'Nother Solent

Abdul Rahman - so what do we actually do?

Read Doug Payton of Blogger News Network on Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity who faces death because he will not give up his faith.

When I think of the contrast between the type of martyr Abdul Rahman will be if the worst happens and the "martyrs" who target women and children in Israel, I am angry. Much good that does. Payton writes:

So what do we do? I think it's time to handle Afghanistan the way we handle any other democratic country; apply diplomatic pressure. I think the words coming from the Bush administration are what we should be doing, and perhaps negotiating with the Afghan government to try to resolve this in such a way that hopefully it will enlighten some folks there. What would be really great would be for American Muslims to raise their voices against this situation, and note how well they are treated here and how well freedom of religion works when it's properly done.

Self-government is a learned behavior. You don't learn it by voting in a few elections. However (and to "georgia10's" surprise, perhaps), you'll never get there without a bunch of purple fingers first.

"This is pretty damning."

USS Neverdock links to a story from ABC News that says recently released documents from Saddam's Iraq suggest that the Russian Ambassador gave Saddam US war plans.

As Marc Landers asks, "Who gave the war plans to the Russians?"

The second and final documents push different ways on the question of whether Saddam's Iraq and Al-Qaeda were cooperating. Given the propensity of dictators to keep their subordinates from knowing too much about each others' doings, I see nothing to surprise in the picture of one of Saddam's agencies dealing with Al-Qaeda while others had no idea what was going on.

Pointless terminological change of the week.

Half a dozen worthy points could be made when commenting on this story on children in local authority care. You handle that side of it, I'd just like to ask why what everyone used to call "children in care" have now become "looked-after children"? Were the "cared-for" children, also mentioned in the story, an intermediate stage in this transformation?

The new term offers no advantage, unless you count the opportunity it gives for cynics to observe that these children cannot be described as "looked-after" without some risk of terminological inexactitude.

Turkeyblog remembers the Detroit Free Press of his youth.

The focus of the Detroit Free Press with which I grew up was that all Detroit needed was for the poor to find a decent way to surrender their livelihoods and luxuries with sufficient grace that they wouldn't get killed. That way, their perpetual victimization could be relegated to the police blotter instead of putting Detroit on everyone's front page again.

The last line brings his memoirs up to date.

Sir Benjamin Slade

is looking for an heir in the Colonies. His own family won't do. They don't know what Sir John Slade did in the Peninsular War, the bounders. (Belated hat tip: ARC.)

4,296,806.

In Ken Livingstone's case, however, I think we can figure it out. Harry's Place and Adloyada have the story.

Unfortunately for Mr Livingstone's reputation, no report has suggested that he made his remarks while drunk.

I am left with the disturbing thought that the whole drama, and the certainty that it would be reported, might constitute a form of ... waving across a crowded room to his friends.

What Was He Thinking Of Part 4,296,805

- Tony Blair, in an otherwise strong speech against terrorism, says that Muslims who commit acts of terrorism are no more true to their faith than the "Protestant bigot" who murders Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Look, don't talk to me about numbers. Don't talk to me about the small but tangible harm done to the cause of reconciliation in Northern Ireland when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland appears - not for the first time - to wish to edit out of Northern Irish history the (as it happens) rather greater number of terrorist murders of Protestants by Catholics.

[INSERTED LATER: I was going to leave the usual caveats about how every murder is equally murder unsaid. Then I remembered that when discussing Northern Ireland you must never leave the caveats unsaid.]

I guess "Protestant or Catholic bigots who murdered their fellow Christians" wouldn't have scanned.

I don't know who comes out of this looking more ridiculous.

Tony Blair for asking Thom Yorke frontman Radiohead to meet him to discuss climate change or the wee songster himself for being too holy to mix with with the impure. Apparently Yorke is an "ambassador" for Greenpeace now. (Ambassador? Since when did poxy little pressure groups get to call their celebrity lobbyists "ambassadors"? They'll be asking for a seat at the UN next. And the UN will probably oblige.)

