Miss World 2004.
Topic: Misc.
Congratualations to Miss Peru on winning Miss World. I didn't have a bet on this market, despite being encouraged to do so by Vicky Coren, as I don't understand the idea behind beauty contests. Everyone's idea of beauty is so different! Luckily, these days it's not just about looks, not when the girls have such a wealth of experience and advice from which we can benefit. To see what I mean, check out the directory of contestants and click on the nation of your choice. I should warn you of some irregularities though.

Firstly, there is no excuse for Miss Turkey. None whatsoever.

Macedonia couldn't be bothered to host a selection contest and instead sent in the android from Blade Runner. This just won't do.

Other countries tried harder:

Miss Netherlands says she comes from a `fairy-like place ... with many dykes', clearly pandering to the gay vote.

Interested in Scottish dancing? Of course you are, so do the obvious and check out Miss Chile.

Miss Nigeria helps to generate funds for charity. Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if I got a few emails from her associates in the coming weeks.

I've never fancied Thai women, and neither it seems does anyone in Thailand either, as they've selected someone with no asian features whatsoever.

Some of the contestants clearly feel that readers might struggle with the jargon they use in their profiles and thus provide hyperlinks for further elaboration. Check out Miss Israel if you don't know what 'ice' is, visit Miss Honduras to learn about 'books' and see Miss Turks and Caicos to discover what 'travel' means.

If all of this leaves you bewildered, don't worry. The girls have plenty of advice to offer, like this from Miss Costa Rica: 'The faith in action, is love; the love in actions, is service', something I find it very hard to disagree with.

On looks alone I would have given the title to Miss Albania. She's by far the best looking. I suppose the judges weren't impressed with her committment to 'Friendship without Boarders'. Sorry Agnese darling, but if you're going to be friends with people, you have to let them stay over at your house at some point!

Finally I leave you with the words of Miss China: 'The desirable come from being nothing desired: Far-reaching is out of a still heart'.

Words to live by.

Tells.
Topic: Poker
I have always thought that the interpretation of 'tells' was one of the most overrated aspects of live poker play. Hollywood loves to make out that a scratch of the ear or a lick of the lips makes the difference between the hero making a ten-thousand dollar call or not. In Rounders, the hero learns to beat Teddy KGB by noticing that the difference between a bet for value and a bluff can be seen in the way he breaks a cookie - listening to it break means one thing, watching it break means the other.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we know it's not really like this. There are countless people making a living by playing online where it's impossible to see the opponent! What would the Hollywood studios make out of that? I thought of all this last night because of a hand that happened while playing in a small competition in Luton (#20 Pot limit Hold'em). As you probably know, I don't see tournaments as the main focus of my poker play, but from time to time I persuade myself to have a go at them and last night Allan 'the hat' Engel talked me into taking a shot at one.

We started with 48 runners, with 9 prizes to be paid. When I got down to the last 10 players this hand took place. I was below average chips and had a loose player with a large stack on my right. I had 66 and was in the small blind. The players to the left of the blinds folded and the button flat called. I know that a lot of people would automatically raise in my position; it might even be correct play. However I have an aversion to doing things that others do automatically and only flat called. The big blind checked. The flop brought 10 4 3 with two spades. As there was only one overcard and it wasn't a picture or an ace, I decided to bet. While I was probably winning and didn't want to grant a free card, there is a drawback to this bet in that you don't really know where you are if you get called, though you can be reasonably sure you're behind if you get raised. The big blind passed and the button called. The player on the button would, I was pretty sure, have raised if he had a 10. He had done similar raises with top pair before. The turn card was a 4 and I checked. He checked also. The last card was a red 8 and I checked again. He now bet enough to set me all in. Ugh!

My initial instinct was that he had been on a flush draw and had missed. I had seen him bet with nothing on the river before to try and steal the pot and on that occasion was called by Danny Sampson with ace-high (a great call). However that previous pot was different in that there had been a raise preflop and no bet on the flop. This time I was concerned that he'd made a loose call on the flop with a 4 and had trap-checked on the turn to try and draw me in on the river. Additionally, he could have called me with two spades including the 8 and decided to make a (pointless) bet on the end. What was to be done? I sat back and decided that this was not an automatic fold and was worth thinking about for 15 seconds.

