Revealed: Journalism is a very competitive business. To see who can get away with being laziest.

Wuzzadem has a classic 'journalists proved wrong seeking easy way out (again)' moment. You may not have heard of the latest bogus anti-war Iraq veteran, but the story is very instructive, though it will probably not come as a Shock.

Interesting article from Douglas Murray for the Social Affairs Unit on the departure of Hirsi Ali from Holland. Some interesting observations on the BBC's coverage of the situation, too.

The most worth a click blogger I know.

That would be Tim Blair, whose latest is an extended piece on a curious case of alleged plagiarism which really isn't. The alleged culprit is Mark Steyn, and what adds spice for me is that the article concerned was one of my favourite ones of recent times: Steyn's take-down of the Da Vinci Code. This book's popularity and its now-attendant film have been irritatingly sweeping back and forth across Europe in waves dashed only by a veritable Rorke's Drift of critics. Frankly who cares if the valiant defenders share weapons?

Ali on the telly: a number of good points made to Jon Snow. I guess it was conducted at an earlier stage but I think it illustrates that there has been an organised opposition to her- or at least that has been her awareness. I'm sure she's right about that.

Back to Hirsi Ali, and so on

Alison at Making Headlines has a very interesting post on the topic.

There are lots of things I could say about it. One though is that my scepticism about Europe's future is not a judgement on the moral values of the people: it's simply based on observations about political change, the liveliness of the expression of civilisational values in Europe, and demography. Ultimately there's a moral dimension, but that's not important when one is merely making observations.

That any citizen in Europe is forced into isolation and has to be guarded against minority fanatics is a scandal. Each death threat letter or threatening phone call is a crime. The criminals should be chased and harried and made example of. That's the only way law works; yet if we fail to impose the law the fanatics have an alternative for us, concerning which a recent Dutch Government report suggested the Dutch become less 'spastic': Sharia law.

Back to the Beeb soon.

Crash Course in Blogging Available for free...

Just read about Polly and her commenters (nb. Tim Worstall's contributions especially noteworthy)

The Real Iraq: Amir Taheri reports back for Commentary, and it's not BBC-approved stuff I can assure you. Of the gloom and doom, he says

'It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq.'

And his conclusion:

'Is Iraq a quagmire, a disaster, a failure? Certainly not; none of the above. Of all the adjectives used by skeptics and critics to describe todays Iraq, the only one that has a ring of truth is messy. Yes, the situation in Iraq today is messy. Births always are. Since when is that a reason to declare a baby unworthy of life?'

(trying to make time to post more, but I'm pretty busy)


In the end, too much effort required.

That might not be the right interpretation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's decision to leave Holland, since she has certainly been pursued by the idiot pols (and stoopid media) who govern there. However, as a non-native, why should she fight for a people who not only don't value her, but make her life more difficult and more frightening than it should be?

I was interested in her personal account of her flight from fate. She was forcibly married and taken from her home in Nairobi (she was a Somali refugee at the time it seems- which is one controversy, as she claimed in the immigration forms to have fled direct from Somalia). It was there, some years after she left for Canada and ended up in Holland via Germany, (late nineties) that I met many Somalians and heard how their lives were under threat from Islamism: mainly because they had renounced Islam and adopted Christianity under the influence of their host nation. I also encountered many stories of quite horrendous forced marriages, even among apparently respectable people (and Islam tended to allow for polygamy, as an added twist). Meanwhile there were accounts of armed Somali-Islamist gangs roaming the streets in trucks aiming to track down and kill apostates, and sometimes succeeding.

But isn't it ironic that Ayaan's critics accuse her of lying when in fact it is merely their cultural ignorance that prevents them from seeing that in recording her name as Ali she was just drawing on one of the many names with which her culture had endowed her? The multi-culti society knows little about traditional cultures. I wonder how many immigrants get into and stay in the West due to outright lies rather than artful half-truths? Surely Ali's main crime has been attempting to live truthfully and potently on the back of (at worst, in my view) a few paltry half-truths, rather than skulking and absorbing the benefits of an outright lie. Outright lies the pols can cope with as they're ok with that; as long as the immigrant keeps a low profile, only mugging the odd old lady or raping a young tart or, in the female case, goes on the game herself, that's ok.

