BBC2: The Retreat
BBC – BBC TWO – The Retreat This is a BBC2 series, starting tomorrow, about a group of people who went on an "Islamic retreat" at the Alqueria de Rosales, an Islamic complex with...
Indigo Jo Blogs Blog
The appeal of image manipulation software
The weekly British photographers' magazine Amateur Photographer has a feature called Backchat (sponsored by Nikon), in which readers are invited to contribute their "thoughts or views on photography". This week's is from one Graham...
Rebuttal to Daily Spew and response to Harry’s Place
Five Chinese Crackers: More bullsh*t from the Express Thanks to Osama Saeed, a comprehensive rebuttal of the garbage on the front page of yesterday's Daily Spew regarding the MCB's report (PDF) about how British...
Inside Bush’s Iraq
The project | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited This is the second part of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's exposé of how the "Coalition" managed Iraq – in this case, by filling important positions in the Coalition Provisional...
Why I signed the road tax petition
Some people just don't get it about the "road charging" situation. I signed the petition, along with well over a million others. No doubt, the government will simply brush it off, as they brushed...
Photoshop Ailments
Last month I got myself a digital camera with money I'd been given by relatives for my 30th birthday (£30 each from most of them, and I have plenty of aunts and uncles on...
“Rocket man” DID have explosives for war
BBC NEWS: Ex-BNP man 'wanted to shoot PM' (hat tip: Lenin) Remember the case of the biggest-ever haul of explosive chemicals the police found at a house in Lancashire last October, which hardly made...
Congestion “continually increasing” in charge zone
BBC NEWS: Congestion rises in c-charge zone Shock horror: figures cited in a speech cited by Ken Livingstone (mayor of London) himself, in a speech at City Hall today, show that congestion has gone...
An attack on the idea of communities
In the past couple of weeks, three events led to much heated discussion about the idea of "communities" in the West, and "community leaders" in particular: a Policy Exchange report (PDF) suggesting, among other...
BBC Radio – The British Mosque
Radio 4 – The British Mosque This is a BBC Radio 4 programme which was broadcast on Friday, which discusses the debates among architects involved in British mosque design, which actually has practices dedicated...
Melanie Phillips: Liar or Ignoramus?
Mad Mel's Diary: the "War Against the West" Mel comments on the King Fahad Academy controversy, in which a sacked former teacher accuses the school of teaching from a textbook which makes some unflattering...
More on silly 9/11 conspiracy theories
As an example of the sort of silly conspiracy-mongering George Monbiot was talking about in his article in the Guardian on Tuesday (which I linked), here is a reply to it (third letter down),...
And I’m a Penguin (but my Mac’s well weapon)
This Monday Charlie Brooker (Guardian columnist of Nathan Barley and TVGoHome fame) told the world why he hates Macs in the most-read page on Comment Is Free this week. He not only hates Macs, but also people who use them and “even … people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did”. Thabet @ Eteraz agrees with him. Brooker reckons that “Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui” and that the “I’m a PC/Mac” adverts, which in the UK feature a comedy duo called Mitchell and Webb, whom I’ve never watched, are “devastatingly accurate” for the wrong reasons.
Monbiot trashes “Loose Change”
The Guardian: A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact George Monbiot takes apart the 9/11 conspiracy film Loose Change, which advances the well-known "no plane" theory:...
Ayaan’s all over the place
Ayaan Hirsi Magan’s been all over the media like a rash this past week, with a series of adulatory articles and soft interviews. Nobody seems to be willing to take her up on her ludicrous claims that, for example, “the 74 per cent of Muslims under 24 who said in a survey that women should wear the veil and want Sharia law to be introduced have gone for the consistency that Bin Laden offers”, which appears in this Metro interview today.
A culture of leaks and contempt
A Law Unto Themselves (from today's Media Guardian, may require free registration) Peter Wilby (former editor of the New Statesman) on the "consistent and brazen disregard for the contempt laws" which exists in the...
Reflections on Salafism’s rise and fall
Umar Lee recently posted a ten-part history on the rise and fall of the "salafi da'wah" in the USA (last post, with comments and links to the other nine, here). The whole series made...
Anti-Muslim bigot goes into the oil biz
The BBC reports that an outfit calling itself the "Terror Free Oil Initiative" has set up a filling station in Omaha, Nebraska, touting oil not imported from countries which "support terror" – meaning just...
Upgrade rage
Upgrade Rage (from today's Guardian) Tim Dowling on the annoyances of Windows which manifest themselves as "upgrade rage, or Upgrage, the uncontrollable anger which occurs whenever a software upgrade deemed to be either essential...
Nick Cohen: crude parodies and a thinly veiled agenda
There are two extracts from Nick Cohen’s forthcoming book What’s Left? published in last Sunday’s Observer, in which he has a weekly column. For anyone who is not familiar with his writing, he is part of the same tendency as Paul Berman (of Dissent magazine and the author of Terror and Liberalism) and Christopher Hitchens; that is to say, he is from a left-liberal background but supports recent western military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and accuses the left generally of betraying its principles in its opposition to them. Until the early 2000s his columns had a strong pro-civil liberties stance and concern for asylum seekers; after the demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, he denounced the Stop the War coalition of being an alliance of the “enemies of economic freedom” (the Socialist Workers) and the “enemies of sexual freedom” (the Muslim Association).