Smashing

'While Axle worked, I asked about times when he “smashed” the Taliban. British soldiers like to use the word “smashed” when talking about the Taliban. When Axle would finish talking about one fight, I would ask about another. Finally, Axle said, “You Yanks are great. You like to hear stories about us smashin’ the Taliban but people at home want to know how much we miss our families.” We both chuckled, and I asked, “Really? They don’t ask you about smashing the Taliban?” “That’s right,” then Axle said something like, “They only want to hear how sad we are.” Axle and I got along great because I didn’t care if he missed his family and he didn’t care if I missed mine. This part is about smashing people who would help those who smashed the World Trade Centers and blew up people in London and Bali and Jakarta and Israel and Spain and the Philippines and anywhere else they can reach.'

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/bad-medicine.htm

Mixing ice cream and dog poop

Famously, Mark Steyn said of the United Nations that it was like mixing ice cream and dog shit- the result was always going to be more like the latter than the former.

So, with its enormous influx of ignorant Mexicans, are the Mexicans becoming Californian, or is California becoming more like Mexico?

http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=MWFhYjhiODFiOGZmNTc1ZTQxMzlkNjNkNjIzNDg2YWU=

Yep. The obvious one. When twenty million immigrants enter your state, they don't just transform into stoner dudes, pretty starlets and hard-bitten businessmen overnight. In fact, they don't ever transform into them. When twenty million Mexicans come to your state AT THE SAME TIME, they remain exactly what they are- ignorant Mexican peasants. And your state becomes part of Mexico, with all the attendant joys and successes of that nation...

In Britain, we had a huge influx of pig-ignorant pakistani hillbillies, and now parts of England resemble pakistan. Yay.

Truthiness about Honduras

'Mr Zelaya has been in exile since 28 June when he was forced from office amid a power struggle over his proposals for a public consultation on constitutional change.
His critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president and paving the way for his re-election.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8217393.stm

See now, the words 'power struggle' denote two power-hungry individuals or groups fighting equally illigitimately for power outside the bounds of constitutionality and legality. Julius Ceasar vs Pompey = power struggle.

Manuel Zelaya against the Honduran constitution, Supreme Court, Army, Congress and mass of the population = not a power struggle. 'His critics'? The Supreme Court, Congress, Army and mass of the population you mean?

See how the BBC does that? If Manuel Zelaya had been a rip-snorting anti-communist capitalist right-winger, desperately trying to make himself Presidente por Viva, how would these articles be written? Can you imagine the outrage of the little pipsqueaks who write the BBC website? 'Crazed Fascist tries to change constitution to create a Horrific FASCIST DICTATORSHIP!!!! For life!!!! Keel heeeem!!!'

They still can't bring themselves to actually recount the events of Zelayas last few months in office- in particular the whole getting his illegal ballot papers printed in Venezuela by his leftie mentor business. Oh well, thanks again BBC for your commitment to Truth truthiness.

Who cares if he's weak?

'Is Obama making tactical retreats to gain better position on these hard cases -- or is he, well, weak?

It is an odd question to ask about a man who tenaciously fought his way to the presidency against enormous odds, then dazzled the country and much of the world in his first six months in office.

But it is one inevitably raised by Obama's conciliatory manner, his appeals to sweet reason and high morality, and his soaring rhetorical promises when he has to adjust means, goals or both. And it will dog his presidency if he does not demonstrate quickly that he is as good at handling adversity as he has been at exploiting initial success.'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082102309.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

Hang on, hang on- 'tenaciously fought his way to the presidency against enormous odds' and then 'demonstrate quickly that he is as good at handling adversity as he has been at exploiting initial success'. I thought he already did the whole 'handling adversity' thing?

The trouble with the dem story of Obama is that it is full of godawful contradictions and logical nonsenses. Obama tenaciously fought his way to the Presidency against enormous odds? Really? Tenaciously fought against a Hillary Clinton forever associated in tens of millions of American minds with the dismal sexual shenanigans of her husband, and considered to be a cynical shrew by even more? Tenaciously fought against John McCain, a RINO who most conservative Republicans loathed? Tenaciously fought against a 2008 Republican party that couldn't find its arse with both hands? Tenaciously fought against a Republican party associated with the Iraq intervention, George W Bush and the Katrina 'disaster'?

The fact is, pretty much anybody who chewed with his mouth closed and didn't have sex with children was going to beat that lot. Think of it as the perfect storm in reverse- the perfect millpond. All Obama had to do was look sexy, talk in banal cliches, and not reveal his true characteristics. Which he did. And won. Despite being the least qualified, least ideologically appropriate candidate of all time. A decidedly centre right country has ended up with a far-left president, because he hid from the electorate that he was far-left until he got into the job.

Obama has been successful from the point of view of the far left: he has damaged the US economy enormously via cap and trade, he has enlarged the US government enormously via nationalisations of the banking and auto industries, he has damaged long-term prospects of the US dollar by printing absolutely vast numbers of dollars, he has tried to nationalise medical care and he has pretty much promised all round the world to Americas enemies that ITS ALL OUR FAULT. All of these things are in the far-left playbook- they want a weak, guilty, economically defunct, helpless United States. After all, everything evil and wrong in the world is because of the mere existence of the United States.

However, if you are a moderate voter in the mid-west, and you voted for this charming, beefy, well-educated, post-racial moderate black guy, the shock has been stupendous. They aren't asking if Obama is weak- its a non-sequitur question. What they want to know is, where is that Obama guy who came by my town last July, and gave that speech? Where the fuck is that guy???

Even Swiss banks can't hold that much stolen money

'Africa seeks climate change cash

By Matt McGrath
BBC News science reporter


Africa is set to suffer the worst impacts of climate change

The leaders of 10 African countries are gathering in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change...'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8217449.stm

I wonder what they'll come up with?

'...Proposals for discussion include the suggestion that developed countries should cut their emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and that the richer nations should provide funds of $67bn (£40bn) a year to help the least well off cope with the impacts of rising temperatures.'

I really actually laughed out loud when I read that. Given what happened to the previous $67 billion given to Africa 'to help the least well off', I foresee some truly enormous Swiss-bank account balances.

Fantasies of Africa

'The desolate, dusty town of Pibor on South Sudan's border with Ethiopia has no running water, no electricity and little but mud huts for the population to live in.
You would be hard put to find a poorer place anywhere on earth.
I went there as part of a journey across Africa to ask the question "Why is Africa poor?" for a BBC radio documentary series.

I was asked to investigate why it is that every single African country - with the exceptions of oil-rich Gabon and Algeria - is classified by the United Nations as having a "low" broadly defined Human Development Index - in other words an appalling standard of living for most of the people.

In Pibor, the answer to why the place is poor seems fairly obvious.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8215083.stm

Wow I thought to myself- finally somebody is going to reveal to British readers the truth about African poverty- that it is poverty of the mind, of the soul and of culture. But then I read on...

'...The people - most of whom are from the Murle ethnic group - are crippled by tribal conflicts related to disputes over cattle, the traditional store of wealth in South Sudan.'

Hmmmm. Bullshit. Nobody fought each other with such gay abandon as Europeans, generation after generation, and it didn't seem to result in African levels of poverty. Even if it did, within a few generations, the Europeans would have rebuilt everything and been wealthier than before. Vast areas of Germany were simple rubble in 1945. Been to Germany lately? If anything, the technological developments resulting from war made Europeans technological leaders of the whole world.

So obviously, war can't be the reason. I read on.

'...South Sudan is potentially rich.

"It's bigger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined," the South Sudan Regional Co-operation Minister Barnaba Benjamin, enthused.
"Tremendous land! Very fertile, enormous rainfall, tremendous agricultural resources. Minerals! We have oil and many other minerals - go name it!"
The paradox of rich resources and poor people hints at another layer of explanation about why Africa is poor.

It is not just that there is war. The question should, perhaps be: "Why is there so much war?"'

Oh my God, leave off about war already!!! That's not another layer you bozo!

'...And the headline question is in fact misleading; Africans as a people may be poor, but Africa as a place is fantastically rich - in minerals, land, labour and sunshine.
That is why outsiders have been coming here for hundreds of years - to invade, occupy, convert, plunder and trade.'

Translate the jaundiced lefty idiom, and here you find an important truth. The attitudes of many Europeans (and Chinese) is 'Well if you aren't going to use this bauxite/fantastic agricultural land/timber for anything yourselves, I guess we will'.

But then we get bogged down in the STANDARD EXPLANATION FOR ALL EVIL IN THE WORLD.

'...But the resources of South Sudan, for example, have never been properly developed. During colonial rule South Sudan was used as little more than a reservoir of labour and raw materials. Then independence was followed by 50 years of on-off war between the south and north - with northerners in Khartoum continuing the British tactic of divide and rule among the southern groups.

Some southerners believe this is still happening today.'

