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Apocalypse on the US blogosphere

David Selbourne

Thursday, 30th November 2006

David Selbourne finds no reason and much hate on American blog-sites, where the Left pillories ‘fascists’ and ‘racists’, and the Right attacks Muslims with terrifying verbal brutality

There is a world, increasingly driven by unreason, in which voices in the wilderness denounce each other as ‘traitors’, cry out that ‘all I want is no more Islam near me’, or allege that Prince Charles is ‘waiting in the wings to declare the UK a Muslim country the minute QEII dies’.

It is the world of the American blogosphere of the ‘left’ and ‘right’; the world not of the lunatic fringe, though it may often seem so, but of vox pop. It is a world of which the ‘MSM’, or ‘mainstream media’, knows too little. Yet blog-site contributors’ opinions, threats and predictions — expressed in large volume on such sites as jihadwatch, littlegreenfootballs or Daily Kos — merit increasing attention for what they reveal of the temper of our times.

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Murdoch’s big secret is that he doesn’t have one

Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff reveals how he secured Rupert Murdoch’s co-operation for his biography and discovered that this media titan has no interest in posterity. He is, at heart, a city editor

I will always defend a big spender like J.M. Keynes

Nancy Dell�Olio

Nancy Dell’Olio makes an impassioned case for Keynesian economics as the necessary remedy for the global crisis. It is to the Cambridge economist that we should turn once more

How I became Bulgaria’s etiquette guru

Dylan Jones

Dylan Jones is astonished to find in Sofia that the former communist country has embraced his guide to the mores of modern life — and that not everybody looks like Borat

Rudd has lurched from indecision to phoney war

Matthew Castray

Matthew Castray looks back on the Australian Prime Minister’s first year in office and audits an administration which has reviewed much and done very little

Incompetence is fine: but being offensive is sure to get you sacked

Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle says that something has gone wrong when 15 South Lanarkshire social workers are sacked over a dodgy Gary Glitter joke while none of their counterparts in Haringey has even been reprimanded over the ‘Baby P’ case

An evening with the Muslim Facebook crew

Sarfraz Manzoor

Sarfraz Manzoor celebrates an iftar meal with homeless people and his fellow Muslims, a web-generated ‘flashmob’ observing an Islamic tradition of generosity to the needy

Have we ever faced an enemy more stupid than Muslim terrorists?

Rod Liddle

These narcissistic adolescent halfwits should not fill us with fear, says Rod Liddle. The aircraft plot trial showed yet again that those who wish to murder us with fizzy pop and peroxide are a bunch of cowards