Busyness

I'm not going to be around much until Monday. No, I haven't got a job yet, I'm just going to busy and not really have the time to be online much. But hopefully by Monday I will be back in action. And yes, I will deal with Tim Montogomerie's ridiculous website, as promised.

Brown is mad?

Liberal Conspiracy discusses the "Brown is insane" meme.

I think that we should learn to love, cherish and adopt the term "concern trolling".

When will Tim Montgomerie stop beating his wife?

No srsly.

I mean, if we're gonna play that game it would be, lets at least do it properly. Going by the site, pretty much everyone who is not at least centre-right hates America.

And while it would be both amusing, and very easy, to make fun of Montgomerie's almost sycophantic website, instead I am putting on my "Internet Is SRS BUSINESS" had and I'm going to have some fun with his sources. Because his sources for some of the anti-Americanism briefings are some of the most disgusting and divisive Americans in recent history, whose absolute hatred at anyone with a worldview that differs from theirs is far more hateful of the Americans who hold those views than many of the descriptions of anti-Americanism on the site.

Firstly, I'm reading about Anti-Americanism and Hollywood, a delightful little playbook taken from the American right, about how Hollywood is undermining all that is good and true about America. And whose name should I see, but Michael Medved.

Medved is not what I would call a good source. In fact, he is a terrible source. This article here, I think, sums up everything that is wrong with his worldview. Historical inaccuracy and naievete are the hallmarks of his thinking. Taking it apart would be a lengthy work for a historian, there is so much wrong with it. Furthermore, his cultural conservativism shows in his contempt for liberal, homosexual and non Judeo-Christian Americans, which is the main point of pretty much every article he writes.

Medved will go to nearly any length to smear liberal, gay or non-Jewish or Christian Americans (in fact, he will smear them too, if they are too liberal for his liking). Why does Medved's contempt for his fellow citizens not disqualify him as a source? Because Montgomerie's site is not about anti-Americanism, its about using anti-Americanism, the concept, as a foil to attack left-wingers with.

This pattern repeats itself with some of his other non-political/NGO sources, who are invariably the worst examples of right-wing Americans, that conflate everything which isn't in line with their worldview as anti-American. As such, it becomes all too easy to claim that everything except one's own worldview is not filled with secret hatred and disgust for the USA. How convienient.

Next on the list is Michelle Malkin. Ah, the Malkin Monster. Where do we start with her? Ezra Klein probably says it best:

To visit Michelle Malkin’s cave is to see politics at its most savage, its most ferocious, its most rageful. They say they’ve spent the past week smearing a child and his family because that child was fair game — he and his family spoke of their experience receiving health care through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. For this, right wingers travel to their home to inspect its worth, they insinuate that the family is engaged in large-scale fraud to receive government benefits, they make threatening phone calls to the family.

Lovely, right? There is plenty more to hold against Michelle Malkin as well. Hold on tight, because its a nasty and sordid little trip we will be taking.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon goes one further:

On a daily basis, Michelle Malkin's hate sites promote violence, rank bigotry, jihad against Muslim Americans, imprisonment of Democratic Party leaders. The comments are not deleted and are virtually never opposed. Her hate sites traffic in content which is the hallmark of white supremacism and violent groups targeting Muslims. And once she is done promoting that, she goes on Fox News and demands that corporate sponsors cut their ties with Daily Kos due to the comments left on that site.

And it gets better (or worse):

David Neiwert does a take down of her book, Liberals Unhinged, her pathetic whining about how American liberals are out of control radicals trying to destroy the country and intimidate conservatives. As David points out:

The only people who will find this book useful are blinkered ideologues who just want more grist for their liberal-hating mills, the facts be damned. Certainly, it will be of little to use for any serious-minded person who is concerned about the state of the national dialogue -- except, perhaps, as Exhibit A regarding the source of the problem.

There is also her book on internment, accurately described throughout much of the American media as historical revisionism and little more than a screed to justify racial profiling against American Arabs, and their possible internment without trial. A full takedown, by two historians with expertise in the case of Japanese internment, can be read here.

We could go into her tedious hatred of illegal immigrants. Or how she enables the harassment of people who she disagrees with. Or her conspiracy theorism. But I simply do not have the time to document all of Malkin's insanity.

