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Sleepless in Fulham: Rambling and gambling by David Young
Tuesday, 24 January 2006
Rejoice, eh!
Topic: Politics
Rejoice rejoice! Canada has elected a Conservative government. Another country swings to the right. In Canada's case, levels of corruption and crony-capitalism that exceed anything we're used to in the UK have finally pushed Canadian voters to reject the Liberal Party, which had become hopelessly tainted with sleaze.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4641954.stm


Meanwhile, a new survey by the BBC reports that people in Afghanistan and Iraq are the among most optimistic people in the world when it comes to their economic future.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4641396.stm

I wonder what those two countries have in common!

Tuesday, 17 January 2006
My obsession, in any language.
Topic: Misc.
It's about time I told readers of my curious obsession. I love buying teach-yourself language books. I don't mean the ones that only aim to impart a few phrases for people on brief holidays. No, I want the ones that teach the entire grammar and syntax.

I've long admired those who can learn the language of another country. When I came out of the film 'JFK', I was struck by the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald had learned to speak fluent Russian. I can speak reasonable German and French and a bit of Russian and got into Portuguese for a while in the late 90s. But I'm not fluent in anything. It remains my fantasy to become fluently multilingual, rather like the Matt Damon character in The Bourne Identity. I know that's utterly absurd, but a man can dream, can't he?

For the time being though, buying the books is about as far as I get. I hate myself for not finishing any of them, but that's one of the drawbacks of having played so much online poker in the last few years. You feel that you should be at the PC earning money all the time.

Somewhere in the middle of the photo below there is 'Teach youself Norwegian'. I bought that because I wanted to be able to read Vampus Verden, written by the 'Nordic Eva Braun' (copyright Jamie) who commented about Hurricane Katrina here.

I'm reminded of her today, as I've just learned that she won the 'Best Political Blog' award in Norway's second biggest Newspaper, Dagbladet. There's hope for Norway yet!


Saturday, 7 January 2006
Former Vice-President of Syria demands change.
Topic: Politics
Only one news story seems important to me today and it's not the resignation of Charles Kennedy.

Khaddam calls for Syrian revolt.

Former Syrian Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam says he wants to see President Bashar al-Assad ousted through a popular uprising. Mr Khaddam told the BBC that Syrians were frustrated with the current regime and should be mobilised by the opposition groups in the country.

This is exactly the sort of positive knock-on effect that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to produce.

It's also nice to see someone having a conversion on the journey back from Damascus. :)

Thursday, 5 January 2006
Moderately, socially, as you well know.
Topic: Politics
So the worst kept secret in British politics is out at last. Charles Kennedy admits he has a drink problem. If you've never seen a politician lie before, check out this interview with Jeremy Paxman:

Moderately, socially, as you well know.

UPDATE:

It occurs to me that some readers might think that there is an element of gloating in the above. They are of course right. I can't stand Kennedy.

Here's why.

_ DY at 8:19 PM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 5 January 2006 9:04 PM GMT
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Wednesday, 4 January 2006
The death penalty.
Topic: Politics
This is a puzzle. A site devoted to American gang culture tries to argue the case against the death penalty, yet manages to achieve the opposite. Referring to the execution of Tookie Williams, it reports on a voluntary handover of arms by members of the LA Bloods gang, with some members stating: 'If they can do this to Tookie, they can do it to any of us.'

By George! I do believe they've got it!

http://thaspot.thuglifearmy.com/blogs/roberts_blog/archive/2006/01/03/19.aspx

I have conflicting feelings about the death penalty. While I oppose it on the grounds that I fear the execution of an innocent man, I feel strangely envious of those US states where murderers are executed, rather than allowed back on the streets like they are here. It's what the public of those states wants. Contrast their position with that of Britain, where it's likely that popular opinion favours the death penalty, but governments think they know 'best'. Take this for instance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1865864.stm

where a British death penalty opponent says:

"Governments lead by example, so in Europe the government leads by opposing the death penalty," to which the BBC, to its credit, dryly replies: "Of course, British public opinion is actually said to favour capital punishment. It is just that in the UK it has never been a serious election issue."

Exactly. So I find myself in the curious position of opposing the death penalty, while at the same time opposing anti death-penalty campaigners who display such arrogance.

_ DY at 6:30 PM GMT
Updated: Wednesday, 4 January 2006 6:37 PM GMT
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Tuesday, 3 January 2006
Don't tell Vicky Coren, but supercasinos are no big deal.
Topic: Poker
Interesting profile of the Head of the Gaming Commission:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1967668,00.html

BBC2's dictionary expert disagrees with him:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1334782,00.html

Sunday, 1 January 2006
Does Bin Laden read the Guardian letters page?
Topic: Politics
A few months ago, a reader of this site wrote to me, asking me to link him to transcripts of Bin Laden's declarations. In the course of comparing his earlier writing (1996) to his later declarations (2002 and 2004), I remarked in my e-mail back:

"I have to confess that I find the last two quite amusing in some ways. The 2002 letter to the American people mentions the US's failure to sign the Kyoto protocol. This has always looked odd to me. It's almost as though bin Laden was reading the Guardian letters page and decided to chuck it into the list of grievances on a whim. It sits very oddly with the decision to bomb London on the week of the G8 conference when climate change (as well as addressing poverty) was on the agenda."

