God Save the Queen

Lazy days

Posting has been light of late, and probably will be until next week. Best recent highlights:

- Laban Tall has the last word on the Brooker business.

- Gregory Djerejian has written a post which sums up my views about the war better than I could.

Picks of the day

- Via Eric the Unread and the Blithering Bunny, this essay on Virginia Woolf. I read Three Guineas many years ago but had completely forgotten its content: on reading this essay I can see why. The content bears no intelligible relation to reality, so my mind must have decided it was not worth wasting memory on.

- Erik of No-Pasaran shows the French Resistance at work. (Via Instapundit.)

- David Adesnik at Oxblog has a reasoned case for Kerry, taking into account the views of Gregory Djerejian and Dan Drezner. It's a good case and I respect his reasoning and his doubts. People like those three restore my faith in the possibilities for reasoned debate. More please.

- Jeff Jarvis expresses Loyal British sentiments. Good for him.

- The worthlessness of the UN, part 37: Winds of Change has a nice comment which shows that watching fairy stories can be useful for understanding international politics. Incidentally, if it had been Dubya rather than Kofi coming out with that 'banana republics' remark how long would it be before The Pundits started insinuating racism?

- This is the kind of thing that encourages me to believe that the Americans will usually do the right thing eventually. Merely dragging their feet for six years is bad, but it's a blip historically.

Here we go

Bill Whittle has launched another strategic strike against the enemy's command and control network, writing a pair of linked essays that are completely, totally and absolutely correct and right in every single last detail. Read the danged whole thing.

Ditto for Michael Totten.

With sprinkles?

Not a current affairs post, honestly...

From Taylor & Co., this excellent summary:

"If Darfur were a man being mugged on the street, the UN Security Council would be a group of concerned onlookers who could not decide whether to:
1. Intervene personally and stop the mugging
2. Call the police, and let them stop the mugging
3. Call the ambulance after the mugger has had his way and departed
4. Ignore the whole thing and duck into Starbucks for a latte."

Cleaning up the UN will be a huge job, after Darfur and UNSCAM: a job for a flamethrower rather than a brush. Now that Tony's declared a willingness to envision a time after No.10, perhaps he could take it on. He would certainly want to do it and might just be capable. But he should be under no illusions: it would be tougher than his current job.

The Conspiracy

Although it ought to be a subject for the Punctuational Jihad, not to mention a 'Language, Timothy' rebuke, this post from Squander Two is just too good not to link to. It fills in an important missing link in the puzzle of who's really running the world, too: I mean apart from aliens, Jews and Freemasons. Go on, you'll never guess.

A good argument

There's as little chance of me becoming a Marxist as there is of SiaAoW becoming a monarchist. But still, if only all Marxists argued like this...

Too busy...

...enjoying the weather and reading other people's blogs to post much of my own waffle for the moment.

- Kamm strikes again. I can understand Kamm, as a Leftist, being upset about Chomsky's chicanery and manipulativeness. Speaking as a reactionary, it's all quite amusing. Chomsky has done more to ruin the Left than anyone other single individual.

- Previously, as a good progressive, my liking for Mark Steyn's writing had to be a guilty secret. But with Norm's nihil obstat I can own up. Lila McClelland's comment at Steyn Online about John Kerry looks pretty insightful, though should be hedged with the usual huge caveats about trying to guess at a man's motives: 'Has he come to the deep and painful understanding that he perhaps truly does not have the psychological stamina or thick skin that will let him survive the challenges and rigors of the Presidency? Has he decided (and who could blame him) that at 60 years of age and as a cancer survivor he really would prefer to live in luxury with his love, Teresa, enjoying their multiple homes, sailing and windsurfing rather than in the fishbowl of the White House? Has it sunk in that the world really IS a dangerous place and is he scared that maybe he does not have the answers to lead this nation that is both the sole superpower and the world's punching bag?' Quite right. Maybe Bush is a lunatic, after all. Why would he want the job? Why would anyone?

- Some great stuff at Mick Hartley, especially this and this.

- Good stuff at Winds of Change and Gregory Djerejian too. Heavy.

New links

Looks like the stuffed shirts have forced CBFTW into blog retirement. I hope he wins his war.

Of the new links I especially recommend Oxblog. I've been reading it ever since I discovered blogs and have been intending to link to it for ages. Hopefully those guys will help to keep the transatlantic relationship just that little bit Special.

Six of the best

I'm off on holiday. If you've come here for the first time here are my six favourite posts.

Back at the end of the month.

Three of a kind

-My Normblog profile is up.

-Oliver Kamm is on top form.

-So is Damian Counsell.