Monkey Tennis

Finally. Rubber bullets available for tomorrow's student riot

2011-11-08T19:18:00.000Z

We can but hope.

The BBC reports that rubber bullets will be available to officers policing tomorrow's tuition fees protest by students in London.

In a statement, Scotland Yard said rubber bullets - also known as baton rounds - were "carried by a small number of trained officers", none of whom would be patrolling the route of the march.

As with previous protests there's likely to be violence, but sadly it probably won't be sustained or large-scale enough that the police actually get around to breaking out the plastic.

That hasn't stopped the Green Party's no-hoper in the London mayoral election, Jenny Jones, from expressing pre-emptive outrage.

She said: "The prospect of the police shooting at unarmed demonstrators with any kind of bullet is frankly appalling, un-British and reminiscent of scenes currently being used by murderous dictatorships in the Middle East."

I suggest Jones takes a trip to Syria, where they're using live rounds and tanks, and the death toll is over 3,500, to regain her sense of perspective. But presumably she believes the police should be prevented from defending themselves against the sort of violence seen at previous 'demonstrations', which included having a fire extinguisher dropped on officers from seven floors up.

She added: "Any officer that shoots a student with a baton round will have to answer to the whole of London."

I hate to break this to Jones, but I fear she may be misjudging the public mood, which is always a risk when you're so thoroughly disconnected from mainstream thinking that you believe windmills are the answer to Britain's energy problems.

After a year or so of watching the capital being smashed up by assorted mobs of left-wingers, anarchists and politically unaffiliated rioters and looters, I suspect that Londoners will be ready to grant the first police officer who takes out a rioting student with a rubber bullet the freedom of the city.

Occupy London: like OWS, without the sex attacks

2011-11-05T13:21:00.000Z

My latest piece for PJ Media looks at the mess the Church of England has got itself in with the Occupy protest outside St Paul's Cathedral, and how church figures have been co-opted as useful idiots for a largely secular leftist movement. This mess is the entirely predictable consequence of the church's embrace of class warfare and other left-wing orthodoxies under the stewardship of Rowan 'Crazy Old Wizard' Williams...

Those protestors who have a semblance of an ideology, as opposed to those who are just there for the party, are leftists, and it’s doubtful that more than a handful will have ever seen the inside of a church. But they’ve cleverly leveraged the moral authority of the church, such as it is these days, to lend respectability to their cause (a “What would Jesus do?” banner is prominent in every TV news report).

The media have played along, with the Guardian in particular guilty of astounding chutzpah. The bible — if you’ll excuse the expression — of Britain’s secular leftists has run a stream of patronizing opinion pieces invoking the teachings of Jesus; a favorite theme, along with WWJD? is the story of Jesus chasing the money changers from the temple, from which several columnists have extrapolated that Jesus was the first anti-capitalist, and that if he were around today he’d be bunking down with the protesters.

This from a paper that misses no opportunity to sneer at traditional values in general, and at Christianity in particular (other religions, notably Islam, are of course exempt from such mockery). It’s said there are no atheists in foxholes, and they’re equally hard to find when Christianity can be co-opted to advance a left-wing cause.

By way of a companion to my piece, here's a video shot at the St Paul's camp by The Commentator. My favourite character is the old crusty getting high on super-strength cider, planning to pitch his plans for financial reform to a deputy governor of the Bank of England... What could go wrong?

Another thought: what would Hugo Chavez do if he was uncontstrained?

UKIP Rising

2011-11-04T22:21:00.000Z

The Telegraph's Peter Oborne on the slow and steady rise of the Eurosceptics of UKIP, which he calls 'the Conservative party in exile'.

If a Left-wing party had reached Ukip’s size and consequence, the media would be fascinated. But, because of its old-fashioned and decidedly provincial approach, it has been practically ignored. In the 2004 European elections, the party gained a sensational 16 per cent of the vote. Had it been the Greens or the Communists that had pulled off this feat, the BBC would have gone crazy. Instead it chose not to mention this event, coolly classifying Ukip as “other”.

For the metropolitan elite, the party scarcely exists. This is why last Sunday’s YouGov poll showing that support for Farage’s party had crept up to 7 per cent – just one point fewer than the Liberal Democrats – gained no coverage. But the significance of this is very great. I believe that Ukip is about to take over from the Lib Dems as Britain’s third largest political party.

British politics is set to get very interesting in the next couple of years, for the first time in a long while, thanks in no small part to the bunglers in Brussels.

Euro orthodoxy and Euro heresy

2011-11-04T21:47:00.001Z

At Presseurop, Michael Fleischhacker of Austrian daily Die Presse praises those daring to challenge the European elites:

Heresies have arisen at all times by asking questions. To question means to doubt, and doubt is the poison of orthodoxy.

What do the United Commentators from Europe want to tell us when they declare with deep indignation that a “No” from the Greeks to the resolutions of the Brussels Congress would have “unforeseeable consequences”?

Do they somehow mean to contend that the consequences of the previously adopted “measures” were foreseeable? Has this past year delivered even a single clue that this is the case?

And why should a country's citizens not be allowed to vote on measures that add up to a substantial limitation of their state sovereignty? Is it their fault that they don’t understand what it’s about, or is it the fault of those who can’t explain it to them?

And is it not true that they can’t explain it because they don’t understand it themselves? And why should they decide, though they understand it no better than those who are not permitted to decide?

The Telegraph puts things more bluntly:

It should surprise no one that George Papandreou’s proposal for a national referendum on the latest European bail-out deal should have lasted just 72 hours before being bulldozed into oblivion by the Germans and French. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy made not the slightest attempt to observe any diplomatic niceties as they turned their fire on this troublesome outbreak of democracy. The Greek referendum must not be allowed to happen, they insisted – and lo, it will not. It was brutal to watch.

Welcome to the new Europe. It is now generally accepted that the move towards fiscal as well as monetary union is the only feasible way in which the single currency can be made to work. Yet it will mean such bullying becomes the norm, since national sovereignty will routinely have to play second fiddle to the diktats not only of the European Central Bank, but also of a central European Treasury, whose creation can now only be a matter of time. Both will, of course, be dominated by the monetary union’s pre-eminent economy, Germany.

It's enough to make you nostalgic for the days when the EU at least allowed referendums to take place, and simply ignored the results.

Why the Libya intervention will end up as a messy stalemate, at best

2011-04-25T14:37:00.002+01:00

In my latest piece for Pajamas Media I suggest that the intervention in Libya is bound to settle into a messy stalemate due to the conflicting aims of the various 'coalition' (I use the term loosely) members. While the participation of the United States is based largely on the aching need of liberals to 'do something' when bad stuff happens – at least when the bad stuff is being shown on TV – France and the UK appear to be motivated as much by the need to divert attention from economic problems and home and to shore up business interests as by concern over attacks on civilians. To varying degrees all the participants lack both the moral authority to intervene, and the resolve to see the operation through to a conclusion – and of course no one has any idea of what a conclusion might look like.

None of the above is to say that the U.S. and its allies should never intervene in national conflicts where civilian lives are at risk; no-one wants to see women and children being shelled. But we should only do so as a last resort, where action can be taken quickly and effectively, without the risk of being drawn into a civil war, and where we know the people we’re helping into power are the good guys (remember all the media excitement about those Tweeters and Facebookers in Cairo? Looks like that might not turn out so well). And we certainly shouldn’t act as a knee-jerk response to upsetting television pictures. If we can take out a Gaddafi or Assad regime with a few well-aimed missiles, and then offer support to factions who won’t lynch Western aid workers, all well and good. And if that sounds like a set of conditions so strict they’ll rarely be fulfilled, maybe that’s no bad thing.

And any such action should be embarked upon with as little regard for the UN and other transnational talking shops as possible. The fact that so many stars have to be aligned before anything can be done makes a mockery of so-called principles such as the “Responsibility to Protect.” If there’s a guiding principle for humanitarian intervention these days, it’s the Responsibility to Protect, as long as Russia and China don’t object and there’s something in it for France. Unfortunately as mentioned above, the Obama administration is compromised in this respect by its rejection of all things Bush, which means fudges and half-measures will be the order of the day until late January 2013 at the earliest.

Dutch barns, grain silos, churches, flags in the yard... Yep, that's Obama country!

2011-04-04T15:03:00.001+01:00

The only element they left out was a slack-jawed yokel with three teeth clinging bitterly to his shotgun.

The New York Times sees justice done in Mazar-i-Sahrif

2011-04-04T10:55:00.003+01:00

So that’s it then. All done and dusted. Job’s a good ‘un, as we say in England. According to the New York Times, the burning of a Koran by the church of Florida pastor Terry Jones almost a fortnight ago has officially been avenged in an attack by thousands of protestors on a UN compound in Afghanistan which left 12 people dead, including seven UN employees; four Nepalese Gurkha security personnel, a Romanian, a Norwegian and a Swede.

But what the headline - ‘Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning, Killing 12’ - and the ensuing story fail to make clear is whether the mob actually left the scene having satisfied themselves that vengeance had indeed been extracted, and that they now considered the matter closed, or whether it’s the Times editorial staff who have rendered that judgment. One suspects the latter, given the perils a US reporter would clearly have faced in attempting to obtain a quote from a member of the enraged crowd who, the Times assures us, first made assiduous efforts to locate Americans to slaughter – which, again, we can only assume is in fact true; no quotes from any official mob spokespersons are offered to support this assertion, so it’s either the product of some kind of mind-meld between the writers in New York and the collective, Borg-like consciousness of the mob, or an fictionalized editorial attempt to exculpate the perpetrators.

According to Merriam Webster, to ‘avenge’ means ‘to take vengeance for, or on behalf of’ or ‘to exact satisfaction for (a wrong) by punishing the wrongdoer’, and the examples they give suggest that it’s generally people that are avenged, not inanimate objects. Indeed, while I like my books as much as the next man, I would consider it at least mildly eccentric to do anything for, or on behalf of, any of them; and if, alternatively, the wanton butchery in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif was intended to exact satisfaction by punishing the wrongdoer, the Afghans missed by a mile; last time I checked, Pastor Jones was safely at home in Gainesville, Florida. Absent a beheaded pastor then, how many of the other random Americans the mob supposedly sought would have sufficed as equivalence? Or how many non-U.S. infidels? How does one weight Asians against Europeans? Gurkhas, courageous warriors whom I had the privilege of serving alongside in Afghanistan, are Hindus; and Scandinavia and Eastern Europe are not known as hotbeds of evangelical Christianity. If more foreign targets had presented themselves at the compound, would they too have been butchered; and if so, would the Times have considered this to be, er, overkill? The Times’ writers fail to show their working, as it were, as to how they were able to declare the Koran burning duly avenged.

But of course it doesn’t matter. Friday, which sees crowds of worshippers pouring out of mosques into the midday heat of the streets, has long been kill-an-infidel day in those parts of the Muslim world where imams are wont to whip their flock into a frenzy at the slightest pretence of a provocation. If such an attack had happened before the supposed Koran burning, the Times would have claimed that it was to ‘avenge’ the victims of NATO airstrikes. If it had happened elsewhere, it would have been a response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons (Denmark, after all, is adjacent to both Sweden and Norway...). Or the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Whatever. In the leftist pathology which exonerates everyone from graffiti artists to Osama Bin Laden by virtue of their relative ‘victim status’, sometimes you’ve just got to lash out – and Afghans, the Times helpfully reminds us, are “reflexively volatile”.

So that’s alright then.

Understatement of the week: BBC 'often notably adrift of the overriding national sentiment', says Michael Buerk

2011-04-03T16:09:00.000+01:00

Reviewing former BBC colleague Peter Sissons' memoir When One Door Closes, Michael Buerk becomes the latest of the corporation's big names to highlight the institutional left-wing bias which BBC bosses would have you believe doesn't exist:

What the BBC regards as normal and abnormal, what is moderate or extreme, where the centre of gravity of an issue lies, are conditioned by the common set of assumptions held by the people who work for it. These are uniformly middle class, well educated, living in north London, or maybe its Manchester equivalent. Urban, bright thirty-somethings with a pleasing record of achievement in a series of institutions, school, university, BBC, with little experience of — and perhaps not very well disguised contempt for — business, industry, the countryside, localness, traditions and politicians. The Guardian is their bible and political correctness their creed. In the Corporation's collective eye, Tony Benn is a lovable national treasure, Melanie Phillips a swivel-eyed fanatic. It's all very well-meaning, and painstakingly even-handed, but often notably adrift of the overriding national sentiment.

More on Buerk's attack at the Mail, which also carried Sissons' own thoughts on the BBC's bias, and serialised When One Door Closes, including this extract on the BBC role as unofficial PR agency for the climate change lobby.

Suddenly, CNN is skeptical when a dictator claims US bombs have killed civilians

2011-03-30T13:52:00.009+01:00

(Thanks to Protein Wisdom for linking)

My latest post for Big Journalism...

This CNN report by Nic Robertson on funerals for alleged Libyan victims of allied bombing, including civilians, is model of hard-nosed reporting; of refusing to swallow government propaganda, and of speaking truth to power. And this should come as no surprise, since CNN’s track record in challenging Arab dictators’ claims of casualties caused by the American military goes back...

Sorry... CNN’s track record of uncritically accepting Arab dictators’ claims of casualties caused by American bombing goes back to the first Gulf War, when Peter Arnett parroted the Iraqi regime’s version of the Al-Amiriyah shelter incident. During the final stages of the air campaign leading up to the allied ground assault into Kuwait, US aircraft bombed a Baghdad command and control facility; the regime claimed it served a dual purpose as a civilian air raid shelter, and that some 400 old men, women and children were killed. While no transcript of CNN’s coverage apparently survives on line, this self-penned puff-piece by Arnett includes his version of the incident; for a US government account, see the case study in this overview from George W. Bush’s White House of Saddam’s record of faking or deliberately causing civilian casualties to exploit for propaganda purposes (And while this is not the place to revisit the claims and counter claims, I couldn’t help but note that reports by CNN, the BBC and others stating that the casualties were old men, women and children also mentioned that many bodies were so badly burned as to be barely identifiable as human).

The tone and balance of CNN’s reporting at the time, along with that of other western media, can be gauged from their later reporting on the Saddam regime's relentless milking of the incident to whip up anti-American fervour. In a story of over 300 words on the state-controlled commemoration of the seventh anniversary of the bombing, Brent Sadler managed to find space for one off-hand, single-line reference to US claims that the shelter was a legitimate military target. A couple of years later, the same regime propaganda was being rehashed for the ninth anniversary - in a report which, while again brushing off the US military's account in one sentence, uncritically carried the platitudes of convicted war criminal Tariq Aziz and the Iraqi information minister alongside the words of grieving relatives of the dead. In February 2003, Sadler was again among the mourners for the twelfth anniversary, with the same auto-complete nod to the US version (Since the search of CNN's archives uncovered no mention of the tenth anniversary, it has to be assumed that breaking news forced CNN to bump what would no doubt have been day-long coverage, complete with a reading of the names of the dead and a moving eulogy by Saddam Hussein himself).

None of this is surprising when one considers that this is the same CNN that covered up Iraqi regime atrocities in the 1990s in order to maintain a bureau in Baghdad. And readers might remember that the same Nic Robertson who filed the report from Tripoli had allowed himself to be led by the nose by Hezbollah while covering their lies about the damage and casualties caused by Israeli air attacks on Lebanon in 2006. (Speaking of Lebanon, where’s the BBC’s Orla Guerin digging through the rubble in Tripoli and exaggerating the extent of the damage? It’s given that the Qaddafi regime would inflate civilian casualty figures, but there will doubtless be some, and the western media doesn’t seem to be going out of its way to find them).

While Roberston is right to be sceptical of Libyan government claims, his relentless ~~defence of the Obama administration’s conduct of the campaign~~ pursuit of the truth causes him to go slightly overboard in trying to make his point; at the end of his report he admits that the fact that one of the coffins is seen to be empty might just be because the body has already been buried. Furthermore, how he knows that the shrouded bodies ‘appear’ to be those of adult males is questionable, and his observation that “there seems to be far more anger than there is grief” is curious, given that his network and others have covered so many funerals where Muslim casualties of western and Israeli action are celebrated as martyrs and used as a rallying point for resistance; indeed, when confronted with images of angry mobs and ululating woman at Arab funerals, we’ve been lectured by liberal media elites that it’s racist to say that Arabs don’t grieve as we in the west do.

Liberal media coverage of the Bush administration’s Global War on Terror was characterised by not merely by scepticism, but by an adversarial relationship in which undue, or at least equal, weight was given to the accounts of supposed victims of US aggression, even when the facts were unknown or unclear. Whether it’s CNN swallowing hook, line and sinker the later debunked account by fake Iraqi ‘human rights’ activists of the so-called Haditha Massacre, or the UK press reporting yet another wedding massacre, the underlying assumption was that it was the US military that was lying. But as The New York Times told us, with President Obama in the White house it’s now cool to wave the Stars and Stripes again, and there’s an anecdote that has the late actor and then liberal activist Ron Silver watching a US Air Force flypast at the first inauguration of President Clinton and observing that “those are our jets now” (Silver left the Democrats after 9/11 and supported the War on Terror). Such sentiments can be the only explanation for the fact that Robertson’s report sounds like a Pentagon press release rebutting enemy propaganda; and while I for one have no trouble with the media checking their ‘objectivity’ at the door when it comes to covering a conflict in which the forces of one’s own country are engaged, it seems unlikely that Robertson would have gone so far above and beyond the call of journalistic duty had the allegations of collateral damage been levelled against the administration of George W. Bush.

Don't the Bush haters at Channel 4 realise Obama's in charge now?

2011-03-28T21:18:00.004+01:00

Shortly after US combat search and rescue teams and air support scrambled to rescue the crew of a downed F-15 fighter-bomber last week, the British liberal media scrambled to cover the aftermath of the rescue. Judging by the swiftness with which Lindsey Hilsum of far left-leaning Channel 4 News managed to file this report, it may have been available for consumption by critics of the western intervention in the troubled north African state before the US aircrew were safely aboard the USS Kearsage.

The following short sentence sums up the content and tone of the whole story: "Osprey aircraft came in, all guns blazing, assuming - as the American military tends to do – that this was hostile territory." Hilsum doesn't claim to have seen this with her own eyes, and she doesn't even attribute the account to local eye-witnesses. An unsubstantiated report is reported as settled fact, and this is then filtered through an editorial prism - in what is supposed to be a straight news report – whereby Hilsum claims to be privy to the motivation behind the US forces’ acting as they allegedly did. And the language – ‘all guns blazing’- reads like fiction, or at best gonzo journalism. Does Hilsum know how many guns an Osprey has? Is she sure that they were all firing? And not just firing, but blazing – a word that has no meaning in a factual news report, being used only to suggest that the American fire was reckless and indiscriminate.

Inconveniently for Hilsum, the US military have stated that not only were no shots were fired during the rescue, but that the Ospreys in question were not even armed, instead being protected by a supporting ‘package’ of other aircraft, two of which dropped 500lb bombs during the rescue. So Hilsum is either lying, or passing on the lies of others because they fit her far-left narrative. Neither possibility would bring credit to a programme that holds itself up as a flagship of serious news journalism, but perhaps the show’s agenda – anchorman Jon Snow is a self-avowed leftist – is considered more important than its record.

Hilsum has a track record which includes anti-American reporting from Iraq for the British socialist journal The New Statesman. Her latest is nothing more than a rehashing of the meme that has arisen in the UK media, going back to Gulf War One, of the US military as gung-ho and heavy handed, often to the detriment of civilians and British forces. (I’ve previously written about it at Big Journalism). Although this media crusade reached critical mass during George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror, when it comes to the employment of American forces against non-westerners, even the Obama administration can’t catch a break from the British media.

When Muammar met Mandela

2011-03-27T22:10:00.000+01:00

Here's a fun clip with which to torment your favourite liberal - Gadaffi being welcomed to South Africa by Nelson Mandela. Going by the attire it seems to be this visit from 1999.

But, you may protest, 'The West cozied up to Gadaffi! Blair visited him!' They certainly did, and they were idiots to do so. But this isn't one of those awkward, staged, diplomatic/business trip encounters. The chemistry between these guys is electric.

Thanks to the peerless Peter Hitchens for the tip-off. He mentions the video in one of his posts on Libya, all of which are well worth your time.

Coincidentally, Thomas Friedman is hoping for some Arab Mandelas!

Just a reminder: the cuts aren't as bad as Labour and the BBC would have you believe

2011-03-27T16:21:00.010+01:00

As London clears up after yet another anti-cuts riot, the Mail on Sunday's Stephen Glover reminds us how relatively minor the cuts actually are, and why they're necessary.

The extreme severity of the cuts is now accepted as universally as are the laws of gravity. Even many card-carrying Tories will unthinkingly assume that the marchers have a reasonable case, though they may disapprove of the way in which it is expressed.

No one, or almost no one, will point out the amazing truth, which is that these cuts — variously described as ‘savage’ or ‘draconian’ or, by the TUC, as a ‘massacre’ — are actually comparatively mild. Far from being ‘slashed’, public expenditure at the end of the process in 2014-15 will be a mere three per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2009-10 before the cuts began.

That wasn’t a misprint. Three per cent lower. In 2009-10, government spending was £669 billion. In 2014-15 it is projected to be £647 billion, if you strip out the effects of inflation, or an estimated £764 billion if it is included. Expenditure will be £710 billion in 2011-2012, so in money terms it has already gone up.

The above shouldn't detract from the real hardship that many people will suffer as a result of the cuts, but as Glover points out, the scale of the cuts is an order of magnitude less severe than Labour, the unions and their media allies would have you believe...

But the three per cent figure is not what the overexcited and angry marchers will hear from a succession of speakers during the marathon rally in Hyde Park this afternoon, who will include TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, as well as Ed Miliband.

The audience will be roused to a state of fury with scare stories about plummeting police numbers and the impending privatisation of the NHS. They will hear about libraries up and down the country closing as a result of wicked Coalition policies, and the hairs on the backs of their necks will bristle as they are told about the inevitable collapse of the welfare state.

Glover goes on to remind us how Gordon Brown, ably assisted but current Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, got Britain into this mess...

In other words, Gordon Brown went on a massive bender, splashing out ever larger sums of money on new hospitals and new schools — sometimes to dishearteningly little effect — before producing a final splurge in order to alleviate the worst effects of the recession. During these ten years, the proportion of GDP eaten up by public spending rose from 36 per cent to 48 per cent, the highest ever peace-time figure.

The report by Tim Morgan which Glover references is here.

