Postmodernism and New Labour

A very partisan article about Politics and lies - or postmodernism and new labour from Peter Oborne in the spectator.

Which Society would you prefer, Islaamic or Democratic?

No, it's not a trick question, it's Dan's scary sect! And the pundits say there's no discussion of the big societal issues in this election - pah!

Here's their manifesto:
Which Society would you prefer, Islaamic or Capitalist (Democratic)?

Bizarre stuff. I always wondered what the Islamist position on the rainforest was, and now I know. As an ex-Green voter, maybe I should transfer my vote to them? And in the light of our racism discussions, it's good to know that (despite those nasty allegations of a race war going on in Dafur) there's actually no racism whatsoever in the Islamist world...

Man secretly filmed wife in the bath

Man secretly filmed wife in the bath
Telegraph
28/04/2005

1. What the fuck?
2. Voyeurism is a crime??
3. He had to film his own bloody wife in secret???
4. What the fuck????
5. Thank god all those of you who have stayed at my house aren't litigious.

Jews return to Russia from Israel

Don't know what to make of this....

Once desperate to leave, now Jews are returning to Russia, land of opportunity
Times
April 28, 2005

...in the light of what I know about both historic & current Russian anti-semitism, eg this story from a couple of months ago:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today5_jews_20050217.ram
Jewish leaders in Moscow are preparing to take twenty Russian MPs to court for signing a letter, along with 500 intellectuals, which accuses Jews of committing ritual murder, satanism, and calling for all Jewish organisations to be banned.

Russian nationalists urge Jewish groups ban
Telegraph
26/01/2005
A group of Russian nationalist MPs have called on the prosecutor-general to ban all Jewish groups, blaming them for provoking anti-Semitism and ethnic hatred. The letter, signed by 20 members of the Duma, accuses Jews of dominating politics and the world of finance abroad and underwriting a war on Russian patriotism at home.

Half of Young Germans Can't Define Holocaust

Jesus wept...

Clueless Youth: Half of Young Germans Can't Define Holocaust
Der Spiegel
25/04/05

and all that after this a few months ago:

Half of British adults have not heard of Auschwitz
Telegraph
03/12/2004

Future of Europe

Found this satirical map.

Note the provenance (I was doing research by the way. I know that's the Pete Townshend defence, but it's the truth your honour.)

Anyway, how far removed from some Pipes and Steyn comments do y'all think it is?

Libby Purves on school discipline

Excellent article, I thought, interested in others' views. Not much chance of implementation of her ideas, I suppose.

Quiet, class, or it's handcuffs
Times - April 26, 2005
Libby Purves
With school discipline rapidly worsening, we will need to use extreme measures in the classroom

Johann says people aren't stupid...

Been meaning to post this for a while. Many fair points in the article but it amused me to see him get himself tied in nots thusly:

"Even when an actual issue emerged, it was usually distorted beyond recognition. Look at the biggest issue of the campaign so far. One man told me he knew "for a fact" that asylum seekers are given £40,000 a year each (in fact, it's £40 per week). Another guessed asylum seekers make up 20 per cent of the population. One told me it was "obvious" that refugees are more likely to be rapists. These people aren't stupid: they have been lied to."

Hmmm. There's a million news websites and newspapers. Could it not at some point be people's own responsibility to inform themselves? Bah, humbug!

When Johann met Galloway...

As you know I'm quite a fan of Johann Hari and here's an article from him about Galloway & King in Bethnal Green.

Here's a rather good bit:

"I asked Galloway how many Muslims had been murdered by his friend Aziz. The correct answer: even more than have been slaughtered by Ariel Sharon, or by Israel in 38 years of occupying Gaza and the West Bank. Galloway said, "Why don't you go and take some more drugs, you druggie?"

This is part of a pattern. Galloway consistently sides with unelected, unrepresentative Muslim leaders at the expense of the majority of Muslim people. When he talks about "siding with Muslims", I am always tempted to ask: which Muslims? Female Muslims, chafing under their veils and reeling from the fists of too many of their men? Democratic Muslims, braving suicide-bombers to vote all over Iraq? Gay Muslims, living in terror and locked in mock-heterosexual marriage? Muslim trade unionists in Iraq, dismissed by Galloway as "quislings"? Tariq Aziz, or his victims?"

Vote on Academic Boycott of Israel is Passed

You can read the story here and here.

And here's the AUT statement.

Here's the earlier impdec post on this topic.

And here's a longer version of a humorous anti-boycott piece I found on Harry's Place and orginally put in the comments section. It's worth reading because it goes far beyond the humorous bit quoted on Harry's Place.

Here's a report from the Palestine News Network.

And here's the reaction in Israel:

'The Foreign Ministry said Saturday that the union was guilty of hypocrisy. "The fact that AUT chose to target Israel, the only country in the Middle East that has complete academic freedom for all segments of the population and all political streams is scandalous," the ministry said in a statement.'

A quick Google search will yield plenty of other articles but I hope this is a good cross section. This whole affair does seem another example of 'human rights activists' turning all their attention on the one democracy in the Middle East. And I still think there's something borderline Stalinist about exempting those Israeli academics who publically denounce Sharon.

Happy Earth Day & Lenin's Birthday

Today is both Earth Day and Lenin's Birthday.

I found this curious website that suggests the two are not unrelated...

"...Americans are continually portrayed as materialistic capitalists who rape the earth, steal its riches, and are the cause of environmental problems around the world. Despite this, Americans remain largely unaware of the true goals of environmentalism while their school's textbooks are filled with Green propaganda, and their churches are infiltrated by Greens seeking to substitute earth worship to replace traditional Judeo-Christian values. U.S. entertainment and news media repeat and reinforce the Green message, and America's elected leaders, many of whom are members of the Progressive Caucus, an instrument of the Democratic Socialists of America, advance laws to achieve the goals of the Green movement.
This is why Earth Day is Lenin's birthday. It is no coincidence. It is a tribute to the ruthless founder of Soviet Communism and his goals are being fulfilled today in the guise of saving the earth from farmers, ranchers, mining, timber, oil, and chemical companies. From "urban sprawl." In short, any enterprise that seeks to utilize the earth's enormous bounty to enhance, enrich, and extend the lives of Americans and others worldwide."

