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Friday, 1 July 2005

Ignorance And Lack Of Self-awareness »

Found through Mark, The England Project: One man’s equality is another man’s complete disbelief.

An utterly astonishing statement that reveals a level of ignorance that only a self interested politician could ever hope to achieve.

My deux centimes: they never bothered with the West Lothian Question, and I still regard the Scottish Parliament, in the form it’s in, as undemocratic and unfair. Equality my buttocks, just more political opportunism.

Speaking of levels of ignorance, I quite agree with Mick Hartley’s letter to the LRB.

What comes through clearly when you study Freud, amusingly for someone supposed to have probed more deeply into the human mind than any other thinker, is his remarkable lack of self-awareness. What about his grotesque decision to psychoanalyse his own daughter, the hapless Anna? I’m reminded of Woody Allen, who took as his lover a girl to whom he’d been a father, and failed to see what all the fuss was about. It takes years of psychoanalysis to get that obtuse.

I disagree completely with the article with occasioned the post, which seems like yet more “Another insufficiently patriotic American” hate froth from the US’s most unreadable dweeb. And he’s wrong on every count: German papers have German names. So? (I’ve just realised that “Bush” would be a great name for a magazine, but it wouldn’t have any political articles.) Modern Germany is at least partly the creation of US reconstruction. Maybe Lileks would be happy if we’d made them all learn English and converted them to Protestantism. (Except they all do speak English, and, er …) The rest of the piece is either mistaken (Allen’s films are all privately funded) or wrong-headed (who cares about artist’s private lives; what about Mozart (giggling popinjay), Beethoven (dour), and Wagner (sod. period)?

These 192 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:16pm GMT Permanent link.

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Saturday, 2 July 2005

Inside The Comet »

No Xaraq’ would have believed in the warming season of the 1011011 Krel that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Xarii and yet as mortal as his own; that as Xarii busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of XYZ. With infinite complacency Xarii went to and fro over this Lrnoot about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No Xaraq’ gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of Xoth danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most Lrm’’rsh men fancied there might be other men upon Patoot, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

The planet Patoot, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 10011010011 ftang, in a nearly circular orbit which spares it the great warming and cooling of our home.

Being curious, and a Xaraq’ of no little intellect, my friend Ogil used the warming season to study the heavenly bodies we passed as we shot toward the sun. I never believed him to be an excitable Znrr, but only last aurol he ran from house to house declaring that a body was approaching us. A body which showed all the signs of artifice. Now he wants us all to gather in the great crater a ftang-ftang hence, and he has invited me to join the delegation to welcome these travellers.

My harem refuse to come. “No good with come of this,” my youngest wife said.

The US Deep Impact spacecraft. (Apologies to Arthur C Clarke for nicking the title. And to H.G. Wells too of course.)

These 394 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:02pm GMT Permanent link.

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A Sort Of Interesting Meme »

These 308 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:32pm GMT Permanent link.

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Sunday, 3 July 2005

Heh, Indeed »

Like holding up a mirror. If Garry doesn’t watch his step, he might have the Big Trunk on his tail. Or Hindrocket after his ass.

These 25 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:51am GMT Permanent link.

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Complete Confidence »

Ooh. Fight, fight. Sunday Telegraph: Blair humiliates Clarke for going soft in the fight against crime. It ends with the coldest words in politics.

“The Prime Minister has complete confidence in the Home Secretary.”

I almost feel sorry for the Safety Elephant.

The document also makes it clear that Mr Blair ordered Mr Clarke to promise to cap the cost of ID cards to the public when the Home Secretary addressed MPs in last week’s Commons debate. According to the memo, the Prime Minister said that he wanted the argument to be more about the primary reason for introducing the cards — national security — rather than about the scheme’s projected costs. Opinion polls have shown that public support for ID cards falls dramatically once the projected cost of having one rises.

I thought the selling point of ID Cards was that they would secure your identity, you know, in case you forgot, or failing that they somehow prevented a Big Brother state — the sort the asks “Votre papiers …” Clearly Charlie misunderstood. ID cards are about national security, ID cards have always been about national security. People keep mentioning the cost. The Dear Leader will denounce them as traitors to a twenty-minute standing ovation.

But the real story is this.

Tony Blair has issued a furious dressing-down to Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, for going soft in the fight against crime, a secret Downing Street memo has revealed.

The memo, written two weeks ago, shows that the Prime Minister has taken personal charge of the drive to stamp out antisocial behaviour and has ordered urgent action to prevent a “sense of fatalism” setting in.

In a humiliating snub to Mr Clarke, Mr Blair has ordered Louise Casey, the national director of the Government’s antisocial behaviour unit and a hardline Home Office figure, to report directly to him.

One of Alan Sugar’s many attractive qualities displayed in The Apprentice was his trust in his lieutenants. You can’t run that many companies without delegating in spades. Blair trusts fewer and fewer goons henchmen ministers, preferring unelected brown-nosers. The Tories dumped Thatcher when she went like this; New Labour have been specially bred like show dogs for characteristics the Dear Leader likes. Absence of spine being his favourite. Oh well, it’s July now, only four years and ten months of hell left.

These 194 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:15am GMT Permanent link.

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But That's Not What Impressed Me »

Mark is, as ever, doing an impressive job blogging Le Tour. Even Jim Henley is getting into it. So come on, Chris, we’re waiting.

Image pinched from here; found through Mark (link above).

I’ve seen Lance pass people in time trials before, but Ullrich came 12th! You’d have thought he was barely moving. He actually rode very well. And, as Mark’s data show, the gap between the rivals is greater after 19K than it was after the whole show in 2003. Jan is an unpredictable guy, though. Don’t write him off yet.

These 93 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:44am GMT Permanent link.

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You Have Got To Be Joking »

I worry that I’m a kind of PC monster. (That’s not the guy who says in the interview, “We’ve got yer bang to rights, chummie, it’s porridge from now on …") I mean that I worry whether I’m a stereotype liberal, and visually-challenged to my comedy value to the common man better-than-average person. Here’s a for-instance.

Chris Dillow noted (hmmm, need more periphrases for “wrote” — Ed) that he like[s] Big Brother. As do I. As guilty pleasures go, I’ve had worse. But I’ve noted that all the “goodies” (or those I like, now that Sam’s left anyway) are all, shall we say, pigment-enhanced.

I’ve discovered that this is a somewhat unusual preference, but I like Science. His moniker seems to irritate people. (I don’t get this, what’s wrong with choosing your own name? Catholics do it at confirmation, and what about Popes, no one said, “Oh, he wants to be called John Paul II does he? look who’s giving himself airs now.” And then there’s Sting…) But apart from the “street” crap (who lives on the street apart from the homeless? not Kieron Harvey), I think he’s a straight-up, honest bloke. One of his reasons for nominating Craig last week (because Craig took so much bullying from the group he joined) seemed observant and decent to me.

I don’t think Science will make it to the final three, or could under Chris’s suggestion of alternate voting rules. So I’ll move on to my preferred trio. I like Orlaith, she’s very sweet, very pretty, and socially adept (except that BB is nothing like real life outside an extermination camp, and maturity, face, and charm count for nothing — which is why Craig has survived, but I’ll come to him later), but my favourites calcified early on.

And now to the nub. One thing Chris didn’t mention is the BB site. This year, it’s great. Fun, that is. But this is Channel 4, and I’m a liberal. And I agree with whoever writes this stuff. Derek and Maxwell:

Derek and Maxwell connected during their task reward of a formal dinner when they discussed Maxwell’s sensitive side.

“What sort of man do you think you’d be in love?” Derek asked.

“I’d be the best boyfriend anyone could ever ask for,” said Maxwell.

Derek asked what made him think that and laughed heartily when Maxwell said, “Dunno.” But Maxwell then added. “Because I’ve been told. It must be the physique!”

“It’s your eyes, darling,” said Derek, flirting on autopilot. “Your eyebrows, your nose and your cheeks.” Maybe not.

I just love “flirting on autopilot.” It’s what I really like about Derek, and yet another factor about what I despise in Maxwell, that he can’t see that. (Now might be a good time to mention that Maxwell has no time for any political opinions or vegetarians, apart from noting that the feeling is heartily reciprocated, I’d like to add, “and brain cells or taste…") I want Derek to win. If Craig had any sense (and he hasn’t, as I’ll come to), he’d see Derek as … Let me backtrack. In Friday’s Torygraph, Tom Cox wrote what I consider an exceptionally percipient précis of The Graduate. Now Craig, all else being equal, and being a somewhat confused gay young man, ought to listen to Derek, even see him as a Mrs Robinson (the age gap being almost exactly what was implied in the movie, despite the principals’ births being a mere six years apart). But Tom Cox has a very pertinent observation.

But the world we’re in here is essentially a 1950s hangover: a staid, suburban one still ruled over by The Old Folk; a place where the reason you get together with a seductively smoking alcoholic in her forties is not so much because you find her attractive but because she’s the only person in the vicinity as bored as you.

And Craig (and Maxwell) just hasn’t the imagination, the neurones to be bored properly. Neither could tell the test card (ok showing my age) from the Gioconda. Craig want his own chat show post BB. Yeah right:

And now, Sir Bob Geldof!!!

Bob: The problem is, yer see, the rich, the G8 countries, they have the fooking money, and they spend it on fooking haircuts …

(Craig blanches)

… and on fooking records, you know …

Craig (gathering himself): ooh, you bitch

Bob: People are starving! They’re dying like … (clicks fingers) …

Craig: ooh, you bitch

Bob: And the G8 summits, they …

Craig: ooh, you bitch

Bob: The governments …

Craig: Oh, you’re such a bitch, but when I was on Big Brother, right, tell you what, yeah, I, I mean me, yeah, I, right, hee hee, …

I also like Kemal:

“Is this ordeal ever going to end so we can get some bloody sleep? I’m sure you’ve secured your magazine deal,” Kemal sniped.

“You’re the biggest p**** in the world,” Maxwell shouted as Saskia backed him up by calling Kemal a “w*****”.

Maxwell then leaned over and threw a glass of water over Kemal, shouting: “There’s you f****** ordeal!”

Covered in water, Kemal replied quite brilliantly: “At least somebody got wet tonight…and it wasn’t Saskia.” Ouch!

Not only did Kemal reply “quite brilliantly” but the News of the World (valid only for one week) suggests the BB site was being coy.

Makosi is lovely too.

While the soppy hairdresser was wallowing on the sofa, Makosi came in to see how he was and told him the news.

“I would have come to kiss you but Oralith likes you,” said Makosi getting straight to the point.

A few days ago, Orlaith thought that Craig and Anthony were an item and was shocked to discover that wasn’t the case. Now Craig was just as shocked to learn that the Irish model has the hots for him. “Does she really? I am surprised!” Craig exclaimed.

Er, to explain… Anthony (who insists, like Hindrocket, that he is straight) “fancies” Orlaith; Craig “likes” Anthony. Orlaith thinks they’re all disgusting. One reason I hate Maxwell is that he couldn’t remember Makosi’s name when nominating, after being in the house a week. He came in wearing a T-shirt saying “Hackney” and he’s trying to get away with “That black bird wiv the Afro like, can’t remember er name, iz forin, like.” I’ve lived in Hackney son, and that don’t wash. I was going to quote George Orwell on the vacuity of the word I’d like to call him, but I remembered that I declared my animosity above.

There was a point to this post (I almost forgot too; if I ever get advertisers, darling, it’ll be “Hara Kari knife set …"). The sardonic tone of the BB site is much less brutal with belly dancing Kemal (who is articulate, and a real star, IMO) than “wiv” verbally challenged Landaners Saskia and Maxwell.

“My inner beauty,” said Maxwell, before restoring his original settings. “If I’m wiv a bird, I’m wiv her cos I want to be wiv her.”

Oh could Keats improve upon that?

Now, am I an inverted racist seeing BB through prejudiced goggles, or is Maxwell just a huge tit?

There was some BB programme where people were asked what they thought of the contestants. Two black ladies were broadcast who said something like they’d “never heard a black person speak like Derek.” Let me reiterate, I want to live in a society where people get jobs through character, rather than the colour of their skin. I’m proud black, gay, Derek is a master of foxhounds and a Tory speechwriter, because I’m sure he got both through effort (glass ceilings be damned) rather than taking the soft route of “positive discrimination.” I mean that. Maybe I should set up a camera and photograph everyone who walks in front of my front door in the morning and compare that to those who get past those bloody Thatcherite gates at the same time. Positive discrimination? Patronising complacent racist middle-class wank more like.

I’ve always been above BB voting (even in Mary’s case) until Lesley came up. Not voting for Lesley was like not assassinating Stalin when he still had a real (non-blogger) name. As a time-traveller once asked “And you watch this stuff?” Guilty as charged.

These 944 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:34pm GMT Permanent link.

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Who The Fuck Are You? »

I woke up in a Soho doorway,
Policeman knew my name,
He said, “You can go sleep at home tonight
If you can get up and walk away…”

I meant to do some Live8 blogging. I didn’t watch as much as I might have. I only wanted to see the Who (though the Scissor Sisters were good). The ideal of the day was somewhat spoiled by my being told that a certain girl I used to be fond of was interviewed on TV because she secured a ticket. I rolled my eyes. I can’t imagine why they picked her. (Being a CSI fan, perhaps? I really want to know… )

But, by god, the Who were sublime. They’re not what they were when I first saw them (in the post-Moon days), but Pete Townshend is god, or there is no moon and there are no stars. They came to the South Clerk Street Odeon when I was 17, and I only saw them on the Kenny Jones tour. That will go with me to my grave.

I’ve seen the best band in the universe, ever and The Who are still the greatest act I’ve seen live.

Some people want to die for their country. Some people want to die with their grandchildren. I want to die in Steve McQueen’s swimming pool! (Steve, you make a movie where you do these motorbike jump things, what’s wrong with the neighbours building ramps?)

In memoriam Keith Moon and John Entwhistle, May there be dynamite and prostitutes wherever you are.

These 228 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:38pm GMT Permanent link.

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Monday, 4 July 2005

Does That Mean Yes? »

Today’s Telegraph carries the joy-bringing news: Panic in No 10 as ID card support collapses referring to their YouGov poll (reported as Eight out of 10 fear ID fiasco is on the cards). Anthony Wells covers it, too: Support for ID cards falls again.

The strangest aspect is the closing paragraph of the Telegraph item.

Last week Mr Blair suggested that he does not see ID cards as an issue of confidence. Asked whether he could be persuaded to drop the plan if the opposition became overwhelming, he said: “I did not come into politics to introduce identity cards.”

Huh?

These 56 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:55pm GMT Permanent link.

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Yet Again Why I Hate Phoney Tony »

L’Enfer, c’est les autres.

Jean-Paul Sartre

What’s the opposite of “real"? False or non-existent?

Now the BBC covers the Clarke “dressing down” story as Blair ‘warns Clarke over respect’.

“On respect the prime minister said this was a real issue for the public,” the minutes are reported as saying.

What is a “real issue"? He means “important issue” not a ‘real’ one. I accept that the term has the advantage of being the vernacular, but it’s lousy thinking. Mr Blair has a public school and Oxford education, and Downing Street discussions aren’t half-cut pub arguments. I know it’s pedantic of me, but he should use words more carefully.

Anyway, I’m not sure that ‘respect’ is an issue of any kind with the public. It’s the public, after all, who lack this respect. The word isn’t being used as “I should be civil to other people” but as “Other people should be fucking civil to me.” That’s the problem, see. Other people. And the bastards are everywhere.

These 140 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:20pm GMT Permanent link.

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Hoon Strikes Again »

Things must be bad if I agree with Stephen Pollard. But I do. Geoff (’Buff’) Hoon tells us all that we have to vote now. (Or be sent to prison, where we can’t, apparently.)

He said that, in contrast, in countries such as Australia, where voting was compulsory, turnout could exceed 90%.

Which means that non-turnout is around 10%. This is an easily detected ‘crime.’ And one in ten break commit [update duh!] it. Splendid.

Mr Hoon warned that “serial non-voters” — particularly those who are young or from deprived backgrounds — could threaten the long-term legitimacy of the political system.

You know, if I were in a big business, say one which sold caffeinated sugary drinks, and of those who drank such things, half liked my Brand A (which I shall call ‘Coke’ and is sold in a red can) and half liked rival Brand B (which went for the colour blue, and to which I shall give the code name ‘Pepsi’), while a third of the public didn’t go for either, I’d see a huge marketing opportunity. I wouldn’t sit around with my head in my hands asking for both to be made compulsory. We could wipe the floor with those guys. Let’s get to work.

As the Times says in The joy of X:

Mr Hoon blamed voter cynicism and, ridiculously, the Daily Mail for low turnout. He also identified a sense of alienation from the political process, rather than apathy; a feeling of disengagement more likely to be found in areas of high deprivation.

Voter cynicism, eh? Indulge me, please. Have a look at the picture on this page. Now who might possibly be fostering cynicism?

These 192 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:45pm GMT Permanent link.

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Tuesday, 5 July 2005

An Idea For The War On Drugs »

The Guardian: Revealed: how drugs war failed. The government’s policy unit (led by John Birt) has produced a “study that Downing Street is refusing to publish under freedom of information legislation.” (Oh, silly me, I thought this government introduced legislation which would make information accessible. ‘Free’ is used as in “the detainees in Guantanamo are free’ or in the Newspeak sense, of a dog being free of fleas.)

The image above (larger version here) shows that much of the heroin sold comes from a small region. Perhaps we could invade and convert it to democracy? The Guardian has the whole thing. Heh.

From the conclusions:

• The drugs supply market is highly sophisticated, and attempts to intervene have not resulted in sustainable disruption to the market at any level. As a result:
  • the supply of drugs has increased
  • prices are low enough not to deter initiation
  • but prices are high enough to cause heavy users to commit high levels of crime to fund their habits

I have doubts about the last one. Didn’t Kahneman and Tversky write a paper on drug use and crime in New York? (I’m sure they did, and it showed something like that if the scare stories were correct, everyone would be burgled at least once a week, which is demonstrably not the case.)