BBC tries to play down violent aftermath of union-backed protests endorsed by Miliband

2011-03-27T14:06:00.027+01:00

Peter Hitchens writes in The Mail on Sunday about the BBC's appallingly biased reporting in the build-up to yesterday's union-organised rally/family fun day/full-scale riot in London - you need to scroll a good way down the Mail's comprehensive report on yesterday's events to get to his contribution. Hitchens writes about how the BBC's Newsnight and Radio 4's Today programme gave predictably sympathetic coverage to the anti-cuts protestors.

This morning the Corporation (I used to use 'the Beeb' as an alternative reference for the BBC, but I've decided that's far too twee and cuddly-sounding – 'Corporation' better evokes the vast and sinister nature of the organisation) is in full damage-limitation mode, after the rally and march were followed by widespread violence.

The headline on the BBC's website (my bold) is 'TUC condemns post-rally violence', and the sub-heading is 'Union leaders who organised an anti-cuts protest condemn later violence in London's Trafalgar Square in which some 200 people were arrested'.

(The story itself is placed below a report on a murder which, horrific as it is, only affects and is of interest to a handful of people, in a further attempt to minimise its significance).

The second paragraph of the main report says: 'Hours after a peaceful march to Hyde Park, there were clashes between police and protesters in Trafalgar Square.

All of this is a lie.

The violence began while the march was still in full swing, not after. And you don't have to take my word for it – just read further down the same BBC report:

The trouble began after demonstrators broke away from the main march and headed towards the shopping district in London's West End.

So the trouble clearly began while the march was still in progress. Unless, perhaps, the breakaway group headed towards the West End, then stood around doing nothing for a couple of hours, waiting for the march to end, and then started attacking police and smashing up shops.

It also proves that, far from having nothing to do with the rally and march, as the BBC would like us to believe, many of the troublemakers were fully involved in the official, union-backed and Labour party-endorsed events.

The BBC's website reports also play down the numbers involved in the violence, using phrases such as 'small groups' and 'splinter groups'. But it's clear from the footage that at least a couple of thousand people, and possible several thousand, were involved in the violence either directly or peripherally.

And when large-scale violence of this type breaks out, it's always the case that the police only arrest a tiny minority of those involved; so if they managed to arrest more than 200 yesterday (with lots more to come, hopefully, as the police study video footage), it's a safe bet that thousands, rather than hundreds, took part in the violence.

There's nothing wrong with pointing out that the majority of those at yesterday's rally and march were peaceful, but it's quite wrong to try and pass off the violence as the work of a handful of extremists who have nothing to do with the broad anti-cuts coalition.

This isn't the first time we've seen large-scale violence in response to the government's necessary austerity measures, and such clashes are going to get more frequent, and more serious, as the cuts continue to take effect.

But the BBC is desperate to minimise the scale of yesterday's rioting because it wants to protect the reputation of the anti-cuts movement, which it wholeheartedly supports (see separate post going up shortly), and in particular the reputation of Labour leader Ed Miliband, who addressed the rally.

It's too bad that the government apparently lacks the will to push back against the BBC's distorted reporting. As ministers continue to look for places to make cuts, they could start by removing taxpayer funding for the liberal propaganda machine that passes for the BBC's News and Current Affairs department.

Vintage Chomsky: Wisconsin the same as Egypt; Obama worse than Bush

2011-03-11T13:19:00.010Z

Noam Chomsky shows he hasn't lost his sense of perspective as he discusses events in the Middle East with Jeremy Paxman for the BBC's Newsnight programme.

Amid the boilerplate about the West's support for dictators, and the perfectly sensible suggestion that the West shouldn't get involved in Libya because it's a civil war, there are a couple of Chomskyesque gems.

At around the 2.30 mark Chomsky relates how an Egyptian labour/labor leader sent a message of solidarity to protestors in Madison, Wisconsin. "In Madison they're trying to preserve aspects of democracy that are under serious attack," he tells Paxman. "In Egypt they're trying to gain rights that have been denied them. The trajectories are crossing but they're going in opposite directions."

You heard it here first. In a few short years the workers of Egypt will be enjoying a 30-hour week and universal healthcare, and retiring on final salary pensions at 50. Meanwhile those workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere in America who are lucky enough to have a job will be eking out a living selling kebabs, collecting scrap metal or hand-crafting clay bricks, and living in constant fear of arrest should they even think about protesting against President-for-life Palin.

Chomsky then comes out (at around the five-minute mark) with an observation that conservatives can at least agree on, albeit for different reasons. Asked by Paxman if Obama has proved to be no better than Bush, Chomsky replies "In many ways he’s worse".

For some reason Paxman - who you’d think would be familiar with Chomsky’s off-the-reservation brand of leftism - is taken aback with this and asks him to elaborate. It’s predictably downhill for there: “escalating war in Afghanistan... supporting criminal acts by Israel... Nuremberg trials... yadda yadda...”

Paxman has a reputation for being a formidable interviewer, so his inability - or reluctance - to seriously challenge the worst of Chomsky's nonsense ("Turkey is a respected country" was another corker) is disappointing. There's a fuller version of the interview here, but it's probably not available outside the UK.

Yes, of course it was The Constitution...

2010-10-11T14:43:00.011+01:00

Via Hot Air, the Daily Mail reports that a book was thrown at President Obama as he spoke at a rally in Philadelphia. The Mail says it's "not clear" what the book was, but I think we can just make it out here...

Click the image for a better look. It's The Complete Idiot's Guide, naturally.

My favourite of the comments at Hot Air: I hope it wasn’t “Atlas Shrugged.” That would smart if it hit a person.

Mike on Blair and Iraq at Pajamas Media

2010-09-13T21:52:00.025+01:00

I have a new piece up at Pajamas Media on Tony Blair's defence of the Iraq war in his memoir, and in interviews he's given to promote it. Blair is happy to concede that opponents of the war have a case to make, but wonders why they can't afford him and others who backed the war the same respect. He makes the case that the situation in Iraq was going to end badly one way or another, and asks only that his detractors concede that Saddam posed a dilemma for which there were no easy solutions, and acknowledge the complexity of the situation.

I suggest that Blair shouldn't pin his hopes on getting a fair hearing, or an honest debate, from the left:

Liberal-left types are of course fully aware of the “complexity” of the decisions that were taken, and are still being taken, over when and how the West should intervene to combat rogues states and terrorists. They just like to pretend that such complexities don’t exist; that there are no difficult decisions, and no consequences for doing what makes you popular, rather than what’s right. And hypotheticals only work one way, so opponents of intervention will ask “Would you do it again?” but never “What if we hadn’t done it?” or “What should be done next time?” The left has a vivid imagination when it comes to threats to liberty posed by conservative governments, or threats to the planet caused by global warming, but is unwilling to imagine what might have transpired in the Middle East had Saddam remained in power, or the consequences of Iran getting nuclear weapons.

The left can’t accept that, although they disagree with their opponents, those opponents might have a valid point, or might be motivated by something other than sinister aims. The arguments Blair advances are ones that are seldom aired outside conservative media outlets or in speeches by Dick Cheney and John Bolton. Blair has a platform that is rarely afforded to advocates of military action against Islamic extremists and their state sponsors, and his position flies in the face of the liberal-left narrative, which is why they hate him.

Blair points out that the West will soon face a similar dilemma over Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons. Don't expect the left to engage in that debate with any more honesty or decency than they displayed over Iraq.

Is Sky News pandering to British anti-semitism, or is just dumb, lazy journalism?

2010-08-17T23:13:00.008+01:00

For much of today Sky News has been running the story of an female Israeli who posted picture of herself posing with Palestinian detainees. A story on Sky's website talks about photos and images without mentioning how many; it appears there were all of two, amongst an album containing a couple of dozen photos spanning the range of military life (At least they didn't stoop to the level of this French website which actually reproduced one of the pictures twice to pad out its treatment of the issue).

An accompanying video on the Sky website includes a bit of editorialising, or making things up, on the part of the reporter supplying the voiceover. She refers to the prisoner's 'confined' quarters, when the pictures make it impossible to judge the immediate surroundings (they actually look to have been taken outdoors), or how long the detainees were kept there. I say reporter when the mangled English sounds more like the work of a teenager on a summer work placement: "...on her lap, the plastic wrist tie used to restrain those over whom she is responsible..." (Just the one tie for all of them? Responsible over? But kudos for the correct use of the increasingly rare 'whom'). And in the inevitable comparison with Abu Ghraib, she refers to the U.S. soldiers jailed over that scandal as officers.

On the evening news version of the story, the correspondent even acknowledged that what occurred was not abuse and was not comparable to Abu Ghraib. So what could possibly explain a British news channel running this story as one of its leads all day, or the fact that it's the second most viewed item on the Sky website?

Hang on... Unless...

War in the Middle East... A win-win for Hillary

2010-08-17T22:59:00.004+01:00

With some form of conflict between Israel and a variety of foes looking increasingly likely before the year is out, I predict victory for... Hillary Clinton, regardless of the outcome for the actual combatants.

If mosque boy fails to forcefully support Israel in a conflict, especially in the event that rocket attacks by Hezbollah or Hamas cause significant civilian casualties, Hilary could resign on this point of principle before the November elections, and thus avoid being tarred as disloyally kicking Obama while he's down by resigning to launch a challenge to him in the wake of the looming mid-term meltdown.

While this would be the most promising scenario from the point of view of a potential presidential bid, the other possibilities are hardly much worse. Robust US backing for Israel,while it wouldn't hurt Obama, would do nothing to save Democrats in the mid-terms; and it would give Hilary plenty of positive exposure as a tough supporter of Israel against common terrorist enemies. A third option, a bout of high-profile shuttle diplomacy leading to an end to fighting, would also enhance her credentials. In either of the latter two cases, thus bolstered, she could then leave the administration anyway next year if Obama's prospects for 2012 continue to deteriorate.

Yabba rages against 'Talibanisation' of British Muslim kids, neglects to offer solutions

2010-08-12T14:57:00.004+01:00

This stirring call from left-wing columnist Yasmine Alibhai Brown for, er, somebody to, er, do something to stand up to Islamists in the UK is to be appreciated; but her moral authority is somewhat undermined by her willingness to abandon the Afghan people to suffer a far worse fate than the indignities that she complains are being inflicted upon Muslim women and children in the Britain. Apparently Yabba was all for the invasion of Afghanistan, but changed her mind when things got messy, without any suggestion of an alternative way forward. She's equally vague on how to tackle the domestic threat - "we", or "the powerful" must "find a way" to stop them (Heck, can't we just stop beating about the bush and declare resolutely that "A way must be found"?) - and one can't help wondering how long it would be before any decisive action against UK fundamentalists had Yabba experiencing a road-to-Kabul conversion and reverting to her default PC mode, whining about Islamophobia or the government's disregard for civil liberties.

Oh, and since she's calling for courage, how about not referring to Al Qaeda terrorists as 'operatives'?

The Russian Spies: Mission Accomplished?

2010-06-29T13:50:00.011+01:00

So let's see. These Russian Spies were tasked, among other things, with influencing US policy at high levels. And...

1. America now has as president a man who counts a member of the US Communist Party as a mentor, who hung around with communists at college, who has appointed admitted Marxists such as Van Jones and others with Maoist/communist sympathies, such as Anita Dunn, to influential positions in his administration, and who counts domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn as friends.

2. That president is driving the US economy into a ditch.

3. That president is at best refusing to confront America's enemies abroad (Iran, North Korea), and at worse cosying up to them (China, Russia) and enabling them to expand their spheres of influence.

4. That president wants to pursue an energy policy that will make the US more dependent on unreliable and potentially hostile foreign providers: specifically, cutting back on domestic oil and coal exploration and production while spending billions on 'green' alternatives that range from the unproven to the not-even-invented-yet (see also point 2).

5. That president and his administration officials rarely miss an opportunity to downplay notions of 'American exceptionalism', and are always ready to blame the US for everything from global warming to racism.

I would imagine they're hanging up the 'Mission Accomplished' banner at FIS headquarters.

Come to think of it, if they're still looking for more suspects, maybe they should try the Oval Office.

Thanks to Kate for the link.

Chaos in the UK

2010-05-11T20:10:00.002+01:00

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on the Lib-Lab pact that wasn't. Needless to say it's being overtaken by events - I had to rewrite it twice and things have moved on again since. Outside the regular news outlets, good places to go for reaction are the Spectator's Coffee House blog and Conservative Home.

Cameron may be a Tory McCain, but Britain still needs a Conservative victory tonight

2010-05-06T20:38:00.005+01:00

A year and a half ago, I was sitting at my kitchen table in the dead of night as it became clear that Barack Obama was going to become the 44th President of the United States, with large majorities in both houses of Congress.

The polls had been pointing to an Obama victory, but I was still hopeful that John McCain could turn things around. When the end came I was crestfallen. I didn't know how I'd be able to get out of bed the next day (or later that day to be exact), never mind make it through four years of an Obama presidency.

And I'm not even American. I'm English (which is why it was the dead of night) and I was following the news at Hot Air, Pajamas Media, Ace and other conservative websites. As a British conservative, ill-served by domestic politics, I get a vicarious thrill from following events across the pond, where conservatism remains a powerful force. And while I may be more of a tea drinker than a Tea Partier, unlike your current President I do happen to believe that in an increasingly unpredictable and dangerous world, America represents the last, best hope of mankind.

Of course, if someone had told me that Obama and his allies would overplay their hand to such an extent, and exhibit such arrogance, tone-deafness and incompetence, that 18 months later the President's approval numbers would be in the tank and his party would be staring down the barrel of massive losses in the mid-term elections, I might have slept a little easier that night.

But few other than the most optimistic Republicans could have predicted their party would be back in the game so soon. While McCain was far from the ideal candidate, most Republicans would - if they're honest and without the wisdom of hindsight - have taken victory on the night over the possibility that Obama and the Democrats might squander their mandate.

There were others, however, who insisted that Republicans were better off losing than winning with Maverick's brand of conservatism-lite. And it appears they were right – that thumping at the polls is now looking like the best thing that could have happened to the party. The Democrats have indulged their innate tendency to overreach, and a fractured conservative movement is coalescing around shared values of limited government and fiscal responsibility.

Many British conservatives are similarly conflicted about today's election. Cameron, like McCain, is far from the ideal candidate. In the process of trying to make his party electable again he's lost touch with traditional Tory supporters and cast aside core Tory policies, pandering instead to the metropolitan elites in the worlds of media and public relations which he used to inhabit.

So should we hope for a Tory win, or for defeat, gambling that a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition would quickly fall apart, and that the Conservatives, led either by a bolder Cameron or a new leader more in touch with Tory values and voters, would sweep to victory in a second election six months or a year from now?

Some commentators are firmly of the belief that only a crushing defeat can save the Conservative party in the long run. In a scathing opinion piece for The Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens, the ideologically estranged brother of Christopher, urged readers "not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project" and warned that doing so would "destroy all real hope of change for the better".

While Hitchens is in the minority among conservative pundits, he has a point. Cameron has moved the party to the center, softening its stance on crime, Europe, immigration and other issues, and the Tory base feels it has been abandoned as the party tries to woo back the moderate conservatives it lost to Tony Blair and New Labour.

There is, however, little to suggest that a defeated Conservative party would undergo a resurgence akin to that being enjoyed by the Republicans.

It's unlikely that a Labour/Lib Dem government would overreach in the way Obama and the Democrats have, and there's no single issue which might generate mass opposition in the way healthcare has. Neither do we have the same conflicts over the size of government, the relationship between the state and the citizen, or federalism versus states' rights.

Labour would be so desperate to cling to power, and the Lib Dems so keen to exploit their first taste of it in a generation, that they could well make a coalition work. Labour's union-friendly big government policies and the Lib Dems' left-wing social policies – soft on immigration and crime, pro-Europe, virulently anti-Israel – are not a bad fit. The unpopular Gordon Brown would soon make way for a new Labour Prime Minister who meets with the approval of Lib Dem boy wonder Nick Clegg.

Even if the marriage of convenience doesn't last, and Britons find themselves going to the polls again, it will be because of the economy - and the country will be looking to the Conservatives to sort out the finances, not to crack down on 'hoodies' or illegal immigrants, or sever ties with Europe.

But if Labour and the Lib Dems remain in power for four or five years, the liberal-left consensus that already holds sway in academia, the legal profession, the arts and the media (a majority of British newspapers have come out for the Tories, but their influence is not what it once was) will only become more deeply entrenched.

Broadly speaking, Britons are center-right on economic issues, and center-left on social issues. That's where both the political culture and the wider culture is at, and there's only so much you can do to influence the culture when you're out of power. How purists like Hitchens think a born-again Tory party could begin to reclaim power in a country that will have moved several notches further to the left is unclear.

It's true that we're in uncharted waters. The emergence of the Lib Dems and the prospect of hung parliaments has shifted the parameters of British politics. A left-wing coalition could prove such a disaster that Britain might once again look to a Thatcheresque Conservative party, but it's unlikely.

And if the Tories lose today, there may well be no going back. They need to get a foot in the door, and supporters must hope that at least some of the centrist rebranding is political posturing necessitated by circumstances, and that once they're in office the suppressed conservative instincts of Cameron and his team will come to the fore.

If the Tories win (they're projected to get the most seats, but fall short of an overall majority, in which case Cameron is expected to attempt to lead a minority government), I hope American conservatives will feel it worth celebrating. British conservatives may have stopped aspiring to the standards to which their US counterparts hold their leaders, but we're living in a hostile environment, and we're doing our best.

Pundits dismiss the notion of a 'special relationship' these days, but I'd like to think that it'll take more than Obama and the European Union to break the ties which bind us, and that with the Conservatives in power on this side of the pond and, God willing, Republicans returning to power on Capitol Hill - and perhaps, in 2012 in the White House - we can rebuild an alliance that has served both countries well.

I don't expect Americans to stay up late biting their nails (even with the time difference, the closeness of the race means it's unlikely the outcome will be known before at least 3am UK time). And I don't expect too many US conservatives will be as distressed by a Tory defeat as I was by a Republican one.

But I'd like to think you'll be rooting for us.

Nidal Hasan: the evidence they missed

2009-11-12T17:30:00.005Z

Inspired by this comment at Hot Air.

Muslim support for terror attacks on Americans increasing

2009-02-26T13:58:00.003Z

Over at Jawa Report, Rusty reports on some worrying findings in an opinion poll on public opinion in the Muslim world:

The good news, of course is that large majorities in Muslim countries reject killing American civilians. But that's about where the good news begins and ends.

The worst news? Support by Muslims for attacks against American civilians has actually increased over the past two years.
This is true even in so-called "moderate" countries, like Indonesia where 5% of the population think civilians are legitimate targets for attack and another 8% have mixed feelings about attacking civilians. What's 5% of 237 million people? That's over 10 million terror supporters living in Indonesia alone, with another 19 million of their neighbors who might not feel inclined to turn them in should they ever decide to go on a killing spree.

A related question showed -- with the exception of those asked in Egypt -- that support for killing American civilians working in Muslims countries is even greater than support for killing American civilians in the US. A full 18% of Palestinians either directly support killing Americans living in the Middle East or had mixed feelings about the prospect.

Hooray two-state solution!

If you read the full report linked at Rusty's, you'll find that Steven Kull, director of pollsters World Public Opinion, manages to put an anti-American (or rather anti-Bush's America) spin on the findings:

"The US faces a conundrum. US efforts to fight terrorism with an expanded military presence in Muslim countries appear to have elicited a backlash and to have bred some sympathy for al Qaeda, even as most reject its terrorist methods."

See, it's all Bush's fault for provoking these noble, peace-loving people!

I have written about WPO, and their buddies at GlobeScan and PIPA, a couple of times. These people are anti-American (or at least they were when Bush was in charge), anti-globalisation, global warming hysterics, multi-culti fetishists and terrorist apologists all the way. They also work closely with the BBC, which tells you a lot.

I imagine that if a polling organisation that was ideologically neutral conducted similar research, the findings would be even worse.

After Wilders, will Smith ban Hezbollah extremist?

2009-02-26T12:08:00.003Z

Earlier this month, Jacqui Smith, the middle-management chav who passes for Britain's Home Secretary, banned Geert Wilders from the UK, ostensibly because he engaged in 'hate speech', but in reality because she feared violence from British Muslims angry at Wilders' portrayal of Islam as a religion that preaches violence.

Now she's under pressure to ban Ibrahim Moussawi, an Islamic extremist who's a key figure in the propaganda machinery of the terrorist groupl Hezbollah, and James Slack at the Daily Mail isn't optimistic that she'll do so.

Coming so soon after the Wilders row Smith may feel she has no option but to ban Moussawi, who's been allowed into the UK twice before. But if the usual suspects in the 'moderate' muslim community start making a noise it won't be a surprise to see her back down - after all, it's not as if British Jews are going to threaten to lay siege to Parliament, as Lord Ahmed (who will have plenty of time on his hands for campaigning from his prison cell) promised British Muslims would if Wilders was allowed in.

Watch this space.

When is a monkey not a monkey? When the left decides it's a coded reference to Obama

2009-02-26T10:48:00.006Z

I have a new piece up at Pajamas Media on the row over the New York Post's chimp cartoon, wondering what we're now to make of the Planet of the Apes movies, and in particular Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the 1968 Charlton Heston film, which ends with Mark Wahlberg returning to Earth to find the Lincoln Memorial statue in Washington DC has been replaced by a statue of ape leader General Thade.

On the same subject, David Harsanyi has a good piece at the Denver Post on the whole subject of intentional, unintentional and perceived offence, and Sharpton's attacks on the Post.

A conversation on race? The Amercian Left can't stop talking about it

2009-02-20T17:21:00.004Z

City Journal's Heather Mac Donald rips Eric Holder over his claim that Americans are "cowards" for not talking more about race:

The Clinton-era Conversation also purported to be frank, and we know what that meant: a one-sided litany of white injustices. Please raise your hand if you haven’t heard the following bromides about “the racial matters that continue to divide us” more times than you can count: Police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism; blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism; blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding; the black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism; blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism. I will stop there.

Not only do colleges, law schools, almost all of the nation’s elite public and private high schools, and the mainstream media, among others, have “conversations about . . . racial matters”; they never stop talking about them. Any student who graduates from a moderately selective college without hearing that its black students are victims of institutional racism—notwithstanding the fact that the vast majority of black students there will have been deliberately admitted with radically lower SAT scores than their white and Asian comrades—has been in a coma throughout his time there.

Read the whole thing. There is, of course, one group of Americans who are truly cowardly when it comes to matters of race: the Democrats, for stoking racial tensions, and conjuring alleged instances of racism out of thin air (see the New York Post cartoon 'controversy') to advance their political and social agendas, regardless of the harm done to race relations, and to black families.

