Things that annoy me... sharks plus

The regaling of stupid so-called "urban myths", and related tripe, in place of discussion.

The BBC, you see, is full of it.

Having plastered the screen with news of a lurid shark attack, having raked in the readers with one of the scariest shark pictures I can recall seeing, the BBC proceed to "educate them".

It is tiresome to have to go through the steps the blinkered, short-sighted, prejudiced journalist takes to do this, but perhaps he thought he'd just read this, and tone it down a bit.

The Humane Society International's article on the matter begins

"In a case of apparent mistaken identity, abalone fisherman Eric Nerhus was attacked by a shark while diving in Eden, an area with an extensive seal population..."

in the same vein in which the BBC's previous news report on a shark attack on Eric Nerhus concludes

"Experts have said that there is a possibility the shark mistook the wetsuit-clad Mr Nerhus for a seal."

See the style: take the pressure group's words, tone them down, call them experts (doubtless they have their academic fellow travellers somewhere; let's assume).

Actually the potential "urban myth" of the seals was not the one I intended to concentrate on. There's some sense in the idea that wetsuit clad divers and seals may similarly entice sharks, although it's rather silly to think we don't make a good meal for a hungry shark, or to suggest that sharks have a 'humane' diet that somehow excludes creatures like man- especially when in the next breath one asserts the equal rights of animals to x, y and z, which rather makes us as fair a game as any.

On the other hand, if we're getting mistaken for seals why aren't they testing designs of wetsuits including flashing lights or wavy flurescent lines to warn off the sharks? I haven't heard of such a common or garden advantage taken of the clear fact that sharks don't attack humans just because.

No, no, my main focus was intended to be the contention made directly by HSI in the BBC article that "The risks are minimal,"... "You have more chance of being killed by a falling vending machine than you do by a great white shark. The odds are infinitesimal."

Well, indeed, I do feel that infinitesimality, sitting as I do behind my computer screen around a thousand kilometers from the nearest salt water agglomeration- and all of the millions of people so cocooned by land would think similarly. But were I to be a sea goer, and to enjoy dipping in and out of the sea at all times and in many places, the minimality of the risk would somewhat change, and would depend on my wits and commonsense, matched against my ambitions to get jiggy with Madam Ocean.

But no, no, that was not my point. I digress.

No, my real point was the one about the darned "falling vending machine"

My first thought when hearing the notion that you had more chance of dying from a falling vending machine than from a shark was to think of all the frail drunks and children I've seen pushing these things forward and back in an attempt to made the evil machines either show altruism or adequate performance.

I googled, natch, and found this this snippet of no provenance except its match with my common sense:

"I can also tell you (from experience, as a vendor) that these accidents DO happen. One of the most tragic occurred several years ago and involved three boys between the ages of 11 and 12. The plan was that two of the boys would rock a soda machine until it tipped forward. The third would catch the machine and hold it while the other two got free sodas for all of them. Since even a small soda machine weighs about 300 lbs. empty, you can imagine the end result.

Most injuries and deaths involving vending machines involve soda machines. Not only are they the heaviest, they are also top-heavy by design. Stop by a vending company and ask them to show you the inside of one and you'll see what I mean. The only vending machine accident I've ever seen (literally) that did not involve attempted theft happened when a coffee machine which was being taken off a truck fell and one employee didn't get out of the way in time. Not a fatality but he now has several pins in his right leg."

Since I never intend to force one of these machines to do anything against its nature I pronounce the risk to myself to be virtually nil.

I often, however, long for the ocean (I have done a sailing trip or two and loved wave hopping as a child)- and a healthy, robust, and confident engagement with that ought to be on the manifesto of any "humane society". Which ought to include a willingness to kill without compunction rogue sharks.

It is not likely that such an attitude will come from the kind of craven posture toward nature which is a result of believing, as the BBC's final source does, the canard that 'the great white shark "is the greatest predator on the planet next to man"'

Light entertainment

BlameBush is fantastic; so good in fact it's well capable of outlasting the Bush presidency (which many now feel they can outlast, unfortunately).

But, I was thinking about the website, and something about it struck a chord, and I remembered who it reminded me of- Peter Simple, the Michael Wharton column.

In the persona of LiberalLarry, we get such gems as this:


"Putting aside for a moment the severe physical trauma a grown adult’s open hand can inflict on a little baby’s backside, a child who is spanked can also develop serious psychological disorders, such as self-discipline and respect for authority. As studies have further shown, parents who were disciplined as children are 78% more likely to discipline their own kids. It’s an endless cycle of abuse that no one has had the courage to fight until now."

Items of Interest

Paul Dacre (Daily Mail editor) weighed in against the BBC recently. Some quotable quotes ensued but I have to say I disagreed with plenty in his arguments, especially in the latter part of his speech.

Still, I agree with this:

The BBC "is hostile to conservatism and the traditional right, Britain's past and British values, America, Ulster Unionism, Euro-scepticism, capitalism and big business, the countryside, Christianity and family values"

Perhaps better is an academic blogger at the Augean Stables (great blog for occasional reading at least), transcribing an address he made to an Israeli audience on the bias of the media against it.

"There has been much discussion of whether or not the MSM has been unfair to Israel, including formal investigations into particularly obnoxious organizations like the BBC, and, by and large the answer is, “well, maybe… but it’s not so bad.” And Israelis, like the protagonist in Richard Farina’s novel, have been down so long it looks like up to them. “It could be worse… it has been worse… it’s getting better.”

But all of this is not nearly good enough."

"the right-wing blogosphere stands revealed as what they are -- a pack of gossip-mongering hysterics who routinely attack any press reports that reflect poorly on their Leader or his policies, with rank innuendo, Internet gossip, base speculation, and wholesale error as their most frequent tools of the trade. The operate in packs, constantly repeating each other's innuendo and expanding on it incrementally, and they then cite to each other endlessly in one self-feeding, self-affirming orgy of links, as though that constitutes proof."

Ooh, I love it when they get nasty!

The above quote is from Glenn Greenwald, who waxes verbose at just about anything.

The topic at hand is the "Jamil Hussein case". Capt. Jamil Hussein of the Iraqi police force was the named source for a large number of AP reports. US bloggers like Michelle Malkin and especially Patterico began to be suspicious of the veracity of the AP's source, and upon enquiry got the response from both the Iraqi Government and the Coalition authorities that they had no record of such a man's existence within the ranks of the Iraq police in Baghdad- a response that was later rescinded on the Iraqi Government's part.

You would indeed expect that a Captain in the Iraqi Police would be known to the authorities, but the key issue was not his existence- that was just the shocked afterthought, that maybe the source was somehow fabricated. The main concern was the truth of the reports he was giving. Michelle Malkin has confirmed the validity of that concern while in Iraq recently.

Greenwald and friends get in a lather over the acceptance of the Iraqi government's word over the non-existence in the Iraqi police of the AP's source. Which rather begs the question as to why they are accepting it now.

Of course they think it shows the authoritarianism of the right that they would accept the Iraqi Government's initial word. Au contraire, amis, it shows that the right doesn't discount the authorities when it suits them, and accept them when they please- unlike the left. The left loves authority when it's their sort. Other sorts, not so much.

There has never, to my satisfaction, been an analysis (let alone a good one) demonstrated by the MSM of their approach to on-the-ground sources in Iraq (and elsewhere in sensitive regions)- a hugely complicated scenario where everyone may have political purposes. Being a partial war zone, the other means of action (war taken as being politics by other means) is political; and both are rife in Iraq. Yet the MSM wants us to gaily take its word for it time and again without regard to the political context, where we know "insurgents" and "police officers" can be sometimes interchangeable. There is no sense in trusting everything a potentially incompetent Iraqi Govt or partially sighted coalition says- there is equally no sense in believing even the ordinary Iraqi in the street as being without political motivation, let alone the sort who in a sense risks his life providing information.