Marxist bilge in the pure. Despite the mountains of evidence that Africa was both desperately poor AND addicted to warfare before a white man set foot on the continent, somehow those two things are all a British invention. As analysis, its very very poor. And if used as a predictor of future events (get rid of the terrible British influence and everything will suddenly come right), truly useless.

'...Almost every African I met, who was not actually in government, blamed corrupt African leaders for their plight.
"The gap between the rich and the poor in Africa is still growing," said a fisherman on the shores of Lake Victoria.
"Our leaders, they just want to keep on being rich. And they don't want to pay taxes."'

And? This is neither ground-breaking information, nor of any possible help. Corruption is a game virtually every African plays. The rulers of African countries may be disproportionate beneficiaries of it, but corruption is present down to the lowliest policeman and public official, and in virtually all commercial transactions too. The culture of corruption inhabits the whole of African society; indeed, it is a cast-iron piece of bantu culture.

'...Even President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia came close to this when she told me she had underestimated the level of corruption in her country when she took office.
"Maybe I should have sacked the whole government when I came to power," she said.
"Africa is not poor," President Johnson-Sirleaf added, "it is poorly managed."'

I'm a bit of a fan of Johnson-Sirleaf, especially as she beat George Weah, international footballer and nincompoop in the general election. But her statement is completely wrong. If Africa was simply mis-managed, it would be vastly easier to fix its problems than is in reality the case.

'...Kenyan architect and town planner Mumo Museva took me to the bustling Eastleigh area of Nairobi, where traders have created a booming economy despite the place being almost completely abandoned by the government.

Eastleigh is a filthy part of the city where rubbish lies uncollected, the potholes in the roads are the size of swimming pools, and the drains have collapsed.

But one indication of the success of the traders, Mr Museva said, was the high per-square-foot rents there.
"You'll be surprised to note that Eastleigh is the most expensive real estate in Nairobi."
He added that if Eastleigh traders trusted the government they might pay some taxes in return for decent services, so creating a "virtuous circle".
"It would lift people out of poverty," he said.
"Remember, poverty is related to quality of life, and the quality of life here is appalling, despite the huge amount of wealth flowing through these areas."'

What do you suppose the odds are of ever getting that "virtuous circle" thing off the ground? So a few individual Africans get immensely wealthy, while surrounded on every side by extreme poverty. What is bizarre is going to Africa to ask Africans for solutions to African problems. Europeans are rich because of European culture. Africans are poor because of bantu culture. But of course no BBC correspondent is EVER going to say something like that. EVER.

'...Then the young Kenyan architect echoed the Liberian president, some 5,000km (3,000 miles) away on the other side of the continent.
"Africa is not poor," he also said.
"Africa is just poorly managed."'

Well, there we are then. That's that sorted out. Its simply an issue of managing stuff better, innit? Just the kind of answer a BBC correspondent wants!

It ignores history, economics and the vast range of material facts, but whatever- the Guardian-reading BBC editor will love it! And lets face it, we're not REALLY interested in Africans living well, and prospering.

Until Africans recognise the terrible effects that tribalism, ethnic hatred, a lack of respect for laws and public institutions, superstition, greed and macho callousness (all derived from bantu culture) have on African lives, nothing will change. Trying to blame white colonial invaders is a pathetic sop, and only distracts from the real solutions. Most of the things which work in Africa were built by white people; and as white people have been chased out of many African countries, those countries have slipped back into shambolic poverty and awfulness.

But don't let the truth get in the way of a good narrative, BBC!

Well, in a sense we're all mass murderers, aren't we?

'The Brits Are Okay with It [Jonah Goldberg]
Well, that's a shame. Katy Kay:

'...The overwhelming majority of his 270 victims were American, but 11 people, two entire families in fact, did die on the ground in Scotland, and one might expect, in Lockerbie if nowhere else, outrage similar to that expressed by American relatives. But not so. Perhaps it's because Brits, with their experience in Northern Ireland, are, more inured to terrorism, whereas, before Lockerbie, Americans had never really been exposed to this kind of attack, and so it became a watershed event that shattered America's sense of invincibility. Perhaps it’s that more in Britain question al-Megrahi's guilt to start with. Or is it just a more confident American sense of wrong and right?

It's not entirely clear to me why the outrage gap is so pronounced on al-Megrahi's release, but it definitely is, and I don't think it's just a question of numbers. The people of Lockerbie seem to support Kenny MacAskill, the justice minister, in his view that the West's identity rests on mercy as well as justice, and that even in the case of a mass murderer that value still applies. As one of the residents of Lockerbie told my colleague, "We just don't see these things in black and white."'

To that last ominous statement, you could add "dead and alive, murdered and not murdered, enemy and friend, immoral and moral, monstrously evil and tolerably good". When you can't even see the cold-blooded murderer of two hundred and seventy people as evil, you have no moral bearings, you have no moral fixed points, you are no longer recognisably moral in any sense.

The West has an identity as merciful? Pompous self-righteousness and disgusting cowardice, perhaps, but merciful? The West sat by while the peoples of Rwanda, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq were murdered in their millions, within the last couple of decades. Very merciful. When the United States and Britain finally went into Bosnia and Iraq, the result was massive protests ON BEHALF OF THE MURDERERS. In Bosnia, Dutch troops sent to protect the muslim population scampered off at the first sign of men with guns, to get drunk a few hundred miles away. Thats why its called Dutch courage.

If the West has a reputation for anything, it is gutless posturing and doing business with the mass-murderers. How many German, French, Italian and Spanish companies are doing business in Russia? You know, the country ruled by a dictator who blew up some of his own people in apartment buildings so he could start a war to get popular by? Nobody knows how many people died in the siege of Grozny. But the Scots are so merciful that they don't give a shit.

The West is not merciful, and it very much does not see things in black and white. It feels smug and superior while at the same time sensing its own vulnerability. In its decadence, though, it can't be bothered to do anything about it.

The first sharp blow to it, and it will collapse like a termite-eaten fence-post. And like all decadent things, it will not be mourned by those who are not decadent.

The Burka is not clothing

Banning the Burka debate:

'...the Liberal Party, which is the senior partner in Denmark's coalition government, rejects the idea of legislating about citizens' clothing, provided they are not employed in a public function.

"It's going too far if we start legislating on what sort of clothes people can and cannot wear. The burqa and covered faces should not be allowed if you work with people in the public sector -- but that is where we draw the line," says Liberal Party political spokesman Peter Christensen, who adds that it is important that politicians know where to draw the line in introducing policy.'

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,643490,00.html

The Burka is not clothing- it is a statement of ideological conformity. Do this simple mental experiment: what would happen if I turned up at work on Monday dressed as an German SS concentration camp guard, in full uniform, complete with deaths head symbols and concentration camp name. According to this argument, anything you wear is simply clothing. What happened to Prince Harry when he wore that Nazi uniform to a fancy-dress party? I don't remember everybody saying 'its just clothing, no biggie'.

Burkas are a very distinctive part of the whole islamist/wahhabist project of returning the whole world to about 670 a.d., complete with primitive arab dress. We absolutely do not have to allow that in our societies. Just like we don't accept people dressing in public as SS prison warders.

Can't wait for the huge demos over this

Amazing change of policy by the US government, one which I heartily endorse by the way.

'Kill or Capture' in Afghanistan

Shared via AddThis

Yes, the US military in Afghanistan are going to kill the Heroin kingpins. They are going to seek out these guys and pop a few caps in their booties.

Imagine, if you will, this happening under the George W. Bush administration. You would have been able to hear the screeching and gnashing of teeth on the moon. The ACLU would have sent their crack team, every lefty organisation would immediately make this their number one chant at their rage-fests, and all the big news channels would be berating the administration with the volume at eleven.

Weirdly, under the Obama administration, none of that stuff has happened. The same heroin meisters will die, by the same bullets, and with the same legal (or not) justification, but the response from the Great Champions of Human Rights won't even get up off the sofa.

Hilariously, the ding dong giving the low-down on this to the VERY-CONCERNED-LOOKING presenter has a dig at the Bush administration for not being VICIOUS ENOUGH! How is that for chutzpah?

I love you Obama but get oughta my face

'Mr. Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago.

More than a dozen campaign volunteers, precinct captains and team leaders from all corners of Iowa, who dedicated a large share of their time in 2007 and 2008 to Mr. Obama, said in interviews this week that they supported the president completely but were taking a break from politics and were not active members of Organizing for America.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/health/policy/15ground.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

What is clear from this piece, and from other articles like it I've read, is that the Obama phenomenon was not about America- it was a beatification of one man. Many of the people who fell in love with Obama don't give two hoots for his policies. He could have run as the Popcorn Chicken candidate, or the Gold Standard candidate, or the Blue Cheese moon candidate, and these people would still have fallen in love. Most of them are still in love, apparently, but find all this political malarky a bit boring and tiresome.

It may well bring the love affair to a premature end too, if Obama keeps on shoving politics down the craws of his lovers. There are some things that really take the sheen off a love affair...

