Awoken by a message on my mobile from Seattle, I’ve just been browsing the web a little more and enjoying the small pleasures of instant messaging. Thinking about these strange connections we’ve built for ourselves.

Last night Channel 4 ran some more short films as part of their “which side are you on?” exploration of the rumours of war in the middle east. Thought provoking stuff. The first film–by an american living in london asking us brits to help the usa avoid war–reminded me of how grateful I am to have so many american friends who help me see past foreign and economic policies I can’t abide. To see that there is hope beyond the hegemony and that there are voices of love within. I think without that knowledge, things would be a whole lot harder.

Sea Change continues to get a lot of play here. I’m told I have to leave it here as I’m outnumbered, but my secret plan (sssh… don’t tell anyone) is to pack it away while the numbers are slightly more balanced. Wish me luck. And don’t tell anyone.

Aimee Mann’s latest record is playing in the background as I type this. It’s the first CD I’ve heard since buying that new Beck record. I guess I’m still on first impressions of Sea Change but they’re good impressions. It’s been a while since I found a melancholic album to love, but if that were how I filed my CDs, this would take a prominent place. As it is, I doubt it will be filed for a while.

We went to church this morning. I’m not sure if the sermon was meant to be an exploration of postmodern story-telling (mr. preacher man said it was going to be about the holy spirit) but the disconnectedness of the stories hinted at that. Though they’re no longer disconnected if that analysis is right. So maybe we should ignore that.

stopwar.org.uk seems to have gone down. At least temporarily. Hopefully that’s a sign of huge interest rather than anything else. Regardless, the attendance yesterday (250,000?) sounds fabulous.

I guess I fall pretty squarely into the category of those who have, for the past year at least, become known as anti-american. And that’s why I turned fairly quickly to Arundhati Roy’s article in yesterday’s guardian. It’s a recurring theme for so many that our society’s desire for labels sets up dichotomies which rob us of the freedom to express nuanced beliefs. I wish I knew how to reclaim that. {I wish I could think how to structure that penultimate sentence}

Most of my thoughts at the moment are with the Stop the War demo taking place in London. Circumstances entirely within my control mean that my plans to be there haven’t come to fruition. I’m trying to find other ways to express my solidarity. I’m not sure that buying a Beck CD “for the people of Iraq” quite counts. But thanks for the suggestion, Steve.

Now I must go and listen to that Beck CD….

James.

So it’s been some days since this was last updated. Days of receiving much hospitality in Dublin and Belfast. Days of reading, talking, playing cards, writing (in other places) and changing plans for flying home. Many thanks are due, particularly to bananie and Susan for Belfast hospitality (and to the rest, but I don’t know that you have websites…)

Time for reading is a great asset. I now hope to be the first person at the University of Reading to quote Ben Okri in an essay on quantum theory. And what’s more, I think the quote will help the essay as well as my notoriety in the department in which I study.

For those following such things, Julie Lee has posted her first update on her website. Delicatessen has now confirmed Iain Archer for 12th December (with more exciting news on the way) and David Dark continues to update anthropiccollective.org.

Disclaimer: To the best of the producer’s knowledge, this entry was produced without the aid of any of jp/p‘s favourite substances.

It feels a little like Bush’s speech on September 11th has made a hole in some floodgates. Since then, outspoken critics of US foreign policy have had a new hook on which to hang our arguments. This piece in the Guardian, the fore-runner to a documentary on Saturday explicitly links the US regime with the cult of (roman) empire which was a dominant force in the culture the early church was born into. It feels a little like the “you’re either for us or against us” has finally sunk in and a lot of foreign (and some domestic) critics are simply accepting that the Bush regime has forced them onto the opposing side.

It was good to hear last night that UN weapons inspectors were taking Iraq’s offer seriously enough to begin talks. I wouldn’t want to go so far as to say that I believe the offer to be genuine, but I know I want to find hope in that situation and at the moment the only way out I can see is if the weapons inspectors get on with it and, hopefully, go in. Regardless of the political games taking place around them.

Meanwhile, julielee.org is in place. Still tinkering with the colour scheme. I can’t quite get the text colour right across all monitors — it’ll look fine on mine and illegible on someone else’s or vice versa — but I’m working on it. Just trying to get all the bits and pieces out of the way before I leave for Ireland tomorrow. Next task is to update the delicatessen site with artist bios.

While browsing a few web design sites, I finally got round to visiting Scott Andrew‘s website. Alongside a really nice design (love those titles on the left-hand side) there are some really useful web development articles for those with a focus on standards.

And I caught a great exhibition at the Hayward yesterday.
The works of two ground-breaking photographers, Ansell Adams and William Eggleston are on display until Sunday and are well worth a visit if you’re in London. The picture with this entry is by Eggleston.

I’m trying to work out how to respond to the news today. On the surface, Iraq’s latest offer appears fantastic: if it’s serious it should destroy all this talk of war and allow for increased security in that region. It’s no surprise, but rather sad, that the US government appears to be dismissing the offer out-of-hand. As with Afghanistan a year before, I wonder what exactly the Iraqi government could do to convince the US of any sincerity. Certainly they could hand over a stockpile of weapons, but that would require them to have the weapons in the first place…. if they don’t have weapons of mass destruction, is there anything they could ever do to convince Bush of the fact?

