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.

I’m posting this Dilbert strip partly because it struck a chord, but mostly so that I can link to it in the context of future Internet debate:

"[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…)

"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.

"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…

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.

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.

"The Muslim fundamentalists use a provision of Islamic law called ‘bringing to account’ (hisba)… Hisba is a medieval idea that had all [but] lapsed when the fundamentalists brought it back in the 1970s and 1980s. In this practice, any individual can use the courts to intervene in the private lives of others." – Juan Cole

As Dr Cole notes, it’s lucky that we in the West have gone far beyond such medieval practices.

"The only editorially independent Arab TV station might have to close. Wahey! Now the Arabs will have to believe what we tell them."

I don’t understand why anyone sane would want Al Jazeera to close down. Then again, I don’t understand why anyone purporting to represent the forces of civilisation would deliberately bomb the station’s offices, so maybe I just need to get with the programme.

Viva fascism. Down with journalists who disapprove of government plans. Destroy people who oppose the Iraqi occupation. Is that better?

The Times has something that purports, perhaps misleadingly, to be a story with the angle that counterfeit goods are being used to fund Al Qaeda.

Author Jon Ungoed-Thomas has mostly reproduced bullshit talking points from the luxury goods firms (e.g. ‘Arab counterfeiters might give money to Muslim charities, which might fund terrorists’), instead of actually investigating whether there’s any evidence that counterfeit goods are, err, being used to fund Al Qaeda.

Intellectual property-related industries have trouble arguing for tighter controls on and enforcement against copying. The reason they have trouble is that virtually nobody in their right mind actually believes copying software or making fake luxury goods is wrong, unless you try and rip people off by selling them as genuine.

So how can you make people stop buying fake items? Simple. We all hate the terrorists – so put together three or four luxury goods PR men, an IP cop who really should know better (presumably he’s annoyed about having the most lame and pointless job in the entire police force), a heavily-deadlined journo who isn’t going to question them too much – and lo, you have a page of propaganda.

One of the IP people in the article does, tangentially, mention a sane argument against buying fakes: "people need to think about… the often appalling conditions in which these items are produced". Presumably the anti-counterfeiting brigade rejected this talking point partly because they think we’re all too sick to give a monkey’s about Third World suffering unless we think the darkies are going to come and kill us (which is pretty much the case), and partly because that might make us think about the luxury goods firms’ own contractors too.

(article via Eric)