Diff'rent strokes.
Isn't it annoying when someone says something similar to what you believe, but goes too far and makes a mess of it! Just such a thing has happened to me recently with the case of Robert Kilroy-Silk. Due to a secretarial error, an article that he wrote several months ago was re-published in the Sunday Express the week before last. Whereas before, the article appeared in the context of a discussion about whether Arab states were justified in having hostility towards the US, this time the article appeared in isolation and was altered by the newspaper to refer to Arabs individually rather than Arab states.

Kilroy-Silk made some mistakes in his piece, the most shocking of which was grouping Iranians (Persians) with Arabs, but his message contained a germ of truth. Many people have supported him in his dispute with the BBC because they feel he has expressed something that needed to be said: that Arab states have failed. Their economies are poor. Their societies produce little in the way of culture that most of us in the non-Arab world buy and their main diplomatic and commercial importance comes from pure luck: the possession of oil. The lack of proper democracy means that resources are not applied to the broadening of education or infrastucture for the many. In most states, the division of wealth is far less equitable than it is in the liberal democracies of western Europe, North America and Australasia.

This matters. In particular it's important because the chasm between the West and the Arab world is the main cause of the current wave of terrorism. Not everyone has grasped this. Last week I watched the BBC's Question Time and was dismayed to see that in the middle of a discussion about the usefulness of air marshalls on hijacked flights, someone in the audience made a remark about the need to address the 'root causes of terrorism'. He then went on to talk about poverty. Sadly this got a round of applause from certain members of the audience.

How can such ignorance persist? The majority of the hijackers on September 11 2001 came from wealthy Saudi families. They were not poor. Osama bin-Laden had a personal net worth of something in the region of half a billion dollars. What poverty were they talking about?

What has happened here is that audience members projected their own values on other people and ended up sympathising with a point of view that doesn't exist. When confronted by the fact that people were prepared to kill themselves in order to attack others, many people think that they would only do this under the most terrible provocation. It therefore follows to them that some awful provocation must have happened.

But it's not like that. There is resentment in the Arab world towards the West. It has a little to do with Israel. It has a little to do with the US's close relations with the Saudi princes who have sucked the country dry. But the main cause of the resentment comes from the chasm between the Islamic world's expectations of its own international significance and the reality of its relative unimportance.

Islam is a revealed religion. Its followers believe that they have the most recent word of God from the last messenger. The result of living the Islamic way of life is supposed to be the bliss of living as God intended we should. Islam is a social code in addition to a relationship with mankind's alleged creator.

And that's all very fine and dandy in isolation. The problem occurs when certain devout Muslims notice that in diplomatic, military, economic and cultural terms their nations are miles behind the West with no sign of catching up. "How can this be?", they ask.

One answer is to believe that the West has been seduced by the devil and is being rewarded in material terms in return for the sacrifice of its citizens' souls. That was the view of the Ayatollah Khomeni who led the 1979 revolution in Iran. That is why the US was called 'The Great Satan'. There are many in the West who believe that this term was justly applied because of Western actions in Israel, Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere. They are wrong. They are merely projecting their own values onto another society.

Muslim fanatics believe that their societies are being punished by God for not following the strict word of God. What they cannot grasp is that in most causes their societies are hindered because they have followed the word. It's no surprise to us in the West that their societies suffer when they neglect the education and equality of women, place religious teaching as the equal of scientific enquiry and dismiss democracy.

Since the revelation of the word of God to Muhammed, the West has acquired another even more recent way of life: Liberal Democracy. The new Western 'religion' includes such heresies as secular government, equality for women, democratic elections every four or five years and full freedom for banks to charge interest on loans (strictly forbidden in Islam). The results are there for all to see.

It's like swimming. There are several styles: the Breaststroke, the Backstroke, the Butterfly and the Crawl. All move you through the water, but if you want to win a freestyle event you have no choice but to use the Crawl, even if you prefer the Breaststroke.

The West has the Crawl. The Arab nations have the Breaststroke. We will always beat them and some of their people will always hate us for it. Unless change is implemented, the chasm will grow wider and wider, especially if dependence on Arab oil is reduced.

And that's the real motive for what the US did in Iraq. The Neo-con agenda is to create a liberal democracy in a region of the world where anti-US resentment was incubating attacks like those on September 11 2001.

Iraq was the most secular country in the region, thus giving the project the greatest chance of success. The exact same thing was done to Japan after the war. A nation of suicide bombers (then called Kamikazi pilots) and women oppressors who believed in their own racial superiority and right to govern neighbouring states in a "co-prosperity sphere" was transformed in less than a decade to a democratic, roughly capitalist country. Attitudes take longer to change than laws, but 60 year later Japan is a nation at peace with itself and its neighbours, making huge contributions to science and culture.

The same is required in the middle east. Either we see this though or they kill us.

Blair understands this and was never a poodle in endorsing Bush's desire for regime change. It's his own gut feeling too, as stated in a little-reported article in the Telegraph of 14th July last year:

Click here!

Where are the WMD?
I must admit to being mildly surprised that no nuclear weapons have been found in Iraq. It seems so out of character of Saddam not to have been trying hard to acquire them. I question whether he was being lied to by his scientists about the extent of their progress. Who would want to be the one to break the bad news to him that the uranium enrichment programme was't quite on track?

