Thursday, July 29, 2004

Dixon At The Beeb


For a snapshot of where the Beeb is today, look no further than this article by Roger Mosey, the so-called head of BBC "television" news. Proof positive that even in an article supposedly trying to rebut charges of bias, the Beeb's brass can't manage to string a thousand words together without exhibiting their most infuriating tendencies. Hey - they can't even get past the title without resorting to one of their favourite tricks, the fatuous strawman. The headline assures us that 'The BBC was no cheerleader for war' - like, really ?

Mosey gives an almost textbook example of what's wrong with the Beeb today. Even in an article supposedly reaching out to the critics, Mosey can't help but patronisingly comment about wacky websites, which 'froth about BBC bias'. He perfectly exemplifies the Beeb's characteristic attitude of smug superiority - Auntie smiling patronisingly while the youngsters have their wacky little tantrums. That the critics may - just once or twice - have a point is beyond his comprehension. Instead, Auntie wants us to know that she's above it all, while all her critics are partisan hacks:

Take this example:

An American general appears on Newsnight and expresses the view that the next stage of the Iraq conflict will be a street-by-street battle for control of Baghdad - and he mutters the word "Stalingrad". My hunch is that most counting operations would define the general as pro-war because the assumption is that senior members of armed services are keen on bombing and the like.

In reality, the same interview could be cited by our friends at the Daily Telegraph as being another instance of the whingeing leftie BBC inciting gloom on the home front.


Leaving aside the fact that, again while supposedly eschewing bias, Mozza can't help but take a swing at those nasty righties at the Telegraph, all this really proves is how much fact-yoga is required to 'prove' a pro-war bias at the Beeb. You can show an excess of pro-war comment, but only if you ignore what the commentators actually say. Isn't it the right which is supposed to be prejudiced ? Who knows ? But we do know that Cherie Blair is a lawyer and so was Ann Coulter so, to adopt Mosey's dingbat idea, they're natural allies.

More to the point though, Mosey's point itself is symptomatic of a Lefty worldview. Look, he says, some folks claimed we were too pro-war. Well, yes, but they probably think Al-Jizzum was to too pro-war. I, myself, am really rather fat. That would still be true even if I was sitting next to Michael Moore. The fact I am gravitationally-challenged is a fact - you can be as post-modern as you want, but I really should cut down on the pies. Ditto with the Beeb. That the Beeb is forced to mine the outer limits of Greater Moonbatia to dig up critics of its 'pro-war' coverage speaks for itself. More to the point, there is such a thing as a matter of opinion, but there either was or there wasn't a massacre at Jenin. There either were or weren't US tanks at Baghdad Airport at the precise time the Beeb was reporting that they'd been stopped cold. And, since Mozza raises the point, there either was or wasn't months of brutal street fighting to capture Baghdad. To maintain that all these events are somehow open to various interpretations is itself symptomatic of years of Kool Aid abuse.

That's what's so infuriating about the Beeb. They take out onions for non-existent massacres or heavily-armed wedding parties then when they get caught it's back to Mosey and his fellow hacks rolling their eyes as though expecting the BBC to report truthfully was somehow evidence of nerdy, trainspotterish tendencies.

That's why even when Mosey should be on his best behaviour, he can't resist dealing off the bottom of the pack. We're told to ignore evidence of pro-EU bias since these studies are often commissioned by eurosceptics yet Mosey cites a study by Cardiff which showed the BBC was well-regarded without mentioning that it was commissioned by...the BBC. Similarly, Mosey comments jeeringly about eurosceptics noting 'another wicked pro-Euro interview for the next "official" expose of BBC bias'. Clearly, those counting up interviews to show a pro-war bias are sober researchers, but those using the self-same technique to show pro-EU bias are nuts. Ditto, it's hard to take seriously the sarcastic reference to an 'official' report, whatever that might be, from an employee of the organisation which proclaimed that evidence of misconduct by a handful of boneheads at a north-west training centre was proof-positive that the Filth were practically the same as the KKK.

Talking of the Bill, it is enlightening to consider the differences between these two arms of public service. After all, the Beeb has no hesitation jumping on the bandwagon when the Police were accused of institutional racism. Let's see how the Beeb stacks up under the self-same metrics. Take the question of recruitment. As it happens the Beeb has been anxious to recruit more blacks, hence it advertises in The Voice, the self-proclaimed 'black newspaper'. Yet, look where the rest of their recruitment advertising goes. After all, if they advertise in a black newspaper to hire blacks, who are they trying to attract with the other 90% of their advertising that goes in The Guardian ?

How would the Beeb report on a Chief Constable who'd made a jeering reference to 'our friends in the black community' ? Or who referred to websites carrying stories of Police racism as 'wacky' and 'frothing' ? Does anyone think they cover it as evidence of his witty and amusing nature ? Or would it be further evidence of system-wide prejudice ?

If having a percentage representation of ethnic minorities in the Police lower than in the general population is evidence of racism, what can we say about the Beeb's hiring practices ? In the last two general elections the Conservative Party went into meltdown, which is to say it only got 30% of the vote - or, to put it another way, if you picked three names at random out of the phone book, you'd probably find at least one person who voted Conservative. Does anyone think you could do the same with the Beeb's staff roster ?

Let's kill one strawman right now. No one is claiming that there is any kind of conscious conspiracy at the Beeb. Then again, MacPherson had the most awful difficulty saying what he felt was specifically wrong with the Police. The term 'institutional racism' was (appropriatly) something of a cop-out, meant to convey that the Police as a body provided a worse level of service to blacks rather than whites. The Beeb thought that verdict was simply wonderful, so how about putting its own house in order ? After all, that's what sets the Beeb apart from other public services. A pacifist may not agree with the country having an Army, a Libertarian may hate the NHS while a sane person would despise the Arts Council, but at least the Royal Artillery hasn't shelled CND's HQ. Only the BBC has the arrogance to tell a huge chunk of the people it supposedly serves (and who've already paid for that service) that not only does it have no interest in meeting their needs but that it is positively hostile to them.

That brings us back to Mosey. The reason he's so plain obnoxious even in an article supposedly refuting charges of bias is simply because he has no conception of it not being the funniest thing in the world to sneer at Britain's biggest selling broadsheet or the majority of the population who oppose adopting the Euro. How can he ? He has no experience of either. That's what's wrong with the Beeb, not that they sit around thinking 'hey, how can we spin this to make Dubya look like a fascist moron ?' but that they never consider that POTUS could be anything else. The BBC resembles nothing so much as a cult, barricaded in its compound on the banks of the Thames, it's members working each other in ever-greater frenzies, sure that they, and they alone, have the truth, while all those people on the outside are the crazy ones. That, at least, gives us some grounds for hope: if Dubya wins again, there's always the chance of a mass suicide.


Polluting The Social Environment


Our future PM points out the joke that life sentences have become. He's dead right and that's without considering the cases that should attract the life sentence but don't because the Courts have let it drop to manslaughter to evade the mandatory sentence.

What I want to know is whatever happened to the Precautionary Principle ? Liberals used to go weak at the knees at the idea that no form of progress could be allowed without absolute proof that it was harmless. Yet, take the comments on PC's post. The L3 are queuing up to proclaim that all we need to do with murderers is pop up the bonnet, tighten up a few screws and WD40 their moral sense, and they'll be practically indistinguishable from St Francis of Assisi.

