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In fact, its so useless and outdated he wants to get rid of it and replace it with another "authentically British" (whatever that means.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...

Anthrax, ANTHRAX!

It seems at long last the anthrax case in the USA may be coming to an end and the FBI have their man.

Too bad he's dead.

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters -- with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 -- that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax -- sent directly into the heart of the country's elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets -- that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.

If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks.

Ivins added bentonite to the samples of the spores that were used, a chemica that was only used by Iraqi biowarfare specialists. That was how the lie was planted. Unfortunately, the bentonite did not detract from the fact that further analysis showed the spores were grown in Ft Detrick labs.

The letters sent out read:

We have anthrax.

You die now.

Are you afraid?

Death to America.

Death to Israel.

Allah is great.

Implicating Islamic terrorism in addition to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that this was part of the campaign to shore up support for a war in Iraq. The anthrax came from Ft Detrick. Ivins worked at Ft Detrick. Reports leaked to ABC implicating by name Iraq as the source of the anthrax came from Ft Detrick. Link Iraq to Islamic terrorism. Link the anthrax attacks to 9-11. 9-11 = Iraq. Osama bin Laden and Saddam are working together.

The narrative is obvious and bears no real repeating.

The most interesting thing though is that the piggybacking technique of this act of terrorism is an idea that originated on the far-right of the US political spectrum, among the militias dreaming of destroying the Federal Government. There are papers that have been circulated among such groups calling for anonymous follow-up attacks in the case of foreign terrorism against the USA - a grassroots strategy of tension designed to throw society to the far-right while dealing some deadly blows to their establishment enemies (notably centrist and left wing politicians).

I tried doing some looking around on sites that track the far right to see what they had on Ivins, if anything. As it turns out, extremely little. His political affiliations do not seem to be listed, only that he has a very violent temper and apparently came up with a plan to methodically murder all of his co-workers just a month before he offed himself.

However, it is worth noting that, attacks on the media aside (which I suspect were done for publicity), the real attacks on political figures were done on those on the left, Daschle, Leahy and Feingold's office. It is also worth noting that the person who sent fake anthrax letters a few years later - piggybacking off the piggyback terrorism - was none other than Chad Conrad Castagana, a Freeper, Michelle Malkin fan and extreme Christian Nationalist who once said:

Liberals and Lefties everywhere in America's institutions are trying to slowly but increasingly ban Christianity from America, from our site, from our discourse !
They have already succeded in banning any sign of Christianity from ourPublic Schools ! !

If THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST were released today for the first time, it would be slapped with an NC-17 rating !

So there is no conclusive evidence of this being militia orientated....however the links in methodology are disturbing, especially when we consider how this came from within high ranks of the US military (Maj. Gen. John Parker perpetuated the lie that the USA did not have powder anthrax, only liquid) and also apparently served the interests of the government of the time - well before most manouvering on the Iraq war had even begun to take place. Of course, some figures within the US administration, notably the Pentagon neocons, were pushing for an attack on Iraq immediately after 9-11 (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith etc) but that was not public knowledge at the time.

This raises a lot more questions than it solves, it seems.

Time to scalp a wingnut, part 2: Browne in his own words

A follow on from my post earlier today, I've spent far too much time digging around dark and fetid corners of the web, places like The Spectator, collecting some choice quotes from Mr Browne. I'll comment on these later, maybe over the weekend, but for now, I'm going to let them stand on their own, as an archive. So no, no snark for you today.

"A popular topic for discussion on Arabic TV channels is the best strategy for conquering the West. It seems to be agreed that since the West has overwhelming economic, military and scientific power, it could take some time, and a full frontal assault could prove counterproductive. Muslim immigration and conversion are seen as the best path."
Saturday, 24th July 2004, The Spectator

"In Muslim tradition, the world is divided into Dar al-Islam, where Muslims rule, and Dar al-Harb, the 'field of war' where the infidels live. 'The presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule,' wrote Professor Bernard Lewis in his bestseller The Crisis of Islam.' "
Saturday, 24th July 2004, The Spectator

"In the last century some Christians justified the persecution and mass murder of Jews by claiming that Jews wanted to take over the world. But these fascist fantasies were based on deliberate lies, such as the notorious fake book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Now, many in the Muslim world are open about their desire for Islam to conquer the West."
Saturday, 24th July 2004, The Spectator

"At least, though, the Left in the Netherlands has seen that there is a clash between liberal democracy and cultural relativism; that some cultures are simply not compatible with Western traditions of freedom and tolerance; and that the old distinction between evil right-wingers and cuddly left-wingers no longer makes sense. It is one thing to turn a Christian church into a mosque, quite another to get radical Islam to accept liberal democracy. Outside the Netherlands, however, the Left has yet to learn these lessons."
Saturday, 20th November 2004, The Spectator

"Just as communism could only be upheld by totalitarianism, so multiculturalism is being upheld by curbs on free speech and democracy."
Saturday, 20th November 2004, The Spectator

"Is Hackney the future of the world? You may find it a horrifying thought, but many on the Left hope that it is. I don't mean the extortionate taxes, the crushingly bloated public sector, the government-by-political-correctness, the bankrupt school system, the dehumanising crime, the failing social services, and all the other things the Left love so dearly."
Saturday, 19th February 2005, The Spectator

"Even in supposedly Christian Europe, Christianity has become the most mocked religion, its followers treated with public suspicion and derision and sometimes — such as the would-be EU commissioner Rocco Buttiglione — hounded out of political office."
Saturday, 26th March 2005, The Spectator

"I have spoken to dozens of former Muslims who have converted to Christianity in Britain, and who are shunned by their community, subjected to mob violence, forced out of town, threatened with death and even kidnapped. The Barnabas Trust knows of 3,000 such Christians facing persecution in this country, but the police and government do nothing."
Saturday, 26th March 2005, The Spectator

"No, the real answer to why Britain spawned people fuelled with maniacal hate for their country is that Britain hates itself. In hating Britain, these British suicide bombers were as British as a police warning for flying the union flag."
Saturday, 23rd July 2005, The Spectator

"Britain's self-loathing is deep, pervasive and lethally dangerous. We get bombed, and we say it's all our own fault. Schools refuse to teach history that risks making pupils proud, and use it instead as a means of instilling liberal guilt. The government and the BBC gush over 'the other', but recoil at the merest hint of British culture. The only thing we are licensed to be proud of is London's internationalism — in other words, that there is little British left about it."
Saturday, 23rd July 2005, The Spectator

