Scotland now spends more of its national income on health than any other country in the developed world. While this has led to higher hospital staffing levels, Scotland’s life expectancy remains the lowest in Europe.
Neat. Chancellor Gordon Brown has a lot to answer for. Oh, and:
Mr Brown’s spending bonanza is aimed at lifting England to public spending levels enjoyed both by Scotland and the rest of Europe - specifically health spending.
Yes, because spending more is the answer to all our woes, right? Looking to Scotland as an example, it's obviously not.
02:32 p.m.
Common as muck: Atomic Kitten's Natasha Hamilton wins Rear of the Year competition...and shows off her arse in a pair of jeans from pikey shop Matalan. Oh dear.
Anyone confused, upon looking at Natasha's bum, at how she won the award should be aware that it's all just an annual PR stunt. Charlotte Church won last year.
Galloway "debated" Charles Moore, the Telegraph's editor, on last evening's Channel Four news. Krishnan Guru-Murthy, the presenter, shot down Galloway's claims about how any money trail between him and Iraq would have had to go through the UN, and it only got worse for Galloway from there.
Galloway says he's suing the Telegraph. I'm excited at the prospect of any libel trial, because I think the Telegraph has got this one right. Galloway is blaming it all on "intelligence hocus pocus," but as the reporter who discovered the documents says:
"Nobody steered me in that direction at all. We just went and purely by chance we stumbled across this room which had these files in it, and again purely by chance we came across these files which carried the label Britain. And it was two days before we had actually gone through the contents and found this document. I find it very hard to believe that this document is not authentic. I think it would require an enormous amount of imagination to believe that someone went to the trouble of composing a forged document in Arabic and then planting it in a file of patently authentic documents and burying it in a darkened room on the off-chance that a British journalist might happen upon it and might bother to translate it. That strikes me as so wildly improbable as to be virtually inconceivable."
Speaking to a friend of mine who was (and is) stridently anti-war last night, he said to me, "You know, I'm really glad I made clear to you my feelings about Galloway long before all this came to light." (Note: this person still cheered Galloway on at a London "peace" rally.) Thing is, this story about him being in Saddam's pay could be totally false, and Galloway would still be a disgusting human being and a corrupt politician. He's got a history of openly admiring Saddam Hussein (the video they played on the news of him telling Saddam, "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability. And I want you to know that we are with you until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem," really turned my stomach), he urged British soldiers to put down their weapons and defy "illegal orders" in this war, he called on Arabs around the world to raise up against the "wolves" Blair and Bush, and he used money meant for an Iraqi child with cancer to finance his trips to visit Saddam.
Peter Cuthbertson made a fine point yesterday about what this whole situation says about our ideas about who gets a pass for engaging in dodgy dealings, in a society where "compassion and tolerance [have] stopped being about the way you [treat] people in your everyday life and [have] turned into a demonstration of the leftist causes you [promote]":
Gorgeous George has proved that you can be a vigorous supporter of all the left's great causes, and still be a monster, willing to starve thousands to enrich oneself. He has shown that your politics are no testament to your moral virtues.
09:59 a.m.
Another big BBC blunder -- or, rather, a series of them. And the journalist's response is so pissy and unprofessional it's unbelievable; I hate management speak, but upon reading Dr David Whitehouse's email, the image that came immediately to mind was a baby throwing toys out of his pram.
What a disgrace. My kingdom for a privatised BBC...
09:22 a.m.
22 April, 2003
Puce isn't our dirty little secret anymore: Mark Glaser's written about him in this week's Online Journalism Review.
10:13 p.m.
Further embarrassing herself, Melanie Goux now trumpets a John Pilger quote on her peace poster contest page:
The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor".
What the document Pilger and Goux refer to actually says is:
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. The decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval.
Bill Herbert has more on the self-serving and frankly shocking distortion of this document. As he notes:
The truth is that the document proposed no real shift in foreign policy, taking the status quo -- the Clinton administration's status quo, to be [precise] -- for granted. The recommendations merely addressed the deficit between Clinton's own "US Terrorism" and the force structure that implemented them...
Again, Melanie Goux seems like a nice person, but she consistently betrays her own ignorance and willingness to take as gospel the disingenuous and blatantly dishonest words of deceptive extremists like Pilger. No wonder she favours Saddam Hussein's brand of "peace" over an Iraq free of his dictatorship. The sad fact is, she's not alone.
05:37 p.m.
On the peace poster contest: Jim has the goods, and no, I didn't win any of the Amazon gift certificates. Dammit. Here are my entries (click for full size):
| |
You may think that my entries were badly designed, overly simplistic, way over the top and of questionable merit (yep, they were), but how do you explain that this and these were accepted? Nevermind this one (depicting French oil companies which stood to make billions on development contracts had Saddam retained power), this one depicting Robert Mugabe as morally superior to President Bush, and this one, which won an honourable mention from the jurors. You really couldn't make it up.
Melanie Goux, the woman who ran the competition, seems a very polite and nice enough person. But being nice and polite is no defence against not knowing enough about this war to recognise entries like, say, the pro-Mugabe and pro-French oil companies ones for what they are: either deluded moral equivalency or out and out satirical comment on her competition. I hope she learns something from this little contest, because I sure have: ignorance knows no political stripe.
UPDATE: the French oil company entry was, in fact, a prank. Its creator, Jerry Joplin, mailed Jim Treacher and told him so. Once Melanie Goux realises what she fell for out of ignorance, I'm sure it'll be pulled from the contest's site -- in which case, you can view the brilliant spoof of her competition here.
"I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong," Mr. Kamiya wrote last week. "Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings."
[...]
"Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least-bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people," he wrote. "But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative — four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?
"Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world."
It's funny; when I wrote, more than once, at the beginning of the war that I knew people who were wishing for the worst, I got a lot of mail from people saying that they found it hard to believe. Give you a clue: most of them just aren't openly talking about it. Kamiya, disgusting though I find him, is at least honest about his radical and nonsensical beliefs. Remember that next time you're reading Salon, okay?
(It's a good thing I had almost a whole bottle of wine -- Californian Zinfandel, 1999 -- with lunch, or else my reaction to this would be a lot less mellow than it is.)
Link via Gweilo Diaries, where it's Bash China Day at our man in Hong Kong's website.
03:17 p.m.
Fry and Laurie, reunited (and it feels so good). I love Stephen Fry, so anytime he's working, I'm happy. And according to his website, the film Bright Young Things -- Stephen's adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, directed by Stephen and starring Judi Dench, Peter O'Toole, Rowan Atkinson, Jim Broadbent and Dan Akroyd -- will likely have its London premiere in late October.
01:40 p.m.
More news on jailed Iranian blogger Sina Motallebi courtesy of Jeff Jarvis. I'm slightly surprised to read that Iranian officials have not only been reading Persian weblogs, but leaving responses in those that have comments enabled.
Jeff also has a quote from Iranian (now in the UK) blogger Sayed Pouya Razavi, who opposed the war in Iraq:
The world should rejoice at the fall of Saddam's brutal regime....
I've always found the anti-war movement in the West niave and ignorant shielded by the comforts of a Western life and pretentiously dipping their toes into "Eastern Culture" as if it was some fad or fashion....
