8:00 PM
Rowan just decided that a blank excercise book would become her poetry book. Here's her first attempt:

Liquorice is ticklish, so are cream and custard, bananas and apples, but definitely not mustard.

(actually, I wanted to type it in using her spellings - "licerish is tiklish..." - but she wouldn't let me. I put in the commas for her as well).

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8:30 PM
More mind-blowingly fascinating stuff on the current global situation and why we are where we are. Thanks to Naomi for making me aware of this.

Not Oil, But Dollars vs. Euros
Geoffrey Heard writes about the real reasons for the Iraq war.

by Geoffrey Heard

Why is George Bush so hell bent on war with Iraq? Why does his administration reject every positive Iraqi move? It all makes sense when you consider the economic implications for the USA of not going to war with Iraq. The war in Iraq is actually the US and Europe going head to head on economic leadership of the world.

America's Bush administration has been caught in outright lies, gross exaggerations and incredible inaccuracies as it trotted out its litany of paper thin excuses for making war on Iraq. Along with its two supporters, Britain and Australia, it has shifted its ground and reversed its position with a barefaced contempt for its audience. It has manipulated information, deceived by commission and omission and frantically "bought" UN votes with billion dollar bribes.

Faced with the failure of gaining UN Security Council support for invading Iraq, the USA has threatened to invade without authorisation. It would act in breach of the UN's very constitution to allegedly enforced UN resolutions.

It is plain bizarre. Where does this desperation for war come from?

There are many things driving President Bush and his administration to invade Iraq, unseat Saddam Hussein and take over the country. But the biggest one is hidden and very, very simple. It is about the currency used to trade oil and consequently, who will dominate the world economically, in the foreseeable future -- the USA or the European Union.

Iraq is a European Union beachhead in that confrontation. America had a monopoly on the oil trade, with the US dollar being the fiat currency, but Iraq broke ranks in 1999, started to trade oil in the EU's euros, and profited. If America invades Iraq and takes over, it will hurl the EU and its euro back into the sea and make America's position as the dominant economic power in the world all but impregnable.

It is the biggest grab for world power in modern times.

America's allies in the invasion, Britain and Australia, are betting America will win and that they will get some trickle-down benefits for jumping on to the US bandwagon.

France and Germany are the spearhead of the European force -- Russia would like to go European but possibly can still be bought off.

Presumably, China would like to see the Europeans build a share of international trade currency ownership at this point while it continues to grow its international trading presence to the point where it, too, can share the leadership rewards.

DEBATE BUILDING ON THE INTERNET

Oddly, little or nothing is appearing in the general media about this issue, although key people are becoming aware of it -- note the recent slide in the value of the US dollar. Are traders afraid of war? They are more likely to be afraid there will not be war.

But despite the silence in the general media, a major world discussion is developing around this issue, particularly on the internet. Among the many articles: Henry Liu, in the 'Asia Times' last June, it has been a hot topic on the Feasta forum, an Irish-based group exploring sustainable economics, and W. Clark's "The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War with Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth" has been published by the 'Sierra Times', 'Indymedia.org', and 'ratical.org'.

This debate is not about whether America would suffer from losing the US dollar monopoly on oil trading -- that is a given -- rather it is about exactly how hard the USA would be hit. The smart money seems to be saying the impact would be in the range from severe to catastrophic. The USA could collapse economically.

OIL DOLLARS

The key to it all is the fiat currency for trading oil.

Under an OPEC agreement, all oil has been traded in US dollars since 1971 (after the dropping of the gold standard) which makes the US dollar the de facto major international trading currency. If other nations have to hoard dollars to buy oil, then they want to use that hoard for other trading too. This fact gives America a huge trading advantage and helps make it the dominant economy in the world.

As an economic bloc, the European Union is the only challenger to the USA's economic position, and it created the euro to challenge the dollar in international markets. However, the EU is not yet united behind the euro -- there is a lot of jingoistic national politics involved, not least in Britain -- and in any case, so long as nations throughout the world must hoard dollars to buy oil, the euro can make only very limited inroads into the dollar's dominance.

In 1999, Iraq, with the world's second largest oil reserves, switched to trading its oil in euros. American analysts fell about laughing; Iraq had just made a mistake that was going to beggar the nation. But two years on, alarm bells were sounding; the euro was rising against the dollar, Iraq had given itself a huge economic free kick by switching.

Iran started thinking about switching too; Venezuela, the 4th largest oil producer, began looking at it and has been cutting out the dollar by bartering oil with several nations including America's bete noir, Cuba. Russia is seeking to ramp up oil production with Europe (trading in euros) an obvious market.

The greenback's grip on oil trading and consequently on world trade in general, was under serious threat. If America did not stamp on this immediately, this economic brushfire could rapidly be fanned into a wildfire capable of consuming the US's economy and its dominance of world trade.

HOW DOES THE US GET ITS DOLLAR ADVANTAGE?

Imagine this: you are deep in debt but every day you write cheques for millions of dollars you don't have -- another luxury car, a holiday home at the beach, the world trip of a lifetime.

Your cheques should be worthless but they keep buying stuff because those cheques you write never reach the bank! You have an agreement with the owners of one thing everyone wants, call it petrol/gas, that they will accept only your cheques as payment. This means everyone must hoard your cheques so they can buy petrol/gas. Since they have to keep a stock of your cheques, they use them to buy other stuff too. You write a cheque to buy a TV, the TV shop owner swaps your cheque for petrol/gas, that seller buys some vegetables at the fruit shop, the fruiterer passes it on to buy bread, the baker buys some flour with it, and on it goes, round and round -- but never back to the bank.

You have a debt on your books, but so long as your cheque never reaches the bank, you don't have to pay. In effect, you have received your TV free.

This is the position the USA has enjoyed for 30 years -- it has been getting a free world trade ride for all that time. It has been receiving a huge subsidy from everyone else in the world. As it debt has been growing, it has printed more money (written more cheques) to keep trading. No wonder it is an economic powerhouse!

Then one day, one petrol seller says he is going to accept another person's cheques, a couple of others think that might be a good idea. If this spreads, people are going to stop hoarding your cheques and they will come flying home to the bank. Since you don't have enough in the bank to cover all the cheques, very nasty stuff is going to hit the fan!

But you are big, tough and very aggressive. You don't scare the other guy who can write cheques, he's pretty big too, but given a 'legitimate' excuse, you can beat the tripes out of the lone gas seller and scare him and his mates into submission.

And that, in a nutshell, is what the USA is doing right now with Iraq.

AMERICA'S PRECARIOUS ECONOMIC POSITION

America is so eager to attack Iraq now because of the speed with which the euro fire could spread. If Iran, Venezuela and Russia join Iraq and sell large quantities of oil for euros, the euro would have the leverage it needs to become a powerful force in general international trade. Other nations would have to start swapping some of their dollars for euros.

