Basic laws of economics

I think the first half of Simon Jenkins' article in today's Guardian is largely correct. Efforts to curb heroin supply from Afghanistan have gone poorly. I worry that he attributes too much of the failure to incompetence and not enough to conditions; like the shortage of troops last year when the Helmand insurgency really got going. Pointing out that wouldn't be worth a post though.

It is the second half of his article that troubles me as it is entirely premised on this little nugget:

"Every schoolchild economist knows demand will always attract supply."

Jenkins thinks he's really bloody clever but his little "basic law", as the blurb at the beginning of the article calls it, is clearly untrue. Consider this example:



I would love to own a talking taco that craps ice cream. There is clearly demand for such a product and yet I've never found a supplier. That's because it is impossible to produce. Similarly my demand for going into space is unlikely to be sated any time soon. It cannot be provided at a price I can afford to pay.

Now, drug demand will usually be relatively inelastic, it will only fall slowly with rising prices, because addiction makes addicts willing to absord quite a high increase in price, they'll steal if they need to. Still, the idea that it is impossible to seriously reduce the quantity of something bought and sold through increasing the cost of supply alone is obviously wrong. If we make using heroin as expensive as going to space then people won't be able to afford it and heroin addiction will plummet.

The important question is, therefore, whether it is practicable to increase the price enough that heroin users start giving up. Understanding that question requires the kind of hard analysis that simplistic and arrogant statements like Jenkins' are designed to avoid.

The descent of Comment is Free into self-parody continues apace with this gem:

Knocked Up is the latest example of a recurring theme in romantic comedies over the past few years - identified by the New Yorker's David Denby as the "slacker-striver romance". From the Stephen Frears 2000 adaptation of the Nick Hornby novel High Fidelity, to last year's man-child valorisation Failure to Launch, via Owen Wilson's entire oeuvre, the template is pretty much the same. She is even-tempered, attractive, super-serious but ultimately bland - unless she's responding shrilly to her partner's perceived fecklessness. He is funny, laid-back, perhaps nursing a nerdy obsession with alphabetised albums or baseball scores, and any inability on his part to deal with the basics of adult existence is recast as charming and/or a heroic rejection of the constraints of conformity.

And so it is that director and writer Judd Apatow adds an unplanned pregnancy to this heady mix of equal parts male fantasy and paranoia. Given the current political climate in the States - with its anti-choice president and, more than three decades after Roe v Wade, 87% of counties without access to an abortion provider - it's unsurprising that Apatow chose not to go there, but it doesn't make the way he does it any less cowardly.

Not a single character in the film is allowed to utter the word "abortion". Is the notion really that heinous? The only character to actively advocate "taking care of things" is Alison's shallow, bitchy mother. The closest we get to hearing a pro-choice line is when one of Ben's loser pals suggests "something that rhymes with schmazmortion", at which point the rest of the gang jump on him because, hey, even stoned, layabout porn-junkies understand that abortion is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Yup, Libby thinks that this Hollywood romantic comedy is fatally flawed by not having its lead characters spend its middle third considering terminating the pregnancy. (God only knows what she thought of Junior.)

To all of which commenter "Cup of Tea" presents, to my mind, the knock-down argument:

Well, if she had chosen to have an abortion it would have been a damn short movie. And probably not a very funny one.

Welcome to the Guardianista rom-com, people.

(Cross-posted from Mr Eugenides)

All in the timing

John Pilger, in today's Guardian:

The "treatment" of [Venezuelan TV station] RCTV is a cause celebre for those in Britain and the US affronted by the sheer audacity and popularity of Chávez, whom they smear as "power crazed" and a "tyrant". That he is the authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed. Even the description of him as a "radical socialist", usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores the fact that he is a nationalist and social democrat, a label many in Britain's Labour party were once proud to wear.

In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death squad gang, back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges Chávez is building in the region, such as the use of Venezuela's oil revenue to end IMF slavery. That he maintains a neoliberal economy, described by the American Banker as "the envy of the banking world" is seldom raised as valid criticism of his limited reforms. These days, of course, any true reforms are exotic.

And as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to defend their own basic liberties, they watch the very concept of democracy as a liberal preserve challenged on a continent about which Richard Nixon once said "people don't give a shit". However much they play the man, Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of Rousseau's idea of direct popular sovereignty may have been planted among the poorest, yet again, and "the hope of the human spirit"... has returned.

