January 2004

I learnt a new German verb recently – torten, or to cake, as in hitting someone with a custard pie. The reason for this was that the students at Vienna University are out protesting again, and this time it seems they have seized the media after unknown persons successfully “torteten” the Rektor, Georg Winckler, and…

Link to report The Reverend Ian Paisley, a not infrequent target of this blog, has decided to leave the European Parliament. Not surprisingly, the reason is not to remove his unpleasant influence from public life but to concentrate on “negotiating” with Sinn Fein. (I suppose that means “making sure the underlings don’t agree to anything…

BBC News Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani’s representatives have announced a direct action campaign in the event that Paul Bremer’s planned “indirect” elections go ahead. Well, we’ve finally done it now. Shia rage was one of the biggest worries anyone had at the time of the war, but the restraint shown by their leaders has so…

The Americans have apparently owned up that there are “problems” with airport screening in the US. No surprise there after the Sudanese chap who appeared at Heathrow on a Virgin flight from Washington Dulles (of all places) with live ammunition in his baggage was arrested. Question – if they can’t spot someone who really has…

FOX News link for rightwingers Australian ABC News Wired for net weirdos

Mind you, just so I don’t give the impression of liking the Grauniad too much, I think it’s a bit rich of a paper that runs a weekly Bad Science column to run huge two-page ads for a device that “gives off streams of positive and negative ions, components of healthy air” which apparently “actively…

It’s now been reported that many of the quotes in Michael Howard’s Grauni-ad were dodgy. What a surprise. And apparently Shadow Culture Secretary Julie Kirkbride…who?…”will no longer pursue her complaint about public sector bodies placing most of their job ads in Society Guardian. “She is not saying anything about this any more”, he (a spokesman)…

The lovable conservative (it says here), Michael Howard, has placed a full-page ad in the Guardian’s Society supplement. He’s apparently looking for real live public sector workers to contribute to his search for “waste and bureaucracy”, led by banker David James. We’ve dealt with the Bureaucracy Myth quite frequently here – the belief that there…

It’s been reported recently that a treaty has been signed by Israel and Turkey providing for the shipment of fresh water from Turkey to Israel, in huge ships, in return for military stores, especially Merkava tanks. LinkThis is just as depressing as it sounds, because it shows that one of the fashionable intellectual worries of…

Damn good post on Iraq Now about everyone’s favourite profiteers. “Youngster: Wow. So no matter how boneheaded an incompetent manager I am, my department is 100% guaranteed to be profitable as long as I’m good at keeping my receipts? Trainer: Absolutamente! But wait—there’s more: the more money you can profligately waste, the more money your…