“This week it cost me 2,750 dollars to airmail a letter to Britain containing three A4 sheets of paper.”
– Jan Raath in yesterday’s Times reporting from what remains of Zimbabwe
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May 17th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Last night, on Have I Got News For You, a British TV comedy quiz show held in high regard, one of the regulars, Ian Hislop, who also edits Private Eye (but who presumably pays rather less attention to the Private Eye home page), launched a spectacular attack on the European Union and on the idea of Britain being any part of it. The gist of it was that Europe was being dealt a new constitution by a man (Giscard d’Estaing) who would be in prison if he were British. “It’s as if Jeffrey Archer was in charge of Europe.” Left wing comedian Mark Steel tried to take the sting out of the attack by implying that Hislop was attacking all French people. (“And how about those bloody Italians, crooks all of them, …” etc.) He played the xenophobia card, in other words. But Hislop wasn’t attacking all French people and saying they were all crooks, just Giscard, and, in general, the kind of people who become French Presidents. He steam-rollered right over Steel, not least because this is Hislop’s home turf and both he and Steel knew it. I can’t remember much of the wording of the attack, and I don’t have it on tape. But in any case, it was the ferocity and the protracted nature of it that was astonishing, rather than the details. Everyone else looked rather embarrassed. Ian, easy boy, you can’t say this kind of thing on TV, BBCTV, BBC comedy TV, said their faces (but not their mouths). But he just raged on regardless. To Americans who may doubt the significance of all this, Hislop is a much loved figure in Britain. For years now, he and Paul Merton have been swapping gags and banter on HIGNFY, and whenever Hislop has been on the receiving end, he has taken it like a good sport. As editor of Private Eye, Hislop has been involved in savaging many dishonest and unpopular public figures – Jeffrey Archer being only one of many, and unlike politicians, he is considered honest. Whether this is true is beside the point I’m making; the point is, he’s a considerable British personality. So when he lays into the EU as a racket run by racketeers in a manner fit to bust, that has got to count for something, public-opinion-wise. You had the feeling that Hislop has been waiting for the right moment to throw all his chips onto the table and make his anti-EU pitch, and if that’s right then it is very interesting that he reckons now to be the moment. One other thing. I say that I don’t have this on tape. By this evening, assuming all goes well, I will have it on tape, because the show is being repeated tonight on BBC2 TV tonight, at 10.05 pm. May 17th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
While I am on the subject of Mugabe, it is worth illustrating what he and his warped, psychotic ideology have actually done to the former Rhodesia. We bandy around words like ‘tyrant’ and ‘dictator’ and ‘undemocratic’ but there comes a point when these words, in isolation, no longer have the power to move in the way they should. Altogether more moving, nay profoundly upsetting, is this graphic description from the UK Times of what African marxism is actually doing to this particular corner of Africa:
It may be too late to reverse or even halt this process now. The damage has been done and, once again, the world is going to be assailed with a stark object lesson in the consequences of state kleptocracy and forced collectivisation. And, once again, those lessons will be rudely ignored, I’ll wager. In fact, I’ll go further. I’m willing to bet that, even with the pictures of starving Zimbabweans rooting around in the dirt for a few berries are beamed into our homes, our own political leaders will continue to devote their energies to ever-more creative and unscrupulous ways of traducing our property rights and confiscating our earnings. Under the mendacious rubric of ‘social democracy’ Western ‘intellectuals’ will kid themselves that there is a world of difference between their economic philosophies and those of Mugabe. But the difference lies only in degree and the end result differs only in terms of timescale. But we must neither forget nor forgive. Even while Mugabe is being glad-handed and back-slapped in Paris, we can exact vengeance on behalf of the society he has destroyed. We can do that by committing ourselves single-mindedly to a ferocious and relentless war against the people who would do to us by increment what Mugabe has done to Zimbabweans in swathes. May 17th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
You can institutionalise kelptocracy on a grand scale. You can ethnically cleanse your minority white citizens. You can employ gangs of vicious thugs to intimidate and even murder your political opponents. You can rig elections and disregard the law. You can use the apparatus of state to deliberately starve your own citizens. You can take a prosperous country and reduce it to a debilitated ruin. But, forcefully ejecting a Guardian journalist from your country puts you beyond the pale:
Bearing in mind the melancholy fate of others who have displeased Mugabe, Mr.Meldrum might want to consider himself fortunate.
