Free Republic

Don't play the nutty professor with David Irving MY WORLD BY GILES COREN PROFESSOR Mona Baker, the leader of the movement to boycott Israeli academics, is in cahoots with Britain’s leading anti-semitic lunatic, David Irving. You did not know this because you do not enjoy, as I do, wandering through the lush vegetation of David Irving’s website and marvelling at the strange fruits that grow there. I surf the Irving foam because among the flotsam on the site there are sometimes some bits and bobs about me (if one mentions him in print in any context at all — which...

Wraiths and race What with the dark skin, broad faces and dreadlocks, it's a wonder Tolkien didn't give his baddies a natural sense of rhythm, says John Yatt, examining Middle Earth's suspect racial undertones Monday December 2, 2002 It was the same with The Phantom Menace - I had no choice. When part of your childhood is playing down the road on a big screen with surround sound and popcorn, there's no escape. But as the wonder of discovering that there was more to New Zealand than sheep wore off, something began to worry me.Maybe it was the way that...

View Current Signatures   -   Sign the Petition To:  British Government As the fire-fighters' strike begins, we condemn this Labour governments' decision to prevent the army from using the best fire-fighting equipment to save lives. Green Goddesses have a maximum speed of just 50 miles per hour and cannot be relied on to protect the safety of the public. We believe that a responsible government would allow the army to use modern fire engines during these strikes, rather than put the sanctity of the picket line before the safety of the public. Sincerely, The Undersigned

The Quick And Dirty Leftist's Guide To Arguing Against The War On Terrorism By John Hawkins Some disreputable people have suggested that Right Wing News is for the 'war on terrorism' or that we're 'biased against liberals.' What scandalous accusations! The truth is that we here at Right Wing News view ourselves as a 'fair and balanced' publication -- just like 'Arab News' or 'The Guardian'! But talk is cheap! That's why we decided to write 'The Quick And Dirty Leftists Guide To Arguing Against The War On Terrorism' to prove RWN's good intentions. Here are the key arguments lefties...

The rescue parties Far from handing elections to the right, protest votes galvanise major parties into action George MonbiotTuesday November 12, 2002The Guardian How many political parties can dance on the head of a pin? The answer, it seems, is one. In Britain and the US, the opposition parties are beginning to discover that there simply isn't room for both them and their rivals on the narrow political platforms they have chosen to contest. Without enough space to shift their feet, they are being pushed ever closer to the edge of oblivion. While the Conservatives are left with no choice...

1. The foetus cannot be taken seriously as a person An unborn baby in its 7th week after conception Before I knew much about the abortion debate, I was entirely uninterested in the unborn baby. When it was mentioned, I accepted uncritically that the "foetus" was just some sort of overdeveloped sperm of no value or worth. Pro-abortion rhetoric convinced me that the baby in the womb was somehow an entirely different class of human from you or me, as though the mere act of leaving the womb and inhaling oxygen conferred humanity on someone. I'm not sure I considered...

We need to ask why these Chechens use terror We may loathe this act, but that is no excuse to misrepresent the excruciating struggles of the Chechen people Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 28 October 2002 Well, at last, and for the worst of all reasons, we are buzzing about Chechnya like furious bees. In that sense, at least, those homicidal men and women who took over the theatre in Moscow achieved something.They were callous. They imprisoned the innocent, killed three of them and terrified the rest, until the Russian authorities stormed in leaving more a hundred dead and many more injured. The...

High court hang-ups 'Why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?' Miles Kington 15 October 2002 A most extraordinary trial is going on in the High Court at the moment in which a man named Chrysler is accused of stealing more than 40,000 coat hangers from hotels round the world. He admits his guilt, but in his defence he claims that – well, perhaps it would be simpler just to bring you a brief extract from the trial. We join the case at the point where Chrysler...

A GRANDAD has become Britain’s oldest victim of dance drug ecstasy. Pot-smoker Eric Whittle, 63, died in hospital three days after taking FOUR of the pills.He also had cannabis, cocaine and alcohol in his blood, an inquest heard.Mr Whittle shocked his grandson by boasting how often he dabbled with ecstasy. Stephen Whittle said: “He would boast about how many ecstasy tablets he had taken and said it wouldn’t be difficult for him to get the drug.”Stephen saw Mr Whittle at his home in Warrington, Cheshire, hours before pal Clemente Porrino found him convulsing on the floor.Mr Porrino told the hearing:...

