Saturday, 1 May 2004
Should I Write To The Guardian? »
On this morning’s Guardian letters page (fourth letter), Alan Halden asks “…and what has Melanie Phillips ever done than write crass polemics for the Daily Mail (Letters, April 30)?” (A reference to her letter yesterday.)
As a Guardian reader of long-standing, I can answer that question, though I doubt that they would print it.
She used to write crass polemics for the Guardian.
These 63 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:54pm GMT Permanent link.
Traitors »
It may be offensive to some, but I feel that I have to say it. The Queen is a traitor. I know that it’s hard for many of you to believe, but it is a fact. Tony Blair needs to be told this and he needs to take action. He can start by removing that shocking leftist erection called the “Cenotaph”. “Traitors’ statue” would be a better term. As for Remembrance Sunday, the silences, the poppies, all are the propaganda of the anti-war traitors. War is glorious, and we should not spoil it by remembering the dead. Traitors in the US want to broadcast the 721 names of American dead in Iraq. How dare they call that entertainment! If I want to read a list of names, I’ll look in the phone book.
There are even traitors in the U.S. Government.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and Vietnam veteran, condemned Sinclair’s decision.
Vietnam veteran is journalese for “dope-smoking communist.” I’ve written before about the harmful effects of drugs, not to mention the commotion that generation called ‘music.’ They should have listened to Cliff Richard like me.
Further proof, if proof were needed, that this calumny is propaganda.
The program was reportedly inspired by a June 1969 edition of Life magazine that carried the names and pictures of all the American soldiers killed in a single week in the Vietnam War.
What happened that time? As surely as night follows day, five years later, the US withdrew from Vietnam, abandoning villages crying out to be bombed with Napalm and Agent Orange. This so-called broadcast is yet another symptoms of the sickening moral decadence which has gripped the English-speaking world. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.
[Melanie Phillips will be guest posting here on an irregular basis. I don’t think ‘calumny’ is the correct word above, but she wouldn’t let me edit it on the grounds that a Melanie Phillips article which does not contain it is not properly dressed.]
These 285 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:52pm GMT Permanent link.
Zed's Dead »
FABIENNE: Butch, whose motorcycle is this?
BUTCH: It’s a chopper.
FABIENNE: Whose chopper is this?
BUTCH: Zed’s.
FABIENNE: Who’s Zed?
BUTCH: Zed’s dead, baby, Zed’s dead.
Pulp Fiction [Screenplay], Quention Taratino, Faber and Faber, p135
Christopher Allbritton asks
Does it really require a close reading of the Geneva Conventions to not perform “indecent” acts on prisoners? Does it really require that much training to avoid abusing shackled men, forcing them to simulate oral sex with one another or attaching wires to their testicles?
What a spoilsport. Boys will be boys and all that.
I’m even more shocked at the allegations of torture by British Troops. At least one political party has a clue.
And Liberal Democrats, who opposed the war, demanded that Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon appear before the Commons on Tuesday to make a statement.
Since the Scotsman above is the only medium to even mention the Defence Secretary, I take it this is Geoff Hoon’s response. British Spin had a story which “will make you like Geoff Hoon a little more”. Right now, if he had close encounter with an irate Iraqi armed with a Samurai sword, I wouldn’t dislike him any less.
Staff Sergeant Ivan “Chip” Frederick is a very brave man. And Rahul Mahajan concludes from his testimony:
This suggests pretty clearly that torture and degrading punishment are part of standard policy, because they help to make prisoners break under interrogation.
Christopher Allbritton again:
In early April, Americans saw how angry the Iraqis were at the occupation with the massacre in Fallujah. At the end of April, Americans — and the British -— found out why.
As Christopher Hitchens complains:
It’s now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or “quagmire"…
Looks like they’re right.
These 119 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:18pm GMT Permanent link.
The Great Day »
Yesterday seems to have been Poem on your blog day. So here’s a topical one.
Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.
Yeats, of course. A poet for everything really. In Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” the cuckolded husband reads Yeats. All the oblivion you ever need and none of the hangover.
These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:38pm GMT Permanent link.
What I've Read Recently »
I’m fed up with politics, which is turning me into a knee-jerk, reactive blogger. So for a change, I’m going to post on books I’ve just finished.
Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is incredible. I read it in a day, and nearly read again the following day just by revisiting the good bits and reading on from there. I’ve got the notion that the story is sort of based on The Thirty-Nine Steps, which I never read, and now should. (Bloke sees murder, and flees.) It’s superbly written, very well paced, all the intentional wandering off-point spins the story out and raises the tension, without getting tedious. And very funny.
Pictures of Perfection by Reginald Hill. Ignore the poor Amazon rating: some illiterate gave it only one star. This may be the best novel I’ve read by Hill, just about the only mystery writer I bother with. I was given it for my birthday, as I swap Hill novels with a friend as presents. It took me ages to read the final chapters, partly because the form is ambitious — the curmudgeonly might say ‘pretentious’ — and the conclusion is revealed in Chapter one, and that seemed too horrible an ending. But it’s a straightforward book that you don’t want to end.
An Amazon reviewer puts it better than I can.
Reginald Hill has a thing for literary allusion. PICTURES OF PERFECTION not only owes its title and its epigraphs to Jane Austen, but also its very setting, the village of Enscombe (from Austen’s EMMA). As Hill thus alerts us, we are being transported from the usual Dalziel and Pascoe round into social comedy — albeit comedy leavened with a sharp dash of satire, mostly directed against Thatcherism. The result is an affectionate parody of both the English village mystery — those villages have such remarkable mortality rates, do they not? — and Austen herself. Is it reading too much into the book to see the Scudamore sisters re-enacting SENSE AND SENSIBILITY? We certainly aren’t overrreading when, like several other Hill fans on the ‘net, we notice that the novel retells PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, in the shape of Sergeant Wield…
While painting an ideal England (and like Patrick O’Brian, Hill does food very well), it rarely misses a snark at Thatcherism. The village pub is called “The Morris Men’s Rest” and the pub sign features a serious looking bearded cove, which is an excellent joke in itself. This is Hill in literary impersonation mode, being the journal of a fictional socialist vicar.
For the monster is loose again, and has been these past several years, roaming free and ravaging the land. It too has the gift of disguise, now appearing as a wild-eyed woman, now as a vacantly smiling man. But it always gives itself away by the reek of greed and corruption that hangs about it.
The books are — for touches like this — far superior to the TV series. Through the cod journals, there are plots which take generations to unfold. It’s a brilliant piece of storytelling.
I’ve read several books over the past month, as I’ve been getting back into worthwhile reading rather than hack ephemera, but most of it seems to have been political, and too sick of politics to even bother remembering what they were.
These 363 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:09pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 2 May 2004
MP Interviews PM »
[It pleases me greatly to have guest blogger Melanie Phillips back with us today]
Whenever I turn on the television or open a newspaper I grieve at how low our once fine country has sunk. We can only raise ourselves up from the gutter if we follow the example of truly moral people. Therefore I’d like to share with you my recent chat with Peter Mandelson.
“I have a simple test for the moral worth of any course of action,” he told me told me over an avocado in a discreet five-star hotel in West London. He paused, meaningfully.
“I call it the ‘snout and trough test’. It’s very simple. Ahem. Snout. Trough. Trough. Snout. Just like that.” He beamed. Naturally I took his meaning right away, by I thought that a little more explanation might help my readers. “Very well,” he sighed. “Snout. Trough. Trough. Snout. Not like that. Like that.” He twinkled visibly.
“I examine every policy very carefully to see if it meets the simple criterion of dipping what I call for this purpose my ‘snout’ into what is commonly referred to as the ‘trough’. Policies which move to this end, are rushed through the House of Commons by my minions, while those that do not I tear up and throw back in their worthless faces. I get to shout things like “Incompetent fools! Do not fail me again,” which gives me enormous pleasure.
And if they do?
“I have a tank of ravenous piranha fish beneath my office. They get to be a little less ravenous for a while.”
He winked. Say no more, I said.
“This is how it works. New Labour likes Formula One because Bernie Ecclestone gives me, I mean us, of course, money. We’re rubbish at motor-racing, of course, which is to the good, because it makes the bribes bigger. While the sports Britain is actually good at, rowing, shooting, equestrianism, Modern Pentathlon, although these are all practiced by toffs, they won’t give us any moolah, so stuff ‘em I say.”
I nodded, impressed by his steely moral resolution.
“We are good at football though. Take Alex Ferguson, fantastically rich and a Labour supporter. Of course, he should come with subtitles…” He trailed off and gaped like a drowning fish into the middle distance. “No, perhaps not. Perhaps like opera in a foreign language, his meaning should be allowed to float over you…
“When I see a bright young man — and they all are young men for some reason — I take him aside, and explain this to him. This intake of new New Labour…”
New New Labour? I smelled a scoop. Was the party rebranding, emerging from recent difficulties like a worm turning into a butterfly?
He blushed. “No, although that is a very good idea, a very, very good idea.”
He did the drowning fish thing again, and then the focus came back to his eyes. “There’s an idea I’ve been pushing around for a while. The party needs to rebrand. I think New New Labour is a catchy name, don’t you? It’ll put our recent difficulties behind us…” He smirked.
“Anyway, when I take a new New New Labour MP under my wing, and I find this intake are very quick on the uptake. Oh that’s good, don’t you think?”
I laughed the old mirthless.
“I introduce them to our secret club.” What’s it called this secret club? New New New New Labour perhaps?
“Oh no, it’s much simpler. We call it, ‘Our Thing’ which is nice and memorable.
“The first rule of Our Thing is, “You do not talk about Our Thing”. The second rule of Our Thing…”
Is ‘you DO NOT talk about Our Thing’?
“No, no quite. It’s “The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part,” I’ve always found a little legal language to be very impressive. And the third rule of Our Thing,” he hurried on before I could guess, “is the most important one. “One hand washes the other.”
Very true, I agreed.
“It’s in the Bible I think. Or some thick book with a black cover anyway. It’s most important that these young fellows know that they owe for my patronage, and pay me a percentage of any money they make. It goes up the chain, do you see?”
It’s a bit like pyramid selling, I ventured.
“No,” he shook his head, I feel I must correct you there, “it’s not a bit like pyramid selling, it’s a lot like pyramid selling.”
I conceded the point.
“Originally, we wanted to model ourselves on Robin Hood and the Merry Men, an updated cool version of course. What’s the point of going into politics if you can’t make things better for people?”
Which people would these be?
“The rich of course! We did try stealing from the poor to give to the rich, which has been the technique of politicians, especially in America, for generations. But we found that the problem with stealing from the poor was very simple.”
It was immoral?
“No, being poor, they didn’t have anything worth stealing.
“Now, you’re from the Daily Mail, aren’t you? By the way, why are you wearing that badge?”
This is my press pass.
“But it says “SCUM” in very large letters.”
“The girl on the desk said that it was a special pass they always give to Mail reporters.
“Hmm. I think you might have encountered one of the enemy within.” He brightened. “I think my babies, my piranhas, will feast tonight.”
He went on, “It’s a common misconception that we are the party of the working class. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’ve always sought out the middle classes. The oiks don’t know how to eat for one thing. Who wants pie and chips and beer when you can have liver, fava beans and a nice chianti?” He made some involuntary digestive noises at the thought.
To get a feel for the flesh-and-blood man away from his office, I asked him for his favourite literary quotation.
“Blessed be the rich, for they shall make unto us interest-free loans, so we may purchase houses in Nottting Hill.”
I don’t think that’s in the Bible.
“Well, it should be.”
I sensed that our time together was nearly over. I thanked him and offered to send him a copy for his approval.
“Oh, I’ve been most indiscreet about Our Thing, haven’t I? I’d rather you didn’t print any of that.”
I don’t like to waste my time, so I took the best compromise that I could think of, publishing our meeting on this site on the Interwebnet thing which no one reads anyway.
As I’m sure Peter would say, “Omerta!”
[The author wishes to apologise to Dr Hannibal Lecter, the famous serial killer and cannibal, it was not my intention to compare him in any way to Peter Mandleson, and I deeply regret any offence I may have caused. Please don’t eat me.]
These 1172 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:46pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 3 May 2004
The Anti-Postmodernist Always Rings Twice, Ah, Three Times »
Qu’est Que C’est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Matt Yglesias takes exception to Sully’s position on postmodernism.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > gt; Post-modernism.
I had suspected that Sully’s objection to po-mo was that it was French, and was therefore unspeakable to all loyal Americans, who should be able to close their minds at will, the way some aquatic mammals can close their ears. Or perhaps, as an anonymous commenter has it, “Sullivan is probably just embittered about being bad at picking up gay men who like Foucault.” (I love Foucault, but I’m not gay. Not as much as I love Feyerabend, though.) However Sully isn’t the first person to give that particular answer on the Normblog profile. Hak Mao:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > gt; That entity loosely known as ‘postmodernism’.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > gt; Postmodernism, especially the idea that there is no truth and everything is relative or an ‘equally valid narrative’…
I detect a pattern.
These 113 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:52pm GMT Permanent link.
Good Riddance, Loser »
I puff Doonesbury too often, but if you doubt that it’s still funny today’s provides the answer.
It’s not untrue. On the other side of the tent, I had a similar reaction after reading Chun’s magnificent put-down, “I love it when people are revealed for what they are.”
“Freedom is slavery,” is a pretty good adumbration of Michael Ignattief. We should tolerate, even welcome loss of freedom: it’s for our own good. Patriot Act Suppresses News Of Challenge to Patriot Act, for instance. (Warning: NOT The Onion.) Ignatieff sounds decent:
So far, the basic rules for regulating a war on terror look relatively simple: first, make sure all measures are subjected to review by Congress and the judiciary; second, make sure the law keeps watch over detainees and suspects. In a word, we need to ensure that we wage a war for the rule of law and not a war against it and that we wage it by means of democratic consent rather than by presidential decree. We have enough of an imperial presidency as it is.
So he talks like an anti-. But this is revealing:
The siren song in any war on terror is “let slip the dogs of war.”
So not only is the “war on terror” real, rather than another inarticulate Bushism, it’s not even the first! Never mind the apparent tautology that in any war, one lets ‘slip the dogs of war’ — surely they would be out already? Move over Yogi Berra, we have a successor for your intellectual crown.
As for the ‘basic rulings for regulating a [sic] war on terror,’ Henry Farrell has the ugly facts.
These 172 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Biff! »
They have their exits and their entrances
As You Like It
The ever-wonderful Bill Deedes defends US heavy-handedness (registration required). Bill is never a paragraph away from an anecdote, and everything he says is rooted in experience and fact. While lesser journalists adopt the role of Pilgrim, Bill is Worldly Wiseman, the true hero of the story.
A man with whom I was lunching spoke of the fighting in Fallujah and then added, rolling his eyes: “Just imagine if the Americans instead of the British had ruled India…” There is much loose talk on those lines about America’s heavy-handedness in Iraq, which is not easily understood. But unless there is a degree more understanding, then difficulties are going to accumulate for George W Bush and Tony Blair.
I first parsed ‘for’ in that last sentence as ‘between’ — but there is no ‘between’: the two leaders are of one mind, or, as it’s the President’s, half of one.
I have a degree more empathy for this heavy-handedness than most people. Some of us who were alongside the American armies in Europe were glad of it. It played well there, much less well in Vietnam. At one point in that war, we offered Americans guidance on tactics from our military jungle school in Malaysia. “No thanks,” they said and biffed vainly on.
“Vainly”, there is a word of Miltonic or Hopkinsesque resonance for the two Bs. (And another reason why the Labour leadership needs to change. Number 18 and climbing.)
My dictionary lists “biff” as an ‘interjection, verb, and noun’: the first and last of these signifying a blow. (It doesn’t mention that it’s also a name, as in Willy Loman’s eldest son, in some Communist propaganda play or other.)
The verb form is more interesting. Leaving out the Antipodean slang meaning of “throw”. It can either mean “hit, strike” or “go, proceed.” Wodehouse, who has the best exits in literature (after A Winter’s Night’s “Exit hurriedly, pursued by a bear") — “And she hopped it”, “I legged it” and so forth, uses “He biffed off” and, my dictionary reminds me, “To biff down to Twing to rally round young Bingo.”
I’ve admired Bill, but never until today have I suspected him of writing with the poetic depth of the mature Joyce, and while that is a bit hyperbolic, he does grab the mot juste by the throat at times.
Elsewhere, Jim White, another writer who starts from the real world and, like Odysseus hugging the shore, never moves out of contact with the tangible, considers Dr Who and Mr Grade.
Grade first tried to call time on the institution when he was head of BBC1, back in 1985. But his idea to consign the Doctor to the fiery depths of Kromon, out of reach of the Portal of Infinity, was undermined by an unholy alliance of the Sun and a bunch of beardy spods from Basingstoke…
Like dear Bill, he knows the power of the properly wielded vernacular, especially when followed with the hammer of bathos.
Now comes news that next spring the Doctor is to be regenerated, played by the brilliant Chris Eccleston, an actor of huge, brooding range. It sounds rather promising behind the scenes, too, with Russell T Davies, of Queer As Folk, and Mark Gatiss, of The League of Gentlemen, commissioned to write episodes. A fine team. Just a pity they couldn’t be assembled for a worthwhile project.
Which allows me to pass on a related email:
Please note that Doctor Who will be filming on a closed set.
This has been agreed by production and marketing and is not unusual on large productions to:
- Allow the production to go ahead without distractions
- Manage all media and visits in the context of the co-ordinated marketing plan
- Control copyright and prevent illegal theft of images, designs, scripts and props
- Add to the sense of excitement — and keep some surprises for licence fee payers!
Practically it means a strict set of rules to be enforced, i.e. barring unauthorised visitors: media, BBC staff, cast/crew friends. Production will talk to each facility about security and signing in of visitors. All visitors will be required to sign a disclaimer including passing all copyrights to the BBC and respecting confidentiality (James Dundas will supply the proforma).
No personal cameras, or any form of recording device will be allowed on set.
Mean isn’t in it.
These 319 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:49pm GMT Permanent link.
The Dismal Miasma Of Warring Primal Hormonal Impulses »
Found through Nick:
Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being here, and say that I hope you’re able to work through your differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from the dismal miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human relationships. [Turns to the camera] Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics, deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis, it all seems like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all our painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and we’re reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It’s not pretty. If you’re in a relationship, and differences over the fundamental principles of your respective subjectivities are making things difficult, maybe it’s time to move on. Find someone new, someone who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence. After all, in the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that’s all we’re all doing anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves — and each other.
Why does this sound like every relationship I’ve ever had? To those of you with the twisted curiosity, yes, I really do read Nietzsche in bed. Doesn’t everyone? This at least points up the point of po-mo: it’s funny. Yes, so is Andrew Sullivan, and yes, I suppose, the question of whether the author intended to be so is a reactionary thesis, so they are alike in that…
These 71 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:09pm GMT Permanent link.
Bank Holiday Photos »
Gordon. I used to call him "Green-eyed Gordon Greedyguts," but while he's still fat, and despite the pleasant alliteration, I have to concede that his eyes are really yellow. The battered ear is a legacy of his homeless days, when he had to fend for himself.
Martin Rees from this morning's Great Welsh Run, where he came second. Not the astronomer (though I, at least, think they look alike), but the 51-year-old South Wales runner, who, in last year's Bath Half Marathon, broke the over-50s half-marathon world record with 1:07:05. (My best is 12 minutes — or two miles — slower.) He's also a very nice guy.
These 107 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:38pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 4 May 2004
Trivia »
Nick links to Jade who links to the Western Mail (non-) story Sian [Lloyd] and Lembit [Opik] to wed. I used to fancy Sian Lloyd — if only her brother hadn’t started bragging that he’d slept with me (9th comment). It’s true — but only in the literal rather than the euphemistic sense, even though anyone who shares a room with a beer-drinking vegetarian deserves some kind of recognition. As for the chess, Dave did beat the (female) owner of a Belgian restaurant we patronised (the restaurant, not the owner, whom we were vying for) over a stag-weekend last year, and she had beaten me, but his hollow legs and insufferable small talk played a part.
Matthew Turner mentions the house price rise under Thatcher. I’m a little sceptical. House inflation happened under Heath. Beer price rises seem sentimental: it were that much cheaper when I were a lad and all that, but you had less to spend. But ten years in your ‘own’ home and you’re paying a lot less than market rent on your mortgage. As for ridiculous inflation in Notting Hill, that’s not taking into account that it is — and was — a very desirable area, which fell into disuse in the post war years. A similar comparison between 1940 and 1979 would have seen prices fall in value.
This is but a rude preamble to my second story to six-plus degrees of separation. I had a friend who thought he knew where Mick Jones (of The Clash) lived in Notting Hill, and spent the whole of the carnival Monday one year in earnest vigil. It was the wrong house. This reminds me of an entirely unrelated story, but I had to get there somehow, about another friend whom I shared a flat with in Archway, North London, who was coming home from even further up the Northern Line. I’d met George on a bus somewhere like Nimes, and we’d spent a very enjoyable week travelling around France [boo! hiss!] drinking wine, eating cheese, and, in accordance with local custom, surrendering to any Islamofascists we met on the way. (Chris Hitchens, we agreed, being hard for a tired and emotional short-arsed toff would have kicked their fucking teeth in. Or at least written a 2,000 word essay imploring the US Marines to.) He visited me in Edinburgh. I didn’t know he’d come up. He’d phoned my dad to find out where I lived. I’d been to a job interview (worrying similar to the one in Trainspotting, though, regrettably, I’m always like that), and I came home to find him very comfortable with my flatmates, on his third joint, and watching afternoon tv. I can’t remember how it went, but I moved to London (and stayed for five years) and George moved to Edinburgh at some point. And at some other point we lived together in Archway with another Australian, Helen (whom I really ought to get in contact with, only there’s the problem of admitting what a mess I’ve made of my life to get over). And Helen had a thing for collecting tube adverts for our (sublet) council flat.
