Robert Fisk writes eloquently on the reality, ugliness, pain and horror of violent death. Of course George the draft dodger and Tony the moralist will never have witnessed scenes such as he describes.

Senses working overtime: a walk in Ramallah
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Several times today (so far) I have listened to the Loose Fur album, which, as everyone knows, is a colloboration between Glenn Kotchke ; Jim O'Rourke and Jeff Tweedy. Is it too early to be thinking about album of the year?

Euroweenies: what America thinks of Europe.

Running on Empty seems to be on one cable channel or another almost constantly, and despite a gratingly irritating performance by Judd Hersch I have to say it's a diverting enough way to kill a couple of hours. Anyway, they have finally caught up with the guy it was based on.

My God!!! Ed Vuilliamy on the forces that drive young George. Thoroughly chuffin depressing.

Ian Ridley on the exploits, or non exploits, of Farnborough in the F.A Cup. He seems a bit ....sour, mind you, there is much to be sour about.

Dick Cheney: man of principle.
Cheney on why we souldn't go after Saddam:
Dick Cheney explaining in a BBC Radio 4 interview why the Bush Administration ended the 1991 Gulf War without pushing on to Baghdad: "If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein - assuming we could have found him - we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground some place. He would not have been easy to capture. Then you've got to put a new government in his place and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government or a Shia government or a Sunni government? How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?" ('The Desert War - A Kind of Victory', 16 Feb 1992, cited in Freedman and Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991, p413.) (via nth position)