KKK kandidate Obama

A special message for any white American readers out there who are planning to vote Obama: you're evil racist scum. Have a nice day.

How much am I paying this man to spout this insulting claptrap?

PS I'm afraid it looks very much as if they're on Trev's wavelength at Barack's church ('We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black' - anyone know of any Unashamedly White churches that I could attend in the Curmudge area?). Disappointing.

Did the earth move...

...for you too?

Fascinating that you apparently had to be in a very specific part of town to feel it. Our fourth-floor flat in Berlin used to shake regularly when a heavy lorry drove past, and for a second or so I thought that was what was happening. Then I realized what it must be. I'm a bit of an earthquake veteran, you see - I experienced what I guess must have been the 1990 Bishop's Castle quake. That was, as I remember it, just a single jolt. I was sitting at my desk at work (in South-West London), looked round to see who had given my chair a shove, and there was nobody there. This time I was a lot closer to the epicentre, and the room was shaking from side to side for a good five seconds as if a giant hand had taken hold of the building.

No damage done, but some people nearer the epicentre weren't so lucky.

Frau G slept through it, and was distinctly unimpressed when I woke her up to tell her about it.

Personally, I blame the gays.

Down at the BBC

Sometimes I think people get a bit too overwrought about BBC bias. Then I come across something like this - a snippet from the now concluded trial of Mohammed 'Osama bin London' Hamid.

Lets get this straight. In June 2005 - yes, that's right, June 2005 - the Beeb screened a programme which aired Muslims' complaints of being treated like terrorists. A very reasonable complaint, except that one of them was, errh, the recruiter and trainer of terrorists Hamid. He and two of the other defendants (one cleared, one convicted) went on a paintballing trip at the Beeb's expense.

Well, anyone can make a mistake, can't they? But now get this:-

'Nasreen Suleaman, a researcher on the programme, told the court that Mr Hamid, 50, contacted her after the July 2005 attack and told her of his association with the bombers. But she said that she felt no obligation to contact the police with this information. Ms Suleaman said that she informed senior BBC managers but was not told to contact the police.'

We aren't told what advice, if any, she got from the producer of the programme, Phil Rees. We do, however, learn that he now works for al-Jazeera.

Hmmm.

Executed for being poor

'An Iraqi militant group posted a video on the Internet on Monday that appeared to show the 2004 killing of 12 Nepalese men who worked for a contracting firm in Iraq.'

(full story here)

Since the 'militants' have seen fit to remind us of the crime, we should also remind ourselves what the victims were doing in Iraq. My atlas tells me that 40% of the population of Nepal is malnourished. It isn't bang up to date but I don't suppose the situation has changed dramatically. So it's a safe bet that for these men a job enabling them to feed their families was not something to turn down even if they had to go to Iraq to do it (and even though they were officially banned from travelling to Iraq by the Nepalese government).

So remember this case next time you come across someone claiming to be a socialist or a liberal who suggests that Islamist terror is some kind of cry for justice on behalf of the world's poor and oppressed.

Pants

As worn by Kirk Elder, a man of few but well-chosen words.

What's happened to Scott?

Remember Scott of the Ablution? He was a magnificent fisker of the liberal papers, his finest hour coming when he infuriated the Grauniad by revealing to the world that it had taken on a Hizb ut Tahrir member as a trainee reporter.

It all went quite a year and a bit ago, without any warning. And, as I discoverd last night, now the blog's vanished altogether. Why? It's at moments like this that blogging feels like a pretty unsatisfactory communication medium.

Here some other fans (another of our favourites among them - don't even think of doing a vanishing act, Snoopy) bemoan the disappearance, and one of them links to an archive which has preserved his stuff.

Thanks for the blog, Scott, and whatever you're up to, I hope you're enjoying it.

A Canterbury Tale

Fouer and Twyntie theye came to seke
The Arche-Bishop, wyse and meke
Labouryte and hippye, Gaye and Greene
Anti-warre and libertyne
All sondry folke urbayne and progressyve
Vexed by Musselmans aggressyve.
Hie and thither to the Arche-Bishop's manse
The pilgryms ryde and fynde perchance
The hooly Bishop takynge tea
Whilste watching himselfe on BBC.
Heere was a hooly manne of peace
Withe bearyd of snow and wyld brows of fleece...

I was planning to post one or two more thoughts on the ABC, but now I must admit defeat: there's no way I can cap this (hat tip: Laban).

The commentariat speaks

...with a little help from Peter Briffa. Priceless (hat tip: Stephen Pollard).

