Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
Jane's Blogosphere: blogtrack for Natalie Solent. 
Links ( 'Nother Solent is this blog's good twin. Same words, searchable archives, RSS feed. Provided by a benefactor, to whom thanks. I also sometimes write for Samizdata and Biased BBC.) The Old Comrades:
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Saturday, October 12, 2002
Washington University will only sell you free speech in approved packages. A link in Instapundit left me thinking, What sort of isolated lives do these campus nabobs live? How can they possibly have thought they would get away with that? Trouble is, they might. 91 today! According to Blogstreet I am the 91st state of the Blogosphere. False modesty aside, I think I may have been temporarily hiked up by being linked to by both Andrew Sullivan and The Corner one day last week, which is not a regular event. Samizdata has had quite a few more hits than this blog in a lifetime equal almost to the day, yet has scored lower at 97th. Lawyers for Liberty - Not. Over on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, Nigel Meek added a pertinent comment to the Scott/ Hudaib case. Aha! He admitted it. [Scott pleaded guilty] On whose advice? Assuming that he wasn't acting for himself, this is evidence a reoccurring theme amongst libertarian-inclined solicitor chums and those libertarians with active experience of the law: what utter shite the legal profession is when it comes to defending the liberty of the individual, particularly in cases which go against the prevailing Leftist-multiculturalist-Europhile establishment "Ah, a woman of spirit!" Angie Schultz reveals hidden talents. Never mind the academic post, we all knew you could do that, but telepathy and writing romantic novelettes? Lady, you've got it made. Just tailor your outlines to the publisher's secret fantasies. Did you, dear reader, ever try writing one? For Mills & Boon it is necessary to demonstrate seriousness before they will give you a contract; would-be authors must submit first chapters and detailed outlines for a batch of four stories. At least that's how I remember things stood twenty years ago when a friend and I investigated the possibility of making our fortunes. Mine, if I had ever got round to writing it, would have concerned the surging emotions lacerating the heart of a British nurse in the first world war. As she bent over Hans to adjust his bandage the crisp white cloth of her uniform blouse, carelessly fastened, fell open and brushed his sleeping face. Instantly his eyes opened, smouldering enemy eyes, and her heart was pierced anew... Deep breath. Brisk walk. Back to normal now. My friend wrote - although to do it right one doesn't so much write as emit - a first chapter. It was Roundheads versus Cavaliers. A dark, masterful scion of the aristocracy (with mocking eyes like Osama's) performed a daring horseback rescue of a buttoned-up yet passionate Puritan maid whose horse had bolted. Or possibly it was a dark, masterful Roundhead rescuing a Cavalierette. Whichever, the injection of a little action made her effort tons better than mine. The horses' flanks heaved like you'd need a cold shower afterwards. Friday, October 11, 2002
An artist tells his story. Orin Judd of Brojuddblog sent me some links concerning an artist-embroiderer. I was fascinated by the fact that he prefers to use the nylon/orlon threads he gets by patiently unravelling socks over shop-bought embroidery thread. The sheen you get from the very fine sock fibres is better, he says. How come he ever got started on embroidering with unravelled socks? Well, when you are in jail for carjacking, that's all you can find. Ray Materson is now able to work at home with his young family, his sentence having finished. Embroidery turned out to be simply more interesting than the drugs he could get in prison. Good luck to him. I do hope he takes care of his eyes with all that detail work.
The Rhineland analogy. Quite a few authors and bloggers have talked about the similarities between the German reoccupation of the Rhineland and Saddam Hussein's various probing attacks. There's nothing earth-shaking in Thomas Sowell's workmanlike summary of the parallels, but how could I have missed the blindingly appropriate quotation from Burke with which he opens the column: "There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." Miz Lillian's boy grown up already. I actually visited the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) in the first place to see what they had to say about Jimmy Carter winning the Nobel Peace prize. Something of a presentational problem for them: is the former leader of the Great Satan, once humbled by Iran, to be praised or condemned, given that the prize is meant to be a criticism of George W Bush? I was intrigued to see how they'd sort it out. IRNA don't yet have the story. You'll have to make do with ABC. And generate your own blog post using any combination of the words Arafat, Axis, Carter, Evil, Jimmy, Joking, Nobel, Peace, Preposterous, Prize, Travesty. Everyone else will.
