DUFF & NONSENSE!

"Conscience doth make cowards of us all", or heroes: Discuss!

I have just read one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking essays I have seen on the internet for some time.  Once again that mystifying little imp, coincidence, has danced his little jig in my consciousness because only this morning I remarked in a comment thread on the fact that some people prefer the 'comfort' of crowds, and I posed one or two somewhat superficial reasons why.  Also, on another blog I have been engaged, somewhat fiercely, on the subject of morality in politics and warfare.  Thus, this deeply thoughtful paper on the subject of the relationship between the individual and society could not have come to me at a better time.  It was written by the late Leonard E. Read, a gentleman hitherto unknown to me, and is entitled Conscience on the Battlefield.  I urge you to read it!  In doing so it will quickly become apparent that Read was motivated by two imperatives in his life, his Christianity and his libertarianism.  I, myself, am not a theist and so his occasional appeals to God have no effect on me but, and this is important as you read him, they have no effect on his argument either.  In effect, he treats God as the originator and standard-bearer for virtue in general, but in particular, His injunction that "thou shalt not kill!"  Personally, I do not require the services of God to tell me that although I am content if others do.  If you ask me, therefore, from where my 'authority' for taking such a moral stand emanates, I can only shrug and answer honestly that I do not know but that I firmly believe it is a view shared by most people for most of the time although the percentages will vary according to the circumstances and, confirming Read's assertion in his essay, my own personal belief will also vary under circumstances.

If Read's words were simply another pacifist treatise I would not bother myself, or you, with it.  Not that I have anything against pacifism but it is a belief which simply beggars debate.  If you say 'I will not under any circumstances kill another' then all argument ceases.  But Read does not quite say that, and it is precisely that exceptionalism which makes his words worth reading and debating. 

His other argument against war stems from his libertarian (and free market) convictions.  He is not so much a small government man as a 'titchy-tiny' government man!  He points out, with telling accuracy, I think, the fact, and it is a highly dangerous one, that government has the effect of standing between a man and his conscience and in doing so it absolves a man of his personal duty to think for himself and justify his actions to his God or to his conscience.  There is also, perhaps, another unspoken (maybe because it is unconscious) imperative behind his philosophy - he is American.  The notion of 'Fortress America' lies deeply embedded in the American soul and leads them to a very different world view than the rest of us.

Read presents telling arguments and they deserve an equally thoughtful response.  I have only read his piece once so I have now printed it off and I will study it further before I return to the subject.  And I must return because, whilst I am hugely sympathetic to much of what Read says, I do sense flaws.  So, to be continued  . . .

Econ 101 and a half!

A useful nudge in the ribs to me and a delicious kick in the nuts to that pip-squeak, Johann Hari, by Peter Hoskin in The Coffee House.  Hari, who on the basis that he likes to give the impression that he is so brilliant he knows everything about everything, has been caught out confusing national debt with national deficit.  Thus, he wrote the following:

"Here’s the lie. We are in a debt crisis. Our national debt is dangerously and historically high. We are being threatened by the international bond markets. The way out is to pay off our debt rapidly. Only that will restore 'confidence', and therefore economic growth. Every step of this program is false, and endangers you."

I, myself, being an ignorant and careless fellow occasionally fail to make clear the difference between debt and deficit but then, no-one comes here for strict, analytical and logical thought - er, you don't really, do you? - and anyway, no-one's mind is ever changed by what they read at Duff & Nonsense.  However, Hoskins makes clear the difference between these two terms - and it is an important one:

The essential difference between the coalition's fiscal plans and Labour's is nothing to do with debt at all. It's to do with the deficit, aka borrowing. It is the deficit that one side hopes to reduce quicker than the other. As for the debt — the sum total of all our borrowing that we have yet to pay off — that would rise by most measures, whichever party was in power.

In other words, the debt is the sum total of what we have borrowed up to now and the deficit is the year by year excess of spending over income which can only be met by, yes, more borrowing.  This essential difference is of critical importance in the current debate betwen Osborne and Balls, and the likes of Johann Hari who writes:

As a proportion of GDP Britain's national debt has been higher than it is now for 200 of the past 250 years.

Seductive words akin to the much over-used line us chaps deployed in our 'youf': "If you let me put it in I promise not to move!"  Here is a diagram showing the year by year borrowing, that is, the deficit as a percentage of GDP:

Now you can see why Johann Hari should not only go to SpecSavers but also take a course in Economics.  As Hoskins puts it:

This is what worries the international markets: the constant borrowing on top of borrowing on top of borrowing. The very fact that last week's Budget contained higher borrowing forecasts was enough to provoke grim warnings from the credit rating agencies.

But according to the gospel from Hari, debt and borrowing are 'A Good Thing' because "debt is part of the cure"!  A couple of posts down I pointed out the illogicality of anarchists demonstrating against government cuts.  Today I would ask anyone of a socialist persuasion to look at this diagram and ask themselves whether they are happy to spend £62.4 billion(*) on money-lenders as compared to other people like, for example, teachers?

(*) Corrected error as pointed out by one of my assidiuous commenters below.  Thank God some-one is paying attention!

Long-term tactics or short-term strategy? All very confusing 'over there'!

A delicious political situation has arisen 'over there' which, in its way, encapsulates politics.  Everyone knows, well, everyone with the exception of Obama and his Democrat party, that American government spending now resembles one of those cheese-rolling competitions so beloved in various British rural areas in which sundry madmen chase a rolling cheese down an almost vertical hillside.  I believe the cheese always wins but my knowledge of this esoteric sport? hobby? therapy? is minimal.  Anyway, US government spending is racing away and gathering momentum and anyone with half a brain will be bracing themselves for the inevitable.  At the moment, the Republicans control the House but not the Senate and above both sits the Big Black Chief, taking a surreptitious puff on his cigarette (I was going to write 'sucking on his fag' but always conscious of the difficulties of our 'common language' and American sensitivities, I forebore), with a presidential veto at his Left hand.  So what's a fiscal conservative to do?

Fred Barnes in The WSJ lays out the options and the tricky decision the Republicans will have to take.  It is yet another of those pesky two-handed situations.  On the one hand, some Republicans take heart from the fact that they have already taken some nibbles out of Democrat budgets during negotiations to avoid a government shut-down with more to come over future months prior to the next set of elections in 2012.  This approach can best be summed up by the injunction "Softlee, softlee, catchee, monkee".  On the other hand, some Republicans of a more fundamentalist bent want to go for the nuclear option and back the Dems into a corner by refusing funds to various of their favourite stooges thereby precipitating a government close down.

Barnes points out that the effects of either policy on the jury, that is, the American electorate, is incalculable, not least, I suppose, because they, too, are split.  The Tea Party activists who have returned many a Congressman want big cuts to government spending and they want them now!  This will result in the spillage of economic and social blood, metaphorically speaking, and some Republican strategist fear it might result in a nasty bite in the bum from disgruntled voters who might accept Democrat agit-prop that will certainly blame the Republicans for their discomfort.

"A damn fine thing; the finest thing you ever saw", said the good old 'Duke of Boot', and I must admit that I would not like to choose between the two policies.

 

Well done, the grunt-snufflers, frightfully good show!

With all the regularity of a good bowel movement the mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers appeared in central London at the weekend to wreak their havoc and I for one would like to express my gratitude.  Already, they are now inextricably linked to the Labour party and the unions whose cause is thereby daubed and smeared with excrement to the delight of public employee-detesting re-actionaries like me.  The unions, of course, are already planning their next 'direct actions' and their grunt-snuffling vanguard will be well to the fore and the result will be that despite their own internal contradictions, to say nothing of their terminal dimness, this coalition government should stumble on for another four years and maybe, just maybe because one can ever under-estimate Cameron's lack of nerve, the Tories will win an outright victory next time around. 

Should any of you be in doubt concerning the intelligence of your average public employee,which is now demonstrably in the minus half of the scale, you need only consider that tens of thousands of them stood with their "NO CUTS" placards and listened to 'Cain' Miliband tell them that he believed some cuts were necessary - and yet none of them even booed let alone pelted him with rotten veg!  To be fair, I suppose, he did rather slip it in quickly before moving rapidly on to other things so perhaps they never noticed, and as most of them, judging by the 'work' they do, seem to suffer with Attention Deficit Disorder that can hardly be a surprise.

Yet another oddity was the protest by the Anarchist group of simians who led the way in the smashing of private property which was at least consistent with their beliefs.  However, they were acting in support of a protest against cutting government activities.  Do try and work that one out and if you can find a solution to this deeply philosophical conundrum please send it to the leader of the Simian Anarchist Group ("er, well not really a group, like, 'cos, like, we don't really believe in groups, really, like . . . ")

Plus ca change and all that sort of thing, but in my 'youf' we had Teddy Boys and Mods who used to open the Summer season by driving to the seaside and having some terrific punch-ups on the promenades.  No-one pretended that there was anything else involved except youthful macho and aggression.  Now, however, the same slobs and yobs needs must pretend to a philosophical creed despite most of them having difficulty spelling the word 'philosophical'.  "Phil, 'oo?"

Jail: as seen from the bottom up!

Does this man look a little tense to you?  Stiff?  Strained?  Concentrated?

Well, how would you feel if the prison authorities searched you and found:

A Kyocera cell phone

An MP3 player

Ear bud headphones

Marijuana

Tobacco

and $140

hidden up your back passage?

Oops, sorry, were you about to have your Sunday lunch?  I do apologise but I blame those scoundrels at IHTM who dredged this item from a site called The Smoking Bum, ooops, sorry again, I meant, The Smoking Gun.  I dread to think what American Airports will be like if that 'collar-and-tie' lady who runs their Homeland Security gets wind of this.  Well, we'll all get 'wind' of it, even 'over here', if she insists on similar searches at JFK Airport!

Right, blank this from your mind, dinner's ready.

 

Time for a poem

I haven't offered you a poem for some time but I am reminded of my lapse today by my neighbour's garden wall, along which is growing, and blooming, a beautiful, coral-coloured Japonica.  Whenever I hear that name I am instantly reminded of Henry Reed's witty, evocative and thoughtful wartime poem.  Anyone can enjoy it but it will mean more to those men who, at some time in their past, were the more or less unwilling recipients of the expert knowledge of a weapons training NCO:

Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But today,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts.

  

Just superb!

 

Ballet or blx?