On Will Anti-Americanism End if Barack Obama becomes President, I see Robert Kagan, of the infamous Kagan family, making an appearance. Robert, like many of his relatives who, inexplicably are listened to by the American media and foreign policy establishment, was one of those pushing most strongly for the Iraq war, and has continued to support it strongly. As Greenwald points out:

No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner, Bill Kristol, did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public.

In April, 2003, Kagan declared the war over and said we won. Since then, he has continuously claimed that things were getting better in Iraq. He is completely liberated from any obligation to tell the truth and is a highly destructive propagandist whose public record of commentary about Iraq ought to disqualify him from decent company, let alone some sort of pretense to expertise about this war.

And we should take his word on American foreign policy at face value? I think not.

David Frum gets a mention on the topic of Strategies to Combat Anti-Americanism. Frum is of course most well known as the man who helped coin the phrase Axis of Evil, but there is a lot more to him.

For example, we have his (obvious) implication that those who blame Feith and Michael Leeden for forging evidence to help the case for the Iraq war are anti-Semites. Gary Kayima also has an enlightening review of the book he co-wrote with Richard Perle:

Here are some of the authors' policy recommendations:

• Preparing to launch a preemptive attack on North Korea, after moving our troops out of range of their artillery and missiles.
• Taking direct action to topple the regime in Iran, by providing aid to Iranian dissidents.
• Being prepared to invade Syria, of whom the authors write, "Really, there is only one question to ask about Syria: Why have we put up with it as long as we have?"
• Being prepared to invade Libya. "The illusion that Muammar al-Qaddafi is 'moderating' should be treated as what it is: a symptom of the seemingly incurable wishful delusions that afflict the accommodationists in the foreign policy establishment." (Now that those accommodationists in State have been proven right, don't expect an apology from the authors: They'll claim Qaddafi got rid of his WMD programs only because Bush invaded Iraq. All other answers, no matter if they're true, don't fit with their Manichaean, evildoers-respond-only-to-force worldview. Besides, those who are always right must never apologize. It is a sign of weakness, which our evil Muslim terrorist enemies (TM) will exploit with evil terror.)
• Taking a superconfrontational line with Saudi Arabia, including letting them know that if they don't reform we would look with favor upon a Shiite uprising in their oil-rich Eastern Province.
• Abandoning the Israeli-Palestinian peace process altogether. In a radical departure from U.S. policy, they say the Palestinians should not be given a state. Creating a Palestinian state out of the West Bank and Gaza, they write, will not bring peace to the region, because the Palestinians and other Arabs are only interested in vengeance, not justice. Instead, the Palestinians should "let go of the past" and content themselves with becoming citizens of the Arab countries in which they now live. The authors do not say what should happen to the 3.9 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories: Presumably they should either agree to become second-class citizens like the other Israeli Arabs, or leave.

Their domestic policies are equally arresting:

• Requiring all residents to carry a national identity card that includes "biometric data, like fingerprints or retinal scans or DNA," and empowering all law enforcement officers to enforce immigration laws. The authors admit that such a card "could be used in abusive ways," but reassure us by saying that victims of "executive branch abuse will be able to sue." Those who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear!
• Encouraging Americans to "report suspicious activity." Apparently alone among Americans, the authors lament the demise of the TIPS program.
• Changing immigration policy so that the U.S. can bar all would-be visitors who have "terrorist sympathies." The authors define "terrorist sympathies" so broadly that this would rule out a high percentage of visitors from Muslim or Arab countries.
• Reforming the CIA to make it more hard-line on the Middle East.

Fascinating stuff. But should we really be taking advice from frothing militarists on how to make people hate America less?

Here is another insight into Frum's worldview, this time in his own words, quoted handily by John Holbo:

The great, overwhelming fact of a capitalist economy is risk. Everyone is at constant risk of the loss of his job, or of the destruction of his business by a competitor, or of the crash of his investment portfolio. Risk makes people circumspect. It disciplines them and teaches them self-control. Without a safety net, people won’t try to vault across the big top.

In short, capitalism is good because it keeps people in their place. It makes them easily controlled, because they are in constant fear of losing everything. It creates social order, by threatening people with losing their jobs, investments and businesses, and thus making sure they do not try and make it too big. Well I'm certainly feeling the love in that argument.


I'll deal with some of the claims actually made another day. I just wanted to point out that anyone using the above people is probably not the sort of person who wants to make a serious effort, and instead is interesting in shutting down debate with accusations of being an irrational hater.

