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Australian PM John Howard is the shiznit. And, hey, I'd buy an autobiography with that title.
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.)
I'm sorry, but that's freakin' hilarious. Sadly, it's also true.
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?
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.
"Billy Joel has told of his battle with drink - but insists he is not an alcoholic." Okay, let's just...nah, too easy.
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).
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.
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".
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
19 May, 2003
Oh, fuck yeah. If that's a police state, sign me up.
I've got some emails from people who have recently come round to the only sane position it's possible to have on the question of Britain joining the euro: no effing way. It's been interesting, and to give a rough summary of my feelings on the whole matter, I'll quote from an email reply to lovely Eurosceptic Lindsey Corcoran (which sort of steals from a conversation I had with young man Cuthbertson the other night -- sorry, Peter): [T]he European thing is the scariest shit. Even worse, liberals (and gosh, it makes me angry that I even have to say this, but it's true) have made it so that anyone who dares question the wisdom of the European Constitution, the EU, the euro and anything else Europe-related is labelled a xenophobic bigot. It's disgusting. That's why I was so over the moon to see Ian Hislop -- who is pretty much a liberal, with a hell of a following from liberals -- be so scathing about it on the BBC the other night. People are starting to say, "Hang on a mo, this [Europe thing] is fucked up: and you can label me a racist for recognising that, but it just makes you look like an idiot." After I wrote that email, I thought, "Hmm, it's been a couple of days since I heard anyone call Tony Blair a racist." And wouldn't you know it, Peter Briffa's found something even more idiotic and weird: Mr. Blair thinks gays are dirty beasts, doesn't like immigrants or atheists, loathes the word "feminist" and is a born-again Christian. No wonder his wife is still giving birth in her 40s.
Gee, why in the world is the left suffering from such a credibility problem? It's inexplicable!
My homesickness has not been helped by a phone call from my father. Apart from catching up on family stuff (recapping the undeniable fact that my niece is the cutest, funniest, happiest, prettiest and most cruelly treated girl in all of Christendom, finding out that my little brother has been in the hospital with some nasty stomach virus, finding out how my wacky mother has been harassing my dad, stepmom and brother), we talked local politics. Local as in the lovely, small Ohio town where I spent my teenage years, and where my father still lives. Apparently, a lot of people are up in arms because the Democratic candidate for mayor (who was mayor six years ago, screwed things up royally and then buggered off to replace a dead guy in the state senate until he couldn't get re-elected after last year's redistricting) has been taking communion openly and without shame, despite the fact that he's just divorced his wife (after fathering two children with different women during his marriage). My Dad thinks it's silly for people to give a shit, as do I, but it kind of made me envious; if the most distasteful thing about London's mayor was the fact that he served placenta paté at a dinner party after his partner had their baby (fact) and goes round telling women how he's "stiff as a broom handle in the morning" by way of a chat-up line (probably fact), I'd be happy. But no, it's all crap like this and this.
So, yes, still homesick. At this point, I think I'm going to have to bust out the George Strait CDs and play them till the very idea of rural America makes me want to puke. (Shouldn't take long.)
I knew David Farrer would have something to say about this: WHISKY drinkers are being swindled out of £4m a year by licensees who substitute cheap spirits for genuine Scottish malts or blends..."The problem is particularly acute in the UK, where the temptation to buy cheap smuggled whisky with no duty charge has been too great for many pub licensees." Take it, David: And just why is the problem "particularly acute in the UK?" I imagine that it's because duties on whisky are much higher than elsewhere in Europe and thus this kind of trickery is worthwhile. It is ridiculous that I can buy a bottle of malt in Spain or Italy for much less than from a shop next to the distillery here in Scotland. Cut the tax, reduce the crime and help Scottish industry.
Call me a cynic, but that sounds like wishful thinking.
She may not regret the gesture, but she'll regret pulling that face.
If I was paranoid, I'd think the BBC existed solely to piss me off.
British transport is a mess, and Tube fares are the highest in the world. Grim, certainly, but hardly earth-shattering news. What interests me is this: Policy Exchange, a British neo-conservative think-tank, carried out the survey comparing transport-related statistics in seven world cities. Neocons, eh? Well, according to Policy Exchange's website: Policy Exchange was launched in April 2002 with the objective of developing fresh ideas in support of strong communities in a free society. We are independent of all political parties and sceptical of all established orthodoxy. We will not allow outdated concepts of left and right to imprison our thinking. We would like to work with anyone who shares our passionate commitment to freedom and community. And check out who's running Policy Exchange.
No one's really come up with a credible definition of "neoconservative" yet, so it's a bit annoying to see the term bandied about so much. In fact, it's become a bit of a joke. But in this case, it doesn't appear to be even remotely applicable, no matter how tenuous one's grasp on a real definition of the term actually is.
This is interesting. Following a link from Alex Singleton's site, I ended up at the Institute for Human Studies' political quiz. It's a quick assessment of where you are on the political compass, and since I'm never quite sure what I am anymore (former liberal? True liberal who's fed up with the nutjobs dominating the left? Centrist with libertarian leanings?), I invested two minutes of my time in taking it. And survey says: NW-You would feel most at home in the Northwest region. You advocate a large degree of economic and personal freedom. Your neighbors include folks like Ayn Rand, Jesse Ventura, Milton Friedman, and Drew Carey, and may refer to themselves as "classical liberals," "libertarians," "market liberals," "old whigs," "objectivists," "propertarians," "agorists," or "anarcho-capitalist."
"Old whigs"! Well, okay. I'm not nuts about the Jesse Ventura thing, but Drew Carey -- as a fellow northeast Ohio native -- is okay by me. (That reminds me: I really need an mp3 of Moon Over Parma...)
Is the Independent's Robert Fisk lying in his reports from Iraq? Gosh, surely not! Private Eye's print edition has this: As British hacks return from Baghdad, they have been belatedly catching up on what their rivals wrote during the war. They are surveying the dispatches of the Independent's Robert Fisk with particular interest -- and some amazement. On 2 April, three busloads of foreign hacks were taken by Saddam's spin-doctors to the town of Hillah to interview wounded Iraqis in the hospital. All of them -- including Fisk -- duly filed pieces on what they had witnessed. But the Indie's living legend sent a second report that day, datelined "from Robert Fisk in Musayyib, Central Iraq." Very vivid it was too. "Cafes and restaurants were open, shops were selling takeaway meatballs and potatoes," he wrote. "This was not a population on the edge of starvation; nor indeed did the people appear to be frightened. If the Americans are about to launch an assault through this farmland of canals and forests of palm trees and wheat fields, it looked at first glance yesterday like a country at peace." How had all the other hacks missed this? They were under the distinct impression that they had been ferried straight from Baghdad along the motorway to Hillah and then straight back again. They remembered no detours, no stops en route and no visits to Musayyib; they thought they had been allowed to leave the buses only for their chaperoned tour of the casualty ward. How had Fisk managed to visit Musayyib? And how come the picture he gave in the Indie did not quite tally with the fact that by the time he wrote his report the Americans had taken control of the main bridge at Musayyib, and hundreds of US military vehicles were already crossing the Euphrates? Hmm, maybe because he's a lying sack of shit?