For a man like Jamil Hussein, there has to be something in it for him, and there have to be ways he is retaining his security while providing a news feed to the West. How does that work- not by adopting a pseudonym, apparently. Then how? How? How?

Questioning minds (and creative ones), of which there are many on the right, would like to know.

World as Stage

My previous two posts were a nod to the Czech political reality- which probably you knew very little about. Sorry for the irrelevance, but I actually think it should be relevant. After all, if Europe can't raise a mite of interest in the futures of 10 million of its inhabitants, what counts for anything? Big Brother and Jade's little outbursts?

Mark Steyn has a brilliant article in today's Chicago Times asking questions of the parochialism of US politics.

His main target is the Barak Obama love-in in the US media.

But, if the US is displaying a strong tendency to prefer talking about Iowa over Iraq, for instance, this at least has some apparent self-interest going for it.

However, quite rightly and incisively he speculates, amidst all this all-America dramatizing : "Whether the rest of the planet will be content with a non-speaking part".

And one just says, "quite".

I'm led to reflect on the fact that the world's most incisive columnist is a theatre critic. If we never go beyond the theatre concept in our understanding of the world we will be in trouble. This is no criticism of Steyn- he always points beyond the theatre but few are interested to follow his gaze.

It's what happens stage right that should concern, and the European media is not just parochial- if only- it's balkanised to a point where it cannot interest itself in its neighbours sharing its own interests.

Failure to support (maybe even school), for instance, the emerging Eastern democracies is a factor in their low birth rates (nb. the exception of Albania being above replacement level) which cannot be excused by conventional explanations of civilisational maturity etc. Eastern Europe has lowest low birth rates which endanger its emergence as a set of allies for a european future.

Here of course the EU is far more hindrance than help, entrenching outmoded social systems above economic necessity.

Failure to make due note of Imadinnerjacket's foray into South America, and Chavez's declaration of self-rule, and the trend towards formalising axes of evil, could lead to some pretty painful twists in the plot, rather than Shakespearian comedy.

And these are just two of the unfolding dramas that either never reach the limelight or only in the form of rough comedy for the lower orders.

Maybe Ahmadinejad will meet his Waterloo at home, but maybe that's not the fundamental drama anyway on the part of Iran.

Ah well,

The Czech Republic finally has a Government confirmed, and few in the media care. There is of course not much enthusiasm in the MSM for a right of centre Government (yet bizarrely they all- BBC, VOA- produced articles when the leftists said they would not help form a government just a few days ago), but I'd have thought that finally having a certified "Government" after having seven months without one would be reason for the BBC to make at least one measly report. But no; in that they're following the pathetically hip and idiotic Prague Post who are mainly concerned about what the public think about Prime Minister Toplanek's affair with a colleague or whether he got the TV coverage he wanted.

The Government, now confirmed, probably won't be functional- but that would be news, and pave the way for another election once it falls apart. One would hope.

A Big Day

... for the Czech Republic (for the time being chez moi) as they might get a government for the first time in seven months since their elections. A good flavour of the nature of the CR politics can be got here from a small quote on the prospect of two MPs acting decisively:

"CSSD president Jiri Paroubek announced expulsion from the party procedures would be launched against Pohanka and Melcak as well as charges on suspicion on bribery.

Topolanek has praised the two parliamentarians as 'constructive.' He rejected the CSSD's charges of corruption and said Pohanka and Melcak had achieved changes in the coalition's tax and health policies"

CSSD are the leftists. Toplanek the rightist Prime Minister (since a few months ago). Paroubeck the fat controller former PM, and the two men mentioned apparently plan to leave the voting room and their CSSD party to break the 100-100 deadlock and allow democracy to allow democracy to get on with things again.

Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston are back from Iraq (what? You didn't know they were away? or "who are they?"), and Bryan has some fascinating observations to make about Iraq on the ground.

"Calling Iraq a “civil war” misunderstands the nature of Iraq and the term “civil war.” Most of Iraq’s warring parties don’t have any chance at taking over the entire country and don’t seem interested in doing so. Most of them are reacting to the vaccuum of power since the iron grip of Saddam slipped off the country. Most of them are reacting to threats they perceive are either coming from the presence of foreign troops, or from the presence of Wahhabi-influence terrorists (al Qaeda) or from fellow Iraqis who belong to the other major sect of Islam, or from Iran. Most militia fighters would probably lay down their weapons if the overall environment improved, and by that I mean improvements in the basics: the economy and education as well as the security environment."

The Trouble with posting about good news (see below tentative post) is that with it comes a sense that one has to report bad news too.

HotAir carries a pretty good round up of rather bad news from Iraq (not difficult to compile thanks to the tendresse of the MSM), beginning with the shocking and evil bombing of the university today in Baghdad.

Iraq- better than you thought.

Or at least that would be the conclusion to make based on this interesting article from a senior British officer there.

So far in January the casualty rate among coalition soldiers has been low (about 1 death per day), and the civilian rate seems to have gone down too.

Somalia Update

It appears that Eritrea has been strongly supporting- with ground troops- what was presented by the BBC as being plucky little Islamic Courts Somalia. The secular government just wasn't wanted we were informed. No special reason, except for an Islamic government who made the trains run on time, so to speak.

2000 Eritrean troops deployed in various places and fought alongside the Islamic Courts, who have now thankfully been dumped out of their last major stronghold. That news comes via a leaked UN report. The Eritreans had been there since August 06, apparently.

The BBC, I note, have not produced a report on that but have slipped a new line into their profile of who supports whom. So they know what they're doing then. Strange how none of their wonderful on the ground journalists deigned to notice it.

The slowly slowly slowly approach to good US news.

Being captivated by a Las Vegas Porn show the BBC appears not to have noticed that the US Federal deficit has fallen to its lowest level in four years. No hurry Beeb, only a few hundred outlets scooped you.

The BBC is comfortable with the idea of hard spending porn-guzzling ham-burger consuming deficit running vehically challenged Bush Americans- a streamlined US economy boosted by tax cuts, not so much.

Beating Insurgencies

Ok, it's just a guess, of course, but I'm of the opinion one of my favourite moments from a favourite film might help, certainly in Iraq.

The film in question is Silverado, one of the great westerns from a time when westerns were going through their bleakest out of season period (they aren't exactly "in" now).

The big hero, Emmett, played by Kevin Kline, dives into the hideout of some ne'r do wells who've robbed some fetching young settlers, and his cover is provided by just a couple of friends shooting frantically trying to appear like some big posse who Emmett claims are pursuing him. The aim is to distract the bad guys long enough for Emmett to sneak the money box away. They succeed.

Emmett retrieves the booty, but not before he's rumbled. Short but immortal lines:

"BAXTER
  (indicating Emmett)
 Brave man.

   DAWSON
 I think there's only a couple of
 guys up there and this asshole's one
 of them."

It's a great moment, full of irony.

I only say this because I was inspired to think about it by this very realistic, if overly pessimistic, Slate article from Robert Kaplan on the Bush surge and his clever new general. My response is that we should remember what chaos a few assholes can create, trying to appear a big posse. And be clear who the good guys are on this occasion.

