Such as, how to pack and ship a hippopotamus…
I find the idea of life without the internet is just unimaginable.
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September 29th, 2006 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Andrew Robb, a spokesman for the Howard government in Australia, speaking to an audience of 100 imams. Can you imagine Bush or Blair having one their spokesmen saying anything even remotely like that? September 28th, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Continuing on the topic of Belgian idiocy, I have been marvelling at the way the police in Brussels have been pronouncing on yet another night of rioting by Muslims in that city.
Why ‘in a peaceful manner’? People try to set fire to a hospital and that should be solved ‘peacefully’? After three days of violence and looting of private property, the police should be cracking skulls without apology and to make the important point that violence should be met with greater violence. If they cannot protect the taxpayers who pay their salaries, what use are they? Moreover what are we to make of Philippe Close’s remark about the Marollen district falling victim to a problem from “outside the neighbourhood?” Does that mean it would be okay if only the rioters were local lads? No doubt the Vlaams Belang (about whom I am deeply ambivalent) will reap the rewards from the Muslim rioting at the upcoming Belgian municipal elections, probably leading to the Belgian government banning them at some point in the near future. September 28th, 2006 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
UK military authorities are claiming the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan has been ‘tactically defeated’, which can mean quite a variety of different things. Certainly the accounts of what has been going on there indicate bloody hard fighting down to bayonet range on occasion and given the lack of resources at their disposal, any significant victory against the casualty insensitive Taliban reflects rather well on the British Army. Now if only the UK government would get rid of some of the many utterly pointless government departments, say for starters the Department of Trade and Industry and the truly preposterous Department of Culture, Media and Sport), we could spend more on the military and still reduce the level of taxation. Well, one can wish… September 27th, 2006 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
The fact Belgian newspapers want it to be harder to find the content they put on the internet is weird (why bother having an on-line presence at all then?), the fact they went to court to force Google to stop driving traffic to their sites is bizarre, the fact a Belgian court found against Google is insane. September 26th, 2006 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Moonbat Media have some good pictures from Saturday’s demonstration in Manchester by the usual suspects… plus some coverage of an incident where Reza Moradi and a friend were removed by Stop The War organisers because they staged a counter-protest, interrupted Tony Benn’s speech. Check it out. September 25th, 2006 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
“What was going through your head during that second engagement?” a journalist asks me at a press conference the next day. September 25th, 2006 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Much is made of bogus asylum seekers (with considerable justification) but in truth, the basic principle of countries in the west being a haven for those who are oppressed for reasons of their belief is a very righteous one indeed. And that brings me to the case of ‘Isaac Shrödinger’, the pseudonymous Pakistan born ex-Muslim blogger who is currently seeking asylum in Canada. If ever there was something I would like to see more of in the west, it is ex-Muslims, apostates if you like, who are willing to talk about Islam and say it the way it is. Read his article and perhaps do as I have done and drop your mouse heavily on his PayPal button to help with his legal expenses… it will give you some serious blogospherical karma points. September 25th, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
So now before British police will carry out raids on Muslim terror suspects, they will consult with a group of Muslim ‘community leaders’ before acting (i.e. they will in effect ask permission from the same people who have so conspicuously failed to prevent the need for such raids in the first place). And of course one can only wonder at the potential for the targets of such raids being tipped off. So tell me, did the Metropolitan Police ask for permission from, oh I dunno, the Catholic Church maybe, before raiding possible IRA terrorist suspects in London for fear of upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the UK’s Irish community? This is beyond parody. September 24th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have a technical question… the comment forms on Samizdata have formatting buttons for the text, but alas these only appear to work for people using Internet Explorer. Does anyone know of a pop-up comment system we might be able to use which will allow push-button formatting to function in IE and Firefox, plus allow us to use our groovy graphics and is compatable with an anti-spam Turing test/captcha system similar to the one we have… all of which would work within Moveable Type (TypeKey is not an option)? September 22nd, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
The recent typically well mannered coup d’etat in Thailand has been loudly depreciated by the usual people, with calls to ‘return to democratic government’ being made. But in truth in places like Thailand (or Turkey), the military acts as an informal check on the untrammelled political power of democratically elected politicians, rather like the Supreme Court in the United State or (theoretically) the House of Lords in the UK. Just as the Supreme Court regularly thwarts the ability of impeccably democratically elected politician to pass laws pandering to the vox populi without howls for a ‘return to democratic government’, the military in Thailand is there to stomp on over-mighty politicos who try and break the commonly accepted boundaries of ‘the system’. Well mannered coups are (usually) the norm in Bangkok and should be thought of as a sort of common law ‘House’ of Lords engaging in a political ritual , rather like Black Rod bagging on the door of the Commons, it is just that the Thai ritual involves parking tanks and armoured personnel carriers in front of TV stations. I take no position on whether of not this particular coup was a Good Idea as I just do not follow the day to day realities of Thai politics closely enough to make an informed guess, but the idea of the military acting as a check on democratic civilian government when conducted like this is really not offensive to me. I just see it as different sort of Supreme Court… with tanks. September 22nd, 2006 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
I know that the West’s struggle against communism in the twentieth century was merely a blip on the historical radar, whereas the struggle of Islam against all other cultures has been a constant of human history for almost 1400 years. September 21st, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
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