Journolist - a Real Liberal Conspiracy

via Ed West at the Telegraph, this story :

In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.

The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists.

And they didn't like it - so did something about it.

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — call them racists.”

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian [my emphasis] also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

Calling a political opponent a racist ? Hmm, worth a try. Not been done before.

"Discourse that serves the people". Very Soviet. But as Andrew Breitbart puts it : 'the reporters at Pravda weren't such insufferable ******* !"

A Dodgy Decision

Here.

According to the complaint filed by the woman, the two met in a Jerusalem street in 2008 and had sex that day. When she discovered he was not Jewish, but an Arab, she went to the police. Kashur was arrested and charged with rape and indecent assault, but the charges were later replaced by a different charge of "rape by deception".

Hmm. I thought it was a truism that a young man will say pretty much anything to get a woman into bed.

The inventive and resourceful Syrian Fadi Sbano was acquitted of rape by a UK court for a lot more than that. Not sure he'd have got that verdict in Israel.

UPDATE

In the verdict, deputy president of the Jerusalem district court Tzvi Segal, along with fellow judges Moshe Drori and Yoram Noam, wrote that although this wasn't "a classical rape by force," and the sex was consensual, the consent itself was obtained through deception and under false pretenses. "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated," the judges wrote.

I see. They'd been together for months before he had his wicked way ?

According to the indictment, Kashur met the complainant in September 2008 in downtown Jerusalem.. the couple then went to a nearby building and had sex, after which Kashur left the building without waiting for the woman to get dressed.

Hmm. Not a gentleman, then. But didn't exactly take a lot of persuasion, did she ?

"The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price - the sanctity of their bodies and souls," Segal wrote.

Hmm.

Noah Fence

At the beginning of the meeting, David Cameron said "this is a national issue of the highest importance; it has both demographic and humanitarian aspects. In effect, we are the only western country that lacks a clear immigration policy. Today, we will start the discussion in order to correct this."

The prime minister added that the new law, drafted by Minister of Justice Ken Clarke, "should conform to our national interests, first and foremost providing security and ensuring the British and democratic character of the country."

"Illegal immigrants are endangering Britain's existence," he said. "The south of England has fallen under siege."

Foreign Minister William Hague and Home Secretary Theresa May discussed the possibility of sending some of the thousands of illegal African immigrants in London to African and European countries that are willing to accept them. Hague said he is talking to his European counterparts, but that it is unlikely that such a plan will succeed.

Gosh ... can this be real ?

The government held a special session this morning on various issues connected with illegal immigration.

What ... where am I ? Oh no ! It was all a dream !



"The government held a special session this morning on various issues connected with illegal immigration. Disappointment, directed mainly at Defense Minister Ehud Barak, was expressed at the fact that construction of the fence between Egypt and Israel would begin only in November.

The purpose of the fence is to block African infiltrators making their way into Israel via the Sinai Desert. Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovitch says there are some 150,000 illegal infiltrators, only 16 percent of whom are registered and known to the authorities."



Good fences make good neighbours, said Robert Frost's neigbour, and India seems to agree. They finished their fence across Kashmir ages ago.

The barrier itself consists of double-row of fencing and concertina wire eight to twelve feet (2.4–3.7 m) in height, and is electrified and connected to a network of motion sensors, thermal imaging devices and alarms in stretches where power supply is available. The small stretch of land between the rows of fencing is mined.

The Bangladesh barrier is proceeding apace :

The barrier is just under three meters high with the aim to stop infiltration of terrorists, prevent smuggling, and to prevent large scale illegal immigration from Bangladesh into neighbouring states. Under the former government of Khaleda Zia and the Islamic extremist Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh troops clashed with the Indian Border Security Force in an attempt to prevent fencing. Some indigenous Assamese fear that they, as a people, will be reduced to a minority if unabated infiltration continues.

Poor Assamese. Imagine how English people would feel if that happened to them.

"We Don't Need No Piece of Paper From The City Hall"

Raoul Moate's brother (by a different father) speaks. Nature, nurture, or what ? He's a tax officer with a Masters degree.

The brothers had different fathers, but neither was told who they were. Raoul made it very clear ('I haven't got a Dad' - LT), in his last stand in Rothbury, that this was something he cared a great deal about, and, even though Angus understands that the 70s were different, that there was far more stigma about babies born out of wedlock, his fury at the situation arrives almost on the same breath.

