I get a little angry about the way the world's press continue to treat Donny George as if he were the patron saint of antiquities. The latest supplicant is the Guardian, which claims he "achieved international recognition for his efforts to track down and recover the priceless antiquities looted from Iraq's National Museum in the mayhem that followed the fall of Baghdad in 2003."

That's a bunch of crap. It was an American Marine, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who tracked down most of the lost antiquities, including, to my certain knowledge, some of those named in this story, though you won't find his name in the Guardian story.

What Donny George is famous for is accusing American forces of committing the "Crime of the Century" by failing to guard his Museum when Baghdad fell. He said that failure allowed looters to steal or destroy 170,000 artefacts. In fact, the true figure is 15,000, rather less than a tenth of his claim. For a long time, Mr George and other directors of the museum neglected to tell American forces, or the press, that many of the Museum's most valuable pieces had been locked away before the war, either in underground store rooms or in bank vaults, and had survived more or less intact.

US military investigators discovered that keys from one director's safe went missing and had never been found. Several employees said they found secure doors leading into the building unlocked, but not broken, after the first days of looting. A wall which concealed a secret entrance to underground store rooms, which only a handful of senior officials knew about, had been knocked down. Colonel Bogdanos has said publicly that looting of the museum's basement storage magazines was "an inside job".

Some time after the Americans began to help the Museum figure out exactly what had been stolen, 130 of the 185 staff of the state board of antiquities' office in Baghdad signed a petition demanding the resignation of its directors, including Mr George. They said they believed some of the thefts from the museum were an inside job. As if that wasn't enough, they accused Mr George of having handed weapons out to them as US forces arrived in Baghdad, and of having ordered them to fight US soldiers. A little while after this, Mr George took to calling for American forces to shoot looters to death on sight, a little piece of drama that cynics might have thought was little more than a feeble attempt to re-establish his credentials as a serious member of the curatorial fraternity.

The Guardian says Mr George has left Iraq because of sectarian violence and is now "in hiding with his family in Damascus". You have to wonder what he's hiding from, since the Shias involved in sectarian violence aren't exactly known to travel the world looking for their victims. And you have to wonder what else he took to Damascus, besides his family. We haven't heard the last of this slithery little man, of that you can be sure.

UPDATE: I didn't read this until Sunday, although it was referenced in the Guardian piece. In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Dr George says that before he fled to Damascus, he completely sealed the National Museum with thick concrete walls, despite being told not to by the Ministry of Culture. 'It was the only way to guarantee the museum's safety,' he said. Yeah. If I were the Minister of Culture, I'd have had a team in there counting the spoons within minutes of reading that.

The Wall Street Journal, every Saturday, publishes a list of books that an ever-changing cast of characters reckons are the best of a particular genre. Often an excellent read. My only complaint is that sometimes the genre narrows to a niche, and a niche sometimes narrows to nothing much more than a chink. But on the whole, you know...

This week's list is the five books Melanie Kirkpatrick (deputy editor of the editorial page) thinks are the best political novels. It isn't the usual crap by any means. Ms Kirkpatrick is a broadly-read lady. Two of these books, one about China and one written by a man she describes as America's best writer of espionage novels, are new to me, but will be in my possession by this evening if my day goes the way I plan it to go.

I guess it was inevitable, with the Chinese dashing around the world making friends with people. People's Daily says: "Nowadays, the number of diplomats from Canada, Japan and the Republic of Korea approaches the number of those sent by their countries to the United States. The total number of foreign diplomats in China is sure to rank among the first, possibly only next to the US. It is by no means coincidence that so many countries are vying to enlarge their embassies in Beijing. This phenomenon reflects the fact that China's influence on the world is growing despite some disputes about the country's mode of development."

Ian Bostridge writes in the Guardian today about the German composer Hans Werner Henze. "We were celebrating his 70th birthday at the Aldeburgh festival and I had been asked to sing, with Julius Drake at the piano, his three song settings of WH Auden written in the 1970s: a simple elegy for a cat (in Italian rather than English, I think); a jagged evocation of Rimbaud; and a wonderful, sublime love song, a setting of one of the poet's most famous lyrics, "Lay your sleeping head, my love, faithless on my human arm...

"For Henze, music is drama, and what matters is the overall effect, not the realisation of every pitch or rhythm on the page. Fidelity to the text is always important in the classical tradition, but living performance is an even more urgent necessity. In rehearsal he often asked for less voice, more speaking, not worrying about the notes.

