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Awesome Neil Clark

Monday, 21st May 2007

Readers of my old blog will recall that I had a mild obsession with a blogger called Neil Clark, whose site is a form of 'car crash blogging': bizarre and entirely spurious assertions mixed with propaganda in favour of mass murderers. I look at his blog from behind my metaphorical sofa, dreading what weirdness I will see but nonetheless compelled to stare.

His take on the Iranian nuclear situation is typical. Iran should acquire nuclear weapons:

The President of Iran has of course denied that his country has any plans to build a nuclear bomb and that his only interest is to develop nuclear energy. In the interests of peace, I do hope he's lying.

Although I have so far successfully resisted here at my new home the urge to link to any of his entries, I have cracked. There is something unsavoury, I realise, in mocking the afflicted, but I have to confess that I simply can't resist.

Before I point you to his latest fantastic post, some context is in order. Clark's hero is Slobodan Milosevic. The historian Marko Attila Hoare has described Clark thus:

Clark has no qualifications in journalism or in Balkan or Middle Eastern studies, knows none of the Middle Eastern or Balkan languages, has never reported from either region, has little first-hand knowledge of either, and has never conducted original research or published a book or scholarly article on either. He apparently visited Belgrade in the 1990s and mistook the splendid former imperial metropolis for an example of the achievements of a socialist planned economy.

Even by his own standards, however, Clark excelled himself yesterday. He appears to believe that Jimmy Carter won the 1980 US presidential election and defeated Ronald Reagan. In a post entitled Time for a Constitutional Amendment, Clark asserts:

If only Jimmy Carter would be allowed to stand for President for a third time! He's head and shoulders above everyone else in American politics.

Eh? There is a bar on any President serving more than two terms. To believe that Carter is barred from standing for the presidency, one must believe that he served two terms.

How can one not be drawn to the geopolitical observations on of such a fellow?

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Ken

May 22nd, 2007 1:18am

I had a drink with Neil a month or so ago. It was the first time that we had met, although we have been allies in the good fight for quite some time. So laugh at him all you want. People like us will have the last laugh. We said that if the imperialist gang was not stopped at Belgrade they would move on to another target: we were right, weren't we? Now that almost 150 British soldiers are dead in Iraq, how does it feel that we were right? Still, continue attacking Neil, but just remember as you look in the mirror to have your morning shave: he's not the loser, you are.