DEBKAfile makes some very interesting points about the chain of events that has been set in train by Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi's decision to give up his nuclear programme. Iraq was heavily involved in what he was doing. So were North Korea and Iran. "This neat setup of rogue states," DEBKAfile suggests, "Qaddafi's exit has now severed." It has also "ditched Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria, all of whom secretly put money in the Kufra project, hoping for a stake in Libya's nuclear umbrella."

Meantime, this story seems to suggest that in Bush and Blair, the world has a classic good cop, bad cop routine working.

The Washington Times comments on Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari's robust rebuke to the United Nations last week.

"Noting that coalition military forces and Iraqis continue to uncover mass graves containing Saddam's victims, Mr. Zebari stated that 'the United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years, and today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.'

"Unfortunately, the United Nations continues to fail the people of Iraq. The Iraqi foreign minister went on to suggest that, by refusing to return U.N. staffers to Baghdad after the bombing of its headquarters in August, Mr. Annan was perpetuating this record of failure. 'Your help and expertise cannot be effectively delivered from Cyprus or Amman,' he said in response to Mr. Annan's comment that some U.N. Iraqi aid activities would be conducted from neighboring countries."

The Telegraph gets it about right in this story about the fuss in Bermuda over the appointment of a new Chief Justice.

The truth is that any small country (Bermuda has a population of about 65,000) has a hard time producing the talent it needs to fill jobs that call for a high level of training and expertise. The degree to which it matters is more or less the degree to which the country interacts and competes with the outside world. If you're trying to run a highly-sophisticated offshore financial centre that is competing, not just with other islands, but with world capitals, then you simply can't expect to be able always to be fully self-sufficient from your own labour pool.

That's a hard line to sell to Bermudians. Encouraged by both political parties, Bermudians have developed a view of their abilities that is often very far adrift from reality. They resent and dislike foreigners who have been brought in to work, thinking that they are, in effect, stealing bread from Bermudian mouths. The bureaucratic machinery that has become built in to the system as a result of this is terribly ponderous...so ponderous that it seems often in danger of collapsing under its own weight. Trying to get permission to employ a non-Bermudian in Bermuda has become a Kafkian nightmare.

The political party that makes up our present government has long been at the forefront of championing Bermudian employment rights. When they won their first election five years ago, the population had high expectations that they would be able to tighten the screws on foreigners even more. But the screws had already been thoroughly tightened, so any further pressure ran the risk of threading the damned things.

I think that's a fair way of describing what has happened in our justice system in recent years. Relying completely on Bermudians, as the Government has been trying to do, has resulted in a system in which delays, inefficiency and rushed, sub-standard performances are allowing the obviously guilty to go free. Since much of Bermuda's offshore financial business is attracted by the promise of a clean, efficient system of justice, the crisis of justice, as it were, could very easily metastasize into something a great deal more serious.

The Chief Justice is the person administratively at the head of the entire system of justice. If improvements are to be made, that's where they are going to come from. The Governor obviously knows that, and is trying to make sure Bermuda gets, not just someone who could do the job with a little propping up here and there, but someone who is able to get a grip of the system and aggressively shake it loose from the lethargy into which it has been allowed to sink.

Against the background of the unrealistic level of expectation of the Bermuda population, and the level of hostility that has been built up towards foreigners who can be accused of trying to thwart those expectations, the Governor's going to have a tough time of it. But this is obviously a good opportunity for Premier Alex Scott to have a go at advancing his party's well-known ambitions to take Bermuda to independence - something the majority does not want.

The European Union has agreed to harsh measures to try to prevent the collapse of endangered fish stocks, but will they be harsh enough? Scientists and others think not. They've called for a total ban on cod fishing to avoid the mistakes made over the Canadian Outer Banks, from which cod might have disappeared forever.

Meantime, fishermen being the liars they are, the EU is setting up a "joint inspection structure" which will allow them to board vessels, enter premises and impose fines.

"The accepted view is that any cultural artefact timed for release at, or showing a preoccupation with, Christmas will be, by definition, sentimental tosh.

