I don’t quite know how to take this comment from the London Daily Telegraph on Rael, the leader of the UFO cult currently involved in claims to have cloned baby Eve.

“Rael found his baggy white suits, his medallions and his topknot of hair – which he claimed was an antenna for receiving extra-terrestrial messages – made him a laughing stock in France. So he moved to Canada.”

The new, fanatically Islamic regional government in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province is beginning to throw its weight about. ‘Obscene’ films are being banned and now local cable TV services offering access to western TV channels are under threat. The London Times (link requires subscription) quotes one government activist as follows:

“Western channels are a bad influence on Muslims. We should destroy anything which is prohibited by our religion.”

Charming.

Friday’s Independent asked a ‘representative’ sample of Britain’s chattering classes to select their ‘heroes and villains’ for 2002. Needless to say, George Bush makes it as ‘villain’ for a number of those who replied, including Norman Baker MP, the home affairs spokesman for the UK’s leftist Liberal Democrats.

Baker’s hero for the year is, naturally enough, Rowan Williams, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, a man whose dog collar is symbolic only of an IQ roughly comparable to that of a newly born puppy. Baker sees matters rather differently, praising Williams as follows:

“He has attacked the Disney empire. He has broken into a US base to sing psalms on the runway. He slams the likely war on Iraq as “immoral and illegal”. Whether one agrees or not with him, isn’t it great to have a church leader who is grounded, courageous and honest and who doesn’t simply talk to himself?”

What a joke. In his tired, tiresome but tireless recycling of the conventional pieties of the old left, Williams is a dull, cowardly and repellent figure. Alas, it’s too much to hope that this tawdry parson will end up speaking only to himself.

A year or so ago the UK introduced draconian laws further restricting the already highly limited right of the law-abiding to own handguns. ‘Gun crime’, Brits were told, would be a thing of the past. Since then, quite predictably, it has soared, not least because criminals realize that they now have the upper hand.

It’s now reported that a ‘national firearms amnesty’ will be launched (Friday's London Independent explains) “to tackle the growing menace of gun crime.” Apparently, “new laws to outlaw carrying replica firearms and a minimum five-year jail sentence for being caught with a gun are also expected to be announced and a national guns database and tracing agency are to be set up.”

Pathetic.

One more from Alan Clark, this time from February 27, 1998:

“The following day [Archie] Norman was in the tearoom and talking a lot of rot about Euro-MP selection and how we would now be putting the ‘good’ ones at the top of the list. “What is a good Euro-MP?” I asked. He scowled, blackly.”

Alan Clark may now be dead, but no-one has yet been able satisfactorily to answer his question.

Tremendous story today – also from the Eastern Daily Press (but, alas, no link) – about a man who has recycled his own hip bone into the handle of a rather a splendid new walking stick. This is a tremendous idea – but if your relatives start eyeing you rather strangely this holiday season – be afraid, very afraid.

Are they sizing you up as a possible fashion accessory?

The principal local paper in this part of the world is the Eastern Daily Press. One of their contributors is Martin Mears, a former president of the Law Society. He has an excellent column today (no link available) on the Labour Party’s proposed ‘reforms’ of the criminal law. These include (effectively) reversing the burden of proof in cases of rape, and the abolition of double jeopardy.

There has always been a certain type of traditionalist in Britain who has taken great pride in the fact that the country does not have the benefit of a written constitution. This was always smug, but these days (as the Labour Party’s proposals show) it’s just plain dumb.

The irony is that now, courtesy of the EU, the UK is ending up with a ‘constitution’ of sorts, but this is largely an alien imposition filled with PC pieties and sub-Marxist musings, which will be subject doubtless to further refinement at the hands of the pygmy Ulbrichts of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, bureaucrats who are likely to know little, and care less, about England’s history and its notions of liberty.

