I'm Turning Into A Marxist

Is it just me, or are other people getting a distinctly nauseous feeling seeing the MSM giving Cameron a tongue bath ? Are we supposed to forget that the self-same people gave Blair the same treatment ? Hell, how come they themselves don't think about it ? "Hey, that last guy we went all goey over turned out to be a nut! Let's go in with our eyes open this time." Nope. Instead, we have the whole "Blair Lied!" scenario, whereby the Fourth Estate, soi dissant remorseless seekers after truth, maintain that they were bedazzled by our demonic PM.

All this would be merely stupid, except when you look at exactly why many of these folk turned against Blair: Iraq. They were OK with Blair smearing a badly-injured 92 year old woman as a racist, but when he started blackening the name of homicidal dictators...well, that's just going too far. Ditto, they objected to Britain going to war based on bogus intelligence - unlike the reports of 100 000 dead civilians in Kosovo [current body count: 3000, almost all young males]. Or maybe it was the civilian casualties caused by the Coalition bombing enemy strongpoints, rather than the real enemy: TV stations. Then again, it could be lack of an exit strategy, like the one that got our boys out of the Balkans so fast. Or maybe it's....

No, this is garbage. Nothing - not one thing - Blair has done in recent years has not been entirely predictable from the start, but try to find any section of the MSM that asked these questions before Blair started hunting Islamoloons. Nope - pre-97 Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have found a critical profile of Blair in the MSM. Now it's deja vu all over again, with Cameron carefully fielding all those 'Is it hard to be so wonderful ?' interview questions.

This all points to a void at the heart of our democracy. The privileged position of the MSM reflects its vital role in informing the public, but when that role is abandoned in favour of blatant attempts at kingmaking, why should we continue to respect them ? More to the point, it's noticeable that in the case of Nu Lab with Blair & Brown, and in the case of the Nu Conmen with Cameron & Davis, the MSM has helped cement the position of a super privileged, vacuous, metropolitan ponce who's never done a real days work in his life, over some guy who's actually worked for a living. Or to put it another way, the MSM helped elect itself. Similarly, when the MSM run stories claiming Blair would actually rather lose No 10 to Cameron than Brown, there’s no doubt this is what the MSM wants. Forget actual ideology, what we’re seeing is true class interest at work. The MSM, and those that think like them, don’t worry about actual party affiliation, just as long as the winner is one of them. The real question is just how long it’ll take Joe Public to realise that.

The L3 Need A New Cliche

Quick quiz: which national newspaper included this in it’s leader column ?

We were sickened when the Americans thought it necessary to incarcerate terror suspects in the most degrading conditions at Guantanamo Bay.

We were sickened when we saw those pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by their U.S. captors at Abu Ghraib.

We were sickened when America used phosphorus to "shake and bake" the people of Fallujah, burning many of them to death, women and children included.

Yep, the Daily Mail. It’s not even as if the paper’s transformation to the Moonbat Gazette hasn’t been going on for a while. Of course, all this leads to one obvious question: is 'Daily Mail readers' still L3 shorthand for scum now that the paper's gone to the Left of the Guardian on the key issue of the age ?

Not Even A Good Liberal

It’s easy to accuse Cameron of stealing the L3s clothes, but the reality is far worse: he’s stealing only the bad bits. Consider, for example, the question of civil liberties. The Cameroonatics came out against raising the limit for holding terror suspects, but now look at their wimpy response to a real threat to liberty. No prize for guessing why our Gramscian friends get all excited by threats to the rights of terrorists, but not those affecting ordinary citizens, but how exactly does this make sense for a supposedly right-wing party ?

There’s a wider issue here. Cameron wants to distinguish the Nu Tories from their ever-so-nasty predecessors, while - I’ll assume even in the teeth of all the evidence – not wanting to lose too much of the base. Well, there’s an issue right here. The government wants to be able to record every journey made in Britain. Hello ? This is hardly some minor change in policing. This is a fundamental change in the relationship between the citizen and the government.

Even leaving aside such potential developments as road pricing and the like, there’s something basically yukky about the idea of some civil servant being able to click a few times and see where you were on June 26 last year – and that holds true for people across the political spectrum. Cameron could score a lot of easy points coming out against this kind of thing – but he won’t. Cameron will not protect the citizenry against over-mighty government simply because he doesn’t believe there could be such a thing. As with Blair, Cameron’s individual views on issues are less important than his belief that Big Government is the way to promote them. Indeed, it is hard to tell if Cameron has any views, save for a dreary managerialism. At the end of the day, what the government does is less important to him than that he should be the one running it.

Make Poverty Of Ideas History

Speaking personally, I was surprised by the announcement that ‘Sir Bob’ Geldof was going to become a consultant to the Conservative Party. Of course, standards in public life have been dropping for years, but still – I thought Geldof had some principles.

Equally, some folk will cite this appointment, together with that of Zack ‘ecoloon’ Goldsmith, as further proof that Cameron has outsourced recruitment to Google, with whoever gets the most hits getting the job – we’ll know if the ‘Terrorism’ group is headed by Osama Bin Laden. Nevertheless, whatever the logic – or lack thereof – behind appointing Geldof, he’s not quite the flake he might appear. True, Geldof often dips into the swamps of moonbattery, but equally he sometimes comes out with some recognisably right-wing arguments, which is more than Cameron ever has. Try this latest from Lord Snooty: “A new generation of concerned citizens want prosperity for themselves and progress for the poor, whether living on the other side of the street or the other side of the world.”

So, the Conservatives are against poverty. I guess we’ll have to wait to hear their positions on fluffy kittens and bubonic plague. That's the problem right there. The Conservatives have appointed a barely-coherent egomaniac to help them develop policy and he's the political heavyweight.

Appeasement: The Final Frontier

So, OK, Liberals are still struggling with World War II and its aftermath, but they’re planning ahead. We might not have any actual evidence of alien life yet, but when we do, Liberals are ready to surrender to them.

Libs Unveil New Role Model: Basil Fawlty

The L3 have always had a problem with the Second World War. Even they can’t find a way to explain how Britain was on the wrong side in that one. Hence the obsession with Dresden and the like as they try to find evidence that even when Britain does the right thing, it does it the wrong way. Even they must have realised this is all kind of weak, hence their switch to Plan B: don’t mention the war. So now we’re going from Operation Overlord to Operation Overwrite.

Funnily enough, the Left won’t admit to wanting to tippex out WWII, no, they only want to provide context. They think the war was sort of important, but hardly a matter of life and death. Besides, it was all a long time ago – as opposed to slavery in the British Empire (outlawed 1833) which is the very definition of a hot issue.

Note too the shattering of unflattering caricatures about our educational establishment, as they grapple with the mystery of why people would rather study D-Day than German fiscal policy in the 1960s.

Still, personally I think this’ll be a scream on so many levels. Consider that any study of Germany post-war is, sooner or later, going to have to deal with the contrast between East and West. Here we have the perfect experiment: one people, two systems, yet radically different results. If nothing else, the L3 won’t be able to use their favourite excuse for the failings of Islam (“it was the culture what done it, guv”).

Of course, it’s not all good news. They also want to teach German history in “the context of other European states and moves towards greater European integration.” Bringen Sie der Sickenbag. I’m also prepared to bet that the story of the fall of the Berlin Wall will manage to exclude any reference to the one man who did most to make it happen. After all, they also aim to teach how ‘ideological differences supported different interpretations of events’. The wall fell 16 years ago - I think we’re ready to start drawing a few tentative conclusions about the relative merits of freedom versus tyranny.

Despite all this, I do think the L3 have a point about the concentration on the Second World War, just not the one they think they have. How come the war is presented as a bolt from the blue - after all, the name does kind of imply that it wasn’t a first offence ? What happened to that favorite Lefty cliche ‘root causes’ ? Ah well, that’s the thing, that’s why it’s worth studying history. To hear modern German leaders talk about the need for other nations to conform to their demands, advocate restrictions on freedom of speech or just plain eulogise about the glories of centralised power, is to be reminded of the very issues that have twice already plunged Europe into war.

Whatever superficial changes defeat in WWII brought about, Germany lacks either the instincts or the infrastructure of a real democracy. Compare and contrast the British and German newspapers, for example. That is the real reason to oppose the EU – not some crazed nostalgia for the Somme or some such, but because our system of government is simply better. Let the Germans continue to elect thugs if that’s what they want, but there is no reason at all why we should let them rule Britain.

What Would Jesus Tax ?

More evidence that the new Age of Tolerance isn’t quite working out as advertised. Apparently, equality demands that public money is spent promoting one side of the issue while those supporting equal prominence for all sides are bigots. Honestly, you need a scorecard to keep up with these folks.

