Saturday, October 01, 2011 

Boogaloo and hiatus.




So yeah, I'm not here next week. Will be back the Monday after. Hopefully will get the blogging juices back after a break.

Keep it foolish.

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10/01/2011 01:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, September 30, 2011 

Glenn Greenwald on the extrajudicial execution of Anwar al-Awlaki.


What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

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9/30/2011 06:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

In the Garden of Eden...

Ah, the BBFC. Not only deciding what we can and can't watch, but also commenting on the shape of the bodies on display in the early naturist films:

"I think Garden of Eden would provoke very noisy reactions at tough cinemas like The Elephant. There are some unconsciously funny nudes. Especially one young lady with peculiar glutial muscles."

Arses commenting on arses is though rather appropriate.

P.S. Also see BenSix's post here, with a comment from yours truly.

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9/30/2011 03:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 29, 2011 

The wonderful world of Melanie Phillips, pt. 964.

You might recall that a while back Paul Dacre's lawyers contacted Kevin Arscott of the Angry Mob blog as he'd had the temerity to say some unkind and hurtful things about the greatest newspaper editor the world has ever seen. Admittedly, hoping that someone dies a slow and painful death and that people then queue up to shit on their grave is not very pleasant; it is however certainly not defamatory, as they claimed. Their aim was however achieved: the second result on Google when you search for "Paul Dacre" is now not a post calling for his death. Rather, there are now three separate entries on the first page detailing his legal activities.

Suggesting that resorting to empty threats of legal action is becoming a habit among hacks at the Mail, Angry Mob has since been involved in an interesting exchange of correspondence with everyone's favourite Moral Maze panellist, Melanie Phillips. Having politely suggested in an email that her insistence on continuing to dredge up the "Winterval" myth is misleading her readers, she responded:

Interesting that you think all those people, including Bishops of the Church of England who were so upset by Winterval, failed to understand what you alone apparently understood. In fact, it is plain that you have zero understanding of why this term caused such offence to so many people. Birmingham council’s protestations that Christmas remained at the heart of the Winterval celebrations were disingenuous and missed the point. ‘Christmas’ is a term that does not merely refer to Christmas Day but to the period around it. There was no need for the term Winterval at all — except as a way of not referring to the Christmas season, but instead to provide a neutral term which would enable other faith celebrations around that time to assume equal prominence. That was the objection which was clearly stated at the time by the Bishops and others: Winterval buried ‘Christmas’ and replaced it in the public mind. Your message is therefore as arrogant and ignorant as it is offensive.

Melanie

While being told that you're misleading people is never likely to immediately endear you to them, to suggest that disagreeing is arrogant, ignorant and offensive goes beyond sensitivity into the realms of being rude for the sake of it. Rudeness often tends to lead to it being delivered back in spades, and Angry Mob duly delivered:

If you read the essay I think you’d realise that you are quite mistaken. Again, you really need to start engaging with facts, rather than just reverberating around your own blinkered mind.

Your dishonest attack on Rory Weal was a staggeringly embarrassing exercise in how underhand you have to become to even engage in an argument with a 16-year-old.

I’ve responded to you via my blog [http://www.butireaditinthepaper.co.uk ], I prefer to keep such conversations public – as any writer should (although I notice you don’t believe that journalism or blogging is a two-way process, probably because it is easier to write your nonsense trapped in your own blissful bubble of ignorance).

I really think you should take a second look at some of the accusations you made about Rory Weal, because, thanks to your laziness (i.e. not bothering to look into his life situation before starting your rant), you got his situation horribly wrong and you look even more foolish than normal.

To which Mel then responded:

Your blog post about me is highly defamatory and contains false allegations for which you would stand to pay me significant damages in a libel action. There are many things I could say to point out the gross misrepresentations, selective reporting and twisted distortions in what you have written. I will not do so, however, because you have shown gross abuse of trust in publishing on your blog private correspondence from me without my permission. Consequently I will have no more to do with you and any further messages from you will be electronically binned unread along with other nuisance mail.

