Today's quiz

If you word-search the Daily Mail Online front page today for "bikini", how many times does it come up?

A) 7
B) 11
C) 13

(Answer in comments)

Alex on Ron Paul etc.

Alex discussing the panic seizing the impure hearts of the GOP establishment in the face of Ron Paul's pole position in the Iowa primary, together with the nature and purpose of the Nanny State, growing in America exactly as it is growing here.

Lord Hunt: flying a kite for state crackdown on free internet

Peck off, Hunt!

Lord Hunt, out-going Press Complaints Commission major domo, has put forth the notion that the blogging world needs regulation. Purely voluntary of course, at least as long as it takes to squeeze the thin end of the wedge into place. His idea is that we bloggers should apply, with fee attached, for a 'kite mark' asserting our accuracy and trustworthiness. Needless to say I won't be applying.

Hunt is pushing the old myth that the blogging world is like the Wild West. In fact, we are accountable the same as anyone else, and those of us who pay attention are very much aware of how the state can and does take action to silence dissent and the free circulation of ideas when it feels threatened or else thinks it can get away with it, and how it has furnished the oligarchs with the legal tools to do the same (mind you, at this point of descent, is there any distinction between the corporations and the state?). Only yesterday I was reading of a police raid on someone in connection to the release of Climategate II emails.

No kite-mark here: William Munny violates terms and conditions at the Big Whiskey, Wyoming Bloggers Bash

The establishment hates the internet and would like to carve it up and control it, to boost their flagging credibility and sales. As a blogger, I take no lectures from the mainstream media on accuracy and telling the truth. You may get no more than the worm's eye view round here, but at least it's an honest worm, not some loose-arsed shill for the klepto-oligarchy and their control-freak minions.

(The pic is of a Mississippi Kite, found at Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies.)

Tony Parsons on form

In case you missed it, Tony Parsons writes a funny piece taking the piss out of the pro-Brussels gang in the Mirror. Check it out, my fellow patriots.

Hat tip: Daniel Hannan

Why is Ofcom banning Press TV?

It's a ominous sign: state broadcasting regulator Ofcom has revoked Iranian Press TV's broadcast licence, meaning it will no longer be broadcast on the Sky platform. This is supposedly over a breach of the rules incurred by an interview of an American journalist being detained in Iran, but given the leaked position of the UK Foreign Office, that seems a pretext.

Somewhere buried in the Wikileaks bundle is found an interesting statement from a FCO wonk to a US counterpart. From the Guardian:

While Ofcom will insist that it came under no pressure from ministers, according to the WikiLeaks cables, the Foreign Office told an American diplomat in 2010 that the government was"exploring ways to limit the operations of … Press TV".

At the time, the department warned the US that: "UK law sets a very high standard for denying licences to broadcasters. Licences can only be denied in cases where national security is threatened, or if granting a licence would be contrary to Britain's obligations under international law. Currently neither of these standards can be met with respect to Press TV, but if further sanctions are imposed on Iran in the coming months a case may be able to be made on the second criterion."

This is coming at the same time as a number of other moves by the hawks to attack Iran, most notably the ludicrous conspiracy theory of Iran trying to hire a Mexican drug gang to blow up a Saudi diplomat. If plans to strike Iran are well-underway, you can imagine that the Foreign Office would not want us to see the other side of the story, so better, in true, sneaky 'Perfidious Albion' style, to quietly scuttle Press TV before the uranium-tipped missiles start slamming into orphanages.

Note to Peter Hitchens: Keynes was no economist

I was reading Peter Hitchen's scathing review of the conference season, nodding along, certainly agreeing with his views of the Bank of England's hyper-inflationary counterfeiting plot, but then something terrible happened. I read this:

"Let me remind you of what one of our greatest economists, Lord Keynes, once wrote ..."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No No No. Mr Hitchens, not only is John Maynard Fucking Beezebub Keynes NOT one of our greatest economists, he was not even an economist. He was an anti-economist, an enemy of reason, the man more than anyone else responsible for destroying the progress made over hundreds of years, dragging the science back to an age of magick. The world's most arrogant, delusional elitist. Everyone outside his little circle he looked down on as worms and cockroaches. And, Mr Hitchens he despised everything you hold dear. When he quotes Lenin on destroying a nation's currency, that's what he wanted! That phrase of Lenin's encapsulates the Keynesian agenda

His name should be used like Cromwell's in Ireland; to scare little children. His corpse should be dug up and scattered on the dung heap.

