I am the truth

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest/editor?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6464629.stm

John Simpson is the Grand BBC World Affairs Editor. His progress up the broadcast journalism tree is perplexing and inexplicable.

"And the most common feeling you come across [in Baghdad] is a kind of slow-burning, gloomy anger"

Scientists are taught during their training about a number of common mistakes easily made when doing research. One is the mistake of only seeing what you set out to find. If I were to characterise John Simpsons output concerning Iraq over the last four years "a kind of slow-burning, gloomy anger" would be a perfect description. John Simpson hates America, and he believes that the invasion of Iraq was illegal and bad. At every point since the invasion, he has wished for a coalition defeat, and has sought the precursive signs of it everywhere. When there is good news, he is silent. When there is bad news, and admittedly there has been a lot of that, he is all over it like flies on poopy. That is not journalism.

It is easy to forget how high the expectations once were.
"I don't like the feeling that my country has been invaded," a shopkeeper in Haifa street told me, a day or so after the fall of Baghdad.
"But thanks to God that it is the Americans who have done this. They are the richest country on earth. They will help us."
But they did not. They did not even protect the ministries and public buildings and museums from being looted.
We filmed as people shouted "Do something!" at an American soldier, while thieves were running out with valuable medical equipment from the hospital behind us. He just shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
Iraqis were infuriated by the gross mismanagement and open theft that American contractors and Iraqi politicians carried out in the first year after the invasion.
They had little but contempt for the feeble administration of Paul Bremer, the American proconsul whose only previous senior job had been as US ambassador to the Netherlands.

What a petulant, non-sensical, mendacious mangled wreck of a narrative.

If you want journalism, read Michael J Tottens reportage of the situation in Lebanon. Clear, factual, un-biased, brave, comprehensive and detailed, Mr Totten makes me wish we could clone him and send him all round the world. John Simpson has no interest in the facts. What interests him is the next cudgel to batter the evil Americans over the head with. Like a mopey sullen schoolboy who hates the schoolmaster, he can't bear to scrutinise things with the objectivity which might provide evidence contradictory to his prejudice. The number one rule in my media world would be, don't promote journalists whose personal psychology precludes them from being able to report the truth. Hence my quotation of Henry II's words. John Simpson believes that he is part of a monolithic truth-telling machine which is more important than politicians and voters. He believes that it is his job to enforce the views of this truth-telling machine on us simpletons. It is arrogance and hubris on a grand scale.

But as Thomas Becket discovered, pretending to power one does not actually have occasionally costs you a great deal.

Where the surge is surging

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/03/the_battle_of_diyala.php

There is going to be no hiding place soon. According to this highly detailed article, As Sadiyah and Baqubah are playing host to two thousand Al Qaeda recently evicted from Baghdad. They are right now on the receiving end of a hefty battering by the almost invincible Stryker vehicles that have reduced IED fatalities significantly for the MNF. It seems that Gen Petraeus strategy predicted a flight from Baghdad as soon as the surge details were announced, and factored it in. Being chased around Iraq is highly dangerous for Al Qaeda in Iraq operatives, now that there are many areas where they are no longer welcome. Locals in many places now believe that the MNF/Iraqi forces outgun the insurgents, and therefore are happy to shop the latter when they become a nuisance. Unlike the many Sunni nationalist local fighters, most of AQinI operatives are foreigners and are easily detectable by Iraqi government Police and Army units.

Its much too early to declare victory, but the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Progress that isn't

Is it possible to get things wrong FOREVER and still keep on keeping on?

http://www.dailykos.com/

Reuters covers the erosion of Bush's - and, thanks to him, American - credibility on two fronts:

Iraq:
Four years after he began the Iraq war, a diminished President George W. Bush has sacrificed much of his domestic agenda and eroded U.S. credibility abroad in pursuit of the sort of nation-building he once scorned, analysts say.

And global warming:
"On two issues, the United States were the only ones who spoke against consensus," German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters at the end of the two-day meeting, which he chaired on behalf of Germany's G8 presidency.

What will happen if the US builds a successful democratic multi-ethnic secular society in Iraq, and if someone produces cast-iron evidence that human beings have not caused the earths climate to warm up? Both are entirely possible. According to the 'progessives', neither can happen. And if they do? Will shame and remorse sweep across their rainbow ranks? You know thats not going to happen. Why not? Is it too much to expect that people who constantly get things wrong because they can't be bothered to learn any facts apologise for yammering away constantly on the public airwaves?

Islam: Religion of bullies

http://www.faithfreedom.org/comics/introduction.htm

Excellent exposition of the malignant psychology of Islam. Especially well described is the process by which the psychopathology of the founder becomes the normative behaviour model for the cult-like followers.

"The narcissists feel grandiose and self-important. They want to be acknowledged without commensurate merit. They want recognition and preferential treatment without feeling any obligation to reciprocate. They get their sense of self-importance by putting you down, criticizing you, decrying your world and disparaging your values, but you are not allowed to slight them. It is okay for them to violate your rights, abuse you and even kill you, but you are not supposed to mistreat them in the slightest way."

I would change that slightly- I believe that the sense of self-importance is derived from the utter conviction that Muhammad is God, pretty much, and that therefore every other religion is deficient. No other religion spends as much time as Islam touting their prophet, and defaming other religions for not recognising him. Christianity and Judaism are the main targets, although the religions that Islam met with later were treated with even greater disdain.

I believe one of Islams biggest problems is it arrived very late in a crowded market. Not only did Muhammad have to persuade Christians and Jews that he was the prophet, he had to contend with a myriad of long-established local religions in Arabia. The Koran is full of rancorous bile against all those around Muhammad in Arabia who just wouldn't believe his spluttering protestations, and rejected his prophethood. That left a legacy of bitterness that we see in Muslims today. The reason their prophet is so important to them is that unlike most of the worlds large religions, Islam has no universal moral foundations. It is a personality cult. The only absolutes in Islam are that all people must submit to the Muslim God and recognise Muhammad as his prophet. Violence for instance is OK if its directed against non-believers. There are no unequivocal condemnations of violence in the Koran, only violence against believers.

Judaism and Christianity are are a constant reminder that for millions in the Middle East in the seventh century, Muhammad did not succeed in his proselytising task. Men with AK-47's and daggers are currently trying to rectify that all over the Middle East, and with backpack bombs in Britain. As Ali Sina at FaithFreedom points out, Islam is the religion of bullies. And the last thing you do with bullies is give them an inch.

Many chinks of daylight in Iraq

http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/

Very interesting confirmation of a trend which has just emerged in Iraq over at Iraq the Model. My sense from reading both MSM and blog info, particularly Milblogs, is that a genuine plain simple Iraqi nationalism is emerging. This simple non-fascistic nationalism is rising to replace sectarianism in some of the most unlikely places.

"At last Friday’s ceremony in a major Shia mosque by a senior Shia cleric — in Najaf no less — Tehran’s interference in Iraq was roundly criticized, calling it an interference that “is not in Iraq’s interest.”Another story notes the withdrawal of the Fadheela Party from the Shia bloc (the UIA). The Fadheela leaders said the reason for breaking away from the UIA was because the UIA didn’t act as a patriotic movement. This step stands as a challenge by the Arabic hierarchy of Yaqoubi (the Ayatollah behind Fadheela) to the Iranian-born Sistani and his hierarchy, combined with a call for nonsectarian political process."

Of course, there are still many blocs of die-hard sectarians who will probably have to be physically destroyed, but if this simple nationalism becomes widespread and covers all three major sections (Kurd north, Sunni centre and Shia south) Iraq will have a major chance of weathering this brutal storm. Many stories are emerging of local Sheikhs and Police chiefs fronting up to local militias and Islamists and winning the vital small local battles which will collectively turn the tide in this conflict. This is genuinely new. I would credit the surge at least in part for this affect. Also, the seemingly interminable nature of this conflict has its own strange logic. The longer the 'insurgency' has gone on, the less viable and meaningful it has become to many of the protagonists. Certainly many Sunni groups who were involved in the popular resistance to the 'occupiers' are now toying with joining up to the national government. High mortality rates and a national government that seems to be genuinely Iraqi and genuinely across-the-board both contribute to their changed mood, I'm guessing.

Iraq the Model does sound one note of warning: "All in all, things are not going the way Khamenie or Nejad were dreaming of just a few months ago. Overall the course of events recently in Iraq indicates the beginning of a severe fall for Iran’s stocks in Iraq.Of course we shouldn’t expect Iran to just sit back and not respond. I think an escalation in attacks by militias loyal to Iran will take place soon, especially outside Baghdad."

