Intelligence work, she insists, is not at all as it is portrayed in spy thrillers - although I can't help noticing piles of Nigel West paperbacks in her flat. "John le Carre did a lot of harm because he talked about the whole thing as if it were a series of acts of treachery and betrayal, and it's not," she says. "It's about knowing human beings and being able to relate to a very wide range of people. People talk to you if they want someone to know what's happening and you're the person they trust. But you have to retain your own values, you have to believe in your own country."

Posted by GeeTee at April 26, 2003 03:50 PM | TrackBack 0

The recommendation to postpone non-essential travel to the three areas will be in effect for at least three weeks, twice the maximum incubation period, David Heymann, WHO director of communicable diseases, told reporters.

Posted by GeeTee at April 23, 2003 10:18 AM | TrackBack 0

I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

Posted by GeeTee at April 23, 2003 06:24 AM | TrackBack 0

A senior US official acknowledged: "It will make them nervous."

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 10:31 AM | TrackBack 0

I caught a bit of the O'Reilly Factor during dinner last night, during which Bill berated Jeremy Glick, a signatory of the Not in Our Name ad whose father died in the 9/11 attacks. I couldn't find a transcript on the Fox site, but happily, one came in over the transom (probably pulled off Lexis, so no link available).

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 10:07 AM | TrackBack 0

"I would prefer we got decent showers and toilets sorted out first," muttered one high-ranking officer.

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 09:53 AM | TrackBack 0

The pastor says he was prepared to testify on the couple's behalf and explain what appears to him to have been a cultural misunderstanding. Jaeger, who grew up in Peru, says breast-feeding is culturally important in his native country and considered acceptable to do in public, particularly in the country's jungle regions. "My cousin sent me a picture of her newborn, and it was of the baby being breast-fed," he says. "As someone who has lived here for 20 years, I asked myself, 'Why did she send me that picture?' To her, it was nothing."

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 06:22 AM | TrackBack 0

Saddam's acting in the picture is actually quite good," al-Sabah notes. "One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you almost can forget you're watching a low-budget sexploitation film."

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 06:17 AM | TrackBack 0

If this offends you, or if you don't like looking at penises, or if you are under 18 years of age, you should go elsewhere.

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 06:11 AM | TrackBack 0

Cian Cullinan has come up with a eye-pleasing way to keep in touch with his girlfriend Ciara, via a fake potted plant that opens up into a beautiful flower when she logs on to her computer.

Posted by GeeTee at April 21, 2003 06:07 AM | TrackBack 0

In 1823 he moved to Paris, where he read insatiably, and wrote unperformable plays, overheated poems and a collection of stories which, when it was published in 1826 at his own expense, sold four copies.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 06:47 AM | TrackBack 0

At a recent press conference, Kenneth S. Rogoff, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, referred to American financial dependence on foreign investors, saying he would be "pretty concerned" about "a developing country that had gaping current account deficits year after year, as far as the eye can see, of 5 percent or more, with budget ink spinning from black into red." Of course, he hastily added, the United States is "not an emerging market." But, he concluded, "at least a little bit of that calculus still applies."

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 05:38 AM | TrackBack 0

For all its claims to Islamic piety, the regime's elite was Western to its core. Their grand homes hid American computers, whiskey, pornography, videos and pop music. They drove big Chevys, smoked Marlboros and read Newsweek. They fired Beretta pistols and Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolvers in an indoor shooting range. They drank French Champagne and Tanqueray gin with a twist.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 05:36 AM | TrackBack 0

Another tension or contradiction also occurs in both the life and the work. Waugh was a celebrated misanthrope and an obvious misogynist, capable of alarming and hateful bouts of anger and cruelty toward friends, children, and colleagues. When his friend Clarissa Churchill married a divorced man, he wrote to her saying that she had deliberately intensified "the loneliness of Calvary." During his wartime service -- which, it must be said, was often conspicuous for its gallantry -- he almost had to be protected from assassination at the hands of the soldiers under his command. Permanently injured by the flagrant adultery of his first wife, and almost certainly a badly repressed homosexual, he made a living example of Cyril Connolly's "Theory of Permanent Adolescence," whereby Englishmen of a certain caste are doomed to re-enact their school days. The vices of the boy are notably unappealing in the grown man, and Waugh was frequently upbraided for the apparent contrast between his extreme nastiness and his ostentatious religiosity. To this he famously replied (to Nancy Mitford) that nobody could imagine how horrible he would be if he were not a Catholic. A nice piece of casuistry, but not one that bears much scrutiny. In at least two cases -- his support for the Croatian Fascist party during his wartime stint in the Balkans, and his animosity toward Jews -- there was a direct connection between his spleen and his faith. And in at least two of the novels, Helena (which is based on the life of the early Christian empress of that name) and Brideshead, the narrative is made ridiculous by a sentimental and credulous approach to miracles or the supernatural. This is what Orwell meant by the incompatibility of faith with maturity.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 05:22 AM | TrackBack 0

