Saturday, 14 June, 2003Your blues artist nameJust as a bit of amusing filler, I thought I'd acquaint those of you not familiar with the joke to the method of determining your stage name if you were a blues performer. It goes like this:
Mine's "Dandruff Raspberry van Buren." posted 0400 Z-8 [link] We got trouble, right here in River City Via Jackie D, who in turn got it via Mr. McGillicuddy (who uses Blogspot, so no permalink), comes the revelation that Greece banned all video/computer games in July 2002. All games, even the standard Solitaire and Minesweeper which come with a standard installation of Windows. Take your mobile phone to Greece and you could find yourself the subject of a criminal prosecution. This is somehow supposed to help stamp out gambling. I wasn't aware that Greek organised crime had been running cut-throat Snake II tournaments in warehouses on the Piraeus waterfront. "Two men with Nokias enter, one man leaves"? posted 0305 Z-8 [more..] Strategic ambiguity Recently, I trotted out an observation that various members of the Bush administration have the knack of making statements which are not actually false, but which are designed to lead the listener to read too much into them. Unfortunately, I did not make this observation in this blog, but on the 3WA discussion boards. But it's all rather academic, since Spinsanity does a better job of it than I could, giving an excellent dissection of this practice in "The strategically ambiguous George W. Bush." Go read. posted 0050 Z-8 [link] Friday, 13 June, 2003The 'Congo Test' and Operation 'Artemis'The New Yorker website has an excellent piece of commentary, "The Congo Test," by Philip Gourevitch. Gourevitch is the author of We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families; if you're going to read only one book on the Rwandan genocide, I would recommend that one. posted 2355 Z-8 [more..] Britain, meet Godwin It's becoming increasingly obvious that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom have never heard of Godwin's Law. We've had the hacks at the Daily Mail squealing regarding the EU constitution that What Hitler failed to do, Europe is now proposing to bring about by edict.On 10-Jun-2003, Harold Pinter proclaimed The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany wanted total domination of Europe and they nearly did it. The US wants total domination of the world and is about to consolidate that.And then of course there was the commentary by Oona King, MP in which she likened the Gaza Strip "in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto." These are just recent examples; more are easy to turn up. Britons are almost unique among Europeans in that, when they encounter a person or institution of whose politics they don't approve, they have no qualms about drawing untoward comparisons with Nazi Germany. The only explanation I can come up with is that Britain was never occupied by the Nazis, and as a result very few people in Britain really understand the full implications of the comparisons, let alone object when such ludicrous comparisons are made. Curiously, due to the influx of immigrants from continental Europe to the United States (and to a lesser extent Canada) between 1935 and 1950, this may be an issue in which American common perception is closer to Europe's than it is to Britain's. posted 0322 Z-8 [link] 'Lager Bier'? One of the more curious aspects of being an expat (I'm not really sure whether I consider myself an emigrant or an expat at this point) is finding yourself confronted with products from your home country which you didn't even know existed. Sitting on my desk is exhibit A: a 12 fluid ounce (355 ml) bottle of Dutch lager named "Hollande 1620" which I spotted for the first time in my life at my local Fred Meyer. posted 0159 Z-8 [more..] Thursday, 12 June, 2003Erm, are you quite sure about that?In an entry titled "Living With America", Lieutenant Smash states: Nations of good will have little to fear from America, and indeed have much to gain from maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship.Now, as far as I know, Smash is a nice guy, and I'm sure he believes that, but I can't help but feel misgivings. The root of that misgiving is Section 2008, Subsection (a) of the American Service-members' Protection Act (HR 4775), which reads: (a) AUTHORITY- The President is authorized to use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any person described in subsection (b) who is being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.The ICC is located in my home town of The Hague, in the Netherlands. The ASPA gives the president carte blanche to send US forces to invade my home town. This does little to make me feel my country has "little to fear from America." posted 2056 Z-8 [link] Why I can't be bothered to read Instapundit A couple of days ago, Jackie D started an entry with the words: I take it for granted that everybody reads Glenn Reynolds, but know from conversations with many people who aren't big on blogs [...] that not everybody does actually read Glenn Reynolds.Even though I'm a fairly avid consumer of blogs, I don't read Instapundit, not any more. posted 2038 Z-8 [more..] Bulwarks against tyranny This week, my actual Permanent Resident Card arrived in the mail; it's not actually green. As I noted earlier, under the U.S. Code and the Revised Code of Washington, I can now legally own firearms. I'm not in any rush to do so, frankly, but it certainly changes one's perspective on the issue of "Second Amendment Rights" in that it's a lot less abstract. With that observation, this is as good a time as