Ed Thomas at Biased BBC reported on Tuesday that the BBC has appointed a ‘Bias Tsar’.
I don’t know whether he’s already having an effect, but it’s good to see the BBC carrying stories focusing on the lives of ordinary Iraqis, like this photo journal on the daily life of a Baghdad laborer and his family.
November 12, 2003
Charles and the press
François Brutsch at Un Swissroll has some thoughts on the allegations being made against Prince Charles. Some commentators are, reportedly, questioning his sexuality.
I tend to avoid news reports involving the British royals unless they impact on the political sphere, and salacious gossip is not my thing, so I haven’t been following the story. However, an English friend joked recently that it’s legitimate for the British people to want to know whether their next monarch will be a king or a queen.
Not that I think it matters. But, given the level of press attention and the lack of sympathy for Charles in some quarters, it might be wise for the British monarchy to think about adopting a policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
I tend to avoid news reports involving the British royals unless they impact on the political sphere, and salacious gossip is not my thing, so I haven’t been following the story. However, an English friend joked recently that it’s legitimate for the British people to want to know whether their next monarch will be a king or a queen.
Not that I think it matters. But, given the level of press attention and the lack of sympathy for Charles in some quarters, it might be wise for the British monarchy to think about adopting a policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
November 11, 2003
More burning questions
The BBC reports that a number of arrests have been made in connection with the burning of effigies of Gypsies at a Sussex bonfire celebration.
Police have arrested a total of six men on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after a bonfire society torched an effigy of a caravan with a gypsy family painted on the side.
There are no indications that police are investigating any of the incidents involving the burning of effigies of Catholics that took place in Lewes on November 5.
Why the difference?
Also this November: Adrian Hilton, writing in the Spectator, argues that the retention of anti-Catholic legislation in the UK is vital to national security.
Harry’s Place has a post and readers' comments on the Spectator article and, getting back to bonfires, Harry's also posted his thoughts on the Burning Bush campaign.
Police have arrested a total of six men on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after a bonfire society torched an effigy of a caravan with a gypsy family painted on the side.
There are no indications that police are investigating any of the incidents involving the burning of effigies of Catholics that took place in Lewes on November 5.
Why the difference?
Also this November: Adrian Hilton, writing in the Spectator, argues that the retention of anti-Catholic legislation in the UK is vital to national security.
The wording of the Bill of Rights explains, ‘And whereas it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant Kingdom to be governed by a Popish Prince or by any king or queen marrying a Papist....’ Ignoring what many consider to be unacceptable terms, such as ‘Popish’ and ‘Papist’, the key word is clearly ‘experience’. Parliament went to great lengths to make the Act foundational because the nation had learnt that when a Roman Catholic monarch is upon the throne, religious and civil liberty is lost. In reading the Act, it is interesting to note how often its purpose in settling the succession of the Crown is intrinsically linked to defending the ‘rights and liberties’ of the people. It states in no uncertain terms that it is ‘absolutely necessary for the safety, peace and quiet of this realm’.Do many people agree with him? I don’t know. But I’ve wondered about the extent of anti-Catholic sentiment in the UK before.
Harry’s Place has a post and readers' comments on the Spectator article and, getting back to bonfires, Harry's also posted his thoughts on the Burning Bush campaign.
On this day
November 11, 1864
My great grandfather is in Kernstown, Virginia. A veteran of Cold Harbor, Monocacy and Cedar Creek, he is serving with Co. 'M' of the New York 9th Artillery, part of Sheridan's VI Corps in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
My English grandfather, serving with 1st Battalion, The King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, is engaged in heavy fighting against superior German forces in the First Battle Of Ypres.
My father, captured while serving with the Rangers in Italy, is a POW at Stalag IIB near Hammerstein, Germany.
My great grandfather is in Kernstown, Virginia. A veteran of Cold Harbor, Monocacy and Cedar Creek, he is serving with Co. 'M' of the New York 9th Artillery, part of Sheridan's VI Corps in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
On October 19, at dawn, after an unparalleled night march, Confederate infantry directed by Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon surprised and overwhelmed the soldiers of Crook's corps in their camps at Cedar Creek. The XIX Corps suffered a like fate as the rest of Early's army joined the attack. Only the VI Corps maintained its order as it withdrew beyond Middletown, providing a screen behind which the other corps could regroup.November 11, 1914
Sheridan, who was absent when the attack began, arrived on the field from Winchester and immediately began to organize a counterattack, saying ``if I had been with you this morning, boys, this would not have happened.'' In late afternoon, the Union army launched a coordinated counterattack that drove the Confederates back across Cedar Creek. Sheridan's leadership turned the tide, transforming Early's stunning morning victory into afternoon disaster.