"As I always say, there is no “stability”. We thought we’d “contained” Soviet Communism. Instead, the social pathologies that took hold during the Russian people’s half-century of “containment” will have profound consequences for us and the rest of the world long after the last Commie is dead and buried".

- Mark Steyn. Rest of article found here.

Over Christmas I read America Alone. I don't think any writer has made me sit up in my chair more, ever. It may explain the deeper reason why I was thinking along the lines I wrote about in my last post, largely about the fall of communism. The People's Tragedy is another book I've read- that one specifically about Russia- and its title is adequate to its subject.

Contrary to many people's imagination, there is nothing crackpot about Mark Steyn's reasoning.

"The Toronto Star (which is Canada’s biggest-selling newspaper and impeccably liberal) recently noted that by 2015 Muslims will make up a majority of Russia’s army."

The great Melanie Phillips is back in action

I was always going to link to it and then I was stung into action by the Instapundit.

The fight in Washington with the army top brass has not just been over whether more or fewer troops are needed in Iraq. It’s also been over a major difference in strategic perception. In order to win in Iraq, it is essential to defeat Iran. This is for the blindingly obvious reason that the principal instigator of the war in Iraq is… Iran. I have never understood how anyone could think that you can win a war by refusing to fight the aggressors and instead running around trying vainly to put out the fires they are starting. As I said last month here and on many other occasions, the coalition cannot secure Iraq without first defeating Iran.

It triggers in me one of those occasions for updating the evolving philosophy of Ed.

Here goes...

The history of the 20th century was of course dominated by the rise and fall of communism. Even events such as the rise of Hitler and the eclipse of the Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Khomenei can be neatly seen as reactions to the rise and fall respectively of Soviet communism.

With the final collapse of Communism in 1989 came a kind of phony peace, where threats were evolving more quickly from their relatively unevolved forms once the settlement of the world order was freer and the USA refrained from asserting its authority. Events such as those transpiring in Rwanda, Somalia, and Bosnia were unusual in that they weren't fallout from some intractable international stasis owing to disagreements among powers, but rather the result of local factions struggling to assert themselves when no great power was really interested.

The lack of colonial policing in a world used to it has resulted in the evolution of threat into philosophy, into religion, and back into more violent threat once more.

The US, partially in Afghanistan, and wholly in Iraq, strode boldly back into the field of disorder. As Melanie points out, colonial policing is not a linear game: you attack one party partly to get to others or to achieve wider objectives. The question is, do the Americans understand that Iraq is the route to Iran? It's only geography, after all.

A cynicism I can endorse

Earlier I mentioned the Jamil Hussein case. It's been running and running. And now it's stopped.

Helen Szamuely has the necessary response.

I wonder if it's true...

That Ayatollah ali Khamenei is dead.

If so Pajamas Media scooped the BBC. If not, I'll update this post referring to the unreliability of rumours.

....

Update: As PM have updated their post, it's time I did too. The Ayatollah is clearly not a well man, and god speed him on his way, but he appears to remain in the land of the living. Rumours, eh?

SomaliaTheModel?

I have to confess I have been surprised by the rapid success of the Ethiopian army in routing the Islamic Courts movement and installing the Somalian transitional government- which was assembled long ago through negotiation in Nairobi. This process had seemed a lame duck, but the Ethiopians, and the Somali Govt. in waiting, it would seem, had a plan.

Not as surprised as some though, apparently. This comprehensive report from Pajamas Media describes how " an American military intelligence officer told Pajamas Media that the ICU “will overrun Baidoa,” where the transitional government has been headquartered, and that the only question was when Baidoa would fall. "

So much for the Americans being the secret mover behind Ethiopian action. Or maybe looking silly is part of their cunning secret scheme.

Anyway, it's obviously not all over, but things look promising, as the report points out as it lists the reasons for the success to date.

Although the !United Nations! warns that “the ICU is fully capable of turning Somalia into what is currently an Iraq-type scenario, replete with roadside and suicide bombers, assassinations and other forms of terrorist and insurgent-type activities” , it seems unlikely in the light of recent events that the Ethiopians and the Somali transitional Government will be soft enough to let them.

Hopefully we can watch and learn the lesson. Stand up, stay strong, and watch them run.

David Vance brings the latest on Somalia (heh heh):

"Once again we see that the mighty forces of militant Islam are little more than girly-men when it comes to real fighting. Sure, they know how to decapitate a defenceless woman, or cut the throat of a helpless Air Stewardess, or detonate themselves at a Wedding Party - but when it comes to standing toe to toe with an opponent, they scarper. What cowards they are. "

Happy New Year, Jihadis!

Somalia update

Douglas Farah:


"Yesterday Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the ICU leader most closely identified with al Qaeda and bin Laden, said Somalia was now at war with Ethiopia and that “All Somalis should now take part is [sic] this struggle against Ethiopia.” The statement came the day after an EU envoy happily proclaimed that both sides had agreed to negotiate an end to the hostilities and that peace was at hand. Someone must be living in an alternate universe where pledges made by radicals with a history of duplicity are viewed binding."

Ah, the EU- ever the partner for (ap)peace(ment).

This is brilliant. Scrappleface has the 'translation' of the latest Ayman Al Zawahiri tape. I hope it really gets up his nose. Kind of a Christmas message. (via LGF)

...

which goes rather well placed alongside Ammedinejad's latest pronouncements. WWJD?

Winning in Iraq? Follow the money. (via Instapundit)

And so,

Making the best of my new format, comes the pleasurable task of replenishing it with links. There were a great many blogs which I have grown to know and like which were not included in my previous format. It's now easier to load them onto my blog, so expect quite a flurry of them.

One of those going in shortly will be Hugh Hewitt's blog. Always interesting, occasionally inspirational.

Today Hugh has a big spread up about Somalia and Ethiopia. This region of Africa has been of special interest to me for a long time; I lived in Kenya for half a year and met a number of Somalians and Ethiopians while there. My interest, or, perhaps more accurately, deep affection, has never left. Now, it looks as though a conflict is brewing. Rather, it looks like the Islamists are going to pick their fight.

I have just a few thoughts about this myself. One is that if Somalia and Ethiopia fight, Eritrea will treat it as a proxy war, a continuation of their long enmity with their western neighbours. Another is that Sudan will use the cover of another regional conflict to make yet more inroads into their western neighbour, Chad. A third is that Somalia will receive support from the Arabian peninsular. Is there a pattern emerging here? An expansionism from East to West? Yes, there is, or there will be.

The war that Sheik Aweys- the long-time Al-Qaeda associate and veteran of Somali tribal warfare who is now at the heart of the Islamic Courts movement- is trumpeting for is a war that has been going on through the ages, where the Christian "lion of Africa", Ethiopia, stood stubbornly in the way of the spread of Islam.

Nowadays, though, Ethiopia is getting on for 50 percent Muslim. It doesn't take a genius to see what the Islamists have in mind. Toppling Christian-oriented Ethiopia would represent one of those great historic goals of the neo-Caliphist agenda.

The Big Brave Beeb

Nick Robinson attracts a fine flock of sycophants following his question to Bush suggesting that he was "in denial" over Iraq: "Well done Nick! I admire your guts" etc

Obviously I'm too detached from the journalistic world to realise how 'brave' a question this was.

It is true that Bush floundered but, far from being floored by the originality of the question, perhaps it was simply his incredulity at being asked the same question in different forms again, and again, and again?

All this talk about detailed plans for Iraq and all the Beeb can manage is "are you quite sane, Mr Bush?"

Richard Sambrook, it seems, found this an electric moment.

