Now that we all know what we knew before, we've begun wondering just where Mandalay Bay will place its so-called "MJ Zone."

Take away some meeting space? Doubtful. Conventions are too important to Vegas' bottom line and the location is too far off the beaten path, anyway. What about those little souvenir shops stuck in nowhere-ville over by the tram entrance? Possible, but it's in such an overlooked area that it's likely not a top consideration, either.

The old rumjungle location (shown below) is empty and in a good location right off the parking garage, but Vegas gossip Robin Leach reports that plans for a nightclub are underway.

A guest post

Arriving at Schipol, you can take a taxi to The Hague (around € 45) or for the budget conscious traveler, you can take the train (€ 7.90) to go to the Hague. Within The Hague, transport seems to consist of many, many cyclists, trams and cars. There are two bikes per Dutch person in the Netherlands, but despite knowing that the Dutch use bikes as the main way of getting around within the towns, it’s still a surprise to see all the people cycling to work, to the pubs, to the stores and pretty much everywhere.

When crossing roads, keep an eye out for the bike lane, the tram lane, AND the car lane. And you might want to obey the traffic lights as well, as the pedestrians also wait for the pedestrian crossing light to turn green before crossing, even in the absence of incoming cars. When being driven within The Hague, you might decry all the “wasted” driving lanes that are taken up by the bicycle lanes, but there is no overlapping from drivers into the bike lanes as the cyclists also seem to have significant cycling rights.

For accommodation in The Hague, there are a range of hotels to choose from. The Ibis hotel, part of an European chain is a pretty safe bet (€99 before tax), and is an environmentally friendly hotel , no frills hotel. Prepare for sticker shock for meals though as breakfast goes for €15.

You can get around even if you speak no Dutch, as almost everyone in the service and retail industry speaks English. Window-shop in the Noordeinde area which has really high end shops located near the Noordeinde Palace. Make sure you soak in the old architecture while you’re there (Google says the Palace was built in the 16th century). The real shopping takes place in Grote Marktstraat where many retail electronics, clothing, shoes, bath and body retails chains have stores, and there are plenty of small shops that sell the distinctive blue and white Delft pottery.

To get the full tourist experience, take a day trip to Amsterdam which has great shopping and tourist attractions. The Van Gogh Museum and the Rijk Museum are must sees. For sightseeing and shopping, a good place to start is Dam Square where shops are flanked by waterways, and with tourists attractions like Madame Tussauds . Many of the international chains have retails stores in this area. Amsterdam isn’t of course Amsterdam without a visit to the Red Light District, so if you can, try and see that as well.

Biggest surprise about Holland? That the dikes aren’t brick walls that prevent the sea from flooding the country. They’re more miles and miles of mounds of earth. Oh, and this boy? He never existed as part of Dutch history. It’s an American children’s story!

We're used to spy films in which the communists are the bad guys – but the eastern bloc had its own secret agent screen heroes, too

A secret agent is attending a party in an elegant apartment. Beautiful young people wear the latest fashions, sip martinis and canoodle in corners. The spy slips into a back room and starts breaking into a safe. It looks like a scene from a James Bond movie – except this is communist Hungary, and the heroes are what western policy makers in the cold war would have called "them", rather than "us". The film is Fotó Háber, an ultra-stylish spy drama made in Budapest in 1963, and, like many of the films emerging from behind what was the iron curtain, it blows apart the glum, grey image of the eastern bloc from the inside.

That we have the chance to see Fotó Háber is thanks to a short season of European spy movies showing at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, to mark the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall. The western ones are worth a look, but the real interest lies in the much rarer films from Warsaw Pact countries, including Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany and the Soviet Union.

During the cold war, the spy movie genre became an obsession on both sides of the divide, with the same recurring themes either side of the iron curtain: the secrets and intrigue of the cold war, the futuristic new style of the space age, the exciting possibilities of high technology, and the even more exciting possibilities of the sexual revolution. Any preconceptions about the Soviet bloc being a dour place full of grumpy peasants in headscarves queuing all day for turnips may be left at the door. Instead, these films depict a world that is, like Bond's, wildly aspirational: these are films with fast cars, sharp suits, hard drinking, and a seemingly endless supply of bouffanted young women in heavy eyeliner taking their clothes off.