George was travelling home from North Finchley on the Misery Line and some way between stations he noticed a fetching Smirnoff poster, and bagged it, as one does. (This being easy: tube ads are, or were, laminated strips which were merely dropped into four-to-the-side-of-a-carriage slots over commuters’ heads. At the time, George worked in the City, because that paid well. He was stopped by a voice, which said, as in all the best Wodehouse tales, “Hoy!” George hoyed. “What do you think you are doing?” The voice seemed to belong to the strikingly handsome and hard to mistake Clash bassist Paul Simonon. George, being what you might call respectable (but with unerringly decent instincts) didn’t say “I’m a banker,” lest the rejoiner be “Any idiot can see that.” He thought. And quickly. “It’s sexist,” he said. “So it is,” replied the great man, and threw it out of the window, somewhere approaching East Finchley.
These 680 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:46am GMT Permanent link.
Cheap Joke »
Chris Lawrence has two brilliant posts about academic success. He notes
There’s an old joke that the Geography Department at the University of North Carolina would tell prospective majors the average salary of graduates with a bachelor’s degree in geography from UNC, without telling them that UNC alumnus and NBA star Michael Jordan received his bachelor’s in geography…
And, more controversially, quotes David Adesnik (warning: Oxblog) on political scientists and concludes “I’d only warn readers that what really takes guts is to get between Larry Sabato and a camera.
Last time I met a ‘political scientist’ I asked if that wasn’t an oxymoron. He punched me.
As I got, up someone whispered in his ear. “I’m so sorry,” he stammered, “I thought that was the same as — I thought you called me a moron.”
“Well. aren’t you all?” I said…
These 95 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:46am GMT Permanent link.
War-Lover »
Arthur Silber has a post about Rush Limbaugh whom he describes as a war-lover.
I think, you know, try this, folks. This thought of mine is, I think wars every 20 years are good so that every generation knows what the hell is at stake here. We are at a period of time where we have a lot of American generations who do not remember World War II, do not remember a truly difficult war that we won, do not have that perspective, do not remember an America victorious at war, other than the Gulf War which took a couple of months, which can create, by the way, and has, perhaps incorrect impression with too many people.
I don’t understand the popularity of right-wing talk radio in the US. John Prescott is more eloquent after six pints and a fist fight.
Thank God for Radio 4.
These 43 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:22pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 5 May 2004
There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out »
The Guardian seems convinced that the Mirror torture photos are fake. That is, with the exception of Roy Greenslade apparently thinks “Torture is the real issue, not these photos.” He ends
I cannot conceive, even with his track record, that Piers Morgan didn’t take all that [the effects of publication] into account.
There were many factors why I stopped reading the Guardian, but Roy Greenslade was among them. How any lackey for Robert Maxwell could have scored a job on a credible newspaper is beyond me. It’s like making Comical Ali, Pentagon press spokesman. Yes torture is the real issue, but what matters is whether it happened — if all the evidence is faked, then there is no prosecution. This is as bad as a bent cop forging evidence to put a real criminal away. Worse perhaps, because there may be no real criminals.
I find the timing of these pictures’ release worrying. Coming so soon after hard evidence of US troops maltreatment of prisoners, the issue of mocked up pictures dilutes the argument. It’s possible — I’ve no idea how likely — that these were released to discredit the anti-war voices. (Found through Harry.)
There was a comment to an earlier Harry post, Faked torture? which ended, “Bye-bye Piers! :-)” I agree. Not only has he made life much more dangerous for our squaddies (and it was tough enough already), he’s made finding real evidence much harder. The Mirror deserves to be as popular with the armed forces as the Sun was in Liverpool after Hillsborough. Facts are sacred.
In a properly run army, however, an effective chain of command is precisely what prevents soldiers’ baser instincts from running riot. That is the whole point of military discipline: to ensure that soldiers who are placed in situations that generate extreme emotions never let those emotions take them over. Army orders and procedures exist not just to help soldiers to kill the enemy ruthlessly and effectively, but also to prevent them from giving in to the urge to abuse and humiliate capitives.
Andy McNab in the Telegraph. We, the British and the Coalition, still have some credibility, but it’s damaged. Neal Pollack discovers some Iraqi Schoolyard Rhymes (NB, satire). Jim Henley (in one post out of many intelligent and quotable ones):
Yet. I’ll keep saying this. My question is not “Are we as bad as Saddam’s Iraq?” but “Are we getting more like it or less like it?” We might never get as bad as Saddam’s Iraq or even squalid old Egypt, second-largest recipient of US aid in the world before Iraqi reconstruction began. But we can be much better than those countries and yet a disgrace to ourselves.
Earlier in the same post:
But have you noticed how much more forthright actual soldiers and veterans who blog have been in expressing their outrage? In addition to the ones I’ve linked in prior items (Tacitus, Sgt. Stryker), see Arkhangel and LT SMASH. Now compare with civilian Daniel Drezner, normally among the cream of conservative bloggers, who devotes most of his passion to resenting that Arabs have gotten indignant about it.
Indeed, real soldiers do seem to be disgusted. Debra Dickerson guest-posts on Kevin Drum. I think the Andy McNab quote above offers a real clue. Nikolai found this:
You know, even to raise the word torture in terms of how the US military would treat someone seems to me is unfortunate. We don’t torture people.
Donald Rumsfeld in December last year. (And where is Geoff Hoon? I searched Google News again today for a Hoon response to the allegations, even just saying that the Mirror has been had. Nope. Nil. Nada. Nothing. Will he emerge dirty and unshaven from his hole before Christmas? I hope not.) Some might say it’s all Powell’s fault: he didn’t listen to the wiser counsel of the Donald. (The man who, lest we forget, sent US troops into the desert without proper equipment.)
Rumsfeld’s plan was to train and equip — and then transport to Iraq — some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi and his cohorts in the INC, the multi-ethnic anti-Saddam coalition he created.
Got that? Just ring the local jobcentre, “Hello, I’d 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters please. Yes. ASAP. Thank you.” What does ‘train and equip’ mean here? US troops are equipped with more than just rifles and boots: they need tanks, helicopters, and the whole pyramid of NCOs. You don’t train sergeant-majors overnight. Not being proper soldiers, some might lack the discipline to hold the line when the fighting started, and others may not know when to stop. That would have made the Coalition look just dandy. And Powell shot this down. I can’t think why.
At least, despite all this, there are still American servicemen who ought to make their country proud. Pat Tillman, who had the Best Memorial Service Speech Ever.
These 517 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:16pm GMT Permanent link.
Progress Is Wonderful »
I wasn’t electrocuted, it is true — but that was only because there was no electricity.
So the Coalition has at last got something working. What strikes me is the British stoicism behind that remark. (Chris Brooke might object to such a casual use of the term.)
Stoical isn’t a term I’d apply to Donald Rumsfeld
“I think that — I’m not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture.”
Perhaps he’s in shock or denial. Medium Lobster takes the same tack but in greater depth:
The activities that occurred at Abu Ghuraib prison are not to be compared to those of Saddam Hussein’s rape rooms and torture chambers. After all, those were rape rooms and torture chambers. These were merely rooms in which rape occurred, and chambers in which individuals were tortured.…
These were isolated incidents, and the behavior of these prison guards should in no way reflect upon the military superiors who endorsed and promoted such behavior. This is because atrocities are supervenient on subordinates, but not on command structures. Those with greater learning will understand.
And finally, a pro-war civilian, and no less an articulate voice than Christopher Hitchens is shocked:
It has been like a shot in the back to the many soldiers (active front-line duty, not safe-job prison guards) who were willing to take casualties rather than inflict them and who fought selectively and carefully. What are the chances of the next such soldier who is captured by some gang of Saddamists or Wahabbists or Khomeinists?
I’ve tried — as best I can — to take Robin Cook’s line: oppose the war, and the feeble reasoning behind it, but support our troops whatever. The ‘good’ ones are in the majority. (And this is why I’m with everyone else who attacks Ted Rall. Pat Tillman was a good guy. I may not have agreed with the US administration’s response to 9/11; but I understand his personal one. If we on the left want to criticise the police for brutality or racism, we have to either encourage non-racists to join the police, or create some anarchist utopia where there will be no officialdom. I’d love the latter, but I’ve yet to be convinced it’s possible. And if we want soldiers not to act like monsters, we have to encourage guys like Pat Tillman. Others things have to be done too, and I’m not convinced that they are. But that’s for another time, when Geoff Hoon resurfaces and deigns to answer questions.
Hitchens, curse him, has got to a problem which has worried me, but I held back from articulating because it could seem too flip.
Probably everyone has wondered what they might do — or might allow to be done — in the case of the “ticking bomb” and the stubborn terrorist detainee.
I meant to say that this seems like an excellent premise for a movie. If art can’t confront terrorism (attempts to ‘understand’ the psychology will be patronising or risible; anything which denies them motives will be crude: I think Arlington Road was as good as any film can be) it should switch the moral ambiguity onto the ‘good guys’.
At least when I saw the movie, Sean Connery in The Untouchables got a rousing cheer when he shot a corpse in the head, in the thick of combat, to convince a mobster that he was deadly serious. But no such excuse will conceivably do in this case. One has to remember the crucial objection to torture in the first place. Moral considerations apply, as they must. But the vice of the torturer is that he or she produces confessions by definition. And soon, the whole business of confession has become polluted with falsity and madness. Even the medieval church was smart enough to work this out and to drop the practice.
Uh-oh. I disagree here. I’m with Arkhangel:
I don’t care if they’re prisoners; I don’t care if they’re Iraqis; I don’t care if every single last one of them were responsible for the deaths of every last dead American — you don’t treat people that way! It’s a principle that goes all the way back to the Good Book ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), and is echoed in every major world religion.
Sorry to go all Kantian on you, and I do know that if torture worked, I could wring my hands until the skin fell off, and it wouldn’t prevent one case of abuse. I don’t oppose torture on account of its dubious efficacy; I think it breaks every human law. I wanted to be sympathetic to the soldiers: they’re in a very dangerous place dealing with some very dangerous characters. But the photos I’ve seen don’t suggest that any intelligence is being gathered. It’s a crude, nasty demonstration of strength, intimidation for its own sake, and totally distasteful for that. As Medium Lobster, above, hinted, I think it goes a lot higher than the smiling fools we see in the pictures. It reminds me a little of Philip Larkin’s As Bad as a Mile.
We’re in a mess. The only solution I can see — and this is where I lose the sympathy of any readers who have stayed this far — is regime change of the Labour leadership.
These 496 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:26pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 6 May 2004
Doing The Happy Dance »
He came. (Or rather, he sent other people.) He refused to see. And, basically, he ballsed it up.
What would you do in those circs? Hey, get your tame hacks to spin and spin again against your main rival, the one with actual military experience who may have a clue what he’s doing. (Or would do, if you didn’t exert every fibre of your flabby being getting in his way.)
“Torture, what torture? We can do business with this fine man.” You say when you want to do business. “Torture, what torture?” you say when your own army meticulously compiles a dossier of evidence against rogue Military Intelligence soldiers. A report you still haven’t read months after it’s published. The New York Times published some pictures. Do you know anything about those? Nope. Too busy spinning and covering your ass.
First rule of business, blame someone else.
Too bad your boss read the same rule book for his Harvard MBA. P45? What P45? Found via the Labour leadership guy.
These 170 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:13pm GMT Permanent link.
You Can Fool Some Of The People »
I was sorting through a shocking pile of spam just now. Mail (which is what Apple imaginatively called their mail programme; until the recent update, it used to sniff out rubbish; it just got huffy if you corrected it) had decided not to talk to my ISP for 48 hours, resulting in a snowdrift of junk when relations were resumed. I think I just deleted 602 messages. As a bonus, I started picking through mail I’d skimmed but hadn’t deleted yet, and started chucking it.
I realised that I should have blogged this email, which opens, “A few choice quotations from my IiP [Investors in People] report for your edification:”
“The Strategy Development Office is unique in that this a small team with a big ‘company’ feel!”
“The Head of the Office leads by example and has created a safe environment in which his team feel they can learn and have the ability to do so.”
“The spirit of IiP was strong. This small team is a prime example of an organisation that has utlised the framework of the National Standard to establish good practice in the way the team operates.”
Apparently IiP assessors like this sort of stuff, so feel free to copy. I could add what my friend really thinks about his immediate colleagues, but I worry that his vitriol might give him away.
These 145 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:16pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 7 May 2004
There'll Always Be A Lynndie England »
“I was just following orders.”
Adolf Eichmann
Boris Johnson, sound fellow and marvellous writer, finds laughter where the rest of us find only tears.
Just remind me, I said, turning to a colleague and friend, what is the case for this war in Iraq? You voted for it. I voted for it. We both spoke in favour of it. We both saw the merits of sticking with the Americans. We both believed that it was a good idea to get rid of Saddam.
But is there not a time when we have to admit, in all intellectual honesty, that our positions have been overwhelmed by countervailing data? How on Earth can we now defend what seems — admittedly at some distance — to be a total bloody shambles?
“Oh come off it, mate,” he said, because he is not only a hawk, but has a keen and impatient mind, “don’t be so wet. You want a single big argument for the war? The key point is that people are no longer being tortured in jails in Baghdad. That’s what we have achieved.”
It was as if the clouds had rolled back. I felt a sudden burst of optimism. “You’re right!” I said, and thought how silly I had been to ignore that gigantic fact, that we had introduced new values to Iraq, of civilisation and decency.
The following day I saw the pictures from the Abu Ghraib jail.
Boris is not cheered.
How could the American army have been so crass, so arrogant, so brutal as to behave in this way? The trailer-trash troops said they had no idea what they were doing. They weren’t even aware of the existence of the Geneva Conventions. They didn’t have any orders to obey, only vague instructions.
I’ll come back to the “trailer-trash troops” in a bit.
Because that fact remains: that we got rid of him, and, whatever the cruelties of the American jailors, Saddam was worse.
This isn’t a U-turn, nor “tout comprender, c’est tour pardonner” liberalism. As Boris says, it’s a fact. I’m not convinced that it is also the plank of an argument, but that’s something else I’ll come back to.
Lenin, who has still to add Lenin verus Norman Geras to his sidebar, takes the good Professor’s side in what he sees as a dust-up with Christopher Hitchens. I’d side with Hitchens if I thought there were a case here: but I’m pretty sure there’s not.
The problem starts with the Guardian, which continues to disappoint Norm, and who continues to record his disappointment. The Guardian would do well to learn from the Taguba investigation which noted:
28. (U) Neither the camp rules nor the provisions of the Geneva Conventions are posted in English or in the language of the detainees at any of the detention facilities in the 800th MP Brigade’s AOR, even after several investigations had annotated the lack of this critical requirement. (Multiple Witness Statements and the Personal Observations of the Investigation Team)
All newspapers should post Orwell’s Six Rules, and enforce them, by docking, say, an hour’s pay for each use of the passive voice.
This is the passage from the Guardian leader Norm objects to.
The US army has put a lethal weapon into the hands of its enemies. It is clutching at the weakest of straws to discount these revolting abuses by comparing them with those of Saddam Hussain’s regime. The US and Britain are rightly held up to a higher standard of behaviour, since that is their justification for invading Iraq.
Norm fisks it in his own way, but my own attempt follows. The first sentence doesn’t actually mean anything. The US has a handed an opportunity for propaganda to the remnants of the Ba’athist resistance, and the mullahs, but propaganda is not, in itself, deadly. As Norm points out, ‘It’ in the second sentence does not refer to ‘[t]he US army’. Comparison is, I think, inevitable. Donald Rumsfeld’s position ("they ‘tortured’; we merely ‘abused’") is sophistry. Boris Johnson’s above, seems more reasonable — it doesn’t read like a ‘discounting’ to me, anyway. Lastly, “The US and Britain are rightly held up to a higher standard of behaviour” seems to reach Rumsfeldian depths of self-deception. Held by whom? As most Guardian readers are British, can we be ‘of Britiain’ and sit in impartial judgement on ourselves? And that smug ‘rightly’, which implies that whoever it is who holds these nations to a higher standard, has given the correct answer and received a big red tick from the teacher Guardian.
Actually the US and Britain are held to a higher standard of behaviour — by themselves. As Jim Henley says:
But we [the US] can be much better than those countries [Egypt, Iraq] and yet a disgrace to ourselves.
He’s not alone in thinking this way. And, it seems, Lenin is right: Norm is unhappy with Hitchens.
(Image found through Ezra Pandagon and Kevin Drum.)
Seymour M. Hersh wonders how far up the responsibility went. Would a brigadier general really be relieved for the unauthorised actions of six grunts? Lynndie England is not only unrepentant, she even claims that she was obeying orders. Not that her home town even needs that excuse:
At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.
“A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,” Colleen Kesner said.
“To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised…”
Reminds me of the T-shirt, “Join the Army See the world Meet happy friendly foreigners And bomb them.” Until I read this piece, I thought Boris Johnson’s “trailer trash troops” a little glib and snobbish. Now, I reminded that Zed and Maynard in ‘Pulp Fiction’ are described as “two hillbillies”.
In the looting that followed the regime’s collapse, last April, the huge prison complex, by then deserted, was stripped of everything that could be removed, including doors, windows, and bricks.
According to Seymour M. Hersh, who continues
The coalition authorities had the floors tiled, cells cleaned and repaired, and toilets, showers, and a new medical center added. Abu Ghraib was now a U.S. military prison. Most of the prisoners, however — by the fall there were several thousand, including women and teen-agers — were civilians, many of whom had been picked up in random military sweeps and at highway checkpoints.
If they had to rebuild so much, why didn’t they just burn the old site down? They could at least have renamed it. Andy McNab has painful memories of the place, as has Zeyad of Healing Iraq, who was more fortunate in that he only saw the inside when visiting a friend.
The name ‘Abu Ghraib’ has always been associated with regular summary executions, systematic torture, endless periods of detention, and the worst living conditions ever imaginable. Former Abu Ghraib inmates have lovingly nicknamed the prison ‘Abu Geneve’ (Geneva), some choose to call it ‘Sweesra’ (Switzerland), so it was not an uncommon thing to hear someone say “When I was in Abu Geneve, I did so and so…” It is disputed how the nickname originated, but the explanation that makes most sense is mocking Uday Saddam Hussein when he was ‘punished’ and detained in Switzerland for murdering Kamil Hanna, his daddy’s bodyguard, in the late eighties.
You wonder what they call it now.
I’m not surprised that the Coalition practices torture. I just assumed that it was rare and carried out by regretful Smiley-like characters in extremis, but the pictures show the bastards actually enjoying themselves.
The case for future regime changes looks a lot more doubtful. There didn’t seem to be much of a post-victory plan. And if we changed the regime, we ought to have known what we were changing it to. It seems to me that we didn’t.
Rumsfeld also met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, and the two agreed, “the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests.” Rumsfeld affirmed the Reagan administration’s “willingness to do more” regarding the Iran-Iraq war, but “made clear that our efforts to assist were inhibited by certain things that made it difficult for us, citing the use of chemical weapons, possible escalation in the Gulf, and human rights.”
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984.
…it’s fairly easy to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy’s bad guy. He’s not just bad in himself but the cause of badness in others.
Regime Change Christopher Hitchens, p18, Machiavelli in Mesopotamia: The case against the case against “Regime Change” in Iraq. Clearly something has changed in the past 20 years. ‘Human rights’ was one of ‘certain things that made it difficult for us [to support Saddam]’. Now, Saddam is evil without equal. Actually, it’s so easy to demonstrate that Saddam was “a bad guy’s bad guy” that Hitchens did not bother. ‘Machiavelli in Mesopotamia’ may be Hitchens’ worst essay ever.
However — and here is the clinching and obvious point — Saddam Hussein is not going to survive…
Once this self-evident point has been appreciated…
(Does a self-evident point need to be appreciated? ‘Once’ implies that the process takes time, so it can’t be as self-evident as all that.)
Iraq is, for fairly obvious reasons, the keystone state here, and it is already at critical mass.
Perhaps you see the pattern. Despite it being good journalistic practice to reminds readers that the Prime Minister’s name is Tony Blair, and that Tony Blair is the Prime Minister — it being reasonable to assume that while readers are not stupid, they are less well-informed that the reporters and columnists — Hitchens never explains the ‘obvious reasons’ or the ‘obvious point’. He just jabs us in the chest with an accusatory finger and hopes that guilt at our ignorance will keep us quiet. By the way, fission bombs don’t start some kind of countdown when they reach critical mass, they explode in miliseconds.
There was a case against Saddam. It just wasn’t made by these liars.
Forgive me for writing at length which makes Steven den Beste look as aphoristic as Nietzsche. I wrote this much to clear my head as much as anything. If you read all of it, I probably owe you a beer.
These 905 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Improving Your Performance »
The Guardian has a mystery quote
“Be able to resign. It will improve your value to the president and do wonders for your performance.”
The paper nastily describes that as being “alongside a series of other political platitudes”. Liberals! Could the ‘author’ (scare quotes because it’s such a trivial thought that it probably came with a Chinese take-away) of the “known unknowns” speech be described as platitudinous? How leaving your job makes you do it better is profound, man.
