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.)

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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:

• Samizdata
  
• The Edge of England's Sword
  
• Daily Bleat
  
• Ain't No Bad Dude
  
• Dawson.com
  
  
• Random Jottings
  
• Progressive Reaction
  
• Mind Over What Matters
  
• Daimnation!
  
• Tim Blair
  
  
• Instapundit
  
• Dr. Frank's What's-it
  
• Joanne Jacobs
  
• Ranting and Roaring
  
• Midwest Conservative Journal
  
  
• Airstrip One
  
• Amygdala
  
• Ken Layne
  
• Matt Welch
  
• Andrew Sullivan
  
  
  
  The New Model Army:
  
  
• Adam Smith Institute Blog
  
• Adloyada
  
• Albion's Seedling
  
• Antoine Clarke
  
• Au Currant
  
• Benjamin Kepple
  
• Best of the Web
  
• Biased BBC
  
• Bilious Young Fogey
  
• Black Triangle
  
• Blithering Bunny
  
• Brian Micklethwait
  
• Bjørn Stærk blog
  
• Blogosophical Investigations
  
• Body and Soul
  
• Brendan O'Neill
  
• Chase Me Ladies
  
• Chicago Boyz
  
• Common Sense and Wonder
  
• Christian Hate?
  
• The Corner
  
• Conservative Commentary
  
• Crooked Timber
  
• CrozierVision
  
• Cut on the Bias
  
• Daily Ablution
  
• Davids Medienkritik
  
• Dodgeblogium
  
• Electrolite
  
• EU Referendum Blog
  
• EU Rota
  
• EU Serf
  
• Freedom and Whisky
  
• Globalisation Institute blog
  
• Heirs of Hammurabi
  
• Hell in a Handbasket
  
• Happy Fun Pundit
  
• Harry's Place
  
• Hokiepundit.
  
• Iain Dale's Diary
  
• It Can't Rain All The Time
  
• Jackie Danicki
  
• Jim Miller on Politics
• Junius
  
• Layman's Logic
  
• Letter from Gotham
  
• Liberty Log
  
• Like a Tea-tray in the Sky
  
• Little Green Footballs
  
• Live from the WTC
  
• Machinery of Night
  
• Marduk's Babylonian Musings
  
• Matthew Turner
• Mark Steyn
  
• Michael Jennings
  
• Mr Chalk
  
• Muslimpundit
  
• Normblog
  
• No Pasaran!
  
• Odious and Peculiar
  
• Oliver Kamm
  
• One Sided Wonder
  
• On the Third Hand
  
• Oxblog
  
• Patio Pundit
  
• Photon Courier
  
• Public Interest
  
• Right Wing News
  
• The Rittenhouse Review
  
• Sand in the Gears
  
• Shot By Both Sides
  
• Squander Two
  
• Stephen Pollard
  
• Steve Chapman
  
• Silflay Hraka
  
• Sporadic Chronicle
  
• Tanstaafl
  
• Talking Hoarsely
  
• Transterrestrial Musings
  
• Thought Mesh
• Tim Worstall
  
• Transport Blog
  
• Turkeyblog
  
• Unremitting Verse
  
• Winds of Change
  
• UK Commentators - Laban Tall's blog
  
• Uncommon Sense
  
• Unqualified Offerings
  
• USS Clueless
  
• Val-e-Diction
  
• The Volokh Conspiracy
  
• The Welfare State We're In
  
• Yourish.com
  

November 2001 December 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 August 2007 October 2007 February 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 March 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 October 2009 January 2010 March 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 April 2011 June 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013

 

Saturday night strangeness - Hitler before his Downfall

The bloke who posted this describes it as,'The same scene everyone knows, except it is from a film called "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" starring Alec Guinness.' Presumably both this film and Der Untergang followed Traudl Junge's diaries quite closely for this scene.

posted by Natalie at 6:06 PM

 

"Damn you Mrs Clinton. You have just made me like a traffic warden."

Thus laments commenter James Primavesi to this Times story (paywalled, but the title tells you all you need to know):

Do you know who she is? Hillary Clinton gets a ticket despite protests of her security detail.

posted by Natalie at 5:59 PM

 

"I thought Racism was illegal."

The Daily Mail reports:

Lord Sugar faced police racism probe after joking on Twitter that crying Chinese boy was upset 'because he was told off for leaving the production line of the iPhone 5'

How far we have fallen.

