Bright's Blog

33 comments from readers

Martin Bright
19 August 2008 at 14:56

The irrelevant comments have been removed. Please refer to Bright's Blog for an explanation

explodingbadger
20 August 2008 at 06:00

If there was any justice in the world Tony Blair WOULD appear before a war crimes tribunal. Unfortunately in this twisted world it may be a long time before it happens.

The invasion of Iraq and Afganistan was an aggressive war as defined in the nuremberg trials. Censor me if you will.

Morgan097
22 August 2008 at 00:01

To Martin Bright:

For the second time, why not investigate the part played by the British MSM in the al-Dura Hoax?

gnuneo
22 August 2008 at 21:15

this IS quite surprising, and it shows that the British public, despite so many decades of deliberately instigated racism in our tabloids and media, are still generous, decent people who are disgusted with the treatment of the weakest, poorest and most powerless amongst us.

i say hats-off to the British Public!

raggedyman
24 August 2008 at 01:13

Bright:

''Please refer to Bright's Blog for an explanation''

I have and it's no explanation.

Morg:

And hopefully for the last time.

gnuneo:

What the blazes are you talking about? The British Public haven't done anything yet except get on with their lives.

Are you always like this or are you on medication?

gnuneo
25 August 2008 at 02:43

raggey: i see you have picked up some vices from your new bosom friend, to wit: imagining insulting other commentators somehow makes a point. In fact you're just being boring.

if you cannot comprehend the almost incredible statistic that most polled regarded the appalling treatment of asylum seekers in this country (something virtually entirely absent from the mainstream media in general, and the murdockracy specifically) to be the number one issue the NS should look into and report, then i'm not entirely sure what would give YOU hope for the moral direction of the UK.

perhaps morgan can come along and tell you what to think? Or, far more likely, spam up this thread with chatting with you. Can't you "find a room" somewhere, and leave this forum to those who wish to use it as it is supposed to be used? Better yet, look him up (its fairly certain he is actually a Brit by now), and do the dirty you are so obviously desperate for.

because more than a few here are sick of you two clogging up the comment threads. This is not your private forum.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 08:09

gnumbnuts:

You remain the insolent simpleton.

Speak when you're spoken to!

Now, sit down and behave.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 08:13

raggy,

I'm personally indisposed, but do sometimes rent out the badger for $50 a night.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 08:22

And I've proudly and regularly recited the following since I was first taught it in school at the age of six:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America,

And to the republic for which it stands,

One nation, under God, indivisible,

With liberty and justice for all.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 08:43

...something which oafs like redherring, Seroach, afraslag and gnumnnuts could never understand.

raggedyman
25 August 2008 at 13:45

Morg:

Remember your Mitzvot: Leviticus Ch 18: 23

gnun:

Calm down. calm down.

It is wise not to take yourself too seriously, me duck; it is likely to lead to a doubling of the dosage for one thing.

'..the almost incredible statistic'.

Yah, quite so.

Of course it is less incredible when you consider the other four choices were about as tempting as a three day old Herring. Choosing the choices is one way of determining the outcome of a selection as any senior ranking Whitehall official can tell you.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 14:19

I'm hurt by your insinuation, raggy,

R: Remember your Mitzvot: Leviticus Ch 18: 23

M: For $50, Rommel offers a heartrending a cappella rendition of "What A Friend We Have In Jesus."

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 14:29

Choir, extra.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 14:31

Chipmunks won't sing for peanuts, anymore.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 15:11

And raggy,

Your "gnun" designation is both brilliantly apt and succinct.

raggedyman
25 August 2008 at 21:53

Morg:

Humble apologies for the foul slur matey; I hope Rommel can forgive me, in the fullness of time, of course.

raggedyman
25 August 2008 at 22:26

And to the Bard himself:

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end.

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, "tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.

Bright the Bowdlerizer:

And I have not forgotten you old chum.

Morgan097
25 August 2008 at 23:12

raggy,

Sometimes, the most honest way to express one's celebration of life is to wear one's heart upon one's sleeve.

raggedyman
26 August 2008 at 00:12

Too true Morg - I have the scars to prove it.

raggedyman
26 August 2008 at 00:50

God, guts, & guns, eh, Morg?

Again Henry Miller in a Hotel circa 1946:

''I am in a small, supposedly comfortable room of a modern hotel equipped with all the latest conveniences. The bed is clean and soft, the shower functions perfectly, the toilet-seat has been sterilised since the last occupancy, if I am to believe what is printed on the paper that garlands it; soap, towels, lights, stationery, everything is provided in abundance.