My English grandfather, serving with 1st Battalion, The King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, is engaged in heavy fighting against superior German forces in the First Battle Of Ypres.
Fighting around Ypres would linger on until 22 November when the onset of winter weather forced a break in hostilities. The combat during this engagement was extremely confusing and unrelenting. After the fight, British survivors were content to say that they had been at "First Ypres"; no more information was necessary to explain what they endured.November 11, 1944
One soldier, Private Donald Fraser, explained it this way: "one [a man] was not a soldier unless he had served on the Ypres front." Less than half of the 160,000 men the BEF sent to France came out of the encounter unscathed.
My father, captured while serving with the Rangers in Italy, is a POW at Stalag IIB near Hammerstein, Germany.
Treatment was worse at Stalag IIB than at any other camp in Germany established for American POW before the Battle of the Bulge. Harshness at the base Stalag degenerated into brutality and outright murder on some of the Kommandos. Beatings of Americans on Kommandos by their German overseers were too numerous to list, but records that 10 Americans in work detachments were shot to death by their captors.
November 10, 2003
Dailee's back
Dailee took a break in October but she’s been back up and blogging since the start of the month. You might want to pop over and say hello.
A new feature in the Dailee sidebar is the “Here Now, Gone Tomorrow?” section, where she links, without comment, to articles of interest by other bloggers. It’s an interesting idea and fascinating to follow the threads over a number of days.
The last few times I’ve visited, Dailee has used the space to link to a handful of posts around the idea of gender roles: diversity and conformity. Or at least, that’s the thread I found running through the links; without comments from the blogger as a guide, you’re free to draw your own connections and conclusions.
I’m enthralled, not least because my Full-time father post was in the box last week. Today, among others, there’s a link to a post from Acidman, called Sleeping Late, that covers similar ground but from a different perspective. Check it out.
Welcome back Lee!
A new feature in the Dailee sidebar is the “Here Now, Gone Tomorrow?” section, where she links, without comment, to articles of interest by other bloggers. It’s an interesting idea and fascinating to follow the threads over a number of days.
The last few times I’ve visited, Dailee has used the space to link to a handful of posts around the idea of gender roles: diversity and conformity. Or at least, that’s the thread I found running through the links; without comments from the blogger as a guide, you’re free to draw your own connections and conclusions.
I’m enthralled, not least because my Full-time father post was in the box last week. Today, among others, there’s a link to a post from Acidman, called Sleeping Late, that covers similar ground but from a different perspective. Check it out.
Welcome back Lee!
Focus on crime
It’s been a slow start to the week after a fairly hectic weekend.
I stayed up late Saturday night in the hope of catching the lunar eclipse. Cloud cover kept me from seeing very much at all. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve somehow offended the sky gods, because it looks like clear skies elsewhere allowed a good view of the event.
I didn’t see a lot in the sky Saturday night but I did manage to disturb some local lads who were taking an unhealthy interest in Mac’s car. They didn’t do much damage but this kind of thing is getting monotonous.
Regular readers will know this is the same car that was stolen in October. We’ve only just got it back from the pound.
On the strength of this incident, Jay at A Voyage to Arcturus reckons amateur astronomers should get a discount on their car insurance. I don’t know. I was thinking of getting a big, heavy telescope and keeping it close to hand, just in case it happens again.
I realize I'm open to criticism for choosing a brute-force solution but, for some reason, it appeals to me at the moment.
I stayed up late Saturday night in the hope of catching the lunar eclipse. Cloud cover kept me from seeing very much at all. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve somehow offended the sky gods, because it looks like clear skies elsewhere allowed a good view of the event.
I didn’t see a lot in the sky Saturday night but I did manage to disturb some local lads who were taking an unhealthy interest in Mac’s car. They didn’t do much damage but this kind of thing is getting monotonous.
Regular readers will know this is the same car that was stolen in October. We’ve only just got it back from the pound.