In a conversation yesterday, it was mooted that the Baghdad surge would simply move the problem elsewhere, as with Fallujah (not a proven case in my view). The crucial thing, as Gen Petraeus would point out, is that the Baghdad surge is no such thing- the point of the extra 22,000 US troops is to have a surge across the whole of the Sunni heartlands at the same time. A brief perusal of the total output of stories about individual unit actions over the last week or so reveals operations up and down the Sunni triangle. For that portion of the insurgency that is the Sunni nationalists, there is literally nowhere to hide. As far as I can tell, Al Qaeda in Iraq are on the run in many places, especially in those locations where the local population have become more nationalist. The Islamist world-view conflicts directly with nationalism of any variety, hence the waning fortunes of the former.

This insurgency is not over, but we may be seeing the beginning of the end.

Forget Troy, here's the Ancient World on screen

The 300, a superb film about Thermopylae, is causing rucks all over the place. Thats because it is the first non-post-modern, non-knowingly-wry, non-world-weary, non-orthodox-anti-war war movie to be made by Hollywood in a long time. It shows men who want to be free fighting against the men who would enslave and kill them. And thats about it. From the moment I saw the trailer I knew there was going to be trouble. Most of the 'ancient history epic' type movies that have been made in the last fifteen years are blow-dried, freshly shaven, gonadless, non-threatening pap and have white mens guilt writ large across the proscenium. See Troy, Kingdom of Heaven etc ad nauseum. They are fluffy and history-free and most especially the history which might show great deeds done by small groups of highly-motivated free men.

The 300 has developed its own mini-industry of critical mock-horror. A common thread is to compare it directly with Nazi (as in Germany) propaganda. No shilly-shallying about with Soviet propaganda or any of the other propaganda that has existed since time immemorial. Noooooo. Nazi propaganda. I get the distinct impression that for many Americans and Europeans, there have really only ever been two significant historical times- Nazi Germany and Nazi America. Oddly, nobody mentions in these screeds how one of the great liberal causes of the last 250 years, the Greek fight for independence from the Ottoman empire, was sustained and overtly linked back to the original Greek war for independence from the all-conquering Persians. That was back when liberals tended to a) be better educated and b) understand what being a liberal implied. Hint: Liberals are meant to be on the side of freedom, not oppressive tyranny.

So I guess the reviewers are sympathetic to the present day Persians- the men who declare day after day their desire to conquer the world and force it to obey Allah and his messenger Moham-n-cheese. Men whose treatment of infidels, women, gays, Christians and everybody else who isn't one of them reminds me a bit of the Nazis. But I mustn't equate the two, must I? Although the facts fit rather better than comparing some filmmakers in Hollywood to Nazi propagandists. Still, the best thing to do really is describe things as they are, in the particular, without resorting to pointless and inaccurate historical parallels that you don't have any basis for... any movie critics reading?

Did anybody WATCH the documentary?

http://globalisation-and-the-environment.blogspot.com/2007/03/great-global-warming-swindle.html

According to George Monbiot, "The programme’s thesis revolves around the deniers’ favourite canard: that the “hockey-stick graph” showing rising global temperatures is based on a statistical mistake made in a paper by the scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes(11)." The hockey-stick graph was mentioned exactly zero times in this documentary, which I watched last night.

Mr Monbiot then goes for ad hominem insult: "In 1997, the director, Martin Durkin, produced a very similar series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which also maintained that global warming was a scam dreamt up by environmentalists. It was riddled with hilarious scientific howlers." Would Mr Monbiot like to tell us what they were? No. Didn't think he would.

We now enter the even more deranged world of the comments section-

"Global warming cannot be caused by Solar activity. For the following reasons. Since life has formed on earth the suns energy has increased from 25% output to 30%, yet the Earths surface temperature has remained the same. How? It is becayse the living Earth can adapt to it's environment (in this case the sun). What this program fails to recognise is that in order for the earth to maintain it's consistency in adapting to the ever-increasing heat, it needs for us HUMANS to not f**k it up by filling the skies with CO2 (thanks aircraft!). Consider this before you disregard humans as the cause for global warming." Can't spell, but can solve the worlds problems from his bedroom... The earths surface temperature has remained the same through the whole of its history? Okay, good argument. Did this guy actually watch the program?

"Climate change isn't a certainty, but when an enormous body of science tells me that something has a 90% probability I tend to believe it. I would question the objectivity of anyone in the non-scientific community who doesn't believe it." Really? If 100% of physicists believe that Newtonian physics pretty much covers all the bases, and one young scruffy Jewish scientist says actually it doesn't, and writes the proofs to demonstrate he is right, I guess that all the orthodox physicists are right because there are more of them...

According to the info on this blog, Rob Elliott, Matt Cole & David Maddison are environmental economists at the University of Birmingham, UK. What is an environmental economist? Does an environmental economist accept a priori that human activities on planet earth always have a 'cost'? If so, their conclusions must always be asterisked with doubt. For many ordinary people, human activity is just as legitimate as say, wolf activity or whale activity. But a whole industry based on human badness and human culpability has grown up, and for them human activity is a scourge and source of shame. How sad.

What the BBC does to inconvenient truth

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6420000/newsid_6426300/6426397.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm

"Now, all of us take a deep breath, prepare to rethink our ideas about our ancestry. We're familiar of course with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, while most of the people in the rest of the British isles derived from Celtic ancestors, but now a medical geneticist is arguing that we can forget those Celtic ties. Deep down, we've far more in common with the Basques! Dr Steven Oppenheimer from Oxford University has written "The Origins of the British: a genetic detective story". So our ancestors were Basques not Celts, is that it in a nutshell? Yes."

Dr Oppenheimer then goes on to explain the genetic link between the Basque country and the British Isles. Turns out that two thirds of the native population of the British Isles are descended from that region straddling the Spanish-French border, and most of the other third are are descended from the first farmers to settle in these island between six and four thousand years ago. Who cares? Obviously not the BBC. Despite, or perhaps because, of the implications this has for the debate about immigration, there is no text story on the BBC covering this subject. If it turns out that rather than being in Britain for only one thousand five hundred years, two-thirds of the people in Britain have been here for eight to ten thousand years, and most of the rest for four-to-six thousand years, the great PC argument that 'we are all immigrants' here in Britain starts to look like the most desperate of garbage.

Prominence given to this story by the BBC? On the same page as this audio story, it has links to two other stories: 'Rare twin giraffes born in zoo' and a story about a video games conference in San Francisco. If the conclusions of Dr Oppenheimer were that actually most British people had arrived in Britain since 1600, I'm guessing there would have been a big story on the front page of the Beeb website, certainly a text story in the Nature/Science bit. This disgusting PC manipulation of inconvenient truths is very close to social engineering.

The idea that immigrants need to be molly-coddled by the media with fake stories about how we are all recent immigrants so they won't feel like such intruders is based on garbage reasoning. Immigrants ALWAYS feel like intruders into an alien place full of people unlike themselves- that is the lot of the migrant. I've done it and I know exactly what it feels like. But these PC idiocies do nothing to change the raw facts: over time, immigrants meld more or less successfully into the general population. Humans have been doing this for all recorded history and presumably long before. Its hard and stressful but after a few generations it happens. To try to sugar the pill by lying to immigrants is both stupid and unnecessary. Most immigrants have a much more hard-nosed view of moving to a new and alien land. Most take it for granted that life will be difficult until they learn the language, learn the culture and find a way to successfully live in this new situation.

That has not stopped our PC legions from developing The Utterly Moronic way of 'helping' people to migrate to Britain. This includes: giving migrants all their many government hand-outs IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, thereby precluding the necessity of learning English. Telling them over and over again that there is no reason to learn or adapt to British culture, they can keep their own GUARANTEEING conflict with British people who may not like Pakistani culturally-acceptable murder of relatives for instance, or African genital mutilation of women. And constantly excoriating the native population in print and on TV and on the radio about their terrible terrible racism, the end result of which is that new immigrants automatically assume that the British ARE racist (beyond the human norm).

Racism (a very poor replacement for the term in-group exclusivity) is endemic to humans. It is everywhere and in all people. Its also not a problem. Discrimination, the day-to-day punishment of people for being outsiders, is a problem. Dhimmitude is a perfect example of discrimination enacted into law. Britain has done a very effective job of suppressing discrimination, as have many countries in western Europe and North America. They have done this through legislation. In-group exclusivity, however is permanent and not open to legislative pressure. Neither should it be. You only have to look at individuals like Michael Portillo and Sgt Beharry to understand that In-group exclusivity very quickly allows the migrant to be in the group if they are successful at adapting to the groups norms and folkways. That should be the goal- not the formation of dozens of disgruntled, badly-adapted, politicised minorities all agitating for a better deal from the racist natives. I already hear a lot of chatter to this affect from New Labour, who have gone down that road and have reaped its awful harvest. Not so much from New Conservatives though. Will we spend another ten years while DaveC learns the same things?

Most mendacious headline of the week

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6431637.stm

"PM 'says Israel pre-planned war'"

You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to understand exactly how that headline will be read by the millions upon millions of Jew-haters across Britain and the world: Israel conspired to provoke the war in South Lebanon (for its own devious purposes.

