Well, we did it. Having been encouraged by to lower my ambitions to reasonable levels, we had about twenty people around yesterday afternoon for beer, wine, juice and snacks. The weather was decent enough to do it in the garden; my mother is staying, and was extremely helpful in preparing the food, fielding small people etc; all thee of our children drifted in and out of the company at different stages (though I must explain to F that most people already know where babies come from), and we had I think five other children wandering around without any untoward incidents (all smaller than F). Nothing got broken, and thanks to the generosity of our guests we are well ahead of where we started in terms of cut flowers, wine and even chocolates. So thanks to , , Zoe, Andy, and everyone else who came and helped us effectively have a house-warming, almost four years after we moved in here. Hope to see the rest of you next time.

[Edited to add:] Turns out that belgianwaffle was also among my guests – little did I know!

A fascinating interview with Eduard Shevardnadze, former president of Georgia and former foreign minister of the Soviet Union, here. Fascinating, as much as anything, because of the prejudices revealed by his Russian interviewer:

Eduard Ambrosievich, in all honesty, does your conscience ever bother you for ruining the friendship with Russia together with Gamsahurdia and Saakashvili? After all, it wasn’t you but your predecessors who started the friendship, and they were just as smart as you.

To which Shevardnadze replies:

I am not responsible for the actions of Saakashvili and even for those of Gamsakhurdia. As for myself, I was never against Russia. I even did something helpful for Russia. I was a member of the Politburo for seven years, a foreign minister. Who helped end the Cold War? Wasn’t Russia interested in this?

The Russian attitude to Georgia has always seemed to me a bit like that of someone who has recently been dumped by their boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife and hasn’t yet got over it – it doesn’t matter what the Georgians do, it is always wrong. There was a particular edge to it during Shevardnadze’s rule in Georgia, as he was seen by many Russians as a traitor – someone who was firmly at Gorbachev’s side in the years of collapse and then ran away to install an anti-Russian, pro-Western policy on Russia’s southern flank; Shevardnadze seems utterly unaware of his own poor image in Russia (or perhaps he just isn’t letting it bother him).

Meanwhile the Russians don’t understand that from the Georgian side they are perceived as the occupiers of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, not to mention the more recent bombing of Georgian territory three years ago. There is little incentive on either side for improving the political rhetoric.

10) The Light Ages, by Ian R. MacLeod

Hmmm. On the one hand, this is the book that China Miéville’s Iron Council should have been. Complex, interesting characters, a sparsely sketched yet believable social set-up, just the corner of the irrational (the mysterious “aether”, discovered in 1678, and the cornerstone of England’s prosperity, but which has dreadful effects on those it touches directly). The literary references are on the whole to those Dickens novels I haven’t read, and to Hardy who I haven’t read at all, but for all that the cliches of nineteenth-century Britain are well-enough known that it all made sense to me (the revolution is clearly 1848, or just possibly Paris 1870, rather than 1968). So a deep and absorbing novel.

But the start is awfully off-putting – took me several goes to even begin properly. Once I was in it, I was flying, and found it easy enough to follow. But I still felt it could have been done more efficiently and briefly, in say 300 pages rather than 450. Maybe that makes it Great Literature, and me a philistine. I don’t know.

9) The Knight in the Tiger Skin / ვეფხისტყაოსანი (more usally translated as “The Knight in the Panther’s Skin”), by Shot’ha Rust’hveli / შოთა რუსთაველი (more usually transliterated Shota Rustaveli), translated by Marjory Scott Wardrop with an introduction by Irakly Abashidze.

The is the grand epic poem of Georgian literature, written by a senior official of the court of Queen Tamar, in the late twelfth / early thirteenth century. I bought my copy of the 1966 edition of the 1912 translation from a street stall in Tbilisi last week, but have found the same edition transcribed on the Georgian Parliamentary Library site here. (The original Georgian, if you want to try it, is here.)

Rather grand claims are made by Georgians and their fans on behalf of this poem (vide Abashidze’s introduction, “its life-affirming passion, shining humanity and heroic spirit, the ideas of patriotism and internationalism that it embodies and the elevated human feelings and moral ideals it expresses link this great literary monument of the distant past with the spiritual world of all freedom-loving peoples”) and since I can’t read the original to appreciate its intricate metrical structure (including rhyming words to the fourth syllable) much of it is lost on me. I did wonder if the limitations of the metrical structure of the four-line stanza are in some ways reminiscent of comics – you have the box, you have to fill it with narrative, so sometimes it needs to be padded out a bit, and occasionally it feels a little cramped.

The plot doesn’t matter much – there are knights, one of whom wraps himself in a tiger skin and mourns his lost love, they go on long voyages by sea and land, fight battles in many different countries, and rescue the lost love, and all ends happily. However it is absolutely fascinating to read a work written at the far end of Europe from Eleanor’s Aquitaine and her sponsorship of the ideals of courtly love, and find exactly the same values of chivalry extolled – and explicitly sourced not in Europe but in Arabia, Persia, Africa and India. I have always tended to think of this sort of thing as linked to the Norman French of the later Middle Ages, but of course it all happened because of the Crusades and the massive injection of new material into Western European from the Islamic world.