Since I’ve mentioned Kahneman and Tversky, and as it’s my blog, so I can go off-topic if I choose, I found the Wikipedia entry on Daniel Kahneman. I always pictured him with a beard. (Feel free to analyse that as subconscious racism. I’m saying nothing.) There’s a lovely story on his inspiration to enter psychology.

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.

I think this may reveal something about me (to me, anyway), in line with this survey. I find stories that reveal people to be basically good more interesting and more salient than all the horror stuff about kids being out of control, gun totin’ whatsits.

These 259 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:32pm GMT Permanent link.

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You And Me Is As Good As Anybody Else, And Maybe A Damn Sight Better »

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …

Jefferson et al.

It is a truth commonly acknowledged that lefties are all sooooo anti-American. Therefore I tip my hat to Yankee Jim Henley for directing me to his countryman H.L. Mencken’s translation of the “Declaration of Independence into, if you will, Red State English.”

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any goverment don’t do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don’t mean having a revolution every day like them South American coons and yellow-bellies and Bolsheviki, or every time some job-holder does something he ain’t got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons and Bolsheviki, and any man that wasn’t a anarchist or one of them I. W. W.’s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain’t hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won’t carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won’t stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work.

Mencken’s vernacular rendering of the crimes of George III seems particularly up-to-date.

He monkeyed with the courts, and didn’t hire enough judges to do the work, and so a person had to wait so long for his case to come up that he got sick of waiting, and went home, and so never got what was coming to him.

He got the judges under his thumb by turning them out when they done anything he didn’t like, or holding up their salaries, so that they had to cough up or not get no money.

He made a lot of new jobs, and give them to loafers that nobody knowed nothing about, and the poor people had to pay the bill, whether they wanted to or not.

…

He let grafters run loose, from God knows where, and give them the say in everything, and let them put over such things as the following:

Making poor people board and lodge a lot of soldiers they ain’t got no use for, and don’t want to see loafing around.

When the soldiers kill a man, framing it up so that they would get off.

…

Making us pay taxes without asking us whether we thought the things we had to pay taxes for was something that was worth paying taxes for or not.

When a man was arrested and asked for a jury trial, not letting him have no jury trial.

Chasing men out of the country, without being guilty of nothing, and trying them somewheres else for what they done here.

…

He busted up the Legislatures and let on he could do all the work better by himself.

These 54 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:00pm GMT Permanent link.

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Wednesday, 6 July 2005

Last Throes »

He even looked up “throes” in the dictionary to make sure he had it right.

These 16 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:46am GMT Permanent link.

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So Carole Caplin Was Right. Tony Is A Pisshead »

Saturday night’s all right for fighting

Bernie Taupin and Elton John

I’m starting to think that Louise Casey’s job description requires her to make Charles Clarke look stupid. (He does that splendidly on his own. Everyone seems to have linked to this splendid Flash animation, The world is full of villains stealing one’s identity.) Both the Hate Mail (front page; NB will change tomorrow) and the BBC (Asbo adviser mocks drink campaign) cover her after boozing dinner speech last night.

The Hate Mail (I read the front page in the local shop just now) reports that she said that “Ministers would work better drunk.” This makes me suspect that the News of the World story last week may have been more true that we knew. Now if ministers and civil servants see Tony slouched in a corridor, they will know that he is “working well.” Not that anyone would dare question the behaviour of the Dear Leader.

Speaking in Stratford-upon-Avon, Ms Casey told her audience: “I suppose you can’t binge drink anymore because lots of people have said you can’t do it. I don’t know who bloody made that up, it’s nonsense.”

It’s called “Joined-Up Government,” Louise. BBC Health: Binge drinking costing billions.

Britain’s binge drinking culture is costing the country £20 billion a year, according to a government report.

The study by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit shows 17 million working days are lost to hangovers and drink-related illness each year.

Might this be because the Home Office (where Ms Casey works) can have some effect on drinking (over licensing policy) which might benefit other areas of government like the Health service or the Exchequer (and a day of work lost is less income generated)? The BBC page has a helpful list:

• Britons spend £30bn on alcohol each year
• The government raises £7bn through taxes on alcohol
• Alcohol costs £6.4bn in lost productivity
• The NHS spends £1.7bn treating alcohol-related illnesses
• Alcohol-related crime costs £7.3bn
• Another £4.7bn is spent on the human and emotional costs of alcohol-related crime
• Some 22,000 people die prematurely each year because of alcohol misuse

Scotland on Sunday Binge drink Scots ‘cause cancer rise’. The Department of Health can’t do much except print posters and advise doctors to lecture anyone who visits casualty under the influence. Ms Casey’s department can do more.

Ms Casey can’t be all bad though.

She apparently joked that she would “deck” Downing Street policy advisers if they kept spouting jargon at her.

Go for it, girl.

These 316 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:36am GMT Permanent link.

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Viva Seb Coe »

London beats Paris to 2012 Games. Splendid.

These 8 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:00pm GMT Permanent link.

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What Part Of 'How The Hell Would I Know' Don't They Understand? »

I tried to vote in the National Television Awards as advertised on Behind the Sofa Again. I managed to ignore that the first category is “Most popular drama” not “drama you like best” (which is a sensible question). But page 2 is “Most popular serial drama” — I haven’t even heard of three of them. I know that “Coronation Street” is in Liverpool or Manchester and that one of the actors in “Eastenders” killed someone once (before or after he was on telly? it seems unlikely that the Beeb would hire a convicted killer …). I don’t care. The page won’t let me not vote, and it doesn’t offer a “none of the above.”

It looks like I’ve been disenfranchised.

These 120 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:49pm GMT Permanent link.

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Adverts »

There’s an advert on TV I don’t understand. It’s promoting the government’s scheme to give new borns cash, which is a policy I don’t particularly care about either way. Still, it’s one of the things the government was mandated to do, and there’s no harm in them doing it.

It’s the advert itself which lost me. I know many products are promoted as making you cool, or attractive, or being fun, and that how or why this happens is not explained. But this is simply obscure. A very multi-cultural group of adults are in some kind of yoga class gear and they all imitate the actions of a toddler. Why? Kids imitate adults to learn how to walk, wear clothes, do things. An adult copying a kid in this way would probably freak most children out. It’s weird and somewhat unpleasant to watch, I know that eating an ice cream is unlike an orgasm, but I don’t expect sense from ads for sweets. I expect it from the government though. And while I expect that in the greater scheme of things the cost of 30 secs during Gordon Ramsay isn’t a big deal compared to the money being given away, it does seem an expensive way to promote them giving something to you when all parents of recently delivered children are going to see at least one of the following: the inside of a maternity ward, the inside of a registry office, or a midwife.

Maybe I’m flattering my understanding of popular culture here, but I think that if an ad goes over my head, and it’s not cleared aimed at a significantly different demographic group (like adolescents or Daily Mail readers), it’s not doing its job.

These 287 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:07pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thursday, 7 July 2005

The Damnation Of Our Neighbors »

EVANGELIST, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.—Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) found on Majikthise

This seems like a reasonable complaint:

Today, … strongly urged U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to take steps to ensure that the free exercise of rights of the students and faculty of the Air Force Academy are fully respected, as demanded by the U.S. Constitution.

Can’t really disagree with that, can you? The USAF should uphold the Constitution, should it not? However, the ellipsis covers the phrase “Family Research Council President Tony Perkins” (not that Tony Perkins) and the word “family” long ago joined “people’s” and “democratic” in meaning the opposite of what it is commonly understood to mean, when it is employed in the title of some organisation.

“I am concerned that efforts to address a few unfortunate incidents may become an excuse for discrimination against evangelical Christians,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, wrote in a letter to Gerald A. Reynolds, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman (USCCR).

Town Hall: Group Fears Air Force Is Discriminating Against Christians. (Via John Cole.)

The “intolerance” allegedly included senior cadets harassing non-Christians by denying them off-campus passes to attend other religious services; cadets uttering anti-Semitic slurs and academy professors “proselytizing” in class.

No, really, Perkins calls this — insults and denying the freedom to practice one’s religion — “religious expression.”

“Our nation’s Constitution recognizes that everyone has liberty of religious expression — including the service members who fight to defend it,” Perkins stated.

But “denying [cadets] off-campus passes to attend other religious services” sounds like straight-forward abuse of office, which has nothing to do with “religious expression.”

[Rev. Barry W.] Lynn [executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State] said it would be ironic “if the Air Force failed to protect that basic right for academy cadets. He also denied that his group was targeting Christians. Lynn claimed that many of the cadets who complained to AU of “heavy-handed proselytizing at the academy are Christians.”

These 125 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:56am GMT Permanent link.

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Blimey »

Telegraph:’Walking wounded’ after blast on Underground.

BBC: Multiple blasts paralyse London.

Well, I just hope that everyone I know in the capital, including all the bloggers I read, are safe. More soon.

These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:17am GMT Permanent link.

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BBC TV News Says »

The consensus now is terrorism.

Were there similar cells waiting in Paris, New York, and Moscow? If there were, is there any hope they can be caught?

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I Take Pity On Them »

BBC tv just broadcast a tasteless interview with a clearly very shocked survivor, who had difficulty marshalling his thoughts. The poor guy was crowded by journalists. Despite that, I watched the whole thing — for the same reason you’re reading this, I suppose.

He tried to make a point about the train he was on not being evacuated sooner. But the journalist tried to end by asking him what he thought of the “people who did this.” He replied to his enormous credit that he was a barrister and would wait for the evidence, but added “I take pity on them.” Well, there goes one journalist’s attempt to put words into someone’s mouth.

Horrible though it is to see someone is such anguish paraded in that manner, I hope they broadcast it later. Shows what we’re made of.

These 138 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:49am GMT Permanent link.

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Blair Leaving Gleneagles For London »

He looks shocked, angry, and frightened. He seems to believe that the attacks (there is no doubt about that now) were timed to co-incide with the G8. (And not, as I thought, the awarding of the Olympics. So why London?)

There are at least 90 casualties from the Aldgate East explosion. It’s reported as unlikely that no one on the top deck of this bus will have survived. Expect death toll to rise until evening.

People are still trapped underground.

The BBC are talking about suicide bombers, though they weren’t used in Madrid. If that theory is correct, is that a “compliment” to our security?

These 105 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:12pm GMT Permanent link.

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Al-Qaida Claim Responsibility? »

The TV reported that the al-Qaida something something for Jihad claimed responsibility, though I can’t find it online.

Already, there’s a Wikipedia entry, and photoblogging.

Via the Guardian News Blog, which also denies (through an eyewitness) that Leicester Square has been attacked.

These 42 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:13pm GMT Permanent link.

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Clearly, It Helps If You Read Arabic »

A screen shot of the claim of responsibility is on the Der Spiegel site. German translation. Via Wikipedia.

These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:18pm GMT Permanent link.

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Proud Of Britain (for Chris Dillow) »

Nosemonkey.

I tell you what, if this is an “Islamic” terrorist attack, they’re doing a piss-poor job. The pubs are all packed out, people sipping their pints happily, all a tad pissed off, but basically fine with it. Nice one, Al Quaeda—you profess to be from a teetotal religion, and you’ve given the pub trade a massive mid-week boost. Result.

Tim Worstall.

No grand demonstrations, few warlike chants, a desire for revenge, of course, but the reaction of the average man and woman in the street? Yes, you’ve tried it now bugger off. We’re not scared, no, you won’t change us. Even if we are scared, you can still bugger off.

Better this indifference than the yapping we’ve heard from Kansas (that’s a long way from New York, DC, and Hawaii) on other blogs. If you’re so keen on fighting, Bart, why don’t you enlist?

These 37 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:36pm GMT Permanent link.

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Two Things »

Just to show that, unlike certain commenters at John Band’s, I haven’t lost it.

Who’d have thought the French would take the Olympics so seriously?

And if there’s one good thing about all this, at least 7-7 is a date the Americans can get the right way round.

These 48 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:47pm GMT Permanent link.

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Cheeky Beggars »

If Jamie is right about the BNP “Muslims out email” (though see any nearby blog with comments for similar sentiments), then they’re cheeky beggars. Who was it who claimed responsibility for the Soho bomb? Bastards.

These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:41pm GMT Permanent link.

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I'll Drink To That »

Daniel Davies suggests drinking London Pride (as does Simon via Nick). Daniel also recalls Lord Hoffman’s remarks last year.

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda.

To anyone who thinks that liberals like me would give in to fanatics like al-Qaeda, think again! They’d take away our beer and cover up women! I’m not having that. They’re going to have to try a lot harder to intimidate us.

These 61 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:24pm GMT Permanent link.

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Friday, 8 July 2005

Charles Clarke Interview »

Channel 4 has a transcript of an interview with Charles Clarke to be broadcast at noon.

These 16 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:44am GMT Permanent link.

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Saturday, 9 July 2005

We Defy Terrorism »

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Surprised By Decency »

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Sunday, 10 July 2005

Separated At Birth »

Police have released pictures of members of the foreign-based terrorist cell believed to be operating in this country and attempting to change our way of life. Mustafa Setmariam Naser, a Syrian, described by expert witnesses as “a total arse with red hair and a beard” is also a suspect in the Madrid attacks.

Meanwhile, Mark Steyn, a Canadian, co-incidentally described by expert witnesses as “a total arse with red hair and a beard” has been undermining British culture in the service of a shadowy criminal mastermind, known only as “Conrad Black.”

Steyn has launched acidulous verbal sallies on our national broadcaster, our education system, Liverpool (see Blimpish, unaccountably a fan), our mode of government, our perceived softness, our mode of living, our lack of religion, and our national prejudice against smug little bearded Canucks, all from the security of the western side of the Atlantic.

Mr Naser, by contrast, believes the United Kingdom to be decadent, poisoned by the prejudiced rantings of the BBC, atheistic, hedonistic, and despotic. He has made no recorded statements about Liverpool.

These men, despite unfortunate colouring and flocculence, are easy to tell apart. One is a conservative defender of religion who identifies with an arid little country in the Middle East, and the other …

These 212 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:14pm GMT Permanent link.

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Tuesday, 12 July 2005

Vacancy: Allies Wanted, Must Have Spines »

Who knew James Lileks personally trained the US military? In event of attack, run like hell.

In other news, Reuters employs some brilliant journalists. The anonymous writer who clearly think R&B crooner Omarion is a tosser deserves wider recognition.

Making no mention of the fatalities or casualties of the blasts, the singer’s statement concluded, “He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home. He appreciates your support.”

He was in London for Saturday’s Live 8 show, his publicist Shana Gilmore told Reuters from Los Angeles. Asked why anyone should pray for him, Gilmore said, “He wasn’t hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that.”

Nope son, not now, and not at the hour of your death either.

These 52 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:22am GMT Permanent link.

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Links And Things »

Being mostly links I should have written about but didn’t.

I usually think that Vicki Woods is splendid, but on Saturday, she was exceptionally good, especially on the hard-to-manage trick of “How I changed my mind [about Ken Livingstone].” Though I think she’s a got a little vaseline on the lens in her image of the IRA in the 70s. (There’s a metaphor that needs work, but I don’t have the time.) God knows how the Birmingham Pub Bombings, for example, targeted the “Establishment.”

There’s a good round up of London Bomb analysis in Right Wing Nut House. Including the Washington Post: London Subway Blasts Almost Simultaneous, Investigators Conclude.

The new details match the leading theory that is emerging among investigators, analysts said: that the bombings were a technically competent and well-coordinated attack planned and overseen by at least one experienced and well-trained operative using commercially manufactured explosives, and carried out by local people.

Such a pattern would fit previous bomb attacks in Casablanca in May 2003 and Madrid in March 2004. In each case, an operative from outside the country trained in Islamic extremist camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan used local people with no known links to terrorism to carry bombs to their targets. Irish Republican Army guerrillas used similar local helpers — known here as “lily whites” because they had no police record — in their decades-long bombing campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.

This makes a great deal of sense to me. Reports than Britain is “crawling with terrorists” (as I think the Sun put it) look like nonsense given that the one bomber witnesses have described apparently didn’t set his bomb; he merely couriered it. That takes about the level of skill that delivering a pizza does without even being able to give change. He could have been trained in, oh, minutes. I don’t believe someone sent him to an al-Qaeda hideout for months for that.

There was one other point I wanted to make about this aspect, and — yawn! — it’s a civil liberties point. As I understand it, police are looking at CCTV for odd characters carrying bags on the Tube last Thursday, and possibly earlier, assuming the attack was rehearsed. If so, I think this is the wrong direction. (Hint: there are lots of weirdoes in London.) If the bombs were home-made, they had to be tested. (Knowing that the timer can ring a bell, say, and that the explosive can explode isn’t enough; you have to run it right through to be sure. Things always do their best not to work.) I don’t know where, but there has to be test site somewhere.

Business Daily seems an unlikely venue for the “Blame the Iraq War” tendency, but here it is:

“Assuming it’s an upstart jihadist group, this is the kind of thing designed to discourage supporting U.S. policies,” says Jonathan Stevenson, senior fellow for counterterrorism at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before. There’s no other country that has lent as many assets and lives to U.S. efforts in Iraq.”

(I looked up International Institute for Strategic Studies and Jonathan Stevenson; he’s no George Galloway.) This does raise the question of “Why didn’t it happen before?” I expected attacks in this country on September 11, 2001. (Which is partly why I don’t trust Blair on “terrorism” as he never condemned Jo Moore, even though she acted as though railway performance figures were a higher priority for the Department of Transport officials than planning to close the airports. That remains unforgivable.)

It may be an asinine political point, but I intend to keep up the Civil Liberties opposition to ID cards. Ahmed Rashid wrote a very sensible article in yesterday’s Telegraph, New terror groups pay homage to bin Laden but work alone.

