The Daily Bork

Public Notice

2005-09-13T08:02:00.000+02:00

To anyone still coming through here...
It is becoming too tricky to do this blog and Sir Humphrey's as well. So for the near future I won't try to update here. Please click through to Sir Humphrey's if you are looking for the same sort of commentary. To anyone who has the Daily Bork blog-rolled, please consider adding Sir Humphrey's as well/instead!

Hip to be square

2005-09-06T15:09:00.001+02:00

Time to get away from hurricanes and back round to NZ politics. The Greens have a cool new invention they want to show off. It's expected to take off in a big way in the last 20 years.

"In 1975 the Values Party set a new standard for political party manifestos with its 90-page publication with a full colour cover that was sold in book shops. We have now eclipsed that cutting-edge initiative with this 21st Century equivalent," Mr Donald says.

Ummm, wasn't the CD-Rom released back around 1985? Not particularly 21st century. In fact decidely 20th, given that other greenie Al Gore must of invented it. First colour printing then CDs, what next for the intrepid party that probably would have banned CDs based on the chemicals used in manufacturing during the 80s? Oh, I see, you mean cutting edge for a political party. Congrats on raising that particular bar, look forward to the next breakthrough round 2035 then. What did ever happen to the Values party with their ground breaking manifesto? Oh yeah, died out in the ice age that they were all so terrified of if I remember right.

Nandor says that once again this demonstrates that the Greens are the most innovative, creative and technologically literate of the political parties.

Demonstrates something, not technological literacy, a bit of creativity maybe, but otherwise.

"We have demonstrated this repeatedly by having the best and most informative website and running one of New Zealand's most popular political blogs. The Greens are also the only party to have a series of music CD compilations," he says.

OK their websites are informative when you are looking for what is latest in crinolene political thought, I'll give him that. As for music CDs, again, welcome to the 80s lads.

"It never ceases to amaze me when MPs, who barely know how to use a computer, accuse us of being Luddites. Clearly we are the most techno-savvy party."

It never ceases to amaze ME how much Nandor can sound like an old man trying to be hip. Geez, even my dad wasn't that bad when I got my first computer and he's way older than Nandor. I know who is in more need of a hip replacement as well. Went to a techno-savvy party once but the drugs sucked, rate acid house parties much better.

Really if your aim is to show that you are up with the cool kids and showing up the other parties lack of technology use then PLEASE don't make an announcement that sounds like you got one of THEM to write it! This takes me back to the cringe days of parents trying to act cool for your friends when you were a teenager.
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Greens bringing back conscription

2005-09-06T15:09:00.000+02:00

The Greens are out after the yoof vote. I'm not sure I count as part of the that anymore, probably note I suspect. But here they give 21 reasons to vote for the Greens if you're part of that generation. Reason #1?

We won’t send you overseas to die in illegal, immoral wars.

Seriously, is that really #1 on the minds of the kids? NZ hasn't had conscription since my Dad was called up back in the dark ages of the birthday ballot. So if they aren't going to send you away to an illegal war, they will send you to a legal one? Must be, otherwise there is no point in saying it. Hence, the Greens are bringing back conscription!!! The last point?

We’ve made sure silly mistakes you make when you’re young won’t haunt you for the rest of your lives.

But voting is by secret ballot so noone will know you were dumb enough to vote Green when you're 45 anyhow. Otherwise the list sounds a lot like "vote for us and we'll look after you just like Mum and Dad". But give them credit for using the term "intergenerational theft" and not mentioning invading the Caucasus as a means to ending "peak oil".

Return of the hack

2005-09-06T15:08:00.000+02:00

The great Brown has more revisionist history up at Public Address, not in the usual Hard News section which appears to be now at least openly waving the Labour party flag, but in the great argument section where he has a transcript up of a speech at the National Library about "Information Entrepreneurs". Not much remarkable in that, just his take on the internet etc. Has a section on blogs as may be expected, with a good promo of PA and I think Scoop was the only other NZ site mentioned. The funny thing is where in a speech at the National Library he can't keep his pet hates out of it. Yes, I'm talking about his great bugbear PowerLine.

During last year's US election campaign, CBS News' 60 Minutes programme ran a controversial story on President Bush's military service, based on a hitherto unknown memo from his commanding officer. The conservative blog Power Line was annointed "weblog of the year" by Time magazine for its work in showing that the memo was forged, but in fact Power Line's authors did little more than ask the question: the real legwork was done by a horde of readers, some of whom displayed a zeal and expertise that put professional journalists to shame.

More recently, blogs on the other side of the divide used a similar division of labour to demonstrate that a mysterious conservative journalist given press accreditation to the White House was working under an assumed name, that the news organisation he worked for was nothing of the kind, and that his services as a gay prostitute were being advertised - explicitly - on the Internet. In that case the labour of investigation was explcitly allotted to willing readers; volunteer investigators.

Now why do you suppose it was written this way? The Rathergate affair culminated in the resignation of Dan "fake but accurate" Rather, indeed coined the term "fake but accurate", a spectacular achievement for a horde of readers. The sideways derision of PowerLine for "doing little more than ask the question" is selfevident, how could Time give them weblog of the year indeed? Contrast this to the unnamed blogs on "the other side of the divide" who organised a witch hunt of a journalist because he was conservative and asked the wrong questions. Why aren't the blogs named or Jeff Gannon/James Guckert mentioned by name? Because someone might go look them up and find out that it was in fact a witchhunt that went after a conservative gay reporter who was pitching easy questions. Now it is funny he doesn't mention Dan Rather either, because then you'd be left wondering why CBS has had more scandals than the "non-existent" Talon. One might also wonder how an one reporter being a party shill is comparable to a respected nationwide anchorman actively touting a forged document prior to a general election, insisting that even if it is a forgery it is accurate and finally resigning in disgrace. In fact one might in the end discover that the hunting of Guckert was the result of these blogs on the other side of the divide trying desperately to find a story of the magnitude of Rathergate with which to strike back and this was the best they could find, a gay shill.

Even funnier if you listen to the speech as well as read the transcript you will find this omitted in print

My tertiary study career consists of one essay on the Merchant of Venice that I wrote without the benefit of having actually read the play.

It's hard to believe. Unless you read Hard News and realise pretty quickly that Russell doesn't read half the stuff he links to but rather seems to pull the appropriate quotes and links from other blogs.

It really does look like another blogger, with a bit more aptitude for reading before writing and respect for knowledge, was correct in using the phrase "sordid little hack" after handing Russell his arse on a plate. Ironically that was about the Plame affair which Guckert was at one time supposedly invovled in. Russ never knows when to quit.

Round the traps

2005-09-05T20:59:00.002+02:00

Rather than go into the details of the Katrina debate, plenty of other posts are doing that, or doing detailed fiskings of the loonier debators I give here just a few comments on the weekend's reading of the usual traps.

In Sweden the pundits have been a bit annoyed that the offer of a water cleaner and the five man operation team were turned down. I suspect that it is more that there is no shortage of hardware an operators available in the US rather than snubbing international offers. But when the headlines are "Bush accused of racism" and "USA government on PR tour of the south" among others its not difficult to see what is going on. Most of these are written by one Britt Marie-Mattsson who is the US correspondent who seems to get most of her material from the NYT and is so desperately anti-Republican she'll run almost any line regardless of the idiocy. After the severe storms of last winter, where some areas were without power for going on two months(!) the more balanced sources seem to be playing a calmer line though. It appears that the more thoughtful realise that an evacuation of a Swedish city would be a complete and unmitigated disaster. Few seem to imagine that if it happened here that the perceived failures of the US federal government they are ranting about would not be failures here because that level simply does not exist. If the equivalent crisis were to occur here then we'd be looking at total disaster since there would be no federal government to pass the buck to or await funding and manpower from.

On the NZ front the usual suspects have been quiet until the overseas sites were in with their stories. The redoutable Brown has the favoured approach, start off in anguish at the failure of local, state and federal levels. Then conveniently switch to a blame Bush mode, while demonising Fox and Poweline giving free pass to a bimbo rap artist flinging accusations of racism everywhichway. It is a giveaway when a blog is accused of something but he can't actually be bothered giving a link to specific posts, in other words what he accuses of does not really exist as portrayed. Then there are links to NYT and Salon articles who seem to be arguing in a roundabout way for an interventionist federal government, funny but I think there was a civil war over that sort of thing. That red-herrings such as Iraq are played up is a dead giveaway, but it plays well to the crowd that reads this stuff. Just like the WaPo article cited by Brown, where it comes back to Sept 11 funding changes. See, another link to bad Bush policies. It's almost believable that W wanted this to happen.

Common in many thread is the confirmation of the underlying dogma that "America" is innately corrupt and this is some sort of natural outcome. For example NRT sees everything that is wrong in America because of the failure of systems to handle such a disaster. The implication seems to be that a caring society would have managed its greatest evacuation challenge in history without chaos and anarchy. This seems to be a remarkably long bow to draw and left unsaid is what would have happened in other places. I doubt very much that we'd see much better anywhere else in attempting such a thing.

Curiously at one political party blog, Frogblog, doesn't intend on commenting about the whole thing... except by running a lengthy reprint of a virulently deranged article that exemplifies everything mentioned above. Funny way of commenting without commenting if you ask me.

The whole evolving racism thing is rather curious, although par for the course in any discussion about "the South" I suppose. About the only reference I've seen to it elsewhere is here, where the writer wonders at the care taken to photograph mostly white looters.

But it seems that everyone begins seeing their own demons lurking in the shadows, as illustrated above. Some are just more obvious than others, such as inveterate whackjobs like Farrakhan, crazier evangelists and anti-gay loons seem to be having a field day seeing biblical wrath wrought on a corrupt city, not unlike Islamofascists who appear to be a bit upset the limelight has been stolen away. But it gives communist dictators the chance to parade doctors around generously gloating in their offers of help.
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Sweden slowly tilting right

2005-09-05T20:59:00.001+02:00

The Swedish opposition block makes further headway a year out from the polls. Reinfeldt "wins TV battle". Remarkable that the media, which is usually heavily Social Democrat, conceded victory to the opposition (for all that it's worth in televised debate). Unlike NZ, it seems being rude to the females is generally OK

One aspect of Persson’s performance that has provoked criticism was when he turned his back on Maud Olofsson while she was criticising the government on unemployment.

Persson defended himself afterwards in an interview, saying he was just stretching his legs.

“It’s hard to stay still for a whole hour at my age,” he said.

But according to Expressen’s Per Wendell, his behaviour only “strengthens the picture of a self-important Persson.”

Still I guess it's a better excuse than "by definition I cannot turn my back, she must have walked round me".

American public more clued than most pundits

2005-09-05T20:59:00.000+02:00

Who'd have thunk it, average Joe Cowboy seems to be more level-headed than the mediasphere

Americans are broadly critical of government preparedness in the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- but far fewer take George W. Bush personally to task for the problems, and public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest.

Q and O have perhaps the most succinct round up of the whole fiasco. Meanwhile Eric at Classical Values illustrates what a mess the whole concept of FEMA is after the 90s growth of "responsibilities". Basically, if you are relying on a bloated national level bureaucracy to save your bacon in the first few days, you are bacon. Of course the above two sites are of the less government is better flavour and understand a federal nation well, so expect them not to advocate for expanding federal structures even more.

Tribes

2005-09-05T20:57:00.000+02:00

Bill Whittle spells it out in Pink and Gray. Do not read this if you were featured in Team America World Police and recently sank a boat or balk at wet feet on duty...

Hundreds of New York firemen and policemen never came home, never came home, but New Orleans Police Chief P. Edwin Compass III said, of his men, “If I put you out on the street and made you get into gun battles all day with no place to urinate and no place to defecate, I don’t think you’d be too happy either… Our vehicles can’t get any gas. The water in the street is contaminated. My officers are walking around in wet shoes.”

Well, Chief, I’m sorry your men’s feet are wet, but getting their feet wet is part of their fucking job. New York’s Finest aren’t complaining about wet feet or places to pee because they died doing their jobs. They were sheepdogs

Was it all worth it?

2005-08-16T19:40:00.000+02:00

An interesting addition to the "what price freedom" question in the dead babies thread down below, this from the Strategy Page

Deaths in Iraq (Aug 14)

The Iraqi government now believes that at least 12,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed during the last 18 months. In the last ten months, about 800 Iraqi civilians and police have been killed each month. Adding a bit more to account for unreported deaths (especially in Sunni Arab areas where chaos, not the government, runs things) the death rate is running at the rate of about 45 dead per 100,000 population per year. This is far higher than the usual rate in Middle Eastern countries (under 10). Well, most of the time. During civil wars and insurrections, the rate has spiked to over a hundred per 100,000, sometimes for several years in a row. During Saddam’s long reign, the Iraqi death rate from democide (the government killing its own people) averaged over 100 per 100,000 a year. This does not include the several hundred thousand killed during the war with Iran in the 1980s. There are other parts of the world that are more violent than Iraq. Africa, for example, especially Congo, Sudan and South Africa. Only South Africa has a sufficiently effective government to actually keep track of the death rate, mostly from crime, but it’s over 50 per 100,000. It’s worse in places like Congo and Sudan, but the numbers there are only estimates by peacekeepers and relief workers. In southern Thailand, a terror campaign by Islamic radicals has caused a death rate of over 80 per 100,000.

So, the death rate from Saddam's time is half and falling. Add in the loss of his sons feeding people into shredders, mass torture (real torture, not taking photos), systemized rape and all the other features of Iraq in the happy kite-flying days. Is it still not worth it?

NZ, genes and religion

2005-08-16T19:39:00.000+02:00

Interesting to see NZ picked up for its curious attitudes towards science and religion. Why isn't that great defender of the enlightenment (not) Russell Brown, among others, doing his nana over this when he threw a wobbly about intelligent design in the USA just last week. Maybe he hasn't seen it yet. Comments from Gene Expression...

One of most of the frustrating things about the modern intellectual discourse is that those of us who hew to the Enlightenment tradition, that empirical investigation can shape a rational model of the world as it is, are having to battle two sides. On the one hand, you have traditionalist religious fundamentalists, particularly in the United States, who can mobilize massive ground troops. On the other hand, you have the hyper-Post Modernist project which attempts to deprivilege Western science from its monopoly on descriptions of the physical and biological world around us by periodically blind siding us with massive air raids. This story about Maori objections to the Genographic Project illustrates how the two can work in tandem, in particular when the focus is on non-white peoples who have a history of being at a disadvantage.

For example, see this quote, "For Tongans, we were created in Tonga. We have gods, our own gods, which we created the same as the people of Israel. We have our own stories...." Or, " "We didn't come from anywhere. We know that our Dreamtime stories tell us we were always here, in Australia. Can this be twisted to say we came from Africa...." The analogy with Christian fundamentalists is not too strained here as far as the religion goes, though while the fundamentalists want to preserve a certain model of the world that they think validates their literal faith in the Bible and underpins their morality, the indigenous spokespersons have a different ax to grind: "Maori representatives at a Health Research Council conference in Wellington called for the project's "immediate halt", saying genetic information belonged to hapu, whanau and iwi collectively, not to individuals." Ultimately, this is politics that is at work, as small ethnic groups attempt to maintain their own traditions in the face of the acidifying effects of modern society (the same acid that Christian fundamentalists fear).

The fact is, contra this talk of "gods," almost all the inhabitants of Tonga are Christian. According to The Joshua Project the vast majority of Maori are Christian. So are the majority of Australian Aboriginals. An emphasis on "traditional beliefs" is belied by the reality on the ground (if you read the article one researcher in New Zealand notes that he's had little trouble in convincing individual Maori to give blood). I am not a hard-core believer in either the Dawkinsian or Gouldian position on the Religion-Science relationship, that is, conflict vs. nonoverlapping magisteria. But, when mythology conflicts with science, I think that the universal acid will always win. It doesn't matter if the mythology is Christian or non-Christian, in the face of modern science they are simply presenting unneeded and superseded hypotheses.

"The enemies we make"

2005-08-16T19:38:00.001+02:00

Done With Mirrors has an excellent article on caricaturing the "enemy" and the curious inversion that has taken place between WW2 and now. As the official organs of Western governments go more and more out of its way to avoid caricaturing, the film makers and commetators in the West have gone to the other extreme.

Atop a grieving Statue of Liberty, the demonic-looking U.S. president waves a banner reading "democracy," but in his other fist he clutches the club of "dictatorship." Around him, on the statue's crown points, a young woman hangs in fetters, "anti-war" soldiers carouse, U.S. workers protest, and a clown in a dunce cap emblazoned with the Star of David inflates a stars-and-stripes balloon.

The latest from Ted Rall, Ward Churchill, Steve Bell, or Michael Moore? Something from "Le Monde" or "Der Spiegel?"

No, the president caricatured is Roosevelt, and the image is by the great Japanese illustrator Ono Saseo, and it graced the pages of the January 1942 issue of the Japanese magazine "Manga."

It is an interesting article, contrasting Frank Capra and Michael Moore, Imperial Japan and bin Laden, the attitudes to the enemy and allies.

Capra was reluctant at first to create propaganda films to motivate the troops, but eventually became the master of using the enemies own pieces to damn them. Moore on the other hand has become the master of using his own countrymen's and allies pieces to damn themselves (although in this age of online information it isn't hard to find the rebuttals and refutations)...

If this technique reminds you of Michael Moore, it ought to. He did the same thing, but with the morality and virtues in photo-negative.

Like Capra, Moore mostly used footage shot by others when he cobbled together "Fahrenheit 9/11." The IMDB "cast" list for the film names 40 public figures; of these, 37 are credited as from "archival footage." Even the common soldiers portrayed often weren't filmed by Moore. Some are from an Australian documentary, "Soundtrack to War," and were used despite the objection of film-maker George Gittoes, who said he had no idea his work was in "Fahrenheit 9/11" until it was screened at the Cannes film festival.

Moore's archival footage of Baghdad before the invasion shows the kind of happy glow Capra might have given to the American hearth. And where Capra showed the devastated cities of China strewn with civilian corpses, Moore gives us a U.S. military campaign in Iraq that seems to have killed only women and children.

In particular he draws attention to the weird use of Moore's propaganda by those who wouold never allow its creation in the first place...