"Only in the last few years has it dawned on the government how dangerous the Left's war on Britishness really is."
Saturday, 23rd July 2005, The Spectator

"Livingstone also has — how shall we put this? — controversial views on relations with Muslim extremists. His notorious embrace of the Qatar-based, anti-Semitic, homophobic, totalitarian, Islamic extremist imam Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been roundly condemned. It wasn't only a naked appeal for the Muslim vote but was also driven by the principle that your enemy's enemy is your friend. Livingstone sees al-Qaradawi as a natural ally because they both hate America."
Wednesday, 28th February 2007, The Spectator

"No, it's lefties we should be furrowing our collective brow about. We shouldn't worry about the threat they pose to society (even though successful countries can survive anything except civil war and socialism)."
Wednesday, 5th September 2007, The Spectator

"The Left was definitely right on basic moral issues, particularly on promoting tolerance — whether it be gay rights, women's rights, or combating racism. But on most other social issues, it was wrong. About the causes of crime, family breakdown, the dangers of welfare dependency, personal responsibility, and the drawbacks of multiculturalism, the Right was right. When Iain Duncan Smith visited a rundown estate and was challenged: 'What are you doing here? This is Labour territory,' he replied: 'Yes, and look around you.'"
Wednesday, 5th September 2007, The Spectator

"Whether it is market forces in public services or multiculturalism, the Left first successfully demonises right-wing policies and then, when its own ideas fail, it adopts them without apology. The Left's great triumph has been to remain credible after adopting policies that it had demonised; the Right's failure has been to win the arguments but lose the debate."
Wednesday, 5th September 2007, The Spectator

"Universities are pretty much monopolised by the Left, and seem to rejoice in their lack of real-world impact. A whole raft of lobby groups from Liberty to Refugee Action to the Child Poverty Action Group get endless free BBC airtime promoting pretty uniformly left-wing viewpoints."
Wednesday, 14th May 2008, The Spectator

"In the US, the flourishing centre-right think tanks have helped push the whole political centre of gravity way to the right of that of the UK. The AEI is (in)famous for promoting the invasion of Iraq, while Heritage has kept social conservatism and the importance of religion high on the policy agenda. Cato has helped mute the siren calls of protectionism.

Those on the right of centre in Britain often complain that the Left has been far better at promoting its ideas, while commentators often complain about the shallow state of debate in Britain. But with such a weakened ideas industry, it's no surprise that our ideas aren't thriving. It would be far healthier for democracy and debate in Britain if our ideas industry managed to step up to the American level."
Wednesday, 14th May 2008, The Spectator

"The London magazine Time Out recently interviewed a Turkish immigrant who said that the English were now the foreigners in Stoke Newington. This, of course, was reported as a cause of celebration: we must celebrate diversity. We have to celebrate it, even though for white British people celebrating diversity basically means saying sorry. We have to celebrate diversity, because otherwise it might rise up and kill us: Northern Ireland, former Yugoslavia, Israel, Rwanda, Gujarat, northern Nigeria have all recently suffered mass deaths as a result of diversity."
Anthony Browne, August 07, 2002, Times Online (cross-posted to VDARE.com)

"Mr Blunkett's warning shows just how dangerous it is to ignore the clear democratic will and impose mass immigration on a people that really don't want it. He in effect admitted that his policies of promoting legal mass Third World immigration while refusing to take action necessary to stem illegal mass Third World immigration are bringing Britain, normally one of the most stable democracies in the world, to the verge of anarchy."
Anthony Browne, January 28, 2003, VDARE.com

"The turning point was the murder of a policeman during a raid on a North African Islamic "asylum seeker." Asylum is the favoured means of illegal immigration to Britain, because once you just say "asylum" you get a whole range of benefits, housing, full health care (including free plastic surgery) and free immigration lawyers who will string your claim out for years, and then when eventually your claim to be escaping persecution is rejected (as happens in 90 per cent of cases) you can just stay in Britain anyway because the government finds it too hard to make anyone leave who doesn't want to."
Anthony Browne, January 28, 2003, VDARE.com

"This political earthquake is rumbling in Britain (the "coming storm" as the left-wing Observer newspaper put it) but it will explode once Islamic terrorist illegal immigrants claim the first life of an innocent civilian–not just a policeman–on British soil. The fear that will rip through the country when that happens will force the government to act, but the tragedy is that it will have set back race relations in Britain decades.

In the battle between the British public and the human rights lobby, it is Britain's five million ethnic minorities, and two million innocent Muslims who will be the real losers."
Anthony Browne, January 28, 2003, VDARE.com

"And although the government broadcaster, the BBC, feels compelled to brainwash the people about the delights of multiculturalism at every opportunity, the national newspaper media is both incredibly powerful and overwhelmingly right wing (there are few left wing papers, and
they are the worst selling)."
Anthony Browne, December 07, 2002, VDARE.com

"Islamic radicals, like Hitler, cultivate support by nurturing grievances against others. Islamists, like Hitler, scapegoat Jews for their problems and want to destroy them. Islamists, like Hitler, decree that the punishment for homosexuality is death. Hitler divided the world into Aryans and subhuman non-Aryans, while Islamists divide the world into Muslims and sub-human infidels. Nazis aimed for their Thousand-Year Reich, while Islamists aim for their eternal Caliphate."
August 1, 2005, Times Online

"The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain's Left."
August 1, 2005, Times Online

"Rather than tackling intolerance, it [Political Correctness] now promotes intolerance, brooking no criticism and denouncing any critics. PC has a vice-like grip on public debate and policy making, setting out what can and can't be debated, and what the terms of the debate are: anything or anyone who digresses from the PC script is automatically controversial."
January 4, 2006, Times Online

"But even Britain's new Muslim ally in the War on Terror, Muammar Gaddafi, recently advised of the dangers of admitting Turkey. He referred to it as "a Trojan horse" and warned the West of rising Islamic radicalism on its streets.Europe is already far from a Christian club — there are 15 million Muslims in the EU, more than the population of most individual member countries. Macedonia and Bosnia both have large Muslim populations, and are all already destined to join the EU along with Islamic Albania. It is not Christian intolerance of Muslims that is driving the "clash of civilisations", but Muslim intolerance of Christians and Jews."
March 26, 2004, Times Online

"The sheikh has used his influential sermons to promote suicide bombing by Palestinians in Israel. Before the Left gets too misty-eyed about suicide bombings, it should remember that it can involve blowing to bits innocent children on buses."
July 6, 2004, Times Online

"Compare and contrast 2:
(a) Christmas trees and decorations are banned in Saudi Arabia;
(b) Christmas trees and decorations are banned in Britain's Jobcentres.

