the darkerside to rants

I would like to point out an article in “The Lancet” that speaks about the current state in Iraq and how much the “freedom” the us has brought has so much cost the Iraqis in blood.

This is interesting to note as one of the main reasons to invade Iraq (these days anyways) is the safety and freedom of the Iraqi people, or at least so are we supposed to believe.

The US is voting in two days, maybe it is partisan “advertising” that this article gets published now, but I think even if not, it is a document that should be read by people who even vote for Bush to understand that their local political decisions have far reaching implications in the world.

Read: The war in Iraq: civilian casualties, political responsibilities

The present conflict in Iraq signals a contrast of paradoxical proportions. The Iraqi people, their interim government, and their largely US and British occupiers are preparing for landmark elections early in the new year. Yet a ruthlessly violent insurgency is successfully destabilising these arrangements, murdering foreign civilians and Iraqi law enforcement officers in the most brutal ways imaginable, and exploiting the world’s media in doing so. Amid this deep national uncertainty, it is hard to judge what is happening among Iraqis themselves. This week The Lancet publishes the first scientific study of the effects of this war on Iraqi civilians.

In a unique US-Iraqi collaboration, Les Roberts and his colleagues report substantially more deaths in Iraq since the war began than during the period immediately before the conflict. Much of this increased mortality is a consequence of the prevailing climate of violence in the country, and many of the civilian casualties that are described were attributed to the actions of coalition forces. These findings-and the tentative countrywide mortality projections they support-have immediately translatable policy implications for those charged with managing the aftermath of invasion.

There is also a summary article on Indymedia.

Cory Doctorow is fuming at Apple once again as they apparantly broke one of his favourite apps (iPod Download) with their latest iTunes upgrade.

If you’re an iPod user, you would have done well to have availed yourself of iPod Download, an OS X app that made it easy to move your music from your iPod to your Mac. Of course, Apple hated that poor little app, so it was sometimes hard to find, as Apple devoted expensive laywer-hours to shutting down all the sites that were hosting copies of it. Of course, there’s more dough where that came from — they’ll just pass the cost on to you in your next iPod.

As it turns out, you’re shit-outta-luck even if you managed to snag a copy. That’s because Apple just devoted some expensive engineering hours to updating iTunes to version 4.7, with the “improvement” of breaking iPod Download. That’s right — Apple’s spending money seeing to it that features are removed from your iPod. Thanks a whole lot, Apple.

Even though in general distrust large companies I do think that they might have a valid reason this time. They just released the new iPod Photo together with a new version of iTunes. My suspicion is that they changed the format of the XML file they use to keep track on tracks on the iPod, so obviously an app that isn’t supported by Apple would break as well.

Let’s see how long it takes for the developers to come up with a fix, if I am right it shouldn’t take too long.