At the beginning of Smyk (Skid), a lavish and lyrical Czechoslovakian drama made in 1960, a Czech agent in glitzy west Berlin slaps the stripper from Prague with whom he has just left a bar. This is a blow, he explains, "in the name of thousands of your countrymen working for the freedom of their country while you are acting the prostitute!" He suggests she could make money another way. "There are all kinds of possibilities. For example, espionage." She fires back: "I think it's more honest to act the prostitute."

The 1960s, when most of these films were made, constituted a golden age for real as well as fictional espionage. The technology of war had moved on alarmingly fast, while the technology of communications lagged hopelessly behind. During the 1950s, both the Americans and the Soviets were pouring resources into the nuclear arms race. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev claimed – falsely – to be churning out intercontinental ballistic missiles like sausages from a machine. Horrified, the Americans churned them out for real. The very fact that Khrushchev was bluffing hints at how much the flow of information between east and west mattered, and how crucial it became for governments to control it. The further fact that American intelligence knew he was bluffing, and allowed the public and much of the government to go on believing in a "missile gap" anyway, confirms it.

This was a world in which a president could launch nuclear missiles against another superpower in 15 minutes, but could not telephone his counterpart first to tell him. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, messages between Khrushchev and John F Kennedy took 12 hours to arrive, during which both leaders' fingers were figuratively hovering over the big red button. There was then no telephone line between the White House and the Kremlin. Moreover, long-range intelligence gathering was sketchy. During the early 1960s, the best long-range surveillance of Soviet military sites came from American U-2 spy planes. These took photographs on negative film. The film had to be flown back to base, then on to the United States; there, it was developed into positive prints and painstakingly analysed by experts. Data from U-2 overflights could take days to reach the director of the CIA.

In a world so dangerous, in which information flowed so slowly, the spy on the ground assumed unprecedented importance – as did counter-intelligence agents charged with thwarting them. This spy-versus-spy theme is central to 1964 Polish thriller Spotkanie ze Szpiegiem (Rendezvous With a Spy). A mysterious western-allied agent, dressed exotically in a pin-striped suit, checked shirt and flat cap, parachutes into a Polish forest. His mission: to gather information about missile base locations around the Baltic. He is spotted immediately by the enormous, dazzlingly hi-tech Polish military intelligence service – it may be worth stating again that these movies paint an aspirational picture – and three handsome counter-intelligence agents are sent to hunt him down. There follows a fast-paced game of cat and mouse, with the counter-intelligence agents using all the most modern surveillance techniques to bust the spy and his network without revealing themselves. There is even an impressively staged finale with a car chase. If it doesn't quite live up to the adrenaline rush of Goldfinger, released the same year, perhaps that is because in place of Bond's Aston Martin, Rendezvous With a Spy has to use a Skoda. However, eagle-eyed viewers may notice that the car chase bears a distinct resemblance to Bond's first on-screen effort, 1962's Dr No.

Though many communist spy films qualify as propaganda movies – including Rendezvous With a Spy – they are far from the blatant flag-waving of second world war cinema. In the east, as in the west, the spy genre aimed to be a sophisticated form of entertainment. So, though viewers need be in little doubt that the three Polish agents are the heroes and the parachuted-in spy is the villain, the spy is a fully developed character. In one scene, he is checking out an apartment when a little girl and her grandmother return to it. He hides behind a curtain, barely daring to breathe. The tension is high, and you may find yourself rooting for the bad guy.

There is no such doubt in Skvorets i Lira (Starling and Lyre), a glossy 1974 melodrama from the Soviet Union made by Sergei Eisenstein's one-time co-director Grigori Aleksandrov. It depicts the USSR as a would-be peacemaker among nations, under siege by a secret cabal of western capitalists known as the Council of Gods. "Peace with communists is absurd," says one council member, decked out in the standard-issue western fat-cat uniform of white tie and tails. "To start a war, we need to create an anti-communist Europe." Laborious theorising about the military-industrial complex is occasionally relieved by a syrupy romance, but the message is stark: capitalist propaganda from the west is aiming to tear eastern Europe away from its natural ally, the Soviet Union.

