Between the Hammer and the Anvil

How Hitchens Saved Aggressive American Wingnuttery From The Wrath Of A Lefty Film-Maker

2011-12-22T14:17:00.007Z

Picture the scene: It's early June 2004, and I'm on holiday in Massachusetts, the heartland of Democratic America. The skies are blue and flags are flying. Even in this bluest-of-blue states, you'd never know that the United States is currently embroiled in its largest, most violent war since Vietnam.

The news channels are talking about Ronald Reagan 24/7, in preparation for the old fraud's funeral. Over and over, It's morning in America, he made Americans feel good about America. At a friend's house, a bunch of us watch the Patriots edge out the Panthers in a re-run of Super Bowl XXXVII over beer and barbecue chicken. American football is incomprehensible - I have no idea what's happening on the screen or why.

In an internet cafe, the BBC News webpage describes car bombs and death in Iraq and how Attorney General John Ashcroft has denied government involvement in military torture programmes. The BBC correspondent Frank Gardner has just been shot and crippled in Saudi Arabia, and his cameraman Simon Cumber killed.

In the mornings, I watch a little TV and buy the Boston Globe or the New York Times. Click, click, click - channel after channel, newspaper after newspaper, it's dead President, sports, lifestyle, sports. What political news there is, is anodyne, he-said-she-said piffle. When Iraq gets a mention, it's because the President has compared the invasion and occupation to World War II. USA! USA!

Then one morning, I find Fox News. I'm vaguely aware of it and watch a few minutes - it's a repeat of the previous day's Bill O'Reilly Show, and big Bill is pissed off. Michael Moore, who I know from The Awful Truth and Bowling For Columbine, has made a new film that claims George W. Bush bombed the Twin Towers, or something. Michael Moore is a traitor, a communist and is also fat.

I enjoy my holiday - visit New York, Cape Cod, Walden Pond and so on, and then head home with a suntan, some duty free and whacking great stars 'n' stripes I bought to use up the last of my dollars.

Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 hits the news channels like a thunderbolt. It's a one-eyed, entirely partisan demolition job on the Bush administration's response to the Al Qaeda attack on America and its subsequent invasion of Iraq. It makes a series of specific and powerful claims...

1) That President Bush is a chump. Most Americans have never seen the film footage of him sitting dumbly in that classroom listening to a reading from a children's book while the World Trade Centre burns. Now, it's being shown on heavy rotation on cable news.

2) That the Bush administration is so closely intertwined with the Saudi royal family that it spirited Bin Laden family members out of the country at its behest. Moore asks, can these people be trusted to have Americans' best interests at heart?

3) That the US government intentionally exploited Americans' fear and alarm to stampede through regressive legislation and to launch a war on Iraq that was based almost entirely upon a series of astonishing lies and propaganda wheezes.

4) That the American media obediently reported everything that the government told it to, without seriously questioning any aspects major or minor, and that

5) US soldiers and Iraqi civilians are dying in large numbers thanks to that war, and that the administration that launched it are utterly clueless on what to do about it.

America has no idea what to make of the film. It contradicts everything that they've been told, everything they take for granted.

The news channels and print press, as is the way of things in the US, report the controversy. The Democratic Party welcomes bad press for their political foes, but are as always too spineless to seize the opportunity, afraid to appear weak or unpatriotic.

The Republicans and their media creatures flail desperately, hurling insults and denials this way and that, but the damage is done. The frame has shifted - the discussion is no longer about Saddam Hussein's invented Al Qaeda links and fictional weapons, but is about whether the Bush administration is full of liars and the war on Iraq unjust and insane.

For the first time, America is on the verge of seeing itself the way that the rest of the world has seen it, this past few years - as a dangerous, wounded animal lashing out at easy targets, led by mendacious propagandists and opportunists. The US diplomatic service is so alarmed that it attempts to block screenings of the film.

It's a precarious time. The presidential election is coming up in November, and things have taken a disastrous turn for the Bush admin. Somebody needs to do something to shore up their wounded, leaking public image, before the damage becomes serious.

But what's that portly figure on the horizon? He's striding towards us with determination and a glint in his eye, hiking up his trousers around his rotund waist and steeling his will. Who is this man? What could he possibly want?

Why, it's Christopher Hitchens, and he's here to save the day for war, destruction and the Republican Party! Hallelujah, brothers, for Hitchens has rescued the American People from reality!

I exaggerate, of course. Hitchens' piece was the first serious attempt to rebut Moore's movie, and he scores some good hits. The Afghanistan section is, as Hitch says, pissweak stuff, a work of circumstantial innuendo worthy of Hitchens himself.

Michael Moore has always been a kind of populist Hitchens, minus the overwrought prose and Oxbridge education, and without the mania for war, death, murder and destruction. In another life, they should've been lovers. They were perfect for each other, each as hackish as the other in pursuit of political goals.

But even now, you have to marvel at how Hitchens rallied the troops to the flag. I don't exaggerate when I say that US wingnuts were flailing, howling incoherently over Fahrenheit 9/11. For the first time in three years, they'd utterly lost control of The Message, and all manner of horrible leftist goblins were springing out of the ground to ask dangerous questions about President Bush's statements, actions and integrity.

Enter Hitchens the Englishman of the left, to save the President from an American, socialist anti-war activist.

We can immediately dispense with every single one of Hitchens' complaints about Moore's honesty. As we saw yesterday, Hitchens was an expert bullshitter who could and did effortlessly match Moore's most ludicrous elisions and misdirections.

We can also dismiss his comparison of Moore to Leni Reifenstahl with a chuckle. Say what you like about Michael Moore, but his angry-ordinary-Joe act never got anyone killed. You can't say the same for Hitch's gleefully ridiculous poacher-turned-gamekeeper schtick.

Marvel also that Hitchens, who propped up his later career with the comical pretense that his full-throated endorsement of official US government policy was an act of exemplary political courage, had the GIANT BRASS BALLS OF STEEL required to commit the following sentence to paper...

(the film) ..."Is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery".

"Abject political cowardice", says the man who spent who knows how many hours defending such glorious paragons of virtue as Ahmad Chalabi and Paul Wolfowitz! Well, we can at least have a laugh as he tries to de-schmuckify Bush's toe-curling encounter with The Pet Goat or his infamous "Now watch this drive!" scene, as he ran the War on Terror from the golf course.

Hitchens' complaint that Moore shows pre-war Iraq by depicting kite-flying children and happy families has now entered pro-war folklore. The kite-flying kiddies, followed immediately by the shattering aerial assault on Baghdad, are all a sub-Hitchens goon like Nick Cohen need invoke any time he mentions Moore, confident that his point is made. And yet...

Let's be blunt. As a depiction of the victims of the Iraq War, Moore's choice of clips are a million times more representative than Hitchens' unending war against Saddam and whoever he was calling Genocidal Fascists on any given day. The lowest, definitely undercounting estimate for civilian deaths in Iraq is in the region of 100,000 and I'd happily place a bet that for every fanatical terrorist whose end Hitchens celebrated, a thousand happy families lost a parent, a sibling or a child, kite or no.

The point of lowest bathos comes when Hitchens tries to explain that, contra Moore's claim, Iraq did attack Americans. Iraq started it! Why, they sheltered Abu Nidal! You remember Abu Nidal? Most won't because nobody gave a fuck about one elderly terrorist, before or after the war, barring Hitchens.

They sheltered Abu Musab al Zarqawi! If they did, of course - and I can't establish this one way or the other - it's in the sense that the US "sheltered" the 9/11 hijackers, since Zarqawi was as murderously disposed towards the various tyrannies of the Middle East as he was to the US. Hitchens certainly knows this, yet says it anyway. Honesty and truth, indeed.

Iraqi ground units shot at American planes patrolling the No-Fly Zone over Iraq! Well, on and on he goes. You can imagine what type of film all of these caveats would feature in, what form of documentary Hitch might prefer to see.

"At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer".

Says Hitchens, the famously objective, well-mannered gentleman*.

Hitchens' gripes get more bizarre - about Moore's "affected and ostentatious concern for Black America", as if Hitch has never affected ostentatious concern for the people he actively advocates bombing. He demands to know whether Moore would support a military draft, or the draft riots of 1863. Thankfully, he doesn't ask whether Mike is still beating his wife.

Hilariously, given his well-known habit of minimising and diverting from American crimes and fuck-ups, he also trots out this humdinger of a line...

"In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence".

Yoy.

Well anyway, you know the rest. The wingnut literati all promiscuously linked to Hitchens' piece, expanded and wanked up the most egregious of his points and soon enough, they steadied the rocking Republican ship. The monster Moore was repelled, sent wailing and thrashing back into the depths of the sea, and the world made safe for the US government's insane wars. President Bush squeaked re-election. Both his administration and its criminal ineptitude passed into history, leaving the rest of the planet with the Mother of All Economic And Military Fuck-Ups in our laps.

The big barbecue in Fallujah was only months away; coalition forces continued to bleed troops until the great slaughter of the Iraqi civil war ensued, murdering thousands upon thousands of civilians in an orgy of horrifying violence and blood-letting. The coalition lost almost five thousand men and women killed and tens of thousands more injured. Many thousands of veterans continue to struggle badly with adjustment to civilian life, with far higher rates of homelessness, unemployment and mental illness than the norm. The bodycount for Iraqis is too large to accurately count.

The Iraq War has gone down in history as one of the most needless and wasteful military disasters of the modern era and the killing is a long way from finished yet.

Chris Hitchens continued to make highly tendentious, fork-tongued arguments for violence and mayhem, picking up fat paycheques for angrily denouncing those of his former colleagues on the left who had the temerity to complain about war. He died in 2011, on the same day that the occupation of Iraq ended. Tributes poured in from all quarters, although many of the wingnuts who once fed on the scraps from his table denounced him as an antisemite and a commie for insufficient pro-Israel belligerence.

Michael Moore made successful films about American healthcare reform and the injustices of capitalism. A few years later, a programme of subsidised healthcare was instituted and world capitalism burned its own house down in an orgy of greed and recrimination.

History, I think, will be kinder to one than it will to the other, Literary Lion or not.

Anyway, let's leave the last word to Hitchens, since he isn't here to speak for himself.

...If you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.

Oh, yes. Those are words to live by alright, Chris.

*On the topic of sneering and jeering, see this passage, quoted from Lawyers, Guns & Money...

“If you wanted more Iraqi support,” Atiyyah bellowed at Hitchens,” you should have given us more money and food once you got there!”

“So you’re saying, sir, that you can be bought,” Hitchens shot back...

...If I didn’t deeply dislike Hitchens already, that would do it. He’s talking to one of the leaders of one of the liberal Iraqi institutions upon which the future of Iraq depends. There’s no way that the guy has the resources he needs. And Hitchens has the gall to talk about humanitarian aid and support for his projects as if it was some sort of bribe that Atiyyah should have the self-respect to refuse. You want more money for the military? Are you saying, sir, that the United States Armed Forces can be bought? I shall have to say good day to you, sir!

Pure class, our Chris.

Not On Their Own Merits, But According To Who Does Them

2011-12-21T15:19:00.018Z

As is the way when controversial figures die, the obituary season for Chris Hitchens has now firmly moved from ludicrously overblown hagiography to withering disparagement of his supposedly immense intellect and allegedly high principles.

He's been mourned by many of the great political and literary writers of the modern era, and also by Martin Amis*. He's been equally damned by others. I've read enough of both to discern the traces of truth in both analyses.

As writer and debater, he was capable both of soaring, rousing rhetoric and of the most idiotic jiggery-pokery, sometimes simultaneously. Hitchens contained multitudes, more so than most, for he was large in every sense of the word.

I'm one of those whom his eulogists regretfully refer to as "People who only read him in his later years". I recall his extended TV smackdown of the Princess Diana debacle well and agreed with much of it. I thoroughly enjoyed The Trial of Henry Kissinger, although I suspect much of that is due to Dr Hank's shared position with Nixon in my all-time list of Men I Would Dearly Love To Kick Up The Arse Very Hard Indeed. I avoided his Orwell book, since excerpts made it sound much like Why Orwell Agreed With Me About Everything. I read and remember nothing of his Tom Paine tribute. Letters To a Young Contrarian was far too irritating to finish, thanks to its intense and florid focus upon Hitchens' favourite subject - himself.

As someone who came late to his work, I'm in a good position to assess where Hitchens' many manias led him. I can't comment much on his lit crit or his non-political writing - his pieces on why women aren't funny and the joy of blowjobs, respectively, quickly put me off following him into the darker recesses of his mind.

If I can contribute one thing to the debate, I'd like to correct the major flaw in the reporting of his life and death - the idea that he was despised by many on the left because they felt "betrayed by his support for the invasion of Iraq".

Well, yes and no, folks. This is a bit like saying that lots of people dislike Alex Ferguson because he's been so successful - the basic point is true, but it omits certain very relevant details of Sir Alex's character and behaviour. Hitchens, like Fergie in defeat, was constantly obstinate, mendacious and entirely ungracious when it came to his Great Personal Battle Against Fascism. Like Ferguson, he attracted fierce criticism, much of it entirely justified.

Lots of people, many of them far smarter than me, supported the invasion of Iraq and yet didn't suffer the same vilification. To pick just one example - Johann Hari was at least as vicious and one-eyed in his Iraq hawkery as Hitchens, and yet many who should have known better leaped to his defence when he was later caught telling porkies. The same people would've damned Hitchens.

From the very start, Hitchens' writings on Iraq exceeded some of the wildest predictions of the second-rate history professors of the Bush administration. His invasion would be a mighty demonstration of arms, followed by a rapturous welcome and a heavenly shower of laptops and consumer goods. Would it increase the threat of terrorism? Not likely.

He had open contempt for those who warned that the invasion was a deadly disaster in waiting and worse for those who suspected the motives of the Bush administration. He was quick to attribute pro-Hussein, terror-loving fascistical sympatheticalness to both and dished out such condemnations promiscuously, to those who deserved it and those who didn't.

The most glaring example came in the immediate post-invasion period, when he offered us a stark, either-or choice between the now-legendary thieves and looters of mercenary services company Halliburton and Saddam Hussein himself.

When it later became clear that Halliburton and other such contractors had ripped off bajillions of dollars in Iraqi and American cash in exchange for goods and services that were faulty or non-existent, Hitchens neither apologised nor justified. Rather than re-examine a critical failure of the war, one that he had defended aggressively, he demanded to know which corporation a President (John) Kerry "should after all have got the contract to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry".

"Not invading Iraq in the first place", of course, was always off the table.

And this was the Hitchens method of political writing in the 2000s all over. He'd make a series of highly risky claims; inflate a tendentious reading of the situation into an issue of world-historical significance; declare that precise agreement with him was a black-or-white test of character and then, when events proved him wrong, move the goalposts as far as it took to reach a position of being sort of half-right. Maybe.

If you looked at it with your eyes screwed up a bit.

His writings throughout the decade were chock-full of such banalities. How important were Hussein's supposed weapons of genocide as a war aim? It depended on how Hitchens was feeling on any given day. "Just you wait", he famously told doubters. When no weapons were found, he announced that this proved the righteousness of the operation. Later, the sound of scurrying would announce that Hitch had moved the goalposts again - now, the invasion and quest for mythical WMDs was Hussein's fault, since he pretended to have weapons.

When a US patrol responded to an insurgent attack by going berserk in Haditha, Iraq, killing a large number of civilians, the pro-war case for the defence should've been obvious - simply, say that war exerts terrible pressures on soldiers, some of whom may be bad apples themselves, but that one incident didn't invalidate the entire war.

Hitchens' response was an exercise in jaw-dropping hackery. Rather than confront the issue head on, he rooted out some joker comparing Haditha to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; pronounced the comparison an intolerable slur on the nobility of the Viet Cong (!), and proceeded to lecture us all for the millionth time upon the awfulness of the Iraqi insurgents. In the same column, he assigned blame to those who called for less violence by the US armed forces for the disasters of our wars.

When US soldiers slaughtered innocents in hot blood, Hitchens' responded by booming in high dudgeon that the Iraqi insurgency were more evil than the lovely VC. Well, no shit, Chris, you told us that a thousand times and we said we agreed. And? Are there perhaps some issues going unadressed in your critique here?

Evasion, retrenchment, misdirection, ad hominem assaults. These were his weapons in his Great Intellectual Struggle, a cause in which he clearly regarded himself as an intellectual Field Marshall, sending his fellow word-warriors into combat.

Pick your Iraq-related controversy, and Hitchens had a highly-conditional, deeply duplicitous argument ready for deployment. When a survey revealed a massive death toll resulting from the war, Hitchens invoked a nebulous "some percentage" of the bodycount who were maybe, probably murderous baddies.

What percentage? Hitchens neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was reducing the damage to the war effort, to allow it to continue unimpeded in all it's righteous violence.

On the torture, rape and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: Bad, but not Guernica and anyway, not as bad as Saddam.

Cindy Sheehan, a woman with some wacky opinions who also happened to be the mother of a dead US soldier? Not so much an exploited, grieving woman as a moral blackmailer, said his angry hatchet job.

When he was embarrassingly suckered by the obvious fraudster Ahmad Chalabi - Other candidates would be worse.

On Iraq's horrifying civil war, a situation resulting entirely from the decision to invade in the first place - your problem, you fucking deal with it if you want to end the war so much... Or, in one of his favourite gambits - Al Qaeda ate my homework.

He was a shameless propagandist for the US government's most crass lies. On the fraudulent connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, he shoehorned the most credulous horseshit into print: "It was, I was told... '70 percent likely' that Atta came to Prague to meet [the Iraqi secret policeman Ahmed] Al-Ani." That lie about the 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta stayed in play for years afterwards.

Long after the neo-conservatives themselves fell silent on Hussein's supposed weapons programmes, Hitch was still flogging the corpse of the Niger uranium claim. When the Bush administration fell prey to its own idiocy in the Plamegate affair, Hitchens was there to defend its honour once more.

Quibbles, distractions, irrelevant diversions. When the President of the United States recently claimed for himself the right to murder any person that he may regard as a threat, including US citizens, Hitchens was on hand to pimp the most idiotic argument of all...

"Those who share my alarm at the prospect of (state-sanctioned murder beyond judicial oversight) and of the ways in which it could be abused, are under a heavy obligation to say what they would do instead".

That's Christopher Hitchens, the courageous opponent of tyranny, demanding that you provide an alternative to state murder. Whatever, Hitch - I thought you said pathos, not bathos.

Policemen would recognise all of these tactics from interrogations. Caught out in a lie, criminals don't confess - they back up and tell half the truth. They admit to minor wrongdoing here and to errors of judgement there, then retreat to a fresh, fortified position of essential innocence.

A court psychologist would recognise a criminal's refusal to face the human toll of his misdeeds, and would diagnose denial. If the subject declared his intent to continue in the same behaviour - in Hitchens' case, by demanding the invasion of Iran - the shrink would most certainly diagnose psychopathy. "A lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, egocentrity and deceptiveness".

That was Hitchens in the last decade; a man who bayed for the blood of jihadists yet shrank from reality when his favoured policy inflicted a far higher toll on the innocent. A man who spent countless hours attempting to turn advocacy for official US government policy into an act of astounding courage; a man who regarded denouncing former friends in his purplest prose as an enterprise of awesome significance and consequence.

He travelled to the far-flung places of the Earth, only to discover upon arrival that he was even more right about everything than even he had previously suspected. He spent the decade building himself a platform with rebellious, outsider indignation, from which to better side with the most powerful people on the planet. The type of man who non-ironically denounces "Iranian interference in our affairs" when he means American-occupied Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

There are many words that would describe this type of behaviour, and none of "courageous", "principled" or "humanitarian" fit the bill. Courageous people don't invent ridiculous schemas to make their minor controversial acts seem more brave, nor do men of high principles revise and retrench their positions in adversity. Humanitarians do not make war gladly and recklessly, with a song of joy in their hearts.

No, the appropriate words are "Hack", "Bullshitter" and "Fraudster". I don't use these richly-deserved insults to imply that he wasn't talented. He was a highly-gifted hack, an awe-inspiring bullshitter and a first-rate fraudster. These are disciplines which require inventiveness, initiative and application, and Hitchens had them in spades.

Still. His much-vaunted principles were so crooked that they wound up resembling corkscrews. If he'd been Russian, he'd have spent his declining years denouncing Putin's foes as traitors and demanding ever-heavier firepower be brought to bear on Grozny.

"Georgia On My Mind - Putin Rescues Russian Civilians From Genocidal Terrorist Aggression". You know it and I know it.

Hitchens loved him some Orwell and quoted him as extensively as possible. Appropriately, Saint George once had relevant words to say about the Chris Hitchenses of this world...

“Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

You can be sure that Hitch was aware of those words, as are all of his current boosters and sycophants. It's to his friends' and supporters' great discredit that his most ludicrous contortions were most directly insulting to them. We just read this stuff and laughed, but they were expected to defend it.

And yet I recall few, if any, ever saying Yo Hitch, I think you might be gilding the lily a little there.

Anyway. When Hitchens famously debated George Galloway in New York, I can remember firing up the Youtube video in great anticipation, to see which of these two hulking beasts of the bullshit business would emerge triumphant.

What I saw was two overweight, middle-aged men trying to outdo the other's outrage over some violent acts of some violent men against certain innocent people. Both used every rhetorical weapon in their armoury to crush the other; both made liberal use of insult and hyperbole and as far as I could see, neither one gave a flying fuck whether their words were truth or bluster. They barked and snapped at each other like angry terriers for what seemed like hours, imparting not a sentence worth of reliable information between them.

I looked from Chris to George and from George to Chris, and from Chris to George again. What a pair of puffed-up, lying cockweasels, I thought.

And then, I closed the browser and read something else, written by somebody who would do me the basic favour of not cheerfully lying to my face.

I can't speak for Chris Hitchens in his youth or early middle age, so I can't evaluate his work in that era. What I will say is this - the older Hitchens was so full of shit that you could use him to fertilise all of Texas for decades.

I'm sorry that he died and I'm horrified that he went in such a godawful manner. His friends describe him as warm-hearted and charitable, even if many acquaintances don't, and even I struggle to think of him as actively bad - more clownish, buffoonish, ridiculous.

Nonetheless, if truth means anything at all, let's drag it all into the memorial and let history be the judge.

*This joke copyright Splintered Sunrise, 2011

Concern Trolling - How To...

2011-12-05T18:52:00.003Z

(Apologies - with the exception of the first part, this is going to be a salad of hyperlinks. You don't have to read 'em all, but they're there if you want to know what evidence I'm using).

The Times have been running long reports and opinion pieces on exploitation of teenage girls by gangs of Asian men for the last couple of weeks. The bare facts are horrifying - men of all ages scheming and plotting together to entice and abuse wee girls with the most cynical and nasty of manipulations and inducements. To prison with the lot of them, say I, and don't spare the public disgrace or the Draconian sentences.

Another aspect of their coverage struck me as altogether weirder, though - an insistence on addressing the issue as specifically Asian/Muslim criminal behaviour. Well, it struck me as a bit odd. After all, sexual abuse and organised sexual abuse between co-conspirators is hardly restricted to Asian or Muslim men... But the figures do appear to back up the contention that this type of crime is committed by those overlapping ethnic/religious groups, disproportionately to their percentage of the populace.

Well, okay I figure. The same goes for forced marriages, and we're fine with discussing that in ethnoreligious terms, so let's give it a go.

And then I notice the single common factor to each piece (I'll paraphrase, since the Times is paywalled) in that almost every one - report, leader, opinion piece - starts with the premise that the topic is taboo; that discussing it in racial/religious terms opens the speaker up to malicious attacks from the Politically Correct mob; that, in short, the Times isn't allowed to discuss this stuff in these terms.

Wait a minute, I think. You're the nation's paper of record, and you're telling your readership that you're not allowed to report on the things which you are in fact reporting on, in the specific terms in which you're reporting upon them?

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I think to myself, they must be worried about a terrible overreaction from the PC Brigade, however they're defining that much-maligned group. So I go looking for these awful liberals who are out to destroy the country's most well-known broadsheet for its brave truth-telling, and...

Well, no doubt there are plenty out there. I imagine that a Bob Lambert or a Mehdi Hassan would take issue, but I'm not finding lots of evidence.

What I am finding is lots of articles along these lines, in which the Minister for Children Tim Loughton places grooming of teenagers and kids in an explicitly ethnoreligious context. I find that back in July, the same minister has previously assailed Asian communities for ignoring such crimes or actively hampering inquiries. I find that the previous Home Secretary was criticised for generalising on the subject in the same terms, and extensive coverage of the police child protection agency laying that shit out in the starkest possible terms.

This isn't only being reported in the Mail, either. It's all the major UK news agencies, including the Guardian and the BBC, reporting this issue in exactly the frame the Times are demanding. It's not taboo at all - it's everywhere.

I also find many, many more articles like this than I care to link to, making the exact same argument - that the authors aren't allowed to say what they are in fact saying, in the terms in which they are explicitly saying them, from the pages of the nation's bestselling news publications.

Naturally, I also find a bajillion race-war loonies promiscuously linking and commenting between them, each stridently convinced that they are not allowed to discuss it because of the tyrannical PC multicultural liberals, or whatever demons haunt their dreams.

Then I think back to the original Times articles, which carried lengthy comments from government ministers, police, child protection agencies and so on. Despite enthusiastic endorsement by some of the most powerful political, civil and media figures in the country, most of the pieces loudly trumpeted their scarily taboo and unmentionable content. Almost all bewail the tyranny of Political Correctness Gone Mad.

I broaden the parameters to similarly combustible topics - genital mutilation is treated identically, with howls of persecution and vicious assaults on western libruls and feminists for God knows what. Forced marriage is such an unmentionable issue that the Scottish Government have just handed the courts sweeping powers to tackle it, with a guns-blazing ministerial fanfare. Similar powers were put in place in England and Wales years ago. Honour killings are all over the papers, from the multicultural evangelists of the Guardian to the diddiest local paper.

Hell, think of the coverage of the recent riots, in which a good number of fannies pinned the blame for white kids' violence on black people, with the same wailing terror of retribution. Did David Starkey or Toby Young miss a paycheque because of their dumbass comments? Did they Falkirk, my friend.

In each case, you don't struggle to find great legions of table-thumping hacks loudly demanding to be allowed to speak about these issues without being crushed by the mighty machine of modern liberalism. They're all over the broadcast and print media, bleating about their fictional victimisation.

Let's be blunt here. If the PC Brigade are strangling discussion of these controversial issues, they're not very good at it, are they? I mean, at present, they can't even get a light entertainer sacked for saying he wants to see innocent citizens shot dead in front of their families. A terrifying New-Age Gestapo, this is not.

All of this prompts the question - if these issues are being publicly attacked by the British Government and are heavily covered in the press, why do so many hacks feel the need to invent these great phantom PC monsters, determined to destroy Our Precious Free Speech?

A couple of thoughts spring to mind. Firstly, maybe British journalists are almost all utter cretins. It's a tempting possibility, but not a realistic one.

Second, these hundreds of politicians, hacks and coppers actually do fear harmful attacks by the PC Brigade for truth-telling. I have no problem dismissing this out of hand. If I can find a bajillion articles disproving the supposed might of some speech-eating Liberal chimera, you'd better believe journalists will stumble across them in the course of their research.

To my mind, this leaves option three - the whole thing, the entire "PC Leftisses will destroy us if we dare open our mouths" act, is a ludicrous pantomime. It's all a charade aimed at inculcating a sense of offended victimhood in the minds of everybody who objects to sexual abuse and domestic tyranny... Which just happens to be more or less the entire population of the United Kingdom.

Surely it's obvious that anyone who tells you he or she isn't allowed to say the things they are saying, when they're saying them with total impunity and the full backing of the nation's political and media empires, is talking the worst, most offensive kind of bullshit? Is this in doubt?

Performances this hysterical and overblown must be aimed at some logical goal. So, I ask myself, why bother with these great, idiotic displays of pre-emptive outrage? The answer to that, I think, lies in the recent government assault on disability benefit, amongst a raft of other regressive policies.

Recall the great avalanche of ginned-up stories about moochers living large off the state that accompanied the government's vicious crackdown on disability benefit. A few papers did manage to squeeze in a few stories about people with horrific diseases being forced back into the workplace, but by and large it was open season on a class of people we were told it was okay to hate.

