comic relief
oxfam
the red cross

"Making the Patriot Act permanent: even Hoover would probably oppose it." Indeed.
12:25 p.m.

In (partial) defence of the UN is another great piece from Jurjen, a former UN man who knows of what he speaks. I always come away from Jurjen's essays with at least one new piece of information that I wouldn't have got elsewhere, and from this one I came away with about twenty pieces of information that I wouldn't have got elsewhere. I also had certain ideas of mine challenged quite persuasively. Go read it.
11:38 a.m.

Unbelievable: the man who murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn only got an 18 year prison sentence. He could be free by 2014.

Van der Graaf said he still "wrestled" with the question of whether he was right to carry out the attack.

"Every day I see it before me. I see myself shoot and Fortuyn fall," he told the court.

The prosecution said Van der Graaf had shown little remorse and had carried out the killing in a "cold and calculating" manner.

A psychiatrists' report presented to the court concluded that Van der Graaf was sane.

It said he was a highly intelligent perfectionist who was emotionally uncommunicative and intolerant of those with different values to his own.

There was a post here, about a certain newspaper's current edition, but I deleted it. It pissed me off so much, the more I read of it, that I really don't want to give it any more attention than it might otherwise attract. (The bottom line, according to this paper, is that the Iraqi people want Saddam back in power, and they want him back NOW. No, I'm not making that up.) I'm sure someone will have fisked it good and proper by the end of the day, and I'll post a link when they do.
06:39 a.m.

Gosh, this breaks my heart: Michael Watson, the former boxer I wrote about on Sunday who fought back from near death and was left extremely physically disabled and brain damaged after a title match eleven years ago, has only raised £13,000 of the £100,000 that he aimed to get in pledges for donation to the British Brain and Spine Foundation. Watson is walking the London marathon route this week, and will finish at midday on Saturday on the Mall near Buckingham Palace.

If you want to donate to this very worthy cause and you're in Britain, call 08700 863000 to do so. You can also donate online, whether you're in Britain or not -- if you're a UK taxpayer, your donation can be boosted by 28% when Justgiving.com reclaims and adds tax from the Inland Revenue at no cost to you, the donor.

The courage and strength of this man is nothing short of awesome. What I find really amazing, though, is that his spirit is so strong that, in a situation where most of us would feel awfully tempted to just give up on life and curse whoever or whatever had dealt us such a crappy hand, Michael Watson has instead picked himself up and decided to go to great effort to do something for others -- even though he's barely getting by financially himself, and has major difficulty just dressing himself every morning.

I know times are tough, but please, at least think about donating whatever you can manage. And spread the word, too, if you can. I sure would appreciate it.
05:10 a.m.

If this doesn't fall under the heading of lowbrow culture, I don't know what does: battle of the blueblooded cleavages.
04:50 a.m.

I haven't posted anything on the loss of antiquities in Iraq, because the accusations and language being thrown around make me so angry I could just about spit. Thankfully, Glenn Reynolds pretty much sums up my thoughts in his current MSNBC column.

And scroll down to the column before the most recent one to read Glenn's take on another situation that makes me want to break shit: CNN's admission that they covered up the Iraqi government's torture of its employees, and subsequent revelations from CNN employees that they churned out pro-Iraqi propaganda, direct from the Iraqi information minister, in order to retain access to Baghdad.
04:37 a.m.

"If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be."

Yeah, I'm sure letting terrorism slide would make America a WHOLE lot better. Let's run that by the friends and families of the 3000 people who were murdered on September 11, 2001 -- or, for that matter, anyone who has two brain cells to rub together and realises that terrorism is, er, not nice. In the words of Friend of Bill Jeff Jarvis, what the hell is Clinton smoking?
03:54 a.m.

What was that about Iraq having no terrorist ties?

Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea, has been arrested by U.S. personnel in Iraq.

Abbas was arrested about 50 miles west of Baghdad after being turned away from Iraq's border with Syria, a Palestinian source told CNN.

The hijacking of the ship led to the killing of disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. Klinghoffer was shot in his wheelchair and thrown overboard by Abbas' men.

Journalists pine openly for less journalism, in the name of ideology. I find this very depressing, not least because I hear this kind of thing all the time from North Americans (here in Britain, as I've written before on this subject, it just doesn't seem to be an issue -- thank God). I agree with Matt Welch when he says:

A certain thick strain of journalistic thought has long since crossed the threshold into actively rooting for the demise of news organizations whose politics and/or standards don’t pass a certain litmus test. That seems to me an exact perversion of what the profession should advocate.

Robert Mugabe is trying his hardest to run with the big boys of totalitarianism. Nope, it's not just Castro who's taking advantage of the distraction of war to bring more misery to his people.

Is the Bush administration looking the other way, or rather, looking at Syria? Not exactly. This Australian report suggests the administration is trying a "North Korea" strategy of having Zimbabwe's neighbors take the lead, quoting a "senior official" in the State Department as follows:

"What we're telling them is there has to be a transitional government in Zimbabwe that leads to a free and fair, internationally supervised election.... That is the goal. He stole the last one, we can't let that happen again.... It has to be internationally supervised, open, transparent with an electoral commission that works..... "

In the words of Daniel Drezner, this is developing...and not in a good way.
02:17 a.m.

What is past is prologue: David Adesnik has a couple of very interesting quotes from a 1981 edition of the New York Times, which ring absolutely as true today, in different circumstances, as they did more than twenty years ago.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by what a long and difficult road stretches ahead of the world, but reading quotes like the ones Adesnik presents, which were spoken when I was three years old, gives me more hope that the light at the end of the tunnel actually exists. It also strengthens my conviction that the world can and will be changed for the better, and that history does not reflect well on those who argue against change and for the maintenance of a tragic and destructive status quo.
02:09 a.m.

This exhibition of art devoted to Margaret Thatcher looks interesting.

Curator Tara Howard says she does not regard it as an anti-Thatcher exhibition. She claims neither an attack on her nor is it homage to her.

"I think she is one of the most important political figures in British history in the past 100 years - Churchill and Thatcher, there is nobody else."

15 April, 2003

I love this Australian blog:

"The current activity of giving us letters could be evidence of compliance..." that is a phrase I will not forget in a hurry. I mean, it could be evidence that the regime has a great recipe for Pasta Carbonara too. But I do not think we need to hear about all the things it could be. Hows about telling us what it is? Non-freakin' compliance. Urgh...

The Russian described older folks in Russia who would honestly assess that things were better for them under Communism than now. But then again, she said, she could probably find some really old folks who would argue things were better under the Csars. And of course today many folks are young and simply do not really remember the communist regime of the Soviet Union, so they will not even bother to wax nostalgic.

The point?

You can find folks who will complain about stuff, even objectively good stuff like democracy, everywhere. They have a point of view and you have to learn to live with it. It might, to your mind, be a point of view which is as stupid as the day is long, but whatever. If someone wants to hold it, they can. Same goes for the marchers.

But what is going to happen from now on, and I reckon September 11 is the true start date, is that people who disagree with the left, who previously have just not gotten into it, are going to stop hold their tongues. I reckon real disagreement will flow and will continue to flow in the most robust way. It is already starting and the weakest link - celebrities - are feeling the discomfort, constantly complaining of censorship when in reality what they are engaged in is a hostile reception to their points of view - and they have to justify themselves, instead of just presuming their view is agred. Real robust debate.

Link via Ken Layne
11:11 p.m.

Help: a bunch of friends of mine are stationed in Kuwait right now with the US Army. For the last few weeks, they've been able to update their division's website on an almost daily basis, upload photos, answer emails and basically keep in touch with their loved ones back home (and around the world). They're meant to be moving north soon, though, and they're not sure what kind of net connection they're going to have up there. They think they might have to purchase a satellite dish and other hardware so that they can maintain internet access as they move through the desert. If anyone knows of a company that can provide global satellite internet access, and the hardware necessary to maintain it, please let me know. The website and email activity are all un-official (though permitted by the US Army) and done with the soldiers' own money and time. They'd love to be able to maintain contact with their family and friends through the many months they will be stationed in the Middle East, and their loved ones would like that arrangement, too.

Just looking at the website, the men and women are deliriously happy because they've just found out they'll be getting a cup of ice every day with their mail. I'd need a big pitcher of Pimms and lemonade to go with that ice before I'd be impressed...but then again, I'm not living in the desert with an average daily temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit.
10:35 p.m.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. British blogger David Holford is being threatened and intimidated by London's loony, Labour-run Tower Hamlets council. Why? Because he blogged a story -- which appeared in several British newspapers -- about the council's decision to ban hot cross buns in case non-Christians found them offensive.

Well, Tower Hamlets council is annoyed, and so they've sent him a letter attempting to intimidate him into editing his blog, reading in part:

“We believe that the continued existence of the comment piece on your website has the potential to incite racial hatred, especially during these very sensitive times.”

