'Nother Solent

No time today

to do anything but fulfil my barest obligations to my hordes of eager readers. Hi, Peter. I'll get back to you both when I can.

Korean abductees:

it gets weirder. And sadder. Looks like two of them, possibly with their daughter, were killed after smuggling letters to their families. Others died in all sorts of unlikely ways. Despite all that, the five survivors all want to stay in North Korea. They say.

Ben Sheriff is doing a Hari-Seldon like series of time delay blogs from China, which you should stop by and read all this week. He also writes to say,

"I saw a headline (in the Telegraph?) earlier this week saying "Charles admits friend leaked letters" or similar. I.e. that it wasn't the government. I can't remember where I saw it sadly, but might be worth searching for given a para or two of you Liddle post rests on it."

OK, chop his head off.

The Government Who Wouldn't Sell The Moon.

Transterrestrial Musings muses transterrestrially on the way that a government-run space program goes the way of a government-run anything program. Slowly,inefficiently and without regard to what people actually want.

I love Rachel Johnson and want to bear her children!

Er, not really. But this terrific article pre-empts all my best lines on social engineering by means of government pressure on schools, universities and exam boards.

I'm a teensy bit worried

that in that last post I may not have quite got over the idea that in joining the BBC in the capacity he did, Liddle voluntarily accepted an obligation of impartiality. You'll let me know if I lacked clarity on that point, won't you?

Of course the whole thing should've been written for Biased BBC, but you know how it is, you get started and then can't stop.

Just a Liddle bit longer...

Rod Liddle tells all in his Guardian column. First he makes lots of jokes about ponies and "goat-fucks." They are fairly funny. He should stick to the goats, because when he says "I was thinking of leaving anyway, actually," he is whingey, and once he gets to political argument he is pathetic. Spot all the suppressions, the bundling together of half-truths with lies, and the deliberate confusions of separate issues in this excerpt:

I suspect, for example, that freedom of speech extends only to those with whom Mr Moore is in agreement - the rest should be sacked or censured or censored.

Liddle's just the sort to think that "censured" is a violation of his rights in the same way that "censored" is. And no, Moore never said that all those who disagree with him should be sacked from their various jobs as waitresses and product placement managers: only Mr Liddle himself from his BBC job that included a commitment to impartiality as part of the job description.

Otherwise Moore would surely have objected, as many of you did, to the sort of stuff I wrote in these pages before - about Africa, for example, or the war against terror. But these perceived transgressions of a neutral status did not seem to bother him.

They bothered me. But not so much as the avowedly party political bias that was completely incompatible with a BBC job that included being seen to be impartial, in line with the BBC Charter.

I've noticed this sort of desire for censorship

No, it is not censorship to wish to sack a man who has violated the commitment to impartiality that was part and parcel of what he was paid for as an editor with the BBC.

growing recently, from left and right. It's not simply that what your opponent argues is wrong, it's that he should not be allowed to say it. And, of course, there are always good reasons for denying someone the freedom to state their point of view. In my case, Moore argued that my position as editor of the Today programme should preclude me from commenting - presumably upon anything.

No, it just precluded you from commenting in avowedly party political terms, because the editor of a "flagship" political programme from the State broadcasting company of a democratic country isn't allowed to do that.

And, by contrast, there are always good reasons for arguing that someone who supports your view should be allowed to speak.

In the same editorial, Moore defended Prince Charles's intervention in the countryside debate by a tortuous circumlocution based upon an inaccuracy. (Moore seems to have assumed that Labour somehow leaked the controversial letter from Prince Charles to the prime minister.)

Wasn't it? If Mr Liddle thinks it wasn't leaked, why doesn't he say so? I think it was leaked. For decades Charles has managed to write to Blair and Conservative Prime Ministers before him without ending up all over the front pages. Then one missive was made public on the morning of the Countryside March. Sounds like a leak to me. And what's with the "somehow", as if it were impossible that New Labour should ever really leak anything? In my opinion Mr Liddle has used this tortuous phrasing because he wants to obscure the crucial difference between his case and Prince Charles's: that he, despite having signed up to political impartiality as part of his BBC role, put his utterly non-impartial views out to the masses as a newspaper column, while Charles in contrast wrote privately and thus did not violate his obligation to public impartiality.

So, by implication - and I was terribly flattered by this, as I'm sure you can imagine - my constitutional position as editor of Today was of greater importance than that of the heir to the throne. Or, more to the point, Prince Charles can say what he likes, but I should shut up. What self-serving nonsense.

You said it.

I would concede, though, that there is a general concern about the impartiality of BBC employees.

Too right there is.