Donald Rumsfeld prepared to testify before Congress on Friday as Washington grew rampant with speculation over whether the defense secretary — who was described as embarrassed and angry over the abuse of prisoners by American forces in Iraq — would survive.
UNITED States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was facing fresh calls for his head today after President George Bush was forced to apologise for American troops abusing Iraqi prisoners…
Many committee members are outraged that they were not made aware of an internal Pentagon report which exposed and detailed the abuse earlier this year.
The Age repeats most of the above, but has a telling cartoon.
These 78 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:44pm GMT Permanent link.
Congratulations »
While I wasn’t paying attention, Andrew er The Editors over at the Poor Man have been and gone and got themselves a Master of Science (in Engineering) (and a sweet picture too).
While Andrew The Editors have been waiting for their thesis to be accepted, they’ve been blogging like it actually made a difference. Wingnut remix is an instant classic.
I wanted to excerpt something from Meeting Notes from the Warbloggers’ Convention, 5/4/04, but it’s a perfect whole. Still, it saves me checking Harry’s Place later on.
I don’t understand the first frame of separated at birth?. I know the guy on the left is Dean Allen of Textism, multitalented, lucky enough to live in France, and a good-looking bastard to boot, but the one on the right means nothing to me. The third one (reproduced below) though, I like a lot. The one on the right seems familiar. The one on the left needs some kind of covering (a hood, perhaps) before being shown on a decent site like this.
The effect is rather spoiled when he pinched my favourite guest poster, and got her on yet another subject she knows nothing whatever about. The cheek! Yet Melanie Phillips on global warming is strangely compelling. I’ll get her back. (I’ve discovered that by a commodius vicus of synchronicity or something, I happened to give the title Traitors to her first effort for me, and I’ve since learned that she has written a play with that very title. An exclusive extract will be available here soon. Those who have seen Alan Bennett’s “Single Spies” won’t be surprised to learn that it features two bachelors who share a flat. They spend their days in affectionate argument and their dressing gowns. One is tall, dark, balding, good-looking (he thinks) with glasses. The other is fair with short, fat, hairy legs. He seems to be under the misapprehension that he is in the play what he wrote, until he realises that it is much, much worse. The bit where they dance is classic. The dialogue, so far anyway, is rubbish.)
On an unrelated note, but prompted by The Arrogance of Virtuous Certainty does anyone else remember that the hoods in No Way Out (possibly Costner’s only good film) were credited as Contra #1 and Contra #2? Takes me back.
These 388 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:13pm GMT Permanent link.
Donald B. Goode »
Go go
Go Donald go
Go
Go Donald go
Go
Go Donald go
Go
Go Donald go
Go
Donald B. Goode
Chuck Berry (amended)
These 15 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:41pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 8 May 2004
And In Other News »
At least Canadian politicians know how to apologise.
Opposition MP Jason Kenney hit back, saying he was sorry for “offending the ageing sex-kitten community”.
As he should be. Minorities ought to be respected, just like everyone else.
Both sides know how to be contrite.
“I’m sorry I called him an idiot. I should have referred to him as an imbecile,” he said.
I never knew how to pronounce ‘Lollobrigida’ either. Which may be why I always preferred Sophia Loren.
These 45 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Homage To Cattelan »
The Guardian has a story about Maurizio Cattelan.
Maurizio Cattelan, one of Italy’s leading modern artists, has a reputation for stirring controversy. But his latest work has surpassed all expectations, offending one man so grievously he ended up in hospital with concussion.
Actually, he had concussion because he fell off a ladder. That was his own stupid fault, and had little to do with being offended.
His artistic creation involves three plastic child dummies hanging from nooses in an old oak tree in Milan’s busy May 24 square. The life-like bambini appeared unperturbed, their faces calm and angelic, their wide eyes turned to the sky. Traffic jams soon formed at lights below and passersby gathered to stare and argue.
Lots of people have seen this, only one gets concussion.
But by Thursday night one passerby, Franco de Bernardo, 42, had become so angry at the effect it had on his nephew, he returned with a ladder and saw to cut the corpses [they’re not corpses, they’re dummies, but never mind] down.
When he got to bambino No 3, he lost his grip and fell, cracking his head on a railing below and ending up in a pool of blood beneath the dangling child. [It’s not a child either…]
I was going to call this, “Too thick to live, too thick-headed to die” but that seemed a little tasteless. Still, if there’s a Purple Heart equivalent of a Darwin award for people who only injure themselves in acts of amusing stupidity, Mr de Bernardo certainly deserves it.
Reminds me of David Mach whose Polaris submarine was destroyed by an arsonist who died later from terrible burns.
The Guardian piece ends:
[Maurizio Cattelan’s] taxidermic horse suspended from a ceiling, called La Ballata di Trotsky (The Ballad of Trotsky), fetched £619,750 at Christie’s in 2001.
The BBC have a photo of La Ballata di Trotsky. Great stuff.
One of these days I must get to Headington to see the shark.
These 138 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:08pm GMT Permanent link.
Signs Of The Times »
Nick has found the utterly delightful Freewayblogger. Nick links to the blog page (I can’t find any permalinks) with the rather wonderful neologism:
Rumsfail (rums´ fal), v., 1. To self-destruct, melt-down or implode under the weight of one’s own arrogance. 2. To fail spectacularly, particularly in matters of warfare or diplomacy; to plunge into chaos. 3. Absolute, unmitigated disaster of national or international proportions and consequence; policy failure so utterly abject and miserable as to approach the realm of the epic. “Although long considered to be a costly and murderous fiasco, the prisoner abuse scandal revealed the war in Iraq to be nothing short of a rumsfailure.” See also: “Karma”
I prefer the homepage, and my favourite sign says “Nobody died when Clinton lied”. I saw Christopher Hitchens looking very frazzled on Newsnight last night. I’d love to stand behind him with a sign like that next time he’s interviewed on TV. To be fair, I think he was having a hard time coming to terms with the hawks’ attitude to torture. He hopes Rush Limbaugh will change his mind, but I think this is typical hawk-speak.
May 3:
LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.
LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.
May 4:
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
May 5:
LIMBAUGH: I think a lot of the American culture is being feminized. I think the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country.
May 6:
LIMBAUGH: The thing though that continually amazes — here we have these pictures of homoeroticism that look like standard good old American pornography, the Britney Spears or Madonna concerts or whatever, and yet the Libs upset about the mistreatment of these prisoners thought nothing of sitting back while mass graves were being filled with three to 500,000 Iraqis during the Saddam Hussein regime.
While Rush is incoherent — he never seems to be anything else — at first attributing the torture (which he approves of) to women, and then blaming the reaction on women.
And then there’s the blogosphere. Little Green Fedayeen:
As despicable as the acts were that these MPs are accused of, those acts were not torture.
This is a step closer to the truth than the old pill-popper can bring himself to admit. Misha is just odd.
This time you’ve managed to cheapen the horrors of Saddam’s regime by comparing it to a dozen morons in Abu Ghraib’s puerile abuses. Of course, it’s nothing new with you Lefty Saddamites. From Day 1 you’ve been busy trying to diminish the true horrors of Saddam’s regime of terror. Not surprising, really, considering that he was a socialist just like you. A fellow traveller, so to speak. Granted, a national socialist, but still a socialist, and this isn’t the first time you’ve stood up for them, is it?
John Cole is, as expected, more reasonable:
It is not as bad as what happened under Saddam, although in some regards, I think it is worse. We aren’t Ba’athists. We aren’t Saddam Hussein. We are supposed to be better than that.
But then he spoils it in the next paragraph:
It is being hijacked and turned into a political issue.
It is a political issue. I can’t see what else it can be. At least he has some perspective:
I am filing this under outrage, not because I find Kevin [Drum]’s remarks outrageous, but because the Abu Gharib issue is, on the whole, disgusting and outrageous.
We agree there.
These 206 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:16pm GMT Permanent link.
The Splendid Game »
Chris Brooke praises Chris Lightfoot for following his lead (or his friend Martin’s) and dividing the world’s contents into Splendid”, “Rubbish”, and “Nonsense".
Well if anyone can play, this is nonsense, though, as it’s long, Jim Henley finds a nugget of incoherence.
LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, the behavior by Americans at the prison in Iraq is, as we all acknowledge, immoral, intolerable and un-American. It deserves the apology that you have given today and that have been given by others in high positions in our government and our military.
I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized. Those who have killed hundreds of Americans in uniform in Iraq working to liberate Iraq and protect our security have never apologized.
Arkhangel agrees:
And just when you thought one side had the market cornered on moral hypocrisy, you had Saint Joe Lieberman, patron saint of pious sanctimony, try to wash away the sins of Abu Ghraib by saying that since the Secretary had apologized (the way a six-year-old apologizes, only after being caught red-handed with the broken hards of pottery in his hands), and the 9/11 hijackers hadn’t, that made things better.
Arkhangel also thinks that Rumsfeld should resign.
No one was in charge, it seems — because that way, the only people who suffer punishment are the sergeants and privates in the photographs and videos. And as for the chain of command, well…uh…well, that was left behind somewhere in the recesses of the Pentagon. And there is no honor in that.
I’d call this splendid, and it is coherent and I do agree, but there is coherence on the other side which disagrees and believes Rumsfeld should stay. I’m not ready — yet — to call that position “rubbish”. (I also think Rumsfeld should go not because of Abu Ghraib — his responsibility for that has yet to be proved, although it fits a pattern which I’ll discuss below — but because he alienated so many potential allies early last year, and seems to still believe that the Iraqis just ought to love us, and any who don’t are “traitors” and “terrorists”. )
The resignation/firing/impeachment of Rumsfeld question does seem to divide along party lines. Kevin Drum is fairly neutral and Oliver Willis is certain he should go.
Macallan of Tacitus disagrees
Every person who ordered, participated in, or tried to cover up the prison abuse must be prosecuted. However, to demand Rumsfeld’s head on a platter is to indict the entire chain of command. So if you’re going to do it, get a grasp of the scope of all the people you’re are so dismissively demanding resign or get canned. Have a full understanding of the fine careers that are to be easily tossed into the waste can. Say goodnight General Myers, thanks for stopping by General Schoomaker, don’t let the door hit ya on the way out General Abiziad, and so on. Since Les Brownlee is only acting Secretary of Army perhaps he can only act fired.
I think there’s something in that, so as I can’t call the views which I disagree with “rubbish”, I don’t think I can call those I do agree with “splendid” either.
I still think Rumsfeld should go. As far as I know, having “contractors” was his idea, and it’s a disaster. ’US soldiers abused young girl at Iraqi prison’. Found through Oliver Willis.
So, I’m skipping “rubbish”, and moving on to “splendid”.
“[To] others who know him, Taguba’s blunt and forthright criticism of a department to which he’s devoted his life comes as little surprise. Associates say he is deeply committed to the Army and to the idea of taking personal responsibility in matters of right and wrong,” said the Sun.
WE’RE AMERICA, DANG IT! IT’S TIME WE STARTED ACTING LIKE IT AGAIN.
Welcome to the Southern Cone - Why shouldn’t we have people like Khaled Sheik Mohammad tortured, even though they are mass-murdering scum? There are various prudential reasons, which I went into last year. Twice. But there’s a more important reason.
Because we’re the fucking United States of America!
I weep to think that we ever took it upon ourselves to criticize Argentina for the “dirty war” of the late 70s. Evil as the junta was, it was at least responding to a concerted campaign of urban guerilla warfare. ("At the time, political kidnappings, violent strikes and bombings had become commonplace,” notes the Christian Science Monitor.) How little it took, really, to bring far too many Americans down to juntahood — a single, terrible, terrible morning. Perhaps al Qaeda already got its weapon of mass destruction, a virus capable of making all infected forget the most basic facts about who they are, or at least who they were supposed to be. We even know when they used it. From here out, we may live or die, may win or lose, but not as Americans.
Jonathan Edelstein here and here (and the post from last year illustrates the pattern which can really only be traced to Rumsfeld which I promised I’d mention, Jonathan does it better than I can):
To paraphrase Jim Henley, I will support this war again when we return to fighting it like the United States of fucking America.
Too much of this stuff, and they’ll start calling me “anti-American.” I can live with that. Heh. Final thought, I — or we — as, I hope, you, dear reader, are with me in this, already have.
Those who protest, oppose, or criticize this war or the President’s conduct of it have blood on their hands: both American and Iraqi. It is their actions which provide hope to our enemies by encouraging them to continue their fight. The protestor, the flippantly anti-war celebrity, and the French-looking Democratic politician are all, by their words and deeds, providing aid and comfort to our enemies.
Adam Yoshida, naturellement.
These 338 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Splendid Update »
Clearly nonsense. Best Fisk: Shorter John Holbo: SdB’s post is like someone who says “There are two kinds of people in the world — those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don’t. I don’t.” (Walt Pohl on CT). For all he says about Europeans this, and Americans that, he seems to have entered my ‘secret’ “Write an ostensibly serious parody of Hegel” essay competition. When I say ‘secret’, I mean I haven’t advertised it, but as cats exist, use logic to deduce the URL and the closing date. And, without giving away the rules to lesser philosophers like physicalists, realists, materialists, and so forth, he has won. Congratulations. My idea of the State of Iowa is on its way to him now. Where were we? Ah nonsense. Second prize goes to:
If anyone wanted to argue that torture is a matter of routine in many of the countries whose official media now express such shock, they would have to argue by way of double standards. This case would collapse at once and of its own weight if the standard was to become a single one, or if one torturer became an excuse for another. This point doesn’t completely apply to the media themselves, who have yet to show the video execution of an Italian civilian kidnapped by Iraqi jihadists, or indeed many other lurid atrocities. But there’s no hypocrisy in holding self-proclaimed liberators to a higher standard.
Former Trot blowhard Christopher Hitchens, quoted by Lenin who was good enough to add emphasis. A worthy second place, but failing by being far shorter than SdB, and the emphasised part actually makes sense to me. Having done so well for almost a paragraph, he fell at the last fence. Sad that one so talented would screw up so badly.
As for the other two categories (we’re back to Chris Brooke’s “splendid, rubbish, nonsense” thing again, do please keep up) JeSugisLac scores on “splendid” (for irony) and — I’m being generous here — on “rubbish”.
A few months ago, I blogged Richard Perle’s appearance on UK terrestrial television. He was on Newsnight last night, giving proud Roger Irrelevant answers to Kirsty Wark. The ageing sex-kitten of serious news coverage clearly felt the way Alexei Sayle had last year. ("I’m a nice liberal. Chinning this cunt is beneath me.") If you don’t know Viz try this: “’How many neo-cons does it take to screw in a light bulb?’ ‘You said “screw"! You… Muslim! Wibble!’”
Rubbish. “Tony Charles Lynton Blair"?! WTF?
Nonsense. “I need a nap/coffee break/golfing holiday…”
These 323 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Beautiful »
If this Yoshida character is not actually a truly bombastic, over-the-top parody of a warbot, he is one hard-core fascist (a word I don’t use lightly). Seen his blog lately? He calls for all of us who dare speak against Bush and the war to swing from lamp posts. He’s a Canadian who incessantly refers to Americans as “we.” He apparently promised more than a year ago that he was going to head south and join the U.S. Army to practice what he preaches. Shockingly enough, this keyboard commando has yet to live up to his word and all his tough talk. By flaming you, he was probably hoping to generate some traffic to his site.
Backword does not condone hate speech or hate mail in any form. I do, however, rate “keyboard commando” as a more fitting epithet than “chickenhawk”.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:48pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 9 May 2004
MISSING »
Have you seen this man?
Not seen since April. Much missed by opposition parties.
Please check your sheds and garages. He may have been locked in one.
If you are in the Armed Forces in Iraq, please check under the hoods of all your prisoners. You may be holding the Defense Secretary by mistake. Like all politicians, he can appear slippery. Perhaps he confused you with the Arabic phrase, “"Dhu yunnow Hoo Eyam,” which your phrase book says means, “My hovercraft is full of squid.” Did you read him his rights before you arrested him? Are you sure that the last person you sodomised or relieved yourself over is not your boss?
He may have angered you by protesting his innocence. They all do, it’s true, until you give them a few jolts from a car battery and stick something up their backsides. Then they start talking!
Believe us, we understand. Those Geneva Conventions are so complicated. Perhaps you were sick and missed school the day they taught that rape and torture were wrong.
The House of Commons isn’t the same without him.
These 184 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:23am GMT Permanent link.
Troying Too Hard »
As if I don’t have enough books already. Waterstone’s in town had a display of books related to Troy, among which was Troy by Adele Geras. It’s a kids’ books, and the print’s quite big, so I hope I can read it in one sitting. I also bought an Andrew Rawnsley and Gore Vidal. Kevin Drum can wait for the movie, I think:
I was appalled: pretty boy Brad Pitt as Achilles? Give me a break. It seemed like just another sign of the impending breakdown of Western civilization.
Never mind the pretty boys, the music already irritates me beyond endurance.
These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:23pm GMT Permanent link.
The MI Awards »
“It’s a nice theory,” said Pascoe. “But he must have some ability.”
“Too true. The ability to dig up whatever bones the Emmies have buried for him and come running back with them, wagging his tiny tail behind him.”
“I’m sorry?” said Pascoe, baffled. “Emmies? I don’t quite follow…”
“Emmies!” said Dalziel in exasperation. “MI this, MI that. The funny buggers.”
Reginald Hill, Recalled to Life, p35
Sometimes it all comes together, and all a poor blogger has to do is fill in the gaps. Mark Lawson believes that Blair has been damaged by “apparent mutual admiration between the Blair administration and the security services.”
You could do worse than check out Chris at Explananda. He finds excellent links. “Listen man, — what part of “Democracy Freedom Stay the Course Terror Terror” don’t you understand?” (Despite a strong resemblance, not a link to Harry’s Place.) And Primal Scream by Timothy Burke.
“Stop with the hindsight”, says one writer. “Be patient,” says another.
Oh, no, let’s not stop with the hindsight. Not when so many remain so profoundly, dangerously, incomprehensibly unable to acknowledge that the hindsight shows many people of good faith and reasonable mien predicting what has come to pass in Iraq. Let’s not be patient: after all, the people counseling patience now showed a remarkable lack of it before the war.
Indeed, if there were nothing else wrong with neo-cons, their unhinged lack of self-awareness would drive most people mad. In early 2003 Rumsfeld couldn’t wait to get moving, and never missed a shot at potential allies over their reluctance to get into a war. As soon as things didn’t go smoothly (I can’t say not according to plan, because, of course, there wasn’t one), patience was the order of the day. One rule for them, and another for us, and I’ve got my fingers in my ears, La-La-La-La, I can’t hear you…
Take Jeff Jarvis for whom the idea that words have fixed meanings is so much liberal piffle.
Rape is not torture. It is a crime. Beating someone to within an inch of his life is not torture. It is a crime. And those who committed these acts should be treated like cops who assault a prisoner with a bathroom plunger: with trials and same and perp walks and prison.
Found through the estimable Oliver Willis who was one of the first to point out that Jarvis was fortunate in not being a prisoner in Iraq — he still had a functioning ass to talk out of. (See the comments. Oliver was too polite to put it that way, of course.) And this is walking the dog. (Also found through Oliver.) I am, to coin a phrase, gobsmacked. It is like, if you must know, I have been smacked in the gob.
Interestingly, Jarvis links to Baghdad Burning (although not this post) who may know a little more about torture, as shown by Tales from Abu Ghraib….
Norm knows what torture is, quoting Ariel Dorfman (who wrote a play about it)
Torture obliges us to be deaf and blind and mute…
To which Norm adds,
Wherever and whenever it occurs.
Which shows commendable intellectual honesty. What was that line about the first casualty in war? Chris Lightfoot provides a handy, no-bullshit vocabulary guide to the War against Iraq. No use to Jeff Jarvis at all then.
Andrew Sullivan does himself some credit with Read and Weep.
But nothing that the enemy could dream up could have done us more harm in the eyes of the world than what some in U.S. uniform have done to the United States’ credibility and honor. We have no option but to withstand it and carry on. We owe that to the Iraqi people, to the world and to ourselves and our own security. But the damage is immeasurable; and, ultimately, the president must take responsibility.
Well, that would be disunpresidented or something. But at least Andrew admits that what’s happening is terrible. He doesn’t go far enough.
The stain on your country’s honor, Bush dear, was the one on the infamous blue dress that made headlines while Clinton was in the White House… this isn’t a ‘stain’ this is a catastrophe. Your credibility was gone the moment you stepped into Iraq and couldn’t find the WMD… your reputation never existed.
So are the atrocities being committed in Abu Ghraib really not characteristic of the American army? What about the atrocities committed by Americans in Guantanamo? And Afghanistan? I won’t bother bringing up the sordid past, let’s just focus on the present. It seems that torture and humiliation are common techniques used in countries blessed with the American presence.
Baghdad Burning, in no mood to take prisoners, as it were.
But every time I try to think of a way in which this is not catastrophic to the cause of democracy and peace in the Middle East, I come undone.
As Andrew says. Dear Andrew, look at that New Yorker picture I link to above. Who gives a fuck for democracy when there are vicious dogs snarlng round your balls? It’s not wrong because it might set back the Iraq elections until after the Olympic Stadium in Athens is finished (late 2020), it’s wrong because it’s fucking wrong.
