June 22, 2002
The sad story of British gun control.
The Financial Times carried this Joyce Lee Malcolm article. Not the FT's usual fare, but not nearly so surprising as if the ordinary Times, let alone the Guardian or Independent had carried it. I look to the day when we start seeing newspaper columns by British writers saying this same message. Unfair it may be, but many of her readers are going to spot the reference to Bentley University/MIT on the bottom line and say, "Ah, she would say that. She's an American, and everyone knows what they're like." (Link via Instapundit.)
June 21, 2002
Back to the real world.
The Palestinians: working towards statehood.JERUSALEM — Hours before her death in a suicide attack, 5-year-old Gal Eizenman was jumping around, a blond bundle of joy at a children's musical performance organized by her grandmother Noah Alon, 59.A videotape of the occasion shows the two of them happy and dancing. Later, the tape was used to give details of what Gal and her grandmother were wearing so their bodies could be identified.
.............
In another tragic tale, two orphaned sisters, Shuval and Shagal Shemesh, ages 7 and 3, lost their adopted grandfather in a suicide bombing on Tuesday, three months after their parents were killed in another attack in Jerusalem.
At the time, the girls' parents, Gadi and Tzippi, had left a clinic where an ultrasound test showed their mother was five months pregnant with twins.
The two girls were adopted by Gadi's sister Anat whose father-in-law Baruch Graoni, 60, was among the 17 people killed in Tuesday's bombing on a bus.
I've got a little running joke on this blog. I put up pictures of Palestinian kids dressed up by their loving parents in suicide belts and make a little play on the notion of a "Moppets and Martyrs" calendar. It's a way of dramatizing my belief that Palestinian society is sunk in barbarism. Well, just now I saw a picture of the little girl mentioned above who never got to play being blown up. They blew her up for real. Perhaps it would not be strictly accurate to call her a martyr. She didn't want to die, any more than did her grandmother. But in a way she was martyred. I can't cry now because it's a training day at the school so the kids are home. They are running about all over the house, my children and another little kid who's visiting, having a fine old time. I hope they don't come in here.
One day I'm going to make it out of TV and into the blogs....
Happy Fun Pundit on the sad tale of the Canadian cable TV channels who discovered "...their prime time audiences measured not in the hundreds of thousands, but in the hundreds. Or dozens. Or one guy named Old Joe who watches 'CanoeTV' religiously for the portaging tips."
Why aren't we tracking these things?
Not to mention reducing them to their component atoms with cleansing nuclear fire. Asteroid came this close to hitting Earth.
Good morning everyone!
I now commence on a 48 page analysis of trade policy, Third Way economic macro-management and its correlation with underlying trends in-- My neighbour just drove in to the street like a bat out of hell. Whatever was she doing out of reach of a TV?
June 20, 2002
Watch patiently.
If nothing happens after several seconds, twiddling the mouse may correct the problem. This... thing is my gift to you all.I got it, and the "thing" description, from MCJ who got it from Transterrestrial Musings. It needs Flash to work.
Those that resemble flies from a distance.
This comes from Teresa Neilsen Hayden's blog. It is unlikely to the point of impossibility that Teresa Neilsen Hayden resembles a fly from a distance, or, indeed from close up. (Indeed she doesn't. Just found her picture. Ignore me when I whiffle on like this.) But she does quote a passage from Borges that itself quotes an interesting Chinese classification system. I had come across this before - I seem to remember that Voltaire described it as "sublime", though Google gives me no reference. Anyway, quiz for you, with a provisional answer to be revealed in a few days. A friend of mine thought up an explanation of how this system came about, under which the classifications are eminently practical. Can you?
Fat chance.
Moira Breen observes the battle between two different PC sects: health fascists and fat activists. It sure pays to have a lifetime of double fries: you can sue MacDonalds for over-feeding you, then reinvest some of the proceeds by suing Southwestern Airlines for having too small seats. Click the comments, too. One lady, self-described as a "fat chick", takes charge of her own affairs well: she buys two seats. Patrick Neilsen Hayden of Electrolite makes some fair points and then finishes up most engagingly with "You know all this. I'm engaged in the process described on rec.arts.sf.fandom as "arguing in order to be polite."