How ironic is it that the most significant piece of Hollywood propaganda produced in this current war is lauded by the people who would burn Hollywood to ash and sow its soil with salt if they had the chance? The religious authorities in Iran scrapped the scheduled program at the Farabi Cinema complex in Tehran to put Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" on display. "This film unmasks the Great Satan America," a spokesman said. "It tells Muslim people why they are right in hating America. It is the duty of every believer to see [this film] and learn the truth."

He ends with a lament, which on the whole is not unjustified...

The care taken by our people to avoid crude caricatures of the enemy's culture is worthy of praise. It sets this war apart from World War II -- ironically, the "Good War" -- when even Dr. Seuss got into the Jap-bashing act. But how sad that we've turned instead to making crude caricatures bashing ourselves.

We aren't for the other side, but we aren't exactly on your side either

2005-08-16T19:38:00.000+02:00

The Guardian runs an article titled Give up your freedoms - or change tack. Blair's anti-terror measures are exactly what Bin Laden wants, with text that basically runs the same line you'll see round the traps, by one Saad al-Fagih who is described in the footnote as

Saad al-Fagih is a leading exiled Saudi dissident and director of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia

Some people take a bit of an exception to such a description, Harry's Place has the run down

Today's Comment piece by Sa’ad al-Fagih [sic] is, I think, a somewhat more worrying example of the Guardian's naiivity in the field of extremist Islamist politics. The essence of the article is that the United Kingdom government needs to change its policies as it is playing into the hands of al-Qaida.

What concerns me is this.

Sa’ad al-Faqih described in the footnote to the article as “a leading exiled Saudi dissident and director of the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia”.

In fact Sa’ad al-Faqih is a little bit more than that.

Al-Faiqih seems to have bought the satellite phone which was used by one of the Al Qaeda suicide bombers who blew up the US embassy in Nairobi.

Sa'ad al-Faqih, was "designated" by the United States Treasury on December 21, 2004 and on 23 Dec 2004 was named on the United Nations 1267 Committee consolidated list of individuals belonging to or associated with the Al-Qaida organisation.

On 14 July 2005, the US Treasury "designated" al-Faiqih's "Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia" (MIRA), a U.K.-based Saudi oppositionist organization, for providing material support to al Qaida:

There's more but you get the gist.

So why is the Guardian running opinion pieces from somone who is more than just an al Qaeda cheerleader or playing Devil's advocate? The Guardian of course knows who he is but don't disclose his affiliations, after all bin Laden could be described as a Saudi dissdent. Imagine Lord Haw Haw running his radio programme from inside Britain during WW2.

Via Instapundit.

It helps if you read the links you reference

2005-08-16T19:36:00.000+02:00

I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't.

But it's just too much fun.

The New York Review of Books has Peter W. Galbraith's Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic. The new Harper's magazine has a wonderful essay by Bill McKibben; 'The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong'. The full essay is print-only, but there's an except here. Pogblog is calling it "one of the most important watershed moral upheavals of our generation."

McKibben, a former New Yorker staffer and current Methodist Sunday School teacher, has also been interviewed in a piece headed What Would Jesus Drive?

Let's start at Pogblog. What do they actually say?

The Anti-Christ Nation
The imagination quails – shrinks back, shudders – at the violence of the delusion, the wickedness, the nastiness, the awful arrogance of our present Golden-Calf-ridden Nation. Christ would certainly be turning over in his grave if he were still there. Looking at it from the Anti-Christ angle, one trembles at the audacity of it (By the way, Karlsputin Rove³ was born on December 25, 1950 if you want an Absolut Reba’s Baby³ moment of chilling synchronicity tinct with frostbites of ironies.) Look at the conversion of GeorgeBush, Barbara’s Baby, from alcoholic to christoholic. It’s the same addiction circuits.

The guy who writes pogblog is a freaking loon. Look at some of his other articles, if you can get through them. Russ might as well put in a quotation from Pat Robertson, it'd make as much sense. Or Scrappleface, if he wants to go that road again.

The McKibben article? Hmmm, seems to be admonishing Americans for believing in Jesus without knowing the 10 commandments or being able to control their credit cards. Mind you, this is the same wingnut who praises Cuba's dire agriculture after they lost Soviet support, without the need for dependence on oil (Chavez who???) etc. No agenda there then. As for his What Would Jesus Drive, read it to see what happens when environmentalism becomes a religion mixed up with a contempt for the average population. Russ doesn't like fundie Christians, but the Christians who mix it all up with Marxism and Greenie politics are just fine. I can only imagine he calls it a "wonderful essay" because it is full of numbers showing how dumb your average American is.

Galbraith is at least credible and worries about the emergence of an Islamic republic. Which is fine, the outcomes of war are never certain and removing the tyrant will unleash unknown quantities. However, per his usual MO, Russ uses one reasonable introductory piece but fills it out with outright loonies as if to show some wide ranging consensus or coherent thread. Who wants to bet he even read the impenetrable pogblog article? Anyone??

A soldier's videoblog from Iraq. Two minutes' noise, confusion and chaos.

Well, it's a video of some American soldiers raining heavy gun fire on some distant and unknown target. Noise. Yes, usually accompanies heavy calibre machine guns. Confusion and chaos? No. Quite a lot of excitement, though fairly orderly. Back up the link one step to the "all videos" section and you find it's some weird German site filled with virtual propaganda videos against the US. The point of the reference? Well, you see that soldiers fire guns and that there is a general level of excitement during battle. Who'd have thought it?

And, finally, MSNBC's Tucker Carlson has explicitly endorsed terrorism: so long as it's French. He said, on air, that the fatal attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland made him "respect" France and "won me over". I've always thought he was a tosser, but …

Find some media loudmouth who says something stupid. Good hunting, can't wait for his similar exposés on various other morons of the media. Otherwise it seems to be a good reason to avoid PBS, if you can actually get it, which you probably can't.

There is some stuff about the political debate on TV3, but since I didn't see it and won't I can't really comment except where it is apparently OK that a judge ordered TV3 about which is OK by Russ. Presumably because Don Brash was declared the loser and his most favouritest woman-in-a-Mao-shirt won, at least according to the Herald. Then there is the obligatory food/drink reference, what cool music I listened to and, shock horror for the prudish out there, he mentions how much he is getting

and in the afternoon I nailed something I've been working on for a long time

Tee hee, see I can play the out of context game too!

(Cue Ackers, stage left...)

In a similar vein, this lengthy holier-than-thou lecture could be equally informative if condensed to,

I once worked with some Pacific Island women, aren't I cool and understanding?

To quote his stablemate,

I've always thought he was a tosser, but …

I should hand this gig back to RWDB.

I can't see this guy helping things

2005-08-16T19:35:00.002+02:00

What happens when you take a bigotted Englishman who gets revelation on an oil well and converts? A speaking tour of NZ by an intellectual dwarf that is supposedly going to help relations with Islam.

Mr Green said he was taken aback by learning something from an Egyptian, because he had considered them inferior people.

And, surprisingly enough, the conversion does not seem to have cured him of being a bigot.

Mr Green drew smiles from the predominantly Muslim audience while explaining his doubts about the Holy Trinity, saying he realised that believing it meant believing God could die and was His own father.

Like that is the biggest problem when you are believing in a god. If God is god and can do what he likes, why on Earth can't he fake his own death and be his own father?

"We have every convincing reason to believe that the Koran we have in our hands today is the same one revealed to the Prophet Muhammad 1400 years ago ... when the Prophet Muhammad died, there was no more revelation."

Oh right, so there is nothing in there that is as troubling as the concept of the Trinity.

But just to round out the loon-fest,

Mr Peters said Mr Green is part of the "militant underbelly of Islam", and called on Maori to "reject this insidious threat to our nation".

Still, if the guy did actually say this

However, after reports in Australia that Mr Green had said "dying while fighting jihad is one of the surest ways to paradise and Allah's good pleasure", he was barred from stopping in Brisbane on his way to New Zealand and had to alter his plans.

he deserves little sympathy, not to mention saying this

"Actually, the whole British middle class are brought up to be extremely arrogant, as though they are the pinnacle of human development."

after just saying

"I was arrogant," he said last night.

News flash, you still are.

Green Pied Pipers

2005-08-16T19:35:00.001+02:00

Sue Kedgley is doing her save the children act again...

“Kiwi parents are being outgunned by food companies promoting unhealthy fat, sugar and salt laden foods to our kids. Unless we make sweeping changes to protect our children from the overwhelming commercial pressures on them to eat unhealthy food, dietary-related diseases will overwhelm our health system and many of the present generation of children may die before their parents,” Ms Kedgley says.

Nothing like a bit of total hyperbole to scare the parents. Usual nutbar response, oh here is a massive problem that is about to doom society and all that can save us is the revolution, follow us to the promised land! Remember to throw in the word children a couple of times for good guilt measure.

“We also want to develop a traffic light labelling system to help children identify healthy and unhealthy food – green for healthy, orange for ‘don’t eat too much’ and red for high sugar-high fat foods. And we want to change the rules so that only healthy food and drink can be sold in schools. We want nutrition education taught in all schools, no advertising of unhealthy foods on television, and the government to report annually on what it is doing to create an environment that encourages healthy eating

How utterly sexist. After all, a good fraction of boys are colour blind, who's looking out for them? I demand yet another labelling scheme to cater to this underrepresented minority.

Funny how many extra regulations there are in there, all designed to remove freedoms in the name of the kids. Strange, but I don't see a tax being proposed on fish'n'chip shops or the local burger joint. But after all, only the government can protect the children from the evils of commerce. Parents just mess it up far too much.

“Ultimately the only way to reduce the burden on taxpayers is to attack the main causes of ill health such as poor diet. This is what our food policy seeks to do,” Ms Kedgley said.

Ultimately the only way to reduce the burden on taxpayers is to add more tax. Or, maybe, make the choices you make in eating (or allowing your children to eat) personally costly. If you spend a lifetime eating your way to diabetes, fund your own treatment. It would neatly save this problem.

“Poor diet is the biggest cause of preventable death in this country. The cost to the health system is enormous. Obesity alone is estimated to cost $303 million a year,” Health Spokesperson Sue Kedgley says.

If you can't control your kids and give in all the time to sweets and fat then why on Earth did you have any? Kids will try it on for anything regardless of what's on TV. They are your responsibility, not everyone else's via the grand apparatus of the State.

Bad science 2

2005-08-16T19:35:00.000+02:00

After the fuss of Bush allegedly promoting the intelligent design farce it was interesting to come across something similar from the opposite side, so to speak. Not long ago Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard, gave a speech in which he said that due to biological factors in the brain it was less likely that women reach the pinnacles of research in the "hard" sciences. As if to prove his point, one woman (I forger her name) had to leave during the speech due to the nausea this induced in her, seemingly unaware of the irony. It all nearly cost Summers his job, before he backed down and made amends with those howling for his blood. Anyway, Simon Baron-Cohen takes this up again in the NY Times. He is an evolutionary psychologist.

So was Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, right when he remarked that women were innately less suited than men to be top-level scientists? Judging from current research, he was and he wasn't. It's true that scientists have documented psychological and physiological differences between male and female brains. But Mr. Summers was wrong to imply that these differences render any individual woman less capable than any individual man of becoming a top-level scientist.

A complete misrepresentation of what Summers said. He never implied anything that resembled the opinion that the innate differences rendered any particular woman less able than any given man and Baron-Cohen must know it. Why did he even bring it up in an article about autism?

The rest of the article is acknowledging the well known differences in brain structure between males and females to build an idea on the causes of autism.

So what was the point of using the Summers case? There was none, it is totally unrelated to the topic of autism. It was purely political assassination of a man who spoke about well known ideas backed by well known brain studies but was gunned down by the establishment because they were politically inconvenient.

Now if I was of a mind to write an article I could start talking about a "sinister left-wing political agenda" or the millenialism of the PC movement, but I won't. Just pointing out that the sort of things that work up various commentators about education is not restricted to debates on intelligent design.
[+/-] Show/hide the rest of this post

Cole-ture shock

2005-08-16T19:34:00.001+02:00

Our old friend Juan Cole gets a tongue lashing for getting the final word in on a debate... after the opponent has died. That'd Steven Vincent, who was killed in Iraq.

Cole presented his piece here.

Martin Kramer takes exception.

In other words, Vincent got himself killed, out of ignorance. Implication: his journalism should be dismissed.

It's certainly refreshing to see Cole slip into the style of Raphael Patai, going on about honor and shame and all that. Pentagon, take note: it's all true. (But you knew that.)

What reeks of bad taste is Cole's superior dismissal of Vincent, as if his death somehow proves his ignorance. Point of fact: you can know everything "serious" about Middle Eastern culture and never criticize it even in the mildest way, and still get yourself killed by fanatics.

Examples? Take Malcolm Kerr, a former president of MESA who left UCLA to run the American University of Beirut at the worst possible time, and got himself killed by gunmen on campus. Take Michel Seurat, French sociologist of Islam, who stayed in Beirut at the worst possible time, got himself kidnapped by Islamic Jihad (Hezbollah's kind), got himself mistreated by his captors, and got himself dead by falling seriously ill in his dungeon. (His body still hasn't been recovered.) These two Western scholars were born in the Arab world (Kerr in Lebanon, Seurat in Tunisia), spoke fluent Arabic, spent decades in the region, knew all about the dangers--and still they died. Should we conclude they were "acting in an extremely dangerous manner"? Or does sole responsibility for their deaths lie with their killers and torturers? And if it does, why should Vincent be an exception?

Here is the bit where Vincent takes Cole to task, prior to his death,

You might want to review your own site and how well it reflects love and concern for the Iraqi people. After all, on "Informed Comment," pro-liberation Iraqi bloggers are accused of being CIA agents, the elections are practically dismissed as window-dressing and every terrorist--no, I mean guerrilla, as Cole would have it--attack is given marquis billing, as if their psychopathic bloodlust discredits the liberation of 26 million people. Whoops, I mean 23.5 million--because according to Cole's Wednesday post, 2.5 million Iraqis support the "resistance."

Well, I thank Cole for revealing his gut-level concern for the Iraqi people... My question to the Professor is, which Iraqi people--the fascist thugs he calls the "resistance," or the police, National Guardsmen, politicians, everyday people and eight million voters who comprise the true Iraqi "resistance"? We await his Informed Comment.

It is also an entirely different view of him than some selected quotes from him given elsewhere, particularly amusing from those fond of also quoting Cole. Course it helps to read a bit further afield than the Guardian and Scoop "Guardian-lite" News. Anyway, back to Kramer:

Cole didn't respond then. But now that Vincent is dead, Cole has seized the last word in the argument. Vincent shamed him, but now he has his honor back. He's taken his revenge. These sentiments and this sort of behavior tend to be rural and to hold among the uneducated, but are not unknown among full professors.

I will give Cole this: he does have cultural knowledge--enough to keep away from Iraq, which he's never visited. Nothing he's written has endeared him to any Iraqi faction outside the insurgency--quite the opposite. He'd have no protectors. And as someone who spent years in the Middle East as a Bahai missionary, his life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel if he fell into the wrong hands in Shiite country. Were Cole to surface in Iraq, he'd be "acting in an extremely dangerous manner." So far, he hasn't.

But as it happens, Cole will be headed for Beirut in December, on the tab of Saudi billionnaire Prince Alwaleed, to whip up support for his Americana Translation Project. (Is it a coincidence that Cole has just written a fawning puff piece at Salon.com, praising the new King Abdullah--who "has the smile and goatee of a genial beatnik"--and defending the kingdom against all comers, from Michael Moore to the neocons? Who knows? The Saudis have a long history of suborning the Middle East studies establishment.) And once in Beirut, Cole could pop over to Baghdad...

Winning an argument with a dead man, really difficult.

So is Cole a Saudi pawn in the pay of the bigboys there? Maybe he shares a room with the Bush family when they are all over there plotting to hike the price of oil.

Shopping malls, bastions of democracy

2005-08-16T19:34:00.000+02:00

More stupid ideas from Keith.

Westfield won't let enrolment stalls in their malls unless they pay a fee. Apparently this is highly undemocratic.

"The footpaths outside street shops are public space and can be freely used for petitioning, stalls, busking, even political protesting. Perhaps we need new by-laws to require such commercially-operated, and often foreign-owned, malls to open up to free community activities, including enrolling voters."

Here's an idea... set up a stall outside the mall you cheapskate. How is it going to help the democratic process by imposing laws on businesses that they must allow "free community activities"? I know that in the green tinged world property rights and everything derived thereof have nothing to do with democracy or freedom, but really... if it is so exceedingly important that these nasty "foreign owned" malls must have enrolment stalls then why not use your dopey soft-drink tax to pay the going rate to the mall? You're mad keen on wasting money on everything else, why not this? Lots of Maori and Pacific Islanders go to church, are you going to force things in there too? Or on the local marae, even if they don't want it?

Please do not feed

2005-08-16T19:33:00.000+02:00

Whose been poking sticks through the bars at PA today then?

Tibby the one-eyed cat:

So despite all the protestations of our resident pyjamahadeen over there in RWDB-O-Plenty (you people really need to get out of the house, and stop posting photos of women you'll never actually sleep with),

Which if you follow his pajamahadeen link you can read As Andrew Sullivan noted in response to Klein's remarks: "Actually, I'm in sweatpants and a tanktop. But of course, it doesn't matter a jot what a fact-checker is wearing as long as his facts are correct. CBS's apparently aren't." Substitute PA for CBS and there you go.

Can someone point me to the RWDBOPlenty web site? I have some pictures to post...

Then the redoubtable one-eye Brown going into uncharacteristic granny mode,

Finally, one of the more curious characteristics of the local right-wing blogosphere is the frequency with which its denizens need to keep assuring everyone they're getting some, oh yes they are. In which spirit, this story from Insolent Prick, which DPF thinks it is "outrageous" (presumably in a good way). I think it's sort of embarrassing, even as humour, as which it is presumably intended.

Naughty DPF, you should go engagingly ballistic or have a rhetorical flourish when you are commending the uncommendable, otherwise you are merely exhibiting your

Small. Penis.

Shopping malls, bastions of democracy

2005-08-10T09:39:00.002+02:00

More stupid ideas from Keith.