Belgrade's burning

Well, it must make a change for the Americans to have the Christians burning down their embassy. Maybe the folk who are always complaining that the West is running an anti-Muslim crusade will get round to explaining why it is that we don't back the Serbs (with good reason, but cf. also the West's scandalous inaction over the genocide in East Timor).

Among friends

The kind of Curmudge folk who turn out to hear a lecture from the Archdruid must be 90% Grauniad and Indie readers. In other words, he was among friends - even if many of them feel he's sold out on the gay issue. As visual confirmation of this, there were some people dotted around the audience clad in orange boiler suits, who'd evidently been on an anti-Gitmo demo earlier in the day. Nothing wrong with that in itself, you just have to wonder whether any of them has ever demonstrated against terrorism.

One telling little indicator of his natural rapport with this kind of audience. One of the questions pitched at him was whether Sharia was an instance of what he'd called 'terrible religion'. He agreed that some of the ways in which it is implemented are indeed terrible - as, for instance, in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, ally of the Evil Empire, so bash it as much as you like and collect a political brownie point. He could, of course, have cited other examples of terribleness - the Taliban, or Iran, maybe. But these are enemies of the E. E., not to mention Iran's role as sponsor of the heroic anti-Zionist resistance ('We are all Hezbollah', remember). No brownie points to be picked up there, so no name checks from the Archdruid.

Still alive

The masses seem to be getting impatient. Or at least two of them. Bless your 'earts, guv'nors.

So, greetings to the world from the fine city of Curmudge (from OE 'Grumpabrica'). We thank our well-wishers, and can report a generally satisfactory move. We are substantially unpacked, though the process does seem inevitably subject to the law stating that the final 10% of boxes will create 90% of the headaches.

Contact with the blogosphere has been re-established. In setting up our broadband access I suffered the mortification of realizing only several minutes into my call to the tech support wallah that I had conjured up the scary error message merely by dropping a digit when I entered my PIN. Grumpy the idiot user - oh, the shame of it! Well, such humbling experiences make for a good Lenten discipline; plus, who says us blokes no longer have a role in the home?

Anyway, back to the serious stuff. Thing is, I haven't really been able to concentrate on the news properly, so am still a little hazy about what's been going on. I did pick up on a story about my Spiritual Leader saying it's no good expecting our local Sicilians to have that warm included feeling if we don't give proper legal recognition to the cultural traditions embodied in Omertà. Or something to that effect.

Some people seem to have got their knickers in a twist over this, but they must be the ones who weren't paying attention when he was speaking. Otherwise they'd know that he was only talking about family conflict resolution and the like, all strictly subject to universally accepted human rights and nothing whatsoever to do with concrete overcoats, Gats in violin cases, etc etc. Honestly, these journalists, eh? And don't get me started on bloggers...

I'm reminded of an anecdote about the eminent Victorian theologian James Martineau. A leading light in his congregation was asked if she had understood his latest sermon. 'I would not presume to understand Dr Martineau' was her poker-faced reply. Truly, an example to today's scribblers.*

Coincidentally, I had the opportunity to experience the S. L. at a live gig last night. He delivered a lecture which resolutely avoided the topic of Omertà, but inevitably it came up when questions were invited from the audience. When it did, he basically offered a repeat of what he said in his address to Synod last week. Superficially, the stance is wryly apologetic, but the substance is a non-apology: sorry for being so clever, I should have realized that I needed to say it in words of one syllable for the benefit of those dreadful oiks in the media. And since Curmudge is of course a place where the entire pecking order is founded on perceived cleverness, he got a handsome round of applause for this. I couldn't help finding him likable on a personal level; there is a real air of holiness, and when he sticks to theology there are nuggets of genuine wisdom buried among the woolly verbiage. But I'm afraid that non-apology again betrayed the touch of intellectual arrogance complained of here.

OK, the Sun gave us the inevitable 'Bash the Bishop' headline over a picture of the S. L. next to one of a woman in a burqa. That's an easy target. But some of us have read the speech, have managed to unscramble what he's getting at, and think it's dangerous nonsense. To use an expression of which the S. L. is fond, we would like him to engage with us.

*Martineau's prose can be sampled in, of all places, one of the Jeeves stories. In fact it's the one where the demigod first makes his appearance, 'Jeeves Takes Charge' from 'Carry On, Jeeves'. 'Types of Ethical Theory', the indigestible tome foisted on Bertie Wooster by his terrifyingly brainy fiancee Lady Florence Craye, is one of Martineau's efforts. 'Quite unsuitable', thinks Jeeves, and the only thing to be said in its favour is that the prospect of being started on the 'fundamentally unsound' Nietzsche is even worse.