What I find is, first, that Bush's view of Iraq is still limited in its detailed feel for how to proceed, but that, secondly and most importantly, the media has absolutely no desire to point out where the confusions may lie and what their solutions might be. The BBC and fellow-travellers have no interest even in minimising US loss of life through highlighting what the sources of disorder in Iraq might be- militias, Al Sadrs, Iran and Syria- in all their gruesome detail, and how they might be dealt with. Instead, they want a humiliated president and a USA with as bloody a bloody nose as possible.

So, I logged in to Blogger and...

They asked me if I wanted to upgrade to BetaBlogger. Being a little bored I thought, "why not?", and before I knew it sweeping changes had unfolded. I apologise to commenters as Haloscan seems to have been swept away in the general tsunami of change. I will see what can be done about that. But not now. Now, as was the Almighty on the seventh day, or as one might have thought he was, I am tired. So I shall rest.

In the meantime, take a look at this terrific Hotair video from Robert Spencer on Blair's slinking retreat from multicultiism. Stirring stuff for a Brit, I'd say, and a rare degree of insight from across the Atlantic. But then that Robert Spencer is quite a remarkable man all round.

"we may hope that [Britain] will re-emerge not just as Blair's geographical location for anything at all and nothing in particular" indeed.

Apologies for my absence.

I've been making a lot of arrangements for a project I have at the moment.

Meantime, Melanie Phillips is spot on in her analysis of the ISG report and aftermath:

"Bush is now surrounded by vultures sharpening their murderous claws. Does he have the inner resources to rise above them? To do so, he would have to not merely acknowledge the strategic errors he has made but transform the way he has run his office. This is a President who, until now, has operated through consensus. He has required his administration to present him not with a series of alternative options but with a settled view to which they all agree. This has been nothing short of disastrous, since his administration has been constantly at war within itself, with the State Department, Defence, the CIA, the generals in the field and sub-groups within those groups and others all fighting each other. Bush’s failure to choose between these warring perspectives and instead to operate on the basis of a ‘consensus’ which amounts merely to the lowest common denominator is in itself a major cause of the difficulties in Iraq."

Kofi's lingering goodbye.

Iraq the Model pronounces:

"Isn't it a shame that the secretary general of the UN is whining about he wasn't able to save a murderous dictator?"

Well, yes.

Hot Air today confronts the Jamil Hussein saga mentioned in one of the Sunday posts below. Mrs Malkin's in storming form and reminds me so much of my idealised notion of a female gym teacher. Come on people- especially you, MSM, at the back-, keep up!

Borat versus Bond.

I went to the movies this weekend. Borat won my attention. I have to say I agree with this site on the latest Bond. Daniel Craig is the kind of Bond everyone's dad can be set alongside without embarrassment.

Setting his self interest to one side for a moment, I have to say that James Murdoch is spot-on.

"From the very start UK broadcasting regulation was skewed," Murdoch said.

"Not to protect people against real harm, but to ensure that broadcasting was a sort of moral and educative crusade.

"There is a tougher but truer description for this approach. It was and is authoritarian."

crooked materials ii

One reason why the MSM is so jittery about the blogosphere is that they themselves are so politicised.

I read with great interest the response of Associated Press editor Kathleen Carroll to recent accusations concerning her company's use of a supposed Iraqi "Captain Jamil Hussein" as a source for lurid stories of violence in Iraq- a man of whom the Iraqi Government say they have no record, and whose stories they have disputed:

"Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.", she said.

Yet the very point of quoting the source's supposed status is to demonstrate the authority of the report.

Two justifications spring to mind:

Stories can be fake but true, if you know what I mean.

The authority lie is a creative ruse to make the truth emerge without risking life and limb.

Blogfather Glenn Reynolds endorsed the theory that Jamil Hussein might be a former Baathist police officer who had never returned to work officially.

Certainly indications are that his stories are not corroborated by other sources.

In the dance for political position- unable and unwilling to trust the authorities, unwilling to ask them real questions (mainly because real questions might involve an assumption that their job is worthwhile), needing to keep them keen by showing independence, maintaining professional pride by enforcing relativism, showing solidarity with imagined grassroots in Iraq, perhaps even staying safe, one thing seems to be forgotten: facts.

Without facts any discourse will tend to become shrill, and if the bloggers get frequently crooked materials they will tend to be a bit angry, and they should be- never mind the lying two-faced mentally enfeebled pols!

Jules Crittenden wrote a good article about the AP. Flopping Aces broke the story about the stories.

crooked materials

Just recently there has been a bit of a blitz against blogs. Among others, Matthew Taylor, that Right On policy geek from Tony Blair's Government, has been having his say, characterising as "hostile" and "shrill" internet "discourse".

Meanwhile the Press Complaints Commission, in association with Alistair Campbell, has been calling for a voluntary "blogger's code" to mirror one applying to journalists.

Is it a coincidence that this comes as opposition to Tony Blair's Government, and invigorated Right or libertarian thought, seems to have amassed with quite some rapidity on the net? Or that the web is increasingly festooned with video reportage, some of which with the flavour of party political broadcasts?

The pace of progress makes it look as though the internet may be a factor in the next general election. Why isn't Labour mobilising on the internet?

Well, it is, but real Labour on the internet just takes the form of the hip and happening BBC. Quietly, and not so quietly, the BBC has been laying the foundations for future internet dominance. Quietly, as in the case of Richard Sambrook, less quietly in the case of the BBC editors' blog.

However, when Richard Sambrook is taking the lead you know that the BBC is serious.

On, and on, Hating Bush

Either they're mad or I am.

This last week wheresoever I've surfed, I've been confronted with Bush hatred. Now we have "the realists" on the Right taking free pot shots at Bush, which is actually more stomach churning than the Left doing so (which is saying something, as I'll demonstrate). The realists hail from the Bush I era, and now that one of their own is replacing Rumsfeld at Defence, they are of course (of course?) kicking up hell by calling Bush the "Worst President EEEver". They've obviously felt outflanked by the Left on this point, and are seeking to make up lost ground.

Anyway, exhibit A: this piece of drivel from yet another great-man-I've-never-heard-of called Jeffrey Hart.

Hart is, believe it or not, a senior editor of NRO, where he seems to offer expertise in tacky Christmas poetry and snobby insights into higher education , making him ideally placed to comment on matters of global moment.

He concludes his screed:

"Supply-side ideology led to large tax cuts and mountainous deficits. Privatization ideology led to an incomprehensible and unnecessarily expensive prescription-drug plan. No previous administration has produced such an outpouring. Is Bush a conservative? Of course not. When all the evidence is in, I think historians will agree with Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who wrote a carefully argued article judging Bush to have been the worst president in American history. The problem is that he is generally called a conservative, perhaps because he obviously is not a liberal. It may be that Bush, in the magnitude of his failure, defies conventional categories. But the word “conservative” deserves to be rescued. Against the misconception that Bush is a conservative, and appealing to Burke, all of our analytical energies must be brought to bear. I hope I have made a beginning here"

Now, as a child of Thatcher (metaphorically, and concerning my earliest memories of British national life), I would have to say that privatisation and tax cuts are precisely elements that have defined conservatism for me. They may not always be managed well, but they are inherently good because they bring the responsibility and thus the power closer and closer to where they belong- with the individual.

Our Jeffrey seems to disagree.