It's also possible that Iraq was fooled into spending money on useless technology and research by foreigners in the same way that middle-class kids get sold oregano instead of cannabis when venturing into the ghetto for their weekend fix. It's not that far fetched. In fact something similar forms part of the plot of 'Back to the Future'.

Of course the coalition attack on Iraq did locate evidence of WMD construction ... in Libya! So it can't be said to have been a total failure if measured purely in terms of removing weapons from our enemies. The fact that Colonel Gaddafy started his discussions with the west around the time that he saw that Britain and the US were serious about removing Saddam cannot be a coincidence.

One of the drawbacks to Tony Blair's attempts to get UN approval for the war was that it gave the former Iraqi regime several months to hide anything that it wanted to get rid of over the Syrian border. It wouldn't be a great shock to me if this occured. After all, Syria is also run by a Ba'ath party. Part of me believes that something was moved there in that 'rush to war' that dragged on for months and months and months.

Now comes a report that the weapons were moved there. It comes from a Syrian journalist who recently defected. He has terminal cancer and thus now has no reason to fear retribution from his government.

You can read what he has to say if you Click here!

I don't know what to make of this. However, I am sure that the world is going to be a safer place since the fall of Saddam. I noted earlier this week that the countries that have been bombed by Islamic extremists are those that opposed the US actions. I forgot to mention in the list the Chechens who stormed into the theatre in Moscow. Their cause was not connected to the situation in Iraq, but to me it's notable that the Russian decision not to support the US against a muslim nation didn't lead the Chechens to relax in their war against the Russian government. I also forgot that the shoe-bomber Richard Reid boarded a flight from Paris to Miami for his attempt at mass murder and would have killed French people along with Americans had he succeeded.

In fact I can't think of any attack on any of the countries who did give support to the US. Poland, Australia, Portugal, Britain and Spain have not been targeted. What is the lesson here? Could it be that strength is respected and weakness attacked?

If only internet poker were fixed.
There is a common belief that internet poker sites 'juice-up' the hands dealt in order to create bigger pots and thus more rake. I wish it were true, as I would now be living in a mansion built for a Bond villain if it were.

Here's why: The only way to juice-up the action is to deal more situations than normal involving flush-over-flush, straight-over-straight, set-over-set and so on. If we are certain that this is going on and that most people are not aware of this, then the solution is simple: Never draw to non-nut flushes. Throw away small pairs and don't play small straightening cards. Make sure to have lots of money in front of you in all cash games in order to wipe out the people who haven't cottoned on to this and who still give action with dominated hands (small straights, small flushes, small trips, small full houses). Play three sites at once, play two tables on every site and within a year you will be a millionaire.

As I have already pointed out on the Hendon Mob forum, the best thing for a crooked internet poker operator to do would be to engineer the site to have more SPLIT POTS with big hands. This would ensure that everyone got some excitement, nobody ever lost and the site got the maximum rake. In all the years that I have listened to people making accusations about the integrity of online poker, I've never heard one person say that there is an unusual number of split pots going on.

Of course, if any of you do find a truly 'juiced-up' site, please tell me about it and I'll send you a postcard from a yacht off the Italian Riviera as a thank-you.

The innocent bystander
I was in a poker game last night when the subject turned to the cancellation of flights from Britain to the US on security grounds. One player at the table, whom I shall call 'the bystander' said 'This is all happening because we went along with George Bush's war'. I spluttered, but managed to be polite enough to limit my comments to 'That's total bollocks'. So astonished was I to hear this defeatist talk from someone who wasn't French, that I totally failed to give the correct response, which is 'So what if that's true?' The mere fact that evil people attack you for something you did doesn't make what you did wrong! If I give evidence against a paedophile and his relatives attack me, it doesn't mean that I was wrong to testify, does it?

But that wasn't the reasoning I had in mind last night. Instead I was thinking of the logical flaws in the argument. In order to believe that the UK-US flight was targeted because of our backing of the US in the war against Saddam Hussein's regime, it is also necessary to believe that countries that were opposed to the war have not been attacked by Islamic terrorists. So let's see then. Is that true?

In May 2002, a suicide attack in Karachi, Pakistan killed 11 French submarine technicians working for a company that was contracted to the Pakistani Navy. I don't recall that France has ever been an energetic supporter of George Bush. You can read about it if you Click here!

Terrorist also struck against a French oil tanker in October 2002, killing most of the crew. This was at a time when it was reasonably clear that France would not support a war against Iraq. You can read about it if you Click here!

The above story ends with a written statement from Al-Qaeda: 'We congratulate the Muslim Nation for the daring and heroic Jihad operations which our brave sons conducted in Yemen against the Christian oil tanker. By striking the oil tanker in Yemen with explosives, the attackers struck at the umbilical cord of the Christians, reminding the enemy of the bloody price they have to pay for continuing their aggression against our nation'.

No mention of France. No mention of Iraq. Just a clear mandate for the murder of Christians. Afterwards, a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said: 'We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels'.

And what of other Al-Qaeda actions? In 1998, three years before the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were attacked, two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed on the same day. Only 11 Americans lost their lives, but over 200 Africans were murdered too. There is no way that the terrorists could have not expected this to happen.