Well, I must say I am shocked! Up until now I have been labouring under the apprehension that Mugabe was an admirable African leader.
As opposed to all the previous acts which were the hallmarks of a reasonable and decent man.
Oh now steady on, Mr.Rusbridger. Let’s not be too hasty now. We wouldn’t want to say anything in a fit of temper that we might regret in the cold light of day. To be fair to Mr.Meldrum he has been meticulously recording and reporting on the horrible predations of Mugabe’s marxist regime not to mention the transformation of a bread-basket economy into a year-zero hellpit. You do not have to be a rocket-scientist to figure out why he is now being unceremoniously bundled out of the country. But is there any chance that any of Messrs. Straw, Ancram or Rusbridger actually read any of the reports? I only ask because they all sound as if they are somewhat taken aback. May 17th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
An update following my article on the Bruges Group meeting on Thursday (right before our previous hosting server went nuclear). The Daily Telegraph is reporting that opinion polls show that the UK public both opposes the single currency and a proposed new EU Constitution. Okay, okay, I hear folk say, opinion polls are not everything, and the ability of the British political class to stiff the public they are supposed to represent is a matter of record. Even so, Prime Minister Tony Blair is famed for his attention to the focus group. And if public opinion can be galvanised, he may stay his hand at wiping out what remains of Britain as an independent, self-governing nation. Well, I always was the optimistic type of guy.  May 16th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
As our regular readers will have noticed, we were blown off our server by the bandwidth spike caused by the response to Gabriel Syme’s article on Wednesday. We have just moved to Hosting Matters, and thus hopefully such traumatic ‘black out’ events will be a thing of the past from now on!
May 16th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“How and by whom do you wish to be governed?”. Such was the simple and sharp question posed to a mostly grey-haired audience of eurosceptics at a meeting of the UK’s Bruges Group in London this evening by noted thriller writer, journalist and former RAF pilot, Frederick Forsyth. Your humble correspondent turned up to a packed audience to hear about Forsyth’s and noted EU legal expert Martin Howe on the subject of a possible new Constitution for Europe. It made for alarming hearing. While partly overshadowed by the recent war on terror and the Iraq campaign, a group of senior European politicians and bureaucrats have been working to set up the framework for a new European Constitution, which would effectively destroy the present EU member states as sovereign self governing nations. There can be no doubt about the outcome. The result would be an undemocratic, unaccountable monster. Here are some of the comments by Forsyth which I particularly liked: “I always took the view (during the development of the EU) that there was something to come, some finality, some point to be reached. We have now reached the stage….a single European nation state.” Martin Howe: “It (the constitution) will destroy the sovereignty which the UK parliament ultimately possesses.” Another: “It is very difficult to see how any democratic control can be exercised over the organs envisaged in this Constitution.” Howe said that the draft of the treaty for a new Constitution should be ready by the late summer of this year and could be ratified by member states in about two years’ time. That is right – just two years. My impressions: well the audience for the two men last night was packed and I would imagine that about 99 percent of those present agreed with more or less everything said by the speakers. I heard no dissenting voices there. Where does the libertarian meta-context relate to all this? After all, the desire for Britain to remain a parliamentary self-governing democracy is not the same thing as being, say, a minarchist libertarian who wants to get the State off his back. However, I would say from a pragmatic point of view, we have more chance of pushing forward our libertarian ideas within the framework of a common political entity underpinned by a shared culture and history than in a multi-lingual, multi-national behemoth headed by bureaucratic institutions with very sluggish lines of accountability. Hence I support the Bruges Group folk, even though my nose my wrinkle in distaste at some of the more reactionary language employed by some of its members. I don’t get much impression that the issue of the EU Constitution is grabbing a lot of attention in the mainstream British media, although some of the tabloid press (let’s not sneer at them) are beginning to get on to this. No doubt Prime Minister Tony Blair is betting that he can sleepwalk us into his European nirvana. Let’s not let him get away with it. May 15th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I