I find it hard to believe that the Independent, suffer though its circulation has done throughout the war, still manages to stay afloat with their hare-brained, kooky "reporting". Yet I know people -- people with actual brain cells! -- who buy it because it tells them what they want so desperately to believe. I seriously doubt that Fisk being exposed as a liar of Jaysonian proportions will persuade them not to do so anymore, which tells you as much about their worldview and political honesty as you need to know.
Does anyone with a functioning brain still believe it was "all about the oil"? Not as far as I was aware, but this (from a site associated with the anti-war movement, no less) pours scorn on the whole idea all over again. Funny how, even when politicians, talking heads and activists are lying through their teeth, the numbers -- no matter how you twist them -- still manage to tell the truth.
Link to John Smith's rather good politics and law site courtesy of Chris Bertram
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't an early working version of a piece of software that's been released to testers called a "beta"? I'm 99.9% sure of this, but Reuters says it's an "alpha". I thought alpha versions were prototypes that hadn't been released to beta or QA testers. (I did a bit of QA as part of my last job, and even though it's mind-numbingly boring at first, once you hit your stride, you enter an almost Zen-like state. In other words, it sure beats diggin' ditches.) Anyway, I've had a beta version of Windows Longhorn for months, and as operating systems go...Well, I can't get too excited about it, but it has some neat features. Not so hot on the Palladium thing, though.
UPDATE: I live with a software developer, who tells me that an alpha is a working version that hasn't been released outside the team of developers working on it, while a beta is a more official release for testing. I also didn't realise that the version of Windows Longhorn that I've been messing with for several months is actually a leaked alpha, not even a semi-official beta. (Hmm, how'd that happen? I wonder...) I guess that makes sense, considering the number of bugs the thing has -- click on Control Panel and hey presto, your machine crashes like Dale Earnhardt -- but I never gave it much thought.
Ewan McGregor is mad at the British film establishment because it wasn't easy getting hold of taxpayer money to finance his latest film. "We used to have a reputation of being able to do anything in British film. And I was lucky to be involved in two films that opened the door to that, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. But the door has slowly closed behind us." Call me crotchety, but good. Why the hell should the taxpayers of a country with so much in urgent need of repair -- the health service, public transport and education to name but a few kind of pressing issues -- be footing the bill for these film projects? We're not talking library funding or money for giving kids art supplies: we're talking millions of dollars being taken from taxpayers to finance Ewan McGregor's latest vanity project. If the film is that bloody important, why not let its multi-millionaire star stump up a few quid to get it made? When I read stuff like this -- a pampered Hollywood star expressing sheer incredulity that the British government isn't falling over itself to fund his life's work -- I feel like I'm 25 going on 75. Do celebrities really lead such sheltered lives? And does no one else see anything slightly amiss with our money being used like this when the country is falling a-fucking-part? In a related (sort of) item, Irvine Welsh's column in today's Telegraph is dire. If that was an online journal, it would never get nominated for a Diarist Award. Still, at least he gets in a dig at the Daily Mirror.
UPDATE: It looks like British taxpayers "only" gave £500,000 (about $815,000 US) to finance Ewan's film. Wow, I feel so much better now...
David Beckham's new, ridiculously unattractive hairstyle was chosen in the hopes of impressing Nelson Mandela. Considering Mandela's lamentable judgement of late, that ploy just might work. Elsewhere in today's Sun, we're faced with this shocking story: A LAD of 11 who has won a police bravery award met leggy Penny Lancaster yesterday — and then admitted he did not have a clue who she was.
You don't say.
If the war on terror is all about stupid white men and their genital insecurity, how come Phillipine President Gloria Arroyo is cracking down on terrorists? She must not have got the memo. And please tell me I'm not the only one who giggles when reading about the "MILF rebels".
Link via my favourite Gweilo
On Radiohead's descent into madness (see below), reader Mark Holland writes the following: I could listen to The Bends and OK Computer forever. In fact, I can remember driving down the A38 towards Plymouth one summer's evening, way back in 1998, with OK Computer blaring out and the sunset looking gorgeous, thinking it doesn't get much better than that. No alarms and no surprises! The Jazz Oddessy style experimentation of Kid A and Amnesiac left me a bit cold, and so I was looking forward to them bringing out a much more conventional record. Then I learnt it was to be called Hail to the Thief and I just thought, "YAWN." It could only sound less appealing if it contained a 7 minute Michael Moore bongo solo.
Indeed. I think every Radiohead fan, sane or otherwise, can identify with the feeling of pure euphoria induced by the likes of No Alarms, Airbag and even High and Dry. But the higher they climb, the harder they fall. I was given two copies of Amnesiac for my birthday in 2001. Unless a similar windfall occurs for my next birthday, I shall only be listening to Hail to the Thief on crappy old MP3; call me crazy, but I really don't like the idea of lining anyone's pockets with money they can donate to the anti-Semitic loons at Indymedia.
How bad must the tax laws in France be to make supermodel Laetitia Casta flee to Britain for tax relief? Anyone who makes a decent amount of money in the UK immediately becomes a tax exile, so badly are they buggered in Britain; even people who make as little as £32,000 per annum are subject to 40 per cent income tax here.
UPDATE: It looks like the top income tax bracket (earnings above £88,000) is taxed at 54 per cent in France. Okay, maybe no one else is interested in this but me, but I'm just a little annoyed that I can't even read Page Six without having to think about how screwed up the tax situation is here in Europe.
This should piss a lot of people off -- obviously I endorse it wholeheartedly.
You really could not make this up: the BBC is proud to be endorsed by Jayson Blair! [W]e have two possibilities: either the Radio 4 announcer cooly subverted an advert for one of his own station's most prestigious programmes with a superb piece of ironic comment, a magnificent joke that would certainly pass over the heads of 95% of listeners as this American journalistic-cum-affirmative action scandal has not been given much prominence in Britain.... or Radio 4, pathetically pleased to relay praise from the high-status New York Times just hadn't been reading the American papers lately.
The former would be hilarious, and the latter inexcusable. Actually, both of them are hilarious, but whatever -- how sad.
18 May, 2003 Lt Smash weighs in on why recent terror attacks show that al Qaeda is getting desperate -- and making stupid mistakes: One of the principles of asymmetric warfare is to exploit the enemy’s weak points in order to attack high-value targets while expending a minimum of your own resources. So these criminals managed to find a weakness—but despite the very real tragedy of these deaths, it wasn’t a high value target, and they wasted quite a bit of their own resources to carry out the attack. Stupid...
