April 13, 2002

Flattery will get you everywhere!

The bodaciously excellent Patio Pundit writes to express doubt in the nice direction as to my figure for hits:
"I find that hard to believe - I got a whole bunch of hits when you linked to me (100 or so), so if it is true (I believe you, but maybe your counter is in error?), you have devoted readers. I have gotten less referrals from bloggers who claim higher numbers than you do."
I had said that my maximum ever daily hit total was 878.

Could it be simply that I usually post in the morning GMT whereas most of my readers visit in the afternoon PST? Hence it is usually not worthwhile to hit "refresh"; I may have devoted readers (it's nice to think I do) but even their devotion does not extend to repeated visits while I sleep.

One specific item found by Martin Devon that you should certainly check out is what he described as "this great pro-Palestinian article" by Tarek Masoud. Not words he or I often use, but justified none the less.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 06:42 PM | TrackBack

Continuing the theme

, this post by Diana Hsieh of the deliciously-named "Noodle Food" starts off by talking about the likely effect of reparations and then describes how Ms Hsieh feels that she was intellectually saved by moving from public (in the US sense, i.e. state-provided) school to private school. In fairness to my own state school, I must say that I experienced there no more than the pessure to conform inevitable when you assemble an age-cohort. Mind you, it was all girls so perhaps the reflexes of the baboon-troupe didn't fully cut in.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 09:49 AM | TrackBack

The Black World Today, black university students yesterday and My Falklands Memoirs.

Regarding my earlier post about a dismal column in The Black World Today, John Costello writes:


Black World Today is a frustrating com. Sometimes the articles can be quite interesting, at other times the writers let their paranoia and prejudices flower. I would say it accurately reflects the intellectual state of the American Black community. By the way, I am white, so this is an observation from an outsider (although one with degrees in Anthropology.) I think their statement about the calibre of their staff is true, alas. I have had a chance to read 'Afrocentric' literature and histories recently and the quality and accuracy of such varies wildly from writer to writer. Also, I do remember from my days as a grad student, the reasons why the majority of (mostly liberal to socialist) academics supported 'Black studies' programs on both my campuses: 1) it allowed the schools to inflate the total number of black students on campus and thus proclaim themselves 'more fully integrated' and 2) in segregated the worst black deadheads well away from anyone who was interested in serious study.

Please bear in mind that the professors were _not_ racist. They were delighted to have African and Asian students because those students, unlike the white undergraduates, wanted to learn, and because, unlike the black undergraduates and graduate students, they were not perceived as hostile to the (mostly white) professors.

From my own experience, I can tell you that African students on American college campuses were far more likely to have multiracial groups of friends (that is white and Asian) than American black students, and I personally never experienced racial hostility from any African students (well, there was that one Ethiopian student who decided to be antisemitic to me, but it wasn't at school --- we were working as security guards in a hotel --- and I wasn't even Jewish!) (My specialty was African Prehistory, the MA paper was the dating of 18 sites in Kenya's Rift Valley) but even getting to know a black American student at UMASS Boston or Penn State would have been virtually impossible because of the segregation (imposed by black students.)

COINTELPRO was, I believe, a Nixon era plan to carry out illegal surveilance on dissident Americans. Like all such secretsa it entered popular mythology. Mkultra is something I have never encountered before.


I can speak from personal experience of the high motivation and willingness to make friends from all races shown by African and Asian nationals who have come to the West to study. At the age of 17 I spent a year as a scholarship student at a private college, of which I have happy memories but which could unkindly be called a "crammer".

The students fell into two main groups. The first group consisted of whites who were repeating their A-level year. They weren't for the most part over-keen on learning for its own sake but pressure from their parents who were footing the bill kept the kids' noses to the grindstone. My tuition still came free as God's good air, as it had at school, and so it wasn't until years later that it penetrated the mildly socialist mousse in my head that the hard work and the school fees had some connection with each other. (There were also a few rich white deadheads who had Video Recorders. Money could no longer motivate them.)

The second main group were foreign nationals; Indians, Singapore Chinese, Africans and others. Nearly all my friends came from this group. One Indian girl shocked me by saying that, although she had been told in India that all the British were racist, she had experienced no hostility at all. I stopped short of telling her to go get some in order to please me, although I did say (an opinion I still hold) that if she were mixing with poor whites who felt threatened by her presence it would be a different story.

So 99% of the time the little multi-racial group with whom I chatted away my lunch hours got along fine. There was only one thing that made me feel utterly apart from them: the Falklands war. It wasn't that they were hostile, it was just that they were indifferent. No business of theirs, chum. Some mild "anti-colonial" feeling against Britain was tempered by equally mild opposition to the dictatorship in Argentina. And there me and my sister were, scanning the shortwave dial at half past midnight and up again for more of the same again at six a.m. Please God, don't let any of our ships have been hit overnight.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 07:53 AM | TrackBack

April 12, 2002

"Oh, you're still alive then."

