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I love the Science Museum in London, and there is another good reason to go there: it has an exhibition about the Spitfire fighter aircraft. Here is a nice review of it at the Social Affairs Unit blog.  Do not believe the nonsense about how the RAF was not essential to preventing an invasion of Britain in 1940. It was vital, and it seems morally right somehow that the aircraft that helped to nail the Luftwaffe was not just a brilliant piece of engineering, but also drop-dead gorgeous. October 7th, 2006 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I can see why people have their doubts about celebrities-turned-politicians, but my goodness, it is hard to resist the appeal of someone as funny, and as sharp as Kinky Friedman (I love Americans’ names). Jesse Walker has a brief look at his campaign to be governor of the Lone Star State. He concludes that Friedman will do Texan voters a favour by annoying the usual political parties. My main doubt would be his ability as a manager, but then frankly how much worse could he be than a professional politician who has probably not done a hard day’s honest toil since leaving college? He may not get to the governor’s mansion in Austin, but boy, the election will be fun to watch. October 7th, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Granted, these days the United States of America has saddled itself with a big ol’ government fat enough to set the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves. However, the USA’s genesis was so well-considered – such a precise ideological crystal – that it gave rise to the mightiest of nations; enormously prosperous even in the face of the myriad bureaucratic hindrances witnessed today. I love to reacquaint myself with aspects of such a universal, timeless and (in my opinion) optimal design of a nation – the Minutemen inspired this post. Such history is criminally superseded by modern reality, but it nevertheless provides something to work towards. There is so much in the USA’s formative years that is inspirational. October 7th, 2006 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was mildly amused to see that there is a book published in the USA called ‘Why mommy is a democrat’. Presumably it teaches children that just as ‘Mommy’ looks after Junior and makes him share his toys with the kid next door, if the kid next door refuses to share his toys with Junior, Junior should threaten to lock him in the attic and take the toys he wants by force… just like the nice Democrats use the threat of jail for people who do not ‘share their toys’ like they are told. Just a guess. October 7th, 2006 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. There must be some human truth that is beyond religion. – Oriana Fallaci October 6th, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Muslims in Britain should start taking a good look at the auguries. Windsor, a town known for its genteel (and tourist infested) tearooms, has been playing host to low level riots and violence by enraged English youths for several nights now, sparked by Muslim thugs attacking a mother and daughter and by aggressive demands for a mosque to be built in the overwhelmingly non-Muslim town. At the same time, Leader of the Common Jack Straw has been saying publicly that he would rather that Muslim women not wear veils as it is deeply divisive socially.
He is not calling for state imposed dress codes (which I would strongly oppose) but he is making a self-evident statement about Muslim non-assimilation. Quite rightly he has not made this a broader contention as I have yet to hear anyone voice concern over Hindu women wearing saris or Chinese women wearing cheong sams (I should think not!), because although some Chinese and Hindus choose not to assimilate (but of course many do), they are not calling for their cultures and beliefs to be legally off-limits from criticism or ridicule. It is only Muslim non-integration in the UK that is really a problem because of an apparently widespread Muslim unwillingness to reciprocate tolerance for tolerance. The bigger point here is, of course, not that Jack Straw personally thinks it is unwise that Muslims make themselves so visibly separate from broader British society but that the Leader of the Commons should feel it appropriate to say something that was obviously going to upset a body of Muslim opinion in the UK. This was not an off-the-cuff remark and moreover, he has repeated it and elaborated on the point. I would say that elements of the political class are starting to notice that increasing numbers of the fifty eight million non-Muslims in Britain are growing a great deal less tolerant of intrusive Muslim demands on their tolerance. There comes a time when people start to think enough is enough. In the end, democratic politicians stay in business by positioning themselves to be on the right side of that sort of ‘mass market’ issue and that is something Muslim ‘community leaders’ would do well to ponder when they do a little projecting into the future, assuming they actually want Muslims in Britain to have a future. October 6th, 2006 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
