What do the Iraqi insurgents want?

Found myself asking this question today, perhaps thinking about the passions that could have led to the taunting of Saddam Hussein as he was about to be hanged...I realised I didn't know, and should try to know...It might be worth finding out what they are fighting so passionately for (or against). Found this Washington Post Article by Hiwa Osman (written in 2005, but still v. helpful).

Hiwa says in particular, the following:

there's more than one [strategy]. That's because the insurgents are actually several groups of people who might share tactics, but possess different motivations and long-term objectives. Thus the appeal on the side of the generator in transit might have had an effect with one group of the insurgency: those who were fired from their jobs in the military and other government institutions for being members of the Baath party but who don't really believe in Saddam Hussein's doddering old brand of Arab socialism. But two other important factions of the insurgency -- the die-hard Baathists and the pro-al Qaeda Islamist militants -- would not hesitate to attack what they would see as a perfect target: a giant generator, 12 policemen and 16 Iraqi national guardsmen. Promoting instability by disrupting public services and crippling the security apparatus of the new Iraq is the heart of their strategy.

New Years Resolutions

I was trying to figure out what makes me uncomfortable about these the other day - well, not uncomfortable exactly more at a loss as to what they actually are.

A good Wikipedia entry provides some context:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year_resolution

There is a reference to earliest beginnings in 153 BC with the mythical king Janus who, with two faces, was able to look forwards and backwards:

"Janus became the ancient symbol for resolutions and many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the beginning of each year".

That provides some historical context, which is useful...The sense of trying to reconcile past perceived shortcomings against future good intentions is not a bad way of seeing these "resolutions". And of-course there's a catch...The past is gone, and cannot be brought back, so how does one reconcile past with future? Can't be done...It's an impossible task, recalling Greek mythology again - a sysiphian task:

"I was a smoker yesterday...Tomorrow I will not be a smoker"...Thinking teleogically, picturing the future as a time in which one will have more control, one will be able to make things happen, according to a linear timeline which charts progress, is possible no more than a glorious delusion.

For, surely, human beings tend to behave and interact cyclically rather than teleogically. We tend to chase our own shadows rather than cast new ones.

So, the more accurate verbalisation, according to my theory, might in-fact be: "I smoked a lot yesterday, and tomorrow, hooray, I will not be smoking, but then the day after tomorrow, my old habit might catch up wtih me again, and I could find myself smoking again...Ouch...My optimistic, forward-moving, linear model of human behaviour just collapsed...!"

(And a Happy New Year to you too!)

And yet, and yet...The old/new resolutions keep on coming...

There is a ferocious little corner of one's mind that, only quasi-conscious perhaps, continues to churn them out - and perhaps for this reason: that with sheer force of will, perhaps a daemonic force of will, it might be possible to forge a linear, forward moving, progress-making, model for the rest of one's life. With the aid of a brace of NLP practitioners and a posse of self-help books, inspirational podcasts, and goodly audio books, it might be possible to "become that person I want to be"...

I must, I must, I will I will...

But it needs will...

Which is why so few, so very few, actually succeed in the dangerous game of New Years resolutioning.

But you do find them, one does find them.....Amongst one friends, the lonely long-distance runners, the mid-winter outdoor swimmers, the oatcake munching smilers and hopers...

They stand apart - perhaps they are the Gods, the goodly Januses of our time: have you noticed they are not always the easiest of people to brush against? Focussed, with little time for pleasantries, cognisant of only what they need to be cognisant of, engaged in the nuclear task of fusing the past and the future in to the present. No wonder, now and again, they appear tired and impatient of us lesser mortals...The ones who can't quite hack it, and for whom a promise is as good as the next Friday-night Kebab, or Thursday afternoon ice cream.

Dr. No...

Started the New Year in Southfields, South West London visiting a good friend. We saw in the New Year with Ursula Andress rising up from the sea in a digitally remastered DVD of Dr. No - wonderful quality. We noted that Dr. No was the first ever Bond movie, and, as such was finding still finding its feet. We sensed the film making a journey from the 50's (the world of gentlemen's clubs, gaming tables, politesse, in London) to something wilder, more surreal and less easy to pigeonhole when Bond travels to Jamaica...My friend noted how amazing the lavish sets of Dr. No's lair on a Caribbean island must have seemed to the audiences of the early 60's. Easy to underestimate the impact. I wondered if the sheer sumptousness and generosity of the designs, the play with colour, must have come as a wonderful and distraction to audiences still reeling from the austerity years.

We speculated on the way the film dances around the big subjects of radiation, paranoia, with espionage as the eye of the audience, Bond being our "way in" to these sinister, yet compelling hidden worlds: his quintessential Englishness is an essential ingredient. It is vital that he is not alien to us, but that he acts as a trusted guide to these alien worlds presided over by "super-powerful" concerns. We have to be able to recognise James Bond as one of our own. For him to be too crazy or too outlandish would be out of the question: 007 the conduit to richer, more dangerous, more tantalising experiences...

The erotic in Bond is always on the edge of danger...He engages with women who could be about to kill him...The kind of sex that a side of us both fears and desires...

So the sex must also be part of the drug...It too must be on a heightened plane of experience...The edge of a cliff, the edge of a bed...

And back to Bill's flat in Southfields: early to bed (about 1.00, which was fine by me), and, as Bill rightly judged it, a most pleasant fry-up breakfast of scrambled egg, bacon, toast and marmalade wtih English Breakfast tea...The only way to start the New Year, and an effective counterbalance to the two Dry Martinis (shaken not stirred) he had downed the night before, plus his glass of champagne: I had 7-Up, as is my wont.