There are many weird things on the Internet. One of the weirdest I’ve seen recently is a whole website dedicated to the thesis that disgraced politician Neil Hamilton is a thoroughly honourable man.

The site claims that Mr Hamilton was set up by a conspiracy led by the Guardian (which, apparently, controls British society). The anti-Hamiltonians also include the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, Martin Bell, Geoffrey Robertson, Charles Moore, Conrad Black, ITN, the BBC, Granada TV, and Private Eye. Strange that they’d team up purely in order to smear Mr Hamilton: obviously the man was more of a threat to the Established Order than we ever thought…

Side note: did Neil Hamilton once win a libel action against someone who called him a ‘crook’ (on the basis that he’d never been convicted of a crime)? I thought he had, but Googling doesn’t seem to dig anything up.

"The Left are fascists, because they don’t hate Muslims as much as I do. They’re also responsible for the rise of the BNP, because if the intelligencia don’t hate Muslims then working-class white people have no choice but to become neo-Nazis." – but in more academic language

I’m moderately distraught that Norm Geras, who has some odd views but isn’t a total and utter bastard, has let this guy post this hate-filled screed on his site…

"There are two components working to destroy British society and western civilization, the left and Islam." – ‘Dwight‘. Poor bastard probably belived the Cold War was a real threat too…

Who owns The Scotsman? It’s one of the most consistent peddlers of Bushite conspiracy theory around, at least outside of the rightwing blogophere….

I’d be willing to stake my life on a large proportion of the ‘facts’ cited in this article being false, given their complete lack of consistency with any other sane analysts’ views on the London bombings, and the way they seem entirely contrived to support the rightwing ‘we should lock them all up and torture them like the Yanks do’ mantra.

Wow, this was a really good post. It actually says, in a moderately entertaining and extremely concise fashion, all one needs to say about outsourcing. I’m pleasantly surprised…

(this may be the start of an occasional feature: articles I’d forgotten about written before anyone came here and which attracted no comments, found by Google searches that randomly turned up my archives.)

And again, yay!

The Fiend is absolutely, entirely, 100% right. I defy you – Decent Left, Indecent Right, or otherwise – to disagree…

Via Tim’s roundup, which is worthwhile as always.

Raed (Salam Pax’s erstwhile correspondent) in Iraq has an interesting post: his brother has been arrested by the secret police for writing anti-occupation articles.

But remember, Raed’s brother would have been killed, not just arrested, under Saddam. And as long as the new government is better than one of the most evil regimes ever to exist, the invasion was justified. Was that worth a minimum of 25,000 civilians killed by violence, you ask? Look, purple fingers!

I’m normally a fan of Scott Burgess. But I’m not sure I approve of starting a witch-hunt to get someone fired for their religious views…

Update: "religious views" is unfair to Scott, and Hizb ut Tahrir is certainly a highly unpleasant organisation. In general, though, I’m not particularly comfortable with seeking to expunge people from view because their political views are viewed as dodgy – it all seems a bit McCarthyite (I oppose all no-platform policies, against the BNP or Islamists or whoever, for the same reason). And I’d be delighted if the Daily Mail were to employ a KKK-affiliated commentator (as long as the pieces published were no more hateful and bigoted than the rest of that organ’s output, which would be a challenge even for the most dedicated cross-burners.)

Wow. A breathtakingly ridiculous article from Daniel Pipes on terrorism in Europe.

The piece’s thesis is that Britain is soft on terror and terrorists, while France is hardcore. His evidence for this thesis is that we allow a load of nutters to preach silly things and allow schoolgirls to wear headscarves, whereas the French deport or jail nutters who preach silly things, and expel schoolgirls who wear headscarves.

The particularly astute may be able to detect a small flaw in Mr Pipes’s argument: it has fuck all to do with terrorists or terrorism. The guy calls himself a Middle East expert, but he can’t even understand the difference between expressing unpleasant views and blowing shit up.

Out of the manic mosque preachers that Britain has tolerated, approximately none have been involved in any terrorist attacks. Terrorists, oddly enough, tend to plan their attacks in secret, which means that they *don’t* go out in public to talk about re-establishing the Caliphate.

None of this means that the British authorities are any good at catching terrorists, or that the French aren’t. But it’s telling that Pipes can provide no evidence at all for this theory, but plenty of evidence that he thinks counterterrorism consists entirely of the oppression of all Muslims. Nice chap…