Scientists have observed that smoking pot may stave off Alzheimer’s Disease. Hmm. I am not a medical expert, but this is not the first time that people have claimed medicinal benefits for smoking this substance. There appears to be quite a steady drumbeat of support for the idea that marihuana may beneficial and that some of the scare stories are just that – scares. Of course, there are certain downsides to a “spot of blow”: such as a desire to suddenly consume the entire contents of one’s fridge (I speak from The War on Drugs is a disaster on many levels. Besides the encouragement to organised crime, the corruption of the legal system, and the obvious assaults on individual liberty, one of the stupidest aspects of said war has been the way in which substances like pot, which might have useful properties in dealing with certain conditions, are ruled off-limits by the law. It is high time (‘scuse the pun), that the law was changed. Remember, when was the last time you heard of a bunch of young British youths getting into a fight because of lighting up a large bong as opposed to being blind drunk? October 6th, 2006 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. October 5th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am so tired of having to roar about the latest provocation-of-the-day from some Islamic barking moonbat that I really need to write about something else… so how about a paean to one of my favourite artists? As a big, no, huge Frank Miller fan, delighting in the way he has darkened up an entire art form, rescuing it from both Disneyfication and political correctness, it is interesting to see how his influence has started to spread into other areas of the arts. However I was apprehensive that when I heard that Sin City was going to be turned into a movie… “unfilmable” was all I said when I heard. I was completely wrong and Sin City was a tour de force, unlike the attempt to translate Miller’s Elektra onto the screen, which was a disappointing mess inspite of featuring one of my favourite actresses. So with the debacle of Elektra in mind, my reaction was rather dubious when I heard they were going to make 300 into a movie… oh me of little faith… having just watched the trailer, well, I am not used to having a film clip lasting 1 minute and 46 seconds sent a shiver up my spine quite like that. This is clearly one to watch on the largest screen possible.  Frank Miller has been one of the leading people adding a harder edge to US comics since the 1980’s, reclaiming a place in a medium in which I have always felt France and Japan lead the world. That he is now proving a source of interesting movies for Hollywood just increases my admiration for the man. October 5th, 2006 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
A Muslim police officer has been allowed to refuse to guard the Israeli embassy in London.
A ‘rethink’? When ordered to carry out his job and protect a location within the United Kingdom from unlawful attack, PC Alexander Omar Basha took the view that it would be immoral to protect that place (in other words, he refused to enforce British law regarding possible acts of violence because of who the potential target was). The only ‘rethink’ needed is why was he not fired on the spot? I wonder… has a Jewish policeman in the UK attached to the Diplomatic Protection Group ever refused to guard the embassy of a Muslim country in Britain? So tell me, if a policeman who was a member of the BNP refused to protect an African embassy, do you think the Metropolitan Police would need even ten seconds for a ‘rethink’? October 5th, 2006 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
Robert Redeker is a writer and philosophy teacher in France who made some self-evident points critical of the behaviour of certain Muslims but he also laid the blame on Islam-as-a-religion itself…
As a result, even though he lives in France and was just expressing his views, he is a hunted man in fear for his life. Time reported that Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Mosque of Paris and president of the French Council of the Muslim Religion spoke of “grave errors” in treating questions of religion in a “purely subjective manner.” Yet surely that is exactly what Redeker did not do. He is looking at our old chum ‘root causes’ and finding that Islam itself may be the problem. That is not a subjective proposition. People need to start thinking of Islam in the same manner as they thought of Communism. Islam may be a religion but it is also has an imposed ‘whole life’ view that makes it indistinguishable from a political ideology. If Muslims want their religion to be treated with tolerance, they need to de-secularise it in the same way Christianity has (largely) done. But for as long as Islam advocates an imposed political order based on religious principles, it must not be treated either legally or socially as being above critique on any level whatsoever. Islam is the problem and, just like Communism and Fascism, it is simply incompatible with western post-Enlightenment civilisation. And also just like Communism and Fascism, it must be contained or defeated militarily when it threatens us but it must also be defeated as an ideology as well. The PLO and Ba’athism were regional threats but they were also largely secular and had political objectives that could at least be discussed (for example even Israel managed to eventually do deals with the PLO). Islam’s morality, theology or weird prohibitions should only be of interest to Muslims, just as Kibbutznik Communism is only of interest to people on Kibbutzes playing at Communism on a strictly voluntary basis… but whereas Communism has been defeated and discredited as a global ideology, Islam is very much alive and kicking and because of Islam’s political imperatives to impose its values by force on everyone (i.e. either become a Muslim or submit as a dhimmi), that makes it of concern to everyone. Until Islam is defeated ideologically, Western Muslims have to be regarded much the way communist sympathisers were regarded during the Cold War. Islam needs to be treated as a political ideology that needs to be confronted and defeated. The pretence that “oh, it is not about Islam, it is just about terrorism” is simply untrue. It is all about Islam. October 4th, 2006 | 71 comments - (Comments are closed)
Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. – Frédéric Bastiat October 3rd, 2006 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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