It is perhaps unfortunately for John that his piece was filed mere hours after this snippet:

The Venezuelan leader, Hugo Chávez, denied he wanted to stay in power indefinitely after announcing plans to abolish limits to presidential re-election. Mr Chávez also told the country's National Assembly that presidential terms should be extended from six to seven years.

"I propose to the sovereign people the seven-year presidential term, the president can be re-elected immediately for a new term," Mr Chavez said in a the four-hour speech.

"If someone says this is a project to entrench oneself in power, no - it's only a possibility, a possibility that depends on many variables."

Mr Chávez was elected president for a second time last December and, under the current constitution, will have to step down in 2012.

¡Viva la Libertad!


(cross-posted from Mr Eugenides)

Neil Clark.

Neil Clark is the sort of person that makes even the mildest person wish they were a fully paid up swearblogger. When I read his latest CiF piece of diarrhea, where he appears to gloat at the likely deaths of Iraqi interpreters and their families at the hands of Shia death squads, I wanted to reach through the computer screen and terminate him with extreme prejudice (or better condemn him to death in the sort of lingering manner that our ancestors reserved for treason - hanging, drawing and (optionally) quartering). It seems my reaction is far from unique.

The comments below his sewage in very large part strongly condemn his viewpoint including one from Conor Foley which points out that Clark seems to be advocating actions specifically prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

Christopher White likens Clark to "a moist part of the female anatomy", which seems to me to be insulting to all women everywhere. Over at Harry's Place, one of the authors copied a letter he wrote to the CiF editors which begins:

Dear Georgina and team,

When are you going to commission a CiF article from Nick Griffin? It couldn’t be worse than anything from Clark.

When you host - and pay - for writing this nauseating, don’t kid yourselves that the Guardian can stand aloof. You’re not a messenger, you’re a facilitator. It’s one thing to run a forum that “represent[s] a wide range of experience and interests”, and quite another to provide a platform for a supporter of head-chopping barbarians. If an article like this is deemed publishable, then I shudder to think the depths an author has to plumb before your consciences are pricked.

About the mildest response comes from Tim W who thought it had to be spoof, just winding us up a la Craig Brown.

Technorati gives some 120+ other links and I can't find a single one that agrees with him so I think the verdict is clear. Neil Clark is a disgrace to the human race and the sooner he joins his hero Slobodan Milosovic in the afterlife the better.

Seumas Milne Stuck in 2005

[This was originally posted at my own blog]
In a "comment is free" article, Seumas Milne seems to demonstrate that he hasn't read any of the news about Iraq over the last couple of months let alone the last few years. I had to check the date on this piece of tosh linked to by Tim, because it seemed so 2005 but no it really is dated "Thursday August 9, 2007". Tim points out a certain weakness of the piece which I'll get to by and by but the whole thing is worth a thorough end-to-end fisking so here is one:

Eventually, the US will have to negotiate its way out

Expectations of an early withdrawal from Iraq are premature. Only broader resistance is likely to break the American grip

The title, that negotiation will lead to the US leaving Iraq is undoubtedly true. The subhead - basically that the Yanks are there for good unless the population rises up en masse and kicks the out - is possibly true in the abstract, but rather less convincing if you look at what is actually happening in Iraq. You see resistance to America seems to be becoming narrower than it used to be. When you have former "resistance" groups like the 1920 Revolution Brigade patroling WITH the Yanks it seems to indicate that the chances for "broader resistance" are slim.

Whatever else they might disagree about, Iraqis, Americans and Britons have something crucial in common: large majorities in all three countries oppose the occupation of Iraq by US and British troops and want them brought home.

Large majorities in all three countries (well a large majority in Iraq and a majority inthe US and possibly a majority in the UK) want Iraq to be peaceful and stable. The evidence is widespread that Iraqis at least prefer the US presence to the bitter civil war they foresee if the US withdraws.

Recognition that the war has been a political and human catastrophe is now so settled that politicians are obliged to pay at least lip service to the pervasive mood for withdrawal. Gordon Brown's studiedly suggestive remarks on the White House lawn about plans to move British troops from "combat to overwatch" in Basra, where two more British soldiers have been killed this week, were clearly aimed at anti-war opinion in Britain.