On the strength of this incident, Jay at A Voyage to Arcturus reckons amateur astronomers should get a discount on their car insurance. I don’t know. I was thinking of getting a big, heavy telescope and keeping it close to hand, just in case it happens again.
I realize I'm open to criticism for choosing a brute-force solution but, for some reason, it appeals to me at the moment.
Punk and New Wave
Michele at A Small Victory has a number of good posts up about Punk and New Wave music. I was interested enough to get involved in the comments. Lileks was there too. In fact, he started Michelle off on the whole thing.
I’ve heard people say that Punk and New Wave were terms invented after the fact, by record companies and the media, to describe phenomena they weren’t part of and didn’t understand. KFX makes the same point in a comment to one of Michele's posts.
It's a view that's surprisingly widespread, but it's certainly not the way I remember it.
From what I've heard, the New York Dolls were Punk in ‘74; the people who went to see them knew that. They didn’t think it because the New Yorker told them to. Malcolm McLaren knew the Sex Pistols were going to be a Punk band when he put them together. He’d worked with the New York Dolls and had seen the possibilities.
In England in late ’76, “punk rockers” seemed to be everywhere. Most of them were following fashion, but the bands they followed knew they were playing Punk Rock. They didn’t find the word in the Sunday Times; they knew it already. They could occasionally be quite provocative on the subject, as I remember it.
In England in ’76, the Listener magazine was talking about “a new wave” of “punk-rock groups” and those who weren’t close to the music might use the terms interchangeably. But by 1977, there was a lot of other new music around apart from Punk. On the home front, not all the kids who’d picked up guitars had stuck to three chords. And, more and more, American bands playing new music where coming over to England and getting a warm reception. New Wave became anything that was new music but wasn’t Punk. Or at least, that’s how I used the term back then.
Not that people didn’t argue about it. In Liverpool, discussions about which bands were “real” punks and which weren’t could get heated. Lileks hit the nail on the head (as usual) when he commented.
I managed to catch a slice of Punk and early New Wave, though my perspective is a little parochial: a couple of years in Liverpool in the late 1970s. Whatever you want to call it, the distinctive thing about the UK scene at the time was that it seemed as much a social movement as a music genre.
It was a do-it-yourself revolution.
Kids who’d been learning to play guitar, jacked in the lessons and started to gig instead. You didn’t have to be good (or, in my case, even competent), you just had to play. You can categorize the resulting noise any way you want, but the energy that went into making the music was new and it had attitude.
The influence of Punk and the New Wave music of the late seventies and early eighties is far-reaching and well attested. What’s often overlooked, is the revolution the music created in the UK distribution industry.
The same just-do-it approach and disdain for conventionality that went into the new music was carried over into its production and distribution. In response to the wave of new bands and new sounds, small independent labels sprang up (usually started by the band or friends of the band) to try and get the music out. The small record shops that sold the product (the big stores wouldn’t touch it) became meeting places for devotees of the new music. Probe Records was the place to go in Liverpool, but the pattern was pretty much the same all over.
Staffed by enthusiasts and seeing the demand, some of these record shops started to move into distribution. It was a backroom operation at first, small scale and simple, but in some cases it quickly grew to swamp the retail side of the business. This happened with Rough Trade in London and Revolver Records in Bristol. And when it did, UK independent music distribution was born.
Today, according to AIM, “the UK independent record sector accounts for a quarter of the UK market and leads the world in terms of music innovation.”
When I worked in the industry in the early nineties, Revolver Distribution had a multi-million pound turnover but was still owned and managed by a music enthusiast who’d started out distributing records from the back room of a small record shop in Bristol.
Restructured and renamed in 1993, Revolver (now called Vital) has been associated with a string of successes.
Twenty-five years on, I couldn’t tell you what happened to most of the bands, but one of the New Wave businesses just made it big.
I’ve heard people say that Punk and New Wave were terms invented after the fact, by record companies and the media, to describe phenomena they weren’t part of and didn’t understand. KFX makes the same point in a comment to one of Michele's posts.
It's a view that's surprisingly widespread, but it's certainly not the way I remember it.
From what I've heard, the New York Dolls were Punk in ‘74; the people who went to see them knew that. They didn’t think it because the New Yorker told them to. Malcolm McLaren knew the Sex Pistols were going to be a Punk band when he put them together. He’d worked with the New York Dolls and had seen the possibilities.
