Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived
A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?
Update: seemingly not
Update: Oh yeah!
Saturday, April 05, 2003
Thoughts from the road
A big hullo to the residents of Dublin, Manchester, Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris, Muenich, Frankfurt, Milan, Geneva, Zuerich, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Amsterdam, all of whom have sold me drinks and sandwiches, driven me around and such-and-such over the last few weeks. Hence, light or shall we say non-existent updating of this site, likely to also be the case for the next ten days at least. Here's a trademark facetious utterance to prove that this is me and not one of my many lookalikes.
Obviously, Iraq will be needing a new leader once the war is over, and although the US is keen to ensure that all the inportant functions of the state will be served by American companies on decent government contracts, it has to be assumed that this leader will be an important job, of the sort which it isn't necessarily all that seemly to fill just by sending out to an employment agency for a temp. Anyway, I realise that other bloggers are getting behind the candidacy of Vaclav Havel, but I have my own suggestion.
Consider the requirements. An ideal candidate for leader of a liberated Iraq would have the following characteristics:
- A Shi'a Muslim of unquestionable religious devoutness.
- A credible record of Arab nationalism, so as not to be seen as a puppet
- But on the other hand, someone with a Western education would be good
- It needs to be someone who has experience with giving contracts to US firms like Halliburton
- In fact, specifically, it would good to have someone with a background in the construction industry
- The candidate will have to work closely with the White House; somebody with family connections to GW Bush would be good.
- And of course, someone who is popular with Iraqis.
As far as I can see, there is a person who fits all of these requirements. Cometh the hour, cometh the man ... step forward, Osama bin Laden1.
1For the thick kids, this is meant to be a pointed comment on the about fifty hours of CNN commentary I've heard over the last four weeks with people saying that "the Shi'ites hate Saddam". Of course they do; but they hate us too.
Any road up ... also a quiz question. Which is the OECD country which most recently had a Head of Government who was not democratically elected? When and who?
this item posted by the management 4/05/2003 02:25:00 PM
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