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

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

Certainly couldn't have put it better myself:

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

Lovely stuff from Iraq the Model.

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

Reverance for an Irrelevance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gilding the lily on the left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

So John Simpson Alleges...

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

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

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

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

Ideology and Truth (another cartoon rumbled?)

We've been slaves to ideology of one sort or another for a hundred years or so, ever since the emergence of radical socialism/communism. You and your family may never have been either socialists or Marxists (as mine weren't, I believe), yet the nature of the ideology was domination at all costs. People have done unimaginable things hard to even believe on the back of these ideologies, and now there's a new one, or a resurgent one, on the block.

Martin Kettle is a semi-reformed Guardian columnist: he still writes for the Guardian but he's somewhat dissenting, reminding the poor cossetted lefties of slightly uncomfortable home truths- he was supportive of the work of Lord Hutton, supportive of the US in Iraq.

That said, he's the son of a leading Marxist, while the reformed part is that he rejects that movement- now at least. His article about the subject is fascinating: the lengths that the Left would go to, the religious quality of it all; the lies.

But what we should learn from this is that 'strong' ideologies will go to any lengths, will stop at nothing, to rise and dominate. Islam is an ideology at heart, one which has been ebbing and flowing around the globe for over a millenium. It's a slow burn ideology since a religion of conquest and political uniformity is bound to go through bad spells; but it's not going through a bad spell now- it's cannibalising the burnt out shell of that more reckless ideology, world socialism, and motivating a vast number of activists.

That's why I'm almost certain Jim Lindgren's onto something with his theory that a further one (not only old pig snout) of the 'extra' Danish Imam cartoons was likely to have been a hoax, written by a hand used to forming Arabic letters. (via Michelle Malkin)

The rule, with aggressive ideologies, has to be if it smells bad, it is bad.

One might ask 'why forge something? Surely some hatemail must be floating around suitable for the purpose? Or why not get something from the internet? Even before the Jyllands Posten case there must have been some pretty strong stuff out there.' Well, aside from the practical consideration that a real offensive cartoon could have drawn a real apology, scuppering the whole process, I think that's ideologies for you: they're all about control. Better to make the revolution yourself than to rely on the vagaries of real life. Rather lie than use the reasonable truth.

They just don't enjoy the beach anymore.

350 odd years ago a fellow by the name of Isaac Newton said something interesting about his experience with science:

“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Now Isaac Newton was not a 'soft' scientist, but I think he enjoyed the whole business rather more than today's joyless politico scientists, who can't think of science for a moment without conjuring up some straw man political opponent who stands between them and their next project funding.

The BBC, as usual, has a fine specimen of that species here.

Serious Media.

A gulf seems to be emerging between the informed professionals who have adopted the web as a vital part of their engagement with the news, and the uninformed professionals who haven't. I'll give two examples of some of the best commentary over the last few days, even though I'm far from being the first to highlight them no doubt.

Here's Claudia Rosett in magisterial form. Information brings perspective, which ultimately becomes authority.

Here's David Warren, with insight upon insight into the cartoon controversy. It's startlingly good, and makes me convinced I must make my daily visits a fixture.

What's interesting is that the governments concerned are still playing to the big media who have been thoroughly outflanked by the blogs and keyed in media. Jack Straw can have little idea of how foolish he looks from an online perspective. His career must surely be over as the message filters through. Another interesting thought is that the likes of Abu Laban can be exposed by the blogosphere, and others in the muslim world will notice this: thinking 'maybe the dhimmies are no so stupid after all; maybe Abu Laban's not so clever' ('rank idiocy' is where I would categorise him, but that would include his moral idiocy as well as his ineptitude as a forger). I would like to think they will put that in their pipe and smoke it.

See also this excellent posting at Euref. And, for a snapshot of the new media in action, interacting with one major story, check out the fabulous Michelle Malkin.

There was nothing spontaneous about Muslim toon anger: that's why an Egyptian newspaper could publish the cartoons in full, in October last year, during Ramadan- and not a peep from the street. That offensive, huh?