Twenty years ago Iain Dale learned that a young man of his age and bearing his name had just been killed in the Falklands. Scroll down to March 29 to read his memories.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 05:24 PM | TrackBack

Moppets & Martyrs update.

Robert Martin writes:
Mr. Alexanian’s strained effort to explain away the photographs is fascinating. It so perfectly illustrates one of the most frustrating aspects of any issue arising in the middle east, the mind-numbing capacity of Palestinians, Arabs, and their supporters to evade the obvious and refuse to deal with facts. Thus the denial that the photographs mean what they clearly do.

Although not a professional, I am a photographer. Mr. Alexanian’s invocation of the “photographer’s safety” red herring is silly. Most photographers shoot for agencies, some for publications. Few photographers are in a position to retain editorial control of their work. Whoever pays for the photographs, the rights to publication are usually part of the consideration for the fee. Further sale of the photos is controlled by the owner. Agencies in particular exist to sell photographs to whoever wants to pay for them. Surely the photographer here knew that. Is it seriously contended that photo agencies should inquire into the intentions and motives of their customers before selling to them? There is no threat to the photographer’s safety here. Hamas and kindred organizations are quite open about these activities. They intend them as a proud demonstration of commitment to the cause, and would probably publish their own photographs if no one else performed the task. No “spying” is needed to get pictures like this.

I do appreciate the distinction drawn between young Palestinians dressing up as bombers and young Americans dressing up as firefighters. Just so, and the difference speaks volumes.

To refer to an earlier post on your correspondents, I am an American. I count on those in different time zones and those who maniacally post at all hours (who?) to have fresh material for me first thing in the morning.

Oh wonderful. As I sit here, a report on the radio of a bombing in Jerusalem.


I assume Mr Martin was referring to this.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:29 PM | TrackBack

Layman's logic

justifies its name when Mr Sheriff sets out the reasons for war in Afghanistan, and the reasons why Real IRA fundraising should be stomped upon.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 02:35 PM | TrackBack

And our "Moppets & Martyrs Calendar"

picture for January shows little Ahmed.

I don't actually know the kid's name. I post this picture because I had an e-mail asking me to cite a reference for what I said here about Palestinian toddlers. This still picture is not the TV clip I remembered, just an example of the same sort of thing.

Does anyone else remember seeing a TV news clip showing older youths crawling under ropes meant to show a minefield while what looked like very little kids dressed in white looked on? The kids dressed in white were wearing things that looked like the floatation belts used by learner swimmers, but painted black.

BTW The letter surrounding the picture makes some fair points about the need for accuracy, and for preserving the safety of reporters and photographers. But I don't really think the question of whether one of the masked figures was or was not the child's father is that important. (Nor does the fact that at least one of the masked figures was either a teenage boy or girl rather than an adult necessarily mean that they were not "for real". Many suicide bombers have been teenagers.) Does anyone think that the child shown was there without the consent of his family and his society? Which do you think is the better description of what was being done to him: "training to be a suicide bomber" or "just dressing up"?

UPDATE: February's picture can be found in this Christian Friends of Israel website. Use control-F and search for "Palestinian child". The small picture on the extreme right appeared originally in the Jerusalem Post under the heading "Child's Play", and shows a Palestinian child dressed as a terrorist at a Hamas rally to celebrate that organisation's 12th anniversary.

In November 2000 Justus Reid Weiner wrote this essay on the use of children in the Al-asqua intifada. It is particularly useful in that it is fully footnoted. Here are some excerpts:

Television broadcasts frequently include what in many Western countries would be deemed "hate speech." On July 2, 1998, in derogation of its commitments to combat incitement under the interim peace agreements (discussed below), a Palestinian television children's show called "The Children's Club," similar in its basic structure to "Sesame Street," aired an episode in which young boys with raised arms chanted "We are ready with our guns; revolution until victory; revolution until victory."35 On the same show, an 8-year-old boy announced to the audience (a group of children), "I come here to say that we will throw them to the quiet sea. Occupiers, your day is near, then we will settle our account. We will settle our claims with stones and bullets."36 Also on the Children's Club program, on February 8, 1998, a girl who could not have been more than ten years old declared that she wanted to "turn into a suicide warrior" in Jerusalem.37

Other Palestinian institutions are also imbued with incitement. A New York Times reporter observed a PA-run summer camp program where the 25,000 campers stage the kidnapping of Israeli leaders, strip and assemble Kalachnikov assault rifles, and learn the art of ambushing.43 They are given camouflage uniforms and imitation guns.44 They parade and practice infiltration, crawling on their stomachs through obstacles.

(That last is the sort of activity I think I remember seeing on film.)