The mundane truth that EVERY country has established military doctrines about what to do in certain statistically likely scenarios confronting it will not intrude into the caterwauling that will now follow this 'revelation'. Germany had the Schlieffen plan concocted many years before world war one. It then used this plan not once but twice, the second time successfully, because Germany's geographic situation means that its permanent number one enemy is France. Sadly, Israels permanent number one enemy is the whole of the Ummah. So it has, one presumes, a cast-iron contingency plan for invasion and attack from every one of its neighbors; even plans covering its near-non-neighbors too. The 'revelation' of this fact is not interesting except to BBC journos and the Muslim conspiracy theorists. I don't know who I loathe more.

News thats just not fit to print

http://www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/756.htm

How come I didn't read about this on the BBC website? Fifty million dollars is not pocket change. If people knew about the vast scale of Irans efforts to ignite civil war in Iraq, they might think Iran needed a good kicking. But surely the BBC wouldn't suppress information like that?

Steady now, here's your prozac

Follow-on from the previous post:

Dean Esmay:
#3 is contingent upon your belief that Osama Bin Laden is right and that Islam has been at war with Christianity and "the West" for 1,400 years. Which means that you think Osama Bin Laden is somehow an "authentic voice" for Islam. Stop trying to rationalize it. #3 is as stupid and destructive as all the rest. If you don't recognize this, there's an obvious course of action for you: Look up in the upper right hand corner for the little "X" button. Click it. Then don't come back. If you want to embrace fucking nutjob conspiracy theorist murderer logic, then do it somewhere else. This isn't the place for you. This point is as non-negotiable as all the rest. There is no 1,400 year old war except in the minds of deluded psychopaths. If you think there is one, then you need to go and play with your fellow paranoid nutjob friends. "Non-negotiable" means exactly what you think it means. I don't much give a fuck whether you like it or not, either. Go find somewhere else to play if you cannot accept basic sanity as a precondition to discussions.
2.27.2007 10:20pm

Wowsa! Listen to the words of a man on the brink... I fear entering this thicket of blind rage, contradiction, dogmatic instransigence and abuse. Dean Esmay is epitomal of what people call the left side of the blogosphere. As far as I'm concerned there is no longer any viable left-wing and right-wing; the labels don't really denote anything much any more. But his is a representative voice of the new orthodoxy: the one which inhabits vast swathes of academic America, academic Britain and academic Europe. It is as screechingly intolerant and incoherent as the nuttiest Appalachian snake-handlers, and becomes ferocious when its pieties are not observed. It has very strong values: Industry=evil. Technology=evil. Hierarchy=evil. Christianity=evil. Enterprise=evil. Tradition=evil. Big business=evil. Scientific investigation=bad. White people=evil.
Basket weaving by African women=good. Donkey-cart=good. Village commune=good. Islam=good. Sitting around a squat smoking dope=good. Dissing all the white-man oppressor shit=good. Making bad pottery by hand=good. Shamanic insights=good. Not-white people=good.
Millions and millions of college students all over the 'west' are being inculcated with these values right now. Many of them suck it up and are permanent converts to this set of beliefs. Its not communism, and I don't know where it sits on any possible political spectrum, but it now has a huge constituency. In fact, it is now the dominant belief pattern for a very large minority of the population.

What will happen when this generation of young people become our politicians, policemen, judges and councillors? The semi-permanent foundation of British society will be destroyed, of that I am in no doubt: what will happen next I'm pretty sure I don't want to see.

I order you to stop arguing

http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1172621961.shtml

'Simply put, you must agree with all of the following assertions:

1) Islam does not represent the forces of Satan or the Anti-Christ bent on destruction of the Christian world.
2) There is no 1,400 year old "war with the West/Christianity" being waged by Muslims or anyone else.
3) Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women's rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.
4) Medieval, anachronistic, obscure terms like "dhimmitude" or "taqiyya" are suitable for polite intellectual discussion. They are not and never will be appropriate to slap in the face of everyday Muslims or their friends.
5) Muslims have no more need to prove that they can be good Americans, loyal citizens, decent people, or enemies of terrorism than anyone else does.

Is this a test of "ideological purity?"
Why yes. Yes it is.'

I bring this to your attention merely as an extension of my post the other day about the suppression of debate by the Political Correctoids. "not suitable for polite intellectual discussion"? I am overcome with the heady fumes of The Soviet Commissar breathing down my neck. Perhaps a little bit like the Roman Catholic church in its more authoritarian moods, the PC brigade are very definite about things that are debatable to the point where the disinterested observer would suspect an underlying streak of insecurity.

'Islam as a religion is no more inherently incompatible with modernity, minority rights, women's rights, or democratic pluralism than most religions.' Thats a huge amount of intellectual territory to give up, what with the sheer tonnage of evidence to the contrary.

In fact, if you add up all the intellectual standpoints ruled out of play by these rules, what in the current world political scene would you have left to talk about?

Respect Africa- treat it like its just another continent

http://africantears.netfirms.com/eddiecross.htm

One of my longest-standing pet peeves is the treatment Africa gets from Big Media, the politicians and the chatterati in Britain. Essentially, they don't care about it. When they can be bothered to think about Africa for a second or two, they are happy to indulge in grotesque caricatures and simplistic gibberish.

This article explains in language that even the dimmest Labour MP could understand (hopefully) what Mr Robert Mugabe has done to Zimbabwean farmers. His actions and their consequences are not mysterious, they don't obey economic laws that only exist in Africa, and they are open to all the usual analyses. Mugabe has stolen a huge amount of stuff from his own people, and trashed his economy as a consequence. This article elucidates the details of the crime: who did it, when, what was stolen, what impact that has had, and what can be expected to happen in the future.

Anybody who reads it, and then understands that Zimbabwe is the microcosmic Africa, is much closer to understanding why Africa is in such a disgusting and pitiful state. It wasn't the white men who raped and pillaged Africa- it was the black men who inherited those prosperous nations. From Uganda to Zambia, from Angola to Mozambique, the history of post-colonial Africa has been a vast parade of declining output, declining business creation, declining GDP, much more hostile business environments and crazy bureaucracy. In Britain, it takes one day to incorporate a new Company; In Mozambique, it takes 139 days. Add to the mix Africa's addiction to pseudo-marxism, rampant corruption and kleptocratic political classes and the state of the continent starts to become explicable.

For as long as the truth is suppressed there is no remedy for Africa. Every month that goes by Zimbabwe disappears down the toilet of history a little further. Many of the large industries that thrived in the late 1990's are now on their last legs. When they fail, Zimbabwe will topple into an abyss. And thats all Mr Mugabe's fault. He has a vice-like grip on the country, enforced by the Army and Police. The land invasions of the early 21st century destroyed the linchpin in the Zimbabwean economy. Everything since has been utterly predictable, while at the same time being heartbreaking and tragic.

Will Britain and the world ever learn to care about Africa and Africans? Will they care enough to stop babbling about imperial oppression and punitive debt repayments and start talking about proper government by men with morals, obedience to law, respect for the average citizen, a decent business environment with regulation that makes sense, and enshrinement of the sanctity of private property? Until Africans are expected to act like we do, and gain the benefits that that brings, our attitude to them will be patronising and counter-productive.

Is it a joke? Is he really really dumb?

"Muslims demand "Taleban-style" conditions in our schools.
That was the Daily Express' version of new guidelines for schools from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).
In fact, there was no reference that I could find to the Taleban anywhere in the report. Such are the dangers of polarising this debate by inflated language."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6391271.stm

Good argument! Strange how the MCB didn't incorporate that Daily Express headline into their report...

Islam will rule the world! (insane cackling)

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/015339.php

'Saudi Arabia wants an apology from a Dutch politician who said Muslims should "tear out half the Koran" if they wanted to live in his country and has asked the Dutch government to intervene, a Saudi newspaper said on Sunday. '

Say a Saudi Arabian government official said to Christians living in Saudi that they would have to tear out half the Bible if they wanted to live there... oh wait, you are not allowed to live in Saudi Arabia as a Christian. Damn, there goes my analogy. Crazy crazy Goddamn world.

Thanks, 9/11 truthers

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2017006,00.html

"9/11 fantasists pose a mortal danger to popular oppositional campaigns. These conspiracy idiots are a boon for Bush and Blair as they destroy the movements some of us have spent years building"

Only the coldest of hearts wouldn't sympathise with George Monbiot at the damage being wreaked on his conspiracy theory movement by the 9/11 truther brigades. Saying that, I find a smirk playing across my face at this rather elegant example of poetic justice. George Monbiot, a marxist eco-fanatic, does have an established place in British politics. His conspiracy theories are less entertaining than the 9/11 truthers, involving as they do mundane things like the fascistic nature of the George W Bush administration and the fascistic nature of the Tony Blair administration, the control of the world by large corporations, the mind-control exercised by the media on behalf of the Bush/Blair fascists, the plot of rich western nations to keep the 3rd world (or whatever we're calling the poor countries this week) in deep poverty and riddled with aids, the denial by many conservatives of the obvious truth of man-generated global warming and lots of other entirely un-controversial ideas.