The extremes that other religions go to preserve their cultural
heritage is only matched in Christianity by its extreme death-wish."
December 21, 2004, Times Online

"Now the Christophobes are on the rampage again. The heirs of the Puritans and Communists have declared war on Christmas. But this time it is by stealth and guilt-tripping."
December 21, 2004, Times Online

"Once Christmas has been supplanted by a spiritually vacuous post-Christian orgy of consumption, the next phase of the war is to ban it altogether. Simply turn it, as Birmingham famously did, into a generic "Winterval" to make it equally meaningless to everyone."
December 21, 2004, Times Online

"No, the real Christophobes are the self-loathing, guilt-ridden politically-correct liberal elite, driven by anti-Christian bigotry and a ruthless determination to destroy their own heritage and replace it with "the other"."
December 21, 2004, Times Online

"The liberal Left need to ask themselves what they hope to achieve by giving such uncritical support to Islamic extremism. They may believe, in their naivety, that they are helping to combat Islamophobia, which is indeed a real problem. But instead they are encouraging it."
August 11, 2004, Times Online

"But winning arguments with reason, rather than rabid denunciation, is
difficult. Too difficult, too often, for too much of the Left."
February 13, 2003, Times Online

"One of the most powerful psychological foundations of political correctness is liberal guilt. Many in the West from middle-class backgrounds suffer a usually unspoken guilt about their unearned privilege, which in turn can lead to an under-current of self-loathing in their views. Men often feel guilty about being men, and whites often feel guilty about being white, even though these are innate characteristics they can do little about."
The Retreat of Reason, page 19

"The West's refusal to confront contemporary Islamic slavery is a reflection of the inability of PC thinking to engage a non-PC reality."
The Retreat of Reason, page 25

"The politically correct have a particular problem with crime. Their instinct is to support the criminal rather the [sic] victim of their crime, because criminals tend to be more socially disadvantaged…"
The Retreat of Reason, page 63

"Many of the politically-correct left - including the Guardian, the Independent, most of the BBC… - have chosen to champion those who are deliberately trying to murder innocent civilians."
The Retreat of Reason, page 11

"Many on the left in Britain supported the Ayatollah of Iran's call to murder Salman Rushdie for insulting Islam…"
The Retreat of Reason, page 50

"After a few days, the coverage of the terrorist attack was obliterated by saturation coverage of the accidental police killing…The reason was simply that the terrorist attacks, although a far more important story, didn't fit the politically correct agenda."
The Retreat of Reason, page 10

"The rise of political correctness represents an assault on both
reason and liberal democracy."
The Retreat of Reason, page 5

"A country that has long prided itself on its freedom of speech has been reduced by political correctness to a country where, despite endemic levels of violent crime, police spend time investigating and arresting leading writers and broadcasters for what they write and
say."
The Retreat of Reason, page 51

Time to scalp a wingnut

For those of you haven't been reading Liberal Conspiracy, Sunny has put out a call for information on Anthony Browne.

A week ago the director of the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange, Anthony Browne, joined London Mayor Boris Johnson as his new policy director. He was replacing Nick Boles, also formerly of Policy Exchange, for screwing up over the Ray Lewis incident.

[...]

Browne is the newest recruit and there has been surprisingly no sense of outrage on the left. As the Evening Standard’s Pippa Crerar pointed out last week:

He first came to prominence at The Times when his series of articles on immigration led to him being denounced by then Home Secretary David Blunkett in the Commons for “bordering on fascism”.

Now anyone who can be called a borderline fascist by David Blunkett without the audience immediately breaking into laughter is, in my book, someone to be worried about.

There are already a number of good comments on the article itself, and probably many more being sent by email, but something in particular stands out. Dave Hill points out that back in 2005 Browne was targeted by bloggers for his:

article comparing Islamic fundamentalism to Nazism and his links with a rightwing US website.

[...]

The piece accuses parts of the British left of supporting "Islamic fascism", criticising the Guardian and the BBC for letting the Muslim Association of Britain "promote sanitised versions of its Islamist views".

The article is, of course, a pretty nasty piece of work. However, it is the site that is of interest. The site in question is the US anti-immigration site called VDARE. Now, as people who read me know, I keep a close eye on US politics, and not just in the mainstream. I keep an eye on their lunatics too, especially on the far-right, partially out of an academic interest in extreme right wing populism (ie; proto-fascism) and partially because the US far right has the largest internet presence of any state, and thus to a degree set the trends that other groups around the world follow.

I also have spent more than a few boring hours mocking debating with the wingnuts who tend to believe and quote these people, so I know their nasty, vile stench when I smell it, and believe me, that scent is all over Browne.

Anyway, to get back on point, I know a fair bit more about VDARE than the average British person. VDARE is originally named for Virginia Dare, the first English child born to immigrants in the New World. And that curious choice tells you a lot about where the group's priorities lie.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, who track extremist and hate groups in the USA, VDARE is a hate group who:

[VDARE] has now become a meeting place for many on the radical right.

One essay complains about how the government encourages "the garbage of Africa" to come to the United States. The same writer says once the "Mexican invasion" engulfs the country, "high teenage birthrates, poverty, ignorance and disease will be what remains."

Its not just a one off case either, but a pattern of hatred directed against immigrants and thinly veiled racism. If one continues to read the SPLC article, you can see how the loathesome Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, a well known white supremacist in American circles, is frequently published on the site.

So is Kevin MacDonald, a Californian professor who accuses Jews of:

"dominating" the "movement to change the ethnic balance of the United States by allowing mass, non-traditional [i.e., non-white] immigration."

He writes that Jews, believing "the masses ha[ve] to be deceived," frame their appeals in universalistic language. But behind that are "the Jewish agendas" of the deceivers. MacDonald also mentions "the famously heavy Jewish role" in television news.

Lovely.

The founder and director of VDARE is also of interest. Peter Brimelow belongs to the US paleoconservative right, that is the wing of the Republican party dominated by Nativists like Pat Buchanan, former Nixon speechwriter and one time leader of the radical Constitution Party. Buchanan's political philosophy is predicated on the superiority of Western European culture, religion, family and tradition:

"I will use the bully pulpit of the Presidency of the United States, to the full extent of my power and ability, to defend American traditions and the values of faith, family, and country, from any and all directions. And, together, we will chase the purveyors of sex and violence back beneath the rocks whence they came".

