29 Jan 2006

George W. Chirac,Warmonger


They say that Europe eventually follows everything America does, but only  later. Who ever thought we would hear this? (Hat tip: the excellent Eurosoc).

In his speech, Mr. Chirac bluntly declared, "In numerous countries, radical ideas are spreading, advocating a confrontation of civilizations."  As a French official put it,  "This is more than a clash of civilizations. It is a cancer within our country that if unchecked will destroy all of France."

Chirac continued,
"The leaders of states who use terrorist methods against us, as well as those who consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would expose themselves to a firm and appropriate response on our part,"  referring to France’s nuclear capability.

No Free Speech Please, We’re British

The gravest threat to free speech is contained in the republished Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. The Blair government is ignoring the wisdom of the House of Lords, who insisted that only speech containing threats of violence ( in effect, verbal assault) should be so covered. The British government have re-introduced the previous broad clauses with different language.

If Parliament passes this bill in the forthcoming vote, one hopes British people will engage in massive civil disobedience and that the Lords will once again rescue the populace from this corrupt legislation.  Excellent rebuttals of this legislation are all over the Internet, for example  Ecclesia’s site here. As usual, Blair won’t listen.

Indeed the only group openly campaigning for this bill are  some fundamentalist  Muslims, especially ones who wish to  use future litigation against other communities to silence  the ancient British rights to praise, ridicule, attack, support or take the absolute micky out of anyone, as they see fit. Indeed cynics are right that it is simply pandering to extreme Muslims to offset Labour’s woes over Iraq involvement.

The right to offend by free speech is also the right to confront power, to ridicule it and mock it. Why should religious power be exempted from this?

In seeking to sanitize all possibility of offense from religious commentary, the Government is abusing human rights in Britain, and will cause enmity between communities, rather than foster tolerance. British Christians, the secular and particularly writers and artists in Britain are  against this bill.

Why indeed should we stop with religious or racial hatred acts? Why not make all forms of offense "hate crimes", including against  the obese, the thin, people from Essex, French farmers, the rural or for that matter, politicians, who seem intent to undo the fundamental right of everyone in Britain to take the piss out of anyone they choose?

The spectre of British police being used a ideological or theological thought-crime investigators is so repellant and orwellian what we must seriously wonder if a free society is possible when the right to offend
the powerful or the established is taken away from the people. And this by those elected to guard our very freedoms.

UPDATE: Due to intense pressure, the worst parts of this  bill were happily defeated on 1st February, only the second defeat in the House of Commons in the Blair government reign.  Regrettably the ‘thoughtcrime’ of ‘hatred’ in various other forms was still included.  

23 Jan 2006

Skinny Dipping


Wonderful news for Kenya’s tourist industry – the US navy has intercepted a Somali pirate ship, fired across it’s bows  and detained 10 ‘skinnies’, the US forces nickname for Somali gunmen. They also freed 16 Indian crewmen the pirates had captured. Sailors aboard the dhow told the US  Navy that pirates hijacked the vessel six days ago near Mogadishu and  then used it to stage  attacks on merchant ships.

It was not long ago that our tours industry suffered a major blow when these same Somali  pirates attacked an American cruise ship on it’s way to  Mombasa.  Naturally everyone in Kenya is relieved and I doubt we will be hearing the usual  anti-American chatter from our  biased news media.

My Compedium of African Geography (1858) describes the inhabitants of the Somali coast as “treacherous ,boisterous and turbulent” and warns the coast is to be avoided and the people “ best left well alone.” Nothing much has changed.  Most Kenyans will be hoping the US Navy keeps up it’s attacks and patrols on these sea-vermin.

In an excellent irony, the pirates were captured by the USS Winston S. Churchill, named after a renowed someone who knew a thing or two about chasing fanatical Muslim tribesmen around , see for example “The River War”.

What of the punishments for piracy these days?  "The disposition of people and vessels involved in acts of piracy on the high seas are based on a variety of factors, including the offense, the flags of the vessels, the nationalities of the crew, and others,"  said a very PC-sounding Lt. Leslie Hull-Ryde of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain. Whatever happened to  that old favorite, walking-the-plank?

22 Jan 2006

A Lost Struggle



“An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve the public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. . . .” Joseph Pulitzer, 1912

The famous words of Pulitzer, he of the  renowned  ‘Nobel equivalent’ prize in journalism, have an ironic meaning today as the  old fashioned media struggles to maintain itself as a force in  the USA.  Hugh Hewitt has a brilliant, even elegiac piece, on a brave attempt by Colombia School of Journalism to  produce new and competitive journalists with specialist  skills.