In England in late ’76, “punk rockers” seemed to be everywhere. Most of them were following fashion, but the bands they followed knew they were playing Punk Rock. They didn’t find the word in the Sunday Times; they knew it already. They could occasionally be quite provocative on the subject, as I remember it.
In England in ’76, the Listener magazine was talking about “a new wave” of “punk-rock groups” and those who weren’t close to the music might use the terms interchangeably. But by 1977, there was a lot of other new music around apart from Punk. On the home front, not all the kids who’d picked up guitars had stuck to three chords. And, more and more, American bands playing new music where coming over to England and getting a warm reception. New Wave became anything that was new music but wasn’t Punk. Or at least, that’s how I used the term back then.
Not that people didn’t argue about it. In Liverpool, discussions about which bands were “real” punks and which weren’t could get heated. Lileks hit the nail on the head (as usual) when he commented.
Punk and New Wave have been folded together. It's inevitable; what once were Great Schisms that wrecked friendships become, after a quarter-century, subtle stylistic differences. It's wrong, but history is lazy, and music historians even lazier.By 1980, the Washington Post was using the term more narrowly, when it referred to British bands like the Police and Elvis Costello as part of the English “New Wave”.
I managed to catch a slice of Punk and early New Wave, though my perspective is a little parochial: a couple of years in Liverpool in the late 1970s. Whatever you want to call it, the distinctive thing about the UK scene at the time was that it seemed as much a social movement as a music genre.
It was a do-it-yourself revolution.
Kids who’d been learning to play guitar, jacked in the lessons and started to gig instead. You didn’t have to be good (or, in my case, even competent), you just had to play. You can categorize the resulting noise any way you want, but the energy that went into making the music was new and it had attitude.
The influence of Punk and the New Wave music of the late seventies and early eighties is far-reaching and well attested. What’s often overlooked, is the revolution the music created in the UK distribution industry.
The same just-do-it approach and disdain for conventionality that went into the new music was carried over into its production and distribution. In response to the wave of new bands and new sounds, small independent labels sprang up (usually started by the band or friends of the band) to try and get the music out. The small record shops that sold the product (the big stores wouldn’t touch it) became meeting places for devotees of the new music. Probe Records was the place to go in Liverpool, but the pattern was pretty much the same all over.
Staffed by enthusiasts and seeing the demand, some of these record shops started to move into distribution. It was a backroom operation at first, small scale and simple, but in some cases it quickly grew to swamp the retail side of the business. This happened with Rough Trade in London and Revolver Records in Bristol. And when it did, UK independent music distribution was born.
Today, according to AIM, “the UK independent record sector accounts for a quarter of the UK market and leads the world in terms of music innovation.”
When I worked in the industry in the early nineties, Revolver Distribution had a multi-million pound turnover but was still owned and managed by a music enthusiast who’d started out distributing records from the back room of a small record shop in Bristol.
Restructured and renamed in 1993, Revolver (now called Vital) has been associated with a string of successes.
In 1996, Vital became the first independent distributor to have both the number one and two records in the national album charts in the same week with The Bluetones "Expecting To Fly" and Oasis "(What's The Story) Morning Glory".In 2000, Vital became the largest independent music distributor in the UK.
Twenty-five years on, I couldn’t tell you what happened to most of the bands, but one of the New Wave businesses just made it big.
November 08, 2003
More diplomatic criticism
A recent survey by the European Union found that 52% of Europeans believe America is a major threat to world peace. That puts us on a par with Iran and North Korea, and only slightly behind Israel, which 59% of Europeans regard as the country posing the greatest threat.
On Wednesday, Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe reacted to the news.
I don’t want to be too hard on Richard Wolffe. He’s just mouthing the same sort of nonsense James Rubin came out with back in August, and probably thinks he’s being clever. I hope he’s being partisan. Because if people really believe that those survey results, and the lack of European support on Iraq, are due to a failure of diplomacy by the Bush administration, then we’re in deeper trouble than I thought.
I’ll leave it to Natan Sharansky to ponder why a nation of Jews might be seen as a threat to peace and security. The European view of America is somewhat easier to explain. Put simply, Europeans are just not that fond of Americans; some are envious of our power but most are suspicious of our motives. They don’t like the way we organize our economy, they despise us for supporting Israel and they hate us because they think we’re destroying the environment.
