Archive for the 'History' Category

Dear Dirty Dwarf Frog,

This Old Brit.

God save our gracious Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen!

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us;

God save the Queen!

[Correction: For frog, read ungracious, ungrateful, ugly, tiny, twirpy, two faced toad.]

*(Cross posted from across at How This Old Brit Sees It)

*

We’re certain that you’ve heard (and/or thought), as often as we have that George W. Bush is/was America’s worst president, ever.

But no, that’s not so, says today’s Sunday Times.

They tell us that the Buchanan bloke shown above was.

They name some other pitiful (in their opinion) US presidents too.

Also, they openly opine about the best of the the whole bunch of the (both famous and infamous), 43 C-in-Cs.

Go see for yourself, The Sunday Times’ take on that score.

(Cross posted from How This Old Brit Sees It)

(click to embiggen)

Modest Bush Approval Rating Boost at War’s End

President Bush’s overall job approval rating has risen only slightly in recent days, even as increasing numbers believe that the war in Iraq has been won. The president’s current rating is 72%, statistically unchanged from 74% immediately after the fall of Baghdad, but notably higher than his prewar approval rating of 55%.

The percentage of Americans who say the U.S. has won the war with Iraq has been growing steadily as military operations wind down. Since April 10, the number saying the war has been won has grown from a low of 32% to a majority of 52%.

An overwhelming majority (74%) continues to support the military action in Iraq and the president’s leadership on this issue, while a minority of about 20% has, since the start of the conflict, consistently said the war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do.

–Pew research, April 18, 2003

Michael Savage became a multi-millionaire when he stopped peddling snake oil and started peddling hate

It didn’t surprise me when police found books by Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage in the home of Jim David Adkisson after Adkisson murdered two people and wounded six during a shooting spree at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. After all, if you believed the crap that the bestselling authors on the right are spewing, it would be hard to escape the conclusion that you had a patriotic duty to kill liberals. After all, it’s the liberals who are trying to take guns away from patriotic Americans like Jim David Adkisson.

Of course, there are also violent extremists on the left, but they tend to admire authors like Mao, Régis Debray, Eldridge Cleaver, and Frantz Fanon, not the popular mainstream authors of the left. That’s because writers like Vincent Bugliosi, Stephen Colbert, Michael Moore, David Sirota, and Amanda Marcotte don’t turn out hate-filled screeds that demonize liberals, intellectuals, and the entertainment industry (scapegoats who used to be referred to collectively as “the Jews”, before Hitler made such shorthand unfashionable).

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Today it’s Saint George (of England’s) Day.

Also today, it’s time for you to tell the truth.

So, hands up those of you who already (honestly & truly), knew - and/or remembered.

Then, hands up those who also knew about the self same ….

St George the Turkish Arab

Not very many we’ll wager.

Now, take a look at this terrifically tasty teaser.

He was born in Turkey; his mother was Palestinian. He’s so multicultural we have to share him with Lithuania, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Moscow, Istanbul, Beirut - and Palestine itself.

If he ever came to England, it wasn’t for long. Welcome to the world of Saint George, patron saint of England, whom we celebrate today, April 23 - the same day, by astonishing coincidence, that we celebrate the birth of the giant of English literature, William Shakespeare.

All nations need heroes. What we know of St George makes him a fine one - though very little of his story can be a certainty. But from fairly contemporary references, it looks as though he was born a Christian in Cappadocia, now in eastern Turkey and may have been of some “Darian” - Persian - blood too.

Sez who?

Sez Jack Straw, that’s who.

So read the rest, and learn and inwardly digest.

Ain’t a decent edumacation an absolutely amazing, awesome attribute to ‘ave?

Eh? Wot?

*(Cross posted at How This Old Brit Sees It)

Anyone still stubbornly insisting US Republican presidential candidate John McCain can be relied upon to do (when it matters), the right and honourable thing, obviously hasn’t yet seen a certain story in today’s British ‘Sunday Mail.’

How war hero John McCain betrayed the Vietnamese peasant who saved his life

In all the tales of wartime courage peppering John McCain’s presidential campaign trail, perhaps the most outstanding example of selfless heroism involves not the candidate but a humble Vietnamese peasant.

