October 2003

Ha’aretz story “The Rafah operation, named “Root Canal,” has been underway for 10 days. It involves large numbers of infantry, armor and engineering troops, backed up by attack helicopters. So far the operation has been only partially successful.Three tunnels have been found and demolished. But there is reason to believe that there are many more…

But on the other hand The next crisis bubbles steadily away. How long before a new disaster? I seem to recall saying that having an entirely vacuous brawl with Iraq would take attention and resources off al-Qa’ida and the stabilisation of Afghanistan, and it looks like I was right.

Some good-ish news at last Well, at least an edging back towards sanity. After all, why does North Korea want nuclear missiles? Because of fear. Address the fear and we can address the missiles. Further, recalling George Kennan’s long telegram on the USSR mentioned yesterday, an insecure and repressive state needs to find enemies to…

What really infuriates me about the Tories at the moment is that they are such an abject cluster fuck that no-one is paying any attention to the poisonous cancer of a government we are afflicted with. So the Highways Agency are planning for the possibility of sections of the motorway network jamming to such a…

As the shit storm about Iain Duncan Smith’s wife being paid by the state to be his secretary, after the tax payer was already shelling out £121,000 a year for his salary as leader of the Opposition and he had the services of the party machine to answer his phone calls, brews up, a very…

So – you don’t think this bulletin board posting might be a plant? “Long live China! Long live the Chinese people! ! Long live the Chinese Communist Party! ! ! Long live the Chinese nation! ! ! !”

BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China hails space hero So – no need for all that secrecy in the end. An amazing thing, even if it does look like a bottle bank.. Yang Liwei keeps up the tradition of astronauts saying very little of interest, though. His first remark from space was “I…

Has pushed the blog skew whiff. It’s being removed until I’ve edited the swine into a more helpful shape.

China Ready for Human Spaceflight And they’ve done it! I’ve seen a couple of sour grapes jokes about the mission today. Yeah, yeah, yeah – the ship may well be a copy of the Soyuz, but this is still amazing. Great – we haven’t done anything new since 1968 – but we can still carp!…

Clients – British Monomarks Ltd. Well, this is where the postcode our friend from “England First” gave points to through the Royal Mail postcode finder. What a surprise! It’s a mailbox company. But their “clients” page doesn’t seem to mention the fascists. Rather shy, wouldn’t you say?