Westfield won't let enrolment stalls in their malls unless they pay a fee. Apparently this is highly undemocratic.

"The footpaths outside street shops are public space and can be freely used for petitioning, stalls, busking, even political protesting. Perhaps we need new by-laws to require such commercially-operated, and often foreign-owned, malls to open up to free community activities, including enrolling voters."

Please do not feed

2005-08-10T09:39:00.001+02:00

Whose been poking sticks through the bars at PA today then?

Tibby the one-eyed cat:

So despite all the protestations of our resident pyjamahadeen over there in RWDB-O-Plenty (you people really need to get out of the house, and stop posting photos of women you'll never actually sleep with),

Finally, one of the more curious characteristics of the local right-wing blogosphere is the frequency with which its denizens need to keep assuring everyone they're getting some, oh yes they are. In which spirit, this story from Insolent Prick, which DPF thinks it is "outrageous" (presumably in a good way). I think it's sort of embarrassing, even as humour, as which it is presumably intended.

Naughty DPF, you should go engagingly ballistic or have a rhetorical flourish when you are commending the uncommendable, otherwise you are merely exhibiting your

Small. Penis.

Tally me bananas

2005-08-10T09:39:00.000+02:00

Harry Belafonte is seemingly lost in la-la-land.

As Cybercast News Service reported, Belafonte over the weekend used a Hitler analogy when asked what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration's relations with minorities.

"Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value," Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service.

Of course colour does not necessarily denote moonbat status either. Sucks to be a conservative black in America, you can never escape your little pigeonholed group. Ironic that this particular group is "supposed" to vote for the party that most resisted their emancipation and civil rights.

One question though... why on Earth is anyone asking Harry Belafonte about politics? No one ever asks me about early Zulu artworks and the answers would be about as meaningful. Oh maybe perhaps because he is chums with Castro and sings the praises of Stalinist groups. Another funny thing that, a black man celebrating Castro, a white man who has had murdered more black men than any Republican or Democrat ever could.

That's incorrect, said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which describes itself as a research and education institute focusing on America's response to the Holocaust.

"Some entertainers simply don't know much about history," said Medoff. "The fact is that there were no Jews in Hitler's hierarchy; the policies of America and Israel are not similar to those of Hitler; and African-American conservatives are not comparable to Nazis."

"Some entertainers simply don't know much about history", possibly the understatement of the month.

Harry is not the only one who is a few bananas short of a boatload,

Earlier this summer, comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen told the German magazine Der Spiegel: "The history of the world is like, he kills me, I kill him -- only with different cosmetics and different castings: so in 2001 some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other."

Potato, potatoe. Tomato, tomatoe...

"Such analogies pollute public discourse by trivializing the brutal horrors committed by the Nazis," Medoff said.

"Hitler was a maniacal dictator whose regime systematically annihilated six million Jews, and launched a world war that caused the deaths of more than forty million people. How can any reasonable person put Hitler and the Nazis in the same sentence as American or Israeli leaders, or black conservatives?"

I guess Mr Medoff didn't get the group-memo saying that Jews in America are supposed to vote Democrat as well.

Bad science

2005-08-10T09:38:00.002+02:00

Russell is out after the creationists now, well, Bush "advocating" intelligent design teaching in schools. He covers it in a concern for science or truth or whatever, but fails pretty weakly.

Salon has an interesting interview with philosopher Michael Ruse "an ardent evolutionist who thinks creationism is claptrap," but accuses atheistic scientists like Richard Dawkins "of being as religious as born-again Bible thumpers." I think he has a point: Dawkins et al sometimes seem keener on trying to disprove God than they are on pursuing science.

Being a scientist is no guarantee against irrational behaviour. Atheistic scientists are just that, atheist, true. But it doesn't stop a fraction of them searching for a psychological replacement for whatever personal reason. Likewise some are militant atheists, more concerned with whacking believers. In that respect they are behaving in a similar manner to the creationist wingnuts.

But having begun with a comparatively rational statement, Russell does his usual trick. Find a convenient quote from some "authority" that halfway through makes a switch to an unrelated but seemingly connected point.

He thinks that creationists, both of the old-fashioned "young earth" variety and the newfangled intelligent-design model -- which President Bush said earlier this week should be taught in schools -- are spewing dangerous claptrap and are in league, consciously or not, with a sinister right-wing political agenda.

It's a two-level answer. I think creationism is dangerous because I don't think you should teach young people bad ideas. I'm a post-Enlightenment person. Inasmuch as I see creationism as a litmus test, I don't think creationism as such is dangerous. I think premillennialism is dangerous, because this inclines you to simplistic and dangerous positions. You hear echoes of this when George Bush talks about the "evildoers." I think the decision to go to war in Iraq was bound up with many different issues; Cheney just did it for the oil. But I do see it as allied to premillennial thinking, and that's even before you get to the Israel issue. Why are evangelical Christians so gung-ho in favor of Israel? Well, it's not because they like Jews. It's because of their eschatological reading of the Book of Revelation. I do think these things are very dangerous.

See the switch? Creationism isn't dangerous, but Bush believes in it (apparently). Premillenialism is dangerous, many Christians are millenialist and now we get to introduce the Jews and Iraq for free! What does Israel have to do with intelligent design? Sweet FA that's what. By this argument, if Bush believed completely in neo-Darwinism we would see that that too was dangerous because of premillenialist beliefs about Israel. The whole argument is invalid, of course Russell wouldn't want to point that out since it meshes so nicely with his "humanist" posturings.

But the guy really blew his cover with "sinister right-wing political agenda". For heaven's sake, there are plenty of right wing scientists who have no time for intelligent design. On one hand there are plenty of excellent scientists who are creationists, I had a supervisor who was a physics professor who was a "flood literalist" but was quite happy doing good work in cosmology and particle physics. On the other hand, I've known a number of scientists who were atheists and were about as useful wet paper bag.

But it gets worse, here he starts blithering about some "star" in string theory. The idea of a star in science is rather repulsive to most scientists, since it starts to reek of argument from authority which is exactly what we need to avoid. Anyway, note the star is Buddhist-Presbyterian.

String theory star Michio Kaku, profiled in the new Australian science mag Cosmos (whose editor Wilson da Silva I'm interviewing at 12.30 tomorrow on 95bFM), takes a similar view of fundamentalism, but has a surprisingly spiritual perspective on his work. He had Buddhist parents but was raised a Presbyterian and likes string theory as a marriage of the two:

With the following quote

"In Christianity, there is an instant of creation; while in Buddhism there is Nirvana, which is timeless. I am pleased that modern cosmology provides a beautiful melding of these two otherwise mutually contradictory ideas: that a continual genesis is taking place in a hyper-dimensional timeless Nirvana."

So what do we have? Yet another scientist who desperately seeks to find religious happiness in science. This is exactly where intelligent design comes from. The science has no knowledge of religions and likewise it is highly unlikely (about as likely than intelligent design is correct I'd say) that these two particular religions are in anyway inspired by the true workings of nature. What is this guy going to do if string theory turns out to be useful but ultimately incorrect? Every age of science goes through it, just look at Newton and what his mechanical view of the universe inspired. It was wrong, useful in many instances but as an inspiration to theology? Pretty useless.

Being a scientist, atheist, humanist, whatever, is no guarantee of being rational. Finding mystical inspiration in physics is highly irrational and bound to end in tears.

Finally

Meanwhile, a physicist-stand-up-comedian-screenwriter-blogger goes engagingly ballistic about President Bush's apparent endorsement of teaching "intelligent design" in American classrooms and the Vatican astronomer fires back at Cardinal Shonborn's attempt to drag the church back into the 18th century. Good.

As far as I can tell, Bush's endorsement goes as far as devolving it to a state choice while saying in a roundabout way that he likes intelligent design. So? Some pissy little physicist gets all knicker twisted about the politics of education. But the guy went "engagingly" ballistic, just like when Russell was praising George Galloway, of all people, for getting the better of a Republican senator. What is substance when you have style?

Intelligent design is a load of crap, in my opinion. But if schools are going to teach crap history, crap maths, crap literature and can't even teach basic literacy then what is a bit of bad science? Nothing, except for Russell of course as a convenient thing to whine about Bush/Republicans a bit more while in the USA it is yet another constitutional battle ground.

Here's a novel idea. Do away with state schools, let people send their kids to whichever school they like, some can even teach intelligent design. Those that turn out usefully educated people will thrive while those that don't won't. For free you get rid of bias from national government, so the President could worship the cockroach in the kitchen who personally birthed the universe and it wouldn't matter. Oh, but then you wouldn't get to teach all that rubbish history, literature, philosophy,... it isn't really about a love of science after all is it?

Rawling on the river

2005-08-10T09:38:00.001+02:00

Che Tibby is off on another tangent about minority groups, or at least the ones he is "worried" about. Another prime example of taking a concept too far out of its intended area of application.

Anyway, catharsis over, and what Sandel had to say was pretty interesting. In a nutshell, he built upon the thought of this other smart-guy, John Rawls, and talked about the issue of knowing too much. Not too much in general, but too much about risk.

So, originally this post was going to talk details about what Sandel had to say, but I can boil it all down to the simple statement that the future does not lie in organising life around the individual to the exclusion of collective, public ventures.

No, really? I can boil this down to setting up the false dichotomy of politics being the "thoughtful, caring about the collective" left and the "libertarian to the point of anarchy" right.

What he lectured on was the danger that private health care (for example) will become too risky for private companies because of advances in genetic identification of probable hereditary diseases.

Of course the way is not clear on that issue, it does however ignore the great benefits gained in knowing predispositions to diseases, the concurrent advances in treatments etc etc. But abuse of information is always a problem, but it is not necessarily insurmountable.

This issue is potentially huge, and if you extend it out to the question of making our society cohesive, then it becomes incredibly tricky. What happens if in another scenario, people simply aren't interested in paying taxes to support another group that has a history of poor health?

Quite apart from the issue of how do you make society cohesive, in this instance why does the group have poor health? Is the group defined by the poor health, possibly because of personal choices, or is it a, for example, racial group with inherited tendencies to a disease? It makes a lot of difference.

This isn't so far fetched, half the time the right refuses to pay money to beneficiaries because they see it as funding dole-bludging minorities.

Oh lordy, can he not help himself? You could take his entire question about the treatment of groups, expounded on further on, and apply it right here to his attitude to "the right". I somehow suspect that the attitudes of "the right" are axiomatic in his mind so some strawman argument is all that is required to use this as a proof for his previous dodgy example.

The question I tried (unsuccessfully) to bring to the discussion concerned religious minorities. What happens if a minority is considered too risky to have in or near our society? Rawls' idea is that you design your political system so that it remains ignorant of specific content like religion or race, and just provides equally and justly to all.

That would seem to be the ideal case, but I would have thought it argued towards smaller government with less power. It seems that the larger the government the more entangled it gets in issues of religion, race, group identity, etc etc.

However, what do you do when you have a group, religious or otherwise, who has a stated intent of destroying the society you so value? When that group has no interest in your Rawlsian ideal and couldn't give two stuffs about equality and justice, however it is delivered? Can you really afford to ignore them and treat all equally? It would be like having cancer but refusing to go to the doctor for fear of the diagnosis.

Curiously, Rawls also argued against the same principles being applied internationally. Here he favoured limited assistance only but argued countries with sound economic policies had no duty to aid those that did not. I wonder if Tibbs is so keen on that idea from his smart guy.

But what happens if this neutrality is undermined by a popular predisposition to distaining groups in our society?

It depends on the cause of the disdain rather, doesn't it? Ghetto living Jews causing every woe of European history. Or organised crime families in New York. Or Islamist revolutionaries in Britain. What is the difference?

After all, people are starting to really hate Islam.

A rather contentious claim, with no real backing.

Does this mean that in time that entire Muslim communities will be marginalized and excluded in places like Britain?

It would seem to depend on how the faction dedicated to destroying Britain are handled, would it not?

Will they be forced to entirely shut down their contribution to public debate, say in opposing things like the levelling of Falluja?

Nope. But they should also be forward in their opinions on, say, blowing up subways, the murder of Israeli schoolchildren, the murder of Iraqi children, the murder of Russian children, etc so that everyone knows where they stand for better or worse.

It's a worry.

Only when you are using those minorities you are so terribly worried about to push your own agenda.

Battle of the Blog

2005-08-10T09:38:00.000+02:00

The Green election blog is heralding the marshalling of the "progressive blogs" and gearing up for a counterattack...

It’s often been said that, globally, blogging is dominated by right-wingers.

Actually what it means is that blogging is suited to those of a more independent and sceptical nature, who are automatically labelled rightwing regardless of who they may actually vote for.

Well, if progressive forces in New Zealand politics were slow to pick up the art (and I’m not sure that they were), then the right/left battle is certainly a lot more even-handed than it was a year ago. Joining the seasoned Russell Brown, Jordan Carter and No Right Turn on the, er, correct side of the ideological divide have been frogblog and, now, KeepLeftNZ. The blog battle is now a much fairer fight.

Russell can't remember if he is in NZ or the USA, the Republican party of NZ must be quaking in its boots. Jordan is what, a semi-official party mouthpiece and No Right Turn seems to be the local Fisk appreciation society. KeepLeftNZ should really be called simply WeHateDonBrashNZ because that seems to be all that they are interested in. In common they all have a strange obsession with Iraq and Bush which, really, has little bearing on the NZ elections.

Interesting that they say "the blog battle is now a much fairer fight". It seems to suggest that the Greens feel there is a fight and that "they" were losing. If KeepLeftNZ is the best that they can come up with to aid the fight then the "progressive blogs" seem well on the way to having as much impact as they did in the US, somewhere between none to counterproductive, where the demented ranters on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground were the leading lights of the cause.

Update:

On a related note, how long before someone does this for NZ blogs? (Or has it already been done?)

MOONBAT BLOG TAXONOMY
Conservative Blog Taxonomy

Update 2:

Oh I missed this at No Right Turn

If you're reading this from Australia, you might want to check out GetUp!. It's an internet-based, grassroots progressive movement, essentially an Australian version of MoveOn.org. As with MoveOn, the basic idea is to campaign and mobilise grassroots support on key issues. Their first campaign is to remind federal senators that while the Coalition now has a majority in the Senate, they are still answerable to the electorate, and will be held accountable for the legislation they pass. More will no doubt follow.

Getting visibility and building membership is important, so if you have lefty friends in Australia, please drop them the link.

It would be nice to see something like this here, but I suspect one of the preconditions is having a right-wing government. And I don't really think that's worth it...

They want to fight a battle using blogs, yet here is a luminary of the left advocating using a model that was an abject failure. Throw millions of dollars at getting out the vote, sure, just make sure you get them to vote for your party, twits. There probably aren't millionaires daft enough in NZ to throw away enough money on this sort of scheme anyway. I know the fool goes by the name Idiot/Savant, but I have yet to see any of the savant part yet. Maybe he's good at adding up or something.

NY Times strikes again

2005-08-10T09:37:00.001+02:00

Gobsmacked. The NY Times runs an article titled Where Are the War Heroes?

Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II.

Bwa ha. Bwa ha ha ha! Not "we refused to commend any heroic actions because that might have helped W and defeating W was far more important than any stinking murdering hero".

The change began, historians said, with the murky stalemate of the Korean War, which did not require as much mobilization or support as previous wars. Vietnam cemented the shift. While the swashbuckling Green Berets were lionized in the war's early years, by 1968 the public became skeptical of military planners who perpetually predicted a victory that never came.

Or, in the real world, the change began when an active fifth column funded and directed by Moscow manipulated the western media. Victory that never came? Tet offensive anyone?

"What happened very quickly was a move away from the bravery of the kids fighting," David Halberstam, the author and former war correspondent, said in an interview. The question that ran through everyone's mind was, Can this war be won?

Yeah, because WW2 was a foregone conclusion. I mean, losing the heart of the Pacific fleet was a mere flesh wound. Dunkirk, Singapore, Malaysia? Bah, I fart in your general direction.

"We had absolute military superiority but they had absolute political supremacy," Mr. Halberstam said. "That led to a stalemate - and that became the governing issue."

Victories that never came, yet absolute military superiority? Come on, you can't really have it both ways. And what was this political supremacy? John Kerry running to "peace talks" as an illegal representative of his country? Jane Fonda swanning round Hanoi? You mean that a war that should have been won was defeated by the actions of those actively working against their own country perhaps?

Ah, the bald faced cheek of it all. Anyway, read it for a sorry laugh.

Men, an insecure lot

2005-08-10T09:37:00.000+02:00

How on earth can anyone seriously write this sort of stuff??

Brickell said masculinity was always in crisis. Women's suffrage made men anxious, as did the fortitude and resourcefulness of women during the world wars, gay liberation, the second wave of feminism and black power.

Basically, everything that can possibly happen makes men "anxious". Oh wait...

Similarly, Otago University sociologist and gender studies lecturer Dr Chris Brickell had little time for the British research.

Reminds me why I left the university system and I did science so got off pretty easy.

I remember going to a lecture in feminist studies with my (now) wife, to see what it was like. They showed a film about the insecurities of men, something about a little mouse of a man dominated by some woman or another if I remember. We both crept out after 10 minutes. Why was my wife doing the course? Only one that fitted the timetable. It was one of those ironic courses you think only exists in a comedy sketch, the guys would deliberately write an all out assault essay on anything "male" and get A+ while the less political women would get C for considering the opposite "side" of the topic.

Small town irony

2005-08-10T09:36:00.001+02:00

I went for a drive today to a town nearby, Alingsås, down the main road towards Stockholm. It's a nice little cafe town, full of arty stuff and parks and things. Alingsås is known for a few things, chiefly it seems to be the place that the potato took hold in Sweden. So much so that they have a potato festival every year, which I guess I will have to see sometime.

Another thing it is known for is that Herman Goering convalesced in hospital there after the First World War.

As we were driving round we drove past the local offices of the Social Democrats, the Center Party and the Left Party. The Left Party had a single poster on their front door, "Boycott Israel".

Funny how somethings don't change.

Art and Empowerment

2005-08-10T09:36:00.000+02:00

If I ever move to the USA, California is one state I am not living in...

