is (Not very, as even the UN, as well as Iran and Kuwait have learned in the past two decades.). We learned what he would do to fulfill his ambition (A lot, which is bad news to even more people.).

We also learned what to do to people like this. At least, we learned that sixty years ago when a similar person took similar power in Germany. I certainly hope people remember that particular lesson, but it is obvious that some people can not or will not do so. Considering how one British authority on Iraq have called Saddam's regime, "Like the Nazis, but without the human warmth," it is high time we start educating people on the real lessons of the world, instead of ones that advocate Neville Chamberlain's deal with Adolf Hitler as a wonderful idea.

Yikes!

Perusing the website for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, I ran across this article about the 85th birthday of the KGB (Well, not exactly since it is the birth of the first organization that would become the KGB, and the KGB does not exist anymore, but this is a matter of continuity here.), and the opening of a museum detailing the history of the agency from its birth as the "All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Struggle against Counter-Revolution and Sabotage" which later turned into the Cheka under Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky. The museum seems to contain a wide-array of collectibles, ranging from the October Revolution to the on-going conflict in Chechnya, though the statue of Iron Felix that once stood across from the KGB headquarters is nowhere in sight.

One detail about the life of Iron Felix really took the cake, though:

"Dzerzhinsky unleashed the "Red Terror" on Russia. In a famous bureaucratic mix-up he ordered 1,500 political prisoners shot in a single night because Lenin had put a cross on a list of names. Only later did he realise that Lenin often put crosses on documents to remind himself that he had read them."

Yikes! Talk about a mix-up in the bureaucracy!

Speaking of Sequels....for Games....

Incidentally, for anybody interested in the gaming console series Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve 2, which are produced for the Sony Playstation by Squaresoft (The same company who makes the Final Fantasy series and the recent collaboration with Disney, Kingdom Hearts.), check out the ultimate fanpage for the series here. You have to click through some pages of Flash animation before reaching the main index page, but it is worth your while. The site is very good.

And while you are there, you can sign the online petition to Squaresoft for a Parasite Eve 3. Since Squaresoft is only going to do a sequel if it feels there is enough interest in it (i.e., ship about 250,000 units for the title.), the petition has a way to go, so sign if you want to support these guys.

Completely Uninformed, Long-Term TV Speculation

Fox's recent cancellation of the sci-fi TV series Firefly left fans of the show with one glimmer of hope. Fox has given its release to series creator Joss Wheadon to shop the show around to any other networks interested in taking it. UPN, whose series line-up has generally struggled since Paramount launched the network, has expressed interest in picking up the show.

The news about Firefly comes at a time when UPN is involved in negotiations with Wheadon regarding the other, more famous, show they have that he created, namely Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The network and Wheadon are currently in negotiations over the fate of the series, which is rapidly approaching the end of the current contract for both the series and the series' cast. At the moment, a lot of attention is on whether Buffy's Sarah Michelle Geller will come back if the series continues (Paramount is thinking of offerign her $750k per episode to at least make guest appearances in a future season.), but most of the talk swirls about whether BtVS will continue and if it remains as is or is replaced by a spin-off.

Like most guesses, this will probably be wrong. But I got a sneaking suspicion that if Paramount decides to pick-up Firefly, it will be doing so as a packaged deal with Joss Wheadon, with the other half either Buffy coming back for a eighth season or a Buffy spin-off for next season.

And that is a good thing, even with the odd plotlines and twists in the last two seasons.

The Gaming Genre that Refuses to Die

Gamespot.com has an article from way back announcing that Microids, the maker of 2002's wonderful PC adventure game Syberia, is teaming up with Benoit Sokal (The driving force behind Syberia.) again to make a sequal. Syberia 2 is tentatively scheduled for release in October 2003, which does sound a bit optimistic (For the date to happen one year from the announcement - which came out 10/14/02 - they either have to be working on it for a while now, have added a lot more people to the development team, or recycled a lot of stuff from the first game. The only other explanation is that they are being wildly optimistic.) for a game with the attention to detail Syberia has.

Still, this is a most encouraging sign in a PC gaming genre that has been declared "dead" quite a few times for the last five years or so. Like Edgar Allen Poe's cat, adventure games keep popping back up every year to surprise and astonish everybody. Not all the products are good, but that is the same story all across the gaming spectrum. What is so exceptional is just how good some of the games really are. Games like The Longest Journey, which was released to the US market in 2000 by Funcom (The same guys from Norway responsible for Anarchy Online.), continue to show that adventure games can be fun, innovative, and enthralling if the developers pay attention to story and gameplay and the myraid of details that can make or break any game. While Funcom has basically admitted that a sequal to TLJ is highly unlikely to ever develop (Meaning actress Sarah Hamilton is not going have a chance at voicing TLJ's heroine anytime soon.), it is good to see some people are continuing the mantle.

