Airstrip One

Echelon, scmechelon. An interesting article on Echelon saying that it's all overblown largely because of the enormous amount of communication that goes on in the world. I made the same point, some time ago.

Why are the Beeb so smug? They are reporting the Czech TV strike as if it's the moral equivalent of the anti-communist demonstrations. Look the government put in a rich man, with little cultural merit who gave a large amount of money to the ruling party. A bit like Greg Dyke really.

Paleo-Conned. I have been taken to task for using the term paleo-conservative, when my correspondant believes I should have used the term "real conservative". I tend to agree that the paleo-cons are closer to conservatism as it should be coherantly understood (at least for Americans) but I will keep my house style of calling them paleo-conservatives as this leads to less confusion. This should always be the first rule of writing.

Don't trust those Tories. My piece on the British peace movement also drew some flack, on the idea of placing faith in the Tories. As if I'd place faith in any bunch of people who want to gain power! I don't have any faith in any of them, just a cynical belief that some of them can be used.

Hoon extracts the urine. Hague may be wrong on this son of star wars, or at least Britain's participation, but Geoff Hoon's reasons for rebuking him are truly stupid. Hoon's argument (amid the hysterical epiphets that seem to be coming regularly from Labour thesedays) is that we should not have a debate on anything until the full details come along. What, we shouldn't debate an issue until we know the small print? How New Labour. Obviously it has nothing to do with the fact that the Foreign Office is against it, the PM is for it and the Ministry of Defence is sitting in the middle.