May I translate. The defeatist media has managed to convince everyone that the war was a bad idea and Gordy Broon, being a slimy pol, isn't stupid enough to not try the slopey shoulders trick if it will help him get elected.

Meanwhile, speculation about scenarios for withdrawal is rampant in Washington and Iraq itself. But that doesn't mean it's about to happen - and there's a danger that pressure in the US and Britain to end the occupation could be relaxed in anticipation of a full-scale pullout that is still not seriously on the cards. After all, Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 on a promise to end the Vietnam war and American troops were still there five years later.

And most of said scenarios talk about civil wars, Iran conquering half the country and so on. Oh and did you read the stories about how even if the US decided to leave tomorrow it would take about a year to do it in an orderly manner?

What is clear is that the US has already suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq. A flagrant act of aggression intended to be a demonstration of untrammelled US imperial power to impose its will on the heart of the oil-producing Arab and Muslim world has instead demonstrated a fatal vulnerability to "asymmetric warfare". It's also true that, as a senior US intelligence officer told the Washington Post this week, "the British have basically been defeated in the south". Far from keeping rival militia from each other's throats, over 80% of violent attacks in the area are directed against British troops.

Now here's a wonderful bit of misdirection. What is a strategic defeat as opposed to a regular one I wonder? Perhaps a strategic defeat is when you win on the ground and then the media and the leftwing politicians decide that you lost anyway? My understanding of a defeat is that you either have to leave or that if you stay you can only travel around etc. at whim of the victor. No one is stopping the US troops from going anywhere in Iraq except their own scruples that think that running over (or bombing) a few babies used as human shields is a bad idea. Have the Americans 'demonstrated a 'fatal vulnerability to "asymmetric warfare"'? Well not the way I see it. They may have demonstrated hesitation and a failure to find the right strategy in the past but when even the NY Times says the surge is working militarily then the folks who seem to be losing the "asymmetric warfare" would appear to be those who are fighting America. Now having said all that one part of the country where there has been no 'surge' is, guess what? the British controlled area of the south. So in other words the non-surging British have been defeated while the surging US is being victorious.

But, given the political embarrassment a British pullout would represent for the Bush administration in Washington, it's hard to imagine Brown's government ordering a comprehensive withdrawal any time soon. So British soldiers will have to expect to go on paying Tony Blair's blood price for the much-vaunted special relationship.

Or if you put it another way they will continue to pay for the fact that, as the EU Referendum bloggers explain, the British MoD seems incapable of supplying the forces and equipment needed to do the job properly. Now there is another more subtle question here. If, as Seumas claims, 80% of violent attacks are against British soldiers, then what are the other 20% against? I venture to suggest that this is the sort of behaviour you might expect if you had two or three factions (or more) who hated each other but who realized that if they came out into the open and fought each other then the British would attack them. In other words you'd want to spend as much effort as nevessary to keep the British distracted so that you could get after your real opponents.

Despite the congressional bluster, a better guide to US intentions was given by the defence secretary, Robert Gates, a couple of months back, when he declared that the US was looking for a "long and enduring presence" in Iraq - reflected in plans to consolidate 14 "enduring bases" across the country. Given the huge US strategic interest in Iraq and the region - and its determination to halt the spread of Iranian influence - that seems unlikely to change in the event of a Democratic presidential victory in 2008. In other words, the price of staying in Iraq will have to rise still further if the US is going to be forced out and Iraq regain its independence.

Well there is another alternative. Consider Iraqi Kurdistan. There are (IIRC) no more than a handful of US militrary folks in Kurdistan because that part of the country is at peace and able to defend itself against invasion or at least infiltration. I don't think there are (m)any evil neocon chickenhawks whou wouldn't like to see the rest of Iraq in the same state. They (and I) think that leaving Iraq, or reducing the troop presence there, before the country is peaceful would be a bad idea for political reasons as well as the humanitarian one that without US troops being there the place seems likely to become even more violent than it is today.