While Microids - which has been releasing a series of adventure games for a while now - is a Paris-based developer with a subsidery development studio in Montreal, other people besides them and Funcom have been churning out adventure games. Presto Studios, which also made The Journeyman Project series of adventure games, came out with the latest episode in the Myst saga, Myst III:Exile, this summer under the Ubi Soft label. And Lucasarts (The gaming division of George Lucas' business empire.) surprised many when it announced plans to release sequels for two adventure gaming stalwarts in the form of Full Throttle 2 and Sam and Max 2 (Of Sam and Max Hit the Road fame.) in 2003. In addition, several other "surprise" releases from overlooked game companies will doubtless add to the mix for the coming year.

So for fans of PC adventure games, 2003 looks bright indeed, with promising games on the horizon. I still have to get my own copy of Syberia, but I also know what I should be getting for the Christmas stocking next December.

Daily Roundup for the Daily Telegraph 12/20/02

Well, the other topics of interest in The Daily Telegraph for today are:

Africa deciding to stand-up to Europe (And the world.) in a sign that "nobody can push us around!" by showing solidarity with Robert Mugebe's Zimbabwe. Apparently, being a thug-dictator who is destroying the welfare, economy, and society of his country to retain power and punish his political enemies (Zimbabwe use to be the bread-basket of southern Africa - Now it is facing mass starvation, due the ruination of the agriculture sector and the ruling party's use of food distribution as a weapon against the opposition.) is a thing to defend and show solidarity with if he is their thug-dictator as oppose to a non-Africa one, when faced with oppostion from the rest of the world. Wonder if they will understand the next time the West says "no" to more aid to Africa because we have lost interest in helping thug-dictators;

Nothing like a good old fashion duel for honors between Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson for the Golden Globes. I hope Sir Michael wins, even if the movie he is going for (A remake of the 1958 movie The Quiet American.) is basically a typical anti-American screed. After all, the man was in Zulu. That is enough to get a thumbs-up despite all sorts of sins;

South Africa's current president, Thabo Mbeki, has had some curious ideas about the cause of AIDS (A virus that is ravaging the population of both the Republic of South Africa and the African continent, due to a variety of reasons and none of them to do with evil, white, Western pharmaceutical corporations intent on killing black Africans.). Specifically, he use to openly believe that HIV does not cause AIDS, but rather "somebody" introduced AIDS into Africa, despite all the scientific and medical evidence to the contrary. His government has went so far as to sponsor a global conference of the world's leading deniers of a link between HIV and AIDS, with a welcome from the then-health minister. The conclusions of the conferece was therefore not surprising. Fortunately, Mbeki has toned down the rhetoric since the infamous letter to President Bill Clinton where he blamed AIDS on "outsiders" rather HIV and led Clinton to ask the State Department whether the letter had actually come from the President of South Africa. Unfortunately, President Mbeki's less the pressing concern about the serious impact of AIDS on his country is not shared by his younger brother Moeletsi, who has openly criticized the older man's mere passing concern with the virus at the recent African National Congress party conference at Stellenbosch University (Ironically, the place where white Afrikaners help formulate the policies of apartheid over half a century ago.). Should make for some exciting conversation at the dinner table at the next Mbeki family reunion.

Another Military Advantage the US has over the EU.

Yes, my piece about the problems of modern military procurement is far, far, far behind schedule. Blame it on my job search. But the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph has an article today which talks about how the British military is searching for more roll-on/roll-off vehicle transporters to contract so they can help move the expected forces the UK will deploy to the Middle East for the coming action against Iraq. The article also contained the surprising news that both France and Holland have been also in the market for ro/ro ships, perhaps the clearest signal that even in Europe, countries are falling in line behind the US for a military action against Iraq.

While the US military have also been contracting ships to help move forces and material, the US is in far, far better shape sealift-wise then it was in 1991 during the run-up to the last Gulf War. Then, US efforts at mobilizing the mothballed transports of the National Reserve Defense Fleet to move equipment from the US to Saudi Arabia was a disaster in every sense of the word. Old ships (Some dating back to the World War Two period.) which were too far gone in condition to use, vessels that should have been ready to steam from within a few days to a month after the start of mobilization requiring additional weeks and/or months of work to be in condition to go to sea, ships breaking down a few day to just a few hours after leaving Savannah carrying heavy equipment and supplies, and the general state of disrepair that the entire US merchant marine suffers from - it was a good thing the world shipping market was there to support Desert Shield/Desert Storm. Of course, foreign ships being charted to carry American military cargo presented their own problems - one charted freighter carrying explosives needed to be unloaded on the Mediterranean side of the Suez Canal - with the cargo shipped overland to the Red Sea and reload to continue the journey to Saudi Arabia - because one of the ship's officers was a Libyan and it was feared the ship might be scuttled in the canal and block maritime traffic completely.

