30 May, 2003

This blog has moved! Click here to go to the new site.
01:06 p.m.

29 May, 2003

Relax, people: Mike Tyson is still crazier than a shithouse rat.

While denying once again that he raped Desiree Washington 12 years ago, Mike Tyson says in a television interview the burden of being labeled a convicted rapist makes him want to do it now.

In the interview scheduled to air Thursday night on Fox network's "The Pulse" Tyson said, "I hate her guts. She put me in that state, where I don't know. I really wish I did now. But now I really do want to rape her."

03:42 p.m.

"Perhaps you impute to me motives that have never entered my head because your granny made you eat semolina pudding when you were three." Natalie Solent, classy as ever, responds to her very first piece of hostile email.

I was talking to Peter Cuthbertson about this, and we both tend to take the attitude that hate mail means that what we're saying is pretty spot-on, if the approximate mental age and warped views of the hate mailers is any indication. Sometimes they're so paranoid that they attribute your posts to a concerted effort on your part to piss them off; I've often contemplated making the subtitle of this blog "It's not about you".

Full marks to Natalie for dealing with the loser in such a dignified and humourous way. No wonder Mark Steyn recommends her site.
02:46 p.m.

Web guru urges online publications to hire bloggers:

"This could be the year that mainstream media companies acquire the best blogs, underwrite them, and turn them into viable businesses," he said. "This is not only a great business opportunity, but a way to get innovative, non-mainstream content on to the traditional media sites... to make your site more appealing to younger consumers."

He recommended that local news sites identify the best local bloggers and offer them contracts. "The best ones produce content that's as good as the stuff your staff produces - perhaps even better - so consider publishing an acquired local blogger in print as well as online."

Sounds good to me.
02:38 p.m.

Jurjen takes the Bush Administration to task for the reactivism of the war on terror. Another great piece, but it did piss me off by making me aware of the existence of this stunning piece of journalistic dishonesty:

My source for this news was an article which originally appeared in the Melbourne Herald Sun, but was quickly reprinted in many other newspapers. The article was headlined "US plans death camp"; this was not merely the work of a sub-editor concocting an eye-catching headline, since the first line of the article reads:

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

Let's get some fucking perspective here, shall we? The term "death camp" evokes associations with places like Auschwitz-Birkenau, whose ultimate purpose was to exterminate every person herded into them. Even the most notorious of the Bosnian Serb camps, Omarska, was not what you'd call a "death camp" (though it came damn close). The fact that the Pakistani Daily Times ran this article unaltered (except to add "in Guantanamo" to the headline) can, given Pakistan's human rights record, only be construed as something of a sick joke.

Pass the sickbag: British clergy back Robert Mugabe.

[N]one of us in Britain has the moral right to condemn the churchmen on the ground in Zimbabwe, any more than we have the right to condemn the Protestant pastors in wartime Germany who cheered on Hitler. We cannot imagine the perils they are under or the compromises they are forced to make; nor do we know the little acts of human goodness they still perform. This exemption cannot be made, however, for the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in London. Our bishops do not live under daily threat of arrest, torture and mutilation. They are not followed by the secret police. But our churches, too, are mesmerised by Mugabe, and afraid to speak against him, as the shameful story of the archbishop’s visit to Britain last week demonstrates.

What the hell is wrong with these people?
01:39 p.m.

Jayson Blair's poetry: not just bad, but grammatically challenged. How thoughtful of him to include definitions of "kaleidoscope" and "brown" as footnotes!
01:31 p.m.

None more common.
01:18 p.m.

The Best of the Iraqi Information Minister, on DVD and VHS, available exclusively from Popbitch. I hope they include all the bits where the BBC treated his statements as plausible and rational.
12:17 p.m.

28 May, 2003

A Guide to Marxist Subversion as supplied by a former Marxist. And what do you know -- it bears a striking resemblance to what's already happened in the EU.

As long as a future parliament can remove and clean up the mess Tony Blair and his useful idiots have created, this country stands a chance. Once he makes himself and his gang a permanent feature, as this move is surely intended to do, and we can't get rid of socialism, we've had it; better book those German lessons and get used to being free to do whatever it is you're told to do.

Forget the detail, concentrate on the main big point. This constitutional move is irrevocable. That means one of two things. It will either last forever, or there will be a war. Assuming that nothing ever lasts forever, that means a war. That's how wars happen. Go and buy a history book if you don't believe me.

The point-by-point description of how to create a socialist utopia using the ballot box rather than a bullet in the back of the neck is, not to use overly strong language, quite scary -- but only because it is a mirror image of what the EU has been getting up to. Causing capitalist failure through regulation, the removal of defended borders, the removal of habeus corpus and trial by jury, the introduction of ID cards...and on and on. It's all there. We don't want it all here.
08:49 p.m.

Just make it through one more day, ya unfunny son of a bitch. I'm kidding -- Bob Hope's done a lot for the morale of the US armed services over the last several decades, and he's a gem of a guy. He was born here in England, but moved to Cleveland, Ohio as a small child, so I have to get his back as a fellow immigrant (in the opposite direction) and Ohioan.

His rheumy eyes still creep me out, though.
08:16 p.m.

It beggars belief, but the Lib Dems are actually serious about banning 4-wheel-drive vehicles in towns. I was just watching the local London news on BBC1, and it was their top story. They had viewers email their comments in, and a few people said, "Yes, these cars should be banned, they're just status symbols for those who want to show off how much money they earn and intimidate the little people." Erm, much of a chip on that shoulder? If that's the reasoning, the Lib Dems better announce their plan to ban all vehicles which cost over £9k.

One viewer, a guy called Nick, replied, "Yes, let's ban all 4 wheel drive vehicles -- and people carriers [mini-vans], trucks, lorries [semi trucks] and anything else over one ton. And let's rip radios out of cars as statistics show that they distract people and make them drive unsafely. And let's ban sun roofs too, since something could fall in them and hit the driver on the head, knocking them unconscious behind the wheel."
07:45 p.m.

Amnesty International: "Things are worse than ever (send us money.)"
04:18 p.m.

The New York Times profile Posh and Becks, and holy shit, Victoria Beckham is a freak:

"David and I are working on other things as well. We want to have our own brand. There are so many things that interest us — fashion, makeup. I'm kind of looking at the big picture now and thinking: `Yes, the music's great, the football's great. But this is about the big picture.' There are so many things we can do." Growing more excited, she said, "Because, obviously, you've got the sport, the music, the children, the marriage — there are so many areas you could hit."

Is it just me, or is creaming your knickers over the idea of using your marriage and children as part of your "brand" a little bit...hmm, how to put this...completely fucking insane?

God, I love them.

Gawker had a comment from someone who saw Posh and Becks in New York yesterday, describing her breast implants as "the worst boob job. Seriously, like two cereal bowls." And it's true. But the worst part is, she denies that they're fake. As if it's normal to have a chest so bony that your sternum sticks out, with D-cup boobs attached. (Wait a sec -- is it? Let me know.)
03:32 p.m.

Bob Geldof praises Bush administration for its financial support of Africa. Whuzzah?

The musician-turned activist said Washington was providing major assistance, in contrast to the European Union's "pathetic and appalling" response to the continent's humanitarian crises.

"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian...

Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."

Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration.

"Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said.

Geldof also goes after the EU:

Geldof was adamant that the EU was the greater villain for delivering just a small fraction of Ethiopia's staple needs and refusing, unlike the US and Britain, to supply any supplementary foods, such as oil, which give a balanced diet.

"The EU have been pathetic and appalling, and I thought we had dealt with that 20 years ago when the electorate of our countries said never again," he said. Warning that the "horror of the 80s" could return, he added: "The last time I spoke to the EU's aid people, they didn't even know where their own ships were. The food is there, get it here."

And damned if Geldof doesn't also go after Robert Mugabe:

The Irish pop star called on African leaders to challenge despots if they wanted the rest of the world to take them seriously.

“He (Mr Mugabe) is engaging in state-sponsored terror and famine and that cannot be allowed,” Geldof said. “He is a shame on the face of Africa.”

Geldof, on his first official trip to Ethiopia since the days of Live Aid in 1985, added: “You people should be demanding that Mugabe steps down. I don’t care where he goes. He can join Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia, he can join the ghetto of tyrants, but get him out of there.”

Geldof may be totally wrong about what the solution to Africa's woes is (he thinks a constant supply of western cash, not a fundamental change to the way things are done there, will make everything better), but I'm glad to see that he's willing to speak out against the likes of self-proclaimed Hitler protege Mugabe. Wish the same could be said for South Africa's President Mbeki.
03:17 p.m.

Administrative note: I've been playing around with the links on the left, adding and subtracting as my reading habits have changed. I'm being kind of brutal, trying to keep it as brief as possible, but have a look and check out any unfamiliar names: if your taste is as impeccable as mine (ahem), you'll probably find some new sites for your bookmarks file.
02:29 p.m.

MEMO TO MAUREEN DOWD: You just made things a whole lot worse for yourself.
12:41 p.m.

British Spin is underwhelmed by the draft of the EU constitution, in stark contrast -- I guess -- to those of us who are outraged and those curious creatures who find it a great thing. He takes issue with the language, comparing it to the US Constitution; the quality of the writing hadn't even stood out to me, but BS is quite correct. He quotes the following:

DraftEU Constitution Article 1.1.
Reflecting the will of the citizens and States of Europe to build a common future, this Constitution establishes the European Union, on which the Member States confer competences to attain objectives they have in common. The Union shall coordinate the policies by which the Member States aim to achieve these objectives, and shall exercise in the Community way the competences they confer on it.

As BS says:

How can anyone feel passionate about that? Compare with

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Preamble to the US Constitution

I think it was D'Amato who said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Well, when setting out a constitution, you could at least pre-amble in poetry.

The Biscuits: stupidest name ever for a professional baseball team? Well, my town's pro team (it's Single A -- a real farm team) is called the Paints. Yes, the Paints. But at least it makes sense; there's a big-ass creek (or, as we say, "crick") running through the town called the Paint Creek.

But...the Biscuits? That's just silly. I'm sure their opponents will all be intimidated by the team. And can you imagine the amount of shit you'd catch if you got beat by the Biscuits?

Further proof, as if it were needed, that there are some deeply misguided capitalists running sports teams.

It also reminds me of this song, which makes me extremely homesick, but happy -- a real song for summer.
12:07 p.m.

Mike's started something called the Twofer Tuesday, and nobody's participated yet, so I guess I will, even though it's Wednesday. Mike's a nice guy.

What is your best drunk story? Well, I can't tell any of my truly best drunk stories, because it might shatter any illusions readers may have of me as an upstanding and decent person. Also, there are far too many.

But last year, I went to the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race in London with my friend Kate, her brother and her brother's friend. We got to Parsons Green quite early (11 AM or so), because there was a football match on, and one of the pubs on the Green was showing it. Kate and I decided we weren't going to have anything to drink until after the race, but our resolve soon melted away when the smell of the pub hit our olfactory senses. "Well, we'll just have one," Kate said to me.

Four pints later, it was time for the race, so we went over to Putney Bridge to watch the teams set off. As soon as they'd disappeared from view round a bend in the Thames, we high-tailed it to another pub. I saw my former colleague Niall going into the pub and, pleased to bump into him in the middle of London, thought I'd go over and say hello. "Hey, Niall!" I called, and Kate hissed, "Jackie, don't!" Then she realised it was Niall, and said, "Oh, sorry -- I thought he was a celebrity you'd spotted and decided to call out to." Uh, okay.

The pub had a really good band playing, and we decided to "be good" and stick to bottles of Heineken. Which we did, for the next six hours. We met loads of really nice people, danced with about twenty different guys, and laughed our asses off.

Unfortunately, we'd started so early and drank so much that we were finished by about 7.30 in the evening, which is when one would usually just be getting going. I was in bed asleep by 8.30.

