The End of the World

Many people have predicted the end of the world in as many different ways.

Some thought that the world would end in the year 2000, others have predicted the year 2012 and some thought it would happen when they activated the Large Hadron Collider... the means of the world ending range from the wrath of nature, the effects of the irreversible degradation of the environment (e.g. Global Warming), collisions with large celestial bodies, and from being sucked into a man made black hole...

But... by some miracle... we as a species seem to have escaped at least some of those predicted ends... although the others do appear to be ticking time bombs...

You want to know what I think will cause the end of the world?

I think our end is not going to be because of anything external... at the rate we are going... we will likely wipe our race off the face of this earth with our own hands...

In case you have not understood... I am talking about the specter of war...

Do you know that there are more than a dozen active war-zones in the world today? (This is not even including many of the conflicts in Africa)... Here are some I know from off the top of my head... and the affected regions...

1] Arab-Israeli Conflict: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories and Syria

2] Somali Civil War: Somalia

3] Afghan War: Afghanistan, Pakistan

4] War in Darfur: Sudan

5] Iraq War: Iraq

6] Mexican Drug War: Mexico

7] Colombian Armed Conflict: Colombia

8] Communist and Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines: Philippines

9] Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir: India

10] Naxalite-Maoist Insurgency: India

11] Balochistan Conflict: Pakistan

12] Conflict in the Niger Delta: Nigeria

13] Fourth Civil War in Chad: Chad

Some of these conflicts involve nuclear armed foes. When you add the specter of terrorism to this volatile mix... the threat of terrorists obtaining even one of the massive stockpile of nuclear weapons being hoarded by the world powers... the grim picture emerges...

A single nuclear weapon in the wrong hands.... a single error of judgement by a commander of the armed forces of the nuclear armed countries could mean the difference between life and death for practically all of mankind... This is not mere Cold War hysteria... This is a cold hard fact...

They say that the Arms Race had ended... when they should be saying it has only just begun... Whether for self defense or for aggressive purposes... the ranks of nuclear armed countries have only grown over the last half century.... not shrunk.... the potency of these weapons has not been reduced... but increased... Currently... it is said that Iran and N. Korea may be on the verge of obtaining these weapons... (well... apparently N. Korea already has them...)...

Given the expansionist tendencies of most of the nuclear armed powers (India included)... things only look more grim... the race for obtaining nuclear weapons has also spawned an even more frenetic race to build better conventional weapons systems... It is estimated that as a whole... mankind had upwards of 1400 BILLION dollars on 'defense' related expenditures in the year 2008... that figure has only risen... and it likely does not fully account for the untold billions spent on research and development... but most importantly... that number does not account for the man hours spent by the worlds most brilliant minds searching for new ways for men to kill each other... rather than saving each other... or trying to solve issues of world hunger, global warming and the like...

The New START initiatives by the American and Russian governments give me hope... but only a glimmer... the fact is that even after the reductions... they will both retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world many times over... not to mention all of the production facilities and materials to make many thousands more....

Closing Note

I have no real message to send here... this is just my view on the question of how the world could someday end...

Unless some steps are taken by the people in the position to do so... I think that we wont be around long enough to have to worry about Global Warming and environmental degradation...

Given my small audience... I don't think this will have much more effect than alleviating that urge I get to yell this out loud in public when people start to talk about how some hypothetical scenario will cause the end of the world...

This is not to say that Global Warming is less of a threat to the survival of the world as we know it... its just not as immediate... nor will it be as quick to kill...

Green Zone

Writer: Brian Helgeland

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Matt Damon, Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Brendan Gleeson

Plot Synopsis:

Matt Damon plays the role of Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller serving in Iraq as part of a WMD search team. He is frustrated by the faulty intelligence that he is being fed by his superiors which always leads him to sites with no visible evidence of ever having been used to produce or store WMD's. He becomes convinced that the intelligence which they are being given (supposedly by a high level Iraqi general codenamed "Magellan") is fake. At a debriefing, Miller (Damon) brings up the point that the majority of the intel given to him is inaccurate and anonymous, stating that on his last three attempts to find WMDs, his team had come up with nothing. High-ranking officials quickly debunk Miller's theory about the intelligence being false.

During one such wild goose chase he is approached by a handicapped Iraqi man who calls himself Freedie. He informs Miller about a secret meeting of high level Iraqi generals taking place nearby. Sick of his fools errands... Miller decides to go off mission and try to capture the generals.

The meeting happens to be that of General Al Rawi... a top Iraqi general and his aides who have been in hiding in Baghdad. Many of his aides propose fighting other Iraqi forces and American forces, however Al-Rawi suggests that they remain where they are and wait until the Americans arrive and perhaps make the Iraqi army an offer to join their forces.

Miller raids the meeting... but nearly all of the high ranking generals (Including Al-Rawi) escape... Miller recovers a booklet from one of the captured men (Syeed Hamza) and is interrogating him about the booklets significance when a special forces team arrived and summarily takes custody of his prisoners and demands that Miller hand over all materials recovered from the prisoners. Despite Millers protestations the Special forces officers persist in trying to search him. A scuffle ensues where Miller manages to hide the book in Freddies pocket.

The Special Forces team had been dispatched by Clark Poundstone, a high ranking US official who was supposedly the one in charge of Magellan.

Miller reports the happenings of the day to Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) a CIA officer he had met after the briefing where he had been reprimanded for questioning the intelligence that was being given to him. Miller gives him the booklet, and Martin confirmed that the booklet contained the location of the safe houses of Al Rawi and his aides.

Martin was of the opinion that Al Rawi would be useful in reestablishing order in post-war Iraq... he felt that the erstwhile Iraqi Army had to play an integral part in any post war system of government... Miller was mortified by Martins idea of dealing with someone like Al Rawi who had been responsible for thousands of deaths under Saddams reign. Martin told Miller that he should not be naive and that hard choices had to be made unless he wanted the situation to deteriorate further and for more people to die. He suggested that they contact Al Rawi and make a deal with him to find out the locations of WMD caches and promise him a role in the future Govt. of Iraq.

Poundstone however tries to stymie their plans and forcibly takes possession of the booklet from Martin. He viciously hunts Al Rawi and all his aides with orders to kill and not capture. Why is he willing to kill someone who could be such a valuable source of intelligence... perhaps better than "Magellan"? Watch the movie and find out!

My Thoughts:

Acting: Well... there is so much action in the movie... that there is no real acting going on...

but there were intense scenes and Damon and Gleeson did a fine job IMO. Kinnear was okay... he made his character look like a douchebag like he was supposed to... The actors who played Al Rawi and Freddie did the best work IMO... that meeting scene was superb...

Story: Dont know how well it will be received by the American public... I liked it. Truth be told I was always skeptical of the WMD claims. Powell talking about WMDS being made in the back of trucks which would be on the move in the desert seemed to be far fetched to me. The story also didnt meander at any time. It was tight and kept you riveted to your seat the whole way through. Shame that I was able to predict the ending though my friends all cursed me for a full hour after the movie.

Overall Score: 75% Points off due to the fact that I wanted to see more of what happened in the end... but they sorta just fade out and allow us to assume what may have happened... then theres other minor stuff... plus the fact that Hurt Locker really kinda makes every other Iraq War movie look mediocre by comparison... if you read worse reviews elsewhere... its probably because some people really get offended by the conspiracy theories that this movie puts forward...