What Comes To Pass

Err...

Walter Cronkite believes Karl Rove is behind the latest Osama Bin Laden video?

Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is “inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”

Erm, Karl Rove is the king of spin. If he was behind this Osama would have been speaking with a KE’04 baseball cap on his head and banging two of those inflatable noise-sticks together over his head whilst he did so.

Later

John

Finns

The following letter appears in the Times today:

Thanks, Roland White, for your concern but we are doing just fine for a nation of 5m (Come up with 100 famous Finns or we’re finished, News Review, last week).

Have you never heard of Alvar Aalto, Martti Ahtisaari, Tommi Makinen, Paavo Nurmi, Karita Mattila, Eliel Saarinen, Tapio Wirkkala, Aki Kaurismaki, Kaija Saariaho, Renny Harlin, Tove Jansson, Eero Aarnio and Linus Torvaldes — just to name a few? Trust me, I could get to 100 easily without ice hockey players and ski jumpers.

Pirkko Wallis, London N3

Is it really bad that the only person I recognize on that list at first glance is Linus Torvaldes?

To be honest the only Finn I know in real life is Jarkko Walroos - a friend of mine from Shatin College who went off to do his year of military service or ‘blowing things up at -50˚c’ as he liked to put it.

Ooh.. Isn’t Hakkinen, the F1 driver, a Finn? I’m really struggling here people. Beyond “produces great vodka” and “is really frikkin’ cold”, I don’t really know all that much about Finland.

Later

John

The only endorsement that matters

Osama Bin Laden (or a voice double with old footage) just threw out his own October surprise an attack on George W Bush in what seems to be an attempt to cripple his election prospects.

Osama Bin Laden just effectively endorsed John Kerry. Well if there ever was a campaign killer for the democratic hopeful, this looks to be it. It would be unfair for Kerry to be pulled down here but fairness has little to do with Al Qaeda’s activities.

How stupid do you have to be to believe the American people are going to listen to you when you try to destabilize or influence their election? It’s like poking a bear with a stick. America is not Spain and will ultimately react differently. It’s citizenry cannot be bought, or threatened or goaded on with false promises of security because they’ve held true to their principled “Never Forget” policy for 3 years now - they’re not about to discard that maxim now. The American people know exactly that Osama bin Laden stands for and more importantly, what he murders for.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse at Instapundit.com wants to know why people aren’t talking about how sickly Osama bin Laden looks. I’m more interested in why no one’s talking about how much he looks like the ‘Swedish Chef’ from The Muppet Show.

In addition:

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

“It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone,” he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

See Mr Moore, when Osama bin Laden is parroting your fallacious ‘arguments’ - you have a pretty good measure of exactly how much they’re worth.

Later

John

They're making it damn hard to be a European

The most irksome fact about all the current political maneuverings going on within the European Commission is that above all, the body is ostensibly representative of the European citizenry and yet acts in such a way concerning the makeup of its governing executive as to promote nothing more or less than absolute uniformity with accepted political thinking. And to hell with the citizens.

The fact that Italy supports Signor Buttiglione is apparently insufficient to earn him a place in the executive. In order for him to adopt a position of power he must conform to not only the political beliefs of the many who consider Blairite politics the right-wing high-watermark (the Commission’s left wing is about the ugliest to be found around the world, being entirely constituted of veteran ideologues who are rewarded for years of solemn solidarity with the party line with their appointment, it chokes upon the very image of Silvio Berlusconi or any man who has earned his approval) but apparently to the spiritual and moral consensus too, lest he be judged unfit to govern. This is nothing more or less than discrimination and pours a veritable pitcher of water over the concept of a representative Commission. Buttiglione’s views are not only Commonplace throughout Italy, but as was pointed out by Stephen Pollard, are positively the status quo in the largely islamic state of Turkey who’s entry into the EU is supposed to widen the spectrum of the EU’s already phenomenal cultural layout.

The Commission is a body with considerable power, even given the constitution’s seeding of increased authority to the Parliament. It still remains the arbiter of fact with regards to anti trust violations of Articles 81 and 82 along with being a massive force in policy decision and the drafting of legislation. Why then, are we asked to accept such a body if it prevents the appointment of men who’s only crime is to have a religious calling, removed from their politics, which differs with that of the accepted norm amongst the Commission’s liberal sect?

