…to be a human shield for Saddam‘. The human shields appealed to my anti-war stance, but by the time I had left Baghdad five weeks later my views had changed drastically. I wouldn’t say that I was exactly pro-war – no, I am ambivalent – but I have a strong desire to see Saddam removed. Telegraph/UK

“Do some of today’s languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language changes far too fast for that to be possible. But a new genetic study underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral human mother tongue.

They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe, who include hunters and herders.

Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was taught only to men for initiation rites.” NY Times Science

An ABC News reporter travelling with the US ground forces into Iraq observes Doubts and Questions:

Slow Aid and Other Concerns Fuel Iraqi Discontent Toward United States. “Traveling unescorted into Safwan today, I got a far different picture. Rather than affection and appreciation, I saw a lot of hostility toward the coalition forces, the United States and President Bush.”

The Iraqis are certainly acting as if they are headless Telegraph/UK

Saddam seriously injured, Cabinet told: Tony Blair’s War Cabinet was told by intelligence chiefs yesterday that Saddam Hussein survived last week’s cruise missile attack on his bunker in Baghdad, but sustained serious injury.

His son, Uday, is also thought to have been injured and may even have been killed. Some American officials also claimed yesterday that another of Saddam’s relatives, Ali Hassan al-Majid – known as “Chemical Ali” for his involvement in the infamous 1988 Halabja chemical weapons attacks – had been killed. Telegraph/UK

“Research at the Salk Institute has identified a gene that may link certain pesticides and chemical weaponry to a number of neurological disorders, including the elusive Gulf War syndrome and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” EurekAlert!

This scenario strikes fear into the hearts of tacticians. Stalingrad keeps being mentioned. And then there’s Mogadishu. Who knows how well-armed the civilian population is? truthout

Even while US forces prosecute the Iraqi invasion smoothly and on schedule, an anxious person might think there are ominous signs the world may match US arrogant impetuousness in unforseen and cataclysmic ways.

‘Three missiles fired by U.S. jets taking part in attacks in Iraq landed over the border in southwestern Iran, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said on Saturday.

Quoting an unnamed military commander, IRNA also said that U.S. and British military jets violated the Islamic Republic’s airspace several times on Friday and Saturday during operations against targets in southern Iraq.

“In two cases, rockets from American planes hit (southwestern Iran),” the commander said. The rockets fell in the area of Maniuhi, close to the border with Iraq. The commander gave no further details and there were no reports of casualties or damage.

Another rocket hit an oil refinery depot on Friday evening in the city of Abadan, about 30 miles east of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, government officials and witnesses told Reuters. Two guards at the depot were injured in the blast.’ NY Times

If these were US/UK missiles, I can understand the first two landing just over the border but someone who knows more about how these things operate would have to dispel my suspicions that hitting an oil refinery depot 30 miles off-course could not have been accidental. Perhaps some commander got the brilliant idea, after the first two missiles strayed over the line, of making a gratuitous hit on Iran look inadvertent. Iraq, Iran, they sound alike, look alike, they’re both evil® in the commander-in-chief’s assessment, and they stand in our way in the same way in the global War for Peace. To be fair, however, given that US planes strayed over the border, these could have been Iraqi anti-aircraft missiles firing on them, the Times article suggests.

On the other side of Iraq, everyone is watching Turkish troop movements into Iraqi Kurdistan. Could Turkish designs on this region and fears of Kurdish nationalism emboldened by a US defeat of Iraq (more than Turkey’s stated aim of controlling an influx of refugees from the fighting into Turkey) have motivated Turkey all along in preventing US deployment on a northern front? In its arrogance, US strategic planners never counted on Turkey daring to flout our demand for cooperation. This miscalculation could broaden the war immeasurably in a manner we never bargained for, even if we’ve taken Baghdad within the next 48 hours. “Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka Fisher has warned its crews on NATO planes protecting Turkey will be withdrawn if it becomes involved in the war; and a top Russian official has warned the war could spread if Turkey gets involved.” ABC News [via truthout]

And while we’re on the topic of the threshold,

‘North Korea says the situation on the Korean Peninsula was deteriorating to the “brink of a nuclear war” because of US-South Korean war games.

And in its first official response to the war on Baghdad, North Korea called the military action in Iraq “a grave encroachment upon sovereignty”.

It also accused the US of planning to attack North Korea after Iraq. ‘ Sydney Herald Sun [via truthout]

with devastating shrieks“. Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad on its bombardment, making it real… United for Peace

Nick Bostrom’s home page: “Welcome! This page will tell you something about me and my goals. You will also find a selection of my writings in philosophy of science, ethics, transhumanism, probability theory and more, plus a work of poetry in Swedish which you will be unable to read.” Bostrom is an

Oxford University Research Fellow.

“I got a letter from a general at the Pentagon when the name change went through and he says it was great to have the employ of the commander of the Autobots in the National Guard.”

Christopher Lydon is back.

More on: Is the Baghdad Blogger for real? Paul Boutin comments on the net evidence so far. [via bOing bOing]

Says Ray at Bellona Times:

To a more extreme extent than we’ve ever known before (the bloated Republican puppets of the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties being more openly pulled by the strings of their puppet-masters), the United States is under the power of the consequence-free. Bush went AWOL, and speaks as a patriot; he failed in business, and remains rich; he snorted and drank and raised those who snort and drink, and pushes life imprisonment for dabblers; he lost an election, and became President; he dragged the FBI off his Saudi business associates and some of them attacked our country and Bush hid and bin Laden still hides, and Bush was praised for his bungling; he squanders our national treasury and destroys our tax base and increases government spending on anything that might profit his domestic business associates, and I still don’t see the so-called fiscally responsible turning against him. He keeps inviting disaster, and retribution keeps passing harmlessly through him and onto the nation.

Whether Saddam Hussein is dangerous or not is beside the point. When I want to complain about dangerous leaders, I can see closer examples… [more]

with devastating shrieks“. Robert Fisk reports from Baghdad on its bombardment, making it real… United for Peace