Especially in times like these, it’s important to be reminded that there was a time when the centre of our civilisation was located in what are now Iraq and Iran (with significant overspill to Egypt and Pakistan).

Ten fictional characters who I would shag:

Actually, I found this very difficult after the first three. If the story-line is one of a romance with a happy ending, then I feel I don’t want to interfere in someone else’s relationship (even a fictional character’s). And even if it’s not that kind of story, just because I find them interesting doesn’t mean I’m desperately keen to shag them. So, the top four I’m totally sure of, largely because their role in the story includes a certain element of shagging everything that looks sufficiently interesting, and I think I would be sufficiently interested for a fling; the next two are fascinating characters who don’t exactly radiate availability but I wouldn’t mind a go with, as long as I knew I’d survive the experience; and the bottom four are a grab-bag from my shelves and memory of TV programmes. So, in reverse order, the ten fictional characters I’d shag are:

10. Stephanie Plum

She’s been good company for me on many a plane flight, particularly going through Vienna airport where she always seems to be waiting for me. Stephanie hunts down bad guys (though not usually very bad guys) in New Jersey, and we hear of her life via Janet Evanovich. Her love life is complex, and I would figure in it only briefly.

9. Helena Justina

Like Stephanie, Helena Justina solves mysteries and fights crime, but this time in first-century Rome. This picture (if indeed it is her) doesn’t show her at her best; she is aristocratic, sarcastic, and very intelligent. She would also break my rule of not interfering in a steady relationship, since she lives in nearly wedded bliss with Marcus Didius Falco, at least according to author Lindsey Davies. However, I don’t think it counts, because he has been dead for about 1900 years. (Of course, so has she…)

8. Caitlín Mulryan

7. Susan Ivanova

Funny how despite the fact that I’m a Doctor Who fan, and have more than a passing acquaintance with Star Trek, there’s none of the characters that really leap into the bonkable category for me. On the other hand, I only watched Babylon 5 a few times, yet I’d really like to take Commander Ivanova aside and help her unwind. And see below for two more classic media sf characters.

6. Death

Definitely in the category of dangerous but attractive. Very dangerous.

5. Scully

This feels like a bit of a cop-out, since I found the X-Files increasingly silly as the years went on; but if we’re talking early series Scully, still trying to make sense of the confusing world around her, then I think it’s possible.

4. Dr Frank ‘N’ Furter

Don’t get strung out By the way I look Don’t judge a book by its cover I’m not much of a man By the light of day But by night I’m one hell of a lover! How could anyone resist?

3. Eleanor of Aquitaine

Now, this really is cheating in that Eleanor of Aquitaine was a genuine historical personality. My excuse is that so many myths and legends have been woven around her that she has featured as a fictional character in numerous novels, plays and films. The picture here is the only one known to be really her, from her tombstone, and probably doesn’t represent her at her most glamorous (she was around 80 when she died in 1204). If she could fit me into her busy schedule in the spring of 1152, between her divorcing the king of France (to whom she had been married for fifteen years) and marrying the future king of England, I wouldn’t complain. She’d have been in her late 20s at the time.

2. Phedre no Delaunay

Scholar, spy and courtesan, world traveller and political activist, in the universe that is described by author Jacqueline Carey, I think I could find enough in common with Phedre to make it work for at least one hot date, since that is her specialty.

1. Faith

What more need be said? (Though oddly enough I can’t manage the same level of enthusiasm for Tru in Tru Calling. I guess it’s the superior production values of Buffy.)

[Edited to add:] I was inspired to do this by ‘s list, though I think I may have seen it from someone else first. Since then I note another list of boys from , and lists of girls from here and here.

Thanks to comments below from , I realise that I unjustly neglected both Bernice Summersfield from the New Adventures of Doctor Who series, and Ashley Watt from Iain Banks’ novel The Crow Road. I would also like to add Angelina DiGriz of the Stainless Steel Rat books from ‘s list, and Officer Tina Russo from Hill Street Blues from ‘s list. So, sorry to Stephanie Plum, Helena Justina, Caitlín Mulryan, and Scully, you’re off the list. (But Susan Ivanova can stay on it.)

The next concours, ie the next round of recruitment for the EU’s administrative machinery, has been announced. The job criteria are:

• A university degree of at least three years’ duration
• Thorough knowledge of one of the following official languages of the EU (main language): Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish PLUS a satisfactory knowledge of a second of these languages.
• Citizenship of one of the Member States of the EU

There will be literally thousands of applicants. And you can only apply on-line, between 1 and 29 September. Full details here (pdf file). If you’re even half interested in a job as a Eurocrat, this is the time to apply – it will take two or three years for the process to reach a conclusion and there probably won’t be another concours this decade.

I’m not always hugely convinced by Stratfor, one of the big names in doing for the commercial sector what we do for governments, but I found this latest piece from them very thought-provoking. (F-locked because it’s their copyright material, and I don’t know where to point to on their website; and also because I’m posting at work.)