The Art of Protesting: Kids take creative approach to activism at camp in Ben Lomond

While most summer camps get kids out of the house and give parents a break, a group called Art in Action is nurturing the next Michael Moore — the controversial filmmaker who created "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Art in Action’s "art and empowerment" camp is being held at the Quaker Center nestled in the redwoods of Ben Lomond. Campers at the 10-day retreat attend workshops on cultural activism, nonviolent action and alternative media.

Oh good grief. Did someone pick up a rejected Dharma and Greg script and run it as news?

"The reality is that the media is not actually showing what’s really going on in Iraq," said Jouse Bustos, 19, of central Los Angeles. "By doing this mural, I’m showing what’s going on.

And pray tell, Mr Bustos, when you were in Iraq last?

Bustos is one of 25 young people attending the camp. For 10 days, they learn to say "no" to military recruiting, racism and war, and "yes" to eco-justice, community and love.

Campers spend their time making banners, writing poetry and choreographing dances that represent a vision of "positive alternatives to the madness of war and oppression."

The hours spent building giant puppets and talking about how to influence the rest of the world culminate with a performance for the community Thursday night at The Attic on Pacific Avenue.

"Art is the best way to communicate social messages," said camp founder Alli Chalabi-Starr, who grew up in Santa Cruz but now lives in San Francisco. "We want to inspire young people to get involved."

Chalabi-Starr, 37, gave up a career as a modern dancer to start Art in Action five years ago.

Each year she invites people ages 17-25 — mostly from low-income families — from cities across the country to attend the camp, which has been held in Nevada City and Half Moon Bay.

"Queer, working class and youth of color are strongly encouraged to apply," an Art in Action postcard states.

The cost of camp, up to $750 a person for meals, lodging and workshops, is mostly covered by donations, Chalabi-Starr said.

In the middle of an uncomfortably warm afternoon, campers — trying to dodge the sun and grab a spot under a towering tree canopy — are absorbed in various activities.

Some glue together pieces of newspaper that will become the giant puppet unveiled Thursday night — the divided face of a Muslim woman and woman of color from the United States.

Stamped across the face will be an American flag, said camp co-founder Maryam Roberts of San Francisco.

The face "represents silence forced upon both women by their governments," Roberts said. "There is a feeling of silence."

Pamela Chavez, a student at UC Santa Cruz, said the conversations at camp have helped her express the frustration from growing up as a Costa Rican migrant who moved at least 14 times with her family before settling in Hayward.

"It’s really cool," Chavez, 21, said. "More than anything I’ve learned a lot from the other youth here about solidarity and the struggles everyone has gone through."

Struggles with reality, struggles in which reality has had six kinds of crap kicked out of it before lunch time by the look of it.

Juan Cole redux

2005-08-05T13:22:00.002+02:00

I see the great Brown has trotted out the Juan Cole load of cobblers which has been pinging round the traps for a while now...

Juan Cole's Fisking the War on Terror is one to cut out and keep. Bring it out when somebody asks you where terrorists come from.

Funnily enough, the article doesn't show any pictures of terrorists' mothers.

He seems to have "missed" these, among others, somehow:

Fisking Juan Cole: A Photo Gallery
Responding to the Obvious
Making Cole-slaw of history

Mind you, he does seem to like the intellect-lite style of the great JC, whom he references quite a lot.

Oh and do you reckon he'll be saying something like this when Condi is elected VP in 2008?

And here's the Wiki on Canada's new Governor General, Michaëlle Jean. Journalist. Immigrant. Black. Intellectual. Total babe.

Yoga, it pisses you off

2005-08-05T13:22:00.001+02:00

News from the slightly odd side...

Yoga classes 'provoke' prisoners

A prison in Norway has stopped holding yoga classes after it found that instead of calming inmates, they were actually making some more aggressive.
High-security Ringerike jail near Oslo offered the classes to eight inmates on a trial basis earlier this year.

Prison warden Sigbjoern Hagen said some of the inmates became more irritable and agitated and had trouble sleeping.

He said the prison did not have the resources to treat emotions unleashed by the deep breathing exercises.

The yoga group expressed surprise at the prison's findings.

It said the project had been tested successfully on some 100,000 prisoners in around 15 countries, the AFP news agency reported.

"The reactions we received from the prisoners who participated in the classes were very varied, ranging from completely positive to completely negative," Mr Hagen reportedly wrote in a letter to the group.

On the negative side, the yoga had provoked "strong reactions: agitation, aggression, irritability, trouble sleeping and mental confusion", he said.

The deep breathing exercises are an essential element of Yoga, which originated in India more than 5,000 years ago and aims to harmonise mind, body and spirit.

But such exercises could make inmates more dangerous by unblocking their psychological barriers, Mr Hagen was quoted as saying.

I dunno. Isn't it just possible that people in high security prisons are, on the average, quite likely to be somewhat different in their reactions? Sure some of them will be products of society, but quite a few of them will be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. How do you harmonise mind, body and spirit in someone with psychopathic tendencies?

Swedish socialism in the rearview mirror

2005-08-05T13:22:00.000+02:00

John Ray has an interesting piece on the development of Swedish politics over the 20th century.

Sweden: Fascism in slow motion

Has not Sweden been the great icon of the Democratic Left in the postwar period? It has indeed, though these days conservatives have better reasons for mentioning the Swedish experience than Leftists do. Nonetheless, little-recognized though it might be, there are substantial reasons for seeing interwar Sweden as Fascist. Like all Fascisms, however, Swedish Fascism had its own unique national characteristics and its most unusual characteristic was how slowly it developed, with much of its development taking place AFTER WW2 rather than before.

As you can guess, it'll probably have admirers of the idea of great socialist welfare states apoplectic. But it is worth a read to see the various paths socialism takes.

Oooh oooh the winds of change.

2005-08-04T09:24:00.000+02:00

The socialist block continues to lose ground in Sweden. The latest polls have the liberal party alliance stretching their lead by 10 points over the ruling socialist block. Still a year out to the election but at least it's going in the right direction.

Trucks and trains

2005-08-04T09:23:00.000+02:00

The Greens (NZ) want to encourage people off the roads and on to trains.

Yet they are also recommending people buy extremely fuel efficient cars.

Call me crazy, but if I suddenly get much better fuel efficiency, why bother with the train? I'd recommend people buy trucks, big heavy ones. Then they would take the train to work. Imagine trying to park a truck in the city, let alone filling it every couple of days.

The Daily Bork and Sir Humphrey's

2005-08-03T20:19:00.000+02:00

I've decided to crosspost my articles from Sir Humphrey's to The Daily Bork as well, since I don't want this site to die away completely and many people may not necessarily be interested going over to SH for the NZ slant.

Lies, damned lies and statistics

2005-08-03T20:18:00.000+02:00

There is a survey out from Public Agenda in the US with a general survey of American feelings about a range of stuff. It's reported today in Sweden and NZ, both carrying essentially the same information from Reuters. Of course out of the large range of questions and stats they cherry-pick a few, such as

Sixty three per cent of Americans say the charge that the US has been too quick to go to war is justified

It seems like an awful lot, so if you go to Public Agenda and read the survey results you see the question was

"The US has been too quick to resort to war". Is the accusation justified?

Answers:

35% Totally justified
27% Partially justified
37% Not justified at all
01% Don't know

So, on the basis of the statements in the papers you could also equivalently say with equal legitimacy:

Sixty four per cent of Americans say the charge that the US has been too quick to go to war is only partially justified at best.

or

More than a third of Americans think there is no justification to the charge that the US has been too quick to go to war while nearly another third think the charge is weak.

Looking at the numbers, opinion seems to be evenly spread over the entire spectrum. Roughly matching electoral opinions perhaps?

In other words, there is no apparent sentiment one way or the other about "going to war too quickly".

To be fair on Reuters, they are using the conclusions expressed in the Public Agenda report but it does seem to be a rather lazy way of concluding opinions on the part of Public Agenda.

It doesn't take long to reach the stage of ignoring any survey reports in the press.

I really can't think of a title for this one.

2005-08-03T20:17:00.000+02:00

A representative of the youth wing of the ruling Social Democrats (SSU) in Sweden has come out with a motion to impose price cuts on "feminine products"...

Åsa Hammarström, SSU representative has proposed a motion for cheaper menstrual protection for women.

"Yes, that's right, there are a number of us behind the motion."

Why is it an important question?

"Because menstruation is not something that we women have chosen to have. And so it shouldn't cost so much each month. Today it costs up to 75 kronor every month."

What should it cost?

"It shouldn't be totally free, but 20 kronor maybe or something like that."

Most men shave, should they have cheaper razors?

"That isn't something we are taking up now. But they need no shave, most do it to be more attractive. But who knows, it will maybe be proposed sometime as well."

You see this from time to time in all sorts of places. It is of course a load of crap, at least the way she has argued it.

Women have not chosen to menstruate, granted. How that logically leads to a product being arbitrarily priced is a bit more difficult to ascertain. After all, she does not propose it being free... but why not? How does one arrive at an arbitrary cost of 20 kronor and not at free?

The fact that men do not menstruate is a complete red herring. Her rationale for the price cut is that there is no choice in menstruating. Assuming that to be so, the entire population has no choice in the need to eat either, so why does she not call for the cutting of all food costs by, say, 50%? It would certainly benefit a lot of people, at least that is until food production crashed.

Now we can see that there would be a problem if there was price fixing going on, with a cartel of tampon makers jacking up the costs. But that isn't the case here, normal marketing and competition seems to be keeping the price at a reasonable level.

It's also not as if there aren't cheaper alternatives. What happened before you could by tampons and liners? Not exactly convenient I guess, but still, there are options. Don't even get me started on toilet paper!

The only semi-reasonable proposition is that it is an unavoidable cost with no benefit. However, that is also plainly untrue. Women have no choice in menstruating and men don't at all, but women get the benefit of being able to bear children whereas men never can. The Swedish government even goes so far as providing assistance in fertility treatments. Of course if you don't count child bearing as some sort of benefit you could always go out and get a hysterectomy to solve the problem (note, I'm not being entirely serious now). Otherwise I guess you could make the concession that if you get to menopause without bearing children you can get a rebate or something extra in your pension to cover the cost since you didn't benefit from the kids.

(You could also say that in a sense, humans have "chosen" to menstruate since if they didn't none of us would be here talking about the price of fish. So really, we can blame all those ancestors who didn't break the mold when they had the chance.)

Projection or just foolish?

2005-08-03T20:15:00.000+02:00

Jim Traue answers a couple of "Russell asked mes" about some book or another. Somehow he gets sidetracked into beggars and enemies of the people...

I was in my fifties before I saw my first beggar on the streets of New Zealand. The other members of the panel have a different experience, you are young enough to have grown up with beggars around you. I had seen beggars in the great American cities, Washington, New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, when I lived there in the mid-sixties, and in London in my few days there. Whenever I saw one I said to myself, thank God I am a New Zealander, we have managed to solve that problem once and for all. That first experience of a beggar in New Zealand was like being kicked in the stomach. First the involuntary tears, then the desire to hit back at those responsible. It was then that I started developing my ideas on the reintroduction of hanging, drawing and quartering for political crimes against the people.

Uh huh. Coming across a beggar in the street and he wants to kill people, nice. Anyway, I've lived in NZ nearly all my life, apart from the last few months and have never been begged from or seen anyone I'd have marked as a beggar. In Sweden I get begged from nearly every week. In America I've never been begged from. In Australia at least a couple of times. What does that tell you? Because it doesn't tell me much. Certainly doesn't inspire a death lust.

Not three paragraphs later he says this

Always in the back of my mind is the example of what has happened in the recent past when people in the mainstream of another country, a nation recently formed from a group of principalities previously divided by religious wars, and believing they had at last found their destiny, were destabilised and unable to maintain their balance in their own country. They turned to a strong man, no great believer in rational argument, and the solution was nasty and Nazi.

Quite clearly the man does not see the glaring connection of what he writes here and his "developing ideas" to kill enemies of the people. He doesn't see that what he had rabbited on about previously is precisely what he sees in the rise of the Nazis, to wit:

First, the welfare/equality consensus that began with the Liberals in 1890, was strengthened by the first Labour Government in the 1930s, and accepted by the National Party when it came to power in 1949, has been shattered. Sinclair, writing in 1963, was clearly convinced that the equality/social welfare consensus was permanent and that it was the secure basis on which a civilization could be built by focussing on quality, what we had been neglecting, in the future. That consensus was overthrown by Rogernomics and Ruthanomics in the 1980s and 1990s.

He is his own enemy, what a fool.

[Also posted at Sir Humphrey's]

Sir Humphrey's posts

2005-07-23T20:21:00.000+02:00

My latest posts at Sir Humphrey's.

Rule 1. Don't run from armed men the day after terrorist attacks

So according to the British police the guy they shot after trailing wasn't a terrorist. He just ran away from them after approaching a tube station.

Well, tragic as it is, what do people expect the police to do? Within two weeks you have multiple bomb blasts killing dozens of people with no reason to expect a let up. Of course giving shoot to kill orders in a civil society are a bad thing and I don't really expect the police like it much either. But imagine being the bobby who hesitated and watches a bus disappear.

Social Democrats on the down and out

Socialism, it just isn't winning anywhere at the moment, not even in Sweden. The parallels with NZ are quite remarkable sometimes (Helen is even reputed to speak Swedish, or so I have heard). Sweden's election is still a year away, but at least things are looking rosey.

It's OK if the extremists are killing people somewhere else

Hmmmm. Got those fingers really tightly crossed?

Many believe that the cells in Sweden have a more logisitic function, gathering money and organising travel, says Jervas.

Oh that's OK then. They are just sending people out to kill someone else. WE on the other hand are fine, so long as we don't piss them off. How can anyone say that with a straight face? How about rounding them up and deporting them... oh except some fool gave them citizenship I bet.

We told you so

Sorry to reference the Guardian, but this is quite interesting. There are apologists amongst us.

It needs to be seen and said clearly: there are, among us, apologists for what the killers do. They make more difficult the fight to defeat them. The plea will be - it always is - that these are not apologists, they are merely honest Joes and Joanies endeavouring to understand the world in which we live. What could be wrong with that? What indeed? Nothing is wrong with genuine efforts at understanding; on these we all depend. But the genuine article is one thing, and root-causes advocacy seeking to dissipate responsibility for atrocity, mass murder, crime against humanity, especially in the immediate aftermath of their occurrence, is something else.

Four more bombs, but it's OK because I'm in Sweden

2005-07-21T20:21:00.000+02:00

My first SH post is up. Why would you feel safe living in a small harmless country when the jihadis apparently live next door?

Discovery

2005-07-20T20:22:00.000+02:00

The good people at Sir Humphrey's have asked me to write over there too. Which is pretty cool, the Chef has been discovered. Sort of. Anyway, be sure to add Sir Humphrey's to your reading lists if you haven't already!

What does it mean for the Daily Bork? Dunno. I guess we'll find out as we go along.

Vilken härlig dag

2005-07-19T19:44:00.000+02:00

It's summer, it's hot and I'm on holiday. So posting is light and I might not be reading the email quite as often as I should. Persevere grasshopper.

This post brought to you by Jill Johnson.

Terror alert level: Brown

2005-07-19T16:28:00.000+02:00

Peter Metcalfe takes apart dishonest arguments in his own inimitable style. Now that is what I like to see, logically present the case, refute the arguments and then when they still are wriggling on the hook trying to twist yet another line... bash the shit out of them.

How can Karl Rove make NZ leftists look like abject fools without even thinking about it? I know he is a super-genius, making his opponents walk into every conceivable trap no matter how obvious or... stupid. But why does he really care about giving us the chance to giggle at the vapid cheerleaders of the NZ left? Oh well, who cares? Keep up the good work Karl!

Two simple questions for the weekend

2005-07-15T13:56:00.000+02:00

What is the difference between diversity and inequality?

Why is diversity of income bad?

I fart in your general direction

2005-07-15T12:30:00.000+02:00

Why is it when Chirac starts talking, all I can think about is Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

Would you trust, or even not laugh at, a many who ponces around like this?

Maybe it's just plain old Anglo intolerance, but cruising around standing in open cars at military parades is soooooo Banana Republic.

Herding cats

2005-07-15T11:14:00.000+02:00

Seems Kofi and Co are having trouble with their anti-terrorism thingies (*cough* Joos *cough*)

The United Nations already has 13 treaties intended to counter various aspects of terrorism.

Because terrorists will be subdued and/or defeated by a UN working group clattering round the local 5-star hotels preparing assessments of the drinks cabinet.

"I think a simple, clear definition that gets across the message that killing of innocent civilians or non-combatants, regardless of one's cause, is terrorism pure and simple, will suffice. And I hope the membership in time will come to this agreement," Annan told reporters on Tuesday.

I dunno, but shouldn't the definition of terrorism include the word "terror"? The death of civilians/noncombatants sounds a bit too much like the definition of "total war" or maybe even just "war". Oh wait, then you'd have to differentiate between Minutemen and Terrorists.

No one questioned giving in to McVeigh, why not?

2005-07-15T08:38:00.000+02:00

The Times has a slightly different suggestion to how to treat domestic terrorists by looking at the Oklahoma bombings.

In this sense, the most useful analogue for last week's outrage in London may not be September 11 or even the bombing of Madrid last year, but the worst act of terrorism in postwar Western history before September 11: the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people in 1995. Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator, was, like the London bombers, a small-time loser who felt he was acting out of intense ideological and religious motives. He was a fervent white supremacist and belonged to an extensive network of neo-Nazi fanatics who are generally believed to number many thousands across the US. His commitment to an essentially religious doctrine - that a global Jewish conspiracy, using African-Americans as their subhuman foot-soldiers, was taking over the world and preparing to exterminate or enslave all white Christians - was every bit as sincere as the faith and "piety" of many jihadist terrorists.

After McVeigh's arrest, thousands of heavily armed neo-Nazis quite like him continued to live in the mountains of Idaho and Utah and the hills of Missouri (and live there to this day), yet the Oklahoma atrocity was not repeated. Partly this may have been because McVeigh was treated as a common criminal after his capture, not as the standard-bearer of a politico-religious movement. There was, of course, intense interest in McVeigh's background and motivation, but it focused almost entirely on his psychological aberrations, not on his politics or religion. Instead of appearing as a glamorous martyr, McVeigh came across as a lonely loser, a pathetic embarrassment to his family and all who knew him, rather than a role model for other rebellious youths.