ANOTHER ONE: This article by Ibrahim Hazboun describes children dressing as suicide bombers. Children, not toddlers; but it does show that the practice occurs.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:54 AM | TrackBack

Working Together.

Samizdata's David Carr on why corporations love environmentalists.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:02 AM | TrackBack

My opinion of Jonathan Freedland has gone up.

The man flies his flag. This column begins, "These are days for republicans to walk humbly...", talks plainly about his own misjudgement of the country's mood and then goes on to say why he thinks a connection with the past could be maintained even were the monarchy to go. It's called The story of us, not them.

For my part I am pretty sure that the sort of Britain to ditch the monarchy would also be the sort of Britain where the teachers and education bureacrats would ensure that only the story of an extremely select subgroup of "us" reached the history books. The New Class are already well on the way to wiping out certain memories. Look what they did to the Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 09:49 AM | TrackBack

April 11, 2002

"The Bush Administration Plays The Daniel Pearl Race Card."

is the title of a commentary by Ray Vaughn in The Black World Today. An admirer of whatreallyhappened.com, Common Dreams C-Span and a Harry Browne voter (presumably because of the drugs angle; I can't imagine Mr Browne's views on racial preferences would meet with Mr Vaughn's approval), Mr Vaughn gives his inimitable views on... everything that pops into his head, really. He tells us all about "the Reichstaff fire" and "How The Leader's is joined by his parrot Tony Blair" [the spare apostrophe represents the parrot, I suppose] and how "We also know about MKultra and COINTELPRO" [I don't], interspersed with randomly generated comments like "with two you get egg rolls" and "It also provides a cover for carrying out racist agendum."

I know nothing about the status of The Black World Today. It has an authoritative name, claims to be big and boasts a swanky website, but that proves nothing these days. I sincerely hope that the claim made elsewhere in TBWT's website, that "The professionalism and experience of our world-class team of editors, writers, columnists and correspondents is unmatched in black publishing," is either a lie or true in an unintentional direction.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 02:11 PM | TrackBack

Echoes from Algeria.

I found this excerpt in John and Antonio's Inside Europe: Iberian Notes:
From Modern Times by Paul Johnson, pages 497-98:

"...It is important to grasp that the object (of the Algerian FLN in and after 1954), from start to finish, was not to defeat the French Army. That would have been impossible. The aim was to destroy the concept of assimilation and multi-racialism by elimination of the moderates on both sides. The first Frenchman to be murdered was a liberal, Arabophile schooleacher, Guy Monnerot. The first Arab casualty was a pro-French local governor, Hadj Sakok. Most FLN operations were directed against the loyal Muslim element: employees of the state were murdered, their tongues cut off, their eyes gouged out, then a note, 'FLN', pinned to the mutilated bodies...

"...These men (the FLN leaders), who had absorbed everything most evil the twentieth century had to offer, imposed their will on the villages by sheer terror; they never used any other method. Krim (an FLN leader) told a Yugoslav paper that the initiation method for a recruit was to force him to murder a designated 'traitor', mouchard (police spy or informer), French gendarme, or colonialist: "An assassination marks the end of the apprenticeship of each candate." A pro-FLN American reporter was told: "When we've shot (the Muslim victim) his head will be cut off and we'll clip a tag on his ear to show he was a traitor. Then we'll leave the head on the main road."

"...But it was the Muslim men of peace the FLN killers really hated. In the first two-and-a-half years of war, they murdered only 1,035 Europeans but 6,352 Arabs (authenticated cases; the real figure was nearer 20,000). By this point the moderates could only survive by becoming killers themselves or going into exile. The FLN strategy was, in fact, to place the mass of the Muslims in a sandwich of terror. On one side, the FLN killers replaced the moderates. On the other, FLN atrocities were designed to provoke the French into savage reprisals, and so drive the Muslim population into the extremist camp..."


John and Antonio also give the Republican side in and before the Spanish Civil War a less easy ride than is customary.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 01:31 PM | TrackBack

You mean - we have to pay for this?

UK Transport Blog's Patrick Crozier reprints and expands upon an Independent article about the Government belatedly waking up to the idea of "you nationalize it - you pay for it, chum" and safety.

Crozier is going to be famous. He has the knack of coining ideas linked to physical facts. For instance, somewhere he talks about how the reason that rail travel cannot be split up admistratively in the way that air travel can is that the train is continually touching the rail. This constant friction in the literal sense produces all sorts of friction in the Clausewitzian sense. Constant non-catastrophic repairs, constant knock on effects, you need a unified system. (Which does not and should not mean a State system, so all you hopeful Guardian readers who rushed up to embrace me for having seen the light can go home again.) Whereas air travel is nodular both literally and figuratively. You can break off a bit and work on it separately because you can wield the scissors in some of that empty space.