We know who you are now

'So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both.'

[Quote from the Washington Post]

http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2009/08/rick-perlsteins-asinine-take-on-the-health-care-town-yells.html

I happened to watch The Alamo about three years ago, during the most intense period of anti-Iraq Intervention hysteria. It is full of the individual strands of thought and culture that weave together to make Americans American. There is the blunt honesty; the utter determination to be loyal and to do your duty; there is the profound love of country; there is the gentle satirical humour; there is the deep feeling of personal responsibility; there is the fierce martial spirit; and of course there is the commitment to keeping the law. There is absolutely nothing weird, bizarre or crazy about any of those things. They would have been perfectly understandable to an ancient Greek.

Apparently, the only people to whom they are a closed book are modern liberals. Rick Pearlsteins argument, that there is mutual incomprehension on both sides of this cultural clash, is clever but fallacious. For many years, normal average Americans, the kind for whom The Alamo is a living document of what Americans at their best are like, did not pay attention to the slowly growing socialist minority in their country. But that minority started electing senators and congressmen, and organising larger and larger activist groups (often paid for by successful capitalists), and promoting socialism the way socialism is always promoted, as a humanitarian crusade. And normal average Americans just didn't react, or pay attention.

It was only when it was revealed to tens of millions of them that these people now numbered in the millions, had very well developed infrastructure and had taken over the Presidency, the House of Representatives and were well represented in the Senate that they got anxious. And they began to find out who these people are, and what they want. That process is now quite advanced. Many ordinary Americans now understand the nexus between the liberal media, the liberal action groups, the liberal politicians and liberal capitalists. They are coming to understand that despite being a relatively small minority in fact, liberals are able to project a much larger profile. Liberals control important things like most of the news delivery system outside the internet; and higher education, where the leaders of tomorrow go to be 'finished'. They are beginning to understand that liberalism is antithetical to democracy because liberals know better- the liberal agenda must be forced on the bovine masses 'for their own good'. They are also starting to understand that at the heart of liberalism is revolutionary violence and destructiveness.

But deep within the American psyche is this fact: once Americans understand that a fight is needed, and what the parameters of that fight are, they are extremely hard to beat. Their determination is legendary- John Paul Jones anybody?

The truth is the opposite of what Pearlstein says- this is not just boring business-as-usual in the culture wars. A great big chunk of the population- Joe the Plumber on a massive scale- has noticed that liberalism is not just a disconnected series of annoying but essentially harmless bits of politically correct BS. That underlying it is a large-scale project to neuter America, to destroy its soul, to rip out of its cultural fabric all the things which prevent a complete socialist takeover.

Liberals don't want ordinary people to have guns. People with guns can resist an overbearing government. Liberals don't want white protestant culture to dominate- in fact they want it to disappear because it is a completely viable alternative to socialism. Liberals want to promote gay and lesbian lifestyles because that undermines protestant morals and folkways. Liberals want abortion on demand because that establishes the view that babies are not gifts from God, but bodily growths like hair or warts, dispensed with with as little thought. Liberals want the government to run everything, because then they can pump their liberal world view into every corner of society with impunity and ease. Liberals promote every cultural viewpoint but that of white protestant America, and hold them to be superior, no matter how unsuccessful, brutal and misogynistic they are.

The third of Americans who are usually uninterested in politics, and are satisfied to let others fool about with public policy, have realised that cool detachment is no longer an option if a socialist evolution is to be prevented. Their voice is new and distinctive. The tea-partiers are just as likely to excoriate useless republicans as they are useless democrats. And thats because their concerns are fundamental ones. They understand that what is going on right now is programmatic, deeply inimical to American traditions, and is much more serious than a bit of tinkering round the edges. And they are angry.

The Pearlstein take on this is the one current among most professional pundits and the professional political class- Yawn, another day in the culture wars. How wrong they are. When they say 'grass roots' they mean Republican grass roots. They aren't- they are the REAL grass roots, ordinary Americans totally pissed at what ideologues are doing to their country.

Sudden outbreak of common sense

'A ban on the wearing of the burka in France would help stem the spread of the "cancer" of radical Islam, one of its female Muslim ministers has said.
Urban Regeneration Minister Fadela Amara told the Financial Times that a veil covering everything but the eyes represented "the oppression of women".
Ms Amara said she was "in favour of the burka not existing in my country".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8203290.stm

Now hang on a moment there little lady- you can't go imposing the white mans rules on other cultures! You can't insist on having the culture you want in your own country! You have to put up with whatever barbarities people bring with them from The Peoples Shithole of Yemen or wherever. I'm pretty sure that's how this modern dispensation works, anyway...

You have to see the wonderful tapestry of girls having their clitoris cut off with a rusty razor blade, and the marvelous diversity of women wearing a huge tentlike structure even in the swimming pool, and the healthy smack of a mans fist on the side of his wifes head, as mandated by islam. You just have to sit there and take it.

'"The burka represents not a piece of fabric but the political manipulation of a religion that enslaves women and disputes the principal of equality between men and women, one of the founding principles of our republic," she said.
France was a beacon for an enlightened Islam at ease with modernity, so it was necessary to fight the "gangrene, the cancer of radical Islam which completely distorts the message of Islam", she said.
Ms Amara, who is of Algerian descent, argued that banning the burka would help women to stand up to the extremists in their communities.
"The vast majority of Muslims are against the burka. It is obvious why," she said.
"Those who have struggled for women's rights back home in their own countries - I'm thinking particularly of Algeria - we know what it represents and what the obscurantist political project is that lies behind it, to confiscate the most fundamental liberties."'

Well, you may know what it represents, by YOU HAVE TO SHUT UP. The PC brigade will hear you and then you are done for.

Mosque targeted by muslim-haters

'Hamas fighters on Friday fired rocket-propelled grenades at Ibn-Taymiyah mosque, where at least 100 Jund Ansar Allah supporters were holed up.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8202746.stm

I await with baited breath the huge 100,000 man march against the murderers of muslims. I mean, firing RPGs at a mosque? Thats got to be worth at least six weeks of frothing at the mouth, screaming into TV cameras and violent placard waving. Hasn't it?

Oops, my apologies! All that stuff only happens when its not one muslim murdering another muslim. You can see how I'd make the mistake, though...

Give everybody everything regardless of income

'If he really could preserve all that is good about the present U.S. system, while making it available to everyone regardless of income, I would wish him all the luck in the world.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206149/STEPHEN-GLOVER-I-deeply-resent-Americans-sneering-health-service---thats-truth-hurts.html#ixzz0OEvq4hQQ

Oh, good. A sensible suggestion from the very sensible Stephen Glover. When the Daily Mail touts socialism you know everything is lost for conservatives in Britain. It's not seen as socialism any more, but compassion. Disgusting.

Watch out! The one with the blue rinse has a .357

"It's certainly a scary time," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, now an ABC News consultant. Garrett said the Secret Service "cannot afford to pass on anyone," and he believes "they really do fear that something could happen to [Obama]."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8324481&page=1

A country whose Presidents have suffered eighteen assassination attempts, four of which were successful, has every reason to fear another attempt. But the wonderful thing about this article is this sentance:

'Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.'

I have watched loads of YouTube videos on the Socialised Health Care town halls, and I have yet to hear a threat against Obama. Most people are focused solely on their representative, whether Senator, Congressman or local pol. The message, for those who want to listen, is that people are fed up with NO ONE listening. Obama is just a johnny-come-lately snazzy-pants who thinks way too much of himself. The objects of public scorn have been around since the sixties continuously in office. They are the permanent political class who KNOW BETTER.

But its just not grand enough, its just not melodramatic enough, its just not Jack Bauer enough to say 'Ernie Blimpman, representative for the 14th district, was today threatened by a little old lady who said she was going to skin him alive once her meds kicked in'. A bunch of people who have jobs and have never protested so much as a mis-placed stop sign in their lives, who don't want communism in America twenty years after it died in the USSR are being painted as a murderous Nazi gang by the very representatives they have elected to office. Up with that they will not put.

What makes a foreigner foreign

'There's already plenty in the president's biography to make nativists anxious. He spent a chunk of his childhood in Indonesia. His father came from Kenya. When young Obama did live in the U.S., it was in Hawaii, the one American state that isn't actually a part of the Americas. If you don't conceive of the United States as a multicultural nation, the president's life is reason enough to consider the man metaphorically foreign. And if there's one thing conspiracy theories are good at, it's transmuting the metaphorical into the real.'

http://www.reason.com/news/show/135152.html

To be cool and modern and hip and 21st century, you have to believe in a set of absolute goods. One of them is multiculturalism. Monocultures BAD, multicultures GOOD. Of course, being uncool, unhip, and very much 19th century, I don't subscribe.