And that's what this is - open season, not just on Asian sex offenders or genital mutilating men who murder their daughters over forced marriage, but merely one front in a general crackdown on everyone and everything despised by the political right. Rioters, feral youth, benefit fraudsters - everyone is getting it in the neck and if there are a few innocent casualties along the way, well, you can't make an omelette without openly lying to the populace, or something.

If you object to that well, fuck you, Mr. Do-Gooder! They're as mad as Hell and they're not going to take it any more, even if they haven't been taking anything and there's nobody to give it to them!

I can't be the only one who's found the tone of what I'll laughingly call our National Discourse increasingly nasty since the economic crisis and the Coalition Government's ascension. It's like all of the dark undercurrents of the last thirty years - the pandering to the electorate's most base prejudices, the scapegoating of the poorest and the rampant fearmongering on crime - have been thrust into the foreground.

As a nation, we're going through one of the worst depressions of the modern era and our entertainments and news outlets are full of angry gypsies, predatory ethnics, violent urban vermin and grasping cripples.

Well, fuck it. If this represents some kind of fight back against an all-conquering, tyrannical PC behemoth, as my wingnut readers will claim, you do have to ask how come it's proceeding virtually unopposed. You'd think that an unstoppable empire of wheelchair-bound Somalian lesbionics students would be able to muster at least a perfunctory pushback.

Where is it?

The logical answer, of course, is that the PC Brigade is a behemoth of bullshit, intended to smuggle all kinds of viciousness past the public undetected. The answer is that we're ruled and catered to by some very unpleasant people indeed, people who are just mad keen to keep us terrified of each other, for their own foul reasons.

Hey, I can see why a lot of folk would prefer the former explanation. After all, it said so in the paper.

The Most Horrifying Thing a Blogger Can Say...

2011-12-01T21:08:00.001Z

...Is, "I'm writing some fiction as an experiment, and here is an example of it". I know this, I dread it.

And yet, here we are.

The second-most horrifying - the explanation for the self-indulgence. If I reached pensionable age without ever giving fiction a serious crack, I'd feel like I'd failed my teenage self.

I'll be back with some politics chat sometime, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month. In the meantime, here's a section from my never-to-be-published first novel. It's some background on a secondary character Who Will Later Prove To Be Important.

And by the way - when other bloggers do this, I always ignore it, so don't feel guilty for doing the same.

How Mr Inglis Fell Out With His Brother

It wasn't over a woman. Mr Inglis told Helena that was the reason, but then Mr Inglis also told Helena that he'd “hurt his brother quite badly”. That's certainly one way of describing what happened.

Mr Inglis had given the Department the crack that they were looking for, and nobody had thought to ask whether Mr Inglis might still have been gilding the lily.

Four years and two months previously, it's half-past ten in the morning. Mr Inglis is lying on the floor of his living room with a broken wrist, covered in lukewarm vodka, while Police Constables Boatswain and Dalziel kneel on his bucking back. PC Boatswain is fighting desperately to handcuff him. Mr Inglis is not cooperating with police instructions.

“Sit still!” Boatswain shouts at the back of his head. “Calm down!”

“My fuckin' arm!” roars Mr Inglis, spitting into the carpet. “My fuckin' arm, ya black bastards! Ya fuckin' black bastards!”

PC Boatswain, who is white, has heard all of these mantras of arrest before, despite his relatively tender years.

In the corner, an emaciated young woman in a sleeveless T-shirt is trying without success to climb up the wall. “Ya hairy bastard!” she shouts at Boatswain, scrabbling frantically. “Leave him alone, ya hairy black bastard!”

PC Dalziel, a female police officer, kneels on Mr Inglis' legs and shouts at the woman. “Calm down! Just calm down, we're not going to hurt you, we're here to help...”

PC Boatswain manages to cuff one wrist. As he grabs the other, Mr Inglis lets out a piercing howl that causes everyone in the room to jump, except maybe Mr Inglis' brother Billy, who is writhing, pounding on the floor close by. Billy is screeching, trying to reach a deep, ugly gash in the right-hand side of his back.

Blood pumps thick and fast from Billy's wound and seeps into the crusty carpet. PC Boatswain tries to manhandle Mr Inglis across the floor, away from the spreading stain.

“Are the paramedics coming?” PC Boatswain shouts to Dalziel.

“Two minutes”, Dalziel tells him. In the corner, the young woman is screaming now, incoherent, hysterical.

Mr Inglis kicks his legs and shoves hard against the floor with his good arm. They have to lean on him with their full weight to keep him pinned down. As Mr Inglis thunders fresh threats, PC Boatswain notices that Mr Inglis's right wrist really is broken. That's bad news for PC Boatswain.

From the street, PC Boatswain hears the sound of sirens. He looks around Mr Inglis's front room, absorbing the full scene for the first time – the screaming, stabbed man on the floor, the panicking woman, the mound of detritus from numerous meals swept onto the floor, the discarded clothes, the ripped furniture, the stained carpet.

He'd chosen policing as a career, ahead of teaching. His careers advisor, a few years back, thought he'd make a good teacher. You've got a gentle manner, the advisor had said, and they're always crying out for male teachers.

Teachers don't have to deal with this kind of thing at work, Boatswain decides.

***

“Start again”, Sergeant Melrose says, “And leave out the bit where you break the arsehole's arm with your baton this time”.

PC Boatswain leans against the side of his car and takes off his cap. He scratches his upper lip, which is covered in short brown hairs – he's been growing a moustache for charity, for sponsorship. They're in the police station's car park and the midday sun is making his forehead sweat a little.

“At approximately ten-twenty-two hours, PC Dalziel and I were on patrol in Muirhouse when we were instructed to attend at 17 Park Street in relation to a domestic disturbance. We proceeded to the scene -”

“You're not writing your fuckin' SPR son”, Melrose tells him. “Just tell me what happened”.

Boatswain sighs. “We got to the door and we could hear the guy screaming inside, screaming like he was dying. It was open, so we went in, me first. In the living room, I saw Alec Inglis waving a knife at her, Justine, the girl. I could hear Billy Inglis howling but I couldn't see him at that point”.

“Alright. And then, what did you do?” Melrose is taking notes, scratching rapidly.

“I told him, Alec, to drop the knife and he started shouting, telling me to get out of his house. I drew my baton and he just came right at me. He meant it too, he was going to do me, right there”.

“And then?”

“I struck Alec Inglis to the right thigh with my baton and grabbed his wrist, the knife-hand. We both fell onto a table and Alec Inglis was injured in the process. I restrained him until the paramedics arrived”.

Sergeant Melrose nods and tucks his notepad away. “Right, that's what goes in your report. The FMEs are in with Inglis just now. A couple of Fife police will be here in a wee while to take a statement from you, so take a minute to get it straight in your head”.

He looks at Boatswain for a moment, then claps him on the shoulder. “Are you alright son? That's a nasty situation and you did the right thing there. If it's him or you, smash the fucker, put him down. I don't ever want to have to tell your poor mother why her dippit son's been chibbed by some wee ned”.

“Aye, I'm alright, it was just...” Boatswain struggles for words. “I didn't even think. I wasn't scared until after, until I realised what had happened. I just wasn't expecting it”.

Melrose takes a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. “You don't, do you?” Blowing out smoke. “Any idea what it was all about, then?”

“We got most of the story out of the girl. You're not going to believe this... So, they're sitting watching the telly, drinking a bottle of vodka that Billy's brought round. Ten in the morning, steaming on vodka. She says they were getting on fine, then the next thing she knows, Alec's gone for a piss and come back waving a baseball bat around. He's going daft, shouting 'Where's my money, I had twenty quid, one of you's nicked it, I'll kill the pair of you', that kind of thing”.

“And that's when he stabbed Billy?”

Boatswain shakes his head. “No, they managed to calm him down. The girl, she says Alec takes these radges all the time, over nothing”.

“Aye, his old man's the same”, Melrose says, taking another puff. “Always was. The whole family's mental. Alec's big brother's been in Saughton for six years for killing some innocent punter, over nothing. Anyway, sorry, go on”.

“So, Billy calms him down. He says, Come on Alec, it'll be here somewhere, we'll look for it, and they do. They can't find it, but Alec seems to have chilled out a bit, so they think he's fine. The girl says he looks kind of weird, but calm”.

“And who's the girl?” the sergeant asks, dropping his cigarette butt and grinding it. “Is she Alec's bird?”

“Can't say”, Boatswain says. “Could be either's, could be both, she didn't tell us... Anyway, so now they're getting on happy as Larry again, watching telly. Billy says he's going to make a joint and he bends over the table in front of Alec. Suddenly Alec's up, he's got a knife from somewhere and he's stabbed Billy through the kidney, and he's standing over him shouting 'Where's my twenty quid you robbing bastard, where's my fuckin' money', all the same stuff. That's where we came in”.

Sergeant Melrose gives Boatswain a disbelieving look. “I know Alec's a nutter, a right nutter, but are you seriously telling me that he stabbed his brother in the back... because he stole twenty quid off him?”

“Oh wait”, says Boatswain, holding up a hand. “It's better than that. So, we get Alec in the back of the car and he's still going mental, greetin' about his arm now. He's shouting about how it's sore and he never done anything. What are we taking him in for? We get him back to the station and the custody sarge searches Alec, goes into his shirt pocket... And pulls a twenty pound note out of it. The dozy prick's had the money in his pocket the whole time and didn't realise it”.

Melrose stares at him, starts to speak and then stops. “Jesus”, he says eventually.

“I know, Sarge”, Boatswain says. “It's the stupidest fuckin' thing I've ever seen”.

They stand there in silence for a while, watching cars come and go.

“The hospital reckon Billy's touch and go”, Melrose says. “They say even if they can save him, he'll be on dialysis for the rest of his life”.

Boatswain puts his hat back on and stands up straight.

“Stupidest thing I've ever seen,” he says again.

Don't Blame Us When Things Get a Bit Nasty

2011-11-18T06:18:00.001Z

As Rod Liddle lands himself and his employers in even more legal problems, it's probably worth taking time to note that the Spectator itself represents one of the media's great morality tales.

As the magazine previously discovered when their embrace of Melanie Phillips nuttiest ramblings cost them a five-figure libel pay-out, this is what happens when you ditch whatever principles you once had in pursuit of cold hard cash and devote the majority of your sales strategy to "pandering to Britain's minority of hateful, arseholes". Plus, it demonstrates yet again that there's a very fine line between "liberal fundamentalism" and "Acting like as much of a godawful twat as you can in exchange for money and approval".

We'll all enjoy Rod's self-pitying cries of fake persecution while he's being impaled on the great rhino horn of the courts, so let's take a moment to remind ourselves exactly how much sympathy Rod has for those who become the architects of their own misfortune, if they happen to take employment in areas that are likely to cause them difficulties...

"You get paid a lot of money to work in Libya; the reason for this is that it’s a shit-hole presided over by a maniac... So don’t blame us when things get a bit nasty".

I feel that similar sentiments could be applied to those who intentionally act like as much of a dick about everything as they possibly can for a living. Don't you?

2011-11-14T16:47:00.003Z

And since I'm on a bit of a whinge about democracy and financial oligarchy, let's note the curious case of Jefferson County, Alabama, whose citizens have been left on the hook for a series of bajillion-dollar debt repayments.

A potted history - the county's corrupt political class, in hock with some of America's biggest banks, turned a sewerage system upgrade into a scam that ended in twenty two convictions for officials and a lifetime's worth of crushing debt for taxpayers. As for what happened next, I'll let Matt Taibbi, who's been howling about this for eighteen months, take over...

In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed — yes, that's right, bribed, criminally bribed — the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business. Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the fuck off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.

Well, Jefferson County just declared itself bankrupt and nobody is happy about it - not chief creditors JP Morgan Chase; not the receivers and certainly not the unfortunate residents, who have been paying through the nose for years for the criminal behaviour of their representatives and their co-conspirators.

I'll freely admit to being just as confused about this situation as I am about the Eurozone crisis. I've been looking for suggestions on what happens next, to no avail. Do the locals still have to stump up the cash, or does the receiver start repossessing public utilities? Does JP Morgan have to eat all that debt and apologise to its shareholders? I haven't got a clue.

One thing I do know, though - if I lived in Jefferson County, I'd be really pissed off right now, however it turns out.

Which brings us back to that argument over democracy and finance... How much responsibility would I bear for this situation, if I'd voted for one of these crooks? How about if I'd voted for somebody else, or for none of the above? We are, after all, not merely talking about irresponsible borrowing, so much as a criminal conspiracy against the citizenry.

I'm no genius, but I suspect that I might feel like I didn't owe any of these sharks a penny. I might even feel like I was the victim of a bare-faced con... And yet, I've read people whose opinions I trust saying exactly the opposite for similar situations like Ireland and Greece.

There's a column in the Times today applauding "the good people of Jefferson County" for defaulting and urging the same course of action for Greece, and I for one am stumped as to whether this is good advice or not. Anyone have an educated opinion to offer?

Pro Patria Bullshitti

2011-11-11T19:17:00.002Z

Late in his career, Tony Judt came to worry that we were becoming decoupled from our history.

He didn't mean that we weren't paying attention to history, of course - I imagine that more books are written and more elegiac films and documentaries crammed into multiplexes and televisions than ever before. He was concerned that, with the approaching disappearance of the generations that experienced the great convulsions of the first half of the twentieth century, we were in danger of losing all sense of what those horrible, continent-shattering events actually meant.

There's no doubt that, for the dwindling band who can recall loved ones lost in the great European conflicts, remembrance is intensely personal in a way that the rest of us probably can't comprehend. So too for those who have lost family members in our more recent wars.

Naturally, you won't lack for coverage of, say, the First World War today. Even Channel Five managed a fair stab at the Flanders' fields stuff and the symbols of remembrance themselves are, as ever, ferociously defended from all threats, however non-existent they may be.

And yet, how well-served are we by rituals that emphasise courage, duty and sacrifice in a globe-spanning conflict? Such ceremonies are no doubt a balm for the bereaved and a salute to those who were killed in our name, but they serve the nation poorly in historical terms, I think.

Judt worried that such historical events have come to be seen less as the lived experience of men and women within a particular context than they are a trite moral lesson; an educational tool for children or a tear-stained final act in a Spielberg blockbuster. A theme park ride, rather than the attempt to inhabit the past that the discipline of history is meant to be.

For really, what is the 11th of November in modern culture? A moment of quiet personal reflection for most, but it's increasingly becoming just another cash-cow for the glorified entertainment industry that we call our popular press.

Year in year out, you can bet there will be some poppy-related scandal - some paper-flower-shunning TV personality; demonstrating football fans or publicity-hungry extremists to be held up and showered in the hot piss of public outrage.

Are we so belligerent that we need to seek out idiots to feed our perpetual sense of injured victimhood? These displays of ostentatious media fury are less motivated by popular anger than they are by a cynical hunger for newspaper sales and web-hits. Jon Snow's much-publicised "Poppy fascism" is a product of the profit motive, rather than of an excess of nationalism or conformity.

This, more than public desire to commemorate the dead, has become our yearly ritual - some soulless hack picking up a paycheque for shouting down a hook-handed Muslim lunatic. You'd think that a nation that has sat on its arse watching The X-Factor while three hundred and eighty-five of its citizens were killed in a ten-year war might have the self-awareness to forego its annual catharsis over a bunch of paper flowers, but apparently not.

The generation that lived through the First World War well remembered afterwards the mad war-fever of 1914 and the ensuing, merciless slaughter of the Western Front. To them, the war was a catastrophe that left few untouched, visiting disaster upon entire towns and cities. It showed once and for all that such industrial violence would kill the strong as indifferently as it did the weak, and raw recruits as arbitrarily as three-year veterans.

This week, the lessons we've learned are that foreign football authorities are disrespectful and that intentionally inflammatory arseholes must be banned. We have David Cameron - a man who shows no compunction whatsoever either for putting British soldiers in harm's way or for assisting in the wholesale destruction of entire cities - lecturing FIFA on the True Meaning of Armistice Day.

Well, you'd need a heart of stone not to appreciate the irony.

Certainly, an exploited commemoration is worth a thousand times more than public indifference, and cultivating a more rounded view of our history is the responsibility of historians and documentary-makers. The British public show admirable generosity and decency year on year by supporting veterans' causes.

I just regret that Armistice Day has been intentionally turned into such a fucking circus, as if Ypres or Verdun were just another gap in the market.

Lovely, Wonderful Thoughts

2011-11-11T17:24:00.005Z

"I say, how do you do it?" asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.

"You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air." - Peter Pan and Wendy

Well, well. I'm hardly the first to note the irony that a vague and nebulous concept - "markets" - has unseated the Italian Prime Minister, a feat that innumerable opposition politicians, crusading journalists, police and prosecutors couldn't achieve after years of hard work.

Funny, that a general air of international unease and an outbreak of unlovely, nasty thoughts about interrupted cashflows have brought Berlusconi crashing down out of the sky, while his epic reign of misrule, corruption and venality was like a big, fat baggie of high-grade fairy dust for world finance.

What lessons can we draw from this, do we think? I look from our domestic debt industry, with its aggressive lending practices and cheerful lawsuits for decades-long repayment, and to the IMF, and from IMF to debt industry, and from debt industry to the IMF again, but already I'm having a hard time saying which is which.

Call me paranoid if you will, but I'm inclined to dust off that old saw about times of crisis exposing the true face of power, myself, and to start rambling about how the world is ruled from Davos rather than, say, Turtle Bay.

So. I imagine there are damn few Italians - or Irishmen, Greeks or Icelanders, for that matter - who can recall voting for wild liberalisation, an orgy of aristocratic greed and avarice, followed by near-total economic collapse and rule by diktat from the IMF... And fair dues - if I was a politician, I would've left that out of the manifesto too.

I hear many voices pronouncing that this is finally Bedtime For Democracy, but I think that's wrongheaded. To me, our present situation looks a lot more like a sudden realisation that modern democracy comes in whatever colour we want, so long as it's black.

It is, after all, impossible to usurp a system that doesn't exist.

I don't know, perhaps I'm over-egging the pudding, as well as the pop culture allusions. Maybe we should wait until some game nation decides to default, rather spending the next few decades shovelling fairy dust and trying to think lovely, wonderful thoughts. I think that would be an instructive moment for us all.

2011-11-02T21:38:00.000Z

"England must be brought into line. The imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves the accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches. And they have the political power still, if they only had the sense to use it for their preservation. I suppose you agree that the middle classes are stupid?... They are... They have no imagination. They are blinded by an idiotic vanity..."

Thus speaks the conniving Mr Vladimir, First Secretary of the Russian embassy in Conrad's The Secret Agent. Given that Vladimir is a deeply sinister manipulator with little concern for human life, I'm intrigued to find a speech so eerily reminiscent of certain strains of modern punditry in a novel from 1907... And from the villain, at that. That speech would get a thousand approving comments, at the right newspaper websites.

Also, check out the description...

"...And Mr Vladimir developed his idea from on high, with scorn and condescension, displaying at the same time an amount of ignorance as to the real aims, thoughts and methods of the revolutionary world... He confounded causes with effects more than was excusable; the most distinguished propagandists with impulsive bomb-throwers; assumed organisation where in the nature of things it could not exist; spoke of the social revolutionary party one moment as of a perfectly discplined army, where the word of its chiefs was supreme, and at another as if it had been the loosest association of desperate brigands that ever camped in a mountain gorge..."

Well, you can take your pick for who that might sound like, almost anywhere on the political spectrum.

Running Out of Ironic War-Based Titles, Now

2011-11-02T21:09:00.003Z

Forced by circumstances to invade and occupy Afghanistan; driven beyond their will to invade and occupy Iraq by the urgent threat of imminent destruction; Compelled by humanitarian necessity to destroy large tracts of Libya; Pressured into hammering holy Hell out of Pakistan, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen...

...And now, it's time to make plans for a massive assault on Iran just in case, you know, they back us into a corner. If, like, we're forced to do it, with sorrow in our hearts and a tear in our collective eye.

I always imagined that one of the good things about being a loose alliance of ultra-belligerent first world nations, armed to the teeth and led by the mightiest military machine the world has ever seen, is that you can force other people to do what you want them to do.

For a full-spectrum dominant, globe-spanning collossus of destruction, it's amazing how many shitsplat, third-world tiddlers have somehow forced us to reluctant last-resort action. How lucky we are that we just happen to have two of Iran's neighbours under military occupation!

And let's be honest - the west's hand is being forced to attack a nation on the other side of the planet, yet again. After all, the Iranian president has made vague reference to using nukes he doesn't have, as opposed to our leaders' passive and non-threatening habit of announcing that "all options are on the table". Paranoid types might conclude that "all options" logically includes "total nuclear annihilation", but they're obviously not appreciating the finer nuances*.

So if we're planning war** with a nation of seventy five million people, can I make a few suggestions? Camouflage isn't going to make any difference for high-altitude precision bombing, so why not go the whole hog and paint our warplanes white with big red crosses on the underside, just to really drive our point home?

And some economic tips - I can see a real big upturn in the market for second-hand cars and fertiliser, as well as localised booms in sales of canned food and shotguns. Plus, now might be a good time to convert to 100% renewable energy production. I mean, like overnight.

How nice that our government has volunteered to wholeheartedly join in whatever fresh lunacy the Americans may be concocting. It's a brave and ballsy move to back up our putative ally's lastest and easily most insane piece of adventurism yet and I, for one, wouldn't even consider calling for the entire government to be arrested and charged with treason, unless they were stupid enough to actually do it.

*This isn't counting Hillary Clinton's campaign promise, live on national television, to use nuclear warheads on Iran, if necessary. Boy, those Iranians sure are crazy, aren't they?

**And let's note - if we do attack Iran, our thoroughly retarded propaganda will not include our first strike as a proximate cause of the ensuing war. We'll be casting the people we attack as the aggressor, no matter how ludicrous it sounds, yet again.

2011-10-29T19:34:00.002Z

Just finished the bi-annual re-reading of Heart of Darkness, a book that never ceases to amaze me. It's the same every time - I struggle with the early chapters and wonder whether I''ve previously overestimated Conrad, only to be sucked ever deeper into the narrative like Marlow himself. I always feel like it repays rereading with previously undiscovered nuances, although I suspect that I've just forgotten aspects of the text.

The Name of the Rose, I reread every four years or so - just long enough that it feels fresh and revelatory every time. I could go on at length about the intriguing mystery at its heart or the wonderful evocation of the period, or just praise the novel as an enduring treatise on humanity, forgiveness and understanding, but really - I just like spending time in the company of William of Baskerville, one of my favourite literary creations. I actually enjoy hearing the cogs of his mind working even more than reading Sherlock Holmes, the character that he's obviously based on.

Other books: I make a point of reading Slaughterhouse Five every few years and Neuromancer every five years or so. The Crow Road always reminds me of my own callow youth, since I was the same age as Prentice McHoan when I read it, and it's filled with lovable characters - I still get a bit teary when they finally find Uncle Rory. Oh, and spoilers.

To Kill a Mockingbird has Atticus Finch in it, which is enough on its own to merit regular returns, and I fully intend to read The Quiet American at least five times, so impressed was I on the last reading. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island are usually first into my suitcase for beach holidays.

But still, there are other books that I loved intensely when I read them, but can't quite recapture the same feeling of wonderment. Lolita, Catch-22, Money, Crime and Punishment - I've tried on numerous occasions, despite being absolutely obsessed with each, once upon a time.

So folks, do any of you find some books are treasures to be enjoyed again and again, and others - no matter how fantastic - are one-shot works? Are there any that you'd recommend as perennial favourites?

The Urge To Save Humanity Is Always Only The False-Face For The Urge To Rule It

2011-10-27T19:37:00.004Z

I always felt a bit sorry for the ancient Greeks, forever at the mercy of wild and vengeful Gods and Goddesses... Mere pawns pushed around this earthly board for the amusement of inscrutable forces, unable to so much as bend over to pick up a discus without being viciously bummed by an angry swan...

Modern Greeks have it so much better, as do the rest of us. In this atheistic era, none of us are slaves to the whims of divine entities. Instead, we have the scientific surety of global capital to ensure that our lives are free from chaos and heavenly caprice.

After all, the free market economy ensures only that prices are determined by the rules of supply and demand. It certainly doesn't demand sacrifices of people and goods - only the reassurance that capital can flow unimpeded and the occasional planet-smashing bajillion-dollar cheque. It doesn't require supplication, merely the total restructuring of every economy that wishes to earn the gifts of its benevolence.

It has no priests evangelising for its magnificence, only lavishly-rewarded pundits and experts. It has no holy texts, beyond the philosophical ramblings of long-dead professors, which are treated as holy texts. It has no Oracles to consult, no mystics nor entrail-readers; it has instead skilled economists, whose role is merely to read the ebb and flow of the markets and then make highly unreliable descriptions and predictions upon the discipline in which they proclaim expertise.

There is no inviolable divine command, although There Is No Alternative. It is not all-knowing, although it sure as shit doesn't look like its certainties can be disproven, no matter how badly they fail. It is not all-powerful or vengeful, but by God it will crush the life out of any and all blasphemers.

No, thank goodness, we are long past the age of religion with its mysticism and its glorification of "faith", which has always been a euphemism for blind trust in a self-selecting, unaccountable priesthood and their cruel and inhuman deities.

That said, if you wanted to sacrifice your family pets as an offering to Citigroup on the off-chance it'll cheer up the financial markets, it probably wouldn't hurt our chances.

Kiss Up, Kick Down - It's The British Way

2011-10-26T18:18:00.005Z

An amazing contrast this week between my Twitter feed and my conversations with colleagues and acquaintances. While I'm hearing nothing but praise for the sterling work of the Occupy movement from the former, here's what I'm hearing from the latter - Hippies... Fannies... Get a job...

And really, how could it ever have been otherwise? The tiny Edinburgh protest sits right in front of the gleaming facade of Harvey Nichols and the stentorian Bank of Scotland building. Who wants to sit in a tent protesting the universal enfuckage of the entire populace by the super-rich, when you can swank around Harvey Nicks pretending to be super-rich?

I mean, we all feel bad that we were collectively car-jacked by the world's financial elite and forced to hand over bajillions to prevent the total collapse of civilisation, but hey! They're offering to lend some of it back at really competitive rates!

There's a simple truth here - in a boxing match between powerless protesters and Croesus himself, most of the crowd is going show up in cut-out cardboard crowns.

Do you remember that old Levellers song Hope Street, about the gaudy, phoney allure of the National Lottery? I seriously doubt it - I only remember it because it always made me think... Well shit, I hear you, but more folk want to be millionaires than want to be crusties. People, isn't it?

Hell, the protesters have my sympathies. From what I can glean from the media, they're pissed because our entire economy was hitched to a fatuous get-rich-forever scheme that was entirely reliant upon the housing market expanding in perpetuity, and because all of the ill-consequences have fallen upon those least able to afford it... While the fat fucks who profitted most continued to suck up bounteous remuneration and the rest of us had to swallow record-busting crashes in our living standards, if we were lucky, or abrupt unemployment and visits from the bailiffs if we weren't.

Business after business may have folded; high streets may have been zapped into space dust, public services might be exterminated and higher education ring-fenced for the children of the middle classes, but Harvey Nicks is doing a roaring trade. Our political masters may be a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK Geezyermoney Plc, enacting an amazing everyone gets fired and then the economy somehow booms plan, but Mammon is still shoving expensive drugs up its hooter and eating pan-fried endangered species, flown first-class straight from Sumatra.

The system is rigged! Any form of capitalism that doesn't allocate capital in the most efficient way possible is not "capitalism", but a jury-rigged scam designed to enrich its aristocratic minority! Go tell it on the mountain, brothers and sisters! Testify!

The Occupy movement is trying to do the only useful thing it can - loudly proclaim to the public that they are marks in a global scam, and striving to force the press and politicians to acknowledge that fact by forcibly wedging this message into the mainstream.

In a way, we've got the tools for it. We in Britain have one of the world's most efficient shit-delivery systems in our tabloid press, which has spent the last three decades pouring great rivers of crap onto the poorest and least powerful people in our society. Imagine, if Occupy whatever could create a public demand for all of that bile and resentment to flow uphill towards those who actually exercise some measure of influence? Hallelujah! Imagine Question Time!

And yet, I can't help but play prophet of doom as usual. The UK - hell, the western world - is the way it is because it suits everyone who matters just fine. A financial crisis is far from ideal, but you can live on it, if you know what I mean. You don't have to be a bomb-throwing anarchist to work out cui is bonofitting when the Fed's solution to disaster is to perpetually shove truckloads of treasure down the gaping throats of their once-and-future bosses in high finance.