It certainly did not occur to anyone after the Oklahoma bombing to apologise for the racial desegregation which had provoked the American neo-Nazis and their ideological antecedents, the Ku Klux Klan. Nobody suggested abolishing affirmative action or banning Jews from public office on the grounds that racial mixing and the prominence of Jews was angering white supremacists and acting as "a recruiting sergeant" for more neo-Nazi terrorists who might copy McVeigh.

Should the political sensitivities and religious aspirations of jihadist killers be treated with any greater respect? The answer is clearly, no.

Which Q and O considers further...

The more I think about his point the more compelling I find it. We never questioned ourselves in the wake of Oklahoma City. We never asked "why did McVeigh hate us?". We never discussed reversing desegreation or giving into his racist tendencies. We never even considered any of his demands nor worried about his religious or ideological sensitivities. We acknowledged McVeigh for what he was, a hate-filled, neo-Nazi psychopath, and tried, convicted and executed him without apology to anyone except his victims on that horrible day.

We didn't do any soul-searching per se (sure we wanted to know what made this man tick and why he did what he did). We didn't declare ourselves guilty and decide we needed to be more sensitive to the racists among us. We condemened McVeigh. He was considered a criminal and an aberration.

What Kaletsky says is the 4 bits of scum which terrorized London last week are nothing more. Just as McVeigh managed, with help, to twist Christianity beyond recognition into a hateful and violent screed which drove his deviant life, the London 4 (among many others) are doing the same to Islam.

McVeigh was denied any political, religious or ideological martyrdom. He was treated, by the authorities (both religious and secular), media and the population, as a murderous thug, which is precisely what he was.

Kaletsky's point is that Brits shouldn't do too much soul-searching about why these 4 chose to do what they did anymore than we in the US did about McVeigh. McVeigh was an abberation, a cancer, a deviant. So were these 4. The fact that they were able to do so much damage is unfortunate and may be unstoppable, but it isn't the "fault" of Britain.

That doesn't mean that the Brits should accept the result and move on. On the contrary, they must identify, infiltrate and neutralize similar groups before they are ever again allowed to get to the point that they can mount such an operation. That's something they haven't been willing to do up to now, preferring a more hands-off, "let's monitor them" stance in hopes that they wouldn't go underground and be harder to follow.

But what Britain shouldn't do is go into a whiny state of introspective and self-indulgent "why do they hate us" questioning that portions of the political left in this country wallowed in after 9/11. Instead treat the 4 and any others involved just as we did McVeigh, and no better. Don't grant their wish for martyrdom. Instead consign them to the eternal dust bin reserved for human garbage who's only claim to fame is that they took the lives of others infinitely more valuable to this world than were they.

Meanwhile, Hard News seems to think that because there were no suicide bombings in Iraq before Saddam was booted it is a sign of failure. Seems to ignore the opportunity cost of murders, rapes, mass gassings and torture conducted by Hussein and Sons Ltd. He also seems to be setting himself up for big disappointment over Rove being done for exposing a non-clandestine agent. But to be fair, his article on vaccines yesterday was spot on. Pity his Public Address partner, Che Tibby, has no redeeming features, today's article is breathtaking in its own apparently unnoticed hypocrisy. I mean really, pot, kettle, black. Anyway, I'm swearing off that site for a while.

Move along, nothing to see here.

2005-07-14T15:51:00.000+02:00

Seems Karl Rove's mind control powers are expanding.

1000+ Iraqis march against terror

Gee, you'd think that'd be reported somewhere.

Summer hols and class warfare

2005-07-13T12:51:00.000+02:00

Government cheerleaders are getting desperate when they start to use the fact that some people can afford to go on holiday is a sign of class division and sexism. Apparently it is a burning issue to the Social Democrats in Sweden.

Klass och kön i semestertider
Class and gender during holiday season

Some people can afford overseas holidays while some children live in what is termed "relative poverty". The latter is not defined but I assume it is one of those dodgy %age of median income or something.

Shockingly those most unlikely to travel overseas for summer are single women with children (apparently single fathers are rolling in it). And refugees. Some cannot afford to even take the 1 month+ national skive-off.

If you were wondering as you read it where all this rather selfevident nonsense was going, they finally get to it when they start in on the Moderate's (main centre-right party) policy for welfare reform. So you see, it is the Moderate's proposed reforms that are responsible for Agnetha Svensson and her five kids not being able to go to the Seychelles for summer, not the fact that a four week summer holiday is not some nationally instituted right.

Jeez, I make decent money and I didn't take a summer holiday last year either. Damn right wing monkeys not in government!

"This is the anti-imperialism of fools"

2005-07-13T11:05:00.000+02:00

Via Instapundit.

A very anti-war Spiked writer has a much different take on the whole London business than most of the anti-war pseuds.

It's not all about Iraq

Why is everyone from George Galloway's RESPECT to the British National Party blaming Tony Blair for the London bombs?
by Brendan O'Neill

So, why was London bombed on 7/7? Given that no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, much less said why they did it, that is a pretty difficult question to answer. Yet some in the anti-war movement seem to have developed a sixth-sense ability to read the bombers' minds, and have revealed all: Londoners were bombed because of prime minister Tony Blair's involvement in the Iraq war.

The writer is none to impressed with the vacuity of the anti-war crowd, despite being 100% anti-war himself. While I disagree with him in some general areas, he does make some vwey good points about the foolishness and opportunism of most of the anti-war crowd that seeks to find blame in Blair and Bush or Iraq.

The attempt to link the bombs in London to the war in Iraq is the anti-imperialism of fools. It simultaneously fantasises that al-Qaeda elements are engaged in a war of resistance against the West, while taking an anti-war position that is more concerned with saving ourselves from mad bombers than offering solidarity with people in the Middle East against Western intervention.

It is well worth a read even if you are not anti-war, just to prove that there do exist anti-war thinkers with rationality and knowledge beyond the rubbish served up by local writers.

Oliver Stone: Official fucking looney

2005-07-13T10:39:00.000+02:00

Good freaking God

"The new world order is about order and control," he said. "This attack was pure chaos, and chaos is energy. All great changes have come from people or events that were initially misunderstood, and seemed frightening, like madmen. Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Gates. I think, I think . . . I think many things."

Those great suicide bombers, religious fanatics and worshippers of Death. Einstein, Tesla and Gates. So, who is the fourth horseman on the grassy knoll?

Clue Oliver, being "misunderstood" does not necessarily imply that a person is an undiscovered genius. Sometimes crazy murderous lunatics are just crazy murderous lunatics. You know, like your buddy Fidel.

Expect Ollie's 9/11 film to be a stinking pile of horsie poo.

Juan Cole, asleep at the controls

2005-07-13T10:34:00.000+02:00

Fun fun fun. Juan Cole, favourite of idiotarians of all nations (not looking at anyone in particular...) busted again:

Making Cole-slaw of history

Next time you see someone Juan Cole, slap them upside the head. Then do it again. And again.

Breath of fresh air

2005-07-13T09:24:00.000+02:00

Now, I have no idea how this woman gets published on Stuff, but she is a refreshing change!

Rockers' humbug on Africa

The rocking knights, Sir Bob, Sir Elton, Sir Bono and Sir Paul, are in the business of making money.

They are capitalists right down to their tip- tapping toes.

The long and winding road and yellow brick road are really one and the same _ they both lead to the bank.

Why, then, do they preach a socialist message with such zeal? They want everyone to think like socialists and demand G8 money- lenders support Africa indefinitely.

It's like a global welfare state on steroids. And it's ironic. The lifestyle modelled by the rockers is one of self- absorption, sex and unbridled consumption. It's humbug. (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.)

Africa really needs a combination of property rights, freedom of contract, the rule of law, decentralised decision-making and sound science. In short, good government.

The G8 leaders will double aid from $25 billion to $50 billion by 2010. Their pledge falls short of what the pop stars wanted but fortunately most understand that African tragedies are much more complicated than outright poverty. Geldof claims that pop music has replaced English as the power language of the world. Thankfully our world leaders turn their headsets off periodically.

By all means, Western nations need to get rid of subsidies and tariffs to Third World countries. All nations, including New Zealand, would benefit. Dare I whisper that George W. is on the right track? The President wants free trade and African countries would certainly benefit.

Of course, France and Germany and some of his own countrymen won't like the idea. The very socialism that the pop stars want to export to Africa is the fertiliser for the subsidies France and Germany don't want to give up. And by the way, "fair trade" _ that darling phrase of the Left _ is a specious concept defined only in relation to their notion of wealth redistribution.

Magnus Linklater, a British writer, is right: "The slogans of international socialism have changed little in 40 years and achieved even less." The alternative newspapers sold in Edinburgh last week still mumbled about Marxism, imperialism and the fascist state as if nothing had changed since the 1960s (the significance of the fall of the Berlin wall was obviously lost on them).

Blowing in the wind

2005-07-13T08:20:00.000+02:00

Seems that global warming will wilt your veges...

The Greens Are Wilting

Ouch. As if overnight, the Greens have turned from the darlings of the German establishment to emblems of what ails the country. goodbye eco-freaks, the Financial Times Deutschland headlined last week, predicting the advent of a long conservative era. With their neglect of hard-hitting economic issues, the Greens have turned themselves into "the feel-good party of the urban academic milieu," sneered even Berlin's Tageszeitung, a historically leftist paper. Critics see Fischer's visa scandal as the embodiment of what's wrong with the Greens: do-good policies—in this case, opening Germany's borders in the name of "multiculturalism"—paired with an arrogant disregard for the cost to the country. A similarly high-minded policy to subsidize wind power has drawn protests from citizens angry about thousands of giant wind turbines that now sully once pristine landscapes. Even Schröder has lashed out at his erstwhile political allies, suggesting in a recent interview in the weekly Die Zeit that sharing power might have been a mistake.

Young Germans who grew up in the economically insecure 1990s, he says, worry about jobs and education, not the second-tier issues with which the Greens are identified. Already, says Klein, Green voters are concentrated in the 40-to-49 age bracket, while young voters are increasingly flocking to conservative and liberal-democratic parties. "The Greens are a one-generation project," says Klein. "Their core voters will just die out."

The Same Old, Same Old . . .

2005-07-12T11:58:00.000+02:00

Victor Davis Hanson can be bombastic and somewhat OTT on occasion. But there are pieces where he shines.

The Same Old, Same Old... An anatomy of the London bombing.

In WWII we didn’t care much whether in fighting Bushido some thought we were in a war against Buddhists. We weren’t, and that was enough.

We knew the enemy were Nazis, not simply Germans, and didn’t froth and whine to prove that distinction.

But not now.

To criticize Islamic fascism is supposedly to be unfair to Islam, so we allow on our own shores mullahs and madrassas to spread hatred and intolerance, as part of our illiberal acceptance of “not offending Islam.”

It is not that we don’t believe in Western values as much as we don’t even know what they are anymore.

Of course prior to WWII there was vocal American opposition to involvement, from the isolationist right, to sympathetic Nazis, to the bulk of socialists who backed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (at least until Barbarossa broke the leftist bond). Nothing changes really.

Another voice in the dark

2005-07-11T13:53:00.000+02:00

I get the feeling that none of the dingbat sites mentioned heretofore will be in a rush to cite this article by one of their fellow left leaners at The Observer. Because, in a nutshell, he seems to have thought it through and found the heart of what faces the world (and it ain't noone with a Texas accent)...

Face up to the truth

...I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.

But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.

Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.

Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows...

Full text:

We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders... and it wasn't Bush and Blair

Nick Cohen
Sunday July 10, 2005
The Observer

The instinctive response of a significant portion of the rich world's intelligentsia to the murder of innocents on 11 September was anything but robust. A few, such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, were delighted. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was 'the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos,' declared the composer whose tin ear failed to catch the screams.

Others saw it as a blow for justice rather than art. They persuaded themselves that al-Qaeda was made up of anti-imperialist insurgents who were avenging the wrongs of the poor. 'The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty, so what is 20,000 dead in New York?' asked Dario Fo. Rosie Boycott seemed to agree. 'The West should take the blame for pushing people in Third World countries to the end of their tether,' she wrote.

In these bleak days, it's worth remembering what was said after September 2001. A backward glance shows that before the war against the Taliban and long before the war against Saddam Hussein, there were many who had determined that 'we had it coming'. They had to convince themselves that Islamism was a Western creation: a comprehensible reaction to the International Monetary Fund or hanging chads in Florida or whatever else was agitating them, rather than an autonomous psychopathic force with reasons of its own. In the years since, this manic masochism has spread like bindweed and strangled leftish and much conservative thought.

All kinds of hypocrisy remained unchallenged. In my world of liberal London, social success at the dinner table belonged to the man who could simultaneously maintain that we've got it coming but that nothing was going to come; that indiscriminate murder would be Tony Blair's fault but there wouldn't be indiscriminate murder because 'the threat' was a phantom menace invented by Blair to scare the cowed electorate into supporting him.

I'd say the 'power of nightmares' side of that oxymoronic argument is too bloodied to be worth discussing this weekend and it's better to stick with the wider delusion.

On Thursday, before the police had made one arrest, before one terrorist group had claimed responsibility, before one body had been carried from the wreckage, let alone been identified and allowed to rest in peace, cocksure voices filled with righteousness were proclaiming that the real murderers weren't the real murderers but the Prime Minister. I'm not thinking of George Galloway and the other saluters of Saddam, but of upright men and women who sat down to write letters to respectable newspapers within minutes of hearing the news.

'Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,' wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God's sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda. 'Let's stop this murder and put on trial those criminals who are within our jurisdiction,' began Patrick Daly of south London in an apparently promising letter to the Independent. But, inevitably, he didn't mean the bombers. 'Let's start with the British government.'

And so it went on. At no point did they grasp that Islamism was a reactionary movement as great as fascism, which had claimed millions of mainly Muslim lives in the Sudan, Iran, Algeria and Afghanistan and is claiming thousands in Iraq. As with fascism, it takes a resolute dunderheadedness to put all the responsibility on democratic governments for its existence.

I feel the appeal, believe me. You are exasperated with the manifold faults of Tony Blair and George W Bush. Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do, and when you are confronted with totalitarian forces which are far worse than your government, the easy solution is to blame your government for them.

But it's a parochial line of reasoning to suppose that all bad, or all good, comes from the West - and a racist one to boot. The unavoidable consequence is that you must refuse to support democrats, liberals, feminists and socialists in the Arab world and Iran who are the victims of Islamism in its Sunni and Shia guises because you are too compromised to condemn their persecutors.

Islamism stops being an ideology intent on building an empire from Andalusia to Indonesia, destroying democracy and subjugating women and becomes, by the magic of parochial reasoning, a protest movement on a par with Make Poverty History or the TUC.

Again, I understand the appeal. Whether you are brown or white, Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist, it is uncomfortable to face the fact that there is a messianic cult of death which, like European fascism and communism before it, will send you to your grave whatever you do. But I'm afraid that's what the record shows.

The only plausible excuse for 11 September was that it was a protest against America's support for Israel. Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden's statements revealed that he was obsessed with the American troops defending Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein and had barely said a word about Palestine.

After the Bali bombings, the conventional wisdom was that the Australians had been blown to pieces as a punishment for their government's support for Bush. No one thought for a moment about the Australian forces which stopped Indonesian militias rampaging through East Timor, a small country Indonesia had invaded in 1975 with the backing of the US. Yet when bin Laden spoke, he said it was Australia's anti-imperialist intervention to free a largely Catholic population from a largely Muslim occupying power which had bugged him.

East Timor was a great cause of the left until the Australians made it an embarrassment. So, too, was the suffering of the victims of Saddam, until the tyrant made the mistake of invading Kuwait and becoming America's enemy. In the past two years in Iraq, UN and Red Cross workers have been massacred, trade unionists assassinated, school children and aid workers kidnapped and decapitated and countless people who happened to be on the wrong bus or on the wrong street at the wrong time paid for their mistake with their lives.

What can the survivors do? Not a lot according to a Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He told bin Laden that the northern Kurds may be Sunni but 'Islam's voice has died out among them' and they'd been infiltrated by Jews. The southern Shia were 'a sect of treachery' while any Arab, Kurd, Shia or Sunni who believed in a democratic Iraq was a heretic.

Our options are as limited When Abu Bakr Bashir was arrested for the Bali bombings, he was asked how the families of the dead could avoid the fate of their relatives. 'Please convert to Islam,' he replied. But as the past 40 years have shown, Islamism is mainly concerned with killing and oppressing Muslims.

In his intervention before last year's American presidential election, bin Laden praised Robert Fisk of the Independent whose journalism he admired. 'I consider him to be neutral,' he said, so I suppose we could all resolve not to take the tube unless we can sit next to Mr Fisk. But as the killings are indiscriminate, I can't see how that would help and, in any case, who wants to be stuck on a train with an Independent reporter?

There are many tasks in the coming days. Staying calm, helping the police and protecting Muslim communities from neo-Nazi attack are high among them. But the greatest is to resolve to see the world for what it is and remove the twin vices of wilful myopia and bad faith which have disfigured too much liberal thought for too long.

Q and O round up

2005-07-11T12:04:00.000+02:00

Q and O take to task the pervasive idea, in some parts,that making a War on Terror is a failure because of London. Neatly summed up as they usually do...

Very Bad Analysis

I've noticed a couple of commenters making an extraordinarily foolish argument, and it's a very common argument on the Left, although I can't, for the life of me, see how such an intellectually vapid premise could be mouthed by anyone who was willing to give it a moment's thought. The argument is essentially this:

The London bombings prove that the US British strategy on the war on terror is a failure. Because we've invaded Iraq, it's gotten a lot of Muslims PO'd and so they're now launching more terror attacks. The war on terror was supposed to have made us safer, and, instead, it's creating terrorists where there were none before! It's proof that Chimpy McBushitler hasn't got a clue about what's going on.

This is a deeply silly argument on a number of levels.

In a follow on they even manage to semi-defend George Galloway (granted, in the "well he's technically right even if he is a conniving ratbag on the take") in an analysis which would send most nice lefties mental...