On sitting back I saw that he was staring at me. His head was tilted at 90 degrees and his eyes didn't leave my face. This is a textbook indication of a bluff. It's as though the strength of the staring is intended to compensate for the weakness of the cards. I felt myself being drawn towards calling. It's not a nice position to be in on the bubble (when there are X+1 players remaining and only X prizes) however. Who wants to go out calling with no cards to come when they can only beat a bluff? So I decided on one last look at him to see whether his chest was pounding. It was. I folded.

That might seem counter-intuitive. One might think that a pounding chest was an indication of nerves and thus of a bluff and indeed six months ago this would have persuaded me to call, but since then I have figured that it's cost me money. The pounding chest does indicate nerves, but more often than not, the nerves stem from two things; either a fear of NOT being called, or a fear of being outdrawn on a big hand that they know they are committed to playing for all their chips (e.g. AA preflop). So I took this as a cue to fold.

A few minutes later, he said to me: 'Do you want to know what I had?'. I said yes and he told me that he had had Ace-Five of spades (in other words, the last bet had been a bluff, as I had originally suspected). Then he said 'I'm good at staring people out'. Ho-hum, back to the drawing-board! He could of course have been lying to me, but I don't think that he was.

Five minutes later, this player on the right got involved with another big stack. He raised in late position with KK and got called by someone in the blinds. The flop brought 5 6 9 and it was checked to the player with the kings, who bet. The guy in the blinds check-raised. Our hero thought for a long while and called. The turn was a low card and the player first to act bet all-in and the player with the kings thought again and then called. He showed the kings and the other player showed 77. The player with the 77 gasped and said 'I put you on two overcards'. He got no help on the river and was effectively out, as he didn't have enough chips to cover the small blind on the next hand and was promptly eliminated.

I didn't think that the call with the kings was easy and if I had had the same chip stack I might not have called the check-raise on the flop. The player who made the check-raise looked totally assured that he was ahead, not a trace of doubt in his mind. This raises a vital point about body language and 'tells'. It's no use knowing that a player's body language indicates strength or weakness unless you know what they believe strong and weak to be. The player with the 77 never let it enter his mind that he was behind, even though he should have. In a similar way, a loose cannon like Jac Arama will confidently semi-bluff with the nut flush draw without thinking of it as being a bluff. In his mind he's got a valid bet and that's that. You have to get inside your opponent's belief system before the analysis of anything else he does means anything.

Despite missing the chance to make a great call, I nevertheless got to third in the competition. On the final table I was helped by having three players on my left whose body language made it clear when they had worthless cards preflop. This meant that when considering a pre-flop steal raise, I could see that I was only raising into 2 players instead of 5. It's a huge edge. Of all the tells I know, preflop disinterest is probably the most reliable. In the late stages of a tournament, this information is worth money in the bank.

I am not the Pokerbastard. Here are seven reasons why:
Topic: Poker
I've had quite a few people asking me who the 'Poker Bastard' is. Some have even speculated that it's me! It's not! Personally, I don't really care who it is. The way I see it, the site stands on its own merits, regardless of who is behind it. However, I don't like people saying that it is me, as there are certain things said on the site that I disagree with (as well as much that I do agree with).

Here are the reasons why you can be sure it's not me:

Blackpool: I have never been to Blackpool. I will go at some point, but I haven't done so yet.

Amsterdam: I didn't go to Amsterdam this year.

Brighton: I didn't go to the last Brighton festival.

"Ongoing cheating in Brighton" (sic): I have played the cash game in Brighton many times in previous years, though only about twice this year. I have never worried about cheating. Whilst I have heard people make remarks about the game's integrity before, I have always put this down to sour grapes. I have won in the game overall and the only thing that deters me from going there more often is the long boring drive from Fulham to Brighton, which takes at least two hours one way, even though it's only 50 miles. If Pokerbastard has some specific allegations to make, I would like to read them. He's not been shy before.

Murray Brown: I have never had a problem with Murray Brown.

Ron Fanelli: I like Ron, even though some of what Pokerbastard says about him is fair comment (he is loud, he is abrasive). However I happen to know something about him that most people don't. I don't want to go into specifics, but Ron has been extremely generous to a friend of mine who needed assistance and that more than outweighs all the other stuff in my book. Hence I would not have written that piece about him.