At the same time, I’m saddened that Bush appears to be getting his way. Iraq backing down is (if it prevents war) a fantastic thing on an immediate humanitarian level, but it will do nothing to deflate Bush’s ever-expanding ego. Though it’s difficult to know at this point whether anything could, and the humanitarian case is the first which should be heard (the Iraqi people shouldn’t be Bush’s pawns, but nor should they be anyone else’s). The talk of Pax Romana/Americana will continue.

John Pilger got away with showing another rather-more-pointed-than-the-norm documentary on ITV last night. I couldn’t really fault his analysis of the plight of the Palestinians–it was great to hear it spoken so clearly on national TV–but I continue to be surprised that the normally far more conservative broadcasters let him get away with that. A hopeful sign?

Spent more time today working on elevation and ICC‘s websites. Put together an update for the delicatessen website now that we have confirmed our lineup for October 17th. And the new Julie Lee website should get an unveiling tomorrow (just need to tidy up some font colours).

Main listening: DJ Shadow – _Endtroducing_ / Coldplay _A Rush Of Blood To The Head_
Main reading: Karl Popper _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ / Isaac Asimov _The Caves of Steel_

I’ve been searching for the photo from Friday’s Guardian online. The one with George Bush speaking to the UN while behind him and above him Kofi Annan holds his head in his hands. It’s a marvellous piece of photojournalism. It says it all.

While I continue to search, this article is worth a read. If anyone knows where I can find the image (it was by reuters and used by the Guardian and the Independent for their front covers) please do post a comment and pass on the link.

Matt and Clare’s wedding was a good occasion, though I’ll think twice before following directions found on Matt’s website in future. Either there was a zero missing, or we travelled ten times the distance we were meant to travel between church and reception. I suspect it’s the latter.

I should have known that as soon as I broke down and went back to boots the sun would come back out. And so it has.

A day of getting bits and pieces done: booked my train and plane tickets to go to Ireland; checked out The Postmodern Condition and Readings In Natural Language Processing from the library to help me get a bit further with my dissertation; worked on some possible designs for julielee.org; added some more press releases to greenbelt‘s site; and that kinda thing.

Only managed to catch bits of Blair’s speech to the TUC on the news but I’m rather surprised (disappointed) that he seems to have had rather an easy ride. I suppose the indication that parliament will be recalled was a positive sign, but (poor late-night analogy alert) finding an oasis won’t take you across a desert without a lot more thought and work. It increasingly seems that there is little difference between the United Nations and the 1930s League of Nations. Just like the League of Nations couldn’t prevent Mussolini’s barbaric invasion of Abyssinia, there is little the UN can do to prevent a US invasion of Iraq. And despite all Bush and Blair’s protesting, Iraq is far from the only country in contravention of UN resolutions.

For those within reach of London don’t forget 28 September.

And on another note, David has started posting at anthropiccollective.org. Check it out.

My summer ended today. As I watched the rain pour down, I put aside the sandles which have seen me through the past three months and returned to my boots. The hope was to keep the water out, but that wasn’t to be. I’d forgotten about the holes in my boots. But the principle of the thing remains.

Not much to report from the weekend. A good visit with family over the weekend. Viewings of unremarkable films. A fair bit more delicatessen planning (front page now updated). And my house is a fair bit tidier.

Watching the news yesterday made me begin to wonder why Scott Ritter couldn’t be US president. I suppose it’s fairly obvious really, but his statements seemed so measured and reasonable that it did make me wish for a regime that saw things more that way.

It came as little surprise to see that the story of Ritter urging caution was followed today with a report that Iraq could have nuclear weapons “within months”. Little surprise, of course, because I expected the propaganda backlash, but also because it would come as a surprise to me to find a regime which couldn’t have nuclear weapons within that time frame given the necessary nuclear material. It would surprise me if there was a university physics department which couldn’t have one in the time frame. Granted, not a clean, advanced nuclear weapon, but a nuclear weapon none-the-less. I guess there’s more of this to come. Did you hear about Tony Blair throwing babies out of incubators? Oh, no, wait….

Meanwhile I’ve made some upgrades to the message boards at sarahmasen.com (and been reminded once again how messy they are internally and that I really need to do something about that), updated the delicatessen front page, produced a draft speak programme for the term and caught up on quite a few other bits and pieces. And now I’ve blogged.

It must be an amusing spectacle to be sitting at an international conference surrounded by stuffily dressed delegates from across the world, debating the arcane points of a policy which will never actually be applied because the establishment don’t have the political will to do so, when all of a sudden a representative of the world’s richest nation stands up and kicks into a stand-up routine.

Of course I’m not sure that that’s quite what Colin Powell had in mind when [and I know I'm coming to this a little late] he read through the drafts of his speech. He must have known that what he was saying wasn’t going to be accepted by many of the delegates, but laughter? That probably wasn’t in his imagination.

In the midst of wild statements about his country’s environmental track record, it is perhaps his slightly more carefully made points about GMOs which most clearly indicate the lack of understanding. Imported European farming practices hold a large chunk of the blame for the desertification of Africa, which has resulted in some of the worst famines in human history. On the surface, he is right that any offer of food to the starving seems fantastic. But that neglects the (oft-stated) fact that the starving don’t want to rely on handouts for ever and that Africa can’t afford to pick up the pieces if the GMOs contaminate future crops. Simply quoting “scientific evidence” which suggests that there have been no problems so far (when the tests have all been carried out in an entirely different environment with far less at stake) is simply not good enough.

The Environment News Service have some thoughts (thanks oneworld.net)

Current reading: Writing In The Dust by Rowan Williams
Current listening: I Was Left Alone by Mohammad Esfahani (not on amazon!)