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.

Say, Does Anyone Know Who George Best Played For ?

Also evil and cynical is my strange feeling of respect for the Leeds and Liverpool fans who broke wind at the canonisation of George Best.

Not that I don’t have a lot of respect for George Best. Two of my hobbies are football and heavy drinking, so naturally I respect a man who was master of both, but there’s something more going on here. Now, I’m not so worried by the slight (OK, huge) degree of whitewashing going on here. He had his genius, he had his darkness – each should stand on their own merits. Ditto, while I suspect that much of the coverage is nothing more than the product of the widespread delusion amongst persons of a certain age that everything that happened in the Sixties is a source of endless fascination to everybody in the world, it doesn’t really worry me. In fact, I’m even willing to overlook the sheer humbuggery of all these folks shocked – shocked! – at the behaviour of the fans. Hey, where were they when alleged authors were clambering over The Don’s corpse to publish books claiming Revie was a Nazi space cannibal ? How about when BoJo made his Hillsborough comments ? Hmmmm ? So what’s different this time ?

Ah yes, that’s the thing.

George Best was a Manchester United legend in every sense of the word, and the rebranding of the self-destruction of a turps-nudging wife-beater into this century’s equivalent of the death of Lord Nelson is utterly predictable. The BestFest is not some content-neutral tribute to a great sportsman, so much as continuous 24/7 propaganda on behalf of what is certainly the sleaziest corporation in British sport, and possibly in Britain itself.

That’s why I have that sneaking respect for those fans – in an era when our fearless media have done all but turned themselves into unpaid PR agents for a massive multinational, they didn’t allow themselves to be mau-maued into swallowing whole this chocolate box coverage of a thuggish mega-corporation. Was it harsh, cruel, barbaric or adjective-of-choice for them to do what they did ? Sure, but the people least qualified to criticise them are the spineless errand boys enablers in the media, ever anxious to take any opportunity to whitewash a despicable collection of amoral scumbags as some kind of loveable representation of the best in our national game.

That Nagging Feeling

Evil & cynical that I am, I couldn’t rid myself of a nagging feeling when I saw the initial reaction to the murder of a police officer in Bradford. It was certainly a terrible crime, but was it really a ‘shock’ ? Surely that word should be reserved for incidents that don’t happen with depressing regularity ? Consider, for example, the slaying of Nottingham jeweller Marion Bates.

Is there anyone in Britain who hasn’t noticed that gun crime is going through the roof ? Yet, as a corporate body – if hardly on the individual level - the Police have been prepared to join the Left in a few choruses of ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’. Now it’s a police officer rather than just a prole who’s been shot, suddenly these people are shouting ‘hey look, there’s an heavily-armed elephant on that table!’

That feeling has just got stronger and stronger as the week has worn on, culminating in the Police’s version of The Dance Of The Seven Veils over the identity of the suspects. I don’t think we need Sherlock Holmes to work out why. It’s all very well for police management to take out onions when discussing this case, but how seriously can you take them when it turns out they’re compromising an investigation to bury inconvenient facts ?

"Shut Up!", He Explained.

Something I’ve been meaning to write about for ages – the latest skirmish in the MMR fiasco. As I hope I’ve made clear in my previous writings, I’m both agnostic and apathetic about the actual specifics. Then again, the actual details hardly seem to matter anymore in a debate that has increasingly become regarded as the Stalingrad of the science wars.

Consider, for example, this response to an article by Melanie Phillips. Stripped of the scientist's trademark horrible wiring style, all this argument boils down to is that if you don’t spend your working day crouched over a hot microfuge, you’re not qualified to have any opinion on scientific issues. Call it the chickendork argument.

Hey -anyone know what the scientific term for ‘chutzpah’ is ? These people have hijacked the ‘chickenhawk’ argument, even while they themselves can hardly go a day without criticising the military. How come the public aren’t qualified to talk about science, but a bunch of geeky lab rats are just the people to talk to about the tactics used to winkle out enemy snipers ?

No doubt these people would justify themselves by talking about the importance of civilian oversight of the military and the like, and they’d be right, but where’s the sauce for this goose ? How come science doesn’t need such oversight ?

Of course, some will see something almost Randian in the attitude of the scientific community. Lest we forget, not only do these people gobble up around £7 billion pa of taxpayer’s cash, they’re vigorous supporters of interventionist government in every other sphere of British life – look at the average edition of New Scientist for proof of that. These people don’t mind Big Government; they just think it should be out there giving everyone else a hard time.

That’s the bottom line here. The question is not whether scientists conspired to cover up evidence of a dangerous vaccine – almost certainly not - it’s how they would have done things differently if they had. The MMR debate threw a harsh light on what the scientific community really thinks about the public, democracy and the like. What was exposed was an dysfunctional sub-culture virulently opposed to principles like accountability, transparency and responsibility (but keep sending the cash anyway).

The Great Experiment Continues.....

First Friday without having to start building up at stockpile at 10:45. But let's be careful out there - there are still dangers lurking for the unsuspecting drinker.

Racists ? I Got Your Racists Right Here!

Hard to believe, but I’m often accused of being too harsh on the L3. Can’t we all just get along ?

Well, no, not if the evidence of the Christopher Yates case is any guide. The L3 have given a masterclass in avoiding the elephant on the table. As I said before, they’ve been prepared to junk twenty years of Liberalism if that’s what it takes. Now – predictably – the judge has outed himself as yet another activist in robes, claiming that ‘evidence did not show the attack was racially motivated’. After all, they’d already ‘attacked people of all races, white, black and Asian’. A-huh.

Really, there’s so many thing wrong with that reasoning, it ain’t true. First of all, there’s the not inconsiderable point that assault!=murder. Other people may have been attacked in passing, but Mr Yates was the victim of a sustained assault that could only have led to his death. Besides what proportion of BNP thugs only assault non-whites ? Are these people really claiming that providing Mr Knuckledragger has the forethought to slap round a white guy beforehand, he can’t be found guilty of a racially-aggravated crime ? Anyway, what’s with this ‘Asian’ thing – here, more than ever, there’s a world of difference between an assault on a Sikh and an assault on a fellow Muslim.

Lest it be thought that this is a mere arid question of political posturing, even the judge admitted that had he found them guilty of a racially-aggravated assault, they’d have been looking at twice the sentence (ie 30 years – also known as ‘what they should have got anyway’). Wassdat ? I hear a squeaking in the corner. Mr Guardian Reader would like to point out that he thought Conservatives were opposed to the whole idea of ‘racially-aggravated’ crime. Well, yeah, we are opposed - exactly because of cases like this. Can anyone – anyone –seriously believe that if the races had been reversed Liberals, both on and off the bench, would be engaging in this frantic splitting of hairs to prove that the case wasn’t racial ?

What we have is exactly what the Right predicted: different classes of victim. We have an aggravating factor that only applies to ethnic victims – whites need not apply. The L3 like to yammer about ‘institutional racism’ and the like, well, here we have a situation where one ethnic group gets much higher sentences than any other group for the same type of offence. No need to call in the Witchfinder Generals of the CRE to find discrimination here.

But that isn’t even the half of it. Possibly suspecting that the public won’t swallow that Mr Yates was murdered because the assailants had, say, a phobia about people wearing glasses, the L3 have moved onto a back-up argument. The reason these three sociopaths murdered an innocent man was because they were...too darn white.

Yep – the killers had been seduced by nasty old Western culture. Needless to say, the L3 are also anxious to remind us that they eschewed their parent’s religion, lest we get any funny ideas about violence and the RoP.

Liberals have spent years arguing that only whites can be racists. Now we have a racist murder of a white man by Asians, it turns out that it’s still the white man’s fault. Our culture has corrupted these pure Muslims. So not only does this case apparently not call for any of these ‘you culpas’ Liberals are famous for when some natives murder an ethnic, but it turns out to be an argument in support of the worldview of Osama Bin Laden.

