The Last Ditch

Teddy teacher freed after "pardon"

Link: Teddy teacher freed after pardon - Telegraph.

Have we no dignity left as a nation? After the humiliating way in which certain Royal Marines conducted themselves in the hands of the Iranians last April, now "the teddy teacher" Gillian Gibbons feels the need to apologise to the very people who imprisoned her. How pathetic. As for her "respect" for Islam, what can one say? Of course there are good Muslims. I am sure that (as in most religions) more are moved to good works by their faith than are moved to evil.  But what about those who called for her death on the streets of Khartoum ? What about the ridiculous judges who applied Sharia Law in such an absurd way? What about the leaders of the genocidal regime which so ruthlessly exploited this petty incident?

To apologise for the "distress" Gibbons supposedly caused these groups was both ridiculous and an embarrassment. They deserve nothing but her (and our) contempt. Now that she is safely en route to the UK, we should evacuate our citizens, withdraw our ambassador and expel all Sudanese diplomats from the UK. Most importantly, we should cancel all financial aid to the murderous regime responsible for the Darfur genocide. We would have done so long since were they not members of the so-called "religion of peace."

The West needs a defence system that works

Link: The West needs a defence system that works | International News | News | Telegraph.

Condoleeza Rice's article is itself of no particular interest. It's addressed more to a certain foreign government than to the readers of the Daily Telegraph. It is no doubt a minor part of a major diplomatic effort.

The comments posted on it are fascinating however.

To judge by them, the UK is populated with semi-literate anti-Zionists. Who are all these people with the leisure during working hours to tell Ms Rice to have children, to call her a c*** and to call the rest of the Bush administration "facists" (sic)?

I have sympathy with those commenters who ask the question (more or less politely) "How can we be sure you are correctly assessing the threat from Iran when you so misjudged that from Iraq?" It's a fair point and one which Ms Rice needs to answer. The Bush and Blair governments have been left (by their dishonesty, their credulity or the failings of their intelligence services) with a credibility problem.

If Iran is the threat she suggests, that credibility problem makes it more difficult to defend our countries. For that, the two governments are to blame and Ms Rice must take her share.

However it's amazing to see, fewer than 20 years after Communist dupes in Britain were suggesting the moral equivalence of the USA and the USSR, new dupes are already doing the same for the USA and an Iran led by an open proponent of genocide.

What is the point of blogging?

Why am I still here? As I watched the British prisoners suck down to the murderous pixie who leads Iran, my reasons for political blogging died. Britain’s educationalists, for so long more dangerous than any external enemy, have triumphed. Those young sailors and marines displayed the cultural cringe that must now betray us all. Faced with a deadly enemy, they saw an equally-valid culture as worthy of respect as our own.

They  probably, as one of my readers commented,  "don't know who Nelson was". However, I am sure they know all about Britain’s “wicked” imperial past. They will know everything of her role in the slave trade, save for abolishing it within her empire (only the second country to do so) and then using her navy to suppress it elsewhere. They will not know that the Anti-Slavery Squadron of the navy in which they now serve liberated 160,000 slaves between 1811 and 1867 off the coast of Africa.

They probably don't know the history of people abducted into slavery by Muslim rulers from British ships and English coastal towns. They will know, however, of every time their country has fallen short of the high standards set by Ghana, Nigeria or the Islamic world. They will also know, in their guts, that Islamophobia is a terrible thing, though they will not be able to explain why. Frankly, they will have been so brainwashed that you could stick “ophobia” after anything you liked and they would be automatically unmanned.

Why then should they risk a beating - or even the indignity of being mocked for their resemblance to Mr Bean - for a country they have been taught to despise? A country which suspects anyone who respects its flag of being a fascist?

If (happy fantasy) we could now purge our Ministry of Education, Universities, teacher training colleges and the staff rooms of our bog-standard schools, where could we find the people to replace those we defenestrated disinfiltrated? Generations have been lost to this self-loathing indoctrination. As Show of Hands sing in their song Roots;

We learn to be ashamed before we walk,

Of the way we look and the way we talk

The great public schools now teach to the same National Curriculum and even independent-minded teachers tell pupils not to lose marks by, for example, critiquing the poems from different cultures added to the GCSE English curriculum.

“Yes I know it’s technically poor dear, but there are no marks for saying so.”

Our decline and fall will not even feature the fun and games with which Ancient Rome distracted itself at its end. If you Google for examples, it becomes hard to argue that England is hopelessly decadent. Puritanism is still a powerful negative force and every description of a pleasure, even in the advertisments for spas and resorts, is accompanied by a ritual justification to do with how hard we all work. The English don't feel they deserve pleasure. We are unlikely even to fiddle as London burns.

When our time comes, I fear that as a nation we will submit as meekly to dhimmitude as the 15 submitted in Tehran. Perhaps one day, from the ashes of an Islamic Republic, a new England will rise.

Until then, is there any point in wasting breath, ink or bandwidth?

TO BE CONTINUED.