The dollars the USA has printed, the 'cheques' it has written, would start to fly home, stripping away the illusion of value behind them. The USA's real economic condition is about as bad as it could be; it is the most debt-ridden nation on earth, owing about US$12,000 for every single one of it's 280 million men, women and children. It is worse than the position of Indonesia when it imploded economically a few years ago, or more recently, that of Argentina.

Even if OPEC did not switch to euros wholesale (and that would make a very nice non-oil profit for the OPEC countries, including minimising the various contrived debts America has forced on some of them), the US's difficulties would build. Even if only a small part of the oil trade went euro, that would do two things immediately:

* Increase the attractiveness to EU members of joining the 'eurozone', which in turn would make the euro stronger and make it more attractive to oil nations as a trading currency and to other nations as a general trading currency.

* Start the US dollars flying home demanding value when there isn't enough in the bank to cover them.

* The markets would over-react as usual and in no time, the US dollar's value would be spiralling down.

THE US SOLUTION

America's response to the euro threat was predictable. It has come out fighting.

It aims to achieve four primary things by going to war with Iraq:

* Safeguard the American economy by returning Iraq to trading oil in US dollars, so the greenback is once again the exclusive oil currency.

* Send a very clear message to any other oil producers just what will happen to them if they do not stay in the dollar circle. Iran has already received one message -- remember how puzzled you were that in the midst of moderation and secularization, Iran was named as a member of the axis of evil?

* Place the second largest reserves of oil in the world under direct American control.

* Provide a secular, subject state where the US can maintain a huge force (perhaps with nominal elements from allies such as Britain and Australia) to dominate the Middle East and its vital oil. This would enable the US to avoid using what it sees as the unreliable Turkey, the politically impossible Israel and surely the next state in its sights, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of al Qaeda and a hotbed of anti-American sentiment.

* Severe setback the European Union and its euro, the only trading bloc and currency strong enough to attack the USA's dominance of world trade through the dollar.

* Provide cover for the US to run a covert operation to overturn the democratically elected government of Venezuela and replace it with an America-friendly military supported junta -- and put Venezuala's oil into American hands.

Locking the world back into dollar oil trading would consolidate America's current position and make it all but impregnable as the dominant world power -- economically and militarily. A splintered Europe (the US is working hard to split Europe; Britain was easy, but other Europeans have offered support in terms of UN votes) and its euro would suffer a serious setback and might take decades to recover.

It is the boldest grab for absolute power the world has seen in modern times. America is hardly likely to allow the possible slaughter of a few hundred thousand Iraqis stand between it and world domination.

President Bush did promise to protect the American way of life. This is what he meant.

JUSTIFYING WAR

Obviously, the US could not simply invade Iraq, so it began casting around for a 'legitimate' reason to attack. That search has been one of increasing desperation as each rationalization has crumbled. First Iraq was a threat because of alleged links to al Qaeda; then it was proposed Iraq might supply al Qaeda with weapons; then Iraq's military threat to its neighbours was raised; then the need to deliver Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's horrendously inhumane rule; finally there is the question of compliance with UN weapons inspection.

The USA's justifications for invading Iraq are looking less impressive by the day. The US's statements that it would invade Iraq unilaterally without UN support and in defiance of the UN make a total nonsense of any American claim that it is concerned about the world body's strength and standing.

The UN weapons inspectors have come up with minimal infringements of the UN weapons limitations -- the final one being low tech rockets which exceed the range allowed by about 20 percent. But there is no sign of the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMD) the US has so confidently asserted are to be found. Colin Powell named a certain north Iraqi village as a threat. It was not. He later admitted it was the wrong village.

'Newsweek' (24/2) has reported that while Bush officials have been trumpeting the fact that key Iraqi defector, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, told the US in 1995 that Iraq had manufactured tonnes of nerve gas and anthrax (Colin Powell's 5 February presentation to the UN was just one example) they neglected to mention that Kamel had also told the US that these weapons had been destroyed.

Parts of the US and particularly the British secret 'evidence' have been shown to come from a student's masters thesis.

America's expressed concern about the Iraqi people's human rights and the country's lack of democracy are simply not supported by the USA's history of intervention in other states nor by its current actions. Think Guatemala, the Congo, Chile and Nicaragua as examples of a much larger pool of US actions to tear down legitimate, democratically elected governments and replace them with war, disruption, starvation, poverty, corruption, dictatorships, torture, rape and murder for its own economic ends. The most recent, Afghanistan, is not looking good; in fact that reinstalled a murderous group of warlords which America had earlier installed, then deposed, in favour of the now hated Taliban.

Saddam Hussein was just as repressive, corrupt and murderous 15 years ago when he used chemical weapons, supplied by the US, against the Kurds. The current US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, so vehement against Iraq now, was on hand personally to turn aside condemnation of Iraq and blame Iran. At that time, of course, the US thought Saddam Hussein was their man -- they were using him against the perceived threat of Iran's Islamic fundamentalism.

Right now, as 'The Independent' writer, Robert Fisk, has noted, the US's efforts to buy Algeria's UN vote includes promises of re-arming the military which has a decade long history of repression, torture, rape and murder Saddam Hussein himself would envy. It is estimated 200,000 people have died, and countless others been left maimed by the activities of these monsters. What price the US's humanitarian concerns for Iraqis? (Of course, the French are also wooing Algeria, their former north African territory, for all they are worth, but at least they are not pretending to be driven by humanitarian concerns.)

Indonesia is another nation with a vote and influence as the largest Muslim nation in the world. Its repressive, murderous military is regaining strength on the back of the US's so-called anti-terror campaign and is receiving promises of open and covert support -- including intelligence sharing.

AND VENEZUELA

While the world's attention is focused on Iraq, America is both openly and covertly supporting the "coup of the rich" in Venezuela, which grabbed power briefly in April last year before being intimidated by massive public displays of support by the poor for democratically-elected President Chavez Frias. The coup leaders continue to use their control of the private media, much of industry and the ear of the American Government and its oily intimates to cause disruption and disturbance.

Venezuela's state-owned oil resources would make rich pickings for American oil companies and provide the US with an important oil source in its own backyard.

Many writers have noted the contradiction between America's alleged desire to establish democracy in Iraq while at the same time, actively undermining the democratically-elected government in Venezuela. Above the line, America rushed to recognise the coup last April; more recently, President Bush has called for "early elections", ignoring the fact that President Chavez Frias has won three elections and two referendums and, in any case, early elections would be unconstitutional.

One element of the USA's covert action against Venezuela is the behaviour of American transnational businesses, which have locked out employees in support of "national strike" action. Imagine them doing that in the USA! There is no question that a covert operation is in process to overturn the legitimate Venezuelan government. Uruguayan congressman, Jose Nayardi, made it public when he revealed that the Bush administration had asked for Uruguay's support for Venezuelan white collar executives and trade union activists "to break down levels of intransigence within the Chavez Frias administration". The process, he noted, was a shocking reminder of the CIA's 1973 intervention in Chile which saw General Pinochet lead his military coup to take over President Allende's democratically elected government in a bloodbath.