Another Crozier idea is the "rhythm of an enterprise." Once punctuality is lost it is very difficult to regain it. Which links in somehow with the daily tasks that employees perform. I'm not expressing this very well, which is why I am impressed with them as can.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 12:05 PM | TrackBack

Choosing to be deaf.

Here the Guardian prints a selection of letters concerning the child engineered to be deaf. The best was from Sheenagh Pugh of Cardiff:
"Sharon Ridgeway seems to assume the statement "hearing is preferable to not hearing" is equivalent to saying "hearing people are better than deaf people". They aren't, but they are incomparably luckier, as I suspect my deaf father and brother-in-law would be the first to agree. When She says "deaf people are no more disabled than someone who speaks French, Italian or Japanese" she speaks as if hearing involved nothing but language. People who speak French, Italian and Japanese can also hear birdsong, Bach and the voices of their loved ones. Those who have never had that blessing, as Jeanette Winterson rightly calls it, are, frankly, ill-qualified to evaluate the lack of it.

The parents in the US case (Lesbian couple have deaf baby by choice, April 8) claim they want their children to be like them. Presumably, then, illiterate parents have the right to deny their children education. The father of a friend of mine did this, refusing to let his gifted children attend university because he hadn't. Most parents, thankfully, are less selfish. I hope the US boy and girl, when they grow up, sue both the parents and the doctors who engineered them without the blessing of sound."

One could take the absurdity further. The mentally disabled are our fellow human beings. God does not love them the less. I'm not sure, on average, that they are any less happy than those of normal intelligence. Certainly they have their own sense of community. So why not, following this logic, deliberately starve babies of oxygen during birth?


Posted by Natalie Solent at 11:55 AM | TrackBack

Yesterday was my highest ever

hit-count, at 878. One day I'll install Bravenet and find out who you all are. The timing of the hits recorded on my BeSeen hit counter suggests that you are nearly all either Americans or insomniacs.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 11:09 AM | TrackBack

Read Norweigan Blogger.

He's Norweigan. He blogs. He rules.
(In my youth we used to say, "rules OK" but in time of war one drops the superfluous. So I won't say where I found this one.)
Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:40 AM | TrackBack

Senator Clay Waters

has in his hand a list of known warbloggers.... (found on Tim Blair)

Mr Waters suggests that if one's name has not been included one should sign up to "Warblogger Watch". Sniff. I'd have really preferred not to have to ask.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:14 AM | TrackBack

You ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Following on from the last post, if you think former Coventry City goalie and Green Party spokesman David Icke's conspiracy theories are weird, go and look in the Handbasket. Also if you scroll up to the top, Mr Rummel gives concentric definitions of the word "Yankee", having heard my account of Moira Breen's inappropriate adventures with the word.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 09:39 AM | TrackBack

April 10, 2002

Puny mammalian scum! Soon you will all be our slaves!

Yes, the glorious day is coming when the green of skin will assume
their rightful dominance over all lesser races! Hahahahaha!

Oops. Broke my cover for a minute there. Mustn't panic, those humans are too dozy to notice. It's all that disgusting warm blood they have; it overheats their brains.

That Gary Farber, though, he may have some inkling...

Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:23 PM | TrackBack

Arf a mo before I go.

Some fun from Chris Pastel:

Well, I don't have a fancy Newton, but I do have an ordinary HP 32S which tells me that 28.41 ml (1 fl. oz in UK) times 16 ozes (obviously the plural for "oz") to the pint gives 454.56 ml, which divided by two gives 227.28 which rounds down to 227 ml for arf a pint.

UPDATE / VAGUELY RELATED COMMENT: My dear husband used to be the sane one. So why did I just hear him saying, while sitting next to me measuring bits of cardboard for a remote controlled buggy, "I do like the simple, basic fact that a millimetre is 1/25 of an inch." (Pause) The French realised the doomed nature of their civilization..."

Posted by Natalie Solent at 05:10 PM | TrackBack

Alex Bensky

writes:

Unfortunately I don't even question the recent report from Norway about someone made to remove his jacket in the parliament buildings because it had a Star of David--while pro-Palestinian regalia goes unchallenged and unremarked upon. This is merely part of the anti-Semitic wave crashing across Europe, as dismally documented by you and other bloggers.

This is, I suppose, part of that superior and more sophisticated and cultured European culture that Europeans keep offering to teach Americans. Perversely we continue to engage in our greedy, oppressive, consumer-mad culture.

Yet, oddly enough, I note that except among Moslems, some blacks, and the usual fringe crackpots, anti-Semitism barely registers. To the astonishment of our chattering classes but to no one else, fundamentalist Christians' voting patterns didn't seem to be affected one way or the other by an Orthodox Jew on the ballot. It is inconceivable that any national or state legislature would bar a Star of David if it allowed other symbols. And of course, lacking the wonderful structures of the European Union, such an activity would be flatly unconstitutional.