I wrote earlier this week about left-wing writer Nick Cohen's excellent piece in the New Statesman about the fact that the leader of Britain's "peace" movement, Stop the War Coalition head Andrew Murray, is a pro-Soviet Communist who wrote a slobberingly reverential piece in the Morning Star to commemorate Stalin's 120th birthday, asking why his name is abominated above all others. As Cohen pointed out, that there were 20 million reasons doesn't seem to have occurred to Murray.

So now, of course, fellow Communists are coming out in droves to protest the reporting of known facts. Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, calls Cohen's piece "shoddy McCarthyite stereotyping". As Harry Hatchet asks, how is it McCarthyism to call an open communist a communist? How is it McCarthyism to point out that the leader of a movement which moans about the "undemocratic" British government actually has no time whatsoever for democracy, and supports its violent overthrow? How is it McCarthyism to mention that the movement against a war on a dictator who models himself on Stalin is actually led by a guy who is nostalgiac for Stalin? Murray himself wrote in the Morning Star that he believes Nikita Kruschov's statement that "against imperialists, we are all Stalinists".

I have a low level of tolerance for people throwing around the label "McCarthyism" right now, because these days it seems one cannot disagree with someone without being labelled a McCarthyist. For some reason, boycotting the Dixie Chicks is McCarthyism, but boycotting Rush Limbaugh and Dr Laura isn't. (In fact, neither is; boycotts are one of the most effective, democratic ways to register protest in a capitalist society.) But Griffiths' desperate attempt to paint as McCarthyism what is mere statement of fact is a bit much even for the reactionary far-left.
06:38 p.m.

James Ujaama, the Seattle activist accused of aiding the Taliban, has finally 'fessed up:

"He's acknowledged his personal responsibility for the facts that are stated in the plea agreement," [his attorney] said. "He stepped up to the plate and said, 'I did these things and I regret them.'"

Link via Buzz Machine
06:20 p.m.

If you're a Yank and want to view passenger records for your ancestors who came into the US at Ellis Island, their searchable database is brilliant. For some reason I'm fascinated by being able to look up the names of the ships (Antonina, Patricia, Adriatic, Uranium, Ivernia) my Polish family took from ports all over (Liverpool, Bremen, Hamburg, Danzig, Rotterdam and, oddly, Buenos Aires) to get to the States. You can even view photographs of the actual ships and ship manifests, which is probably interesting only to a genealogy geek like me, but I got this link from Gael's Pop Culture Junk Mail, so I know I'm not the only one who's into this stuff.
05:23 p.m.

Christina Aguilera to star in romantic comedy with Sean Connery. Yes, the apocalypse is indeed upon us.
04:57 p.m.

I know it's boring to talk about the weather, but I just have to say how absolutely gorgeous it is here today -- 25 degrees (I think that's 77 in Fahrenheit), sunny and no humidity. If only it would last.
04:54 p.m.

Just got an email from Toby Young, informing me that a one man show based on his book, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, is finally being staged in London. The show, like his book, tells the amusing tale of Toby's dismal failure under Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair, and how he made a complete cock-up of his efforts to take the New York social scene by storm. Toby was originally going to star in it himself, but he's been replaced by the (infinitely more sexy) Jack Davenport (Peter from The Talented Mr Ripley, Miles from This Life, Steve from Coupling). Says Toby, "I know, I know, he's about a thousand times better looking than me, but it's no more of a stretch than Jeffrey Barnard being played by Peter O'Toole. Okay, maybe a teensy weensy bit more."

The show starts April 28, and Toby will be in attendance most nights if you want to chat with him: he's a pretty amiable guy, though a shameless self-promoter. For more on the performances and ticket information, check out the show's official page.
05:22 a.m.

Will Iraqis soon beat Bush's image with their shoes? I don't think so, but Donald Sensing has something for us to consider when pondering that question:

Yes, they very well may be shoe-beating George W.'s likeness, and then we'll round them up and torture them and beat their children until they betray their friends and rape their women and . . . .

No, we won't, will we? If Bush-beating images are broadcast on Al Jazeera and the rest of the Arab world sees them, what will the Arabs think when the response of the American forces and civil administration is to . . . intensify humanitarian aid and continue to work for democratic institutions in Iraq? What will they think when Bush's image is defaced and insulted in the presence of armed Marines or soldiers and . . . the troops just keep on walking?

More important, what will the dictators and authoritarian leaders of the other Arab governments think? I would say to them: Your people, whom you have repressed (hey Hosni! How ya doin'?) or ground under your heel (Bashar! How's it going?) or ruled with fundamentalist, theocratic cruel rigidity (Fahd! My man!) - your own people will come to realize that their own best interests and deepest aspirations are being realized by ordinary Iraqis, and the cause is America and Great Britain. Not you.

So when you see the shoes battering Bush's image, be afraid. Be very afraid!

It will mean that freedom has been uncorked. Freedom will be a jinn to you, but Israfil to your people. And you already know it.

Don't get your panties in a bunch about Syria, doomsayer peaceniks -- so says that ultra-right-wing, pro-Bush rag the Guardian:

The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon, the Guardian learned yesterday...

"The talk about Syria didn't go anywhere. Basically, the White House shut down the discussion," an intelligence source in Washington told the Guardian...

"I have the advantage of talking to the American president on a regular basis and I can assure you there are no plans to invade Syria," [Tony Blair] said...

A diplomat in Washington with close ties to the administration agreed there was no sign of military action on the horizon.

"There's no question of this at the White House...Anyone who lives in the real world would never see this as more than noise."

The Iraqi information minister is "a good guy". So says his son, who works as a doctor at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

"My father is a good guy," he said. "He knows that he is responsible for his own decisions, but as a father he is a good man. When he comes home from work and takes off his uniform we do not discuss his job."

This is pretty horrifying:

On Saturday night, Virgil and Acidus, two young security researchers, were scheduled to give a talk at Interz0ne II on security flaws they'd found in a popular ID card system for universities. It's run by Blackboard, formerly by AT&T, and you may know it as OneCard, CampusWide, or BuzzCard. On Saturday, instead of the talk, attendees got to hear an Interz0ne official read the Cease and Desist letter sent by corporate lawyers. The DMCA [Digital Millenium Copyright Act], among other federal laws including the Economic Espionage Act, were given as the reasons for shutting down the talk...

At many schools, Blackboard's system is the ID: you swipe your card for your meal plan at the cafeteria, to get into your dorm, maybe even to get your final exam.

A swipe at a vending machine will get you a soda -- a money transaction from your campus debit account. When you use a swipe to do laundry and make copies, money has to be involved. Blackboard even notes that they can set up a merchant network on- and off-campus: "a cashless, safe, and secure way to transact on and around campus while offering parents the assurance that their funds will be spent within a university-approved network."

The kicker, of course, is that this network is not very secure, or at least Blackboard doesn't think it's as secure as... well, as lawyers...

So, if you're a student at a school that uses Blackboard, do you feel more secure now that the DMCA has tried to stop you from learning about its security flaws? If you're a parent putting money into a Blackboard-based debit account, do you feel more confident of its safety now that this information is ostensibly hidden?

It takes a lot of cheek to burglarise a prison.
02:36 a.m.

Treacher and Layne have come clean, so I just have to say that my own entries to the Peace Poster Project have not yet been uploaded, either. Those posters are hilarious, and it was tough coming up with one that was equally as po-faced and nonsensical, but I think I did a good job. I'll post my efforts (yes, I submitted more than one anti-war poster -- but the rules allow that) in a couple of days when the deadline for submissions has come and gone. In the meantime, any guesses on what the peaceniks have against marmalade?
01:51 a.m.

Quote of the day, courtesty of Tim Blair:

IRAQI information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is now universal journalistic shorthand for comical inaccuracy. Kinda funny, considering how mainstream outlets like the BBC weren't treating him like a joke when he was actually saying all the stupid things in the first place.

Sometimes, the satire writes itself: RIAA lobbyist Hilary B Rosen is rewriting the intellectual property laws for the new Iraqi government. Supposedly. This comes from BBC journalist Greg Palast, and Pacifica Radio's DemocracyNow! has an audio link supporting it, but like a lot of people, I find this very hard to believe. I'll update on this when/if it becomes more clear that it's either true or a very funny joke.

Link via Glenn Reynolds
01:07 a.m.

Sad news: police think they may have found the bodies of Laci Peterson and her infant son. How awful, for whoever the woman and her child are, and their family.
12:15 a.m.

14 April, 2003

From the "What the hell?" files: Colorado panel passes bill after taking special interest group's money:

A state Senate committee accepted a ,300 check from a special-interest group today and then approved a public school voucher program the group supports, saying the money was welcome given the state's financial crisis.

"If everyone would show up with a check, that would make this job so much easier," said state Sen. Ron Teck, a Republican from Grand Junction.

Lawmakers said they knew of no precedent for getting cash for a project, though they have approved legislation that allows programs only if they were financed through gifts and donations. Lawmakers said they would return the check if the bill is killed...