don’t know if I’m more impressed by these people’s tenacity in defending their position even as it circles the drain, or horrified that they’re willing to grab up weapons like these in order to avoid having to admit they were wrong. May 15th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The hunt for the fugitive Texas Democrat legislators has intensified with a set of playing cards being issued to troops in Iraq in case any of them turn up there. [Alan K. Henderson rocks] May 14th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although details are still sketchy, it seems that Algerian government forces have rescued some of the European tourists taken by Islamic terrorists of the ‘Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat’, who are part of the Al Qaeda network. Some reports indicate that both Austrian and German special forces (perhaps GSG 9?) were involved in the operation assisting the Algerians. This is very good news indeed! May 14th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the news headlines today was about the discovery of mass grave in Mahawil area in Iraq. So far remains of more than 3,000 people have been found but Iraqis fear up to 15,000 people reported missing in the area may have been buried there during Saddam’s government crackdown on Shi’ites when they launched an uprising in 1991. Reuters reports:
To all those protesters whose righteous hatred for the United States and Britain was declared out of self-proclaimed desire for peace. Is this the kind of ‘peace’ you wanted to preserve when you cried “not in my name”? Araya Hussein carried the remains of her husband in a bag away from the site weeping.
Explain to this woman why your righteous wrath was directed at Bush and Blair but not at Saddam. Explain how according to your warped view of the world Saddam has ‘the right’ to rule Iraq and kill thousands without any fear of retribution. Explain how you can end up supporting an evil and oppressive regime and distance yourself from the long awaited liberation. Damn you and your coddled, self-centered and twisted minds. You have caused enough misery and suffering by your irrational and irresponsible opposition to anything that might bring freedom to those parts of the world where free expression is an unknown concept. Perhaps you should change your slogans and cry for ‘peace of mind’, your minds that is, in the face of the gruesome truth emerging from Iraq. 
The mass murders in Iraq have been stopped… but not in your name May 14th, 2003 | 276 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked western civilian workers in Saudi Arabia are nothing more than a timely reminder that the overthrow of Ba’athist Iraq was not the end of the matter which blasted into the public consciousness on September 11th 2001. Saddam Hussein and Islamic terrorism were related subjects but were never the same. I was starting to detect a “Game over, now it’s Miller Time” attitude in some newspapers and blogs after the triumph in Iraq, but I think this shows that if there is ever a time for complacency, it sure as hell is not now. It will be interesting to see what happens if this atrocity leads to a mass movement of Westerners out of the accurséd Kingdom. If the risks posed by terrorism means the Saudis become unable to induce western technicians and specialists from working there at any price, I suspect the impact on the Arabian economy will be quite dramatic. No doubt within a couple years infrastructure and certain essential functions will decay beyond the point where the regime’s spin doctors cannot hide the truth that Saudi Arabia is not an internally viable nation-state in any modern sense. And if the Saudi Wahhabist regime’s ability to use petrodollar funded patronage to buy off the disparate elements of its indolent society grinds to a halt, what happens then? Would a monstrous and tyrannical fundamentalist regime take over? And would that regime be a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism? Well considering that the current regime already is a monstrous and tyrannical fundamentalist regime, and it is from Saudi Arabia that most of the September 11 The House of Saud is built on sand, so let it go down the toilet of history and let’s see what comes in its place. After all, if we like the look of what comes next even less than the current tyranny, it is not like the 3rd Infantry Division has to travel all the way from the United States to do something about it… and that self-evident fact alone should concentrate the minds of those who would be the new rulers in Riyadh. The US will not be in the region forever but at the moment the peoples of the Middle East are very aware that they are living in the shadow being cast by that 900 foot tall gorilla currently standing astride Iraq… for a short while at least, that might not be such a bad thing just so long as the gorilla knows when it is time to go home. May 14th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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