The Norwegians will no doubt continue to sneer at us crass Americans. I can live with that.

Ah, but you don't have to live in Norway. I keep on hoping to see a wave of reaction against all this. There was that pro-Israel march in France. It would be interesting to know how many of the marchers were gentiles. If the point comes up I always stress that I am not a Jew. I do this because (a) I'm not, and (b) one popular measure of the moral rightness of a case is whether it can attract supporters who have nothing to gain personally.

It's obvious to me that's why Moira Breen made it clear she wasn't a Jew, when Netlexblogger (sorry, can't make link work. Look in Moira's site under the word "classified") mistakenly said that she was. His reply starts off OK, but then opportunistically siezes on her jokey reference to being "accused of being British", and continues in this not entirely nice way:

It seems that the terms "jewish" is problematic for some pro-israel supporters who pride themselves to stand by the Israeli nationalists, but would feel offended to be "accused" of being members of the jewish people. Let's make it clear. "Jewish" is not an insult on this weblog. Nor is it an insult of being taken for someone else, jewish or not, unless you have serious personal identity problems to solve.

Is it insulting to be taken for a "jew" ? Since when has "jewish" become a slang word ?
[SNIP]
So it is my view that my wording using the term "jewish blogger" was not insulting anybody.
[SNIP]
So the question is why do some people of WASP background have so little trouble identifying with the Israelis, but would find it almost insulting to be really taken for jews ? It reminds me that some deported jews by the nazis reported that the day the gates of their concentration camp were opened by the Allies, some of their "fellow-prisoners" were shouting by their side to their liberators "I'm not jew. I'm a true prisoner".

Today, why should someone reclaim so loud not being called "jewish", making a point of honnor in saying to the face of the world that he or her is a true ("damn") Yankee ? (Note that i would never use the expression "damn" Yankee in my blog that would sound very pejorative when translated in french).

By the way, what is the definition of a true "Yankee" ?

I sometimes get accused of being American. Even San Franciscan. I try to bear it bravely.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:38 PM | TrackBack

Two cheers for the monarchy.

Andrew Sullivan is clearly a good deal less attached to the monarchy than I am. Perhaps for that very reason he has expressed better than I could why those who seek to abolish it should be passionately opposed. This is from near the end of the article:
Besides, as a practical matter, the monarchy could only be successfully retired and an alternative constructed if there were overwhelming public support. As long as a significant proportion of the country wanted to keep it - even a minority - the replacement would be so constitutionally divisive that it would undermine its own rationale. The Windsors would not be executed. They'd live on somewhere. And plenty of Daily Telegraph readers would still regard them - regardless of the new constitutional settlement - as the legitimate sovereign. We'd be replacing an institution with which many are tired with an institution against which many are passionately opposed. That's called undermining the basic political order - and unless there's a vital reason for doing so, no responsible government would or should dream of it. Abandoning the pound would be divisive enough. Getting rid of the monarchy in the same breath would be tantamount to the destruction of large swaths of political legitimacy in the country at large. It simply can't be done. And it won't be done. A nation isn't simply its people today. It's also its people yesterday. It's a contract, to paraphrase Burke, not just between the current generations but between all the generations who have ever made it up, and especially those that played such a vital role in making it what it is today. For them, the monarchy mattered. That's why it should also matter to us, even if we cannot begin to think of it in even vaguely the same way.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:33 PM | TrackBack

Saudis, too, help suicide-murderers turn a profit.

At Ken Layne.com I found this UPI article by Pam Hess.

Towards the end of the article we had this statement by a Mr Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American Islamic Relations:

""Sometimes I'd like to ask these people who criticize these things (the funds) to find a list of Palestinian orphans who shouldn't be fed. Give us a list of Palestinian widows and orphans so Muslims can comply with dictates of not feeding the wrong people," Hooper said. "Are you supposed to penalize some child, some widow, because of what their father did or did not do?"

Hey, you can ask some of "these people". Ask me.

I answer: it doesn't take that many thousands of dollars to keep a child fed. You don't have to make a widow rich on the proceeds of murder.

I answer: the majority of the families of evil, psycopathic suicide bombers are, of course, evil and psychopathic themselves. When discussing the death cult dominant in present day Palestine and influential across much of the Muslim world, certain sad but true observations must be made. It is regrettable, but all too likely to be true, that the parents of suicide bombers are evil, their brothers are evil, their sisters are evil, their spouses are evil, and their children are born innocent but rendered evil by about the age of eight. We see them do the work of corrupting these children on our TV screens, when they parade toddlers wrapped about with mock bombs and teach them to sing of murdering Jews. There is no reason to suppose that a task at which so many Palestinian parents and teachers work so assiduously does not meet with success.