Note: Due to a technical hitch this post originally went up a day late (St. George's Day as it happens - though I have no conspiracy theory about that date.) Anyway, I've corrected the date on this post so that it is archived correctly under April 22nd.

Voltaire the anti-semite

Was shocked and disappointed to find out recently that even bloody Voltaire was at it...

:-(

http://library.flawlesslogic.com/jtr_01.htm

Centuries later Voltaire's criticism of Jews, in his Essai sur le Moeurs, repeated many of the same charges: "The Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous -- cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity." Ironically, as Jacob Katz observes, "Voltaire did more than any other single man to shape the rationalist trend that moved European society toward improving the status of the Jew" (Katz, 34).

Still historically remembered (according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994) "as a crusader against tyranny and bigotry," Voltaire turned repeatedly and angrily against Jews who he believed to epitomize such "tyranny and bigotry." Jews, he complained, "are ... the greatest scoundrels who have ever sullied the face of the globe ... They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and Germans are born with blond hair. I would not in the least be surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race ... You [Jews] have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserve to be punished, for this is your destiny" (Gould, 91). On another occasion Voltaire charged that "the Jew does not belong to any place except that place which he makes money; would he not just as easily betray the King on behalf of the Emperor as he would the Emperor for the King?" (Katz, 44). Thirty of 118 of Voltaire's essays in his Dictionary of Philosophy address Jews, usually disparagingly. Voltaire calls Jews "our masters and our enemies ... whom we detest ... the most abominable people in the world."

Bringing down Dictators

I realise that my posts have been most re-directs to Harry's Place and I'm afraid here is another one. It's about Bringing Down Dictators and is quite interesting. (Note: article mentioned in the post can be accessed for free by reading it at the bottom of the permalink; not by the link the main body of the post.)

Adminstrative post: an observation re: profiles

Have the rest of you seen Wembley's profile? Puts us all to shame. There's photos, favourite books, music, movies. I urge us all to follow his example.

(JP - we can take this post down after a few days. It doesn't need to be archived for posterity.)

Academic boycott of Israel

I posted something about this in a comment on another post, (admittedly full of typos) but anyway I thought the topic was interesting enough to put something else up here. (Another good post from Harry's Place.)

Say Hello to the New Pope... Same as the Old Pope

Welcome Benedict XVI.

I wonder if I'm alone in being slightly bothered by GW Bush's reaction. Most other world leaders have contented themselves with some platitudes about it being a tough and noble job.

GW on the other hand has said "He's a man of great wisdom and knowledge. He's a man who serves the Lord."

I'm squeamish about this 'serving the Lord' bit. It doesn't seem a million miles from Muslim clerics whose highest compliment is that someone is 'a good Muslim'. Or 'a man who serves Allah'. I guess as a secularist I'm just not comfortable with such professions of faith from our leaders.

By the way, The Sun's front page today is superlative.

I pleaded with them in Arabic not to shoot me

Bloody 'ell...

The man who would not die
Ten months ago, a BBC journalist and British cameraman set off on a seemingly safe assignment in Saudi Arabia. The trip left the reporter fighting for his life and his colleague dead. Now, for the first time, Frank Gardner tells his extraordinary tale of survival.
By James Meek
Tuesday April 19, 2005
The Guardian

PS I note they're still "militants" throughout this article...

Voting is an apostasy

Scary group the Saviour Sect urges Muslims not to vote. (Post from Harry's Place.)

Iran Bans Al-Jazeera

Iran Bans Al-Jazeera

What are the odds on an Al-Jazeera report on the Protocols of the Elders of Teheran?

MPs compared Gaza to Warsaw ghetto

My erstwhile sympathy for egg-bedraggled Black-Jewish Labour MP Oona King has taken a bashing on reading this.

MPs compare Gaza to Warsaw ghetto
Press Association
Thursday June 19, 2003

Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was today compared to the Nazis' creation of the Warsaw ghetto by MPs who recently returned from the region.

The controversial comparison, drawn by Oona King and Jenny Tonge, will anger the pro-Israel lobby and the visiting Israeli finance minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, who met Tony Blair at Downing Street this morning.

Labour MP Ms King, who is Jewish, said Gaza was "the same in nature" as the infamous Polish ghetto.

Polly Toynbee on the Pope's funeral - someone had to say it

.. and she says it well. Most surprising to me: "spreading the lie that the Aids virus passes easily through microscopic holes in condoms". Anyone heard of that before?

Not in my name
How dare Tony Blair genuflect on our behalf before the corpse of a man whose edicts killed millions?
Polly Toynbee
Friday April 8, 2005
The Guardian

Palestinians prefer Zionist domination to PA tyranny

Fascinating reading this...

The Hell of Israel Is Better than the Paradise of Arafat
Weblog
Daniel Pipes
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2005

Some excerpts:

....

JP COMMENT - This is the main thrust of the article:

In the view of Fadal Tahabub, a member of the Palestinian National Council, an estimated 70 percent of the 200,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem preferred to remain under Israeli sovereignty. A social worker living in Ras al-‘Amud, one of the areas possibly falling under PA control, said: "If a secret poll was conducted, I am sure an overwhelming majority of Jerusalem Arabs would say they would prefer to stay in Israel."