How’s diplomacy going to help?
Update
A couple of other perspectives. One from the BBC on Arab and Israeli press reaction to the survey results. The other, an old Instapundit post, provides an insight into British public opinion on the Middle East, Europe and America; not timely but apt.
Update
In the essay by Natan Sharansky I link to he misquotes Martin Luther King. A Voyage to Arcturus has the story.
On Wednesday, Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe reacted to the news.
Shocking as they are, these numbers are not an excuse to beat up our favorite European stereotypes. There was a time when it was easy to dismiss the rest of the world as a bunch of spineless and spoiled children, hiding under America’s security umbrella while throwing hissy fits at the adults in Washington. (That was around the same time when it was easy to dump on anyone who cared about the rest of the world by branding them a weak-willed internationalist.)The survey results show that Europe is descending into anti-Semitism and a reflexive anti-Americanism. To think that the correct response to such bigotry and ignorance is more and better American diplomacy is morally inadequate. It is also unlikely to be effective.
That time is long gone. The European poll shows this dispute has gone far beyond name-calling. What started out as a little overheated rhetoric has grown into a full-blown crisis that threatens U.S. policy across the world.
I don’t want to be too hard on Richard Wolffe. He’s just mouthing the same sort of nonsense James Rubin came out with back in August, and probably thinks he’s being clever. I hope he’s being partisan. Because if people really believe that those survey results, and the lack of European support on Iraq, are due to a failure of diplomacy by the Bush administration, then we’re in deeper trouble than I thought.
I’ll leave it to Natan Sharansky to ponder why a nation of Jews might be seen as a threat to peace and security. The European view of America is somewhat easier to explain. Put simply, Europeans are just not that fond of Americans; some are envious of our power but most are suspicious of our motives. They don’t like the way we organize our economy, they despise us for supporting Israel and they hate us because they think we’re destroying the environment.
How’s diplomacy going to help?
Update
A couple of other perspectives. One from the BBC on Arab and Israeli press reaction to the survey results. The other, an old Instapundit post, provides an insight into British public opinion on the Middle East, Europe and America; not timely but apt.
Update
In the essay by Natan Sharansky I link to he misquotes Martin Luther King. A Voyage to Arcturus has the story.
Saturday roundup
Donald Sensing on the rationale for war in Iraq
Josh Chafetz’s speech at the Oxford Union debate on winning the peace
Michael J Totten on President Bush’s speech
Kim du Toit on the “Pussification of the Western Male”
Lileks reviews (and fisks a review of) Matrix Revolutions.
Josh Chafetz’s speech at the Oxford Union debate on winning the peace
Michael J Totten on President Bush’s speech
Kim du Toit on the “Pussification of the Western Male”
Lileks reviews (and fisks a review of) Matrix Revolutions.
November 07, 2003
Schrodinger’s cat
When it comes to the use of animals in scientific metaphor, I doubt whether any have been as badly treated as Schrodinger’s cat.
This unfortunate animal is repeatedly stuffed in a box and poisoned, all in the name of science. Cruel “thought experiments” like this might have some point if they advanced the public’s understanding of quantum mechanics, but it seems the poor creature is suffering in vain.
Here’s a shocking example of the cat’s mistreatment from Whatis.com.
This unfortunate animal is repeatedly stuffed in a box and poisoned, all in the name of science. Cruel “thought experiments” like this might have some point if they advanced the public’s understanding of quantum mechanics, but it seems the poor creature is suffering in vain.
Here’s a shocking example of the cat’s mistreatment from Whatis.com.
First, we have a living cat and place it in a thick lead box. At this stage, there is no question that the cat is alive. We then throw in a vial of cyanide and seal the box. We do not know if the cat is alive or if it has broken the cyanide capsule and died. Since we do not know, the cat is both dead and alive, according to quantum law, in a superposition of states. It is only when we break open the box and learn the condition of the cat that the superposition is lost, and the cat becomes one or the other (dead or alive).Ghastly!
Worse than cockroaches
Via Citizen Smash: Mark Steyn, writing in the Spectator, on the Western alliance and the death of Europe.