Would we allow the House of Lords such power today? Obviously not and that is precisely because it is not a democratically elected body. Any semblance of proportionate representation which the Commission once had seems to me, utterly refuted.

I’ve said before that I’m Pro-European but every day it is not the leaflets of UKIP but rather the actions of the three pillars themselves which turn me away from the European Union.

Later

John

Kamm's on fire

In the good sense of the term, obviously.

First of all there’s this post. Paragraph of choice follows:

Though I shall be voting at the next election for the return of a Labour government, I regard it as a legitimate position for consistent liberals to vote tactically to defeat the Liberal Democrats – and have indeed advocated this course since I started this site 18 months ago. In the 1980s, when the Labour Party adopted extreme positions and poor leadership, the old Social Democratic Party could be held to serve a valuable purpose in British politics (though I never supported it or voted for it). The Liberal Democrats, who absorbed the SDP, have made recent advances – from a very low base – in the quality of their economic thinking, but overall represent reactionary and sometimes ugly sentiments.

I live in Colchester, Labour can win locally here (as was shown by my own council candidate helped a miniscule amount by the big ol sign erected in my front garden to endorse him to all who face the river) but we haven’t a chance in hell of winning in the GE. So I’ll be voting Tory.

Yes I think Howard is the most pathetic Tory leader since Major, his spurious about-face on Iraq and insistence upon opportunistic posturing where policy would have been better received actually make me nostalgic for IDS or even William Hague. But when I compare him to Charles Kennedy I start reaching for a blue rosette.

Then Kamm offers this:

I don’t know what humanity at large is, but I do know who the victims of Baathist tyranny were, for Coalition forces have been exhuming the bodies from the mass graves for the past 18 months. A professed liberal party with nothing to say to those who lived under - or more properly, survived the violence of - a fascist regime commits a betrayal even greater than marching alongside the totalitarians of the Stop the War Coalition.

Well worth a full read of both articles.

Later

John

The BBC needs to read some Blogs

This from a report on an Iraqi rally for the release of Mrs Hassan, the kidnapped British aid worker:

Correspondent Claire Marshall said there was much support for Mrs Hassan amongst ordinary Iraqis, but that the rally was “completely unprecedented”.

If the BBC had bothered to read Iraq the Model they might be aware of the fact that a great many protests and rallies have been taking place all over the country since the beginning of the April insurgency, condemning kidnapping and terrorism in all its forms. I find the fact that the BBC takes notice of and reports such goings on, only when it’s politically expedient, highly disturbing.

However it seems less spurious than the mainstream media’s incessant parroting of the terrorists’ demands through hostages. For pities sakes is the Associated Press honestly asking me to believe that those demands were obtained by any means other than duress!? It is sick and achieves little more than the furthering of the terrorists’ goals.

I’ll listen to someone if they don’t have an AK-47 pointed at their head and aren’t being threatened with rape.

Do these people have any standards?

Later

John

What's with Bill?

We’re coming to the end of the US presidential campaign and not for the first nor last time, I’m surprised.

Bill Clinton came out and did some rallying for Kerry.

Now I’m a big Clinton fan, he was in my view a great president with only one real weakness - his policy (or lack thereof) on Terrorism and to be honest, who can blame him when no one gave two jots about it during his presidency.

However from the outset it’s been easy to see the outlines of the Clintonian return to power in Hillary’s prudent plan to hang back this year. I didn’t really expect Bill to suddenly come out swinging for Kerry when his presidency effectively demolishes Hillary’s campaign-to-be for the next term.

So here are the possibilities as I see them:

1) Hillary has decided that her presidency isn’t worth another 4 years of GWB (after all it’ll be a tough fight against Gulliani by the looks of things) and has decided with Bill to go with Kerry. Or

2) The Clintons have a gut feeling that this one is going to the Republicans and are therefore just swinging in casually to prevent being fingered as campaign assassins after the dust settles.

So which is it? I don’t think we’ll know till the end of the election - if at all.

Later

John

The Real Winner

Mr Hamid Karzai is the new and first democratically elected president of Afghanistan.

For all its meanderings and post-invasion botching in Iraq this is an astounding achievement for the Bush doctrine. How many people said this would never happen? “The Arabs aren’t capable of democratic government”, “They will resent western intervention”.