In the end, the anti-war movement contributed to this happening. Their inneffectiveness, their lack of focus and lack of solutions handed the war to the warmongers. It gave them exactly what they needed: a disorganised rabble that appealed only to its own kind.... [dominated by] the voices of suburbanite white kids whose arguments degenerated into name calling and wishy-washy anti-globalisation rants....
Yet, I think I'm beginning to realise that there is no anti-war movement. There never was. There are some smart folks who are opposed to this war but there is no movement.
As Jeff writes:
What I agree with and disagree with is not the point. What weblogs let us do is compare views of the world from across the world. Weblogs are a powerful tool. Iran's government, unfortunately, realizes that. Then so must we.
10:47 a.m.
On the subject of poll questions, David Adesnik tackled this one from a Washington Post/ABC News poll:
How do you feel about the possibility that the United States will get bogged down in a long and costly peacekeeping mission in Iraq? Would you say you're very concerned about that, somewhat concerned, not too concerned or not concerned at all?
As David noted, considering how careful polling organisations usually are to ask neutral questions, it's anyone's guess how that one got through. But a reader of Eugene Volokh's writes:
Gee, I sure wish the polling companies would ask the same question about other issues:
== How do you feel about the possibility that the United States will get bogged down in a long and costly healthcare program in the United States?
== How do you feel about the possibility that the United States will get bogged down in a long, costly, and failing public education program in the United States?
== How do you feel about the possibility that the United States will get bogged down in a long and costly crop subsidy program?
I wish I could think of others, but I'm "very concerned" about all those things and more...
"Maybe it is the product of the same forgers who forged so many other things in this whole Iraq picture. Maybe The Daily Telegraph forged it. Who knows? The truth is I have never met, to the best of my knowledge, any member of Iraqi intelligence. I have never in my life seen a barrel of oil, let alone owned, bought or sold one."
That's the best he can do for a denial? Cos, reading the above, it seems to me all he's denying is that he's ever met any member of Iraqi intelligence, and that he's ever seen, owned, bought or sold a barrel of oil -- which, of course, isn't exactly the point of what's being alleged here.
Galloway is an extremely litigious guy, and he never shies away from filing libel suits against newspapers. In light of that, I'm thinking the Daily Telegraph must be pretty bloody sure of this one. Noteworthy, then, that Galloway didn't, as part of his non-denial, threaten them with a lawsuit, as that's his usual schtick.
This is verrry interesting. It's already been revealed that Galloway was using money from a charity for an Iraqi leukaemia victim to finance his trips to visit Saddam, and the anti-war movement in the UK has taken enough hits to their credibility without it emerging that their chief campaigner was actually on Saddam's payroll.
Laci and her unborn child did not deserve to die. They certainly did not deserve to be dumped in the bay and be sent to a watery grave as though their lives were meaningless. Laci meant the world to me; she was my only daughter, she was my best friend.
I can only hope that the sound of Laci's voice, begging for her life and begging for the life of her unborn child, is heard over and over again in the mind of that person every day for the rest of his life.
The photos of the flowers, toys and other mementoes left in Laci and Scott's front garden are pretty sad, too, especially when you think that Connor will never get to play with any of them. It almost feels wrong to even look at the photos, though I'm not sure why.
09:48 a.m.
It's a girl for Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas. I love the name Cerys (pronounced KAIR-is), but they've spelt it Carys, which I'm not so keen on. Nice that they've gone with another Welsh name for this baby, too.
09:43 a.m.
The Independent was less balanced, chiefly because of its near-total reliance on Robert Fisk, who must be the most famous foreign correspondent of our day. As I said a couple of weeks ago, I revere Robert. I can even claim to have been one of those who persuaded him, when in a different life I was foreign editor of the Independent, to jump ship from the Times. I often found myself defending Robert against the accusation made by Marcus Sieff, chairman of the Independent and an ardent Zionist, that our new star correspondent was biased against Israel. He is a brave and brilliant correspondent, and so it grieves me to say that on this occasion he has allowed his anti-Americanism to get the better of him, and has had a pretty dreadful war.
It would stick in my throat to ever call Fisk "brilliant," but I have to give him credit for being brave: I can't say I'd be eager to sign up for long stints reporting from Middle East war zones. But yeah, he's definitely biased against Israel, and he's definitely anti-American, and he's definitely poisoned the Independent's coverage with his disgusting and often just plain wrong ("There are no Americans at Baghdad airport, but this isn't the first time the Americans have been caught lying"; "There are no Americans in the centre of Baghdad," etc) reports from Iraq.
Duke appeared as a guest on only the most popular satellite network in the Arab world. Had Pat Robertson invited Duke on "The 700 Club" to share his views about the Jews, everyone and his brother would have condemned the television evangelist, and rightly so. So is the Islamic world giving al-Jazeera and "Discover Islam" a pass? And if so, what does that tell us? And what does our giving them a pass tell us about the double standard we allow Muslims?
Pollard also reproduces in full a column he wrote for the Independent (they do need a bit of good sense in between all the rubbish) on what Tony Blair must have learned from his handling of opposition to the war in Iraq ("The lesson is simple but critical: ignore the polls, ignore your opponents, and ignore the trimmers – just do it.") and how he must now similarly handle domestic issues:
It has become a cliché to say that "we should have finished Saddam off last time" – at the end of the Gulf War. Like most clichés, it is not only true but contains an important lesson. Our failure to deal with Saddam many years ago – caused by misguidedly allowing the opponents of action to set the agenda – compounded the problem. So Tony Blair's willingness in his first term to be held in thrall by focus groups, opinion polls and the forces of conservatism he himself derided, and the consequent failure to be bold and embark on genuine public-sector reform, has made things more difficult now.
Indeed. This reminds me of something Peter Cuthbertson wrote a few weeks ago, on Tony Blair's legacy:
However willing Blair may be to stand up for (certain) British interests, on the domestic front he has been a disaster, and after six years in office, it's almost certainly too late for him to make much difference in reversing this. But this decision to fight with America in Iraq will be seen by history in much the way Harold Wilson's decision not to fight with America in Vietnam is now seen - a rare example of a wise decision taken by a government that was otherwise virtually achievement-free. If this conflict puts some gloss on the history of the Blair government, it will be deserved. But equally deserved will be the abiding image I am sure we will have of a man who had massive effect on the political system, won two landslide victories, made a few constitutional changes, but who left the country and its problems very much as he found them. This war may be the cherry on the top of a very stale and tasteless cake.
Let's hope Blair heeds the advice of Stephen Pollard and others and forsakes the focus groups, opinion polls and desperate desire to be popular that helped make his first term such a bungle, and instead opts to do what the initial opposition and eventual approval of the Iraq war should have taught him: when you believe with your entire being that you're doing the right thing, sod the popularity contest and do what needs to be done.
12:43 p.m.
Pushing up through the rubble, a free nation is rising.
The road ahead is so long, and full of obstacles to overcome, but the most immediate rewards of this war -- freedom of speech, the right to protest, the right to worship openly and without government hindrance -- should not be minimised or go unnoticed by those of us who have always enjoyed such freedoms.
08:32 a.m.