Faced with such out-of-touchness and crass double-standards I'd be very willing to agree that Holland will never, by itself and under her influence, 'get it'. She is better casting her bread upon the waters.

Wikipedia's account is bang up to date and worth reading.

Oppose terror in principle and practise: DV sets the Ulster Unonist party straight.

And the link to the below is... this


Is it possible to have an immigration policy that stems abuse while allowing compassionate asylum and sensible population circulation?

I'd say so. I have a list of questions in my mind which I'd like to ask, including whether we prioritise our former colonies (which I should know but don't; I suspect not really any longer, which would be irrational if so), and exactly what questions are asked and what requirements made. Funny how we never really get the chance to find out. It's quite Yes Ministerish when you go to the Home Office site (caution: the "Directorate" loads slowly) and find out just how many amendments are being continually made to the rules. There's no sense of principle, only pettiness. Pretty much off the cuff I'd say that our problem lies in a system relying on the alien principle of 'rules' rather than the kind of evolutionary, flexible principles which make our common law work. I'd say why not allow for a branch of home grown law to grow up on the subject, giving access to courts where something like a CPS for immigrants considered a case uncertain and meriting legal examination? That's probably quite a silly idea but seems appealing to me rather than the bureaucratic morass and opaqueness of the current situation.

The US situation is different to the UK's, but if you're looking for an expert on the situation Michelle Malkin has some definite attributes. And she can vent on the subject, too. Fine rant indeed.

By a kind of serendipity, I read within the space of a half hour both this post about the necessity of being guided by laws rather than ruled by them, and news of calls made for Ayaan Hirsi Ali to be deported from Holland for lying in her asylum application.

The real gravity of nazism comes across loud and clear in this recently discovered BBC broadcast from Belsen in 1945, while today's BBC meanwhile are tracing castles in the air, pursuing mirages, and ignoring reality.


Three dimensions missing from the one dimensioned BBC.

When the BBC report 'Far right ties in Belgian murders' they are misleading readers. Rather than any direct political link what they have to report is only 'family ties'- in other words that the murder's family includes members of the (banned) so-called right-wing party Vlaams Bloc and its legal successor Vlams Belang.

The BBC go on to report how the 18 yr old murderer's father took part in the formation of 'anti-immigration party Vlaams Blok'. What they don't point out is that the fundamental principle of this party is Flemish separatism, and that this party was declared illegal in Belgium (information here). They do manage to report that its successor-party, Vlaams Belang, was successful in elections in 2004 but kept from power by a coalition opposed to it.

Three dimensions are to my mind inappropriate:

1)The focus on family connections. It's unusual in murder cases to drag the family in (certainly pre-trial). It's surely unproven that his family's beliefs bear a direct relation to the occasion of the murders. It's surely offensive that the search for causes precedes the establishment of the legal facts, and more to the point it becomes politically and legally prejudicial.

2)The failure, in the context, to highlight that the murderer's uncle was co-founder of a party (Vlaam's Blok) declared illegal by Belgian courts. The murderer's connections were outlawed before he turned outlaw in his behaviour, it would seem. If we want to go into root causes it might be interesting to examine the consequences of having one's relatives declared criminal by court ruling. The BBC describe instead the 'now defunct' Vlaams Blok party.

3)The tying together of these murders with another recent incident:

'The killings follow an attack last Saturday in the city of Bruges, in which a black Frenchman was left in a coma after being beaten up by a group of skinheads.'

There is almost certainly no organisational link. There may be no ideological link. The murderer with so-called far right ties wasn't very careful in his choice of targets, including a white baby among his victims. Really, who knows if his motive was really racial, despite what he says. Normally we wait for psychological reports. In this case the BBC (and Belgian pols) waste no time in setting this within the grand narrative of the scourge of far right racism.

The absence of faithfulness to detail and interest in specifics makes this BBC report prisoner and prison-warder to a political agenda; the kind of soft-left take on things which dominates the media. I am clear in my own mind that there is no great right wing conspiracy to persecute non-white races, yet the BBC acts as though there were. This is a great disservice to truth, and to the people who pay for their services.