Perhaps some of these children can be rescued even now. My goodness, perhaps even some of the adults can be saved, but I'll concentrate on the case of the children since organizations like CAIR do seem very concerned about these orphans. By the grace of God, great things are possible. Some of the children kidnapped by warlords and death-cults in Africa and forced to kill as an initiation test have indeed been restored to humanity and morality. Of course the task is harder in Palestine than in Uganda or Burundi because the Palestinian children, unlike the African ones, were warped and abused by their own parents.

Since Mr Hooper has so kindly expressed an interest in this fine work of giving these abused Palestinian children a chance to grow up into normal human beings, I am happy to respond with my suggestions.


  • Allot each family the amount it had before the criminal killed himself. (Not more: perhaps those over-lenient governments in Saudi Arabia and Iraq with their famously lax penal systems do not know this, but it is not conducive to good order to make crime pay.)
  • I answer: make the money gven to those with custody of minors conditional on the self-evidently dysfunctional surviving carers embarking on a course of reform and/or psychiatric treatment and the self-evidently vulnerable children being educated in a civilized educational institution. If there are no civilized educational institutions to be found in the Palestinian Authority, put some of this money to good use by founding one.
  • Obviously, despite the odds being against it in a brainwashed country like Palestine, it can happen that the child of respectable people turns to evil without the parents or other family being in any way responsible. In these circumstances, naturally, a simple statement by the family repudiating their evil spouse or child and condemning their crimes would suffice.
  • Call it the "Charity fund for feeding the dependants of criminals and psychopaths and rescuing them from the Death Cult."
Then I'll contribute.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 09:52 AM | TrackBack

April 09, 2002

Random Jottings is my baby.

Yep, that's what John Weidner says. Wow. I'm honoured. (John sent me my second ever Reader Comment. The first was from Brian Linse, and Dawson wasn't far behind.) But, as I said to Glenn Reynolds when adding myself to his list of Instapundit-inspired blogs, what if offspring-blogs start suing parent-blogs for blog maintenance?

Talking of Brian Linse, he leads a busy life over there in the Den of Lions. "We had to kill two people, make Stephen and Laura fall in love, and cut a deal with an international terrorist."

Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:16 PM | TrackBack

Whither 227ml?

You guys are on the ball. Captain Heinrichs writes:

According to the authoritative converter on my Newton MessagePad 2000, in
the UK:
1 fluid oz = 28.41 ml
.4 pints = 227 ml
However in the US:
1 fluid oz =29.57 ml
.48 pints =227 ml
My listing:
1 fluid ox = never use it, have shot glasses
1/2 cup = 112 ml (also called "Little Scoop")
1 coffee cup = 1 serving instant soup
1 cup = 250 ml (also called "Big Scoop")
>1 cup = gauge relative quantity of basic ingredient, add
remaining ingredients to taste
Be creative!

Cheers

J.M. Heinrichs

What on earth is going on? 0.48 of a US pint is very close to half a pint, but not exactly. No cook yet born can differentiate between 227ml and 228ml so why that exact number? Is 227ml the equivalent of some Thai measurement I don't know about? Is it a secret act of resistance on the part of the Blue Dragon company - and if so, resistance against whom? Have a good old slosh of whisky while you ponder this mystery.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:11 PM | TrackBack

None so deaf as those that will not hear

. Anthony Woodlief rails against efforts to deliberately concieve a deaf child.
Posted by Natalie Solent at 04:04 PM | TrackBack

In an empty house, my screams echo from the walls.

Er, possibly I am getting overwrought about this. But some things just get to you. I just cooked some Blue Dragon Thai 3-minute noodles from a packet. No, they weren't that bad, really quite acceptable. Only - grrr-I'mgoingtoexplodeagain! - on the instructions it said, "Bring to the boil 227ml of water and blah blah blah..."

227ml is half a pint.

So why can't they just say, "half a pint"?

or "227ml or half a pint"

or even, if they must, "250ml"?

Instead, in obedience to who knows what "guideline" they have to say a sum that means half a pint while contorting themselves to avoid putting in print that dreaded, unmentionable obscenity at which all good folk must make signs warding off the Evil Eye, an Imperial measure.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 01:28 PM | TrackBack

Khatami's Iran

described by Michael Rubin.

This struck me forcefully:

"In his recently published memoirs, Grand Ayatollah Husayn Ali Montazeri described a purge in 1988 of political prisoners that resulted in several thousand deaths. Khatami was a member of the ruling council at the time and intimately involved - at least administratively - in the purge."

Note how large the number of deaths and how recently they occurred.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:18 AM | TrackBack

Brownshirt Barbie.

Angie Shultz sent me this wonderfully nostalgic e-mail. Her words appear in italics, mine in ordinary type:

Natalie,

If there is a roughly Christian afterlife, I am going to do hard time in Purgatory for the sin of under-appreciating my mother.

(Yes, I will eventually get to the point.)

