More than irritating.

Awarding the Nobel peace prize to Al Gore was an act of political hostility, ironically. Personally I hate such backslapping affairs and would rather recognition were spontaneous- in which case the moronically inclined could whoop it up for Al all by their ownsome. It's the astonishing lack of attention given to their detractors which makes the Nobel committee's decisions so much like a kind of open suicide note to history. Recognise Carter, Annan, Gore, and you're pinning your colours to the mast and inviting a reprisal through public opinion. But so what?

Guess which British broadcaster was busy doing some loud whooping? Yup, that one. Another group whose demise would have me saying, "so what?".

Al Gore seems to think, by the way, that Hillary is unstoppable for 08.














It's true she's been a well-oiled machine of late. However, her almost preternaturally attractive image (seen above) is a bit of a Dorian Gray- someone's bound to find the real picture over time. She's clearly got image consultants that "silky" Edwards would die for- she's just not that attractive and powerful-looking, never has been, and truthfully the falseness there is indicative of her wider flaws: a skin-deep philosophy hiding a neurotic desperation for power.

People will prefer Fred, who is my tip for '08.

And that's the real danger for our Norwegian friends and the Rev. Al Gore as well- vanity will out in the end. Can't wait.

Champion of the blogosphere

No, not Al Gore, who only invented the internet. Damien Thompson, who lays into the old fraud here.

Comment of the day though comes from John B:

"Well, that proves it. The Nobel peace committee is entirely predictable, unlike the earth's climate."

Reason: from Ayaan Hirsi Ali

"reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly"

Lovely little essay on ConHome by Louise Bagshawe about Gordon and the Conservatives.

We have contributed to Brown’s “Ratner moment” – one week when he totally trashed the careful image he’s built up over ten years, and showed the nation he’s a spinning (Iraq), bottling (Andrew Marr), bogus (“the polls had nothing to do with it”) bog-standard new Labour apparatchik.

One question: wasn't "Gordon Brown" (as we knew him) in fact a figment of Tony Blair's imagination?

Interesting things noted.

I have noticed recently some action on the Pakistan front. Not the Afghan one, the cricket one. First the retirement of Inzamam ul Haq, the captain. He is 37, apparently, so that's not surprising in a way. Then the banning of Shoab Akhtar for 13 games for allegedly hitting a colleague with a bat.

Two of the most senior players gone in a matter of weeks.

Well, it's been around six months since the death of Bob Woolmer, in circumstances we were assured afterwards - long afterwards - were not suspicious.

Apparently Shoaib hit his fellow player Mohammed Asif on the thigh. Interesting- it's difficult to call that a serious act, since being hit there is not very dangerous and actually not so unusual in the ordinary course of cricket when fielding close to the bat. It's often worse then because the batsman is actually trying to wallop the ball and instead hits the close-in fielder- ouch!

13 games is an awful lot, but then Shoaib is a bit of a bad boy. He has had brushes with drugs for which he was banned for 2 years and then soon after reprieved, and was actually replaced in the Pakistani team just before the World Cup where Pakistan lost to Ireland and Woolmer died.

Shoaib was fined in January for a row with Woolmer. A fight between them had previously been denied.

Btw, in looking into this situation I found out that before he died, Woolmer had started a blog. In it he notes, shortly before the World Cup began "We also hear with pleasure that Sami and Yasir Arafat will replace Shoaib and Asif." With pleasure?

Shoaib is currently being disciplined for hitting Asif, it appears- both men restored to the Pakistani dressing room only to fall out, it would seem. Asif had also- like Shoaib- been found guilty of using the drug nandrolone, and his withdrawal from the Pakistan world cup team was rumoured to be about more than just an injury.

Ah, dressing room politics. It seems that there was just an extraordinary amount of that going on in the Pakistani one prior and subsequent to the death of the cricket coach.

Gordon Morphs

It's really very funny watching Brown trying to imitate Tony Blair in his press conference today. He even dropped a 't' just now- "wha' I want to do" is show my vision etc etc.

Another thing noticed in Gordon Brown's recent presentations: the number of times he mentions some variation of "honest". Blair was master at doing that without over-egging it- managing to plead without ever descending into desperation, pleading before people saw it as necessary and thereby coming off as "sincere".

What is clear is that Brown, having sat back and observed Blair all those years, now does a pretty passable impression of Blair with some vital aspects missing, and some very Brownish tics visible.

Much better when talking about figures than about politics.

Tony Blair is cleverer than Gordon Brown...

It's the answer to a question I've thought about a bit over the years. It's not something I take great joy in finding out for sure, and neither does it prove that Tony Blair was actually a "good thing" (really I don't think that at all). But the hamminess of that clunking fist is apparent in the chain of events that have unfolded, leading up to Brown's big anti-climax non-election announcement, while TB has pranced on, viralesque, into the Middle East.

