June 2003

"demand for cargo space is so strong that container lines can barely keep up. The reason? Mainly the rapid growth in China's foreign trade."

"Australians are one of the most spied on people in the Western world, with mail interceptions and telephone taps rising daily."

"tens of thousands of legitimate sites were wrongly blocked by filtering programs, making them all possible litigants in a class-action suit"

"If I wanted to get a Welsh version of Windows, it would mean a lot of lobbying and probably spending a lot of money"

"The existing US plans for Iraq's economic diversification appear to owe more to corporate contractors than to the interests of the country's people"

"The hard truth is that US intelligence simply does not really know what is going on in the Taliban and al-Qaeda camps."

so a) there's no way to "win", no central organising force to be destroyed or negotiated with, and b) if a real guerilla war starts, things are going to get much, much worse

"things have been moving in a downward spiral. The coalition forces dont feel safe and we dont feel safe either. You can see the distrust in their eyes and the way they hold these big guns towards you when you move close to a check point."

"The supreme court did not make a judgment on the case but ruled that the claim had no place in the court."

"Australia's democracy survived by 37 votes to 32 tonight, when the Senate insisted that Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer not be permitted to overwhelmingly control Australia's media."

"The United States under Bush is driving toward empire, but the domestic political fuel being fed into the engine is that of a wounded and vengeful nationalism"

"Countries that have fought wars on their own soil, most notably Israel, have made improvements, out of fear that duds would harm their own civilians"

"the idea of the commons may seem an integral part of the democracy Americans so proudly defend, [but] it is a concept often ignored by environmental lawyers"

"our expectation is that the Linux desktop will 'cross the chasm' this year, and start to proliferate next year. It is beginning to look unstoppable."

"When required to seek input from scientists, the administration tends to actively recruit those few who will bolster the positions it already knows it wants to support, even if that means defying scientific consensus."

60 of 62 "international terrorists" were "Middle Eastern students who had cheated on a test; specifically, they had paid others to take an English proficiency exam"

"The June 14 issue of The Economist has 'Extinction of the Car Giants -- Why America's car industry is an endangered species' on its cover."

the bill "rescinds the right of Israeli residents and citizens who have married residents of the Occupied Territories to establish their home in Israel"

"virtually every major business software vendor that isn't owned by Microsoft is embracing Linux... building their products on Linux and actively promoting Linux as the best, most flexible, lowest-cost, and most secure server platform"

"Btw, we can think of another rotational movement: that of the revolving doors at Total HQ as you and everyone else responsible for this astonishing clap-trap are dragged into the street and beaten senseless by baton-wielding members of the Académie Française."

"Either American living standards will have to be adjusted downward, imperial ambitions will have to be curbed, or Americas foreign creditors will have to agree to some kind of a workout."

"Will Iran and Iraq complement each other? The answer may hinge on the impact of the more than 3,000 Iraqi Shi'ite religious leaders who came back home from exile in Iran."

"Last year, cotton subsidies amounted to almost $4bn - three times the sum given by the US to treat HIV and Aids in Africa."

claims it's too early to judge on WMD, "because you haven't given the inspection process a proper opportunity"

"Millions of books have been burned, thousands of manuscripts and archaeological artefacts stolen or destroyed, ancient cities ransacked, universities trashed."

"If you're thinking of writing a haiku, don't do it. Or at the very least, don't share it with anyone. If you can't avoid that, at least try to keep it secret from me."

"The marijuana that flourishes like a weed in every Bhutanese hedgerow was only ever used to feed pigs before the advent of TV"

"two dozen men were playing backgammon and drinking tea. All were lined up against a fence, blindfolded, forced to kneel and carted away on trucks. They were released later, after none turned out to be suspects."

sounds like they're getting just a little desperate - after all, the US government is also using Linux to build supercomputers

"the new wave of student protests in Iran ... began last Tuesday as a move against the Iranian government's plan to privatize universities"

"There was a time when sites launched in cycles, living from one major redesign to the next. Each new redesign would bring a whole new look, a whole new user experience."

how this all works out will depend on the divides within the clergy - a secular Iran isn't one of the plausible options, whatever the US Administration may fantasize

"They lied. Period. Trust a teacher on this. We can spot liars who have not done their homework a mile away."

"The scene at the deserted National Library in Baghdad looks almost too staged to be true... The sign appears to be the only intact article of literature left, out of a collection of one million volumes, twenty million periodicals, and many original manuscripts."

"I could see jagged, broken sewage pipes emptying into a pool of fetid water. 'When we repair the bridges and the pipes,' the mayor said, 'the Israelis bomb them again.'"

"What's clear to me now at 45 is, screw the alpha male stuff. Go for an alternative strategy. Go for the social affiliation, build relationships with females"

"They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons."

"More than 277,000 people visited Iceland in 2001 and the tourist association estimates a third of the tourists went whale watching"

US political blogs head the list - this blog comes in at #1489, making it a "fish" on the blog evolutionary scale

"The generals, it seems, are rattled, especially since their old friends in the United States have joined the ranks of their critics"

"Israel is mainly a formal democracy that has not yet acquired the characteristics of a substantive democracy"

"Khatami presented to the Iranian parliament two bills... one to secure his constitutional power as president... Another to limit the Guardian Council's control over the election process"

"How to connect then when in the UK? It is as simple as getting on a plane at Heathrow Airport... I'm in Tel Aviv now."

"rule changes that will extend the market dominance of the five media corporations that control most of what Americans read, see and hear"

"the latest housing boom has inflated bubbles in several countries, notably America, Australia, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain. Within the next year or so those bubbles are likely to burst, leading to falls in average real house prices of 15-20% in America and 30% or more elsewhere"

"if a government chooses to believe only what it wants to believe and selects from the intelligence only what best suits its political purposes ... the result can be a fine compost indeed"