It's not just Japanese who disappear. Imam Mousa Sadr was an Iranian mullah who went to live in Lebanon. At one time he gave sermons in Christian churches and admired Martin Luther King. Later he ended up founding the Shi'ite Amal party, which according to this 1986 article by Daniel Pipes sponsored the early Lebanese suicide bombers. To put it mildly, the Imam and I, had we ever met, would have had little in common. Be that as it may, in 1978 he visited Libya and was never seen again. Every now and then the story rumbles up to the surface, as it has today. Perhaps one day the Libyans, like the Koreans, will come clean. Sarin Man to die. I was under the impression that the Japanese always commuted death sentences. But here they give the impression that he really will hang. Talk about a turn around in attitude. I have gone surfing over FAIR's news clippings service, and I have signed up for it. It seems to cover the main British media outlets fully, and does not shirk from including stories that cover, for instance, suicide bombings. Just in. A reply from the Daily News Digest: "Simon de Bruxelles in the Times covered this story twice, once on the 27th of July, and again on the 4th of October. Both stories were picked up in our News Digest and are archived online on our website. See below for further details. Mr Bora appended two sets of hyperlinks: For 27th July 2002 First conviction on religious hatred By Simon de Bruxelles A FORMER teacher who verbally attacked three Muslims has become the first person to be convicted under new laws that outlaw religious hatred. Alistair Scott, 33, accosted the strangers in the street and began arguing about the involvement of Islam in the September 11 attacks in the US. . . Times Hyperlink: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-366546,00.html FAIR digest Hyperlink: http://www.fairuk.org/DND20020729Mon.htm#7) Headline Seven For 4th October 2002 Man guilty of religious hatred after Sept 11 row By Simon de Bruxelles A MAN who had an argument in the street with a supporter of Osama bin Laden became the first person to be convicted under new laws on religious hatred yesterday. Magistrates in Exeter were told that Alistair Scott, 33, was arrested after an argument with his Arab-born neighbour, Muhammad Hudaib, who was said to have shouted that bin Laden was great, September 11 was a great day, all Americans deserved to die and called him a "Zionist pigf****r" Times hyperlink: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-435448,00.html FAIR digest Hyperlink: http://www.fairuk.org/DND20021004Fri.htm#5) When I had seen only the earlier story and compared it to what was obviously the same case reported in the Telegraph, I was suspicious of FAIR (or whoever supplied them with stories), as it really did look like someone had been editing the news in a slanted way. But this reply gives a perfectly reasonable explanation for the apparent discrepancy.
So everybody - FAIR, The Times - comes out of it well. Except me.
"My hero, Osama," she breathed, her chest heaving... "Take me! Oh, take me!" Tim Blair has been helping along the publicity for John Caroll's book that claims to "meditate" on the meaning of September 11. Since Mr Blair claims that reading Caroll's corrosive prose burns away ten IQ points for every chapter read, even on the favourable assessment of his initial intelligence that we are all, I am sure, happy to grant him, you had better link to the series while Blair yet retains the ability to type. He's up to Chapter Two now. The excerpts from Chapter One of Caroll's book read like a Mills & Boon bodice-ripper, only not so discreet: It had all been brought about by one man, alone on horseback, riding through the wastes of Afghanistan, stealing America's own myth, its hero, its projection of valour. He is tall and handsome, with clear skin and full lips, sun tempered, looking the West and all its might nonchalantly, with a mocking smile, straight in the eye. He wears a fine, longish black beard streaked with grey, a cross between desert nomad and Confucian scholar, yet his bearing is elegant. Allez-vous -en! Laissez-moi seul! France is in a (possibly constructive) sulk, says this article in the Telegraph. The Independent says much the same, only leaving out the "possibly constructive". Even Le Monde, quoted in the article, agrees: The France of Jacques Chirac and Jean-Pierre Raffarin has become the black sheep of Europe. It is in the process of replacing Margaret Thatcher's Britain as a blocker of all common initiatives. This selfish national policy is contrary to France's 50-year long pro-European tradition. He will re-live this moment in nightmares his whole life long. An Israeli bus driver struggles with a suicide bomber. I don't think the James Bennett who wrote this story is the same as the Anglosphere Jim Bennett who thinks that if supranational organizations keep breaking down it might just be because the design never worked anyway. The latter usually heads his columns James C Bennett.