Also

"Who is in your face here? Who started this? Who is on the offensive? Who is pushing the envelope? The answer is obvious. A radical Left aided by a cultural elite that detests Christianity and finds Christian moral tenets reactionary and repressive is hell-bent on pushing its amoral values and imposing its ideology on our nation. The unwisdom of what the Hollywood and the Left are about should be transparent to all"

Buchanan is a reactionary who fully promotes a "culture war" against the left, and also promotes the idea of immigrant invasion and takeover of American society:

"In the next 50 years, the Third World will grow by the equivalent of 30 to 40 new Mexicos. If you go to the end of the century, the white and European population is down to about three percent. This is what I call the death of the West. I see the nations dying when the populations die. I see the civilization dying. It is under attack in our own countries, from our own people."

This is the sort of "intellectual" background that Peter Brimelow has come from. So it is hardly a surprise when he describes:

...the role of race as "elemental, absolute, fundamental." He said that white Americans should demand that U.S. immigration quotas be changed to allow in mostly whites. He argued that spending tax dollars on anything related to multiculturalism was "subversive." He called foreign immigrants "weird aliens with dubious habits."

He worried repeatedly that his son, with his "blue eyes" and "blond hair," would grow up in an America in which whites had lost the majority.

Sound dubious to you? Me too. And it turns out that Mr Anthony Browne has no problem writing for a website rooted in, and promoting such views. David Neiwert, the American freelance journalist who runs the blog Orcinus, has more to say on VDARE:

Groups like FAIR, VDare, and American English like to pose as mainstream organizations offering "thoughtful" proposals for reforming U.S. immigration policy, but in reality their core -- ideologically, financially and programmatically -- is the same bigoted, racist Nativism that has plagued the nation since the time of the Know-Nothings. They are, in essence, all about putting pearls on a pig.

Neiwert also quotes another SPLC report which shows that another frequent contributor to VDARE is Edward Rubenstein, who works for the far right National Policy Institute:

The institute has published two studies: a critique of affirmative action, which the institute opposes; and "Mass Deportation is a Viable Solution to America's Illegal Immigration Crisis," written by Edwin Rubenstein. (Rubenstein, a frequent contributor to the V-Dare hate site, is president of ESR Research Economic Consultants of Indianapolis and has served as research director for the conservative Hudson Institute, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, an economics editor at the National Review, and a contributing editor at Forbes magazine.)

Browne, in short, keeps some very suspect company, and since he writes for a website known to promote nativist, anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, we should question very carefully both his judgements and his policy recommendations. Not least in light of his promotion by the poster-child for thinly veiled fascism, Richard Barnbrooke.

I'm going to dig up more on Brown himself over the weekend, if I have the time. However, for the moment, at least one of his associations seems highly worrying, in light of his own political views, which are of course viciously anti-immigrant.

"Statistics is for sissies!"

There are times I really hope knife crime is as out of control and as common as certain tabloids are making it out to be. Because then pricks like Keith Waterhouse might get stabbed in the hand and be unable to write such incredible bollocks.*

We are among sceptics

he says as he goes on to give another pronoucement amount knife crime. Now, remind me again, is scepticism that thing where you've already made up your mind about something and fix the evidence around the policy? No? My mistake then, carry on.

There are lies, damned lies, statistics, figures in a plain brown envelope slipped to Pollyanna Toynbee in an alley round the back of the Home Office, graphs and tables from the British Crime Survey and estimates from the National Guesswork Authority.

What a delightful looking strawman you have there, Mr Waterhouse. May I enquire as to its precise purpose?

Stripped of all its flim-flam, the British Crime Survey is about as informative - for one thing, no one under the age of 16 allowed to give evidence, so that loses a whole stratum of new-type knife victims - as a questionnaire on your favourite shampoo.

Oh? And do you have any figures to support this?

The plain fact is that nobody believes a blind word the Government, or its minders and manipulators, say any more. Truth is not a commodity in which they wish to have further dealings.

I'll take that as a "no" then. What then do you base your assessment on?

A few nights ago, as an 18-year-old stab victim lay in a pool of blood awaiting his statistical turn to become the 21st teenager to die violently in the streets of London this year, we learned that crime statistics are dropping dramatically.

Oh, emotional appeal. Interesting, and obviously tragic for the poor lad. However, it doesn't actually disprove the government's figures. Would you like to try something else?

Addresses of interviewees, we're told, are drawn at random from post office lists.

Which means that if you live in a crime-free area, you're going to give crime-free replies.

Well, yes, that's kind of how it works. You know, if there is no crime around, then of course it won't get reported. As opposed to the Daily Mail's wonderful method of statistical analysis, where they used police reports of knife crime to claim that there had been a 35% rise in some parts of the country - which is true - but also failed to report that these were in fact in the minority as crime had dropped in most of the country. Could you please comment on this discrepancy?

And meanwhile the altogether different police figures, based on whatever they have managed to dig out of their hectares of paperwork, are - how shall I put this? - altogether different.

Yes, you could say that. They show that while 4 police forces have seen a huge rise in knife related crime, 18 have seen a drop. All in all, in 20 forces in the country, knife crime has either stayed level or gotten better, whereas in 14 forces in total, it has gotten worse. Now, which of these numbers is larger 14, or 20, 14, or 20? Take your time.

If I was told by some government agency that tomorrow was Tuesday, I should check it against the calendar. Then I would shake the calendar to make sure it was still working.

Well yes. That's because you're a moron, as the above post so clearly illustrates. For those interested in a more thorough debunking of the knife crime panic, Five Chinese Crackers has the relevant material. Surprisingly, David Aaronovitch also has a good article.


*I don't really wish he'd get stabbed in the hand. Mainly because I know he'd dictate his article to someone else, and would probably never shut up about how he was the victim of a "horrifying knife crime!!212!" What about me, having to read this and be the victim of a horrifying logic crime? Never thinking of the little man, these bloody journalists....

Daily Express headlines - in the style of haiku

End of the road for speed cameras?

Fining people for
breaking the law is bad
when it affects me


Convicts hug a tree to go free

This headline is
factually incorrect
but never mind right?


'Sex on beach' Briton sorry

What a slut, I
am now in favour of Dubai's
awful Shariah law


Tories attack 'U-turn' over victims

Cameron to Brown:
Damned if you do and
damned even if you don't.


Top knife crime officer: teenagers must do national service

Violent teens? Put them
in the Army. Its the stock
answer to all ills.


95% of Express readers say 'quit EU'

Stand in awe as we
show you the art of stating
the bleeding obvious


OK, that's enough haiku for today.