Last night I watched the last episode of the documentary series on the English National Ballet in which the cameras were allowed full access as the company strove to put on a new version of The Nutcracker.  Never was the title of a piece more apt!  I don't think I have ever witnessed such a car crash of a production, it was a shambles of such epic proportions that it stands as a visible demonstration of chaos theory.  The inept, Tommy Cooper-like magician who wafted through this self-made travesty in a cloud of ineffectual pipe-smoke was the once great dancer, Wayne Eagling, who was, and I am trying hard not to giggle, the 'artistic director'.  I can say now, with absolute authority, that this man might be tremendously 'artistic' but he couldn't direct traffic!  I don't like to say this because I am deeply grateful to Wayne Eagling for opening my eyes to ballet when, many years ago, I caught by accident on TV a recording of his performance with the delicious and delightful Alessandra Ferri (and she nevers answers my letters, either!) in Romeo and Juliet with music by Prokofiev and choreography by McMillan.  I have never seen anything so sublime in all my life, I think it is better to watch than Shakespeare's play.  So there is no doubt the man can dance but judged by what I saw last night he is incapable of creating and then driving a production through to completion.  To give but one example, up until the day before opening there were several minutes of dancing which Eagling had failed to choreograph!  He was surrounded by dancers, assistants, dress-makers, shoe-makers, stage managers, scene shifters et al, all of whom were in various stages of hysteria as opening night approached and so many things had not been decided or completed.

As an old veteran of many an AmDram theatrical production I began by sniggering quietly to myself and thinking, well, at least we're not as totally useless as these pros are, but then the smile froze on my face when the Managing Director of the ENB appeared and told us that this Christmas production was critical to the company's future because it produced roughly a third of their income and also they could expect visits from all their main sponsors along with some politicians and members of the Arts Council.  Oh my God, I shrieked silently (the 'Memsahib' was dozing), please don't tell me that my money is going into this monstrous bonfire of the vanities!  Well of course it is, by the bucketful, I reckon given the colossal waste that this programme showed; for example, the lady who hand-makes all the shoes had made and painted some special boots for the chorus dancers.  Eagling decided that these wouldn'tdo and that the dancers should wear ballet shoes.  Later, apparently, he had decided that the tops of the boots should be cut down shorter.  Reaching for my third Glenmorangie I began muttering about some of the things I would like to see cut off short, starting with their Arts Council grant and ending with Wayne Eagling's balls!

I think BBC4 will be repeating this programme later in the week and I urge you all to make an effort to watch it.  I guarantee it will make your eyes water and your wallet seek asylum in the freezer cabinet.  The world of state-subsidised ballet management, as opposed to the skilled, dedicated and endlessly patient dancers and back-stage people, is a grossly swollen, distended monstrosity of inflated egos combined with an equal dash of stupidity and cupidity.

A quick scan of the reviews for The Nutcracker can best be described as polite but luke-warm - which is more than you can say about my temper at the moment!

 

Pheeew, I thought it would never end!

The Killing on BBC4 has finally ended with more twists, turns, somersaults and surprises than Ed Miliband trying to explain why Labour cuts are better than Tory cuts.  Needless to say, I, 'Sherlock Hercule' Duff, the greatest detective in, er, this study, applied my 'little grey cells' and provided you all with the identity of the culprit weeks ago.  Back on the 16th February I wrote:

Personally, I have my eye on that foreman chap who works for the dead girl's father.

Never liked the cut of his jib, old boy, shifty around the eyes, don't you know!  Yes, it's that sort of shrewd, insightful thinking which has got me where I am today - sorry, I didn't quite catch that  . . . 

Anyway, don't ask me to explain the various plot lines, I was lost weeks ago.  There seems to me to be, so to speak, a number of 'hanging chads' but quite frankly I was so exhausted last night I couldn't work them all out.  The good news is that there is a second series on its way.  I do hope it will feature the same lady detective whom I can only describe as the 'mostest with the leastest', by which I mean that she had very few lines to speak but gradually and inexorably she grew before our eyes into an almost monstrous, monosyllabic, unstoppable machine which slowly but surely minced up all those around her, the loved and the unloved, as she pursued her quest to find the killer.  The only problem, I suppose, is that part of the tension in the series arose from watching her destroy, one by one, her entire family and and her lover, but now she has no-one left.  It was an unforgettable performance and I cannot applaud the writers, directors and the actress loudly enough for avoiding the sentimental tantrums and flare ups which a second-rate show would have felt was necessary.  Her controlled, cold, not to say, glacial, exterior was exactly right and only the slight twitch of a jaw muscle or a quick turn away was needed to show us the torment she was feeling inside as one by one she sacrificed those close to her in her relentless pursuit of the killer.

Perhaps the most overtly upsetting theme in the series was the Larsen family.  Shattered by the murder of their daughter, slowly their private life was stripped bare and we saw the guts of a family with all its wounds laid open.  Theiss, the father, a magnificent, tragic figure, was nearly brought down early on but gradually clawed his way back up only to be felled in the last episode.  Another cheer for the producers who refused a sentimental ending and a double cheer for the actor and actress concerned who were simply terrific.  Similarly, the parallel political plot-line ended with a nice, bitter, little dollop of cynical truth for us all to swallow before we went to bed!

Next week, I gather, we are to be offered a French thriller series so I must set up that nice magic-box-thingie that my mate 'Rupe' gave me.  I hope it is good enough to fill the achingly empty weeks ahead before we get the next Danish series back again.

Well done, BBC4!

 

Dammit, she makes you think, that Anna Raccoon!

I am distinctly wary of offering any personal opinions on the particular subject of the American soldiers accused of murder, amongst other things, whilst serving in Afghanistan, not least because I know next to nothing of the details.  However, it seems clear that a particular squad of US soldiers agreed on a plan to murder unarmed Afghani civilians and make it look as though the victims were in fact armed and belligerent at the time of their deaths.  One of their number has, in Brit terms, turned 'Queen's evidence' and ratted out his former comrades.  As a result he avoided the death penalty, drew a sentence of 27 years but is likely to be released in 7.  So far, so predictable - but Ms. Raccoon poses some questions which, if nothing else, ensures that we realise that what appears to be a clear cut case is, in fact, loaded with difficulties (my emphasis throughout):

Let us take ‘Afghan civilian’ first.  The forces in Afghanistan are not fighting the Afghan army, the men they are supposed to kill don’t wear uniforms, and therefore technically, everyone they kill is a civilian. That is what we have sent them out there to do. I will grant you that they are supposed to establish the thought pattern of their victim first and make sure he is a civilian that is opposed to the allegedly ‘democratic government’. In condemning Jeremy Morlock, are we saying this is the first time a mistake has been made as to which side this civilian is supporting? Obviously not, for American forces – and British – have been responsible for many civilian deaths. Some ardent supporters of the ‘legitimate’ government.

'Establishing the thought pattern' of anyone is something which appears to be quite beyond the skills of most trained psychologists, let alone 'grunts' in the field.  I suppose the only 'fail safe' way is to wait until the 'civilian' pulls a gun or grenade and on that evidence shoot him before he shoots you provided you are quick enough - and brave enough!  However, that does not, and cannot, apply to, say, our "bravest of the brave" ('Field Marshal' Cameron's emotive hyperbole) as they sit in their submarines several hundred miles away, or in their cockpits at 40,000 feet, firing off missiles which will vapourise anyone in the vicinity of a radar or command bunker in Libya assuming, of course, that it actually lands where it is supposed to.  How do they establish the "thought pattern" of their victims?  Part of the repugnance the actions of this squad have raised stems from their efforts to be photographed with their 'trophies' and their obvious enjoyment of what they had achieved:

Given that ‘planning to kill people’ is not a crime we generally hold against soldiers, nor is killing unarmed people, nor is killing civilians, given that we have not, since Iraq, actually sent any soldiers out to kill other soldiers, I am left with the inescapable thought that Jeremy’s real crime was to ‘enjoy’ his work, to be photographed smiling alongside of it.

Personally, I have lost count of the number of YouTube films shot from aircraft tracking the movements of various civilian 'baddies' (or assumed 'baddies'!) in Iraq all of whom, after being filmed from a distance for several minutes, simply disappear in a cloud of smoke and, I assume, human detritus, as a missile hits.  I must confess that the first one or two fascinated me but then I reminded myself that these were human beings who had been blown assunder and increasingly I found the 'yippety-doo-dah' cheers and hollerin' from the aircraft crews to be irritating at first and then nauseating.  Don't misunderstand, I would have no compunction about pulling the trigger or pressing the button myself and thus I offer no legal or even moral impeachment of their behavior.  As Ms. Raccoon puts it:

It is a topsy-turvy world when the main stream media can take delight in blowing up sailors on the Belgrano, can cheer on the snuff porn footage of a Libyan pilot crashing to his death, but a soldier who admits to having enjoyed killing people, only narrowly escapes a life sentence. It reminds me of our convoluted morals whereby we condemn a Doctor who purposefully ends a painful life, yet sanction, nay force, another Doctor to end a life by dehydration and starvation in a prolonged manner.

And there, of course, she raises yet another mirror up to our convoluted moral souls and the image being, as always, intensely complicated, we will no doubt avoid the hard thinking that any contemplation of these difficulties entails.

 

The Punic, and possibly runic, Wars

An interesting essay by Walter Russel Mead at The American Interest on the subject of the Punic Wars from which he seeks to draw contemporary analogies.  He points out that until the rise of Rome and Carthage the centre of the world (so to speak) lay in the Levant and Mesopotamia.  Quite how the city state of Rome grew and grew to such prominence is the stuff of much conjecture these days amongst those with an interest in the fundamentals of grand strategy and the nature of those societies which are best able to practice it:

The idea that states compete not only by fighting wars but by creating societies which can, among other things, fight wars successfully is still very much with us today. It underlies George Kennan’s approach to containment. Kennan’s containment was the exploitation of the flawed nature of the society the Soviets wanted to build.  Because the American system, at home and abroad, had more durable foundations than the brutal but ineffective Soviet model, Kennan believed that time and history was on America’s side.  If we could keep the Soviets from expanding, sooner or later their system would fall apart.

Not for the first time geo-politics played a key role.  Italy, and therefore Rome as the greatest power in it, dominated the central Mediterranean which meant that rivals such as Carthage were forced to the periphery.  Not that that stopped them from a series of smashing victories in Spain and eventually, and famously, across the Alps in mid-winter and into 'the boot' itself.  Hannibal had realised that peripheral victories were not enough and that only a thrust to the heart would still Rome forever. Two colossal victories in northern Italy led eventually, in 216 BC, to arguably the most influential battle ever fought - Cannae.  I say 'influential' because, amongst others, Bonaparte copied it at Austerlitz, and in 1906/7 von Schlieffen planned a version of it for use in the coming war with France.  However, whilst pulverising Roman armies did succeed in prizing loose hitherto loyal Roman allies they in turn became more of a hinderence than a help.  Instead of offering armies to support Hannibal's war efforts, like spoiled children they vociferously demanded protection from Roman vengeance. 

Mead reminds us that part of the eventual Roman success stemmed from their own internal 'civilisation' in which their leaders were forced, in effect, to run a never-ending political and military marathon so that only the 'fittest' survived and attained high leadership.  Not, of course, that it was a sure and certain way of finding great leaders because Rome produced its fair share of duds but in a Darwinian sense it tipped the scales slightly to their advantage in that their leaders were experienced and driven by competative urges:

The Roman political system at the time of the Punic Wars harnessed the ambition of rival families and clans to the service of the state. The wealthiest and most powerful Romans competed for the great electoral offices, to be aediles, quaestors, praetors and consuls. With annual elections and multiple openings every year (two consuls were elected, and larger numbers of the other offices), well-placed patrician Romans had a reasonable chance of ascending the cursus honorum and achieving the highest offices in the state.