I’m writing this from a house in Norwich, the capital city of my home county, Norfolk, which is on England's east coast. Norwich was once the second richest city in England (OK, it was some time ago…), and can still boast a well-preserved historical district centered on an early-medieval Cathedral and a district rather depressingly known as ‘Tombland’ (the source of the name, some local optimists like to claim, has more to do with the dye trade than burying the dead).

Not all the past has survived, however. One of the sites – and pleasures – of Tombland used to be a traditional butcher’s shop, which has since moved to another part of town. Its produce remains a delight, but I miss the former location’s wonderfully Dickensian exterior. Throughout the years of my childhood the outside of the old store was festooned with rabbit, partridge, pheasant and other specialties of the region, a mouth-watering spectacle of rural largesse that tempted this apprentice carnivore, but may, I suspect, have also have created a vegetarian or two.

Such a display, someone told me, would not be permitted these days. It would not comply with EU ‘health’ regulations. A myth? Perhaps, but also quite believable as Brussels’ war on history, tradition and commonsense carries on apace.

Another pleasure of Christmas is, lets face it, receiving a nice present or two. One of mine was the third – and final – volume of Alan Clark’s diaries. Clark was a minor politician (the high point of his career was fairly lowly ministerial rank under Mrs. Thatcher) but a major diarist. The three volumes – especially the second (chronologically, but the first to appear) – will be read (in the UK, at least) for generations both for their insight into late 20th Century British Conservative politics and for Clark himself, fluent, clever, brimming with opinions and attitudes (some of which were ill-considered at best, repugnant at worst), neurotic (the hypochondria!), a man for life’s pleasures (9th October, 1991: “Drank too much. Randy in the night. Illish in the morning”.) and a fascinating blend of arrogance and self-doubt.

Here he is on Easter Monday, 1997:

“Am I relaxed, confident, beautifully turned out, one of the few ‘real’ Conservatives, historian, authoritative, high-profile media figure: to be returned smoothly to the new ‘difficult’, ‘interesting’, etc. House of Commons?

Or am I shaky, nervous of crowds, with incipient prostate, bowel and basal cancers; demi-deaf in one (right) ear, completely non-functionally impotent with a limited lifespan and an enormous crowd of ill-wishers waiting for me to fall over?”

This entry (from February 28th, 1991) also caught my attention:

“The Gulf War is over. Too soon, I think. Bush has ordered a ceasefire. Now a long and messy interlude with Saddam stalling and dodging and quite likely to start shooting again. The Foreign Office has no idea what it wants. Never seems to have given any thought to the post-war pattern, the western military presence, commitments – OBJECTIVES.”

Doesn't anyone at The Corner have a good word for Mr. Letterman, who spent his Christmas hanging with the troops in Afganistan?
We have an anti-Sean Penn here and nobody notices.

As I sit here listening to the radio, commentators on the BBC's Radio 4 PM show are discussing the North Korean crisis. The spin? Pyongyang may have been driven to this by the 'axis of evil' speech.

It's sometimes difficult to avoid the conclusion that some of these clowns might have seen Churchill's (admittedly rather more eloquent) pre-war speeches about the Third Reich as 'unnecessarily provocative'.

NRLC has no way to evaluate the validity of claims that a cloned human infant has been born, and that other women are carrying unborn human clones. But what is know for sure is this: Multiple laboratories in the U.S. are working towards mass creation of cloned human embryos to use in research that will kill them. In order to prevent such human embryo farms, and the other horrors of human cloning that will follow, the Senate must act quickly to pass the Brownback-Weldon cloning ban. NRLC believes that every member of the human species should be recognized as a human being with intrinsic human rights, regardless of the circumstances of his or her creation. This position is in contrast with the suggestion of some that a clone -- whether embryo, fetus, or newborn -- should not be regarded as a "human being."