Thursday, October 10, 2002
Another Korean abduction story, this time from a major Japanese paper, Asahi Shimbun. 'Police now say mother was abducted with her daughter.' Flicking through the links to other stories at the base of this one you will find some eerie images - a man and a woman managed to escape an abduction by shuffling away still in the sacks into which they had been tied - the North Korean athletes at the Asian games refuse to read the piles of free South Korean newspapers left outside their doors - the North Korean journalists, too, show little interest in the wider world. "This has not been reported," one photographer says, refusing any input that deviates from Party reality. Reports say that five of the surviving abductees will soon visit Japan. Their children have not been allowed to leave North Korea. That figures. "Hang Mandela" T-shirts. An anonymous wearer of such garb writes: The fun that could be gained from watching the local campus left going into a apopleptic fit when they saw the stickers and t-shirts was well worth it.In general I do not favour using an extreme message to make a valid point - I favour being blunt and honest in making my valid points and not worrying unduly if others say I am extreme. Or even if I am extreme; the important question is not where I stand on some spectrum but whether I am right. Also I think Mandela has done a great deal more good than harm in the world. South Africa under apartheid closed off avenues for peaceful change, so it was no great surprise that the ANC turned to violence. The surprise is that South Africa is relatively peaceful and free today, and Nelson Mandela helped it become so. I do not know enough to comment in much more detail than that. But they did let off bombs, didn't they? And they did not go nearly far enough in condemning "necklacing". Winnie Mandela even made a speech that referred to it favourably. So my anonymous correspondent has a point. Let no left-winger who has praised a play, or a piece of modern art, or a polemic by calling it "provocative" condemn him. The Times definitely not wimps after all. Blogger ate that last post by the way. If you read an earlier post of mine about the Alistair Scott case, please note that I got a major aspect of the story wrong through being careless and naive. Please do re-read the corrected post. Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Remember my post on university admissions? An admissions tutor had this to say: A number of different things are going on simultaneously which makes the overall picture a bit messy, but one thing that is happening is that admissions tutors are getting data about the historic A-level performance of particular state schools. This enables us to make a crude judgement about how good an achievement getting a particular grade at A-level is. After all, we're not really interested in past performance as such, just in past performance as an indicator of future performance. And a sad and constant experience shows that kids who have struggled to get BBC in some really crummy comprehensive often do a lot better when they get to university than those who have been very well coached at an expensive school to get AAB. (One reason is that they've often had to learn by themselves and so can cope at university where there's no-one to hold their hands - the public school kids often can't.) Given than fact, we actually made differential offers for years before anyone instructed us to: we were just trying to get the best people. (So I'd defend making lower offers to kids from problem schools.) Codswallop in parts. "Cosdwallop" was how Steve Chapman described in a comment the version of recent history put forward by Brendan O'Neill. Mr O'Neill is indeed walloping the cod if he really believes what he implies, that the West "destroyed democracy in Iraq." According to this timeline, nothing of any interest happened in Iraq between the Mongol sack of Baghdad and the British moving in to occupy the place in 1917. I feel sure the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, who