But to do that, they had to win and keep the approval of their peers, demonstrating a sufficient level of administrative competence, physical courage and personal honesty. The law courts, where former officials could be sued for malfeasance in office, and the open debates in the Senate and the popular assemblies ensured that the performance of individuals would be watched. Failure or scandal would block your rise.

Eventually, as we know, Rome declined and Mead, via Livy, points out one of the reasons why:

[...] after the Punic Wars Rome’s tendency toward decadence was accelerated because Rome no longer faced a great power rival in the Mediterranean world.  Ambitious men seeking power could play ruthless politics against their rivals without worrying that divisions among the Romans could leave the whole country exposed to hostile attack.

Livy's description of Roman  Roman society following the defeat of Carthage makes for uncomfortable reading for modern American students:

[H]is analysis of the causes of the fall of the Republic (an increasingly greedy uberclass, the erosion of the middle class, the growing dependency of the lower classes on what today would be called entitlement programs, immigrants who did not share traditional values, the decline of traditional religion, political and sexual license and corruption up and down the social pyramid) has been making Americans nervous since the time of the founders.

However, 'like a hanging in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully', so to does a rival great power in global affairs, and modern China is exactly that - writ very large indeed.  Yes, first the Germans and the Japs, and then the Russians, went down against American superiority, not just in terms of tanks and planes but because America 'works better' than anywhere else.  Or at least, it did.  Mead is more optimistic than me and believes that new threats arising in the east will ensure that American minds will remain concentrated for future tests.  I hope he's right!

 

"The Leopard": Jo Nesbo

With apologies to John Masefield, 'I must go down to the shops again', lest I incur the wrath of 'she who must be obeyed' but before doing so, a quick word on Jo Nesbo's latest thriller The Leopard.  As you regulars will know, I always take time to praise any writers new to me in the 'pulp fiction' genre which I adore.  I praised Nesbo's previous books, particularly The Redbreast, and so I was delighted when a friend loaned me a copy of The Leopard but, alas and alack, it was such a disappointment.  Within the first few pages I quite lost patience with Harry Hole, his hero, whose characteristics hitherto could be put down to mild eccentricity but which have now developed into self-indulgent psychosis.  This is a great sprawling book which roams from Hong Kong to the wilds of northern Norway and thence to the 'heart of Africa'.  The only gain, as far as I could judge, was  an increase in my utter confusion.  These Scandinavian thrillers are a always a bit of a struggle with their strange, unpronouncable names and thus a constant turning back of pages is needed in order to remind one's self who or where such-and-such a person or place is in the complicated scheme of things.  All this stretched my pathetic, and rapidly failing, powers of concentration too far.  I don't mind concentrating on a complex thriller but not a complete Chinese maze which can only be navigated using a mirror!  And I'm afraid to say that Harry Hole has turned into a self-indulgent dick!

More later when I have braved the shops.

The perfect shit storm continues to gain strength 'over there'

In my preceding post I suggested that 'over here' the loonies have taken over the asylum.  Perhaps a better analogy would have been to say that the children were running the nursery.  Either way, it can only mean bad news.  However, 'over there' the forces at work are infinitely more malevolent and the situation is best described as the maximum security prisoners have now taken over the jail!  The outcome is likely to be catastrophic.

As Peter Ferrara explains in The American Spectator, the spiral of decline in America is growing in size and strength.  The means are simple and disasterous, and I used Donald Boudreaux's succinct explanation of them in a previous post.  In essence, the American government is spending far and away above its income and is printing money to lend to itself as a means of paying for it.  This is a version of a Ponzi scheme on a gigantic scale and the resulting crash will reverberate round the globe and into the history books.  Read this and cringe:

Last month, President Obama's own budget admitted that he will more than double the national debt in just one term of office, with an admitted budget deficit this year of $1.645 trillion, the highest anywhere in world history by several times over. Friday's CBO report concluded that federal deficits over the next 10 years under President Obama's budget would soar by nearly a third more than he estimated, totaling nearly $10 trillion over those 10 years, which would nearly double the national debt again to $21 trillion by 2021.

This headlong plunge into debt is set to continue but begs a huge question:

QE2 [the second tranche of money printing]  is scheduled to continue through June, at which time most commentators expect the Fed to end this reckless policy. But if the Fed suddenly stops this "quantitative easing," who is going to step in to buy the bonds to finance the 70% of the remaining federal deficit [my emphasis]of $1.645 trillion for this fiscal year, and the $1.4 trillion deficit the CBO projects for the next fiscal year? Finding real buyers for those bonds is going to require paying soaring interest rates on them, which will only further increase the deficit. And that will cause soaring interest rates across the credit markets as well.

The rocketing-up of interest rates will bring about a massive recession to follow in the next year - and guess who is up for re-election in 2012?  So, as Ferrara shrewdly says, in effect, 'it ain't gonna happen, folks'!

Which is why QE2 will be followed by QE3, QE4, and quite possibly QE5, just to make sure no recession or ominous economic clouds darken President Obama's door during his glorious 2012 re-coronation tour [...]

Thus, the perfect shit storm grows and grows and, without exaggeration, I really do believe the end result will be apocalyptic.

Now, at the risk of wandering into Glenn Beck-land, one is entitled, I think, to ask what it is that lies at the heart of Barack Obama?  Personally, I like to think that if someone pokes me in the eye with a sharp stick I would be gracious enough to allow that it might be an accident.  (Actually, there is absolutely no chance of that but I offer it up as a theoretical possibility.)  However, if he then goes for my other eye then I would seek about for an even larger stick to insert up his nether regions- sideways!  During Obama's first term he has inflicted not one but two grievous injuries on the American people.  First, he used every trick in the book to ram through a health bill which is so eye-wateringly expensive and useless that States, cities, trade unions and big companies are queing up to gain exemption from it.  That is one sharp stick, the other I have described above, and I think it is reasonable to ask why this man is inflicting these damaging blows on the American republic?  There can only be two answers; either he is stupid beyond belief, or, he is motivated by hatred of his own country.  As far as I am concerned, the jury is out!

 

Capt. of the Titanic: "What's that big white thing?"

Every time I read, and I keep reading it everywhere, that George Osborne might not be a whizz at economics but he's a very clever politician, I weep a little more.  Life in Britain is rapidly emulating one of those sci-fi series in which people find themselves living in an alternative universe.  For example, any minute now the 'Bruvvers and Sisters' are due to kick off in a huge national 'pub fight' whose main message, implied if not actually printed on a placard, will take us back 30 years: "STOP THE CUTS!"  What cuts?  If only there were some cuts, even a few titchy, little ones would do, but there aren't any.  As John Redwood points out using Office of Budget Responsibility(OBR) figures:

Total borrowing will be £165.5 billion in 2010-11, and £167.4 billion in 2011-12. £261.6 billion of this is additional borrowing for extra spending. (My emphasis)

Needless to say, the almost entirely useless media fail to ram this point into the public consciousness by endlessly repeating it in the way they endlessly repeat equally useless pictures of jet fighter-bombers wasting their time, and our money, over Libya.  These figures should writ large on every headline in every newspaper - but don't hold your breath:

2011-12   spending increase of £10.6 billion

2012-13  spending increase of £9.2 billion

2013-14  spending increase of £8.1 billion

2014-15  spending increase of £6.1 billion

I can only repeat, borrowing is increasing not decreasing, as Redwood and the OBS make clear:

Total borrowing will be £165.5 billion in 2010-11, and £167.4 billion in 2011-12. £261.6 billion of this is additional borrowing for extra spending. (My emphasis)

And so, as barmy Osborne prances around in cloud cuckoo land throwing his Monopoly money up in the air and whistling "Happy days are here again", and 'Field Marshal' Cameron leans over his war-board moving squadrons (well, only a couple of squadrons, actually 'cos that's all he's got) of bombers from here to there so that they can, er, well, you know, bomb things - and, no, I dunno either), I gradually come to realise what it is like when the loonies really do take over the asylum.

 

It ain't over 'til the fat (Portugese) lady sings!

Thought it was all over, did you?  Understandable, I suppose, because our breathless boys and girls in the media have donned their flack jackets and their radiation protection suits and dashed off to Libya and Japan to report non-stop "Hold the front page!" non-stories about, well, bugger all, really!  In the meantime, our battered old globe continues to spin and the real problems that were around in January have come around again in March, as Yahoo News tells us:

Portugal's government is on the verge of collapse after opposition parties withdrew their support for another round of austerity policies aimed at averting a financial bailout.

The expected defeat of the minority government's latest spending plans in a parliamentary vote Wednesday will likely force its resignation and could stall national and European efforts to deal with the continent's protracted debt crisis.

The timing, I am happy to tell you, is exquisite:

The vote comes on the eve of a two-day European Union summit where policymakers are hoping to take new steps to restore investor faith in the fiscal soundness of the 17-nation eurozone, including Portugal.

Aren't they great comedians, I mean, " restore investor faith in the fiscal soundness of the 17-nation eurozone", it's the way they tell 'em!  The 'Kaiserin' can expect to be asked to get the cheque book out - again - so it's no wonder she refused to allow the Luftwaffe to fly off to Libya at several 'zillion' euros per flight. 

Needless to say, if Portugal goes belly up then Spain is sure to follow, and at that point the EU is going to face a real test because Spain is not a minnow in the Irish-Greek-Portugal scale of things and the cheque required will be enormous.  Should they hesitate on Spain's behalf, which they should do because most of their problems are with their naive/greedy provincial banks who lent 'gazillions' on property developments which they now cannot give away, then Italy, Belgium and France will be next in line.

But perhaps the most delicious irony lies just over the Irish Sea.  The Paddies fought and suffered for centuries to rid themselves of the Brits and finally succeeded in 1921, then, just over 50 years later they surrendered their hard-won independence to the 'New Frankish Empire' which helped and encouraged them in their profligacy and now they find themselves bound hand, foot and wallet to Brussels forever.  'Irish independence' - as a famous Irishmen once said, "<i>It would take a heart of stone not to laugh!</i>"

 

Exquisite irony

This is a real 'three whinny' job!  I have just caught some tickertape news on Sky to the effect that Saudi Arabia is thinking of joining the coalition to help free the poor oppressed peoples of Libya whilst, of course, at the same time they are helping the King of Bahrein to oppress his. 

WHA-WHA-WHA!