Luton car park attendants: This is the thing I most disagree with on his site site. I think that the car park attendants in Luton have a horrible job to do and that they do it very well. I have a lot more respect for them than their counterparts in the Vic, as the environment in which they have to work is far more unpleasant (as well as being outdoors). I feel so much safer with them there and don't begrudge giving them a quid when they direct me to an empty space. I found Pokerbastard's remarks here quite offensive.

What price Paradise?
Topic: Poker
The recent announcement that Paradise Poker is to be acquired by Sportingbet plc gives poker players a unique insight into the financial side of the online poker industry. Click here to see the details of the offer. Sportingbet agrees to pay an initial consideration of $297.5m, of which $193.3m is in cash, the remainder in Sportingbet shares. An additional bonus payment of up to $50m is payable in cash and shares, dependent on the performance of Paradise in the next three years. Further payments may be due, depending on performance in the following three years.

The acquisition document tells us about Paradise's financial performance:

As at the end of July 2004, it had roughly 10 per cent of the online poker market, as measured by number of customers, with 721,000 registered customers of whom 97,000 are `active'. Active players are defined as "real money players who have made a balance movement on their account in the current or preceding two quarters".

For the 7 months to the end of July 2004, Paradise generated turnover and operating profit of $37.2m and $21.3m respectively.

There has been rapid growth in total monthly rake during 2004, rising from $4.4m in January to $7m in September. Seventy-nine per cent of deposits this year have come from US customers, 11 per cent from European customers and 10 per cent from the rest of the world.

In 2002, when rival operators were advertising heavily on televised poker tournaments, Paradise instead focused its efforts on developing multi-table tournaments (MTTs). Consequently, Paradise lost market share and rake income. However, since the launch of MTTs, the company has enjoyed rapid growth.

Paradise has a high level of operating gearing. This means that the majority of its costs are fixed and the main variable cost (i.e. cost that increases with a rise in rake income) is the processing cost, i.e. money transmission. Personnel and IT costs are low relative to rake income. Marketing expenditure is now the largest cost incurred. Operating margins have fallen from 82 per cent in 2001 to only 57 per cent now, due to a big increase in marketing.

Sportingbet's directors believe that the online poker market is worth between $1bn and $1.5bn based on current industry total rake and that an average of 37,675 people play online poker for real money every day. North America accounts for 75 per cent of this market. Sportingbet hopes to use the acquisition to capitalise on cross-selling opportunities, in particular it notes that there is a high tendency for poker players to also be sports bettors.

My thoughts:

A substantial amount of money is being taken from players in rake. However this is coming from a very large number of people. It seems that online poker has a high churn rate; if only 97,000 players out of 721,000 registered are 'active' by the definition supplied.

The industry still believes that it's in a growth phase and is thus prepared to spend vast sums on advertising. Less clear is what it pays in deposit bonuses and freerolls. Paradise isn't the most generous in terms of affiliate schemes, rake-backs and freerolls, so its margins might be higher than other sites, at the cost of lower overall customer numbers.

While operational gearing is high, it may not be as high as some imagine. Something has to account for the difference of $15.9m between turnover and operating profit in the first seven months of this year. I think that most people underestimate the cost of moving money between banks and customer accounts. Overheads however, as understood by most companies (staff and IT) are small.

The dominant market, geographically, is the US. This comes with some risk due to the possibility of legal challenges, which might be why the shareholders are happy to sell out to a buyer armed with so much cash.

Sportingbet's directors seem highly optimistic about the cross-selling opportunities. I would be more cautious. The acquisition document states that the deal would create 'the only global combined online sports betting and poker business'. That may true on a global basis, but for the world outside the US, there are Coral (Eurobet) and Betfair, both of which allow players to move their money into a sports betting account on a real time basis. In any case, it's not immediately obvious to me that players have that much loyalty to one site or bookmaker.

I would be interested to know what others think about this, in particular those who feel that the rake charged by online sites is unjustified.

Site update.
Topic: Misc.
I've belatedly discovered how to make some changes to the appearance and content of this site. I think they will make it more interesting and accessible. I hope you do too. Bear with me while I continue to experiment.