The idea seems to be that if one doesn't actually give voice to opinions then it's perfectly possible for listeners or viewers to believe that one might not have them at all. This strikes me as an intellectually flawed position.

It is. Let's stop the charade and end state funding to the BBC.

But it's a tricky issue

No, there is nothing tricky about it. And there was nothing tricky or - to use his earlier excuse - "technical" - involved in understanding that to write in a newspaper column that the Countryside marchers remind one "gloriously" of why one has voted Labour is not some sort of philosophical challenge to the tricky concept of impartiality, but is plain old dishonesty. He signed up to impartiality. There may be times when it's hard to tell what constitutes impartiality but that ain't one of them.

and I would concede, too, that the BBC is far more flexible on the point than it was even three or four years ago.

Flexible. Yeah, too right. These days the BBC bends over backwards for New Labour.

Now we know how Megumi Yokota died.

Suicide. As the abducted girl's mother said, "This has just reaffirmed for me how horrible a country North Korea is."

I wondered whether our friends at the Korean Friendship Association, now that their heroes in North Korea are providing some details of the kidnap victims' lives and deaths, had brought themselves to admit that the "missing" Japanese were not missing at all. Nope.

We do learn, however, a little more about the Sinuiju Special Economic Zone.

"The Special Economic zone is totally separated from the rest of the DPRK territory, inch by inch protected by the Korean People's Army, and the goods and services there are focused for export and foreign use only."

I love that "inch by inch protected" bit. From whom, exactly? Are the North Koreans likely to try to swarm over this hated capitalist enclave in their just fury that even this little bit of pseudo-free enterprise should pollute their soil? Remember how the East Germans used to pretend that the Wall was there to keep the West out, conveniently overlooking the fact that the guns were pointing the wrong way?

There's also news from America. Oh dear, you poor Americans. Nobody told me about the military coup:

"Our governmeent [sic] has been hijacked in many peoples' opinion, and we are struggling to regain it. A violent minority has rule and it is a constant struggle to undo the damgae [sic] they have done internationally. We hate this policy of the US government and we oppose it. We are targeted and attacked by the government because of it, but we still insist on supporting peace.

...We are subject to arrest, detainment, and other penalties, so people are scared. We continue to fight."

That despatch was smuggled out by Dominick Bruno of New Brunswick, New Jersey. Obviously the Movement is strong in New Jersey - first we thrilled to the brave words of dissident poet Amiri Buraka (who, John Costello tells me, was once Leroi Jones), and now we have the heroic Comrade Bruno.

UPDATE: That couldn't be the same Dominick Bruno of New Jersey who used to be a Neo-Nazi, could it? Surely not. But this website does speak of a Dominick Bruno who, strangely, also has NJ connections:

"Kucek [a Neo-Nazi] is confronted by Dominick Bruno, a former Neo-Nazi that is now a progressive activist working with the One People's Project. Bruno is reminding Kucek of the time they met and worked together when Kucek tried to run for office on the Populist Party ticket. Kucek was attempting to deny that this was anything other than a financial planning seminar or that he had racist ties. A bit comical to watch since Kucek is the most prominent Anti-semite in New Jersey."

But if we are talking about the same man, what an inspiring example of reform. A mind that once was consumed by fanaticism of the right is now... consumed by fanaticism of the left. Hoop-de doodie.

And So To Bed.

Zoe Williams goes on about something or other, oh yes, how marvellous it all is that Edwina is sexy though wrinkly, and says something revealing:

...his tenure as prime minister was about the most tedious thing to have happened to this country since Pepys.

I suppose she could be attempting an informed comparison between the two men, but, re-reading it, no she isn't. She actually appears to think that Pepys falls into the category "worthy but dull." Has it come to this? Have the passages that gave such pleasure to generations of schoolboys really fallen so far behind our collective horizon that no one is going to tell her that there was a reason, you know, why dear Samuel chose to first put certain episodes into bad Spanish and then wrap that into well-nigh impenetrable code.

Briffagate latest

The mysterious "David" has promised faithfully that he does exist. I would like it known that I have absolutely no prejudice against chemistry teachers. Why, when I taught a higher and nobler subject, I would often pat them on the head in the staff room and offer to explain any difficult physics words. Iain Murray has also weighed in.

A Liddle goes a long way.

Sorry. But you did want to know that Rod Liddle has been eased out as editor of Today, didn't you?

A liddle more from me over at Biased BBC. I just can't seem to stop myself. A lid'll be put on it soon, I promise you.

The boot's on the other foot.

John Weidner has a quietly major post on who gets all the fun of being provocative now.

