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[Music clip: Soaring chords, orchestra and chorus.]
01 — Intro. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Time again to tune into Radio Derb, your infallible source of news, views, elucidation and edification, brought to you from National Review world headquarters here in the heart of Manhattan — or, as we conservatives say, the belly of the beast. Let's see what's been happening in the world this past week or two, shall we? |
02 — Truth breaks through. Either a hacker or a disgruntled employee got
into the phone system of Britain's NTL cable service and changed the greeting message. People who called in for service got the following.
You are through to NTL customer services. We don't give an [expletive] about you. We are never here. We just [expletive] you about, basically, and we're not going to handle any of your complaints. Just [expletive] off and leave us alone. When NTL found out, they changed the message back to something more soothing. Which just goes to prove there's no respect for honesty and plain speaking nowadays. |
| 03 — The U.N.'s Chief Thief warns …. U.N. Secretary General
Kofi Annan, in an interview with the BBC, said that the Iraq war has been a violation of international law.
This being the BBC, the interviewer did not bother to ask the Secretary General whether perhaps his real objection to the war was that it had dried up the flow of funds into his son's Swiss bank account from the U.N.'s sensationally corrupt and mismanaged Oil for Food program — those flows being, of course, so far as Kofi is concerned, perfectly fine under international law. |
| 04 — … the nuke watchdog bares his teeth …
Resolutions on matters of international concern are flying around thick and fast.
Here is one from the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency saying how very, very upset they are that, quote: "Iran has not heeded repeated calls from the board to suspend as a confidence building measure all enrichment related and reprocessing activities." End quote. Not to worry, though. Negotiations are still going on. In the words of the BBC, reporting Iran's response to the agency's impertinent resolution, quote: "The door was however left ajar for compromise when Iran said any further suspension of enrichment activities are a matter for negotiations and could not be achieved by passing resolutions." Oh, that's all right, then. So long as we can keep negotiating for a couple more years, everything will be fine. There is of course no possibility at all that somewhere along in those negotiations, some blushing Iranian negotiator will confess that, "Darn it, sort of by accident, we just carried out a successful nuclear test explosion." |
| 05 — … and the U.N. warns some more. More than a million
people have fled their homes in Sudan's Dafur Province and thousands are said to be dying every month. Not to worry though: The UN is on the case.
On September the 18th, the Security Council passed a resolution asking Secretary General Kofi Annan to set up a commission to investigate whether these human rights violations amount to genocide. It also expresses grave concern about the lack of progress in disarming the pro government Janjaweed militias, which are accused of carrying out widespread killings of non-Arab civilians. "Grave concern"! That will make the guys with the machetes sit up and take notice. The vote in favor of this thundering act of international determination was eleven in favor, none opposed, four abstaining. The September 18th resolution supersedes a previous one in which the Security Council declared that if the Sudan government didn't stop these acts of ethnic cleansing and mass murder, important diplomats would wag their fingers, stamp their feet, refuse to eat their greens and hold their breaths until they turned blue. |
| 06 — Southern Africa sinks. The joke currently doing the rounds in Zimbabwe
goes as follows. Question: What did we have before Candles? Answer: Electricity.
After 24 years of independence under Robert Mugabe, this country, once one of the most prosperous in sub-Saharan Africa is retreating back into the bush. Ambulances are drawn by oxen. Hand-guided cattle plows have replaced farm machinery. The state railroad uses gunpowder charges on the tracks to warn trains of danger ahead. The trend has accelerated over the past four years with the violent seizure of thousands of white owned farms for reallocation to black Zimbabweans, mainly friends and family of Mr Mugabe. Meanwhile, in next door, South Africa whose president is a gentleman named Thabo Mbeke, the joke going around is Question: What's the difference between Mugabe and Mbeke? Answer: About five years |
| 07 — Time courts Bush's base. Time magazine, for 35 years
now a leading voice of Big Media left-liberalism, ran a cover story on the nation's problem with mass illegal immigration. Time estimates
that three million people will enter the country unlawfully this year.