Firstly, I've discovered how to give links to some of my favourite sites. You can see them in the column on the left hand side of the screen. They are grouped into categories, with poker bloggers at the top. One of the political sites is the first blog I ever found, the one by Bjorn Staerk. His is the Norwegian site that I mentioned in a recent posting. His writing is outstanding, even though English isn't his first language and he still makes a few mistakes in it. Be sure to have a look at some of the Iraqi bloggers like 'Iraq the Model' and 'Hammorabi'. The latter's English isn't great, but he expresses with great passion a point of view that you rarely hear from our newspaper reporters, who mainly visit those parts of the country that aren't optimistic about the future.

Secondly, I'm going to categorise my posts by topics in future. You can see the topic listings on the bottom of the right hand column. I haven't gone far with going through the archives, so it won't bring up much now, but when I've finished you will be able to bring up a page showing just those posts that relate to religion, poker, politics or whatever.

Thanks to those of you who've made some interesting comments to things I've written. Let's get some good debates going on here. I intend to write less on the poker discussion forums from now on, so that they can be used more for what the readers really want, i.e. 'Is online poker rigged?', 'Rate these players!' and 'Should I play rebuys comps as a freezeout?'.

If anyone wants to know how to set up a blog, I can happily show you how to use Tripod. I'm happy with the free service, but I seem to be the only person I know not using Blogger for some reason. If you've got something to tell the world, blog it! Bye for now.

The Sex Inspectors.
Topic: Television
I took a break from online poker last night to watch a little television and caught a new ground-breaking show from Channel 4 called 'The Sex Inspectors'. It was certainly something novel. I don't think television has ever been quite so intrusive in the private lives of members of the public and something about it fascinated me. In yesterday's episode, a young woman in a long-term relationship revealed that she'd never achieved orgasm through penetrative sex. Prior to appearing in the show, she had misled her partner for 18 months before telling him the truth and was now vexed by her continued inability to climax.

In order to assist her, the programme makers installed television cameras in the house. Two 'Sex experts', one male and one female (the ubiquitous Tracey Cox) then watched them having sex. Viewers were able to see some of this footage too, with little left to the imagination. After viewing it, Cox was full of advice for both of them, telling the male half of the partnership that his foreplay technique was impaired by his 'big rough hands'. To remedy this, she took him to Body Shop to buy some oil to make his hands smoother and whilst there demonstrated the appropriate level of touch with which to caress his partner. The female half was given suggestions in how to get used to having her man in the room when she masturbated.

Did I mention that something fascinated me about this? Oh yes I did. Well it's this: although the show was no doubt highly educational and informative, I couldn't help being distracted by the fact that viewers were shown the couple closing the curtains of their house before they went to bed. It reminded me of the question that Alan Abraham has often asked me at the poker table: 'Why did Kamikaze pilots wear crash helmets?'

Poker-edge update.
Topic: Poker
As promised, I wrote to a couple of online card rooms about the passage in Pokerpages (see entry on 13th November) and also enquired about their attitude to Pokertracker. I attach the replies:

From Pokerstars:

PokerTracker is fine (and encouraged!). Software that assists you in "real time" or that makes use of automated decisions is generally prohibited, although we have no firm rules for what we disallow. Use your best judgement - if it seems like an unfair advantage, it most likely is. Please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with.


Corals (edited):

The reference is about "Pokerbots" I think, these are programs that play for you based on statistics. The rumour is that there is one on XXXXXXX that has been on for some time, but is such a high rake producer they were loath to do anything about it. However this is just a rumour. It is in the interest of the large sites to run as honest a game as possible, as the rake is there as long as the players are. I know from our dealings with Party that they use a lot of resources to track down collusion, "Bots" and Disconnection Protection abuse.

A lot of players now use Poker Tracker and other similar programs this is basically saving them time writing in a notebook which I know a lot of players do as well.

Neither of these answers the question directly as to whether the passage concerns Poker-edge or not. I now suspect that it doesn't and that it's really about something called 'Winholdem', but I guess we'll know soon. Meanwhile, I'm surprised how calm the sites are about Poker Tracker. I think that part of the skill of the game is making your own notes and observations and this service does a lot of that for you. I am interested to hear from anyone who has worked with it. Perhaps it's time I invested.

Poker on ESPN.
Topic: Poker
I watched a couple of this year's WSOP finals at the weekend. One was the NL hold'em event that James Vogl won, the other was a 7-card stud event. Both were interesting for different reasons.

