The Slog takes this opportunity (before further complication adds to the obfuscation) to wonder about selective FBI raids, the forthcoming Covid19 blame-game, the name-change game, the intrusion of reality into the climate-change myth, the denialism of the BBC, the antics of the New York Times, and the new post-millennium techie Luddites

It’s beginning to look more and more like the FBI “raids” on Joe Biden’s various homes are a case of ‘going through the motions’. The alacrity alone with which Sleepy invited them to conduct a ransack fest is rather telling – but whatever you believe, the “story” thus created has resulted in the classic ‘Nothing found at Biden residences’ headline. Everest not climbed today, and so forth.

A far more intriguing approach would have been to ask what they were looking for, given that ‘other residences linked to the President’ did reveal some irregularities….but we don’t know what they were either, and we’re not likely to find out. One wonders why, if the old retainers at Hoover Hall are so keen to find documents, it’s never so much as opened the 2020 election dossier on Democrat cheating given to them by Rudy Giuliani; yet they somehow seem to know that the former Mayor is guilty of malpractice in “conspiring with Donald Trump to falsely suggest irregularities in the election of President Biden”. Leaving aside split infinitives, that one has Upcoming Show Trial written all over it.

Perhaps this is the new virus heavily forecast by the crystal ball of Mystic Meg Microsoft, aka Bill Gates: code-named Paperchain23, its cunning virology lies in an ability to make Top Secret Pentagon bioweapon plans disappear, or at other times to read a closed dossier from a distance of 26 months, make a washed-up Ukrainian actor $1.3 billion in under four years and predict that China is about to invade the Philippines.

Thankfully, the miraculous P23 has one hugely beneficial side effect: a quite astonishing knack of stopping global warming in its tracks:

“This could be the secret weapon we’ve all been waiting for,” suggested planet saver in chief St Aloysius Gore, adding with a wry smile, “but then, I’ve already trousered 300 million bucks, and so in that context I’m sure you’d understand why I don’t give a hoot or a holler either way.” His lack of enthusiasm may well have been further diluted by the news last Monday that, using the old (and thus obviously useless) method of actually going to the Antarctic and sticking an ice-build recorder into the snow has shown that the depth of cap has grown by fifteen per cent in the last seven years.

None of this has had the remotest effect on former top Labour and current non-job holder Ed Miliband, so we must assume that he’s immune to P23, because Minigland (the chap who gave you hundreds of irreparable propellers in the North Sea) continues to plough ahead with his zero-carbon plans. Our roving reporter Saul Bollocks obtained an exclusive interview with Big Ed last week and asked him about the failure of zero-carbon in Germany, where most of the population is now burning the domestic furniture in a desperate bid not to freeze to death while saving the Planet from brutally obvious overheating. Milibean [right] responded as follows:

“Oh God no, you’ve got it quite wrong there Saul,…you see, you’re still stuck in this warming groove, when – if we are going to follow the settled science properly – we have to take the more eclectic route of referring to climate change. Profound thinkers – as opposed to nutty deniers – dig deeper into the issue, and see it as one of symptomology rather than the sterile hot versus cold debate that has held us back for so long”.

Right then. Everything is complex in the 21st century, because elegant simplicity is for simpletons: eyes deceive, ears mishear, smells mislead, taste over-promises and touch is lust. The only answer is to ignore the empirical in favour of the catechismic. This must be why the kitchen area in my new apartment is graced by something called a Smart Inverter Compressor. I’m obviously a grumpy old denialist because, on my spectrum of consciousness, it looks exactly like a fridge – or, for other nationalities – refrigerator, ice box, frigo, koelkast, Kühlschrank etc.

Still, it’s guaranteed for ten years: so if at any point it stops compressing the smartness or inverting the compression, I shall be making a formal complaint.

