Floppy slacker Americans and a strategy for winning

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061207/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq

"The American people are soured on this war. They don't want any more American casualties," [Lee] Hamilton, an Indiana Democrat and former congressman, said on CBS's "The Early Show." He said that "pressure is building on these politicians to find an answer, to bring to the completion our adventure in Iraq."

First off, lets take that word 'adventure'. An 'adventure' in the sense meant here, is a swashbucking foreign sortie, meant to benefit the pocket and prestige of the adventurer. It might be considered the opposite of a strategic intervention, which is self-evidently serious and considered. How many intelligent people in Britain and America consider George Bush's intervention in Iraq an 'adventure', as opposed to a strategic intervention? As President Bush has pointed out from the very beginning, there are very specific strategic purposes for intervening in Iraq. Saddam Hussein provoked three major wars in his 26 years in charge of Iraq, and because of his terrible political judgement, would almost certainly have attempted more. Getting rid of him and replacing his gangster regime with a working non-islamist democracy in the heart of the middle east would have very long-lasting effects on the region, especially on the other gangster and autocratic regimes around Iraq. That we can safely label a stratagy. It appears that the Democrats, not having a strategy, refuse to countenance the idea that someone else might.

As I've pointed out at least once before in my blog, it took Rome 216 years to defeat Carthage. The US has been in Iraq for 3 years. 14 of the 16 provinces of Iraq are at peace. Virtually every school and hospital in Iraq is open and functioning. Many infrastructure projects have been completed, including the restoration of about 2/3 of the marshes (home of the Marsh Arabs) drained by Saddam Hussein. But America is losing...

Shia vs Sunni violence in Baghdad is getting worse, of that there is no doubt. But then when you have a bipolar society, thats always a risk. Look at Fiji over the last few days (half native Fijian, half Indian immigrant). Saddam did mask that bipolar nature of central Iraq in a way. He totally dominated the Shia through his Sunni police, army and secret police. 'We create a desert, and call it peace' said Tacitus the historian of Rome. Thats what Saddam did: his was the rule of a determined criminal clique supported by those of the same religion and tribe. I hear more and more often from those who will never have to suffer either fate, that things in Iraq were better under Saddam. If you were a Sunni, that is quite possibly true, although certainly not universally so. For Shia, Marsh Arab, Kurd and everybody else who wasn't a Sunni Arab, utter garbage.

But the whole reportage of Iraq is Baghdad-centric, and the particulars of Baghdads psychoses are lazily projected by journalists on to the rest of the country. This despite the fact that Kurdistan is as peaceful as rural England. Most of the south is peaceful, apart from a few pockets where Iranian-sponsored terror groups are trying to muscle in on the oil money now pouring into Iraqi society. Even in the heartlands of what used to be the insurgency, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is being cauterized by a collapse in support for it among Sunni arabs more interested in their future place in Iraqi society than in some stupid worldwide jihad. As with the recent case of the ex-Yugoslav countrylets, once religio-tribal warfare kicks off, where it stops is unknown. Parts of Bosnia have been completely cleared of either muslims or Christians, and more 'ethnic cleansing' would occur if Nato's presence were to be removed. But Baghdad, where 95% of Iraq's Sunni/Shia warfare is occuring would be torn asunder in a completely hideous way were real ethnic cleansing to start.

My suggestion: do a 'Fallujah' on the Mahdi army and the Sunni militias in Baghdad. Only once the backs of the militias are broken can Baghdad look forward to relative tranquillity. At the moment, all the militias have everything to play for, as they are not being pressured militarily in any way. Recently the US Army closed off Sadr City to stop the Mahdi army and the Sadr Brigade from doing their usual disgusting business, only for Maliki to order them off. If I were the US military consul in Iraq, I know what I'd do. Get rid of the militias, especially the Shia ones, and deal with Mr Maliki's squealing and whining later.

Do you want this woman to shape the future of British Society?

The execrable Channel 4 have decided to give a freelance lecturer in islam the 'honour' of giving the alternative Queens Speech on Christmas day. We have been assured that she will be wearing the second-most enveloping muslim dress available, just as an added 'fuck you'. This transgressive, in-your-face decision puts the proposition squarely before us: do you want the Britain that the Queen represents, or do you want the kind of Britain this Khadija has to offer?

I'm pretty sure what kind of future Britain Khadija has in mind. In every part of the world where her ilk have the whip hand, a suffocating intolerance and ignorance prevails. There is no variety, no freedom, no learning and no fun. Just the suffocating rule of sharia.

The Queen's Britain on the other hand has a long and glorious history of freedom, endeavor, creativity, learning, problem-solving, adventure and development.

I know which message I'll be watching (probably the same choice as most Britons I'm guessing).

Real Grit

Every now and then a juxtaposition hits you. And this one on the front page of the BBC News website made me wince with painful irony. David Cameron promises 'real grit' to his supporters in the coming year. And then theres the little photo of Geoffrey Boycott.


David Cameron thinks that to say something is to make it real. Like all his ilk, to him the words are all. Its not necessary to have real grit, or do things that demonstrate real grit, or live a life that embodies real grit. That would require strength of will and character and spine. But Dave can talk about real grit till the cows come home.


Geoffrey Boycott IS real grit. He would never say it. Gritty men don't. He would never get all weepy about how gritty he is. Thats not a gritty thing. But in everything he does, and especially in all the difficult things he has done, Geoffrey Boycott demonstates that he has real grit. And that is worthy of my respect.


David Cameron talks. Geoff Boycott walks (not in the Cricket sense, obviously).

Democratic foreign policy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6205050.stm

Demos, a 'think-tank' of unknown political orientation, says that British ministers (there are about 20 frontline departemental ministers) have not spent enough time chit-chatting with our muslim brethren. According to this august coven, the dilatoriness of our top politicians has the effect of driving the muslims into islamo-imperialist views.

Consider for a moment how stupid that is. First of all, 'muslims' do not constitute a separate nation within Britain. Policies in 'the national interest' are engaged in for the benefit of all of us; that includes those people in Britain who happen to be muslim. So a pretence on the part of politicians to engage in a separate discourse with muslims about THEIR 'national interests' would be wrong. Whether muslims like it or not, Britain is governed for all British people.

Also utterly stupid is the acceptance that somehow the war in Iraq is about islam. The Iraq war may have many policy fathers, but a plan to 'attack muslims' is not one of them. The blame for the widespread acceptance of that superlatively stupid proposition is one that can be squarely laid at the door of the left-wing press and broadcasters of Britain. For some reason, as soon as the islamists in Britain and round the world started saying that the war in Iraq was part of a worldwide attack on islam, the lefty press took up the refrain. Good plan. The worst thing to do with a paranoic is agree with him. A whole castle in the air has been built on this lie- convenient for the left who don't like Mr Blairs wars, but disastrous for those in Britain trying to keep good intra-communal relations.

Why would Demos come out with this now? During the recent Hizbollah-Israeli conflict, a group of so-called muslim community representatives wrote a letter interpreting the bombing of tubes as a necessary result of ignoring muslim views about foreign policy. For the first time, the political classes in Britain rose up almost as one to condemn them for this obvious attempt at blackmail. Will they do the same now in regard to Round 2?

Army of 155,000 trapped in Iraq

Shalom from Israel.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15827976/

I just had to share this most droll observation of Kofi Annans. According to him, the US is 'trapped' in Iraq. Really? By any dictionary definition of that word I'm aware of the US is not trapped. The people of Iraq ARE trapped. They are trapped in a country where there is no law but the law of the gun, the law of the sectarian murderer and the law of the politically amoral. The US Army can just leave. Get in their C-5's and zoom back home. The people of Iraq are there for the duration. They need a functioning country, with peace and the institutions to run a decent country and protect themselves from thier belligerent neighbors. Without a US army there, the likelihood that they will find their way to that point is very small.

Idiots like Annan, with their opinions from Jupiter or Saturn or anywhere but earth would be funny if they weren't actually in charge of large (if ineffectual) organisations. He, like millions of Americans, Europeans and Arabs, are still bleating about whether there should have been another UN resolution, about faked evidence of WMD and a zillion other historical details. Apart from the fact that many of these people can't get any single fact straight distracts from the larger point- that in the three years and counting since the US/UK invasion, the world has been changing relentlessly, and there's lots to consider and weigh up. Constantly revisiting 2003 is a microcosm of the liberal view writ large- don't have a decent plan, don't try to help, just sit on the sidelines, safely away from real decisionmaking and power, and carp. Yeah, good.

Incompetent terrorists should be allowed

Whether we like it or not, large parts of the Islamic world have declared war on the West. Because Muslim countries, to date, have lacked the military and economic capability to wage conventional warfare against us, they have engaged in vicious acts of terrorism designed to intimidate and undermine Western society. They may soon be in position, through developments in Iran and, perhaps, Pakistan, to commit acts of nuclear blackmail or actual nuclear warfare.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=6031

Reading this article, and the above paragraph about muslim armies, and their incompetence, reminded me of a comment I read recently on the BBC News Forums. The commentator had a foriegn name although he lived in London, and his gist was:
"The response to terrorism in Britain has been completely over the top- after all, most of the terrorists are incompetent. Because of their incompetence, they pose no real threat. So therefore, we should just let them be". He then listed the following "A ricin plot with no ricin, a shoe bomber with a match" etc etc. Great argument. He sadly failed to mention the 7/7 bombers, and the second stick who attacked two weeks later who only failed to murder hundreds of people because the explosives in their backpacks, of identical material to the 7/7 sticks bombs, was beyond its best-before date.

It worries me deeply that there are so many idiots like that correspondent in Britain. It makes me wonder whether there is still a quorum of sober, intelligent, rational people to appeal to to make the difficult choices we are going to have to make in the near future. I believe that without the rapid reduction of muslims in this country, the closure of all muslim schools and mosques that teach wahhabist islam, and the cessation of muslim immigration into Britain, we are going to spend an awful lot of time, money and blood stopping the approaching wave of terrorist atrocities. All of it completely our fault for allowing mass immigration into a settled and harmonious nation in the first place, but lets not go there.

