Monthly Archive

Yesterday afternoon, even at the risk of inducing “climate change”, the wife and I used powered air transport to travel to NY.  We are here to visit family and spend a week in Florida.  While we’re here, posting will take place, but probably a bit more intermittently from usual. 

Currently, I’m still a little out of it . . . due to the travel.  (I qualify that since I know some of you probably think being out of it is my normal condition.)  Separately, whenever getting re-acclimated to the newest intellectual currents of the NY area, as you may know one of the first media sources to which I turn is the paper version of Long Island’s Newsday.  That is no different this time.

If you aren’t familiar with Newsday, let’s just say it makes The Independent look like the 11th edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.  But leaving aside the content issue for now, from a business perspective as we know, all newspapers are desperately trying to retain paid print circulation and readership.  The Independent, for instance, tried demanding readers pay for particular content online.  (That doesn’t seem to have lasted.)

Ah, but Newsday has found another alternative.  Consider this brillance, on today’s page A95, in Sports:

With the start of the NFL regular season less than a week away, where are the Jets and Giants in Bob Glauber’s first Power Poll, and who’s on top?

Innocuous enough, you say?  True, but where do you think you find that “Power Poll?”  In today’s print edition that you have just laid across the table, that you had paid 50c for?  Of course not. 

At the very top of the page, you are directed to the Newsday blogs site.  It may have been in yesterday’s print edition, true, but on August 30, it was posted online.  That means it is now free . . . elsewhere.  

Yes, talk about a long-term business plan that can only lead to retaining paying readers: “Great idea, board members.  Let’s direct paying readers to where they can get our content for free!  Naturally, in the future they will stupidly keep paying to be told to do that again and again and again…”

[Posted 2:20 PM NY time]

Here’s another from the Daily Express.  Yesterday, the paper reported: 

A GANG dug a 40ft tunnel through soil and rocks in an attempt to raid a cash machine in Manchester…

And The Telegraph’s Simon Heffer actually thinks the welfare state has, shall we say, “undermined” the British work ethic?  

Incidentally, this is an unintentionally amusing way for a police spokesman to have characterized the immediate investigatory response:

…“Officers sealed off the area and are now investigating the attempted burglary.”

Are they really sure they’ve sealed off the area? Also, terming it “attempted burglary”?  Ho, hum.  You’d think the gang had tried to force open a locked window.

Could resist taking a screenshot of this.  The Daily Express styles itself as “The World’s Greatest Newspaper”.  So what do you suppose the “greatest’s” readers search for?  “Climate change”?  “War on Terror”?  Or something similarly weighty?:

Nah.  And perhaps even more telling, ”blank” seems pretty high on the list.

The BBC reports:

The parents of 11-year-old Rhys Jones who was shot in Liverpool have urged his killer to surrender to police.

Melanie and Stephen Jones said if the teenager who shot their son would not confess then it was up to his or her parents to turn the killer in…

One would wonder, though, why they would turn him in, given the horrors he would face?  First, he will probably have to do a bit of juvenile detention time.  Then when he hits adulthood, upon release the whole family will probably get to enjoy a fresh start, a new home, and state protection at the cost of £1 million a year. 

Independent headline:

Mia Farrow’s exclusive dispatch: I am a witness to Darfur’s suffering

Well, if Ms Farrow has confirmed the horrors of Darfur personally, that clinches matters. And that The Independent has provided her the means to get the word out at long last is highly commendable.  Unfortunately, though, while she does chastise us:

…After the Nazi Holocaust, the world vowed “never again”. How obscenely disingenuous those fine words sound today. As we look at Darfur and eastern Chad - a region that has been described as “Rwanda in slow motion” - are we to conclude that “never again” applies only to white people?

. . . Ms Farrow may forget that it required a world war to put an end to the genocidal Nazi regime. Presumably, she isn’t calling for one of those? One thinks not, considering as Ms Farrow might also recall, the overthrowing of even Saddam Hussein’s foul, local genocidal regime in a decidedly non-European state composed of decidedly non-Europeans wasn’t exactly greeted with wholehearted, global humanitarian applause.

I hope that caring people of the world will band together and with one voice demand an end to the terrible crime of genocide.

So, while long on description and emotion, unfortunately Ms Farrow doesn’t suggest any actual particulars — other than “caring people of the world” banding together — as to what might be, umm . . .

. . . Hey! [turning the page] looking for someplace to have that big night out?  It’s not as far away as you think.

And don’t feel guilty.

Sky News:

Rapper Dizzee Rascal has hit out at the attempts of politicians to tackle the rise in gangs.

He told Sky News Online the Government and police were “gangs in their own right, just doing different things on a different scale“…

It’s good Sky shared Mr Rascal’s intellectual insights with us.  Frankly, we’d had no idea.  Not only are gangs of youths  increasingly utilizing carefully politically correct syllabi, but they have also become hyper-proficient in the use of traffic enforcement cameras?