This cover story read like a policy paper from one of the keynote immigration restrictionist websites and was a major breakthrough for this topic, which has been shunned as politically incorrect by the mainstream media up to now. The story was so much of a breakthrough, in fact, that some conservatives were suspicious of Time's motives. What, they wondered aloud, can anti-Bush forces do to hurt the President of this stage of the election campaign? Well, one thing those forces could do is, they could try to dampen the enthusiasm of Bush's base. Which Bush policies are most displeasing to that base? Why, Bush's insouciance towards mass illegal immigration. Hmmm. Look for a few more stores in the mainstream media along the lines of George W. Bush's failure to control illegal immigration. |
| 08 — Spanish is the patronizing tongue. "Como he dicho antes, esta es
la elección más importante de nuestras vidas," said John Kerry to an audience of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's
annual gala in Washington.
The audience broke out into cheers and applause. Apparently not one of them thought that the candidate's venture into Spanish was insufferably patronizing. Still less did any recall the example of John Quincy Adams, who, though he spoke fluent German, refused to give campaign speeches in that language to audiences of German speaking citizens on the grounds that a candidate of office in an English speaking nation ought to address his voters in English. Our current president is not above some of this linguistic Hispandering, though his best known venture in this area is at least one we can smile at. Addressing Cuban Americans in Miami once Bush said: "No quiero destruir un idioma que bonita, así y por eso voy a hablar en Inglés." Which means: "I don't want to destroy a beautiful language, so I'm going to speak in English." |
| 09 — Kerry defies Dante. John Kerry suggested to a meeting of the
Congressional Black Caucus that Republicans may try to keep black voters from casting their ballots. Quote: "We are not going to stand by and
allow another million African American votes to go uncounted in this election." End quote.
Thus spake the Democratic presidential nominee. One of the most gruesome passages in Dante's Inferno is the one where Dante meets the Sowers of Discord, whose punishment is to be horribly and repeatedly mutilated. Here's a bit of Dante. … I saw one Hmm, Sowers of Discord … yes. |
| 10 — Let no-one familiar with geometry enter. Of the 34 Senate seats up for
grabs this year, a dozen — that is, better than one in three — could change hands. By contrast, only one House seat in 15 is
listed as "competitive" by Congressional Quarterly.
The difference is of course that house races are for districts increasingly sculpted by clever computer programs to be incumbent-friendly. The battle for the House of Representatives is, says The Economist, a travesty of democracy. This could all be easily fixed. We could, for example, impose some simple geometrical constraints on the shape of house districts. Of course, no one has any interest in doing this. Get ready for the title Congressman-for-Life — already in fact a reality over much of the country. |
| 11 — El-Jo in Taiwan. One-hundred-and-two-year-old pop singer Elton John
arrived in Taiwan to do a concert. As he disembarked from his plane reporters and photographers surrounded him in the usual way.
This displeased to the artist who felt he had already gone out of his way to accommodate himself to a Chinese environment by putting his first name last, the way Chinese folk do, and wearing his best rug for the occasion. The following exchange ensued. Elton: " Rude vile pigs! Do you know of that means? Rude, vile pigs! That's what all of you are!" Let's hope the Taiwanese can summon up the same spirited resistance to the People's Liberation Army when they come swarming over the Taiwan Straits a year or two from now. In the meantime, a small culture note for Elton. "Pig!" is not actually such a bad thing to call a Chinese person. If you really want to get them, "Turtle!" is much more potent. |
| 12 — The pop star's wedding. Britney Spears may or may not have got married
again. The
guy who may or may not be her husband left his previous gal for Britney after having impregnated that gal … twice, the second birth still
pending.
Why do Kipling poems come into my mind at the most unexpected moments? In this case, "The Sergeant's Wedding." Bowin' like a lady, |
| 13 — Signoff. Well, that's it for today, folks. Tune in next week for more
snippets from Radio Derb.
Oh, before signing off, just one other thing. Alerted to the fact that I sang a song to the assembled NRO-niks at Kate O'Beirne's party last week, thousands of readers have written in demanding to hear me sing. Glad to oblige. The following doesn't represent my voice at its best, I hasten to say. I was suffering from a mild upper respiratory infection when I recorded it. It'll give you the flavor though. Ready? Okay. [Clears throat.] [Clip: Luciano Pavarotti, sensational high note from I puritani.] [Applause, cheering.] [Clip: Elvis, "Thank you, thank you very much."] |