Diminishing the potency of a word

My dad taught me many good and true things. One of his concerns was the weakening the potency of words by deliberate misuse. Jon Snow, the anchor on Channel 4 news, calls people who request the wearing of Remembrance Day red poppies 'poppy fascists'. It may seem obtuse to move from the substantive point about whether or not the ultimate sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young men and women on our behalf should be memorialised each year, to the much more trivial one of using the label 'fascist' for every group of people we think are a little too keen on something, but humour me.

The fascist movements (for my purposes Communism is also fascism, but with different terminology) that came to the fore in Europe during the early 30's harboured many psychoses. When they took power their psychoses were then projected on to the rest of the world. Between fifty and sixty million people died, many of them murdered, before fascism was finally exterminated as a political creed in Europe. So to use the word fascist for those who are particularly keen on good nutrition for children (food fascists) or for those who are very over the top in their desire to protect children from accidents (health and safety fascists) drains that word of its power. I wish those who unreflectingly rob the word fascist of its potency would muster the mental strength to find some other description for the single-issue bores and the jolly-hockey-sticks home counties marms who insist they know whats best for us all. For one thing, I'd much rather have a country dominated by those well-intentioned if slightly blinkered folk than one dominated by the real fascists of our day, the islamists. And so would you if you have any wit whatsoever.

Possibly the worst abuse of the word fascist at the moment is the use of it to describe the Republicans in the US and those people in positions of power in the UK who are most engaged in the war on islamism. Interestingly, now that the Republicans have just lost control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, will the fascist label still be ubiquitously attached to them? Probably. As I always say, by their fruits ye shall know them. The intentions and good will of both Britain and America are evidenced in many places over many decades all over the world. Only the most ludicrous interpretation of the evidence would allow ourselves and the Americans to be deemed fascistic. There are real dangers in the misuse of words. When you can no longer describe something effectively, you lose the power to deal with that thing precisely and elegantly. Lets not do that to ourselves.

Where have all the conservatives gone?

On page eight of todays Times of London Bronwen Maddox starts her editorial concerning the decision to hang the barbarian Hussein with these words:

"This is victor's justice."

No shit sherlock. She means that as a criticism and an insult rather than a simple description of the facts. Although it is true that this is victors justice, it is not interesting. Were the Nuremburg trials wrong and a travesty because the Allies won WWII? No. Did they not produce fair and just outcomes? Yes, they did.

What is of much greater pertinence to her readers is, are the victors in the 21st century just and good? Are their intentions beneficial or harmful? These are not of interest to Ms Maddox however.

She immediately goes for a utilitarian argument. Will the trial result calm Iraq or promote further turmoil? A hundred years ago, perhaps fifty years ago, the Times of London would not have permitted such amoral arguments to appear on its pages. Someone serious would have written that whatever else happens, calling a murderous dictator to account for his barbarities is just and right. Iraq is plagued by rivalries old and new- and is currently unable to settle those without resort to tit-for-tat murders. Will that be the case forever? Of course not. But to suggest that a trial should or should not be held simply because it might inflame a rivalry that is already burning brightly is beneath contempt.

The invasion of Iraq was conducted primarily for moral reasons- Saddam Hussein was a murderer of his own people and a clear and present danger to his neighbors. In removing him, Britain and America sent an unequivocal message: commit mass murder and invade your neighbors and we won't wait for the United Tyrants Club of Nations to send in a couple of Bangladeshi battalions to stand around while you continue your bloody work- we're coming for you. As long as Britain and America continue to do that I will be happy.

What does worry me is Bronwen Maddox and her legions. The pompous regurgitators of left-wing talking points, increasingly prone to national self-loathing and just-for-sake-of-it America bashing, have comprehensively taken over former conservative bastions like the Times of London and the Daily Telegraph. Since Mark Steyn and the latter parted company, there is not one serious right-wing voice remaining. Not only are the pompous middle-class lefties ubiquitous, they are also dull and worthy and boring. Much as the Soviet Union was, actually. There is not a single newspaper left in Britain, in fact, which hosts a vibrant energised right-wing perspective. Do I hear any offers?

Any old law will do when it comes to fighting fascists

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/6113040.stm

British National Party leader Nick Griffin told a crowd that Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" a court heard. Mr Griffin, 47, from mid-Wales, is charged with using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in 2004.

Hmmmm. Last time I checked, islam was a religion, not a race. And what if Mr Griffins description was factually correct? Presumably the court would not care...
I think this "using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred" thought crime should be subsumed within a new super-law banning all descriptions of other people and their activities. We can all just sit here and smile. Shoot me somebody please.

How useful idiots explain the world to themselves (and us)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dream-Palace-Arabs-Fouad-Ajami/dp/0375704744/sr=1-1/qid=1162553275/ref=sr_1_1/202-9427992-8484656?ie=UTF8&s=books

While perusing the entry for this book (The Dream Palace of the Arabs, by Fouad Ajami) I came across this screed-

Ajami's book is a perfect example of the disasters inflicted on the Arabs by a group of self-loathing and deracinated intellectuals, who could not come to terms with their own history. Rather than construct a modernism that is not at odds with the rich past of the Arabs, they foisted on us the "glories" of Arab nationalism and socialism. Long before Ajami and his ilk took off for their academic posts in the West, they abandoned their homelands to the barbarians whom they nurtured by their incessant and vicious demolition of the Arabs' unique world view. What they left behind was a half-baked pseudo-modernism, that was rooted in no authentic tradition- in fact in nothing.

Ajami rails against the theocracies of Iran and elsewhere. His true heirs are the officer gangsters and crass cliques that have gobbled the area's resources and turned it into a cultural desert; all the while mouthing the slogans of secularism and democracy. This book is an outrage against all those who were marginalised, exiled, ridiculed, and ultimately betrayed by the intellectual elites of the Arab World of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Give me an ayatollah anyday in preference to the neo-fascists of the Baath and the heirs of Nasser. Ajami does not admit that the intellectual elites of West Beirut whom he glorifies paved the way for the racketeers and criminals who inherited the Arab World. His solution for this cul-de-sac that his crowd led us into is to throw the Arabs into yet another horrid experiment; this time into the arms of the New World Order with all its injustices and inequalities. Ajami and a few like him may have found their bolt hole in the West, and became more royalist than the king, but this is no recipe for the millions trapped in a civilisational limbo. No reader should be seduced into believing that Ajami's work is anything but a piece of well-written fiction that camouflages an ugly reality. Stick to Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Jonathan Randall and Patrick Cockburn if you are seeking the truth.

You can almost see the beads of bloody sweat coating this guys face, and the flecks of froth at the corners of his mouth as he smashes at the keys...

Because I'm slightly masochistic, I tried to follow the narrative as he led us the merry dance around the 20th century middle east. But I became unnerved by the catalogue of terrible crimes committed by Fouad Ajami. Here is my distillation of them:

1. caused a disaster of unspecified nature to Arabs
2. cannot come to terms with own history
3. constructed a modernism that is at odds with 'rich' history of Arabs
4. caused nationalism
5. caused socialism
6. abandoned homeland to the barbarians
7. nurtured said barbarians by incessant and vicious demolition of the Arabs' unique world view
8. left behind half-baked pseudo-modernism
9. this half-baked pseudo-modernism was rooted in no authentic tradition- in fact in nothing (unlike the well-baked pseudo-modernism)
10. railed against theocracies
11. spawned officer gangsters and crass cliques of resource gobblers
12. turned the middle east into a cultural desert
13. mouthed the slogans of secularism and democracy
14. committed an outrage against all those who were marginalised, exiled, ridiculed, and ultimately betrayed by the intellectual elites of the Arab World of the 50's, 60's and 70's by writing this book
15. threw the Arabs into the arms of the New World Order with all its injustices and inequalities
16. ran off to a bolt hole in the West
17. provided no recipe for millions trapped in civilisational limbo
18. wrote fiction disguised as truth to camouflage an ugly reality

Whew! Thats a Herculean burden of horrors this guy is responsible for! Forget Hitler and Stalin. Mr Ajami must qualify as the worst person EVER.

What does perplex me is, what agenda would our correspondent support? He hates modernism, nationalism, socialism, militarism, gangsterism, monarchy, non-specific barbarians, secularism and democracy. What does that leave us?

Oh hang on. I know. Traditional Wahhabist Islam and its 'rich' culture; and the dreary apologists for it (Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Jonathan Randall and Patrick Cockburn).

"But hacking off peoples heads with rusty scimitars is part of our rich cultural tapestry..." We know.

Lucid delineation of the current war

http://www.strategypage.com/dls/articles/2006102522057.asp

James Dunnigan does a sterling job outlining exactly what the larger situation is in the Middle East, and why Arab lying is such a problem. It is Arabs who lose out mainly from Arab lying, but it is so deeply ingrained in their culture that even when the terrible results of it become apparent (which they have to many intelligent people in the Middle East) they just can't wean themselves off it.

Also, the passivity and fatalism which prevent muslim societies developing even basic infrastructure and productive capability are well-described. Lets not forget- many Arabs were still living in tents and riding camels one hundred years ago (or less). And they have no civil institutions to act as permanent bearers of cultural learning. Just the mosque, with all its lies and unchallenged bullshit.

A Pet Peeve

There is something which comes up constantly in discussions of Britains islamofascists I hate. It goes like this:

"Well I just don't understand how these guys can dress in t-shirts and jeans, wear baseball caps and latest stylee sneakers, and still want to blow up our tube trains!"

Really? Clothing as a signifier of cultural bias or political allegiance tells us NOTHING. Look at the Pakistani cricket team. They dress like nouveau riche pop starlets, but they cheat like Pakistani cricketers. Just because Osama Bin and Gone dressed like a 7th Century camel herder does not mean he wasn't a 21st century politician. The half of Bradford council which is Pakistani dress in suits and ties, but they rig elections like local politicians in Karachi.