Stratfor has introduced a weekly article written by Fred Burton, Stratfor vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security, that takes a tactical approach to analyzing terrorism and terrorist groups, the motivations and methods of various movements and the impact on security and public interests in the United States and abroad. We believe you will find this supplement to our geopolitical analysis timely and relevant to your intelligence needs. Please watch for details in the coming weeks on how you can register to receive this mailing on a regular basis. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing your feedback.

By Fred Burton

Nearly two weeks after the London bombings, investigators have established a critical mass of forensic and other evidence, and it is now certain that all four bombers died at the scenes of the explosions. The identities of the bombers have been established, timelines of their movements recreated, and revelations that at least one of them previously had been under MI5 surveillance for a time have emerged. It also is strongly suspected that the four-man cell was operating under the guidance — or at least was in contact with — a shadowy fifth operative or a handler of some type in Pakistan.

All in all, it seems unquestionable that the July 7 bombings were well-planned, well-coordinated, trademark strikes by al Qaeda.

Yet in reviewing the growing mass of evidence, there is still something that doesn’t add up. It’s the kind of thing that seems innocuous enough, but sticks in a detective’s brain — a clue to which he returns again and again, trying to make it fit with the rest of the puzzle. And in this case, it’s the image of all four bombing suspects together, captured by closed-circuit television cameras, entering a train station at Luton early on the day of the bombings.

For anyone with a background in intelligence and tradecraft, it’s hard to downplay the significance of that image. One of the first rules learned in Intelligence Officer Training 101 is that operatives working together on a mission should not travel together or engage in noticeable contact, for fear of providing leads to anyone who might be conducting surveillance. For al Qaeda, the risks of putting live operatives together in the same place and time — at any point, but particularly on the day of a suicide mission — would be enormous. And those risks would be amplified in a place like Britain, which is blanketed with CCTV cameras that, as we know from evidence gathered in the past, would have been systematically noted by al Qaeda operatives conducting their own pre-operational surveillance.

This leaves us with two possibilities: Either al Qaeda is not as slick and as smart as the world — and particularly the intelligence agencies that have failed to prevent its strikes — would like to believe, or the 7/7 operatives were unwitting bombers who might have been duped into carrying out a suicide mission.

Let’s consider the facts supporting an “unwitting bombers” theory for a moment.

First, we know from materials gathered in connection with arrests made since 9/11 that al Qaeda conducts extensive and detailed pre-operational surveillance. This means that before any strike, someone is sent to check out existing security measures and other details at possible targets, and along the routes that cell members would travel on the day of the actual mission. These all must be countered or else somehow factored into the plans in order for an operation to succeed.

Certainly, the 7/7 cell members — or at least their handler — would be aware of the presence of security cameras at the train stations and realize that this footage would be carefully scanned in the aftermath of the explosions. If the bombers were aware of the true nature of their mission, it would hardly be difficult to spread their movements out — arriving at the train station at staggered times and thus throwing at least some complications into the post-attack investigation.

Moreover, all four men were carrying their actual identification documents at the times of the explosions, which have become part of the forensic evidence gathered. This would be extremely foolish, assuming they actually knew they were on their way to their deaths — again, since it would greatly speed certain aspects of the investigation that easily could be dragged out, helping the trail grow cold before authorities could close in on their handler or other operatives with whom they potentially had contact.

Finally, it’s not beyond the pale that al Qaeda would use unwitting operatives. The informant who led U.S. authorities to Ramzi Yousef, who planned the first World Trade Center bombings, was initially called into service to test out a plan involving explosives planted inside baby dolls — and realized at some point along the way that he might in fact be a suicide operative who wasn’t prepared to die. Rather than carry out his mission, he reported it to authorities instead.

Our longstanding assessment of al Qaeda has been that it is an extremely resource-scarce organization — for operational security reasons, if no others. The fewer people who know about or are part of a plot, the safer they and their plans are. We also believe it to be an extremely risk-averse and security-conscious organization; otherwise, it could not have achieved the success it did with 9/11, the Madrid attacks and other operations.

This assessment remains firmly intact — and the implications for the future spin forward in terrifying ways if it can be assumed that the 7/7 operatives were unwitting bombers. Speaking from the standpoint of a professional who has trained operatives in the past, it makes perfect sense to me for all four bombers to be seen traveling together if they believed their purpose was to conduct a training run. For a handler, it’s just easier to keep the group together in tow.

Of course, we must speculate here, but suppose the handler — who might have been Mohammed Saddique Khan, the elder statesman of the four-man cell, or a shadowy fifth operative who may or may not have visited Britain prior to the attacks — had called the group together under the guise of testing them. Perhaps the goal was to plan “another Madrid,” or simply — in the cell members’ minds — to determine what was possible and where the risks in an operation lay. In this scenario, the training run would be most easily carried out if they departed from a central point, timed their runs and then met again afterward to report their findings.

However, they would have been — without their knowledge — carrying explosive devices with pre-set timers, and only their handler would have been aware that the cell members would not live to possibly change their minds or tell tales. In that case, the presence of the cameras or other security measures could be more easily discounted, and al Qaeda’s operational security (OPSEC) would remain intact.