"I feel very strongly that a child has a right to know who his father is. I don't think a selfish woman has a right to have a baby as her own plaything. I think there are massive indications there for somebody's identity in adult life. We weren't given the opportunity, for what I believe to be very selfish reasons." He has since discovered who his own father is, though he has no intention of contacting him; apparently, after all the publicity, someone has turned up claiming to be Raoul's. "I think it's a crying shame he's only turned up now Raoul's dead. It's a bit late in the day."

On Nature vs Nurture, I'm a more-or-less rather than either/or type, as in so many other things. In Steven Pinker's the Blank Slate, he posits a rough guide to how your kids will turn out, given 3 approximately* equal factors - with (I think) upbringing being the least of the three - depressing information for well-meaning daddy :

a) natural inheritance (genes)
b) upbringing
c) post-adolescence peer group

If the third be true, it may be that yet another Sixties liberal myth (albeit one still being pumped out by our educators) is exploded - although there is a difference between childhood and adolescence, maybe being kept away from the rough boys then makes you less likely to hang with them later. Many times I've listened to or read of some successful figure describing his childhood and taking an affectionate but condescending pop at parents who wouldn't let them hang out with the rough boys down the road. Maybe that parental decision is why they're on Desert Island Discs.

When the academic Moat brother was doing politics at Nottingham, the other had discovered the society of the gym and its steroid subculture.

I don't think Raoul's background (more here) fits by any means the classic underclass scenario. But, as study after study shows, fatherless children, even after controlling for the lower income of single parents, do worse on pretty much every measure of human achievement.

As A.H. Halsey puts it in his foreword to "Families Without Fatherhood":

“The children of parents who do not follow the traditional norm (i.e. taking on personal, active and long-term responsibility for the social upbringing of the children they generate) are thereby disadvantaged in many major aspects of their chances of living a successful life. On the evidence available such children tend to die earlier, to have more mental illness, to do less well at school, to exist at a lower level of nutrition, comfort and conviviality, to suffer more unemployment, to be more prone to deviance and crime, and finally to repeat the cycle of unstable parenting from which they themselves have suffered.”

There's nothing we can do about it, though. As Sunny so perceptively pointed out a month or so back, people who have children and don't get married wouldn't be any more likely to stay together if they DID marry each other. His conclusion is that people who don't marry are just the kind of people with low commitment to the relationship, who are more likely to split (aka desert the kids), married or not !




* I think those three factors stand provided the upbringing is not 'extreme' - in which bets may be off. Obviously an infancy or childhood of torture or abuse will have a hefty effect - as will, say, being brought up in a closed religious community, or selected for the Janissaries (in both these instances your peer-group gets chosen for you as well, securing two out of three factors).

French Rioting Season Commences

"Youths" were (relatively) quiet in France last summer, although seasonal traditions such as the New Year car-burnings are still well-supported.

Every summer, like King Arthur's men at the feast of Pentecost, the youths await a sign - some strange portent or happening after the schools break up which means that the car-burning season may commence. That sign has now been given :

Karim Boudouda, 27, was one of two men believed to have held up a casino, escaping with more than 20,000 euros (£17,000). He was killed in a shoot-out with police following the robbery. Violence flared after his memorial service. Mr Boudouda, 27, had three previous convictions for armed robbery. The other suspect escaped and is still on the run.

And the season commences :

The incident begun in the early hours of Saturday morning when rampaging youths stoned a tramway and attacked it with baseball bats and iron bars. The gangs then set cars on fire and opened fire against officers. The officers returned fire.

Shooting at the police is fast becoming as integral a part of the season as a flambéed Renault :

Four young men found guilty of shooting at the police during riots on the outskirts of Paris in 2007 were jailed for between three and 15 years early Sunday. Defence lawyers denounced the sentences as “extremely harsh” and claimed that political considerations had influenced the cases.

Great White Defendant ?

In Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, the (white) state prosecutors, watching the stream of poor black and Hispanic defendants being processed by the courts, long for the appearance of The Great White Defendant, someone whose prosecution will publicly prove that the law makes no distinction of colour or class, and privately assuage the nagging guilt of the prosecutors.

"Every assistant D.A. in the Bronx ... shared Captain Ahab's mania for the Great White Defendant . For a start, it was not pleasant to go through life telling yourself "What I do for a living is, I pack blacks and Latins off to jail" .. it made the boys uneasy, this eternal prosecution of the blacks and Latins."