And the people? Put it this way - those same papers have spent months loudly complaining about how crap the latest series of The X-Factor is, to a very receptive audience. I notice that the advertisers are still paying top-whack for airtime though, and that the public are still tuning in in their millions. What are they going to do, watch Strictly? It's the same show with a different backdrop and a slightly altered premise!

Still, I marvel at the ludicrousness of our situation. The Great British public has mechanisms for dealing with protests - noisy anti-war marches can be dicked off easily, because we all go home afterwards and don't come back out; riots are violent and destructive, and everybody knows how to respond to that.

The spectacle of ordinary people tutting, bitching and sneering at protesters who are angry about the very phenomenon that has crushed the man in the street's finances to a pulp, though... Well, that may just represent the hilarious, inevitable apotheosis of the western way of life.

Stop All The Clocks, Cut Off The Telephone, Get Out The Party Hats

2011-10-26T16:31:00.005Z

The World at War has finished a repeat run on one of the cable channels and what strikes you immediately, from the opening titles onwards, is this - it treats World War II as a horror of unimaginable proportions, an unspeakable thing full of monstrous hate and cruelty, rather than a wild adventure filled with derring-do.

No, come back! Okay, so that's hardly a cheery start to a blog post, I know, but it's a point that I consider relevant when I stumble across the likes of Hitchens complaining about the "legality and propriety" of the stabby-punchy-shooty execution of Muammar Gaddafi.

Hitchens isn't the only one suffering a bout of buyer's remorse over our North African escapade, lemme tell ya - my favourite has to be the calls from Human Rights Watch to investigate bi-partisan war crimes throughout the region. That's the same Human Rights Watch - an org that knows what a civil war looks like, by the way - who were among the most vocal advocates for intervening in and thus prolonging a really nasty civil war, complaining that their desired outcome resulted in terrible enormities and atrocities. Damn.

It really is astonishing to me that the death of a vicious, ridiculous tinpot goon like Gaddafi has caused such an outbreak of red-faced shuffling and pencil-fiddling amongst our latest war's erstwhile backers. To be clear - the brutal execution of Gaddafi by a baying mob outside the ruins of a whole city, while Nato jets scream helpfully overhead, is absolutely not the worst thing that has happened during our latest war. It would function wonderfully as a horribly apt metaphor for the whole thing, but it certainly wasn't particularly objectionable, by comparison to the jaw-dropping levels of violence the war unleashed.

If anything, Gaddafi's execution stands out as a glaring exception in the conflict, in that it happened to someone who deserved it and that crucially, it was repeatedly shown on television, in graphic detail.

This is what upsets yer Hitchenses, of course, not that he'd like to admit it - not the murder itself. After all, who ever felt sympathy for Nicolae Ceausescu or his missus? All the hand-wringing; all the impassioned pleas for impartial justice and restraint, all of this self-serving bullshit is down to the fact that Gaddafi's shot-up corpse was splattered across the front page of The Sun under a belligerent, triumphant headline. Looks bad, makes the whole thing seem a bit bloodthirsty and a bit less "humanitarian" than we might have been led to believe, I think.

Consider it - how many articles have you seen saying Perhaps we need to rethink this whole "Bombing entire cities to rubble while the inhabitants are still living there" malarkey? How about Yo, arbitrary execution of civilians and captured, restrained combatants is totally uncool? How many times did you hear the words Oops, Nato appears to have massively exceeded its mandate to protect civilians?

Ladies and gents, I bet it's damn few. I've gone on about this subject at such great and tiresome length - and God, please let this be the last time that it's necessary, since I don't like it any more than you do - because as a nation, we need to be reminded that none of this is unusual or unexpected. As I said back in March, this is what happens in wars.

Back when all the talk was of No-Fly Zones and arming the rebels, I was asking what would happen if we had to step up to Maximum Violence to get the job done, and what we'd say if Human Rights Watch started reporting war crimes throughout the region. Well, most of you will know what the answer was then, and I haven't heard any answers since, beyond the usual I bet you love the Colonel stuff.

You do have to marvel at our current generation of civilian war enthusiasts, though. After all the bombast and the amateur renditions of Ride Of The Valkyries, they manage to watch an entire war right up to its bloody climax, and yet somehow draw precisely the wrong lesson from it.

Jesus. The execution of Gaddafi doesn't stain the whole war, guys - that was one of its most justifiable events!

The stuff that really called it into question and demonstrated the crazed volatility of war in even its most humanitarian guise, for the umpteenth time this decade... Well, that shit happened far from the cameras, while Bernard Henri-Levy was still poncing around North Africa, force-feeding trite anecdotes about the wondrous contents of Pandora's Box to indifferent NTC dignitaries.

No Mercy For Tyrants!

2011-10-20T16:08:00.009Z

Sirte has fallen; the last remnant of the old regime is smashed and the tyrant Gaddafi is dead! Truly, nobody in these isles could be happier than I am to see the evil old bastard gone - I had a tenner bet on him not making it to Christmas. Ker-ching!

Oh, what a joy it's been this afternoon, to watch the unbridled delight and celebration; the exultation, the sheer ecstasy as an entire country united and, with one voice, announced on Twitter that they had finally remembered that Libya exists, after months of talking loudly about anything else.

I urge each and every one of you to watch as much coverage of events in Libya as you can over the next two days, because once the celebrations are over, Godzilla Himself could rise roaring from the Mediterranean and take a giant, radioactive shit in the middle of Martyr's Square without the British media giving it more than a nod.

I mean, it's been a bizarre war, if you were lucky enough to follow it from the security and comfort of the United Kingdom. Talking about our Libya adventure in Britain this year has been a bit like trying to carry on a relationship with a resentful and heavy-drinking lover - sudden, unexpected outbursts of blazing passion punctuating great yawning months filled with nothing but angry silence and the occasional dirty look or sulky tut.

And what a blaze of passion we've had today! Personally, I found initial reports that Colonel Gaddafi had been summarily executed by the Libyan rebels hard to believe. After all, the man may have been a murderer, a thug and a gangster, but he wasn't black.

And so, Gaddafi died as he lived - with the officially-denied complicity of the British government*. It's unfortunate that he wasn't captured alive, in the end. I think everyone would've enjoyed seeing him get his just desserts in the new government's courts. That's assuming that he would've survived getting his just desserts in the new government's prisons, of course.

Even now, I struggle to believe that the prancing old fleabag is dead. I won't fully credit it until Gaddafi himself makes a rambling, two-hour speech on radio, incoherently denying his own extinction and urging his bajillion-strong army of followers to avenge him.

Of course, there are those who grumble that all these pictures of the splattered dictator are ghoulish and inappropriate, and that celebrating a man being beaten and executed is distasteful. I say, thank God we were so lucky. Given Nato's conduct over the last few weeks, I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd nuked Gaddafi's hiding place from outer space.

Anyway, what a war it's been. It was full of ironies - who can fail to forget William Hague and David Cameron calmly insisting that we weren't trying to rub out Gaddafi and his family while we were bombing his compound with high explosives, and while Liam Fox was simultaneously telling the press that we actually were trying to rub out Gaddafi? Precious.

I think my favourite part was the bit when Britain went to the United Nations to seek permission for a preventative No-Fly Zone over the country, and mysteriously emerged with a mandate to smash fuck out of whoever and whatever we liked, providing we sort-of pretended that we were "protecting civilians" while we did it.

Thus did we get the final orgy of violence, destruction, mayhem and humanitarian civilian protection that was the assault on Sirte, during which Nato helped the NTC to protect seven shades of shit out of the city and what remained of its populace. Watching the pictures of a bombed-out Sirte on TV, you can see how we protected that place to fucking rubble, house-by-house. Now, what does that remind me of?

Well. More cynical voices than mine will say that our noble intervention in Libya has led to a death toll that outstrips even the worst of the Arab Spring crackdowns by a factor of at least ten; that our undoubtedly sincere intentions were not entirely selfless in nature, and that the whole thing may just reek more of a hitjob than a humanitarian enterprise**.

Pish and tush, say I. If nothing else, our government's relentless honesty and transparency in explaining its motives and methods prove that their behaviour is entirely beyond reproach, and.... No, actually, fuck it. Even my sarcastic superpowers have limits.

Anyway, let's all sit back and enjoy this small moment of happiness for the Libyan people, after long years of grinding misery and repression. After all, there's nothing we in the west enjoy more than TV footage of Arabs celebrating deaths, right?

Let's just hope that, after all this horror, tyranny and violence, the Libyan people can now enjoy a bright, liberal democratic future. Really, we might as well because, if they wind up getting more horror, tyranny and violence, it isn't like we'll be hearing about it with any great frequency.

Up the revolution! Hey, has anyone seen that Musa Kusa lately?

*This joke copyright Justin McKeating, 2011

**I've been asked today whether I think that this victorious outcome will embolden Britain's countless war-happy interventionists, to which I can only say - guys, Gaddafi could've won and been crowned Supreme Emperor Dalek Of All North Africa, and it wouldn't deter those crazy motherfuckers one bit.

Tribalism Makes The World Go Round

2011-10-19T19:27:00.008Z

Excellent news this week as captured soldier Gilad Shalit is released. Many years ago now, I read Brian Keenan's book about his four years chained to radiators in unlit rooms in Beirut. Keenan's ordeal has stuck in my mind ever since as the perfect nightmare - seemingly unending captivity and brutality, with the ever-present possibility of sudden execution as a brief final chapter. The mere thought gives me the shivers even now, so I was delighted to see Shalit emerge from the darkness.

The deal that released the poor kid - and soldier or not, he was only nineteen when he was captured - is a painful one for the Israelis to bear. If one of the thousand-odd Palestinian prisoners freed had killed one of my loved ones, I'd be beyond enraged to see them liberated too, so I can imagine how badly the news was received in certain parts of that country.

Still, there's much to be pleased about. A young man, long thought lost, is now free to pick up the pieces of his life; Israel has scored a storming PR victory in the world's press as a bonus and for once in the region, negotiation has paid off where brute force has failed. Good news all round, right?

Depending on who you read - well, not entirely.

I can't link to Danny Finkelstein's piece in today's Times* but his argument was broadly reflective of much of what I've read on this issue - namely, that this prisoner swap, while a welcome development, both exposes Israel's weakness and shows that Israel has a unique, perhaps religiously-inspired, respect for human life

I hate to be the one to piss on everyone's fireworks here, but this isn't really the case. I'm ill-qualified to judge the religious argument, but what I will say is this for starters - the idea that this deal reflects weakness in any sense is just insane.

Do I really have to point out that one-thousand-to-one isn't a kick in the arse off the kills-to-casualties ratio from Israel's most recent clashes with its neighbours? If the deal demonstrates an inflated concern for the wellbeing of fellow Israelis, what does it tell us about the perceived value of Palestinian prisoners? And can a nation that can confidently expect to kill at least one hundred of its enemies for every loss in any conflict that it chooses to fight really be perceived as weak?

Certainly, it's true that Shalit's status has been a high-profile, emotive issue in his homeland for the duration of his captivity, whereas I'd never heard of US hostage Bowe Bergdahl's long ordeal in Afghanistan until this week. Recognising this though, I still find it impossible to forget former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz's response to Hezbollah's kidnap of two Israeli soldiers at the start of the 2006 Lebanon war: "If the soldiers are not returned, we will turn Lebanon's clock back twenty years". He made good on that threat too, to the tune of around a thousand dead civilians for two soldiers.

That war turned out to be more or less a draw, in tactical terms. Strategically, it was an awful military blunder, a PR catastrophe and a political disaster, as the nation's leaders were forced to explain how, exactly, they had managed to sacrifice a hundred and twenty Israeli soldiers for nothing. Note well that it was the damage to Israeli interests that enraged the populace, while the smashed rubble of southern Lebanon was an afterthought, at best.

That's hardly unique to the region - it's perfectly understandable at the spieces level, in fact, if you junk once and for all the idea that people everywhere are humanitarians and accept that they're entirely tribal.

In the United States, politicians bemoan the disaster of the Iraq War by highlighting the thousands of Americans killed in a needless war that also, by the way, was very hazardous to Iraqis' health. In the UK, we hear little of anti-war feeling until some British soldiers are killed in a particularly awful and pointless way. Our best estimate on Afghan casualties for the period 2007-10 is just under ten thousand people, but such a dry statistic can't compete with our visceral reaction to those anguished processions through Wooton Bassett. Hell, I even take more notice when some kid from just up the road is blown up by an IED than I do for Londoners who meet a similarly sudden end.

And I know I've been banging on about this non-stop recently, but seriously - Nato is currently helping to pound a heavily-populated Libyan city into dust in order to "protect civilians". The fighting in Syria, where we did not intervene, is estimated to have just passed the three-thousand casualty mark, while the Libyan NTC presently estimate twenty to twenty five thousand deaths. If the Libyan War winds up killing in excess of fifty thousand people, will the stink and the scandal drive the Coalition from office? I think not.

Or take the Palestinians themselves. We've been told for years that some notional Arab street is just boiling with anger over their plight, but the recent uprisings across the Middle East should illustrate quite starkly what real rage looks like. Violence is one thing when it's happening to someone else on TV, but those old rifles get dug up lightning-quick when soldiers start firing on your neighbours... And who is riding to the rescue of the Syrians? Nobody. Ever thus.

I know that this is a moment of high drama and emotion for the many Dan Finkelstein-style partisans of the internet, but the idea that nation (x) or (y) has a particular respect for human life, one that is vastly different to that of other countries, is patently insane. Life may be much cheaper in Iran than it is in Australia; dictators may care less than democrats, but when push comes to shove, tribalism and expediency trump all.

If you don't believe me, try asking the next Russian you meet his opinion of the Blitz on London. I mean, he or she may sympathise, but I imagine that they might have some stories of their own that they'd be just dying to tell you.

*I'll copy his main points into comments tomorrow. I had a series of other examples I was going to post, but I realised they would've represented shameless nut-picking.

Libya News Update, 16th October

2011-10-16T14:04:00.001Z

GORMAN: Apone, collect magazines from everybody. We can't have any firing in there... Flame-units only. I want rifles slung.

---

HUDSON: Movement!

APONE: What's the position?

HUDSON: Can't lock in...

APONE: Talk to me, Hudson.

HUDSON: Uh, multiple signals... They're closing!

APONE: Go to infrared, people. Look sharp!

GORMAN: What's happening, Apone? I can't see anything in here.

RIPLEY: Pull your team out, Gorman.

HUDSON: I got signals. I got readings in front and behind.

FROST: Where, man? I don't see shit!

HICKS: He's right, there's nothing back here.

HUDSON: Look, I'm tellin ya, there's something moving in here, and it ain't us... Tracker's off the scale... They're all around us, man!

DIETRICH: Maybe they don't show up on infra red at all.

(Screams, carnage, explosions, marines ripped to pieces, set ablaze and blown up)

VASQUEZ: Let's rock!

(Heavy machine-gun fire)

GORMAN: Who's firing? Goddamnit! I ordered a hold-fire!

What Is A "Responsibility To Protect"?

2011-10-12T21:48:00.020Z

This is Nicolas and David. Hello, Nicolas and David! Nicolas and David love all of the good people of the world very much. When bad people hurt the good people of the world, Nicolas and David get very sad. When Nicolas and David get very sad, they say lots of things about a "Responsibility to Protect" the good people.

So when a bad man called Colonel Gaddafi threatened to hurt some good people in a place called Benghazi, Nicolas and David were very sad. "We cannot stand by while Colonel Gaddafi launches indiscriminate attacks on the good people in Benghazi with warplanes and artillery", says David. "Yes", says Nicolas. "We have a thing called a 'Responsibility to Protect' the good people of the world. We will protect the good people by launching indiscriminate attacks on the bad people with warplanes and artillery".

Do you know what a "Responsibility to Protect" is, children? It's a special law thing that Nicolas and David use to help the good people who are being bombed and shot at. Can you imagine how horrible it would be if you, your Mummy, your Daddy and all your friends were being bombed and shot at? That would be terrible!

So Nicolas and David help the good people by bombing and shooting at the bad people who are bombing and shooting at them, and also by bombing and shooting at the bad people's Mummies and Daddies and all their friends!

Nicolas and David are very, very brave.

This is Sirte. Sirte is a place that is far away. All the bad people live in Sirte. Nicolas and David are not actually sure how many of the people that live in Sirte are bad people, but once Nicolas and David and their new friends are finished bombing and shooting at them, they won't be able to tell us whether they are bad people or not! Nicolas and David are very clever.

To help them to protect the good people, Nicolas and David use some special tools to bomb and shoot at the bad people in Sirte and their Mummies and Daddies and all their friends. This is a Panavia Tornado GR1. It is a big plane that makes lots of noise. It fires big rockets that go Whoosh! and then go Bang! and make all the bad people fall down dead. We know they are bad people because Nicolas and David's new friends say that they are bad people. So they must be bad!

This is an artillery battery. Artillery batteries fire big bombs that go Whoosh! and Bang! and make the bad people fall down dead, as well as making everybody else within a fifty metre radius fall down dead too! Artillery batteries are silly things, because they don't know the difference between bad people and bad people's Mummies and Daddies and all their friends. They make everybody fall down dead! Nicolas and David's new friends like artillery batteries very much. Nicolas and David's new friends are using lots and lots of artillery batteries so that the bad people can't use artillery batteries. Using artillery batteries is bad, except when the good people use them!

This is a flak gun. It fires lots and lots of big bullets very, very quickly. A flak gun is used to shoot down planes, but Ooops! The bad people don't have any planes! Nicolas and David's new friends use a flak gun to shoot at snipers. Snipers are bad men who hide in buildings and do bad things. Nicolas and David's new friends are afraid to go into the buildings to stop the bad men doing bad things. So Nicolas and David's new friends use a flak gun to fire lots and lots of big bullets into the buildings, floor by floor, room by room, for a very long time indeed, until all of the bad people inside fall down dead. The bullets are so quick and so big that they go right through the building and out the other side and into other buildings! They make everybody in the building fall down dead, as well as making everybody in other buildings behind them fall down dead too! Can you imagine?

These are the bad people's Mummies and Daddies and all their friends. After Nicolas and David and their new friends had been bombing and shooting at the bad people and their Mummies and Daddies and all their friends for a week, they stopped bombing and shooting for a little while, to let some of the Mummies and Daddies and friends run away. That was nice of Nicolas and David, wasn't it? A lot of silly Mummies and Daddies didn't run away and are still in Sirte. Silly Mummies and Daddies! I wonder how many Mummies and Daddies fell down dead? Who knows?

Who cares!

And this is Mr Terrorist. Hello, Mr Terrorist! Mr Terrorist is a bad man. Nicolas and David's new friends can tell that Mr Terrorist is a bad man because he is brown. He wants to use planes and artillery batteries and flak guns to hurt the good people! Nicolas and David have stopped him from hurting the good people by bombing and shooting at Mr Terrorist, as well as Mr Terrorist's Mummy, Mr Terrorist's Daddy and all of Mr Terrorist's friends. Nicolas and David's new friends might make sure that Mr Terrorist can't hurt any more good people by shooting Mr Terrorist in the back of the head and burying him in a little hole in the ground. If they do that, then policemen can't find Mr Terrorist. Nicolas and David's new friends do not like brown people very much. Silly Mr Terrorist!

And that's what the "Responsibility to Protect" means, children! Thank goodness that Nicolas and David and their new friends are clever and brave enough to help the good people by bombing and shooting at all the bad people, their Mummies and Daddies and all their friends.

Haven't we learned lots of new and exciting things today?

Goodbye!

What Is This Day Of Rest Shit

2011-10-12T13:43:00.004Z

The United States on Tuesday accused Iranian officials of plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million... "The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?” (Hilarity Clinton) asked. - NewYork Times, 12th October

Well now. Let's observe that the Iranian mullahs and their funtionaries really are crazy - they believe that they are the true recipients of God's wisdom and are the moving hand of His divine plan for the universe. There's a lot of that shit around these days, but assassination is a key tool of repressive regimes and the Iranians are alarmingly good at espionage.

On the other hand, what have the Iranians been doing this last decade? Exactly what you'd expect a sly hostile power to do when its neighbours are invaded - sit tight and manipulate the situation to their maximum advantage; quietly consolidate their control over proxies in those nations, arm their allies to the teeth etc.

And now, out of the blue, they appear to have paid a Yankee car salesman to hire some Mexicans in order to whack an eminently expendable minor Saudi official, regardless of the cost, for reasons that are opaque, at best.

Hmmm. Two explanations definitely do spring to mind here - that either the mullahs have started smoking crack and entirely abandoned their highly successful methodology, or that the FBI have picked up some nut, handed him a wacky bomb plot and then trumpeted his arrest as a major victory over the Terror. For the principal actors, one of these possibilities would represent a decisive break with tradition, while the other is entirely in-character.

I mean, I'm all for frantically ReTweeting tales of horror to gullible readers because We Hates The Iranses, but I do try to hold off on the hysterical premature ejaculation where possible.

Perugianisation

2011-10-07T10:17:00.001Z

Here's a piece from Liberal Conspiracy this week - Why do we have a problem with faith, family and flag? Give it a quick skim, because I'll be coming back to it later.

Now, it's been a very revealing week for the UK on legal issues, in which both the British public and the government were shown to vastly prefer pleasing myths and self-pitying boo-hoo to a justice system based upon evidence and adjudication.

First up, Theresa May filled her conference speech with Palinesque hoots and snorts aimed at the Human Rights Act, much to the joy of her audience, who gave nary a damn whether she spoke the truth or just made shit up out of whole cloth. The HRA - a piece of legislation that the Tory rank and file want pulled regardless of its merits or flaws - is one of the right's great bugbears, and conference season requires platoons of hackish ministers to thrust their faces into the spotlight with booming vows for crackdowns.

Unfortunately for May, she foolishly chucked one of the countless invented scare stories of criminals and immigrants abusing the law to claim a helicopter full of drunk glamour models in her speech, thus beshitting her entire Voice-Of-Common-Sense act. Here's an iron rule of politics for you - if a politician is caught feeding whopping great lies to the public on a perceived problem, you can be sure that their remedies are stuffed to the brim with nonsense also.

Thankfully, current justice minister Ken Clarke does actually pay vague attention to the law, and promptly relieved himself all over May's speech. The result? Clamour for Clarke's resignation.

Meanwhile in Italy, Amanda Knox and Rafaelle Sollecito were freed on appeal against their sentence for assisting in the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Now, say what you like about this case, but the hard facts are this - the prosecution were unable to establish any reasonable motive; were dubious on opportunity and failed to provide any solid evidence that the accused were present at the murder. What appears to have happened is that the police forced a confession from Knox, then proclaimed to the world that the two were guilty as sin and would be summarily impaled upon the great rhino horn of the law. And then, the evidence from the crime scene came back explicitly indicating that a third party had murdered the victim on his own.

In the UK, the police and prosecutors would probably announce that they had got it wrong; apologise to the victim's family, release those parties that it had no evidence against and prosecute the perpetrator. This, of course, would leave the coppers looking a bit silly, but there's no harm in that, provided the guilty are punished and the innocent spared.

In Perugia, it looks very much like the coppers and the prosecutor would rather lose digits than confess to an error, and so they ploughed on with a farcical, nonsensical case that kept two people in prison for four years for a crime that they didn't commit... Because they might have looked silly if they'd changed their minds.

And yet, I've spent half the week trying to explain this to colleagues who are determined that Knox in particular is guilty, and evidence be damned. When you're up against newspapers that are telling their readers that smiling assassins are set to make squillions from crime, the very idea that people should be convicted on the basis of evidence, rather than acting suspiciously, changing your story or looking shifty seems to be regarded by many as some kind of rampant political correctness.

Here's the big problem we Brits have with justice issues. The general public don't understand the law, and they don't want to understand it. We already know everything we need to, thank you very much, and any attempt to complicate matters with talk of law is merely an attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. Thus, Amanda Knox is a she-devil and the HRA entitles illegal immigrants to free cats and housing benefit, or whatever.

Thanks to decades of tabloid horseshit, we appear to regard the law as a highfalutin conspiracy between criminals and judges aimed at ensuring the highest level of public outrage. Speak to people about this, and a huge number appear to believe that they've got access to some kind of Private Eye-style insider information - wielders of the flame of truth, indignant defenders of Common Sense. They don't, of course - they've just spent years getting their information from hacks and politicians who only feed them whatever they already wanted to hear.

So this is why I have a problem with airy and highly subjective concepts like "Faith, Family and Flag" - they're uncomfortably close to invocations of Common Sense, which is a way of saying Things I believe intensely, regardless of whether or not they are true. "Human rights" and "evidence" have strict definitions and practical applications. "Faith", for example, is windy bullshit, open to be hijacked and driven in any direction by a pack of fork-tongued lunatics.

The population of Britain, by and large, are a pretty smart bunch. We can handle a bit of complexity and we don't need everything explained to us in apocalyptic tones. The nation's problems are many and varied, and all of us would benefit if they were addressed with that in mind, rather than by feeding us a blazing miasma of lies, deceptions, outrage-mongering hysteria and straight up nonsense.

Humanitarianism - The Art Of Putting Humans On The Dinner Menu

2011-10-02T14:37:00.003Z

Let us recall that when we first started bombing fuck out of Libya, David Cameron responded to the question "Why are we bombing that country and not, say, Bahrain?" by comparing it to a teenager demanding to know why he should tidy his bedroom when the rest of the world is such a mess. Bad enough if that were an offhand zinger at a press conference, perhaps, but worse at Prime Minister's questions in the House.

The "Why should I tidy my bedroom" crack was joyfully seized upon by a lot of people who should've known better, but I think we can now make a stab at answering it...

1) It's not your bedroom, you gaggle of chuckleheads, it's somebody else's. Also, when you say "tidy" and "bedroom", these are euphemisms for "murder" and "human beings".

2) No sane person tidies their room with high explosives, flak cannons and heavy artillery. Nor does running a hoover round the skirting board generally result in war crimes, indiscriminate bombardment of heavily populated urban areas or columns of refugees.

3) What is the Prime Minister doing ripping off gags from third-rate bloggers, then braying about them in Parliament for his party's entertainment and as justification for war? Why doesn't behaviour that crass result in 28-point screaming headlines of SHAME and INFAMY?

I'm keen that people remember this incident, since it so starkly illustrates the level of care and consideration Britain's interventionists apply to their countless schemes and wheezes. We must send warplanes to attack yet another foreign nation because Why should I tidy my bedroom when the rest of the world is such a mess haw haw my bedroom isn't it like teenagers haw haw teenagers who don't want to tidy their bedrooms haw haw haw their bedrooms haw haw a mess haw haw bedrooms haw haw teenagers WHY SHOULD I TIDY MY BEDROOM

Assassin's Creed

2011-10-01T11:46:00.002Z

Well, I'd say that frog is well and truly boiled by now.

Whether youse think the assassination of Al Qaeda's PR man for Englishstan is a sensible move or not is likely to depend on your response to this question - do you think it's a good idea for the United States to unilaterally declare its entitlement to kill the fuck out of whoever it likes, wherever it likes, whenever it likes, for whatever reasons it likes?

If you're happy with that, I imagine you'll be in hog heaven today.

Of course, this new and exciting doctrine does raise some fairly intriguing questions. For example, if states are now entitled to assassinate propagandists for hostile parties in order to prevent them from formulating justifications for war and mass-murder, then I'd say that about seventy five percent of Washington beltway pundits just became legitimate targets. God knows what it implies about the status of someone like, say, Hillary Clinton.

Let's just sum up the current situation. The United States of America has attacked and/or occupied Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan in the last decade. It has empowered its allies to attack Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories, while actively blocking the democratic ambitions of the latter; it maintains military bases in Israel, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and, until recently, Bahrain; it is disappearing an unknown number of people into a massive black prison network beyond judicial oversight; it may or may not still be using torture, but certainly has done in the recent past and has granted its professional torturers immunity from prosecution; it hands over prisoners to tyrannies explicitly to be tortured for information; it is intentionally killing thousands of people in many countries with which it isn't officially at war without offering any justification beyond assertions that those it kills are baddies; it is assassinating those it declares to be a threat, with or without the consent of their host countries, and is in large part codifying and confirming all of these measures in law, so that these powers can be used long into the future, as presidents to come see fit... In order to make the world safe from people who use political violence.

I know I've said all this before, but it really does bear repeating that these are some pretty bizarre actions for the world's leading proponent of human rights and democracy to be undertaking. Given that 100% endorsement of all this insanity is now widely accepted as an essentially centrist position, you really do have to wonder just how murderously psychotic a superpower has to get before its allies start backing away from it, muttering about how they have to be up early in the morning.

