Hat tip me (again)

errrrrrrr

Hat tip: Will.

Or at least he is according to one Sunny Hundal, who in the comments [over at Pickled Politics wrote]:

“I’m quite disappointed someone like Francis, who used to be the epitome of good natured intellectual discussion, has let himself dragged into the gutter by constantly calling other journalists / commentators silly names. But I expect that what happens when you hang around that dimwitted Will bloke. I expect she [G Henry] got annoyed at his hat:tip because Will is the kind to launch the most stupidest and expletive-filled attacks on anyone who doesn’t follow his narrow world-view.”

…and in another comment about Will specifically:

“You couldn’t make this shit up. I’m not surprised so many journalists hate bloggers. He’s like Devil’s Kitchen. [note –(I Will — have added this link — just for ease of comparison)] Another inbred who spends too much time in his pyjamas railing at the world and smug in his self-righteousness, ready to call others anti-semitic or sexist with ease. Sheesh.”

Our Will is perfectly capable of defending himself, and will no doubt do so in his own inimitable way.

But it looks to me like I’m being libelled by Hundal.

I know I’m a grumpy old man, and occasionally display a lack of civility in my comments about those who could bore for England on matters of religion. But where exactly is this “constantly calling other journalists/commentators silly names”? And, more importantly, where is the name calling in the mocking piece about Madeleine Bunting that was rejected by Comment is Free?

As for Hundal’s reference to intellectual discussion, if “thinker and writer” Madeleine Bunting were to put in the effort and engage in such, maybe people would address her arguments and not be so terribly beastly toward her.

Regarding esteemed Comrade Will, Hundal would no doubt have me dissociate myself from him. Sorry, but I’m not playing. Fellow Drink-Soaked Trots may now and then mock Will for his coarse tongue, but self-righteous and dimwitted are certainly not terms I would use to describe him.

I make no apologies for my drama queen resignation from the Comment is Free writers roster, and to be perfectly honest I cannot even bring myself to read the site most days. Comment is Free is neither blog nor journalism, and commenters there often put writers to shame with the high quality of their responses. That applies also to me and Hundal. Several of my articles have been complete turkeys. I’ll leave it to others to comment on Hundal’s oeuvre.

Comment journalism has in recent years gone down the toilet, and the problem extends beyond the Guardian. Having poor-quality newspaper and online opinion pieces open to instant response leads to often vitriolic comments, which in turn encourage throwaway, contrarian and nasty writing. The result is that Comment is Free and sites with similar grand pretensions have become moral and political cesspits.

Hat tip: Will

Sex in Ramallah: Between Islam and Globalization

Hat tip to Me!

“Studying the impact of planes, similar to those that hit the Twin Towers, that had accidentally fallen on densely populated cities, one concludes that it was not a plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Only a projectile could have caused the geometrically round hole that allegedly was made by the plane.”

. . . Fidel Castro, 911-Truther.

Hat tipping to Will 

Evidence for the prosecution.

Hat tip Will 

Eric Lee and LabourStart are campaigning with Unison in support of care workers in Barnet. The workers work for Fremantle Care a not-for-profit trust that is seeking to slash wages and impose worse terms and conditions.

On their website Fremantle have the usual managerial vision and values section that says their vision is to “To develop the skills and qualifications of our dedicated workforce” and their value is to “Encourag[e] every member of staff to contribute fully”. Fishcakes.

Fremantle have tried to shut LabourStart down. Eric Lee writes:

The campaign we launched a little more than a week ago in support of low-paid workers in care homes in north London has generated more support than any other campaign we have ever done.Already, well over 8,100 messages have been sent to the employer. This is even bigger than our 2005 campaign in support of the Gate Gourmet workers, which was a much more widely publicized dispute in the mainstream media.

As we mentioned in this week’s message, the employer reacted swiftly and brutally — first threatening us with a libel action in the English courts and then sacking a union rep.