And, I'd add, in a secure environment: because the US military is pretty damned good at security. The problem being, of course, that the US can't secure every square inch of the world in order to protect it from terrorists -- which is why it's imperative to eliminate them, not appease them. Sounds obvious, but as I blogged below, a lot of people still don't get it.
On the subject of this week's Have I Got News for You, where Private Eye editor Ian Hislop made a fool of Marxist "comedian" Mark Steel on the issue of Europe, I was tickled enough to cobble together a rough transcript from some hastily scribbled notes. Enjoy: HISLOP: This is about us becoming the United States of Europe...to be led by Giscard d'Estaing, who in this country would be in jail...It's as if Jeffrey Archer was in charge of the continent of Europe. He's one of those charming French leaders they come out with, oh, every time. The idea of him presiding over the Constitution of Europe is absolutely ludicrous. Sorry, I am sounding quite like the Daily Mail, but just occasionally, they're right...
The queue to kiss Hislop forms behind me.
Ask Former President Gerald Ford, an Uncle Bob exclusive.
Mmm, sexy.
Rosie O'Donnell is writing for the Advocate, and the results are even more fucked up than one might imagine. If the words weren't enough, there's also a scan of one of Rosie's paintings -- and yes, that too is more fucked up than one might imagine.
Does anyone else have the feeling that most people weren't overly bothered by the idea of gay adoption until Rosie opened her big yapper?
Here's why the BBC's critique of the rescue of Pfc Jessica Lynch is a load of bollocks. I'm almost past feeling pissed off that I pay for this horseshit. Almost.
Juan Gato is back, and telling it like it is: No one likes the idea that someone out there wants to kill them. Especially when they don't think they've done anything to cause this hatred. So this, then, must be someone else's fault. No one could want to just kill me for who I am. Someone must be pissing them off. Someone must be causing this because I'm not doing anything. Lessee....who's the biggest bully around? Of course! That lousy United States being all high and mighty. It is pissing off the terrorists. It is its fault that I'm a target (and I blame it for the clunkiness of that sentence too).
I'm still baffled by those who think that the best way to eliminate the threat of terrorism is not to quash terrorism, but to placate terrorists. As Tony Blair said before the war, these are not people who are nice to you if you're nice to them. It's a pretty simple, undeniable fact, but a lot of people still don't get it.
Me and my kid brother, now and then. In the Easter photo of us in 1981 (his inky blue eye is due to my 3-year-old hand colouring it in with a pen), he was 8 months old and I was 3 years and 8 months old. The black and white photo is from last September, at ages 22 and 25. (And yes, I did eventually grow an upper lip, and I haven't worn bangs/fringe for years.)
Between finding that photo and today being my best friend in America's birthday (happy 26th, Karri!), I'm pretty homesick for the US. I guess it's time to re-read old Robert Fisk columns and remind myself of what a terribly shitty place it really is, eh?
This is serious business, but I can't stop laughing: Frankly I was relieved to hear from Tam Dalyell that Tony Blair is secretly controlled by a cabal of Jewish advisers. Cabal-wise, that takes the heat off George W Bush, who's secretly controlled by so many cabals he's juggling his schedule as frantically as Jack Lemmon in a 1960s sex comedy. The President is apparently simultaneously secretly controlled by a cabal of sinister Jews, a cabal of fundamentalist Christians, a cabal of Texas oil barons, and a cabal of devious "neoconservatives", who are also Jews but, demonstrating the cunning one traditionally associates with the Hebrew, have taken to going around under a new name to confuse those not as eagle-eyed as Tam...
Sounds a lot more plausible than the theories of the cabals controlling Bush and Blair, doesn't it?
I like Radiohead, but Thom Yorke is nuttier than squirrel turds: 'All the way through the record there is this sense of trying to understand how one human being can make a decision and affect thousands of other people's lives. Our glorious leader [Tony Blair], for example - how he thinks, believes, that he's doing the right thing over this war, when he's not being presented with the facts or he's choosing to ignore the consequences.' Yep, that's right: Tony Blair doesn't know the facts about Iraq, but Thom Yorke has them nailed. Apparently. The Gloaming is a throbbing, scratchy song. It features the line 'murderers, murderers, we're not the same as you', and 'your alarm bells should be ringing'. Jonny says it's the most important song on the album for you. Why? 'The time off we had was during the Afghan War, shortly after September 11, blah blah blah.' Again, Yorke is pre-empting the mickey-taking, aware that people think he's always prattling on about September 11, new model imperialism, oil wars and how it's all the fault of Starbucks and Nike. Well, to be fair, he is. And why is that? 'I was totally hooked on Radio 4.' Damn BBC! So what did Thommy glean from Radio 4 and the show he says he listened to quite a lot, Today? 'I found it incredibly difficult to come to terms with the fact that maybe we were leaving our children with no future at all. This imminent sense of moving into the dark ages again. The rise of all this Right-wing bigotry, stupidity, fear and ignorance.' Yeah, he's definitely been listening to the BBC too much. And, unsurprisingly, Radiohead link to Indymedia as well. Guess that's where Thom got all the "facts" about Iraq that Tony Blair isn't aware of. It all makes sense, doesn't it? More than can be said for some of the drivel to be found on the Radiohead official website, though. To wit: its not exactly surprising that a large section of the population will not give a flying fuck about the election. everybody blames evryobody else. and new labour is happy to let filingdales be used in world war 3. they are not in touch and have blatantly betrayed all who supported them except those friendly business interests. we were involved in a campaign to encourage people to vote a few years ago in the uK. this was hijacked by labour. labour are good at highjacking and betraying. they attempted something rather similair with jubilee2000. frightening levels of paranoid bullshit. err oh dear. world war 3...
I'm standing over the barrel, holding the loaded gun, but...the fishies are just far too cute to shoot.
I loathe Carole Malone, who has one of the most smackable faces in the world and can always be relied upon to offend, but this (no link) from her column in last week's Sunday Mirror, did make me laugh: Glad to see Sam Roddick is proving to be as "right on" as her mum, Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. Sam, 31, who runs a London sex shop declared this week that: "all our wooden dildos are made from naturally felled trees."
Those crazy Roddicks, eh?
Oh, the romances that start in my local nightclub. We're so very proud here.
17 May, 2003 Programming note for those in the UK: I highly recommend catching the rebroadcast, at 10.05 PM tonight on BBC2, of last night's Have I Got News for You. Private Eye editor Ian Hislop wipes the floor with extreme leftist comic Mark Steel on the matter of Europe -- twice. It makes for delicious viewing, as anyone who's seen Hislop reduce nutjobs of all political stripes to bumbling, quivering incoherence (well, more so) can well imagine. Tape it if you have to, but don't miss it. UPDATE:
There's more here.