Despite the high production values and the high profiles both of Aleksandrov and his wife and leading lady Lyubov Orlova (in her last role), Starling and Lyre was never widely released even inside the Soviet Union. One rumour said this was because the ageing Orlova was upset by how she looked in the film. Another suggestion is that the film was canned by the authorities because some elements resembled the real-life "Guillaume affair" of 1974, in which a personal assistant to the west German chancellor Willy Brandt was discovered to be a Stasi agent. In hindsight, the film seems too kitsch to constitute much of a threat to anything except good taste; but it is nonetheless an intriguing glimpse into how the Soviet Union saw itself, and the west.

Not all Soviet bloc films were so heavy going. The dialogue-free Romanian film from 1961, S-a Furat O Bomba (A Bomb Was Stolen), features a man who goes flower-picking and accidentally ends up in possession of a bag containing a stolen nuclear bomb. In the madcap farce that follows, he becomes the unwitting object of a struggle between devious gangsters and sinister soldiers – rendered slightly less sinister by their low-budget safety attire, consisting of buckets on their heads. There is formation dancing, cross-dressing, a romance with a pretty tram conductor and a custard pie to the face.

Communist or capitalist, a custard pie to the face is somehow universal. The difference between "them" and "us" was not quite so great as either side thought.

The Celluloid Curtain: Europe's Cold War in Film runs until Monday at Riverside Studios, London. Box office: 020-8237 1111. Alex von Tunzelmann's Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean is published by Simon & Schuster.

Trident Vitality : Vigorate [Video]

Client: Trident Agency: JWT New York Production: RSA Films Country: United States of America Director: Brett Foraker Senior Creative Director: Dan Glass DoP: Simon Chaudoir Agency Producer: Betsy Schoenfeld Post production: Method Editor: Gary Knight Sr. Executive Producer: Gabby Gourrier Executive Producer NY: Jay Lichtman VFX Producer LA: Jennie Burnett VFX Producer NY: Tram Le VFX Supervisor: Jason Schugardt VFX Coordinator NY: Susan McNamara VFX Coordinator NY: Valerie Kenniston On-set Supervisor: Andy Jones CG Lead: Brian Burke CG FX: Dan Letarte CG FX: Norris Houk CG Animation: Ed Manning Lead Flame Compositor: Johnny Hicks Lead Flame Compositor: Martin Lazaro Flame Compositor: Tim Davies Flame Compositor: Susanne Scharping Flame Compositor: Chris Hunt Flame Compositor: David Forcada Flame OP: Pete Marin Nuke Compositor: Eric Weinschenk Nuke Compositor: Samuel Jorgensen Matte Painter: Olivier Pron Modeling/Texture: Lersak Bunupuradah Roto: Pam Gonzales Roto: Patricio Fernandez, Tracker: Michael Maker Tracker: Lauren Von Houtten

The comments to my post on The Window gave me several interesting points to pursue, but first I'd like to talk about the data I compiled from the opposite point of view.  What size of lead does a player need to enter the final round with to feel really, really good about her chance to win?  Of course this depends on the player and the quality of those who are chasing her but as always, I'm looking for the norm.

I'll stick with the same dataset I used for that post, leaving out the just-completed Avnet event to keep things constant.  In that group of 147 events, I found that 59 players who held the solo lead and 23 who were tied for the lead going into the final round went on to win the tournament.  You might have wondered how those 82 victories broke down by size of lead and number of players tied who did NOT win, so here you go:

Over the last five-plus seasons, the only perfect category is "Leading by 7+".  Cristie Kerr (8 at '10 LPGA Championship), Suzann Pettersen (7 at '07 Thailand) and Lorena Ochoa twice (8 at '08 HSBC and 7 at '08 Corona) are the only players who have held such an overnight lead and they all went on to win.  But we aren't just looking for perfection, we want to know the level where the player should expect the victory.  If you take all the examples from four on up, the success rate is 79% (19 of 24).  And if you are so inclined as to throw out the examples involving Angela Stanford (two four-shot leads lost but one four-shot lead held onto), the rate goes up to 86%.  I'm not trying to pick on Angela, I'm just setting up a future post which will break down the lead-holding and come-backing by player and try to grade their results against these norms.

