Category: Uncategorized

I won’t excerpt this interview with Christopher Hitchens, I just urge you to read it. (Via HispaLibertas.)

There is an account of today’s demonstration in Baghdad at Healing Iraq:

The rallies today proved to be a major success. I didn’t expect anything even close to this. It was probably the largest demonstration in Baghdad for months. It wasn’t just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba’ath and Saddam.

We started at Al-Fatih square in front of the Iraqi national theatre at 10 am. IP were all over the place. At 12 pm people started marching towards Fardus square through Karradah. All political parties represented in the GC participated. But the other parties, organizations, unions, tribal leaders, clerics, school children, college students, and typical everyday Iraqis made up most of the crowd. Al-Jazeera estimated the size of the crowd as over ten thousand people.

Read the rest. There are also photos.

I’m still unable to find any reports on the anti-terror rallies planned for Iraq today, but on this story there’s plenty:

Companies from countries opposed to the conflict in Iraq will be barred from bidding for new rebuilding contracts worth $18.6bn, the Pentagon has said.
…..
The move is likely to anger France and Germany and other traditional allies in Nato and the UN Security Council.

See also here and here.

Here’s a story on the how of it, and from which you will learn that ‘Mice are excellent at detecting differences between individuals’. But it looks like it may take a while yet.

While I’m trying to get sorted out here I offer you this seasonal item to keep you sweet. It’s better with sound. Click on different combinations of animals. (Hat tip to Amanda Layne.)

Unable to access normblog this morning in order to post, I’ve opened up here at Typepad. I will be posting on this site from now on. It’s my new blog home. For the time being I shall maintain the other site (www.normangeras.blogspot.com) as an archive, and I’ll look into how to move my stuff over here, or whether to, depending on what I discover in doing that. Also, so as not to waste any time I’ve figured out no more than the basics – I hope – and started posting. Over the coming days I’ll get to blogroll links and other such things. Please bear with me. I’ve had kind offers of help from other bloggers, when mentioning in the past the possibility of making a move; and I may now need to call on them, not having any great proficiency in this sphere of human endeavour.

Meanwhile, could all persons of goodwill out there do me the favour of telling the blog-reading community that this is where normblog (mark 2) is, with normblog (mark 1) remaining for the time being as an archive – as well as a place for nostalgic visits.

Gulp!

Today, first things first: anti-terror rallies are scheduled all over Iraq. Zeyad at Healing Iraq says:

Let’s bombard the ‘media’ with emails and letters pressuring them to give the demos some real ‘coverage’ this time. Show your support to the Iraqi people anyway you can.

It may be too early yet, but so far I’ve not been able to find anything at any news site. For what it’s worth all the same, solidarity with the Iraqi people and against the bombers! If anyone out there can point me towards something I’ve missed, please do.