America is not a multicultural country, thank God. It is dominated by one culture, which provides all the norms and provides the foundation which has kept it highly functional for 230 years or so. Off in the corners, you got some kooks and weirdos and satanists and other flim flam. You also have the Mexicans and the Blacks, who brought their cultures with them, but they don't make America America.

If you want to see what a country would look like if it was dominated by African-American culture, visit Liberia or Haiti. Make sure you take a flak jacket and hire armed guards. If you want to see what a slowly collapsing marxist dystopia looks like, go to Mexico. They've had a one party state since about 1925, and boy it shows. The reason America looks and feels like America is because it is dominated by one culture- protestant Christian white culture. The founding fathers of the United States, the ones who wrote the best constitution so far written, were to a man protestant Christian white men. Sadly, they had no wise Latinas to tell them what was what, but they soldiered on.

The great currents eddying through American political life right now should worry all Americans. Public life in America is in the hands of people who go out of their way to mock and despise protestant Christian white America, and hold it to be the source of most of the evil on the planet. Standing the truth on its head like that is de rigeur for intellectuals and intellectuals who become politicians.

'If you don't conceive of the United States as a multicultural nation, the president's life is reason enough to consider the man metaphorically foreign.' That sentance made me laugh. You don't have to have any conceptions about the United States at all to consider Obama foreign. You just have to read his life story. And listen to how he talks. And pay attention to how estranged he is from average America. Hell, he comes across as foreign to me, and I'm foreign. Transmuting transshmuting- nobody needs to do any wizardry. Obama is a foreigner in the country he rules, and so is his wife, despite what their passports say.

Thatcherism is eccentric according to genius Conservative leader

'Health Secretary Andy Burnham has accused a Tory MEP who attacked the NHS on American TV of being "unpatriotic".
Labour has stepped up its criticism of Daniel Hannan, with John Prescott recording a YouTube message to the American people defending the NHS.
Tory leader David Cameron has insisted the NHS is his "number one priority" and dismissed Mr Hannan as "eccentric".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8200817.stm

The reason Britain is not a shambolic bankrupt ruin is because of Thatcherism. But now, in an interesting turn of events, the British Conservative Party have endorsed socialism, the absolute antithesis of Thatcherism. There is absolutely no reason why government should provide health care, just as there is no reason why it should run car factories, steel mills, coal mines, the phone company and the million other things the British government used to run extremely badly. The only people who say the government should run those things are socialists, and they have an ulterior motive.

If a demonstration were needed of how left-wing Britain has become, it is this pitiful capitulation. Essentially, the Conservative party has become just another lefty mush-fest. The newspaper of the Conservative party, the Daily Telegraph, has done the same thing. It is now pro all the things that twenty years ago all the things it was against.

I have to get away from this place. Willfully dedicating yourself to poverty and irrelavance is not my bag.

We love the huge government bureacracy

'The welovetheNHS tag has received tens of thousands of messages of support during the past few days from NHS staff and former patients after it was branded "Orwellian" and "evil" by Republican critics of Mr Obama's health reforms.
The prime minister took the unusual step of adding his voice to the campaign in a message posted from Downing Street's Twitter feed, in which he said "thanks for always being there". His wife Sarah, also sent a message of support to the campaign.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8200817.stm

Do you get the impression this frothing may not have to do with the actual provision of health care? Would someone ever start a welovetheR&C (revenue and customs department)? Why would you be in love with a government bureaucracy? Or indeed a commercial organisation? People you can love, pets you can love but a government department?

But of course, its not really about giving people the best health care. If it were, the NHS would have long ago been privatised. You only have to compare the NHS to British Telecom to know why. British Telecom used to be a byword for inefficiency, grotesque over-manning, union idiocy and a complete incapacity to innovate. Then Margaret Thatcher privatised it. Now its a world-beating company in a very dynamic telecoms market. Of course, Labour and the commies don't want the NHS to follow this pattern.

Its very difficult to stop people from making invidious comparisons like this. So Gordon Brown doesn't bother to try. Instead, change the subject. Pretend that the NHS is a much-loved British institution, part of the wonderful fabric of our lives, there for us during all our important life events. John Major famously opined that England to him was cricket, warm beer and nuns cycling to evensong in the gloaming. Add to that 'going to A&E to have my stomach pumped', and Gordon Brown would be happy.

Britain, unlike the rest of Europe, is heading further and further left. The populace at large may well suck up this bilge with pleasure. How incredibly sad.

Tactical lying

'RM3 Frisker FTN Says:
August 14th, 2009 at 12:08 am
URBAN LEGEND - Congress Exempt From Health Care Reform?

Start at pg 113, line 22 of SENATE version of the Health Care Reform Bill (http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf). This starts to describe who is and is-not covered by health care reform. The term is “qualified individual”.

If you are NOT eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, then Health Care Reform WILL apply to you.

If you ARE eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, then Health Care Reform will NOT apply to you.

Who is eligible for Federal employee health benefits, as described in US Code Title 5 Chapter 89?

Time to read US Code Title 5 Chapter 89 … http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/5/usc_sup_01_5_10_III_20_G_30_89.html

For purposes of US Code Title 5 Chapter 89, members of Congress, political appointees, federal employees (obviously), and many others are eligible for Federal employee health benefits.

CONCLUSION: The Senate is attempting to exempt itself from Health Care Reform. Congress, Federal Employees, and other ‘chosen’ ones will get a different plan from the one that will be inflicted upon the rest of us.

SIDE-NOTE: When critiquing health care reform, please quote chapter & verse from the bill (House or Senate version, page #, line #). Otherwise, some absolutely ridiculous claims will be put into circulation, leading to ridicule and undermining the credibility of those honestly fighting against this awful attempt to destroy one of America’s most effective industries. When reading a critique, reference the actual bill to verify for yourself it is an honest critique rather than a bogus critique.'

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2009/08/13/not-a-good-day-for-robert-gibbs/

This has probably been written up in many books on liberals/lefties, so I'll keep this short. It has come to my attention many times in the last couple of weeks that liberals/lefties launch the accusation that their opponents are lying. Over and over again, a generic accusation is made that those who oppose health care nationalisation are lying. I specifically say 'generic', because 99.9% of the time, no specific lie is evidenced. No rebuttal is made to a specific 'lie' at any point.

The person above is being extremely specific. He/she is taking on a particular debating point, and showing evidence of proof. That's what a good debater does. That's what an honest debater does.

So, what is the purpose of this constant barrage of generic accusations of lying? It appears to be a tactic. If people who are only vaguely following the debate (that covers very large numbers of people) hear both sides accusing the other of lying, they will assume that both probably are. They are not going to pick up on the fact that one side are making rebuttals like the one above, and that the other can't do that because the generic accusations of lying are themselves lies.

These are classic communist tactics. There is no need to be right- it is perfectly sufficient to confuse and complicate the debate while getting on with executing your policy. The mistake is to believe that the debate is in any way honest, and that its purpose is one of discovery of facts.

Liberal/lefty politics does not need the general population to be aware of the facts- indeed, that is the worst possible outcome. Look at the 'global warming' debate. Those presenting contrary facts are ripped into with accusations of 'denialism'. The only way that the left can enact the enormous systemic changes, like Cap-and-Trade, is to make sure that no real debate takes place. Cap-and-Trade was passed with virtually NO public debate whatsoever. The only reason the health care socialisation legislation is not already law is the unfortunate (for lefties) timing of the summer recess. They would dearly have loved for it to pass with no debate.

The vicious, vitriolic anger on the part of lefties about the current health care debate is because they didn't want to have it. And now that it's happening, their only refuge is to constantly screech 'you're lying!'.

Damn Edward the Confessor and his coal-fired power stations

'Hurricanes in the Atlantic are more frequent than at any time in the last 1,000 years, according to research just published in the journal Nature.
Scientists examined sediments left by hurricanes that crossed the coast in North America and the Caribbean.
The record suggests modern hurricane activity is unusual - though it might have been even higher 1,000 years ago.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8197191.stm

Yeah, you remember, the huge industrialisation that happened around 1000 a.d.? You remember all the coal-burning power stations built by Edward the confessor? You remember all the humvees driven by the invading Danish army?

Yes folks, those awful days are back...

When friends speak the truth

'You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

I just don't get it. Why the insane rush to pass a bill, any bill, in three weeks? And why such an abject failure by the Obama administration to present the issues to the public in a rational, detailed, informational way? The U.S. is gigantic; many of our states are bigger than whole European nations. The bureaucracy required to institute and manage a nationalized health system here would be Byzantine beyond belief and would vampirically absorb whatever savings Obama thinks could be made. And the transition period would be a nightmare of red tape and mammoth screw-ups, which we can ill afford with a faltering economy.'

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/08/12/town_halls/print.html

I had forgotten that Camille Paglia existed, but then Edward Craig quoted her at length on the NRO Corner blog. And it is slightly shaming for me that I had shuttered my mind because she still has a wonderful scalpel of a pen. You have to elide the constant Bushitler boilerplate; she is after all a paid-up member of the intelligentsia. But her analysis of both the campaign to promote health care reform and the substance of the proposed reforms are gleaming paragons of precis.