David Icke is running as an MP

True story.

Icke's own webpage says:

I want to make it clear one more time because a few people have still got the wrong impression. I have not put my name forward in the upcoming by-election because I want to win and nor do I have any chance of winning. I will get a few votes at most in the time we have. Personally I am not in the least bothered if I get zero.

It is not about that. It is about taking an opportunity in a by-election called by the sitting MP on the subject of 'Big Brother' to make the point that this is far, far bigger than even he realises and unless we see the BIG picture of what is going on nothing effective can be done to stop it.

We can sit on our bums and moan, or we can do what we don't want to do (as with me in this case) to communicate what people need to know as effectively as we can.

best wishes,

David

I for one welcome our reptilian overlords.

Having moved back home...

Now my degree is more or less over and done with (roll on Graduation Day) my blogging has slowed considerably. Not least since my connection is much slower, but also because I am doing much more reading and catching up on other projects for the moment.

Still, nonetheless, I am around and still noting the events of the world. For example, hearing yesterday morning that Gordon Brown intends to go ahead with the 42 Day Detention scheme, claiming he has come to an agreement with certain Labour dissenters by putting more legislative safeguards into the proposal.

I think he is bluffing however. There is deep scepticism to this plan across the political spectrum, and absolutely no proven pressing need at all. I'm sure some Labour MPs have been assured by this, but I very much doubt many of the rebels have. Which makes the situation rather more uncertain. I suspect Brown is pushing ahead because he knows if he loses....well, it can hardly get much worse than it already is for him, and in the unlikely event his proposals do win over enough votes to pass the legislation, he can try and use this to put the government back on the intitative and claim to be "tough on terrorism" (but of course not tough on the causes of terrorism).

Apart from that, I haven't much to say. Oh, except for when driving though Bradford upon Avon last week, I stopped to put up several signs saying "NOT the birthplace of William Shakespeare" and "please stop asking us about Shakespeare, that's Stratford upon Avon." Needless to say, I have never heard of anyone ever confusing the two, not least because they are on totally different rivers in seperate parts of the country. Still, someone likely will now, which is all part of the fun.

I'm currently reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer as well. If you want some background information on the Fundamentalist Mormon Church and their very strange ways, I highly recommend picking up a copy.

I always find BNP wingnuts loltastic

It's a bad habit really. Whenever I am bored, or need a laugh, I start surfing around the BNP supporting blogosphere, to find something out of touch with reality, nutty, or just plain hilarious to laugh at.

And it works every time. My faith in the batshit insanity of certain sectors of the British public is restored, I realize I'm actually a fairly good writer when I want to be (current postings are evidence to the contrary, I admit, but I have been busy with finals) and I get a laugh in with the deal.

It's a bad past time, really. Habit forming, almost. But now and again I hit the jackpot, like with Sarah Maid of Albion. Talking of course about my favourite subject....terrorism. In particular, the case of Nicky Reilly, the allegedly failed suicide bomber (I say allegedly for the legal reasons, of course). And its a slow Saturday night, and I have nothing planned, so why not?

Ever since the identity of the man accused of attempting to set off a bomb in an Exeter restaurant was revealed, certain sections of the press have been announcing breathlessly that the suspect, Nicky Reilly, is a white convert to Islam.

Certain sections of the press? Come on, name names! If you've got the goods, don't play coy. As it happens, I did a search on this and found out which media outlets she meant: the BBC, Guardian, Independent and Mirror.

Oh dear gosh, its lining up to be a fiendish left wing conspiracy already. Only, not really. Going by the BBC report, they were reporting a description of Reilly given by the police, which was repeated in the Independent. The Guardian bought up his race in the terms of wider counter-terrorism issues (like Al-Qaeda recruiting white converts to Islam in order to avoid racial profiling measures) and the Mirror didn't even mention it themselves - instead publishing a quote by a member of the public saying he standed out at meetings with a suspicious group of people on a street corner due to his colour.

I hardly think this counts as announcing breathlessly - especially since almost all comments on his race or appearance are well down the pages on all the media outlets that I found reporting it.

The media always get overexcited when they can pretend that white Europeans are as likely to be terrorists as Asians, even if they have to bend the truth into impossible contortions to do so.

So presumably Baader-Meinhof, the Provisional IRA, ETA, Nivelles gang, OAS, Action Directe, National Front for the Liberation of Corsica, The June 2nd Movement, November 17th, Antikratiki Dikaiosini, Hawks of Thrace, Revolutionary Struggle, October 22 Group, the Red Brigades, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, Aginter Press, the (admittedly laughable) Canary Islands Independence Movement, the Ordine Nuovo (founded by the odious Stefano Delle Chiaie), Meibion Glyndŵ, the Irish National Liberation Army, Loyalist Volunteer Force, Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Volunteer Force, White Aryan Resistance, Continuity IRA and many other groups I can't be bothered to name had or have no white members whatsoever. You know, despite many of them being neo-fascist in orientation, or else ethno-nationalist and thus "real" Europeans.

And if we include ethnically European Americans into the mix...well, where to start? We could go all the way back to the Klan, or right up to the modern day 'Patriot Movement' members, who intermingle with militia organizations such as the Montana Freemen, but who also had links to individuals like Timothy McVeigh, Army of God, Aryan Nations, The Order and other fun loving neo-fascist/Christian groups, many of whom have very clear ideas on what race it is best to be.

But that was unfair of me, using history like that against you. On the other hand, we could always be thankful I didn't decide to start digging into the Russian anarchist terrorists...that stuff goes on forever. We still count Russians as white Europeans, don't we? Don't we? But yes, terribly unfair using history like that, it's a shame we don't have some examples of more modern terrorism carried out by 'white Europeans'.

Readers may recall how hard they tried to present Andrew Ibrahim, the young terror suspect arrested in Bristol in April as “white”, even after it was revealed that his father wa an Asian doctor called Nassif.

I hate to break this to you, but he look's white. I'll link to a picture, and feel free to dispute it, I know you will anyway, but he doesn't really look very foreign, does he? Or is this one of those things where he'd have to be one-sixteenth "Muslim foreigner" to fifteen-sixteenth's "white European" to count?

Whatever the truth may be in this instance, I don't really know why the press get so excited on the rare occasion that a white convert gets involved in attempted atrocities, it proves nothing other than that radical Islam is a dangerously infectious condition.

