Short Takes

Bush's Kind Of Small Business
So you get rich with a dozen different types of tax-funded help, you become a Republican, and you live happily ever after complaining about how much you pay in taxes. Maybe President Bush was right after all, that is the American dream.

We Ain't Racist Here
Asked specifically whether he thinks white people are superior to blacks, Michael Hill, the [League of the South's] founder and president, replied: "I certainly know this. I can't play basketball like Michael Jordan, and he's a black man and I'm a white man. I think Michael Jordan's a better basketball player than I am."

He added: "I don't think that any one person or group of people is inherently better than any other -- because I'm a Christian."

For example, he added, "The Japanese seem to be better at mathematics than anybody else."

Robert Fisk: So what was the war for?
Thank you, Mr Bush and Mr Blair, for making our world safer by ridding us of the one tyrant - Saddam Hussein - who never had any connection with 11 September 2001, or with the Riyadh bombings or with the bombings in Casablanca.

Afghanistan is in a state of anarchy, its pathetic government scarcely ruling over Kabul. Iraq is in an even more incipient state of anarchy, largely without electricity, money or petrol. And this is a war of good against evil?

Casablanca is a sorry and pertinent page in the history of America's folly in the Arab world. So what comes next? More boasts by President Bush that he is winning the "war against terror" or more claims - yes, he told you so - that the "war on terror" is eternal? Heaven spare us all.