As Reuters reports, Democrats have successfully engineered the ousting of the first Latino to serve as U.S. Attorney General:

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned on Monday under pressure after months of controversy and political turmoil that President George W. Bush angrily blamed on his administration’s critics in Congress…

…Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blamed Gonzales and Bush for “a severe crisis of leadership” at the Justice Department…

…Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said: “This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”…

Oh, you mean it wasn’t really about Mr Gonzales’s ethnic heritage?  Hmmm, okay, let’s assume it wasn’t.  Yet if the party roles were reversed, why does one suspect many Democrats would now be screaming that this was the result of bigoted machinations by the vast number of right-wing conspirators in Congress, who had always hated the mere notion of a Latino as U.S. Attorney General?

Jeremy Clarkson in the Sunday Times (via my wife):

…I suspect the people who move from Britain to the States do so because they are interested in guns and murdering…

Notice The Times’s curious choice of online positioning for Mr Clarkson’s truly witty and insightful column, especially the location of that line in particular . . . directly opposite the photo of 11 year old Rhys Jones, who was shot and killed (hit by an apparently ”stray bullet”), not in, say, Houston, but outside of Liverpool:

Separately, The Times also tells us this morning:

…The teenage girl who is believed to have been at the centre of Rhys’s murder has already been questioned by police. She had lived with her parents and sisters in the Croxteth Park estate until the family moved this summer after shots were fired at their home…

Obviously, not all of those gun fanatics can manage to get U.S. visas, eh Mr Clarkson? 

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UPDATE: In the comments, Farfallina raises an issue that I hadn’t chosen to address initially, but I think I should: Mr Clarkson’s fascinating, basic premise on British expatriates being “failures” back in Britain.

We should bear in mind first the important distinction on expatriation that evidently totally eludes Mr Clarkson: moving within the EU technically no longer really rates as expatriation.  British citizens have as much right to live in, for example, Spain, as New Yorkers do in Florida.  However, as moving from the U.K. to the States still does constitute true expatriation, let’s focus instead on Mr Clarkson’s trenchant observations on those who make that move:

…What about America then? We imagine that the Brits living there are successful and bright, like David Beckham and, er, Kelly Brook. But mostly, I suspect the people who move from Britain to the States do so because they are interested in guns and murdering.

Twice I’ve bumped into expats while in America and both times they were wandering around in woods carrying preposterously large guns and wearing combat fatigues. One was chewing tobacco which, when combined with his broad Birmingham accent, made him appear to be the stupidest person in the world. He probably was.

The fact is, I’m afraid, that anyone who emigrates from Britain, no matter where they end up, is a bit of a dimwit…

As any Briton familiar with emigrating to the States without family ties has certainly noticed, obtaining a U.S. work permit usually requires one have either money to invest in a business, or certain desirable job skills. (Walking in via the southern land frontier is a separate issue.)  Both Mr Beckham and Ms Brook might be said to serve as examples of the filling of either one, or even both, of those requirements.  Similarly, while less high-profile of course, that Brummie Mr Clarkson disparages probably does so too.

Mr Clarkson clearly is not planning to make his own move there anytime soon.  However, if he were it might be useful for him to understand that while he himself currently may fall into the former, monied group, if money were suddenly to become tight it seems he won’t likely fit easily into the latter.  For insofar as we are aware, “lunkhead who drive car fast — varooooooom!” is not yet in great skills’ demand in the U.S.

John O’Sullivan, in The Sunday Telegraph:

…Like the Jamie Bulger murder of 14 years ago, also in a Liverpool suburb, the casual killing of Rhys Jones has driven home to the British the extent of their social decline - the rise of an underclass, the high rate of crime, especially violent crime, the vandalisation of public spaces, the spread of public drunkenness, and the coarsening of popular culture…

As we can see, Mr O’Sullivan views the boy’s murder primarily through the prism of the breakdown in general societal morals. There is undoubtedly some truth in that.  Others have different concerns, of course.  Mary Riddell in The Observer (which is the Guardian on Sundays):

…Around 30,000 children left school with no GCSEs on the day after Rhys Jones died. One in five young Britons is without qualifications, work or training. No crude determinism ordains that the poor, especially those with the wrong postcode, become the killers and the dead, but only a fool would deny a causal link between deprivation and the risk of carrying firearms for bravado or knives because of fear.

You can try to curb the supply of guns, You can, and should, raise the price of alcohol, put more police on the streets and lock away the vicious few. But nothing will work until the government acknowledges that hopelessness is the most lethal weapon. As Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, says: ‘Violence breeds in unequal societies and Britain has become much more unequal over recent decades.’…

There’s one to remember: ”Guns don’t kill, hopelessness does”.  Incidentally, I almost forgot.  The “Observation of the Day” award has to go to Mr O’Sullivan, for this:

…The police have become little more than the paramilitary wing of The Guardian, sniffing out “racist” or “Islamophobic” attitudes rather than investigating serious crimes…

One does have to wonder, though, it being the Guardian, if “military” is really the best word there?  Regardless, Mr O’Sullivan obviously believes British police have become as hypersensitively politically correct as The Guardian/Observer.  For example, the paper chose today, of all days to share with its readers this stirring piece proclaiming its unquestioning solidarity with victims of wanton gun violence:

Bonnie and Clyde shocked and thrilled the world when it was released in 1967. But the legacy of this savage classic is that it opened the floodgates for all forms of screen violence over the next 40 years…

Shocked and thrilled indeed.  Just that opening paragraph brings forth a warm, fuzzy, counter-culture, glow. But the title of the piece really says it all:

How violent taboos were blown away

Yes, undoubtedly the family and friends of Rhys Jones are well pleased at all the new freedoms we, and children in particular, now enjoy. 

