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Just who do these arrogant Canadians think they are?
We must condemn this aggressive, unilateralist, neo-conservative challenge to the authority of the World Health Organisation. April 26th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I am not quite old enough to have been a full-blooded Cold War Warrior but I can imagine what it must have been like poring over the speeches and statements that emanated from the Kremlin, searching out all those coded mendacities and gussied-up ideological postures. The closest we come to that kind of excitement these days is by listening to someone like the Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke:
Not remotely a risk for the BBC where there is not even a hint of either patriotism or objective journalism.
Oh that vulgar word again! Such a rank obscenity for a member of the defeatist, vacuous, ethically crippled ruling elite.
Credibility in whose eyes?
This, from the head of a broadcasting organisation whose chief recruitment ground is the jobs page of the Guardian.
For those of you unfamiliar with British public-sector-speak, allow me to interpret: “We must oppose a free market in information and ideas as this would severely threaten our role as paternalistic gatekeepers of public opinion”.
I think you ought to have a word with the crew of the Ark Royal, Mr.Dyke. The BBC has yet to undergo ‘perestroika’. April 25th, 2003 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a dramatic development, under-fire British MP George Galloway has stunned an audience of journalists at a press conference by stripping off all of his clothes and posing for photographs whilst completely naked. The controversial left-wing MP for Glasgow Kelvin had called the press conference in order to answer allegations that he accepted substantial payments from the former Iraqi regime. However, during a particularly heated round of questioning, Mr.Galloway suddenly stood up and began to undress himself. The attendant journalists watched in bemusement as Mr.Galloway eventually got down to his underpants which he whipped off with a flourish and draped over the ITN sound-recordist’s boom-mike.
Said Mr.Galloway who was unrepentant about his unorthodox and shocking gesture:
Mr.Galloway’s gesture was warmly welcomed by a new left-wing organisation called the Campaign for Hindbrained Political Stunts (CHiPS) which is dedicated to pursuing a variety of ‘progressive’ causes with public displays of nudity. Denouncing all clothing as an oppressive construct of late-stage capitalism the group also intends to use bodily functions such as urination, defecation and induced vomiting as a means of protest. The group’s motto is: “Other people discuss, we just disgust”. April 25th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Among the Notes from an Iranian Girl is a sobering reminder that she lives in a country where the kissing has to stop:
She despairs. Who can blame her?
Sentiments echoed by Hollywood actor Tim Robbins:
And, believe me, the threat of 74 lashes is as nothing compared to tale of abject horror and violent oppression to which the heroic Mr.Robbins has been subjected:
Bush=Hitler. [The link to Tim Robbins speech courtesy of Dumb Celebs] April 24th, 2003 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are altogether far too many people in the world with far too much time on their hands and not nearly enough genuine trauma in their lives to occupy them. That, in a nutshell, is what lies at the root of so many of our problems. First it was narcotics, then guns, then tobacco, then fast-food and now it looks like we are witnessing the opening salvoes of the War on Sugar:
What a perfect set up! The ‘honest’, ‘caring’, ‘selfless’ professionals of the WHO pitted against the obesity-spreading, profit-obsessed vested interests of the corporate suger industry. I can just see the latest anti-globo protest banner now: ‘SUGAR IS WORSE THAN RICIN’. Well, let me nail my colours to the mast right here and now and say that I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the corporate neo-sugar mongers on this one. Since I am usually to be found agitating vigourously on behalf of the productive profit-seekers of this world, I am hardly in any mood to abandon them now, especially when they’re genuinely fighting a good fight and probably telling the truth. And let no-one be fooled by the use of the innocuous word ‘guidelines’. As if these things are merely helpful suggestions. We all should know by now that these directives are only ‘advisory’ until such time as they are successfully enacted into state law. The anti-tobacco injunctions used to be just ‘guidelines’ as well.