And what of the Bali bombing? What was Bali's position on the Iraq conflict? I don't know and I don't care, because the man who confessed to planting the bomb used his day in court to say that the bombings had positive effects because they 'encouraged people to re-embrace religion and weakened the corrupting influence of foreign tourists'. If he instigated his attacks because of Israel, Iraq or to help the poor and needy, he certainly forgot to mention it, as you can see if you Click here!

Hundreds died on that day in a part of the world not known for being full of Americans or Jews. Islamic fascists instead saw Europeans and Australians. They saw women who dressed to please themselves and who considered themselves the equal of men. They saw people who did not worship Allah. That's what they saw and that's what they killed.

What will it take to make people like 'the bystander' realise that there is a trend of Islamic fascism that just wants to kill us? In recent months, Al-Qaeda's terrorism has focused on Islamic countries: Turkey and Saudi Arabia. I specifically recall that the Turks refused to allow the US army to enter Iraq through its border. Did that give them a 'Get out of Terrorism Free' card? No. They got bombed in Istanbul just the same.

Saudi Arabia refused to allow the US to fly from its bases to attack Iraq. Did Al-Qaeda decide to lay off attacking inside the kingdom? Certainly not! It instead blew up a residential compound that housed Arabs from other countries. These attacks may have finally woken the Saudi people to realise what is at stake. Several clerics who had previously encouraged the use of terror against the West have realised that it's backfired on their own doorstep.

You can read about this if you Click here!

Please take the time to click on some or all of these links.

I don't recall this sort of reaction with Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murray building in Oklahoma City. I don't recall people saying 'this is the inevitable consequence of expanding the federal government and was thus highly provocative to the small-government survivalist cults'.

Why should this be any different?

A fist full of traveller's cheques.
I'm astonished to see how weak the dollar is going against the pound. I understand that the expenditure on the war against Iraq and the subsequent reconstruction is bound to have some effect, but I'm not used to seeing the pound being worth $1.79.

I recall over a decade ago working in Midland Bank (now HSBC) and seeing sterling rise to $1.99. I thought that it was ridiculous at the time. I wondered whether it was worth speculating on a dollar recovery, but couldn't figure out a way of doing it. It briefly entered my mind to buy US$ traveller's cheques from Thomas Cook or American Express with the intention of selling them back when the pound weakened.

I quickly dismissed the idea because it would have involved paying a spread on both sides of the transaction. The pound soon fell back down as I expected it to. It was only a few months later, when I was planning holidays in Europe that it dawned on me that I could have bought US$ travellers cheques and kept them for my next holiday, regardless of whether I was going to the US or not. Everywhere accepts them.

I have no crystal ball, but if you know that you are going abroad this year and don't think that sterling can hold at $1.79, why not save some money by buying US$ traveller's cheques now? Sadly I can't plan that far ahead, as everything in my life is 'subject to solvency', but some of you lucky people with regular salaries might be able to save a few quid on your Sangria.

Happy New Year.
I wish you all the best in 2004. I don't make New Year Resolutions (if it's such a good idea, why didn't I do it last year?), so don't expect to see a list of promises here.

Instead I thought I would pass on a story from the Independent that perfectly illustrates the arrogance of the ruling elite in this country.

Click here!

The story concerns a poll conducted by BBC Radio 4 in which listeners were invited to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.

As the paper reports:

But yesterday, 26,000 votes later, the winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.

Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.

"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

Having recovered his composure, Mr Pound told The Independent: "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4. I would have expected this result if there had been a poll in The Sun. Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"

Well, funnily enough, Mr Pound, YES THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE DO WANT! How dare you judge people for wanting to protect themselves, their family or even their property?

I certainly hope that Pound's views get the widest possible audience to show just what happens when some people get to Westminster. And I also hope that his constituency dispatches him at the earliest opportunity, so he can go home and make scones and cocoa for the next burglar who drops by to loot his valuables.

I also love the idea that Radio 4's audience will have to be re-evaluated after this! What a disappointment for a politician to actually be confronted by the reality of what the public really wants! It brings to mind the famous Bertold Brecht quip.

Back in 1953, East German workers staged a revolt against the Communist regime that had failed to deliver the workers' paradise that it had promised earlier. The leader of the Communist Party issued a statement regretting that the people had lost the confidence of the government. Poet and Playwright Berthold Brecht wrote a sardonic poem suggesting that the government should dissolve the people and elect a new one.

Pound would no doubt approve.

Can I count on your support?
I don't know whether to believe my hit-counter. Recently it's recorded some very high daily results. It tells me that on December 25th I got over 350 hits! I got over 200 a few days earlier.

It's possible that my debates with James Butler's Armchair Angst ( http://james.butler.name/weblog/blogger.html ) have brought me more readers but I can't believe that this is all there is to it. So if anyone has seen a link to this blog from another site, please let me know at sleeplessyoung@aol.com

If someone has listed me on their blogroll I'm delighted to hear about it.

Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings!
Notice how I didn't use the words Christ or Christmas? I enjoy this time of year. Mankind has celebrated it for centuries. Long before Christ is supposed to have been born, the Romans called it Saturnalia. It's the time of the year when the days start to get longer in the northern hemisphere. When the early Christians wanted to popularise their religion they hijacked this winter festival. I resent this, because I always enjoy it for what it is: an orgy of consumerism, a break from work and a fun time with friends and relatives. But the church tries to make us feel guilty about losing the `true meaning of Christmas' when it itself stole the real message:

The sun, not the Son, is coming back.