"A mere list of Christmas movies - The Muppet Christmas Carol, Mickey's Once Upon A Christmas, The Santa Clause, Jack Frost, Olive, The Other Reindeer, Jingle All The Way - is enough to send any sane person screaming to the attic.

"A good rule of thumb is to avoid anything with "Christmas" or "Santa" in the title...In that way, we have our fruit cake and eat it.

For our American and, I suspect, many Bermudian friends, we offer the official website of the Great Scottish Haggis Hunt. Yes, the game's afoot and if you want to win a stay at a luxury Scottish hotel, you'd better start paying attention to these haggis-cams. There's one in New York, by the way, on account of the great Haggis diaspora...of course.

A ghostly image has been caught on CCTV at Hampton Court in London. Hampton Court was the home of Henry VIII, and has long had a reputation for being haunted. I'll believe it exists when I see Lesley Stahl interview whatever it is.

The European mission to Mars passed another important hurdle early today, when the Beagle 2 lander separated from its parent, the Mars Express. The intention is the Beagle will land on the surface of Mars on Christmas Day.

I'm not so sure I can agree on the basis of what is attributed to him in this story that he is hinting that there might be Mugabe-like land seizures in South Africa, but Thabo Mbeki is certainly destroying his reputation with his defence of the indefensible in Zimbabwe.

The US Department of State has released the 2003 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom. In his remarks to the press, Armitage mentioned five categories of abuse of religious freedom, and named those countries (it's the usual cast of characters) which fall into each one.

Although he did not single Cuba out for comment, I was particularly interested in that section because Bermuda's new government, apparently oblivious to the human rights violations of the Castro Government, seems determined to forge a link with Cuba, to the horror of many members of the public.

The report says that: "There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom during the period covered by this report; however, overall human rights conditions deteriorated sharply as indicated by the Government's arrest, summary trial, and jailing of 75 human rights activists and independent journalists in March and April, the biggest such crackdown in more than two decades. In general, unregistered religious groups continued to experience varying degrees of official interference, harassment, and repression. Some unregistered religious groups were subject to official censure, and also faced pressures from registered religious groups. The Government's policy of permitting apolitical religious activity to take place in government-approved sites remained unchanged; however, citizens worshipping in officially sanctioned churches often were subject to surveillance by state security forces, and the Government's efforts to maintain a strong degree of control over religion continued."

The full report is here.

This Haaretz article gives a sober sort of summary of Ariel Sharon's announcement on Thursday that Israel would unilaterally disengage from the Palestinians if they do not come up with some moves towards peace in the coming months. Usefully, it contains a link to the text of Sharon's speech, as well as a link to some of the comments it has attracted.

Was Antonio Salieri really the bastard who drove Mozart to an early grave, as Amadeus had it? Erica Jeal thinks it is time to reappraise the man and his music.

"Salieri may have made a great cinematic villain," she says, "but perhaps in the future we can remember him for something he actually did."

Isn't it curious how often the radical left, when it acquires the reins of political power, moves smartly towards the conservative centre?

Janet Daley of the Telegraph (she's the American living in London) is amazed at the mental agility of the anti-war lobby. I am amazed at what a lovely little thinker Janet Daley is, and I will be even more amazed if this "guide to Guardian comment writers, BBC interviewers and Labour backbenchers on how to deal with any foreseeable circumstance that may arise from the current state of emergency" doesn't win some kind of prize. By emergency, she means the blow that Saddam's arrest has delivered to the composure of the anti-war crowd, of course.

The cause of this great increase in salinity in the southern oceans is a slowing of the current they call the Ocean Conveyor, part of which is the Gulf Stream. If the Conveyor should stop, we're in for a cold time of it. It has happened before - about 12,800 years ago, for example, the waters in the North Atlantic, and the land around that region, cooled quite dramatically. The process took about a decade to complete, and the resulting cold spell, called the Younger Dryas, lasted for about 1,300 years.

If you want to learn more, go to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's website and do a search on the words "ice age". Just when you thought it was going to get warmer, huh?

People are always, they say, on the hunt for a better mousetrap. Now, as a result of the war against terrorism, they're also on the hunt for a better rat trap.