What is your worst drunk story? As with the previous question, I can't tell any of my truly worst drunk stories, because it might shatter any illusions readers may have of me as an upstanding and decent person. Also, there are far too many.

But here's my most recent one: Back in December, Paul, my beloved friend, decided to hire a box at Loftus Road (Queens Park Rangers' football ground, currently being used by Fulham) for us to watch Manchester City play Fulham. It was Paul, his partner Lisa (another good friend), me and five of our friends. I hadn't been able to sleep the night before, and when I met up with everyone in London, I'd been up for something like 30 hours. This becomes important later on.

We got to Loftus Road a couple of hours before the game...and started drinking. The concierge-type guy told us that we could drink before the match, during halftime and after the match, but we couldn't drink while the match was being played. We checked this story out with our waiter, who told us that if we were discreet (stay away from the front of the window, hide our bottles when the other waitpersons came in), he'd let it slide. So Paul ordered something ridiculous like 40 bottles of beer -- only a few of us were drinking -- to tide us over the next two hours.

Did you know that alcohol makes you sleepy?

By the time the match had finished (Man City won, of course), I was fading fast. But I still wanted to go to the pub with everyone. We ended up walking around Shepherds Bush for what seemed like ages, then got to the West End and hiked up the Charing Cross Road until we found a decent pub behind the Wyndham Theatre. I drank a quarter of my pint and promptly started to fall asleep sitting up. It was clearly time to give up and go home, so I did. I fell asleep on the Tube, then fell asleep on the train from Liverpool Street to my stop, but somehow managed to stay awake long enough to walk home from the station. I was in bed asleep by 8.30.

Okay, so maybe those are better answers to the unasked "What's your most boring drunk story?" question, but I'm trying to help Mike out. Leave me alone.
11:49 a.m.

Oh, HELL yes: Maureen Dowd is being investigated by the New York Times for THAT column. God bless Jayson Blair for causing such a stink that the real problem journalists -- the ones who deliberately tweak quotes in order to tell lies -- are getting wider exposure for their dubious methods. Really: thank you, Jayson. (I'm still not buying your book.)
10:10 a.m.

I used to have a fairly obsessive interest in makeup and beauty products. This Economist article makes me glad I no longer do.

There will always be something fun about picking out new lipgloss, and something deeply satisfying about discovering a product that does what it's supposed to do -- the latter being perhaps more thrilling for its rarity -- but when you get to the point where you don't bat an eyelid at shelling out £40 for an ounce of foundation or £30 for a lipstick, things have gone a bit far. (Unless, of course, you can afford to spend your money like that; I can't.)
08:00 a.m.

Democracy in Palestine:

[T]he "Democracy in Palestine" movement is speaking to the substantial Palestinian middle class, which has a reputation as Westernized, educated, and hardworking, and which genuinely grieves its children lost to the allure of suicide squads...

[T]he Road Map is not to be taken at face value. I think Bush is playing for time by stroking the Road Map enough to keep Tony Blair and the EUnuchs happy, while encouraging methodical businessmen like Fayyad and Karsou to gradually pry political power from Arafat's grip and build an infrastructure of law and property rights in the territories.

And there's an Anti-Road Map rally in Central Park next Sunday, too.
06:43 a.m.

Noam Chomsky is doing a three hour, live call-in show on CSPAN-2 on 1 June. That would either put me to sleep or make me want to rip my beaver off. But Alex Knapp has his question ready:

"Noam, you've spoken frequently about how the media and the government conspire to create falsehoods for people do believe. Since you've gone on the record as admiring the works of Holocaust deniers, would you say that the Holocaust was just a giant falsehood manufactured by conspiracy?"

06:27 a.m.

A lefty calls bullshit on Michael Moore and his methods, but still thinks he's peddling the truth. Obviously I think that if Michael Moore was dealing in the truth, he'd be able to support it with...well, the truth. But he's not, and he can't. (Stop me if you've heard this one before!) Still, I'm immensely cheered that Moore continues to lose credibility amongst his (former) fanbase. I just wonder how, with straight-faced comments like "Fuck all these small businesses - fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains," he continues to fool so many. (Maybe Stupid White Men refers to some of the self-haters who buy into his schtick?)
06:05 a.m.

More EU lunacy: a documentary film crew was allowed to observe the Danish prime minister at an EU summit, and the EU Commissioner for Enlargement (heh) calls it a violation of human rights. Man alive.

And Iain Murray has a warning for us Eurosceptics, and raises doubts about the wisdom of putting the adoption of the EU constitution to a referendum:

The proposed Constitution is bad enough on its own, as I shall investigate over the coming days, and Britain should resist ratification with all its might. I am beginning to come to the conclusion, however, that the best way for people to do this is not to campaign for a referendum. Besides the constitutional arguments advanced below, I have no faith that the referendum itself will not be loaded (imagine the question "Do you support HMG's efforts to promote peace and prosperity for Britain and Europe by adopting certain administrative measures outlined in the White Paper distributed to all households on 7 June?" or something like that)...

We need to target marginal Labour MPs, making it clear that the issue is important enough to their constituents that they are in danger if they support ratification. We need to target business interests, pointing out the likely effects of stifling European regulation. We need to target supporters of civil liberties, pointing out the raison d'etat and asking whether free speech and other liberties will really be respected in this new Europe. We need an all-out education campaign telling people the truth about Europe's ambitions to legislate for us and how our Parliament is perfectly capable of doing that and still keeping us the fourth largest economy in the world. We need to point out how withdrawal will not damage our economy, if the EU adheres to international law (and if it won't, why are we in it?).

Iain's almost convinced me that a referendum might not be the best way forward. I definitely agree with him that putting pressure on certain Labour MPs is important -- if, as Iain says, Tony Blair is in fact unwilling to divide the Labour Party over the issue of Europe. The more Labour voices that are raised in scepticism or outright opposition to Britain's involvement in the EU, the more the movement will gain ground outside of its (perceived) traditional demographic. Maybe then it won't be so easy for the Europhiles to cry xenophobia whenever someone suggests that Britain's entanglement in EU is not a positive thing.
05:44 a.m.

You can't just buy educational success for inner city kids:

Did anyone actually believe that a few pounds (or even a few thousand pounds) of extra money per child could replace generations of belief in the value of education, the stimulation of a literate family life, and the support of disciplined, devoted parents?

Net accomplishment of public spending increase: deprived pupils have been made to feel a bit less bad about academic failure, and they are no less likely to truant...

Such children (all children, in fact, but the "privileged" are more likely to find their own way with the help of their families) need a myriad chances to discover their potential talents and interests. It might be music or drawing that opens the door, or technology, or computers, or a particular book or scientific experiment...

So how could it work? Actually, everybody already knows. Give the money (or the power over it) to those who use the service, rather than to those who run it. Get the politicians out of the business of manipulating education.

Hear, hear.
04:37 a.m.

Al Jazeera's director general sacked amidst allegations that he conspired with Saddam Hussein's régime. You know, I was always puzzled by the credibility with which some people regard Al Jazeera, if only because of their no-bones-about-it, Jew-hating editorial voice. Maybe that's why this doesn't surprise me at all.
04:31 a.m.

They still don't know it's Christmas. And it's still not our fault. So says Rod Liddle, in response to Bob Geldof's insistence that the answer to sorting out Ethiopia is for western nations to step up the cash injections.

[P]erhaps this time around we should look for a cause for the Ethiopian catastrophe, rather than just bunging them vast loads of dosh. Because the dispiriting thing is, when you examine the evidence, you can't blame any of the people you might wish to blame for the current crisis. You can't blame Tony Blair or George Bush or the IMF or the World Bank. You can't blame those evil multinationals such as Nestlé which, unforgivably, asked the Ethiopean government for money that it was rightly owed. You can't really blame the sun for continuing to burn down on the horn of Africa: it has always done that. You can't even blame Sir Bob (and Midge Ure, Tony Hadley, Paul Young et al); they were only trying to help - even if, in trying so to do, they disguised, or ignored, where the real problem lay. To find out why Ethiopia is in a crisis bigger than its usual, everyday, hellish and mind-numbing crises, you have to look at what happened after we gave them all that money, back in 1984-85.

And Liddle does so, in great detail; it's downright painful to read. Apart from the biggest cause of Ethiopia's woes -- Marxism, a terrorist prime minister, political corruption and further lamentable behaviour on the part of the Ethiopian government -- there's still female genital mutilation going on, and human slavery, children being forced into labour and arranged marriage. No amount of western money is going to solve these problems for Ethiopia, and I can't believe someone as apparently intelligent as Sir Geldof can't see that.

As Liddle says:

[D]on't be kidded for a moment that the evil west is to blame for Ethiopia's problems, convenient and comforting though that may be.

And then ask yourself, if you are tempted to blame the west, why exactly such a response is so comforting.
04:07 a.m.

Can a day go by without the Lib Dems doing or saying something utterly retarded? I'm still waiting to find out. Now they want to ban four wheel drive vehicles, but apparently only from being used to take kids to school or go to the grocery store.

None more misguided.
03:51 a.m.

Bono spends £1000 to fly his hat to Italy. As if the £100+ taxi ride from West London to Gatwick for the hat wasn't obscene enough. Hey, Bono -- howsabout going on stage without the hat and donating that £1000 to one of the multiple charities or impoverished nations you care so passionately about? Seriously.
03:42 a.m.

Geri Halliwell admits she was so skinny that she stopped menstruating...and does yet another naked photoshoot to show off how good she looks now that she's gained weight. You know, for someone who's supposed to have such a poor body image, she sure does run around naked quite a lot.

[N]owadays when it’s that time of the month and I feel grouchy and my boobs swell up two cup sizes and my clothes feel tight, I try to see it as a blessing from Mother Nature...

I have learned that the only thing that enables someone to be happy is self-acceptance.

Thirty year old Geri reveals this shocking secret to happiness in an updated version of her second autobiography, the cover of which featured Geri topless, in tiny knickers and with a measuring tape wrapped round her body. I am humiliated to admit that I actually read her first autobiography, but this is beyond a joke.
02:18 a.m.

This makes me feel old: Prince Harry leads military cadets at Eton's trooping of the colours. I remember when that kid was born. Same with Prince William, who turns 21 in June; here's a rather in-depth profile of him to mark the occasion. His life at 21 really couldn't be more different than his father's was at the same age, but -- as William points out -- his father was next in line for the throne at that age, and William won't be for many years.

(Yes, I'm interested in the British royal family. Sue me.)
01:19 a.m.

Anne Frank had nothing on this Iraqi, who hid in a wall cavity for 21 years after Saddam Hussein put an execution order out for him. His crime? Political dissent.
12:15 a.m.

27 May, 2003

If you look at one photo essay today -- hell, this month -- make it this one.

I guess most people would say that Tony Pierce's work would be better if he had a sub-editor, like paid hacks do, to clean up his punctuation -- put some commas in the right places, that kind of thing. But I like Tony's writing how it is, raw and unique and damn funny.

Besides, anyone who read The Catcher in the Rye knows that commas are the least important part of writing. Tony's got a whole lot of the stuff that counts: talent.
09:17 a.m.

My Night of Shame at the Topless Bar. No, not mine -- Gwen Zepeda's; she's put back online some of her illustrated stories from a few years ago, and this is one that I've never forgotten. I have a few female friends in America who go to strip clubs with their male friends and really enjoy it, and I guess I'd probably enjoy it too (if I was totally wasted), but Gwen's tale makes for uncomfortable reading, at least for me.

A good friend of mine had a strip club in Chicago try and "recruit" her to work there, with the scouts calling her several times a day for weeks at a time to try and convince her to come work for them. She figured the best way to get them off her case was to demand that they start talking much higher numbers than the already ridiculously large amounts of money they initially proposed. Instead of backing down, they offered her the money she said she was after. Yay, capitalism. (She didn't take the job.)