produced the timeline, would have mentioned it if Parliamentary Democracy had flourished amid the desert sands circa 1916. The series of coups and massacres by and within the Ba'ath Socialist Party since then cannot be laid at our door. But Brendan is enjoyably scathing about Mr Clinton. A regular correspondent writes: If I were surrounded by fanatical, well-armed "anti"-racists, my conscience might fail me so far as to hesitate to say 'niggardly' in some context where the word was otherwise appropriate. I like to think that nothing seriously less would make me even hesitate. Thus while I applaud your contempt for the silly woman who tried to get the teacher fired for saying it, I don't think you should ever (except in the circumstances described, as we'd be heartbroken to lose you) hesitate to use the word yourself. The combination of stupidity and arrogance which alone can be angered by it should not be pandered to. Further, like envy (of which it is a form) it is insatiable; give them 'niggardly' and they'll demand that 'blaggardly', a word containing a clearly-offensive homonym to 'black' be abolished, and then ... make your own list. Those who seek offensive references where none logically exist (or only at an incredible semantic distance) will never be appeased. A Google Re-adjustment Profiteer Gloats Shamelessly Over Those Less Fortunately Situated. Angie Shultz of The Machinery of Night writes,
Free speech hangs on a thread. Arthur Silber of The Light of Reason sent me another example of censorship. (Scroll down the post past the part about Ann Coulter to find it.) A website poked rather obvious fun at the scaremongering and vigilantism over fears of paedophilia. Whether you think the joke is funny or not, did you actually have any difficulty discerning the satirical intention of the site? Of course not, because you, dear reader, have two brain cells to rub together. Not everyone does, though. As Silber says, A private company took the site down after one complaint, on the basis of an "informal" request from one police officer. Of course, the company clearly only did so because of their fear that if they didn't, the government would take more formal action against it.That was all it took. The unsupported view of one police officer. Not that even he actually failed to get it, he just had heard that someone else, somewhere in the world, didn't. Paul Carr, involved with the website, tells the story. 'Did you look at the site?' I enquired. 'Yes sir.' 'And you did realise it was a parody?'. 'Yes sir, but the complainant obviously didn't.'"This could be any of us. Let's hear it for the nasty party! In this article Polly Toynbee tells it to the Tories. Ignore it, I only put it there as a hook upon which to hang the really important topic: Be Nasty! Be Proud!When Mrs Thatcher stalked the land like a robber baron of old, political analysts used to whisper of permanent Conservative majorities. It is only since they had nice men in charge that they have lost the will to power and taken to squeaking about "the vulnerable" and hugging comfort blankets. Admit it, don't you yearn for a ruling party of the old school who shot pheasants in season and peasants out of it? Or for a self-made illegitimate son of a chorus girl who would claw his way up through the ranks and end up a Peer with a notch on his Purdy for every strike broken? It's not only the right who have turned to mush. There were real left wingers when I were a lass, real men with fire in their bellies and lice in their underpants, who longed for the day when the gutters would run red with the blood of the bourgeoisie. Mad old barely-female battleaxes would knit wooly underthings for the Viet Cong while muttering murderous old-granny imprecations, inherited from the generations of witches that spawned them.
Bring 'em back, say I, back from their unquiet graves. We need clarity. We need vision. We need fluffy little squirrels roasted on sticks. Who better to provide these things than that most under-used resource: Nasty People!
Or you could try this, I suppose.