However, just as war plans are often drawn up on the basis of the last war, British intelligence will have to throw away its old files and start anew to understand the new al-Qa’eda.

Unlike the old ones, the new groups do not gather in London’s mosques on a Friday afternoon and attack the West for its policies while their speeches and conversation are bugged. The new al-Qa’eda does not divulge its activities to even its closest family members.

It is made up of individuals who have been friends for a long time, making any leak or penetration by intelligence agencies less likely.

As for Charles Clarke’s plans to store emails (searching them all would be a challenge for Google, never mind the far less competent Home Office) he says:

Just as bin Laden no longer uses any form of electronic communication, it is more than likely that in planning the London bombings the group avoided use of telephones or e-mail in favour of direct meetings.

The perpetrators of the Madrid bombings were undone by their extensive mobile telephone calls. The London group will have avoided the same mistake, making catching its members that much more difficult.

It’ll be years (if ever) before we know which “intelligence” is plausible fiction, and which is, by whatever means, roughly correct, but this sounds right to me. I could be wrong, but I think we need more alert police on the streets and fewer watching video tapes and bugging mobile conversations.

These 531 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:58am GMT Permanent link.

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Wednesday, 13 July 2005

Don't Look At Me; I Voted For Wittgenstein »

Karl Marx won the In Our Time’s Greatest Philosopher poll. Melvyn Bragg announced it on Today, followed by Eric Hobsbawm. If he had a point, he hid it well. No mention of what Marx actually wrote, only what Professor Hobsbawm thought Marx may have thought of the poll. I do understand that some people get irritated by Radio 4. But there is the “off” switch. I think I gave up when he mentioned that a Tory told him that Marx and Freud (Jesus on a bike! who next? Deepak fucking Chopra?) were the formative thinkers of the last century.

Followers of David Hume are responsible for approx. 0 deaths.

These 110 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:07pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thursday, 14 July 2005

Like Cutting Moonbeams »

I’m rather more fond of Tony Benn that is usually considered sensible.

Craig Brown (if I may borrow the muse of Christopher Hitchens for a moment, the ‘great Craig Brown’) has a rounded portrait of the man from an admixture of personal encounters and reading.

Here is Brown’s account of “Bernard Donoughue’s recently published Downing Street Diaries.”

They all go into the Cabinet Room, along with Benn. According to Donoughue, the others all round on Benn. “Healey spoke first and was very rough. He took Benn apart… Callaghan followed and was even more savage… Benn sat there looking very pale, first rocking back and forwards in his chair and later scribbling furiously, no doubt for his diary… Afterwards Robert Armstrong said that he had never seen a minister so mauled by colleagues. Yet Benn seemed unabashed. I mentioned this to Healey in the lavatory afterwards. He said, ‘Yes, it’s like cutting moonbeams.’”

And Tony Benn’s diary entry for the same day.

It was the most fascinating discussion and I went away feeling, in a way, that it had been a success, not least because they have all blown their tops and expressed their anger, which I knew was going to happen anyway: now they have got it off their chests.

Brown concludes:

Whose eye is the more benevolent? On the above evidence, one might have thought Benn’s, but he is, for the most part, the chief recipient of his benevolence. On September 10, 1975, Donoughue writes: “Benn was as always engaging and open… It is impossible not to like him.” But on November 4, Benn writes: “Donoughue is power mad and just wants to establish a dominant position in Whitehall.” How strange it must be for the old men, reading what the other thought of him back then!

Roll on Alastair Campbell’s diaries.

These 74 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:31pm GMT Permanent link.

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Strange Allies »

No comment necessary. That’s never stopped me before, but in this case comment is, “Like, wow.”

Eric describes Khalid Mahmood as One voice of reason. Mr Mahmood is on his favourite topic.

“We also have a big problem with much of the religious education that goes on in mosques after school. It is totally unregulated and much of it is of low quality. None of the teachers are subject to any normal child protection regulation, yet this is where many people’s minds start to be shaped.

“I have argued for many years that we need to do something about the incitement to religious hatred and the quality of the religious teaching in mosques. We can do that through the current legislation if necessary. Abu Hamza and Bakri Muhammad need to be dealt with.

State-regulated religious teaching? Dear god. How many law-abiding Christian sects would oppose that?

I’ve written about Mr Mahmood before, on Khalid Mahmood Is An Arse and Khalid Mahmood Is An Arse (Again). I’ll quote the MP’s tactful comment from the Sunday Times.

This weekend the boycott by the leaders of Britain’s 1.2m Muslims was condemned by Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. “I’m proud to be a Muslim. But if people are boycotting this then I think it’s a mistake. People who were exterminated in the Holocaust were not just Jews. There were Romany gypsies as well. Anybody who is interested in human rights should support this remembrance.”

At least the comments are sensible. Mason says (and who needs separation of church and state?)

Sure wish he would move to the states.

So do I dear boy, so do I.

These 99 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:53pm GMT Permanent link.

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Suicide Generis »

Matt Turner has already done a splendid job on the idiocy of Melanie Phillips, and it’s hardly sporting to point out that her second-stupidest statement ever (after condemning as “weasel words of appeasement” Sir Winston Churchill’s “to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war"—which is simply magnificent and unbeatable lunacy) seems to be flavour of the week. Mad Mel earlier this year:

International rules? What a laugh. I’ll believe in the sincerity of those who talk about “international rules” when they vehemently condemn homicide bombing …

Well, I’m not fan of the IRA either, or of the bombardment of Fallujah, but Mel, er, “soldiers” on

…- from the Islamofascists who killed 3,000 in New York to the dirty work of the insane doing the bidding of Hamas/PLO/et al. in Israel.

Oh right, you mean “suicide bombings.” And the term has taken off in the eternally wicked MSM. Or Fox News, anyway.

Von of Obsidian Wings says, Sometimes, I just feel like homiciding myself.

Eugene Volokh: "Homicide Bomber": The term has long annoyed me. He quotes an earlier post by Juan Non-Volokh:

I know that it has become fashionable in some circles to use the term “homicide bomber” in place of “suicide bomber.” This is unfortunate. Even though I am generally sympathetic to the political views of those who use the term, I think that it represents a positively Orwellian misuse of the English language for political purposes of exactly the sort that many who use the term would otherwise condemn.

Would it make any sense to refer to a murderer as a “homicide killer"? Should we have called the D.C. snipers the “homicide snipers"? Of course not. Why not? Because it is redundant and the addition of the word “homicide” does not clarify or provide additional detail. If a killer took his own life after that of his victim(s), it would make no sense to refer to him as a “homicide killer.” The same is true here.

Indeed, the only purpose of inserting the word “homicide” is to make a political statement. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of the English language. Any terrorist bomber who kills is a “homicide bomber.” What is unique in these situations is not that a terrorist is killing people — terrorists do that as a matter of course — but that the terrorist is taking his (or, in at least one case, her) own life in the process. This is what makes suicide bombings different from an “ordinary” terrorist bombing — and what makes this sort of attack particuarly difficult to stop.

I know what some of you are thinking: Somehow, using the phrase “suicide bomber” unnecessarily validates the actions of these terrorists, and downplays the evil nature of their attacks, whereas the phrase “homicide bomber” makes clear how terrible they are. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. The phrase “suicide bomber” is simply more descriptive and accurate.

Indeed. Both the Madrid bombers and the London bombers committed homicide. To refer to both groups as “homicide bombers” merely obfuscates the difference in method.

But the best is from Opinion Journal (3rd item).

We often criticize left-wing media outlets like the BBC and Reuters over, among other things, their refusal to call terror by its name. But it’s worth emphasizing that by far the worst offender in terms of abusing the language via politically correct terminology is Fox News. …

The answer is that Fox, and only Fox, has redefinied homicide to mean “the act of killing oneself"—what the rest of the English-speaking world calls suicide. So Fox would say, for instance, “Hitler committed homicide by shooting himself in his bunker.” But what about what Hitler did to his victims? The Fox brain trust will have to get to work on a name for that.

These 166 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:23pm GMT Permanent link.

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Precious Liberty »

Liberty is precious — so precious that it must be rationed

Lenin (in Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism)

Matthew d’Ancona isn’t the a columnist I have strong views about. I’ve previously considered his output to be “sensible Tory attempts to be even handed,” but he’s clearly lost some marbles since last Thursday.

Yes, there was a mood of solidarity and mature consensus at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday and during Monday’s Commons debate on the bombings. But there was also the whiff of shame in the air: shame at the political decadence that had so demeaned the debate on the war on terror before 8:50am last Thursday.

The low point was the moment in March when the Tory whips, having forced the Government to insert an automatic expiry date into its Prevention of Terrorism Bill — the “sunset clause” — brayed that they were off to uncork the champagne. To celebrate what, I wondered at the time. Who was their real enemy? Bin Laden — or Blair?

He doesn’t go any further into what was “decadent” about the House of Commons. The usual adjective for partisan catcalling is “childish.” Mr d’Ancona apparently prefers the commons in “a mood of solidarity and mature consensus” when the point of parliament is debate and opposition. I can’t see what’s wrong with an “automatic expiry date” — laws are tough to remove from the statute books, laws which curtail freedoms should be watched. The original Prevention of Terrorism act was renewed enough times. I’d like to know what the IRA gained from Parliament’s annual debates which it wouldn’t have had had the PTA been a permanent law.

The “real enemy” question is sophistry. Why cannot one have two enemies? Churchill called Nye Bevan a nuisance. Shouldn’t he have been concentrating on Hitler instead of debating with a squeaky-voiced Welshman? And where did those Tories ever describe Tony Blair as an “enemy"? You win a debate, you open champagne. Maybe Osama bin Laden calls that decadent. I don’t.

But the arguments that follow will be conducted in a new and awful context: namely, the absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, spelt out in the blood of Londoners, that this war is now being waged in our very midst.

Mr d’Ancona hasn’t mention any war until now. That’s also a grotesque image, which if you didn’t try to picture it spontaneously, I’d advise you not to bother.

We face three, inextricably linked threats: from Islamist fanatics, from the rogue states that harbour them, and from the deadly weapons which they seek to acquire.

I think there are three threats, because three things sound a lot more convincing than two. ("A Mars a day rots your teeth and makes you fat” is never going to take off as a slogan.) Hitherto, I’ve considered “guns don’t kill people; people kill people” a truism in the service of a lie. But I can’t see how we’re threatened by weapons which terrorists don’t even have. Anyway, Syria harbours some wanted fanatics, but we’re not in any danger from Syria — except through the agency of those fanatics. It’s true that terrorists with WMD are dangerous, but as 9/11 and the murder of Theo van Gogh show, they’re dangerous without them too. The “three dangers” are really only one.

In this conflict, everything is, and will be, connected.

Given Mr d’Ancona’s erudition, I doubt that the nod to Lenin is accidental. (I was trying to find where he said it, but I came up with the epigraph instead.)

There is still much glee at the failure of the Iraq Survey Group to unearth Saddam’s weapons. I would have thought a more pertinent question — and a terrifying one — is where, exactly, all those weapons are?

That is, the 3.9 tons of VX gas, 8,500 litres of anthrax, 550 artillery shells containing mustard gas and other nasties that the Iraqi dictator himself admitted to producing in the 1990s, but are still officially “unaccounted for”.

If they’d stayed in Iraq, and we’d stayed outside, those weapons might not be in the hands of anyone likely to pose a danger to us. (This leaves aside the point that Saddam was not to be trusted, and his boasts of producing weapons, as well as his denials, should be treated sceptically.)

On Monday, Mr Blair pointedly left the door open to further legislative measures. “Just using the normal processes of law will not be enough,” he warned.

Therein lay the seed of a huge and necessary debate on the proper balance between security and liberty in this country. But that debate will now be carried out in the proper context.

The “proper context’ seems to be hysteria.

While I’m on this, and as I’m going out and don’t have time for a proper post. Where are the Tories incensed by Jack Straw?

Meanwhile, Jack Straw said that fears about the costs of implementing data retention laws were overstated, and added that ISPs, telcos and mobile operators are not the “most impoverished” of firms.

“There may be some costs but it is surely a cost we ought to pay for the preservation of human life,” he said, according to the BBC.

Is it me, or is the “cost we ought to pay” going to be borne by ‘not the “most impoverished” of firms’? Very generous of him to volunteer others to pay. This sounds like the thin end of wedge to me.

These 507 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:26pm GMT Permanent link.

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Friday, 15 July 2005

Something Called The Em-Ess-Em »

Tom Tomorrow on what a wonderful world it would be if bloggers’ opinions mattered a damn.

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Saturday, 16 July 2005

The War Of The Worlds: The Good Bits 2 »

As Jim Bliss is talking about something other than the London bombings to wit, writing DVD reviews, it’s time I finished the “War of the Worlds” thing I started here.

But first:

“War of the Worlds” is rated PG-13. Much of the earth’s population is wiped out, leaving very little time for sex or bad language.

NY Times summary.

Fred Clark has a good post on the meaning of the original War of the Worlds, although he doesn’t link to any of the “right-wing blogs” “kvetching” about the movie being “some kind of anti-American, anti-war tract.” (Oh god, I found one. “Yet another farrago of lies from anti-Semite Steven Spielberg, the man who tried to con millions of Americans into believing that Germany in the 1940s was in black-and-white (or as libruls would say ‘monochrome.’) Much as we all adore “I love Lucy” what kind of asshole makes films in black-and-white? Anti-Semite Woody Allen that’s who.” Etc It doesn’t say that. I haven’t read it yet; I’ll need to find a sick bag first.)

This review will contain two spoilers. The second is unique to this movie and will come at the end, with a warning. The first isn’t really a spoiler because a) you should have read the book; and b) the end is obvious if you know anything at all about H.G. Wells. Wells was an aesthete and a careful writer. “The Time Machine” is narrated anonymously and tells of a time traveller who relates his adventures also in the first person. (As I’ve said before, this is a similar structure to Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.") At the end of that book the time traveller returns to the future and the anonymous narrator is left to write the story. Wells has to find a way for the book you’re reading to exist. If the time traveller writes it, then his wish to return to the Eloi is invalidated. Or he writes it, and how you’re reading it in the 1890s (when it was published) makes no sense.

Likewise, the"War of the Worlds” has to be written by someone, for an audience. Its tenses are finely observed.

The intense excitement of the events had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife’s sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy’s rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity of the Martians.

Book 1, Chapter 7. This is written for an audience familiar with these things. (Note also the “crimson-purple wine,” the nuts, and the cigarette, for I will come back to these.)

So that’s it, the Martians lose. In the book, that makes sense. In the film, which isn’t bothered with who is telling the story or to whom, that ending is much less satisfactory. (See Holy Moly Cunts Corner for a critique.)

As Fred Clark says:

It’s not surprising they don’t like Wells’ story. “War of the Worlds” is a political book. As Jim Emerson notes at RogerEbert.com, Wells explicitly compared the alien invasion of his book with the British imperialism of his time, including incidents like the decimation of the original people of Tasmania.

The book is an exercise in empathy — what would it feel like to be on the receiving end of such imperial force.

The alien invaders arrive. We cannot understand them. Our best technology cannot harm them. They are inscrutable and unstoppable. There is nothing we can do.

This is my first real problem with the film. How the aliens arrive makes no sense. It looks great. In the book (written before rocketry) the cylinders are fired from a gun on Mars and simply crash around London, leaving great craters. While Wells tries to imagine what technology aliens might have (or we might have in the future), he doesn’t get how much we might be able to learn from astronomy. So his philosophical writer narrator can say after the Martians have killed a peaceful welcoming committee.

“They have done a foolish thing,” said I, fingering my wineglass. “They are dangerous because, no doubt, they are mad with terror. Perhaps they expected to find no living things—certainly no intelligent living things.

Chapter 7. Already we have a more interesting text than the movie. Wells’ narrator becomes a “liberal who gets mugged” to mess with the cliché. If the film had to be about terrorism, then a central character who believed in the terrorists’ essential good nature but gets shot would be at least challenging, The film makes the Martians malign the second they appear, and in not making Cruise’s character intelligent (that may have been a given in casting of course) the opportunity is missed. The point of the book, as Fred says, is that the Martians are inscrutable, and that the narrator and his friend Ogilvy completely misunderstand them.

Going to the edge of the pit, I found it occupied by a group of about half a dozen men—Henderson, Ogilvy, and a tall, fair-haired man that I afterwards learned was Stent, the Astronomer Royal, with several workmen wielding spades and pickaxes. Stent was giving directions in a clear, high-pitched voice. He was standing on the cylinder, which was now evidently much cooler; his face was crimson and streaming with perspiration, and something seemed to have irritated him.

Book 1, Chapter 3. (Given what happens, “something seemed to have irritated him” is a nice dramatic irony.)

This was the Deputation. There had been a hasty consultation, and since the Martians were evidently, in spite of their repulsive forms, intelligent creatures, it had been resolved to show them, by approaching them with signals, that we too were intelligent.

Flutter, flutter, went the flag, first to the right, then to the left. It was too far for me to recognise anyone there, but afterwards I learned that Ogilvy, Stent, and Henderson were with others in this attempt at communication. This little group had in its advance dragged inward, so to speak, the circumference of the now almost complete circle of people, and a number of dim black figures followed it at discreet distances. Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a quantity of luminous greenish smoke came out of the pit in three distinct puffs, which drove up, one after the other, straight into the still air.

This smoke (or flame, perhaps, would be the better word for it) was so bright that the deep blue sky overhead and the hazy stretches of brown common towards Chertsey, set with black pine trees, seemed to darken abruptly as these puffs arose, and to remain the darker after their dispersal. At the same time a faint hissing sound became audible.

Beyond the pit stood the little wedge of people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed to flicker out from it.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

Book 1, Chapter 5. The film misses all this nuance. (And the tripods being buried, what was that about?)