Inside the mind of the celebrity activist

2009-02-19T20:45:00.002Z

It's a couple of weeks old, but this is probably the best thing I've read on the mindset of the celebrity activist, and on what drives 'creative' people to fall for leftist ideas. Endre Balogh is an acclaimed concert violinist and award-winning photographer, and now he's turned to writing and he's pretty good at that too (read his new piece on socialism while you're there). Here are a couple of paragraphs, but do read the whole thing:

It’s easy to understand how creative people fall into this pit. By definition, entertainers have to be in far closer touch with their feelings than most people or they couldn’t dip so easily into the pool of emotion that informs their work. Leftist positions appeal to the emotions because they are easy to understand and seem compassionate, even if they lead to larger problems in the long run. And, since they don’t necessitate a lot of facts to clutter the mind, they are easy to embrace and promulgate. I know from my own past that I accepted a lot of Leftist rhetoric simply because it was easier to allow myself to be swept along in the feel-good tide it engendered without being forced to think my positions through with any depth.

Big problems arise, though, when the media gives unfettered permission to entertainers to express their feelings in all areas of life. The Left has been very careful to nurture its relationship to celebrity “artists” and since so many are high profile entertainers, they are constantly giving what amount to Leftist product endorsements via the roles they portray or the interviews they give. Then, sadly, when their pronouncements are taken too seriously, society gets led into a ditch. As a result, even those of us who feel that being an entertainer is a dignified calling are forced (like myself) to opine in areas that we wouldn’t otherwise, simply to counteract the pernicious effect of “artists” spouting their feelings-based claptrap.

Remember the 'global cooling' hysteria?

2009-02-17T11:32:00.003Z

There are many good reasons not to believe global warming hysteria – the complete lack of evidence is an obvious one. But perhaps the best reason to be skeptical is the fact that, as George Will reminds us, the same newspapers and scientists who keep predicting imminent catastrophe got it spectacularly wrong last time:

In the 1970s, "a major cooling of the planet" was "widely considered inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950" (New York Times, May 21, 1975). Although some disputed that the "cooling trend" could result in "a return to another ice age" (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" involving "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation" (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10, 1976, respectively). The "continued rapid cooling of the Earth" (Global Ecology, 1971) meant that "a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery" (International Wildlife, July 1975). "The world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age" (Science Digest, February 1973). Because of "ominous signs" that "the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down," meteorologists were "almost unanimous" that "the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century," perhaps triggering catastrophic famines (Newsweek cover story, "The Cooling World," April 28, 1975). Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were retreating from Central European forests, the North Atlantic was "cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool," glaciers had "begun to advance" and "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" (Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).

Read the whole thing. I recommend printing Will's piece out – or at least the above extraxt – keeping it in your pocket and flourishing it in the face of the next eco-moron who tries to tell you the science is settled.

Do as we say, not as we do: prominent eco-fanatics' homes are wasting energy

2009-02-17T10:40:00.005Z

A survey by the UK's Times newspaper has found that some of Britain's leading environmental campaigners are living in energy-inefficient homes (via Instapundit):

An audit of properties, measuring heat loss, has revealed that Chris Martin, the pop star, Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and Sir David Attenborough, the broadcaster, are among those who reside in homes that are “leaking” energy. Some lack even the most basic energy saving measures such as cavity wall insulation and double glazing.

Thermal images of the residences of 10 high-profile green campaigners found that their heat loss was either worse or no better than that found in the average family home.

Hypocrisy is, of course, one of the cornerstones of the environmentalist movement. The problem in this case appears to be that these people are all very rich, and live in large, expensive houses in the most exclusive parts of London, so making energy-saving improvements is both costly, and difficult because of planning restrictions in – irony alert – 'conservation areas'.

So, for example, double glazing has to be 'in keeping' with the both the building and the surrounding area – you can't just bolt on some uPVC job, because it would look ugly. The rich and famous residents of these areas, and the planners, won't allow energy-saving improvements that don't look nice, but they don't want to pay extra for 'sympathetic' alterations. It's the Ted Kennedy/wind turbines problem on a smaller scale.

If these celebrities and politicians are really so concerned about the environment you would think they would either stump up the money to get the insulation work done, or put pressure on their local councils to relax planning restrictions and so bring down the cost of the work.

But then why should they, when from the comfort of their heat-leaking but character-filled mansions they can simply lecture the rest of us on where we travel, what we eat, and every other aspect of how we live our lives?

It would be funny if it weren't so scary: Miliband and Vaz support Wilders ban but haven't seen Fitna

2009-02-15T14:28:00.016Z

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on the British government's appalling decision to ban Geert Wilders from entering the UK. In it I mention that the idiotic Labour MP Keith Vaz appeared on the BBC's Newsnight to condemn Wilders and his film Fitna, but then admitted he hadn't seen the film.

Here's the video. The fun starts around 3.00:

Also in the piece, responding to Foreign Secretary David Miliband's claim that Fitna contained "extreme anti-Muslim hate" I wrote:

If Miliband has seen the film, then he’s lying; if he hasn’t seen it, he’s guessing.

Turns out he was guessing. From Harry's Place, via Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner:

Miliband, having watched Fitna, obviously feels it does ’stir up hate, religious and racial hatred’.

But, hold on… When asked by the interviewer if he had actually watched Fitna he responded that he had not and didn’t need to as he already knew what was in it!

Fitna is a 16 minute film, easily accessible online. Is it really so much to ask that our political overlords bother to watch a film before condemning it and supporting its creator being barred from the country? How is Miliband any better than Muslims who screamed about The Satanic Verses without bothering to read it?

Also at The Corner, Mark Steyn has a good post on the subject:

If young Muslim girls are being kidnapped and forced into marriage with their first cousins, the British Home Office minister will suggest that these matters are best handled discreetly and informally. If young Muslim girls are being murdered in "honor killings", the Chief Commissar of the Ontario "Human Rights" Commission will explain that they're a "small commission" and they have to be able to prioritize and that Mark Steyn is a far greater threat to the Queen's peace than killers of Muslim women.

But, if you don't threaten violence, if you don't issue death threats, if you don't kill anyone, if you just make a movie or write a book or try to give a speech, the state will prosecute you, ban you or (in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali) force you to flee your own country.

In their appeasement of thugs, buffoons like Miliband and the Tory squishes across the House of Commons on the Opposition benches are making it very clear that the state accords more respect to violence than to debate.

It's truly terrifying that Britain is being run by people this ignorant, and this arrogant. With the Tories apparently not offering much more in the way of backbone than the fascist bureaucrats of Labour, it's hard to see how Britain can pull out of this tailspin towards what Steyn calls 'civilizational suicide'.

Update: Thanks to Hot Air for linking.

I've also been linked by a blog called Het Vrije Volk, which appears to be a conservative outfit based in the Netherlands - thanks guys, and welcome freedom-loving Dutchmen! If anyone would like to tell me what the blog's called in English (and what the '100%' line under the title means), I'd be grateful. And make sure you visit Pajamas Media too.

Update 2: From Ed in the Comments...

Hi,

"Het Vrije Volk" translates as: "The Free People". The "100%" line says that the blog is 100% free from any government control or interference. You may have noticed that the url links to a provider in the USA and that's why the Dutch Government can't touch it. It is, nevertheless, as sad sign of the state of my country that the blog's adminstrators thought that necessary.

Hamas steps up aid thefts - where's the outrage?

2009-02-06T15:01:00.004Z

Don't hold your breath waiting for celebrity-led protests in European capitals...

From the Jerusalem Post:

UNRWA informed the IDF on Friday that it is suspending its humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip after Hamas stole supplies the United Nations organization had transferred to the Palestinian territory.
The seizure of the 200 tons of supplies took place Thursday night and in response, UNRWA officials informed the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration that it was suspending its deliveries to the Gaza Strip until further notice. The supplies confiscated included flour and other basic commodities.
The transfer of 40 truckloads of humanitarian supplies - some 800 tons - planned for Sunday has already been canceled.
It was the second time this week that Hamas stole UN supplies transferred to the Gaza Strip for impoverished Palestinians.
The first incident took place Tuesday evening when armed Hamas police broke into a Gaza warehouse packed with UN humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages.

In Gaza, the ownership of aid confers power, and Hamas desperately needs to hold on to power after starting a war which wrecked the Strip, and damaged it militarily.

At least the UN locally is starting to speak out. But what about the UN bosses in New York? What about the EU, and all those politicians who are so quick to protest about suffering Palestinians when the suffering is inflicted by Israelis? And where's the media outcry?

Then again, the MSM is fond of reminding us that Hamas is a legitimate government, and a 'humanitarian organisation' - maybe they're just frustated by the UN's inefficiency.

Another unfortunate connection between Islam and the Nazis

2009-02-05T13:09:00.003Z

The links between radical Islamists and the Nazis, forged when the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem allied himself with Hitler during World War Two, have been well documented.

And now it's emerged that Aribert Heim, a concentration camp 'doctor' who butchered hundreds of Jewish inmates, and who was number two on the Simon Weisenthal Center's wanted list, converted to Islam and apparently spent the last 30 years of his life in Egypt.

The Telegraph reports:

Nazi hunters had believed Aribert Heim, who reportedly killed hundreds of inmates with poison injections to the heart and removed his victims' organs without anaesthetic, was hiding out in Chile, where he was believed to have an illegitimate daughter.
However, the German state broadcaster ZDF announced on Wednesday that it had discovered that Heim spent nearly 30 years in the Egyptian capital before dying of bowel cancer.
In a joint investigation with the New York Times, ZDF said it had discovered that Heim became a Muslim in the early 1980s and renamed himself Tarek Fared Hussein.
After the war, he practised in West Germany as a gynaecologist but went missing in 1962 as police prepared to prosecute him.

The New York Times piece on Heim is here. It's a fascinating story, but the Times plays down the significance of Heim's moving to Egypt and conversion to Islam.

It's no coincidence that Heim made his home in a country that at the time was hell-bent on destroying the state of Israel, and found a spiritual home in a religion whose more radical adherents aspire to the mass-murder of Jews, and have a predilection for cruelty, murder and mutilation. But the Times apparently doesn't want its readers jumping to any conclusions.

Palestinian rock thrower, channelling Wile E. Coyote, is killed by own rock

2009-01-29T15:02:00.006Z

File under 'Cartoon Violence': From Israel National News, via Daniel Pipes:

A Palestinian Authority Arab who stoned cars in Samaria was killed by one of his own rocks, police have concluded. A Jewish man held in connection with the death has been released.

The Arab teenager hurled heavy stones at Israeli-owned vehicles along a Samaria highway last Tuesday evening. He managed to hit one car, which was driven by a resident of the nearby town of Emmanuel.

Fearing further attacks, the driver fired a single shot in the air to frighten away the stone-thrower. He then contacted local security officers to report both the attack and his own response.

A short time later, Israeli paramedics received a report of an Arab teen found unconscious and badly wounded next to a highway. The teen suffered a serious head injury that appeared to be a bullet wound. Medical personnel rushed to the scene but were unable to save the young Arab, who died a short time later.

Police originally believed that the resident of Emmanuel who reported firing in the air had in fact fired at his attacker, killing him. The man was arrested and questioned. However, an initial forensic report showed that the attacker had not been killed by a bullet, and the detainee was released.

A final forensic report, released over the weekend, showed that the attacker was killed when a stone he threw hit the car driven by the man from Emmanuel. The stone hit the car's tire and bounced back at high speed, hitting the attacker and leaving him with a fatal head injury.

Headline of the day

2009-01-29T14:58:00.002Z

Yep, fighting has a way of doing that.

Jenin redux: BBC and others report Hamas figures for Gaza dead as fact, ignore Israeli counter-claims

2009-01-27T13:45:00.005Z

The row over the BBC's refusal to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza has give the corporation a wonderful opportunity to grandstand about its 'impartiality', but iIronically the furor is providing a smokescreen for the BBC's reporting on the conflict itself, which has been anything but impartial.

The BBC (along with Sky) is right not a broadcast an appeal which is, in effect, raising funds for the temporarily defeated side in an ongoing conflict. The public are free to donate to those charities if they want, but supposedly impartial news organisations should not be promoting the appeal.

If anyone's in any doubt about the emotive and political nature of the ad the BBC refused to run, here's how the New York Times described it:

As shown on Monday night, the video focused heavily on the plight of Palestinian children — small boys and girls wounded and sobbing, being rushed into hospital emergency wards and, at one point, a parent clutching a tiny white shroud. Other scenes were of apartment blocks collapsed into piles of twisted steel and rubble.

But in the case of the BBC, 'supposedly' is the operative word. While it claims the moral high ground in the row over the appeal, its reporting on the aftermath of the Gaza fighting continues to betray a bias the effects of which are far more insidious than the effects of broadcasting of the DEC ad would have been.

As I've written in a piece for Pajamas Media, the BBC, along with much of the rest of the world's media, is continuing to report Hamas's figures for the number of people killed in the conflict, without mentioning that the figures are disputed, and without reporting Israel's own figures, which suggest that a majority of the casualties were Hamas fighters. Here's the paragraph on casualties in today's lead BBC story on Gaza:

The Israeli offensive in Gaza killed about 1,300 Palestinians, of whom 412 were children; 21,000 homes were destroyed or badly damaged. Thirteen Israelis were killed during the three weeks of violence.

In another report, in which the BBC's Christian Fraser attempts to manufacture an Israeli 'war crime' based on uncorroborated claims by Palestinians, the BBC again states as fact that 400 children were killed in the Israeli assault:

One of the most alarming features of the conflict in Gaza is the number of child casualties. More than 400 were killed. Many had shrapnel or blast injuries sustained as the Israeli army battled Hamas militants in Gaza's densely populated civilian areas.

Bizarrely (and belatedly) the BBC is actually running a story on the conflicting casualty claims here, yet in its lead stories, both on the web and on TV, it continues to use the Hamas-approved numbers.

As I said, the BBC isn't alone. Here's a Reuters story about the DEC row, which will have been repeated by news outlets around the world:

But the BBC and Sky, which have 24-hour news channels watched in the Middle East and have closely followed Israel's three-week war in which 1,300 Palestinians were killed, have said they will not broadcast the appeal.

And here's CNN:

The conflict, which began December 27, has left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead.

The New York Times, meanwhile, at least carries the Israeli claim of a slightly lower number of deaths, but again neglects to mention that many of the Palestinian dead were combatants:

About 1,300 people were killed, according to medical officials in Gaza (Israeli military officials have put the number at about 1,200), and more than 5,000 were reported injured.

Compare these figures with the claims of five or six hundred dead, and reports of many empty beds in Gaza's hospital, from the Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi, and with the latest estimates from the IDF:

A continuing IDF investigation into the number of civilian Palestinian casualties during the Israeli offensive in Gaza indicated that only 250 of the fatalities were civilians.

The military estimates that between 1,100 and 1,200 people were killed during the offensive. Some 700 of are believed to be militants and most are believed to be Hamas operatives.

The IDF is still trying to ascertain the identity of the remaining fatalities, but security sources said many would probably turn out to be militants as well. "Hamas is familiar with the numbers and is doing everything it can to concealed them," said an IDF source.

As I point out in my Pajamas piece, we're unlikely to ever get a definitive death toll for this latest conflict - Gaza under Hamas has been a basket case at the best of times, and the latest fighting has only added to the chaos. And which numbers you believe will probably depend largely on which side you support in the conflict.

But if the MSM is happy to report as fact uncorroborated claims from a regime made up of liars, murders, torturers and crooks, it shouldn't have a problem reporting conflicting claims made by the military of a free and democratic nation, whose statements and actions are subject to intense scrutiny by its own media and courts.

Instead, the figure of 1,300 dead Gazans - mostly civilians and including over 400 children - has now been incorporated into the mythology of Palestinian victimhood, and is being used to incite hatred against Israel worldwide.

We've been here before, with Jenin in 2002 and Lebanon in 2006. There will never be peace in the Middle East so long as myths continue to be reported as news, and it's hardly surprising that the outlook remains bleak when much of the world's media shows no interesting in uncovering and reporting the truth.

Thanks to Rusty and Carl for linking.

Self-appointed spokesman for 'moderate' Islam apologises for calling Harry a 'thug'

2009-01-15T13:14:00.004Z

Mohammed Shafiq is the spokesman for the Ramadan Foundation, which purports to represent young, moderate British Muslims. He's been omnipresent in the British media in recent days, condemning Prince Harry for using the word 'Paki' to describe an Asian fellow army officer. In several interviews, however, he apparently forgot that he was supposed to be the voice of reason, and called Harry a "thug". Now, just like Harry, he's apologized.

Shafiq normally does a better job of playing the 'moderation' game - so, for example, he was vocal in his condemnation of Sudan for arresting Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher who allowed her Sudanese pupils to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Shafiq has a good feel for mainstream public opinion, and doesn't try to defend the more outrageous behaviour of his co-religionists. But, as I've written in this piece on the Harry row for Pajamas Media, the mask slips when the issues become more nuanced (the article also touches on the double standards of other Muslim 'activists', and the media).

Shafiq has attacked Tony Blair for having the temerity to suggest that some British Muslims should do more to integrate, and the Pope for merely quoting a 14th-century emperor who was critical of Islam. He also criticized the decision to award a knighthood to Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, on the grounds that Rushdie’s exercising of his right to free speech was offensive to Muslims, and has condemned the publication of The Jewel of Medina, a 'racy' book about the Prophet Mohammed by U.S. author Sherry Jones (I wrote about that row here). Before the Harry story broke Shafiq was accusing the Israelis of behaving like Nazis in their assault on Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

And now the mask has slipped again. Like Harry, Shafiq has discovered the pitfalls of opening your mouth without first engaging your brain.

Brits taking fight to the Taliban

2009-01-10T14:31:00.006Z

Lost amid the coverage of Israel's assault on Gaza, British troops have been enjoying big successes against the Taliban in Helmand province, capturing four key enemy positions. Around 100 Taliban fighters were killed in the operation, which reached its climax with a battle on Christmas Day.

My brother Steve is in the middle of his six-month tour in Helmand, helping to co-ordinate artillery support for troops in the field from the British base in Musa Qala. He just sent a batch of photos, including this great shot of a US Marines CH-53 Super Stallion taking off from the base in the early morning (double-click for full-size image):

Karmic justice catches up with Somali pirates (and taxi drivers)

2009-01-10T13:42:00.005Z

From the Telegraph:

Five Somali pirates who released a Saudi supertanker have drowned with their share of a reported £2 million ransom after their escape boat capsized.
Residents and pirates in the Somali port of Haradhere told the Associated Press that the boat, which was carrying eight men, overturned in a storm after dozens of pirates left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden.

Three of the eight pirates managed to swim to shore but five were believed to have drowned.

The Telegraph reports that the ransom money was lost at sea, although it's not clear if all the money was lost, or if the three survivors managed to hang on to their share. Either way, karma has apparently has managed to achieve what the world's navies couldn't.

My girlfriend had a similar experience a few weeks back. A taxi driver overcharged her, and when she complained he became abusive and threatened to call the police. My girlfriend, not wanting to make a scene, paid up. The taxi driver drove out of our street, hit a patch of ice and crashed into a bus stop.

Sadly though, he held on to his money.

Israel is right to keep the MSM out of Gaza

2009-01-07T14:01:00.003Z

My latest piece for Pajamas Media. It's not like there's a news blackout - there's plenty of information coming out of Gaza, much of it in fact skewed against Israel, and the last thing Israel needs is Christiane Amanpour and the rest of the MSM all-stars providing one-sided, context-free, 'infotainment' that focuses almost exclusively on Palestinian suffering.

Make sure you read the rest of the coverage at Pajamas, particularly Victor Davis Hanson.

Media's favourite Gaza doctor is terror-loving fascist

2009-01-07T13:56:00.002Z

Unbelievable. A Norwegian doctor who is all over the TV news channels pontificating about the suffering of Gazans is a terrorist sympathiser. A regular Che Guevara. And these are the sort of people the world is getting 'impartial' reports from. (Via LGF)

More closing arguments: Obamanomics

2008-11-03T17:52:00.003Z

Three great pieces on the dangers posed by Obama's economics policies. Just highlights – read them in their entirety if you have time.

From Chicago Boyz: Why isn't Detroit a Paradise?

In 1950, America produced 51% of the GNP for the entire world. Of that production, roughly 70% took place in the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

[…]

Yet, a mere 30 years later, by 1980, we called that area the “rustbelt” and it became synonymous with joblessness, collapsing cities, high crime, failing schools and general hopelessness.

What the hell happened?

Obama happened.

Of course, not Obama personally but rather the same ideas that Obama espouses. What those ideas did to the Great Lakes states, they can do to the entire country.

Via Chicago Boyz, at Free Republic: An American businessman's letter to Obama

It's long but powerful. The conclusion:

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us...

David Harsanyi at the Denver Post: If it redistributes like a duck ...

Now, I'm not suggesting Obama intends to transform this nation into 1950s-era Soviet tyranny or that he will possess the power to do so. I'm suggesting Obama is praising and mainstreaming an economic philosophy that has failed to produce a scintilla of fairness or prosperity anywhere on Earth. Ever.

[…]

From 1982 until now, every arrow on nearly every economic growth chart, every health care chart, every chart that matters, points in one general direction — and that's up.

Obama — who, it seems, is running not only for president but also national babysitter/accountant/daddy/icon — ignores this success and claims he can "invest" (will that euphemism ever go away?) and disburse your money more efficiently, smartly and fairly than you can. How could any American accept the absurdity of this position?

Obama and the post-racial illusion

2008-11-03T13:17:00.002Z

I have a new piece up at Pajamas Media in which I argue that, while it's understandable that some people will be persuaded to vote for Obama because of his skin colour, rather than his policies, an Obama presidency is unlikely to usher in the 'post-racial' era that Americans are being promised, and in fact could have a negative impact on America's black underclass. You can read the piece here.

The piece was inspired in part by a video, embedded below, by a black conservative called 'Zo', which has deservedly become a big hit on YouTube, and has been linked by many conservative blogs. They should have given this guy half an hour of prime-time at the Republican convention, and he deserves to become a star of the Republican Party in the years ahead.

Via the links on his YouTube page I've found some great blogs by black Republicans. Here are a few links, and you can find lots more blogs and resources via these: Zo's blog, Hip Hop Republican, Bob Parks, Rational Black Man and Black Man with a Gun. You might also want to consider donating to the National Black Republican Association. These guys have a lot of guts to go against the 'conventional wisdom' of their peers, the party that's considered their 'natural home', and the narrative spun by the mainstream media, and they deserve the support of all conservatives.

Over to Zo…

VDH: The End of Journalism

2008-11-01T15:57:00.003Z

Victor Davis Hanson on the US media's wholesale abandonment of journalistic integrity:

The media has succeeded in shielding Barack Obama from journalistic scrutiny. It thereby irrevocably destroyed its own reputation and forfeited the trust that generations of others had so carefully acquired. And it will never again be trusted to offer candid and nonpartisan coverage of presidential candidates.

