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Out of sheer horrid fascination I dip into Bartcop from time to time, and look what I found just now on the Forum:
Well, well, well. It seems that American socialists just love the BBC. I wonder why? November 1st, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Though most of our readers will doubtless be unaware, the BBC has been running a competition to find the ‘All-time Greatest Briton’. I have, thus far, been indifferent to the whole wretched exercise but it has been brought to my attention that, currently, Lady Diana is topping the voters poll. I am no longer indifferent. If Lady Diana wins, it is not just a victory for sentimentality over reason but a gross insult to this country’s glorious history. I cannot allow that to happen without let or hindrance. So may I please urge all contributors and readers to go to the BBC vote page and vote for Cromwell, Brunel, Shakespeare, Newton, Churchill or anybody except Lady f*cking Diana! I thank you in anticipation of your kind and worthy assistance. [My sincere gratitude to Hadrian Wise for the alarm bell] October 31st, 2002 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
The tide of mendacious pro-EU propoganda that has flooded this country for the last 20 years or so, has been so relentless and has become so institutionalised that us beleaguered ‘antis’ were, until recently at any rate, quite despondent about the prospects of getting our message across concerning the reality of this misconceived ‘Reich’. No lie has been too outrageous and, on occasion, the lies have even been contradictory without anybody seeming to notice. We have been told that Europe is more prosperous, Europe is fairer, Europe is more open-minded, Europe is more dynamic, Europe has less crime, Europe is more modern, Europe is more generous, Europe is more caring, the cost of living is cheaper, everyone in Europe has a better standard of living and (drum roll, please) Europeans are more sophisticated!! My father told me that he remembers exactly the same things being said about the Soviet Union in the 1930’s. So it gives me an incalculable thrill to see an article about Europe’s coming collapse in a British newspaper:
The article may be right or it may be wrong but, for my purposes, that almost doesn’t matter; its very publication is the rub. It would certainly not have appeared even a year ago and the fact that it has surfaced now, and in a mainstream publication to boot, is an indication that the tide is turning.  October 31st, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is not often that I pass comment upon US partisan politics. Yes I have, in the past, railed against American socialists who insist on referring to themselves as ‘liberals’, but, that aside, I tend to avoid analysis of the political battleground in the US if only because our American contributors are so much better disposed to do that than I am or ever could be. However, once in a while I am prepared to set aside my customary reluctance and grasp that big, American bull by the horns. On my travels around cyber-space, I happened upon a website called ‘Bartcop’. I have no idea who Mr.Bartcop is, but he is clearly a socialist and a very long way from being anything even resembling a happy man. Mr.Bartcop also hosts a forum wherein those of a similar disposition are invited to share their thoughts and views and where I found this woefully pathetic thread. Of course, this may not be representative of the American left in general; merely a reflection of the company that Mr.Bartcop likes to keep. But, if it is a fair cross-section, then I suggest that US Republicans have very little to worry about in the foreseeable future because these people are going, quite literally, out of their minds. October 30th, 2002 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I can’t quite remember when it was that my sense of outrage at HMG obscenities gave way to grim resignation. I don’t believe it was any single defining event, nor any specific date. Rather, I think it was a gradual and cumulative process. Whatever the causes, though, I am rather glad I went through that transition because now I can confront news like this and still keep my blood pressure at tolerable levels:
Now, all anti-discrimination laws are misconceived and for so many reason that I would almost be required to start a new blog in order to list them all. They are intolerable enough in the workplace but by their extension to the home, HMG is making it clear that the distinction between the private and the public is the thing that they find intolerable. Surely I am not alone in regarding the matter of who one does and does not allow in one’s home to be a matter requiring the utmost discrimination? Still, there is a get-out clause (of sorts):
And, naturally, by extension an elderly Catholic woman, say, will be able to insist on a Catholic home-help. Yes? Well, I have this nagging feeling that the answer to that will, in practice if not theory, be ‘no’. → Continue reading: Beware of non-whites October 29th, 2002 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
It now apears that the number of victims of the Moscow theatre siege has risen to 117. It also appears that all the victims were killed by the gas that was used to overcome their terrorist captors. Unarguably that is a terrible price to pay but I am forced to agree with Dale Amon that the Russian authorities had no other plausible options open to them. Faced with not being able to win them all, they settled for not losing them all. Decisions do not come any harder than that. Negotiations, however framed, were a non-starter. To even commence them would be, and be seen as, a capitulation; a reward to the terrorists for their audacity and enterprise and a guarantee that every public venue in the civilised world would, henceforth, be eyed hungrily for the prospect of a repeat performance. Negotiations don’t always save lives. Like it or not, the Russians have now established the template for dealing with these situations and, regardless of the whining in the mainstream media, it’s a template that will be followed, albeit improved upon. It is also a message to every terrorist nutjob in the world that all they can expect in return for their ‘heroic’ efforts is a miserable, pointless death. I wonder how many other planned terrorist ‘operations’ of this nature are, even now, being hastily reconsidered? The much-feared Russian proclivity for brazen ruthlessness has, for once, worked both in their favour and ours. They have a saying in Russia: if you’re going to die, then die with music. It means go out with a bang, go down fighting, make sure your death has meaning. Whilst it will not constitute even a meagre crumb of comfort for the bereaved, I do not believe their loved ones died in vain. By their tragic deaths, many, many