The good news of the Gospel isn't really good news at all. We are all on a journey to damnation but we can be saved provided that we believe in something for which there is no evidence. Most of us will fail and be tortured for eternity when we die.

Jimmy Cagney never said `You dirty rat!'. Humphrey Bogart never said `Play it again, Sam.' None of the old Tarzan films featured the line `Me Tarzan, You Jane'. No episode of Star Trek has ever featured the line `Beam me up Scotty'. No Sherlock Holmes book includes the line `Elementary, my dear Watson'. Like a game of Chinese Whispers, people `remember' things that were never uttered in the first place. A similar false memory shapes the common view of Christ.

Many people think Jesus was a good person. They can't have read the New Testament. He did do some nice things, like saving the woman who was due to be stoned for adultery, but he also said some terrible things and I don't find it appropriate that we should celebrate what he said and did. Of all the religious leaders, Christ stands out as probably the most anti-family. The way that Christianity is presented as having 'family values' has to be one of the most amazing examples of 'spin' of all time. Again and again, Christ speaks out against the family.

Here are some actual quotes from Jesus as related in the King James Version -

St Luke Chapter14 Verse26:
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Go and look for it yourself. It's clearly stated. You must HATE your family members. I know that some of you think that there is probably some context in which it means something different. I don't see any. It's clearly designed to make people abandon their families to follow him. It is just what I would expect from the leader of a brainwashing cult. In fact I'm sure that such cults use this passage to separate followers from loved ones. It's one of many reasons I can't be a Christian. There is simply no way that I am going to hate my mother, father or sister because of someone I've never met.

In case you think that this is an isolated incident, check out:

St Matthew Chapter10 Verse21:
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

So I guess as long as I get all my family killed before any of them get to me, I'm OK. Thanks, "Prince-of-peace". Christ makes it clear that he is going to split families. He does this when he tells people that he has NOT come on Earth to bring peace:

St Matthew Chapter10 Verse34
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

So now you know whom to blame if you end up fighting with Mum and Dad over the turkey. We are even rewarded if we abandon our families!

St Mark Chapter10 Verse29:
And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

This is made clearer elsewhere:

St Matthew Chapter 19 Verse 29:
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

We are not supposed to refer to our own fathers as `father'. How ridiculous is that?

St Matthew Chapter23 Verse9:
Call no man your father upon the earth.

In St Luke Chapter 9 Verse 60 he tells a young man not to bother attending the funeral of his own father with the meaningless nonsense `Let the dead bury their dead'. To say that this is inconsiderate of a bereaved person's feelings is putting it mildly. If someone said that to me in the same situation, they would be unconscious before they hit the floor.

Christ clearly has little understanding of human emotions. One of the big reasons to believe in any religion is the hope of meeting loved ones again in the afterlife. I think most of us imagine such reunions. They are the carrot. So what does he do? Faced with enquiries from people wanting to know what happens to a woman who marries several times in her life, he is forced to admit:

St Luke Chapter 20 Verse 35:
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

Does this mean that married people can't get into Heaven or just that marriage ends with death? It's not well expressed. Why can't an all-powerful deity come up with some way of making us reunite with those we loved on earth? Frankly that's the main thing I would want from the afterlife. There is of course the other problem of how I'm supposed to be happy in Heaven if people I knew went to Hell. How could I tolerate that? Would I have no conscience?

Elsewhere, Christ advocates mass murder.

St Luke Chapter 19 Verse 27:
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

Now that's a call to arms! Bad things are planned for those who reject Christ's messengers. Any city that rejects him suffers a fate worse than Sodom and Gomorrha. Quite how Mecca is still standing today must remain a continuing mystery. He tells his discilples:

St Mark Chapter6 Verse11:
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Some of you might know some ardent Christians. How do the men react to the advice he offers to seek self-castration?

St Matthew Chapter19 Verse12:
For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

How do the women react to being told that if their husbands divorce them, then they themselves become adulterers and that anyone who subsequently marries them is guilty of adultery too?

St Matthew Chapter5 Verse31:
But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever that shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Was Christ racist? It's hard to know what to make of the next passage. When confronted by a woman whose daughter was possessed by demons, he declines to help and compares her to a dog. The woman was Greek and he told her that his priority was to treat the `children'. Does this mean that he only wanted to treat Semitic people? It's only when the woman goes along with the insult and agrees to be called a dog that he relents and treats the afflicted girl. Who is the better person in this story?

St Mark Chapter7 Verse25:
For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Christians unless they happen to be bigots. Many admirable people want a path to doing good in the world. Most don't know about the horrors that I have just related. It's just a shame that the person they worship didn't hold such worthy ideals.

Enjoy your mince pies!

For better or worse?
I discovered an anti-marriage website the other day: www.nomarriage.com. It's written by a single American in his thirties. At first glance, it's easy to dismiss as a piece of ranting misogyny, but the statistics and arguments he marshalls in his case deserve serious thought.

The US divorce rate is around 50 per cent. Some will point out that many divorces occur to people who have divorced before, so a single thirty-year old with no previous marriages shouldn't take it that he only has an even money chance of staying hitched. But as the author points out, many of those who remain married are those from religious backgrounds - either the protestants of the bible belt or the catholics, especially hispanics. So if you are not in that category, you might do well to be on your guard.