The BBC’s Tim Franks tells us:

The man appointed to be the British government’s new representative on the Middle East has called on Israel to make much more effort to improve life for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank…

…Michael Williams has just returned from a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the quiet and the cool of Government House in Jerusalem…

There is no indication in that BBC report, however, that Mr Williams ever raised the issue of Palestinians perhaps ceasing to blow themselves up among crowds of Israelis.

…Michael Williams is reluctant to be drawn directly into the debate as to whether British policy in the region has been too tightly tied to America’s in recent years.

But when asked whether Britain might have a role going to places and talking to people the US and the European Union might have difficulty with, he suggests this could play to traditional British strengths.

“With Iran, unlike with the US, which broke diplomatic relations after the Iranian revolution of 1979, the United Kingdom has always had an active policy with regard to Iran.”…

Dissembling must be a “British strength” to which Mr Franks is referring.  Because if Mr Williams isn’t, he has just offered a summation of U.S. policy that is 100 percent false.  

The U.S. did not break diplomatic relations with Iran “after the Iranian revolution of 1979“.  The Iranians “broke diplomatic relations” with the U.S. . . . when Iranian so-called “students” invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, took the entire embassy staff hostage, and threatened to kill them. 

Amazingly, with members of the staff still being held, the U.S. unjustifably and shockingly chose to “break diplomatic relations” with Iran on April 7, 1980.  Obviously disgraceful, that knee-jerk overreaction on the part of the U.S.  What were Americans thinking?

…”One of the real dangers in the Middle East,” he warns, “is the breakdown of state structures.

“In Iraq, in Lebanon, and to some extent in Gaza, [we're seeing] the breakdown of state structures and their replacement by militias, usually attached to extremist interpretations of Islam, and which don’t shirk from using terrorism to a considerable extent.”…

“To some extent in Gaza“?  Gaza is run by a terror Islamist militia: Hamas.  In contrast, as bad as matters are in Iraq and in Lebanon, terror militias do not yet form the government of either state.

More dissembling that:  we hope.

This scan is of the cover of a birthday card — I’m turning 42 in a few days (there’s a number I’d never imagined I’d ever use) — that came in the mail yesterday, from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law:

Gee, you’d almost think they were trying to tell me something?

WordPress has been doing weird things all day, but there’s been no explanation on the members’ page.  Every time I’ve had a quick check since first logging in at about 7 AM UK time, all sorts of nonsense has been going on.  None of it helps in trying to write a post. 

“Your dashboard will be available in ____minutes” . . . and then it is with the next click.  Briefly.  Then nothing loads.  Then you reload and you get a “Your dashboard will be available in 4 hours” and then it is a minute later.  Or “2 hours”.  Then nothing will upload.  At times, I see that the blog itself isn’t even visible. 

I’m amazed I could even manage to post this.  Just so you know why there’s been no other post today yet . . .

Presumably, the WordPress guys are pulling their hair out.  As for us out in these parts, it’s way too nice outside today to sit in front of a PC for any period of time anyway.  I’ll be back later.

The Times:

Channel 4 has signalled the end for Big Brother after axing the controversial Celebrity version and admitting that the current series of the reality show has been a flop.

The broadcaster, facing a cash squeeze and the threat of privatisation on the 25th anniversary of its launch, is making radical changes to its schedules. American imports and reality shows will be cut to make way for a “creative renewal”…

…Popular homegrown shows axed include Brat Camp, Selling Houses Abroad, You Are What You Eat and It’s Me or the Dog. Taking their place will be The Family, an observational documentary series chronicling the life of one British family for six months. There will also be a season examining illiteracy amongst schoolchildren and a drama about British-born Muslim suicide bombers called Britz.

Oh, on that last one there, it’s clearly a sensitive programming choice.  Indeed, how could ”Britz” in any way be even half as controversial as some minor celebrities being rude, and the audience witnessing someone offer uncouth comments behind the back of Shilpa Shetty?  It’s impossible to imagine, really.

The Independent:

Two teenagers aged 14 and 18 were released on bail last night after being questioned about the murder of Rhys Jones, the schoolboy who was shot dead in a pub car park by a gunman on a BMX bicycle.

Right there, we have something of a problem with characterization: an 18 year old is chronologically a “teenager”, true. (So is a 19 year old.) But legally, he is an adult. Or has that changed?

The 11-year-old had cut across the car park while on his way home from a youth team practice match in an adjoining park when he was shot in the neck, apparently at random, at about 7.30pm on Wednesday by a hooded teenager. Rhys is the youngest person to be shot dead in Merseyside.