Oh, this is beautiful

My favouritest Pagan website on the planet, MysticPricks, has sunk to a new low. Not content with promoting woolly thinking, historical inaccuracy, superstitious dogma, sectarian hatred and allowing cryto-racists to have the run of the site, they've now stooped to the level of pimping The Church of Scientology!



As usual, click to view a larger image.

The question is, of course, is what to do with such information? Apparently, the site owner's wife has already stated that to take it down would be to discriminate against Scientologists. You know, in the same way that arresting and incarcerating Al-Qaeda members is discriminating against Muslims. I know only a few weeks ago at least one member on the site made a detailed post listing the wrongs of the Church, so either they didn't read the post (in which case they are bad admins, but then we already knew that), or they just don't give a shit, and are more than willing to promote the Scifag cult because of the filthy lucre it brings in.

Knowing Mol's addictions, I have a good idea of which of those theories I prefer.

Headlines that don't make sense until after your first coffee #1

Paedophile Glitter arrives in UK

I swear I was thinking "what, glitter for paedophiles? Glitter that attracts paedophiles? Is this a new episode of Brass Eye? WHAT THE HELL IS THE BBC TALKING ABOUT?"

Which just goes to show how necessary coffee is in my life.

This is not the broken society you were looking for

And thus, Jedi Master Boris Johnson overturns the idea that he may be off message.

I like his style though. It reminds me of a certain fictional lawyer (whose name eludes me), whose tactic was to allege the most preposterous things, then say "withdrawn" before the Judge could punish him, knowing full well that the original statement is out there, and no amount of denial will have the impact of the initial allegation.

Good old Boris.

MI5 state obvious, media goes into shock

The Guardian has the info.

Am I terribly shocked? No. But then again, I studied terrorism using something other than Parliamentary statements and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam. You know, with people who have spent their entire lives studying terrorists, mapping personalities, conducting interviews, modelling radicalization etc.

Marc Sageman in particular has been noting and publishing the trends MI5 have produced since the publication of his Understanding Terror Networks, if not before. Nothing in this report is really new from that. Religious novices? Check. Socially excluded or removed second or third generation immigrants? Check. Low incidence of mental illness? Check.

I'm surprised any of this is even considered news. Anyone who has been following the academic terrorism literature knew this stuff a long time ago. We have reports going back to the Red Brigades and UVF that rule out mental illness, or a particular personality type.

Other background details are interesting, highlighting the difference between the old Al-Qaeda (the professionals in their late 20s to 30s, who have families etc) and the new Al-Qaeda, the kids in their late teens or early 20s. The diversity of background, from sober, nearly areligious (until recently) professional family man with no criminal background, to the kid who has been caught taking drugs and possibly served a sentence for a violent crime, who cannot even read Arabic, is enormous.

And those are just two of the many profiles one could come up with. Factor in racial background, gender, educational history, geographical location etc and you quickly lose anything that resembles a useful description of a potential terrorist.

Even worse, terrorists often tailor their recruitment methods to avoid profiles. By concentrating on certain segments on the population, you just increase the evolutionary adaption of an organization. As the 7/7 bombings show, anyone who had been looking for foreign born, or all Pakistani radicals, for example, would have been caught out. And yes, you could argue the converse, that in fact some lives might have been saved, but the true mark of terrorism is targeting weak points, taking advantage of the unexpected and unconsidered. As soon as you focus on one area, and it becomes obvious (and believe me, with the internet, it will), then terrorist groups will regroup and attack from unexpected directions.

The best way, as Sageman notes, is to map the relationships between known violent radicals, facilitators of violent teachings and those who are involved in activity which is linked to terrorism. Target the smugglers (people or otherwise), the money launderers, the radical Imams with links to training camps in Pakistan or Indonesia or the Middle East. That is how you deal with Islamic terrorism.

And lets not overlook the possibility of a resurgence of rightwing, nationalist terrorism either. Its picking up in the USA, currently, and there could be international implications, when we consider how many have adapted themselves to narrative of the War on Terror, and the persistent Eurabia bullshit.

Anyway, a welcome report, and I am glad to see MI5 seem to know what they are doing.

Reasons to not drink coffee while reading BBC News

Tories 'best' to tackle poverty

George Osborne is set to claim that the Tories are best placed to tackle poverty and create a fair society.

I mean, seriously, are you trying to kill me here? I could have choked...

Oh dear, it looks like Boris is "off message"

Link.

Boris Johnson has described David Cameron's claim that Britain is a 'broken society' as 'piffle'.