The Marginal Cost of a War on Terror

In a sort of related fashion, they also ponder Thoughts on Left libertarianism and conclude it is virtually oxymoronic. Which it is, almost like Leftist Humanism.

There are a few more good ones there recently too:

Taking a swipe at the "living wage". A neat summary of why minimum wage/living wage or whatever you try to dress it up as is an abject failure that inevitably harms those least able to afford it.

Liberal Paternalism. On why the hell are lefties so desperately keen to get government out of the bedroom (a good thing) by pushing it straight into the kitchen (a dumbarse thing)???

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum

2005-07-11T11:27:00.000+02:00

I think Brian Tamaki must be Keith Locke's spritual brother...

Brian:

"What people in New Zealand don't realise is we have been enduring a type of terrorism of another kind - acts of terrorism against the family."

He outlined aspects of the "terrorism" - prostitution law reform, civil unions, the lowering of the drinking age, abortions and teen pregnancies.

Keith:

Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Keith Locke has written to the British Green Party expressing the New Zealand Greens’ great sadness at the loss of life in the terrorist bombings.

“This was obviously designed to divert the G8 away from its work on poverty and climate change – we hope these terrorists’ plans are not successful,” he says.

Both showing a significant detachment from reality, one seeing apparent terror in young drinkers and prostitutes, the other seeing terror being used to thwart climate change politics.

My pick for the election: a Green/Destiny coalition backing whichever major party is desperate enough to take them on board.

A change

2005-07-11T11:15:00.000+02:00

Well now for something completely different...

I moved to Sweden from NZ. Everyone asked why, since it would be so cold etc etc.

We have had 30+ degrees for many days straight, with no end in sight. The sun doesn't really go down, so it cooks all night long.

Mosquitoes are huge here, and they hurt.

There are snakes! But luckily only one mildly poisonous type. I don't know how to spot the non-poisonous ones yet, shoot to kill.

Ticks love the coutryside, especially where the deer roam, ie just out the back of where I live. Some carry some sort of encephalitis, but fortunately they mostly hang around Stockholm and I live near Göteborg. Small blessings.

On the upside, it ain't winter in NZ!

Yet another one

2005-07-11T09:35:00.000+02:00

This twit seems to be big on irony, so maybe the alias "Biff Guevara" is not indicative of anything more than that.

But...

The world is tough enough as it is without this sort of tragedy. Ok Iraq's invasion was awful, and so was Afghanistan, and lots of innocent people died but ..... the problem with this stuff is that trying to balance out what is the lesser atrocity and what constitutes a just war is all bollocks.

Well let's see. You are incapable of making moral judgements. I know it is deeply indicative of the leftist mindset, all this fancy moral relativism. But it does start to make you shit yourself when the bombs land closer to home doesn't it? Even when you have been nice and non-judgemental and pondered why 3000 people dying isn't an act of war, just some sort of divine balancing act. Of course you can't say what constitutes a just war, for you have no moral system. It is a "just war" from both Osama's point of view, his religion and ideology make any such attacks just in terms of re-establishing the caliphate taking the fight against the Soviet Union to the fight against the West, while it is also just from, say, George W's point of view of escalating attacks against African embassies, first WTC attempts, USS Cole, second WTC attacks, Pentagon, Bali, Madrid, London... Oh but wait, even in a "just war" people get killed. Well yes, obviously. But would 6 million jews have been too worried if Hitler had been crushed after the invasion of Poland? I doubt it. Would you care to bet what would happen if Saddam was left free? Osama not hunted down? Will you take those odds?

It's all wrong... the Taliban were nasty oppressive tyrants, as was Saddam Hussein, and so is George Bush. The thing that infuriates me so much about the Islamic fundamentalists is that they would use our relative freedom to take it from everyone if they could. It's almost as perverse as bombing for peace.

So, pray tell, which country will George W be tyrannically ruling come the year 2009? I'm waiting... answer yet? No thought not. For the mentally retarded in the class, the answer is NONE. He won't be ruling any country, he will have stepped down and Hillary may even take over the reins. Not much of a tyranny. Oh but you were being ironic? Oh well done that cutting wit.

You even make a passing reference to a nugget of truth there... "they would use our relative freedom to take it from everyone if they could". But then you swerve back into la-la-land "It's almost as perverse as bombing for peace", can you come up with any more tired ironic jokes that make no sense?

But the deaths in London were just nasty.

Well maybe next time they will offer everyone sedation before they blow them up.

Rodders the right

2005-07-09T08:56:00.000+02:00

To the prissy little whiner who was wondering when Rodney Hide was going to make a comment...

Here it is

We can’t contemplate the minds that set out to terrorise the world by killing and maiming innocent men, women and children at random.

Our hearts go out to the victims and their families of the London bombings. And we realise that we are all victims of such terror attacks as nowhere and no-one is safe from such attack. That’s why it’s important that we stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against terror.

And we shouldn’t forget Israel. Last year Israel endured 40 terrorist attacks with 140 killed.

The London attacks rightly shock us. We have become all too innured to the attacks on Israelies.

Typical right wing bastard.

First he shows no lack of empathy for the perps... "We can’t contemplate the minds"

Then he fails to acknowledge that presenting your arse for a good reaming will get the terrorists to leave you alone... "nowhere and no-one is safe from such attack"

Worse, he gives props to Chimpy Bushitler! "stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against terror"

Then to finally prove he is really a death-camp guard in waiting he mentions Israel! Sympathetically!! "And we shouldn’t forget Israel"

Rodney! You seem to have forgotten Osama's crusade against global warming and you haven't looked deep within yourself to see why the terrorists want to do this to you.

Terribly partisan I'm afraid old chap.

Ransom asides

2005-07-08T13:42:00.000+02:00

Random asides on London

1. Thank the Lord that Islamic terrorists apparently have no one like Timothy McVeigh. It would be a simple task for someone to repeat that act multiple times in a city like London. Assemble truck bombs out in the countryside, drive them in one day and pang, away she all goes. Hundreds if not thousands dead.

1 a. The fact that (1) does not occur seems to indicate that the terrorists abilities are somewhat curtailed at the moment.

2. Why does everyone start off their posts with how they have family and friends in London? You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a Kiwi without at least a cousin and a couple of mates there.

3. Where is all this outrage when Palestinian madmen and women blow up busses full of school kids in Israel? Is it related to (2) above? At least the left are consistent on this point, it's the victims fault there as well.

4. Why doesn't George Galloway just move to Saudi Arabia and be done with it?

Dingbats Deux

2005-07-08T08:53:00.000+02:00

Oh lordy, another Kiwi dingbat...

And that's my fear, that simply being Muslim will be enough to incur the wrath of angry, bewildered and vengeful citizens of many countries, not just Britain. Once again, the spectre of fundamentalist Islam will be raised by those who want to scare you into hating innocent Muslims in quiet havens like New Zealand.

But, let me make one point very clear, Al Qaeda is to Islam what the IRA is to Catholicism. The IRA exploding bombs in London did not equate to Catholicism being a threat to everyone. No-one invented farcical terms like 'Islamopopists'.

Let me repeat the title above. DO NOT BE AFRAID. This type of attack will not occur in New Zealand. We have not made any insane enemies. We have not followed our powerful friends into any foolhardy, greedy wars. Since long before September 11 we have been known as an open and tolerant country that accepted 'others' like Muslims into our society. Nothing that has happened over the past few years should change that, and nothing that has happened can justify ever changing that.

But in Britain? The British already have far, far too many kinderfascists who will already be using this attack to galvanise their support. Already the angry words are being muttered, soon to be screamed at people who do not deserve hatred. Already the spectre of the Jewish pogroms that beset innocents in another age will be waiting just over the rise. And I say that we should have no part of it, lest we become the animals all these fundamentalists are.

I can't even be bothered commenting on this, how do you even make sense of the self-righteous and hypocritical toss that is more worried about possible reactions of legions of "kinderfascists" (prediction, not many to none) than actual live terrorists out there killing people at random.

Swedish domestic reaction

2005-07-08T08:14:00.000+02:00

Symboliskt höjd beredskap i Sverige
Symbolic raising of preparedness in Sweden.

Säpo, the Swedish security service, secret police, what you will, says there is no "concrete evidence" of a threat to Sweden. I'm sure there isn't at the moment.

However, the attitude of "it won't happen here" is pervasive. Many believe that Osama and his ilk are inspired by Bush, Iraq etc. There is a studied, perhaps deliberate in some parts, ignorance of the nature of the threat. Many refuse to see that it is their very way of life, liberty for men and particularly women, freedom of choice, indeed everything most Westerners take for granted that is the target. These evil little men have been plotting war against the West for decades, but it is somehow easier to pretend that Sweden has no part in it since it is only George W that is the problem, and we all despise him so they won't come here.

Along with this deliberate or otherwise deflection is the almost unmentionable growing population of Muslim immigrants. Many of them are fine individuals, but a huge fraction of them steadfastly refuse to assimilate and maintain what would be unconscionable practises to other residents of Sweden. No one really dare talk about the problem, except when there are flares of violence in places like Malmö where they are concentrated most. No one wants to be branded racist (what worse label could there be?), to the point that laws on violence against children, inciting violence and more are let slide. No one expects better in the weird hypocrisy of cultural relativism that permeates officialdom.

It doesn't take much to see the possible outcome of the two situations above. Terrorists are not rational, they do not care that terrorism has never achieved the "stated goals". Particularly not when they are taught that paradise awaits the martyr. How long before zealous disciples of bin Laden and his associates are inspired to take the jihad further abroad? Do you really want to be on the Stockholm underground when that happens?

Till then, fingers crossed. They are only out after W of course.

A voice of reason

2005-07-08T08:00:00.000+02:00

Lest anyone think that there don't exist rational minds on the lefter side, Christopher Hitchens has a cogent, balanced article. The fact that he has been persona non grata and extremely unquotable by the more "fair minded" wingnuts, er, leftists, due to his unequivocal denunciation of Islamic terrorists makes it even more interesting to read. He is angry, he is unafraid and he ain't going to take no bullshit from his former comrades.

Pathetic

2005-07-07T19:12:00.000+02:00

Everyone else is commenting on London of course. Let's take a tour on the wingnut side of NZ blogs. Well, three biggish ones that have been updated. Well, OK the only ones that happen to be updated in the last *days*...

No Right Turn

BBC has an updating timeline here and eyewitness accounts here.

You have to love the British authorities - when confronted with a problem, they lie reflexively, and blame explosions on "power surges" - even when they occur on buses.

Ah nice that. Nothing about who did it. No sympathy. Nothing except a swipe at the authorities. Also a lie, since any twit who watched it unfold saw the "power surge" was only blamed on the first tube bomb, by the time busses were blowing up no one called it a power surge. Wanker 1.

Just Left

I was in my hotel room and had the TV on about 5pm (9pm NZ time) when first heard the reports of the atrocities in London. At that point, they were claiming that it was power outages on the Underground, but they had just reported the bus explosion, and it seemed obvious to me it was terrorism. That now seems to be clear.

My thoughts are with those who got caught up in this through no fault of their own. When I lived in London, just after the Madrid bombings last year, every suspicious look, every bag, you looked at it and wondered if there was a bomb there. And today, perhaps, there was.

Very sad. I am sure that the UK will carry on as it usually does. Londoners are used to terrorism. This won't knock em.

... no fault of their own...
Well, that would seem to be everyone involved. You see, wanker 2, no one who could be labelled "at fault" was targetted. One could not even say people were in the wrong place at the wrong time. For the TERRORISTS who COMMITTED the crime they were the TARGET. This twat makes it sound like an act of God, rather than a premeditated act of evil.

Bloggreen

Firstly all my thoughts are with the people of London. This tragic event will change your city I do not doubt. Be strong, look out for each other and know our thoughts are with you. Any of my London based friends who read this, drop me an email to let me know you're ok please.

But I have to say this: Learn from New York. The question is not who did it, but why did they did it. This is the most important lesson to learn if we are ever to win the 'war on terror' because if we don't start to ask this question, the attacks will only continue, and continue, and there will be more and more retaliation.

Please learn this lesson everybody.

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the war on terror.

And so wanker 3 trundles out the ... we must understand why ... load of crap. We know why. For decades, long before your current fashionable hatred for the west, the Islamic TERRORISTS have been planning these things. The war on terror will be won the same way all wars are won, by crushing the enemy. And don't give me that on behalf of "hundreds of thousands of victims" bullshit either, faux sympathy for people you don't know, would never meet and frankly don't care about anyway is disgusting. The lesson from New York was, you want to kill thousands of us? Well, we'll crush your dreams of the Caliphate restored into the dust, along with your financiers, buddies and anyone who feels like joining you. Two toppled regimes for every terrorist act sounds about right.

It is amazing how much these freaks will fall over themselves to avoid even mentioning the prime suspect (no, no one will fault you if you were wrong, you aren't the police and you aren't giving evidence) while indirectly absolving the perpetrators of responsibility because, obviously, they had no choice and the "reason" lies with the victim.

Still, it is heartening to think that similar acts against the USA and Australia had precisely the reverse desired effect and Britain ought to be no different. Tony Blair might be a domestic nightmare of a politician, but at least he has testicles when it counts. It could only be better if Maggie or Winston was in charge.

I can't wait for the sewage to start flowing from these web sites, based on their respective histories of the last 4 years.

http://www.greens.org.nz/

Update 1. They nearly got through a decent press release without jumping the the deep end. Nearly...

Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Keith Locke has written to the British Green Party expressing the New Zealand Greens’ great sadness at the loss of life in the terrorist bombings.

“This was obviously designed to divert the G8 away from its work on poverty and climate change – we hope these terrorists’ plans are not successful,” he says.

Yes. Obviously Osama is concerned about too much attention on climate change. Keith, you are a freaking MORON!

http://www.nandor.net.nz/
http://www.publicaddress.net/default,hardnews.sm

Update 2.

Would I choose modern Christianity over modern Islam? Of course. But the church has presided over so many of its own horrors. The faith still seems a vehicle for hate in some hands. And it is not unreasonable to describe those IRA bombers, with their insane sectarianism, as Christian terrorists.

A classic strawman. The fact that Christian terrorists exist has precisely what to do with it?

Spirituality as a means of modelling nature, you might say. But I cannot contrive to believe in a Man in the Sky handing down instructions for life. My values - and those that defend us from what has happened in the past 24 hours - are human values. I believe they are strong.

PS: I made this post, went for a walk and came back and changed one word: the last one. The word was "stronger", now it is "strong". I decided that I simply wanted to assert my values, not to elevate them over anyone else's. We have enough of that.

The crazy defence of moral relativism. Faux humanism. Another religious straw man. Squeezing your eyes shut and hope the nutters don't choose your bus.

Whoops nearly forgot the obligatory Bush-bash...

Tony Blair's initial statement was good; Ken Livingstone's impromptu speech from Singapore, on behalf of and about Londoners - no, he said, we will not surrender to hate - utterly inspiring. Sitting there, in a quiet house in front of the TV, I cried as he spoke. [Bush, with his wooden cliches, I just wanted to slap.]

Course, Bush has said on numerous occasions the equivalent of "we will not surrender to hate". But he has no style when he says it, so he clearly doesn't mean it. Of course, not wanting to bash Red Ken or Pinkish Tony would also be a part of it.

http://blog.greens.org.nz/

2005-07-07T12:38:00.000+02:00

So what arseholes are responsible for killing people in London then?

Scooping up the crap

2005-07-07T10:17:00.000+02:00

Some people are on to some exceedingly good drugs.

Whoever writes this load of nonsense is reminiscent of old Brian Sandle back in the Usenet days. Is he still around? Does anyone else remember him?

Which goes to show what a load of crap Scoop news is. But a brief run over their "articles" is enough to confirm that. Why oh why do I do it to myself?

Through the looking-glass

2005-07-07T07:46:00.000+02:00

Oh my freaking god...

Nats tax rebate will increase bureaucracy - Labour

Finance Minister Michael Cullen has attacked National's election promise of a childcare tax rebate saying it would increase bureaucracy if implemented.

A Labour government warning of increased bureaucracy. How desperate can they be coming into an election?

Lipstick on a Pig

2005-07-07T07:10:00.000+02:00

Q and O has a go at Live8, or the "look at me, I caaaarrrreeeeee" concert.

Live8: Lipstick on a Pig

Fortunately, people like Bob Geldof recognize that the problem lies with governments; unfortunately, they seem to believe that the governments in question are non-African, claiming that a G8 failure to substantially increase aid and cancel African debt would be a "grosteque failure".

...the cost of Geldof's focus on G8 charity is the continuation—even de facto acceptance—of the brutal thuggery and kleptocracy of African despots.

London 3, Paris 0

2005-07-06T14:47:00.000+02:00

So London gets the 2012 Olympics for the third time, beating out Paris. Poor old aris, beaten out again (missed 1992 and 2008). The Olympic committee weighed all factors and then realised that no one in France was willing to put in an honest day's work to build the arenas, given that it is only 7 years away. That and the thought of the annual farmer protests clogging up the marathon course with tractors and cow poo.

Political posturing can’t hide the poo on Rod’s breath

2005-07-06T13:14:00.000+02:00

More blithering baloney from the suspendered Green one...

Political posturing can’t hide the uranium on Brash’s breath

Don Brash has uranium on his breath and no amount of political posturing can hide it, says Green Co-Leader Rod Donald.

"Uranium on the breath" being a tired reference to the 80s when then PM Lange used the phrase rather cleverly in an Oxford debate, back when the nuclear debate was a nice political football to prop up the Labour government at the expense of a pretty sweet deal NZ had going with the US.

The National Party Leader said this morning that if he became Prime Minister he would have to consult the United States before deciding whether to revoke New Zealand’s nuclear-free status, while at the same time backing away from his previous commitment to let Kiwis decide this fundamental issue through a referendum.

Ooooohhhhhh scary. He will have to consult with the US. What a fricking surprise. You mean in considering revoking a stupid ban on *US* ships he might not consider asking the US what they think of the idea and what he might get in return? Heaven forbid Don should be all unilateral in foreign affairs.

“Dr Brash needs to understand that our nuclear-free status is an integral part of our sense of nationhood.

That is a patent load of dogs testicles. When I consider my nationhood, it never even enters my mind that I haven't seen a nuclear powered naval vessel in Wellington harbour lately.