I’m sure the Bishops would speak out against this attempt to criminalise Christianity, but they’re kind of tied up with something even more important: supporting ‘open door’ immigration. Laban neatly fillets their absurd argument, but I’ll let it go if they’ll finally admit that, while he may have worked via a variety of proxies, the true author of the Constitution of the United States was clearly Jesus. That might seem like quite a claim, but consider this: what is the story of the slaughter of the first born, if not a warning about the dangers of over-mighty government ? It was the US that was the first nation to include in its basic articles of law, a clause explicitly meant to facilitate rebellion against such a body. Proof of concept: look at who is most virulently against the Second Amendment: Liberals. And their other signature issue ? Abortion. Now, that doesn’t prove that every Democrat is necessarily the willing servant of Lucifer, but that is the simplest explanation.

But I digress. The point is that almost anything in the Bible can be read as supporting a particular political point. Take, for example, the feeding of the 5000 - surely a parable about the tremendous gains in efficiency possible when the dead hand of government is removed from the agricultural and fishery sectors ?

Well, no, probably not. The thing that sticks in the throat about the Bishops’ babbling is not just that it’s a crude attempt to hijack religion to push the Liberal line, it’s that the point they’re making is implicitly an anti-Christian one. Remember the whole ‘giving to Caesar that which is Caesars’ thing. Consider that Jesus lived at a time when slavery was universal yet he never mentioned it - or, indeed, any other ideological issue. Christianity is about eternal truths - to attempt to cite it in support of throwing money at Albanian wasters is evidence either of a total misunderstanding of the religion or a readiness to misrepresent it for reasons of political expediency. Neither explanation suggests that we should place much weight on the imbecilic yapping of the Bishops.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I've always wanted to be one of those sad cases who posts on Christmas Day

Christmas Sneaks Up On Me Again

I almost had a flash of the Christmas spirit in me earlier today, but then I caught five minutes of Patrick Stewart's performance as Scrooge, which killed it stone dead. Fortunatley, some folks are working on our behalf to make Christmas a truly inclusive occasion. Meanwhile, the Lib Dems have finally found a task worthy of their talents.

Mr Free Market Will Be Pleased

I knew it was a great idea when he said it. Apparently, plenty of other folk came to the same conclusion.

What Could Go Wrong ?

In a modern day version of the Greek warnings about Nemesis following on from Hubris, the L3 have put a fatwa on Nottinghamshire’s PC Diederik Coetzee. The non-PC PC’s fatal flaw was going public about his busting frenzy, thereby placing himself in the crossfire between Libs shocked – shocked! – that the police arrest people, and police management, equally appalled at anyone implying that law enforcement doesn’t necessarily need helicopters, special task forces or compulsory RFID chips all round.

The Left have fallen back on one of their trademark countermoves: girly whining. Apparently, all those arrests are intimidating vulnerable young people - and, no, I’m not making this up. You never can tell with the Nu Police, but I’m guessing that most of PC Coetzee’s intimidatees are what scientists call ‘scumbags’. Giving them a hard time is kind of the point of having police. Not these days though. In an anti-matter version of the famous ‘broken windows’ theory, it turns out that just about everything can be tolerated.

Let’s not even consider the moral backflip involved in seeing an OAP living next door to a 25 year old smackhead, and deciding that it’s Captain Needle who’s vulnerable. Insane though such a worldview is, there’s something even more deeply perverted at work here. The Victorians are easily mocked, but at least folks like William Booth aimed to cure social pathologies, not merely rebrand them as quirky, yet equally valid, lifestyles.

Consider events in Sheffield. Here was a textbook case of abuse, and the social workers did absolutely nothing. Why ? Consider this line ‘[there was a] failure of teachers and health workers to mark out any of the children's problems as exceptional, because of low expectations in their community.’ A-huh. This is what happens when non-judgementalism becomes your guiding principle – or, to put it another way, when the only morality is the absence of morals. You end up with social collapse and a whole bunch of public sector princes standing around because, hey, who’s to say that starving your kids is necessarily worse than not starving them ?

I guess we have to give the social workers some credit for not actually killing anyone this time, still, there’s a certain irony when you consider what else was announced this week. MPs have decided that the law on corporate manslaughter needs to be tightened up. Apparently, these folks haven’t heard the saying about motes and beams. The Left is all-a-flutter about the private sector killing people, but when social workers screw up, it’s because the system failed. Hey – you’ve got to watch these systems, there’s no telling what they’ll do next.

For all the Left’s propaganda about eviiiiil kepitalist pigs sacrificing lives for profit, at least the pigs in question don’t try to claim moral justification for their actions. British Airways may cause a few crashes if they replaced expensive pilots with trained chimps, but at least they won’t lose planes because they’ve decided that the concept of ‘stall speed’ is a social construct. Meanwhile, our social working classes are on the bus to never-never land, secure in the knowledge that no matter how many kills they amass, they’ll never be faced with anything worse than having to give a quick performance of the Lessons-Have-Been-Learned waltz.

Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Liberalism

It seems like it was only about a month ago the Left’s Insane Clown Posse was all-a-twitter about the Sun running its famous ‘Traitors!’ headline. Oh wait – it was. Doubtless these same folks will be doing their enraged chimp dance again after Princess Tony’s latest effusion. Lest we forget, here’s what he said:

[although you] sit with our country's flag, you do not represent our country's interest.

Yowser. Not much room for misquote there. Doubtless the Left side of the blogosphere will be going to Defcon One even as we speak.

Just kidding.

That jibe was actually aimed at UKIP's MEPs. I guess calling people traitors is OK, if they’re on the Right. Of course, Blair is to be commended for playing to one of his strengths, namely girly hysteria, but the facts are not on his side. Say what you like about the British Right, but we’re not the ones who have a fit of the vapours every time we see someone wearing a Union Flag tiepin. We haven’t all but airbrushed our nation’s history from the school curriculum. We haven’t foisted activist judges on the country so they can take a blowtorch to our constitution. Come to think of it, having one of Britain's most prominent Liberals call you a traitor is like having Ken Clarke call you fat - and that was the sane part of his speech. Try this:

This is 2005, not 1945.

We are not fighting each other any more.

Actually, that was the one thing that always put me off voting UKIP, the fact there three main policies are withdrawal from the EU, support for free trade and carpet bombing Hamburg. Huh ?

How on earth do we get from not wanting to throw £7 billion down the U-bend to wanting to send tanks up the Champs Elysees ? This isn’t an argument, in fact it’s not even any good when viewed as abuse – it simply doesn’t make sense in the first place. He may as well have accused his opponents of wanting to shoot dogs. What is the point ? Really – this is the true measure of Liberal media bias, that this guy can say these things secure in the knowledge that the only people who pick him up on it will be folks tapping away in their spare time.

Public Service Announcements

Peter Briffa thinks we need to acknowledge a talented young man for his superb articulation of what the Guardian stands for today.

Tim Worstall is doing his bit for charidee (True: I read his e-mail a few days ago but still haven’t worked out what’s going on).

Meanwhile, Mr Free Market points out a group that's appealing for you to send any examples of junk mail you might be sent.

But Did They Clear It With The French ?

The Bush doctrine turns up in the funniest places. Who’d have thunk it ? The Peopls’s Republic of Scotland a hive of neocons. Despite the absence of any evidence of WMDs, and without authorisation from the UN, they nevertheless chose to impose their own vision of ‘civilisation’ on a peaceful group of islanders who offered no imminent threat to Scotland.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but some of us called the shot and the pocket months ago. There’s nothing libertarian about the idea that governments can redefine millennia old institutions by fiat. Equally, the whole ‘gay marriage’ bandwagon was never about removing restrictive laws preventing gays booking village halls. There never was an Inappropriate Ceremonies Squad staking out Moss Bros. Come to think of it, there were even plenty of groovy vicars and the like, ready to carry out the ceremony. The only thing gay couples couldn’t do was use their ‘marriage’ to demand special treatment from third parties – like demanding committed Christian registers carry out their services.

It is hard to believe that anything the islanders are doing would outrage the man on the Clapham Omnibus. They’re simply saying that their religion is incompatible with these ceremonies. No one is getting thrown off tall buildings (actually, the Scots seem to like that). But that’s enough. This is the true measure of what the ‘gay marriage’ debate is really about: pushing the gay agenda. That’s why they’re flying in registers, rather than suggesting that gays go the other way. Facilities paid for by the people of the Western Isles will be used to carry out ceremonies that they strongly believe are immoral. A more blatant act of Liberal triumphalism can hardly be imagined. If nothing else, can these people just give us a break from all that talk of 'US insensitivity' ?

Sympathy For The Devil ?

Say what you like about David Cameron, but he’s certainly changed one thing: it used to be that it wasn’t until the new PM took office that we got nostalgic about the old one, but even in less than a fortnight, Cameron has made Tony Blair look like a political giant.