To be fair, the first act of the film (up to Cruise’s escape) is well done, but I find Spielberg a convincing director of domestic scenes. Tom Cruise’s acting here, especially where he’s in shock and covered in dust, is good. But I remember seeing a publicity documentary on Empire of the Sun in which Spielberg very carefully showed Christian Bale the exact facial expressions he wanted. I can’t shake my suspicion that Cruise’s acting here was merely mimicry of the director. (And I think Cruise is underrated. He was very good in Rain Man, for instance.)

In writing this, and re-reading parts of the book, I’m impressed by Wells’ satiric eye. Here he talks about newspaper analyses of the situation.

I began to comfort her and myself by repeating all that Ogilvy had told me of the impossibility of the Martians establishing themselves on the earth. In particular I laid stress on the gravitational difficulty. On the surface of the earth the force of gravity is three times what it is on the surface of Mars. A Martian, therefore, would weigh three times more than on Mars, albeit his muscular strength would be the same. His own body would be a cope of lead to him. That, indeed, was the general opinion. Both The Times and the Daily Telegraph, for instance, insisted on it the next morning, and both overlooked, just as I did, two obvious modifying influences.

The atmosphere of the earth, we now know, contains far more oxygen or far less argon (whichever way one likes to put it) than does Mars. The invigorating influences of this excess of oxygen upon the Martians indisputably did much to counterbalance the increased weight of their bodies. And, in the second place, we all overlooked the fact that such mechanical intelligence as the Martian possessed was quite able to dispense with muscular exertion at a pinch.

This aspect is missing from the film altogether. Not only is there no news commentary (apart from a passing snark at the heartlessness of reporters), there is no mention that Mars is a radically different planet. This is made for an audience who think every planet looks like a quarry or a California studio with plastic rocks (depending on tv show of choice). One could make a passable right-wing parable from the this material (for all that Wells was Fabian socialist). The loss of liberal innocence of the narrator, the inscrutably evil invaders, might being the only right, and the asinine commentary of the media (although I would fail to resist the temptation to substitute “Glenn Reynolds of Tech Central Station” for the Times).

In the film when we see the Martians they appear remarkable similar to the Tripods, but who looks like a Lear jet or a bicycle? That is a stupid and lazy conceit. Wells’ description is more ingenious and more meaningful.

They were, I now saw, the most unearthly creatures it is possible to conceive. They were huge round bodies—or, rather, heads—about four feet in diameter, each body having in front of it a face. This face had no nostrils—indeed, the Martians do not seem to have had any sense of smell, but it had a pair of very large dark-coloured eyes, and just beneath this a kind of fleshy beak. In the back of this head or body—I scarcely know how to speak of it—was the single tight tympanic surface, since known to be anatomically an ear, though it must have been almost useless in our dense air. In a group round the mouth were sixteen slender, almost whiplike tentacles, arranged in two bunches of eight each. These bunches have since been named rather aptly, by that distinguished anatomist, Professor Howes, the hands. Even as I saw these Martians for the first time they seemed to be endeavouring to raise themselves on these hands, but of course, with the increased weight of terrestrial conditions, this was impossible. There is reason to suppose that on Mars they may have progressed upon them with some facility.

Book 2, chapter 2. It may be hard not to think of the “obesity epidemic” or Adam Yoshida and the Keyboard Kommandos when reading the next passage.

It is worthy of remark that a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November or December, 1893, in a long-defunct publication, the Pall Mall Budget, and I recall a caricature of it in a pre-Martian periodical called Punch. He pointed out—writing in a foolish, facetious tone—that the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages. The brain alone remained a cardinal necessity. Only one other part of the body had a strong case for survival, and that was the hand, “teacher and agent of the brain.” While the rest of the body dwindled, the hands would grow larger.

(I detected, anachronistically, a nod to Clause IV here.)

Wells also at least gives the Martians a motive.

They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh, living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal….

This survives in the film, but without the explanation.

Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment

is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shrivelled remains that have fallen into human hands, were bipeds with flimsy, silicious skeletons (almost like those of the silicious sponges) and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before earth was reached. It was just as well for them, for the mere attempt to stand upright upon our planet would have broken every bone in their bodies.

Wells does horror splendidly, and the sympathy he extends to these creatures ("It was just as well for them") makes their misfortune tragic.

There’s also a dry and joyless aspect of the Martians, whose ascetism disgusts the carnal Wells.

In twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on earth is perhaps the case with the ants.

In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men.

All this interesting stuff is gone from the film, as are several characters. Ogilvy’s name is grafted onto Tim Robbins’ character who is a combination of the curate and the artillery man. The curate, roughly, represents loss of faith, and a possible response of religious people to any kind of evidence of extra-terrestrial life. The artilleryman who survives the initial assault on the Martians (in the book the army attack early on; in the film they’re slow) is far more interesting than the creepy loon Robbins plays.

“There’ll be any amount of sentiment and religion loose among them. There’s hundreds of things I saw with my eyes that I’ve only begun to see clearly these last few days. There’s lots will take things as they are—fat and stupid; and lots will be worried by a sort of feeling that it’s all wrong, and that they ought to be doing something. Now whenever things are so that a lot of people feel they ought to be doing something, the weak, and those who go weak with a lot of complicated thinking, always make for a sort of do-nothing religion, very pious and superior, and submit to persecution and the will of the Lord. Very likely you’ve seen the same thing. It’s energy in a gale of funk, and turned clean inside out. These cages will be full of psalms and hymns and piety. And those of a less simple sort will work in a bit of—what is it?—eroticism.”

He paused.

“Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks—who knows?—get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us.”

“No,” I cried, “that’s impossible! No human being——”

“What’s the good of going on with such lies?” said the artilleryman. “There’s men who’d do it cheerful. What nonsense to pretend there isn’t!”

I find this cynicicism more convincing than the greed the crowd exhibits at the ferry in the film. However, Wells doesn’t admire the artilleryman.

From that, in answer to my questions, he came round to his grandiose plans again. He grew enthusiastic. He talked so eloquently of the possibility of capturing a fighting-machine that I more than half believed in him again. But now that I was beginning to understand something of his quality, I could divine the stress he laid on doing nothing precipitately. And I noted that now there was no question that he personally was to capture and fight the great machine.

Comment is unnecessary here.

Tim Robbins’ Ogilvy character also makes zero sense. When the crowd (another, different one) is fleeing the Martians he appears from the basement of a house holding up a gun, and only Tom Cruise and his daughter join him. Also Tom Cruise’s character doesn’t know about food; his children have only rescued condiments from his kitchen, and when they hide in his ex-wife’s house, they don’t eat as the daughter is allergic to peanut butter. (Though everything about the house would suggest that the fridge would be full. I appreciate that Tom may have thought that checking would amount to theft, but feeding his kids should come first, and he can pay later.) In fact, the only thing to pass Tom’s lips is peach schnapps from Tim Robbins, not recommended on an empty dehydrated stomach. His daughter eats nothing. The book is much keener on the necessity of eating. The narrator’s privations are as painful as his close encounters with the heat-ray.

We then crossed to a place where the road turns towards Mortlake. Here there stood a white house within a walled garden, and in the pantry of this domicile we found a store of food—two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and the half of a ham. I give this catalogue so precisely because, as it happened, we were destined to subsist upon this store for the next fortnight. Bottled beer stood under a shelf, and there were two bags of haricot beans and some limp lettuces. This pantry opened into a kind of wash-up kitchen, and in this was firewood; there was also a cupboard, in which we found nearly a dozen of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits.

Book 2, Chapter 1. This it turns out, has to keep two for fifteen days. (The book has several structural problems, and this is a big one, as the narrator has to see the original attacks and to survive the rest of the populace of London being wiped out, Wells had to find a way of protecting him; he buried him alive. I’m not surprised this didn’t make it to the film.) Perhaps the politically correct end of Hollywood decided that a diet of burgundy, salmon and biscuits was too decadent for a modern audience. Unlike the narrator, Cruise doesn’t smoke either.

Now for the second spoiler. I’ll need some help from Debbie Schlussel of Front Page. Ms Schlussel seems not to have read the book, and for that matter isn’t bothered that the film defies her attempt at pigeonholing.

But “spirit” alone does not beat terrorists. Fighting them does. And that involves going on the offense. Terrorists don’t just give up and disappear. They are not aliens who can’t handle our air. Hello? They live among us — they’re of the same species.

That’s because it’s a science fiction movie, Debbie, not a CIA seminar on al Qaida.

And magically, the invaders eventually die and go away at the end of the film because, as narrator Morgan Freeman says, they could not handle the bad things in our air, our environment, our culture. Our “spirit” won out over them.

That’s not what Morgan Freeman says. Ms Schlussel doesn’t even take notes. What Morgan Freeman says is:

From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate, and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man’s weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet’s infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

IMDb memorable quotes. This is a pretty direct lift from Book 2, Chapter 8 (of ten: unlike the film, this isn’t the conclusion).

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things—taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power; to no germs do we succumb without a struggle, and to many—those that cause putrefaction in dead matter, for instance—our living frames are altogether immune. But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

“God in his wisdom” is in both versions; “spirit” is in neither. This is purely invention on Ms Schlussel’s part. The novel ends, as I’ve said, for aesthetic, not moral, reasons. If Wells had followed through on the Tasmanian metaphor, the artillery man’s description would have been the conclusion. (But there’s no need for that, as we’re told what will happen if the Martians win.)

Ms Schlussel does get one thing right, and it’s part of why I hate the film so much. Second spoiler coming up.

Soldiers, with their tanks, hummers, and assorted weapons are wasting their time fighting the alien terrorists. Their hummers come back empty and on fire.

We see the army belatedly engage the Martians, and, as in the book, they’re annihilated. This fits with Wells’ vision of superior technology prevailing. But Cruise’s son wants to join them, and I’m surprised that Ms Schlussel and others don’t take issue with Cruise’s objections. He’s a jumpy, immature, teenager who doesn’t even have a driving licence; I’m sure the troops would really appreciate his assistance, but he represents another chance to do down Cruise as a pacifist. As Ms Schlussel says “Their hummers come back empty and on fire.” The son follows them. And he shows up in Boston at the end. I think this is some sort of sentimental touch. It’s all right because the family are reunited! But in god’s name why? There’s no discernable logic to the Martians’ methods but the survival of an irritating brat when good men and women are blasted out of existence made me gag as it doesn’t seem intended as perverse or ironic.

There is something which is unusual about the ending, though, and Ms Schlussel nearly gets it. The final fight scenes when the Tripods are out of control (because the Martians are dying) is like the street battle at the end of Scorcese’s “Gangs of New York” (review by me); it’s futile.

But “The War of the Worlds” isn’t about anything. Not terrorism, not 9/11 (whatever the writers may have said to the press), not peanut butter allergies. It’s just dumb.

These 1824 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:54pm GMT Permanent link.

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When The Guardian Confused Logic With Fact »

The Guardian has a cheery first paragraph in Lie ends Byers comeback hopes.

The chance of a political comeback for Stephen Byers, once one of New Labour’s brightest hopes, was fading yesterday after the former transport secretary had to admit in court that he had lied to parliament over the future of Railtrack.

Oh yeah? (Love that “one of New Labour’s brightest hopes” though; the cancerous cell in the Party will be cut out yet!) Er, Louise Casey, David Blunkett, and who could ever forget Peter Mandelson? Lying to Parliament? Pish and Tush, sir. He cannot remember the motives behind it. The Dear Leader’s forgiveness is all that matters.

These 69 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:21pm GMT Permanent link.

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Sunday, 17 July 2005

The Joys Of The Weekend Papers »

Sam Leith (whom Tim Worstall informs us, is the Telegraph books editor) writes rather splendidly on kipple. ("Kipple” was coined by Philip K Dick, appropriately immortalised here — just one of the things I don’t know about yesterday, and today seems essential to the gaiety of nations. I should worry; last night I had a dream about an electric sheep.)

Kipple is present when, as last week, I received a phone call from a publicist following up an e-mailed press release about some new book or other. This book, she said, “has been compared” to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and some other damn thing — was it Dostoevsky?

I fished out the press release, which repeated the assertion in just those terms. Compared by whom? I asked her. “Oh,” she said. “It’s what we’re saying about it.”

Sam is quite obviously brilliant and cool and, from his picture, almost inhumanly good-looking. All the more so if he skims the pages of Tim Worstall’s UK blogcritics. And I highly recommend him. He popped into my head when I read Nick Cohen following Matt Turner’s lead.

Cicero is credited with inventing the notion of crimes against humanity in the first century BC when he described Mediterranean pirates as ‘hostis humani generis’.

Credited by whom? Or is it just what Mr Cohen is saying about the Roman? “Hostes humani generis” means “enemies [of] human kind.” (Did someone say “pretentious diction"?) It’s usually translated with an “all” modifying humankind which is silly because a) pirates are human, and they’re not enemies of themselves and b) pirates be cool, arr!

The trouble is that the idea that some things are bad and some are good, not just for particular people at particular times but for all people, has become deeply unfashionable in the postmodern era. Philosopher Stuart Hampshire put the case against relativism well when he wrote: ‘There is nothing mysterious or subjective or culture-bound in the great evils of human experience, reaffirmed in every age and in every written history and in every tragedy and fiction; murder and the destruction of life, physical pain and torture, homelessness, friendlessness. That these great evils are to be averted is the constant presupposition of moral argument at all times and in all places.’

But this is also silly. There are still pirates today (mostly in Asia, I recall.) Piracy, besides being cool, is good for pirates, it isn’t universally bad at all. For myself, I’d go along with “the great evils of human experience… murder and the destruction of life …” but I’m not sure how Mr Cohen’s support for ariel bombardment, which certainly killed tens of thousands, fits.

If you agree but don’t want to call the murderers of civilians ‘evil terrorists’ because the words have been debased by propagandists, there are plenty of others to pick from: commanders who order their fighters to destroy cities …

Fallujah anyone? And then the fun really starts. Actually, let’s put off that off. Let’s look at what a sub did to Mr Cohen’s article (where he chastises the BBC, which he doesn’t work for, loose language while the Observer happily lets him down). The I forget what you call it, summary under the title reads:

A misguided obsession with objective reporting is undermining the BBC’s credibility as a news organisation

This is not Mr Cohen’s point at all. As a damner of relativism, he believes in “objective reporting” — it’s the approach and the kind of language the BBC employs which he’s attacking. Perhaps the headline is Mr Cohen’s, though I hope for his sake, it’s not. “Stop castrating the language.” Now there’s an image. As a serial cat owner, I always thought that particular operation was not only a one-off, but very quick.

Anyway, on to language, gelded or whole.

The BBC has always upheld its reputation for impartiality by balancing the right of the Labour party with the left of the Conservative party, while occasionally allowing the odd Liberal Democrat to say more of the same. Everyone was satisfied except socialists, nationalists and Thatcherites who had good reason to protest that the corporation’s assumption that truth always lay in the centre ground was the bias of the complacent.

This must be wrong. The BBC can’t have “always upheld its reputation for impartiality” because it didn’t start off with one. “I say Mr Chumley Warner, have you the heard that news is going to be delivered straight into your home through the ether if you purchase a contraption called a wireless set! And it will be impartial too. When Lord Reith sets up the BBC he will uphold its impartiality.” Challenging Mr Cohen’s “balancing the right of the Labour party with the left of the Conservative party” would take a book. It’s not true of talking heads discussions (I don’t remember Alan Clark, who from his Diaries was a bit of a moonbat right-winger when not shagging whole families, being barred from “Question Time") and it’s tosh in the context of reporting news which is what the rest of the column is about. “Hello I’m Kate Adie, reporting from Sudan, I can’t bring you any news because, while I am accompanied by Sydney Hetherington-Snickett of the Conservaties and Bert Trellis of the Labour Party, Mr Trellis is having an emotional moment and my reporting would be lop-sided.”

The BBC news guidelines, as I understand them, insist on reporting all relevant accounts. They don’t insist that the true account is an admixture, nor that the ‘centre ground’ must lie between the two major parties. The phrase “socialists, nationalists and Thatcherites” is also telling as we shall see, because Mr Cohen has some biases of his own.

If you agree but don’t want to call the murderers of civilians ‘evil terrorists’ because the words have been debased by propagandists, there are plenty of others to pick from: commanders who order their fighters to destroy cities - war criminals; fighters who kill to overthrow a democratic government - fascists, Stalinists, Islamists and, in the past, CIA agents …

Did the BBC ever flinch from calling a known CIA agent, er, a CIA agent? Notice the list of “baddies": “fascists, Stalinists …” and contrast that with those frustrated with Auntie Beeb “socialists, nationalists” — Stalinists are bad lefties; nationalists are good righties? And Thatcherites? Well the BBC buried them so completely Mrs T won three elections on the trot and a fourth when she’d gone.

But with the exception of ‘kidnapper’, none of the BBC’s words is specific or objective. ‘Bomber’, ‘attacker’ and ‘gunman’ allow no distinction between fighters who assault military targets and fighters who assault civilian targets.

Mr Cohen seems fond of his “evil terrorist” trope — since this appears to be a tautology (unless he secretly believes “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter") is the adjective necessary? I ask because it seems to be the word “terrorist” Mr Cohen wants thrown out; he wants the BBC (but not as Matt observes, his employer) to call terrorists “evil.” But what is a terrorist?

The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

CIA Terrorism FAQs. Yanks eh? When they’re not entering wars late, they’re being pedantic with words.

The deliberate targeting of civilians is a crime against humanity, full stop.

Well yes, Nick.

… the slaughter of a group of 24 children who had surrounded a soldier and were shouting: ‘Hello mister’ and asking for sweets, as a suicide bomber the BBC will not call a ‘terrorist’ did in the al-Jedidah district of Baghdad did last week.

