Simon Blackburn on his top ten myths. I’ve chosen just one I found interesting, and agree with most (I somewhat disagree with number 10). Paulie, Shuggy, and the, now rural, Chris Dillow will probably like number 5.

1. The myth of meaning
2. The myth of religious belief
3. The myth of British values
4. The myth of the scientist
5. The myth of management
6. The myth of democracy
7. The myth of culture
8. The myth of equal respect

The belief that everyone deserves equal respect and that anything else is discriminatory and elitist. The truth is the exact opposite: discrimination is a virtuous activity and elites are to be admired. The very few human beings who are good at anything, whether football or playing the violin or writing or painting, form an elite and deserve respect for their excellence. Other people either deserve sympathy for trying and failing, or should be ignored if they have not even tried.

Respect is not the same as toleration. I am lucky if my neighbours tolerate my singing when in the garden, but they would have to be tone deaf to respect it, and if they did then of course they in turn would forfeit my respect as music critics.

There are people whose chosen lifestyle disqualifies them from any respect at all, such as celebrities, although a more charitable view is that they deserve respect for the amount of publicity they can bestow, which is why they get into nightclubs and Downing Street. Religionists know in their hearts that they are always teetering on the edge of being ridiculous, and are therefore nervous about respect and constantly insist on it.

9. The myth of choice and competition
10. The myth of the public service ethos

Blair’s new portrait will hang in Portcullis house because “Politicians’ pictures cannot be hung in the Palace itself until they have been out of office for two full terms”. Personally, I think it would look nice hanging above Gordon Brown’s desk.

Hitchens interview (via MH):

In 1982 he backed Britain against the Argentinian junta in the Falklands. On this he ran against almost everyone else on the British left, and had sharp disagreements with James Fenton. “I had been in Buenos Aires,” he says. “I’d seen what the Galtieri regime was like.” He cites this as an early example of the British left taking reactionary positions. “If it had been up to them the junta would have lasted ten more years and destroyed the society of the Falkland Islands.” He likens the response of liberal friends to the reaction he would get 20 years later when he announced his support for George W Bush. “People would goggle at you as if you were an idiot. There’s no intolerance like liberal intolerance, no closed mindedness like the closed-mindedness of liberals.”

Something to cheer about for a change. The Chinese cargo ship An Yue Jiang is reported to be heading back to China after workers in coastal countries neighbouring Zimbabwe refused to handle its cargo of weapons.

A petulant sounding Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Jiang Yu, said:

“Some people in the US are always critical, positioning themselves as the world’s policeman, but they are not popular in the world.”

I dare say that’s true, but it’s a shitty job and someone’s got to do it. It would just be nice if the responsibility were shared out a bit more.

In this instance the US government has done absolutely the right thing in following up an international workers’ initiative with a diplomatic call to China to recall the weapons shipment. Zambia’s president Levy Mwanawasa urged African countries not to allow the arms to pass through their territories in case this should increase tension in in crisis-riven Zimbabwe.

So here’s to the dockworkers of southern Africa, and here’s to the president of Zambia and the US State Department. Oh, and a nod also to Gordon Brown, who recently mumbled something or other about an international arms embargo on Zimbabwe.

It’s a mad world after all:

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

“You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We’ve had a number of attempted lynchings. … You see them covered in marks after being beaten,” Kinshasa’s police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.

American biofuels have been in the news recently. You may have heard them discussed in the context of inadequate world food production, dramatic increases in the price of staples such as rice and grains, and subsequent riots in parts of Africa and Asia.

So have you ever wondered how biofuels subsidies actually work? David Freddoso of the once conservative but now increasingly neoliberal rag the National Review has given us an example in the form of the so-called “blenders’ credit” devised by Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa. This wheeze provides $1 of taxpayers’ money for each gallon of biodiesel mixed with regular diesel.

According to World Trade Organisation rules, the subsidy must in all fairness be extended to foreign companies, and this has given rise to what is known as “splash and dash”:

“It works like this: A foreign tanker carrying 9 million gallons of biodiesel from Brazil or Malaysia sails to an American port. While it waits, 9,000 gallons of American diesel is added — that’s right, a 0.1 percent blend — so as to earn the blender a $9 million tax credit. The tanker heads to Europe, where diesel cars are far more common and biodiesel is further subsidized.