State-registered journalism: what could be worse?

First we had Ivan Lewis MP calling for a state register of journalists, from which malefactors would be "struck off". Next we had Lewis claiming he had been misunderstood.

Now we have George Monbiot publishing his personal register of interests, in the hope that others will follow suit and the public will begin to demand such openness from others. That seems reasonable, no? But then the music starts:

"A voluntary register is a small step towards transparency. What I would really like to see is a mandatory list of journalists' financial interests, similar to the House of Commons registry. I believe that everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show who is paying them, and how much. Publishing this register could be one of the duties of whatever replaces the discredited Press Complaints Commission."

Suddenly the red lights are flashing. George is calling for a state register of journalists, such as proposed (or not) by Lewis. I am sure, dear readers, you do not need me to spell out how dangerous such a thing would be, but, as I've got nothing better to do for the next five minutes...

The first question is this: What is a journalist? Or, more importantly, where does journalism end and PR or blogging or some other form of writing etc., begin? Certainly I don't consider myself a journalist, but I write for the public via this blog, and although I abjure advertising, if I didn't, I would be getting paid some meagre sum for my output. If Monbiot's plan were actioned, it would be necessary to define what is and what isn't journalism. This would have the pernicious effect of creating a cadre of 'proper' journalists, and de-legitimising everyone else. To be a journalist would thus become a privileged position. It would be like the Party membership card was in communist countries.

Also, let us consider this line: "everyone who steps into public life should be obliged to show who is paying them, and how much". This brings to mind the standard ad hominem tactic of Monbiot, his enviro-ilk and the puritanical zealots of the anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-fun brigade.

Whenever someone argues against the latest draconian infringement of individual liberty, they are accused by the puritans of being in the pay of 'Big Tobacco' etc. This is necessarily so within the puritans' narrative, where smokers etc., are mindless automatons, incapable of exercising any kind of control over their actions. If only, we are expected to believe, cigarette packets weren't so damned enticing, we'd never pick them up. This narrative thus requires the state to step into the picture and prohibit individual choice, there being no such thing as far as the puritans are concerned.

Requiring everyone to register and provide all the details of their financial situation can only act as a deterrent to engage in any kind of public debate. Furthermore, we have seen in recent times how the distinction between public and private has all but disappeared. So, the dragnet required for Monbiot's plan grows potentially ever greater. If I tell you I like Guinness, will I now have to publish all my bank details to prove Guinness haven't paid me to tell you this?

In summary, Monbiot's decision to publish his register of interests is fine for him to do, and enables him to rain fire from the moral highground against opponents who he can accuse of being in the pay of vested interests. However, as soon as he calls for others to be forced to follow suit, he loses the highground and becomes just another mouthpiece for state control of everything.

Finally, with regard to a definition of journalism, I recall that Hunter S. Thompson provided one that may serve:

“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”

You okay with that, George?

Hat tip: Counting Cats

An idiot in Brussels and a very guilty man

I quite like this clip. Oborne's a little rude to the idiot in Brussels, but it's good when the guilty wanker from the FT gets riled - fucking traitor!

Hat tip: Jon Worth (he sees it differently, of course!)

Why I loath the Daily Mail; part 94

With the title of the link; 'Isn't it time you stopped cavorting semi-nude, Jade?', the Daily Mail brings us the incredibly important scoop that Jade Jagger has been seen topless on the beach in Formentera. Of course it has the photos to prove it, with a black line tastefully inserted to cover the nipples.

I think the Daily Mail needs to ask itself a few questions, such as;

Isn't it time you stopped paying paparazzi to sneak around taking photos of women on the beach AND DID SOME FUCKING REPORTING?