And there you have it: when natives commit racially-motivated murders it proves the British are evil, when natives are victims of racially-motivated murders it proves the British are evil. Or to put it another way, even when faced with completely opposite sets of circumstances, the L3 comes to the same conclusion about the evilness of a particular race. To borrow an Eminem-style line from the DSD: 'Will The Real Racists, Please Stand Up, Please Stand Up'

These People Are Literally Insane

Not entirely contradicting the belief that modern Liberalism has degenrated into little more than an obsessive search for victims, they’ve now located a whole new frontier for grievance – it’s...no, even I can’t make it sound any sillier than they do: ‘Homophobic bullying in primary schools is not being tackled effectively, according to a Sunderland academic.’

You can’t satirise that stuff. Honestly, it makes you feel nostalgic for the days when the only people talking about the sexuality of seven year olds were behind bars.

Outrage D'Jour

Snafu reports on a case of judicial blind eye. Funny thing is that I recall something about...ah yes, here it is: 'The definition of a 'racist incident' now adopted by all forces is 'any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person'.

Like, hello ? Yes, Mr Guardian Reader, how hilarious it is of you to point out that the victim hasn't actually said anything about it being a racial attack. Let me state that last bit again 'any other person'. In this case you could change that to 'just about any person you randomly stopped in the street' and this would still qualify as a racist killing, but suddenly Liberals have gone the other way. Now, it appears, anything short of the killers writing a book called 'We Killed A Guy Because He Was White' means Liberals will take that as an excuse to claim their motivation is some dark secret. Meanwhile, the rest of us can chalk up another great day for 'it depends....' law enforcement.

It's Just Like Christmas Eve

Levelling Down 101

In a cunning attempt to quash rumours that they exists in a parallel universe to the rest of us, the educrats have announced that parents often help their children with their GCSE coursework. While we await further reports on the religious leanings of the Pope and the sanitary arrangements of bears, the educrats have decided that what the situtaion really requires is more guidelines, thereby utterly refuting another Nu Lab stereotype. Apparently, parents will read these notes then decide to let Junior sink if that's what Mr Blair wants, and order will be restored.

Really, if you were a recently-arrived alien from another planet, you'd be able to draw up a better model of human behavior than this. Yes parents help their kids out - that's what parents do. Besides, it's not like the kids are going to learn anything any other way. Not with the schools being obsessed with stuff like this.

I mean, look at that opening line: 'Schools should incorporate racial equality into mainstream lessons to achieve an effective race relations policy, inspectors say.' A-huh. You can imagine how that works - 'Ok class, can anyone tell me which metal salts are always soluble, and why native Britons are evil ?' C'mon. If even the most apolitical teachoids aren't allowed to cover how mirrors work without inserting little PC sermons then it's no wonder parents don't respect the system.

Our education system is a trainwreck. Children from succesful familes can draw on their support to succeed in spite of that, while those from dysfunctional backgrounds are basically screwed. Nu Lab's concern about coursework just turns out to be same ol', same ol' socialism: 'we can't help, but we can screw up your neighbours' life as well'.

The Liberals Who Cried Wolf

They were warned. Laban has found a BNP blogger. But what are the Libs going to call him ? After all, they already call everyone to the right of Tony Blair a 'Nazi', so what's left ? Double-Nazi ? No-Kidding-Nazi ? Look-I-Know-We-Were-Lying-Before-But-This-One-Really-Is-A Nazi ?

Liberals Sink Own Boat

Further proof for the hypothesis that there is no one the Left will not defend if it'll harm Britain. Yep, they're going all misty-eyed over badly treated Nazi war criminals. Scott points out that to believe this story - and the Guardian appears to - means conceding that torture must be effective after all. There go half the Left's talking points. Equally, wasn't WWII the Left's inspiration for all their little homilies about how we could win wars without losing our humanity ? Now it turns out that our traditional British values of bending over and taking it like a man are nothing of the sort. Contary to the Liberal narrative, allied captors did not carefully don gloves before handling copies of 'Mein Kampf'. Our ancestors were quite capable of judging when the rules should apply and when not, yet somehow our humanity remained intact after all.

MSM Strike Again

Nobody panic - the Iranians may have elected a loon as President but hey ? He's a powerless figurehead, doncha'know ?

What Cameron Really Offers The Tories

Conservative leadership contender David Cameron has said the party needs to
change its "look, feel and identity".

He told the BBC's Newsnight he did not "rule out" changing its name,
but did not want a mere "rebranding exercise".

The Trouble With Libertarianism

Late to the party again.I’ve just realised what disturbed me about last week’s BritBlog round up. Worstall links approvingly to critics of ‘Harry’s Place’ and their support for the 90 day anti-terrorist legislation. No surprise there, but later on he links, again apparently approvingly, to a bunch of Leftists encouraging people to report Sun editrix Rebekah Wade to the PCC. Huh ?

Yes, yes, yes: I know the difference between private action and state action. No one is talking about censorship, but how exactly does this sort of thing mesh with a supposed belief in liberty ? Of course, the PCC is pretty toothless but the principle is important. Here we have a group of people attempting to use mass action to hijack a regulatory body in order to punish the editor of a paper who publishes stuff they don’t like. Their cause is not obviously one compatible with a belief in liberty.

Indeed, this is the central flaw in Libertarianism. At the national level, the State is certainly the greatest threat to liberty, but on the micro-scale it doesn’t matter much if you’re afraid to express your opinions because you fear arrest by the Secret Police or you’re afraid because of the prospect of being beaten to death by the local union godfather. Not only are Libertarians virtually silent about these second category of threats, in so far as they oppose virtually all attempts to tackle them (since these would require increasing the power of the State), they make it easier for the thugs to run riot. This tendency has reached its zenith with the Libertarians generally pathetic performance in the War on Terror.

The thing with life is that, for most people, the threat from the non-governmental type of thug is far more acute than that from supposed Statist conspiracies. When government acts to restrain private sector lunatics, is it reducing freedom or increasing it ? Yes, the Left has spent years claiming they’re not a bunch of totalitarian thugs, they’re just giving people ‘freedom from choice’, but everything is balance. Terrorists have killed large numbers of our citizens and Libertarians have responded by warning of the danger of the State. Libertarianism as a philosophy will only deserve respect once it’s proponents admit that sometimes it isn’t about The Man.

The Left Gets Tough (No Terrorists Involved)

Thinking of that last post reminds me that Liberals, as a rule, get ever so angry when their commitment to, say, fighting terrorism or protecting kids from paedophiles is called into question. Every time the question comes up Libs play the civilisation card, the one where they claim Conservatives are a bunch of vengeance-crazed savages while they are interested in the wider questions of justice. Thing is though, when it comes to topics Libs really do care about, suddenly all bets are off. The Briffa points out the latest effusion from the Toyntard. Yowser! Are these the people who were upset about paedophiles being hounded out of their homes ? Suddenly driving people to suicide and throwing young families out onto the street is fine by Pol. Also, men should be made to pay higher taxes than women because they’re more likely to commit crimes – but we’re supposed to pretend that it’s just a coincidence that all the July 7 bombers worshipped the moon god. Maybe that’s how we can get the Left on board with the WoT: ‘just think of all the men who got off paying child support by getting killed in bombings.’

Timmy! Timmy! Timmy!

The dangerously subversive one passes on the latest lunacy from well-known Liberal activist and judge Timothy ‘Timmy!’ Workman. He’s apparently troubled by the prospect of a jihadi being extradited to the US. I mean, he’s OK with the idea that a visitor to this country can be seized for no better reason than that a ragbag of the usual suspects have decided he’s committed some unspecified offence under vaguely-defined pseudo-laws, but when it comes to the government of an allied nation requesting the extradition of a man for committing acts which are illegal under both our and their laws, why that’s just going too far.

