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And it's not as if Israel is not putting the effort in...

By Matthias Gebauer in Israel

Propaganda is part of every war, just like bombs and soldiers. Still, it's remarkable how professionally Israel deals with foreign journalists, catering conscientiously to all their needs. Lunch included.

AFP
The mother of Israeli soldier Seargeant Shimon Dahan at her son's funeral on Thursday.
The phone rings at 9 a.m. -- right on time. "Hello, this is the Government Press Office," pipes a woman's voice. "What are you planning to do today? Do you need an idea?" And then the suggestions just keep coming -- interview partners; a tour to the houses in Haifa that were struck by Katyusha rockets, complete with victim interviews. An expert will come along too, one who explains the nature of the rockets -- "in clean sound bites, if you want."

There's more on the plate. "The highlight is still to come," says the lady from Israel's press office, the GPO. "We can offer an interview in Naharya with the parents of the kidnapped soldiers," she says. She explains that the parents of Ehud Goldwasser, who has been held by Hezbollah since July 12, are waiting in a hotel. An interpreter? No need. "They speak good English, don't worry."

Many journalists come along, most of them by GPO bus. About 15 camera teams have set up their equipment. Twenty radio and print journalists are enjoying their coffee and the specially prepared sandwiches. Then the parents arrive. The father self-consciously steps up to the microphone. The desk in front of him bristles with microphones -- as if a politician were giving a press conference. He's sweating slightly; the veins on his forehead are bulging.

Shlomo Goldwasser doesn't have much to say -- not much more than the banal phrases security officials often teach parents so they stay on message. "They, my son's kidnappers, are responsible for Ehud's safety," Goldwasser says. "They are also responsible for returning him to us soon -- and unscathed." He says he can't think of anything else to tell us. He's a father, he says, not a politician.

Goldwasser has barely finished speaking when a journalistic scrum erupts and cameramen start to shout. "Mr. Goldwasser, over here," one of them calls. "Please don't smile." Others want to hear childhood stories -- "It tugs on the viewers' heartstrings." Elsewhere, the man's wife has to leaf repeatedly through the family photo album. She responds to the orders given her like a robot and would presumably even start crying if she were told to do so. Fortunately no one makes such a request.

The disgraceful spectacle goes on for 90 minutes. The parents say they've got nothing to do with politics, nor with the war. They've been told appearances in public could save their son. And it's all organized and choreographed by the Israeli government's press office -- organized for foreign journalists, so that one of the reasons for the current war, the suffering of parents and civilians, receives the public attention it is due. But the parents, in this story, somehow come off only as extras.

John Prescott's Denouement?

Graeme Hick Eases Past Sir Leonard Hutton

Hick Crosses off Another Landmark

If only all of Hick's Test matches were played at Worcester's serene New Road. There would of course still be the small matter of Raymond Illingworth to contend with though. Such an evil man.

Indefinite Leave to Remain

Amnesty plan for 500,000 illegal migrants

There is a pellucid reason why the Government would wish to naturalise an incoprehesnible number of illegal immigrants: a perceieved increase in taxation revenues; an increase in its controlling fetish; and eventual labour voting tendencies.

An amnesty is useless until Britain's borders are once again managed efficently.

Vote Labour

Every week, there is an example of a law-abiding citizen who is murdered by someone who has either been let out of prison early, or not sent there at all, but instead given a sentence of "supervision in the community". One of Mr Hart's killers had been given a "community sentence order" for theft just two days before he broke into Mr Hart's house.

The rights of criminals seem to have become a national fetish.

Education, Education, Education.

Pass this GCSE without writing a word

Probably the Most Incompetent Government in British History

labourdonotdo.com

I Wonder Who They'll be Voting For?

"The number of immigrants granted British citizenship has more than quadrupled since Labour came to power, latest figures show.

The number of successful applications for citizenship rose by 15pc last year to 161,780 - an increase of 337pc on the 1997 figure of 37,010."

Is it any wonder that the Labour Government doesn't want a debate on the positive effect of managed immigration. Its current policy of extemporisation actively encourages obsquious immigrants to vote Labour. The Labour Government may lose votes where competition for resources is at its acutest, but why worry when you can import voters from abroad to replace this loss.

You'll Find Them In Scotland

Rights But No Responsibilities

British Values Classes Considered

What sort of British values will be taught? Tolerance of intolerance? The right to legal aid? Welfare dependency? The right not to be offended?

Instead of teaching meaningless generalisations, we should be actively teaching British history in its broadest sense. But why should we expect immigrants to integrate into our society when we actively denegrate and dismiss our own history? Without a shared history a cohesive society is unobtainable. The ineluctable result is the further balkanisation of Great Britain.

