'Nother Solent

On Thursday

the Indy led with badgers in peril. EU Rota has the screenshot.

For the Seattle Post-Intelligencer it was imperilled polar bears. (Presumably this story, although Jim Miller doesn't say.)

Slow news day? I sympathise.

For once I am out of smart remarks,

as Ed says:

Natalie kind of meanders around a bit, like a country walk along the riverside, making allusions which you only get at the end as you reach the vista you were seeking all along; Adloyada picks a thread and then pulls and pulls, taking care to straighten the material so as not to hurt the threads she doesn't object to.

Yes, Lachesis is careful in her work.

Hallelujah, the THING is gone.

I skip, I gambol, I pirouette.

I am escorted from Tesco's fresh produce aisle by an assistant manager.

But nothing can bring me down; gravity has a ten percent reduction special offer zone centred around me, for I am without the THING.

Do you have a THING?

My THING was a letter (a proper ink on paper letter) that had gone unanswered for a shamefully long time. Now it is answered, licked, posted and gone. I am free, unless it comes back to me stamped "GONE AWAY" or "DECEASED" in which case it's a ten thousand years in THING thing.

Now I need a new THING.

Christmas cards.

Go private. Now.

You fools.

Today is election day in Iraq.

Here are some pictures from the BBC.

To mark the occasion, Heirs of Hammurabi has up plenty of new material. I liked this:

A young man can find many jobs in today's Iraq, including new ones like selling cars; now widely available to most folks: or cell phones; a true post-Saddam 'must have' item.

And this:

No American soldier has been killed in the Kurdish safe haven in the north since Saddam was toppled in the spring of 2003.

And this

In more than one instance — and to the delight of American and Iraqi troops — insurgents have been caught attempting to flee the battlefield dressed as women: Considered a particularly disgraceful act among Iraqis.

OK, I don't like the sexism. Sooner than we think perhaps, Iraq will experience the joys of diversity seminars. I believe it was Poul Anderson who said that future SF describes the problems that will arise from the solutions to the problems we have now. May the future when Iraqi politicians and media can afford to get as steamed up about basically prosaic issues as we do here be not long coming. Apparently the Kurdish region is well along that route.

Damian Penny links to this scorching piece by a left-wing blogger, Glenn Greenwald, on the true character of the European Left. After saying (in the context of European outrage at the execution of Tookie Williams) that the E.L. displays a "parmaount desire to find fault and evil with the U.S. and thereby adopting that goal as the first and only real principle, from which everything else follows," he continues:

This is a deeply dishonest and manipulative syndrome, having nothing whatever to do with the principles to which its adherents claim fidelity. Indeed, their supposed “principles” (human rights, the sanctity of human life, individual liberty) are simply weapons, pretexts, used to promote the only real principle they have – that the U.S. is a uniquely corrupt and evil country. And the reason one knows that to be the case is because these same individuals systematically overlook and even excuse far more severe violations of their ostensible principles when perpetrated by the countries and governments with which they inexcusably sympathize (sympathy which itself can be explained by a desire to sit in opposition to any and every American interest).

I felt a pang for Mr Greenwald. The early comments came from left wingers, many of whom were comically shocked ("Why can't we accept that other people do have insight and moral wisdom that we lack?") , then, as word got round, stacks of right wingers commented at his site expressing a level of support that he may have found a little embarrassing.

Word getting round included a link from Instapundit, who highlighted a very telling point made by Greenwald:

"Somehow, Europeans have managed to transform the atrocities which they committed and which occurred in their countries from a badge of shame (which, arguably, it need not be any longer) into some sort of badge of moral superiority and entitlement to sit in judgment."

Follow the link to Damian Penny's introduction too. He himself opposes the death penalty, but links to an informative piece saying (with figures) that it is popular with the people of Europe, just not their governments.

Testing times.

My more old fashioned readers probably think that the driving test is intended to, as it were, test whether a person can drive.

Not in Ontario. Over there it is a privilege which the state grants and the state can take away for reasons that have nothing to do with whether you are a safe driver.

"It is a privilege to have a driver's licence, and one of the corresponding obligations is to be serious about taking your learning as far as possible," Education Minister Gerard Kennedy told a news conference at Queen's Park yesterday before introducing the legislation.

Why Ontario, following the example of nine US states including Alabama and South Carolina, should say that the grant of a driving licence is conditional on staying in school rather than on any of the literally infinite number of other irrelevant criteria is not clear to me. It cannot be an argument of principle. Once the state has declared "seriousness about taking your learning as far as possible" to be a "corresponding obligation" to being allowed to drive there is no reason not to also bring "seriousness about taking your virginity as far as possible" into the test criteria, or "seriousness about taking your ice hockey as far as possible" - or Christianity, fascism or Tantric Yoga, according to the fashion of the moment. The "correspondence" is exactly as good in all of these examples, which is to say nonexistent.

It cannot be hard-headed practicality either. There is no reason to suppose or evidence to show that those seventeen year olds to whom it matters most that they learn to drive are also those who would most benefit (if anyone does) from being forced to stay in school. Would-be rural dropouts are penalised heavily, urban dropouts shrug and take the bus. Or drive without a licence.

I guess it must be desperate flailing about to avoid addressing the failure of state education, then.

Iranian president says Holocaust is a myth - the Times.

"The days of denial must end," writes Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian.

My readers know everything.