Of course, it’s not like Workman doesn’t have a track record in dhimmitude, all but abasing himself because Britain, gosh darn it, doesn’t follow the Islamic calendar [searches to locate cases of Workman apologising to Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Zorostans, Wiccans, Satanists, Animists and Pagans for not respecting their holy days have so far proven negative]. Then again, Timmy is a full-spectrum Liberal – maybe it's not the dhimmi factor, so much as the general Gramsican delight in helping out just about anyone who'll stick it to the basic standards of civilisation.

BBC Reports: Conservatives Shocked By Gang Rape

Just something to consider next time you hear the MSM talking about all those extremists on the Internet. A vote of thanks too for our friends in the femiloon community. I guess celebrating gang rape is a mere cultural quirk compared to real horrors such as a gentleman who prefers blondes.

At least now we're seeing the true nature of the BBC. There is literally no one these people will not carry water for if it'll serve the Left's agenda. That's the common thread that's run through all the BBC - in fact, all the MSM - coverage of these riots. Look at this report for one:

One of France's leading TV news executives has admitted censoring his coverage of the riots in the country for fear of encouraging support for far-right politicians.

Anyone think there's any more significant difference between the Franch media and the British one than the fact ours are better liars ? Even then, they can't help but let the insanity leak out every time they open their mouth. Here one of our jounalistic betters talking about the French censorship at an industry conference:

Deborah Turness, editor of ITV news, seemed to hit home by asking the LCI editor about levels of diversity among the staff in his newsroom and whether he was "doing the government's work" by withholding coverage to discourage further violence from alienated minorities.

Free clue for the MSM: if you're trying to disavow charges of Liberal bias, try to sound less like student activists. Or, at least, try to make sense. Is censorship alright if you have a diverse newsroom ? Would censorship be OK if it wasn't helpful to the government ? What proof do these people have that the rioters are, in fact, an 'alienated minority', rather than Jihadis ? And what does it say about their committment to diversity that not one of them even thinks to ask these questions ?

But at least some folks in the industry are getting it:

Chris Cramer, managing director of CNN, pointed out: "We are not the gatekeepers anymore. If we don't report it someone else will"

Or, as a native English speaker may put it, 'we'd lie if we thought we could get away with it.' So much for jounalistic ethics.

The thing with the French riots is this: not only is it a perfect example of just how far the media will go to push the Liberal agenda, it's also a great example of just how weak these people actually are. After a fortnight of round-the-clock defamation, the MSM would have us believe that Nicolas Sarkozy's career is over. True, but only in the sense of 'not at all'.

Turns out that the man on the Caen omnibus doesn't take kindly to 'alienated youths' going on the rampage. Who'd have thunk it ? Yep - just about everybody who doesn't spend their time worrying that they might inadvertantly help defend civilisation against the Jihad. At least King Canute knew he couldn't really stop the tide coming in - the MSM finds itself asking themselves a version of the old hippy saying: what if you held a lynching and no one came ?

Sarkozy took on the whole of the MSM and now he's going to PM. Need I say there might be a lesson here for folks closer to home ?

Pah! I Spit Upon Your Puny Atrocity Story

Laban reports the latest outrage from the white-coated ones. That's pretty bad, but for real medical horror try this. We should never forget that the 'death of deference' wasn't murder so much as an assisted suicide.

US Vs EU

Just about every Liberal blogger who's ever existed has at one point made the same stunning point: most Conservatives like the US even while opposing the EU so they must be hypocrites because they don’t conform to the Left’s own stupid stereotype of Little Englanders ranting about bleedin’ foreigners

Apparently, the nuanced ones can’t handle the idea that British Conservatives may hold different views on these two entities by virtue of their differing natures. If you want to know how different, consider the contrasting uses of surveillance technology. Liberals have regular tantrums about the way US technology allows them to spy on other countries (see here for an example). The EU is above all that. They’ll still build the surveillance network, but they use it to monitor the real enemy: their own citizens.

It's Alive, It's Alive.....Oh, Maybe Not

Did I sleep through the bit where the BBC's charter was changed to allow it to spend public money on blatant activism ? There's no other word to describe its saturation coverage of the topic of gay footballers. The man on the Clapham omnibus does not spend his days agonising about the sexuality of Fulchester's No 10 - it's a completely articifical scandal cooked up in the BBC's PC laboratory. After last Thursdays 'Gay Day', they're back again, with another publically-funded innuendo fest. I guess licence payers will have to wait a bit longer to find out the number of openly Conservative people employed at the BBC.

Exactly

I love the way those naysayers predicting doom and gloom in Baghdad scoff that Iraq's a totally artificial entity and that, without some Saddamite strongman, Kurds, Sunnis and Shias can't co-exist in the same state. Oh, really? If Iraq's an entirely artificial entity, what do you call a state split between gay drugged-up red-light whatever's-your-bag Dutchmen and anti-gay anti-whoring anti-everything-you-dig Muslims? If Kurdistan doesn't belong in Iraq, does Pornostan belong in the Islamic Republic of Holland?

Telegraph Jumps The Shark

It's been a long time threatening, but today is the day The Telegraph finally went over to the dark side. Look at this story here. It's almost like a textbook example of how not to do journalism.

The Telegraph’s breathless revelation is that St Jean the Martyr was shot with hollow point rounds, a type of ammunition ‘banned in warfare under international convention’. Really – that’s what counts as logic at the Telegraph these days, claiming that something would have been illegal if it was used somewhere else.

Contrary to the crazed panting of the usual suspects(see here for an example), there’s absolutely nothing underhand about police officers using hollow point rounds (or, more likely, frangible rounds). The idea is that these rounds are designed to dump more of their kinetic energy in the first thing they hit. This has the dual advantage of decreasing the risk of overkill – a round that goes through the target and into the civilian behind – and ensuring that the target is taken out...

Maybe it’s that second bit that’s got them all batey, except - what’s their point ? Why would a police officer fire at someone he doesn’t want to kill ? Police officers are only permitted to open fire as a last resort – someone needs to be killed right now. There’s no question of shooting to wound – not only because it’s almost impossible, but also because in any situation that doesn’t require deadly force, the officer has no business firing.

Seems to me that this is the perfect microcosm of the whole War on Terror. Here we have a charge that doesn’t make any legal, technical or moral sense, yet these people have been screaming it from the rooftops. They don’t advocate any alternative course of action, in fact they can’t even say what they don’t like about current policy. It’s all just innuendo, ignorance and, most of all, loud, foot-stamping, tantrums.

Everything Must Go!

It's the end of season link clearance - a bunch of links aquired from who knows where for reasons I can't remember, but that are too good to just delete.

The American Imperialist perfectly skewers an alternative, yet perfectly valid culture.

Check out Steven Lansburg's briliant essay on enviromentalism. Read it and never again listen to Liberals complain about Conservative moralising.

Talking of econuts, Michael Crichton does a good job of kicking them, and their MSM enablers, here.

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce ? The USSR used to declare that dissidents were mentally ill - you'll never guess who's following in their footsteps.

Oh, alright, maybe you will.

Another famous British figure outed as a Muslim ? Hey, this still makes more sense than most of the BBC's coverage of exploding issues.

Talking of the ROP, The Dick List has written a lovely song for them. Isn't that nice ?

Meanwhile, we have the last word on the Islam/Queen scenario.

On the subject of decapitation, here's final proof that the headchoppers are in no way practicing true Islam, also it's not just Britain where public service broadcasting is a byword for sleazy appeasement.

Come to think of it, even when Islam is pretending to be a religion it still sucks. It's not even the looniest faith imaginable. Sure, mass murder is pretty deranged, but it can't hardly compare to the madness revealed in the Fishman affadavit.

And finally, a source for the ultimate in pub quiz trivia rounds.

La Ligne Maginot Les Vies

The Government has a cunning plan to defeat terror. X-rays and body scanners all round.

