Yes. I do. I said it was right back in February and I haven't seen anything to make me change my mind.

*They use the slightly punchier "Stop The Occupation" slogan, but it's the same thing.

A drunken woodlouse who's been smoking crack. Here's the text from the Bin Laden and Donald Rumsfeld cards:

Bin Laden: "CIA agent tasked with fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, then spreading discord between Arab nationalists and islamists, finally to provoke the clash between the Arab-Muslim and Judeo-Christian worlds."
Ah, yes, the crusty old "Bin laden was a CIA agent" meme. Shame it isn't true.

Rumsfeld: Secretary of defence, he predicts the 11th Sept attacks 2 minutes before they happen. Then instrumental in raising military budgets and starting to build a space army able to dominate the Earth."
A space army? Cool. Where do I sign up?

Sorry to rant, but Meyssan and his little imps just irritate me something rotten.

If Iran is declared to be in breach of the treaty banning the spread of nuclear weapons - the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) - at the next IAEA board meeting in November, the UN Security Council could be asked to get involved.

That could result in economic and political sanctions against Iran.

At the climax of a military parade ... enormous Shehab-3 missiles were rolled out painted with the messages, "We will crush America under our feet' and "Israel must be wiped off the map."

Iran later announced that it would scale down cooperation with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. Ali Akbar Salehim, Tehran's envoy to the IAEA, said on state television that Iran had been allowing the agency more oversight than required under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty "to show our goodwill and transparency."

"When I sit here and watch the local TV news and somebody's talking to me who's six-foot three with fantastic cheekbones, great hair and false teeth, I think: 'Do they know what they're talking about?' ["false teeth"? - ed]

"I'd love to get these guys alone and ask them if they know where their facts are coming from. They'd crumble!"

At the tattoo parlor, Marcus Gonzales found a list of Chinese characters and picked "strength" and "courage." His Tai-chi teacher finally confessed that they really say "dog" and "puppy."

Faith Fippinger: victim of American repression of dissent? Hardly. But they're threatening her with a million dollar fine and 12 years in jail, and the loss of her house and pension! Oh no they're not.

While the 21 September article talks only of "up to a million dollars and up to 12 years in jail" it is not telling the whole truth. You see, on 11 August the BBC informed us that "A retired US teacher [Faith Fippinger] who served as a human shield in Iraq has been told she faces fines of $10,000"

So the penalty for travelling to Iraq in breach of the sanctions is a $10,000 fine, with no mention of jail. So where does this "$1M and 12 years" come from? Well, if she refuses to pay the fine then penalties kick in for not paying the fine (as tends to happen with non-payment of fines), which is why she was also sent a "warning that if she did not pay the amount, she faced up to 12 years' imprisonment or a lengthier legal battle that could run to over $1m in costs." The 12yrs and $1M is for non-payment of the fine, not for going to Iraq.

In fact it isn't even that. Reading it again it says "12yrs jail or a legal battle costing up to $1M". The $1M isn't a fine at all - it's the likely maximum cost of the legal fees to defend herself from going to jail.

And quite how a $10,000 fine would result in her losing her house and her pension is not explained: the pension is paid according to a contract between her and the pension company - they can't take that away from her. And it sounds like she owns a house, so it would be trivial for her to borrow $10,000 secured against the house. At her age the loan company would probably be quite happy to waive monthly repayments and instead settle for some arrangement where they take a cut of the value of the house when it is sold after her death: this sort of thing happens fairly routinely with what are called "equity release schemes" in the UK - I don't know whether similar products are available in the US.

So she needn't go to jail, she needn't lose her house and she won't lose her pension and the penalty for travelling to Iraq is $10,000 instead of 12 yrs in jail and a million dollars. But apart from that the story's pretty accurate.
(Permanent link to this article)

• The MIT Leg Laboratory, where robots learn to walk, hop and crawl.
• Strange wiggly-wobbly thing.
• Laser guns are just so old hat. The real cutting edge is, erm, mysterious rays which cause brain poisoning. It is not revealed whether these poisonous rays can be blocked by wearing a tin foil hat.
• BA staff are caught stealing bar snacks. They were probably just trying to emulate the behaviour of diplomats at the United Nations.
• Wasted Space is a project to find the most godforsaken patch of derelict wasteland in Britain.
• Exhibition of Skulls in Culture (link from Exclamation Mark, who in turn found it at Things Magazine).

I always get the shakes before a drop. I've had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can't really be afraid. The ship's psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn't fear, it isn't anything important -- it's just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate.

I couldn't say about that; I've never been a race horse. But the fact is: I'm scared silly, every time.

I especially like this bit of reasoning:

Experience has shown that the general public come forward in their thousands when they believe their sample will help police to detect a serious crime.

I wish it were a cheap and very efficient way of disposing of nuclear waste, but I'll eat my pants if it ever works on anything even remotely approaching an industrial scale (in the between-time I'll eat my hat if they make it work on gram quantities).

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain must introduce personal identity cards for all citizens if it is to combat the threat of terrorism and organised crime, according to the country's most senior police officer.

"We are sure they would have a massively beneficial effect for us in fighting organised crime, human trafficking and terrorism," Sir John Stevens, London's police commissioner, told Reuters.

He insisted that new biometric technology, which allows personal details such as fingerprint or retina identification to be included, made mandatory ID cards "a must".

"The excuse people say is that terrorists and organised criminals get round it...

...They might do. But in getting round it, it will identify who they are."

"What I am totally against is the business whereby we can trace and follow people who have a normal life. ...

...But we do need to have the ability to identify those people who are around doing their business lawfully...

...and those other people who want to create mayhem and effectively destroy our way of life."

"These results do not suggest that persons with abdominal fat should start drinking."

Talking about the risk of being blown up by an eager young jihadi during his journey, Martin displays admirable sang froid:

"In fact ... you are probably more likely to be run over by a bus than blown up in one"

While the numbers of people being run over by buses are hard to come by, according to this study of worldwide traffic deaths Israel suffered 9.3 road traffic deaths per 100,000 population in 1996, and the country has a population of 6.1 million. So if the roads haven't become noticeably safer or more dangerous since 1996 we can expect that 9.3 x 61 = 567 people died in road traffic accidents in Israel over the past year. By contrast, according to this tally of casualties, the following numbers have been killed by bombings of buses in the past year:

Date	Number of people blown up in a bus
Sept 19, 2002	6
Oct 10, 2002	1
Oct 21, 2002	14
Nov 21, 2002	11
Mar 5, 2003	17
May 18, 2003	7
May 22, 2003	9
June 11, 2003	17
Aug 19, 2003	21
Total :	103

Unless nearly a fifth of Israel's entire road traffic deaths come from people being run over by buses then no, you aren't more likely to be run over by an Israeli bus than blown up in one.