The "dismal science" made clear

Sorry, this is something of a 'copy cat' post because the sudden outbreak of Spring weather requires me to go and rescue what is left of my garden after the ravages of Winter.  Not that I intend to spend all day breaking my back and bending my knees because this afternoon a gang of us old age pensioners are tottering off to see a 'crash-bang-wallop' at the cinema.  I just hope the body count is sufficiently high! Now, where was I?  Oh yes, copying and pasting another blogger's words because I'm too knackered busy to write my own.  However, they are the words of the wise Donald Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek - so they are definitely worth reading.  In this witty but sharp letter to The WaPo he tells you all you need to know concerning 'Obanomics', or what I would call the three card trick, in terms which are pellucid:

Mr. Larry DeWitt

Dear Mr. DeWitt:

Arguing in today’s Washington Post that the U.S. Treasuries in Social Security’s Trust Fund are genuine assets that the government can redeem to help it meet its future Social Security obligations, you proclaim that “The Treasury owes the workers of America the value of the funds in the same way it owes the debt held by the wider public.”

I’ve got a great deal for you, Sir!  In exchange for $10 million in cash from you today (every cent of which I’ll burn through over the next 12 months as I treat myself to lavish, extravagant high-living) I’ll promise to repay you $15 million in one-year’s time.  That’s a fifty percent rate of return – and it’s guaranteed!

Now I must tell you that my current net worth, including the income that I’ll earn over the next year, is less than even $1 million.  But don’t you worry, for upon my receipt of your $10 million in cash I’ll write an I.O.U. to myself, promising to pay to me $15 million in one-year’s time.  My redemption of that I.O.U. will enable me to repay you, principal and interest, in full.

So you see, with your $10 million loan to me secured by my solemn promise to pay to myself $15 million in one-year’s time, you need not worry that I’ll not have sufficient funds on hand to pay to you what I owe you.

Please make your $10 million check payable to “Donald J. Boudreaux,” and mail it to me at the address below.  When I receive your check I’ll send you a copy of the I.O.U. in which I promise to pay myself enough to enable me to repay you.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

P.S.  On second thought, I think I’ll make my I.O.U. to me worth, not $15 million, but $150 million.  The extra cash will come in handy.

Poor old Bernie Madoff, he only followed the example of the Great and the Good!

 

"Let's kill all the lawyers"

Thus spake Dick, one of Cade's mob in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part II.  Quite disgraceful, of course, one in three would be sufficient pour encourager les autres!  I had better explain and I will begin by confessing that on this Monday morning I find myself in something resembling a state of shock.  For a start I have a new 'hero' and, God help me, he is a Liberal Democrat MP, John Hemming by name.  Regular readers will know that in my opinion one of the few good things to result from this coalition government will be the utter destruction of the il-Lib-non-Dem party, as I usually refer to them.  However, I make an honourable exception for John Hemming MP, hitherto completely unknown to me, and I trust the 'Brummie' voters in the Birmingham Yardley constituency will vote him back into parliament with an even bigger majority.  Whatever else he does or does not do, he at least remembers the very basic duty of a Member of Parlaiment, to stand as the final bastion of liberty for and on behalf of his constituents against all-comers high and low.

As this post is concerned with legal matters I will use barrister-speak by saying that I am obliged to Anna Raccoon whose excellent blog is now well and truly bookmarked under 'Favourites'.  I must also raise my hat in thanks to 'my Lord Bishop Hill' for pointing me in the right direction.  In her post, Ms. Raccoon draws attention to an event which took place in Parliament last Thursday and during which Mr. Hemming earned his accolade from me:

On Thursday afternoon, in a back room of Parliament, history was made.  A few MPs found themselves a backbone; they found a way in which they could exercise their Freedom of Speech and perform their ancient duty, drawn from the Bill of Rights 1688, of redressing the grievances of the citizens who rely on them.

But first he and other MPs were warned by the Chairman that they were walking into a legal and political minefield and that caution should be employed:

The speaker, Mr Peter Bone, issued that warning because he knew what was coming; he understood the careful dance that must be performed before him.

Every single MP knows what has been going on; the Speaker of the House knows what has been going on; David Cameron knows what has been going on; to my personal knowledge, every single media outlet has known what has been going on; none of them were prepared to risk the wrath of the establishment by letting you know what has been going on. Do please Google and see if you can find one single reference in the media yesterday or today to the astounding events detailed in Westminster Hall on Thursday afternoon.

Mr. Hemming, armed only with, dare I say without rousing snorts of laughter, 'the sword of truth', duly stood up and launched into a frightening, almost Gothic, horror story in which various individuals and organisations of the state, including the Law Courts themselves, have connived together in using threats of the most cruel nature, including a threat to take a man's child into state care, if the individual concerned by word or deed contacted their Member of Parliament, in this case, Mr. Hemming himself.  In other words, these 'jacks-in-office', these high and mighty 'Cocklecarrots', these slimy bureaucrats, have ganged together to defy the Bill of Rights, as explained by Hemming, himself, in the parliamentary committee:

I often find the older laws interesting to look at, and they are all available on the modern websites. On the statute law website, found at legislation.gov.uk, we can find the Bill of Rights 1688, which is sometimes called the Act of Rights 1689. Article 9 of that Bill is on freedom of speech, and says

"the Freedome of Speech and Debates or Proceedings in Parlyament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any Court or Place out of Parlyament."

Hemming provides several examples where various 'authorities' have done exactly that but perhaps the most egregious was the case of a man, falsely accused of rape and subsequently cleared, who was specifically warned by social services and by the court that he must not under any circumstances contact his Member of Parliament, John Hemming, who was specifically named, because such contact would lead to his daughter being taken into care.

My 'ghast' is well and truly 'flabbered', and I use that pathetic 'joke' because, in truth, I am enraged and hardly dare write in detail what I feel about this disgusting and frightening state of affairs.  If you can spare the time, it is a long read, try and go through the parliamentary report of the debate in this committee, it is like following Alice through the looking-glass into a mad, bad world.  In the meantime, I can only wish John Hemming and those few MPs of all parties who support him, the very best of good fortune in their lonely campaign to have this festering can of legal, bureaucratic shit done away with!

 

A tale of two soldiers

Daniel Steven Prior was 27 years old and serving with 2 Para in Afghanistan.  A month ago he was granted two weeks leave in order to fly home and see his wife and his new, first-born son, Logan Prior.  He returned to duty and last week he was caught in an IED blast.  Evacuated back to the UK for emergency treatment, he died on Thursday.

Photo from BBC News

So far, so normal in these troubled times but . . . nearly 30 years ago his uncle, Steven Prior, also 27, from whom he took his middle name, died serving with 2 Para in the Falklands during the fierce battle of Goose Green.

An inconsequential tale of two soldiers living, and dying, by the lights of their honourable trade.  I bow my head in respect to both of them.

 

"Wadda we do next?"

The late Spike Milligan, surely the greatest Anglo-Irish-Indian - read his Wiki entry - funny man of all time had an unusual way of ending the sketches in his comedy show.  The entire cast would freeze, turn towards the audience and advance slowly chanting "Wadda we do next?"  I wonder if they are doing that in No. 10, or the Elysee Palace, or even the White House today?  I hope so, or at least, I hope someone is trying to work out the next step in this north African danse macabre.

It must be one of the oldest military principles in the history of Man that in order to bend your opponent to your will it is necessary to put your infantry's boots on his ground.  This great truth appears to have passed by 'Field Marshal' Cameron but I fear he will learn it the hard way.  Yes, it is more than possible that Gaddafi's (how do you spell his bloody name?!) sophisticated military structure can be taken out by air strikes and missiles but that will simply reduce him to roughly the same unsophisticated level as his opponents.  So we can expect to see sundry Toyota pick-up trucks loaded with machine-gun toting tribesmen dashing up and down the Tripoli-Benghazi road, shooting away merrily, mostly up in the air if the newsreels are anything to go by, and by such means - er, achieving what, exactly?  This internecine warfare could go on for months or, more likely, years and the civilian toll (so precious to the hearts of Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama - so they keep telling us!) will grind its way steadily upwards.

Because Cameron wouldn't dare pass wind without a Security Council resolution, he seems to think that Gaddafi is similarly meek in the face of so-called 'world opinion'.  No-one, it seems to me, has looked at it from Gaddafi's point of view.  Why should he give an inch?  There is now no hiding place for him and his family and thus, like dear old Adolph of yesteryear, he might as well go down fighting in his bunker.  But the likelihood is that the mixed and no doubt squabbling tribesmen who are his enemies will get nowhere near it - unless and until western armies are landed.  Alas, our 'glorious leaders' have absolutely and definitely ruled that out - well, they have until the Libyan civil war which they have facilitated becomes so messy and smelly with the bodies piling up ever higher that they will be forced to do something to bring it to an end.

At that point, let us say later this year or early next, unpleasant realities will intrude.  Cameron will realise that he has issued so many redundency notices that he hasn't anywhere near enough soldiers; also, he will learn that the MoD decided some time ago that tank regiments were sooo 20th century that they have run them down - and all that is quite apart from the fact that we have little or no means of transporting them.  Little Sarkozy is facing an election next year and is currently running in third place!  How keen will he be to send French soldiers into battle?  Finally, of course, we come to the pathetic sight of 'the main man', the 'leader of the free world', the Ivy League intellectual who was going to change the world - Barack Obama - The One!  I am trying hard to think back and remember a more utterly useless POTUS than him.  He has achieved what I thought was impossible, he has out-Cartered Jimmy Carter, himself!  It is quite obvious that Obama hates the whole concept of using the American military in any cause whatsoever.  That, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on the circs, but watching him being dragged against all his instincts into this international equivalent of a pub fight is painful to watch.  Apart from anything else, all theAmerican polls are telling him that something like 65% of the American electorate are against any involvement.  You would think that that alone would put some steel into his backbone but, no, where little Sarkozy leads, shamefully Obama follows - but only so far!  I have tried hard to think of a single American national interest that is involved in this Libyan imbroglio, and not a single one comes to mind.

This stand off', pull your punches, one hand behind your back, sort of warfare is stupid beyond belief.  If it really is in our national interest to be rid of Gaddafi then my rough estimate is that the Brigade of Guards, or a US Marine regiment could achieve it in an afternoon with very few casualties on either side.  They could then withdraw and allow the Libyans to carve the place up in their usual tribal Arabic way - and good luck to 'em!

Finally, a word in praise of the 'Kaiserin'.  She alone, it seems to me, has looked at this whole mess and decided that German national interests are not involved and therefore, neither will German soldiers.

ADDITIONAL:  The always excellent Donald Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek publishes an excerpt from H. L. Mencken's book Minority Report which I think is pertinent:

“It seems to be difficult if not impossible for human beings to avoid thinking of government as mystical entity with a nature and a history all its own.  It constitutes for them a creature somehow interposed between themselves and the great flow of cosmic events, and they look to it to think for them and to protect them.  In democratic countries it is theoretically their agent, but there seems to be a strong tendency to convert the presumably free citizen into its agent, or at all events, its client.  This exalted view of its scope, character, powers and autonomy is fundamentally false.  A government at bottom is nothing more than a group of men, and as a practical matter most of them are inferior men….  Yet these nonentities, by the intellectual laziness of men in general, have come to a degree of puissance in the world that is unchallenged by that of any other group.  Their fiats, however preposterous, are generally obeyed as a matter of duty, they are assumed to have a  kind of wisdom that is superior to ordinary wisdom, and the lives of multitudes are willingly sacrificed in their interest.”