In speaking of our fall, I do not refer the belief of the complainant, Nichola Szeto, that Lord Sugar's joke was racist: stupid people have always been with us. The joke was not remotely racist. Apple might have cause to whine, at the implication that the company employs child labour, but Apple Inc. probably has enough sense to refrain from going to law at a joke and getting a tidal wave of bad publicity. Poor Ms Szeto herself nearly had the sense to refrain from going to law at a joke and getting a tidal wave of bad publicity. It did take Merseyside’s Hate Crime Investigation Unit two tries before they could get her to ruin her business and reputation:

She was contacted by police on Wednesday but declined to give a statement. At 8am the next day, she was again contacted by officers who said they wanted to visit her home. Instead, she agreed to attend a police station in Central Liverpool later that day, where she spent an hour giving a statement to two officers.

I do not refer to the mistaken belief of Ms Szeto that racism is both illegal and a proper noun. State schools are often not very good, and in all fairness how far can we blame someone for thinking that an opinion might be illegal, when the police evidently thought so too? Or perhaps Merseyside Hate Crime Investigation Unit thought no such thing but was just anxious to drum up trade in a slow market. You know times are hard in the hate biz when you get sales calls at eight in the morning. Funny, though, when I have once or twice called to report the old sort of crime it took Plod ages to answer the phone. Why Merseyside police seem keener on home visits to well-toned ladies upset at what someone said on Twitter than on home visits to Toxteth amphetamine addicts beating their women is just one of those unfathomable mysteries.

How far we have fallen when this can be part of the normal operation of the care of a state for its citizen, in a country that once had something like freedom:

However, the remark was in the end classed as a ‘hate incident’ – which means no further action will be taken, although details will be kept on file.

Got that? Not even the zealous young commissars that they send to work in the Hate Crime Investigation Unit could find a enough of a crime to give the boys in the CPS something to work with. What a scalp that would have been: a Labour peer and a TV celebrity. All would have trembled at the power and reach of the law if such a man were brought down. Alas for the Hate Crime Investigation Unit, this time it was not to be. But it is still a "hate incident". Not an alleged hate incident, or a complaint of a hate incident, an official hate incident. On file, for use if need be.

posted by Natalie at 5:57 PM

 

That's not an insult to your parents. THIS is an insult to your parents.

That.

The man who hated Britain: Red Ed's pledge to bring back socialism is a homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country.

- Geoffrey Levy, in a hit piece in the Daily Mail aimed at Ed Miliband.

This.

I am at no loss for information about you and your family; but I am at a loss where to begin. Shall I relate how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an elementary school near the Temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles on his legs and a timber collar round his neck? Or how your mother practised daylight nuptials in an outhouse next door to Heros the bone-setter, and so brought you up to act in tableaux vivants and to excel in minor parts on the stage?

- Demosthenes, in a hit piece aimed at Aeschines.
posted by Natalie at 5:54 PM

 

Discussion point: circumcision

Circumcision ruling: European bureaucrats are effectively banning Jewish boys, argues Brendan O'Neill, quoting the Jerusalem Post and unintentionally supported in his argument by the creepy quote from the Council of Europe in which it calls for "debate" and in the same breath announces what the result of said debate is to be. And this was put forward by a German rapporteur. I am not usually one for endless digs at modern Germans for evil done before most of them were born, but, Frau Rupperecht, do you have any idea of what that must look like to some of the Jerusalem Post's older readers?

And yet - irreversible modification of a child's body without the child's consent. Gulp.

And yet again - parents irreversibly modify their children's bodies by surgery all the time.

We have discussed this several times before, acrimoniously. Any new thoughts? Any constructive reformulations of old thoughts?

I have a question for medically knowledgeable readers. I gather that a far higher proportion - 79% in 2002 - of men in the US are circumcised than in the UK, yet the number uncircumcised is also huge. There must therefore be scope for large scale comparisons of outcomes. Have these been done? Does male circumcision make much difference?

posted by Natalie at 5:51 PM

 

Samizdata quote of the day

We are the ones, we militants without a strategy of emancipation, who are (and who have been for some time now) the real aphasics! And it is not the sympathetic and unavoidable language of movementist democracy that will save us.

- Professor Alain Badiou, in an article arguing that "We need to rediscover the language of Communism."

posted by Natalie at 5:43 PM