The CIA would consider this murky; I know I do. If the bombers in Iraq blow up sweet shops, I’ll accept that they’re “targetting” civilians. It seems they’re killing soldiers (Mr Cohen used “civilians” not “non-combatants” and, for that matter, “deliberate targeting"); when will Mr Cohen apologise to the “collateral damage” in Iraq, or as those of us with balls on our language might say, “non-combatants” and “civilians.”

Peter Cuthbertson, I suspect, would be unimpressed by labelling the bad guys “Stalinists” and “fascists”. The word “fascist” is being tossed about much too glibly these days. Peter objects very sensibly in this thread on Harry’s Place. “Fascism” has a meaning, and it’s not “somewhat repellent person with views antagonistic to my own.” I feel like I’m having a Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich moment in the Young Ones House.

Matthew gets to the real problem with Mr Cohen with brevity I can only envy.

In these murky circumstances, filled with self-deceit and double standards, the corruption of language is inevitable. The statement that: ‘Insurgents killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday’ is entirely different from the statement that: ‘Al-Qaeda and the Baathists killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday.’ The latter at least allows those members of the audience who want ‘to make their own assessment about who is doing what to whom’ to find out what al-Qaeda and the Baath party believe in and whether decent people should be on the side of the victims or the perpetrators.

As suicide bombers don’t phone threats or leave notes, it’s unclear where they come from. Mr Cohen apparently believes that the secular Ba’ath Party and the ultra-religious organisation called “Al-Qaeda” are standing shoulder-to-shoulder as it were, and riding roughshod over Iraq, quite possibly in the same instant. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi thought to be the al-Qaeda operative in Iraq was based with the Kurds who never made peace with Saddam (and if the Ba’athists ever regain control will be in danger again).

Is there ever a question of “whether decent people should be on the side of the victims or the perpetrators"? Can you name one instance where “decent” people should be on the side of the perpetrators?

Never mind decent people, sensible people (of whom I trust there are many in Iraq) know there is only one side it’s safe to be on: the winners.

Oh, and Matt, thanks for ruining my morning.

These 1071 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:29pm GMT Permanent link.

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BB Roundup »

Tim Worstall’s usually splendid (I’m not in it this week, so take that how you like) Britblog roundup is up. If you’ve read everything listed already, get a life, huh?

These 30 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:27pm GMT Permanent link.

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Monday, 18 July 2005

Another Word For Multi-culturalism Is Civilisation »

As a sopping liberal, I’m not keen on state interference with or judgement of free speech. I’m not keen on the term “hate speech” but I know it when I see it. So this post contains three links; one is sensible, one is shocking (and I don’t say that lightly) and one is, I’m afraid, to a deranged moralising smug little dickhead.

I thought I could do some smart linking commentary, but you’ll have to do it yourselves.

Matthew d’Ancona who disappointed me last week, says (or rather quotes) something very smart about multi-culturalism.

Multi-culturalism - often presented as a sinister Left-wing conspiracy — is, in fact, as the philosopher John Gray has written, “an historical fate”, a purely empirical description of the modern condition. The challenge for a multi-cultural society like Britain, therefore, is not to identify the areas of difference between its component communities, but to have the courage to identify, and insist upon, the points of non-negotiable conformity.

Muslims, in my view, have as much a right to their own schools as Anglicans, Catholics and Jews. But they have a corresponding duty to treat their female pupils in a fashion consistent with British social practice.

(My emphasis.) OK four links. I should write something about I WISH Hollywood Was That Organized …, but it links to frothing loon Ben Shapiro the cub columnist who just won’t let facts spoil his story! If the following paragraph makes any sense, I’m the Salem Witchfinder General.

And we can’t just shrug off all of this deviancy as science fiction — it’s reality! These are real people, in real situations. After all, aren’t we watching reality TV? That’s the gimmick of “reality” television: We can’t turn it off, because it’s real. As long as we’re going to live in the real world, we might as well watch “Reality’s Greatest Hits” on Sundance instead of sitting through a lifetime of real world experience and possibly missing some of what real life has to offer.

Ben as you can tell doesn’t like “reality tv.”

This September, the Sundance Channel will air a “groundbreaking” new “reality” show entitled “TransGeneration.” The show follows “four unique individuals, two male-to-females and two female-to-males as they struggle to transition from one gender to the other in the midst of a grueling school year. From working-class campuses to private colleges steeped in tradition, we follow these four students as they juggle the pressures of college life, academia and family expectations with their own life-changing transitions. Idealistic and empassioned [sic], these four young adults embark on a journey of self-discovery and in the process re-define gender for their generation.”

As you can tell, he’s got his sweaty hands on a — press release!

Sundance execs can’t wait to put this gender propaganda out on the air, enhancing tolerance for those who can’t decide whether they’re boys or girls.

I don’t know what planet Ben comes from, but in the US, to qualify for Social Security you have to be starving, health insurance costs the earth, and, by the way, Josef Goebbels is dead. Propaganda doesn’t pay. If a studio makes a programme, any programme, it’s because they they believe it will attract viewers and hence advertisers. Oh, and by the way, “enhancing tolerance” is a terrible phrase.

What’s rather sad about Ben is that he can’t even do research. (I know he’s writing for Town Hall readers, but even they must have some standards.)

The irony of the situation is that reality television is a hoax. It’s no more real than “The O.C.” or “Law and Order,” and it’s considerably more deceptive. It’s also much more profitable. I recently spoke with Dave Bell, president of Dave Bell Associates; Bell is a veteran documentary filmmaker and a pioneer in reality television. His company produced the first “Unsolved Mysteries” specials, among other reality projects. He describes reality TV programming as “the most unreal situation for something called ‘reality’ that anyone could imagine.”

Er, right. Ben has been talking about a show (which he hasn’t seen) which is filmed in real time (as Big Brother and Gordon Ramsay are over here) and the only person he can find to interview makes crime reconstructions (that’s not going just on the name; here’s the website), which is a totally different kind of television. (Both are absolute shite, though I like Gordon Ramsay.) Reconstructions of “unsolved mysteries” are by definition unreal. But that isn’t what’s bothering me. This is.

According to the TV execs, we should all embrace the deviant — after all, these transgendered students are “idealistic and impassioned,” going through “life changes” just like the rest of us. Who are we to condemn them?

Never mind the “TV execs” bit — they’re just straw men blowing around Ben’s useless skull, it’s the word “deviant” and the suggestion that it’s right to “condemn them.”

Well, what Ben is doing, IMO, is spreading hatred. Because what does condemning do?

Maybe you remember from the early 1990s a kid called James Harries. He was some sort of prodigy and bow-tie wearer and he was certainly whatever the opposite of self-effacing is. Terry Wogan interviewed him on TV once when it was becoming clear that the supply of proper celebs willing to chat to Tel was not bottomless. He managed to rub the professionally affable Irishman up the wrong way.

Whatever, having had his brush with fame, he had a sex change, and some total thugs agree with simpering Ben about condemnation, giving a sub ed on the South Wales Echo one of the weirdest headlines ever: Sex change ex-child star in brutal attack. (You may not want to follow the link; it’s pretty graphic.) Bastards.

These 512 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:03am GMT Permanent link.

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The Priapic Parliamentarian »

Oi, Boris, No! Change it, now, at once, this instant, if not sooner. (Noticed through Kaliyuga Kronicles.)

These 17 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:53am GMT Permanent link.

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The Voice Of The Mole »

Here’s a laugh. In the Guardian, Roy Hattersley says He’s still the wrong leader for Labour.

That is not to say that he has become “the leading … statesman in the developed world” — a judgment that, although it appeared in this newspaper, might well have been an extract from the works of Adrian Mole.

When we build the New Jerusalem, deliberate cruelty will be outlawed. But how right Roy is. Adrian Mole (warning: scary photo).

Blair is not merely an outstanding statesman, but the most important single figure in international relations in the world today.

These 37 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:26pm GMT Permanent link.

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You Know What? I'm Confused »

—The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
—The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory or the citizens of more than one country.

Central Intelligence Agency - Terrorism FAQ

So it began: Straw warns Iraq on terror threat. Then he wobbled a bit: Jack Straw BBC Interview.

People have questioned whether there is any evidence that Iraq was involved with Al-Qaeda. Well there wasn’t any direct evidence of that. But what I know for sure is that rogue states and tyrannical leaders like Saddam Hussein first of all provide a terrible example to terrorists.

Indeed he did. Quoth Guido Fawkes (bit of a terrorist name, methinks, lock that man in the tower for religious deviance!) —

Remind Guido again when the last load of muslims from Leeds/Luton went to place bombs all over London and what was their motivation?

Now he’s gone, and terrorist are free from his (ahem!) terrible example, they’re getting it right more and more often.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.

Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

The Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Interview on The American Conservative with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago.)

The treacherous Telegraph (it was once edited by Peregrine Worsthorne, skewered by Oliver Kamm as one of “twin voices of reaction in defence of fascism") quite unobjectively reports Terror ‘is the price we paid for going to war’.

When Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, connected the two issues in a speech, No 10 accused him of being “naive”. It issued a list of al-Qa’eda-related attacks going back more than a decade to underline that the Iraq war was not the starting point. However, Mr Blair will find it hard to dismiss today’s report. The Royal Institute of International Affairs, which also goes under the name of Chatham House, is internationally respected and politically unbiased.

How can any body be “politically unbiased” and challenge the government? Taking a stance other than the government’s is de facto proof of bias. This report and Royal Institute of International Affairs belong in the bin.

Is it really more than two years since this blog first noticed that suicide attacks work?

The bloody Telegraph (the voice of reaction) Straw rejects report linking bombings to Iraq war.

Mr Straw, who is chairing an EU foreign ministers’ conference in Brussels, said he was “astonished” that the report suggested “we should not have stood shoulder to shoulder with our long-standing allies”.

Bastard! He said “shoulder to shoulder” I nearly spat tea on my monitor!

John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said bombings in Turkey and Iraq since July 7 show terrorism is an international problem.

Terrorism is an international problem: many countries have problems with terrorists: when we had the IRA, Germany had Baader-Meinhof, and Spain had ETA. (Some say Wales had the Free Welsh Army, but as they got what they wanted a television channel and a pub named after their leader — those Guardian indecent Lefties demur (original Graun content removed, sorry), they can’t have been real terrorists.)

However, the terrorists in Turkey can’t be the same ones funded by the Ba’ath party according to Nick Cohen.

The minibus bombing [in Turkey] by suspected Kurdish separatists highlights the deadly new tactics of a movement battered by the jailing six years ago of Abdullah Ocalan, the once-feared leader of a vicious insurgency that left more than 40,000 dead.

Separatists are seeking to cripple the economy. MP Anne Clywd thinks the Kurds are no allies of the Ba’ath Party. Someone must be mistaken!

These 306 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:03pm GMT Permanent link.

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Tuesday, 19 July 2005

Thou Shalt Not Spam »

This is thy first commandment: Thou shalt not spam. This is thy second commandment: Thou shalt not spam. This is thy third commandment: Thou shalt not spam.

How do you reach a sophisticated, email literate and interwebthing savvy audience, readers? God only knows, because emails offering penis extensions, hot teens, MILFs, Rolexes (WTF is this watch thing?), loans, and the ever-popular Nigerian scam just don’t seem to grab the attention like they used to.

What’s a really, really, really stupid idea? It’s getting hold of a list of names and sending an email addressed to “undisclosed recipients” (that means everyone is in the BCC address field) to all of them. That’s so personal.

And I thought the “Decent Left” were at least smart.

These 124 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:39am GMT Permanent link.

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I Didn't Get Where I Am Today By Invading Countries And Converting Them To Democracy And Letting The »

Matthew Turner quotes Michael J Totten.

Christopher Hitchens said to Ghassan Atiyyah: “If the Iraqis were to elect either a Sunni or Shia Taliban, we would not let them take power.” …Hitchens had a defender, too. He had me. “I agree with Christopher,” I said. “We didn’t invade Iraq to let it turn into another Iran.”

hilzoy of Obsidian Wings found this (original article requires subscription; much of it is in the post):

One young political appointee (a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate) argued that Iraq should not enshrine judicial review in its constitution because it might lead to the legalization of abortion.

Raed (once the friend ‘Salam Pax’ ostensibly wrote to)’s brother Khalid has spent a few days in the clink. Who’s a naughty boy then?

If your child or sibling vanishes for two days then calls from the secret service jail in any other place on earth, that would be considered a disaster and a violation of human rights …

In Iraq, however, it’s Happy News.

Because the other options include: To be tortured, executed, and thrown in garbage by SCIRI and their Badr brigades. To be held by the Iraqi police and left to choke to death in one of their cars. To be held by the US troops then disappear and be mistreated for months in one of their many prisons. To be kidnapped by one of the countless criminal gangs and cost your family some tens of millions of Iraqi Dinars and/or your life.

So now you can see why being held at the mukhabarat jail is such happy news!

My dad said that Khalid mentioned something about his writings or his blog. We’re not sure whether our blogs are the reason behind the abduction of my brother, but it’s one of the possible scenarios. In case if they were, we’ll stand for our political values of anti-violence, anti-occupation, pro-dialogue, pro-free speech, and all of the other honourable stands that my family has taken in our lifetime.

(Via Jamie.) How many times do I have to say this:

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

William Butler Yeats. What part of this don’t the pro-war shills get?

These 70 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thou Shalt Not Spam 2 »

I shouldn’t, I know, but this is so unintentionally funny, I can’t resist.

Dearest one.

Permit me to inform you of my desire of going into business relationship with you. I must not hesitate to confide in you for this simple and sincere business . I am JOY MIKE the only daughter of late Mr.and Mrs. MIKE. My father was a very wealth cocoa merchant in Abidjan,the economic capital of Ivory coast, my father was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outings on a business trip. My mother died when I was a baby and since then my father took me so special Before the death of my father on November 2002 in a private hospital herein Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side and told me that he has the sum of fifting million, Five hundred thousand United State Dollars. USD($15.500,000) left in one of the prime Banks here in Abidjan ,that he used my name as his only Daughter for the next of Kin in depositing of the fund. He also explained to me that it was because of this wealth that he was poisoned by his busines associates. That I should seek

for a foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money and use it for investment purpose such as real estate management or hotel management . Dear,I am honourably seeking your assistance in the following ways:

(1) To provide a bank account into which this money would be transferred to as soon the fund moved from the bank.

(2) To serve as a guardian of this fund since I am only 21 years old.

(3) To make arrangement for me to come over to your country to further my education and to secure a resident permit in your country.

Moreover,Dear,I am willing to offer you 15 % of the total sum as compensation for your effort/input after the successful transfer of this fund into your nominated account overseas.

Furthermore, you indicate your options towards assisting me as I believe that this transaction would be concluded within fourteen (14) days you signify interest to assist me. Anticipating to hear from you soon. Thanks and God bless.

Best regards,

JOY MIKE

“…my father was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outings on a business trip …” and “… in a private hospital herein Abidjan he secretly called me on his bed side …” Desite the handicap of being dead, obviously. Even stupider than the “Decent Left” and a lot more fun. Now if only I had SIAW’s bank details.

These 76 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:20pm GMT Permanent link.

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Relativist Wisdom »

Nick Cohen:

In these murky circumstances, filled with self-deceit and double standards, the corruption of language is inevitable. The statement that: ‘Insurgents killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday’ is entirely different from the statement that: ‘Al-Qaeda and the Baathists killed 24 children in Baghdad yesterday.’ The latter at least allows those members of the audience who want ‘to make their own assessment about who is doing what to whom’ to find out what al-Qaeda and the Baath party believe in and whether decent people should be on the side of the victims or the perpetrators.

An alternative view: US Army Uses Iraqi Children As Human Shields Again.

Using kids as human shields is such a shameful US Army policy. It’s one of the worst policies in the illegal occupation that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis till now.

One of these writers took the photo above, can you guess which one?

These 28 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:57pm GMT Permanent link.

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Oooooh! That BBC! »

Telegraph: Licence payers neglected for years, says Grade.

Television licence-payers have been “neglected” for years by the BBC’s governors, chairman Michael Grade has said.

Mr Grade said the governors had followed their own opinions and tastes and had failed to ensure the BBC responded to the requirements of viewers.

Too fucking right! Some bastard took “Doctor Who” off the air, just because he didn’t like it! If I ever find out who it was …

(I’m kidding. It was total crap until Russell T Davies came along.)

These 46 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:23pm GMT Permanent link.

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Wednesday, 20 July 2005

New Links »

There have been a few upheavals recently. John Cole has moved to a nice new site. I’ve added Pub Philosopher; Raed in the Middle (smart name); Cosmic Variance (written by natural philosophers aka as “the clever sort” — scientific and materialist without the Marxist bull); What Do I Know? and Tampon Teabag. I may have left some worthwhile new blogs out, but I don’t think I have.

I’m sure there are others, and I’m sure that some sites on the blogroll are dead or barely alive. I might have to follow the example of Harry’s Place and start making cuts.

While I’m adding people, I’ve started to worry about how to identify the ‘Decent Left.’ We know that they don’t ’quaff’ shiraz and they don’t live in Hampstead and Islington; however, they do take themselves seriously, and do express solidary with “workers” everywhere. This isn’t much to go on, admittedly, but I think I’ll recognise one now.

These 159 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:41pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thirty-Six Years Ago Today »

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Jon Gillespie Magee, Jr, Pilot Officer, RCAF

And it still excites me. (And, yes, I still think manned exploration is an utter waste of tax-dollars, pounds, euros, yen, and er whatever the Chinese have.)

Google have celebrated the first Moon landing as only they can: Google Moon. Via Tim Wostall. As he says, pick a site and zoom right in. It didn’t look like that on TV at the time, but we only had black-and-white.

These 68 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:59pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thursday, 21 July 2005

Taking Care Of Business »

Commons sketch by Andrew Gimson in the paper I usually refer to as the Torygraph.