As Boulton says "whatever else, it will call into question the judgement of Team Brown and also their sincerity when they talk about the national interest because of the political calculation which they have clearly now been caught by the headlights".

You may or may not know this but... Ayaan Hirsi Ali is back in hiding in Holland.

Douglas Murray expresses the situation very clearly.

This is a lady whom I would be proud to volunteer to guard. Unchivalrous Holland thinks otherwise.

Stop right there, Beeb.

"Ever the showman..."

Yes. The article is about Gordon Brown- the man who had to be taught to smile. The man who was once the sober son of the manse- prudence's best friend, you name it in terms of sobriety when he was covering Tony Blair's back in the nulab early years- is now a smiling showman. Truly the spin is dead- long live the sping!

And then, quite a lot of news.

Well, some fascinating analysis of the latest numbers from Iraq- sadly we're talking body counts, but I've always been absolutely focussed on these as my means of understanding what can be understood about there by us from over here. John Wixted has the breakdown- keep scrolling, but notice where it compares the trends of sectarian Shia-led killings with Al Qaeda bombing attacks. The surge happens, and the former drop off, while the latter take off, and now appear to have stuttered. You can see a chink of light here, you really can- once the battle becomes Al Qaeda vs, the battle becomes worthwhile and meaningful and Iraqis suddenly begin to see their choices.


I was also very impressed by this article from Caroline Glick on the Ahmadinejad trip to the US. It's the fundamentals on fundamentalism, to put it succinctly.

And well, I even got a little excited by the Conservative Conference this week. On the other hand this guy brought me back down to earth. Some traps would be worth falling into- it's known as principle and far-sightedness. But, yes, it would be a turn up for the books if that happened to be the case with the current Conservatives.

Serious Considerations...

Another week and, sorry, another gap in posting, wasn't there? It's not really a sign of my getting tired of the weblog, more a symptom of me re-thinking a few things and that it's not always possible to be thoughtful and prolific, especially when time is short and other things crowd in.

Something that caught my eye in this week of the Labour Party conference was the neat way in which the BBC gave Gordon Brown a platform on the international stage as he responded to the upheavals in Burma. Also included was a nice image of Brown looking like a man of fortitude.

So many of these positive images of Brown floating around at the moment, aren't there? Reminds me of a contempory of mine at school- a bit wimpy so he got into judo, which was fine until he got his photo in the local paper, captioned: "Nick, ready for action". Too much. I had to laugh. Not his fault, of course, but ott.

In the new, unelected Prime Minister's case it makes me sick because there are real people on the end of these conflicts, and all Gordon sees fit to do is to introduce an element of surprise into his Conference package by appearing to be at the forefront in a crisis. It's almost as if Gordon is saying that anything Blair can do (ie. spin), he can do better- and with more chutzpah, as is shown by the fact that he announced on his ascension an end to spin. Since then it's been nothing but spin and proven that his image is paramount.

As often I have to acknowledge a "thought debt" to Mark Steyn, whose latest article is in my view among his very best,

"So much of contemporary life is about opportunities for self-congratulation. Risk-free dissent is the default mode of our culture, and extremely seductive."

Yes, yes, and Gordon has been giving us a masterclass recently- as if we needed one. That's one reason we miss Steyn in the UK these days since he walked out of the Telegraph and Spectator. Brown trotted onto the centre stage, full of righteous indignation about affairs in a country that he'll never have to sacrifice anything for, the epitome of risk-free self-congratulation.

And that's not even to mention Darfur. Or the cuts in the Navy. It's all virtual, this world, apart from the people who're dying.

Shhh- only me. Sorry I've haven't posted for a few days. I've been working on something a bit different.

As it is, I have only two slivers of Steyn brilliance to offer.

The king of wordplay was at his finest in 2002 when swapping barbs with the Saudi Ambassador to London: 'a couple of days later it was announced that King Fahd had appointed him Minister of Water - which, on closer inspection, turns out to mostly involve being Minister of Sewage. My fan has hit the s--t'

But then he's not so rusty today, though a touch more serious:

Last week freedom took another hit. Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled her new health care plan. Unlike her old health care plan, which took longer to read than most cancers take to kill you, this one’s instant and painless – just a spoonful of government sugar to help the medicine go down. From now on, everyone in America will have to have health insurance.
Hooray!
And, if you don’t, it will be illegal for you to hold a job.

Read the rest for the statistical demolition job, and be illuminated.

