After Fallujah

There's an excellent account of the Battle of Al-Fajr in Fallujah over at Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal. It's important to look at the realities of that battle as it has become a rallying cry for those who would support the extremists over America and her allies.

Bubbles & Bastards

I regularly read The Underwire over at Wired.com and it's recently brought up two very good - and very pertinent - little videos. Firstly, here's a little ditty by The Richter Scales about the Web 2.0 bubble:

And here's Harlan Ellison talking about Hollywood's attitude to the writers; it makes a much better case for the WGA's strike than Tina Fey's sanctimonious bitching about Desperate Housewives stalling ever could.

Fascists, fakers & funds

Oliver Kamm has a good little roundup post over at his blog; in it he makes a fine summation of what will be Gordon Brown's negligible legacy and outlines exactly how I feel about the Oxford Union furore.

The only addition I'd make to what he says is to express how much I disagree with some of the more militant attitudes I've seen displayed in the blogosphere on the issue. The Drink-soaked Trots have been typically bellicose and therefore make an excellent illustration: they call for those making racist remarks to be met with "a fist, boot, or bottle." At some point, when I have more time and I don't feel like death, I'd like to write what I think about the idea of 'hate crime', but in short our right to freedom of speech should extend to and include even the most repulsive of our personal convictions. As Kamm describes, "Griffin is a demagogue and Irving is a racist faker; but the offence you and I are caused by their views is entirely irrelevant to civic affairs."

We shouldn't meet any opinion with violence because - despite what the Trots say - there is a qualitative difference between calling someone a "nigger/paki/yid/poofter" and genocide; a person's right to express a personal belief - and as Kamm points out, their right to hold one - does not extend to a right to act on it, and definitely doesn't provide a tacit mandate for murder. The crimes that fascists would have done to people based on attributes given them by virtue of birth are already covered by ample laws; we cannot attempt to silence our opponents by force with the possibility that we are averting mass homicide as a fig-leaf to salve our moral conscience.

P.S. Nick Robinson and Kamm's description of Labour's current, self-inflicted, donation scandal as "gob smacking" couldn't be more apt.

B&W's Zeppelin iPod Speaker Dock

These are ever so slightly cool. They should cost somewhere just shy of £300 when they're on sale in the UK. The slight premium over the new Bose Sounddock I think is a price worth paying to have one of these flash fuckers in your bedroom.

That'll distract from all the bloody rags and used needles...

Gordon Brown: A silence for the underappreciated, the underfunded and the unarmoured...

Of all Gordon Brown's attempts to change his public image (if not his policies), none have angered me more than this. That Brown - in another vain attempt to paint himself as the statesman he'll never be - has the nerve to pose as the champion of the fighting man is beyond contempt.

Lest we forget the squeeze that this man put on our armed forces while he headed up the Treasury, there are some choice examples to remind us: first and foremost, Government underspending has directly resulted in the loss of British soldiers' lives, from missing body-armour, from fratricide caused by a lack of combat ID equipment, from the lack of casevac and from faulty aircraft amongst other causes.

Training, and the equipment vital to carry it out properly, has also been at a premium since 2001, inadequate funding leading to the cancellation of major exercises as far back as the run-up to the Iraq war, and worsening as the intensity of current operations increased. And this money isn't just held back at source, it's also clawed back later, sometimes with disastrous results: much of the £1 billion worth of funding the Treasury promised for the invasion of Iraq was demanded back just a year later, resulting in the sale of WMIKs at below cost in order to refund the Treasury's money, WMIKs that would later be in short supply in Helmand.

And, considering his praise for the new national war memorial in Staffordshire, it is perhaps strange that only in 2001 was he charging £200,000 VAT bills to the builders of the Memorial Gates monument to Commonwealth servicemen.

These few examples represent only a small sample of the disrespect that this Government in general, and Gordon Brown in particular, have shown our brave men and women in uniform over a decade in power. It's just a little bit too late for all his fine words about the courage and heroism of men he's spent so long shafting.

The carrot as prosthesis

This Cooney chap sounds like a real joker: 12-inch carrots make ideal faux-erections, and I should know!

"The court also heard that when another pupil failed her test, he offered to waive the £80 she owed him if she pulled over into a lay-by and had sex with him.

"She told the court: "I just said 'No thank you, Steve'."

Well, it was a fair offer, considered upon its merits and rejected. We can't blame him for that, his primary concern was always, first and foremost the success of those under his tutorage. This may have crossed a line, however:

"He regularly groped her during lessons between August 2005 and February last year, the hearing heard."

These questions then present themselves: 1) That's a lot of driving lessons with a 'sex attacker', and 2) in what way was that question worse than the months of groping? Important questions, I think you'll agree. Enquiring minds want to know...

Clash of Crap

I have just watched the end of a BBC2 documentary called 'Clash of Worlds'; it is almost completely ahistorical. I say 'almost completely' because its narrative touches on real events, however the filmmakers have clearly decided that a contemporary spin must be put on history to, in the BBC parlance, 'sex it up.' So The Mahdi must become a modern version of Osama bin Laden - though, in the cause of relativism he must also be, confusingly, a great scholar, a merciful statesman and a canny general - and General 'Chinese' Gordon, along with Kitchener and pretty much every other notable Briton mentioned in the course of the programme, must be a religious extremist of comparable fanaticism. To suit this cultural relativism Gordon's support for the abolition of slavery becomes a mark of his zealotry, while Muhammad Ahmad's rule is simply a little harsh...

The historical, and historiographic, inaccuracies in this programme's account are too numerous to recount, but it is in the spuriously tacked-on contemporary bookends that the total bankruptcy of its thesis becomes clear. As tonight's episode drew to a close, the parallel between the Mahdi and bin Laden was laid out: bin Laden looks 'similar' to The Mahdi and he went to the Sudan. Sounds pretty watertight to me.

Stopping people won't help; we need to stop idiots.

Williams: "a deal that went wrong or something that didn't really go too right..."

Watching BBC News 24's coverage of Britain's recent spate of youth gun crime and Keith Jarrett's response to it reveals a new and revolutionary strategy in policing. Knacker of the Yard should long ago have hung up his truncheon and stepped aside in favour of Sipho Williams who offers up the stunning critique of Stop and Search that "it's not gonna help if you just stop more people; you need to stop people committing crime." Blimey, what a clever sod.

"Strength to change Britain"

All this talk of strength sounds very familiar...

Live Earth is immensely popular

I note that the BBC, who are hosting extensive coverage of Al Gore's Live Earth gig, have had to rephrase their poll to get even 45% support for it. The original poll (found here) asked whether Live Earth can "make people more environmentally-aware", a simple yes or no question tackling the concerts' professed goal that scored a pretty damning 87.97% against the gig after 10769 votes cast; but now at "Sydney kicks off Live Earth gigs" the poll has changed to the totally meaningless "Live Earth: Can people make a difference?" with its equally waffly "yes/no/not sure" options. Now you don't need any great experience of quantitative research methods to work out that this isn't how you phrase a question that you actually want to know the answer to: is it asking if Live Earth can make a difference, or if people can make a difference? Well, neither: it just means that the BBC can point to a poll that says people are vaguely indifferent to the chances of Live Earth's success (as the confused 45%/45%/10% result can be read to demonstrate), rather than one that says it, just like their much-criticised propaganda for Live 8, is just another of their pet projects we couldn't give a toss about.

Al Gore invented the internet: he can have as many damn screens as he wants!