And the leavin’ is easy.
Fish are jumpin’
Folks gotta fly.
Which, with apologies to Gershwin, is just to say that posting is likely to be much slower for the next few weeks.

My recent post on identity and Amin Maalouf seems to have drawn an absolute blank here, even though I personally consider the points he raises to be at the heart of the WoT and related issues. Over in Canada, Randy McDonald has picked up the thread, and relates Maalouf’s ideas to the issue of [...]

The Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino has just stated that he considers threats against Italy by the Islamic militant group Abu Hafs Al Masri Brigade to be credible.
OBL expert and former US government adviser Michael Scheur also takes them seriously (and confirms the el mundo story indirectly):
“On the tactical and strategic levels, the [...]

I have already indicated that I consider attemps to deny all Iraq war connection to recent events in London pretty much stupid. I wonder how many people in the UK beyond Tony Blair and Jack Straw actually believe the contrary to be the case (assuming for the moment that even they themselves believe it, rather [...]

Well, this about beats the lot of them. Yesterday the shares Groupe Danone SA went through the roof on rumours of a takeover by PepsiCo Inc. Dominique de Vil-pin also went through the roof:
“Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Danone was “among the jewels of our industry”…. “We plan to defend France’s interests,” Villepin said [...]

Robin Grant continues to do some great up to the minute live blogging over at perfect.co.uk. He has the just released CCTV photos of the 4 most recent suspects (and suggests that the man shot dead this morning may not have been one of them). Speaking of photos, I have posted on my own blog [...]

2000-2004: Under the rule of the Social Democrat Party (PSD) and Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, Romania enjoys four consecutive years of rapid economic growth. Romania’s GDP increases by an average of nearly 6% per year; for the first time since the end of Communism, the country has four years without a recession. [...]

The UK economy showed its weakest year-on-year performance for 12 years during the second quarter of this year, and manufacturing seemed to enter recession. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth on a 12-month comparison stood at 1.7 percent during the second quarter — the weakest 12-month performance since the first quarter of 1993.
The annual growth rate [...]

The latest EU25 trade data from Eurostat highlight the competitive challenge some European companies face from the fast-growing Chinese economy:
Imports from China in the first four months of this year, at ?45.3bn ($54.5bn, ?31.5bn), were 19 per cent higher than the same period a year before. Imports from the US remained almost flat [...]

In a website posting yesterday the Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade have one more time claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks, in this case yesterdays bombs in London. It should be remembered that this group also claimed the Madrid bombings and the July 7 bombs. Just how much credibility should be accorded to [...]