 

Oh, no! Am I really in agreement with little Georgie 'Moonbat'?

Tell me it ain't so, surely there has to be a way out, an alternative, anything will do, anything at all except the dread thought of being in bed (so to speak) with little Georgie 'Moonbeam'.  Oh God, 'there is no alternative'! 

I had better explain but first let me draw your attention to an excoriating post by Richard North (who else?!) entitled Barriers to Understanding in which he tears into the media for their wildly simplistic and sensational, to say nothing of their blithe and almost totally ignorant, coverage of the Japanese nuclear power station story.  If I had a fiver for everytime they use the word "meltdown" I could afford to build myself a nuclear shelter! 

Two things have intervened in the media coverage of the Japanese nuclear plant crisis to make it misleading to the point of incomprehensible.

The one is the frequent use of the Chernobyl disaster as a comparator, where there are absolutely no comparisons with the incident at Fukushima. The second is the childish refrain of "meltdown" by scientifically and technically illiterate journalists, who seem to be incapable of understanding what is happening, yet seem determined to spread their own incomprehension far and wide.

I had better confess that you could not write down what I know about the workings of a nuclear power station on the back of a postage stamp because I know nothing!  However, what I do know with absolute certainty is that the number of deaths caused by nuclear power as opposed to coal or gas is miniscule.  As today's Spectator (no link yet) points out, the scare-mongering does not fit the facts to hand:

Such hyperbole ignores how surprisingly well Japan's nuclear power stations have held up so far.  Despite one of the most ferocious earthquakes in recorded history and a 30ft wave, a handful of old nuclear reactors have remained largely intact and released only small quantities of radiation into the environment.

Even so, the 'Greenie' maggots have come crawling out of the woodwork to inveigh against the whole concept of nuclear power.  But not so, little Georgie Monbiot, in The Guardian who makes his position clear:

"What disaster?", you may ask. The decision taken today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.

Well, setting aside his antipathy to coal, at least he sees the advantages of nuclear power:

Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.

And when they do go wrong the death toll is minimal: none at all at Three Mile Island, and a total of 43 from Chernobyl.  Compare that to the coal mining industry in just China alone where, according to Wiki, some 20,00 miners a year are killed.

Perhaps, 'Field Marshal' Cameron should stop playing with his toy tanks and instead start thinking how he can get us unhooked from our fix on middle east oil and Russian gas.  I suggest he starts with some new nuclear power stations - fast!

 

What's Libya to me?

I think it's time they fumigated No. 10, or perhaps, better still, they should get a clergyman in to rid the place of past ghosts.  I suggest that because everytime some late 20th or early 21st century politician walks in they seem to be possessed by the spirit of Winston Churchill, or Lloyd George, or even Lord Palmerston - or all three at once!  Nothing against those distinguished prime ministers but the Great Britain they led bears no comparison to the 'Teeny-Weeny UK' that 'Call me Dave' Cameron leads.  Indeed, under Dave's leadership he is, quite rightly in my opinion, trimming our armed forces down to a level we can afford; on which basis that should leave us with half a dozen helicopters to rescue prats who go sailing in the North Sea, enough Guardsmen to keep the tourists happy (although Equity could probably supply a chorus line for the purpose at much less cost) and a Royal Navy confined to barracks in Portsmouth for lack of ships!   But that was last year's policy.  Today, 'Dave' has been infected by the No. 10 spirit and wishes desperately "to strut his hour upon the stage" of world affairs.  Determined to catch up with that French dwarf and elbow his way into the limelight, he has rushed in to a commitment for military action in support of a very doubtful enterprise - the removal of Ghaddafi and regime.  But alas and alack, even as I write, and even before 'Dave'' has had the chance to be photographed in his camouflage fatigues and tin hat, that artful dodger, Ghaddafi, has proclaimed a cease fire - the spoil-sport rat!  Of course, it won't be a real cease fire but it will be enough of one to bring 'General' Cameron's moment of glory to an unedifying, stalled, false start.  Ghaddafi, of course, will 'continue his policy by other means' which will probably include a mixture of infiltrating his murderous supporters into Benghazi, and offering the tribal leaders some hefty bribes - that nearly always works in Arab societies.  Meanwhile, Cameron, Sarkozy et al will be left gesturing on the sidelines.

I wonder if anyone in our useless government has actually asked for a detailed analysis of exactly what our interest is in Libya?  I can understand that the Mediterranean Europeans are worried about an influx of refugees but that, surely, is their problem not ours.  The only interest we have is in Libya's oil and gas, and to be honest, I simply do not know exactly how important that is to us as a nation, as opposed to how important it is to BP as an oil company - the two are not, of course, synonymous.  I assume the taps were switched off a few weeks ago and I can't say I have noticed any shortages although, of course, the price has gone up, but there again, it has gone up for everyone everywhere.  So, again I ask, just how important is Libya to us?  And if it is a vital interest how can we be sure that who-ever takes over is going to be more amenable than the Ghaddafi family?  And now that a 'cease fire' has been announced, how will the, er, 'great powers' re-act when it is the rebels who break it?  And if they, in turn, start to slaughter the inhabitants of Tripoli, what will the 'Great and the Good' of the, er, world community do then? 

Even so, there is some delicious irony to be enjoyed by contemplating the risible figure of 'Field Marshal' Cameron leaning over his wargames table wishing he still had HMS Ark Royal and all those scrapped Harrier jets!

Paras, Commandos, SAS - and then there are ballet dancers

BBC4 is rapidly becoming a 'must watch' TV channel, or to be precise, it is a 'must read their forthcoming schedule' TV channel, because they keep producing interesting and well-made programmes which are easily missed unless you pay attention.  Thus, I missed the first episode of Agony & Ecstasy: A Year with English National Ballet but almost by accident I did catch the second episode dealing with the trials and tribulations of the male dancers.  Now, in my youth I mixed with some very hard men, by which I mean, men who could put enormous weights on their backs and carry them over rough country for huge distances and then, if required, mount an all-out assault on a position.  To drop out was unthinkable.  But having watched these dancers I am humbled.  Of course, I always knew, intellectually, so to speak, that they were super fit, but as I watched them going through their routines, hour after hour, day after day, having to learn several roles, suffering, as many of them did, with a plethora of injuries, to say nothing of physical and mental exhaustion, well, I was open-mouthed with admiration.

These men (and, of course, the ladies but this episode was concerned solely with the men) are supreme athletes as well as being great artists.  Their guts and determination are exemplary.  And in addition, not only do they have to overcome physical exhaustion and pain but also they have to remain in a highly concentrated mental state to remember their steps, and their music, and their interpretation of the roles they are playing.  In this particular episode they were rehearsing Romeo & Juliet, a ballet that on top of all else requires several mass fighting scenes of great violence and energy with swords and daggers, all of which, of course, are choreographed to the last detail - one mistake and chaos could ensue!  Needless to say, the rehearsal room began to resemble a battlefield with bleeding wounds, sprained ankles and wrists, and exhausted men.  But still they carried on until they got it right.

Also, I was touched by the plight of one of the principle dancers who, at the age of 36, was nearly at the end of his career.  When you have given your life to such a concentrated art form as ballet, I simply don't know how you face up to the fact that it is all over - never again to dance those magnificent roles accompanied by great orchestras and huge audiences cheering you at the curtain.  All over, finished, before you've even reached your 38th birthday!

'The agony and the ecstacy' just about sums it up.  I salute them.

The Antiques Roadshow: 2111

Yes, thank you for asking, I did manage to find my way out of IKEA (see previous post), despite their utterly useless maps and directions designed, I reckon, to keep you in there forever - I swear I glimpsed a couple of skeletons in the corners.  Anyway, I have returned, triumphant, with a 'Billy' bookcase.  I may be wrong but I think the name implies that it is 'Billy Basic' although, having spent most of the day assembling it I would describe it as a fiendishly diabolical Chinese puzzle.  Still, with the patience and perseverence for which I am famed the length and breath of this study, and with a little encouragement from the 'Memsahib' (like: if you don't get that bookcase up and ready you can forget about supper tonight!), I managed to put all the pieces together - although not necessarily in the right order, or even the right way round!  However, now it stands proudly before me as I type this post and so long as you put all your weight on one foot you barely notice the slight lean.  Anyway, I am so proud of my craftsmanship that I can't help thinking of  The Antiques Roadshow in 2111.

Expert furniture dealer: My goodness me, what have we here?

Punter (perhaps my great-great-grandson if SoD ever gets around to producing my first grandson):  It's a bookcase; it's been in the family for years.

Expert:  Yes, indeed, I can see that and I can tell you that in all my years on this show I have never seen one like this before.  I think I know the name of the maker but tell me, what is your family name?

Punter:  Er, well, the name's Duff, actually.

Expert:  Ah, as I thought, a Duff bookcase!

Punter:  Look, mate I'm pissed off with 'Duff' jokes, just get on with it!

Expert:  Oh, right-ho, well, this looks like a very original piece by David Duff, your great-great-grandfather.  You can tell by the rather elegant lean to one side which characterises so much of his furniture; and the witty way in which the shelves slant slightly in the opposite direction to provide a visual balance; and, of course, an absolute give away on a Duff construction, he's built it with the base on the top and the top at the bottom, he was rather proud of that innovation and claimed that he gave his furniture a unique style.  Now, let me examine it closely - oh yes - look, just here where the peg goes in, a little smear of dried blood where he missed with the hammer and probably hit his thumb; and now, looking at the back I notice that he's only put in four tacks per row instead of the mandatory six, always a man for cutting corners was your great-great-grandfather.

Anyway, it's in, er, typical Duff-style and, of course, in its day it cost about £40 but today, a hundred years later, well, my goodness, today, you'd be lucky to get half-a-crown for it and then the buyer would have to be drunk, blind and lacking a sense of smell!

At this point, for the first time in the long and distinguished history of this frightfully proper BBC programme a fight broke out  . . . see, aggression again, it's in the genes, you know!

 

Nippon no:1

I am somewhat pressed for time this morning because the 'Memsahib' insists on going to IKEA.  You may never see me again, and if you wonder why then it is obvious that you have been wise enough never to enter the endless, Byzantine vastness of an IKEA warehouse!

However, before I go I wondered whether you had noticed a couple of aspects to the Japanese cataclysm as I did.  I was open-mouthed with admiration watching a film of staff inside a Japanese supermarket which was visibly shaking.  Had I been there I would have broken the world sprint record as I made for the nearest exit.  But instead, these young girls rushed to the shelves and tried to save the produce that was being hurled to the floor by the violence of the earthquake.  Another point has been raised by Ed West in The Daily Telegraph in the form of a question: why has there been no looting in Japan?  Happily I have never subscribed to the view that this or that race or nationality has a monopoly in virtue but even so I think the stoicism and altruism reported from Japan speaks loudly on their behalf.

(Yes, dear, just coming, dear, and have you remembered the ball of string so that we can find our way out?)

The blue/red model is breaking down

No, no, not that sort of model, do be serious.  Walter Russell Meade in The American Interest is both very serious and seriously interesting.  I have had to offer you a choice of colours in my title because, of course, 'over there' blue means socialist whilst 'over here' it is red that has the dubious honour.  However, as I will be quoting him I will stick to the American style.  Recently there has been much talk and several books on the subject of civilisations and the characteristics needed in order to make them successful.  In his article Meade suggests that the New Deal heralded the beginnings of the Blue Society which was then firmly cemented into place at the end of WWII.  In this socialist dream:

In the old [blue] system, both blue collar and white collar workers hold stable jobs, a professional career civil service administers a growing state, with living standards for all social classes steadily rising while the gaps between the classes remain fairly stable, and with an increasing ‘social dividend’ being paid out in various forms: longer vacations, more and cheaper state-supported education, earlier retirement, shorter work weeks and so on.  Graduate from high school and you were pretty much guaranteed lifetime employment in a job that gave you a comfortable lower middle class lifestyle; graduate from college and you would be better paid and equally secure.

Life would just go on getting better.  From generation to generation we would live a life of incremental improvements — the details of life would keep getting better but the broad outlines of our society would stay the same.  The advanced industrial democracies of had in fact reached the ‘end of history’: this is what ‘developed’ human society looked like and there would be no more radical changes because the picture had fully developed.

But, according to Meade, the first fissures began to appear about 30 years ago:

Foreign producers began to erode the market share of lazy, sclerotic American firms–like the Big Three automakers.  The growth of offshore financial markets forced the financial services industry to become more flexible as both borrowers and lenders were increasingly able to work around the regulations and the oligopolies of the domestic market.  Demand for new communications services created an appetite for competition against Ma Bell.  The consumer movement attacked regulations that were clearly designed to protect companies; Teddy Kennedy was a cosponsor of the bill to deregulate the airlines.  Anti-corporate liberals rebelled at the way government power and regulation was being used to allow corporations to give their consumers the shaft.

Today in America the old-style blue-companies can only survive by climbing into bed with government and relying on them to protect them from the strictures of foreign competition and homeland consumer pressures by the use of protectionist policies and subsidies in return for the political support of their big unions.  But it cannot, and will not last.  Like those Japanese buildings which seemed able to withstand the pressures of the tsunami as other structures floated past them, suddenly at the last minute they, too, were, and will be, swept away.

Of course, the biggest, most powerful blue structure of them all is the government and they, and their unionised employees, will be the last to go - but go they will, according to Meades:

Federal, state and local governments are often staffed by lifetime civil servants, whose jobs are protected by law and by some of the last truly powerful unions in the country.  That means it is incredibly expensive for governments to do anything at all, and they are poorly equipped to respond nimbly to the fast-changing conditions of America today.  The cost problem is aggravated because quasi-governmental sectors of the economy (like the health and university industries) are also by and large pretty blue: high wages, stable employment, cumbersome procedures — and powerful unions.  Government is simply too unproductive, too unresponsive and too expensive to do what needs to be done at a reasonable cost.  (Government also still has the anti-consumer mentality of the old blue monopolies: if you don’t like the crappy services government provides — move.) Public schools are increasingly expensive to run, and yet they do not provide improved services to match those exploding costs.

Finally, culturally and intellectually, bureaucrats and politicians often remain blue.  That is, they think instinctively in the old ways, come up with blue solutions to non-blue problems, and often fail to grasp either the constraints or the opportunities of the new era.

We see exactly the same thing 'over here', or at least, we will do in the next few months, as we see now in Wisconsin, as public employees feel the chill wind of reality.  It will be long, messy, probably bloody but, dare I quote a phrase forever associated with 'that woman', "there is no alternative".  Meade sums it up, thus:

The collapse of a social model is a complicated, drawn out and often painful affair.  The blue model has been declining for thirty years already, and it is not yet finished with its decline and fall.  But decline and fall it will, and as the remaining supports of the system erode, the slow decline and decay is increasingly likely to bring on a crash.

But what, one wonders, will arise, phoenix-like from the debris?

 

James O'Keefe: Give him a knighthood and get him over here!

"James who?" I hear you mutter, "Who's the old fool complaining about today?".  Jame's O'Keefe, you ignoramuses, and I'm not complaining, just the opposite.  He is the very young, very bright and very crafty leader of a small cabal of under-cover infiltrators who masquerade under different guises in order to gain entry to various organisations and people whom they then secretly film and record.  That these organisations are some of the main, Left-wing-liberal bastions of American society and that they are thereby exposed by young Mr. O'Keefe as hypocritical, lying liars adds a shiver-inducing thrill when reading of his exploits.  A few months ago he inveigled his way inside the ACORN organisation (former prop. B. Obama Esq.) and showed them up for the illegal ratbags that they are and which resulted in a partial collapse of their network.  Now he has struck again with missile-like accuracy.

National Public Radio (NPR) is the rough equivalent of our own BBC, that is, a broadcasting organisation captured in its entirety by Left-wingers who, lying through their fright-white teeth, claim to be utterly neutral in their presentation of the news.  Part of their income is derived from Federal grants which the new, and Republican, House of Representatives has been grumbling about and threatening to withdraw because of perceived but unprovable claims of bias.  Well, now Mr. O'Keefe has winkled out the truth and as far as the two top honchos of NPR are concerned they have now learned the hard way that 'the truth shall make you free' because they have been forced to resign in disgrace and embarrassment. 

O'Keefe and associates pretended to be representatives of a Muslim education foundation with millions of dollars to spend and the NPR bosses took the bait like a salmon hitting a fly.  Lunch in a smart restaurant was arranged during which, according to Clarice Feldman of The American Thinker, they were recorded saying such things as:

"the radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people."[...]

[S]aying that the Tea Party people aren't "just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it's scary. They're seriously racist, racist people."[...]

They expressed disdain for the tea party and non-Democrats, laughed at and expressed pride at the pretend donors'  contention that they called NPR "National Palestinian Radio", endorsed the firing of Juan Williams [an impeccably liberal commentator who blotted his copy-book by appearing on Fox News and was fired for it], and seemed comfortable  tacitly if not covertly endorsing the view that Jews and Zionists control coverage in the American media.

But best of all, and this is a real three-whinny job, one of these idiots was actually recorded as saying that NPR doesn't really need the Federal grant of $450 million and would be better off without it.  Wha-wha-wha!  I've heard of turkeys voting for Christmas but not rushing towards the slaughterhouse!

So anyway, look Mr. O'Keefe, I know you have an Irish background and that from time to time I have passed less than flattering remarks concerning your, er, motherland but it's time to let bygones be bygones, old chap, so, please, come over here and do what you do best, starting with the BBC.  I can't promise the knighthood but I bet The Screws News of the World would give you a top job in a flash.

Me no likee Chinese/Japanese (delete accordingly)

Lest there should be any misapprehension perhaps I should add that my semi-humorous title does not describe my views but the mutual views of the races concerned.  Actually I had a lot of contact with Chinese whilst living in Singapore and by and large I found them admirable.  My opinion of the Japanese, whilst coloured by WWII history, is fairly neutral not least because I have never had any experience of them.  However, there is an interesting sideways glance at current Sino/Japanese relations by Ms. Clarrissa Tan over at The Coffee House.  She has a history with The Spectator as Fraser Nelson explains:

Clarissa Tan is a Singapore-based journalist who won a travel writing competition for The Spectator a while back. We thought CoffeeHouers might be interested in hearing an Asian view.

She points to the quick expressions of sympathy and assistance from Beijing following the earthquake and tsunami but suspects that its apparent warmth is only just above freezing point!  There is history between these two nations and it is long and bloody beyond belief.  Ms. Tan reminds us that for many Chinese the Nanking massacre still looms large - and so it should, it was monstrous.  However, like the scorpion and the frog of fable these two great nations are locked together and the fate of one is inextricably linked to the other.

I do not pretend to any detailed knowledge of Japanese history but I have yet to recover from the shock of reading David Bergamini's book Japan's Imperial Conspiracy.  In it he describes a society even dafter and madder than that of Kaiser Wilhelm II, than which, etc, etc.  I suppose - I hope? - that the catastophe of WWII has knocked some sense into them and certainly their post-war behaviour has been impeccable.  However, I agree with Ms. Tan that memories in China will not be easily eradicated.

As I have remarked before, it is entirely reasonable and even proper for a growing power to exercise that power to its own ends. Without any doubt the greatest diplomatic and strategic problem facing the USA is going to be its management of Chinese ambitions.  That this should come at a time of unprecedented (well, since 1941, anyway) American weakness and division is a deep misfortune.  Certainly the Japanese are taking note but their re-action is unlikely to help matters, as Ms. Tan points out:

Beneath the goodwill (and attendant photo op) that may be generated from Chinese rescue workers landing in Japan lies an old unease that has intensified in recent months. Tokyo reacted with anxiety when Beijing declared it would raise its defense spending by 13 percent this year (many experts think actual spending will be higher), and just one week ago it protested over a Chinese military helicopter buzzing one of its destroyers in the East China Sea. The governor of Tokyo recently told the Independent that Japan will have to develop nuclear weapons, and Wikileaks reveals that Japan is creating a spy agency for the first time it its postwar history. Last month, Japan learned it had been leapfrogged by China as the world’s second-biggest economy – a title which Japan held for 42 years.

Hmmn!  The times they are a-changin', and that nearly always spells trouble!

 

The Japanese tsunami

Sometimes even a non-stop chatter-box like me is silenced by events of such magnitude that I simply cannot find suitable words.  At those times, helpless, I retreat towards Shakespeare:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.

From his most apocolyptic play, King Lear. 

Nothing more to say except perhaps a sort of numb, dumb, plaintive and futile wish that the agony of the survivors is abated somewhat over the coming days, months and years.

But may I call Sir Fred a wanker?

I ask the question because this blog takes the laws of the land very seriously and it is reported that Sir Fred Goodwin has taken out an injunction under privacy law banning anyone from referring to him as a banker despite him once having been the boss of that dynamic, but now broke, financial institution known as the Royal Bank of Scotland (prop. G. Brown esq., or at least, it used to be but now it is owned by you and me).  I have studied the story in The Mail very closely and nowhere can I see any injunction forbidding me from calling him a wanker so, in view of the fact that under his stewardship his bank was only saved from collapse by the emergency injection of £20 billion of government money (or my money as I fondly think of it), I intend henceforth to refer to him as Sir Fred the wanker.  I shall defend any legal action taken against me by claiming that it is a true description on the grounds that he must have been doing something whilst his bank went down the toilet because it is now patently obvious that he wasn't, er, banking!  I might even sue him back because he owes me:

He left with a lump sum of nearly £3million and a pension of £700,000 a year which he agreed to reduce by £200,000 after a public outcry.

Also, please spare a thought (you know the sort, one filled with sincere hopes that he is run over by Sir Fred driving one-handed in his Rolls Royce) for Mr Justice Cocklecarrot Henriques another wanker who granted this injunction.

ADDITIONAL:  Oddly enough, Guido has this mysterious item on his blog:

So there was this ****** bloke who worked closely with another ****** colleague, they apparently began an adulterous affair not long after the ****ing crisis of 2008. He went to Court to stop it getting out that he had been banging her. Because he is the most notorious ****** of his generation he also banned references to his profession lest he be identified. Guido would be in contempt of Court if he told you his name or profession…

What can it all mean?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365047/Former-RBS-boss-Sir-Fred-Goodwin-named-Parliament-having-taken-super-injunction.html#ixzz1GJLqPYrk

Hurrah, good news, no, really, Alice told me!

I must confess that sometimes this blog tends to the gloomy side of the street.  Maybe it's my age because as you get older you have less to look forward to and there is a subtle pleasure to be had from passing on one's misery to others - especially if they are young - the ingrates!  However, today, in an unusual spirit of goodwill to all men, and women, and courtesy of Alice Cook, the latest lady in my life, I bring you 'Good News'.  Incidentally, and before I spell out the glad tidings, you may have noticed my propensity for falling for strong, intelligent and powerful women.  Alice Cook is one of those as you will find if you follow my advice and visit her excellent blog Clouded Outlook.  She studies "the dismal science", economics, but illuminates it with great clarity and, thank the 'Intelligent Designer', with brevity.  And today she also adds good news with this heading:

What a surprise - global wheat supply is better than expected

I really shouldn't enjoy that because only the other day I was inveighing against the 'Greenies' for succeeding in getting farmers to switch thier production to support the ethanol market, and I warned that people might well starve as a result.  However, according to Ms. Cook:

There is more US supply and government stocks than previously thought.

There is more global supply.

World demand is lower than expected.

She made me wince with this line:

There are those who love to talk up a crisis.

Alas, 'tis true, 'tis true, but at least I can plead 'not guilty' to her next line:

There are others who know how to profit from such talk.

If I could make any money out of this rubbish I scribble I might move slightly higher off the bottom of 'Dave's Happiness Index.  Anyway, she sums up her piece, thus:

Then there is the rest of us, who end up suffering from the joint activites of the miseralists and the speculators.

Over the last month, wheat prices have fallen sharply. A bursting bubble perhaps?

Well, I hope she's right, starvation is an abomination; but anyway, I wouldn't dare say she's wrong.  But "miseralist", I rather like that, sums me up perfectly.

 

"Before the Parachute Opens"

Once again I am obliged to the Art Contrarian, Donald Pettinger, this time for reminding me of 'Futurism', a style of art much in vogue during the 1920s and '30s, particularly with Italian artists many of whom were deeply in thrall to Mussolini and the new fascist movement.  We should not allow that to put us off because it is a style of painting which has produced some excellent art.  The one above, entitled "Before the Parachute Opens" (1939) is the work of Tullio Cralli (1910-2000), an artist who persevered with the Futurist style long after others gave it up.  Pettinger recommends his work and I (for what it's worth!) endorse his opinion.  That is a terrific picture in its own right and having experienced that exact moment 'before the parachute opens' I can confirm that it captures the thrill and the excitemnt exactly.

Here is another, earlier, example of his work, Forces of a Curve (1930), this time featuring a racing car and having once enjoyed watching the Italian Grand Prix from the pit wall at Monza, I can again confirm that this painting captures the very essence of the speed and elegance of the cars.

Pettinger features several other examples of Cralli's work and I promise you it's worth  your while to pop over and take a look.

 

Blimey, that's the skipper climbing into a life-boat!

That nautical analogy more or less summed up my feelings when I read this via CityWire: 

Bill Gross dumps $28bn of US government bonds

Who he, you might ask?  Well, he happens to be the boss of the world's largest investment fund and he has, in effect, asked for his hat and coat and the direction to the nearest exit!  As of last month he owned $28.6 billion of US Treasuries and today he owns zilch - nada - nought - nil.  I cannot help wondering what he knows that we do not.  The answer is that we all know but most of us choose to ignore it and hope it will go away, that is, we know that the US Treasury driving its printing presses into smoking wrecks in their non-stop efforts to churn out yet more trillions of dollars is, if I may return to sea, the equivalent of the master of the Titanic not so much taking a wrong course and hitting an iceberg but actually aiming for one and, furthermore, ordering full steam ahead!

According to CityWire, the Pimco fund has steadily moved into cash raising its cash holding from $11.9 billion to $54.5 billion.  One commenter at the site reckons Gross's next move will be into gold and/or commodities.  Should Bernanke bite the bullet and stop printing dollar bills (if Obama allows him) you can expect the value of US Treasuries to drop like a lead weight, followed by stocks and shares and, lo, there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth! 

Testing times

We all believe in free speech, don't we?  Well, no, actually.  Most of us want to pick and choose a bit.  And that is not unreasonable given that absolutes almost always break down when they run into the vagaries of human nature.  However, freedom of speech is recognised as a fundamental aspect of a free society, particularly in the UK and the USA.  In Europe they pretend to bow to it but only with their fingers firmly crossed behind their backs.  Hence, that ridiculous fashion designer who was caught out in an anti-Semitic rant is to be hauled before the French courts for voicing an opinion; and the nation currently heading the European Union, Hungary, has just instituted anti-press legislation to shackle opposition newspapers.  But as I say, in Britain and the States, however lax we are in upholding the principle we do take it fairly seriously, which is just as well because recently we have both been tested severely.

Yesterday, a spiteful Muslim head-banger called Mohammad Haque was found guilty of "using threatening or abusive words or behaviour" when he and others shouted insults whilst burning poppies during the two-minute silence on Armistice Day.  He was given a paltry £50 fine on the grounds that his actions were likely to cause a breech of the peace.  'Over there', the equally spiteful Christian head-bangers who are devotees at the Baptist Church of Westboro won an 8-1 SCOTUS judgement to allow them to continue to picket the funerals of dead soldiers from Afghanistan on the grounds that they believe American tolerance of homosexuality makes their country an abomination in the eyes of God and that anyone who dies in service to it deserves to be heckled and spat upon.

I confess that in both cases I had to swallow the bile that immediately rose in my throat but, through gritted teeth, I support both judgments; and oddly enough I feel a swell of pride that our two countries could find the inner strength and dignity to stand above the mouth-foamers and their hatred.  In an exchange yesterday with my regular commenter, DM, I tried to explain why at a very fundamental level I continue, despite the very many political shifts and changes and disagreements that occur, to hold America in a special relationship, not in the political sense, but in the knowledge that most of us, Brits and Yanks, most of the time, share similar ideals which we hold dear.

 

Bernard Nathanson: Saint or Monster?

I have just filled in my census form which had the impertinence to demand that I state my religion.  I thought about it for a while because, despite my rapid approach to finding out the answer to the Great Unanswered Question, I remain a devout, not to say, fundamentalist, agnostic - and, yes, I do find this fence perfectly comfortable, thank you for asking!  But on the other hand, I was baptised into the Christian faith as a child, and my entire upbringing and the society to which I belong is, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, imbued with a vague sort of Christianity, and so I ticked that box with a clear conscience.  Also, as it happens, setting aside the God Question, I do think that Christian principles are a pretty good basis for running a society.  But of course, any sort of acceptance of Christian principles entails the duty to forgive the sinner who repents and, as regular readers of this blog will confirm, forgiveness does not come easily to me.  I am, by and large, more of the Old Testament than the New.  This has been confirmed to me in spades today as my regular commenters, Hank and Dom, have brought to my atttention a latter-day monster called Bernard Nathanson who has just died and who, if the God-believers are correct, I trust is even now frying slowly, ever so slowly, in hell!

According to Joseph Bottum in The Weekly Standard (thanks, Dom, for the link), this man, above all, stands as the onlie begetter, or at least, the main one, of the contemporary murder-machine that we call the abortion movement.  He was one of the leading agitators and the man who produced most of the lying agitprop to support his case:

Back-alley butchers. That was the catchphrase. And 10,000 women a year killed in illegal abortions, that was another. Coat hangers were what those butchers used to perform their grisly trade, and the only thing American women wanted was medical safety on the rare occasions when they made the agonized choice to abort their fetus. Not their unborn child. Fetus was the more scientific word, the true medical term, and besides, the argument wasn’t really about abortion. It was about choice​—​and who could be against that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1969 he began operating, in all senses of the word, and ten years later he had supervised some 75,000 abortions of which he, personally, had performed some 5,000 including, of course, one of his mistresses who was carrying his child!

But then, in the early '80s, whilst literally up to his elbows in the blood and the slaughter, like an SS man toppling yet another hundred innocents into a mass grave they had been forced to dig themselves, he suddenly saw the light of reason.  However, in the manner described long ago by the psychiatrist, William Sargant, in his book Battle for the Mind, extremists in one direction, if changed, simply become extremists in the opposite direction.  Thus it was with Nathanson who joined the Catholic church against which he had railed so violently and turned all his demonic energies into the anti-abortion movement.  You can read more of his late repentence in the link kindly offered by Hank.

So the question arises, can I find it in my heart to forgive this man?  Alas, the answer is 'no'.  I am glad that he changed his mind but the colossal  crimes of which he was guilty so outweigh his repentence that I simply cannot find it in myself to forgive him.  And that, of course, makes my entry in the census form a fraud.  But for God's sake don't tell them, in these daft times they will probably fine me £500 quid!

Photo courtesy of The Daily Telegraph.

 

NyLon out but LaLon in!

As you all know this blog takes considerable pride in keeping right up to date with the very latest examples of 'in-hip-cool-lingo', if you get my meaning.  (Er, you  do get it, don't you?  Oh, for goodness sake, how are you ever going to get on in this world if you don't keep right up to date with sophisticated, world-traveller mod-speak?)  Anyway, as my heading states, NyLon is very definitely on the way out but LaLon is on the up and up.  Oh dear, I can see from your puzzled faces that you haven't a clue.  Let me explain.

