The morning after the woolly Franco-US UN resolution for a ceasefire in Lebanon there are reasons not to be cheerful for those who want:
1. A muscular Anglosphere
2. A timely war to eliminate Islamo-fascism. I mean war, not putzing about; war on Iran; war on disloyal immigrant groups; prompt, ferocious and simultaneous war to install acceptable regimes in Syria, Lebanon and Iran. That will simplify Iraq and Afghanistan. That is the humane and risk-averse policy, the best chance to avert a bloodier war later, which we might lose if our resilience and ferocity is the lesser.
It's not cheerful that Bush is signalling weakness in foreign policy, that the BBC's dhimmitude fades into treachery as the tension grows, that 'Dave' Cameron is leader of the party of Thatcher... that sort of thing.
But...over 0-3 years the scenery could shift to this :
US - Giuliani or Romney
UK - Brown or Reid
Israel - Netanyahu
Australia - Howard
Canada - Harper
Germany - Merkel
France - Sarkozy
Of these, only Howard has proven himself as a fighter for the West, but it's a potentially formidable wartime alliance. I might add Japan and India.
That's a best case and when the US is credibly threatened by an Islamic WMD, appeasement will seem more attractive than now. They know it, we know it. That threat is their stick, the carrot is their permission for us to enjoy life while demography does its work for the Caliphate.
Let me try to articulate the opposite view:
"Like it or not Muslims are provoked by pro-Israeli policy and Iraq. Sharia law can operate alongside western law within Europe and everyone will be happy. Iran is entitled to the same nuclear technology as the West. Ahmadinejad may be even shorter than Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin, but he's charming and rational, ok, a little crazy about the Zionists and he hangs homosexuals and he hangs teenage girls for adultery, but that's a cultural thing. We have our equivalent fundamentalists like Bush ."
I hope that's a fair summary of let's call it 'the BBC view'. It has the virtue that it is self-refuting, it just needs to be stated absent the weasel words. The Bugs Bunny Democrats have no coherent view outside self-gratification and appeasement; they are the 'Feed The Crocodile 'Party.
I don't want to feed the crocodile, especially a sadistic crocodile, but I can't live with it prowling around my house. I can't live with little crocodiles inside my house chirruping away to the big one outside.
Appeasement central: hat-tip to Powerline.
August 12, 2006
August 11, 2006
Correlate that
1. Time - "a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications."
2. FT - "The detectives allowed the alleged plot to continue for as long as they dared. They followed the young Muslim men’s movements in London and other parts of the UK, listened into their meetings and monitored their spending."
3. WSJ - "The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs."
4.
2. FT - "The detectives allowed the alleged plot to continue for as long as they dared. They followed the young Muslim men’s movements in London and other parts of the UK, listened into their meetings and monitored their spending."
3. WSJ - "The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs."
4.
August 10, 2006
Correlate this
I'm in London.
My family is in the US, due to fly to the UK at the weekend.
This morning there is the highest level threat alert on UK/US flights - 'critical'.
The UK police say they've thwarted a specific attempt at 'mass murder' .
21 British Asian Muslims have been arrested overnight.
Neither the police nor the BBC say the word ' Muslim'.
Nearly a quarter of young British Asian Muslims polled say 7/7 was justified.
There's a long-term, consistent profile of terrorists against planes.
Everyone knows what that profile is.
Almost all security assets at UK and US airports will be applied to the bags of passengers like my family, not to logical human targets.
Security assets are finite.
Security intelligence is finite.
Please correlate.
Afterthought: Thank God the New York Times didn't know these arrested men were under surveillance.
My family is in the US, due to fly to the UK at the weekend.
This morning there is the highest level threat alert on UK/US flights - 'critical'.
The UK police say they've thwarted a specific attempt at 'mass murder' .
21 British Asian Muslims have been arrested overnight.
Neither the police nor the BBC say the word ' Muslim'.
Nearly a quarter of young British Asian Muslims polled say 7/7 was justified.
There's a long-term, consistent profile of terrorists against planes.
Everyone knows what that profile is.
Almost all security assets at UK and US airports will be applied to the bags of passengers like my family, not to logical human targets.
Security assets are finite.
Security intelligence is finite.
Please correlate.
Afterthought: Thank God the New York Times didn't know these arrested men were under surveillance.
August 09, 2006
UNCoRRELATED.com
Today's posts are in fact posts made over the past few weeks on Mick Stockinger's UNCoRRELATED.com
All together now..love,love,love
Paul and Heather McCartney are impressive people, but their divorce is doing to them what divorces do: 
"Sir Paul ordered all the locks on his properties to be changed after the phone at his Peasmarsh estate in Sussex was bugged earlier this year — and the tape strangely ended up in Heather’s hands. She challenged him over a conversation he had had with his daughter Stella, in which Stella had attacked her stepmother."
