Baghdad live — and dead

On Sunday, 13 Iraqis were killed and dozens injured in Baghdad when US helicopters fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians. Guardian columnist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, who was injured in the attack, has written an extraordinary account of what happened – and revealed just how lucky he was to walk away. Here’s an excerpt:

“One of the three men piled together raised his head and looked around the empty streets with a look of astonishment on his face. He then looked at the boy in front of him, turned to the back and looked at the horizon again. Then he slowly started moving his head to the ground, rested his head on his arms and stretched his hands towards something that he could see. It was the guy who had been beating his chest earlier, trying to help his brother. He wanted help but no one helped. He was just there dying in front of me. Time didn’t exist. The streets were empty and silent and the men lay there dying together. He slid down to the ground, and after five minutes was flat on the street.”

Batman strikes again

A protester for “fathers’ rights” wearing a Batman costume got into the grounds of Buckingham Palace (one of the Queen’s tied cottages) and scaled the front wall, upon which he placed a banner advertising his grievances. Big deal. But you would think from the hysterical reaction of the British media (lead item on the BBC Ten O’Clock News for well over five minutes) — closely followed by hysterical politicians — that (a) the entire fabric of civilisation had been rent asunder, and (b) that he had actually threatened the Queen. In fact, the lady in question was far away, taking one of her interminable holidays on one of her vast estates (Balmoral in the Scottish highlands). I am reminded of Thomas Macaulay’s observation that “We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.”

Free Standards group stabilises Linux for nervous businessmen

John Paczkowski, writing in today’s Good Morning Silicon Valley, says:

“In October of 2000, Microsoft ran what would be the first of many anti-Linux advertisements, one that, unlike the others that would follow it, was not only uncharacteristically witty, but rooted in the fears of the Open Source community, and not some alternate reality conjured up in a company sponsored study. Published in a German magazine, the ad featured a lineup of four penguins – the first a normal penguin, the second a penguin with rabbit ears, the third a penguin with a frog’s head and antlers, and the last a penguin with the ears of a pig and an elephant’s trunk. Microsoft’s point: Linux is forking in the same disastrous way that Unix did. Some day, there will many separate and incompatible versions of the OS and God help you if you’ve chosen to build a business on one of them. Nearly four years have passed since that ad first appeared and Linux has not forked in the way that Microsoft predicted. And after today, it probably never will. The Free Standards Group is expected to announce today that a consortium of companies — among them IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, AMD, Red Hat and Novell — has agreed to support Linux Standard Base 2.0, a specification designed to assure compatibility between Linux distributions. It’s a landmark agreement and one that could do much to solidify Linux’s role as a desktop option. Said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Free Standards Group: “If the Linux industry can unite and pull this off, there’s a real shot at a true open alternative to Microsoft. … As with any standard you must reach a certain critical mass to gain recognition. We’ve gained total support from the world’s Linux software makers and having these other vendors come lend their support goes a long way.”

Microsoft’s new mobile phone only needs three keys

Thanks to Tom’s friend Charlie, who saw it first.

Madness on boards

And in the midst of the howling gale, a windsurfer.

On the beach…

… near Haarlem today. There was a Force 6 gale, wonderful clouds scudding across the sky and perfect photographic lighting — sunlight filtered through cloud.

So why exactly did Bush disappear from the National Guard?

From Scott Rosenberg’s Blog…

“Now we have a flood of new jigsaw puzzle pieces, including this strange one from May 19, 1972, in which Bush’s Texas commander writes: “Physical. We talked about him getting his flight physical situation fixed before his date. Says he will do that in Alabama if he stays in flight status. He has this campaign to do and other things that will follow and may not have the time. I advised him of our investment in him and his commitment. He’s been working with staff to come up with options and identified a unit that may accept him. I told him I had to have written acceptance before he would be transferred, but think he’s also talking to someone upstairs.” Another memo records a direct order to Bush to take the physical.

Now, I’ll accept that young Bush was a busy guy, with political campaigns to run and parties to attend — but here he is, he’s been in the Guard for four years, what’s the big deal about a physical? How long does it take, an afternoon? Why was it so important to him not to undergo this routine procedure?

I’m afraid this is the sort of query that leads one toward that other swamp of evasion in the Bush record — those questions about his alleged drug use that have always been answered with nods, winks, comments about having been “young and irresponsible” and denials of drug use carrying carefully crafted expiration dates. Earlier this year, Boehlert reported on the strange coincidence that Bush’s Guard disappearing act almost exactly coincided with the institution of random drug testing for military personnel: ‘At the time when Bush, perhaps for the first time in his life, faced the prospect of a random drug test, his military records show he virtually disappeared, failing for at least one year to report for Guard duty.'”

Thanks to Gerard for the link.

Hazing, Amsterdam style

Walking along the Keizergracht in Amsterdam yesterday, we came on this striking scene — settees out on the street, pompous, overdressed young chaps, strange conversations.

The friends with whom we were walking explained. One of the Fraternity Houses for posh students is nearby, and the sofas etc. are all part of an interviewing and selection process. Just like Skull and Bones in Yale, in fact. And I thought that the Dutch were too sensible for this kind of nonsense. Wonder what their initiation rites are like.

Skype for Mac OS X is out!

The most interesting VoIP application around is available for Macs from today. Hooray! Beta available from here.

The Beslan terrorists

Even allowing for the difficulties of the situation, one of the things that was most striking — at least to the TV viewer — was the apparent amateurishness of the Russian ‘special’ forces. Compare that with the professionalism of the terrorists they were up against. Here’s a quote from today’s New York Times:

The attackers wore NATO-issued camouflage. They carried gas masks, compasses and first-aid kits. They communicated with hand-held radios, and brought along two sentry dogs, as expertly trained as the attackers themselves, the officials said. All suggested detailed planning, including surveillance and possibly rehearsals, the officials said.

“They knew the geography of the school grounds like their own backyard,” the chief spokesman for Russia’s Federal Security Service, Sergei N. Ignatchenko, said in a telephone interview on Saturday. “This allowed them to choose sniper positions and place booby-traps on all possible access routes.”

I suppose that, in a way, Beslan was Russia’s 9/11. I watched Channel 4’s drama-doc, The Hamburg Cell last week and was reminded of the difficulty of combatting people who are not only fanatically convinced about the rightness of their cause, but who are also good at planning, logistics, training and finance. My first reaction to 9/11 on the day of the attack was to assume that it must have been the result of state planning — that it was too complex for mere terrorists to pull off. How wrong can you be?