I mean, it's not like the science here is exactly foolproof. Au contraire, most of the evidence in favour of rehabilitation has been produced by folks who've dedicated their careers to proving it works. It's great that they're committed to their job, but it doesn't make them the best choice to audit the results of these programs. The flip side of that is that no member of the rehabilitation industry is prepared to go as far as to provide any form of guarantee of their product. And why would they ? Take the case of Roy Whiting - jailed for the abduction of a young girl, he was released early then subsequently abducted and murdered Sarah Payne. What definition of 'dangerous' were the Parole Board using ? Who knows ? But try to imagine the reaction if Sarah Payne had been killed by an accidental release of toxic chemicals from a nearby factory. The self-same folks singing 'That's Life' right about now, would have led lynch mobs to the factory gates.

Then again, there has always been an underlying humbuggery to how the L3 have dealt with paedophilia. Liberals claim to be disgusted by people, usually religious folk, who claim to be able to turn homosexuals, presumably by showing them pictures of Sir Elton, Mandelson and Barrymore and asking 'do you really want to be associated with these people ?'. Yet, the people who claim it's unnatural to try and turn a gay man straight, also claim paedophiles can be persuaded to lose their attraction to children. So, which is it ? Is sexuality hard-wired or is it malleable ?

Of course, sex offenders are only a minority of murderers, but they are a group who definitely do suffer from a mental condition, yet even here rehabilitation is frequently a fiasco. As for the rest, well, to quote P J O'Rourke, drugs are the answer, if the question is 'how can I get rich without working' ? When well-known Jamaican cultural ambassadors, the Yardies, used to boast that in Britain 'The Law don't hang, the cops don't bang, look 'em up, not lang', it's hard to believe their criminality arose from anything other than a rational assessment of risk and reward. How exactly is drawing angry faces and smiley faces in group therapy supposed to persuade them not to do a job which brings them huge amounts of money, sex and power ?

Of course, the L3 do recognise that not everyone can be rehabilitated. Take Jeffery Archer for an example. Or, more seriously, the assailants in the Stephen Lawrence case or the Brixton Bomber. No one's claiming they just need a stiff talking to. Liberals use the word 'rehabilitate' as code for dealing with crimes they don't really think are that serious. Paedophiles are really just sexual pioneers, Yardies are oppressed by The Man, while even slashing up the Mrs is really just a case of taking healthy self-expression too far.

That's why Liberals are uneasy about the death penalty. The idea of the ultimate sanction for the ultimate crime is a no-no for people who think everything is a shade of grey. These are people incapable of judging any issue divorced from the need to, in their favourite phrase, send the right message. That's the chicken and egg nature of the Liberal fascination with rehabilitation. The L3 have to believe that murder is sort of like catching a cold otherwise they'd have to face the true nature of those they seek to defend. That's why scumbag rights bodies far outnumber those dealing with the victims of crime. That's why Liberals fetishise the idea of objectivity: they claim we can't get drawn into the details of the crime, we've got to stay clear headed. We're talking about murderers, but the Left doesn't want us to talk about the actual murders. Who'd study Shakespeare without reading the plays ? We should know what they did, we should know what the victim went through, their terror, their agony.

It's an arresting thought that the people who babble on about Feeling Your Pain and The Children are the ones who don't want us to feel the pain of actual, murdered children. Stay detatched, stay objective, says the Left. The only way to be civilised is not to feel rage when the innocent are slaughtered, to cast a jaundiced eye over murdered families and the agony of those left behind. Well, screw that. No one would be detached from the murder of their child, and so to proclaim your indifference to the murder of strangers is to announce that other people do not matter to you. As long as you're OK, even the foulest crimes are merely an intellectual diversion. This is the secret at the heart of the L3 approach to crime: it rests on utter selfishness.

Run That By Me Again....


So, the fact the media are capable of reporting on misconduct where the round-ball game is concerned, means we shouldn't criticise them for sitting on stories of near-riots in other sports...

Meanwhile, that tiny minority keeps on keeping on: Lance Armstrong was voted third most hated sports personality in France. Of course, this plus Schumacher getting first could imply a certain bitter, loser quality to the French, but hey - it's just a tiny minority that wins these polls.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Dhimmis D'Jour


brave team effort from the nation's publishers, ever anxious to stand up for the right to kneel down, is only eclipsed by the news that the Holy Big Issue seller will be spending a day next year helping the RoP celebrate one of its holiest days.

Meanwhile, Will Cummings has really ruined his chances of ever winning the prestigious Golden Waistcoat, yet again he totally fails to understand that all that talk of mass slaughter, world domination and the like is really just a metaphor for helping sick bunny rabbits get well again:


Jenny sees in the revulsion for Islam displayed by the British National Party an echo of the anti-Semitism to which hideous German publications like Der Sturmer gave vent. Though why she has to ransack back numbers of hoary Fascist tradesheets when almost every mainstream Muslim paper in the world today is full of loathsome anti-Jewish rants and images isn't clear.

"In the miserable event" of "an al-Qaeda attack in Britain", she wrote last week - which repeated warnings from our Government have termed inevitable - "there is little doubt in my mind that assaults on peaceful, law-abiding British Muslims would increase".

Well, it's good to know that, as the rest of us hug our bottles of Evian in the irradiated ruins, mourning thousands of dead, Jenny will be lying awake at night worrying that someone might drop a dog poo through the letterbox of her local balti house. Such outrages, she warns, will be "fanned by an increasingly hysterical rhetoric - already in place - that encourages non-Muslim Britons to see each and every Muslim citizen as a threat". Whose rhetoric is that exactly?

 
RTWH.


Message From Losers@Nowhere.Eu


I said it before, but why should anyone believe the TINOs when they claim to be electable yet keep losing elections ? Who knows ? But two more dinosaurs have re-emerged to remind the Conservatives that if they keep applying the leeches they'll soon be cured.

Concrete Proof Of Sleaze

 
C'mon this is kind of funny, even if somewhat inevitable.

Going Down...

 

Having long ago hit rock bottom, TINO has apparently called in a blasting crew and pneumatic drill. The man who writes screeds criticising Tailgunner Joe and Tony Martin for being too harsh on scum thinks nothing of posting an article fantasying about a 78 year old man suffering horrendous injuries.

As if to prove that without moral equivalence the Left could barely argue, TINO never actually says what it is about the Reverend Ian Paisley MP that means he deserves to suffer terrible injuries, instead he merely tags it onto the end of an article welcoming the demise of an IRA Godfathers. We're supposed to take it as read that they're both as bad as each other.

You probably remember the Rev Paisley being linked to hundreds of murders, or his rhetoric calling for the Protestants to annex the Republic, ethnically cleanse the Catholic population and establish a Marxist people's republic ? You don't ? That's possibly because neither the ends sought nor the means used by these two men were within a country mile of each other. TINO may as well fantasise about George Best being badly burned in a car accident since, hey - he's from Ulster too.