My record of the weekend, several years old but still in heavy rotation, is The Boy with the Arab Strap by Belle and Sebastian: A central location for you is a must
If you don't like this record, you have no soul.
As per usual, Tim Blair is en fuego.
Any bets on whether EasyCinema will be a success? The 10-screen box-office-free cinema is to open its doors to the public in Milton Keynes on Friday and aims to sell tickets for as little as 20 pence to start with.
Personally, I don't think the punters will be lining up for this one. Going to the cinema is something people tend to do more on the spur of the moment than planned days in advance, and if for a few quid more you get a more cushy experience, it's worth it. Hell, if you're paying at the top end of the range -- £5 -- there's no price difference at all. I can see families taking advantage of this to save money, but a large chunk of the people who cinemas rely on for business -- those on dates -- probably won't. (Please don't send me hate mail telling me how shallow I am, but taking someone to a cut-price cinema on a date is not the move.)
This is what it takes for the Guardian to give a shit about Zimbabwe -- one of their correspondents being "manhandled" and deported. David Carr is all over this.
CNN is either lying or totally fucking inept. It says a lot that neither one of those prospects is especially shocking to me.
Talk about your lowbrow culture: I'm not proud to admit it, but I am totally geared up for Celebrity Wife Swap. I think this has to be the best reality TV show format ever (is that saying a lot?), and a celebrity version will be unmissable, especially as they've roped such a bunch of freaks -- Neil and Christine Hamilton, Chris Evans and Billie Piper, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? fraud couple, et al -- into participating. I can only imagine what the American version will be like.
TV presenter (and former boyfriend of Catherine Zeta Jones) John Leslie has been cleared of rape accusations. I'm not surprised, and I really do hope he drags that famewhore Ulrika Jonsson's leathery ass into court and has his lawyers make mincemeat of her for this whole debacle.
Help me, please, you geeks. I got this DVD, Standing in the Shadows of Motown. It's an American DVD, and to play it, you need to download a licence from the internet, while the disc is in your DVD drive. But when the DVD takes you to the site to retrieve the licence and the system discerns that you're on a non-US ISP, it tells you to fuck off and die. So basically, the only way round this that I can see is for me to dial in to an American ISP. For obvious reasons, I'd like to avoid signing up -- and shelling out for -- an American dial-up account. If anyone has any ideas on how I can solve my dilemma, please email me your suggestions.
I can't believe I'm posting about this, but awww! I've only watched a couple minutes of American Idol -- which is shown here on ITV2, days after it airs in the US, I think -- but somehow I ended up seeing bits of two episodes tonight. Clay is such a goofy bastard, a total cruise ship singer, but I can't dislike him, really. (That said...the hair. Sort it out, dude.) Ruben is just a fantastic singer. The two of them do make a rather cute couple, and I think it's sweet that they both seem kind of unbothered about the final result.
But what I want to know is, are people actually going to shell out to see the American Idol movie(s)?
16 May, 2003 Geraldo Rivera has invited Benyamin Netanyahu to his wedding. I post this only so I can point out that Bibi is a total hottie. (Yes, I'm sober.)
Do you fancy any politicians? Email me and let me know. I'm curious if any of y'all have taken a shine to anyone as shameful as Boris Johnson, my number one political crush.
Good gravy, could she possibly be any more beautiful? (Keanu looks like ass, by the way. Smells like it too, by the looks of it.)
I think Jonathan Margolis had a stiffy when he wrote this: The surprisingly widespread hatred, and not just among Muslims and anti-globalisation protesters, of Starbucks and McDonald's suggests that the global public is ready to end its love affair with US culture. Do I really need to point out the ignorance of anyone -- much less a journalist working for a paper like the Guardian -- who thinks that Starbucks and McDonalds constitute the sum total of American culture? And do I really need to point out the unabashedly hateful, downright nationalist nature of such comments? Imagine the uproar if he'd uttered such rubbish about the French or Germans...or, say, any other nationality in the world. Hatred, stupidity and ignorance: yours free with today's Guardian!
Link courtesy of Peter Briffa -- check out the comments there, too.
Allison and Chris have lost everything, including their dog, Murphy, in a fire. If you've ever laughed with and enjoyed Allison's site, or even if you just would like to help out two people (newlyweds, no less) who are in a tragic situation most of us will only ever hypothesise about, go here to donate and help them rebuild their life. Even if you don't donate, please keep them in your prayers and thoughts; as Hannah Beth wrote in an email: And at a minimum please keep them in your prayers and think of Murphy who probably tore his way across the rainbrow bridge, ate it and then promptly fell asleep. (But not before requesting a toilet brush made of peanut butter.)
Godspeed, Murphy.
We thought we had it good when our school trips took us to Spaghetti Warehouse.
I agree with Iain Murray: the Spectator has got this one totally wrong. In the words of Peter Briffa: Poor old Clare never made any sense, least of all now. The reason she was so loved was her 'speak from the hip' non-politician persona. Was it carefully crafted? From this resignation it appears not. She really is finished now, and will never reappear, Mandelson-like from the deep freezer of failed political careers. Really, there's a better chance of Stephen Byers whipping the stake from his heart than Cabbage Patch Clare. When Robin Cook makes his much-anticipated stab at power shortly, Clare will not be his second in command, I'm afraid. She's a liability. All that remains for her now is a series of interviews about how important it will be for the UK to join the Euro, but that's the only game in town for the exploding politician these days, of left and right. But she won't have any allies except for the hard left soft-headed Stop the War weirdoids who abandoned her long ago - at least Cook had the good sense to resign before the war. So farewell, Clare, it was amusing having you around. Clare Short could not be more irrelevant to British politics, unless we want to talk about how much of the public's money she wasted while she was in the Cabinet. I predict an Ann Widdecombe-style makeover -- and God knows Clare needs one of those -- within six months, but no amount of NARS Orgasm blush or MAC Lipglass can save Depleted Claranium's political aspirations.
Lucky us.
Let's get the Friday Five out of the way, shall we? 1. What drinking water do you prefer -- tap, bottle, purifier, etc.? Bottled water is so common, but I do love a cold glass of Volvic. And my water must always be still; sparkling water tastes vaguely of Alka-Seltzer.
I love Jim Treacher. No specific reason for me coming out with that, other than the fact that I don't believe in keeping that sort of thing to oneself. That, and it sort of fits (if you imagine me slurring it) with this article on drinking alone that Jim links to. I don't really drink alone, because when I drink, I like to be with my friends, having fun and laughing and scanning the room for hot guys. But there have been a couple of occasions in the last six months where I was sat at home, either after the pubs had closed (like, 11 PM) or so close to closing time that it wouldn't have been worth it to even trek down there, and really been in the mood for a drink. And so I had a few -- polished off a bottle of Archers one night, and another night had a nice bottle of red all to myself -- and it was...well, a bit too nice. It put me in the kind of mood where I think, "Jeez, why the hell do I ever NOT drink? I should drink every day! What exactly is so awful about going through life one or two sheets to the wind, eh? Who says that's so wrong?" And since I have a family history of alcoholism (my maternal grandfather and, so my father and aunt think, my paternal grandfather as well), that's probably not a good thing. But everything -- even inebriation -- in moderation, right?
