Nick Cohen on 18DS

18 Doughty Street Cross Talk

In this preview for tonight's Cross Talk, author and journalist Nick Cohen defends his book, 'What's Left: How Liberals Lost Their Way', in the face of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's impassioned criticism.

Impassioned it may have been but if you are going to debate with Nick Cohen about opinions expressed in his book you might think it a good idea to actually read the fucking thing first! Whatever credibility Alibhai-Brown had to start with (and, let's face it, that wasn't very much anyway) was lost once it became established she was criticizing a book she hadn't even bothered to open. What a wasted opportunity.

Puke alert

The Sun - Maddie: Symbol for Maddie's mum

A butterfly gave hope to brave Kate McCann yesterday — as it landed softly on her hair before an emotional audience with The Pope. The tiny Red Admiral then flitted from the yellow ribbon tying her ponytail, only to return two minutes later.

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!

Complete this well known sentence...

For kicking a sixteen year old boy to death: four years

For growing cannabis: four and a half years

Bells and whistles

Feature Fatigue - The New Yorker

A new study by Katherine A. Burson, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, shows that, when we buy things like golf balls and digital cameras, we generally do a poor job of evaluating our skills, and so get stuck with unsuitable products. We’re also willing to pay for extra options because we feel shortchanged if we don’t have them. But, once we actually have a product, our patience with all those features runs out very quickly. Elke den Ouden found, for instance, that Americans who returned a product that was too complicated for them had spent, on average, just twenty minutes with it before giving up.

Hummelgate

Glenn Greenwald: Right-wing blogger geniuses expose another journalistic fraud!

Greenwald on the latest revelations by the likes of Charles (under every ponytail there is an arsehole) Johnson and the Pajamas Media morons.

Like the brilliant pundits whose every proclamation about the Iraq war turned out to be false yet who still parade around as proud and pompous experts, right-wing bloggers continuously hurl accusations like this and then, when proven wrong, simply move on to the next accusatory orgy without any real acknowledgment of wrongdoing or apology.

Via Majikthise (and here)

NHS underspend - Part ll

RAF hero with cancer and MRSA denied free nursing home place

At the age of 90, Second World War hero Eric Friar can barely walk or see and suffers from bowel cancer, shingles and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.He has been diagnosed with bladder and colon cancer and is currently recovering in hospital from a bout of pneumonia and an MRSA infection.Yet despite this list of ailments, the former RAF navigator has been told he is not sick enough for the NHS to pay for a nursing home place.

The gratitude of every home in our island...etc, etc

If only he'd been impotent

Put sex pills in the dock

The most bizzare take yet, from Jan Moir, on the murdered 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper.

The sex pills to which he was addicted should have been in the dock, too. For the earl's plight perfectly illustrates the dark side of such pills, hailed as a wonder drug by many, but just as likely to cause oceans of misery as nights of eternal pleasure. Ashley-Cooper seemed so lost to chemically powered excitements that they led, indirectly, to his death and magnified his bad behaviour. Of course, the testosterone injections and industrial amounts of alcohol didn't help either. Yet the earl ended up like a demented woodpecker, forever hammering on the doors of Cannes brothels.

At a time in life when his natural human appetite for sex should perhaps have been inching towards the downward slope on the parabola of desire, the priapic earl was plucking £1,000-a-night prostitutes from Riviera fleshpots, while drifting into an ever more dangerous and unsavoury world.

£1000 a night prostitutes eh? If only he'd been skint !

Fandabidozi she ain't

Newsnight Deputy Leadership Debate



If only they had used solid lecturns, then Hazel Blears could have stood on a box or something. As it was she looked like Wee Jimmie Krankie peering over a sweet counter.

The whole debate can be seen on the Newsnight site but here are the responses from the six candidates to the first question Paxman asked:

"Is there any one of you who would say, knowing what you know now, if you'd known it then, who would have voted against the war?"