As the forces of the law closed around the late Thomas Moat last Friday, the Magistrate pondered from the peaceful seclusion of West London whether the seemingly inexplicable recent tendency to violence of the North Countryman was just coincidence :

Murderous rampages are mercifully rare, but perhaps it is no more than chance that the two recent killing sprees took place a long way from my patch.

While I don't attempt to minimise the vileness of Moat's crimes, one death doth not a killing spree make. By strange chance, as the Magistrate was writing, only a couple of miles up the road, police were arresting someone in relation to the murders of two people, and the shooting of a third, in the previous few days - after Moat's attacks.

The post mortem of the man killed by mystery gunmen in rush hour traffic outside his Cricklewood home yesterday is set to happen this afternoon. Neighbours said the victim was an Eastern European builder, aged in his 50s, who lived in Garth Road, next to the A41 Hendon Way. He was shot “multiple times”through the window of his black van as he pulled out of the road onto the busy 6-lane artery and pronounced dead at the scene.

Nasty.

The third alleged victim of a man arrested over the shooting in Cricklewood on Thursday has been named. The man, 58, was found dead on Friday and named as Osman Grbic. He was found in a flat in Milton Avenue, East Ham with gunshot wounds. The suspect is also wanted over the shooting of two other men: Nezir Golaj, 45, of Garth Road, Cricklewood, who died of multiple gunshot wounds last Thursday, and the non fatal shooting of a 43-year-old man in Haringey.

Hmm. Two in two days and a third injured.

A Kosovan man is set to appear in court today charged with three shootings in north and East London, including the murder of a Cricklewood builder. Hajdar Kasumaj, 50, of Firs Lane, Winchmore Hill will attend Westminster Magistrates Court today charged with murdering Nezir Golaj, 45, near his home in Garth Way on Thursday. He is also accused of murdering Osman Grbic, 58, in East Ham on Friday evening and the attempted murder of a 43-year-old in Wightman Road, Hornsey, the same day. Mr Kasumai is also charged with three counts of possessing a firearm, possessing a prohibited weapon, a silencer and ammunition without a license.

I'm just reading Misha Glenny's McMafia, on the vast corruption and gangsterism of the post-Soviet world and how globalisation has facilitated ever-expanding criminal networks.

Behar Dika, from Cheyne Walk, Hendon, was last month found guilty of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and money laundering. Kingston Crown Court heard during the trial that Dika was the leader of a network that was supplying cocaine from three addresses, including in Second Avenue, Hendon, and laundering the cash through a bureaux de change in west London. False companies were established by two co-defendants and over a period of time they were able to take nearly £10million in cash to a legitimate bureau de change and trade the sterling for Euros in 500 denomination notes A statement from Scotland Yard said the bulk of this laundered money has never been traced, despite “extensive enquires”.

Following earlier information, police raided the home of Besnik Alla, 31, of Princes Parade, Golders Green Road, Golders Green, and uncovered more cocaine and cash. Albanian national Dika, 35, and his brother Elton Dika, 27, of no fixed address, were found to be directly linked to the drugs factories controlled by the network and to the money laundering operation. The older brother was found guilty last month of supplying cocaine and money laundering. He was jailed yesterday for a total of 18 years. Alla pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on January 11 to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug and was sentenced to six years.

Elton Dika pleaded guilty on April 21 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs and received five years imprisonment.

The other gang members sentenced yesterday are as follows: Xhovan Gripshi, 31, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on April 22 to allowing a premises to be used for the supply of class A drugs. Sentenced to two years nine months imprisonment. Fabiol Beqiri, 23, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on April 22 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to two years imprisonment. Abu Tarab Raja, 27, from Hounslow, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on January 29 to conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to six years imprisonment. Kanwaldeep Deol, 40, from Hayes, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on November 20, 2009, to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug. Sentenced to six years imprisonment. Jaspreet Singh Gill, 27, Hayes, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court on the same date to conspiracy to supply controlled class A drugs and conspiracy to launder the proceeds of a conspiracy to supply class A drugs. Sentenced to a total of nine years. Emiljan Shega, 19, from Wembley, pleaded guilty at Kingston Crown Court, on the same date to conspiracy to supply a controlled class A drug. Sentenced to ten years imprisonment

North London seems as bad as Sarf these days. I'll leave you to read all about the dismembered love-triangle pensioner and the drug dealer's girlfriend.