So many Jerusalem Arabs considered taking out Israeli papers in 2000 that the ranking Islamic official in Jerusalem issued an edict prohibiting his flock from holding Israeli citizenship (because this implies recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the holy city). Faysal al-Husayni, the Palestine Liberation Organization's man in charge of Jerusalem affairs, went further: "Taking Israeli citizenship is something that can only be defined as treason," and he threatened such people with exclusion from the Palestinian state. Finding his threat ineffective, Husayni upped the ante, announcing that Jerusalem Arabs who take Israeli citizenship would have their homes confiscated. The PA's radio station confirmed this, calling such persons "traitors" and threatening that they would be "tracked down." Many Palestinians were duly intimidated, fearing the authority's security forces.

...

JP COMMENT - You never see this in discussions of Israel's "Berlin Wall":

The issue arose a bit later in 2004 as Israel built its security fence. Some Palestinians, like Umm al-Fahm's Ahmed Jabrin, 67, faced a choice on which side of the fence to live. He had no doubts. "We fought [the Israeli authorities so as] to be inside of the fence, and they moved it so we are still in Israel. We have many links to Israel. What have we to do with the Palestinian Authority?" His relative, Hisham Jabrin, 31, added: "We are an integral part of Israel and will never be part of a Palestinian state. We have always lived in Israel and there is absolutely no chance that that will change."

...

JP COMMENT - Some unbelievable stuff in the bit "Preferring Israel to the Arab Regimes":

* Syria's leadership referred to as "Arab Zionists" (LOL!)
* On Kuwait: Arafat himself concurred: "What Kuwait did to the Palestinian people is worse than what has been done by Israel to Palestinians in the occupied territories."

General Election - "Passion? Vision?"

Tom Utley in the Telegraph bemoans the lack of clear philisophical difference between the main parties. I found it amusing and a lot of it chimed with my own feelings (aprt from the stuff about being a tribal Tory.)

For an alternate view here's on old post which contains an article by good 'ol Johann.

Who knows why our 70mph speed limit was introduced?

I saw this letter in today's Telegraph:

Telegraph Letters 14/04/05
Sir - Speed cameras are to be deployed on the M4 between Junction 14 and Junction 18, Hungerford to Bath (News, Apr 13). If drivers are to be punished for exceeding 70mph, who voted for that limit? Answer, no one. The 70mph limit was brought in, under emergency powers, as a measure to save fuel during the 1974 fuel price crisis. Speed limits do not reflect the public's wishes. We have never seen this limit as part of a political manifesto, and have never had an opportunity to vote on it. I am not advocating elimination of speed limits, but vehicles are now safer and nearly every driver ignores the motorway limits.
Geoffrey Collingwood, Brackley, Northants


Did some checking, and lo and behold, it's true!

BBC 15/12/74
New speed limit to curb fuel use
British drivers must adhere to reduced speed limits from midnight tonight as the government tries to save fuel. ... The measures have been introduced indefinitely by Energy Secretary, Eric Varley, as part of a 12-point package of energy conservation measures aimed at saving £700m in imports annually.

Manifesto fact check

Crits of all the manifesto's are up:

Labour

Conservatives

Lib Dems

Thank You Tony

A quick diversion from the election.

Our leader as viewed in the US.

Smoking has 'devastating impact' on IVF success

Good one for you, Dan! Also has some stuff on BMI (ie fatties), which will be of interest to Al, if no one else.

Smoking has 'devastating impact' on IVF success
Smoking adds the equivalent of 10 years to the reproductive age of a 20-year-old woman seeking to have a baby by in vitro fertilisation and has a "devastating" impact on a couple's chances of a successful delivery, scientists reported yesterday.

Slay them wherever ye catch them

My old man put me on to this one...

Slay Muslims wherever ye catch them

Some time ago, I heard a debate, where the British author Nick Hornby replied to a comment made by another panellist, Germain Greer, Aussie pin up girl of the feminist Left. Ms Greer had made a generalisation about men, where she said that men could not be trusted, were liars and needed to be watched constantly. Nick Hornby, when it became his turn to express his opinion, took Ms Greer’s sentence, and for sake of exemplifying the stupidity and sexism of her statement, took exactly the same sentence and replaced the word "men" with the word "Jews" and "women" with "gentile"…

"Jews lie, Jews Cheat, Jews need to be watched 24 hours a day. In short, any Gentile would be mad to ever trust a Jew."

Try the same sentence with the word "Nigger" "Wasp" or even "Ivy Leaguer", or whatever minority group you belong to, and you will get the idea. So, using Mr Hornby’s methodology, why don’t we take the teachings of Islam, and turn the words around. In each case I have taken the original script, and effectively turned it around, exchanging "Infidel" for "Muslim" "Democracy" for Islam and so on. If you are a non Muslim, you will find this terrifying.

Bloody students

Seen this? Story about NUS council members resigning because of failure to confront anti-semitism.

Generally think that students are filled with self-important fervour and I try to avoid them as much as possible. Nonetheless the story rings true.

There's plenty of coverage but I've taken this article from 'Harry's Place' as it has good links to the Guardian and the NUS.

Good news from Nigeria??!!

Wow, now I've heard everything.

Senate chief quits in bribe scandal
April 06, 2005
Senate chief quits in bribe scandal
From Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

NIGERIAN politicians, among the most loquacious in the world, were left speechless yesterday when the President of the Senate — the country’s third most powerful man — was forced to resign for his alleged role in a bribery scandal.

Al-Qaeda lures middle classes to join its ranks

(i) Know thine enemy
(ii) This "it's cos of poverty" argument is a loada crap.

Al-Qaeda lures middle classes to join its ranks
April 03, 2005
Sunday Times
Nick Fielding

THE typical recruit to Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organisation, is upper middle class, has been educated in the West and is from a professional background, according to a new study.

‘Cover-up’ row on report clearing Annan

Had a big discussion with friends of mine in Berlin about the future of the UN, brought this story to mind...

‘Cover-up’ row on report clearing Annan
Sunday Times
April 03, 2005
Robert Winnett

A REPORT that “exonerated” Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, of knowing about his son’s alleged links to the Iraqi oil for food affair has been called into question by a key witness.