"He referred to some of the piano writing (much of it furiously difficult) as the representation of natural phenomena rather than written music. At one point, he said that the notes were not interesting enough to be heard properly. By this he meant, I think, that the effect of the music on its listeners, and indeed performers, has precedence over its literal construction."

Bostridge and Julius Drake recorded the three Auden Songs, and the Rimbaud stuff - I'm not sure about the elegy for the cat - on an album entitled Henze: Sechs Gesänge aus dem Arabischen, Three Auden Songs. Amazon had two copies early this morning. They now have one left.

The Iranian-born author Amir Taheri, writing in the Wall Street Journal this morning, thinks Hezbollah won a Phyrric victory in Lebanon: "Far from representing the Lebanese national consensus, Hezbollah is a sectarian group backed by a militia that is trained, armed and controlled by Iran. In the words of Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the Iranian daily Kayhan, 'Hezbollah is Iran in Lebanon.' In the 2004 municipal elections, Hezbollah won some 40% of the votes in the Shiite areas, the rest going to its rival Amal (Hope) movement and independent candidates. In last year's general election, Hezbollah won only 12 of the 27 seats allocated to Shiites in the 128-seat National Assembly - despite making alliances with Christian and Druze parties and spending vast sums of Iranian money to buy votes.

"Hezbollah's position is no more secure in the broader Arab world, where it is seen as an Iranian tool rather than as the vanguard of a new Nahdha (Awakening), as the Western media claim. To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is - a Khomeinist Trojan horse - would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.

"Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. 'Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States,' says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. 'But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory.'"

The Washington Times is wondering what Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, the judge who ordered the NSA to stop monitoring international telephone traffic to and from the US, has against national security: "What we have here is a triumph of ideology over law. If this ruling holds up on appeal, it'll be another milestone in the radicalization of the federal judiciary. Judge Taylor's pronunciamento may be the most sweeping example of partisan dogma replacing legal reasoning since the last convention of the American Bar Association. That's when the ABA solemnly resolved to keep the president of the United States from issuing any statement when he signs a bill into law."

I have a better question - what is a woman who is prepared to cook the books for politics doing on the bench in the first place?

I think I've mentioned before how good I thought Lebanese wines were when I was there a few months ago. Israeli bombing of the Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border, put this year's harvest at risk, because the mainly foreign grape pickers fled. But, as the Telegraph reports, at the 11th hour, Bedouin women saved the day. Pity the Telegraph didn't give us a little more information about the whys and wherefores of their appearance, but what the paper did serve up was a splendidly eccentric, two-paragraph editorial on the subject, which I offer in its entirety: "Omar Khayyam's thought, I often wonder what the Vintners buy / One half so precious as the stuff they sell, is utterly persuasive to anyone who has tried an aged bottle of Chateau Musar, that splendid wine from Lebanon. And now, as we report today, the grapes are being harvested as in biblical times in the Bekaa Valley, in Musar's vineyards and Ksara's and the few other domaines that have bravely persevered for decades under war's metallic hail.

"Serge Hochar, whose father began at Musar in 1932, says his reds are noted for 'life, length and truth'. God knows those virtues are rare in the deadly, short-term deceptions of Middle East politics. Hizbollah, with its Bekaa stronghold, is weak on wine appreciation. Yet the glory of the wine, red as heart's blood and strong as courage, is that it has nothing to do with politics. Let us drink a glass, then, to life, length and truth."

The subject of this New York Times article lacks the kind of zing British newspapers want before they'll give precedence to a story, but that's their loss, because it's an important angle to the blowing-up-airliners story and, beyond that, to the way terrorism works. "...Speculation has centered on a small charity, Crescent Relief, founded by the family of two suspects said to be at the center of the recent plot. One was arrested here and, according to news reports, released on Wednesday; the other was arrested in Pakistan. Another suspect was listed last fall in a British newspaper as the local contact for the charity as it collected money for Kashmir earthquake victims.

"To Mr. Kohlmann (Evan, an American expert on terrorism), those facts suggest a time-honored way that some charities have been linked to terror groups in recent years: as a support and alibi rather than the more direct, and documented, role played by Muslim charities in the Bosnia war in the early 1990's and the embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998.

"'Who pays for tickets?' Mr. Kohlmann asked. 'Who provides a good excuse, or a good reason, to travel from the U.K. to Pakistan? They also provide a cover story. They provide documents - and that is what they have always done in conflicts from Afghanistan to Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Caucasus to Iraq.'"