Or, if such a thing is inconceivable, why not just give up the pretence that you are a newspaper, and focus exclusively on the trashy titilation?

But I guess the main point is; If Jade Jagger's tits offend you, THEN DON'T PUT THEM IN YOUR SO-CALLED NEWSPAPER.

Personally, I like the female form. Jade Jagger is not a teenager, she doesn't have a teenager's body. She's got a woman's body, there's nothing wrong with it, and if she wants to get it out, it's her business, and it's certainly not newsworthy in any way.

The role of the media in the Libyan war

The role of the media in reporting conflict seems to have crossed a significant point into pure agit-prop during the Libyan conflict. It is not that this has never been the case, after all the media has always been selective in what it can and what it chooses to report, but it seems to have moved on from partial reporting to active participation.

With media now broadcasting to a global market, it's no longer a case of keeping the folks back home selectively in the dark, but rather feeding propaganda into the very theatre of operations.

Also worrying is the trend, very prevalent in this conflict, of seeing independent reporters in the same light, i.e. as a combatant - an enemy combatant. The message is clear: any journalist not on our side, better watch out. If they get out alive, they may be pursued with legal action for taking money from the enemy regime. Don't expect such action to stretch as far as the many political leaders who lapped up the milk and honey back when Gaddafi was a man we could do business with.

Nato attacked Libyan television, as they had attacked Serbian television some years before. In the Libyan case, we were told this was a legitimate target in a campaign ostensibly to protect civilians. Are the journalists playing this game aware that such logic blows both ways?

Zoe Williams and her strange notion of functional

Grauniadista Zoe Williams makes the same connection as I do vis à vis 'The Big Society', but draws the opposite conclusion in her piece on citizens stepping into the breach. JuliaM at Orphans runs through it all, so I will concentrate only on two parts:

"The point here is that everyone from "feral rat" lady to the Enfield Defence League is on the same spectrum: they vary in the impression they give, from seeking order to seeking chaos, but they all doubt the ability of the state to defend their safety – and they are all, therefore, tacitly outside the control of the state."

You get that? "Tacitly outside the control of the state". Here's her closing flourish with my italics:

"Big society might look like people on the streets with brooms or doner knives; but that's not what functional society looks like."

So, what can we assume to be Zoe's vision of a functional society? Clearly not one where members of that society do anything for that society, be it defending their property from criminals or sweeping up broken glass, unless they have a uniform and a badge, work for the state and have been instructed to do it. Functional society for Zoe is when the state controls everything, and the citizens are utterly passive, only doing what they are told, and nothing else.

What the fuck is the matter with the woman. Rush her to hospital, somebody, and give her a scan. Somebody's looted her fucking brain.

Charles Moore: Dinosaur

Chucky Moore's having a senior moment in the Telegraph: "I'm starting to think that the left might actually be right" he proclaims to widespread head-scratching.

"You see, one of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls “the free market” is actually a set-up."

Fifty years too late, Moore comes over all teenage existentialist, grappling, apparently for the first time, with marxoid quandaries, and having forgotten, if indeed he ever knew, the answers. I guess he encapsulates the unthinkingness of being a tribal politico. He's been defending positions not because he thought them right but because he thought them rightist.

Free market economics are not supposed to be surrounded by inverted commas. As someone who supports them, I am well aware that our system is not anything like as free as it could be or as it was, and this is the case in spades for the central-committee, government-monopoly monetary system, but for poor, confused Charles he thinks that's capitalism!

"As for the plight of the eurozone, this could have been designed by a Left-wing propagandist as a satire of how money-power works. A single currency is created. A single bank controls it. No democratic institution with any authority watches over it, and when the zone’s borrowings run into trouble, elected governments must submit to almost any indignity rather than let bankers get hurt. What about the workers?"

Firstly Moore ignores that he is describing a system that is economically socialistic. Secondly he is seemingly ignorant of what alternatives there have been and could be to government monopoly.