As I walk the streets of London, I am constantly reminded that although most of the people walking by me are dressed approximately like me, their culture and world view differ in most important respects. And if the British don't re-colonise their cities and wake themselves up from their narcissistic and degenerate torpor soon, there will be no-one to save them from the barbarian avalanche.

Google Ads employ lefty morons

I apologise to my reader for the George Soros Foundation ad which currently appears on my Blog. The Google Ads folk deem themselves humorists, I guess.


You can find this little gem at georgesoros.com:

The War in Iraq
What The Bush Administration Won't Tell You
About The War in Iraq

The United States has thoroughly destabilized the Middle East by invading Iraq. The task of the occupying forces is no longer confined to fighting a Sunni insurrection; they have to contain an incipient civil war. The country has divided along sectarian lines and each faction has established a fighting capacity.

Now the situation in the Middle East is dire. Iran threatens to become a nuclear power. The low-grade civil war in Iraq threatens to broaden into a regional conflict. We are facing a clash of civilizations and/or armed sectarian conflict. And all this in a region that is responsible for the bulk of the world’s oil supply.

Something is fundamentally wrong with President Bush’s contention that he has made us safer at home by taking the war on terror abroad. There are many more people willing to sacrifice their lives to kill Americans than there were on 9/11.

The Bush administration shows no awareness of the contradictions in its policies or of the negative consequences. Here is President Bush’s introduction to the 2006 National Security Strategy so that you can judge for yourself.

So let me get this straight- because the US invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussain, Iran has developed Nuclear weapons? What school of logic does that argument come out of?

'The low-grade civil war in Iraq threatens to broaden into a regional conflict' in a region that has for many many years not had one of those. Yeah, good one.

Hang on, we're onto the next huge claim- 'We are facing a clash of civilizations and/or armed sectarian conflict'. George W Bush INVENTED clashes of civilizations! They just didn't ever occur in world history before 2003. Especially when Clinton was President- everybody in the world just LOVED each other.

'And all this in a region that is responsible for the bulk of the world’s oil supply.' Its almost like President Bush didn't factor in the oil industry when he invaded Iraq...

'There are many more people willing to sacrifice their lives to kill Americans than there were on 9/11'. That we know about. Before 9/11, we just didn't care that they wanted to kill us. We thought they were being rhetorical.

'The Bush administration shows no awareness of the contradictions in its policies'. They have not submitted even one rebuttal document to us over here at Georgesoros.completelydumb. Its almost like they think our illogical, ignorant, pseudo-intellectual twaddle isn't worth responding to.

Damn, thats true actually. Must be time for bed.

US General confirms my theory

Not before time, a US Army General has confirmed a long-espoused theory of mine:

"General Pace told me last week that, if anything, the evidence is that Iraq has tied up a big chunk of senior jihadists who'd otherwise be blowing up Afghanistan and elsewhere" (Quoted from a Mark Steyn column on the Chicago Sun-Times website).

Many moons ago, I wrote to Bill Roggio of AntiTerrorism blog fame with the theory that at least one solid reason to go into Iraq in the first place was the honey-pot theory. A US Army in Iraq would attract all the little gobshites hot for jihad and given that they want to die for allah anyhow, we would have ample scope to give them a quick dispatch to meet him (or go to the very hot place, more likely). I got back a dismissive email saying there was little evidence that this was the case. Well, Mr Roggio, General Pace would like to disagree with you!

And if the Taliban keep up with the wave-type frontal assaults on NATO positions in Southern Afghanistan (have they been swotting up from 1930's Soviet military textbooks or what?) there is going to be a worldwide scarcity of jihadi boys soon. Which I think we can all agree is sad.

The real face of islam

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6086374.stm

Sheikh Taj el-Din al-Hilali said women who did not wear a hijab (head dress) were like "uncovered meat".

I am sick to my gut that men like this exist in our societies. I am sure many muslim men in Britain have voiced similar views to Shiekh Tojjer, and thought much worse.

Australia's most senior Muslim cleric has prompted an uproar by saying that some women are attracting sexual assault by the way they dress...
The cleric says his comments were taken out of context.

What IS the context for saying its womens fault they are raped if they don't wear a great big tent-like covering? Could that context be the 7th century A.D.? I think so. I, and many like me, will not sit around while barbarous cretins like Sheikh Taj Mahal take us back to the dark ages.

It is time for us to chuck these idiots back on the scrapheap from whence they came.

Hilarious options

There has really been too much to blog about in the last four days- so much I haven't been able to latch on to any one thing and get to it. But I keep on hearing this word 'options', mainly in regard to Iraq and its current situation. And the more the media and various politicians moot 'options' for Iraq, the more I fear for my sanity, my country and my sides- as in the splitting of. Lets invite Syria and Iran to get involved in the running of Iraq. Really? REALLY? You call that an option? Iran is ALREADY involved in the running of Iraq; they are committed to using the Shia militias as tools to disrupt Iraqi life, and eventually to create a Shia state in Southern Iraq, which would in effect be a province of Iran. Syria is ALSO already involved in the running of Iraq. Syria is the safe haven and launching pad for the ragtag dregs of humanity that is the foreign jihadi contingent currently becoming dreadfully unpopular in Iraq; mainly because if they can't find infidel Americans to kill, they are happy to kill Shia or local tribal elders who won't provide them with facilities or pretty much anyone who gets in their way.

My suggestions for Syria and Iraq would involve bunker-busters and F-117's over Damascus and Tehran, not an invite to a round-table chinwag.

Another mooted option is to remove US troops to some location just outside Iraq, but where they could hurry back from quick-time should the need arise. What? WHAT? Please be joking. Please. Where exactly will the US troops be? Kuwait? Jordan? Iran perhaps (if only). Boots on the ground. That is what matters. To define the enemy, to find him and to kill him. That is what war is. Anything else is just a pussified way of masking defeat.

I also hear lots of non-specific allusions in the press to 'changes of strategy' and 'changes of tactics' (I'm pretty sure most journalists are hazy about the difference between those two things). Not ONCE have I read in the mainstream media outlets about the ACTUAL real changes of tactics that the US has been persuing in Iraq, to what I hear is initially good effect. The US has moved away from large FOB's (Forward Operating Bases), which are like medieval fortresses, to COP's (Combat Operation Posts) which are small outposts but in much greater numbers. Most of the COP's have line-of-sight to the next COP, which means that the IT's (islamoterrorists) have very little wriggle room. There are also many many more road-blocks now than there were a few weeks ago. That also means the IT's are much less able to do long-range ops away from where they live. Its also interfering with the emplacement of IED's. I have seen nothing about this in the press. They just don't care how the war is being conducted tactically, nor strategically. The devil is in the detail, and journalists never seem to get around to the details.

I have my own option for Iraq: its the Roman allies option. If you read Pliny's history of Rome, you will find that the Romans had a very persuasive way of encouraging cooperation in its allies. Its what I think of as the extreme carrot and the extreme stick. If a particular city/state in the Italian peninsular was visited by the Roman legions, it was offered a choice: join Rome as an ally, and your prime persons will be given honorary Roman citizenship, Rome will trade with you in a preferred way, you will be protected by the Roman legions, and additonally receive the many prestige benefits of being an ally of Rome. Or the Roman legions will invade your city and kill everyone, before razing the walls to the ground. Most cities obligingly joined the Roman alliance.

If America is going to be an imperial power (which I wish for the benefit of huge portions of the world it would), it needs to keep its wars short and as painless as possible. I see the only problem with the Iraq war is that its still going on. With the stupendous fighting power available to America, it should have won long ago. But to win quickly, you have to use similar methods to the Romans. The choice between cooperating with America and not cooperating must be stark- and the consequences of not cooperating must be utterly intolerable. Anything else, and the US can look forward to many more of these desultory un-won wars. Ask any historian- more people die in long-protracted conflicts than in short sharp ones like the Six Day War.

More on the Lancet Iraqi casualty figures

... there is a problem with the pre-invasion Iraqi death rate that the Lancet study assumes. Its estimate of the total number of deaths depends on comparing
the supposed pre-war Iraqi death rate with the supposed post-war Iraqi death rate; get the pre-war rate too low, and you are overestimating the war’s victims. Yet this is just what the study does. It puts the prewar death rate at 5.5 out of every 1,000
Iraqis. That number is almost certainly wrong. Incredibly, it is considerably
lower than the death rate in the United States....

If Iraq’s GDP is used to provide a more realistic estimate of the pre-war death
rate, 600,000 of the study’s estimated deaths are erased. The number of deaths
left over is close to the number given by the IBCP [Iraqi Body Count Project], whose estimate is looking more reliable all the time. And if we apply to pre-war Iraq the death rates of Pakistan and Syria—two countries in the same region, with socioeconomic conditions comparable to those of Iraq—we find that more than 100,000 additional predicted Iraqi deaths disappear.

November 6th issue of The National Review

If you believe the figure of 5.5 deaths per 1000 is correct, Saddam Hussein bum-buddy George Galloway can put you straight. Nary a week went by in 2001 and 2002 when Georgeous George didn't assail us with the horrors that the sanctions regime imposed by Bushitler and Bliar were wreaking on the poor citizens of Iraq. He even set up a charity to help the poor sick children of Iraq who didn't have any medicine because of the neo-colonialist aggressors. He made a very big deal about how many Iraqis were dying as a direct result of the sanctions.

So you can't have it both ways. Either you posit a pre-war death rate equivalent to Switzerlands and get your 655,000, or you take George Galloway at his word (not very clever in most instances I know) and the figure deflates like a badly tied party balloon. But as the National Review article points out, "If anything in this world is certain, it is that from now until the end of time every critic of American policy in Iraq will repeat [the 655,000] number."

Freedom to fragment

http://www.adamsmith.org/index.php/main/individual
/the_right_to_choose_yes_prime_minister/

Sweden has been operating a choice–based school funding system since the early 1990s. Families are allowed complete freedom to choose a school, whereupon public funding goes to the institution of their choice, whether it be a government–run or an independent school.