Joesph Cahill was an evil fanatic. If the Rev Paisley was fanatical about anything it was stopping low-life like Cahill. For that reason, the Rev Paisley has become a hate figure for a certain breed of babbler, just as surely as Joe McCarthy's inability to accept card-carrying Communists working in the code room of the Pentagon assured him of a place in the Lefty's Hall of Bogeymen. Why does the Left do this ? Who knows ? But I think James Lileks got close to at least one aspect of it:

But in the end the kerfuffle always comes down to the Clever Kids who cannot seem to process any emotion other than Bemused Ironic Distance from anyone who feels strongly about anything; when they arrive on the scene to survey the damage, their main contribution is to roll their eyes at how artlessly the dead bodies are arranged, no? You get the sense that it’s not the fact that people have erroneous positions that bothers the Clever Kids, it’s the fact that they have positions at all. The best position is no position, because then everyone’s so amusing, and really, that’s what it’s all about: standing above the fray and laughing at the people who take things so seriously. Because nothing is serious, except for certain things, and if you step out of line on those issues then you’re super-evil and you get the extra snarky scorn-sauce poured on your unflattering AP photos, and we’ll lie about you too, but hey! We lie about everyone, for fun. Eventually. Maybe. Whatever. Who cares. Do you like these shoes? They’re hot. But they pinch. Where’s the waiter?

The Egalitarian Left

 

Here's the Guardian's Jeremy Seabrook on the effects of deindustrialisation on the North: 'Many of those unable to escape poor white communities have seen their status decline from working class to underclass in one generation.'
 
And lest you think I'm quoting out of context, here's how he ends the article: 'These occur in a quite different arena from the repression of women and gays, and are located among the injuries of excess that we have come to regard as normal; and that includes the impoverishment visited upon millions of people who thought they were working class, and woke up one day to discover that they were only white trash after all. '
 
So, there you have - your income drops below a set amount and you automatically become a skank. Conservatives are often caricatured as being obsessed with filthy lucre, yet who on the right would make such an obnoxious statement ? Still, he can be forgiven for making such an ludicrous assertion - after all, factor out the bank balance and all the other attributes of the Underclass - drug abuse, incompetent parenting, sleazy personal lives and the like - are perfectly replicated in Guardian reading circles.

Mind you, they're even harsher over the water. In an NYT article which really should be titled 'How I found success and happiness through abortion', Barbara Ehrenreich gives us an insight into the true nature of Liberal egalitarianism, noting that 'I was a dollar-a-word freelancer and my husband a warehouse worker, so it was all we could do to support the existing children at a grubby lower-middle-class level.'

Cops, nurses, fire officers - grubby scum all.
 

No, We Know Scum Just Fine

 

Pre-seasons, hey ? Doncha'luv 'em ? Nope - me neither. Plus we had a minor riot at yesterday's game. Coins, seats and even a few bottles thrown. The bloke in front of me starts babbling about how terrible it all was, so I told him: 'Hey, granddad, I bet you don't know what a Libero is, what the highest ground in England is, or the only club in Britain with a J in it's name - so STFU already!!'

No, no, not really. I made the story up to make a point about what I think is absurd about this guy's complaints about my criticism of the rabble at the Tour de France. He claims that I, and the folks at Little Green Footballs, should all STFU until we know about the intricacies of biking. Say what ? We might not be so hot on biking, but we can spot scum when we see them. He can talk all he wants about the exact number of Basques who gave the finger to Lance Armstrong, but what of the two confirmed cases of spitting ? Or the fact that even The Tour's General Manager stated that he was feared violence (incidentally, since the head honcho is a Jean Marie Leblanc, he makes an unlikely frog hating fanatic). Or how about the vile campaign waged against Armstrong by the French press, even to the point of them breaking into his room to try and find (ie plant) evidence of drug abuse ? Just how big does a group have to be to lose 'tiny minority' status anyway ?

Of course, the author could conceivably just be on a 70s nostalgia deal, thinking back to a time before all this touchy-feely family friendly garbage in sport. I'm a real Conservative so I think he should have the right to do so, but - to return to the point I made in my original post - can he and his fellow travellers at least stop moralising about the Beautiful Game at the slightest provocation ?
  

Thursday, July 22, 2004

War On Some Terror Latest

 
Liberals have found a type of pot they don't like - Scott B has further proof that the L3 have passed through the Satire Event Horizon. It's bad when people commit crimes and get away with it, but when they announce in advance that they're going to, and still get away with it, then the rule of law is in serious trouble. So how come Blunkett never goes after these freaks ? Stupid question.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Our Sophisticated Neighbors

Seems like you can't open the paper without seeing some freak's scribblings about how much more cultured they are abroad (ie Old Europe) compared to our own horrible, boozed up selves. That goes triple for any event involving football. So it's interesting to see how the intellectual ones behave when they look to be going down at a sporting event - nearly as interesting as the news blackout on this story in Britain. The media are  probably tied up on 'Americans are fat' stories.


Crackdown Crackup

Hey - it's an odd numbered month, must be time for a crackdown on crime. Yep - here it is, and as well thought out as ever. Blair's come out against the Sixties consensus. Next week Bin Laden will come out against anti-Semitism. Who exactly passed the Human Rights Act anyway ? Oops. Whatever the pols say, it's business as usual for the scum-coddling classes.

Ben Franklin famously claimed that 'they who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security'. Blair's policies are the living embodiment of this rule, albeit without even the compensation of temporary security.

Still, even without the contribution of our loony PM, there is a giant elephant on the table that no one will address as far as crime is concerned. The question simply is this: what is the objective of law enforcement ?

Doubtless some of my fellow Conservatives will at this point be shaking their heads, thinking I've gone over to the academic never-never land where a cigar is never a cigar. Isn't it obvious ? Actually, no - one of the consequences of the Right's awful performance in the Culture Wars is that we have allowed much that was for generations thought to be self-evident to be redefined by Liberals in their own image.

Indeed, this desire to remake society is the dominant feature of modern Liberalism. Whether conscious of it or not, all modern Liberals are followers of Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci's theories have been expertly dissected by Sean Gabb here and here, but for now let's just say that Tony the G believed that institutions in society exert a kind of sociological gravitational pull, with public opinion being moulded by those who dominate the media, the law, education and the like whichever way they so choose. You will immediately recognise two main consequences of this world view are an obsession with victimhood ('cause we're all just pawns in the game, man) and a moral Get-Out-Of-Jail Free Card, since - hey ? - it's all about power, so if - to choose an example completely at random - a doctor chooses to smear a badly-injured 94 year old woman as a racist, well, who cares ? Morality is just conspiracy anyway.

Traditionally, we've always regarded the law as the codification of common morality. Cynics say that the role of the Police is to pick up the pieces - meaning that the realties of police manning and deployment mean they'll only arrive after the incident is over. But there's also another way in which that is true - in a healthy society the law is a backstop. Social pressures act to discourage law-breaking far more than the Police do.

The Gramscian worldview turns that on its head: the law is there to enforce whatever paradigm those in power seek to impose on the public. The law dictates morality not reflects it. Equally, the public can have no role in the legal process since they are the passive recipients of the law.
It is in this light that we should consider the familiar whine following at least half of the more outrageous Police screw-ups: namely, that they can't have a police officer on every street corner. Until very recently that's exactly what they did have. Every citizen had a common interest in upholding the law and the main distinguishing point between police and other citizens was the fact the former was paid. It is the Police who forced the public out of law enforcement and, having proclaimed that they, and they alone, will uphold the law it is hardly unreasonable to expect that they should do so.

But, worse than the simple fact that the Police can't impose law and order unilaterally, the Gramscian approach strikes at the very idea of civil order. If the law reflects not the common morality but the interests of the elite how can it command the respect or loyalty of the public ? Equally, the Yang to that Yin is that the Gramscians, being temporally at least, stuck with the old laws on the books, seek to debase the very concept of criminality. What was once understood to be someone who'd struck at society, thereby renouncing the privileges of membership, is now being rebranded as a form of alternative lifestyle. The self-same people who have insist on six public inquires before allowing a phone mast to be built nevertheless claim a 'right to privacy' for paedophiles and thugs. The idea that being a convicted pervert should impact negatively on someone's lifestyle has gone the way of the dodo.