Iran's strategy, as it struggles with the rest of the world over its nuclear ambitions, is to hammer wedges into the political fault lines in the United Nations, according to the Wall Street Journal: "Iran's reply looks like a calculated attempt to conquer the Security Council by dividing its members with the promise that more talk might some day, down the road, in return for who knows what, lead Iran to stop going nuclear.

"And already yesterday, the mullahs' strategy was paying dividends as Russia and China took the bait and urged further negotiations. These countries have their oil or nuclear energy deals with Tehran, and they don't seem to worry all that much about Islamic radicals getting the bomb. Perhaps they figure that's America's problem, or Israel's, though how an Islamic regime with a nuclear arsenal helps Russian or Chinese interests is a mystery."

Der Spiegel looks at the German slice of a worldwide phenomenon - people who will believe anything but the truth: "Who planted the bombs on German trains? Depends on who you ask. Many Muslims in Germany think it's government conspiracy. Just like with Sept. 11. And London...

"This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last months were hired hands - in the employ of German government itself.

"That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. 'It's all a Protestant crusade,' the man explains. 'All of northern Germany is Protestant, isn't it? And so is President Bush.' Then the man launches into a melange of confusing arguments and historical facts. The bubonic plague, Martin Luther and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all make a cameo. It's all connected somehow, the man is sure of it."

The head of the legal division of the International Committee of the Red Cross is jumping up and down about the fact that the Geneva Convention, now that it has been signed by Nauru and Montenegro, is the first "universal" treaty. JURIST has coverage, but doesn't mention the notion that no treaty affecting warfare can be considered universal until international terror groups like al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbollah and others, no longer exist.

The concept of privatisation is, to a Brit, as a red flag is to a bull. But the New York Sun argues in an editorial that the chaos at privatised Heathrow airport in London when new carry-on luggage rules were introduced, was as a result of a failure to privatise sufficiently. "It might be tempting for some to look at the mess at Heathrow as a warning of the chaos that would descend on American airports if some of them were privatized, but something else is at work here.

"To the extent BAA did fail its airline customers by not hiring sufficient security staff, that's arguably because the airports haven't been privatized enough. The fees BAA charges are set only once every five years in cooperation with Britain's Civil Aviation Authority and have arguably been too low for the company to hire sufficient back-up security personnel while still offering a reasonable return to investors. Allowing a real market to flourish would allow BAA and the airlines to settle on a real equilibrium price instead of a government-engineered, inflexible rate structure.

"All of that is an argument about how to privatize an airport, however, not whether to do so. On the latter point, this kerfuffle is showing one boon to airport privatization - it is much easier for airlines who feel, perhaps even with justification, that they were wronged by BAA to do something about it. The economic incentives created by the danger of a breach-of-contract lawsuit work much more powerfully on a private company than on a quasi-governmental agency to ensure future good behavior. It's hard to see through the haze of long lines, weary passengers, and lost bags at Heathrow over the past week, but despite what BAA's detractors might say, there is a good idea here if only government will at long last step out of the way."

A useful article in the Christian Science Monitor gives background to the odd controversy over the ownership of the Shebaa Farms - a thoroughly undersirable piece of real estate in the area where Syria, Lebanon and Israel meet. "Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora," the newspaper says, "has often called for the resolution of the Shebaa Farms conflict as a means of neutralizing Hizbullah's military wing. In a seven-point plan he unveiled last month during the height of the war, he called for Israel to withdraw from the farms and for the 12-square mile territory to be placed under UN guardianship pending a formal agreement between Lebanon and Syria over its sovereignty.

"At the time when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Hizbullah seized on claims that the farms belonged to Lebanon, thus justifying its attacks against Israeli forces occupying the territory. Israel and the UN said the real estate was part of the Golan Heights captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War. Damascus has declared that the Shebaa Farms belong to Lebanon. But it has never attempted to formally ratify the sovereignty of the mountainside with the Lebanese to gain UN recognition and acceptance of the new border."

Science strikes again! Technology Review says an explanation has been found for why creams like BenGay can relieve minor aches and pains. "Researchers have discovered a neurological mechanism behind such cooling remedies that, if tapped in just the right way, could have implications for people with chronic and nerve-related pain.

"A study published yesterday in the journal Current Biology reveals that activating a crucial protein in the skin may counteract the nerve signals associated with chronic pain brought on by nerve injury. One trigger for this protein receptor is menthol, an active ingredient in topical analgesics like BenGay."

