Friday, February 17, 2006


Lawyer wins case (the body will naturally appeal- but so far so good).

One thing I haven't heard anyone mention about the hunting accident is that Cheney knows a thing or two about heart problems and mortality. Dick might well keel over before Whittington does.


Certainly couldn't have put it better myself:

'Maybe a few British soldiers did some bad things and beaten up some Iraqis but bruises don't kill, it's Iran's revolutionary guards and secret services thugs who are assassinating Iraqis and destabilizing my country, so SHUT UP MULLAHS.'-

Lovely stuff from Iraq the Model.

Of course, in the context he speaks of he doesn't mention the jihadofascists. The Jawa report does that (via LGF).

Thursday, February 16, 2006


Reverance for an Irrelevance.

That's my view of the BBC's lavish coverage of the UN's attempt to blast the US into getting rid of Guantanamo.

I despise all this weasel worded 'amounts to torture' rhetoric from the tranzis. If you have to weasel around trying to label some kind of treatment 'torture' you can be sure it isn't that at all.

Anyway, it seems I'm not alone in thinking that the UN is an utter rotten disgrace. This man thinks so too- and he spent four years at the highest level there.

Oops, did I send you to the BBC site for some news? Silly me, I meant to send you here for some news. (via EUREF)

I think the UN is a very sad and very real distraction from the real world. The BBC seem to love it.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006



A Whim for Zim. (a post-valentine's message)

Over the course of a while, as I browsed my visitor stats (a sobering experience, believe me), I noticed an interesting pattern. I kept getting visits from some computer (or computers) lodged in a particularly forsaken nook of sub-saharan Africa. I mean Bob's country, the land of Rhodes, you get the picture?

Oh well, I rarely mentioned the country, despite having it on my heart really most of the time- just how do you deal with the devil's playground?

It's sad to say but when you read reports coming out of the country that's what you conclude: the 'vintage' one (I quote the BBC) has made it his business to flout the needs of his people, to hurt them, in the most bizarre, cruel and brazen ways. The more brazen he is the more he gets away with it. Don't tell me he's going to keel over and die. I don't believe it, although I can't say for sure, of course. He seems a healthy old goat.

So what to do, what to do? I could as well keep a record of Bob's evil acts as I could a record of sick jokes that I've heard.

I link almost at random this current instance; there have been many more. There can be no doubt that the repression in Zim is routine and sadistic.

I may have mentioned on this site that I spent some time- about six months- in East Africa a few years ago. I was fortunate and had no health problems; no typhus or bruscella, and no malaria, entered my blood-stream. Something about Africa did though, and I've been carrying it around ever since.

That something tells me that all we need to do is tell Mugabe 'no', to stand up to him in all the ways available and some that aren't immediately available. I'd favour an armed intervention and I'd bet all I have that just a small one would have miraculous effects, without anything like the Iraqi situation emerging. Not exactly a second Rhodes raid, but not far off in spirit, is what I have in mind.

Well, anyway, I don't seem to be getting the visitor from Zim anymore, so he or she won't get to read this, my small cry on behalf of a long-suffering people. But if there's one thing I'd like people everywhere to take on board about this it would be that it doesn't have to be this way.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006



Gilding the lily on the left.

One really shouldn't do it. It only does harm.

It's probably a bedrock characteristic I have: I just can't stand being lied to; I try really hard to understand people's half truths because I hate the feeling I get when I feel caught out.

That's the thing about the cartoon apoplexy: the lies. The Gateway Pundit reports that the Danes (some of them) want to try for treason the Imams who spread fake cartoons in the Middle East. That's how I'd feel about it if I were Danish. It's how to deal with traitors, who are usually cocky little idiots doing it 'because they can' and because they want a sense of significance their society has seen fit not to give them. I'd feel alot more comfortable, for instance, if society would call George Galloway on his egregious lying and put him in the dock and thence to jail where he belongs, instead of playing the silly little game of pretending he's an honest radical. He's not honest and it would dignify him far too much to call him radical.

And another thing: this cartoon thing is a lot less about religious intolerance than it is about lying and rabble-rousing politics.

Of course for the anti-religious, it's a gift, but what is stupid is that instead of learning the real lessons about checking people's assertions, investigating their backgrounds, analysing their words and actions, etc (you know, the human game?), they just say 'that's religion for you; knew it all the long!'

One suspects that right-on leftist anti-religionism was the reason why Harry's Place casually quoted and worked up this pseudo-historical account from Times' journalist Gary Duncan.

It's the story of Britain's last death penalty for blasphemy, but reading that story at numerous online sources, including primary accounts, I barely recognise it from the Times' account, rehashed by Harry's Place and popularised (I guess) by a link from Pajamas Media.

I like this source. Two things emerge quite clearly: one is that Garry Duncan's account is a pathetic rendering of the story, reducing it from an accusation of a habitual, yearlong blaspheming pattern, to one incident in front of a church one freezing night. The second is the role of lying, or at best bare-faced hypocrisy.

We learn about the actions of one Mungo Craig, 'friend' of Aikenhead (the young man accused) and his chief accuser, who lent him radical books and then accused him of believing and espousing what they said! Craig seems to have disingenuously pursed a vendetta, resulting in an execution.

Anyway, none of this is to invalidate the accusations against religion; the religous authorities were stupid, vain, and yes, intolerant- by all accounts- but if you ignore the human element you ignore everything that makes the case distinctive, everything which tells you why such a thing happened exactly then, and perhaps why such abuse of power came to an end. It's all so MSM to miss the story completely like that.


But a final thought: from googling Gary Duncan I haven't a clue who this phantom of uncertain historical tales is; I have no bank of articles of his to ascertain anything he believes, or anything about his background at all. He's so unaccountable!

Monday, February 13, 2006


So John Simpson Alleges...

That the Guantanamo inmates are mostly innocent, in this article. He throws impressive statistics around like confetti. He brandishes the fact that most of the 'enemy' were not captured by the US; he tosses up the US' reward in Afghanistan for informers as though to invite jaundiced outrage.

Let's focus for a moment. When the professor and lawyer Simpson cites argue that the vast majority of inmates were not Al-Qaeda, why can't Simpson simply point out that the US' reward to informers was offered in return for members of the Taliban as well as Al Qaeda? Afghanistan's government provided a terrorist haven; to support terrorists you could simply be a loyal part of the Taliban. The whole question Simpson raises should not be about the headline Al-Qaeda point, it should be about the definition of a terrorist organisation, and the definition of involvement. I feel pretty confident that has received some thought on the US' part; pity about the BBC.

Then again, why doesn't Simpson point out that many have been released from Guantanamo? There has been a rationale at work there, for sure, differentiating between inmates of different sorts. Why not analyse that? No, he's not interested. Not interested at all.

Sunday, February 12, 2006


Sunday Reading: I give you the Sandmonkey (specialist in Egyptian cartoon publication).

 
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