The Left often tries to claim that its support for therapy and pool tables reflects a genuine belief that cable TV in each cell makes reoffending less likely. So where are the Beardy-Weirdies demanding we seek out the root cause of City fraud, tax evasion or people scrawling 'Pakis Owt' on the window of the Madras Star ? Nope - when Liberals propose giving free holidays to thugs it's simply because it does not serve their agenda to jail them.

For the perfect example of these trends, check out Nu Labs approach to rape. Labour continually tries to define down rape to the point where being in possession of a Y chromosome is grounds for arrest, yet look what happens when a no-argument, balaclava and combat knife rapist gets convicted: he'd be unlucky to miss more than one World Cup, while his time in jail will mainly be spent with other perverts in group therapy listing to some pencil-necked dweeb tell them they don't love themselves enough. Contradictory ? Hardly - as ever, the demands of political strategy drive the administration of justice. the cultural Marxists have always sought to spin rape into some kind of justification for their ranting denunciations of those white males, who are clearly guilty of everything in the entire world. On the other hand, it is an article of faith amongst the Left that failure to immediately act on any impulse at all, especially a sexual one, leads to the psychological equivalent of gangrene. Against this background, rapists are just taking the concept to its logical conclusions even while Liberals proclaim rape to be a secular version of original sin, forever casting a shadow over the male of the species.

This kind of politicised drivel runs through the whole Gramscian approach to crime. That's why we have the old standby of homeowners being attacked by gangs of thugs, then finding themselves charged. That's because homeowners are members of that rotten, old bourgeoisie. Any excuse to hammer them. Similarly, there's the obsession with either stretching existing laws to absurd lengths (see speeding for further details) or conjuring up whole new ones. Either way, the idea is to use the law as a stick to beat non-Kool Aid drinkers.

To remake a society it is first necessary to destroy the existing order. Metaphorically speaking, Gramscians are using criminals to wage a proxy war against our civilisation. Being an upstanding member of the community means being an oppressor, while slashing up an OAP makes you a Robin Hood for the twenty-first century. What's more, they create this chaos and then claim that we have to sign over a whole new tranche of civil rights to the government so it can cure problems it caused in the first place. Either way up, Joe Public gets the slam.

The Conservative Party is still stuck in its death spiral, ever concerned that someone might call it the nasty party. It says something about how awful the right has been in the Culture Wars that suggesting we deal harshly with sexual predators, muggers and killers get you classed as 'nasty'. I mean, I think we can live with that, but no - Conservative frontbenchers go pale at the prospect of being called names by the Guardian. Well, we can laugh all we want at Blair's lunacy, but until someone in the Conservative Party finds a pair we're stuck with it.



Blame America

 
Scott B reports further evidence for my theory that the Golden Age of satire is over since the Left has now decisively gone past the point where any humorous exaggeration would not be overtaken by events by the end of the week. Take yesterday's intro to the Jeremy Vine Show for further proof of that.

Jegsy opens by talking about Iraq: "MPs debate Iraq intelligence. The PM says he didn't lie. Should he at least say sorry ?". So far, so L3, except - without so much as a pause for breath - he goes into the next item "misery for the people of Darfur and the world stands by". Gosh! This bloke's a tough marker. Toppling a murderous regime in an Islamic country is bad, but not toppling a murderous regime in an Islamic country is also bad. What do these people want ? The foreign policy equivalent of Schrodinger's cat ?

OK, when he meant 'the world' he could have been pointing to the absence of any bold foreign policy initiatives from Belgium, but instinct tells me the real villain of the people is Uncle Sam. When Arab Muslims slaughter black Muslims in a central African hell-hole then the blame clearly lies in Washington. Or at least it does if you're a member of the vast, sulky mass of eldery 14 year olds that make up modern Euroleft.


Sunday, July 18, 2004

A Liberal Speaks!

 
Nothing does for the L3 quite like letting them express their inner thoughts. The Creator of Worlds passes on a snapshot of where modern Liberalism is today. 
 

Excommunication Squad Required

 
Ah yes - science, the disinterested pursuit of truth. Doubtless the scientific community is even now ordering up the bouquets and garlands for the team of researchers who've just demonstrated that global warming is not in fact the result of over enthusiastic BBQ enthusiasts, car drivers or any other of the usual scapegoats. Or perhaps not, to judge by the fact that even the researchers themselves are frantically hedging away. They don't want a horse's head left in the lab.
 
Nevertheless, shockingly, it appears that planetary temperature is affected by the activity of a gigantic fusion reactor in the near vicinity. Hard to believe, I know, but there you have it. DumbJane won't light one fag too many and plunge the Earth into Hell after all. That'll be a relief for her. Of course now anthrogenic global warming is being shown to be a myth, can we expect the whiny ecotools to help themselves to a nice, hot cup of STFU ? Ah well, even if they move onto the next Apocalyspse D'Jour, we can now burn them at the stake with a clear conscience.
 


Now That's A Conservative Politician

Lord Tebbit yesterday described Michael Howard's leadership as "colourless" and warned Tory "deadweights" to expect a third general election defeat....
 
Mr Howard "needs to be braver, bolder in what he is saying". Turning to Mr Letwin, Lord Tebbit lauded his "logic and competence", but these virtues "do not grab the guy driving the Ford Mondeo or whatever it is they drive nowadays".

 
I believe the saying is 'read the whole thing'.
 

John Kerry: Man Of Principle

Well, he is compared to certain other people:
 
MICHAEL HOWARD today raises the political stakes over Iraq by saying that he would not have backed the government in last year’s eve-of-war Commons vote had he known then that British intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons was flawed...

Howard, in an interview with The Sunday Times, says the crucial government motion that authorised military action should not have referred to Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles” posing “a threat to international peace and security”.

 
Which doesn't even make sense on its own terms. Whatever the situation with WMD, Iraq really did have long-range missiles (far longer than was permitted) and they were hardly to be used as a high-speed alternative to air mail.
 
At least Kezza was funnier when he claimed that he voted for it before he voted against. Howard on the other hand....
 
Although Howard qualifies his remarks by saying he is still in favour of the war and would have voted for a different motion authorising military action, a decision by the Tories not to back the government’s motion would effectively have meant British involvement in the war would have been blocked.

 
He was in favour of the war, but he would have voted against.... m'kay. What a conniving rat. He knows Iraqs turned the corner, so he'll take some of the reflected glory for that, but he also wants the benefit of being seen to be opposed to liberating Iraq in the first place. But don't ask why people don't trust the Tories.
 
Still, there's one more outrage hidden in the text:
 
Meanwhile, senior MI6 officers expressed deep concerns about the misuse of their intelligence by Downing Street and three spies even boycotted all work on Iraq because they believed the war was wrong.

 
Well, isn't that special ? So, they told a democratically elected government to shove it and what happened ? I mean, could police officers refuse to enforce the dipstick laws coming out of the Home Office ? Hardly - so why haven't these lowlife been fired ?
 
 
 
 

Ready For Nothing

 

War ? What war ?

Emergency services said they will review how they reacted to a simulated chemical attack in the West Midlands.