(snip)

And when a furious mob at the water’s edge began to beat and stab the captured pilot, Mr On drove them back.

Nearly three decades later, a Vietnamese government commission confirmed he was indeed the rescuer and, in a 1996 meeting in Hanoi, McCain embraced and thanked Mr On and presented him with a Senate memento.

From that brief encounter to his death at the age of 88 two years ago, Mr On never heard from the senator again, and three years after their meeting, McCain published an autobiography [Faith of my Fathers]that makes no mention of his apparent debt to Mr On.

It is a snub Mr On took to his death.

His widow, Bui Thi Lien, 71, said: “In his last years, my husband was very sad sometimes.

He would say, ‘Mr McCain has forgotten me.’

”Mr McCain would be dead if it weren’t for my husband. He would never have returned to his family and he wouldn’t be in the presidential race today.”

(snip)

“McCain listened but there was no dramatic response. He just nodded, said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and gave Mr On a little Senate seal.

“It was the kind of thing you buy in the souvenir shop in the Senate basement.

“But Mr On, to the day he died, treated it as if it were a Congressional Medal of Honour.”

But although McCain appeared to believe the story, it was one he would later seem to ignore in his autobiography and there was no more contact between the two men.

When Mr On died in 2006, an email was apparently sent to McCain’s office requesting a message of condolence for the family. There was no response.

Whether or not McCain believed Mr On is unclear.

But his refusal to acknowledge his heroism is likely to fuel other, more damaging allegations that McCain exaggerated elements of his PoW ordeal in Hoa Lo prison.

Before you read the rest we want to make it abundantly clear that the UK’s ‘Mail‘ can in no way, shape or form be described as either a ‘lefty’ or even liberal national newspaper.

*(Cross posted at How This Old Brit Sees It)

McCain compares himself to Churchill, but leaves out crucial information

Not long ago, Trailer Park Feminist posted this McCain ad, and I reposted it at Liberal Avenger and This Old Brit. Predictably, it provoked howls of derision from the Brits:

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Jonah Goldberg

I’m really sick of reading the glowing reviews of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. The book’s thesis is one of the most absurd ideas imaginable: American liberalism and European fascism are roughly equivalent, because both movements feature a social safety net.

I’m not kidding. Here’s how Goldberg puts it:

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We see Ali Hassan al Majid - aka - Chemical Ali is shortly set to swing, just as surely as his cretinous cousin, Saddam Hussein swung.

Serves him so & so right - we won’t lose a wink of sleep - neither as, nor after, the trap door’s tripped beneath the turd’s feet.

Incidentally, shown above is the same smug schmuck, in his hay-day.

What a shame that some of the sickening sod’s past US enablers, accomplices and aiders & abettors shan’t be sharing the slimy sob’s fate.

Well, whatever.

Onward, ever onward.

You may remember that we ended our last post with the words “Don’t forget.” Well, we’re reminding you again: Don’t forget.

Now, see this snippet from an old ‘Counterpunch’ piece, penned by ELSON E. BOLES.

You may feel disgusted by the hypocrisy of US plans to make war on Iraq and sickened at the inevitable slaughter of thousands of people. But if you could only vaguely recall the details of how deep the hypocrisy goes, then read on.

The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988.

(snip)

… while making his case against Saddam, President Bush said “He’s used poison gas on his own people.” Bush deceives because he hides the fact that US officials, including his father, had no qualms about helping Saddam gas Iranians.

(snip)

US policy makers, financiers, arms-suppliers and makers, made massive profits from sales to Iraq of myriad chemical, biological, conventional weapons, and the equipment to make nuclear weapons.

(snip)

A PBS Frontline episode, “The Arming of Iraq” (1990) detailed much of the conventional and so-called “dual-use” weapons sold to Iraq. The public learned from other sources that at least since mid-1980s the US was selling chemical and biological material for weapons to Iraq and orchestrating private sales.

These sales began soon after current Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad in 1985 and met with Saddam Hussein as a private businessman on behalf of the Reagan administration.

Surprised? Shocked? Stunned?

You certainly should be, as you read the rest of this positively puke-inducing piece.

*(Cross posted at How This Old Brit Sees It)