Anyway, Gwen's story is a good read, but I won't be visiting any lapdancing clubs soon. I know where to go to look at naked girls; why else would I be such a fan of Conrad's site?
05:51 a.m.

I'm from the Cleveland, Ohio area originally, but have never been a fan of their pro basketball team, the Cavaliers. I was born in 1977; the Cavs sucked even before that, and have continued to do so in risible fashion.

But it looks like they're going to get the much sought after high school senior LeBron James in next month's socialist, outdated NBA draft. And LeBron James, still in high school and yet to play a professional game, has already signed a million endorsement deal with Nike.

I don't care where I was born. It's official: Americans are insane.
05:38 a.m.

The peaceniks called this one, didn't they? Well, sorta: the Arab Street has finally risen up...against Islamofascist terrorism. Guess they didn't get the memo from the anti-war brigade: "You're supposed to be protesting against evil AmeriKKKa, dudes! Did Rachel Corrie die in vain? Stop making us look bad and get back to burning the stars and stripes!"
04:58 a.m.

Speaking of the BBC, the link below comes from Biased BBC, a site whose founders can truly claim that they're performing a public service. So I'm very pleased to say that I've been asked to join the Biased BBC team as a contributor; needless to say, I accepted without hesitation.
04:49 a.m.

As hard a time as I give the BBC, I'm happy to point out when they get it right. And with this grilling that Tim Sebastian gave Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas, they got it very right. As Charles Johnson notes, it reveals the naked ugliness of the Islamofascist mindset. Read it and ask yourself how and why anyone seriously expects western democracies to successfully and non-violently negotiate peace with these murderers:

Q. You know what you're telling me? That under no circumstances will you give up violence until you've pushed Israel into the sea. That's what you want, isn't it?

Z. Who is saying that?

Q. You're saying that.

Z. I'm telling you frankly, the attitude of Islam is not to accept a foreign state in this area.

Q. So until Israel ceases to exist, you won't lay down your arms. Is that right?

Z. First of all, we are a part of the independent Islamist - this is the attitude of thousands and millions of people ...

Q. Why do you keep on with this attitude? You are seen ... by many people in the world as a bunch of ruthless killers, fanatics, terrorists. Are you happy with that picture?

Z. We're not happy - [but] these people are seeing Islam as an enemy, as a terrorist, but this is a historical mistake. Because Islam is a supreme power in this area, sooner or later we are going to achieve our power, our moral principles, our virtue, in order to implement a real state.

Watch the whole ugly spectacle, if you can stomach it.
04:45 a.m.

David Aaronovitch nails it -- again:

When Tam Dalyell accused Tony Blair recently of being in the pocket of Lord Levy, Peter Mandelson and "the Jewish lobby", he defended himself against charges of anti-Semitism by recalling that his daughters had visited kibbutzim. Notwithstanding Jonathan Freedland's devastating and factual demolition of Dalyell's slide into anti-Semitic stereotyping, Paul Foot - veteran leftwinger and campaigner - defended Dalyell suggesting that Tam was merely "wrong to complain about Jewish pressure on Blair and Bush when he means Zionist pressure". "But," explained Foot "that's a mistake that is constantly encouraged by the Zionists." Clever bastards, they even manipulated poor old Tam into looking like the anti-Semite he isn't...

[M]any leftwingers and liberals are crossing the magic line right now. Let me spell it out for you. There is no all-powerful Jewish lobby. There is no secret convocation. Most journalists with Jewish names do not write the things they do because of loyalty to their race or religion. Nor can you simply change the word "Jewish" to "Zionist" and somehow be exempt from the charge of low-level racism. And it's no good wiffling on about your Jewish friends or trying to slip your prejudices past the guards by boldly proclaiming your refusal to be intimidated.

I really wish I was quick, clever and particularly motivated, because I would have registered the domain www.jewsloveus.com (it's taken) and ripped off www.blackpeopleloveus.com good and proper.

Far too many of those who fancy themselves really progressive, openminded and tolerant people are peddling anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism, and their own words betray them, time and time again. They probably do think that Woody Allen counts as an Israeli, but as Aaronovitch points out, most of them know at least well enough not to say it out loud. Others, like MP Tam Dalyell, left-wing commentator Paul Foot and a ridiculous number of other (inexplicably) respected people are stupid enough to let the anti-Semitism flow from their mouths and pens with abandon. Let's not disappoint them by not sitting up and taking notice of what they say -- and pour scorn upon them at every turn.
03:24 a.m.

26 May, 2003

Big mistake, America:

The FBI made secret plans to capture and arrest Osama bin Laden five years ago, long before the terror leader's deadliest plan came to fruition.

Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who is now an ABCNEWS consultant, said that federal agents seeking bin Laden had developed a plan to have a plane fly in and attack a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the terror leader was believed to have been holed up back in 1998 — three years before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But when the plan went up the chain of command for approval, it was killed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno.

"They came to the decision that this plan was probably too dangerous, that the loss of life on the ground would have been significant," Cloonan said. There was concern that people around the bin Laden compound would be killed."

I hope to hell that Reno's hangups over the outcome of Waco were not to blame for September 11th, but it'd be hard not to reach such a conclusion in light of this report. Either way, it's a pretty good example of how misguided and flat-out wrong it is to be unwilling to make the difficult but correct choice of minimal loss of human life over untold death, destruction and compromise of national security.

Unless you're one of those unreachable souls who believes the likes of Osama bin Laden can be negotiated with or peacefully "contained".

Link via Balloon Juice
11:55 p.m.

Happy Memorial Day, my fellow Americans. And yes, Iain, I include you in that group.
10:48 p.m.

This is heartbreaking.
08:53 p.m.

Bloody brilliant:

[F]orget the experts who told us the Bali bombing was caused by Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. Or by our invasion of Afghanistan. Or by Western support for Arab dictators. Or whatever -- because Islamic terrorism has been like a Rorschach blot of the Left: into every suicide bombing you can read your favourite cause, and demand your favourite solution, whether it is winding back American influence, curbing globalisation or destroying Israel.

When Amrozi himself explains he just wants Westerners "finished" for something as trivial as drinking in a bar on a Hindu island, or for being Jewish, then it's time to stop negotiating and start shooting.

These terrorists do not want peace. They do not want compromise, not even with moderate Muslims. They do not care to distinguish between nice Westerners and wicked ones. And they are in love with death -- preferably yours, but almost anyone's will do.

This, no doubt, sounds extreme, but look at the past week of Islamic terrorist attacks and see how crazy it is to talk of negotiating with such people...

And for what "cause"? Osama bin Laden has said Saudi Arabia is his enemy because it has 5000 American infidel troops on its "holy" land, but the US said only this month that it was pulling them all out. And why kill civilians, including a child and a dozen Muslims?

[W]hat was the "cause" [in Morocco]? Morocco opposed the war in Iraq, and so did Belgium. Spain did support the war, but sent no troops. Or is Morocco just too moderate, too welcoming of tourists and Jews?

...But don't panic. The US State Department's annual survey of terrorist attacks shows the war on terrorism is going well. Last year the number of terrorist incidents around the world dropped by 44 per cent, and no country that went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the US, Britain and Australia -- has suffered a revenge attack on its soil...

No matter how well we fight back, there will be more terrorist attacks. But while we cannot finally defeat terrorists, we now know enough to ignore the urgings of those who would have us negotiate, and so let the terrorists defeat us.

Thanks to Natalie Solent for the link.
04:55 p.m.

I'm absolutely against hacking, but when it happens to Michael Moore, it does raise a smile. He'll probably just use it as an aid to his martyrdom campaign, but maybe some visitors to his site will have learned a thing or two about the lies and distortions he peddles as as truth.
04:45 p.m.

A few years ago, a South African friend of mine expressed to me her extreme distaste for Nelson Mandela. "That man," she said bitterly, "is not the saint people seem to think he is. He has fooled so many people." I was kind of surprised to hear this, but I've never forgotten it. She was genuinely angry that, in her view, people were so eager to view Mandela as a saint.

Now, someone else is making the same point. Interesting, too, that Hitchens' comments echo something else that my South African friend has repeatedly stressed to me: that South Africa is headed down a path not dissimilar to the one Zimbabwe has been following for a while now. I hope that's not true, but the more I hear people -- proud South Africans and pundits alike -- express that worry, the more it bothers me. When I read Kim du Toit, who was born in Jo'burg and lived there for thirty years before emigrating to the US, saying "Let Africa sink," I'm very disturbed. Whether or not one agrees with his conclusion -- and I don't know nearly enough about Africa to do so, though I am reading more about it in order to try and make some sense of the awful, sad history and present times -- the descriptions of how people live and think are pretty upsetting.

If we can't agree on what, if anything, should be done to improve conditions in African countries, we should at least agree that no one is helped by the elevation of false gods. Unfortunately, I don't see the people falling over themselves to lay prostrate at Mandela's feet -- most of whom should know better, which I can't really say for David Beckham -- getting real anytime soon.
04:20 p.m.

I'm supposed to be at the seaside right now, and it's a brilliant day for it -- sunny, warm and breezy. Unfortunately, I'm feeling a little under the weather. Hmm, wonder why.

In any case, I predict huge British success for the Brooklyn hip-hop group Fannypack; DJs will get such an immature frisson from saying their name that the single will get loads of airplay. (In Britspeak, "fanny" means, er, front bottom.)
04:15 p.m.

Had a very...interesting time with Mr Sensenbrenner last night. After dinner at Satsuma in Wardour Street, where the two of us made a start on rewriting the words to 2 Live Crew's Me So Horny as Me So Tory, we headed to a pub on the Charing Cross Road, where there seemed to be an unusually high population of girls in skirts which barely covered their bottoms. Frank was, as you can imagine, very upset at this spectacle. After being given a free pint by a total stranger (thanks, dude), I kept on the Stella and Frank kept on the bitter. A couple of hours later, I returned from the loo to find two girls had made a beeline for him as soon as I'd gone upstairs. (Tarts.) We made friends with them, and their boyfriends (poor Frank) soon joined us.

One of the girls, a nutty redhead, claimed to be a Communist. By the end of the night, Frank had recruited her to the Tory Party. (I am not making that up.) The other girl's boyfriend claimed to be an atheist, and by the end of the night, the nutty redhead's boyfriend had converted him to Christianity. (I am making that up; he just persuaded the guy that he was agnostic instead.) We all exchanged phone numbers, as slightly drunk strangers are wont to do.

On the train home, as if I needed one more reason to feel ill will towards the Gauls, I was groped by a French guy. (I may write more about this, depending on how furious I still am after I have time to think about it a bit more.) It was an unpleasant end to a very entertaining evening, and I can't wait to do it again -- sans molestation -- when Mr Sensenbrenner returns to London after his month-long stint working at the White House, for which he leaves today.

And yes, Frank's promised to give my love and yours to Dubya. Ain't he sweet?
09:28 a.m.

South African FA in corruption shock. Does this really surprise anyone?
09:25 a.m.

Mr McGillicuddy is writing such good stuff, y'all should really go over there and have a look at his archives. On the behaviour of his students:

Manners are so important. I can't stand it when I'm in line at the supermarket and someone puts their basket in the stack without uncrossing the handles [GOD, me too. --jd], so you can imagine I'm not so good at hiding my chagrin when I'm looking at a student's work and he says, "Hey, do ya have to be all up in my face?" It would bug me if it weren't so preposterous and transparently insecure. There's no response. The best is just to move on and turn your chagrin at least into a smile. But some things demand a response. Sometimes I'll get a comment so rude that I figure, if you won't learn about English, at least we can have an etiquette lesson: "That's really not very good manners," I'll say, without the composure that sentence seems to have. What's amazing is that the response is often, "Oh," or even "I'm sorry" or just silence.

I really wish I'd had a teacher like him when I was at school.