Also certain to disagree with that, another and more familiar brand of Bush hater- the deranged aging "entertainment" lefty. Tony Hendra was nearly a Monty Python, and it shows. The brahmins of British comedy haven't an ounce of common sense to recommend them. It's been one of those dirty little shibboleths of British society that you have to "love" the Pythons. Personally I find them mildly amusing in a juvenile sort of way. But anyway, take a look at how that generation has matured:

"I give thanks O Lord that we're getting to kick The Lame Duck when he's down. Thank you too Lord for making impeachment unfeasible so's we get to kick him and kick him and kick him, have him to kick around for two more long years, kick him so bad his stupid quacking beak comes out his own greasy-feathered DA."

Unfortunately Hendra is not jester. Just a fool.

Convergence

As the BBC heralds the restoration of ties between Iraq and Syria, Christopher Hitchens discusses the reemergence of foreign policy realism in the US.

Quietly ensconcing themselves in the seats of power, meanwhile, are the Democrats.

Apologies for the sparse posting of late. I've been doing rather a lot of thinking instead, as well as being busy in the real world. Then I put together a couple of posts and they got mangled through the blogger composition box. Excuses, excuses.

Anyway, Mark Steyn once again rather eerily illuminates a corner of my thinking. I'm of the relatively simple opinion that we wouldn't be in the slough of despond over Iraq- partly a consequence of being faced with a party in the US hostile to the US-led action there- if we had been tougher with people such as Muqtada al Sadr.


Says Steyn:

"Meanwhile, from the War Party's point of view, the Bush Doctrine is beginning to accumulate way too many opt-outs. For example, a couple of weeks back, U.S. forces in Baghdad captured a death squad commander of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army only to be forced to release him on the orders of the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. When I had the honor of discussing the war with the president recently, he was at pains to emphasize that Iraq was "sovereign." That may be. But, at a time when a gazillion free-lance militias are running around the joint ignoring the sovereign government, it seems a mite pedantic to insist that the sole militia in the country that has to obey every last memo from Prime Minister Maliki is the U.S. armed forces. Muqtada al-Sadr is an emblem not of democracy's flowering but of the arid soil in which it's expected to grow. America would have been better off capturing and executing him two years ago."

There is a simple lack of balance in the US/UK approach there, one which the UK bears a lot of responsibility for. Having deposed the Sunnis chief hero in Iraq, Saddam, and having killed his successors, what we needed was to prove that we would not tolerate extremism from any quarter, where extremism means intimidation and despotism. That would have meant at a minimum taking out Al-Sadr, but probably also quite a number of his henchmen and sundry other Shia mini-demagogues.

Sad to say it, but the British softly-softly approach emanating from Basra has emboldened anti-democratic forces, and enshrined radical political influence at the political heights of government.

I remember that one of the most balanced voices in the early part of the Iraq invasion, Zeyad, the Sunni invasion sympathiser, recommended that Al-Sadr be dealt with. Fair's fair- he should have been.


Zeyad's latest post links to this in depth account of how tyrannical elements of the Shia have come to dominate, accounting for the violence quite absurdly characterised by the BBC journalist Hugh Sykes here.

I blinked. I rubbed my eyes.


I was looking at a BBC report which showed the level of unemployment in the UK rising to 1.7 million. Rather high, I thought, since I remember when it was tipping 1 million not so long ago. And then I looked at the percentages nationwide. The rate for London was HIGHER than for any other part of the UK, at 8 percent. I've never seen that before; the only explanation I can think of is something immigration related. If so, then it shows just how radical are the changes in demographics in the UK since already very high levels of immigration were combined with the EU open doors policy. Come to think of it, I was talking to a Czech guy tonight: professional, settled, yet considering getting a job in the UK... just because.

I don't know if this figure of 8% in London does relate to a jobs market flooded by (im)migrants, but it could. I'd like to know.

nb. I should point to this from the BBC as exhibit A:

"However, the rise in the UK population led to the number of people actually in work increasing by 56,000 over the quarter to 28.9 million."

Also, I noticed a classic tell-tale sign of a Government on the run. Says the Gvt. spokesman:

"The Bank of England should take care not to undermine the government's strong record on job creation."

Heh.

Helen Szamuely has a great post reacting to the US election result at EURef here.

I had a phone message today from a liberal friend asking innocently what I thought of the US election result. I said very simply in eight words -with a :-)- that I thought the Republicans got what they deserved- believing as I do in the democratic process and that Republicans have failed to show the necessary leadership.

On the other hand, I don't for a minute trust the Democrats. Why? Because there is a reason why the Republicans behaved so badly, and that is to compensate themselves for having to face daily a Democrat party that always knows better but is never good enough in a reasonable discourse to suggest in what way that might be (we know they want to quit Iraq but still can't say so publicly except by insinuation), which posits spurious friends and talks down actual enemies. It's that deliberate lack of seriousness that has undermined the whole integrity of US politics. It's been one long fillibuster, and its effectiveness in lulling the Right has been taken as evidence of political know-how. In the sense that the political vacuum has made idle hands of Republicans, the Devil has made use of them. And the judgement is just.

In the wake of the US election (yes, I do mean wake), we are moved to ask the big questions, such as "Can Borat Save Western Civilization?"

Well, no. But still.

And actually (a few minutes post posting here), according to the BBC Borat "has a series of real life encounters with unsuspecting Americans in which he makes the most outrageous, sexist, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic comments."

So maybe. (of course, the best joke, in the best tradition of jokes, at least concerning the anti-Semitic part, is that the comedian is Jewish- I think Aunty meant to say anti-Jewish. Bless.)

And lo, the blind have seen, and the US has voted Democrat.

(coincidentally co-front page stories at BBC views news online)

I don't know about the US population, but I certainly feel galvanised.

Steering the Scylla and Charibdis

Orson Scott Card has a brilliant essay at The Ornery American; some of the best, simplest explanations of why, in accordance with my views as it happens, G W Bush stands out as a wise and just leader for the times we live in.

Here online there is a vast amount of information available about US politics; it's all up front and out there. I was quite taken with the Ornery statements of values. A country whose interpretation of the ordinary is as a stand alone free thinker is quite mesmerising.

Scott-Card was the co-author of a fine novel I read when a young teen: the Abyss, which was, unusually, a fine novel based on a film (though the film was unreleased at the time of publishing). It was quite gritty and real from my point of view then, and unusual too in its concern for characterisation in a Sci Fi genre. He seemed to have a certain integrity; he still does.

I love the way he defends the "War on Terror" terminology used by Bush:

"it is precisely those people -- the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) -- whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies."

He applauds the deliberate vagueness of the term.

I personally think a "War on Islamofascism" would be as good, if not better, but then that is one of the formulations Bush himself has recently used.

I also love his analysis of the Bush strategy for the Middle East. This idea of confronting your enemies at a time and place of your choosing. Of carefully selecting which ones to pick off and which to play against each other. He points out that the right decisions have already been made. It is a bold essay, whose botom line is terrifyingly simple:

"It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon."

Wow. Like standing on the dotted line in a motorway full of careering traffic.

Speaking of funny...

We don't need any film comedies when we've got John Kerry. I believe in the adage that "it's funny because it's true". When I laugh at John Kerry, it's not because he says what's true, but because he's truly as stupid as he seems. Hilarious; and even though it's deadly serious, I had to laugh on reading Victor Davis Hanson's list of problems with the Boston Brahmin.

Beeb Leads Sense of Humour Rebellion

Someone on some blog mentioned Borat- you know, cultural learnings from the USA- and I couldn't resist Googling to find out what the reviewers were saying.

The first review I came across was the BBC's, and a more facile, humourless take-down of a comedy film would be hard to imagine. The so called writer tries to imitate the Borat style, and indicates by his feeble effort the reverse of his criticism that Borat's comedy is cheap: "not hard joke to do, as we proves"- not.