President Chavez Frias is desperately clinging to government, but with the might of the USA aligned with his opponents, how long can he last?

THE COST OF WAR

Some have claimed that an American invasion of Iraq would cost so many billions of dollars that oil returns would never justify such an action.

But when the invasion is placed in the context of the protection of the entire US economy for now and into the future, the balance of the argument changes.

Further, there are three other vital factors:

First, America will be asking others to help pay for the war because it is protecting their interests. Japan and Saudi Arabia made serious contributions to the cost of the 1991 Gulf war.

Second -- in reality, war will cost the USA very little -- or at least, very little over and above normal expenditure. This war is already paid for! All the munitions and equipment have been bought and paid for. The USA would have to spend hardly a cent on new hardware to prosecute this war -- the expenditure will come later when munitions and equipment have to be replaced after the war. But munitions, hardware andso on are being replaced all the time -- contracts are out. Some contracts will simply be brought forward and some others will be ramped up a bit, but spread over a few years, the cost will not be great. And what is the real extra cost of an army at war compared with maintaining the standing army around the world, running exercises and so on? It is there, but it is a relatively small sum.

Third -- lots of the extra costs involved in the war are dollars spent outside America, not least in the purchase of fuel. Guess how America will pay for these? By printing dollars it is going to war to protect. The same happens when production begins to replace hardware. components, minerals, etc. are bought in with dollars that go overseas and exploit America's trading advantage.

The cost of war is not nearly as big as it is made out to be. The cost of not going to war would be horrendous for the USA -- unless there were another way of protecting the greenback's world trade dominance.

AMERICA'S TWO ACTIVE ALLIES

Why are Australia and Britain supporting America in its transparent Iraqi war ploy?

Australia, of course, has significant US dollar reserves and trades widely in dollars and extensively with America. A fall in the US dollar would reduce Australia's debt, perhaps, but would do nothing for the Australian dollar's value against other currencies. John Howard, the Prime Minister, has long cherished the dream of a free trade agreement with the USA in the hope that Australia can jump on the back of the free ride America gets in trade through the dollar's position as the major trading medium. That would look much less attractive if the euro took over a significant part of the oil trade.

Britain has yet to adopt the euro. If the US takes over Iraq and blocks the euro's incursion into oil trading, Tony Blair will have given his French and German counterparts a bloody nose, and gained more room to manouevre on the issue -- perhaps years more room. Britain would be in a position to demand a better deal from its EU partners for entering the "eurozone" if the new currency could not make the huge value gains guaranteed by a significant role in world oil trading. It might even be in a position to withdraw from Europe and link with America against continental Europe.

On the other hand, if the US cannot maintain the oil trade dollar monopoly, the euro will rapidly go from strength to strength, and Britain could be left begging to be allowed into the club.

THE OPPOSITION

Some of the reasons for opposition to the American plan are obvious -- America is already the strongest nation on earth and dominates world trade through its dollar. If it had control of the Iraqi oil and a base for its forces in the Middle East, it would not add to, but would multiply its power.

The oil-producing nations, particularly the Arab ones, can see the writing on the wall and are quaking in their boots.

France and Germany are the EU leaders with the vision of a resurgent, united Europe taking its rightful place in the world and using its euro currency as a world trading reserve currency and thus gaining some of the free ride the United States enjoys now. They are the ones who initiated the euro oil trade with Iraq.

Russia is in deep economic trouble and knows it will get worse the day America starts exploiting its take-over of Afghanistan by running a pipeline southwards via Afghanistan from the giant southern Caspian oil fields. Currently, that oil is piped northwards -- where Russia has control.

Russia is in the process of ramping up oil production with the possibility of trading some of it for euros and selling some to the US itself. Russia already has enough problems with the fact that oil is traded in US dollars; if the US has control of Iraqi oil, it could distort the market to Russia's enormous disadvantage. In addition, Russia has interests in Iraqi oil; an American take over could see them lost. Already on its knees, Russia could be beggared before a mile of the Afghanistan pipeline is laid.

ANOTHER SOLUTION?

The scenario clarifies the seriousness of America's position and explains its frantic drive for war. It also suggests that solutions other than war are possible.

Could America agree to share the trading goodies by allowing Europe to have a negotiated part of it? Not very likely, but it is just possible Europe can stare down the USA and force such an outcome. Time will tell. What about Europe taking the statesmanlike, humanitarian and long view, and withdrawing, leaving the oil to the US, with appropriate safeguards for ordinary Iraqis and democracy in Venezuela?

Europe might then be forced to adopt a smarter approach -- perhaps accelerating the development of alternative energy technologies which would reduce the EU's reliance on oil for energy and produce goods it could trade for euros -- shifting the world trade balance.

Now that would be a very positive outcome for everyone.

. . . .

Geoffrey Heard is a Melbourne, Australia, writer on the environment, sustainability and human rights. . . . .

Geoffrey Heard (c) 2003. Anyone is free to circulate this document provided it is complete and in its current form with attribution and no payment is asked. It is prohibited to reproduce this document or any part of it for commercial gain without the prior permission of the author. For such permission, contact the author at gheard@surf.net.au.

SOME REFERENCES AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html
'The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and
Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth' by W. Clark, January
2003 (revised 20 February), Independent Media Center,
www.indymedia.org

http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=28334
This war is about more than oil. OIL DOLLARS!!!! DOLLARS, THE EURO
AND WAR IN IRAQ.
This story is based on material posted by Richard Douthwaite on the
FEASTA list in Ireland.

http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/12/1550023_comment.php#1551138
USA intelligence agencies revealed in plot to oust Venezuela's President

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A41444-2003Jan11
Washington Post
Split Screen In Strike-Torn Venezuela
By Mark Weisbrot Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page B04

http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/DD11Dj01.html
Asia Times online: Global Economy
US dollar hegemony has got to go
By Henry C K Liu

http://www.feasta.org/energy.htm

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html
The Observer
The Enemy Within
by Gore Vidal London, Sunday 27 October 2002

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2:08 PM
Oh my, this article is very scary. Reproduced below, because I'm allowed to and because as many people as possible should see it:

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History
by Thom Hartmann

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.

It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to strike (although he didn't know where or when), and he had already considered his response. When an aide brought him word that the nation's most prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the scene and called a press conference.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," he proclaimed, standing in front of the burned-out building, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.

Two weeks later, the first detention center for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display.

Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.

To get his patriotic "Decree on the Protection of People and State" passed over the objections of concerned legislators and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year sunset provision on it: if the national emergency provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then, the freedoms and rights would be returned to the people, and the police agencies would be re-restrained. Legislators would later say they hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on it.

Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator.)

Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as "The Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it's of little concern to us.

Playing on this new nationalism, and exploiting a disagreement with the French over his increasing militarism, he argued that any international body that didn't act first and foremost in the best interest of his own nation was neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his country from the League Of Nations in October, 1933, and then negotiated a separate naval armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling elite.

His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to ensure the people that he was a deeply religious man and that his motivations were rooted in Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a revival of the Christian faith across his nation, what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most of them fervently believed it was true.

Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's leader determined that the various local police and federal agencies around the nation were lacking the clear communication and overall coordinated administration necessary to deal with the terrorist threat facing the nation, particularly those citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers, and various troublesome "intellectuals" and "liberals." He proposed a single new national agency to protect the security of the homeland, consolidating the actions of dozens of previously independent police, border, and investigative agencies under a single leader.

He appointed one of his most trusted associates to be leader of this new agency, the Central Security Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the government equal to the other major departments.

His assistant who dealt with the press noted that, since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at out disposal." Those voices questioning the legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising questions about his checkered past, had by now faded from the public's recollection as his central security office began advertising a program encouraging people to phone in tips about suspicious neighbors. This program was so successful that the names of some of the people "denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio stations. Those denounced often included opposition politicians and celebrities who dared speak out - a favorite target of his regime and the media he now controlled through intimidation and ownership by corporate allies.

To consolidate his power, he concluded that government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to industry and forged an alliance, bringing former executives of the nation's largest corporations into high government positions. A flood of government money poured into corporate coffers to fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large corporations friendly to him to acquire media outlets and other industrial concerns across the nation, particularly those previously owned by suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He built powerful alliances with industry; one corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth millions to build the first large-scale detention center for enemies of the state. Soon more would follow. Industry flourished.

But after an interval of peace following the terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose within and without the government. Students had started an active program opposing him (later known as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby nations were speaking out against his bellicose rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to direct people away from the corporate cronyism being exposed in his own government, questions of his possibly illegitimate rise to power, and the oft-voiced concerns of civil libertarians about the people being held in detention without due process or access to attorneys or family.

With his number two man - a master at manipulating the media - he began a campaign to convince the people of the nation that a small, limited war was necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though its connection with the terrorist who had set afire the nation's most important building was tenuous at best, it held resources their nation badly needed if they were to have room to live and maintain their prosperity. He called a press conference and publicly delivered an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation, provoking an international uproar. He claimed the right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and nations across Europe - at first - denounced him for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.

It took a few months, and intense international debate and lobbying with European nations, but, after he personally met with the leader of the United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After the military action began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told the nervous British people that giving in to this leader's new first-strike doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in times of war. The Austrian government was unseated and replaced by a new leadership friendly to Germany, and German corporations began to take over Austrian resources.

In a speech responding to critics of the invasion, Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators."

To deal with those who dissented from his policies, at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign to equate him and his policies with patriotism and the nation itself. National unity was essential, they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting the nation or weakening its will. In times of war, they said, there could be only "one people, one nation, and one commander-in-chief" ("Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign charging that critics of his policies were attacking the nation itself. Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or "not good Germans," and it was suggested they were aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most effective ways to stifle dissent and pit wage-earning people (from whom most of the army came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who were critical of his policies.

Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and peace returned, voices of opposition were again raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was necessary to divert public attention from the growing rumbles within the country about disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals, Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in the corporate sector but threatening the middle class's way of life.

A year later, to the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; the nation was now fully at war, and all internal dissent was suppressed in the name of national security. It was the end of Germany's first experiment with democracy.

As we conclude this review of history, there are a few milestones worth remembering.

February 27, 2003, was the 70th anniversary of Dutch terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag) building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution. By the time of his successful and brief action to seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was shed, Hitler was the most beloved and popular leader in the history of his nation. Hailed around the world, he was later Time magazine's "Man Of The Year."

Most Americans remember his office for the security of the homeland, known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its SchutzStaffel, simply by its most famous agency's initials: the SS.

We also remember that the Germans developed a new form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning war" or blitzkrieg, which, while generating devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly desirable "shock and awe" among the nation's leadership according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock And Awe" published by the National Defense University Press.

Reflecting on that time, The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983) left us this definition of the form of government the German democracy had become through Hitler's close alliance with the largest German corporations and his policy of using war as a tool to keep power: "fas-cism (fbsh'iz'em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Today, as we face financial and political crises, it's useful to remember that the ravages of the Great Depression hit Germany and the United States alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring their nations back to power and prosperity.

Germany's response was to use government to empower corporations and reward the society's richest individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle dissent, strip people of constitutional rights, and create an illusion of prosperity through continual and ever-expanding war. America passed minimum wage laws to raise the middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish the power of corporations, increased taxes on corporations and the wealthiest individuals, created Social Security, and became the employer of last resort through programs to build national infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant forests.

To the extent that our Constitution is still intact, the choice is again ours.

Thom Hartmann lived and worked in Germany during the 1980s, and is the author of over a dozen books, including "Unequal Protection" and "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight." This article is copyright by Thom Hartmann, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

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7:57 PM
Lots of funny war-related pics here. Also, heard this quote today and chuckled:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, France is accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war.
Unknown

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2:06 AM
Gill and I started detoxing today. Feeling really good about it - normally, if the two of us do something like this together, it ought to make us more committed but somehow has the opposite affect - we don't worry about one another's opinion of the other so much that we'd stick to the regime to avoid embarassment, and it only takes one of us to crack for both of us to give up. But this time it feels like we're both committed to getting it 99% right and sticking with it for a few weeks (apart from anything else, I've been cooking with so much bloody double cream these last few weeks that we need a break - we're both developing prominent double chins). Tonight was easy enough - we had tuna steaks (tinned ones... yeah, I know, but they even tasted good with a marinade) cooked in about a million and one things, including onion marmalade, chilli, ginger, garlic, allspice, cloves, lime, ... and with them we had spring greens cooked with walnut and ginger, yams mashed with coconut milk, thyme and garlic, and the obligatory daily short grain brown rice (cooked with cardamom, lemon zest and juice). And for pudding... yeah, we even got away with pudding... a chilled "soup" of liquidised melon, rasberries and lemongrass syrup (made with fructose - I know sucrose is out of the question, not sure whether we ought to be allowed fructose, but I thought we should be allowed one extravagence per day :))

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2:00 AM
Yay! Spring is gorgeous. Spent some wonderful days in the sunshine, few more wonderful than Sunday, when we revisited Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I took lots of photos (and some video too).

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9:03 AM
Crikey, life just keeps on getting better.