In the decade since those experiences, the US has added 2 million tons of ships to its sealift fleet, one of the few good things to happen to national defense under President Clinton, vastly improving the age, condition, carrying capacity, and numbers of the transport pool. While there is no new ships like the SL-7s (Big vehicle transports capable of extrardinary 30+ knots speeds, originally contracted to be built for the SeaLand shipping line. The US, under the auspices of the young Transportation Command, owns and operate - with civilian crews - all eight ships in the class.), most have been big vehicle transports with pretty good speed and endurance. Some, like the Bob Hope-class, are new-built. Others have been purchased and refitted to American standards, including ships built in the Ukraine. Airlift-wise, the US has a smaller pool of long-range, heavy-lift military transport aircrafts then in 1991. However, most of the C-5A/Bs (The 'Big Daddy' of Western airlift.) are still around, and the new C-17 Globemaster III aircraft (Of which the one hundredth airframe was just delivered to the Air Force and named after retiring Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina at the same time he turned 100.), which is partially a replacement for the C-141 and partially to fill the gap between the Starlifters and the Galaxies is proving to be everything the Air Force hoped for and paid to develop and procure, has given the US a better availability in airlift then in 1991. The depression in civilian air travel since 9/11, and the decade-worth of growth in the air delivery business, have also improved the pool of civilian aircraft available to the US military that can be impressed to move personnel and material quickly.

Contrast those encouraging signs (Though the US could always use more SL-7s and definitely needs to procure more C-17s more quickly.) with the situation in Europe. Not a single nation in Europe has anything more then a trivial force of heavy lift transport aircraft or ship. Britain, for example, has three ro-ro vessels in her military which are usually operated under civilian charter to help pay for their upkeep. No other nation in Europe has even that much sealift, and some operate their fleet logistical vessels under charter. In terms of airlift, beyond some C-130s and French-made C-160s, there is no real long range, heavy lift presence. The situation is not likely to improve anytime soon, despite Airbus's proposed A400M military transport aircraft which the European Union is keen on to promote military cooperation and improve efficiency. It can all be traced to the fact that European defense budgets are smaller and less stable (Being subjected to the whims of the current government even within the approved fiscal year.), and the spending priorities those same governments have where defense is not very high. One reason why the A400M will probably never see the light of day is that Germany, which is suppose to purchase about 40% of the projected initial order for the aircraft, is going through a major governmental fiscal crisis right now, and is likely to cut her military budget severely, leading to cuts in the order. This will raise the unit price for each aircraft, since Airbus will have to spread the A400M's development costs over a smaller number of aircraft, which will force other countries (Being unable to raise the funding for the program as easily to compensate.) to cut their orders with the higher price, which will lead to increased prices and more cuts. Since the only other competitor in the military heavy lift market is the C-17, which is rather expensive despite being worth every penny, it is likely that Europe will not be able to assemble a military airlift pool anytime within the next decade, with all the deleterious effects that implies for the rest of their military capabilities.

Needless to say, the transport situation is paralleled in a number of other defense fields and technology, like precision guided munitions. If the current course continues, it will be very hard for Europe (And the European Union.) to ever achieve military equality with the US. That is ironic, since one of the aspersions of a unified Europe that has gone through the years was to serve as a military challenger to American power. Short of America handing over both the technology and the systems themselves to Europe, it is increasingly difficult to see how the EU will ever hope to match, let alone overtake, American military supremacy.

Tooting My Horn

In case you have not seen it before, check out Steven Den Beste's weblog at USS Clueless. I do not agree with everything he posts (I tend to be suspicious of atheists' arguments against the value and foundations of religion - not to mention the practice of it thereof - even if I am an agnostic.) but on most subjects he is tough to beat.

And yes, some of the stuff I write makes it onto his weblog occasionally.

Holiday Observations

A note to everybody who runs charities: when you decide to put bell-ringers and pots out in public places and in front of stores like the Salvation Army does, try to avoid choosing bell-ringers who look like they are waiting for the casting call for the latest remake of Psycho or any other horror movie you can name. You will get more donations that way.