The committee voted 6 to 4 to approve a bill to create a pilot program that would provide scholarships for eligible students to attend private or religious schools.

Honest to goodness royal gossip, from a friend and impeccable source for such information:

They're now working on Clarence House, redoing the Queen Mother's bedroom, piss stains and all. Well, she was an old woman...

Apparently Charles will be moving in there, so Wills can have Highgrove. Anyway, the interesting stuff is that on the floor above her old room, Charles is having a bedroom and bathroom refurbished [and insisting] that they use sustainable environmentally friendly supplies from his duchy. I know we're under global warming conditions and all, but I don't know how a solid mahogany shower stall (no glass) could be sourced from Cornwall.

Anyway, beside his room a room is being built under the "codename" CPB. Separate bathroom - [no confirmation of] mahogany usage - but with connecting doors onto the Prince's room. The most worrying news is that all kinds of data cables and electrics are going into the basement. BECAUSE HARRY WANTS TO SET UP A MIXING DESK IN THERE. Oh yes.

Also, the sacked Michael "can I hold that for you sir?" Fawcett is acting as consultant on this project.

John Malkovich, who won my everlasting admiration when he named Robert Fisk and George Galloway as two people he'd like to see dead, has some interesting comments on current events:

"Why should America listen to what France now has to say? The French say that everybody else has a self-interest [in Iraq], but none is more obvious than theirs. And they're absolutely blind to it...I don't really care what a lot of European countries say. I've lived in Europe for years. I have a lot of dear friends there. But if you talk about politics, I want to say, if they're so smart, why Franco? Why totalitarianism? Why fascism? Where is your humility? I just think they should be curious about their own regimes."

Piers Morgan: "I was wrong." No, he's not talking about this (though I think he'll eventually concede how absolutely disgusting it was), but about some of the more poisonous coverage of celebrities that he and the Daily Mirror have undertaken. My heart doesn't exactly bleed for celebrities, but his comments are interesting:

'Yes, Anthea, I feel guilty about what we have done to you. There's no denying it: on behalf of the newspaper industry, I do." It had taken years of anguish, self-loathing and obstinate defiance, but I had finally done it. I had at last publicly apologised to a celebrity for making their life a misery...

[L]ook at it from the bull's standpoint and you also see a rather unedifying sport at work, with the Fleet Street matadors extracting commercial gain from celebrity misery, prodding and goading until our victim is destroyed in front of a baying crowd of punters.

And if tabloid journalists don't admit that this is how we are viewed by the world outside our newsrooms, then we can bring no sense of genuine compassion, humanity and basic fair play to what we do. Either in real life, like wars, where real people lead nightmare lives; or in the world of fame, where real people lead fantasy lives. Perhaps we should all be made to sit with Anthea Turner for two hours and explain why we took such joy in ruining her life.

Today I got a sneak preview of Charles Saatchi's new gallery at County Hall, which opens Thursday. I didn't expect to be so thrilled at the site of all the Hirst and Emin works, but I was. I think because they've got so much press attention and caused so much controversy over the last few years, it was just rather neat to see them up close. County Hall is an amazing building anyway (it's the one with the London Eye in front of it), and the combination of such stunning architecture and a whole lot of truly interesting art makes for one of London's more satisfying gallery experiences.

Saatchi's girlfriend, food writer and TV cook Nigella Lawson, was also in attendance, looking as drop dead gorgeous as one would expect. They make a very...interesting couple.

Anyway, check out the gallery -- there's a slide show of its highlights there, and the official site is full of good stuff, too.
05:46 p.m.

Dog piss: Derbyshire County Council is spending £75,000 to assess whether or not it poses a risk to public safety.

This reminds me of an item I read in the Rotten Boroughs section of this fortnight's Private Eye:

An inquiry into how Isle of Wight council lost nearly £400,000 on a music festival last summer, after budgeting it at a mere £20,000, described the conduct of those responsible as "sloppy," "strange" and "startling," while concluding that senior officials and councillors needed their duties spelled out to them "in words of one syllable."

The report advised the bureaucrats to talk to each other a bit more. With this in mind the council's top dogs have held a series of three "team-building" exercises requiring overnight stays at the agreeable but expensive Farringford Hotel at Freshwater, one-time home of Lord Tennyson. Islanders facing a 15.5 percent council tax rise wonder why it is necessary to spend thousands on such jollies when County Hall committee rooms, though lacking such poetic associations, are available for nothing.

Further commentary from Jurjen on the discovery of recently-produced French weapons in Iraq -- and (surprise, surprise) the French government's excuse that they must have come from the black market doesn't wash:

The French armed forces have a total of 20 Roland systems, the Bundeswehr has 11; if one went missing, I'm sure they'd notice. And, as I said, the thing has been in production for less than a decade. It's not like the international black market for arms is going to be awash with these things.

The French government either knew, in which case they're dirty, or if they didn't, they're incompetent; either way, they're culpable.

Is there a thug anywhere that the left will criticize these days? So asks Glenn Reynolds after reading letters to the Los Angeles Times in response to an article in which James Cason slammed Fidel Castro for arresting journalists and dissidents:

Only the Bush administration could possibly have produced a fool such as U.S. envoy James Cason, the head of the massive U.S. Interests Section in Havana. What right has this man to blatantly foment anti-government sentiment in Cuba? Is that what he calls diplomacy? Would we want the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington to step over the line and advocate anti-government acts here?

[...]

Cason should keep his mouth shut, although it may be too late.

[...]

It appears that Michael Ramirez's editorial cartoon on Castro (Commentary, April 8) has a typo and the wrong image. The image should be Bush, with the words: "USA/Bush's Political Machine/Ramirez" across his chest. And Bush would be strangling a war-protesting grandmother. The words across her chest would read: "Freedom of Speech."

13 April, 2003

No wonder they hate us: journalists touring Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz's residences find Meg Ryan movies, posters of Britney Spears and bottles of Drakkar Noir.
09:32 p.m.

Republican Barbara Cubin needs to be ripped up one side and down the other for her racist comments on the House floor last week. I know there's a war going on, but this is a major problem -- both her actual words and the House of Representatives' totally lax attitude towards what she said. It's also a major story, and one that's not getting nearly enough attention.
07:49 p.m.

We went to watch the London Marathon today, gathering on Tower Bridge to cheer on the runners. Paula Radcliffe set a world record, shaving almost two minutes off her previous personal best.

Next Saturday we'll be at Buckingham Palace to watch Michael Watson cross the finish line. Watson's story of struggling back from near death after a boxing match is nothing short of inspiring:

He was carried away to chaos and operating theatres and as the hours passed there was little hope that Watson would ever recover. It is pointless being pleasant. The fact remains that Watson defied all medical records and he should be dead or in a permanent vegetative state. I remember the morning after the fight and leaving St Bart's hospital and walking through the empty streets of Smithfield meat market. I will never forget the smell, the smell of blood and death.

The neurosurgeon, Peter Hamlyn, had that scent of fatality about him when he spoke to the family at 7:06 that morning. There was little hope. Then, Watson started to recover and not even his neurosurgeon, the eminent and photogenic Mr Hamlyn, could quite believe his recovery. Behind the scenes a lot of people spoke of caution, but Watson just pushed on and regained the body he lost. His mind was intact. He had will, mad will.

The plan for today's race is simple. Watson will complete 2.5 miles this morning, take a break and then do another 2.5 miles later today. Each day next week he will complete 2.2 miles, take a break and then walk another 2.2 before getting some sleep. He will have a lot of boxers at his side, a lot of support and hopefully raise £1 million for the Brain and Spine Foundation...

There were vile rumours from the sick in the boxing business that he would become an instant millionaire with his final settlement. That is a joke because he owed £80,000 to the Compensation Recovery Unit for the first three years of his medical care before he won a penny. He has full-time care, he has two teenage daughters.

He lost a fight live on television in front of an audience of more than 17 million people. He still struggles to pull his underpants up on his own. Would you deny that man a million? He never got it, never got the million the snakes said he would get. Today he starts a run for £1m, but it is £1m for other people. He was a good person, Michael Watson, when he was a fighter. He is even better now -- now that he is a runner.

Simple things that make me laugh, No 7282 in a series: Liz Smith's columns.

We were served a beautiful split mango filled with seafood and fruit. Then came a perfect, flaky pastry star onto which we ladled chicken a la king. So great! On our same plate, we received a small portion of shiny green arugula, so we could eat "against" the main course instead of struggling with a big salad. Dessert was a bombshell sensation! Ice cream rolled in coconut with chocolate sauce optional. I didn't see anyone of the wraith-like slim there, opting not to have it or hanging back.

Jurjen has loads of good content at the moment, including commentary on the Greek stance towards America (and the Greeks' ridiculous EC victory on feta), Russia's violation of UNSC resolution 661 by training Iraqi Mukhabarat agents, and another ISM activist wounded by the IDF.
05:33 p.m.