If we stand by this argument, there are several potential aftereffects that would play in al Qaeda’s favor. Not the least of these is the fact that the bombers were British-born citizens who carried out an attack on their home soil. It is extremely difficult for many to accept that native-born citizens could be al Qaeda sympathizers, and this tends to amplify the terror effect of the strikes.

That said, we must examine the other possibility — that the bombers knowingly undertook a suicide mission. The tale then follows a standard pattern: a four-man cell of hard-core militants, intent on death and destruction.

There is plenty of evidence to support this case as well — particularly as more details emerge about the operatives’ movements in the days prior to the attack.

For instance, it has been confirmed that three of the bombers visited Pakistan last year — two of them, Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, arriving and departing together from Karachi — and authorities believe they might have been radicalized while attending madrassas there. Furthermore, there are now reports that the suspects themselves purchased many of the materials used in the attacks — including the large rucksacks each of the bombers carried aboard the trains — in Leeds in the days prior to the strike.

Perhaps most damning is word that, with forensics well in hand at this stage, there is “no evidence” of any timing devices having been used, authorities have said. Now, that is not the same thing as saying there is direct evidence the devices were command-detonated, and this has been a matter of some conflicting reports since the bombings occurred. However, the latest revelations from British authorities strongly suggest that the bombs would have been manually — and purposely — detonated.

Assuming that the London strikes were a standard suicide mission, all the aftereffects mentioned above remain; only the belief in al Qaeda’s reverence for operational security is cast into doubt.

And it well could be that — as painful as this is for intelligence and security agencies around the world to stomach, looking back over the history of successful attacks — the network’s tradecraft really is that lousy.

Consider Ahmed Ressam, whose behavior as he crossed the border from Canada was so suspicious that he attracted the attention of authorities and the Millennium Plot was unearthed. Ahmad Ajaj, traveling in the company of Yousef, was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1992 carrying a suitcase full of manuals on bomb-making techniques. The Madrid bombers all boarded the trains they blew up from the same station. Mohammed Atta left pocket litter and documents detailing the 9/11 plot behind in a rental car. And Zacarias Moussaoui applied to a training school to learn how to fly — but not land — airplanes. The list goes on.

As evidence continues to mount, the balance seems to be tilting in favor of the traditional suicide mission. The bitter pill for intelligence agents and analysts is that al Qaeda actually can be that sloppy and yet still be effective. It’s almost like a contradiction in terms.

There is, of course, a third and final possibility — that all of the bombers’ movements were carefully planned and calculated, with all of the clues they left behind for investigators intended as a final, brazen thrust.

In some respects, it would be more comforting to believe the London bombers were duped into carrying out their mission. But any way you slice it, something about the 7/7 operation is going to be very hard to swallow.

I’ve been following the latest blogger-getting-fired story with some interest. (If you haven’t seen about this – this is where a columnist for the New York Times read her nanny’s blog and fired the nanny; and then wrote about it in her column. Last time I noted (publicly) an incident like this, my sympathies were largely with the blogger (Joe Gordon, late of Waterstone’s and now of Forbidden Planet).

This time round my feelings are a bit more mixed, and I think the blogging nanny’s last entry helps me feel justified in that ambivalence. Working with children is just a bit different from working in a job where you are publicising books, and the parent, I think, is entitled to a little more of a comfort zone, however irrational and logically ill-founded, than the bookseller; and all kinds of personality issues which should ever be considered in the office do become important in the home. I hope I myself wouldn’t fire a blogging nanny, but I think her employers had an unquestionable right to take that into account if they wanted.

Having said that, while it may be within the bounds of acceptable behaviour for the parent to fire the blogging nanny, it is certainly not then within the bounds of acceptable behaviour to write a long newspaper article sensationalising the nanny’s blog, and I feel considerable sympathy for the nanny who as far as I can tell showed much more discretion in describing her employers than they have since done towards her.

I came across a blog the other day describing the life of a Western woman living in an Eastern European country, a moving account of her small child getting bigger and her own attempt to come to terms with her husband’s having recently admitted that he had an affair several years ago. She has posted enough information that I was able to google the husband’s fairly high-powered job almost instantly – she’s used their real names (and the real name of the head of the organisation for which the husband works) and the real city and country in which they are based. I attempted to be a Good Samaritan a few weeks ago, when it was my own organisation; perhaps I should make the same suggestion again…

Ӕ and ӕ are unique to Ossetian. They look just like Æ and æ, but are in Cyrillic.

My pictures are here.

kindly asked my views on Ted Heath. I’ll just start by noting that the number of living ex-prime ministers has halved this year, from four to two; and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were to halve again before it increases.

On Northern Ireland, the picture is mixed. The gross security errors of Bloody Sunday, internment and the Falls Road curfew, crucial iconic incidents in poisoning the relationship between the British Army and many Catholics, all of which directly strengthened the Provisionals, all took place earlier in his term of office, and Heath must carry ultimate responsibility for all three (including internment, technically Faulkner’s decision but one that could hardly have been taken without Heath’s knowledge or consent). Suspending Stormont was obviously the right thing to do – but perhaps this should have happened much sooner. And Heath then further bolstered the legitimacy of the Republican movement by flying in Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams (as spokesmen for the IRA, note, not Sinn Fein) for the famous London talks with Willie Whitelaw.