On Saturday I lost a £50 note - or so I thought - the only £50 note I can remember having possessed in my entire life (though I'm sure there must've been perhaps one or two others). It had been in my pocket that morning - I know because I pulled it out to offer it to Gill, then gave her some change instead. Then I went on the peace demo in Sheffield (amazing - there must've been about 10,000 people there, far bigger than anything I've ever seen in Sheffield before. It crammed the whole city centre with a snake of singing chanting people). When I got to the meeting point, my mobile phone was in and out of my pocket every two minutes, sending and receiving texts to arrange meetings with friends and family. After the march, we went to the Costa Coffee Waterstones to grab a bite to eat and drink but, mainly, to use their toilet. Gill was skint so I queued up, rummaging in my pocket for the fifty as I did so. When I came to the front of the line, about ten people later, and still hadn't found it, I realised that something might be up. We left, without food, drink, or toilet (you had to get a key from the counter), I emptied my pockets over and again, and found nothing.

Yesterday I was in John Lewis's (bought a whetstone block [not quite like that one - has a rubber base and a dual-layered stone for coarse and fine sharpening] for my new Global chef's knife), fished in my pocket for the money and what should pop out... a £50 note! Wierd... I hadn't even been wearing these trousers on Saturday, they were in a pile of clean washing on the floor at the time. I finally worked out what had happened - I'd had another pair of trousers on Saturday morning, had gone for a bath and changed into some old trousers afterwards. Left the original trousers, containing the cash, on the bathroom floor, and only transferred the contents of their pockets, without examining them, when I put these trousers on.

I was mostly glad to find the money - but there was an element of disappointment as well. I'd been quite hyped up imagining some grungy teenager's excitment at finding that kind of money. In fact, I'd been sat by two sixteen year-old girls at the bus stop, who were trying to work out the approximate price of a bottle of absinthe. I had visions that they might have found the note and been able to afford their absinthe (which, they said, tasted much nicer than vodka).

Anyway, the £50 note wasn't the reason I originally wrote that life keeps getting better... but I forget what was. Perhaps it was that Fufi just informed me her Columbian friend is interested in talking to me about playing bass in his Salsa band. I can't wait to make some more music! Or perhaps it was just that I got up at 6am today (after checking the clock impatiently every half-hour since 3.30) and feel full of life. Perhaps it was that triumph of a meal that I cooked last night. Whatever.

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10:23 PM
I surpassed myself at dinner tonight.

The first course was something I would have been pretty delighted with if it'd been served in a restaurant - just the right-sized portions, perfectly presented, and despite my initial fears that the dishes were so diverse they would be a hell of a mess, they somehow all went together perfectly. Some rice timbales - I cooked up short-grain brown rice with some black cumin seeds (and a little lime juice in the water - no reason why other than Lola was helping me cook, and wanted to squeeze the half a lime that was sitting out on the side). A salad of grated betroot and onion with sweet-and-sour mustard sauce. Thinly sliced fennel half-baked and half-steamed in a garlic butter and vermouth sauce (courtesy of The Return of the Naked Chef). And smoked mackrel - amazing, gorgeous smoked mackrel, marinated and heated in a mix of red chilli, ginger, hoisin sauce, honey and muscat - courtesy of my misreading and adapting of a recipe in this week's Observer Food Monthly - it was awesome, and the marinade/hoisin created a marvellous sweet, hot, gingery dripping sauce to smother it in. The whole lot looked so perfect on the plate. And I followed it up with heaven in a pie dish - Nigella Lawson's rhubarb tart - a layer of sweet creamy pastry, a layer of cream cheese/double cream/muscat goo, a layer of sweated-down sugary rhubarb, and a drizzling of rhubarb syrup over the top. Words cannot describe - I don't think I've ever tasted a better dessert. It was like those rhubard and custard sweets you can buy, but the real thing, and because I made it moments before we ate it, there were so many contrasts - crumbly, warm, comforting pastry, creamy, cold refreshing cream, sloppy warm tart rhubarb and gloopy hot sweet syrup.

The funny thing is, I somehow imagined that five dishes, most of them with quite a few ingredients, would take me the best part of a day to prepare, but actually I managed them easily within the couple of hours or so that I had. The rhubarb tart was a little fiddly, but all of the other dishes were a breeze - I put it down to the new Zen Hachoir Mezzalune set (yes, we've been opening more wedding gifts) which meant that I sliced through the chilli and onion in about half the time it would normally take.

Excuse me, I have to go and lie down now.

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8:16 PM
Yay! Get Your War On fucking rocks!

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2:13 AM
Broaden your mind with some Mad Science random knowledge

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1:02 AM
Faxed my MP again:

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Mr Richard Caborn
MP for Sheffield Central
House Of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Tuesday 11 March 2003

URGENT: LICENSING BILL [HL]

Dear Mr Caborn,

I am writing to express grave concerns over the Licensing Bill [HL] currently under consideration by Parliament, despite having not received a reply to my previous fax on the subject of identity cards (I feel I ought to make you aware that I participated in a survey related to that fax, which is being used to compile a league table of MPs' responsiveness - having checked the results of that survey you do not come out of it particularly well).

The proposed Licensing Bill includes a repeal of the "two in a bar rule" which allows certain types of music performance to take place without licensing. I strongly believe that proposed legislation will have a detrimental effect upon live music. As a sometime-musican myself, as well as somebody who has greatly enjoyed listening and participating in open folk music nights, a centuries-old tradition at many Sheffield pubs, I am astonished and mystified at the government's heavy-handed approach which is likely to criminalise many such events.

The proposed legislation is all the more unfathomable given that satellite or terrestrial tv, radio, and jukebox music (all with rather shorter provenances than live music) are to be exempt from licensing, no matter how powerfully amplified. In addition, the majority of noise-related complaints connectred with pubs and similar establishments arise from the noise made by drinkers leaving the premises (as somebody who lives 100 yards from two pubs, in an area popular with student drinkers, I can certainly attest to this). The decision to exclude places of worship from the remit of the bill also strikes me as somewhat illogical.

Should you be unfamiliar with the details of the bill, some of the injustices it seeks to make law include:

- 110,000 on-licensed premises in England and Wales (pubs, bars, restaurants etc) lose their automatic right to allow one or two musicians to perform. A form of this limited exemption from entertainment licensing control dates back to at least 1899.

- The provision of a piano for public use becomes illegal unless licensed.

- 5,000 registered members clubs lose their licensing exemption for public entertainment.

- Thousands of private events, hitherto exempt, become licensable if 'for consideration and with a view to profit'. The same applies to any private performance raising money for charity.

- A new licensing criterion is introduced: the provision of 'entertainment facilities'. This could mean professional rehearsal studios, broadcasting studios etc.

- Carol singing on front door-steps and busking could also be outlawed under the proposed Bill. Government lawyers dispute this, but Government Ministers in the Lords have confirmed that organised carol singing in such places as railway stations or shopping malls would be licensable.

