I was just reading about a journalist who was eager to hush-up proof that Saddam Hussein mutilated opponents, but keen to publish dishonest, antisemitic conspiracy theories alleging that Israeli soldiers harvested organs of dead Palestinians.
I bet you can’t for the life of you guess where he works…
I am reading Welcome To Obamaland by James Delingpole. He’s a fantastic writer – as close to the brilliant Mark Steyn as we have in these shores. I don’t agree with everything Delingpole writes but much of it I do.
He takes apart the hysterical deification of Obama well but his targets are many. His ‘Give War A Chance’ chapter is a highlight. Two particular passages linger in the memory:
“Nor yet am I going to predict that Obama’s foreign policy will be a flop. (Who knows? Maybe Ahmadinejad really will cancel his entire nuclear weapons program because all he ever wanted was a United States president with the audacity to be hopeful.)”
I like sarcasm. Sarcasm is good.
On the Not In My Namers:
“Why were they all marching in favour of Saddam Hussein? If you’d asked any of them, they would have been appalled at the question. Of course they weren’t marching for Saddam. They were marching against war. It would have struck few of them that there was any logical inconsistency in this position. By marching against war, they were marching in favour of a man who had done more for war than perhaps any political leader in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (having initiated wars against Iran, Kuwait, and his own people).”
So true. Delingpole is a marvelously entertaining writer and when he’s right he’s so right. Even when he’s wrong he’s brilliant. I strongly recommend Welcome To Obamaland.
There are things I’ve wanted to write for a while about Obama, actually. I was dismayed when he won the election because his stance on Israel, Islamism, security and related issues seemed very mistaken. If America gets that wrong we all pay the price. I was also distressed by the blind, hysterical way so many in Britain idolised him. They believed this proved their anti-racist credentials, but if anything it hinted at the opposite. Is there not a streak of condescending racism in their refusal to judge Obama by the standards they would any other politician?
Just as their blinkered idolising of Obama hinted at one thinly-veiled bigotry, so did their equally mindless demonisation of Sarah Palin suggest another. The sniggering and sneering at her from the very start was depressing – but what more would you expect from the same bunch who overlooked the way Bill Clinton treated women and who routinely refuse to condemn Islamic states for their brutal mistreatment of the fairer sex?
I don’t agree with everything Palin personally stands for, and yes she sometimes said some surprisingly ignorant things for which she was roundly mocked. But Obama too has come out with some astonishing crap: he thinks Austrian is a language and even got the number of states in the USA wrong. But those who sneer at Palin’s (and before her Bush’s) slip-ups naturally made no fuss about Obama’s mistakes. Hypocritical and patronising.
Over and over they show their true colours. Palin’s family were considered fair game for intrusion and mockery – but Obama’s were completely off-limits, apart from to receive blind praise. And when liberals laughed at those jokes about Sarah Palin deserving to be gang-raped in Harlem, didn’t they show their true colours on every level?
I had never heard of the rapper Lowkey until I saw a Harry’s Place posting about a strange rap he has written for the pro-terrorist Stop The War coalition.
It’s such a powerful, emotional work of musical poetry that I feel I must engage with it:
One day I was running from the truth,
To speed me up they gave me these shoes,
So tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about the 11th of September
(If you insist: the 11th of September is the 12th day of August.)
I hungered for knowledge, needed to know the facts,
But it when it came time to feed me, all I got was a Big Mac
(You must have felt terribly short-changed. No wonder you’re so angry! Sorry, I interrupted again. Do go on…)
So muffle my mouth with McDonalds,
Tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about Afghanistan
(Okay: Afghanistan is a the square-root of 43.)
That’s not depleted uranium,
Just gifts of freedom and liberation,
Those mutated babies aren’t being born with Cancer,
Baby’s are just uglier and less healthy on that side of the world,
(Presumably you mean Babies not Baby’s. Still, you can always be a Guardian sub-editor if the whole rap thing doesn’t work out.)
So burn my eyes with The Sun,
Muffle my mouth with McDonalds,
Tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about Iraq
(Iraq was the bass player in 1980s pop band Kajagoogoo.)
That is not ethnic cleansing, those people chose to be refugee’s,
If you ever want to get anywhere in this business,
DO NOT mention the “P word” PLEASE!
(Do you mean refugees, not refugee’s? And yes, the only reason you haven’t got anywhere in “this business” is because it’s run by Jews who are determined to censor the “P word” – that’s why your astonishing talent has not been recognised!)
So seduce my mind with celebrity,
Burn my eyes with The Sun,
Muffle my mouth with McDonalds,
Tie my feet with Nike’s,
Tell me lies about Palestine
(Your demands are getting ever more perverted but if you insist: Palestine is a type of fruit. Carry on…)
It was the planes.
Not controlled demolition,
The BBC didn’t report the explosion of Building 7,
20 minutes before hand, on my television,
They found passport’s and plane flying manuals belonging to terrorists in the rubble.
That all makes perfect sense,
But why did I lose my voice when my thirst was quenched,
(Another verse, another random apostrophe! And yes? Why did you lose your voice? You more than anyone could have proved once and for all that 9/11 was an inside job but you lost your voice when we were all counting on you! I think the whole world keeps coming back to WHY?)
Those soldier’s are fighting for our country,
Not the poison being pumped into the veins of our junkie’s,
You put your bomber’s in,
Put your conscience out,
Take a human being,
And smash him all about,
(Is this a cry for help? There are people you can turn to.)