Congratulations Mr Bush, whatever your legacy come this November they can’t take this away from you. This shows what can be done when the world gets off its ass to liberate the millions incarcerated by tyrants and despots. Regime change pulled off with spectacular successes, the literati can complain all they want about poppy fields and drugs - these people escaped generations of tyranny and just elected a democratic government. I hope Iraq has the same future ahead of it.

Peace in my time.

Later

Winner:

Conrad of The Gweilo Diaries shows why he deserves to be on everyone’s blog roll:

That’s What We’re Afraid of Senator

John Kerry has pledged to “hunt down and capture terrorists … with the same energy … I put into going after the Viet Cong and trying to win for our country.”

So, now I finally know what the Kerry plan is — throwing in the towel after four months, labeling US combatants as war criminals and pow-wowing with Osama bin Laden in Paris.

Genius.

Later

John

That ain't email bombing

Harry chastises Tim Blair for his posting of Guardian journalist’s email addresses encouraging ‘email bombing’. I’m not going to defend in the least the hacking and disabling of the Guardian website. For a site with so much through-traffic you’d think it’d be better protected than it evidently was. I mean it wasn’t even a DOS attack - this was evidently a vulnerability exploit.

However ‘email bombing’ is an entirely different matter from having 5,000 people email their opinions to you about your print, no matter how derogatory or unpleasant many may have been.

Trust me, if they had been email bombed they’d have had a lot more than 5,000 emails. Heck I sent more than that as one prong of my attack on Kent & Blaxille School’s server (don’t worry, I said sorry and I almost got expelled - I didn’t go unpunished and I am a long way from seeing that action as just, even if it was provoked).

What they got was a lot of bad feedback.

Later

John

Take me out to the baaaaallgame!

In case you weren’t aware I am a huge fan of Bill Bryson, the travel writer, columnist and insanely funny author who’s books will never do anything less than elicit huge belly laughs from myself to the considerable concern and consternation of anyone who’s on the same train carriage as I. Occasionally it will be some other commuter who collapses in a fit of hysterical laughter and as I catch a glance at the book he’s reading I will smile and nod knowingly as Mr Bryson’s embossed name flashes past, dragged through the air by the uncontrollable flailing of my laughter-locked companion’s limbs.

He has started to write a series of articles on the World Series. Bryson’s love of Baseball is infectious and really speaks of that golden 50’s Americana spirit that dwells within his jovial prose. I therefore take great pleasure in presenting you with a link to his first article, which covers baseball in general and leads into what will become weekly coverage of the pinnacle of the season.

It would be The Times that woos this man to print, although I doubt much wooing was needed when tickets to the World Series were being provided.

I confess I have something of a love for Baseball despite rarely watching it but a lot of it may have to do with the game’s beloved theme tune.

Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks

I don’t care if I never go back!

for it’s root root root for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame

It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game!

Later

John

Rebuttal

I watched Fahrenhype 9/11 today. A little too much Republican liberal bashing for my liking but in refuting the many, many, many faults and lies propagated by Michael Moore, the film is very effective and well argued. Obligatory viewing for anyone who’s tired of being lied to by Mr Moore.

I think the most galling thing about all of this is not that Moore was wrong on just about everything in that film but that he knew he was wrong and deliberately distorted the facts (That’s called ‘lying’ - RESPECT ought to learn that definition). The newspaper forgery near the beginning was perhaps the most despicable fabrication although the “Bush Holiday” sequence is quite brilliantly put together for the purpose of destroying the myth of ‘the pres on vacation’.

Anyhow. This rebuttal won’t sell well to Europe or most Brits because it really is aimed at America. Certain characters will simply fit the arrogant pigeon holes set aside for “southern hicks” and “idiot Americans” in the minds of many. The flag waving towards the end would probably cause several people I know to vomit (American patriotism is completely misunderstood in a country which largely reserves the term “God Save the Queen” for satire - we’re only allowed to be patriotic on the last night of the Proms) but I found it uplifting.

Interesting viewing and probably a decent guard against nausea if you should be subjected to Fahrenheit 9/11.

Later

John

Moral amalgamation

Even a pro-european like myself can see that this article by Stephen Pollard has a valid point.

Some notional aspects of the constitution, although not politically far removed from my own point of view are undeniably strict and constitute genuine constraints upon public policy and morality.