Hewitt finds all the old problems in just analyzing the 16 students of one intake group. No matter that anywhere in the Western world (even Germany), a solid third of the population is centre right and that  in the US this proportion is a majority. Of the 16 young journos, 11 voted for John Kerry and just one for George Bush.  All 16 thought it obvious that Bush is something of a “dolt”, despite he has a Yale degree, a Harvard MBA and  defeated four consecutive Democratic candidates the entire international media judged to be a lot “smarter” than himself.  All were for homosexual marriage. None own a gun. Very few attend religious services.  

So there is no more hope of intellectual or ideological diversity coming out of this group of supposedly “new” journalists than the present MSM: a conformist echo-chamber, where a single left-centre “progressive” viewpoint dominates all reportage.

The fact the profession is rapidly becoming “feminized” ( over 70% of new journalistic candidates are women)  will produce a gender distortion in future reporting as well. If you accept the left’s view that we  can only first speak from our racio-gender perspective, wait for more reportage as “feelings”. Recent brain studies show women empathize with those in pain, regardless of if those people have done them wrong or not.  This will in future need balancing with a male perspective of ‘earned’ retribution.  Stand by for more incidents such as the BBC reporter who found herself “weeping” as  poor, dear  old terrorist Arafat was flown out of Ramallah. She was reprimanded by the BBC.  A decade from now she will probably be in line for the Pulitzer.

Hewitt’s wanderings through the famed halls of Colombia has uncovered nothing new. Casual research has long shown the mis-reflection  of the  people’s mainstream thoughts by the  left-centre  MSM mirror. Tellingly, a  recent UCLA study  has finally shown this scientifically. The good professors were amazed to discover almost no a major media  player in the USA was other than left-centre.  One of the few exceptions was Fox News. The message is clear. ‘Diversity’ is a great virtue according to the traditional media, as long as that diversity does not include the ideological  variety.

So how will the Colombia programme combat the inexorable decline  in the image of the MSM in the USA as ‘Bias Central’?  The idea is to increase the level of training of the journalists so that they become capable of even finer analysis, research and deep study of whatever it is they are writing about. These “skills” will  place journalists in the MSM back on a pedestal of  ‘truth’ from the mire of biased “news-views” they are now perceived to be in. Hewitt thinks the effort is doomed, and I agree. The very concept of  objective ‘truth’ has been undermined by the relentlessly amoral post-modernism purveyed and pushed by the very same Mainstream Media.

The great aspect of the internet is that it allows enormous numbers of true experts to  publish their own commentary and reportage on news events instantly to a worldwide audience, let alone a local one. No journalist, even if as brilliant as Einstein, can expect to be able to  absorb all the skills that non-media experts possess. Before, it was an extreme struggle to get your views heard. A newspaper could write a thousand wrongs, and one could struggle for an equal number of nights firing off indignant letters to the editor, to be received in total silence. To have, effectively, ones right of reply denied. Journalists could say things were ‘facts’ and then spin those facts. The average person had no way of either checking the ‘fact’ or replying.

Blogging and the internet have provided  a greater democratization of opinion and comment in news than any other invention since perhaps the newswire teletape of over 100 years ago. They truly open the door for “people’s journalism” for the significant proportion of  people, worldwide, who have centre-right social or economic opinions.  There has always been something inherently undemocratic about  the media’s self-appointed, self-anointed ‘expertise’. If you can amass enough capital to own a printing press or run a radio station, you can mobilize, influence and shape  people or even events.  This was the only way to become heard until the revolution of the internet and blogging. Now all you need is a $800 computer – or sometimes, like the pro-democracy bloggers in Iraq, just a cybercafe account. One can only hope that centre-right media in the new internet forms will never assume the monopoly of the old MSM.

The nature of the internet medium will probably prevent that. There will remain a (lesser) place for the  “legacy media” , the great newspapers, the famous news hours, the entertaining news-spinners and the like. Yet those media will never dominate opinion and shape it towards left-centre views again, or be able to exhibit such shameless partisanship without worry of correction.

19 Jan 2006

The Regressives

Andrew West is one of the more thoughtful journalists on the left. He is willing to look at the downside of leftism with candor, if not yet with courage.

He writes, regarding left attitudes to Christians, in the Australian Herald:
"Even worse, progressives and their militantly secular allies in the media, have been extremely patronising toward evangelicals -- indeed, toward most people of faith."
How wrong he is.


He cannot mean  towards the most authoritarian, anti-secular, theocratic, woman-dominating, homophobic, agressive and anti-Western religion commonly known: Political Islam.