To keep up with this story, I highly recommend checking periodically with Jeff Jarvis, who seems to have all the bases covered. As Jeff says, spread the word.
Lee Peterson: That $250,000 life insurance policy they had for two years and it was on each of them...
Jackie Peterson: It's not a policy. It was a retirement policy that has insurance attached.
[...]
Lee Peterson: As for the home, one of the ladies who ran our volunteer center in Modesto is in the real estate business. And she was one of favorites. ... And Scott was talking to her as a side remark and said "What do you think I could get for [the house]."
Jackie Peterson: That's not what he said. He said, he didn't want to live there anymore. He said he didn't want to bring Laci home to that and what would they get out of it.
Coach: "He was both popular and a leader."
Fellow Player: "He was the biggest snob. He was always talking about how good his golf game was and how much better he was than the others."
Coach: "He had a great personality. He was dependable."
Fellow Player: "He was a loner. At school he was the kind of guy you would walk by and not even notice."
And finally, as if this case isn't sick and sad enough, at least one NOW official says that even though Laci was eight months pregnant with a child she very much loved and wanted, if her son Connor was unborn when she was murdered, police shouldn't charge Peterson with double murder. Ugh. Nevermind that California law stipulates that murder charges can be brought if the foetus is older than seven weeks; this kind of short-sighted, nonsensical thinking that masquerades as pro-choice feminism is extremely offensive to me as a pro-choice feminist. I hope the national powers-that-be at NOW distance themselves from this particular official's comments, but forgive me if I don't hold my breath.
(NOTE: Gael's site, Pop Culture Junk Mail is a good one to bookmark -- both for Laci Peterson case information and for less depressing, more fun pop culture links. It's been a favourite site of mine for years, and Gael does a fantastic job.)
07:17 a.m.
Meet your friendly local racists: this story in the Guardian gave me the chills. The extremely racist British National Party is gaining a lot of ground in many areas, and part of that is down to the fact that they've ditched shaven heads, all-over tattoos and assault in the streets for suits, ties and slick political talk. They're also spreading malicious lies about asylum seekers in order to make people think that Labour is taking money out of their pockets to set up foreign-born people with lives of luxury.
'I wouldn't have dreamt of joining a few years ago,' said [Debra] Hiles, a diminutive mother of two now standing for election in South Hylton, a ward in the Sunderland South constituency of Labour MP Chris Mullin. 'But they're respectable now; they represent common-sense issues to me. They put local people first.'
Hint: whenever you hear a right-winger in the UK use the phrase "local people," what they mean is white people who were born in the UK.
The other element that's playing into the BNP's hands is the fact that the Labour party is re-elected with such seeming inevitability that they've taken their success for granted and candidates don't really bother with much in the way of personal canvassing.
It's an extremely scary situation, and shows that Labour hasn't exactly learned the lessons of France's own dirty little elections last year. There, capitalising on the complacency of more centrist parties, as well as apathy and failure to vote on the part of mainstream citizens, racist National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen garnered 18.2 percent of the French vote in their presidential election. (I can't refrain from commenting that Jacques Chirac owes his eventual election success, in large part, to the fact that he was running against someone so vile.) And a recent survey shows that a significant amount of French voters still support Le Pen and the National Front.
Just for laughs, I checked out the BNP's anti-war statement. Apparently this war is all about oil, Bush cronyism, Western imperialism and evil Israel. (Seems the fascists of the British National Party have a lot in common, ideologically, with the far-left Communist extremists leading the Stop the War Coaltion.) They sum up their views thusly:
So good luck, lads. Keep your heads down when the Yanks are bombing. Do everything you can to get the war over with as quickly as possible, so that you can come home, and all those Iraqi asylum seekers over here can be sent back as well. That at least is worth fighting for!
And they call themselves "principled and peace-loving modern nationalists".
IN THE past three weeks, we at the BBC may have inadvertently given the impression through all our outlets that the Allied incursion into Iraq was a reckless political act which was militarily ill-conceived in every respect, unsupported by the Iraqi people, who regarded it as a ruthless invasion of their sacred homeland, and which was certain to end in total disaster. News headlines such as “Coalition Bogged Down In New Vietnam”, “Baghdad Will Be Worse Than Stalingrad”, “Blundering Coalition Forces On Brink Of Humiliating Defeat By Saddam’s Super-Elite Special Republican Guard” may have given the impression that we believed in some way that the war was not going quite as well as planned.
In the light of recent events, we now accept – albeit with a very bad grace – that the coalition forces seem for the time being to have got away with it, and that large numbers of Iraqis, though clearly paid by the CIA to do so, may have appeared to be not entirely displeased at the downfall of a regime which, whatever its faults, did at least for 30 years guarantee the stability of a potentially explosive mix of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds, who will now undoubtedly plunge the whole region into a state of chaos which will threaten the peace of the world.
Whilst apologising for any confusion to which our reports may have given rise (and allowing for the fact that they could be broadcast only under monitoring restrictions imposed by the Iraqi authorities), we now realise that the only hope for future peace is for the hated Bush/Blair imperialist aggressors to be replaced at once by a French-led UN force of Russian troops of the type who were so successful in bringing peace to the Muslims of Groszny.
The fact that even Private Eye has the Beeb's coverage sussed and has been writing since the beginning of the war about how very biased it has been may be the thing that makes them realise it's time to start doing some badly needed repairs to their credibility. Let's hope so, anyway.
05:36 a.m.
20 April, 2003
I love this anti-war poster. I wonder if the person who made it realises that all of those oil companies they've used are French ones that stood to reap billions of dollars worth of oil contracts in Iraq if Saddam Hussein had retained power. (The GEP is the French Oil and Gas Suppliers Council, and the IFP -- the Institut Français du Pétrole -- is "an independent research and industrial development, education and training, and information center active in the fields of oil, natural gas, and the automobile".)
Sometimes the irony is too, too delicious. It's bad enough if the poster's author didn't realise this, but if the person running the contest is so uninformed as to not know it either, it's no wonder they think this war is all about American thirst for oil. Really, if the anti-war brigade will serve up this bollocks on a silver platter, it'd take a heart of stone not to make fun of them for it. (And no, that poster isn't one of mine. I wish it was.)
07:34 a.m.
Michael Jackson: still mad as a fish. I guess it's nice to know you can count on some constants in the world, but what a shame for his kids.
04:50 a.m.
One of the creepiest contortions of the anti-war appeasers was how, once we were finally out there and even the most anti-war papers suggested that it might be best to put our differences aside and support our fighting men, a bunch of self-righteous tossers refused even to be this generous, and prissed that their way of supporting our soldiers was campaigning for them to be "brought home". Brought home; as though they were lost children, sorely in need of sensible, grown-up guidance. Instead of serious, dedicated, highly-trained professional young people who have made a literally life-and-death decision about what they want to do with their lives and who are proving and improving their skills in an outfit, the British armed forces, which is very probably the best of its kind in the world...
Maybe we could invent a race of fighting robots to defend us, like those Hoover-bots, only quite (but not too!) aggressive. What a wonderful world that would be; all our soldiers stripping off as Chippendales, and all our battles won by robots. Leaving this country fit for heroes like George Michael and Ms "The New Million Dollar Voice Of Pepsi" Dynamite to ponce around bigging up themselves. The trouble is, I'd rather have no British entertainers than no British soldiers - and that goes for lots of other "desirable" jobs, too. When you're next feeling sorry for our armed forces, from your soft desk at your soft job, as you suck up to your soft boss, think on this: has it ever occurred that they might feel sorry for you?
