Setting Annan straight. While the BBC employs its old Punch and Judy tactic regarding international disputes where it would rather not see moral clarity emerge, The Washington Times offers the critical US-UK responses to Annan's attempt to fling a little mud in the 'international community's' eyes.

Key points:

'British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain was "consistently in the lead in seeking to enforce sanctions against Iraq" ... "There were no occasions, which we can recall, on which the United Nations made representations to the United Kingdom" regarding smuggling activities'

'exemptions from U.N. sanctions that were granted to Turkey and Jordan had been implemented with the full knowledge of the U.N. Sanctions Committee and other U.N. bodies and officials.'

You know, that's really game over, isn't it? I know of no real contradictory arguments. We would be left contemplating Koffi's moral/political failures.

So what do the Beeb consider the proper continuation of the fight Annan picked to coincide with the indictment of some of the few US connectors to Oil for Food?

Oh yes, Mr Punch, it's 'UN must reform or die, says Rice'

Not that I really disagree with the sentiments of Ms Rice, but it is the Beeb's habit to seek a mudslinging session when a clear view would see their chosen ones (and if ever there was a chosen one it was Koffi) deselected by history.

Just a post to note the absurd BBC policy of soft-pedalling the Oil-for-Food scandal until they can make it a partisan 'them and us', US/UK vs the decent chaps just doing their transnational duty etc etc. Such dishonesty is sickening, and Koffi, like one of those slapstick comedians in old Western comedies, crawls out from the melee he's encouraged on his dirty hands and knees. I noted a couple of related articles in the post below (maybe even the one above is an updated form of one of them), where the Beeb were building a little bandwagon of blame to counteract what they habitually term the 'hostility' of the US to the UN.

To be honest it doesn't matter if the US were letting Saddam get away with smuggling, to some degree. Let's see: they ejected him from Kuwait a the cost of US lives; they policed his dangerous territory at the cost of a permanent presence there. What did the UN ever give? What right had it to make strategic decisions? yet they were doing just that, and for profit. Surely the crucial point is that Saddam's sources of money went far beyond the US's ability to control them, significantly due the UN's incompetence and criminality. Consequently the threat Saddam posed was being bumped up by UN actions and UN inaction. Reason enough to sack Koffi.

Simply superb: Steyn on the future, in the Speccie. What can I say? I agree with every word. I'll link the print version too, as it's an article that deserves to be read whole. He picks out so many of the telling instances that epitomise the looming realities that are making so much of the current baggage of thought that passes for politics in the UK just that: baggage.

To give one example, I'm sure a lot of people noticed an appalling 'Christian' Aid advert recently. Well, Natalie Solent noticed it. Steyn says:

'in the Guardian last week, Christian Aid took out the following advertisement: ‘It’s not called slavery nowadays. It’s called free trade.’

Yeah, sure. I’d love to email to India the CAT-scan of whichever Christian Aid wallah thought that would work, even as overheated rhetoric. The popular British ‘charity’ is campaigning for what it calls ‘trade justice’: ‘Poor countries must be given the freedom to help their own farmers and industries.’ By ‘poor countries’ they mean the dictators and crooks and incompetents who run ‘poor countries’; by ‘given the freedom to help’ they mean encouraged in the delusions that have made ‘poor countries’ out of once prosperous territories.'

So, what we can say is that whatever is the right thing to do by the developing world- or whatever the latest apologetic term is- we're not doing it by placing our trust in the likes of Christian Aid, and we're not doing it by trusting State proxies, or the nice GDP percentage targets of aid that everyone murmurs assent to, from Left and Right alike in British politics.

Moreover, we're not learning about that failure from the BBC- quite the opposite. They tell us about capitalist criminality, the failure of UK and US politicians, the outdatedness of global corporations (a photo-article, unavailable to links, asked the question, 'is the Burger giant showing its age?'): you name it, anything but the real waste of western wealth and western advantages that the statist projects of western nations entail.

Podhoretz versus the Beeb:

Says the Beeb:

'Mr Sharon said Maale Adumim "would be part of Israel" and that there ought to be "contiguity between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem."'

'The international community considers all settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.'

Says Podhoretz:

'With Israel's successful defeat of the Palestinian intifada, the death of Yasser Arafat and Sharon's stunning decision to cede Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, the terms of the discussion between the two parties have changed entirely.

The astonishing changes on the ground over the past 18 months are creating a new political dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians. The effort on the part of the press, the pundits and the Europeans to make the theoretical Maale Adumim issue a major scandal is an effort to deny the existence of this new political dynamic.'

Let's see now; which one seems to be carrying the news, and which seems about as relevant as an aged Metternich bleating on about the Congress of Vienna?

Political limbo dancing: how low can they go?

Pols behaving despicably. For every pseudo-example of the politics of the gutter, such as when Michael Howard raises the question of UK immigration, there are many more examples of the real thing which happen when no one is paying attention.

The basic definition of gutter politics I'd offer is that it's politics which puts lives at stake for the sake of personal satisfaction.

The sharp intake of breath taken by liberals when they heard whisperings that Bush was pursuing his aggressive War on Terror strategy 'because he could', ie. because of the US' power and unique position, was the sound of affronted hyprocrites.

The reality is the Left does everything it does because it can, and thirsts to do more whenever it can.

John Kerry, for instance, is talking about intimidation at the US polls, claiming his voters were cowed by Republican rottweilers- because he can- despite the fact that he knows well what use his words will be put to in the prejudiced and propagandised world media. American lives may be lost due to the perception he fosters of American corruption. Kerry talks of having 'no magic wand' to end this corruption (though he has a magic hat, as we know), but I am just struck with a saying such as 'once a traitor, always a traitor', to sum the Senator up (Chrenkoff also reports)

Oona King, in the UK, is facing a torrent of abuse and pressure from anti-war 'ethnic communities'- despite her own ethnicity, and, certainly in part, because she's Jewish. George Galloway is opposing her in her constituency, playing on all these factors to gain personal revenge for his near-brush with political extinction, and lucrative notoriety- because he can (because no one saw fit to put him behind bars already). In so doing he is stirring the anti-Semitism which endangers Jewish lives everywhere, and stoking the Jihadic drive which endangers us all. (Arthur Chrenkoff also reports)

The BBC are questioning the anti-Aids strategy of perhaps the only good example of a country that has combatted the disease effectively: Uganda. Where is the sense in that, when Mbeki's gross ignorance and stupidity in allowing the disease to take hold in Southern Africa is the continent's big political story, allied to his tolerance of the stinkingly flea-bitten and diseased Mugabe regime? Why are they doing this kind of journalism? Let Uganda tinker with its policy however it wants since at least it has a successful policy to tinker with. The Beeb are doing this kind of journalism, in fact, to satisfy anti-religious and anti-US prejudice- because they can, having been given the carte blanche of the licence fee for another ten years.