Labour MP Tom Watson breaks his silence on the BBC's biased coverage. I think he goes rather easy on them (the BBC's reporters are not there to "speak their mind," unless they're filing opinion pieces and not straight reporting), but I can understand why: anything for a quiet life, and Watson, as a politician, has to be careful about this one. That said, he still rounds up some good quotes that show just how wrong the BBC has got it -- again.
05:18 p.m.

"The French? Violating United Nations sanctions? Why it's almost as if the United Nations were merely a joke or something." That's how Glenn Reynolds puts it, and since I'm one of the ones who's been saying that France was pretty scared about us finding out about all of the weapons they've been supplying to Iraq recently, I have to agree with him. Not only are we finding the records of these sales, but the weapons and equipment themselves.

The New York Times has more:

The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use.

Uncle Bob has a couple of worthwhile PSAs -- if you can help out at all, please do. My Dad's going to help out on the first one for me; the second one I think I should handle myself.
04:47 p.m.

It's time to reclaim the left for liberals. Jeff Jarvis and I are pretty closely aligned on this one.
07:16 a.m.

Sometimes the personal really is political, as left-wing writer Nick Cohen demonstrates quite nicely:

Andrew Murray, the Stop the War Coalition’s chairman, wrote an article in the Morning Star to celebrate the 120th anniversary of Stalin’s birth. He acknowledged that the tyrant had used “harsh measures” but asked why hack propa­gandists abominate the name of Stalin beyond all others’.

That there were 20 million reasons didn’t seem to occur to him.

Mur­ray is on the politburo of the Communist Party of Britain (which must never be confused with the Communist Party of Great Britain). In a report to his com­rades in March, he said the coalition should have two slogans: “Stop the war” and “Blair must go”. “We need urgently to raise the level of our Leninist education,” he continued. “Everything we are talking about, the imperialist crisis, inter—imperialist conflict, war, political strategy and tactics, are Leninist issues. We need to do far more to study Marxism-Leninism.” The anti-war protest had led to “the rate of inquiries about party membership rising rapidly and that is welcome, but we need to ensure they are educated as communists and learn to work as communists”.

Thus, a living fossil from the age of European dictators was heading the biggest protest of the new century. Even Julian Lewis, the Tory MP who spent the 1980s accusing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament of having been infiltrated by supporters of the Soviet Union, was taken aback. “I had thought that my days of unearthing totalitarians at the heart of ‘peace movements’ had ended in 1991,” he wrote in the Telegraph. ‘Yet here is a case of a former worker for the Soviet Novosti Press Agency in precisely such a key position, being solemnly quoted by the anti-war press as if he were a representative of democratic politics.”

There are ironies aplenty, and not only in the sight of the same old scowling faces from the fragments of splinter groups reap­pearing after all the talk of the Seattle generation creating a new politics. Mass opposition to a war against a dictator who models himself on Stalin is being led by a man who is nostalgic for Stalin. British opponents of the war have condemned the “undemocratic” government for not listening to majority opinion. Yet the Communist Party of Britain, the Socialist Workers Party and the other Marxist-Leninist groups that run the Stop the War Coali­tion are not interested in democracy. They want to abolish it and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the pro­letariat in question turns out to be made up of the bosses of the Communist Party of Britain, or the Socialist Workers Party, or whatever other faction storms Westminster.

That said, if it hadn't been run by extremists, the anti-war movement may not have looked quite so ridiculous and may actually have accomplished something. I'm rather thankful it didn't.
06:32 a.m.

Honest to goodness celebrity gossip, for those who give a care: I got together last night with a friend of mine who's been in New York for a couple of weeks working on recording sessions for the soundtrack to De-Lovely, a biopic of Cole Porter being directed by Irwin Winkler (Goodfellas, Rocky, etc). He reports that Macy Gray "is so crazy that she acts like a loon even when she's sober" and that Norah Jones is "very gorgeous, very nice and very timid -- as in she has to ask her record company chaperone if she's allowed to have a cup of coffee".

Okay, so it's not especially shocking gossip, but it's all I've got.
05:28 a.m.

North Korea makes dramatic shift on nuclear arms talks:

North Korea said on Saturday it would consider any form of dialogue with the United States about its suspected nuclear arms ambitions if Washington was prepared to make a "bold switchover" in its policy toward Pyongyang...

Washington -- which lumps communist North Korea in an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran for seeking weapons of mass destruction -- wants multilateral talks that also include regional players South Korea, Japan, Russia and China...

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun told the Washington Post in an interview published on Friday the U.S.-led Iraq war had had a profound impact on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and other North Korean officials.

"Especially watching the recent Iraqi war I'm sure they are very much terrified...petrified by the Iraqi war," the Post quoted him as saying.

Links via Dean Esmay
05:08 a.m.

12 April, 2003

Discrimination at the gas pump: Debbie Brannigan writes at Capitalist Chicks about the Oregon law against pumping one's own petrol. No, I'm not making that up.

Among the reasons for this legislation, as claimed in the text of the law, is that "high prices of full service discriminate against low income customers who are subjected to the inconvenience and hazards of self service." Hey, haven't you heard about the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to convenience? No, me neither. Other ridiculous justifications for this law, according to its text, are that pumping one's own gas contributes to unemployment (same goes for wiping one's own ass, I guess) and that kids are in "danger" while their parents are paying for gas, so eliminating the need for parents to get out of the car is best for the children.

I will quote, as Brannigan does, Benjamin Franklin:

People who are willing to give up their freedom for security deserve neither.

Too bad, so sad:

The Daily Mirror's circulation has crashed through the psychologically important 2 million mark for the first time in over 70 years...

ABC figures shows 91,693 fewer readers are buying the paper compared with this time last year, leaving the Mirror with an overall circulation of 1,997,846.

Sources say were it not for the higher circulation of the Saturday edition, the Mirror's figures would by much lower...

Morgan has now toned down his anti-war stance - it has been less obvious on the paper's front page for the past few days - and admitted it could have been to blame for the drop...

[T]he Independent, which regulary carried reports from the fervently anti-war reporter Robert Fisk on its front page, lost readers, slipping 1.13% to 191,826 copies.

I'm pro-choice and have always voted for Democratic candidates, but if John Kerry is the best the left can do in 2004, we're all in deep shit. To wit:

Litmus tests are politically motivated tests; this is a constitutional right. I think people who go to the Supreme Court ought to interpret the Constitution as it is interpreted, and if they have another point of view, then they're not supporting the Constitution, which is what a judge does.

By the way, last night's news played a clip of a Downing Street spokesperson taking the BBC to task for another of their ridiculous comments. What was it this time? Oh, just a remark that people in Iraq, post-Saddam, are living "in more fear than they have ever known before." As the No 10 spokesperson said, "Try telling that to people put in shredders or getting their tongues cut out."

Or people whose toddlers were put in prison:

"The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children - toddlers up to pre-adolescents - whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene."

More dodgy oil ties to Iraq -- and they've still got fuckall to do with the US:

The Western oil company with the closest ties to the late Saddam is France's TotalFinaElf. That's not the curious fact, that's just business as usual in the Fifth Republic. This is the curious fact: As Diane [Francis] wrote in February and again last week, "Total's biggest shareholder is Montreal's Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's daughter."

Let's see if I've got this straight: TotalFinaElf's largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal's Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is Jean Chrétien's son-in-law, Andre Desmarais. Mr. Desmarais' brother, Paul Desmarais Jr., sits on the Total board.

For months, the anti-war crowd has insisted that "it's all about oil," that the only reason the Iraqi people were being "liberated" was so that the second biggest oil reserves in the world could be annexed in perpetuity by Dick Cheney and Halliburton and the rest of Bush's Texas oilpatch gang. Instead, it turns out that, if it is all about oil, then the principal North American beneficiary of the continued enslavement of the Iraqi people is the family of the Canadian Prime Minister -- that's to say, his daughter, France Chrétien, and his grandchildren.

What a delightful footnote to the Chrétien-Chiraquiste war effort. This is a victory not just for the Iraqi people but for "Anglo-Saxon" reality over Franco-Canadian postmodern cynicism.

You know George Galloway, the Labour MP who is facing expulsion from the party because he went on Abu Dhabi TV and urged Arabs around the world to go to Iraq and fight against the coalition? Same guy who told the coalition forces to lay down their weapons and stop taking "illegal orders". Same guy who took money from a fund for a little Iraqi girl with leukaemia and used it to finance his trips to Iraq to hang out with Saddam Hussein. Same guy who told Saddam during one of their meetings, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."

Well, according to the BBC, Galloway "[faces] having the Labour whip withdrawn because of [his] anti-war stance". Oh yes, it's just because of his anti-war stance. Nothing to do with any of the above. Nothing at all.

I hate the BBC. Still.