I really will have to read Ms Paglia more often.

NOW you ask...

'Who Is This Guy?

Dan Froomkin re-emerges at the HuffPo and asks the same question about Barack Obama that failed to resonate during the campaign - who is this guy?

"We're finally going to get to know the real President Obama.

Once the final outlines of health-care legislation become clear, we'll know what really matters to him. Where he draws the line. How he wields the levers of power. Whose ox he gores when there's goring that has to be done.

We'll know who's really in charge.

What's amazing is that more than six months into a presidency that Obama vowed would be the most transparent in history, we still know so little about some basic things like how he makes up his mind and who influences him the most."

We are quite a bit past the "Let's elect him and find out" part of the getting-to-know-you process.'

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/08/who-is-this-guy.html

You gotta say uh huh to that... 'we still know so little about some basic things like how he makes up his mind and who influences him the most'. All of the things that come into my mind to say about that are extremely caustic and bitter. What role are journalists supposed to play in our society again? Just how many of the mantras repeated by Obama at his Nuremburg-like rallies were straightforward lies? Just how fake does a faker have to be before tens of millions of Americans can actually detect his fakeness?

From the same blog post:

'Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ alludes to and reverses the "Who is this guy" mystery of Barack in her piece on the health care debate - in her view, Americans are also a puzzle to Barack:

"The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

...

Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him."'

Barack Obama doesn't understand the American people? Why would he? He is basically a foreigner, thats why. His father was African. He grew up outside the US and even when he did live in the US, he lived in Hawaii, which most people would probably say is spiritually STILL outside the US. Certainly native Hawaiians think so. Many Hawaiians are militantly anti-American. Its more like a much larger Berkeley, CA than say Iowa. Obama has hung out his whole life with people who hate America. His wifes church sizzles and pops with hatred against whitey and his many evils. He went there for twenty years and never noticed (apparently) how much of the time was spent making up hare-brained conspiracy theories against white America.

The most vital questions to me are, how could he possibly be expected, with a background like that, to have any insight or knowledge whatsoever of mainstream American life and politics? And given that, who in their right mind would vote the guy into the highest office in American life?

The piece ends:
'Interesting. Still, Bill Clinton also whiffed on health care, yet no list of his failings included a non-understanding of the Great Unwashed (We were his people!).'

A point I have made before. Nobody ever challenged Bill Clintons spiritual, cultural and racial resonance with the people he governed. For all his many failings and weaknesses, he never lost his popularity with the great mass of Americans. And that was because although many disagreed with particular ideas of his, he was still one of them. Obama is a fake. He is not one of the people. He is a foreigner, in mind and in fact.

I watched him yesterday speaking at a rally for State Senator Creigh Deeds. The hackneyed, cliched rubbish he was talking seemed aimed at retards with a mental age of about seven. I'm pretty sure that is his mental image of the American people- retards who he can tell pretty much anything and they'll just suck it up without question or murmur. He has some justification for viewing Americans as he does- after all, they believed all his nonsense for eighteen months on the campaign trail. But disdaining your supposed countrymen comes at a very high cost. As Obama will discover.

Huh? That cannot be right... can it?

'Eighty-two percent (82%) of Democrats say the president is doing a good or excellent job, but 57% of Republicans rate his performance as poor. Voters not affiliated with either party are much more closely divided: 39% say good or excellent, while 35% say poor.'

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/august_2009/45_rate_obama_good_or_excellent_as_a_leader_down_19_points_from_january

Two surprising statistics- 43% of Republicans rate Obama as doing a good or excellent job; and 35% of non-affiliateds say he's doing a poor job. It was the non-affiliateds who voted Obama in. How more Republicans than non-affiliateds can be positive about the shambles that is the Obama administration I can't imagine.

Regime change for Burma

'World leaders have reacted with anger and disappointment at the conviction of Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for violating security laws.
The UN called for her immediate release after she was sentenced to a further 18 months of house arrest - where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8195830.stm

Wouldn't it be really cool if there was an organisation, maybe an international organisation, that sanctioned the removal of regimes like the disgusting greedy criminals that run Burma...

Oh, there is one? Well, get to it guys!

Want to check for yourself?

For anybody who wants to decide for themselves whether the anti-socialised medicine protests are faked 'astroturf' or genuine heartfelt protest, you can watch a huge slew of videos here (http://www.clubforgrowth.org/protests/). Shouldn't take too long...

BBC tentatively covers huge story eventually

'So are the "grassroots" genuinely angry, or are the protests simply manufactured "astroturf"?
That depends largely on your politics - or whether you watch the liberal MSNBC or conservative Fox News.
If you are an Obama Democrat, you will find reason to be suspicious.
Why, for example, are the protesters filming the meetings and then posting video on the internet?'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8194485.stm

I try to give credit where credit is due. Although this piece starts by laying out in detail the Dem view of the supposed 'mobs' protesting against socialized medicine in America, it then goes on to provide a number of the legitimate criticisms of the Dem view.

But is the piece as a whole un-biased? Try this thought experiment. Go back in your mind to 2006, the very height of the anti-Iraq-intervention maelstrom. Picture Code Pink and/or Cindy Sheehan suddenly revealing themselves at a congressional hearing, shouting and chanting, disrupting the whole proceedings until they are thrown out by security. Would they video it?

Anybody who knows WHY these things are done knows that videoing it is THE WHOLE POINT. You then post the video on all the video hosting sites and on your organisations website and boast about it for a month.

So why the bizarre question? How would the fact that Tea-partiers have some internal organisation and media savvy make them less genuine or legitimate? Nobody at the BBC questioned the self-promotional tactics of those protesting against the Iraq intervention. But then they almost certainly agreed with the protestors. So why in this piece?

And by the way, the first paragraph is a logical nonsense. It can be objectively determined whether the protests are astroturf or not by comparing them in detail to astroturfers of days gone by- there are plenty to choose from. Many of the 'mob' showed up at these meetings on a tide of anger with no sign, no prior knowledge of each other, and no coordination. If you look at the astroturfers, they show up in buses and vans, they have 'leaders' who shepherd the little platoons around, scripts for chants, mass produced printed signs in fonts big enough to be easily picked up by TV cameras, and matching t-shirts or even whole outfits. The astroturfers are also led by people who are trained in media tricks and who will almost certainly have many friends in the local TV stations and newspapers. If the track record of the vast majority of local news reports is anything to go on, the Tea-partiers have NO friends in local tv and newspapers.

Many of the local tv stations and newspapers ignored the Tea Party protests at town hall meetings completely if they could. They know that denying the Tea Partiers the oxygen of publicity is the best way of limiting their appeal to the public at large, and of helping the dem friends.

One very large-scale problem America faces is the enormous number of liberal arts/humanities graduates churned out of US universities, 99% of whom lean left or are blatantly socialist. They have few career choices. Up until now, one of the few careers open to a graduate in English Lit would be media, whether TV or print. So year after year, more and more dems/socialists pour into the media, whereas young republicans are much more likely to choose a career as a business-person, engineer, manufacturer, join the armed forces or a profession.

So if you work in the media, you may never meet a republican from one year to the next, and imagine in your tiny mind that they are a minute, vanishing breed. Certainly thats an opinion many of them seem to hold. When I worked at AP, I met numerous people who were shocked to discover I was a conservative. For them, it was like suddenly discovering a left-over dinosaur. Of course, the reality is, outside of the media and a few other bastions, most Americans ARE republicans, or non-committed conservatives. Most polling indicates the mass of Americans are to the right of center. Even many who vote dem are right of center, viz Hillary Clintons sudden rediscovery of her Tammy Wynette roots, gun collection and Baptist hallelujah religion when Obama overtook her in the primary race.

So it seems that the hopes of the Tea Party Protesters getting a fair hearing on either side of the Atlantic is small. Certainly the BBC don't want to give them the benefit of any doubt, but are forced to so far by their editorial system. How long can that last?

Forget your stupid facts, believe our lies!!!

'How could the left possibly be losing the debate on health-care reform when its opponent is the roundly loathed health insurance industry -- an ongoing criminal syndicate, in my view, that demands protection money from sick people?

It's because the insurance industry's demagoguery is better and smarter than the reformists' demagoguery. This is a gunfight to which the reform agenda has brought a dull spoon.'

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09221/989355-109.stm#ixzz0NmVwYkTf

See, its not about the enormous mountain of debt the US government already owes people, its not about taking another huge chunk of the private sector into public ownership, its not about the easily detectable lies being peddled by the President of the United States because he thinks ordinary people are stoopid- no no.

Its about words.

Who can say the prettiest words with the right inflections so other people actually think those words are true. Who can shape the most elegant, eloquent lies.

How revealing, in the worst possible way.