And, though I have huge sympathies with the anti-SUV movement, I have to roll my eyes at the "SUV drivers are Satan" mentality that many extremists have adopted. (And check out this, which should certainly take the wind out of the sails of the anti-SUV hysterics.) That said, I think Mr M has a point here:

Driving through Southern California last weekend, I was not quite amazed, but depressed to see car-lot after car-lot with Hummers. Wasn't it just a few years that Arnold Schwarzenegger was downright eccentric for driving a Humvee of some sort? And now normal people - if you consider people who want to drive around in army vehicles normal - are buying them up and trying to intimidate us earnest, secure Honda drivers. I'm sorry, but these people gross me out. It's the motor equivalent of stuffing your face with cake, and it's not very attractive or healthy. We need a vehicular diet of some sort...

Even though I'm not sure I agree totally with what he says about the motivations of Humvee drivers, and one look at me would tell you that I'm not exactly anti-cake, I just really like the way Mr McGillicuddy expresses himself, on a whole variety of topics. So go check the guy out; you'll probably end up bookmarking (or blogrolling) him.

(SUV link via Tim Blair)
09:07 a.m.

25 May, 2003

MEMO TO ISRAEL: Don't know if you've heard yet, but a cabal of your country's leaders is secretly controlling Tony Blair, and the war in Iraq was fought to keep you uppity Jews happy. That being the case, could you not have at least thrown us a couple points at Eurovision? Thanks a heap.
04:23 p.m.

Lib Dem Hate Corner: I was told by a perfectly placed source at the BBC -- who, after giving me this information, said, "Don't forget to blog that, okay?" -- that...well, let me couch it in semi-mysterious terms so as to legally protect myself:

Which flame-haired leader of a racist, opportunistic and not terribly popular British political party has been forbidden by party PR handlers from giving interviews after 4 o'clock in the afternoon? It seems the Kennedy-emulating politico isn't as much a fan of Charlie as he is a skinful of whisky in the afternoon. Och, aye.

On a completely unrelated note, ever notice how fugly Charles Kennedy is?

My BBC source is, uncharacteristically for Auntie's employees, incredibly trustworthy.
03:48 p.m.

All I can say is, "Heh."

Do your children RESPECT the hours of hard work that you invest in them? No! Children EXPLOIT THEIR PARENTS in much the same way that MCDONALDS CORPORATION exploits the poor and weak people of Canada's rainforests. It's time to TAKE MATTERS INTO YOUR OWN HANDS and force the LITTLE BASTARDS to behave properly. The time for calm exhortations and promises of extra cartoon time is over...MAKE your kids BEHAVE and STOP treating the place like a GODDAMNED AMUSEMENT PARK.

07:13 a.m.

Ken Layne lays into San Francisco's handling of its homelessness problem:

When [Mayor Willie] Brown's spokesman says the city does "more than anyone else" to help the homeless, he means they've never been able to come up with the political spine to make SF unattractive to the nation's homeless, so instead they just open the vault every two weeks and let anybody with stains on their pants grab a handful of twenties...

What happens in that town is shocking. I've never seen anything like it anywhere on Earth. Granted, I haven't been to real hellmouths like Central Africa or Pakistan, but I've spent time in plenty of places widely considered to be dirt poor: Latin America, Kosovo, much of the former USSR/Warsaw Pact, the Mississippi Delta, France, etc. (Just kidding, France!) New York City in the early eighties was pleasant compared to a five-minute walk down Powell Street today.

Daniel J Callaghan comments:

I've lived in the SF Bay Area going on 4 years now. Whenever friends and family come out to visit they all make the same comments without fail: "Why's everything so dirty?", and "What's with all the bums?"

[...]

When I hear pretentious lifelong Northern CA types prattle on endlessly about the natural beauty of the Bay Area, it makes me wonder how the hell they can suffer from such reverse-myopia. They're focused on the mountains and the redwoods, when right in front of them their cities are shitheaps.

I've never been to San Francisco, and this is the first I've read about the homeless problem there. But I'm not too shocked, though I wish I was, to read this, again from Layne:

In November, 59 percent of SF voters said yes to a plan to eliminate cash payments to the homeless, but it got locked up in court so everything remains the same. The SF county supervisors could just vote Prop. N into immediate law, but they won't. They did, however, vote themselves a 300-percent raise this week...

Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Europe. Tough shit: come July, Italy becomes EU president. The Economist has more, including the hilarious and sad fact that there is talk of a new law to grant criminal immunity to those in "high state roles". Well, I guess when so many bastard politicians are getting prosecuted for criminal behaviour, the other bastard politicians who haven't been caught yet are going to try to save their own asses somehow.

I do not want Britain any more involved in this corrupt mess than we already are. Is it that difficult to see why?

(NB Berlusconi accuses The Economist of being part of a communist plot against him. How he worked that one out, God only knows.)
05:45 a.m.

Fear is not the sole preoccupation of the right, writes lefty Julie Burchill:

[I]n my experience, liberals are just as fearful as reactionaries; for every Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, there is a Horrified of Hampstead. Sometimes, Disgusted and Horrified share a fear factor. Recently, it's been the Jews once more, with bully-boys from Islamofascist youth to racist skinhead to aristocratic buffer, from Daily Mail columnist to Old Labour firebrand, jostling to lead the witch-hunt...

Liberals hate [fast food] for two reasons: they don't like America, the spiritual home of fast food (tell that to the Earl of Sandwich and German Mr Hamburger), and, being self-loathing, they don't like England. In bemoaning our soulless grazing, they get a chance to compare us for the worse once more with France and Italy where, myth has it, family mealtimes and "good" food add to the quality of life. In some unexplained way, this is supposed to breed better people and a healthier society, mentally and physically - which makes me wonder why so many citizens of oh-so-civilised France and Italy have such a weakness for voting fascist.

Aside: That reminds me, actually, of a quote from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat:

With what piety and smugness do the dietetically pure wave away those wicked, fat-clogged foods and show us, sinners all, the way, the truth and the Lite...

I don't disparage the shallow concerns of the ordinarily vain, which, after all, I share. What I hate is all this new-age voodoo about eating, the notion that foods are either harmful or healing, that a good diet makes a good person and that that person is necessarily lean, limber, toned and fit. Quite apart from anything else, I don't see the muscular morality argument. Why should a concern for your physical health be seen as a sign of virtue? Such a view seems to me in danger of fusing Nazism (with its ideological cult of physical perfection) and Puritanism (with its horror of the flesh and belief in salvation through denial).

And on to the quote which will get Burchill in the most shit with her fellow liberals:

Reactionaries fear asylum seekers, but liberals fear philistinism and xenophobia of the indigenous working class, who quite reasonably complain about having to share their grotesquely overstretched schools and hospitals with thousands more people. (This is routinely dismissed as "racism", even though the immigrants being objected to are white and though the majority of black and Asian Britons object to it, too.)

I don't always agree with Julie Burchill, but I can't resist a good shit-stirrer.
04:04 a.m.

24 May, 2003

The BBC has a problem with US schools. Predictably, the focus of their dissatisfaction is not a worthy target, and they completely ignore the real story.
10:47 p.m.

Why are black students in affluent, well-funded school districts underperforming academically? A Berkeley professor surprises me by coming up with an explanation with which I wholeheartedly agree, and teaching blogger Mr McGillicuddy shoots down the self-delusional excuse of racism.

It's not been that long since I was in high school myself; I graduated on 31 May, 1995. My school district -- in marked contrast to the Ohio school district explored in the abovementioned piece, Shaker Heights -- was dirt poor. Schools in Ohio are funded by local property taxes, so wealthy areas like Shaker Heights end up with the best facilities, materials and courses that money can buy. My district, a rural one with lots of relatively low-value land and homes, couldn't get voters to pass an additonal levy on their property taxes while I was in school -- or for years prior -- which was reflected in what we had at our disposal. (They did pass a levy a few years ago, and this autumn a new, huge school building will open in the district, with the one I attended destined for the wrecking ball. This makes me very sad, for many reasons, but that's a whole other rant.)

But my school still managed to produce graduates who excelled academically and garnered respectable scores on their SATs and ACTs. Out of my graduating class of 103, about 90% of us went on to university -- one of whom, a good friend of mine, was accepted by the US Naval Academy and nominated by Congressman John Glenn (yes, THAT John Glenn) to attend West Point, where he played football for Army and from which he graduated in 2000.

The difference between those who did well in school and those who did not was, nine times out of ten, attitude. Kids whose families did not value education and who put little emphasis on academic achievement could often be expected not to care either. Kids like me, whose parents expected us to succeed academically -- and who demanded nothing less from us than to give 110% -- expected and demanded the best from ourselves, and consequently got good grades and good exam scores. Were there areas where I could coast? Absolutely; I never had to put much effort into English, history, government, speech or drama (shut up). But maths and sciences kicked my ass. Some of those battles I eventually won, getting good grades in chemistry, geometry, physics and calculus despite the fact that I am inherently retarded when it comes to such things. Some of them I lost (ninth grade algebra and eleventh grade algebra), getting crappy -- but passing -- grades, but only after I put in hours of revision and hard work, often showing up at school at 7 AM to be tutored. I know for a fact that I wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't been expected to try my best, or if I myself hadn't given two whits about such things.

That said, I was impressed by the number of people I knew who came from families where no one expected them to achieve academically and who still made successes of themselves in school. And why did they do that? Because they had the right attitude. They may have come from a family where dad had a good job (k/year plus health benefits and pension) at the local paper mill, or where they were set to inherit the lucrative family farming business, but they weren't interested in a life of industrial labour or farming, and didn't want a much-coveted "your parent works here, so you're guaranteed first dibs" job at the plant or to be handed the agricultural reins. Or maybe their parents were uneducated and had paid the price, and they didn't want to repeat those mistakes. Either way, they were motivated to do better for themselves academically, get into a decent university and go on to a different sort of life.

The dishonesty of those who blame racism for failure in these cases does absolutely no favours for the kids who are screwing up their academic careers and, eventually, their futures. It's quite clear from such excuse-making that no one expects them to do well in school -- so why should they bother?
09:47 p.m.

Reader mail, from someone who, I must confess, knows me rather well in "real life":

You’ve fuckin’ lost it girl!

[D]on't feel shit about Europe – be bloody well encouraged that European debate is finally dragged out into the open even if the dragging is done by division, Mandelson and other half-witted backstabbers. Perhaps now we can have some sensible debate, discussion and really hear the pro-Euro folk argue as strongly and loudly as the [Eurosceptics].

Get a grip otherwise I’ll have to start reading the Independent!

As much as I agree that it's good that pro-Euro lunatics are now forced to out themselves, there really is no need to make such grave threats. But it's nice to know that I'm considered, by some at least, to be the anti-Fisk.
09:14 p.m.

Zimbabwe, England, cricket and the South African government -- Michael Jennings gives a brief bit of background to the whole deal that illustrates why I, and many others, are so angry about England hosting the Zimbabwean team right now.
09:06 p.m.

The oligarchs are to blame for West Ham's relegation from the Premiership -- at least according to the Socialist Worker. West Ham is my local football club (their training ground is apparently a mile from my house, though my knowledge of the area is such that I have no clue where that might be), and so I was kind of sad to see them relegated. But, as Harry points out, "Football needs all the capitalist bastards it can get." They just need to do a better job. (This is further confirmed by reading Sportswriter of the Year Martin Samuel's damning indictment of West Ham chairman Terence Brown.) Harry's piece on this is entirely quotable, so just go read the whole thing.

Another item of interest over there addresses the banning of competitive sports days in schools. Harry notes that crazy parents who take recreational sports far too seriously -- and abuse the volunteers who run things -- are the real problem, and quotes this spot-on dismissal of the idea that the problem is "political correctness gone mad":

The notion that political correctness has gone mad is a strange anthropomorphism. The implication being that political correctness was once a perfectly sane and reasonable chap who only concerned himself with sensible pursuits, such as hounding Nazis and kiddie fiddlers. But then he suffered a breakdown, perhaps triggered by a humiliating sporting experience, and now Mr PC is a twitching, bulgy-eyed loon who has started stalking innocuous targets such as egg-and-spoon races. But in truth political correctness hasn't so much gone gaga as gone mainstream. The scrapping of competitive sports is the logical consequence of our therapeutic culture that assumes that children are vulnerable creatures whose self-esteem will be irreparably damaged by sporting failure.

