Gaddafi Gone

Only a matter of time, wasn't it? Poetic justice, some would say. Not nearly as bad as he deserved, others may say. Another blatant violation of sovereignty, is all I see. But all the same, Gaddafi is dead. And while I am no supporter of his domestic politics (even though I really don't care much for dead humans, at least no less than most humans care about the death of animals. How many of you are even aware that a whole bunch of tigers, lions and what-not were shot a couple of days ago by cops in Ohio in the Unbelievable States of Arseholes?), I did admire the man for the same reasons as I had for Saddam: sticking to his guns (literally too, to some extent) and opposing Western imperialist designs even in the face of much adversity.

But what is done is done, and I am not about to tear my hair out over something that, frankly, doesn't even affect me remotely. I would rather that the man was still alive and kicking, and that he kept showing the proverbial middle finger to whoever he felt like. But I am no Jesus Christ, and he no Lazarus. It struck me as comical though, the fact that he was finally found in a drain pipe. Seems like these tyrant-type rulers have a thing for pipes and holes as they draw close to their final moments.

What I find especially irritating is these fucking rebels who take the claim for having brought Gaddafi down. From the start to the finish, they would have been able to do all of diddly squat, had it not been for the US and NATO bombing the shit out of the government forces. Even this last battle was decided by the NATO airstrike on the convoy in which Gaddafi was trying to flee Sirte.

And oh, here is a picture for thought. Kids celebrating the fall of Gaddafi. Yes, it is a real gun. Ask the AP photographer if you must.

Liberty and Looting in Libya

Couldn't resist that title. Alliteration has its own charm.

The rebels have made their way across most of the country, and Gaddafi is nowhere to be found. What they did find, however, was his hometown, dominated by members of the tribe he belongs to. And these rebellious liberators wasted no time in looting it and burning portions that caught their fancy. A bit like what happened in Iraq after Saddam's ouster, you know, what with museums being looted and such. Of course, no TV cameras to show it to the world this time.

The few media reports I read about it, they first went on about how this town was being a pain in the collective arse of the rebels by holding out for very long. And then, once it had been 'liberated' too, one report about Red Cross trying to move in to help the many women and children who had been, to put it politely, fucked over by liberators in the process of liberation. A necessary evil fallout, I am sure.

Before any of this happened, there is also the amusing story about stockpiles of Libyan weapons that were lying around for whoever wanted to take them. Shame I wasn't around, else I would have got myself a hand-held surface-to-air rocket launcher, at the very least. That would have been that for all those pesky aeroplanes that keep flying over my house at all hours, never letting me sleep. But seriously, that's how it went down. Anyone walking by the ruins left behind by NATO bombings (which selectively targeted locations like ammunition depots) could easily walk over to and get their hands on all sorts of weapons that we usually get to see only in films. And that is precisely what people were doing. There are ample reports of people driving up in trucks of varying sizes, filling them up with weapons of choice, thanking the NATO forces for helping them out with this little bonanza, test-firing a rocket or two into some wilderness and being on their way.

Way to go, you stupid interfering fucks. Just what we need. Hi-tech weapons up for grabs for anyone who wants them, for whatever reason he wants them. And I doubt those reasons will be 'hunting'. Unless, of course, we are talking hunting in an urban jungle, a la Eli Roth's Hostel.

Breaking the Speed Barrier

Call it a whim or whatever you will, but there are some scientific nitty-gritty kind of coclusions that totally piss me off. For instance, the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a whatever they call it now. But this neutrino business is most interesting. Einstein's grave may be disturbed from within as his bones do a mad jig at the news that one of his fundamental principles behind establishing modern physics may be not how he theorised it to be.

This neutrino (doesn't matter if you don't know what exactly it is, enough to know that it is one of the many sub-atomic particles) apparently travels faster than light. If that be the case, then E=mc² loses meaning, since c is no more the ultimate speed. Admittedly, the difference in the speed of light and this neutrino particle is quite a small one, to the order of about 50 nanoseconds, too small for any of us humans to ever register, but the fact remains that it exists.

Of course, this is only the second experiment, and the first proper one, that has shown such results. And the scientific community is not taking this lying down. So I suppose there will still be a wait before this is actually proven, inasmuch as anything sub-atomic and particle physics related can be proven, keeping in mind always Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

But the jury is already out about what difference, if any, it makes to our everyday lives. Is there any reason to be alarmed or to celebrate? Who knows, but most likely, no. And I suppose much the same can be said about Pluto.