'Nother Solent

Two minutes is about as long as I can stand

in this room, which faces south. Here’s some speed blogging from the furnace. Pinochet. Cuthbertson, Crozier, Goldstein, me.

Marriage. Micklethwait, quoting Lileks. Bachini comments. Also Breen, quoting Kamm.

And Jim Miller scores, with some great Orwell quotes on anti-Americanism half a century ago.

Let's celebrate the summer!

I haven’t had a Moppets & Martyrs Calendar entry for simply ages. LGF has several years' worth. To be strictly accurate, some of them don't qualify. Merely dressing up the tots in warlike gear doesn't count: you have to want your children dead to get that coveted M & M slot. But Palestinian parents have come up trumps again, and there are several worthy entries. Those kids dipping their hands in red gloop to reenact a lynching didn't quite qualify, but what a splendid effort they made, eh?

Solidarity with the workers of Scarborough? That indefatigable foe of imperialism, Dave Dudley, has written an inspirational account of his soul-searching as to where a true son of the Revolution can get a sun-tan without guilt.

The safety god demands lies as his offering.

Today I went to the regular Wednesday viewing for tomorrow's sale at our local auction house. This isn't the posh sale but what they call the 'general' sale and everyone else the 'Thursday junk auction.' The catalogue (priced at 50p) bears this message:

IMPORTANT NOTICE CONCERNING POST-1950 FURNITURE.
All items of furniture included in this sale are offered for sale as works of art. The items may not comply with the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) Safety Regulations 1988 and for this reason, they should not be used in a private dwelling.

The first thing to understand about this is that it is bullshit. The guy who wrote it knew it was bullshit and the people who read it know it is bullshit. No-one on God's good earth buys a 1970s armchair as a work of art, or if they do they probably bought it as a job lot with California from the Emperor Napoleon in the next bed. Nor does one buy a 1981 reproduction oak coffee table (slight surface damage) for one's office, not if one wants to keep one's creditors from panicking.

You know, the calling of auctioneer has not always had the best press, but this outfit has always seemed respectable enough to me. Been going a long time, too, right back to the days of monthly horse sales, which implies that they didn't make too many enemies in and around a small market town. And now they have to tell stupid lies and we have to pretend to believe them. The Harlot's cry from Street to Street Shall weave Old England's winding Sheet, said William Blake, but I'm not sure the legal disclaimer isn't weaving it faster.

For a moment

, while I posted this rant about the evil of Ryanair over at Samizdata, I forgot how hot it was.

Possible puppy picture.

John Weidner of Random Jottings has kindly said he will post a puppy picture I emailed him. I know, I ought to learn to do it myself, but this is quicker. Besides, my brain has turned to mush.

UPDATE: Definite puppy picture - but it's at the new Random Jottings at http://www.randomjottings.net/

Oliver Kamm's deconstruction of Beatnik Salad's praise of the Baader Meinhof gang is much more than a fisking; it taught me plenty I did not know. For instance the small but fascinating detail about the difference between "fraction" (as in Red Army Fraction) and "faction" in revolutionary politics. Kamm also quotes an article by Paul Berman on the political evolution of Hans-Joachim Klein, a German would-be revolutionary who was sent to train in an Arab country:

Klein did not specify which country. But wherever it was, he was not happy. He found himself in a military training ground where, in one part of the camp, European leftists singing left-wing songs received their anti-Zionist military training, and, in another part, European fascists singing fascist songs received their own anti-Zionist military training.

I doubt Mr Kamm's post will change the attitudes of its intended recipient. It was not lack of background knowledge that caused the author, 'Ryan in Manchester', to write as he did; it was lack of human sympathy for people who can be placed in enemy categories and morbidly swollen sympathy for people who can be placed in progressive categories.

Incidentally, the post above complains that it was arrogance for Oliver Kamm to put his hostile comments in his own blog instead of in the comments box. Why? That's what Oliver Kamm's (or anyone else's) personal blog is for, to bring together the author's thoughts on all sorts of subjects, at least half of which will be sparked off by someone else's post. That's the deal on offer at the Oliver Kamm shop. In this post on his Culture Blog, Brian Micklethwait talks about personal versus theme blogs in a much less controversial vein. Some estimable commenters don't have their own blog but prefer to flit from place to place leaving their views wherever they go - which is good luck for the other blogs thus pollinated, but the downside is that there is no central place to go to find their stuff.

Nor is there anything wrong in Kamm rendering himself "untouchable" by not having comments. So long as he doesn't stop Ryan speaking as he pleases he is under no obligation to allow himself to be touched. Someone likened having comments on your blog to having a permanent party, open to all, taking place in your living room: some people might thrive on it, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to keep some space as your own. And you have to continually tidy up after the guests, even when you don't have to eject them bodily.

When I started blogging, back in the Jurassic i.e. November 2001, comments software was unheard of. (Eee, back then we dinna even have permalinks.) You just sent someone an email saying "I have commented on your blog", or trusted that they were one of your regular readers. This is still the way I do it. There were and are certain advantages: comments are fewer but longer than if someone just pops off a quick note of approval or disapproval in a comment box. Also you don't have to learn scary computer stuff or pay any money, and the site is quicker to load.