Inside Iraq, that price can only be exacted by increased resistance. More than any other single factor, it has been the war of attrition waged by Iraq's armed resistance - or insurgency as it is usually described in the western media - that has successfully challenged the world's most powerful army and driven the demand for withdrawal to the top of the political agenda in Washington. Two years ago the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, insisted the insurgency was in its "last throes". But while the outside world has increasingly focused on al-Qaida-style atrocities against civilians and sectarian killings, the guerrilla war against the occupation forces has continued to escalate. There are now over 5,000 attacks a month, a more than 20-fold increase on four years ago, and the US and British death toll is rising. Opinion polls show there is majority support for armed resistance across Iraq; in Sunni areas it is overwhelming.

First note that Seumas is clearly advocating more attacks and more deaths of UK and US service personnel. What he is saying here is "if you kill enough soldiers the US will give up and go home, so far you aren't killing enough so get better at it and quickly." I don't know if Seumas is a British citizen but what he's writing here could probably be counted as treason and, if the UK were like, say, Russia, then a journalist who wrote such a thing might find himself committing suicide with extreme prejudice. Beyond that it is worth noting, as Seumas doesn't, that the cost of the war of attrition waged by "Iraq's armed resistance" seems to have mostly fallen on the Iraqis themselves. Figures are relatively hard to find but it seems clear that while the coalition loses about 3 soldiers a day on average the Iraqi civilian population loses perhaps ten times that. It is also worth noting that the western media has hyped the "insurgency" and that if it were honest it would note that the insurgency is remarkably ineffective. Sure the recent EFPs due to "the spread of Iranian influence" have helped increase fatalities but even so hundreds of patrols go on without any attacks and dozens of attacks fail for every success. In other words the "insurgency" would be classed as a dismal failure if it were not hyped by journalists such as S Milne. See this email quoted by Michael Totten:

Having served with an infantry battalion much like the one subjected in the post during a year in Ar Ramadi when Ar Ramadi was at its most conflicted, I can assure you that the violence is not as you might expect. Our unit suffered pretty massive causalities during our year. However, we patrolled every single day of that year. Those patrols lasted many hours. And, typically, even in then “chaotic” Ramadi, most patrols followed the same peaceful format as the one described in Mr. Totten’s post.

Even in the worst places, day-to-day activity is mundane and quiet. When attacks occur, they do so viciously. In my case, these resulted in my unit’s heavy causalities. Nonetheless, I rarely patrolled in fear. I knew that on most days, our patrol would result in an absence of action. Again, this was in a city considered to be one of the most violent of the war. This peculiar dynamic of the situation in Iraq is lost on Big Media.

Also note that military casualties in July FELL, despite the surge and the rise to over 5,000 attacks a month. It is also worth noting that in Sunni areas opinnon, as demonstrated by actions, seems to prefer having the US around compared to either Al Qaeda or a Shia dominated Iraqi government. Sure the Sunni want the Americans to leave. But what Seumas doesn't say is that rather like St Agustine's plea for chastity there is a critical rider "NOT YET"

The mainstream resistance movement has often been dismissed in the US and Britain as politically incoherent, obscurantist or tarred with the brush of al-Qaida (which accounts for a minority of attacks, though perhaps a majority of suicide bombings). That has been made easier as it operated underground, communicating mainly through the internet or occasional statements to the Arabic media. Now that is changing. Last month, I interviewed leaders of three Sunni-based Islamist and nationalist-leaning resistance groups which are joining four others to launch a political front in advance of an expected American withdrawal. The recent cross-party Iraq Commission report cites four of the seven as among the "four or five main groups" the insurgency has now consolidated around. All have signed up to an anti-sectarian, anti-al-Qaida platform, oppose attacks on civilians, and call for negotiated withdrawal and free elections.

Their goals of anti-al-Qaida, not attacking civilians, negotiated withdrawl and free elections appear to coincide neatly with the stated goals of the USA. This may explain why in Anbar, Diyala etc. these groups and the tribes they come from are increasingly cooperating with the US. Something that Seumas seems unable to understand.

The greatest danger to both the resistance and the wider campaign to end the occupation remains the Sunni-Shia split, fostered since the invasion in classic divide-and-rule mode. Throughout the occupation, armed resistance has been concentrated in mainly Sunni Arab areas. Whenever it has spread to the Shia population - as it did in 2004, when Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army fought the Americans - the potentially decisive threat to US control from a genuinely nationwide resistance movement has become clear. Now armed resistance by the Mahdi army has re-emerged, against the British in Basra and the Americans in Baghdad, where the US lieutenant general Raymond Odierno has claimed that most attacks during July were by Shia fighters.

