March 09, 2002
Damian, say it ain't so!
Can it be true, or was it some scumbag of a hacker rather than the real Damian Penny who has said out loud in the company of warbloggers that he is in favour of gun control. Actually I am in no position to be rude about gun-controllers as for a large chunk of my life I was one. I was even unthinkingly in favour of quite a high degree of regulation after I first acquired guns. No doubt we'll return to the issue, but as a start can I direct you, Damian, to look at the experience of Jamaica and Britain regarding what happens after gun bans. The Corner reissued Joseph Olson and Dave Kopel's excellent 1999 essay on slippery slopes recently. It describes how the British right to bear arms was destroyed one sensible rule at a time. Somewhere near the end you'll see it noted, in quite small and modest letters, that gun crime has increased a hundredfold.
China isn't always like you think it is.
Yesterday's Guardian had this surprising story describing how the banned Falun Gong sect briefly hijacked a Chinese TV station.
March 08, 2002
Painful in another way
will be (when I finally get to read them; the internet is still being stroppy) will be Emmanuel Goldstein's latest comments on Zimbabwe. He is a tireless enemy of Mugabe, but no fan of Morgan Tsvangirai. My eloquence tank is running on empty when it comes to comment on that country. Saturday's election could go wrong in more ways than I care to describe. Personally, I'm close to thinking that Mugabe actually lost his mind when the February 2000 referendum on the constitution didn't go his way. Not that he was nice before - as they would tell you in Matabeleland, if dead men could speak - but he was competent to hold the country down. But something snapped when he realised that his ungrateful people could vote against him.
What to blog?
Writes Mary Lacroix, "You could always make Nick Denton happy and say something about steel tariffs :-) Here's the link.Trusting soul that I am, I'm going to post it now and read it later. So, Mary, I hope it's good. Must fly!
UPDATE: it was good, if harsh. I am in a mellow mood today and making excuses for everyone. (Except the leader of the free world, HAH!) So in defence of the warbloggers I shall say that, sure, it is a tad disingenuous of them to imply that their stories are chosen according to the degree of public interest - but it is perfectly accurate to claim that they pick them according to their own interests. And war is sexier than steel.
The best and most cutting weblog comments I've read so far on the steel tariffs came from an American abroad, Dale Amon* of Samizdata:
'Bush tells Russians: 'Yeah I know we are proping up your economy with aid on one hand and trying to wreck your steel industry with the other... so what? If you need money go sell nukes to Iran and stop bugging us'Can I bear to look at what anti-anglospherical Airstrip One is going to say? Deep breath. Let's try it.
Phew. What a relief. Obviously my friendly enemy Mr Goldstein decided to spare my feelings and make a nice little "web site not responding" message just for me. The alternative explanation, that the world and his wife are clicking on some impassioned and justified denunciation of the worst decision Bush has yet made, is just too painful to complicate.
LATER: I think I meant to type "contemplate", but actually "complicate" is unintentionally rather good.
*Actually it was Perry de Havilland. Isn't he partly American too?
Billy Graham goes to Narnia.
Or the island of the Dufflepuds to be exact, since I take this little anecdote from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which I have been reading to my offspring recently. In that book there is a scene where the child Lucy finds a book of spells, and naughtily says a spell which allows her to find out what her friends think of her. Bad move. One of the pictures in the book comes alive and she gets a nasty shock."And all at once she saw the very last thing she expected - a picture of a third-class carriage in a train with two schoolgirls sitting in it. She knew them at once. They were Marjorie Preston and Anne Featherstone....'Shall I see anything of you this term?' said Anne, 'or are you still going to be all taken up with Lucy Pevensie.'
'Don't know what you mean by taken up,' said Marjorie.
'Oh yes, you do,' said Anne. 'You were crazy about her last term.'
'No, I wasn't,' said Marjorie. 'I've got more sense than that. Not a bad little kid in her way. But I was getting pretty tired of her before the end of term.'
'Well, you jolly well won't have the chance any other term!' shouted Lucy. 'Two-faced little beast.' But the sound of her own voice at once reminded her that she was talking to a picture, and that the real Marjorie was far away in another world."
If you missed the story, the Jewish friends of evangelist Billy Graham will have experienced a similar sense of betrayal when some tapes made (presumably without his knowledge) of a conversation he had with President Nixon in 1972 were released. No time now for me to pull up the link, but he said something along the lines of "these Jews are swarming all around me. They all think I'm their friend because I support Israel." He says now, rather lamely, that he doesn't remember but he's very sorry.