Except not actually everywhere. Even they admit they can't have full security, so they'll only be in some railway stations (i.e. if you're outside the M25, disregard whole statement). I suppose we're just lucky the Islamopaths have never thought to attack buses. Or bars, office buildings and hotels. The only thing worse than governmental meglomania is government implemeting a strategy which demands such measures, then refusing to fund them. We're supposed to be reassured by the possibility that we may be using one of the 0.2% of stations which have this technology, and stop asking why the government shies away from using a strategy with a proven record of stoppping attacks (and it doesn't need us to irradiate eveyone passing through King's Cross).

How effective could this strategy be ? Pretty effective, after all the enemy within have proactively come out against it:

"Public safety can be enhanced by passenger screening but police must not heighten tensions by targeting young men from ethnic minorities," Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said.

Yes, we're allowed to screen, but only if we don't use criteria of any use whatsoever. Call it a crazy hunch, but I'm pretty sure that the next attack won't be delivered by Buddhist monks, Rabbis or Druids. Ditto, I'm pretty sure that should one of these 'young men from ethnic minorities' be found beaten to death, then Shameless Shami will be first in line to call for the Police to ignore skinhead BNP members in favour of giving the third degree to 80 year old Jamican grandmothers.

Ah yes - that's the thing. When there's a racial attack people suspect Nazis becuase they know that their beliefs make them particularly likely to coimmit such crimes. That's why the Left won't let people profile Islamopaths, because that would lead to people asking what exactly it is about Islam that leads people to self-detonate, and that would never do. Meanwhile, we're supposedly developing computer programs that'll detect people who use too much sugar in their tea, wear blue coats or....just about anything rather than face facts that the biggest predictor of terrorism is adherence to the teachings of the Paedo Prophet.

You Mean The Bloke Who Got Shot ?

Laban passes on the latest school atrocity story. To be honest, I can't keep them straight - I find myself thinking 'is that the one where they pinned her down and pored bleach down her throat or is it the one where the lad got slashed with a craft knife or...' How the hell did we get to the point where we expect a level of violence in schools that would get The Dog & Duck closed down ? Well, here's a subtle hint.

A Nation Of Immigrants No More

Here's the Guardian's considered opinion on the French riots: 'Europeans of immigrant descent are speaking to us through a pillar of fire. They need acceptance as hyphenated Europeans'. But wait - as an e-mailer reminds me, wasn't it the Left which keeps claiming Europe in general, and Britain in particular, is a 'nation of immigrants'. Are we all seeking acceptance ? And, if so, who from ? Or maybe there are different classes of immigrant, after all. Typical Guardian: there's no such thing as a native Britain, but if there was, they'd be to blame for everything.

Glad we got that cleared up.

Vote Semtex

Laban writes a post about how he doesn’t need to write a post because Mel P has already done such a good job of covering the Government’s bizarre committee on whitewashing Islam. Actually, I don’t think Mel covers everything, but then again, a comprehensive treatment would require an entire squadron of 12th dan Fiskers working round the clock.

Fortunately, a single point they make sums up the whole perfectly. They claim that the Government needs to take into account the effects of foreign policy on provoking terrorism. Hey – it might just be me, but people who argue that the government choosing a foreign policy they disagree with is a good reason to blow up buses don’t immediately strike me as moderates.

When George Best Calls You A Drunk...

It’s a sad sign of the times when a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party could learn something from a group of people who think ‘it’s eleven men against eleven men, same game the world over’ counts as inspiring rhetoric. Right about the time David Davis was falling into one of the most obvious elephant traps in political history, the Beautiful Game was showing exactly how to deal with the PC loons. The BBC had decided to send a letter to every Premiership club asking if they’d stopped beating up homosexuals yet. I have the pleasure of reporting that every club in the Premiership plain ignored them (one might almost say they stonewalled them).

Let us take a moment to relish the thought of the impotent fury that descended on the Beeboids when they realised what had happened. ‘But… but…we’re the Witchfinder Generals….they’re not allowed to just treat us like a bunch of pretentious loonies. It’s not fair…..’

But it takes more than a complete lack of evidence to stop the terminally self-righteous in their tracks. All Thursday we had fact-light, innuendo-heavy reports like this on the airwaves. On the bright side, this at least means a well-deserved break for a much-maligned one-time Senator from Wisconsin. Nothing Joe did was ever so thoroughly ‘McCarthyite’ as the BBC’s suggestion that failure to cooperate with a fishing expedition by activist loonies is somehow, in and off itself, proof of the truth of their charges.

It says a lot about the current state of the BBC that there was apparently not one person there who could remind his colleagues that ‘freedom of the press’ means you can publish what you want, not that the press has some kind of extra-legal right to coerce people to cooperate with their witchhunts. Then again, that self-same person might well have felt obliged to ask just how exactly this kind of overt activism comes under the rubric of ‘public-service broadcasting’. But of course this hypothetical individual wasn’t there – that’s the sheer humbuggery of the whole thing.

How much chutzpah does it take for an organisation that is the most high-profile practitioner of discrimination in modern Britain to criticise privately-owned businesses for their recruitment practices ? Here we have a corporation that is funded by the public yet resolutely refuses to employ a large chunk of that public. Just how many of the BBC’s staff could be described as ‘openly Conservative’ ? How does that compare to the number of Liberal employees ? And if the BBC won’t tell us, is that an admission of guilt ?

While Liberals at the BBC award each other huge chunks of public money, aspiring journalists of the Conservative persuasion either have to look elsewhere or take part in a political version of ‘The Birdcage’. All of which is by way of saying that the BBC is qualified to talk about discrimination only in the sense of giving advice on the best way to get away with it.

Take the vital importance of the absurd strawman in deflecting criticism. Premiership clubs could, for example, imply that their critics want to legalise child molestation (John Humphries on critics of BBC bias: 'Do we want to return to capital punishment or to see homosexuals persecuted?’)

Of course, every now and then a premiership footballer might get caught claiming that homosexuals are the same as paedophiles, or that gays often murder the innocent, sort of like Orla Guerin comparing Israel to Zimbabwe or Nik Gowring claiming Israel and the US murder jounalists. Fortunately, all the clubs have to do is to remind people that their employees are speaking in their personal capacity – after all, no one in the MSM would ever think to ask why it never happens the other way round, with someone being caught making offensive statements about heterosexuals.

Also, the clubs should commission studies by respected, middle of the road groups such as Christian Voice, and cite them to prove that both heterosexuals and gays complain about discrimination.

Similarly, the clubs should busy themselves investigating every other form of discrimination possible. The BBC would rather employ a dyslexic subtitler than a Conservative, but they’re still agonising over being ‘hideously white’.

Finally, of course, the clubs should keep claiming that if there really were gay footballers, they’d already be playing, while making sure to lobby hard for the passage and enforcement of laws to prevent homosexuals playing footy (they could learn a lot from cases like this).

Alternatively, the clubs could just keep up with their current policy of ignoring the tantrums of a bunch of pampered Metropolitan princes. No doubt the BBC will keep on with the publically-funded slander, but that's OK, the clubs do still have the perfect response. All they have to say is this: just how many openly Conservative people work at the BBC ?

Flooding The Swamp

The dangerously subversive one suggests that the War on Terrorism could take a tip from the Nationwide. I can’t see anyone who reads here regularly disagreeing. Actually, I think most real Conservatives (which excludes the entire Parliamentary Party) would say that a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. All qualify under Rule 9 – as in 9 mm. But I think it goes a little deeper than that.

Liberals keep yammering about how the West ‘abandoned’ Afghanistan or supported thug regimes across the Middle East. They have a point – just not the one they think they’re making. The Left claims all this is the root cause of terrorism, as though Mo the Paedo’s many massacres were a quirky eccentricity. Hardly, but it is true that under the baleful influence of the stability fetishists the West was prepared to watch as the Islamic world sank into a cesspit. The excesses of the Al-Saud family, or the collapse into anarchy of Afghanistan didn’t cause terrorism, but it did make life a lot easier for the terrorists.