On the other hand, Sunningdale was indeed an accomplishment – an agreement in many ways less flawed than the 1998 one (voluntary coalition rather than forced, largely brokered by Heath himself, and essentially wrecked by Harold Wilson’s failure to stand up to Loyalist intimidation. Some analysts blame Heath for calling the first 1974 election early, and handing the Loyalists the propaganda coup of winning 11 out of 12 Northern Ireland seats. I would defend him on this – the election was coming at some point anyway, and in those days Westminster elections were practically second-order elections in Northern Ireland. It should also be said that the whole Sunningdale process, from the suspension of Stormont in early 1972 to the inauguration of the power-sharing executive in 1974, took less time than even the 1996-98 Mitchell talks, let alone the entire process from Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 to the present day.

I don’t write much here about Northern Irish politics, but two sites which I do scan from time to time are the Slugger O’Toole weblog, providing commentary from a number of different perspectives, and The Blanket, which also presents a diversity of views, but is essentially run by disgruntled Republicans who believe that Gerry Adams has essentially settled for the same deal that was on offer in 1974, and complain that this devalues the entire armed struggle since then. I’d put it a little differently; I agree that Gerry Adams has indeed essentially settled for the same deal that was on offer in 1974 (strictly, 1973), but would say this demonstrates the worthlessness of the entire armed struggle since then.

Going back to Heath, two last notes. First off, last night’s TV documentary showed how important he was in getting the UK into the European Economic Community as then was (and didn’t mention Northern Ireland once). This is probably his most valuable political legacy, and he deserves a great deal of credit for it. Second, a friend of mine stood against him in Old Bexley and Sidcup in his last election, in 1997. The national papers ran a feature on the largest age gap between any two candidates in the same constituency – 54 years: Heath was then 80, while Iain had been born in the week of decimalisation, when Heath had already been prime minister for six months. Heath won handsomely, of course, but for the last time.

[Edited to add] Journalistic assessment from Belfast Telegraph here. Key phrase, “the Sunningdale settlement turned out like so much of the Heath record, to be either a glorious failure or too much too soon”.

Bolded those of you I’ve met, at least to the extent of “hello, you must be…” in the pub; strictly I should italicise those I have spoken to on the phone but not met, however I don’t think that applies to anyone.

ajshepherd, akicif, alarielle, alexmc, alliemay, andwatagain, andyhat, ang_grrr, annafdd, artw, autopope, aynathie, banskid, barsine, blonde222, bouncingbelle, bricoleur, bring_back_food, brisingamen, britzkrieg, burkesworks, busarewski, butterbee, captain_wesker, ccfinlay, cdpoint, ceemage, chance88088, chernikovsun, cherylmorgan, chess, chilperic, coalescent, communicator, crazysoph, creaney, crystalfrog, cwgerard, cygny, dace_holenfor, daegaer, davesangel, davidstewart, deadspeaker, deannawol, dear_hubby, deborah_c, despotliz, djm4, dougs, eastethnia, eimear_rose, elise, ephiriel, etherealfionna, eugie, feorag, fjm, flemmarde, fluffcthulhu, flyingsauce, givali, greengolux, gummitch, habseligkeit, hawkida, hddod, hedgetrimmer, hells_librarian, hfnuala, ianmcdonald, ias, inner_storm, irishlass04, jacobsmills, james_nicoll, jdigital, jere7my, juleske, kate_nepveu, kcjones, kenmaher, kennedybak, kharin, kradical, kulfuldi, las, lauriemann, leedy, leex, leila_azziza, liadnan, lopt, lostcarpark, luned, major_clanger, marykaykare, megolas, mevennen, mik_yesha, min_baro, minny, mr_renaissance, mylescorcoran, nalsa, nancylebov, natural20, nhw, nickbarnes, ninebelow, nmg, nrivkis, nyphur, omegar, original_kaos, papersky, peake, pickwick, pnh, politicinternet, purple_pen, purplecthulhu, pvaneynd, qatsi, qdbii, rangerdewshine, redbird, rfmcdpei, rozk, rparvaaz, sammywol, sbisson, scattyme, seawasp, sevenorora, shsilver, shutters_i, sinclair_furie, sisterdew, slovobooks, smhwpf, sneerpout, srk1, stellanova, stilldancer, sugarimp, sulkyblue, susansugarspun, swisstone, synan, tamaranth, theferrett, thette, tnh, vnp, wiselamb, with_this_voice, wwhyte, wyvernfriend, yhlee, yourownmeretrix, zhaneel69

Who have I missed?

I’ve written before about Mini-Europe, the attraction up at the Heysel stadium where famous buildings from all over the European Union are reproduced in miniature. Obviously since last year they’ve had to rearrange the display while introducing new exhibits for the ten new member states, and Anne’s brother had managed to wangle an invitation to the formal opening of the new Maltese exhibit this morning.