Media Manipulation At Its Most Overt

2011-09-28T16:33:00.002Z

Ed Miliband says he isn't anti-business, in an item that once more confirms the subtle yet inviolable boundaries that constrain modern political discourse.

I mean, nobody ever asks David Cameron whether he's a Spam-clad android created in focus-group Hell as a polyamorous sexbot for the sport of Croesus-rich public schoolboys, do they? George Osborne isn't regularly forced to deny being a V-style reptile in a highly unconvincing "human being" disguise, who must retire from public view twice daily to feed upon rotting animal flesh.

Boris Johnson never faces allegations that he sends boxes full of his faeces to underlings who displease him, although I bet he bloody well does. He looks the type.

Considered in these terms, you can see how the dreaded tag of being "anti-business" is merely a function of oligarchy; a reflexive mechanism of the overclass, used to corral public perception of political reality into tightly-enclosed ideological cages, for the benefit of a minority of plutocrats.

This is why the internet is so important. Without it, nobody will ever hear about the hordes of Filipino maids and au pairs that Michael Gove whips around the miniature hippodrome at his country estate, driven in terror before his insatiable cruelty and his deranged, Caligulan laughter.

Whatever

2011-09-27T21:15:00.006Z

Nevermind was released four years before I was legally able to buy a pint, so I'm hardly the go-to guy for the twenty-year anniversary reminiscences. Nonetheless, the few pieces that I've read have been heavy on the mythology, and have successfully obscured the reasons why that record had the impact that it did.

Most have acknowledged the obvious - that the late eighties and early nineties were an extravagantly dreadful period in rock music's annals, dominated by bouffant, Harley-riding, leather-trousered egomaniacs. It was an era of epic dick-measuring contests to determine which star could shove the most drugs up his cretinous hooter or cram the most weedly-weedly-weedly noises into his infuriating guitar solos. In 1990, the hottest property in Rawk was the Hey-We're-Sensitive-Us acoustic ballad, delivered with an ovine earnestness that would've earned their composers the hand-smashing treatment meted out to cheats in Casino, in a just and fair world.

It was, in short, a bloody horrible period in the largely shameful history of the genre*.

Nirvana didn't look like a biker gang. If anything, they looked like they couldn't care less how they appeared at all, like they'd fallen onstage off their sofas. To a teenager, there's nothing cooler than people who just don't give a damn what anyone thinks.

Nevermind didn't feature any bongo-backed ballads. It didn't want to tell you about all the models it had boned or all the drugs it had shoved up its bum. It was lean, mean and - critical for a form beloved of hormonal teenagers - it was really pissed off about nothing in particular, to the point where the lyrics could mean more or less whatever you wanted them to.

The songs have no fat on them at all, just short intros into headlong battering beats and ridiculously raucous noise with triumphant, shoutalong choruses, the whole rattling shebang still so melodic and catchy that my Mum owns a copy. In genre terms, it has some genius, primal riffs. Half the songs take off like vodka hitting your bloodstream. Like most of the best books you'll ever read and the finest films you'll ever see, it gets in, says exactly what it wants to say as succinctly as possible, then smashes its amp and stomps off in the huff.

All the rest - the whole freakshow it all became - is just details, by comparison. In the end, the record didn't change the world, but for a short while there, it sure looked a lot like a planet-smashing asteroid that was finally going to wipe out the dinosaurs once and for all.

*Doolittle didn't make the top ten over here. Extreme did.

Salesmen For Bullshit, a Continuing Series

2011-09-24T14:05:00.001Z

Back in 2001, Chris Hitchens penned The Trial of Henry Kissinger, in which he declared Dr. Hank a war criminal for, amongst many other misdeeds, prolonging the Vietnam War and thus needlessly killing God knows how many people.

Readers should bear that fact in mind while reading his latest column, In Defence Of Endless War.

Sane human beings do not seek perpetual war and reasonable people don't relish unrelenting mayhem. Thus, Hitchens' latest column is the work of a lunatic psychopath. I don't mean that as a comical exaggeration or as a meaningless insult. I mean that Christopher Hitchens is a psychopath and a lunatic.

We can argue all day and night over the winnability of the war in Afghanistan; we can debate means and methods until the cows come home. On the other hand, I imagine all perceptive observers will agree that no matter how hard it tries, the United States of America cannot possibly kill enough human beings to satisfy Chris Hitchens' raging hardon for violence.

Salesmen For Bullshit

2011-09-24T12:33:00.000Z

I've said this before, but I don't regard the death penalty as some inherently horrifying and barbaric sanction. The Japanese use it and whatever the flaws of their society may be, they don't strike me as a bunch of horn-helmeted pillagers and destroyers.

Even if we all accept this contention, the arguments against capital punishment remain far stronger than those in favour. It doesn't work as a deterrent and the chances of irrevocable injustice, while fairly low, are still far too high. I'd also add that many societies that embrace extreme punishments are also likely to embrace extremity in other areas of public policy, to the disadvantage of all.

The only arguments for capital punishment that ring true for me are the ones that Mencken cited back in the twenties - namely, that the death penalty satisfies the entirely natural desire of victims and their relatives for vengeance, and that the public's justified outrage is sated.

Even if this is the case - and it is, for many - these rationales are entirely undercut if victims have to wait more than twenty years for the deed to be done. Far from providing desperately-needed comfort, this merely drags out the agony for relatives who have to endure decades of legal debate.

It's a policy which manifestly achieves few of its alleged aims, so obviously that those who go out of their way to make claims to the contrary can be safely regarded as yahoos and conmen. See also, bloggers who make regular media appearances to act as slick salesmen for bullshit.

In Which The Author Considers The Many Tactical Problems Afflicting Celtic FC in High-Pressure Games & Recommends Positive Action

2011-09-20T21:23:00.000Z

In light of Celtic's recent run of poor form, characterised by an inability to compete effectively in important games, I thought I'd offer an in-depth analysis of the areas in which I feel they are struggling and offer some solutions.

Problem - Our central defenders can't head a football, deal with a cross or stop passing to opposition strikers in their own penalty area. This means that we're conceding an astonishing number of needless goals.

Solution - Buy two defenders who don't soil themselves in terror whenever a football comes near them, or even just a couple of big lads who are at least aware that the guys in the shirts that don't have stripes on them are trying to kick the ball into our big net thing.

Say What You See

2011-09-20T21:05:00.002Z

"What we will be looking for... is a way of putting together something that allows (Palestinian) claims and legitimate aspirations for statehood to be recognized while actually renewing the only thing that's going to produce a state, which is a negotiation directly between the two sides".

Sayeth Tony Blair, in his capacity as prime fig-leaf inadequately draped across the end of America's throbbing boner for "peace in the Middle East", by which the United States means "Realisation of its ally's maximal goals with minimal concessions".

Tony's reputation for scrupulous impartiality has been rather compromised after he presented Palestinian leaders with his most generous proposal - namely that, in exchange for dropping their bid for statehood and recognising Israel's right to do whatever the fuck it likes, they would earn the right to re-enter the same negotiations that have been so very productive these last few years. After all, Benny Netanyahu may have built his career upon the solid bedrock of opposition to a Palestinian state, but who's to say he won't change his mind tomorrow?

Unsurprisingly, the Palestinians remained unmoved by Tony's proposal, failing as they do to share his confidence in the internationally sponsored peace process.

Perhaps their faith in Tony's neutrality has been shaken somewhat by his unfortunate habit of touring the Holy Land telling the Israeli political class how bloody awesome they are, while their faith in the peace process is quelled by a quick glance at the evolving map of the region, which shows up its aims rather starkly in steel girders, stone and tarmac. Perhaps Palestinian indifference to Tony's proposals is related to his habit of asking them whether they believe him, or their lyin' eyes.

The Times today advised our current Prime Minister to join with the Americans in vetoing the Palestinians' bid for statehood, on the grounds that this would "evoke the 'special relationship'" in some vague way that would confer squarely no benefits upon us, but would shower fortune and plenty upon the Obama administration.

As best I can tell, their hacks believe that the United States' lonely veto will undercut American claims to independent arbitration, leaving the casual observer with the impression that they have some kind of ulterior motive or something. Combine that with the fact that the Israelis are threatening dire consequences, should the Palestinians ask the United Nations for the same rights that each of its member states take for granted, and you can see how this might start to look a bit suspect, from a justice angle.

The Times' editorial line on this is that, since Israel and the US have already fucked this situation beyond repair in plain view, the UK is now duty-bound to publicly fuck itself in identical fashion, thus somehow magically unfucking everything to the benefit of all. This sounds a little like wishful thinking, to me.

Nonetheless, you do have enjoy the thought processes on display - the emphasis on appearances rather than reality, for instance. It's as if the planet's population were contestants on 80s idiot-fodder quiz show Catchphrase, squinting at an unintelligible and partially obscured image on a giant screen.

"Just say what you see", Roy al-Walker gently encourages us, as another square disappears, revealing what appears to be a cartoon Barack Obama holding an animated Bibi Netanyahu's coat, while the latter pours concrete over half of the West Bank.

"Is it... Is it 'Another One Bites The Dust', Roy?" we ask, mystified.

"It's good", Roy says, sucking on his teeth and shaking his head, "But it's not right..."

Well. While it's fun watching all these statesmen proclaim that nobody could deny that the Palestinians deserve statehood from one side of their mouths while muttering that they can't have it from the other, I suggest that it would probably be better if the UK kept its own counsel.

If the Americans are intent on nailing their balls to the Wailing Wall and then trying to sprint towards a better tomorrow - and they are - I doubt whether the sight of Britain straining alongside them is going to make the spectacle any more convincing, effective or edifying.

Manna

2011-09-15T18:12:00.001Z

Oh, praise the Lord - this Johann Hari thing is the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it?

I'll assume you know the background and just observe that sentencing the little arse to a year's hard journalism studies is Just. The. Perfect. Outcome for this whole hilarious escapade - it ends nothing and ensures an ongoing mutual fragfest between some of the nation's most tiresome hacks. I can almost hear that little vein on Toby Young's temple throbbing, no doubt lending him the dignified air of an oversized, live-action bollock-torture sculpture.

I mean, where to start? The precious spectacle of British journalism up in arms over some grievous affront to its much-vaunted integrity, perhaps, a proposition akin to a career poledancer launching a crusade for public modesty? Oh, please, continue!

I think we can all agree that some purloined quotes will fatally undermine an industry that's in large part devoted to flogging a volcanic miasma of celebrity titty, rage-inducing lies and net meme ripoffs. What woe hath Hari wrought upon the noble writer's art? Who now shall place their faith in our exclusive exposes of climate hoaxing immigrant sluts who go like the jackhammers of fuck five times a night with well-known Premiership footballers?

And what of the grotesque insult to the dignity of Hari's Wikipedia victims, after his pseudonymous accusations were seen by none? Admittedly, most of them deserve to be forcefully strapped down so that a pissed-up tattoo artist can scrawl even worse allegations on their foreheads left-handed, but surely nobody deserves to have nasty things written about them on a web page. I mean, not only is such a thing unheard of, but that's not what the internet is for, is it?

There was some Twittertalk last night encouraging the injured parties to seek restitution through the courts, a fresh hilarity that I hope and pray comes to pass. My ideal scenario would be a series of ruinously expensive and acrimonious trials, in which both parties somehow contrive to lose, incurring smashing great legal fees in the process.

Whatever. The Hari affair has been a knee-slapping, rib-cracking laugh-a-minute riot - a richly comedic display of hubris and nemesis in which all of the participants have wound up whacking themselves in the face with the rubber fish of bathos, and there's no prospect of a let-up in the near future.

I say, bring it on. I heartily encourage the participants to tie razorblades to their heels and physically attack each other, squawking and slashing like fighting cocks, but I'll settle for a grinding war of attrition fought across the opinion pages in increasingly bitter and desperate tones, with all the friendly fire and collateral damage that implies.

My advice for this era of financial strife? Invest heavily in beer and pretzels, because this comedy bandwagon is going to run and run. Magic.

God Help Us If He Ever Becomes Self-Aware

2011-09-09T05:46:00.003Z

Tony Blair has blamed Iranian intervention for prolonging conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regime change in Tehran would make him "significantly more optimistic" about the region's prospects, the former prime minister told The Times. BBC News, 9th September

Ah, Tony Blair. God help us if he ever becomes self-aware, like SkyNet in the Terminator movies - it could be a catastrophe on the species level, like nuclear war or the Black Death.

So. Here we have a leading light of an aggressive, expansionist political system that regularly employs extreme violence and coersion to replicate itself across the planet, warning a medieval theocracy to desist interfering in the affairs of its neighbours, on the grounds that those neighbours have been made protectorates of said expansionist system by force. It's a bold gambit, I have to say, and one that a sane nation might find a little peculiar.

As it happens, I do agree with Tony - I too would be more optimistic about the region's prospects, were the Iranians to ditch the glowering caste of priests that have blighted the development of their country and brutally repressed the population. God knows, we have enough historical experience of what it's like to be at the mercy of the clergy ourselves.

Let's note another irony here, though. No doubt the Mullahs would be overjoyed to impose their wacky Koranic idiocies on Edinburgh or London; if they could push a button and overthrow the American state, they'd do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, in the absence of the ability to do so, I imagine that they have no concrete plans for how the United Kingdom should be governed...

Well, you can't say that Tony Blair has no designs on the governance of Tehran.

Update!: It's actually worth shelling out a quid for the Times today, just to catch the barking yet entirely earnest lunacy of the Tony Blair interview. Here he is, explaining why Afghanistan and Iraq went so badly wrong, against all of his expectations...

"The real reason why it was difficult in Afghanistan and then in Iraq - and is difficult, actually, all over the region of the Middle East at the moment - is that the narrative in which religion is mixed up with politics and in which the idea that 'the West is inherently in conflict with us', that ideology, that has those ideas in it, in a very toxic way, is far more widespread than we understood at the time".

Now, I'm aware that Tony is referring to religious and political extremism here but equally, I can't help but point out that the former Prime Minister is complaining that some irrational, crazy people believe that the UK is "inherently in conflict" with them at a time when the UK is bombing, invading and occupying their countries.

He also unironically blames much of the carnage on "external factors" and says that there will be no "external players trying to cause difficulty" in Libya; Insists that the War on Whatever must continue because the people of these countries "want democracy", while failing to note that substantial minorities amongst them have in fact sacrificed tens of thousands of their own lives explicitly in order to prevent such an outcome, and proclaims that all of this bloodcurdling mayhem has made him realise one thing - that the "scale of the problem" was far greater than he'd imagined.

Also, this little peach of a quote is nestled near the end...

"I was saying even two or three months ago, if he (Bashar al-Assad, Syrian dictator) was prepared to lead a process of reform, then I would give him the chance to make the evolution work".

You really have to hand it to Tony - a man who believes a sincere apology should always include a restatement of how very fucking right he was all along; whose idea of questing for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is to deliver sucky speeches telling one of the warring factions how very fucking right they are about everything; who seems to think that the only problem with bombarding cities is that the public sometimes see too many bloody corpses, and who appears to believe that he has right of veto over the leadership of Ba'athist dictatorships.

As I've said before, the problem with Tony wasn't that he was a liar - he wasn't any worse than his predecessors or successors in that regard, I think. No, the real problem with Tony was and is that he is an actual, for real lunatic who sees validation in every error and the Promised Land in every bombed out cityscape. The man is a maniac of the most dangerous type - a politician who actually believes his own propaganda... And, let me remind you, this guy is the Peace Envoy to the Middle East.

Ouch.

Interim Review - Doctor Who Series 6

2011-09-06T17:10:00.002Z

If old Doctor Who was a bit like The Littlest Hobo - mysterious traveller has adventures, saves people from danger in their hour of need and then disappears again...

...New Doctor Who is more like The Littlest Hobo is a DemiGod who shows up at the height of the seige of Stalingrad, has rampant seventeen-dimensional sex with a Valkyrie, endures a thousand Christlike deaths for no apparent reason and then saves the day from an intergalactic evil that may or may not be himself through the power of his own sheer awesomeness. Woof!

Awesome Decontextualised Violence

2011-08-26T23:47:00.002Z

Short fights! Let's face it, the movie's dragging on and we know the protagonists hate each other's guts - why would they pole-vault around the place Wu-style waving bendy swords at each other, or firing a bajillion bullets and missing? Luke - I am your father. Shut up and have his hand off, won't you?

For credibility, you want the hero's life on the line in a no-holds barred, die-bastard deathgrip fight to the death. Drama! Entertainment is supposed to be gripping, white-knuckle stuff and I've never seen a real fight that lasted longer than thirty seconds.

In that enobling spirit, let's count off the best short fights in cinematic history that I can think of on the spot. First up...

Martin Blank vs. Felix LaPoubelle, Grosse Point Blank

Hitman Martin enjoys a moment of quiet nostalgia, then suddenly - Whap! Whap, slap, whap, Slap! (Wham, thud!) Thump, grunt, crash! Whap, gurgle, crunch (click) snick! (Gurgle).

Chingachgook vs. Magua, Last of the Mohicans

Chingachgook sees psycho crater-face Magua knock off his first-born, and loses the rag. Swish, Fucko! (Crack!) Bam! Splat! (Glower!) Splutch! (Thud!)

Aragorn vs. Lurtz, Fellowship of the Ring

The heir of Elendil has shit to be getting on with, and orcs are just getting in the way. Bam! Whing-ching Slam! (Growl!) Wham, thud (Growl!) Stab! Bam, thud, fucko! (Roar!) Ching, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, slice Splutch! (Roar!) Whack! (Thud).

I would've included one or two from Zatoichi, but most of them were a bit too short.

PLI03 - The Responsibilitising

2011-08-25T16:16:00.003Z

The United States has no troops in Libya, which means our men and women in uniform do not find themselves at the center of — or responsible for — what will inevitably be a messy and possibly dangerous aftermath. Our forces did not suffer a single casualty. The military action by the West that was crucial to the rebels was a genuine coalition effort led by Britain and France. This was not a made-by-America revolution, and both we and the Middle East are better for that. - EJ Dionne, Washington Post, 24th August

The result is irrelevant - we were right to attack. Having an exit strategy from Libya was nothing like as important as the urgent need to save huge numbers of lives... (Before the war) there were as many people who said that, well, yes, they agreed that Colonel Gaddafi is a very bad person, and yes, on balance it would be a good thing to get rid of him, but despite this, intervention was most imprudent. And the reason? We didn't have an exit strategy... I never thought the lack of an exit strategy was a good objection in the first place... It would have been the right thing to do even if there had been an impasse. - Daniel Finkelstein, Times, 24th August

Looks like Nick Clegg was right when he said that lessons had been learned from Iraq, certainly among the pundit class, if nowhere else.

Lots of opinion columnists wound up looking pretty silly when they imprudently declared that Iraq would only be a success if it wound up producing a model democracy, a beacon for those benighted souls of the region still suffering dictatorship, or if those phantom nukes and anthrax bombs eventually showed up. Incautious statements like that made repeatedly declaring victory at regular intervals for the next few years a tricky proposition, in the Google era.

It looks to me like parts of yer pundit class have found a way to avoid all that boring "consequences" nonsense - simply declare absolute vindication while the country is enjoying the fun and fireworks of victory, then turn off your TV and proclaim that anything that happens afterwards is irrelevant.

We won! Just rejoice at that news.

Ah, opinion journalism - stuff like this always reminds me of that F. Scott Fitzgerald description, the one I always haul out on occasions like this...

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Party Like It's 2003 - The Naming

2011-08-25T15:55:00.001Z

I’ve decided to apply for a civilian job at the Pentagon. I want to be the guy that comes up with each day’s description of the counterinsurgent Iraqi enemy for press releases. Whoever they have now is good, no question about it. I’ve been a fan of his work since the first week of May. Under his tutelage, the average length in print of the described Iraqi enemy has jumped from about four or five words in May ("pro-Saddam Baath Party holdouts"), to about 10 to 15 words in June ("Forces loyal to the regime of the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein"), to the current 20 to 25 words. Matt Taibbi, NY Press, July 2003

Thus began Taibbi's quest to find the perfect US government description of the Americans' terrorist foes in Iraq, a search that started simple with "Ba'athists" and "Loyalists", and quickly became...

"Ba'ath Party activists loyal to the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein"; "Iraqis who remain loyal to Saddam Hussein and Islamic militants from other countries eager to kill Americans"; "Remnants of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, anti-American Islamic fighters coming into Iraq and common criminals..." and "Former Ba'ath Party and security officials who will stop at nothing to regain their power and their privilege enjoyed under the deposed Hussein dictatorship".

Me, my favourite was the short-lived "Anti-Iraqi forces", one of the more ballsy efforts.

So, given recent events, what fresh terms are about to be minted for north Africa? "Gaddafi-ites" sounds too much like a Desmond Dekker record and is inflicted with a plethora of variant spellings and "Insurgents" carries far too many negative historical connotations. Maybe they'll let us down by going for plain old "Al Qaeda extremists", but there's a part of me that fully expects "Islamomaniacal xenophobic fascists hell-bent on causing mayhem and destruction".

War Is The New Normal

2011-08-23T16:45:00.005Z

You can't help but marvel at the pictures LIVE FROM TRIPOLI! of the Libyan rebels apparently storming Gaddafi's compound - a bunch of semi-trained working geezers doing their best Bastille impression on a richly-deserving target. Me, I still have to join in the current media vogue for backtracking and hedging.

Hands up - I thought this war would drag on far longer than it has, and kill a massively higher percentage of the populace than it did. I have a standing bet since March with D-Notice that Gaddafi won't make it to Christmas alive, which gives you an idea of the timescale that I anticipated. This was largely based on reporting from the ground by hacks for the New York Times, the Times, the FT, the Graun, the Telegraph and various internet sources.

As usual, it'll take a few months to shake out what actually happened, but a consensus appears to be emerging that the press were too concentrated around Benghazi to notice that the rebels in the west were made of sterner stuff, quietly advancing while our attention was elsewhere. That may be true, but it doesn't explain to me where Gaddafi's goons went - I suspect that they decided that being paid was great fun, but that few of them fancied getting killed for a strutting, murderous tool like the Colonel. There's only so much precision high explosives a hated dictator's army can take, after all.

Excellent news, all in all. The difference between the Libyans' situation in March and this evening is like night and day, and they now have a great opportunity to forge a future free from self-important gangsters backed by thugs, secret policemen and torturers.

I hope they make a good fist at reconstruction and democratisation, because it's been a vicious war, filled with exactly the kind of urban bombardments and house-by-house fighting that the original UN resolution for intervention was supposed to prevent. It didn't prevent it, of course, because our leaders were lying through their teeth about protecting civilians, and that's where things get sticky.

Much as I hate to dust off Professor Norm's mea-culpa-but-fucka-youa routine and tu quoque like it's 2006, it should be pretty apparent that there are still some very large questions over Nato's hare-brained chariot-charge into the war and the vast, towering mountains of bullshit that greased the wheels.

Recall - the UK, US and France supposedly went to the UN to seek permission to create a No-Fly Zone, yet miraculously emerged with wide-ranging powers to take any measures necessary to "protect civilians". You've just seen six months of solid, dedicated "protection", which in reality meant "Intervening on one side in a civil war".

For all the Responsibility-To-Protect rah-rah, we've just demonstrated to the world for the third time in a decade that we intentionally and brazenly lie to the entire planet about humanitarianism for months on end in pursuit of entirely political goals. Nato has spent six months explaining that it isn't seeking regime change in Libya while straining as hard as it could to do exactly the opposite.

More alarmingly, the President of the United States spent the entire period denying his country was even involved in a fucking war at all. Think about what precedent that sets, next time the sabres are rattling for Iran.

Whether you object to any of that depends on your opinion on the old ends justifying the means, and whether you think fucking off potential consequences in favour of action now is a responsible way for nations to proceed. Nothing succeeds like success, so if you're happy being propagandised and lied to in pursuit of further wars, you'll be delighted today.

Further, it remains entirely true that, for the second time in a decade, the UK has jumped into a war with its fingers crossed, entirely on the reassurances of western-educated locals who don't appear to represent the populace. That's why western diplomats have spent the last three months quietly whispering to the papers that the Libyan rebels are a disparate group with massive internal differences. If you've got no idea what's going to happen next in North Africa - democracy or interfactional bloodbath - then congratulations! You and David Cameron have something in common after all.

Whether you find that worrying depends on whether you have an attention span longer than five seconds. There's no need to reiterate the long catastrophes that are Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, but let me put it this way - were you aware that the Iraqi government is quietly supporting the Syrian government's ultraviolent crackdown on its citizens?

These two are the leading official bullshit explosions that have bugged me most throughout, but they're not alone. Whatever did happen to that Arab No-Fly Zone, anyway? And whatever happened to those great floods of refugees that the war was supposed to stop, or the evil crackdowns that would be deterred in other nations? Each of these were cited before bombing began, and panned out exactly opposite to how we were told they would.

Hell, I know none of this stuff worries many of the characters who were most enthusiastically pro-intervention in Libya. Few gave a shit how this war was going to work in practice then, and many of them have been making machine gun noises and bellowing for days about how very awesome bombing Libya was all along... After six months of near-total silence on anything that's happened there, and you can be sure that if Tripoli goes the way of Baghdad, you'll hear nothing out of them on the subject. There'll be newer, crazier military escapades to cheer on by then.

Well. If you, like me, were flabbergasted that Britain stampeded to involve itself in another serious conflict, just years after presiding over one of the nastiest mass-murder sprees in recent history, then steel yourselves for sequels. It took decades of boo-hoo propaganda and flag-waving for the Yanks to get over the disaster of Vietnam - it's taken us about a tenth of the time and none of the self-reflection to dick off one of our most inglorious warfaring episodes to dive into what could be a whole series of new ones.

Seriously, y'all. If we were that belligerent, that eager to dive into this war after one of the most horrifying military fuck-ups in our history, imagine how can-do chaps we're going to be for the next decade. Excellent news for Libyans means interesting times ahead for British squaddies, I think. War is the new normal.

WTF Day

2011-08-22T05:13:00.001Z

Excellent news this morning as the Libyan rebels take Tripoli without major bloodshed, to scenes of wild celebration. It's a great day for them and for the people of Libya, who have endured a truly horrible time of it this last six months, never mind the last four decades.

It comes many months quicker and with several thousand less deaths than I'd expected and, as I said I would, I happily retract all those bad things I said about the rebels being an incompetent militia, incapable of liberating the country even with the assistance of Nato.

I'll update this post extensively after the day's breadwinning, but I'll say this - I'll be very, very interested indeed in what the papers have to say this morning. My impression of gridlocked stalemate a week ago came from the consensus view of the embedded reporters on the ground. If anyone has an explanation for how we moved from extended standoff to smashing victory in just a matter of days, I'll be delighted to hear it.

Still, happy days - there are still a number of pressing problems in the country, but it's nice to have my boundless cynicism on our ability to screw everything up and make it a million times worse contradicted, once in a blue moon.

Ay Widnae Know Ays Arse Fae a Hole In The Ground

2011-08-19T19:31:00.002Z

Uh wis thinkin the other night, that cunt David Starkey an ays greetin pus on Newsnight? What a loaday shite ay wis talkin, greetin aboot how aw the blacks huv made the whites dae such a such. What dis he ken, fae Cambridge an that? Ay widnae know ays arse fae a fuckin hole in the ground, if ay wis dropped on a random high street fae Tranent tae Tollcross.

Ah mean, ah've got a degree in English an ah dinnae talk like David Starkey, wi ays flames lambent an aw that pish.

Ah cannae be daein wi the fucker, if ahm bein honest. English history means fuck aw tae me, just a loaday posh bastards fannyin aboot an killin each other fur nae reason ah can see. Nae doot some Oxbridge jokers want tay hear aboot Henry the Eighth an ays epic quest fir mair pussy an nae hassle an a new religion tae boot, but ah cannae be daein wi it.

If it wis up tae me, that Starkey widnae huv a job - it'd be aw modern history wi its Abraham Lincolns and Robespierres an Lenins an Garibaldis an Oliver Cromwells, showin they royal bastards what happens when ye bugger aboot wi the man in the street.

---------

Now folks, that's how I'd talk to my brother, playing pool on a Tuesday night, were he to develop a sudden and miraculous desire to discuss politics. You all understand me fine as Mr. Polysyllabic giving it hee-haw about President Obama or Bashar Al-Assad, so I'm going to assume I can communicate... okay, in print.