There's been a rash of stories about how the giant media company had ties with the Nazis. On Monday the Wall Street Journal did a leader on how execs aren't telling the whole story etc. The Times did similar stories in the Fall. Now, I think it's safe to say helping the Nazis is never a good thing. But are we supposed to be shocked that a German publisher had to work with Nazis in order to stay in business? I thought everybody had to do this. Of course, there was no comparable problem in USSR, where there were no private publishers. And yet working directly for the Soviet State isn't nearly as bad as working for a private German firm, maybe because if you held the Russians to that standard everyone would be guilty because everyone worked for the State. Anyway, if Bertelsmann is guilty of things we don't know about, by all means let's hear about it. But spare me the shocking revelation that Nazism in Germany was abetted by Germans.

Two Towers yesterday. Deciding whether to write at length or just in Corner. Generally, I liked it. But I saw it at a bad theater and I'm kicking myself -- and considering how inflexible I am that's pretty impressive.

42-year-old Marlene Ponce from North Carolina, described in the London Daily Mail as “exuberant”, “tiny” and “sobbing and wailing with excitement” succeeded in breaking through the security cordon to present Prince William with a greetings card on Christmas Day. So far so good. It turns out, however, that the kindly Ms. Ponce also gave the prince a Christmas gift - “a large block of American chocolate”.

American chocolate? That wasn’t a good move. Despite the tragic absence of Marmite, pork pies and chicken-flavored crisps, American food is, on the whole, better than the offerings available in Blighty. This is, not, however true of chocolate. Hersheys may try their best, but if Marlene really wants to impress her prince she needs to go to a traditional British sweet shop and load up on Aero, Flake, Maltesers, Bounty and maybe a Cadbury’s crème egg or two.

Robert, I’d vowed not to do any more on the punky-cons controversy (lots of e-mail on this whole topic by the way, interestingly), but I have to disagree with you on who you categorize as ‘superstars’. In the old country, at least, both the Damned and the Stranglers (saw ‘em once in 79 – the guy I went with managed to lose a shoe for some, unexplained, reason) were also considered to be in the top rank.

Thanks though for reminding me about the Undertones and, of course, “Another Girl, Another Planet”. Memories!

Expect some criticism over your inclusion of Plastic Bertrand. That trendiest of Belgians (or was he French?) already came under fire from some of my correspondents a couple of days ago…

Also in the New Yorker, an interesting profile (no link, alas) of Joe Nickell, a man whose day job is acting as the only full-time investigator for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (“CSICOP”). The writer of the piece records how he had been with Nickell at the Fourth World Skeptics Conference and notes that it is “hard to believe such gatherings exist” (not if you read NRODT – we covered the first such conference back in the 1990s), but then gets, I think, to the heart of why skepticism always finds it difficult to win a constituency:

“No matter how clever the proof, the result is to replace the fantastic with the ordinary.”

As a species, alas, we would rather be entranced by dreams of the fantastic than face up to the challenges of what we so mistakenly call the ‘ordinary’.

One of the joys of a few days off for the Christmas holidays is the ability to do a little reading and, for once, make a dent in the magazine pile. The current issue of the New Yorker contains a few gems. There is, for example, Seymour Hersh on the ‘controversy’ (what controversy?) over the targeting and killing of senior Al Qaeda figures.

Naturally enough, there’s plenty of talk about that successful Hellfire missile attack in Yemen on the Al Qaeda leader, Qaed Salim al-Harethi. This extract, in particular, is worth noting:

“The Yemeni official also said that the al-Harethi operation had produced valuable diplomatic information. For example, the car bearing al-Harethi and his colleagues had Saudi plates, which led investigators to believe that al-Harethi had been shuttling back and forth along Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia. According to the official al-Harethi had obtained operating funds from Saudis”.

The Saudis, always the Saudis…

But, of course, it’s not only the Saudis.

“Al–Harethi’s last known satellite telephone call…was to a number in the United Arab Emirates, an Anerican ally that is also known to be a center of support for Muslim extremists. “Lots of money comes from the U.A.E.,” the Yemeni official said.”

Channel 4 also ran, as it does each year, an 'alternative' Christmas message’: this year from Sharon Osbourne. I caught some of it – and it seemed OK, but the best of these alternative messages was a few years ago – from the always remarkable, and sadly missed, Quentin Crisp. As I recall, he concluded by advising viewers to immigrate to America.