Unfortunately it proved impossible to get key members of our party ready in time for the formal event, but we went along to Mini-Europe anyway, and I got a few decent pictures:

F turning the wheel that makes the Kinderdijk windmills turn and the water pour into the canal.

The new Latvian exhibit – I’ve never been to Riga but apparently this is the Freedom Memorial, looks pretty spectacular.

The ostensible reason why we should have been there, the new Maltese exhibit, prehistoric temples.

Ah well, back to work tomorrow – but Thursday is a day off!

All very good fun, as these events are supposed to be. My cousin is from the Bengali side of our family; she commented that the 150 invitees were basically her close relatives and about ten friends. Not sure how pleased she’ll be with the first two of these pictures (reflecting, alas, my own not too finely honed photographic skills) but the third I think is pretty good:

The evening before

Arriving at the venue with my uncle

The happy couple after the ceremony

My brother got rather better pictures of the ceremony itself.

Inevitably with so many relatives gathered together there had to be more group photos.

My brother, my mother, me, my sister

My mother, me, my sister-in-law, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law

(Anne had had to stay behind in Belgium)

And a couple of pictures of some of the Aberystwyth end of my family:

My godson (also my cousin) plus wife and stepson

My godson plus brothers plus partners plus young Sam again.

I had a great time, though unfortunately seem to have picked up a stomach bug on Thursday evening that left me unable to really appreciate the lovely food on Friday (and still haven’t completely shaken it).

I was also very glad on Saturday morning to have the chance to catch up with two of my closest friends from college days (I guess known only to and ) who kindly gave me a lift to Heathrow.

Got back here safely; will write up today’s adventures in due course.

… or perhaps, send me a link!

Thanks to ‘ note on JK Rowling’s admiration for Jessica Mitford, and his link to her cover version of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, I have now become aware of her brief singing collaboration with Maya Angelou. From her obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Mitford’s resonance is complemented by Angelou’s wide-ranging harmony as both lace their performance with intriguing Cockney accents. As they follow the adventures of two frustrated furniture movers (“After striving, heaving and complaining (pronounced complaye-ning) we was getting nowhere”) in “Right, Said Fred”), one can’t help thinking of early Sonny and Cher recordings.

8) Keepers of the Peace, by Keith Brooke

Keith is the very nice guy who edits the infinity plus website – I didn’t realise that he was also an author, and snapped this up when I saw it, oh, somewhere recently. A straightforward young-soldier’s-rite-of-passage tale, a la Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Haldeman’s The Forever War, or Lucius Shepard’s Life During Wartime, and TBH not quite of the quality of any of those. But competent enough, and I’ll keep an eye out for his other two novels.

7) The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Sorry, Potter fans, this is the book I’d been waiting for for ages, and got on publication from Amazon in May – but have only now had time to read it (Anne of course had first crack at it). This is a new book in the world of The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, with (as far as I could remember) an entirely new set of characters and a slight shift of geographical focus, but the same religious setting of five gods who are very real indeed; in this case there is also an Ancient Curse that has to be lifted. I was worried that it was a bit slow-moving and info-dumping at the start, but once we get the Grand Revelation about one of the central characters it really picks up, and I couldn’t put it down while reading the second half. Bujold’s usual well-rounded characters, including those who would be villains in a lesser author’s book, combined with an intriguing puzzle which is solved with due regard to internal logic. So, I liked it, and it doesn’t really need you to have read either of the previous two.

6) The Rules of Management, by Richard Templar

I like to buy the occasional personal development book, and this was a) cheap and b) the best-selling such at Heathrow Airport so I bought and read it pretty quickly. It’s simply 100 top tips for managers, each explained in one or two pages, not in fact very well structured except that the first third are things to do with your team and the rest are things to do with your own work habits. A couple of ideas that gave me pause for though, but I must say the other books I’ve read in this genre were much more potentially useful.

5) The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, by Christopher Hibbert

Have made it safely home and now just noting all the books I read while on planes or up in the middle of the night with stomach problems. First up, this mid-70s volume on the famous Italian family who took over Florence and Tuscany and were (on some readings) responsible for the Renaissance. The best bit is the first section, on the rise to power of Cosimo de’ Medici in the early fifteenth century; after that it all seemed to descend into a succession of biographical data including each family member’s patronage of the arts. Disappointingly little context was given; I’d have liked to know a bit more about the precise role at that time of a cardinal (or indeed of a pope, as two of them ended up there), and some explanation of why Florence went from the thriving metropolis of Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent to the impoverished backwater of the eighteenth century. Filled in a few blanks for me though.

So, now in a public library internet terminal in Petersfield, Hampshire, preparing for my cousin’s wedding this afternoon.

