Daily Archives: Saturday, 18 June 2005

Blimey, it’s subarctic in Hell today

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Improvised


Improvised

Originally uploaded by framboise.

This hasn’t passed me by. Oh no. It’s just that Doctor Who completely took over this evening and I haven’t had a chance to let it sink in. Plus, I thought it was a very belated April Fools’ joke. Australia can make all the excuses they like, but this day will go down in History (so special the ‘H’ needs to be capitalised).

On a sadder note, the mini cricket balls and bat are now stashed away in a box. Dogs and walkers on East Lothian beaches will now be safe from my ridiculous attempts at spin bowling. (OK, I can’t even get it where I want it, but spinning is so much more fun.)

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Everything must come to dust

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Massive spoilers ahead. (I’ll stick a photo of Rose here in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen The Parting of the Ways yet.

Rose

Tonight, the Doctor finds redemption. That was, for me, the highlight of tonight’s episode. After his display of hysterical hatred of the Geocomtex Dalek in the Dalek episode, we were made to wonder how far the good Doctor would go to eliminate the Daleks, how much to the bad he would slip, how much he would become like the very thing he hated. A destroyer. Tonight, however desperate the situation, the Doctor held his hand. He could not find it within his conscience to destroy an entire world to eliminate the Daleks. He could not be an exterminator. This whole season has been about the Dcotor’s mental and emotional state following the loss of the Time Lords. From the very first episode, with the Nestene, we see a defiant character. He feels guilty about the fall-outs of the Time War. He’s had to make tough choices (but thankfully not in a Blairite way), and looking back now, this makes the resolution of The Empty Child all the more poignant. “Everybody lives.”

Jack too, finds redemption. From the first time we meet him as a buccaneer in The Empty Child, he’s grown. And while he still obviously thrives on adrenaline and has no qualms about using violence, he has shown himself to be capable of caring for someone other than himself. Like Rose and the Doctor, it doesn’t even occur to him that they can escape in the TARDIS. He’s willing to stand and fight. Although he might have an ulterior motive since he’s from the future and thus could be a paradox should the Doctor blast Earth with a delta wave. (Although, as the Doctor explains, there are outposts of humans elsewhere. Which allows Jack to be a good guy again…) And it is particularly touching when he bids both Rose and the Doctor goodbye in the exactly the same fashion. (And how many complaints will we get on Points of View for that one?)

On to Rose. What a deus ex machina! It’s the third wish scenario. Having said that, what a fantastically strong character Rose is. To have the bravery and strength to attempt to use something as vast and powerful as the Time Vortex. To be able to deal with the task at hand calmly and rationally. First, the message. Then the dispersal of the Daleks. And finally, just because she is human and has feelings, Jack. Would anyone else have the moral courage to stop there and not abuse the absolute power?

To take it back a little, it was also a very courageous and selfless thing that Mickey and Jackie did. They could have prevented Rose from going back. She was, to all intents and purposes, pretty likely to perish along the Doctor. She made it clear that the Doctor was fighting a losing battle 200,000 years in the future. Instead, they could see beyond keeping Rose for themselves, and gave her not only the freedom to go, but their assistance too. It’s nice to get some storylines that celebrate humanity.

Comments on the very end to follow. Liked it though. Very cool.

Fantastic!

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Incensed over incendiary devices

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Chicken Yoghurt has posted his thoughts about yesterday’s article in the Independent about the UK government’s response about the use of napalm in Iraq by the US army. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence? In short: the US army used/did-not-use* napalm in Iraq, and lied/did-not-lie* to the UK govt about it. Chicken Yoghurt is not happy about both. Better?) Anyway, read the post and follow through Chicken Yoghurt’s links for the full story.

The wikipedia page for napalm refers to an article as long ago as the 22nd of March, 2003 in the Sydney Morning Herald. An excerpt from the article includes a quote from a potential whistleblower (in italics):

Marine Cobra helicopter gunships firing Hellfire missiles swept in low from the south. Then the marine howitzers, with a range of 30 kilometres, opened a sustained barrage over the next eight hours. They were supported by US Navy aircraft which dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives and napalm, a US officer told the Herald. But a navy spokesman in Washington, Lieutenant Commander Danny Hernandez, denied that napalm – which was banned by a United Nations convention in 1980 – was used.

“We don’t even have that in our arsenal,” he said.

The US military powers-that-be later issued a statement of denial to the SMH:

The Pentagon subsequently issued a statement to the Herald:

Your story (‘Dead bodies everywhere’, by Lindsay Murdoch, March 22, 2003) claiming US forces are using napalm in Iraq, is patently false. The US took napalm out of service in the early 1970s. We completed destruction of our last batch of napalm on April 4, 2001, and no longer maintain any stocks of napalm. – Jeff A. Davis, Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Another article, highlighted by Chicken Yoghurt, is from the San Diego Herald Tribune, and quotes a Colonel from the US Army:

“We napalmed both those (bridge) approaches,” said Col. Randolph Alles in a recent interview. He commanded Marine Air Group 11, based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, during the war. “Unfortunately, there were people there because you could see them in the (cockpit) video.

Even more worrying is the following passage:

Apparently the spokesmen were drawing a distinction between the terms “firebomb” and “napalm.” If reporters had asked about firebombs, officials said yesterday they would have confirmed their use.
What the Marines dropped, the spokesmen said yesterday, were “Mark 77 firebombs.” They acknowledged those are incendiary devices with a function “remarkably similar” to napalm weapons.
Rather than using gasoline and benzene as the fuel, the firebombs use kerosene-based jet fuel, which has a smaller concentration of benzene.

So, napalm in all but name. Sure, they’ll admit to Mark 77 firebombs, which don’t have napalm because they use an even more efficient fuel.

I’m not familiar with the San Diego Herald Tribune, but the SMH is a reputable paper, and not one to be sniffed at. I wonder why this was not brought to public consciousness here when the first allegations were made. We got a second chance just before the General Election in May. Follow the exchange of letters in the Guardian: one, two, three.

We probably all missed it first and second time round because there was so much else going on.

* delete as appropriate