In an intervention likely to dismay Tory HQ, the London mayor claimed our success at the Olympics proves youngsters are far from 'aimless, feckless and hopeless, addicted to their PlayStations'.

'If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness,' he said.

'And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is.'

Oh dear. It would be terrible if this were the start of the unravelling of the Tory party message, and still 2 years from when the election is due. They'd have to come up with a whole new meme to explain why their plans for radical social reform (hang on, I thought it was the left who did the social engineering?) are so necessary.

Its GO TIME!

Drop everything, its time to protest!

Today, Littlejohn is bemoaning the lack of protests over Georgia and Russia's recent tangle.

I know in LJ's mind, bands of anarchists and communists sit around the streets of London, promoting terrorism and rape and knifecriming and Islam while the government pays them dole money, and so in theory they should be able to take to the streets and express their hatred for the enemy du jour at the drop of a hat, making their lack of current protesting suspect...but back here, in reality, things don't work like that.

Because, you know, things like permits and buses and placards and, oh I don't know, telling people to turn up, takes time, and by the time people considered doing that, the war was already over.

Of course, we could ask why Notorious RLJ hasn't bothered organizing a protest either, but he is likely too busy quivering from fear of the outside world, in his gated community in Florida, to comment.

Amy Alkon, the emails: Part 1

I woke up, feeling like something had crawled into my mouth and died sometime during the night. It was no relief to find out it was tongue. Did I say night? Early morning looked more plausible, the light seemed to be coming from all directions, giving me a splitting headache.

Worse, this wasn't even my flat. My heart sunk as I realized I had spent another booze-induced sleep session at the office. Clearing the sleep from my eyes, I managed to sit up straight, feeling the stiffness in my back. I put the lid on the cheap scotch from last night – Glenmorangie – and finished the half empty glass.

It burned as it went down, but I was feeling more alert, more alive. I rocked back on my chair, and looked out the window. Another soulless day, the too bright sun shining off the reflective, all too familiar buildings.

Oh how I hated it here.

I put my feet up on the desk, pulled my fedora over my eyes, and made myself at home with the silence. It was relaxing, and peaceful. In my office with no work to do, no pressing engagements and half a bottle of low quality single malt to get me through the afternoon.

And then she walked in. Rolling off the streets like some primeval force, a whirlwind of passion and destruction.

“I'm sorry”, I said, “I think you have the wrong room. The drag queen's make up class is three doors down.” It was, too. This was a cheap neighbourhood, and you took office space where you could afford it.

“I'm NOT a drag queen! And anyone who says otherwise, or edits my Wikipedia to say so is nothing more than a filthy and childish liar!”

An American. And either in hysterics or denial, possibly both. This wasn't going to end well, I could tell.

“I'm sorry....ma'am” I answered, cautiously. This met with no outburst, so I continued on, “what can I do for you this, uh, fine day?”

“Are you Cain?” she asked.
I looked around discreetly for any recording devices or other listeners. I saw none.
“Yes”, I replied, in a bored, drawn out yawn. “What's it to you?”
“I hear you're a dick. I need someone to be a dick for me.”
I thought about this momentarily. Her jaw looked like it could crack open a man's skull, and there was something disconcerting about that Adam's Apple...
“I assume you mean a Private Detective, of course. Then you have come to the right place. What exactly can I do for you? In a professional capacity, of course.”

She withdrew a sheet from her handbag, and placed it on my desk. Swinging my legs down, I grabbed the paper and had a look. It was a printout, of a Wikipedia edit history page. Some numbers were circled, and highlighted with a marker pen.

“My name is Amy Alkon, Cain”, she said, “and I need you to find a man for me. I need you track down and bring me Gary Ruppert.”

Drug companies are a boon to stockholders, and those who say otherwise are our enemies

Unfortunately, not a very funny entry for this one, since I can find little humour in someone who so obviously overlooks the role of drug companies in enforcing intellectual copyrights so that they may profit off of human suffering.

Stephen Pollard, on the other hand, has no problem with this. And to do so, he uses the single weakest fucking strawman ever. And I am no stranger to weak strawmen, employing several as useful punching bags when I cannot be bothered to read a ridiculous argument from the BNP before mocking it.

But like I keep pointing out, I am not a serious writer getting paid for my work.