Worse still, the suicide of both print and electronic journalism has ensured that, should Barack Obama be elected president, the public will only then learn what they should have known far earlier about their commander-in-chief — but in circumstances and from sources they may well regret.

Read the whole thing. I agree with most of what VDH says, but if Obama wins and the Democrats make gains I'm not sure if his prediction of long-term damage to the reputation of the MSM will hold true.

The Democrats will likely bring back the Fairness Doctrine, and pursue other measures to curtail the influence of talk radio, bloggers and other new media outlets, which (along with a few conservative outlets like Fox News and the WSJ) have dared to question Obama's motives, past associations and fitness to be president.

At the same time they'll do everything in their power to prop up the 'old media' that has in effect become an arm of the Democratic party, and which will spend the next four years portraying the Obama presidency as a spectacular success enjoying universal support, whatever the reality.

Closing arguments from Mark Steyn

2008-11-01T15:36:00.002Z

Mark Steyn has a timely reminder about Obama's utter lack of substance and achievement at National Review:

In Tokyo last week, over a thousand people signed a new petition asking the Japanese government to permit marriages between human beings and cartoon characters. “I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” explained Taichi Takashita. “Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?”

Get back to me on that Tuesday night. We’ll know by then whether an entire constitutional republic has decided to contract marriage with a two-dimensional character and to attempt to take up residence in the two-dimensional world.

Read the whole thing.

An exceptional American

2008-11-01T12:15:00.002Z

A powerful endorsement of McCain from Quin Hillyer at the American Spectator. Here's his conclusion, but do read the whole thing, especially if you're a wavering voter…

So there you have it: John McCain as a patriot firmly rooted in the American traditions of free enterprise, limited government, strong defense, personal accountability, and a decent respect for the cultural standards of the broad middle of the American public. Those are the constituent elements of American exceptionalism -- and to his great credit, John McCain is an American exceptionalist, and an exceptional American.

The Ayers ad to end all Ayers ads

2008-10-22T14:25:00.003+01:00

Not, unfortunately, produced by the McCain campaign but by Kathy Shaidle and The Nose on Your Face. The McCain campaign should take this, polish it a little and run with it from now until November 4.

Some talking points for McCain

2008-10-04T17:44:00.004+01:00

Jonah Goldberg at NRO was asking for readers' thoughts on what McCain should do in the next two debates. I planned to fire off a quick email, and ended up with a pamphlet – I've been turning these ideas over for a while now, so I may as well put them out there.

I can't believe that no-one in the McCain campaign is thinking about this stuff – and sure enough it appears they're ready to 'take the gloves off' – but going on previous form I think they need all the help they can get.

1. At some point, and perhaps several times, Obama will try to link McCain to Bush. McCain should respond along these lines:

"You're desperate to connect me to President Bush aren't you senator? Well let's get something straight right now: I've had my disagreements with President Bush, and they've been well-documented. But the President is a decent and honorable man who loves his country, and what a lot of people seem to be forgetting is that he has kept this country safe from terrorist attack for seven years (emphasis), something that no-one believed was possible in the aftermath of 9/11. The President has been demonised by you and your fellow Democrats, and by your cheerleaders in the mainstream media, but I will not (emphasis) disown him for the sake of political expediency; that, Senator Obama, is your game, as you've shown by your attempts to disassociate yourself from the terrorist Bill Ayers, who plotted to murder American soliders, the racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the convicted fraudster Tony Rezko and the other radicals and extremists who helped you get where you are today."

2. As lots of people are saying, with the bailout bill safely passed McCain should go on the attack over Fannie and Freddie, and the CRA (although I appreciate that there's a 'racial sensitivity' issue there). Specifically, McCain should point out that Obama voted against tougher regulation of F&F, then ask Obama:

"Why don't you tell the American people how much money you got from Freddie and Fannie?"

If he dissembles McCain should say: "If you don't tell them, I will." When Obama continues to dissemble, as he surely will, McCain should say (preferrably over the dissembling):

"You took almost $130,000 senator. And now you're returning the favour by pretending Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with this crisis."

He should say that Democrats "took the money and looked the other way", although perhaps without saying Obama did so. Of course he should also bring up Johnson and Raines: "Far from calling for Jim Johnson to be punished senator, you rewarded him by putting him in charge of the committee to select your running mate!"

3. Related, he should bring up the Acorn connection, pointing out that Obama helped to train and fund the radical groups who pressured (intimidated? shook down?) the banks into giving loans to unqualified borrowers. He should say something like:

"Wall Street certainly takes much of the blame, but so should the Democrats who looked the other way, and so should you and your radical friends who were there right at the start of this thing."

He should also bring up Annenberg, make the Ayers connection again, and talk about the $100 million for improving schools that was diverted to Acorn and other radical groups.

See Stanley Kurtz's NYP story for more on the above if you haven't already.

4. McCain should point out all the instances of Obama saying one thing to get the nomination, and another thing once he got it. He should deride Obama's claims to have 'worked across the aisle'. And if push comes to shove, McCain should confront Obama on ideology. He should call him a socialist:

"You know senator, you've come a long way without ever telling the American people what you really stand for - nobody really knows, and I think the American people deserve to hear exactly what you believe. If you believe that socialist policies are best for America, you should have the courage of your convictions and say so, instead of hiding behind all this talk of hope and change and bipartisanship. You have the right to propose whatever policies you want senator, but what you don't have the right to do is insult the intelligence of the American people by pretending that those policies amount to anything other than bigger, costlier and more intrusive government. And that, senator, is called socialism."

5. Related, when Obama starts riffing on 'hope' (or even if he doesn't), McCain should say:

"You talk a lot about hope senator. Well I believe the American people deserve to be given more than 'hope' (derisively). They don't want 'hope'. They want assurances, they want specifics, they want certainty. They need to know that their leaders are going to help them, not hold them back, by cutting taxes and by giving them the freedom to raise their families and run their businesses in the way they see fit."

He could add that the Democrats have been "peddling hope" in America's biggest cities for decades, and what has the result been? Rising crime, failing schools and broken families (implicitly pitching to black voters here).

"I want to replace the Democrats' culture of dependancy with a culture of responsibility."

And:

"Likewise, America's friends around the world need more than 'hope'. The people of Iraq need to be assured that the next President of the United States won't abandon them just so he can pander to extremist elements within his party. The people of Georgia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republicans need to know that the United States will stand with them in the face of Russian aggression. And oppressed peoples around the world need assurance too. The people of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba need to know that the dictators who control their countries and harbour terrorists won't be given legitimacy, and a propaganda coup, in the shape of a visit from the US President."

6. McCain should bring up the attempts by the Obama campaign to shut down discussion of his past by bombarding radio stations with protest calls, and threatening radio and TV stations that run anti-Obama ads with legal action.

"Is this what you mean when you talk about a new kind of politics senator? Threats, intimidation and bullying tactics? If that's the case I think I'd rather stick with the old politics."

"What is it you're afraid of?"

Any more suggestions welcome. And if someone from the McCain camp happens to stumble across this, feel free to copy and paste into Mac's teleprompter software. Hell, you can even take credit for it.

Saudi cleric calls for veils with one eye slit

2008-10-04T15:16:00.006+01:00

…because seeing both a woman's eyes makes the guys sooooo horny!

From the BBC:

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.

The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.

I can see his point – I came over all hot and bothered just looking at the photo that accompanies the story, and had to take a cold shower.

But surely this would make it difficult for the women to drive, or watch a movie… hang, on though, they're not allowed to do those things anyway are they? So that's OK then!

And why stop at one eye-slit? Why not have no slits at all? There are already versions of the niqab that have a mesh grille instead of slits, but while this might stop the men from thinking impure thoughts, it does have the disadvantage of allowing the women to see out, which means they could easily be corrupted if they were to cast eyes on one of those hot, 400-pound Saudi man-babies.

Why don't they just seal up all the holes, and mount a radar on the top so the women don't bump into things – like bats! Or give them guide dogs. Or to be on the safe side, why not just keep them chained up in the cellar?

The BBC – the web's one-stop-shop for all your 'Aren't those Muslims whacky?' stories. Just remember not to get judgmental, because who are we to say they haven't got it right?

Why Republicans should pass the bailout bill

2008-10-03T13:25:00.001+01:00

Bill Kristol makes a good case. His conclusion:

So House Republicans should help pass the bill. I think it's the only responsible thing to do in terms of the economy. But I also think it's the only way McCain has a chance to win. To those House Republicans who care about conservative principles, about limited government and free markets--I'd ask this: How much damage will a president Obama and a Democratic Congress do to the causes you care about? Electing McCain gives us the best shot at solving this crisis in a way that doesn't lead to a permanent and perhaps irreversible expansion of the size and scope of government. Following up on Sarah Palin's victory, principled House conservatives should vote yes tomorrow. Passing the bailout would give McCain a fighting chance to win, which in turn provides the best chance--the only chance--for conservative principles to prevail in the next few years.

A couple of shots that Palin missed

2008-10-03T04:21:00.003+01:00

Palin did great tonight, but she was so focused on getting her own talking points across that she missed a couple of great chances to nail Biden.

1. When Biden talked about there being '7,000 madrassas' on the Afghan/Pakistan border, and said we should be building schools instead, Palin could have replied, "Actually Joe, madrassas are schools, and what with Afghanistan and Pakistan being Muslim countries, if we build non-religious schools there we'd have a pretty hard time finding kids to go to them." (Expect Palin would have said "go to 'em", in that endearing Frances-McDormand-in-Fargo voice).

2. When Biden repeatedly lied about Obama's pledge to meet unconditionally with the bad guys, Palin should have said "Hey, Joe, I can show you the video on YouTube. And then I'll show you the video in which you say 'No clean coal here - send it to China'."

But overall a great performance, comfortably exceeding most people's expectations. Too bad she only has a few weeks in which to keep improving. Imagine what she could be like if she had a few months…

Burning Down the House: The banking crisis explained

2008-09-30T17:17:00.001+01:00

In case you haven't seen it…

The World wants Obama. So what?

2008-09-30T16:31:00.003+01:00

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on a recent BBC poll which suggested that a majority of people around the world want to see Barack Obama elected president: We're Not Electing a President of the World.

How McCain should respond to Obama's "he can't use a computer" jibe

2008-09-14T20:35:00.004+01:00

How should John McCain respond to Obama's misleading and grossly offensive ad that claims McCain doesn't know how to send email or use a computer? We now know that in fact McCain can use a computer, but doesn't find it easy because of the injuries he suffered while a PoW in Vietnam.

Of course, if the McCain campaign points this out they'll be accused of 'playing the PoW card', and apparently McCain doesn't want to make a big deal about his disability. But I don't think they should let such a nasty and unsubstantiated jibe go without responding.

Allahpundit asks: Why doesn’t McCain want people writing about this? Is the perception of a president slightly limited by injuries he suffered heroically at war more damaging than the perception of a president who’s not incapacitated at all but chooses not to go online because he’s old and wholly removed from the culture? I don’t get it.

I don't get it either. And I'd add that creating the perception of Obama as either insensitive, too dumb to check his facts or both could do him some real damage.

I think the McCain campaign could respond to this by making it another style versus substance issue, and by hammering the judgement theme again. They can mention why McCain finds it hard to use a computer in passing – the public can work out for themselves what an egregious slight the Obama ad was.

Here's a suggestion for a McCain ad, which would be accompanied by headlines referencing the Obama ad and other appropriate images. I'd also love to see Palin say something along these lines in speeches – it makes sense not to have McCain talk about it, but let Palin come to his defence:

“Barack Obama thinks John McCain isn’t fit to be president because he can’t use a computer or send email. Apparently he thinks that’s pretty funny.

Actually, Senator McCain CAN use computers. He just can’t use them as easily as most people, because of injuries suffered years ago in the service of his country.

But he’s never let that hold him back. Because John McCain believes that it's not how you get your information that's important, it’s what you do with that information; it’s not how you communicate, it’s what you say.

Barack Obama may have his own Facebook page, but that doesn’t qualify him to be president.

Only John McCain has the experience, the knowledge and the judgement to lead.”

I'm Monkey Tennis Center, and I approve this message.

The BBC and GlobeScan: The Ben and Jerry's of international public opinion

2008-09-10T00:40:00.006+01:00

A new BBC poll shows – big surprise – that pretty much the whole world wants to see Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

Allahpundit speculates that such findings might help McCain more than Obama, given how big a hit The One's performance in Germany proved to be with the folks back home, and points out that, either way, being rated unfavourably in a BBC poll should be seen as something of a badge of honour.

I wrote about the highly dubious polling produced by the BBC/GlobeScan partnership with regards to ~~global warming~~ climate change last year. GlobeScan and its fellow-travellers at the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes and World Public Opinion are focused almost exclusively on promoting leftist talking points, which of course chimes nicely with the BBC's own worldview.

In case you're in any doubt as to where their sympathies lie, here are a few other BBC/GlobeScan polls we've known and loved:

Iran is probably developing nuclear weapons, but we can talk them out of it, and anyway this isn’t about Iran, it’s a global problem

Pakistanis: Without Musharraf, Pakistan would look a lot like Rhode Island

Loss of innocent life generally preferable to torture

Too much ~~free trade~~ globalisation a bad thing

You can almost smell the funding from some Soros-linked operation. As for methodology, I'm guessing they sample roughly 50/50 from college campuses and slums.

Here's a message from GlobeScan president Doug Miller.

'At the same time, we consider ourselves part of the democratic process, "letting the people speak" to decision-makers on matters that affect them - at meetings of world leaders, expert forums, and the boardrooms of major companies.'

It's Saul Alinksy and community organising on a global scale. And we all know who the world's biggest and bestest community organiser is, don't we?

Update: A guy from GlobeScan has left a comment, and I've replied.

Michael Moore is a lot of things, but he isn't stupid

2008-09-09T15:17:00.006+01:00

Daniel Hannan has a good post up about a poster promoting Michael Moore's latest book, which contains blurb to the effect that if rich people were drafted into the military "they won't be so eager to start ridiculous wars". Hannan points out that Moore's trope is rather undermined by the fact that John McCain has a son serving in Iraq (McCain of course also served his country), while soldier sons of both Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are heading over there soon.

Hannan headlines his post 'Michael Moore: the stupidest white man', but he misses the point. Moore is crafty, cynical, manipulative, a prolific liar and a vile human being, but he isn't stupid. Along with other propagandists on the left he's making a fortune selling his particular brand of the 'two Americas' shtick to losers, who will pay good money to be reassured in print and film that their lowly station in life is no fault of their own, but rather is the result of a vast conspiracy waged against them by rich and powerful elites.

In his movies Moore is simply offering a cruder version of the fare that's been pumped out by 'serious' filmmakers these past few years, to critical acclaim that's proven inversely proportional to box office receipts. And slapstick outsells satire every time, although the awards and approval that have come Moore's way – notwithstanding the fact that his 'documentaries' don't even come close to fulfilling the criteria for that genre – are a nice bonus.

There's a conspiracy all right – and it's being waged against the ignorant and the self-loathing, by Moore and the rest of the powerful, elitist Left. But Moore is one of the few people getting rich out of it.

Terrorists in Need

2008-08-28T15:22:00.002+01:00

Lost amid the Obamamania at Pajamas Media, I have a new piece up on the revelation that £20,000 of BBC charity money ended up in the hands of the terrorists who bombed London in July 2005. Accidents can happen, but the episode is an inevitable consequence of the BBC's softly-softly attitude to most things Muslim. You can read it here.

Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration…

2008-08-28T13:19:00.007+01:00

"Remember, if anything should happen to me, you must go to Gore and say 'Obaamu barada nikto'."

Click on the image to see the full-size version.

Summer camp Gaza style

2008-08-17T14:03:00.003+01:00

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on the summer camps for youngsters in Gaza being run by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, at which children are religiously indoctrinated, taught to hate the US and Israel and glorify violence, and otherwise abused.

It’s that time of year again: school’s out, the kids are under your feet, and, much as you love the little brats, you find your patience being tested. Eventually, after clearing yet another dirty plate, or tripping over a discarded sneaker, you give them a well-deserved piece of your mind: “Why don’t you get out of the house and do something useful, like memorize the Koran or learn how to fire a shoulder-launched rocket?”

You can read the whole thing here.

Empty T-shirts for an empty suit

2008-08-17T12:30:00.007+01:00

The vapidity of Obama's 'youth appeal' is splashed across two pages in the Review section of today's UK Observer newspaper. The piece is online here.

The main article, by Amy Larocca of New York magazine, rehashes all the well-worn points about Obama's popularity among young people – the endorsements by pop and movie stars, the 'cool' factor, his mastery of the internet and so on (although Larocca neglects to mention that the McCain campaign has recently enjoyed great success with its web video ads).

Nothing new there, even for British readers. Lines such as 'Obama understood from the start how to use the net' aren't exactly piercing political insight.

Accompanying the article are photos of seven suitably hip young Americans, wearing Obama T-shirts and photographed against authentically 'grungy' urban backdrops. And beside the photos are 'vox pops' in which they explain why Obama appeals to them.

The interviews are littered with the usual references to hope'n'change, and the vaguely articulated belief that Obama is, and will be, 'different' in some way. (Interestingly, the only one of the seven who's slightly skeptical about Obama says that, while he's supportive of his candidacy he's actually voting for Ralph Nader.)

Facts, and an acknowledgment of reality, are conspicuously absent from the testimonials. Jordana, 24, says: "For America to be this beacon of democracy it always says it is, it needs to acknowledge its flaws, look to other countries as models and build up from there."

Viola, 23, thinks Obama "has a new way of dealing with other countries without looking only at American self-interest". Sei, 18, says: "I saw Obama on television saying that you don't necessarily need experience if you have belief, and that sometimes experience can cloud your vision. I thought that was interesting and cool."

But my favourite Obamaniac is Tony, a 30-year-old… wait for it… community organiser! Tony is a Che Guevara wannabe who, in his peak cap and combat jacket, could also pass for an Obama action figure, and here's what he has to say about the man who's clearly his role model:

"I wear the T-shirt because I admire Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric; he is just cut from a different cloth from most politicians. After everything that went down in Florida in 2001 I was very cynical about the whole political process. He has revived hope in me as well as others."

Got that? Tony, who professes to be 'cynical' about politics, admires Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric. It's clearly lost on Tony that rhetoric is, by its very nature, anything but forthright and genuine. Tony is also frightened by the 'threat' from people who might be resistant to the 'change' Obama would bring about.

Tony wears his ignorance like a badge of honour.

Read the whole thing, and shudder at the naivety, and outright stupidity, of some of the people who will be voting for Obama in November.

Update: Thanks to Ace and JWF for linking. Also Dan, who highlights a few more examples of youthful ignorance.

Terry in the comments points out another howler from Tony that I missed – he thinks the Great Stolen Election was in 2001. Or perhaps he turned up, stoned, at the polling station in November 2001 and was told there was no election – it might explain why he's so cynical.

If they ever introduce a basic intelligence test as a prerequisite for being allowed to vote, the Dems will be truly screwed.

Short on global warming alarmism? Make some up!

2008-07-28T19:32:00.003+01:00

The BBC has long been famous for passing off global warming fiction as news. And with dearth of fresh alarmist news to report, they've apparently decided that putting global warming propaganda into their fictional output is a more effective means of propagandising – they've resorted to making stuff up about people making stuff up. I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on Burn Up, the atrocious global warming drama that the Beeb screened last week. You can read it here.

Red Cross spokeswoman equates Nato with the Taliban over civilian casualties

2008-07-14T16:11:00.006+01:00

The BBC has been making hay with the news that a US airstrike in Afghanistan last week apparently killed around 50 civilians, sending its reporters hiking through the mountains to collect first-hand accounts of the tragedy, and generally giving the incident the sort of coverage that it wouldn't give to a story about 50 civilians being killed by the Taliban.

It's no more than we've come to expect from the BBC, and the Western news media in general. But grudging credit where it's due: when Peter Allen of the Beeb's Radio Five Live interviewed Carla Haddad, a spokeswoman from the International Committee of the Red Cross, about the incident he at least attempted to make a distinction between civilians being accidentally killed by Nato forces, and the Taliban's deliberate targeting of civilians.

Haddad was having none of it. Despite being invited to do so by Allen, she refuses to accept that there's any difference between Nato's actions and those of the Taliban, instead falling back on platitudes about appealing to 'all parties' in the conflict, and generally doing a passable imitation of a greased weasel playing Twister.

Here's the interview (I hope – this is my first attempt at recording and embedding audio. Web 2.0? Here at Monkey Tennis Centre we're still at Web 0.05). Allen first talks to a guy from international development think-tank The Senlis Council, who, while not being overly critical of Nato, says it should put more boots on the ground and rely less on airstrikes. He starts talking to Haddad at about 1:45.

In case the clip malfunctions, or disappears, here are the key exchanges:

Peter Allen: When you say you’ve appealed to all parties does that mean you actually talk to the Taliban and say ‘The suicide bombing must stop.’

Carla Haddad: The ICRC is in regular contact with all parties to the conflict, be it Nato/ISAF forces, US-led coalition forces, the Afghan Government or the armed opposition, which includes the Taliban. So the ICRC has contacts with everyone on a regular basis, and tries to remind them regularly of their obligations under international humanitarian law, or what is also called laws of war, which explains that they should distinguish between military objects and civilians.

PA: It’s probably worth pointing out, that of course, that when you get a suicide bomber, quite deliberately they walk into a crowded place and take out a lot of civilians, and do it deliberately, and that, at the least, the allied forces do intend to hit only combatants; they don’t aim for civilians but sometimes they strike them. So there is a difference…

CH: We’re not speculating on… what we’re deploring is the casualties; and many casualties are civilians. Each force has to take into account international humanitarian law and to respect it. We will not speculate we do not know the details of what happened in every single incident. All we can say is that casualties are civilian they are either injured or killed and all parties to the conflict should spare them and should make sure they’re distinguishing between military objects and civilian objects.

As an afterthought, she adds that the ICRC 'deplores' the Taliban's suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul last week. Perhaps she was worried about leaving listeners with the impression that the Red Cross supported it.

There's such a thing as not taking sides in a conflict, but this is ridiculous. The moral equivalence on display is nauseating. Haddad, and her colleagues at the Red Cross, clearly see Nato as no better than the Taliban, and the Taliban as no worse than Nato.

This is the sort of no-fault leftist claptrap that blights the work of not just the ICRC, but the UN and other transnational NGOs. There are no good guys or bad guys, just victims and oppressors, and Nato and the Taliban are equally guilty of oppressing the Afghan people.

Of course it may be that Haddad is personally sympathetic to the Taliban's aims, and just wishes it was a little more discerning in its target selection – you've got to love her characterisation of mass-murdering religious fanatics as 'the armed opposition'.