Anyway, follow the above link to see the pitiful London anti-war march today. Organisers predicted 250,000 people would show up, but only 20,000 actually did. A good sign, I think. They held a two minute silence "for the war dead". Where were their rallies and silences for the millions of "peace" dead who died at the hands of Saddam Hussein?
05:41 p.m.

Here I am again, doing the Friday Five on a Saturday. Well, it's still Friday in the States.

1. What was the first band you saw in concert? Technically, the Kinks. My parents saw them live when my mother was about eight months pregnant or something. After that, they dragged me to see Cheap Trick when I was about ten. Cruel, cruel people.

2. Who is your favorite artist/band now? I really couldn't narrow it down. Bands and artists I've seen in recent years include Oasis (I know, but I do like them a lot, despite their personalities), Manic Street Preachers, Screaming Trees, Weezer, Divine Comedy, Embrace, Mercury Rev, the Strokes, Turin Brakes, the Cult, Eminem (it was, um, research), Natalie Merchant, Travis, Queens of the Stone Age, Gene, Iggy Pop, Evan Dando, Kelis, Idlewild, Counting Crows, Bettie Serveert...and a bunch I can't remember at the moment. Right now I'm listening to a lot of Catatonia.

3. What's your favorite song? Again, I can't narrow it down. Here are mp3s of four songs I've had on heavy rotation lately: Stone by Stone, Long Time Lonely, Apple Core (all by Catatonia -- Cerys Matthews has such a great voice, and I love that she sings with her Welsh accent intact) and (Could Be) A Country Thing, City Thing, Blues Thing by Richard Ashcroft.

4. If you could play any instrument, what would it be? I'd like to play the piano a lot better than I do. I probably would, too, if I ever practiced. I have a piano, so there's no excuse for not practicing more.

5. If you could meet any musical icon (past or present), who would it be and why? Probably Bono, so I could ask him to either urge France and Russia to forgive Iraq its Saddam-era (oh, I like the past tense sound of that) debts or shut the hell up and go away forever.

11 April, 2003

What she said:

Earlier tonight, CNN had a live feed from some highway out in the middle of nowehere in Northern Iraq. What looked like (and was reported to be) a few thousand young Iraqi men were walking down the highway in civilian clothes, unarmed, with no water or food or anything at all. They said they were former army conscripts who were finally going home, and that they hated Saddam and were thrilled that the U.S. had come and defeated him.

What struck me the most was that they were walking in the hot sunlight, some of them barefoot, not one of them in possession of any food or water, yet they were smiling. They said it was a 7-day walk to their destination.

It's all quite beyond the comprehension of an American girl like me, who's spent her life in utter peace and comparative luxury. I've never once felt as though my freedom was at stake, or that I truly wanted for anything important, such as autonomy, food, shelter, or safety. So I see people who lack all of those things, yet still have smiles on their faces, and all I can say is that I'm proud of them. Happy, excited, and hopeful for them.

I was driving home today from some errands, along a tree-lined street on a beautiful spring day, listening to happy music on the radio and drinking cool, clean bottled water - and I realized how much like paradise that might seem to some people. It's just a tiny slice of my life, but isn't it huge, too?

Oh my Lord:

Michael Portillo has swapped his Westminster office for a supermarket checkout. The Conservative MP for Kensington and Chelsea is said to be "revelling" in his new role behind the clothes counter at Asda in Wallasey on Merseyside. He is spending a week there serving customers, tidying up and putting security tags on clothing as part of a BBC documentary.

He wears a staff uniform and has a name badge saying 'Mike'...The store's manager John Tobin said: "He's not work shy and has adapted really well. Mike is really good at working the till and if he's after a job we can offer him one."

What journalists kept to themselves about Iraq:

I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.

The Onion seriously needs to hire this guy.
02:30 a.m.

The words "nail" and "head" spring to mind:

So if I'm reading this correctly, the same people who bleezed on and on about how the inspections needed time, years in fact, are the people now bitching that it's a failure that civil, democratic order hasn't taken hold in Iraq by this morning.

Christopher Allbritton, described by Jeff Jarvis as a "reporter-turned-blogger-turned-war-correspondent," has finally arrived in liberated Kirkuk:

This newly liberated city was a scene of joy and jubilation as the people took to the streets, letting out a collective breath they had been holding for 35 years...

The mood is World Cup crazy as people were hanging off trucks and speeding to the city. Armed men stood up in the back of pickup trucks waving the yellow or green flags of the KDP or the PUK, respectively. As we passed, they waved to me and honked, chanting, “America!”

I met a B2I reader earlier, djoy, who now says I can use his real name: Delshad Fattah, 33, a former resident of Kirkuk. He came with me to Mosul and was now on the way to Kirkuk with me and Freydoon. I don’t think he expected this when he agreed to meet me for tea at 10 a.m.

He said many of the people on the road were going to Kirkuk to loot, and shook his head in sadness. “This is what Saddam has done to my people. He has turned us all into thieves.”

10 April, 2003

From the "You fucking said it" files, Victor David Hanson writes this about Maureen Dowd, but it applies to so many people I have personally encountered. You might recognise someone you know, too:

So she just doesn't get it. It is precisely because Mr. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz hate war, wish to avoid a repeat of the vaporization of 3,000 in Manhattan and the specter of further mass killing from terrorists, armed with frightening weapons from rogue states like Iraq, that they resorted to force. She evokes Sherman (who called something like 19th century Dowdism "bottled piety") with disdain, but forgets that Sherman, who saw firsthand the grotesqueness of Shiloh, proclaimed that war was all hell — but only after his trek through Georgia where he freed 40,000 slaves and destroyed the icons of the Confederacy, while losing 100 soldiers and killing not more than 600 young non-slave-holding Southerners, an hour's carnage at Antietam or Gettysburg.

It might be neat between cappuccinos to write about leaders getting "giddy" about winning a terrible war, or thinking up cool nicknames like "Rummy," "Wolfie," and titles like "Dances with Wolfowitz," but meanwhile out in the desert stink thousands of young Americans, a world away from the cynical Letterman world of Maureen Dowd, risk their lives to ensure that there are no more craters in her environs — and as a dividend give 26 million a shot at the freedom that she so breezily enjoys.

So, yeah, what Hanson said -- but lay off Letterman.
05:01 p.m.

Lt Smash, live from the sandbox, has a note worth reading today. Just below that is a heartwrenching entry from the Lt's wife that's worth reading, too.
04:05 p.m.

I'm all about the long-ass posts today. Sorry. If you feel like laughing, check out what is possibly the most ill-fated, ill-timed advertising campaign in history, going on right now in Hong Kong.
04:02 p.m.

Yep, this is exactly how it's going. Not an original lot, but you gotta give 'em bonus points for determination (to be miserable and negative).

I was on the phone last night with the delightful Athena (and got to talk to her son, which was cool considering I'd followed his growth from foetus to current crawling baby status with much interest), and I'll tell y'all what I told her:

A week and a half into this war, I was pretty fucking pissed off. People all over the place -- all over my TV, all over my newspapers, all over my lovely-but-sometimes-very-dim country -- were calling this conflict "another Vietnam". They were trotting out quotes from old Reagan administration folk who'd predicted a "cakewalk" and made out that the Bush administration had promised them a six day war. They were taking what can only be described as exquisite delight in every setback suffered by the coalition. Here's what I wrote on April Fools Day (no comment):

I haven't posted anything on the histrionics of those now claiming that this war has failed and that we were "promised" a "short, easy war". (Even if that had been promised -- and the only quotes I've seen doing so are from Bill Clinton and ex-Reagan administration members -- I seriously question the critical thinking skills of anyone who would accept such ridiculousness as gospel...) Bottom line: we're not even two weeks into this thing. Go ahead and predict all you want that it's an unmitigated disaster, but you look foolish for doing so. Think back to those who were calling the US action in Afghanistan a disaster...It's quite clear that the most rabid armchair generals at this point are the "peace" lovers who grab on to every knock the coalition takes with an unbecoming amount of glee. And I think that says more about them than it does about this war.

I'm shelling out for this effort twice, once to the US government and once to the British government, and I'm more than happy to do so. If you're not, then stun the world and your elected officials with what you think is the better idea. Marching and bitching only go so far in this world, and I'm sure they'd get you much less further in Iraq than they do in the west.
02:49 p.m.

Marines hold nuclear site south of Baghdad:

Investigators Tuesday discovered that Al-Tuwaitha hides another city. This underground nexus of labs, warehouses, and bomb-proof offices was hidden from the public and, perhaps, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors who combed the site just two months ago, until the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Engineers discovered it three days ago...

So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have discovered 14 buildings that betray high levels of radiation. Some of the readings show nuclear residue too deadly for human occupation.

A few hundred meters outside the complex, where peasants say the "missile water" is stored in mammoth caverns, the Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts."

"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," said physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997. Officials at the IAEA could not be reached for comment...