You know, when even an extreme left Communist like Julie Burchill can pick apart the most silly anti-war arguments so deftly, they might like to sit up and take notice.
03:09 a.m.
He was met at the specially-constructed finishing line by Chris Eubank - the boxer who left him wheelchair-bound, severely brain damaged and comatose for 40 days after their super-middleweight clash in 1991.
Watson, 38, defied medical opinion to stage the remarkable comeback. Doctors warned him he would never walk again and he still only has the use of one leg.
He began the marathon last Sunday with thousands of other competitors. He said the support he had received from spectators - and his Christian faith - drove him on.
"The respect and support I've been getting each and every day, it's just been fantastic. I've enjoyed it from day one."
It was a really emotional moment when he finished. There were hundreds of people there, including Ricky Gervais (from The Office), boxer Audley Harrison and promoter Frank Warren. (More pictures are here.)
Best of all, he ended up exceeding his goal of raising £100,000. Earlier this week, he'd only raised £13,000, but today they announced that he actually ended up raising £150,000.
And I wouldn't normally praise anything written in the Independent, but this report is worth a read:
"When he came to us, for a month we were worried he might not live," said Mr Hamlyn [Watson's neurosurgeon]. "Then we worried he might not be able to talk or to walk, or have any quality of life. He couldn't walk across a living room five months ago. I had serious fears that the challenge would be too much for him. But he is an athlete, and athletes work at the limits of their ability."
In the 12 years up to Christmas, Watson, battling with paralysis down his left side, had got as far as being able to stand and shuffle a few steps unaided. Then he decided to take on the marathon, to "improve his walking" and raise thousands of pounds for the Brain and Spine Foundation...
Four minutes after Watson crossed the finish line, Alex Robinson, 14, from Suffolk, followed. Alex, who suffered similar injures to Watson in a road accident, could barely walk a few yards on Monday. But inspired by Watson he walked three days with him. "He might do the full course next year," said his dad Glenn.
02:41 a.m.
Anyone in London will remember the day in February when army tanks suddenly sprung up all around Heathrow and other places in London. The government said there was a specific terror threat, but didn't specify what it was at the time. A lot of people guessed that it was all just a big show to drum up support for a war.
Further to my post below, the Mystery Worshipper is a site that has a team of people submitting evaluation reports on churches all over the world. The reports require them to comment on everything from the subject of the sermon and the quality of the preacher to the friendliness of the congregation and the comfort of the seating. They even describe the after-service tea and biscuits on offer.
It's nice to find a site that I can actually use; this report helped me decide quite easily not to pay one particular local church a visit. This one is a maybe. And while this review of St Paul's Cathedral is amusing, this one makes a comment about it that echoes my own feelings about the services at St Paul's:
I felt we were an audience, rather than a congregation, in a church that isn't sure whether it is a museum, a tourist site or a church with a congregation.
08:29 a.m.
Look away now if you're horribly offended by the subject of Christianity: today's Guardian offers an email exchange between two theologians, wherein they briefly touch on whether or not the Resurrection was merely spiritual or physical as well (a fantastic, more lengthy and detailed piece on that can be found here), and talk of the relevance of Easter and what it should mean to us now. The subject of God's judgment brings up some important points:
Many [people] reject the notion of divine judgment, asking rhetorically how can a God of love judge? Yet if you saw something unjust and cruel happening to the weak and vulnerable, you would want to act against the perpetrators. The history of social justice and reform is predicated on such a moral imperative. Surely the question is rather, "How can a God of love not judge?"
Interestingly, the popular question, "If there is a God why doesn't he do something about the state of the world?" reveals an aspiration for God to judge, to divide people into good and bad, to save the former and remove the latter from the face of the earth. But before we press the question we should pause soberly to ask, "Who would be left?" Not I!
The hope that the God of justice will stand with the oppressed and act against the causes of human misery leaves us all gasping for the oxygen of forgiveness. We're all complicit in the world's corruption...
[F]orgiveness presupposes sin and judgment. God's love flows forth in both judgment and mercy. In love he must act against injustice; in love he must reach out with mercy. The cross is where justice and mercy meet for love's sake...
[A]s Portia says..."in the course of justice [ie alone, without mercy] none of us should see salvation".
On this subject, Iain Murray cites the results of a new poll showing that almost half of all Britons believe in the Resurrection. That surprises me as much as the 2001 Census results wherein 72 percent of Britons claimed to be Christians. S asks in Iain's comments:
Does anyone else find it odd that 72% of Brits self-identify as Christians, but just 47% believe that Christ rose from the dead and a mere 2% (see same article) attended Church of England services on Easter?
I can't explain the discrepancy between those who call themselves Christians and yet do not believe in the Resurrection, except to hazard a guess that those people don't have a handle on what Christianity is about; I've met more than a few people who think it all amounts to being a nice person and "earning" your way out of hell with good deeds.
As for the low church attendance numbers, I would put that down to the frankly boring nature of most traditional church services. The dispassionate disposition of most traditional celebrants has for many years bred widespread disinterest and disinclination from participation in what should be valuable fellowship and learning. I'd love to have a church to go to for such things, but I've not found one (yet) where the vicar/priest/reverend can hold my attention and make me feel like it was really worth the time and effort. (And, being totally honest, I haven't exactly been scouring the Greater London area on a weekly basis to find such a church.) I get much more out of my own private readings and talking to other people about issues of faith. To quote Iain Murray, "The Church has failed the flock, rather than the other way round." Iain was addressing falling attendance amongst subscribers to the Church of England, and its connection to the CofE's political endeavours, but I think the same sentiment can be applied to British churches in general. (I never had trouble finding a suitable church in my small Ohio town; quite the contrary -- I sometimes attended more than one church in the course of the week, mostly at the behest of friends who attended different churches. If I went for once service, I almost always ended up going back for another.)
I'm going to try out a new church tomorrow. It's probably a bad time to do so, as the place will likely be more full than usual, but I don't think I should let that put me off. We'll see how it goes; I do, after all, believe in miracles, and it should be clear to anyone who reads my often angry, snide and judgmental posts in this blog that searching for a suitable church isn't the only aspect of my faith that I find to be a struggle.
08:00 a.m.
How good is your grasp of the geography of the Middle East? Go here and find out. It's stuff like this that makes me miss school (yes, I'm a freak).
Police on Friday arrested the husband of pregnant California housewife Laci Peterson, who has been missing for months, after a female body and fetus found washed up from San Francisco Bay were identified as hers and that of her unborn child.
Modesto police said they would charge Scott Peterson with capital murder, but would not say whether they would seek the death penalty.
"There is no question in our mind that the unidentified female is Laci Peterson. The unidentified fetus is the child of Laci Peterson," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer told reporters. "We are scientifically convinced that the match is one in billions."
I can't imagine what Laci's family and friends are thinking and feeling. Personally, I don't care if Scott Peterson is ever rehabilitated: if he did this, he should rot in prison for the rest of his life.
