This is the second time around

Hit tip to Harry’s Place for its superb blogging on the ongoing repression in Iran. But this has happened before: read this article by an Iranian dissident in 2004.
The Iranian regime is one of the worst on the planet – and therefore protected by the Left, especially as it has a fig-leaf of “democracy” in front of the tyranny, which given the controls placed on that democracy, render it a fraud – like the recent elections.
Reports are coming out of police and Revolutionary Guardsmen opening fire on crowds, of abducting the wounded from hospitals (probably never to be seen again) and arresting “foreign agents” (i.e. opposition leaders, thinkers and organisers). All trade, whether merchant or financial should be severed at once. This is the bare minimum that the West could do – but to change the regime, which is founded in terror, murder and the threat of unrestricted violence, we should prepare to wage war.
Freedom should be our slogan. Where injustice is allowed to exist, all justice is emperilled (to loosely quote Dr King).

Caroline Glick is right once more

Reading her latest column in the JPost, she argues that Israel should morally speak up for the anti-regime protesters in Iran and should do it can to aid them. Once again the West is just waiting for a tyranny to crush its opponents, proving that the West’s obsession with human rights is merely a canting form of speech.
Britain, by any reasonable measure of moral politics should enact the same measures she prescribes for Israel: publically supporting democracy, acting to give alternative channels of information and communication to the opposition and making clear that the agenda of the Iranian regime is not that of the Iranian people.
There is not likely to be much of a chance of change, especially if the regime resorts to massacre (by bringing the army onto the streets) but history is resplendent with moments of seeming madness turning a fixed situation into an unknown number of possibilities.
Britain, as should Israel should support the opposition and do all it can to aid a change of regime. It is time to drop the scales from our collective eyes.

And again…

Someone else has this right too. The Republicans have lost their focus and must think about what is important.
An excellent article sums this up.

Bruce Bawer says it right

Link via Little Green Footballs. But he is right; people I had previously respected have gone nuts. This is not good but the best we can do is to maintain our unwavering gaze on the preservation of Western values.

Saluting the IDF

Watch this video (linked via Little Green Footballs) and then consider that 80-90% of those killed by the IDF in Gaza during Cast Lead were Hamas terrorists.
The IDF faced these challanges embedded in a disgusting disregard for the sanctity of human life and still beat them.

Shire Network News, recent entry

Have decided to post comment here as the comment button does not appear to be working…

Excellent podcast entry! Agree with a great deal of what was spoken here. I disagree partly on religion and fear. I think that it is a combination of mutual interest, altruism and law that makes societies work better and keeps people within the bounds laid down by society. That said in Britain we still live in a society whose ethics are influenced by Christian ethics, in addition to the ethics of Greek philosophy and the organic ethics of Western family life. What we should not forget is that so much of what drives the crazed-Left is religious in impulse without a deity. I do not mean that that this part has set up a deity of their ideology but that the same pyschological impulses that used to be fed into religion (or that secular religion, socialism) are still grounding themselves in a fruitless (for it is always so) search for Utopia. You guys should seriously talk to Philip Stott of [url]http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times.html[/url] and ask him his thoughts on what drives the modern Left today. I have been a fan of his for as long as I have been listening to this show (from when you first had Nick Cohen on here). It is perspicacious, is it not, that President Obama’s agenda is proving to be [i]radical[/i]? Just like Melanie Phillips and others had been warning… It is called seeing what is in front of your nose, something only a few of us (including this site) have been doing for a very long time. Finally, I love the Churchill quotes and agree fully with putting Churchill up for one of the great men of history.

Don’t be so foolish…

Please tell me that the government is not going to deport the terrorists arrested last week? We all know exactly what will happen – they’ll get a year (or less) in a Pakistani prison and/or go straight back to their masters and try again.
Try them and put the bastards in prison (though I admit my preference would be for execution).

Obama discovers NATO is a joke

And it’s a joke played on those nations whose governments are not completely self-serving.

So it is down to the same nations to actually fight the battle. Looking at the wikipedia page on ISAF, how many countries are bravely guarding Karbul International Airport?
The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic are the NATO nations actually involved in fighting (which is kind of the point to having an army?) as well as some small contigents from other nations (not to disparage those nations, I’ve read accounts of their bravery).
The Spanish, true to their history, are located ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY. And in the safest part.
The Italians  have done some little fighting (probably authorised in Parliament)…in 2006. Well done.
The French…their special forces were withdrawn in 2007, their paratroopers were ambushed in August last year and the country demanded that they be withdrawn. Fortunately Sarkozy has a backbone. Unfortunately, he is French, which means you never quite know where you stand with them.
The Germans… Where to start…
Let’s begin with a comparison.  There are eighty two million Germans against sixty million in Britain. The British Army is larger than the Bundesheer at 147,000 against 137,000. This means that the Bundesheer represents (including conscripts and reservists) 0.002% of the German population. The British Army represents 0.0025 of the British population.
There are currently 8,300 British soldiers in Afghanistan against 3,600 German soldiers…who are currently drinking too much, smoking pot and being bored. Each time the Germans have been asked to either remove the caveats or send more troops, they have refused (apart from promising 1,000 extra last June).

Anyway, the Germans, the Spanish and the Italians are forbidden from combat operations other than self-defence. We hear the cowardly nations of Europe (as opposed to the brave) talking about being sceptical that the battle could be won by bringing in more men to fight. Yeah, there may be something there, as in most arguments except that THEY HAVEN’T TRIED!

NATO is a joke. Fuck the Germans, the French, Spanish and Italians. They won’t fight. We need a new defence organisation based on those who will.

How do you know when this government have gone mad?

When they propose cutting maternity leave to give father’s more time with their newborns…

The mother is the essential component here. I am quite sure that if a woman takes a year to raise the child before going back to work, then in the long run the child will be much better off.

We cannot be so obsessed with earnings as a ratio of equality that we monitarise every aspect of people’s lives. Children are more important than a few years lost in a career!

Fantasies of the moment

One of the worst, most disastrously stupid and pernicious fools in the global market of ideas is Naomi Klein.

There is a excellent critique of her work here. In short, she is dishonest with the facts and figures, ignorant of actual economics but even more shockingly ignorant of the works of those she professes to critique.

Why is she so popular? Because she tells the global anti-capitalist left exactly what they want to hear – that capitalism is an evil plot by a wicked cabal, that we’re controlled by this cabal, that no anti-capitalist leftwinger can ever feel guilty about the murders and horrors carried out by anti-capitalist regimes (for the good of their people, you understand), let alone the miserable grinding poverty that leftwing economics and political authoritarianism create.

Because she’s a woman, she can be viewed as “sympathetic” and because she’s a mother (though she whined about that) she must be “naturally intiative (”I’m a mother! I know! – see MMR). Because she’s “nice” and “brave”, no one will actually question the solutions she’s peddling, which is kind of the point. The emotional rhetoric surrounding the  ”Our Dear Führer” is meant to prevent questioning… Remember that Führer means leader, the anti-capitalist left will willing follow anyone who promises utopia in the face of reality…