Instahack is taking James Lileks’ advice and ‘blog[ging] not’ or blogging little, and blocking out all those nasty stories. He does mention ‘torture’ but tries to blame it on CNN (I dealt with this last year) for not reporting Saddam’s crimes (along with all the other news stations) and wonders why they’re all reporting this. Because this is how your tax dollars are being spent for one thing. These people are wearing the uniforms of the United States army, they’re flying your flag at Abu Ghraib. Reasons enough to be more interested? Other than that it’s business as usual, your “handy total bullshit guide to goodthink.”
Best of all is Seymour Hersh (’Sy’ to Sully, can I call you “Sully"? I’ve linked to you, it’s like we’re good friends now, right?)
In his devastating report on conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, Major General Antonio M. Taguba singled out only three military men for praise. One of them, Master-at-Arms William J. Kimbro, a Navy dog handler, should be commended, Taguba wrote, because he “knew his duties and refused to participate in improper interrogations despite significant pressure from the MI”—military intelligence—“personnel at Abu Ghraib.” Elsewhere in the report it became clear what Kimbro would not do: American soldiers, Taguba said, used “military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”
Some people have courage. Incredibly, they’re even in the military.
Gene of Harry’s Place takes comfort in history. (Revisionist, selective history, as it happens, which conveniently omits the Civil War, the Native American genocide, Korea, Vietnam, etc.)
And that really has been the history and the pride of the American service people. And I deeply regret the actions of a handful of people who have tarnished that.
That handful should be prosecuted and dealt with by the law. In the meantime I’ll just show you a picture.
I don’t know who the fellow on the left is, he’s sort of familiar, but no one’s seen him for ages. I think he’s hiding in a bunker somewhere, and eating Mars bars and salad.
I’ll try to be jollier tomorrow, but it’s hard.
These 689 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:20pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 10 May 2004
An Honest Journalist »
And you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone
The Times They Are A-Changin'
Two breaks from tradition for backword this morning. One, I use an obvious oxymoron without irony or even a wink. Two, I’ll get to Bill Deedes in the Telegraph later. But I just bought the paper in the shop and bought the Mirror as well. Too bad it doesn’t publish its columnists contemporaneously. However, next week you’ll be able to read Tony Parsons without buying the paper yourself. (But I recommend that you do.)
I can’t be bothered selecting any choices passages — it’s all good. But he starts with Slobodan Milosevic, and you can make the comparison yourself. He ends:
To this former supporter of the war in Iraq, it looks like the whole damn farm is rotten to the core.
Sounds like a call for change in the Labour leadership.
These 112 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:25am GMT Permanent link.
He Knew He Was Wrong »
Last year, I quoted Alexander Chancellor on leadership.
Have you noticed that the only people who really value leadership are themselves leaders, and that what they think of as leadership is not usually what we mean by it? This is certainly the case with Bush, who admires the leadership of foreign leaders who support him, and finds it lacking in those who don’t, irrespective of whether they are actually any good at leading.
It’s not a new excuse, but it might work in the tortuously (no pun intended) slow process of justice in the Hague. “I was only following orders…”
Apologies to Andrew Davies and Anthony Trollope.
These 44 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:57am GMT Permanent link.
The Lonely Passion Of Geoff Hoon »
To think that only a month ago, it looked like we’d get all the images of torture we’d ever need from Mel Gibson.
It looked that way to us, you and I, dear reader, kept in the dark like mushrooms, and you know the rest…
Mr Hoon is likely to face questions as to why a minister told Parliament last week he had received no “adverse” reports from any outside body on the treatment of prisoners by British soldiers.
Armed forces minister Adam Ingram’s explanation appeared to be undermined after the Government said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had raised concerns with it back in February over the treatment of British-held prisoners.
Human rights group Amnesty International added to the controversy on Sunday, saying it had warned the Government last May that Iraqis had been tortured and killed in British custody.
(Biased) ABC. The answer is obvious, is it not? The Red Cross lied, Amnesty lied, the photographs are PhotoShopped. Our ministers never, ever lie.
Of course, I have to record the gladness in my heart that Geoff Hoon has been found safe and well, and is returning to the House.
The only question now is, will it be on the box? I can’t wait.
These 109 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:31am GMT Permanent link.
Hoon Let The Dogs Out? »
I doubt that any politicians read this blog, and that any Honourable Members are au fait with popular music, but it would still be very nice if all the MPs in the chamber could greet the Defence Secretary with a rousing chorus of:
Hoon let the dogs out
Hoon! Hoon! Hoon!
Repeat ad nauseaum. But please let him speak. I’m very interested in what he’s got to say. Tony Blair’s face should be interesting too. It might be time to change the Labour leadership.
Apologies to the Baha Men.
These 81 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:57am GMT Permanent link.
Since I'm Unable To Leave Well Enough Alone »
Damian Counsell and Matthew Turner both find doubles entendres galore in David Aaronovitch’s adieu to ‘Friends’. I’m not sure if it represents big Dave in mid-U-turn or just digging himself in. Actually, the only clever thing in the whole piece is “the evil cow being set up by the fat cow for the killing of the sad cow,” which is the immortal Nancy Banks-Smith on EastEnders.
A far better farewell to old ‘Friends’ comes from Daniel Drezner who has a minor carp.
However, there was no need for the show to have a Jewish character do something that even a non-practicing Jew would never even have considered.
But, as Matt Stoller replies,
Jews do anything they want, like most people.
The other comments go into far more detail why ‘Friends’ wasn’t good anymore. The short version is: only Joey was funny, and only Monica was fanciable (and, even then, not lately). A poor hit rate for six supposed good-looking comedians.
These 127 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:34am GMT Permanent link.
It's All Words Round Here Nowadays »
I agree with Nick (who agrees with me), It’s all words round here nowadays.
First, I owe an apology to Norm. I wrote to him following his Daily Mirror pictures post, taking issue with
However, in the overall context the authenticity of the pictures is not as important an issue as is the issue of whether an incident of the kind they represent did in fact occur; of whether British soldiers have been responsible for torturing or maltreating prisoners.
I said that as the pictures looked fake (those pictures still do), even if the events they depicted had happened, the Mirror was like a bent cop planting fake evidence when he couldn’t find any real proof. Well, was I ever wrong.
Also BBC News 24, has just announced that the Red Cross report which I mentioned earlier was not given to the UK government: it was given to Paul Bremer — who, IMHO, ought to have passed a copy on. It’s about two feet thick, according to the BBC. Perhaps the government hasn’t seen it, but, if the substance is as reported, that the practice of torture was part of policy, then they didn’t need the report. The Amnesty report remains unexplained.
When I spell-checked Paul Bremer on Google, I got his Wikipedia entry.
Bremer’s appointment was criticized by some human rights groups, who note that while chairing the National Commission on Terrorism, Bremer advocated relaxation of CIA guidelines which restrict working with individuals and groups who have a record of human rights abuses. [1]
And
During the 1970s Bremer held various domestic posts with the State Department, including posts as assistant to Henry Kissinger from 1972-76.
Please follow the link for Christopher Hitchens (a war supporter) opinion of Bremer’s former boss.
And, courtesy of Jeff Jarvis’s comments, a new definition of torture, and a remarkably confident one, since there are said to be many more pictures which the papers won’t print. (And I thought the one on the front page of the Guardian and the Independent was more than children should see. Or adults.)
So far, we didn’t slice off any of their ears.
St Peter is said to be appealing.
These 247 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:17pm GMT Permanent link.
Jon Snow Mon Amour »
Just watched Jon Snow ask questions about human rights of Tony Blair at the Prime Minister’s press conference before he meets Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
No sign of the usual fixed smile. I think some of Snow’s points hurt. Not physically hurt like being bitten in the bollocks by a Rottweiler or even emotionally hurt like hearing your teenage sister screaming as she’s beaten in the next cell, of course.
Blair looked really angry. He said something about the Red Cross allegations not being about systemic abuse — that’s not my understanding (and the report seems to be 24 pages long, not two feet thick). And he seems not to have seen the Amnesty report. I think he said something about “China’s commitment to human rights” and I laughed so much I missed the rest.
Western civilisation, as Ghandi said, would be a very good idea.
These 147 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Hoon Again »
I think he survived. He’s adamant that the original Mirror pictures are fake, and that British troops stopped using hoods in September (why didn’t I know that? I should have). Nicholas Soames made a good case for the prosecution, but Hoon handled it well. I’m not certain that all Soames’ points were answered in the Minister’s original address; I’ll have to wait for the breakdowns for that. Amnesty have raised issues. Hoon claims that because a junior minister has replied to them, an “investigation is clearly underway” [from memory; could be wrong]. Not sure that follows or is adequate. Also claimed there were 33 reports of possible abuse. 15 have been investigated and rejected. 6 may go further. That leaves 12. No mention of those.
In general, he emphasised that our army was investigating itself, and doing so honourably. (So, IMO, would the US army, if the issue weren’t confused by all the unaccountable mercenaries.) Of course, the US are in Baghdad, the capital, so things may well be rougher there.
Guto Harri speculated that Tony Blair was distancing himself from the US position, and it looks like Hoon is too. God, I still hope we’re [the British] are clean, but I doubt it now.
I’m a lot less angry at Hoon now than I was yesterday, but that might just be time, the great healer, at work.
Quote of the day:
The one anti-war argument that, in retrospect, I did not take seriously enough was a simple one. It was that this war was noble and defensible but that this administration was simply too incompetent and arrogant to carry it out effectively. I dismissed this as facile Bush-bashing at the time. I was wrong. I sensed the hubris of this administration after the fall of Baghdad, but I didn’t sense how they would grotesquely under-man the post-war occupation, bungle the maintenance of security, short-change an absolutely vital mission, dismiss constructive criticism, ignore even their allies (like the Brits), and fail to shift swiftly enough when events span out of control.
Andrew Sullivan, emotionally bruised and intellectually betrayed, tries to work through what’s happened.
These 245 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:44pm GMT Permanent link.
David Blunkett »
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”
The man who went out for a pint of milk and forgot his ID card.
These 19 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 11 May 2004
I'm Sorry, But This Is ‘Abuse’ »
It seems to have been ages since the Beckhams were in the papers. Stories about how many mobiles the England captain had, and his texts with missing letters are like the land of lost content in the Housman poem. Other people’s marital difficulties are fascinating. You want to know if they’re due to circumstance, if David had had a different PA, for instance, or are a sort of tectonic shift along fault-lines which were there all along.
Whichever it is, sometimes things get said, and no matter how much you want to go back, you know you never can.
The political left has always been disputatious. The right has always tried to be “common sensical”, apolitical even, and often revelled in Mill’s description of the Tories as the stupid party. Thinking and ideologies are not really for them.
To those on the left, right-wing blogs can seem repellently dull because they do tend to agree with each other a lot, and there seem to be a lot of dittoheads out there to say “Yay,” and “You’re sooo right.”
It’s the left which has the arguments, the shouting and falling-out kind, as well as the reasoning kind, and while we’ve been able to get huffy with each other over the most trivial questions, give us a good reason for division, such as a war, and you know that the wounds are going to leave scars that take longer to heal than an Alsatian bite.
But falling-outs can be fun to watch too. SIAW (Socialism in an Age of Waiting) have it in for pretty much everyone. As they’ve only started blogging recently, it’s hard to tell if they were always like that, or like Professor Goodthink had some awful conversion from mild-mannered law professor to keyboard terrorist-fighter. But they don’t like the anti-war left:
Torture continues in many countries across the world, as part of the deliberate and sustained policies of their governments (see previous post for the most glaringly obvious example, on which the “left” maintains near-total silence). Such abuse of human rights still goes largely unphotographed, uninvestigated, unpunished and — except when it suits the domestic agendas of western political activists, or the increasingly slanted and untrustworthy agendas of the high-minded “neutrals” at Amnesty International and elsewhere — it remains largely unremarked in the West. There is nothing new about this, and the right are just as selective about it as the “left” — which only goes to show that, when it comes to failing to maintain a consistently internationalist outlook, the “left” are just as hypocritical and just as reactionary as the right.
Predictable and
The orgy of rushed judgements and sanctimonious moralising predictably being indulged in as we write confirms what has been sadly obvious for a long time: these hypocrites’ much-vaunted commitment to the notion that human rights are indivisible is no more than hollow rhetoric. It is revived whenever there is western intervention in the Middle East, or another Israeli atrocity (real or alleged), to protest about, but, revealingly, it is abandoned whenever any Arab dictatorship intervenes in the affairs of other Arab countries — as the Syrian Ba’athist regime is now intervening in Iraq — or takes care, unlike Saddam, to terrorise only its own subjects.
A Sense of Proportion. The “increasingly slanted and untrustworthy agendas” of Amnesty result in their ignoring human rights abuses in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lybia, and elsewhere at great length in detailed and researched reports.
And they’re making enemies.
I’m losing patience… with the comrades at SIAW and their increasingly childish attacks on those who protested outside the recent Iraq Procurement conference, where members of the Iraqi Governing Council were wined and dined by the world’s corporations keen to secure a slice of the profits to be made out of rebuilding Iraq.
Nick of 4Glengate, and
I’ll finish with this, since SIAW think they hegemonise the venomous side of blogging (they don’t, it just happens to account for about 90% of their output): SIAW is singly the most repellent, intellectually neutered, meretricious load of old diseased testicles that I have ever had the displeasure to encounter. Whether they consider themselves on the Left or not, the intellect on display in their trashy blog could easily be outmatched by any passing insect and the arguments therein casually dispatched by Winnie the Pooh.
And you thought the comments at Harry’s Place were bitter.
These 360 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:00pm GMT Permanent link.
A Stun To Memory »
Stopping the diary
Was a stun to memory,
Was a blank starting,
One no longer cicatrized
By such words, such actions
As bleakened waking.
Forget What Did, Philip Larkin
I think I started blogging because it was there, I write a lot anyway, and blogging allowed me to vent some opinions without having to argue with non-consenting friends. But there’s another side: it is a diary, and if you change your mind on something it remembers what you used to think, even if you don’t.
I know that I didn’t march against the Iraq invasion (it’s hard to forget something as tedious and time-wasting as a march), but I also thought that I was more ambivalent about the venture. (I kept saying that I’m ambivalent, but everything seems rather one sided.) I seem to have been against it from the beginning of 2003, which I regret because it makes my position seem less considered and more like prejudice. January:
There’s a world leader who’s planning the deaths of his own servicemen and innocent civilians in the cause of popularity and oil. Right now, that person is not Saddam.
I think about Saddam and I think about Blair, and to quote Morrissey, “neither one, particularly, appeals to me.”
And
It’s a great joke here, but probably unreported in the States, that a 72-year-old charity worker was arrested in South Africa at the request of the FBI, and held for three weeks without trial. He was innocent. This is how our allies deal with suspected criminals. Still he got a call from the president, which I thought was sweet. However, it was the SA president. Bush and Rumsfeld clearly don’t apologise.
March starts with John Brady Kiesling’s letter of resignation to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. I knew I was cynical about the war before it began but this, I’m proud of:
First, Dean Allen uncovers an old but oh so relevant Onion piece: Bush: ’Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.’
And then Dean, and everyone links to Raed’s take on inside Iraq. Raed (and there should be a link to the right) is fan-fucking-tastic.
There’s a lot of Blair-Churchill comparisons around just now. Churchill was just about the only prominent politician who was against Hitler, and he was right, blah blah. I don’t think these obtain. The UN was not appeasing Saddam, it was imposing sanctions and weapons inspections. War in Churchill’s time became necessary because the League of Nations didn’t do these things. If anyone is being Churchillian, it is Robin Cook, standing by his principles, and letting them fly in a devasting speech. Of course, Cook may be being petulant, he may be taking an enlightened gamble, but so, in many ways, was Churchill.
My friend Dave Price was far more informed, articulate, and percipient than I was. (March 20)
It’s a very confusing position, and until the last couple of days I have been unable to make my mind up on the issue. Although my views are likely to keep on changing, I’m currently here:
Chirac’s opposition to 2nd resolution is equally duplicitous as Bush’s (and Blair’s?) motives for intervention. Chirac is motivated by France’s own interests in the region and, more importantly (I think), he is looking to Europe in the long term. His primary objective is to marginalise the UK.
In that context, the issue of the “legality” of war is moribund. Having a second resolution might have made things easier in presentational terms—i.e. the war would be said to be legal, but it would make it no more or less legal than without an agreement.
The issue is not about the legality of war, it is about the ethics of starting a war. Trouble is the situation has got far beyond such debates.
Reading further down, I find:
While I’m glad that Salam Pax is alive and well, I’m now sick of this war. I wish I’d been more against it from the first — enough to go on marches, at least. But, like a lot of people, I thought that there was some merit in the arguments that international law is not binding, that Saddam has to go (see for instance I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam or Anne Clwyd who has campaigned for years for the indictment of Saddam). So, even though I thought that Bush wanted the war for the wrong reasons (Oil) and pretended to have other wrong reasons (September 11, 2001), I sort of hoped the war would come off, and maybe the world would be a better place. But now, it’s starting to look like we’re just going to alienate the neighbouring countries, and, more pertinently, the local Iraqis we’ve always been assured will turn on Saddam.
At the end of the month:
In the past week, Andy McNab, SAS, Gulf veteran and author, said on Radio 4 that there would be resistance in the cities. And Boris Johnson, Tory MP and columnist writes No matter how much I might dislike the Blair regime, I would have mixed feelings about a “liberating” force that destroyed the MoD, the Foreign Office, the BBC and Number 10. Much as I dislike Bush and Rumsfeld, I felt I knew who was on ‘my’ side when al-Quaeda tried to fly a plane into the White House, and did fly one into the Pentagon.
They were wrong at the time, right in the long run.
By April, I wasn’t keen on the Home Secretary.
David Blunkett talks about asylum seekers on Radio 4’s Today. Mostly, he’s talking about Abu Hamza. But he says, rather oddly, after distancing himself from the extreme liberals, that he opposes the death penalty (fair enough, but this is UK law, and in the Geneva Convention), and will not deport anyone facing death or torture in their home country, regardless of what they had done or whether their asylum appeal was successful or not.
Now, if your government threatening torture isn’t an adequate reason for seeking asylum, what is?
May. Boring. June. Ditto. July is better, for the truth about lies. Besides that, I’d clearly decided that the choice was as simple as Bush thought it was. Any side which included Alastair Campbell was to be opposed to the death. A year later, it’s still true.
In August, I agreed with Peter Cuthbertson. Frightening.
At the end of the month, through Stephen Pollard, I found this charming and truthful ad. Pollard called it distasteful, but he thinks Professor Goodthink and Mad Mel are sane, and Blair has principles.
And after that, life seemed to settle down again.
These 309 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:28pm GMT Permanent link.
Yale Style »
A new face for Yale University. Class, IMO. Matthew Carter designed the font you’re very likely reading this in. Smart guy. British too.
These 23 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Swivel Eyed Loons »
Apologies for taking one of Anthony Wells’ catchphrases, but nothing else came to mind after seeing this BNP Flash wierdness (found through Tim). It’s sort of comforting, because, apart from the mendacity, they really don’t have a clue, or, apparently, any policies.
It’s sheer, deranged lunacy. And FWIW, my passport is red. I think they all are now.
These 58 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:27pm GMT Permanent link.
Links And Thinks »
Not fair, but true. New York Post front pages for the week the Abu Ghraib story broke. Via Chris, who’s also right about Noam Chomsky.
Wingnut World, or Glenn Reynolds (Professor Goodthink) condensed.
Professor Goodthink, the Bleat, and a few others (Melanie Phillips and Stephen Pollard seem a little quiet lately, I can’t think why they aren’t berating our moral shortcomings and telling us what to do) have followed the Post’s example. Shorter Lileks (no permalinks, so damn hard to pin him down) no drum-banging today, here’s a picture of my daughter or my dog. Aren’t they sweet? Say no, and the terrorists have won. The Hack sez: “Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s a scandal, to be dealt with. The people who want to make it the whole war are misguided, at best.” (Clearly, he had only a limited number of ‘Yay’s, or was trying to cut down. Perhaps military action in the Yay producing regions of the middle east have forced the price up.)
Asked when Ministers had actually seen the [International Committee of the Red Cross] ICRC’s interim February report, the [Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman] said that they would have seen it only once this controversy had blown up. The reason why it had not been necessary for Ministers to have seen it was because officials would have been given the report in strict confidence, in accordance with the way the ICRC operated, and it had been felt that the issues which needed to be dealt with had not required Ministerial decisions.
Downing Street Says on Iraq. This seems a very twisted definition of “in strict confidence”, surely when you give a report like that to the Government, they’re not asking that it be withheld from Ministers (who are, in theory, the only ones with the power to actually do anything), only that the sources are protected. And surely Ministers need to be informed — they ought to know more than what is merely reported by the papers. Strange.
On the Iraq Abuse Allegations, this is rather classic.
Put to him by BBC News 24 that it was “slightly incredible” that, having gone to all the trouble of protecting the Iraqi people from torture, the Prime Minister “couldn’t even be bothered” to find out from the Red Cross and Amnesty International how Iraqi prisoners were being treated, the PMOS said that he would leave it to others to comment on the pejorative way the question had been put. Put to him that the question was being asked in factual terms, the PMOS said it was not factual to suggest that the Prime Minister could not be bothered with the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
Actually, it may be factual; it’s not proven: the converse can’t be proven either.
Asked why the Prime Minister had chosen to issue an apology for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners on French television yesterday, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had been asked a direct question. Following his comments to the House last Wednesday, his position was very clear. We had gone to Iraq to stop this sort of thing happening.