The author blames two things. The first is unrealistic and unachievable expectations by single women. The other is that the divorce process is biased against men, giving unsatisfied women almost no reason to stay in the marriage. The fact that most divorces are initiated by women seems to support this. In the vast majority of custody cases, the woman gets the children, with fathers having limited access. Divorce is often a financial disaster for men too.

If you are a young man considering marriage then it doesn't take too many horror stories from older men to deter you. And the evidence is that men ARE being deterred. The age of first marriage continues to rise.

The blame he places on women is actually on American women. In his intro page, he states:

Foreign women from South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia make much better wives than American women. An American woman has several fundamental problems that will never go away and that will get much worse a few years after she is married:

Her inherent anti-male bias and pre-occupation with fairness that was drilled into her at high school, college, and through the media. Her constant confrontations and trying to prove herself and to make a point. Her self-centeredness, her ridiculously high expectations, her sense of entitlement, her high-maintenance, superficial, and stuck up attitude, her snootiness and her sense of superiority. This "princess" syndrome means that she will always think that she is better than you, and that she deserves and she is entitled to whatever she wants from you. Her general mental instability and psychological disorders. Her using sex as a weapon and reward to get things.

Foreign women generally don't have any of these problems. Marrying an American woman simply does not make sense. The ONLY reason men stay with American women is because they did not have enough exposure to foreign women. Any man who spent a few months in Brazil or Russia will not even look at American women again.

And I can't argue much with the last point, as I know four men of my age range who have married Russian women and all are extremely happy. They seem to have found women who accept them for what they are. The problem for me is that I find myself in agreement with him, except that I'm thinking of British women while he's thinking of Americans. I have found American women a breath of fresh air by comparison and the snootiness he derides seems to be mainly a metropolitan thing - think of Ally McBeal (set in Boston) or Sex and the City (New York).

Ally McBeal provides an useful example. In the first episode she announces: "Here I am, a victim of my own choices". One can't help wondering what she's talking about. A victim?!? She is in one of the most highly paid professions (law) in the richest country in the world and she's young and of above-average attractiveness. Yet somehow, she's convinced herself that she is a victim. How on earth is she ever going to be happy with that attitude?

I know that Ally McBeal is fiction, so don't write letters but she has many real life sisters. For a true to life insight, I recommend Toby Young's (no relation) 'How to lose friends and alienate people'. In it he describes how despite the fact that single women outnumber single men in New York, the women he encountered in the Conde Nast offices where he worked in his brief journalistic career could barely bring themselves to look at him.

A few years ago, I went out with a women who had a highly paid job in the City. One day she lent me a book called 'Mr Maybe' by Jane Green and told me that she identified with the story's heroine, Libby.

She might as well have said 'RUN, DON'T WALK!'. I read the book and was horrified at the incredible shallowness of Libby. She loves a man named Chris, who is a stuggling author and is surprised when after a couple of weeks he leaves to focus on completing his book, as he's totally broke and it is his only hope of a future.

Then she goes out with someone called McMahon, who is rich and influential. He's also a nervous virgin and their first sexual encounter is awkward. Rather than calmly and maturely suggesting new techniques, she erupts with rage.

She bumps into Chris again and on this occasion summons up enough interest in his ambitions to actually ask him what his book is about!!!!! Incredible as it seems it takes her until about page 300 to do this. Needless to say at the end of the story she rejects McMahon, gets back with Chris (who is suitably apologetic for not staying with her) and then in the last line, we learn that Chris has just struck a deal for his book; the message being that Libby is to be financial rewarded for her decision too.

Utterly sickening it was too and I gave it back to my girlfriend and casually enquired whether she was aware that the heroine was actually the villain of the story. We didn't last much longer, though we are still on friendly terms.

But what would the author of nomarriage.com make of all of this? Well one page of the site is titled 'American women are fucked, they priced themselves out of the market' and that pretty much sums up the attitude of the men whose correspondence he quotes. But the page that terrifies me is the one titled 'Marriage means you become a slave to your job. Quotes from readers include:

"I'm Living the American Dream and Hating Every Minute of It. I'm a 38 y/o male who is married to a beautiful woman and have 1 kid with 1 more on the way. We have what many consider to be the ideal life. Nice house, good jobs, SUV and a overall nice lifestyle. Problem is I hate my life. I feel trapped and destined to live the life of a corporate warrior and familyman when I really long for something else. I've been married for 9 years now and while I love my wife, I feel that I need more space and to be honest long for some variety. I wish I could walk away from it all."

And he's one of the happy ones.

I don't want anyone jumping to conclusions about my parents by the way. Both worked. They are VERY happy and have been so for over 35 years.

But something seems to have changed in that time in the way that the sexes relate. Almost every television advert I see presents men as being stupid and unworthy of the women they know or love. I often come away agasp at the sheer rudeness and condescension of many women I talk to. I can't be bothered with it, frankly.

I stand by my conviction that it is men who are the romantics. Take a look at the personal columns of any newspaper and you'll notice that many if not all of the women want a man who is 'solvent' (I just about qualify here). Then try to find one man who expects earning power from a potential wife. I've never seen it.

