Apologies for the lack of posts. I plead unusual busyness, physical unwellness, and a few items of bad news which have had me preoccupied.

I've still kept in touch with news online, I think. One the issues that really involves me emotionally is the Iraq situation- everything seems quite emotional to me at the moment.

This, for starters, is an insightful foray into understanding one part of the Iraq insurgency- coming from a man who has subsequently been killed. More of his work here. I wonder, partly in the light of this, whether some individuals in the Coalition are targeted for their effectiveness- implying a kind of surveillance and intelligence operation against the Coalition. Could be.

Then I was also moved by this account of a true shahid (martyr) in Iraq.

Tim Montgomerie makes an excellent point:

Right-wing commentators may despair at the drift of “their” party towards the BBC world view but they are wrong to lay all blame on the shoulders of David Cameron. The Tory leadership lacks the resources to change cultural attitudes that have been carefully nurtured by lavishly funded quangos, the universities and other pillars of today’s Establishment.


Read the whole thing.

Just a repost of something I posted at B-BBC, but I consider really encapsulates the BBC's bias:

---------

The reason is the death of hope, caused by a cocktail of Israel's military activities, land expropriation and settlement building – and the financial sanctions imposed on the Hamas led government which are destroying Palestinian institutions that were anyway flawed and fragile.

The "death of hope", eh? Sounds pretty comprehensive to me.

I thought about the leaked email from Jeremy Bowen when I made comparison between this November 2006 BBC report of a Christian exodus from Bethleham, and this January 07 article from the Jerusalem Post. What you notice as the BBC journalist attempts to explain a massive lurch from Christian to Muslim domination is that somehow Israel is to blame for it. Two thirds of the article is devoted to the actions and restrictions meted out by Israel.

Most pathetic is the attempt made to tick the old "public/private" box when interviewing the locals:

"Publicly Christians here insist there is no friction with the Muslim majority.

Earlier this year though the Islamist Hamas movement came to power.

And in private some say they now dress more conservatively. There have also been fights between Christian and Muslim families."

Mmm- it would seem these "fights" were a little one-sided, given statistics which show that what was once an 85% Christian town is now 15% Christian (must be all the Jews moving in and grabbing land as usual, eh, Jeremy?).

Maybe the BBC could learn a little more, and so could we, from attending to the report (a second link here to the JP's eyeopener) of Palestinian Muslim Khaled Abu Toameh. The brutal truth is out there, Aunty, but you don't care.

"A number of Christian families have finally decided to break their silence and talk openly about what they describe as Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in this city.

The move comes as a result of increased attacks on Christians by Muslims over the past few months. The families said they wrote letters to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican, Church leaders and European governments complaining about the attacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears."

Feeling a bit environMental

Or, rather, since I could be driven (environ)mental by the sheer redundancy of the thinking of most in the environmental lobby, I was pleased to hear from the lovely Mary Katharine Ham about the release of a new film exposing environmentalists as empty-headed, prejudiced, and pampered. It's called "Mine Your Own Business" and its promo website is here.

I also responded to one of the more foolish BBC articles on environmentalists' concerns about "compassion" for sharks, in the longish post you will find below.

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.