Well I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

_ DY at 3:24 PM GMT
Updated: Sunday, 1 January 2006 3:28 PM GMT
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Thursday, 29 December 2005
Replying to a 9-11 conspiracy theory.
Topic: Politics
Over at the Hendon Mob forum, 'Lancy Howard' links to a documentary that alleges a US conspiracy on 9-11. I have watched it and wish to refute its conclusions:

Lancy,

I sat and watched that documentary as you suggested and do feel that it raises certain questions and displays some inconsistencies in the official version of events. But I don't think that the evidence presented supports the conclusion that the US government was behind the attacks. In any large event, it's not hard to find inconsistencies. The documentary itself shows how eye witnesses can often disagree on vital details. Merely showing differences isn't enough to persuade me of a conspiracy. A similar tactic is used by Holocaust deniers who look for inconsistencies in the survivors' accounts to promote the idea of a hoax. In an event that involved so many millions, it's not hard to find inaccurate accounts and conflicting versions of events from traumatised people. But this doesn't mean that the holocaust didn't happen.

Physical evidence is of course preferable and the video does a decent job of finding inconsistencies, but it's not hard to find a site online that refutes the Pentagon issues:

A refutation.

I've not had time to examine all of this fully.

Much of the story suffers from another problem - the "comparison with a vacuum". For instance, we're shown fireman talk of explosions. So what? What other word would they use to describe what they say? None of them had scene a jumbo jet fly into a skyscraper before, so they used the vocabulary that they knew.

Another instance - the point that no building has been brought down by fire before. Well, on how many other occasions has this exact same thing happened before? We're told that the fuel doesn't burn to a high enough temperature to cause the alleged damage but unless you recreate the exact same circumstances again, you don't know whether there were other reactions within the buildings that took place for 'innocent' reasons that could have caused the damage.

I don't know what the grainy footage of the plane's crashing was meant to suggest. The shiny rectangle on the site of the plane just before it hit one of the towers didn't prove anything to me. Neither did the dark shadow under the other. The film was much too grainy to discount the possibility of simple shadows and reflections.

Furthermore, it's worth pointing out that the Pentagon is not a typical building. What a plane does hitting a normal building says nothing about what a plane would do hitting the world's largest office, with the toughest security wall in the world. And I also think it would take a very confident Donald Rumsfeld to place himself anywhere in the building knowing that it would be hit, regardless of how well planned his supposed adventure was. His own life would have been on the line!

We are invited to believe that a conspiracy occured that would have involved thousands of people in a cover-up. And none of the conspirators have had an attack of conscience after four years? How hard would it be for one of them to travel to a hostile or neutral country to spill the beans? Once one does it, other would follow. Yet we hear nothing.

Even if you do accept a government conspiracy to plant bombs in the twin towers, it wouldn't necessarily have to be the govt of the US. Iranian agents have been caught taking photographs of the tunnels leading into Manhattan (Lincoln and Holland).

The video makes no serious attempt to explain where the missing planes are that 'didn't' hit the WTC. It leaves that totally in the air, so to speak. Nor does it follow through its own logic and explain how at least TWO conspirators were persuaded to fly suicide missions. What would you have to be paid to kill yourself?

Then there is the question of motive. None is supplied. Bush had won election less than one year earlier and had three years left to run. It's hardly an election year 'October surprise', is it? If the purpose was to support a war to bolster his popularity then you have to ask why Bush would think that war would boost his popularity. His own father had fought and won a war against Iraq, yet still lost the next election, just as Bush's hero Winston Churchill did in 1945. If this was to somehow support war against Iraq, would they not have planted fake evidence of Iraqi involvment? And why did they wait so long afterwards before going to war?

If the purpose was to support war against Afghanistan, then why? What vital resources does it have? None! What possible strategic benefit would there have been? Don't believe that rubbish about a vital pipeline. That has been thoroughly debunked.

Not a lot makes sense here.

Bush wrote (or had written) a book of his philosophy a few years before. In the book 'A charge to keep', one chapter is devoted to explaining his opposition to the entire idea of 'nation building' - the total oppositie of his current plan in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the purpose had somehow been to make Bush look like a heroic leader, why was it timed to happen when he was being filmed reading a book about a girl's pet goat to a group of young schoolchildren? Nothing he did on that day has ever been made to look heroic.

I could sit and think of other problems with this video if I had the time and energy, but for now I think that will do. I'm sure that the official report made some mistakes. It may have cut corners. But that's a million miles away from supporting a conspiracy theory.

DY

_ DY at 8:52 PM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 29 December 2005 9:12 PM GMT
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What does a kidnapper have to do to get a bad press?
Topic: Politics
Nothing to see here folks.

Three Britons captured in Gaza. No big deal. Business as usual, just an internal dispute. Everything will come out all right in the wash.

That's the feeling you're left with if you read this report:

Gaza kidnaps not drive by hatred.

I've heard of Stockholm Syndrome, but this is Stockholm Syndrome by Proxy.

