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.

"The Bad Israelis: a poem"

I have a thought. If the BBC weren't producing dreamy explorations of the supposed psychoses at the heart of Israel such as this one, but instead were reporting the reality of the savagery on Israel's doorstep among its neighbours, would they be producing rubbish entertaining the question of whether it's "time to negotiate with Al Qaeda?"?

According to Paul Adams of the BBC "Nadim Injaz is a man without a home, without friends, afraid for his life, trapped by more than a decade of bad luck and bad decisions."

If you read the article, you will see that the only mistakes referred to relate to his decision to be an informer for the Israelis; or maybe his brother's decision to do so. I also noticed this little encapsulation of the BBC's mentality:

"In Palestinian society, collaboration with Israel is a crime usually punishable by death. This hasn't stopped the Israelis recruiting thousands of snitches"

Got that? The mob murders that await informers are referred to as though some kind of judicial process was involved: a 'crime' , 'punishable' by 'death', carried out in the name of 'Palestinian society'. Have a look at my second link and you will see an example of Palestinian 'punishment'- and yes, sadly, Palestinian 'society'.

Meanwhile the Israelis sources are referred to informally as "snitches".

Something back-to-front here. The Israelis are painted as heartlessly abandoning their sources having stirred up Palestinian society against them, while the Palestinians escape blame for their vicious and unjust, not to say utterly savage and barbaric, behaviour. In fact the truth is their psychotic hatred of Israel is- if I may be so bold- the root cause of every informer's behaviour. Maybe that's why Europe's 'alienated youth' are turned on by the jihadis and turned off by civilisation, when savagery steals the garments of respectability, and civilisation is written off as a fix. When even a jihadi spokesman can be more honest than the BBC, what has "Western Civilisation" to offer?

The Good Journalist.

Claudia Rossett has a blog. Which is something you will welcome after reading this post from Richard North. Honestly, I have been impressed not to say amazed by the amount of detail and interest emanating from his and Helen Szamuely's EU Referendum blog ever since it started. Well, I was brought up on the MSM y'know.

Anyway, back to the good journalist. The good journalist has a sense of history. Claudia Rossett devotes her second post to covering events of sixty-sixty years ago, and to a speech from an Anglo-American of note.

I would quote some of this with reference to today, as the conflict deepens between Islam and the West seemingly more rapidly with every western denial of the fundaments of it. However we need something less hopeful, more cynical, more biting for the current age. I prefer this (all your fakes are belong to us)- a modern response to twistedness, as a stopgap while we get some bearings.

Yet More Mark Steyn:


"in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon"

That's the good news, I guess.

Oh, and btw, you might notice I put a link to photos in the sidebar- me in Kenya back from summer 98 to 99. Undying feelings though.

To Watch This Video you will need...

1)A certain tolerance of bad language.

2)A bit of patience.

But you will laugh. Some of the best TV I've ever seen- and it's a home video, of sorts.

(via Kim Du Toit)

Btw, I think it's relevant to mention that I was absolutely smitten with the old Dukes of Hazard as a wee one.

More Steyn wisdom, here and here- from his End of the World Tour Down Under.

I love the quotations- especially the ones he repeats. The Napier quote strikes me as more and more brilliant every time I read it.

A British General in India, Napier responded to the cruel practise of Sati thus:

"'You say that it's your custom to burn widows, very well. We also have a custom. When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their neck and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it my carpenters will build a gallows; you may follow your custom, then we will follow ours.'"

Now that's my multi-cultural brutha!

Speaking of Truth, here's Mark Steyn quoting another guy:

'"The Jews are a peculiar people," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem . . . But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab . . . Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world." '

and from the man himself:

"For over a generation now, Canada and many other countries have regarded civilizational self-loathing as just another alternative lifestyle, like being gay or vegetarian. It's a kind of literal "homophobia"--a fear (phobia) of the same (homo-), the same old white-bread people that produced the world in which you live, the legal system, the property rights, the economic prosperity."

Great essay.

Why I don't want "to disappear vanish"

First I have to explain that I'm a bit of a fan of A Tangled Web, and this post is something of a riposte to David Vance's recent "feel like quitting blogging" post.

There are many reasons for not giving up posting to this site- for me.

The first is that I'd regret it if I did- and soon. You know, I care about what happens in the world and somehow I can register that concern here.

In a very small way one is part of the continuum of events- even though probably less significant than one's real life influence on events, which is vanishingly small anyway.