Maybe Charles thinks he'll get invited more often on the BBC with this tripe. My advice would be to educate yourself, Charles, you're a little bit too long in the tooth to have such gauchist views.

Pilger on media monoculture

John Pilger, although a leftie, gets it right sometimes, and spells out some home truths on the current media furore, such as:

'... Certainly, there is no “revolution”, as reported in the Guardian, which compared the “fall” of Murdoch with that of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania in 1989. The overexcitement is understandable; Nick Davies’ scoop is a great one. The truth is, Britain’s system of elite monopoly control of the media rests not on Murdoch’s News International alone, but on the Mail and the Guardian and the BBC, perhaps the most influential of all. All share a corporate monoculture that sets the agenda of the “news”, defines acceptable politics as maintaining the fiction of distinctive parties, normalises unpopular wars and guards the limits of “free speech”. This will only be strengthened by the allusion that a “bad apple” has been “rooted out”.'
Hat tip: Prison Planet

The martyrdom of Saint Rupert

Those who see politics as a battle between left and right, where the left is good and the right is evil, are seeking to exploit the furore over News of the World to smash Murdoch's empire and silence something they see as an enemy.

They call for regulation, but don't identify who is to do the regulating. They call for objectivity and a lack of bias. Just like the BBC, right? They say they want a free press, but what they mean is that they want a press that is less free than now. They decry the undue influence of Murdoch but won't mention the BBC elephant.

They do not believe in freedom. They are followers of the leftist ideology. Those who do not follow this ideology, in one way or another, are viewed as evil. As such, these evil-doers can and should be silenced. They only spread evil, and the public must be shielded from such influences, due to the appeal of such evil ideas.

Reader, is this you I'm describing? Are you thinking; 'What nonsense! The writer is a typical evil rightwinger sticking up for Murdoch the plutocrat. There's nothing wrong with regulation and anyway the BBC isn't biased.' If so, feel free to argue...

Hat tip for link: Ambush Predator

The power behind the throne ain't Murdoch

All of a sudden, the British media sans News International have awoken to the notion that there are powerful influences pulling strings behind the politicians. The Independent, for instance, reports on the sleepy Cotswolds village of Chipping Norton:

Within a few square miles, the Prime Minister, the most powerful woman in Britain, the most powerful PR man in Britain and the daughter of the world's leading media magnate can all be found. Anyone who wanted to claim that democracies are a sham could do worse than start here.

And yet this same paper didn't even mention the last meeting of the Bilderberg Club, in Switzerland, a month or so back, and with the exception of the Guardian, neither did anyone else in the establishment media. The only time the BBC ever mentions it is to denigrate those who think it worthy of journalistic investigation. But now we're supposed to believe that Murdoch and his flame-haired enforcer have the power to dictate policy to the PM or something.

Let's not over-egg the pudding. No doubt Murdoch has had influence, mainly due to the politicians of both major parties craving his newspapers' support to peddle pro-government propaganda. As with so much shit, it really goes back to the wertfrei period of the Blair supremacy. To begin with, it was merely political machiavellianism, but by the end Blair's closet was so stuffed with skeletons, he could have been destroyed if Murdoch had turned his hounds loose. The main problem was not Murdoch's power, but why Blair was in its thrall.

Embed a YouTube video? Get ready for felony charges

In the past, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but now the British government operate a policy of handing over anyone the US authorities, or more exactly the criminal scum who have seized control of the US authorities, desire, maybe I'll end up visiting the USA after all.

I'm referring to this story from Tech Dirt (hat tip: Max Keiser):

Senators Unconcerned About Massive Unintended Consequences Of Criminalizing People For Embedding YouTube Videos

This is really no surprise, but the same Senate Judiciary Committee that unanimously approved the PROTECT IP Act, despite worries from internet experts and major media about how it would break the internet, has now also unanimously approved the anti-internet streaming bill that makes it a felony to stream certain videos online -- potentially putting people in jail for embedding YouTube videos or just putting up YouTube lip synching videos.