The mock terror alert at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre saw 400 volunteer "casualties" being dealt with by police, fire and ambulance crews.

But it took the crews nearly three hours to set up "decontamination" units to deal with those casualties 


 
So, after nearly three years of war, home defense is still a shambles. Of course, there's a limit to how well prepared anyone can be for this kind of attack, but this is a disgrace. Yes, exercises should be hard - ruthless, even - but there is no evidence that this was any kind of Kobayashi Maru type situation. The emergency services appear to have failed to deal even with a Mark 1 Mod 0 type scenario - so who's going to be fired ? If cops can be given the old heave ho for telling naughty jokes then total incompetence ought to be a sacking offence. The fact that it isn't shows exactly how utterly the government has failed to adopt to the demands of war. 

Trouble At The Dept Of Victimhood

 
The sisters are scratching each others eyes out. Staggeringly enough, it turns out that well motivated and successful professionals resent having their reputation dragged through the mud by treasure-hunting slags. If the Conservative Party had any brains at all they'd recognise the chance to spring a huge demographic from Labour's Big Kitchen... oh, wait, I see the flaw in that plan.
 
Meanwhile, in further proof that we're approaching the End of Days, a lawyer tells the truth:
 
Ronnie Fox, senior partner at the employment law firm Fox Williams said: “What we say whenever a woman comes to us with a grievance is, ‘Was there an element of sexual discrimination? Why not just throw it in so we can claim more money.’ ”

 
Doubtless, there will be a huge demonstartion of fellow lawyers outside his office tomorrow, protesting that he's bnringing the profession into disrepute.

Won't there ?
 

Let The Whining Begin!

 
Well, OK, this is a great idea on its own merits, but think of the service its doing to the country by enraging all those Liberals until their little heads pop open.
 

Thursday, July 15, 2004

Under Siege


Her Majesty's Government may kind of stink at defending the country from Jihadis, but at least they've identified the real alien menace threatening our shores: 

Foreign news channels such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox News may be made to carry on-screen "health warnings" under proposed new guidelines published yesterday covering accuracy and impartiality on television.

The broadcasting regulator Ofcom is to ask broadcasters and viewers for their opinion on the idea, which it said was a response to complaints about coverage of the Iraq war.

Ah yes, the unspecified number of complaints from undeclared sources - and these people want to lecture others about accurate reporting ? Note too how FOX gets mentioned - apparently Al-Jizz is the very model of impartial journalism. Lest you still be skeptical that this is a blatant Yank-bashing exercise, try this: 

The regulator said that audience research last year showed that viewers would like clearer identification of foreign news channels.


Yes: clearer identification that FOX, a channel which (literally) flies the flag on screen constantly, features a 100% US staff and breaks off from Iraq coverage to report on landslides in Utah, is -surprisingly enough - American. Let me guess what form the message will take: Warning - Ofcom has certified that this programme contains scenes of counter-revolutionary, Imperialist, running dog Yankee air pirates.
 
Just one question: is the Left really requiring that, purely on the basis of national origin, broadcasters should be required to carry demeaning labels implying that their product is of lower quality than programmes produced by Brits ? Isn't that kind of......
 
Meanwhile, the Guardian is reporting on something even worse: self-propelled Amerikkkan kitchen appliances storming into people's houses and forcing them to eat junk food. Read and be amazed at the perfect fusion of whiny victimhood and anti-Americanism.  



Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Iraq's MacArthur Moment


Just thinking some more about Mr Portaloo's rantings and about the way Abu Grahib has been spun by the Yank-Haters into a broadbrush condemnation of everything west of Ellis Island: could there be an actual upside to all this ? General MacArthur's rebuilding of Japan post-1945 is one of the textbook examples of nation-building, yet his biggest contributuion may well have been to implode spectacularly. By driving Truman to the point of firing him, MacArthur inadvertently gave the Japanese a lesson in democracy. The sight of a popular and successful general being turfed out by - of all things - a politician was a powerful lesson in the realities of democratic politics.

Now we are seeking to rebuild Iraq, we may well have the chance to make another important point about the rule of law. Of course, the trial of Saddam has its part to play, but that will always be open to jibes about victor's justice. OTOH, there are no such problems with Abu Ghraib. Let losers like Ted 'hic!' Kennedy announce that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under new management. The public trial and sentancing of the Abu Grahib rabble will give the lie to that, while providing the Iraqis with a perfect model of the difference betwen our system and those of our enemies.

Too optimistic, that's my problem.

Whale Watched


Expect weeping, whaling and gnashing of teeth down Manhattan way: "Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man" has managed to grab number 9 spot on the NYT bestseller list. A considerable achievement for a book that not only eschews the Liberal establishment's articles of faith, but aims straight for the throat of their biggest star.

What's more, the success of MMIABFSWM is evidence of a shift in power between old media and new. Not only are both authors bloggers, with Mooreexposed.com (Hardy) and Moorelies.com (Clarke) respectively, but the book has risen with nary a trace in the traditional media. Its success is almost entirely a product of the net. So the book annoys the old media Liberal establishment - what more do you need ? Well, actually, you probably are asking one question: is it any good ?

First, a couple of whines. As you can probably guess from the fact the book's already out, the authors weren't able to take into account events surrounding Fahrenheit 911 - but more about this later. Plus - irony of ironies - the book's kind of slim. Excluding the extensive footnotes, there are just 206 pages of which 43 are actually reprinted articles by other authors, which inevitably means quite a bit of redundancy. Take Tim Blair's piece from the The Australian - it contains some absolutely brilliant insights, yet much of it is given over to covering ground already expertly dissected in previous chapters. Fortunately, however, of those remaining 163 pages, virtually all contain a hand grenade.

A difficult decision for any author seeking to deal with Fatso is the question of tone. Do they let the facts do the heavy lifting, and rely on a dry, even quasi-legalistic approach to exposing the Zeppelin - thereby exposing themselves to ostentatious Lefty eye-rolling and cries of 'calm down, dear, it's only a comedy' ? Or do they fight fire with fire (or, more correctly, Jabbah the Hut jokes), thereby leaving themselves open to Lefty moralising ? For an example of the latter, look no further than the reaction to the books title - it may be a double allusion to books by Mikey and Al Franken, but hey ? Those guys are lefty aristocrats, not like those fascists, Hardy and Clarke.

The authors have adopted an approach much like a coroner, carefully dissecting Moore's work, then dispassionately laying it all out for public scrutiny. With a more scrupulous target, this approach would risk falling fat flat, but it is the nature of Moore that his work is the living embodiment of the phrase 'to state it clearly is to refute it'. One of the most effective chapters consists merely of a series of recitations of a Moore prediction followed by what happened in reality (not to give the ending away, but the chapter is called The Prophet Of The Left Is Never Right).

The bulk of the book deals with debunking Moore's supposed masterpieces. Bowling For Columbine is justifiably notorious, yet even here Hardy and Clarke unearth much that is new and interesting. Meanwhile, even a Right Wing Death Beast such as myself was surprised to find out how much of Moore's work - even back to Roger and Me - was fraudulent. Hardy and Clarke manage to be comprehensive without becoming stodgy or resorting to nitpicking. The tone is relentlessly dispassionate such that there is never the feeling that the authors are beating you over the head with their opinion.