If being a cleaner is a thankless job, so too is being the leader of the Opposition, a task Michael Howard appears to have abandoned since turning himself into a caretaker.

In other walks of life, the caretaker is often an elderly and ineffectual figure who potters about to no apparent purpose but is regarded as generally loyal, and so it is with Mr Howard. He has entered with embarrassing enthusiasm into the role of Mr Blair’s loyal assistant in the struggle against terrorism, just as Mr Howard’s predecessor, Iain Duncan Smith, entered with embarrassing enthusiasm into the role of Mr Blair’s assistant in the Iraq invasion.

Mr Gimson is a class act as a sketch writer; I hope his editors continue regard his cynicism as the only proper response to long exposure to politicians and not as dissent from the editorial line.

He clearly doesn’t rate Howard, but he reviles Blair.

When one considers the display of moral passion which the Prime Minister brings to any subject he reckons to be of political importance, one can see that he reckons the cleaners are an irrelevance. Mr Blair did not get where he is today by standing shoulder to shoulder with what is left of the working class.

The following paragraph starts with, “But one need not be a socialist …” which makes me question if he writing for the right paper. (But, er, they’re all tory really, and the Telegraph pays well, so probably yes.)

Anne Begg (Lab, Aberdeen South) asked him if he would find time this summer to read the new Harry Potter book, adding: “What would you say to those who have been critical of these books, especially as they have done more for improving literacy and children’s enjoyment of reading than even this Government’s excellent education policy and I did in 19 years as an English teacher?”

This was a question so sycophantic one could imagine it being put to Saddam Hussein in the bad old days before Mr Blair transformed Iraq into a democracy.

These 98 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:18am GMT Permanent link.

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A Society That Is Intolerant Of Error Will Soon Become Intolerant Of Truth »

In the Times, Theodore Dalrymple says “Removing Sir Roy Meadow from the medical register is very wrong.” (Via Mike Power.) He makes several good points, and no bad ones (as far I can see at one reading).

A society that is intolerant of error will soon become intolerant of truth, for truth rarely emerges except by the testing of error. In this connection, it is probably not irrelevant to note that Professor Meadow was a disseminator of an unwelcome and disturbing truth: that parents may sometimes maltreat their own children in bizarre ways, and those children, therefore, need to be protected from them. Although I am not a paediatrician, I can testify from personal clinical experience that parents are capable of doing things to their own children that, had I not had incontrovertible evidence, I should scarcely have credited as being possible. And all paediatricians in this country are familiar with the kind of cases that Professor Meadow described.

Part of the problem here, it seems to me, is one of language, and the binary nature of court decisions. We think of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy as a thing, which is either present or not. But the underlying cause of the illness is the parent using the child as an attention-getting mechanism. Now how many parents do that — the tennis lessons, the spelling bees, the talent contests. Suddenly half the middle class looks guilty.

I didn’t link to this because of his Dr Dalrymle’s conclusion, but it’s worth mentioning.

The striking-off of Professor Meadow is therefore a sinister manifestation of a society that tolerates no error, and therefore no thought; that is in constant need of scapegoats; and that offers vanishingly little resistance to the centralisation of authority.

These 129 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:09am GMT Permanent link.

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A Definition »

Memo to all using “Islamism” as a contraction of “ISLAMic facscISM” of “ISLAMic evangelISM” or as a buzz word for “what bad Muslims believe and good Muslims don’t.” Shorter OED:

Islamism … noun M18 …

= ISLAM 1.

Islamist noun (a) an orthodox Muslim; (b) an expert in or student of Islam.

If you’re looking for a word for those who through speech and writing support violence but don’t actually do anything else (or talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk), the ever-flexible English language has a phrase for those too: Keyboard Kommandos. Please use it.

Update. John B has pointed me to the Wikipedia definition, which is, like many Wikipedia entries, extremely detailed. Unlike John, however, I don’t find it useful. Islamism is a term used by others; those it describes call themselves everything from Pan Arabists to Muslim fundamentalists. As Norm says, the corect term for a movement is ‘what they call themselves.’

These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:09pm GMT Permanent link.

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Carbo-loading »

The magazine promoting next year’s London Marathon came through the door this morning. ‘Magazine’ may be the wrong word, but I can’t think of a better one; it’s glossy, A4, and 98 pages, anyway. Most of those pages are adverts for charities, and most of the ones that aren’t are either adverts for Flora (the main sponsor) products or shoes. And there’s an ad for Michelob ULTRA a beer with “less than half the carbs” [of other beers]. What, in God’s name, is the point of promoting carb-light products to marathon runners? If you don’t want a beer gut, drink less beer. It’s kind of simple. The website, if you bother with it (Gary Farber read the rest scale: 0 out of 5) seems to have been written by a trainee late on a Friday.

Michelob ULTRA was the first ever premium low-carbohydrate lager to be launched in the world. It is a true evolution in beer. This unique beer was launched in the UK on 7th August 2003. It was introduced because we identified a consumer need for a low-carbohydrate and low calorie beer that still has a taste refined enough to carry the Michelob family name.

(As beer contains no fat, and little protein, “low-carbohydrate” and “low calorie” are the same thing.) The really sad bit is this.

The result is a great-tasting premium lager with fewer carbohydrates and calories.

Here’s Michael Jackson (not that one) on a London Brew.

“Don’t call me a yuppie,” warned the investment banker, flexing his red braces menacingly, “and don’t say the White Horse is a trendy pub.” The investment banker was doing something that happens 14,000 times a year at the White Horse: he was spurning the Grolsch and Michelob in favor of Highgate Mild. …

… The remarkably smooth Highgate Mild, with a contemplative balance of maltiness and fruitiness, a hint of iron and a notable complexity of flavors, is available at half a dozen pubs in London and much more widely in the West Midlands.

If you want to say something tastes good, “great-tasting” doesn’t do it.

Here’s a training tip for getting fit, losing weight, and having a good time. Try making love in a canoe.

These 200 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:46pm GMT Permanent link.

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The Periodic Table »

Via Gary Farber a new look periodic table.

Cool, I agree, but I prefer the Edgar Longman version from the Festival of Britain which inspired it. (See below; larger image.) The galaxy in the Philip Stewart version is largely irrelevant, but as with J.K. Rowling, if children like it, and it inspires them, all to the good.

These 58 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:03pm GMT Permanent link.

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More Attacks »

Second time as farce, apparently. Four bombers, three on the tube and one on a bus. No casualties (or perhaps there are; it’s hard to tell — numbers seem low). BBC: Tube cleared after minor blasts.

One cavil:

If you have any photos send them to yourpics@bbc.co.uk

No don’t. I can’t remember the links, but one victim of the first attack thought the people taking photographs were just sick, and the journalists who were sent pictures from the first bombs said they couldn’t use any of them. If you have anything which may help the capture of those responsible, give it to the police, otherwise, you’re just sad, morbid bastards.

These 102 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:52pm GMT Permanent link.

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Update »

Snowmail breaking news email: “Armed police have entered University College Hospital in Bloomsbury near Warren Street station.” I can’t find a story on this. (But remember that there were reports of a shooting in Docklands two weeks ago, and these came to nothing.)

These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:08pm GMT Permanent link.

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Would Research Kill You? »

Well, I’m sure research has killed people: Marie Curie for example. But Tim Worstall bagged Don’t These People Have Editors?

Roger L Simon doesn’t have editors, of course, but as he has “Ads by Google” on his site, you’d think he might have heard of search engines. So this irks me.

Quite recently fifty-five or so Britons and others were blown to death in the London tubes at the hands of Islamofascists.

“Fifty-five or so"? The names aren’t hard to find: List of the bomb blast victims. Maybe Roger’s counting was thrown by Fox News, ever-eager to declare victims dead before they stopped breathing. (Well do you have a better explanation for their body count being higher than everyone else’s? They pulled the numbers out of their arses? Yes, that is a plausible explanation.) It’s not as bad as Mark Steyn (or Simon Heffer) getting the number of dead at Hillsborough wrong, but as the bombings were less than two weeks old, it’s still pretty bad. While I’m at it, it’s not “the London tubes” — it’s “the [London, if you really have to] tube” — the passengers were on tube trains. Sheesh. How is life in Dear Old Dixie, Rog? (And it’s by the hands of … not at … the victims weren’t strangled, or knifed.)

Perhaps Jonah Goldberg doesn’t have editors either, seeing as his byline calls him an “NRO Editor at Large.”

I’m reminded of the line from Virgil’s Aeneid: “Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

Virgil, of course, didn’t say that. Enoch Powell said it (though Virgil was from Gaul). He actually wrote, if you’ll permit a Nick Cohen interlude: bella horrida bella/et Thybrium multp spumantem sanguine cerno. Virgil was being literal, by the way.

O.K., I’m not really reminded of the poem itself so much as the now largely forgotten speech by the British scholar and — briefly — politician Enoch Powell, who, in 1968, recited the verse to suggest that Britain was heading down a path that could only lead to social division and multicultural chaos. Powell lamented the usual rogue’s gallery of villains: runaway immigration, secularism, feminism, et al. His worry was that the new barbarians were tearing apart the institutions, values and norms that tend to hold a nation together.

My emphasis. Jonah, you’re not reminded of the poem at all. Perhaps Jonah’s byline pic is a coupe of decades old (he has a never-in-fashion Republican haircut), but he looks at little young. Enoch Powell was elected in 1950 and resigned from the Conservative Party (over the EEC) in 1974 (when he said, “Vote Labour"). He returned to Parliament later in 1974 (in the second General Election that year) to represent South Down for the Ulster Unionists. He lost his seat and left Parliament in 1987. You can say many things about Powell, but not “British scholar and — briefly — politician.” Now, for your delectation, edification, and much else besides, here’s the text of that speech. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to either a) find the prediction of Muslim suicide bombings; or b) find references to secularism, feminism, et al. Bonus points and padded cell for finding both.

From this American’s perspective, the debate in Britain in the wake of the bombings — over Powell, immigration, Islam, “Britishness” and the rest — reveals the extent of this proud nation’s problems, and to a certain extent, the profound decline of Britain.

My emphasis. Now, no journalist, let alone one kicked upstairs to the giddy heights of editorship can resist the dustiest cliché but isn’t Jonah actually arguing (when he deigns to make any sense whatever) that our problem is that we aren’t proud?

All of this came about because the British lost confidence in themselves.

See? Told you.

For years, the police here have looked the other way as citizens have slaughtered their wives and daughters in “honor killings.”

I used to read the ah, feminist, Guardian which was regularly (and rightly, IMO) appalled by domestic violence at home and abuse abroad such as female circumcision. I somehow missed this story of the police looking the other way while wives and daughters were murdered. Perhaps one of my right wing readers will find such a story. I need a) proof of murder; and b) police (not courts, not the CPS; no scrub that, include ‘em) refusal to investigate.

And now the Thames, like the Tiber, is foaming with much blood.

Except, it’s not. Jonah doesn’t understand the scale of slaughter Virgil was describing (something akin to the sack of Troy and the butchering of all the inhabitants of a city, and the corpses literally being in the river) and he doesn’t understand Powellite hyperbole either. Idiot.

These 577 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:46pm GMT Permanent link.

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Friday, 22 July 2005

Suspected Bomber Shot »

Snowmail email:

A suspected suicide bomber has been shot on the London Underground station of Stockwell as he fled from the police.

One witness said the young Asian man was shot five times and was dead.

There were unconfirmed reports that police believe the suspect was one of the attackers involved in yesterday’s incidents.

Passengers evacuated from the south London station described seeing armed police chasing a suspect before opening fire.

Witness Chris Martin said he was waiting on the northbound Northern line platform at Stockwell station and a train had pulled in when several men burst on to the platform about 20 yards from him.

“There was obviously some sort of altercation going on, and then they came flying on to the platform and these guys just threw this man into the open doors of the train.

“Then I heard shots, I thought it was three but someone else said five. It sounded like a silencer gun going off, and then there was blind panic, with people shouting and screaming and just running away.”

These 2 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:42pm GMT Permanent link.

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Brilliant Ideas I Never Had »

Part 1 of a possibly infinite series. Anthony has discovered Fitness First’s Light Saber workout (which I’m not going to dignify with a link). The hardest part seems to be keeping a tiara on your head while being extremely silly. I do like the “bicep curl":

A Jedi Knight may have used this exercise to help strengthen his arm muscles and to improve core stability. This exercise will tone the upper arm (biceps muscle) and strengthen abdominal muscles - helping to create an impressive six pack

…

2. Flex both elbows until the joint is at right angles
3. Lay the light saber across your two palms and grip lightly
4. Flex the elbows drawing the light saber towards your chin

Hey it’s just like lifting weights … without lifting weights! (I honesty think drinking a pint of beer would work the arm muscles more. Might not tone that stomach though.)

I’ll never understand the Telegraph’s web policy. There was a fitness story (see the connection? oh, I’m smooth) at the weekend which I wanted to link to, but it wasn’t online, and I doubt you’d have believed me. And now it is! Crazy world. Josh Salzmann (their “new fitness expert") promises Get fit in five days.

When I trained Angelina Jolie for Tomb Raider, we used wrestling bouts as a way to work out, but she also found it therapeutic in combating the stresses of daily life.

And you know what? He turned a fit, slim, very pretty actress in just six weeks into a fit, slim, very pretty actress. It’s like magic. I mean, who knew she was that stupid? And why didn’t I think of it first?

These 174 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:12pm GMT Permanent link.

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Saturday, 23 July 2005

Observer Columnist Slams "Degenerate" Music »

The Observer’s Nick Cohen, who came to nationwide attention when he was evicted from the first series of Big Brother, slammed German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen as a ‘degenerate,’ and referred to the composer’s “tin ear.”

(The online article carries a correction which admits that Mr Cohen was wrong to write

The destruction of the World Trade Centre was ‘the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,’ declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams.

What Mr Stockhausen actually said ‘Lucifer’s greatest work of art’. The “imaginable for the whole cosmos” bit was justifiable columnist licence on Mr Cohen’s part. Mr Cohen insists he is a columnist not a researcher or a “bruschetta eating-intellectual.” The former have been speaking prose for their whole lives are paid six-figure salaries for their verbal invention (such as adding “whole cosmos” or writing about “the screams” which were not broadcast). The latter two categories are trainees and paid the minimum wage, supplementing their diets with crumbs from David Aaronovitch’s belly button if they are good.)

Facing the press this morning, when asked if he was a philistine, Mr Cohen snapped, “I consider that an anti-Semitic remark typical of the MSM. You’re the sort of people who say ‘Chinese, Japanese’ as if they were the same thing. Cursory knowledge of the Books of Samuel should acquaint you with the difference.”

One journalist wondered aloud that the Bible does not mention the Chinese or Japanese anywhere to loud groans and bread-roll throwing.

When an unidentified journalist muttered, “This country is run by philistines,” Cohen declared, “You’re from the BBC aren’t you? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

In response to a question about his taste in music, Cohen grew heated, “You Islingtonians, I know you, you sneer at Phil Collins. He’s a great man. Not in the physical sense, obviously. And you pretend to keep up with youth. What about Rap music, then? That’s rap music with a silent “C” if you ask me. And don’t give me alternative comedy. Alternative to comedy, more like.”

These 314 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:38pm GMT Permanent link.

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There Was An Old Man With A Beard »

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared! —
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

Edward Lear

John Band links to Daniel Pipes who refers to “Londonistan” as here.

Could it be that the four bombs on July 7 jarred the British from their Londonistan reverie? Though a believer in what I call “education by murder,” I doubt that 54 deaths of anonymous users of public transportation can profoundly impact so tired, liberal, apologetic, and multicultural a country as the United Kingdom.

Like that other Beltway-based enemy of multiculturalism, Mark Steyn, Mr Pipes adds valuable minutes to his working day by refusing to submit to the tyranny of the razor. Clearly support for traditional values, monoculturalism, religion, and anti-feminism (it all went wrong when wimmin got the vote, I say) goes with this brave iconoclasm. Rise up, men! The beard club is open only to those with a ‘Y’ chromosone! Chin stroking is enhanced immeasurably, giving you that “I’m an intellectual” look women go wild for without having to join the Democratic Party! Just remember how Jennings’ chum Darbishire just to stroke to chin when thinking. Being 11, he didn’t have an actual beard, but he clearly aspired to one!

Join us now! Beards for family! Beards for religion! Beards for the good old days! Beards for values!

These 150 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:46pm GMT Permanent link.

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Pussies »

Telegraph: Inter [Milan] cancel English tour. Yeah, and you switched sides in the war too. At least our police do more than buzz around on hair-dryers. And our men don’t spend all day counting their bollocks or coming their hair.

You can fuck right off. Cowards.

Update. I’ve calmed down a little now. As it seems that the police shot a man who wasn’t a bomber, I can sympathise a little more with Inter. What if everyone the police go after has to face the business end of a Glock? That would put an dampner of the national passtime of shoplifting, wouldn’t it? Well, when I was in Italy your bastard countrymen tried to half-inch everything not nailed down. The only things of value they left alone were the Roman ruins. Guess which European country elected the first Fascist? And which one has the only theocracy in the West? You’re still cowards, and you can still fuck off.

These 46 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:06pm GMT Permanent link.

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Sunday, 24 July 2005

The Wogs Start At Kansas »

Norm finds a passage from O. Henry:

The first “stick-up” I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train robbers start in the business. Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong. The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some low-down trick that gives the boys a bad name. Wire fences and “nesters” made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth.

As norm comments:

A bad heart? You better believe it.

Translation. Our villains just had a few unlucky breaks. The “bad hearts” aren’t from round here.

Somehow, they never are.

These 30 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:53pm GMT Permanent link.

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Curse Those Islingtonistas! »

Nick Cohen sounds off in the Observer. (Via Mick Hartley.)

