Link You'd think, considering the state of American-Iranian relations since the Ayatollahs came to power, that America would be right up there at the top of the Mullah's 'countries we love to hate list'. Nope. America is the Great Satan, but whenever some crisis threatens Iran it's always Britain, the 'Little Satan' or the 'Old Coloniser', that's seen as the Moving Hand of all things sinister and malign. Britain has been involved in the affairs of Afghanistan (where British troops are...
What is happiness? Does anyone deserve to be happy? Can happiness be bought? What's the difference between happiness and misery? Does anyone deserve to be miserable? No one fully understands the life of another. No one can, merely on the basis of external appearance, judge whether another is truly happy or not. What is happiness? Is it found in external circumstance? For example, are the fabulously wealthy happy? Does the ability to buy whatever you want, whenever you want it, bring y...
Some time ago I watched a show on TV. It dealt with eating disorders among a group of teenage girls confined in a treatment center 'for their own good', which actually meant for the good of the sanity of their parents. These were girls who not only had eating disorders but exhibited uncontrolled anti-social behaviouirs; who 'self-harmed' on a regular basis; who could not manage their own lives and refused to be managed by others - except when incarcerated, when choice had been removed from th...
Locamama posted an article here ( Link ) asking if God cares. Before my response to her she received a couple of others offering sympathy and encouragement. I answered her as bluntly as I could: no, God doesn't care. That's perhaps a little too blunt, left as it is. So here, as a primer for the puzzled and confused, is a more detailed explanation of my point of view. I've written on the topics of faith and theology many times, engaged in many discussions of those topics here on JU. My...
I posted this on the Gurdian's talkboards this morning, in response to an article about prejudice and fat. Read the article and comments here ( Link ). I'm posting it because Sabrina thought it was funny and wanted me to share... cannibalcritic Comment No. 472616 March 13 14:47 USA We all need something to hate. And there isn't much left, after the work of the PC-mongering wankers that generally (not universally, please note) make up the readership of the Guardian and its ilk.
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How many of you, I wonder, know about the event in British history referred to by the English as the Glorious (glorious because bloodless) Revolution? How many of you know that the English fought their own Civil War, over issues of religious toleration, orthodoxy and the role of Parliament in relation to the Crown? The fighting concluded in 1660. But the Civil War didn't end until 1668, when William of Orange became King of England as the conclusion to the Revolution. He accepted the claims o...
Tova7 has a son, called Hunter. She recently wrote an article called 'Man enough?' regarding an incident in which her boy punched another kid (quite rightly and properly) in the eye. ( Link ). I read the article, and commented that I thought Hunter had done the right thing, and that the outcome for both boys could only be good. The little swine who had provoked Hunter had learned a valuable lesson in not screwing with other people's limits, and Hunter had learned that the proper and judicio...
( Link ) This is a link to the image that currently graces my desktop at home (image insertion seems not to be working right now). And this is a link to the website of the creator of that image: ( Link ) You should look at his stuff, it provokes thought and that in itself, in this dumbed-down age of complacent fear and self-satisfied hysteria, is a dangerous act, almost a revolutionary act. The greatest threat to any State is not an armed populace. It's an armed populace that think...
I had occasion to go to the dentist recently, and while there I found myself confronted by what can only be described as child porn, laid out along with Red Book, and Woman's Weekly, and all the other innocuous crap you find in doctors and dentists offices. This pornographic publication is called Just Seventeen, or something like that, and its supposed audience is that of teenage girls between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. Apparently every teenage girl in America between those ages i...
Link Below is the text of a comment I posted in response to the linked blog entry on CiF, addressed to the blogger (follow the link to see what CiF is). Wucker - What part of the word 'illegal' do you not understand? Il or legal? I'm a legal permanent resident of the USA. It's cost four years of dealing with bureaucrats and the better part of $10,000. It's a complicated, expensive, slow-moving process that will have taken seven years by the time I become a citize...
The most straightforward argument I can think of for 'unthinking', 'unquestioning' support on the part of Britain for America is simply this: without American support there would be no Britain. Without the support of America during WW2 there would, now, be no 'English-speaking' people outside of America. Hitler's Germany would have swallowed us whole - as it very nearly did. Britain owes to America its national life - and this is not a debt that can ever be repaid. That being so, the decis...
Shabby and disgusting. "Mr Bush's new Iraq strategy will have no British involvement, because the White House has recognised both Downing Street's political difficulties over Iraq and the overstretch of the British armed forces, senior officials have made clear to the Guardian. They say that there is neither the political will, nor the manpower, to freeze, let alone increase, the number of British forces in Iraq or to expand their area of operations. "It is a question of blunt realities...
Yesterday afternoon I found myself watching a show on TV, a political documentary exploring current attitudes to the USA among young people in France and Germany. The makers of the show also visited the UK but there they concentrated their attention on American Rhodes Scholars attending Cambridge University. The tacit assumption made by the producers of the show is that France and Germany have been the major backers of the European Union as a political as well as economic project, and that th...
Everyone in JU (at least, those who have been here awhile) knows little whip. Everyone. And everyone who knows her in JU has an opinion about her, whether 'good' or 'bad'. She has her favorite victims, her good JU buddies, and the rest to amuse her, the vast sea of anonymous, mediocre, second-rate bloggers whom everyone ignores. And all who have, in any way, encountered her have an opinion about her. Allow me to tell you the truth. The very worst you can imagine of her, the cruellest and ...
I watch those TV shows about wine, occasionally. I watch them because I take a perverse pleasure in how much I hate the wine-babble of the people involved in them. I felt the same way about cigar aficionados - until tonight. Wine-speak I still despise, but no longer praises sung to the divine Cigar. My wife, bless her black little heart and her chromed-steel eyes, likes to give - and not just on Christmas Day. All this month she's been presenting me with presents because for her Christmas ...