Until yesterday, Petersfield was a rather insignificant dot on the map for me. But now I know that it has a superb second-hand bookshop, one with suitably winding shelves and passages and books of all ages. (And for all ages.) The one thing I really miss about where we live is the lack of decent English-language second hand book shops. (I understand there is one in Antwerp.) So I have bought:

A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six (F’s sixth birthday is very soon)
Shakespeare, Complete Works, edition smells like it’s about 100 years old.
Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories (also probably for F)
Juvenal in English, Penguin Classics edition of dozens of different translations
Pamela Sargent, The Shore of Women, which I understand is a seminal (if I can use that word) feminist sf text
Bram Stoker, The Lady of the Shroud, set in an unspecified Balkan principality that sounds very like Montenegro
Ellis Weiner, National Lampoon’s DOON, for 50p
Charles Schulz, Snoopy Stars in the Pursuit of Pleasure, also for F
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Second Stage Lensmen – I have never read anything by him and have to start somewhere
Seamus Cullen, Astra and Flondrix – think I read something about this somewhere recently which made me want to look out for it
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage – not especially expecting to enjoy this but I understand it’s an American classic and it was cheap
Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky – still waiting for Going Postal to come out in paperback but this will keep me going.

Also mandatory Shreddies from Waitrose. Have been catching up a little on livejournal but have probably missed anything of importance (except tagging me for the idiosyncracies meme).

OK. Better go back to my B&B and change into wedding-type clothes. Home tomorrow, see y’all then.

Gebzhalia – rolled slices of cheese in mint sauce. Mmmm.

So, I went to South Ossetia on Monday. This is a small territory which fought and won a war against Georgia in the early 1990s and is kept going now by Russian military and economic support. (There is also a North Ossetia, which is one of the republics within Russia, and which is where the awful massacre at the school happened last year).

Ossetian is a language related to Persian but written in Cyrillic script. This is the sign outside the Foreign Ministry and an inspiring and uplifting slogan on display at the deserted main square:


I was told that the Ossetian for Ossetia, “Iryston”, comes from the same root as “Ireland”, and that “Belfast” means “Broken Spade” in Ossetian. Make of that what you will.

The Foreign Minister, Mr Dzhioev, was very pleased to see me. I don’t think he gets many visitors, given that even the Russians have not recognised them as an independent country:

When I asked him what I should take pictures of, he said, “Well, you didn’t come here for our scenery or our climate, did you, you came for the political situation!” (In fairness, the climate up in the foothills of the Caucasus was much more pleasant than on the sun-baked plain of central Georgia.) Irina and Teimuraz, our minders, suggested I should try taking a picture of the one tourist attraction in Tshinvali, the city theatre, unfortunately burnt in an accidental fire last year:

Actually, here are Irina and Teimuraz in front of the Foreign Ministry:

The other slogan on display in the deserted main square was in Russian, and expressed the desires of the South Ossetian people in so far as anyone has bothered to ascertain them:

“230 Years With Russia”

Personally I think they are doomed. The Georgians at the moment are publishing peace plans without actually communicating them to the South Ossetians, which I don’t take seriously; but sooner or later the Russians will get tired of maintaining the South Ossetians in the style to which they have become accustomed (itself sharply reduced by Georgian economic sanctions and military actions from a year ago) and will cut them loose. Later rather than sooner, I expect, given Russia’s current difficulties in the North Caucasus, but the day will come.

The guy I mentioned in my previous post has published his side of the story in RFE/RL:

AN INSIDER LOOKS AT MOLDOVA’S PASAT CASE

By E. Wayne Merry

On 27 June, the trial of former Moldovan Defense Minister Valeriu Pasat in connection with the sale by his government in 1997 of 21 MiG-29 jet fighters to the United States got under way. The ostensible offense for which Pasat, who served as defense minister from 1997-99, is in the dock is that he defrauded the Moldovan state of $54 million by selling the planes to Washington for a mere $40 million.

The arrest and trial are widely viewed as politically motivated, due to Pasat’s association with a previous Moldovan administration and his current connection with Russia’s Unified Energy Systems (EES), for which he works as a consultant. The image of a political trial is reinforced by the fact it is being held behind closed doors at the request of the prosecution, purportedly for national security reasons.

Whatever else Pasat may have on to account for, the MiG sale was a good financial deal for Moldova. I oversaw the purchase as Regional Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the office of the U.S. Defense Secretary. I conducted the initial negotiations with Pasat, although I left the Pentagon for a Congressional staff assignment a few weeks before the final purchase.

This acquisition involved confidential matters that I am not at liberty to discuss, but the intention of the U.S. government was to remove the planes from any potential illicit sales on the international arms market and to assist Moldova during a period of extreme economic hardship. The Pentagon saw the transaction as, in part, a type of assistance to Moldova. The amount the United States was willing to pay for the aircraft and associated equipment seemed generous to U.S. officials involved.

The Moldovan side, including Pasat, did not understand the concept of “fair market value,” to put it mildly. Officials in Chisinau felt the planes must be worth at least what they had cost the Soviet Union to build, rather than what anyone with real money was currently willing to pay for them. They wanted much more that $40 million, and it took months for them to recognize the limitations of the market.

The aircraft in question had been left in Moldova by the Soviet collapse. Although local mechanics kept the planes in good repair, they were of no practical use to the Moldovan state, which could not even afford fuel for training. The planes had no viable military purpose, as Moldova barely has enough airspace for high-performance fighters to turn around in the sky.