“Our reputation around the world as a reasonable, peace-loving people and as a clean and green, ‘100% Pure’ country is largely built on being nuclear-free. It is who we are; it allows us to hold our heads up high internationally.

Watch out, here comes the second delivery of reproductive parts. I have never in my life, while travelling or living overseas met anyone who has even mentioned "nuclear free" in relation to NZ. Lord of the Rings, sheep, kiwifruit, Maori, Once Were Warriors yes yes yes. Nuclear free, no. For god's sake, every foreigner thinks NZ is a tropical paradise and are surprised when they freeze their tits off if they arrive during Autumn/Winter/Spring. No one thinks we are peace loving either. Get off your ego trip and, um, talk to someone who isn't a Green zealot when you are overseas sometime.

“Where was Don when Norm Kirk sent a frigate to Mururoa, when David Lange won the Oxford Union Debate and when the Rainbow Warrior was sunk? Can he not understand that these experiences have helped to define us as a proud and independent nation?

Ah yes. Because if you opposed *French* nuclear tests in the Pacific and *French* sabotage in NZ harbours, you must be a Green dimbulb who thinks being proud and independent means being a petulant whiny little bitch towards the *Americans* who have done, exactly what again?

“It is time Dr Brash joined the mainstream, instead of trying to turn New Zealand into the 52nd state of America. Kiwis do not want to surrender our identity and foreign policy to Washington, or become a lapdog to the 51st state deputy sheriff, Australia,” Mr Donald says.

"Mainstream" being a snarky reference to a Don Brash speech. Probably went down a treat when they were passing the doobie round at the PR session. Obviously revoking the ban would immediately mean the election of a Republican PM in NZ, oops, we don't have a Republican party. They must have been into the really good shit when they wrote this one, insulting the Australians as well. No wonder we can hold our heads so high when we are busy shitting all over historic friends and most dependable allies, all for a worthless ego-building ban.

Cheers

2005-07-06T08:27:00.000+02:00

Thanks to Sir Humphrey's for sending people my way. Enjoy your stay!

Huh?

2005-07-06T08:06:00.000+02:00

I can't really see what the Maori Party are playing at here.

Hold fire on Zimbabwe, urges Maori Party

While the Greens proposal to ban sporting teams going to Mugabe's paradise is stupid, I can't see why the Maori Party are waiting on the UN to come back with a report saying that Bob is not a nice man. I mean, it's been how many years now that he has been evicting farmers, murdering opponents and rigging elections? Hardly need the UN to whistle past the graveyard to know that.

What are they doing? Maybe they are waiting for the UN to spring into action, just like in the Sudan...

UN delays Sudan sanctions by three months

Maori Mafia busted

2005-07-06T07:59:00.000+02:00

Further to the Maori Mafia demanding rent money from businesses

'Maori Govt' leader denies running scam

Sue Nikora, 69, the "prime minister of the Maori Government of Aotearoa", has been bailed to appear in court on Friday charged with being a party to impersonating a police officer.

They follow there customary laws of demanding rent (in white man's NZ legal tender of course)...

"It is about our tino rangatiratanga or our sovereignty rights which cannot be breached ... wherefore it follows that the tangata whenua ... live in freedom to enjoy the rights of protection afforded to us by our own tikanga Maori or customary laws," she told National Radio.

but then

"One of our caucus implementations to support our proclamations was the creation of a law and order protection force. Unfortunately we used the words `Maori Police'. We didn't know we couldn't use the word police."

When confronted by the limp wrist of the law they suddenly get all cagey. Not being able to demand rent on property you don't own didn't seem to worry them much though.

"It's not a scam. We have got our lands back and what these boys were doing, they were going to demand rent for land that we own.

"We weren't asking for compensation, we were only asking for rent from the 30th of May onwards."

She didn't agree that the moteliers had title on the land as the "Maori Government" had proclaimed it back.

"They are working with lands which are now owned by Maori. It's always been owned by Maori," she said.

"It's always been Maori land, even before the Maori got here." she didn't say.

"It's the first time that we have been upstanding and claiming back our rights."

Except for those previous occasions they were upstanding and claiming. Dame Whina Cooper who again?

Party gags

2005-07-06T07:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday a group of thespians launched the Culture Party in Sweden, hoping to get into parliament and requisition more dosh for poor starving artistes.

Today it is all revealed as a gag. But lots of people fell for it and some said they would vote for it (what, another party demanding more money be given away on random crap? Where do I sign up?). People seem to like this sort of thing here in Sweden, unfortunately not all of them are jokes.

This particular laugh was conducted by the National Theatre. At the cost of 200,000 crowns of tax money. Sigh.

One party (The Centre Party) is asking for an investigation into the misuse of the money.

The Greens are predictably sad that it didn't last longer, so that more money could be directed to "culture". But anything that soaks a bit more money from the plebs is alright by them.

Kodak moment

2005-07-06T07:42:00.000+02:00

Did Göteborgs Posten just have a "Hitler moment"?

Fredrik Reinfeldt, possibly the most sanguine and understated right-of-centre party leader ever:

Could it have something to do with his party Moderaterna (literally "The Moderates", how much more understated can you get?) taking a firm lead in the opinion polls?

Well, it didn't work against W so I suspect it won't work against Freddy either.

Concerts for cash

2005-07-05T09:00:00.000+02:00

Acts see sales soar after Live 8 gigs

The galaxy of rock stars who took part in Live 8 concerts on Saturday to help beat the curse of poverty have seen their records fly off the shelves in British music stores, proving that cash balances as well as consciences were the winner.

Where are all the fricking loonies that scream "Halliburton" at the drop of a hat?

Making money off the back of the downtrodden and starving black man. How disgustingly capitalist.

Green science, aka voodoo

2005-07-05T07:15:00.000+02:00

So the Green representative for bad science and voodoo has found a report that says that big power lines increase miscarriages...

The report, by De-Kun Li of Oakland’s Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, shows an 80 percent higher rate of miscarriage amongst women exposed to more than 1.6 micro-teslas of magnetic forces. It was presented at a weekend health forum in Hamilton organised by opponents of Transpower’s Waikato mega-lines.

The Earth's clean-green and all-natural magnetic field strength varies between about 30 and 60 micro-Tesla. So wandering across a field will probably expose you to more change of "teslas of magnetic force" than the 1.6 micro-Tesla from a power line. Presumably we are talking about non-static or not slowly varying fields here, but not specified.

Oh yeah. Tesla is not a measure of force, you green dingbat. But what do we expect from those who can't separate beta and gamma radiation. So long as you scare people it doesn't matter about your level of honesty or literacy. Likewise

It is crucial that we do this before any decision is made on whether to put these 400Kvh lines near residential dwellings.

That is kV. k is kilo, not capitalised. V as in Volt, derived from some bloke's name therefore capitalised. Oh yeah, Tesla was a person to, so it is micro-Tesla. Both dead white men I know, but the convention is well set. And what pray tell is a 400 kVh line? Perhaps you mean 400 kV, since kVh would be a unit of well, not much sensible really. Even kVH would be Volt-Henrys, which again is not much sensible.

Here is another dead giveaway for anyone from NZ...

Claims that there may even be a biological effect from exposure to electro-magnetic radiation at levels below the current standard, first made by New Zealander Dr Neil Cherry many years ago, should be looked at, Ms Kedgley says.

Neil Cherry, RIP, was a scientific fraud who played on every possible community fear (mostly to do with children) to make money and influence people.

The paper from which all this is taken is

Li DK, Odouli R, Wi S, Janevic T, Golditch I, Bracken D, Senior R, Rankin R. A population-based prospective cohort study of personal exposure to magnetic fields during pregnancy and the risk of spontaneous abortion. Epidemiology. 2002;13:9-20

Which can be found online. The conclusion states

Our findings provide for the first time strong prospective evidence that prenatal
MMF exposure above a certain level (possibly around 16 mG) may be associated with SAB risk.

Which is very vague. Indeed the whole paper is full of conditionals

Although 12 mG would have been a better cutoff from the view of the
threshold effect, 16 mG was the only available cutoff point between 10 and 20 mG, chosen
before the data collection, upon which many parameters for exposure dose (e.g., total sum of MF,
duration, and number of times above the cutoff point) were constructed.

So the 1.6 micro-Tesla figure is arbitrary, chosen for convenience between 10 and 20 milli-Gauss. What if the "true figure", assuming a real effect, was 100 micro-Tesla?

The exposed women (MMF≥ 16 mG) were more likely to
have been employed before conception, to have had fever during pregnancy, and to have drunk
tap water; but they were less likely to have had a history of subfertility defined as failure in
conceiving after having had regular intercourse without contraception for more than 12 months.

Errrr, that seems to be a bit of a hole right there. Fever and tap water? Surely someone ought to investigate that.

Overall, I wouldn't be crapping myself about it until a better controlled study is done, ruling out things like fever for starters.

It's still all about me

2005-07-04T11:37:00.000+02:00

Here we go again...

Rock stars put on historic show to fight poverty

"Mahatma Gandhi freed a continent, Martin Luther King freed a people, Nelson Mandela freed a country. It does work. They will listen," Geldof said in London's Hyde Park.

St Bob, the modern MLK. I think not. The real equivalents would be those chaps in Africa putting their lives on the line trying to free themselves from tinpot dictators. Not some washed up hippy rolling out his cult of personality every decade to appease the "guilt" of Generation-Me.

Bono fired up 200,000 fans in Hyde Park by joining Paul McCartney to launch the show with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles classic offered an echo of Live Aid with its first line "It was 20 years ago today".

Anyone done a cost-benefit analysis of that effort? "Huge failure but made us feel good for a few years" doesn't really cut it.

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt told the crowd: "Let us be outraged, let us be loud, let us be bold."

Oh for fuck's sake! How about stumping up a few mill yourself then??? Or is it just easier to be outraged and bold?

Tokyo kicked off Live 8 with Icelandic star Bjork headlining at a 10,000-capacity venue.

The diminutive star expressed the sense of helplessness she felt in the face of Africa's extreme poverty.

"I look at the news, I see people starving, I am crying. I'm a total mess," she said.

In other words "me me me me me!!!!"

Live 8 was also staged in the Circus Maximus in Rome and before a crowd of 150,000 in Berlin where most Germans felt it was a good idea even if they had doubts about its impact.

In other words "we know it isn't going to work but it makes us feel better for some reason."

"Me me me me me me!!!!!"

Rinse.
Repeat.

In Philadelphia, actor Will Smith told a huge crowd: "This is the biggest ... event that has ever taken place on this planet."

Apart from perhaps, the collapse of the USSR, D-Day, Lincoln freeing the slaves, The French revolution, The American revolution, the birth of Jesus, the Trinity tests...

Oh yeah, a bunch of self-congratulating rich "stars" slapping each other on the back demanding governments use someone elses tax money (cos they sure as hell aren't paying it) to "end poverty" is right up there with all those history defining moments that actually changed the world.

In Johannesburg, most of those interviewed among the crowd of 10,000 had never even heard of Geldof, but Edward Romoki, yelling over a booming hip-hop act, said: "Maybe a concert like this can put Africa in the news and change things."

Put Africa in the news... Rwanda, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia,...

Don't see those in the news much. Well, maybe not on MTV news which is apparently all these chuckleheads watch. For God's sake, they LIVE IN AFRICA!

This is too much the "Die Hippie, Die" episode of Southpark, word for word, but without the happy ending.

Some aid workers and Africans also worry that the Live 8 initiatives will only serve to bolster corrupt regimes while scepticism persists that rock stars can change anything.

No, really? Leads nicely into

Live 8 rocks world, but will it help poor?

"For God's sake, take this seriously. Don't behave normally. Don't look for compromises. Be great," Live 8 organisers said in a joint statement after the concerts ended.

Yeah, alright!!! Be great!!! What a load of fatuous bollocks!

More than 26 million people worldwide sent text messages in support of Live 8, setting a world record for a single event, organisers said. They had also expected up to two billion people to tune into the show worldwide.

So all those starving kids in Ethiopia are now feasting mightily on text messages, planting them for next years harvest, using them to drill for water. Or something.

Two BILLION people??? Are you seriously fucking kidding?

In Philadelphia, where hundreds of thousands crammed the streets to hear Will Smith and Stevie Wonder, singer Alicia Keys questioned America's interest in helping Africa.

"America has a sense of disconnect when it comes to Africa or places that are very far away because many of us, most of us, won't get the opportunity to see those places," she said.

Limited television coverage in the United States could also dampen the impact of such an impressive show of people power.

How much trite dribble can a "star" come up with? It's far away and we are disconnected because we don't go there. All those Americans who donate to charities, pay taxes that go to aid and tsunami relief before the UN gets its finger out of its arse are all disconnected and selfish because... they aren't quite as interested in a huge group jerk-off?

Show of people power? You AREN'T DOING ANYTHING! You are going to a concert! That isn't people power! How many tanks do you have to dodge on the way there?

The raucous crowd fell silent when Live 8 organiser Bob Geldof replayed Live Aid footage of dying Ethiopians. After freezing on the image of a girl on the verge of death, the same person, a now healthy Birhan Woldu, was introduced on stage.

So Bob found one survivor of his last effort. Meanwhile, dictators still alive and well. Where are the hippies calling for the overthrow of the rotten "governments", propert rights, rule of law, etc etc?

But Live 8 has sparked debate over whether making money available to African governments encourages corruption.

"Throwing money at African governments is not the answer," the brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki wrote.

"Give the money to the people for productive investment," Moeletsi Mbeki said in the Mail on Sunday. "Africans are perfectly capable of improving their own lot."

You mean you can do it for yourselves if people stop financing the overlords?

You poor deluded fools! Only we, the wise, wealthy and somewhat guilt-ridden sages of the West can save you. Don't presume to know what is best for yourself. We'll send Chris Martin over and he'll sort you out, once he has killed off the capitalists and share holders he'll make you a smashing fine king.

What's Maori for "godfather" anyway?

2005-07-04T07:54:00.000+02:00

Seems the Maori Mafia are getting bolder...

Self-styled 'Maori police' demand rent money

Men dressed in police uniforms are demanding money from Gisborne businesses, claiming it is rent owed to the Maori Government of Aotearoa.

Motel owners in Gisborne last week were told they would be evicted if rent was not paid after three visits.

Charming.

The men delivered a "sovereign order" stating from June 21, Maori police and rent collectors would visit houses and businesses each week. "They shall visit three times only and, after that, eviction orders shall be promulgated," the order stated.

Rent charges are $200-400 for a 0.1ha (quarter-acre) property and $500-600 for a 0.2ha (half-acre) business. Private houses would also be charged rent at $50-100 for a 0.1ha and $100-200 for a 0.2ha property. It is unclear how often rents would be charged.

Well I think it will obviously be as often as they can. Why didn't anyone ask what the penalty for non-payment is? I doubt it is a trip to the district court.

Motelier Stewart Haynes said the men said the rents would mean they no longer had to pay council rates. "They claim that we'll get a better deal paying rates to them than the local council."

Cos if you pay the council instead of us, you are going to end up with no kneecaps. An offer you can't refuse.

He said although their appearance was intimidating, the men were very polite. "They seemed to be very genuine in their case."

What the hell? Basically demanding money with menaces, but they seem to be very genuine???

Police have advised motel owners to avoid debate with the men, to politely decline their offer and contact police immediately.

Police spokeswoman Sarah Martin said it was a serious offence to impersonate police and the men could be prosecuted.

Nikora said there was no intention to masquerade as police. Police labels had been removed from uniforms and replaced with Maori Security and Protection Force. "We've dropped the word police because we know that we're not allowed to use it."

Many business owners had been aggressive and threatening, she said.

Many businesses had been aggressive when a bunch of heavies turn up demanding money? You don't say.

Why do these fools want rent money anyway? There never was a Maori nation with sovereign property rights over land. There were numerous tribes who allied and warred and recognised right of conquest, but never any "Maori government" uniting them all under an umbrella of codified laws and rights.

Curious headline

2005-07-04T07:49:00.000+02:00

Some newsrooms need to check their editing...

Steel worker dies after being crushed to death

Died after bing crushed to death? Who resurrected the poor bloke in between these fatal incidents?

The best page in the universe

2005-07-01T19:23:00.000+02:00

He's a right shirty buggar, but man is his page funny...

Apparently the 11 worst songs of 2004 were all by U2, can't say I'm surprised in the least...

Bono is 44. He's too old to "rock." I know people have been saying the same thing about Rolling Stones for years now, and every time the Rolling Stones go on tour, they prove their critics right. Give it a rest. I don't even blame U2 for this, it's you stupid fans. Maybe they'll stop annoying us with obnoxious commercials if you morons would stop lapping this shit up like anti-freeze at a petting zoo.

There is more.

Much, much, much more.

Anyone who can mention Reimann, Ren & Stimpy, convex volumetric fog rendering and dig up disturbingly erotic cartoon covers has got something worth listening to.

If it works well, nationalise it

2005-07-01T11:42:00.000+02:00

What do you do when a privately run prison is performing well, being cost-effective and has good relations with the communities of the inmates? Well, if you are a socialist government who is being shown up as incompetent, you just go ahead and take it into government control. Because, well, private prisons can't possibly be better run than state prisons, can they now?

Irrational rationalists

2005-07-01T08:27:00.000+02:00

Sometimes you have to wonder what on earth some people think they are going to achieve...

Humanists seek platform to halt religious advance

Moonbat alert in the second paragraph...

"With US society sliding towards theocracy, and religious belief – even fundamentalism – on the rise in every continent we have to take a stand," says Roy Brown, President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).

US sliding towards theocracy, pull the other one (personal disclosure, I am an atheist). Fundamentalism on the rise, yep, but what do they bang on about?

European humanists, delighted at success in their campaign to keep any reference to a deity out of the troubled European Union constitution, were shaken at what many call the 'media madness' over the death of Pope John Paul II.

In protests to newspapers and broadcasting bodies, they argued that the saturation coverage of his funeral – and the inauguration of his successor – amounted to free advertising for Catholicism at the expense of rational thought.

He was a leader of millions and gets mass coverage just like any other who shuffles off. Just look at the evil little tick Arafat and how they feted his life when he finally popped off. Get over it.