Tradition dictates that it’s the former PM’s biggest weakness that suddenly appears as a strength once the new guy gets to work. Lady Thatcher’s refusal to acknowledge even well-founded criticisms of her polices looked great compared to Major’s government by opinion poll. The Major government’s collapse into chaos and petty corruption didn’t look so bad compared to the well-organised, industrial scale corruption of the Blair years. Now Cameron’s nihilism makes even Blair’s messianic delusions seem like a positive.

True, there is something deeply creepy about the way Blair always seems like he can’t hardly pass a mountain without wanting to give a sermon from it. More seriously, when Blair decides to bring peace to Africa, reform the EUSSR or cure cancer, it always seems to involve Joe Public catching it in the wallet. Yet, the sick truth is that there is a genuine streak of altruism in Blair. He really does think the world would be a better place for having him run it.

This is both the central insanity, and the central corruption, of Blairism. Nu Lab’s belief that they have a moral duty to rule allows them to justify almost anything to themselves. The corruption, the sleaze, the intimidation – all can be justified by the greater good of perpetuating and extending their power. Indeed, for all the frantic triangulation in other areas, Blair has been remarkably consistent in increasing the reach of government into the lives of the citizenry.

Yet, for all that Blair worldview is totally deranged; it does have at its core that slither of altruism. He really does think he’s helping. Cameron has the same sense of entitlement to power, but completely lacks the moral justification. Cameron wants to be PM because he wants to be PM. There is no wider context to his desire for the job, no sense of vocation, he just wants a promotion. Of course, there’s a lot to be said for politicians who don’t want to remake the world, but there is no evidence of any small government tendencies in Cameron, no obvious desire to reverse any of Blair’s measures. Cameron offers the worst of both worlds: elephantine government, combined with an attitude of quietism (at best) shading into social Darwinism (at worst) on social issues.

This is why we had the farce following his election, whereupon he gave a speech full to the brim of nothing and announced the setting up of a whole bunch of panels designed to spend the next 18 months trying to find him some policies. Even the selection of staff for these committees revealed the sheer vacuousness of Cameron’s ideology. Selecting a legatee with £100 million in the bank to berate working folks about the futility of seeking economic growth ? Choosing the country’s chief apologist for the EUSSR as head of the democracy taskforce ? These are not appointments that any man with any serious interest in policy could make.

Just Thinking....

Now that the MSM has finally been forced to report on the Sydney riots, they’ve had to switch to Plan B: blame it all on the Right. Apparently, it’s all the fault of John Howard’s harsh rhetoric. So John Howard gives a speech supporting immigration control and 14 Jihadis gangrape an Infidel woman. I'd like to see the L3 show the flowchart for that little theory.

But, OK, just for the sake of the moonbats’ insane argument, let’s assume that a right-wing politician mentioning the words ‘immigration’ and ‘reform’ in the same sentence is enough to turn ordinary citizens into Nazi killing machines. Doesn’t that mean we’re entitled to ask if there’s a connection between the Left’s crazed rhetoric about ‘fat cats’ and the like, and the brutal murder of a senior figure in the financial services industry by a killer described as ‘obsessed with the rich’ ? If not, why not ? Surely the evidence is exactly as compelling in this case as in the former case, right ?

Surf Nazis ?

I can’t think of a subject where I’ve changed my mind more profoundly than the issue of Israel and the Palestinians. There are plenty of reasons for that change, but all come down to the fact that my previous opinions were based on the reports from the MSM - also known as ‘lies’. Really – the first three years on-line were a series of shocks. I knew the media leaned Left, but I couldn’t believe that they would actually go as far as to hide whole chunks of the truth. One of the biggest shocks was finding out that RoP facecards like Arafat were Martin Luther King for an Infidel audience, and Martin Borman for their fellow RoPers. That wasn’t even hinted in MSM coverage. They can’t have not been aware of that – it’s not like the Israelis wouldn’t have pointed it out – but it was like there was a media blackout every time some RoP leader ODed on the sodium penthol.

Just as long as the MSM restricted it’s lying to ‘far away places of which we know little’, they had a chance of getting away with it as far as most of the public were concerned. The only problem for the MSM is that right now they’re lying about a far away place of which we know a hell of a lot. Now, suddenly the MSM is trying to convince us that down under they’ve abandoned barbies in favour of cross-burnings. That could be a tough sale.

Given the immense number of Brits in Oz, and Aussies on the Sceptred Isle, the MSM would have a tough time even if Al Gore had fallen under a bus in 1970. Fortunately, Al survived long enough to invent the Internet, so now we can read Ozbloggers and see what’s going on for ourselves. We can find out for ourselves the real backstory behind this completely surprising outbreak of viiolence. We can see that the Maronites – Lebanese Christians – have been targeted, not by the supposedly-racists Aussies, but by Lebanese RoPers. We can tell that all those attacks on ‘places of worship’ seem to involve churches rather than mosques.

The bottom line is that when they wanted to make a film about cloned Hitlers they called it ‘The Boys From Brazil’ not ‘The Boys From Bondi’. The MSM might just about be able to convince people that the Israel, Thailand and Sudan all just happen to be cursed by huge numbers of crazed Islamophobes, but that won’t work for Australia. Maybe this won’t be the tipping point that leads to pitchfork-wielding mobs storming the BBC, but it could just be the point where the truth about the MSM’s dhimmitude goes mainstream.

OK, This Is Actually Quite Funny

Via the comments at ATW, here's the cover of Private Eye.

But What If The Homeowner Was A Terrorist ?

Amongst the many wimpy reasons trotted out for not beating Liberals about the head is the argument that, horrible though Liberals may be, Liberalism itself has some useful things to say about running a country. Or, to put it another way, phrases like ‘civil liberties’ may currently be euphemisms for the moonbat policy d’jour, but the concept itself is an important bulwark against overmighty government.

Well, OK, it is almost Christmas, so let’s not give into mindless knee-jerk reactions – not until the next post anyway. Let us analyse the problem scientifically. Fortunately, recent events have conspired to give us an excellent opportunity to study exactly how Liberals defend three of these ‘civil liberties’, namely the right to free speech, the prohibition against government searching citizens without due cause and the prohibition on the use of torture..

The L3 are so anxious about the possibility of torture that they demand evidence be presumed inadmissible unless the government can prove it was not obtained by torture - even when it comes from third parties in completely different countries. Funnily enough though, the other two rights don’t fair as well. It’s been announced that agents of the state will be able to demand entry to any property they want, sans warrant, accountability or other such historical curiosities. Meanwhile, not only do we have restrictive laws on speech – oops, best make that ‘hate speech’ – but now it appears that the police will target you even if you haven’t actually, y’know, broken the law. And the reaction from the L3 ? Actually, we're still waiting.

You know, it’s ironic that one of the L3’s favourite documents is the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. What exactly is ‘universal’ about their definition of rights ? On the contrary, your rights seem dependant on how the Left feels about you. Author saying things the Left doesn’t like ? Take her away, officer, and we sort out that ‘law’ stuff later. Terrorist conspiring to blow up buses ? Can the government prove that there’s no possibility that anybody even tangentially related to the case anywhere in the world could have been tortured ? Ah well, then – you’re free to go, Mr Jihadi, and yes, you can catch a No 52 from that corner.

I’m Ready For My Close-Up, Mr De Luded

If you didn’t know the Telegraph was a Conservative paper, you wouldn’t guess from reading this story.

The powerful film, unveiled for the first time at a London screening this week, deals with the aftermath of the capture and murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.

And later on the Israeli counter-strike:

[Ciarán Hinds character] cleans up the murder scenes...

The quintet travel to European locations (Rome, Paris, Cyprus, Athens, London) to confront their victims.

So when terrorists seize unarmed hostages they ‘capture’ them, but when an Israeli taskforce zaps the Tangos, they ‘murder’ the ‘victims’. Folks, this ain’t moral equivalence, this is moral nihilism. Still, the article does raise one serious question: does Hollyweird remove all sense of self-awareness and humility from its denizens, or do you have to be insane to make it in the first place ?

Munich was already a hot Oscar favourite even before it was completed, just 10 days ago. Yet Spielberg seems less interested in chasing awards than in using the film to provoke an international debate about terrorism.

So, no cute aliens in this one then ?

The aim of [hiring a bunch of former Washington insiders as flacks] is clear: to position Munich, which opens in America on December 23 and in Britain on January 27, as a serious, important film that goes beyond mere entertainment. Spielberg wants it to be discussed by politicians and in newspaper comment pages. To underline the film's blue-chip credentials, its script was co-written by playwright Tony Kushner, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Angels in America.

Lest we forget, that was the film about AIDS in which the comic relief was provided by the depiction of one of Joe McCarthy’s former assistants dying of the disease. No wonder Spielberg wants such a classy guy on board.

Also, there are no one-dimensional baddies here; even the hit squad's targets are sympathetic or well-rounded. One Palestinian is a charming, civilised author; another is the loving father of a young daughter. A third has a calm, rational chat on a staircase with Kauffman about his dreams for a homeland. "The Palestinian targets are not demonised," Kennedy said.