A towering sense of entitlement and pomposity

http://www.11alive.com/video?maven_playerId=immersiveplayer3&maven_referralObject=1208541313

I recommend watching this clip right to the end. Remember what Representative Scott says about meeting up with him to discuss health care issues in the public forum, as opposed to what he actually does. Note also his repetition of the absurd characterisation of 'hijacking the public forum'. One decent, penetrative question, and you are hijacking a public forum apparently. For many of the current set of Senators and Congressmen, democracy has no substantive meaning whatsoever.

There's that, and also the Representatives assumption that his questioner is a Republican, because he disagrees with the Representative. Absolutely pathetic.

Future alliances

'India and China fought a brief border war in 1962. India lost the war, but territorial disputes with China have endured. Aside from the area that India calls Arunachal Pradesh, the two countries also differ over part of the border with China's Tibet Autonomous Region....

The sources of friction go well beyond contested territory. India continues to view with suspicion China's close strategic relationship with its arch-rival Pakistan, including recent deals to build nuclear reactors and manufacture jet fighters. China, meanwhile, has closely watched India's warming ties with the U.S., including a civilian nuclear deal that has formed the cornerstone of a new strategic partnership and its closer defense cooperation with the world's only superpower.'

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124964895363214289.html



If British foreign policy were up to me, this would be my plan for the next twenty-five years. India would be the strategic cornerstone of my relationships in south Asia. India seems increasingly inclined to take its rightful place as part of the Anglo-sphere, countries whose political, legal and business systems are derived from British ones. It is a functional democracy with proper legal systems and a political class who show a genuine desire to work on behalf of the less fortunate in Indian society. In comparison to China, where hundreds of millions have fallen through the gaping chasms into extreme poverty and out of functional society, India shows real signs of trying to reach out to minorities and very low castes to try to integrate them into the burgeoning success story of Indian industry and business. India has thriving political parties some of which have left behind their original caste, religious or ethnic character to become genuine political parties based on a systematic political philosophy. The major parties now genuinely compete to prove their fiscal seriousness, their humanitarian intent, and their professionalism in government.

China, on the other hand, has an ossified system based on ludicrous falsehoods. It is a relatively benign oligarchical dictatorship, but with the vestigial clothing of a communist dictatorship. That is a very unstable mix. The Chinese government has no real legitimacy, which mean all political activity is dangerous and frustrating. The pressure from below, especially the new rich middle class in China will grow and grow. And the discontent from the many hundreds of millions cut off from their land, from political power and from employment will fester too. In many places China is becoming a polluted hell on earth.

China has no proper independent, trustworthy legal system, no trade unions or organised protection from harsh and exploitative employers, no safety net for the poor and dispossessed, and no outlet for political feeling. Chinese culture allows the minuscule oligarchy some leeway, as Chinese culture conditions people to put up with harsh, arbitrary and unjust rule. But there are thresholds. When China reaches them, the results could be extremely unpleasant. At the moment, a rising tide of economic productivity gives the Chinese something good to focus on. What happens if that stalls, or worse, goes into reverse? Then the systemic faults will prove what a terribly fragile edifice Chinese society is.

The last of the great Asian powers is Russia. My goal would be to isolate Russia, give Russia as little encouragement as possible, and encourage the rest of the world to do likewise. The government of Russia, if they can be graced with that description, are simple murderous thugs. They have snuffed out civil liberties, destroyed the nascent political party system, rigged politics so only one outcome is possible, endeavoured to be as unpleasant, unhelpful, aggressive and destructive as they can in international relations, and utilised extreme xenophobia and paranoia as a way of ginning up grass-roots support for their disgusting regime. They have stolen billions of dollars from western companies, reneged on contracts, cut off essential energy supplies to neighbors in the dead of winter, invaded neighboring countries generally behaved like criminal mafiosi. Despite only recently becoming basicly solvent, Russia has already started to try to throw its weight around, like a short drunk guy in a bar picking fights with people three times his size. It is a terrible shame for the Russian people to be governed in this way. Will they do anything about it? If we are unequivocal on all occasions about the nature of the Russian regime, ordinary Russians may at some point find a way to replace their regime with a real government.

I would boost military, commercial and political ties with India, and make it clear that we would back India in any confrontation with China or Russia, especially the latter. We would supply India with our latest weaponry, and make sure they always kept a clear technological and quantitative edge over the Chinese in all the major weapons systems. That is because in my view, India will need to fight at least one major defensive war against a deranged China before China gets a proper legitimate government. Countries with very weak governments often launch into wars of conquest to try to fix the political situation at home. And for any number of reasons, we would want India to win that war.

Another good reason for becoming very long term strategic partners of India is the hopeless nature of Pakistan. Most countries dominated by islam have very weak and illigitimate governance. I don't think I need to present a list to demonstrate this, you can write it yourself. Those few which do, like Turkey, only do so as a consequence of taking the destabilising influence of islam head-on, and consciously removing it from civil society. Sadly for Turkey, the gains it made in the twentieth century under secular rule are steadily being eroded in the 21st. I expect Turkey to look more like Saudi Arabia in twenty years time, and less like Germany, with all the terrible downside that entails.

Pakistan has done exactly the opposite of what Kemal Ataturk did in Turkey- they have taken a society with a secular parliament, law courts, army, civil institutions and educational systems, and subsumed them to islamic jurisdiction. If it weren't for the positively stupendous amounts of financial 'assistance' (free money) dumped on Pakistan from every direction for the last forty years, first because of the cold war and then because of the war on terror, Pakistan would be Somalia already. The Pakistani army is not funded by Pakistanis, but mainly by Americans and EU citizens. The Pakistani army is really the last thing left in Pakistan that even vaguely works properly. If the foreign money stops coming, Pakistan will collapse like a bad souffle.

Britain should cut the extremely detrimental umbilical which connects the stone age hills of Pakistan with the post-industrial towns of the North East of England immediately. It should stop assisting Pakistan, apart from money or programs linked directly to changed behaviour; all incentives should be towards reversing the islamification of Pakistan and towards secularisation. On every substantive issue, Britain should take Indias side. Pakistan has already chosen China as its strategic ally, so we would not be jeopardising any existing good will or intentions. Any and all steps that can be taken to remove Pakistans nuclear capability should be taken. I can't understand why people who are staying awake at night over a near-future nuclear Iran aren't bothered much at all by a very much current nuclear Pakistan. Iran has a very solid foundation as a nation state, and a cultured and civilised electorate. Pakistan has neither. I can easily see Pakistan being ruled by Taliban-like individuals in the short to medium term. Pakistan is in the middle of a process of Wahhabisation- hence the burgeoning violence being meted out to Shia moslems and Christians alike.

Wahhabist islam is also destroying the hold of sunni and shia islam in Britain, mostly due to the umbilical that connects Pakistan to northern England but also because of showers of Saudi money into British mosques. If I were in charge, both of those would be stopped tomorrow morning.

I can see very few downsides to a long-term alliance with India, and many positives. I doubt the great and good of our Foriegn Office see it the same way, sadly.

Stopping the tides

'The message for modern conservation, say the authors, is that some groups are more vulnerable to extinction than others, and the focus should be on the lineages most at risk....

"Big groups of organisms tend to be similar to one another," he explained. "Look at the large cats for example."
But genetic similarities also mean, said Dr Grenyer, that "a bad effect that affects one of them, will likely affect all of them".'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8188166.stm

King Cnut, Englands last Danish king, demonstrated to his fawning courtiers that he had no more power over the great natural forces that shape our lives than any other man by the simple expedient of sitting on the beach and commanding the tides to halt. Todays conservationists and global warm-mongers alike feel no such constraints.

Species going extinct? No problem, mankind will override evolutionary processes on your behalf! Global climate changing? No problem, man will command the seas to recede, the Sun to warm less, and the atmosphere to be constituted from different gases. Can you say hubris, children? Can you say tilting at windmills children?

Thoughtful scientists long ago gave up thinking of extinction events as things to be fought and tamed. Just like thoughtful people long ago stopped thinking that wildfires were evil and had to be stopped at any cost.

Todays popular scientific culture reminds me of kids in their early teen years- vividly struck by their own importance and capability, overwhelmed by the first taste of adult responsibility and access. This tips constantly over into arrogance and hubris. Thats just the way it is. Everybody makes allowances for it. But it is nevertheless fatally mistaken.

Who are we dealing with here?

The White House, the congressional leaders and the left-wing legacy media are desperate to de-legitimize the surging wave of anti-single-payer anti-obama-health-reform Americans. It has tried a few narratives on for size already. First was: they are extremist proto-fascist Republican nutjobs who want a riot. Then it was: they are an astroturf renta-mob hired by the usual suspects in the health insurance industry to protect their cushy lifestyles. They now have a third narrative: these are the posh-dressed upper class twits who don't care if poor people die in the road, as long as their health insurance and tax rates don't go up.