Royalists should not despair entirely. At 2.35pm today, Boxing Day, ITV1 (the main commercial rival to the BBC) is showing The Queen’s Story : the sovereign’s extraordinary life, followed at 3.05pm by The Queen’s Story : the euphoria of the Coronation in 1953, succeeded at 3.35pm by The Queen’s Story : the roots of the royal family’s problems, and then concluding (for variety) at 4.05pm with The Queen’s Story : the death of Diana.

Ah, British TV – the best in the world (or so they like to claim)…

One of the features of the British yuletide is the Queen’s Christmas message, shown at 3pm on TV on December 25th. It’s usually a perfectly pleasant blend of pap, pomp, platitude and pleasantries. This year she discussed the deaths of her sister and mother and, naturally, the success of her Golden Jubilee. In the course of this she mentioned that the celebrations had reflected Britain’s increasingly multi-ethnic heritage. Over on Channel 4’s 7pm news, however, the newscaster could not resist attributing these words on diversity to the royal “scriptwriters”. The insinuation, of course, was that her comments on this topic were insincere, a remarkable piece of editorializing in what is meant to be the ‘news’ section of the program.

I’ll look forward to the day when Blair’s speeches receive the same treatment.

Bernard Goldberg, Britain needs you.

“And now a holiday message from your friends at the American Civil Liberties Union” [sung to the tune of “Away in a Manger”]

Away with the manger. Please hide it from view. Remove the Menorah and Kwanza stuff too. A suit has been filed by the ACLU. And if you display these, you bet we will sue.

If you were P.C. then we might be OK. Could Mary be played by an Asian who's gay? Why couldn’t the Three Kings be three Swiss drag queens? We think that this Joseph should be Josephine.

And for Baby Jesus, we think you should try a differently-abled small person who's bi. We’ve one more request, though you might think it’s strange. The cattle and sheep simply must be free range.

Good.

The British press this morning is filled with tributes to Joe Strummer, a reminder of the importance that the country still attaches to the rise of punk rock in the late 1970s. This is more than just a question of musical taste or the durability of the wider punk aesthetic. Those often crude chord progressions and shouted-out lyrics turned out to have a real historical importance. They formed the soundtrack for the drama that was the collapse of Britain’s cozy, but crumbling, collectivist post-war consensus, a crisis that led, ironically, enough not to the sort of socialist republic that Strummer might have wanted – but to Mrs. Thatcher.

As for Strummer himself, he never gave up his left-wing politics, but the Daily Telegraph notes with more than a touch of satisfaction that the “former public [private] schoolboy’s lifestyle was not entirely unconventional. He read the Daily Telegraph…”

I'm a faithful reader of NRO and The Corner, but haven't subscribed to NRODT to this point because a) I rarely have time to sit down and read a print publication while at law school and b) my law school has its own subscription to NRODT that I can enjoy in the reading room on those rare occasions I have the time.
Today, however, I was out shopping (with everyone else in Kansas City, evidently) for my brother's Christmas gift, but with little success. After fighting the crowds for several hours with nothing to show and a lack of ideas, I thought "magazine subscription." But which one? No sooner did I ask the question than images flashed across my mind of the regular pleas on The Corner for readers to subscribe to NRODT. Then I thought of the hours of thoughtful entertainment and enlightenment I've received from NR...I came home immediately, got online, and ordered my brother's gift subscription.
Thanks for simplifying my holiday shopping...merry Christmas!

A faithful NYC correspondent writes:

"After a night of alcohol drinking and Gangs-of-New-York watching (just concluded), I parted ways with my comrades and headed over to the 33rd St. PATH station, for the ride home to Jersey City. Picked up a copy of WIRED Magazine at that skanky newsstand across from the McDonald's sign (you know the one), and lo! I have violated my 'no email after drinking' rule in the hope of being the first to inform you that "Crunchy Conservative" made the WIRED Jargon Watch, along with 'Newater,' 'Portal Shields' and 'Post-Traumatic Job-Switcher.'