‘Cause, y’know, the last thing you’d want would be to demonise Islamopathic killers.

Of course, the Yin of stupid moral equivalence can’t exist without the Yang of the supposed terrible, corrosive effects of violence:

Most crucially, the squad's killing mission is neither casual nor fun. It comes to exert a heavy toll on them. "All this blood comes back to us," says one of them, mournfully. "We can't afford to be decent any more." Kauffman says bleakly at one point: "I feel less every day." As events progress and the assassinations mount, he becomes increasingly fearful, paranoid and prone to nightmares.

So, to sum it up, killers are people too, and any attempt to resist them leads inevitably to a descent into madness. A-huh. Of course, that last bit is pretty much the line Spielberg was pushing in War of the Worlds: even when faced with alien invasion, the real danger is from those people who want to resist.

Well, alright, Spielberg is another Hollyweird Moonbat. Quelle surprise! Except that these people keep pushing this line, it’s the underlying assumption behind their position on issues such as Gitmo, invading Iraq and the like, but when anyone calls them out on it, they deny it. Oh no – they’re totally behind the WoT, it’s just that they genuinely believe complete surrender is the one thing Al-Quaida are most scared of. Right!

This ties in with Spielberg's views about terrorism in the Middle East. "The biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis," he told Time. "The biggest enemy is intransigence. I don't think any movie or book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it's certainly worth a try."

And next week we’ll be curing cancer through mime. Anyway, there must be a hell of a lot of ‘intransigence’ out there, what with all the trouble in Thailand, Chechnya, Nigeria and now Sydney – amongst many others.

To this end he has bought 250 video cameras and players, and is giving half to Israeli children and half to Palestinian kids. He wants them to make video diaries of their daily lives, then exchange them to promote mutual understanding.

And this really is the one, truly profound moment in the whole interview. It’s one of the central questions of our time: why is it always the people who babble about the importance of ‘understanding’ are always the ones who so obviously fail to understand anything about actual Islam ?

Return Of The Worst. Candidate. Ever.

Could it be ? Yes, indeed, to judge by this post and comments, it looks like The Margon, primo pin-up of Blue Labour is back, and this time it’ll be even better than last time.

Those who were reading this blog back in the early days may recall the fatwa put on my own fat self for daring to ask just how exactly Margo James, who is a lesbian, is qualified to be an MP. I think the technical name for what followed is ‘girly hysteria’. Trouble was, these folks were so busy writing 84 000 posts about how Nazi a Nazi I was that they didn’t find any time to lay out any actual arguments in favour of Margo James, who is a lesbian, becoming an MP.

As far as I can make out, the case for putting Margo James, who is a lesbian, in Parliament, seems to revolve around the fact she was a moderately successful flack for the pharmaceutical industry. Just that. Sir James Dyson she ain’t.

But what about the politics you say ? What, indeed ? A google.co.uk search on “Margo James” and either “Conservative” or “Tory” produces a grand total of one document which could conceivably be political in nature (and it was inaccessible so I couldn’t even verify that).

In so far as Margo James, who is a lesbian, is known for anything, it’s for the bizarre Dance of the Seven Veils she performs over her sexuality, whereby she doesn’t like to talk about it, but those pesky journos keep bamboozling her into doing so at great length (if only she had some experience dealing with the press!). Needless to say, the Tory-In-Name-Only contingent is particularly excised by any suggestion that Margo James, who is a lesbian, is trading on her sexuality. She celebrated her candidacy by giving a round of interviews talking about her sexuality, later told The Sun that she thought Lady Thatcher was sexy and now appears on a stage as the Conservative Party’s Lesbian-In-Chief, but it’s a private matter.

The irony is that for all the eye-scratchey attacks by the Blu Lab hysteria squad, those of us on the Right would agree with them: Margo James, who is a lesbian, is the perfect pin-up girl for Blue Labour. Here we have an individual with a fairly successful business record and no political track record being hailed as the next Lady Thatcher (except not really, really evil like that Lincolnshire cow).Yet the public aren’t fooled. Despite an unprecedented level of support for a virgin candidate in an unwinnable seat, she still managed to score a lower swing than the national average last time around.

More profoundly though, there’s a blatant contradiction at the heart of the whole idea. The loony theory behind AA is that lesbians, say, can only be properly represented by a fellow lesbian, but just how many ‘pink’ constituencies are there in Britain ? I make it ‘none’. In other words, to accept this dipstick theory means to accept that Margo James, who is a lesbian, will be unable to represent at least 95% of the people in any seat she might win – this’ll be why there are no successful gays in industries that rely on mass appeal, like music and fashion. But wait…..it turns out that although minorities must be represented by minorities, the door only swings one way. Yep – it’s our old friend Gramsci again, with different rules for those pesky hegemons and the oppressed.

Make no mistake: the Conservative Party’s submission to the whole identity politics scam marks a grim surrender to the Gramscian agenda, made all the more shameful by the fact that few of them appear to realise the significance of it.

Where's The Clue Fairy When We Need Her ?

I wasn’t happy with Cameron’s opening speech, but Peter Briffa makes an important point: there’s a certain demographic that appreciates a smooth talker even while they know he’s lying (I think he means women). True enough, but it requires the aforementioned smooth-talker to at least try to hide his contempt for the mark. Cameron’s team seems more Gerald Ratner than Errol Flynn.

Party conferences play an important role in British life: when all the geeks tramp onto the train to some seaside resort it gives trainspotters a rare feeling of superiority. Personally, the thought of being trapped in room with the type of people who spend an entire week talking politics seems like a vision of Hell. Yet even I was offended by the Nu Conservatives justification for screwing about with the Party conferences. Apparently, the annual conference is only attended by ‘people who are paid to or who are retired or who are independently rich or who are fanatics.’

Hey, Tories, he’s talking about YOU!

Funnily enough, the charge of fanaticism doesn’t apply to folks who do other odd things like pound pavements canvassing and delivering leaflets, fund-raising, working phone banks, or approximately 99% of what the Conservative Party wants members to do when it’s election time. But the bottom line comes across loud and clear: the top brass hate the membership.

Let’s not even consider the dingbat idea that hip young things that won’t attend these monotonous jismfests now will nevertheless do a week’s work then jump in the car, spend two days being talked down to by the Cameroonatics, then go straight back to work on Monday. In your dreams, rich boys!

No, this is just another v-sign from the Conservative Party to the membership. Just what do these people need ? David Cameron to come round and personally slap them across the face with a wet fish while addressing them as ‘Mr Oikey-Stupid-Person’. Hello ? Conservative Party members: you are hated by your party.

Can't Think Of A Better Word

It’s a while since the Anglican Church was the Tory Party at prayer, but the Law Lords will always be the Lib Dems in fancy dress. Consider the latest bizarre effusion from the bewigged fools. There is a serious debate to be had over the use of torture in time of war, but – contra the MSM – this ruling isn’t about actual torture, so much as potential, possible, theoretical torture.

In establishing that the government must prove that suspects weren’t tortured (or, as I like to think about it, the ‘prove I’m not Judy, Crown Prince of the Miceoids of Pra’tas 5' principle) the judiciary have handed over a blank cheque to the enemy. There’s the obvious logical point that it is impossible to prove a negative, but there are also specific grounds for being suspicious of this ruling. Their Lordships don’t define which countries we can accept evidence from. In fact, they don’t even define torture. – an important consideration in light of the L3’s constant efforts to define torture down. Few people outside the Kool Aid drinking classes would consider this torture.

It’s a good rule of thumb that when the L3 are getting misty-eyed about tradition then they’re up to something. As it happens, their talk of 500 year old traditions can’t possibly be true (Guy Fawkes and all that). Come to think of it, just last month one of their house organs was assuring us that Nazis were tortured by Her Majesty’s Government. Must have slipped their mind. No, the reason why these people are – for the first time in their worthless lives – talking positively about Britain and its traditions, is the same reason why they’re making constant reference to the Liberal Humpty-Dumpty Laws a.k.a. ‘international law’: legally speaking – in the sense of actual British laws – they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Equally, this is not a case of the bench bending the rules to prevent the executive abusing their mandate. Over half the public are in favour of actual, real torture of terrorists. What we have here is a textbook example of ‘legislating from the bench’. There is simply no principle in operation anywhere else in British law that's even halfway analogous to the one their lordships have just dreamed up. Or, to put it another way, terrorists – and only terrorists – will be able to benefit from protections not available to a bloke accused of nicking a bottle of milk out the corner shop.

The L3 were ever so angry when the Sun ran its famous ‘Traitors!’ headline. Well, now, here we have a situation where Liberal judges, in the teeth of opposition from both Parliament and the wider public, have conjured up an absurd principle, one that has apparently eluded all previous generations of judges, and which will have the sole effect of helping terrorists. What word do the Left think we should use to describe these people ?