To promote the right to choose within UK schooling, three proposals are recommended. The first is that parents should be entitled to remove their children from schools that are failing, and choose any other school (state or independent) instead.

The second proposal is a Swedish–style universal user choice system. Public finance, representing about 70% of the per–student cost of state education, would be available to all schools on the basis of the number of students they could attract.

The third proposal is for a non-refundable tax credit to provide parents with a pound–for–pound reduction in their income–tax liability (up to an agreed limit) for each child they have in non-state education.

As soon as ideas are as clearly defined as the above, its easier to see where the problems are. I see a number of problems with allowing a 'free market' in schooling. First, school is the place we learn about the adult world. In a 'free market', some schools will fulfil the wish of parents to have their children indoctrinated in some hippy fantasy like the Steiner schools, or perhaps some bizarre cult. Would it be ok for the state to support them in this? If not, where would you draw the line between say a Seventh Day Adventist school (very strict protestant sect) and a Branch Davidian school (almost exactly the same as the Seventh Day Adventists but basically a child-abusing millinarian cult)?

Also, school is the place where children learn history and get a grounding in thier nations identity, achievements, cock-ups and particular nature. History is very often the first part of learning where those promoting an identity other than the orthodox national identity feel the need to change the narrative. Would that be policed? How could you successfully police it?

Mass education by the state has its own problems and inherent weaknesses. But it does mitigate towards a 'standard' education that then goes on to form part of a 'standard' national identity. Its not an exact science, but I believe it tends towards that end. I would see the fragmentation of that as problematic because what would replace it would almost certainly speed up the disintegration of Britain in hundreds and thousands of micro-cultures, many of which are openly antipathetical to the historic character of English men and women. If you could send your child across town to the Pagan Satanist school, where they could learn how to make blood sacrifices and hate Christians, would that make Britain a better place to live? In discussions about Choice, I am often struck how vague the proponents of Choice are about the genuine advantages which Choice will bring.

If by Choice, these learned folk mean "every child will have a choice between going to a crap local comprehensive or to an Eton-standard public school", then thats great. But Choice in this case may mean muslims taking all their children out of mainstream schools, and using taxpayers money to fund their indoctrination in Jew-hating, Britain-hating, male supremacy and wife-beating. And not just the muslims- there are many groups who I'm happy to see spend their own money on promoting their own particular brand of idiocy- but not my money.

I have no beef with independant schools of any type (with the exception of those that teach treason as part of the curriculum), but they should not get government funds. To a certain extent (and I believe this is the tacit assumption of many millions of Britons) I am happy to have a state school system which provides a standard, orthodox, good-enough education to every child, as long as there are other outlets for that minority of parents who are fanatical about their childs education. The extent of my dissatisfaction is that the state school system is not necessarily apolitical, and is somewhat open to being ideologically penetrated by anti-nationalist people who then do not perform the necessary function of turning out Britons, but rather Britain-denigraters, Britain-despisers and Britain-loathers. Being a subject of the Queen trumps party-political and post-nationalist ideology, or at least in any reasonable polity it should. And if schools don't encourage good citizenship, aware citizenship, positive citizenship of Britain (not some meaningless supra-national identity) they aren't doing one of their main jobs.

The last idea, the tax credit is not really a very good one. It would mean that only those people who are not particularly anxious about education would fund public education- which to my mind would be inequitable because the state would not be able to fund much of an education if half the population weren't contributing. Perhaps a rebate of half the cost of a years state education would be reasonable. Needs further consideration.

Sew the wind...

Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, speaking on behalf of the 57 Islamic countries, declared the the phenomenon of Islamophobia was on the rise in Europe and urged Western countries to promote tolerance and respect for all religions. He warned about the dangers of Islamophobia: “If we read the trends closely and connect the dots, it is obvious Muslims are being dehumanized. This is painfully reminiscent of the pre-World War II era. That dark chapter of history and pogroms must never be repeated, this time involving Muslims.”

http://www.theaugeanstables.com/reflections-from-second-draft/islamophobia-and-criticism-of-islam/

What makes this quote painfully ironic is the fact that the Muslim Council of Britain and many less well-known islamic bodies in Britain refuse to dignify Holocaust Day with any acknowledgement. Every year when it comes around, mainly Labour politicians plaintively plead with the MCB et al to join up and remember with the rest of us what fascist psychopaths reaped in Germany, and what Turkish psychopaths perpetrated in Armenia, and what Tutsi psychopaths did in Rwanda. And every year they get the same vague fob-offs, masking the very real anti-Jewish sentiment that lies behind their non-marking of Holocaust day.

I don't believe a holocaust of the muslims is about to take place. That is just florid exaggeration. But the selfishness and ethnocentricity and lack of fellow-feeling of muslims in Britain is winning them no friends. Well, that and the mass-murder.

Encouraging news

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006480104,00.html
I don't usually link to stories on The Sun website, as I try to keep to ostensibly serious news providers, but I couldn't find this story elseswhere. But this is a genuinely good idea, one of very few I've heard from the Government. A map of islamist hotspots in Britain, and presumably the links between them. Of course, concomitant with that must be the political will to smoke out the islamists once their enclaves have been discovered, but this must be considered a decent first step.

One Cheer for the Government.

What is with these people?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6055184.stm

Civil liberties

UCU joint general-secretary Paul Mackney said: "Members may be sucked into an anti-Muslim McCarthyism which has serious consequences for civil liberties by blurring the boundaries of what is illegal and what is possibly undesirable." Fellow joint general-secretary Sally Hunt said discussion of ideas was the key to understanding.
"The last thing we need is people too frightened to discuss an issue because they fear some quasi secret service will 'turn them in'," she said.

The islamists have been 'discussing ideas' for about eighty years, and in the late 20th Century, they started acting on them. The idea that they might be 'too frightened to discuss an issue' is surreal in a Britain where no major newspaper would print the Mohammed cartoons. Who is afraid here? Us or them?

And what is it with fiftyish Britons and 'McCarthyism'? Every time one of their pet ideologies comes under genuine scrutiny, as predictably as the sun coming up in the morning, accusations of 'witch-hunts' and 'McCarthyism' are bandied about. What is shocking is that islam is now one of the pet ideologies of the Guardian reading classes. Do they know how islam plays out in most islamic countries? Do they give a flying fudge about how kuffars are treated in countries like Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Egypt? How about freedom of religion, freedom of expression and academic freedom in the aforementioned? Sadly, I think that the halls of academia are now peopled by droids utterly divorced from how the world is actually constituted. They are like children who have a strong but pervasive desire to contradict everything their parents and teachers say is true, without knowing why. I recall my post from 9th of April this year, and the following commments-

"I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great."

"Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them,"

"If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

"Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

These are comments from young gitmo inmates. They are the product of real experience in a real US holding facility at first hand. Not the bogus, endlessly recycled anti-American prejudice and bile of the Guardian morons. How long can Britain as a polity sustain real-world significance and rational policy-making when there are millions of dopey lefties intent on believing patent falsehoods and our enemies propaganda?

If you believe that an 'exchange of ideas' is what the islamists want, you have not been listening to them, or watching what they do.

The inevitability of moral equivalence

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6053992.stm

It was with mounting excitement that I read this story on the BBC website. A member of the British government urging 'moderate' muslims to finally take responsibility for the treason and hatred being fomented in their name. But then, with the inevitability of death and taxes, came the moral equivalence. The far right, according to Ruth Kelly, are as dangerous and worrisome as the islamists. Really? When was the last time the far right blew anything up? Are the BNP and the NF plotting to do away with British law and replace it with their own version? How many of them are there? If you added up all the people who vote for the BNP and NF in the whole country, I bet it wouldn't top 50,000.

In that famous recent poll of the muslim population of Britain, 17% of those polled agreed with the agenda of the 7/7 bombers (and were willing to tell a pollster). We are told there are verging on 2 million muslims in Britain (although that is a highly politicised count), that means 323,000 muslims in Britain have the brutal and dangerous views of the world that caused the violent deaths of 60 people in London very recently.

But we are supposed to make an equivalence between the threat from those 323,000 and the 50,000 neo-fascists who haven't done anything worse than have public meetings and campaign for local government seats. What an utter load of bollocks.

A few weeks ago the papers reported that at the time of the Forest Gate anti-islamist raid, there were 21 ongoing investigations of active terror cells in Britain. Here is a plea to the media: stop minimising what is going on with the traitors in our midst. You are storing up a maelstrom for the future.

Cultural exports

But the fact is they have waited now five years for the government and the international community to do what they promised to do back in 2001, which was to provide jobs and health care and education, and roads and infrastructure, and electricity and water, and all the rest of it. And, really, they haven’t seen it. For many, many people in Afghanistan, their lives have not changed very much.

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/perfect-evil-part-two.htm

Ahmed Rashid may not know how the internal combustion engine works, how an AK-74 functions, or how to build a dam, but he has got one thing one hundred percent pegged- how the socialist state works. You sit home until the government build a factory next to your shack, plumbs you into the sewage and water systems, hooks you up to the mains, builds a school and carts your children off to it. Your input= 0%. Their input= 100%. Because as we all know, thats how America and Britain and Germany became rich countries, and shitholes like Liberia and Haiti avoided becoming rich. Nothing to do with the constant and persistent activity of their people!

Do you want a country like Afghanistan? Its easy! Sit around the house praying, while everybody else in your street, village, region, nation does the same thing. If you don't have a culture which promotes meaningful, worthwhile activity, you won't see any. The first thing that has happened in Afghanistan to hundreds and hundreds of brand new EU and US funded schools is they have been burned down by Taliban or Taliban-sympathisers or people who just have exactly the same attitude to schools as the Taliban. A large part of me thinks that you will be able to go back to Afghanistan in five hundred years time, and it will be the same shitty dismal backwater it is now.

