Read Al-Ahram commentary; Illegitimate and Untouchable

Read Arab News article ‘Saudis call Obama speech meaningless drivel

David Miliband in Islamabad – ‘Pakistan is feeling bruised, abused and confused.’

Read The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by John J Measheimer and Stephen M. Walt (2007).  ’Americans need to understand the real history of Israel’s founding and the true story of its subsequent conduct.  Instead of passively accepting the Leon Uris version of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Americans need to absorb and reflect on the findings of Israel’s “new historians,” whose courageous scholarship has shed much-needed light on what the Zionists’ campaign to build a Jewish state in the midst of an indigenous Arab population entailed.  Although the two situations are hardly identical, one cannot understand Zionism without understanding the long history of Christian anti-Semitism, and one cannot fathom contemporary Palestinian nationalism without being aware of the events surrounding the 1948 war, which Israelis call the War of Independence but Palestinians call al-Nakba, or “the Catastrophe.” (p350-1)

Back in frozen Copenhagen filming for an NHK programme on ‘Cosmoclimatology’. Quite a controversial subject, as it challenges the greenhouse gas global warming theory. It’s ironic as well because it was only over a year ago in this very town that the world leaders gathered to sign nothing. (I was part of the media circus and frustrated by the performance of the mumbling Japanese environment minister.)

Cosmoclimatology is a theory that claims it is cosmic rays that are responsible for climate change and the Earth is actually cooling. Increased activities on the Sun such as ‘coronal mass ejection’ create cosmic rays that reach the surface of the Earth and they contribute to aerosols formation in lower atmosphere, which subsequently form clouds, blocking the sun and its heat from the surface. Intriguing stuff.

This is Nyhavn at dawn on Sunday. Someone has been drinking all night in a bar and thrown a chair on the frozen canal. There are hundreds of pushbikes underneath the ice, apparently, chucked out for a laugh. Jolly lot, Danes.

P.S. Morten and Kersten, if you are there, email me.

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‘The Earth is cooling.  Enjoy the sunshine while it lasts…’  Debate on Henrik Svensmark’s cosmoclimatology.

His take on the current Middle Eastern ‘revolutions’ is unflinchingly realist.  He criticizes Obama’s foreign policy lacking a coherent grand strategy, trying to have it both ways i.e. preaching democracy and tolerating the despots, which resulted in ‘a period of hapless confusion’. Where there is no foundation of basic democratic principles, there bound to be violence, and in the Middle East it will be of an extremist Islamist kind. In the 20^th century the centre of violent conflict was the Balkans.  In this century it will be the Muslim world, Ferguson claims, and this is a natural consequence of economic problems and declining empire.  America has lost its grip in the region.  In ten years time, there won’t be the House of Saud ruling the Arabian Peninsula.

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Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek article ‘Un-American Revolutions‘

Niall Ferguson interview in The Global and Mail ‘There Will Be Blood‘

Watch Ferguson’s latest series, ‘Civilization’ on Channel 4.

In November I was in Gateshead (and in Newcastle for the first time, I think, after 30-odd years living in this country) and made a detour with the Fuji TV crew to see Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North.

It stood in the middle of nowhere, a gigantic figure, which looked deceptively small from the side. From the front though it was so wide that it could topple over sideways any moment, not particularly lovely to look at but certainly impressive. You can experiment with different angles to shoot it from. Would like to visit Crosby Beach next.

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