How did Germans treat Jewish Allied POWs?

WW2: it's pretty well known you didn't want to be a Russian POW during the Second World War, yet western POWs got a relatively good deal, at times even in accord with the Geneva Conventions.

Well I always wondered what happened if you were an American or British POW, and the Germans found out you were Jewish. Well, surprise surprise, it turns out they treated you as they would any other jew. Here's one well-documented story:

The Soldiers of Berga

Andrea Dworkin, anti-pornography campaigner, dies

Andrea Dworkin, anti-pornography campaigner, dies. And yet Hugh Hefner lives (very well, & singing Viagra's praises). Is God trying to tell us something?

......

PS Here's something on that interesting-sounding book of Dworkin's mentioned in the obit: Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation. And no, it won't make you any sadder she's gone.

Honour the Catholic, don't touch the Jew

Kinda gives you a warm feeling inside doesn't it? Those lovely Iranians.

Iran denies contact with Israel at Pope's funeral

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has denied speaking to Israel's president at the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Moshe Katsav says they exchanged words, but Mr Khatami told Iranian media the "allegations are false" and that they had not shaken hands.

Mr Katsav, who was born in Iran, said he had exchanged words in his native Persian with Mr Khatami. "These allegations are false... I have not had any meeting with a personality from the Zionist regime," the official Iranian news agency quoted Mr Khatami as saying.

Doesn't get anywhere near no.1 in the Iranian all-time wanker ratings, that spot occupied by their Bam earthquake appeal for aid from "any country except Israel"

Black-Jewish MP pelted with eggs at War Memorial

This is absolutely fucking disgusting:

Jewish MP pelted with eggs at war memorial
By Richard Alleyne
Daily Telegraph
11/04/2005

The campaign for what promises to be one of the most bitterly contested parliamentary seats got off to an explosive start yesterday when the MP Oona King was pelted with eggs and vegetables as she attended a memorial to Jewish war dead.

Miss King, 37, the black Jewish Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was attacked as she joined mourners to commemorate 60 years since the Hughes Mansions Disaster, when 134 people, almost all Jewish, were killed by the last V2 missile to land on London.

Oona King has enraged her Muslim constituents by supporting the war in Iraq. The eggs missed her, but one hit a war veteran, Louis Lewis, 89, in the chest and an onion struck Richard Brett, a bugler from the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade who sounded the Last Post at the ceremony.

...

Ibn Alkhattab, 21, said: "It will be all about the war. There is enormous anger. No one will vote for her." His friend added: "She represented these people and then voted for the war. We all hate her. She comes here with her Jewish friends who are killing our people and then they come to our back yards. "It is out of order. What do they expect?"

Richard Littlejohn in today's Sun (I know, I know...) made some very good points, which unfortunately don't seem to be online. He imagines the above comments slightly changed, to a white person saying "We hate her. She comes here with her black friends to our backyard", suggests (rightly in my view) that the coverage would have been national and deeply appalled in tone, and asks why King's Jewish half is deemed so much less worthy than her black half.

Royal Wedding Special

Congratulations to the happy couple and all that.

However, as something of a republican I thought now might be a good time to post a link to Republic, the organisation trying to bring an end to the monarchy. I haven't been through the whole website yet, but I think it's certainly worth a look.

Japan faces storm over 'rewriting' war history

My god, how many times have I read this story? Seems to be repeated every year!

Would love to see an interview with a rep from the Japanese Min of Ed. I mean, what the hell would he say in answer to a direct question about the Rape of Nanking? Deny it ever happened??

Let me know if anyone sees a follow-up to this, eg about the effect of the boycott.

Japan faces storm over 'rewriting' war history
Times Online
From Leo Lewis in Tokyo
April 06, 2005

Islamism - discussion with Dom, some thoughts...

It was interesting talking to my mate Dom last night about (amongst other things) (i) the relationship between Islam (a faith) and Islamism (a political ideology) and (ii) the true level of threat that Islamists pose to us westerners.

Dom is reading the Wheen book, which I hugely enjoyed. Wheen, however, poo-poos the level of threat posed by Islamism (or at least accuses Bush/Blair of hugely exaggerating it for nefarious political purposes). Berman, who Wheen quotes and seems to hugely admire, is in no doubt that Islamism is a totalitarian ideology in the tradition of communism and fascism. In this he is in complete agreement with Daniel Pipes. And Pipes is in no doubt of the huge threat posed by Islamism. Would be interested to see Wheen and Pipes discuss this...

To those who think there is no (or not much of a) threat from Islamists to us, I would ask why they think that. The possible answers that occur to me are (1) the Islamists have no intention to do great damage to us or (2) they have no capability to do so. If answer (2) is chosen, I would ask if they think that because (2a) the Islamists are extraordinarily incompetent (despite 9/11) or (2b) the Western security forces are extraordinarily competent, nay foolproof.

Terror and Liberalism
Paul Berman

How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions
Francis Wheen

Islam and Islamism - Faith and Ideology
by Daniel Pipes
National Interest
Spring 2000

Grown up debate...

Most commentators agree that Michael Howard won yesterday's clash in the last PM's question time before the election and I'm not inclined to dispute it.

What depresses me is the playground nature of the process. Here's an extract from the Daily Mail (Chosen simply because it's representative of the coverage.)

"Tory MPs joined in a chorus, raising and lowering their arms as Mr Howard said: "Taxes are up, crime up, immigration up, waiting times up, MRSA up - take home pay down, pensions down, productivity growth down, manufacturing employment down."

The only other situation I can think of where you can win a debate by chanting the loudest is in a football stadium. The Guardian described it as 'a music hall moment' but I think that's being charitable. 'Pantomime' might be nearer the mark.

I'm not picking on the Tories here - this tendency to bray, cheer and shout is apparent on both sides of the house.