The much maligned Buttiglione is just sticking to his religious beliefs and has clearly asserted that they do not intermingle with his policies. A lot of the problem with the Left has always been its inability to see how anyone could possibly, intellectually or morally, adopt a stance on a given issue which differs from the one laid down by orthodox liberalism. I have friends who still think conservatism is founded on fundamental self-interest and greed. If the EU is to exist then it cannot do so by prescribing the morals and opinions of its citizenry or indeed prejudicing those who’s beliefs contradict the party-line.

Stephen Pollard mentions that the constitution actually affords member states less legislative freedom than is enjoyed by the United States of America, on matters such as the Death Penalty (which I personally oppose). It seems that the EU could learn a lot from the Whitmanian maxim, “E Pluribus Unum”.

Later

John

Just doing my job

If you haven’t read this story yet, do so. It’s my funtastic duty as a blogger to plug news stories that are being buried, which are material to the ‘great debate’.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Preparations for the crucial January election are “on track” and the absence of international observers due to the country’s tenuous security should not detract from the vote’s credibility, the top U.N. electoral expert here said.

Read the whole thing. Takes a lot of wind out of the sails of those who seem intent on opposing the rise of democracy in Iraq no matter the cost.

Later

John

I'm weak...

I just bought Will Shatner’s rendition of Common People. It’s currently in the Top 10 of the iTunes Music Store Chart.

Ok, so ultimately Pulp are such a bloody good band that you really can’t improve on their performances - every track sounds like it’s been polished and produced for the entirety of the band’s history (some 20 odd years if I remember correctly) but astonishingly Shatner is actually pretty good and offers an entertaining performance whilst maintaining the undercurrent of rage that sold the original so well.

I was wavering towards it after Kev originally told me about the track and the album (he subsequently posted about it on his blog). Whilst I shied away from buying Has Been (Will Shatner’s latest album) ‘Common People’ was just too cool to ignore.

I wonder if Mr Shatner can quite believe the meteoric success of his album on the iTunes Music Store - it just goes to show that if you make music cheaply available to your entire target audience (surely every self-respecting geek is on the iTMS) you’re going to sell a lot of albums.

Later

John

Finally...

The Bush Campaign, or more accurately the ‘progress for America voter fund’ have released the election ad which could win Bush the election. Recalling one of his finest moments (he doesn’t have many but they sure are doozies) in halting his hand-shaking to embrace a girl who’d lost her mother in the WTC attacks. Spontaneous, compassionate and utterly applaudable.

All the demonization of George W Bush has largely been a foolish endeavor because, when reminded of what he is capable of in terms of compassion and human connection, as we saw in the post 9/11 days, any such assertions appear unfounded. All that wrapping protest in a layer of hate for the man himself has done is discredited the often legitimate criticism of his policies when the ‘Bush is evil’ meme proves itself to be fallacious.

At the end of the day the smart play is reminding America of why Bush had those soaring approval ratings back in December 2001. By taking out the largest Ad block in history, this pro-bush group have probably won him a good few swing voters who had perhaps forgotten about why they would want to vote for Bush in the first place.

If you’re going to make personal attacks you’d better make them against someone who doesn’t have such outstandingly powerful stock footage to discredit those attacks. The Kerry campaign largely understood this, it has been the liberal outriders such as Michael Moore who’ve done the most damage and who will be to blame if this Ad is as effective as it seems to be.

Hillary in ‘08!

Later

John

Can these people hear themselves talk?

The following quotes are from a BBC News article on the suggested redeployment of UK troops to take up US positions in the Sunni triangle, freeing up US Divisions in Iraq for action in Fallujah and other terrorist/insurgent hotspots.

As the election neared, Mr (Charles) Kennedy said, the Bush administration would be “looking for some major breakthrough in terms of their Iraq campaign, and that they want to divert forces accordingly” .

You’re bloody right it is! What the hell is Charles Kennedy on!?

Oh no! Not ‘some major breakthroughs’ in Iraq! Anything but that!!

If anything the quote does nothing more than highlight a truly imbecilic undercurrent of the Lib Dems Iraq policy. They want us to loose. As over-the-top as it might sound, you look at that sentence - a politician decrying the possibility of ‘major breakthroughs’ being made in the fight against terrorists in Iraq - and tell me that ANY other conclusion can be drawn from it.

But most anger was felt on Labour’s backbenches, with Glenda Jackson MP accusing the government of providing “mercenaries for a Republican army”.

Nice to see someone who treats the Anglo-American alliance with the dignity that it deserves after fighting two world wars side-by-side.

