Category Archives: World Affairs

Operation Overload

Kennedy says Iraq is ‘Bush’s Vietnam’. But, if Bush=Hitler, surely it’s his Eastern Front? That can’t be, of course, because Kabul was supposed to be America’s Stalingrad—as was, er, Baghdad. At least we can be sure that Abu Ghraib is Iraq’s My Lai—as long as it’s not true that September 11 2001 was the new […]

Godwinning

Claire sent me this one. I’m not going to tell you what to think. If you find something familar about the text, you do; if you don’t, you don’t. Either way, it’s chilling history.

Comedy Divorce

Everything I have read about Team America: World Police makes me more eager to see it. A film in that opens with Thunderbirds-style puppets accidentally destroying Paris as part of an US anti-terror operation and offends Sean Penn to the point of releasing a statement to the press is worth a viewing. This report worries […]

The Web

[cliché]As the year draws to a close[/cliché], I’d like to thank the global network of PooterGeek operatives who make this site the nerve centre of international happenings that it is, both the core team of: Special Agent Berlinski: Paris operative and roving European reporter; Special Agent Levy: “the Mossad Mother”, our Middle East observer; Special Agent Savant: […]

Unelected Leaders Update

Another one bites the dust.

Getting Worse

The Independent Radio News report on 96.9 Chiltern FM at four o’clock: “11 Britons are among the dead.” [Recording of northern Irish bloke recounting his experience] “—journalist Blahdy Blah on the earthquake in south Asia. In [Thailand] alone, eight Britons died. Others are on their way home to emotional reunions.” Don’t the media just love those […]

David Carr Is The Anti-Swift

Hello, loonies of Libertarianism. This is good irony. It is funny, sharp, and original. It has a serious underlying point to make. This is bad irony. It is flat, smug, and tired. Somehow it doesn’t score a hit against crap British celebs making crap records for charidee. David Carr, you win this week’s Prêt-à-Porter Award […]

Strange Potency

At number 15 in the UK singles chart the United Uniting Nations are “Out of Touch”.

Yes, But

Yes, it’s bad there, but what about North Korea? Yes, he’s an evil dictator, but the Americans will be even worse. Yes, they’ll overthrow him, but what about the humanitarian disaster that will inevitably follow? Yes, democracy’s all very well in theory, but those people aren’t ready for it yet. Yes, they chopped off his […]

Obscene Publications

Have you got any hardcore? Y’know: Naomi Does Najaf? No, sir. Maybe some stuff with, er, children? Like the Pilger one in the paediatrics wards or that Moore one with the kids flying kites? I’m afraid not. I bet you like a bit of amateur, though, dontcha? You must have “The Best of After Hours Indymedia: Moonbats by Moonlight”? Absolutely […]

Cheers!

I long for the day when there is no longer any hiding place for the bastards—instead of a vast system of “international” “law” to shelter their fiefdoms from reason, liberty, mercy, fairness, and universal suffrage. In the meantime, let’s raise a glass to the continued imprisonment of these guys [do you think their “snacks” include […]

The Force Is Strong With This One

Eric The Unread has taken Backword Dave’s Jedi morality/foreign policy post and run with it. If you are familiar with the Star Wars films you’ll have a good laugh.

It’s Time To Play The Music

Even when disagreeing with me, anti-war Backword Dave has always shown commendable respect for the moral basis of my pro-war Leftie stance. Yesterday, however, he cited the words of Yoda, a Muppet no less, in criticizing Tony Blair’s foreign policy. If Tony reads it he’ll probably have to resign.

Mild Day In Hell

Do you think any of these Arab writers stand a chance of getting a regular gig at The Guardian? [Thanks to Judith.]

Robert Kagan Is Smarter Than Jacques Chirac

Judith was so right to recommend this, even allowing for the terrible, clunky play-on-words at the very end.