I am depressed, depressed beyond words. If I were to occupy this room for any length of time I would go mad — or commit suicide. The spirit of the place, the spirit of the men who made it the hideous city it is, seeps through the walls. There is murder in the air. It suffocates me.''

Miller's ill-tempered diatribe continues:

''Wherever there is industry there is ugliness, misery, oppression, gloom, and despair. The banks which grew rich by piously teaching us to save, in order to swindle us with our own money, now beg us not to bring our savings to them, threatening to wipe out even that ridiculous interest rate they now offer, should we disregard their advice.Three quarters of the world’s gold lies buried in Kentucky. Inventions which would throw millions more out of work, since by the queer irony of our system every potential boon to the human race is converted into an evil, lie idle on the shelves of the patent office or are bought up and destroyed by the powers that control our destiny. the land, thinly populated and producing in wasteful, haphazard way enormous surpluses of every kind, is deemed by its owners, a mere handful of men, unable to accommodate not only the starving millions of Europe but our own starving hordes.''

Finally Miller's romantic revisionism:

''Less than two hundred years ago a great social experiment was begun on this virgin continent. The Indians whom we dispossessed, decimated and reduced to the status of outcasts, just as the Aryans did with the Dravidians of India, had a reverent attitude towards the land. The forests were intact, the soil rich and fertile. They lived in communion with Nature on what we choose to call a low level of life. Though they possessed no written language they were poetic to the core and deeply religious. Our forefathers came along and, seeking refuge from their oppressors, began by poisoning the Indians with alcohol and venereal disease, by raping their women and murdering their children. The wisdom of life which the Indians possessed they scorned and denigrated. When they finally completed their work of conquest and extermination they herded the miserable remnants of a great race into concentration camps and proceeded to break what spirit was left in them.''

Plus ca change.

raggedyman
26 August 2008 at 01:26

On the very thorny issue of transport that will never be investigated by anyone least of all the New Statesman:

Just recently the current incumbents at ‘Number Ten’ have come as close as any Government has come to announcing an integrated transport strategy ( which is not very close at all ). No doubt we all applaud this. That is if by integrated they mean penalising the motorist whilst simultaneously promoting the virtues of alternative forms of transport, i.e., public transport ( I suppose we must allow that buses and trains are a form of 'public' transport even if they are increasingly 'privatised' ). Within the context of this highly contentious issue is the bicycle. For a long time I have been an ardent supporter of the bicycle; indeed on occasion I have waxed lyrical about those sleek tubular lines, rounded curves, and those efficiently engineered moving parts combining power and simplicity in their design. That is until recently. I couldn’t help noticing that my interest in bicycles was intensifying to the point where it became, well, not to beat about the bush, unhealthy. This was a matter of growing concern to me and, in certain circumstances, also embarrassment. This was rendered all the more worrying as no obvious medical condition could be identified - could it be attributed to some mental instability of which I might remain completely unaware?

Fortunately after some characteristically desultory reading I recently came across a possible explanation for my condition; although very much unattested as a scientific fact it has offered me a glimmer of hope for the eventual understanding and possible reversal of my problem. It has to do with the molecular theory of matter and I can do no better than to quote directly from Mr O’Brien himself:

— Did you ever study the Mollycule Theory when you were a lad? he asked. Mick said no, not in any detail.

— That is a very serious defalcation and an abstruse exacerbation, he said severely, but I’ll tell you the size of it. Everything is composed of small mollycules of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other various routes too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. Do you follow me intelligently? Mollycules?

— I think I do.

— They are as lively as twenty punky leprechauns doing a jig on top of a flat tombstone. Now take a sheep. What is a sheep only millions of little bits of sheepness whirling around doing intricate convulsions inside the baste. What else is it but that?

— That would be bound to make the sheep dizzy, Mick observed, especially if the whirling was going on inside the head as well. The sergeant gave him a look which no doubt he himself would describe as one of non-possum and noli-me-tangere.

— That’s a most foolhardy remark, he said sharply, because the nerve-strings and the sheep’s head are whirling into the same bargain and you can cancel out one whirl against another and there you are - like simplifying a division sum when you have fives above and below the bar. — To say the truth I did not think of that.