May they act with grace. That would be a blessing to them and their daughter. Divorcees know the risks of a downward spiral once lawyers and advisers are involved.
Heather Mills was once a prostitute, which she seems to have lied about to Paul. That's an honest and useful profession and it's tough on her that she's being humiliated. The cruellest commentary comes from women maybe because fucking for money makes plain to men and themselves that swapping sex for stuff is much of the underlying deal, whereas love, which is real too, is optional rather than primal, but it binds a man to a particular woman and to their children against his own merely reproductive interests.
[A propos -
A woman can have about 1 child per year for 30 years.
A man can have about 1,000 per year for 60 years.
and
There is no reciprocity.
Men love women.
Women love children.
Children love hamsters.]
I wouldn't choose the expensive wedding they chose - in contrast to Paul and Linda 38 years ago when he was still more famous; flashy wedding, trashy divorce. Maybe the flashy wedding compensates for an emptiness in the spiritual wedding. The flash says 'Look at me, look at us, we look married so we are married, here's stuff to prove it' when all that's needed at a wedding is true minds. The stuff is impediment.
"Sir Paul ordered all the locks on his properties to be changed after the phone at his Peasmarsh estate in Sussex was bugged earlier this year — and the tape strangely ended up in Heather’s hands. She challenged him over a conversation he had had with his daughter Stella, in which Stella had attacked her stepmother."
May they act with grace. That would be a blessing to them and their daughter. Divorcees know the risks of a downward spiral once lawyers and advisers are involved.
Heather Mills was once a prostitute, which she seems to have lied about to Paul. That's an honest and useful profession and it's tough on her that she's being humiliated. The cruellest commentary comes from women maybe because fucking for money makes plain to men and themselves that swapping sex for stuff is much of the underlying deal, whereas love, which is real too, is optional rather than primal, but it binds a man to a particular woman and to their children against his own merely reproductive interests.
[A propos -
A woman can have about 1 child per year for 30 years.
A man can have about 1,000 per year for 60 years.
and
There is no reciprocity.
Men love women.
Women love children.
Children love hamsters.]
I wouldn't choose the expensive wedding they chose - in contrast to Paul and Linda 38 years ago when he was still more famous; flashy wedding, trashy divorce. Maybe the flashy wedding compensates for an emptiness in the spiritual wedding. The flash says 'Look at me, look at us, we look married so we are married, here's stuff to prove it' when all that's needed at a wedding is true minds. The stuff is impediment.
Special relationship
My New Yorker wife pretends to write a book, "101 uses for an English twat" [pronounced "twot" rather than "twat"] and I scold her to talk proper - eg "bottle of water" for "boddle of wader." It's nothing to do with accent or idiom - I love hers - but blur pronunciation and you blur speech then thought and I don't want our children lumbered with inexpressive speech.
Anyhoot, I'm glad that "wanker" is getting tossed into American usage. "Merchant banker" is a nice variant from rhyming slang. The great linguistic prize would be a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate "restroom" and "bathroom" as euphemisms. "Bog" is the mot juste.
Anyhoot, I'm glad that "wanker" is getting tossed into American usage. "Merchant banker" is a nice variant from rhyming slang. The great linguistic prize would be a Constitutional Amendment to eliminate "restroom" and "bathroom" as euphemisms. "Bog" is the mot juste.
Universal wolf, universal prey
Animal testing is an issue in the UK. Most of the New Labour apparatus is clear that the medical benefits to man trump the emotionalism of the anti-vivisectionists and that the illegal, sometimes terroristic attacks on scientists must be beaten. When I've seen the issue raised on conservative sites (diabolical britspeak profanity warning), the likes of PETA are scorned to the hilt...tree-hugging liberals....skinny twerps. The BBC just staged a debate. The protestors were inarticulate dolts. The scientists were cool and logical within their definitions.
But still it stinks. To refute a common debating point: would I accept animal testing to save myself? Yes. So I'm a hypocrite and the anti-vivisection argument fails? Yes, I'm a hypocrite, no the argument doesn't fail. I would accept testing on any animal, but especially on the human animal, to save myself. That makes me selfish (and sane), but the anti-vivisection argument stands since Law should protect the rest of you against me as I wish Law to protect other animals against us.