The resonance of Omar Khayam

Interesting times, or are they? Looking back in my mind to my blazered and tied, hopelessly dazed and out of it school days, I remember feeling that loons got a free pass with the press; that, for instance during the Rushdie crisis, only those who were innately culturally distinctive ever stood for anything and were allowed to stand for something.

We've pushed on since those times however, and now the free pass does not come without the potential for 'afters'. Omar Khayam is back in jail. One is tempted to say 'where he belongs' and that would be right, except that his is the criminal lifestyle, and that shouldn't exist at all. There should be choices in life whether to be criminal and face the consequences of meaningful restictions on one's lifestyle, or 'straight' and begin to reap some benefits. For Omar Khayam the consequences will be very limited indeed.

What does he do following 3 years imprisonment over drugs trafficking? Straps on a fake (or should that be 'empty'?) bomb belt and goes looking for trouble at a London demo against western free speech. His only prospect the continuation of his fantasist lifestyle paid for by the taxpayer. No thoughts induced in Omar Khayam by his incarceration that discouraged him this time around.

In a way he's a lot weirder than the loons used to be: the absurd posturing against the backdrop of already being a serious offender was not the profile of the muslims who protested Rushdie. When we talk of protests being healthy, we usually mean they show a stake in society that the protester cares about. Not many anti-Rushdie men felt like that, but maybe a few did, however misguidedly. But Khayam is just typical of how people with voices today are those who don't have a stake in society- through their own fantasy rather than through deprivation. These are people who get benefits for free, which if they were taken away might actually present them with some serious decision-making process. Most of the London mob were simply idiots (but often not unintelligent ones); and those who weren't were extremely dangerous characters. The police can't tell the difference (and really there isn't one- flip-flopping between idiocy and criminality in the ether of extremism- to have arrested the lot would have been salutory and defensible) and so are paralysed, then fixated on what they think the press or public notice, which in this case is a black plastic paraphenalia which looks like it could be used to carry water but is associated with carrying bombs. I really felt for the officers forced to stand there like dummies while the protesters made threats against the society the police are sworn in to uphold. Of course some of them felt no doubt that they were doing their duty- but most must have had doubts at some level.

Although Khayam is weird he's almost certainly not an outcast; I think he probably feels right at home in the niche position of being a loyal Muslim feeding off the stupid dhimmi system, dabbling in western-specific types of criminality to make life more rewarding. He doesn't have himself under control but then how many young men do, really? I've no doubt many muslims, especially young ones, would respect him for his bravura- and it's natural that that's so. He demonstrates a balanced role surfing waves between worlds that only looks absurd to an outdated bank of perceptions based upon fading assumptions. He has a poet's name and his symbolism is nonchalant. And he pisses me off something chronic.

From the re-emergence of Rummy with an audience in Germany, to the disappearance of 'Europe' from the cartoons debacle. Missing: European leadership- as Richard North notes, warming to his theme.

Results from the German Elections

It was questionable whether electing Angela Merkel was going to make any difference to the German outlook, but I think this is one thing we wouldn't have found without being rid of the toxic Schroeder: Don Rumsfeld speaks his mind and is listened to, in Munich, Old Europe.

Of course recent events may have played a part, but it's difficult to imagine Schroeder being this mature. Wise words from Rummy:

'"We could choose to pretend, as some suggest, that the enemy is not at our doorstep. We could choose to believe, as some contend, that the threat is exaggerated.

"But those who would follow such a course must ask: what if they are wrong? What if at this moment, the enemy is counting on being underestimated, counting on being dismissed, and counting on our preoccupation," Rumsfeld said.'

Galloway in the black hole of Cairo International. Heh heh.

Searching for the real Mohammed...

I searched the BBC's site today for 'Muhammad', and something struck me. Every single return referred to him as "the Prophet Muhammad". Really, I didn't know the Beeb were so religious. To call Muhammad 'the Prophet' is a tacit endorsement of Islam's claims. It is analogous to the pious term 'the Lord Jesus Christ', which you will not find the BBC using (In case anyone thinks this is just to distinguish that Mohammad from all the others, I would point out that Jesus is a first-name too in countries like Spain; an interesting quirk for a post-Islamic state).