Untold damage is being done at this very moment to not only the prospects of the democrat party in 2010, but in 2012 as well. Many of the Americans being serially insulted and mocked are the dedicatedly non-political third of the American population who NEVER get involved in partisan shenanigans. Well, not until the pathetic children running the country become just too arrogant and destructive, like now. What they are NOT used to is having their patriotism, ethics and good intentions questioned by pathological, cynical blowhards.

Many of the Tea Partiers are old. Indeed, many come from what in America is called the Greatest Generation, the one that fought world war II. Ask Imperial Japan- these are not people you want to piss off. Once angered, their vengeance is terrible and their memories long. In British terms, the Tea Partiers are the Womens Institute brigade, the stout yoemen of the local cricket club, the decent and hard-working backbone of the country. Why you would pick a fight with these people its hard to know, but they will not forgive nor forget.

Chicago rules only work when you have all the levers of power under your control. Thankfully Obama doesn't and never will. First and foremost, among the Tea Partiers are many, many people with kids in the armed forces. Pick a fight with mom and dad, and you'll get son and daughter into the bargain. President Obama may have the rockiest ride of any US president, and not because of racism...

If they send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue

Chicago Rules. I know this video is from St Louis, but the mood in America is darkening across the whole country. For many previously a-political Americans, their first experience of organised politics will be exactly what is shown in this video. They are going to protest something they straightforwardly disagree with, and what confronts them is organised thuggery, the prevention of their participation in public events, and the railroading of public events to ensure that their voice remains unheard.

You are storing up for yourself a whirlwind, President Obama.

UPDATE

'I got into the line immediately after taping it, but not everyone was abiding by the same rules. Carnahan staffers were wandering through the line with a list of “guests” that, as expected, got to jump the line and join the Astroturf of Purple inside. Not sure how many “town halls” operate like a gated community, but this one certainly did.'
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/08/07/photos-and-video-carnahan-event-in-st-louis/

I'm not sure, but that doesn't sound like democracy to me.

The Beast has awoken

This is a very telling video. Watch in particular the guy who talks very simply but effectively from around the six minute mark. Obama has awoken the great white non-political slumbering giant.

Its amazing to watch the sad ninnies who try to corral the meeting as they talk down to the people they consider uninteresting cannon-fodder. The pathetic bitch who takes away the microphone in a vain attempt to stop the meeting from continuing without her permission is straight from central casting.

In a recent post, I called the straight-jacketing of American political life the victory of the school-marm over the working stiff. What the school-marms never expected was that one day, the working stiffs might rouse themselves from their somnolence and re-take the field of battle. Look at their response to Joe the Plumber, Sarah Palin and now the Tea Partiers- they don't know how to react, they don't have a plan for this. Nothing in their play-book tells them how to cope with PEOPLE FIGHTING BACK. Especially when they take the gloves off and fight back using the same tactics the left thinks are their intellectual property.

When the Dems want people screeching, swearing, getting in peoples faces and smashing things up, then screeching, swearing and violence are good. When the Dems want people sitting like obedient sheep and baaaing in unison, sitting and baaaing are good. But should you have the temerity to screech and swear when they don't want, you are a traitor destroying the very fabric of civilised politics. Even if you don't screech and swear, but forbear to baa in unison, you are STILL a traitor destroying the very fabric of civilised politics. For the very foundation-stone of the liberal is, do what I say, don't do what I do.

Obama is in a steep nose-dive. And he is being ably aided and abetted by the young, arrogant idiots at this AARP meeting.

Even journalists have mortgages

'Mr Murdoch said he was "satisfied" that the company could produce "significant revenues from the sale of digital delivery of newspaper content".

"The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive methods of distribution," he added.

"But it has not made content free. Accordingly, we intend to charge for all our news websites. I believe that if we are successful, we will be followed by other media.

"Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting," he said.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8186701.stm

Many bloggers are firmly of the opinion that journalists should not be paid for their work. Its a weird thing to believe, especially as many of the same bloggers are loud boosters of the capitalist system, free enterprise and doing business. Work hard, get paid accordingly, apart from if you are a journalist.

Huge scorn has been heaped on the New York Times and Associated Press for charging people for reading their material. I imagine News International will get the same treatment. Its sad, because Mr Murdoch is right- quality journalism is not cheap. Even some very profound bloggers seem to think that what they do is journalism. But its not true. Like most jobs, if you are doing it right, there is not time for a second job. Most journalists don't have time to be pundits. And unless you are one of the tiny minority of bloggers who make a living at blogging, you have a day job. Which means you don't have time for a whole other career as a journalist.

Simple facts, but ones which seem beyond the ken of many bloggers. Journalism is time consuming, revolves around lots of fiddly details, involves travelling very often, there's lots of logistical crap to deal with, and then the writing up of notes into finished pieces. It may even involve having to do pieces to camera if you're a TV journo. Amateur bloggers are just not going to get all that done. You might be able to squeeze a tiny bit of journalism around your day job, but you'd end up with no time for anything else.

So the demise of lots of newspapers and news organisations is not fantastic. Our need for the product that journalists provide has not changed. The requirement for the scrutiny of public officials and the myriad of other things journalists report on, sport, science, business, culture and all the other things still remains. Whether we read that stuff on bits of paper or from pixels on a screen is completely immaterial. Just as the people who write songs should get paid when their songs are played, people who write news stories should get paid when they are read. Work should be rewarded with payment.

Everything else is just noise. Last time I checked, Associated Press employ around 10,000 journalists. If AP goes bust, who will pay those 10,000 journalists? More importantly, how will I ever find out what is going on where those journalists report from if AP don't pay him to tell me? The Huffington Post? InstaPundit? The Drudge Report? Yeah, I don't think so.

The first people on the world wide web had some very hippyish ideals- some very 1980's ideals. They didn't like business, that was selling out man. Everything would be done for the love of it by cool and hip and eccentric people, for free. The web would be the place where 'Imagine' wasn't just a song, but a way of life.

And then everybody else got on the web. And then it became just like the rest of the world, but with much more porn. And guess what? People wanted to earn money from websites. People created websites just for selling stuff. And that whole hippy thing disappeared as quickly as a bongful of best Afghan.

But for some reason, there are still vestiges of that long-gone era- like insisting that news websites shouldn't charge for people to read the news. In reality, there are only two options: enormous quantities of intrusive advertising on every page of news; or paid subscriptions for news without the intrusive ads. I know which one I'll be taking...

No no, you think again

'Think Again: Africa's Crisis
As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Africa, the continent is in far better shape than most experts think

It's true that some countries in the region are as poor as England under William the Conqueror, but that doesn't mean Africa's on the verge of doomsday. How many serfs had a cellphone? More than 63 million Nigerians do. Millions travel on buses and trucks across the continent each year, even if the average African road is still fairly bumpy. The list of modern technologies now ubiquitous in the region also includes cement, corrugated iron, steel wire, piping, plastic sheeting and containers, synthetic and cheap cotton clothing, rubber-soled shoes, bicycles, butane, paraffin candles, pens, paper, books, radios, televisions, vaccines, antibiotics, and bed nets.'

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/31/think_again_africas_crisis?page=0,0

What is the motivation to write pieces like this? I mean, really, what? I remember getting to Rhodesia in 1975, and one of the most consistently touchy subjects among white Rhodesians was the state of technological development in Africa.

'Everybody in Europe thinks we all live in mud huts and drive donkey carts' they would moan. This despite the fact noone had suggested that either was true. I believe the underlying fear was that Africa is just so far behind the rest of the world that it might never catch up.

Forget about the technologies Africans use- what technology is made in Africa? What percentage of those 63 million cellphones were manufactured in Nigeria? Nought percent. And even more importantly, how many technologies used from Saskatchewan to Sarawak were invented, developed and marketed first by Africans? That would be another nought. Mosquito nets, quinine and DDT between them have save hundreds of millions of lives in Africa. Invented by Africans? No....

Silly pieces like this which try to gild the slops bucket avoid the extremely unpalatable truths abundantly evident to visitors to Africa. Greed, brutality, extremely macho culture, curruption, tribalism and a complete disrespect for the communal civil space ruin Africas prospects at every turn. Africa is in many places wrecked ecologicaly, not from the depredations of the constantly demonised white man, but by the catastrophic 'farming' practises of the black population. Goats, the most commonly kept animals, make deserts. I'm not kidding. Sheep and cows crop grass, goats tear plants out whole, destroying them and allowing the soil to blow away. Slash and burn farming is still practised in much of Africa- and fragile ecosystems often take decades, if not centuries to recover. 'Bush meat' has become huge in Africa. To you and me and the documentary makers, they might be scarily endagered species, but to the locals they are yummy dinner.

Africas tragedy to me is that it needed five hundred years of colonial rule, and most of it got less than a hundred. In that hundred years, bits and pieces of modernity were introduced to Africa, but only in a shallow and superficial way. Think of it this way- 63 million Nigerians own mobile phones and probably zero know how a mobile phone system works. Robert Mugabe knows the word Democracy but he has no emotional or cultural investment in the idea itself. Where would Africa be in the 21st century if it had not been colonised? Have you been to New Guinea?