Anyway, I'd rather drink with Jim; anyone who can come up with this without the aid of alcohol is someone I'd definitely buy a Slippery Nipple and a beer.
I know Glenn Reynolds gets concerned emails if he goes 20 minutes without posting, but I think blogging through a tornado is a bit much. It's also extremely cool, in an (admittedly) very geeky way.
Yesterday, someone posted a rather cute photo of themselves as a child. Coincidentally, just the other morning I scanned a photo of myself as a child from one of my high school yearbooks (our senior year, everyone had a baby photo in the yearbook). If you want to see it, and if you -- and/or your colleagues and/or employers are not offended by bare baby bottoms* -- click here. I'm 2 years old there, and since we lived right on the beach (Lake Erie), I was that colour from May through October. (Either no one thought much about skin cancer in 1979, or my parents were more neglectful than I thought.) And speaking of photos and the beach, here are a few seaside shots from our trip to Brighton a couple of weekends ago. It was sunnier than it looks there, and windier too. Not to come over all Julie Burchill, but I love Brighton and would not be unhappy if I was forced to live out my days there.
*Someone actually said to me that such a photo constitutes "kiddy porn," and that parents who take photos of their children without clothing are "well dodgy". Huh? Frankly, I worry about anyone who looks at an innocent photo of a toddler without clothes and sees something sinister, but whatever.
Increased council tax and dearer National Insurance contributions add to slowdown in consumer spending. You don't say...
Will Tony Blair take his place in history as a statesman or war criminal? So asks Armando Iannucci. Will Armando Iannucci take his place in history as a television writer of debatable talent, or as a newspaper op-ed writer of unquestionable insanity? So asks Jackie D. This reminds me of an email exchange I had with Jurjen a couple of months ago, wherein he lamented the fact that the newspapers giving the likes of Terry Jones and Richard Dawkins a forum for their political opinions meant that those of us who admire their non-political work will find it difficult to enjoy that work in light of their less-than-stellar political commentary. (Terry Jones has been particularly clueless, but as I'm not a Monty Python fan, I could just point and laugh and wonder if the people who actually paid to read his opinions in the Guardian didn't feel terribly ripped off. Then I realised that most of them probably thought he was spot-on, and despaired for the world. Ho hum.) As Jurjen put it, we already know which newspaper columnists are clueless gits, but at least we don't have to weigh that against their redeeming qualities.
In short: Armando Iannucci should stick to writing fiction for television (unless he's going to keep writing shite like The 11 O'Clock Show, in which case we should just shoot the bastard and put him out of our misery), and stop trying to conjure up ridiculous fictional plots for the op-ed pages of newspapers. Either that, or try joining us in the real world, because Lord knows he's been hibernating if he thinks there hasn't been any "proper political discussion about the euro or foundation hospitals."
"Now, you do not punish someone, Dutch or otherwise, for having big boobs." Never a truer word spoken, Brentmeister General. (Geeky aside: What shitty search engine was he using to only get 2230 matches for sex fetish?)
Link via Tim Blair, who was writing about something else entirely.
If Geri Halliwell's doing it, knitting is so over.
I really don't want London to bid for the Olympics. I'm open to having my mind changed, but this whole situation just screams "Money pit!" If anyone happened to catch the ITV Evening News on Wednesday, well, let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who was watching from behind my hands. The news anchor was standing in Hackney, East London, broadcasting about how the area may soon be hosting the Olympics, and the scene was just awful: old buildings with graffiti all over them, garbage bags blowing in the wind, cloudy skies and rubbish all over the shop. It really almost looked like he was reporting from some war-torn nation, so much so that the guy I was watching with turned to me and said, "I can't believe that we even choose to be here, so what the hell is the Olympic committee going to see in this shithole?" God knows, but £17 million just for the bid seems like a pretty big waste of money to me. I don't think we have, as Ken Livingstone claims, a one in three chance in winning (not against the likes of New York, Madrid and Paris), so I don't think there's any danger of that £2.3 billion Olympic funding package getting spent -- but why spend £17 million just to find out? And why should Londoners have their council tax hiked another £20 per year just to raise the cash for it? Fuck me hard, I am sick of being bled dry for worthless causes when so much shit is broken and in need of sorting out. Blah. Like I said, I'm open to changing my mind about this, so please -- try if you think you can. I'd love to not be so annoyed at the prospect of shelling out for this waste. UPDATE: Philip Howard, writing in today's Times, says: For pity’s sake don’t award the Games to London. Why should Londoners each be charged £500 per household for hosting the vulgar nuisance? How can the vile chicken-crates of the Tube carry another 500,000 passengers a day? Luckily there is no hope of the Games being awarded to us. Even with the gritted-teeth subsidy from the Treasury, the Lottery Fund and Ken Livingstone’s outrageous council tax supplement, we shall never raise a big enough bribe.
We don't want old Seaman, do we? Granted, I know very little about football, but why does Man City want to sign up -- to the tune of £30k/week -- a 39-year-old goalkeeper who's pretty obviously past his prime and who only gives himself one more season? I thought the epithets being shouted at Peter Schmeichel in the stands were harsh ("Fuck off, you fucking knobhead cunting numpty"...or something), but I can't imagine how bad it'd be for Seaman if he replaced Schmeichel and somehow didn't pull a spectacular performance out of his arse.
Plus, he has really bad hair and a dodgy moustache. Don't do it, Kev!
15 May, 2003
A Long Peace, a report on the future of Unionism in Northern Ireland, is well worth a read. It was co-authored by Mick Fealty of Slugger O'Toole, and he was on Ulster Television the other day to discuss his thesis, a transcript of which is here. Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble's wife, who took part in the discussion, seemed rather peeved at the suggestion that the Ulster Unionists don't do as much of what us Yanks call networking as Sinn Féin does, but I suspect that's because the truth hurts.
"For years, many governments played down the threats of Islamic revolution, turned a blind eye to international terrorism and accepted the development of weaponry of mass destruction. Indeed, some politicians were happy to go further, collaborating with the self-proclaimed enemies of the West for their own short-term gain — but enough about the French. So deep had the rot set in that the UN security council itself was paralysed...There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it."
Love her or hate her, she's just so damned good at pissing people off with the truth.
Jennifer Weiner had her baby! Jennifer is one of the loveliest people I've ever encountered, and her book Good in Bed is pretty decent, too. (For some reason, I still haven't read In Her Shoes.) Little Lucy Jane is very lucky to have such a talented and caring mother -- and what a pretty baby she is, too. Who says they all look like Winston Churchill?
Whew.