And not because the government failed to shower a cornucopeia on their poor ickle people- but because each individual Afghan sat home and didn't bother to build a new Afghanistan, one with running water and educated women and roads.

US commits horrific war crime!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6046950.stm

A coroner has recorded a verdict of unlawful killing on ITN reporter Terry Lloyd, who was shot dead by US forces in southern Iraq in March 2003....

...'War crime'
Mr Lloyd's Lebanese interpreter, Hussein Osman, was also killed and French cameraman Fred Nerac is still officially classed as missing, presumed dead. Belgian cameraman Daniel Demoustier was the ITN crew's only survivor.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said Mr Lloyd's killing was a "war crime" and this was echoed by Mr Lloyd's widow, Lyn.

In a statement she said: "This was a very serious war crime, how else can firing on a vehicle in these circumstances be interpreted?

"This was not a friendly fire incident or a crossfire incident, it was a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act, particularly as it came many minutes after the initial exchange.

"US forces appear to have allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger happy cowboys in an area where civilians were moving around."

His daughter Chelsey said: "The killing of my father would seem to amount to murder, which is deeply shocking."

I hope the Iraqi people take note. Kill 655,000 Iraqi's, very unfortunate. Kill one ITN journalist, its a war crime. But, dear reader, read on.

He and his three colleagues were caught up in a firefight between US and Iraqi forces near the Shatt Al Basra Bridge on 22 March 2003.

Oops! Seems that there was a war on at the time...

Speaking truth to power

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=410150&in_page_id=1770

Do not use your judgement, do not protest if your education is going down the toilet because your school is swamped with foreign children and most of all don't challenge PC pieties. Do it, and you WILL go to jail.

Breach of protocol in the Army high command

Main point is, Generals do not make national policy. Politicians do. Whether Sir Richard Dannat is right or wrong, he has no role in making national policy, except a quiet word over scotch in the club perhaps.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6046332.stm

Sir Richard needs to be publicly humbled by Tony Blair or perhaps Des Browne. God knows the unwritten constitution of Britain is a tattered and bedraggled ghost of its former self, but this is still a straightforward abuse of it.

A lesser point is, the crucial part of his comments are essentially an Al Qaeda talking-point which has been bought wholesale by the 'great and good' of the British middle classes. "We should not be in Iraq because we act as a recruiting sargeant for the Islamofascists". Excuse me, but when did we ever STOP fighting our enemies because they might mobilise their own forces? Two seconds thought reveals this to be utterly specious. Once you have declared war on someone, or someone has declared war on you, necessity dictates that you keep fighting until you have won (and/or broken the enemies will to continue fighting). Pretending that if you leave the battlefield you won't be at war any more is patently daft. And it worries me deeply that such intellectual doo doo appears staunch good sense to our top soldier. The equivalent of the childs game "if I cover my eyes, you can't see me any more" will not wash as the openly stated maxim of the 8th largest industrial power, and 3rd largest military one.

As Mark Steyn points out, the IRA made the judgement that although Britain had vastly enough military power to defeat them, they did not have the political guts and determination to do so. If we continue down the road that Sir Richard proffers, all our future enemies will make the same judgement.

The debating society paradigm

I actually hate to use the word 'paradigm' in a blog post title, because it makes me sound like a social studies student, but its the correct one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6040054.stm

An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003 who might still be alive but for the US-led invasion, according to a survey by a US university.
The research compares mortality rates before and after the invasion from 47 randomly chosen areas in Iraq.

The figure is considerably higher than estimates by official sources or the number of deaths reported in the media.

It is vigorously disputed by supporters of the war in Iraq, including US President George W Bush.

It was the last sentance which caught my eye. If a debating society choose 'How many Iraqis have died since the US invasion?', and one side posits a figure of 60,000 and the other side posits one of 655,000, they could dispassionately present evidence for their particular number, and a neutral observer could probably at the end of the debate make a reasonable judgement about which one was actually true. Would the participants then be forced to accede that if the figure of 60,000 were true, the Iraq war was 'good', and if it were 655,000 it was 'bad'?

The sad truth is, whether 60,000 or 655,000 died, support for our presence in Iraq is not optional. Once the invasion took place, the US and Britain took responsibility for the dispensation which will pertain now and in the immediate future. If we don't take our responsibility to the Iraqi people seriously, and leave Iraq in a murderous state of tribal and religious warfare, history will damn us. And it won't discriminate between those of us who were emotionally fixated on one particular approximate death toll or other.

First known joke about a mosque

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061010/od_nm/mosque_dc

NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) - A couple caught having sex in a Kenyan mosque during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan have been sentenced to 18 months jail for what the judge called an "abominable" affront to religion.

Peter Kimani and Jennifer Wairimu pleaded guilty to the charge of having sex in a place of worship after being caught on October 3 at the Abubakar mosque in Gilgil, about 60 miles north of Nairobi. Neither is a Muslim.

A worshipper heading for evening prayers found the couple having sex after investigating what the prosecution described as strange noises emanating from a dark corner of the mosque.

Kimani and Wairimu both pleaded for clemency at Monday's hearing, saying they were too drunk to know where they were. Kimani told the court he thought he was in a lodging house.

John King'ori, senior magistrate in nearby Naivasha, dismissed their plea.

"Having sex in a mosque is a most abominable thing to religion and only a custodial sentence can add justice to this," he said.

Priceless! Its ok to bonk in a mosque as long as you're completely smashed...

Its time for new men

Prominent on many newspapers today was the headline "Foreign criminals bribed £2500 to go home". Can you imagine Britain in 1906 paying criminals to leave the country? Just this year, our courts decided Britain did not have the power to deport nine Afghan men who hijacked a plane and flew it here, then claimed asylum. They still live here, on benefits, in council housing. We can't deport many of the jihadis who have been caught in the midst of conspiracies here, because they might be tortured in their home countries. When the vote on 90-day detention for terror suspects was voted on in the House of Commons, the Conservative party voted against it.

What is my point? Britain is ungovernable. It is hamstrung by international accords, agreements, supra-national laws, conventions and treaties. But what is worse, is that the men who supposedly rule here COOPERATE in making Britain needlessly vulnerable and open to attack. Thats why I noted the Conservatives dismal failure to support at least some common-sense legal reactions to our current state of affairs.

We need leaders, and a political party, who are rational and steely in their defense of the English people. Men who will not allow all that external international (especially EU) law we signed up for in decades past under very different circumstances to stop them from governing the country. They would need to revoke treaties that do not help our interests, unmake laws that stop us from living safely, and nullify international agreements that don't allow us to rule ourselves well. They would solve our real problems, and not worry about which international lawyers were peeved with them.

Do we currently have a party like that? No. I've checked, and there is no current serious candidate. So who will step forward?

So THATS what the medias job is...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6033421.stm

The court heard the news team was travelling independently of coalition forces to "interview civilians about their feelings in the first few days of the conflict" on 22 March 2003.

These men were not risking life and limb to give us factual reports about troop movements, levels of resistance, major engagements, new developments in combat techniques or equipment, enemy strengths and weaknesses or those kind of boring, mundane, 20th Century things. No no. They were there to interview civilians about their feelings. And a good job too. I'm sure they would have been rewarded with many useful quotes. I mean, nobody has ever asked people caught in the middle of a war if they are happy or sad before. What if people were actually ecstatic about being bombed, strafed, sniped and mortared? How would we ever find out, if it weren't for staunch newsmen like the guys from ITN?

I can't work up ANY sympathy for the bunny media, I'm sorry.

Beyond Dhimmitude

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5408470.stm

The headline for this article should read "British Policemen can now choose which assignments they will go on depending on whether it coincides with their politics". Absolutely disgusting. We have muslim servicemen who refuse to go to war in muslim countries because they would be fighting against Brothers, and now muslim policemen who won't guard the Israeli embassy because of the Lebanon self-defence action. In the same week that two muslim immigration judges were found to be employing and having sex with an illegal immigrant, is it possible that there is nothing we can trust these people to do?

The story the MSM won't tell

http://vernondent.blogspot.com/2006/09/youll-never-know-what-we-did.html

Ever wondered whether life in Iraq is improving?

Its time to close with the enemy

Drawing the Line?

It has been a parlor game of sorts to guess when—but even more so if—the Europeans (Britain included) will sigh, “Enough is enough,” and so get tough with both their own unassimilated angry Muslim minorities and the radical Islamic world at large. There will never be liberal values in the Middle East, no change, no future—as there would not have been in Hitler’s Germany, as there is not today in Cuba or North Korea—without the defeat of Islamic fascism, in its latest Islamic incarnation, as an ideological force.

The latter always proves more frightening than any caricature, the proverbial wild teenager who starts throwing things when told that his room is a bit messy. The riots in France, murders in Holland, cartoon fiasco in Denmark, bombings in London and Madrid, foiled plots in Germany and Spain, and now the Pope threats—will Europe insidiously bleed from a thousand nicks or take action and call fascists fascists?

And yet what would such spine-strengthening look like?

Closer, albeit still stealthy, ties with the U.S effort? More defense spending? Demands for assimilation or else? More moderate and right-center governments? An end to the EU politically-correct maternalism? An honest foreign policy with the Middle East? A new appreciation for Israel’s woes? Who knows?

But one thing is rather frightening: the political pendulum in Europe always swings much more widely and quickly than here. Unless these legitimate worries about radical Islam are addressed by EU politicians, a frustrated public—note the recent elections in Germany—will address them on their own in ways that are historically scary in their own right. When I go to Europe, I am always struck how at odds the average European’s talk is from what one reads in the newspaper or hears on the television. That degree of frustration and cynicism will only get worse unless there is some honest talk about the dangers Europe faces.

