I Got Trolled

A lot of newpaper columns are actually examples of trolling- coming out with things that leave readers incredulous and fuming- which generates page views and comments that keeps the advertisers happy.

This is an example, the troll in question Ellie Mae O'Hagan is good. Writing on the subject of Charlie Gilmour's 16 month prison sentence she lays it on thick:

He simply should not be imprisoned for crimes that hurt nobody. 

Outrage level-Tut tutting loudly.

certainly Gilmour did wrong although, having admitted that he had taken LSD and Valium prior to the protests, it's arguable whether he was wholly responsible for some of his more extreme idiocy.

Outrage level- Simmering in silence.

Perhaps, given this background, it was inevitable that Gilmour would be made an example of: living evidence that one does not question the order of things. During the protests he was filmed shouting "they've broken the moral laws, so we must break all the laws!" and this desire to question has cost him, unfairly to my mind, his liberty.

Outrage level- Explosive Rage. He actually says "we must break all the laws" yet she twists that into "a desire to question" IN THE SAME F***ING SENTENCE!!!!!

And as more and more people are criminalised, what is this all for? If the public sincerely feels safer knowing an LSD-riddled student is behind bars for the next year, we have become a paranoid nation indeed. And nobody benefits from a society where lack of dissent is the result of fear, not happiness.

Outrage level- Fist through monitor!

UK Uncut Have The Popular Touch

UK Uncut tells it's hardy supporters to- "Come dressed as a worker; a nurse, a teacher, a builder, or anything you choose."

Imitating the life of one of the lower orders is a sure way to earning their love and respect as Marie Antoinette could tell them!

Via Brendan O'Neill.

???? World peace

Tell me if I am missing a step here:

1.  Colonel Gadaffi has WMD programme. Is a bastard to Libyan people.
2. Colonel Gadaffi agrees to disband WMD programme. Remains a bastard to Libyan people.
3. NATO commits itself to regime change because Colonel Gadaffi is a bastard to Libyan people.
4. We ask Iran, Pakistan, North Korea & Syria who are all bastards to their own people to give up their WMDs.
5. ????
6. World Peace

Whilst I do see why protecting Benghazi from a massacre is a worthwhile objective extending the mission to depose Gadaffi- an admittedly disgusting creature- sends out a message to all of the other states in the international rogues' gallery- "Don't give up your WMDs under any circumstances or you will be annihilated".

War: The Answer To All Life's Problems.

War is doing a better job of species conservation than the WWF, the wildlife charity that is not the Wrestling organisation (although they probably don't do that much conservation either):

Indian Kashmir's wildlife population has seen a dramatic increase after two decades of fighting scared off poachers and hunters from the region, a wildlife official said on Tuesday.

Similarly 50 million people died in World War 2 but it did wonders for replenishing the North Sea cod stocks, so it's an ill wind that blows no good.

Bad Art & Fanaticism.

Before he became a war criminal, the former Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was a poet, in fact he even appeared on the BBC's arts programme Bookmark to discuss his poetry back in 1992 when they didn't do anything so vulgar as probe non-literary activities such as ethnic cleansing that philistines like me would have thought worth mentioning. It kind of puts last week's Question Time into perspective.

I don't speak Serbo-Croat but I'd be willing to guess that his poems were on a level with Saddam's novels and Hitler's paintings, which is to say crap. I don't say this out of simple prejudice or because I've internalised a kind of Halo Effect, in which I assume that someone dreadful couldn't possibly have redeeming qualities, but because of an observation made by Eric Hoffer more than 6 decades ago in The True Believer:

Marat, Robespierre, Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler are outstanding examples of fanatics arising from the ranks of noncreative men of words. Peter Viereck points out that most of the Nazi bigwigs had artistic and literary ambitions which they could not realize. Hitler tried painting and architecture; Goebbels, drama, the novel and poetry; Rosenberg, architecture and philosophy; von Shirach, poetry; Funk, music; Streicher, painting. "Almost all were failures, not only by the usual vulgar criterion of success but by their own artistic criteria." Their artistic and literary ambitions "were originally far deeper than political ambitions: and were integral parts of their personalities."

The creative man of words is ill at ease in the atmosphere of an active movement. He feels that its whirl and passion sap his creative energies. So long as he is conscious of the creative flow within him, he will not find fulfillment in leading millions and in winning victories.

In other words fanaticism is a refuge for failure. I know some genuinely talented people have fanatical views, in fact extremism is often almost de rigour, but they don't actually take in the movement itself, they write a few words in support or wear a Sandinista tee-shirt they don't become key players in the movements.

Guess The Publication.

Without googling guess which publication this passage appears in:

I doubt there will be an American apology in my lifetime for the holocausts of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. I count them as atrocities, and don't buy the convenient line that they saved tens of thousands of American lives.

