Friday, April 16, 2004

It Must Be Nice

To have as much spare time as these guys.

"Okay, so there’s this girl with a sick cat and she falls in love with the veterinarian who tries to save this sick cat’s life. After the veterinarian’s heroic efforts, the cat dies anyway. She becomes his assistant but he has suddenly become an asshole. He doesn’t let her help with the medical work and just tells her to get him coffee and food and stuff. This goes on in a humorous manner as we notice him becoming pale and constantly fatigued. Then he starts coughing up blood. Towards the end, as he’s dying of an undefined illness, we realize he picks up chicks by poisoning their pets but acting so super nice and stuff. Then, at the very end, we realize that she already knows this and has been poisoning him all along. The working title is Munchausen by Pussy."

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Sorry, I'm Working Late

If you aren't, such excuses will soon be a thing of the past. Quick ! Switch the phone off ! Mobile GPS tracking is coming.
Death And The Maiden ...

Some bloggers have remarked on the recent amazing scientific discovery that sexually transmitted diseases were - well, transmitted by sex.

Alas despite regular checkups this hideous fact is now being being brought home to the US porn industry. After the deaths of John Holmes and others, the 'industry' became very safety conscious. But no industry involving the intimate exchange of bodily fluids can be totally safe, and there appears to be trouble in paradise with an HIV outbreak among US porn stars.

I'm a bit dubious about this comment from one producer, who said that if a two-month ban on shooting films were called, people 'would continue to shoot underground'. Kinky or what ?

And for those who think that non-penetrative sex is the answer, disturbing news in this somewhat tastelessly titled piece from Japan.

UPDATE - more trouble in paradise.

Happy Birthday

To Adrian Warnock, whose blog is one year old tomorrow. Great Christian site with excellent blog links.

And hello to Faute De Mieux and the wondrously titled Way Of The Intercepting Fisk.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Another Three Months Gone ....

But at last the new City Journal is out.

The great Dalrymple has an opposite view of Islam to Niall Ferguson's. He believes it will wither away in the style of Christianity when exposed to the temptations and fleshpots of the West.

I'm not sure I agree - it's a strange argument for one who chronicles the moral and cultural collapse of the West to use - that the collapsing society (in shorthand sex, drugs and rock'n'roll) will in the long term prove irresistable to 'the religious'. And I think he's writing off Christianity prematurely.

But he's right about the secularisation, in the worst sense, of many Muslim youth. In my hedonistic Bradford youth, the drugs trade was in the hands of whites and Afro-Caribbeans, with the occasional middle-aged Asian businessman importing 'black' or Nepalese hashish. There were very few Asian 'retail' dealers. If, walking late at night in the city, you saw a gang of white kids on one side of the road and a gang of Asians on the other, you'd walk on the side with the Asian kids. They rarely meant trouble.

I spent a few months recently working on an IT project with a young Muslim analyst from a Bradford street near my old house, who told me many young Muslims were now dealing heroin, attracted by the instant wealth and status of a 'gangsta' lifestyle. There were. he said, a lot of guns about.

Dalrymple writes of Winson Green's Muslim prisoners :

"The young Muslim men in prison do not pray; they do not demand halal meat. They do not read the Qu’ran. They do not ask to see the visiting imam. They wear no visible signs of piety: their main badge of allegiance is a gold front tooth, which proclaims them members of the city’s criminal subculture—a badge (of honor, they think) that they share with young Jamaicans, though their relations with the Jamaicans are otherwise fraught with hostility. The young Muslim men want wives at home to cook and clean for them, concubines elsewhere, and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. As for Muslim proselytism in the prison—and Muslim literature has been insinuated into nooks and crannies there far more thoroughly than any Christian literature—it is directed mainly at the Jamaican prisoners. It answers their need for an excuse to go straight, while not at the same time surrendering to the morality of a society they believe has wronged them deeply. Indeed, conversion to Islam is their revenge upon that society, for they sense that their newfound religion is fundamentally opposed to it. By conversion, therefore, they kill two birds with one stone.

But Islam has no improving or inhibiting effect upon the behavior of my city’s young Muslim men, who, in astonishing numbers, have taken to heroin, a habit almost unknown among their Sikh and Hindu contemporaries. The young Muslims not only take heroin but deal in it, and have adopted all the criminality attendant on the trade."


But it's a long way from that observation to the theory that sex, smack and Sky will inevitably sap the strength of Islam. And I prefer a pious Muslim to a smackhead criminal any day.

Monday, April 12, 2004

BBC Fail To Understand

Listening to the World At One on R4, where reporters seemed unable to understand why Chinese people should be kidnapped. After all, China opposed the war, didn't they ?

The other theme of the Iraq report was how much better things would be if the UN were there. After all, they wouldn't be hated like the Americans, would they ?

London Is Safe

From the kind of attack (dirty radiation, suitcase nuclear, major biological) that would make the city uninhabitable. After all, if you're running jihad you need somewhere with decent communications to run it from. And if at the same time you can use the place as a recruitment and training centre, you're quids in.

Offing the local kuffir may be tempting, but why cut off your nose to spite your face ?

Sunday, April 11, 2004

Iraq Attacks 'Organised In London'

Make what you will of this Glasgow Sunday Herald report, but there are precedents. For years the Hamas military command was based in London.

The meeting, entitled 'Islamic Movement and Iraq' was instigated by the Iraqi Islamic Party without the knowledge or approval of the US-appointed governing council in Iraq, was subjected to a complete media blackout and held under maximum secrecy.

The Iraqi Islamic party is London-based but works underground in Iraq, and is currently in contact with a number of Iraqi opposition factions inside Iraq to 'come together to stand up to the occupation and its agents'.

'Those present at the meeting asserted that Sunni resistance alone was not enough for turning the balance of power with the occupying forces, so, they agreed to find the necessary means and move the Shiite resistance from peaceful protests to a much more effective role', said the source.

'Some were already resident in the UK, but many travelled from cities in Europe', confirmed the French source.

Asked how, given British security concerns, such movement would have been possible, the source said: 'It would have been easy for some because many represent legitimate moderate Islamic groups, but in reality are connected to militant organisations like Hezbollah to whom they would report back directly'.


There's also a report in Islam Online. According to the BBC the Iraqi Islamic Party have a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, held by Mohsen Abdel Hamid.

There's a useful link to the various groupings at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).