'President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become "President-for-Life" Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.'

This is part of an article apparently written in all seriousness by Philip Atkinson, author of A Study Of Our Decline. It was published on Family Security Matters, a site that nominally informs families about how to keep their homes secure from terrorists. As they say:

Our mission is to inform all Americans, men and women, about the issues surrounding national security; to address their fears about safety and security on a personal, family, community, national and international level; to highlight the connection between individual safety and a strong national defense; to increase civic participation and political responsibility; and to empower all Americans to become proactive defenders of our national security and community safety.

It's probably just a coincidence, then, that it is owned by right-wing think tank, the Centre for Security Policy...

Still, it's a worrying reminder of how often we here calls to sacrifice our principles because we are threatened by those who hate our principles. It is a theme often elaborated by President Bush, who claims that we are hated because we are free, and whose response to attacks is to remove those freedoms. We are told that 'there are no options that we should take off the table' from torture to pre-emptive nuclear strikes on a non-nuclear country. The example above is only notable because it follows these arguments to their logical conclusion. Democracy is weak, and slow, and often wrong, and full of checks and balances.

I happen to believe that our claim to be civilised is based exactly on what we are prepared to 'take off the table'; in saying that there are certain things that we will never do. If we're not prepared to behave differently than those whose behaviour we deplore, what separates us from them?

This is a very interesting post on Quaequam Blog (and one of the best I've seen on a Lib Dem blog in a long time). I particularly liked the paragraph:

"One thing we, as a society, might try is to reverse the trend towards viewing anti-social behaviour as criminality. 12 years ago, we had more crime, but no-one knew what anti-social behaviour was. One of New Labour’s most pernicious legacies has been to convince people that naughtiness, rowdiness and petty vandalism is something the police should handle when in the past it was something the community itself sorted out. The more we concentrate on anti-social behaviour, the worse it seems. We can never win the war on anti-social behaviour because it is so mutable: unless all young people transform into angels en masse, there will always be someone doing something that upsets someone."

It's probably just me being a hoary old leftie, but I'd also argue that the last 30 years have seen a consistent attack from all parties on the structures we, as communities, had created, and this has left us looking to the state to help us solve problems we would rightly have seen as our own. From trades unions to churches to civic amenities, we have been encouraged to seek fewer solutions in voluntary collective movements, or through local democracy.

You can only tell people for so long that 'there's no such thing as society' before they begin to believe you, and behave accordingly. Or maybe that's overly pessimistic...

Burnley BNP Case - Sentencing | Blairwatch

Blairwatch has a nice piece here, comparing the relative sentences given to members of the BNP who are convicted of terrorism offences and Muslims who are convicted of offences which do not involve the possession of explosives...

Look, I don't want to get into Big Brother, but having seen those godawful twins in the Diary Room together all I could think was: two Orvilles and no Keith Harris. Or is it just me?

Pickled Politics » Ex-BNP ‘terrorist’ gets jail

As a follow-up to a story I mentioned ages ago...

This is Eleanor Rose Tapley. She was born at 7:13 pm on July 28th, 2007. She weighed a lot, as her mother will attest. She is the reason I shan't be seeing much of any of you for a while, probably. She has a very squishy nose.

*Edit 01:38 July 31st - And right now she's a Googlewhack. Her first Internet achievement...*

All right. I don't really like Johann Hari. He's too young, too doughy, and he oozes from the screen like a particularly smug oyster mushroom... However this article on the pro-war left, a review of Nick Cohen's 'What's Left' is a fine piece of journalism. I may spit less bile next time he sits sideways in a chair to pontificate on something about which he is uniquely unqualified to talk.

Maybe.

Pay for my brother's car.


If you'd like.

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This article on Denise Pfeiffer, the erstwhile media consultant for The Silver Ring Thing (the po-faced chastity promotion group), is interesting for the light it sheds on the links between certain groups of 'Christians', the BNP, and other assorted homophobes.

Boy, am I out of touch with the kids of today...