peter cox's Kevo

Just to explain what’s happening here: my blog is changing. I will no longer be blogging regularly since the daily podcast (Litopia Daily) has largely replaced that function. It’s also much higher on my list of priorities – I think a short daily podcast is far more useful to writers than random musings on a hotchpotch of subjects.
Instead, this blog will become a place of publication for longer articles that I write from time to time, mostly, but not exclusively, about writing and publishing.
Should you miss my, ahem, acid wit and ironclad irony, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m now Twittering very frequently – short missives and links (just 140 characters) updated several times every day. Follow me there!
The blog repurposing will take a week or two to finish. Right now, we’re totally overhauling the main Redhammer site, and that’s taking a fair bit of time to get right. In the meantime, I apologize for the mess round here!

Big debate going on over at The Bookseller about this.  I think people are getting worked up over very little… there are far bigger issues for authors to be concerned about at the moment.  If you don’t want the darn label on your book - tell your publisher!  Simple.  And move on to something more significant…

“Scan It®” says the manufacturer’s blurb, ” is an educational and creative play toy that helps children become acclimated with airport and public spaces security. “  Just what we need to train the next generation in mindless compliance and bovine docility. 

Michael Ledeen is not a man whose opinions I would naturally respect.  A prominent voice calling for war against Iraq (“One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please.  If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today”) he has been implicated in both the Iran-Contra  Scandal and the “yellowcake” forgery that helped precipitate the war that Mr. Ledeen so devoutly desired.

His present “resident scholar” status at the American Enterprise Institute should also give pause for thought.  It is, after all, the AEI that has been so pivotal in forming American neocon foreign policy.

For those interested, Wikipedia reveals a great many more facts about this unsavoury but influential individual.

And yet.

His article in the current issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review is a plausible comment on the current state of the Chinese regime.  The fact that this issue of the FEER has been banned in China should give you a clue that it’s got right up the authorities’ noses.

Ledeen makes a good case that present-day China should be viewed, and dealt with, as a “mature fascist state”.  He writes:

Imagine Italy 50 years after the fascist revolution. Mussolini would be dead and buried, the corporate state would be largely intact, the party would be firmly in control, and Italy would be governed by professional politicians, part of a corrupt elite, rather than the true believers who had marched on Rome. It would no longer be a system based on charisma, but would instead rest almost entirely on political repression, the leaders would be businesslike and cynical, not idealistic, and they would constantly invoke formulaic appeals to the grandeur of the “great Italian people,” “endlessly summoned to emulate the greatness of its ancestors.”

This is an interesting analogy.  He then goes on to draw some devastating strategic conclusions that I’ll analyze in the next post.

Whatever has happend to the Project for a New American Century website? Can’t they afford to pay their bills now?

It takes a bit of a reach to wilfully misunderstand some unguarded words by Hilary Clinton, but many have done so. This is what she was reported as having said:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out.”

It’s clear that the subject of her remarks is the date at which nominations have been decided in the past – specifically, June.  She is not saying, “I’ll stay in this race on the off-chance that the other candidate might be assassinated”. However, that’s what many people are understanding her to say (for example, Keith Olberman).

Hilary is guilty, however, of a cardinal political sin – speaking incautiously, and not thinking ahead. Maybe she was tired – maybe she was just tired of speaking obliquely. Whatever the reason, something of a turning point now seems to have been reached.

Just one of the many ways in which McDonalds are prettifying our inner city streets. Thank you, Ronald!

“A massive government database holding details of every phone call made and letter sent by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. The Post office would open and copy every letter before delivery, and would hand over their records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.”

The Times, yesterday

I’ve slightly changed the above extract - the original Times report refers to phone calls and e-mails, - not letters.  My reason?  I wanted to see whether substituting “letters” for “e-mails” would make these colossally outrageous plans any more shocking.  We have, after all, been groomed for years to consider the Internet a playground for terrorists, and in dire need of regulation.  I, for one, will be encrypting all my e-mails from on on.  It may not be fully adequate protection - but it’s a gesture.

In related news, Tory leader David Cameron intends to be the new Margaret Thatcher.  “With a growing lead in the polls”, says the Daily Mirror, “Mr Cameron is believed to be increasingly confident of setting out a right-wing agenda.”

More right wing than the present lot? 

God save us all.

It’s beard week here in Baker Street. Kicking things off, this rather splendid graphic from Jon Dyer’s equally magnificent beardy blog. What style shall I choose next? Spoilt for choice! The French Fork is tempting… so is the Mighty Insecto… pass me those scissors…

Police constable Zeeshaan Chaudry describes in today’s News of the World how he can “fit up” anyone he wants as a terrorist - and ten years jail time.

“Get a few batteries”, says PC Chaudry, “put wires around them, strip the wires to make it look like he is making bombs and that. Put them in his pocket. Just get a piece of paper from the internet, how to make explosives. Tell me you are meeting this geezer in the pub and I will come along and find all this stuff on him. “I can get him ten years man… ten years! We say he’s part of al Qaeda.”

So here we have an enterprising British copper carefully explaining how to use various pieces of UK anti-terrorist legislation to frame innocent people.

It is worth remembering that the government is presently trying to extend the period of time that terrorist suspects can be held without charge from 28 days to 42 days – itself a compromise after sustained police lobbying for a 90 day period. The police argue that the terrorist threat is so severe that we must all be prepared to sacrifice our rights to fight it.

PC Chaudry has already worked out for himself that planting batteries, wires and bomb-making instructions on a target is quite enough to “fast track” a conviction for just about anyone. By dispensing with the old-fashioned niceties of habeas corpus (good enough for many hundreds of years but clearly no longer adequate for the likes of Blair, Brown and Smith) our politicians are effectively colluding with bent coppers everywhere to pervert the course of justice.

I suspect that making it easier to obtain convictions for terrorism does not help in the fight against terrorism one little bit.

Rather, it leads to the “creative” use of the law in the way PC Chaudry describes.

McCarthy’s perverse logic comes to mind: the easier you make it to convict “terrorists”, the more “terrorists” we will miraculously be able to find.