02:47 a.m.
Scott Peterson has been arrested, presumably in connection with his pregnant wife Laci's disappearance. This follows the discovery earlier this week of the bodies of an infant baby boy and a woman who had recently given birth. Whether or not those bodies are of Laci and her son Connor has not, up to now now, been determined. Police will announce a "significant change" in the case at a press conference scheduled for 6PM PST/9PM EST/2AM GMT.
What a sad, sad case.
12:59 a.m.
18 April, 2003
Here's this week's Friday Five -- on a Friday and not a Saturday, for once. (Though it feels like a Saturday, since everyone's off work today here.)
1. Who is your favorite celebrity? Nigella Lawson. I always liked her political and current events columns in the Observer, and her books are fantastic as well. Plus, she's easy on the eye.
2. Who is your least favorite? Oh, to narrow it down...Probably Geena Davis. She's probably a nice person, but I don't think there's anything about her that is remotely interesting or appealing -- not even in a trainwreck-y way -- and she's not saying anything I can enjoy picking apart or despising her for.
3. Have you ever met or seen any celebrities in real life? Yeah, mostly in London. Eminem, Madonna, Iggy Pop, Bill Clinton (a few times), Monica Lewinsky (separately from El Presidente), Arnold Schwarzenegger (sleazy), Betty Boothroyd (former Speaker of the House of Commons), Joe Pasquale (squeaky-voiced British comedian), Nigella Lawson, David Boreanaz, Nick Moran (from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), Stephen Fry (SCREAM!), Ben Elton, Paul O'Grady (aka Lily Savage, Liverpudlian tranny comedian), BBMak (British boyband that's apparently quite successful in the States -- happened upon them filming their video on the platform at West India Quay DLR station), and a bunch of past and present Eastenders cast members: Laila Morse (who's also Gary Oldman's sister, and is great in his film Nil by Mouth), Danniella Westbrook, Russell Floyd and Craig Fairbrass -- twice. I know I'm forgetting some, but I'm sure they're probably not significant. (UPDATE: I remembered some -- Noel and Liam Gallagher, James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire of Manic Street Preachers, Huey from Fun Lovin' Criminals, Anne Robinson, who I met when I was on The Weakest Link -- got to the final and lost, and Michael Jackson, who I saw getting out of his limo in Cleveland when I was five. I remember telling the woman who looked after me at daycare about it, and she replied, "If I ever saw Michael Jackson in person, I would spit in his face. He's ugly and weird." This was in 1982, long before his weirdness was established and long before he started mutilating himself for shits and giggles. Also, I can't believe I had such a nasty bitch for a childminder. It explains a lot.)
4. Would you want to be famous? Why or why not? It'd be nice to be famous enough to get lots of free stuff, but yet not so famous that the newspapers would go digging into your closet looking for skeletons. I doubt that level of celebrity exists.
5. If you had to trade places with a celebrity for a day, who would you choose and why? Michael Moore, so I could kill myself. I mean, first I'd set everyone straight on what a bunch of horseshit I'd been peddling for years, why Bowling for Columbine is as much of a documentary as Lord of the Rings is and why everyone who bought into my "fictition" (as Moore calls it) was a bloody fool, but then I'd eat a bullet.
11:14 p.m.
For an alternate viewpoint on the sentencing of Pim Fortuyn's assassin, check out what Jurjen has to say. I don't think anyone could talk me round to the view that 18 years is an adequate sentence for premeditated murder -- whether the victim was a politician or a regular Joe, and although rehabilitation is important, I still think punishment has to play a part -- but Jurjen makes some very noteworthy points, and sheds some light on the Dutch penal system.
08:12 p.m.
"The Spanish PM rang me to say: ‘I have the support of only 4 per cent of the people.’ I said, ‘Crikey, that's even less than think Elvis Presley is still alive.’"
That's one of the funnier quotes. A lot of it deals with his feelings on civilian deaths, military deaths and the up and down rollercoaster of war.
“The only way I can retain equilibrium and balance through something like that is to remember the essential rightness of the decision and the essential responsibility that comes with it. That means that you are not leaping out of your seat when it is going well, and putting your head in your hands when it is going badly.”
[...]
“It is not a game,” he said. “It means that moments of sadness and worry do not turn into despair, but your moments of joy and relief do not turn into triumph. You have taken a responsibility upon yourself to decide an issue of life and death, and that just stays with you. We will find weapons of mass destruction. But I was a lot happier once we started getting on to the regime.”
02:28 a.m.
Funniest thing I've read all week: the Weekly Worker's post-war assessment of the important issues of this conflict. If you're wondering what really matters to the people who helped to spearhead the anti-war movement in Britain, this pretty much sums it all up.
02:14 a.m.
For those who are interested, my record of the week is Blur's new one, Out of Time. I grew bored with them over the last couple of years, but this may well be my favourite track they've ever done -- it's up there with The Universal in my book. Damon's vocals are exceptional, which they rarely are in my view. (Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, aka Quentin Cook, produced their new album. I don't know if this improvement is down to him, or if it is representative of the whole album -- it's not out till May 5 -- but I am hopeful.) The single came out on Monday here in the UK, and it's available on DVD too. (The video is footage from a BBC documentary about the lives of US Marines stationed on a ship in the Persian Gulf. It's a bit unconventional, but the mood is just about right.)
01:50 a.m.
"You know, it's ironic we're fighting for democracy in Iraq because we ultimately aren't celebrating democracy here.
Because anybody who has anything to say against the war or against the President is punished and that's not democracy, it's people being intolerant."
One more time: neither democracy nor the US Constitution recognises the right to say anything you want without having to worry about people disagreeing with you. You are not guaranteed the right to have your words go unchallenged. Show me the people who have been "punished," tell me how they were "punished" and tell me who it is that punished them. The Dixie Chicks? Clear Channel jumped all over that shit, launching a customer-supported boycott and exploiting current events to make money. Democracy and freedom of speech allow for people to disagree with you, to make fun of you and to choose not to play your records. If they make money off of doing so when the public responds favourably to that disagreement, then it's good for business, too -- and it's still not an infringement of democracy or anyone's rights. Hell, Clear Channel runs anti-war billboards. Why? Because they make money from it. Because they can. Because our speech is free and democracy is still in effect.
Honestly, I know these celebrities must have a hard time dealing with it when people disagree with them and don't kiss their asses, but someone really needs to inform them that part of democracy and freedom of speech is the right of other people to speak out in disagreement with you. It's not "punishment" and it's not intolerance -- it's discourse. It's also a sign that people are exercising their right to free speech to stand up for what they believe in -- and yes, that's a good thing, even when they disagree with you and even when they're wrong. If that doesn't celebrate democracy, I don't know what does.
05:02 p.m.
I'm not the only one who thought the sentence of 18 years imprisonment handed down to the assassin of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was outrageously light:
Is this a great deal or what? If you're a militant activist, you can assassinate the leading candidate for prime minister in your country and change the course of European history -- have a bigger impact, in other words, than most activists could dream of in ten lifetimes -- and you only have to spend 12 years in a Dutch jail (which, I suspect, is not likely to be a hellhole)...