Online nipping.
If you've played on Pokerstars in the last three months, you will have noticed an annoying new phenomenom: online nipping. Ever since the site introduced the facility whereby players can transfer money from one account to another without writing e-mails to the support department, a new form of begging has appeared in which players write in the chat box that they just need $1 to get into a game.

There is nearly always a story and often a promise to repay double the amount the next day. Refusals offend and often lead to insults. I have taken to reporting it to the support department every single time it happens and I state this in the chat box in case any other potential 'nippers' are waiting in the wings.

The support department always thank me for bringing it to their attention and tell me that they have either warned the player not to do it again or that their chat privilege has been revoked.

But the situation isn't improving. The threat to bar chat isn't a strong one if people can open new accounts with ease. Something else is required to nip the nipping in the bud.

So I have written to support with a proposed solution: Raise the minimum transfer to $50. This would have little effect on those who genuinely wish to help out friends but it would make most cold-call nipping an impossibility since few people are willing to give $50 to a complete stranger. And most online nippers know this.

If it gets adopted, you heard it first here!

Charles Kennedy can shut the @*^& up.
Earlier this year, one mainstream British political party stood out as being opposed to the war against the Iraqi leadership. It was the Liberal Democrat party. Its leader, Charles Kennedy even went as far as to go to a protest in Hyde Park and marched under the banner 'Not in my name'.

Later in the party's annual conference he gave this speech:

Click here for the transcript of the speech

in which he says:

"But we also have in mind another very important group of people - the innocent civilian population of Iraq. They have suffered terribly under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. There is no question about that. But war could so easily make their plight so much worse. There are no bombs sufficiently sophisticated, sufficiently smart, to avoid causing civilian casualties. And bombs aren't the only danger they face.

Any war will cause a refugee crisis of huge proportions - not to mention the dangers of famine and disease.

There are concerns nearer home. There is a real danger that the war could alienate British Muslims. Many moderate Muslims already feel that they are victims of prejudice. Action against Saddam could fuel that prejudice and leave the law-abiding Muslim population of Britain feeling excluded and aggrieved.

Those are factors which have to be weighed very carefully in the balance before any decision is taken to go to war. They're factors which I fear haven't been considered nearly hard enough.

Well he was proved wrong on almost every score.

1. Where is the refugee crisis? Where is the humanitarian catastrophe? There simply isn't one. There is of course a problem of looting and terrorism. The former is aggrevated by the fact that Hussein released many criminals before abandoning Baghdad. The latter is the actions of people who want to be the new slavemasters of the Iraqi people and who hope that they can bully their way to power.

I haven't seen the figures for the UK, but I do know that asylum applications for Iraqis wanting to go to Germany have fallen off a cliff since the start of the war.

Click here to see a graph of applications to Germany in 2002 and 2003.

Notice the huge fall in such applications since February. Iraqis are staying in Iraq to make a go of it. The refugee camps that were set up in Jordan to cope with the human flood are empty.

Where is the famine and disease, Charles?

2. The British muslim population has remained entirely peaceful. Although he doesn't make an outright prediction that they will riot, he clearly uses language designed to lead us to that conclusion, so that he can say 'I told you so' later on if rioting occurs. Well it didn't, perhaps because the people he's talking about have more common sense than he does.

3. There were civilian casualties and every one was a tradegy but the Hussein regime was killing 200 people per week - and that's not including the numbers killed in the wars against Iran and Kuwait. If we take 10,000 as the number killed by the US invasion, we are left with the conclusion that after only 50 weeks, the invasion will have SAVED lives. Every week thereafter, another 200 people will have been spared.

So, having demonstrated that he knows nothing, Kennedy should be expected to keep his stupid mouth shut. Instead he comes out and says that it's great that Hussein is captured.

What, Charles? You didn't want this to happen. If you march under the banner 'Not in my name' then you have nothing to say. So say that instead.

Lisbon.
I went to Lisbon for the weekend of the 5/7 with a cousin. I've been to Portugal before when I was 13 but that was on a two week holiday to the Algarve. I have only heard good things about the city, but had no plans to go until he suggested it. We only went for three days, so I can't claim any authority, but I would recommend it for a pleasant city break.

The people all seemed really friendly, which straight away marks it out from London and Paris. However, there didn't seem to be many people of my age around. The tourists were also of a far higher calibre than is normal. I didn't see public drunkeness or loutish behaviour.

The city is full of small cafes - all selling the exact same pastries, doughnuts and cakes. In fact the shops all reminded me of the 'Lisboa Patisserie' on King's Road, which I like to visit every few months or so. What is really unusual are the 'ginjinha' booths. These are small shopfronts, like the the newsagents you see in railways stations, only smaller, which sell a cherry liquor that is 20 per cent alcohol. They are ideal for alcoholics as all that is necessary is to stick your money on the counter and you are rewarded with a little plastic cup of the drink, with cherries in the bottom for extra flavour. Nowhere have I seen the act of drinking so reduced to its bare essentials. It's a very nice drink too.

Many of streets are covered in mosaic - using small stones roughly square with sides the length of an adult thumb. They don't always stay in place and there are many patches where they have come loose. The city is on several hills and probably isn't ideal for wheelchair users.