And then on Thursday, in an unprecedented move, the employer (Fremantle Trust) contacted our internet service provider and demanded that they shut down the campaign or else face a lawsuit themselves.

We were contacted by the legal department of the internet service provider and told that we had until noon on Friday to close down the campaign or else the entire LabourStart site would be shut down.

We worked very hard over those 24 hours to attempt to get our provider to back down, and had the full support of Unison (Britain’s giant public sector union, whose members are at the center of the dispute) but were not successful in doing this before the noon deadline on Friday.

As a result, at 11:59 on Friday we were compelled to shut down the campaigns.

But — we instantly revived the campaign in nine languages on a different server, in a different country, with a new name that reflects our feeling at this time.

The new site is called “We will not be silenced!” and is located, appropriately enough, at http://www.wewillnotbesilenced.org/.

If you have not yet sent off your message of protest to Fremantle, please do so from the new page.

Remember that you can use our system to send out your own message to the chief executive of Fremantle Trust — and you can tell her, if you wish, what you think of this attempt to silence our campaign.

Please also inform all your lists and every trade unionist you know to use the new site to send a loud and clear message to this employer.

If Fremantle Trust were unhappy to receive 8,000 emails, how are they going to feel about getting thousands more in the next few days? Because that is exactly what is going to happen. We will not be intimidated, we will not be bullied, and we will not be silenced. The campaign continues.

Nick at 4glengate points out that LabourStart is working on behalf of Unison but Unison refuses to fund LabourStart becuase of Eric Lee’s position on Israel. Hmm.

Now we have LabourStart playing an important role in a crucial UNISON dispute, at the request of the union. For my money, this just shows that the union leadership had no intention of actually carrying out the boycott decision, but that means the whole debate at conference was dishonest. I hope LabourStart’s role in this campaign will help to set the groundwork for the boycott motion to be overturned next conference.

That partly explains why I joined the GMB when I recently began working in local government. I know the GMB has its own internal issues but it’s not UNISON.

Adam Roberts provides a more complex, nuanced review of Richard Dawkins’ much hyped and somewhat simplistic book, The Fascism Delusion.

… Though he accuses Fascism of being an extremism; he flatly refuses to acknowledge the extremist bias of his own non-Fascist position. He is also blind to the obvious truth that his beloved non-Fascists have killed just as many people as have Fascists—more, indeed. Why doesn’t Dawkins focus his polemic on them? The reason is that a peculiar hysterical hostility to the very idea of Fascism blinds him. (He claims for instance that ‘non-Fascists don’t do evil in the name of non-Fascism’, which would be news to all the senior Fascists hanged by the Nuremberg anti-Fascist trials). All ideals – political, transcendent, human, or invented – are capable of being abused. And knowing this, we need to work out what to do about it, rather than lashing out uncritically at Fascism. But Dawkins cannot understand this.

Read it all here (and don’t forget to scan some of the comments - dumb or what?)

Hat tip Will

UPDATE

Read in conjunction with Tristram Hunt on ‘the new atheist orthodoxy‘.

At the risk of coming across as monotonously anti-religious, or even “fundamentalist” in my atheism, I should like to alert you to the following juicy morsel of news…

Actress and comedian Kathy Griffin has got herself into a spot of bother with remarks she made at the recent Emmy Awards ceremony.

Receiving an award for her part in the reality TV programme “My Life on the D-List”, Griffin said:

“A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” an exultant Griffin said, holding up her statuette. “Suck it, Jesus. This award is my god now.”

After the speech Griffin added: “I hope I offended some people. I didn’t want to win the Emmy for nothing.”

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights condemned Griffin’s remarks as obscene and blasphemous:

“It is a sure bet that if Griffin had said, ‘Suck it, Muhammad,’ there would have been a very different reaction,”

Perhaps it is because Griffin is a recovering Catholic that she said “Suck it, Jesus.”

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has decided to cut the offending remarks from the edited recording of the awards ceremony.

Addendum

Hat tip: Will (sorry, couldn’t resist!)

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By Christopher Hitchens