For all that is going wrong with the world at the moment, you have to say that it is a good time to be namby, pamby pinko, liberal...there hasn't been this much to bitch about since the Vietnam war...and then you suddenly remember that the US is run by a bunch of scarey nutters and that this has consequences for everyone. On another note, I'm trying to decide weather America's allies form an "Axis of Poodle" or an "Axis of Arrogance." Today's Hard News has a good series of links about exactly why they are scarey nutters...it has stuff about Bush Jnr and Snr, the religious right in America and the insidious encroachment of their values in the everyday affairs of Government. One of America's founding principles is the seperation of church and state, but you wouldn't necessarily pick it these days though.

Britan hasn't quite reached the scarey stage yet and in fact it looks (well if you get all of your daily news from The Independent it does anyway) like Blair is in real trouble. His party is in revolt against any plans to join the war on Iraq and the opposition has the jitters as well (see Tories' support for action is waning). There are a lot of interesting theories about what could happen, after all the war is just as unpopular in the UK as it is in France and Germany...the only difference is that the British government has chosen not to take the will of its people into account...which is always dangerous in a democracy. Its entirely possible that this could cost Blair his government or if it doesn't, his support base is going to be radically shifted...it looks like this is not withouth historical precedent (See - Alan Watkins: Mr Blair may end up as a PM without a party.)

There is new Fisk today so I thought I'd link too it. The second article is one that was deleted due to the fact that it was basically bagging the Israeli Astronaut who died in the Columbia disaster...in a piece of exquisite timing this article came out the day before Columbia ceased to be...and fortunately most places displayed enough good taste to make the article disappear shortly thereafter...but not the New Zealand Herald.
Robert Fisk: A nation divided, with no bridges left to build
Robert Fisk: Don't forget the third clock still ticking away.
One thing in the news did make me happy today though. Forget the yachting, that's for sissies (although apparently 1.4 million sissies, including myself, tuned in to watch us lose) ...Is there anything better than beating the South Africans at Cricket? By 9 wickets? When they have the home advantage? When we've never beaten them in South Africa before? When it looked like we were going to get thrashed?
They may not make it through to the next round as we have played all the good sides, and they still have to play Sri Lanka...who are kicking ass. Life is good sometimes...bring on Bangladesh and Canada!