Anyway, back on topic. No Stephen, people don't care about pharmaceutical companies making profits, per se. What they care about is when people like Dr. Yusef Hamied are charged for making affordable generics, because most people in the Third World cannot afford the inflated prices of Western drug companies, and then companies like Dr. Hamied's get dragged over the coals because they violated an intellectual copyright.

Profits over lives. People cannot pay the prices of the best drugs, but hey, who gives a fuck about them, they're poor and foreign, right? Almost not really people, in a way, right? And someone does come along, and does give a fuck, and violates a couple of laws in doing so, and he's suddenly a fucking criminal. Yeah, right. Fuck that noise.

Copyright is the elephant in your article, the thing you dare not mention. Because if intellectual copyright in the arena of drugs research and production was reformed, then these companies wouldn't have such a strangehold over the worldwide production, less people would be dying of perfectly curable illnesses, and more people would be profiting. Admittedly, those profits would not be especially high, being spread out as they are over several companies, but they would still exist.

But that might affect share prices, right? And we couldn't ever have that now, could we?

Oh ho, this is precious!

Over at The Home of Paranoid Black Helicopter Spotters, johnofgwent has discovered a horrible truth about the recent Policy Exchange report

ITS SECRETLY A COVER FOR THE ISLAMIC TAKEOVER OF BRITAIN!

Of course, long-time Green Arrow readers will ask "what isn't, according to these lunatics?" And they have a point.

However, are we talking about the Policy Exchange that:

• Wrote the infamous Hijacking of British Islam report?
• That employed the odious Anthony Browne?
• That employs the even more odious Dean Godson?

And so on and so forth. I can really see Policy Exchange wanting to shack up with Islamic militants, no, honestly...And in other breaking news, Johann Hari has joined the Nazi Party.

Of course, I can no doubt expect another lovely dose of BNP link-spamming on this blog entry, because riling up the natives gets them restless and angsty. But then again, if they were not engaging in hilariously wrong-headed conspiracy theories, I would not make fun of them so much.

Maybe.

Probably not actually, but I'd least take them somewhat seriously, instead of treating them like the borderline mentally ill, online entertainment system that they truly are.

Must...not...mock...

Gah! Can't restrain my derision gland any longer! Baron Zemo over at Gates of Vienna is engaging in some world class paranoia today. Apparently a Muslim cemetary in Austria is now a sign that tEh mIgHtY mOoSlIm hOrDe iS tUrNiNg eUrOpE iNtO eUrAbIA or something. But then again, for Baron Zemo so is practically everything, up to and including letting people whose skin looks darker than that of a holiday tan into the continent.

Does it make me a bad person that I consider this sort of thing entertainment, instead of suggesting he seek professional help?

Hitler was a sensitive man too

A picture of Italian Prime Minister,
Silvio Berlusconi, after the comments
were published

The Italian government is apparently upset by the "fascist" label applied to some of its policies by the Catholic Famiglia Cristiana magazine.

To quote a great American blogger, if they're so upset about being labelled fascists, perhaps they should stop acting like them. Maybe they should stop treating the Gypsy population like congenital criminals, and then perhaps people wont go around drawing obvious conclusions.

Come on Berlusconi, man up. What would Mussolini say if he saw his modern day disciples crying? A disgrace to the movement no doubt. The Blackshirts didn't get infamous by emulating the emo crowd, after all.

Tory Party Election Slogans

Because I feel it is my civic duty, as a good citizen-to-be, I have come up with several dozen slogans the Tories can use to secure victory in 2010. Additionally, to keep them down with the kids and their crazy internet lingo, I have added a special 4chan meme-slogan compendium at the end of this list.