Now we start to mix truth with utter fantasy. It is true that the Sunni-Shia split is the great threat but it is the great threat to Iraq remaining a unified country not to the "resistance". The implication that the coalition fostered the split is 100% opposite to reality. It is clear that it was Al Qaeda, in conjunction with Sunni Ba'athist criminals who did most of the splitting by attacking Shia again and again. Once they'd started they were of course ably assisted by the retaliation from Al Sadr and the other Shia militas.The statement "armed resistance has been concentrated in mainly Sunni Arab areas" should be telling you something - namely that the Shia were not resisting and not worried about the US. When Al Sadr fought the Americans we saw many Shia, including their supreme Ayatollah, support the US because they hated what Al Sadr and his thugs wanted to impose. Finally if the majority of attacks are now caused by Shia then perhaps that indicates that umm the Americans have substantially defeated the Sunni insurgency and got them on its side.

But while acutely aware of the need to make common cause with Shia groups and the danger of the breakup of the country, the new Sunni-based resistance front refuses to have anything to do with the Mahdi army because of its role in sectarian killings and on-off participation in the floundering US-sponsored government. Meanwhile, the US is seeking to draw some on the margins of the Sunni-based resistance into the orbit of its anti-Iranian, anti-Shia regional alliance.

So the Sunnis won't ally with Al Sadr because he's in the government and he's been killing Sunnis. Let me guess which one of those two reasons has greater resonance. As evidence of the way the Sunnis trust the US more than Al Sadr I present Michael Yon's two dispatches about getting food to Baquba from the food store in Sadr City. What Seumas seems not to grasp is that, finally, the Sunni tribes have figured out that the US doesn't attack you if you don't attack them while Al Qaeda and the Shia militias do attack you especially if you don't attack them. And I love the way the Sunnis working with the US are considered "the margins". When a Sunni province like Anbar goes from hundreds of attacks a day to practically zero that's not the effect of a few marginal players changing sides. Finally he calls the alliance anti-Itanian, anti-Shia. I'm not sure about the Anti-shia part but he is right about the Anti-Iranian bit, but then most Iraqis are already anti-Iran anyway, even amongst the Shia.

The history of anti-colonial and anti-occupation resistance campaigns shows that success has almost always depended on broad-based national movements. But the embryonic resistance front has got to be a positive development if it holds together. Not only could the creation of an alliance with a common programme help open up cooperation with Shia anti-occupation forces now, but if there is going to be a stable post-occupation settlement in Iraq, that will have to include all those with genuine support on the ground. Sooner or later, the Americans are going to have to negotiate with these groups.

We're in fantasy land here. There is no broad-based national resistance movement. There never has been and, as far as I can see, never will be. Indeed contrary to Seumas' delusions what there is, increasingly, is a section of the Iraqi population that wants all the militias disarmed, preferably fatally. It is extremely unclear to me whether the militias have support on the ground except through intimidation and I suspect that as the operations against Al Qaeda wind down and operations against the Mahdi army and other Shia militias start up we will see precisely how much support these groups lack once they are put on the defensive. I see no reason why the US should negotiate with criminal militias except at the barrel of a gun and, despite Iranian assistance, it seems like the US has rather more weapons and rather more powerful ones than these gangs.

All in all this piece is a disgrace. Seumas lets his anti-Americanism blind him to the brutal behaviour of those who claim to be fighting for the "liberation" of Iraq and he makes no attempt what so ever to analyse whether these groups will actually be a constructive or destructive force. Going on their actions to date as corrupt warlords in the areas that they control it would logical for a "liberal" democrat like Seumas to oppose them and support the struggling US backed democracy in Iraq - the only one so far in the Arab world and one of very few in the Muslim world as a whole. Indeed, as I said at the top, this piece could have bene written almost unchanged in 2005 and been unremarkable. To write it in 2007 after the surge and related activity has convinced the Sunni tribes in much of Iraq that the US is more their friend than either Al Qaeda or the Shia militias are is astounding. It shows that Seumas can't grasp the idea that there should be any alternative to "resistance" or that the US can occupy any position other than "great satan". Perhaps he should go live in Iran for a while, then he can decide if the US is indeed the greatest evil, or whether, just possibly, the Iranian influence that the US is worried about is actually worse.