Five Years On

Listening to the BBC on Wednesday, July 7th, 5th anniversary of the 7/7 attacks, was an odd experience.

'Nikki' Campbell's morning programme treated the events as you would a flood or other natural disaster - tales of coping and survival. People were interviewed about how they escaped, how they treated the wounded, how they first heard the news. Not a mention of the perpetrators, still less the M- or I- words. Hitler got a mention, the IRA - none of 'them' could break the spirit of Londoners and neither would 'this'. You'd think the attacks were just a thing that happened.

In the PM and World Tonight programmes the perpetrators were still only mentioned obliquely - in one interview after another, a kind of conversational tapestry was woven all around them without ever actually alighting on them, so that their image was marked by a hole, an absence. What we did get in the heavyweight programmes was warning after warning that anti-terrorist activity and legislation not be 'counter-productive' - that it not upset the (still un-named) 'community' and create more terrorists. Our ruling class are 'frit', as Mrs Thatcher would put it.

And with perfect timing for the anniversary, we were treated to Jeremy Hardy on 'How To Confront The Vexed Issue Of British Identity Without Getting In The Most Fearful Bate About The Whole Thing', a 30-minute lecture on how 'they' are in fact just like 'us', that there is absolutely nothing to worry about and the sooner we realise that fact the happier we'll all be.

The anniversary 'refocused attention on Islamist terrorism' according to the Guardian. Not on the BBC it didn't.

Friday Night Dixie - Money Talks

I think this is quite a way better than the original.

Sunny Hundal "Two Great Truths" Shocker

Now that Labour are consigned to the privatised council dustcart (rubbish/recyclables alternate weeks) of history, its adherents seem able to speak a few previously un-nameable truths.

First of all, a little aside in a Lib Con piece by one Adam Ramsey :

"Tony Blair seemed to believe that if you sound like a Tory, you can sneak through some Labour policies. So he switched from “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” to announcing initiatives to march ‘hoodies’ to cash machines.

And while these statements were Daily Mail fodder which never actually happened, a whole generation of people began to believe that attacking those who commit crime is the appropriate response ..."

I've been pointing that out for five years at least.



And here's the Sunster himself telling it like it is - or was :

The war on social issues has broadly been won by the left.

Can't argue with that, can you ? Nor with this (other than the word 'great') :

" ... expanding the size of the welfare state and making it central to people’s lives, despite Thatcher’s best attempts to destroy it, was one of New Labour’s greatest achievements ..."

He's not too sound on his history - given that the Thatcher years saw the explosion of the British underclass and the fatherless family*, and some fairly hefty public spending. But his point about trying to create as many welfare recipients as possible is a valid one. This struck me when I realised that an income of 48K entitled one to Child Tax Credit. The Gord giveth and the Gord taketh away. Welcome to the Benefits Big Tent !





* as Charles Murray put it :

When I wrote (in 1989) in the Sunday Times Magazine that Britain did indeed have an underclass, small but growing, the news had no natural constituency. Conservative politicians were embarrassed that crime, unemployment, and illegitimacy had soared conspicuously on their watch, and would just as soon have ignored the whole thing. The Left, ordinarily delighted to blame anything on Margaret Thatcher, couldn’t admit that crime really was rising and large numbers of people were exploiting the dole without sounding like lower-case conservatives. As for unmarried women having babies, it was a good sign, not a bad one, that women were no longer forced into marriage just because they got pregnant. From Left and Right alike, the notion of a British underclass was generally dismissed as an attempt to impose an American paradigm on British problems that weren’t really so terrible anyway.

It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

A feminist classic of Edwardian times, recorded in 1932 by the Spanish mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia.

I once walked with her by the Arno, in Florence, where navvies engaged in road work put down their picks and stared in frank admiration as she passed. Supervia, without even a glance in their direction, sensed their admiration and visibly preened herself.

"You surely don’t enjoy men looking at you like that?" I asked.

"I do," she replied, amused at such a very Anglo-Saxon question. "I don’t find it unpleasant to think that they are all saying to themselves, “If I was a rich man, that’s what I’d want.”"

If you want to learn a lesson with the fan,
I'm quite prepared to teach you all I can
So ladies, every one, pray observe how it is done,
It's a simple little lesson with the fan.