"They define it thusly:

CRUNCHY CONSERVATIVE: Someone right of center of foreign policy and the economy but more liberal when it comes to issues associated with granola lefties, like the environment, homeschooling and alternative medicine.

"Homeschooling? Anyway. Neither NRO nor Mr. Dreher are credited, which is probably for the best. I can readily imagine 'crunchy con' turning into the 'soccer mom' of the 2004 election, and the fewer people who know it was coined by Dreher, the better. I sure wouldn't want that on my conscience. ('Course if Old Strom was elected in '48, 'Crunchy Con' would never have been coined.)

"Anyway, I'm half in the bag and should probably call it a night. Merry Christmas."

Back atcha, pal. Go put that free-range goose in the oven, open a bottle of microbrew, and imagine a Joe Strummer Christmas.

Various readers have written in with ideas as to what to do with Lenin's body, not all of them kind (and the person who suggested that it should be exhibited in the Clinton library goes too far). Another reader, who grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, took the opportunity to recount this joke from his childhood. It was apparently, a difficult time for the Czech party leadership. Stalin had been discredited, so Lenin had to be boosted as the good cop to Stalin's bad. Children were taught about a kindly, gentle and benevolent Lenin, and here's a joke that sprung up in response:

It was the anniversary of Lenin's death and a newspaper reporter is interviewing Lenin's widow, Comrade Krupskaya. Krupskaya explains to the journalist that one of the most impressive things about Lenin had been "his love for people''.

The journalist asks for a specific example.

"When we were in exile in Finland, we had to hide in some farmer's barn. One morning Vladimir Ilyich was shaving and a small boy came in and watched him shave.''

The reporter expects the story to continue but Krupskaya seems to be finished. Puzzled, he asks how this anecdote reveals Lenin's love for the people.

Krupskaya is startled that any further explanation is necessary. ``Well there he was, alone, with the boy, holding a straight razor ...he could have easily slashed his throat ... and he didn't.''

Jan Morris is the author of what is, for me, the finest history of the British Empire (a trilogy comprising Heaven’s Command, Pax Britannica, and Farewell the Trumpets), a mesmerizing mix of epic, travelogue and deft character sketches. There’s more than a touch of this style in a wonderful piece on her recent european travels in the Christmas edition of the London Spectator.

Here she is on the Habsburg empire:

“Looking back at the old Dual Monarchy from a safely vicarious distance, I always love the memory of it, the yellow of its barrack walls, the pomp of its railway stations, the sickly thump of its waltzes; and when, almost at the end of our journey, we inadvertently tried to cross into Slovenia via the wrong frontier post, I was thrilled to find our way courteously barred by a gloriously authentic, uniformed figure direct from The Gold Soldier Svejk, bumble, billowing moustache and all.”

Enjoy.

England’s top judge, Lord Chief Justice Woolf, has just issued new sentencing guidelines for burglary. His advice, prompted partly by prison overcrowding, is that most ‘first time’ burglars (and even certain categories of repeat offender) should not be imprisoned except in the most extreme circumstances. As theories of deterrence go this is nuts. In particular, it goes against lessons learned in the US, a country where higher rates of incarceration help explain why the property crime rate is now lower than in the UK. Of course, there is also another explanation. As was noted in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph:

“American burglars are further deterred by the risk of being shot by the householder.”

And isn’t that great.

With worries that Britain might still be contemplating at least a partial handover of Gibraltar to Spain, Gibraltar’s government has now started using a new weapon – the London taxi. I spotted one today, emblazoned in the colors of the British flag, and covered with slogans advertising Gib as “Britain in the Sun” and a “Home from Home”. Officially, of course, this was all just aimed at persuading Brits to visit Gibraltar on vacation – but the real message was clear:

The place just isn't Spanish.