The alleged ‘realists’ have been banished from Middle East policy, but they seem to have an iron grip on Ulster. Just as in the Middle East, we’re told it’s unrealistic to expect a functioning democracy in Ulster. Ditto, we’re supposed to pretend that the Banana Republic is a partner in peace, rather than the IRA’s main sponsor. We have to reach deals with these thugs and let them turn their own country into a sewer, lest they export their sadistic lunacy to the civilised world.

Hey – didn’t handing over Afghanistan to the warlords cause enough trouble ? But no, the Left are the epitome of the phrase ‘they forgot nothing, and learned nothing’. Obviously, there are differences. The IRA claim to be motivated by a perverted form of Catholicism, rather than the Religion of Peace, which on first sight would appear to limit their options in terms of fellow scum. But history proves the IRA is remarkable – ahem! – catholic in their choice of allies. Ask a Columbian. The argument that we can draw a useful distinction between bad terrorists and good terrorists is absurd.

Right about now, Northern Ireland is a place where you can do little things like commit murder or rob banks with no risk of arrest - providing you have the protection of the local warlord, obviously, it’s not like they want anarchy to break out. Letting a formerly civilised nation degenerate into the Somalia of the North is supposed to be the price of peace and stability, yet the whole strategy of the War on Terror is predicated on the idea that absent little things like democracy, justice and individual rights, a country can’t hardly become anything other than a incubator of terrorism.

Looking at the trends in these two places, who’s not to say that there’s more chance of peaceful democracy in Iraq twenty years from now than there is in Ulster.

Follow That Dog

The folks at Rottweiler Mansions have said just about everything I wanted to say about the not-very-Conservative Party’s new ‘national security is so 20th Century’ position. As obnoxious as it to find a supposed party of the Right that thinks that the defence of the realm is negotiable, let us not forget the equally obnoxious argument advanced by supposed champion of true Conservatism, David Davis.

Davis it was who claimed that Conservative MPs were justified in ignoring the massive public support for this measure because, hey, they just knew better than us. Is this guy sure he’s in the right party ? Sure, if you’re a Liberal, then you believe that all our nation’s problems are down to not having enough really smart people in government. Unemployment ? Obesity ? Stupidity ? All we need is a whole bunch of Oxbridge grads to pull an all-nighter, push a few levers and open a few valves, and everything will be cool. Conservatives are supposed to be the people who follow William F Buckley in preferring to be governed by the first hundred names in the Boston phone directory rather than the whole of the Harvard faculty.

Here we have a man with two highlights on his CV: he was born on a council estate and he was a part-time soldier. This is what constitutes an unusually full backstory in the Parliamentary Conservative Party. But these people are supposedly better qualified to make these judgements than Joe Public so everyone from airline pilots to zoologists can all shove it.

Wassdat ? Did someone point out that a large chunk of our population doesn’t fly or know the difference between a bactrian and a dromedary ? Alright, let’s wind the clock back to 1985. Who was better informed about the state of the real state of the USSR: a politburo member or a drunk tractor-factory worker in Kiev ? Lest the comparison between modern Britain and the USSR not be obvious, I would just point out that in July, despite years of planning, four bombers managed to slaughter huge numbers of people. More to the point, two weeks later, four more bombers would have been able to do the same, if only they’d passed GCSE Chemistry. Davis can say what he wants – the public know our defences are dysfunctional.

It would be better if we didn’t need 90 days. It would be better still if we had some kind of Jihadi-detecting rays. We don’t have either. We have to fight the war we’re in, not the one we wish we were in. The Great British Public has absorbed this lesson, while their supposed betters spend their time conjuring up polysyllabic explanations for burying their heads in the sand. Somebody remind me: just how exactly do you qualify for this elite ?

On Patrol With Ayn

It was Ayn Rand who pointed out that the government has limited power to deal with the law abiding, therefore tyrants must seek to make it impossible for any honest man not to break the law. The Gramscians take this to the next level with their determination to ensure that perverse incentives should be instutionalised, such that blind, senseless obediance is rewarded, while the conscientious are hunted down. In this way previously effective bodies can be hijacked by the culture warriors. For a perfect example of that method in action, look no further than this case.

This Is Really Geeky....

OK, this is a real inside joke....but hey, 0.000005% of people reading this may find it rings a bell:

Then Beagles Barkley was elected mayor and the good ol' boys network movedin, decimating the tourism industry and nearly 96% of all lakeside business. One decade ago, we could all plan on healthy holiday revenue sustaining our economy year-wide. The only people visiting our historic city these days are the occasional writer or lost husband, and they don't bother purchasing anything. Maybe we could sell replicas of their mysterious ghost daughter or missing
undead wife or whatever. We could do it real tastefully, like put them in a snow
globe or something.

Yep, mayoral elections in America's most dysfuntional town.

Because They've Had So Much Success With Their Other Iniatives

See, this is what I was on about in that last post. Who in their right mind can think this sort of thing makes sense ? What's it all about ? Are Liberal teachers too intimidated by the intellectual firepower of the average five year old to carry out a proper indoctrination ? Really, just look at these plans:

They highlight four "aspects" of early learning: that children should be strong, in the sense of self-assured; healthy; skilful communicators who listen and respond; and "competent learners" - imaginative and creative.

That let's out half the Parliamentary Labour Party. Come to think of it, the plan itself doesn't pass: 'self-assured' ? Doesn't mesh well with the apparent underlying belief that people will only follow their ideas when constantly monitored by a monolithic bureaucratic structure. 'Healthy' ? Belief in endemic, yet unevidenced, misconduct is clearly suggestive of paranoia. 'Skilful communicators who listen and respond' ? Apparent determination to impose top-down micromanagement even in teeth of evidence of utter failure of previous attempts. 'competent learners" - imaginative and creative' ? Complete inability to concieve that any beneficial social change can come about other than through the central planning and bureaucracy.

Clearly, this plan is hideously malformed. I recommend an immediate termination.

The Smell Test

I don't understand Libs. That goes without saying, but some of their actions are so strange you find yourself asking 'this makes sense to you ?' Take the latest moves on council tax, with council staff presumably being employed to sneak around searching for unregistered nice views and carefully measuring the distance to nearest golf course (via road or as the crow flies ?). Do this strike no one on the Left as kind of strange ?

Well, It's Different

Liberals are obsessed with the idea of paying public money to people to talk to young children in a way that would be an arrestable offence if they weren't government employees. Hence this latest offensive in the Culture War.

Laban Tall points out an... interesting defence of all this from a predictable source. If I'm getting this right, Hari admits there's gay culture has gone off the deep end, so he claims this means we should allow proponents of this culture to proselytise their lifestyle in schools so that kids can be informed of how to minimise the risks if they're drawn into this culture. Huh ?

It occurs to me that Hari has inadvertently given the game away here. Leftists always try to claim the whole Gay Rights ball of wax is some unobjectionable attempt to reduce all those lynchings of air stewards that are such a feature of British life. But Hari's just let the cat out of the bag: what's being promoted isn't some wooly, value-neutral 'why can't we all be friends' philosophy. It takes a very specific worldview to argue that homosexuals don't use condoms because of Lady Thatcher.

That's the bottom line (pun intended): it's the old orientation vs behaviour thing again. Hari would doubtless claim that homosexuals are born not made. Well, OK, just for the sake of argument let's say there is a gay gene - is there a gene for having rampant unprotected sex ? Surely not. It's a lifestyle choice, and a pretty stupid one at that.

Maybe it isn't Lady Thatcher after all. Maybe it's the combination of endless yapping about homophobia and the horrors of traditional morality that has allowed gay culture to slip into a nihlistic death spiral. Whatever, but parents who object to Captain Bareback being paid to tell their kids about the wonders of his lifestyle aren't prejudiced - they're sane.

The Waiter Effect

Right For Scotland reminds us that that there is a breed of British tourist even worse than the Costa Del Chav set. Yep - it's those local government officer (Grade C) who go through passport control and start acting like a parody of Sir Elton: 'boy, fetch me another drink then move the Sun 20' to the left so I can get an even tan'. Really. It's like they're thinking 'I may have a rubbish job back home, but I can sure make these folks suffer'. Of course they behave like pigs when they're faced with the slightest upset.