Am I some kind of dolt, just because my patter isn't instantly recognisable nationwide? Do digits drop off my IQ because I talk some unintelligible heathen lingo that Cambridge graduates find bizarre?

Ah dinnae think so. Maybe the kids of London are unemployable and ineducable because of their funky, new-fangled patois. I might not like to employ some teenagers babbling their own wee teen language, if I wanted to sell to the general public.

Or, maybe some people have a fondness for wild overstatement. I throw it out there, for consideration.

Update!: I've been Googling for that Zoe Heller quote about the teacher being impressed by the working class kid, "like a gorilla just stumbled out of the jungle and asked for a gin and tonic". Can't find it, even though I know it's in there. It's a beauty.

2011-08-18T19:13:00.002Z

What Australia Needs Is Some Kind Of Devastating Apocalypse
by Lawrence Humungus MP

Greetings, my dogs of war, from Lawrence Humungus - Shadow Secretary for Wastelands and leader of the Republican Party of Rock 'n' Rollah.

I speak to you at a time of great strife for our nation. We are beset with many grievous economic problems. Even now, the Australian consumer remains woefully confident; our markets bouyant and our businesses unburned and disgracefully unplundered. The deserts sprout great cities of pipe and steel, powered by the black fuel.

There has not been enough violence.

As I drove to this very building today in my nitrous-boosted, souped up Ute, I looked in vain for a single burned out car; I did not see so much as a single mohawked bicycle gang member clad in assless chaps. Not one!

Members of the House, I am gravely disappointed, but I have an honourable compromise. What Australia needs now is some kind of devastating apocalypse, and there will be an end to the horror of peace and prosperity.

Be still, my Gayboy Berserkers. We will do it my way - fear is our ally. Then, you shall have your assless chaps.

I hereby call upon the Prime Minister to abandon her puny plans for energy efficiency. I move that the House vote to implement our proposals for an immediate global thermonuclear war and the reduction of the nation to a desolate wasteland populated by rapacious homosexual scavenger gangs.

Do it not, you puppy, and you will know the vengeance of Lawrence Humungus! I promise you, nobody... Nobody gets out of here alive, unless they can jump onto a barbed-wire-wrapped oil tanker at speeds of over seventy miles per hour.

I give you one day to decide.

Justice, Seen To Be Done In

2011-08-18T17:28:00.001Z

Let this be a lesson then - if your kid is out of control and needs a short, sharp shock, why not just trap them in their rooms and nail the doors and windows shut for a week, or debag them and chuck them out of your car in front of their school?

Hell, why not just beat them down with a rolling pin? I'd take that over any amount of jail time, since prisons - for men or women, and young offenders' institutions - are about the most godawful, dismal places in the country*. I'd say the level of brutalisation involved in both is at very least equivalent, and the only people I can think of who avoid serious harm to their long-term prospects from jail are newly-remodelled crims-turned-true-crime writers.

Half the nation applauded Mrs Ives when she shopped her daughter to the police for being involved in rioting. Here's the lesson that other parents in similar circumstances just learned - hand your child in to the police to admit their guilt and take their punishment, and in all likelihood a magistrate will take their repentance into account and then throw the fucking book at them, pour discourager les autres.

I'm considerably less shocked at the sentences being handed out to looters and rioters than many, it seems, but even I find this tactic of hammering absolutely everyone a bit surprising. Make no mistake, it'll discourage les autres just fine, but if I'd have second thoughts about speaking to the coppers about a loved one now, you'd better believe that everyone else has taken notice too.

Fisher Price's My First Law 'n' Order Debate

2011-08-17T19:29:00.002Z

I like to think of myself as a reasonable man, prepared to hear out and consider arguments in a calm and rational matter*. That said, the fact that it seems to be necessary to point out that youth culture was not invented by a lesbian hip-hop collective in 2009, with the explicit aim of destroying all that's right and true, makes me feel a little like hitting the Delete button on the entire universe, or at very least frogmarching anyone who wears glasses into a paddy-field for a day's work at riflepoint.

I actually don't know what's worse - that in 2011, anyone needs to be informed that young people have been kicking up shit and mobs of nutters running riot since Jesus Christ Himself was an anklebiter, or that they need to be told it by the Economist and the Spectator.

Obviously, what I'm describing here is a conversation between us pointy-headed geeks who spend our evenings batting this stuff back and forth, but really. It shows you how useful a debate we're really having, if we're reduced to going over the ABCs of human civilisation.

*Seriously. On occasion.

Shitegeist

2011-08-13T14:22:00.000Z

Oh my, the horror! A man who is notorious for making idiotic statements on television has made some more idiotic statements on television.

Specifically, he's saying that white people are turning into criminals because they have been in some way Blackified by malignant osmosis with some black people, who aren't themselves criminals due to biological or racial characteristics - oh, heaven forfend that anyone should take it that way! - but because of "cultural factors". Seasoned idiot-watchers will notice that Cultural Factors are the Biological or Racial Characteristics that it's okay to cite in the press.

Shuggy makes the appropriate point that the sole reason for asking David Starkey onto your current affairs show is to horrify the audience into pearl-clutching paroxysms. He isn't there to clarify issues or to represent Britain's sizeable ignorant reactionary demographic - he's there specifically to make offensive and stupid remarks.

No doubt there will be calls from lefty types for Starkey to be barred from TV appearances, but I think this is the wrong reaction. As ever, I think he and other chumps of his ilk should be given a prominent public platform and encouraged to speak their minds as fully and frankly as possible.

When I was talking a few weeks back about Melanie Phillips' ludicrous conspiracy theories of a sinister, liberal-Jihadist elite conspiracy to destroy the West, I should've been more clear on this point. I actively favour putting yer Starkeys, Phillipses et al on TV and radio, provided they're then asked some fairly direct and searching questions about their nutty opinions. The public, broadly, are not idiots and they can spot racism, hysteria, paranoia and evasive bullshit when it's placed in front of them.

Here's a specific example - the next time that cold-faced psychopath Douglas Murray* appears on Question Time, maybe one of the guests could lean over and ask him what he meant when he said that Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board during his early Deport 'em all speech.

The harsh glare of publicity is democracy's best friend, as always. As we've seen with the riots this week, there are plenty of lunatics in the public eye who have strong opinions on the sapping effects of multiculturalism etc. on our Precious Bodily Fluids; lots of people who have inventive policy suggestions on everything from the death penalty to the collapse of Christianity.

I say, put 'em all on prime-time TV and let 'em talk us through their wacky theories and loopy proposals for forcible remoralisation or for deBlackifying the nation's white youths, so we can watch 'em all sweating and stammering like they've just been caught whacking off to horse porn on the office computer. It'll be fun for all the family.

*Frankly, a man who looks like he hasn't enjoyed a single second of his life and who wouldn't raise a chuckle for anything, save maybe a Greenpeace protester being slowly run over by a steamroller. I don't know what he looks like to you, but to me he looks like the kind of bloke who has a locked room in his house that nobody else is allowed to enter or even refer to.

Football Legends

2011-08-12T18:09:00.001Z

Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed the Celtic vs. Manchester United: Legends game the other night. It was all for a good cause and it was nice to see Larsson, Sutton and Moravcik again, but I was a little disappointed that the manager didn't sub on Hercules for the last fifteen minutes or play a Sasquatch at left-back.

I told my brother that was probably because Britain has little in the way of epic mythology, and he was all like, Well, what about Arthur?

I mean, I had to laugh. I like Dudley Moore as much as the next man, but he's no Beowulf.

Nothing Proper About Your Propaganda

2011-08-11T16:57:00.005Z

In a war of information and perception, the truth no longer matters. It is all about the message and in Libya, the regime is coming out on top. - Times, 11th August

Strange words indeed from Deborah Haynes, defence editor at the Times, in a piece bemoaning the snafu that is our latest war (Full article in comments, below). It's an odd column, listing the following points as presentational problems for Nato and the Libyan rebels...

1. Nato forces have killed quite a lot of kids in Tripoli recently. Additionally, Nato's bombing campaign is causing major medical shortages, power cuts and petrol shortfalls for the civilian population.
2. Gaddafi's stooges on TV are making much hay from these facts.
3. The rebels claimed they'd killed one of Gaddafi's sons, when he is in fact alive and well.
4. The rebels are disorganised, fractious and appear to have a Jihadist problem.
5. Our record of having bombed a whole series of Muslim countries this decade is making it very easy for Gaddafi's stooges on TV to portray Nato as crusaders and aggressors.
6. The failure of a coup to materialise is being exploited by Gaddafi's stooges as evidence that there is no majority desire to end Gaddafi's reign.
7. This means that the rebels' challenge appears fatally flawed and that Nato are after Libya's oil, and that

This is a huge Propaganda Fail on Nato's part.

Well. Let's note here that, while Haynes bemoans all of these points as propaganda problems, she doesn't actually bother to question their accuracy at all.

To pick a few of these points - Britain and France are not leading a holy Christian war and are probably not primarily motivated by lust for Libya's resources. Nonetheless, Nato does appear to be killing quite a lot of kids and intentionally depriving the citizenry of medicine and fuel; the rebels are fractious and disorganised, and so on. Further, the failure of a coup to materialise may actually mean that there's no majority desire in Tripoli to end Gaddafi's reign.

The problems raised here are, for the most part, facts and not inconvenient lies promulgated by a tyrant's pet broadcaster.

The quote at the top of this post - "In a war of information and perception, the truth no longer matters" - would be a tiresome truism were it made by a disinterested observer. Far from being disinterested, The Times has been the foremost cheerleader for the Libyan war from the start, bigging up our chances of quick victory and egging on intervention like Manchester United's prawn-sandwich brigade in hospitality.

For the defence editor of the Times to disavow the importance of truth itself in piece which essentially concedes that the entire war is a travesty is... interesting, to say the least.

2011-08-09T22:01:00.003Z

There's really nothing positive at all to say about the riots in England. Basically, we have a lot of gangs of petty criminals of the type who usually restrict themselves to organised shoplifting crews, bootlegging and small-time drug dealing, now whipping up a lot of excitable kids as cover for mass theft operations. Large distractions leave the ringleaders free to attack wherever they like without worrying about police interference - that Sony distribution centre, for example.

This isn't a protest or kids letting off steam - it's organised crime. Given how astonishingly effective this is, Daniel is right in this Tweet - it's less a question of "Why is this happening?" than it is of "Why doesn't it happen more often?"

The really alarming thing here is that there's not a lot the cops can do to prevent it, beyond mass arrests, and they're not going to be very effective anyway. There's also only so many people you can shoot with rubber bullets, and it's not like we're short of easily-led kids with time on their hands.

I think a lot of commentators are missing just how bad this could turn out to be. This could prove to be a more or less unstoppable public disorder problem causing major damage and disruption, at a time when we've got a near-enough infinite supply of excitable kids who were regarded as being practically a sub-species by much of the populace before the riots started. Soon, we'll have a massive public demand for Something To Be Done.

This means crackdowns, and I don't know if anyone else watched Sky and BBC News most of the day, but the calls for martial law started early and got louder as the day went on. David Cameron doesn't strike me as the Nixon type, but you'd better believe both major parties are crammed to the hoop with authoritarian dinosaurs whose dreams are filled with clunking coppers in space marine armour and weapons catalogues full of shiny guns.

Maybe I'm being alarmist here - it wouldn't be the first time - but if this continues, the way is clear for some seriously Nixonian behaviour here, and when the state takes the gloves off, it's unlikely to be the ringleaders who are on the receiving end of the bare-knuckle boxing.

We're talking about major wedges being shoved between existing political blocs, pushing those who already have some wacky beliefs out to the far edges of wingnuttery, with the resultant arguments and policies you'd expect... In the middle of an economic disaster and huge unemployment. That would have lots of effects, none of them good, and few if any of the new and shiny ideas about smashing heads are likely to stop the damn rioting - quite the opposite, in fact.

Jesus. I hope not, but the potential is on here for a political atmosphere that's going to make the Daily Mail in full flow look like an address on forgiveness by Rowan Williams.

War! Good God!

2011-08-08T18:23:00.004Z

Ay, when I asked earlier who that Libyan NTC Plan For Ultimate Victory was aimed at, I entirely forgot to consider the possibility that it was aimed at Professors Emerituses of Politicses.

The Good Professor is annoyed with Peter Preston. I don't need many excuses to take the arse with Preston myself on occasion, so he has some sympathy from me there.

Nonetheless, as you can probably guess, we're back on the subject of Our Great Perpetual War On Reality Itself, for which Professor Norm is a strong advocate. Preston reckons we should slash our spending on "defence", since we haven't fought anything resembling a war of defence since about 1982, at least. The Prof disagrees on three counts...

1. Do not do anything like invading Afghanistan again... So, were Britain ever to be on the receiving end of a 9/11-type of attack, prepared from a country hosting an organization dedicated to carrying out such attacks against it, and resulting in the deaths of thousands of people in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh or some other British city, the government of the day should just 'pass' on the idea of a military response.

Not to be too much of a dick about this, but the UK didn't actually invade Afghanistan with nuclear submarines, heavy armour, massed mobile infantry and so on. Admittedly, the Americans used aircraft carriers - something we didn't have at the time - but the actual anti-Al Qaeda operations were achieved with relative ease by small special forces teams, high-altitude bombing and co-operation with Afghan allies - precisely the kind of combined arms operations the present defence proposals are aimed at. I suggest that we probably don't need a bajillion-dollar military to achieve this kind of victory in future.

Actually, I'm not that naive. I know that the Professor is including our God-Knows-Why, What-Nutter's-Idea-Was-This? ten-year busman's holiday in Afghanistan here, but since that endeavour has actually nullified the initial successes of Operation Enduring Freedom by creating a massive Taliban cross-border statelet within Pakistan and Afghanistan, I don't think that's a very good advert for the UK maintaining a planet-crushing military behemoth.

2. Do not ever think of using our planes or troops to try to rescue civilians under threat of mass atrocity... This is a nice reversal of the 'If Libya, why not Burma?' question. We may now say, 'If not Syria, then why not not anywhere?' Screw the Responsibility to Protect. More Rwandas? Bring 'em on - we don't have to intervene to prevent that sort of thing, and (on the same basis) neither does anybody else.

See, I know where Norm is coming from here. It seems hard-hearted to say, No More Interventions! The sad fact though is that our current intervention in Libya is basically a watch-through-your-fingers catastrofuck, that may yet either end miraculously well or devolve into carnage. Further, there actually was an intervention in Rwanda - Operation Turquoise. Guess what? It was also a watch-through-your-fingers catastrofuck, as have been most of our well-meaning interventions. Somalia? Check. Iraq? Check. Kosovo? Hmm, wobbly palms, could've been better, could've been a whole lot worse.

You might say Well, One Good Result Now And Then Is Better Than None, and it's an argument worth making, given the stakes. All I'll say to that is that maybe we can help people, on occasion, but our proven habit of making things a whole lot worse doesn't inspire confidence. I'm just glad that it's not my country that a bunch of eager, trigger-happy humanitarian beavers are aiming to assist.

Frankly, I'm now at the point where I wouldn't favour any kind of new military actions without a thousand-point battleplan and an encyclopaedic, heavily-footnoted paper on stabilisation. Neither will be forthcoming for any future bombing enterprises.

3. If you can't think of a threat to this country that is immediate or proximate, you don't need to worry about anything... In Peter Preston's version: 'Who, looking round there [Europe] with due solemnity, is going to start attacking the UK any time soon?... Give me one believable scenario that makes sense.' Don't say Eurocentrism, say: oh, what a jolly benign world.

Well. I'm nobody's pacifist - I actively like war, in the abstract. You should see my bookcase and DVD collection, and the PS3 games? Evidence of an ill-spent youth and young adulthood, I'd say.

Even so, invoking the possibility of vague, non-specific future threats is a neat way of dodging the question, isn't it? After all, Preston's right - there is no serious military threat to the UK at the moment. It may not always be that way - hey, it could be nuclear combat, toe to toe with the Russkies by teatime tomorrow! - but "Like, the world is not benign, man" is a damned funny attempt at refuting the point.

Like the Professor, I too would pick a better advocate for reduced military expenditure than Preston, if it was up to me. That said, I'd pick a better critic too.

Suckered

2011-08-08T17:27:00.000Z

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals – if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Thus spake Saint Ronald of Bonzo back in the Year of Our Lord 1975. Naturally, the first thing he does after saying this is to immediately disavow the actually existing Libertarian Party as a bunch of wackos, as any politician who wishes to be elected to even the local PTA would be forced to do, but I find this instructive in light of my recent post on libertarians and the death penalty.

When that was reposted over at LibCon, it immediately attracted a rash of comments to the effect that those self-declared "libertarians" who were demanding the instantaneous state-sponsored extermination of paedos and murderers are not Real Libertarians.

It may surprise you, but I'm highly amenable to that argument. Indeed, they are not Real Libertarians, in the sense that there are about five Real Libertarians in Britain and all of them are too busy linking to each others' blogs in arguments over how fascist the licence fee really is to actually campaign for anything*.

Nonetheless, this claim really is reminiscent of some student punk band in 1977** angrily proclaiming that the Sex Pistols aren't Real Punks. Hell, maybe they weren't, but if you'd asked a random member of the public what a punk looked like back then, there's a good chance their description would resemble John Lydon much more than it would a bunch of Real Punks propping up the bill at the Bog and Plunger on a wet Tuesday night.

So indeed, yer Guidos and even yer Saint Ronnies may not be Real Libertarians but like so many of their ilk - and there are loads of 'em - they've somehow magically found a way to use libertarian dogma as a pole vault to propel themselves up to positions from which they can promote a series of mean-as-fuck, self-aggrandising and regressive policies. Gee, how did that happen?

Let's be blunt here. When New Labour rocked to power with loud declarations about their relaxed attitude to the filthy rich, I didn't then conclude that their shocking record on inequality was an aberration. I didn't even make much complaint about Great Betrayals of this Socialist Principle or that Promise To Uplift The Little Guy, since it was entirely obvious that whatever noises they made in that direction were entirely secondary to their goal of keeping the taps on the cash pipes to the already wealthy wide open.

I take a similar attitude to Barack Obama's record on war and taxation. Hell, when the three iPods that Mrs R. and I have owned between us all packed in one after the other, each within three months of the expiration of their warranty, I drew the appropriate lesson.

I mean, Milton Friedman knew full well that the Republicans were a bunch of corporate goons and Christian phalangists, motivated by the twin desires to stuff their mates' pockets and drive fear of a literal, bull-horned and goat-hooved Satan into the nation's Godless fornicators and homosexuals. Anyone recall him ever finishing one of his fruity little talks on the Godlike wisdom of the markets with the words "Oh, and by the way, don't vote Republican - they're a bunch of beady-eyed mentalists who want to padlock your genitals"?

No, you don't... Because, like so many of his thinktank buddies, his entire schtick was a fine-sounding scam aimed entirely at electing as many mean-as-fuck right-wing psychopaths as possible, however reactionary, and damn the consequences.

I mean the whole thing here - free market evangelism, minarchism, the whole nine yards - all of it. Scam. A well-constructed scam, mind, but a confidence trick nonetheless.

Now, I know this isn't going to go over well with true believers. This kind of thing seldom does, and all I can tell you is to take a look across the political aisle at those unfortunate, red-faced lefties who spent years as members of glorified personality cults. There's no great shame in having been suckered, since it's basically an unavoidable part of consuming politics in any form.

Not buying it, eh? Well, perhaps there's some other, less obvious explanation for why a worldview predicated on individual freedom and the destruction of the state always manifests itself in reality as a coalition with the super-wealthy; why it always seems to find figureheads whose minds are full of spotless panopticon prisons, anti-abortion crusades for the Baby Jesus, shadow government deals with the Ayatollah and tub-thumping, disingenuous populist calls for state execution.

Really, I'm all ears.

*That's when the Real Libertarians aren't busy intentionally fleecing other, junior Real Libertarians. If you ever bump into a political candidate who insists that the basis of their philosophy is absolute self-interest and a rejection of his duty to others, I'd say it's time to start keeping your wallet tethered on a short chain.

**1977, not 1979. Better now?

We Are So Totally Not Fucking This Thing Up

2011-08-08T16:19:00.003Z

I have in my hand a piece of paper, and on it is written the Libyan National Transition Council's plan for post-Gaddafi governance, drafted with "secret" assistance from "Britain and other Western governments". You can find the bare details here, with further details behind the paywall in the Times. [1]

Frankly, it's as nutty a plan as I could've imagined and although it stops short of calling for an assault on Tripoli using war elephants, it's still something of an eye-opener.

"The document reveals that rebel forces have little faith in their ability to topple Colonel Gaddafi, but expect the regime to crumble from within. Despite their public rhetoric, the top secret document reveals that rebel planners conclude that a succesful advance on Tripoli is unlikely, as is the death of Colonel Gaddafi in a Nato bombing raid. Instead they think that he is most likely to be ousted by a popular uprising or coup". - Times, 8th August

Which is all well and good - in war, much is left in the lap of the gods and they're a lot closer to the action than I am, so maybe they're right.

On the other hand, let's also note that "And then the people will rise up in support of us and provide a Deus Ex Machina total victory" is precisely the battle plan that worked so very well for, amongst others, Bonnie Prince Charlie's military advisors in the doomed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. If you haven't heard much about that plan, that's probably because those guys found it hard to pen their memoirs after they'd been bayonetted through the heart or publicly hung for treason.

Alarmingly, "And then the people will rise up" also represents the entirety of the NTC's plan for securing Western Libya after the regime's fall, in that 10-15,000 rebel sympathisers in Tripoli will apparently keep the peace, backed by 5,000 "non-ideological regime security officials". This, recall, after both French and British ministers have explicitly floated plans allowing Gaddafi and his cronies to remain in Libya after the war is over, at a time when we are still denying that regime change is our official policy.

They also lay out a series of likely outcomes for the war, with ATTPWRU regarded as "High Probability". Also in the "Very Likely" column is "Nato attacks intensify to an unbearable level", which is a pretty bold prediction after six months of what appear to be entirely bearable Nato attacks.

In the "Medium probability" section is "International community unites, untenable diplomatic pressure on regime", a proposition which I'd put right up there with "Contact with massively advanced spacefaring alien species suddenly eliminates war as a tool of policy" in the likelihood stakes. There's also "Enough Gaddafi family members detained or killed" which seems fair enough, if a little bit Sopranos-esque.

Meanwhile in tthe "Low probability" section is "Radicalised suicide bombings/car bombings", which is comforting coming from an organisation whose top general was just fragged to smithereens by Jihadist lunatics in extremely whiffy and suspiciously convenient circumstances. Bear in mind that this is also quite a claim to be making in a document that appears to have been drawn up with significant British input, given our track record.

Really, I don't blame the NTC for making vague and windy plans for the capture and pacification of a major capital city. I've no doubt that the rebel forces contain many brave and committed fighters for freedom, but even if they were in a position to take Tripoli - which they aren't and probably won't be, because they're a militia and not an army of actual soldiers - some of them do have nasty inclinations towards abusing civilians and looting everything that isn't nailed down.

And so, we remain exactly where we were before this plan was published - bogged down with our fingers crossed for a non-bloodcurdling outcome.

The Times claims that this plan is targeted at high-level Gaddafi officials and the general population of Tripoli, with the message "Gaddafi has no support". I think it might well be aimed at credulous, Times-reading westerners with the message "Yo, despite appearances, we are so totally not fucking this thing up".

You can make your own mind up about the truth of the latter statement.

1. Paywalled, of course. I notice that the Libyan rebels ask the Telegraph & the Times to withhold key details of this "early draft", an odd move given that more or less the whole shebang is printed on page three of the latter. As ever when referring to the Times, I'll post relevant extracts in comments on request.

(Post slightly edited at the start, to remove daft claim about a "Times exclusive" when Torygraph has much the same deal).

Hanging Referendums Are For Pussies - Real Men Want To Bring Back Crucifixion

2011-08-04T21:02:00.001Z

Guido Fawkes is confusing me. He’s campaigning for the death penalty on the grounds that the public want it... And here’s my confusion. Guido has also long claimed to be a libertarian. But libertarianism and democracy conflict, simply because public opinion is on many issues very illiberal. Chris at Stumbling and Mumbling

Chris finds the internet libertarians' campaign to bring back hanging surprising. Luckily, I'm on hand to clear up any doubts and set the story straight. Here it is -

The libertarians - people who, remember, want to see the state massively disempowered - are campaigning to hand the state the power of life and death because they are hacks and because their "libertarianism" is 100% purest bullshit.

Consider the following possibilities: either a) A bunch of self-declared anti-statists have somehow forgotten the core tenets of their own political philosophy or b) A bunch of twats who don't want to pay any tax will support literally anything that moves political debate in an infinitely stupider direction.

Recall the Swiss minaret ban, if you can. You'd think a measure that selectively cracks down on the property rights of individuals would be anathema to small government types. Not so - popular opinion on taxation and public services may be tantamount to tyranny, but whenever the people speak on a subject that penalises one of their bugbears and, crucially, annoys lefties, you can hear the champagne corks popping from a mile away.

I can already hear the objections that really, it's a bit more complicated than that. It's not more complicated than that. When you're talking about people whose entire worldview can be reasonably reduced to Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money, it's a major error to expect consistency in anything other than their tendency to be as much of a dick as possible about absolutely everything.

C*nt Give Him Two Years

2011-08-03T00:33:00.002Z

Danny: ...He's a very low temperature spade, the Coal Man. Went into court wearing a kaftan and a bell. This doesn't go down at all well. They can handle the kaftan but they can't handle the bell. So there's this judge sitting there sitting in a cape like fucking Batman with this really rather far out looking hat... So he looks at the Coal Man and says "What's all this? This is a court, man. This ain't fancy dress." and the Coal Man looks at him and says "You think you look normal, your honour?" ...Cunt give him two years.

Jamie is making sense here, talking about the joker who pied Rupert Murdoch, amongst various other protest hi-jinks of late.

There's been plenty of outrage on Twitter recently as various protestors have been handed what look like harsh sentences for a variety of offences. It tends to go like this...

"It's ridiculous that Johnny Tithead-Smythe has been sent down for 14 months for such a trivial offence when Villain (x) gets less for something worse. Clearly, this is a politically-motivated judgement. I thought we had an independent judiciary??!!!?"

I hate to come off all waggy-finger with youse, but here's the deal - the law is what it is, and one of the things it is, is really, really Draconian on civil disorder. There are reasons for this. Some of them are understandable and some less so.

Take rioting, for instance. Mobbing and rioting is a Big Deal, not just because it disturbs the Man (although it really does, and not often in a good way) or because it causes property damage (which it does) but because what looks like a lot of hurly-burly between the coppers and a bunch of rowdy teens can turn very quickly into people being trampled or beaten to death by angry mobs, buildings being torched with the occupants inside, and so on.

That all sounds like great fun until it's your street it's happening on*, and most people have an innate aversion to being subjected to missiles and police charges on their way to work. Thus, the sentencing guidelines read To prison with the hoodlums, and don't spare the horses.

Similarly, judges frown upon people being assaulted in the Houses of Parliament and attacks on policemen, not least because they also frown upon attacks on judges, but also because the H'es of P and the cops are symbols of democracy and good order. For obvious reasons, those who make the law want citizens to think twice before getting into boxing matches with the constabulary.

Now, you might think this is unfair. You might think it's scandalous and symptomatic of whatever societal ills, but the one thing it isn't is politicised. Get caught committing these types of offences, and it's Wormwood Scrubs for you. If anything, half of these folk could've been given far worse sentences and they wouldn't have had many grounds for complaint.

I'm not a great protester and I'm an even worse rioter, but I will say this - if you're intent on registering your discontent, take a look at the law books and pick something that doesn't carry a prison sentence. If you do go for the criminal option, you pretty much have to take it on the chin when they send you down for it.

*While I'm at it, I don't recall ever hearing much sympathy for rioting football fans who get hefty sentences.