So, the whole Campbell versus the BBC, Campbell on the JIC, Campbell invades Channel 4 News, Campbell spending more time with his ego thing was entirely unnecessary. Blair could just have said last March that we were going “to Iraq to stop this sort of thing happening.” None of that 45-minute nonsense. Without the lies, I may even have bought it.
I may have been overly sanguine about Hoon’s performance yesterday. He survived Nicholas Soames quite well — he didn’t seem that bothered. If the army spontaneously arrested soldiers for abuse, then that does imply that the system works (unlike the US one, where nothing gets done until the media intervene). But then I missed the second part of Hoon’s commons performance, because the BBC only broadcast it on BBC Parliament. Still Simon Hoggart found No hood, but humiliation aplenty.
Ann Clwyd, who was Tony Blair’s special human rights representative in Iraq, quietly but angrily wanted to know why she hadn’t been shown the Red Cross report.
But why should she? She was only an Iraqi human rights envoy. What possible business of hers were Iraqi human rights?
Robin Cook, who does “I told you so” with elegance these days, pointed out that the charges would make life horribly more dangerous for our forces. How on earth did ministers not know?
Cook is perhaps the only person who could convince me to vote Labour again. I get the impression Jack Straw is fed up. A Cook/Straw/Clwyd alliance? Perhaps there’s hope. Troops broke the law, admits Hoon.
But in a sign of the immense pressure on Mr Blair, loyal backbenchers voiced serious unease about the government’s handling of the affair. Some of the anger was fuelled by the prime minister’s attempt to play down the report.
On the Iraq torture story the Scotsman says:
According to reports in the US, more photos are expected to emerge - including images of a US soldier having sex with a female inmate and pictures of Iraqi guards committing rape.
Further images of US soldiers mistreating a corpse are also said to be in circulation in defence circles, and are likely to be leaked to the media.
I really want to know how “mistreating a corpse” can be “softening-up for questioning”. Even the most inbred Southern hillbilly must know that dead men, as the Motorhead song puts it, tell no tales.
Adam Yoshida (who in the comments to this post is accused by Michael Brooke of being ‘left-wing’ — I see the logic, and somehow Adam has recovered enough to post since) asks readers to Sign to Support Secretary Rumsfeld. That is, “Support his continuing as Secretary of Defense in spite of the ramblings of worthless sub-human trash like the lot of you.”
Giblets also supports the Defense Secretary.
To everybody who wants a weak America, who wants a pansy-ass runnin-scared fraidy-cat America, Giblets has this to say: God bless Donald Rumsfeld because he is taking the fight to the terrorists, in some vague, ill-conceived sense that doesn’t seem to be working out well but hey, Giblets is not a “details” person he is a “big picture” person.
The traitors at the Army Times:
But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership.
Before we leave Adam, let us consider his belief that space is the key to the American future. Bush thinks so too as does Steven den Beste, though neither mentions enslaving aliens. (Hmm. I wonder if Adam knows why the slave trade collapsed? Or if he has any idea how much energy it takes to put a person into orbit?)
In Iraq, Faiza writes:
I remember now a comment made by my neighbor that I didn’t believe at the time. Now it surfaces into my brain again. After the Falluja incident I called her and we talked about different things. She works for the ministry of health and I know that those working at government offices know some secrets the regular citizen finds about much later. I told her how amazed I was and that I refuse such acts of killing and burning people in the streets. She said: Don’t be amazed Um-Raed, they were involved in torturing and mistreating Iraqis in prisons…
Now we know that they found out about the torture as early as January 2004.
That’s 4 months ago…
That minority who knew about it have every right to hide it. It hurts and destroys Iraqis’ feelings. It tears their pride apart. It’s humiliating and makes them hate the occupation even more.
It was a shock to the American people. They didn’t believe that their government would do such a thing.
That’s mainly because they believe totally in their government, its honesty, Right and justice in the US and abroad.
Then the truth was out.
Norm is unhappy with Matthew Norman in the Grauniad, and so am I.
Barbara [Amiel] isn’t about to hold her hands up (and with all those cuffs about, can you blame her?), and nor is the Mail’s Mad Mel Phillips, Mystic Mogg of the Times, Crazy Janet Daley of the Telegraph, our own David Aaronovitch and several others. Champagne for any still explaining why it all makes sense come June 30.
Oi! Norman! ‘Mad Mel’, I coined that. Get your own pejorative appelation. Cheek. But it was something else which irritated the Professor Emeritus:
Meanwhile, which of the pro-war pundits will go longest without the hint of a mea culpa? Yesterday, the Mirror’s Tony Parsons had the grace to admit dropping an orchestra, to borrow a racetrack term…
Tony Parsons’ article is here (Hat tip Lenin).
Perhaps they’re waiting for a mea culpa from him [Matthew Norman] for the things Iraqis would still be enduring — and which I won’t enumerate here, since they’re well enough known to all morally aware people — had his contrasting anti-war view prevailed. But I doubt it. It’s not something that will ever come.
The Norm often refers to ‘The Dude’ aka Christopher Hitchens (aka “that English guy in the ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’"), keen supporter of the war, who said:
However — and here is the clinching and obvious point — Saddam Hussein is not going to survive…
For once, I’m convinced by ‘the Dude’ (though I wasn’t when I quoted him last week).
Does Norm’s rather acidulous comment add up to ‘a mea culpa instead of “the ramblings of worthless sub-human trash like the lot of you"’?
I did say this war was causing divisions, even among the best of us.
These 748 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:44pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 12 May 2004
When I Said, 'Heads Must Roll,' I Meant... »
How are the media this stupid? AOL headlines: “Abuse Scandal’s Deadly Fallout” referring to the hideous beheading of Nick Berg. Or this idiocy: “American Beheaded for Abuse.” Do these people have no memories? This is al Qaeda. They beheaded Daniel Pearl long before the war in Iraq. They murdered thousands in New York City long before Saddam was removed from power. And they are as stupid as they are evil. Iraqis now have contrasting images. Do they want to be run by people who cut innocent people’s throats at will or by people who have removed a dictator and are investigating unethical abuse of prison inmates?
I agree with all of that, though I wouldn’t have used the term ‘al Qaeda’. I think he loses it — or he loses me, a different thing — for the rest of the paragraph.
I remember British soldiers killed by mobs in Northern Ireland (sorry, but I can’t remember names this morning, so finding a link would be hard), without any British atrocity as an excuse. Let’s be fair: they would have done this anyway. That’s why we’re fighting them isn’t it?
I don’t understand his carping about CNN and the BBC.
BBC WATCH: “His killers shouted ‘Allah is great’ before holding what appeared to be a head up to the camera.” What appeared to be his head? Who do they think Zarqawi is: Penn or Teller?
I think the scepticism — you don’t know for certain that it was his head — shows good journalism.
These 114 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:55am GMT Permanent link.
Is It Me, Or Is There A Draft In Here? »
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag, Country Joe McDonald
Someone here asks whether Rush ever served. The answer is…uh, no. Like Cheney and the other chickenhawks he ducked it. What makes his case so fascinating is the reason he got off. It was a medical deferment for a “pilonoidal cyst”. Although he denies it now whenever someone brings it up, he admitted to it in an interview in Playboy in 1993. A pilonoidal cyst is a chronic big pus-filled pimple on your butt! A perfect reason for Pillboy to begin his career as a lifelong chickenhawk. What a sanctimonious blowhard…
You know the beginning of ‘Gladiator’ when Russell Crowe strides among the foot soldiers, checking their turnout and making inspirational small-talk? Thus you can tell a good military leader. Paul Wolfowitz, it seems, really knows the army well.
US readers! Register for the draft. Damn, I have ‘Averse-to-Deathism.’ (Via Nick.)
You may need the The I-resign.com Guide to Being Called-Up.
David Aaronovitch in an otherwise excellent article:
I am not about to add to the loud splashes of those jumping the occupation ship…
Perhaps a reference to Tony Parsons. Aaronovitch is too old to be called up; Tony Parsons has a year or so to go. Might these facts be related?
These 98 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:32am GMT Permanent link.
Lest We Forget »
How quickly they do.
’GOOD-MORNING; good-morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
’He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
. . . .
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
The General, Siegfried Sassoon.
These 8 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:45am GMT Permanent link.
James Inhofe »
James Inhofe manages the trick of uniting Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum, and Josh Marshall:
According to CNN, McCain walked out during Inhofe’s statement.
Sullivan has started speculation about the Kerry-McCain ticket. McCain is a Republican.
Thing is, I will be rooting for a George Bush election victory. Who knows, perhaps even impeachment in 2006?
These 45 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Cruel And Unusual »
Interestingly, beheading seems to be particularly prohibited by the Constitution. (I’m not a US lawyer, so I’m not sure if what’s in the square brackets is a gloss or the actual text of a authority.) News 24 has more on the Nick Berg story. His family blame the US.
Berg spoke to his parents on March 24 and told them he would return home on March 30. But he was detained by Iraqi police at a checkpoint in Mosul on March 24.
Berg was turned over to US officials and detained for 13 days. His father, Michael, said his son wasn’t allowed to make phone calls or contact a lawyer.
That sounds like a violation of the Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…
He was a bridge-builder, not a mercenary ("contractor” in Rumsfeld newspeak), right?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi doesn’t seem like he’s a respecter of human rights.
The website broadcasting the killing [of Nick Berg] said Mr Zarqawi was the man who cut off Berg’s head — and the statement in the video was signed off with the militant’s name.
And he’s already under a death sentence.
Jordan tried him in absentia and sentenced him to death for allegedly plotting attacks on American and Israeli tourists.
Bloody hell.
These 91 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:10pm GMT Permanent link.
Compare And Contrast »
Chistopher Hitchens, April 29:
It’s now fairly obvious that those who cover Iraq have placed their bets on a fiasco or “quagmire” and that this conclusion shows in the fiber and detail of their writing.
Kevin Drum, today.
This is all part of the game of trying to pretend that the media systematically reports only bad news from Iraq, a game that’s getting way old. Face it: they report lots of bad news because there’s lots of bad news.
Well at least the Dude snarked before it got really stale…
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:25pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 13 May 2004
The Mirror Up To Nature »
The MoD will announce the result of its investigation into the Mirror torture photos later today. And, speaking of making stuff up,
[Adam Ingram] is also due to respond to claims he misled MPs over when he first heard of allegations UK troops had abused Iraqis.
Politicians lie, but "The armed forces don’t perpetuate frauds,” he added after showing the footage at a news conference on Tuesday. Do those aliens know that Adam Yoshida intends to enslave them?
These 54 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:29am GMT Permanent link.
Nick Berg »
I don’t think the murder of Nick Berg was in any related to the pictures and reports from Abu Ghraib prison. Abu al-Zarqawi is pretty clearly a thug.
The Torygraph today is good on Nick Berg.
“The real losers are the Iraqis. They killed their best friend. They just didn’t know it,” said Skip Best.
As Abu al-Zarqawi is Jordanian, and, as he seems to want fear, hatred, and poverty, I suspect he’s not that bothered. He doesn’t seem to be in al Qaeda:
Zarqawi is not a member of a particular terror group, most experts say, but rather cooperates with several terror organizations. He represents a new kind of terrorism, they say, carried out by small, mostly autonomous groups that share a common belief in jihad but have individual goals and may seek financial or logistical help from bigger organizations like al Qaeda.
My impression is that he — like bin Laden — is an isolated nutter, and is not representative of Arab or Muslim feeling.
So, to distance myself from the shameful hypocritical Arab and Muslim masses. I wish to denounce this barbaric act and the pathetic ideology that fueled it, to disown any person from my part of the world who would justify it, and to offer my sincere condolences and sympathy to the family and countrymen of Nicholas Berg.
Zeyad. He’s better placed to judge than I am. However, not all Iraqis support the murder.
West Chester itself seemed numb as much as furious at Mr Berg’s fate. The shrillest expressions of rage at his death came from elsewhere.
“Where is the outrage from all the international groups, the ICRC, the Red Crescent and all the sheikhs, imams and mullahs?” demanded Col Oliver North, best known for his role in 1980s Contras scandal.
Bathetic. (From the Torygraph, link above.) I don’t think the Red Cross does outrage; it reports facts. The “sheikhs, imams and mullahs” could say something, but there’s as much hope of that as getting sense out of Rush Limbaugh.
These 143 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:18am GMT Permanent link.
I Feel Better About Myself Now »
I never thought I’d say this, but I watched yesterday’s debate in the Commons as often as I could yesterday — and I was rooting for Michael Howard!
But then, and I had to wait for the papers this morning to confirm what I saw with my own eyes, Jon Owen Jones asked a question. According to the Mirror
Despite the efforts of his whips Labour backbencher Jon Owen Jones quizzed Mr Blair for his close ties to Bush, comparing Iraq with Britain’s last invasion of the area, then called Mesopotamia, in 1914.
Andrew Gimson in the Telegraph Commons sketch (reg required):
[Tony Blair] made no attempt to diminish the seriousness of recent developments: “I agree of course the events of the past few days have been immensely damaging.”
The same brutal honesty was found in his declaration a few minutes later: “I have to accept responsibility for the position I’m in and the country’s in today.” This personal admission of responsibility was made in reply to the Labour MP Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff Central), who had just observed in a gloomy tone: “When we last invaded Mesopotamia in 1914 it took 44 years to get out.”
(Blair’s “brutal honesty” reminds me of Fareed Zakaria:
Secretary Rumsfeld hastened to add that he did not plan to resign and was not going to ask anyone else who might have been “responsible” to resign. As far as I can tell, taking responsibility these days means nothing more than saying the magic words “I take responsibility.”
After the greatest terrorist attack against America, no one was asked to resign, and the White House didn’t even want to launch a serious investigation into it.)
I campaigned for Jon Owen Jones in 1997. I wasn’t that impressed. “Cardiff Central is the smallest, most urban of all Welsh constituencies and has the highest student vote in Wales.” So his position: “I oppose the Government’s proposal to bring in variable fees for universities and intend to vote against them” isn’t all that rebellious. But his voting record (especially recently) is more impressive.
Jon, I was wrong about you, if I ever see you in the ‘Gower’, I’ll buy you a pint.
These 160 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:07pm GMT Permanent link.
Quote Of The Day »
Boris Johnson on grade inflation:
I am myself an employer, in a small way, and I see hundreds of CVs a year; and all of them now have so many As that the page reads like the wail of a man falling off a building.
Now seems a good time to mention Boriswatch. (Via Nick.) On the same page as Boris’s column, deputy editor Sarah Sands defends the great man from the carping of Janet Street-Porter.
These 36 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:24pm GMT Permanent link.
A Little Respect »
I’m pleased to report that I’m a human being according to Philosoraptor’s little quiz.
Long Story, Short Pier has the best take I’ve seen yet on the six morons who lost the war.
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:33pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 14 May 2004
A Great Improvement »
I don’t know why this is so funny. It just is.
This, on the other hand, makes sense.
These 18 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:46am GMT Permanent link.
I Will Survive »
And so you’re back
From outer space
I just walked in to find you here
with that sad look upon your face
I should have changed my stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one second
You’d be back to bother me
Go on now go walk out the door
Just turn around now
’Cause you’re not welcome anymore
These 60 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:26am GMT Permanent link.
Gods And Monsters »
This is a brilliant cartoon from Today’s Telegraph. (I’d have posted a link, but that would have only served whatever today’s editorial cartoon is, which isn’t the point). I like the rose on the left.
Matt sums up my views on the Mirror’s fake pictures. (That took some finding too. I had to email a link to the cartoon to myself to get it.)
These 65 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:15am GMT Permanent link.
Away »
I’m off for the weekend, be back late on Sunday or Monday.
Be good.
These 14 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:10pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 17 May 2004
Photos »
Back later than expected, and have been out of touch with the news, so blogging will take some time.
A tank on Salisbury Plain, moving and kicking up lots of dust, so not easy to photograph.
Salford City, supposedly worth £3M.
Four-year old Joe gets to sit on the cheaper Barry Island.
A very young foal — two or three days old — with its mother in the New Forest.
A weevil Joe found.
These 75 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:11pm GMT Permanent link.
In Camera »
I’m going to close my eyes. I can hear the cries starting. Matthew had the right idea. but suggesting this will at least bring me the worst bile, the phlegm from the bottom of the lungs from Harry’s Place and beyond. Yes, I am a supporter of Saddam. And I will give it to you straight. Hitler was worse. Hitler conquered France. He bombed Britain for four years. He murdered millions in the concentration camps. Saddam was a beginner, and he had years to refine his torture techniques before he was deposed. We had months. (Don’t give me that “They only did this” crap. All Saddam’s men did to Andy McNab was pull out a few teeth and force (remember ‘force’ he was in the SAS, he was harder than me or you) him to eat shit. I maintain: Saddam was bad; the Nazis were worse. And the Sunday Telegraph reminds us how we treated them. America has a great past. Rumfeld and Hoon have let that down. World War II was not fought for the Jews in camps, but for Hitler’s expansionist policy. We had to fight to survive. And we kept our humanity. We didn’t need to fight in Iraq. But we lost what made us us.
I take exception to Matthew d’Ancona in yeserday’s Torygraph”
I am still a hawk, if only out of contempt for those who seem to think that if John Kerry is elected President in November and Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister in the near future, the Islamic fundamentalists will defuse their bombs, put down their rifles and leave the West alone. Do the opponents of the war really believe that appeasement of this sort will stop the men who cut off the head of the US contractor Nick Berg and then paraded it to a camera? How deluded is it possible to be?
I think dear Matthew will find names of those so deluded hard to find. I — and I can speak for no one else — don’t believe that there are foreign powers plotting against ‘us’. I do believe there are enemies, but so far, this “war on terror” is misconceived.
I mostly want the Chimp to win in November, because that way, as Matthew Parris has noted, neoconservatives will be discredited, indicted, impeached, even executed, instead of surviving like some kind of Trotskyism-in-aspic as the untried -ism. But I have to try to calculate the number of the dead. It isn’t the case that if GWB is magicked from the White House the terrorists will beat their smart bombs, cruise missiles and whatever else we sold them (insert photo of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam with think-bubble calculating the value to his pension) into ploughshares; but Clinton would have fought back; he was an American patriot, unlike these “highest-bidder” monkeys.
These 379 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:09pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 18 May 2004
When Blogs Kick Ass »
Gene, IMO the most sensible of the Harry’s Placers, has an ostensibly sensible post on the World Bank. As with so much of Harry’s Place, it’s a cover for some serious straw-man bashing. “Isn’t this the sort of idea a serious Left should get behind?” “The left will get behind it IF they can find a way to spin it as anti-US and/or anti-Israel.” “Is there a serious left, err, left?”
Daniel on Crooked Timber explains, with examples, why it’s not such a good idea.
These 85 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:37am GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 19 May 2004
Complaints Policy »
I still haven’t got comments working yet, and I haven’t got a clue what’s wrong with the May archive. So, I’m going to follow the The Poor Man:
Please address all technical questions to our customer service center at rmeuller@fbi.gov, using the subject line “bomb threat”.
Heh.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:14pm GMT Permanent link.
Biting The Dust »
As someone who thought ‘Fathers 4 Justice’ was a crime-fighting rap outfit, I’m probably not really entitled to comment, but I have mentioned the House of Commons security screen. So whether it cost £2M or merely £600,000 as the BBC says today, I’m greatly amused that it’s as much use as a lead parachute. If Peter Hain is still worried by security, I’m happy to sell him my collection of chocolate fireguards.
These 72 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:41pm GMT Permanent link.
The Search For Christopher Hitchens' Style »
Found on No More Mister Nice Blog (from Atrios):
Caprice, also, lends an element of relish to what might otherwise be the boring and routine task of repression. However, most governments will have the grace (or the face) to deny that they do this. And relatively few states will take photographs or videos of the gang-rape and torture of a young woman in a cellar and then deposit this evidence on the family’s doorstep. This eagerness to go the extra mile, as is manifested [here], probably requires an extra degree of condemnation. And if we are willing to say, as we are, that the devil is in the details, then it may not be an exaggeration to detect a tincture of evil in the excess. We could have a stab at making a clinical definition and define evil as the surplus value of the psychopathic — an irrational delight in flouting every customary norm of civilization.
Christopher Hitchens, Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2002. I’m not interested in comparisons between the Coalition and Saddam here — and Hitchens is writing about the latter. This is his opinion about Abu Ghraib:
Thugs and torturers, who are always on tap in limitless supply, do their work in the dark and, when caught, plead exceptional circumstances. It’s as if they are on an urgent self-appointed mission. But the battle against Islamic jihad will be going on for a very long time, against a foe that is both ruthless and irrational. This means that infinite patience and scruple and intelligence are required, as well as decisiveness and bravery. Given this necessary assumption, all short-cut artists, let alone rec-room sadists, are to be treated, not as bad apples alone, but as traitors and enemies. If Rumsfeld could bring himself to say that, he could perhaps undo some of the shame, and some of the harm as well.
If I understand this, the tortures up to April 2003 were the fault of Saddam personally, while all those since are down to “bad apples.” I don’t have a problem with Hitchens’ views as such, but I do have one with how he gets to them.
Regular readers may have guessed that I occasionally post drunk. I think every blogger knows it’s stupid, and I sometimes have the control to leave what I’ve written until the morning to see if it makes sense. Mostly I don’t. I wrote this post drunk, and considered deleting it, but it seems to have impressed Nick. And most of the things others pick up on, I’ve nearly thrown away, while the posts I regard as brilliant go ignored.