On 11 September 2001, I wrote that one of the casualties of the day’s events would be the Western alliance: ‘The US taxpayer’s willingness to pay for the defence of Canada and Europe has contributed to the decay of America’s so-called “allies”, freeing them to disband their armed forces, flirt with dictators and gangster states, and essentially convert themselves to semi-non-aligned.’ ‘The West’ was an obsolete concept, because, as I put it later that month, for everyone but America ‘the free world is mostly a free ride’.Steyn also has something to say about the cockroach metaphor. I agree it’s not particularly apt, but it makes a change from weasels.
November 06, 2003
Political pantomime
The BBC reports:
Michael Howard has been crowned Tory leader after winning the one-horse race to replace Iain Duncan Smith.A few weeks back, Oliver Kamm explained why Iain Duncan Smith had to go.
IDS is not talented; if he is bright, it isn't evident in anything he says or does. His abrasiveness, intended to project decisiveness, screams weakness. His attempted quips - the threat to shoot Tony Blair, the prediction that the men in grey suits delegated to depose him would leave without their suits - are always witless and sometimes surreal. His attacks on his political opponents are mean-spirited and small-minded. He is inarticulate and intellectually incurious.I can't wait to read what he thinks of Michael Howard.
Smear tactics
Last week, over a hundred scientists wrote an open letter to the British government complaining about its failure to correct misleading media reports on the results of GM crop trials.
Yesterday, as Envirospin Watch reports, the Guardian tried to discredit the signatories by accusing them of being stooges for the biotechnology industry.
Yesterday, as Envirospin Watch reports, the Guardian tried to discredit the signatories by accusing them of being stooges for the biotechnology industry.
November 05, 2003
Full-time father
Everything I’ve ever done for money:
Three years ago, I gave up work to look after the boys. We’d gotten fed up of a succession of unsuitable au-pairs (read “Jekyll and Hyde”) and decided one of us would have to stay home full-time. Mac was earning more than me, so she’s still putting in the hours.
I sometimes joke that I’ve retired, but some days I can’t imagine ever going back to work.
Paperboy, bakery worker, bus conductor, disc jockey, psychiatric nurse, games designer, entertainment manager, insulation installer, bookkeeper, project administrator, crystal-ball salesman, retail manager, internal auditor, financial controller, finance manager, entrepreneur, commercial manager, finance director, bank manager, management consultant, chief executive.Spending most of each day at home, mired in the isolation of domestic chores, I occasionally feel the need to remind myself that I was once valued for more than my uncanny ability with a feather duster.
Three years ago, I gave up work to look after the boys. We’d gotten fed up of a succession of unsuitable au-pairs (read “Jekyll and Hyde”) and decided one of us would have to stay home full-time. Mac was earning more than me, so she’s still putting in the hours.
I sometimes joke that I’ve retired, but some days I can’t imagine ever going back to work.
Perfidious BBC
In the past, I’ve criticized the BBC for its coverage of Palestinian terrorism and those who support it. Today, Natalie Solent, posting at Biased BBC, was pleased to see the BBC using the phrase “Palestinan violence”, along with its acknowledgement that “Israel sees the barriers as vital to stop suicide bombers flooding into its cities to terrorise the civilian population."
I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies, but I don’t think this marks a sea change in the BBC's attitude towards terrorist violence in the Middle East. The BBC’s Alan Little explained the Corporation’s stance on terrorism in an analysis piece for BBC News back in December 2001.
The BBC’s terror creed has three key tenets.
1. Terrorists are motivated by legitimate grievances.
2. Fighting terrorism directly is futile, “ the harder you hit it, the stronger it seems to grow”.
3. The War on Terror is US hypocrisy; America is as guilty of state terrorism as Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Iran and Libya.
I imagine it’s this sort of thing that prompts Natalie Solent to call the BBC “traitors to the civilisation they claim to represent”. The charge is not preposterous.
These days, British licence payers are a small minority of the BBC’s customers, it caters largely to an international audience. If that involves working against Britain’s interests then, as Greg Dyke made clear in April, the BBC will put its audience before its country every time.
I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies, but I don’t think this marks a sea change in the BBC's attitude towards terrorist violence in the Middle East. The BBC’s Alan Little explained the Corporation’s stance on terrorism in an analysis piece for BBC News back in December 2001.
The BBC’s terror creed has three key tenets.
1. Terrorists are motivated by legitimate grievances.
2. Fighting terrorism directly is futile, “ the harder you hit it, the stronger it seems to grow”.
3. The War on Terror is US hypocrisy; America is as guilty of state terrorism as Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Iran and Libya.