To me, its a bit like the village idiot getting in a complete tiz when a much more incoherent nutjob wanders into town. 'Get out of town, you are ruining my whole schtick!'

Saying that, I do believe Mr Monbiot has pointed out at least a couple of valid truths about conspiracy theorists. "The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless." How true. "The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a displacement activity. A displacement activity is something you do because you feel incapable of doing what you ought to do." I would replace 9/11 conspiracy theories with ALL conspiracy theories, but I think the psychological insight is valid. Can't be bothered with learning how the world works? Invent a crazy conspiracy theory. Feel like you have no access to the real deliberations that affect our lives? Invent a conspiracy theory that makes you feel like you REALLY know how those important events played out.

Remember how it was always some dweeby country yokel who saw the UFO? It never seemed to be Ivy league professors, or millionaire lawyers... Ever noticed how the originators of conspiracy theories are always internet geeks or lonely assistant professors of Sociology? Can't imagine why they would feel that world events are controlled by potent powerful men with virtually superhuman powers...

I would say that actually the 9/11 truthers are a boon all round- they show the nature of 'movements' like that of George Monbiot to be what they are- silly, unfounded wastes of time, a displacement activity for genuine engagement in politics and the lives of nations.

Denizens of the PC realm

"4 of 28 people found the following review helpful: Offensive and Poorly-Written, February 18, 2007
Reviewer:
C. Marshall "cmstar17" (USA) - See all my reviews I accidentally purchased this book online and, after realizing my mistake, sat down to read through a few chapters. Everything I read was unfounded and offensive, the epitome of partisan hackery. If you value your ability to think freely and interact compassionately with the world, do NOT read this book. Comments (4) Was this review helpful to you? "

This is a review of 'America Alone' from the Amazon US website. Mark Steyn noticed it too,

"But C Marshall calls it "unfounded and offensive": "If you value your ability to think freely and interact compassionately with the world, do NOT read this book." Instead, do as C Marshall tells you: that's the best way to maintain your ability to think freely."

One of the most prominent features of the politically correct establishment is their complete lack of desire to confront facts outside their comfort zone. Viz, this story from Emory University about the comical lack of honesty Ex-President Jimmah Carter has shown since he wrote a book about the Israel/Arab conflict. Mr Carter included copious blurb indicating that he was writing the book to help promote debate and dialogue blah blah blah, and ever since has energetically avoided any debate about it. A group of Emory University professors have publically called him on this, and it remains to be seen whether he can screw his courage to the sticking point and debate people who disagree with him AND know the facts.

Do you get the impression that C Marshall, Jimmah Carter and many many other people embedded in the giant warm fuzzy Politically Correctosphere believe that NOT reading books by the people they disagree with will give them the "...ability to think freely and interact compassionately with the world"? I recently had an argument with a colleague about the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians, and virtually every word she said was parroted propaganda from the many Pali mouthpieces, and virtually none of it was true. I mean, verifiably and demonstrably not true, objectively not true, go-and-see-for-yourself not true. I didn't point this out aggressively, but I did try to insinuate a few facts during the occasional pauses in her diatribe. She kept on saying "I sympathise with the Palestinians!" in a very in-my-face way, as if she would definitely slap me if I suggested that might not be a right or good thing to do. My response was "I sympathise with the Palestinians too [although it must be said that my sympathy for them is a lot like my sympathy for the German populace in the direct aftermath of WWII- larded with a great consciousness of how much their travails were self-inflicted]. I also sympathise with Israelis." She stopped on hearing this, as if the tape recording had run out, and lost interest in the conversation completely.

It has been of great interest to me that many people outside the Politically-Correstosphere have started reading books about Islam, about Muhammad, about Middle Eastern history, culture and politics. Much of this is on the basis that one should know ones enemies at least as well as ones friends, but whatever. There is an obvious willingness to engage with 'the other' and find out what their properties are; what their strengths and weaknesses are; what their nature seems to be. The Politically Correct legions are not like that- they are satisfied to echo back and forth between each other the same formulations, the same theories and motifs, the same truthy factoids (truth lite). And if anyone tries to intrude into this circle jerk, they are met with great incivility and blocked off. Which is weird, because people often imagine that the messages of Political Correctness are liberal ones, free-speaking ones, voices of the enlightenment. They are not. Political Correctness is the voice of a suffocating political orthodoxy, whose progenitors are the Germany of Hitler and the Russia of Stalin.

The content of this political orthodoxy is the anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-male, anti-Christian hodge-podge of ideologies that washed around US universities in the 1960's. The petulant and the resentful children of the rich sucked up a noxious, confused brew which they've been quaffing ever since, and now they are disoriented and lost because of it. The world just didn't correspond in any way to the great mish-mash of hippy counter-culture memes, but they used to try to make the facts conform anyway. I say used to, because they now seem to have given up even that vain enterprise, and have now chosen the path of sticking their fingers in their ears and going la-la-la I can't hear you!

The problem for America, and by extension America's friends, is that many of the petulant and resentful now occupy government jobs, both elected and bureacratic and they don't love us. They don't want us to win. They believe that every little child crying in an African hell-hole is our fault. They believe that the Israelis are fascistic baby-killers. They believe that America is all about the corporations and the preppies and the Republican old boys network. And they believe that all the brown people and the yellow people and the black people are just lovely and if only the conservative/Republican death merchants would leave them alone they would be getting on in perfect harmony together in their picturesque, bucolic little countries, paragons of understanding and natural virtue (see the Borat movie). Any evidence to the contrary is... unnecessary.

I remember saying in an earlier post that these acid-and-marxism-deformed minds would soon be leaving public life aka Bill Clinton, and that we would be in much better shape as a result. I think that was premature- they have spawned a whole generation like themselves, and it is them, as well as the Islamofascists who we must engage in battle.

Unless the Iraqis save themselves, no one will

http://www.mudvillegazette.com/archives/007850.html

'GEN. CALDWELL: The difference this time in the Iraqi security plan is, you know, as we've discussed before, is there's three aspects. It's not just a military plan; there's the political and economic piece associated with it. Unlike any time before when we have worked to deliver a plan in the city, this time, it truly is -- the Iraqis have put forth a political will. They are demonstrating the political will to follow through and make the tough commitment.
The fact that the prime minister on January 25th went and talked to the council representatives and laid out the principles of this plan to them, and then there is a overwhelming majority vote that voted in favor of those principles, of which a key aspect is no political interference with military commanders conducting their operations within the city, and the fact that there are no off-limit areas either within the city -- so there is an incredible political will this time that we have not seen before.'

Reading this made me think about the vice that Iraqis find themselves in: The vice created by the utter disinterest Iran and the Jihadi nutters have for whether Iraq becomes a desert full of bones. For both parties, the only thing that counts is giving America a bloody nose. And if giving America a bloody nose means that hundreds of thousand more Iraqi bystanders have to die in disgusting ways, oh well, never mind.

There seems to be a realisation among Iraqis at every level that if they don't save themselves, they will disappear in a bloody mess, and the Iranians and the Jihadis won't shed a single tear. That burgeoning realisation is the worlds best hope that Iraq can stop itself and step back from the brink of an intra-communal bloodbath.

Cash rich, trade poor

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20070213.aspx

"France has a larger GDP than all Moslem nations put together." Ouch. And as they mention slightly earlier, "While the industrialized nations average $27,000 per person in income, the Moslem world manages only 14 percent of that. And that's despite all that oil income."

Anybody who knows their history will be reminded of the fate of the Spanish empire. Spain received billions of pounds worth of gold and silver from the New World between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth centuries, and yet both the Dutch and the British empires ended up being better at generating wealth on a permanent basis than Spains. Thats because the latter were based on trade rather than plunder, and a lot of the Spanish gold went into beautifying churches, whereas the British and Dutch spent their money on more ships and bigger companies so they could do more trade. The latter model is the one by which all modern societies become more wealthy, and their lifestyles become more luxurious.

The ones who don't bother with trade and manufacturing, and spend all their massive cash injections on penis-extension Mosque building, end up dirt poor and not at all powerful. Come back to me in fifty years, and we'll see if Iran is still a 'regional power'. I imagine they'll still be riding around in donkey carts when Europe and America have manned moon bases.

The assymetric time-bomb

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6356931.stm

'IPCC commissioner Deborah Glass said: "I've concluded that the police were right to take no chances with public safety. But they were wrong not to have planned better for the intelligence being wrong."

'...She added: "None of this should minimise the deep and understandable sense of grievance felt by all those affected by what must have been a terrifying experience."'

