Blood & Treasure

pay as you go

The International Space Station, once a place where astronauts would share food and facilities, is said to be embroiled in a Cold War-like stand-off.

A Russian cosmonaut has complained he is no longer allowed to use a US toilet as well as a US exercise bike. Gennady Padalka, 50, told Russia's Novaya Gazeta newspaper the lack of sharing was lowering the crew's morale.

The veteran cosmonaut said the problem was due to the ISS becoming a more commercial operation.

Poor old Gennady has to space walk to an outside lav, a shack circulating in orbit around the main space station. It’s a real bugger, especially when you get halfway there and realize that you’ve forgotten the paper. But still: billionaires have paid to use that space station toilet. You can’t have some experienced professional cosmonaut free riding. It just wouldn’t be right.via.

torture, confession and disposal

Taking the fall, Comrade Duch:

A key Khmer Rouge leader has admitted responsibility for crimes committed during the regime's brutal rule.

Speaking at a UN-backed tribunal in Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav - also known as Duch - expressed "regretfulness and heartfelt sorrow" for his actions. Duch is accused of torture, crimes against humanity and premeditated murder for his alleged role in the deaths of more than 10,000 people.

This is a bit like calling Rudolf Hoss a “key Nazi leader". Duch* was a functionary. He never governed a KR administrative unit, let alone province, and was nowhere near the Politbureau. He was certainly not as senior in the KR hierarchy as Hun Sen, the country’s current Prime Minister. The other three on trial with him were very senior KR leaders, but Duch is the only one charged with anything specific and the only one to admit anything. Preliminary trial proceedings were dragged out for an age, apparently in the hope that the former senior KR detainees would die of natural causes before possibly saying anything in court. It would be difficult to just dispose of them with the UN poking its nose around the place.

S 21, the extermination camp Duch ran, was the place where cadre who fell foul of the Khmers Rouges constant rounds of internal purges were sent for torture, confession and disposal. If Hun Sen and other former KR eminences in Cambodia’s ruling party hadn’t bolted for Vietnam at the right time, Duch would have got his hands on them, too. Now they have him. There's obviously general justice in his prosecution, but it doesn't seem to go much beyond the requirements of the current Cambodian leadership for revenge.

*pronounced "doik", apparently. And for those curious about such things, here's the Khmer Rouge-imposed Cambodian national anthem.

they weren't neither

Farewell the trumpets:

A British military pennant was symbolically lowered over Basra today as UK troops began their withdrawal from Iraq by formally handing command of the southern area of the country to the US army.

The ceremony was attended by the head of Britain's armed forces, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, and US General Ray Odierno, the commanding general of coalition forces in Iraq.

Could have been worse (or better, depending on how you want the ‘lessons learned’ process to go). Here’s how we left Aden:

Two weeks later, Trevelyan inspected a guard of honour drawn from all the services. Disdaining Auld Lang Syne the band of the Royal Marines from HMS Eagle struck up ‘Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be’. The High Commissioner’s security adviser was the last to board the RAF Britannia as it stood, engines idling, on the tarmac at Khoramsar airfield. He climbed the steps to the plane backward, holding a Walther PPK pistol in his hand.

From Peirs Brendon’s Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Brendon goes on to quote diplomat Reginald Hickling on the British imperial presence in the Arab world generally:

I think he will see our whole exercise…as one of selfish power politics, overtaken in its decline by a casual interest in self government.

Not so different then.

he looks like a man who used to tell me what to do

R. Crumb does God, or specifically the Book of Genesis:

Back in 2005 in an interview at the New York Public Library recorded by Time magazine, Crumb, a hero of underground comics, talked about the difficulties of drawing God for the book. "My problem was, how am I going to draw God? Should I just draw him as a light in the sky that has dialogue balloons coming out from it? Then I had this dream. God came to me in this dream, only for a split second, but I saw very clearly what he looked like. And I thought, OK, there it is, I've got God," he told interviewer Robert Hughes, Time's art critic. "He has a white beard but he actually ended up looking more like my father.

Like his dad! Get away. You don’t get many old-time fundamentalist Freudians anymore. Bet Eve’s got a huge arse too.

parenting news

Our kid, currently the wage slave of Evil Capitalist Megacorp, came on a visit this weekend. He told me that he and his fellow young executives had been told to avoid wearing suits lest they be burned as witches during the protest on Wednesday. He didn’t think much to the proposition, but senior management are apparently crapping themselves with worry about the hairy hordes, with the encouragement of the police. Call it a contemporary instance of upward mobility: he’s apparently a member of the protested against classes.

All of which brought back memories. Twenty five years ago I was one of a group filming the original Stop The City demo as one of a network organised by someone affiliated to Crass. I didn’t film it very well: I was followed around by an irate bank messenger who kept jumping up and down before the camera in protest against the publicity I was giving the assembled seditionaries. They bred ‘em loyal, in those days, the lower orders. He was proudly sporting his whistle, too.

Of course, if people dressed in suits ended up joining in the protest then senior management would really be crapping themselves. As things stood I prepared him for the showdown by making him stand in the back garden and dodge while I threw copies of No Logo at him from an upstairs window. Parenting duties don’t end when the child leaves home, you know.

workshop of the world

So, a major Chinese hacking network is discovered: Tibetans in exile targeted, and much much more:

Researchers found that ministries of foreign affairs of Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Barbados and Bhutan appear to had been targeted.

Hacked systems were also discovered in the embassies of India, South Korea, Indonesia, Romania, Cyprus, Malta, Thailand, Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and Pakistan.

Analysts say the attacks are in effect industrial espionage, with hackers showing an interest in the activities of lawmakers and major companies. Beijing denies responsibility.

