When you’ve run out of things to say, steal from others. It’s the sincerest form of flattery - honest.
David Vance at A Tangled Web wants to why, if the west is under attack from the jihadists for their actions in the middle east, Bangladesh was treated to over 300 bomb explosions today.
Last time I checked Bangladesh wasn’t exactly spearheading the action in Iraq. I’ve not seen too many Bangladeshi troops fighting their way into Baghdad. Nor has Bangladesh been a good friend to either the US or Israel. It appears that the primary reason for this massive blitzkrieg across Bangladesh is because the Islamofascists want to kill and bomb their way into power everywhere.
He’s also go the hump over the shooting of Mr Menezes and the gulf that lies between the initial explanations for the event and the gradually emerging truth. Either the Police Commissioner is incompetent or the media are. Somebody, he says, needs to resign over this.
DE’s latest post picks a small hole in the neocon idea that if one decide’s a country’s political system is bad for its people then you can just crash in and remove it:
I kept hearing the argument for the invasion of Iraq (before W.M.D. became the vogue) was that the Iraqi people were “prisoners” of Saddam Hussein, and needed to be “liberated”. In short it was not a democracy, and members of the free world were required to convert it into one.
I don’t know exactly what DE’s views are on the Iraq war but I am very uncomfortable with the idea that you can force an evolved system - democracy - on a tribally-based country that was, it seems, more or less randomly selected for the purpose as an example to anybody even thinking of crossing the US. I have a lot of time for America - and Americans - but I believe the thinking behind this war was faulty.
Frank O’Dwyer is convinced our liberties are about to be removed by an authoritarian Labour government. I hope he’s wrong but I know he might not be. He quotes no less an authority than Herman Goering on the methods of affecting that removal. And ol’ Herman ought to know:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
Bishop Hill quotes the CBI’s Digby Jones saying we - the British - need to learn foreign languages in order to be successful in business. On no we don’t, says the Bishop:
Why on earth must the people employed by British businesses be British? If you run a business and want someone to speak to your French customers get a Frenchman.
Thersites has a long post about the motivation of suicide bombers. These aren’t random acts carried out by seething hateful nutters, he concludes. A summary made up of quotes from his post:
The vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal.
In general, suicide terrorist campaigns seek to achieve specific territorial goals, most often the withdrawal of the target state’s military forces from what the terrorists see as national homeland.
During the past 20 years, suicide terrorism has been steadily rising because terrorists have learned that it pays.
The most promising way to contain suicide terrorism is to reduce terrorists’ confidence in their ability to carry out such attacks on the target society. States that face persistent suicide terrorism should recognize that neither offensive military action nor concessions alone are likely to do much good and should invest significant resources in border defenses and other means of homeland security.
It’s worth reading the whole thing.
Dumb Brit has had enough of the Church of England’s fannying about over gay clergy and whether or not they ought to be, ahem, getting it on within their gay partnerships.
…the Church has decided, once again, to betray its members, its doctrine, and its history (not to mention all the martyrs it’s betraying).
So he’s leaving the C of E. I always wondered how the C of E squared the godliness of marriage with its decision some years ago to not regard non-married, cohabitating couples as living in sin. I find religious pandering to the latest fads contemptible, to be honest. Sincere Christians can surely only take so much. Brit’s evidently taken enough. Well done Church of England - you’re doing a better job to put people off religion than us atheists ever could.
At Once More, the EU Serf makes the important distinction between a multi-cultural society and a multi-ethnic one.
Multiculturalism means making no judgements about another’s chosen way of life. At its worst it means accepting Polygamy, Female Circumcision, Forced Marriage and a host of other wonderful ideas, from cultures whose value is apparently equal to our own.
The fact that we have a significant number of immigrants who plain don’t understand our way of life is down to Multiculturalism, not a Multi-ethnic population. A multi-ethnic society can celebrate Britishness, a multicultural one cannot.
The Serf has his own blog here in which he exposes the rotteness of the European Union.
A non-political blog I look at has this about human behaviour:
You are not random. Never have been, never will be.
You think you have been random, have done things for no rhyme or reason but you haven’t. Nothing is uncaused.
Everything a human does is done for a reason, to achieve a goal, to secure an aim. Sometimes what we do seems anything but beneficial but there is a reason, a useful intention, behind all actions. Even the worst.
There are a few interesting ideas on this site about people and why we’re the way we are. I just hope the owner updates a little more regularly that s/he has been doing so far.
Finally, on a lighter note Driverchris’ Caption Competition gave me a real belly laugh. Read the comments too…