The fallacy in all this is the ego-syntonic superstition that human animals are more important than other animals. Maybe, maybe not, but a scientist should be sceptical of human criteria to decide the question. Mankind vivisects because it can and because it can sanitise the the disgusting, cowardly deed by keeping it out of sight. I don't know about animal rights, but I do sense the virtue in human duties, one of which is the duty to abstain from tormenting other animals. If the cost of that is worse medicine (though I doubt it), then so be it for the sake of decency.
Things change. Orthodoxies change. This perversion of science, which includes abortion and vivisection, is not science, but a guilty use of power..
"Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite (an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power)
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last, eat up himself."
Embryonic stem cell research is nicely pinned by "and last, eat up himself."
But still it stinks. To refute a common debating point: would I accept animal testing to save myself? Yes. So I'm a hypocrite and the anti-vivisection argument fails? Yes, I'm a hypocrite, no the argument doesn't fail. I would accept testing on any animal, but especially on the human animal, to save myself. That makes me selfish (and sane), but the anti-vivisection argument stands since Law should protect the rest of you against me as I wish Law to protect other animals against us.
The fallacy in all this is the ego-syntonic superstition that human animals are more important than other animals. Maybe, maybe not, but a scientist should be sceptical of human criteria to decide the question. Mankind vivisects because it can and because it can sanitise the the disgusting, cowardly deed by keeping it out of sight. I don't know about animal rights, but I do sense the virtue in human duties, one of which is the duty to abstain from tormenting other animals. If the cost of that is worse medicine (though I doubt it), then so be it for the sake of decency.
Things change. Orthodoxies change. This perversion of science, which includes abortion and vivisection, is not science, but a guilty use of power..
"Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite (an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power)
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last, eat up himself."
Embryonic stem cell research is nicely pinned by "and last, eat up himself."
Strong/Weak continued
Here Mick argued that Bill Kristol was disingenuous and puerile in arguing that we aren't travelling the path in the war on terror. On the substance I commented that there is clear and present danger and we should hit Iran now because :
1. What about a suitcase bomb?
2. What about a ship bomb?
Mick replied :
1. Only the US and Russia have suitcase bomb knowhow.
2. The threat from tankers is understood and easily defeated.
3. Iran would be deterred as the weapon would be traced and Iran would cease to exist.
This is too important and too wrong to leave to a thread which has disappeared over the horizon.
1. You and I just don't know who has a suitcase bomb, but suppose it is only the US and Russia, would you gamble New York City - ok, Salt Lake City - on the hope that Russia itself or a Russian AQ Khan won't sell the knowhow or a bomb to Iran? It's plausible that something south of billion dollars buys Iran a nifty nuke from a Russian (or Chinese or Ukrainian or American or Israeli) source. It's not "Who has it?", it's "Who wants it and can pay for it?" and it can be any other WMD as well.
2. You don't explain how a ship bomb is easily defeated if you don't know it's there. Armageddon 101 - place bomb in container, load container on vessel, sail into a Western harbour, make cellphone call to the 12th Imam, pop.
3. Mutually assured destruction may be no deterrent to a messianic regime. Anyway Iran just needs to demonstrate its capability to get the leverage.
Iran must be dealt with. Sooner will be less bloody than later. Diplomacy is a displacement activity to avoid starting down a tough road.
UPDATE - the Iranians may have a "dirty" bomb already
- ingredients from Britain.
1. What about a suitcase bomb?
2. What about a ship bomb?
Mick replied :
1. Only the US and Russia have suitcase bomb knowhow.
2. The threat from tankers is understood and easily defeated.
3. Iran would be deterred as the weapon would be traced and Iran would cease to exist.
This is too important and too wrong to leave to a thread which has disappeared over the horizon.
1. You and I just don't know who has a suitcase bomb, but suppose it is only the US and Russia, would you gamble New York City - ok, Salt Lake City - on the hope that Russia itself or a Russian AQ Khan won't sell the knowhow or a bomb to Iran? It's plausible that something south of billion dollars buys Iran a nifty nuke from a Russian (or Chinese or Ukrainian or American or Israeli) source. It's not "Who has it?", it's "Who wants it and can pay for it?" and it can be any other WMD as well.
2. You don't explain how a ship bomb is easily defeated if you don't know it's there. Armageddon 101 - place bomb in container, load container on vessel, sail into a Western harbour, make cellphone call to the 12th Imam, pop.
3. Mutually assured destruction may be no deterrent to a messianic regime. Anyway Iran just needs to demonstrate its capability to get the leverage.
Iran must be dealt with. Sooner will be less bloody than later. Diplomacy is a displacement activity to avoid starting down a tough road.
UPDATE - the Iranians may have a "dirty" bomb already
- ingredients from Britain.