Time now for a little gratuitous laughter at the expense of women who have what my mother used to call “an unfortunate face”. Given the slapdash composition of this BBC news shot (in which we can’t see the canine element at all) it’s hard to avoid the impression that the pet owner was the object of the term ‘dog’. Certainly, if anyone needs a makeover then it would be the young lady going into pies-rehab, not her four-legged friend: but if I was her, I’d sue the BBC’s arse off on the grounds of (a) denigration (b) sloppiness and (c) being the BBC, which institution remains in our culture the most obvious example of untried treason.

For many years up until around 2017, when people laid into the Beeb, my stock answer was always, “Be careful what you wish for” because the main alternative on offer was Sky – a company pioneered by Rupage Threedoch, whose newspapers specialise in vindictive accusation and celebrity expressed largely through the medium of female tits ‘n’ ass and unconstitutional meddling. Mr Murdoch was (in case you forgot) the source of all phone hacking in the UK, and when summoned to a public Inquiry confessed himself to be unfit to plead on the grounds that he really had no idea who he was.

These days, I take a more balanced view: I would fire everyone at the BBC and levy a 300% tax on every Murdoch dish and newspaper sold. This wouldn’t achieve much beyond making me feel better on waking up each morning, but the desire to achieve that end was inspired by watching John Smuggy Sopel taking the piss out of Brexiteers live on a Channel supported by the very taxpayers he so obviously despises.

None of the above is (of course) the answer – which is to constitutionally forbid any State or monied influence being applied to the MSM. There is no rationale at all for BBC News, France24 or indeed any other Establishment funded (direct or indirect) means of biased media communication. And joking apart, that really is a non-negotiable principle that every 1in8 Radical Realist ought to try and accept. Broadcasting nothing that’s knowingly biased is journalism: propaganda is merely the furtherance of a mendacious belief system.

Talking of the New York Times, if one can manage to plough through the 63 articles about Russia being on the verge of defeat and China quaking in its boots because of US soldiers in the Phillipines, there’s an interesting piece about the so-called ‘Teen Luddites’ who have decided at last that Smartphones are naff, and it’s time addicted users got a life. The group started getting noticed towards the end of last year, and now its 17 year old founder and leader Logan Lane is becoming something of a celebrity sufficient to have attracted the attention of Arianna Huffandpuffington. One must grasp every encouraging sign as it floats by, and I for one would salute post-millennials this movement if it turns into deeper suspicions about smartphone self-surveillance.

If the NYT continues to be off-message about these Luddites, expect an early article from Fauci about the dangers of being out of touch with loved ones in metropolitan areas where paedophiles roam free, or – even worse – little Laura not picking up her app notification of booster needs and thus falling victim to a pimple somewhere unpleasant.

Despite all this, the NYTimes continues to be a truly awful attempt to be the Stalinist Izvestya of its time. For some reason, it has become the go-to for when you want to check how a place-name or Eastern surname is being spelt this week. Kiev is now irreversibly Kyiv, the late Mao Tse Tung lives on as Moishe Dung the Jewish shit-shifter – and Peking will now forever be Beijing, but the jury’s still out on how many y’s there are in Zelenskyyyyy’s surname. In India, Kalkatter is holding steady and Sri Lanka is what it is. But nobody orders Beijing duck or drinks Sri Lanka tea. And to confuse you further, the country called the Philippines is full of people called Filipinos.

It makes one think. Suppose the Chinese eventually invade us, and start spelling the capital City Rondon, or my favourite city Riverpoor. Then later still we throw them out and change the names back to Londinium and Scousetown.

From now on, I think the World Economic Foundation* should decide on such matters, ensuring that nobody need be confused by phonetics or euphemism.

For example, let’s stop farting about with NATO and call it GUSTO (Greater United States Terrorist Obscenity).

By the same token, the IMF should be rebranded as HIV (Hopelessly Ignorant Vision).

And to finish off, let’s get real about the EU and call it out as FRENCHUMBUG (Fourth Reich Elementary No Competition Hubris Monopoly Bungled Gravy-train).

*The more ironically sharp-eyed among you will have spotted the element of sarcasm in this analysis. The question left unanswered is whether the GUSTO of the HIV will ever be enough to bring French Humbug to its senses.

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