To me, the three-shot lead is on the cusp.  The 50% success rate means that we should not literally "expect" the player to win, though obviously her chance is very good.  When referring to this data in the future, I'll probably regard four shots as where I expect a victory and three shots as where the player ought to win.  I bet that when I analyze each of the three-shot scenarios in depth, about half of the losses came when the leader blew up and half came when somebody went low and the leader was around even par on Sunday.  The lower percentage of victories by two-shot leaders than one-shotters flies in the face of logic and deserves in-depth analysis as well.

The chart backs up a comment Awsi Dooger made, that betting against the leaders is "for suckers".  Even the players leading by only one shot held on to win 44% of the time which is a solid percentage compared to those only tied for the lead or trailing.  The percentage for players tied for the lead has an artificially low ceiling in that it could not possibly rise higher than 50% (given that you must have at least two players in the tie and only one can win).  In the dataset, there were 11 times that two or more players were tied entering the final round and none of those tied won the event.  So the percentage of events tied entering the final round won by one of those tied is 68% (23 of 34).

Since they are relatively few, here are all the leads of three shots or more which did not result in a victory:

I'll never forget that '08 Ginn Tribute, because I was there.  I didn't see most of Sophie's meltdown until I watched it later.  Did see Lee play her last four holes and ran into her mom in the gallery at 16.  Needless to say, I was thrilled when she won - which put me in the distinct minority of the patrons.  Everybody else on the tram riding back to the parking lot wanted Gustafson or Karrie Webb (who lost in the playoff) to win.  A couple of them were quite emphatic about it.

Enough reminiscing and enough of this subject for now.  In the second chart, you see why I mentioned Stanford earlier and there's good similar reason to analyze the records of Pettersen, Ochoa, Kerr, Webb and Hull.  I will break down all their records in this area next time.

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From a fly and flop break in Lanzarote to a beach hut in Whitstable, here's where to go with a toddler in tow

Ile de Ré, France

Holidays with toddlers are tough. We've tried it all, from self-drive in South Africa to house swaps in Savannah, but our fondest memories are reserved for the Ile de Ré. On our summer hols last year we camped at Les Amis de la Plage, a lovely site by the beach with none of the big holiday park fuss, just brilliant, clean facilities including child-sized sinks and toilets, a baby changing area and purpose-designed shellfish washing stations. On the beach, there were pools at low tide for the kids to play in and surprisingly passable surf for me at high tide. We stocked up each day at the local market in Le Bois-Plage-en-Ré and then headed back to camp to consume the vast quantities of delicious claret and shellfish we'd bought. In the evenings, we often headed to Saint-Martin-de-Ré for a sunset stroll and dark chocolate ice cream from La Martinière, absolute bliss.
• Pitches at Les Amis de la Plage (+33 546092401, les-amis-de-la-plage.com) cost from €22 (high season)
Ben Colclough, director of tourdust.com

Princes' Islands, Turkey

Burgazada, one of the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul, is a weekend retreat that's sleepy the rest of the time. Keen for a relaxed, self-catering break but also hooked on Byzantine mosaics, the Hall family (including George, then two-and-a-half, and Harry, nine months) spent a blissful week here early last summer. After morning pastries, fresh juices and Turkish coffee by the harbour, a 45-minute ferry ride (£2) slowly brought the city into view before docking at Kabataş, on the European shore. Transport-obsessed toddlers will love that Hagia Sophia is a tram ride away, while Taksim Square can be reached by funicular. Locals loved our boys, and ferry journeys were unexpected fun with them both getting plenty of attention. Car-free Burgazada can be toured by horse and buggy, or you could do as we did and just hang out by the pool until it was time for dinner on the quayside.
• To rent the Serenity apartment on Burgazada for £650-£1,450 a week, see holidaylettings.co.uk
Tom Hall, Lonely Planet

Mull

The Isle of Mull is second only to Skye in the Inner Hebrides for size and population, and it's a wonderful place for a family holiday. Just getting here, usually via the beautiful ferry ride from Oban, is an adventure – and if the weather's right the views from the breezy upper deck are a wonderful way to leave the real world behind. The ferry docks at Craignure, from where a 45-minute drive brings you to journey's end at Calgary Bay, arguably Scotland's best sandy beach. The former Calgary Hotel is a collection of self-catering properties – a week at Limetree Cottage costs £515 – £615 and makes the perfect base if the weather's fine – and a cosy retreat if your luck's out. Close by, Tobermoray – the setting for the television series Balamoray – has a great fish and chip van on the harbour wall. Mull has plenty of lovely short walks which can easily be tackled with small people in backpacks.
• Limetree Cottage (+44 (0)1688 400256, calgary.co.uk/limetree.html) costs from £405-£615 to rent for a week
Tom Hall, Lonely Planet