And the point of the post is that I'm inclined to let it lie. Let his own sense of shame (my impression is that he does have one) be its own punishment. True, like the fictional Marjorie, he was being a two-faced little beast. But if you've read the book you'll know that the lion Aslan (a figure who represents God) later says: "Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean." Likewise I can well believe that in the fevered atmosphere of what he thought was a secret conclave with the beleaguered President of the United States, Graham brought forth any rubbish lurking in his subconscious that seemed likely to impress. Of course the rubbish had to be there in the first place, but few of us would escape unscathed if a transcript were made of our every unsuspecting word. Anyway, it was 1972. That's thirty years. The statute of limitations on spiteful remarks has surely expired.
And if anyone thinks that I am letting my co-religionist off too easily, let me say that I'd extend the same qualified latitude to Hillary Clinton. 26 or 27 years ago now she is alleged to have made, in hot blood, an anti-semitic remark. Bad if so, but I am not motivated to examine it much further.
March 04, 2002
I will be away
for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday making family visits and attending my father-in-law's funeral. See you Friday.
The Blogs of War
covers Britain, France and the twists and turns of the new anti-semitism here. And if you want a good laugh to cheer yourself up, scroll up and get it from Ms Lewinsky. A laugh, not that sort of it.(A minor note regarding the mention of me. In fairness to French newspapers, they may not have ignored Daniel Pearl's last words to the extent that Dr Frank thinks. I read French only with great labour and made next to no effort to keep up with the news. I can say that it was not highlighted, that's all.)
Guns, words and loony doctors.
Ben Sheriff of Layman's Logic fills in the lacunae of my historical knowledge. He writes, "(a) "London proper" is presumably "the Square Mile", giving a very clear indication of how large it was, and b) "The Surgeon of Crowthorne", about a mad yankee doctor from the Civil War who shot someone, was sent to Broadmoor and contributed to the original OED, mentions that only some of the parts of London in C19th had bans on weapons (etc) and that different parts of the rapidly growing city were governed by different laws (at least, I think I'm right on guns, and am right more generally)."On the same subject, John Weidner of Random Jottings points out that though Holmes may have been minor aristocracy, Watson was solidly middle class. You watch, any minute now some spoiler will start claiming that these people weren't real at all.
Every single post in
in that part of Amygdala visible on my screen is either funny or bracing or important. Is it always like this? Via MCJ.
And I thought it was all over.
But as we've been hearing over the weekend, the war in Afghanistan has a little while to run yet. The Telegraph reports on the battle in Gardez. Lot of caves they have in Afghanistan.While at the Telegraph, visit this Barbara Amiel article asking, Are too many Muslims in denial about September 11?" Hope someone gives me a penny for every warblogger who posts that headline followed by the answer "Yes".
And what is it with Kuwait?
Muslimpundit, I'll get back to you
- but it may take a while. There is a tremendous volume of new and densley-argued material to read and absorb. All sorts of ideas are spiralling around my head. I am a Christian not a Muslim. That, obviously, means that I do not believe certain things which are profoundly important to Muslims, just as they do not believe certain things that are profoundly important to me. Yet I think it fair to say that there are ideas on the status of Scripture and the sovereignty of God that are cognate to some of mine.(BTW, I've decided to go over to the spelling "Muslim.")
March 03, 2002
Talking of jobs,
I have just had an application to join my vast and munificently renumerated staff.Alex Bensky writes:
Please consider this my application for the historian's position advertised on your web site.Once you tell me what conclusion you would like, I believe I am qualified to do the necessary research. I have an M.A. in history and a background in creative writing. I promise to do extensive research in all relevant archives. I propose to begin by an exhaustive search of probate and other relevant files in Christminter and other towns in Wessex. From there I'll move on to Everytown, and for comparative studies I shall examine thoroughly the public records in Brigadoon and all of the pre-earthquake San Francisco probate records.
As you can see, a report based on these sources might well win me the British equivalent of the Bancroft Prize.
Salary is negotiable.
Very truly yours,
Alex Bensky (Detroit, MI)
They must be getting desperate
for readers at one of our local rags, the Herts & Essex Star Classified. (Not online.) The most recent headline reads "Triple Death Shock: Families hit by three days of horror." Mass murder! Beginnings of epidemic! No, it just so happened that over two counties there were three untimely deaths over three days. Gee Wow Whiz. The three deaths were all (of course) very sad for those concerned, but they were completely unrelated. And, "'there was nothing suspicious in any of the deaths,' said a police spokesman." Can I have a job at the H & E Star, please, 'cos I'd like to get paid for sitting in an office all day whoring for hits.We ought to be grateful that they are desperate for news in Hertfordshire and Essex, I suppose. Plenty of the real stuff available in India and Israel.
That self-obsessed twerpette
Elizabeth Wurtzel is not treated gently in this strip by Jim Treacher. (Biological swearwords appear in quantity.)