Militant Islam has only to bleat, and all the progressive sheep follow. The only religion(s) the multi-cultis despise and condescend regarding are naturally those in the moderate Western mainstream - which includes evangelical Christians for the most part.

My blog is continually bombarded by smug "progressives" trying to point out that evangelicals or Christians generally are "just the same is Wah'aabi Muslims".  Despite there being absolutely no scriptural basis in the Gospels for   forcing conversion on people of other faiths, we are routinely told  the Gospels are basically the same as the Koran, which has an entire full  ideology of war making,  “submission”, infidel tax, dhimmi (apartheid) status and much else.

I grant that perhaps 400 years ago there was less to choose between these two religious systems in their militancy, scriptural sanction or not, but Christianity has moved on. Islam has not - nor are the "progressives" pushing it.

Meanwhile the "progressives" continue trying to wreck the  spiritual/philosophical foundations of the Western mainstream...oblivious to the fact that more Western "progressives" are converting to Islam (even in Australia, I will bet) than Muslims anywhere are convinced to join the "progressive" ship.

The progressives not only lose out on the birthrate in this matter, but the brain-conversion rate too.

For their collusion in wounding and weakening the most dynamically moderate society the world  has seen,  Western "progressives" would be better called the "regressives". Churchill foresaw the Iron Curtain - but they are blind to the Iron Crescent.

12 Jan 2006

A Tale of Two Sickies

It’s been very interesting to compare the approach  to public information between Ariel Sharon’s medical team and that of  last year’s  mortal crisis of his enemy, Yassir Arafat.

Arafat was whisked off to France with an “undisclosed ailment” . Doctors treated him in  absolute secrecy, gave almost no medical evidence of his condition apart from the very vague and allowed a controversy to blow up after his death when the cause  of  his passing was hidden from the public.  Perhaps the persistent media reports that Arafat, who like many Middle Easterners found it hard to distinguish between riding a camel and  plonking a peachy  male rump and thus   died of AIDS , were not wholly unfounded.

Compare with the  detailed medical briefings, almost to the point of breach of patient confidentiality, with Sharon’s medical team. Surely this can have nothing to do with the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the region, with a full and vibrant free press?

Meanwhile the   MSM has been hammering away at the meta-lie that Sharon’s visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque started the Intifada. Typical of these comments are Scotland's The Sunday Herald who state , “he ignited the Intafada  of 2000 with his provocative visit….”. My guess is  over 70% of Europeans believe this  trash, proof indeed that propaganda can work well in democracies.

A  better view of the truth can be found in members’ of Araft’s government own words:

“Whoever  thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is  wrong.. . . This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President  Arafat's return from the Camp David  negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President  Clinton.” (Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji,  3 March 2001. Translated by MEMRI )

War Photo of 2005



A U.S.  soldier  hugs and talks to a dying  Iraqi girl, aged 3, one of many  Iraqi children  blown to bits by a   suicide bomber when they surrounded a US Humvee that was distributing sweets and toys.

The soldier is also running to try and reach U.S. medics who could better help the girl than the nearby Iraqi hospital, but she died in his arms. The US soldiers were incensed and kept saying, “Why did he wait till we were with the the kids? Why did he not just target us when we drove away?”

Which brings me to my  one of my New Year Resolutions for 2006.  I  was born just after World War 2.  Some of my earliest memories were looking  at the pictures of Dad’s huge ‘Colliers’ World War II picture book that my family had – a war he participated in. I remember how obvious it was to me that the Nazis, with their death’s head  cap badges, their sinister  emblems, their uncanny knack for the haut couture and pagentry of fear and force were people of  plain and pure evil. Any small child could notice that, long before he could read the captions of what those fascists actually did.

The same pictures of the black hooded jihadis, with  their Arabic scrawlings of death wishes on their scarves , their bombings and beheadings, evoke in me now towards the end of my life the same recognition of looking at pure evil, at an articulated love of death. In 2006 I will continue to fight them with my feeble pen and failing wit and do that way the little I can, to hasten the defeat of  Islamic fascists. I hope to continue to pour scorn, ridicule  and venom on the dupes and allies they have among the so-called “progressives” of the world and if my words hurt either of these  groups in 2006,  all the better.


11 Jan 2006

Butt of the Year 2005


The 2005 award for Best Ally in the War on Islamic Fascism goes to Prime Minister John Howard and Australia in general.

Quote of the Year goes to historian Victor Davis Hanson: “The more left-wing the Westerner, the more tolerant he is of right-wing Islamic extremism.”