Lanzarote

It was a bit of a surprise to find that fly-and-flop holidays are still possible with baby in tow. We took Lola, then six months, to Lanzarote for an autumn break at Casa Katharina, a smart but affordable house on a peaceful, if nondescript, estate near Playa Blanca on the island's south-eastern side. Big hits included Sky TV and an outdoor pizza oven/bbq (dad), the garden's giant cacti (Lola), the absence of almost anything to do (mum) and the private heated pool (everyone).

The Canarian air was magically soporific, even for a teething baby, but if you're likely to bore of a relaxed swim-read-snooze routine, there's a wide, buggy-friendly promenade a five-minute walk away. In one direction you'll find crashing waves and solitude, in the other an unpretentious resort with a small play park and relaxed beach bar where grinning waiters coo at children while parents drink beer with toes in the sand.
• See Lanz Luxury Villas (+44 (0)121 275090, lanzluxuryvillas.com)
Emily Mathieson, Word of Mouth editor at Condé Nast Traveller

Cabo Cope, Murcia, Spain

I'd never heard of the Cabo Cope before, but was immediately intrigued by the prospect of unspoiled Spanish Mediterranean coastline. And realising that it is threatened by yet another concrete resort project, we decided to go down and see it for ourselves. This was as close as I could get to Laurie Lee's experience when he first arrived on the Costa del Sol, I thought: arid mountains cascade unhindered by man towards the sea. It was perfect for driving along dirt tracks to find private beaches of crystalline water – shallow enough for toddlers, but with excellent snorkelling opportunities for adults too.

We stayed at the Mayarí Hotel, in Calabardina, a pleasant oasis overlooking the sea, run by a child-friendly couple; a babysitting service was available and they were soon treating our little one as though he were part of the family.
• Doubles at Mayari Hotel (+34 968 419748, hotel-mayari.com) from €76.50
Jason Webster, author of five books on Spain, including Or the Bull Kills You (Chatto & Windus) a detective novel set in Valencia

Isola d'Elba, Tuscany, Italy

One of the joys of holidaying with under-fives is that you're not bound by the tyranny of the school calendar. Elban beaches that are unvisitable during Italian school holidays in August are quiet in May, when the island's wild flowers bloom, and even June. Perfect white-sand crescents at Fetovaia and Cavoli, on the island's south-west, make a great photo, but Sant'Andrea on the north coast is a tiny rock-pooler's dream. Away from the crystal waters, my little ones love the open, boneshaker cable car ride to the 1,019m summit of Monte Capanne, for views as far as Corsica and right up the Tuscan coast. Just remember to hold on to their hands, and your hats … ours are still up there somewhere.

There's plenty of seafood on every menu, but at informal La Bussola, in Portoferraio, we can sample some serious flavours, such as the signature dish of steamed salt cod on shredded leeks and chickpea puree – and the kids share a pizza. The island's best family accommodation is the boutique complex of affordable, spacious apartments at Casa Campanella, near Capoliveri. Ask them to book your ferry crossing from Piombino, to guarantee the best fare.
• Apartments at Casa Campanella (casacampanella.it) cost from €1,900 per week for two to three people
Donald Strachan, author of Tuscany, Umbria & Florence With Your Family (£12.99), published this week by Frommer's

Wind in the Willows caravan, Wales

This gorgeous Romany caravan, made for a recent film of Wind in the Willows, is hidden away on top of a hay meadow in stunning Monmouthshire countryside. The caravan itself is compact – there's just one large double bed – so it can only furnish a holiday for a small family: my husband, my six-year-old daughter and I squashed in happily enough. I'm not generally a fan of camping, but this was more comfortable than the usual, because a touch of luxury is provided by the off-grid cabin just a few feet away – the interior is worthy of an interiors magazine, with a sofa, large oven, dining table and a shower. But the most magical part was cooking meals over an open fire, with wood from the nearby copse, then getting tucked up inside the caravan at night and falling asleep to the occasional hooting of owls.
• Prices range from £168- £258 for a two-night stay (+44 (0)844 500 5101, underthethatch.co.uk/willows)
Harriet Green, editor of the Guardian's Family section