any to address something that's been knocking about in my head for some time. In early May, Brett Cashman of Tabula Rasa posted an entry regarding the case of Silveira v. Lockyer before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In the post, Brett linked to an AP article which ran in the San Jose Mercury News (or the "Murky News" as some of its readers call it). posted 0536 Z-8 [more..] Wednesday, 11 June, 2003Revising the scores IIOne of the things David Aaronovitch concluded in the column I linked to in my previous post is "that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed." One of the things that irked me during the war was the tendency on the part of British media to speak disparagingly about the professionalism of American troops, who were portrayed as rather trigger-happy and uncouth compared to the British, whose skills in urban warfare and controlled application of force had, we were told, been honed to a fine art in Northern Ireland, rivalled only by their sense of decency and fair play. This is nothing particularly new; every time elements of the British armed forces embark on a combat or peacekeeping operation, British journalists rush to employ the phrase "second to none" as many times and in as many ways as possible. Consequently, I will admit to a sense of Schadenfreude at the prospect of the British press (and such officers as were quoted anonymously making similar statements) being made to look like fools as the result of the series of investigations which have been launched into alleged misconduct by members of the British army. posted 0137 Z-8 [more..] Tuesday, 10 June, 2003Revising the scoresVia Virginia Postrel and Jackie D, a column by David Aaronovitch (who does more than his part in keeping it worthwhile to skim the Grauniad): "Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth" Aaronovitch sums up the various reports and responses regarding the looting of the Iraqi National Museum, and then writes, So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks."Bollocks," you may be interested to know, is officially not an obscene word in Britain. For this, you may ultimately thank (or blame) the Sex Pistols, whose album Never mind the bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols caused the court case which led to this ruling. Nevertheless, it's pretty strong language, and Aaronovitch goes on to demonstrate why he is furious enough to use it. posted 1826 Z-8 [link] In media res Via Colby Cosh, I came upon a piece of correspondence sent to Virginia Postrel. Her correspondent, Linda Seebach, contends that the use of the word "media" as a plural constitutes a grammatical irregularity, and one which will sort itself out. I have to admit I'm not too familiar with English grammar per se, but I had a classical education, and as a result I would like to think I know something about grammar in general, and the idea of construing "media" as singular makes me wince. posted 1704 Z-8 [more..] Monday, 9 June, 2003Agonism and antagonismHenry Farrell, author of the blog Gallowglass, has a very insightful entry regarding the dearth of discussion in American politics lately, with some interesting references to Max Weber. There's lots of other good stuff on Gallowglass, particularly if you're interested in the EU. Farrell's originally from Ireland, and now teaches international political economy at the University of Toronto; his commentary on developments regarding the European Union are highly informed, which is an all too rare phenomenon in Blogoslavia (he certainly knows a sight more than I do). Admittedly, the entries on the EU are a little dry, but that just goes with the subject matter; the EU does not tend inspire high drama. But there's lots of interesting stuff in there, including contributions by Farrell's sister Maria, so if you've got some time to kill, you could do a lot worse than spend it checking out Gallowglass. In light of my recent entries on international institutions, I thoroughly recommend this entry as well. posted 0103 Z-8 [link] Sunday, 8 June, 2003Supranational bodies 102Much as I love Jackie D, I have to say that being an American living in the UK does not provide one with the best perspective for examining the European Union in the an objective and informed fashion. A case in point is this entry, which cites an article in the Telegraph by Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP (Member of the European Parliament). Strangely, the article is classed as "news," with the author desribed as "reporting," despite the fact that it's rather obviously an opinion piece. Or perhaps it's not all that strange; the British media, or at least those British media which focus primarily on a UK audience, can be counted on to do two things, regardless of their (domestic) political orientation: they will never pass up an opportunity to take a swipe at the Americans, nor will they pass up an opportunity to take a swipe at mainland Europe. In the latter case, it's frequently dressed up as being directed against the "faceless bureaucrats in Brussels," who facelessness—for reasons which are never delved into—is so much worse than the facelessness of bureacrats in Whitehall, but there is a universal undertone of xenophobia, in which Britain is cast as the final bulwark of democracy in the face of an ever-encroaching federalist Europe. This is rather rich, coming from inhabitants of a country which has "subjects" rather than citizens, does not have a written constitution, and gave the English language the word "quango." posted 0433 Z-8 [more..] |
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