- Musicians organising their own gigs could face criminal prosecution if they don't first check that premises hold the appropriate authorisation for live music. This would apply even to a performance in your local pub.

- While premises that sell alcohol do not face an extra costs to apply for an entertainment license if applying simultaneously, premises which do not sell alcohol will be faced with costly additional administration. Even normally licensed premises are likely to face the additional time and cost of local authority scrutiny, public consultation, and possible public hearings.

- Similar legislation in New York was struck down because it violated First Amendment rights; it is quite possible that the proposed Bill could be found in contravention of Article 10(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

- The proposed legislation is open to over-zealous enforcement, as was the case when Westminster Council recently fined a pub in Soho over its customers' "swaying", which the council interpreted as unlicensed dancing.

- The maximum penalty for the provision of unlicensed performance will be a £20,000 fine and six months in prison.

In summary, the bill appears to be illogical, draconian and very poorly thought out. The government has stated that its intention is to stamp out anti-social behaviour, but I believe that a more likely effect will be to deter those who do drink and behave responsibly, smother traditional practices and the grassroots of the UK music industry, while doing little to address the real issues.

I would welcome your comments on all of the above points. I very much hope that you will not be voting for the bill in its present state, and will instead push for a system more in keeping with those which are popular and succesful in more liberal countries such as Scotland and Ireland.

Thank you,
Dan Sumption

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11:42 PM
We finally made it to Chez Lahlou's restaurant last night - it's only around the corner from us, literally 1 minute's walk, and is about the only French restaurant in Sheffield, always fully booked and I'd heard good things said about it... all of which makes it strange (very strange, for me) that we'd never been there before. OK, slight lie, we went there a couple of years ago, when Gill was about 6 months pregnant with Lola - but Gill came over very dizzy, walked outside for some fresh air, and then fainted up against the front of the restaurant, waking up in a slight mess of mixed bodily fluids - all of this before our starters even arrived, so we caught a taxi straight home, and my escargots somehow didn't taste quite the same re-heated from the bag.

It was... well, it was exactly what I expected, which I'm sorry to say wasn't a great deal. See, although I'd heard good things about it, I know my expectations of a restaurant are somewhat different from most of my friends', South Kensington has left me jaded. And from the short time we'd spent there before, I did have an inkling what it would be like.

First of all the place is just too damned crowded - small restaurants are great, not so milking the maximum out of them by squeezing tables up alongside one another and not leaving enough elbow room to swing a steak-knife (which, incidentally, is what Gill was given to eat her duck with - isn't that supposed to be a bad reflection on the toughness of the duck, or something?) Even the entrance was tiny - a person-sized space between two doors which doesn't leave room for the two doors to open, making entering the restaurant a complex operation (especially as both doors are prone to jamming) and let in vast quantities of the chilly air that I presume the two-door setup was supposed to help keep out. We managed to squeeze ourselves inside, and I climbed into my chair with some difficulty, wedged as it was between table and wall.

We were promptly given two menus, no offer of aperetifs though, a shame because I really fancied a Kir Royale - but as aperetifs were obviously very much out of vogue there, I very much doubt they would have cracked open a bottle of bubbly just for my sake. Unfortunately the menus did not come with a wine list, this only turned up about 10 minutes later after we'd ordered. The wine itself arrived a lifetime or two later, after we'd finished our starters. Even then, the waitress opened it and left it standing on the counter for about 10 minutes before bringing it to our table and pouring our glasses. The thing I was looking forward to most when I set off for the meal was knocking back some half-decent wine - I know things are supposed to be better if you have to wait for them, but it is possible to have too much of a bad thing.

While we waited for our food we were brought nibbles - some little pieces of chicken on the bone, with a crust of sweet something or other, and vegetable crudites with a thick vinaigrette dip. I know I shouldn't, but I just had to try the chicken. Tasty, but very greasy. Next came some bread (hmm... two courses into the meal and our starters haven't even arrived, let alone the wine) - slices of supermarket faux-baguette. Finally our starters arrived (along with some more bread - much nicer this lot, home-baked soft mini-ciabatta style rolls). I had garlic mushrooms (actually, I think there was something in the menu that made them sound slightly more interesting that standard garlic mushrooms - flamed in pernod, or something, but it didn't notice that much). The plate of mushrooms was huge - it would have made a decent enough main course, especially garnished as it was with half an orange, slices of apple, cucumber, lettuce and onion, and swimming in butter. Gill had a similarly huge plate holding a fish I'd never heard of before (pigeot or something? Gill was worried it might turn out to be a pigeon), with maitre d'hotel sauce and a garnish of strawberries - the fish was overcooked, too dry and chewy.

For the main course, I had lemon sole with bearnaise sauce - probably the best part of the meal, although still not great - the fish was encased in batter and the sauce had a rather ageing glazed look, but the fish inside was at least cooked right. Again, there was masses of garnish. Gill had duck - when the waitress asked how she wanted it she said "just a little bit bloody", to which the waitress enquired "medium?" - I warned Gill that this meant it would be overcooked, and of course it was. There were tiny flecks of pink in the centre, but most of it was brown and a little too dry. I much prefer the approach of the serving staff at Simply Heathcotes the other week - when Gill ordered the duck there, the waitress says "it comes very rare, a little bloody - is that OK?" - leave the chef to make the decisions, eat it when they think is best unless you have strong reasons for wanting it otherwise. But, of course, this is Sheffield, so not allowing a person the option of getting it "well done" would be a sin. At least Gill didn't lack for quantity - there seemed to be an entire duck there, swimming in its own pond of orange sauce.

And, as if we weren't struggling enough with the food on our plates, the waitress turned up again as we were well into our food with a huge bowl of vegetables (new potatoes, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, red cabbage, green cabbage, courgettes, carrots, and probably a couple of others I've forgotten). More proof that in Sheffield, the less you hear "less is more" the better. We struggled bravely, but in the end we were only able to manage about half of our main course each, and a measly quarter or less of the massed vegetables. It has long been fashionable to slag off "nouvelle cuisine" with its "tiny portions", but I have to say that even when I've eaten in places where the servings looked tiny, I've never left feeling undernourished (especially after 3 courses of tiny portions). It seems that people prefer quantity to quality.

In a similar way they also prefer choice - I'm quite happy going to a restauraunt that only has three dishes on the menu, as long as they're good dishes, my only gripe with that is that if it's a really good restaurant then I'm likely to go back soon and two of the three dishes are likely to be the same - but I can cope with that. But people want freedom of choice, freedom to choose crap, the Americanization of sandwiches and ice cream, 573 varieties of everything. This struck me when I visited a gastro-pub in the Derbyshire Dales a few years back - I was mesmerised by their row of blackboards advertising meal-after-meal of enticing-sounding grub. There were about 20 to 40 each of meat dishes, poultry dishes, fish dishes, seafood dishes, vegetarian dishes, plus God knows how many starters. It took me about half an hour of mouth-watering anticipation just to choose something... then when my food turned up it was a heavily overcooked piece of white fish in a mediocre sauce. I had to give up eating it halfway through, the fish gunged my mouth up so much that I could barely swallow it. Freedom of choice, pah! Give me a chef who can show me what I didn't realise what I wanted, not one who can make a pathetic attempt at what I thought I wanted.

