Asia

04Aug03 — 3

Said. Again.

Nick recommended this piece by Edward Said to me. I must admit that he did so with serious qualification: “It is tainted by intellectual snobbery, but my more fundamental objection is its failure to address or even mention ethics and the need to recognise absolute wrongs in the face of cultural relativism.” . Nick was […]

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18Jul03 — 1

So Prescient My Pants Hurt

I aspire to an permanent state of smugness, but I occasionally find it uncomfortable being wise before the event. Following my last WMD ‘Blog posting, I flicked through my correspondence from around the time of the original one. On 18Feb03, in an email to about a dozen fellow members of la Résistance, hiding in attics […]

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08Jul03 — 0

I Call It Killing

If you believe in capital punishment, you have no right to plead squeamishness in the face of the details of executions; if you believe that abortion should be legal, you can’t object when your opponents use pictures of foetuses. There are some kinds of killing that some humans are prepared to accept, but those people […]

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23Jun03 — 0

U! S! A! U! S! A!

It’s the Sunday afternoon “Support Our Troops” demonstration on the corner, near the Warner shopping park in Canoga Park, Californ-I-A. As usual I have my camera and I am hoping for some pics of the demonstrators. On the opposite side of the junction (five lanes away, of course) there are two anti-war protestors, a man […]

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01Jun03 — 0

Celebrity Deathmatch II

I missed this one last weekend. The BBC interviewed “experts” to argue the case over war in Iraq retrospectively. The interviews are available on video, but in each case I have linked to the transcripts. In the pro corner: Ann Clywd, left-wing Labour MP and human rights campaigner; Wyn Bowen, lecturer at King’s College London […]

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18May03 — 0

The Eternal Optimism of the Israelis

One of the frustrations of a ‘Blog is that there are stories that you know all your friends would love, but you can’t tell properly because someone else involved in the actual events might Google for it ten years hence and object violently. So let’s just say I know of a person with a serious […]

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13May03 — 0

Saint George

John Reid had the unenviable job of answering questions about the resignation of Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, this morning on the Today Programme. He put in a solid performance despite interviewer John Humphrys‘ “sophistry”. The accusation was accurate. Of course, Reid’s job would have been easier if he had not been forced to […]

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25Mar03 — 0

What It's All About

Sorry to keep harping on about the war. Mine is not a "warblog", but if you can think of a more important topic to cover let me know. (Today another publisher invited me to write a bioinformatics book and the best I can do with that is put it in parentheses.) Now I am about […]

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22Mar03 — 0

Broken Law

Ageing 'Net bores like me enjoy quoting Godwin's Law, so it's doubly surprising that (not even in the interests of balance) I link to an excellent anti-war piece that invokes comparisons with the Hitler era. It is in the interests of balance that I link here too.

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21Mar03 — 0

Pack Up Your Troubles

While the massed ranks of the spoilt and ignorant continue to talk rubbish about "indiscriminate" "carpet bombing", the Iraqis, who are supposedly about to suffer "carnage", have been looking forward to the change of management by investing massively in their own stock market. Given that they live in, er, Iraq, and that they are, er, […]

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18Mar03 — 0

Roasting That Old Chestnut

Following on from yesterday's speech by Robin Cook, she also points out that (as did an Economist article from several weeks back that I am not allowed to link to) that Israel has not clearly been in breach of resolution 242—as everyone lazily claims every time they have an argument about this. Here is her […]

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18Mar03 — 0

French Twist

Claire points out that the French seem to have changed their minds somewhat about supporting the U.S.. Interestingly, they'll only help if things get dirty. Now I wonder why that might be. If I was a cynical person I'd suspect that the French might have something (else) to hide…

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17Mar03 — 0

The Gnome Turns

One of the few reassuring things about being "pro-war" has been the stupidity of the opposition. Even when you count George W. Bush among your friends, the average intelligence of the anti-war bloc is still comfortably low by comparison. Hey, these people are in bed with the clone-crazy Raelians. Unfortunately for Tony Blair, whose job […]

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13Mar03 — 0

Surreality

Today, Judith, our Israel correspondent, sent me this [click for image]. This little kid waving the Palestinian flag in front of masked, machine-gun-carrying Hamasniks is wearing a Maccabi-Tel Aviv sweatshirt. Maccabi-Tel Aviv is an Israeli basketball team. Is all this being scripted somewhere? As one of my own work colleagues pointed out, this is like […]

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08Apr02 — 0

08Apr02

The numbing predictability of it. Unfortunately I can't link to this, but the main political cartoon in today's Guardian has Bush with a missile-shaped "inhumane dog controller" in his hands and Blair as a lap-dog looking up at him with a missile-shaped bone in his mouth. Sharon is a fat hound wallowing in blood behind […]

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07Apr02 — 0

07Apr02

Blimey. Our Tone joins Dubya in threatening Iraq. Now I'm supposed to spout some clichés about Western imperialism and link to a cartoon depicting Blair and Bush waving their missile-shaped penises or something. Instead, I'll remind certain people that until the British “illegally” exercised their imperialist muscle in Sierra Leone (poorest country in the World, […]

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