Or, as Harry says, "Competition-free sport is as useful as alcohol-free beer." Hey, thanks for putting it in terms even I can understand, Harry!
08:42 p.m.

23 May, 2003

Uday Hussein, alive and trying to negotiate a surrender deal, Saddam alive and "in questionable mental health" (are you shittin' me?) and thousands of volumes from the Iraqi National Library, previously thought to have been lost to fire, found safely stored in a mosque. Well, gosh, talk about your good news days.
05:34 p.m.

There's no blaming affirmative action on this one: Maureen Dowd gets away with egregious journalistic dishonesty. Again.

Critics have every right to object to Bush's statement if they believe it mischaracterizes the threat from Al Qaeda. But they also have a responsibility to accurately represent what the President actually said, rather than repeating Dowd's distorted quotation. The New York Times - and the other outlets that have disseminated the myth - should let their readers know the full context of Bush's statement. The rapid spread of this myth is yet another sad commentary on the state of American political journalism.

If Bush is Hitler, how come so many people have to make stuff up about him? And how come the New York Times keeps cocking up like this?

And no, Spinsanity isn't a right-wing site; quite the contrary:

Full disclosure: We all have been politically active in Democratic and progressive politics and disclose those affiliations below. We have strong personal views on politics and believe in participating in the political system, but we also share a commitment to the democratic values that motivate this site. Our pledge to our readers is that we will always be non-partisan, fair and civic-minded.

We need more sites like Spinsanity, frankly.

And, well, what he said:

Most of me wants to refuse to believe that something so ridiculous could be taken seriously. She's a cheap, partisan clown, and not a very good one at that. She and her writing, in and of themselves, are of no consequence. However, the fact that she is published four times fortnightly in the New York Times makes her dangerous because for far too many that gives weight and importance to her words that simply isn't there.

Back when I first started this blogging crap, I began reading columnists such as Dowd seriously for the first time. I started to feel like I was in The Emperor's New Clothes. This was supposed to be informed commentary? People actually took this as serious thought? My only conclusion was that the aura of the Emperor made these columns look well dressed. If the best paper in the nation publishes it, then it must be worthy. They wouldn't publish crap!

Heh. I just don't know how people get by only on traditional media these days. As Andrew Sullivan writes of the influence of the internet, and blogs in particular:

We've pulled the curtain back at Oz. But we certainly didn't create the Blair scandal, which would have broken regardless of the Internet. All we did is make the reading public less shocked by what goes on inside the Times: we lowballed expectations. Which, in some ways, alleviates Howell's problem, rather than intensifies it.

04:50 p.m.

Defending Salam Pax, and going for his accuser's jugular. Say what you will about Jurjen, but he doesn't mince words -- another must-read piece.
04:47 p.m.

This week's Friday Five questions are boring as hell, so I'm just going to pull a set of questions from the FF archive. From April 26, 2002:

1. What are your hobbies? I don't collect stamps or go spelunking or anything like that. I like writing, drinking cold beverages in nice pubs, painting (not walls -- pictures, terracotta pots, pieces of wood that I found in the garage, that kind of thing), cooking, doing stupid shit to make people laugh and playing the piano when I'm home alone. I used to play a lot of table football on a daily basis, but haven't for months now. Not sure if that's a proper hobby, though.

2. Do you collect anything? If so, what? I used to collect handbags, but I don't spend my money that foolishly anymore. Here are some of my favourites. (Yes, I was sad enough to take photos of my accessories. I'm not proud.) Not pictured: the hot pink watering can-shaped handbag I got for my birthday last year, which I haven't had a chance to carry yet. As soon as it's sunny, that thing will be firmly attached to my right arm.

3. Is there a hobby you're interested in, but just don't have the time/money to do? Screwing whores and putting hits out on my enemies. I mean! I'd like to get back into playing volleyball, but it's not that popular here and you need a relatively large group of people just to get a basic game going.

4. Have you ever turned a hobby into a moneymaking opportunity? Well, if you count writing, yeah. Oh, and doing stupid shit to make people laugh -- I made £30 one night for downing 8 ounces of soy sauce in one gulp. Then I spent £30 on pints of Diet Pepsi to quench my thirst. Sadly, this was only about a year ago. And then there was the time I got a free tongue stud in Zurich! All I had to do was get my tongue pierced on a dare to win it. So I did. It only lasted a few months.

5. Besides web-related stuff (burbs, rings, etc.), what clubs do you belong to? I've belonged to the Polish National Alliance since birth. My Grampa arranged that for all of his grandchildren when we were born. Being a Polack is serious business, you know.

My weekend plans are kind of tentative, apart from a big Jacques Chirac project (not for this blog) that I have to put the finishing touches on for delivery. I just found out that it's a bank holiday (three day) weekend, which explains why it won't stop bloody raining.
04:15 p.m.

If you're not reading Tim Blair, well, you must be new to blogs. Or lame. And definitely deprived:

THE MELBOURNE Age today reviews Beavis and Butt-head, apparently unaware that the final episode went to air six years ago. In next week's Age: Should Murphy Brown have a child out of wedlock?

Hee.
03:13 p.m.

Anyone who's surprised by this, please slap your ass back to reality:

Baghdad - Throughout the 13 years of UN sanctions on Iraq that were ended yesterday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.

Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Hussein turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.

Unlike Mr Reynolds, I'm not holding my breath when it comes to retractions and apologies from all those who bought into Saddam's propaganda.
03:07 p.m.

British Spin cuts through the crap in the newspapers over the issue of a Euro referendum in Britain. (I'd apologise to my non-British readers for the intensely British/Commonwealth focus of this blog lately, but I hope y'all find it a matter about which it's worth knowing a thing or two.)

Look. On June 9th, People will make as many pro Euro noises as they can without it sounding ridiculous that we're not actually entering the Euro any time soon. The aim will be to behave like a fat man on a strict diet, hungrily eyeing the cream cakes and making sorrowful noises about how much he'd love to have one, but he has to think of his blood pressure. Now, you might believe, with me, that the whole argument is the political equivalent of self harming and that Browns point about an economic decision is entirely valid, but at least the Express should know what the debate is before they write the story. I mean, do they really think that for the next three years, Gordon Brown is going to tour the country whipping up Euro-enthusiasm?

Hmm. This definitely gives one food for thought. Not terribly cheering, though, really, no matter how you look at it. We're in an awful mess, here. As Denis MacShane says, we are headed for civil war.
02:45 p.m.

Welcome to a dying nation.

Many have fought the advent of the European super-state in Britain, but it has just been one issue amongst many. Only now and oh so very belatedly have a few newspapers and media commentators picked up the horn and sounded it. Suddenly it is dawning on them that the battle has now reached the very last ditch almost unnoticed, whilst the mass of people sleepwalk towards the end of a thousand years of evolving political culture. Lose this one and there will be no more political means left for opposition. No doubt the perpetual growth of mass surveillance and the impending introduction of ID cards at this time is just a coincidence. Sure.

My records for the weekend both feature Terry Callier, a fantastic singer-songwriter I only discovered about five years ago. He's been around for years -- before I was born, even. I love his voice, and his songs, and he's meant to be a really nice guy. (An ex-boyfriend's brother was a big fan of Terry's and went to an in-store performance/signing that he did up in Leeds several years ago. Sadly, only a few people showed up, because no bastards in the north were with it enough to realise that there was a freakin' musical legend in their midst. Instead of storming out of HMV in a dejected strop, Terry hung out with the small crowd for two hours, answering all their questions about music, taking requests and just shooting the shit with them. Cool, huh?)

Anyway, here are the records:

Gotta Get Closer to You -- a song that Terry recorded in 1975, when I was still two years away from being a zygote

Lean on Me -- no, not THAT Lean on Me; it's a totally different, better song, and is a duet with the politically retarded but very talented singer Beth Orton. It's a beautiful song, and their vocals are just perfect in every way. This track is on the EP that first brought Mr Callier to my attention, Ms Orton's Best Bit EP, which was released in 1998. From that recording, I would also recommend their duet on the song Dolphins.

Enjoy, suckers.
12:43 p.m.

Don't bombs blast through concrete, too?

A ring of concrete is being placed around the Houses of Parliament, and security is being stepped up elsewhere in London, in response to the threat from terrorism.

Concrete blocks are to be placed on the roadside by the Palace of Westminster to protect the building from car bombers.

The worst thing, apart from the fact that these huge concrete blocks aren't going to protect us all from massive terrorist attacks, is that these mofos are ugly. Indeed, that seemed to be the main objection to the people speaking to Radio 4 earlier (I heard it when I was in a shop): waste all of our money that you'd like to help yourselves to, HMG, but please don't spend it on anything offensive to the eye.
10:58 a.m.

A poem by the Queen has been discovered, and it's getting decent notices from poets. I'm pretty surprised that Al Alvarez is so complimentary (and that he manages not to mention Sylvia Plath in his review), but like he says, it is what it is.
09:42 a.m.

Funniest web toy ever -- and it applies to so many people! (As Glenn notes, make sure you check out all the boxes. Classic.)
09:38 a.m.

Is the Guardian coming over all sensible? Unfortunately, it's an isolated incident.
09:29 a.m.

I think it's safe to say that Scott Peterson's defence is in trouble. If this Satanic cult angle works, I'll eat my shoe (I don't have any hats).

Thanks to Gael for the link.
08:58 a.m.

From Kiwi pundit Nigel Kearney comes the news that the US will not be engaging in a free trade deal with New Zealand, certainly due to the way the NZ government's opposition to the war was recklessly handled -- specifically, PM Helen Clark's stupid comments about George Bush and Al Gore. billion is a hell of a lot of money to lose in any currency. As Nigel says:

It will be interesting to see what sort of deal Australia gets. If they can negotiate a complete elimination of tariffs on beef, lamb and dairy exports then we will have missed a huge opportunity.

Nigel also links to this New Zealand Herald story which is full of surprisingly frank quotes from a US government spokesperson. NZ PM Helen Clark apologised for her offensive comments about President Bush (though it was one of those "I'm sorry if you were offended" apologies, not an "I'm sorry I said the stupid things I said" apology), but it looks like she done fucked up good and proper, as certain rednecks say. As spokesperson Zoellick says:

"You can forgive friends a lot, but in the way the world really operates, personal attacks are beyond the call, particularly from friends," he said.

"When you have a long-time friend and you are in a situation which is a very critical one for your sense of national security, although you don't always expect your friends to agree with you all the time ... the way that is handled and the way it's expressed is important..."

"The trade nightmare is about to occur - Australia gets free-trade access to America while this country is denied," said [Act] leader Richard Prebble...

National leader Bill English said New Zealand farmers and exporters had Helen Clark's "foreign commentator role" to thank for the setback.

I feel for the people of New Zealand for being saddled with such a crappy PM. But I can't really shed too many tears when this page has such amusing photos of both Helen Clark and George Bush. Someone in the art department at the New Zealand Herald has a sense of humour.
08:00 a.m.

Hey, we get it: Halle Berry is really beautiful and sexy*. Of course she is, but I think she's becoming more revered for her looks than anything else, which...Okay, maybe that doesn't bother her since she's got her Oscar.

I'm a fan of my fellow Ohioan, but I think that, with the success of the current and next Matrix films, Monica Bellucci may grab the title of Sexiest/Most Beautiful Woman next year. The year after that, there really will be no excuse for Charlotte Casiraghi, the breathtakingly gorgeous granddaughter of Grace Kelly, not to claim the crown -- she'll be 18 in 2004, after all, and perfectly legal for men all over the world to lust after.

*With apologies to David Spade.
07:42 a.m.