Well, apart from the fact no-one was getting excited over the fact that he was a white convert, GREAT POINT! The Guardian mentioned MI5 were considering if this was a change in tactics and recruiting by Al-Qaeda, which some might consider to be a legitimate concern. You know, if you want to catch terrorists and all that. I think you'll find more people were worried that someone attempted to partake in a suicide bomb attack, full stop, to note his colour and go "OH MY GOD, AND HE WAS WHITE TOO!" Just because BNP members have this funny fascination with race does not mean everyone else does. Stop projecting.

Dengue fever does not cease to be a tropical disease if an Englishman catches it, and and neither does the fact that a few vulnerable or weak minded individuals have been seduced into embracing its deadly doctrine make Islam a European faith.

Uh-huh. So what makes, for example, Christianity 'European'? Or Judaism (feel free to ask Nick Griffin if Jews are a European faith or not) for that matter. Or indeed anything that is not laughable NeoPagan Reconstructionism. Are they 'European' by virtue of ethnicity of genesis, geographical location, or practice? Because Jesus sure as hell wasn't white, or located in Europe (depending on whether one considers the Levant Europe, of course. I do, but many do not). Can we expect to see the BNP picketing Christmas celebrations soon? They too, have spread like a virus, after all.

The few small Muslim enclaves in the Balkans and Chechnya are the residue left from earlier attempts by Islam to colonise Europe, not to any European tradition.

Oh? And what European traditions are these? When I last checked, Islamic and Christian thought were both heavily based on Greek Classical thinking - especially the works of Plato and Aristotle, though a few Roman's slipped the barrier too. Given the Greco-Roman culture is the bedrock of modern Western civilization, I would find the exclusion of Islam...intellectually dishonest, shall we say? And of course, St Thomas Aquinas and (arguably) René Descartes owe an influence to Islamic philosophers such as Al-Ghazali. There was a lot of intellectual traffic flowing along Asia Minor back then, let me tell you.

Or this the European tradition of being a white European? I just want to cover all my bases here, you understand.

Islam is an alien philosophy, with its origins in a set of beliefs so different to those at the root of our own culture that most can either not comprehend it or refuse to acknowledge it.

OK, I'll take that as an "I'm an idiot with little or no knowledge of the history of philosophy".

There is no European tradition within Islam, it is a force from outside, which we have let in and the fact that it has captured or beguiled some of our children does not make it native to our land.

It's kinda like the Mysterons, when you think about it...those strange, alien, outside forces....

Like all infectious conditions, some will fall victim to it, as Nicky Reilly appears to have done, but all that tells us is that we need to take preventative measures before more succumb.

Unfortunately, the spread of idiocy will go on unchecked...

Making a killing on world hunger?

Truthout has more on how certain multinationals are getting record profits, despite the start of a worldwide food shortage.

Link via Manuscripts Don't Burn.

More on the Crewe by-election

As is hard to miss, I was pretty pissed off by the Labour party Crewe by-election leaflet, more or less pandering to the xenophobic masses afraid of immigrants coming over here to steal their jobs and wimminz.

Fortunately, it seems like the Guardian has caught up on this story too (which was abley covered by the more Tory-friendly press and blogs, it has to be said) and John Harris has an article up on Comment is Free, where he puts this into the context of a government desperate to remain in power by appealing to "chauvinistic and backward-looking parts of British society" to quote Charles Clarke (who is still an authoritarian thug, in my opinion, but at least gains a smidgeon of respectability with this statement).

Harris pulls few punches showing the increasing role of nationalist rhetoric now the Brown government is up against the wall:

the essential Labour strategy is clear enough: not to concentrate on anything progressive or inspiring but to run instead on a mixture of the Dunwoody bloodline, utterly witless class warfare, and the politics of fear. One wonders what the more shrill aspects of the party's campaign will do for Crewe's community relations - but there again, it's doubtful that such thoughts are troubling many Labour high-ups. Misanthropic nastiness, after all, seems to be a central plank of the government's fightback.

This stuff has a pedigree dating back well into the Blair years but seems to be turning ever more ugly. Among the first announcements in the wake of May 1 was a loud Home Office pledge to try to realise Brown's drive for "British jobs for British workers", by forcing employers to prove no Briton can fill a vacancy before offering it to anyone from outside the EU. Soon after, there came Jacqui Smith's bizarre plans to "harass" badly behaved youths using video cameras and a technique hyped as "frame and shame". Going back a few months, one thinks also of James Purnell's proposed clampdown on the long-term jobless, Caroline Flint's priceless proposal that the workshy should be threatened with homelessness, and the government's increasingly baffling drive on "Britishness", in which fine words about inclusion are often overshadowed by the sense of dog-whistles being desperately sounded.

...

While seizing on fears about immigration, Brown has still made no headway on the issue of agency workers, which underlies so many modern tensions. At the same time as maligning many of the nation's youth as yobs, Labour also wrings its hands about their "unlocked talent". Apparatchiks are encouraged to wage class war for the cameras, but the government refuses to talk about compelling the ultra-wealthy to pay their way, or to make any move on, say, the totemic issue of charitable status for private schools. The impression is of politics at its most dried-up and disingenuous. The result: activists and once-loyal supporters decide to leave the party well alone, and floating voters decide that Cameroonian confidence and optimism is much the better option.

...As Labour lays waste to what remains of its progressive credentials, one thinks immediately of that handful of young(ish) Brownites - Ed Miliband, Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper - who usually go out of their way to talk up the party's supposed soul, and the parts of the government's record that reflect it. Where are they, and why won't they speak up?

Even if what they had to say was couched in the obligatory political code, we'd know it when we heard it. Behind the scenes, they must surely alert Brown to a simple choice: cut this stuff out and rediscover that moral compass - or bequeath them a political husk so robbed of its essential identity that it will take at least a generation to even begin to revive it. David Cameron's recent pronouncements are not nearly as surreal as they sound: right now, the Tories really are sounding more progressive than Labour, and that way lies not just electoral defeat, but the prospect of complete wipe-out.

As Labour's popularity continues to go the way of the sub-prime loan industry, I can only see this sort of shrill and nasty rhetoric increasing.

Another reason, as if one was needed, to hate Labour

Oh no, not those vicious foreign nationals.

Fuck you Labour, fuck you in the ass. If you didn't know, this is what Labour were trying to use in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Yeah, trying to appeal to the xenophobic blockhead vote.

As I'm sure some of you are aware, while I reside in the UK I am not a UK citizen. Yeah, I'm a dirty immigrant, draining your economy and stealing jobs (lolwut?), when I'm not planning to establish a Caliphate, driving drunk and eating swans. And I'm pretty sick and tired of being treated like some scum who should be grateful to this government which has decided, in its infinite wisdom, to let me reside here (especially since I was here just after the fall of the Thatcher government).