There's a wider issue here. These people spend 50 weeks a year as just another wage slave, then suddenly they get the chance to go abroad and behave like spoilt brats. Plus, as RfS points out, they get a warped view of foreign lands anyway. Is it any wonder so many of these people fall for the multiculti garbage ? The idea of 'abroad' as just one big amusement park seems to be a uniquely British form of mental illness. This is the flip-side of Liberalism's constant denigration of Britain, and these people are the perfect standrad bearers for modern Liberalism: a bunch of whiny cry-babies shocked - shocked! - to find out that Third World countries often have bad weather and primitve infrastructre. And they call us 'Little Englanders' ?

Maths Fun

Them that know these things claim Chaos Theory tells us that out of a multitude of random events can emerge high level order. I'm guessing this is the explanation why you can look at the completetly random pattern of attacks by French rioters of indeterminate background, yet still percieve some kind of pattern.

Auntie Is A Slut

Guess you find out who your friends are when you find yourself on the wrong end of a fatwa. There the British Left was, all lovey-dovey with France, complimenting it on how macho it looked when it opposed the Iraq war, how sensitively it took care of all its citizens - except the old ones, obviously - and how intellectual it was to reject the cowboy concept of divinding the world between good and evil, in favour of the truly so-fist-ikayted approach of divinding the world into potential customers and potential enemies of customers. But now suddenly they aren't returning its calls.

Really, to hear the BBC today is to feel you've fallen into a parallel universe in which Liberals never spent epic amounts of oxygen citing France as the very model we should follow. Au contrair, BritTwits have been queuing up all day to claim they always knew France was horrible. It's like 1989 all over again.

No wonder Leftists are so into yoga. You need to stay flexible to keep up with all the backflips. Seems like only yesterday Lefties were toasting each other with Bordeaux wine and complaining that America should be more like France. Now it turns out the Left think France is too much like France. Not for the first time, the Left seems to be looking for Goldilocks Nation. In fact, things must be pretty desperate for the Left, since they're reverted to what for them must be the political equivalent of cannibalism: praising Britain.

What it's all about is Liberals being faced with their worst fear: reality. First, they argued that the US model of fairly-free markets destroyed social cohesion, now they're faced with events in France, a country which has its very own minister for social cohesion. So US capitalism doesn't work and neither does Eurosocialism. Hey - maybe it's something to do with the 'alienated' themselves ? No - apparently, the world has to follow the British model. Indeed, there hasn't been so much excited talk about the supremacy of the British way since Victoria died - and never from Leftists.

As far as Liberals can actually define this supposed British model, it revolves around the fact that France forces immigrants to assimilate therefore leading to them being alienated (huh ?) while British multiculturalism let's immigrants stay isolated from the wider culture so they fit in better. Leaving aside the morality of letting immigrants maintain their cultural quirks like honour killings, female circumcision and forced marriage, it's questionable whether the British model actually works.

Sure, many immigrants have done great in Britian, but when we come to the specifc question of Islamic immigration... Let's just say that if there were two more Hindu billionaires in the country, there'd be as many as there are Muslim millionaires. On the other hand, British Muslims don't lag behind in all areas: there may be far fewer than in France, but they still manage to riot regularly, plus I'm pretty sure that there was something in July....

In so far as Britain has avoided a France-type situation, it has been achieved purely by policy of short-term appeasement, which has achieved little more than to embolden the Islamopaths to make more and more demands (Burqua King fatwa, anyone ?). In so far as the Islamopaths have not been as violent as their French counterparts, it is purely because the British Establishment could not possibly be more Dhimmi anyway. Our cultural elite has looked into the belly of the beast and said 'OK, maybe we can work something out...'. Liberals can't stop yapping about the success of their policy of appeasement simply because any honest consideration of the current situation would expose them as what they are: this century's Chamberleins.

Liberal Calls Crusade

Hey, I guess there are some religious groups you can abuse after all. A bishop has just given a speech claiming that another religions' policies are 'an act of violence that needs to be confronted'. Not much room for misquote there. Needless to say, this call for Holy War wasn't provoked by you-know-who flying airliners into buildings, blowing up trains or rampaging across Paris. Nope, this is 'Bishop' Gene Robinson, head honcho of the Gay Godsquad, talking about the Catholic Church's insistance on priests following Catholic teachings.

Actually, I have to admit it - the first thing I thought when I heard he'd used the word 'vile' was this: 'well, at least someone's still reading Andrew Sullivan'. I mean, what is it with the v-word ? Is it some kind of inside joke ?

Anyway, to the point: where did all the tolerance go ? So much for all this 'we just wanna be free' stuff. Robinson has hardly worn through his first set of robes before he's laying claim to the next bit of cultural lebensraum

Can you seriously imagine the Liberal reaction if it was the other way round ? If B16 had called homosexuality vile, and declared homosexuals need to be confronted ? It'd be 1605 all over again. But no - that's not what Catholics are saying. All they are claiming is the right to decide who can join their organisation. Or, to put it another way, in the name of tolerance, gay rights activists are calling for cultural jihad against an organisation that promotes a lifestyle they disapprove of. So, remind me again who the bigots are ?

The BBC's New Slogan: Now Less Reliable Than 'The Sport'

Quelle surprise! It turns out that ex-US Marine Jimmy Massey's lurid tales of US war cimes turn out to be - to use a miltary term - garbage. These tales never really got traction on this side of the Atlantic, with only the loopier elements of the Left giving them houseroom, thereby proving there are some things too stupid even for our MSM to report them. Well, most of the MSM anyway. Apparently, when you're getting by on just £3 billion p.a., fact-checking is just one luxury too far.

Evil Nazis Tell Truth About Stuff

Via Max comes news that PC Plod is still struggling with the idea of freedom of the press. Bedfordshire Chief Dhimmi Constable Gillian Parker is whining about a cartoon in the Police Federation magazine showing officers of her force carefully taking their shoes off outside a mosque, while a guy dives out a back window with a bag of explosives.

Given that Bedfordshire Police policy is indeed that officers should carefully taking their shoes off before entering Muslim-owned territories, this seems like a fair cop. Ms Parker, as she would no doubt like to be called, is clearly a devotee of the old line that when the facts are on your side, argue the facts, when the law is on your side, argue the law and when neither are on your side, pound the table and scream a lot. Here's her main argument:

The stereotypical portrayal of religious communities and the use of places of
worship in a sacrilegious manner are bound to offend.

Alright, for the sake of her moronic argument, we'll assume that a news report that offends is, by definition, a bad thing. Yes, we should stop the use of religious places of worship in a sacrilegious manner. But, given that dhimmis like Parker would rather stick pins in their eyes than search a mosque, it looks like the mullahs won't have to stop using them as armouries any time soon.

Insensitive actions only serve to make our life more difficult

Again, with the assumption that the media - even the trade media - exists to make the Filth's life easier.

We have worked hard over an extended period of time to achieve relationships and I feel that the stereotypical portrayal of Muslims as terrorists has unnecessarily jeopardised this.

Where it is feasible to do so we continue to consider the individual customs of all communities when we enter their homes and places of worship; I make no apology for this.

All communities ? Can Parker name any other communities which get this treatment ? Any ? Leaving aside the implication that Parker wouldn't have complained if the target had been depicted leaving with a bag full of crack and paedo mags - as if - Islamic terrorism isn't some bizzare caricature dreamed up by the VRWC. It happens - a lot. That's the bottom line here. For all the whining, Parker can't deny that the cartoon is, as far as such things can be, a perfectly fair representation of Bedfordshire Police policy. She'd just rather you didn't mention it.

Looking For The Local Angle

One of the better jokes in the later Hitchhiker books is when a jounalist on a local paper becomes the first person to make contact with one of the minions of a giant alien that has invaded the Earth, and tells him 'I think we'll get a story out of this, if we work in a local angle'.

