God Save the Queen

Get with the programme

Norm: what he said.

"We will build a statue for Bush"

Sometimes one gets the temptation to do something that, while pointless in itself, one wants to do simply in order to wind up one's political opponents or enemies. For instance, I suspect (it is no more than a suspicion, and probably groundless in most cases; speculating about people's motives is usually foolish and offensive) that one reason why so many leftish types are republicans is because abolishing the monarchy would upset Tories and reactionaries.

Usually this temptation should be resisted as deeply immature and possibly dangerous, since after all we all have to live together one way or another. On the other hand, some ideas are just too tempting to pass up. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a statue is worth at least a couple of dozen pictures. It'd be well deserved. 

La heureuse journee

72%. If that's even close, the bad guys should pack up now. They won't, of course, and one major reason to despise the terrorists in Iraq is that they go on killing and dying in a lost cause - they can't win and ought to know it.

The only comment to make is - ironically enough - in French: an old Huguenot war-hymn recorded in Garrett Mattingly's great book The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. (Apologies: I can't find a way to do accents.)

"La voici la heureuse journee

Que Dieu a fait a plein desir

Par nous soit joye demenee..."

For other more skilled commentators, see here. And here (note the 'I for Iraq' sign). Also here, here and here (via the previous), here, here and here. Oh, and here as well.   

30th January 2005: regardless of what came before or what comes next, this is la heureuse journee.

Never again: meanings

We let down Mehsin Imgoter and his son in 1991. At the time I was glad that the war stopped after 100 hours: I was wrong, though I think the decision was made for basically good motives - partly because the Allies were horrified by the effectiveness of their own weapons.

Perhaps 'never again' can have more than one meaning.

Back after a break

Haven't blogged Philip for a longish while. Time to correct it with this cheerful little poem about doom and failure. What a guy!

War against humanitarianism

Gregory Djerejian has a post up that's well worth a read, though not for any hawks with high blood pressure.

356 years later

Arthur Herman's article in National Review is very Whig. It's also true.

The last straw

I'm breaking one of my usual rules here and posting while still angry. But, as Bill Murray once put it, it's more a guideline than a rule. This story is as bad a piece of news as I've heard for a long while, or at any rate this month. Jack Straw knows that there are only two likely uses for any military hardware sold to China: internal repression or agression against Taiwan, with the strong possibility of their being used against American ships and planes - no, correct that, against American pilots and sailors - in the latter case.

So why is this happening? One scarcely need ask - too many businessmen and politicians in the EU look at China and you can practically see the dollar (or Euro) signs come into their eyes. Presumably we're also doing this to try to make the French like us again. Memo to Tony and Jack: the French never liked you to begin with and never will. Now they will despise you as well for being just as hypocritical as they are.

This is it. Basta. I love Tony's idealism, which is genuine, but his magnificent speeches about freedom can't change the fact that this is a disgrace. Dubya at least has the excuse that coddling the Saudis and suchlike nasties have been US policy for decades and he can't change everything at once. But what excuse can there be for making a change to an existing policy in a way that benefits a tyranny? And don't try the 'constructive engagement' line. That has some validity, but having shiny new French weapons will strengthen the nasties in China, the hard-core nationalists and militarists, not the more pragmatic types. The Government just lost my vote.

Past and future

Ali on the past:

"It made us hate ourselves and the whole world, lose our trust in everyone and just keep living a life that was worse than death but one that we still couldn't sacrifice for a good cause fearing for our families fate after our death."

And the future:

"I don't want to live like that again, NEVER, and for that reason I'm going to vote and for the same reason I know that so many Iraqis are going to vote and let the terrorists show us the best they can do, as it won't stop us."

On one side, Ali: on the other, the arguments of the anti-war movement and associated pundits. When I looked to see what they had to put against Ali, all I ever heard was slogans ('no blood for oil' etc.), innuendo ('those neocons are all Jews') and flat-out inaccuracy ('we armed Saddam' - not unless you're Russian - beware PDF). The anti-war types might have been more persuasive if they had shown more sign of knowing or caring that people like Ali actually exist.

Putting the f back in freedom

Went to see that film last night. Gary's closing speech to the world leaders - the anatomically inventive speech - was what Colin Powell has needed to say for a long while but couldn't. I expressed this view to M., who used to be a lecturer at one of the world's finest International Relations university departments. He agreed, or at any rate didn't shake his head.

I laughed like a drain, anyway. On my way back to the Tube I passed the Italian tourist office, and thought how silly that was - the whole of Western civilisation is an advert for Italian tourism.

And what is Western civilisation? Not far from Bond Street tube there is a branch of McDonalds and, over the way, a fine sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. Western civilisation is where you can contemplate Hepworth's mastery of form and line while eating a Big Mac. We have always needed both, and always will.