Traitor's Droop
Yesterday I walked by the nearly complete NYT Tower on 8th Avenue opposite the Port Authority Bus Station in New York City. 'Obviously it's in NYC,' you say, but the NYT prints in New Jersey and is a useful idiot
for those who'd happily construct a big black hole out of Gotham granite.
I like the architect, Renzo Piano I lived close to the Menil Gallery in Houston (lousy collection, lovely building) and live close to the site of London Bridge Tower (will be the tallest building in Europe and the UK, just iconic ).
The NYT Tower looks good to me, better than the NYT stock-price. Shiny new HQs are infallible sell-signals, flagging desire for pomp before profit. Pride comes before a fool.
The NYT should operate from cheap, dingy premises in Queens or Harlem, not from a princeling's folly that screams elite! elite! elite!. ( I once worked for a triple-A firm in cheap, cramped offices just outside the City of London. Our clients took this as a sign that we were so seriously strong that we didn't need show to boost our own morale or impress the geese ).
Although the NYT stock-price has Traitor's Droop and I'd love to see it implode ( oh Lord, implode that traitor's droop! ), the stock must have recovery prospects in the right hands. That means oust the Sulzbergers or, more likely, the Sulzbergers oust Pinch and instate proper voting rights, letting the stock come in play. A suitable confederacy of dunces to take over the NYT would be a consortium of all the Als - Gore, Franken, Quaeda and the Saudi squillionaire, Waleed. There'd be no need to change its editorial line or news management.
See also Rove runs the Times and Keller as cat's paw for an effeminate/feminist/femmefatalist freakshow of Pinch and Judy and Mo came too .
for those who'd happily construct a big black hole out of Gotham granite.
I like the architect, Renzo Piano I lived close to the Menil Gallery in Houston (lousy collection, lovely building) and live close to the site of London Bridge Tower (will be the tallest building in Europe and the UK, just iconic ).
The NYT Tower looks good to me, better than the NYT stock-price. Shiny new HQs are infallible sell-signals, flagging desire for pomp before profit. Pride comes before a fool.
The NYT should operate from cheap, dingy premises in Queens or Harlem, not from a princeling's folly that screams elite! elite! elite!. ( I once worked for a triple-A firm in cheap, cramped offices just outside the City of London. Our clients took this as a sign that we were so seriously strong that we didn't need show to boost our own morale or impress the geese ).
Although the NYT stock-price has Traitor's Droop and I'd love to see it implode ( oh Lord, implode that traitor's droop! ), the stock must have recovery prospects in the right hands. That means oust the Sulzbergers or, more likely, the Sulzbergers oust Pinch and instate proper voting rights, letting the stock come in play. A suitable confederacy of dunces to take over the NYT would be a consortium of all the Als - Gore, Franken, Quaeda and the Saudi squillionaire, Waleed. There'd be no need to change its editorial line or news management.
See also Rove runs the Times and Keller as cat's paw for an effeminate/feminist/femmefatalist freakshow of Pinch and Judy and Mo came too .
First Post on UNCoRRELATED.com
Assembly of Trumpeters for Reveille
Mick invited me to post, so a small profile:
British, UK/US/Australian children, baby-boomer, London-based with spousal visits to NJ, oil-industry and commodity-trading background, url thelightcavalry.com.
I play soccer, so my first post is on ZZ Shinytop, Zinedine Zidane. His crime is stupidity. That's it really.
The appropriate Samurai code is:
"A warrior should notsay something fainthearted headbutt a shirt-tugging, nipple-twisting, sister-sliming Italian even casually. He should set his mind to this beforehand. Even in trifling matters the depths of one's heart can be seen."
Mick invited me to post, so a small profile:
British, UK/US/Australian children, baby-boomer, London-based with spousal visits to NJ, oil-industry and commodity-trading background, url thelightcavalry.com.
I play soccer, so my first post is on ZZ Shinytop, Zinedine Zidane. His crime is stupidity. That's it really.
The appropriate Samurai code is:
"A warrior should not
Like, oh my god
A Shakespeare First Folio was auctioned for $5m today.
Sotheby's English literature specialist Peter Selley said: "The First Folio preserves 18 of his plays, including some of the most major, which otherwise would have been lost for all time...."
There is no evidence that Shakespeare took any steps during his lifetime to publish these unQuartoed plays.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Fuhgeddaboudit.
Like.Oh.My.God.
Sotheby's English literature specialist Peter Selley said: "The First Folio preserves 18 of his plays, including some of the most major, which otherwise would have been lost for all time...."
There is no evidence that Shakespeare took any steps during his lifetime to publish these unQuartoed plays.
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Fuhgeddaboudit.
Like.Oh.My.God.