In some ways I blog to feel small, to set myself against events as I used to seek out the waves in the ocean as a child and try to ride them.

Let me just point out a couple of things i'd regret if i didn't blog. I'd regret that I didn't place myself in opposition to the many lies that our MSM tell, and inparticular- given their reputation, reach and resources- the BBC.

I'd regret not being able to let out how I felt the next time a major terror attack happens. I'd regret not complaining about the reverse racism, the corruption, the malaise of reason, that's infected the West.

I'd regret most of all I think the chance to listen to others, to weigh their thoughts, ideas, schemes in a medium which like it or not is going to be formative of our future world- assuming that is that there is a world to be formed.

And, in listening to others, I'd miss absolute gems like the dropping of Autumn rain such that my perceptions are like dormant seeds readying themselves to hear. Gems like this one, for instance. Or this, from the same site. Real understanding, and a real grip on things which none of us can maintain all the time, but some of us will always be manifesting. It's but for me to look, and understand.

(the two posts linked immediately above refer to an excellent point about GWB and the WOT, and a simply brilliant roundup of the data on Qana- in that order)

Islamofascism

I've talked a bit about it. Now here's Stephen Schwarz attempting to define it.

The Islamic Fascist Threat

I think most people think that talking about Islamic Fascism is just a ramping up of rhetoric, simply exaggeration for effect.

Howeve, since Sept. 11th I have consistently held the view that it's an accurate description.

One reason for this is the strong dimension of racism in the Islamic movement, which has really been overlooked and downplayed.

A vital part of this racism, without which the true nature of Islamism cannot be appreciated, is the racism against black Africans. Of course the racism against Jews is a prominent feature, but the underbelly of Islamic racism has traditionally been against blacks.

This racism is both historic and current. Forget the apparent tolerance of blacks among Islam in the West, when it comes to Africa proper the Arab muslims give no quarter to the blacks.

Recently I was reading up about Somalia. Did you know that there is a part of Somalia, a river valley called Juba, occupied by Bantu tribesmen, in contrast to the Arab-derived Somali populous? Their historic function was to work as a slave class, tilling the soil to provide for their Arab-Somali masters. Now many of them have fled the region altogether to avoid the Somali warlords' pillaging. That kind of tale is a commonplace reality for East and North Africa.

Turning to Sudan, I was interested to read this from Dave Kopel, as well as to hear the Sudan President's identification of his country with Hezbullah's struggles.

Dave Kopel points out that "if you’re an Arab who wants to kill blacks, then Sudan’s gun control laws became awfully loose. In Darfur, there has been a long rivalry between camel-riding Arab nomads and black African pastoralists. The Arabs consider the blacks to be racially inferior, and fit only for slavery."

The fascinating thing about the Kopel article is that it analyses not the acts of violence perpetrated against the blacks in Sudan, but the armament of the Arabs and disarmament of the blacks, thus creating the imbalance of power necessary for genocide. He outlines the very strict rules for gun ownership in Sudan, which are applied to blacks and overlooked for Arabs.

It is this kind of basic abuse of power, abusing the power of the state to oppress sections of society, which reminds me forcibly of Nazism. And where this cannot operate because the Islamists don't hold sway, the power of terror is used to turn opponents into facilitators of the growing menace by their sheer passivity in the face of fascistic evil.

And guess who is the biggest facilitator of the disarmament which has served Sudan so well? Why, the UN of course.

(and by the way this UN position is absolutely crazy to me from my exerience of Africa. There were very few weapons on display in highland North-West Kenya, anyway. There are tribal gangs which are outlaws and armed, and the government troop has his always on display, and will point very freely at any civilian who looks twice at him, but guns were not an issue- knives, meanwhile, were omnipresent, and very sharp.)

I push the boat out and email- very politely- Orange ( stuart.jackson@orange.co.uk ) about Inigo Wilson (see below post). Am assured that "suspension" is a neutral position intended to facilitate investigation. Am also told I will be 'gladly' updated on the results of the investigation. Don't really trust them, but if 'gladly' indicates that I will be updated and that will not be an onerous task, it should bode well for Mr Wilson. If not I will be very angry. MPACUK (Muslim pressure group) are claiming success over the blogger who sought to "redefine words". That's fundamental to the trouble really. Most 2nd or 3rd generation muslim immigrants have never understood what they meant in the first place.

Meanwhile Mr Wilson gets some of the LGF lizardoid assistance.