The N-word

Whoops, what happened there, then? Seem to have nodded off during the last PMQs, and woken up in the midst of another Big Brother racism row. And in the meantime, it looks like the Cold War is making a bit of a comeback. Oh well, I think we must have been missing the old international tensions, and that comforting threat of imminent nuclear apocalypse. (Sorry if I've offended with the N-word.)

Putin must be secretly quite pleased to see the USA wasting billions of dollars on a missile interception system that, thus far, has proved almost totally ineffective at intercepting any missiles. As Bob Park says in his weekly What's New newsletter: "AntiMissile Test: Last Week's Test Was Very Realistic... the target missile never got off the ground. After all, what rogue nation, even one as nutty as N. Korea, would launch a missile at the dominant nuclear power? The return address is on the package. The nuclear threat today is from weapons in cargo containers, or assembled in a target country."

More puzzling is why the Czechs and Poles are willing to deploy such a system. If it were ever used (and if it worked), the result would be nuclear-armed missiles exploding over their countries rather than being allowed unhindered on their way towards London or Washington.

Anyway, I've just put a new song in the side panel. It's the queen of Malian griotte singers, Ami Koita, singing Wale Yuman from her 1995 album Carthage.