The third item was a dual quarter pound cellophane wrapped cardboard package of loose leaf Chinese tea. Unfortunately, it was of a well known variety known as Gunpowder Tea, and had this printed on the packaging.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 04:31 AM | TrackBack 0

The doll says, "There are no Americans infidels in Baghdad, never. Our initial assessment is that they will all die. I am not scared and neither should you be. They're not even within 100 miles of Baghdad."

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 03:40 AM | TrackBack 0

At least three English classes have been opened unofficially in the city, with teachers who provide instruction on sentences like: 'One hundred dollars', 'I want to be your wife' and 'Give me your watch', the Nguoi Lao Dong (Labourer) newspaper reported on Friday.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 03:38 AM | TrackBack 0

[Carl] Lewis went on to win gold at Seoul in the long jump -- and in the 100 metres after Johnson was stripped of his gold medal and world record after being disqualified for using steroids.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 03:31 AM | TrackBack 0

I've never seen a war with so few 'returns'. The Iraqi army was like a ghost. It barely existed. Over the three weeks, I only saw the adversary fire a few short-range rockets and a few shots. I saw deserted trenches, a dead Iraqi soldier lying next to a piece of bread and some old equipment. Nothing that really made you feel that there was a real confrontation going on, nothing comparable to the massiveness of the means at the Americans' disposal.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 03:26 AM | TrackBack 0

Powell cited existing traffic laws, which allow for "electrically-driven mobility assistance devices" on sidewalks only if the operator has a disability. Additionally, Powell noted, the Segway does not yet meet existing qualifications as a motor vehicle, as there are no standardized provisions for its registration, insurance or safety equipment.

Posted by GeeTee at April 20, 2003 03:24 AM | TrackBack 0

Today, here at the plant at Philadelphia's Naval Business Center, the experimental feedstock is turkey processing-plant waste: feathers, bones, skin, blood, fat, guts. A forklift dumps 1,400 pounds of the nasty stuff into the machine's first stage, a 350-horsepower grinder that masticates it into gray brown slurry. From there it flows into a series of tanks and pipes, which hum and hiss as they heat, digest, and break down the mixture. Two hours later, a white-jacketed technician turns a spigot. Out pours a honey-colored fluid, steaming a bit in the cold warehouse as it fills a glass beaker.    
It really is a lovely oil.    
"The longest carbon chains are C-18 or so," says Appel, admiring the liquid. "That's a very light oil. It is essentially the same as a mix of half fuel oil, half gasoline."

Posted by GeeTee at April 17, 2003 08:21 AM | TrackBack 0

However, any attempt to use money from the oil-for-food programme for rebuilding, or to carve up Iraq's oil industry among a select group of private companies, would run into stiff opposition. Chris Patten, the external-affairs commissioner of the European Union, has already described America's reconstruction plans as "maladroit". Even companies in Britain, America's coalition partner, are dismayed at having been largely left out of the contract-bidding process. Opposition from the Russians, French and Germans is much more robust. At a summit last weekend, their leaders insisted that the running and rebuilding of Iraq should be placed under the auspices of the UN. For the Russians and French, there are big commercial interests as well as a principle at stake here.

Posted by GeeTee at April 17, 2003 08:19 AM | TrackBack 0

A former Iraqi military chief-of-staff, who turned against Saddam in 1996, he has publicly declared that he was prepared to lead a rebel army into Iraq. "All real Iraqis want to overthrow this regime and I am one of them," he declared from his home in Denmark.

Posted by GeeTee at April 15, 2003 05:02 AM | TrackBack 0

Ha! I have made myself laugh! I will not gloat further over this thrilling but predictable defeat which vindicates me so completely. Suffice to say that Max Clifford owes me a box of Cohibas. Thanks, everybody, and Death To America.