Mel says it all.

I've been meaning to get around to reading the report to the BBC Governors on the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli situation, but Melanie Phillips has read it and comments

'Beneath all the strenuous striving to appear to be seated on the Mt Parnassus of dispassionate judgment, the panel cannot help revealing evidence of the very same partial mindset displayed by the BBC.'

Sounds about right.

(I'm back)

Parallels

You can tell a lot from parallels. Often we miss them, and only vaguely later we realise there is some shocking symmetry in social trends.

Take the life sentence imposed on Zacharias Moussawi, which Peter Glover comments on powerfully- as does Mark Steyn. It's just over a year since the death of Terri Schiavo.

Or, on a smaller scale, take the case of the man manhandled by numerous armed police (arrested in front of his grandchildren and held for five hours) for pinging the back leg of a dog threatening his sheep. That was the sensitivity of Bedfordshire police in action.

And its exponents are police officers from a force who will have read their instructions about dealing sensitively with the muslim community by taking off their shoes and not interrupting prayers when entering muslim homes.

Sorry for Absence. It might continue for a few days as I'm travelling until monday. I'd love to be able to post as I go but it seems unlikely.

Whither blogging?

A recent period of quite relaxed sifting of online information has led me to think about blogging (and I'm not alone; Auntie is looking over her shoulder). One of the reasons for haitus's on this blog is that things are really changing very quickly, and it's hard sometimes to decide what's relevant at any given time.

What prompted me in the first place was my experience of feeling abandoned by media like the BBC, and to a lesser extent by the Telegraph (which can do what it likes as far as I am concerned, and still produces the occasional interesting thing).

I blog to set myself the independent line which many media, especially State sponsored ones, would deny me, or rather, tried to deny me, and about which I am lastingly angry.

I also blog to give myself an incentive to examine the many fascinating and necessary things being said by people out in the new media.

What follows is a summary of current change, with personal notes.

Politicians taking hits, in a spin

That could be the summary point: on both sides of the Atlantic politicians are taking hits from the new media; at the same time, the old media is having holes punched through it by anyone with the widely available technology (and a clear sense of what they want to do with it. So not you then, ed- ed).

Look at what Michelle Malkin is doing with 'Hot Air'. It's very, very smart. She's such a clever little cookie in her little slippers, sitting pretty on the couch (sorry for the tone there, but isn't it fair to question how much her success involves sex appeal? Not that it matters in some ways). I've heard that she and her family have experienced death threats from some extremists, and I'm very angry about that.

I also found this item on USS Neverdock: a video on John Kerry's changing opinions which very much sums up the nonsensicality of Kerry's whole career. I think Marc has every right to get a bit hung up on Kerry's flailings. He's the very model of the modern major politician. At a time when leadership is needed, all we find is 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma', as Churchill said of Russia. Perhaps the key is John Kerry's desire for power and influence. But it's fascinating for me how our observations can be partisanly supported through the magic of video on a blogspot site. Carefully cut the video may be, but the cutting just removes the Kerry ums and ahs, the vanity, the window dressing- to leave the void, the nullity, wide open.

Kerry's career really is fascinating, in a sick kind of way.

Also fascinating, in a sick kind of way, the Blair Government's unravelling, almost I think heightened by their attempts to deflect attention away from incompetence and towards sleaze in the bulked up shape of John Prescott. All I can say is that I'm sorry it's come to that, and that the predictions I am sure many conservatives have made more frequently privately than publicly are coming to be fulfilled. I know in my family there was talk about this, and we knew it would be ugly. Can't get much uglier than Prescott in his current position.

But here again there is the role of the blogosphere in pushing the real stories into the light of day. I am sure, for instance, that the Devil in his kitchen is regretting not using a few more impolite words about Charles Clarke.

Guido Fawkes has been like a kindly wasp over John Prescott's affair, and here forces a senior BBC journalist to be honest and Ian Dale has been pushing the debate on sleaze in a number of directions.

What this means is that the Britblogosphere is on the move, and it will change rapidly from here on.

Will it become professionalised or retain an amateur integrity? Those with greater experience, in the US, are likely to be of assistance here.