It's not the Morning Star or the Socialist Worker.

Class War.

As Laban Tall notes the disruption of Stansted Airport by supposed environmental activists looks a lot like a bunch of spoilt brats deciding to wreck the holidays of the lower orders. Direct action often comes across as the petulant rage of a priviliged class (to borrow a phrase) outraged that their opinions of what must be done don't carry any more weight than those of their feudal inferiors in a modern democracy.

Bea-ing Ridiculous. (Updated)

If there is one characteristic that I particularly envy among professional columnists is their uncanny judge of character, honest. After the conviction of Karen Matthews for the abduction of her daughter Shannon it seems like a good time to revisit Bea Campbell's class war column on the subject from earlier this year:

Karen Matthews has acted appropriately throughout: she was waiting for Shannon at home; she contacted the police as soon as she had exhausted all the obvious locations.

Apart from with the bloke she gave her to.

And yet, our eye is drawn to her poverty, numbers of partners, cans of lager going into her household. Everything about Ms Matthews' life has been up for scrutiny.

This appears to have been quite astute.

Karen Matthews has been subjected to a Today programme interrogation that appeared to position the mother as the perpetrator: Sarah Montague asked her seven times about her lifestyle. Her patronising preoccupation was how many men there have been in her life, not her judgment about them. Has any other, apparently blameless mother been so sweetly assailed?

Sarah Montague 1, Bea Campbell 0.

{the McCann's} resources - money, looks, religion, organisation, focus (all a function of class) - were all mobilised to protect them and to obscure the question of culpability. It was the McCann's photo-opportunity with the Pope that eventually exposed the campaign to criticism as inappropriate, not to say unseemly.

Unseemly!?

No one thought Karen Matthews had abducted or killed her daughter - and yet she has been judged. Some commentators think they can say anything they like about this woman and even to her. She has spoken with reticent dignity, yet her class makes her available for blame.

Nope her obvious unsuitability as a parent appalled most people, who kept their silence because of the awful situation they believed that she was in.


Update: Most spectacular volte face ever? (Via Marcus at Harry's Place and Julia)

Shameless Seamus & Sad Vlad.

Having you illusions shattered is never easy, I remember how I cried for days when I learned that Santa Claus wasn't real, it ruined my 21st birthday. Now another dream is coming to an end because it appears that far from being a well informed expert on current affairs, Seamus Milne is in fact an utter ignoramus who bullshits his way through subjects he is barely capable of comprehending and butchers the facts mercilessly in order to fit the party line. In his latest column Shameless informs his loyal readers:

There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer."

It's only the West that objects to Russia's behaviour. Alas the rest of the world doesn't appear to want to play along with Milne's wish fulfillment fantasy of the third world masses uniting behind a challenger to AmeriKKKan capitalist hegemony.

Russia faced increased diplomatic isolation over its military action against Georgia on Thursday, with its Asian allies failing to offer support and France saying EU leaders were considering sanctions.....

Even China, which often sides with Russia in diplomatic disputes, issued a veiled criticism of Moscow's actions, saying it was "concerned about the latest changes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia" and calling for dialogue to resolve the issue.

In fact Putin is now claiming that the Americans made him attack Georgia. This would be like George Bush claiming that the Bilderberg Group were behind the invasion of Iraq. Searching for conspiracy theories is quite common, but when the man who makes the decisions claims that that the Illuminati are behind it all this is either full blown insanity or desperate backtracking from someone who has overplayed his hand.

This supports the theory I put forward last week that Putin is in fact a moron.

An Own Goal In The Class War.

As is now quite well known Labour a resorting to some very ugly class war rhetoric in the Crewe and Nantwich by election. One of the things they've decided to highlight is the fact that the Conservative candidate is driving around in a Bentley.

As a Labour PPC, Lucy Powell writes on the Guardian politics blog:

The view, in Crewe at least, seems to be that local people want a local champion, someone who will stand up for them in parliament, who is in touch with their concerns and will deliver for them. In this Labour town, they're not convinced that the Tory candidate will do this. (Driving around campaigning in Bentleys isn't helping, although the only Tory campaigner I saw was in a classic MG).

Aside from the fact that Labour's 'local champion' is from Wales and her only connection with the constituency is that her mother previously held the seat, the Bentley swipe is spectacularly ill judged as the subsequent comments make clear:

Are you sure you were in Crewe, the home of Bentley Motors? Bentley, and its local suppliers, are a major employer in the town

And:

Funniest post I've read for days.

"driving around campaigning in Bentleys isn't helping"

You think?

Company Profile

Bentley Motors Ltd

Company Address Pyms Lane,
Crewe,
Cheshire,
CW1 3PL

As well as:

Err, I am a Crewe voter and I do so happen to be employed at the Pyms Lane Bentley factory.

Incompetent as well as nasty.