You put your puppet’s in,
Take the oil out,
Talk of democracy,
But know not what it’s about
(Humanity is waiting for you to teach us what democracy is really about, Lowkey. Perhaps you could explain via poetry? We await with baited breath. If you need a starting point, democracy is what Israel has and what the Stop The War Coalition were determined to prevent Iraqis getting.)
Be “cool” and salute the new President with a tune,
He will never be forgotten by the Elephant in the room,
Let your children sing songs about Jesus and place of his birth
But not about the children dying now in that part of the earth,
Keep running from the truth, better yet, buy a top car,
Allow your children to be educated by these shallow pop stars,
(As opposed to shallow pop nobodies. By the way, Lowkey, if you want to be told lies about Israel, Iraq or Afghanistan, just keep hanging out with the Stop The War Coalition, they’ll keep you well-stocked with bullshit.)
Speaking of which, the Coalition website features another moving Lowkey work that includes the bizarre line:
Nothing is more anti-Semitic than Zionism
Hmm, I can think of at least one thing that is.
The New Statesman’s decision to hire Alastair Campbell as a guest editor has prompted much fury this week from media people who still hate him for his part in removing Saddam Hussein from power.
I don’t read the New Statesman and I rather like Campbell anyway, so I had no problem with his guest editor spot. The generally wonderful Suzanne Moore did, and she resigned. Others have vowed to cancel their subscriptions and so on.
I normally admire people for taking principled stands, even when I disagree with them. But there have been far better reasons to quit the New Statesman in recent years. Such as when it sneered at the dead of 9/11, or when it further exploited its own poorly-paid writers, taking the whole operation to little more than vanity publishing.
Or, for that matter, when it published this antisemitic cover. It would have been nice to have seen some principled stands then.
Six years ago today, somewhere between one and two million people marched through London against the liberation of Iraq. It was quite a varied crowd: from seasoned leftie marchers to Islamist hardliners and misguided do-gooders. They gathered under the most narcissistic banner: Not In My Name.
Liberating Iraq has not been an easy task – none of its supporters suggested it would be. These things are never easy. It wasn’t easy dealing with Hitler.
But six years on, let’s see where we are:
The genocidal monsters of Saddam Hussein’s regime have been removed from power and tried for their crimes against humanity.
Contrary to the (racist) prediction of the anti-war movement that the Arab world wasn’t ready for democracy, over 80 per cent of Iraqis – a far higher percentage than here – have exercised their right to vote. More than 14 million voted in last month’s council elections.
Exiled Iraqis are flocking back to their home to help build a free vibrant country.
Other Middle East countries – including Egypt and Libya – have responded to this by stepping closer to freedom themselves.
Iraqi children are no longer born into a nation of tyranny and genocide. Instead, they are born into a free, democratic country.
Not in their name.
On the latest edition of his unintentionally hilarious Press TV show, George Galloway claimed he has spent his entire political life “fighting fascism”. He even managed to keep a straight face while doing so.
Hmm, remember this?
Fighting fascism? More like fellating fascism, surely?
Charles Krauthammer has written a breathtakingly great article that shows the folly at the heart of President Obama’s apologist approach to the Muslim world. Obama says he seeks a return to “the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.”
Krauthammer writes:
He adds:
Well said that man. It is well worth reading in full.
Robert Fisk has written a characteristically selective article in this morning’s Independent. Concern about civilian deaths in wartime would normally be admirable, but Fisk isn’t really concerned. Rather, he simply uses and twists incidents to continue his frenzied hatred of Israel and his love of all its enemies.
He lists examples of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israel but has no words of concern for Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians. Heck, he doesn’t find time to express concern about the thousands of Palestinian civilians that have been slaughtered by Jordan and other Arab states. He mentions victims of Syria in passing but then trails off before the dead of Darfur can get a look-in on his roll-call of tragedies. Pressure of space, perhaps?
Though he does find space to return to his beloved 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre which was carried out, he says, by “Israel’s allies”. Two decades on, and Menachem Begin’s words continue to ring true about that massacre: “Goyim kill goyim, and Jews get the blame.” Fisk also throws in a few more distorted examples of Israeli “massacres” for good measure.
No wonder he is stuck at the moribund Independent. He has been thoroughly discredited as a journalist, with ‘Fisking’ becoming a byword for distortion and prejudice. Not that he is entirely short of fans: he has been praised by Osama Bin Laden and Holocaust denier David Irving. The latter’s praise is little surprise, Fisk is the man who spoke of “the Perles and the Wolfowitzes and the Cohens…very sinister people hovering around Bush”. He has strongly opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. If Fisk had his way the Taliban and Saddam Hussein would still be in power.
For a man who has staked – and among sane people lost – his reputation as a journalist on promoting the Palestinian’s cause, he has a fondness for describing them in animalistic terms. He has described them as everything from lions, eagles, donkeys and cockroaches. It’s almost as if he sees them as his pets, who should look up at him adoringly as he pats them and tosses them scraps of food. Well, not all Arabs want to be his pets. When he was reporting in Afghanistan, he was attacked by some Taliban thugs. Far from waking him up about the evil of Islamism, this vicious assault seemed to only increase his self-loathing admiration of that movement. “They had every reason to be angry,” he said. “If I had been them, I would have attacked me.”
What a guy! Perhaps it was nerves from that attack that led him to – as he never tired of telling us in his articles – pack 25 loo rolls when he set off to report from Iraq. Too much information, Robert. Way too much. Feel free to not share that – or any of your other crap – with us in the future.
They say that today is officially the gloomiest day of the year. So let’s have a giggle watching George Galloway grovelling up to his hero Saddam Hussein and lying about it.