Anyway, maybe I'm totally irrationally prejudiced, quite possibly so and I'm certainly generalising, but I see Sheffield (and perhaps more generally South Yorkshire) as the centre of quantity/choice culture. So culturally backwards and closed to new ideas. Of course, most of the world is like that really, but somehow it seems to me that here they are morseo. Gill's opinion on the subject definitely influences my views on this (as with most things), after all, she's from the place, she should know it well enough, right? If you were to personify Sheffield, you couldn't do much better than the "Rubbish" character from the Fast Show (whose philosophy of life, in fact, almost exactly mirrors Gill's dad, right down to the use of the word "Rubbish", every bit as much as the Brilliant character could be Gill's brother - in fact, I rather suspect that Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson may have been sitting next to the two of them in a public place when they were writing this part of the show).

So, did I enjoy my night out? Well, yes, I did actually. Despite my many protestations about Chez Lahlou ("it was bluddy roobish!") it does have one or two redeeming qualities. The food, despite not being good, certainly wasn't bad (like I said, I'm just spoilt). It wasn't cheap but neither was it frighteningly expensive (especially when you calculate the price by volume) - we had the most expensive bottle of wine on the list (a Sancerre which was, surprise surprise, fairly mediocre) which cost £22. The meal including wine came to £55. Also the staff, despite their treacle-slow dizziness, are as friendly as hell. I felt less embarrassed about taking back a doggy-bag of snails last time, after they offered to bag up the (substantial) remains of our meal for us on this visit too (but somehow carrying home half a duck carcass, half-eaten fish and a market-garden's worth of vegetables didn't appeal, neither did trying to tackle them again the next day - although the cat might genuinely have been happy). Similarly, I didn't feel so bad about leaving early on our earlier visit, because this time a group of people arrived, sat down for 20 minutes or so and ordered, and then made excuses and left (I didn't hear the reason why - I think it may have been the arctic gale from the front door just next to them, possibly backed up by the fact that a dish they wanted wasn't available).

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11:42 PM
I went for a walk in the sunrise this morning. Actually, tell a lie, I was about five minutes too late to catch the sunrise in its full glory, and walking in the wrong direction, but the view from Bole Hills and Rivelin Bank is almost as inspirational as a sky full of marmalade-cream clouds - I do believe I had a tear in my eye as I looked out across North-West Sheffield (although that was probably as much down to lack of rest and love of live as anything else), I felt like I could fall forwards, arms outstretched, and soar across all those rows of boxes like the Angel of the North.

I'd woken up earlier at 3.30am, realised that F1 qualifying was on TV, and careened upstairs in time to watch the end of Jensen Button's lap followed by Michael Schumacher caressing every curve on the circuit, in the most virtuoso display of human computer interaction I've ever witnessed. I tried going back to bed afterwards, but my mind was still racing so I came upstairs to work, type emails and blog. I saw those blue-white-orange strips in the sky signalling morning's approach, and knew I had to get outside (it struck me yesterday that the only time I'd left the house in about three days was to use the washing machine in the outhouse in our back garden), just too late to see anything really spectacular.

I had my MP3 player on - started off with some Bow Wow Wow again. Something struck me - I'm often asked who my bass playing influences are, and I always reel off Lemmy (Hawkwind era - and yeah, he is the one that hooked me on the idea of Rickenbackers - assisted by Chris Squire and others) then later Jean Jaques Burnel and finally Bill Laswell (mainly Material/Massacre/Baselines era, and subsequently Last Exit totally threw my musical direction and altered my life irreversibly), with a few other minor influences in between who I always forget, they're so influential. But hearing Bow Wow Wow again after a break of years, I realise that this is where it all started. The first record I ever bought was Adam and the Ants' Prince Charming - I came to music late, was 12 at the time, for until then I remember being frightened of having an opinion on any music in case my Dad didn't like it. I loved Adam and the Ants, but they were pop, everyone loved them, but Bow Wow Wow were my own little secret (and how proud I was when they achieved chart success and coolness was duly conferred) - I think my next purchase was the gloriously titled See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! - I still have it, although the wonderful cover of my Cassette Pet, which I folded, unfolded and gazed at endlessly, is now rather ragged. Anyway, listening again I recognised the wonderful bass sounds of Leroy Gorman as something akin to my own - that spindly tinnyness, the nervous itchy far-too-many-notes-in-one-bar-iness, the it-shouldn't-work-yet-it-sounds-wonderful---to-me-at-least-ness. I never really left my spiritual home. I realised that, in Bow Wow Wow, guitar and drums were the rhythym instruments with bass playing lead - what I had always assumed was a double-tracked drum kit on C30 C60 C90 Go and other tracks is actually the guitar, while the bass wonders off pulling fanciful melodies out of bags. Ahhh

Anyway, next up were The Coral - the first time I'd given their album a proper listen. I first heard them on Top of the Pops and was blown away - probably the most awesome performance ToTP has ever seen, or is ever likely to, if you pushed me I might even say it was second only to the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's angle-grinding up of The Word's set with California Uber Alles in terms of televisual musical brilliance. Anyway, the album matches up to all expectations, fuck knows how this bunch of teenage scousers manage to replicate and improve on 60s Nuggets-esque garage music, but they do, almost every track is a classic, full of depth, symphonic variations within short pop songs. Respect. Of course, the lyrics are pretty teenagery and crap, but I never give a toss about lyrics anyway except in exceptional circumstances.

I wish I'd taken my camera with me. I've never been able to frame a picture, but today was one of those rare days when pictures frame themselves. Ah well. I also discovered places I never knew existed, a couple of streets away from my house. Glad I went out.

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6:16 AM


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4:33 PM
I love Vice Magazine! The more I read it, the more I love it (and Andrew, Vice's UK publisher, is a very fun bloke to be in the vicinity of). And their "How to get reamed up the cake" article has changed my life forever :->

I heard this story reported on Radio 4 a while back, but somehow Vice give it a, err, slightly different spin ("No More AIDS... And There's Going to be Fucking in the Streets"). They are big, they are clever, and they're funny as hell - they're rude and offensive as hell as well, but only ever in the nicest possible way, you know they're only Joshing. Vice's journalistic style is just about as damn close to perfect as I can imagine a magazine ever coming.

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9:57 AM
Posted a new review to Amazon - of Delia's new vegetarian book.