Charlie Bell - If this is the future of the Left...

Charlie Bell's "I'm young but I care" article for Comment is Free is quite the demonstration of why 'grown-up' politicians shouldn't take the voice of 'the youth' too seriously:

"A common response, by one of my friends, to any questions that could possibly touch on the area of politics is: "I don't care - I'm not really interested in politics." But who can blame him? Not a week seems to go by without yet another depressing statistic about today's youth in this country. Not only do we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, but the Institute for Public Policy Research has just released a report that brands British teenagers the worst behaved in Europe. With gun crime, drug taking and binge drinking never far away from the headlines, we must be an appalling generation."

That's a complete non sequitur. There is no reason to expect that depressing statistics make people less likely to engage with politics. If things are going alright already why try to make a difference? By contrast, serious problems like those identified by the IPPR suggest that getting involved is worthwhile.

"And even those who claim to be in touch with the youth miss the point. The famous "hug-a-hoodie" idea (unfairly attributed to the Conservatives) highlights this - just because people wear a hoodie and hang around with their friends doesn't mean the next thing they'll be doing is smashing up a cafe or binge drinking. You don't see police community support officers marching up to Costa or Starbucks and breaking up a group of middle-aged women simply because they are all wearing jeans. It sounds ridiculous, but the only reason needed to stop young people who are innocently walking the streets is an item of clothing. And that makes us the terrible generation?"

This is staggeringly ignorant:

• Middle-aged women wearing jeans don't terrorise the law-abiding, particularly senior citizens, into staying at home after dark.
• The 'hoodie' isn't just one more item of clothing. It has a particular function in hiding the wearer's face that aids criminality, petty or serious. That is why it is associated with criminality and rightly causes suspicion.
• Just because not all those wearing hoodies are trouble does not mean suspicion is ill-founded.

"We are the IT-literate generation, the generation that will (seemingly to the horror of the media) eventually take over as this country's leaders. Maybe those who constantly talk of saving the world for "our children and grandchildren" should wake up and realise that's us. We are the future, and we need to be included. Every time someone young comes up with a new idea, they are beaten down for being inexperienced. Take David Cameron, for example. It's taboo to talk about elderly statesmen being too old for the job, for fear of being ageist, but the moment a young politician or commentator opens his mouth to speak, they are criticised for being too young to have any worthwhile ideas."

'Charlie' is clearly too young to remember the last election. Michael Howard faced frequent criticism for being too old. He is also clearly too poorly informed to have noticed the masses of criticism Menzies Campbell has faced for his age. Eric Forth's shouting "declare your interest" during an early question Campbell was trying to ask the Prime Minister on pensions was a particular high point. By contrast, David Cameron used his relative youth as a selling point in the Conservative leadership election.

"The answer is simple - young people feel strongly about things that will affect them. Climate change is going to flood my house, not that of my grandmother."

Actually even under Stern's "alarmist and incompetent" (PDF) analysis, it isn't myself and Charlie's generation that will pay the price for climate change. As Nordhaus noted the majority of the harms Stern identifies come after 2800. With decent flood defences and if he avoids living in an eco-town on a flood plain he should be fine.

If this is the future of the Left politics is about to get fun if infuriating.

Eco-Socialists hate flying

This is my problem with green politics at its most eco-socialist: I don't think they're doing what any attempt at forming environmental policy should be doing - trading off expected costs to climate change against the costs of stopping us doing the things we love. They don't love the things we do.

They hate flying:

"Except there's a catch. The truth is, I don't feel I'm making any sacrifice at all. Because I hate flying."

[...]

"Even before kids came along, I hated flying. Irrational, I know, but I find it frightening: the loss of control, the sheer helplessness up in the sky. I can make my palms sweat just thinking about it."

Now, do we believe that when Jonathan Freedland makes the case for increased taxation on aviation he is thinking "while it isn't to my taste I understand that other people enjoy flying, what a shame we have to cut down to save the environment"? Or, do we think he has "Good. Bloody planes" running through his head?

I reckon it's the latter and I don't think Freedland is alone. They don't like planes, cars and the rest of modern, industrial life. They don't possess the humility to accept that others do. Green politics provides an excuse to push lifestyles in a direction the hippy movement has been pushing for decades.