LATER: Blogger archive bug strikes. This would never happen under a Nasty government. Go to England's Sword and check out the link headed "Fighting Yesterday's Battles" where it says "How about standing up and saying Conservative voters are decent people, who love their families and love their country, compared with the haters in the Labour Party who want to destroy anything they don't approve of, whether it be families, education or patriotism, and replace it with their own, twisted version, whatever the consequences for the working class?" My Unwanted Superpower. Talking of Junius, I must apologise to him for killing Arts & Letters Daily. Yes, it was me. I do it a lot just by looking at things and liking them. I had just thought, mmm, must try this thing Junius calls "one of the real jewels of the internet" when my anti-Midas touch struck its awful blow. Happens all the time. The moment I started really liking Marks & Spencers' range of ladies' clothes their shares nosedived. Same with Laura Ashley home furnishings. Also I don't believe I have ever voted for the winning party in an election in my entire life. I am available for hire at reasonable rates by prudent CEOs and party leaders who would like me to dislike their product range. Chris Bertram of Junius is slightly sceptical, and wonders whether there might have been sarcasm involved. As it happens I was finally publishing Richard Littlejohn's take on the case which includes the "Zionist pigf****er" angle at the instant Chris sent me his e-mail. (I thought I had published it last night, but unfortunately I was once more a victim of that refusal-to-publish Blogger bug.) So Chris Bertram's view of the incident does not include the ZP-word, which is not one easily used sarcastically. Follow the link for his views. He quotes a most useful account from the local press, which sorts out the question of whether the three Muslims in the case were or were not neighbours of Scott. Two weren't, one was. On the other hand the question of spelling the last-named man's name is right back on the agenda: the Express & Echo has "Hudaid" not "Hudaib".
I quite agree that the account of such a fracas that appears in court is likely to differ from what really happened as memory fades and policemen, officials and lawyers of every degree of competence and goodwill try to make messy real life fit into neat artificial categories. I also acknowledge, in fairness to Mr Hudaib/Hudaid, that in a furious row it is easy to end up saying what one does not really mean. But boil away all the froth and you are still left with a residue of stark imbalance in the treatment of the two sides.
Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Richard Littlejohn adds a little detail to our understanding of Mr Hudaib's character, one that did not appear in either the dishonest-by-omission Times account [ADDED LATER: I was unfair to the Times. See comments in red at the base of this post.] or the somewhat fuller Telegraph version. Hudaib (it appears the Times got the spelling wrong) called Scott a "Zionist pigf***er." I am obliged to Peter Briffa for the link. I don't understand why Muslim organizations don't fear this double standard and fight against it. (I know of one or two individual Muslims who do.) Firstly because it is unjust, and secondly because it is dangerous. Teacher's pet gets beaten up after class. Apologies to all who sent me e-mails and haven't yet had a reply. Had a headache most of the day, didn't want to go on computer, felt a little better, checked e-mail, read about Scott / Hudaid (Hudaib? Accounts vary as to the spelling) case in Libertarian Alliance Forum, exploded into spitting rage, posted it in spirit of cleansing fury, calmed down once action taken, headache again. Since I think the story below is important on several levels, I've decided to provide a link for that Times story after all. It's here. In general, all Times url's go via a pop-up registration page before you can read them. Foreign readers will have to pay for a whole year at once. However the link should work for British readers, at least for the next few days. Can anyone send me the url of the Telegraph story? The Telegraph's search function never works for me, and it does not appear to be on Google yet. UPDATE: Randall Parker of Parapundit has a link to the Telegraph story.
Note to readers: this post gets complicated. The central injustice of the Alistair Scott/ Mohammed Hudaib case, consisting of the very different treatment meted out by the courts to the two parties in a furious row following September 11, remains unaltered. Read the black print to understand that. There were, however, two confusions, successively sorted out, in the way I reported it. The Thursday evening changes are marked in red; the Friday changes in blue. I could have just edited the lot, but in the end I decided it was more honest, albeit confusing, to leave in all my clarifications and retractions. Here's the post Andrew Sullivan's readers came to see: Two versions of one story. Here's an interesting example of self-censorship. I'm having trouble linking to back numbers the Telegraph, and I am intermittently refusing on principle to link to the Times. So I am going to print out two little stories in full. Don't worry, they are brief. And interesting.
Here is the Times version of the story:
[FIRST UPDATE: No it isn't the Times version, it just puports to be. I was wrong! A website called the FAIR Daily News Digest published the version that follows, describing it as the work of the Times's Simon de Bruxelles, but leaving out crucial facts that he included. See further info at the base of this post.]