I don’t see any other explanation besides writing drunk for Christopher Hitchens’ stylistic nosedive. He has swapped Orwellian clarity for Gibbonian fustian. That’s unfair to Gibbon; I’m thinking of how Robbie Coltrane did Dr Johnson in ‘Blackadder.’ I find it helps if every time Hitchens says something is “self-evident” or “obvious” you add “even to you, Baldrick.” It gets the voice-in-the-head right, though I think Hitchens pictures a dinner-jacketed Laurence Olivier resting after each comma in the maze of sub-clauses for applause or laughter.
And if we are willing to say, as we are, that the devil is in the details, then it may not be an exaggeration to detect a tincture of evil in the excess.
There was a story in the Telegraph recently which was perhaps intended to rehabilitate Dan Quayle, which included, “The world recalls Mr Quayle watching a schoolboy write potato on a blackboard, before nudging him to add an extra ‘e’. The world does not recall that a distracted Quayle was the victim of an aide, who handed him a cue card inscribed ‘potatoe’.” You do wonder if one of Mr Hitchens’ assistants were to hand him a cue card with “We are a grandmother,” the phrase would turn up in the next Salon.
Hitchens may fancy himself as “the reincarnation of Orwell” (as Paul Gottleib puts it in a CT comment) but the highfalutin foppery in the sentence above can only be the product of a bet that he couldn’t use the word ‘tincture’ in an article on Iraq. His own excess, evil or not, has made him forget that “the devil is in the details” means “Even the grandest project depends on the success of the smallest components.” No mention of evil there whatever.
I’ve read, and been impressed by, Hitchens’ earlier journalism, when he did seem to be influenced by Orwell. Now his writing is lousy with ‘perhaps’s, ‘probably’s, and ‘may’s. Something seems to “sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to” as the Porter in MacBeth had it.
But Hersh’s article wants to argue that the fish rots from the head, as indeed it very often does (even though, metaphorically speaking, one might think that the fish’s guts would be the first to decay). And in order to argue this top-down process, he decides to propose that it began with Sept. 11. “In a sense,” as he himself cautiously phrases it, this could arguably be true.
Hitchens in Slate, Tuesday, May 18, 2004. The fish rotting metaphor is Hitchens’ not Hersh’s. I don’t know why he constructs a metaphor, then babbles about it, and then tries to dismiss it — never mind that fish are usually seen horizontal, and the putrefaction occurs length-wise. Many of Hitchens’ paragraphs carry a pointless ornate word. Orwell called this ‘pretentious diction.’ Hitchens is full of it.
Hitchens criticizes Hersh with “More than one kind of non sequitur is involved in this ‘scenario.’” Note the scare quotes around “scenario”, but, true or false, it is a scenario, not a so-called one (and if it were, it would be Hitchens who so-called it). Despite the signature phrase “And very obviously” in the next sentence, Hitchens does not tell us what they are, or whether the facts Hersh provides are accurate or not.
There would have been sadistic dolts in the American occupation forces in Iraq, even if there had not been wavering lawyerly fools in the Tampa center that was monitoring Afghanistan.
I don’t read Hersh as blaming “wavering lawyerly fools.” Kevin Drum has a photo which may show military intelligence officers interrogating an Iraqi. (It may be from this NBC report on abuse, but I haven’t found it.) From the photos I’ve seen (and there may be as many as 1800 altogether), there are a lot more than a “few sadistic dolts”.
(For a fuller analysis, see Ted’s CT post, approved by Chris at Explananda.)
Everyone is a fool by now to Hitchens except himself and his president, and he’s not too sure about Bush. From Brock Sides, I’ve found Mark Kleiman’s “five epistemic principles” (Brock’s term, not Mark’s). And those really do spell out why you shouldn’t post drunk, because what seems like an unaswerable pub argument looks a lot paler on a computer screen.
The devil is in the details. Heh.
These 765 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:19pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 20 May 2004
Not Reporting, But Spinning »
I think it was Karl Popper who coined the term “postdiction.” It means, ah, predicting an event after it has happened, or after it has been observed (a scientific distinction). The classic example is the perihelion of Mercury, which defied Newton’s laws of gravity, but behaved in accordance with General Relativity.
Less modest souls than the present writer would nod toward the motto “great minds think alike”, wits would add the inevitable rejoiner: Norman Geras posted at “02:04 PM” Christopher Hitchens really worries some people on the anti-war left.
I mean he really, seriously, worries them. How do I know? Well, you can tell. Even though these people — the ones he really worries — profess to have been finding his arguments uncompelling for some little while now, they seem unable to limit themselves to pointing out why this or that argument of his doesn’t persuade them, without also throwing in a personal insult or two, relating to his writing style, his alcohol intake or some other such vital matter. Here’s a suggestion. Hitchens worries them because he isn’t the inconsequential intelligence they affect to think he has become, but rather a formidable anatagonist of their own preferred forms of oversight and evasion.
Well, that’s me told. That’s very true, and I suppose I owe an explanation. I respect Norm. He’s unfailingly polite. I’d like to think that, like an ideal liberal, I look for counter-examples for whatever I happen to believe. I know that I don’t — the Grauniad ran some crap about astrology yesterday — which I won’t link to, and which only made me glad that I’ve stopped buying it. But I do run anything new against whatever might discredit it, and I do look for things which may expand my ken.
And I think Hitchens is talking crap. I don’t know much about prisons, and what I do know I learned from either Porridge or Michel Foucault, but I know that they’re not designed like English stately homes, with ramshackle extensions built on over the years, and hidey-holes for turbulent priests and illicit stills concealed in subtle corners or fake walls. Modern prisons are modelled after John Stuart Mill’s panopticon, and sentries can indeed see everything.
Despite the attractions of prisons, a holiday from the wife and free food, prisoners want to escape. Keeping them in requires vigilance, as technology and architecture are always weaker than human ingenuity. Many of the photos from Abu Ghraib were taken in the corridors. I cannot believe that these acts went unobserved. Someone said on some military blog, “if you’re an NCO, and you’re not saying “that’s against regulations” five times a day, you’re not doing your job.” In the army, you don’t cough without permission. Seven bad apples? Two years into the greatest threat America may have ever faced, and the army adopts the discipline of the Grateful Dead? Why do I not believe that?
There are more misdirections in a Hitchens essay than in an hour of Paul Daniels. There is very little factual content. There is a lot of stuff about non non sequiturs, and huffing that some things are so obvious they hardly need said.
Given this necessary assumption, all short-cut artists, let alone rec-room sadists, are to be treated, not as bad apples alone, but as traitors and enemies. If Rumsfeld could bring himself to say that, he could perhaps undo some of the shame, and some of the harm as well.
Hitchens, What Went Wrong. I think it’s not true, and Hitchens knows it’s not true that the privates and NCOs facing courts martial acted on their own initiative. That isn’t the charge against Rumsfeld.
So why do I attack Hitch, rather than his arguments? Because some are too vague to pierce. I detect a pattern, and I suspect that Hitch has become, to use a recent phrase, “embedded” in the Rumsfeld camp. He is no longer reporting, but spinning.
These 495 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Ask A Silly Question »
Roger L. Simon asked:
Why didn’t George Bush enlist Stephen Spielberg to help with Iraq? Because he’s a Democrat?
Roy Edoroso answers:
No, because he’s a fucking movie director.
I had to read the Simon post after that. I believe he was serious. Good answer though.
These 24 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 7:26pm GMT Permanent link.
10,000 Volts In Your Pocket »
"10,000 Volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent."
These 9 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 8:24pm GMT Permanent link.
A Carnival Of Scotch-Drenched Comic Possibility »
This is genius.
“Why, that can’t be! Over the last two years, I spent thousands upon thousands of words accusing liberals of moral weakness as regarded the Hussein regime. I accused many people of being unwitting Islamist sympathizers. If the United States really committed torture, and even if it’s on a much smaller scale than Hussein why, then, I’ve been a hypocrite, and a cocky one at that. Perhaps even a dupe.”
“May I suggest something, sir?”
“Certainly.”
“Perhaps, sir, and this is just a supposition, you are less like your intellectual hero George Orwell than you’d like to think.”
“Impossible! Intellectual courage is my hallmark! I never back down from my positions, and either did Orwell.”
“That’s not entirely true, sir. Orwell occasionally admitted that he’d been wrong.”
“No he didn’t! Because he wasn’t! And I’m not either! I still believe that invading and occupying Iraq, installing an ineffectual and patronizing interim administrator, bombing religious sites, and killing thousands of civilians was the right thing to do! For democracy! Orwell would have said the same thing.”
But then you ask yourself, why a former Trot like Christopher Hitchens has a butler, and why the butler blabs their private conversations to Neal Pollack.
These 29 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:42pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 21 May 2004
Tory Blair »
Like many disaffected, ex-Labour members, I’ve started to regard New Labour as the Tory Party in drag. Ralph of Politix says
Thatcher ‘79-’90. Major ‘90-’97. Bliar ‘97-200?’ A Quarter Century of unbroken Tory Government. Hardly surprising nobody knows who to vote for any more.
And Vicki Woods in the Torygraph (reg required) says
For a Labour PM, he does such unLabourlike things.
Which is altogether too true.
These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:00am GMT Permanent link.
Operation Chalabihorse »
Photo from MoveOn.org.
Dan Drezner links to a TNR Reihan Salam article which divides the pro-war conservatives, like Gaul in the Asterix books, into four camps. The nicest is
2) “The Neo-Neocons: Operation Chalabihorse": True-blue believers convinced that Colin Powell is the devil and Ahmed Chalabi is the answer to all of the troubles in Iraq (Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Michael Rubin, David Frum, Laurie Mylroie).
It’s the most pejorative category, rolling up their beliefs into simple-minded black-and-white. Sadly, it happens to be true.
There it is in black and white in Bob Woodward’s book, and we can be pretty sure that it’s accurate, because we know that Colin Powell likes to talk to the composer of the first draft of blah. The secretary of state is quoted as saying that he often thinks our biggest problem in Iraq is Ahmad Chalabi. Just take a moment to roll that thought around your own cranium. Iraq … mass murder, looted economy, mass trauma, incipient warlordism, devastated ecology, foreign infiltrators, crazed mullahs….you become a bit spoiled for choice when you select a main problem here. Picking Chalabi is presumably easier than picking a fight with Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz or even Bush.
It’s a change, though, from the authorized smear and jeer of last year, which was that Chalabi was an American puppet.
Christopher Hitchens, Tuesday, May 4, 2004. It’s all there, Powell the phoney, the misguided, even the morally blind, and then the misdirection with the implication that Chalabi is “smeared and jeered” whatever he does, because his critics can’t lay a finger on him.
We may have bought the idea that Chalabi would be a puppet and I’ve yet to be convinced that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush will tolerate an independent-minded democracy; exactly the reason they raided his home yesterday.
Chalabi told the newspaper that he believed the raid took place because he had been outspoken recently, and the Americans do not like it when a person speaks his mind.
Juan Cole. But I think the White House bought the story that Chalabi was, at least, like-minded on important issues, and biddable elsewhere.
U.S. disenchantment with Chalabi has been growing since it dawned on the White House and the Pentagon that everything he had told them about Iraq — from Saddam Hussein’s fiendish weapons arsenal to the crowds who would toss flowers at the invaders to Chalabi’s own popularity in Iraq — had been completely false.
Andrew Cockburn in Salon.
Hitchens does make more sense when he says
[Chalabi has] said and done some other things that I’m not so sure about, and I don’t know what happened in the Jordanian banking system many decades ago (and neither, dear reader, do you).
What Hitchens claims not to know (an odd claim for an investigative reporter, but not for a partisan spin-doctor) is
[Chalabi] was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court to 22 years in prison with hard labour.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Profile: Ahmed Chalabi. Jordan seems rather fond of trials where the defendants are otherwise occupied. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was tried “in absentia and sentenced … to death for allegedly plotting attacks on American and Israeli tourists.” I’ve got Jordan down as a country to avoid in case they sentenced me for something without my knowing it. If they passed a sentence of death on me, a sense of justice ought to mean that, as I wasn’t present at the trial, I would be allowed to similarly miss the execution.
I notice that I seem to hold two conflicting beliefs about Ahmad Chalabi. He is both independent-minded and a criminal. I think both are true. He’s a politician, like the neo-cons (who did correctly identify one of their own), he’s interested in power and the main change. To that end, he lied to the White House, got them to deliver Iraq to him, at which point he turned on them. His timing may have been a little off. He should be taught as a study in Machiavellianism to future generations. I think I rather admire him.
The notion of a puppet government, an Airstrip One, or fifty-second state, in the Middle East, was always bonkers. (And therefore I feel confident in attributing it to Rumsfeld.) Whatever the hardships of living under Saddam, the only people with a right to decide the future of Iraq are those who stayed. Choosing exile made a lot of sense, but if you emigrate, you should integrate. If Chalabi lived in the US, and wanted to run for government, his only options should have been the Senate or the House of Representatives. Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela have the CVs of leaders of post-revolutionary countries, not your globe-trotting Chalabis or Lenins.
These 484 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:03pm GMT Permanent link.
Stupid »
I ought to be smart and mature enough by now not to characterise everyone I disagree with as brain-damaged.
It’s just that some people make it so damn hard.
Wesley R. Elsberry calls Professor Joan Roughgarden stupid.
Hal Crowther finds the Bush administration stupid.
Will Wilkinson says Jennifer Roback Morse is stupid.
Nancy Peloso is unimpressed by Bush.
The editors rediscover a stupid strategy.
Mickey Kaus has issues with Juan Cole who says,
I did not “compare Wolfowitz to Saddam.” I compared the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters in Kut and Amara by the US Department of Defense to the killing of dozens of Marsh Arab fighters by Saddam. I said that Muqtada has maneuvered the US into looking to the Marsh Arabs as though it is behaving like Saddam.
As for my reliability, well that depends on a record. Go back and read the Web Log over the past year and show me where I’ve been unreliable.
Kaus’s take on Cole’s response? “…you make the call!” ‘You’ being him, Kaus, as it were, I think, but he may mean his readers. Which would explain why he doesn’t make any call himself. Substantive argument? But I’m a conservative, we don’t do facts!
I was going to say something about this scary story about these stupid people, but Long Story, Short Pier does it better.
These 139 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:08pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 24 May 2004
Somewhere Over The Pond »
If I lived in the States, I could purchase this rather wonderful T-shirt. (Found while checking a reference on Michael Brooke.)
These 21 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:55am GMT Permanent link.
Fun On The Internet »
You may remember episode one of “The West Wing” where the main characters are introduced receiving the information “POTUS in bicycle crash,” which we’re invited to believe is some sort of code, perhaps for the declaration of WWIII. There’s nothing like a bathetic beginning, and by the end, when we meet Martin Sheen, who’s been discussed throughout, we find that he indeed rode his bicycle into a tree. His character had a doctorate. What happens to an idiot in a charge of a bicycle? He falls off. Not his fault, of course, it had rained a lot.
As if, says Kos, who checked the weather reports for the area. The Internet, a wonderful thing, part #1170. Found first by The Editors.
These 121 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Book Burning »
I’ve come back from a weekend away in the Lake District (from which I have only very boring photos), where I had one of those revealing discussions you can have either with a total stranger you know you’ll never see again or when you’re several sheets to the wind. I had both. The short version is that we stayed in Youth Hostel in Patterdale, where I met Bob, who worked in the NHS. (We were both after cups of pre-breakfast tea, he had Roy Jenkins’ “Churchill” biography, and I had Andrew Rawnsley’s “Servants of the People”. He’d read mine, I’d part-read his.) Anyway, we had discussions during the day, and, at one point, I defended Diane Abbott (actually because I had a friend who worked for her in the 80s, but whatever), on the grounds that anyone who puts their family or real visible people before principle is good, while those who do the reverse, like the nasty kids in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” who shop their dad, isn’t. Anyway, though Arkhangel, I’ve found this Bill Hill story:
The girl’s mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child’s poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.
The rest is horrific enough. But that paragraph is disgusting.
These 186 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:11pm GMT Permanent link.
Tuesday, 25 May 2004
The Tension Mounts »
As Matthew Turner notes, Christopher Hitchens’ column in Slate comes out on Tuesdays, ie today. As Matthew says, three weeks ago Hitchens “back-tracked somewhat [on Ahmad Chalabi], with the ingenious technique of saying ‘at least he proves he’s not a American puppet’ and criticising Colin Powell (for reportedly saying that much of the problems in Iraq were his fault) and the CIA (for having a vendetta against him).”
As Simon points out in the comments to Matt’s post, Hitchens collected his essays on Slate in a volume titled “Regime Change,” which was published with the addition of a short preface in 2003. On page viii, he wrote
Thus, I respectfully dedicate this slim work to Barham Salih [the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq], Kanan Makiya [professor of Middle East Studies at Brandeis University], and Ahmad Chalabi, comrades in a just struggle and friends for life…
We’ll have to wait to find out whether Chalabi is still a ‘friend for life.’ I suspect that he might be. (Matt is betting on a betrayal.) Iran denies that he was a spy.
We had continuous and permanent dialogue with Chalabi and other members of the Iraqi Governing Council,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi said at a press conference. “But spying charges are unfounded and baseless. It’s not true at all.”
“We didn’t receive any confidential information from Chalabi or any other member of the Iraqi Governing Council,” Asefi said.
Note that ‘to spy’ is always an irregular verb, only the third person form resembles the infinitive. It’s like “to torture” in this respect. “They torture.” “We do not torture.” We ask questions nicely over cups of tea. If anyone is defenestrated, it’s because the tea was too hot. Accidental death of an anarchist. Tetley’s tea bags to blame.
The left has always doubted Chalabi. Tinker, Banker, NeoCon, Spy, by Robert Dreyfuss in The American Prospect, November 2002:
And when Chalabi fled the country [Iraq], anonymous leaflets reportedly circulated linking Chalabi to an alliance with Iraq’s Shi’a and with (mostly Shi’a) Iran, all in a vague conspiracy against Iraq and Jordan.
In the same magazine, this month, Jason Vest quotes an unnamed source as saying:
“The guy [Chalabi]’s no democrat. He’d always tell us, ‘Just put me in charge, I’ll be America’s friend, everything will be fine.’ He’s taken so much for granted in terms of his own importance, for Iraq and to Washington. I don’t know if he’s just working a con or actually believes his own line, but he’ll end up taking himself out.”
Mark Kleiman has a quiz which is worth it just for drawing my attention to Jim Hoagland, who uses what Mark calls “strikingly anti-American language.”
[Iraqis and other Arabs] know of the long American record of supporting or accepting national kleptocracies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. This raid at this time, when police and military power are urgently needed elsewhere, can only further deepen skepticism about America’s dedication to the rule of law and basic fair play in Iraq.
Confused? You will be after this evening’s edition of Salon.
These 268 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:06pm GMT Permanent link.
Tough On The Causes Of Crime »
There is a lot you say against Lyndon B Johnson, but he had the odd good idea. Head Start was one.
U.S. government program that provides educational, medical, and social service support to economically disadvantaged children and their families. It began in 1965 as part of the Community Action Program (another piece of Johnson’s Great Society legislation). The program focuses on preparing children for school and improving family life. Local communities operate Head Start centers. The centers work to provide activities to stimulate emotional, intellectual, physical, and social growth. Parents play an important role in the program’s operation. They serve on Parent Policy Committees and work in the centers as caregivers or volunteers.
It worked (largish, 318K pdf document).
The Perry Preschool Study Project, conducted in Michigan between 1962 and 1967; the Carolina Abecedarian Project, conducted in North Carolina from 1972 to 1985; and the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey, conducted nationally from 1997 to 2000, provide solid evidence that children who attended high-quality preschool programs have better grades, higher test scores, lower dropout rates, and are less likely to be involved in crime.
“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you teach today?” You sing. Well, the idea lives on.
Controlled studies show that it results in 54% fewer juvenile arrests and 69% fewer juvenile convictions and probation violations. And for every dollar it costs, four dollars are saved in future costs. Why aren’t tough-on-crime conservatives all over it?
The ‘it’ does indeed sound like something enlightened conservatives should support. Respectful of Otters knows why they don’t. ‘It’ is nurses.
The registered nurses (who, keep in mind, have a 79% effectiveness rate at preventing the extremely expensive social problem of child abuse) get paid salaries more appropriate for nurse’s aides. They cast apprehensive eyes towards Albany every time the Republican governor is looking for new ways to trim the budget. Strangely enough, budget-trimming time never seems to affect the prison guards at the Supermax prison down the road.
Found through Kevin Drum.
These 69 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:13pm GMT Permanent link.
The Head On The Dish »
I’m a modest fellow most of the time, with much to be modest about according to my so-called friends. Still I’m quite proud of this post. The last two paragraphs, where I quote Andrew Sullivan:
BBC WATCH: “His killers shouted ‘Allah is great’ before holding what appeared to be a head up to the camera.” What appeared to be his head? Who do they think Zarqawi is: Penn or Teller?
Which I countered with:
I think the scepticism — you don’t know for certain that it was his head — shows good journalism.
Now through Kevin Drum, I’ve found Berg beheading: No way, say medical experts.
American businessman Nicholas Berg’s body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.
This story does appear all over the internet, but I can’t find it mentioned by any source I know to be reputable. (Asia Times may well be, but I’d never heard of it until just now.) Whatever, journalists should report facts. The video was edited, so whatever was held up can’t be said for certain to be Berg’s head. “Appeared to be” was the right form of words.
These 120 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:32pm GMT Permanent link.
Adam Yoshida: Humorist »
Adam Yoshida has started banning “annoying users.” Quote of the day.
Initially I was resolved to allow them to comment in the name of free speech. But then it occured to me that I’m not actually a big fan of free speech.