I wish we had studied Portuguese at school instead of French. The former is spoken in Europe, South America (Brazil), Africa (Angola and Mozambique), India (Goa) and Asia (Macau). Nearly all the continents are covered. What does French teach you? How to read the menu in pretentious restaurants. Time to change the national curriculum.

Veni, vidi, vici?
I have received an email from James Butler informing me that his blog has been deleted. He didn't clarify whether this was due to a technical hitch or of his own doing. Although I disagreed with some of what he wrote, I am grateful that there are bloggers who have escaped the rat race and for whom there is more to life than the purely material. Please come back!

When Pundits attack.
James Butler has responded to my post below. It helps to read his piece or the rest of this won't make a lot of sense. He has paid my arguments a compliment by resorting to personal insults. These start with: His view of the world is American because of a constant diet of American television and food from what I last saw of his waistline. James' abilty to deduce the national origin of my food by merely glancing at my stomach must make him a strong candidate for a detective's job in Scotland Yard. By stating that my outlook on life is `American' he means that I am incapable of perceiving the truth in the impartial way that he does. In the court of Armchair Angst, you are innocent until proven American.

He claims that I oversimplify life. I have learned from past history with many people over many arguments that this is coded language for `David doesn't agree with me and when I try to retreat into grey, he sticks his ground.' James professes not to understand the world and thinks `those with at least half a mind don't either'. It's difficult to argue with someone who thinks that if he does understand the world he must have gone stupid.

He calls me a `typical Wannabe yank'. I won't take that as an insult, though I am perfectly happy being British. There is much that I admire about the US and I frequently wish that US levels of service and organisation applied here. America is a cultural exporter. If you see a standard of living portrayed on US TV that exceeds your own, then you might feel that your life is worthless. But that isn't the end of the matter. We are free people in a free country and if we decide that a lack of coffee shops a la Starbucks is a blow to national prestige then the solution isn't to go into a funk about it. You can instead open your own chain and try to do better. That's what Coffee Republic, Caf? Nero, Caf? Uno and numerous other operators have done. We are also perfectly capable of selling products and ideas to the US. "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" & "The Weakest Link" were both sold to the US networks after their success here. "Late Night Poker" pioneered the idea of televised poker with under the table cameras showing the cards. For a while American poker writers were jealous of what we had!

The remainder of James' rant concerns the decadence of the US. He manages to compare the killings in the circuses of Rome with the ownership of cars that have poor fuel economy. The fact that he sees these as being morally equivalent tells us far more about him than either `empire'. The basic outline of his argument about the US is that of `imperial overstretch'. It's not a new theory. Several years ago I was worried about it too. I even went as far as to buy a bestselling book about it: Paul Kennedy's `Preparing for the Twentieth Century'. And nicely gathering dust it is too. In the four or five years since I've bought it, I haven't read more than one paragraph. I did however read another doom-and-gloom book by William Rees-Mogg and James Davidson called `The Great Reckoning'. So worried was I by the predictions of its chapter about urban America (titled `Drugs, delusions and the imperial culture of the slums') that when I needed to prepare something for a presentation course at Midland Bank, I delivered a talk on `The Decline of the United States'.

I cringe now to think that in the decade or so since I gravely told my audience of the forthcoming collapse of the US, the country went on to record nine consecutive years of economic growth. Didn't they know that they were supposed to suffer economic disaster? The cheek of those damn yanks! And I was so solemn too.

After the briefest of recessions, the US economy is now growing at over 7 per cent! For an advanced economy, that is a truly incredible result. I guess in part, I'm trying to spare Butler the embarrassment I now feel. Don't dig any deeper James, you'll only regret it! He writes: `But how much longer will it last? When the money runs out and the heathens batter their doors down then they won't be as happy as their TV persona would suggest. Yet again he is obsessed with the decline of empires. In particular the one he has read about the most. In James' world, all odes lead to Rome.

Concerning the middle east, he falls into the trap of the `undistributed middle'. This is the logical fallacy that goes `All dogs have four legs. My table has four legs. Therefore it's a dog'. When writing about the attack on the WTC he says that they were `an attack on capital. An attack on those who will not accept that there are some in the world who do not want to drink Coca Cola, eat McDonalds and wear Nike sports wear'. Apart from the fact that Coca Cola is famously headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, I want to scream when I read this drivel. No James NO! That's why YOU would attack the US. It's not why they have. They are not the same as you.

Al-Qaeda's philosophical underpinnings come from the writings of the late Egyptian theocratic writer Sayyid Qutb. His most noted works are "Milestones" and "In the shade of the Koran". It was he who popularised the idea of jihad and martyrdom in the latter half of the twentieth century. I intend to write about him another time but in essence what he hated most from his visits to the US in the 1940s was the separation of church and state, as well as the very act of independent thought outside the strictures of the Koran. He thought that all human misery in the west stemmed from the Christian idea of `render unto Caesar'. In his mind, happiness could only be achieved if we all returned to following God's orders. It's not just about not wanting Coke or Pepsi. It's about not wanting to think for yourself or tolerating others doing so.

Bizarrely he continues `...an attack by those who want nothing to do with the way that the US sees the world, who have no other course of action, because they do not have a state that champions their cause.' This is all great rhetoric, except that it's total bollocks. They did have a state. It was called Afghanistan and it became more corrupted by bin Laden's millions than any Central American nation ever was in the wildest dreams of United Fruit. The country was used as a terrorist training camp for years.