While Kevin did give in to the temptation to refer to Phillips as "Mad Mel", a term of endearment much used across the blogosphere, and one to which it's known she has not warmed (the tactics of Stalin, she said, when Jackie Ashley suggested without any malice that some of her thinking could come across as "bonkers"), there's little else in his post which could be construed as defamatory, let alone for which he would have to pay out damages. The worst in fact comes in a comment, with Col describing her as a "shit human being". Not very nice, but again, likely to be classed as abuse rather than defamatory. It also seems all the more remarkable considering that it wasn't so long back that the Spectator, the former home of Phillips' blog, had to pay damages to Alastair Crooke after Mel had made err, false allegations about him. This misunderstanding almost certainly resulted in Mel deciding to "expand and develop" her own website. Then again, Mel has never had any compunction about responding in kind.

What's more, as Angry Mob relates, someone had these wise words to say on the subject of libel a couple of years ago:

Because of the difficulty of proving what may be unprovable, those who express such views are intimidated by the prospect of losing such a case – and then having to pay astronomical legal costs to multinationals or wealthy individuals who can afford to keep racking up the final bill.

So scientists, academics, authors, journalists and others are effectively censoring themselves for fear of becoming trapped in a ruinous libel suit – or are being forced to back down and apologise for statements they still believe to be true.


Wealthy or at least comfortably off individuals like Melanie Phillips perhaps, the author of the above. A statement she doubtless still believes to be true.

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9/29/2011 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 

A step in the right direction.

One of the benefits of waiting to pass judgement in this new age of instant comment and analysis is that it leaves time for the overall message of a speech to sink in. Somewhat hidden in what was, as all conference addresses by party leaders now must be, a fairly disjointed speech was a fundamental and absolute break with the era of New Labour.

Not of course that this is the first time such a break has been hinted at. Everyone else has repeatedly pronounced New Labour dead: when Northern Rock was nationalised, when the banks were bailed out, when the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 was introduced, when Ed was elected leader last year and the heir apparent went off in a huff. The truth is that up until now the same old triangulation has been in evidence on all fronts; yes, Labour might have been demanding a Plan B on the economy, but it can hardly do otherwise when the coalition seems so determined to run it into the ground for no other reason than to ensure that Dave and George don't look like complete fools by performing their most spectacular u-turn yet. Why else did they demand that Ken Clarke resign having previously pledged to support him? Why carry on sitting to the right of the coalition on civil liberties when it achieves absolutely nothing except for the occasional mildly supportive word from the Sun? Why continue to give shadow cabinet jobs to such useless Blairite hacks as Caroline Flint and Tessa Jowell when the elections have now (rightly) been abolished? Why give the shadow chancellorship initially to Alan Johnson when Ed Balls, baggage carrying as he is, was the obvious choice?

Still, a year into the job and it does look as if Ed has finally gained enough confidence to take the party ever so slightly into a new direction. This sadly wasn't in evidence in the manner in which he delivered his speech, which has been discussed at length elsewhere. Whether it was nerves at taking this new line, or just that he's not the world's greatest speaker and is never going to be, although he certainly wasn't that bad when he was campaigning to be leader, the audience struggled to get into an address that contained far more in actual content than many of Tony Blair's efforts. Quite how far Blair's stock has fallen in the party that he led to three election victories became apparent when the very mention of his name was booed when Ed set out why he isn't like either of his predecessors; perhaps it had something to do with Peter Oborne's Dispatches documentary which aired on Monday night, the implication being that the former leader was another of those looking for something for nothing.

For while Miliband's phraseology was as clunky as we've come to expect from British politicians, his main targets were for the most part spot on. Here was a leader of a mainstream political party taking aiming at trickle-down economics; he might not have said neo-liberalism, as his strategist Stewart Wood repeatedly did in a New Statesman article, and he only said it once so many no doubt missed it, but here we finally have someone in a position of influence, on the inside as it were, saying that the past 30 years of voodoo economics has reached the end of its usefulness. It's difficult to overstate just how significant this is, at least when it comes to New Labour. The great bargain or understanding with business, which began under John Smith's leadership and was then fully implemented under Blair was that while the party would increase public spending and introduce a minimum wage, business and the City especially would be as lightly taxed and regulated as the wider party could tolerate. Tory spending plans would be followed for the first couple of years to build trust, then the full new deal as it were would begin.