What's really troubling here is that the media and plenty of concerned citizens have directly raised the issues about the unintended consequences of this law. And while Senators Amy Klobuchar, John Cornyn and Christopher Coons continue to insist that (of course) the law is not intended to be used against such people, they have made no move to fix the bill. Even supporters of this bill, who insisted that we were wrong about what the bill allowed, eventually conceded that our argument was accurate and that this bill could be used to put people in jail for embedding a YouTube video or doing a lip synch video.

And that's a huge, huge problem. Of course, no one thinks the bill is for that purpose directly or that it's going to be widely used for such purposes. However, the bill, as written, clearly allows law enforcement to charge people with a felony for that, assuming it meets a few other conditions. But those conditions are pretty minimal (ads on your page? you're in trouble...). The risk here of abuse is a serious risk, and it's incredibly troubling that Klobuchar, Cornyn and Coons failed to change or adapt the bill, and worse that the rest of the Senate Judiciary Committee allowed the bill to move forward in such a broken state. They were clearly made aware of problems with the bill, but directly chose not to make any changes. How do you explain that other than incompetence or corruption?

As Max says:

The MPAA and RIAA – the lobbying groups responsible for rewriting the Constitution to the detriment of artists and citizens – has erred on the side of extremism. Today, we are told that extremist ideologues plague our existence, and yet nothing is being done about the most extreme ideologues of all, the copyright cartel monopolists in the movie and music business.

The Daily Moss

There's nothing and no one the Daily Mail likes better than Kate Moss or, to be precise, slagging off Kate Moss, wagging that hypocritical finger and sneering at every wrinkle its paparazzi can snap. Today's article is a choice example, cataloguing the model from teenager to now, in order to show how all that hard-living has taken its toll. Since half the photos were taken as she was leaving various parties or at the airport after a long flight, it's hardly surprising if some of them show her worse for wear. Even so, she usually looks okay, and the final line about how she's almost unrecognisable is ridiculous. A series of photos of anyone over this same period of their life will show - shock! horror! - the signs of aging. So what?

Kate may well have spent the last twenty years living it up. I don't see why I should begrudge her that, and I am sure that working in a factory or an office for twenty years is worse for your youthful looks than the life of a super-model, cocaine-fuelled partying being no doubt compensated by lounging around at £5 grand-a-night resorts.

I've always had a soft spot for Kate. For one reason because she's a South London girl. For another, she's never seemed to give a flying fuck what the Daily Mail says, and quite right too.

Super-injunctions: who are the Greeks, who are the Trojans?

Firstly, the rampant prurience of the Britsh public, at least if we view our press as representative, is not something we should be proud of. Personally, I don't care about the sex lives of the rich and famous.

Secondly, in the case in point, given the above, the woman has a right to sell her story. If the man doesn't like it, tough. You make your bed, you lie in it.

Thirdly, and hence the title, I wonder where this is going. At this moment, you could look at the situation and think that the Greeks are the press and Twitter the Trojan Horse, enabling the press to break through the walls of legal constraint. Certainly, there is much talk of how the rules will have to be re-drawn. My fear is that, rather than a loosening of the control over the press, we will see instead a tightening around internet freedom, and an attempt to impose upon the internet the same strictness. The justification will be the need for our laws to conform with our masters in Europe, which guarantee a 'right' to privacy.

It will not surprise me if this issue turns toward introducing controls on internet users. Such plans are on the shelf just waiting for the opportunity to be brought into play. They may well be ineffective in stopping information leaks like the one in the spotlight, but they will serve a purpose.

Bomb Libya. It's what Jefferson would have wanted

I'm no cheerleader for Barry Obama, but this attack from Janet Daley in the Telegraph is beyond dumb. According to Daley, the Founding Fathers will be spinning in their graves because of his tardiness in starting the new war with Libya. America, she states:

"has abdicated its role as defender and standard bearer for the principle of freedom – the idea that all men are born with inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, which the great founding documents of the United States declare to be universal and not simply the birthright of residents of one nation."