When I was a wee lassie I of course had a Barbie doll. And of course she needed clothes. And of course my younger sister and I asked for Barbie clothes for Christmas.

But we didn't have a lot of money, and Barbie clothes were expensive, so my mother spent a lot of time sewing clothes for our Barbies. I remember one year she made us an entire shoebox (each) full of Barbie clothes. We were underwhelmed. We didn't like the dumpy old clothes she made Barbie any more than the dumpy old clothes she made us.

But in that shoebox were wondrous things! My grandmother had a fur coat--- some respectable fur, soft and silky. Muskrat, for all I know. Lord knows how she ended up with it, because as I've said we did not have much money. It was left to her by someone, but I can't imagine who. Anyway, no one in our family was ever going to have an occasion to wear a fur coat, and it had a very wide hem, so Mom cut away a bit of the inside of the hem to make "mink" stoles and hats for our Barbies. She also had a lot of material left over from making our clothes, so often Barbie had clothes very like ours (ick). Sometimes she got little scraps of exotic material, and Barbie had really wild clothes.

I still have my Barbie. At least, all but the head. She's dressed in a garish early-'70s flowered pantsuit. I sure wish I had those Barbie clothes now, especially the fur. I remember Mom sitting at the sewing machine working on those clothes (which she said were for our cousins), and now I can see how hard it was on her eyes and hands to sew the little things.

You bet! After fixing some torn underarm seams I flatly refused to do any more of the wretched things. I'm an unrepentant doll heightist. Any doll under eighteen inches high has to dress in rags in our household. - NS

Er, anyway, my point. The Hitler doll. If you loved sewing doll clothes, you might really get into the Hitler doll. Imagine sewing him little satin negligees, and lacy things, and maybe if you were daring, leather thongs. Him and Goering. And you could pose them in compromising positions. I have a Star Trek Barbie and Ken (of much more recent vintage than the Headless One, natch) and a Han Solo and a Darkwing Duck. I'm sure these intrepid Good Doers would love to burst in with a tiny digital camera and take pictures of Adolph and Hermann in compromising positions and publishing them on their tiny web page. Hours of fun for the whole family! (But not at 118 pound a pop.)

Regarding Ms Shultz's striking concept for a web page, a few years ago in either the Observer or the Sunday Times I saw a photo-story about Action Man and Barbie (or perhaps Sindy). It was an ironic comment on war by some artist or other. A google search has not turned it up, although some of the sites it did turn up seemed... interesting. But any readers wishing to set to work on Goering's negligee should beware the unsleeping Mattel legal team, although the legal eagles did suffer a setback last August.

By the way, in the US every once in a while there's a great cry over how Barbie is teaching girls to be passive consumers. My sister and her friends and our cousins played Barbies, and their Barbies generally did the standard lunch-and-shopping thing. But my Barbie lived alone in the woods with a tribe of wild (plastic) horses, who would obey only her because they loved her, and they were telepathic and originally from the Andromeda Galaxy. Sometimes Barbie and the horses had to go to town for supplies, and they would come thundering in, overturning the cafe tables and sending the lunching Barbies scattering in terror. Ha ha! Consume that!

Thank you for prompting this little stroll down memory lane. We now return you to something important.

Angie Schultz

You mean... you think this isn't important? No Barbie goes unmourned on this blog. Actually when I was little the market leader in Britain was Sindy, a much more matronly figure. My sister and I had about four Sindys (Sindies? Peccavi!) in various stages of dismemberment, a Ken (an ambiguous character, I always thought) and one Barbie who I didn't like much because her chest stuck out so oddly. And they got put into combat fatigues quite often. It does not require Survivalist parents for this to happen, just an older brother into Action Man.

Action Man was a jolly sight easier to dress on account of having ball-and-socket joints somewhat resembling one of Larry Niven's Protectors. Unfortunately these joints were a weak point in his anatomy and after a year or two of bungee-jumping on a piece of string thrown from the landing railings Action Man became Quadriplegic Man. Sindy #2 tended him lovingly, while Sindy #1 (helped by her unjointed but squidgy legs) took over his missions, at least when I was in charge she did. Ken was deemed unfit for combat duties as his legs had been paralyzed into a rigid position even when new. Also his waist was too wide for Action's trousers. Tut tut, Ken.


Posted by Natalie Solent at 08:45 AM | TrackBack

April 08, 2002

What are friends for?

Bitter Girl reports that, knowing of her womanly habit of knitting things, one of her chers amis sent her a most bizarre article and sweetly said I thought of you. What she said in reply her blog does not reveal.

And she thought to forward it to me! She knew I liked to sew, you see. Er, Shannon, I'm more into fluffy soft toys. Kittens. Squirrels. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. You go follow the link to see what the creative toymaker is into these days.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 10:24 PM | TrackBack

Feeling happy? I can cure that.