More Tory Outreach

So, I guess this is what Cameron meant about the Tories reaching out. Instead of just being the Party of the rich, they’re reaching out to the super-rich as well. Really, I suspected Cameron of wanting to take the party back to the 70s, but I didn’t realise it was the 1870s, complete with gentlemen farmers berating those oiks ‘in trade’. I guess it’s a lot easier to turn your back on the futile pursuit of economic growth if daddy left you a boat load of cash anyway. Meanwhile, in the real world here’s a tip for the Tories: if you have to have someone launching a jihad against the folks who fly Easyjet, at least choose someone who doesn’t think a budget flight is where they give you a special deal on filling up the Learjet.

More On Booze

This guy picks up on an old post of mine together with one of his own. I agree with him mostly. One thing I would say is that it’s also worth considering the effects of business rates on small pubs (or, indeed, shops). This takes a huge chunk out of a businesses turn-over even before a pint is sold, hence the trend towards massive battery pubs.

The other thing worth considering is the issue of culture. Actually, AJE pretty much covers this, but I’m not one to avoid ramming a point home, so here goes: dysfunctional behaviour is the product of a dysfunctional culture not a dark conspiracy between makers of fermented products. In my original post I alluded to the endemic violence in our nation’s schools. Yet, a few years later when these kids are committing acts of violence in the street, it’s all the fault of the brewers ? How does that work exactly ?

Again, AJE is right to point out that one problem is the way in which these maroons are insulated from the consequences of their actions, but I think there’s more to it than that. It was the great Theodore Dalrymple who coined the phrase ‘ideological drunkenness’ to describe this kind of drunken excess. What he meant was that as well as a culture that protects people from the perfectly predictable consequences of their actions, we have one that prizes self-expression above all else. That’s another aspect of the infantilisation of the public, a culture that regards each and every impulse as perfectly valid while the failure of anyone to comply with your needs is a grievous imposition on you. You want to get too drunk and throw up everywhere ? But of course! Someone looking at you in a funny way ? You don’t have to put up with that! Glass him! That’ll teach him.

This is the irony of the whole ‘brewers make people violent’ argument. Not only is it wrong, it's also, in and of itself, a perfect example of the real problem: victim culture. Those six yobs didn’t beat an innocent guy to death because they’re scum. Oh no, they’re victims of the brewers, the TV companies, bad experiences at school, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy…. Just as long as we’re prepared to go to any lengths other than to address the basic fact that yobbery is the fault of yobs, then we deserve to have our cities turned into war zones.

At Last, The Rich And Absurdly Privileged Have A Voice In Modern Britain

Cameron’s propagandists (also known as the MSM) have always implied that behind the vacuous drivel lurks the brains of a master strategist. A-huh. Well, now he’s been elected he’s free to put his brilliant ideas into practice, so what are they ?

I said when I launched my campaign that we needed to change in order to win. Now that I’ve won we will change.

Cue Saddam!

We will change the way we look.

That’s it right there: the essence of Cameronism. They’ll change the way they look. We’ll have the United Colours of Metropolitan Yuppie Scum.

Nine out of ten Conservative MPs, like me, are white men.

Well, Dave, you know what the answer to that is: lead the way and fall on your sword. Otherwise, it looks, at best, as though the Conservatives are telling the next Sir Winston to shove it so they can arrange a safe seat for some guy with the right combination of melanin and, at worst, as just another excuse for the Notting Hill set to discriminate against any guy who isn’t the aforementioned Metropolitan Yuppie Scum low-life.

We need to change the scandalous under-representation of women in the Conservative Party and we’ll do that

Yep – Nu Lab has the Blair Babes while the Conservatives have to stumble along with freaks like Margaret Thatcher. Clearly, the Conservatives could learn a lot about recruitment from Nu Lab.

I mean, that’s the free clue right there. That’s what’s wrong with tokenism. Lady Thatcher came to power in an collapsing nation and presided over a renaissance of British life, meanwhile the Blair Babes are busy talking about breastfeeding.

Anyway, tokenism is lousy politics. Look at this – or rather don’t since I can summarise it in one sentence: ‘David Cameron is obviously a Nazi because he has failed to abase himself before our worthless, race-hustling selves’. I don’t expect a lot from Tory MPs, but a basic familiarity with the concept of Danegeld surely isn’t a lot to ask ?

More than everything else though, the whole identity politics scam is inimical to the whole essence of Conservatism. Conservatives believe in the individual, but the toxic ideology of identity politics tries to dragoon people in political blocks based solely on the crudest of measures. Think of Johann Hari’s eyescratchy attack on Matt Lucus for not being a real gay. Is that something Conservatism should encourage ? Thatcher wasn’t a great female PM and Condi won’t be a superb black POTUS but the race-hustlers will always be bitter losers.

So that’s Cameron’s flagship policy right there. What else does he offer ?

We need to change the way we feel. No more grumbling about modern Britain. I love this country as it is not as it was and I believe our best days lie ahead.

Particularly the day when this maroon gets replaced by a real Conservative.

We need to change the way we think. It’s not enough just to talk about tackling problems in our inner cities - we have to have all of the right ideas for turning those communities around.

No, no, no. We need the wrong ideas, and lots of them. Free radishes for all! Say ‘No!’ to Summer! Aromatherapy for the dead!

And we need to change, and we will change, the way we behave. I’m fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster, the name-calling, backbiting, point-scoring, finger-pointing.

But enough about his campaign team.

I want and I will lead a Conservative Party that when the Government does the right thing, we will work with them, and when they do the wrong thing we will call them to account and criticise them. We won’t play politics with the long-term future of this country, we will work to get it right.

90 days, Einstein.

And I want us to change because this country faces huge challenges. They are not challenges you can put in individual boxes, they’re complex, they’re interconnected, to deal with them takes hard work, complex research, deep thinking and I want us to get it right. I don’t want us to invent policies for newspaper headlines, I want us to get it right for the long term.

OK, he’d make a lousy PM, but at least that’s better than some jobs he could be doing. Can you imagine him in the Fire Brigade ? “Thank God you’re here! A massive pile-up has trapped a bunch of kids inside a school bus and the flames have almost reached that wrecked petrol tanker.”, “Well, OK, it’s obviously a highly complex multivariable problem demanding a cross-functionary ad hoc working group to be set up to consider how best we can move forward with our available assets in order to achieve viable win-win scenarios across the whole range of stakeholder-related

BOOM!

But maybe that’s unfair. He doesn’t want to be a fire officer, he only wants to be PM, so it’s not like there are the same demands in that job, right ?

I’m not seeing a lot of fear amongst Al-Quaida should this tool get into No 10.

The challenge of economic competitiveness - today there are nearly three quarters of a million eight-year-olds. At the end of what I hope will be the first term of a Conservative Government they will be 18. I want them to have well paid jobs and good careers. And that means a full-bodied economic policy not just a tax policy. It means well-funded universities and saying how we’ll pay for them. It means a transport system that works with new roads and how we’ll pay for them as well.

Tuition fees, road pricing and no cuts in existing taxes. Tell me again, what kind of Conservatism is this ?

The second big challenge is to reform our public services. Today there are 68,000 people training as teachers, doctors and nurses. I want them working in public services that are well funded but over which they have the freedom to control and deliver the service the public wants. So we have to meet that challenge and end the opt out culture of helping a few more people to escape public services.

You have to love the chutzpah of Eton Boy sneering at ‘opt out’ culture. If he’d ever met an NUT member he’d at least appreciate that they are the problem. We’ll need some degree of centralised (or, as we Earth people say, ‘democratic’) control just as long as there are teachers who want to call failure ‘deferred success’ – no matter how much that particular concept might appeal to Cameron.

We need to improve public services for everybody in this country. The next great challenge is the quality of life. I want my children, your children, to grow up in a country where the streets are safe, the public space isn’t filthy, where it isn’t a hassle to get around, you can own your own home and where climate change and the environment aren’t an afterthought. That means setting targets for reducing carbon but it also means taking tough decisions to make sure we meet them. I tried to make a start this morning by biking to work. That was a carbon-neutral journey until the BBC sent a helicopter following me

Well, OK, credit for slapping the BBC, but WTF ? He just got through talking about the importance of the economy, now he’s drinking down the Kyoto Kool Aid ? The Clue Fairy just stopped by to remind us that Kyoto is such a socialistic abomination that even Princess Tony is backing away from it.

The fifth big challenge is national and international security. In 10 years’ time, there will be 13 and a half million British citizens over the age of 65. I want to pledge to them that their safety, their dignity in old age will be our priority. That means re-civilising our society, with school discipline, with strong families, and with cultural change. It means, yes, having a tough law and order policy, but it also means reforming the police, and ending the nonsense where it’s so impossible to sack an officer who isn’t doing their job properly

Yes – that’s exactly what the problem is in policing. It’s the worker bees that are at fault. We need to give more power to the perfumed princes in management. Hey – wasn’t this the guy who wanted to set public servants free two paragraphs ago ? Now he’ll allow the MBA totting culture warriors to purge their ranks of awkward coppers (i.e. anyone experienced enough to know management are FOS) and produce a police service staffed with bureaucratic zombies. That’ll help.