I'm surprised this September speech to the Commonwealth Club by Michael Crichton hasn't attracted more attention. He makes some strong and timely points about environmentalists who treat their environmentalism like a religion:

"I want to argue," he said, "that it is now time for us to make a major shift in our thinking about the environment, similar to the shift that occurred around the first Earth Day in 1970, when this awareness was first heightened. But this time around, we need to get environmentalism out of the sphere of religion. We need to stop the mythic fantasies, and we need to stop the doomsday predictions. We need to start doing hard science instead."

It's worth a read.

After reading this story in the Washington Post this morning, I'm going to be on the lookout for Phillip Kennicott's byline. It's a learned little piece...a superb little piece... that spins off pictures of the captured Saddam Hussein and other images of the Iraq war, to focus on the political meaning of symbolic gestures.

Gary Giddins, one of the best writers about jazz in the world, is leaving his job as a columnist for The Village Voice. "...I'm not sure why," he says, "except that I want to focus on books, I don't like writing short, and it's time. In jazz, time is all."

According to Aljazeera this morning, the International Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights has comdemned France for attacking freedom of religion with its ban on religious insignia in schools.

The British teddy bear is under attack this morning - but not by the EU, as events over the last few years might have led you to suspect. No, the villain is a Saudi prince. If he's bearded and swarthy and wears a turban, British jingoists will be just as happy.

The British media seem to have embraced the notion of blogging more easily and more wholeheartedly than their American cousins. This Guardian compendium of blogging links is a treasure for people who either want to learn more about the phenomenon, or who want to get involved.

New York State is apparently selling of surplus items through EBay, an organisation that has to be one of the wonders of the modern technological world.

The magazine Nature has published a report this morning on a set of figurines found in southwestern Germany that add to our knowledge of the remarkable creativity of our earliest European ancestors. They are the earliest known representations of living forms.

Nature is also carrying a report that a strange 16th Century book that has puzzled linguists and baffled code-breakers for nearly a century may be an elaborate hoax. The manuscript is hand-written in a unique alphabet, about 250 pages long, and contains pictures of unrecognizable flowers, naked nymphs and astrological symbols.

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems extraordinary that the Wild West atmosphere of the world of arms dealers hasn't been been tackled before.

Since the disheveled former strongman, Saddam Hussein, emerged blinking from his hideyhole over the weekend, US forces have arrested what American officials describe as a contingent of resistance financiers and a major meeting of insurgent fighters was interrupted in progress by soldiers. Documents found with Mr. Hussein have been filling in gaps in US knowledge about the insurgency structure. But don't expect the Iraqi resistance to collapse any time soon. The mix of activists involved, according to this well-written report in the Christian Science Monitor, may help the group mutate into a new kind of political and military structure, beyond the control of members of the former Iraqi regime.

Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician who killed off a few of the most sacred assumptions of the environmentalists' canon with his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is a much-maligned young man. He was furiously attacked for his work by individuals in the scientific community when the book was published, by Scientific American and, earlier this year, by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty. Once again, he has been cleared of all charges - this time by the Danish Science Ministry.

In an editorial accompanying its story this morning, the Financial Times makes some pointed comments:

"How can they have been so stupid? In a nutshell, this was yesterday's official verdict on the Danish committees on scientific dishonesty.

"With imperious hauteur the committees had ruled in January that Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist was 'objectively speaking . . . scientific dishonesty'. Purely based on the evidence of articles in the magazine Scientific American, the Danish environmental optimist became the scientific equivalent of a flat-earther and the cause of an almighty dispute about the science behind global warming. 'The publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice,' the ruling added.

"Yesterday it was damningly overturned by the Danish Ministry of Science, which found that the committees had not discovered any bias in Mr Lomborg's choice of data and that criticism of his working methods was 'completely void of argumentation'. The criticisms continue. The committees used sloppy and emotive language that - perhaps deliberately - obscured the fact that they had in fact cleared Mr Lomborg of gross negligence and an intent to deceive. They failed adequately to assess whether they had proper jurisdiction over the book. They used improper procedures. They failed to assess whether Mr Lomborg's work had been peer reviewed. They had not offered Mr Lomborg a chance to respond. And they allowed his accusers too much time to make their case."