I stick to my assessment that the troops should remain in Iraq longer. James says `We can't keep fighting this anti-terror war forever'. I don't think we can afford to stop fighting it. Of course the US will leave Iraq eventually but there is much work still to be done, just as there was in Japan and Germany after WW2. Those countries have become free and prosperous. So too will Iraq.

In a recent update to his site, James picks on an incident in the US and concludes that it's another failure for multiculturalism. His ability to draw conclusion from to specific and apply them to the general is undiminished. Personally I prefer to look at the bigger picture. In the last decade or so, the US economy has grown by leaps and bounds. While over in mono-cultured Japan there has been a recession of about the same length. There's nothing like facts to spoil a good rant, eh James?

Throwing the baby out with the Baath Water.
What do you call someone who sets out to prove one thing and usually succeeds in proving the opposite? Over at Armchair Angst (http://james.butler.name/weblog/blogger.html), fellow poker-playing blogger James Butler talks of `making sense of a senseless world', yet more frequently succeeds only in expressing his inability to make sense of things that make perfect sense to most people.

A recurrent theme is his very own brand of Anti-Americanism. Not for him the burning of the US flag or wearing a Bush face mask while standing on stilts in a protest march. No, instead he writes of the country as an empire sure to fall, spreading a decadent anti-culture to the rest of the world, which we absorb at our peril. In his article of November 23, he appears to suggest that he emigrated from Britain to Ireland to get away from people using American terminology in day-to-day parlance. Way to go, Jim-boy!

James despairs of the popularity of American culture and can't seem to grasp why it's accepted so readily. The answer, which I understood when I was about 7 years old, is that Americans look like they are having more fun. As a child I couldn't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to watch Coronation Street when there was the Six Million Dollar Man. Why voluntarily depress yourself?

Every visit I have undertaken to the US has underlined this. The people there are far more cheery and seem to want to enjoy life without any of the existential weltschmerz that so many people on this side of the Atlantic seem to think is necessary to affect in order to be taken seriously. Miserable Europeans should take heed of what I saw the hostess of an Indian music channel tell her viewers: "You only live once!" (thereby rejecting thousands of years of her culture's belief in re-incarnation).

Now Damn the man, he's only gone and outlined the reasons for his mixed views on the US while I'm half-way through writing this! Oh well, I shall press on and cover another point he makes. Elsewhere, also on November 23, he asks:

Should the troops return from Iraq now? Yes, they should. The job is done. Saddam is no longer a threat to Iraq and Iraq is no longer a threat to the rest of the region. The foreign troops are only there through altruism now and it is getting them nowhere. More troops have been lost since the Iraqi army was defeated than during the war. The country is in chaos as the various factions fight each other and the fundamentalists target foreign soldiers. We can safely leave the country and let it get on with destroying itself. If it becomes a threat to the region in the future then we just bomb it back to the stone age again. Sorry to speak out in a non-Liberal way but if the Iraqis are not interested in our way of life then that is ok.

Since he has taken the trouble to explain some of the assumptions in his view, I can respond to them. Firstly he seems to take it as a given that the fact that more troops have been killed since the end of the defeat of the army than were killed in the war, is somehow a meaningful criticism. I'm not sure why the latter figure is taken as the denominator though. It's a small number compared to the numbers killed in the sort of terrorist outrages that the whole neo-con project is designed to prevent happening in the future. Two hundred Africans were killed in the two embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Roughly three thousand were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001. And note that it was the World Trade Centre, not an `American Trade Centre' that was destroyed. A very large number of non-Americans were killed that day, including people from Muslim countries like Pakistan.

A lot of people assume that the WTC was filled with Wall Street Types - the `masters of the Universe' bond traders and such wheelers and dealers. In fact the buildings were mostly filled with small companies - branches of Taiwanese banks and lots of little freight forwarding and import-export companies. It was an attack on all of us.

James also states that Iraq is in a state of chaos. This just isn't true. Most of the attacks happen in the so-called `Sunni Triangle' and it's not surprising that this is so. The war shattered the master-slave relationship within the country and that area contains a large concentration of former masters. Their reaction to the arrival of US troops is not indicative of a cross section of national opinion.

The fundamentalists who are attacking soldiers in Iraq would merely switch to attacking civilians in Europe, Israel or the US if the troops left. As things stand, they are attacking armed professional soldiers instead. What price would any bookmaker has given on September 12th 2001 that after two years there would not have been another major terrorist attack on US soil? Twenty to one? Forty? I don't know, but it's likely to have been in double figures, that's for sure.

The wider benefit of the entire war would be missed if we were to abandon it now. The whole idea is to create one successful Arab capitalist democracy in a country that borders Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Something needs to be in place before the Saudi Royal family loses control. The Saudi youth, who are the region's other Weapon of Mass Destruction need to see an alternative to the theocratic madness of Iran, the death-cult hell of the Palestinian West bank and the despotism of Syria and the former Iraqi regime.

And the worst thing possible would be for us to do as James suggests and leave the country to the Arab world to sort out. That's like letting the school bullies take charge of the sick bay. The whole point of the undertaking is to shatter the status quo,thus giving hope to the masses, so that they are not drawn to the madness of al-Qaeda or the Baath party.

Let's see it through for the benefit of all our futures.