Brittany, France

Ten minutes inland from the seaside town of Binic, La Maison des Lamour is a collection of four cottages and five B&B; rooms set on a former farm. The decor is stylish country – a sleek combination of modern furniture and accessories (free-standing baths, a chandelier of tea lights, slate-tiled walls) and antique finds (old picture frames and books decorate the bedrooms), with splashes of Cath Kidston-style floral cuteness. All of which will appeal to design conscious parents, though just as important is the kids' paraphernalia – cots, high chairs etc, which make this a hassle-free family retreat. Breakfast (for B&B; guests) of local breads, pancakes and jam will please adults and children alike. Outside there's a large wooden fort for kids to let their imaginations run wild, along with a slide and swings, tunnels, a wooden horse, and a field full of ponies to ride in summer – and a river with pedalo hire. With a restaurant and farm shop on site, you could easily while away your days without getting into the car once, but the Lamours will happily recommend places to visit and eat in the area.
• B&B; from €75 (high season); cottages from €580 per week (peak season) (+33 2 96 74 13 63, lamaisondeslamour.com)
Jane Anderson, author of Brittany with Kids, published in May by Footprint

Osea Island, Essex

The Essex commuter belt is not the obvious place to look for a secret island untouched by time, but that's what makes Osea so exciting. Until last year, this private island in the Blackwater Estuary near Maldon was run as an exclusive rehab clinic and recording studio. In January, it opened to the public for the first time in more than 100 years as a low-key holiday retreat offering self-catering accommodation in a collection of stylish weatherboarded 18th century cottages, a couple of beach houses and a grand Edwardian manor house which can sleep up to 20. Sailing and fishing trips can be organised, but the emphasis is on simple pleasures: beachcombing, foraging for berries and samphire, swimming, birdwatching and nature walks. Young children will love the chance to collect eggs from the hens, pick fruit from the orchard and visit the island's two resident donkeys. Osea can be reached by road just twice in every 24 hours, when the waters recede to reveal a causeway built by the Romans across the rocky river bed. Although you are really just a 90-minute drive or a 40-minute train ride from London, when the tide comes in and the causeway disappears, the sensation of being cut off from the rest of the world is complete.
• Prices range from £263-£512 for a week at the Sweet Shop, a one-bedroom cottage (07810 753226, oseaisland.co.uk)
Joanne O'Connor, travel writer

Kent

Kids love the novelty factor of the Fishermen's Huts in Whitstable, Kent. They're like supersized versions of Dad's garden shed, but with bedrooms, kitchenette and a bright green wooden front door that opens directly onto the beach. The paved beachside path is ideal for cycling, tricycling, scootering, toddling, or purposefully pushing a toy pram back and forth all day long – and it's just a few car-free steps away. Let the kids explore while you sample some of the best oysters in England and take in the picturesque pebble beach and striking fishing boats. The huts may not be glamorously furnished and the stairs are a bit steep for young ones, but it's the perfect seaside crash pad for beach-bound boys and girls.
• The Fishermen's Huts can be booked through the Hotel Continental, Whitstable (01227 280280, hotelcontinental.co.uk); family huts from £115 per night. The world-renowned Royal Native Oyster Stores (whitstableoystercompany.com) can be found along the path. For cycle hire, including children's bikes, child trailers and tag-alongs, contact whitstablecyclehire.com
Jonathan Knight is editor of Cool Camping and Cool Places guides

Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz’s ill-informed and manifestly misleading attack on the Palestinian-led, global movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel contained several misrepresentations and some outright fabrications. The historical account given by Meyerowitz-Katz is not only skewed; it is a typical attempt to obscure or omit altogether the basic facts about BDS.

An overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society issued the BDS Call on July 9, 2005 as an effective, non-violent strategy to end Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights. This civil, peaceful and inclusive struggle, largely inspired by the successful South African anti-apartheid movement, is based on international law and universal principles of human rights.