• “Tories: We won’t fix things but we’ll give it a shiny coat of paint!”
• “Vote Conservative: Who knows when the next time we’re going to look so appealing will be?”
• “Vote Conservative: After the last 13 years of this shit, your standards really can't afford to be all that high.”
• “Tories: let us play the Good Cop for once.”
• “Unhappy with the status quo? Tough shit. Suck it up and vote Conservative.”
• “The Conservative Party: A Better Class of Sex Scandal.”
• “Vote Tory: It Will Make Polly Toynbee mad.”
• “Tories: We’re not competent either, but at least we might sell you out to someone who is!”
• “Vote Conservative. If you can’t hold your own nose, we’ll deduct the cost of a clothespin from your wages.”
• “Vote Conservative: We promise to keep Iain Dale away from anything important.”
• “Tories: Shit is better than Radioactive Waste.”
• “Vote Tory: I’m serious, like when will the Lib Dems will ever do anything?”
• “Tories: because money-grabbing opportunists are STILL better than well-meaning psychopaths.”
• “Vote Conservative, before we forget how to do corruption properly.”
• “Tories: The Other Rich Elite!”
• “Vote Tory! What Did Having A Conscience Ever Do For You?”
• “Tories: We’re marginally less likely to march the whole country down the slow road to becoming Airstrip One.”
• “Conservative Party: When You Like Freedom, But Don’t Like, Like Freedom.”
• “Tories: Like you have a choice anyway, so just shut up and vote.”
• “Tories: Because you want to believe there’s a difference.”
• “Vote Tory! Like you’d really want Gordon Brown to listen up on your phone calls?”
• “If you’re ready for slightly less of the same, vote Tory.”
• “Tories: With us in power, Labour will be outraged by civil rights violations again!”
• “Vote Tory: You may as well, now that Sarkozy has won in France!”

And now, the 4chan/meme-speak version:

• “A Conservative PM Is Fine, Too.”
• "Vote Conservative: A winnar is you!”
• “Bitches Don't Know Bout Our Amazing Policies.”
• “Vote Conservative, and receive a delicious cake!”
• “Gordon Brown: DO NOT WANT.”
• “Vote for Cameron: he has a shuvel.”
• “Tories: WE'RE A CHARGING OUR LAZORS!”
• “Tories: Political Hate Machine.”
• “Voting Labour? ITS A TRAP!”
• “Gordon Brown? Not this shit again.”
• “i think david cameron is a pretty cool guy. eh isn't gordon brown doesn't afraid of anything.”
• “Vote Tory: We'll even put shoes on our heads if you ask us.”
• “Voting Labour? YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.”
• “Vote Cameron: He'll stick it in your pooper.”
• “Where is your socialist paradise now?”

And last, but most certainly not least:

I gotta start reading The Nation more often

Because if I don't, I'm going to continue to miss out on gems like this.

Corey Robin's piece is a fascinating insight into the intellectual heritage of the American right. However, he also says things that can apply more universally, and those are what really interest me.

For example:

While John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville and David Hume are sometimes cited by the more genteel defenders of conservatism as the movement's leading lights, their writings cannot account for what is truly bizarre about conservatism: a ruling class resting its claim to power upon its sense of victimhood, arguably for the first time in history. Plato's guardians were wise; Aquinas's king was good; Hobbes's sovereign was, well, sovereign. But the best defense of monarchy that Maistre could muster in Considerations on France (1797) was that his aspiring king had attended the "terrible school of misfortune" and suffered in the "hard school of adversity."

Emphasis mine. As always, I'm eager to point out most of our Tories are quite good in that respect, the majority are most emphatically not wingnuts. However, what we might call the socially conservative populists, those shrill writers who infest the comment pages of many online publications do seem to fall into this category, often making such arguments in order to prop up the socio-economic status quo.

This is the driving force behind ridiculous claims like speeding fines being a stealth tax, or that New Labour are persecuting "the middle class white, hetrosexual male" (I always want to add "sexually frustrated" and "virginal" to that list, for some reason). Its a drive to claim victimhood and wield it as a weapon - cynically or subconsciously carried out by what is usually a fairly privileged class of people.

And it is a somewhat powerful weapon - most people have an inherent sense of fair play, and they do not want to pound on the underdog. Incidentally, the converse also illustrates something important for the British wingnut mindset - the idea of immigrants, foreigners and other groups they disagree with getting "benefits". Usually these benefits are laughably small, but nontheless they justify what would otherwise be the reprehensible attacking of less powerful group in society. Its not the wingnut hates immigrants, so the arument goes, oh no. They just want a level playing field.

Suddenly they're not whiney little pricks, they're valiant freedom fighters and activists, don't you know?

Anyway, moving on:

But how do they convince us that we are one of them? By making privilege democratic and democracy aristocratic. Every man, John Adams claimed, longs "to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired." To be praised, one must be seen, and the best way to be seen is to elevate oneself above one's circle. Even the American democrat, Adams reasoned, would rather rule over an inferior than dispossess a superior. His passion is for supremacy, not equality, and so long as he is assured an audience of lessers, he will be content with his lowly status.

