World

Rod Liddle says that the French President may be right about Islam’s ideological content but that his proposal is shockingly illiberal and wrong-headed I’ve been in the Middle East for the last three or four days — just trying to help out, you know, anything one can do — and staying in a hotel which is renowned for its profusion and diversity of whores. Stick a pin in one of those United Nations lists of comparative prosperity, healthcare, life-expectancy rates etc, and I guarantee that a female representative of that country will be — as the Bangladeshi bellhop put it — ‘slinging pussy’ in the lobby or the late-nite bar,

Really interesting debate on who is winning the Blog/Comment War last night at Edelman HQ in Victoria Street. I tried to argue that they are part of the same continuum. I have never seen them as particularly antagonistic.  I suggested that we are yet to see a “classic” or “great” blog posting in the way that you have memorable comment pieces that stay with you for life. Peter Beaumont’s Observer piece about Iran at the weekend is one such article. There has been some good discussion of the debate at journalism.co.uk and Mark Reckons. Mark (a Lib Dem blogger) has challenged my assertion that there are no classic blog posts and

There are a few things that could be said about this snippet from Mr d’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column: More to the point, they [the Broonocracy] believe – as an article of faith, of irreducible conviction – that the Cameroons are bad people whose wickedness expresses itself in the slashing of the state. One of the words Brown uses most often in private to describe the Tory leader is “libertarian”: a word that conveys his belief that Cameron’s “compassionate conservatism” is mere window-dressing, but also hints at a decadent strain of Tory libertinage, drug-taking and yacht-fondling. 1. Gordon Brown clearly has a very limited understanding of libertariansm. 2. If only Dave

The Michigan Republican is owed our thanks for producing what must be the most absurd reaction to the Iranian drama yet and, let it be said, a welcome moment of light relief. The other day he made the mistake of Twittering that “Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.” For real. This being the internets, it’s no surprise that a blog was born gently chiding Mr Hoekstra. (As pictured) People can be so cruel. But that’s the intertubes for you. Doubtless readers will want to make their own suggestions, blending the mundane with the historic to produce

Democracy in America goes back to pre-election profiles of Mir Hossein Mousavi and finds a “cautious, pragmatic, vague and increasingly shrewd politician.” This seems a fair verdict and, as we know, Mousavi can hardly be the perfect poster-boy for liberals since, if he were, he wouldn’t have been permitted to stand in the first place. But that was then and this is now. The movement is bigger than Mousavi now and it’s hard to see how much of it he and his advisers really control anyway. What can be said is that reform is a process, not an event. Furthermore, I would hazard that the regime faces a pretty bleak

Ezra Klein has copped some stick for his observation that: There are a couple things to say about this, all of them depressing. First, those of us who have long argued for the fundamental rationality of the Iranian regime have seen our case fundamentally weakened. A rational regime might have stolen the election. But they would not have stolen it like this, where there is no doubt of the theft. I a) disagree with Ezra and b) think he’s being too hard on himself. That is, there is a difference between the rationality of the Iranian regime’s foreign policy and its attitude towards domestic dissent. One can believe that Iran

I agree with James’s view that this New York Times’ blog is doing an excellent job of keeping one up-to-date on the turmoil in Iran. I’d also recommend Andrew Sullivan’s site. What happens next is, frankly, anyone’s guess. But something is happening and the situation is so fluid that it’s difficult for newspapers to keep up. That is, the internet and technology – Youtube, Twitter, blogs etc – is transforming the way we follow breaking news and permitting one to have a better, if still necessarily imperfect, understanding of what may or many not be going on. It’s sometimes said that the internet rewards certainty at the expense of nuance

For real: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday accused his election rivals of adopting smear tactics used by Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler and said they could face jail for insulting him. Ahmadinejad was speaking at a rally in Tehran on the final day of an increasingly bitter and hard-fought election campaign, in which he faces a growing challenge from moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi. Mousavi and the two other candidates say Ahmadinejad has lied about the state of the economy which is suffering from high inflation and a fall in oil revenues from last year’s record levels. Ahmadinejad said his rivals had broken laws against insulting the president. “No

From the Departments of a) Modern Britain and b) Modern Childhood. The Lancashire Telegraph reports: Primary school pupils are to be shown a film about the dangers of terrorists as part of an organised safety day. More than 2,000 10 and 11-year-olds will see a short film, which urges them to tell the police, their parents or a teacher if they hear anyone expressing extremist views. The film has been made by school liaison officers and Eastern Division’s new Preventing Violent Extremism team, based at Blackburn. It uses cartoon animals to get across safety messages. A lion explains that terrorists can look like anyone, while a cat tells pupils that

Which of the many MPs accused of defrauding the taxpayer by fiddling their expenses is the worst offender, do you think? We need some clarity on this issue. In the public mind I have a feeling that they are all beginning to merge as one composite beast drawn from ancient mythology — a hydra-headed pig emerging from its second duck island with a tampon in one claw and a porno flick in the other, whining piteously about inadvertent accountancy errors. How should we choose between them? Clearly, some have behaved worse than others. Some have cheerfully gone along with a corrupt system to trouser a few extra quid here or