While the authors are remorselessly factual when dealing with Moore's work, they're not afraid to get down and dirty when dealing with the man himself. Chapters such as Moore's Millions go straight for the throat, while a more tongue-in-cheek attitude is present in Moore's Last days In Office. Both attitudes come together in the outstanding chapter of the book, which the authors open by noting that 'This is not one of those books where an author attempts a psychiatric analysis based on inadequate training and limited experience with the person being studied. The authors in this case have no psychoanalytical training whatsoever and have never met the person under study' before attempting to show how Moore is a textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

It says a lot about how well Hardy and Clarke have studied Moore that they managed to write a chapter debunking Fahrenheit 911 before the film was actually completed. The authors guess correctly that Moore would try to construct loony conspiracy theories about pipelines, Saudis and oil. What they could not anticipate was Moore's grave-robbing exploits in the second half of the film - say what you like about the Fat Man, but he can always find new and innovative ways to disgust.

Perhaps (overly ?) anxious not to descend to Moore-style partisanship, Hardy and Clarke steer clear of trying to draw any wider conclusions about what the success of Moore means for modern politics. Guest author Andrew Sullivan at least has a go, explaining the Moore phenomenon as a result of an intellectual vacuum on the Left. Even so, this is unsatisfying. Moore didn't just happen to the Left: lefty papers slobber over him, senators and film stars attend his screenings - these people aren't innocent bystanders. What does it say about the Left when their star player is a proven liar ? More philosophically, can the loose association between Liberals and reality as revealed by their Moore worship be one of the reasons for the high failure rate of their policies ? Hardy and Clarke ain't saying.

Quite correctly, the authors devote a chapter to the overlap between Moore's philosophy and that of the Islamists. If Clinton could virtually indict Rush Limbaugh as an accessory to the OK city bombing, then we're free to ask what it says about Moore when counsel for one of the Bali bombers cites his work as proof of the evil of the West. Again, however, the authors steer around wider issues.

One wider point the authors do make is the sheer snobbery inherent in Moore's work. To quote Tim Blair, Moore is always ready to stand up to the little guy. His movies feature him bamboozling, bullying, victimising and humiliating ordinary, decent Americans. One of the secrets of Moore's success is that he's found a way to allow metropolitan yuppie scum to sneer at small town folk and still babble on about how unprejudiced they are.

The authors point out that Moore has become less coherent as his career goes on. In Roger And Me there was still an actual point: GM's redundancy program was creating thousands of casualties. BfC supposedly dealt with an actual problem, namely America's high murder rate, albeit only as an excuse for Moore to mock people and spew lefty drivel. Fahrenheit 911 ? With the exception of Bush's satanic nature, what exactly is that all about ? My own suspicion is that this is tied to the other trend in Moore's career - namely, the way he has become more and more cunning at hiding his lies. Roger And Me could be debunked by anyone with a basic knowledge of current events in Flint, BfC - with it's quick editing and bogus footage - required a deeper analysis while Fahrenheit 911 is the high point of Moore's deceptiveness, for example Moore presents a montage of idyllic images of pre-war Iraq. Of course, they did fly kites in Saddam's Baghdad, so in that sense Moore is not actually lying, yet what he presents is far from the truth. Moore has learned to replace easily refutable facts with subtle innuendo, and if obscuring his mischief means obscuring his actual point, that's a price worth paying.

The book ends on an optimistic note. Whatever success Moore has had, he has helped bring on a new wave of creativity amongst the right. The authors rightly (if somewhat excessively) pay tribute to young filmmaker Michael Wilson, maker of the documentary Michael Moore Hates America. While doubtless too modest to mention their own contribution, Hardy and Clarke note the grass roots agitation that has sprung up against Moore, with efforts such as this latest example here. Moore's rantings are ultimately self-limiting, the hate and the rage prevent him actually generating any kind of positive message - it would be ironic indeed if the only long-term effect of Moore's theatrics was to energise a new generation of Hillary's Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

So is the book worth buying ? Well…. it is unparalleled in it's dissection of Moore's work. If you're working somewhere that's knee-deep in Moore fans, like a school, university or mental hospital, this book will give you all the ammo you need to repel drones. Even on the fisked-to-oblivion BfC, Hardy and Clarke unearth new bodies. At the same time though, the book does seem strangely unsatisfying. Hardy and Clarke lay out the case against both Moore's work and Moore himself, yet what does it all mean ? The book lacks any sense of a central narrative or context. No doubt this will increase the books appeal to the ideologically less committed, but at the same time the book seems at time to be merely concerned with cataloguing Moore's offences rather than attempting any kind of deeper analysis. Inevitably, you find yourself wondering what a more spiky commentator would do with this material. Obviously, the book is a must-read for Moore Haters, while Conservative bloggers and the like will appreciate an exhaustive reference to the many and varied misdeeds of the fat pest but those of a less political bent may prefer to wait for the paperback version before indulging in the pleasures of seeing one of the most bloated (in every sense) figures in Hollyweird today given a right kicking.



Your Property Is Not Your Own (Unless Something Goes Wrong)


I've said before that I'm no fan of country folk, nevertheless this Right To Rampage legislation is crazy. Take this latest atrocity. To put this in an urban context, it's like being required to leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition, then being legally liable if the guy who robs it runs someone over.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Outrage D'Jour


I think we all saw this one coming. To think we were once unenlightened enough to base our immigration policy on not admitting felons.

Monday, July 12, 2004

Not In Our Lifetime


The Englishman asks a good question. Anyone think we'll get a good answer ?

The Gospel According To St Marx


Say what you like about the Church of England, it may have long ago jumped the shark, but at least it won't rest on its laurels. It's forever seeking out new and better ways to cleanse itself of every last iota of sanity. Today's news marks a particular high point:

Church of England harvest festival services could soon expect worshippers not only to thank God for an abundant crop but also to repent for sins against the environment and for oppression and inequality.

Congregations which traditionally gather around piles of bread, fruit and vegetables to sing "We plough the fields and scatter" will be asked to acknowledge their "selfishness in not sharing the earth's bounty fairly". They may also apologise for "our failure to protect resources for others" and for "inequality and oppression in the earth".


Has Chairman Mao been hired as a consultant or what ? Compulsory self-criticism sessions all round. Of course where the weasel runt of cultural Marxism is present, its idiot half-brother ecofreakery can't be far away:

One section reads: "For all those who depend on the earth for their daily food and fuel, whose forests are destroyed for the profit of a few, Lord we pray.

It's true. Rich people cut down forests all the time, then keep all the wood in the cellars of their big mansions so no poor people can have any. That explains why church pews are always made of plastic. Still, even these freaks have enough marbels left to recognise that you can take Marxism too far:

The Church rejected a move yesterday to pay all clergy of whatever rank the same salary, that of an ordinary parish priest.

The private members' motion argued that all future bishops, deans and archdeacons should be paid just over £18,000 a year.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, whose salary exceeds £60,000, voted in favour but the motion was easily defeated.


Hooray for the deserving rich!

Unworried


The folks at Blogger have linked to an article about blogger burnout. I was almost worried until I read this bit:

While [bloggers] enjoy what they're doing, many find that keeping up with the pressures to post regularly and to be sharp, witty and incisive is often too much.

That lets me out then.