Posted by GeeTee at April 12, 2003 03:26 PM | TrackBack 0

"Any occupying power that has destroyed a regime is responsible for maintenance of hospitals, medical services and food supplies. The British are failing to fulfil their responsibilities under the Geneva Convention."

Posted by GeeTee at April 12, 2003 02:26 PM | TrackBack 0

I say now death...

Posted by GeeTee at April 12, 2003 02:03 PM | TrackBack 0

Two articles from The Hindu suggest the interesting world we’ve entered. In the first, India’s Union Minister for Civil Aviation says that the doctrine of “pre-emptive war” (relied upon by the United States to justify its war in Iraq) should be used to justify a war against Pakistan to counter its allegged support for “terrorism.” In the second article, Pakistan says that there is “ample proof that India possesses biological, chemical and other weapons of mass destruction” and of the “massacre of innocent civilians in Ahmedabad and Kashmir” and therefore is a fit case for “pre-emptive strike.”

Posted by GeeTee at April 12, 2003 01:52 PM | TrackBack 0

...he can't shake the memory of that stoning at Cornell. "It wasn't all the students. It was only a few. But it made an impression on me," he says, his pale blue eyes focusing on something outside the window, far away.

Posted by GeeTee at April 12, 2003 09:25 AM | TrackBack 0

The bill, introduced by Oregon Rep. Phil Barnhart, D-Eugene, last month, would require the state to consider using open-source software when buying new programs. Although the bill does not specifically mandate open-source software over proprietary software, the bill does say it cannot be excluded from the selection process. The bill, HB 2892, also says open-source options can "significantly reduce the state's costs of obtaining and maintaining software."

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:39 AM | TrackBack 0

World travelers will tell you that the thumbs-up sign in one culture will get you strung up in another. An American's "okay" sign, made by touching the tip of the thumb to the tip of the forefinger, in Latin America is like flipping the bird. If you hitchhike in Israel, don't use your thumb -- point your finger in the direction you want to go. Don't tap people on the head in the Buddhist world. Don't touch anyone with your left hand in North Africa. In Mongolia, you can't lean on the supporting pole of someone's yurt. In Japan, let the cabdriver open your door. In France, pressing a thumb against the fingertips and holding them in front of your face means something is ooh-la-la parfait; in Egypt, the same action means "Hold your damn horses!" Don't give someone in China a gift containing vinegar. In some countries, flicking your thumb across the teeth tells the other person he's a cheapskate. In others, the "V" sign can be negative, not positive. In just about every part of the planet, grabbing the crook of your elbow and raising your fist is not nice.

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:37 AM | TrackBack 0

"We're in the standby mode," the older man, a master sergeant, replied. "Stand by to stand by."

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:35 AM | TrackBack 0

"The Patriot Act has been an extremely useful tool, a demonstrated success, and we don't want that to expire on us," a senior department official said on condition of anonymity.

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:32 AM | TrackBack 0

Depending on how prosecutors interpret the legislation, Web site operators who feature sexually oriented art or graphic safe-sex demonstrations could face criminal prosecution if their Internet addresses are deigned misleading, noted Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:30 AM | TrackBack 0

Universal, which reaps about $6 billion in sales annually from artists such as 50 Cent, Shania Twain, U2 and Luciano Pavarotti, would be controlled by a maverick who revolutionized the computer market and coined the mantra ``rip, mix, burn,'' which many in the music business read as an invitation to electronic piracy.

(Unlikely, but would be interesting.)

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:28 AM | TrackBack 0

...Vayntrub, 20, is wary of potential viruses and "spyware" often loaded along with file-sharing software. She concedes, though, that she's not ethically opposed to sharing music: She constantly asks friends to burn CDs for her. "I don't remember the last time I bought a CD. But I do buy lots of blanks."

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 06:27 AM | TrackBack 0

A Virginia man has been sentenced to five months in prison and fined $28,500 for selling imported chips that illegally modify Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console.

Posted by GeeTee at April 11, 2003 05:06 AM | TrackBack 0

...According to His Autobiography, "Klaus Kinski: I Need Love," in Order of Mention

Posted by GeeTee at April 10, 2003 10:50 AM | TrackBack 0

Only one country, Canada, is ranked as reaching this level of complexity, and, for the third year running, it is seen as having the most sophisticated e-government.