"Hague Absolutely Will Not Fellate Gaddafi Live On Libyan TV"

2011-08-01T20:20:00.001Z

US President Barack Obama has defended the first military intervention of his presidency, insisting US involvement in Libya will be limited. He said US participation in the coalition had saved "countless lives", but that overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi by force would be a mistake. - BBC News, 29th March 2011

Explaining the UK's position on the Today programme, Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was "not involved in regime change". "We would like him [Gaddafi] to go but militarily what we're involved in is the [UN] resolution. We will stick strictly to the [UN] resolution," he told John Humphrys. "It's for the people of Libya to determine their future." - BBC Today Programme, 29th March 2011

The Foreign Secretary simply insisted that it was not a question of "if" Gaddafi would go but "when". He said he was satisfied with what had already been achieved... (List of achievements to date) ...Mr Hague denied that the aim of the military mission was to deliver regime change. That was not possible under the terms of the UN mandate, he said, but the vast majority of the world did think Gaddafi should go and, in time, he would. - Conservative Home, 13th April 2011

One day after Nato planes launched air strikes on Tripoli, a Conservative MP has requested the recall of Parliament amid fears that the allied mission in Libya has become focused on regime change, which is illegal under international law. John Baron, who was the only Tory MP to vote against military action in Libya, believes that while the original emphasis of the Libyan mission was the protection of civilians and the provision of humanitarian aid, it is now the removal of Colonel Gaddafi. - Channel 4 News, 15th April 2011

Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy have stated their determination to keep bombing Libya until Muammar Gaddafi steps down or is deposed. The leaders of the United States, Britain and France said, in a jointly written article, it would be an "unconscionable betrayal" of the populations of rebel towns to cease operations with Colonel Gaddafi still in place. It was "unthinkable" that a leader who has "tried to massacre his own people" could be allowed to continue in government, they said. - Independent, 15th April 2011

Foreign Minister Alain Juppé of France said Wednesday that the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi could remain in Libya so long as he completely gave up power, as part of a larger political deal, including a cease-fire, on the future of the country. - New York Times, 20th July 2011

Britain is prepared to agree to a political settlement in Libya that would see Muammar Gaddafi remain in the country after relinquishing his hold on power, the foreign secretary, William Hague, has said. Guardian, 25th July 2011

Now, even I'm savvy enough to spot that "regime change" means "Nato soldiers removing Gaddafi", while "Libyans deciding their own future" means "Libyan rebels killing Gaddafi". Nonetheless, it does make for a bewildering series of pronouncments, doesn't it? You do have to wonder where we're going next here. Hague "Absolutely will not" fellate Gaddafi live on Libyan TV? "France Will Never Submit To Libyan Naval Invaders"?

I've used the issue of regime change here to illustrate the incoherence of the whole project and the level of honesty displayed from our political leaders throughout. There are a host of other issues that could've served equally well - for instance, how does the proposition "It's for the people of Libya to decide their own future" square with Nato's recognition of the rebels as their legitimate government? - but this'll do for now.

Well, what the hell. It was clear before this campaign started that our national sat-nav was programmed to drive us up Bullshit Boulevard, but even I'm surprised by the directness of our route the rapidity of our arrival. Have we had any good "Nobody could possibly have predicted this type of thing would happen" articles yet, or are we still at the "Give us infinite time and resources to sort this out and everything will work out fine" stage?

2011-07-25T17:25:00.002Z

The world's first "anti-Jihadist" mass-murderer isn't a suitable topic for my usual comedy bullshit, so I'll cut right to the chase here.

Melanie Phillips' site is down for now, and I sure as Hell don't link to Gates of Vienna et al, but you can take it from me that she and the gaggle of paranoids that make up the internet's nutty "Counter-Jihad" movement are loudly insisting that they don't advocate acts of violence or terrorism. For now, let's assume that's true and move on from there.

What, exactly, do they imagine it is that they are advocating?

I ask because the message they've been sending out loud and clear is that Europe is under threat of imminent enslavement, and quite possibly genocide, at the hands of a sinister cabal of Marxist fifth-columnists in cahoots with one of our largest ethnic minority groups, the latter of which they portray as irrevocably violent and totalitarian. Unsurprisingly, they're stridently in favour of "resisting" this theoretical dictatorship.

That being the case, what kind of "resistance" do they expect the urgent threat of Nazi-Commie-Jihadist European domination to inspire in their readership? A sudden upsurge in the creation of idiot blogs?

It isn't good enough to pimp this fearmongering lunacy then disown the crazy actions of your ideological stablemates. If your message amounts to this...

"I'm not saying that we need to take up arms in extreme violence against our compatriots or viciously repress our nations' ethnic minorities. I'm just saying that inaction will inevitably lead to the total destruction of the western way of life and the enslavement of our loved ones at the hands of a foreign invader whose motivations are entirely alien and malign. But I'm definitely not urging violence in the face of certain genocide".

...What is it that you want your readers to take away from your work?

There are plenty of calls for calm around today, with reasonable people counselling against linking one man's horrific crimes to the deranged views he espouses, those being a half-baked political analysis that has been festering on the internet and even in the pages of the mainstream right wing press such as the Mail and the Spectator for years.

I disagree. I think that now, more than ever, fingers need to be pointed squarely at those who have been disseminating this poisonous cack, and searching questions need to be asked. First up - What the fuck did you think you were doing?

That Stupid Club

2011-07-24T16:21:00.001Z

It seems to have become accepted that the price of genius is a tortured mind, and more often than not an early death.

Thus scribbles Telegraph blogger James Rhodes, on the sad death of chanteuse Amy Winehouse. The link between genius and self-destruction is always made when stupendously talented individuals die or otherwise annihilate their abilities, and often there's much truth in it. Nonetheless, I think we too often imbue such senseless waste with romantic qualities that the brutal reality doesn't merit, as a way of rationalising loss.

Not always, of course - I thought Scorcese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator faithfully depicted the link between its subject's brilliance and his downfall, for example. Hughes' achievements and his destruction both sprang from his obsessive personality, which could be channelled into impressively creative or wantonly self-destructive behaviour. Man's quest to conquer the skies may be a romantic ideal, but here isn't much romance in a shut-in surrounded by bottles of his own urine.

There's always a temptation to portray junk habits and excess as the penalty for genius, but I suspect the truth is more prosaic. Put simply, the music business is renowned for drug abuse because musicians have lots of money to spend and much time to fill, and live in a toxic environment for people with the kind of chronic self-esteem and self-control problems of Janises, Kurts and Amys.

If you showed up for work whacked out of your skull on horse tranquilisers, you'd be fired on the spot. Rock stars who do that are plied with whatever substances are required to keep them upright and mobile, then pointed towards the stage and pushed. They're enabled, rather than discouraged.

When you're famous and wealthy in a drug-rich environment, a serious addiction is as easily acquired as the circle of groupies, male and female, who always latch on to musicians. Even well-adjusted people with real willpower struggle to overcome such addictions, and musicians seldom struggle to score if they're in the mood. Usually, it's no more glamorous or poetic than that.

Maybe in a parallel dimension, Jimi Hendrix just released his seventh Greatest Hits collection, and Amy cleared up her act enough to claim the decades of international superstardom that were rightfully hers.

In the one we're stuck with, unfortunately, that awesome virtuosity was snuffed out by years of serious substance abuse. It's all terribly sad and wasteful, and not romantic in the slightest.

For info - The title refers to the words of Wendy Cobain, on her son's accession to the group of rock superstars who died needlessly at the age of 27.

Murdoch Scandal Gagdump

2011-07-19T21:41:00.010Z

So, there we are - I hope we all enjoyed our day out at the political theatre. Everyone and his pet dog has had a go at this topic, but for what it's worth, some thoughts on the News International phone hacking shenanigans...

- Firstly, it amazes me how many times the consumer of politics, myself included, falls for the "Let's Sort All This Nastiness Out With a Nice Inquiry" model of public accountability.

How many times have we got all het up with bloodlust as some hideous, writhing gorgon is finally dragged kicking and screaming for public beheading before the Committee on Social Affairs or some such, only for him to be politely tickled with the feather duster of parliamentary disapproval?

Whether it's a former Prime Minister trailing a five-ton bag of skulls into the QEII Conference Centre or a sitting President who can't recall cutting an arms deal with the Ayatollah, the outcome is always the same: a long and windy exercise in heavily-generalised self-justification. Sometimes, we might as well give them a two-hour advertising slot on primetime television with a bank-busting CGI budget to show off their own radiant awesomeness.

Today's session was better, with some definite blows landed - the admission that they were paying their hacker-in-chief after his guilt was public knowledge, for instance, and I doubt that a few hours' worth of the CEO of News Corp telling the world that he doesn't have a clue what his underlings are up to will help the share price.

Foolishly, even I expected a little squirming from the Murdochs, at least. Instead, we got a volley of ham-fisted questions being casually dicked off for several hours via the ingenious rhetorical technique that is "mumbling, I don't know". I particularly enjoyed all those incisive follow-up questions along the lines of "Are you sure that you don't know?"

- That's probably got a lot to do with the MPs on the committee. I count two marketing types; one accountant; one former SpAd; a soldier; a novelist; an insurance salesman and a trade unionist. In a parliament filled with lawyers, is it too much to ask to chuck someone who can cross-examine a witness in there? Maybe, you know, someone capable of catching them out telling the odd porky?

Just maybe, what with this case concerning grave criminal behaviour, suborning of police officers and an assault on democracy itself, the justice committee might've been more appropriate.

- Ultimately, parliamentary committees aren't courts, nor should they be. Clearly they put The Fear into public servants, but any half-skilled bullshitter is going to walk away with nothing worse than a few headlines pointing out what egregious bullshitters they are.

Well, who knows. Maybe it'll all be sorted out by one of the complicit parties investigating its former co-conspirators in the highest echelons of the business and political establishment and the depths of the criminal underworld, thoroughly purging public life of lawbreakers, corrupt officials, thugs for hire and sycophants.

Some other thoughts on the general issue...

- Jesus, Murdoch senior looks and sounds like a confused tortoise, pissed off at having been woken from hibernation while there's still snow on the ground and nary a lettuce leaf in sight. Let's be honest - if the committee had gutted the old goat and a lot of half-digested celebrities and underlings had poured forth twitching onto the floor of Portcullis House, it'd still have felt a bit like the death of Stalin... Painful and prolonged, certainly, but not quite painful or prolonged enough, and at least thirty years too late to do any good.

- A safe prediction - this phone-hacking thing is going to turn out to be worse than we imagine, even now. Hands up anyone who would be surprised if it turned out that Rebekah Brooks had paid the Archbishop of Canterbury to rifle through Kate McCann's underwear drawer, three days before her daughter disappeared?

If it was revealed that James Murdoch routinely had lackeys who displeased him machine-gunned to strippy ribbons by ED-209 from Robocop, would you raise an eyebrow? Frankly, if Junior was naked from the waist down during that committee session, I'd shrug and say Well, that fits.

- Hats off to the Guardian - they've really played a blinder here, Nick Davies in particular. He kept on this like a terrier, and a flick through his book Flat Earth News shows how much of this scandal has been in the public domain for years.

Even their only slip-up - wrongly claiming that the Sun had swiped Gordon Brown's child's medical records in order to use his son's illness to shift units - turned out to be a triumph, as the News International rag trumpeted its alternative source.

This must've hit the public's ear like the fat end of a pool cue - We didn't screw the Brown family - we made love to them... It was about as appropriate as apologising for maligning a rough school by sending primary seven a free fuckswing.

And in short...

- I always find that mass resignations across multiple agencies and organisations are a sure sign that everybody acted in good faith and is innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, don't you?

- It speaks volumes that the Tories' internet factotums are reduced to smearing the mud about a bit, hoping some of it will stick to Mirror Group, or to outraged, piggy squeals about lefty pile-ons.

Of course it's a fucking lefty pile-on, you dolts. This scandal is the equivalent of the BBC Trust being caught conspiring with the Khmer Rouge to re-educate children in bloodcurdling revolution by impaling businessmen on sticks and throwing people who wear spectacles into pools full of ravenous mako sharks.

For anyone to the left of Ted Nugent it's a joy to behold and the best part is that, like Johann Hari, there's no way out because they're caught red-handed and guilty as sin.

- The most entertainingly hysterical denunciation of imminent Marxist takeover came from James Delingpole, who denounces the Hezbollah-worshipping of the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation and the "Kim-Jong Il-style brainwashing... of CBBC".

Children's BBC! Truly, when you're reduced to arguing with Rastamouse, you've long since lost.

- Anyone else notice how it appears to be impossible for anyone to say the words Closure of The News Of The World without then appending the words After one hundred and sixty eight years?

Ah well, I could go on forever. The whole scandal has been a knee-slapping, laugh-a-minute comedy show from start to finish and it may get funnier yet. I just have worrying flashbacks to '97, when all those hacks vowed that the death of Princess Diana had made them see the light, resulting in a round of pledges to act reasonably and responsibly from that day forth.

You all remember how that worked out, right?

Update! Remiss of me not to mention the pie-flinging arse. All I'll say is this - British manufacturing may be on its knees; our industries dying a death in an era of long decline and our exports reduced to a shadow of their former glory but damn it, we can still produce world-class knobheads to compete at the highest level against the most cretinous twunts that the planet can throw at us.

Let's hear a cheer for good old Britain - still producing twits and chumps like an industrial fuckwit factory, despite everything.

A Punishment Beating

2011-07-10T14:33:00.006Z

"You wanna fuck with me? Okay. You wanna play rough? Okay. Say hello to my little friend!" - Tony Montana

Back in the hot summer of 2007, while dreams of liberal democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan were crashing down in blood and flames, there was a little-noted yet highly entertaining spat between Johann Hari and Nick Cohen, two of the pro-war left's leading lights.

The short version goes like this - Hari used his review of Nick Cohen's dreadful book What's Left? [1} to launch a mild and finger-waggy attack upon the totality of Cohen's writings on The War On Terror and the Awful, Terrorist Loving Libruls, and to point out the glaring contradictions in Cohen's post-2001 work. Hari plainly saw this as his opportunity to burn his boats with the Decent Left writ large, which had long since become a running journalistic joke, and he grasped the moment with vigour.

In response [2], Nick penned a lengthy, dummy-spitting declaration that Hari's points didn't relate to statements made in Nick's book, which was largely true. Nick had, in fact, made most of his jaw-droppingly dense assertions on Neoconservatism, Kissinger etc. in his Observer columns or in pieces for print and online magazines.

As a spectacle, it was utterly hilarious - the most ridiculous pair of British journalism's preening fighting cocks frantically scratching each other to ribbons; strutting, crowing and pecking, with Hari incapable of admitting that he was reviewing Nick himself and Cohen furiously pretending that, because his wacky statements didn't appear in his book, Hari was somehow misrepresenting his proclamations.

Both of them came off like prize tits, in short, and more or less the entire Decent set piled in on Cohen's side, resulting in maximum comedy as Hari issued a libel threat [3] and Nick's pals herded nervously together around him, bleating and baahing with what they hoped would be sufficient volume to drown out Hari's mostly accurate criticisms.

And then, years of nothing - Hari became the Independent's pompous, right-on Boy Wonder and Nick continued to file his highly tendentious assaults on Liberaldom for, like, cheering on terrorists to mutilate women, man, and making TV shows that were insufficiently belligerent towards Jihadism.

But then, Johann Hari was caught out [4] splicing old quotes into his interviews and passing them off on his own, and was engulfed in a Twitter-wave of richly-deserved mockery. Exposed as a fraudster, Hari issued some half-hearted mea culpas and kept his head down, hoping it would all blow over.

A vain hope, for in some darkened corner of his own Oval Office, Nick had long been poring over his Enemies List with Nixonian determination, waiting patiently for his moment of glorious retribution against the elitist bums and hippies...

...And siezing his chance once his old foe Hari lay injured and prostrate upon the field of battle, Nick grabbed his trusty shootin' iron and charged in to bravely finish off the wounded [5]. Johann Hari, he declared - or at least someone who appears to know him personally - has been making malicious, defamatory and self-serving edits to Wikipedia!

What in tarnation...!?! Circle the wagons, boys! cried Nick's buddies [6] - We got us a hard fight on our hands! Everybody, to Google for an intensive internet search!

I see no need to investigate these allegations in any depth at all - let's just assume that they're true, and go on from there. Others may disagree but to me, malicious Wikipedia edits are right up there with "mild cursing" or "running with scissors" on my list of "Behaviours That I Could Not Give a Fuck About".

Let me give you an explanatory example. Back in 2006, Yankee blogger Glenn Greenwald was repeatedly accused of this kind of internet "sock-puppetry" - making self-aggrandising comments using a pseudonym - in an epic, three-week orgy of wingnut outrage, prompting one of the most deranged of wingnut blogs to ask whether it was "The Worst Blog Scandal Ever?" [7]

You remember The Worst Blog Scandal Ever, right? Oh, you don't? I wonder why that could be. Perhaps it's because it was really one of the lamest, most inconsequential scandals ever. Malicious editing and sock-puppetry are dishonest and weasling; they're nasty and defamatory. What they're not is very interesting, or scandalous enough to be worth much in the way of time or effort.

Let me put it this way. During the week when the Guardian - a paper that Nick and his pals have spent years dumping oceans of shit over - rocked the foundations of the world's most powerful media empire, shut down a criminal enterprise and brought a genuine scandal of public interest to the front doors of Number 10 and the Metropolitan Police...

...A small but determined bunch of angry berks were engaged in the honourable task of helping one of the nation's most ridiculous hacks wreak his pissy vengeance upon a nationally-discredited twerp for the crime of penning a mildly critical and dishonest book review, years ago.

Let's be clear, here - Hari's career is toast. Sure, he'll keep picking up a paycheque from the Indy and he'll still be Mr. Liberal Enlightenment Values In Annoyingly Strident Tones on op-ed pages for years, but his integrity is fatally punctured. All of his enemies are remorseless quote-miners and grudge-bearers, which means Hari will never be able to open his yap again without having great fistfuls of his own ridiculousness shoved down his neck, and quite frankly - good! Fuck him - As ye sow, so shalt ye reap and etc. and so on.

But let's not kid ourselves that these accusations of crimes against Wikipedia are a principled defence, or a holding to account, or a cleaning of the stables of the Fourth Estate. It's an act of public vengeance on an uppity ingenue who had the impudence to get above his status and dared to fuck with people he shouldn't; a punishment beating; a Casino-style baseball-batting, long planned and executed with maximum injury in mind.

Well. I say that Nick and Johann should drop the internet squabbling and settle this the old-fashioned, honourable way - Thunderdome. They could put it on pay-per-view and make a tasty profit.

Update! What'd you think of that, huh? What you think, I'm a fuckin' worm like you? I told you, man, I told you! Don't fuck with me!

And with that, Hari is suspended and is probably about to get his jotters. Me, I hope he's been done in for important stuff - you know, passing off other people's quotes as his own; transgressing the basic rules of his profession and for his stupendous, flatulent pomposity, that kind of thing.

Twitter and Blogger are swarming with comedy ballbags roaring, throwing kung-fu shapes and ordering the Independent to take this Wiki-tampering bullshit seriously. It's entertaining in its own way, like watching a pack of Chihuahuas furiously trying to fuck a rocking horse.

So it goes with each and every one of these hack-generated, tool-promoted blogspats. As I've said during more or less every one of these incidents - the Great Bullshitty Amnesty International Boo-Hoo; that endless series of mendacious, politically-convenient exposes of Gordon Brown's depravity, and so on - people who are caught with their fingers in the till should be given the punt on that basis, and not because a bunch of handbag-clutching, nudge-nudging cybercretins are making demands and sad-faces.

I can't really see any way back to Serious Journalism for Hari, although I'm sure he'll rock the lifestyle section of some local rag somewhere. If he's ever willing to revert to his earlier warmongering, hippy-baiting ways and pen endless screeds about the depravity of the left for an audience of lunatic, hate-happy Morlocks, there could even be a slot at the Spectator for him, one of these days.

Note - For brevity, I haven't gone into the sharp detail of the original Hari-Cohen spat at all. Comments are below, for anyone who feels I've mischaracterised either participant's positions, but be warned - if any commenters show up from Independent IP addresses, there'll be some swift deletions...

1. Johann Hari's review of What's Left, 2007. Particularly mild on its subject, as far as I can see. Bluntly says that Cohen is well-intentioned, but a bit hypocritical and self-deceiving, which is a lot nicer than I would be. That said, also very cynically jumps ship from the burning wreckage of HMS Decency as it sinks beneath the lapping waves of its own idiocy and viciousness.

2. Nick's response, Dissent magazine, 2007. Nick clearly feels that he's pummelling Hari with the sheer force of his remorseless logic here, but I remain unconvinced, especially given some of the points in Hari's reply. Nick also calls Hari's behaviour "Maoist", which is nice of him.

3. Greenslade on Hari's threat to sue Harry's Place, Guardian. The point at which the whole affair tipped over from "Entertaining" to "Absolutely hilarious".

4. "Johann Hari apologises for error of judgement", Telegraph, 2011. "Apologises" is one way of putting it, without using the words "Wriggles" or "Cavils".

5. Nick Cohen, Spectator, 2011. Nick's entirely not-personal, non-opportunistic revelations of horrifying Wikipedia vandalism. Nick's summary of the initial spat is a hoot in its own right. Ask if you want to know why.

6. Jack of Kent discovers the network and crowdsources for evidence. JofK seems like an alright sort to me and he's done some excellent work, but I think his mateyness with Nick may have led him to overestimate the importance of blog comments and Wiki-tampering.

7. Hot Air blog, 2006. That bit about the Worst Blog Scandal Ever, not very interesting but an amusingly hyperbolic example of the form.

Glorious People's Supermarket Increases Efficiency, Comrades!

2011-07-04T20:09:00.003Z

Middle class lefties should pipe down when it comes to supermarkets. Decent, affordable food is an old socialist goal to be applauded, not opposed.

Thus starts this article on the joys of Tesco, and it continues in the same Guardian-baiting vein... Tiffany Rose designer wear... Sabatier carving knives... vegetarian restaurants... Hampstead liberals... chi-chi delicatessens... organic butchers... And so on and so forth, reminding us all that only the Hoorayest of Henries would harbour suspicions of Tesco's benevolent schemes for the enrichment of humanity. As I've noted before, arguments that come this heavily-larded with pre-emptive insults are usually attempting to smuggle some form of horseshit or other past the reader.

All of which brings joy to the heart of John Rentoul, who complains that "It's like Margaret Thatcher never existed"; decries the "Anti-capitalist madness of today's Labour Party" and advises that the company should help out with schools, hospitals and criminal justice.

Me, I've never seen the point in getting annoyed over Tesco. Despite Rentoul's hilarious claim of Labour anti-capitalism, the welfare of Britain's major supermarkets is so vital to all three major parties that their dominance will be a fact of British life for decades, like horizontal rain and complaining.

And yet, let's note the case for Tesco that has so impressed JR...

Surely few Labour members really want a return to the dominance of the independent retailer on the high street, with supercilious staff, overpriced goods and stores closing at lunchtime, Sundays and a half-day on Tuesdays. Tesco and competitors create jobs in depressed areas. Usdaw, the Labour-affiliated shopworkers' union, has the biggest private sector union agreement in place with Tesco. Usdaw states that Tesco ‘offers some of the best terms and conditions (including pay) for its staff... Through rigorous competition, the supermarkets are constantly keeping their prices low and offering cheap deals to their customers...

Which may well all be true, and sounds superficially wonderful. Having spent much time skint myself, I can confirm that cheap food and clothes are a godsend. I've always thought that cursing out Tesco or TK Maxx is usually a political error myself - continual, day-in-day-out poverty is the most demoralising, grinding, bloody awful experience, and the ability to buy fairly nutritious food and half-decent clothing is great for your physical and mental well-being.

And yet, you do have to wonder how the areas Tesco are supposedly rescuing came to be so depressed in the first place. After all, most of the towns around where I grew up once had thriving high streets - Jim the butcher* might have charged a little more for his goods, but that reflected the fact that more people were involved in producing them - making, delivering, retailing and so on, people who got paid at every step. He didn't make the kind of astronomical profits Tesco does, but he somehow managed to get by.

Then, the eighties, deindustrialisation and large-scale unemployment, and high streets nationwide start to die on their arses until the big supermarkets steam in and began hoovering up custom. Jim the butcher watches his profits crater and has to take a job working for Tesco in the next town, serving his old customers. It's a nine-to-five job, so it's less hassle, but he doesn't own a share of the business and makes far less money than he used to; his suppliers now have a choice between supplying Tesco at lower prices or going out of business; and, rather than learning the trade and eventually taking over the family business, Jim's sons have a choice between taking lower-paying jobs at Tesco or moving out of the area.

You get the idea. Perhaps Tesco delivers greater efficiency, but now the town is dependent on them and their competitors, on one-sided terms that the supermarkets dictate. In effect, the town is a cash-cow for the supermarkets' shareholders. Unless I'm much mistaken, the rise and rise of the big-name supermarket coincides with rocketing inequality under the last government, which I'll put down to coincidence if a convincing case is made.

To the Rentouls of the world, this is a triumph of social-whatever-he's-calling-it-today capitalism but to me, a nation that's so thoroughly dependent on the performance of a few galacti-businesses is taking a giant step away from democracy. For such supposedly glorious free market successes, towns that are so dependent on a few huge businesses for sustenance and employment both - wage to employer back to wage - have a bizarrely... Soviet feel to them, no? Like, The Glorious People's Supermarket thrives for the greater good of all! Onward towards a ten percent increase in productivity, comrades!

Well. This is the point where commenter Luis Enrique usually turns up to tell me with infinite patience that I've got it all wrong, and that actually, workers are infinitely better off now than ever before, and everyone's a winner thanks to pension investment and so on.

I just find it odd that an idea as plain as Tesco's interests are not necessarily our interests is now some lunatic, unacceptable wackery on a level with previous ones about the importance of local industry and small businesses, and that the schemes to which There Is No Alternative always seem to involve people who are usually already wealthy getting much, much wealthier.

*Jim the butcher is a real person I know, and I call him that because his name is Jim and he used to be a butcher.

Will You Start The Fans, Please!

2011-06-15T17:40:00.001Z

Humour me in a flight of fancy here, while I explain why the most eerily accurate metaphor for modern British politics is The Crystal Maze, the now-defunct Channel Four game show.

Think about it - a bunch of over-enthusiastic, deeply unfashionable specky types are made to perform a series of inane and infuriating tasks, while their colleagues shout instructions at them in hectoring tones.

Jammed into a claustrophobic room with a map of the British Isles and told to construct a feasible economic policy, the bewildered contestant plays with a calculator, pushes some pencils around, scratches his head in exasperation and shouts, "I can't see what I've got to do!".

"You need to put those invalids in the workplace!" shouts the pudgy bank clerk, while the beanpole social worker reckons they probably need to ring-fence those nurses.

Richard O'Brien is the press, of course, rolling his eyes and mugging up to the camera to show what a great drag the whole affair is, before sternly warning the contestant that he has thirty seconds to crack down on single mothers, or he'll be locked in.

The ultimate aim of the game is to accumulate enough points to be allowed into the Crystal Dome, wherein the contestants must jump about like fannies on TV for the entertainment of the viewer, frantically trying to grab enough bits of paper to claim a win.

Meanwhile, Channel Four rake in the advertising revenue until an increasingly bored audience tire of the ridiculous spectacle and the show is cancelled in favour of a series called Wife Swap, in which the nation can laugh at a council estate mum struggling to work out how to turn on an aga in fucking Kent.

I don't know, I could have that wrong. Maybe it's more like The Apprentice, in which a bunch of insufferable twunts stand on each other's faces in the hope of winning a crumb of praise from a Croesus-rich tycoon, while the nation turns to Facebook to argue over which contestant they hate the most.

Hell, maybe I meant Footballer's Wives.

This Is Not An Exit

2011-06-15T16:35:00.000Z

Well, yes. I think we've reached the stage where we can all agree that, rather than launching a War on Terror, it would've been cheaper and more conducive to enhanced national security if we'd just put those squaddies to work in Aldershot burning two billion quid a week with flamethrowers.

In The Words Of The Immortal Edwin Starr

2011-06-12T14:31:00.002Z

"...It should be entirely clear that there has been little or no thought or planning here. What are the objectives? Do they include achievable aims, or are they just vague and windy 'let’s get the bad guys' bollocks? What happens if there are major setbacks – do we have any contingency plans at all?" - Your not-very-humble host, on the proposed bombing of Libya, 10th March

I've been putting off revisiting the points I made before we started bombing Libya, for two reasons - first, the situation there is so murky and indecipherable that it's difficult to assess, and second... Well, I don't feel very good about saying some of this stuff while people are fighting and dying for their families and homes.