[LATER UPDATE: There were actually two stories, both by Simon de Bruxelles, both reported by FAIR's Daily News Digest. The second gave a much fairer picture of the case than the first.]
And here is the way the Telegraph tells it. Spot the highly relevant fact that does not appear in the Times version. [Or, rather, in the what seemed to be the Times version. See below.] [Correct to "...in the earlier Times version."] Daily Telegraph London 4 10 02 The new "religious hatred" law is an outrage. The history of free speech in this country is the history of winning the freedom to argue about religion. I could have sworn this obnoxious clause had been dropped, after widespread criticism. Apparently I was wrong. And almost as frightening is the cowardice of the Times. [I withdraw this, obviously] Mr Scott seems to have been browbeaten into swallowing the progressive establishment line and doing a spot of humble self-criticism, in the good old Chinese style of thirty years ago. If he does have any spirit left he ought to sue the Times [Er, once again, not the Times; whoever wrote that story] [Possibly that should be marked "STET". Or possibly not. I'm running out of colours.] for making him look like a nutter when he isn't.
And since the Department of Public Prosecutions are so hot on prosecuting hatred and bigotry, let me point out an example to them. Here's hatred and bigotry: Mr Hudaib, a Postgraduate student at Exeter University , acknowledged under cross-examination that he "could have said Osama bin Laden was a great man and that all Americans deserved to die and are stupid".Will the DPP be on the case? I don't think so. UPDATE: All my comments on the unfairness of the treatment of Mr Scott vis à vis Mr Hudaid stand. But, please note, I was unfair to the Times. The account of the case available at Times Online includes all relevant facts. I apologise to Simon de Bruxelles, the Times author, for suggesting it didn't. Mea culpa, but the story of how I came to screw up is interesting in itself... Read on.
When I first read about this story on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, I did a Google search for the names involved. I found the story as I first printed it, word for word, at a site called the Daily News Digest. It's given the byline "Simon de Bruxelles - The Times." So I thought, not unaturally, that that was what it said in the story by Simon de Bruxelles in the Times. Only it's not. Isn't that weird? Some unknown hand has edited out all the aspects that make Mr Hudaid look bad and mitigate Mr Scott's admittedly unruly behaviour.
I should have checked. Of course I should. It wouldn't have been hard to do. I usually do click the link, but for some reason this time I didn't. If you'd asked me five minutes later where I'd seen the story, I'd have blithely said, "Why, in the Times, of course." I'm very sorry I didn't check, only I do offer as a mitigating factor that the Daily News Digest did make it easy for me to make that particular mistake, if you know what I mean.
How do the two compare? Mr Bruxelles' version of the story begins: A MAN who had an argument in the street with a supporter of Osama bin Laden became the first person to be convicted under new laws on religious hatred yesterday.Compare that to the Daily News Digest version - still credited, remember, to Simon de Bruxelles and The Times: A FORMER teacher who verbally attacked three Muslims has become the first person to be convicted under new laws that outlaw religious hatred. So who are these Digest guys? The website describes itself thus: "The Daily News Digest reviews the main electronic news media for items relating to British Muslims at home and abroad, Britain’s ethnic minorities, and stories which have a bearing on the image of Islam in general in the media. FAIR is not affiliated to any political or religious organisation, and does not necessarily endorse the views reflected in the items reproduced in the Daily News Digest. "I can't help thinking that their readers would get a more accurate perception of the image of Islam in the media if the stories found there were left as the Digest found them, or clearly marked as edited - and not just edited for brevity, either. ADDED LATER: There were two stories, one much fuller and fairer than the other. Both are now up on the Digest website.
Thanks, not for the first time, to Layman's Logic for being the most attentive reader anyone could wish for. Puts me to shame.