The Dutch three-judge panel, according to the NYT, said they were "persuaded that Mr. van der Graaf was not likely to repeat his crime." But isn't the relevant question whether someone else very much like Mr. van der Graaf is now likely to repeat his crime? ... Among the lessons the twentieth century teaches us, one is surely that assassinations work -- maybe not in the long-term (centuries), but in the medium term (decades). You're not supposed to say this. It's a bit like admitting that most great popular music is made on drugs. But Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Amir, van der Graaf -- name five other men who have done more to alter the course of history (for better or, in this case, worse) in their lifetimes. You'd think the Dutch judges would recognize this and adjust the punitive calculus accordingly. Instead, they've made an offer many ineffectual-yet-earnest activists may find hard to refuse.
I think that's right. And what really bothers me about this is the seemingly nonchalant attitude a lot of people who protest by violent or otherwise destructive means seem to have towards their offences. Like Paul Kelleher, who beheaded a statue of Margaret Thatcher with a steel rod (after the cricket bat he bought for the job proved ineffective) and said that his three month jail sentence was "ruthless," because he believed his actions were "truly justified in law," and offered this non-apology masquerading as remorse:
I would like to say I'm very, very sorry that my frustrations have led me to this. I wish it was not the case, more than probably anybody else in this world.
As I noted yesterday, this was essentially a statement that he had no choice in the matter, because his frustrations "led" him to his criminal act. It's a total avoidance of taking personal responsibility for the actions he chose to take.
I did what I felt I had to do. I hope to never have to do it again, but I don't regret what we did.
Notice a pattern here? These people truly see their actions as justified, and absolve themselves of any responsibility for their own behaviour: it's other people's fault, not theirs. They're sorry they "had" to do it, but by no means do they recognise that choices, made by no one but them, are what led to their actions.
So yeah, I'm concerned as well that this light sentence for assassination of a political figure will only increase the chances of this sort of thing happening. After all, some people truly believe that if you're "right" and passionate about something, any old criminal act is okay. And the Dutch judiciary has effectively agreed with them by stating that, as long as they're not likely to repeat the offence, there's no reason to impose anything but the lightest of sentences -- even for premeditated murder.
It's been another gloriously sunny day here, warm and breezy and absolutely perfect. There was only one thing I could imagine doing today: sitting outside in a pub garden, drinking lots of Pimms and lemonade. Sadly, I had to settle for walking around Dagenham (the sun made it tolerable), shopping and having a nice lunch -- French bread (made in the UK, of course), cheese (Welsh Caerphilly, Wensleydale with cranberries), salad and some gorgeous foie gras. These French boycotts can only go so far before they become a bit silly, you know...
Speaking of that, though, I did notice in Safeway today that the bargain shelves of the chill cabinet were stacked high with many different kinds of French cheeses, all marked down to a few pennies because they hadn't sold. It may mean nothing, but in light of the news that the American boycotts are genuinely hurting French exports, I'm not so sure.
Experts say the council's plan to discourage non-verbal forms of ``disagreement or disgust'' is odd, unenforceable and almost an infringement on free speech.
``It's just bizarre,'' says University of Kansas Professor Burdett Loomis, who specializes in political civility. ``You'd be thinking all the time, `What expression do I have on my face?' ''
God, yeah. I was always getting in trouble when I was growing up for rolling my eyes at my parents and other authority figures (it's true, it's true!), and most of the time I didn't even realise I was doing it. I'm sure I haven't changed at all.
The funniest thing about this story, to me, is that the woman who drafted these rules for politeness, Judy Kleinberg, sounds like a rather rude, pissy piece of work. When the reporter asked her what she thought of alternative suggestions that another council member came up with, Kleinberg responded:
``I didn't look at them. I had other things to do.''
If anyone took issue with this and it ever went to court, I'm sure it would be struck down as a violation of free speech. Terry Francke, general counsel for the California First Amendment Coalition thinks so too.
While Palo Alto's proposed protocol seems to stifle that Constitutional right, it doesn't say a word about enforcement.
``I would love to be in the audience the first time this goes into effect to see who is expected to be the demeanor police,'' Francke said. ``What happens if a council member is caught grinning too much? Are they going to be asked to put on a mask?''
Bunch of clowns. I'm glad I don't live and pay taxes in Palo Alto.
The first points out Paul Foot's rather pathetic attempt at criticising the "LLW -- League of Leftist Warmongers" (ha ha, sides splitting, etc). In it, he inadvertently puts his foot in his mouth and admits:
There was not even a semblance of a democratic force in Iraq that could make a revolution against Saddam or form the nucleus of a new democratic order there.
As Harry says:
So why have he and his party and his movement spent the last six months dishonestly trying to convince us that there was a real chance of a revolution against Saddam when they knew there wasn't?
Well, lets face it, "There is no chance of a revolution against Saddam but I'm damned if we are going to back the American military doing the job, so sod the Iraqis" was not really going to help rally people to the anti-war cause was it?
The second post, which is an exclusive to Harry's blog, is an article on sovereignty and human rights by John Lloyd which was published in the centre-left Italian newspaper Il Riformista last week. Lloyd has made the English version available to Harry for posting, and it's well worth a read:
The line [Blair] crossed [is] that which has gone on since the end of the Cold War: it went under many names, but the one which has stuck is that of ‘humanitarian intervention’. This has been the realisation that, as Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, put it in a speech last February, ‘human rights and the evolving nature of humanitarian law will mean little if a principle (of sovereignty) guarded by states is always allowed to trump the protection of citizens within them’...
[Blair] has thrown down the gauntlet to the international system. He has said – stop your endless debates about sovereignty and human rights. Human rights trump sovereignty. Realism would have to add – he sometimes adds himself – that this will not be so everywhere at every time. He would also add – this would only be so if it can also be aligned with British interests. For many, these reservations are proof of hypocrisy. In fact they are evidence only of inevitable restraints. Morality, in world as in human affairs, is rarely pure: it never is when acted upon. Blair has acted for as much of a moral cause as he can square with realism...
Blair has done what even Thatcher, the most prominent of the post-Churchill British leaders, did not. He has put himself at the balancing point of a series of interlocking international debates which are also real struggles for power and between powers. The irony is that the Conservative leader’s international moment of fame came from persuading President Ronald Reagan to believe the Communist Mikhail Gorbachev could bring an end to the Cold War. Blair has seized the international stage because he is a centre left European leader who is giving a rationale for an invasion led by a right-wing US administration.
The whole piece is excellent, and a great coup for Harry -- go read it all.
Americans telling a truth at least! Why as it hurt, you cannot admit the Bush tries start Tacobell in Baghdad? Serve babie meat borritos? Wake out, idiots!
"At this rate, [Tim Robbins] may catch Michael Moore for most televised appearances to discuss how he's being silenced." So says Juan Gato, who is of course absolutely spot-on. I hoped Rachel Lucas would be amongst the people dealing with Robbins, who is either grossly misinformed or knows he's wrong and doesn't give a shit. And she is. I quite liked her response to Robbins' downright weird, downright ridiculous and downright idiotic assertion that "[The Baseball Hall of Fame] is using what power it has to infringe upon [his] rights of free speech with the hope to intimidate millions of others who disagree with our president":
I believe your education has failed you. The Constitution does not guarantee your right to speak at a party at the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Baseball Hall of Fame is not obligated in any way whatsoever to provide a forum for you to express your views. The Baseball Hall of Fame is completely incapable of infringing upon your Constitutional right to express your views, unless they send someone to tape your mouth shut.