Victor Davis Hanson

I agree- but honest talk about the real dangers we face in Britain looks a distant prospect. The major political parties in this country are all bound up in a woolly Anglican-vicar rose-tinted dream where the vast majority of moderate, right-thinking muslims will at some future unspecified moment, turn on their fanatical co-religionists and scourge them from their communities on our behalf, and take their place alongside us as well-intentioned, patriotic and full-on members of British society. Highly unlikely and statistically the reverse of what is currently happening but perhaps... but since when do you make plans and run a country based on something highly improbable and statistically contradicted by each survey of the muslim population?

Before the population of Britain take matters into their own hands, in a way unlikely to meet the strictures of the Geneva convention, the British government must do something to change the dynamic of the current situation. Remove the islamists and their families from Britain, close the mosques that preach hatred and treason, execute the men caught trying to kill us, spy on as many muslims as it takes to eliminate the threat, take away the funds and facilities from any organisation (school, charity, association, campaigning body) that breeds islamists, and pursue the islamist ideology wherever it is found and destroy it.

We had to do that with Nazism and we should not shy away from doing it with islamism.

The worst ally in world history

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5394278.stm

Earlier this week Tony Blair assured Gen Musharraf a leaked paper condemning Pakistan's intelligence service did not reflect his government's view.

In the leaked report, a naval commander at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, had indirectly helped the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

In the BBC interview Mr Musharraf rejected these claims and said ISI's support was vital. "You'll be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn't co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," he said. "Let that be clear. And if ISI is not with you, you will fail."

Lets take Mr Musharraf's main thesis and examine it. "If we were not with you, you won't manage anything." Is that really the case? At the moment, Pakistan is eating its cake and having it too. Pervaiz gets to lunch with all the European and US bigwigs, while his secret service do the heavy lifting for the Taleban and Al Qaeda. He has basically out-sourced the running of the North West Frontier province (a huge area) to the Taleban and Al Qaeda. The latter are currently murdering anybody in the region who don't like the fact that they now call the shots, including upper echelons of the Karachi governing apparatus. Pakistan sponsors terrorists who attack Indian forces in Kashmir and northern India; not to mention commuters in Mumbai. It is sanguine about hordes of Taleban launching attacks on Afghanistan from within its territory, a fact that Mohammed Karzai is currently becoming bilious about. Pakistani death-cult 'schools' prepare Britons for their 'missions' to murder other Britons. The ISI built and fund many of those schools.

Pakistan must be the worst ally you could have. My question to Mr Musharraf would be, where is the up-side to this for us? If I was him I'd be preparing a bunker with more comforts than that hole Saddam ended up in.

Nobody knows their history

The rules of engagement for jihad are flexible. According to Khadduri, anything is possible, from mercy to mass enslavement to mass killing, just like with Greeks and Romans. This is a fundamental difference between the holy war of islam and of Old Testament Judaism, which prescribed the killing of all males outside of Israel, and the killing of every living thing within Israel (Deuteronomy 20, 10-20). We usually are outraged at what the Crusaders did in Jerusalem in 1099. Yet, the Crusaders acted in accordance with the ius bellum of the times, Muslim conquerors did the same all the time and everywhere: 698 they hit Carthage, in 838 Syracuse; the notorious vesir of the Cordoban Caliphate, Al Mansur, led 25 wars in 27 years against the Christian realms of northern Spain, enslaving, destroying, laying waste. They hit Zamora (981), Coimbra (987), Leon, Barcelona twice (985 and 1008), then Santiago de Compostela (997).

The worst destruction was wreaked by the jihadis on Byzantine Anatolia, which was then still full of cities; the massacre of Amorium (838) has remained a symbol for a long time; the urban culture of Anatolia never recovered from it.

The Seljuk Alp Arslan had entire Armenian cities massacred, the worst being the capital Ani in 1064. Bat Ye'or's evaluation therefore is more than justified: "Its lack of measure, its regularity and the systematic character of the destructions, which Islamic theologians had decreed to be law, make the difference between jihad and other wars of conquest".Certainly, mass enslavement remained the favourite aim of the wars. That was the way in which, as early as the eight century, the biggest slave-holder society developed that world history has ever known; it demanded a permanent influx of new slaves, transformed the African continent into the biggest supplier of slaves, a destiny which Europe narrowly avoided.

Professor Egon Flaig (quoted from Michelle Malkins blog).

I was struck today by a story on the front page of the BBC website, saying that more than 50% of Britons want British troops out of Afghanistan. I couldn't help wondering why. An incidental comment on a news bullitin today about that war went along the lines of "... and the Afghan government controls very little of the country." At what precise point in history did an Afghan government control more than 'very little' of Afghanistan, pray tell? Nobody knows their Afghan history.

The information in the quote from Egon Flaig about the Islamic way of war brought to mind floods of comments, vox pops, articles in the newspapers and conversations I have had with people about the nature of islam and the threat (or not) it poses to the rest of the world. Unsurprisingly (as humans seem designed to argue this way) prior behaviour often gets dragged into the mix. But the history reported by both muslims and non-muslims never seems to get much further than a few 'highlights'.

1. The crusades. These prove that the evil Christians are always the aggressor, and that the muslims are the victims

2. Muslim scientific and mathematical brilliance

3. The wonderful treatment of non-muslims in muslim societies historically

4. The great imposition of Israel onto the Arab (read muslim) world by the west.

And thats about it. The conquering by force of the north African and central mediterraenian Vandal and Goth states by muslim armies? Forget about it. The invasion of Spain? The attempted invasion of France? The conquering of the Asia by muslim mongols? Nah.

There are nested problems here. First, many people don't know the history. Second, many of those who do for political reasons won't interpret it in its most obvious ways. For instance, how many left-wing wacademics in the US tout the Arabs as the biggest slave owners and creators of all time? Not a lot. And third, muslims as a whole deny ANY facts that would intrude into their fixed world view, so you won't get much useful info out of them.

So where does that leave us? With a population who can't be educated by the media because not only don't the media know themselves, they want the muslim version of world history to be true, because they hate George W Bush more than Osama Bin Laden. Why don't British people want to extend the civilised world to encompass Afghanistan? Why don't the British people want our superb soldiers to act as guarantors for an Afghan government who DO control their own borders? Why don't British people feel that without the 32,000 Nato contingent in Afghanistan, a horrible domino effect would occur emanating from the new Talibanistan on the North West Frontier that would destabilise Russia, China and India? Why don't they recognise the amazing prospect that young Afghan girls and boys may actually go to school for pretty much the first time in Afghan history because our squaddies are killing the men who want to burn down the schools and get the girls back in the house where they can become ignorant baby-machines? Why don't the British people see that the Taliban ARE Al-Qaeda ARE the Mujahadeen ARE Hamas ARE Hezbollah to each other? Names are different, goals are the same.

How have British people NOT got those facts sorted out? By themselves, or with the help of the BBC, the Broken Broadcasting Corpse?

If you are going to give people the mandate, you must also demand that they consider the world their choices affect. With power comes responsibility. People should know their damn history.

Victor Davis Hanson goes to the nub

"Herein lies the greatest, most dangerous delusion we have been indulging for years now: everything our enemy does is merely a reaction to what we do. The enemy has no motives of his own, no goods or ends he is pursuing that may be very different from ours. He may think he does, and set those goods and ends out with clarity and force, and link them to the traditions of his faith, and be seconded in his opinion by millions of his co-religionists and the theologians of his faith, but they are all deluded. It’s not about Islam and Allah, it’s about Israel, oil, voting, cartoons, unemployment, American television, globalization, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the occupation of Iraq–– any and every material or psychological cause other than the one spiritual cause the enemy keeps telling us over and over guides and justifies his actions and has guided and justified the wars of Islam for fourteen centuries.

This indeed is an “appalling” misunderstanding of the enemy. As long as we indulge this reduction of the jihadist to our own assumptions; as long as we show by our actions that we are not really sure that the ends we pursue are just and right, right enough to do things at times we’d rather not; as long as we cling to “dangerous delusions” about human nature and the primacy of the material over the spiritual, we will continue to lose the war. For our enemy has none of our hesitation, none of our doubt, none of our fear of the world’s disapproval. He knows why he kills and dies. What will it take to teach us what we should kill and die for?"

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/thornton091706.html

I often read things which make me envy the writers skill, but no one as often as Victor Davis Hanson. This article is a superb summation of what most people, especially the socialist and Guardian-reading mass of the population, don't get about this war. They can't think outside the box, to borrow a ghastly phrase from the marketing world. Its much easier for the Israelis, the Serbs and the Georgians to get a direct grip on this current world situation than it is for people in the US and Britain. For the latter, this stuff was all dusty history and a few crazed rag-heads in Iran until Sep. 11, 2001. Islam was off the map, the failed religion of people who just didn't matter. Now it does matter because they have declared war by any and all means, chemical, biological or nuclear, on non-believers. And people are going to have to get over their deeply and lovingly held belief that these people aren't really serious. They can't be THAT agitated over religion, surely? But they are folks, and they are willing to lop off heads, machinegun schoolgirls and blow up airliners full of happy holidaymakers until we collectively cry uncle.

Who you gonna believe?

On Sunday, Nato said they had driven Taleban militants out of Panjwayi district, after a two-week offensive codenamed Operation Medusa. Nato said at least 400 Taleban fighters had been killed in the operation, the biggest offensive since Nato took over southern Afghanistan from US-led forces at the end of July.

The deaths cannot be independently verified.

The BBC are SO scrupulous about verification. Wowsa. They never ever just take peoples say-so and report is as fact.

"Don't worry, I'm just parking!" shouts the driver. He is Kassem Shaalan. He knows what it is like to be hit by a rocket. On the evening of 23 July, he and two other medics answered a call to rendezvous with an ambulance from Tibnin, in the hills to the east, to relay three civilian patients down to Tyre. Both ambulances were struck precisely by separate rockets as they were stopped at the roadside near Qana for the transfer. It was 2230 at night. There was nothing else on the road. They were clearly marked, and lit up with flashing blue lights and illuminated Red Cross flags. Kassem, his two colleagues, the three medics in the other ambulance, and the three Lebanese patients, were all injured. One of the patients, 38-year-old Ahmad Fawwaz, lost his leg in the ambulance. His mother Jamileh, 58, and son Ahmad, 8, were both seriously injured.

