The enemy of my enemy, and all that

Here's an interesting one: Engage Online are giving space to Colin Meade, Lecturer at London Met and Milosevic defender. A google of "Colin Meade" and "Milosevic" shows a few interesting sites around the internet. Meade used to have a blog but it has been removed, but is linked to from places such as (hold your nose before clicking) this. Fortunately, the Internet Archive is our friend and Meade's writings on dhimmitude and the like are still available. Just the sort of association that HP Sauce would make a big deal out of, of course, if the personnel and issue were slightly changed.

Sick with corruption and criminality from top to bottom

We[1] are most amused by this.

Ridiculous exaggeration RT @AndrewSparrow Tom Watson says Murdoch empire is "sick with corruption and criminality from top to bottom"

And this.

@JohnRentoul @tom_watson Well Tom, what's the answer to John's question? What act of criminality can you ascribe to The Times? Name one.

Pedantic note: I understand Tom Watson's phrase to mean that some employees and directors of the Murdoch empire, that is, from lowly reporters to the Murdoch family themselves are corrupt and/or criminal. This is perfectly consonant with the case of Clive Goodman (at the bottom) and the allegations of perjury by James Murdoch when he gave evidence to the HoC Select Committee (at the top).

This has (as journalists like to say when being dismissive) predictably upset David Aaronovitch and, less predictably, given that he's employed by a rival publication, Blair loyalist John Rentoul. In short, I think it's a perfectly sensible thing to say, just as one can say certain banks are sick without meaning that every trader is performing fraudulent transactions.

God, I love it when they're angry. Peter Oborne has stirred them up too. I see John Rentoul's getting upset at that Dispatches too. But were Oborne's allegations based on envy as Rentoul suggests they were? You can work that one out by yourselves, and if you have, you can ask if Kuwait (which partly finances the Blair empire) is a state fit to enter this "League of Democratic Nations" opponents of the UN are always banging on about.

[1] I am, anyway.

Krugman scores a hit

Krugman on 9/11 and More About the 9/11 Anniversary.

Roy Edroso has a round-up of rightblogger responses. (Thanks to Flying Rodent.) There's an accompanying blogpost.

Really, I have so much to say on this, I find starting impossible, but if I can cut it down to one thing, I advise anyone who has ever considered claiming to be part of a "war on" anything and anyone else who thinks that belligerence is a solution to try sneaking up on a goose and saying "boo" before deciding whether they're really cut out for a life of conflict.

Update 2:20pm Jon Stewart goes one better.

Andrew Brown on links to Breivik

Interesting piece on links to Breivik. None of our immediately decent friends are mentioned, but people they've consorted with such as Douglas Murray and Gates of Vienna feature fairly prominently.

Waggy finger watch

Eliza Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, has made a speech in which she rejects the phrase "war on terror" as unhelpful. Elementary induction predicts that the waggy finger of Professor Norm will soon be wagged.

Some Cheap Laughs

Harry's Place seems to be trolling its own commenters. The current masthead must refer to this post where almost all the comments are hostile. (Although this (real) pic of Geller and Spencer is more sinister.) Now, will they accept that they've created an oasis for loons? (Nope.)

And this is a rather wonderfully percipient post on H'S'JS signatory Michael Gove. As is this (though I suspect this is partly a set-up; I can't believe he's that daft.

Update 1/9/11 We've now over 200 comments. Blogger doesn't seem to display them all on one page. So you need to go to the 'post a comment' page and then click on the 'Newer' link.

This is a hassle. On the other hand, it may also discourage further contributions.

Let Them Eat Cake

Title suggested by Gastro George.

Andrew Sparrow in the Guardian offers a round-up of the commentariat's reaction so far, including David Aaronovitch.

The highest realistic estimate I've seen for rioters in one place was 200, and pictures of that event suggest that it was too high. It also seems that one must make a practical distinction (if not a moral one) between rioters and looters — people who entered shops already broken into to steal goods. There is some evidence of the same people moving from one location to another. With the number of arrests at about 500, I seriously wonder if many more than a few thousand people were involved in rioting.

This is important because it tells us two things. First, we are not dealing with a mass criminal insurrection. And second, that a remarkably small number of people, if they are mobile and use surprise, can cause mayhem out of all proportion to their numbers. I was told this by Tony Blair once, in the context of terrorism, and it's true.

I considered adding this in the comments to the last post, but it seems to merit its own to me. Though this deserves to come under the "with exemplary timing" heading.

Why is Aaro so keen on playing down the numbers? He was doing it on Twitter "@DeborahJaneOrr Quite possibly. How many then, roughly? 2, 3k [rioters]?"

I think his preference for low, rather than high, numbers is correct. But it's obvious that he's going too low. Mad Mel seems to think that the whole underclass is rising up, propelled by the Gramscian-liberal-Church-of-England nexus of evil.

What's the point of the Blair name-drop? It's a very obvious point, and hardly limited to modern terrorism. It's how the French resistance worked. It was the thinking behind the original SAS operations in WWII (IIRC, which I may not); it's in Herodotus, the Iliad, and, again IIRC, Gibbon. Dave studied history: I'm sure he knew more about this than Tony Blair. BTW, can circumstances really tell us something we already know? Because if they can't, that brings Dave's two things down to one. And I wasn't aware of anyone suggesting that we were "dealing with a mass criminal insurrection."

Also, thanks to the Cous Cous Kid in the last comment's, Dave's final para.

Because, yes, we have been here before, with a relatively small number of young men, high on violence and low on personal skills, finding a way to drive the rest of us mad. This analysis is both gloomy and hopeful. It suggests that, short of a world war to send them to, difficult and violent young men will always be with us. The numbers matter, of course, and we can and should whittle away at them with firmness. But we won't eradicate them altogether, and if improvement is always slow and adapting difficult, we can - of course - make things worse quickly, by reacting with impatience, prejudice and stupidity.

The last sentence is of course very sensible. I'm not sure about having world wars just to send "young men, high on violence and low on personal skills" off to. Armies aren't very keen on that sort really. Dave seems to envisage modern warfare as "The Dirty Dozen" on a more ambitious scale.

Am I overdoing the pacifist thing by suggesting that a sport like rugby is a better outlet for young men's tendency to difficulty and violence than, say, going to war with Germany again?