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9:29 AM
We finally went through the hatch in our living room roof last night! Yeah, only about two years after moving in (and a year since John K came to visit and got so excited about what might be up there), but we made it eventually. We saw there... not a lot. Well, a triangular space the length of the house, with actually 4 hatches in it, but the other 3 are all plasterboarded over. It's about 5-foot high at the middle, and pretty sound structurally. Lots of cobwebs and dust and bits of insulating fluff, but nothing else up there. But wadda space!

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12:51 AM
Wow... schloozed out on uber-sweet lemon genever, subbing articles for the next FAD, and Bow Wow Wow MP3s playing - fscking blast from the past or what!

C30 C60 C90 Go sounds almost fresh again - still an amazing song, and it's home-taping philosophy fast forwards well to an era of file-sharing.

It used to break my heart when I went in the shop
and you said my records were out of stock
so I don't buy records in your shop
now I tape them all 'cause I'm Top of the Pops

Well I don't need no album rack
'cause I carry my collection on my back

If you're rich enough to have a record collection
I'll bring my bazooka round for inspection

C30 C60 C90 go
see-three-oh see-six-oh
C30 C60 C90 go
see-ninety-go
three-oh six-oh nine-oh
GO!

Yeaaah!

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12:20 AM
It looks like our housing/money problems could be all solved... or at least pushed far enough into the future for us to forget that they exist. See, we're foolish enough to be actually paying off the money we borrowed to buy our house. Stupid idea. Latest craze is to leave it owing, and mortgage our retirement instead.

The way the sums work is like this - we owe the bank £120k which we are paying back over the next 17 years, along with interest. Stupid idea. Scrap that. Put the debt up to about £175k (the house is, after all, worth about £100k more than that), forget about paying it back for another 25 years, and in the meantime just pay the interest. Means that instead of paying the bank £800 a month we only have to pay them £400, and meantime we get a whole bunch of cash to pay off all our debts...

...AND to build our dream home. See, we finance all this by turning what is now our living room into a three-bedroom house (there is room in there, believe me)... leave the front third as it is, a lounge with a big stained glass window and a very high ceiling, split the other two-thirds by putting a floor halfway up the wall, turn the bottom bit of that into a kitchen and an office, the top part into three bedrooms (the front one of which has a balcony overlooking the living room and sharing the light from the stained glass window), lots of Velux windows in the roof, it'll be amazing, trust me. We already have a toilet/bathroom outside on the landing, so no worries about that, and the entire downstairs of the house can be turned over to rowdy students who will hopefully pay our mortgage for us by renting it out. And we live happily ever after. In 20 years time, our kids leave home, by which time we either split the house properly and sell a leasehold on the bottom half, or sell the lot (not forgetting that by changing it from a 4 bedroom house to a 7 bedroom house in one of the most expensive parts of Sheffield we have almost doubled the value of the house) and emigrate to a warmer climate.

Oh, and we also demolish the outhouses in the backgarden, leaving the bottom few layers of bricks so we can turn them into a pond and stuff, and at a stroke our garden seems like it's twice as big.

What can possibly go wrong? (rhetorical question, answers not welcome)

I love Gill's master-plans, and this time I really do think she's onto a winner.

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1:33 AM
I was thinking earlier of throwing together some sort of words of advice for young people, á la William S Burroughs ("If you're doing business with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing. His word isn't worth shit. Not with the good lord telling him how to fuck you on the deal"). Kind of near-truisms that I really ought to have realised at the time but that somehow escaped my mind.

And yet... now I can only really think of one, perhaps something to do with my recent failed attempt to get to sleep, while nestled in a deep depression (physical, for a change):

Never buy a matress from IKEA. It may say "pocketed sprung" on the label, but there's pocketed sprung and there's pocketed sprung.

<sigh>

(of course, this is subsumed within the greater Dan-ism that you should never buy anything from IKEA... aside from the oft-remarked inability to assemble their cack-goods once you get home, the whole stressful traffic-jam-parking-space-warehouse-shelf-till-queue experience is just not worth it. I have managed to banish IKEA from my life and I'm a much better person for it, my anger at the world has all but disappeared).

Maybe hearing Nick Hornby's paen to his favourite songs on Radio 4 also prevented me from sleeping. I've been hearing about this book all over the last couple of weeks, and it annoys the hell out of me that somebody can get paid good money to ramble on about their 31 favourite songs. Actually, it was very interesting, despite tonight's installment being about two songs in which I have no interest (well, it would have to be really... I mean, "my favourite 31 songs" is just too personal unless you can make it a good read as well). But still... the very idea. The barefaced cheek of it. Gissa job, I can do that.

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11:33 PM
I'm back in another food phase.

It started three or four days ago, when I decided to take a more serious look at the copy of Delia Smith's Vegetarian Collection which we got as a wedding gift (still haven't worked out who gave it to us - the label came off somewhere between the Earth Centre and our house).

So I forget exactly which recipe I started off on, but over the last few days I have made, among other things, semolina shortbread, black-eyed bean burgers (except I didn't have any black-eyed... substituted black turtle beans instead) with an amazing ginger-onion marmalade, a plum grunt-type crumbley-sconey-topped dessert, red onion and balsamic vinegar tart, pesto risotto salad, a few other things which I must've forgotten but I'm sure they were very nice. It's a better cookbook than I at first thought, but it still annoys me with its acres of photos of baskets of apples and punnets of whitecurrants (yes, I know what the raw materials look like... why the hell don't you show me pictures of the finished product?) and the measurements given in imperial, with the metric equivalents in brackets, as if to make a point.

And then today I got back to using the absolutely amazing wonderful Vegetarian Bistro (OK, so the measurements are in fucking CUPS, something which I thought we got over shortly after the stone age). Ahh... delicious gorgeous super-wonderful. We had a kind of soufflé-ish gratin for dinner - mashed courgettes and arborio rice mixed with spinach, basil, parlsey, parmesan, onion, garlic and egg, a few salads and some creamy mushrooms to go with it. And then for dessert... well, get this... absinthe soufflé!!!

Dissolve a quarter of a cup (how big a cup?) of sugar in half a cup (ditto) of water over a low heat, then turn it up and boil for ten minutes until it's syrup. Meanwhile take three egg whites (or in my case, seven) and whisk them to hell and back with a pinch of salt. Once they're hard and peaky, drizzle in the syrup while still whisking, then drizzle in a little (two tablespoons?) absinthe. In another bowl (I hope somebody else is washing up) whisk up some (a cup?) double cream until peaky but soft, then whisk in some more (another two?) absinthe. Fold together the egg mix and the cream mix and stick it in the freezer for six hours or more (if you're me, you might stick some mint leaves on top or something poncey like that... or will that make it taste even more toothpastey?). Eat. But not too much, or you'll get very drunk.

Mmmm. Absinthe ice-cream. Whod've thought it?

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