I have e-mailed the editor of the Daily News Digest to ask why the Digest's version of the story and the Times's version are so different.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: The next day, Friday 11th Oct, FAIR did get back to me - with a perfectly reasonable explanation: "Simon de Bruxelles in the Times covered this story twice, once on the 27th of July, and again on the 4th of October. Both stories were picked up in our News Digest and are archived online on our website. See below for further details.FAIR's editor also supplied two sets of hyperlinks. I've posted his full reply plus links here. As I've said on that post, everybody - FAIR, The Times - comes out of it well. Except me.
Oh, and the makers and enforcers of the law that put Scott in the dock and left Hudaib out of it. Both in the dock or neither, preferably neither.
Monday, October 07, 2002
When is a quota not a quota? I try to avoid linking to the Times, since their absurd registration policies mean that foreign readers must pay a ridiculous amount to read their stuff. But you must see this account of the latest social engineering project. The "problem" is this. Private schools are generally better than state schools. Parents can so easily take their kids elsewhere, so they have to be. There are all sorts of possible solutions. Trust our government to pick the worst: dumb down the universities to match. Reward failing schools. Have quotas based on social class, an expedient that found favour in China during the Cultural Revolution.
In case you're wondering, I never paid a penny in fees for my education. State school, then a scholarship to a private college, then University under the old grants system. The command economy overproduces musical wallpaper in France. John Lichfield reports that a quota system designed to promote French music instead promotes Frenchified American music. Junius discusses that controversy between Daniel Pipes' "Campus Watch" and the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) with with Brian Linse of Ain't No Bad Dude fame, working from a a more left-wing perspective than you usually get on this horrible wicked weblog. And here is a list compiled by Campus Watch themselves of articles mentioning them. Sunday, October 06, 2002
Arthur Silber of The Light of Reason had left a rather more serious e-mail in my poor neglected in box. It seems the Canadian government impounded a bunch of leaflets while they checked them out to see if they were hate speech. Jolly good, some of you will say. Vigilant Customs doing their jobs.
But who were the crazed Neo-Nazi scum who authored this sadistic pornography (for surely the Canadian Customs boys would not waste the taxpayers' time harassing respectable people)? And what was the disgusting stuff actually about?
The newsletter was put out by the Ayn Rand Institute. Its title was "Israel's moral right to exist."
I'm not a Randian, so I'm allowed to say bloody hell.
By the time I read about this, the impounding order had been rescinded. Someone in the Canadian government belatedly realised how bad this made them look. (Correction: someone in the Canadian government belatedly realised that this was making it clear how bad they are.) Scroll up from the link for more about the case. You can even read the dreaded newsletter that caused all the fuss. Do it while you still can. To Canada's shame, Mr Silber thought it necessary to put a note of caution to Canadians warning them to be aware of the trouble they might be in if they clicked the link.
Correction: Arthur Silber has pointed out that it was it was actually Eugene Volokh who put in the note of caution. It is outrageous that anyone should even think they need to warn the citizens of a free country about reading an academic pamphlet discussing morality, and when the "anyone" teaches law (although he disclaims particular knowledge of Canadian law) things are worse yet. The sun was shining. All was right with the world. I was actually too busy living real life to blog. Then, tempting fate, I checked my e-mail. Junius it was who brought the terrible, awful news. Google, curse them to the uttermost depths of space and time, have become aware of bloggers and changed their algorithm to stop us having fun.
Blair is 3rd Blair. (Interestingly Tony "Who?" Blair is still nowhere.)
Ken is 2nd Ken. If you scroll down you'll find a link via Gary Farber to a nice man called "Dive Into Mark" who explains this whole awful phenomenon. Seeing as I have become as a worm that crawleth in the dust I won't give you the link direct. Let Ken have it. (Sob!) Let him have the glory seeing as he's one of those swanky number two people.
James is James the 7th, though not of Scotland.
And I - oh, I cannot say it. Number one no longer. Not even number two and trying harder, like Avis. But at least I wasn't, like, fourth or anything. |