A Parasitic Relationship

Southern Cash Buys Northern Votes

"A widening North-South divide has been exposed by a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph that shows the Tories are piling up votes in London and the Home Counties while failing to make any significant inroads north of the Trent. The result of a north-south divide with the Tories controlling the South and Labour the North could have servere constituional consequences."

The reason for this electoral dispartity is the contrasting attitudes to taxation and public spending in different regions:

"Public spending in parts of the North accounts for almost 60 per cent of the economy - a level of intervention as high as in some old communist states - compared to just 30 per cent in the South."

Labour's vote is then cemented in areas where the economy depends on high public spending, whereas the Tories are supported in areas that pay more in taxes but feel they get less back from central government. As I have stated before, this is a systematic attempt by the Labour party to create an effective client state that will ensure it remains in power for the foreseeable future.

The Sound of Willow and Leather

I have been playing cricket but I shall return soon...

Fear God and Dreadnought

So advanced was the 6th Dreadnought that her name became the generic term for the modern battleship. Exactly 100 years after her launch, the retirement of the Royal Navy sea harriers has left Britain lacking the maritime ability to act independently without coalition assistance - for the first time since the 16th century.

A once unrivalled institution; intrinsically intertwined with the nation's fortunes and subconsciosuly embedded in the Brtish soul, it is now emaciated, another victim of social democracy and the drive for abstract human rights.

The Modern Face of Britain

Six jailed for life for the murder of Mary Ann












I am clinically fed-up. Instead of a custodial sentence they should all have had to endure the stocks for the rest of their lives.

Is Foreign Aid Really the Solution to Africa's Terminal Indigence?

Brown vows £8.5bn in crusade to educate world's poor

The Telegraph - fairly recently- succinctly expressed the idiocy of Gordon Brown's prodigious efforts to educate (indoctrinate) the world's poor in three concise points:

1) It will encourage the fallacious belief that a good education is chiefly a question of state spending.

2) The subsidies will confirm the view of many Africans that they should look to the outside world, rather than to themselves, for better government.

3) As well as infantilising Africans, they infantalise British taxpayers.

Gordon Brown is by no means an evil man. However, when you have someone who eminently believes that the nation's wealth belongs to the state; who has undoubted immense altruistic instincts, you know the taxpayer is in for a fun time.

Should taxpayers' money be used to alleviate the world's alleged education deficit? I don't think so. What annoyed me even more though was the impassive exhibition Gordon Brown produced when he announced that £8 thousand millions (£ 8 billions if you come from North America) was to be parceled out to the deserving poor. We know why he was so casual about it; they'll always be more.

I perhaps wouldn't mind so much if the money was spent wisely. But, like most government initiatives, it just isn't. If only politicians would address the real causes of the problem rather than the resultant symptoms. Instead I have to put up with a priapic Gordon Brown displaying his philanthropic credentials across Africa - something a genuine philanthropist wouldn't be caught dead doing.

As the Daily Telegraph leader states:

The beauty of Africa, for a British politician, is that it is about mood, not results. Mr Brown will be able to pose for photographs with laughing children. Everyone will feel slightly better at the sight. He will have demonstrated his benign motives, and will then be able to move on, happy in the knowledge that no one will ever hold him to account.

There is a simple reason why the global community continually fails Africa: all solutions have been expressed through state intervention or the redistribution of private wealth. Any charity, public or private, can make anyone richer - for a temporary time. However, hand-outs won't eliminate poverty, they will actually mask the causes of it; more importantly they will help to entrench the habits that perpetuate poverty.

Poverty may be used to justify these international programmes, but the aid is almost always given in the form of government-to-government transfers. This very inherent bias towards state control and the politicisation of the actual process stifles, rather than encourages reform and anabiosis. Foreign aid then inevitably augments and encourages the resources of government compared to the private sector. Once the aid is then in the hands of a nepotistic bureaucracy the state uses the aid for purposes conducive to the ruling regime’s own desires. One only has to look at the examples of Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Even when aid does finally does reach the consumer it has the same debilitating effect as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). It is typically forgotten that most of the recipient countries have local industries and farms. How are they expected to survive the influx of free goods? It is no different to the dumping of subsidised European produce in African markets. In practice, the developed world's short-term solutions eventually manifest themselves in the the protracted difficulties of the future. Aid acutely destroys the possibility for sustained economic growth by driving local producers, especially farmers, out of business.

This is why taxapayers' should not support Gordon Brown's massive redistribution policies. For a start, it is their money, and by association they will be giving open-ended support to the pathologically corrupt regimes which propagate the poverty.