It just makes Parliament seem a bit childish.

Election websites

The following may be handy in the coming weeks (at least for those of us who can tear ourselves away from the the state of race relations in US golf).

Tony Blair's election diary
BBC's Election Monitor
Channel 4's fact checker (I posted this earlier but you may have missed under an avalanche of JP posts. Just kidding, JP. You know you are the blog star!)

Also here's the permalink to an earlier post which included all the main party websites.

Many of these links were found at Harry's Place (which has a permanent link off this site and is well worth checking out.)

Postal vote scandal - should I vote Tory?

This kind of thing is making me seriously reconsider my "vote Tony because of Iraq" stance...


Votes and values
Times Online - Comment
It is an outrage that the integrity of this election is already in doubt


Ministers vetoed election watchdog plan to cut fraud in postal ballots
By Jill Sherman, Whitehall Editor
THE Government blocked the Electoral Commission’s recommendations to combat postal vote fraud by banning political parties from handling the applications.

Extraordinary rascism in US Golf

This article is about Lee Elder, the first black man to play in the US Masters:

Elder calls for Woods to carry the fight to Augusta National

The best black player before him was Charles Sifford. When Sifford tried to qualify for the Phoenix Open in 1952, he was denied use of the locker-room and, on reaching the 1st green, found human faeces in the hole. It was not until 1961 that the PGA removed from its constitution a rule limiting membership to “Professional Golfers of the Caucasian Race”.

...

The victory that qualified him [Elder] for that historic Masters in 1975, at the Monsanto Open in Pensacola, Florida, was typical of the racism that existed. Like Sifford, Elder had to change his shoes outside; like Sifford, he was used to being called “n*****” and “black boy”.

The Masters, though, had been the unattainable. It is well documented how changes in qualifying rules seemed forever to legislate against the leading black players, or how no invitation was presented to a black player, despite heavy lobbying from the United States House of Representatives. One of the most famous quotes from Clifford Roberts, the co-founder of Augusta National, was that, as long as he was alive, “golfers will be white and caddies will be black”.

Elder knows the quote all too well. He also finds it staggering that he was able to play in South Africa, in 1972, before he got near Augusta. “You realise that?” he asked, rhetorically. “So I can go to a country where apartheid is at its height and yet here I am in my own country and I cannot play in the Masters?”

Killers butchering the "unislamic" barbers of Iraq

The Times doing good work exposing these disgusting murderers...

The barbers cut down by Baghdad’s killers
Times 2
April 06, 2005
Catherine Philip

Close shaves kill Iraqi barbers
April 03, 2005
Times Online
Ali Rifat, Baghdad

Harold Pinter interview

Harold Pinter interview
He’s still writing, still angry, but is it a vision of a lost England that drives Harold Pinter, asks Bryan Appleyard

Anyone who's an admirer of Hutton's great cameo 37 at Sydney in 1946 can't be all bad, but Appleyard (good writer!) exposes some of the more ridiculous and inconsistent aspects of Pinter's politics...

Electoral stimulation

So it begins...

If JP can forgo japanese military history for a few weeks I thought it might be a good idea to focus on the election between now and May 5th. Articles to help floating voters (such as myself) would be much appreciated (though I live in a one of the safest Labour seats in the country so I'm not sure how much difference it would make.)

My latest straw poll has Labour slightly ahead. This is based on my dad's grudging support: 'I suppose I'll stick with Labour. [Heavy sigh]'

Anyway, here's Uncle Johann on the differences between the parties (including the by now inevitable bit of banging on about how poor his relatives are.)

Philosophical lunch with JP - morality

Lunch with JP and Andy today. Wide-ranging discussion. Many world problems solved.

Kept trying to pin JP down on the subject of morality. Agreed that it was tricky.

It ended with an aphorism:

'Absolutism is unproveable.
Relativism is unworkable.'

Any takers?

Is Bush the antichrist?

Amazing article from a radio talk show host who clearly thinks Bush is not right wing and Christian enough.

Is Bush the Antichrist?

by Chuck Baldwin

You MUST read this. It's hilarious.

GIVING GEORGE W. BUSH HIS DUE.

An interesting article from the New Republic. Alot of people - me included - are probably guilty of a certain amount of churlishness where Bush is concerned.
A

GIVING BUSH HIS DUE ON DEMOCRACY.
The Politics of Churlishness
by Martin Peretz

If George W. Bush were to discover a cure for cancer, his critics would denounce him for having done it unilaterally, without adequate consultation, with a crude disregard for the sensibilities of others. He pursued his goal obstinately, they would say, without filtering his thoughts through the medical research establishment. And he didn't share his research with competing labs and thus caused resentment among other scientists who didn't have the resources or the bold--perhaps even somewhat reckless--instincts to pursue the task as he did. And he completely ignored the World Health Organization, showing his contempt for international institutions. Anyway, a cure for cancer is all fine and nice, but what about AIDS?

No, the president has not discovered a cure for cancer. But there is a pathology, a historical pathology, that he has attacked with unprecedented vigor and with unprecedented success. I refer, of course, to the political culture of the Middle East, which the president may actually have changed. And he has accomplished this genuinely momentous transformation in ways that virtually the entire foreign affairs clerisy--the cold-blooded Brent Scowcroft realist Republicans and almost all the Democrats--never thought possible. Or, perhaps, in ways some of them thought positively undesirable. Bush, it now seems safe to say, is one of the great surprises in modern U.S. history. Nothing about his past suggested that he harbored these ideals nor the qualities of character required for their realization. Right up to the moment Bush became president, I was convinced that his mind, at least on matters Levantine, belonged to his father and to James Baker III, whose worldview seemed to be defined by the pecuniary prejudice of oil and Texas: Keep the ruling Arabs happy. But I was wrong, and, in light of what has already been achieved in the Middle East, I am glad to say so. Most American liberals, alas, enjoy no similar gladness. They are not exactly pleased by the positive results of Bush's campaign in the Middle East. They deny and resent and begrudge and snipe. They are trapped in the politics of churlishness.