Will telephone calls ever be free? This story is an interesting journey to a predictable answer.

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times is absolutely right to ignore an emailed instruction to treat a press release as "background". That is a technique that was designed to be negotiated with individual reporters, not dictated to people on a mailing list.

"California is to me a dreamland. It is the absolute combination of everything I was always looking for. It has all the money in the world there, show business there, wonderful weather there, beautiful country, ocean is there. Snow skiing in the winter; you can go in the desert the same day. You have beautiful-looking people there. They all have a tan.

"I believe very strongly in the philosophy of staying hungry. If you have a dream and it becomes a reality, don't stay satisfied with it too long. Make up a new dream and hunt after that one and turn it into reality. When you have that dream achieved, make up a new dream. I am a strong believer in Western philosophy, the philosophy of success, of progress, of getting rich."

If you can't guess who wrote that in one, you need to give up whatever it is you're smoking, right now.

While he was waiting to be invaded, Saddam Hussein apparently wrote another of his novels. It's not going to be on anyone's Christmas ten best list. Most of the 40,000 copies printed were destroyed by bombing, so watch for heady prices on EBay.

Haaretz is reporting in Israel that a CIA report suggests the death of Yasser Arafat would result in an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

"The intelligence estimate casts doubt," the newspaper says, "on the likelihood of a full peace settlement materializing in the years before 2020; nonetheless, should an Israel-Palestinian agreement for a 'cold peace' win support among a majority of Palestinians, it would constitute the most significant development in the region since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, improve the Arab world's attitude toward the US, and eliminate a pretext used by Arab countries which are reluctant to implement political reforms, the US assessment claims. Israel, the evaluation adds, will not relinquish nuclear weapons it possesses."

In all cases, apparently, those who suffer from this peculiar disease display the same symptoms - long periods of coma-like unconsciousness, interrupted by sudden bouts of frenzied behaviour. During attacks, patients attempt to flee their communities with their eyes closed, seizing any weapon they can find with which they appear to try to defend themselves against invisible attackers. The Nicaraguan government has sent a medical team into the interior to investigate.

More Simon Hoggart, ace parliamentary sketch writer. "Short of digging up Sir Francis Drake," he says, "it's hard to know what will make Johnny Dago (that's the Spanish, for those whose memories don't stretch back to the impudence of that silly Armada) tremble more than the knowledge that the Duke of Kent is on his knees in a church somewhere."

Whatever it was that made Nigerian scammers pick this particular pharmacy as their home away from home, it certainly wasn't the quality of their window display.

The BBC is not going to find it easy to stop radio and television personalities like John Simpson from writing for the newspapers. The Telegraph says it has contracts with Simpson and others, and won't release them.

Sadaam Hussein probably has a better chance of being executed in the next few months than anyone anywhere. So why can't George Bush keep his big mouth shut? I'm prepared to back him to the hilt when he's right, as he often is, but what could the most powerful leader in the world possibly gain for himself or anyone else by behaving like a cheap cop bent on vengeance?

A website called The Smoking Gun has created a universe in which the rich and famous are humiliated, ordinary citizens are out of control and lawyers laugh all the way to the bank. Will you be strong enough to resist visiting the site once you read the story? No chance. It's Christmas...or something.

AI Bush? An interactive robot President? This is going to drive the left to an insanity of fury.

"...An outgrowth of inflationary theory called eternal inflation is demanding that the world be a megaverse full of pocket universes that have bubbled up out of inflating space like bubbles in an uncorked bottle of Champagne. At the same time string theory, our best hope for a unified theory, is producing a landscape of enormous proportions. The best estimates of theorists are that 10500 distinct kinds of environments are possible.

"Very recent astronomical discoveries exactly parallel the theoretical advances. The newest astronomical data about the size and shape of the universe convincingly confirm that inflation is the right theory of the early universe. There is very little doubt that our universe is embedded in a vastly bigger megaverse."