Capitalism and globalistion are then not responsible - despite the BBC's insistence - for the existing inequalities in the world. They have in fact done more to increase wealth and lower prices then any other mechanism in history. Lasting and protracted poverty has it roots firmly entrenched in an abyss of cultural and political corruption. For instance, if capitalism is so destructive and encourages inequality, why do foreign companies based in Africa provide the best education and healthcare services for their employers? It doesn't help that the United Nations fails to even recognise private schools in their calculations for how many children fail to receive any formal primary education.

Central to the question of foreign aid is the belief that formal education and health services can only be provided by state funding. It is simply a fallacy. What existed before the inception of the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom? Ask anyone now and they believe - it is subliminally taught at state schools - that there wasn't any discernable health care system in operation. Where do they think the infrastructure came from? If one did exist they are probably told it involved the poisoning of working class children. Either that, or they were complict in some naughty eugenics programme in Scandinavia.

Africa's problems stem from irrationalism and collectivism - all throw-backs to the aftermath of colonial rule. Some of this blame can be apportioned on the developed world. That blame is not exploitation or the systematic rape of a continent though. I'm not sure how you can even rape a country of its resources when it doesn't have the capacity to utilise them. Without Western technology I doubt even the Middle East could extract its oil. The developed world's real crime is to have burdened African nations with a failed socialist ideology. A combination of misgovernment, the heaviest regulated markets in the world and endemic corruption that would shame an Italian politician (or is it Brtish now?) has transformed these countries from moderately prosperous enclaves into the apotheosis of the most miserable and pathetic place imaginable. The continent itself is still rich in resources, but the incentive to produce has been destroyed by government policy; the real cause of Africa's enervation.

Why are these acts of recidivism being allowed to continue and in such a profligate demeanour?

The blame can be wholly attributed to the lack of moral fortitude exhibited by the liberal-right. The Left didn't even have to resort to irredentist behaviour to plant the Red Flag. This is because ever since the 60s the Right has actively vacated issues on foreign aid and development. This has then left the authoritarian-left with a completely unchallenged monopoly on how Africa's plight is addressed. A moral case must then be made: that the Left must no longer command a cartel on third-world issues.

A start can be made by acknowledging that the world's impoverished nations are poor for a reason: they have nothing to do with free and liberal markets. Africa's autocratic leaders are corrupt, intrusive, and actively restrict political and economic freedom. The real inequality then is that the political culture of Africa is illiberal, whilst most of the developed world has a semblance of freedom to acquire and posses wealth. The question that needs to be asked is: not what makes someone poor, but what makes them wealthy?

It is for this reason that British taxpayers' do not owe the third world an apology for their relative wealth. Their wealth has been earned through their own enterprise and productivity; they are not parasites who prey on the poor around the globe by stealing their natural resources. Consequently, they are not responsible for the tragic problems that afflict that 'vast, beautiful [and] pitiful continent.' The poverty that exists in Africa is a terrible shame, but that shame should not be thrown on to the British taxpayer through the Chancellor's guilt-ridden self-loathing. Africa's decline can only be reversed through the active support of democratic institutions, responsible private charity and unflinching support for the individual. Only then can a renascent Africa emerge after almost 40 years of decline.

Africa's problems are self-inflicted. Only when we acknowledge that fact and treat these nations on the same moral basis as all other governments will reform and development finally be possible. Bob Geldoff can then at last retire from public life, or campaign in support of male victims of domestic abuse, and Bono can go back to writing his music. Actually, on second thoughts, please continue showering Africa with foreign aid.

Labour isn't Funny Anymore

Charles Clarke insists 'I will not quit'

More than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals, including killers, rapists and child abusers, have been freed from prison without being considered for deportation and hundreds are missing, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, admitted yesterday.

There was once a noble time when an extra-marital affair would have led to a resignation. When exactly is your impropriety beyond doubt in this government?

Grievance Mongers

Bristol shuns slave trade name

Once again, another vocal minority group is caught lasciviously seeking any perceived offence and then wallowing in present-day victimhood. I am offended that they are offended.

Dave the Chameleon

Available in any colour

Easier to HIRE - and FIRE

The amphigoric Mr. Derek Simpson, leader of the union Amicus, read out a statement headed: "Ten reasons why it is harder to sack a French worker than a British one." Almost every one of those 10 was true.

Had his political perspective been different, however, Mr Simpson could have listed his 10 points, with equal truth, under the conspectus: "Ten reasons why multinational companies would rather employ workers in Britain than in France."