Then I went, as is my wont, to the Rotten Tomatoes website, and found that Borat got a 91% rating from the rest of the reviews. That's some very fresh tomatoes. The consensus was "offensive in the funniest possible way".

I also noted the company the BBC were keeping. There was the classic comment that "It's a sad state of our own nation that people still find sexist and racist humour so amusing" review here

It's adorable, isn't it? Society just hasn't evolved enough, we still laugh at basic things like the human condition. Not the BBC though.

This morning, by the way, I was talking to an artist. Yes, it happens. In the course of her conversation she was telling me about her art. Photographs, taken in specific locations, superimposed one upon the other to create an otherworldy take on our own world. It would be easy to make a mess, but her compositions were beautiful because so cleverly balanced and ordered to destabilise and harmonise simultaneously. It looked easy but it certainly wasn't.

BTW, reviews of the BBC review granted our brave BBC boy a whole 13% rating, with choice comments including "that review sounded like it was written by a ten year old."

?















Colonial rights and wrongs.

EURef recently reported on the latest in the attempts of Rwanda to come to terms with the genocide which took place over a decade ago, by blaming France.

Well, that could be all it is, but this report indicates some telling actions on the part of French troops, including how "French forces lured Tutsis from hideouts in the hills to village centers where they were killed."

That detail comes right at the end of the article, and one senses that, where the media have covered the latest allegations, scepticism has been built in to the reporting. The BBC's article, for example, takes a long time before moving to specifics.

What is not in doubt is that France trained the Hutu military which was active in the slaughter, up to the time of the slaughter (after it there was no need).

Beyond that, the problem is that there are strong political motives to blame France, exemplified here, and there is a history of false claims against (fmr) colonial powers such as this one where the Brits were accused of mass rape of Kenyan women.

The unequal battle and sometime absurdity of African claims against (fmr) colonial powers is comically evident in the understated BBC presentation:

"A forensic examination of police records in Kenya has concluded that all known reports of alleged rape by British army soldiers are forgeries.

This is a major development in the rape cases"

Er, what rape cases?

Still, despite this there is a moral responsibility I would like to highlight, and by that standard the French are well and truly guilty. The moral standards in Africa may be terribly schizophrenic, but if a sane person, for the sake of retaining and enhancing their status in society, facilitated and encouraged a temporarily insane and generally unstable person's desire to kill people, wouldn't they actually be morally guiltier than the mental person?

It may sound like a thin argument, but in the absence of reliable evidence there is much sense in saying that France was responsible for the genocide, an event of remarkable superfluity in Africa's grim trajectory.

The great film Hotel Rwanda begins with a radio broadcast indicating President Clinton's preoccupation with Bosnia, and later another broadcast describes the refusal of the State department to define events as "genocide"- a definition upon which intervention was contingent.

But the part which struck me most was the part where hero of the story, Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, calls his Sabena company boss in Belgium as a last throw of the dice when facing Hutu troops bent on emptying his hotel of its Tutsi refugees. The exchange went thus:

Sabena boss: "Who can I call to stop this?"

Rusesabagina: "The French, they supply the Hutu army".

Sabena boss: "I'll call you right back"

The Sabena boss (the film explains) contacts the French President's office. The hotel was spared. QED.

Heavy handed film maker's moralising for the audience, or a summary of action that took place?

The film is accurate and precise about British and US actions at the time, as well as UN and Belgian actions. I wouldn't bet against it over the French involvement. I never bought the army rape allegations from Kenya, though. Some things chime with their contexts, and the French involvemnt in Rwandan genocide is one of them. When you look at their behaviour in the Ivory Coast, a pattern of callousness seems to emerge quite alien from the British amnesia which tends to be our predominant vice.

Well, what d'you know? Sudan's about to annex Chad.

Despite media moral equivalence between Sudanese rebels and Sudan's military/militias, and despite moral equivalence between Sudan and Chad
- countries of wildly differing military strength- it was always blatantly obvious who the regional power was, and how aggressive (scroll half way down) were its intents.

We will live to regret not being tougher on Sudan. In the modern context occupation of territory is key (think how difficult it is for the US in Iraq when they occupy only dots on a map, or Israel when they try to take out Hezbullah), and the Islamists are getting plenty of that all across North and East Africa.

It's funny but I'm getting this pain in my back right where my White Man's Burden used to be.

Non-random gleanings

By the way, I wonder if any helpful reader would care to provide a working definition of "unsustainable."- Mark Steyn on the 300th million American

"what if the history books of the future are written in Arabic or Farsi? 2000 years ago they were in Latin"- a commenter on Mark Steyn's doomsday scenario for Europe and elsewhere, reviewed here.

"You start assembling a list of names...you deepen the roots...it radiates out... eventually you try to reach as much of the universe as you can"- Lawrence Wright describing his authorship of The Looming Tower, the story of Al Qaeda's rise to lethality. Pajamas interview here (audio). New Yorker interview (text) here.

ps. for those concerned, I haven't given up pointing out BBC bias; they're pointing it out themselves right enough. Just recharging the batteries on that front.

Oh Dear.

I watched the whole of the video available of Paul Belien's interview with Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, and the cumulative effect was quite terrible. Belien is the founder of the website The Brussels Journal, and a man who feels acutely the times he lives in.

As often a statistic he mentioned stood out and rammed the message home. When talking about muslim violence in Paris he said that it should be a matter for the French army. Then he stated that the French army is already 15% muslim, so that would be problematic.

If true, that's a shocking statistic which calls into question all the cosy last resorts scenarios with which people put off making hard decisions about immigration and multiculturalism. If not true, it's a lot closer to being "fake but true" than the majority of faux stories in the MSM. Facts are the most precious commodity in the modern world, but I'd rather this weren't one of them.

The funny thing about this awful logo is the fact that when the accents are reproduced as they are in French and German- with the acute accent and the umlaud- they produce a strangulated sound something like "tuurgethair". In other words it's Frenglisch.

Btw, Richard North has been producing some cracking stuff recently; like this one for instance. Reality can be a bit hard, but like a sharp breeze on a cold morning the lungs can really fill with it. If I hadn't forotten username and password by now I would be commenting :-).

Look too at Michelle Malkin's view of EU ambitions to regulate moving pictures on the internet. I'm not surprised about that, given that progress could just be a little too fast for certain sluggish continental cousins.

Is it just me, or does ramadan seem to come earlier every year? (via Atlas)

Must be my "complete lack of awareness and sensitivity."

Thay should watch Chariots of Fire to get into the spirit of things.

Rushdie on the veil:

"I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women"

Report here (via Oliver Kamm)

It is, of course, more than that, but it certainly is that.

On this last point, just came across Adloyada's post on the subject. She basically opposes the opponents of the veil. The point she misses while she is comparing the veil to all manner of cultural artefacts accepted in the UK already, is the orchestration point I think is most important to what I said below. Islam uses such tools of conformity to enforce the differentiation of themselves and unbelievers. Steyn pointed out today that some non-muslim women adopt the veil when entering especially Muslim areas of Paris just to avoid abuse. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, though the most important conformity they are trying to instill is internal, so as to present a powerful and united front. Think of it as a perpetual mass demonstration against western values and you'll be close to what they have in mind.

The Veil












Bad










Point One

A while back, while I was shifting locations, I stayed for a period with a German girl who needed a housemate temporarily.