If you chance to be invited to a ball,
And meet someone that you don't expect at all,
And you want him close beside you,
While a dozen friends divide you,
Well of course, it's most unladylike to call,

So you look at him a minute - nothing more
And you cast your eyes demurely on the floor,
And you wave your fan just so,
Well, towards you, don't you know,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

When you see him coming to you, simple you,
Oh be very, very careful what you do
With your fan just kindly play,
And look down as if to say
It's a matter of indifference to you,

Then you flutter and you fidget with it so,
And you hide your little nose behind it so,
And when he begins to speak
You just lay it on your cheek,
In that fascinating manner that you know,

And when he tells the old tale o'er and o'er,
And vows that he will love you evermore,
Gather up your little fan
And secure him while you can,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

(When she takes a crack at an English song the results are quite charming.)

Today's Early Release Murderer - Strike One For Ken Clarke

Ken Clarke is so right - prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Take Raoul Moat for example - an ordinary bouncer from Gateshead who inadvertantly 'got caught up in crime' and assaulted someone.

Some idiot magistrate who probably read in the Mail that 'prison works' sent him down - and what happened ? He comes straight out and murders someone !

Armed officers are seeking Moat, 38, who is believed to have fired on the young victim, named locally as Samantha Stobbart, through the living room window. A man believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s was also shot dead outside the property in Birtley, Gateshead. He has not yet been named by police. Miss Stobbart, 22, who has a young daughter named Chanel, is thought to have been shot in the stomach and is now in a critical condition in hospital. Moat has previously worked as a nightclub doorman and was released from jail on Thursday after serving time for assault.

So our criminal justice system turns a man into a murderer with one short sentence ! Nobody gets a long sentence for a little thing like assault nowadays, do they ?

As Rob Allen of the Centre For Crime But No Justice Studies puts it :

His recognition in today's speech at King's College London that there are more people in prison than necessary is as welcome as it is overdue. His description of prison as often costly and ineffectual marks a return to late 1980s Conservative policy under Douglas Hurd, which saw that far from working, "imprisonment can often be an expensive way of making bad people worse."

UPDATE - that short sentence has done even more damage than we thought.

Police said the uniformed motor patrol officer was carrying out a "static patrol" on a roundabout joining the A1 and A69 when he was attacked. He suffered a gun shot wound and was taken to Newcastle General Hospital.

I suppose it's no surprise that Rob Allen is on board. I've just taken a look at Ian Duncan-Smith's Centre for Social Justice site. Who's on the Working Groups ?

Aslyum - Bob Holman, the holy fool of Easterhouse. Did they really ever send asylum seekers there ? That is what I call cruelty. And an asylum seeker, of course.

Courts and Sentencing - well, there's the chair of the Prisoners Education Trust, anti-prison activist Enver Solomon, deputy dawg at the anti-prison 'charity' based at King's College London. And who's this 'advisor' - no less than Rob Allen, director of same 'charity' !

Social Cohesion don't look too promising, either, given the presence of a Peace Studies lecturer whose book has 'a foreword by Jon Snow'.

Economic dependency looks a bit 50-50, Early Years seems full of pointy-heads .. only the Police Reform working group looks sound - Ray Mallon, Norman Dennis, David Green, Ken Pease (possibly the only non-Guardianista criminologist in existence). Even they have Steve Green, former head of Notts Police and the guy who in August 2005 issued his force with green ribbons "to show solidarity with the Muslim community after a series of racist attacks".

Prison reform - uber-liberal Rod "The Master" Morgan and James Monahan, the double murderer who writes for the Guardian - the CJS give him his pen-name. He also features (with Rob Allen again and some NACRO guy) in the Youth Justice area.

What we're seeing in Ken Clarke's "Back To The 80's" initiative is a toxic synergy between the desire of the Tories to cut government spending and the desire of the liberal establishment to bang no man up except racists and smokers. They pretend that a few more social workers and probation officer chats will cut crime and he pretends to believe them.

This is cost centre management at its very worst. Ken will save on the headline costs while passing on even more of the cost of crime, financial, social, moral, psychological, to individuals, families and communities.


















Looks like the Cameroon honeymoon is the shortest on record.

Support The Bangladeshi Garment Workers!

AFP -

DHAKA — Garment manufacturers in Bangladesh said they would reopen all factories closed Tuesday in the country's major industrial hub after authorities pledged to protect key plants from protests. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers, employees at some 700 factories that supply top names in Western retail, have been on strike since Saturday, demanding higher pay and forcing the closure some 700 factories.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), which represents factory owners, said the factories would be reopened Wednesday following a government pledge to put down the protests.