Except when it's good news. Then I'm not written out.
Lots of people have commented on the Al Ahram/Independent article from Edward Said. OK, so I did make one of those atonal hums through the nose while reading it. No one would call it a clarion call to morality. But it's an advance on the time when Mr Said's idea of a good answer to "When are you [Palestinians] going to stop killing people?" was "That's an American question." Here is Junius's take on the article.There's more to come. InstaPundit led me to this excellent news in Zachary Barbera's blog. He links to a Sydney Morning Herald article saying that 50 notable Palestinians have taken out an advert condemning suicide bombings. Their quoted statement still seemed to dwell overmuch on the pragmatic inadvisability of the tactic, rather than its evil. But, again, it's a start. And they risk much more than Said does in speaking out.
I'm written out
for a while on the subject of suicide bombers. Iain Murray isn't. Also note spot-on comments from Kris Murray.And I see Iain, too, has a jeer about spoilsports Perugia.
"For the Italian team, the whining noise doesn't stop when the plane touches down."
That, from memory, was the unwontedly witty signing off line given to us by a BBC reporter on the news last night. Perugia sacked the Korean player whose goal pushed Italy out of the World Cup. La Bella Perugia! City of Raphael, Urbino, wine, truffles and babies in a sulk.
Learn from us.
The man behind "Rogernomics" in New Zealand says you can't fix the NHS with money. Compared to Gordon Brown, Roger Douglas is a paladin of economic good sense. Not everyone is a fan, though.
June 19, 2002
Check out
Eric Raymond's Armed and Dangerous. Not afraid to follow the thought through to any conclusion, is he?
Go rant and roar someplace else!
"OK," says David Janes, now at http://blog.davidjanes.com/ Update links time again.
Honourable mention.
Sorry, Basmallah. You may be cute, you may be three and a half, but you don't get a slot in the Moppets and Martyrs calendar because your Mummy hasn't said in so many words that she wants you dead. Yet. But getting coached to say that "we kill the Jews because they are apes and pigs" is a really good start, so keep trying, Basmallah!
I ought to say
that Medical Aid for Palestinians seem fairly respectable, and I am quite happy to see Palestinians get medical aid. (What with UNRWA looking after them, Saudi killathons and Yasser Arafat crisps they must be the most medically aided people in the world, but they don't seem to be getting any less sick. Sorry, meant to say, any healthier. Perhaps some of the money slips through the cracks.) What I object to is all the talk that implies that the Israelis shoot the curfew-busting husbands of women in labour for fun. They do it because murderous suicide bombers have given them ample cause to believe that they might have 0.02 seconds to get a bullet through the brain of the Palestinian driving very fast in their direction.
What is it with ex-ambassadors to the Saudi Entity?
Just re-read Matt Welch's demolition of the onetime US ambassador to the place, "Saudi lapdog" Wyche Fowler. Now update the scene to the floor so recently hit by Cherie's little dropped brick. The carpet so abused belonged to a charity called Medical Aid for Palestinians. And who is the guiding spirit of this body?...What she got from Sir Andrew Green, a former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and MAP's chairman, was a gruesome slide show of the inhumanity he claimed the Israelis had carried out in several Palestinian villages...andIt was deliberately undiplomatic language from Sir Andrew, who said that Israel's "ruthless occupation" was stopping the charity delivering medical supplies.
The whole Times story can be found - drat!, can be found on page 12 of the Times. Buy a paper for once. Every time I link to the website my computer freezes. If you want to risk it the story is headed "Slide show developed into a political sideshow."
So what gives? It could be that irresistible charm exercised by the class of Saudis who mix with Western diplomats, I suppose, that turns their heads, but Daniel Pipes thinks it's the consultancy fees. (When I started writing this post, I knew I wanted the earlier Matt Welch post on Wyche Fowler and googled straight to it. I had not yet seen this more recent Welch / Charles Johnson posting on the subject.)