We are going to die in a gloopy sea of understanding. 'Planning for the intelligence to be wrong?' Who does that? In which bonkers universe do you plan your anti-terrorism operations so that in case you get the wrong people by mistake, everybody shakes hands and goes away smiling? You would never ever do that! Not if you weren't shitting yourself in the first place because you thought 'community relations' or some other made-up PR concept was at risk...

In my experience, innocent people don't mind being arrested, even with a gun pointed at their heads. Thats because they have the knowledge of their own innocence to keep them happy. Very few times have innocent people ever gone completely berserk because they were arrested by mistake (rather than imprisoned by mistake, a totally different scenario). People who start campaigns against their wrongful arrest are animated by a vigourous political ideology that wants to make the Police look as evil and brutal as possible. These two beardy twats are very obviously Muslim firebrands, and the fact that no evidence for bomb-materials was found does not mean they are not intent on making bombs. And they are using their arrest to try to humiliate the Police and the authorities to the greatest extent possible, revealing their hatred of our society.

For how much longer will ordinary Britons tolerate this extremely assymetric situation, where the majority and the institutions of state are seemingly at the mercy of fascistic religious fanatics who know how to turn our civil protections and legal systems into weapons against us?

How to get on the BBC

On the Science/Nature page of the BBC website, I was surprised to see this story. The headline was "Balancing Act: Islamic Perspective on the challenges facing the world". In the Science/Nature section? Whatever. I did, as a brief mental challenge, run through other likely headlines to find in the Science/Nature section of the BEEB website- "Balancing Act: Judaic Perspective on the challengs..."; "Balancing Act: Presbyterian Perspective on the challenges..." etc. And it made me wonder why, when the followers of Mohammed have declared low-level warfare on Britain, our taxpayer-funded news organisation would care what the Islamic perspective on melting glaciers was; Especially as no other religion would EVER be given such a platform to pontificate on matters so far away from theology. What next? The Islamic perspective on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy? The Islamic perspective on manned exploration of Mars? The Islamic perspective on the The Police getting back together?

Islam has contributed virtually nothing to modern Britain other than a series of expensive lawsuits about clothes and a pile of dead bodies on wrecked public transport. But that seems to have elevated it to a lofty position, indeed a unique position as a religion in Britain. Nobody at the BBC would ever DREAM of inviting the Catholic Archbishop to contribute a blurb about global warming- in fact, apart from the vicious anti-Opus Dei propaganda pieces, it would be impossible to detect the Catholic church's existence from BBC output. Same goes for Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Seventh-Day Adventism, the Baptists, the Ecumenicals and every other religion. The BBC disdains religion in general. But it seems that Islam has literally blasted its way into the limelight.

There is the pleasant story we tell children about how the world works- and then there's actually what happens. In the pleasant story, we never deal with terrorists, violence brings no rewards, and blackmail only brings disaster on the blackmailer. But what has happened in Britain is that Islam has gone from invisible on the radar of British people, including journalists, to one of the most discussed topics between them. It has forced millions of people to try to 'understand' Islam, solicit their ideas on everything from foreign policy to prison toilet design, and give them a voice even on the Science/Nature page of the BBC website. I am not the first person to point this out but it bears repeating- we have set up a system of rewards and payoffs for Muslim aggression that will come back to haunt us in a big way unless we get to grips with it.

The Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher deprived Sinn Fein of the 'oxygen of publicity' to the greatest extent possible, even banning Jerry Adams voice from being broadcast. In 2007, the BBC has plumped for the exact opposite. Are you an Imam with a view on Cheese production in the Limoges? Come on down! Are you an Imam with strong opinions about garden gnomes? We have a half-hour slot we need filling. Muslims are constantly paraded before us, as if they were the majority and we were the minority. You can't get away from them! Why? Because they have made Britain sit up and pay attention. By ruthless violence, by a constant drizzle of mendacious media pieces, by an aggressive and singleminded campaign to dominate, Muslims have fought their way to the top of the pile, certainly at the BBC.

Have you learned your lesson yet?

England win one day series in Australia

Click on the picture for a better view.

I just had to post this. Its such a rare event, we really have to milk it when it happens.

Go England!! Away the lads!

Moan, whinge, gripe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6352965.stm

This makes me so angry I could spit. Israel could, if it wanted to, destroy the Dome of the Rock or turn it into a holy place for their religion. If Israel was a Muslim country, thats exactly what it WOULD do, as evidence from many countries during many historical eras demonstrates. But instead, Israel is replete with mosques, even ones which dominate the landscape of the holiest sites for both Christians and Jews.

And yet!! And yet!! The perenially angry people are still willing to riot and go mental when Israel does some civil engineering works well away from this mosque. I am so sick of these people and their constant berating and their constant moaning and their constant self-declared victim status. Just because they aren't powerful enough to force us into dhimmitude and slave status, their energy is occupied with whingeing.

Bah!

I like us

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/

"I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

How did climate change become so partisan that Ms Ellen Goodman would make this kind of comment in a mainstream newspaper in America and the Democrat half of her readership would agree with her? For a non-initiate in the fanatical religion of Eco-self-loathing, comparing a skeptical view of whether global warming exists and if it does, whether its our fault; with fascists and Islamo-fascists who deny the holocaust is surreal. Over the last two or three weeks, a much harder Eco-religious line has been in evidence on the 'denial' issue. We're not quite to the point where no cartoons may be drawn that mock the Eco-religious or their prophets, but it can't be too long.

For me, as I suspect for many well-educated conservatives, the main question would be: is something true because a huge number of scientists voted for it at a conference? It may be likely, but there is no reason why it must be true. And if I choose not to accept their vote, what does that imply about me? That I am obviously a deranged maniac who hates the worlds children and grandchildren, and is willing to condemn them to a scorching death so that Mobil and Exxon can keep their profit margins for a few more years? Or that a healthy skepticism of the political views of scientists is a sensible state to maintain given how badly wrong scientists as a herd have been in the recent past?

When it comes to demonstrable, verifiable, reproducible matters of fact, I am willing to follow the scientists pretty much anywhere- as, presumably, are all the other people in society who value rationality and the empirical way of finding truth. What I will not do is venture off with even very large groups of scientists into an unknowable future and make very bad decisions about what I do today based on shaky political positions linked to models of what might happen in the future. As Mark Steyn points out, twenty five years ago there were large groups of scientists predicting an impending Ice Age. There was lots of good evidence pointing to it, and who knows, maybe it will still happen. The truth is we didn't know enough about how the world works to say whether there was going to be an ice age, and we don't know enough about the world to really say whether there is human-attributable global warming. We also don't know whether human-attibutable global warming would be a bad thing or a good thing. As with many things, there would probably be winners and losers. Large parts of Canada, Russia and North America that are currently very cold would warm up and become habitable. Large parts of Africa and Asia would be too hot for human habitation. The middle east would become much hotter, and would desertify.

There is the possibility that the earth will become much more hostile to humans whether we do nothing and even if we do all the things that the Eco-fanatics want us to do. 74,000 years ago there were only about twenty/thirty people on the planet, due to the collision of a very large body with the earth and a resultant 'nuclear winter'. In 74,000 years from now, maybe there will only be twenty/thirty people again due to circumstances beyond our control. Cutting carbon emissions does make sense, but there are many many threats to us that we have no answer for, no levers to turn.

What I suspect many conservatives feel is that they don't trust the scientists to make a valid judgement about human responsibility. There is a pervasive conviction amongst the neo-hippies, lefties, anti-globalists and eco-doommongers that humans are a scourge, a disease and a blot on the planet. In my personal experience, a large majority of scientists exist at least to some extent in that world-view. And because the conviction that we are inherently destructive of the world, and that we have no right to live on the earth and use it for our purposes informs so much of scientific debate, those of us who like the human race and approve of its role on the planet can't really get on board with the scientists conclusions.

There is also the curious matter of 'steady state'. Much of the debate on global warming assumes that there is a 'normal' state for the earths climate. Most of the last three million years, the earth has been plunging into ice ages, with very large percentages of all the pure water on the planet locked up in the ice caps. Before that- not. Could we be reverting to what the earth maintained as a 'steady state' before three million years ago? Can we possibly say? I'm guessing not. Much as our information has improved, the earth is vastly more complex than even our most developed models, and therefore behaves according to rules which we just don't know about yet. Perhaps we won't ever discover them, as the tools for finding out are beyond our capacity to build.

I wish I knew more about all the various strands of science which together form the corpus of knowledge about earth climate- but not because I want to 'prove' that global warming doesn't exist, or that human beings didn't make it happen. I don't believe that this is a partisan issue at all, and consider the 'Easter Island' parable a highly persuasive argument for us. For those of you who don't know the story, the Polynesians who migrated to Easter Island cut down all the trees to make canoes and failed to plant any. After the last trees were cut down, Easter Island civilisation imploded and became hideously murderous, because there was no escape from the island and no way to fish and provide food. If we find that we are behaving in a way which will lead directly to the destruction of our own societies, we should of course change our behaviour and live 'sustainably'. Hopefully we can detect more effectively than the 'Easter Islanders' which branch we are sitting on and stop sawing.

