Milestone

Well, I've reached one hundred posts. Such a prospect was always in the distant future when I started last June and I'm glad I haven't flagged (too often), as so many blogs fall by the wayside as their authors lose interest.
I've become quite a dab hand at winning the quiz recently. Last night the competition wasn't so fierce as there were only two teams, one team composed of regular quiz winners, the other by a bunch of visiting Americans. I was on the 'home' side, called 'Them' (although the other rather unsportingly did not call their team 'Us'). Suffice to say we trampled all over them despite picking up only just under half the points available (not helped by an obscure table round consisting of the official names of countries - I should have been up with the Co-operative Republic of Guyana).
Every time I've turned up at the quiz, I've been on the winning team. I'm no talisman, but I put in my fair worth. There's no 'I' in teamwork (though there is in 'win'). I put it down to ending up in the right teams by chance.
Last night's quiz wasn't quite a bare-knuckle ride, more of a sedate journey to victory. Other quiz nights have been more heightened, such as when one Aussie woman said she would only get topless for a charity fund-raiser, if someone put up 300,000 tugrugs (142 quid). So this guy, who was showing around a half-fake, half real 100 dollar bill he'd been conned into swapping for equivalent tugrugs (the dividing line held together by cellotape), got out his wallet and counted out 300,000 tugrugs onto a table and asked the Aussie to perform her side of the bargain, which she obliged upon. Quiz nights cab get quite raucous.

What's this about UEFA planing to give major cup winners a place in the Champions League? Cup competitions need rejuvenation, but I thought that specific idea had been laid to bed when Millwall reached the FA Cup Final (without playing a single top-flight side) and so qualified mercifully only for the UEFA Cup. Can you imagine Millwall in the Champions League - it's absurd. It's faintly weird when second-tier sides are in the UEFA Cup, but to give them a chance of playing in Europe's premier competition beggars belief. Why not give Champions League Places to the winners of the Premiership, the FA Cup, the League Cup and the LDV Vans Trophy, with a UEFA space for the FA Vase? The best sides in each top-flight league should compete against each other in top European competition, their league position proving that they have the best, most effective football. Revitalise the FA Cup, but not this way.

The way not to do things

So, almost inevitably it came to pass. Despite the second biggest rebellion of the Blair government, with 95 MPs breaking party ranks, Trident will be renewed. Giving the lie to Margaret Beckett's assertion that no decision had been taken, and Des Browne's statement that it is purely for deterrence, it was revealed one day before the vote that new missiles are being prepared for the UK that will enhance war-fighting capabilities. No doubt they will be called 'smart' nuclear missiles, the way smart (in reality still dumb) bombs create massive collateral damage even if they hit their target (which is not always). Blair was spoiling for a tussle on this. Some say he was taking a hit in his dying days to save Gordon Brown from it (when will they be opening the Comedy Store). In reality, he has wrecked the Labour Party and maybe wrecked the Union. Alex Salmon will exploit this to the hilt to win independence for Scotland (where most of the nuclear submarine facilities are). Well done, Tony. The Tories will leap with glee at savaging Labour's divisions at the next election. But to say that the rebellion is a sign of the 'unreconstructed left' rearing its head again is as batty as voting for Trident renewal. The only unreconstructed minds in the Chamber were the ones voting for a new nuclear system, fighting the last war, not the 'current' one. And one can hardly call the aristocratic Tory MP Michael Ancram a member of the unreconstructed left.
The government held out the carrot that this vote was to renew the submarine fleet capable of carrying the nuclear missiles and that the real vote on the warhead will take place in 2012. But what's the point of building expensively furnished cruise missile carriers and expensively renting the missile from the Americans if you're not going to put a nuclear warhead on top of it. Far cheaper options exist for non-nuclear missiles, but the whole system will be so interwoven into the defence budget that the likely Conservative government in 2012 will say that a nuclear warhead might as well be put on top, after all the cost. This government stinks. Robin Cook (who would have opposed this) tried to run an 'ethical' foreign policy and took the flak when Blair kicked into the long grass and made him the spokesmen for government actions. Margaret Beckett is no such intellectual and would have nodded sagely like the last dodo alive to the arguments of Blair and Brown. Such a cipher she is for the government she might as well pen something Beckettian like Waiting For Gordo (with the same punchline as Sam Beckett's play). The Blair government may have followed in the footsteps of its Labour government predecessors since World War II, but they were operating in a Cold War environment with a visible, easily targeted, rational, coherent entity as an opponent. That is not the case today. But its no use arguing with madmen.
Talking of madmen, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted to being the mastermind of al-Qaeda operations puportedly 'from a-z' if the released transcipts are accurate. The US administration will trumpet this as a victory for operating Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay (where KSM was tried) in curbing terrorism. But if what KSM says is true, then Osama bin Laden is innocent and we should call off the hunt. Of course, KSM was not tried under habeas corpus, the bedrock of western law for more than 300 years, but an unconstitutional military court (the last English king to try and subvert habeas corpus was James II and he was kicked out of the country, but then this is today's USA and associated territories). I, however, don't think that KSM was being entirely truthful in his 'confession'. It reminds me of the Nuremburg Trials 1945-6 where Hermann Goering knew he was going to face the noose. As War Criminal No. 1 (since all the other prominent Nazis were dead), he knew he was going to go down in infamy and such a pompous man wanted the biggest posthumous reputation possible, hence as he could not be a saint, he made himself out to be as notorious as possible. He claimed responsibility for all the acts of the Nazis, saying the rest of the Third Reich hierarchy was beholden to him and that Hitler was just a figurehead for Goering's deeds. He also declared he was innocent since all the acts were committed under laws passed by the Nazi regime and that to impose retrospective justice was illegal. He lost because the argument did not boil down to a legal persuasion, but a moral one. His conviction was inevitable. As was that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He could either stay anonymously in 'Gitmo', maybe for the rest of his life or announce himself as the true archenemy of America and claim ever loyal devotion from tens of thousands of Islamic fanatics. Guantanamo Bay's detention centre is a failure. His incredible claims should have been destroyed in a proper court of law. The hunt for bin Laden will go on, but the USA just lost a bit more credibility with the Pakistanis sheltering him (if that were attainable). If they ever capture bin Laden, he may argue he is innocent (in a proper court of law, the US Supreme Court striking down these military courts as they have done before). Notwithstanding the prejudices of an American jury, the USA may embarrassingly be forced to let him go. It is just another failure from the administration of the man who would be tyrant. But what hope for a Glorious Revolution in January 2009?