The achievements of Bush's foreign policy abroad represent a revolution in the foreign policy culture at home. The traditional Republican mentality that was so perfectly and meanly represented by Bush père and Baker precluded the United States from pressing the Arabs about reform--about anything--for decades. Not Iraq about its tyranny and its record of genocide, not Syria about its military occupation of Lebanon and its own brutal Baathist dictatorship, not Egypt about loosening the crippling bonds of a statist economy and an authoritarian political system, not Saudi Arabia about its championing of the Wahhabi extremism that made its own country so desiccated and the world so dangerous, and certainly not the Palestinians about the fantasy that they had won all the wars that they had actually lost and were therefore entitled to the full rewards due them from their victories. This was the state of U.S.-Arab relations in 2001: The United States was actually more frightened of the Arabs than they were of us. The extraordinary report of the 9/11 Commission about the delinquent reactions to the decade-long lead-up to the catastrophe of September 11 only confirms this impression of official U.S. pusillanimity.

The Clinton administration seized on every possible excuse--from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, right through the atrocities in Kenya and Tanzania, to the attack on the USS Cole--not to respond meaningfully to Osama bin Laden. This aggressively dilatory approach was set early on, when Bill Clinton's first secretary of state, dead-man-walking Warren Christopher, proposed that a special bureau be set up to deal with drugs, crime, and terrorism in a single office, as if terrorism is a problem for policemen and not for strategists. The 9/11 Commission Report records that only congressional opposition aborted Christopher's concoction. Attorney General Janet Reno always worried about retaliation against any moves by the United States; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, preoccupied with her "push for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israelis," was concerned that military strikes against the bin Laden operations in Afghanistan would strengthen the Taliban; National Security Adviser Sandy Berger fretted that a shoot-out might be seen as an assassination, and, always the trade lawyer, he consistently held out hope that some sort of carrot would turn the Taliban against bin Laden; General Anthony Zinni was more concerned about human rights abuses by the Taliban than by its hospitality to Al Qaeda and worried also that a mosque might be damaged in the course of bombing operations; Pentagon officials warned that a missile aimed at bin Laden might kill a visiting Emirati prince instead (but why was a UAE prince hanging out with bin Laden anyway?); and CIA Director George Tenet had so many objections to decisive action that it would be nearly impossible to enumerate them.

Clinton, it is true, resolved to eliminate bin Laden, but soon he eliminated his desire to eliminate him. The Clinton administration's true desire was to arrest bin Laden, to indict him, and to put him on trial--to "bring him to justice," as these men and women pompously exhorted each other. Except Berger also feared that bin Laden would be acquitted in a U.S. court of law. CIA personnel trying to cut a deal with the Northern Alliance to capture bin Laden warned that, if the Afghan "tribals"--that's the orientalism of liberals--did not bring him in alive but, heaven forbid, actually killed him, they would not be paid for their labors. The charismatic leader of the Afghan opposition and our best contact with it, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated two days before September 11, thought he was dealing with madmen.

The new Bush presidency also found it hard to wrap its hands around the Al Qaeda phenomenon and preferred to focus instead on Star Wars redivivus--until, of course, a catastrophe in Lower Manhattan concentrated its mind. What the Bush administration gradually came to realize was that fighting the Muslim terrorist international could not be done in a vacuum. If the Islamic and Arab orbits were to continue to revolve around sanguinary tyrannies, there would be no popular basis in civil society to rob the cult of suicidal murder of its prestige. So, rather than being a distraction from the struggle against the armed rage suffusing these at once taut and eruptive polities, confronting their governments was actually intrinsic to that struggle. The Bush administration recognized that removing the effect means removing the cause. The 9/11 Commission seems to have grasped this, too, at least in its citations of Richard Clarke's assertion that bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Baath could be natural allies.

