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I finally bit the bullet and started the weblog. I can’t guarantee it will be updated every day, but I will update it as frequently as possible.

Monday 29th October

The government is getting fed up with the media demanding news and rapid progress in the war. The Independent believes Blair has got it wrong in talking simplistically of "right and wrong" and "moral fibre". HMG is certain to be pretty unhappy at the call in the Guardian for a broad-based anti-war coalition. It is good that it includes the demand that With every call to halt the military action it should continue to condemn the bombing of the World Trade Centre, express sympathy, unconditionally and without qualification, for the victims and join the call to bring those proved responsible to justice. A critical appraisal of American foreign policy offers a context for the attacks but not a justification for them.

The problem is that, as with all the comment I’ve heard so far, the anti-war groups have no clear alternative to offer, only vague options such as "getting the UN involved" or "maybe get the Taleban to hand bin Laden over to a third country". I don’t think they realise that, in the USA at least, the prosecution of the war is much less aggressive than the bulk of the population want (John McCain is probably more in tune with that): two of their major cities have been attacked, thousands are dead, and the Taleban refused to hand over the man the USA believes to be responsible. Under these circumstances, the anti-war groups need to come up with a bloody good alternative to sending in the military if they want to persuade the wider American public of their case.

The Washington Post reports that the USA tried for three years, up to only days before the attacks on Washington and New York, to get the Taleban to hand over bin Laden. The article also notes that [o]n Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth … and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.

Mullah Omar has given an interview to an Algerian paper in which he promises that the Americans will suffer a fate worse than the Soviet Union did:

Dans cet entretien obtenu par écrit par le journal algérien El Youm, qui se qualifie d’indépendant, le mollah Omar a promis d’infliger aux Américains "une leçon plus amère que celle (…) donnée aux Russes" , lorsque l’armée soviétique avait essuyé l’une des plus cuisantes défaites de son histoire en Afghanistan où elle avait combattu de 1979 à 1989.…

"Nous n’avons pas encore commencé la véritable guerre contre les Etats-Unis en raison de leur supériorité technologique" mais les Américains ne seront pas "accueillis avec des fleurs et nous leur infligerons une leçon qui sera plus amère que celle que nous avons donnée aux russes", a encore affirmé le Mollah Omar. Il a estimé que "la guerre actuelle contre l’Afghanistan ne vise pas Ben Laden, mais la destruction de l’émirat musulman d’Afghanistan pour concrétiser les objectifs de Washington et imposer son hégémonie sur cette région du monde".

[English]

British tanks in Oman aren’t working because of — wait for it — the wrong type of sand.

The New York Times reports on Pakistan’s intelligence service’s longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda (and about time too, says The Times of India). American fears over the agency’s dealings with Kashmiri militant groups and with the Taliban government of Afghanistan became so great last year that the Secret Service adamantly opposed a planned trip by President Clinton to Pakistan out of concern for his safety, former senior American officials said. Clinton made the trip, but there was unusual security: An empty Air Force One was flown into the country, and the president made the trip in a small unmarked plane. Later, his motorcade stopped under an overpass and Mr. Clinton changed cars.

What does Saddam Hussein have to do before we take him seriously? asks a Times article forcibly arguing for action against the Iraqi dictator. This should not depend on hard evidence linking him to the WTC atrocities:

Last week, reports began to emerge that Iraq is moving some of its chemical weapons into underground bunkers. Presumably, Saddam is trying to protect them from the US attacks on Iraq that Tariq Aziz said this weekend that he is expecting. Yet these weapons should not exist. Agreeing to destroy them was part of the price for ending the Gulf War. If the weapons still exist, the war is not over. It’s as simple as that.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice of the Islamic fundamentalist revolution? That’s William Rees-Mogg’s description of Osama bin Laden: For all his personal austerity, and his merciless use of terror, he belongs to the category of playboy revolutionary, a rich man’s spoilt son petulantly seeking the approval of his deceased papa. He has done one remarkable thing, though:

He has united his enemies; no one has ever united the world’s powers in such a way before. It is an achievement of a kind, but hardly one he can have foreseen. Indeed we do not really know how much he does foresee. Undoubtedly his organisation authorised and facilitated the crimes of September 11, but did he foresee the consequences? He may, for he is a clever man, have seen an advantage in forcing America to respond against Afghanistan. But did he realise that September 11 would not be just another terror spectacular, but to Americans an unforgivable offence? Did he know that he was going to change the world, largely to the disadvantage of the Islamic revolution?

Terrorists in Pakistan slaughtered people — including women and children — worshipping in a church, shouting Allahu Akbar before they fired their Kalashnikovs.