One witness said the killer had coolly held his weapon, a large handgun, steady with two hands while firing three shots at his victim before riding off…

That’s where we are in this world now. Apparently, some children carry firearms while riding bicycles. It seems that if the Independent is still in business 5 years from now, it already has been presented with another “case for redemption“.

…Last night, the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith appeared close to tears after watching the boy’s parents talk of their grief at a press conference. She said she felt “terrible” about the death, and a sense of responsibility in its wake. Earlier, she told Channel 4 News: “I am willing to consider anything that will help us to get the information to put people away.”…

Ms Smith’s response is emotional, but utterly legally unrealistic. If the killer turns out to have been younger than age 16, as we know he is unlikely to be put away for all that long. We know why, of course: the assumption is always that children are not punished; they are to be reformed.

That includes reformed post-murder conviction, even if murder is a crime that is never repaid by “time served”, but is rather a crime against forever. It isn’t shoplifting, burglary, or car theft. So, unless the killer turns out to be of an age in which he can be dealt with as an adult, with this murder we appear back to the debate of what to do with children who kill.

However, we have boxed ourselves in. Given the legal framework under which we function (if “function” is the right word), children under no circumstances should be permitted even to have the chance to kill; yet as adults, we have abdicated our responsibilities, and given them way too much adult-style freedom to have the opportunity to do so. We’ve put guns in children’s hands (literally), and then turned our backs; but one simply cannot have adult freedoms without having to assume adult responsibilities.

Thus we wait, weirdly hoping that when arrested the killer was a legal adult on a BMX bicycle. If so, at least he might then actually face adult jail time.

And that’s why, also, any idea of lowering the voting age is rank absurd — unless there is a commensurate lowering of the age of all adult responsibility. For we are told children must be extra-protected, because they are never deemed fully responsible. But it is plainly ludicrous to talk of children’s rights therefore as being of the same order as those of adults, because as children they do not face adult sanctions for misbehavior. Not even for murder.

Nice going — we’ve set up the utter worst of worlds. What’s the solution? Since it appears we cannot legally enforce “childhood” any longer in order to protect both them and ourselves (because children have “rights”), it seems that unless the age of criminal responsibility is reduced to about, say, age 7, and we give 7 year olds the vote, there is probably little that can be done. The BBC reports:

…Detectives believe the murderer could be as young as 13…

We are reaping the whirlwind. We have among us now children as capable of murder as any 18 year old or 25 year old. And we are legally paralyzed, unable to do a blessed thing to rein them in.

Wait’ll we see the youthful Einstein they pick up for this eventually. “Why’d you do it, son!?” “Uhh, like, huh. I dunno.” And, chances are, he won’t even be deportable either.

Camping time again.  This time at Gatwick.  The BBC reports:

Campaigners fighting the building of a second detention centre near Gatwick are planning to camp at the airport.

About 400 people are expected to join the six-day camp, planned by a group opposing all controls at international borders, from 19 to 24 September.

The No Borders group claims immigration restrictions are racist and wants free movement of people across the world…

Sounds like they have a powerful moral argument. Upon what do they base it primarily?:

…Ian Bros, a spokesman for the Gatwick Area No Borders Campaign, has said the camp will be peaceful.

“Workers who produce the goods in third world sweatshops, that are allowed to pass around the world freely, should themselves be allowed to pass around the world freely,” he said…

First off, various airport demonstrating advocacy groups really should try to get their arguments better joined up.  After all, if everyone were utterly free to travel everywhere, inhibited by “no borders” whatever, that seems certain to increase air travel and . . . contribute to “climate change”. 

Secondly, the argument for a “no-borders” world would appear to have rather more substance if that argument were at least rooted in a degree of reality.  No goods move around the world “freely”.  From the very moment anything is produced — even in ostensibly “free trade” zones — during the long journey to the ultimate consumers (who, amazing as this sounds, actually consist of people of all races), every single item already has been taxed at various levels . . . by a multitude of nation-state authorities. 

One ”minor” example immediately jumps to mind: customs duties.  But do try this experiment anyway: start a business, have some “widgets” manufactured in a “third world sweatshop”, and then try to “pass them” into Britain without paying duty.  As the above demonstrates, some would find it quite a learning experience. 

Reuters:

…U.S. President George W. Bush, under pressure to show progress in the war or start bringing troops home, on Wednesday compared Iraq to Vietnam in urging Americans to be patient. His administration had previously avoided such comparisons, saying there were few parallels.

Many U.S. Democrats have likened Iraq to Vietnam, calling the war a quagmire that has exacted a toll in American lives and money without furthering U.S. interests…

You may not realize it, but you have just witnessed Reuters’s novel idea of how to “report the facts“. 

Those above are paragraphs 3 and 4 of a 20 paragraph piece.  It is immaterial whether one agrees with President Bush’s comments of yesterday about withdrawing from Iraq paving the way for a re-run of post-U.S. Vietnam withdrawal disasters such as the “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”  Notice only — carefully sticking to “the facts” — that Reuters chose there to omit any mention of those assertions, while assiduously including in the very next paragraph an upteenth review of longstanding Democratic assertions as to why the current conflict in Iraq is perpetually a re-run of 1967-1968. 

