Even the New York Times, normally fairly broad in outlook, occasionally slips. In this article on the Mexican election, the issues are summed up as:
At stake in the contest is whether the country remains on a conservative track and stays a firm United States ally or joins a trend that has brought several leftists to power in Latin America in recent years, weakening Washington’s influence.
Wow, is that it? No other issues other than how Mexico relates to the US? Who’d have thought it?
So the Conservatives’ Democracy Taskforce have come up with: banning Scottish MPs from voting on English issues. Two questions:
The Supreme Court have ruled that President Bush overstepped his authority in creating military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. The court found the “military commissions” illegal under both military justice law and the Geneva Convention. MetaFilter discusses, and their full ruling is here (pdf).
Ann Coulter or Adolf Hitler? Spot the quotes.
Rolling Stone investigates naughtiness in Ohio.
Kevin Drum in the Washington Monthly remembers the soon-to-be-ex Congressman Tom DeLay, specifically his reaction to the Columbine High School shootings. In a piece of coruscating analysis, DeLay said:
Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills.
What can you say when a man like that leaves office? For some reason I think of the famous (possibly apocryphal) comment by one colleague in John Birt’s leaving card from LWT: “Piss off Birt, and don’t come back.”
(via The Well)
I notice from Cllr Bob Piper’s blog that one of his fellow councillors on Sandwell MBC has joined the blogosphere. Unremarkable in most cases, but this blog is by one of the four BNP councillors, one Cllr Simon Smith.
In a “know thine enemy” sort of way, his one entry so far is interesting. The most notable feature is Cllr Smith’s combination of paranoia and defensiveness – the latter not generally part of the BNP house style. For instance, here’s a section of his post entitled “The Big Picture”:
I don’t profess that either the BNP or myself are always right. I’m sure there are good people in other smaller parties. I reserve the right to respect good people in those parties – what ever they might think of me is irrelevant. I hope that the British National Party becomes more than a party, more than even a cultural movement.
But he can’t stop himself running off the edge of the cliff in the next sentence:
I hope it is in the Vanguard of a New Renaissance that can destroy the wicked, some would say satanic, Globalist-Materialist world order that keeps many new discoveries, inventions and knowledge undercover, ON PURPOSE in order to maintain control.
Perhaps the strongest sense you get from reading the blog is the extent to which Cllr Smith could be on the wilder fringe of a number of more ‘respectable’ parties – UKIP, RESPECT and the WRP, for example. Those parties at the macro level stand for different sorts of things, of course, but they all stand in opposition to the mainstream – I would say rational – parties, while feeling and promoting fear of foreign, external forces.
Adrift on a wide ocean, they are clinging to different bits of flotsam – the BNP to nativism, UKIP to a sort of Gaullist touchiness, and RESPECT to … well, George Galloway, mostly. Despite being a strong supporter of rationalism, I have some sympathy for the members of those parties personally – though they are wrong in their ideas, and wrong in their perception of the world, they presumably believe themselves to be right, and that must make the world a pretty scary place to be.
Update: The comments on the post are worth reading.
A year after the French “no”, almost two thirds of French voters think their decision weakened France’s standing in Europe. Not so sure myself, but then it depends what happens to the constitutional treaty now the “period of reflection” is coming to an end. Le Monde canvasses views in the French political class.
George Galloway (by claiming it’s OK to assassinate democratically elected leaders) shown his contempt for democracy. But, perhaps more importantly, he has surely jumped the shark.
I see that John Reid has a suitably sinister photograph on the BBC News website, to illustrate a story about victims being given more rights over what happens to offenders. Next up: Modern Lynchings.