From the perspective of card play, I found the 7-card one much more interesting. Being a limit event, there were hands being bet on all the 'streets', which made a nice change from the all-ins that you get in most NLHE events. I have often wondered what Ted Forrest looked like and how he played, having read about how big he plays in the Bellagio. I was very impressed by him. In one hand he calls his opponent all the way to the river with only a pair of twos and wins! That is an amazing read. He was a worthy winner.

James' NLHE victory was interesting because of James himself. He was very self-effacing. He admitted the large role that luck plays and didn't seem too excited. I loved the bit at the end when he refused to be photographed holding the cash in the air, saying 'I'm not going to do that. It's vulgar. I'm British!'.

Separately, I can't help remarking on the commentator, Norman Chad. I didn't like him at the beginning but by the end I was warming to him. He reminds me of Nick Diamond, the commentator on MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch. After a while I started looking forward to his inevitable references to failed marriages. Great stuff.

Comments enabled for now....
I have resisted having comments on my blog since I started it, because of some of the petty and often vulgar abuse that I've seen on sites like Gutshot and the Hendon Mob. However, I have lately found that I've been getting involved in many off-topic discussions on poker fora, as frankly I find them more interesting. This probably isn't fair on those who aren't interested, so as an experiment, I am going to introduce comments. I will of course stop them if I have to spend time removing abuse.

To get the ball rolling, I'm going to post something I wrote today about Israel/Palestine. It's a subject I intend to learn more about. I didn't always have an opinion about this and my current opinion isn't the one that I had about four years ago. Now read on....

Israel/Palestine

The topic of Israel/Palestine does fascinate me, yet I'm not Israeli, I'm not jewish and I think that judaism is a false religion, like ALL religions. But I can spot a country with courts, juries and elections and I can spot thugs who steal from their own people too.

I didn't use to have much of an opinion about the matter until a casual remark by a friend about four or five years ago. He said 'If Israel carries on like this, it'll be a temporary state'. I had no idea what he was talking about. He began to say something about a visit to a mosque in Jerusalem by an Israeli politician that had kicked off a hostile reaction from Palestinians. On my next visit to the local library, I found a book called 'Arabs and Israelis for Beginners' and took it out. It comes from a series of 'for Beginners' books, which take a cartoon based approach to issues, mostly from a left-wing angle. I trusted it to give me a grounding. Reading it left me feeling that the creation of Israel had been highly unfair and that the country's behaviour was provocative to innocent Palestinian people. It made me quite angry actually.

Then after Sept 11th, I started reading a blog that was mentioned in the Mirror (irony here!) and was blown away by the quality of the writing. It was Norwegian and I loved it. It also listed other sites and I was amazed that there was so much good writing out there that could be accessed for free. From them I learned the counterarguments and learned some facts that I didn't know before - stuff that almost never gets mentioned in the Independent and the Guardian.

More and more, I've come around to the Israeli point of view. I do want peace and prosperity for the Palestinian people as much as I want security for Israel. But the best start for that to happen is for outsiders to stop indulging the Palestinians in their tendancy to blame all their woes on the west and on Israel. In 2002, I went to Vegas and found myself sitting next to an American of Pakistani extraction in the Bellagio. I asked him about Pakistan and he said something I'll never forget: "We need secular government and we need to stop blaming everything on the rest of the world. Every time I phone my parents back home they rant on about the CIA, Israel, the jews and so on." Palestine is the same. While I think it would be best for Israel to leave the territories in the West Bank, some honest speaking would help too. Like this from Donald Rumsfeld: "My feeling about the so-called occupied territories, is that there was a war, Israel urged neighbouring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict." That is the kind of plain speaking truth that should be said more often, instead of the pandering that most journalists do.

Topic: Poker
The latest monthly newsletter from Pokerpages contains an interesting post:

Welcome news as major poker sites have begun scanning for, and suspending the accounts, of players who are using a certain 3rd party software add-on to gain an unfair advantage over their opponents. The current crackdown focuses on one particular program that even claims to automatically play the users hands based on an analysis of over 500000 outcomes, even going so far as to automatically bet, check and so on with the player having to take no part whatsoever. This news only came to light as this issue of the magazine was being completed, so expect a fuller story in the next issue. For now, suffice it to say that the poker sites are doing all that they can to protect us, the honest player, and to ensure that we all get a fair game."