And we need to look at the problems of international terrorism, and I can promise that I will never play politics with that issue, I will do what is right for the country.

And we still haven’t forgotten: 90 days.

The sixth and the final challenge is at the heart of all the others, it is having social action to ensure social justice, and a stronger society. I want to set free the voluntary sector and social enterprises to deal with the linked problems that blight so many of our communities, of drug abuse, family breakdown, poor public space, chaotic home environments, high crime. We can deal with these issues, we can mend our broken society. I want to develop my idea for a national school leaver programme, that says to young people, let’s do something, that is about public service, about building self esteem, self respect, for the good of our country and the good of our communities.

So that’s his plan to win the culture war ? Off load our social problems onto the voluntary sector and try to mau-mau the kids into working as willing slaves in some ‘communidee’ BS programs ?

There is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same thing as the state. I don’t believe that Labour can meet these challenges, they are yesterday’s men, with yesterday’s measures. I want us to sweep away their command and control state, the quangos, the bureaucracy, the regional government, which is not bringing real change in our country.

We’re back to New Improved Conservatism. Why not legalise cannibalism ? That’d be new; no one’s ever done that before.

I want us to be the party that meet those big challenges, but we have to change in order for people to trust us. We have the right values, Britain needs a strong Conservative Party with those values. At the heart of what I believe are two simple principles, trusting people, and sharing responsibility. I believe that if you trust people and give them more power and control over their lives, they become stronger, and society becomes stronger too, and I believe profoundly that we are all in this together.

Again, I ask: what manner of train wreck is this guy’s vision of Conservatism ? Governments don’t give freedom to anybody. It’s not theirs to give. Citizens may temporarily transfer their sovereignty to government for the purposes of building roads or killing terrorists, but Cameron isn’t offering to do us some kind of favour here. In fact, given the previous paragraph, it look like Cameron’s vision of freedom is just an excuse to slash away at the social safety net while still maintaining Big Government’s control over everything else.

We all have a responsibility, as individuals, as parents, as families, as businesses, as Government, as Members of Parliament, we all have a role to play. And it is by bringing those values to play that we can do good for our country again.

Not forgetting our responsibilities as children, siblings, team members, parishioners, spectators, stalkers and unindicted co-conspirators.

I won’t do it on my own, I need the support of every Conservative Member of Parliament, of every Conservative local councillor, now the biggest party in local government, of all of our voluntary party, and I want it to be so much bigger.

And bizarrely he’ll get that support, despite his constant currying of favour with the media by propagating every negative possible about Conservative Party members. Are Conservative Party members the battered wives of politics or what ?

People in this country are crying out for a Conservative Party that is decent, reasonable, sensible, commonsense, and in it for the long term of this country. And that is the party we are going to build, and I want everyone to join in.

No – we want a Party that's indecent, unreasonable, insane and heedless of consequences, a 21st birthday party sort of party . At least that’d be more fun than listening to this garbage.

To those watching at home, if you have a passion for positive politics, come and join us. If you want to build a modern, compassionate Conservative Party, come and join us. If you want me and all of us to be a voice for hope, for optimism and for change, come and join us. In this modern, compassionate Conservative Party, everyone is invited. Thank you.

That’s it. That’s the big finish. Translation: “And don’t worry if you think Conservatism is a load of rubbish – we feel the same! That’s why I give speeches with less ideological content than a Persil ad.”

Now, actually that’s unfair. At least, Persil does clean clothes – you don’t see Lever Bros talking about how they’d like to move towards achieving a long-term clean clothes situation. Of course, David Cameron probably hates Persil – too easily confused with other white powders.

A Week Is A Long Time In Liberal Posturing

Was it only last week that the L3 were flapping about the ‘Al-Jism’ memo ? Reports that an alleged memo may have included speculation by Bush on the possibility of bombing Al-Quaida TV were proof positive that the Chimpy McHitlerBurton was intending to establish the Fourth Reich of Jesus.

Not that the Left was motivated by Bush Derangement Syndrome. Nope – they were deeply concerned by issues such as press freedom and the like, which is exactly why they’ve reacted so strongly to recent events in Denmark.

No, wait...that’s not right.

It’s not like we need to speculate about alleged memos here – we know that these people really are under threat. Ditto, there’s nothing hypothetical about Islamopaths slaughtering critics of Islam. So where are the Left ? For that matter where are the Tory-In-Name-Onlys ? How come Bigoted Bozza isn’t making a big song and dance about his readiness to publish the offending cartoons in the Spectator, as he did with the alleged memo ?

This is what these people mean when they talk about moral principles: absolutely nothing. They have a hissy fit over a completely hypothetical threat but ignore a real one. Of course they do – the only consistent principle on show is the principle of sticking it to the West at every turn. Remind me again why we should take any of their moral posturing seriously ?

Now Can We Call Them Traitors ?

As I’ve said before, I’m often cruelly slandered as someone who is unreasonably rude to the scum-sucking Liberal vermin. That’s so not true. When I call Liberals treasonous rat weasels I’m not being abusive, simply technically correct. Consider cases like this.

We’re told Liberals are just as patriotic as us, but in a different way. No they aren’t: when anyone expresses patriotic sentiments they react like they're channeling Linda Blair in 'The Exorcist'. I don’t think it speaks to a great love of country when you’re arguing that the only people who express patriotic views are Nazis.

Liberals Ask: Is It Over Yet ?

Anyone see More4’s newspaper ads for the TV premiere of ‘Downfall’ ? A picture of Hitler with the tagline ‘There’s a happy ending. He dies.’ I liked it, but I can’t help thinking that that’s exactly the kind of comment which usually has the Liberals turning the hysteriator up to 11. Of course, Hitler's the only socialist you're allowed to criticise, but still can you seriously imagine the whining if someone on the Right celebrated the death of an Al-Quaida scumbag ? Nope – the L3 would surrender itself to girly hysterics.

Obviously, one factor is that the Left has – somehow – managed to introduce into popular culture the insane idea that the head of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was a right-winger, but there’s more going on here. Consider how enraged Liberals are at the fact that America had slavery into the second half of the 19th century. Now, consider how enraged Liberals are that the Islamic world has slavery right now – which is to say ‘not at all’.

Maybe that should be the Left’s new slogan ‘Ready to take a stand just as soon as it becomes irrelevant’

One Industry Nu Lab Doesn't Want To Regulate

Yeah, OK, it’s great that at least one council's finally grown a spine and started nailing these sleazily rats, but what of the people behind it all ? Sure, they guys who score £7K off the council with a bogus claim need to be hammered, but how about the scumbag lawyers who seduce clueless idiots into making these claims in the first place ? They take a cut of the winnings, but if it all goes wrong they’re in the clear ? Is there any other industry where this sort of thing would be allowed ?

Not Remotely Safe For Work

But funny!

Who They Are

As an example of what the Conservative Party should be doing, consider events last Friday. When a government with a massive majority chooses to filibuster a bill, then that’s usually a hint that there’s something going on. Even by Nu Lab standards, the tactics used to block Anne McIntosh's Householder Protection Bill were exceptionally slimy. But who seriously expected anything else ?

Few issues expose Nu Lab's gap between image and reality like crime. They certainly like to talk tough, and they’ve even passed some good headline measures, like ASBOs, but when it comes down to the day-by-day stuff ? Forget it – whatever cosmetic changes Blair has wrought, when it comes to the war on crime large parts of the Party still instinctively favour appeasement. Now along comes a bill that is a perfect litmus test of attitudes to crime. Of course they couldn’t risk it coming to a vote. This would throw into sharp relief the gap between what these people say publicly and what they actually believe.

Nu Labour are telling us who they are. They’re admitting that behind all the faux reasonableness, the L3 are still a major force in the Party. When they block votes on topics like this, they’re admitting that if the public knew what they really believed, their popularity would crash like a stone.

That’s what the Conservative Party needs to be doing, forcing the Left to either reveal its true self or indulge in desperate evasions. Either way it’s a win. The trouble is that this strategy requires the Conservative Party to actually know what it is that the public is saying. Does anyone seriously believe that the Notting Hill Party does ?

I Liked Him Better When He Was A Liberal

Suddenly remembering he's pretending to be a Conservative, David Cameron has thrown some red meat to the Right - or, more specifically, he's thrown some red meat to a Guardian readers' caricature of the Right:

The music and games industry has to stop churning out material that celebrates aggression and violence. The drinks and entertainment industries must stop irresponsible alcohol marketing, and stop serving people who are drunk. Those who produce the media that children consume need to think harder about the social impact of their output

If nothing else, can we at least put an end to the idea that David Cameron is some kind of political Einstein ? Maybe there are a few Mary Whitehouses still floating round bemoaning the use of naughty words, but not enough to make it a smart move to tell five million Britons that you’re going to take their Eminem CDs off them.