So there you are. Sir Andrew Green was amassador to the Saudi-Controlled Place from 1996 - 2000, overlapping with his US colleague Wyche as it happens. He's also guest speaker for Swan Hellenic cruises. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just one of those human interest details.
Like a pound coin found down the back of the sofa,
this editorial saying that the post office needs competition sparkles brightly among the fluff, broken bits of toy and old lollipop sticks surrounding it.
It's a poor memorial
to the 19 innocents killed in Israel that much of what the British papers can find to say about them is what a clanger Cherie has dropped. However it was interesting to see the BBC Television news assuming that it was a clanger when all she was doing was repeating their own line of a few days ago. Last night's ten o'clock news was the most anti-bomber I have heard yet. Something has changed, and if the change sticks it will will save a few lives down the line. It might cut down the flow of EU money to Arafat for a start.BBC News 24 is quite separate editorially, but it too is beginning to feel the see-saw tip. No equivocation about this story: Child heroes of bus bomb rescue. On the other hand, BBC News 24 keeps to its old habit of putting quote marks round "terror attacks" in the introduction to the story about Israel re-entering the West bank, as if the terror attacks might be something else; friendly pats on the back for instance. (That link will only be good for today, Wednesday.) Can I make myself believe that the quote marks merely show that Sharon is being quoted? No.
Why blog?
I posted a fortuitously-found quote from Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay over at Samizdata.
June 18, 2002
As promised
, I'm coming back to Brendan O'Neill's question "Why is blogging a right-wing thing?" As I said to him in a private e-mail, after his calling all my readers "easily shocked ladies who lunch" I would dearly love to rend his gobberwarts.* But there's a problem. I agree with him.He says, "I have always suspected that the right-wing blogging phenomenon is a result of the right's increasing isolation from the mainstream - from mainstream politics, mainstream journalism and mainstream debates. Over the past 10 to 15 years, traditional right-wing views have become ever-more unpopular, as Third Way and consensus politics have take centre stage. The Reaganites and Thatcherites who were in the ascendant in the 1980s have found themselves out on a limb in an age where we're all supposed to be caring, sharing, non-argumentative, environmentally-aware centre-lefties. "
You can't say truer than that. It's like being a sheepdog on a sensitivity training course these days. Pah. But after this strong start the limitations of Mr O'Neill's mindset soon become clear:
"And rather than build an effective and coherent opposition to the new political orthodoxies, some on the right seem happy to retreat into the 'Blogosphere', from where they can throw insults at their enemies without having to challenge them fundamentally."
Huh? Just what sort of fundamental challenge do you think I was putting up before the blog? Cleaning the toilet in a right-wing way? Non-multicultural clearing up after breakfast? The point about blogging is that it costs next to nothing, anyone from housewives to executives can do it, and you don't need to go through an editor. Mr O'Neill's disdain for such low-intensity warfare comes through in his repeated use of the word "challenge":
"...the very nature of the Blogosphere ... means it is best suited to poking fun or poking holes in the mainstream media, rather than actually challenging it at a serious level."
Er, yes. Such a relief. As I write this post now I know that it is well short of the serious and weighty response that I could be composing were I Gladstone reborn. How nice that I'm not, and it's just a blog post that I can get done before nipping round the shop for some more milk. For all his romantic attachment to the spirit of 1798, Sir Brendan the Serious has all the attitudes of a nobleman demanding that these oiks put down the longbows and fight properly (with the very important caveat that first they have to buy the horse and the armour i.e. get a journalism degree and a proper job.)
"...it's safe to say that The Guardian - now the most mainstream, pro-government paper in Britain - won't be quaking in its boots."
No, but it's turning red and shuffling about. Did I ever tell you the story of Matthew Engel's column that was laughed right out of the Guardian archives?