By now making a distinction between predators and providers, however facile and simplistic a dichotomy that is, Miliband is recognising what has been the case all along: that not all businesses are equal, and that adopting such a policy in the first place was simply storing up problems for later. By encouraging a completely out of control consumer economy to develop, with families becoming ever more indebted as the years passed, New Labour has almost certainly lengthened the road to recovery following the crash. They shouldn't feel too guilty about this: everyone else was pursuing the same course, while the Tories were proposing even lighter touch regulation, and at one point were actively considering a flat tax. By going further than any party leader so far in making clear where the origins of the crash lie, and today responding to criticism of his stance with the far better soundbite of being anti-business as usual rather than "anti-business", he's began the crucial work of carving out a new niche for himself and Labour.

This isn't to downplay the obvious problems with Miliband's insistence that "producers" and "predators" will be treated differently should he become prime minister. How they will be identified to begin with is difficult to ascertain: Tesco for instance is without doubt one of the most predatory but also successful businesses in the country, employing thousands while riding roughshod over local objections to new stores, crushing independents and helping to kill off the high street. It also remains largely popular. This fundamental lack of detail, beyond his promise that only companies that "commit to training the next generation with decent apprenticeships" will get large government contracts, something almost certainly subject to legal challenge, is almost certainly why the response of the CBI was fairly low-key. They obviously don't believe either that Miliband can win the next election or that even if Labour does that such measures will be implemented.

At the moment, the public also finds it difficult to believe. First impressions are difficult to shake, and he continues to pay, not only for his poor performance at crucial moments, excepting on phone hacking, but also for daring to consider himself as offering something different and better than his brother. This is though still early days: as has been advised, most for now are paying little attention to Labour and won't do until the next election gets a little nearer. The problem with this view is that if Eurozone implodes, necessitating a further bank bailout and even harsher spending cuts, it's difficult to imagine the Liberal Democrats feeling able to continue to prop the Tories up. A snap election is still a distinct possibility, and with Labour's policies on everything else either remaining much the same or in utter disarray, there's not much rebuilding yet been finished. The foundations have been laid; now the real hard work begins.

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9/28/2011 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 

Short verdict on Ed Miliband's speech.

Fiddling at the margins in policy content and woefully uninspiring in delivery.

(Tomorrow, providing I haven't wasted my time stupidly like tonight, you might just get a longer one.)

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9/27/2011 11:02:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 26, 2011 

The wonderful world of Melanie Phillips, pt. 769.

Like all right-thinking people, Melanie Phillips is up in arms over the BBC religion website's decision (and it is only their decision) to use CE and BCE instead of AD and BC. As usual, we must bear in mind that dear old Mel is quite happy to appear on the Moral Maze and Question Time at the licence-fee payer's expense, despite the corporation being dedicated to the destruction of the very culture Mel fights to defend, when she then denounces her occasional employer:

One of the most sinister aspects of political correctness is the way in which its edicts purport to be in the interests of minority groups.

This is despite the fact that, very often, they are not promulgated at the behest of minorities at all, but by members of the majority who want to destroy their own culture and who use minorities to camouflage their true intentions.

The latest manifestation stars once again that all-time world champion of political correctness, the BBC. Apparently, it has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era.

Well, yes. Or it could be down to the fact that using AD and BC on a website dedicated to discussing all religions without passing judgement on them would be rather silly, when there's a perfectly good, relatively neutral system which can be used instead. The BBC's justification isn't worded very well, it must be said, but that's the real reason for doing so.

For as Mel goes on to say:

Well, I am a Jew, so I am presumably a member of this group that must not be alienated.

It so happens, however, that along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me.

If the BBC really was dedicated to the destruction of Judeo-Christian culture, it would be looking towards introducing the Hijra (Islamic) calendar, where a year has 354 or (355) days and it's currently 1432. Then it might just be time to worry.

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9/26/2011 09:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, September 24, 2011 

Ugly duckling.



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9/24/2011 02:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

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