The line about 'not knowing the details' of various incidents is a transparent cop-out. And does she honestly believe that Nato and US forces need 'reminding' of their obligations under international law?

Like Allen, I'd dearly love to know what form the ICRC's 'regular contact' with the Taliban takes. Does someone from the Red Cross really call up the Taliban to complain about civilian casualties? If so what does the Taliban tell them? "Sorry, that was another software glitch"? or "Our boy mistook that busload of schoolchildren for a Humvee"?

Either Haddad is lying, which is perfectly plausible, or the Taliban is playing the Red Cross for the well-intentioned dupes that they are. Either way, by refusing to concede that the Taliban are the real enemies of the Afghan people, the ICRC is undermining the effort to defeat them, and ensuring that it'll be needed in Afghanistan for a very long time to come.

Then again, maybe they just want to ensure that they're never out of work.

Thanks to Rusty for the link.

BBC plays 'Guess the Victims' over Jerusalem attack

2008-07-03T17:26:00.005+01:00

I also have a piece up at Pajamas Media, on the - probably unintentional - symbolism of a Palestinian using a Caterpillar machine to murder Israelis. You can read it here.

The US media has long enjoyed playing the game of ‘Guess the Party’, wherein the affiliation of Republican politicians accused or convicted of wrongdoing is prominently featured in news reports, while that of misbehaving Democrats is buried in the depths of the story, if it’s mentioned at all.

The BBC appears to have developed a couple of variants on the game – Guess the Nationality of the Victim/Aggressor and Guess the Sex of the Victim – to be played when reporting on deaths in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This morning the Beeb headlined its report on yesterday’s murders of three Israelis by Palestinian Hussam Dwayat ‘Jerusalem attacker acted alone’. The report began:

A Palestinian who went on a bulldozing rampage in west Jerusalem on Wednesday apparently acted alone, Israeli police say, despite claims by militant groups.

Hussam Dwayat was at work on a building site when he drove his front-loader vehicle into the street and started mowing down cars and ramming buses.

He killed three people and wounded dozens more before security personnel climbed on the vehicle and killed him.

The fact that people died doesn’t make it into the headline or the first two paragraphs. And you have to get all the way to paragraph 12 – after the BBC presents a couple of theories for Dwayat’s actions, which, while not exactly excusing the attacks, suggest that the behaviour of Israelis may have driven him to his wits’ end – to find out that two of the dead were women, and beyond that to realise how close Dwayat came to murdering two babies as well.

The BBC also doesn’t mention that the male victim was 68, and soon to be a grandfather. In fact its reporters fail to get so much of what’s relevant into the crucial opening lines of the story that if this was a test-piece in an exam for entry to journalism school they would probably have flunked it – and this despite the fact that BBC reporter Tim Franks watched the whole thing unfold.

Update: The BBC updated the story while I was writing this post, and the details of the victims have been pushed even farther down the report.

Contrast the story with the BBC’s reporting of incidents in which Palestinians are killed by Israeli troops or airstrikes. A quick search of the BBC’s site reveals a steady stream of headlines such as 'Four children die in Gaza strike', 'Palestinian children die in blast', 'Family killed during raid in Gaza' and 'Outrage over killing of Gaza boys'.

If children aren’t mentioned in the headline, they’re invariably mentioned in the first line of the report, and the facts that they were Palestinians, or lived in Gaza, and were killed by Israelis, are also prominent.

Again, contrast that with a February BBC story headlined ‘Gaza rockets injure two Israelis’, in which you have to get to paragraph five to learn that one of the victims was aged eight.

In the case of yesterday’s story the BBC appears more concerned with reassuring readers that Dwayat was some kind of unhinged loner, and not a terrorist. In the process of doing so they’ve essentially relegated the killings to the status of an industrial accident.

Readers’ perceptions are often framed by a quick glance at the headline, or the first paragraph of a story. Casual readers of the BBC’s website must get the impression that the Israelis deliberately target children and other Palestinian civilians on an almost daily basis, while Israelis are occasionally the victim of some mishap or criminal act.

Clearly the BBC doesn’t want its readers to know that Palestinians kill women and children. After all this would undermine the image, so carefully cultivated by the BBC and other media outlets, of Palestinian terrorists as ‘militants’ engaged in a war against an occupying army – or ‘urban guerrillas’, in the words of BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, the first kidnap victim to develop Stockholm syndrome before being seized.

The tactic is subtle, but very effective, and it stinks to high heaven. But as we’ve seen, if enough people complain, they’ve been known to withdraw lies and misleading reports. You can complain here.

HonestReporting.com has a rather more scientific analysis of bias in BBC headlines and reports.

Desmond Tutu, Neocon

2008-06-30T22:24:00.006+01:00

It took a few years, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu is finally coming around to the idea of using military force to topple dictators and liberate their subjects.

In an interview with the BBC, Archbishop Tutu urged the international community to intervene in Zimbabwe, and said he would support the deployment of a UN force to restore order in the country.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme, the former anti-apartheid leader said: "I think that a very good argument can be made for having an international force to restore peace."

This is a welcome development. And if the Archbishop’s going to be consistent, then we can shortly expect him to revisit his opposition to the Iraq war, and perhaps even confer retrospective approval on the Bush administration.

Tutu was an outspoken opponent of the invasion. Like many others he was critical of the flawed intelligence that was used to justify the war. However, he also contemptuously dismissed the secondary justification for the invasion – regime change.

This is what he said in a speech in London in February 2004.

‘But if now the reason being trumpeted for the war is regime change, why there and not for example, Burma? Or North Korea? And who makes the decision about which regimes should be changed? And what authority do they have to do whatever they think, may think is right? Or is it a matter of might is right, and to hell with the rule of international law?’

Leaving aside the silly and disingenuous argument that ‘if we can’t intervene everywhere we shouldn’t intervene anywhere’, and that the coalition had a sound legal basis on which to take action against Iraq, Apparently Tutu has apparently now conferred on himself the authority to decide which regimes should be changed.

Doubtless the Archbishop would protest that Zimbabwe is a different situation from Iraq. He might claim that his international force won’t be going in to effect regime change, but simply to restore order and safeguard the distribution of aid. Any intervention would, of course, spell the end of Mugabe’s rule.

Some might howl at this blatant double standard, accusing the Archbishop of deciding that intervention is okay, just as long as it's not America doing the intervening. And they might point out that if past experience with African 'peace-keeping' forces is anything to go by, the women and children of Zimbabwe are likely to be in as much danger from their liberators as they are from Mugabe's gangs.

But I prefer to celebrate the news that Archbishop Tutu has finally accepted the reality that sometimes, regrettably, it’s necessary to take military action against bad people in order to save innocent lives and establish democracy, up to and including killing anyone who gets in the way (His Grace hasn’t as yet gone into specifics as to the rules of engagement under which his ‘international force’ will operate, but I’m assuming that if they come under fire from Mugabe’s thugs, he’ll allow them to defend themselves).

This is quite an about-turn for the veteran human rights campaigner. In addition to opposing the Iraq war, Archbishop Tutu has been a vocal critic of Guantanamo and the military tribunals system. He’s also attacked Israel, going so far as to compare Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank with apartheid. However, he’s been such a powerful force for good in Africa, standing up to dictators of every political stripe, whether black or white, with equal forcefulness, that we can perhaps forgive him the occasional anti-American or anti-Israel outburst.

His Grace, like many soft-left types, appears to be motivated by a frustration with injustice, both real and imagined, and by the notion that if we just show kindness to evil people, then they’ll stop being evil. Despite the fact that they share a fondness for the Israel/apartheid analogy, I would certainly set him apart from bitter, hate-filled leftists like Jimmy Carter (who, lest we forget, played a key role in bringing Mugabe to power).

And anyway, it appears that His Grace’s anti-intervention days are now behind him. Many prominent neocons started out as lefties, and Archbishop Tutu appears to be the latest to see the light. Now I'm looking forward to his 'Why we can't let Iran get the bomb' speech.

Afghan biofuels: a magic bullet for energy security?

2008-06-18T16:06:00.002+01:00

Two of my pet subjects are the war on terror and global warming, and they overlap in the area of energy independence. While I'm a global warming skeptic, I do think that for security reasons the West needs to wean itself off Middle Eastern oil by developing alternative energy sources.

Reading about the struggle to discourage Afghan farmers from growing poppies for the heroin trade, I've wondered for a while whether it would be feasible to get them to grow biofuel crops instead, which would have the multiple benefits of reducing the supply of heroin, cutting off funding for terrorists, helping the Afghan economy and producing energy without diverting farmland from food production.

It turns out that people a lot smarter than me have been thinking the same thing, and I have a piece on the subject up at Pajamas Media, which you can read here.

Obama is now the only obstacle to victory

2008-06-04T20:37:00.004+01:00

Matthew Continetti has a piece up at The Weekly Standard on the clear signs of progress being made in the War on Terror, and he rightly gives much of the credit to the policies of President Bush. And it's not just the jihadists that are being defeated – it's also those who opposed the President for political expediency. Continetti writes:

The left's analysis of jihadism has been proved incorrect at every turn. It argued military power would be ineffective against the terrorists. Wrong. It argued that intervention in Iraq would energize bin Laden's movement. That movement is in shambles. The left argued Iraq was a lost cause. It isn't. The left argues that a "war on terrorism" is futile, that defeat is inevitable, because terrorism is a "tactic," not an enemy. Nonsense. President Bush has demonstrated through perseverance and (more often than not) sound policy that the war on terror can be won. And right now we're winning it.

A Barack Obama presidency, however, could still enable the jihadists to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and would also encourage Iran to step up its efforts to cause mayhem in Iraq. Lebanon and elsewhere. With the help of his supporters in the media, Obama is already attempting to airbrush his record of defeatism and misjudgment over both Iraq and Iran (see this piece, by Danielle Pletka, also at The Weekly Standard, for an account of Obama's evolving Iran position).

He may not be allowed to get away with it. As Jennifer Rubin, discussing Obama's U-turn on Iran at Commentary magazine's Contentions blog writes:

In short, the road back to the middle of the road will be treacherous for Obama. As he tries to moderate his views, on Iran most clearly, he will, it seems, face frequent reminders from the McCain camp that the new positions seem adopted especially for the general election. In a world of YouTube and Google, not to mention campaign websites, the job of the McCain camp is made much easier.

The left, unfortunately, will likely prove more resolute than the jihadists. While Islamic extremists can be killed, their bases destroyed and their ideology discredited in the Muslim world, the left will simply fine-tune its tactics in its relentless war on America and the West. And seizing the White House would be the first step on the road to victory.

Hugh Hewitt on Obama's rhetorical style

2008-06-01T13:51:00.002+01:00

Hugh Hewitt recently did a wonderful takedown of Obama's rhetorical style which you really ought to listen to. It's funny, but also extremely incisive. Bottom line: most of the time Obama has no idea what he's talking about.

Go here. The clip you want is number 29, hour 2 of the May 20 show (clip number 28, which is hour 3, is titled 'Obama audio' but it's clip 29, 'Dean Barnett', that you want).

The essence of Hugh's analysis starts at around 7 minutes and lasts about 3 minutes, but you should listen from the start to get the context, and listen to the rest of the hour, and hour 3, if you have the time.

Someone with more time and expertise than me needs to put this on YouTube, with a slideshow of shots from Obama rallies.

Muslim gangs threaten UK prisons; government responds with 'diversity events'

2008-06-01T12:38:00.002+01:00

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on the British government's typically insipid, politically-correct response to the news that Muslim gangs are threatening to take over a high security prison:

Faced with the threat of violence from gangs — Muslim or otherwise — prison officers at Whitemoor would probably prefer Tasers and pepper spray to development days, focus groups, and diversity events, but the official response is entirely in keeping with the muddled thinking that pervades Gordon Brown’s government when it comes to dealing with Islamic extremism. Ministers appear torn between trying to reassure the public that they’re being tough on terror on the one hand, and avoiding causing offense to “moderate” Muslims on the other — notwithstanding the fact that genuinely moderate Muslims shouldn’t be offended by reasonable measures taken to protect British citizens from terror attacks.

You can read the article here.

Remote Amazonian tribes for Obama

2008-05-30T22:48:00.012+01:00

Talk about getting your message across…

These guys have had no contact with civilisation, they've never heard of electricity or television, and they certainly can't speak English.

Yet somehow, they just know…

Things were going great until the plane made a low pass, and the locals spotted the 'Hillary '08' sticker on the cockpit…

Update: Thanks to Ace for linking. Also Jim, who has a fine take of his own on the story. Those poor hicks, clinging bitterly to bows and arrows and human sacrifice…

Also Rob at Say Anything (don't worry Rob, only liberals could possibly find a race angle in this, and we're long past caring what they think).

Jules Crittenden looks at the eco-angle…

I don’t know how big a carbon footprint these guys have, but the message here is pretty clear. If you want to save the planet and you aren’t living in a grass hut in Amazonia shooting arrows at passing airplanes, then you’re a chickengreenie.

Defending Beckham

2008-05-29T15:23:00.002+01:00

Yesterday Allahpundit posted a video that's apparently a huge hit on YouTube, of David Beckham scoring from around 60 yards for LA Galaxy against Kansas City Wizards. Beckham hit the ball into an empty net, on the bounce, after the Wizards' goalkeeper had pushed upfield for what I assume was a late corner kick.

For the benefit of American readers wondering what the hell the Wizards' keeper was doing at the other end of the pitch, keepers will often do this if their team is trailing by an odd goal late in a game, reasoning that leaving their net undefended is a gamble worth taking in an attempt to grab an equaliser – after all, if you're losing anyway it hardly matters whether it's by one goal or two.

Allah sniffed that he couldn't see what all the fuss over Beckham's strike was about, pointing out that any professional soccer player should be able to hit a 24-foot-wide target from 60 yards, and he was absolutely right.

In Beckham's defence, however, I sent Allah the video of Beckham scoring from the half-way line for Manchester United against Wimbledon in 1996, having spotted Neil Sullivan off his line. Allah was gracious enough to post the video, and concede that the goal was rather more impressive.

A heated debate has inevitably been raging at Hot Air on the merits of soccer vis-à-vis American football, which I don't intend to restart here. Two very different games requiring different sets of skills.

One observation though. Of the excitement over Beckham's latest effort, Allah asked 'Is this just a by-product of the collective European mancrush on Beckham?' I would suggest no – it's more likely the by-product of Americans new to soccer who don't understand how easy it was for Beckham to hit the target; of generally stupid people who have a low novelty threshold, and of hysterical Beckham worshipers, who tend for some reason to reside in Asia.

Mullahs' mouthpiece mangles elephant idioms

2008-05-19T11:23:00.007+01:00

I know Iran is in fairly dire economic straits, but if the mullahs want to wage an effective propaganda war against the West, the least they could do is fork out a few rials to supply their various mouthpieces with some dictionaries of English idioms. Because when you're trying to chastise your enemies in their native tongue, nothing blunts the impact of spittle-laden invective like getting your figures of speech mixed up.

In an editorial in today's English-language edition of the state-controlled Kayhan newspaper, under the headline 'The White Elephant', Kian Mokhtari writes:

Is there something wrong with the world's sense of what is happening in Iraq? Do we have to continue to ignore the white elephant of the illegal US occupation of Iraq and the resulting civilian deaths of around one million people, in the same way that we have stood by and watched Palestine ripped to pieces by the occupying Zionist regime?

The US is increasingly concentrating its firepower against the Iraqi forces opposed to the US-led occupation of their country while sending the Iraqi army out to fight Al-Qaeda operatives. The US is busy killing Iraqi patriots sick to death of US murder, rape and torture of Iraqi civilians, while Maliki's government has been lumbered with the task of funding the United State's so-called fight against terror.

'Illegal US occupation'… 'one million civilian deaths'… 'Palestine ripped to pieces'… 'murder, rape and torture'… the New York Times should sign this guy up under some international leader writer exchange programme. Ultimately, however, the polemic is diminished because the author made the schoolboy error of confusing his elephant expressions.

The phrase Mokhtari was grasping for was, of course, 'elephant in the room', 'elephant in the living room' or some variant on that saying, meaning something that's impossible to ignore (my personal favourite is the British 'elephant in the drawing room'). 'White elephant' describes something whose cost exceeds its usefulness to the point that it becomes a liability.

We shouldn't be too hard on Mr Mokhtari. His English is clearly very good, and it's not uncommon for English speakers to confuse the two expressions – there are warnings to that effect on the respective Wikipedia entries. And there are those who would argue that Iraq has become a white elephant for the US, although that's clearly not the context in which Mokhtari was using the phrase (similarly, many supporters of US efforts in Iraq would say that Iran is the elephant in the room in the context of the continuing instability in the country).

But the whole point of a hostile regime addressing its opponents in their own language is that it's supposed to have an unsettling and corrosive effect. It says 'we know you', ' we understand you', and 'we're not embarrassed to share our ideology with you'. And to political leaders it says 'we're so confident that your people will believe our propaganda and turn against you that we're appealing to them directly'.

And if, after the first line of what's supposed to be some paradigm-shifting rhetorical flourish, all the reader is thinking is: 'He meant elephant in the living room, not white elephant – idiot!', then it's hard for them to take what follows seriously – particularly when it's so over the top that it verges on the comical anyway.

At the moment the war between the US and Iran is one of words, rather than weapons. And if you can't get a simple phrase right, there's a danger that when you say perfectly sensible things like

Islamic Republic of Iran recently apprehended a group of terrorists responsible for the Shiraz mosque bombing atrocity. They had been trained by the UK, US and Zionist agents. Among items discovered in their hideouts were: poison gas and chemical agents to cause maximum human casualties at other venues on their to-do list.

people might not believe you.

Lean times for climate change alarmists

2008-05-15T23:26:00.003+01:00

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media on how, slowly but surely, the tide is turning against the climate change alarmists and in favour of those who are either skeptical about the existence of man-made global warming, or who believe in taking a more responsible approach to any problems that might arise from climate change, whether natural or man-made.

Long story short: the alarmists have yet to produce a single shred of evidence to support their claims that man-made CO2 emissions are causing irreversible and catastrophic changes in the Earth's climate. There's no proof that the warming seen in the last century was outside the natural range of variation in the Earth's temperature, and no proof that it has been caused by man. All the alarmists can offer is wild speculation, based on guesswork which is itself based on the output of discredited and essentially worthless computer models.

There is, however, ample proof that 'global warming' is not happening in the way the alarmists have for years been predicting that it would: we have the graphs showing that CO2 emissions are continuing to rise steadily, and we have the temperature data showing that there's been no increase in global temperatures for ten years now – and that, indeed, in recent years the Earth has cooled slightly.

Contrary to what Al Gore says, the science isn't settled, and the debate isn't over.

Freed Gitmo detainee, struggling to adapt to life on the outside, blows himself up in Iraq

2008-05-07T21:54:00.008+01:00

Politicians, anti-war groups and the mainstream media complain ceaselessly that America should close Guantanamo Bay, and either return the terror suspects being held at the camp to their home countries or put them on trial in civilian courts in the US. More than 400 detainees have indeed been returned to their countries, where they’ve either been tried for offences committed there, kept under some form of supervision or freed without charge.

One such detainee was Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who was repatriated in 2005 and subsequently acquitted of terrorism charges. While some jailbirds try to make the most of their freedom by ‘putting their life back together’, in Iraq last week Ajmi turned that concept spectacularly on its head by blowing himself apart. Ajmi, along with two other Kuwaitis, detonated two explosive-filled vehicles in Mosul, killing themselves and seven other people.

Ajmi is apparently the first former Guantanamo detainee to carry out a suicide bombing in Iraq, but he’s not the first to return to the fight after being released. Last year the Pentagon reported that at least 30 former detainees had been killed or captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan (you can find details about seven of them here). The AFP story about Ajmi puts the number of Gitmo alumnus "confirmed or suspected" of having returned to terrorism at 36.

The UK Guardian reports that Ajmi was captured attempting to cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2001. The US military opposed his release from Guantanamo, claiming that he presented a continuing danger. The case against Ajmi in Kuwait collapsed on a technicality: the court ruled that alleged testimony from Guantanamo was inadmissible because Ajmi hadn't signed it.

The report adds: ‘The involvement of an ex-Guantanamo detainee will make it harder for civil rights lawyers in the US and Britain who have been fighting for the release of the remaining prisoners at the camp complex.’

We should be so lucky. It’s likely to take more than a few dead bodies in Mosul to silence the calls from The New York Times, Human Rights Watch and others for Guantanamo to be closed, and its inmates either freed, regardless of the consequences, or moved to prisons or military bases in the US – and afforded a whole swathe of additional rights in the process, including new opportunities to challenge their detention.

Nobody is pretending that Guantanamo and the military tribunals system is the perfect solution for dealing with 'enemy combatants' captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but unfortunately no-one has as yet come up with an alternative that doesn't run the risk of allowing dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of fanatical, trained terrorists to go free. The phrase ‘legal minefield’ has never been so appropriate, although perhaps the minefield metaphor should be updated to include explosively formed penetrators and suicide bombers.

McCain, Obama and Hillary have all pledged to close Guantanamo if they're elected, although, as the LA Times reported recently, none of the three has offered specifics about how they would deal with the suspects being held there. The best McCain could come up with in a recent speech was: "I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control."

The Times story highlights the main stumbling block in the way of closing Guantanamo: the Pentagon wants to retain the ability to detain those individuals it considers most dangerous indefinitely, regardless of whether it has strong evidence against them. But, even were Congress to pass such a law, the anti-war lobby and their lawyers would begin fighting it just as soon as they’d shaken off their hangovers from the ‘End of Gitmo’ party.

Leaving aside the human rights specialists and activist judges, the legal establishment hasn’t been overly helpful, appearing to treat the problem of how to strike a balance between civil liberties and the rights of detainees, and the need to protect the public, as a conundrum to be pondered to the nth degree, rather than a matter of life and death.

Guantanamo, and the wider legal and constitutional issues arising from the War on Terror, have been addressed by some formidable legal minds, including US Court of Appeals Judge Richard A. Posner, whose book Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency is reviewed by the Weekly Standard’s Peter Berkowitz here, and John Yoo, the former Justice Department official who found himself framing much of the Bush administration’s legal response to 9/11 and its aftermath. But the fact that people have time to write books about these issues doesn’t bode well for the prospects of coming up with solutions any time soon.

Meanwhile, for the presidential candidates it’s all about pandering to the perception, certainly held by many in the US and abroad but magnified by politicians and the media, that America’s image somehow needs repairing. Even McCain, who’s steadfast in his support for the Iraq mission, apparently feels compelled to throw the Guantanamo bone to the less-hysterical elements of the anti-war crowd.