In actuality, few British social conservatives are sitting in front of their PS2, ticking off each act of violence. Why would they ? As the old line goes, a pornographic society isn’t one with a lot of porn, it’s one which accepts the view of human sexuality that porn promotes. Similarly, caricatures to the contrary, those (few) socio-cons who complain about the games industry aren’t talking about the amount of violence, so much as the context in which these events occur. After all, the average level on a Medal of Honor game is far more violent than the whole of a Grand Theft Auto game, yet the latter draws far more fire (metaphorically speaking).

This is exactly why complaining about violence in games is moronic - the implication that Dreamworks’ recreation of Omaha Beach is somehow more offensive than Rockstar’s depiction of supercool bank robbers. Or, at least, it’s moronic to social conservatives. But how about David Cameron ? Isn’t GTA’s smirking attitude to drug abuse perfectly mirrored in the Notting Hill set ? How about its belief that all morality is really disguised hypocrisy ? Or the contempt for the police ? Und so weiter...

GTA isn’t destroying our society, but I’m not sure we can say the same about the mainstreaming of the worldview it portrays. Yet when we consider what’s doing the damage, we find that the strain of Conservatism championed by David Cameron has been a vigorous cheerleader for a large chunk of it. Rockstar are only making video games, Cameron wants to be PM – maybe we need to consider the social impact of that.

Feel The Love

A commenter at B-BBC points out this thread at the Al-Beeb.

Just in case the BBC performs one of its trademark stealth edits, here are some highlights:

have u seen the videos of british/us contractors killing people randomly on the highways??...its unbelievable, totally unbelieveable.

I cant stand the way these foriegn contractors are regarded as innocent.

They are nothing but part and parcel of the illegal war and occupation of Iraq. They are bloodsuckers who make a living on the backs of 10's of thousands of dead men women and children.

No mercy for them.

I don't see how Muslims can sit back and watch Muslims being tortured and killed. The Koran clearly states that it is the duty of ALL Muslims to defend Muslims lands which are being attacked.

But no, Muslims in the West would rather sit back, happy with their Toyotas and semi-detached houses. After all, it might be a bit dangerous in Iraq! People might get killed!

It is they who have sided with the kafirs. Allah will have no mercy for them.

The kafirs when they die go to hell.

Muslims should not fight other muslimss - but mankind was created weak. But Allah forgives all sins.

Dead Muslims have a hope, dead kaafirs have nothing.

Remember to watch out for all those Right-Wing Extremists!

Everyone Happy ?

OK, the puppy powered template appears to work. Mind you, I thought that about the old one until I tried firefox so what do I know ? Leave a comment if the template is still misbehaving, otherwise click and enjoy Michael Moore's new documentary 'Fahrenheit 1861'.

The BBC's New Mascot: A Greased Weasel

The BBC’s policy of 'all Anthony Walker all the time' continues today, but there’s a certain sadness at the heart of it. Try as they might, there’s one thing preventing this becoming the next Stephen Lawrence case. Them Scousers have gone and busted the killers. What’s a bunch of race-hustling nogoodniks to do ?

But wait…

They’ve got it! Claim that the lack of any real grounds for complaint is proof that their race hutling worked – also known as the ‘elephants painting their nails pink to hide in cherry trees’ strategy.

Still, the BBC must be feeling the heat. They’ve posted another one of their ‘Us ? Liberal ?’ articles. It really is a classic. Apparently, the BBC decides how much coverage to give stories depending on the views of the CPS and the police. Surely, such a policy allows the government to manipulate the reporting of crime ? Certainly, an analysis of the ‘raw’ statistics suggests that the real number of racial attacks is somewhat different from what certain people would have you believe. So much for that ‘challenging authority’ that the BBC is so proud of when the War on Terror is discussed.

Also, the BBC implies that most murder stories aren’t newsworthy because the killer is known to the victim, but that the racially-motivated slaying of a white guy wasn’t reported because that was the day Danielle Jones’ uncle was convicted of her slaying. A-huh. Given that the BBC’s annual income from the TV licence is £3 billion – just how much would they need to be able to cover more than one story per day ? Really – just give us a working figure here.

Besides, they point out that they don’t just downplay attacks against whites – they also shaft East Asians. Did we ever doubt it ? The only way you’re going to see slant eyes on BBC primetime is if they remake ‘Tenko’. It’s the Christopher Yates defence all over again. The BBC can’t discriminate against whites because it also discriminates against East Asians as well.

The central point though is the one the BBC will not address. The BBC suggests that it is self-evident that crimes classed as ‘racial’ should receive more coverage than those that are not. But why ? Isn't this, in and of itself, an inherently political position ?

We’re back to that thing, the metacontext, the unstated assumptions that underpin BBC reporting. Whatever attempts the BBC makes at ‘impartiality’ in reporting individual stories, it’s still a prisoner of the Liberal worldview. In the BBC bubble there’s no one around to say ‘hang on a minute, surely a crime is a crime is a crime’. This is hardly some outlandish view. I’m guessing that half the country (at least) feels that way – it’s just none of them have jobs at the BBC. That’s why it’s so nails-down-a-blackboard to hear these people preach the benefits of diversity.

Ramming The Point Home

Just about everybody has already linked to this but, hey, it deserves the exposure: what Nu Lab really thinks about the English.

Not Innocent

See, this is the magic of the Internet. Already, the wheels are coming off the ‘Christian Peacemaker Teams’ as wide-eyed innocents meme. That’s good, but I never bought it anyway. By now, the evidence is well and truly in. No matter how deluded anyone was about the – ahem! – insurgents in 2003, few people can be under any illusions about the nature of the enemy now.. To put it another way, the only way you can not see these people as savages is to be so thoroughly-immersed in the BushChimpler kool aid as to believe that all those decapitations are actually being carried out by CIA officers in a film studio at Area 51.

These people aren’t Luke Skywalker handing themselves over to Darth Jihadi claiming they can still sense good in them. They just don’t think they’re evil in the first place. These people are so wrapped up in their hatred of the West that they cannot conceive that anyone who hates the West nearly as much as they do can be a bad guy. They’ve been framed, the West made them do it and what about the 200 million homeless Americans anyway ? It isn’t their naiveté which leads them into trouble, it’s their hatred.

Troops Fall Into Hands Of Crazed Militants

Gosh, just a week after the chattering classes were shocked by the Royal Marines attempt to get an Arts Council grant, it turns out that Princess Tony has arranged for the Armed Forces to be handed over to the bewigged fools. Isn’t it funny how often that sort of thing happens ?

Today's Bill will set up a joint prosecuting authority in place of the existing Army, Navy and Air Force prosecutors…

Like the three bodies it replaces, the joint prosecuting authority will come under the "superintendence" of the Attorney General. That term, first used in the Prosecution of Offences Act 1879, is deliberately vague, meaning pretty much what people want it to mean.

I’m guessing calling it the ‘Office Of Screwing The Forces’ would be a little too obvious. Consider for one moment the mentality which compares the Forces with the Courts and decides the Forces need reform.

Lest you be in any doubt what these people intend, try this:

Lawyers should advise military police which questions to ask in interview and what evidence is needed to secure a conviction….While this may not be practicable in a military war zone, modern communications should permit a much greater involvement by lawyers.

This makes LBJ picking the next day’s targets over lunch look sane. Some Liberal freaks are going use satellite links to persecute troops in the middle of a war zone ?

These reforms are a train-wreck. They’ll deliver over one of the few functioning institutions in modern Britain to the very people who have done most of the damage. You couldn’t fill a minibus with actual, normal people who’d think this is a good idea. No wonder the L3 are reduced to releasing tapes of ‘Marines Gone Wild!’.

Is It Just Me ?

Or are other people getting a huge whitespace when they try to view here using Firefox ?

More Nu Science

See this is what I was writing about here. Here's Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society, no less, giving his considered opinion on science:

Fundamentalism is hampering global efforts to tackle climate change, according to Britain's top scientist.

'Fundamentalists' - this is the language of disinterested seekers after truth ? I'll bet those folks studying, say, the rise in temperature on Mars will be surprised to learn they're not practicing Real Science.

In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford will say scientists must speak out against the climate change "denial lobby".

Say, that phrase sounds familiar - anyone know what other form of 'denial' is commonly talked about ? Lucky for him Godwin's Law only applies on the 'net.

He will warn core scientific values are "under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East".

Yes, Prof. Cutting heads off is exactly the same as mocking econuts. Is this bloke getting £500 for every L3 article of faith he spouts ?

Lord May completes his five-year term as president of the UK's academy of science on Wednesday.

"Ahead of us lie dangerous times," he will say in his fifth and final anniversary address.