Reuters does finally get President Bush’s argumentative details into the piece, in paragraph 19:

…In arguing for perseverance in Iraq on Wednesday, Bush said it was in U.S. interests not to withdraw from Iraq too soon. He raised the example of the emergence of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and violence in Vietnam after U.S. troops pulled out…

That new information follows this rehash back in paragraph 16, of the reasons underlying “the surge” tactic:

…Washington has built up its forces in Iraq to 160,000 to help curb sectarian violence and give Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government breathing space to forge a political compromise among the warring sects…

Ask oneself this: coming upon that repeat of the reasoning for “the surge”, about which most readers would probably already be eminently familiar (one has lost count by now of how many times in other pieces Reuters has told us about those), how many of those same readers therefore naturally chose to stop reading about there? 

We can’t know precisely, of course.  However, as a Reuters reader who actually does read pieces to their conclusions, I consider it unconscionable and editorially indefensible for one long-known rationale to be included prominently in paragraph 4, while the more news-timely one is consigned to the distant paragraph 19. 

If any Reuters employee cares to comment, please feel free to leave a reply.  Should it be reasonably explained why my observation is unfair (although, narrowly, I don’t see how it could be), I am more than happy to alter this post accordingly. 

In contrast, I’m not holding my breath waiting for that Reuters piece to be altered appropriately, so the crux of paragraph 19 is moved up and slotted where it belongs “factually”, in paragraph 3.

Reuters:

Support for Nazi ideas in Germany is making people fear for their lives, a government minister said Tuesday.

Wolfgang Tiefensee, the minister responsible for east Germany, was speaking after a mob of about 50 Germans attacked and chased eight Indians through the streets of a small eastern town at the weekend…

…”It’s a scandal what happened in Muegeln,” said Volker Kauder, parliamentary chief of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “The fact people were evidently looking on and that nobody had the courage to intervene makes me very sad.”…

We shouldn’t be too hard on those onlookers, though. Maybe they were just following a British suggestion?  The BBC “Magazine” tells us:

…the advice from police is unequivocally against intervention. A spokeswoman for the Association of Chief Police Officers says they have only one instruction - call the police.

And a Home Office statement said: “The public should not intervene in any situations of any criminal activity. They may put themselves in danger, exacerbate the situation and ultimately be acting on the wrong side of the law.”…

And some wonder why most sane people look away, walk on quickly, and avoid involvement?  Is it any shock that many streets are given over to thugs?  For by the time police get there, any ”situation” is probably long since over anyway.

Then again, that’s assuming police ever turn up at all.  It seems that overworked police may also suggest you “contact your MP” (meaning member of Parliament, not military police).  The Daily Mail:

A father who phoned 999 when his son was knocked unconscious by a drunken thug was told to write to his MP rather than bother the police.

Businessman Pete Bayliss called after his 22-year-old son Chris was taken to hospital with a broken nose and other injuries. But police said they were too busy to investigate the attack.

Mr Bayliss, 51, was visiting his son in Portsmouth last weekend when the pair decided to go for a night out…

That’s not being entirely fair, though.  It seems an exasperated police operator was actually venting about the lack of adequate policing resources:

…”Somebody phoned for the emergency services after Chris was attacked and the ambulance turned up but there was no sign of police,” said father-of-two Mr Bayliss. “After about 40 minutes I dialled the police because there were other fights going on in the area and we wanted the guy who did this to get caught.

“I couldn’t believe my ears when the operator told me there was no one available to deal with it and that I should contact my MP if I had a problem with that…

Translation:  Hampshire police in Portsmouth, worn down trying to deal with innumerable other troubles that were popping up (Portsmouth is in locations indeed a rough place; perhaps another Baghdad in the making), just did not have enough officers available and able to respond. 

Politicians do certainly need to hear such plain truth spoken now and then.  “Bin police” may be useful, but what about funding the real police?  Given the latter’s obvious limitations based on woefully inadequate and perhaps even dwindling resources, what hope do they have possibly to respond hurridly to a life-threatening assault call? 

Sure, it’s easy to demand that they do.  But let’s also be a tad realistic for a second.  For instance, before underfunded, overstretched officers can even begin to respond to that assault call, there is first the time-consuming, as well as physically draining, need to fold up and stow away those mobile “safety cameras”.  (Via Dock Green.)

The BBC reports:

Figures from the Office for National Statistics indicate that some 385,000 people left the UK for the long term in the year to mid-2006. Some 196,000 of those were British citizens.

Why non-British citizens leave the UK is irrelevant here.  The salient issue is the loss of British citizens.  Why might some of those be departing?: 

One of those Britons who chose to make the move abroad was Roy Bevis, 64, who traded in his home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, three years ago for one on the banks of Lake Como in Italy…

…A typographer by trade, Mr Bevis said he became fed up of life in Britain for many reasons.

He faced problems over his self-employed status after 12 years, he was frustrated with the health service and the cost of transport, he had high blood pressure and he felt his income was being drained by high bills and taxes…

Mr Bevis’s high blood pressure would seem probably to be at least partly a consequence of all the rest he mentioned.  Yet, as we know, a lot of “searchin’ questions” are now being asked about what those emigration numbers really indicate.  However, one can really save all the self-examinations: we have just been told directly.