That's why they'll ignore that, for example, trains aren't better than planes for the environment if they go at a decent speed (as the one pictured in Freedland's article does). From an article by Monbiot of all people:

"Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes…. energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour…. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more C02 emissions than planes."

Idiot unsure of his place in the world, perhaps there is none?

Today we have this piece. Just finished the first paragraph and the number of idiotic statements in it is just incredible:

On June 30 I flew out of Glasgow airport approximately nine hours before the suicide bombing attempt, thereby missing out on the massive Daily Mail-style moral-indignation boon of being able to describe myself and family as intended terrorism targets. Like most people, I was pleased to be able to watch a story of potential atrocity pass into one of black humour and farce, allowing us to depict the Islamist threat as no match for a Glaswegian baggage-handler, and to joke about the perpetrators as the first people to drive to Paisley in expectation of a rendezvous with 72 virgins.

First, your family was an intended target you fuckwit. The fact you left 9 hours before or 9 days before does not make a difference. They went there to kill those who would use it. You used it, you were an intended target. Dipship.

Black humour and farce? Don't be a cunt. That is like saying the Brighton Bomb was a farce because the bogtrotters got the wrong fucking room and Thatcher went on to make a speech. Do not denigrate the thing because it suits your warped political opinion and fuzzy world view you cretin. They have to be lucky just the once, eventually they will read a wiring diagram the right way and we will all be in trouble.

You especially because your neighbours will hunt you down for being on their side. They will - I will tell them.

Very good, slag off the great Smeato. It was not the actual man you waste of human skin it was the morality and backbone he represented. He stood up to these murdering scumbags and won because the possession of morals and a sense of duty to stand up for ones country will always trump you bunch of arseholes who are so keen to appease these lunatic death-cultists. God, you have only been on my radar for minutes and I want you to die.

Why do people like you sneer at Smeato? Because you want us all to prostrate ourselves before militant Islam and you hate that there are people in the world who are willing to fight back to preserve their way of life. You hate that so you clearly wank donkey balls.

Jokes about virgins in Paisley? Have you seen New Street on a Saturday night? Some of those Swamp Donkeys must surely still be virgins simply because the amount of booze required to make them look good would kill you long before they started to give you a semi.

However, what has fairly ripped my knitting in the weeks since has been the concerted efforts to give religion an alibi for the whole undertaking, depicting it as merely misused by extremists and clinging to the idea that faith itself is a virtue, all the while ignoring the very simple equation that no belief in an afterlife equals no suicide bombers.

No, not religion you cum stain on the bedsheets of humanity. Islam.

Christians believe in life after death and the resurrection but they don't go driving burning jeeps into departure lounges. To try to shroud Islam in the blanket of all religions and then tell us that atheism would stop the bombers is just fucked up. I don't want to be a fucking otter.

Anyway, I cannot be bothered reading the rest because you are clearly an apologist for terrorism and you lack any moral compass whatsoever.

Go and fuck yourself with a big fucking barbed wire baseball bat up your arsehole while piercing your tongue with a rusty bayonet.

Update: Complete lack of self-awareness or applying double standards? Either way he is not talking me round to revoking my call to anally probe himself with the barbed wire bat.

My new novel, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks, takes its name from a coinage of the magician and sceptic James Randi to describe people who, no matter how much proof you try to submerge them in, always bob back up again with a new reason to keep believing.

When you believe in nothing you will fall for anything. I present the proof.

Update 2: Scanned the full post and guess what? It is an attack on Christianity and Judaism, whodathunkit? So one religion that promotes death causes its followers to seek death so therefore us Christians should convert to atheism? The actual religion that caused them to carry out this act? Mentioned only the once. Nothing like missing the big picture you useless fuck.

Update 3: From the comments some right-on wanker posts:

These justifications [Glasgow attacks and Koreans killed by Taliban] are spurious in the extreme (ref Old Testament: thou shalt not kill).

So you are saying that the criminals are not justified in using THEIR religion as a reason for killing because of something OUR religion says in its texts? Fuck off you total airheaded horsefucker.

The Home of Racist Violence

Muslims should choose jihad over Johnny Cash but that isnt a choice that they will ever have to make.

Bikhair

The promotion of terrorism in the Guardian website?

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