We consider this our duty – to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence, and fanaticism.
– Ahmed Shah Massoud
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August 15th, 2004 | Comments are closed
 As my father used to say, diplomats are very good at marrying rich women and making polite conversation at cocktail parties, but don’t ever expect them actually to do something. August 13th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
August 12th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Jackie: “Do you ever make cakes for people?” (Overheard at the Big Blog Company ‘open day seminar’ held this evening Samizdata.net HQ) August 11th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. August 9th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Republicans and Democrats, Labour and Tory, Christian Democrat and Social Democrat, Gaullist and Socialist … they all have a vested interest in maximising perception of their differences: and so the illusion of choice and empowerment that underpins the whole democratic shell game is maintained. This is hardly a new phenomenon as the fascists and communists in the 1930’s and 40’s did the same thing because like today’s parties, they appealed to largely the same constituencies and the crossover of leaders, members and supporters between them was considerable. Yet like the situation today, what is striking is not how they differed but how similar they really were. Fetishizing the differences is a way of hiding the truth: you are being asked to eat a shit sandwich and the only choice on offer is the type of bread. August 7th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
In another perilous time – 1918 – Lord Haig wrote of Lord Derby: “D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him.” It’s subtler than that with Kerry: you don’t have to sit on him; just the slightest political breeze, and his pillow billows in the appropriate direction. His default position is the conventional wisdom of the Massachusetts Left: on foreign policy, foreigners know best; on trade, the labour unions know best; on government, bureaucrats know best; on defence, graying ponytailed nuclear-freeze reflex anti-militarists know best; on the wine list, he knows best. -Mark Steyn, getting stuck in to the Democrats’ truly unimpressive presidential candidate. (This is worth reading, too). August 4th, 2004 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense. July 31st, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are plenty worse [than Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan] in the nation’s upper house – John Kerry, Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, Claiborne Pell, Alan Cranston and the appalling Howard Metzenbaum, to name just six. N.B. Top of the list of shame! July 28th, 2004 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers.They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we’d all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half. July 25th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is the New York Times quote of the day, from Stephen Hawking, he of the technologically enhanced vocal chords:
Until now I have taken it for granted that any idea that black holes might ever make a contribution to long haul transport was black pudding in the sky. But now I am not so sure. I do not know exactly what Hawking means about information being preserved, just as I am seldom completely clear what he means about most things, but the rest of this quote reads so very like those it-will-never-float it-will-never-fly only-six-computers-will-ever-be-needed electric-guitar-groups-will-never-catch-on prophecies which are periodically gathered together into anthologies of Things They Wish They Had Not Said, that I suddenly find myself becoming more optimistic about the possibility that one might one day be able to hail a Black Hole Cab and take a trip to another universe. July 22nd, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today, watching television often means fighting, violence, and foul language – and that’s just deciding who gets to hold the remote control. July 12th, 2004 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
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