Bolsover MP Dennis Skinner said the government was handing President Bush a “lifeline” and an “oxygen cylinder” by freeing up American troops for a pre-election offensive.

Aaargh!! We’re HELPING OUR ALLIES!! Dear god no! We can’t achieve anything in Iraq because it would be beneficial to the president’s re-election! Better to let things stagnate till after the elections.

What an absolute joke. As if their arguments against redeployment weren’t tenuous enough the Anti-War league has taken a step into the ridiculous.

Later

John

My Decision

The Belgravia Dispatch today offers a long, thoughtful and cogent article on the reasoning for voting for Bush in Novemember. I’ve stated on this blog before that I think George W Bush will win the next US presidential election. I lamented several months ago the fact that I faced two utterly lack-luster candidates, neither of whom were preferable and thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t have to choose who to pull the lever for.

My fantasy vote was later cast for Bush but recently I took time to reconsider all the facts. His fiscal impropriety, the FMA and of course the long honoured tradition of ‘shoveling money into rich people’s wallets as fast as is humanly possible’.

So on a domestic US policy note, I’m leaning -nay- falling over towards Kerry/Edwards. I’m a card carrying centre-left Blairite Labour party member after all, no matter what derision this might incite from the petulant demagogues of the Independent-reading class.

The problem I have with their campaign however is so massively substantial that if I were American I’d still find myself voting for Bush. That problem can be summed up in one word: “Allies”.

Kerry has made much of his reputed ability to ‘patch things up’ with the US’s allies. To approach all matters from a bilateral perspective and to ‘internationlize’ the War on Terror and its many facets. The problem is that his foreign policy has, in my mind been utterly devastated in just 2 months.

Firstly there is the argument that a Kerry government would bring more countries on board for the War on Terror. I find myself asking “What countries?” and can to the best of my ability only find 3, which would really add to the 30+ states that joined the coalition of the willing (‘unilateral action’ has never had so many participants) owing to the obvious isolationist policies of the PRC and Turkey’s domestic pressure base.

• France
• Germany
• Russia

Well Schroeder was quite clear about whether Germany’s policy on both Iraq and the War on Terror would change. A dismissive laugh told us all we needed to know and a few weeks later when there were even the slightest rumours of a change the German government issued a frantic press release assuring all that Germany would be playing no part in America’s plans for the War on Terror re: Iraq. I think we can rule out Gehard for now Mr. Kerry.

France has been quite clear too. NATO plans to help train Iraqi defense forces have been sped up but still remain laughable (although in fairness the military projection capabilities of some of the member states is itself a point of amusement). France won’t change its stance on Iraq if Kerry is in office and have also had spokesmen denied such a policy reversal.

Russia is interesting. First of all Vladimir Putin and George W Bush actually have a decent working relationship, Kerry’s ‘personal touch’ wouldn’t seem too potent a force in this situation. Secondly Russia is already moving under America’s influence albeit slowly, its hand forced by the atrocities committed at Beslan by terrorists trained in the very camps the US destroyed in Afghanistan.

Crucial to these countries (and indeed China) is the ‘elephant in the sitting room’ of UNSCAM. China, France and Russia received a hearty share of the revenues from this despicable perversion of aid revenue. How, I wonder can you trumpet the virtues of the United Nations (even ignoring its lamentable record on Genocide in the past 20 years) in the face of this enormous web corruption? Unless Kerry is willing to bribe foreign political forces with a sum from the National Reserves proportional to the reputed $5 billion they received from Saddam’s Oil Vouchers, it seems unlikely that his administration would have obtained a level examination field from those who are administering his much vaunted ‘Global Test’.

11 Years of UN diplomacy followed by another last push in the year leading up till April 2003 doesn’t seem like a ‘rush’ to war to me. The Bush administration gathered an astonishing coalition of allies and seemed to falter only in obtaining the support of nations who’s political ambition was either the opposition of American geopolitical dominance or the retention of vast oil contracts entered into with Saddam’s regime. You cannot berate Bush for failing to bring France, Russia or Germany on board when such a feat was rendered nearly impossibly by a myriad of bribes, greed and political self-aggrandizement. What other countries can Kerry mean? His policy seems to be simply founded upon the shrill cries of the 90’s era literati rather than fact. He’s playing to his home team, which is forgivable, especially given Bush’s monstrous support for the FMA but that doesn’t make for a sound foreign policy any more than the contemptible amendment represents the spirit of the US constitution.