The way to do things

Yesterday I popped down Nairamdal Park, the main park of Ulaanbaatar, to wander about in its surrounds made starnger by snow. In winter time parts of it look like the Penguin's Lair from Batman Returns. However, upon reaching the perimeter, I find that the entire park has been fenced off. Upon inquiry as to why such a drastic measure was implemented, I was told that the park is to be renovated and won't be open until 2009 (add one-two years for inevitable delays)! To section off a whole park to refurbish it for two years is rather extreme since certain parts of the park could be updated area by area, instead of denying it to everyone for a good few years. Not all of UB's residents can afford in either time or money to go to the countryside to enjoy a relaxing stroll, while the boating pond became in winter an ice rink with picturesque backdrops.
In Britain they would have done things better on an issue like this, but conversely get it wrong on far more important matters like Trident renewal. Des Browne says he hopes he has made the case for renewal. He couldn't make the case for finding his own arse with his hands. Unknown future threats are myriad. A large chunk of an island in the Canary archipelago is predicted to be on the verge of falling into the sea, triggering a tsunami that would wipe out the eastern seaboard of North America a la Deep Impact, causing economic meltdown as the waves recede. What insurance policy against this far more credible future threat has the government got - absolutley none, because it wishes away such real potential catastrophes, lost as it is in its own nuclear phantasmagoria. And didn't they say (again and again) terrorism is the abiding conflict of our times? What are they going to do with our deterrent against this - use nuclear missiles to shoot hijacked planes out of the skies? Then there is Margaret Beckett, stating that a decision has not been taken but there has to be a vote now is Swiftian in its contradictions since the implication is that a decision has already been taken, otherwise the vote would not be so pressing. It takes a while to develop a new submarine, but our submarines have a further 17 years of frontline service in them (if frontline can be described as three of the four being laid up in harbour for most of the year), and can be patched up for several more years service as the government is forced to admit. As for Conservative defence spokesmen saying that "renewal is essential" (notice they are men, not women - maybe nuclear missiles make up for the inadequacy of their own sexual armoury), did they follow the rabbit down the hole and end up at the Mad Hatters Tea Party? Obviously David Cameron did not stop smoking pot after Eton if he supports statements like these.
All in all, T. Blair seems determined to get something secure on nuclear renewal as part of his legacy, even at the cost of provoking one of the largest rebellions in his parliamentary party. Mind you, he's done it before, and he'll do it again because he simply is out of touch with guiding Labour principles and looking back over ten years always seems to have been, needing to twist his party's arm when he was politically stronger. Britain's nuclear weapons constitute 1% of the world's nuclear arsenal and if a unilateral gesture won't mean much in persuading other countries not to seek nuclear aramament, then by the same token, there is little reason in keeping our deeply destructive drop in the ocean at vast expense. Remember this, the British public narrowly supports a nuclear deterrent, until told the cost.

Snow at last

On the last day of the month of February there was snowfall worthy of the description, a good three inches in a few hours. A veritable blizzard in UB had at last produced the winter wonderland I had been hoping to see for so long in the city. It was worthy inducement once the weather had settled to walk home last night. That took 45 minutes, but was interesting. Walking along the main street near my abode, I saw an abandoned department store, but one wonders who foots the bill for the exterior lighting, when streetlamps more adequately fulfill the purpose of keeping the street illuminated.
This post was for March 1st and I published it at 1.17pm.