But I don't see a future where large numbers of people join up with the human-haters and vote for ending our way of life when the main reason for doing so is a crazed sense of guilt for existing in the first place.

The not-so-much answer to the American electorates questions

'I--there's no answer to that question at this moment. I think that it's a--it's a--it's a very bad thing for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. I think we have--we have many steps in front of us that have not been used. We ought to negotiate directly with the Iranians, which has not, not been done. The things that I just talked about, I think, are the right approach in dealing with Iran. And then we'll, we'll see what the result is. . . . I think--I think the--we don't know, and you have to make a judgment as you go along, and that's what I would do as president.'

Good answer! Thats John Edwards quoted from the Powerline blog. Can you say Bill Clinton the second?

Our dreary future

'MS: And I put a quote up at the National Review’s website, from the Ayatollah Khomenei, which is I think one of the all-time great quotes, in which the Ayatollah says there are no jokes in Islam, there is no fun in Islam. This is something he wrote, and appears in his big volume of collected writings that was published in the holy city of Qum in 1990. And I love it. It’s a fantastic quote, because it points out one of the big differences between us and the enemy, which is that the enemy is totally humorless. And I think it’s rather disturbing that Andrew Sullivan, who mocks so many of the rest of us on the right as theocrats, is, in fact, turning into a bit of a, you know, theocrat-wise, he’s getting close to the Ayatollah Khomenei in his sense of humor.'

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=cdd2ee56-d848-4da4-b3f3-9ebaff30bab9

This is a point that I have made before. I do see a massive change between the state of humor now and when I was a child. The English sense of humour has always been a coruscating, wild, rude and dangerous one. It was historically one of the main creative outlets for ordinary people. Its targets were very often the stupid, the unlucky, the unwise, the ugly and the cuckolded. It was no gentle thing. But it also did not spare the lofty aristocrat and the professional man and the high Churchmen and the 'great and good'. In fact, it was very wide-ranging and egalitarian in its abuse. This rough democracy added a great strength to English culture, because it allowed even the meanest among us to verbalise their distaste, disgust or disenchantment in a completely harmless way, while giving great pleasure to those telling the jokes, and those listening to them.

The refusal of Muslims to allow any mention of the content of Islam, let alone jokes about it comes at the end of a long process of narrowing down of the allowable topics for jokes. When I was a child, there were jokes about black people, Irishmen and/or Catholics, physical disability, mean Scotsmen, daft Welshmen and a thousand other topics that are now completely forbidden to the humorist. Instead of a roughhouse democracy, we now have a situation where the butt of all jokes must be a white, protestant man- the last group of people yet to recieve any kind of special dispensation when it comes to abuse. Soon, though, I believe that will change. And we just won't have humour at all. We will become Ayatollah Khomeneis, and everything will be sober and dull and boring. The superb humour of Spike Milligan, Tommy Cooper, Ken Dodd, the Python boys, Billy Connolly, Victoria Wood, Morecambe and Wise and thousands of lesser lights will be replaced by the dreary earnestness of the PC acolytes.

I may well have to go out behind the cowshed with a shotgun....

Thanks for the confirmation, idiot

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6340935.stm

The religion of Peace is vibrantly unaware of its own contradictions. Remember the violent clashes and riots and murders of Catholic clergy after the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperors remarks about Islams sole contribution to theology, forced conversion at the point of a sword?

Here is Abu Bakr, who works in the Maktabah bookshop and is studying for a PhD in Political Islam at Birmingham University: "the UK is a police state for Muslims".

He had been released by police on Wednesday morning and told to "go back to things how they were", he added. "But they don't realise that, after seven days of virtual torture for my family, it's going to be hard to readjust," he added.

Seven days of virtual torture? Oh my God! That virtual torture can be bitch, although its not quite as bad as say, real torture.

"This is going to affect me for the rest of my life." Mr Bakr said his parents had told im they had aged 10 years while he had been in custody. "Now who is going to replace that?" he said.

Mr Bakr may be interested in this story. Thats why you are creating yourself a Police state for Muslims, matey. The result, you might be interested to know, of cause and effect. You try to blow us up, we try to stop you. Its all very simple. And if you think that the 59 million Britons who are not Muslim care if your parents got a few sleepless nights, we don't. Not when people like you plan the torture and murder of our soldiers; And the mass murder of our people on buses, tubes and trains. You have the unbelievable cheek to turn around and berate us for trying to protect ourselves from your bombs. Do not expect this amount of tolerance and geniality from us indefinitely.

British political parties

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Whats-Left-Liberals-Lost-Their/dp/0007229690

'The terms `Right' and `Left' appear to have only a residual traditional meaning, and in the current political climate, there is often little to distinguish between the two.'

I would agree with this reviewer, and go further. In a healthy, well-run modern state like Britain, the conflict between 'worker' and 'employer' is simply a matter of the continued application of established rules of equitability. It no longer constitutes any sort of fault-line in society worth organising political parties around. So what genuine constituencies are their who need political parties to advance their interests, and currently do not have one?

All three of the main parties in Britain are vying to represent that amorphous, ill-defined group called 'Middle-England'. Nobody seems sure exactly what 'Middle-England' will vote for, but if you triangulate the policies of the main parties, you get some idea. The main parties obviously believe that 'M-E' are entirely happy that healthcare, education, childcare, care of the elderly and a thousand other societal needs are provided by the government, even if that means taking perhaps 45% of medium- and low-income citizens income to pay for it. The public are deemed to be happy to see the public sector growing to become an ever-larger percentage of national economic activity. The main parties (excluding Tony Blair, the exception who proves the rule) also agree that America is the enemy of British national interests, indeed of everybodies interests all over the world. The big three are also happy to see Britain filling up with cheap labour from mainly Muslim countries, who keep wage inflation down and big companies happy. They are all happy to accept the loss of sovereignty to EU institutions, as long as the effects occur after this generation of politicians have retired. They are all also unfazed by the many losses of liberty and the intrusion into millions of peoples lives of Big Brother video surveillance, speed-cameras, government databases and many other shameful features of life in modern Britain.

The conclusion they seem to have come to is this: Britons don't want freedom, risk, an open society, charity, individual effort, traditions or a coherent culture. They have made a faustian pact with the government to provide them with a cocoon from cradle to grave that will obviate the need for any thought, effort, responsibility or risk. As long as the government provides this cocoon, its electoral success is guarunteed.

Nick Cohen's book is called "Whats Left? How liberals lost their way". I agree with his analysis, but would point to a larger problem. It is not just liberals who have lost their way. Most of the British governing class has lost its way. And the question Whats Left? could just as easily be applied to the Britain of old, much of which remained when I was born; but which has been destroyed piecemeal by us since the sixties. Britain feels poverty-stricken, even though it is rich. It feels dangerous, even though the statistics are not that damning really. It feels disoriented and aimless, unsure of its every move. Our politicians hardly ever speak their minds and when they do, it leaves us even more anxious than before because we discover our leaders are dazed and confused too.

Left-wing support for fascistic Islamism is to me a symptom of a nation without moral bearings; without a set of established moral principles to ground political debate. Say for instance, the moral principles to be found in Christianity. Unless a moral foundation can be found, and unless the real history of England can be retrieved from the marxist lies that make so many Englishmen hate their own country, I don't think we can expect our political parties to think any new thoughts. We will just tramp this dreary and chaotic road until somebody comes along with a fascism that appeals to the idiots enough to demolish the pitiful remnants of our once-great polity. The BNP haven't found it yet, but perhaps the Islamists have.

The Fog of war and other cliches

'A US military study that examined wars from World War I to the first Gulf War found that 15% of all casualties came from friendly fire, according to retired US Army Lt Col James Corum, the author of Fighting the War on Terror. The British and German military statistics were similar, the study found.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6337137.stm

The End.

But it won't be. Take this story for instance:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6040372.stm

Here are some choice quotes:

"Was reporter victim of a 'war crime' ?"

"Former ITN chief executive Stewart Purvis told the inquest he believed "the British military knew more about what happened at the top level than they were disclosing to us". He said he believed this may have been linked to their dislike of unilateral journalists and he added: "In my experience the British and the American military do not want unilateral teams operating full stop."

"Mr McLaughlin said: "Terry Lloyd was the victim not just of an unlawful killing, but also of a war crime. We would like to see the British government pressing charges against whoever was responsible." The NUJ's general secretary Jeremy Dear said: "The killing of journalists with impunity must never, ever go unpunished. Any attempt to silence journalists in this way must never succeed."

I know Jeremy Dear. I used to work with him. He is as far left as it is possible to go, way out into Trotskyist territory. What he is accusing America of is murder- politically motivated murder of 'non-embedded' journalists so they would not report on the war.

Proof please? Or evidence? Any evidence AT ALL. You haven't got any? REALLY? So this is just politically motivated hate-mongering of the worst kind...