For the lawyers and human rights groups who are determined to spring as many detainees from Guantanamo as they possibly can, the motivations are different. While some are no doubt acting out of principle – however naively – others aren't much concerned with the guilt or innocence of those whose release they're battling to secure; for them it's all about embarrassing the US and the Bush administration, and if, every so often, one of those freed detainees happens to blow a few innocent people to pieces, that's a risk worth taking.

The anti-war crowd, and the left in general, are exemplars of political expediency, and have never been overly burdened by the unpleasant consequences of their supremely principled actions. And their efforts are cheered on by a media that takes as much delight in seeing the Bush administration defeated in the courtroom as it does from seeing US forces and their allies frustrated on the battlefield.

The US needs to come up with a watertight legal framework for dealing with the threat from radical Islamists, who often have no national allegiance, and refuse to abide by even the most basic conventions of war, fast. Those who have their reservations, but who aren’t ideologically invested in seeing Bush and the Republicans defeated, should ponder the backlash that would follow if another freed Guantanamo detainee mounted a successful attack closer to home. Last week it was seven dead in Mosul. Next time it could be 50 in London, or 500 in New York.

In the meantime, perhaps some of the shysters and Atticus Finch wannabes who are so desperate to see the inmates of Guantanamo walk might like to meet with the families of those who were murdered by Ajmi last month. They would be able to reassure the bereaved that, while his release proved fatal for their loved ones, at least justice was seen to be done.

Update: I thought of speculating in this post that some in the MSM/anti-war/human rights crowd might try to suggest that Gitmo turned Ajmi into terrorist. But I thought 'Nah, I'm getting paranoid.'

Then, via Ace, I see this…

UK Muslims launch group to counter extremism; extremists counter with said extremism

2008-04-23T17:03:00.007+01:00

Unlike the rest of the BBC’s news operation, its Newsnight programme (it's on late in the evening on BBC2) isn’t afraid to tackle stories about Islamic extremism in Britain. Last night it carried a report on the launch of a think-tank set up by British Muslims to counter Islamic extremism.

The Quilliam Foundation (named after a 19th century British convert to Islam) aims to set up rehabilitation centres for former and ‘wavering’ radicals, organise training for preachers, and counter attempts to radicalise Muslims in colleges, prisons and mosques. Its website is here, and you can read more about the organisation, and the background of some of its members, here.

Its founders are former members of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the organisation has the support of respected British politicians and academics, including Sir Paddy Ashdown and Conservative MP Michael Gove, author of Celsius 7/7 (which is akin to Mark Steyn’s America Alone but without the jokes).

After the report there was a pretty entertaining studio debate between Maajid Nawaz, the foundation’s director, and Azzam Tamimi of the Hamas-linked Institute of Islamic Political Thought.

You can watch the video of last night’s programme here (link at top-right). The video will be available until 10.30pm UK time today, although you may still be able to find the report elsewhere on the site after that. The report starts at around 22.40, and the debate between Nawaz and Tamimi starts a few minutes further on.

Nawaz – who while studying in Egypt was jailed for his membership of HT – basically runs rings around Tamimi, whose only contribution to the debate is to call everyone associated with the think-tank neocons and Zionist stooges.

At one point the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, asks the evasive, weasel-mouthed Tamimi: "Do you accept there is a problem with the interpretation of Islam if some young people thing that the only way to legitimately express it is to strap explosives to themselves and blow themselves up?"

Tamimi replies that the problem has to be dealt with within Islam – which of course is exactly what Nawaz’s organisation wants to do – and accuses the foundation of ‘attacking Islam’.

Nawaz highlights the Islamists’ (yes, he freely uses the term ‘Islamists’) inability to separate religion from politics, and asks how his colleague Ed Husain – a particular target of Tamimi’s ire – "can be at war with Islam for criticising people who want to blow themselves up in Palestine" – which, as he points out, is something Tamimi himself has publicly aspired to.

It’s too early too say how successful the Quilliam foundation will be, or whether their motives are entirely genuine, but I suspect they’re the real deal. At times during the debate Nawaz talks about ‘right-wingers on both sides’ and appears to equate ‘neocons’ with Islamists, but I think that’s a case of sloppy language – the word has after all been bandied about by the media to the point where few people know what it means. And he doesn’t fall back on the usual lazy arguments about Muslims being radicalised by Western foreign policy.

The fact that the foundation is already being attacked by the extremist–riddled Muslim Council of Britain (which the Government happily talks to and funds), and by leftist commentators, suggests they’re on the right track.

There’s more from Ed Husain here and here – the comments on the second piece, at the lefty Guardian's website, include some high-quality British moonbattery.

Ed at Hot Air has news of a similar, Europe-wide initiative here.

If an MSM celebrity is caught in a park with a rope around his genitals, and the MSM doesn’t report it, does the story get around?

2008-04-21T17:44:00.005+01:00

Along with many other people, I’ve long suspected that CNN’s hyperactive global business correspondent Richard Quest was on drugs, and sure enough he is.

Judging by Quest’s on-screen demeanour, I’ve also long suspected that he has a rope permanently tied around his neck, concealed under his clothing and with the other end tied around his genitals.

Turns out that’s true as well. Under the headline Kinky News Network, the New York Post reports:

CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said.

Quest, 46, was arrested at around 3:40 a.m. after a cop spotted him and another man inside the park near 64th Street, a police source said.

The criminal complaint against Quest said the park was closed at the time - something Quest should have known because of all the signs saying "Park Closed 1 a.m. to 6 a.m."

Quest was initially busted for loitering, the source said. Aside from the oddly configured rope, the search also turned up a sex toy inside of his boot, and a small bag of methamphetamine in his left jacket pocket.

It wasn't immediately clear what the rope was for.

Can we infer from that that it was immediately clear what the sex toy was for?

The reports adds:

Quest's lawyer, Alan Abramson, had a much more innocuous version of events.

"Mr. Quest didn't realize that the park had a curfew," Abramson said. He was simply "returning to his hotel with friends."

The New York tabloids and the blogs are having a field day with this. But CNN, along with the rest of the networks that are signed up to the MSM’s own version of the Hitler/Stalin pact, are either playing down the story or ignoring it altogether.

CBS and ABC have brief reports buried in their showbiz sections, while CNN and MSNBC have nothing. Their reporters are presumably too busy chasing stories about politicians and celebrities being busted for things like drug possession and kinky sex.

Quest is, of course, free to get his kicks however and wherever he wants (within the constraints of the law - and I'm sorry, but 'Park Closed' means 'Park Closed').

And I for one am not going to take the cheap shot of demanding that the MSM applies its usual standards of scrutiny to one of its own.

From the sound of it, it seems that Quest may already have tried to hoist himself by his own petard.

Update: Thanks to Kate and Rusty for linking.

And for the benefit of any pedants making a beeline for the comments form, I know what 'petard' means. I just had to explain the joke word by word to the editor of a well-known web round-up mailing from a well-known US newspaper, and when you spell it out it doesn't seem so funny.

BBC on child marriage in Yemen: Move along folks, nothing Islamic to see here

2008-04-17T09:24:00.009+01:00

In Yemen you don't have to spell out D-I-V-O-R-C-E to hide what's going on from the kids, because it's the kids who are getting divorced. The BBC reports:

A Yemeni court has annulled an eight-year-old girl's marriage to a man in his 20s, after she filed for divorce.

The girl, Nojoud Mohammed Ali, took a taxi to a judge’s office on her own, after running away from her husband.

Lawyer Shatha Nasser told the BBC she heard about Nojoud by chance and instantly decided to represent her.

"Child brides are common in parts of Yemen, but this case received wider attention because it reached court," she said.

The report adds that Yemen has no legal minimum age for marriage, although the wife is only allowed to live with her husband once she has reached puberty. Nojoud told the court she had signed the marriage contract two-and-a-half months ago on the understanding that she would stay with her parents until she was 18, but her parents forced her to go and live with her husband a week later. The court was told that the marriage had been consummated.

The CIA factbook lists the religion of Yemen as 'Muslim, including Shaf'i (Sunni) and Zaydi (Shi'a), small numbers of Jewish, Christian, and Hindu'. And Wikipedia states: 'Less than 1% of Yemenis are non-Muslim, adhering to Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism.'

So I suppose the reluctant bride and her groom could have been members of a gun-toting, bible-bashing minority Christian sect clinging to ancient traditions like child marriage out of a sense of bitterness. However, while I wouldn't want to go jumping to conclusions, given that Nojoud's father is called Mohammad it's highly likely that they were Muslims.

And the BBC defers to no-one in its skill at navigating the minefields of multiculturalism, so it manages to report the story without mentioning the ‘M’ or ‘I’ words. Perhaps the BBC doesn't think that Islam is issue here. After all, it also reports that:

Yemen is one of the world's poorest countries.

and...

The courtroom was packed with members of the press and human rights activists, who are using the case to highlight the need for more child protection in Yemen.

So there you go - the problem of 8-year-olds being married and sexually abused can probably be sorted out by lifting Yemenis out of poverty, and getting social services involved.

Compare the BBC's kid-gloves approach to the eccentricities of Islam with its recent reporting on the polygamy sect bust in Texas:

Texas authorities have continued raids on a ranch belonging to a breakaway Mormon sect, removing a total of almost 200 women and children since Thursday.

No problem mentioning the religion there. Every BBC report on the story refers prominently to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and some mention Bibles.

Most reports also include the following stock sentence:

Members believe a man must marry at least three wives in order to ascend to heaven. Women are taught that their path to heaven depends on being subservient to their husband.

Maybe the BBC could included a similar sentence, by way of establishing context, in reports such as today's from Yemen. Here's a suggestion:

There is no minimum marriage age for men or women under Islamic law. Mohammed was betrothed to his second wife, Aisha, when she was aged six, and the marriage was consummated when she was nine and he was 52.

Of course, they'll do no such thing, despite the fact that in a recent lecture the BBC's director general, Mark Thompson, stressed that broadcasters should not shy away from reporting on sensitive issues regarding any religion (the lecture is linked at the top-right of the page):

...we have a special responsibility to ensure that, whatever the difficulties and the sensitivities, the debate about faith and society and about the way people with very different beliefs encounter each other – that this debate should not be foreclosed or censored.

Thompson's words are laughable. Time and again the BBC cows to threats, and even the possibility of threats, by Islamists, whether apologising for jokes made by presenters, calling Muslims who killed Christians in Turkey 'nationalists', changing the plots of dramas to avoid causing offence, or apologising for showing the merest glimpses of the Mohammed cartoons.

Perish the thought that, confronted with honest reporting about extreme aspects of Islam, Westerners might be more resistant to millions of people arriving in their countries from Islamic countries, free to practise their customs and under no obligation to assimilate. And perish the thought that people might be a little more supportive of US-led efforts to stop Islamic extremists dominating the Middle East.

You can find a serious discussion of child marriage in Islam, by a Muslim writer, here.

Of course, the BBC aren't the only ones in the UK living under self-imposed dhimmitude.

Update: Freeborn John links, and has extended thoughts on both child marriage in the Islamic world and the BBC's bias in general. Also linked by Pajamas.

We must listen to the IPCC say the climate alarmists – except when it's not hysterical enough

2008-04-15T22:32:00.006+01:00

As the Earth chills, polar bears and penguins gambol on the expanding polar ice, and Al Gore tries to repackage his patented brand of hysterical dishonesty, the BBC's chief ~~global warming~~ climate change alarmist, Richard Black, is scrambling around with increasing desperation for stories to keep the doomsday scenario alive.

And so we get reports like this on the BBC's website. Under the headline 'Forecast for big sea level rise', Black writes:

Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis.

This is substantially more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast in last year's landmark assessment of climate science.

Sea level rise of this magnitude would have major impacts on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.

The findings were presented at a major science conference in Vienna.

The research group is not the first to suggest that the IPCC's forecast of an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43cm by 2100 is too conservative.

And so it goes on. The story, which reports findings by a UK/Finnish team, is suitably adorned with a beautiful yet poignant image of a Bangladeshi woman up to her waist in water, clutching a child.

For the sake of keeping the arithmetic simple, let's consider a sea level rise of 0.9 meters, towards the low end of the projections that have got Black so excited. This would require an average rise of a 100mm per decade for the next 90 years, or 10mm per year. Buried deep in Black's article is the current average annual rise: 3mm.

So how are the researchers able to predict a more than trebling in the rate of sea level rise? By using that paragon of reliability, the computer model, of course.

And into this particular computer model they fed information about ice caps melting as a result of rising global temperatures, regardless of the fact that the global temperature hasn't risen in the last ten years, and fell last year (it's projected to fall again this year, but unlike the alarmists we'll stick to observed facts). And regardless too of the fact that the Antarctic ice is at record coverage, the Arctic ice is recovering after recent melting, and ocean temperatures aren't rising.

The report reaches new heights of absurdity when Black quotes another scientist, Steve Nerem from the University of Colorado, as saying: "There's a lot of evidence out there that we're going to see at least a metre of sea level rise by 2100."

How the hell can anyone, let alone someone who purports to be a scientist, say they have 'evidence' that we're going to see something? On what planet does that constitute acceptable scientific methodology? And how can Black, with a straight face, include such a self-evidently preposterous statement in what purports to be a science report?

No scientist, of course, has ever produced a single grain of evidence to support any of the tenets of man-made ~~global warming~~ climate change. All they have ever produced are predictions, projections and guesswork, all of which have been based on the now-discredited hypothesis that global temperatures would continue to rise in line with CO2 emissions.

Another thing that's interesting about this story is that Black appears to have lost faith in the all-seeing, all-knowing, IPCC. You'll be aware that, whenever a 'rogue' scientist or politician raises doubts about the causes, effects or very existence of ~~global warming~~ climate change, the BBC, Gore and the rest of the alarmist movement invoke the IPCC, which they claim represents the views of the world's leading scientists, as the dissent-crusher of last resort.

Leaving aside the fact that the IPCC is not a scientific body, but a hopelessly politicised and bureaucratised offshoot of the United Nations that uses science when the science fits its agenda, and disregards it when it doesn't, it's strange then that Black is only too ready to doubt the findings of the IPCC when someone comes up with an even more alarming prediction than it can offer.

But we shouldn't be that surprised, because of all the reporters shilling for the alarmists, Black is one of the most shameless, shouting about every new finding, however unconvincing, that fits that alarmist narrative and ignoring any evidence that doesn't. At least his colleague Roger Harrabin had the decency to hold out for a couple of emails before caving in to threats from an eco-fascist (Glenn Beck video here if you haven't seen it). In Black's case, no threats are necessary.

We know the New York Times makes up the narrative on Iraq; now they're making up quotes too

2008-04-14T17:46:00.004+01:00

If you want to know what's really going on in Iraq, rather than having your news spun, cherry-picked or just plain made up by the MSM, then in addition to the obvious sources such as Michaels Yon and Totten you should check out Talisman Gate, the blog of Iraqi scholar Nibras Kazimi.

Kazimi, who has family, friends and other contacts on the ground in Baghdad and elsewhere, takes great delight in dissecting the US media's Iraq reporting, and in particular that of the New York Times.

In a recent post Kazimi mocked the Times' Baghdad bureau chief Jamie Glanz's continuing portrayal of the recent violence in Basra and elsewhere as a spectacular defeat for Prime Minister Maliki. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, says Kazimi,

…Glanz still has the gall to write, and write, and write: “…the badly coordinated push into Basra…”, “…the Mahdi Army stopping Mr. Maliki’s Basra assault cold…”, “…Mr. Maliki’s military operation in Basra foundered against Mahdi resistance…”, and “…the military ‘fiasco’ of his Basra adventure.” How is that?

It seems that Glanz hopes that by repeating something often enough, he can magically make it real.

Most interestingly, Kazimi presents evidence that suggests Glanz is at best a careless reporter, and is at worst making up quotes to suit the stories he's determined to file:

To authenticate such stretches, Glanz cites a single source to firm up his diagnosis:

Reflecting that calculus of power on the streets, Amal Mosa, a 28-year-old computer systems worker in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, said, “I think Maliki and America are more powerful than JAM, but Maliki alone would be smashed by it,” referring to the Mahdi Army by its Arabic acronym.

There is something very fishy about this quote, since there is no “Arabic acronym” for the Mahdi Army. It is either referred to in Arabic as jaish almahdi, jaish alimam, or jama’at alsadr. “JAM” is an acronym invented by the U.S. military and is never used by speakers of Iraqi Arabic. I don’t want to accuse Glanz of fabricating a quote, but even if this error is somehow passed on to Glanz’s interpreter then it would seem doubtful that Glanz, who boasted in his Op-Ed over the weekend that he can speak some Arabic, would not have caught this error while in translation or not figured out that it was quite weird for a native speaker to employ American terminology.

Kazimi stops short of accusing Glanz of making up the quote, but given the bias that's prevalent in Glanz's reporting, I suspect he's being overly charitable.

British troops have killed 7,000 Taliban in two years; would like to kill fewer

2008-04-14T11:10:00.003+01:00

Many of us who support victory in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (I deliberately try to avoid the term 'pro-war') have long complained that our governments and militaries are reluctant to publicise the numbers of enemy being killed.

Senior soldiers and politicians say they don't want to make the conflicts all about 'body counts', because that plays into the hands of extremists, and also detracts from the humanitarian and nation-building aspects of both campaigns.

It's a fair point, but the counter argument is that if we don't highlight the successes achieved by our troops, it leaves the way clear for the MSM and political opponents of the war to dominate the news with reports of setbacks suffered and mistakes made by allied forces, and other stories that undermine support for the war effort and provide encouragement to the enemy.

I'm a body count person myself. I think the positive effects of letting the folks back home know that we're winning outweigh the possible negative effects of radicalising a few more Afghans or Iraqis at the margins. But this story from the UK's Sunday Times illustrates the dilemma faced by allied forces:

British troops are to scale back attacks on the Taliban after killing 7,000 insurgents in two years of conflict, defence sources said last week.

British paratroopers have returned to southern Afghanistan in increased numbers this month. For the first time, members from every battalion of the regiment will be fighting together on one battlefront.

The paratroopers of 16 Air Assault Brigade killed at least 1,000 Taliban during their first deployment to Helmand province in 2006. Since then another 6,000 Taliban insurgents have been killed by British troops, the sources said.

The paratroopers’ commanders hope they can cut the deaths, which they fear are a boost for the Taliban when fighters recruited from the local population are killed, as the dead insurgent’s family then feels a debt of honour to take up arms against British soldiers.

7,000 enemy KIA, against 93 British deaths, has to be good news (although I wonder how many of those 7,000 were killed by US air support), and it seems counter-intuitive to hear military commanders say they want to kill less of the enemy. But I can see where they're coming from – they're the ones in the field who have to face the consequences of Afghan deaths boosting the militants – and I'll trust them to keep killing the bad guys when they need to be killed.

I'm just glad that there will be 7,000 less Taliban around for my brother to worry about when he deploys to Afghanistan with the British Army in September.

Muslim war graves desecrated in France

2008-04-06T15:26:00.002+01:00

Via the BBC: vandals have desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest WWI cemetery.

If this was supposed to be some kind of warped protest about Islamic extremism they picked the wrong target. The people who did this have far more in common with the Islamic fascists than those Muslims whose graves they vandalised – they're most likely neo-Nazis, and Islamists such as the Mufti of Jerusalem sided with the Nazis during WWII.

And they're off! Running battles as Tibet protestors ambush Olympic torch relay in London

2008-04-06T13:55:00.014+01:00

Update 4: I now have a piece on yesterday's events up at Pajamas Media.

Update 5: For more on what's happening in Tibet you might want to check out Agam's Gecko.

Come to think of it, it would make a great Olympic event of itself: try to carry a torch (or baton, or any object) 31 miles through a major city, smiling the whole time, while being assailed by an angry mob.

As I write this post the relay is barely half-way across London, and the event is degenerating into what looks like a rolling series of Reagan shootings – someone attacks the procession, 20 policemen jump on them, another one shouts Go! Go! Go! and the torch, almost the literal definition of a political hot potato, continues on its way.

Already one protestor has tried to snuff out the torch with a fire extinguisher, while another tried to rip it out of the hands of a bemused children's TV presenter. There have been 25 arrests so far. The BBC has full coverage of the festivities/hostilities (festilities?), including video clips of the aforementioned incidents, here and also on its front page.

(Update 1: You can now watch live coverage at the above link. It's worth watching just for the comedy value of the massed ranks of jogging coppers, who occasionally break formation to rugby-tackle another protestor.)

The Beeb also has live coverage of the climax of the relay on its main channel at 5.35pm UK time, although they might drop it if the trouble continues, especially given that the protestors are likely to have some high-profile disruption planned for the finale.

I'll update this post with any major developments, but if you can get BBC World or BBC News 24 on cable/satellite I suggest you have some friends over, break out the beer and chips and enjoy the show.

I have to say I feel rather proud to be British today. These scenes are being broadcast around the world, and will certainly encourage campaigners elsewhere to stage similar protests, as well as putting pressure on national governments to at least boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing or make some other gesture, even if they insist on allowing their athletes to participate in the games. Sarkozy is making some encouraging noises.

Screw keeping politics out of sport. It's a quaint but outdated notion that might carry some weight if sport wasn't now dominated by commercial interests. Prestigious global sporting events shouldn't be gifted to murderous dictatorships, and that's that.

George Clooney was unavailable for comment.

Update 2: The pathetic response of Konnie Huq, the aforementioned TV presenter, is typical of the platitudes being spouted by politicians and sporting figures:

"I believe in the Olympic values, the Olympic ideals... it's just unfortunate that China has such a terrible track record when it comes to human rights and they are the host nation."

Especially unfortunate for those still being murdered and persecuted by the Chinese in Tibet and elsewhere in the country, and by Beijing's pals in Sudan.

Moron.

Update 3: The pop group Sugababes has pulled out of the concert that's due to cap off the festivities this evening. There's some talk of laryngitis, but it's probably more a case of something sticking in the craw. Maybe they can get Bjork to fill in.

Thanks to Gateway Pundit for linking – Jim has more links and video. And thanks also to Kate, and a warm welcome to Small Dead Animals readers.

The NYT's increasingly desperate attempts to declare defeat in Iraq are getting embarrassing

2008-04-04T14:19:00.005+01:00

The New York Times, desperate to re-energise the flagging drumbeat of bad news from Iraq, continues to obsess about the shortcomings, both real and imagined, in the performance of Iraqi forces who battled Shia militias in Basra and elsewhere last week. Today's report begins:

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.

As is usually the case with New York Times stories, once you read beyond those eye-catching first couple of paragraphs the story slowly starts to come apart – decompose would be a better term, and also an apposite metaphor for journalistic ethics at the Times.

