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Hoo-boy! has winter come knocking, or what?!? The temperature plummetted Saturday down to around 20f (-6c) and stayed there for the next few days. No snow, frost or ice, just damn cold. Apparently this is the longest spell of continuous cold weather for 6 years. While it has been colder, it has always been a temporary dip and then back to warmer again. Still, there isn't the biting winds we used to get in Scotland, so it doesn't blow right through you.

The kids are off school now, and just waiting for Christmas. We're in pretty good shape, most of the presents are bought and goodies in the store cupboards. We're going round to the Keatings' for Christmas dinner, the first time Cathy and I won't have Christmas dinner at home since we got married. We're both looking forward to it, as Dave and Mitzi are really good people, and we both enjoy their company. We'll try to take lots of photos to let you all see.

Out in the big world there is lots to comment on. The biggest is obviously the bombing of Iraq by the US and British planes. A very difficult situation, with no clear cut answers. There has been a lot of condemnation of the action, but the condemners (?) just gloss over the actions of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. He has attacked 2 foreign countries (Iran and Kuwait), not held up to the conditions of the ceasefire when he was kicked out of said countries, murdered countless numbers of the Iraqi people, used chemical weapons on several occasions, and withheld food and medicines from the Iraqi people for his own political ends.

The problem, as I see it, is that in the 'western' countries, we are always trying to apply the 'rules', written and unwritten, to our behaviour. The rules that say you should treat people fairly; be honest in your dealings with others; shouldn't use all these nasty weapons that have been developed over the years. The problem here is that Saddam doesn't play by these rules. To him it is fair game to abuse people (even your own people); to be deceiptful and renege on your word and commitments; to use whatever means neccesary to achieve your goals.

And yet... Is that sufficient grounds to throw out the rulebook and play by his rules? What we have here is the equivalent of the playground bully. Do we really achieve anything by beating him up? Does that solve the problem, or just leave him even more bitter, with a bigger chip on his shoulder.

I've been reading some of the messages on the CNN message board about this. One person was suggesting that we should declare the existing rulers (Saddam and his henchment) war criminals, declare a government in exile and wait for the people to rise up in revolt. What stupid, naïve nonsense! Does anyone in their right mind really believe that Saddam would give a hoot? He controls the media, so the general populace wouldn't even know about it, and he'd most certainly imprison or eliminate anyone who tried to do anything about it. As for a government in exile, they would have all the safety of Salman Rushdie; he's still in general hiding after how many years (15?) after his book was declared blasphemous. Then again, do the Western nations really want to remove Saddam? If he was taken out (assuming that anyone could get close enough to do the job) that would leave an enormous power vacuum. There would follow a period of instability as the various groups (sons, family, generals, democratic movements, Kurds) all jockeyed for position, leaving the country ripe for action from the Islamic Fundamentalists, Iran and all sorts of other nasties. Saddam is a bad scene, but that could be worse.

One other thing about this whole, unsavoury mess. His Holiness, The Pope to the non-Tim element reading this, was quoted in the Electronic Herald (Scottish on-line newspaper) as follows : Pope John Paul expressed bitterness at the raids, saying hopes that international law could be upheld had been dashed. With all due respect, what about the international laws that say you should look after your people, not kill them?; what about the use of chemicals?; invading other countries?; etc, etc?

I lied, a final point. A lot has been made by several of the Arab countries about calling off the bombing for Ramadan, which started at he weekend. Respect for the defendiing nation's religous holidays didn't stop Egypt and Syria attacking Israel during Yom Kippur in 1973. They used that Israeli holiday as an advantage in their attack. They planned the attack around the holiday. For them now to ask for the attack to be called off for respect of Ramadan is little short of hypocrisy.

Several people on the CNN message board commented on the possibility that the attack was purely an effort on Bill Clinton's part to divert attention from the ongoing impeachment hearings. I'm not sure that I go along with the idea. It was, admittedly, very fortuitous timing, but I think the window of opportunity was there, and the two events were mostly unrelated.

Which brings us onto the whole impeachment process. What a farce this whole thing is! I really don't know why Congress bothered spending all the time and money debating the affair. The Republicans had already drawn up the impeachemnt document before they had completed the debating phase! Now that the matter has been passed to the Senate, where it has very little chance of passing, quite a few of the Republican Congressmen are saying that Clinton should just be censured, not impeached. Why on earth didn't they say that last week and save all the palaver?!? Sheesh, they don't half like to waste money here.

What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the polls have constantly shown that the general populace are against impeachment, by a ratio of 2-1. Yet the Republicans have been determined to go down that road. The November elections saw them get a real bloody nose from the voters, with Newt Gingrich, the Speaker, eventually resigning. Haven't they learned anything yet? They're still heading down the same road, which the people have shown that they don't want. How much more stupid can they get?

I can't remember if I mentioned in a prior Thoughts, but I have finally acquired a cell-phone (mobile phone in UK-speak). This is a Sony digital/analog unit using the Sprint PCS Digital network. For the princely sum of $50/month I get 500 minutes of talk time, with full roaming and long distance included in the charge. Not a bad deal.

Cell-phones here work totally differently here than in the UK. Here, each cell-phone belongs to a specific city (home area), so that you have the same area code as a normal land-line. In the UK all cell-phones belong to a special area code (sort of a cell-city, if you like). One effect of this is that it is just treated like a normal call. This means that when Cathy calls me from home it's just like a normal, local call, i.e. it doesn't cost anything. And because I have roaming capability it's still a local call regardless whether I'm in downtown Lake Oswego or the other side of the country. And I can call her because I've got long-distance included, so it doesn't cost any more.

The other thing is that calls to cell-phones are only charged to the caller like normal calls, local or long distance. The person receiving the call pays for the call, normally through the rate being for so many minutes per month. In the UK both the caller and the cell-phone user have to pay, with the caller being charged about 33p (50c) per minute.

Still on the subject of phones, we got our phone bill in from US West yesterday - $150! It appears that they terminated our long-distance service from Sprint, and then started charging the default $2/minute rate instead of the 10c/minute Sprint charge. Cathy called them and got $105 refunded, though. Phew!

Well, that's enough for this week. I'll catch you all next week.