That same spirit is alive today in Cumbria. An e-mail from the Puppy crew points out this article, where the North West Evening Mail suggests local MP John Hutton (Blunkett's replacement) could be our next PM. Why ? Ah yes - nobody knows who he is.

I can see how having no one know you're a part of this government could well be an advantage, but considering Hutton has now been landed with sorting out the pensions crisis, I'm thinking he's probably more likely to be the next Estelle Morris than the next John Major.

Reasonable Farce

For a proposal that is supposedly meaningless, the L3 aren’t half working themselves into a rage about Anne McIntosh’s eminently sensible bill to change the law on self-defence. Apparently, it won’t change anything and they’ll use any means necessary to block it. Is it just me or is anybody else seeing a contradiction here ?

When it comes to m’learned friends, it’s amazing how fast a bunch of Liberal activists can convince themselves of the benefits of social conservatism. Of course, some of us would say that the judicial activism was all on the side of those who stripped the public of the right to self-defence in the first place, but OK, for the sake of domestic tranquillity let’s pretend that these people genuinely believe the McIntosh proposal is a new and dangerous innovation. After all, who wants to see this country split between Left and Right ? We need to reach out to each other, build bridges and come together as a community, and I know just how to do it. It’s really simple: we’ll stick with the concept of ‘reasonable force’ if m’lordships will accept the concept of ‘reasonable judicial independence’. After all, if the danger of householders 'taking the law into their own hands' is so acute, how much more so the danger from judges who ignore the law of the land.

Fair's fair - if we’re going to have Chief Inspector Plod whipping out the fine toothcomb every time Mr Householder fights off the Mad Axeman, then surely we need a mechanism to check that judges aren’t overstepping the mark. Mr Householder was woken at 4 AM by the sound of breaking glass, whereas Mr Justice Liberal makes his decisions after hours of consideration in perfect safety – clearly, if jail is appropriate for unreasonable householders, then that must surely apply double to judges who show utter contempt for the law as passed by Parliament.

Of course, we’ll need a structure to investigate allegations of unreasonable independence. Fortunately, we have a perfect model set up for dealing with self-defence cases. What I envisage is something like this: first up, judges will be arrested just as soon as there’s the slightest suggestion that they have acted improperly - don't worry, most of them will get bail after about 72 hours. The investigation will be carried out by members of an organisation whose top brass constantly claim publicly that there's no reason why a judge would need to be independent anyway. The decision to proceed will be made by members of a second organisation with a record of unremitting hostility to judicial independence and a history of trying to define it down. Finally, the case will be arbitrated by people who think all this talk of ‘seperation of powers’, ‘tyranny’ and the like is all tabloid nonsense.

I’m thinking this sort of arrangement would be perfectly acceptable to the Left. After all, they keep telling us that having the same arrangements in place in respect to self-defence is no bar to people protecting themselves. Right ?

Culture War Update

Another sign of the tide turning in the culture war. Add to that the quiet dropping of the charges against Alan Buchan. Seems like the Liberal concensus isn't so strong after all - making this the worst time ever to elect a hollow man like David Cameron.

Rioters Cruelly Discrimated Against

Curses! The Rotteweiller Puppy crew have beat me to this example of BBC drek. Ah well – BBC dhimmitude is surely the very definition of a renewable resource. Take this one, for example.

Apparently, the rioting by a completely random group of people has been partially provoked by the banning of the Muslim headscarf. Huh ? There are Muslims involved in the rioting ? Who knew ?

As with much of the BBC’s reporting, the bias vs stupidity question comes up. The author quotes an Islamopath claiming:

Christians have crucifixes, why can't we have headscarves?

Yet later on we have an Educrat saying:

All conspicuous religious signs have gone," says Marie-Louise Testenoire, the top education official for the Essonne department

So, who’s right ? Need you ask ? The law does not, in fact, discriminate between symbols of particular religions. The bottom line is that, yet again, if you got your information from our £3 billion per year broadcaster, you wouldn’t get the full story.

The crucial point isn’t what’s there – it’s what’s missing. We’re invited to a pity party for all those Islamopaths denied the chance to parade round the schoolyard in full Islamic regalia, but isn’t there a degree of humbuggery here ? Which side of the political spectrum is it that turns all Linda-Blair-in-The Exorcist when faith schools are mentioned ? Surely the French are just taking Liberalism to its logical conclusion, mmmmm ? But no, after all those years of mocking the religious – not to say the approximately 200 000 dramas in which the local Priest is bonking a parishioner – the BBC has suddenly decided that religious feelings need to be respected, after all.

In a similar vein, the BBC has been prepared to give houseroom to even the most absurd stories about George W Bush’s religious beliefs, yet when faced with people who really are pushing ideology in the guise of religion, the dogs not only don’t bark, they roll over with their legs in the air. If someone is seriously religious – even to the point of wearing religious garb in their daily life – it is surely valid to consider what the tenets of that religion are, and how they might influence their behavior. The BBC is surely double-dipping here: if these people’s religion is so important to them that not being able to wear its regalia on school grounds causes them such distress, then it’ll surely affect them in other areas of life, yet the whole tone of the latter part of the BBC report suggests that wearing a scarf is merely some harmless quirk.

As ever, the point needs to be made that Islam does not simply concern itself with creation myths and personal morality. On the contrary, Islam is an ideology which intrudes on all aspects of life. What’s more, the headscarf is emphatically not equivalent to the crucifix – from the start, it was an overtly ideological symbol. When people wear the headscarf they are signalling their adherence to an ideology that is antithetical to just about the whole of Western Civilisation. Yet, staggeringly, companies aren’t queuing up to employ them. Who’d have thunk it ?

Dirty Shami

I’ve never been convinced by those folks who claim you need two axes to represent political opinion: a left-right scale, and a libertarian-authoritarian scale. In my experience, Liberal opposition to authoritarianism extends only as far as them opposing attempts to enforce laws they don’t agree with anyway.

For proof of that, consider the latest shenanigans. Not forty-eight hours ago, Liberals were waxing lyrical about civil liberties, now suddenly they’re channelling Dirty Harry. What’s the diff ? Ah yes. Yesterday, the subject was anti-terrorist legislation, now it’s the utter collapse of a murder case against British soldiers. So it looks like Al-Quaida members aren’t necessarily terrorists, but members of the Parachute Regiment definitely are.

Here’s Liberty’s chief idiot Shami Chakrabarti:

As the death occurred under British jurisdiction we would hope for the highest standards to be employed in the investigation and trial

See ? The Court didn’t convict so obviously there’s a question mark hanging over the process. Not that Shameless Shami can actually name any specific grounds for doubting the procedure but…c’mon, paras – they’ve got to be guilty of something right ? Besides:

Rather than just trying individuals in these cases, the entire system should be under review to ensure that there is not a culture which would allow the alleged abuses to take place.

Let me spell this out to any Libs reading this: There. Was. No. Abuse. You can’t have a culture which allows abuse if there’s no abuse to allow in the first place. But no – Shami, soi-dissant civil libertarian, is arguing in effect for over-turning one of the central principles of British justice, the idea that people can only be convicted of a specific offence, in favour of some kind of murky charge of ‘being the type of person who might commit an offence’.

Of course, there’s no Punch without Judy, so where the ratweasels of Liberty go, the weaselrats of Amnesia Intentional are sure to follow.

[Amnesty International's UK director Kate Allen] said: "International law requires a prompt, impartial, thorough, effective and independent investigation into alleged abuses.

Hey, I agree – it’s a disgrace that such a lousy case was able to drag on for two years. Maybe Amnesia ain’t so bad after all ?

Or maybe they are:

A decision over whether to bring charges should be taken independently of the commanding officer and other military bodies.

See if you can see the flaw in that point. Here’s a clue: the case went to trial. Call me excessively anal, but I’d have thought the basic qualification for a cover-up would be things actually being covered up.