BBC's news draining away

Well it seems like that concerning Iraq. Of course they are still highlighting the negatives, such as the recent debacle of killings by Blackwater Security- which may or may not have been Blackwater's fault (too early to say).

It's not a safe thing to do to say that the BBC are running out of bad news on Iraq- they are resourceful for the lean times and so are the terrorists- but it certainly seems that they have little choice in the negative stories they cover ie. the selection is diminishing.

Have you heard about the quiet times for Baghdad's main hospital and mortuary? Thought not- at least not from the BBC.

Have you heard how Hell got pasted in Ramadi? Thought not- from the BBC anyway.

Have you heard how they are emulating the Anbar province in Southern Baghdad province? Well, you know the score by now. (I must confess an indebtedness to the great Instapundit that I know all about things the BBC haven't covered).

As I said, I really wouldn't want to claim that the BBC haven't got any bad news to report- I just think that perhaps they will have to cast an eye at the positive stuff if trend follows trend. I think the most remarkable thing, the thing that's really different in Iraq now, is the turnaround of the Sunni triangle. It's the dissolution of this terrible clot of blood that could release the pressure on the rest of the Iraqi body. Let's hope.

Still.

Economic woes.

There is a list of things as long as your arm that could outline what Gordon Brown has done to bring the British economy to its current perilous pass. Of course, listing them here would require a little too much Googling for today... (If the state of Gordon-critiquing were better I am sure I would have them off the top of my head by now. (dis)Honourable mention here for the BBC for being such a good shill for Gordon over the years. It's what they do, you know).

The Telegraph notes, in an article typically headlined according to the personality involved, "The banking crisis of 1973 was one of the key factors that led to Mr Heath's government losing the 1974 election."

Mmm. 1973. Here we go again.

Britain overspun

Today saw Mrs Thatcher visiting Downing Street, welcomed by Gordon Brown. Gordon has clearly learnt a few things from Tony Blair.

This convenient publicity gives Gordon the chance to wrong-foot the Conservatives, that much is clear. It also, I think, demonstrates that the repeated disloyalty of the Conservatives to the substance of the 80's transformation means that Mrs T. has no reason to side with them against Gordon.

Mrs Thatcher, it's true, was barely middle class in the context of Britain when she was growing up. Middle class for Grantham, yes, but that was a town well down the pecking order of desirable societies.

So if Mrs T. welcomes opportunities to have meetings with the marketising socialists, it's no real surprise. She isn't a Tory, like Cameron, after all.

But if she imagines that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown actually oversee a real continuation of her approach to society, she's quite misled (and anyway, we know there's no such thing as society). Not surprising, at her age.

One interesting indicator of Gordon Brown's approach came today as the UN adopted a treaty on "native rights". There was a very plain group of countries voting against- the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Is it conceivable that under Margaret Thatcher Britain wouldn't have voted with them? Well, almost, but only as a tactic and a short term one at that.

It's not clear whether the UK might have abstained, and it is a non-binding agreement , but it's interesting to note that many countries who have at least as much to lose as the four who voted against the agreement must have voted for it. Countries in South America, for instance. Heaven knows what "indigenous peoples" might mean when applied to Europe.

And that's the thing- most of the countries that voted for the agreement would lose something were they to follow the rules they sign to- non-binding really just means that there will be no mechanism for enforcement. Thus it must be, either we have a lot of selfless neighbours in the world, or most have signed in blithe bad faith. The latter is my guess, which is why we need the anglosphere. Which is why it really means something when we ignore them. Which is why I say that the direction of this country is basically heading towards hunkering down in a hypocritical, two-faced, socialist Europe. That sucks, actually.

The deeply impressive Petraeus

I managed to catch about 90 minutes of Gen. Petraeus' testimony to the Senate committee yesterday- I couldn't believe it when I heard them say how much there was left; those sessions are incredibly long.

One little glitch I noticed was his Bush-like slip where he talked of the terrorists' global war on terror- which of course should have been of terror.

I was interested by this short clip via HotAir of a bit I hadn't seen, later in the session, where he corrected that slip very pointedly.



That self-correction comes amid another self-correction- he is explaining how the war in Iraq is making America safer, having been non-committal on the point in answering an earlier question. It's easy to understand why he didn't answer immediately- is it a soldier's job to survey the whole world like some latter-day Alexander the Great? According to the Senate committee you would think so.

Yet Petraeus, like any army man, has a sense of territory. If you keep it, no-one else can except someone you permit to inherit it from you. That, strangely, is why in this non-state war it is so vital not to give up territory. It's because you wish to prevent a group of people who don't respect territorial sovereignty from getting their own territory, which they personally don't care for, which is for them merely a launch pad for infiltrating more territory, causing more chaos, increasing their power base, reach, influence and prestige.