I imagine it’s this sort of thing that prompts Natalie Solent to call the BBC “traitors to the civilisation they claim to represent”. The charge is not preposterous.
These days, British licence payers are a small minority of the BBC’s customers, it caters largely to an international audience. If that involves working against Britain’s interests then, as Greg Dyke made clear in April, the BBC will put its audience before its country every time.
Ranting and raving
One of the joys of reading the Daily Telegraph (an otherwise fairly sensible, conservative newspaper) is that, every once in a while, one of their writers will lose a stabilizer and go spiralling off into an entirely inappropriate rant.
It happened again yesterday. Here’s the story.
A couple of weeks ago, in his regular EuroPress Review for NRO, Denis Boyles looked at some of the factors he thought might be responsible for the rise of nihilism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism in Europe.
Boyles focused on the “cockroaches” in the European Social Forum, (“a global, transnational, conglomerate of well-organized anarchistic antiglobalization groups”), and in particular, on Tariq Ramadan, one of the ESF’s leading lights and grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Adam Nicolson, writing in yesterday’s Telegraph had a response to Boyles’s piece. With some gusto, Nicolson gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and goes thrashing about with it in the tangled undergrowth of his own imaginings.
Iain Murray found the article interesting for a different reason.
It happened again yesterday. Here’s the story.
A couple of weeks ago, in his regular EuroPress Review for NRO, Denis Boyles looked at some of the factors he thought might be responsible for the rise of nihilism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism in Europe.
Boyles focused on the “cockroaches” in the European Social Forum, (“a global, transnational, conglomerate of well-organized anarchistic antiglobalization groups”), and in particular, on Tariq Ramadan, one of the ESF’s leading lights and grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Adam Nicolson, writing in yesterday’s Telegraph had a response to Boyles’s piece. With some gusto, Nicolson gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and goes thrashing about with it in the tangled undergrowth of his own imaginings.
That is a degree of loathing and contempt, of wilful misinterpretation of foreigners, which you would normally associate with propaganda about an enemy in wartime. Stupid, uneducated, infertile, morally incompetent, socially dead, more animal than human: Boyles's Europe is a continent of Calibans. At no time since the American War of Independence have Americans, or at least some of them, including the hardline Republican Americans of the sort now in government in Washington, viewed Europe and the Europeans with such visceral hatred.Did he say “wilful misinterpretation of foreigners”?
Iain Murray found the article interesting for a different reason.
November 04, 2003
Beyond the future
Joe Katzman links to a thought provoking post by Jay Manifold at A Voyage to Arcturus about Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev’s ideas on the physics of extraterrestrial civilizations.
Kardashev’s classification of civilizations depending on their level of energy use received popular attention after Michio Kaku introduced his ideas to the general public in his book “Hyperspace”, first published in 1994.
Musing on Kardashev’s ideas is fun but, as Michio notes, “any conjecture about such advanced civilizations is a matter of sheer speculation”. Of more relevance to our current situation, are Michio’s thoughts on the universal problem facing Type 0 civilizations: the discovery of element 92.
From “Hyperspace” (OUP 1994):
Kardashev’s classification of civilizations depending on their level of energy use received popular attention after Michio Kaku introduced his ideas to the general public in his book “Hyperspace”, first published in 1994.
Musing on Kardashev’s ideas is fun but, as Michio notes, “any conjecture about such advanced civilizations is a matter of sheer speculation”. Of more relevance to our current situation, are Michio’s thoughts on the universal problem facing Type 0 civilizations: the discovery of element 92.
From “Hyperspace” (OUP 1994):
The development of the internal combustion engine (for example, a car engine) requires the development of a complex chemical and industrial base, which can be accomplished by only a cohesive social unit numbering in the millions (for example, the nation-state).On the same page, Michio quotes Heinz Pagel’s words:
The discovery of element 92 upsets this balance between the slow steady rise of the cohesive social unit and its technological development. The releasing of nuclear energy dwarfs chemical explosives by a factor of a million, but the same nation-state that can harness the internal combustion engine can also refine element 92.
Thus a severe mismatch occurs especially when the development of this hypothetical civilization is still locked in the form of hostile nation-states. The technology for mayhem and destruction abruptly outpaces the slow development of social relations with the discovery of element 92.
