This speech, or more accurately prayer, from the movie Shenandoah made me smile. The father of a large family in the Old West [update: oops, it’s actually Virginia during the American Civil War] is saying grace before dinner.

Lord, we cleared this land, we ploughed it, sowed it, harvested it. We cooked the harvest. It wouldn’t be here, we wouldn’t be eating it, if we hadn’t done it all ourselves. We worked dog bone hard for every crumb and morsel but we thank you just the same anyway, Lord, for this food we’re about to eat. Amen.

Taking credit for your own hard work seems like the right attitude to me!

Posted by Rob Fisher as Imaginary Friends at 1:37 PM EDT

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I’m now back in Blighty, at least for the time being. I can never discount the possibility that I’ll be sent away on another foreign errand at short notice. But that’s a good thing: it keeps me on my toes.

There’s some kind of socialist slot-sharing system for the black cabs at Heathrow airport. I live just the other side of an imaginary boundary having driven across which the taxis have to wait an hour before they’re allowed back in the airport queue. This means that in order to avoid annoying the taxi driver, I have to lie about my destination to the fellow with the hand-held computer who enforces the rules and regulations. The trouble is that after a nine hour flight from a different time zone my brain doesn’t usually work well enough to remember to tell the right lie, which results in the taxi driver complaining and lecturing at me all the way home.

No doubt the rules are there to make everything “fair” for everyone. The fact that they don’t make any sense, involve the employment of otherwise pointless staff to enforce them, and are regularly contravened through deception is just another example of the inefficiency of trying to control people. A free market free-for-all might be a little more chaotic, but at least it’d be honest.

Why are taxis allowed in the M4 bus lane? It doesn’t make any sense.

Things I miss from Los Angeles: Ubiquitous air-conditioning; proper plumbing; parking spaces; cheerful service; and air I’m not allergic to.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 1:00 PM EDT

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I often moan about BBC bias. It’s more of a world-view than a bias. It sometimes seems as if the BBC defines the boundaries of political and philosophical thought in the UK. It’s hard to say anything the BBC wouldn’t say without coming across as, well, a bit strange.

In a comment responding to a post by Scott Burgess about an opinion peice by “trainee journalist” Dilpazier Aslam, douglas r writes:

I’ve just listened to a BBC interview on NPR in New York with four prominent British Muslims. At one point one of them – I think from the Muslim Council of Britain - says something along these lines: “We must tell angry British Muslims not to be drawn into terror because TWO WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT.” The two wrongs he is referring to are Afghanistan and Iraq.

The BBC presenter (I can’t recall who ir was) did not question this statement, did not say: “Well, hold on a moment here, did the war in Afghanistan not liberate Muslims? The war in Iraq, contentious as it was, did in the end overthrew a man who killed a million Muslims and ultimately led to 8.5 million Iraqis voting for their own leaders.”

The BBC interviewer did not say this because he does not believe it to be true either. He does not believe there is even an argument to be made! He is part of the mindless orthodoxy.

Which is exactly what I’m talking about. Once the BBC repeats something often enough, it becomes the accepted truth. I know this because I’ve often been the dissenting voice in the pub discussion, with everyone looking at me funny and someone saying, “Rob has strange views”. It’s because I often say things that no-one would say on the BBC.

Update: The Daily Ablution article I got the douglas r comment from sparked a page two article in the Independent about the Guardian’s refusal to sack Dilpazier Aslam for being a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Apparently, “staff at The Guardian were unaware that Mr Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir until allegations surfaced on ‘The Daily Ablution’, a blog run by Scott Burgess.”

What Scott Burgess does is very important, as well as entertaining, and I will continue to encourage people to read his blog.

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 9:23 PM EDT

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Justin Howard (whose link I found in a USA Today story about blog coverage of the events in London) was in a train that was either bombed or derailed as a result of a bomb on another train. He has a straight-forward, down-to-earth account of his experiences, and more recently has added responses to journalists and updates.

In his latest post, entitled I’m Not A Victim, he complains, “People expect me to freak out when I return to the tube; which I will as I have a journey planned this week. It won’t stop me or slow me in the slightest.”

His story is another example of people just getting on with things, which I understand from various reports (such as those by London based Samizdatistas), is exactly what most people have been doing. (I’ve been in LA for the past week or so, so I haven’t seen London first-hand.)

Mick Hume, writing in Spiked Online, also thinks people are quite capable of coping.

There was no panic on the streets of London and no wave of fear. Those caught up in the attacks worked together to get through their ordeal. Everybody else stood together - or perhaps more accurately, walked together, since the public transport system was closed down.

But…

Yet already, the parasites are gathering to try to feed off the bombings and turn the mood more funereal, by emphasising our vulnerability once more. The trauma industry is descending, telling everybody in London they need counselling and demanding more money for post-traumatic therapy. This follows the pattern of every disaster or tragedy in recent years. The record of those interventions suggests, however, that trauma therapy does little good and can do much harm.

I’ve always been skeptical of all that victim counselling mumbo jumbo. Justin Howard doesn’t think he’s a victim. It almost seems as if the counsellors want people to feel like victims. And that is supposed to help them how?

But more importantly than that:

There are others, too, in the political sphere trying to prey on the London attacks to promote an image of vulnerability rather than resilience. The UK home secretary, Charles Clarke, has already said that yet more security measures and anti-terror laws may be needed to keep us safe, at the cost of our civil liberties.

It’s because politicians need to be seen to be Doing Something. What else can they do but make up new laws? They can’t catch the terrorists themselves, the really useful people are already working on that. And everybody else is just getting on with their lives. Well, we can’t have people getting on with their lives now, can we? How can they be grateful for being saved by politicians then?

Posted by Rob Fisher as News at 2:33 AM EDT

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I’ve been a bit quiet lately because I’ve been working too hard. But I couldn’t resist taking time out to point out this pure genius. Thanks to Verity for finding it.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, Links at 8:37 PM EDT

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