"Iraq developed procedures to limit access to these buildings by IAEA inspectors who had a right to inspect the fuel fabrication facility. On days when the inspectors were scheduled to visit, only the fuel fabrication rooms were open to them. Usually, employees were told to take their rooms so that the inspectors did not see an unusually large number of people," according to a 1999 report Albright wrote with Corey Gay and Khidhir Hamza for ISIS...

Yesterday, Hamza expressed great surprise that the underground site could even exist. The ground there is muddy and composed of clay, he said. The water table is barely a foot and a half below the surface of the ground. During construction of one of the former nuclear reactors there, French engineers spent a fortune pumping water from the foundation area, only to see buildings crumble when the water was removed...

So the Marines' discovery makes the former atomic inspector wonder if the Iraqis went to the colossal expense of pumping enough water to build the underground city because no reasonable inspector would think anything might be built underground there.

"Nobody would expect it,” Hamza said. “Nobody would think twice about going back there.”

Ta to Jurjen for the heads up.
01:36 p.m.

Hate to say "I told you so"...Well, actually, it's more like "We told you so":

BBC correspondent Emma Jane Kirby, in Paris, says that many French people, who believed this was an illegal and hot-headed war, have been stunned by the welcome American forces received in Baghdad on Wednesday.

The French newspaper, Liberation, has warned that President Chirac is now threatened with isolation on the international stage.

Thanks to Jeff Jarvis and Steven Den Beste for the links.
01:11 p.m.

British soldiers save fedayeen from angry mob. Man, if there had been any doubt in my mind that those populating the armed forces are better people than I am, this would have definitely laid that to rest.

Link via Glenn Reynolds
12:19 p.m.

The rescue of Pfc Jessica Lynch makes Brian Sewell want to puke. Hey, that's cool: Brian Sewell makes the whole of Britain want to puke. Sewell, the man whose pretensions are on such a grand scale that -- in the words of Paul Merton -- he talks with an accent so posh that even the Queen takes the piss out of him, is someone I'm glad not to have on my side of this issue. Fling him into the middle of the Stop the War crowd on Saturday and those suckers'll scatter like cockroaches.
12:11 p.m.

Dispatch from the front lines -- actually, from Boston, where my good mate Paul has travelled from London on mysterious business:

Thought you might like to know that there are still pockets of resistance in Camden, north London, fighting the ignorant and ill-informed posters of "Peace" stickers and coincidentally, they are neighbours of Kemper.

Flt Sgt Kemper in a daring daylight raid (conducted with impunity) affixed this attachment to a nearby peace enclave. Fortunately coalition forces were on hand to restrain him from beating his neighbours with a pair of smelly shoes and shaving their moustaches off.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Again, why not channel all this energy into lobbying the government(s) to do right by the Iraqi people in the post-war phase? Surely that cause is one we can all agree on, and one that is more deserving of attention than a bunch of pro-North Korea, anti-Israeli socialists getting together to throw a temper tantrum.
11:46 a.m.

Why is the Iraqi embassy burning documents? My guess: Chirac got on the old dog and bone and told them to destroy the evidence. As if we don't already know the numbers.
10:38 a.m.

"BUT EVERYTHING ISN'T INSTANTLY PERFECT" -- Jim Treacher comes through yet again.
09:58 a.m.

I just saw two rather interesting exchanges on morning television. The first took place on the BBC, where Natasha Kaplinsky (who used to work for Labour politicians Neil Kinnock and John Smith, ahem) asked the BBC's defense correspondent Paul Adams:

This war has gone amazingly quickly, despite what everyone said would happen. Are people now asking how the intelligence on this could have been so wrong?

That said, I won't shed too many tears if it turns out he's already rotting in hell. (See, I'm not so heartless after all!)
07:46 a.m.

The lovely Jackie C emailed me yesterday and told me it was snowing in Holborn, central London. (I was out all day, but in east London, and missed that.) But now, outside my window here in northeast London, snow is indeed falling, and has been for hours. This comes after a couple of weeks of constant sunshine and insistent flowers breaking through and blooming all over the damn place.

Not interested in weather? Sorry, it's the British brainwashing I've been going through for the last five years or so, which has made the weather a constant source of intrigue to me. Happily, I still have zero interest in drinking tea or talking about farts.
07:34 a.m.

Quote of the day, from Juan Gato, summing up the new whinge from the anti-war's most obnoxious and misguided:

"Now their lives are open-ended and uncertain! At least under the stability of Saddam they knew tomorrow would always suck."

Not in YOUR name, nosiree.
03:49 a.m.

9 April, 2003

Well. This war is by no means over, and there is so much still to do that it's almost overwhelming. The peace will be tougher than the war, I think, but for today, it would take a heart of stone not to celebrate along with the Iraqi people. The outpouring of emotion and the release of years of pent-up resentment, frustration, anger and sadness made for a riveting spectacle. My own feelings were pretty strong, so I can't even imagine how those people, who have lived under the most unspeakable tyranny for so long, must feel.

I have expressed feelings of disgust, disdain and everything in between in this blog -- both for Saddam Hussein and the anti-war protesters. No, those who protested this war were not, most of them, "pro-Saddam". Not by a long shot. But they must accept the undeniable fact that, if things had gone their way -- if the "peace" which made the Iraqi people so miserable had been unpenetrated by military action -- children would still be rotting in Iraqi prisons, Saddam Hussein and his brutal régime would still be in power, and the Iraqi people would have absolutely nothing to celebrate.

It used to be that you could always count on a liberal to celebrate the downfall of a tyrannical dictator. Today, I saw liberals turn their faces away from the scenes of jubliant Iraqis speaking without fear of death and imprisonment for the first time in a quarter of a century, proclaim that there was "nothing to celebrate" and denounce this war as "still wrong, no matter what". How they reconcile this with a belief system which supposedly holds the interests of the poor and downtrodden in the highest regard is beyond me, but I can only imagine how bitter and deluded they must be to deny that this has been a truly great day for the Iraqi people. (It also illustrates perfectly why I no longer feel comfortable labelling myself a liberal.)

Like I said, the toughest work is ahead of us. Basra already has a new, Iraqi mayor (so much for the US turning Iraq into an American colony, eh?), but restoring law and order to Iraq and setting down a framework for a true democracy there will not be as easy as winning this war has been. But I believe wholeheartedly that it's an investment of time, money and effort that is absolutely worthwhile.

I think the Iraqi people I saw on TV today would agree with that. If you don't, I don't care. This war isn't about you, and if you're one of the "Not In My Name" brigade who can't stop talking about how ashamed you are to be American/British/Australian/Polish/whatever, take it to therapy and get the hell over yourself. The rest of the world is moving on, in the direction of democracy for the Iraqi people. And under this new democracy, the people won't be ripping down statues of the guy who supposedly won 100% of the popular vote and proclaiming that their life starts with his downfall.

Life starts here for the Iraqi people. If you truly care about them and their future, put as much energy into supporting them now as you've put into protesting or supporting this war.
11:21 p.m.

Jeff Jarvis fisks Michael Moore. If you thought he couldn't top his fisking of George Galloway, you were mistaken!

Speaking of Galloway, the Guardian captured this fine moment in Parliament today:

"It is extremely difficult to know what is left of the governing ranks of Saddam's regime," Tony told the Commons today. Hilarity breaks out among backbenchers. What the microphone didn't pick up was David Winnick (Labour, Walsall North) shouting "Galloway!"

Come on, say it:

[TONY] SNOW: If people are dancing in the streets of Baghdad after a war...

[JANEANE] GAROFALO: OK, what are you going to say? "Are you going to apologize?" Everybody asks me that...

SNOW: No, I'm not asking you if you're going to apologize. Are you just going to say, "Well, I guess I was wrong"?

GAROFALO: I would love to be wrong about this, Tony.

SNOW: OK.

GAROFALO: There's no glory in being right about catastrophe.

"I'm 49, but I never lived a single day."

"Only now will I start living. That Saddam Hussein is a murderer and a criminal."
05:29 p.m.

I cannot believe what I'm seeing on my television screen. I mean, I can believe the scenes of jubilation and dancing in the streets of Baghdad -- it's the fact that the BBC reporters haven't been able to put a negative spin on it that shocks me.

What a day.
05:26 p.m.

More BBC bullshit:

Saturday, April 5, will be the day most people will remember as the day when the journalistic standards of the World Service committed suicide. The BBC’s bad day in Baghdad started early: A column of US soldiers had entered southwestern Baghdad just after daybreak. The soldiers - in tanks and armored personnel carriers - drove through the city for several kilometers encountering only sporadic resistance. Near the university, the column turned left, drove out of the capital and parked at the international airport, which was already securely in American hands. In Qatar, the Coalition command center announced the incursion, saying that elements of the 3rd Infantry had gone into the center of Baghdad. At first, the maneuver was reported as a grab for urban territory. Later, more accurate reports, however, said that it was a demonstration by the U.S. that it could and would enter Baghdad at will.