I hope that clears things up for you. Out here in the real world, we try to familiarize ourselves with the actual laws of the land, our actual Constitutional rights, and the actual meaning of the words "fear", "intimidation", "threats", etc. I realize that in your sheltered millionaire world, anyone disagreeing with you in a less than ass-kissing manner is perceived as threatening and as trying to take away your civil rights. I know it must be difficult to be treated like a superstar for years and then suddenly be unwelcome at a private party, but it would behoove you to reexamine your own paranoia and self-centered worldview.
On the central reservation of Wolverhampton's ring road sits a khaki tent with a pair of torn socks drying on a stick outside. Every morning an old man crawls out holding a broom and begins sweeping the kerb which separates him from the passing juggernauts. His matted beard ruffles in the wake of fast cars.
Josef Stawinoga, 83, a second world war veteran from Poland, has been living in a tent on the grass island for 40 years.
Traumatised by war, he has a phobia of confined spaces. The ring road is the only place he feels secure. He believes the second world war is still being fought and fears strangers are out to harm him. He wanders the reservation, hoarding any litter he finds...
Last week Wolverhampton city council called in the Territorial Army to erect a ninth replacement tent over the old man's original construction of plastic sheeting. Officials acknowledge that he will live on the intersection for the rest of his life.
Poor guy. I don't know what the council could really do to help him live a safer life elsewhere, or if they even should -- he's got obvious mental problems, and has lived there for 40 years. It's just a bit unsettling. Call me emotional, but my grandfather was a Polish World War II veteran as well, and the thought of him living like that really upsets me.
Link via Labour MP Tom Watson, who already made me cry once today with a post about one of his elderly constituents, Arthur. *Damn you, Tom! Damn you to hell!
PARIS, April 15 -- An American backlash against French products and businesses has started to bite, dashing hopes here that appeals in the United States to punish France economically for opposing the war in Iraq would go unheeded.
American importers of French wine are reporting sharp drops in sales in the past two months, and other French products also have been affected. The Federation of Wine Exporters has called a meeting Thursday to discuss how to respond...
"It's a very, very deep reaction," said Carreras, who is French. "We would never have expected something so lasting. I think it has been accelerating even in the last four weeks."
The importers, angry and frustrated, said the government in Paris did not comprehend the effect of its war position on French businesses.
Well, duh. And heh. Capitalism's a bitch, eh, Chirac? Money talks, bullshit walks -- and Chirac is walking (almost running) towards global acceptance of his country's irrelevance and worldwide condemnation of his shady dealings with regard to Iraq.
Stephen Pollard sure does know how to push people's buttons: his column in today's Times (London) is all about his political hero, Donald Rumsfeld. I have to say, as soon as I read the title of this piece, I laughed. And I'm still smiling now. I'm no big Rumsfeld fan, but I love it when a journalist I like says something that will piss people off.
What makes people’s reaction so bizarre is that, whatever the attributes for which most of us look in a politician, Donald Rumsfeld has them all. He always says exactly what he means. He tells it as he sees it. He has decades of experience in the real world. He is witty. He is imaginative. He thinks for himself. He inspires loyalty. Even better, he is prepared to stand up for his beliefs and treat the smug superiority of the trimmers, appeasers and Euro-elites with the contempt that they deserve. What more could one want in a politician?
Ah yes, I have just remembered one other thing that you would want in a politician: he is right. Always.
And that is the root of it, of course. The real reason why Rummy inspires such contempt among bien pensant types is that they cannot bear the thought that he is right. They loathe him because the that fact he is right boomerangs back at them all their self-righteous, haughty, “Americans are so coarse” complacent beliefs...
I know exactly what would have happened if the war plan — Rumsfeld’s war plan, as we were so frequently told when the doom-mongers thought that it was all going wrong, but which in victory is, of course, now Tommy Franks’s — had turned out to be a huge mistake. He would have been endlessly pilloried. It was barely a week ago, after all, that we were told by supposedly well-informed experts that Rumsfeld and his associates were for the highest of high jumps...
Heh. Well, go on -- argue with that, if you're up to the job.
In (partial) defence of the UN is another great piece from Jurjen, a former UN man who knows of what he speaks. I always come away from Jurjen's essays with at least one new piece of information that I wouldn't have got elsewhere, and from this one I came away with about twenty pieces of information that I wouldn't have got elsewhere. I also had certain ideas of mine challenged quite persuasively. Go read it.
12:49 p.m.
Unbelievable: the man who murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn only got an 18 year prison sentence. He could be free by 2014.
Van der Graaf said he still "wrestled" with the question of whether he was right to carry out the attack.
"Every day I see it before me. I see myself shoot and Fortuyn fall," he told the court.
The prosecution said Van der Graaf had shown little remorse and had carried out the killing in a "cold and calculating" manner.
A psychiatrists' report presented to the court concluded that Van der Graaf was sane.
It said he was a highly intelligent perfectionist who was emotionally uncommunicative and intolerant of those with different values to his own.
Yeah, that's the kind of murderer we want back on the streets.
I really am gobsmacked by this. I'm anti-death penalty, but absolutely in favour of stiff sentences for murder. I don't see 18 years (likely less) as a sentence commensurate with the barbaric act which has been committed here.
I haven't spent loads of time in the Netherlands, but I can honestly say that it's one of my favourite places in the world. I really can't wait to go back, and if it was a clever thing to do at the moment (which it isn't, for me, for a variety of reasons), I'd be there this weekend. I love the trains (pure luxury compared to British ones), I love Amsterdam, the canals, the people, the architecture -- everything. Holland's just a very special place to me, and I have a lot of fond memories of it.
That said, this whole thing reminded me of something I read yesterday morning in Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There:
When I was twenty I liked Amsterdam -- indeed admired it passionately -- for its openness, its tolerance, its relaxed attitude to dope and sex and all the other sins that one can't get enough of at twenty. But I found it oddly wearisome now. The people of Amsterdam were rather stuck with their tradition of tolerance, like people who take up a political stance and then have to defend it no matter how untenable it gets. Because they have been congratulating themselves on their intelligent tolerance for all these centuries, it is now impossible for them to not be nobly accommodating to graffiti and burned-out hippies and dog shit and litter. Of course, I may be completely misreading the situation. They may like dog shit and litter. I sure hope so, because they've certainly got a lot of it.
I can't help wondering if this tolerance-at-all-costs (if that's what it is, really) is what's to blame for this ridiculously light sentence. Has it got to the point where Dutch society is willing to more or less tolerate murder? I don't know, but I'm sure somebody will fill me in if I'm going down the wrong track, here.
12:49 p.m.
There was a post here, about a certain newspaper's current edition, but I deleted it. It pissed me off so much, the more I read of it, that I really don't want to give it any more attention than it might otherwise attract. (The bottom line, according to this paper, is that the Iraqi people want Saddam back in power, and they want him back NOW. No, I'm not making that up.) I'm sure someone will have fisked it good and proper by the end of the day, and I'll post a link when they do.