As I understand it, however, this doesn't mean one's bank account is embedded in a vastly bigger one, just that the piddling total is writ in vastly bigger letters.

Neither use nor bloody ornament, these theorists.

You'd have thought a major New York newspaper would know how to spell assassination properly, but the Observer's review of Nicholas Basbanes' new book about books is nonetheless worth reading.

"In two earlier books, A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books (1995), and Patience and Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture (2001), journalist and book addict Nicholas Basbanes explored the curious universe of book collectors, an oddly riveting place full of passion, skullduggery and misadventure - like a good mystery novel. In his new book, Mr. Basbanes leaves behind the fragrance of fine leather bindings and the Oxbridge atmosphere of finely arched library rooms; he fixes his eye instead on the killing fields of cultural elimination. From the razing of Carthage to the Serbian leveling of Bosnian repositories, he examines the bonfires that have consumed entire centuries of man's musings on matters great and small."

Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times writes about (you'll need to register to see it) the list of the world's most endangered monuments:

"Architecture is a luxury. Preserving it is a double luxury. And if the World Monuments Fund were restricted to advocating architectural preservation, its mission would be one luxury among many.

"But the fund stands for something much greater than that. It represents the cosmopolitan virtues of tolerance and aesthetic discrimination. This set of mental attitudes is not a luxury at all. It is a precondition for peace, and has been so for at least 4,000 years, first with individual cities, now with the entire globe."

The most sensitive and comprehensive ultraviolet image ever taken of the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest large neighbor galaxy, has been captured by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image is one of several being released to the public as part of the mission's first collection of pictures.

"In perhaps the ultimate sign of our times...In the face of allegations of greed and self-dealing, former corporate officials have sought to be judged according to the standards of their morally delinquent peers. In other words, in a community of the corrupt, there can be no such thing as a dishonest man."

This is an absolute treasure of an article...John Keegan, world's preeminent military writer, gives Fisk a bit of a fisking.

This one takes second place in the treasure stakes - Archbishop Tutu gives Thabo Mbeki a bit of a trundling.

If you thought punishment couldn't get much more brutal than public stoning, try marching an offender into a crowded stadium and pouring acid in his eyes. I'd say Judge Afzal Sharif is making the competition look like a gang of sissies.

Simon Hoggart, who has been the Guardian's Parliamentary sketch writer for about ten years now, describes one of the Tories' most closely-guarded secrets - "the ancient and traditional scorn British people of a certain age and class have for everything Italian. Organ grinders, ice cream salesmen, the mafia, swarthy men with curly moustaches, waiters who say things like 'che bella signorina!' while grinding pepper mills the size of California redwoods." That about nails it.

Ariel Sharon has been annoying the right wing of his Likud party in the last few days by suggesting he might unilaterally withdraw from some areas that Likud regards as part of greater Israel. He undoubtedly feels the pressure of international support for the Geneva Peave Plan, and that of shifting public opinion within Israel. But some thought he might be trying to soften the Likud up in advance of announcing a plan that would otherwise be hard for them to swallow. Now the shape of his apparently complex new plan is emerging. this story suggests that if it were accepted, it would see the creation of a provisional Palestinian state in a year. It would would involve Israel withdrawing from a number of settlements and from areas controlled by the Palestinians before the start of the uprising in September, 2000.

John Keegan, author and Telegraph military columnist, recalls what an embarrassment it can be to capture, not kill, a tyrant.

Meantime, unhatched chickens are being counted around the world.

More prophylactic BBC work to minimise the impact of Hutton Inquiry comments. These new rules have to do with the reporting of stories based on single anonymous sources.

It's Christmas, and it's the season for Top Ten lists. I'm a hopeless addict, so get used to it. Here's the American Film Institute's top ten list.

Here's another one, and the much-awaited result of the BBC's Big Read hunt for the most popular book of all time.

Activist, lawyer, scholar and writer Samantha Power suggests in this fine interview in the Atlantic Monthly that there are ten steps to be taken in a Mugabe-style country takedown.