Ringing in the New Year - in Mongolia

In Mongolia, they celebrate the New Year in mid-February and not just over one day but fifteen. So really the past week and a half has been a corollary in a minor vein of this. The date is largely determined by the lunar new year and the Buddhist calendar refines it to to an exact date, a bit like Easter always falls on a Sunday in Europe.
I was here last year for Tsagaan Sar (White Month), though on that occasion though driving to the outskirts, I didn't actually leave the environs of Ulaanbaatar. This year though, with Altaa, we were going to celebrate it in the far north of the country, in Selenge aimag (province).
We first made a stop-off in Darkhan, third city of Mongolia, despite being only thirty years old. There was a proper amount of snow in Darkhan, but of the level I would expect in UB - really Darkhan should have more snow (i.e. no bare patches of ground visible that haven't had the attendance of sweeping humans). In Darkhan, we stayed the night at Altaa's aunt and uncle. They had cable TV and, by chance, Eurosport were showing Newcastle Utd vs. Zulte-Waregem at that moment, so I caught the last thirty-five minutes of the match in Belgium before I went to sleep. On another channel, I was informed, they had dog-fighting after 1am.
Next day in the afternoon we left for the countryside proper. On the way from Darkhan to Altaa's relatives in the countryside, I saw a herd of camels wandering about in the snow - a quite incongruous sight. Altaa asked if I wanted to stop the bus to take a picture, but I decided against it, not wanting to look the tourist. Mind you, I might not get another chance as it was a first sight for Altaa of camels in this far north province - she thought they only lived in the Gobi. I guess this is one of those occasions that will have to remain in my mind without being able to show anyone - like once seeing ducklings swim in formation after their mother.
Almost the first thing the men did on arrival at the house was to sit down in front of the television and watch (Mongolian) wrestling. Typical. The owner was another of Altaa's uncles and he was a big cheese in the village being the maintenance of the local electrical substation. This enabled him to afford a large house with yard and a computer with flat-screen monitor. A further one of Altaa's uncles in the village had a massive wide-screen TV, while a further had a DVD player - such are the luxuries of the middle-class.
At night , one could really see the inspiration for the ancient Egyptians when they thought that a sieve was placed over the earth at night, so bright were the stars above. In fact, I felt quite naked, despite being fully clothed, testament to the intensity of the light from the stars and my unfamiliarity with them like this.
Most of the several days we spent in the countryside from Saturday to Monday was consumed doing the rounds of those of Altaa's family who lived in the village. This involved the downing of many vodka shots, sometimes first thing in the morning. Buuz - traditional steamed meat dumplings - were in abundance and I avoided the copious grease they oozed by biting open an aperture in the pastry outside and letting the grease pour out onto my plate. Unfortunately, after a few buuz, my plate was out of action for any other kind of food, even after the grease set.
One day we went even further into the countryside, to what might be described as a hamlet, with a few residents and their livestock down on the ranch. Here I took the opportunity for horse-riding while wearing my deel - traditional Mongolian clothing.
Finally, on Sunday night we completed the round of visiting homes by going to Altaa's uncle who owned a wholsesale shop (the one with the DVD player). I handed over the fifth bottle of vodka we had brought with us and racked my brain for something I could sing that I knew entirely - everyone had to opt into this game. I wasn't drunk enough to launch into any kind of song at this point, so I plumped for two nursery rhymes - only Altaa would be fully aware of their meaning.
On Monday morning, there was a steaming cow in the yard, heated moisture visibly rising off its back. The cows in the yard were amusing, sometimes looking into the house from the other side of the window, appearing to hide behind the main gate as if shy or taking an impromptu dump nearby when people went to the outside loo seemingly out of solidarity.
We bade our farewells to Altaa's family who had hosted us and set off on the long road back, leaving Altaa's brother who had come with us, since he wanted to see some more family and had time off from study while Altaa couldn't get the same from her work. We tarried in Darkhan a while with the first of Altaa's relatives we had come across before setting off home to UB. Coming back from Darkhan, the road may have been macadamed but with the driver of the large minibus putting his pedal to the metal, I dropped off periodically but it was like trying to sleep as a passenger in Steve McQueen's car in the chase scene of Bullitt, as we bounced in the air every time the bus hit a divot or slipped into a dip. Eventually, I resolved to stay awake after the umpteenth time my nose bashed into the bag on my lap. The scenery helped in this respect.
We were back in UB, and over the next several days we went and saw Altaa's friends and cousins - one time, staying over the night (late on Saturday), after much vodka and wine - they were all too happy for us to stay. I also managed to sing Paul Simon's Graceland on this occasion to general applause.
It finally ended when the office was invited to a fellow employee's house to partake of nibbles, buuz and a little wine on the Tuesday (27th Feb).Mongolians certainly know how to bring in the lunar new year.
So much for new blogger, I publish this March 9th after being busy recently but it was meant for Feb. 28, but I can't seem to amend it if the month has passed. So treat this as if it was published on Feb. 28th. It was also published at 1.12pm not whatever it says below. New does not mean better.