others might avoid an equally grisly fate. I cannot bring myself to glorify an event which led to the deaths of so many people who went out to enjoy a musical evening. But I think it appropriate to pay them tribute by acknowledging that they died with music. October 28th, 2002 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Perry has gone and got my creative juices flowing. I’ve already drafted the copy for the advertisement that I intend to place in all the Singles Columns: “Practice safe sex! If you’ve arranged a date this morning, call me this afternoon.” You can hardly blame me for wanting to cash in on (yet another) government ‘crackdown’. I’m getting too old to chase ambulances and voyeurism sounds like a far more appealing way to make a living. ‘Crackdown’. HMG just loves that word. They crackdown on this, they crackdown on that. Whenever they suspect that the British tax cattle have forgotten why exactly it is they need all these overpaid suits in Whitehall, out they come with another ‘crackdown’, straight from the Must-Be-Seen-To-Be-Doing-Something School of Political Science. HMG has become like an angry man who can no longer communicate with his children so he just takes his belt to them every now and then to keep them from asking so many stupid questions. However, the thing about ‘crackdowns’ is that, very often, they never actually materialise. They’re announced, trumpeted by a compliant media for a while and, by the time the news-wagon has rolled on to the next terrorist atrocity or Boy Band break-up, it’s all been forgotten about. This ‘crackdown’ on the sex laws has that familiar ring to it. They’ll probably knock it around at committee stage for a while, draft some new laws, put them before their own laywers for advice, be told that their ideas are insane, unworkable and likely to lead to chaos and then the whole thing will be quietly filed away. However, in the meantime, sufficient kerfuffle has been made to keep some radical marxoid feminist wing of the Labour Party quiet until after the next election. I’m just speculating of course and I could (Lord help us) be wrong. So I shall maintain a watching brief in the meantime; one that I shall not actually be able to charge for. Damn! October 28th, 2002 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Excuse me but….I’m…I’m just a little groggy right now. I’ve stopped seeing double but my hands are still shaking. I just managed to avoid hitting my head on the desk as I went down but I hit the floor with a thud. I only hope I haven’t broken anything. I think I have recovered just about enough of my constitution to link to this editorial in the Daily Mirror:
Wait a minute, did I say that was in the Daily Mirror? Let me just check [Pause]. Yes, it was the Daily frigging Mirror!! John Pilger’s dead-tree mouthpiece; Britain’s most popular left-wing tabloid. These are the people who have been running a TV ad campaign inviting the public to regard George Bush as a more dangerous tyrant than Saddam Hussein. Have the proprietors been locked in a cellar somewhere? And what about the author, Tony Parsons? Not in the Pilger league for sure but still a long-standing, card-carrying member of the sneering leftie ‘intellectual’ classes. Well, at least he was until now. Has someone implanted a chip in his brain? Would some functional adult please go and read the whole editorial and tell me that I wasn’t just hallucinating, because the world isn’t supposed to be like this. In truth, I am sort of hoping that I am just seeing things because if I am not then we at the Samizdata have to face the thorny problem of there being no more idiots left to denounce. What are we going to do then, for chrissakes??!! October 25th, 2002 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
My initial hopes, that the storming of a theatre just outside Moscow (the name of which doesn’t appear to be published anywhere, incidentally) by a gang of heavily-armed Chechenhawks was merely the execution of a piece of bizarre and shocking performance art, have now ebbed away.
As substitute for hope, I now have the tangibly queasy feeling that this is all going to end very badly. October 25th, 2002 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
A commendably good analysis from James C. Bennett on the strategic decisions facing Australia following the Bali massacre:
He also examines the potentially catastrophic consequences for the Balinese. James has an audacious talent for getting to the heart of the matter without cant or hyperbole and by my reckoning he has hit a multitude of nails squarely on the head yet again. October 24th, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
I was prompted by Perry’s post below to refer to a London newspaper story I saw yesterday. The fig-leaf justification provided for establishing a panopticon state is that we all be a lot safer as a result. Pity it didn’t work in the case of this gut-wrenching story of a man who was set upon by a gang outside an underground station in North London and beaten to death for no other reason than he had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where was all the security state apparatus? What about all those CCTV cameras? Do you think this man’s family might want to ask themselves why they’re being sold a pup? Police States are all about security; not our security, mind. October 23rd, 2002 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
We all know what caused the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, right. We all know because we have been told (ad nauseum) by this lot among others that the root causes lie with America’s wrong-headed foreign policy, its empire-building and its constant meddling in other people’s business. If one accepts that argument then the solution presents itself: America should mind its own business, stop arming foreigners, bring troops home and quietly get on with the business of building a peaceful, free, non-interventionist country. Then the worlds bad guys and bullies will simply leave America alone and go off to look for someone else to haunt. In other words, America should be more like Switzerland. After all, nobody ever attacks Switzerland. Why should they? There’s no reason to. Switzerland is neutral and peaceful and prosperous and…under attack:
Nothing to do with Swiss foreign policy then. Nothing to do with Swiss meddling in other people’s conflicts. No, it’s everything to do with the exceedingly domestic policy of banking secrecy which means that Switzerland is a living, breathing bolt-hole for those desperate Euro-serfs who want to hang on to whatever precious capital they have left and shield it from the endless predations of Brussels. → Continue reading: Root causes revisited October 23rd, 2002 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
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