There were no other legitimate buyers for the aircraft, my research at the time revealed. Several other governments operated MiG-29s, but none wanted to add to their inventories; indeed, most were shifting to NATO-standard aircraft. The Moldovan planes lacked a source of spare parts and support/repair systems, making them of little value for a new customer. Russia, the producer of the MiG-29, made clear to potential customers that it would supply parts only for planes purchased from it or with its concurrence. Russia would not encourage the competitive sale of MiGs from sources like Moldova, which might cut into its own export market.

The only other potential customers for the Moldovan planes were the so-called “rogue states.” Washington felt it had legitimate concerns about the leakage of Soviet-made weaponry of all types from the arsenals of post-Soviet and former Warsaw Pact states to rogue governments. For Moldova, such an option would have been a disaster because the United States would have terminated its bilateral assistance programs if the MiGs fell into rogue-state hands as required by U.S. law. I have no doubt Washington would also have used its influence in international financial institutions to punish Moldova severely as an object lesson to other countries to discourage this kind of commerce.

The Moldovan government in 1997 was informed of these realities and came, although slowly, to understand the United States was its only serious potential customer, that the offer was a fair one, and that the United States would pay real money immediately in contrast to the vague promises so common in the global arms trade. After several months of negotiations and high-level interventions from the U.S. side, the deal was done. It was a good deal for Moldova.

The sale was a disappointment to many in Chisinau who imagined the aging aircraft to be a goldmine of astronomical worth. In fact, $40 million was more than many people in Washington wanted to pay. I remember having a hard time finding so much money for a country of less-than-primary importance to the United States. The Pentagon proceeded as part of its policy to develop cooperative defense relationships with all the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet states.

I do not know how the $40 million was used. The payment was a simple inter-state financial transfer with no cash or funny business involved. The money went to the Moldovan Finance Ministry.

Anyone with experience of Moldova knows how far short it falls in comparison to Western standards of business practices. Corruption and malfeasance have been rife there throughout its years of independence. However, the sale of 21 aircraft for $40 million was an entirely legitimate transaction. The thinly veiled accusation behind the Pasat trial that the United States in some way defrauded or swindled Moldova in this matter is false.

(E. Wayne Merry is a former U.S. State Department and Pentagon official and current senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.)

I’m not sure if this is really chicken. It tastes better than any chicken I’ve ever eaten. (Let alone cooked.)

Pickled garlic, and the best dolmades I’ve ever had. With tkemali.

For the first time ever, my name badge is in Cyrillic. But I can’t reproduce it here, as this is an SMS post.

[Edited to add:] Николас Уайт.

Tarragon-flavoured lemonade and chvishtari by the river as the sun goes down.

Is this the first ever livejournal post from South Ossetia? Given the large number of Russian-speaking lj users, possibly not.

Hot.

4) Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiassen

The usual hilarious romp of crime, corruption, ecology, sin and redemption in Florida. Great!

3) The Balkan Trilogy – The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City and Friends and Heroes, by Olivia Manning

The first installment of Manning’s books about the second world war. In book 1, Harriet Pringle, recently married to her husband who works for the British Council, arrives in Bucharest just as the second world war is breaking out around them. The book finishes with the fall of Paris. In the second book, Romania gradually crumbles into the German sphere of incluence. In the third, the Pringles have made it to Greece, which also falls to the Germans at the end, though they have escaped to Egypt. The story is heavily autobiographical.

I really enjoyed the first two books. I don’t know Romania particularly well (my grandmother knew it better) but the whole mentality seemed very familiar from my Bosnia days and from my subsequent experiences of other former Ottoman territories. There were several aspects of the story that I felt very familiar with: the personalities and quirks of the small expat community, the total uncertainty of what is going on will happen next – I remember one night in 1997 when I was living in Bosnia, driving home late from the office I unexpectdly came across a column of British tanks; when I turned on the radio to listen to the BBC world service I found out that they were moving in to occupy the police stations in the town.

And the relationship between the Pringles is delicately, almost painfully observed. When I persuaded Anne to come out to join me in Bosnia, we had at least been married for three years and had known each other for nine (and it was by then a former rather than future war zone, at least I hope so); Harriet Pringle’s leap of faith, moving to a Romania with a husband she barely knows, is almost incomprehensible, and her difficulties therefore seem a bit self-inflicted, though at the same time her husband’s behaviour is rather self-obsessed.

The last of the three books, chronicling their time in Greece, is rather different, and a bit disappointing (which is rather similar to my time in Croatia, the last third of my own Balkan experience in 1997-98). Greece was and is of course much more integrated with Western Europe than Romania, but it’s a country I don’t know particularly, so I found the setting more unfamiliar. Harriet’s long drawn-out dalliance with a potential lover is I suppose understandable but I found it a bit frustrating that they took so long to get to the point. And the casual disposal of Prince Yakimov, one of the more attractive characters from the series, was a bit sad.

I never caught the 1987 BBC miniseries based on Olivia Manning’s books, but knowing that it was made allowed me to imagine how bad Ken and Em would be in the title roles. To my delight, the one character who really ought to be played by Alan Bennett, Professor Lord Pinkrose, actually was played by Alan Bennett. I’ll look out for the DVD, but second-hand, I think.

Summary: enjoyed the first two books, less so the third.