History has never traveled in the Middle East as fast as it has during the last two years. In this place where time seems to have stopped, time has suddenly accelerated. It may be true (more likely, it is not) that a deep yearning for democracy has been latent throughout the region for a long time. There certainly was a basis in reality for skepticism about the Arabs' hospitability to the opening of their societies. Whatever the proper historical and cultural analysis of the past, however, the fact is that democracy did not begin even to breathe until the small coalition of Western nations led by the United States destroyed the most ruthless dictatorship in the area. Democracy in Mesopotamia? A fantasy, surely. But not quite. Iraq was, despite its unbelievably bloody history, a rather sophisticated place. During the nineteenth century, many Baghdadis went abroad to study. Modern nationalism sank some roots. Baghdad itself had a plurality of Jews, learned and mercantile, until they fled to the new state of Israel. An ancient minority of Christians survived into the age of Sunni pogroms and survives--though in lesser numbers--still. The Kurds grew relatively tolerant in the areas they dominated. And the majority Shia, though viciously persecuted from the founding of the Iraqi state after World War I--with the not-so-passive consent of the British colonials--and condemned to near-genocide by Saddam's revolutionary republic, have generally maintained the restraint that piety sometimes allows. After a year and a half of nearly daily Sunni bloodletting among them, the Shia have not wreaked the vengeance they surely could and, equally as surely, some of them long to take. The U.S. liberation-occupation has now tried to cobble together these diverging Iraqis into the beginnings of a democratic regime. Wonder of wonders, these estranged cousins have shown some talent in the art of compromise; and trying to make this polity work is hardly an effort undertaken without courage. The judge who was killed with his son outside his home on his way to work at the tribunal that will try Saddam knew that danger stalked him, and so did the rest of the victims of Sunni bloodlust. This bloodlust evokes an unmistakable but macabre schadenfreude among many critics of the war, who want nothing of history except to be proved right. It is as if suicide bombings and other sorts of helter-skelter murder were a just judgment on the wrongdoings--yes, there have been wrongdoings, some of them really disgusting--of the Bush administration. And, even if ridding western Asia of Saddam is reluctantly accepted as justified, what blogger couldn't have accomplished what came after more deftly? In any case, this churlish orthodoxy tells us that the Sunnis need to be enticed into the political game lest it be deemed illegitimate. In this scenario, it is the murderers who withhold or bestow moral authority. John F. Burns, the defiantly honest New York Times journalist in Baghdad, who has consistently reported the ambiguous and truly tangled realities of the war, now sees the Baathist and Sunni warriors in retreat, if not actually beaten. What will probably happen in Iraq is a version of what endured for decades in Lebanon: a representative government rooted in sect--argumentative, perhaps even corrupt, but functioning. Lebanon was never perfect, but it worked reasonably well, until the aggressive Palestinian guests took to commanding Shia turf to establish a "state within a state." (This was a phenomenon that the nimble Thomas L. Friedman did not much report on in the first leg of his journey From Beirut to Jerusalem, confiding that fear for his life and livelihood kept him from deviating too far from the Palestinian story as they wanted it told. Eason Jordan avant la lettre.) The fine fruits of the Bush administration's indifference to international opinion may be seen now in Lebanon, too. What is happening there is the most concrete intra-Arab consequence of the Iraq war. Nothing could be done in Lebanon without Syria's sanction, no government decision without the approval of Damascus, no business without a hefty Damascene percentage. Syrian troops and spies were everywhere. Lebanese of all sects and clans have been restive for years. But they lived in the fearful memory of their mad civil war, the civil war of the daily car bombs in the marketplace. Suddenly, the elections in Iraq, Bush's main achievement there, exhilarating and inspiring, sprung loose the psychological impediments that shackled the Lebanese to Syria. Even if the outcomes will not be exactly the same, this was Prague and Berlin at the end of the long subjugation to their neighbor to the east. More immediately, this was Kiev only a few months ago. The first mass protest against the Syrians and their satrap prime minister drew tens of thousands. Then there was the much larger crowd of pro-Syria Shia from the south, a disconcerting moment. But, after that, a multitude so huge that it defied counting, and so diverse. This was the true cedar revolution, a revolution of the young, for independence, for freedom from the failing but always brutal Damascus regime next door. Will Vladimir Putin be so stupid as to invest credit and arms in the stiff and callow son of Hafez Al Assad? one of this happened by spontaneous generation. Yes, there were lucky breaks: Yasir Arafat died, Syria conspired somehow to have former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri assassinated. And yes, the new directions are young, and the autocratic-theocratic political culture of the Middle East is old, and it is once again too early to proclaim that the mission has been accomplished. As the ancient Israelite king observed, let he who girds his harness not boast as he who takes it off. But the mission is nonetheless real, and far along, and it is showing thrilling accomplishments. It is simply stupid, empirically and philosophically, to deny that all or any of this would have happened without the deeply unpopular but historically grand initiative of Bush. The hundreds of thousands of young people in Martyrs' Square knew that they had Bush's backing. The president seems even to have enticed Jacques Chirac into a more active policy toward Lebanon: For him, too, Syria had to go. If this satisfies Chirac's yearning for 'la gloire', so be it. (But it will not be so easy to maintain such alliances: Already, Security Council members are said to be working up plans to put the future of Lebanon under the protective care of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, when nothing in UNIFIL's past--nothing--should provide confidence that it is able, or even disposed, to act decisively against Arab brutality.)

What is occurring in Saudi Arabia and Egypt is also heartening, if more than a bit tentative. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the Saudis have allowed the first local elections in the country's history: an election to bodies that cannot make big decisions, and an election limited to male voters, naturally. But infidels (that is, Shia) may also vote. By Saudi standards, this is the revolution of 1848. In Egypt, responding to the insistence of the Bush people, President Hosni Mubarak has allowed that he will permit opponents to run in the presidential elections against him. Mubarak has no chance of losing ... this time. Maybe, however, the son will not be the father's inevitable successor, and maybe the Arab custom of turning dictatorships into dynasties will also come to an end, at least in Cairo. And, in the brave figure of Ayman Nour, the world now has a hero of the anti-Mubarak forces to celebrate and to support. In both countries, to be sure, what we are seeing are the bare beginnings of a democratic process, the very bare beginnings. It will be years, maybe decades, before these become democratic polities. And there is always the chance--as was the case in Algeria, once the jewel in the shabby crown of the "nonaligned"--that the vox populi will vote wrong. In the Algerian instance, it had to vote wrong: The choice was between national fascists and pious fascists. Take your pick. the situation is certainly complex. But complexity is not a warrant for despair. The significant fact is that Bush's obsession with the democratization of the region is working. Have Democrats begun to wonder how it came to pass that this noble cause became the work of Republicans? They should wonder if they care to regain power. They should recall that Clinton (and the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter even more so) had absolutely no interest in trying to modify the harsh political character of the Arab world. What they aspired to do was to mollify the dictators--to prefer the furthering of the peace process to the furthering of the conditions that make peace possible. The Democrats were the ones who were always elevating Arafat. He was at the very center of their road map. After he stalked out of a meeting room in Paris during cease-fire talks in late 2000, Albright actually ran in breathless pursuit to lure him back. It was the Democrats who perpetuated Arafat's demonic sway over the Palestinians, and it was the Democrats who sustained him among the other Arabs. And so the cause of Arab democracy was left for the Republicans to pursue. After September 11, the cause became a matter also of U.S. national security.

