Laura Rozen takes us to meet the Iranian government’s loyalist bloggers. The hardliners have fielded hundreds of pro-regime bloggers, most writing in Persian, emphasizing particularly the importance of supporting the Supreme Leader. The bloggers range from students to clerics, with many claiming to be members of the Basij and children of war veterans or martyrs.…
Read More trolls of the AyatollahAaronovitch Watch reflects upon dinner with Denis MacShane. There’s an important point here, and one that was well made as a by-product of Nick Davies’ brilliant reporting on Operation PENTAMETER 2, a giant police sweep looking for prostitutes brought into the UK by force that failed to find even one. It turned out that the…
Read More permanently operating factorsIf you think the Superfreaks had demonstrated the truth of the Dunning-Kruger effect well enough, especially after this further hammering, and their attempt to gain everyone’s esteem by having NewsCorp send out copyright nastygrams, think again. Here’s some science, via Lou Grinzo’s blog. We’ve been taking very, very thin samples of the leafmould in the…
Read More a reminder that things happen quicklyOK, time to make the rubble bounce. There’s a nice online visualiser for climate data here, (thanks!) so we can have a lovely little chart. OK, this shows the GISTEMP land-ocean mean for as long as they’ve been measuring, as the red line. As you can see, that sucker’s going up. As you can also…
Read More target for tonight…Craig Murray seems to have taken a blog pill. Britain’s most disgusting journalist, New Labour creep and Jack Straw cheerleader Michael White, is on Sky News trying to justify his New Labour chums… That information comes from two sources both of which I trust not at all – White and a New Labour minister. ……
Read More disgusting reptile creep bully tribal predator snoutHere are two news stories whose contrast should tell you a lot, via Charlie Stross. Spy chiefs fear Chinese cyber attack: INTELLIGENCE chiefs have warned that China may have gained the capability to shut down Britain by crippling its telecoms and utilities. They have told ministers of their fears that equipment installed by Huawei, the…
Read More spybreak!Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has a hell of a story. Now, I’ve not always been totally convinced by Tim; he spends an inordinate amount of time pursuing minor politicos for breaches of netiquette I think I’d just forget. But two of the crucial principles of journalism can be summed up as the clam ethic –…
Read More tearing up the astroturfMore information is becoming available about the Christopher Hitchens brawl. It appears to have been a telling moment in Decency. The crucial detail is that Hitchens didn’t just deface any old SSNP artefact – he scrawled on the monument to the first shots fired in resistance to the Israeli occupation of 1982. Now, I’m sure…
Read More Hitchens Drinks Scotch in Psychic Counter-InsurgencyLook what the Ministry found. Remember the business with Harrow Borough Council and the secret Israeli lie detector? We noted that it was unlikely that the signal it claimed to detect would be transmitted through the telephone system; an expert pointed out that it might be manifested in other ways; eventually we obtained a copy…
Read More Snake OilThe Grauniad asked 21 of its opinion writers to make predictions for 2009. As a service, and to force Daniel Davies’ hand into starting his planned Predictions-L mailing list, I’ve shorterised each one and reflected briefly on it. The full texts are here. 1) Jackie Ashley thinks the Lib Dems may be powerbrokers in a…
Read More predictions are difficult, except about Martin Kettle