The danger of this infantile anti-Americanism -- believe it or not, this is from the Independent! [E]very day in British newspapers, on television and on the radio, I hear the same tedious stereotypes about loud and stupid American gunslinging bullies. For weeks, radio phone-in shows have been full of people describing George Bush and the US military as being morally as bad as Saddam Hussein. Others suggest that the United States government – after the disputed election of November 2000 – is itself a tinpot dictatorship, again not much better than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I wouldn't say that delusion is limited to the British, but yeah, what Gavin Esler said.
Link via Peter Briffa
Stop insulting Jews, you "liberal" fuckwits. Paul Foot, in defending the anti-semitic outburst of MP Tam Dalyell, says that not all Jews are bad -- just the ones who aren't extreme left-wingers: The most honourable and principled Jews, here, in Israel and everywhere else, are those who oppose the imperialist and racist policies of successive Israeli governments God, does this piss me off. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Thanks to Peter Cuthbertson, who has some interesting but unsurprising new stuff on George Galloway, for the link.
I'm also glad I don't live in Texas, or I'd really want to be kicking some Democratic ass. Christ on a bike, what a bunch of brats. I was reading about it in the Times on the train home last night, and if I'd been awake enough to get annoyed, I would have been. Because God knows the world needs more reasons to think that Americans are petty bitches. (Of course, anyone with two brain cells will recognise that politicians the world over are in serious need of an ass-kicking.) Thanks to Lindsey Corcoran for the heads-up on this while I was away.
Speaking of legislation that makes people feel all warm and fuzzy but is of extremely questionable merit, Frank Sensenbrenner has a few things to say about the Human Rights Act. Somehow I don't think the title Corporations' Rights Act, while truthful, would have won it quite as much support.
Oh, and Peter Briffa has some good stuff on this too.
I'm kind of glad I don't live in Scotland. I can't help wondering what colour the sky is in the Scottish Socialist Party's world. I'm sure the idea of giving free lunches to all children in the state school system, regardless of economic need, makes them feel all warm and fuzzy, but it's a step too far. As Marcus over at Harry's Place comments: I do have a problem with extending free school meals from those who presently receive them (the children of the poor and unemployed) to every child in the state system...I have a number of questions I'd like The Scottish Socialist Party to answer: Why should middle-class children whose parents can well-afford to pay for school-meals be subsidised by the Scottish tax-payer? How much money is this proposed plan going to cost? Who came up with this stupid idea anyway? The caption under the photograph on the link states "Our kids need free, nutritious school meals". The ones who need it get it already, those who don't shouldn't. Any extension would be a collossal waste of money. David Farrer, as usual, has lots of great stuff on the SSP and the current disastrous state of Scottish politics. I'm a little more shocked by the fact that back-bench Members of Scottish Parliament are paid £48,000 per annum than I am to learn that new MSP Rosie Kane has only read five books in her life, one of them being Michael Moore's Stupid White Men.
Like I said -- kind of glad I don't live in Scotland. (Let me pretend that things are going much better down here in England.)
Paging Tom Watson! I think the MP for West Bromwich East could do with this youth lingo guide from a youth ministry website to improve his page for teens.
12 May, 2003 Have a good weekend? I did. Going to the last match at Manchester City's Maine Road was the highlight for me, and I was shocked when Badly Drawn Boy -- one of my favourite singers -- came out and sang one of my favourite songs, A Minor Incident. But beyond that, it was really quite moving to see the end of an era at Maine Road (photo gallery here) as the team move to their new stadium. Here's what today's Sun had to say about it: [I]t is sad to see the game disappear from Manchester's Moss Side. I'm still hoarse from shouting verse after verse of Blue Moon, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything; it's a day I'll always remember. Thanks again, Mr D. But anyway. I'm away from home most of this week again, on another well-deserved break (spot the sarcasm). I'm sure I'll see something on the news at some point that will outrage me enough to get me to post, so check in every once and a while for updates. In the meantime, absorb this: 9/11 was a great clarifying moment, it exposed the world of September 10th as a fiction, a collection of soft-focus illusions, and what's happened in the period since is that the world has divided into those who recognized that and those who are still trying to patch up the Humpty Dumpty world of September 10th and prop it back in place - as the French are trying to do, and the UN, and much of the US Federal bureaucracy.
Link via Glenn Reynolds
9 May, 2003 About damn time, indeed: IDF forces raided the Bethlehem offices of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement Friday, confiscating documents and CDs.
I always thought it was amusing how idiots like Michael Moore and other lefties proclaimed Rachel Corrie and the ISM to be "brave" and "heroes," but with the news that the British suicide bombers who struck Tel Aviv last week had ties to the ISM, that shit is officially no longer funny.
As if one needed another reason to find Ken Livingstone distasteful, Frank Sensenbrenner has unearthed a doozy. Talk about wanting to slap "Not in my name" on something: how on earth can this asshole get away with spending Londoners' council tax to support groups who campaign for Islamic jihad, Hamas and Hezbollah?
This guy gets it. But then again, he's an Iraqi who was until recently exiled in London, so of course he gets it: Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world -- from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity.
Ours is a nice house, ours is. It's time for the Friday Five again already (and I skipped last week's as I was away). I hope y'all have a good weekend. Mine is going to be fantastic, the highlight being a roadtrip to Manchester to attend the last football match ever at Manchester City Football Club's Maine Road Stadium. After 80 years, the club is moving to the brand new City of Manchester Stadium, so it'll be a truly historic event. And the post-match entertainment includes a concert by one of my favourite bands, Doves (I hope they play my favourite song), as well as Johnny Marr (of the Smiths, SCREAM!), the Cult and others. Thanks to the greatest friend a person could have for inviting me along -- you're the best, Mr D! (And please, everyone, cross your fingers that Man City beat Southampton and do not repeat the shitty performance they gave the last time I went up to see them play, when they lost to Liverpool.) 1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not? No, I'm not organised at all. I desperately need a PA.
"Absence of evidence? Well, no." Jurjen weighs in on the question of WMD in Iraq: ...[W]e don't even need to that far back; in earlier entries (here and here), I cited the report by Hans Blix to the Security Council of 14-Feb-2003 and the UNMOVIC 12th quarterly report of 28-Feb-2003, both of which established a clear picture that Iraq had not met its obligations to disarm. Note that those reports are less than three months old.
No prizes for guessing which I think it is...
8 May, 2003 This is the Cuba those "liberal" "intellectuals" are defending: After the service she and the other [wives of recently imprisoned political dissidents] would walk silently up and down a few blocks in front of the church on an elegant avenue that runs through the neighborhood. That, they say, especially irked the government. The courage of those women contrasts starkly with the weak posturing of those extremists who defend the government that threw their husbands in prison for daring to criticise it. Oh, and this is pretty heartwarming, too: Reporters Without Borders activists were beaten by staff of the Cuban embassy in Paris today when they chained themselves to the embassy railings in the presence of several prominent cultural figures to protest against the imprisonment of 26 journalists in Cuba. As Bill Herbert asks: What does this say about the French, when even RSF [Reporters Sans Frontières] is calling them appeasers?