Now I have no problem with secularism, as long as it's even-handed- but in the BBC's case, quite obviously it isn't. The BBC might respond that the West is far less religious, so it's an appropriate distinction in their address. That's not a good response though. In the UK, for example, 70 percent or so regard themselves as CoE, so that the difference can be better seen in terms of tolerance. Many people I've known who've termed themselves Christians have enjoyed Monty Python's Life of Brian, for instance.

Now, I would have no problem with the BBC saying that it wasn't their business to enforce western tolerance as a lodestone for its coverage, taking a moralistic liberal tone as a standard from which to judge all events, but that's exactly what they do on many issues that concern certain groups and countries- it's one of the staple inspirations for this blog. They often fly in the face, for example, of US sensitivities, and Israeli sensitivities, and white people's sensitivities, and western conservative sensibilities etc etc. One could point out that the majority of Africans are Christians, and often passionate ones, but this somehow doesn't seem to weigh in the BBC's balance.

Well, one could respond that there are dominant sensitivities in need of challenging (ha ha- western conservativsm 'dominant'!), but really, in Iran Muslim sensibilities are thoroughly dominant, and in Saudi, and in Indonesia, and in these countries such sensibilities are often enforced through great injustices- the banning of christianity, the imprisonment of converts, and so on. And the BBC styles itself as a world broadcaster, spends taxpayer's money in this cause (yes, the licence fee was recently designated 'a tax'), and therefore has a responsibility, at least, to be 'world impartial'

So what I want is for the BBC to be evenhanded; that is all. Oh, and to get rid of the licence fee which complicates and exacerbates all their faults.

Making sense of senselessness

Not for the first time, Victor Davis Hanson produces a great article which does this.

Explaining the inexplicable: the BBC response to looney toons.


The BBC know next to nothing about religion: that's the root cause of their absurd response to the controversy, exaggerating both the number and nature of the cartoons, then portraying the protests as spontaneous, the anger disinterested, the Danes as instransigent etc etc. Their limitations are on display.

Because they wouldn't touch a literalist approach to the Bible with a barge-pole, they have a problem when faced with Muslim literalism, which, because 'foreign' they must dignify somehow. Except that it's not literalism at all- it's Koranic hyperventilation, as the BBC's own article about the Koran's anti-imagery ethos proves.

Point one: the Koran doesn't anywhere say not to make images of GOD, let alone Mohammad.

Point two: although the Koran rails against imagery, no-one is going to worship those Danish cartoons!

The whole thing makes no sense, and the Beeb can only try to pad it out by assuming some mysterious exegesis of the Koran. Anyone who had the slightest experience of actually attempting exegesis of religious texts would be falling about laughing. The fact is that the Koran posits a mysterious and grand God, and a mighty messenger. Therefore it's the lack of our reverence for that that's at issue. It's just pure religious bigotry which demands that others share the same feelings, the same understanding etc.


But Muslims = foreign = in need of special care and attention; the more so because if we don't they'll blow us up.

That's why the BBC's overall account has to assume some (serious) fault from the Danish side. Sorry Beebies, there's none.

eg. "Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen met ambassadors in Copenhagen to talk about the row. Danish officials said they could not expect an apology.

Syria and Saudi Arabia have already withdrawn their envoys.

The meeting comes three months after Mr Rasmussen rejected a request for talks from 11 Muslim ambassadors in Copenhagen.

The prime minister was criticised for not meeting the diplomats. The BBC's Julian Isherwood in Copenhagen says Friday's meeting seems to be an attempt to redress what was seen as a diplomatic snub to Muslim countries."

eg. "Jyllands-Posten has apologised for causing offence to Muslims, although it maintains it was legal under Danish law to print the cartoons."

Of course it was legal. Any law which invalidated those gentle little sketches would have to be devised by Tony Blair himself.

