Christopher Hitchens on a people made small in every sense.

The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea’s food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader. […] A North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

Gerard Alexander on the condescension of our betters. Via. 

In this view, we should pay attention to conservative voters’ underlying problems but disregard the policy demands they voice; these are illusory, devoid of reason or evidence. This form of liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or “tea party” gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

Ron Radosh on the polemicist and pseudo-historian Howard Zinn.

Zinn added that his hope was that his work will spread new rebellion, and “lead into a larger movement for economic justice.” […]  Zinn candidly said that history was not about “understanding the past,” but rather, about “changing the future.” That statement alone should have disqualified anyone from referring to him as a historian.

And Roger Kimball on the same. 

During his disreputable tenure as a professor at Boston University, Howard Zinn did everything in his power to subvert the university… He would, for example, pass around his classes a bag containing bits of paper imprinted with the letters A or B. Whichever token a student picked denominated his grade, no matter what work he did or didn’t do. The point? It wasn’t merely grade inflation. More insidiously, it was an expression of contempt for the entire enterprise of which he was a privileged beneficiary.

Feel free to add your own.

For newcomers, three more items from the archives.

Uprising.

Mandatory lesbianism and the politics of shoes. A video history of radical feminism.

“It was a fantastic bit of graffiti and everybody had it up on their walls. And then we found out that a man had done the graffiti. We were just like, ‘Right, that’s it.’ We were basically going to go round and brick his house ‘til we found out he lived with women and children [laughs] … then of course we couldn’t do it, yeah.”

I Sense A Malign Presence.

Meet Jane Elliott: “diversity” pioneer and Witchfinder General for the modern age.

Note Elliott’s disregard for context, motive or objective criteria. “Perception is everything,” says she. By which she means the perception, or misperception, of one party only. This is the premise of Elliott’s crusade – to provide moral correction for all pale-skinned people. The particulars of an exchange and who did what to whom are all but immaterial; what matters is which party belongs to the Designated Victim Group, as defined by Jane Elliott and others in the trade.

The Wrong Kind of Rich.

Wealthy Guardianistas deserve hefty salaries. Unlike you.

Toynbee’s Guardian salary, for years a subject of speculation, was eventually revealed as £106,000 – excluding royalties, advances, media fees, etc. Presumably Polly feels her own financial rewards are not at all “extravagant” or “unjust,” or a likely cause of public outrage. It seems, then, that Ms Toynbee only dislikes the wrong kind of rich people, which is to say rich people whose politics and backgrounds may differ from her own.

And the updated greatest hits may reward some rummaging.

Armed with a “bounty fund” of over £9000, George Monbiot has been urging Guardian readers to effect a citizen’s arrest of Tony Blair, ostensibly for committing “an illegal act of mass murder” and “crimes against peace.” (Mercifully, this bounty doesn’t extend to parliament or a sizeable part of the British electorate.) Monbiot’s campaign website includes the former prime minister’s public schedule and a charmingly ambiguous assurance:

The fund will remain open for as long as Mr Blair lives, or until he is officially prosecuted.

The proposal met with much whooping and hooting among Guardian readers, with more than a few enthusiastic endorsements:  

I would actually like Blair’s blood on my hands.

Elsewhere, saner voices have noted some procedural concerns.

Blair hasn’t been found guilty of anything by any court, tribunal or other competent forum unless you count the High Court of Islington (Chattering Class Division).

And,

Amusingly, if someone did act in this way as a result of Monbiot’s urgings, Monbiot would also be liable, as he would have procured the wrong and the wrongdoer’s actions would also be attributed to him. I would suggest, as well, that his employer, the Guardian, would be vicariously liable for Monbiot’s wrongdoing.

Readers may recall George’s earlier attempt to arrest former US ambassador John Bolton, which didn’t go terribly well. I perhaps don’t need to add that some of us were hoping to see Mr Bolton decking Monbiot personally, quite firmly, and maybe more than once.

I’ve previously noted an air of default entitlement among the UK’s arts practitioners and commentariat, but for those in need of further illustration here’s the Guardian’s Laura Barnett, alerting us to another crushing injustice.

Right now, the economic climate for artists in this country looks particularly bleak… Unlike some European and Scandinavian countries, the British government makes no specific social provision for artists,

Oh, say it isn’t so.

unless through the publicly funded regional arts councils.

Ah. So the government does in fact make special provision for artists. To the tune of almost half a billion a year. And as we know, arts councils can be counted on to spend your money wisely for the betterment of mankind.

In Denmark, for instance, 275 artists are granted an annual stipend of between 15,000 and 149,000 Danish krone (£1,750 to £17,000) every year for the rest of their lives.

Readers will no doubt recall the Danish artist Bettina Camilla Vestergaard, whose benefactors include the Danish Arts Council, the Arts Grants Committee Sweden, the Danish Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Council of Aarhus. Ms Vestergaard used her government stipend to spend six months in Los Angeles pondering “identity and gender” and working on an “intervention in public space”:

My first three months primarily consisted of passing time in residential Hollywood, sitting alone in my car, shopping and getting fuel.

The results of Ms Vestergaard’s lengthy, publicly subsidised musings can be appreciated more fully here. 

But in this country, for artists without a lucky early break, rich parents or benefactors, a day job is often the only way to survive. […] What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: making art.

It’s an outrage, I tell you. Thankfully, some businesses are sensitive to the arts community and its special needs.

For the last four years, [actor, Lainy] Scott has been working at RSVP, a call centre in east London that employs only artists, taking calls for Which? magazine and WeightWatchers. Shifts are available in the day, evening, or at weekends, allowing artists to plan their work around shows, rehearsals or auditions.

Some comfort, then. However,

“There are people who get very bogged down by having to do non-acting stuff,” Scott says.

Update: An artistic Guardianista adds,

When I left college in the early 80s after finishing my Fine Art degree, I went and lived in Holland for 6 months as some artist friends of ours had been allowed to live in an old disused warehouse by Leiden council. They had electricity paid and were allowed to claim the equivalent of the dole to just be artists. We put on experimental theatre, lived and worked in the same place… This was an investment in the economy… Why have artists take up jobs that people rely on in a time of recession. Why not allow them to claim benefit but not have to job search?

“Just to be artists.” Oh, I like that. And don’t dismiss all that experimental theatre, which is after all an investment in the economy. Taxpayers can’t get enough experimental theatre.

Here’s a thing.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused the United States of causing the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, which killed possibly 200,000 people. Chavez believes the U.S. was testing a tectonic weapon to produce eco-type devastations.

Blimey. One wonders how this revelation will go down among the Great Man’s admirers here in the UK.

But I’m confused. I thought only “The Jews” had such diabolical technology. As revealed in December 2007 when Hamas MP Ahmad Abu Halabiya informed Al-Aqsa TV that,

It is not impossible for the Jews to generate an artificial earthquake… in order to accomplish their goal of destroying the foundations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Needless to say, The Guild of Evil™ has been conducting research of its own with this mobile apparatus.

Update: Not what it seems, it seems.