Do ya think this might

Do ya think this might explain why the weapons inspectors haven't found anything yet?

The effectiveness of the United Nations weapons inspection programme was thrown into question yesterday after an admission by its spokesman that inspectors had given Iraqis advance knowledge of their visit to a suspected weapons site.

The Iraqis are hiding 50 truckloads of essential documents, too.

Australian actress Judy Davis is

Australian actress Judy Davis is strongly opposed to a war with Iraq:

World renowned Australian actor Judy Davis yesterday slammed the Howard government's stance on involvement in a possible war against Iraq.

The multi award-winning Hollywood star launched her stinging attack in a speech during the Walk Against the War rally in central Sydney.
[...]
"Those who support John Howard's easy war rhetoric, those who believe in the fantasy, should educate themselves about the society they intend to destroy."

I, too, believe we should educate ourselves about Iraq before a war is launched. I highly recommend the following articles:

- Michael Rubin, "Food Fight", The New Republic, June 2001.

- Franklin Foer, "Air War", The New Republic, October 2002.

- Matt Welch, "The Politics of Dead Children", Reason, March 2002.

- Stephen Bryen, "Iraq's Threat", National Review Online, January 2002.

- William Shawcross, "Let's Take Him Out", The Guardian (yes, The Guardian), August 2002.

- Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Great Terror", The New Yorker, March 2002.

- Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, "Saddam's Rap Sheet", New York Post, August 2002.

There's plenty more where these came from. If I can find Judy's e-mail address, maybe I'll send them to her.

The stifling of dissent in

The stifling of dissent in post-9/11 fascist AmeriKKKa: a cautionary tale

September 2001: Bill Maher, host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, says the following in response to President Bush's allegation that the 9/11 terrorists were "cowards": "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Several advertisers, including FedEx and Sears, pull their ads, thereby denying Maher and ABC their constitutional right to advertising revenue.

October 2001: Politically Incorrect is still on the air.

November 2001: Politically Incorrect is still on the air.

December 2001: Still on the air.

January 2002: Still on the air.

February 2002: Still on the air.

March 2002: Still on the air.

April 2002: Still on the air.

May 2002: A mere nine months after Maher made his controversial comments, John Ashcroft's Thought Police gets the show cancelled.

November 2002: Maher gets a new talk show on HBO starting in February, 2003. Maher's book, When You Ride Alone You Ride With bin Laden, is released (US$19.57 on Amazon.com).

How can those hypocritical Yanks preach about "democracy" and "freedom", when their dissidents are so oppressed and silenced?

I want one of these

I want one of these

It might not be the best looking car on the road, but the Dodge Neon SRT-4 will do 0-60 in 5.6 seconds, the quarter mile in 14.2 and tops out at 153 mph. And it's less than US$20,000 (approximately $714,903.55 Canadian). Car and Driver basically says it's a beast to drive - but you simply can't go that fast for so little money.

Speaking of Neons, Chrysler has succeeding in imprinting that "Born to be Alive" song into my brain, but why are they pretending the "Dodge SX 2.0" is something other than a Neon with a different grille? I guarantee it, when owners start selling these 5 years from now, they'll be advertising them as "Neons". If they had to give it a distinctive name (up here in Canada, the Neon - and most other Dodges, except the trucks and minivans - are sold as Chryslers, for no particular reason), why didn't they just bring back "Dart"?

Update: Aussie Tex found a vehicle that will go twice as fast for half the price...as long as you don't mind missing out on luxuries like 4 wheels and a roof and stuff.

CBS reports that an American

CBS reports that an American woman is being held in connection with the Kenya bombing. She has a Florida address - just like the 9/11 hijackers.

Update: AP says she - and another American - may have been arrested by mistake.

When John Woo's face-transplant thriller

When John Woo's face-transplant thriller Face/Off came out in 1997, people laughed at what was percieved as an absurd, implausible premise.

Who's laughing now?

Even when writing about the

Even when writing about the murder of Israeli tourists (and their Kenyan hosts), Robert Fisk still has to blame Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government. He just can't help it; it's in his nature.

Two months ago, Israel's senior military intelligence officers were privately expressing concern that al-Qa'ida would strike Israel next. They talked about high buildings in Tel Aviv, nuclear missile sites in the Negev desert – they talked about this softly, of course, because the world is not supposed to discuss Israel's nuclear capability – but they feared, rightly, that Bin Laden would try to put Israel in the same frame as the United States.

And he has. For whatever al-Qa'ida did yesterday, it set Israel up alongside America. The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has claimed, since 11 September, that Israel stands beside President George Bush in his "war on terror". The conflict has – thanks to Washington's one-sided, hopelessly biased Middle East policy – given the impression that Mr Sharon and Mr Bush espouse the same goals.

Never mind all the Islamofascists' talk about the Americans' "weakness", and how they'll just throw down their guns and run as soon as the casualties get to heavy. Never mind the way bin Laden and his men kept attacking, again and again, after the embassies and USS Cole bombings failed to provoke a reaction worth talking about. To Robert Fisk, Al-Qaida wants to be attacked, and that's why we have to give in to all their demands and run away.

Be sure they have looked at the Thames Barrier and the Eurostar and all the other soft, vulnerable symbols of our society. Because they want to bring Europe into an alliance with America and Israel.

Yesterday was another step in that direction.

The whole thing is worth reading, just to witness Fisk's contradictions and confusion. ("How one gasps in awe at the courage of Israeli holidaymakers," writes Fisk, but he damns any move by the Israelis to keep their people safe.) Only one thing is clear: he says the Palestinians have nothing at all to do with Al-Qaida, no sirree ("Are there any Palestinians in the ranks of Bin Laden's legions? I never met any – and I met dozens of his men in Sudan and Afghanistan.") and that they're simply being used by Islamic fundamentalists who want to milk their cause for propaganda value. He may have a point there - but we know Fisk is wilfully blind to the fundamentalism, death-worship and Jew-hatred that so permeates Palestinian society, so how can we take him seriously?

Osama's still dead A Swiss

Osama's still dead A Swiss research institute, commissioned to analyze the bin Laden audiotape by a French television network, says they're "95% certain" the tape is fake.

(via Drudge Report)

Mark Steyn (whose long-overdue website

Mark Steyn (whose long-overdue website is now up and running) states a truth obvious to everyone except President Bush and his advisors: the Saudis are not our allies, and pretending otherwise makes a mockery of the war on terror.

The Saudi embassy say they’ve only received queries about [the terrorist funding scandal] from the media, not from the FBI. Odd that. The federal government claims it needs vast new powers to track every single credit-card transaction and every single email of every single American, yet a prima facie link between the terrorists and Prince Bandar’s wife isn’t worth going over to the embassy to have a little chat about. ...The fawning legions of ex-ambassadors to Riyadh have been all over the TV assuring us that, oh, no, al-Qa’eda hate the House of Saud and want to overthrow it. But, interestingly, though Osama’s boys are happy to topple New York landmarks, slaughter Balinese nightclubbers, blow up French oil tankers, kill Philippine missionaries, take out Tunisian synagogues and hijack Moscow musicals, you can’t help noticing they do absolutely zip against the regime they allegedly loathe. There are 6,000 Saudi princes, but none of ’em ever gets assassinated. And, if anything mildly explosive goes off in the Kingdom, it somehow manages to get blamed on Western bootleggers. Statistically speaking, if you’re looking for the spot on the planet where you’re least likely to be blown to shreds by an al-Qa’eda nutcake, it’s hard to beat Riyadh.

A group of leading Nigerian

A group of leading Nigerian Muslim clerics say the fatwa against Isioma Daniel should be ignored.