The desertions were mostly in the ranks rather than among officers. They represented a fraction of the forces committed to the fight, and may were the result of simple fear or inexperience rather than anything more sinister. Maliki has promised to deal with them harshly. The Times report adds:

The American military official said, “From what we understand, the bulk of these were from fairly fresh troops who had only just gotten out of basic training and were probably pushed into the fight too soon.”

“There were obviously others who elected to not fight their fellow Shia,” the official said, but added that the coalition did not see the failures as a “major issue,” especially if the Iraqi government dealt firmly with them.

The story here is not the understandable shortcomings of the Iraqi military, but the fact that they've come so far in such a short time, and under such testing circumstances. So yet again we have to ask: where is the Times going with this?

Well for one thing, they never tire of emphasising that the Iraqi forces are 'American-trained'. As I wrote in a piece for Pajamas Media about an earlier NYT story on Basra:

For most observers the fact that the Iraqi forces have been trained by American (and British) troops has no bearing whatsoever on the events in Basra, but the Times considers it noteworthy enough for the opening line of the story, and the implication is clear: all that American training has failed to lick the Iraqi army into shape, or, even worse it’s actually a contributing factor to the failure of government forces to subdue the insurgents.

And anyway, how can the Times say that the desertions 'cast fresh doubt' on the effectiveness of Iraqi forces? The Times has already cast so much doubt on their effectiveness that there can't possibly be any 'fresh' doubt left to cast.

While last week's clashes were, in the Times' words, 'inconclusive', few serious observers doubt that both Maliki and the Iraqi army emerged with their reputation enhanced, while Moqtada Sadr was further exposed as a puppet of Iran unable to control his own militias.

For some genuinely insightful and informed analysis as to who won and who lost, rather than the boilerplate offered by the Times' reporters and their anti-government Iraqi stringers, I recommend you read this blog post by Nibras Kazimi. Kazimi is a Hudson Institute scholar and New York Sun columnist, and he's also an Iraqi who's increasingly optimistic about his country's future, and has excellent connections there. His hugely encouraging conclusion:

It is unfortunate that what little news the American public gets to see and read about Iraq gets so distorted by the neurotic contortions of a handful of maladjusted, misinformed journalists. This active disinformation will further confuse those uppity congressmen who’ve made running Iraq from afar their business, and may even sway elections one way or another. But the regular readers of this blog will know that such mistaken perceptions and the actions they may entail no longer worry me, since I see very little that America could do to alter realities in Iraq proper, realities that I find encouraging. Sure, Americans could make things even better had they had the chance to see why Iraq is so worthwhile, but for that to happen integrity would have to be reintroduced into the profession of journalism—don’t hold your breaths. For now, I’d settle for how things are developing on their own accord.

Incidentally, one of the commenters posted a link to a photo of hundreds of Shias queuing up to join the Iraqi military in Basra, which Ace of Spades posted here.

You might think the Times would be talking up the performance of the Iraqi military, eager as it claims to be for US forces to leave Iraq. But a US withdrawal on its own terms, leaving behind a capable Iraqi government and military and a relatively stable country, would be a spectacular defeat for the Times, and for all those who have invested so much in America failure there.

The Times' efforts to spin continuing progress in Iraq as failure are becoming increasingly desperate. Aside from the Times' own staff, Obama and Hillary, no one's listening any more. Its behaviour reminds me of how, when I was younger, I would resort to increasingly desperate measures in an attempt to win back some girl who had very obviously dumped me.

Just as I used to think ‘Hey, I’ll make her a really moving compilation tape! That'll do it!' The Times seems to think that reporting on how a whole Iraq infantry platoon put their boots on the wrong feet will finally convince those who remain committed to victory in Iraq to abandon all hope.

I'm not even angry at the Times any more. It's just pathetic.

Related: Two months of higher casualties in Iraq, and the BBC declares a 'trend'.

Two months of higher casualties in Iraq, and the BBC declares a 'trend'

2008-04-01T22:46:00.004+01:00

How long did it take the BBC to acknowledge that things were getting better in Iraq? Certainly a lot more than two months. Six at least, probably more. But after just two months of increased Iraqi deaths the Beeb has no hesitation in declaring an upward 'trend'.

Under the headline 'Iraqi death toll climbs sharply' it reports:

The monthly figure of people killed in Iraq rose by 50% in March compared with the previous month, according to official government counts.

A total of 1,082 Iraqis, including 925 non-combatant civilians, were killed, up from 721 in February.

The journalists who put this story together (there's no byline – it's one of those BBC staples: figures culled from wire reports with a smattering of unattributed 'analysis') must have been counting down the hours until the end of March like a kid waiting for Santa Claus so they could let loose with this.

In the fourth sentence the report actually provides an explanation for most, if not all, of the increase in March deaths over the February figure:

March also saw an increase in bombings and intense fighting between Shia militiamen and government forces.

That's right. And the violence in Basra and elsewhere was isolated, not typical of recent developments in Iraq, and it was quickly contained, with Moqtada Sadr backing down again. But no matter:

The number of deaths last month seems to confirm a trend of rising deaths due to violence.

A trend? Two months' worth of statistics is a trend?

The madness continues in the very next paragraph, where the BBC, without the merest suggestion of irony, reports on an actual trend:

More than 1,800 people were killed in August 2007. This declined to 540 in January 2008…

Yes! That trend there! Six months of figures! That's a trend! Guys! Guys…

Nope, they're not listening.

…but the figure has risen steadily since.

Rising steadily? Rising @$%*ing steadily?! Let's count those months again shall we…

1, 2…

Er, that's it. But anyway, here comes the analysis, ready or not…

Correspondents say the figures will be a blow to the Baghdad government and the US, which had claimed overall levels of violence had been reduced by last year's US troop surge.

For one thing, no-one has 'claimed' that violence has been reduced by the surge. It has been.

But do you really believe that someone in the newsroom said "Hey, I know! Let's ring round our correspondents and ask them what they think the implications of this are for the Baghdad government and the US!"

Of course they didn't. The editors just dropped that line in because it, or a variation on it, is the BBC's stock comment whenever they perceive that things are going badly for the US and/or its allies.

Not that anyone had to bother typing the sentence of course – they use it so often that it's one of the keyboard shortcuts set up for the BBC's word-processing software:

Hit Shift+F1 for 'Correspondents say the figures will be a blow to the Baghdad government and the US.'

Hit Shift+F2 for 'Correspondents say the airstrike will damage relations between Afghanistan and the US.'

Hit Shift+F3 for 'Correspondents say the news is a severe blow to the Bush administration.'

And so on.

Anyway, let's see how this 'trend' develops shall we? I'm not claiming that Iraqi deaths definitely won't go up again next month. Maybe they will. There could be one or two huge bombings. There could be another flare-up with the Shias.

I have no doubt that progress in Iraq will continue to be slow painful; I also have no doubt that progress will continue to be made.

But the BBC has played its hand. You might almost say it was staking its reputation as a trusted news provider on its 'trend' prediction, if it had a reputation to stake.

If casualties don't increase again in April, will the BBC report that its 'trend' has been bucked?

Watch this space.

Who'dathunkit! Chavez 'stifling Venezuelan media'

2008-03-30T15:55:00.004+01:00

Hugo Chavez has been accused of stifling press freedom in Venezuela by an organisation which represents media companies from across the Americas. The BBC reports:

Delegates at a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association in Caracas said Mr Chavez was using intimidation to curb criticism of his government.

The report adds that several hundred supporters of Mr Chavez held a protest rally in Caracas against IAPA:

They described the association's delegates as "fascists" and "liars" and also accused the private media in Venezuela of trying to destabilise Mr Chavez's government.

I'll bet that was one spontaneous rally, and had absolutely nothing to do with Chavez, though he was doubtless grateful for the support.

Sean Penn was not immediately available for comment. He's probably being 'stifled' by the all-powerful Bush censorship machine.

Related… Just remember: no-one, but no-one, makes Hugo Chavez look stupid.

Pulses racing at New York Times over Basra violence: we may just lose this thing yet

2008-03-28T13:13:00.010Z

I have a new piece up at Pajamas Media on the New York Times' take on the violence in Basra:

“I watch the news with my family, and I see that Maliki is fighting the innocent people in Basra,” said Muhammad, 12. “I don’t understand it all, but it looks bad to me.”

So ends today's New York Times report on the violence currently raging in Basra and other parts of Iraq. And it's an appropriate quote for the Times to use, because Muhammad's sentiments neatly sum up its own attitude to this new outbreak of fighting: “We don’t understand it all, but it looks bad to us.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

BBC erases all traces of lies over Bush speech report; so what have we learned?

2008-03-22T18:00:00.021Z

Updated: Courtesy of commenters db, Jonathan and John, here are the grabs:

Now you see it…
Now you don't…
Exhibiting a thoroughness worthy of Orwell's Ministry of Truth, the BBC has been busy erasing all traces of the corporation's blatantly dishonest reporting of President Bush's speech on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion.

I'll provide a quick recap for anyone who's new to the story (you might also want to read, in the following order, my previous three posts) before bringing things up to date. On Wednesday the BBC reported the speech under the headline 'Bush speech hails Iraq "victory"'. The headline was supported by the following sentence in the story:

He said recent troop reinforcements had brought about "a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror".

However, this isn't what Bush said. What he said was:

The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around – it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.

'Opened the door to' is obviously very different to 'brought about' – the BBC's own words. The deceitful editing of the story, and the equally deceitful headline, were clearly designed to expose the President to the ridicule of the BBC's viewers around the world, by creating the impression that he was once again prematurely declaring victory in Iraq, as he was ridiculed for doing back in 2003.

I wrote my first post about the story on Thursday, and emailed a few of the bloggers I read on a regular basis. Charles at Little Green Footballs linked, and by Friday morning – almost certainly as a result of word of the LGF post reaching the BBC – the headline on the story had been changed to 'Bush says Iraq invasion was right'. However, the misleading sentence mentioned above was still in the story, and the 'Bush hails victory' headline still appeared on a video of the speech.

By this time the dishonestly headlined, mendaciously edited BBC story had been displayed prominently on the website for two days. With the site attracting around 13 million unique viewers per week, we can safely assume that several million people around the world saw the report of President Bush 'claiming victory' in Iraq.

As I noted in my second post (linked by Pajamas Media) the BBC's 'Have Your Say' thread on the story was filled with comments hostile to President Bush and the US, with many commenters citing and ridiculing the 'victory claim' which Bush never made. At least two commenters called for Bush and Tony Blair to be hanged, and this in a 'fully moderated' thread. Here's one of those comments:

Late on Friday night/Saturday morning I emailed the BBC, using the comments form provided on the website (here – it's not too late to let them know what you think), to point out that the deliberately misleading sentence remained in the story, and the inaccurate headline remained on the video clip; I also sent links to mine and Charles's posts. I received no reply from the BBC, but by lunchtime on Saturday the story had been corrected, and the headline on the video clip had been changed.

I stupidly didn't think to screen-grab the headline on the original story – to be honest I didn't expect the BBC to correct it – but after it was changed I did screen-grab the video player. Here's the original version, with not one but two references to Bush 'hailing victory':

And here's the 'after' version, with the first reference corrected and the second deleted:

Update: Also via db and Jonathan, here's the sentence in which Bush's words are misreported:

Before:
After:

Even as I write this post, the Middle East page of the BBC site still features a link to the Have Your Say thread (comments are now closed) which takes the form of a quote from one of the comments, accusing Bush of 'arrogance' for declaring victory:

It's inconceivable that the headline and sentence which created such a misleading impression of Bush's speech were simply 'editing errors'. I used to work as a sub-editor on a daily newspaper in the UK, and a story as important as this would one have been seen by perhaps six different journalists before the paper went to press.

I've no doubt that at least as many BBC journalists would have been involved in putting together the Bush story, and senior ones too. The BBC is fat with British taxpayers' money, and its news-gathering operation is probably the best-resourced and most over-manned in the world; they wouldn't have farmed this job out to the intern.

The journalists who edited the report knew exactly what they were doing. They had access to the full transcript of the speech, and the video. They cut-and-pasted, or typed out, Bush's 'incriminating' words. It's clear that the decision to manipulate his words, and to headline the story with a lie, was approved at a high level.

Even for a news organisation with an undisguised political bias, the manipulation of a key speech by such an important figure would be despicable behaviour. The BBC's actions are made worse by the fact that it maintains the pretence of impartiality, although anyone familiar with its reporting on issues from Israel-Palestine (see also this story) to global warming knows this isn't the case.

As I wrote in my second post, the BBC is trusted by, and influences the opinions of, millions of people around the world, and such influence demands a similar degree of responsibility. It's one thing to 'bash Bush', but the BBC's selective and biased reporting on the war on terror can only embolden the jihadists and their state sponsors (anyone who seriously doubts there's a link should read this), while simultaneously undermining the political and public support that US, British and allied troops so desperately need.

I've been calling the BBC for its biased reporting since I started blogging last year, but my beef with the corporation has now become personal – my brother is due to deploy to Afghanistan with the British Army in September. The situation there is dangerous enough without the BBC stirring the pot – I would hate to think of he, or any coalition soldier, being targeted by some previously friendly Afghan who's been enraged by the latest exaggerated, context-free BBC report about coalition forces causing civilian casualties.

But the safety of our troops appears to be a secondary consideration for the BBC after its desire to see the US defeated and humiliated, first and foremost in Iraq (although its position, like that of the US media, will no doubt change if Obama or Hillary is elected President). The majority of its journalists, like their fellow soft-left/progressive travellers, want a world in which the US has less influence, and bodies such as the UN and EU have more.

In pursuit of this goal they have no compunction about manipulating the news to suit their agenda, whether by omitting inconvenient facts, or by applying the corporation's legendary double standards (Castro, for example is always the Cuban 'leader', while Pinochet is the Chilean 'dictator') and moral equivocation (Palestinian terror attacks are no worse than Israeli actions aimed at preventing those attacks). And sometimes, if they think they can get away with it, they'll simply lie.

When they're caught, like Eliot Spitzer the fact that they have been caught is the only thing they're sorry about. They have no shame; they despise and disregard their critics (as I mentioned, I've had no reply to my email – what could they possibly say?); and they'll brazenly attempt similar chicanery again, as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

When Charles linked my post at LGF, one commentator was driven to despair by the fact that the mainstream media can apparently keep getting away with manipulating the news in this way, and suggested that bloggers who draw attention to biased reporting are only preaching to the choir.

I know how they feel, but the events of the last few days have shown that the BBC can at least be forced to remove misleading and dishonest material from its website, even if it doesn't acknowledge that it's had to do so. If the alarm is raised quickly enough the propaganda effect can be contained, and the damage to the reputations of individuals, groups or countries limited.

Conservatives, and anyone who believes people should be able to make up their own minds about an issue based on a fair presentation of the facts, are engaged in nothing less than a battle for the truth. We may never be able to win outright, but we can't afford to lose.

Update: Thanks to Charles for linking again, and for bringing what I think is hugely important story to an infinitely bigger audience than I could. I think a couple of other people have linked too, so thanks, but my sitemeter is wall-to-wall lizards so it's hard to tell.

Thanks also to Glenn, and fellow Beeb-baiter Marc at USS Neverdock, who maintains one of the most comprehensive catalogues of BBC bias on the web.

Atlas links, and also links to this story on the New York Times using US war dead for propaganda. Just like the BBC they've now backtracked. So much bias, so little time...

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Dear BBC: Please stop lying

2008-03-21T23:49:00.002Z

Here's my email to the BBC on their reporting of President Bush's Iraq speech (see previous posts):

Your coverage of President Bush's Iraq speech has been spectacularly dishonest, even by the BBC's usual standards. Your original headline, which of course you've now changed (1-0 to the bloggers), was 'Bush speech hails Iraq "victory"'. As your journalists who worked on the story will have known, he said no such thing.

While you've changed the headline, the following, equally dishonest sentence remains in the story:

'He said recent troop reinforcements had brought about "a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror".'

What he actually said (and again your journalists will have known this, because it's in the transcript you linked, and in the video) was:

'The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around – it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.'

Saying the surge has 'opened the door' to a victory is of course a very different thing to saying it had 'brought about' a victory.

I've blogged on this blatant piece of news manipulation here and here.

My first post was picked up by the blog Little Green Footballs, which is what I suspect led to the headline being changed.

I'd be curious to hear your explanation for this blatant piece of mendacity. I'd like to know how many journalists were involved, and how high up the decision was taken to lie about Bush's speech in order to expose him to the ridicule of your readers.

I'd also like to know how your journalists sleep at night, although I don't expect I'll get an answer.

I hope you will promptly correct the text of the story, and the text on your video clips, and issue a correction as prominent as the original, dishonest report.

I look forward to hearing from you.

You can send your own observations using the form here.

BBC changes dishonest headline about Bush's Iraq speech, but too late: the lefties are going wild

2008-03-21T15:44:00.014Z

Yesterday I posted about the BBC's blatant misreporting of President Bush's speech on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The post is here (or just scroll down). Long story short: the BBC accused Bush, both in the headline and in the story, of 'claiming victory', but he didn't.

Charles at Little Green Footballs linked, and, very likely due to the story appearing at LGF (although there's no way of knowing for sure), the BBC has now changed the headline on the story from Bush speech hails Iraq ‘victory’ to Bush says Iraq invasion was right.

But the offending sentence that was the basis for the headline is still in the story, and anyway the damage has already been done. The original, utterly dishonest headline will have been seen by millions of people around the world over the past couple of days.

Update: The Beeb may be burning evidence like Nazis at the fall of Berlin, but the 'Bush hails victory' headline still appears on the video clip of the speech. Twice. (Click to view.)

Not surprisingly, the BBC's 'Have your say' thread on the story is filled with commenters attacking Bush for a victory claim he didn't make. I've been trawling through the comments so that you don't have to – it's an unpleasant job, akin to wading through a chest-high river of bile.

I've edited some of the comments for length, and the names and addresses are as displayed, but I haven’t edited the spelling and grammar. Bear in mind that some of these people don’t have English as their first language, while others are moonbats; it can't be a coincidence that so many lefties appear to be learning-disabled.

This is the pick of the comments from the first 30 or so pages, and at the last count there were 101 pages. The further in you get, the more people are reacting to the original BBC story, and the more frequent the references to the 'victory’ claim. Newer commenters are following a link from the BBC's Middle East news page, and the link itself is typical of the comments:

'Bush's arrogance is astonishing in declaring victorious a war which he lost'
Ahmed, Tripoli

To start with, a special mention for two posters, who quiet openly, in a 'fully moderated' BBC forum, call for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hanged (I've screen-grabbed them in case the BBC's clean-up crews try to 'disappear' them).

Here's William Rogers, from Falmouth, Devon in the UK:

For G.W.Bush to claim victory in Iraq, simpy explains what an ideot and urealistic he is ! The only victory he acheived is controlling Iraq's oilfields. His war was illegal. He and Blair, and their cronies are war criminals and should be brought to justice for the destruction and killings hundred of thousands of innocent Iraqis and both should be hanged in one of Baghdad's main Squares. Iraq was far better place under Saddam than under occupation and current puppet and corrupt Iraqi government.

And David Gurarie, of Bolder, United States:

I hope the day will come when the perpetrators of "great victory" (Bush, his henchmen and his British poodle) will stand before the Hague tribunal to account for this abhorrent feat. Even better to see them on gallows which they deserve much more than Sadam Hussein, indeed of all "Sadams" of the world combined.

You might think that such remarks would contravene the BBC's house rules, which state:

Do not post messages that are unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.

Clearly the forum's moderators are as 'impartial' as the rest of the BBC's journalists.

Anyway, on with the show. If/when you get fed up, scroll to the bottom for some closing thoughts. Enjoy…

what Bush calls a "victory" in Iraq is not a victory for the US...it is a victory for the Iraq citizens not for the US citizen...A "victory" in Iraq has cost the US trillions of dollars and the lives of more that 3 thosand of our soldiers and four times that of lost Iraqi lives...A "victory" in Iraq is one that we can not afford
Tom Wright, Tomball Tx

Bush's arrogance and stupidity are astonishing in declaring victorius a war which he lost , the american nazi-fascist policy has failed iraq and afghanistan are to add to the lost conflicts of vietnam ,korea,somalia.
ahmed, tripoli

Five years and still holed in the green zone is that victory. Every diplomat goes in a surprise visit is that security.
riki, leicester

Quantify exactly what % decrease there has been on terrorism Mr Bush! It seems to me all you have done is aggravate the situation, because everyday the violence and senseless killings seem to be increasing. So how exactly, do you define your so-called "victory"on terrorism.
trinirdm, san fernando

I find it unbearable to listen to Bush talking about Iraq. The entire situation in the Middle East is much much worse than it was before the invasion with Iran being the really BIG WINNER (stronger than ever). And yet, he talks about "victory". An insult to our intelligence!!
Stephan, Germany

Your soldiers are still coming home in boxes, your economy is in a shambles, your Country is in debt up to it's ears, 95% of the world dislike Americans, your dollars are been used for toilet paper, your hiding behind your fences at the boarder, you can't go no were in the World with your flag on your back, and Americans are claiming *Victory* it's more like Bin Laden has you were he said he would 7 years ago
Don Nuttall, Canada

Anarchy prevails, terrorist networks thrive and thousands of lives are lost in Iraq and Afghanistan today. No WMD's found, no cause of war even faintly satisfied, no objectives even remotely achieved. Terrorism has spread across the globe. Your Kellogs' and Haliburtons' bask in blood stained money. The war on terror was a 3 trillion dollar intelligence failure.

Victory?
Hamaad Haider, Karach

This President Bush and his allies had deceived the entire world about Iraq. I just wish to know when this Mr. Bush and his allies are going to face justice because of all the American brutalities in Iraq.
I am really surprise that Mr. Bush still speak of victory in Iraq.
MICHAEL ATIYE

Mr. Bush's Iraq "victory" speech is another of his many utterly self-deceiving and misleading speeches that he has been making since his presidency begun in 2000. Mr. Bush must think that we are all idiots - is it not a common knowledge that it is his Iraq invasion that created Al-Qaeda in that country.
Adil Khan, New York

Bush is welcome to declare victory every month, it does not change the reality
Naveed Khan, San Jose

Thanks God I am not in Iraq, nor do I wish it on anybody.Close to 5000 American casualties, 60,000 injured, over 150,000 Iraquis dead is not a victory, it is a tragedy.
OneMojo Hand, United States

If George Bush genuinely regards what the United States has done to Iraq as a victory then he's even more crazy today than he was on September 12, 2002 when he announced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Danny, Vancouver

If George W Bush thinks that Iraq is a `victory' then why isn't he withdrawing US troops?
This would be the most logical course of action, once a supposedly successfull military operation reaches the end of it's mandate.
Phil Brand., London, England.