Now by "quietly major" I do not mean to imply that this post has ever engaged in adultery with Edwina Currie. I think that most unlikely, as I happen to know that Mr Weidner keeps a stern parental eye on all his posts, gives them frank and timely instruction on how to avoid viruses and certainly does not let them hang out with riff-raff from the House of Commons tea room. Still wasn't it amazing the way that Mrs Currie took offence when Major said he was ashamed of his adultery? She appears to think that the correct statement for a man in his position to make is something on the lines of "I am deeply sorry for the profound hurt I caused my dear wife but would like to add, in fairness to Mrs Currie, that she can shag like no other."

Where was I? Oh yes, the "quietly major" post on the way the boot's on the other foot when it comes to being provocative. It crystallised the very spirit of the times. When I was a kid you could get all the Mary Whitehouse types foaming at the mouth by wearing a 'Che Lives' T-shirt or making a joke about Christianity or putting a naked woman on the stage. When I was a young adult, things had begun to change, and had changed all the way in certain restricted circles.* Twenty years on, strong men still blanche when recalling the doings of the Federation of Conservative Students that weekend in Loughborough and shiver when they recall that there was a girl with a camera at the party when they all wore the "Hang Nelson Mandela" T-shirts. Or, as John Weidner (not Major! Not!) puts it:

It used to be that if there was an over-the-top comedian who said impudent things that outraged stuffed-shirt reactionaries, they would always be coming from the left. Who's doing it now? Ann Coulter. When people make niggling criticisms of Ann's factual accuracy, they're showing that they just don't get it. They don't even see that they are part of the jape; she pulls their noses and pokes them in the eye, and the best part of the jest is the ponderous shock and outrage of the straight-man.

Ploffff, a cream pie in the face...we should convert all those Moslems to Christianity! Cream pie wiped off red spluttering stammering face....She can't SAY that... it's, it's, it's, it's TERRIBLE...Ploooffff, another cream pie...I have to say I'm all for public flogging...

I'm just glad I'm alive to see such times.

In that case a recent on-off post by Peter Briffa will certainly bring joy to your old eyes. Or perhaps not. Our Peter has been putting the cat among the pigeons. He put out and then withdrew a post on Friday. Steve Chapman said, "If I deleted every half-arsed post I ever wrote my blog would be nothing more than a twinkle in HTML's eye. However you took the offending article down before I had chance to snort with derision at its fubar logic and textual opacity. Boo hoo". Now it's back again. The whole thing ought to be on display at the Tate Modern: The artist, "Peter", aims to subvert the continuity expectations of his audience and playfully deconstruct their attempts to impose permanence on what he writes. Now he has roped in a friend for moral support, although the possibility did occur to me that the friend is non-existent and he is playfully subverting our notions of what constitutes Peteriness. Anyway, "David" writes (slightly edited):

"Surely the comments prove the point about the post. People make inferences about words and the way that people use them. Should we condemn a generation of older people as bigots and racists purely because they use the language of their day?

No. But this rhetorical question is a straw man. No one even brought up old people, or changes in language. If ever anyone does I have in my files a half-written essay on the bewildering speed of change in what constitutes an acceptable racial term, and you will agree with every word. Until then, can we stick to the subject of when and whether you or I have legitimate occasion to use the word "nig nog"?

People (like Solent et al) don’t get that Niggaz With Attitude and Eminem and Dr Dre etc is humor that others find funny and interesting social comment.

I get it fine. It repels me.

I also note that no one takes offence to the remark about fat chemistry teachers or references to nancies, woofters and queers.

Only because those little comment boxes fill up quick.

It is also socially acceptable to refer to ‘all men are bastards’ and sneer at people from Glasgow/Croydon/Mosside as being lesser beings.

If you can carry off the joke, yes. If you can't, no. Croydonians should stick to their own very worthwhile cultural pursuits and not attempt to imitate Westerners, I always say.

However mention the word nigger (or nigga as is the term chosen by the youth of today) and a whole bunch of white middle class goons get all touchy.

It is rather difficult to formulate a general principle of what is and what is not acceptable in polite society, but since the difficulty of defining it does not make the distinction invalid, I will try. Before venturing to use a derogatory term in an acceptable way (e.g. irony or a joke) one should try to consider how much your reader has been hurt by insults of the same category in the past, and whether or not the quality being laughed at was assumed voluntarily.

I’d love to hear the opinion of one black person on the subject rather than the select white skinned conservatives.

As I said before, if you do try this, put on your running shoes first. And don't expect me to hold your hand.

