blobby blobby blobby

November 1, 2009 in architecture, moral horror

Here’s a case study in unpopular populism: ‘The ravers should have more respect for Mr Blobby. He was a hero to a lot of kids and the thought of them taking drugs and having all-night raves in his house is completely disrespectful.’.
The photographs are truly eerie. Like this one:

Of course, it was never popular in [...]

Bull

February 6, 2009 in BAE, Blair, corruption, crime, empire, ideology, intelligence and stupidity, moral horror, torture

This is wrong;
Gitmo will be closed. Binyam Mohammed will be returned to Britain, or put on trial in the USA. Either way the details of his treatment, and that of all the other inmates, will become public. What are Foggy Bottom and the CIA playing at? Get it over with
Consider this BBC story. The [...]

fruit of the poisoned tree

December 21, 2008 in Blair, Home Office, Pakistan, Tories, action, corruption, moral horror

This week we’ve had the Piccadilly bunglebombers’ convictions, but more importantly the first conviction for “directing terrorism”. This was the case in which the suspect’s fingernails were torn out by the Pakistani intelligence service; he claims, and I see no reason whatsoever to doubt this, that he was questioned between bouts of torture by British [...]

The Independent: Is Over

December 7, 2008 in Tories, class, economics, fisking, moral horror, politics, press, quackery

No wonder the Indy’s moving in with the Daily Mail; it’s taken to publishing leaders like this one, a crude bit of hard right culture war stuff which blames the Sharon Matthews case on “welfare”. Yes, really. They also rehearse the old Peter Lilley thing about “single mothers who get pregnant just to jump the [...]

a cheap holiday in other people’s misery

November 11, 2008 in moral horror, politics, socialism, wankers

I’m not so sure about this; arsewit wingnut blogger runs out of money, goes bankrupt, various people who should know better jeer.
The whole point of everything from some way to the right of centre – Bismarck or thereabouts – leftwards is that IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good [...]

Blinded By The Sun

August 25, 2008 in MOD, TWOS, Tories, action, conservatives, corruption, crime, fisking, moral horror, politics, press, torture

Tim Ireland’s new project is more necessary than ever. It’s not quite achieved the same degree of punch and professionalism that the daddy of tab-bashing blogs, BildBlog offers readers of Germany’s biggest newspaper, but give them time. (This also bothers me. When I started this blog there were one million blogs, of which 50,000 updated [...]

Curiosity is not a crime. Killing cats is.

May 24, 2008 in action, education, libertarian, moral horror, terrorism

OK, this is outrageous stupid shit of the sort we expect from our gallant allies. Simply, a graduate student at Nottingham University is writing a thesis on terrorists, and as part of this he gets a copy of an Al-Qa’ida training manual from a US government website. Being a postgrad and therefore by definition permanently [...]

The Joy of Linux

May 3, 2008 in Linux, geekage, hacker, introspection, moral horror

So I actually bought a printer; in fact, a printer/scanner. And I considered buying two pairs of jeans after showing up at the count with interesting new holes. Am I descending into bovine consumerism? And the obvious next step was to qualify it with the Linux Lappeh.
It wasn’t quite the “And then my troubles [...]

The Bombardment of Walthamstow Rages On

April 20, 2008 in France, banter, fisking, ideology, mastur/metablogging, moral horror, naval, personal history, pirates, politics

This NYT story is nonsense. Various rightwing barkies have taken the opportunity of the French armed forces’ deliciously 007-esque mission to rescue the sailing yacht Le Ponant to tout the following story around the media: the Royal Navy has been ordered not to detain pirates under any circumstances, for fear that they might something or [...]

Torture Lawyers

April 4, 2008 in Afghanistan, Blair, Iraq, conservatives, crime, cultures of war, ideology, moral horror, my own ignorance, personal history, special relationships, torture, updated

If you can read you should read this if you read nothing else this decade. It’s all about how the Americans started torturing people, whose idea it was, how men like John Yoo came to provide the legal justifications, who was keen (the ideological core of the administration), who didn’t want to know (the [...]