Humanists note that his successor, Pope Benedict, has declared the Enlightenment "one of the greatest evils to have befallen mankind" and vowed to fight secularism.

Well, really, how many people is that going to buy into the faith? It is better everyone gets to hear it and judge rather than repressing it.

Across the Atlantic, US humanists and atheists see Christian fundamentalists backing 'born-again' President George W. Bush extending their influence into the schools, science laboratories and even into famed museums.

They argue this is a threat to social harmony, setting the religious not only against non-believers but also against each other. "Surely we are on the brink of religious factionalism," wrote Paul Kurtz, editor of the journal Free Inquiry.

And the duels between Christian fundies and idiots like the ACLU have been going on for decades. But, crucially, the US has the constitution and rule of law to keep it all under control.

In largely sceptical Britain, humanists say, Bush's Iraq War ally Tony Blair – the most overtly religious prime minister for a century – promotes 'faith' schools, allowing some to teach that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is wrong and that the universe and everything in it was created by an all-powerful god.

This is a bizarre sentence. The Iraq War promotes faith schools? What?

Across much of Africa, according to the London quarterly 'Focus on Africa', US-sponsored evangelical Christian movements are edging out Catholic and Episcopalian churches – as they are doing in Latin America.

Ahhh, US-backed churches are more eeeevvvviiiilllll than the Catholic church even. Actually, I don't see how this upsets them since it is replacing one religion with a very similar one. Except by definition the "US backing" is more troublesome than the Pope who called the Enlightenment evil. Go figure.

In formally secular India with its often warring Hindu and Muslim communities, says Innaiah Narisetti of the Radical Humanist Association, government leaders play up to religious figures, involving them in state ceremonies.

Even Communist administrations in power in some states – like Kerala – financially support religious ceremonies, arguing that this helps promote tourism, says Narisetti.

In Russia, which under communist rule in the old Soviet Union kept religion under strict control, the Orthodox Church has been coopted into the new system, humanists say.

Newsflash, communism is a religion, which is why it kept other religions under strict control. Show me an atheist communist and I'll show you a repressed bible thumper.

In some Islamic countries, non-believers are shunned as apostates and in many places can face official persecution and even death, says Ibn Warraq, raised as a Muslim in India and a writer on religion in the Middle East and Asia.

Yes, but non-believers of every stripe (ie Buddhists and Christians) as well as those believing in the wrong flavour of Islam. A little more serious than some school trying to teach creationism.

Then we get to the real illogic...

In Iraq under former president Saddam Hussein and his immediate predecessors in the Baath Party, the state was largely secular, allowing little room for Muslim religious leaders to exert influence in contrast to many of its neighbours.

So Saddam ran a secular state, but still murdered his subjects by the tens of thousands, raped, pillaged and warred with everyone. Is the fact that Iraq was nominally secular compared to Iran supposed to make this better???

Two years after the US-led invasion to overthrow Saddam, a Shi'ite-led administration is in place in Baghdad, while in Iran next door an Islamic hardliner has just won the presidency.

So a government is in place that isn't murdering freely but the fact that it is "Shiite led" is supposed to be far more of a problem than Saddam's secular state. Wait I get it, the government is US backed, backed by those evil creationists who go around teaching crap science but somehow manage not to gas their own population.

"Whatever emerges, we expect humanists around the globe to gain strength from the knowledge that their are many millions of us united in the struggle in the defence of rationalism and the secular ideal," says Gogineni.

You know what Gogineni? You give rationalism a bad name and your secular ideal seems to be nothing more than reflex bigotry based on left wing bullshit that worries that a Shiite majority rules in Iraq rather than Secular Saddam. You are no more a humanist than Uncle Joe or Fidel.

Race trumps sex

2005-07-01T08:09:00.000+02:00

A female probation officer is at a ceremony to farewell prison inmates from some programme and is forced to stand behind all the blokes, due to "Maori protocol", because she is lacking in the testicular necessities.

Josie Bullock, a Wellington mayoral candidate in 2001, has been given a verbal warning for refusing to move to the back at a poroporoaki, or farewell, for male offenders who had just finished a violence prevention programme last December.

The Onehunga probation officer, who belittled the warning as a "slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket", is now defying departmental instructions not to speak out on the issue.

Ms Bullock said the probation service was a government department and was supposed to be non-sexist and secular. Yet she was obliged to attend functions where there were prayers and to take second place to men purely because she was a woman.

Ahhh, the idiocies of PC where a woman has more balls than the dipshits she works for.

Uncuriously...

However, feminists and Maori women yesterday were not leaping to her defence.

Because, when faced with an internal contradiction in their philosophy, or put another way when not dealing with a "white male" transgressor, they really have no way to deal with it. Certainly they can't say, well buggar me if this policy makes no sense when we have to try and choose between "culture" and "equality". Because, as with all this leftist shite, equality has no real part to play except when it can be wheeled out as a useful cannon against some bloke.

Maori activist lawyer Annette Sykes said she did not support Ms Bullock. As a probation officer, she was obliged to abide by rigid court protocols, and in the same way, she should abide by and respect Maori protocols.

Prominent Wellington feminist Margaret Shields, co-convener of the recent Women's Convention, said if Maori protocol was used it was not for others to define what that should be.

Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia said Ms Bullock was "a Pakeha woman who is opposed to, defies and mocks the observance of tikanga Maori in her workplace".

"That's her choice, but it possibly says something about how she might interact with those she works with and comes into contact with on a daily basis."

Sorry Josie, but equality does not apply in the world of Maori protocol which is now deep frozen in the glorious past and unable to adapt to changing times. The sign of a dead culture if you ask me. You certainly won't get any help from supposed "prominent feminists".

Mr Matthews agreed Ms Bullock should be treated equally with her male colleagues and said Corrections was developing a policy balancing Maori protocol and equality laws. But, in his view, it was inappropriate to invite Maori to functions and then break their traditions and rules.

In other words, we'll make up some more opaque policy to placate the complainers until the fuss dies down, then it'll be business as usual.

Ms Bullock made "a scene" that embarrassed people rather than making her views known appropriately.

"We don't have a problem with the views, but it was the manner in which they were expressed and her behaviour in that forum that was found to be inappropriate."

Oh for God's sake, tough titty! So some sheila has the temerity to kick up a stink about being treated like second-rate citizen in a *government workplace* and you're all upset because it was inappropriate. Heaven forbid you should support her and say to the dipwads organising whatever it was that they can't tell her to go sit at the back like a naughty child.

We don't need your stinking help

2005-07-01T08:04:00.000+02:00

Man observes burglary, apprehends one of the crims after a scuffle and gets arrested...

Crimebusting doesn't pay

But Aashis Sadhu, one of the owners of the Guthrie Bowron store, applauds Michael's bravery and paid his fine.

He says Michael's arrest was unjustified and staff only found out when he told them about the incident.

"Mike said: `I tried to help catch these guys, I have been arrested and have to go to court'," Mr Sadhu says.

"The poor guy tried to help us and he's the one being made the culprit, it's absolutely ridiculous," he says.

"Personally I think the police should be a bit more understanding.

"It makes us laugh at the whole system. New Zealand security has become a bit of a joke."

The guy is a father of four with no prior criminal history and has the temerity to, you know, defend civil society and what happens to him? "Don't take the law into your own hands?" As if the law is someone else's to be taken away. Maybe if people had more feeling that they would have the backing of the law they would take more action over petty crimes and the like and perhaps the crime rate would drop.

Pathetic.

The man of the hour...

Someone buy that man a DB.

I am a mild mannered assassination victim

2005-07-01T07:00:00.000+02:00

David Farrar was JFK, I am Abe...

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Could be worse, Carter, Clinton, Wilson...

Newsflash, Bush gives typical Bush speech

2005-06-30T09:11:00.000+02:00

Following hot on the heels of the last non-analysis of Bush's speech we have

Hård kritik mot Bushs Iraktal
(Harsh criticism of Bush's Iraq speech)

It goes round the world to find anyone and everyone who wants to have a bash at it but were apparently too lazy to read it or listen to it.

One Erik Åsard, of the "North American Institute" in Uppsala, Sweden is quoted:

Han anser att talet var "typiskt för Bush". Det innehöll inte mycket nytt och egentligen ville Bush bara understryka varför USA är i Irak och varför det är nödvändigt att stanna.

He thinks that the speech was "typical of Bush". It didn't contain much new and really Bush only wanted to underscore why the USA is in Iraq and why it was necessary to stay.

Exsqueeze me? But, what on Earth was he expecting? It was a speech, about Iraq, by the president of the USA. I can't really see what his problem is here, how it amounts to anything reportable or how it even is relevant. He might as well have said "Bush made a speech".

For comment about the ACTUAL SPEECH, you of course have to turn away from MSM sites. Q and O have a round up of THE CONTENT and finish with

Well, there was nothing there that we haven't been saying here for a couple of years. Notably, the president didn't really sugarcoat the situation in Iraq at all. He said it's been hard, and progress has been slow. But, we are making progress.

He did make it clear, however, that he's not going to reverse course in Iraq. He laid out what he plans to do, laid out a political and military strategy.

This is the kind of thing the Administration should've been pounding on for the last two years. No matter how important social security or taxation is, this is the central issue facing the country, and the Administration hasn't made nearly enough effort to stay on top of the issue publicly.

Hopefully, this will not be a one-time speech, but the start of a concerted effort to let the American people know what is going on in Iraq, what progress is being made, and how we can move closer to winning against the terrorists there.

Dean Esmay says...

It was a fine speech, and the aftermath of it will be positive. Not for Bush per se--indeed, it's pointless to wonder about its affect on Bush. He's not running for President. History will judge his legacy once he's gone. There's no more need to get into stupid "this hurts him or helps him" stuff. The question is whether it helps the troops, and the war effort.

Yes, it does both. No, it says nothing he hasn't said before, except for the bit about encouraging young people to enlist and to be proud of that choice if they make it. But nothing new NEEDED to be said: we are committed, this is a just and moral cause, and the price of failure would be horrific.

It was absolutely right to hold it on prime time, and a good time to do it. As many people as possible need to see it. Unlike most of those of us who are plugged into politics in the blogosophere, everyday Americans needed reassuring. Most of them got that.

No, not the BDS-sufferers and the fascist sympathizers. Nothing will change those. But the waverers who needed bucking up got it. This is a good thing.

But wait. These guys seem to have read the speech itself rather than faxed off their standard "Bush speech response" with the appropriate date inserted.

Spin the numbers

2005-06-30T08:47:00.000+02:00

What do you do if you have a president giving a good speech, but publishing the details would seem too much like, you know, giving people some real information? Run with the viewing stats instead...

Bush's Iraq speech draws career-low TV audience
30 June 2005

LOS ANGELES: President George W Bush's latest address to the nation, urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure, Nielsen Media Research reported on Wednesday.

Live coverage of Bush's half-hour speech on Tuesday night averaged 23 million viewers combined on four major US broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels, Nielsen said.

Designed largely to bolster sagging public support for the persistently bloody conflict in Iraq, the speech fell 8.6 million viewers shy of Bush's previous low as president, his August 9, 2001 address on stem cell research, which was carried on six networks.

Even Bush's last prime-time address, his April 28 speech on Social Security overhaul, drew more viewers: 32.7 million.

Bush garnered the biggest US TV audience of his presidency - 82 million viewers on nine networks - when he addressed a joint session of Congress nine days after the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

By comparison, his May 1, 2003, speech from the deck of an aircraft carrier declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq averaged 48.4 million viewers.

OK, so what? Viewing numbers for a president's speech, during his second term, are hardly indicative of anything.

I know that you desperately want to make it seem that because "only" 23 million people watched it live that it somehow makes the content less meaningful, but that can only hold if everyone knew exactly what he was going to say beforehand. In which case noone would have watched it. So really, what the hell is this about?

What was IN THE SPEECH?

Time to grow up maybe

2005-06-30T07:27:00.000+02:00

Apparently I am younger at heart than I really am (32), by a few years. It must have been the SpongeBob answer, cos I thought I was going to end up much older than I am...

You Are 26 Years Old

26

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe.

13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world.

20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences.

30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more!

40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

2005-06-29T15:37:00.000+02:00

Google mapping odd places.

2005-06-29T13:10:00.000+02:00

Google maps is fun for finding your own house, if you happen to be in one of the high-resolution areas. But you can also do some of your own spy work.

For instance, in one of the few high detail areas of Iran we find this not particularly civil looking place. Hmm, what's in all those identical hangars I wonder?

I wonder where the maps come from, given the sparse coverage of such countries, that there are highly detailed maps of air force bases, with planes on the runway even?

If you know where to look you can also find sigint stations around the world and lots more.

Something from the NYT you won't see in Swedish

2005-06-29T10:13:00.000+02:00

This from the NYT, via Instapundit. I wonder when we will see this translated into the Swedish dailies, which usually use the NYT as gospel. Oh wait, I know when, Zzzzzzzz...

Senators Laud Treatment of Detainees in Guantánamo

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: June 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 27 - Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.

"I feel very good" about the detainees' treatment, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.

That feeling was also expressed by another Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

On Monday, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said he learned while visiting Guantánamo that some detainees "even have air-conditioning and semiprivate showers."

Another Republican, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, said soldiers and sailors at the camp "get more abuse from the detainees than they give to the detainees." . . .

Cruise again???

2005-06-29T08:40:00.000+02:00

In a review of the new War of the Worlds I found this apparently unintentional humour...

Cruise, who plays a self-indulgent misfit divorced from his wife

Did they accidentally describe Cruise's life rather than his character? Oh wait, they are one and the same. "Tom Cruise once again playing himself in this summer's blockbuster etc etc."

Oh the movie looks like shit. Stop remaking old classics and get some NEW ideas for Christ's sake! Oh, and not every fricking movie needs some lame political subtext to "make you think".

Watermelons

2005-06-28T12:51:00.000+02:00

An interesting tidbit in a Green missive...

There is an increasingly active network of trade unionists within the Green Party

Which probably explains barking mad ideas like...

The right to strike on significant social, political and environmental issues – not just around employment agreements.

Yeah, great, hold everyone hostage to (insert cause-of-the-week here) by striking about it.

Does anyone really need any further proof that they are a bunch of Marxist fools?

It's not easy being Green

2005-06-28T12:23:00.000+02:00

"National leads Labour in latest poll"

National: 40.1
Labour: 36.2
NZ First: 11.8
Greens: 4
Maori Party: 3.1
ACT: 1.9
United Future: 1.3

While I'd be sorry to see ACT disappear, the demise of the Greens for a term or two (or forever) would be ample compensation.

And, if newspapers cut out all the totally useless comments,

Victoria University political scientist Nigel Roberts said Labour and National were both trying to gain maximum advantage in the period before the campaign.

wouldn't they be much cheaper? I mean, no shit Sherlock.

We had to destroy the wabbit hole in order to save it.

2005-06-28T12:17:00.000+02:00

Can't wait for the Greens to throw a complete spazz over this...

Rabbit exploding device proves popular

It is probably the most humane way to kill an animal, causing a haemorrhage at the base of the spine and exploding the animal's lungs with the oxygen, he said.

Must keep straight face...

The death of rabbits is not covered by laws on humane animal killing because it is classed as a pest, but Mr Meyer said experiments showed the rabbits died instantly.

Scare-symbol headlines

2005-06-28T08:59:00.000+02:00

How often do you see an image as part of a headline?

Almost never right? So if a radiation symbol was used as part of a headline, what would it imply? Why use it? Surely to add impact, in this case it is a warning symbol so the implication is what, nuclear weapons? The article would be about North Korea? Iran?

Nope...

USA vill producera plutonium 238

The article appears to be a straight translation of a Reuters release (minus scare symbol)...

US plans to resume plutonium 238 production - report
28 June 2005

NEW YORK: The United States plans to produce highly radioactive plutonium 238 for the first time since the Cold War, The New York Times reported yesterday.

The newspaper quoted project managers as saying most, if not all, of the new plutonium was intended for secret missions. The officials would not disclose details, but the newspaper said the plutonium in the past powered espionage devices.

The Times said Timothy Frazier, head of radioisotope power systems at the US Energy Department, vigorously denied in a recent interview any of the classified missions would involve nuclear arms, satellites or weapons in space.

"The real reason we're starting production is for national security," Frazier was quoted as saying.

Officials at the Energy Department could not be reached for comment.

The program, which the newspaper said had raised concerns among environmentalists, would produce 150 kg over 30 years at the Idaho National Laboratory. The program could cost $US1.5 billion and generate over 50,000 drums of hazardous and radioactive waste, federal officials told the Times.

Plutonium 238 is hundreds of times more radioactive than plutonium 239, which is used in nuclear arms, according to the newspaper. Medical experts say inhaling even a speck posed a serious risk of lung cancer, the Times said.

The newspaper said plutonium 238 had no central role in nuclear arms, but was valued for its steady heat that could be turned into electricity. Nuclear batteries made from it power spacecraft to go where sunlight is too dim to energise solar cells.

Federal and private experts not connected to the project were quoted as saying the new plutonium would likely power devices for espionage under the sea and on land.

The United States last made plutonium 238 in the 1980s and now relied on aging stockpiles or imports from Russia, the newspaper said. It added that under the agreement with Russia, the United States could not use the imports - about 16 kg since the end of the Cold War - for military purposes.

Now I may be reading a bit much into this, but what is the big deal? The US, instead of soaking up Russian material, rather than leaving it lying around, is going to produce it again. For power sources, not weapons. It is not much different to producing other isotopes for medical and research purposes. So really, what is the news? Why the big bad bogey symbol?

Tom Cruise, idiot

2005-06-27T12:53:00.000+02:00

Interview with a moron...

TOM CRUISE:

No, you see. Here's the problem. You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do.//

MATT LAUER:

//aren't there examples, and might not Brooke Shields be an example, of someone who benefited from one of those drugs? TOM CRUISE:

all it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.

....

TOM CRUISE: But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways of vitamins and through exercise and various things. I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what-- what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, anti-psychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. // the thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She-- she doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt.

No such thing as a chemical imbalance, but take these other chemicals and you will be fine?

Tom Cruise, scientologist extraordinaire, scientific illiterate, historically challenged.