While it is easy to appreciate that no one likes being the butt of others derisive remarks, be it fatso, lardy, nigger, bitch, bastard, motherfucker, filth, fuzz, rozzer. If these terms are applied without any offensive context, are they still offensive?

It is possible to construct scenarios where they are and where they are not. Use your judgement. My judgement says that blacks have been harmed and insulted, individually and collectively, a great deal by people who used the word "nigger." So there are scarcely any real situations where "nigger" is acceptable. Perhaps one can be constructed as an exercise, but I wouldn't bother. Men, on the other hand, do all right in this world and only need defending every five years or so. Chemistry teachers cannot be blamed for what they are, poor things.

Robert Harding makes an interesting point about only using certain words in an offensive context, but as someone that undoubtedly would use the phrase ‘ I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to free speech’ surely limiting certain words to certain contexts detracts from the wonderful range of language phrases that we have in our marvellous English language

If you are so alive to the marvellous potential of English, then you will not neglect its subtleties.

...and is also equivalent to communist Russia burning certain books as they could promote ill feeling amongst the populus.

Straw man again. So far as I can tell, everyone who commented supported the political right to cause offence. Nearly all of them I have seen pour scorn on the excesses of PC.

Foul and abusive language does have a place in civilised society as without it, many frustrated generations would be lost.

I'm not sure what this means, but it's your best line yet.

Also giving a label to someone based on their appearance is exactly what everyone does every day. In Iain Murray’s world the labels man, woman, child, boy, girl, short, tall would all be lost would they?

Straw man, straw woman, straw child, straw dwarf.

While I’m sure this detracts from his point this is basically what he is saying.

No it's not. You can't seriously be under the impression that it is.

*Circles to which I did not belong. You got nuttin on me.

I was struck

, writing the post below, by how much more I knew about events in Northern Ireland thirty years ago than events today. I was reading the Letter to Slugger O'Toole blog and scarcely had an opinion on most of the issues raised, except the vague hope that it would all come right somehow. With apologies to those concerned with life and death issues, it's like losing the plot of a soap opera. When my kids were small and I had little time or sleep I lost the plot of Northern Ireland. I lost the plot of a great many other news stories too, but that didn't matter so much as I could regain it with a little reading later. But with Northern Ireland, everything's in code. Seemingly innocent concepts and phrases carry extra meaning, clear to both sides in the know but by mutual and half-conscious agreement not spelled out to outsiders. This obliqueness spills over even into communications where no one is trying to be obscure. It makes it hard to tap back in.

Home to roost.

Gerry Adams linked to the murder of the Northern Ireland "disappeared". Ed Moloney, the Northern Editor of the Dublin Sunday Tribune has written a book that alleges:

...Mr Adams had earlier set up two covert IRA intelligence cells, nicknamed the "unknowns", which reported directly to him and were charged with disposing without trace people - most of whom were nationalists - whose deaths could cause the Provisionals embarrassment or bad publicity.

The best known of the disappeared was a woman called Jean McConville. Moloney alleges that Gerry Adams must have ordered or at the very least approved her murder. The IRA say they killed her for being an informer. Leaving aside the question of whether being an informer is a good or a bad thing, her family deny it. They say all she did was cradle the head of a shot British soldier as he died outside her house.

Mrs McConville was the mother of ten children which fits a Catholic stereotype, but actually she was a Protestant. To those who knew Northern Ireland later it is surprising to learn that she had been married to a Catholic (he died), and lived in the Republican Divis Flats area, but all this happened in 1972 before the process of segregation by harassment and threats had really got going. A few days later a gang abducted her and beat her up. She escaped, but not for long. The next day later a second IRA gang - this time including four women, which is unusual - dragged her from her home in full view of her screaming children. It is believed that she was "interrogated" (and we're not talking about a chat over coffee here) then killed. Her body has never been found, despite a thorough search of a beach in Co. Louth, south of the border, following a tip-off a couple of years ago. Left orphans, her children struggled to stay together under the care of her 15 year old daughter, but eventually the family was taken into care and broken up.

By the way, Ed Moloney does not confine himself to investigating Nationalist crimes. He has been active in investigating the murders of Pat Finucane and Seamus Ludlow, two crimes in which it is alleged that the RUC were involved as well as Protestant paramilitaries.

Earth calling Amiri Baraka! Not that I had ever heard of this poet, despite the confidence placed in him by the state of New Jersey which appointed him poet laureate, but my eye was caught by the title of the piece. Keats told us that "Poetry ... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance." Here is a sample of Mr Baraka's efforts to live up to that maxim:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

Stefan Sharansky rang him up, got a series of spectacularly dopey and ignorant replies, and tosses and gores him in the article linked to in the title of this post.