Priests and worshippers at the Our Lady of Fatima church, Islamabad’s main Catholic church, had little doubt the massacre was Muslim revenge for the air strikes on Afghanistan and warned of worse to come.

Many blamed President George Bush for inciting the majority population by calling the war a "crusade", evoking a religious clash between Islam and Christianity. Last week Islamists strung a banner emblazoned with the word "crusade" across the street and some mullahs urged two Christians to be killed for every dead Afghan.

At the time he said it, I thought someone should have pointed out forcefully that "crusade" is frequently used in the West without any religious overtones at all. I suppose we couldn’t really expect the US to admit that they have a president who doesn’t exactly grasp the nuances of words.

On the other hand, we in the West do have media which is reasonably well-informed. The Islamic world is quite bizarre. Take this bizarre "report" about Rudy Guiliani’s rejection of a Saudi prince’s $10 million donation:

"Giuliani said: ‘The Prince’s declarations are grievous and irresponsible; these Arabs have lost the right to dictate [to us what to do]. What we (America) must do is kill 6,000 innocent people.’ "

But that’s nothing compared with this. The penultimate sentence is quite uniquely bizarre.

Joining the attacks on Giuliani were columnists in the Palestinian Authority mouthpiece Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. Editor Hafez Al-Barghouthi wrote: "New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was obsessed by his hatred of Arabs even before the terrorist attacks on New York. He hides his first name, chosen for him by his Italian father, so as not to remind the Jewish voters of the infamous Rudolph Hitler. This is why he prefers to shorten it to Rudy."

Every year we have an execution. This year we wanted to execute someone everyone hates. — The Florida haunted house where you get to see Osama bin Laden executed:

The house features a young FBI agent pummeling bin Laden in his death row cell, then dragging him kicking and screaming to the execution chamber before slamming the terrorist into the electric chair. The agent turns on the electricity, making sparks fly and the floor shake.

There have been some jokes recently to the effect that what you really want if you’re going to be working in a skyscraper is a parachute. Maybe it isn’t a joke.

A woman in Washington (state, not city) was getting fed up with trying to prove to a student loan company that her son was dead, so she sent some of his ashes to the company. Pretty bad timing, the package arrived in Philadelphia as the anthrax scare was growing.

Talking of the anthrax scare — it’s good news, for the Net at least, according to the boss of AOL.

Last week’s attempts by MSN to force people to use MSIE to visit the site have made it into the New York Times:

The imbroglio was another example of how the Web is really regulated. It is not a matter of enforcement agencies in Washington, politicians or lobbyists. Instead, the Internet cops on the block are mainly a band of elite — and vigilant — software experts who keep things honest because they have the technical and moral authority. Their views cannot be ignored.

An impressive list of complainants is cited, including Tim Berners-Lee and Hakon Wium Lie. The paper is even switched on enough to spot the major piece of bollocks Microsoft came away with last week:

What really irked many Web experts was Microsoft’s statement on Friday that MSN and Internet Explorer adhered most closely to the Web consortium’s recommendations for open technology standards.

No browser is 100 percent compliant with the consortium’s recommendations. But Opera, Amaya and Mozilla generally rate higher than Internet Explorer, based on some independent measures of compliance. When tested on the Web consortium’s service on Friday, the MSN site failed to be validated as complying with one fundamental standard, for what are called cascading style sheets.…

The general feeling seems ot be that this wasn’t actually some devious strategy, but rather a major cock-up which will prove to be mainly a source of innocent, malicious fun at Microsoft’s expense. Yep.

Talking of elite experts and of Microsoft, Jakob Nielsen is bitchslapping Microsoft around the block in his latest Alertbox. Now we all make fun of the Blue Screen of Death — I do like the suggestion that Microsoft should sell advertising space on it, but I can’t remember who came up with that — but Nielsen says it costs the world economy $170 billion per year in lost productivity due to crashes. And, assuming that Windows XP actually is ten times more stable that will mean it’s still costing $17 billion per year.

He’s not only talking about crashes, though. Much time is lost through the opacity of the way the computer works. Problems arise and you don’t know even where the problem might be occurring let alone what it is — and that’s true even for a Ph.D. with 28 years’ experience of working with computers. He finishes with five guidelines for avoiding poor quality, unstable web sites:

• Avoid recently released software, especially if you use plug-ins such as Flash or PDF.…
• Avoid JavaScript in your Web pages.…
• Avoid special menu controls in your Web navigation.…
• Have spare server capacity.…
• Run robust server software.…

Simple but good advice. I wish more people would follow it.