Posted by GeeTee at April 09, 2003 02:17 PM | TrackBack 0

Like "Typhoid" Mary Mallon, who famously infected dozens of people in the New York area in the early 1900s and was forced by the government to live alone on an island, Mok is living her own modern-day exile in a hospital room networked with televisions and telephones.

Posted by GeeTee at April 09, 2003 02:16 PM | TrackBack 0

The intelligence sources de scribed their view that President Saddam had not been killed in Monday's attack as a "preliminary assessment", presumably from intelligence in Baghdad. But the Pentagon said yesterday it could be days before it was known for certain who had died.

Posted by GeeTee at April 08, 2003 07:07 PM | TrackBack 0

In a survey sent to 1,500 libraries last fall by the Library Research Center at the University of Illinois, the staffs at 219 libraries said they had cooperated with law enforcement requests for information about patrons; staffs at 225 libraries said they had not.

Posted by GeeTee at April 08, 2003 04:42 AM | TrackBack 0

The Portugal News has been told by a reliable source that the Carlyle Group meeting in Lisbon will discuss the relationship between the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) and Osama bin Laden. Many US officials claim that the SBC continues to finance his political activities, and has done so for many years. If true, this would place George Bush senior and his colleagues at the Carlyle Group in an embarrassing position. As managers of SBC's financial investments they might well be accused of indirectly aiding and abetting the United States' number one enemy.

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 08:27 PM | TrackBack 0

The soldiers and police who were supposed to be the bedrock of a stable postwar Afghanistan have gone unpaid for months and are drifting away.
At a time when the United States is promising a reconstructed democratic postwar Iraq, many Afghans are remembering hearing similar promises not long ago.
Instead, what they see is thieving warlords, murder on the roads, and a resurgence of Taliban vigilantism.

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 05:29 PM | TrackBack 0

She said artists make on average $13,000 a year and the tax revenue loss from their salaries would be negligible.

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 05:25 PM | TrackBack 0

Well, we're all against censorship -- or are we? While the ACLU and the usual band of First Amendment zealots are demanding let-it-all-hang-out Internet access in libraries, some resistance has arisen from an unexpected constituency: librarians. In Minneapolis last week, 12 librarians sued their employer in federal court, charging that the library's three-year-old Internet sites displayed ''virtually every imaginable kind of human sexual conduct,'' contributing to an ''intimidating, hostile and offensive workplace.'' ''We were living in hell, and they were unwilling to acknowledge the problem,'' plaintiff Wendy Adamson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In Toronto -- admittedly a city that won't be affected by the Supreme Court's decision -- a group of unruly teenagers chased a librarian out of her building when she shut off their Internet porn connection. A police officer told The Toronto Sun that teenagers consider the library better than an amusement arcade because the latter doesn't allow them free, unfettered access to all kinds of pornography.

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 05:23 PM | TrackBack 0

At the beginning of the 20th century the father of modern science fiction, Herbert George Wells, said in his writings on politics, "If we want to have an educated citizenship in a modern technological society, we need to teach them three things: reading, writing, and statistical thinking." At the beginning of the 21st century, how far have we gotten with this program? In our society, we teach most citizens reading and writing from the time they are children, but not statistical thinking. John Alan Paulos has called this phenomenon innumeracy.

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 04:52 PM | TrackBack 0

"Not every American is against Arabs. So it is not open to go and kill Americans. No. The Americans who are coming to kill you, yes, you can face them to defend your country," Solaiman said. "When any Arab goes to America and makes mischief, that is totally objectionable."

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 03:04 PM | TrackBack 0

"While a burning cross does not inevitably convey a message of intimidation, often the cross burning intends that the recipients of the message fear for their lives," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the majority. "And when a cross burning is used to intimidate, few if any messages are more powerful."

Posted by GeeTee at April 07, 2003 03:01 PM | TrackBack 0

...all that changed on the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Those close to Mr Bush say that day he discovered his life's mission. He became convinced that God was calling him to engage the forces of evil in battle, and this one time baseball-team owner from Texas did not shrink from the task.