Surrounded as I am by New Labour’s Islington supporters, I can understand the insouciance. Most parents I know want to send their children to religious schools. They don’t believe in God for a moment; they just go to church and lie to vicars so their children can get away from the abysmal state system and have what is a selective education by any other name. Where’s the harm in that? But it’s a far cry from Islington to the slums of the north. The bombers came from what is becoming a typical Muslim community. They were Kashmiris living in Leeds’s segregated streets which might as well have been official ghettos.

Now the government wants to reinforce separation with Muslim schools for brown pupils and Christian schools for white ones.

David Trimble told John Humphrys recently that the greatest blunder after partition was to allow Catholic and Protestant schools to survive. He might have added that the mainland is repeating Ulster’s murderous mistake.

A “far cry” from Islington (was that dozy cliché or an intentional Muriel Spark reference?) eh? Can this be the same Nick Cohen who wrote:

Finally, and unforgivably in the view of my neighbours, our anti-liberal populists can’t even get Islington right. Most of the borough is miserable. The usual causes of poverty — unemployment, non-union jobs and single parent-hood — combine with high London prices to make it wretchedly poor.

The few gentrified streets did once house members of the leftish intelligentsia.

Ee, it’s grim oop north, by gum. “House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, ‘alf the floor was missing, and we were all ‘uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.” (And if the “leftish intelligentsia” have moved out, how can they surround Mr Cohen?)

But how is “the mainland … repeating Ulster’s murderous mistake"? By not forcibly merging schools? Separate schools is the status quo. OK, I admit there was a little bother with that Guy Fawkes. Go on, name some names.

Oh, and did the bombers identified so far go to Islamic schools? Here’s last week’s Sunday Telegraph The path to mass murder.

Whatever the bookshop’s significance, it was during their teens that [Hasib ]Hussain and [Shehzad] Tanweer first struck a bond. Neither was especially religious and mixed moderately well with white neighbours. But when Hussain moved from his local primary school to the Matthew Murray comprehensive, the reality of being part of an ethnic minority hit home. “It was always whites against Asians there,” said one young man who was a contemporary of Hussain at the school. “I can’t recall Hussain fighting much, but he was in the thick of the gangs. I think it came as a shock to him, that his background was mocked and hated by some whites. It didn’t help that he was over six foot and a bit of a dork, so he got picked on for a whole variety of reasons. Maybe that was the start of how he began to feel alienated.”

I don’t believe in Religious Schools any more than Mr Cohen does, but he could use some better arguments against them. And a few facts.

These 181 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:35pm GMT Permanent link.

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If It's Not Murder, It's OK »

Normas Geras is viewed by many as a fair-minded and reasonable chap. Being a F-MARC, he took exception to Charlie Brooker’s Guardian “Screen Burn” column (since removed from Guardian site: link to Google cache). Normblog: Guardian journalist calls for assassination.

Of course it’s all in jest, so that’s OK. Except calling for a person’s murder isn’t OK: not in jest, not in general, and not — in particular — in the times we’re living through, where there are people who think there are political justifications for murder and others who make excuses for them.

Last Friday’s Normblog profile.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > From the present — the American writer and conservative ‘hawk’ Mark Helprin, and rocker Ted Nugent. Helprin is on a lot of shortlists as ‘world’s greatest living writer’, but that’s not the only reason I’d invite him. I figure that given a few drinks, he could help me convince Nugent to beat the crap out of the third guest I’d invite — Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the socialist Canadian Prime Minister who set into motion the intellectual, military and political decay of a once proud nation.

I suppose not being in jest, calling for physical attacks on very old men (Trudeau was born on October 18, 1919, making him 85) are perfectly acceptable. In my country we have traditional dance called “Beat the Socialist.”

Update. So Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, PC, CC, CH, QC, MA, LL.L, LL.D, FRSC is actually dead. Should have checked Wikipedia. So I'm an idiot. What else is new? Thanks as so often to Dave Heasman, who spends his leisure hours to picking through my mistakes.

These 82 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:42pm GMT Permanent link.

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Another Fine Selection »

Tim Worstall has compiled another fine Britblog Roundup. To all those who made the cut, well done. To all those who didn’t including me, must try harder. (Deferred success joke omitted.) Tim himself is missing, but that’s clearly modesty (or an understanding of conflict of interest). He’s written excellent posts for the past week,

The Sharpener’s The Future Dictionary of Great Britain is particularly fine.

Centrist
1. n. A person sharing the opinions of the word’s user.Antonym: Fascist

Fascist
1 n. A person whose views the speaker disagrees with. Antonym: Centrist

That reminds me that I’ve added (among others) Wardyblog to the blogroll on the right. Partly for Aaronovitchwatchwatch, partly for the hilarious (and short) How bloggers speak.

These 93 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:43pm GMT Permanent link.

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Oops! I Take It Back! »

BBC: Inter tour back on after rethink. (Via This Leaden Pall.) So this was bang out of order.

I doubt Pub Philosopher will change his mind though.

These 27 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:49pm GMT Permanent link.

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More Evidence For The Mark Lawson Theory »

Writing in the Guardian last month, Mark Lawson wrote of galloping spiritual inflation in the USA. This was given the sort of reception among British bloggers you’d expect Reg Keys to get in Sedgefield Labour Club.

Especially for those of us who live in the red states, the pernicious influence of religious fundamentalism is a simple fact of everyday life. Someone has to keep an eye on what these folks are doing and saying.

Jason Rosenhouse, Report on the 2005 Creation Mega Conference, Part Three on The Panda’s Thumb.

These 51 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:58pm GMT Permanent link.

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Outing The Appeasers »

Jim Henley:

If they really do “hate us because we’re free,” the Bush Administration’s approach to civil liberties constitutes “appeasement” of the first water.

More comments on Crooked Timber.

In a two-paragraph post, Jim other paragraph is also classic.

President Bush is doubly contemptible. Man wouldn’t veto a spending bill if aliens sucked every last dime out of the Treasury with a tractor beam, but he’ll go all out to preserve the executive power of boundless snooping and covert abuse.

Disclaimer: In reproducing this post and linking to it, I am not calling for the assassination of contemptible military service-dodger, President George Walker Bush. Or even his being beaten up by a MOR rocker and a tedious novelist. (See If It’s Not Murder, It’s OK.)

These 62 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:07pm GMT Permanent link.

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Wrong Person Shot »

Telegraph: Shot man had ‘no reason to flee’

His cousin, Alex Pereira, said Mr Menezez was “a 100% good guy who never did anything wrong and had no reason to run”.

He said: “I don’t think he ran from police. I don’t think he would do that. They can’t show anything that shows that he had.”

I think this is very sad. But while blog discussions elsewhere have mentioned the lack of reliability of eye-witness testimony, what’s been reported so far is that the police shouted something at him and he jumped the barrier. I can see how witnesses can get garments wrong, make assailants taller, and so on, but I really don’t see how several witnesses can confuse going through the barrier with a ticket and hurdling it. In this, I stand by what I wrote in the comments on Tim Worstall’s blog: “BTW, it’s always a bad idea to run from the police, armed or not.”

There’s a sort of explanation for what seems like very odd behaviour on the BBC’s Have Your Say | Stockwell Tube shooting: Your comments:

As an Englishman living in Brazil, I spent some six months living in the Zona Norte of Rio de Janeiro. And I know that if I had been in the same position as Jean Charles, I would have run too. Perhaps it’s not how we would react in England as English but when you’ve lived in a violent Brazilian city you don’t wait for possible gangsters/muggers to get close to you. The fact that he vaulted the gate to get into the station really hasn’t helped him.

Tim Edwards, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil

But back to the Telegraph

[Mr Pereira] said Mr Menezes had been working legally in Britain as an electrician for three years.

Call me heartless, but I think that doesn’t help his behaviour at all.

As always, Londoners shine through, “Have your say” again:

This morning in Wandsworth I saw my first “DON’T SHOOT — I’m not Brazilian” t-shirt.

I love this country.

These 170 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:46pm GMT Permanent link.

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How To Kill A Decent Comedy »

I’ve no enthusiasm for knocking the BBC. But they’ve started to repeat Trevor’s World Of Sport late on Sunday evenings. Do I even mean repeat? — they killed it off after about four episodes when they first broadcast it on Mondays earlier this year. Now it’s in a complete no-hope slot. Maybe it deserves a small audience; it’s distinctly blokeish, and ‘adult’ — here meaning “bad language” anda certain cynicism about human relations, Neil Pearson’s family is the most dysfunctional example in sitcom since the execrable Married with Children. And there’s a slimy underside to everyone worthy of David Lynch masterpieces like Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks. Andy Hamilton’s writing must do something to attract a quality cast — from Caroline Quentin’s woman on mobile phone who blocks Pearson’s office doors while berating her ex for giving her genital warts (pausing only to say, “Do you mind, this is private") to David Gower at the end turning down an advert where he’s crushed by a ten-ton weight. ("So did Christine Hamilton, and that annoying Jade from Big Brother.")

Bastards. And with their repeats policy they’ll kill it off again.

At least they’re backing Extras. Must be the star appeal. I meant to write something long and convoluted comparing it Jonathan Pryce’s turn in Trevor Griffiths’ Comedians, but that’s all you need to know. Now that was comedy.

These 227 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:15pm GMT Permanent link.

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Monday, 25 July 2005

Music To Hear, Why Hear'st Thou Music Sadly? »

When I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun.

Tim Worstall (to whom I’m linking much too much; perhaps because he has more sensible things to say about last Friday than I can manage at present) calls a Guardian piece on Mao Pure Idiocy.

If China’s search for socialism under Mao was not wholly bogus, why did it prove such a disaster?

Tim comments:

Here’s a radical thought. Perhaps it was the search for socialism, not the methods used in that search, which were to blame? To refute this argument all that is needed is an example of a successful search for socialism. Points will be awarded to anyone who can provide such an example.

Well, like Chris Harper in the comments, I don’t entirely buy the “socialism is bound to fail” thing. Nor do I buy that compulsion is a necessary facet of “socialism.” I agree that many nations which describe themselves as “socialist” have degenerated into making every possible action either forbidden or mandatory, but I’d call that Socialism 2, while the socialism I’d talk about is Socialism 1 which doesn’t require any of this. As you can see the names are confusingly similar, and it’s unlikely that we’ll ever agree on what we’re talking about.

Anyway, here’s a story which demonstrates something of the style of Maoism, which may in turn explain a little of why it was an unmitigated inhuman disaster. Warning the writer is employed by the BBC and may live in Islington. She does not appear on the Enemies of the Party list, and has not yet been denounced as an “apologist” or “objectively pro-fascist” yet I feel the seeds of doubleplusungoodthink could be there, and the following should be considered extremely dangerous.

One day, a teacher from the Shanghai Conservatoire came to lecture us on the reactionary — and therefore inferior — nature of Beethoven’s music. After half an hour of rehearsing the Party line he finally played a few bars of the ‘Ode to Joy’ on a tinny cassette player, to demonstrate his case. Despite the equipment, it never sounded better. The class smiled. They were not convinced. The lecturer looked embarrassed. He didn’t believe it either. When Mao died and Jiang Qing fell from power, I thought of the man from the Shanghai Conservatoire with pleasure. Now, at least, he could listen to Beethoven without first having to pretend to hate him.’

Isabel Hilton’s Beethoven Experience. (Found indirectly starting from Gert’s post on the Guardian.) Imagine denouncing a work of art for the political views of its creator. Can’t happen here.

These 241 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:15pm GMT Permanent link.

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Tuesday, 26 July 2005

Going Undercover »

Annie Mole of the London Underground Blog was taking photos on the London Underground yesterday, and as these included the police presence she was stopped by two of London’s finest.

“Well can I ask you to delete them and not put them on your website. At the moment it’s not a good idea for people to get an idea of our movements. The ones of The Standard are OK”

Now let’s see, there are policemen in every tube station, in Zone 1 at least, and they’re dressed in uniform with those bright reflective jackets. Nope, no one will “get an idea of [their] movements” as long as bloggers don’t publish photos. Via John Band.

These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:11pm GMT Permanent link.

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Jeeves Winced, "Not The Brown Suit, Sir" »

Tom Coates and Nick Barlow are much taken by David Tennant’s Jarvis Cocker/Crooked Timber look. I like the white Converse sneakers. I don’t think this will persuade my gentleman’s gentleman that brown suits are ever acceptable. Suits him more than the “U-Boat captain” look did, though.

Billie Piper, by contrast, wears an about-to-extremely-unfashionable puffa jacket.

And they’re shooting in Cardiff. Where? WHERE?

These 62 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:22pm GMT Permanent link.

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Tuesday Flash Fun »

Incroyable. Via Chris Bertram in John B’s comments. (Requires sound, so not really work safe.)

These 15 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:14pm GMT Permanent link.

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Wrong Target »

I’m both saddened and sickened by this story. All I can do is note my distress for the poor stepfather. And mention that the activity they were engaged in is perfectly legal. It’s only hunting with hounds which is illegal. As the unfortunate kid died in hospital, I somehow doubt that the deaths of foxes hunted in this manner are either quick or humane. But you know the British, animal lovers that we are, voted to ban hunting, and we got er …

Telegraph: Man admits killing son on night-time fox hunt.

These 92 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:21pm GMT Permanent link.

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Don't These People Have Editors? »

(With apologies to Tim.) BBC: Counting on the Caterpillar.

It’s said to have sold a copy for every second it’s been in publication and now the film rights have been sold for a seven-figure sum.

Waan, tooo, free paragraphs later:

It’s said that one copy a minute has been sold since it was released in 1969. George Bush is said to rank as one of its most avid fans; film and TV rights have just been bought for £1m, and it’s rumoured to be part of a package of books the UK government is to send to every toddler.

So, who’s innumerate now? Calculating total seconds since 1969 is not hard, it’s 36 [years] x 365.25 [days in a year] x 24 [hours in a day] x 60 [minutes in an hour] x 60 [seconds in a minute] = 1,136,073,600. (This seems a little high.) Sure records are released and books are published? George Bush did indeed name The Very Hungry Caterpillar as his favourite book, but as it was published when he was an adult, I’ve long suspected that he read it to his daughters. Can one be an avid fan of a book — or is this lazy-minded periphrasis for “favourite"?

These 118 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:43pm GMT Permanent link.

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Roger That »

Roger L Simon discovers more undesirables in the media. (Via TBogg.)

Unlike the actions of London police, however, CNN’s decision was not an accident. It is deeply reactionary in its implications because it distracts the public from the most serious imaginable problem into the side issue of the culpability of a few working class cops and, by implication, those in charge of them, who were only trying to react in a desperate situation. When I say many in the media have become “objectively pro-fascist,” this is an example of what I mean. And not as small a one as it may seem.

Is no broadcaster (apart from the Centrist Fox News of course) safe from the cancer of curiosity and the desire to find news? Can anyone say “deeply reactionary” or “objectively pro-fascist” without laughing?

Many in the media include the running dogs of bourgeois reaction in Tunbridge Wells and beyond. How pathetic and flabby are the English middle classes, clinging as they are to outdated “individualism” and “individual freedoms.” They waste their worthless breath criticising the infallible police! Only when we are united under One Party, and merged into a Great Army permanently at war with counter-revolution, and all dissidents are crushed, can we say we have defeated fascism!

Pictured, progressive Simon readers learn about the reactionary bourgeois elements whose crimes are numberless.

These 134 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:54pm GMT Permanent link.

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War Is Over! »

“The Global War on Terror” is over: we’re now involved with ("fighting” is not the word) “a global struggle against violent extremism.” (Via Gary Farber and almost everywhere else.)

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require “all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities’ national power.” The solution is “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military,” he concluded.

That sounds like UN talk to me. The time has come for straight talk: “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards.”

These 58 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:57pm GMT Permanent link.

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The Telegraph Gets Multiculturalism »

Rachel Johnson is happy to see that almost anything goes these days.

Roman Polanski won damages from Condé Nast, the editor of Vanity Fair spoke outside court.

“I find it amazing that a man who lives in France can sue a magazine that is published in America in a British courtroom,” said Graydon Carter, of Canada.

Actually, I’d find it amazing if such a thing didn’t happen, especially in multinational London.

As it happens, I was also in the Royal Courts of Justice for one day last week, not in the video-linked Court 13 but in closed session elsewhere. I was being cross-examined by an English barrister representing a South African who was contesting his American ex-wife’s application to take their (dual nationality) children to live in Los Angeles.

Before I took the stand, I was asked by a court associate of Asian descent whether I would like to swear on the New Testament or whether I would prefer the Koran or some other holy book. It did fleetingly cross my mind to ask for a copy of Riders by my heroine Jilly Cooper, who lives in England, to hold as I took the oath, but eventually I replied that the Bible, first printed in Germany, would do me fine.

Not to mention written in Hebrew and Greek, and translated into incomparable now-archaic English. Makes you wonder what it is that monoculturalists believe in.

Sarah Crompton gets a sense of perspective.

Any worries I might have had about returning to London were put into context when my younger son decided to follow his father across a busy road - and ran out in front of a car, while looking (as an English boy abroad) the wrong way. He was seconds away from serious injury, and was saved by the prescience of a woman standing behind me who saw what was happening and shouted loud enough to stop him.

The incident made me realise how easy it is to worry about the wrong thing. I had been so depressed about the London bombings, yet my whole life could have been changed by a road accident. I also felt enormous gratitude to the unknown woman whose prompt reaction helped save my son. My Italian was too inadequate to thank her properly yet I owe her a great and undeclared debt.

The British public remain, alas, as selfish as ever, a doctor writes.

I n. the first person singular, the person who is speaking or writing and referring to himself or herself. When patients enter my surgery, it’s always me, me, me. Doctor, I feel this, Doctor, I feel that. Doctor, I want that treatment, Doctor, I want those pills. But do they ever bother to ask me how I’m feeling? Do they ever offer to take my temperature, or feel my pulse? Not a bit of it.