"...it means that many on the right will end up simply talking to themselves, rather than building a real opposition to the Blairs, Clintons and Schroeders of this world. That is one of the reasons I have a lot of time for Iain Murray. Iain and I disagree on many things, but his Conservative Revival weblog was a good stab are thinking about actual alternatives to New Labour and how such alternatives could be reconstituted as an opposition."
He means proper politics again. Join a party. Become activists or local councillors or journalists. Get a proper job. Not that I have the slightest objection to Iain Murray (May his sword arm be ever strong!) or anyone else doing these things. But it all boils down to play nicely! To which I say, "Shan't!"
"In short, I think blogging is a right-wing thing as a result of the right's increasing isolation - and as a result of right-wingers' fancy for short, sharp, pithy attacks on an enemy that, in fact, they don't feel like they can take on. "
Classic guerilla tactics. And a classic guerilla error is to be tempted before you are ready into full scale battles that you are certain to lose.
Whoah, brakes on. Perhaps I'm in danger of letting my military metaphor push me into conclusions I don't really believe. Although I do think the right wing three quarters of the blogosphere does indeed do much of its work by pinpricks, it may have its greatest effects through conventional means. As Brian Micklethwait says, 'Blogging is going to impact seriously on all this, by identifying non-left and libertarian journalistic talent, giving it a start, training it, and then feeding it into the mainstream media.' So come on Brendan, gis a job.
*As Terry Pratchett fans will know, not as much fun as it sounds.
For reasons I explain over there, this post also appears in Libertarian Samizdata.
Uncommon Sense
says "I hasten to point out the following: The immigrant-welfare problem exists only in the welfare state. Eliminate the welfare state, this "problem" disappears as well."Yes.
June 17, 2002
Total Perspective Blogdex.
Like Zaphod Beeblebrox discovering that he really was the centre of the universe, I emerge unconcerned from having passed under the lens of Brendan O'Neill. Hey, what's the problem? Any mention that puts me next to Instapundit is fine by my Inner Troll. Stirring up Junius and Public Interest simultaneously was an undeniably brave stroke, but I'm not sure that Brendan's daring last-minute substitution of his Fenian forbears into the argument - or rather, substitution of his Fenian forbears for the argument - is really enough to keep him in the tournament, seeing that so many Irish ancestors are playing for my team too.More tomorrow.
Britain considered as a private party.
Jim Bennett (who, I discover, is Australian - click link to find out more [UPDATE: No, he's an American. I misunderstood - see below.]) writes:Natalie:*&'$%"£! I should have thought of that. In fact I already had thought of it, but in another directory. My mind is like the internet without Google. The directory where I had thought of immigration as agreeing to a contract was headed "welfare/problems/immigration" or something like that. The world is full of hardworking, active people who would like to live in the Anglosphere. In order to get this valuable benefit they would happily contract to do without welfare. If we could let them in on these terms we existing residents would gain the benefit of their energy and talents and we wouldn't get swamped by freeloaders. But such is the horror of unequal treatment that even though both sides would benefit we can't bring ourselves to do it. The English lessons are - or were - subject to the same constraints. Quite rightly we don't want the Home Secretary checking our apostrophes, and so we shy away from allowing him to check anyone's.You wrote:
"and while I oppose compulsory English and citizenship classes on the same grounds upon which I oppose compulsory anything else, it is nice that so many British Muslims want more of their people to learn English."
I think the problem is with the fool that called the classes "compulsory" when he should have written "conditional." As marginalized fringe libertarian wierdos know, but Guardian writers don't, is that there's no similarity at all between a compulsory measure and one imposed as a condition of contract, when the action contracted for is entirely voluntary. And immigration to the UK is surely a voluntary act in this case.
I myself find this news extremely encouraging. But then, I've always said that Anglosphere cultures tend toward assimilation unless forced otherwise.
Cheers,
Jim
Mr Bennett's argument, that a contract freely assumed is no oppression, is a strong one. I teeter on the edge of agreement - but remain worried: what if we get the new immigrants learning English and citizenship (I assume they come as a package), and it works fine, and then someone oh-so-reasonably says, shouldn't we all share in the benefits of Education in Citizenship? Ah, come now, the test at the end is easy, platitudinous even... you just have to say that you are committed to the British ideal of "social justice" in order to pass.