In fact, Mr Bevis’s points corroborate the wife’s view.  Upon hearing of this general Brit emigration story yesterday, she blurted out:

Only if they are leaving for a [particular] job or family would most people leave their country, unless they are unhappy. This Government has made lots of people unhappy.

The Independent doesn’t know quite what it is trying to be.  It is clearly not conservative.  However, it is not truly leftist either. 

Being pigeonholed is not always a good thing, of course.  Why be another Telegraph or another Guardian?  Yet a clear sense of purpose is useful also.  

My take is it is a paper that sees its audience as “liberal” in a slightly pompous (or some might well say armed with the “self-assurance” of one who knows he’s smarter than most) left-of-center, upper middle class, professional, “I read it usually over breakfast and can only shake my head at the disgrace that is Guantanamo, climate change, that idiot Bush (who is responsible for both of those and most every other problem in the world) and knife crime (my children would never go to such a school!), and then I turn to the travel section, where, ummm, oh, look, dear! Simon Calder went hiking in the Pyrenees just where we’ve been!…” sorta way. Today’s front page story is a solid expression of that:

The fate of Learco Chindamo throws down a challenge to liberal opinion. The Government wants the killer of Philip Lawrence to be deported. But why can’t the boy who is now a man be rehabilitated into British society?

Hmmm [ponder, ponder].  Overall, kinda [sniff, sniff] . . . touching, really.  Where’s my Tocqueville biography?

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UPDATE:  “Liberal” opinion indeed.  In contrast, for some the argument over “deportation” v. “rehab” spans the debate all the way from A to B.  Sam Tarran offers a “C” that would qualify as one of The Independent’s worst right-wing, Texas nightmares:

…“There is no evidence to suggest that the use of the death penalty serves as a deterrent against violent crime…”

Ah yes. And there was clearly no connection between the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in November 1965, and the murder of three policemen in the summerof the following year, the first shooting of a policeman since 1911. There’s clearly no connection between the abolition of the death penalty in 1965 and the subsequent rise in the rate of unlawful killings from 0.68 per 100,000 to 1.42 per 100,000. There’s clearly no connection that within ten years of abolition the number of murder convictions almost doubled. It obviously means nothing that in the United States, in the period between 1980 - four years after the US Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment - and 2000, the US murder rate declined by 54%

Common sense informs you that the death penalty is a deterrent. You kill someone, you get killed. No parole. No reoffending after release. It is not a deterrent if you kill someone, then get a lifetime (read in the UK: six years) of free television, free video games, free medical care, regular exercise, and all the recreational drugs you could ever dream of…

Death penalty?  Methinks I just heard Robert Verkaik (The Independent’s law editor, who is credited with the above Chindamo story) faint and crumple to the floor.

Reuters:

Former CIA chief George Tenet failed to follow through on his 1998 declaration of war against al Qaeda and the agency diverted counterterrorism money for other uses in the years before the September 11 attacks, according to an agency report released on Tuesday…

Blah, blah, blah.  Just more looking to blame ”Admiral Kimmel” and “General Short”.  Just more “Tora, Tora, Tora” recriminations . . . for our generation.

Agence France-Presse:

…The [Australian] Labor Party leader admitted that he visited Scores, a Manhattan “gentlemen’s club”, during a boozy night out on a taxpayer-funded trip to the United Nations as shadow foreign minister in 2003.

Rudd said he had drunk too much and did not have a “completely clear recollection” of whether there were semi-naked women in the club or what they were doing.

It was the sort of admission which could see a US politician’s career crash and burn, but the leader of the Australian Greens Party, Senator Bob Brown, said Rudd’s escapade should be kept in perspective.

“Four years ago Kevin Rudd got drunk and took himself into a strip club. Four years ago John Howard, sober, took Australia into the Iraq war. I think the electorate can judge which one did the more harm,” Brown said…

Yes, an informed electorate can indeed judge, and perspective is useful. As prime minister, John Howard did not have to fall back on a bottle in order to lubricate his perhaps single toughest policy call.  In contrast, wannabe prime minister Mr Rudd couldn’t manage even a cushy trip to the UN, without going miles beyond imbibing for social pleasantry into the distinctly hazy realm of “semi-naked women” and utterly blind, stinking drunk. 

The AP:

An illegal immigrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year to avoid being separated from her American-born son was deported from the United States to Mexico, where she vowed Monday to continue her campaign to change U.S. immigration laws.

Leave it to the AP utterly to miss the point.

Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents as she defied her deportation order and spoke out from her sanctuary…

…Jim Hayes, director of ICE in Los Angeles, said “proper perspective” should be placed on the woman’s case. Using a false identity, as in the case of Arellano, who was convicted of using someone else’s Social Security number, can be a threat to national security, he said…

…Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the case demonstrates the need for a reform of U.S. immigration laws.