— Mollycules is a very intricate theorem and can be worked out with algebra but you would want to take it by degrees with rulers and cosines and familiar other instruments and then at the wind-up not believe what you had proved at all. If that happened you would have to go back over it till you got a place where you could believe your own facts and figures exactly as delineated by Hall & Knight’s algebra and then go on again from that particular place till you had the whole pancake properly believed and not have bits of it half-believed or a doubt in your head hurting you like when you lose the stud of your shirt in the middle of the bed.

— Very true, Mick decided to say.

— If you hit a rock hard enough and often enough with an iron hammer, some mollycules of the rock will go into the hammer and contrariwise likewise.

— That is well known, he agreed.

— The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of the parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycles as a result of the interchanging of the mollycules of each of them, and you would be surprised at the number of people in country parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles. Mick made a little gasp of astonishment that made a sound like the air coming from a bad puncture.

— Good Lord, I suppose you’re right.

— And you would be unutterably flibbergasted if you knew the number of stout bicycles that serenely partake of humanity.

Well I do not know if Mr O’Brien is himself a keen cyclist but the recurrent reference in his work to bicycles is well enough documented. The evidence, it seems, is stacking up in favour of the idea that the bicycle as a routine form of transportation may bring all sorts of hidden and, as yet unguessed at, dangers. There may be little in the way of scientific evidence supporting this theory but equally in the absence of any contradictory evidence this Government might do well to adopt its customary cautiousness in such matters and focus upon the various motorised alternatives ( or at the very least make suspension a compulsory fitting on the modern bicycle thus avoiding excessive percussion between rider and machine ).

I suppose nobody's going to take this seriously either?

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 02:40

raggy,

re: Miller

Harvard has been known to affect alumni in strange ways. Observe the case of "Putzi" Hanfstangel.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 02:42

Or "Barry" Obama.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 02:56

And I hope you're not about to elevate the detritus of a redherring to the level of a Flann O'Brien pearl.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 04:24

Furthermore, If you're suggesting that redherring actually IS Flann O'Brien, I beg to disagree.

Herring Boy is obviously "Li'l Al" Husseini.

raggedyman
26 August 2008 at 10:06

In my casual perusal of the ancient Hebrew texts I find that I am much better acquainted with this Jehova of the Old Testament than hitherto. And what had not struck me before was the very martial nature of this one God; a God that you may love but must fear.. In fact he makes Sun Tzu look like a CND supporter.

Here he is on the very tricky business of laying siege to a city:

10 When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it.

11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that are found therein shall become tributary unto thee, and shall serve thee.

12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it.

13 And when the LORD thy God delivereth it into thy hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword;

14 but the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take for a prey unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee.

But is this limited to just the odd city or to all cities?

Well:

15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations.

16 Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth,

17 but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;

Despite this it would seem that the God of the Israelites is not without mercy as he seems to have a fondness for trees or at least those that bear edible fruits:

19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by wielding an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, but thou shalt not cut them down; for is the tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee?

20 Only the trees of which thou knowest that they are not trees for food, them thou mayest destroy and cut down, that thou mayest build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it fall.

[Deuteronomy, Chapter 20]

Thus the first conquest of the Palestine by that sub-sect of the Canaanites.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 10:50

Hey, raggy,

Whatever gets ya through the night.

But the difference between both Christianity (inquisitions, crusades, etc.) and Judaism (decapitation of Philistine giants, etc.) and Islam is that Islam unfortunately never underwent a reformation.

Surprisingly few Baptists and even rabbinical students expect to be rewarded with 72 virgins in return for exploding themselves inside some pizza parlor.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 11:10

It's already 6 AM here, and I've gotta hit the sack. Meanwhile, instead of finding arcane rationales to explain the unexplainable, why not do something constructive and resolve my ruminations on Bright's "No Glory" thread?

Sorry, old pal, but gotta go.

raggedyman
26 August 2008 at 11:40

O dear, O dear, Morg, whatever are we to do with you?

Time and again I have pointed out to your fellow travellers that the religious beliefs of those on the receiving end of an injustice may affect the manner of their protest but it cannot be their primary motivation.

To illustrate my point:

The female suicide bomber that was captured alive after the bombing of the Radisson Hotel in Jordan subsequently made a number of bizarre confessions on TV. She was singing like a canary, you might say, having been tickled for a time by the Jordanian State Security Services.

However what was not made public at the time in the MSM was the fact that many of her kith and kin had gone up in a puff - they got shaked & baked as the US Marines like to put it - in Fallujah.