The BDS movement’s objectives are justice, freedom and full equality for all, irrespective of identity attributes. The aim of the BDS campaign, specifically, is to pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law, namely by: withdrawing from all Arab lands it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; implementing full equal rights for the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel; and respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

Mischaracterising the internationally mandated return of indigenous Palestinian refugees uprooted and dispossessed by Israel during the Nakba, the 1948 campaign of ethnic cleansing, as “a sudden influx of millions of immigrants” is unarguably false and deceitful.

The reality is Israel is a state that, according to several annual US Department of State human rights reports, maintains a system of “institutional, legal, and societal discrimination” against its Palestinian citizens. This system of legalised and institutionalised racial discrimination fits the international definition of apartheid in the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes of Apartheid and the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

According to Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, there are at least 20 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel. These encompass the vital domains of land ownership, state education, and infamously, the “Law of Return” – which excludes anyone who is not Jewish. And all this is not even to mention Israel’s military occupation and colonisation of the West Bank or its illegal siege of the Gaza Strip, which has recently been called a “prison camp” by British prime minister David Cameron. BDS is a movement based on universal human rights and as such rejects all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.

This has been one of the main reasons for the movement’s success, and its wide adoption by human right groups, activists and concerned citizens around the world – including many Jewish peace groups and even some principled and active supporters within Israel, such as the Coalition of Women for Peace and Boycott from Within.

In the past five years, the BDS movement has witnessed a spectacular and robust rate of growth in international civil society and among people of conscience around the world. Many high-profile campaign victories put BDS on the mainstream map in the West. The Derail Veolia campaign, for instance, targeting the French company due to its involvement in the illegal Israeli tram project connecting colonies with Jerusalem, has in less than three years cost the company contracts worth billions of US dollars.

Leading moral authorities, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have also widened the movement’s appeal to many around the world. Cultural and intellectual icons of the calibre of Stephane Hessel, Alice Walker, Iain Banks, John Berger, Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Henning Mankell, Roger Waters, Ken Loach, and Mike Leigh have added visibility to the swelling ranks of BDS support globally. Artists like the Pixies, the Klaxons, Carlos Santana, Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, leading artists in Faithless and many others have heeded the cultural boycott part of the BDS campaign and refused to perform in Israel.

Many unions around the world have also backed BDS campaigns, including the South African COSATU, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the huge Brazilian trade union federation CUT, and the Trades Union Congress in the UK, which endorses a boycott of and divestment from companies that are complicit in Israel’s occupation and colonial settlements. Campaigns aimed at boycotting complicit Israeli academic institutions have also spread, inter alia, in Britain, the US, Canada, India, France, Norway, Spain, Pakistan, Italy, South Africa, Australia.

As the BDS movement has gained more and more successes, the far-right Israeli establishment regarded it as a “strategic threat”. Smear and intimidation campaigns by the proponents of “Israel right or wrong” have increased, but have been notably futile in hindering the movement’s growth. Recognising their inability to rationally and convincingly debate BDS in public with leaders of the movement, Israel’s lobby groups have opted instead to insinuate and slander. Now we are seeing such desperate tactics by the supporters of apartheid Israel in Australia, in light of the courageous decision by Marrickville Council to join the BDS movement.

One of the most desperate arguments put forth by those Israel pressure groups in Australia and elsewhere is that “BDS actually hurts Palestinians”. This is both patronising and pathetically dismissive of the ability of Palestinian civil society to determine its own destiny and rights as well as the sacrifices needed to attain them.

Like the South African majority, Palestinians know well the price to be paid for freedom, for the light of justice at the end of the long, torturous tunnel of colonial oppression and dispossession. The fact that a near consensus in Palestinian civil society, including all the main political parties, unions and NGOs, has existed since 2005 in support of BDS unambiguously expresses the Palestinian’s readiness to pay that price.

Freedom, justice and self-determination are worth every bit of it.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist and a founder of the BDS campaign..

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Local man reportedly walked into the sacristy, sprayed it with flammable liquid and set fire to priest's robes stored there

Tourists were hurriedly evacuated from Barcelona's emblemetic Sagrada Familia basilica after an arson attack destroyed part of the original work of its eccentric architect, Antoni Gaudí.

A local man reportedly set the blaze after walking into the sacristy, spraying it with a flammable liquid and setting fire to the priests' robes stored there.

