How Chris Hitchens saved the Americans from the wrath of Michael Moore
Picture the scene: It’s early June 2004, and I’m on holiday in Massachusetts, the heartland of Democratic America. The skies are blue and flags are flying. Even in this bluest-of-blue states, you’d never know that the United States is currently embroiled in its largest, most violent war since Vietnam.
The news channels are talking about Ronald Reagan 24/7, in preparation for the old fraud’s funeral. Over and over. I have no idea what’s happening on the screen or why.
In an internet cafe, the BBC News webpage describes car bombs and death in Iraq and how Attorney General John Ashcroft has denied government involvement in military torture programmes. The BBC correspondent Frank Gardner has just been shot and crippled in Saudi Arabia, and his cameraman Simon Cumber killed.
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Democracy in every colour, as long as it’s black
Well, well. I’m hardly the first to note the irony that a vague and nebulous concept – “markets” – has unseated the Italian Prime Minister, a feat that innumerable opposition politicians, crusading journalists, police and prosecutors couldn’t achieve after years of hard work.
Funny, that a general air of international unease and an outbreak of unlovely, nasty thoughts about interrupted cashflows have brought Berlusconi crashing down out of the sky, while his epic reign of misrule, corruption and venality was like a big, fat baggie of high-grade fairy dust for world finance.
What lessons can we draw from this, do we think?
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A plan to attack Iran? Really?
Forced by circumstances to invade and occupy Afghanistan; driven beyond their will to invade and occupy Iraq by the urgent threat of imminent destruction; compelled by humanitarian necessity to destroy large tracts of Libya; pressured into hammering holy hell out of Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen…
…it’s time to make plans for a massive assault on Iran just in case, you know, they back us into a corner. If, like, we’re forced to do it, with sorrow in our hearts and a tear in our collective eye.
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Shock as Tony Blair’s ‘offer’ to Palestinians is soundly rejected
Tony Blair’s reputation for scrupulous impartiality has been rather compromised after he presented Palestinian leaders with his most generous proposal – namely that, in exchange for dropping their bid for statehood and recognising Israel’s right to do whatever the fuck it likes, they would earn the right to re-enter the same negotiations that have been so very productive these last few years.
After all, Benny Netanyahu may have built his career upon the solid bedrock of opposition to a Palestinian state, but who’s to say he won’t change his mind tomorrow?
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The Johann Hari controversy: a gift that keeps giving
Oh, praise the Lord – this Johann Hari thing is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? Sentencing the little arse to a year’s hard journalism studies is Just. The. Perfect. Outcome for this whole hilarious escapade – it ends nothing and ensures an ongoing mutual fragfest between some of the nation’s most tiresome hacks.
I can almost hear that little vein on Toby Young’s temple throbbing.
I mean, where to start? The precious spectacle of British journalism up in arms over some grievous affront to its much-vaunted integrity, perhaps, a proposition akin to a career poledancer launching a crusade for public modesty? Oh, please, continue!
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What are the chances parents will shop their kids to the police now?
Let this be a lesson then – if your kid is out of control and needs a short, sharp shock, why not just trap them in their rooms and nail the doors and windows shut for a week, or debag them and chuck them out of your car in front of their school?
Hell, why not just beat them down with a rolling pin?
I’d take that over any amount of jail time, since prisons – for men or women, and young offenders’ institutions – are about the most godawful, dismal places in the country.
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Ban him? No, we need more of David Starkey’s idiocy on TV
Oh my, the horror! A man who is notorious for making idiotic statements on television has made some more idiotic statements on television.
Specifically, he’s saying that white people are turning into criminals because they have been in some way Blackified by malignant osmosis with some black people, who aren’t themselves criminals due to biological or racial characteristics – oh, heaven forfend that anyone should take it that way! – but because of “cultural factors”.
Seasoned idiot-watchers will notice that Cultural Factors are the new Biological or Racial Characteristics that are okay to cite in the press.
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‘Propaganda’ has become an excuse for our failure in Libya
Deborah Haynes, defence editor at the Times, writes these strange words in a piece bemoaning the snafu that is our latest war.
In a war of information and perception, the truth no longer matters. It is all about the message and in Libya, the regime is coming out on top.
(Times, 11th August)
It’s an odd column, listing the following points as presentational problems for Nato and the Libyan rebels:
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Confused on libertarians and hanging? You shouldn’t be
Chris Dillow finds the internet libertarians’ campaign to bring back hanging surprising.
Guido Fawkes is confusing me. He’s campaigning for the death penalty on the grounds that the public want it… And here’s my confusion. Guido has also long claimed to be a libertarian. But libertarianism and democracy conflict, simply because public opinion is on many issues very illiberal.
Luckily, I’m on hand to clear up any doubts and set the story straight.
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What are people like Melanie Phillips calling for then?
Melanie Phillips and the gaggle of paranoids that make up the internet’s nutty ‘Counter-Jihad’ movement are loudly insisting that they don’t advocate acts of violence or terrorism.
For now, let’s assume that’s true and move on from there.
What, exactly, do they imagine it is that they are advocating?
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» Why Quantitative Easing doesn’t make common sense
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