This Washington Times piece is angry, written without any thought of restraint, but its point is accurate - "With acceptance of UN Resolution 1701, the world is left to await the next terrible attack - and it will occur - on freedom-loving society by an implacable, suicidal terrorist foe. Then and only then, it seems, will we realize the magnitude of the threat we face..."

When 1701 was dealt with, the Security Council was acting as if its passage was business as usual. But the rest of the world is in the process of changing its mind about the efficacy of the UN, and about how it should deal with terrorist organisations like Hezbollah. It wants those involved to get serious about sorting the Hezbollah mess out.

Iran and Syria, believing in the business-as-usual take on 1701, have begun using the pause in hostilities to step up arms shipments to Hezbollah. But the new reality is working against them. The Israelis used their commando raid in the Bekaa Valley the other night to draw attention to the arms shipments, which Resolution 1701 bans, but creates no mechanism to ensure the ban works.

Haaretz has confirmed that a DEBKAfile story over the weekend was correct: "Turkish authorities have prevented five Iranian airplanes and a Syrian aircraft from flying into Lebanon, suspecting them of transporting arms to Hezbollah...after American intelligence reports indicated (one of the planes) carried three missile launchers and containers with Chinese C-802 land-to-sea missiles, identical to the missile that hit an Israel Navy battleship in July."

And although many are saying, like the Wall Street Journal that Jacques Chirac tricked the US and Israel into accepting 1701 by saying French troops would lead the peacekeeping mission, what he and other European nations are doing is also part of the new reality. Like the US, France got a seriously bloody nose the last time it participated in a Lebanese peacekeeping mission. And by refusing to send more than token troops this time, France, Germany and others are putting the UN on notice - it isn't business as usual. If you want the peace kept, and the Resolution enforced, give us proper instructions.

I linked on Saturday to an excellent Washington Post article which explored exactly what questions peacekeepers need to be answered. Here's the link again. It's worth reading.

Meantime, Haaretz quotes "senior IDF officers" as having predicted that "'round two' between Israel and Hezbollah could begin within months or even weeks, probably over the renewal of arms deliveries to the organization from Iran and Syria.

"One senior officer told Haaretz on Sunday that throughout the month-long war with Hezbollah, Iran and Syria attempted to smuggle large quantities of weapons to Lebanon. He said that the efforts were stepped up over the past week, following the cease-fire and the end of Israel Air Force sorties deep in Lebanese territory."

It is worth noting that there are five brigades of regular IDF soldiers are still deployed in southern Lebanon, and they are likely to stay there until a competent peacekeeping force is deployed.

In the National Review, Victor Davis Hanson noted over the weekend that "Israel now has a good glimpse of the terrorists' new way of war, and probably next time will attack the supplier, not the launcher, of the rocketry. And when the Reuters stringers go away, the 'civilians' of southern Lebanon, off-camera, might not be so eager to see more real fireworks lighting up their skies - or far-off, pristine Syria and Iran in safety praising the courage of the ruined amid the rubble. Note how Hezbollah already is desperately racing around the craters to assure its homeless constituency that it has enough Iranian cash to buy back lost sympathies."

Mexico's election authority is unlikely to rule in favour of the I-Hate-Losing presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He and his staff are stamping their little feet about it. The Los Angeles Times says "Some members of Lopez Obrador's leftist Democratic Revolution Party (known as the PRD, its Spanish acronym) have said they will launch a sustained, nationwide program of civil disobedience if the tribunal declares Calderon the winner. Gerardo Fernandez Norona, a Lopez Obrador aide, said Wednesday that the candidate's supporters would take a position of 'rebellion in the face of authority' and might encourage Mexicans to stop paying taxes.

But "as the election saga reaches its endgame, there are indications that some members of the PRD would balk at taking the radical actions others in the party favor. 'Violence and riots in the streets are a less probable outcome than many people in Mexico think,' said Pamela Starr of Eurasia Group, a risk-analysis company. 'But I wouldn't discount it either. With the current high levels of tension on the streets, it's easy for things to spin out of control.'

"Lopez Obrador's supporters have shut down Avenida Reforma, the city's central axis, since July 30. Mexico City's notorious traffic has worsened significantly, turning even simple commutes into gridlock nightmares. Many residents feel the capital is being held hostage by Lopez Obrador and his supporters. Even longtime backers of the leftist candidate have said the decision to blockade the capital city's streets has been a grave political mistake."