The second problem Kerry’s platform has with allies is his effective disregard for the US’s existing allies. You might recall my indignation at Jimmy Carter’s speech at the DNC where he belittled the efforts of both of my countries whilst setting the franco-prussian alliance on a pedestal. Unfortunately Kerry seems to have taken to this cause with great enthusiasm and his remarks about Allawi after the man had delivered his speech to the US congress bordered on the grotesque. It seems ironic that the Bush should be so vilified for having ‘wrecked our relationships with our allies’ when in fact he had failed only to earn the cooperation of powers who’s only discernable foreign policy has been to counteract US interests, whereas Kerry and his team appear to be tripping over themselves to insult, belittle and trash the US’s most vital allies.

Cheney made a good point in the debate with Edwards and that was that Kerry’s campaign is constantly listing coalition casualty figures but never takes into account the tremendous effort and expenditure of lives of the Iraqis themselves. They are the US’s most important and valuable allies. You don’t insult them and expect to be the president of the United States, you don’t insinuate that they aren’t pulling their weight or that they’re weak if you’re going to be president of the United States and you don’t pander to folks in your own party who are actively rooting for their opponents if you’re going to be president of the United States. Kerry’s foreign policy makers don’t seem to understand this and that is why I’d be voting for George W Bush.

The Democratics won’t make it to the whitehouse this year and the reason is the name at the top of their ticket.

Hillary in 08!!

Later

John

Kapow

Stephen Pollard gives Charles Kennedy the proper political shoeing that his policy of declaring the War on Iraq “Illegal” invites.

If Mr Kennedy believes that the war was illegal and thus brought about an illegal regime change, then he also believes – it is not logically possible to believe anything else - that Saddam remains the rightful ruler of Iraq. He was, after all, deposed only by an illegal force. And if he believes, as he claims, in the primacy of international law, then he and those who espouse the same argument have no alternative but to campaign for Saddam’s immediate re-instatement as the internationally recognised head of state of Iraq.

Just following the argument through to some of its natural conclusions.

Later

John

Yep

Ah yes. Please excuse the corpses of babies, children and expectant mothers - cause there ain't no WMD here! What a shockingly immoral war.

Later

John

Nice one Mr Branson

This was announced friday:

After a lengthy bloody and fierce bidding war frenzy between all the major players in the UK music industry Madness have finally signed a one album deal with V2 records at about 2.00pm GMT today. The album will consist of of reggae and ska covers and will be due for delivery in April 2005.

Aw yeah!

You just can’t keep a good band down.

Later

John

Snapshot

By the way, the reason why there hasn’t been a Snapshot update in ages is that I left my Bluetooth USB adaptor in Hong Kong. Thankfully I just ordered another inexpensive one from Amazon.co.uk.

I searched for a nice cheap one and when I got to the end of my checkout I found to my horror that an extra £5 had been slapped on for “postage and packing”.

Determined to get my money’s worth I went back and added a paperback I wanted, Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Almost Everything (having devoured no less than 3 of his books in Hong Kong in an effort to get to grips with his entire catalogue).

Anyhow, because it tipped it over into the “free delivery super saver” I got both items for less than just the Bluetooth adaptor. Huzzah! Frugality reigns supreme and I’ll soon be able to post my rather meagre collection of new Snapshots.

I need a better camera phone.

Later

John

Enrollment

Much of friday was spent in the confines of a beaurocratic Catch 22 situation whilst I struggled to re-enroll for my last year of University.

It went something like this.

I couldn't get through the door, because I had a nominal sum of fees left over from a year ago (which the university staff had only noticed in the past few months) and therefore my Student ID card locked me out.

However in order to deal with this matter I needed access to the finance department. In order to get to them I needed to get through several other stages of 'processing' for my enrolment and I couldn't get through those steps if I had a financial impediment to my enrollment (the aforementioned outstanding fees). I was stuffed, beureaucratically bitch-slapped with all the vigour my University can muster.

In the end I managed to get into the building thanks to a sympathetic security guard. I began the process of enrollment but was quickly turned back and as the finance department were all processing the 3rd stage of enrollment which I could not progress to if I had not completed the 1st stage of enrollment. Things looked bleak.

In the end I went to a different campus building and spoke to a different set of Cashiers and finally managed to pay off the oustanding fee, I was then informed that I would not be able to enroll without a program of studies, which is normally mailed to you during the summer.