Posted by GeeTee at April 06, 2003 02:55 PM | TrackBack 0

"The [Fedayeen] special operations team said I had three choices, they kill me, the British kill me, or I kill myself," the man, who wished only to be identified as Abdullah, said.

Posted by GeeTee at April 06, 2003 02:53 PM | TrackBack 0

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

Posted by GeeTee at April 06, 2003 10:54 AM | TrackBack 0

People can even print off the information on a standard toilet roll.

Posted by GeeTee at April 06, 2003 10:47 AM | TrackBack 0

Whatever the long-term outcome of the war in Iraq, any reasonable observer of the Middle East would have to agree that the region has dire problems. Over the past two decades, the academic left in this country held it as a tenet of quasi-theological faith that Western discussions of Middle Eastern problems were inherently biased or flawed. Sept. 11 destroyed whatever currency that notion once had. Moreover, in some quarters of the Arab world today, there is refreshing evidence of self-examination about "what went wrong," best demonstrated by the release of the unglamorously named "Arab Human Development Report 2002." Written by Arab intellectuals, the report highlights the dearth of freedom, the lack of civil society, the widespread illiteracy and the dismal status of women in the Arab world. These social problems have economic consequences. It is not an accident that if you subtract oil revenues from the GDP of all the Persian Gulf countries, their total output is the same as . . . Finland's.

Posted by GeeTee at April 05, 2003 05:20 PM | TrackBack 0

Church officials participated with "the most qualified experts on the theme," as well as "specialists in recuperative therapy of people affected by this problem," the Vatican said in a brief statement.

Posted by GeeTee at April 05, 2003 05:17 PM | TrackBack 0

The sex-slave myth also portrays Eastern European women as idiots. Banica asks how hundreds of thousands of women from the same pockets of the country could have been repeatedly tricked. For this to be true, it also means no duped woman has ever come home and, if they have, they have never talked to family and friends about their experiences.

Posted by GeeTee at April 05, 2003 05:34 AM | TrackBack 0

Was it true, the Iraqi minister of information was asked at his daily 2pm press conference (11pm NZT) - a routine institution of usually deadly tedium - that the Americans were at the airport? "Rubbish!" he shouted. "Lies! Go and look for yourself." So we did.

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 03:18 PM | TrackBack 0

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 09:30 AM | TrackBack 0

The U.S. State Department released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2002 on March 31, when the United States is facing condemnation from people of various countries in the world for unilaterally launching a war against Iraq. With the United States pretending to be "the world's judge of human rights," the reports once again assessed the human rights situations in over 190 countries and regions in the world. The reports carry distorted pictures and accusations of human rights conditions in China and other countries, but they mention not even a word of the human rights problems in the United States itself. Therefore, it is necessary to make known to the world the human rights violations in the United States in 2002.

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 09:26 AM | TrackBack 0

" I have decided not to release my new video. It was filmed before the war started and I do not believe it is appropriate to air it at this time. Due to the volatile state of the world and out of sensitivity and respect to the armed forces, who I support and pray for, I do not want to risk offending anyone who might misinterpret the meaning of this video."

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 08:57 AM | TrackBack 0

Although it took millions of people around the world to compel the Gray Lady to describe the anti-war movement as a "Second Superpower", it took only a handful of webloggers to spin the alternative meaning to manufacture sufficient PageRank[tm] to flood Google with Moore's alternative, neutered definition.

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 08:51 AM | TrackBack 0

call me Elizabeth
from tomorrow on

Posted by GeeTee at April 04, 2003 08:49 AM | TrackBack 0

Why, then it is harder not to write satires; for who
Could endure this monstrous city, however callous at heart,
And swallow his wrath?

Posted by GeeTee at April 03, 2003 07:47 AM | TrackBack 0

Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey took the opposite approach, tackling the book question headfirst when he sought the 1992 Democratic nomination. Kerrey readily offered that his favorite book was Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, a novel that depicted the aimless existence of a soldier-turned-stockbroker named Binx Bolling. His answer may have revealed too much. The New York Times' Maureen Dowd pounced, claiming Kerrey's confession would worry voters, given that Percy's work was an "anthem of alienation" about a war veteran "out of touch with the rest of America." As The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert later put it, with 20/20 hindsight, "Here was a man proposing himself as the next leader of the free world while apparently identifying with a character who, to all outward appearances, seems to have completely lost his sense of direction." Ouch.