The decision marked a dramatic about face by factory owners, who earlier Tuesday declared that all factories in the affected area, Ashulia, which make clothing for global retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco, H & M and Carrefour, would be closed indefinitely.

About 800,000 workers are employed in the 700 factories in the area and "tens of thousands" have taken their grievances to the streets, forcing the shuttering of businesses, Dhaka's deputy police chief Monowar Hosain told AFP.

"We've stepped up security, brought in reinforcements but the problem is there are too many protesting workers," Hosain said. The workers are demanding wages of at least 5,000 taka (70 dollars) per month. The current minimum wage, set in 2006, is just 25 dollars.

70 dollars a month would definitely be an improvement, and would hasten the day when the average wage in Bangladesh becomes comparable with that in the UK - and we can make a few things again. Mind, the skills will have been long lost. But maybe they'll outsource some of the less skilled stuff to us.

Dumb Britain Part 628

not to mention de-Christianised Britain.

In a Mail piece about an Islamic private school, a staff member says :

‘Our Koran teaches us to respect the earlier prophets and the earlier revelations of the Bible and Torah,’ he told me. ‘If you do not believe in Jesus or Moses, you cannot be a true Muslim.’

To which a commenter responds :

Yes, you may believe in Jesus, but if your faith is merely in Him as a prophet, your faith is totally in vain. Only His shed blood can possibly wash away our sins. All other vehicles of faith are human vanity.
A proud Pakistani.

- Daoud Mohamed Ul-Haq, Peshawar

Now you may wonder if it's a wind-up, but the theology seems pretty sound to me.

Comment rating : -706. Did they see "proud Pakistani" and turn brain off ?

Strike One For The Old School

I mentioned a while back that the old school had produced few famous alumni. Nae mair. The new Poet Laureate, no less ? OK, a bit less. Oxford Professor of Poetry,then.

Hill was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, in 1932. "If you stood at the top of the field opposite our house," he once recalled, "you looked right across the Severn Valley to the Clee Hills and the Welsh hills very faint and far off behind them." At the age of eight, he witnessed the Nazi bombing which destroyed Coventry. Hill's work is marked by memories of the war, and contemplations of European history. His father and grandfather were village policemen. Hill identifies himself as working-class - indeed is "glad and proud to have been born into the English working class". He commemorated his maternal grandmother, who had spent her life making nails, in poem XXV of Mercian Hymns : "I speak this in memory of my grandmother, whose childhood and prime womanhood were spent in the nailer's darg [a day's work]... It is one thing to celebrate the 'quick forge', another to cradle a face hare-lipped by the searing wire." Hill was educated at Bromsgrove High School. Despite deafness in his right ear from the age of 11 because of severe mastoiditis, he was an excellent student, and although "somewhat apart", in the words of Norman Rea, a contemporary, he played soccer, acted in school plays, and became a prefect. One of his roles was to introduce a piece of classical music in morning assembly, which, Rea recalled years later, was a task he performed "with enjoyment and aplomb".

They still had the classical music before assembly when I was there, more then twenty years later. But by then the school had moved to the new concrete and glass structure off Alcester Road (Stratford Road to you young 'uns), and the old High School of Hibbins, Sailman et al was Parkside Secondary Modern. But as any educator will tell you, you can't teach children in old-fashioned buildings, and Geoffrey Hill's alma mater now lies derelict.
























Photo by Bullymeister

Drei fur die Hexe

From Germany, 1968 - the Rattles.



(fascinating factoid - singer Edna Bejerano's mother Esther survived the Orchestra of Auschwitz)


.... und noch ein mal - Ian Anderson in finest 'aargh, Jim lad' 1970 mode.




Is it just me, or does the witch Baba Yaga in this Russian short bear a resemblance to Deputy Dawg ?

Saturday Night Music - Baron of Brackley

One of my hobby-horses is the biological and evolutionary underpinning of male/female relationships :

"Evolutionary psychologists postulate that the same physical and psychological drives prevail among modern humans: Men, eager for replication, are naturally polygamous, while women are naturally monogamous—but only until a man they perceive as of higher status than their current mate comes along.