Petraeus knows all that instinctively. Others need to learn it.

Oh, and btw, I think that what Petraeus is doing will make the UK a whole lot safer than it would otherwise be as well. Certainly winning in Iraq would have that effect, though any such judgement is a finely balanced one in the grand scheme of things.

From not-always-quotable-Norm-

"what a lot of useless claptrap postmodernism is. For, while (as I've said) I don't know what the truth of this particular case is, one thing that's clear to everyone is that there is a truth about it: something really happened, an event took place involving Madeleine"

It's just common sense really. From an academic. Today. Talking about the Madeleine McCann case is something of a departure for me, and actually I am not going to do so here.

What happened to Madeleine was no doubt a very specific train of events which resulted in A) tragedy, and B) mystification. Any conclusions I could draw would be terribly politically incorrect and practically speaking indefensible. I do think however that our era is rich in the qualities that made Greek drama tick. I think that's a strong hint, actually.

U.S. Can Do

I there's one thing I'd like the US to take away from recent Iraq experience as presented by General Petraeus, it would be that there's nothing they can't do in Iraq. That's not the same as saying they can impose order everywhere at will- it's that whole regions can be tamed when the US is concerted in its approach. More than anything, when it shows that it just won't back down.

Here's a nice graphic from Petraeus' presentation:






(click to enlarge. More graphics here)

You can see the rising tide of violence, a slow wave rising in various particulars of violence, interrupted and brought back to levels that indicate one thing- respite. The product of the so-called "surge".

It's interesting to me, because it not only confirms that commitment brings success, but also that I was right in thinking that the violence had been on a gradual but steepening incline from the end of 04 (with a small break after the Iraqi general election- were some of the Islamofascists holding their breath, waiting to see if...?).

If you couple it with stories like this one from Michael Yon, it begins to look as though commitment wins success, fighting works, and Iraq is no quagmire- though it's the kind of unruly beast that requires constant discipline mixed with reassurance.

It's not a great deal of information, admittedly, but it's of a lot more value than the latest BBC-Iraq poll. The complexities of such an undertaking when asking detailed questions according to western priorities ought to be obvious. I wonder what the Arabic for "surge" is?

"Isn't it obvious?..."

It seems to me these are the three most common words which occur to a conservative minded person.

Conservatism seems to be a habit of mind, in a way. Because it is a habit of mind, the idea that something ought to be obvious is often dismissed as thoughtlessness by the liberal establishment (the idea that today we have a liberal establishment is really a banal observation, given that great efforts have to be made to make the common view assent to the ministrations of that establishment. Good examples would be the death penalty, and EU membership, where the public feeling must be routinely turned aside by a combination of media, legal and political types). A "habit", after all, sounds rather boring, instinctive, not at all the grand effort of mind which humanistic liberals like to imagine.

And this, in turn, leads to a kind of self-censorship, especially today.

It might be better to call conservatism a discipline. Sometimes self-imposed, sometimes imposed by reality. Best when the two are combined. Most people have a bit in them somewhere.

I was thinking of this in response to reading about the latest film from Brian De Palma, a smash hit at the Venice Film Festival (inaugurated by Benito Mussolini, by the way). It's called "Redacted" and it's an Iraq war "expose", and the Financial Times raves about it here.

Well, knowing De Palma (The Untouchables), it'll be blood and guts and moral fervour, just as the FT describes.

But how about that reality? It comes from all directions, you know. In addition to the insecure, unstable and ill-disciplined, we have the disciplined, incredible and the brave, the understanding and the educated, the vainglorious and dishonest- and, the thing that real conservatives never forget, the enemy. And, under it all, the fallibility of things, which we all forget sometimes.

It was always going to be that way. Nothing has surprised me so far about the Iraq conflict. I am not pessimistic, but I will end on a conservative note:

As Bad as a Mile

Watching the shied core
Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
The apple unbitten in the palm.

(Larkin)

Projection quote of the day:

"the more the American people reside in a world of hate, fear, terror, anger and sheer unthinking blind rage; the better it is for the egotistical unholy cult "leader" Osama Bin Laden....."

What hell it is in Amerikkka according to the Daily Kos.

All this stirred up by the latest little tirade from Osama. Latest, I say, well, perhaps the best attested as having come from the OBL.

Since a lot of other people have been spouting their opinions about it, I may as well.

OBL comes over as a fantastically cocooned, smug, unconsciously ethno-religio-nationalistic, bigoted and wildly generalising man of 50.

In fact, a not untypical liberal. A kind of psychotic Tony Benn on speed.

Sure, the problems of the world are caused by man's engorged unthinking stupidity- but it ain't George Bush's that stands out for me.