I think most of us had noticed.
Update:. Scratch that. He’s changed his mind.
These 25 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:37pm GMT Permanent link.
Wednesday, 26 May 2004
Cool »
Back in January, I named Colin Pillinger one of my “Heroes Of 2003.” Despite the recent nastiness, he still is. He faced straight critical questions from self-styled hard-nut Jeremy Paxman last night. Unlike the thin-skinned, God-bothering, I-went-to-Oxford-you-know, How-dare-you, “it’s the fault of the Muslims”, “that’s a state secret”, “my underlings were responsible for that” crowd (Geoff Hoon, I’m looking at you, and the rest of the New Labour wankers), he didn’t blub off with pompous blathering defences. He took it on the chin like an Englishman, and was rather charming, as the very smart (who for some reason tend to be scientists) can do.
There’s a lesson there somewhere.
These 109 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:25am GMT Permanent link.
Absolutely Nothing »
Norman Geras, as seems to be his wont, quotes David Aaronovitch, and asks Did war never solve anything? Big Dave kindly gives an example:
Ask a black American if he or she thinks the civil war didn’t solve anything.
American Civil War 1861-1865, Martin Luther King, 1963:
One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.
Short answer, no.
These 35 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:48am GMT Permanent link.
Disappointment »
Just checked Slate. No Christopher Hitchens. I’ll have to find someone else to pick on. I was convinced he’s back Chalabi, “spy”, criminal, con artist, and “friend for life.” Perhaps I was wrong.
These 33 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:25am GMT Permanent link.
Quote Of The Day »
Found by, and, indeed, on the Poor Man:
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Theodore Roosevelt. Another freedom hatin’ liberal. What did he ever do for his country apart from give his name to a kids’ toy?
These 31 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:29am GMT Permanent link.
Osama Bin Laden, Who Is President In America »
I learned something new today. Oh boy.
It does not matter to terrorists like Osama bin Laden, who is president in America.
I thought it was that Bush fellow. And now I learn that it’s this crazy religious fanatic who can’t even speak English. No, wait.
When people are running for cover to avoid contact with powerful, deadly chemicals, there will be little time to say “I told you so” because once a person is exposed to Sarin gas and other deadly gasses, death is imminent and fast. Maybe then, when it is too late, they will wish they had closed a deaf ear to political rhetoric, and united with the ones who really had their best interest uppermost in their minds… all along.
Astute readers will remember the Tokyo attack. Sarin was released in a very confined and crowded space. “Over 5,500 [people] were injured in the attack.” The Swedish Nation Board of Health and Welfare report, The Terrorist Attack with Sarin in Tokyo on 20th March 1995 says “In all twelve people died from the sarin exposure.”
They seem to be saying that death is neither imminent or fast. Why would anyone close “a deaf ear.” What difference would it make?
No one paid attention to “Chicken Little” running around like a chicken with his head cut off, warning the sky was falling, either.
Yes they did. And it wasn’t.
Chances are, news of Saddam Hussein’s WMD’s will be surfacing soon, and the Democrats [sic] strategy to undermine President Bush’s reasons for taking action in Iraq, will again go up in smoke.
Does news surface? I never looked at it like that. Can a strategy go up in smoke twice? Are we back to the war over WMD line again, what happened to the democracy and humanitarian intervention line, the one about removing torture, or any of the other reasons? Saddam tried to kill Bush’s dad. (Good news for GWB that Saddam’s sons are dead, because he tried to kill Saddam. This could go on for a very long time.) If you keep trying excuses for the war in Iraq, you’ll every find one to suit every taste.
Yes, found through the Poor Man again. I’m just going through Hitchens withdrawal. It’s far more fun taunting someone with an education, though.
These 235 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:00pm GMT Permanent link.
Holy Fake Videos, Batman! »
I don’t want this to become a theme or anything, but following from yesterday’s post on Nick Berg, Jamie form Blood & Treasure discovered this analysis of the Nick Berg video. Now, I don’t buy the conspiracy theories floating around the interwebthing. Just because there are whopping great inconsistencies between what’s on the video and what it purports to show does not mean that it was made by the CIA and/or in Abu Ghraib prison. Some former paramilitaries (Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness come to mind) are good at adapting to peace; some are not (like the Real IRA). There are lots of good reasons why former paramilitaries, insurgents, whatever you call them, would want to prolong the conflict and inflame it further. It’s what they know, and where else would they get the excitement and the power?
What surprises me (and it’s a measure of how thick I really am), is how uncritically the Berg murder (he was alive, he’s not now, and it wasn’t natural or accidental) video has been taken by the pro-war side. Andrew Sullivan gets offended by honest BBC scepticism. Glenn suspects that all the big media are against Bush, and aren’t pushing the video as much as they might. A couple of things worth noting, it is (ostensibly) a snuff film, and unlike the photos from Abu Ghraib, leaves little to the imagination (or, if it is fake, it leaves too much). Second, it comes from our supposed enemies (I don’t buy the CIA theory, so I agree with this part), who intended it to have some effect to their benefit. They are terrorists and this was meant to cause panic. Sullivan and friends make the elementary mistake of assuming that the ‘bad guys’ are congenitally stupid. The evidence indicates otherwise. Some of them may be, and they may have made a mistake, but if “The prison abuse scandal can damage Bush, the Nick Berg story can only help him” (Neal Boortz, quoted by Insty, above), I smell a rat that the Ba’ath Party/al-Qaeda are quite so willing to see Bush re-elected when they had gripes against Clinton too, and toppling a Western leader can only be in their interest.
It’s all a little weird.
These 371 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:33pm GMT Permanent link.
Thursday, 27 May 2004
Dr Heckle And Mr Jive »
I’ve generally fallen out with the Guardian, but there are a few of its writers I still hold in high esteem. The immortal Nancy Banks-Smith, of course. Nicholas Lezard, for his book choices. And, as this seems to be a political blog, Simon Hoggart and Michael White.
Simon Hoggart wrote last year about the incident when Alistair Campbell “hit my colleague Michael White for making a joke about Robert Maxwell.” (Found through my having blogged it last July.) You can guess from that, that I like Michael White.
I said above, “as this seems to be a political blog,” so, I’d better stick in some politics. Downing Street Says lives up to its title with a transcript of the Prime Minister’s Press Conference. My only gripe is that the questioners aren’t identified. One journalist does start a question with “A moment ago, in reply to Elinor…” which I assume refers to Channel Four’s political editor Elinor Goodman, but the rest are anonymous, except for this one anomaly:
Question Prime Minister a lot of people say that the reason the Brits have been more sensitive perhaps in running their zone in occupied Iraq is that we have 300 years of colonial and imperial history behind us which the Americans don’t, but a lot of other people — historians on the left and right — well actually no, the last 100 years the United States has in seeking to impose its political and economic and cultural values on the wider world has stumbled into an imperial role, and that is what the cause of the trouble is because they won’t admit it, even to themselves. What do you think? Is it an empire, benign or otherwise, and if not, why not?
Prime Minister Right. How long have you got then?
Michael White: As long as you’ve got! As long as it takes.
Nice heckle.
These 169 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:17am GMT Permanent link.
The Obese And The Obtuse »
Chris believes that Obesity Makes For Very Bad Radio, and he’s not wrong.
I’ve nothing intelligent to say obesity myself, but I do like the chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, David Hinchliffe’s comment:
“It is simply unacceptable that sports and education ministers should have endorsed initiatives to supply schools with sporting equipment or books but which required children to buy Cadbury’s chocolate or Walker’s crisps.”
Children’s diets ‘must improve’. Having heard something to the same effect on Radio 4 this morning, I suppose I was primed to take offence at the ad on page 23 in Today’s Telegraph. Reader offers are nice idea (though I wonder who the Telegraph ones are aimed at), but I don’t see the connection between a 10-day pass to a David Lloyd Leisure Club and training for The Michelob ULTRA London Triathlon. I’m not sure I can disentangle my offense that a supposedly healthy sport (as opposed to one like snooker) is sponsored by a beer, or that it’s such a crap beer. (This isn’t anti-Americanism; I’ve had very good beer in Chicago, and excellent beer in Portland, Oregon. Americans can make fine beer, they just can’t enough of their countrypersons to drink it.)
At least the offer isn’t for this David Lloyd.
These 178 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:30am GMT Permanent link.
Reverse Gears »
There’s good stuff in today’s Torygraph, which I want to mention before I go to bed.
Stephen Robinson has a lovely piece called The war lobby beats a retreat (see also The New York Times finally concedes its WMD errors in Slate). Annoyingly, the Telegraph quotes Sully, who doesn’t have an archive (what’s the point of a diary if you can’t read your old opinions?), so this Google cache will have to do (even this I think will wash away very soon).
Some days, the burden of keeping the faith grinds him [Andrew Sullivan] down. Last week, he apologised to his regular surfers for the absence of some reflections on Iraq, pleading “I am too tired now after talking half the night chez Hitch.”
Clearly, that spirit of solidarity across the ideological divide will be needed as the war party feels the glare of what the New York Times yesterday called “the bright light of hindsight on decisions that led the United States into Iraq”.
Some days, the Telegraph seems to operate a three-line whip and columnists are remarkably like-minded and choose to write on the same issue. And sometimes it’s far more diverse. Right now, the erstwhile pro-war Telegraph is every man for himself.
(Thank God there is an emerging anti-war conservative — OK paleo-conservative — movement in the US, even if it’s Tom Clancy himself and Tom Clancy Republicans.)
Not surprisingly for the Torygraph, they don’t care for New Labour. No Commons sense:
Michael Martin’s [security] measures are as arbitrary as they are pointless… [H]e appears to be driven by blind panic and something-must-be-done-itis.
Finally the Telegraph letters page leads with a missive from Alan Sked, Founder, UKIP:
Sir — The UKIP today, I fear, is entirely unworthy of support, even as a protest party.
Oh dear.
These 178 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:47pm GMT Permanent link.
Friday, 28 May 2004
Just Like Peter Pan »
Some days, I think the Torygraph is the greatest paper on earth. Other days, I think it’s sweet in a uniquely British way, in the way that, like Chris Brooke (in the comments to his own post), I like the fact that the Archers exists, even if I’m not a follower myself. Today is one of the second sort of day.
Naturally, it leads the front page with the Abu Hamza story. But in the middle of the article is a box with headlines and page numbers of follow-up stories, headed by a pullquote from an opinion piece by Daniel Johnson:
One Christmas, before we knew who he was, the children sang carols outside his door. They were sent packing.
Clearly, part 1 in a series of “How to recognise if a terrorist lives in your street.” I can’t wait for the others.
These 124 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:54am GMT Permanent link.
Another Mirror Lie »
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln (attrib)
The blogosphere liked the childless couple story.
Snopes gives some good reasons why it’s false.
In Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, Doc Daneeka reminisces to Yossarian about his days in private practice, and he talks about a couple who once came to him because they were unable to conceive a child. Despite the couple’s claims of regular sex, the doctor discovered upon examination that the wife was still a virgin. He used plastic models to demonstrate to the couple how to have sex the “correct” way, and a few days later the husband returned and punched him in the face.
My first thought when I read the story, I remember it so well because it puzzled me as a teenager.
It has a lack of detail common to tabloid or spoof articles: The couple is identified only as a “husband” and a “wife” (with no quotes from either), and no name or title is provided for the article’s single source of information, a university representative (he’s merely an unnamed “spokesman").
Interestingly, Piers Morgan was sacked four days before the story ran. You’d think they’d learn.
These 50 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:49am GMT Permanent link.
The Lost Tuesday And Wednesday »
When I saw that the guys with the unlikely names over at Fafblog, had scooped the rest of the planet, hip, lively young blogosphere and tired old media together with the double whammy of interviews with wanted terrorist Donald Rumsfeld and US Defence Secretary Osama bin Laden. I knew this could only mean one thing: war! Not another war in the Middle East, or a War on Terrorism, drugs, or gay marriage, but war on Fafblog! So-called “Fafnir” (I suspect an alias) may think he’s smart visiting Rumsfeld in his secret cave, but I can go one better! Many readers will have expected Christopher Hitchens’ Slate piece on Tuesday. Instead, it appeared yesterday. Some may have put the delay down to Hitchens caught in an agony of dice-rolling, trying to work out his next position. The truth is, alas, more sinister. He was abducted by enemies working inside the American government. Men who hate America, and Ahmad Chalabi in particular. Men who stop at nothing to undermine elected officials and spread disinformation. I refer, of course, to the Central Intelligence Agency, or the CIA.
But let the Hitch tell all.
It is not, let me tell you, as cushy an assignment as it sounds being a peace correspondent, embedded, as I am, in Washington D.C. I have had a narrow escape from the clutches of those snakes in the grass, our so-called intelligence agencies, who have done so much to throw mud at Michael Ledeen’s and my careful arguments why Ahmad Chalabi took money from and worked for Iran in the cause of America.
I came to my senses in a dark place from which all hope of escape was lost. I cannot say that I recognised it. I tried to check my watch to see how long I had been unconscious, but the combination of the poor light and whatever substance I had been laid out with made my eyes swirly and hard to focus.
The next thing I noticed was the noise! I knew then that I was, at least, a prisoner of the Americans. When you read, dear reader, of the US military playing loud rock music to disorient and destroy the will of their enemies, do not stint in your imagination on the ‘loud’ part. If Debussy’s Clair de Lune had been played at that volume, it would have been responsible for the extinction of all wildlife within a hundred-mile radius. As it was, they were playing some foul techno thing, which was having the effect on my still dizzy brain of pounding my head on the inside of the bass bin at a Motorhead concert while being beaten with a four-iron for good measure.
I looked up. I saw that I had a companion who was, shall I say, rather familiar, but I could not at this point name him. A solid-looking fellow though, who reminded me of my brother Peter, clearly British from his dress, and, despite the confused look in his red eyes, a man of intelligence and character. He seemed to open his mouth to speak, but with the noise and everything, it was an ineffectual dumb-show. I raised my right hand. He raised his left. I waved. He waved back. At least we understood each other.
Then, and it is some relief, as well as embarrassment, to record this, because at least the hellish racket ceased, I blanked out again.
I recovered my senses in a place no less dark, but thank some non-existent eternal being, a few gradations quiter. Now it was merely as bad as sharing a soundproofed phonebox with a pneumatic drill and the St Winifred’s School Choir. I was being shaken by a man lesser writers would call a ‘heavy’, but I recognised, because I know all the psychological flaws of the Central Intelligence Agency, and this thug clearly had James Bond pretensions because he was dressed in ill-fitting evening wear, as one of our ‘spies.’ I opened my mouth to say “Shir Shean Connery, I presume?” but the words wouldn’t come. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my companion being manhandled by a very similar bruiser. Do they clone these fellows now?
He was at least, verbally polite, he called me ‘Sir,’ and said ‘please’ but his mien and his eyes betrayed his utter lack of sincerity. I rose to my full inconsiderable height, and the horror dawned! As if I needed confirmation, we were clearly on a ship, though my interrogator was an old hand and clearly had his sea legs. I however, lurched as the floor buckled and fell sprawling.
I sprang to my feet again like a young lion. A young lion alas with chronic arthritis and the dinner-jacketed laddie hauled me up by the collar. Through the gloom, I learned one terror that I will never forget. To those who attribute the brutishness of Abu Ghraib to Donald Rumsfeld, I say that I have confirmation that it is the Secret Service at work yet again. (And to those who say that Donald is in charge of them too, I say, “He doesn’t know what’s going on! It’s secret. How can it be his fault?") On a platform, not far from where I sat were young women as naked as they came into this world, although with the addition of the odd belly button ring or tattoo. They were not piled in a pyramid as in the infamous photos, but were spinning around poles.
I would have protested but I was being walked up some steps, very much against my will.
A door ahead opened. Sharp, unforgiving light broke in. Then the world turned upside down, a voice shouted, “And don’t come back… sir.” There was a boom as if the very gates of Hell had shut behind me, and I found I was alone on a bright, cold, Washington morning.
These 981 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Saturday, 29 May 2004
Belated Birthday »
…: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
King Lear, Act V, Sc. iii
I didn’t realise that this was de rigeur, but Happy 3rd Birthday to The Virtual Stoa. In dog-years, that’s 21 of course, less significant now than when it used to be the age of majority (though it’s still the legal minimum for buying alcohol in the USA), but right now Chris is probably besieged by anxious 21-year-olds worrying about their finals, and about to discover that a little work earlier on would have gone a long way.
It helps that his first postings coincided with the 2001 General Election, because that shows one of the — often overlooked — charms of blogging. It forces you to accept your earlier opinions, however much would wish to cancel half a line, etc.
Chris has all the celebrants.
These 126 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:57am GMT Permanent link.
Tempting Fate »
Cold as charity,
And that’s bloody chilly
WWII army song
In the middle of all this political stuff — and it’s the weekend, chill! — a couple of recent events. First off, coming home from my trip to the Lake District last weekend, Julian suggested that we would be lucky with traffic, to which Simon, who was driving, came up with a convoluted theory about “calling fate’s bluff”, which involved tempting fate in such a way that what you said would happen would indeed happen instead of supernaturally producing the opposite effect. It makes no sense whatever. But the traffic was on our side.
Buying the Guardian this morning, Waheeda in the local shop remarked that the papers are all doom and gloom, Boy plots his own murder, in the Graun and the Torygraph, Hamza in the Express. Big Brother was in a few of the tabloids, and last night was the first time I’ve not watched the opener. (If I had a choice between deporting Abu Hamza or Davina McColl to Guantanamo Bay, I’d have a very, very hard time making up my mind. But I think phone taps are and should be illegal, so it has to be Davina.) The ever-cupidinous Mail led with £30 Million Lotto Frenzy. The National Lottery has a triple rollover this week. (Due, no doubt, to falling sales.)
So, I’m going to call fate’s bluff and declare the numbers I would have used were I to buy a ticket.
2, 9, 17, 18, 42, 45.
If I’m a quid up tomorrow (as I don’t buy a ticket normally, not really), I’ll give it to the first beggar I see. I’ve bought a Big Issue this week, so that’s out, and I’m pissed off with charities since a girl, called, predictably, Emma, knocked on my door in search of alms for Tommy’s and refused to take “No” for an answer until she realised that I wasn’t going to let her finish a sentence.
These 319 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:12pm GMT Permanent link.
Practical Parenting »
“Hurry up” Harry tries to be a good parent. But it ain’t easy.
Then there are the burger chains particular McDonalds who use the oldest trick in the book for bribing kids — they offer them a free toy. My daughter once confessed she doesn’t actually like hamburgers or chicken nuggets but still when she sees the golden arches she demands we stop.
Cue quite a sensible discussion (somehow, no one blames the SWP, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (© Moe), or the Zionists) on personal responsibility. FWIW, this is where I draw the line at libertarianism. For it to work, all consumers (or nearly all) need to be perfectly (or nearly perfectly) informed about the consequences of each decision they make. This is just impossible. Furthermore, legally children can’t really make decisions about their own lives — except in special circumstances, such as which parent they want to stay with, following a divorce — so advertising at children (who don’t have money anyway, only ‘pester power’) ought to be illegal. I really don’t have any thoughts about obesity in adults.
Tim Ireland is just a Dad who can’t say no… until now. (Please Tim, get some permanent links. I said what I said about the charms of blogging because Sully doesn’t have them; while everybody with any sense does. Sure, we all say some daft things, but you’re on the sensible side here, you’re supposed to be saying mostly smart stuff. Let me link to it, so I don’t have to lift it like this.)
Night before last, our SKY box had a nervous breakdown and stopped receiving satellite signals. Yesterday, the wife talked to the kids and the kids came to a decision that surprised the hell out of me.
Until yesterday, SKY had been regarded as a necessary evil in our house (I’m not the sort of person to stamp his Daddy-feet and demand that such-and-such a newspaper or such-and-such a service provider isn’t allowed in my house) but now things have changed.
Last night we advised SKY that we were cancelling our subscription. We made a point of telling them why. Right now they’re bleating about contracts and us paying until a certain date (even though we can’t see what we’re paying for, but SKY will happily repair the box if we maintain our contract etc. etc.) but our household has decided to stop funding the willing conspirator Rupert Murdoch. Not in a month from today, but from this moment forward.
SKY had obviously heard this kind of thing before. The main line they had at the ready was “but he’s not even on our board of directors.”
We. Don’t. Care.
We know where the money ends up, and we know what Murdoch does with it. And he’s not getting any more from us.
Of course, this means that I won’t be able to watch BBC Parliament (UPDATE — it’s available on Freeview — Huzzah!) or track the antics of FOX News. Or enjoy new episodes of The Simpsons. This decision also complicates the need to check the print version of The Sun from time to time.
But…
I. Don’t. Care.
Not one more penny for Murdoch. Ever.
Well done that man.
These 209 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:34pm GMT Permanent link.
Impressed »
Because I’ve moved to broadband, I’ve also moved the room my computer’s in from the upstairs “3rd bedroom” (if you’re an estate agent) to my downstairs front room. This means that I can watch the street outside when I’m not typing/hacking away. And it means that the street can watch me.
It also means that I’m usually warned in advance of the (increasingly rare) Royal Mail deliveries, or I can see who’s just posted the junk free papers or pizza adverts or whatever if they stomp in the other direction up the street.