The reporting of the blue-on-blue story from 2003 shows that the reporting of these stories is not about the real situation of men in a war- whether they are journalists or soldiers- who are at risk of dying each minute of each day. It is about showing the Americans to be callous killers, in love with their weapons, blazing away at anything and everything; And cold-bloodedly murdering reporters who might relay that back to the world.

The real story is much less dramatic, but has its own sad quality. I'm just reading that AP have a new super high-security bureau in Baghdad- phew! Because those hotels in the Green Zone are soooo risky. Last year I blogged about the pitiful number of embeds in Iraq, journos who are actually doing journalism- in June 2006, there were six of them. Reasonable estimates are that America has approx. 500,000 journalists of various shapes and descriptions. So of the available individuals, 0.0012% made it to the biggest story of the decade. Most embed applications are successful, as long as the journalist is able to establish proper credentials. The conclusion we must make then is that rather than the US and British militaries preventing journalists from reporting Iraq, there are virtually no journalists with the balls to do it.

This was the clincher for the Terry Lloyd 'murder' story though

"Most of the bullets were definitely coming from the American tanks," said Mr Demoustier.

Ergo, some of them weren't. Terry Lloyd died in a fire-fight that he tried to drive through the middle of. And thats it. But for the armchair critics who demand that all warfare goes strictly according to the Queensbury rules, thats never going to be enough.

Confronting America-hatred

There is a lefty moron in my office who came very close to saying that the US pilots who fired on British soldiers ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6334769.stm) during the initial invasion of Iraq did so on purpose. I generally steer clear of discussing politics at work because most of my colleagues are soft left America-haters (despite working happily for a US company). But this malicious slur was just too far over the line for me to let it slide. According to him, and I quote from memory "They were told three times that their target was Allied and they still went ahead and fired on them. They are just trigger-happy idiot Americans". Here's what the BBC story says-

"Abort your mission. You got a, looks we might have a blue-on-blue situation [a friendly fire incident]" An air controller on the ground says: "We are getting an initial brief that there was one killed and one wounded, over."
One pilot replies: "Copy. RTB [return to base]." A colleague says: "I'm going to be sick."
They then talk about the possibility of being jailed for carrying out the attack.
The first pilot says: "Did you hear?" His colleague replies: "Yeah, this sucks."
"We're in jail, dude," says the first.
The other pilot is audibly upset, saying: "God dammit".

And having listened to the audio, the man mentioned as 'other pilot' sounds like he wants to cry.

Another of my colleagues chimed in defending moron 1, saying that all the units have both identifying marks and electronic devices which flag them up as friendlies. Sort of true, in that some vehicles had the electronic device and some didn't, but not relevant. Moron 1's assertion was that the US pilots intentionally and deliberately killed British troops on the ground. Disgusting and slanderous, it is this kind of comment that now goes unchallenged every day in Britain. I have even heard anti-American comments from supposed conservatives.

To me, this thinking is representative of the irrational, febrile and vicious state of political discussion in Britain, and how far away from common sense, common interests and mundane fact we have moved. All the hippy notions of the sixties and seventies have mutated into these festering hatreds and bitterness, mainly against America. American power is seen as evil and threatening, and British power used to help America becomes evil as a consequence. None of my colleagues have lived in the States and many have not been there. But they are happy in their prejudice.

A plague on all their houses.

Shadow boxing for clowns

'Although non-binding, it was the first serious effort in Congress to confront the White House over the war in Iraq.'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6333707.stm

Thats called an oxymoron, by the way... how BBC journo's can write this crap is beyond funny. These magnificent Democrat heroes are '...confront(ing) the White House over Iraq'? Why? What is the goal they seek? Are they asking for time to be reversed, and for President Bush to NOT make the political judgement he did in sending US forces into Iraq? Are they saying that they want US forces to leave Iraq, with all the attendant loss-of-face, hideous internicine strife and geopolitical knockons that would follow?

Or are they just posturing uselessly because they haven't been able to envision anything resembling a policy for the last four years? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!

Lieutenant takes overall command

http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/02/the_watada_doctrine.php

Superb dissection of the moron who refused to go do his job, and his imperious decision to override the chain of command and make up his own US foreign policy. We had one medical man who did this, but I don't think any of our actual fighting men have tried this wheeze. I have a feeling the British media would be much less merciful with him than the US ones have been to Watada.

Knowing and thinking you know

http://www.newmediajournal.us/guest/e_jeffers/02012007.htm

While reading this thoughtful and insightful article, this section started me thinking.

"In a year, I will be thrust back into society from a life and mentality that doesn't fit your average man. And then, I will be alone. And then, I will walk down the streets of America, and see the yellow ribbon stickers on the cars of the same people who compare our President to Hitler. I will watch the television and watch the Cindy Sheehans, and the Al Frankens, and the rest of the ignorant sheep of America spout off their mouths about a subject they know nothing about."

One day my parents pulled over by the side of the road and picked up a hitchhiker. It was 1979 and we lived in Rhodesia. The hitchhiker was an Oxford student come to see how viciously evil the pariah state was. Well, from the moment he started talking, thats what we understood his views to be. There are levels of ignorance- this young man was not at the lowest level. He had read a lot, and had bothered to travel to this place he had such strong views about. But its interesting to me that both my parents, who had shared many of his opinions when we first moved to Rhodesia in 1975, disagreed with him rather hotly now. I could tell that they were annoyed by how imperiously and innacurately he judged things because he just didn't know what he was talking about. And at 19 (or whatever), most people aren't very good at working out how much there is they don't know.

Fortunately, we grow up, and gradually we realise how great a gulf there is between the natty slogans of people like Sindy Sheehan and the young Oxford student; and the great teeming world with all its quiet, significant truths. Well, some of us do. Other people, like Michael Moore, Senator Edward Kennedy, Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn stick with the natty slogans and a world as thin and simple as veneer. Debates between the veneer people, and Sergeant Eddie Jeffers, the author of words above, are pretty much useless. Sgt Jeffers has been through an intense and stressful speed-learning course, run (unintentionally) by the US Army in Iraq. Simply by being a soldier in that harsh and hostile place has taught him things that will never be erased from his mind; that he could never have aquired in any way but this way; and that have given his world a depth and subtlety entirely absent from the sloganeers one back home. It brought him into daily contact with people utterly unlike himself, and forced him to enter their world, at least to some extent.

Just like the young Oxford student, the sloganeers are very happy with their current state of knowledge. They believe they know everything they need to know- but what is missing? With Iraq, it seems, everything is missing. We all remember the recent Democrat appointee to the Senate Security Committee who didn't know whether Al Qaeda were Sunni or Shia. Thats the tip of a very large iceberg of ignorance. When it is willful ignorance, we should be very harsh. And a bright light must be shone on the subjects that the veneer-people just can't be bothered to acquire real information about.

Thinking the unthinkable

'In the report, Time to Talk: The Case for Diplomatic Solutions on Iran, the coalition accuses Mr Blair of using the prospect of military action as a negotiating tool.
Launching the report, former Labour minister Stephen Twigg, director of the Foreign Policy Centre, said: "The consequences of military action against Iran are not only unpalatable; they are unthinkable.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6330353.stm

One of my favourite movies is 'The Princes Bride'. There is a superb exchange between Inigo Montoya, the great swordsman intent on vengeance, and Vizzini the slimy plotter.

Inigo Montoya: You are sure nobody's follow' us?
Vizzini: As I told you, it would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable. No one in Guilder knows what we've done, and no one in Florin could have gotten here so fast. - Out of curiosity, why do you ask?
Inigo Montoya: No reason. It's only... I just happened to look behind us and something is there.
Vizzini: What? Probably some local fisherman, out for a pleasure cruise, at night... in... eel-infested waters...
Vizzini: INCONCEIVABLE.
[In the boat in the morning]
Inigo Montoya: He's right on top of us. I wonder if he is using the same wind we are using.
[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means

Replace the word 'inconceivable' with the word 'unthinkable', and that would be my riposte to Stephen Twigg. Why are the consequences of military action against Iran 'unthinkable' exactly? Not only are the their great upsides to destroying Irans nascent nuclear program, we are already seeing on many fronts all the downsides that Iran is capable of. Iraq is being used as a stage for Iranian influence, Syria is happy to play stooge to Iran for now and Hezbollah are destroying the prospects for peace in Lebanon even as we speak. Apart from sending out its greatly inferior naval forces into the gulf to get slaughtered, or its 1970's airforce to get shot down in an afternoon, what will be the stupendous, earth-shattering consequences that an attack on Iran would provoke?

Just as Saddam Husseins star waned significantly after the Israeli destruction of his nuclear setup at Osirak, so it will be for the Mullahs. In fact, the humiliation of it was one of the major factors in provoking the Iraqi dictator to make his single greatest error- the invasion of Kuwait- in a effort to recoup his lost manliness. But this time will be different? Why?