And doesn't that hit a few nails on the head? Instead of fighting, say, for greater equality for all, which may result in some of the best off statistical outliers being brought closer in line with the rest of society, but with major benefits, instead the hope is to retain privilege by subordinating oneself to a hierarchical power structure, even though it may not be in one's best interests. One isn't at the top of the hierarchy, but equally one is not at the bottom either. And so it works because the desire to have someone else to kick around, blame and feel superior to is more powerful and addictive than "dispossesing a superior".

Unlike the New Left, however, Goldwater did not reject the affluent society. Instead, he transformed the acquisition of wealth into an act of self-definition through which the "uncommon" man--who could be anybody--distinguished himself from the "undifferentiated mass." To amass wealth was not only to exercise freedom through material means but also a way of lording oneself over others.

This could very well explain the obsession with Glibertarian talking points, such as the aforementioned speed cameras bullshit. The thinking isn't that of "taxation is inherently immoral" that a more usual libertarian or even anarchist may take. Its that taxing me is wrong, because then I cannot use my wealth to lord it over others.

Mannheim also argued that conservatives often champion the group--races or nations--rather than the individual. Races and nations have unique identities, which must, in the name of freedom, be preserved. They are the modern equivalents of feudal estates. They have distinctive, and unequal, characters and functions; they enjoy different, and unequal, privileges. Freedom is the protection of those privileges, which are the outward expression of the group's unique inner genius.

This ties into the previous statement - inequality is bound up in the wingnut concept of freedom. Presumably unaware of the problem of massive inequality being de facto a danger to freedom. In short, positive freedom is entirely ignored - or derided as against freedom, while negative freedom alone is exalted above all (note: I'm not a fan of either being favoured - I believe a balance of the two is necessary for actual freedom). The Feudal analogy is also very interesting, given the Mail article I posted the other day.

And finally, I just wanted to point this out:

Reactionary theologians in eighteenth-century France mobilized against the left by aping its tactics. They funded essay contests, like those in which Rousseau made his name, to reward writers who wrote popular defenses of religion. They ceased producing abstruse disquisitions for one another and instead churned out Catholic agitprop, which they distributed through the very networks that brought enlightenment to the French people.

Tell me that does not sound like the Spectator Coffee House. I defy you to try. I wonder if that is the first recorded case in history of wingnut welfare?

Pot, kettle, geek...

Nyeah, human rights nerds!

You know, it may just be me, but I wouldn't go around calling other people "Trekkies" if I looked like the archtypal basement dwelling virgin.

But then again, I'm not an MP sitting on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, referring to my colleagues.

Douglas Carswell, MP for Cardassia Harwich and Clacton, is upset about all these human rights geeks ruining his street cred, hanging around him when all he wants to do is watch Kirk thwart Khan in the second Star trek film.

Obi Wan Doug seems to hold the rather strange notion that the Human Rights Act is simultaneously a useless piece of legislation that does nothing, yet can mystically free terrorists, rapists and murderers all at the same time. The force of stupidity is strong in this one, clearly.

In fact, its so useless and outdated he wants to get rid of it and replace it with another "authentically British" (whatever that means. Printing the paper the report is published on from UK paper-makers?) Bill of Rights, which will somehow, magically, be super accountable, in addition to raising and reducing the cost of beer to a penny a pint. Because, of course, the last time the Tories suggested that, their ideas weren't ridiculous at all.

But apparently, people "resent" these acts. Yes, we know, and they're usually the sort of people who think that Richard Littlejohn is a serious political commentator, that Quentin Letts is funny and that Melanie Phillips isn't completely batshit insane. They're also the sort of people who think a speed camera fine is a steath tax, that Labour are socialist and that the Muslims are going to take over any day now.

Of course, we could just make judges more accountable to the population, but then that would just be silly. Why do something genuinely democratic when you can call for gutting the Human Rights Act all over again?

Moral of this story: I get cranky being up early in the morning...

Oh shit, I know I shouldn't laugh...

But I did, so there.

Encyclopedia Dramatica's take on the South Ossetian crisis.

In particular, the reference to Dmitry Medvedev as "Putin's altar boy" probably made me wake up the neighbours. Some prescient commentary, hidden among the cursing, memes and general mocking.

ATTN World: I am blogging at 3am

And do you know why I am blogging at 3am?

Because I was ill on the weekend and spent all Saturday sleeping, thus beautifully fucking up my sleeping patterns.

Oh well, at least I can beat everyone else to the morning news. Blah blah Olympics, Georgia, house prices, murdered couple named, Milliband, tourists, Darfur etc etc. There, happy now?