And I can safely say that the first person who attempts to enforce me having an ID card on my person will very quickly find out how painful a biometric ID card is, when shoved where the sun doesn't shine, with alarming swiftness.

This is the sort of xenophobic, Daily Mail-esque triangulation bullshit that makes me want to puke every time I see another Parliamentary initiative unveiled, and pretty much guarantees I will only vote Labour again in the most dire of circumstances. Assuming I even bother to hang around long enough to have the chance to vote again, which is looking increasingly unlikely. There seems to be a foul smell in the body politic, and I for one have no intention of seeing it play itself out.

Roll right!

So, it looks like the Götterdämmerung of Labour will soon be upon us.

With a startling victory in local council elections (where the Tories trounced Labour by 20% and broke their hold on several previous safe councils) and the election of Boris Johnson as the Mayor of London, I think it is safe to say that Labour's days are numbered, as I had suggested back in December. Hardly a feat of precognition, I know, but it still feels nice to be vindicated.

I know I have made it extensively clear that I am no fan of Labour, under Brown or Blair. But this is almost a phyrric victory for the UK electorate in many ways. Because, despite the Conservative rhetoric coming from the media, of a libertarian and (hilariously) even progressive bent, they are still the Neo-Thatcherite party who will gut public services and programs, and promote the wellbeing of the rich and business inclined over everyone else.

And that's the problem.

Many right-wing inclined publications have lately taken this pseudo-libertarian tack to complain about the very real authoritarian nature of New Labour. But lets be honest, they have to be insane to think the Tories will be any better. Oh, sure, maybe in the first year or two, while they are riding high on popular support in the press and electorate generally. But then they'll realize they have a mandate and it will all go downhill from there.

And I'd bet everything in my bank account (ie; my mountain of debt) that the Daily Mail/Express/Sun reading the public, the ones who leave comments on stories bewailing Labour's autocratic tendencies on nearly every story, will be the same ones cheering on illiberal policies passed by a Tory government - especially if they were aimed at immigrants, Muslims or criminals. Every intelligent person know's they don't give a shit about freedom - they care about their own hides and are more than willing to cheer on a police state so long as they think the government is on their side and will only use it against other people.

Tribal politics, in other words.

I have no doubt that David Cameron will be the next Prime Minister. And I have no doubt when that happens, certain yahoos and morons will treat this as their moment in the sun, and proceed to swing a wrecking ball through what remains of freedom in this country.

On the other hand, at least I wont have any minor twinges of guilt about doing everything in my power to fuck up such a government.

Breaking: Albert Hofmann, discoverer of LSD, allegedly dead

Hot off the presses...if its true...

More as I get it.


Edit 1

As of yet, no official confirmation. However, those who spoke with him in the last few months said he was not in good health at all.


Edit 2

Still no confirmation...however the rumour has spread fast. The Wikipedia entry has had to be reverted several times since there is nothing more than rumour at the moment...the story has also spread to sites like Deathlist, Shroomery and God Like Productions (where, humourously, someone tried to use Wikipedia as proof of his still uncomfirmed death).


Edit 3

Boing Boing has also reported this....though as of yet, still no confirmation. Speculation on Livejournal too, though still nothing positive.


Edit 4

Echoes and Mirrors is alleging this is a hoax. While no new evidence is put forward, the lack of evidence, and the time lapse since the initial claim is making this look more and more likely.


Edit 5

On the other hand...apparently he IS dead. According to Seattle's Stranger:

There’s uncertainty on teh nets whether Hoffman’s passing is just a rumor. However, a call to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies confirms he died last night in his home in Basel, Switzerland.

Also, according to his Wikipedia article:

Rick Doblin of MAPS has claimed that Hofmann died at 9am from a heart attack.

But according to a Wikipedia editor I spoke to just recently, Rick Doblin was unaware of this only a couple of hours ago, and the comment is not sourced. So we have at least one source now...but I'd like another independent source to confirm. Just to make sure.


Edit 6

I Love Bonnie.net has another piece confirming Hofmann's death. The email from Rick Doblin can be found here.

“Albert died at home at 9 AM Basel time from a myocardial infarction, quick and relatively painless. Two caretakers were there with him at the time. The only people who were told were people from Burg, the village where he lived, and Peter and others were surprised the word of his death had gotten out so quickly. It’s the age of the internet…

Albert had been increasingly thinking of death these last few months. He had stopped leaving his home, where he said he could feel the spirit of Anita, his wife who died December 20, 2007. He didn’t come to the World Psychedelic Forum a month ago, but did entertain some visitors at his home. We spoke on the phone the day after the Basel conference and he was happy and fulfilled. He’d seen the renewal of LSD psychotherapy research with his own eyes, as had Anita. I said that I looked forward to discussing the results of the study with him in about a year and a half and he laughed and said he’d try to help the research however he could, either from this side or “the other side”.”

So I believe thats it. Goodbye, Dr Hofmann.

The best single statement on the Olympics business

And sadly, I am fully aware of the irony of that sign. I can only hope it is satire....

The most interesting thing...

About the current terrorism trial going on in the UK is the complete lack of concentration on the actual level of threat. Every newscast I have seen has been concentrating on the videos the guys made, presumably for the sake of drama.

What has been overlooked is could the guys have actually said what the government claimed they could do, which is create explosives from liquid to down a plane? I've seen a number of things to cast doubt on this.

Firstly, I had a number of conversations with various terrorism experts up at St Andrews who expressed a level of doubt over what was intended by the operation itself. Some, such as Dr John Horgan, suggested it was perhaps intended to embarass the security services, show the futility of their extra security. Previously, that would have almost certainly involved actually killing people, but in today's hyper-sensitive media climate, even the attempt alone can cause mass hysteria.

Secondly, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer has also cast doubt on the official narrative of events.

"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

And finally, there is this discussion on Schneier on Security which seems to be backing up the claim of Lt. Col. Wylde, and treating the official version of events with some skepticism.

It's like trying to blow up a plane with your elementary-school science project volcano.

Of course, the plot did ultimately succeed....it triggered a hilariously out of proportion government response and scared a bunch of sheep....uh, I mean, Daily Mail and Sun readers. That's all you really need to do now.

The sovok

You know things are bad when Soviet-era language can easily be applied to your own country's situation. I think this goes equally for the UK and America, as well as maybe for Australia, to a lesser extent.