The great diversion from the real politics of the Arab countries, and from the prospect of political reform, was the Palestinian grievance against Israel. In the early years of their conflict with the Zionists, the Palestinians thought that these countries would fight their battles for them, at the negotiating table and on the battlefield, which they did. But what happened in reality was that the various Arabs exploited the Palestinians as pawns in their own ambitions to pick off pieces of Palestine for themselves. That is why there was no Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza after the armistice of 1949, as one might have expected from the Partition Plan of 1947. The West Bank was annexed to Jordan. Gaza was not annexed but administratively attached to Egypt. Syria's armies won no decisive battles against the Jews; otherwise, they also would have taken a piece of Palestine. In any event, until the Six Days War, the Palestinian groan against the Jews was focused on the very existence of Israel within narrow and perilous borders, without strategic depth, without old Jerusalem, without the West Bank, without Gaza.

And Arab governments deflected the ample internal plaints of their own peoples with mobilized hysteria against the Jews. Every domestic grievance was dispersed with rousing rhetoric against Israel. The sun of Gamal Abdel Nasser rose and set with Cairo's failures in its wars with Israel. Hatred of the Zionists levitated the Baath dictatorships of both Iraq and Syria. In the end, after five wars and two intifadas, the Palestinians still seethed. But it had all come to nothing. And, finally, the angel of death unilaterally attacked Arafat. Bush had had the good sense to pay no attention to him, despite the urgent imprecations of the usual apologists: the European Union, the United Nations, France, Russia, and the editorial page of the Times. Had Bush made even a single accommodation to Arafat, Arafat's way in the world would have been enshrined in Palestinian lore for yet another generation as the only way.

But Bush didn't, and Ariel Sharon didn't, either. Now that there is some real hope among both Israelis and Palestinians about the future, let us examine the reasons for it. The first is that Bush made no gestures to the hyperbolic fantasies of Palestinian politics. He gave them one dose of reality after another. The second is that he gave Israel the confidence that he would not trade its security for anything--which means that Israel is now willing to cede much on its own. (Israeli dovishness for American hawkishness: This was always the only way.) The third is that Bush is holding Sharon to his commitments, and everyone who is at all rational on these issues now sees the Israeli prime minister as a man of his word and a man of history. After all, Sharon has broken with much of his own political party. Not for nothing is he now the designated assassination target of the Israeli hard right. Still, holding Sharon to his word also means holding Mahmoud Abbas to his. So far, the record is mixed. The serious shutting down of the terrorist militias has not yet begun, but the Palestinian Authority did run reasonably free local elections, and they were not accompanied by killing. It is true that Hamas won more of these races than makes either Sharon or Abbas comfortable, and its strength may even increase in the coming parliamentary voting. But this, too, is a part of the gamble of democracy; and, to the extent that the Palestinians are taking this gamble and following the newest fashion among the other Arabs, it is a tribute to the inked purple fingers of Iraq, which is to say, a tribute to Bush and his simplistic but effective trust in the polling place.

It has been heartening, in recent months, to watch some Democratic senators searching for ways out of the politics of churlishness. Some liberals appear to have understood that history is moving swiftly and in a good direction, and that history has no time for their old and mistaken suspicion of American power in the service of American values. One does not have to admire a lot about George W. Bush to admire what he has so far wrought. One need only be a thoughtful American with an interest in proliferating liberalism around the world. And, if liberals are unwilling to proliferate liberalism, then conservatives will. Rarely has there been a sweeter irony.

"Capitalism" a redundant word?

An interesting mail just in from my mate Ed, talking about a book called An Anglosphere Primer, by James Bennett:

Read an interesting point in the Anglosphere book yesterday: Bennett doesn't use the word "capitalism" but uses "market economy" instead. He made the point that not only is "capitalism" a term created by Marx but that "the term capitalism effectively became meaningless in the 1990s when the average person could afford to buy a PC with a high-speed connection to the Internet and hence has all the capital he needs to sell his skills on the information economy market (I have to think of asking Pete* the other day where he has his office now and he said that all his employees work at home from their PCs -- there is no 'capitalist exploitation' going on here, just people who own their own capital organizing themselves loosely and efficiently). Bennett says this development is as significant as workers in an automobile manufacturing plant all suddenly being able to afford their own blast furnaces. As robots replace people in the manufacturing industry, the information industry becomes more signifcant which makes the term "capitalism" less meaningful in describing the forces that be in our economy.

*Pete is Ed's brother

Post-Zionism - one for JP to mull

Saw this in the Guardian at the weekend. Interesting. I'm not well informed informed enough to know if all of this factually accurate, but I thought I'd chuck it on here for JP to look at.

'We need a post-Zionist leap of faith'

John Rose
Saturday April 2, 2005
The Guardian

Spengler - Seb's Favorite

Putting this here on Seb's behalf, really - this is one of his favorite writers:

The Complete Spengler
Asia Times Online

Islamism, fascism and Terrorism

Indebted to Seb for this great link - required reading:

Islamism, Fascism and Terrorism
By Marc Erikson
Asia Times

PART 1
Links between neo-Nazis and the radical ideology of Islamism have surfaced since the terrorism of September 11, 2001 - an event that was celebrated by both groups. But fascism and Islamism have an 80-year history of collaboration based on shared ideas, practices and perceived common enemies.

PART 2
Substitute religious for racial purity, and most ideological and organizational precepts of Nazism are essentially identical to the later precepts of the Muslim Brotherhood. Marc Erikson traces the Brotherhood's collaboration with fascism from the present-day brains behind al-Qaeda to the era of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during World War II.

PART 3
The West is waging war not against the religion of Islam, but against the little-understood political philosophy of Islamism, which, upon close examination, reveals itself as a distinct - and distinctly noxious - form of the same kind of fascism that went down in defeat in World War II, but which never quite died out, especially in the Middle East.

PART 4
The key personality behind the global Islamist jihad of the 1990s was not Osama bin Laden; rather, it was his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the man whose critical acumen and organizational and operational skills were central to the success of al-Qaeda. Now his fascist Islamism has seized the ideological initiative in the Muslim world of today.