Clint Eastwood

As Blondie in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
1966
Dir: Sergio Leone

San Francisco, California

Hyatt Regency Embarcadero

Lobby floor mosaic

18 October

Dodger Stadium 1965

Location shot: The Satan Bug

via Wikipedia:

The Satan Bug (1965) is a science fiction film in which a US government germ warfare lab has had an accident. The first theory is that one of the germs has gotten free and killed several scientists. The big fear is that a more virulent strain, named The Satan Bug, because all life can be killed off by it should it escape, may have been stolen. The film was loosely adapted from Alistair MacLean's 1962 novel The Satan Bug.

It was also one of the first espionage films to follow the lead of the wildly popular James Bond films that set the tone for action/adventure films of the '60s and early '70s. In contrast with the Bond spy thrillers, however, The Satan Bug was a serious attempt by director John Sturges to go in a different direction from his previous all-star blockbusters (The Magnificent Seven, 1960, and The Great Escape, 1963). Indeed, while it is hard to conceive of a film like Goldfinger (1964) without a major star in the lead role, The Satan Bug actually benefits from the lack of big name stars. George Maharis, a product of The Actors Studio, is an effectively laconic hero who uses his brain, not his fists. The Satan Bug is, in essence, a "thinking man's" spy thriller. However, The Satan Bug failed at the box office and remains largely unknown.

Los Angeles, California

Turkey

Osman Orsal/Reuters

Protesters at an anti-U.S. demonstration in Istanbul today.

Oil

Photo: a British soldier guarding oil pipelines near Basra, Iraq, 2005. By Toby Melville/Getty

via Andrew Sullivan

If Greenspan is right [that the war is about oil], haven't we already won the war in Iraq? My old friend Jim Holt explains why in the new LRB. Money quote:

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years.

And so when we keep asking the Bush administration for an exit strategy, we are, in fact, asking the wrong question. There is no exit strategy. The point is staying there for ever in order to ensure that energy supplies are secured by the West. Jim goes on:

How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq.

Five self-sufficient 'super-bases' are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred... But will the US be able to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? It will plausibly claim a rationale to stay there for as long as civil conflict simmers, or until every groupuscule that conveniently brands itself as ‘al-Qaida’ is exterminated. The civil war may gradually lose intensity as Shias, Sunnis and Kurds withdraw into separate enclaves, reducing the surface area for sectarian friction, and as warlords consolidate local authority. De facto partition will be the result. But this partition can never become de jure.

And so failure in Iraq is actually redefined as success. A long-term presence of 50,000 troops minimum is what seems to be in the cards anyway. Senator Clinton will keep the occupation going for fear of looking weak. And the price is cheap relatively speaking:

The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.

Was this a plot from the beginning? I doubt it. But it is an obvious game-plan now.

Yamaha

Faro, Sweden

Photo: Dean C.K. Cox for The New York Times

Stora Gasemora is the closest thing to a hotel on the remote island.

Iraq

Photo: Joao Silva for The New York Times

Some of the 2,000 troops from Georgia, which seeks NATO membership, officially began a mission Monday in Kut, Iraq.

Jonathan Van Dyke

For Artware Editions, the artist Jonathan Van Dyke cast six different paper or plastic-foam coffee cups in Hydrocal plaster. Each is an edition of 10; shown here is Lee, $200. Go to www.artwareeditions.com.

October

Denis Rouvre

Denis Rouvre le photographe de Sortie de match
Photographs of rugby players
Exhibition:
October 24 - December 2: Espace Guillaume Expo: 32 rue de Picardie: Paris

Sorti le 2 novembre en librairie, "Sortie de Match", le livre de Denis Rouvre connait un vrai succès.

Pendant six mois, Denis Rouvre a assisté aux rencontres de tous les effectifs du Top 14 (Top 14 = ligue 1 du rugby). Match après match, il a eu accès aux vestiaires et en rapporte un témoignage de l'engament des rugbymen qui se sont laissés photographier à leur sortie de match.

Un beau livre sur le rugby qui, à travers 140 portraits, rend hommage à l'esprit sportif de ce sport.

Sortie de Match
Editions de la Martinière
Parution le 2 novembre
196 pages
28€

Wellcome Collection

Photo: Jonathan Player for The New York Times
Scientific and pharmaceutical glassware.