_ DY at 2:06 AM GMT
Updated: Thursday, 29 December 2005 5:46 AM GMT
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Monday, 26 December 2005
Libya rewarded for blackmail
Topic: Politics
I'm saddened by a footnote in this story:

Relief over Libya medics reprieve

It concerns the trial and conviction of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor for deliberately infecting Libyan children with AIDS.

Just ask yourself how likely that really was.

What upsets me is that the Bulgarian government is going to pay money to Libya. It is being rewarded for charging foreign doctors on a ridiculous trumped up charge and holding them for seven years. Doctors and aid workers working overseas in needy countries have just had a price put on their heads. A sad day.

_ DY at 6:23 AM GMT
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Wednesday, 21 December 2005
Israel makes a mistake.
Topic: Politics
As many of you know, I'm mostly on the Israeli side when it comes to discussing the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I don't intend to elaborate for now on why this is. Instead I want to talk about a dilemma that it faces and why I think it could be about to make a mistake.

I refer to the announcement that it plans to prevent voting in East Jerusalem during January's Palestinian parliamentary elections.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/news_service/middle_east_full_story.asp?service_id=10414

In any normal situation, it would not be controversial to say that a country should never interfere in another country's elections. But in this instance, I can see their concern. Israel is worried that Hamas could achieve power and that does have consequences, because the Hamas charter declares that Israel should not exist. If taken to its logical conclusion, the election of Hamas should surely mean war.

Yet it's not all about war. As Hugh Miles reports in his book 'Al Jazeera' (page 72) "... most Palestinians do not support Hamas because it is violent: they support it because it is kind". And that's part of the problem. The Palestinian Authority is associated with "nepotism, flashiness and hordes of hangers-on" (same source). Hamas's leaders are considered more charitable, just and austere. It's truly tragic to see the more honest party being the more violent one. Imagine if the BNP were known for good works and charitable donations.

Faced with this dilemma, I still think that Israel's best bet is to let events take their course. If Hamas takes power, it will be faced with responsibilities for managing roads, hospitals and schools etc. If they chose to go to war then Israel, then Israel should have no difficulty in pointing out that it has the right to defend itself. But it's also possible that the burden of actual government leads to some moderation.

This point of view might surprise some readers, but it fits with my neo-con views. One of the biggest disasters of the last two decades was the decision to cancel the 1992 Algerian elections. Again the concern was that fundamentalists would take power. For me that isn't a problem, as long as the constitutional arrangements continue to exist by which the people could vote them out of office. Many expressed the view that this would not happen and that there would be 'One Man. One vote. Once'.

But that's being pessimistic and cancelling the election has proved to be the cure that was worse than the disease. Islamic extremism retains its appeal in part because it hasn't been tried (outside Iran and Afghanistan, where it proved massively unpopular after time). Fundamentalists can shout empty slogans like 'Islam in the answer' and never be disputed as long as they are kept out of power. Islamism must be given the chance to fail, democratically.

The day that irony died.
Topic: Misc.
Over at Andy Ward's diary, I tried to be funny in the comment section of a recent lament:

I wrote:

Absolutely. Everyone passes the buck. Nobody takes responsibility any more.

Personally I blame society. Society is to blame for this. I feel helpless to do anything about it.

DY



Was it all in vain, I wonder? In a glorious non-sequitur, a guest writes:

Society, I'm not so sure. Look at America's attitude towards Kyoto.

Er, ... thanks for that.

Tuesday, 20 December 2005
Language Arts in US publishing.
Topic: Poker

Wednesday, 7 December 2005
Action or Judgement?
Topic: Poker
Dominic wrote to me recently:

"I thought Big Dave D's blog was quite interesting today. The gist of it is that he has been trying No Limit Hold Em recently, and doesn't like it because it requires judgement. I remember Xxxx Xxxxx telling me pretty much the same thing. Yet there will still be punters who play Omaha because they consider it a 'gambling' game."

I never bought into the idea that omaha was the 'action game'. I certainly never accepted that there was as much mental action involved. I don't mind playing it for a few hours and I think it can make an interesting tournament game, but I find cash omaha boring compared to cash hold'em. For a start you don't get anywhere near as many hands per hour.

There was a long period in this country when you couldn't get a hold'em cash game anywhere and you had to play omaha. I thought it created something I called 'lazy professional syndrome'. If you knew that a king-high flush draw was no good, that an 8-card straight draw was not a wrap and that small trips were often worthless then you could beat up those who didn't. You didn't have to try too hard to put people on hands or project much of an image.

Omaha games at the Vic now resemble those 7-card games of years ago. The average age at the table is nearly double that of the hold'em games. Most people look miserable most of the time. There is very little banter.

Two cards good. Four cards bad.

_ DY at 1:34 PM GMT
Updated: Wednesday, 7 December 2005 1:36 PM GMT
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Best comment I've read about Iraq for a long time.
Topic: Politics
Hat tip to Omar at Iraq the Model for this comment by Joseph Liebermann:

Note that this is a man who stood as Vice-President against Bush and Cheney in the 2000 election.

Key quote:

"I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.

Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.

It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America.

If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority.


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