She therefore had good reason not to love the mercenaries, US Special Forces, and SAS black ops chaps who mostly occupied the Radisson.

You see my point I trust? Her religious beliefs affected the manner of her protest [suicide bombing] but the motivation was the loss of her loved ones in Fallujah [a more secular motivation?].

In like fashion an Israeli IDF soldier may be motivated by the loss of a fellow comrade or a bombing of Israeli citizenry but the manner of his response [Air to Surface missile attack followed by bulldozing of remaining habitations] is shaped largely by his belief in Deuteronomy, Chapter 20.

I would respectfully like to point out that much of the industrialised slaughter of the twentieth-century in which whole cities were laid waste follows in the post-Reformation Judeo-Christian tradition - the Islamic people were largely spectators to this bloodbath.

Morgan097
26 August 2008 at 18:09

Raggy,

R: O dear, O dear, Morg, whatever are we to do with you?

M: I can surmise what little darlings redherring, Seroach, afraslag and gnumbnuts would like to do with me.

R: Time and again I have pointed out to your fellow travellers...

M: "[my] fellow travellers" ? Tailgunner Joe and Roy Cohn popularized the term to apply to apologists for the hard left; neocons don't qualify - but porcini admirers....

R: ...that the religious beliefs of those on the receiving end of an injustice may affect the manner of their protest but it cannot be their primary motivation.

M: Well, it's certainly a relief to learn that it's just coincidence that accounts for suicide bombers' preferred last words, i.e. "Allah Akhbar!"

R: The female suicide bomber that was captured alive after the bombing of the Radisson Hotel in Jordan subsequently made a number of bizarre confessions on TV... However what was not made public at the time in the MSM was the fact that many of her kith and kin had gone up in a puff - they got shaked & baked as the US Marines like to put it - in Fallujah.

M: And yet, by comparison, the Adlon's guests seem oddly unafraid of retribution from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, MOST not "many" of whose INNOCENT "kith and kin" had really "gone up in a puff."

R: She therefore had good reason not to love the mercenaries, US Special Forces, and SAS black ops chaps who mostly occupied the Radisson.

M: At least you admit "mostly occupied the Radisson," unlike the King David, which served as British military headquarters in Palestine, and hosted NO civilians. History records that when warned beforehand of the impending attack, the Tommy switchboard operator uttered the immortal last words: "I don't take orders from some f**kin' y*d!"

R: You see my point I trust? Her religious beliefs affected the manner of her protest [suicide bombing] but the motivation was the loss of her loved ones in Fallujah [a more secular motivation?].

M: Well, at last you concede the connection between "her religious beliefs," i.e. Islam - The Religion of Peace(TM), and her "protest."

R: In like fashion an Israeli IDF soldier may be motivated by the loss of a fellow comrade or a bombing of Israeli citizenry...

M: Let's not get too touchy-feely, raggy. The IDF soldier, like his US or British counterpart, is primarily motivated by a burning desire to fulfill his service and then get the hell home in one piece.

R: ...but the manner of his response [Air to Surface missile attack followed by bulldozing of remaining habitations] is shaped largely by his belief in Deuteronomy, Chapter 20.

M: This is simply beneath your intelligence. Have you ever actually met a real life Jew? 99% probably wouldn't know Deuteronomy from trigonometry. But ask one about a particular episode of Seinfeld ....

R: I would respectfully like to point out that much of the industrialised slaughter of the twentieth-century...follows in the post-Reformation Judeo-Christian tradition - the Islamic people were largely spectators to this bloodbath.

M: Well, raggy, welcome to the 21st century! Muslims have now officially become full-fledged participants.

Morgan097
29 August 2008 at 08:46

Next suggestion for NS Investigates:

NATO Membership for Ruritania -- One More Provocation to Austro-Hungarian Empire?

Morgan097
04 September 2008 at 18:41

Enough with this NS Investigates nonsense!

What NS needs to raise the tone of learned debate is clearly a contest:

To the first contestant who can provide documented proof (BBC or French TV "verification" unacceptible) of an actual, genuine undernourished, unclothed, or shelterless Palestinian Arab, NS will provide a fifteen minute tour of Suha Arafat's Paris Bristol Hotel suite, a brief ride in her latest BMW roadster, and a peek at the latest statement from her Swiss bank account.

Best of luck to all!

Morgan097
04 September 2008 at 18:46

And yes, raggy,

I'm sadly aware that I misspelled "unacceptable."