Victory??You must be kidding...
bob ariff yusoff, zrich, Switzerland

This is why the US invaded Iraq - to get control of their oil, and this is the "victory" that Bush is claiming. No mention of this in the Western press, of course.
Anthony George Cheney, Ipswich

How dare Bush presume that there has been a "victory" - the only victory he believes in is one where he and America are at the centre of the world and safe from harm, utterly regardless of the suffering that millions must endure as a result of an illegal war. He's a despicable man, and the only glimmer of hope I now see for Iraq, let alone America's reputation, is in the possibility of a Democrat President next year.
Matt Black, Cambridge

Victory? Tell that to the Iraqis who are dying everyday..
The only Victory will be when on January 20, 2009 when a new president will be in office and this 8 year nightmare will finally be over.
Jeff Gallo, StateN Island NY

If he claims this a victory i would hate to see what defeat is then.
yossi, london

well, considering that Bush thinks that the US isn't in a recession, of course he thinks we have a "victory" in Iraq. He seems to subscribe to the Orwellian concept if you repeat a lie enough times it "becomes" the truth.
[janeravenswood], Harrisburg, United States

Yes it is a victory for him and oil company. Converting US Tax payers money by financial the war that bring profit to them. Using US sons and daughters that is not from their blood to convert to profit for them.
Wil Ng

How naive or dumb is this president to believe there's a victory in Iraq ?
John Perkins, Toronto

English is not my first language, but I've lived 14 years in English speaking countries!
Can Mr Bush give the (not his) definition of Victory, please? I think I have the wrong one.
Gerome M, São Paulo, Brazil

The war in Iraq may have got rid of what was an extremely dangerous man, but for George Bush to even use the word "victory" in this speech i think is despicable. I would hardly call the tremendous loss of the lives of innocent civillians and soldiers in what is still an on-going war a "victory".
Sam, Manchester

Bush declares it a victory..If he feels that way let him be the first to enter Bagdad without bullet proof vest....Better yet, this war is about two components..Bin ladin and Bush...We need a duel like in the wild west movies...Imagine a showdown at sunset with Bush and bin Ladin...Or are they a cowardly pair.. if .Mccain wants to continue this war he should run for office in Iraq.
d muschett, rincon

VICTORY! What does that mean? - is he so out of touch with reality. To use that word in this context is insulting to the lives of the hundred of thousands that have been lost and destroyed.

There is no victory, there is just needless, terrible, anguish, pain and suffering. and for what! so Bush can make a victory speech - lunacy!!! absolute lunacy!
Zam, New York

Few days ago he was asking Russians to help in Afghanistan, today he is anouncing victory in Iraq.
Ratko Maltar, Cleveland, United States

I don't know what delusion Bush is living in, but "Death" and "Destruction" were not categorized under "Victory" last time I checked.
Emily Smith, Columiba

Bush needs to keep quiet for the next 8 months until he is out of office. Americans are fed up. Stop with the fake victory speeches already!
John Wayne, USA

George Bush thinks its a victory?
[George2012], London, United Kingdom

Bush is as wrong about victory in Iraq as he was about the reasons for going to war in the first place.
Nigel Darwent, Trinidad and Tobago

In true style Bush now claims victory when all that he has done is pay off some gangsters who will turn against him anytime soon.
peter, stoke on trent

when i the headline about mr. bush declaring 'victory' in iraq i really wondered whether april fools day had come a bit early.
meg rinaldi, seattle washington usa

Did somebody change the definition of victory when I wasn't looking?
Alec Braithwaite, Bellevue, United States

A victory? Funny sort of victory if you ask me. While I generally support the American side, I can't agree with what Bush just said.
[Martin1983], London, United Kingdom

Clearly my dictionary definitions of 'success' and 'victory' are somewhat at odds with Dubyas dictionary!
John Chapman, Bath, United Kingdom

How Orwellian! A Victory? It is a defeat, and an end to American Hegemony
Mark Bergseid, Carlsbad

Enough.

One more time: President Bush did not claim victory. He said:

The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around – it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.

And he's absolutely right.

I've written many times about the influence the BBC has over the opinions of millions of people around the world, and the responsibility that goes with that influence. It's one thing to 'bash Bush', but their selective and biased reporting on the war on terror can only embolden the jihadists, and undermine the political and public support that US, British and allied troops so desperately need.

Declaration of interest: my brother is due to deploy to Afghanistan with the British Army in September. He knows the risks, but I would hate to think that he might get RPG'd by some previously friendly Afghan who's been enraged by the latest exaggerated, context-free BBC report about coalition troops causing civilian casualties.

If the BBC can't police itself to maintain basic standards of honesty and fairness, then it will have to be brought to account some other way.

The contact details for the BBC's news website are here. Let them know what you think. Blogger power appears to have got one lying headline changed, so imagine what an avalanche of polite, well-argued but savagely critical emails might do.

(Update: My own email to the BBC is in a separate post.)

I'll finish on a upbeat note. Amid all the hate and lies of the comments, a few brave souls have come to the defence of George Bush, Tony Blair, and the US and its allies. Here's one from Ron Alcorn in 'chama' – don't know what that's short for or where it is, but it's presumably in the US. Note the perfect spelling and capitalisation.

History will prove Iraq to be a great success story but I am not sure the United States will be able to save Europe this time.

Amen to that. My US Green Card lottery application is paid up for the next five years.

Related: More BBC Iraq anniversary bias from – who else? – Biased BBC.

The BBC accuses Bush of 'claiming victory' in Iraq again. He didn't.

2008-03-20T09:21:00.011Z

The BBC's headline on its report of President Bush's Iraq speech is 'Bush speech hails Iraq victory'. I was surprised that he would have said such a thing, given the way in which previous claims of success have been used to criticise and ridicule the Commander in Chief.

Most famously, in 2003, Bush landed on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared: "In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." He was speaking in front of a banner that said 'Mission Accomplished', words that have been recalled with a sneer by many a news anchor and New York Times writer in the years since (apparently the banner was the Navy's idea).

So I was surprised that the President would hold out another hostage to fortune by claiming victory again, but this is what the relevant part of the BBC report said:

He said recent troop reinforcements had brought about "a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror".

Surely this is more ammunition for the President's many critics. There he goes again! They'll be shrieking. We knew he was stupid, but this is unbelievable!

If read the speech, however - I happened to see the excerpt in question on Hugh Hewitt's blog - you'll find that Bush didn't say that at all. (If you don't want to read the whole thing use your browser's 'Find' field to search for 'victory' – it's the first instance.)

What he said was the following:

The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around – it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.

Bush didn't say the surge had 'brought about' a strategic victory, he said they had 'opened the door' to it. He was saying that the surge has paved the way for a victory over Al Qaeda; he did not say the victory had been achieved.

I checked the video in case the President had deviated from the text, but he sticks to it faithfully. And he shows that he's fully aware that the 'strategic victory' has not yet been achieved in the next paragraph:

When Iraqi and American forces finish the job, the effects will reverberate far beyond Iraq's borders.

'When' they finish the job. So he's clearly admitting that it's not finished yet.

The BBC's headline, and its mischievously edited report, convey completely the wrong impression about the tone of the President's speech, leaving him open once again to accusations of arrogance about America's achievements, and ignorance of the situation in Iraq.

The journalist who edited the report knew exactly what they were doing. They had access to the full transcript, and the video. They cut-and-pasted, or typed out, Bush's 'incriminating' words. Whoever wrote 'brought about' was lying, and their intention was clear.

I don't know whether they've taken the picture of Bush as Hitler off the wall of the newsroom, but it's clear that some very senior people at the BBC despise the President as much as ever. They have no compunction about manipulating his words, and producing misleading news reports, in their campaign to ensure that he remains a figure of hate and ridicule around the world.

UPDATE: A belated thank-you to Charles for linking. Welcome, lizards, and feel free to scamper around on the rocks while you're here. A couple of recent posts you may enjoy: George Clooney's double standard over China, and Gazans driving Caterpillars; Rachel Corrie spinnining in grave.

UPDATE 2: LGF reports that the BBC has changed the headline. However, the misleading sentence that was the basis for the headline is still in there.

I'm working on a follow-up post now.

After the big Obama speech: the big Osama speech

2008-03-20T00:40:00.003Z

Rusty is on it. Wretchard says 'We've got him now' and sparks intense theological and philosophical debate.

Nice speech. Too bad he didn't deliver it years ago, from Pastor Wright's pulpit

2008-03-19T21:02:00.008Z

It's too early to know what impact Obama's speech will have on his campaign to win the Democratic nomination, or, if he's successful, his bid to win the White House.

But one thing's for sure. Obama has certainly squeezed every last ounce of usefulness out of Pastor Jeremiah Wright. For years he used Wright and Trinity Church to cement his position in the world of Chicago faith-politics, and now that the pastor's extensive canon of race-baiting and hate-preaching has come to light he's used him one last time – and to spectacular effect.

Glenn Greenwald found the speech 'riveting, provocative, insightful, thoughtful and courageous'; Chris Matthews doubtless had another of those thrills run up his leg. Andrew Sullivan was cool and objective as ever. Temporarily, at least, the speech seems to have had the desired effect, although if he wins the candidacy Obama may have to make another speech renouncing all the socialist rhetoric he employed in the latter part of yesterday's.

Cynical though I am about pretty much every aspect of Obama's campaign, I can't believe that, as Obama and his family sat and listened while Wright regaled his flock with a litany of America's sins (after insisting that he had never heard any 'controversial' remarks by Wright, he backtracked in the speech), Obama thought he would one day be able use the pastor's indiscretions to his own advantage.

But he clearly didn't worry that they would do him any harm either, otherwise he would have found another church, or perhaps had a quiet word in the ear of his mentor. Maybe he could even have stood in Wright's own pulpit, and told the worshippers of Trinity that it was time to move beyond such divisive language, and begin the process of reconciliation.

Perhaps he dismissed the pastor's revelling in the deaths of 3,00o Americans on 9/11, his blaming Israel for all the Middle East's ills and his accusing the US government of unleashing the AIDS virus to exterminate the world's coloured people as 'bawdy humour'.

And certainly, when Wright's words emerged to threaten his Presidential bid, Obama knew exactly what to do with them: he took the pastor's appeals to the basest of anti-American and racially divisive instincts, and leveraged them into an appeal for unity.

He delivered a speech in which he patronised Wright as a harmless old man driven mad by racial injustice (although apparently no more unreasonable than Obama's own grandmother), and presented himself as having risen above such foolishness, burnishing his image as a 'post-racial' figure.

Then, shortly after insisting that "race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now" he declared that it was time to stop talking about race, and move on. He even managed to get in a plug for his book.

Think about it: Obama earned himself wall-to-wall media coverage by making a speech about race which he might not have had the opportunity to make had he not at best acquiesced in, and at worst connived at, Wright's long history of racist demagoguery.

Talk about audacity.

Related: Stop the ACLU has a round-up of Obama's other unsavoury allies; Cliff Kincaid at CFP explores Obama's Marxist connections.

I have a nightmare: Obama to give 'major' speech on race

2008-03-18T00:23:00.002Z

Barack Obama is to give a speech on 'the larger issue of race' in the primary campaign tomorrow. Among other things he'll apparently attempt to defend the inflammatory preaching of Pastor Wright. Jim at Gateway Pundit has the details.

Clearly Obama thinks it's time for some damage limitation, but he'll need to choose his words carefully, particularly with regard to Wright. JammieWearingFool reports that the pastor of disaster has an approval record of just 8% with voters nationally. The good news is that as Wright has never had a national approval rating before, this is a record high figure.

I wonder if he'll be taking questions afterwards?

Ace has a post on the MSM airbrushing Wright's comments, and lots more Wright stuff.

Clooney sells watches while the Chinese shoot monks

2008-03-16T16:39:00.008Z

Update: An expanded version of this post is up at Pajamas Media

According to reports coming out of Tibet, as many as 100 people have been killed by Chinese forces in a crackdown on pro-independence protests by monks and their supporters. The unrest is said to be spreading, and more deaths are likely in the coming days.

The Beijing Olympics take place in August, and Tibetans are courageously taking the opportunity to draw attention to their plight, and bring international pressure to bear on China. And if his previous form is anything to go by, the Tibetans should soon be able to count on the high-profile support of Hollywood star George Clooney in their struggle for freedom.

After all, the man annointed by the media as the ‘heart-throb with a conscience’ has been pretty outspoken about China's indirect responsibility for the on-going genocide in Darfur. Here's his most recent protest:

Sorry! Wrong protest. Here’s Clooney’s latest attack on China, delivered in his capacity as ‘ambassador’ for Olympic partner and official timekeeper Omega (I couldn’t find video):

"I have talked with Omega (about China) for over a year and will continue to talk to Omega," Clooney told BBC Sport.

"I have and will go to the places I and China do business and ask for help."

Get the message, Wen Jiabao? Coming through loud and clear, People's Liberation Army? Gorgeous George is going to “continue to talk to Omega”. He’s going to “go to places” and “ask for help”.

We’ve yet to hear from Clooney on the specific issue of Tibet, but he’ll surely take an even stronger stance than he has over Darfur, given that this time Chinese are doing the shooting themselves, rather than merely supplying the ammunition.

We can perhaps hope for something along the lines of the blistering attack Clooney launched on Nestle last year, when it was politely pointed out that his commercial activities on behalf of a company that’s been criticised for its policies in the third world didn’t sit well with his self-appointed role as global crusader for the oppressed (more on the Nestle connection here).

Here's the full, unedited transcript:

"I'm not going to apologize to you for trying to make a living every once in a while. I find that an irritating question."

Okay, it wasn’t that blistering. However, Clooney has on other occasions been genuinely outspoken in his condemnation of perceived injustices – namely those he feels have been committed by the United States, and specifically by the Bush administration.

He’s been among the most high-profile critics of the Iraq war, which is of course his right, although as Austin Bay has pointed out the similarities between the case for invading Iraq and Clooney’s own justification for US intervention in Sudan somewhat undermine his position.

And as blogger Scolai has pointed out, Clooney has nothing to say about the US intervention in Afghanistan. He was asked recently whether, in the context of Afghanistan some wars were justified he replied “I’m not the guy to answer that.” An odd answer from someone who certainly appears to be the go-to guy if you want to know which wars aren’t justified.

Similarly, he’s silent on the Bush administration’s $15 billion initiative for AIDS relief in Africa (as, of course, are his friends in the media, an oversight recently criticised by Bob Geldof in Time magazine). Clearly, Clooney’s crusading is selective to say the least. I can’t put it any better than Niall Stanage in this 2006 profile:

Films aside, what many journalists refer to as his ‘‘activism’’ tends to comprise involvement with worthy but largely uncontroversial causes (like the Bono fronted Drop The Debt campaign) and nebulous statements about peace or holding the powerful to account.

In his 2006 National Review piece ‘Phoney Baloney’, Mark Steyn memorably ridiculed Clooney’s self-declared ‘bravery’, and his double standard of attacking easy political targets in the US while ignoring more complex and controversial issues. (Not sure how long the link to Steyn's website is good for; you can also find the article here).

Steyn’s piece is the greatest takedown of pompous celebrity activism ever committed to print or web: it should be carved in cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. He writes:

By comparison [with earlier generations of Hollywood activists], Clooney’s [activism] is no more than a pose — he’s acting at activism, new Hollywood mimicking old Hollywood’s robust defense of even older Hollywood. He’s more taken by the idea of “speaking truth to power” than by the footling question of whether the truth he’s speaking to power is actually true.

When interviewers turn to the subject of his politics, Clooney invariably talks about the influence of his journalist father, and it’s easy to think that his activism is driven at least in part by a sense of guilt over his success in the often superficial and ephemeral movie business. He alludes to as much in this spectacularly smug and self-serving 2006 interview with clearly-smitten Guardian journalist Emma Brockes.

(You should read the whole thing before reading Steyn’s piece. You can’t help thinking that Clooney is more interested in attracting the opprobrium of 'right-wingers' than he is in actually doing good; he wears the 'traitor' label like a badge of honour.)

So why the apparent double standard? Why the relative silence from Clooney over China?

He could conceivably make the argument that 'engagement' with unpleasant regimes is more useful than punitive measures – which, after all, is the position taken by Western governments with regard to China and other countries.

But no amount of photo-shoots and drinks parties featuring Clooney modelling expensive watches are going to affect China's policies towards Tibet or Sudan. On the other hand, the public severing of his links with Omega would attract worldwide publicity on a scale similar to that generated by Steven Spielberg’s recent decision to snub the Games.

Maybe, like all those corrupt politicians and corporate scoundrels that inhabit his films, Clooney simply has his price.

But there's another possibility, which is slightly more charitable. Perhaps Clooney needs the money so that he can continue to fund worthy documentaries and 'political' feature films which, while well-received critically, aren’t necessarily successful in terms of box office receipts.

How ironic if would be if Clooney was reduced to compromising his principles so that he could make more films in which those principles are so blatantly flaunted.

*Note that the linked BBC report refers to protests in 'another part of China', which suggests it considers Tibet to be 'part' of China. Slip-up, or a reluctance to offend as the BBC prepares to send hundreds of its employees to cover the Olympics?

Update: Thanks to Jim for linking.

Can the BBC work a Bush-bashing line into the Spitzer affair? Of course it can!

2008-03-13T14:33:00.005Z

There's only one thing the BBC enjoys more than attacking George Bush, and that's reporting on Americans attacking George Bush. You might think that dragging both the President and the Iraq war into the Spitzer scandal would be a tough sell, but the BBC manages it in the person of the very first New Yorker quoted in a 'vox-pop' on the affair, one Ian Cunningham:

"I like him. He's a local, he's smart and he's willing to turn on his own class – Wall Street.

"I don't think he should step down. If we won't impeach the president for an illegal war I don’t think he should go for something more minor, the world's oldest profession."

So Cunningham 'likes' a man that cheated on his wife with hookers for several years, and has brought shame on her and their children.

He admires Spitzer for being willing to 'turn on' Wall Street (an unfortunate choice of phrase given the circumstances of the governor's demise), as if Spitzer was the first attorney general to make a name for himself by prosecuting, and persecuting, prominent business figures.

And note the way he quaintly dismisses prostitution as "the world's oldest profession" – although if you read his words carefully he may in fact be referring to philandering public officials, rather than prostitutes.

But what's really disturbing is the fact that the BBC has decided that Cunningham's remarks about President Bush and the war are somehow pertinent, and presents them as if they were established facts rather than leftist rhetoric. The invasion of Iraq wasn't illegal, and no-one outside the MoveOn/Code Pink crowd and the lunatic fringe of the Democratic party is talking seriously about impeachment.

But of course, Cunningham is exactly the kind of American whose viewpoint the BBC reflects in its daily reporting on the country. He appears to be utterly amoral, ignorant of basic facts, hostile towards big business and happy to repeat lies. If you look at the picture you can actually feel the arrogance and the self-righteousness.

In short he's every inch the modern Democrat.

Lines on the demise of Eliot Spitzer

2008-03-13T14:10:00.002Z

With acknowledgement to E.J. Thribb. (More here and here.)

So. Farewell then,
Eliot Spitzer.

They called you
'The sheriff of
Wall Street'.

Keith's mum says
Your downfall
Was poetic justice.

Does this mean
You're going to be

Run out of town?

Continuing progress in Iraq

2008-03-06T12:42:00.001Z

Gateway Pundit has the graphs.

Gazans driving Caterpillars; Rachel Corrie spinning in grave

2008-03-05T22:29:00.012Z

For the past few years Palestinian sympathisers and Israel haters have been waging a campaign against US construction equipment maker Caterpillar, on the grounds that it builds the D9 earthmovers used by the Israeli Defence Forces.

Campaigners say the IDF uses the bulldozers to illegally demolish Palestinian homes. The IDF says it uses them to demolish buildings used by terrorists as firing positions, and to dismantle booby-traps and fill in weapons-smuggling tunnels.

A D9 famously ran over and killed the flag-burning US activist Rachel Corrie in Gaza in 2003, spawning an entire canon of sub-standard poetry and drama. The pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement claimed she was 'murdered' while trying to protect Palestinian homes, producing a series of contradictory and apparently faked photos to support their claims. (HT for that last link Israel Matzav.)

The IDF says its troops were clearing weapons-smuggling infrastructure, and that there was no way the driver of the D9 could have seen Corrie. Corrie's family and others have tried to sue Caterpillar but failed, and she has become a hero of the Palestinian 'resistance' movement, and its official PR arm.

Whatever the truth of that particular incident, it's fair to say that, in the eyes of the anti-Israel lobby, Caterpillar's name is Mudd – or maybe that should be Earth. In 2004 Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch said:

Caterpillar betrays its stated values when it sells bulldozers to Israel knowing that they are being used to illegally destroy Palestinian homes. Until Israel stops these practices, Caterpillar’s continued sales will make the company complicit in human rights abuses.

So it comes as something of a surprise to see Palestinians clearing up the damage caused by last week's Israeli strikes on Gaza with… a Caterpillar:

Apologies for the picture quality – it's a screen grab of a video, which is itself pretty ropey (or maybe it's my monitor…) on the BBC's website. But if you click to enlarge it you can clearly see 'CAT' on the engine cowling, and 'CATERPILLAR' along the top of the windscreen.

The BBC video is here (if that doesn't work the page is here – click the 'Watch' button below the photo). The Caterpillar appears briefly at 50 seconds, but there's no commentary. There's another version, with commentary, here (the page is here). It's edited differently, and the Caterpillar appears at 46 seconds. The branding is clearly visible in both clips.

It's what's known as a 'backhoe loader', rather than the notorious, almost larger-than-life D9, but a Caterpillar it most certainly is. This must be what they call the 'circle of earthmoving': Caterpillars knock the buildings down, Caterpillars come along and clear up the mess, and so it continues…

You've got to hand it to Caterpillar’s Mid-East sales rep. Talk about playing both sides – the guy has to be in line for 'salesman of the year' and a weekend in Vegas.

There are several websites, including Stop Caterpillar, devoted to attacking Caterpillar, and calling for boycotts of its products (I for one will certainly have pause for thought next time I'm out shopping for a 150,000lb earthmover). You can see some endearingly pathetic photos of a demo in England here.

The United Methodist Church in the US is running a disinvestment campaign against Caterpillar. The General Synod of the Church of England, under the leadership of the hapless Rowan Williams, voted to do the same in 2006, but was snubbed by its investments advisory group.

Among leftist opponents of Israel, Caterpillar has become a by-word for the perceived injustices visited on the Palestinian people. Maybe someone ought to tell the Palestinians.

Related: Business as usual at the BBC

Thanks to all who linked. In Berlin for a few days so not much time for blogging. I was at the Holocaust memorial shortly after hearing of the attack on the seminary in Jerusalem. Maybe I'll have some thoughts when I get back.