Hypergamy—marrying up, or, in the absence of any constrained linkage between sex and marriage, mating up—is a more accurate description of women’s natural inclinations. Long-term monogamy—one spouse for one person at one time—may be the most desirable condition for ensuring personal happiness, accumulating property, and raising children, but it is an artifact of civilization, Western civilization in particular. In the view of many evolutionary psychologists, long-term monogamy is natural for neither men nor women."

Which in times past produced winner-take-all males - and an awful lot of losers :

Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

I think this difference is the single most underappreciated fact about gender. To get that kind of difference, you had to have something like, throughout the entire history of the human race, maybe 80% of women but only 40% of men reproduced.

A situation which Christian civilisation was destined and designed to correct and struggle against. Although sin was always with us, any male proclaiming to the world that he took whatever he wanted was likely to be given short shrift by pre-1945 Britons. That was the cry of "primitive man", as far as they were concerned - people like the Papua New Guineans quoted in the foreword to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" :

"Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder."

The wife welcoming her husband's killer to her bed is a narrative with a literary pedigree and plenty of historical exemplars. The ballad of Brackley, based on a Deeside raid in 1666 by Farquharson of Inverey against John Gordon of Brackley, is a grim example where the husband's death sentence consists of the words 'if you were a man you'd go out and fight' - at odds of fifteen to one.

From Dee side came Inverey whistlin' and playin'
And he is to Brackley's gates ere the day is dawnin'
Saying, Baron O'Brackley oh are ye within?
There are sharp swords at your gates, to gar your bluid spin

Oh rise up my husband and turn back your kye (cattle - LT)
For the lads frae Dunwharrum are driving them by
Oh how might I rise up and turn them again
For where I have one man I'm sure they have ten

If I had a husband the like I have nane
He'd no lie in his bed and watch his kye ta'en
Then up spake the baron, said gi'e me my gun
Saying I may go out but I'll never win home

There rode wi' bold Inverey full thirty and three
But along wi' bonny Brackley just his brother and he
Twa gallanter Gordons did ne'er the sword draw
But against three and thirty, wae's me, what is twa?

Wi' swords and wi' pistols they did him surround
And they pierced bonny Brackley wi' monys a wound
Frae the head o the Dee, tae the banks of the Spey
Oh the Gordons will mourn him and will ban Inverey

Oh came ye from Brackley's, and was you in there?
And saw ye his Peggy a-rivin' her hair
Aye, I came by Brackley's, and I was in there
And I saw his bonny Peggy she was makin' good cheer

She was rantin', she was dancin', she was singin' wi' joy
And she swears this same nicht she will feast Inverey
She laughed wi' him, danced wi' him, welcomed him in
And she kept him while morning whae slain her good man

There's grief in the kitchen, there's mirth in the hall
For the Baron o Brackley lies dead and awa'
Then up spake his son from his own nurse's knee
If I live to be a man 'tis avenged I'll be

UPDATE - Robert Whelan, in the foreword to Patricia Morgan's "Farewell To The Family" put his finger on where modern warriors are coming from.

"We have created the classic conditions for the emergence of a warrior class: separation of economic activity from family maintenance; children reared apart from fathers; wealth subject to predation; and male status determined by combat and sexual conquest."

Presented in slightly idiotic socialese, this Atlantic piece describes urban warrior culture :

"At the heart of the code is the issue of respect--loosely defined as being treated "right," or granted the deference one deserves. However, in the troublesome public environment of the inner city, as people increasingly feel buffeted by forces beyond their control, what one deserves in the way of respect becomes more and more problematic and uncertain. This in turn further opens the issue of respect to sometimes intense interpersonal negotiation."

Ha ! That's one phrase for it.

UPDATE 2 - new blogger Hexe Froschbein ("Frog-legs the Witch" ?) points out in the comments that Christian culture was neither the first nor the only monogamous culture (never said it was, mind). Thoughtful Romans (a/c/t 'I, Claudius') considered the Germanic tribes to have a particularly strict code of sexual morality, which contrasted favourably with that of decadent Imperial Rome.
She links to this text-and-audio of Tacitus' Germania - "Tacitus’ descriptions of the Germanic character are at times favorable in contrast to the opinions of the Romans of his day. He holds the strict monogamy and chastity of Germanic marriage customs worthy of the highest praise, in contrast to what he saw as the vice and immorality rampant in Roman society of his day, and he admires their open hospitality, their simplicity, and their bravery in battle. One should not, however, think that Tacitus’ portrayal of Germanic customs is entirely favorable; he notes a tendency in the Germanic people for what he saw as their habitual drunkenness, laziness, and barbarism, among other traits."