Methinks Dr.Puska protests too loudly. Does he really expect us to believe that he gets millions of plaintiff letters from people all over the world saying, “Please rescue us from the capricious tyrrany of sugar, Dr.Puska”? I don’t buy any of it any more than I bought into the ‘global warming’ hoax which, incidentally, appears to have set the methodological template for all future junk science scares. Nor am I the slightest bit interested in entering any debate as to the merits (or otherwise) of consuming sugar because I simply don’t give a damn. I speak as somebody who has a fair shot at getting a job as Danny De Vito’s body-double but I’ll be damned to the deepest pit of perdition if I am going to sit back and allow some otherwise-unemployable tranzi penpusher tell me what I can or can’t sprinkle on my breakfast cereal. Never mind Saddam, or Al-Qaeda or gangs of shadowy, homicidal Islamofascists, when are we going to start a War on Busybodies? April 23rd, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Want to know quite what I find so laughable about this story?
The answer lies in the way that Gordon Brown has ordered an ‘inquiry’ into NHS funding in order to provide a patina of scientific, objective justification for the tax increases that he has clearly already made up his mind on. And would you like to hear something even funnier? Well, just wait until the ‘opposition’ (chortle, snigger) Conservatives launch a fierce attack on the government for not spending enough on the NHS. Won’t that be a scream? Yes, yes I know, it’s not really funny and I shouldn’t laugh. But, honestly, I just don’t know what else to do. April 22nd, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
There will be no ticker-tape parades for the returning heroes of Gulf War II and, given the current political and cultural climate, I suppose that is understandable. However, one would have thought that Mr.Blair might at least see the benefit of a suitably discreet pause before publicly shafting them:
So it appears as if the Royal Irish Regiment, whose members fought with such gallantry and tenacity in the Battle for Basra as far back as…ooh, let’s see…a few days ago, are to be issued with a whole new set of marching orders. Thanks very much, chaps, now fuck off! The irony can surely only be desribed as breath-taking. Whilst neither Saddam’s Ba’athist thugs nor his Republican Guards could put so much as a dent in them, their very existance as a fighting unit is about to be sacrificed by a government that will stop at nothing in a (vain) attempt to appease the brooding war-dogs of Sinn Fein/IRA. April 22nd, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is no shortage of entrepreneurs who will assure you that the secret to business success lies in marketing. Who am I to argue? You may have a quality product but you won’t make any money from it unless you sell it. Lots of it. That is why I have a lot of respect for the people who devise marketing strategies. Producers can and do work hard to refine their product but the money doesn’t go round nearly so well without the salesmen who tickle the fancy of potential buyers. It is those strategies that I always find so intruiging. How do they identify the pople who might be interested in any given product and what things do they say to induce these people to actually part with their hard-earned? Oftentimes these strategies are subtle beyond subtle. Other times, though, they are screamingly obvious. Whilst on a London Underground train coming home this evening, I noticed a poster campaign for a book by a man called Joseph Stiglitz which is called ‘Globalization and its discontents’. Now we all know that globalization does indeed have its discontents and they are mostly be found running around places like Genoa and Seattle waving ‘Hammer & Sickle’ flags. So I was unsurprised to note the sales strapline on the poster which read something like: “Will make you angry enough to want to march”. How dreary, thought I. Here again we have yet another frothing-at-the-mouth marxoid rant designed to incite walnut-brained followers to throw incendiary devices through the window of the nearest Starbucks. However, and interestingly enough, the book itself does not appear to live up to its firebrand sales pitch. If the Amazon editorial linked to above is anything to go by, the author actually appears to take a more (dare I say it?) nuanced approach to the entire global trade thing and he is even prepared to say good things about it:
Okay, I shall overlook the patent admiration for ‘foreign aid’ (transnational welfare) here. I said he was nuanced, I didn’t say he was necessarily right. But, the point is, that none of that comes across from the advertising which clearly seeks to pitch this as some sort of ‘Nihilists Handbook’ aimed at the smelly combat trousers/woolly cap brigade. Regardless of the fact that they might want their money back when they’ve read it, it is still a bit of a depressing insight for the rest of us. After all, publishers want to make money (I assume) and advertising campaigns on the London Underground are quite expensive. The publishers (or the advertising executives) clearly take the view that there are enough of these people floating about to be considered a ‘target audience’ and hence provide them with a sufficient return on the investment. Still, there is also a valuable lesson for anyone looking to earn some cash for themselves: get your marketing right, and there’s a healthy profit to be made in the anti-capitalism business. April 22nd, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