As it happens, what with the advent of Laptop, the kids being home for the summer holidays, and the non-political writing I do from home, I am beginning to feel a little overwhelmed with the number of comments received by Biased BBC, where I serve as letters editor. At the outset it was me who suggested not having comments software over there, fearing a deluge of junk deliberately designed to gum up the works. I may have to eat my words. Encouragingly, Iain Murray and Patrick Crozier have both said that their fears when opening comments pages have not come to pass. Yet I still feel that this blog is by definition my show and I want to keep control over who else gets to be a guest exhibitor, so to speak.

UPDATE: I just finally got to read the comments to Beatnik's Salad post, which were taking a long time to load for some reason. Jackie D of Au Currant says what I said but better.

UPDATE AND BOO-BOO ALERT. Oops. Jackie D whose comment I just mentioned and The Green Fairy, to whom I initially attributed the comment, are poles apart. My explanation is that it was rather difficult to tell at first glance whether the attribution referred to the text above or below. Pathetic excuse, I know. Regard the link to the Green Fairy's site as a special gift bonus.

Take a look

at http://semiskimmed.net, more formally known as "The Sporadic Chronicles". Or a ferocious beast belonging to a mate of the editor will bite your nose off.

On a similar subject: Jay Cantor (cat person) writes

Natalie, Natalie! How awful of you! You got a (obviously little, cute and adorable) PUPPY and you don't blog a picture! Or even a link! How cruel! How else now are your legion (well, regiment anyway) of blogosphere fans going to able to gurgle, coo and go AWWWWW with you over the new baby? Please correct this a.s.a.p. THE BLOGOSPHERE NEEDS TO KNOW!!!

Why don't I post pictures? Because I haven't the faintest idea how. You can all write in telling me, if you like, and weeks from now when I have stopped going into a state of nervous prostration every time the little beastie tenses his rear leg muscles, I will do something about it.

He is awfully sweet though. To prevent our innocent puppy being upset by hate mail from enraged cat people (unlike the tolerant Jay Cantor) I shall conceal his real name on this blog and refer to him as "Laptop." Why this name? (1) He fits on a lap quite nicely (2) that's the other thing we could have had for the money.

Another possible name came up in e-conversation with Captain J M Heinrichs. I'd blipped him an e-mail apologising for my lack of response to a couple of his and he said

I feared the Anathema, and was contemplating the steps required to avoid such. On hearing of the new resident chez les Solent, I knew I was merely being overlooked, possibly ignored, but such has been my life; I am stronger for it, really I am.

If only I'd called him* Anathema I could have had the pleasure of saying, "Anathema sit." (Not my pun. I think it's one of Terry Pratchett's.)

*The puppy, I mean. I was not present at Captain Heinrichs' naming. Though, come to think of it a "Captain Anathema" would certainly strike fear into the hearts of Canada's enemies.

Evil tidings from modern Britain

. There were two disturbing letters to the Telegraph yesterday. The correspondence had started when the British Ambassador to Germany said that our obsession with WWII was causing German visitors to be insulted in the street. Here is the first letter, from Maciej Pomian-Srzednicki, who, jjudging from his name, might have cause to know about nationalist abuse. He says that the victims are not just German; the yobs are not fussy about their prey:

These incidents are a sign of our inability to prevent the gradual disintegration of order in our society, and are not a consequence of deficiencies in the teaching of foreign languages, an idiosyncratic sense of humour and biased history teaching.

He's right. The yobs goading schoolchildren are the direct descendants of the mobs who followed Titus Oates. Old Adam is never put down. He is always ready to break out again whenever society's guard is down, as it has been these last forty years. In contrast I think the American author of the second letter, V L Mahoney, is quite mistaken about the motivations behind at least some of the abuse his family has suffered.

If someone were to perform a study across this country, it would soon emerge that anyone from a foreign nation is stereotyped because of their cultural, physical or linguistic differences.

As an American family living here, we have been repeatedly verbally abused. Sadly, the abuse often comes from people who are educated enough to know better.

Obviously at a moral level those who insult Germans or Italians for their nationality and those who insult Americans for theirs are the same. However the groups of people doing the insulting were, I would guess, quite different. The people "educated enough to know better" will not stereotype "anyone from a foreign nation," only Americans, Israelis (increasingly) or white Africans (decreasingly). With anyone else they will exercise an almost painful sensitivity. It's political, of course, and as far as they are concerned it's not insult it's political education.

Bjørn Stærk has two excellent posts. One is about the lack of repentance by and excoriation of all the Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao-worshippers of the 70s:

Focus on the extremist minorities, on [Norwegian far left political grouping] AKP (m-l)'s support for Pol Pot and other surrealisms, is necessary and just, but risks taking the place of a harder, more important task. Who said what and why isn't as important as staking a new course away from the blast zone of the whole damned era, a course that rescues feminism from the feminists, environmentalism from the environmentalists, global awareness from the anti-globos, the fight for peace and democracy from the neo-pacifists. One that emphasizes individual liberties against paternalism, and knowledge, curiosity and honesty against ideology and dogmatism. The course already exists - we've been working at it for more than 2000 years - but we have to choose to rejoin it.

The post below is about Jessica Lynch, and the way the Norwegian papers pretend that they are revealing secrets the US papers will not.