Cut to: Andrew Gilligan, the BBC’s man in downtown Baghdad. "I’m in the center of Baghdad," said a very dubious Gilligan, "and I don’t see anything…But then the Americans have a history of making these premature announcements." Gilligan was referring to a military communiqué from Qatar the day before saying the Americans had taken control of most of Baghdad’s airport. When that happened, Gilligan had told World Service listeners that he was there, at the airport - but the Americans weren’t. Gilligan inferred that the Americans were lying. An hour or two later, a different BBC correspondent pointed out that Gilligan wasn’t at the airport, actually. He was nearby - but apparently far enough away that the other correspondent felt it necessary to mention that he didn’t really know if Gilligan was around, but that no matter what Gilligan had seen or not seen, the airport was firmly and obviously in American hands.

It was important to the BBC that Gilligan not be wrong twice in two days. Whatever the truth was, the BBC, like Walter Duranty’s New York Times, must never say, "I was wrong." So, despite the fact that the appearance of American troops in Baghdad was surely one of the war’s big moments, and one the BBC had obviously missed, American veracity became the story of the day. Gilligan, joined by his colleagues in Baghdad, Paul Wood and Rageh Omaar, kept insisting that not only had the Americans not gone to the "center" - which they reckoned to be where they were - they hadn’t really been in the capital at all. Both Omaar and Wood told listeners that they had been on hour-long Iraqi Ministry of Information bus rides - "and," said Wood, "we were free to go anywhere" -yet they had seen nothing of an American presence in the city. From Qatar, a BBC correspondent helpfully explained that US briefings, such as that announcing the Baghdad incursion, were meaningless exercises, "more PR than anything else." Maybe, implied the World Service, the Americans had made it all up: all day long, Wood repeatedly reported that there was no evidence to support the American claim.

Give me strength: Reuters is comparing America's founding fathers to the Iraqi Fedayeen. Or at least they do in the headline ("Like Iraqis, Americans Once Used 'Irregulars'"); by the time they get to the meat of the article, they're forced to admit:

Granted, the Americans then did not use suicide bombers or human shields, and the specter of weapons of mass destruction did not haunt the conflict.

Thanks to Donald Sensing for the heads-up.
05:34 a.m.

"So you think you know what a war crime is..." Well, if you're Aidan White from the International Federation of Journalists, you probably don't. Jurjen, a former soldier who actually spent several years helping to prosecute war crimes when he worked for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, sets White -- and all those who would jump on his sad little bandwagon -- straight.
05:18 a.m.

Speaking of North Korea, looks like the UN is having a spot of bother on that front:

The major Security Council powers failed to agree on a statement condemning North Korea's nuclear program because of opposition from China, which has close ties to the North's communist regime, diplomats said.

China said Tuesday the Security Council has no business discussing North Korea's nuclear program...

"It is not appropriate for the U.N. Security Council to get involved in these issues," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said in Beijing. "No related parties should take actions that would further complicate this matter."

Further proof that diplomacy is working with North Korea:

Pyongyang has curbed its brinkmanship in the three weeks since the United States began bombing Baghdad on March 20. It has not restarted its reprocessing plant to make nuclear weapons fuel out of spent plutonium, nor tested a ballistic missile, which would unsettle Japan.

"Both sides have come to an unspoken pact. No sanctions from Washington, and no reprocessing or testing launch from North Korea," said an American observer who is quietly trying to start some private contacts, and asked not to be named.

Jeff Jarvis fisks George Galloway -- and it feels so good.
03:48 a.m.

Contest time: out of the ten men ("Britain's most unlikely sex symbols") pictured here, guess which four I find remotely attractive. Email me with your guesses, and the first one to get it right wins a very special prize package from me.
03:30 a.m.

British soldiers welcomed into the Garden of Eden with open arms:

The 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment reached Al Qurnah, crossing the River Euphrates, military officials confirmed.

The Irish troops were met by thousands of jubilant Iraqis, waving their arms in a joyful welcome...

Al Qurnah is said to be the site of the biblical Garden of Eden and the birthplace of mankind. The area is populated by Ma'dan, the Marsh Arabs who have suffered genocide at the hands of Saddam Hussein.

Traditionally dressed women and children ran from the fields to garland vehicles with desert flowers and men thronged the roadside in their hundreds to chant their gratitude and welcome.

My old neighbour, Danniella Westbrook, is the latest C-list celebrity to tart herself up for the benefit of her career the men of the military. She looks great, doesn't she? Having seen her in the flesh many times, I can tell you it's all makeup and lighting. And I wonder why the photographer chose not to zoom in on Danni's destroyed (by cocaine) septum for these snaps? Sorry, but as they say, none more common.
03:00 a.m.

I really, truly do not like Richard Littlejohn, but for two weeks running, he's said something I totally agree with in his column. Last week, he took on George Galloway. Today, the "Starbucks Strategists":

Although there have been civilians killed, the hundreds of thousands of deaths predicted by the doom-mongers have not materialised. The Dresden-style bombing, the razing of cities, the slaughter of the innocents have all been conspicuous by their absence. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say more civilians have been murdered by Saddam’s henchmen since this war started than by stray Allied fire.

Are the hysterical opponents of this war chastened? Do they accept that their wildest forecasts have been discredited?

Not a bit.

In fact, there’s a sense that some of them are disappointed that there’s been no bloodbath. They’d rather tens of thousands more British, American and Iraqis had died if it proved them right. Shamefully, there are plenty of people in this country who would cheerfully have seen the roadside littered with the corpses of Coalition soldiers.

For them, every dead baby would have represented a small victory, a vindication of Not In My Name. They were willing to let the Iraqi people go on suffering under a brutal tyrant and a vicious regime rather than side with America.

[...]

My favourite moment of the war so far was the rooftop press conference given by the Iraqi information minister in downtown Baghdad, in which he claimed everything was going swimmingly and the invaders had been repulsed.

It might have been more convincing had an American tank not been clearly visible over his shoulder in the car park next door.

[...]

This isn’t to be flippant or even complacent. Just to point out that the Not In My Name crowd and the Starbucks Strategists have got it hopelessly, ridiculously wrong.

This isn’t another Vietnam. It’s not another Suez.

They were wrong about Afghanistan — remember, the Americans were going to be involved in guerilla war there for years to come.

Now they’re wrong about Iraq.

Three terrorists were convicted in London on Tuesday of masterminding a dissident republican bombing campaign in England. One of the bombing scenes was BBC Television Centre in White City, London -- which came under fire from a car bomb the day after I'd been there on a callback audition for a TV show (long story). I rather like Samizdata's take on this one.
02:21 a.m.

8 April, 2003

Is it just me, or are "the 10 most beautiful people in Dallas"...well, a bit of a letdown? All of the guys look like they're covered in a film of chipfat, and while the women are certainly pretty, I'm surprised they're the five most beautiful females in a city as big as Dallas.

Also, aren't they all a bit...er, white? Doesn't Lanny look like the bastard child of Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover? (And, personally, I think that my older brother and his wife -- who live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area -- are miles better looking than any of them.)

I'm sure they're all really lovely people, but beauty remains, as always, in the eye of the beholder.

Thanks to Virginia Postrel for the link.
10:55 p.m.

Now hear this:

Even though you [the Hollywood anti-war crowd] are among the luckiest and best-rewarded human beings in the history of civilization, you have moaned long and loud about life in the oppressive United States of America. And you have complained that free speech is practically an endangered species--though it's not as if you've been kidnapped, bound and gagged for expressing your views.

You have talked about how ashamed you are to be an American. You have said you believe this is a war for oil conducted by a power-hungry simpleton in the White House.

You have given speeches at awards ceremonies. You've marched in the streets and held forth at anti-war rallies. You've gone on talk shows and you've written op-ed pieces and you've signed letters and you've flashed the peace sign every time you've gone out in public.

Even after the fighting began and U.S. troops started risking their lives to fight for the very freedoms you've been enjoying--including the right to speak out against government policies--you refused to let the drumbeats of war drown out your voices of dissent.

Fine. You've made your point. And if you want to keep on with the the marching and the protesting and the grandstanding and the speech-making, well God bless America, that's your right.

But I'm just wondering: If you're such a crusader for kindness and decency and the rules of fair play, when are you going to say something about the atrocities committed by Iraqis since this war broke out?

--Richard Roeper

Now THIS makes me angry.
10:26 p.m.

As a bloodthirsty warmonger, I am happy to welcome Elie Wiesel to our ranks!

Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel said the war on Iraq is justified and blamed unnamed European countries for failing to prevent it through pressuring President Saddam Hussein.

"If some European countries put as much pressure on Saddam Hussein as on (US President George W.) Bush, there would have been no war," he told a press conference in Montreal.

"Saddam Hussein had to be disarmed (and) there were no other means," said the Nazi concentration camp survivor and author who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1986 for his message "of peace, atonement and human dignity."