Being a friendly sort of person I tried to have a few conversations with her to make the atmosphere more homely. She obviously felt this somehow encroached her "personal space"- or at least it seemed so when she appeared one day with a T-shirt boldly emblazoned with the words "YOU DON'T KNOW ME" on it. Well, she apparently wore it all day so it wasn't exactly a private message, but somehow the message of the clothing got to me in a way that a simple conversation about keeping onesself to onesself never could have. It intrigued me that someone would have purchased clothing with a message so much to the front and centre- but of course many people do that; just not me.

The point of this is that clothing sends messages, and it can be used to intimidate. I didn't particularly have strong feelings either way regarding her, but I certainly redoubled my efforts to find a more permanent location to live- and I imagine she felt reasonably satisfied with that.

I think it's a big mistake to underestimate the political and social significance of dress.

Point Two

Reading this article on the politics of dress in Egypt, I came across this sentence:

"it is very important to note that the state deliberately promotes Western dress over any other form of dress"

Recalling Ahmadinejad's tieless appearance at the UN recently, I found this article talking about an apparent resurgence of the tie in Iran- in 2002, prior to the latest president's reign.

Even then, according to a Government source then "The 1979 Islamic revolution was mostly a cultural revolution. The tie is a symbol of the West and we don't want to be followers of the West. We want to keep our own cultural identity"

It was also said that in the times after the revolution "Any man with a tie risked being condemned as pro-Western and could have faced beatings or detention."

Interesting. I have always associated assigning significance to symbols with primitivism, notwithstanding their political application. I don't regard ties as political; I rather take the Beau Brummel approach to them, since they stylishly create a symmetry in the upper half of a man- women have a pleasing (very) natural symmetry in that regard.














Point Three

If we look at the intended symbolism and purpose behind veiling- both partial and full- there is certainly something going on. That something is the fetishisation of female chastity.

People say that women in Christianity have traditionally covered up- and of course Nuns do so as a mark of a calling. Whether one agrees with that or not, the covering of the head advocated in the Bible is a question of authority, not of chastity. Dressing modestly may be what some Muslim women practise, but the hijab and niqab are about advertising chastity. In societies where such strict standards of clothing apply, equally stringent punishments for unchasteness accompany them. Marc at USS Neverdock flagged up this video of the stoning of women (warning: very disturbing material). Notably, both women stoned are fully clothed from head to toe at the beginning- the clothes are ripped off them by the impact of the stones. Watching it one word was all I could find; otherwise I was speechless. Savages.

Point Four (summary)

Dress has real historical significance, and this has been regulated. From the roundheads to the blackshirts, to the burka, dress has been used to instill uniformity and fear. The use of women in this respect is particularly abhorrent, but in keeping with the politicisation of civilians which seems to underpin all Islamic struggles, or "Jihad" as they are also known.

The hijab and niqab are cultural artefacts which were not intrinsic or of unwavering importance to Islam and have their parallels all over the world. However we live in a globalised society and they are now being imposed as part of a worldwide jihad. The personal choice of women has very little to do with it.

This BBC article is a good example of an inadequate approach to Islamic dress- dealing only with the present, not with historical trends, and analysing only the religious aspects rather than the political level where it really gets interesting. We don't need to know much about the interpretation of Koranic texts- what's far more relevant to us is the political uses of the dress code. It's also noticeable that the attempt to make a distinction between hijab and niqab is a bit strained.

Just now all kinds of symbol are becoming controversial, and pressure builds to have them removed. The latest publicised case is that of Fiona Bruce's cross. I'm generally laissez faire on such things, but when there is a degree of orchestration and a political message behind the clothing symbols, it's appropriate to make an orchestrated response. The hijab might stay (maybe)- if it means wearing a headscarf a la Benazir Bhutto, and here the crucial aspect of personal choice of style of dress is foremost- but not in workplaces unless of a specifically religous character. It would be strange to ban something akin to many traditional European garments, and unworkable. The niqab must go, unequivocally. Pick and mix must always apply to public dress, otherwise totalitarianism can rise up through its medium. Pick and mix sometimes has to be sustained by the intervention of the law, and so it should be in this case.







Better (were she not actually conceding ground to Islamofascists by dressing this way- she actually appeared sometimes without covering at all, but this roused seething from her growing Islamist critics)












Addendum: Marc points out an interesting article on the hijab in Morocco.

Manolo offers the light relief.

Ahh, I think it may be time for a Dennis Boyles season-

"Remember Spitting Image, the British TV show starring insane puppets who looked like caricatures of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan? Nowadays, it’s on BBC-2, where it’s called Newsnight. The funniest puppet by far is the “Jeremy Paxman” one. He looks exactly like a pompous, self-righteous, self-important windbag with fabulous hair. But really the whole crew is hilarious, pretending to do news by speaking loudly and interrupting, when everyone knows it’s that typically British parody stuff, the kind of thing they call “barking mad” because only dogs take it seriously"

Legalism

It's a bit of a plague really; in many ways the UK and other western countries seem more lawless than previously they were. On the other hand we seem more than ever mindful about arbitrary legal requirements.

It would be strange, in this context, not to mention Richard North. After running up against his local constabulary on several occasions, confronting the press over Qanagate, and his fellow bloggers over their shallowness, he seems to have attracted the ire of the Daily telegraph over borrowing from their photo archive. Actually the second point may have some relevance to the latter point, as the Telegraph were thoroughly narked not to say rattled when their Qana coverage came under fire.

On the subject of photos, I recently decided to include some on this blog, for the simple reason that I realised how easy they were to load and had decided a while back that there was no significant reason to spurn them any longer. I had originally imposed a purdah on photos on my blog(s) because I felt that I needed just to write, without the distraction and easy option of photos. This self-imposed discipline seemed reasonable for a while but became defunct a while back- hence I explored the pictorial option.

Now, it would seem, just as I get into the picture biz, the biz is coming under scrutiny.

To me, in a world where the rapine media exists, pictures abound and visual, oral and written communication fuse seamlessly, pictures are ten a'penny and effectively worthless. The Telegraph may huff and puff but they are just fantastically out of touch- every Tom Dick or Harry has a digital camera and the capacity to bring forward pictures without training. This is becoming more and more a reality everywhere, not just in the West. It doesn't even need a digital, either. I was really proud of what I achieved in Kenya with disposables. I have other photos from time spent in Spain, and I aim one day to get out and about in my favourite Prague locations to get some really special ones- all will sooner or later be freely available on the web.

On the other hand such is the legalism of the western mind, pictorial evidence is more and more important to affirm the valdity of any truth claim. Why, for example, did the US DoD see fit to publish this photo of "detainee salad"? (a picture used by Claudia Rosett to illustrate a recent visit to Guantanmo):

When Mark Steyn, another participant in the media Guan'mo junket, mentioned the L-z-boy chairs of interrogational horror of detainees there, I took the opportunity of a link to have a look at some examples. Here is one, much nicer than what I'm sitting on right now:

















Of course this need for pictures is one which the press have long pandered to. I remember the Telegraph introducing colour photos. Think about the glossy magazine approach which prolonged the interest of newspaper readers in the advancing consumerism of the 80's and 90's. Now they have a smorgasbord of photography to offer, and the prevalence of photography is proving difficult for them, since where we are saturated with photographs on the net they are having difficulty at doing something- anything- better than the net.

