[the skinny] on the fat of the land

So glad the BBC saw fit to publish this.

This is not the time of year to think skinny but to get a bit of body fat on, eat lots of proteins, good carbos and some good fat. A certain amount of exercise and a whole lot of hibernation is indicated.

Good luck.

[palestine] just the facts please 3

It's next to impossible to get a clear picture of the region loosely referred to as Canaan. I've just been reading one, two, three, four and five sources and am no clearer now than before.

The essential problem is that almost all sources set out initially to be unbiased but then twist the narrative as it goes on, concluding that the land belongs to this people or that people and that they've proved it.

There's little doubt that Israel occupied ancient Canaan but I can't see this as any different to the Romans or Anglo-Saxons occupying Britain. The most realistic statement is that there are quite a few tribes or sub-groupings attached to different regions and the hegemony of one or other is a fact of life.

Whites dominate Australia, the dark skinned tribe dominates Italy ... so what? Realpolitik. Given this, I'd like to ask the Arabs in the middle-east two questions:

1. Do a people exist whom the world could refer to as Jews or of Jewish origin? Just that - do they exist?

2. If they indeed exist, then where is their traditional home, if you will not concede it is in Palestine? In other words, if your claim is correct that the Jews do not descend from Canaan, whence do they descend?

Then we come into another area - the people who develop the region. The Jews have obviously turned the area into a fertile land, where once it was a barren home of nomadic groups and people eking out a living. Jerusalem has been associated with Jews millennia earlier than with Muslims, so who can lay claim to it?

[tough men] sometimes need to remember their age

Statue of Ronald Dale Barassi near the MCG

This sort of thing goes on all the time, of course, so why should this one be any different? Well, there's a twist to it.

On New Years Eve, football great Ron Barassi was having dinner with his wife at a St Kilda restaurant, dining al fresco. There was a commotion and the next thing someone crashed into his wife's chair. It was a woman who crashed to the pavement and was then kicked while she was there by an unidentified male.

Ron Barassi sprung up, the man ceased and ran and Barassi chased him through the crowd, when the man turned on him punched him to the ground and started kicking him in the ribs. Then friends arrived and the man ran.

All right, so where's the twist? Ron had forgotten he was now 72 years old and the coward could have been anything from his 30s downwards. Barassi's been good-humoured about it but understandably, there is a groundswell of sympathy for him.

Just a note for non-Australians. Barassi was the famous Number 31 for Melbourne during their golden years and then went on to a distinguished, premiership winning coaching career afterwards. He's generally regarded as one of the greatest football legends ever. What characterized him during his playing and coaching days was his ruthless determination and hardness - he was a tough customer to tangle with.

You have to wonder what the fate of the coward would have been, had the incident occurred 35 years earlier. And Barassi's last words on the matter?

'I'd do it again.'

[eu monster] time it returned to the eec

Interesting thought - a Mediterranean Union

Liam Fox wrote a piece at the Telegraph on the EU defence establishment:

On defence, the treaty gives the EU Commission more influence than ever. The debate is not about whether the treaty affects our defence policy but how far it pushes us from an intergovernmental policy to a supranational one. The newly created High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (the EU's foreign minister) will also serve as a vice-president in the EU Commission.

This in itself is bad enough, potentially blurring executive and civil service roles. Worse still, he will also head the European Defence Agency (EDA) and have a right of initiative for proposing EU-led military operations. The bottom line is that the EU will get a foothold in our defence policy for the first time.

We did not join the EU for defence purposes – we have Nato as the cornerstone of our defence. For the EU to have a constructive role, it needs to do something Nato does not do.

Mr. Fox is correct - Britain did not join an EU state with it's own defence establishment. Defence in the UK is through our own forces and in combination with NATO. Quite apart form the resources consideration, there is the simple matter of jurisdiction.

Can anyone doubt that the EU sees itself as consuming the members states in all aspects of a government's remit? This body must be resisted with the full force of a nation's resources until they agree to go back to what they once were - the EEC.

[renegade] or do you prefer trojan horse

Stephen Pollard tells us that Barack Obama's secret service code name is renegade.

This is the Merriam Webster definition of a renegade:

1 : a deserter from one faith, cause, or allegiance to another
2 : an individual who rejects lawful or conventional behavior

Are they trying to tell us something?

[in bruges] requiem for three hitmen

The reason Roger Ebert is such a popular film critic is because he is a good film critic. You don't have to agree with everything he concludes but he's on the money with In Bruges.

Now, call me a prude but I don't like the way Colin Farrell operates in real life. On screen though and especially in this film, he's the goods. As Ebert says:

Farrell in particular hasn't been this good in a few films, perhaps because this time he's allowed to relax and be Irish. As for Brendan Gleeson, if you remember him in "The General," you know that nobody can play a more sympathetic bad guy.

This is a superior film, despite its lukewarm box office reception. The cast is talented and Clémence Poésy is so uncannily like someone I know well in Russia that the film would be memorable just for her. Thekla Reuten [photo below] maybe even overshadows her although her role is smaller.

Actually, it's a great film in itself. Ebert again:

If the movie accomplished nothing else, it inspired in me an urgent desire to visit Bruges ... The movie does an interesting thing with Bruges. It shows us a breathtakingly beautiful city, without ever seeming to be a travelogue. It uses the city as a way to develop the characters ... But [the film] accomplished a lot more than that.

It's dark, there are quite a few threads and the black, grim humour runs below the surface the whole way through. It's atmospheric and lush and yet it does something else only a few might enjoy - it allows nothing particularly active to happen for long portions of the run time.



Then it finally comes together. Ebert:

Without dreaming of telling you what happens next, I will say it is not only ingenious but almost inevitable the way the screenplay brings all of these destinies together at one place and time. Along the way, there are times of great sadness and poignancy, times of abandon, times of goofiness, and that kind of humor that is really funny because it grows out of character and close observation.

All the above is probably telling you what you already knew.

In Bruges.