Safety In Flight

Good morning, chattels and infidels. On behalf of all of the team, welcome aboard this wide-bodied handcart from London Heathrow to Hell. Your flight has been the subject of a hostile, but successful, takeover bid by Intellectual Jihad. By co-operating with us in every way your inevitable demise could be postponed for anything up to […]

Now A Major Motion Picture

A Jerry Bruckheimer Production 45 MINUTES starring Aaron Eckhart as George W Bush and Don Cheadle as Tony Blair [“I’m telling you, Steve, the sidekick has gotta to be black.”] [Urban skyline. Dusk.] TOUGH STREETS. NEED TOUGH COPS. DETECTIVE GEORGEDUBYABUSHHE’S WRESTLED WITH DRINK. HE’S WRESTLED WITH DRUGS. HE’S WRESTLED WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. THEY RAN HIS FATHER OFF THE […]

The Anglo-Saxonsphere

A frequent correspondent points me to this story in which Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, takes exception to the Prime Minister of Iraq describing non-participants in the liberation of his country as “spectator” states. My correspondent suggests that, rather than apologize to Juncker, Allawi should have told the esteemed European leader to “go […]

More Father-Son Stuff

Via the BBC I notice disturbing evidence of another political dynasty in the making: Karzai’s Mini Me

Crap Headlines Of The Week

Thanks to Claire for this one from The Guardian. Here’s one that was changed at the source, so I only have a screenshot of the Google News link. And this one is from those sexually liberated Aussies.

Result

I was wrong. The one who looks like Alfred E. Neumann beat the one who looks like Frankenstein’s monster. Talking of Frankenstein and his monster, below you can read one of those strange PooterGeek entries where I write nothing about something and a debate breaks out over the something I said nothing about.

My Twelve Pence Worth

Screw the polls. Screw the pundits. Screw Osama. I’m sticking by my prediction that Kerry will win, not that I can enter Norm’s competition. I’d bet about twelve pence on John Kerry becoming President of the United States of America. I also want Kerry to win, but not very much. Here’s The Economist expressing a similar […]

Future News: November

Live from next month, more of “Pooter’s Futures”: The Middle East The body of one of the militants believed to have been responsible for the bombing of the Hilton hotel in Taba on Egypt’s border with Israel has been washed up on a bank of the river Nile near the Egyptian town of Aswan. When challenged about […]

Nothing To See Here

The BBC and The Guardian: as long as it’s only the fuzzy-wuzzies that are dying, and not rich white people, then terrorism is a figment of the imaginations of our oppressive Western governments.

God Bless Islington!

Dear British Guardian Readers I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be able to write to you on White House notepaper. I cannot thank you enough for your cruciate support in our country’s recent presidential election. When my colleagues used to show me cuttings from the opinion pages of your newspaper, the cartoons, and […]

Too Busy To Fisk

Apparently “Sudan’s Darfur” is “‘safer than Iraq’”. I’d been wondering where those millions of Iraqi refugees had gone to. I think Sudan’s Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismael, makes everything clear to Europeans when he says that “the international community should leave the complex ethnic politics of Darfur alone” because… “This is an African problem—it needs […]

Unintended Consequences

Many Americans see in Tony Blair the leader they cannot elect. Many also feel the same way about Arnold Schwarzenegger and are campaigning to make it possible for California’s “Governator” or any naturalized citizen meeting certain requirements to be permitted to become their president (subject to the other usual conditions). At least one commentator here […]

But Is It Art?

SUE FROM BBC LOCAL RADIO: I’m standing in the grounds of an ordinary central Cambridge apartment block where local resident Damian Counsell has found himself at the centre of a controversy following his construction of a sculpture he has called, somewhat provocatively even he must admit, “You Bet Your Sweet Ass It Was In My Name.” […]

The Tories Warned Us

This is the kind of thing that happens when you let the Germans reunite and people stop hunting wild animals.

Mucho Macho

I saw Collateral some time ago, but haven’t got round to writing about it, have nothing original to say, and feel slightly let down by Michael Mann (who is a god). It’s not that it’s a bad film; it is, in many ways, superb, but, like others who’ve seen it, I think that Mann or […]