More than 100 Iraqi children freed from prison in Baghdad. Yes, children:

Around 150 children spilled out of the jail after the gates were opened as a US military Humvee vehicle approached, Lieutenant Colonel Fred Padilla told an AFP correspondent travelling with the Marines 5th Regiment.

"Hundreds of kids were swarming us and kissing us," Padilla said.

"There were parents running up, so happy to have their kids back."

"The children had been imprisoned because they had not joined the youth branch of the Baath party," he alleged. "Some of these kids had been in there for five years."

The children, who were wearing threadbare clothes and looked under-nourished, walked on the streets crossing their hands as if to mimic handcuffs, before giving the thumbs up sign and shouting their thanks.

I honestly can't help but wonder if one solitary anti-war protester would be willing to explain to those kids, and those people dancing in the streets, weeping with joy and thanking the coalition forces for the war, exactly why theirs is not a cause worth fighting for. I seriously doubt it.
08:54 p.m.

Wonder why I can't take the (ever-waning) anti-war movement seriously? One example of it popped up in my inbox this evening, in the form of an email from Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop. Simply delusional in her opposition to this war, she's recommending this site as full of "fantastic, practical, powerful things you can do *right now* to bring the end of this war". Let's take a look at some of these fantastic, practical, powerful ideas:

Send an email to President Jacques Chirac of France, thanking the French for their global leadership for a peaceful solution

Send an email to Gerhard Schroeder, Chancellor of Germany thanking him for not lining up behind George Bush.

Send an email to every member of Canada’s Parliament, urging them to help the UN find a peaceful way to disarm Saddam Hussein, and not to support the US war.

Vote to impeach George Bush. This is a proposal from former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The votes submitted will be delivered to the House Judiciary Committee and the leadership from both parties on the committee.

Hold Them in the Light. In your prayer or meditation, or during a quiet moment in the washroom, take a moment to hold the key world leaders in the light. Visualize George Bush sitting quietly on his own, taking a moment to reflect. Invoke the deepest peace you can imagine, and invite it to descend upon him, surrounding him with love. Visualize it filling him with faith, instead of fear. Visualize it filling him with compassion, instead of hostility. Visualize him opening to the possibility that together, as a world community, we can solve this problem. Visualize him letting go of his fears, and saying no to the big financial interests who are goading him into war. Visualize him turning into a truly great leader, choosing the path of peace. Repeat the exercise for Saddam Hussein.

Dance for Peace. If you are alone, clear away the furniture, and put on some appropriate music. Light a candle, and dedicate your dance to peace in the world, peace in Iraq, peace in the hearts of Americans. The let your body dance its wisdom, as your spirit soars free. If you have friends, do the same together. If you have confidence, take your dance into a public place. Tell the media.

So, like I said, forgive me if I don't take these people seriously -- but who would?
08:19 p.m.

Look away now if you're not down with vulgarity (in which case, we are not well-suited), but my two favourite slang terms at the moment are FAFCAM (Fit as Fuck, Common as Muck) and BOBFOC (Body off Baywatch, Face off Crimewatch). Tee hee hee. And boo hoo hoo -- there are far too many people around to whom one or both of those could apply.
06:29 p.m.

The fiction of the peaceniks is overdue for pulping:

The first myth, the claim that Iraq’s liberators were once Saddam’s armourers, may seem to be of diminishing relevance now that so much of Saddam’s arsenal is scrap metal. But it matters because it encapsulates the tendency of those who oppose Anglo-American policy to believe the worst of the US and Britain, to attribute cynical commercial motives to those governments actually prepared to take risks for international security, and to pass over the sins of the world’s real cowboys.

It is certainly true that most of Saddam’s apparatus of terror was supplied by permanent members of the UN Security Council who have abused their position to further their own interests, heedless of innocent deaths. But the guilty men are not the Americans and the British, but the French, Russians and Chinese. According to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1973 and 2002 Russia supplied 57 per cent of Saddam’s arms imports, France 13 per cent and China 12 per cent. The US supplied at most just 1 per cent and Britain significantly less than that. Brazil supplied more weaponry to Saddam than the US and Britain combined. No wonder France, Russia and China declined to support action to disarm one of their best customers. And no wonder they are so keen to have their pet UN run the country now. We cannot have any inconvenient invoices falling into the wrong hands now, can we?

Another quote worth bold print from that Colin Powell interview with German TV:

There is this common perception in Europe that there is this list of enemies and we are going to go down one-by-one and invade them all in some predetermined order. This is not the case. The President is not looking for places to go invade. The President has made it clear that he has many ways of dealing with regimes that, we believe, are not following international standards. So, sometimes political actions are appropriate, economic actions, use of our intelligence assets. Sometimes military force is appropriate. But we are not looking for wars to get into.

It’s fascinating that we are now trying in a multilateral setting to deal with the problem of North Korea and here we are criticized for not acting bilaterally or doing something directly.

This story about former All-American Villanova basketball player Shelly Pennefather is rather interesting. In 1991, Pennefather renounced her successful pro basketball career in Japan, and all of her worldly life, to live as a cloistered Poor Clare nun.

Pennefather became a novice at the cloister. Her friends and Villanova teammates struggled with her decision. At first, many wept. "Traumatic," Perretta called it. "I said, 'Why do you have to hide?'"

"It was hard," he said. "I don't want to say it was like someone dying, but you're not going to see them anymore. It's like someone says, 'I'm going to Mars.'"

Tighe asked Pennefather, "Why are you doing that? I'm glad you're becoming a nun. But there's so many opportunities out there to teach and coach and influence kids' lives."

"She said, 'Lynn, I would never choose this for myself. This is what I was called to do,'" Tighe recalled. "You can't argue with that. I don't know the strength of that calling. You say, 'OK, good luck to you.'"

Link via Andrew Sullivan
05:18 p.m.

If you thought "freedom fries" was a load of horseshit (like I did), how about this?

German linguists yesterday called on the nation to use French words in place of their popular English equivalents in protest at the US-led war against Iraq. A campaign launched by the group Language in Politics proposed swapping English words such as "ticket" with "billet" or "briefing" with "communiqué".

English words and phrases are increasingly used by Germans who value the language's efficiency - compared to German - and its perceived street credibility. Among the words that it is proposed should be pushed aside in favour of French are "driver" for "chauffeur", "playboy" for "bon vivant" and "okay" for "formidable".

How bad is the BBC? So bad that the British Navy has switched it off aboard the HMS Ark Royal, following complaints about pro-Iraqi bias from crew members. Ouch.
03:54 p.m.

Robert Fisk is getting fisked by his own colleagues, now! Honestly, that guy is a class-A nutjob. I live with someone who actually buys the Independent, and who takes great offense at me sitting on the sofa, reading Fisk's reports and tittering away. Sorry, but when that sad excuse for a journalist proclaimed "the Americans had been caught lying again" and that they had not actually taken Baghdad's airport, he should have been stripped of his credentials and sent home to be fawned over by his like-minded anti-war dipshit readers, if not long before that.
03:48 p.m.

I'm sorry, but that is one fugly wedding dress. I cannot believe she -- or, more likely, Russell Crowe -- paid £100,000 (over 5,000 US) for it. Then again, looks like Russell shaved and had a wash for the big day, so I guess anything is possible.
03:48 p.m.

10,000 cheer: "Saddam is no more!"

Many who assembled in the city square chanted "Saddam is no more!" and "Saddam is dead!" as they pulled on a rope, yanking the Hussein statue from its perch. Once the statue tumbled, many in the crowd jumped up and down, struck their chests and wept.

The statue was erected shortly after Hussein came to power decades ago, according to Karbala residents, and seeing it fall was a moment many would never forget.

"We have been living in fear for so many years, and we have been taught in the schools that Saddam would never die," said Hassan Muhammad, 20, as he helped pull on the rope. "This is a historic day, and we will celebrate this day always."

Why?

An elderly man added in broken English: “Good, good, good — Mr W. Bush, no Saddam.”

As US troops proudly wore flowers given to them by townsfolk, a 25-year-old said he could not understand opposition to the war.

He asked: “Everyone who refuses this war — why?”

Pointing to the statue [of Saddam], he went on: “Come here and live two days with this man, and then refuse this war.”

Joe Biden must be stopped. I'm calling my Ohio senators, Mike DeWine and George Voinovich (two of the most repugnant politicians on the face of the earth; their Republican party membership is mere coincidence) tomorrow about this shiznit. Read more here about this ridiculous legislation that Biden is trying to sneak through on the coattails of a totally unrelated act.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the heads-up.
03:47 p.m.

"Working for the U.S. Marines 24th Expeditionary Unit as an interpreter, Al-Emeri, 43, is hugged by his sister Suhila after being reunited with local villagers after 12 years, Monday, April 7, 2003, in Qal'at Sukkar, 100 kms. north of Nasariyah, Iraq."

I've removed my sidebar link to The Agonist. Here's why.
03:47 p.m.