JEM writes:

Call me picky if you like, but in fact 'fistula' is any abnormal passage leading from any bodily cavity to any other that do not normally connect. Indeed it might be a hole in the wall of the vagina, of which there are several varieties covered by the general term 'obstetric fistula' which is what the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital itself tells us it is concerned with. However a 'fistula' might equally well be any one of about a thousand other similar pathological holes in various parts of the body.

In other words the term 'fistula' does not exclusively imply 'obstetric fistula' or 'vaginal fistula', which are merely subsets of the much larger set 'fistula'.

And to add to the universal sense of delight and joy such thoughts induce, 'fistula' is also the name for chronic inflammation of a horse's withers.

Independent Exclusive: People Do Bad Things.

I posted at Biased BBC concerning the coverage of the Sydney riots. I said the Beeb manages to be quite clear about the race of white rioters at Cronulla beach on Sunday but goes all coy about the race of rioters of Lebanese origin who made retaliatory mayhem in Mabroubra and other suburbs on Monday. A commenter, Simo, said, "Incredibly, the BBC might have been outdone in deliberate obfuscation by the Independent."

Not that incredible, actually, but Simo's comment deserves a wider audience. It's not about the BBC so I'll post it here. Simo quotes this Independent article:

"Violence on the streets of Sydney spilled into a second night as scores of people drove through beachside suburbs smashing windows of shops, homes and flats.

"Any hopes that Sunday's race riot was an isolated incident were shattered when car-loads of people rampaged through southeast Sydney, chased by police vehicles."

Simo observes:

These naughty "people" are at it again. Of course, when those people aren't young males of Middle-Eastern origin, the Indy shows no such coyness about calling a spade a shovel, nailing first "5,000 white men, many of them drunk" before raising the spectre of the swastika by condemning the unnamed "neo-Nazi groups" who were allegedly fanning the flames.

Actually quite worrying.

Now, why on earth would anyone report a story of conflict while refusing to name one side?

I can guess why the BBC does it. It thinks a significant chunk of its audience are uncultured whites belonging to socio-economic groups far down the alphabet who would turn on their non-white neighbours if ever they were to learn that some brown-skinned people living on the other side of the globe are capable of behaving badly. Providentially, thinks the Beeb news manager, these brutes can be safely lied to because they are too thick to seek out alternative sources of information.

Hey, maybe the Beeb has a point. The BBC's audience is theoretically the entire British nation after all.

But it's a little disconcerting that a progressive quality newspaper makes the same assumption about its audience. Still, no doubt the Independent knows its own readers best.

UPDATE: Like Simo, Scott Burgess also spotted that the Indy is a "people" paper. If this carries on it'll save a packet on the paper's coverage of the sunnier parts of the world. There were dramatic developments in Basra today, where people did stuff. Meanwhile in Darfur people did peoply things, other people claim. Eventually it might reach a stage where the only person mentioned by name in the entire newspaper was George W. Bush. One would open one's copy to see the Presidential name repeated endlessly, like a mantra.

There comes a point in every old codger's life

where they hobble out into the sunshine of the modern world and peer about in a bewildered fashion muttering, "I don't understand. It's all changed. I don't understand."

I'm forty-one - but it's all changed and I don't understand.

When I was a kid the idea that the police would come around and "have a word" with a guest at a BBC talking heads show for the mere expression of opinions that the government did not like, opinions which even the police themselves concede did not include any threat of violence or lawbreaking, would have seemed like dystopian science fiction. Not any more.

Remember Robin Page, called in for questioning for remarks made from the commentary box at a country fair - after the police placed an advert in the local paper trawling for narks?

Dystopian science fiction never comes without a scene where one of the last few relics of the old regime reminisces. Winston Smith couldn't get any sense out of his old codger but the Aged Informants in earlier stories were more cooperative, or less drunk. I shall try to stay halfway sober when my time comes. Sober enough to thank 'ee for my half litre of watered down beer and say that I first noticed things beginning to change when that Robin Page was arrested and I knew it was no longer the Britain I had grown up in when that Lynette Burrows got into trouble.

A long ago war:

...a remarkable man, Epaminondas, one of the Theban generals, (and a Pythagorian philosopher) dreamed of ending the Spartan threat forever. Spartan power rested on the ability of all her citizens to be full-time soldiers, devoting their whole lives to military training. This was possible because they had long-before conquered the large neighboring province of Messenia, and reduced its people to near-slaves, the Helots, held down by brutal totalitarian tactics, including a ruthless secret police.

If Messenia could be freed, the basis of Spartan power would be destroyed. This is what Epaminondas persuaded the Thebans to undertake. And it was the rise of democracy and freedom in Thebes that gave the Thebans the upsurge of energy and courage to accomplish what no one had dreamed of before. They were fighting for practical reasons, to destroy a threat and to have revenge for past wrongs. But they were also fighting to free the most wretched and oppressed people in Greece.

- John Weidner

Google giving. This product of Worstallian ingenuity is an effort to get nice Mr Google to pay for (a) assistance to the Fistula* Hospital in Ethiopia and (b) the Send A Cow appeal.

The idea is you sign up for Adsense and Firefox with the Google Toolbar. Didn't I do a good job of sounding like I knew what I'm talking out? When I figure out what to do I will have a whirl at doing it. And if the Adsense/Toolbar angle does not appeal, one could always consider giving some money!

*A fistula is a hole in the wall of the vagina, an injury often suffered in the course of a stillbirth. The particular tragedy for women who affected by a fistula who live far away from medical facilities is that, as well as having lost their baby, they become unable to control urination and defecation. They are often disowned by their husbands and rejected by the community. Imagine the difference that an operation to repair the hole can make to a woman's life.