Man, this takes the effin' cake: I know not one damn day goes by that I don't rant about the BBC, but using taxpayer money to pay for human shields' airline tickets is going too bloody far. Those idiots -- war criminals one and all, whether they know it or not -- can rot in Iraq for all I care, but if some sucker wants to give them money to come home -- fine. If that sucker is the British Broadcasting Corporation, using our money -- not fine.
06:35 a.m.

I find this cartoon rather Treacher-esque.
06:25 a.m.

Wondering why some of us are Eurosceptics? Here's another gem from this fortnight's issue of Private Eye:

With Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi accusing EU commission president Romano Prodi of malpractice, former French prime minister and EU commissioner Edith Cresson charged with counterfeiting, and the proposed future president of the European Bank Jean-Claude Trichet charged with false accounting, it's business as usual in Brussels. Just the time to launch a new, all embracing constitution for the European Union.

Berlusconi is the first serving Italian prime minister to appear at his own trial following a series of other fraud investigations. In his defence he is accusing Prodi of malpractice when in charge of a state holding company in 1985. Cresson was the first European commissioner to be accused of corruption after employing her dentist, Rene Bertholet, as scientific adviser and later allegedly forging documents to cover up his mistakes.

Though the entire European commission was forced to resign in 1999, corruption is still rife in the EU. Despite this -- and the prospect of more uncontrolled accounting with 10 new member states -- a new treaty is planned which sets out the EU's first ever legal constitution and which will bind all the countries who sign it.

The British foreign office refused to comment by telephone on this document which will give EU laws supremacy over those of member states and such legal traditions as habeas corpus and trial by jury. Instead power will reside with politically elected EU judges.

British MPs have been denied a chance to debate the constitution which will be presented at an EU summit in a few weeks' time...[A]rticle 14 demands "unreserved support" for the EU's foreign and security policy, with the threat of sanctions for those who infringe "a short list of fundamental European values".

Not that abuse of these fundamental values appear to have unduly bothered the chairmain of the constitution commission, former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing. In bidding for an ever more powerful and permanent EU presidency, he ignored the shenanigans involving Cresson and Trichet, as well as the fact that France has infringed more EU regulations than almost all other member states. Oddly, "tricher" means "to cheat" in French. Could there be a link?

It's hard not to delight in France's surrender, but did anyone honestly not see this one coming? Well, obviously Chirac and de Villepin didn't, or else they wouldn't have made such asses of themselves last month by getting all stroppy about it. Makes you wonder if they've got a clue between them.
05:59 a.m.

Is Salam Pax, as an admitted "privileged son of Ba'athist power in Iraq," an "untrustworthy witness to history"?

As a supposed insider, his opinions carry weight with his numerous readers in a way that official Pentagon briefings or U.S. press reports do not. They shouldn't, because those opinions still flow from his old elite ways, and from a lifetime of steep indoctrination in party thinking. He is interested in reworking the truth about the Baath party both to assuage his own guilt and to get himself a leg up in the chaotic new Iraq. But that doesn't make him an official agent of influence. It just makes him a quirky, iconoclastic Iraqi whose life of irresponsible leisure has come to an abrupt end.

This one's going to go on for quite a while, but I find the debate here interesting. Maybe the only thing that will settle it once and for all is Salam actually getting a book deal, in which case we'll be able to put a face to the name and find some of the many missing pieces to his puzzle.
02:37 a.m.

About face:

Iran demanded on Thursday that Washington prove its claims that Tehran harbors al-Qaida terrorists...

Yeah, we've heard a lot about how mean old Washington is being so unfair, shaking down Iran for the terrorists it claims it doesn't have. But what's this?

Iranian officials Thursday told a U.N. representative that Iran has several unnamed al Qaeda operatives in custody, CNN has learned.

The acknowledgment comes as Washington has intensified its accusations that al Qaeda terrorists are inside Iran -- something Tehran had previously denied.

Gosh, imagine that: laying down the law with rogue nations actually gets results. Thanks, Yanks.
02:27 a.m.

I agree with "Graydon Carter" -- let's have a moratorium on the use of the word "snarky" (and "snark" and "snarkfest" and "snarkilicious" and any other annoying derivation of the word). I've used it, yeah, but enough is enough.
02:05 a.m.

Jurjen is back, and as excellent as ever; this time, he's (once more, for the slow kids) addressing the issue of weapons in Iraq:

It strikes me that this meme of "huge stockpiles of WMDs were the only justification for this war" is starting to closely resemble the one about the Reagan administration supplying CW agents and bioweapons to the Iraqi government during the Iran-Iraq War; it starts with a distortion of some actual facts, gets passed along in a round of Chinese Whispers (or "telephone," as I understand the game is called in America) until it's blindly accepted as fact and no-one ever stops to wonder whether it might be a good idea to verify it.

There's also a pretty thorough refutation of a wildly inaccurate, deeply silly Molly Ivins column, which is always a lot of fun. Go read the whole thing.
01:53 a.m.

Lt Smash's command in the Middle East is having daily poetry contests. Knock it the hell off, Smash, or you'll ruin the American military's reputation as a collection of unthinking, unfeeling killbots who only joined the armed forces because they had no prospects for further education or gainful employment.
01:00 a.m.

22 May, 2003

Michael Jackson: still mad as a fish.

Michael Jackson has burst into the office of his local Congressman wearing a Spiderman mask - to complain about the lack of fast-food restaurants near his Neverland ranch. The star wore the superhero's disguise when he made an unannounced visit to US Representative Elton Gallegly in Solvang, California.

He asked the politician's deputy, Steve Lavagnino: "How come Solvang doesn't have any fast-food restaurants?" After Jackson was told the town's only eaterie was a Subway sandwich shop, the disappointed singer said he loved food from the Taco Bell chain. The 44-year-old then pulled his disguise off and apologised for disturbing the office.

I've just finished reading this fortnight's Private Eye (well, most of it -- I still have the ten page special report into how the Inland Revenue and Customs chiefs dodge taxes to look forward to...yawn/grr), and it's got quite a few gems in addition to the item about Independent "reporter" Robert Fisk making up stories for his reports from Iraq. Here's one about the creative ways Tony Blair's government has of spending taxpayer money -- read it and imagine the ungodly furore that would erupt in America if George Bush's government did something similar:

The worst grovelling over Tony Blair's 50th birthday was surely seen at the "Experience Corps," a body set up by home secretary David Blunkett with a £20m grant to encourage volunteering by the over-50s.

On 1 May it decided the best way to use some of this money was to ask oldies to "help The Experience Corps build a birthday card to celebrate Tony Blair's 50th birthday week". The Saga generation was asked to say what is "Fab About Fifty" and the best emails would win a "Fab at Fifty" t-shirt.

Government-funded groups trying to organise public birthday greetings for a dear leader have a distinctly North Korean feel...

Older readers wanting to tell Tony Blair that the best thing about being 50 is having the wisdom to see that public money should not be wasted on sycophancy of this kind should send their messages to: fabatfifty@experience-corps.co.uk.

There are more items worth quoting -- so many, in fact, that I shall spread them out a bit. More to come...
06:08 a.m.

"Jane's Law: The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant. The devotees of the party out of power are insane." Democrats and Republicans alike need to read this.

Democratic websites now offer the same vast well of spleen, the same conviction that every single news item with the word "Bush" in it somehow vindicates their thesis that Bush is not merely a center-right president with tax policies they dislike, but a proto-Fascist intent on establishing a dictatorship and herding his political opponents into camps. I'm not saying that all Democrats believe this, any more than all Republicans were crazy Clinton bashers. But just as the Republicans did, they tolerate an astonishing array of nutty opinion. And a very large percentage of the commentariat, from the blogerati upwards, are totally obsessed with proving that Bush is, like, the worst president ever.

I confess myself surprised. I would have thought that they would have learned the lessons of the Clinton presidency, such as that obsessing with the commander-in-chief reflects worse on you than on him...

Republicans, of course, have turned into the Democrats of the nineties -- smugly convinced that they have merely assumed their rightful place at the top of the world, and that because of the essential goodness of their cause, they need exert little effort to stay there.

Of course, the way the Democrats are behaving now, they're right about that last part.

Okay, Democrats and Republicans both need to read it, but maybe the Dems need to read it as a matter of urgency.
03:32 a.m.

"Hey, slut! I'm gonna write a letter to your parents and tell them you're a whore!" So screamed Cybill Shepherd (as Martha Stewart) at a young woman in a clip from Martha Inc, the TV movie about the American lifestyles guru.

I still can't stop laughing.

I saw the clip on David Letterman's show tonight (ITV2 shows it at 1 AM), and he played several other clips as well. They were comedy gold, people:

"For God's sake, did I not specifically ask for Merlot?!"

"Somebody on my staff forgot to put out the lima beans!"

"Every good cook deserves a copper pot!" (said while hurling a copper pot at a retreating young woman)

As Dave said, "If she's really throwing copper pots at people's heads, that just makes me like her even more."
03:18 a.m.

"Peter Mandelson is a backbench MP, no more and no less." Bit of an understatement, that, but it was the official word from Tony Blair's spokesperson about Mr Mandelson's divisive remarks to journalists on Tuesday. But I love this:

PETER MANDELSON had just begun to enjoy himself again, saying he felt liberated to have been honest about his views and finally find his own bearings in politics...

Mr Mandelson has, they say, at last got over his sense of injustice at being forced to resign from the Cabinet for a second time in 2001. He is relishing a role in international affairs through his chairmanship of the Policy Network think-tank and has begun to emerge as the “keeper of the Third Way flame”.

In other words, busywork. Probably best to keep the self-promoting knobhead occupied with something where he can do as little damage as possible to the government and the country.

This week he has undoubtedly strained his relationship with Mr Blair, whose anger over Tuesday’s comments was made worse because they appeared to be another chapter in a feud with Mr Brown.

The Prime Minister has often pleaded for peace. He once wrote to Mr Mandelson: “Have you any conception of how despairing it is for me when the two people that have been closest to me for more than a decade . . . will not lay aside personal animosity?”

Downing Street’s patience with Mr Mandelson is now wearing thin. But his friendship with the Prime Minister has survived greater tests and if Mr Mandelson is developing a political identity of his own instead of just trading on their relationship, the Prime Minister might feel a sense of relief.

Now Downing Street's patience with Mandy is wearing thin? Took them long enough. Let's just hope that, as usually happens with shameless self-publicisers, his own big mouth is what's put the final nail in the coffin of whatever credibility he may have had left.
02:56 a.m.

Memo to the Sex and the City wardrobe department: keep trying.
02:55 a.m.

"You'd think they could at least pretend there's another view. News agencies do it for terrorists all the time." So says Mr Gato on the subject of one-sided news reports from CBS on the subject of Christine Todd Whitman's resignation as head of the EPA. You know he's right.
02:38 a.m.

Nothing gets by the Guardian: months after the rest of us realised it, they finally admit that "the looting in Baghdad may not have been as disastrous as we thought" (Real Audio link). Well, gee, the number of missing antiquities has been revised from 170,000 to about 30. So yeah, I think it's fair to say that the story was greatly exaggerated. The problem is, the media hasn't trumpeted the corrections nearly as loudly as they did the original, bogus claims. Do keep up, Guardianistas.
02:16 a.m.

21 May, 2003

Caption competition time: what exactly is being thought/said in this photo of David Beckham and Nelson Mandela? How about this photo? Best entry gets a special prize.
06:55 p.m.

I love Stephen Pollard. He got three tickets to the First Test against Zimbabwe at Lords Cricket Ground tomorrow -- and he's putting them in the trash, where they belong.

[I]t is not just [Tim] Lamb and his colleagues who should be held in contempt. It is every single person who attends the match. Anyone who walks through the turnstiles tomorrow will be making what amounts to an active statement of support for Mugabe. They should all, literally, be ashamed of themselves. They will deserve all the opprobrium they are likely to receive from the protestors outside the ground. As they drink their beer, they should consider that they are getting drunk on the blood of innocent Zimbabweans.

