March 2003

"a new colonial occupation of Iraq - however it is dressed up - will face determined guerrilla resistance long after Saddam Hussein has gone"

"The entire Iraqi judicial code has been translated into English and made available to the U.S. military."

"[Only] Jazeera gives you the impression there is a war going on, rather than a series of press conferences."

"a largely secular Iraqi nationalism": good for nation building, but may inspire some to fight to the death

a moral stance, but is he "becoming a household pet for a bunch of kooky extremists in the White House"?

"Getting rid of the Ba'th regime in Iraq has been the cause of my life for almost a quarter of a century."

"Why should we worry about peacekeeping, nation-building or international cooperation on global problems when we can buy our friends, bully our allies and bomb everybody else?"

"The Prime Minister concerned has very little knowledge of the issues involved and has never taken part in a war of any kind."

they "farmed eels... modified more than 100 square kilometres of the landscape... exported their produce"

Saddam Hussein: "You are making a lot of trouble, but it's good."
Hosni Mubarak: "All this trouble from a matchbox like this."

"if customers rush to install their own power systems, other ratepayers would be stuck with the bill for the multibillion-dollar bonds and long-term power contracts left over from the energy crisis"

for most people, most of the time, I think a conservative approach to science is appropriate - mistakenly rejecting something new is less dangerous than being conned (courts and politicians need to be more sophisticated)

"efforts to build a consensus against ICANN's continued authority over the technical side of the Internet were stymied by the absence of key speakers and indifference from smaller countries [without much of a clue]"

in mid-2002 someone bought $120 of books that way, so my credit is up to $6! (I'm not giving up my day job.)

in the 20s "vibrators began to appear in erotic films and photography, driving them from 'respectable' publications"

as much a result of deadlock between the AK Party and the military as a split over collaboration with the US