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Outrage D'Jour


Can we now close the debate over whether the civil liberties rabble are anything over than a bunch of L3 lowlife trying to sneak their agenda in via the back door ? Take a look at this and note the absence of cases of people being deafened by cries of outrage from the Left. Here our friends in blue have ripped up the law regarding 'reasonable suspicion' and grounds for arrest, yet you could read a book in the silence. A vote of thanks too for our five star legal profession. No doubt too tied up defending Jihadis to deal with the Filth taking a blowtorch to the statute book. Ditto the Judiciary, Mr Justice "Turn 'em Loose Bruce" would like to help, but he's too busy finding new and more inventive ways to let paedos go free. These people spend their lives playing violins for every scumbag in the country, but when a real outrage happens, they don't want to know. Hey - they're Liberals, they truly believe that agents of the State should be empowered to demand people prove their innocence, then store the data thus coerced until Hell freezes over. But what of Mikey boy ? Surely the kinder, gentler, fairy-soft Conservative Party doesn't go in for the kind of blatant thuggery ? Does it ?

[sound of crickets chirping, a train passes in the distance]

But there's always the ever-whacky Lib Dems, our wild and alternative Party. They won't go for the Man sticking it to ordinary Joe's, right ? Pfffft…in a clash between Big Government and the little guy there's never any doubt what side these people will choose. The media take a lot of stick, but they're the closest thing we have to an institution that'll stand up for the little guy. [What's that, Mr Politician ? Why, yes, they are scum, and they still beat you, so work it out for yourself]. Someone needs to say it clearly: police officers who break the law are the lowest of the low. They should be held personally accountable - with the accent on personally. Enough with this garbage whereby successful lawsuits merely result in the bill being passed onto council tax payers - apart from anything else that usually means the victims end up paying part of the bill themselves. Let bent coppers pay their own bills, and see then if they still want to moon at the House of Commons.

The Smoking Crater Formerly Known As John Edwards


Ann Coulter is always worth reading. Nevertheless, sometimes you get the feeling that you're watching a lioness devour a rabbit. Not this week though. St Ann takes on John Edwards and it's a thing of beauty.

Question D'Jour


Will this government ever stop grovelling to the teaching unions ?

No Bias Here!


The Beeb asks viewers to have their say on the 'Illegal Israeli barrier' - but they can't yet say whether people blowing up restraunts are terrorists.

Symbolics


I've been the first to slag off Michael Howard, but we should never forget it could be worse. Take this putrid article by putrid article Michael Portillo. It really is the essence of Portilloism, with the characteristically adept choice of words and phrases failing utterly to hide basically bankrupt ideas. Look at the first few 'graphs, the faux-agony as Mikey finds himself forced - forced! - to criticise America. He doesn't want to, but now he's found out about the behaviour of a half-dozen trailer trash on a single day in November 2003, why, there's no choice. I'll give him that if he accepts that the events of a whole 19 Muslims on a certain day in 2001 say all we need to know about Islam. Oops no - that would be bigoted, whereas spinning the behaviour of six perverted 'tards into a broadbrush condemnation of the US is tres sophisticated.

Note too the drivel about his constituent. We're supposed to be outraged that a one-armed man got picked up - but how did he lose it ? And what is the legal definition of a mild criminal record anyway ? More to the point, what was he doing in Afghanistan ? Nope, Mikey skates over these points and hopes you'll be sufficiently impressed by his word wrangling that you won't notice these gapping holes. That sets the tone for the rest of the article.

We're told that the US has made disastrous mistakes - but not what they are. Given that the fastest advance in history has been followed by the setting up of a broadly-based Iraqi government and democratic institutions are coming on-line with elections early next year…well, don't ask what the disasters were, ask what would have had to happen for Mikey not to call it a disaster.

Mikey tells us that 'we have been left speechless in the face of atrocities committed by other regimes', and what's more 'During his visit to Britain the Chinese prime minister could hardly contain his mirth when the subject of human rights abuses was raised at a joint press conference with Blair'. Possibly his mirth was a result of seeing the media crucify Blair over the unauthorised doings of a handful of pond scum while he gets a free pass over slave camps, mass arrests of political and religious dissidents, executions merely to allow the harvesting of organs, Tibet…. You get the picture. Moral equivalence was never stupider but, since Mikey sees isolated criminal acts by public servants as evidence of unfitness to govern, can he tell us which party governed for the majority of Harold Shipman's killing spree ?

Perhaps sensing that arguing that Abu Grahib means that we'll now longer benefit from the support of France is kind of weak, Mikey then goes searching through the cupboards for every pot and pan to throw. He tells us that 'Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, used too few troops to secure the borders or to capture the stockpiles of weaponry'. Doubtless, next week General Sir Michael Jackson will write an article on getting elected (then again, to judge by 1997, Mikey probably needs the tips). Also, 'disbanding Iraq’s security forces was a foreseeable error' - because, of course, there would be no question of Mikey and his fellow travellers making mischief if the Yanks had announced 'Meet the new boss, same as the old boss', hmmm ? What's more 'backing Ahmed Chalabi for president flew in the face of wise counsel.'. OTOH, not backing would also have president flown in the face of wise counsel. Either way Mikey and the rest of the Hate America crowd would be shouting 'A-Ha!'.

Even within this whineathon, Mikey is still at it, spinning away: ' the blitz on Falluja was a military and diplomatic catastrophe'. Blitz ? There are parts of Birmingham that look better than 'blitzed' Falluja. But we're just supposed to accept that Falluja was blitzed, and not notice the slippery choice of words at the end. The objective of operations was neither to impress the French nor to produce massive body counts. Falluja was entirely political. It was supposed to be the start of a popular uprising against the US. Instead, as Steve Den Beste illustrates, it was a complete fiasco which, by way of failing utterly, left the interim government much stronger. Some catastrophe.

There's one more lu-lu though. Mikey claims that Bush hasn't grovelled enough to Islam. Like, hello ? Bush more than anyone is responsible for all those jeering references to the 'Religion of Peace' on the net. Bush has risked his reputation by reaching out even to the looniest Jihadi. Yet, Mikey condemns him for not solving the Israel-Palestine problem, no doubt by strong-arming those Israelis who intransigently want to stay alive (but, needless to say, Mikey supports Israel, of course).

What all this babbling leads to is this money graph:

I begin to think the West can purge itself of American misdemeanours only by some symbolic sacrifice. Rumsfeld would have done nicely had the president dismissed him over the Abu Ghraib horrors. He signally failed to do it. Now only the defeat of the Republican administration will suffice.

'Purge themselves' ? Like, heavy, man. It's the ultimate fusion of the Liberal establishments hippy-dippy 60s baggage with the rancid remains of 90s psychobabble. Would everything be alright if Dick Cheney carried out an Apache cleansing ceremony or Condi moved her office to sit on a Ley Line ? Hey - I'll tell you this: if guilt by association is the thing, Rummy is a lot further from some idiots in Baghdad than Mikey was to Archer, Hamilton, Aitkin……und so weiter. Never mind that a Kerry administation would use the self-same policy of trying to stick a restraining order on Bin Laden that Mikey himself admits was such a failure in the Clinton years: America's got to purge. It the politics of bulimia.

Of course, I can almost believe that Portillo has spent so long in the Thames Region Asylum that he's really unable to think in terms of anything other than symbols, images and sending the right message. Actual reality is only ever a distant relative in these circles. But still, Mikey can scabble about all he wants trying to recast Abu Grahib as America's Holocaust or Falluja as its Stalingrad, but the reader is still left with the feeling that there's a bit more to it. Regular readers will know that I'm not one for trying to divine motivation - that's a Liberal thing, done to hide the fact that their policies always lead to total disaster. Liberals talk about dark motives so they can argue that even though Mr Conservative saved three kids from a fire, he did it for selfish reasons, while they sat on their backsides chanting to the Fire God for only the very best of motives, and are therefore superior. Nevertheless, so furious a storm of rhetoric on so dubious a set of grounds cries out for further investigation.