(another one from drafts. I understand that Stephen Pollard has posted about the same BBC article, and the link's on Biased BBC, so this one's going here instead. BTW, so much for the French, eh?)

Immediate Update: the Beeb stealth edited the worst quote away, as Laban Tall points out. No acknowledgement was made of major changes, including that one. The point is that with the BBC, changing a story doesn't alter the fact that millions may have been influenced by it, and there is no redress. The original had all the hallmarks, not of a news piece, but an opinion one. It's all very Marx brothers: those are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others. (or something like that).



More Looney Toons from the Beeb:

Not content with misrepresenting the cartoons (15 instead of the actual 12, with the add-on value of Mohammad with a pig's face- by far worse than any of the actual cartoons), the BBC are keen to invent another side to the account. According to Michael Buchanan,

'Denmark's reputation as an easy-going, consensual nation has been severely tarnished in recent days. All the Danes can do now is hope the repeated apologies for the offence caused, by both the government and the newspaper, will end this unseemly row.'

Er, no. Denmark's reputation for being easy-going and consensual has only been enhanced. The Danes should be proud as once again they've shown they can stand up for themselves in order to continue to be easy going and consensual in the future. The apologies offered are far from being abject- good job our BBC reporter managed to put a comma between 'caused' and 'by'.

However, the reputation of a certain world religion as been confirmed as intolerant and childish. But you won't be hearing that on the BBC unless on the Have Your Say section. And, by the way, I haven't seen any background to the story pointing out the Islamist violence in Denmark in Oct-Nov last year over this same cartoons issue. This is all I could see- a peaceful protest! And this, naturally- the 'balancing' article.

For some real background, see here. And here.

As for the 'global outrage' Buchanan alludes to- this may be technically true, but is disingenuous as we are really talking about a certain part of the world, and its co-religionists abroad.

Truth will out however. Despite a leading question from the BBC reporter, all the real bonus points go to the Danes as the question is roundly answered (the only thing good I can say about this article is that the exchange made it into the final copy):

''But knowing what he knows now, would he still commission and print those cartoons?

"That is a hypothetical question," he says. "I would say that I do not regret having commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt Friday night at the discotheque."'

The Unposted

Here's a little something from my drafts of a day or two ago. I might revise my opinion of the French if they continue a)to publish cartoons and be damned, and b) continue helping the US as this article describes. However, I have to say that if the French had just come right out and supported the US/UK over Iraq, we'd have wrapped things up in the first three months. No Turkish neutrality, a Northern front, no sympathetic Europress etc etc- maybe even no Syrian WMD smuggling- fait accompli.


Over-sporting to the French. Whatever the core characteristic of Britain you choose to look at, the chances are the BBC have distanced themselves from it. French bashing, for instance, is a national passtime we indulge in for having our generous admiration (over the centuries) spurned and disappointed. With the BBC it's the reverse: to show how sophisticated they are, French bashing is a purely unemotional and political decision, in place of a general fawning approach.

But anyway, why is is said in this article that 'France is drafting 400 troops to help fight a mosquito-borne virus spreading on its Indian Ocean island of Reunion.'

'Its'?

Well, fair enough, I suppose the French have paid enough in subsidy to buy the place by now, though the reality is that they have military interests there. But actually, colonial ownership of this island of almost 800,000 is a pretty big deal in today's day and age. Oh I know it's just a 'departement'- but that surely makes it part of France itself.

Another odd thing in the BBC report: the troops are said to be being 'drafted' to help the locals, yet as the BBC note they're already stationed on the island this seems a contradictory way to report. It doesn't seem so much like an international news item, more an item from the local French sponsored 'aren't we doing well' newspaper. Items like this remind me of those awful council newspapers that money is wasted on in the UK. At least the bias is clear there though- people paying taxpayer's money to convince the same taxpayers their money isn't being wasted. A sucker punch if ever there was one. Here we just have the hypocrisy of the BBC in sucking up by reporting the fairly innocuous yet apparently positive doings of a dubious colonial power.