Unfortunately my university had seen fit to estop the dispatchment of my program of studies because of the oustanding fee (who's history has been peppered with assurances from alternating finance department employees as to its ficticious and quite definite existence, respectively).

I later joined a queue at the promising sounding "Undergraduate Registry Office" where I had been directed by the Cashier. When I reached the end of the rather lengthy queue I was informed that I had not in fact been standing in the correct queue, nor was I in the correct office.

I finally found the correct office ("The department of general defenestration" or some such thing) and by virtue of my natural people skills and possibly the exasperated expression on my face I received the plethora of papers which I required to prove that I had paid off the phantom fee, had a program of studies and would like very much to receive further news of Tackola inc Toastmeister and Toastmeister related products.

I finally enrolled and in a miraculous turn of events, my Student ID Smartcard worked for the first ever as I exited the building. I caught the next train back to Colchester, enjoying my chutney-riddled Boots sandwich far more than it probably deserved.

God I love my University.

Someone please eject this woman from the Labour Party

Claire Short just said on Arabic TV that Osama Bin Laden’s cause was ‘just’. She attempts to temper her remarks with the following:

“So I think the killing of civilians is always wrong, all the Prophet Muhammad’s teachings said it was wrong, but I think the cause is just.”

In her own words, this woman now believes the following objectives to be just:

• The genocidal murder of all the jews, everywhere in the world.

• The oppression of all women.

• The murder of all Homosexuals

• The destruction of western civilization, democracy, liberty, an unbiased, secular Jurisprudence and the rule of law.

• And of course the murder of every American, Briton, Australian, Pole, Japanese and persons who form the citizenry of any nation which took part in both the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

It doesn’t matter if you wish to achieve these aims without the killing of civilians or not (much of the extremist anti-war left doesn’t seem to classify Jews as civilians anyway), they are reprehensible and nothing short of morally repugnant. I’m sorry to have to resort to profanity but kindly get the fuck out of my party Mrs Short.

Later

John

Now I remember

I had been wondering what was bugging me about Leung Kwok Hing or ‘Long Hair’, the Trotskyite independent who recently won a seat in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (or Legco as it’s known). The man’s name is mentioned at least in passing in about 1/3 of all SCMP articles, be they on genocide in Darfur or the US Presidential elections, the South China Morning Post seems to manage some bizarrely tangential segue into a sentence that will, I personally guarantee, contain the words “Trademark Che Guevara T-Shirt”.

I have finally realized what ‘Long Hair’ is. He’s Rudy Wong. For the uninitiated, The World of Lily Wong was a Hong Kong satirical cartoon drawn by Larry Feign and printed in the SCMP, Standard and Malaysia Strait Times at different times during its lengthy run. It had some brilliant strips and captured Hong Kong life rather well, sending up everything from mobile phones (back when they were bricks with aerials and only Hong Kongers would buy them) to the Communist Party over in the mainland.

One of its central characters was Lily Wong’s layabout brother, Rudy. Rudy wore a ragged T-Shirt at all times and was seldom seen without a cigarette hanging limply from his mouth, perhaps accompanied by a can of beer. One of Feign’s running series of jokes was Rudy’s election to Legco, allowing the writer an excellent platform from which to brutally lampoon the entire institution and all the participants in Hong Kong political debate. I remember them clearly because I had something of a rabid appetite for political satire even at a young age and took great delight in finding a strip with my grandfather in it (for me, the highest accolade of his professional life) rebuking Rudy in his capacity as president, for singing in Legco, or more accurately for singing the wrong words to a song (his cartoon form corrects Rudy and gives him the correct lyrics, lest there be any semblance of actual legislative activity in Legco).

Anyhow, this post from Hemlock’s Diary on Leung Kwok Hing, was the source of this revelation.

Thanks to him, we can look forward to a refreshing new approach to sartorial style and deportment in the chamber, as he stumbles in late, tosses his cigarettes and can of beer on the table, pulls his sweaty T-shirt off and takes his seat with a satisfied burp.

Sounds like Rudy Wong to me.

Later

John

Foolish attempt at liveblogging VP debates follows:

Candidates are sitting down, reading notes and ruffling papers.

These people are doing way too much sitting in silence. This is supposed to be America! I demand Instant Gratification!