Lovely lovely islam

Dateline Iraq:

'In January, police arrested a middle-aged woman, Samira Ahmed Jassim, for allegedly recruiting female suicide bombers. In a prison interview, Jassim told The Associated Press about a plot in which young women were raped and then persuaded to carry out suicide attacks to reclaim their honor.'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090806/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq;_ylt=AjWQ28sN9hJCtz3lAVhR8k9H2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTJhMzJ0MGxqBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwODA2L21sX2lyYXEEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMzBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDaXJhcWl0ZWVuZ2ly

What is not to love about islamism? Either get with caliphate, or we'll rape some of our own women and use their shame and self-disgust to coerce them to go out and murder other muslims. Well, murder anybody really.

NIT response

'Hamas rocket attacks 'war crimes'

The firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip amounts to a war crime, a prominent human rights group has said.

Human Right Watch (HRW) said Hamas should "publicly renounce" the attacks and hold those responsible to account.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8187446.stm

You might have heard of JIT. Its a business strategy where you do something 'Just in Time' rather than way beforehand. There is a downside to JIT, which is NIT, 'Not in Time'. When implementing JIT, too many NITs will bring the whole system to a grinding halt. Human Rights Watch have sat around on their arses for the last four years not condemning Hamas for the constant drizzle of mortars and rockets into Israel, presumably because they didn't think it was a big deal.

But just a few weeks back, Human Rights Watch came under enormous scrutiny by the media in the US when it was revealed that HRW was trawling for funds in Saudi Arabia. Most Americans don't think much of human rights in Saudi Arabia. But as a result of the sudden glare of the spotlight on HRW, a number of other facts came to light which shocked many observers. The woman who is Middle East and North Africa Director, Sarah Leah Whitson was an active member of the New York chapter of the American-Arab Antidiscrimination Committee, which actively militates against Israel. She served on its Steering Committee and was a member of its Board of Directors when she was hired by Human Rights Watch. Conflict of interest? I leave that to your judgement.

Anyway, lots of journalists have been going back over the output of HRW just to see if there is a pro-palestinian slant. And guess what? There is! How surprising. And there have been lots of pieces in the press questioning whether HRW is what it claims to be- against the abuse of human rights wherever and by whomever they are perpetrated.

And thats why HRW have put out this press release about Hamas. Since September 2005, the rockets and mortars have been thumping into southern Israel, and since then HRW have ignored them. But TODAY, they've discovered that these may be war crimes. What a coincidence. Thats not a JIT response. Thats a NIT response if there ever was one.

Don't bother reading his lips

'Linda Douglass, communications director for the administration’s health-reform efforts, says, “There are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now,” then points on-screen to the Drudge link.

“There are people out there with a computer and a lot of free time, and they take a phrase here and there. They simply cherry-pick and put it together and make it sound like he’s saying something he didn’t really say,” she says.'

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/04/drudge-driving-more-youtube-hits-than-whitehousegov/?mod=rss_WSJBlog?mod=

I think its a mistake for the White House to counter any criticism about any policy by saying "Barack said this rather than that". Even the trusting, not-paying-very-good-attention centre of American politics has started to grasp a large truth about Obama: it doesn't really matter to Barack Obama what he says. His words are endlessly elastic, being used to hide his intentions rather than reveal them.

Ms Douglass is 100% right about what Barack Obama is saying. He keeps repeating the mantra "You will be able to keep your current insurance if you like it, nothing will change unless you want it to". But she is occupying a mental space from eight or nine months ago, when it was sufficient to simply say 'Barack Obama said X' and all the millions of Obama supporters would believe that his words constituted a concrete commitment to X. But many mainstream voters have Moved On since then.

There have been many broken commitments, lies and cynical backtrackings since the inauguration. For many of the moderate voters who took Obama at his words when he took on hundreds of moderate views for the last three months or so of his campaign, the reality of Barack Obama has been a bucket of iced water to the face. Which Obama do we believe, they ask themselves? The one in 2003 who stated very very honestly and clearly to an AFL-CIO meeting his commitment to a single-payer socialised medicine that would have to be introduced slowly so the frog didn't jump out of the saucepan. Or the Obama who states that nothing will change at all hardly, and the people who are saying all those stupid things are just haters. Or the Obama who is at this very moment presiding over a bill which will change the US healthcare system irrevocably and lead inexorably to the single payer system.

In short, read my lips has been trumped by watch my hands.

A return to tradition

I'm reading De Tocquevilles 'Democracy in America' at the moment. What is vividly apparent is how far America in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries drifted from its traditions. The kind of fractious and robust interaction between represented and representative you can see in this video is normal for the mid-nineteenth century. By the end of the twentieth it had virtually disappeared. The rough-and-tumble of the traditional way of American democracy had been replaced by a pallid and wizened faux-politess.

The same bloodless and dreary atmosphere dominated (and still dominates) American newspapers as well. I think of it as the victory of the school-marm over the working stiff. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans felt completely free to get in the face of their representatives and tell them how it was using short and brutal words. And those representatives took it for what it was- the electorate making sure the elected knew what was expected of them. The more vigorous the exchange, the harder the representatives listened- these were the people they were doing the job for. That attitude is long gone.

The doddery old farts and plastic fantastic used-car salesmen who currently occupy positions in Congress do not feel it is part of their job to have to listen to disgruntled voters. All those hicks and NASCAR watchers should know their place and leave governing to the professionals! Look at the enormous response to Joe the Plumber during the 2008 election. Upstart! Ignoramus! Yokel! How dare he intrude into our choreography and myth-making exercises!

Joe the Plumber may well have planted the seeds for the Tea-Party uprisings. His was the only truly revelatory question of the entire campaign. He did what the massed legions of drudge journalists wouldn't- he asked a question Obama didn't want to answer, didn't have the wit to dodge, and revealed for the only time in the campaign his real thoughts about taxation and the redistribution of wealth by government diktat. Joe the Plumber knew Americas traditions, and kept to them in the finest way imaginable.

Politicians in America had almost managed to invert the true intent of democracy- the working slobs worked for them, for their perks, for their grandiosity, for their glory. Right now, at this very moment, they are being brought down to earth with a bump. They are getting the truth right between their eyes. Many of them can't handle it, apparently. Hopefully at the next election, they will be replaced by people who not only can handle it, but who see that as 'business as usual'.

Conservative party principles

From a Conservative Party email:

'This is not the Iraq Inquiry the nation wanted

William Hague has warned that the Iraq War Inquiry announced this week by Sir John Chilcot will not be "the inquiry that the nation wanted to see".

The Shadow Foreign Secretary condemned the "worrying new caveat" that sessions will be held in private not just when national security is concerned, but also when there is a need for candour.

He stressed, "If there are difficult truths to be told they should be told in the light of day, not behind closed doors."'

Can you say unprincipled shit-for-brains?

The Conservative Party were FOR THE WAR IN IRAQ. They voted for it on all possible occasions. They supported Tony Blair against his own party. If there are difficult truths to be told, how about 'you supported the war on all occasions'? Is that a difficult one for you to own up to?

The people who want an inquiry into the war have already made up their minds what its conclusions will be. Their stiflingly limited knowledge of history, their laserlike focus on a few trivial details and their cold war-hangover hatred of Britain and the United States mean that for them an inquiry is simply a formality to rubber-stamp their opinions. How dare the United States and Britain squash an enemy like an over-ripe grape? How dare they stride manfully about the world exerting power? They should be grovelling like frightened girls in the dirt, apologising for their very existence, like Obama and Hillary do.

The educated, knowledgeable, moral part of the nation which supported the war never needed an enquiry. What would it enquire into? Why spend the money? We know why the war was fought. We needed to conclude business unfinished by 'realists' Clown Colin Powell and G H W Bush. The Iraqis needed someone in charge of thier strategically pivotal nation who wasn't an aggressive psychopath. See how easy that is to explain David/William/Oliver?

So why all this pathetic half-assed pretending that you are actually principled critics of the Iraq intervention? When are we going to be governed by grown-ups?

Let the punishment fit the crime

'Pictures of models, some of whom were partially-clothed, were taken inside and outside St Michael Penkivel Church near Truro.

Cornwall-based photographer Andy Craddock is the subject of legal action by the priest in charge for blasphemy...

Andrew Yates, the priest in charge of St Michael Penkivel, said in a statement: "No permission was ever sought by or given to Mr Craddock by the priest-in-charge or by the churchwardens for these photographs.

"I am deeply shocked that Mr Craddock could consider taking action that will inevitably cause great offence."'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/8179635.stm

As a punishment for this crime, this idiot must shoot all the same pictures in a mosque in Bradford. We all know that no Christian is going to do anything serious about this disgusting behaviour, but we know some people who will! Rusty sword time Craddock.