Wednesday, October 20, 2004

The Beginning

I've been trying to keep a diary for some time but usually fail for long periods. This may be a way of doing it. I want to include some personal information, and a fair amount of non-personal information.

I copied a fair amount of this stuff from my original Blog site on AOL - burt this no longer exists. I had left the pictures on it, but removed most of the text. I originally thought it could be the illustrated counterpart for this Blog, but then I discovered how to upload photos to Blogger. (2009 edit)


At the weekend I drank quite a lot of cider, and left myself in pain and feeling sick for the last few days. I didn't realise how intolerant I'd become.

Now, after two late nights, staying up to watch the two HBO programmes that are just about the only good things on British television at the moment, I feel tired, groggy, and thought processes are garbled and confused.

Consequently I'm driving to work. I'm not that groggy - I'm able to drive safely enough. Left work at 7.00, after listening to that Graham Garden / Alan Davies comedy about a dog, on Radio 4. Some of it was very funny.

The cats were pleased to see me, mainly as I hadn't fed them in the morning. I ate sausages, cheesy mash and baked beans. Felt so full up I couldn't move.

I watched a programme on BBC2, The Power of Nightmares, about fear and how our politicians exploit this and exaggerate it for their own benefit. The programme followed the lives of a neo-con and an Islamic intellectual, both who founded respective movements in USA and Egypt, and both movements grew into respectively government of USA and radical Islamic organisations in the Middle East.

I recorded the programme and will write out a transcript some time. I need to include the information in my research, although most of the programme does seem to support what I have written so far in my draft.

The programme seemed to be true up to a point, but did leave some stuff out. It left out George Bush, head of the CIA in 1975, and his possible involvement in supporting the coup in Iran in 1979. It does appear that the CIA sparked this coup for whatever reasons - maybe it was to humiliate Carter who had sacked Bush - but maybe it was the beginnings of a policy to destabilise the Middle East. Certainly, an Islamic revolution in Iran was enough to create conflict between Iran and Iraq.

My wife's grandmother's partner died yesterday - he'd been ill since before Christmas and we knew he would die soon.

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