For me at any rate, there were only two credible candidates left after these answers.

All together now

Blair cabinet 'took one decision in eight months'

The cabinet took just one decision during Tony Blair's first eight months in office - to leave the Millennium Dome to the prime minister - a former top civil servant has disclosed.  

Lord Butler, who was cabinet secretary when Labour swept into power in 1997, said the new government failed to take collective decisions from the start. While cabinet government had "progressively weakened" since the second world war, he said, it "virtually disappeared" under Mr Blair.

An eye(ball) for an eye(ball)

Seraphic Secret: Hamas: Kill all Jews

Jackie (they're MY photos, I'll get the law onto you) Danicki links to Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret.

What a surprise…not. The party of the elected Palestinian government has made an official call for the murder of Jews wherever Muslims may find them.

Avrech has his own solutions to the problem of 'palis' (as one commenter refers to them ) or the 'so-called Palestinian people' as Mr Avrech refers to them himself. Because it is the 'palis' that need dealing with, not just Hamas:  'Hamas is the elected government of the so-called Palestinian people. Thus, Hamas speaks for the civilian population.' A significant point of view as we shall see in a moment.  So, on to the Avrech solution:

The IDF must turn off the electrical grid in Gaza. Every single Hamas government official is and has always been an enemy combatant and should be hunted down and killed. If rockets continue to rain (sic) on Israel from Gaza, then Israel should proceed with carpet bombing every inch of Gaza.

Here's what General Curtis LeMay said during World War II: I'll tell you what war is about. You have got to kill people, and when you have killed enough of them they stop fighting. And this how General Phil Sheridan defined the object of war: To deal as hard blows to the enemies' soldiers as possible, and then cause so much suffering to the inhabitants of the country that they will long for peace and press their government to make it... Nothing should be left to the people but eyes to lament the war.

I happen to respect Arabs and Muslims. (sic)(choke) I take them very seriously. When they openly and proudly call for genocide, well, call me crazy, but I believe them. They have a long and proud history of Jew killing.

A commenter kindly pointed out that Mr Avrech had forgotten the other utilities, gas and water: Not to mention the water and gas pipelines. I have never understood why providing utilities to terrorists has been understood to be Israel's responsibility. If the palis want electricity, gas, and water, they should contract with companies in Egypt and Jordan. And he responds: Michael: Gaza water and gas: off. Right. My bad. (sic) Thanks so much.

Both Danicki and Avrech accuse Hamas of calling for genocide, 'the murder of Jews wherever Muslims may find them'. Hamas actually calls for the murder of Israeli Jews: “The time has come,” the group said, “to kill the occupier.” Now that doesn't look so different from Avrech's call to carpet bomb the entire population of Gaza. It couldn't be called genocide though because Avrech, along with a great many other Jews, cannot even bring himself to refer to Palestinians as a people. And anyway the population elected Hamas so they are fair game. A similar logic used by terrorists killing US and UK citizens, no?

I wonder if Hamas leaders are familiar with the words of General Phil Sheridan? If so, we may end up with a lot of lamenting Jewish and Palestinian eyeballs.

It's not your gut. It's the bugs in your gut

Could the explosion in the use of antibiotics have changed our digestive processes and triggered the obesity epidemic?

Asks Professor working with.........Nestle:

An article you'll never read in the Mail

Have we seen that bow tie somewhere before, John?


It's a fashion nightmare many men have experienced - you turn up at a big event in your super new outfit, only to find your thunder has been stolen by someone with the same sense of style. But most such clothes disasters don't happen in the full glare of the world's media. That's what happened to Joseph Kennedy and John Canemaker at the Oscar ceremony last year.

John and Joseph looked stunning as they walked down the red carpet in their evening wear. But the photographers who were covering the event couldn't help feeling they had seen it before. And sadly, they were right. Thousands of times. Men wearing the same or very similar outfits to awards ceremonies . Oh my god!  What a faux pas.