MY GRUDGING RESPECT for the strength of Labour members' peace-loving convictions pretty much vanished as I watched the reaction to President Clinton's arrival and speech at their Party Conference today. Forget for a moment his 1995 assistance to Sinn Fein/IRA, when he placated pro-life, Irish-American Catholics by letting Gerry Adams into the country to go on a spectacular media tour. Forget his adultery, his lies, his perjury - for which Clare Short publicly said he should have resigned. Forget that he left office the only President in US history to cast doubt on his successor's right to govern. What about...

It was only in conversation with a self-proclaimed "Liberal Christian" that I actually realised what such people were about. He said that morality was subjective: that sin was doing whatever you, not God, thought to be wrong. He didn't believe in the Virgin Birth and he didn't seem to take any Christian values seriously, being very promiscuous and indulging in regular drug-abuse. Politically, he supported gay marriage, legalised polygamy and abortion on demand. What I wonder is why such people bother to call themselves Christians at all. Why do they go to church and then disobey all Biblical truths? What...

It was only in conversation with a self-proclaimed "Liberal Christian" that I actually realised what such people were about. He said that morality was subjective: that sin was doing whatever you, not God, thought to be wrong. He didn't believe in the Virgin Birth and he didn't seem to take any Christian values seriously, being very promiscuous and indulging in regular drug-abuse. What I wonder is why such people bother to call themselves Christians at all. Why do they go to church and then disobey all Biblical truths? What gives them the right to declare themselves God, and to interpret...

I'd like to take advantage of them, but can find no guide.

Americans are badly served by semi-official media propaganda Mark HertsgaardWednesday September 11, 2002The Guardian Perhaps the greatest lie told to the American public about the September 11 terrorist attacks is that they prove the outside world hates us. President Bush, for example, has repeatedly warned Americans about foreign "evil doers" who loathe everything we stand for. The US media has been no less insistent, referring time and again to "Why they hate us", as one Newsweek story put it. But the world doesn't hate us, the American people. It is our government, our military, and our corporations that are resented....

The parents of an 11-year-old girl are to take the extraordinary step of having her fitted with a microchip so that her movements can be traced if she is abducted. Danielle Duval will have the device implanted in her arm in the next few months, the scientist assisting the plan claimed yesterday. The miniature chip will apparently send a signal via a mobile phone network to a computer, which will be able to pinpoint her location on an electronic map. The parents, Wendy and Paul Duval from Reading in Berkshire, said they had decided on the step after the abduction...

Last week I heard a BBC correspondent refer en passant to ‘right-wing elements’ in Iran who were sympathetic to the Taleban. And why not? ‘Right-wing elements’, after all, has simply become a handy term meaning ‘baddies’. Never mind that the Iranians in question want to confiscate private property and nationalise the means of production. The fact that they have lined up with Mullah Omar means that they can be neatly bracketed with Israeli hard-liners, Stalinist nostalgics, Timothy McVeigh, Eugene Terre Blanche, the BNP, the Tory party and any other ‘right-wing elements’ that threaten the BBC’s world-view. When you hear such...

In Manchester, a friend at university there tells me, a new word has entered smart parlance among the young. The word is ‘raped’. The expression is moderately strong, and casual. It is a way of saying that one has in some way been done over, done for, or done in. ‘I was completely raped,’ a cool young Mancunian might remark, emerging from an examination in which the questions had proved impossible; or on discovering that something he had just bought was on sale much more cheaply elsewhere. My friend added that some women were complaining that to use a word...

Anyone who keeps a close eye on the times I make my posts on this site will have noted by now that my sleep pattern is far from conventional. But then my perspective on sleep itself is much the same. I try to spend most of my time doing useful things, and when fatigue works to rob me of that opportunity, I am offended. For a while, I have found it very interesting that the worst people in society: the most violent, cruel and selfish, apparently have no objections to sleep. There are people who will happily kill a man...

I want a world where entertainment is its own justification, and whatever low and dirty pleasure anyone can gain makes the means to getting it absolutely fine. I want a world where the gentle, kind manners of a dying generation are not just absent, but despised - where those with a clipped accent, innocent humour and a natural courtesy for others are met with a universal sneer and anger that in their naivety they cannot comprehend. I want a world where the weak and old are seen deserve their every misfortune, where sympathy is only ever demonstrated in public. I...

Politically motivated marking? ONE OF THE difficulties of taking A level exams is when you get your marks back, they do not come with the original papers. If you made a mistake, you do not know what it was. I was disappointed yesterday with my own results: Politics: A History: B Philosophy: B I had hoped to accept the place at Somerville College, Oxford I was offered last December, but I required at least AAB to do so, so now I will probably retake some of my A levels and reapply. What interests me, however, is looking at my fourth...