For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Because Men Have Abortions Too.

Gender activist Jos Truitt tells us about reality and how it really is.

Jos Truitt can be seen here educating an audience with tremendously deep and radical thought, thereby confirming Hampshire College’s status as a “radical space.” We learn, shockingly, that sex change surgery from female to male typically entails the patient losing the ability to bear children. This is described by Ms Truitt as “an issue of eugenics” and an affront to “reproductive justice.” Rather than, say, an obvious consequence of choosing to have the necessary organs removed in order to become more like the gender that, by definition, doesn’t bear children. Presumably a woman who feels male and wishes to undergo extreme surgery to gain some semblance of physical maleness should also retain a functional uterus and associated organs, perhaps cleverly connected to a decorative penis. An intriguing challenge for any ambitious surgeon.

It’s Protest So It’s Righteous.

Alexander Vasudevan says radical people are entitled to “seize” your property.

Readers who wish to reclaim the belongings of Mr Vasudevan – say, his laptop or his phone – should head for the University of Nottingham. As Mr Vasudevan is keen to excuse the “seizure and reclamation” of other people’s belongings as a “potent symbol of protest,” it seems only fair – and important – to bring that sentiment back to his own doorstep, or that of his employers, if only rhetorically. Of course our academic radical has little to worry about. Readers of this blog are likely to have strong inhibitions regarding the invasion or theft of other people’s property, unlike some enthusiasts of the “radical politics” that Mr Vasudevan finds so exciting.

Socialist Hearts Are Just Bigger Than Ours.

Zoe Williams objects to philanthropy by people richer than herself. Because giving money away “creates inequality.”

Normal salaries won’t of course cut much ice at an Ark Gala, where ticket sales alone raise millions of pounds. Even Zoe, whose former school sends well-heeled little socialists on trips to Rome, Morocco and Barbados, would be out of her league. Still, Zoe’s personal resentments are the important thing and these “obscenely” rich people should stop “creating inequality” while giving money away. Given time, the orphans of Romania will doubtless learn to do without while sharing in Ms Williams’ moral satisfaction.

Abduct the greatest hits and probe them thoroughly.

A collection of miniature origami. 

Horse, by Anja Markiewicz, 75mm.

Further to this, some post-riot rumination. Of variable quality.

First up, Daniel Hannan on criminal opportunism:

Potential criminals will always outnumber police officers. Law enforcement works on the theory that not all potential criminals will go on a spree at the same moment – just as banking rests on the assumption that we won’t all simultaneously withdraw our deposits. When potential criminals realise that the forces of order are overstretched – during a blackout, for example, or in the aftermath of a natural disaster – looting usually follows. What happened earlier this week was that potential criminals made precisely such a calculation. The trigger was not a power cut or an earthquake, but the television images of police in Tottenham standing by while shops were plundered. Even the dimmest hoodie was capable of making a cost-benefit analysis. If the police were unwilling to defend property on one London high street, they would be quite overwhelmed by more widespread disorder. All that was needed was numbers and, thanks to Blackberry and Twitter, numbers could now be concentrated.

Next, Theodore Dalrymple on dependence and degeneracy:

The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor – quite likely – any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognise this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude. On the contrary, he would simply feel that the subventions were not sufficient to allow him to live as he would have liked.

And finally, here’s a podcast of the BBC’s World Tonight, in which Laurie Penny offers her “intelligent analysis.”

The comedy starts around ten minutes in, shortly after one self-declared rioter says he wants “more things for the community” and “less tax.” The same gentleman also thinks the police should have “more power” to “clamp down” on rioters… i.e., on people such as himself. I kid you not. Swollen with righteousness and keen to interrupt, Laurie tells us, “there’s been no attempt to understand” the rioters, which is a typically bold and puzzling statement, not least given the acreage of commentary attempting to do precisely that. Ms Penny also tells us that what frightens her isn’t the delinquent nihilism, the mugging of children or the attempts to burn people in their homes, but the use of the word “feral” to describe the people doing so. It seems we, not the rioters, are the ignorant ones. “Violence,” she repeats, “is rarely ever mindless.” And so, if your home or business was burned to the ground by people who don’t have an explanation for why they did it, besides it being “a laugh” and an opportunity to steal or smash your stuff, then you really should try harder to understand our society’s “social divisions.” And do please note the implied redefinition of the word understand, which now means agree with Laurie Penny.

“Nicking trainers,” Laurie tells us, is a sign of “desperation” and “a political statement.”

It’s a sign of the End Times. // Cat scans. // The remarkable head stability of the Brown Owl. // Beard-measuring T-shirt. // Roof garden apartment, London. // Fog in San Francisco. // World’s highest tennis court. // Drainpipe hotel. // Garbage trucks of yore. For the garbage truck enthusiast. // The internet movie cars database. (h/t, Coudal) // How to deal with vehicle thieves. // Abandoned remains of Russian space shuttle project. // Tetris in the round. (h/t, Anna) // Hiroshima panoramas, six months after the bomb. // Picture of note. // Rating the Bond films. Die, Moonraker, die. // And finally… Stopping looters, the American way.

“A disorientated and bleeding teenager on the streets of London. A gang pretend to help him, and then mug him.”

Captures the ethos, I think.

Meanwhile, our pocket-size revolutionary Laurie Penny – who of course has “no problem with principled, thought-through political ‘violence’” – is telling her readers: “Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there.” Doubtless Laurie will soon tell us exactly what those politics are and how closely they match her own. She is, after all, keen to see the emergence of a “radical youth movement” – “a movement not just for reform but for revolution” – one that “requires direct action” and “upsetting… our parents, our future employers… and quite possibly the police.” Ms Penny also thinks that spitting on women she doesn’t know is pretty rad too.

Elsewhere, while Mothercare burned to the ground and female fire-fighters were dragged from their vehicles and punched insensible, a number of leftist anti-cuts groups announced their “solidarity” with the thugs, thieves and predators. “London,” we learn, “is the world’s biggest Black Bloc.” While student “activist,” chronic liar and Independent blogger Jody McIntyre was busy using his new media profile to urge further rioting and arson. No doubt the Indie, the Guardian and the New Statesman will be swollen with pride at the doings of their latest protégé. But remember, people. As the Guardian’s Priyamvada Gopal told us recently, setting fire to occupied buildings – resulting in this – isn’t “real” violence. Not when compared to “hypocritical language.”

Update, via the comments: