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As Michael has posted some interesting pictures from sunny Mozambique, I thought I would contrast that with a picture out of my window of the freezing USA…  … I am here to do some shooting and maybe some skiing in the Land of the Free(ish). More later. February 16th, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Vladimir Putin, the former KGB member who runs Russia as if the Soviet Union was still alive and well, does not like the fact the US is prone to take military action outside its own borders, claiming it is causing a new arms race. Arms race? With who? China is certainly arming itself but sclerotic Russia? I would love to see some figures for Russian arms procurement over the last ten years to get some insight into the true strength of Russia as a serious military power. The Russian GDP is about $1.7 trillion… i.e. slightly less than Italy… and does anyone really loose much sleep over what the President of Italy thinks? Still, it seems a bit perverse for a man who seems keen to sell technology to Iran to be complaining about all those things the pesky Yanks are doing which are not in his interests. February 10th, 2007 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
All credit to the Guardian for risking accusations of heresy for publishing such impious sanity. February 9th, 2007 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Statists the world over jumped for joy today when the UN released yet another report stating that global warming is due to human activity rather that cyclical solar factors. Watching the BBC reports about this, one could be forgiven for thinking not a single scientist or logical thinker demurred from that notion. Medieval Warm Period? What Medieval Warm Period? Oh, THAT Medieval Warm Period! No, the approved experts have spoken and no heresy shall be suffered to be reported. What particularly made me laugh was when the BBC voice over said “and the fact over one hundred governments have endorsed this report will add to its credibility.” So let me get this straight… the fact one hundred states which exercise political power over people have endorsed a report that will be used to justify imposing even more political control over people, and that makes this more credible? I wonder if the BBC would report a pro-tobacco report endorsed by tobacco companies the same way? What do you think? February 2nd, 2007 | 68 comments - (Comments are closed)
To forbid “discrimination” is to violate basic freedom – not just religious freedom, any freedom. It was grimly predictable that faced with a choice between freedom of association and the doctrine of “anti discrimination” Mr Cameron would choose to support state control. So much for his “big idea” of the greater delivery of “public services” by voluntary groups. Both Mr Blair and Mr Cameron have shown themselves to be people who only support association if people associate in the way they COMMAND. – Paul Marks January 31st, 2007 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is of course too much to expect much rationality in the debate about immigration occurring on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment. I keep getting completely deranged e-mails from an outfit calling itself Conservative News NYC from across the puddle who are claiming that the USA and Mexico are in a de facto state of war due to the ‘invasion’ of the USA by illegal aliens. They also take the view that anyone who takes a more measured opinion on this is clearly a vile traitor. This is the same outfit who thinks any American who supports Israel is also a traitor, a word they rather like it seems, although of course they preface this with “but we’re not anti-Semitic”. No, of course not, perish the thought. Now just because I think the fine fellows of Conservative News NYC are barking moonbats that does not mean all is well when it comes to immigration. There are indeed two groups in the USA (and one in the UK) who really are a problem. On both sides of the Atlantic we have an increasingly radicalised and non-integrating community of Muslims amongst whom support is very widespread for values completely antithetical to post-Enlightenment western civilisation. Add to this in the United States the quite similar, at least in outlook if not action, ethnic fascists of La Raza, the one form of overt in-your-face racist fascism that seems to be quite acceptable for members of the American left to praise and with whom they are quite happy to share a stage (I guess being racist to white people is not really racism, eh Hilary?). At least one good thing about La Raza is that they are a lunatic fringe amongst Hispanics in the USA (much as Conservative News NYC are a radical lunatic fringe amongst US Conservatives). Of course the same could probably be said of Samizdata in many ways as we are hardly mainstream in many of the views we take, so it is not like I am against lunatic fringes per se. Sadly the same cannot be said for much of the Muslim community who do indeed appear to share a wide range of views with the people we quite incorrectly call ‘extremists’… I say incorrect because it appears they actually reflect increasingly mainstream Muslim opinion, particularly in the UK. They are not extremists, they are merely practising Muslims who actually believe what their religious texts tell them to believe. The problem is not extremism, it is Islam itself and anyone who actually takes it seriously. One thing both of these groups have in common is that they must be relentlessly confronted and cannot be compromised with or appeased in any way whatsoever. It really is ‘them or us’. However… → Continue reading: Immigration successes… and disasters January 29th, 2007 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
January 24th, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whilst having lunch the other day, I saw an attractive young woman wearing a tee-shirt with a slogan that made me laugh:
No doubt she was reacting to this campaign. And when she and her gentleman friend were finished, she put on her fur trimmed coat and they left. It reminded me of this. Bless. January 24th, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
I missed this the other day… The French government, the same people who gave aid and comfort the the instigators of the Rwanda genocide, and have done everything they could to thwart the arrests of mass murderous Serbian war criminals in Bosnia, have decided to ‘honour’ one of their own. They have awarded the Legion D’Honneur, France’s highest award, to Harold Pinter, that well know playwright, man of letters, literary colossus and apologists for mass murdering national socialist Slobodan Milosevic and mass murdering national socialist Saddam Hussain. Vermin, one and all. January 22nd, 2007 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
And how do I know? It has passed Julian’s Tesco Checkout Girl Test (TCGT). January 20th, 2007 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems that the Tory Party wants less market forces and more local political planning of the economy in order to stop local shops from closing. But if enough local people wanted local shops to survive at the expense of supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres, they would indeed already be voting for them… with their wallets and credit cards. Yet that notion seems not to compute with ‘Conservative’ Nick Hurd, the MP for Ruislip-Northwood. Presumably what he wants to ‘conserve’ is the power of local political activists by giving them even more power to decide who can and cannot make money in local communities. More ‘direct democracy’, eh Nick? I must say the Spanish solution to people who cannot restrain themselves from meddling in the lives of others who want to just go about their business starts to look more appealing by the day. January 19th, 2007 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a report in the Telegraph called Entire village suspected of mayor’s murder that caught my eye.
I regard it as a truism that ‘the state is not your friend’, but it is easy to concentrate one’s attention on the outrages to personal freedom that come out of central government, the big sweeping laws that abridge liberties and which get talked about in the national newspapers. Yet in many ways the most fearful tyranny is the one which gets imposed by people living right next to you, because it is almost impossible to avoid or mitigate… well not entirely, as Mayor Miguel Grima discovered. January 19th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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