Now, the Founding Fathers were a mixed bunch, and few of them emerge untarnished from close-up examination (such is life, they were flesh and blood). They also had widely divergent opinions on the key political issues. But, for what it is worth, the Constitution makes it clear who is responsible for declaring wars. And, whatever Janet Daley thinks, and whatever deluded manifest-destiny bullshit she wants to spread on her roses, that who is Congress, not the President and certainly not the UN.

There's more to say, but her stoopid article ain't worth it.

Delingpole: the unthinking man's libertarian

In politics, one often finds oneself battling those nearer to one's own position. Taken too far, it leads to micro-factionalism. Ignored completely, one's political position becomes compromised and big-tented into meaninglessness. I do not claim to represent the one true libertarianism, but I will at least try to argue the rights and wrongs of any particular case from a libertarian point of view.

Take for example what is euphemistically called an 'interventionist foreign policy'. There are many who support such adventures. Fine. But if you call yourself a libertarian, I will expect you to justify that position on the basis of libertarian principles.

As far as I can see, there is only one way to do that; to claim that the intervention is in some way not an act of aggression, but rather a defensive act, where the harm that would be caused by doing nothing outweighs the harm caused by the intervention. I will still likely take issue, seek clarification of your reasoning and go away disagreeing, but whether or not I consider you a libertarian, will depend on those answers. War is of far greater importance than, say, the issue of mandatory seatbelts. There's no point being right on all the little things, if you're wrong on the big issues. I'm not, by the way, claiming that such matters are easy to resolve, but let's not brush them under the carpet.

Now, turning to Delingpole, my attention was drawn to a piece in the Spectator, which rattles my cage in a number of ways. To begin with:

"The problem is that hardly anyone seems to understand what the ‘l’ word actually means, least of all ‘libertarians’."

What the fuck are you talking about? If there's one word everyone understands, it's 'I'. And why is libertarians in inverted commas? Well, that last is easy to guess, because James wants to attack some straw man libertarians, from his oh-so libertarian position. First up, is someone who thinks; "children shouldn’t be punished for the ‘victimless crime of not doing homework’. And that they shouldn’t have to do up their ties or tuck in their shirts, either."

By the next paragraph, this opinion has been transformed by Delingpole into "encouraging a child to indulge its natural preference for Call of Duty: Black Ops over homework." Furthermore he tells us; "I’m a scruff myself but I don’t think I can decree that all others should be scruffy too."

So the original assertion that a child should not be punished for being scruffy is transformed, without Delingpole even seeming to realise, into the non-sequitur that a child should be punished for not being scruffy. It's not the same, any more than saying 'I think people shouldn't go to jail for smoking cannabis' is the same as saying 'I think people should go to jail for not smoking cannabis'.

On we go:

"Libertarianism is not some free-for-all where the only badge of authenticity is how far you are prepared to let it all hang out. But there are quite a few self-professed libertarians who think it is."

Who's this addressed at? Not libertarians, surely? No, it's for his rightwing readers, for whom Delingpole plays the role of guide to an exotic region. He is erecting his next straw man, the one about libertarians being libertines, who wish to debauch themselves, and/or care not a fig for the poor suffering others.

"If you don’t want Dutch donkey-porn broadcast on BBC1 before 9 p.m., if you don’t want heroin vending machines in every classroom, if you’re not fighting to help enable Islamist suicide bombers to blow themselves up when and where they want, then you’re not keeping it real."

It's the mention of the BBC which gives the game away. Delingpole is too thick to realise that his straw man would necessarily be against the state-run broadcaster. I'll let his other stupid examples drop, and move on to the last page, where he briefly gets back on track, before ending in a flourish of wankery, and an appeal for some kind of 'broad church' where we can all come together against the 'big government', notwithstanding the rest of the article.

From what I can see, American libertarianism splits into the Mises people and the Koch people. I am down with the Mises people. Delingpole wants to go stroke egos at the Cato Institute, and cosy up with what's left of the neocons. It is for him to explain how his opposition to 'big government' squares with his hawkish position on 'intervention', and if he wishes to bring libertarians together in a common endeavour, he would be better debating real bones of contention, rather than duffing up paper villains.