On not being a whining twat

The main lesson to draw from the BBC Director General’s amusing biting habit appears to be that his bitten colleague, Anthony Massey, is a bit of a cock: trying to enforce "the whole [employer’s] disciplinary process" is reasonable if you’re discriminated against or persistently bullied, but is an lame thing to do to someone over a single mostly-harmless incident.

Still, it pales into insignificance compared with the Republicans’ wonderful attempts to force academics to respect the stupid beliefs of the fundie, Fox-watching community. "The law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities" – did someone say frivolous lawsuits…?

(left-wing PC often pisses me off as well. But at least it’s founded on obviously-true principles such as ‘discriminating against people on the grounds of race and gender is not only bad, but also easy to do accidentally through modes of speech and jumping to conclusions about people’s character, so we should try and stop it’. Right-wing PC is broadly founded on principles such as ‘it hurts my feelings when you point out how stupid my views are, so we should try and stop it’.)

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Vigilantes: worse than paedophiles?

Discuss, with reference to this appalling bunch of cunts.

Seriously, why the fuck has society developed the view that abusing children is worse than murder, when it’s patently obvious to anyone who isn’t insane that murder is worse than abusing children? (should you be sceptical of this, I recommend you speak to someone who was abused as a child and suggest that they would be better off if they were dead).

(via Laban)

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Lies, bad laws, and neocons

Rage, rage against the lying of the Right, and the dangerous distortions of the centre. Grr. And maniacs claim America has a liberal media?

Bah. We’re just as bad: although I’m broadly pro-EU, the European arrest warrant is exactly as dangerous and stupid as the new UK-US extradition treaty. Which is very. There’s a good chance that the European Court of Human Rights will ultimately find in favour of Gerhard Haderer, but it’s still absolutely insane that an Austrian satirist risks being jailed in a backwards third-world kleptocracy for drawing Jesus as a stoned surfer. Just as it’s insane that three British bankers might be tried in a Texan kangaroo court for allegedly defrauding their London-based employer in London.

Speaking of corrupt bankers, dsquared at the resurrected Crooked Timber has a heartwarming piece on why Paul Wolfowitz might not be such a bad choice after all for President of the World Bank.

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The epitomy of the American soul

"[Cuban exiles] have been nothing more and nothing less than the epitomy of the American soul. And who have strived for not only the betterment of their lives and the progress and enrichment of the country that adopted them, but for what is morally and ethically right." – Val Prieto.

Well done to TV’s The West Wing, for inspiring the best tirade of pompous buffoonery I’ve seen quite in some time. I’m always amused when I think of Castro’s ingenious plan for making Cuba a better place in the early 1980s: after the US said it would give residence to any Cuban exiles who showed up, he packed the country’s madmen and criminals onto boats and sent them to Miami. This does say some things about the American soul, although probably not the ones Mr Prieto is thinking of.

(obviously Fidel Castro, while better than most US-backed Latin American rulers over the last 50 years, is a wanker and a tyrant. It’s just that the Miami Cubans exude wankerishness to such an extent that it’s hard not to support the other side of the debate on a basic and instinctive level…)

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Ignore God, Harry, and St George!

"One of my favourite English traditions, however, is under serious threat. And not from those evil bureaucrats in the EU meddling in our affairs, not from transnational corporations sucking the blood out of communities. No, this time the enemy is definitely ‘within’.

"What tradition is this? It is, of course, that fabulous English insistence on completely ignoring St George’s Day. While other nations arrange parades, concerts, flag-wavings and general emotional excess to celebrate their national days, the English have always proudly declared their identity as a people by doing absolutely nothing."

I both like, and agree with, Third Avenue. The lack of flagwaving nationalistical bollocks is one of the things which makes me proud to be English.

Meanwhile, the fact that we’re so surprised when we win the rugby that we cut off our own bollocks is one of the things which makes me proud to be Welsh. Alongside Dirty Sanchez. Indeed, there seems to be a strong self-mutilation element to the Welsh side of my personality.

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NuLab epitaph

"Too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack[ing] a foundation of public trust and confidence" – the London School of Economics

Actually, the LSE’s report is only talking about the government’s ID card scheme (PDF). Nonetheless, it does seem to shed some light on common threads across many different policy strands…

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Not dhim at all

Found while looking for something entirely different, this piece is an excellent overview of Muslims’ position in Europe.

The author’s main conclusion is that there’s no reason to expect serious problems integrating Muslims into European society, unless Europeans end up following wankers like Sam Huntington and treating Muslims as a serious problem. Except that he’s much more reasoned, academic and polite than that summary might imply.

Well worth a read, whichever way you swing on the issue.

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Glenn gets it wrong

Says the Instatwat: "GOOGLE NEWS’ JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS: Nazis welcome, mainstream bloggers not.". This doesn’t make much sense, given that he’s linking to a story about how Google News will carry stories from this horrible bunch of Nazis, but not this horrible bunch of Nazis.

It would be better if Google News didn’t carry stories from *either* bunch of Nazis. Nonetheless, despising everything that LGF stands for is a praiseworthy enough attitude to atone for a myriad of other sins.

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