First question - There was a way to answer that question, Cheney failed to offer it. Point to Edwards

2nd Question 'Global Test' - Ouch... Edwards is getting something of a stuffing on this point.

Edwards leant on the 90% point. Not a good idea. It had already been fisked before the night.

Cheney does the intelligent thing in bringing up the flip-flopping. It may not be accurate but it works.

Question 3 - Cheney's been reading a lot of blogs. Bringing up Dean's primary challenge as the reason for Kerry's voting record.

Question 4 - Wow.. Good question.

Too much... To write....

And now I concede defeat. Expanded notes later

Update to Fisking the Letters Section

The following is to be found in today’s Times.

Sir, In criticising Tony Blair’s claim that “the whole international community” believed in Iraq’s possession of WMD, Ms Joanna Kirchner (letter, October 2) queries whether France, Germany, Russia and the UN believed any such thing.

Of course they did. They, together with all members of the UN Security Council, were unanimous signatories to Resolution 1441, which stated categorically that such weapons did exist and were being proliferated by Saddam Hussein.

The resolution appeared some three months after Mr Blair’s famous “45-minute dossier” — the sexed-up one which he supposedly used to deceive us all. Clearly, if Mr Blair lied, then so did Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin. These nations’ independent intelligence services were obviously presenting their masters with exactly the same information as ours were , unless Ms Kirchner believes they all took Mr Blair’s word for it.

There is a difference between being wrong and lying.

Yours faithfully,
IAN McBAIN,
76 Kingston Road,
Poole, Dorset BH15 2LS.
October 2.

The best thing about Blogging is always getting the first bite.

Later

John

Momentum

Iraqi Defense Forces and Coalition troops have managed to vanquish insurgent forces in Samarra and now have the city under their control.

I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps - as the administration in Washington has asserted - their perseverance and willingness to wait for the IDF to shore up the numbers is finally paying off. For all the yelling from either side of the debate it seems that Rumsfeld has pulled another rabbit and if this momentum is carried forwards in a rolling onslaught liberating Fallujah and other terrorist hotspots then Andrew Sullivan may just have to eat humble pie.

For the futures and lives of millions of Iraqis I hope it is so.

Later

John

Fisking the Letters Section

It’s time for another “Letters to the Editor” fisking. The Times letters section is quite unlike that of many other newspaper. Few offer such well thought out commentary or authoritative pundits, perhaps by virtue of The Times’ standing or perhaps because of its erudite readership, myself excluded.

However, every now and again someone writes in with a letter so monumentally ill-sourced or plainly fallacious that the sole possible purpose of its publishing appears to be to provide a target for derision and knowing nods of amusement.

One such example is reproduced here, from my own town no less:

Sir, In his conference speech Tony Blair said: “I simply point out, such evidence (of Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons) was agreed by the whole international community.”

France? Germany? Russia? The United Nations? Hans Blix? Charles Kennedy? Robin Cook? And two million UK protesters?

Yours faithfully,
JOANNA KIRCHNER,
163 Maldon Road,
Colchester, Essex CO3 3BL.
September 30.

To answer the questions posed.

Yes, Yes, Yes, In its composition of members Yes, Initially Yes, Not in a position to know, Yes and In no position to even speculate.

The debate at the security council was never about whether Saddam had biological or chemical weapons but simply the means by which the situation should be dealt. France, Germany and Russia all had intelligence which pointed to Saddam having WMD. They accepted it and it was never an issue. For someone feeling the urge to write into a newspaper Mrs Kirchner seems to be rather wanting in her research.

Preceding that was a brilliant letter that highlights some of the astounding gall which some in the anti-war movement have demonstrated concerning the “immoral war”.

Sir, Sir Adam Butler (letter, September 30) poses a hypothetical question: “If he had known that the information was false … would Mr Blair still have invaded Iraq to ‘remove Saddam Hussein’?”

Let me ask one in return. Suppose it had been the case that Hitler had constituted no direct threat to our national security, should we have stood by and let him complete the extermination of European Jewry with impunity?

It is said that on a conservative estimate the Saddam regime was responsible for the murder of one million people.

The “accepted” principle that you risk life and limb only if your own safety is in jeopardy and never in order to succour those in need is repellent in the extreme.

Yours faithfully,
ROBIN HOWARD,
New Timbers,
8 Upfield, Croydon CR0 5DP.
September 30.

Right you are Mr Howard.

Later

John