Matt Tiabi from here on in:

In Russia they have a word, sovok, which described the craven, chickenshit mindset that over the course of decades became hard-wired into the increasingly silly brains of Soviet subjects. It's a hard word to define, but once you get it -- and all Russians get it -- it's like riding a bicycle, you've got it. Sovok is the word that described a society where for decades silence and a thoughtful demeanor might be construed as evidence of a dangerous dissidence lurking underneath; the sovok therefore protected himself from suspicion by babbling meaningless nonsense at all times, so that no one would accuse him of harboring smart ideas.

A sovok talked tough, and cheered Khruschev for banging a shoe at America, but at the same time a sovok would have sold his own children for a pair of American jeans. The sovok talked like a romantic and lavished women with compliments, but preferred long fishing trips and nights spent in the garage tinkering with his shitty car to actual sex. It's hard to explain, but over there, they know what the word means. More than anything, sovok described a society that spent seventy years in mortal terror of new ideas, and tended to drape itself in a paper-thin patriotism whenever it felt threatened, and worshipped mediocrities as a matter of course, elevating to positions of responsibility only those who showed an utter absence not only of objectionable qualities, but any qualities at all.

We're getting to be the same kind of people. We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense -- while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we... shit, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

I'm just tired of this tone that's always out there when these scandals break, like we can't fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer! -- when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we'll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously. God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem.

While everyone is concentrating on Obama's "crazy" pastor

I decided to do some digging into another candidate's odd religious links. I'm sorry, but hysteria bores me unless it is very funny, and all the Rev. Wright drama is showing is how out of touch white America is with black America, and how some conspiracy theories are pefectly acceptable for the media to believe in and accept, but others are not.

I think McCain's religious links are fairly well known, if contested in what they signify, so instead I decided to look into Hillary Clinton who, aside from her Bosnia sniper lies has kept a relatively low fuck-up profile of late.

And that's why I find so much of this interesting, because while it is being reported on the fringe news sites, it doesn't seem to have translated over into a general media concern. Not yet, at least.

I am talking, if you hadn't already guessed, of The Family, the strange religious group to which Hillary Clinton belongs. Very strange, given almost all of their members are part of the religious right, especially on Capitol Hill, where the sort of people who tend to belong to the Family (or Fellowship, they like to play fast and loose with names) include people like Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, most famously known in the UK for denying evolution during one of the Republican Presidential nominee debates.

So yeah, we're not exactly talking Methodists here.

But there is much more to the Family than a prayer group for Christians in DC. Much, much more. As Mother Jones goes on to explain, The Family is built along:

sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Starting to feel a little worried?

You should be, because The Family not only says it wants to do these things, like so many groups of religious nutters, but it apparently has the means as well. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and in 2001 it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. But its power is not simply limited to waging peace. It also helped the US government forge relationships with Africa's brutal postcolonial dictators in the 60s, not to mention Brazil and Indonesia's anti-Communist military dictatorships.

As you've probably realized, at least during the Cold War, the aim would seem to be in building an anti-Communist coalition among the Third World, no matter the cost in money or lives. Suharto killed hundreds of thousands of supposed Communists, and I couldn't even begin to try and fathom how many were lost in Africa.

So...Christian and dedicated to anti-Communism, but with a decidedly Realist streak of cynicism when it comes to power politics. A question for the political science students: who does this sound like? If you said Reinhold Niebuhr, then give yourself a cookie. Niebuhr is considered among the pre-eminent early Realists. And just so happens that he is a favourite of one-time Goldwater gal Hillary Clinton, who learnt of his teachings under the leadership of Reverend Don Jones, shortly before she joined the Republican party.

I do this to illustrate that despite Clinton's apparent apathy towards religion except as a tool of power, there are links between her early life and the thinking of the Family, and that this should not just be dismissed by appeals to "triangulation" or cynical politicking.

You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking the Family is entirely part of the Religious Right either. They probably hate secular Democrats as much as any on the Religious Right do, but if someone is a Democrat and a Christian, they are more than willing to embrace them. Because their mission is a higher calling, they are here to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

One of the more well known members on Capitol Hill is David Coe. Here is a quote of a talk he was giving to, what he thought, was just a cell of Family members, but also included an undercover Harpers reporter:

You guys know about Genghis Khan?” he asked. “Genghis was a man with a vision. He conquered”—David stood on the couch under the map, tracing, with his hand, half the northern hemisphere—“nearly everything. He devastated nearly everything. His enemies? He beheaded them.” David swiped a finger across his throat. “Dop, dop, dop, dop.”

David explained that when Genghis entered a defeated city he would call in the local headman and have him stuffed into a crate. Over the crate would be spread a tablecloth, and on the tablecloth would be spread a wonderful meal. “And then, while the man suffocated, Genghis ate, and he didn't even hear the man's screams.” David still stood on the couch, a finger in the air. “Do you know what that means?” He was thinking of Christ's parable of the wineskins. “You can't pour new into old,” David said, returning to his chair. “We elect our leaders. Jesus elects his.”

Exactly. Chew on the implications of that for a while.

Dick Cheney doesn't give a fuck about your whining

American war protestors: kick yourselves in the balls for thinking you could have any effect on the thugs in the White House. This clip tells you everything you need to know about Cheney.




The clip you want is from 3:17 in. For those of you who missed it:

Interviewer: Two-thirds of Americans say it [the Iraq war] is not worth fighting.

Cheney: so?

Japan first country to ban filesharing

Japan has decided to beat France and the United Kingdom (both who have similar proposals) to become the first country to ban file sharers from the internet.

Oddly the agreement to do so has not come from the Japanese Government, but from Japan’s four internet service provider organizations after pressure (not surprisingly) from the record and movie industries. According to Torrent Freak, the agreement would see copyright holders tracking down file-sharers on the Internet using “special detection software” and then notifying ISPs of alleged infringers. File sharers will initially receive a warning for a first offense, then be disconnected for subsequent offenses, eventually be disconnected from the internet permanently (it wasn’t clear whether the agreement is a three strikes proposal).

The process will formally commence in April and will primarily target users of Winny, the most popular file sharing network in Japan.

(via Techcrunch)

Needless to say, I'm not impressed, and I very much doubt this "special detection software" can tell the difference between a legitimately downloaded file from a P2P network, and an illegal one. Consider for example the latest NIN's album, available for free download. Not to mention it puts copyright holders in charge of investigating infringements. I can't see that going wrong at all, oh no....

On a related topic, Matt Mason, the author of The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism has an interiew which you can download here (mp3).