Nonetheless, I think it's worth looking at this again. I intentionally made some definite predictions, largely because the pro-intervention camp were making none at all, beyond the assertion that those counselling against bombing Tripoli were disgusting, heartless Communists. Recall the atmosphere at the time, which was thick with the implication that opposition to a fresh bombing campaign was a ridiculous, childish concept, far outside the boundaries of political acceptability, and quite possibly tantamount to de facto [1] support for Gaddafi's goons.

I did raise some fairly silly questions - the possibilty that Gaddafi might knock out Misrata and Benghazi despite our efforts being the silliest. In fairness to myself, I considered this a possibility because the proposal at the time was for a No-Fly Zone only. What we actually got was a Free-Fire Zone, in which any and all loyalist forces were targets.

Had I known that, I wouldn't have raised this possibility. I'm aware that a fight between a column of tanks and a well-tooled air force is barely a fight at all. It wasn't.

Similarly, I worried about the possibility of a Black Hawk Down scenario, featuring Nato pilots being captured and/or murdered live on television, with the ensuing public pressure for maximum smackdown on Tripoli. Realistically, this wasn't a major risk for as long as Nato was only committing warplanes. Now that we've sent in the attack helicopters, the risks increase.

Finally, I was also concerned about Nato causing large numbers of civilian casualties, thus hardening the government forces' resolve and support. This was a reasonable assumption, given our habit of rubbing out vast numbers of civvies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, but thankfully it hasn't come to pass in Libya. I assume that this is because Nato is using stricter rules of engagement. These rules may frustrate the rebels, but are a damn good thing for Libyans in the affected areas.

Amazingly, I managed to call quite a few things correctly. The core reason for calling bullshit on this operation was and is this - there was very clearly no plan at all for victory or unexpected contingencies, and there still isn't.

I can't stress this enough, really. If you believe that a military operation is going to be poorly planned and executed, and that it may worsen rather than solve the problems in the area to be bombed, you have to oppose it. To do otherwise would be wildly irresponsible.

And so. Nato spent the first few weeks squabbling over who was in charge. As in our other wars, the mission statement has quickly morphed out of all recognition. Recall that we are bombing Libya to "protect civilians". Unsurprisingly, this has been quietly changed to "Get rid of Gaddafi and install the rebels of eastern Libya as the new government".

It's become very apparent that the rebels aren't capable of overthrowing Gaddafi themselves; Nato appear to have bet the farm on a quick victory, but we're now into the third month of stalemate. We're now committed to overthrowing Gaddafi and can't accept any outcome that falls short of that goal, which also means that Gaddafi and his goons have no motivation to accept defeat and slink away with their tails between their legs.

Fighting and bombardment in some areas have been vicious, and the Libyan rebels are estimating 15,000 people have been killed thus far. Both sides have intentionally targeted civilians, and we're now babysitting a war that could drag on for months, at least. This isn't surprising, nor was it unforseeable.

Other worries from before intervention - that the rebels might include significant extremist elements (unproven, probably overstated anyway); that we might wind up watching impotently while the rebels commit atrocities (correct) and that intervention might damage international organisations and law (correct - just watch the US Secretary of Defence pissing over his European counterparts, and keep an eye on the concept of a "Responsibility to Protect" in law from now on).

Back when the proposal was a No-Fly Zone, I was asking if we were committing to a war that would drag on indefinitely; whether we'd be willing to jump in with both feet on the rebels' side by aggressively targeting government forces or attempting to assassinate Gaddafi, and whether intervention was more about making us feel better about the awful things we were seeing on TV than it was a serious plan for a positive outcome.

The answer to those questions, it appears, is "Yes". I'd rather it wasn't - I'd far rather be typing up an extended Mea Culpa over my hilariously wrong opinions. Making a couple of accurate guesses feels pretty hollow when it's a war we're talking about.

So, here we are. The war looks set to continue for the foreseeable future, with all of the attendant horrors that implies. A civil war isn't just a disaster in terms of destroyed lives and buildings. It's a catastrophe with far-reaching consequences, in which every citizen experiences a massive drop-off in every area of their lives - health, education, economy, infrastructure. An extended conflict massively increases the likelihood of post-war atrocities and extremism, and occasionally terror for export.

Well. Fingers crossed for a happy ending - Gaddafi dead or routed, a victorious rebel movement establishing a flourishing liberal democracy. The really frightening thing is just how dependent on crossed fingers we are here. It may just turn out that Maybe we'll get lucky this time has been the entire war plan from day one.

(Posts what I wrote containing many of these predictions and questions here, here, here, here and here).

1. Having seen it used in this manner many times, I can confirm that pretty much everyone who uses the words "de facto" in a policy dispute is attempting to smuggle some seriously dumbass horseshit past you, in the hope that you won't notice.

So Long And Thanks For All The Bombs

2011-06-11T12:22:00.006Z

The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense. Nations apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets. - US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates

Ever thus, to American military types.

Readers are invited to consider the following words, which may not mean what Secretary Gates believes they mean - "increasingly precious funds"; "on behalf of"; "serious"; "defense" and "security burden", amongst others.

Let's note that, rather than suffering a severe spending squeeze, the American military is the one area of government expenditure that can never be lavish enough. The US armed forces cost roughly as much as the rest of the planet's military budget combined. The possibility exists that it's the Americans, rather than the Germans, who are misallocating their resources here.

Further, while it's touching that Gates has such great concern for our well-being, I suspect that American interest in European security issues may not be entirely altruistic. No doubt they wish us well and worry about our safety, but I imagine they'd like us to build massive military capabilities so that we can help them bomb the hell out of various non-European countries, for purposes that range from "dubious" to "insane".

And that word, "Defense". They spell it differently and it means more or less the opposite of what is implied. If readers can explain in what way invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan or bombing Pakistan and Yemen constitutes "Defence", I'm all ears.

Of course, Gates is basically pissed because Norway is about to withdraw from bombing Libya, because its tiny air force needs maintenance. Readers are also invited to suggest ways in which bombing Libya represents some vital contribution to the defence of Europe, because I'm struggling to think of a single one.

The only reason that was proffered before we started was that failing to bomb Libya would lead to a flood of refugees across the Med. As it turns out, bombing Libya has achieved much the same result.

Update!: This New York Times editorial, which explicitly accuses Europe of freeloading off the back of America's amazing military might, is a graphic example of a political/media class that has long since departed the realm of reality and is on an outward trajectory for the planet Bugfuck Nuts.

"What if they had to fight a more intimidating enemy than Colonel Gaddafi?", they ask. A more intimidating enemy? Like who?

Updated Update!: It occurs to me that, since the Americans clearly believe that each and every one of their military catastrophes is a critical priority for NATO, and actively pushes its allies to adopt their priorities, then only an insane person would wish to be part of NATO. Ergo, the UK should withdraw from NATO, sooner rather than later.

Further, let's be clear on what the Americans are asking for, and what they aren't. Since they've historically opposed efforts by Europeans to set their own common defence policy, we can conclude that the US is interested in European security initiatives only insofar as they serve American purposes.

Thus, the Americans want us to beef up our militaries to assist in American military operations, so that their wars are less expensive in cash and casualties. Essentially, burn our own cash so they don't have to burn theirs and send European soldiers to be killed, so that fewer American soldiers are being killed, in exchange for... Uh, something.

This doesn't seem like a very good deal to me - Thanks but no thanks, guys.

Crime And Punishment

2011-06-10T16:22:00.001Z

Some discussion here on the differing meanings of the words "Working class", "Chav" and "Criminal underclass".

As might be expected, it's not enlightening stuff - one part debate to twenty parts class-baiting. Suffice to say, it's an epic human and political catastrophe that it's necessary to point out that working class people aren't chavs and those we do call "Chavs" aren't a criminal underclass. There are easily-identifiable reasons why these elisions exist, and almost all of them hail from the "toxic horseshit" school of prejudices stemming largely from media headlines and political arguments.

That's a discussion for another day, one when I'm in a worse mood than I am now. The point I want to pick up is the part about this "Criminal underclass" - what it is, who it is, what it does.

I'll ruin the surprise right now by telling you that there is indeed a criminal underclass in Britain, by which I mean "People who either make a living through criminality or are merely serially incarcerated". It makes up a tiny percentage of the populace - if I was to make a maximal guess then, in a city the size of Edinburgh, I'd say that we're talking around one to two thousand people from a population of around 500,000 - but it makes a big noise nonetheless.

It should be obvious that these people are drawn from the rock-bottom end of the economic scale, and that they tend to be the offspring of habitual criminals themselves 1. Even so, I encounter a stunning level of ignorance about who, exactly, fills out our prisons. It's a major mistake to identify a single class of criminals with an equal propensity to violence and mayhem, since their behaviours and characteristics are many and varied.

It should go without saying that most career criminals tend to come from very deprived backgrounds; are poorly educated and often inarticulate. I forget the exact figure, but a depressingly large number of criminals also suffer from mental disorders, ranging in severity from mild to very serious indeed. What follows is a runthrough of the major personality types you'll find in prisons the length and breadth of the land - do bear in mind while reading that this is all anecdata from my own personal experience, so don't go expecting rigorous sourcing and citation.

First up, by far the largest group of habitual criminals are Sad Sacks - generally shoplifters and petty thieves, incompetent burglars, drug offenders and so on. Stereotypically, the Sad Sack is the guy caught wedged fast in the window of his local shop with his pockets full of fags, surrounded by broken bottles of vodka, when the owner arrives for work.

Sad Sacks almost always have serious problems with drugs or alcohol and their criminal activities are almost always motivated by the need to fuel those habits, habits which make them utterly unemployable. They are, by and large, a nuisance to the public rather than a serious threat, although as always there are exceptions. Sad Sacks are usually only a serious problem up until their mid-thirties, when they tend to calm down and either clean up a little or settle into NHS drug and alcohol treatment programmes.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Sad Sacks make up at least 50% of the population men's prisons and up to 80% of women's jails. Women's jails in particular are stuffed with those whose dependency problems are the main reason for their offending.

It should also be remembered that Sad Sacks also represent a massive chunk of the victims of crime, given that they tend to socialise with nastier criminals than themselves. Sad Sacks can be very intimidating indeed to law-abiding members of the public, but they're small fish in a big pond. When push comes to shove with the assorted radges and nutters in their social circle, it's usually the Sad Sack's arse that ends up in the mud.

The second-largest group is Wee Pricks - rowdy teenagers prone to impulsive acts of violence, sometimes of the blood-curdling variety. Although their victims tend to be other Wee Pricks or Sad Sacks, the WPs are the ones most commonly cited by the public in crime surveys, because they're loud, intimidating, highly visible and occasionally armed. Wee Pricks don't last long on the streets and are usually either incarcerated or incapacitated before they reach 20 years old. WPs usually end up in young offenders institutions, where they traditionally graduate to the level of Bams or Radges (see below) or slowly turn into Sad Sacks.

Both Sad Sacks and Wee Pricks are impulsive criminals, stealing or fighting as the opportunity arises with little thought for the consequences, not because they're brazen rebels, but because they are either too desperate for drugs/alcohol, or are just too damn stupid, to care.

A far smaller but much scarier group are Bams and Radges. Bams and Radges share the same characteristics in that they're both violently-inclined and highly irrational, and both are constantly on the lookout for victims to exploit and injure. Both are likely to drink very heavily, but the chief difference between the two is that Bams are usually more of a threat to their friends, family members and other criminals, whereas Radges will smash fuck out of more or less any innocent punter unfortunate enough to incur their wrath.

Radges are also less likely to stop smashing fuck out of people once they've started, so as might be expected, there's a significant overlap with the next class of criminal, the Evil Bastard.

Evil Bastards are the ones that attract serious media attention and, although their numbers are comfortingly small, they are - paradoxically - still alarmingly numerous. Such people are, as the name implies, irredeemable shits, constantly scheming for ways to rob, injure or take advantage of anyone and everyone they encounter. Unlike other criminals, Evil Bastards do what they do for personal gain and because they greatly enjoy harming their fellow citizens. They make up a large proportion of the nation's career criminals, since they have the basic savvy to commit burglaries and assaults without getting caught.

Evil Bastards are the ones who will try to steal your last fiver and get violent and indignant if you catch them at it. Most of the really bloodcurdling crimes - men who batter their mothers for a tenner, that kind of thing - are committed by people in this group and unlike most other criminals, there's little prospect of reforming them even in their later years.

Unsurprisingly, Evil Bastards also make up a substantial proportion of the country's Rapists and Perverts. While most Perverts tend to be sad, lonely little men or sad, nasty family men, plenty of them are extremely sinister, calculating, vicious and spiteful little men for whom lifelong incarceration is probably the safest answer.

The final major group are the Criminally Insane, and you'll be familiar with them from your TVs. Whether they are literally insane is a moot point, and probably irrelevant, but we're talking William Beggs, Fred and Rose West, Peter Tobin and Peter Sutcliffe here. Despite their high profile, these criminals are incredibly rare.

So there - your criminal underclass, neatly categorised. I've done some violence to the statistics here - there are lots of white collar criminals and unlucky chumps who commit serious offences in hot blood too - but this'll do as a starting point for any discussion that ensues.

1. Rather than append "Although not always" to every sentence, just assume that I'm also saying "Although not always" at the end of every definite claim in this post.

He's Using Hypnosis!

2011-06-09T19:43:00.002Z

So, what are they calling shows like Made In Chelsea and The Only Way Is Essex in Medialand? There must be a collective word for the genre - Babblevision or Souphead Bingo, or some such.

For the uninitiated 1, these shows are basically scripted reality television: like Big Brother, except every scenario onscreen is storyboarded and every emotion or wisecrack is acted out by the fame-hungry amateurs. The characters pretend to go about their daily lives, mugging up for the camera in tones of increasing twattishness, and pretending their way through a series of pre-prepared emotional crises and drunken hijinks in suspiciously well-lit and soundchecked backgrounds.

As entertainment, the genre is somewhere below teeny, melodramatic bonkfest Hollyoaks and a thin sliver above Ow, My Balls!   Five minutes of footage would damn an entire generation of media vermin to the Lake of Fire, where they could spend eternity literally shovelling shite for Satan as opposed to the metaphorical shovelling that is their earthly lives. Saint Peter would have to hire a heavenly bulldozer to clear the Pearly Gates of its backlog of ITV producers and Charon the Boatman would have to build himself an armada of cruiseliners to transport them all to the Underworld.

Anyway, there's a long spiel in Private Eye this week railing against the farcically obvious fakeness of MiC and TOWiE, which is a bit like denouncing all the talent shows for being rigged. Speak to anyone who watches these programmes and they admit that yes, they know that every second is fake, before they turn back to their pals to gossip at length about how the stupid one put his foot in it that time when he revealed that blah about arse, and so on.

See, I think the horrified reviewers are missing the point here. The audience know full well that they're watching a fraud, and they don't care - they're willing to suspend disbelief, for entertainment. That's why the shows don't merely clog up their own time slots, but are now selling magazines and chat shows into the bargain.

This doesn't resemble the Big Brother model of shit TV at all. In BB, you knew the contestants were constantly playing up to the cameras, but viewers knew that they weren't being fed all of their lines or faking their emotions too much. MiC and TOWiE are Eastenders or Coronation Street with the added thrill that it's, like, real, even though we all know it's not real.

The proper analogy here is WWF American wrestling. The Ultimate Ballcrusher is pissed at Billy Ray Biceps and the DilDozer, because they teamed up on him in SuperWrestleMania MMMMCMLXXVII. So he's going to get Even, y'all, in the Exploding Cagematch at Super Slamicide Hardcore in Kentucky, but wait! Who's that having a conspiratorial chat with Billy Ray backstage? Why, it's Elvira Irontitties, the Ultimate Ballcrusher's old lady! What could they be cookin' up, d'ya think? 2

And then they hit each other on the head with tables for four hours, in front of a baying audience of slackjawed cretins and sugar-crazed seven-year-olds, and nobody gives a damn whether it's real or not because they've all chewed their giant foam fingers off with the sheer excitement of it all.

Swap that for a Ronsealed woman rattling her veneers at her bullet-headed, brain-donor boyfriend because, like, he was talking to that Shawnessa for like five minutes, and WTF was up with that, and you've got the breakthrough popular entertainment hit of the year.

Now, you may wonder why I think you'd be interested in this stuff. To be honest, I doubt you are, but look at that phrase again - the breakthrough popular entertainment hit of the year.   That's no exaggeration, by the way. Where I live, The Only Way Is Essex is the fifth suggested search if you type "The" into Google.

The worrying thing isn't that, ten years from now, practically every show on TV will be ripping off this fuck-awful horror. The real nightmare is that compared to programming ten years from now, these shows are going to look like bloody I, Claudius.

1. Single men, for instance.
2. I'm not exaggerating about wrestling either. Check out the first sixty seconds here. This can't be legal in international rules!

Malcolm And Cressida Strike Again

2011-05-29T20:43:00.002Z

What's not to love about this story?

A Toronto couple are defending their decision to keep their infant's sex a secret in order to allow the child to develop his or her own gender identity... The boys are encouraged to choose their own clothing and hairstyles - even if that means wearing girls' clothes - and to challenge gender norms.

Now, the caveat - people are free to raise their rugrats as they see fit. If Mum and Dad want to encourage junior to develop his or her own gender identity, it's certainly not for me to interfere. That said, why not go the whole hog and name the poor kid Gaylord MacWoofter, then spend the next eighteen years flushing its head in the toilet themselves?

After all, as anyone who's ever been to any school, anywhere knows, kids take vicious abuse for everything and nothing - for being too fat, too thin, too tall or too short; for being too smart or too thick, and so on endlessly in a neverending chain of senseless, competitive nastiness.

Frankly, encouraging your kid to "develop its own gender identity" before sending him or her to school is like declawing a cat and hurling it to the hounds. The poor sprog would do better to stay at home giving itself dead legs and chucking its own schoolbag onto the roof.

"Mum, Dad... Do you remember how you encouraged me to find my own gender role without the intrusive intervention of society's norms?"

"Why yes, son, we do. We always felt it was important that you find your own identity".

"I'd like to thank you for that, guys. Without you, I wouldn't be barricaded into this branch of Ann Summers holding fourteen hostages at gunpoint. You're the best parents a boy could have... Now, put the police negotiator back on, I want to know where my purple helicopter is".

And yes, it'd be nice to live in a world where kids could express themselves however they like without being sadistically tormented. Let me know the very second that this fantastical reality dawns, and I'll rock up to work in a mankini myself.

Out Of Office

2011-05-10T13:00:00.000Z

I'm out of the office for the next two weeks on holiday. Urgent inquiries can be directed to the department of wacky propaganda, the bureau of superliterate anarchist hypercynicism or the south-Asia tourist information office, but won't be answered.

See youse later...

Cons And Conspiraloons

2011-05-05T16:53:00.005Z

"Wondering which hack will be the first to 'Booyah!' tha Librulz by pretending Adam Curtis said Al Qaeda didn't exist. My money's on Aaro." - Your humble author, approx. 5 hours after Osama Bin Laden was killed.

"Curtis does make fabulous films. He is the Leni Riefenstahl of comfortable leftism". David Aaronovitch, approx. 2 days after Osama Bin Laden was killed.

To be fair, Aaro was merely the first person that I saw putting the boot into film-maker Adam Curtis after my Tweet, and rather than accuse Curtis of being a wacko conspiracy theorist - which Aaro has done in the past [1] - the charge was one of "simplifying" complex issues.

Curtis outlines his take on the War on Terror here, in a piece that's essentially a shortened version of his film The Power Of Nightmares. If I can shorterise him further - the epic Clash of the Titans between the United States and al Qaeda was notably characterised by serious misconceptions and wacky ideological assumptions on both sides.

While others have had a go at Curtis [2], it's Alex Massie at the Spectator who has had the best crack at meeting him head-on. I often agree with Alex on foreign policy issues, but I think he's fallen into the same trap that pretty much everyone who's had a go at refuting Curtis has, i.e. flailing at arguments Curtis doesn't make.

As I recall, The Power of Nightmares was routinely criticised on the grounds that it was paranoid, anti-American and even pro-terror. The most common - and incorrect - criticism was that it claimed that Al Qaeda didn't exist. Alex goes at it from a slightly different angle...

From the off we're supposed to appreciate, I think, that bad as bin Laden certainly was, he was never as bad as you were led to believe and, gosh, certainly not as bad as the people for whom he was a useful, even necessary, enemy. The world, you see, is complicated and if you think al-Qaeda are the bad guys you've been duped my friend. Seriously.

Or, not very seriously. Unless I badly misunderstand the man, Curtis has always accepted that al Qaeda exists and that it is composed of extremely violent and ideologically deranged individuals. He entirely accepts that al Qaeda are horrible, evil shits. His main point has always been that, while al Qaeda is a highly dangerous and murderous adversary, it's not a globe-spanning, multi-tentacled, civilisation-destroying colossus, replete with ninja-training James Bond mountain retreats [3].

The contention is that the Terrorwarriors of the west mistook a small but fanatical gang of terrorists for a freedom-crushing Empire of Death - a label that al Qaeda were more than happy to appropriate and wear with pride. This has never struck me as a particularly controversial thesis, given that it raises few hackles when variations on it come from AQ specialists like Jason Burke.

Alex also grumbles that Curtis refers to al Qaeda in the passive voice; that they somehow became America's Enemy Number One, rather than being the aggressors via the September 11th attacks. I suspect this may be because, you know, the former were small in number, seeking to commit spectacularly vicious atrocities as an example to angry, gullible idiots across the Middle East and Europe, and the latter were a damn superpower with history's most terrifyingly powerful military machine at their command. The US government most certainly had war with al Qaeda thrust upon it, but it was entirely their decision to rhetorically elevate September 12th from a mismatched search-and-destroy mission into a planet-wide battle for civilisation itself.

I think it's fair to say that, outside of a few internet boobyhatches, few would dispute that the War on Terror has been a horrific balls-up from start to finish. How do we think that an enterprise that has consumed so many resources and billions of man-hours in planning, strategising and execution came to be such a stark-staring disaster zone?

From my reading of neo-Conservative and humanitarian interventionist post-mortems, I can tell you that those who planned and prosecuted our wars believe they made some understandable yet elementary goofs, and that's more or less their entire explanation. Given the chance to alter history, they'd take a trip in a TARDIS to advise Paul Bremer not to disband the Iraqi army and would recommend even more school-painting and culturally-sensitive hand-shaking, and then return to the modern day in the full expectation that our wars would've worked out perfectly.

Curtis suggests that tWoT was such a travesty because the premises upon which it was based were fundamentally fucked-up from the very start - that its leaders misidentified not only the mindset and intent of the enemy, but also failed to even understand who the enemy was in the first place. By envisaging our foes through their own excitable Cold War mindsets, with the Jihadists as the Soviets and ourselves as Good Guys who needed only the will and the daring to strike a blow for freedom, we wound up baby-sitting a series of uncontrollable bloodbaths.

Which of these two analyses sounds more credible to you?

On the dramatis personae of tWoT, I have to bow to Massie's superior knowledge of Yankee conservatism. He's absolutely correct that the incoming Bush administration didn't seek to throw its weight about on the international stage. I think he forgets that after the WTC attacks, the White House turned immediately to its neo-Conservative allies for aid in retaliating, and that the neo-Cons were only too happy to seize their big opportunity with both hands.

And here we find Alex's principal objection - that Curtis claims that America is always looking for a new Baddie to fight, so that they can play the role of Good Guy.

This, I suggest, is the road that eventually leads to wars being fought for Halliburton and other corporate interests. A world in which nothing is ever as it seems except, of course, for the enduring constant that the Americans are simultaneously gauche and conniving, simpletons who yet contrive to hoodwink everyone except the brave truth-seekers who can perceive through a glass wrongly and courageously reveal that Osama bin Laden is America's useful enemy, implying in the end that he's been so useful he'd have had to be created had he not in fact actually existed. And, lo, perhaps he was. Thinking otherwise is just too simple, you see.

Which is pretty much the same as saying Oh LOL, pass the tinfoil, lizardman, before the satellites attune to our brainwaves!

And yet, what's Curtis actually suggesting here? That American foreign policy has recently been dominated by academic types with fundamentally flawed frameworks for understanding the world; men and women who believed that America had a duty to spread the nation's unique message of freedom and liberty for all, through violent means if necessary; and that these were people who were incapable of interpreting the consequences as they were, rather than how they expected them to be. Further, they faced a foe that was only too willing to step into the shoes of the evil, aggressive, heavily-accented antagonist with world-wide ambitions that they expected to find.

On the conspiracy scale, I'd say that's pretty much near-zero, or bang on the money... A damn sight less off-the-wall than Eisenhower's final address, and that crazy moonbat nutter was twice elected President of the United States.

And here's what I'm getting at - I agree that Adam Curtis over-simplifies complex issues, whether for convenience or some baleful desire to hoodwink. I agree that his work has flaws; that he sometimes overstates and elides when it suits him to do so. I think he's entirely correct on the broad brushstrokes, but I think there's plenty of room to attack him on the fine detail.

What I don't get is why he seems to wind people up so much that they start attacking statements he hasn't made, positions he doesn't take and deranged conspiraloon matrices that he never describes. One common criticism of Curtis that Alex Massie doesn't pick up on is that he portrays the neo-Conservatives and al-Qaeda as being equally evil, and yet... Where is that coming from? He implies that they're both wrong, as in, incorrect and mistaken about reality. The Americans' War on Terror was no conspiracy. It was only human beings making grievous errors in plain view. [4]

Who knows, maybe it's the doomy soundtracks. They are pretty intimidating... That, or they're talking about Richard Curtis.

1. "Curtis's is a one-stop conspiracy theory to stand alongside those fingering the Illuminati, the Bilderberg group and (vide the Da Vinci Code) Opus Dei". Aaronovitch, "Al Qaeda is no dark illusion", Guardian, 19/10/04

2. Predictably, Professor Norm steps in with a howling non-sequitur, this time along the lines that a) the War on Terror can't have been misconceived; western leaders can't have been deluded about its nature and Curtis must be a bastard, because b) the Soviet Union was horrible and the people of the Middle East hate living under tyrannies. I tried and failed to see how a) refuted b), until I realised that Norm was - yet again - confusing "the motives and deeds of the Bush administration" with "the motives of Professor Emeritus Norman Geras". This is a regular occurrance.

3. See The Power of Nightmares, episode 3 from 20:30 onwards here for an excellent example - Don Rumsfeld and Tim Russert discussing al Qaeda's futuristic Goldfinger lair, with its sophisticated computers, communications equipment, ventilation systems, armories and tank-sized storage bays. Needless to say, the actual al Qaeda hideaways turned out to be... just some caves, filled with non-futuristic dirt and rocks.

4. Don't take this to mean that I think al Qaeda are just "a bit misguided". They're evil fucks. They're also evil fucks who are seriously wrong and misguided, and the one doesn't preclude the other.

A Fair Trade

2011-05-03T20:35:00.004Z

Plenty of people will remember where they were when they heard that the Americans had finally got Osama Bin Laden. Me, I was sitting up in bed shouting They never have! You're pulling my leg... Found Elvis too, have they?

Like many others, I assumed he'd never be found, not because I thought he was dead or a seven-foot tall shape-changing reptilian from Venus, but because he seemed destined to join Jimmy Hoffa in the Where are they now? file - a mystery for the ages. Credit to the Americans for sticking to their guns and tracking him down.

I doubt there's much I can add to the debate, but a few points occur...

- First up, break out the beer! Bin Laden was one of that most obnoxious of breeds - a jumped-up, true-believing little turd whose every breath and thought were dedicated to making the world a shittier, more dangerous place for everybody else. It's a shame this didn't happen in 2001 and save us all the hassle.

- Ten years ago, I probably wouldn't have had to say that explicitly. It would've been taken as read.

- And, what? Ten years of non-stop, full-bore violence and mayhem, and we have a dead Saudi beardie with a bullet in his head to show for it. I won't list the disasters of the decade. Suffice to say, there are a huge number of people who are no longer with us who probably would've been, had it not been for Osama and George W's dick-waving contest. I'm yet to run across anyone saying in blunt terms that all of the catastrophes of the 2000s were worth it to perforate one angry shut-in, which is good. It either means that there are fewer psychopaths around than I'd assumed, or that they're a lot quieter than they used to be.

- And no wonder they're quiet. Hands up who thinks Bin Laden spent the decade thinking Oh my, I have really messed up. We are losing so badly to the Infidel that I regret my previous actions? A little rich-kid styles himself a Holy Warrior, sucks up a load of funding for his psycho mates and somehow manages to become the Face Of Evil Itself, glaring out of magazine and newspaper covers worldwide. Bin Laden might be feeding the fish as I type this, but I don't think he'd have said that he lost. He may not have got his apocalyptic victory, but with half the Middle East in flames, I think he'd say that he didn't do too badly for a hateful little shit with a few rich buddies.