And right there at the end, as you can see, it says, in huge block capitals, 'The injuries and rocket explosions cannot be independently verified.'

Some way cool gassing from our dude in France

"I don't believe in a solution without dialogue," Mr Chirac told Europe-1 radio, urging countries to remove the threat of sanctions against Iran.
"We must, on the one hand, together, Iran and the six countries, meet and set an agenda for negotiations then start negotiations," Mr Chirac said. "Then, during these negotiations I suggest that the six renounce seizing the UN Security Council and Iran renounces uranium enrichment."

He was wearing a natty Nehru-suit, some beaded sandals, majorly cool sunglasses and had a spliff hanging from the corner of his mouth.

His last words to the star-struck radio-pixie were "Peace, Out". So, like, happenin'.

Back in the USSR

I never was in the USSR, but I do read. And I used to read many magazine and newspaper articles about the comical gymnastics that the Soviet newspapers and radio did to make sure they kept in with the Party. After all, twenty years in a gulag does nothing for your good looks. So the Soviet newspapers were not worth reading- they were some of the least read of any polity anywhere. What wasn't cringing toadying to party apparatchiks was probably lies. And the rest of the pages were information about where to go for some good-time commie fun- like the workers festival of heroic basket-weavers or some such.

It really takes some going to reach those depths. But try this on for size:

"Pope Sorry for Offending Muslims" Headline of the top story on the BBC news website.

Trouble is, he didn't say that. At all. That is the BBC speaking. Not the Pope. What the Pope ACTUALLY said was this:

"At this time, I wish also to add that I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims."

Thats what he said. He is sorry FOR THE REACTIONS.

"I hope that this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect."

Those are the words of an intelligent and thoughtful man NOT IN THE LEAST CONCERNED by the grotesque, over-wrought misrepresentation of his words by virtually all the worlds muslims. He wants to engage them in a frank and sincere dialogue. Good luck with that.

The title of this blog is my despairing shot at the hopeless dhimmies (muslim bitches) who occupy a great swathe of modern Britain. The BBC is now the apologist and re-interpreter of world events on behalf of the muslims. Its relationship with them is similar to those hopeless skanky women who marry serial killers and death row inmates who never see any evil in them, are blind to any intimation of their true characters, and willfully blind to the evidence of the guys terrible crimes. Why they want to do it I leave up to the psychopathologists- but the evidence that they do it is there plain as day every day.

A modest proposal

Being of an orderly nature, I think we should get the whole "muslims enraged, insulted and riotous" thing organised. I suggest one month a year set aside for muslims to rant, scream abuse, burn things down and file lawsuits, during which time the rest of us could all mock mohammed, call muslims pigs and apes (whats good for the goose...), point out obvious truths about the so-called religion of peace and generally get things off our chests. That way we wouldn't have to have these episodes of faux-outrage and staged flag-burnings by men in white sheets and little beady caps every couple of weeks; just during the seasonal outrage-fest.

Either that, or muslims could grow up and get used to being mocked and derided. Like the rest of us have.

Middle eastern leaders 'Tell Truth' shock

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5344334.stm

Kofi Annan has graduated 'Summa Cum Laude' from the university of the bleeding obvious. After doing a straw poll of middle Eastern leaders, he discovered that most deem the Iraq war to have been a disaster. For once, we can all agree. Specifically for middle Eastern leaders, the Iraq war is and will be the biggest disaster to befall them in the short history of ME nation-states. Up till now, the exigencies of the cold war, and then the mypia and inertia of both the US and Europe allowed the most disgusting and anti-huminatiarian regimes to exist in the ME without challenge.

But with the sweeping away of the Talibans suffocating and poisonous cabal and then Saddams grotesque and murderous thugocracy, that changed suddenly; from Damascus to Riyadh, Cairo to Tehran, the unelected and corrupt men in charge started to sweat and thrum nervously on their thrones. Things were afoot. New winds started to blow through. First, Muammar Ghaddaffi, the worlds most hilarious dictator, did a well-publicised switcheroo and gave up all his WMD programs. Then the Syrian twit Assad pulled his troops out of Lebanon, and even intercepted a few jihadis on their way to a quick death in Iraq. Most of the rest decided they were US allies at least for now. Only the Iranians diverged from the path of reason and realpolitick.

They did what can only be explained as whistling through the graveyard. Instead of looking over the border at the 135,000 seasoned US troops and making the obvious judgement that perhaps now was not the best time to tweak the tail of the great Satan, it has twisted and tweaked like there is no tomorrow. First, they attempted (and are still attempting) to break up the Iraqi state by sponsoring Shia death squads. Second, they used their proxies in Lebanon to start a war with Israel. And third, they are going hell-bent for leather to develop nuclear weapons.

I think we all know in our heart of hearts how this will play out. The US is never going to let an Iranian state ruled by psychotic, irrational hate-mongers go nuclear, right next door to two delicate new democracys. In Iraq a third of the population have religious affiliations with Iran. In Afghanistan, no nation-state has ever really existed, not at any point in history. One is currently being created, but the time-scale is at the very least decades. A nuclear Iran would change the regional balance beyond recognition instantly. The stakes in any confrontation would immediately be off the scale. So I predict Iran will have a nuclear program for about another month, maybe two.

The middle-term problem is Pakistan. Having now given the North West Frontier province to Al-Qaeda, Musharraf looks much less like a US/British ally. And he has real nukes, right now. The wafer-thin margin of influence that the US/UK can exert in Pakistan would disappear in a trice were Mr Musharraf to meet a bloody end, which he probably expects at any moment (and so should we). So really, its a two-fer as Americans call it. Pakistan cannot be trusted to have nuclear weapons if its going to allow Al-Qaeda to create a state-within-a-state in the NWF province. It probably doesn't have many anyway, and a surgical take-out of those must have been contingency-planned for many decades at the Pentagon.

So my prediction is that within two years, the world will have one less nuclear program, and one less nuclear state. And quite possibly two or three revolutions. Watch this space.

Very impressive first person account from WTC

http://www.mpwilson.com/uccu/archives/000803.html

For those of you who don't do the English thing

By their fruits ye shall know them

A couple of weeks after 9/11, the professor [Edward Said] deplored the tendency of commentators to separate cultures into what he called "sealed-off entities," when in reality Western civilization and the Muslim world are so "intertwined" that it was impossible to "draw the line" between them. National Review's Rich Lowry was unimpressed. "The line seems pretty clear," he said. "Developing mass commercial aviation and soaring skyscrapers was the West's idea; slashing the throats of stewardesses and flying the planes into the skyscrapers was radical Islam's idea."

Thank you Mark Steyn. That is all I have to say on this very sad anniversary. Some of Britains finest minds were in those towers.

How can you argue with these people?

I heard recently that the 9/11 attacks were retaliation by Al-Qaeda for Nato's war against Muslims in Bosnia. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. How can you argue with such ignorance and stupidity? Where can you begin to challenge the lack of discrimination, the willful disregard for motive and intent, the ability to mutate events into their antithesis?

Over and over again, I read in the BBC propaganda organ that I am the problem- I'm ignorant of islam, ignorant of how a picture of Mohammed is the worst of all crimes, ignorant of the day-to-day life of pakistani goatherds currently residing in Britain. That may be true, although I'm sure I know more about their way of life than they do about mine. But when you listen to the paranoic and biased islamists and their cheerleaders in Britain waffling on about the Zionist conspiracy, the CIA 9/11 conspiracy, the Koran-flushing Gitmo outrage, the Abu-Ghraib torture conspiracy and finally the Nato-war-on-Bosnian muslims conspiracy, you enter a lobotamised world.

I'm tired of the willful perversity of the media in calling us ignorant, while at the same time 'bigging' the muslims and trying to persuade us that all the knowledge and beauty in the world can somehow be traced back to the muslim world. Our knowledge, education, tolerance and breadth of experience is constantly belittled and underrated, while their pig-ignorance, intolerance and bad faith are elided.

The result is very large numbers of muslims inhabit a world-view where everybody hates the muslims and the only response is mass-murder, beheading, disgusting torture and a crazed attempt to take over the world; and nobody challenges it because we're so darned tolerant and understanding.

We need to get less tolerant and understanding of things that directly threaten our way of life, and the ammassed civilisation of many thousands of years.

Playing by the rules

Societies that are highly homogenous ethnically and culturally gain a benefit of tranquillity and orderliness, because behaviour and the societal correction of anti-social behaviour are consistent across the board. Britain is now bearing a heavy burden of lawlessness and violent behaviour which is a direct result of a heterogenous culture. And its not just the most extreme behaviour which is a problem; recent immigrants are deeply ignorant of English mores and folkways, and that means our roads are chaotic and dangerous, our buses are chaotic and dangerous, our inner-city schools are chaotic and dangerous, and intra-communal relations are often chaotic and dangerous.

Many people warned about these things 50 years ago when the first mass-immigration was foisted on a highly un-willing British population, and were accused of racism, bigotry and xenophobia. Now that the evidence is there for all to see, if you point it out you are STILL accused of racism, bigotry etc. Especially for city-dwellers, and the poorest people in Britain, the trashing of their communities and way of life have been wholesale and catastrophic. Many English people, myself included, are now a minority in their own land, little islands of Englishness in a maelstrom of foreigners.

The English thegns who fought against William the Bastard at Hastings used as their battlecry "Out! Out! Out!". That atavistic urge is starting to awaken in the English. All you politicians, in your picturesque little home counties bastions, do you hear the faint but growing sound of revolt? Then you had better start listening...

Todays childrens quiz

Hello children!

Can you put these events into their chronological order?

- The invasion of Iraq

- The invasion of Afghanistan

- The second and successful attack on the World Trade Center towers

- The first and unsuccessful attack on the World Trade Center towers

- NATO come to the rescue of Bosnia's muslim population

Remember children, if you can do this, you are smarter than ALL the muslims in Britain!