A few days ago, I spent a pleasant evening at chez de Havilland enjoying a sumptuous dinner consisting of a selection of char-grilled endangered species washed down with a delightful bottle of Ultra-Extreme-Right-Wing cordial. After dinner, we retired to the drawing room to smoke cigars (hand rolled by grossly exploited third-world children) whereupon the discussion turned to matters of international affairs. It was during the course of our deliberations that I struck upon what I considered to be a quite promising strategy for dealing with the ‘Axis of Weasels’ (France, Germany, Russia) Since the basis of their informal ‘alliance’ appears to be the shared concern about the vast amounts of money each is owed, then would it not constitute a masterful stroke in the machiavellian art of ‘divide and conquer’ to ensure that one or more gets reimbursed while the other is told to take a hike? Then sit back and watch while the gang breaks apart and they start turning on each other. To me, this was a screamingly obvious manoeuvre. And not just to me because I note that Brian Micklethwait has made a similar suggestion in one of his comments below:
Indeed they are, Brian. No sooner had I finished reading Brian’s comments, and marvelling upon how they echoed my own thoughts on the subject, than I notice this article in the Financial Times:
The world, and it would appear the French in particular, is about to be reminded of an old axiom: to the victors go the spoils. By the way, if any influential members of the US Government happen to be reading this, let me just say that the Samizdata Team are available to provide free-lance consultancy on International Relations. Please e-mail us for a resume. April 19th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Political assassination is becoming something of a national pastime in Russia. The latest victim is Sergey Yushenkov , a Liberal Party deputy in the Dumas who was gunned down yesterday outside his apartment building in Moscow. Russian Liberals are ‘Liberal’ in the European sense of the word, not the American sense i.e.
Of course, murder is always murder regardless of the opinions held by the victim, but in this case Russia has lost one of the genuine good guys and at a time when they need all the good guys they can get. There are no indications as to who carried out the murder or why. R.I.P. Mr.Yushenkov. April 18th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
You’ve just got to laugh really. Certainly that was my reaction when I happened upon this development, courtesy of Bill Herbert:
What, no mention of any intended actions against Saddam Hussein? Some mistake surely? I mean, if Great Satan and Little Satan are in the dock then surely it cannot be so hard to cobble together a half-way decent case against the Ba’athist regime as well? Of course, we all know the reasons why that is never going to happen; the same reason that truly does vindicate the American determination to have nothing whatsoever to do with the International Criminal Court. But, for once, it is worth examining this in just a little more depth. So, I followed the link in Bill Herbert’s post to this article in the National Post which provides a bit more background:
The ‘Permanent People’s Tribunal’? What’s that all about? I’m ‘people’ and yet I have never heard of them nor do I recall appointing them to sit in judgement on my behalf. → Continue reading: A long way from Nuremburg April 18th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Our worst suspicions have been confirmed. The British Chancellor Gordon Brown is suffering from SARS (Severe Acute Robbery Syndrome) but every time he sneezes it’s the rest of us who catch the cold:
I don’t know how many people work in the public sector but I do know that the number is much higher than in was in the early 90’s. Since 1997 especially, the ratchet of taxation (both direct and indirect) has gradually been cranked up to fund a staggering growth in government. The Labour Party’s natural constituency, the middle-class kleptocracy, has been showered with money and perquisites as a reward for their loyalty while, even now, they moan interminably about a ‘lack of resources’. Meanwhile, the 21 million wealth creators have sadly bought the lie that only by accepting an ever-increasing burden can their lives improve. These Atlases may soon want to shrug and give their allegiance to a genuine tax-cutting, government-shrinking political party. Sadly, we don’t have one in this country.  April 17th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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