For newcomers, three more items from the archives:

The Guardian Position.

On cowardice in moral drag. Jakob Illeborg touches his toes and hopes no-one takes advantage.

The Voice of Conscience. 

Imperialism, brainwashing and the imminent invasion of China. The wild imaginings of Mr John Pilger.

Peddling Stupidity. 

Professor Carolyn Guertin “inserts bodily fluids and political consciousness into electronic spaces.” Mockery ensues.

Dip a toe in the greatest hits. 

This is one for the “funny-but-actually-quite-mad” pile: 

The outbreak of swine flu should be renamed “Mexican” influenza in deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork, said an Israeli health official Monday. Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman said the reference to pigs is offensive to both religions and “we should call this Mexican flu and not swine flu,” he told a news conference at a hospital in central Israel. Both Judaism and Islam consider pigs unclean and forbid the eating of pork products.

Let’s set aside for a moment objections that the virus in question – a mongrel strain of H1N1 – has more to do with pigs than with Mexico as a whole, or indeed with Mexicans, as some might infer from the suggested renaming. Let’s also set aside the fact the virus has been found in the US, Canada, Spain, New Zealand and the UK, and has genetic elements of at least three other animal flu viruses found in North America, Asia and Europe. Let’s put that out of our minds and grapple with the much more pressing issue: When did the mere “reference to pigs” – i.e. the word “swine” – become such a trial for the devout? Will the indignity never end? And is the aforementioned “sensitivity” something to do with the fact that transmission from pigs to humans suggests a genetic commonality of some kind? I think we should be told.

Daniel Finkelstein considers a well-worn phrase:

Between 2003-2008, I found more than 200 different murderers or murder victims who were described by their neighbours as “keeping themselves to themselves.”

Several examples are quoted, including this rather infamous one:

In the dark, someone was at the stank, pulling masses of rotting flesh from the drains, slopping them into black bag after black bag. It was their neighbour Dennis Nilsen. A civil servant who kept himself to himself.

But why is this not entirely helpful phrase deployed so readily?

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that people who keep themselves to themselves are substantially more likely to be murdered or murderers than other members of the population. I suppose this is possible. But I did note that there were more than 50 footballers who were also described as keeping themselves to themselves in training. This – and the fact that the phrase appears to be British and isn’t used to describe for instance American murderers or murder victims – leads me to the second explanation.

This is that we all copy each other when asked to provide descriptions by the media. The political scientist James Stimson notes that opinion pollsters frequently get people to opine on issues they don’t actually have an opinion about. He calls these fake opinions “non-attitudes.” I suspect “he kept himself to himself” is the crime equivalent of a non-attitude. The neighbour doesn’t actually know anything. Although perhaps their ignorance is caused by the murderer or murder victim actually keeping themselves to themselves.

Theodore Dalrymple ponders rape, punishment and an interesting selectivity:

It is curious how, when it comes to rape, the liberal press, and presumably liberals themselves, suddenly appreciate the value of punishment. They do not say of rape that we must understand the causes of rape before we punish it; that we must understand how men develop into rapists before we lock them away, preferably for a long time; that prison does not work. It is as if, when speaking of rape, it suddenly becomes time to put away childish things, and (to change the metaphor slightly) to talk the only kind of language that rapists understand.

They quiver with outrage when they learn that the clear-up rate for rape cases is only 6.5 per cent, though this in fact is very similar to the clear-up rate of all crimes. They are appalled at cases where rapists are left free to commit more of their crimes because of police and Crown Prosecution Service incompetence, which is itself the natural result of the policy of successive governments. But it is important for their self-respect as liberals that their outrage should not be generalised, that they should not let it spill over into consideration of other categories of crime, where the same bureaucratic levity and frivolity is likewise demonstrated. For, as every decent person knows, there are far too many prisoners in this country already, and prison does not work.

A claim aired repeatedly in the pages of a certain newspaper. Presumably, the Guardian’s Irwin James feels that imprisoned rapists should be allowed to vote along with the rest of the prison population. (Mr James does tentatively draw a line with Ian Huntley and Rose West, noted hate figures of the “popular press,” for whom he feels the franchise would be “pointless.” However, he maintains, “all others… should be allowed to cast their vote.”) And one might reasonably suppose that Mr James also frets over the “poor quality of the toothbrushes” available to rapists.

If anyone were to write that he thought that rapists should not be locked up because they have had a difficult childhood, have psychological problems and aberrant personalities, including a tendency to take drugs and too much alcohol, and because prison does not work as evidenced by the fact that they often commit the same sorts of crimes on release, he would be (rightly) regarded as a moral idiot. Yet the very same arguments are trotted out, with every appearance of convincing the people who trot them out of their own moral superiority over those who do not believe them, with regard to the kinds of crimes that make the lives of many old people in this country (to take only one example) a torment.

The whole thing. (h/t, Freeborn John)

Speaking of Communism and how it works out so well… 

In van Houtryve’s hotel room, propaganda played in an endless loop on the three TV channels. North Korean biographers, striving to make Kim his more revered father’s equal, insist a swallow foretold his birth and attribute a spate of superhuman characteristics to him – the ability to manipulate time among them. Defectors have described him as arthritic and illiterate.

Posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory, documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve visited North Korea. Despite 24-hour surveillance and the pointed reticence of North Koreans, he managed to take some photographs.

Lest we forget, North Korea still has concentration camps and gas chambers. Hence perhaps the reticence. Via Mick Hartley.