I’m inclined to believe it, though complicity is a different matter. While political and diplomatic targeting would benefit rival states, governments are also customers for the kind of information harvested by commercially interested parties. So are interested private actors: Last week Haaretz reported that an Israeli security network brought down Hezbollah.tv domain using off the shelf Chinese hacking tools.

There are other factors in play too:

With China's economy cooling down, some of the country's IT professionals are turning to cybercrime, according to a Beijing-based security expert. Speaking at the CanSecWest security conference last week, Wei Zhao, CEO of Knownsec, a Beijing security company, said that while many Chinese workers may be feeling hard times, business is still booming in the country's cybercrime industry.

"As the stock market dropped like a stone, a lot of IT professionals lost lots of money on the stock market," he said. "So sometimes they sell 0days," he said, referring to previously unknown software bugs.

"China is not only the world's factory, but also the world's malware factory,"

One of the things I’ve tried to explain about Mass Group Incidents in China is that their occurrence doesn’t necessarily lead to or indicate more widespread political discontent. A certain amount of chaos is normal for China. Now China seems to be exporting that chaos in viral form.

Anyway, if you want to know what mucky movies the spouse of the Maltese Home Secretary is downloading, you know where to go.

Dark Visitor looks like the place to go for more on the wider world of Chinese hacking.

husbandly flies

Sadly, this story may not be quite as good as it looks:

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, apologised today for an expenses claim which included adult films watched by her husband Richard Timney.

Smith said she mistakenly submitted an expenses claim which included five pay-per-view films, including two adult movies which were viewed at her family home in her Redditch constituency.

The £67 Virgin Media bill was submitted last June as part of Smith's expenses. It included two 18-rated features, each costing £5, which were viewed on 1 April and 6 April last year. The bill also included two viewings of the film Ocean's 13 at £3.75 each and an additional £3.50 to watch the film Surf's Up.

It all depends on the definition of “adult film”. There are plenty of adult films, judged by rating, that aren’t porn. The last 18-rated film I watched was Romero’s remake of Night Diary of the Living Dead and its not hard to see how this could have a certain resonance with the spouse of an MP, especially a member of the Government of the Living Dead. Anyway, we might just be stuck with boring old minor financial malfeasance.

On the other hand it is easy to imagine Mr Timney, left at a loose end, his wife poring over her red boxes, resorting to research material for a hand shandy and – one hand on the zapper, the other unzipping husbandly flies - thinking: ‘never mind, I’ll stick it on exes.’

Also:

After today's disclosure about the expenses claim for the adult pay-per-view films, former shadow home secretary David Davis told Sky News: "It is very hard to believe. My first response was, under what category would this expense claim be? I didn't even know films were that expensive … claiming for films? I can't believe it."

Ah, sweet. The shadow Home Secretary wants to know who Gazza is. These video recordings of which you speak? What are they?

as in needs

The British press, on the case: Sarah wants to know if Obama thinks Gordon is special.

The next British press questioner, the Times' Sarah Baxter, asked Gibbs and McDonough about whether they were using "special relationship" or "special partnership" to describe the US-UK relationship, and Gibbs admitted that he was mystified that there was any difference, and turned to national security specialist McDonough to try to explain that the U.S.-U.K. relationship was apparently solid and super valued as ever.

I assume on this performance that the US thinks Britain is “special” as in “needs.”

Sinosphere Friday six

Hey everyone, what are you doing for serf emancipation day?

Saturday, China will observe a newly created holiday: Serf Emancipation Day, which commemorates the day in 1959 when the Tibetan government was dissolved after the Chinese government crushed a Tibetan uprising and the Dalai Lama went into exile. The holiday was established following last year’s Tibetan protests and riots against Chinese rule and is intended to highlight what Beijing says is the social and economic progress that Tibetans have made over the last 50 years.

There’s surely an element of truth here – the same as if the Soviet Union had commemorated the invasion of Poland in 1945 as “Auschwitz Liberation Day”. And lets not forget that we certainly got rid of Saddam Hussein a few years back. But there’s always the question of what happened next.

On the same subject: A religious ceremony for the Dalai Lama used human blood, skulls and skin. That’s the death metal vote sewn up for the Dalai then.

Also related: with Younghusband to Lhasa.

 Animal statues weren’t the only things boosted from the Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace) by the Anglo-French forces of 1860, an actual pooch was also snatched as part of the war booty. This diminutive Pekingese, rumored to have been the possession of the Empress Dowager, fell into the hands of a British officer who then arranged for the dog to be presented as a “gift” to Queen Victoria.

 The puppy’s new name: “Looty.”

There’s a new film about John Rabe. “the good Nazi of Nanjing.” And while we’re about it, meet Feng Shan Ho, the Schindler of China.

An apple for teacher, or else..

What China and India have in common.

One thing worth noting before the wrap: three months into 2009 and I’ve not heard of a significant mass group incident all year.

game over

The normally reliably dull apparat hangout Labourlist comes up with a weirdly compelling account of the Orwell Prize shortlist debate, featuring various representatives of the commentariat and political classes. Everyone’s more or less drunk – especially Nick Cohen – and bad tempered. Everyone thinks that the game’s up. No one knows what to do about it. It brings to mind this classic comment on a different matter a few years back:

We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.

What are the discussions like in the footman’s parlour when the manor house goes bankrupt? Something like this, I suspect. What you have here are the understrappers of the overclass, the proletariat of the super-rich, once hired to provide ornamental political and media services, now feeling uncomfortably expendable. Oh my God what’s going to happen with the school fees and I can’t afford personal armed guards and the mob are coming with the pitchforks and there’s no place for me on the private jet...

Anyway: check out the state of the British intelligentsia.