Undulating Ungulate

A fun grab bag of curiously related informations from the internets.

Basra Violence Down 90 Percent.

But why, you ask?

BAGHDAD (AP) — Attacks against British and Iraqi forces have plunged by 90 percent in southern Iraq since London withdrew its troops from the main city of Basra, the commander of British forces there said.

The presence of British forces in downtown Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, was the single largest instigator of violence, Maj. Gen. Graham Binns told reporters Thursday on a visit to Baghdad’s Green Zone.

“We thought, ‘If 90 percent of the violence is directed at us, what would happen if we stepped back?’” Binns said.

Britain’s 5,000 troops moved out of a former Saddam Hussein palace at Basra’s heart in early September, setting up a garrison at an airport on the city’s edge. Since that pullback, there’s been a “remarkable and dramatic drop in attacks,” Binns said.

“The motivation for attacking us was gone, because we’re no longer patrolling the streets,” he said.

That’s why.

Of course, More US military veterans kill themselves each year than soldiers have died so far in Iraq.

MORE US military veterans had killed themselves in one year than the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq since 2003, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6256 US veterans took their own lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total 3863 US military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 — an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website icasualties.org.

Interesting article on social software, the internet, and electronically mediated communication in general.

Those of us older than 25 can’t imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it’s hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I

[...]

Thinking more practically, there’s now a generation gap between first-generation and second-generation Internet users.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit that could unravel Fox news

Let’s linger over that for a moment. Two executives of a major news organisation may have told a citizen to lie to federal investigators to protect a presidential candidate. It’s a stunning charge. If proven someday, Fox will no longer be able to hide behind the fiction that it’s a neutral news outfit.

And what does Rupert Murdoch think about new communications technologies?

Rupert Murdoch, at conference: If you wanted to stalk a young girl, it’d be much easier to do on Facebook than MySpace.
Conference attendee: Douche chill…

–Grand Hyatt Hotel

Finally, if you regularly read only one international news summary page, what does it mean is still really fascinating.

Filed by billy at 5:16 pm under the world
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