Well, you know, some of those test tubes can be pretty sharp when they break.

There are serious problems that derive from the realities of the external world: climate change, loss of biological diversity, new and re-emerging diseases, and more.

See, that's why we're killing off all those species, so there's less places for new diseases to hide.

Many of these threats are not yet immediate, yet their non-linear character is such that we need to be acting today.

And, if you sign up today, you will get our special, Five-Star Executive Club membership for the price of a Standard memebership.

And we have no evolutionary experience of acting on behalf of a distant future; we even lack basic understanding of important aspects of our own institutions and societies.

In his case, who could disagree ?.

Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason.

As opposed to the deeply scientific technique of calling your opponents brainwashed morons.

Lord May will say that fundamentalism applies not only to organised religions but to lobby groups on both sides of the climate change debate.

The climate change "denial lobby" and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) opposed to nuclear power are not exempt from a denial or misrepresentation of scientific facts, he told reporters in London.

Translation: scientists will team up with econuts to work over eviiiil kepitalists, but the Green Weenies better not do anything to derail the gravy train.

Speaking in a week that saw the opening of climate talks in Montreal, and the re-opening of the nuclear power debate in the UK, he said there had to be open questioning and inquiry of such issues.

You know, kind of like alluding to Al-Quaida and Nazis when talking about your opponents.

The huge problems with nuclear power had to be weighed against the problem of putting more carbon into the atmosphere and the future potential of land and sea turbines, he said; "rather than ruled out of discussion on what you might call some fundamentalist belief system".

"I'm serious, dammit. Leave our gravy train alone!"

Another danger to the enlightenment of science came from the growing network of fundamentalist and lobby groups in the US that campaigned for creationism to be taught in science classes, he added.

Call us back when the first plane hits MIT.

By their own writings, this group has a much wider agenda which is to replace scientific materialism by something more based on faith," he said.

As opposed to the scientific community, who's approach is completely the opposite. After all, atheistic materialism worked so well in the last century.

He called on scientists to take a more active role in speaking out against so-called "intelligent design" and other threats to modern scientific values.

Man, maybe there really is something wrong with science if a bunch of hicks teaching the kids that fossils are one of God's little jokes is enough to have these folks going to Condition Red.

The only thing I can see scientists doing is being more energetic as citizens - getting out there and trying to convince people that that's not a very wise way to behave," he explained. "That's no easy recipe.

Well, now, that's kind of is the thing, init ? Seems to me that science went off the cliff precisely because scientists started to become convinced that a PhD qualified you to talk about everything from artillery to Zoroastrianism. Take the whole 'America as Theocracy' meme. We're meant to believe these people are worried about religion having too influential a role in American life, but everyone knows these people have always hated religion anyway, so how seriously can you take their pious talk about 'scientific values'.

For that matter, where are these scientifc values ? There's plenty of good science that contradicts the theory of anthrogenic global warming. Surely that should be taken on its merits, rather than merely calling people names ? But no, resembling nothing so much as the medieval church, the scientific community continues to insist that they alone can interpret data while opponents are isolated loons. Here's Michael Crichton on that point:

Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

Indeed. It's a sign of the times when the bloke who wrote Jurassic Park seems better informed about the nature of science than one of Britain's top scientists.

Well, At Least There's Some Order To It

Via Mr Shiny New Comments, we find the rules of PC. Just in time too, otherwise we'd be left wondering why after all that yapping about Islamophobia, the BBC has ignored an actual, proven case of a guy being forced out of his job because of his religion.

I guess the rules must also explain the BBC's sudden backflip with racially-motivated violence. Back all those seven days ago, the BBC were insisting that every fact be carefully confirmed by a team of top scientists, theologians and VC winners. Now we're talking about the Anthony Walker case and it seems there's almost nothing the BBC won't publish. Take this 'ere piece by David Green. Consider the sheer chutzpah of the title: " Murder 'proves racism exists'". Yes, indeed, David and what's more, some of us were saying that last week. Given the content of the article, I think a more accurate title would be 'Race Hustlers Speak Out'. Still, we need to consider the dangers of racism, dangers like allowing bigots to take an isolated incident and try to weave it into some kind of broadcast condemnation of a whole ethnic group. We're just lucky the BBC is on the alert for that kind of thing sneaking in.

Outsource Liberalism

What does it say about the strength of the case for modern Liberalism that the mere propspect of someone being allowed to speak against any of its tenets sends Liberals into a frenzy ? Insecure, much ? Still, today's farce gives me an idea.

Truth be told, most Conservatives will admit that, all things being equal, they'd rather not have large chunks of the fauna and flora of this planet go extinct. Where we differ from the idiot faction is that we recognise pious hopes and prayers to Gaia aren't cutting it. The unromantic truth is if we're going to 'save the rainforest' then the best way is to show how we can make it pay. So here's my answer: replace Liberals with chimps.

Think about it: chimps are superb climbers and can make loud shrieking noises - that's practically every Greenpeace protest there's ever been right there. Plus, not only do chimps have better personal hygine, their use of tools indicates far superior reasoning skills than the average Liberal. True, chimps often take drugs, but only as part of controlled experiments, and what's more, chimps never sign off on the sick for six months becuase they're like, totally stressed out.

We need an exchange program, we'll hire our little forest mates, and send Liberals down there to experience the warmth of Gaia's embrace. Three years work should be enough for the average chimp to safeguard his forest forever, while the Liberals will help to enrich the local environment (particularly for the lions).

Watch Out For Those Right-Wing Extremists

Seems like only last week Liberals were preparing for another round of witch hunting in our nation’s schools. Yep – here it is. All the usual suspects are present and correct: effective race relations policy...community links…strong guidance…successful racial equality framework...local community…. yhrgjedojmfm

Sorry, just dropped off there.

Funnily enough though, it doesn’t seem to be working, at least to judge by the case of Parveen Sharif. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that she didn’t know her brother was homicidally-inclined – and avoid the obvious corollary that she should then be fired as clearly being too stupid to teach anything more taxing than Basic Breathing. In fact, we’ll even forget that the bar for firing is lower than that for a criminal conviction, and just consider whether a Native British teacher who celebrated the murder of Anthony Walker would merely be asked to undertake not to repeat his comments.

As it happens, the law requires schools to report any racist incident to the local education authority, but now we find that one of the reasons for excluding Little Miss RoP’s previous shenanigans from evidence was that no one at the school had thought to make a written report. What does that say about the culture in our school staff rooms when no one apparently feels that expressing support for mass murder is, quite literally, worth taking note of ?

Our Long National Nightmare Continues...

Will it ever end ? Yep, the Left are busily beating a dead Brazilian again. Still, I can't help but notice a certain desperation about the latest farcical iteration.

I remember when the L3 were working themselves into a frenzy about police death squads spraying fire around crowded train carriages, now they're down to picking through public statements, trying to catch the Police in a contradiction.

That’s a bit of a come down, from accusing the Police of operating secret assassination units, to trawling through documents in a desperate search for ‘Gotchas!’. Still, you know how the Left are about lies, which is why they'd never do something like, ooh, I don't know, try and imply that the police were using illegal ammunition when there's absolutely no legal basis for that claim.

Still, these folks do have point about lack of transparency in this case. Think how long it took to find out that, yes, St Jean the Martyr was an illegal immigrant. I just don’t think these people are the obvious choice to complain about it – not with the difficulty there is pinning down exactly who these people really are (or who’s paying for this campaign). Mind you, it would be interesting to hear our newly prissy Left give us their considered opinion on the morality of political activists passing themselves off as merely concerned citizens.

Liberals Discover Huge Conspiracy By Adolf McChimpler (Part MMDCV)

There are plenty of advantages to life as a Conservative as opposed to a Liberal. Better personal hygiene for one. Still, every now and then I find myself envious of the sense of wonder every new day must bring when you can’t remember anything that happened more than two weeks ago. At least, I’m assuming Liberals have no memory. After all, it’s the best explanation for their latest excuse for manufactured hysteria.

We’re told that Chimpy McHitlerburton wanted to bomb Al-Quaida News. ‘Bomb’ presumably as opposed to anything more controversial such as pressuring governments to withdraw their reporter’s visas, jamming their transmissions, cyberattacks or paying some local naughty boys to give their transmitters a C4 upgrade.

So, OK, the charge is absurd from first principles, but look who’s making it – yep, the Daily Mirror. Hey – at least they don’t have a proven record of publishing fake material to try and undermine the Allied war effort. Oops.

Equally absurd though is the Left’s girly hysteria about the idea of bombing an enemy TV station. To listen to them, you’d think they’d never heard such talk before. We don’t need any sleazy tabloids to tell us what Slick Willy felt about armed TV criticism.

You almost have to remind yourself that there really have been a number of bombings in this war, in places like London, Madrid, Bali and the like. If Liberals had expressed half the outrage about them that they’re generating about this absurd non-story, we might almost take their moralising seriously.