I'd like to think that we've learned lessons about not turning murderers into global celebrities and tiny gaggles of terrorist shitheads into planet-throttling James Bond-esque supervillains, but I doubt that's the case, because...

- It's odd to hear politicians and pundits simultaneously declaring that snagging Bin Laden is both a major victory and not-victory at the same time. It's an event that has both changed the world and left it unaltered; a death that has made us safer by somehow increasing the threat of terrorist attack. It's like the Schrodinger's Cat of historical events.

- All of which means that, despite all the hoo-ha, it's still business as usual. The drones will keep buzzing over Pakistan and we'll continue doing whatever it is we're supposed to be doing in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The obvious implication of this is that OBL himself and Al Qaeda generally were never as threatening or as important as we were led to believe but then, prominent public figures have been saying this for years to no avail.

Other thoughts, in no particular order -

- Yes, it's pretty distasteful to see people openly celebrating Bin Laden's death like it was a football result. I don't begrudge it to anyone, if it makes them feel good for a while - if nothing else, at least it's one fleeting moment of pleasure to come out of OBL's whole, worthless existence.

- That said, it puts me in mind of those weirdos who rock up outside death row prisons to chug beers and wave Burn the Bitch! banners whenever there's an execution. Hell, whatever excites you, guys. It does nothing for me.

- It's pretty odd that the Americans haven't released definitive proof of death. I assume this is because OBL didn't carry much paperwork. I'd expect photos to be released in all their gory detail eventually, once the furore has died down.

Still, this has led to a lot of talk of conspiracies. Going by my Twitter feed - not a reliable source, by any means - there seems to be a lot more concern about conspiracy theorists than there are actual conspiracy theories. I also notice that those most concerned about conspiracy theory are also those who bought into the War On Terror rhetoric hook, line and sinker. It's mildly interesting that those most stridently disdainful of suckers are themselves some of the most prominent suckers around.

- Anyway, if I was Osama Bin Laden, I'd be thinking three things - 1) Why didn't I leave a video pretending that I was still alive, and that the Americans had killed a body double? 2) My head hurts and 3) I don't like the look of that bloody great fish.

- The ladies get the royal wedding, we get Call Of Duty: Extreme Terrorist Smackdown. It's a fair trade.

People Of Britain - Restrain Your Genocidal Bloodlust And Read This

2011-04-27T17:47:00.003Z

Remember when Peter Kosminsky made that drama Warriors about the war in Bosnia, and those public intellectuals took to the newspapers to wail and howl about how it was proof of some kind of anti-Serbian hate campaign?

You don't remember that? What about the uproar after Saviour, Welcome to Sarajevo, Behind Enemy Lines, The Peacemaker or any of the rash of '90s films that featured Serbs as the bad guys? Not ringing any bells?

Well, what about other films about horrible interethnic violence and/or military atrocity - Black Hawk Down, Hotel Rwanda, Shooting Dogs, The Killing Fields, Salvador and so on? You don't remember the uproar about those?

No, neither do I. That's why I'm less than convinced by Howard "Are the people of Britain about to launch a new Kristallnacht*" Jacobson's pretence that a recent Channel Four drama about the foundation of Israel represents some epic, racist affront and incitement.

See, when Melanie Phillips tells the world that the Brits are one angry speech away from genocidal rampages, I can console myself with the thought that she's internationally recognised as a crazy opinion hack who specialises in hysterically overblown alarmism. She has an eager audience of dribbling idiots who are delighted to hear her confirm their prejudices, but not much more than that.

Jacobson is a multi-award winning author and one of the country's leading cultural critics - when he speaks, he's taken seriously, for good reasons. If he's telling the world that major British institutions have been brainwashed with hateful, racist propaganda or when he announces that he personally fears imminent, violent pogroms, that's some serious shit, and it's also pretty offensive stuff to other British people. Me, I'm reasonably sure that my Dad, my brother or my friends will be able to restrain themselves from exterminating any ethnic minorities en masse in the next few decades. I imagine you have similar thoughts about practically every single human being you know.

I offer an alternative thesis to Howard's, here. I contend that the drama he's talking about was considerably less offensive than he's making out and that in fact, OfCom's ruling was entirely correct. I also suggest that Howard has committed yet another ludicrously overblown piece of cynical fearmongering to the ages, to be considered alongside those works of his that aren't filled with wacky, wingnutty politics.

*"The mood of those months inevitably found its way into my novel. I wanted to record what it was like being Jewish in this country then, when it seemed reasonable to ask whether loathing of Israel would spill into loathing of Jews - such a thing is not beyond the bounds of possibility - and whether a new Kristallnacht was in the offing. Since many German Jews doubted they were in serious danger in the 1930s, how wise would it be of us to doubt we were in danger now?" See.

Also see - My review of The Promise - the series Howard is talking about - is here. I thought it was worth looking at because even then, it was attracting some utterly mental commentary.

Stating The Obvious

2011-04-22T16:08:00.000Z

You know, if far right headbangers really did represent the opinions of "the white working class" - so much so that jokers are asking for their activists to be recruited as the authentic voice of the WWC - they'd be a massive political party on the cusp of government, and not a gang of powerless, angry twats.

White working class people are a massive chunk of the electorate and the one thing you'll notice about their voting habits is that they overwhelmingly vote for mainstream parties. Even if the Lib Dems get creamed at the next election, they'll still outpoll the loony parties and have a far more legitimate claim to speak on behalf of their constituents.

And yes, I have said this before, at some length, but it looks a bit like the point bears repeating.

You've Taken That Too Far

2011-04-20T17:06:00.000Z

I'm guessing that Scotland's death-threatening, bullet-posting, parcel-bombing periphery of football fans may have screwed up catastrophically with this caper.

After all, regularly threatening the lives of footballers is one thing. When you start messing with politicians and high flying lawyers, you're fucking with real people. I suspect that the boot of the state will foot these idiots up the arse so hard that they'll be coughing up their bumholes within about two days.

He Starts Monologuing!

2011-04-18T21:01:00.007Z

While we're on about Randian supermen, I note with mirth that the movie of Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a barking-mad, thousand-page hymn to the divine entitlement of superior beings, has finally been released... And, by all accounts, it sucks.1

No surprise there, I suppose. If anything, I'm surprised that a film of the book was greenlighted - not because it's the work of a lunatic, although it is - but because all of Atlas's themes were explored in far more entertaining fashion by Pixar, in 2004. Pixar's movie featured superhuman collossi, crushed beneath the heel of a government that forces them to conform to the mediocrity of the common man; a state riddled with thieves and haters and one that, above all, asserts itself via a bunch of jumped-up, finger waggy little men ticking off their betters in annoying, high-pitched voices.

It was called The Incredibles, and not only was it vastly more enjoyable than Rand's interminable harangue, it was also significantly more concise, less histrionic and a damn sight less juvenile. It had cool action sequences and humorous slapstick, drama and a bit of emotional heft. It was, in short, a good film.

Oh, it had the same fruity message, of course - the grasping failed suicide who owes the protagonist his life, yet repays his saviour by screwing him with the courts (Oh no, initiating violence!); the bureaucratic hacks forcing our heroes to hide their awesomeness; the scheming, wimpy boss... In fact, most of the regular, non-super humans are either grifting, villainous midgets, victims thereof or merely stunned bystanders.

Looters and Moochers

Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [sullenly] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Who's this, then?

Now, I'm not daft - I know that most of this bubbles up from comic books and superhero movies, to be appropriated and reworked for modern use. The dodgy ubermensch undercurrents in superhero mythology have been done to death in recent years, largely because the films that don't make use of them have a tendency to go all rubber-nipples, high camp and Holy Godawful dialogue, Batman.

I raise this merely to note that it's a fitting testament to Rand's epic that its main impact on popular culture is in kids' movies, comic books, dystopian science fiction and computer games. I guess that's what happens when you fill your magnum opus with flawless He-Men, cackling villains and wacky futuristic technology.

1. Recall - one of the main reasons the 2011 film got made is because the US is supposedly in the grip of some titanic uprising of anti-statist yadda-yadda and more pertinently, because a bunch of wealthy wingnuts kicked in a few bucks to get the thing off the ground.

Well, the movie's taken $1.7m in its opening weekend, which I'm told is pretty respectable for an independent film. That said, both book and film have had millions of dollars worth of free publicity as every wacky outlet in America fluffed it as the antidote to the era of Obamafascocialism, or whatever the hell they're calling it now. God knows how many bums on seats $1.7m buys you, but I doubt that it amounts to a sequel.

The Incredibles, by the way, took $70.5m in its opening weekend, largely because it was distributed nationwide and wasn't shit. Rand fans seem to have enjoyed it, though.

And The Animals Looked From Randian Superman To Looter

2011-04-14T18:52:00.002Z

A very sad yet utterly insane story here of how the Libertarian Party of the United Kingdom quickly metastisised from a bunch of loopy bloggers complaining about being robbed by the sociofascist state, into a small cadre of shits robbing and taking advantage of a bunch of loopy bloggers.

I doubt there's anything going on here that hasn't happened since time immemorial, and yet I have to repeat for the nth time that one of the features of democracy is that people so often get exactly what they ask for, good and hard. I tend not to trust politicians who tell me that politicians only seek power in order to enrich themselves and enhance their own interests, for obvious reasons.

Well. I had wondered why we'd heard so little from the country's libertarians in recent years, given their former ubiquity. I'd assumed that the Tories' electoral victory and subsequent mean-as-hell political trajectory had convinced them that the looters and moochers were being sufficiently battered. Much as they once furiously denied angry Torydom, I think that would've been a lot more edifying for everyone than the real story.

2011-04-13T21:29:00.003Z

To Melanie Philips,
c/o The Spectator,
Deepest, Darkest Wingnuttistan,
London

Dear Melanie,

Thank you for your letter of 12th April, in which you raise very grave allegations about flawed news reporting on Israel and the history of the region by the BBC. I assure you that I take such issues very seriously indeed and that if any evidence is produced by non-fucknut sources - e.g. a source that is not a one-eyed, wackadoodle internet circle-jerk like Just Journalism - I will do my utmost to ensure that the matter is thoroughly investigated.

In the meantime, if you find the behaviour of your occasional employers to be so utterly beyond redemption that you are compelled to lobby a government minister about it, I suggest that you immediately resign from The Moral Maze on Radio 4 and refuse any further requests to appear on BBC1's Question Time or on any of their other current affairs programming.

As a further gesture, it would be a bold and courageous statement of your displeasure if you were to publicly refund to the BBC all of your appearance fees for, say, the last calendar year. This would be a far more eloquent demonstration of your disgust than any amount of letters or raving newspaper columns, and it would clearly affirm the seriousness with which you treat the welter of accusations that you make on a near-weekly basis.

P.S. I'm glad to see you're still sticking it out in Britain, even though you've repeatedly told your readers that the people of our country exist in a perpetual state of raging, pre-genocidal bloodlust. You're a trooper.

Yours fictitiously,

Rt. Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, member of the same HM Government that you have previously accused of collaborating with an international genocidal conspiracy.

No Rules

2011-04-13T17:21:00.000Z

"There are no rules for writing a book", I was sombrely informed today by a published writer.

To which I can only respond: okay, write a kids' book set in 1976 with Pol Pot as the hero, or a crime novel about a snail which sits on a rock for four hundred pages monologuing in phonetic Farsi and Serbo-Croat, then falls off. Now, take it to a publisher.

I'm not saying the guy was wrong, of course. He's the writer and I'm a chump. I'm just saying, maybe that little maxim shouldn't be taken too literally.

Oh Yes, Those Silly Americans

2011-04-07T21:23:00.001Z

While I'm at it, I might as well point out that the New York Times is telling the American people that the Libyan rebels are a badly-organised civilian militia who are basically crap at war, and that they can't win.

On the same day, the London Times* is celebrating the truly awesome Libyan rebels' Boy Scout movement, much as the Times has been telling the British people that the rebels are outstandingly brave, and awesome and courageous right from the start of this debacle. You'll notice that none of those descriptors forbid the terms "doomed", "fucked" or "entirely dependent upon French airstrikes".

Now, this whole idea that the Americans have a ludicrously biased, corporate media? I think we need to talk about that.

*Behind the Times paywall. You'll just have to trust that I'm telling you the truth.

Shorter Rodent: Bullshit

2011-04-07T19:02:00.007Z

I love this opinion piece by Ari Shavit in Ha'aretz. Summary - the Left are more worried about actions and behaviours that they can directly and democratically affect than those they can't, and this somehow reflects badly upon the Left.

Ignore the fact that Shavit is talking about the Israeli left particularly and pay attention to the fact that he's calling for greater general left condemnation of the horrifying behaviour of the foreigns, since this piece could've been written at any time in the last twenty years in Britain, the United States or France, to name but a few. The basic point is that an undefined Left is far too concerned with the actions of the authorities it can elect, is governed by and is compelled to fund, and isn't nearly exercised enough about the behaviour of the individuals and states that it can't practically control, affect or even vaguely influence.

I could go on forever, but really, three straightforward points... First, you know this as well as I do - man bites dog trumps dog bites man. Shavit is on about journalism here. I don't like it any more than you do, but the fact is that repressive theocracy theocratically represses citizens is much less newsworthy than, to invent a random issue, liberal democracy imprisons political dissidents. Ask a journalist - the unusual gets the ink and the everyday gets the shaft, and if you think that's unjust, then I suggest that you rail against market forces rather than institutional bias.

Second, you'll notice that the right manages to produce vast numbers of lunatic enthusiasts for total war against more or less everyone, without devolving into internecine conflict bordering on mutually-assured destruction. By way of random example, even the reasonably sane and humane Alex Massie at The Spectator manages to peacefully share a stable with a deranged and intentionally inflammatory demagogue like Melanie Philips, and yet I can only recall him ticking her off once. Nobody regards that as an indictable offence. I don't wonder why that is, by the way.

Finally, if this ridiculous nonsense is the source of some epic split in left wing politics, then it's back to the drawing board. We're back at basic theory here, and if it's a wildly controversial idea that people tend to be more upset by the activities of their own governments than they are about those of other states, then it's time for a major reorganisation, because - and correct me if I'm wrong - focusing on the behaviour of your rulers is the foundation of modern democracy.

Shorter: Bullshit.

Up To Their Knees In Fines And Bans

2011-04-07T18:01:00.003Z

Rangers are to face a UEFA disciplinary hearing over sectarian singing during last month's Europa League match away to PSV Eindhoven... The chief executive stressed that the club condemned sectarian singing and that had "been made clear time and again"... (Chief executive Martin Bain said) "It has also become clear that there are people who have been determined to undermine our club at any cost and have constantly lobbied Uefa and other organisations to take action against Rangers." - BBC News

So. Group (x) is caught out in some form of reprehensible behaviour; its defence is that other people do the same or worse and that anyway, they're only being targeted because of the biased, hateful and politically-motivated machinations of some unnamed yet undoubtedly malicious coterie.

It's not often I'll say this, but I actually sympathise with Rangers' predicament here. [1] Naturally, I don't think they've done enough to deal with the horrible bullshit that pours off the terraces, but I acknowledge that the club itself have tried to tackle the issue and I believe that the management would love nothing more than an end to sectarian chanting, even if only for a quiet life.

Still, note the club's defence. Would Other people steal more stuff than I do stand up in any court in the land, or would The prosecution lawyers hate us because we're (x) see any trial wound up for prejudicial treatment? I don't think so.

I raise this as part of my ongoing quest to prove that the partisan mentalities of football fans are an excellent analogy for those of politicians and politics enthusiasts. Within their own milieu, Rangers are correct - their fans' behaviour is bad, but it pales in comparison to fans of, say, Italian bastards Lazio, or the various terrifying nutters who follow teams from the former Yugoslavia. [2] Even so, the supporters in question are still clearly guilty.

Only in politics or football would people tell you with a straight face that your eyes or ears are lying to you. I've watched defenders perpetrate scything assaults that would earn them jail sentences in any other walk of life, only to be told that resulting punishment is politically motivated. I've seen slo-mo footage of footballs either crossing or falling short of goal lines, and heard people argue the exact opposite of the evidence.

This isn't just a Scottish thing, either - witness Arsene Wenger's selective eyesight, or the wildly differing ways in which English commentators treat simulation by home-grown and foreign players. Readers from other countries can provide their own examples, no doubt.

Hell, I'd hope that most readers would regard me as a fairly reasonable and rational person, and yet I remain convinced that the Scottish football authorities are quietly biased towards Rangers, even though I know full well that the recent evidence is flimsy at best and that almost everyone else making that claim sounds like a paranoid lunatic. To be clear, I'm admitting right here that I know that I hold an irrational belief, and yet I still believe it to be true.

If that's the case with me, what chance of arguing round people prone to angry waffle about cultural Marxism, or some other mad form of conspiracy theory? None, is my guess. Some academic type should write up a study, I think.

Not that I have a solution, of course. Like all other bloggers, I merely seek validation.

1. Rangers the club, that is, not Rangers fans, and certainly not the sections that have brought this action upon their team. They're hoist by their own petard, and if Celtic fans were regularly attracting adverse attention from UEFA, I'd be howling for them to be kicked out of the ground. European football is what separates Scottish football from its equivalent in Wales or Northern Ireland, and without it we'd be toast.

2. Or Nazio, as I prefer. Also, Croatian fans once famously formed a human swastika at a friendly with Italy, which remains one of the most outstandingly offensive things I've ever seen at a football match, even though the first game I ever went to was Hearts v Celtic in 92 when the Jambos had Maurice Johnstone and Justin Fashanu up front.

Filthy Foreign Food

2011-04-07T16:47:00.002Z

This Michel, as indefatigably Gallic as his mother, had been cooking for himself in his small London flat, and had in the last few days made himself ill by stuffing himself with filthy foreign food of his own preparation, in particular, Dixon gathered, spaghetti and dishes cooked in olive oil. This seemed fit punishment for one so devoted to coagulated flour-and-water and peasants' butter-substitute, washed down, no doubt, by' real' black coffee of high viscosity.- Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis, 1954

The past is, as they say, a foreign country. In another novel, I might be inclined to see a satirical snobbery in this passage but then, those would be novels that don't take "Decent Englishman beset by insufferable arseholes" as their subject material.

After all, spaghetti Bolognese is now a staple of the British diet, coming in right next to fish 'n' chips and a mile behind chicken tikka masala, as best I can tell, and yet in 1954 it seemed deeply queer - in the old, though not-so-different meaning of the word - to one of the country's most celebrated authors.

Lucky Jim is still a cracking read, if not quite so hilarious as advertised, and its repressed, raging protagonist's war with the world in general has long since been hijacked as a British comic standard, and with good reason - Mark in Peep Show, Tim in The Office; maybe even Basil Fawlty, if you cranked up the snobbery.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help taking away the impression of it as an evolutionary step in modern British wingnuttery. Chip away the comedy stylings and the snappy wordplay, and you're left with a parade of capricious, uppity women; bumptious Celts and the plummeting educational and cultural standards of the modern era.

It's all here - the ostentatiously demanding and self-involved females; the cavalcade of insolent Welches, Michies, O'Shaughnessys, McCorquodales and Ap Rhyses, and the damnable, interfering bureaucracy elevating dunces above their station. Chuck it into a cocktail shaker and shoogle it up with a dash of multiculturalism and feminazism, and it's the Daily Mail with funny jokes. It's quite an achievement on Amis's part that he's able to maintain Jim Dixon as a sympathetic character, when he basically whines and complains about everything from start to finish.

Not that this was particularly new in its day, of course - that old quote about how the people of England are never happier than when they are told they are ruined was minted in 1758. Still, it makes plenty of sense to me that the great and the good were busy complaining of how Britain was going to the dogs, twenty-five years before I was born.

How To Rank Comparative Unfairness In An Unfair World

2011-04-06T17:41:00.002Z

Amid all the usual screechy hysterics from the muppets at Comment Is Free, it should be noted that Jonathan Freedland is largely right. Freedland is one of the nation's better columnists, in that at least he's honest and isn't obviously deranged, and he's right that the Israelis generally get a harder time for their numerous and frequent human rights violations, to a greater extent than other, often more deserving, nations.

When he notes that, say, the UN Human Rights Council focuses disproportionately upon Israel, he's correct. Now, he knows as well as I do that this is because the Council is elected by the UN's member states, and that dictatorships game the system in their own interests as surely as the democracies do, but still - it's entirely true, and it does no greater injury to anything than it does to the oversight of human rights standards worldwide.

I'm more dubious about his claims of intrinsic bias in the "media, cultural and academic sphere", and I'm really quite cynical about the idea that any of this represents some epic injustice, in the way that Freedland appears to believe it does. {1}

If only, I thought to myself, there were some way in which we could assess the severity of this situation... And then, it hit me - there is!

Here's my proposition. I reckon that from now on, we should all agree to treat the Palestinians' behaviour with the same level of outrage as we would the Israelis' frequent bombing campaigns. Whenever a volley of improvised rockets is fired from Gaza, the UNHRC will issue stern condemnations and call for high-profile investigations, which will then be utterly ignored. Simultaneously, we could all make loud declarations of solidarity with the suffering citizens of Israel, and the hacks could pen 48-point headlines about what a travesty it all is.

By way of compensation, we'll send the Palestinians three billion dollars' worth of cutting-edge military hardware every year, from fast attack jets to drones and smart missiles. The Israelis can have the food parcels.

Hell, the Palestinians would go for it. If you asked me if I'd like three billion dollars and total impunity from prosecution, I'd be far too busy being all, like, Wahey, I'm in a helicopter! to worry about Mohammed Al-Pissed-Offo or whoever watching his angry resolutions being swatted like flies on the East Side of New York. Also, if I had three billion, I'd be able to handle a few Guardian journos calling me a prick in print, I can tell you that.

What have the Israelis got to lose? At least it would cancel out the terrifying threat of all those pointy-headed English Lit professors trying and failing to enact some kind of boycott, and Just Journalism would never again have to worry whether the BBC had used the word Militant rather than Terrorist.

I say, give it a go! We'd find out in double-quick time exactly how unfair it is that some nations can't bombard heavily-populated urban areas without a lot of foreigners making sad-faces about it.

{1} A quick check-up of Freedland's own output might prove instructive here, of course. Readers may notice that his own journalism isn't exactly a fountain of information about Congo or Darfur, although no doubt that's different.

All War, All The Time

2011-04-01T16:06:00.000Z

As it slowly begins to dawn on Britain that the nation has jumped feet first into yet another wildly dangerous and insane conflict with precisely no forethought or planning, I thought I'd draw your attention to this little exchange from the first Parliamentary debate on Libya, which took place after the bombing had started.

David Cameron had just been asked why Britain should intervene in Libya particularly, as opposed to a number of other pressing areas of humanitarian concern...

The Prime Minister: As I said the other day, just because we cannot do the right thing everywhere does not mean we should not do it when we have clear permission for and a national interest in doing so. One commentator put it rather well at the weekend: “Why should I tidy my bedroom when the rest of the world is such a mess?” That is an interesting way of putting it.

Yes, it is indeed. It's certainly an interesting way for the fucking Prime Minister to put it when he's talking about an ill-defined and quite possibly catastrophic military intervention in a full-on civil war, on the side of an angry militia who, it later transpires, may or may not be jammed with Jihadists, to raise only one major problem.

As the Independent's perma-twattish John Rentoul points out, the "Why should I tidy my bedroom" crack is possibly the first Parliamentary ReTweet - see here. The gag provoked much amusement among this new war's most vocal backers, at the time.

So. It looks a lot like Libya is a test case for the much-invoked "Responsibility To Protect" in international law. Asked why Libya meets the test and other crises - Ivory Coast, Bahrain, Syria, maybe - don't, the Prime Minister responds with a wanky RT, much to the joy and merriment of R2P enthusiasts. Much as the Iraq War did in the Americans' adventurist democracy promotion in the Middle East, Libya may well bury R2P in an open grave in the desert, but LOL! Teenage Trot tossers, haha!

You'll notice that all of those chucklesome japesters have fallen silent now that the sheer scale of the task we've set ourselves has become apparent. Certainly, I've seen very few supporting Tweets cracking wise along the lines of OMFG Tha rebels r being beaten like rodeo clowns in what appears 2 b a total military clusterfuck WTF!!

I'll say this about the Iraq invasion - it may have failed brutally for want of planning, strategic thought or common sense; it may have been an epic disaster with consequences that may well explode in our faces for the remainder of the century.

Unlike Libya, however, there was at least a faint air of gravitas and half-serious deliberation about it. The lunatics and fools who led us into that debacle with bullshit slogans and fuck all else, well, at least they put a little bit of thought and effort into it.

This time, a bunch of honking politicians, columnists and internet fuckheads marched in waving their dicks in the air, braying about how huffy and annoying their detractors were. Now that it's gone predictably tits up and we're basically relying on luck and crossed-fingers for a non-murderous outcome, silence.

It might do us some good in future to recall who these people were and how they comported themselves around issues of life and death, especially on the next occasion that they pipe up with some Good Ideas, I think.

This used to be a comedy blog, you know, with jokes about animals and stuff.

Fool Me Twenty-Seven Times, Shame On Left-Wing Extremists Yet Again

2011-03-28T20:19:00.001Z

It's a particular irony that those calling most loudly for CONDEMNATION of the weekend's violence in London are, perhaps non-coincidentally, among the country's foremost proponents for the use of violence abroad, on a scale that wholly dwarfs a bunch of angry idiots boxing with policemen.

Like any good citizen, I strongly disapprove of angry idiots boxing with policemen. On the other hand, I'm forced to observe that they aren't using Predator drones or forming kill squads; they aren't destroying buildings with cruise missiles or launching hundreds of airstrikes on a series of nations that they haven't formally declared war upon.

I have only so much outrage to go around, and I notice that no matter how much we all complain about the awful, paint-happy arseholes, it never seems to be quite enough. Perhaps that's because every single hack bitching about the anarchists is aware that, say, the Black Bloc don't represent The Left, and so many are intentionally pretending that they do? It's surely a possibility.

I look down upon rioting and smashing things up, yet - and I'm happy to be corrected here, if possible - the historical success rate of unfocused rioting and smashing things up is arguably much better than that of lunatic attempts to bomb freedom and democracy into nations from high altitude.

Sharp-eyed critics might say, Aha! You're setting up some kind of false equivalence here. There is no connection between angry idiots boxing with policemen and lunatic attempts to bomb freedom into nations.

To which I can only say Oh, really? Because I recall that, when I believed that invading, bombing or occupying all those countries was basically insane, pundits from right across the political spectrum suddenly told me that THE LEFT had gone insane and should be ashamed of itself. When I believed that, say, attempts to bomb antisemitism and support for terrorism out of Beirut and Gaza were doomed to murderous failure, cries from all corners insisted that the real problem was TWO BLOKES AND A DOG who thought terrorism and racism were just fine.

And so on: control orders, Pakistan, the financial disaster and Libya, to pick a few random issues, and now, the Tories' cuts. All somehow revealed that some nebulous LEFT that doesn't appear to possess any political power at all beyond the ability to print articles in low-circulation newspapers was the heart of the problem.

I hate to say it, but it is sort of starting to look like this awful, despicable left is little more than a stick that a bunch of people with a very narrow range of political beliefs beat dissenters with. I throw it out there, for discussion.

So, those angry idiots. I say, come back and ask for fiery denunciations when they're rioting with a multi-billion-dollar armaments budget.

Aha! those sharp-eyed critics might say again - the angry idiots' violence serves absolutely no sane purpose and is in fact extremely counterproductive.

Well, yes. Heaven forfend, that anybody should deploy aimless violence in pursuit of unrealistic political goals.

All Necessary Measures

2011-03-28T19:14:00.000Z

"Left open, as well, was the question of how the allies could justify airstrikes on Colonel Qaddafi’s forces around Surt if, as seems to be the case, they enjoy widespread support in the city and pose no threat to civilians". - NYT, 28th March

Yes, you do have to wonder about that. If only there was some kind of mechanism by which proxies could interrogate the authorities on questions of war and legality, then transmit any information thus acquired to the general public, perhaps via the exchange of currency for printed reports or even provided free of charge in electronic form.

Whatever. I, uh, hate to judge before all the facts are in... It's beginning to look like, uh, General Ripper exceeded his authority.