Sisterhood Solidarity Award, 2005:  “Every minute in the world a woman is raped, and she has no one to blame but herself.” Sheikh Feiz Muhammad

Most Hopeless European of the Year goes to ex- French Prime  Minister and drafter of the failed EU constitution,  Valerie Giscard d’Estaing:  “It is not possible for anyone to understand the full text.”

10 Jan 2006

Dying Like..... Cows


My usual Xmas safari work brought me into contact with the vicious drought ravaging most of Kenya. The Maasai Mara National Reserve was bone dry, with Cape Buffalo beginning to show tell-tale ribs and pelvis bones. They are the first to die off in a drought. However, there is ample grazing in the Mara for Maasai tribal herds, if needed. Yet the rains are months away. The situation will get far worse there.

The situation in the north of Kenya was grim. On two trips to Shaba National Reserve we found a half dozen emaciated, immobile cows abandoned to their fate (to be eaten alive by hyenas). The grazing is almost non-existant, even in the boundries of the game reserves. More depressing was to pass Isiolo and see a cheerful young Borana woman who sells fruit to our camps. She was gaunt, her skin without the shiny, smooth glow of African health. She was obviously stricken with AIDS.

“Fatima” is a Muslim and there is a serious problem with HIV in Muslim communities. This is buried even deeper under “speak-no, see-no” taboos than among Christian Africans. “Fatima” ( not her real name) said she had recently had “typhoid”, the usual Kenyan shorthand to explain away a bout of AIDS. Last time I saw her , she looked almost double in weight.

Meanwhile, the friendly mechanic who rebuilt the safari body of my Land-Rover passed away from AIDS on Sunday, aged about 26 years old. It’s been a sobering start to the New Year.

Kenya badly needs donations to help in famine relief. Friends of Kenya is one site where tax-deductible (USA only) donations may be made. Give generously.

Hajj-iography


As has become normal, CNN presents us with yet another annual “Hajj” documentary. Are the lefties at CNN trying to convert us? More likely they are just displaying the usual dhimmi behaviour.   The whole crew are there. Happy converts, compliant Muslim women, ooh-ing and aah-ing Western reporters wearing headscarves  asking  patsy questions.

Notice when CNN does anything with Catholics, the questions abound about homosexual priests, child abuse, the role of women.Not even Pope John Paul’s funeral commentary was spared this sort of grilling. Catholicism of course is a cornerstone of Western civilization, something the left is trying to deconstruct as fast as possible.

Not once is anyone asked how they feel about women being excluded from mosques or the from the  kabaa (  housing a meteorite, dating from when pre-Islam was a religion that worshipped star and moon gods). Or  how the “peaceful” religion deals with suicide bombers and so on.

The left is fascinated by militant Islam for sinister reasons. Firstly, Islam gives vent to their fantasies of control, domination and being dominated that are at the heart of their illiberality. Secondly, Islam is  anti-capitalist and anti-Western which dovetails into the secret and open loathing they feel for the capital and social markets. Thirdly, Islam appeals to counter the agnostic and atheist voids that the hard left often have in their materialist approach to life.  Lastly, since the left is motivated above all by anti-Americanism, Islam’s pathological hatred of the USA fit’s quite nicely, thank you very much.

Pity CNN did not take time off to show these Iranian adherents of the “religion of peace” chanting away in religious rapture during this years Hajj in Mecca.

Crowd: Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!

Man: All together now: Death to America! Death to Israel!

Crowd: Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!

8 Jan 2006

Polling Around

Here in Kenya the government always complains whenever opinion polls are published that seem to eternally show it as unpopular. You figure that’s just politics. Yet, perhaps they have a grievance. The Bush administration surely does. Associated Press, one of the world’s major  “impartial” news agencies, is forever publishing polls in conjunction with Ipsos, that show the “majority” of Americans are opposed to almost everything the Republicans  have as an agenda.

That smells like a rat, given that US politics  has been largely centre-right for two decades now. And you would be right to hold your nose.  The latest AP/Ipsos poll shows “most” Americans think President Bush should have a  court order to wiretap suspected terrorists who are US citizens by 56% to 42%.

The trouble, as you can check from the Ipsos poll data at their website , is they managed to ask  42% Democrats and only 30% Republicans, in their poll sample. No wonder they got the answer they did.

Ipsos self-description is “a non-partisan, objective, survey-based research company made up of campaign and political polling veterans.” Really? It’s an old media sales trick of the MSM to commission “polls” whose pre-determined and  cooked outcome will be used to sell media to Joe Public, via “shock” results.