It is natural, to conclude, therefore, that Type 0 civilizations arose on numerous occasions within the last 5- to 10-billion-year history of our galaxy, but that they all eventually discovered element 92. […] Regrettably, if we live long enough to reach nearby stars in our sector of the galaxy, we may see the ashes of numerous, dead civilizations that settled national passions, personal jealousies, and racial hatred with nuclear bombs.
The challenge to our civilization which has come from our knowledge of the cosmic energies that fuel the stars, the movement of light and electrons through matter, the intricate molecular order which is the biological basis of life, must be met by the creation of a moral and political order which will accommodate these forces, or we shall be destroyed. It will try our deepest resources of reason and compassion.It’s fun to muse “beyond the future” but the physics of extraterrestrial civilizations apply to us also. As the 21st century unfolds, it is not idle speculation to wonder whether our own civilization will survive to attempt the stars or perish in the fire.
November 03, 2003
At home with Hitler
Browsing and blogging can lead to a myriad of outcomes, as the Guardian’s Simon Waldman found out in August, when he posted an article featuring Adolf Hitler from a 1938 copy of “Homes and Gardens”.
The H&G piece has some interesting pictures, but it’s the article’s admiring portrayal of Hitler in a British magazine of the time that makes it significant. It's a classic piece of appeasement propaganda, from a time when public opinion in the UK was starting to move away from support for Chamberlain’s policy of negotiation.
It's chilling to think that the same people who read the November 1938 issue of “Homes and Gardens” would also have been reading newspaper reports that November about the violent events of Kristallnacht.
As a result of this casual browse through an old magazine, I have struck up a friendship with an amateur historian in Louisiana, been involved in a copyright tussle with the UK's biggest magazine publisher, been branded a Nazi sympathiser, been written about in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune and the Jerusalem Post, and become the subject of a petition from 60 Holocaust scholars as well as protests from David Irving.Last month, at the request of IPC Magazines (owners of the original copyright), Waldman took down the pages he'd scanned onto his blog from “Homes and Gardens.” But since then, I’m pleased to say, the Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies has successfully lobbied IPC Magazines to have the pages published on the internet, and Waldman has now rebuilt his original post at Words of Waldman.
The H&G piece has some interesting pictures, but it’s the article’s admiring portrayal of Hitler in a British magazine of the time that makes it significant. It's a classic piece of appeasement propaganda, from a time when public opinion in the UK was starting to move away from support for Chamberlain’s policy of negotiation.
It's chilling to think that the same people who read the November 1938 issue of “Homes and Gardens” would also have been reading newspaper reports that November about the violent events of Kristallnacht.
Progress in Iraq
Back in July, the Salt Lake Tribune reported on the state of the Iraqi banking system
And, as the Economist reports today, for some Iraqis at least, things are looking up.
With assault rifles and acetylene torches, roaming bands of robbers have nearly wiped out Iraq's once-booming banking system, posing one of the biggest hurdles to reconstruction efforts. Baghdad's financial district is a wreck of blown-out vaults, burned-out buildings and blocks of broken glass.On Friday, the CPA announced that the Iraqi Central Bank has now authorized four private banks to conduct international transactions and handle Letters of Credit. It maybe doesn’t sound like much, but it’s another important step towards the reconstruction of the country's economy.
Smoldering at the center of the chaos is the Iraqi Central Bank, where all nine floors have collapsed into a hollow shell. The U.S.-led Office of Reconstruction calls the situation dire, with one official conceding "there is little or no banking in place, no money flow."
And, as the Economist reports today, for some Iraqis at least, things are looking up.
For many Iraqis, living standards have already risen a lot. Boosted by government make-work programmes, day labourers are getting double their pre-war wages. A university dean's pay has gone up fourfold, a policeman's by a factor of ten.Despite the continuing attacks on US troops, things are getting better. Not fast enough for many of the administration’s critics, but they are improving.
Before the war, Kifah Karim, a teacher at a Baghdad primary school, took home monthly pay equivalent to just $6. Her husband earned $13 as a factory overseer. Today, with a combined income of close to $450, they no longer rely on gifts of meat from Mrs Karim's brother, a butcher, to buttress a diet dominated by government food rations. They buy 2-3 kilos of meat a week, and have recently purchased a new fridge, a television, a TV satellite dish, a VCR and a CD player.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