Fortunatly, we don't have to look far for the TINOs motivation on this issue. This issue ? About 90% of issues actually. Bush has come out in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would prevent activist judges forcing through gay marriage. Whatever form of Conservative you are, you can't be happy about at least one of either gay marriage or judges remaking an ancient institution from the bench sans any kind of democratic mandate. Mikey knows this, hence his detour into Mooresque territory. That's it. That's the true measure of the TINO's unfitness for government. We are engaged in a vast global war that will shape the world for centuries to come and Mikey thinks victory is less important than allowing Sir Elton and Dave to get hitched.

Even with the world in flames, it turns out to be all about them.

Sunday, July 04, 2004

Not Random


This article by Matthew d'Ancona is getting a lot of play in the blogsphere. Certainly it makes some good points:

Moore uses all the techniques of modern mass entertainment with supreme skill: comic intercutting, brilliantly-selected music, shocking images of civilian casualties, a laconic voiceover interspersed with scenes of untrammelled emotion. I confess that I found it gripping.

Unlike Moore, I supported the destruction of the Taliban regime and the liberation of Iraq. But I also have to acknowledge the aplomb of his campaign, and the cunning of his strategy. He has not only touched a nerve; he has filled a vacuum. He has identified the feebleness of the campaign to persuade the public that the war on terror is necessary and exploited that weakness to the hilt.


Yet, even in doing so, it commits the self-same errors. Take the war seriously say these people. Yet, even then shy away from a clear statement of what the war is about. Ironically enough, in the self-same edition a far more clear sighted article is present. Try this:

The Crusades - for which the Pope has apologised to Islam (he did so again last week), rather as an old lady might apologise to a mugger for trying to retrieve her purse - were simply an attempt by medieval Christians to get their homelands back. Spain, Sicily, and parts of the Balkans were recovered. Palestine wasn't, though the Muslim colonisers there - who are no more "native" to the Holy Land than the European Jews who removed them - were largely ejected in 1948. It goes without saying that today's Muslims - who, unlike today's Westerners, are very proud of their history of imperialism - are highly indignant at being parted from this stolen property.

Indeed. Remember 'Nightmare On Elm Street' - the films where a murdered serial killer stalks kids in their dreams and kills them ? In one scene a young girl is confronted by Freddie and tells him 'I don't believe in you' to which he replies 'I believe in you' while killing her. The agonised, introspective psychobabbling of the chattering classes is irrelevant, the Jihadis believe they're at war with us and that's all that matters. There may be no easy route to victory, but admitting the enemy may not be a random collection of folks who just happen to be disproportionately called Mohammed may be a start.

The Myth That Won't Die


The grievance farmers are at it again:

A review of police stop and search powers has been launched by the Government because of claims that they have been disproportionately used against ethnic minorities.

The Home Office said black and Asian people "continue to be stopped and searched more regularly than white people".

Figures based on "resident populations" in the 2001 census show black people were six times more likely to be targeted by police than white people last year.


Blah, blah, blah. As ever, these figures alone are essentially meaningless. The two obvious factors are that illegal immigration renders the census figures artifically low, plus the fact that - how can one put this ? - the offences countered with stop/searches are more common in Tottenham than Ambridge. But to point this out is to miss the central scumbaggery inherent in citing these figures.

Consider a force which on a given day searches 300 blacks finding contraband in 60 cases and 200 whites, finding contraband in 20 cases. The LLL would insist that this proves the force is racially-biased against blacks, yet the self-same figures really reveal that innocent whites are twice as likely to be searched as innocent blacks. It's a scandal! Or possibly not. But it does illustrate how pointless it is merely to count searches, yet the L3 continue to use this as a stick to beat the Police. Without knowing the proportion of searches that do turn up illegal activity it is simply absurd to suggest that unnecessary searches are being made.

And there we have it. A bunch of race-hustling scuzballs using incomplete figures to stir up racial antipathy and anti-Police hatred. Hell, given that most of the victims of crime in Chapeltown and Moss Side are themselves black, no one can say that these rat molesting grudge miners are even acting out of a misplaced feeling of racial solidarity. 10-1 that after hobbling stop/search, the self-same 'community leaders' will pronounce that the consequent increased crime in black areas proves that the Police don't care about black-on-black crime. In the race-obsessed world of the left, the blue people are always wrong.

Friday, July 02, 2004

Really Annoying


Samizdata has a post on our friend the bat - nasty little Marxist stalking horse that he is. Of course, they are right that it is a grim offence against property rights and such like. Still, I'm a Conservative not a Libertarian, so what really annoys me about the flying rats is the immense amount of humbug they generate amongst the ecotools. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen some bearded freak on the idiot box explaining the bats are actually mammals. Say what ? I mean, what else ? Are we supposed to believe that there are people out there who think they're fish ? Or really large flies ? No, of course not. It just the L3 being their usual smug, patronising selves , trying to pass off all their opponents as misinformed idiots who'd come round to the L3 position if only their tiny minds were advanced enough to appreciate that the big, furry thing is not a type of frog.

Screw that. They're mammals alright. They're rodents. Like rats, except they fly and they live in people's houses. And come out at night when people are asleep and enter their rooms without an invitation and fly round sqeaking and squarking. No wonder the Left loves them so - in terms of sheer annoyance the bat is Mother Nature's own Guardian reader (although life would be much improved if we could persuade Guardian readers to do something as useful as performing pollination or eating insects). I'm assuming it wasn't the objective of this legisaltion to ensure that anyone finding a flying rat on the premises kills it ASAP ? How can a political grouping have so many lawyers and so little grasp of the Law of Unintended Consequences ?

Thursday, July 01, 2004

Outrage D'Jour


There be trouble down in Robin Hood country:

A convicted drug dealer plans to sue police for using his picture in a campaign against gun crime.

Michael Polizczuk says police breached his human rights by featuring his photo on leaflets distributed in Nottingham.


Yeah, fancy letting the public know he was a scuzball. They should be left to found out the old fashioned way.

Weirdly though, Nottinghamshire appears to have a Chief with a functional spine. Doubtless this oversight will soon be corrected., but for now enjoy the rare sight of a senior police officer talking sense:

Nottinghamshire Chief Constable Steve Green said: "I challenge any judge in the land to say that the problem of gun crime is not such in Nottingham that we need to take steps of this nature.

"As far as I am concerned, I welcome what they are trying to do because these matters ought to be sorted out in court.


But there's a sting in the tail:

The leaflets show his picture, alongside other convicted gun criminals, with the message: "No such thing as untouchable".

About 30,000 leaflets were distributed in the city in a name-and-shame campaign in April this year.

He was chosen by police for the campaign which aims to show youngsters that armed criminals are now serving long prison sentences.


Uh huh.

He is serving a four-year sentence at Sudbury Prison in Derbyshire after being convicted of possessing a handgun, ammunition and cocaine.

So a dealer gets picked up in possession with a loaded firearm and cops 18 months with parole. Clearly, gun crime is caused by the Police not putting enough effort into busting 84 year old with Lugers they picked up as souvenirs. Of course.