Dinner party prattle

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6328753.stm

Why is this piece called "Middle East: An end to US primacy?"

'"Something is happening that could have a strategic potential," says Dennis Ross, the US peace envoy to the Middle East during the Clinton years.' Mr Ross, Clinton appointee, clearly has no axe to grind with the (evil) Bush administration. Neither, presumably does 'political correspondent' Jonathan Marcus. Just because the BBC is packed to the rafters with America-haters, doesn't mean Mr Marcus is one! Does it?

There are a number of arguments set forth here. According to this piece, Afghanistan and Iraq were both rival powers to Iran; and now both are occupied by US forces. When exactly was Afghanistan a rival power to Iran? Or indeed anyone? But we'll pass over that for a moment. Now Iran is free to exercise its influence over the whole middle east in an unconstrained way. How is the one a consequence of the other? Let me get this right... the US attacks in a full-blooded way Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Saddam the murderer in Iraq, and that emboldens the Iranians? Having 155,000 US troops, plus a whole carrier group just to its south in the gulf, and hundreds of land-based aircraft in Iraq is an encouragement to Tehran to have a go? Only if you are irrational and delusional and tanked up on prophesies of returning 12th Imams.

As anyone with an even passing interest in these matters would be able to tell you, Irans behaviour towards the middle east, America and the rest of the world has not changed at all since the arrival of the Mullahs in 1979. They are actively pursuing the dominance of Shia Islam at home and abroad. They are very keen to give the Sunni nations a poke in the eye whenever possible, and will use any and every political situation to achieve Shia pre-eminence. What else do you need to know?

Saudi Arabia and the other large Sunni nations know all this; indeed have always known it. It is part of their everyday political scene. What has happened that is new is the crazy determination of Iran, even faced with overwhelming military force, to pursue the semi-suicidal Nuclear weapons program they are so inordinately proud of. This is worrying to the Saudis, Egypt and the other Sunni nations because US politics may suddenly remove that massive US military bulwark on which they currently rely. How could they face down a nuclear Iran by themselves. The simple answer is they can't. Which is why they are all very twitchy at the moment.

'Ambassador Ross dates the genesis of this to Saudi Arabia's criticism of Hezbollah during last summer's Lebanon war.
"Iran," he said, was perceived by many Arab states "as trying to seize control of the Israel-Palestine issue and was using Hezbollah and Hamas as tools".'

Ambassador Ross is an idiot. Everybody in the middle east has been using the Palestinian Arabs for their own ends for sixty years. Saudi Arabian concern about Iranian influence goes back a bit further than last year- probably a few thousand years, to be exact. The only person to whom this is new, is Ambassador Ross.

'The Saudis have dusted-off their Middle East peace plan, and Riyadh, Cairo and Amman are all clamouring for a greater US push on the Palestinian front. And if this is the price for a new alliance to contain Iran, then the Bush administration seems willing to at least go through the motions.' Words dripping with cynicism and disdain... thank you Clintonians for your magnificent contribution!

'So for all the talk of a new US diplomatic push, Dennis Ross says that it is going to be very hard to make a strategic breakthrough now.' Because of course, having US forces occupying two of the most strategic countries in the middle east ISN'T a strategic breakthrough. What Dennis Ross is mindful not to mention is that Ahmadinejad is doing the political equivalent of whistling past the graveyard. Iran is in no shape to take on the US militarily, and only proper nuclear weapons will provide any real deterrence against a US strike. Even the most pessimistic observers believe Iran to be two to five years away from effective nuclear weapons, even with its nuclear program running flat out; and in the meantime the insurgency in Iraq may very well die on its feet.

At that point, Irans geopolitical situation will look very glum indeed. With only fair-weather, stab-you-in-the-back-at-the-first-opportunity friends like Russia to rely on, Iran is the only Shia nation of any size. There will be no great rising up of Sunni's on their behalf, especially if Iran overtly threatens Saudi Arabia. With a stable Iraq protected by a US army twice as large as the Iranian one, Syria will be under huge pressure to get with the Sunni program, and stop its novel dalliance with Shia Iran. Hezbollah will suffer badly if Syria can no longer provide its logistical backup, and without a constant new supply of arms would be even more vulnerable should Israel have another go at wiping it out.

In my view, even the short term prospects for Iran are poor. The medium and long term are very poor, especially if its oil production continues to decrease. But you'll never hear that from a clintonian appointee!

Irans tentacles

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6323425.stm

'Overnight members of the presidential guard stormed the Islamic University - long regarded as a Hamas bastion.
A Fatah official said seven Iranians were arrested at the university and an eighth blew himself up during the operation. Hamas denied that any non-Palestinians were inside the campus.'

This is shocking and worrying. Iran seems intent on subverting the Arab middle east to the greatest extent possible, using Islamism as a tool to advance their national goals. America and Israel really need to go to the source on this one- fighting Hezbollah and Hamas is pointless. I see things coming to a head in the next three months. There are too many good reasons to take out both the mental cases in the Iranian government and the Iranian capacity for nuclear warfare now.

What Americans joke about, we actually do

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6322545.stm

There is an episode in Friends (the Sitcom) where Joey loses Ross's family-heirloom wedding ring. When Ross asks him what he's done about finding it, Joey says "Well, I phoned the Police, and they said they'd look right into it, right after they'd solved all the murders and stuff."

In Britain, the Police are not interested in the murders, armed robberies, rapes, Islmic terrorists and steaming gangs. They have tracked down all the people who may have voiced some disparaging remark in public about people from some other country than Britain with darker skin colouring than you. Those other trivia will just have to wait. How is it that a country can lose its common sense so dramatically in just a few years?

I'm no fan of racism and bigotry. But racism and bigotry are part of every nation, every culture in every country. They cannot be legislated away, and are as permanent as poverty and criminality. You can legislate to prevent discrimination of course. Discrimination is the enactment of racism and bigotry, and actions can be legislated on perfectly adequately. We have excellent and effective laws that cover them already.

But policing attitudes, thoughts and opinions should NEVER be the remit of government. To the greatest extent possible, people should be able to voice their true opinions in public. Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun would be legal organisations in Britain if it was up to me. The BNP would be free to voice whatever fascistic nonsense pleases them this week. The black power guys should have a public stage for their conspiracy theories. The marketplace of ideas is littered with very poor thinking and demonstrably idiotic notions- but all ideas should get their own airtime. America is a vastly freer place to air opinions than Britain, and its done their society nothing but good. We should want to copy their 'best practise' rather than gradually going down the route of Russia, Egypt, China and many other countries where expressing an opinion can get you locked up for decades.

Being the object of racist abuse is not fun. I have been in that position and I didn't like it one little bit. But I survived, and I have a perfectly good life, and an excellent job, and a house and a wife- I just got up every morning and went off and created my life. Blaming racists because you live an abject life is easy- and wrong. And Shilpa Shetty is a pampered actress who wanted to make some easy money on British TV. She found that it wasn't quite such easy money...

Good Muslim, bad Muslim

Having just read "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam", I am very much sensitised to the ignorance and dhimmification of both print and broadcast media in Britain. First and foremost among the many illusions perpetuated by the mainstream media is that Islam itself has been hijacked by misinterpreters of what is essentially a peaceful, benign, tolerant and progressive religion. The CONTENT of Islam is irreproachable, we are told. But the fanatics come along and willfully misconstrue it, to the great detriment of all, but especially 'good' Muslims.

That is bunk, as Henry Ford might have said. For Muslims, the Koran is the actual words of God, a recording of conversations between Mohammed and God. Muslims are required to do everything in the Koran exactly as it is written, or risk being in conflict with the words of God. And who, if we look around the world, are most closely modelling their lives on the plain words of the Koran? Its the Islamists. The Muslims considered 'Good' Muslims by the great Liberal establishment in Britain are actually 'Bad' Muslims- they are willing to ignore large parts of the Koran so that they can live peaceably and effectively in Britain. No scholar of Islam would consider them 'Good', however. They contradict the fundamental diktat of Islam- to follow and copy what is written in the Koran to the letter.

There is no arguing around this- browse any 'Islamist' website if you don't believe me. The problem is not Islamists- it is Islam. For as long as there are people dedicated to being good Muslims, Britain will not be at peace; and the position of 'bad' Muslims will be difficult, if not untenable. What is to be done?

First, I would call into question the labelling of Islam as a religion. It is much more a fascistic world-dominance political creed than a religion. Religeons the world over have highly similar properties- the preeminence of love, obedience to certain overarching moral principles, peaceable behaviour etc. Islam has none of these. It is about dominance and violence and power. As such, it has no real claim to be a religion. Re-labelling Islam as a fascistic political creed would go a long way to clarifying the situation we currently find ourselves in.

For as long as Islam is called a religion, the hatred, prejudice, intolerance and bigotry it promulgates will get a free pass. Religions are exempted (with some exceptions) from this kind of judgement- political creeds are not.