According to Dan Jones in The Spectator (no link yet - so go and buy a copy and keep my favourite magazine going!) not the least of Obama's mistakes was to insult the Brits on his very first day in office by returning the bust of Winston Churchill which had hitherto occupied pride of place in the Oval Office.  Thus, from the off, he indicated a distinct cooling, not to say, frosting, in Anglo-American relations.  However, in this as in other things he totally misjudged the mood of his own people who are becoming ever more enamoured of all things British, or to be exact, English.  According to Jones, the Middleton-Windsor marriage has captured the American imagination particularly in what he calls "the Oprah-watching barbecue belt" who are enraptured with the notion of a commoner marrying a prince - the stuff of every little girl's dream - er, well, it is if she is either very little or very dim!  The extraordinary success of The King's Speech film is yet another example.

However, this manifestation of pro-Brit feeling is merely the latest in a long and steady process which began, as so much does 'over there', in Hollywood.  In a memorable sentence Jones describes the infestation of Brit talent thus:

Hollywood Brits have gone viral.  Just as bedbugs have infested New York, so the Brits have overrun LA, crawling around town like lice, sinking their bad teeth into the city's skin and sucking for all their worth.

He goes on to list all the British actors who have broken into the film and TV business in LA, including the remarkably talented Hugh Laurie whose dark performances in the TV series House seem a universe away from his days of playing silly asses in Jeeves & Wooster and Blackadder.  He is, apparently, the highest paid TV actor in America.

Jones insists that there is still much that connects New York and London, even if it is only the "rudeness, filth, perpetual drunkeness, an excellent public transportation network and generally dismal weather" but increasingly it is the Los Angeles-London axis which is thriving as never before.  So, as I said before NyLon out, LaLon in!

 

C'est un mauvais vent that blows no-one any good!

There is a God, and just every once in a while He lets us know He loves us by providing us with a deliciously scrumptious piece of excellent good news.  His chosen 'prophet' this time is  Yahoo News assisted by Drudge.  The heading says it all:

Former French President Chirac to stand trial

That is news worthy of several strident whinnies - whaa-whaa-whaa-whaa!  It also deserves much clutching of sides, rolling on floor and kicking legs in the air.  To be fair, M. Chirac, or Prisoner No. Soixante Neuf, as I like to think of him, has never done me any personal harm, except possibly, breathing, but you only have to look at his photo and you just know he's an A1 merde of the first order.

Alas, there appears to be a degree of wriggle room and so the rascal is unlikely to do jail time but still, if he looks worried now, think how his ulcers will ping over the next few months:

Chirac will answer for only a fraction of the scandals that have hounded him over the years: the others were either thrown out for a lack of evidence or had exceeded the statute of limitations. Even for those going to court, he will answer for just 21 total jobs out of 481 turned up in the investigation by Simeoni's team: Those before 1992 are too old to warrant prosecution.

Bring back 'Madame Guillotine', I say!

 

Joined-up government disintergrates

I have remarked before how worried I sometimes am over Richard North's blood pressure.  Visiting his blog, EU Referendum, is rather like peering over the top of Mt. Etna and watching the steam arising from the red-hot, bubbling embers below; one is never quite certain when an eruption will take place.  I thought this piece from last Tuesday might have set him off on one but, rather amazingly, his tone verged on placid, er, well, that's 'placid' as in Richard North terms:

Having dumped Portillo's folly, aka Nimrod MR4, at a cost of some £4.2 billion, the UK now lacks a vital maritime surveillance capability. Not only does this leaves us gravely weakened, it means we are also without the important and very necessary assets needed to deal with major maritime emergencies.

Well, yes, MoD/HMG piss £4.2 billion up against a wall, so no change there, then!  However, it is Richard North's great virtue that his "surveillance capability" over the media is so comprehensive that he is able to mix and match with ease:

India, is in the process of acquiring eight state-of-the-art maritime surveillance aircraft (pictured), only one less than the nine Nimrods that we have scrapped after a Tory defence secretary made the wrong choice.

The Indians, of course, being a great deal wilier than us managed to buy their 'planes off the shelf from Boeing for a mere $2.1 billion.  OK, OK, I hear you muttering, so the civil servants and the top RAF types (rarely the brightest) were stuffed by the defence industry crooks - again - so what?  Well, and here you come to the detonator cap in the whole story, you see this week HMG announced, with pride, I gather, their new targets for overseas aid which included - stand by - a hefty donation to India.  Indeed:

the cost of the [Boeing] deal at $2.1 billion, which includes an element of support, has a purchase price which is roughly equivalent to the amount of UK aid we pay to India.

I waited with breath bated for a North-style explosion somewhere around 8.7 on the Richter scale but not a bit of it, he remained laconic and frightfully British.  I, on the other hand, had a somewhat different re-action to the news that 'Call me Dave' is spending my money helping the Indians to raise the standards of their maritime defences whilst we are forced to scrap ours.  "Bloody, bloody, buggering, useless, retarded bastards" is simply some of the shrapnel left over from my explosion.

 

Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but we can hope, can't we?

I mentioned not long ago that one subject best avoided on blogs is abortion.  Almost always opponents on the issue take up extreme positions from which nothing is ever going to shift them.  However, I raise the subject because I have just read a piece over at The American Thinker by Peter Heck in which, whilst the author is obviously anti-abortion, he concerns himself mainly with the possibility (he thinks it is a probability) that this generation of Americans will finally overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling and consign legalised baby-killing to the same fate as the slave trade.  He points to the (dare I say?) 'killer point' raised in the original court case, that is, the question of whether or not an embryo is human?  I have always believed that it is from the very moment sperm hits egg for the simple reason that I consider life to be a process which begins at that instant and continues until death.  Opponents of that view simply dismiss the idea that a bunch of cells can be human but they suffer the terrible weakness of not being able to pinpoint exactly and precisely, and on scientific evidence, when a bunch of cells becomes human.  As I never fail to insist over and over again, it is crucial because one minute's difference either way means the difference between murder, or not.

According to Heck, the pro-abortionists have taken some heavy hits in the States recently.  There was the truly shocking (even in this day and age) story which emerged from the killing factory abortion clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell who specialised in late abortions and who, apparently, stabbed living babies with scissors if they were unfortunate enough to by pulled alive from the womb.  Also, Heck has it that the anti-abortionists have taken some heavy hits from a campaign in which billboards were put up all round New York showing a picture of a little black girl and warning that "The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb" - ouch!  The pro-abortionists instantly screeched their outrage but people began to notice that nowhere did they, or could they, dispute the truth of the message for, indeed, "three out of every five black children in New York City are killed by abortionists".

The most recent blow was deliberately aimed below the pro-abortionist's belts when some 'wannabe' news investigators went undercover into an office of Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion advisors, and secretly filmed and recorded their meetings:

After being caught flagrantly thwarting the law to conceal abusive prostitution rings, statutory rape violations and an underage sex slave operation, Planned Parenthood's leadership didn't demand immediate internal investigations to clean up their act.  No, they mused about suing Lila Rose and her organization Live Action Films who exposed them.

All of this and more leads Peter Heck to believe? hope? that the American moral compass point is shifting.  We shall see.

 

Something rotten in the state of, er, Sweden, actually!

Corker alert!  Regular readers will know that presages a red hot tip for yet another piece of terrific 'pulp fiction'.  This time, continuing my odyssey into the Scandinavian underworld, I bring you a thriller - and, oh boy, do I mean thriller! - written by two authors, Roslund and Hellstrom, and called Three Seconds.  It's out in paperback now and I urge you to give it a try.  Yes, it is a tad far-fetched; yes, two authors does not lend itself to an entirely easy read; yes, the lead detective does indeed suffer with galloping, pathological misanthropy, enough, one feels, to have him invalided out of any real-life police force; but, the plot is terrific.  In fact, so terrific that a combination of visitors and frantic efforts to creep away to another room so that I could keep on reading meant that I was quite unable to post anything on the blog yesterday.  I just had to see how it all worked out.  If Hollywood doesn't seize the film rights I'll drop dead with shock - what a film it will make, and I only just hope and pray that make a good, subtle job of it.  Give it a try, people, this comes with a 'Corker plus' recommendation.  Than which, etc, etc. 

ADDITIONAL:  The number of coincidences in my life recently is becoming rather creepy.  No sooner had I finished the book above when I read this morning that the American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (AT&F) have been running a scam in which they encouraged the smuggling of arms across the border into Mexico as a (doubtful) means of infiltrating the gun-runner gangs.  The end result, which has all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, was the death of an American border guard by one of the weapons concerned.  The parallel is not exact but if you do as you are told(!) and read Three Seconds you will see the similarity.  Creepy!

Incidentally, I have a friend's 70th birthday lunch to attend after which my visitors depart and I can once again return to this blog.

The Defence Intelligence Agency sneaks a look at the Virgin Guard Regiment

Those eager beavers at IHTM obviously have a top level source inside the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) and it is now clear that they themselves have been penetrating the Virgin Guard Regiment with which Gaddafi surrounds himself.

Well, he may appear to be an eye-ball-swivelling loony but he can't be entirely daft if he keeps these totties troops as a personal, er, body guard.  However, IHTM report that according to the DIA several new facts have come to light concerning this splendid body of women.  I can't print them all, you can read them over at IHTM, but here are a few of the salient points:

The captain of the squad is solely responsible for the grooming and trimming of Muammar’s ’70s-era porn actor ‘stache.

One of the oldest members of the Virgin Bodyguards was tossed out of the squad recently when it was discovered that she was a virgin because she was just really ugly.

The phrase “Look at the bazookas on that one” has multiple meanings in Gaddafi’s inner circle.

And so on.  It's absolutely red hot intelligence so go over to IHTM and read the rest on this "monstrous regiment of women".

 

'M. A. Talan', m' tailor, you know, awfully good!

My 'newest bestest' friend is Matalan and for the benefit of my non-Brit readers I should explain that they are a multiple store specialising in, er, well, cheap crap, really - but when I say 'cheap' I mean absolutely, unbelievably, rock-bottom, stinking cheap!  Last week I took the 'Memsahib' in - well, I do like to give her a treat every so often - and we bought the following: tracksuit trousers and two T-shirts for her; and for me, a long-sleeved and a short-sleeved pullover, a pair of slippers, a packet of 5 socks and 3 paperback books.  That cost the grand total of £43 ($69).  And unlike all those doubtful, dodgy, so-called 'Fair Trade' products which always seem to cost the earth, not because the natives are getting any extra but because the middle-men are creaming it off the top, this cheap crap from Matalan employs sundry workers around the world.  Yes, I know, they don't earn much but tuppence in hand is better than sweet Fanny Adams.

 

“I’m not corrupt, I’m just careless.”

Upon how many political headstones might those words be carved in perpetuity?  Too many to list, I suppose, but at least my Brit readers will be relieved, and surprised, to learn that they were not uttered, or muttered, by some ratbag MP but instead they come from that veritable university of corruption - Chicago - where-else?

As those scurrilous rapscallions at IHTM report, Rahm Emanuel's new mayoral administration has taken the world speed record for corruption:

He was elected mayor on Tuesday, appointed his transition team on Thursday and an ethics violation forced his co-chair to resign on Friday.

Now that's what I call real, American-style 'get up and go'!