Smearing opponents as anti-semitic
A favourite tactic of die-hard defenders of Israel is to smear critics of the country’s policies through guilt by association, lies, and decontextualised quotations.
I have come to know this latter strategy quite well. Based on short extracts, or even a single sentence, from two out of the 100 plus articles I’ve published, I have been accused of ‘understanding anti-semitism’ and ‘defending’ Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial.
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Could Red Toryism deeply wound the left?
Red Toryism is perhaps the only intellectually interesting debate that has come from the right over the last, say, 20 years. In many ways it firms up the superficial ‘compassionate conservatism’ agenda that David Cameron had borrowed from Republicans in the US, while he avoided the nasty immigration rhetoric that habitually eminates from the Tories like a bad smell.
But what I like about Red Toryism, and the very reason it poses a great philosophical threat to the left and an electoral threat to Labour, is because it is a deeply emotional philosophy.
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The neo-nazi “threat”
What are we to make then of Neil Lewington, the latest in a string of neo-Nazis to be convicted of terrorism offences?
There is one constant between Robert Cottage, Martyn Gilleard and Lewington, which is either reassuring or worrying, depending on your view: despite their world view, whether it be imminent race war, or the intention to try to start one, all were only interested in “small” explosive devices.
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US opens asylum to sexually abused women
The Obama administration has opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic beatings and sexual abuse to receive asylum in the United States. The action reverses a Bush administration stance in a protracted and passionate legal battle over the possibilities for battered women to become refugees.
There are still strict criteria but the move is to be celebrated nevertheless.
It also struck me that in addition to foreign policy, the environment and a whole rage of domestic issues like healthcare and science – Obama really is trying to eke out a different agenda despite the establishment inertia. And yet there are still hard-left ranters who keep saying there’s little difference between Obama and Bush. It boggles the mind.
Political incorrectness gone mad
You may have heard it mentioned by conservatives that certain opinions are practically off-limits, and that lefties have been preventing people from arguing that, say, the traditional family is the best way of raising children or that immigration should be reduced.
For example, I have read or seen these opinions argued for, and claims made about how they have been suppressed, in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Evening Standard, by religious leaders of all the major faiths, by the Conservative Party, the UK Independence Party, the British National Party, in bookshops, in reports produced by think tanks, on the telly, on the radio, and, of course, on the internet (this is not an exhaustive list).
I therefore conclude that us lefties are obviously doing a pretty hopeless job of using political correctness to stifle freedom of speech, and need to jolly well try a bit harder.
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How Tory bloggers spun Coulson
There has been an intriguing side-show to Coulsongate / NotW blagging story: the speed at which many Tory bloggers came out to distance themselves from Coulson, to Guido Fawkes who insisted that the Guardian were wasting their time with the whole issue. Yesterday showed that not to be the case at all.
And indeed the affair raises some very important questions about the context of bloggers versus lobby journalists.
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Hypocrisy and the Conservative family fetish
The Family – what does it mean, this ephemeral concept that makes Tory policymakers so very moist and excited? It doesn’t mean any old bunch of people bound together by blood and love. Ian Duncan Smith’s vision of The Family as propounded in his new policy paper, Every Family Matters, is the relatively recent kitsched-out 1950s incarnation of the nuclear heterosexual brood: you know, one man and one woman bound in holy wedlock, living together with their genetic offspring, him in the office, her in the kitchen.
Well, that rules out my family for a start, and probably yours too. And yet Tory wallahs – not even in power yet but already slavering to sink their teeth into Labour’s social reforms – get all gooey over The Family. All you need to do is have a shyster mention ‘ordinary families’, as distinguished from the rest of us scum, and Tory spinsters start wetting their little knickers.
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The News of the Screws is screwed
At the weekend the News of the World was unequivocal in stating the the phone hacking story was almost completely baseless. In an act of extreme chutzpah, it even called on the Guardian to practice what it preached when it said that “decent journalism had never been more necessary”.
All eyes were then on the Commons culture committee yesterday, where first Tim Toulmin of the Press Complaints Commission, then Nick Davies and Paul Johnson, Guardian News and Media’s deputy editor, were to give evidence. Toulmin hardly did the PCC any favours. It seems remarkably relaxed by the allegations made by the Graun, as it has been from the beginning.
Davies then did the equivalent of setting the session alight.
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Fit to work, but can’t work
More than two-thirds of applicants for sickness benefits are being rejected under a new testing regime, casting doubt on the validity of 2.6m existing claimants deemed unfit for work. According to data seen by several welfare industry figures, up to 90 per cent of applicants are being judged able to work in some regions and placed on unemployment rolls rather than long-term ill-health benefits.
No simple solutions to Afghanistan
I’ll confess to being a bit indecisive about the war in Afghanistan and the regional strategy being pursued by the Obama administration. Whilst I think Sunny’s case for continuing to fight Afghanistan’s heavily-armed, well-organised & utterly mercenary militants is a good one, I’ve never really had an issue with the justification for our involvement there.
Instead, I just harbour a deep scepticism about whether the sort of ‘victory’ expected by politicians and the public is within the capability of coalition forces.
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