I had no idea what this was referring to, until a friend asked me whether I had looked at www.poker-edge.com. The site claims to offer a service that "gives you access to a database of PartyPoker player statistics.... These stats break down your opponent's Pre-Flop, Flop, Turn and River play into numbers that tell a story about his or her poker game."

Is this the same thing? I intend to find out this week.

A great new poker blog.
I heartily recommend a new poker blog that's been put together by an anonymous writer called 'the poker bastard'. It's clearly aimed at dishing dirt in the poker world. It looks like the writer is based in the south of England, as it's full of references to Gutshot and Luton. I hope that he's able to extend his remit to other parts of the UK.

Checkout www.pokerbastard.blogspot.com

I have felt uncomfortable a few times that I didn't have the nerve to expose some of the things I don't like about the way that the game is run or the way that certain players behave. Now a weight is lifted from my shoulders. Such naming and shaming only works however if the writer is accurate in his reports. It's therefore encouraging to see in his latest post that he's seeking verification of a story about drug use among poker players. I hope he keeps his verification standards up. A few false reports would spoil an otherwise useful service.

While I've been vilified several times by anonymous writers on poker forums, I've never been able to agree with those who think that people should not be able to post anonymously. Sometimes there are things that should be said to warn the unwary, which cannot be said from a named individual. The Hendon Mob's forum grew its traffic enormously after someone calling himself 'The Executioner' wrote an expose of the AcesPoker fiasco. The post was so good that I printed it onto paper as soon as I saw it, certain that it would be deleted (it was). Anonymity has its place provided it's not abused.

Rejoice rejoice!
I'm very relieved to see that George W. Bush has been re-elected to the White House. It's a vote of confidence for his "forward strategy of freedom". Americans have sensed that bringing freedom to the rest of the world, in particular the Middle East, is the best form of defence. Kerry could never explain how his consensus-based multilateralism and readiness to withdraw from tough fights at the first sign of trouble was any different to the policies of the past that lead to 9-11.

That's because there was no difference.

Why I want Bush to win.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

I want an 'unreasonable' president. We face an ideological enemy and need an ideological strategy to combat it. Bush grasps this. Kerry doesn't. Soon after the atrocities of September 11th 2001, Bush revealed his intention to take the battle to the terrorists. It would involve far more than merely reacting to events. Instead he would aim at nothing less than the transformation of the Middle-East through regime change. He was right.

It is rare in war that your enemy tells you the path you should take in order to defeat it, but such was the hubris of Al Qaeda until recently, that it did exactly that with the 2003 publication of a book titled 'The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsular after the Fall of Baghdad', written by Al Qaeda member Yussuf al-Ayyeri and published by The Centre for Islamic Research and Studies, a company established by bin Laden in 1995.

See this review: http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=4153

In the book, Al-Ayyeri explains Al Qaeda's theory of history as the battle of belief versus unbelief. Belief in Islam has, according to the book, been challenged by many opposing philosophies over the centuries and all except one have been defeated. These have been modernism, nationalism, socialism and Ba'athism. The removal of Ba'athism has created what he calls a "clean battlefield" for the final and greatest battle of them all, against "secularist democracy". Al Ayyeri describes it as "far more dangerous to Islam" than all its predecessors combined, because of democracy's "seductive capacities", which persuade people that they can be empowered to control their own destinies, leading them to draft their own laws and abandon Sharia, the strict Islamic law handed down in the Koran. The book says that democracy will, "make Muslims love this world, forget the next world, and abandon Jihad".

That is why they are so desperate to prevent elections, order and prosperity for ordinary Arab people. It is also why I want Bush to win. Only Bush's "forward strategy of freedom" will solve our long term terror problem. And we know this because our enemy has told us.

Al Qaeda's declining ambitions.
I've said for about three years that Osama bin Laden is dead, so on Friday it was somewhat of a surprise to hear that he had released a videotape mentioning presidential candidate John Kerry. I've since wondered whether a look-a-like was used to make the video and whether old voice recordings could have been used for the sound. But whatever the case, I'm sure that it comes from Al Qaeda and that's what matters most.

I find this latest message very interesting and believe it shows that Al Qaeda is being beaten into submission. That's not something that comes over from reports of the atrocities it commits in Iraq, but an examination of the tone and content of the tape bears this out. To demonstrate this, I will compare the recent message with previous ones both alleged to have come from him.

In bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against the United States,

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html

he speaks of Arab youth being willing to sacrifice themselves to kill Americans: "Those youths know that the reward in fighting you, the USA, is double than the reward in fighting someone not from the People of the Book. They have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. An infidel, an enemy of God like you, cannot be in the same heaven with his righteous executioner."

and later says of his fanatics:

"Those youth are different from your soldiers. Your problem will be how to convince your troops to fight, while our problem will be how to restrain our youth to wait for their turn in fighting and in operations. These youths are commendable and praiseworthy."

The clear assumption was that Americans wouldn't fight back against Al Qaeda aggression. That was understandable, given the US withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, the withdrawal from Beirut after the Marine Barracks bombing of 1982 and the withdrawal from Somalia after a small number of US soldiers were killed on a humanitarian mission and one dead American pilot was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Of this, bin Laden comments:

"You had been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the heart of every Muslim and a remedy to the chests of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden, and Mogadishu.

Over six years later, in November 2002, another letter appeared from bin Laden, addressed to the American people:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html

In it he answers two questions:

Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2) What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

The answer to question 1 is the predictable list of grievances. But in answering question 2, he goes further in telling Americans how to live their lives. The list is long, so I shall only include highlights:

"The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam .. The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you .. We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest ..

You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich ..

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation."

And now it's 2004 and bin Laden appears just before the US election and his message is rather more muted than before. He says:

"Do not play with our security, and spontaneously you will secure yourself."

What?

That's it? "Leave us alone and we'll leave you alone"? What happened the youths who "have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you."

What happened to your threats of further harm if we didn't end gambling and homosexuality? Why the loss of confidence?

There are a few clues. As this new story reports:

'U.S. officials told NBC News that in parts of the tape not aired by Al-Jazeera, bin Laden acknowledges that the recent Afghan elections were not a success for him because "they came off with minimal violence." And he admits that "aggressive Pakistani operations" in South Waziristan, where he is believed to be hiding, have hurt his operations.'

I'm not an expert in military affairs, but I'd wager that Al Qaeda knows that it's losing. It has failed to take back Afghanistan, where Anthony Loyd in the Times of September 13th reports:

`in Afghanistan, the insurgency is failing and failing badly .. it is the Taleban and their Al Qaeda comrades who find themselves isolated and pressured. In a country awash with weapons and populated by a skilled guerrilla force, the insurgents have failed to ignite resistance to the 18,000 American troops there'.

Al Qaeda supporters are now holed up in Fallujah, where the US Army is about to mount a concerted assault. Their future looks bleak unless they can cut off the army's supply lines and the way to do that is to change the Commander-in-Chief. Rashly they issue this latest broadcast, hoping that Americans will opt for the easy life and select Kerry. It's their only chance.

Al Qaeda's own words reveal that we are poised to win against them if we hold firm. Tomorrow, I will show what Al Qaeda has to say about the situation in Iraq and why their own words reveal the correctness of Bush's approach to the Middle East.

The Inarticulate Competent.
My recent piece about the New York Times has provoked some amusing responses. Andy Ward wrote to tell me that it smacked of paranoia. I should stress that while I did want to make the point that Bush is more intelligent than his critics make out, I don't really suppose that the NYT actually planned to leak this revelation as part of a smear. That was 'tongue-in-cheek'.

The reason that Bush is considered an idiot by so many is that he's a terrible speaker and he especially doesn't seem to speak well to large non-friendly crowds. While this doesn't inspire confidence, it doesn't per se mean that he's not an effective leader or decision maker. A president is a commander-in-chief not a debating champion. It is widely said that Kerry won the first debate. I didn't see it, but I heard that Bush repeated himself many times and looked rather worn, while Kerry spoke better and looked more assured. I suppose I should have seen that coming, given that Kerry is a Senator, which almost by definition means that he's more of a talker than a doer. Bush was a governor, where the virtually the opposite applies.

All of this reminds me of something I read many years ago in a review of a book about business. The author listed various types of people not to hire. One of these was 'the articulate incompetent'. I agree that such people exist. But if they do, then it's likely that there are others who are 'inarticulate competents', people whose understanding is superior to their ability to express it. I've met many poker players with a great intuitive understanding of the game who could not express how they arrived at their decisions, as well as educated professionals from business, academia and medicine who played appalling and justified losing plays with eloquent nonsense, which they sincerely believed. I know whom I would rather back in a game.