The front page of the BBC News Website is currently decorated by the headline:
JUDE LAW CALLS FOR WORLD CEASEFIRE
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Category Archives: World Affairs
Talking Of Bathos…
01Sep08 – 19:50
Can We Talk About Something Else Now?
01Feb08 – 10:41
Islam isn’t a race. Martin Amis isn’t a racist. This video is fun:
[via The Ambrosini Critique]
Oxfam Report Supports UK Humanitarian Intervention
11Apr07 – 10:29
This is a surprise:
The UK must not shy away from trying to resolve international crises despite the “terrible misadventure” in Iraq, a report from charity Oxfam argues.
In With A Bullet
19Dec06 – 10:25
In the latest edition of your super soaraway Foreign Policy there is, shockingly, a year’s-end top ten. Those crazy dudes at FP—bringing you close-up views of the hottest international relations—have collected the most significant “Stories You Missed in 2006” and they are grimly interesting, including for example India helping Iran to build the bomb and […]
Tilting At Bots
10Oct06 – 09:15
I suspect that quite a few people have, like me, recently had someone going by the name of “cell-phone-accessory” drop by and leave a comment on their blogs. The comment is a rambling rant about terrorism. Its content is similar to that of an Independent opinion piece, though the spelling and grammar are poorer. Gloria […]
The Satisfying Sound Of Leather Hitting Trouser
05Sep06 – 09:57
As you’d expect from an embittered wannabe academic like me, I enjoy immensely reading reviews in which genuine scholars demolish the latest fashionable nonsense published by trend-chasing academic presses.
Here Ben Goldacre casually and rightly puts the boot into an absurd attack on evidence-based medicine—it’s “fascist” apparently.
Here Shalom Lappin does a grand and rigorous job on The Question […]
Admirable; Futile
04Sep06 – 17:44
Like a man trying to teach calculus to a hamster, Anthony “Black Triangle” Cox attempts to apply logic to the content of a front page of The Independent. For some reason I am reminded of Norm’s continuing struggles with The Guardian.
The Future Of Darfur And The Future Of The Left
31Aug06 – 08:28
Because of a couple of gremlins over at the Euston Manifesto site we’ve accidentally been turning people away from applying for tickets to our meeting next Tuesday evening in London. It’s free and there will be three speakers on the subject: “Darfur: An Urgent Case for Humanitarian Intervention”. Follow the link to email us for tickets.
This […]
Stop The War(monger Bush And His Poodle Blair)
25Aug06 – 10:28
As you know I’ve been busy, so I’ve only just noticed via Jo Salmon that someone has found an honest STWC/CND flyer.
Bush And Blair Burn Up The Mic [Uncut]
17Jul06 – 13:50
Via Normblog I read the Times’ transcript of an accidentally broadcast conversation between George W. Bush and Tony Blair at the G8 summit. By downloading the original recording and processing it with various digital sound programs I have been able to reconstruct the inaudible parts of the exchange. Here I present the full transcript, with […]
By The Way
21Apr06 – 13:51
Thank you to Pete in the comments and to everyone else who’s been sending kind wishes. It’s good to be alive on days like these. I hope eventually everyone will be just as free to say in public how they think we should live in the world we share. It’s a precious gift and one […]
A Lesson In The Importance Of Sentence Construction
27Mar06 – 09:04
Via Instapundit I came upon this unfortunate opening to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram report on the release of Abdul Rahaman:
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.
Let’s hope the Star-Telegram’s […]
A Top Post By A Top Bloke
15Mar06 – 09:07
For a while I wondered if she was a parody, so broken and infantile and hackneyed were her arguments. Now I only ever read her when someone writes about her. Madeleine Bunting’s intellectual and moral development has been so corrupted by the ideological diseases of our time that she is hardly qualified to read out […]
Sky-Fairies Continue To Advise Leaders Of Free World
04Mar06 – 09:33
When I was about nine years old I told a bunch of advancing micro-racists that I wasn’t scared of them because “Jesus was on my side”. That the Son of God was shamefully absent throughout my subsequent twatting should have been a lesson to me then, but it was a few more years before I […]
Fatuous Bint
03Mar06 – 23:18
Regular readers here know that I had little time for the argument that “we” had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein had a strategic arsenal trained on Hoxton hidden under his various country homes. It’s been said that I’ve been quite rude about people who signed up too confidently for certain types of WMD-related bollocks, […]
Breakdown Of Diplomacy
07Feb06 – 10:11
While I’m on the subject, during much of my youth, lazy, stupid, ungrateful, talentless, illiterate, violent, and very very ugly white people would daily tell me to fuck off “back home”. They were wrong to do so. They would, however, be right to tell the sorts of lazy, stupid, etc brown people who wave banners […]
Ignoring A Stamping Child
24Jan06 – 22:20
I don’t agree with a lot of what she says, but I think Mary Madigan at Exit Zero has a very interesting angle on Iran:
What should we do about Iran? We should do nothing.