Hyperbolic? Maybe, but I'd be tempted to say he doesn't go far enough. The fact that Britain is hosting the Zimbabwean team makes me want to puke.
06:34 p.m.

Things are getting rather heated at MP Tom Watson's blog. I don't think it's quite fair of him to tease us with the threat that he'll spill all of the beans about what MP Bill Cash had to say on that train if Cash continues to fight dirty -- he should tell all anyway. Sounds like Mr Cash didn't get the memo about the fact that the only people who talk loudly and conspicuously on their mobiles in public places are sad social retards.
05:53 p.m.

More from Kiwi pundit Nigel Kearney, via email, on New Zealand's government, to tide me over until this book arrives:

The biggest problem is not the structure per se, it is our small size. The Cabinet includes more than half the government MPs and by convention, Cabinet members do not publicly disagree (at least in theory).

So when you control more than half of Cabinet (only about 15 people including a number of brown nosers), by extension you control Cabinet, so you also control the government caucus, which is enough to control parliament and therefore the entire country. Nasty, isn't it? This is how power has become concentrated with so few people.

We also have no entrenched Bill of Rights or other avenue for the courts when faced with bad legislation.

Egads. Part of what I find so fascinating about New Zealand's political system is the fact that they're in a bind I would never wish on the US: massive constitutional reform has to happen just to put things on a somewhat even keel. I was discussing with someone (who works for a state legislature in the US) last night my belief that the US Constitution, much as people say they love it and would defend it come what may, probably wouldn't win the majority of American public support if put to a referendum today. It's a nightmare scenario, but luckily it's been in place for hundreds of years. So how exactly do you get a modern electorate to sit up, take notice, get involved and make wise decisions about constitutional reform? It's a daunting prospect, to say the least.

Nigel says on his blog that most of what I had to say in my earlier post about New Zealand was "not nice but all of it true". Just for the record, because while I know Nigel understands where I'm coming from but others may not, I don't think that learning about a country's political system, finding that the basic structure is deeply flawed and taking an active interest in how they're going about fixing things is in any way a comment on the country itself, or its denizens. (Hey, some of my best friends are Kiwis!) I find it quite easy to separate the framework of government from a country and its people -- really, which of us lives in a perfect democracy? In my view, I've actually chosen to move from an imperfect democracy (in the US) to a more imperfect democracy (in Britain), but recognising that is entirely different from slagging off the US and Britain -- and Americans and Brits. It's only in comparing and contrasting such systems that one can really gain a greater appreciation for the advantages and disadvantages of each -- especially in times where countries like Britain are facing the prospect of having to adopt elements of other nations' governmental systems. For instance, Roger Kerr writes on the strength of New Zealand's Privy Council:

Although the institutional separation between the executive and the legislature is blurred, the judiciary is clearly separate from both the government and the parliament. Unlike in the United States, where the Supreme Court applies 'judicial review' and can invalidate legislation it judges to be unconstitutional by reference to the written constitution, in more thoroughgoing common law countries like New Zealand the courts interpret statutes strictly as the will of parliament. This means that judges, being unelected, are quite rightly not lawmakers except in the narrowest sense. But it also means that governments have to govern within the terms of the law as expressed by parliament and also with due regard to common law principles that have evolved in case law. It is true that neither in the United States nor in New Zealand have the courts done much to stem the expanding economic role of government. Nevertheless, as things stand, New Zealand's highest court, the Privy Council in London, is fully independent of the New Zealand executive and constitutes an important check on it, which is a major reason why the business community at large, Maori (as a minority group in society) and many in the legal profession are opposed to the government's moves to do away with it as New Zealand's final court. The strength of the English common law tradition compared with other systems, such as the European civil law system, is its defence of individual liberty. We need a strong and independent judiciary to ensure that governments cannot lightly override the common law.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Yay, New Zealand! Well, enjoy it while it lasts: the horrible bind that New Zealand is in now is that, as Nigel writes, the badly needed constitutional reform is likely to come only with the abolition of its highest court, to be replaced with one where the government appoints all the judges. It's truly a nightmare scenario, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to observe from a far remove as this political restructuring changes the governmental system -- compelling viewing, not unlike peering in on a trainwreck. But who amongst us can feel smug and comfortable watching that trainwreck, when our own democracies may be just as fragile? As you may have noticed, I'm pretty concerned about Britain possibly adopting a crazy-ass European Constitution -- these democracy-altering exercises aren't limited to tiny countries down under that don't get as much press as the big boys do, but knowing what the hell is going on down there is not a waste of time.

But anyway. Nigel also tells me that I've made an excellent choice of book to learn about the NZ system, which I am more than happy to hear. My geeky core anticipates its arrival with bated breath.
05:41 p.m.

Two things:

1. Don't read this unless you want to get very fucking angry. You know the drill: I hate the BBC for what they do, and I hate them more for taking my money to do it.

2. How wrong is it that a children's computer game that lets them create music is entitled "Chika Chika Boom Boom"? Or am I the only one who thought "Porn music!" upon reading that?

That is all.
06:48 a.m.

I like the look of Democrats for National Security. It'd be nice to see leftists of that calibre edge out the extremists who should be hanging onto the fringe of liberalism for dear life instead of dominating it because they screech, bitch and moan the loudest (while, of course, offering no viable alternatives of their own). As Patrick Belton says:

[P]eople of both partisan persuasions will hopefully recognize the United States is best served when neither political party enjoys a monopoly on supporting well-funded military and intelligence services, or espousing a strong U.S. political engagement with the rest of the world on issues such as the promotion of democracy or freer trade. When both parties are equally trusted by the public on matters of foreign policy, then it is more likely for the party out of government to act in the role of a responsible opposition - enjoying more political capital to, say, criticize U.S. security alignments with authoritarian governments, promote greater U.S. engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or call for a international economic policy more honestly committed to the pursuit of freer trade. (This to say nothing of, for instance, criticizing the present administration's handling of Iraq from the position of a commitment to democracy promotion in the Gulf and Arab world, rather from a less noble position of hopes the U.S. involvement will fail, tarnishing the current administration in the forthcoming election.) All of these are useful additions to a policy conversation which could be made by a responsible opposition parties with trustworthy credentials on letting politics stop at the water's edge.

06:39 a.m.

Hey, what's a billion error between political enemies? De nada, apparently.
06:30 a.m.

10k4awife.com -- because everlasting love comes just that cheaply. The funniest thing on the site, though, is this picture, with the caption: "Me being silly with a piece of kelp that looked like a brain that I found on the beach." Don't ask me why, but that's some funny shit.
06:01 a.m.

"The government's role is whatever the government defines it to be," says New Zealand PM Helen Clark. Scary stuff. As one clever Kiwi puts it in this rather good explanation of why New Zealand badly needs constitutional reform:

Democracy, understood today as government for, by and of the people, means governments should respect the rights and freedoms of each and every citizen, and the rights of minorities as well as majorities. We should resist the concept of government as unbridled power.

Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it?

I have a handful of Kiwi friends and have worked with a fair number of New Zealanders as well, and none of them seemed to know much about exactly how the executive, legislative and judicial branches interact in NZ (fair enough: I'm not sure I'd know about how it works in America if I hadn't studied it at school and university, and I'd probably think someone was a bit of a politics geek if they asked me about it).

But I find it interesting -- in an admittedly geeky way -- how American democracy, where the people decide the government's role (as per the Constitution), as well as the Britsh parliamentary system, differ from the set-up in New Zealand. It's a rather thorough document, with footnotes, but it makes for a compelling read. Did you know that the New Zealand legislature is unicameral? (As you can well imagine, it "has been turned by party discipline into a rubber stamp for many executive decisions". I shudder to think of such a set-up in Washington or London.) There's also a lot of enlightening stuff on New Zealand's judicial system:

'Justice' was once uncontroversially whatever resulted from the fair application of the rules: a fair trial led to a just verdict. Nowadays, justice is often far from blind, and its requirements are read off from various rights doctrines. Consequently the procedures have to be manipulated so that they lead to the 'correct' outcomes.

Almost as scary as Helen Clark's weird and warped views on the role of government, but this document -- lengthy though it is -- isn't exhaustive enough to give novel-length contextualisation to such comments, which just makes me want to read more. So I've ordered this tome, which will probably lull me to sleep on quite a few nights, but for £32.50, had better be good.

Thanks to Kiwi pundit Nigel Kearney, who's been linking to me for ages and has a fine Antipodean blog, for the link.

(And on a related note, Courtney wants to know why Aussies and Kiwis are so obsessed with George W Bush's cock. I'm not touching that one -- or Courtney's question.)
05:20 a.m.

The New York Times described the BBC's news coverage as "nuanced objectivity". Now Jayson Blair says that "race, substance abuse and psychological disorders" had a "nuanced role" in destroying his career. For those of you scratching your head over all this nuance business, an evil genius presents the Nuance Rainbow.
05:10 a.m.

If rich people are the enemy, I can only imagine the horror inspired by rich people who donate millions to ensure that more people get rich. David Farrer is, as it happens, quite right: we need more multi-millionaires -- self-made and otherwise -- promoting entrepreneurship, in Scotland and everywhere else. Cos, in a funny way, I kinda like rich people: they're the only ones who have ever paid me to work, after all.

On a related note, the Blair government's tax increases are threatening the UK economy by increasing the burden on entrepreneurs who want to give people jobs. Hey, doesn't that sound like a good plan? It does if you're Chancellor Gordon Brown.
04:56 a.m.

If you want to see one cheesy-ass commercial, check out the Hong Kong government's PSA about SARS -- specifically, how to clean your entire house with a mixture of one part bleach to 99 parts water, every freaking day. Phil Hartman's Troy McClure has absolutely nothing on the voiceover artist.

Link via Flying Chair
04:34 a.m.

If it's unacceptable to be a proud Yank, can I be a proud Polack? If I can't be an American who's pissed off at France and Germany for how they've gone to such great lengths to bugger the country of my birth, can I be a Polack who's pissed off at France and Germany for how they've gone to great lengths to bugger the country where my family was born?

[I]t is not hard to imagine how the people of Poland, who have transformed their country in the past decade to secure EU membership by next year, felt about being ticked off like naughty children by the French President during last winter’s wrangling over Iraq.

Jacques Chirac’s response to news that Poland and seven other European countries had signed a public letter supporting US policy on Iraq was to hint darkly that their EU accession might be threatened and to rage that they were “immature” and had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”.

This month, after the US allocated Poland a sector of Iraq to run as a thank-you for contributing 200 special forces to the war effort — and Poland offered to share management with an unwilling Germany — it was the turn of the German press to hiss and snarl that the Poles were America’s “Trojan donkey” and “insolent”.

France and Germany, being bitchy and rude to countries that have the balls not to agree with them? I was told the Bush Administration had the market cornered on that.

As Poland’s leaders try to lure traditionally apathetic (if pro-European) voters out to cast their ballots, those counter-productive Franco-German rages have reminded Poles that, even in the new Europe, they have had too much second-class treatment for comfort. Like the nine other mostly Eastern European countries due to join the EU next year, Poland has had to accept a scaled-down deal that will leave its farmers at a disadvantage against richer, better subsidised competitors from Western Europe. Poland’s regular three-way diplomatic talks with Germany and France have, to its disappointment, been kept on a low level, giving it the sense of being a perpetual junior partner. The tacit expectation in Paris and Berlin has been that Poland, and the other accession countries, will go on being cap-doffingly grateful to their mentors for years...

No surprises, then, to see who the Polish Government has picked as its pre-referendum star guests to visit the country and get out the Europe vote. Not Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schröder, whose bossy, bureaucratic, inflexible, Washington-phobic vision of Europe might remind voters of their bossy, bureaucratic, inflexible, Washington-phobic communist past under Soviet leadership. Instead, the two international statesmen who are to stop off in Poland in the run-up to the referendum are Tony Blair and George Bush.

