March 2004

1. Somebody has to be unnecessarily arrogant. 2. Someone else has to be unreasonably stubborn. 3. Both have to develop severe target fixation. 4. The whole must involve the institutions society sets up to prevent these occasions. 5. Stir. So – all these have now been followed, and we have a crisis! Now, the Ranter…

“Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening—nobody on the stage at least. That’s why it becomes so popular in any civilized country during a war.” Edwin Denby, Dance Writings from Dual Loyalty. Very wise. I wonder if, had he heard about this, his attitude might have been…

Does anyone remember something called the Iraq Communications Group? It was the team of spindoctors and spooks chaired by Alastair Campbell in the run-up to the war with Iraq that – depending on who you believe – either did or didn’t sex up the dossiers. After all, Ali C stated to the Foreign Affairs Committee…

Link The terrorists – and I mean terrorists, no Robert Fisk fastidiousness with language this time – are back in town. At least 140 dead in two attacks on mosques on the holiest day in the Shia calendar, one in Baghdad and one in Karbala. Hard not to read the symbols – Karbala, the holy…

Interesting article, if a little techy, on the giant power failures in the USA last summer and their cause – the gap between the engineering realities of the electricity system and the tortuous attempt to impose a market system on it. Basically, the problem was that the marketisers saw the system as a large number…

Reuters – US to station inspectors at foreign airports Well, I proposed the establishment of British security controls on British aircraft and shipping in US ports right here on the blog not so long ago, in response to the regular US-inspired security scares. But it seems to have become US policy to do the opposite…