(Health warning: facts are extremely dangerous to the muslim world view)

The easiest money you can make

Whats the easiest money you can make? Selling missiles to Iran? Selling nuclear technology to North Korea? Being a Palestinian? No way.

The easiest money on earth is:

"Death of a President, on More4, uses actors and computer effects to portray the president being shot dead during an anti-war rally in Chicago in 2007."

Guess which President they mean, and you win todays putty medal.

As the program maker says "It's a pointed political examination of what the War on Terror did to the American body politic. I'm sure that there will be people who will be upset by it but when you watch it you realise what a sophisticated piece of work it is."

Mmmmm. Perhaps. A more reasonable way of characterising it would be something like "...another hack piece of lefty bullshit fantasising about the murder of George Bush." And if you don't think that this is a common fantasy for those in the US and around the world whose pet peeve is the continued existence of Mr Bush, do a Google on George W Bush and assassinate.

The Democrats in the US in particular have spectacularly descended from their historical position as a moderately left-of-centre party with wholly American instincts into a festering melange of hate-groups, eco-frenzies, special interest lobbies, single race promotion groups and America-haters. As they become more extreme and unhinged, fewer and fewer ordinary Americans are willing to associate themselves with it. Joe Lieberman has already payed the price of having a rational view, and Hilary Clinton I predict will too. Democrat policy can now be summarized as:

We hate George W Bush
Pull all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
Apologize to the world and grovel in self-abasement
We hate George W Bush
Stop all meaningful economic activity (due to warming of earth)
We hate George W Bush
Give zillions of dollars to third-world dictators as recompense for our oppression
By the way, did we mention we hate George W Bush? Just checking.

Anyway, returning to the original point of this post, making TV programs that feed into the Bush-hatred feeding frenzy is just about the closest thing right now to a guarunteed banker. "Producers of the film, which is directed by Gabriel Range, hope to sell the broadcast rights to the US."

I'm just surprised that there aren't five or six more of these murder-fantasies flying around, given that as soon as you get a distribution deal for the US, you can retire to the Bahamas with you hefty pile of loot, braying all the while about the fascist policies of Mr Bushitlerhaliburton. The sangria tastes so much better when its got that dash of self-righteousness.


All quotes taken from this BBC website article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5302598.stm?ls

Hugo Chavez- leader of the worlds morons

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060825/wl_mideast_afp/chinamideast
conflict_060825100753

Ever since childhood, I have had a secret loathing of the naivety and gullibility of a lot of latin Americans and South Americans. It seems that with no effort, any snake-oil salesman, corrupt politician on the make, or dim-witted rabble-rouser can almost instantaneously summon up a great crowd in Brasil, Venezuela or Argentina and lead them off on some stupid escapade. Hugo Chavez is a recent example, but the 20th century was littered with them.

What marks these buffoons out is the Ghaddaffi-like estrangement from the world of facts. Very often their public statements read like the more esoteric gibberings from the hippy era of acid-produced incoherence, un-sullied by knowledge or judgement. The fact that they often become President of a whole nation calls into question many things, but most importantly the sanity and judgement of the voters. Chavez may be a favela boy made good, but there must be men of vastly greater wit, learning and judgement still in the favela who would benefit Venezuela by their occupation of high office. The big question is, will Venezuelans ever choose one?

The way of the world

Happened to catch Billy Connolly last night for a second. Although diminished as a comedic force, he is still better than most others. This line really caught my attention-

"Scientists have declared that in our first few milliseconds on encountering something our brains go through a little hard-wired routine. It goes

Can I eat it?
Can it eat me?
Can I fuck it?

Within about 3 milliseconds we've already done that analysis and behave accordingly."

So true. Especially the fact that it starts out with eating, which I consider in the great balance of things provides most people with more pleasure over a lifetime than sex. And unless you are Michael Stipe, more variety.

Racist umpire 'expects us to follow rules'

The Pakistani nation rose up with one voice today to declare the umpire in the Oval test match a racist. "How dare he expect us to obey rules like not tampering with the ball? We are Pakistani's and therefore don't have to obey your WHITE MAN rules. What is this, the 19th century? Next you'll be saying we have to have non-corrupt courts, an economy that doesn't just involve opium and donkeys, and a foreign policy that doesn't just revolve around jihad for all. Disgusting! Take your colour bar with you on the way out!"

All I can say is, cricket would be the better without 'em.

Israels failure and what must happen next

Israel cannot afford to lose wars. The most recent war with Syria/Iran/Hesbollah was not a fiasco, it just wasn't a victory. Hesbollah had far too much time to prepare their defenses, had the latest weaponry thanks to the Russians, and were attacked in the wrong way. Air bombardment against Hesbollah failed for the same reason air bombardment failed in Vietnam- deeply dug defenses and a big area of operations meant that the IAF were really only going after a few guys at a time, with relatively small impact munitions. Hesbollah were well spread out and were only ever damaged locally. The strategy was to bomb lots of Hesb targets and hope that their infrastructure was damaged severely, then send columns of ground forces in to mop up. Both parts of the strategy failed.

A strategy that would have worked would have been to create an Isreali cordon right across Lebanon, on the Litani river, quite narrow and easily defensible cutting off Southern Lebanon completely and isolating Hesb in the south. Then slowly pick off Hesb south of the Litani as they became hungrier, short of ammo and more desparate. No big infantry pushes that would generate large-scale casualties, and no large areas of territory to control while being IED'd and sniped. And no air war- the bombing was spectacular so the western media found it very easy to damn Israel, yet ineffective.

Cutting Hesb in half would have lots of positive results. The southern area would be gradually reduced as the local population would have to rely on the Israelis for supplies through the cordon. These could be manipulated to make sure that Hesb ground to a halt. Constant patrolling by drone would make sure that Hesb had to pretty much keep their heads down- very much not brave and victorious. Slow strangulation of Hesb in the south would have been much more do-able, and clever, and without the propaganda pictures for the Jew-haters at the AFP. Somebody want to suggest this to the Israeli army command? Its not too late yet...

Cricket the revealer of character

Last summer at about this time, us cricket fans were enjoying the most spectacular and tense test series in my lifetime, between two sides who just didn't know when to quit. Australia were immense, both in their commitment to winning and their grace in defeat. And now for the contrast- could there have been a more pathetic end to a pretty dull series of cricket matches than the cheating that brought the yesterdays match at the Oval to a premature end?

I firmly believe that sport reveals the character of individuals and of teams, indeed of nations. England showed spirit, verve, tenacity and being 'up' for the game- Pakistan showed pride, spinelessness, disorganisation and at the final moment, dishonesty. I for one would be perfectly happy not to have to watch a test series involving them ever again. After the disgusting tanking of the world cup final, and numerous other undignified and corrupt episodes of the last few years, Pakistan ought to be stripped of test status. Given that murderous Pakistanis made the last English tour of that country extremely tense and unpleasant, it could well be very good timing.

At last! British Muslims see the light

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4786159.stm

"Prime Minister, As British Muslims we urge you to do more to fight against all those who target civilians with violence, whenever and wherever that happens.

It is our view that current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in the UK and abroad.

To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy.

The debacle of Iraq and now the failure to do more to secure an immediate end to the attacks on civilians in the Middle East not only increases the risk to ordinary people in that region, it is also ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.

Attacking civilians is never justified. This message is a global one. We urge the Prime Minister to redouble his efforts to tackle terror and extremism and change our foreign policy to show the world that we value the lives of civilians wherever they live and whatever their religion.

Such a move would make us all safer."

So the muslims in Britain (or at least the guys who wrote this letter) have finally seen the light! They want us to change our foreign policy to commit ourselves to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas, whose attacks are always and intentionally against civilians (unless Iran asks them to assasinate a few soldiers to spark a distraction from their nuclear bomb program). Fantastic! Now we all agree that the 'debacle of Iraq' caused by Iranian civil-war promotion and Saudi jihad promotion, in which many thousands of innocent muslims have been murdered by other muslims is the scene of disgusting war-crimes. All those muslims in Iran and Saudi Arabia who are responsible should be tried and executed by the International Court of Human rights. Now we are ROCKING!

A meeting of minds

Mohammed at http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/ in his latest post about the Arab media, develops at least two themes that I am very focused on.

First, the lying that cloaks the Arab world like a wraith, guarunteeing failure and behaviour that is completely antithetical to the Arabs own goals.

Second, the blindness of the haters in the Middle East, and their faithful chorus in Europe to any cruelty or bestial behaviour that is inconvenient, or doesn't fit into the dramatic narrative they have written for themselves.

I believe that a worldwide consensus is building up, which endeavors to incorporate all the facts into a coherent picture of what is really going on in the world, especially its more complex and confusing corners. Those of us who don't hate for the sake of hating, and who will peace with justice and without tyranny must bind together to take the world away from the fanatics and the destroyers of life.

Help! I'm less than half sentient

Watching the 10 pm BBC news tonight, there just wasn't any time for factual reporting amongst the editorialising and pro-Hesbollah propaganda. Nick Robinson obviously loves them so much he got a bit carried away. He said, and I quote verbatim "...only the less than half-sentient would not want an immediate ceasefire" (in Lebanon). I don't want a ceasefire, ergo I am less than half sentient. I was always told by my mum that as soon as you start insulting those with opposing opinions you've lost the argument.
The argument for no ceasefire is perfectly valid and logical. Israel have fought Hesbollah intermittently for the last 24 years. They are now determined to not spend 24 more years doing so, and are going about the indubitably difficult task of destroying Hesbollah root and branch. Why would they stop in the middle of doing that so poncy western diplomats can have a group hug? I find the arguments FOR a ceasefire weak and mainly misguided. The first and most important effect of a ceasefire would be a precious window of opportunity for Hesbollah to re-arm, get wounds treated and re-organise. Why would Israel give them that gift?
But what do I know, I'm less than half-sentient.