Power, who had just returned from Zimbabwe, was surprised by the lengths to which Mugabe had had to go to "screw up" a place as robust as that country. "In a sense, the invasions of white farms were Mugabe's attempt to kill three birds with one stone - to get the war veterans off his back, to further satisfy his cronies, and to get rid of the white farmers, who had begun teaming up with the black opposition as a political force. So I think you can see there is no one answer to how Mugabe became this way - he certainly didn't roll up his sleeves one day and say, "I've had enough of running the jewel of Africa, now I want my country to become the joke of Africa." But everything sort of fed on itself, and the only unifying theme through it all is his personal power. Power comes first, second, third, and last - and nothing can stand in its way."

Nat Hentoff, whose weekly Village Voice and Wall Street Journal columns testify to his expertise on the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court, student rights, education and jazz, not necessarily in that order, has condemned American librarians for failing to condemn Fidel Castro's crackdown on freedom of speech - and freedom to read - which took place last April at summary trials in remote locations that were closed to foreign journalists. The 75 dissidents who were jailed included Cuban librarians.

"Yet, at the ALA's annual conference last June in Toronto," says Hentoff, "Cuban independent librarians were refused a speaking place on the program. Only Mr. Castro's official librarians were accorded the freedom to speak - for nearly three hours. And there was no ALA resolution to demand that Cuba's leader release the independent librarians. Some of them - like a number of other prisoners of conscience in Castro's gulag - badly need and are being denied medical attention."

Prime Ministers, presidents and other officials who attended the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva last week were given badges surreptitiously affixed with radio-frequency identification chips, allowing conference organisers to track their every move. But although the researchers who discovered the chips questioned summit officials about their use and how long information would be stored, they were given no answers.

Meantime, opposition to the choice of Tunisia as the site for the next WSIS meeting is already growing.

The Amenhotep Bust. If it sounds sort of like a sequel to the Maltese Falcon, it should. Illicit trafficking in antiquities is a $2 billion-a-year business these days, apparently.

Diagnosing the famous dead has become a half-playful pastime among medical experts and historians. The University of Maryland holds a public post-mortem on a historical figure each year.

In these sessions, scholars have concluded that Beethoven had syphilis, Edgar Allan Poe died of rabies, Florence Nightingale had bipolar disorder, and the Roman emperor Claudius was poisoned by a mushroom.

Now, they've concluded that Alexander was brought down by a humble mosquito.

The world is breathing a sigh of relief this morning, with the news that Saddam Hussein has been captured near Tikrit. Don't allow that to make you overlook this story which, if true, makes an astonishing link between Saddam and 9/11.

I admit this cannot compete with the capture of Saddam for the title of best news of the morning, but it comes a damn close second.

This is a long, horrifying, heartbreaking update on the life story of Leidy Tabares, the young Colombian woman who, as the star of the film, The Rose Seller, was the toast of Cannes in 1998. Now, she's facing a 26-year jail sentence.

Whatever crimes the French and the Belgians have committed, no matter how much of a blot on the face of civilisation they may make themselves, Asterix and Tintin absolve them of all crimes, in the end. I can't believe Walt Disney turned Rene Goscinny down for a job. Surely that can be blamed on Michael Eisner, somehow.

The British Beagle, a comparatively inexpensive little spacecraft, is set to land on the surface of Mars on Christmas Day.

However inexpensive the spacecraft is, though, "Houston - the Beagle has landed" is unquestionably going to be the most expensive punch line in history. There's not a Brit in the world, though, who won't think it money well spent.

The BBC must prove it can be trusted to provide impartial and factually accurate news coverage or else face fundamental changes in the way it is regulated, Britain's Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell says of the review she intends to hold before reviewing the organisation's charter in 2006.

"I am not implying that it can't," she said, "but a broadcaster like the BBC that lives and breathes on the strength of the licence fee has got in a sense to continually renew its contract with the people who one by one fund its operation.

"One of the important facts about the BBC is the relationship of trust people have with it. What people expect is that particularly in relation to news and current affairs is that what they will get is facts and accuracy."

Microsoft is ending fully-blown support for Windows 98. I'm sure some people will find that annoying, but really, if it nudges them into upgrading to XP, it will be doing them a great favour.