Jonathan Glancy's piece in the Guardian about architecture failing to take account of the weather seemed a little pedantic at first, but (may the gods forgive me) I warmed up to it. "Traditionally, architects made a virtue of even the most extreme weather. On more than one visit to one of my favourite buildings, the gently restored Convento de Santa Clara in old Havana, the heavens have opened in the most almighty fashion. I have gawped at terrific rains cascading into the building's courtyard, while architects, with the louvred doors to their deep-eaved offices kept wide open, have continued to work in a setting made even more beautiful by the tropical storms" (he must mean a rainstorm in the tropics, not the kind of tropical storm those who live in the tropics think of).

"In Britain, although we certainly like to talk about the weather, we expect our buildings to shelter us from the slightest breeze. Perhaps we really do want the business-park, shopping mall-style designs shown in all those drawings. But what worries me about the weather-free illustrations is that they suggest, at a time when more people than ever are concerned about climate change, that new buildings are unashamedly unresponsive to changes of weather. Weather is simply dismissed.

"It comes as a surprise, then, to see young architect Gillian Lambert's dreamlike drawings for a 'studio house for a weather-obsessed architect'. Lambert is one of eight exceptional graduates chosen from hundreds of young architects last month by Building Design magazine for its Class of 2006. The idea for her imaginary house, she says, came from looking at Turner's sensational painting Snow Storm - Steam-Boat Off a Harbour's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going By the Lead of 1842. This wild vortex of oils depicts a ship called Ariel leaving Harwich in the teeth of a tempest. No such ship existed, but Turner claimed to have been lashed to its mast for four hours in order to record the scene in all its swirling drama."

Claudia Rosett says, in a National Review article that we're "heading for the moment in which Secretary-General Kofi Annan jets to Beirut to crown as the heirs of Lebanon the hijackers of the Cedar Revolution - the terrorists of Hezbollah.

"Not that the UN has exactly expressed it that way. Annan's office as of Friday afternoon would confirm only that Annan 'will likely go to the region in the weeks ahead.' Israeli radio has been reporting that Annan will begin a Middle East tour on Monday in Lebanon, and go from there - in what order is not clear - to Israel, Syria, and Iran."

Annan, she says, has met Nasrallah before...

A year after Hurricane Katrina and other major storms battered the U.S. coast, the question of whether hurricanes are becoming more destructive because of global warming has become perhaps the most hotly contested question in the scientific debate over climate change, says the
Washington Post.

"Academics have published a flurry of papers either supporting or debunking the idea that warmer temperatures linked to human activity are fueling more intense storms. The issue remains unresolved, but it has acquired a political potency that has made both sides heavily invested in the outcome.

"Paradoxically, the calm hurricane season in the Atlantic so far this year has only intensified the argument. Both sides are using identical data but coming up with conflicting conclusions. There are several reasons."

Her subterfuge found out, she described herself this way - 'Yeah. Alice Sheldon. Five ft 8, 61 yrs, remains of a good-looking girl vaguely visible, grins a lot in a depressed way, very active in spurts.' There was some stuff she didn't bother to mention. The New York Times Book Review says: "It would take another decade or so for Sheldon to invent the identity of James Tiptree Jr. on a whim (after spying a jar of Tiptree jam in a local supermarket ), attach it to some science fiction pastiches she had been playing around with and submit the manuscripts to editors. But by the early 1970's, Tiptree was unquestionably one of the brightest-burning talents in the constellation of science fiction. In her breakthrough short story The Last Flight of Dr. Ain, published in 1969, she writes with sardonic affection about a scientist who spreads a deadly virus in hopes of cleansing the world of humanity, making a startlingly sympathetic character out of a man with genocide on his mind.

"Traditionally male customs and rites of passage became familiar themes in her work: a story called Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, published in 1974, let Sheldon, through the voice of a male narrator, express her yearnings for double-barreled 12-gauge shotguns and unconsummated female loves; while A Momentary Taste of Being, a novella from 1975 about a space exploration team that learns their brains are about to become interstellar sperm, may be the greatest sustained dirty joke in sci-fi history.

"Indeed, the very best Tiptree stories inevitably possess some element of gender displacement: in Houston, Houston, Do You Read? a group of astronauts discovers a future Earth whose male population has been entirely wiped out, and whose remaining females have learned to get along just fine in their absence. ('As I understand it, what you protected people from was largely other males, wasn't it?' asks one guilelessly perceptive survivor.)"