Sun Sentinel link courtesy of Matt Welch
The BBC loses the plot -- yes, more of it: [E]ven if the two men were involved in terrorist acts, it did not follow that the BBC should necessarily have referred to them as "terrorists" rather than "militants"... Perry de Havilland suggests that the reader: substitute the words 'rape' and 'rapists' for 'terrorist acts' and 'terrorists', and then replace 'militants' with 'sexually forceful'.
I'm not exaggerating when I say it makes me sick that I am forced to pay money out of my own pocket to finance this horseshit.
Opponents of the war are starting to assert, or at least hint, that the entire rationale for the conflict has been undermined. The notion that Bush made the whole thing up about weapons of mass destruction has taken root on the left and is creeping ever closer to the liberal mainstream. My fellow liberals who have taken up this line are once again making a disastrous misjudgment.
StrategyPage has an excellent article on why finding the WMD matters, and how long it should take.
When you were a kid, did you ever say to your parent(s) on Mother's Day or Father's Day, "How come there's no Children's Day?" I did, and my parents would always reply, "EVERY DAY is children's day!" Well, it turns out that Koreans do have a Children's Day.
You really could not make this up...unless you were writing for the Onion: In the short term, foundation hospitals will worsen inequalities, as they would have easier access to capital than other hospitals, enabling investment in better facilities and more advanced services. As Johnathan Pearce points out at Samizdata, equally poor service is much preferable to different levels of excellence to the likes of Taylor -- and yes, the same goes for education. "Equality is their god, their supreme being. Nothing can challenge it." In the words of Mark Holland: What is the point in everybody being equal...when everybody has nothing? Mark worked that one out when he was ten years old, with regard to the Soviet Union; I was a similar age when I asked my father the same question. He told me roughly the same thing Mark concludes: it's maddening to argue with those who believe that we should all be poor and miserable together, and that while egalitarianism seems, on the surface, like a good and noble thing, it is inherently dangerous. (And my Dad was a lefty!) But these people are sitting in our Parliament, a fact which fills me with despair. I'm just glad their little "rebellion" failed miserably. Although I don't think the government's plans go quite far enough, they're certainly better than what we have at the moment. It's nice to see that sometimes common sense does prevail. UPDATE: Iain Murray has a helpful examination of what the foundation hospitals victory means for the House of Commons and the Labour party. He also addresses the fundamental weakness of arguments like MP David Taylor's: It's the old levelling down argument. Excellence is bad because it shows up those who are underperforming. Everyone must, in the name of fairness, be subjected to the same level of healthcare, however bad it is. The politics of envy is still with us. One might suggest that the best solution to the postcode lottery is to allow free choice, so that people can go to better schools some way away or ask ambulance drivers to take them to St. Gooddoctor's rather than St. Useless, but that's not fair. The politics of envy are still with us. So were the Conservatives right to vote against the bill? In fact, the more I think of it, the more I feel the Tories should have voted with the Government on this Bill. No, it's not perfect, and is more muddled than clear thinking, but by expressing their support for the PM here, they could have driven a wedge into the Blairite coalition and perhaps inspired a bigger rebellion. The more backbenchers and the nation think of the PM as "Tony the Tory" the more likely a Labour schism is to appear. By voting against him, the Tories may well have increased his control.Wow -- Blair is foiling the extreme left and the Conservatives. Why aren't the centrists dancing in the streets? 04:34 p.m.
Queer as Folk creator Russell T Davies is writing the film version of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? fraud case. Oh man, this is going to rock. Queer as Folk (the original British series) is probably my favourite television show of all time: it's moving, funny, exceptionally well-written and perfect in almost every way. I interviewed Russell a few years ago, and have kept in touch with him since then, and he is one of the most genuine and lovely people I've ever encountered, not to mention talented. I can't wait to see what he does with the story of Major Ingram and his Lady MacBeth of a wife.
Polly Toynbee is insane, and another reason why I shy away from calling myself a liberal these days: Bang the drum for social democratic values. Give up pandering to the language of Thatcherism, of markets, individualism, consumerism. Stop trying to do good by stealth, stop running against public services. Spell out what good the state does and how much more it can do. The NHS is the most efficient health system in the world: now it is well financed, it can be the best. Education is already sweeping up the OECD tables: improving at this rate, we shall reach top ratings. Tell it like it is: only the state can buy the things that make people happiest.
The parodies really are writing themselves these days.
Are you feeling left out? So asks Harry Hatchet, with a handy little test for determining whether you still belong to the good old British left. Not being British, I obviously never did, but this almost reads like a parody. If you, like Harry (and me, and many others) "prefer [your] response to unfairness of all kinds to be dressed up a bit more in terms of solutions than 'forming a voice of protest'," you'll likely find LeftField as distasteful a prospect as Harry does. I know I do.
Check out Marcus, the new contributor to Harry's blog; he says his "political roots are in the left though this does not stop me from despairing at the recent sheep-like state of thinking on the left," and he proves it with a rather tidy judgement on whether Guardian columnist George "Moonbat" Monbiot's "tests for a just war" have been satisfied. (Go here and scroll down to "IRAQ BALANCE SHEET".) Well done, Marcus!
Salam Pax is safe, and there are new posts up at his blog, courtesy of Diana Moon. It sure does make for interesting reading, as Salam talks of the horrors of war and life in Baghdad post-Saddam. He relates the arguments he gets into with taxi drivers, which reassure me that those of us in the west aren't the only ones who have strongly differing opinions about this war: Besides asking for outrageous fares (you can’t blame them gas prices have gone up 10 times, if you can get it) but they start grumbling and mumbling and at a point they would say something like “well it wasn’t like the mess it is now when we had saddam”. This is usually my cue for going into rage-mode. We Iraqis seem to have very short memories, or we simply block the bad times out. I ask them how long it took for us to get the electricity back again after he last war? 2 years until things got to what they are now, after 2 months of war. I ask them how was the water? Bad. Gas for car? None existent. Work? Lots of sitting in street tea shops. And how did everything get back? Hussain Kamel used to literally beat and whip people to do the impossible task of rebuilding. Then the question that would shut them up, so, dear Mr. Taxi driver would you like to have your saddam back? Aren’t we just really glad that we can now at least have hope for a new Iraq? Or are we Iraqis just a bunch of impatient fools who do nothing better than grumble and whine? Patience, you have waited for 35 years for days like these so get to working instead of whining. End of conversation. In light of Salam's earlier proclamation that: No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is, and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying “come on bomb us” it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any case. I think it's clear that Salam, like many Iraqis, recognises that while war is a horrible thing and no one would wish for it over peaceful resolution of problems, that peaceful resolution was never going to happen. Military intervention to remove Saddam Hussein's régime was the only shot Iraq had at freedom. Thankfully, we took that shot. As Jurjen writes: ...I subscribe to the notion that most people tend to (severely) overestimate the historical importance of the time they live in; personally, I think that a hundred years from now this war will merit a brief mention at most in the history books, just a short flash in the much larger process of western involvement in the Middle East (though in fairness I should add that the significance to military historians will likely be much higher). But that doesn't alter the fact that it is of supreme interest of those of us living right now...