I think we should remember, however, that from these noble savages sprang the French.

How To Trash a Brand

Laban's not a terribly brand-conscious individual unless it's a question of things you can taste and/or smell - and even then the product may change while the label stays the same. Many famous food brands have been bought and sold half a dozen times in the last 30 years, with production moved from factory to factory.

One of Laban's few brands was soap. I'll shower with Tesco's bottom of the range gel (literally about 10p) but for some reason I just love the smell of Pears soap. I know it won't give me the complexion of a young Susan Hampshire, but I like that the product is pretty much unchanged since the Pears company were annoying Millais in Victorian times.
















I'd buy ten or a dozen bars at a throw and stack them in the bottom drawer of the bathroom cupboard, so I'd only get it every year or so. I ran out last month, and went to buy some more. For some reason the stock in the shop smelled a bit odd, so I just took the one bar. They didn't seem to have any of the heftier bath size, either.

The first time I used it I wondered if the same company was making Wright's Coal Tar and there'd been a bit of cross-over on the production line. Wasn't right at all - a phenolic, chemical smell not at all like the delicate aroma I know and love.

Took a look at the packet. "Made In India by Licensed User Hindustan Unilever Ltd". Ah, I get it. It's a slightly dodgy approximation to the real thing made for less sophisticated overseas markets, and the shop's doing some grey importing. I bought some Heinz Salad Cream a week or two back for 46p, made in Amsterdam and with the label in half a dozen Arabic/Asian scripts. Just make sure you get the UK-made stuff next time, Laban.

Gulp. There ain't none no more. That's all there is.

According to Unilever records, Pears Soap was the world's first registered brand and is therefore the world's oldest continuously existing brand...

In October of 2009 the formula for the transparent amber soap was changed significantly. This completely changed the smell and texture of the soap, making it unrecognizable from the earlier product. The new soap is slightly softer in texture, but the most noticeable difference is the scent. The aroma of the classic transparent amber bar, which used to be characterized by a mild, spicy herbal fragrance, is now a very strong smell akin to frankincense, or even insecticide.

Sales must have dropped off a cliff. They really have knacked it (and they can't spell 'Click' on their website, either. I hate Flash intros on a website.). In Morrison's this week it was on sale at 35p as opposed to the usual 55p price. According to the Mail they were going to backtrack on the formula, but by the smell they appear to have instead moved production to Bhopal. What possessed them ? Why fix something that wasn't broke ?

Looks like farewell to Pears - and there's nothing else like it on the pharmacy or supermarket shelf - you have to hit Body Shop or some small specialist. There's a market opening there for someone fast on their feet.

South Africa Are Too Honest

They really need to take a leaf out of the book of some other lesser footballing nations hosting the World Cup for the first time :

a) make sure the 'draw' for the groups puts you in a group with at least two minnows. How about the USA, Slovenia and Algeria, for example ? Instead, they've got the nearest thing to a Group of Death that this World Cup affords. Mexico, Uruguay and France, all of whom can play a bit. Arrange the draw in the style of Spain 1982.

b) make sure the refs are 'onside'. I'd take advice on this from South Korea.

Bit late for them now. The ANC Government may have plenty of corruption allegations swirling around senior figures, but when it came to the really important stuff they couldn't deliver. Of course the team have to do it on the pitch, but a lot can be done with good preparation and organisation to ensure that the host nation stays inside FIFA guidelines by qualifying for the knockout stages.

The emptying stadium with ten minutes left told its own story. Alas !

Quote Of The Day

My son, at half time :


"You can have your nuclear weapons as long as you beat Brazil"

Signs Of The Times

Standard :

Street adverts featuring women in bikinis have been defaced in apparently targeted attacks. Most show women in swimwear by chain store H&M but another features a couple kissing to promote the Bollywood film Kites. Residents in affected London areas suggested the images, which were daubed with black paint, could have been targeted by religious conservatives or radical feminists. Police have not linked the campaign to any religious group but the damage is similar to attacks in Pakistan on billboard ads branded "un-Islamic" and "obscene" by hardliners. Today women's rights and anti-censorship activists joined Muslims and Christians to condemn the vandals. Police said 14 bus shelters around Tower Hamlets, including many in Limehouse, were hit last month.

Tower Hamlets is a hotbed of radical feminism, I hear.