These 55 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:15pm GMT Permanent link.

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Something To Thank Bush For »

Telegraph: Adams and McGuinness ‘quit IRA leadership’. Of course, if they have resigned recently, then they were members during the McCartney scandal.

George Bush, to his enormous credit, met the sisters of Robert McCartney in the White House — and refused to meet Gerry Adams. Neither Adams nor McGuinness belong in democratic politics.

Speaking before leaving Dublin yesterday, Paula McCartney said the situation “stinks of a cover-up”. Her comments came a day after Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, warned the McCartneys to be “very careful” and to stay out of politics, after one of the sisters threatened to challenge the party at the ballot box.

Still, the news that they have left the IRA is an admission that they were terrorists, and with any luck, now they don’t have the armalites, a limited retribution awaits them at the ballot box.

These 88 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:32pm GMT Permanent link.

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Wednesday, 27 July 2005

Tony Gets Something Right »

BBC: IRA are not al-Qaeda says Blair. He’s right too!

IRA terrorists were the enemies of democracy. They twice attempted to decapitate the legitimate, democratically elected UK government. First in Brighton.

The blast tore apart the Brighton Grand Hotel where members of the Cabinet have been staying for the Conservative party conference.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her husband Dennis narrowly escaped injury.

Then by firing a mortar at 10 Downing Street.

The IRA mortar heading straight for the cabinet room had hit a tree and exploded 15 yards short of its target. This, coupled with special defences in the cabinet room, ensured that injuries were restricted to two civil servants and two policemen attached to the Diplomatic Protection Squad. What was not lost on those inside Number 10 was that had the device not struck the tree it would have ploughed straight into the cabinet room, almost certainly killing the British Prime Minister and most senior members of the British government.

It’s not often I agree with our Tony, but he’s 100% correct here.

These 53 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:05am GMT Permanent link.

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Over There, Infadel! »

So much for cultural determinism. Not close to adulthood and already labelled “infadel." (Spotted in the comments, not by me.) Say no, and the terrorists win. Split them up, and the terrorists win. Might be liberals though: they can’t manage black and white, only shades of grey and white. Keep the Shiraz far hence, that’s foe to man.

These 59 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:05am GMT Permanent link.

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More Frothy Mix Of Lube And Fecal Matter »

Everyone’s favourite byproduct of anal sex, Senator Rick Santorum puts his er, you know, right in it.

But the spotlight also shines on Santorum because of an article he wrote three years ago for a Catholic newsletter. In it, he said, “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”

In other words, blame Boston for abusive priests.

In the midst of all this attention, Santorum arranged a conference call with the Catholic press.

Brett Lieberman, who writes for this newspaper [The Patriot-News, Pennsylvania] from Washington, D.C., heard about the call and dialed in, even though neither he nor The Patriot-News fits the bill.

…

Then, all of a sudden, Lieberman voiced a question.

“Senator,” he said, “what I’m hearing from a lot of victims’ groups …”

Santorum interrupted. “Is this Brett Lieberman?”

When Lieberman said yes, Santorum demanded to know what he was doing on a conference call for Catholic press.

“You’re not going to be on this call, and you’re not going to ask a question,” Santorum ordered.

Top politico filters his interviewers. I wonder if Roger Simon and the Powertools will comment.

These 32 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:06pm GMT Permanent link.

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Snowmail Again »

I know I’ve quoted quite a bit of Channel 4’s Snowmail email updates recently, but this one is irresistible after reading the comments on Chris Brooke post (and good to see him back).

Quite a few people must live in the block which was under observation. I saw in a paper that the police had followed several other people who emerged from it.

If I lived in that block and had left the building during friday I would be getting a cold shiver up my spine now, as I thought back to where I had been and what I might have done which might have looked suspicious to a paranoid, trigger-happy policeman.

And here’s Jon Snow on looking suspicious.

A day in the life of London, maybe even a commonplace day in the life of a Muslim. I am cycling back from Channel 4 at ten thirty seven this morning past the back of Horse guards parade in line of sight of the back of number 10 Downing Street — suddenly on the edge of the park I notice armed police, four of them, their guns raised surrounding a tall Muslim man with a dark beard.

He is smartly dressed and has a brand new silver coloured camera bag on the ground at his feet. The voices are raised with the guns, in the time that I take to pass the guns lower, the bag is searched, the incident passes, no one seems to notice. Up on the mall a small knot of tourists are looking from a distance. One now normal unreported, maybe unreportable incident and a searing experience for one innocent Muslim man. Which isn’t to say that the level of anxiety and tension which prompts such a scene isn’t all too understandable.

I am white, crazy-looking on a bike, with a shoulder bag across my back, yet I am not stopped in line of sight of number 10: here lies tonight’s central dilemma — do only bag carrying bearded Muslims need to worry about passing public buildings? Soon they will begin to keep away from them and what is shared, what is all of ours, will become places they no longer come to. Not just the pubs where they never might have drank anyway, but now the places that are central to our democracy and our identity…

I wouldn’t call Jon Snow “crazy-looking” more of a national institution.

I completely agree with Daniel Davies’ comment on John B’s site regarding the police officer involved in the fatal shooting of an innocent Brazilian man at a London Tube station [who] has been given a holiday paid for by Scotland Yard.

Seems entirely sensible to me. On the one hand, the poor guy must be shattered. On the other, for cynics of the Met, it’s a good idea to get him separated from the rest of that squad by a few thousand miles until the inquiry is ready to ask them all what happened.

Ditto that. There will have to be an inquiry. If he’s found guilty, he’s in deep shit. Loss of his job, obviously and as John Gardner observes, “If they injure or kill, the police need to rely on the same law as the rest of us.” It would be wrong of the Met to prejudge either way, in the meantime, they must assure his colleagues that they will stand behind all officers.

That the police have arrested suspects without gunshots is good news — and, IMO, backs up the news coverage of the accidental shooting last Friday. Man bites dog is news …

These 195 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:41pm GMT Permanent link.

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Thursday, 28 July 2005

Hang On, Hasn't He Left? »

I thought that Gerry Adams had “quit IRA leadership.” Maybe he’s just taken a new post as spokesman: IRA to issue statement today, says Adams.

He said: “The forthcoming IRA statement will challenge Irish republicans and nationalists.

“I appeal to everyone to carefully read what the Army has to say and to remain united and steadfast.

“The IRA statement will also challenge others, especially the two governments and the Unionists.

“The Dublin political establishment in particular will have a lot of soul-searching to do if those in political leadership are to meet the needs of the upcoming period.”

Shorter Adams: meet our demands or any deaths will be on your conscience. You made us plant bombs, you bastards!

10 things you didn’t know about Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

10) This week, both Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams made it clear that they condemn all suicide bombers. In a joint statement, the two men said: “This is something we would never consider doing ourselves. As the wise old Irish saying has it, if you own a dog, why bark yourself?”

These 56 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:09pm GMT Permanent link.

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The Deep Roots Of Our Social Decline »

I cannot recommend Peter Cuthbertson highly enough at present. One learns so much from him. EU Serf in the comments says:

I will say however that this is the result of us losing the culture wars. We can thank Troy quislings for that as well as Labour.

Those horse-worshipping multiculturalists! And that bastard’s so-called “poetry” didn’t even rhyme! “Wine-dark sea” I ask you! You can tell he was blind.

Dearieme ponders:

Alan, “Tories have been in power”. You really must learn to distinuish being in power from being in office.

This is a classic example of the political right adopting the “Nick Cohen strategy” — if the party of your political wing does something you dislike; it’s because of infiltrators (especially “liberals” who are a sort of political gremlins, and exist only to water down the sincere policies of red-faced table bashers with authentic political convictions); while if they do something you agree with, it’s a rare moment of intellectual honesty. (Decides to burn all blog archives herewith.)

Speaking of Nick Cohen, I haven’t bought the Observer for years (and even when I did, it was for Anthony Burgess’s reviews) so I’ve missed out on the people’s “sensible columnist.” Matthew Turner dug up some of his more rebarbative columns. Come on liberals. If you think you’re hard enough.

But when Bush entertains Boris Putin in a fortnight, Russia will make damn sure America picks up the check. In return for Putin’s support, Washington will remove economic sanctions and admit Russia to the World Trade Organization.

Not Godunov, Nick. You were claiming some sort of expertise, no? I admire your solidarity with your fellow Guardianistas: if one hack makes risible factual errors, all must make risible factual errors.

But back to Peter, who handed over his blog to an near-incomprehensible rant by DumbJon. It’s not worth quoting: it’s Liberals this and Liberals that, with no names or quotations. (Jon also uses “Left” and “Liberal” as synonyms, which would drive Mr Cohen to apoplexy, not that he’s ever far off.)

Well what this liberal (or possibly leftist) thinks is best articulated by Juan Cole in his most readable post for a while.

You have to think about terrorists as units of hardware, on which software has been installed. The software is a world-view, a set of premises about the world, which then make sense of the terrorist’s actions. How does the software get installed? The potential terrorist meets the installer socially and falls under his spell.

The terrorists don’t have a social background in common. They aren’t lumpen proletariat or working class or middle class or bourgeois. Or rather, they have in their ranks persons from all these backgrounds.

The terrorists don’t have an ethnicity in common. Richard Reid and Lindsey Germaine were Caribbean. Others are Arabs. Some have been Somali or Eritrean or Tanzanian. Others have been South Asia (India/Pakistan/Bangladesh). Still others have been African-American or white Americans. They don’t even have to start out Muslim. Ayman al-Zawahiri was particularly proud of an al-Qaeda operative in Afghanistan who had been an American Jew in a previous life. Ziad Jarrah, one of the September 11 hijackers, appears to have been a relatively secular young man right to the end.

Prof Cole details how “soldiers” are brainwashed. He then suggests.

So how do you fight this form of terror? You disrupt the installation of the software in more and more minds. You adopt policies that make the story the software tells implausible. And you reach out to make sure people hear the implausibility.

I think this is a good idea; but I don’t entirely buy it. I’ve heard (I can’t remember where, so no link: sorry) of the bombers using the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia as a justification for their actions. For some reason this reminds me of Paul Bigley.

Added to the public grief generated by Bigley’s death was the reaction of his family. Ken’s brother Paul Bigley publicly accused Blair of having “blood on his hands,” and doing nothing to save Ken’s life. Blair should resign, and Britain should immediately withdraw from Iraq, he said.

Yet US launched Bigley rescue bids (which his brother must have known about). Both Paul Bigley and the London bombers seem to be confusing intent and success, and both seem to think that the West is omnipotent: all it has to do is set itself against “ethnic cleansing” and that’s the end of it. Unfortunately, as with Kenneth Bigley, it doesn’t work like that. Clearly policies alone aren’t enough; the injustice is in their heads as much as it is elsewhere. (This isn’t to say that the West/US/UN/Coalition etc has always been right, or always tried hard enough.)

These 434 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:51pm GMT Permanent link.

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Friday, 29 July 2005

Keyboard Kommandoes Branch Out »

Eric, in the comments to the Crooked Timber Unite Against Terrorism thread, asks a question which has been rattling round the pro-war left for some time: Do you think disabled people should not be allowed a view on the war on terror? This is in response to the equally predictable “Orwell went to war; if you’re so bloody keen, why don’t you?” Answer: “But I sprained my wrist doing important warblogging.”

(Good to see that Eric sticks to the proud left traditions which make Nick Cohen so proud, as he does above and in John Band’s comments. Only a true leftist would stick up for those who don’t need to be stuck up for.)

Differently-abled Keyboard Kommandoes, help is at hand! You too can fight terrorists. Even if you’re too old, too fat, too myopic to sign up for the fighting ranks, you could serve in an important intelligence capacity in Iraq. If you can hold a drill, the floor is yours! Being in a wheelchair is no barrier to cutting someone’s ear off, so long as they’re nicely tied to a chair.

A Biased BBC commenter has been the first to volunteer to serve his country. There can be no excuse now for not joining the fight against terrorism. Iraq is roughly the size of France, and the White House is only refusing to release a few dozen photos of abuse. The backlog must be horrendous. Brave torturers, to your drills!

These 242 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:42pm GMT Permanent link.

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Big TNO Discovery, Urgent »

New Scientist: New world may be double Pluto’s size.

An object possibly twice the size of Pluto has been found — hiding in plain sight. The discovery could be the biggest world in the Kuiper belt of rocky objects that orbit the outer reaches of the solar system.

The find suggests more such objects are waiting to be discovered and is likely to reignite the fierce debate about what constitutes a planet.

On Thursday, an email with the subject, “Big TNO discovery, urgent” was sent to a popular astronomy mailing list. The message described the discovery of a “very bright” object that was creeping along slowly beyond the orbit of Neptune — making it a Trans-Neptunian Object, or TNO.

BBC (I’m struggling to find bias here; but they do fail to acknowledge the Biblical accounts of the sun circling the earth, which is an insult to all those of faith) Distant object found orbiting Sun.

The uncertainty in estimates of its size is due to errors in its reflectivity.

It might be a large, dim object, or a smaller, brighter object. Whatever it is, astronomers consider it a major discovery.

New Scientist concurs.

Its exact size cannot be determined because the reflectivity of its surface is not known. But if the reflectivity is as dim as most other distant, rocky objects that have been studied, it could be twice as wide as Pluto, which is about 2300 kilometres across.

It could therefore, be much smaller, and very reflective. Say what you like, I think it’s a Stargate.

These 66 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:10pm GMT Permanent link.

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In Which I Am Obviously Stupid »

The old guy set this up as a paramilitary organization.

The Sporanos, series 1, episode 4, Meadowlands

Slugger O’Toole has the best blog commentary on the IRA statement, but no one mentions my theory of the end of the IRA campaign. In the foreseeable future, Northern and Southern Ireland will be governed by the same parliament. They will have the same currency (probably without the monarch’s head on one side of the coins). They will have the same legal system. They will have the same passports and the borders will be open. This should suit the IRA.

For the Unionists the same applies substituting “Southern Ireland” with the mainland. Naturally both sides will be upset that their old enemies are satisfied in any particular and may resume bombing campaigns out of petulance. Any government troops sent in to calm down the resulting violence may find themselves confronted with important questions of religious identity, such as “But are ye a Protestant Muslim or a Catholic Muslim?”

Of course this outcome has been looming for at least the past thirty years, and anyone with any sense could see it coming. As Dougie says in the comments:

The provos have a stellar record of “policing” West Belfast and other nationalist areas. Shouldn’t there be some sort of award ceremony for their policing efforts over the last 35 years? The community policing tactics were a model for all to follow. The kneecapping, tar and feathering, the beatings, and the killing (if you didn’t comply with the 1st warning) were respected by many in the nationalist community. “Fear-Based Policing” was effective. They also wore the uniform with pride… the ski masks, army jackets, jeans and black shoes/boots…a high-class bunch, one and all.

Did the ‘RA say they would stop punishmnet beatings?? Are catholic women now allowed to date British soldiers?

Today marks the defeat of the provos, another battle won in the global war on terrorism; a failed 30 year campaign of killing and terrorizing innocent people.

On the BBC site: life as an IRA victim.

Gerry Adams is a murderer and thug and not even a heroic failure: he was an anachronism when he joined the IRA; and as important to human history as a fly smeared across a windscreen.

These 222 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:39pm GMT Permanent link.

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If Only The Beeb Were More Like Fox »

Why oh why don’t we get commentary like this (QuickTime movie) on the BBC? The anonymous narrator neatly explains the Menendes shooting and exonerates the police: of course he was an al-Qaida decoy. All persons darker than, say, Ann Coulter, should be treated with suspicion. (From Crooks and Liars.)

On a similar note, the increasingly atheistic BBC should broadcast more religious services like this one. You need an enema, oh yes.

These 71 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:12pm GMT Permanent link.

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Two Views Of Britishness »

On Wednesday, a Telegraph editorial identified Ten core values of the British identity. Starting with

I. The rule of law. Our society is based on the idea that we all abide by the same rules, whatever our wealth or status. No one is above the law — not even the government.

Naturally, one ignorant git objected. Government answerable to the law? Horror.

Heaven forbid that the judiciary might take note of what Parliament decides is in the nation’s best interests.

Pollard objects to the former Master of the Rolls, Lord Donaldson:

It is the job of governments to put forward measures which make the work of the police and security services easier — and it is the job of judges to resist that where necessary [to uphold the rule of law].

Chris Brooke knows a thing or two about politics, here are his thoughts on the orientation of Stephen Pollard.

The thing you need to know about Stephen Pollard is that while he describes himself as being left-wing, an online political survey he took once calculated that he was the most right-wing man in the country.

Interestingly, Pollard’s formula reminded me of something.

S—, now showing no emotion, ordered [the] Secretary of the Central Executive Committee to sign an emergency law that decreed the trial of accused terrorists within ten days and immediate execution without appeal after judgement. S— must have drafted it himself. This 1st December Law — or rather the two directives of that night — was the equivalent of Hilter’s Enabling Act because it laid the foundation for a random terror without even the pretence of a rule of law.

Everyone’s favourite cuddly extremist, of course, p 151.

These 71 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:40pm GMT Permanent link.

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Sunday, 31 July 2005

Security Update »

In a move designed to wrongfoot terrorists and their masters, Number 10 Downing Street has given control of Cabinet’s Cobra emergency committee to John Prescott.

In the wake of fears that President Bush’s trusted advisor, Karl Rove, gave unauthorised leaks to the press, Downing Street has cleverly appointed the one minister who can be utterly trusted. “What you tell John in secret, stays secret,” a cabinet source said yesterday, “Even if the terrorists capture and torture him horribly they won’t get any useful information. No one’s ever understood what he says, so his discretion is total.”

Take that, Osama!

These 100 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:22pm GMT Permanent link.

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It's Not Green Cheese, But ... »

Who knew space looked like this? Maybe the close-up is true after all …

These 14 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:35pm GMT Permanent link.

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