In the disappointed corner I'd say, we have Donald Sensing

In the optimist's corner we have Anne Althouse. I'm with Anne on this.

The Last Days of the Tonan Empire.

'What I find fascinating is the complete lack of perspective the BBC has on this. In the dying days of Major's government (which were really just a warm-up for ZanuLabour anyway, policy-wise) the BBC were going ape-shit over every possible hint of "sleaze". Yet, within months of Labour entering office I recall tiny hints of possible bad behaviour being reported in the newspapers, but quickly brushed over - and simply ignored - by the BBC. Labour started out bad and went downhill. Over the years we've seen Labour ministers involved in affairs (practically orgies if you believe some accounts), bribery, corruption and general nastiness, yet barely a peep of criticism from the national press. And, behind all that, we've had Prescott re-organising the country, bypassing the county councils with his regional development agencies and his new Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (which gave itself planning permission to knock down thousands of houses in the north and build thousands more in the south, without consultation), the Home Secretary's office pushing ID cards, the ministry of transport pushing for a universal road camera monitoring system, the MAFF destroying our ability to produce our own food, the MoD removing any ability to cooperate with the Americans in military matters by fording the procurement of European equipment that works on different standards, the ministry of "Culcher" destroying just about any culture we have, and all of it with the expressed aim of harmonising us with the EU. Thhis government has had one aim from the beginning: destroy the country. And they're succeeding. A truly impartial BBC would have picked up on this and pointed it out a long time ago... but the BBC isn't impartial about this. They want european harmonisation as well, because it guarantees their existence.

And for the record, the boy king Cameron is nothing more than Blair MK2. If the tories win, it'll be in spite of him, not because of him. It should worry people that he's toeing the BBC line so closely these days. They won't get my vote until he's gone.'- the views of Archronix in Biased BBC comments, who blogs infrequently here.

I thoroughly agree, except that in my analysis of New Labour I'd replace their aim of destroying the country with their contempt for its basic character, such that they wished essentially to re-shape it in an an alien mould.

Ian Dale meanwhile has a list of New Labour scandals, rounded down to 50.

And Richard North has an account of the career of John Prescott, the most blatant dark horse one could imagine, with the bully's knack of getting away with it.

Me? I think there's a sense of sick fulfilment about this Labour Government. What Archronix says about the cover up of Labour sleaze from the earliest times is absolutely right, and Ian Dale demonstrates it well. I noticed an immediate shift, while the dew still rested on Tony Blair's forelocks, to appease and perpetuate the public mood of political indulgence post 1997.

One thing I think is interesting is the adulation of Tony Blair which occurred in America. There's no doubt that Blair was capable of papering over cracks better than any painter-decorator. I think I observed back in the early days that Blair and co. were masters at social appearances and networking, at using momentum to overcome a lack of substance. Like Clinton in that respect; and it's curious how someone like Prescott turns out to strongly resemble Clinton in one respect at least.

What Americans like, or liked, about Blair, was that he had Clintonian vibes while definitely not being like Bill. Must be safe, they thought, and on top of that he had the presentational skill lacked by a certain W. Yet that fact that Tony's not Bill- and I doubt that British politics could produce a Bill Clinton- doesn't mean that the tactics and standards by which Tony Blair operates are any higher than the gutter which was Clinton's natural habitat. Perhaps there's more to Tony than meets the eye, too.

While we're talking film reviews- see below post but one, pretty please- this is an awesome off-beam review of a much better film than I saw last night, United 93, which I intend to see because I should.

Don't miss this fascinating take on the BBC's attempt to come to grips with the modern world, from Brian Appleyard. It's not only interesting from a BBC point of view, the trepidation of the media generally is another issue, concerning
'the multimedia firestorm that is about to engulf us all'

Really, really must read. (hint- that's why I'm leaving my accidental second link up. If you want to check links you can just make the cursor hover over the link and the URL appears to you in the bar at the bottom of the screen)

Sorry for the hiatus.

I've been meaning to post (I even have a substantial draft languishing) but deferring. Anyway, last night I saw V for Vendetta. Quite an interesting film, tries hard. You can read what I thought about it in more detail here.