“Until we resolve the status of the estimated 12 million undocumented people living and working in the United States by giving them some meaningful pathway to citizenship, families will continue to be torn apart,” Villaraigosa said…

This tale is almost precisely what one is talking about when saying that there is an assumption among way too many that one has a right to live in the U.S. just because one wants to.  (When did Americans get a similar right to live in Mexico, or have we all missed something?)  That (deliberate?) misperception is disgracefully encouraged by the likes of the current Mayor of Los Angeles, who stupidly has his “pathway” distinctly backwards.

Since when did residency rights suddenly “up-volve” from citizen minor to foreign parents?  Since never.  The world out here is chocker full of U.S. citizen minor children whose parents are foreigners, and those foreign parents are not entitled to U.S. residency merely because their child is. 

However, it is a bit tougher, obviously, for those parents to walk into the U.S. from Europe, Asia or Africa than it is from Mexico.  Hence Ms Arellano was merely trying to use her country of origin’s geographic proximity and her U.S. born child as leverage to obtain the U.S. residency to which she is simply not legally entitled.  She made her best effort, and failed.

And in not taking her son back to Mexico with her, she merely demonstrates that leading a “crusade” to gain 100 million Mexicans an automatic legal right to live in the U.S. is clearly more important to her than living with her child.  That is her own personal choice also, certainly.  In contrast, if I found myself so separated from my wife, my choice would be never to return to the U.S.

Interestingly, though, Ms Arellano’s child, by virtue of her actual nation-state citizenship, is therefore a duel Mexican-U.S national.  When he becomes an adult a scant decade from now, if he wishes to move to the U.S. he will be able to obtain a U.S. passport.  Then, as an adult permanently residing in the U.S., he will be permitted to sponsor his non-citizen mother’s bid for U.S. residency.  Just like how it is done by many another U.S. citizen adult child who sponsors a visa for a foreign parent.  But considering Ms Arellano’s conviction for the fraudulent use of a social security number, that bid may prove problematic.  (An arrest in London for kicking a photographer – and seemingly not coming clean about that with U.S. immigration — was enough to get a childish, but legally adult, British singer’s work visa at least temporarily withdrawn.)

There is actually nothing particularly novel about this situation.  It is newsworthy only because media has chosen to make it so.  Contrived drama sells.

But more importantly, it is worth noticing how we are also regularly seeing much media, as well as illegal alien advocacy groups, attempting to portray Mexico as somewhere which simply must be escaped from no matter how high the cost, another impoverished and hopeless hell hole akin to a Somalia, a Sudan or a Zimbabwe – despite any such assertions being absolute nonsense.  Amusingly, though, we often hear also of how the “hopeless hell hole’s” culture is deemed worth favorably comparing to that of the U.S. and Canada.  Huh.  Interesting dichotomy that: an often culturally superior, impoverished and hopeless hell hole.

It would also seem that Democrats, especially, have to be very cautious with this sort of residency issue.  Particularly, they should not allow themselves to get too carried away with “the families being torn apart” swoonings.  After all, were we not told some years ago that a child’s place is with a loving parent . . . no matter what?

Independent headline:

Whales and dolphins are ‘endangered by wind farms’

Now, that’s a real enviro-ethics quandary.

* * *

In another headline, The Independent also explains:

Backing for pipeline ‘endangers whales’

Okay, no wind farms.  And now we can’t have pipelines either. 

* * * 

And no fossil fuels at all for that matter. As the Independent also informs us:

…The 63-year-old former petro-physicist had worked for more than 40 years in the oil industry, but yesterday he was marching next to a banner that read: “It’s your great-grandchildren’s planet too - stop wrecking it for them“…”

A more fundamental question is why does he believe he should be entitled to great-grandchildren at all?  If no humans are alive 200 years from now, generating carbon, isn’t the planet going to be far better off?  French writer Corinne Maier sure thinks so (via my wife):

…every baby born in a developed country is an ecological disaster for the whole planet…

“HAVE NO CHILDREN/SAVE THE PLANET”. Far easier to get on a marching banner, don’t you think? And “scholars” like the idea, too.

* * *

One other possibility — nuclear — has been, as the BBC reports, also totally ruled out:

…Five people blocked the main gate at Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk after locking their arms inside barrels of concrete…

Incidentally, how was that concrete manufactured? Oh, well, never mind. 

Yet it is worth asking. How are we to make anything? Stay out of the dark? Keep warm in winter? Get from one place to another? None of that really matters, you say, given there shouldn’t be any of us anyway. (So who cares if the jihadists win?) Still, those are questions worth asking, considering how, for the shorter-term at least, mass suicide also seems out of the question.

However, also assuming people in developed lands irritatingly insist on continuing to reproduce, what seems clear is we may have little choice but ultimately to do away with misguided industrial society altogether.  That ”solution” would appear almost certain to “save the planet” . . . although it does, unfortunately, also present one other “little” problem.  Anyone out there want to volunteer to be among the first group of uncompensated, dark to dark, heavy lifters?

AP headline:

Taiwan Jet Explodes Into Fire in Japan

A disastrous plane crash!