Courts martial were inappropriate forms of justice in cases other than purely military offences, she added, saying they would inevitably considered biased.

...because, y’know, there’s nothing the Army wants more than unstable criminals in its ranks. Also, the RAF actually goes out of its way to recruit smackheads.

The use of ordinary civilian courts will strengthen national and international public confidence that justice is being promoted in our armed forces.

Well, that does rather beg the question doesn’t it. I’m quite prepared to believe we don’t have the confidence of the international public, but some of us regard that as a feature not a bug. I’m guessing Amnesia are still hazy about this whole sovereignty thing.

As for national public confidence ? Huh ? At least those of us in the VRWC are under no illusions about public support for our plans to make gun ownership compulsory, these nuts actually think the average member of the public is a transgendered, vegan, social worker from Islington. Hey – there’s only one way to settle it: let’s send out Amnesia’s staff onto the streets to explain their view that the British Army is a collection of murderous sociopaths. And let's film it so we can sell the DVD as ‘Moonbat Massacres’ and clean up on the merchandising rights.

Of course, we can’t have a real Moonbatfest without a contribution from the Treason Party. Here’s their aptly-named spokefool:

But Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Michael Moore said: "The collapse of this court martial raises some very serious questions about the way cases like this are investigated and conducted.

"These issues must be addressed in the forthcoming armed forces bill."

Yowser. At least you can’t accuse him of burying the lede. The case collapsed so there must be something wrong with the system. The corollary to that is, of course, that the system would have worked fine if only the accused had been convicted. Whatever the word is for the view that the courts are a factory to produce convictions, ‘libertarian’ isn’t it. Reading all these responses from the guardians of civil liberty, you have to remind yourself that what we’re talking about is a case where, well, this happened:

Three women had admitted lying about being assaulted by British soldiersand one witness had told the court that Mr Abdullah's family encouraged othersto tell lies, Judge Blackett said.

Witnesses some distance from the scene "could not possibly have seen what they said they saw", he added.

And Iraqi court witnesses had used the case to seek "compensation to
what were patently exaggerated claims", he said...

[One witness], along with other witnesses, was paid $100 a day to give
evidence at the trial and that she only agreed to give evidence after being told
she would be paid.

Collusion amongst witnesses. Obviously absurd evidence brought up in court. Witnesses being paid for their testimony, with the possibility of huge compemsation claims being dangled before them.

If you wanted a textbook case of the dangers of the State bending the rules to get a conviction, this would be it. Yet when our soi-dissant civil liberties campaigners speak out, it’s only to berate the State for not going far enough to obtain convictions. It’s like the RSPCA holding a sponsored hare coursing meet.

To quote the great Rush Limbaugh, they’re telling us who they are. They were almost convincing when they were taking out onions for all those innocent citizens that were going to be victimized under the new anti-terrorism legislation, but now twenty-four hours later, it turns out that they think the whole ‘due process’ thing is kind of a drag.

The Left’s opposition to anti-terrorist legislation isn’t based on any particular principle, except the principle of throwing their hand in with anyone who hates Britain. This is the sheer nihilism of the modern Left. Everything they ever believed has been proven to be nonsense, so now they don’t actually believe anything more concrete than vague fantasies of the Golden Age that will follow when they're no longer oppressed by the system, man. They’re a bunch of angry losers endlessly shrieking out their hatred for the civilization that seems to get along fine without following their asinine ideology. No wonder they get on so well with the Islamopaths.

The ‘Reverse Nuremburg’ Rides Again

Who says Nu Lab has been afraid to innovate ? Consider how they’ve introduced a whole new excuse into British politics. The Nuremburg defence is where someone claims they were ‘only following orders’. Nu Lab have gone one better – every time they get busted, they claim their minions weren’t following orders, they just got some wacky idea into their head and ran with it for no reason at all. Look at this for a perfect example.

Thing is this: how come it only works one way ? How come we never hear of over-enthusiastic public servants trying to rebrand Eid as ‘The Festival Of Not Blowing Buses Up’ ? Nope – when public servants supposedly overstep the mark, then it’s always in the one direction. Ditto, if these people really have exceeded their authority and used public money to give an unauthorised V-sign to Christians, why aren’t they being shown the door ? Again, I don’t think our friend proposing the hypothetical Eid rebranding would last the day. He’d be given the heave-ho, but not these guys. But remember, the Left doesn’t support them in any way – it just spends public money employing them.

President Implicated In Massive Fraud

Talking of things the BBC doesn't like to report, compare and contrast the coverage of Plamegate in the US with the coverage of Chirac's problems.

We Lied Because We're So Honest

Speaking personally, I loved the BBC’s coverage of the Birmingham riots. Plenty of folks may not know any better than to swallow the BBC's line about events in Iraq or Israel but the cat is well and truly out of the bag as far as Birmingham goes, and no amount of Beeboids interviewing each other about these totally inexplicable disturbances between unknown groups of people will put it back in again.

Perhaps sensing a sudden run on their credibility, the BBC has launched a counter-offensive to try and rescue themselves from public ridicule. To sum up their line: we lied because we’re so honest, or as the BBC puts it:

Journalists at the BBC want to report fact, they want to be accurate. They don't want to be in a position where they report every rumour that springs from the rumour mill.

Hey, anyone got an up to date body count for the New Orleans flood ?

Even if we assume that BBC policy has suddenly changed since they were reporting 10 000 floating dead in the French Quarter, we’re talking about information that was being reported by virtually every other MSM outlet and which has not been seriously questioned by anybody: just how does the BBC define ‘rumours’ ?

This is the key point. The BBC really does believe that it’s creating the first draft of history. Indeed, one of the main excuses for the licence fee is that it’s the only way we’ll have a broadcaster that can provide truly comprehensive coverage. An organisation that undertakes that kind of commitment then refuses to report facts it doesn’t like is defrauding the viewer just as much as if they’d gone the other way and invented stories out of whole cloth.

To find out what’s really wrong with the BBC, consider this comment by BBC editor Marek Pruszewicz:

There is no culture of political correctness, there are no edicts given. I was in charge of TV news at the weekend and I didn't lay down any edict, quite the opposite, in fact.

OK, let’s not assume that this is a bad faith attempt to set up a strawman and assume that Pruszewicz really does believe that Conservative critics are claiming Michael Grade sends out an e-mail every morning telling BBC journalists what line to take. Surely even Pruszewicz must see the problem with his defence ? He seems to be saying ‘why, there’s no party line – everyone at the BBC just naturally adopted exactly the same angle’. But that’s exactly what Conservative critics are saying - that the BBC is a political monoculture. Is anyone really surprised that every one of their reports independently took exactly the same line. ? Seems to me that the BBC lacks a certain, what's the word ? Ah yes, 'diversity'.

For an example of that monoculture in action, we need only consider the opening line from that article:

Reporting on violence such as last weekend's rioting in Birmingham can be difficult for news organisations.

Really ? Doesn't that beg the question ? But no - there's apparently no one around to suggest that a news organisation only has to report the news without fear or favour.

Again, we’re back with the BBC’s implied commitment to provide full news coverage. Now, we have BBC employees claiming that they do slant the news but it’s all in a good cause. That is what all this talk of ‘great care’, ‘sensitivity’ and the like boils down to: lying for the cause.

After all, it’s not as if the Abu Grahib channel has ever worried about inflaming opinion before. Doesn’t the BBC keep telling us that all these atrocity d’jour reports are inflaming Muslim opinion and leading to more terrorism ? How come all this sensitivity disappears when they’re reporting from Gitmo ? Then again, considering that Googling site: bbc.co.uk for ‘Anthony Walker’ returns 150 hits, it looks like the BBC has no problem reporting on other cases of racially-motivated violence.

The bottom line is this: the BBC reporting from Birmingham had more holes than a polo factory. Now it’s attempting to justify itself by citing standards of proof and sensitivity that it has applied to no other stories. That’s the final proof that the BBC is living in a bubble: how else can they imagine the public will swallow this ?