Wait a sec -- a country in which communism fell less than 15 years ago would rather ally itself with the US and Britain than with anyone else? Don't these dumb Polacks know that the Anglosphere is the enemy of freedom? Don't they know that George W. Bush is worse than a million Hitlers with AIDS buggering altar boys while talking on cellphones in their SUVs?

This pair, so reviled in the salons of Paris and Berlin for creating painful and perhaps permanent divisions inside Europe, have a relationship that dovetails neatly with Poles’ vision of how their future in the West should look. Poland — repeatedly carved up between Germany, Austria and Russia, and left to its fate when Hitler’s armies invaded it in 1939 — wants to know it can depend on American military might as much as it wants an equal voice in Europe’s political and economic development.

Surprise, surprise -- Poland looks to Britain for that equal voice, because France and Germany have already shown they have no intention of giving it to them. Or, in the words of Jacques Chirac, Poland has "missed a good opportunity to shut up".

If I can't say it on behalf of my American birthright, I'll say it on behalf of my Polish blood: Chirac and Schröder, eat a dick. As the saying goes, Poland is not yet lost while we live.
04:05 a.m.

Peter Mandelson, please be a lamb...and sod off forever.

LABOUR’S longest-running feud burst into the open again last night when Peter Mandelson accused Gordon Brown of out-flanking the Prime Minister on the euro...

In his off-the-record restaurant remarks, Mr Mandelson accused Mr Brown of delivering a “Polo mint Budget” because there was a gaping hole where there should have been an announcement on the euro.

Mr Brown was a “politician to his fingertips, 24 hours a day, seven days a week” and that had allowed him to gain the upper hand on the euro, Mr Mandelson continued. Had Mr Blair been as obsessed with politics, he would not have let himself be outmanoeuvred by the Chancellor.

Listen, Mandy, you're finished. You're never going to be PM, you're never going to weasel your way back into the Cabinet, and your very name is a punchline to a joke that everyone in the country knows by heart. Give it up, fuck off and don't rear your ugly head again until it's time for the Slimy Bastard Awards.

If there's anything that makes me question Tony Blair's judgement, it's the fact that he was ever fooled by Peter Mandelson enough to give him chance after chance to rebuild his career. If there was ever any hope of yet another chance being given, this little development should have pissed all over it:

A government source said: “This is poison and now we know who is spreading it.”

Once a snake, always a snake -- right, Mandy?
03:45 a.m.

The European Court of Justice puts its foot down -- over ham and cheese:

Parma ham cannot be sliced and packaged for sale outside the Italian region where it is produced, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday. And the same goes for Grana Padano, a hard cheese similar to Parmesan, the court added. But there is no restriction on hams being sliced on delicatessen counters where consumers can confirm their authenticity...

Asda [supermarket] described the ruling as "barmy", pointing out that it could sell ham as "Parma" if it was sliced in front of the customer but not if it was cut up in a back room.

He said: "No one doubts that Scotch beef remains Scottish if sliced in Southampton, Jersey potatoes are still Jerseys when boiled in Blackpool, Cheddar's still Cheddar if grated in Gretna...We asked the court to apply the same logic to Parma ham sliced outside the Parma region. After all, we are allowed to slice Parma ham on our deli counters and sell it as Parma ham. It's barmy."

What he said. I like a good slice of prosciutto (especially with a hot croissant and some Jarlsberg cheese) as much as the next carnivore, but I assure you that I would have absolutely zero clue if my Parma ham was really from the designated geographic location in Italy by mere virtue of its being unsliced, or sliced before my very eyes so that I could supervise the task. What a load of shit, but after the ridiculous feta judgement, I'm not terribly surprised. Next thing you know, the European Court of Justice will stop British restaurants from putting croque-monsieur on the menu. (Which, actually, I could get behind: trying to make a ham and cheese toastie sound more elegant by pretentiously calling it croque-monsieur is pretty lame. Then again, I've actually ordered a croque-monsieur in a restaurant before, with a straight face, so who am I to talk?)
03:02 a.m.

You'd expect a Member of Parliament to have some good gossip on his blog, but it turns out the juiciest stuff Labour MP Tom Watson has shared with us so far could have been posted by anyone who was in his carriage on the 10.29 train from Sandwell & Dudley to London on Monday morning. Nevermind; it's still worth a read.
02:53 a.m.

Reading about this daft girl who tried to use a CD cover as photo ID to get on a plane, I was puzzled as to why she even needed to provide photo ID for a domestic flight; when my brother and I flew the same airline from London to Glasgow a couple of summers ago, I just had to give my name at the check-in desk to pick up our e-tickets (laminated orange cards with numbers on, handed to the attendants at the gate), and we breezed onto the plane with no problem whatsoever.

Then I remembered: we flew up to Scotland on August 31, and flew back on September 3...2001; that is, before those of us in the west had any idea what kind of world we were living in. Doesn't seem that long ago, does it?
02:37 a.m.

This little boy is my Hero of the Day:

The Government's much-trumpeted literacy and numeracy targets for 11-year-olds are unachievable, Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, admitted yesterday.

Ryan Hassan, 10, was asked to pose for a photograph as Mr Clarke opened his primary schools strategy at Rotherfield Primary School, in Islington, North London. He could not have known that as he took the mickey out of the Education Secretary with a pair of bunny ears that he was continuing a tradition dating back to Mr Clarke’s own school days.

Friends have recalled how Mr Clarke was nicknamed “The FA Cup” by unkind fellow pupils during his school days. Earlier this year his ears were criticised by the television presenter Carol Vorderman, who said: “He has appalling ears that are far too large and stick out.”

And they say nothing worthwhile ever came out of Islington*.

*Okay, "they" don't say that -- I do. It's a hideous stereotype that Ryan Hassan has proved wrong. Cheers, Ryan; now I have to go back to treating Islingtonians with a modicum of respect.
02:24 a.m.

20 May, 2003

Australian PM John Howard is the shiznit. And, hey, I'd buy an autobiography with that title.
02:23 a.m.

My birthday is July 21; if you're wondering what I'd like, this would be nice. (Jim has more stuff here -- if I had any female friends who'd understand the thong, my Christmas shopping would be complete.)
02:23 a.m.

I'm sorry, but that's freakin' hilarious. Sadly, it's also true.
02:23 a.m.

Finding hope in the Riyadh bombings:

Why did they hit New York? Because they could. Now, they can't. Why did they hit Bali? Because they could. Now they can't. So why are they now hitting their own back yard? Because they can. And that's all they can.

Some would say we should stay the hell out of securing their backyard. Would you?
02:23 a.m.

The BBC is backing down from their bullshit critique of the rescue of Pfc Jessica Lynch. Sadly, this won't get much -- if any -- coverage in Britain. I'm just curious why, if America is doing so much awful stuff over in Iraq, the likes of the BBC and the Independent need to make shit up.
02:23 a.m.

"Billy Joel has told of his battle with drink - but insists he is not an alcoholic." Okay, let's just...nah, too easy.
02:22 a.m.

Chirac killed the Kyoto Protocol, not Bush. Well, that's a bit of a blow to the "I Love French Fries" brigade (if they ever stop to absorb the news).
02:22 a.m.

Interesting George Galloway interview and profile in the Scotsman. It makes for a fun and enlightening read. For example, did you know that the Arafat apologist is actually not as much of an extremist as everyone in the world thinks? It's true, it's true!

Read the Guardian letters page: he’s a hero of the Left - though not as far left as you might think. He’s not a command economy socialist. He believes certain aspects of capitalism are inescapably with us: the state is bad at running restaurants, private individuals are better. "I’m a centre-left Labour man. I’ve never been in the Campaign Group, I’ve never been a Trotskyist, I’ve never been a Communist, I occupy a piece of political ground that was once commonplace but can be caricatured as being extreme now only because of how the political centre of gravity has moved."

This from a man who has framed pictures of Ché Guevara and Fidel Castro on the walls of his house, admits that he grew a moustache "in emulation" of his "hero" Ché Guevara and openly admires Saddam Hussein. But hey, at least he admits that private individuals are better at running restaurants than the government is. How in the world could anyone think he's anything but "left-centre" and reasonable?

Thanks to Harry for the link.
02:22 a.m.

MTV wants to take over Leicester Square for its new, British TRL, which will mirror the American TRL set at Times Square in New York. An MTV spokesperson said:

"Broadcasting TRL from here would also project the vibrant image and landmark qualities of the square to a wide audience across Europe."

By "landmark qualities," I guess she means the four Bella Pasta restaurants, Pizza Hut, All Bar One, Häagen-Dasz, various pubs and a handful of cinemas.

Even though it probably makes for good business, I'm hoping Westminster council rejects the application. Leicester Square is not the nicest place in London, but at least it's got a postage stamp centre of trees and grass and a scintilla of tranquility about it. If MTV moves in, we can kiss that goodbye.

Then again, at least people might show up here with a clue about how to pronounce "Leicester".
02:22 a.m.

If you've got a Jewish surname, you must be a neocon -- or at least that's how the Guardian's David Aaronovitch explains his own questionable outing in the New Statesman's cover article about neoconservatives. Now, no one really knows what a neocon is; that much is clear. But if David Aaronovich is a neocon, then I'm a bloody banana. And if you think that his Jewish surname theory is wild -- even after all the talk lately of Jewish cabals secretly controlling Bush Blair -- I can only tell you that, when discussing one of Aaronovitch's pre-war columns with an anti-war acquaintance, he replied, "Well, look at his surname. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what his politics are going to be."

Try explaining to a liberal that they're dealing in religion-based stereotypes more blatant and ridiculous than the ones they imagine are central to anti-Islamofascism. Try keeping a straight face when the liberal tells you that Zionism is racism and its backers are poisonous snakes who control the media, Aaronovitch included. (Radio Islam makes the same argument, putting itself on a par with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites who are a lot easier to go after without being labelled racist/bigoted/anti-Islam.) Nevermind that Aaronovitch is only a quarter Jewish -- apparently, that's the quarter of his blood that demands he be a neocon. Whatever one of those is.

Aaronovitch also points out, for those who don't seem to notice such things, the fact that not every bomber is a member of al Qaeda -- which should come as news to those who argued that the terrorists being funded, trained and bred by Saddam Hussein's régime were totally different from the terrorists who orchestrated the World Trade Center attacks. Hey, who knew they all liked to murder indiscriminately? Usually terrorists are so much more reasonable than that. Apparently.
02:22 a.m.

Guardian columnist Hugo Young doesn't understand what there is to be afraid of when it comes to Britain being run by Brussels, saying:

Far from running a country that had at last exorcised its anti-European ghosts, the government remains dumbly terrified by their power.

And again, the old "You must be xenophobic if you don't want to give up British sovereignty to a bunch of corrupt politicians" line rears its ugly head. The only thing more clear than what exactly there is to be afraid of is the transparent weakness of those who cry xenophobia every time someone suggests that it might not be such a great idea to relinquish power over Britain to men in other countries who have been dogged for decades by their own criminality -- and corruption that makes the Nixon White House look like Romper Room.
02:22 a.m.

The Bali bombers get fisked. Kind of makes you wonder how anyone can fail to see the difference between being anti-Islam and being anti-Islamofascist.
02:21 a.m.

Do my eyes deceive me, or does Eva Herzigova look exactly the same size now as she did when everyone said she was "painfully thin"? The only difference now is that she's got a bit of a tan and she's sorted out her blue, chapped lips. But the Sun thinks that this is the same as this Wonderbra ad, in which case either they or I have been dropping bad acid.

The Sun also thinks that Posh Spice is turning into Liz Hurley, because they both have long, brown hair, show of their legs and wear clothes and sunglasses that millions of other women wear. Pass the crack pipe.

In other news, Catherine Zeta-Jones just had a baby, but you wouldn't know it from this picture.
02:21 a.m.