However ridiculous one might think it for Thom Yorke to be Ambassador to the Nation of Greenpeace, the fact is that he accepted the job. Did no one tell His Excellency that ambassadorial duties do normally include "talking to people who do not agree with you" as a pretty fundamental part of the job description?

It seems not.

"...It was just obvious there was no point in meeting him anyway, and I didn't want to.

"That was the illest I'd ever got. I got so stressed out and so freaked out about it. Initially when it came up I tried to be pragmatic. But Blair has no environmental credentials as far as I'm concerned.

"I came out of that whole period just thinking, I don't want to get involved directly, it's poison. I'll just shout my mouth off from the sidelines.

Come to think of it, did anyone tell him the job involved talking?

"There's this whole thing going on at the moment with Blair and the nuclear thing."

A decade in denial.

EU Referendum Blog remembers the last doom but two. Ten years ago almost to the day the Observer was predicting the future thus:

It is 20 March 2016, precisely 20 years on from that wet Wednesday when loyal backbenchers bounced to their feet in Westminster and began to bray, yet again, at the Opposition for scaremongering. Now, Britain's National Euthanasia Clinics churn on overtime, struggling to help 500 people a week to a dignified death before brain disease robs them of reason and self-control.

This nation, whose leaders spent a decade in denial, is now in quarantine, the world long since having shunned contact with a population in which half a million people a year succumb to CJD spread in the late twentieth century through eating beef products. The Channel Tunnel is blocked with five miles of French concrete. The health service is crippled; blood transfusions are impossible because undetectable prions infect most donors, and the strain of caring for more than two million CJD victims has overwhelmed support staff. The fabric of the nation is being torn apart.

CJD is a terrible disease and the hundred or sixty victims deserve our sympathy. But Richard has a point when he says:

The Observer was by no means on its own, with the whole media, broadcast as well as printed, indulging in an orgy of scaremongering and recriminations. Small wonder, therefore, that ten years later - on a date that coincides with the anniversary of the Iraqi invasion, to which copious coverage is given – not a single media source, usually besotted with anniversaries, has chosen to mark the events of ten years ago.

It does not follow from this that bird flu is not a real risk. After all, flu epidemics have killed tens of millions in the last century. But I'd take anything the Observer says on the subject with a prion of salt.

Chris Tame has died. He was founder and president of the Libertarian Alliance. In the tribute that Antoine Clarke has posted on Samizdata you can read just one of the many ways in which his ideas helped change the world. I am not exaggerating; read this:

One of my proudest moments was in the Mozart House in Bratislava in August 1991, in the actual room where Mozart gave a performance aged 5. I read out your "Taxation is Theft" LA pamphlet to a room full of politicians.... and years later, the Slovak government brought in a flat tax. Some of the people who did this heard my speech and your arguments.

I'm not going to let mere death stop me from saying this: All hail the ruling junta!

Britblog roundup

is square and down! Er no. I'll get that right in a minute, meanwhile here it is.

My favourite of the posts I've read so far? This one from Liberty Central.

In case you’ve missed the start of this whole debate, this is how the purpose of the bill was described by Cabinet Officer Minister, Jim Murphy, at the start of its committee stage:

“The Bill builds on the Regulatory Reform Act 2001. It aims to deliver on the Government’s agenda of better regulation. As part of that, however, we need to ensure through our deliberations in these eight sittings that there is a correct level of effective parliamentary scrutiny. Ultimately, however, the Bill is intended to maintain the UK’s competitiveness, free up public sector workers and others from bureaucracy, and remove unnecessary regulation.”

So why does a bill that is supposedly designed to “maintain the UK’s competitiveness, free up public sector workers and others from bureaucracy, and remove unnecessary regulation” need to include the power to amend core constitutional legislation?

Does the government think that Scotland’s constitutional right to its own independent judiciary is ‘uncompetitive’?

Is Habeas Corpus an ‘unnecessary regulation’?

Is Habeas Corpus an ‘unnecessary regulation’? That should be the rallying cry of the nation. Trouble is, some of the present government probably do believe exactly that.