Moi aussi.
More from the Guardian's comments on MP Tam Dalyell and Britain's anti-semitic shame: In a way, this episode is a test for Britain. American journalists covering the Dalyell story say the same comments would be a career-ender in Washington - much as Republican Trent Lott's expression of nostalgic sympathy for racial segregation recently cost him his place at the helm of the US Senate. Admittedly Dalyell does not hold leadership rank in Labour, but it seems Britain's intolerance for intolerance is not quite as advanced as America's.
As Jonathan Freedland writes, Dalyell's comments are not being treated as the racial slur they so clearly are. I'm glad to see the Guardian going to pains to point this out; maybe someday soon, those who fancy themselves liberals will come to their senses and stop using the word "Jewish" as a codeword for rich, powerful and world-controlling. More importantly, maybe they'll stop thinking such stupid, dangerous, ignorant things to begin with -- certainly that would be better than them merely being shamed into keeping schtum.
Writer Margaret Drabble 'fesses up: My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world. I can hardly bear to see the faces of Bush and Rumsfeld, or to watch their posturing body language, or to hear their self-satisfied and incoherent platitudes. The liberal press here has done its best to make them appear ridiculous, but these two men are not funny. This is one of the funniest op-ed pieces I've read in a long time -- well, since Norman Mailer went off the rails in the Times last week -- and in reading parts of it out loud to a friend, I could barely speak for laughing. The sad thing is, the woman is actually that deluded. And she's not alone, but she's one of the few who's honest about her madness. But, as Andrew Sullivan notes, she's clearly mistaken a newspaper column for a therapist's couch. Link via Peter Briffa, whose next Times column is awaited with bated breath.
UPDATE: Emily Jones also has an amusing takedown of Drabble's babble.
7 May, 2003 Stop me if you've heard this one before: even more evidence that reports of the "looting" of the Baghdad museum weren't quite accurate, this time from the New York Times: A top British Museum official said yesterday that his Iraqi counterparts told him they had largely emptied display cases at the National Museum in Baghdad months before the start of the Iraq war, storing many of the museum's most precious artifacts in secure "repositories." Like I said last week, a lot of people have failed miserably in joining the dots on this story, and I can't say I don't find their blunders amusing. The serious side to that, though, is the total disregard for truth that is inherent to such mistakes. As Glenn Reynolds writes: So this happened in 1991, and nobody bothered to check to see if it had happened again? Why? Because they were too anxious to find a story that would make Rumsfeld look bad? It looks that way to me. There seems to be a bit of smoke-blowing here, too, as the Times now says that an undetermined number of never-cataloged items may have been stolen from the basement.
Interesting exchange here about Bill Bennett (about whom I could not care less. Really.) and attitudes to the shady activities of public figures. This bit really jumped out at me: I think Jonah Goldberg's criticism of the way in which hypocrisy is to some the only vice is also well placed. Better to preach against adultery and fail to meet your own standards than to declare adultery fine because you don't want to be labelled a hypocrite. Better to be right in theory and wrong in practice than wrong on both counts. As Goldberg puts it: "If I declared 'murder is wrong' and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy."
It's not that recent, but this has to be one of my favourite rants ever. The warped ideas some westerners have about how wonderful life is in deprived areas of the world don't even surprise me anymore, but I do still enjoy it when they're called on their foolishness.
Good points on MP Tam Dalyell's anti-semitic comments from Harry Hatchet. The way such proclamations are able to pass without much remark is just stunning to me. Anti-semitism is something I've only encountered since I came to Britain. The thing is, the area I come from in Ohio isn't heavily populated with Jewish people; I'm sure if I'd lived in an urban centre like New York, my experience would have been different. As it is, I remain pretty shocked by the kinds of things people say without seeming to think about what it is they're saying. I hear people -- people who I'd previously thought to be quite decent -- using the word "Jewish" in a way they'd never use the words "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Muslim": as a synonym for rich and powerful. It does not even occur to them that there's anything dodgy about such usage. I think those kinds of ideas and attitudes are what makes it easy for the likes of Tam Dalyell (again, another big leader of Britain's anti-war movement) to spout such anti-Semitic bullshit and pretty much get away with it.
What a world.
If anyone's keeping track, the first blog I checked out when I got home yesterday was No Cameras. If you want solid content, Jurjen's your man; there's lots of good stuff over there at the moment, but this really made me smile. Something about my family history -- being from what my grandparents always referred to as "the old country" (not sure if that's "Old Europe" or "New Europe" these days), but getting to America in time for my grandfather to fight in World War II for the US Army -- makes me particularly fascinated with the liberation of various European countries by Allied forces during that war.
Speaking of which, Rachel Lucas has a couple of interesting and revealing items on modern Germanic attitudes about Nazis and the Holocaust that are well worth a read. Makes you wonder how accurate a country's collective perception of historical events -- the Holocaust, Vietnam, apartheid, the Troubles -- can ever be, especially when so many groups have such a vested interest in denying the truth and reality of those situations.
Celebrity gossip alert: my friend who's working on the Cole Porter biopic De-Lovely reports that Ashley Judd is -- surprise, surprise -- a nasty piece of work. She stropped out of a recording session and refused to return until a memo had been circulated to all crew, advising them not to call her Michelle; Ashley replaced Michelle Pfeiffer as the female lead in the film and some people who just show up to do their jobs and don't know one Hollywood starlet from another hadn't really noticed the difference, and kept calling her Michelle.
Unsurprisingly, Kevin Kline -- who's playing Porter -- is "a total pro".
This is a few days old, but it's so outrageous that I really couldn't refrain from commenting: "intellectuals" rally behind Castro. Yep, that's right: Castro arrests and imprisons journalists, human rights activists and other dissidents, and they can count on these fools to back them up on their right to do so. Nevermind that they themselves would not be allowed to follow their chosen careers in Cuba -- who cares about piddly things like human rights when you're not the one being denied them? And the fact that Nadine Gordimer is one of the people advocating such behaviour is truly disgusting. She should know better; alas, this just goes to show that a lot of "intellectuals" are as dumb as a box of rocks. (And what kind of wacky world do we live in when Danny Glover is considered an "intellectual"?) Once again, here's the list of people these "intellectuals" think deserve to be locked up by the Cuban government:
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