The adoption issue, too, brings up a conflict between universal rights and particular conditions accepted as part of the deal. We've all heard about the hoops that those wishing to adopt a child must jump through. The hoops are frequently absurd and outrageous, but that's another story. Even if one accepts that some check must be made that prospective adopters are fit to be parents, that doesn't mean that one supports similar checks on natural parents. A tremor goes through me when I hear a sententious TV commentator raise the topic, because they always finish up by talking about the "anomaly" that even the most feckless natural parent is allowed to breed.
Finally, I gave some thought to another important question raised by Mr Bennett. Which is the best service area on the M1 for children? It's a close run thing, but I'd say Newport Pagnell if you like them fried, but Toddington if you go for the fricassee option.
What's all this Australian bit? In a sort of director's cut, Mr Bennett has sent out an extra three words for his column exclusively for readers of this blog. "I suppose I should have written the following sentence with the additional 3 words in brackets. "In its own way this immigrant mix has become part of Anglosphereness, so that a bowl of Vietnamese noodle soup can be for me a taste of home (even when I'm ) in Australia."
British Muslims pro-integration?
I was surprised by this finding: "Further evidence of the appetite for integration lies in the level of support for David Blunkett's plans for compulsory English language and citizenship tests for new immigrants - 65% of Muslims backed the proposal. " The Guardian and ICM carried out a poll on the attitudes of British Muslims. Although this commentary exaggerates the extent to which the respondents did want integration, I must admit that I was surprised and heartened by the support for Blunkett's proposals. Which is weird, because I don't actually support them myself. But given that I am a marginalized libertarian weirdo, I must take my comfort where I can; and while I oppose compulsory English and citizenship classes on the same grounds upon which I oppose compulsory anything else, it is nice that so many British Muslims want more of their people to learn English. It's a pity that there is a great swarm of "diversity officers", British Sign Language to Urdu intepreters and the like whose jobs depend on this not happening.
Power without responsibility. Peace Process without Peace.
There was a story in Saturday's Telegraph that brought back memories. Headed "Terror threat to policeman" it described how a young Catholic policeman narrowly escaped injury - they called it injury, though I would have thought "death" was more the mot juste - after a bomb exploded under his car. The link says that too many people are trying to access that story. Good. I hope the crowds trying to access note well that Mitchel McLaughlin, chairman of Sinn Fein refused to condemn the attack on the officer. Sinn Fein grow fat on the rewards of participation in the peace process. Their placemen prance about for photo-opportunities and pose at the big desks they now have in government. Yet they refuse to condemn attempted murder of a policeman.The story reminds us that this type of killing is not new. Both the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary were meant to be religiously mixed. But the IRA killed as many Catholic policemen and part-time soldiers as it could. It was easy to do. The gunmen knew where the Catholic recruits lived. Then, then, they set up a great wail that the UDR and the RUC were sectarian, and wasn't it shocking how few Catholics there were in them. And the "liberal" British press, let alone the foreign press, just lapped it all up.
UPDATE: Some of my less cosmopolitan British readers thought I was joking about fried opossum. No, I'm not. Do a Ctrl-F search or scroll down to find the 'possum, passing the bear fillet in burgundy on your way. Now, I'm very soft-hearted and happen to know that my meat appears by special act of creation divinely shrink-wrapped on Tesco shelves. But if I had to eat dead animals like the rest of you, there is a certain appeal in going out in the morning to hunt your lunch.
June 16, 2002
What is this, a frigging gossip column?
My dear friend Junius (of course he's too high-principled to use his title, but we all know) tells me that Electrolite has moved to most chic little place at http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ - cost him five million, you know, but worth it for that location, and of course we're all missing Myria who, getting serious here, is having a bad time according to a comment on her blog. I heard that snippet while at the most magical party thrown by my dear friends over at Dodgeblog...