A group of tourists raised the alarm after flames and smoke started billowing from the sacristy and emergency services rushed to the building. Some 1,500 people had to be evacuated, though only four needed treatment for smoke inhalation.

The sacristy was destroyed in the blaze and the crypt – part of the building completed while Gaudí was still alive – was badly damaged by smoke.

All the robes and furniture in the sacristy were lost, local fire chief Miguel Ángel Fuente said.

Joan Rigol, the president of the society in charge of building the unfinished temple, claimed the arsonist had mental health problems, and said he had been caught by a group of tourists and handed to police.

The colourful basilica, with its soaring, ceramic-encrusted towers, became a tourist attraction and emblem of the city decades before it was due to be finished.

Gaudí devoted the last 15 years of his life to the building before he was run down by a tram in 1926, at which point less than a quarter of it had been built. Work stalled in the 1930s and funding by public subscription meant money to pay for it appeared slowly.

Income from 2.5 million visitors a year has allowed progress to speed up, and religious services are now held there. Architects are still unwilling to put an exact date on when the building may be finished.

Pope Benedict XVI formally consecrated it as a basilica in November.

A previous arson attack saw anarchists break into the building in 1936 and burn many of Gaudí's original models and plans, meaning later building work has required a certain amount of guesswork.

Authorities plan to continue with services there over Easter.

The British tennis player Andy Murray, who is in the city for the Barcelona Open tournament, had to cancel a photoshoot at the site.

I actually came back Thursday night, but I've been too lazy to jot down some reactions until now.

There are signs on the street directing you to a tram connecting the Monte Carlo hotel with the Bellagio. but once you follow the first sign (that takes you into the casino), there are no more signs telling you how to get to the tram. The tram is a lie.

Actually, the tram does exist, but it's not marked. You have to walk through the entire Monte Carlo casino to the Street of Dreams shops, and then past them and up a flight of stairs to the tram station. When you reach the Bellagio, you then have to do the reverse, walking through the Bellagio to get your way back to the street. I'm not sure if it's actually faster than just walking the regular way.

Note to people who choose swag for conferences: if people are flying into your conference, a toy gun is probably not a good choice for a giveaway.

A word of warning to Japanese tourists: The people in costumes standing around enticing you to pose with them for a picture? After you take your picture, they're going to ask you for money. And apparently, the practice has spread to helpful "volunteer" photographers who will just shrug and walk away if they break your camera.

The Marquee bills itself as a "Nightclub and Dayclub." Doesn't that just make it a "Club"?

I didn't win a Niney, but I did get to meet Lady Gaga (or a least a Lady Gaga impersonator). As a courtesy, I called her "Your Grace." I knew it wasn't the correct honorific, but she seemed okay with it.

Man, that Niney award is heavy. And Scott won two of them! If he packs them both in the same suitcase, he's going to get a hernia.

At the urinal is a small shelf, presumably a place to put your drink while you make room for your next drink.

Let me get this straight. If you visit the Paris Hotel and take a picture of the fake Eiffel Tower, you'll also capture in the frame a U.S. flag. I guess that's sort of like the fake streets mapmakers add so they can detect copyright violations.

One of the figures atop the Paris Hotel is a statue with the simple label Suger. Once again proving that if you know Swedish, the world is funnier. In Swedish, suger means sucks.

When airline pilots come onto the speaker to tell you the weather at your destination, why do they all assume they're talking to other pilots? "The winds are out of the south-southwest, and the cloud ceiling is 10,000 feet, with visibility of five miles and air pressure of 30.05 inches." The only way this could be made more useless would be if a passenger shouted out, "But what's the dew point?" One of my friends suggested that airline pilots are simply frustrated that they couldn't make it as a weatherman.

My clothes smell like cigarette smoke, so I guess what happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas.

tram: posted a reply:

Hi all~ :D

Roadmen look at a German World War II bunker that was recently uncovered during work to replace a tram line in central Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, April 14, 2011.

Last week I shared a clip of my first bicycle. I continue to work my way through the converted video files from my old family Super-8 movies and suspect I may have found an early influence for my multi-modal transportation obsession.

In the summer of 1965 I traveled to New York City with my parents for the 1964-65 World's Fair. I apparently "drove" a car (on a track) and rode both a monorail and an aerial tram...