Seriously. When a belligerent little foaming-at-the-mouth nation shouts about nukes, they expect us to pay attention to them. This encourages other belligerent little foaming-at-the-mouth […]
And Next Year’s Nobel Peace Prize Goes To…
17Jan06 – 01:01
Some misquotes are more serious than others.
[thanks to Claire]
Fobbing Off The Punters
14Dec05 – 09:54
Eh! Eh! Calm down! Yes, I parenthetically threatened to kick Harold Pinter’s hospital bed for his drivelling on about the US foreign policy, but I have a lot to do right now. If I do put the boot in it won’t be before the weekend because I need a nice unbroken slot of time to […]
I’m Condi. Fly Me.
14Dec05 – 09:45
Hi! Welcome to the CIA Airlines check-in desk. Could I ask you to itemize your hand luggage as you place it on the belt, sir?
Er, one holdall of shoes, running gear, and toiletries; one suitcase of casual clothes; one suit carrier containing three identical black suits and ties with matching Ray-Bans; one attaché case containing five […]
Final Revisions
06Dec05 – 09:04
Yesterday’s serious press carried near-full-page advertisements for Channel 4’s new substation “More4“‘s screening of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s acclaimed cinematic imagining of the last moments of former German head of state Adolf Hitler. These advertisements read:
“It’s a happy ending. He dies.”
But just how happy an ending was it for the once-proud nation that was Germany, for Europe […]
Top Ten Discontinued Dulux Paint Colours
29Nov05 – 13:26
Burnt Hummer
Institutional Magnolia
Sambo
Warm Placenta
Haliborange
Coldplay Yellow
Kilroy
Autumn Phlegm
Coelacanth Brown
Conrad Black
[Despite / because of my being born into a country in the midst of the Biafran War, a conflict in which one weapon was starvation, it was normal in the house I grew up in for us to respond to uneaten food on a plate at tea time (“dinner time” to soft Southerners) with the […]
That Angela Merkel Speech In Voll
26Nov05 – 15:18
Guten Morgen, meine Damen und Herren, Herr Prime Minister, Frau Blair, Herr Straw, Brenda, und so weiter. Vielen Dank fur den Freiheit, ihre grossen Europaischen subsidiese zum Integraztion wir lumpen Ossis, und den neuen Robbie Williams Album—mit his dimplich Grin, er ist viel sexyer als David Hasselhof.
Wir, die Britischen and die Deutschen, sind sinze der langsten […]
Easy, Tiger
12Nov05 – 16:23
One of the extracts from novelist John Fowles’ diaries in the Guardian today neatly sums up the attitude of a certain kind of educated observer to the War On Terror:
Rushdie fuss. Eliz in a paranoiac state, that I might support him. This is a clear moral choice. From what I have heard of him, I […]
Root Causes
07Nov05 – 10:32
I think the riots in France are a protest by disenfranchised Muslim youth against that country’s involvement in the disastrous imperialist adventure in Iraq.
Or You Could Go To The Tate And Look At The Boxes
27Oct05 – 14:57
I could have chosen one of hundreds of quotes from various Whedon interviews over the years to set this brief (and somewhat random) rant off, but this is particularly apt:
“I love genre. I love fantasy. I love science fiction. I love horror. I love musicals. I love finding a different way to express what […]
Says It All
03Sep05 – 22:12
Who Knew? has a telling post. Imagine: you have invested your life savings in a multinational corporation, who would you choose to run, respectively, its US and UK arms: Bill Clinton and Tony Blair or George W Bush and John Major? Whatever happened to the Right’s ability just to manage serious stuff competently?
Walken For President
18Aug05 – 22:50
AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI is man-handled into his office. Waiting for him are four associates, standing: CONDOLEEZZA, RUMSFELD (an old Wise-guy), VICE-PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER, and BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BOB HOSKINS (a fireplug pitbull type).
PRESIDENT WALKEN sits in KHAMENEI’s recliner
KHAMENEI is knocked to his knees. He looks up to see a smiling WALKEN. They pick him up and roughly drop him […]