I have to admit I find the legal wranglings over Guanatanamo difficult to follow- it's not my legal system, for one thing. That's largely unimportant, however, as it would be the same in the British court system. It's interesting that alongside the chicanery of legal principle we find the need to be so pictorial in our approach- think about the immensely visual approach to war crimes, to bombings, to torture. In an age of shifty words we rely more and more on photos. To me they are stimulus, on occasion; best when witty and ironic, when they cast a shade of humour across some reasoned thoughts. I imposed my photo purdah so I wouldn't lose sight of that. It seems the Telegraph lost their reason with their humour- and their readership.

Now wouldn't it be ironic if I had to remove one of these photos- hardly likely to happen, I think.

The Time Machine, again

Claudia Rosett has done us a service and reminded us exactly what was said about Bill Clinton's strike on Afghanistan in August '98.

I couldn't remember because I only know what was being said in Kenya at that time- and they basically felt that Clinton had no moral authority to be lobbing missiles around.

Take time to enter The Time Machine (really, do. The echoes, almost poignant, are uncanny)




All agin' you were they Bill, poor lamb.

the very pick me uppish Drinking from Home seems to have done as I have today and listened to Gordon Brown's speech, lovingly provided by the BBC. Rather more carefully though.

Oh So Good: Mark Steyn on UN-flavoured ice cream. I just had to share.

Religious Disrespect

Well I know infallibility has a specialised meaning, and even then I don't have much time for it, but the BBC's David Willey seems to be getting a somewhat unhealthy kick out of the Pope's current issues.

.
According to said Willey in this BBC article:

"The Pope is eating humble pie before the world."

Which is a slightly odd thing to say when reporting that the Pontiff "did not retract words uttered during his six-day trip to Bavaria as demanded by his Muslim critics"

But to bang a drum for the papists for a moment, isn't Willey being a bit rude, nay, childishly cocky, about the most senior figure in the world's foremost church? Not sure if His Highness St Koffi of Annan would get the same treatment.

And bye the bye, I'd just note that the BBC have changed subtly their representation of that quote. Now it's "he quoted medieval Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologos criticising some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman"."

I think it could be termed nuancing the stable door.

FWIW, I agree with fmr Arch-Bish Carey's view of Benedict's speech, though not the Times' sensationalism. And, would it not be a mark of respect for Christianity for the BBC to report it too? I see nothing about it anywhere on the Beeb.

ps, I also notice this from Melanie Phillips. As always invaluable.

Bryan Preston with a pretty cool take on ignorance of religion at HotAir.

Words with legs.

I mentioned below David Warren's article on the Pope's words and the BBC's misrepresentation of them. The BBC seem to have a sickening game playing out here, as though trying to prove that all without exception must bow the knee before multicultural pieties (transfigured almost without a blink into a monocultural defence of Islam).

Warren's intro alluded to one of the most significant facts about the BBC which makes its coverage preeminently important:

"The BBC appears to have been quickest off the mark, to send around the world in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, and Malay, word that the Pope had insulted the Prophet of Islam, during an address in Bavaria."

It's the license tax, folks, that pays for it.

Oh, but he forgot Somali.

Who knows if it might be connected to events like this- a nun murdered in Somalia?

Two things stand out here: one is the assault on the stature of the Pope. The other is the assault on intellectual freedom whereby a carefully framed quote from an obscure source as part of a highly academic address to groups of academics by a former academic can be rendered a slap in the face of the Islamic street by wilful multiculti journalists dripping ignorance and prejudice in equal measure.

Your Pope Scandal Resources:

Mary Katherine Ham, David Warren, Richard North and the horse's mouth the Pope.

Trash TV.

TV isn't art; cinema tends not to be. (kind of a follow up to my last post, which made me think for the first time in a long time about the value of TV)

Mark Steyn does much better in celebrating the pragmatism of trash tv than Lileks does in defending tv as an artistic medium- "No, I’m not saying “The Sopranos” is Shakespeare. If Shakespeare had written in the Sopranos style, “The Merchant of Venice” would have been different." It's a question of style only, apparently.

Lileks however did make the best video in commemoration of 9/11 that I've seen, so he does know a lot about the visual medium.

The Time Machine

I was fascinated reading the text of this speech from Clive James about international television. I think one can't help but like Clive James, and I think he has a keen, intelligent sense of humour. He was speaking in 1991. In many ways it's a paean to the BBC and its so-called quality programme making.

Recently I was watching some DVDs of old sitcoms, such as Yes Minister and To the Manor Born. Funny, but not so spectacular as I've sometimes fancied them, or been informed they were. As far as I am concerned they are the equal of the best the BBC has had to offer. The formulas show through somewhat, and they don't compare with works of art.

Yet the funniest thing about James's speech is the recent inserts he's made to the text, informing us of how things have changed:

The idea that you can make television only in response to market forces is an idea that not even Rupert Murdoch can render plausible. In fact he can’t really afford to hold it: not for long. Sky Television is up there, but there is almost nothing on it, and the sort of people who watch nothing don’t buy anything, so the enterprise doesn’t even make sense in commercial terms. (Note in 2006: I was, of course, terrifically wrong on that last point, as I had been wrong about the government’s assault on the broadcasting system’s having been even momentarily thwarted. I can forgive myself for failing to predict that the immense volume of exported television from the USA would eventually become remarkable for its quality, also: HBO was as yet in its infancy, and nobody could have guessed that a network like NBC would give a green light to The West Wing.)

Add in the internet and the Hutton report and Clive looks as though his thought had all the depth of a pancake. He's still dead wrong about the Government's "assault on the broadcasting system". As if the Government can be accused of assaulting that which is preserved only by virtue of its maintainance of a compulsory tax.

This little encapsulation of liberal vanity I felt contrasted strongly with the welcome celebration of the New Criterion's 25th birthday. This conservative magazine has been right about so much during that period, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, with eminently sensible artistic commentary throughout, and has had Mark Steyn writing for it for over a decade. Now that's high quality journalism

More Mel- giving the panorama.

The sign post that was 9/11.

Niall Ferguson on the next war of the world.

It's interesting because only now am I beginning to absorb which way that post was signing. It's one thing to instinctively react to an act of war, another completely to weigh the forces of history. Mene mene tekel upharsin.

Also check out the Global Crisis Watch's latest podcast for a first class reality check.

She gave probably about seven minutes to answer Norm's questions for his Normblog profile, but as usual Melanie Phillips' every word is worthwhile.

Adam the American

Our best shot at looking into the mind of Al Qaeda came along about a week ago in the form of an American auto-videoblogger who is regarded by the CIA as a high ranking member of Al qaeda, at the relatively young age of 28. Quite precocious- and to think I'd written off my generation as underachievers. He even had Al Zawahiri as a warm up act.

If you've ever sat through a sermon of around 45 minutes you'll have experienced something like this before. I was going to say it's the most boring thing I'd ever heard, but it isn't- he just lost me a bit when he started to say how you have to balance what the Koran says with other bits of the Koran, and then quoting in Arabic. The early part when he lists the failures of the West while omitting any of the things that have really gone wrong, eg. the holocaust, communism and many related massacres- things mostly only tangental to our responsibilities- is a masterful show of selectivity. Towards the end he starts to make little idiomatic gestures- "you don't have to be a rocket scientist"- and gets a little more personal than at the beginning (you can use the cursor at the bottom of the video to run through some parts and cut to the chase, I think).

My conclusion: he's no dummy, but he is a hectoring little dictator, and I'm glad he's not my dad.

The best thing I read on it, which picked out the central points I missed in my fascination with this personality before me, is here. (via Daniel Pipes)

Not part of my usual beat, but, this is a remarkable and illuminating take on feminism, modern society, and Islam by the extraordinary Fjordman at Brussels Journal.