Read both Damianation and The World After WTC.

Quote from the latter: "Who would have guessed that the road to the hearts of 21st century Norwegians would pass through the blood-soaked floors of Israeli restaurants?"

It's painful to be at odds with most opinion in your own country. Here in Britain I can sometimes persuade myself that there is a silent majority giving the lie to the establishment view on, say, Europe. And I think Tony Blair is doing the more or less the right thing regarding Iraq etc. However, when it comes to some of my more far-flung libertarian opinions - guns for instance - hooo boy I am out there on the nut fringe and there is no fudging the fact that 95% if not 99% of decent British folk would reject my views if they could bring themselves to believe that I was serious in holding them. But I doubt that hurts me anything like as much as the peverse response of Norweigan public opinion to the daily outrages in Israel hurts Bjorn Staerk, or the PC blabber in Canada hurts Damian Penny.

(Light relief: I'm afraid I still can't do the aelig, oslash and aring things. Back on January 24th the Strong Bear told me how, but when talking to me about computers you have to use very short words indeed, and can't complicate the issue with "&" signs. The level I want is: Press This Key. Now Press That Key. You Can Breathe Now.)

Posted by Natalie Solent at 09:45 PM | TrackBack

Even a priestess of the anglosphere cult

must take a moment to congratulate France on an almost embarrassingly definite victory in the Six Nations. Rugby has spread in an unusual way. Usually the mark of history is quite clear: the Indians play cricket and the Cubans baseball. Soccer, of course, was created fully formed as part of the human genome. But what other sport links the countries of the British Isles, France, Italy, Fiji, New Zealand and South Africa?

UPDATE: Okay, okay, I know the origin of the game. Dr Arnold picked up Harry Flashman and ran with him or something like that. Then Martin Luther split the game up into Union and League and so we continue to the present day. Floreat Etona. I should have said that rugby is odd in having two separate mechanisms of diffusion: a British Empire one and a purely geographical one.

Some Frenchmen play cricket, too. Even some Welshmen play it. No, cariad, of course I'm not getting at you. How can you think such a thing?

Posted by Natalie Solent at 06:54 PM | TrackBack

Views of the South again.

Southern boy Patrick Carver quotes a radio commentary on Mississippi achievements. I certainly didn't know about the ballet, but I did know about the heart and lung transplants.

Some people asked if I am on some sort of crusade to restore the Confederacy. No, just challenging a stereotype.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 02:57 PM | TrackBack

Bear facts

- there are a whole lot of intriguing stories flagged up on Dodgeblog over the last few days, particularly the creekwater thing. Have these people ever heard of Weil's Disease, also known as Rat Syphilis?

But actually, being a straightforward bear fan, I am moved to Just Say Wow about a British TV programme that MommaBear is unlikely to have seen yet. It was all about large carnivores in Romania. Did you know that there are more bears in Romania than in all the rest of Europe combined? Or that, for fear of wolves and bears, Romanian shepherds really do wrap themselves in sheepskin coats and lie down to sleep beside their flocks? It was like seeing the opening scene of the Christmas story by infra-red camera.

BTW Momma Bears are admirable role models. Sadly Daddy Bears are not, particularly if you are a stepchild.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 02:48 PM | TrackBack

Elizabeth, the Queen Mother RIP.

OK, so my hackles did rise just a bit at that word state in the phrase "exaltation of the British state" in this quintessential Telegraph leader - but, hey, that's just me. Other than that I'm cheering the writer on, and a pox be upon the knave Freedland, who writes for AOL's diddy little news magazine as well as for the Guardian, so I get him both ways.

Just why did people queue for so long to see a flag with a coffin-shaped bulge under it? First, let me admit to be present two factors which Mr Freeland has no doubt also mentioned. The sun shone and it's the school holidays. But nobody spends twelve hours making smalltalk with two randomly-chosen strangers just to have a day out and give the kids something to tell their kids. The main reason, of course, was that she was widely loved and with good cause. As everyone keeps saying because it is true, her death marks the end of an era. There are perhaps three or four hundred people in Britain who were alive before she was, and few enough who remember the world before she became a public figure, which I take to have first happened in a small way in about 1915. The Queen Mother and the royal family generally are symbols of permanence and identity in a dangerous and anonymous world.

It may seem odd to talk about a woman who has just died as a symbol of permanence. But of course her influence will survive her by decades or even centuries, as Queen Victoria's did. (Although without meaning any disrespect it cannot be as far-reaching as Victoria's, who managed to have a whole era named after her, the kind of score you just can't top.) Memories of her particular life will flow like a stream to join the river of kings 'n' battles 'n' prime ministers 'n' Alfred burning the cakes. I hope and trust it'll take more than Peter Sissons' bloody burgundy tie to make that river run dry.

Posted by Natalie Solent at 01:38 PM | TrackBack