I was just surprised by the sound of the letterbox without the augury of a shadow against the window or the sight of some bag-carrier slouching north. Instead, I saw a man of Asian origin driving off in a people carrier, which was an unusual choice of vehicle for random flyer distribution. So I checked the mat to find an unstamped envelope addressed to my full name and address. (I’m quite used to wrongly delivered mail turning up at all hours or redelivering others’ mail on an evening run.) Only then do I recall telling a Lib Democrat canvasser that they could count on me for an anti-Blair vote. (Indeed, I voted Lib Dem in 2001, well before 11 September or all this war stuff. I’d had enough by then.)
Inside the envelope was a letter thanking me for past support, on the reverse asking for support by actually working for the party, and a second page explaining why the LDs are the only sensible tactical vote. And, of course, a poster to put in a window.
I’d like to know who the Looney candidate is before I make up my mind. And the Asian, who I’m sure is one of their local candidates might have been less impressed if he’d seen me playing the imaginary drums along to “No 13 Baby” on “Doolittle” by the Pixies.
Still, my MP here (not that it matters) is Alun Michael, whom I’d be happy to be rid of. (OTOH, it’s a very safe Labour seat, and was Jim Callaghan’s.) If I still lived in Roath, my MP would be the very marginal Jon Owen Jones, who, despite the disapproval of the whips, asked Blair the first tough question on Iraq from his own benches. (Go Jon!) I’d be far more conflicted, but as I believe you vote for the man, not the party, I’d stick with him.
These 409 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 6:15pm GMT Permanent link.
Sunday, 30 May 2004
By The Beard Of The Prophet »
I rather like the way Christopher Hitchens defends Ahmad Chalabi, even when he’s shown to have taken money from a sworn enemy of the US (and one which tramples women’s rights, ignores dissent, turned the clock back to the late middle ages, and practices torture), this is, somehow, in the interests of the Iraqi people. Foreign freeloading journalists and justice-evading exiles are the only ones who understand. The ones who should choose which wars otherwise decent young men and women should die and be maimed in. The ones who know how to lecture a poor illiterate country, one stupid enough to elect, not once but twice, a president who didn’t delight in bombing civilians, and (this almost makes one believe in a higher spirit) were only just saved from electing his Vice-President by the wise intervention in Florida by the brother of the leader of the opposing party.
Similar interpretations are put forward by Chun, Matthew Turner, Middle-Aged Curmugeon, and Andrew Northrup/The Editors/The Poor Man who has the best portrait of the propagandist as a young patriot.
As the Poor Man never seems to sleep these days, he offers the final theory:
So, once you’ve gotten them to bite on going to war, how do you go about ensuring that the country is “liberated” in a more Iran-friendly direction? First, you need to identify your American rubes. Done. Then, you need to convince the rubes to do it wrong: they need to be too weak going in, they need to be isolated diplomatically, and they need to mismanage the operation once they are there. The first two you get by promising that Iraqis will welcome you as liberators; the last requires more direct involvement. But, taken as a package, getting the US to take out Saddam and then fumble the occupation nets Iran a pretty substantial payoff, albeit at some risk. If you can get some real dumb rubes — real pokes, guys who will screw up in ways you never even thought of — your risk goes down. They may have found them.
Yep, cock up, rather than conspiracy, that works for me. I’ll never believe a GWB conspiracy, the man couldn’t sell ice-cream in hell. He needed his daddy to fix his MBA grades back when he was outdrinking Comrade Hitchens. Take your favourite upper-class twit characters from Wodehouse, Lord Emsworth, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Catsmeat Potter-Purbright, for instance. Now throw one of those out and replace him with a prize pig, like the Empress of Blandings. Voila! you have the collective intellectual might of the Bush administration. It has to be cock-up. And outside manipulation. I give Hitchens one thing. He knew Chalabi was never the puppet. But he never guessed who was.
Image from TomPaine.com via Nathan Newman.
I’m sure that if I knew more about this interwebnet thing, I could tune into to the traffic cameras of Denver, Colorado, USA, and watch this magnificent sight.
These 315 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:41am GMT Permanent link.
Spin-Doctor, Heal Thyself »
I mentioned the other day that the Telegraph was critical of Speaker Michael Martin’s handling of Commons security.
In the interests of balance, I ought to mention that the following day they ran a story where they clearly prefer him to Dave Hill (req probably required; second last story).
“Michael Martin was talking to Blair about whether they should reconvene or abandon Prime Minister’s Questions. Suddenly, Dave Hill — who was sitting in on the conversation — butted in and offered his opinion.
“Much to his credit, Martin just looked straight at the PM and said calmly: ‘Tony, I don’t like being interrupted by men in pin-striped suits.’”
Of course, I want to know who the fourth person was. (surely Tony doesn’t leak about his own staff to the gossip columns, and would the Speaker leak about himself? Why would Dave Hill tell a story against himself? Unless Tony has taken, Nixon-like, to bugging himself.) All the same, nice to know these decisions are now taken by our elected representatives, and not spin-meisters.
These 114 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 9:12am GMT Permanent link.
In Memoriam »
Doonesbury. Shame it’s so hard to read. Who cares that it’s not funny?
These 13 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:02am GMT Permanent link.
Blog Meet-Up »
You’d think that there would be some political bloggers around the DC area. Indeed there are. Moe Lane asked “Do DC political bloggers ever get together for a Bash[?]” Jim Henley replies in the comments:
Moe: We do indeed get together for bashes. We haven’t got one scheduled, but that’s just because we didn’t know you were coming. Absolutely we’ll throw something together for you.
And Moe replies in turn:
Jim, I live here; have since 2001.
Jim Henley is one of my favourite bloggers (and if I ever have the willpower to make a shortlist of ten, à la Nick, he be in it) for posts where he shows that we do not have proof positive that [Michael] Ledeen is himself an Iranian agent (if you wondered who would suspect that he is, there’s Matt Yglesias); Ultimate Godwin’s Law Violation (indeed); and this stunning post which I meant to discuss separately, but it’s here, so I’ll confine myself to the observation that, when Thom Gunn died, Sully made some anodyne observation that he was a “difficult” but “rewarding” poet. Sully has a Literature PhD, but Henley shows how to do poetry blogging.
Matt Yglesias asks
When did “skanks” become the sort of word you could use in a Town Hall column?
The offending paragraph is this one:
But give The Washington Post two vain, young, trash-mouthed skanks who couldn’t care less about what their parents think of their sex-drenched infamy, and the newspaper can’t wait to help make them full-fledged members of the media elite.
“[S]ex-drenched infamy” where do I get mine?
Julian Sanchez finds Ana-Marie Cox’s ’Snarkalicious’ reply. Julian also has a brilliant Patrick Stewart story, a review of the Day After Tomorrow, and Everybody Say His Own Kyrie Eleison:
The Pope says Americans are in danger of succumbing to a “soulless vision of life.” One hopes.
I’m intrigued that my favourite bloggers in the DC area are all nominally right-wing. I don’t know how I’d get on with them if I ever attended a bash, so perhaps it’s just as well that the Atlantic is in the way.
These 243 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 1:39pm GMT Permanent link.
Photos »
It’s too nice a day to do anything more than sit outside while the sun’s here. But these are photos I took on Friday on the way to and from a meeting, and some from out side the Millenium stadium just now, before the Bristol-Brighton match.
Wedding party outside the BIg Sleep Hotel Cardiff.
This was on a church in Metal Street, Splott (pretty much as grim as it sounds).
Newish Council Houses opened by local MP and my current hero, Jon Owen Jones.
Two kids who insisted on being photographed. They were polite, so I did, and showed them the picture on the screen. I don't think they'd seen a digital camera before.
The Big Sleep from the other side, and yet more building in the centre of Cardiff. I suppose this is a good thing.
Bristol supporters, like a lot of others, they're actually wearing red England strips.
Bristol flags.
One of three Scouse face painters, who were doing an indifferent trade.
This guy grabbed me from behind.
Not much cop, but a change from being angry.
These 55 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 3:09pm GMT Permanent link.
The Triumph Of Methodological Individualism »
I’m not religious, so perhaps I’m not entitled to hold an opinion on this, but the religious thinkers I like are the natural questioners, mostly the metaphysical poets like Donne and Herbert. I see a parallel with my own lukewarm socialism (except that I’m pretty positive that socialism can work, and sure that God does not exist). I prefer doubters to zealots.
I wish I could see Karl Marx as a very methodological individualist, but I find him a far less appealing thinker and writer than David Hume.
I’m not sure if Norm’s take on Marx is the same as Sidney Morgenbesser, but I agree with him on Madeleine Bunting, who has a predictably awful article on feminism in yesterday’s Guardian. (Awful because it seems that when men do philosophy they divide into Marxists, Humeans, realists, dualists, and whatever; when women do, they’re always “feminists”. How patronising is that?) I can’t say much about the piece because it’s full of unearned assertions, “This is one part of feminism which will never be subject to revisionism.” Never? “Meanwhile, a workaholic culture underpinned by a New Labour fetishisation of work has stripped any activity outside paid employment of any worth: ‘I’m just a mum,’ mumbles the stay-at-home mum, apologetically.” What is she talking about?
I’m far more impressed by the Telegraph editorial Misogyny (registration probably required). Misogyny is a tricky subject, and sometimes means no more than the beliefs of a man you dislike, but I think the Telegraph’s “methodological individualism” hits the right liberal note.
These 254 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 5:40pm GMT Permanent link.
Monday, 31 May 2004
Melanoma »
In America they have the Republican Party, who are the equivalent of our Conservative Party, and the Democratic Party… who are the equivalent of our Conservative Party.
Talk about turning and turning in the widening gyre, I looked up the Peter Cook quotation above, on Google and what do I get? this. Gert is already on my blogroll, as is Nick who supplied the quote in the comments. A more sophisticated search found The Hindu, which thinks Dudley Moore said it.
Peter Cook was actually pretty apolitical, if anything a conservative. He hosted the much-missed “Revolver” on ITV (a live OGWT type show with bands and some 20-something guy serving burgers to the audience who announced next week’s guests; Cook appeared on a massive TV screen patronising the punters) and did the Derek and Clive recordings, but he wouldn’t be the first knee-jerk conservative (I’m thinking Swift, Joyce, Lawrence, Osbourne, Amis (père), Larkin, and perhaps even Jarman) to frighten the horses.
Melanie Phillips finds the usual shock, horror in this:
An article in the Times reveals that two Tory MPs, Alan Duncan and Simon Burns, are to help John Kerry’s push for the White House and unseat George W Bush. On the face of it, it is astonishing that British Tories should be assisting their ideological opponent across the pond. Moreover, Duncan is a front-bench spokesman. Is Michael Howard going to put up with such political cross-dressing in his senior ranks?
The Tory party are anti-Democratic. Hold it! I didn’t mean to leave Labour. What exactly is it about the Democrats that makes them the “ideological opponent” of the Tories? I am, I confess, stumped.
Mel continues
But it would be a mistake to dismiss this as an event of no significance involving a couple of maverick Tory MPs. For a strange alchemy has been wrought within the ranks of British conservatism.
As Bob says on Matthew Turner’s comments:
By several accounts, Kennedy and Macmillan got on well and we owe Britain’s submarine-based nuclear deterrent to a deal made between them.
Both seem like exemplars of their parties. Melanie is, not for the first time, nor the last, as we shall see, talking out her willfully-ignorant arse.
A timely article in the US Weekly Standard by the Economist’s man in Washington Adrian Wooldridge identifies a new and most alarming phenomenon, the ‘Michael Moore conservatives’ — after America’s very own stupid white man, who trashes his country and tells egregious lies about it at every turn.
Moore may well tell some lies, throw in a few distortions, and twist the truth, but this as WJ Phillips (no relation) noted in some comments thread or other, goes back at least to early nineteenth century pamphleteering, if not beyond, to Tom Paine. While I think it’s less than honourable to let truth be the footstool to rhetoric, I doubt Ms Phillips is in any position to pronounce judgement.
As Wooldridge correctly observes, there are now many conservatively-minded Brits who spit tacks about Bush, America, Israel and the war in Iraq in terms indistinguishable from Michael Moore — not to mention from the venom that daily spews out of the Socialist Workers’ Party.
’Correctly’ means “I agree with”, unless Mad Mel had some undisclosed hotline to Almighty. Like many an aspiring scribe, I suffered many sessions on the big white telephone to God around the turn of my third decade, but the old boy never said anything worth writing down in my recall. Christopher Hitchens may have learned shorthand and taken better notes than the rest of us, but I doubt it. (I mean why bother recording your ‘meeting with a very “senior administration official."’? [sic] The guy’s in your head.) Mel’s punctuation is, as ever, curious. Does she mean “indistinguishable from Michael Moore [or perhaps] from the venom that daily spews out of the Socialist Workers’ Party"? Or does she mean, as I suspect, “there is also the SWP…”.
Scratch any apparently intelligent, educated anti-war person and they will tell you the whole thing was cooked up by the Jews — not that they would actually use that vulgar word, now that ‘neo-con’ is the euphemism of choice.
I’ve wanted to address this point ever since Oliver Kamm objected in (again) Matt’s comments.
Scratch any apparently intelligent, educated anti-SWP person and they will tell you the whole thing was cooked up by the Jews — not that they would actually use that vulgar word, but everyone knows they’re popularly referred to as ‘Trots’ as Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, aka Leon Trotsky was a member of the so-called “chosen people’.
What a marvellous argument! Oppose me and you’re a Nazi. (Which, as any fule no, is a BAD THING.) Donald ("what is truth?") Rumsfeld is not Jewish. Nor is Bush. Neo-cons are a very small group of the intellectually challenged but spoiled-rich kids ho make up the Senate. No one except Mel would lump them together as"jewish”, “psychotic” maybe. Melanoma would doubtless lump Albert Michelson among the anti-semites for his views on relativity. But she is not a fascist. Jews can never be fascists. They can only be victims. What a pointless philosophy! Karl Marx, whatever his faults, had far more faith in individuals.
For my money, this is the real issue. Middle Britain is now full of decent, liberally-minded, socially conscious people of moderate political views or none, who nevertheless loathe Israel with a passion and irrationally blame it for the ills of the world.
You may laugh at the notion that the present writer enjoys “moderate political views or none” but I don’t “loathe Israel” (Sharon, however, I do, but I never confuse a country with its transient ‘masters’) nor do I “blame it for the ills of the world”. Does anyone?
This grotesquely inverted world view is the expression of a culture whose moral centre of gravity has now been all but destroyed by the staggering influence of far-left ideas which have comprehensively colonised the institutions of the establishment, through which they have long and successfully marched.
I remember learning about the ‘centre of gravity’ at school. It involved cutting shapes out of paper and hanging them from random points and then drawing veritical lines straight down. These lines invariably crossed, at a point we were told was the “centre of gravity”. The smart reader will note this is passive, something discovered, rather than a cause of anything, or about to be so. I don’t know what “the staggering influence of far-left ideas…” even means. The furthest-left people in history I can name (not that there’s a competition) are Marx and Trotsky, and recently Chomsky and Pinter, all sworn enemies of the Jews. Ahem! There is nothing inherently anti-Semetic in the left unless you believe that all its enemies are top-hat wearing factory owners like Fredrich Engels (oops!).
The Conservative Party’s raison d’etre was always, at root, to hold the line for values that were under threat. Without that sense of purpose, it is nothing.
Does that include the “values” of slavery, denial of suffrage for women, the wonderful Victorian values we see in Dickens, children sent up chimneys, the workhouses, the degrading poverty of the urban working class, the orphan criminal gangs (whose parents, for some reason, failed to realise the all-importance of the family in Merrie Olde Englande), the shameful treatment of war veterans as recorded by Kipling and others, the slaughter of a generation of young men (yes, Melanie, you’d have been safe) by the donkeys in charge of WWI. The conservatives I know (apart from a very few loons) have no time for any of that. Not being a conservative, I can’t say what the Tory raison d’etre is, but I know it’s not that.
Yet now that our most fundamental values of right and wrong, truth and lies, justice and freedom, duty and responsibility, are under attack as never before, the Tories are not just looking the other way but some of them are actively joining up with the destroyers of this culture and those who choose to appease them.
I’ve been pretty much a life-long Labour supporter (OK, not New Labour, and being a precocious kid I used to read the Sunday Post which kept my politics several furlongs to the right of Hitler (but still short of Mel) until I read Nineteen Eighty-Four. But the Tories are “up with the destroyers of this culture and those who choose to appease them"!? WTF? Where in anything she quotes can she infer that? Kerry is not an appeaser. It’s Bush who sat, opening and shutting his mouth, like a Venus fly-trap on valium, after 9/11 and let the terrorists attack DC after they attacked New York.
I’m desperate to read Ms Phillips’ Guardian articles from the 70s. Her prose stinks of one who changed her mind (no problem there, many of us have) and cannot track the reasons (may I suggest lucre? she was bought like a common Hollywood scriptwriter or King’s Cross whore). At least the latter category may fall back on their looks.
(To make myself clear, anyone with racist beliefs — Jews are this, blacks are that, etc — is not a member of the left as I understand it; we (and I speak only for myself) believe all persons are equal. Racism, which is real, is not welcome in the Left.)
These 948 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 2:25am GMT Permanent link.
I Know You And You Cannot Sing »
You’re “How Soon Is Now?"! Everyone likes you but you still can’t seem to get a date. Be patient, damn it, and stay out those clubs. They’re danmed depressing….
Which Smiths Song Are You? brought to you by Quizilla.
Found through Sarah.
I haven’t been clubbing for years.
These 50 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 12:41pm GMT Permanent link.
No Idle Boast »
The Poor Man claims not to like Eric Idle (and he gives so good reasons too, but he was very funny once).
Whatever, Eric has recorded this lovely song (not work safe and 3MB, so broadband helps), perhaps in support of Howard Stern, and certainly in support of free speech.
What constitutes swearing on the radio is a tricky subject. The Mirror blanches at the word “buggery” even when quoting Norman Tebbit on the Today programme. (Found through Gert.) Fi Glover played the unbleeped clip at least twice on Broadcasting House yesterday.
These 92 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 4:51pm GMT Permanent link.
The Friends Of Tracey Emin »
I’ve found it hard to have any opinion about the Saatchi collection fire. I’m mildly fond of Damien Hirst, because I find his work both witty and serious. OTOH, I consider the Chapman brothers vandals for their ’improvements’ on Goya. But at least they managed to be stoical.
The Chapman brothers, whose sculpture Hell was destroyed, were more sanguine. While Dinos expressed concern that they had been stored next to acetylene cylinders, he said that they would make Hell again, adding: “It’s only art.”
More sanguine, this is, than Tracey Emin.
She issued a statement lamenting the “tragedy for British culture that so much art was destroyed in the fire”.
She said that her own two works, which were owned by Mr Saatchi, had “great personal and emotional value and are irreplaceable”. She went on: “At this point, I am just thankful no-one was hurt”.
Earlier, she told the Evening Standard: “I feel like I have lost some friends. It sounds sentimental but this is what I do.”
If there was anyone who didn’t already consider Ms Emin to be a bit of a wanker, those words would have convinced them. I don’t see any tragedy in the loss of artworks which no wanted to display or have in their homes. Ms Emin seems to have forgotten that she’d sold them. If they were “irreplaceable,” she ought not to have done so.
It seems she doesn’t like me either.
These 126 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 10:05pm GMT Permanent link.
Responsibility »
In the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne Jr. writes
When presidents take big chances, they have two choices. They can take all the responsibility on themselves and hope that when things go well, they will reap all the rewards. Or they can choose to draw in the opposition from the beginning and count on some help and a feeling of solidarity if things start to go wrong.
President Bush took his big chance in Iraq without buying himself an insurance policy. He could have patiently built a coalition of the many — not only abroad, but also at home — rather than slapping together a coalition of the few, including the not-entirely-willing. He could have made clear, as his father did a decade earlier, that a decision to go to war is so momentous that Congress should consider the matter under circumstances that would encourage genuine deliberation.
Bush apparently believes that his job as president is to change cultures (hat tip: Arthur Silber) to the “responsibility era”. (I can’t find a paragraph which explains what he means by this: responsibility seems to be something to do with supporting marriage and opposing abortion.) He doesn’t seem to believe in taking the credit for the past three and a half years:
Another “strategic mistake” is that Bush thinks it is 1988, and that he can bury his challenger in negative ads.
It’s only May, but Kerry camp smells victory.
As D2 says:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.
Former analyst (does that mean ‘spy’?) Andrew Wilkie writes:
Australian spooks aren’t much like the spies in the James Bond movies. Not many drink vodka martinis. But most are smart — certainly smart enough to understand how US intelligence on Iraq was badly skewed by political pressure, worst-case analysis and a stream of garbage-grade intelligence concocted by Iraqis desperate for US intervention in Iraq.
Here I’m reminded of Andrew Gilligan, who, as Boris Johnson said, got it right.
I said it last week, and I will say it again until I am blue in the face: the whole WMD argument was a red herring. The immediacy of the threat posed by these weapons was somehow exaggerated, and the diligent Gilligan helped to expose the process.
Now we know the threat was not “somehow exaggerated” but one of Alistair Campbell’s more successful fictions.
Anti-war people have assumed that it either had to be because of the supposed existence of WMD or to create a democracy in Iraq.
Melanie Phillips is right for once. We did assume that. So did the pro-war people. (Melanie, never much of a democrat, doesn’t even consider it important that if there was a real reason, we were kept in the dark.) That is what our governments told us.
On the cover of Andrew Rawnsley’s Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour, there’s a cartoon of Tony Blair on a pulpit inscribed “Trust Me.” Always his mantra. Very few will do so now.
These 204 words were hurriedly scribbled by Dave @ 11:53pm GMT Permanent link.