12:48 p.m.
Gosh, this breaks my heart: Michael Watson, the former boxer I wrote about on Sunday who fought back from near death and was left extremely physically disabled and brain damaged after a title match eleven years ago, has only raised £13,000 of the £100,000 that he aimed to get in pledges for donation to the British Brain and Spine Foundation. Watson is walking the London marathon route this week, and will finish at midday on Saturday on the Mall near Buckingham Palace.
If you want to donate to this very worthy cause and you're in Britain, call 08700 863000 to do so. You can also donate online, whether you're in Britain or not -- if you're a UK taxpayer, your donation can be boosted by 28% when Justgiving.com reclaims and adds tax from the Inland Revenue at no cost to you, the donor.
The courage and strength of this man is nothing short of awesome. What I find really amazing, though, is that his spirit is so strong that, in a situation where most of us would feel awfully tempted to just give up on life and curse whoever or whatever had dealt us such a crappy hand, Michael Watson has instead picked himself up and decided to go to great effort to do something for others -- even though he's barely getting by financially himself, and has major difficulty just dressing himself every morning.
I know times are tough, but please, at least think about donating whatever you can manage. And spread the word, too, if you can. I sure would appreciate it.
I haven't posted anything on the loss of antiquities in Iraq, because the accusations and language being thrown around make me so angry I could just about spit. Thankfully, Glenn Reynolds pretty much sums up my thoughts in his current MSNBC column.
And scroll down to the column before the most recent one to read Glenn's take on another situation that makes me want to break shit: CNN's admission that they covered up the Iraqi government's torture of its employees, and subsequent revelations from CNN employees that they churned out pro-Iraqi propaganda, direct from the Iraqi information minister, in order to retain access to Baghdad.
Yeah, I'm sure letting terrorism slide would make America a WHOLE lot better. Let's run that by the friends and families of the 3000 people who were murdered on September 11, 2001 -- or, for that matter, anyone who has two brain cells to rub together and realises that terrorism is, er, not nice. In the words of Friend of Bill Jeff Jarvis, what the hell is Clinton smoking?
Abu Abbas, the Palestinian terrorist who masterminded the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea, has been arrested by U.S. personnel in Iraq.
Abbas was arrested about 50 miles west of Baghdad after being turned away from Iraq's border with Syria, a Palestinian source told CNN.
The hijacking of the ship led to the killing of disabled passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew. Klinghoffer was shot in his wheelchair and thrown overboard by Abbas' men.
Because we fought a war and won there. And because we scared Syria into closing its border. And because the worm was trying to crawl over that border.
Fringe benefit, if I've ever seen one.
Indeed.
12:48 p.m.
Journalists pine openly for less journalism, in the name of ideology. I find this very depressing, not least because I hear this kind of thing all the time from North Americans (here in Britain, as I've written before on this subject, it just doesn't seem to be an issue -- thank God). I agree with Matt Welch when he says:
A certain thick strain of journalistic thought has long since crossed the threshold into actively rooting for the demise of news organizations whose politics and/or standards don’t pass a certain litmus test. That seems to me an exact perversion of what the profession should advocate.
It seems like an exact perversion because it is an exact perversion. Not that many people seem to take any notice.
12:47 p.m.
Is the Bush administration looking the other way, or rather, looking at Syria? Not exactly. This Australian report suggests the administration is trying a "North Korea" strategy of having Zimbabwe's neighbors take the lead, quoting a "senior official" in the State Department as follows:
"What we're telling them is there has to be a transitional government in Zimbabwe that leads to a free and fair, internationally supervised election.... That is the goal. He stole the last one, we can't let that happen again.... It has to be internationally supervised, open, transparent with an electoral commission that works..... "
I'd bet that anybody still nursing a broken heart about the 2000 American presidential election could read no further than the words "He stole the last one" before the red mist descended. If a stolen election is what it takes to get the American left to give a shit about this situation ("He's stealing people's homes, raping, torturing and murdering political activists and whoever else he wants? Big deal. What? He stole an election? That does it! I am outraged!" etc etc) so be it -- play it up, Dubya!
Will this strategy work? The U.S. official spins a positive reaction, saying: "The neighbourhood is starting to realise that there is a downside to giving aid and protection to Comrade Bob," the official said, using a derogatory nickname for Mugabe.... "There is stuff happening, there is stuff happening behind the scenes."
Well, maybe. The Times story makes it clear that South African President Thabo Mbeki is reluctant to criticize a fellow African leader, especially in response to Anglosphere pressure.
Grrr. I am not a fan of Mbeki's anyway; I really do shudder to think what will happen now that he has the power to rewrite the constitution. Failure to condemn Mugabe is pretty inexcusable.
In the words of Daniel Drezner, this is developing...and not in a good way.
12:47 p.m.
What is past is prologue: David Adesnik has a couple of very interesting quotes from a 1981 edition of the New York Times, which ring absolutely as true today, in different circumstances, as they did more than twenty years ago.
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by what a long and difficult road stretches ahead of the world, but reading quotes like the ones Adesnik presents, which were spoken when I was three years old, gives me more hope that the light at the end of the tunnel actually exists. It also strengthens my conviction that the world can and will be changed for the better, and that history does not reflect well on those who argue against change and for the maintenance of a tragic and destructive status quo.
Curator Tara Howard says she does not regard it as an anti-Thatcher exhibition. She claims neither an attack on her nor is it homage to her.
"I think she is one of the most important political figures in British history in the past 100 years - Churchill and Thatcher, there is nobody else."
Well, obviously. I can't help but think of the man who beheaded a statue of Thatcher as a "protest against the ills of the world's political system". The man, Paul Kelleher, was sentenced to three months in jail this past February. At his sentencing, Kellher made a lengthy speech:
"I would like to say I'm very, very sorry that my frustrations have led me to this. I wish it was not the case, more than probably anybody else in this world."
Translation: I'm not sorry I did it, but I'll say I'm sorry my frustrations "led me to this". God knows I had no choice in the matter.
But he maintained the decapitation had been "truly justified in law", before going on to brand the guilty verdict at the end of his half day trial as "ruthless".
He added: "I am becoming increasingly worried as to what sort of world I have brought my son into."
Dude, so am I. Your poor son has an asshat for a father.
I should add here that I watched a Channel Four documentary about this guy, and it left a very sour taste in my mouth. They followed him around as he cared for his young son (he's a single parent), and filmed him sitting in his lounge, smoking a spliff while he played with his son and rambled on about how destroying a work of art was justified because he had a big grudge against the subject of the work of art.
Whatever. I don't think Channel Four would have cast him in such a sympathetic light if he'd shat on Tracy Emin's bed.
Anyway, I loved this quote about the current Thatcher show:
One of the most striking exhibits is a framed piece of paper, blank except for the signature at the bottom of Turner Prize winning artist Martin Creed and at the top the words "Something on the left, just as you come in not too high or low."
Ms Howard explained to reporters: "It describes something that she is not, rather than what she is," then adding with a touch of impatience, "to put a handle on this you have to be an art critic."
Yes, no one but an art critic could possibly get such highly evolved art.
12:47 p.m.