Uh, no. In the story text itself our friends at the Associated Press are forced to share with us an obvious “reporting” letdown:

…All 165 people aboard escaped unhurt, including the pilot, who jumped from the cockpit at the last second…

Clearly, the wire service feels cheated. Yet the AP shouldn’t feel too badly, though. After all, there’s always some real disaster bound to unfold somewhere.

ITN Headline:

Camapigners stage BAA sit-in

Let me repeat: ITN composed that headline.

If you stop by here regularly, you too probably spend a lot of time pondering our culture and our civilization.  We try to (now and then) think big thoughts.  We (mostly) try to muster (occasionally) good arguments.

Then, you stumble suddenly on that which makes you sink back into your chair despairing, while a sense of utter futility descends upon you.  And then you actually wonder to yourself, in all seriousness:  ”Does any civilization that produces imbeciles like these deserve to have a future at all anyway?” 

_____________________________

In contrast, at least the immature Heathrow “climate change” protesters actually are attempting to do something arguably constructive . . .

. . . even if they, too, are often similarly intellectually and emotionally stunted.

The BBC reports:

A 5,000-year-old piece of chewing gum has been discovered by an archaeology student from the University of Derby.

Sarah Pickin, 23, found the lump of birch bark tar while on a dig in western Finland.

Neolithic people used the material as an antiseptic to treat gum infections, as well as a glue for repairing pots…

Bringing that substance back into common usage today might in a roundabout way help alleviate the shortage of NHS dentists.  Also, we desperately need to recycle, of course.  So after one’s dealt with that gum infection, one might afterwards easily fix that recently chipped dinner plate. 

The Sunday Times:

EVERY foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination…

…“If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of the country,” Giuliani said. He intends to call it a Safe card (for secure authorised foreign entry)…

Mr Giuliani has got to be kidding on this one.  Yet again, we are going to over-bureaucrat, intimidate and stick it to law-abiding people usually possessing more ID than anyone knows what to do with, who enter the U.S. as tourists with every intention of leaving?  For in addition to holding their machine readable (or now perhaps a biometric) passport, most approach U.S. passport control nervously, awaiting their (already required) electronic fingerprintings and sometimes terse cross-examinations, while also bearing in a pocket or purse a foreign driving license, credit cards, bank cards, check book, and even perhaps an ID card from their country of origin. 

All that most lack on their persons at that moment is probably an original of their house deed.  Likely their needing also to carry that across the Atlantic is only a matter of time.  Yes, for them, the already warm “Welcome to the U.S.” always only gets oh, so much the warmer.  

Next, how about putting some minor effort into addressing another small issue for a change?  As Pew Hispanic prominently has told us:

…Mexicans make up by far the largest group of undocumented migrants at … 57 percent of the total in the March 2004 estimates … In addition, another … about 24 percent of the total are from other Latin American countries. About 9 percent are from Asia, 6 percent from Europe…

So, of perhaps rather greater import, in case the Mayor hasn’t noticed, is if one can manage to walk in across the southern land frontier, it has evidently become that crosser’s God-given right to live in the U.S. just ’cause he darn well wants to. And perpetually weak-kneed U.S. politicians seem to think nothing of allowing that crosser that privilege . . . sans any papers period. Biometric ID cards for those people at the supposed frontier, or they “get thrown out of the country“?  It is to laugh. 

However, according to the Sunday Times, the Mayor has at least partly noticed, and . . .

…has vowed to strengthen patrols along the most porous parts of the border with Mexico and deport illegal immigrants who have been convicted of drug dealing and other crimes…

Yet what about those parts that are “porous”, but aren’t “the most porous”?  Well, those who slip in through those are only apparently to be without papers until some state, city, or locality hands them a local ID.  That ID is presumably “secured” courtesy of the “immigrants’ ” good words and disarming, “I love America” grins. 

Those ”immigrants” are then rewarded also with offerings (by both parties) of a “path to citizenship”.  Actually, “path” in that sense couldn’t be a better word.  After all, it is still impossible to walk across the Atlantic. 

In writing and in blogging, one should try to be aware of excessive usage of the “I”.  Too much of it reads as narcissistic and (understandably) turns off readers.  But those potential shortcomings certainly did not appear last weekend to trouble The Independent’s then soon to be vacationing Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.  Just a few examples from that single column:

… I fret …  I have … I describe … I was told … I do find … I speak … I am a tourist … I took my … I never haggled … I guess … I am off … I am dying … I enter …

I, I, I . . . aye, yigh yigh, yigh yigh.  But we do thank her for all of her observations on all her numerous elsewheres.  Yet, in the end, one cannot avoid the distinct impression that it all might really be about herself.   For as her subheading tells us:

Tanzanians will know from my accent and clothes I am no longer one of them

Then again, perhaps it isn’t all just about herself?  Perhaps upon meeting her in a cafe, Tanzanians really have nothing better to do than to reflect upon how she is no longer “one of them”?  Nonetheless, we readers do also sense just why she has lost any “first-person” editorial self-awareness, as we too are helplessly swept up in her lamentations of her truly horrific, non-Tanzanian travel experiences . . .

…In Austria we get creepy looks and in the Czech Republic it is gypsy colouring that provokes unpleasant