“In some cases tankers have reportedly made round trips from Europe to the US simply to collect the subsidy. Thus we ‘import’ and ‘export’ the same fuel from and to the same country.”

See here and here for a European take on this farcical state of affairs. There are also calls in the US to close down this tax loophole, but as with Europe the motivation across the pond appears to be more to protect domestic markets than remedy an environmental and economic injustice.

Wal-mart are restricting rice sales in the US.

My partner came home today somewhat upset that the paypacket usually received was less than usual. This was as a result of the abolition of the 10p tax rate. A notice had been put up at the workplace informing employees that this was the case.

My attempt to “spin” the reduced pay packet by explaining that overall out position was probably better due to other changes was met by “I don’t care, I worked for that and they have taken it away. I am not voting Labour again. Ever.”

Even those who may not be net losers perceive that they are losers.

The confounding labyrinths of British politics are daunting to those of us from away, so forgive me if I just come straight out and ask: Is “thought to be a man working at a research company” one of those euphemisms you people use, er wha?

This one’s been round the houses, but better late than never, eh? It speaks volumes about something or other; you tell me what.

The photo was taken at a pro-Tibet/anti-PRC rally in the US.

Hat tip: John Carter Wood

Catherine Belsey is research professor of English, Swansea University, and the author of Why Shakespeare? (2007). This is from her review of Pacifism and English Literature: Minstrels of Peace (hat-tip NL):

We live in a world where increasingly implausible euphemisms are designed to reassure us of war’s humanity: “smart bombs”, for instance, as well as “friendly fire”, not to mention “intelligence”.

“A geographical area of mass slaughter becomes a ‘theatre of war’,” White observes, as if killing were a show put on for the pleasure and instruction of interested spectators. Fiction and poetry, meanwhile, give a sharper picture than our own propaganda machines will permit.

Written with conviction in the context of the West’s shameful waste of life in Iraq, and its equally shameful failure to intervene in the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, this reflective and wide-ranging book presents a timely reminder that war is always a choice. Literature tends to indicate that it is usually a poor one.

1. The shameful wastes of life in Iraq have been the result of non-Western and Western actions. Arguably, since the elections in Iraq gave a sovereign government of Iraq, the Non-Western actions have been largely responsible for continuing the violence (often with the support of so-called anti-war voices).

2. A shameful failure to intervene in a conflict? Examples of pacifist interventions would be welcome. Even a sainted and blessed UN intervention force, sprinkled with the holy water of righteousness by Conor Foley himself, would find a pacifist peace-keeping mission difficult in execution.

Still, fair play. Belsey gets to tick the Iraq and Israel boxes neatly. Well done her. It’s nice to conform to the consensus of the day.

Gordon Brown is a nail-bitingly bad disaster. His fatal indecisiveness permeates his administration. Hie second-rate Machiavellian tendencies were bearable when directed in private at Blair, but now they make him look an arse in public. His inept scheming has made him look both stupid and untrustworthy. Turning up to sign a treaty on his own: pathetic. Signaling an election and then not having the guts to carry out: dreadful. Scrapping the 10p tax rate to catch the Tories out: useless. Everything he does now looks like a scheme to gain political advantage - even when it isn’t. Power for power’s sake; policies from conviction or evidence? Forget it.

It does not matter how often the point about the 10p tax rate is made that you have to look at the budget as a whole, the perception has changed. Winning any vote will be a Pyrrhic victory.

Losing, of course, will be a catastrophe. It will damage Labour in the short-term. Combined with the expected loss of the vote over 42 days detention of terror suspects, it may be the end of Brown.

Suddenly the catastrophe doesn’t look so bad. The real disaster would be to have Brown fight the next election.

Let’s hope for a catastrophe.

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca Time.

I prefer Hammer Time. It has more evidence, and is certainly more fun.

Alan Johnson has laid the Euston manifesto to rest in a public rite notable for its almost exclusive use of past tense forms of Decentleftish. There will now be a period of official mourning. I suggest that we all show some respect to those who grieve at this sorrowful time.

Here’s an interesting documentary on Amy [iplayer 6 days left], a drama student who pole dances. Check out the “difference feminist” soft porn actor, the student sleeping with 50 year-olds as an escort to get through a business degree, the PR wanker at the Brits who is every bit as exploitative as the pole dancing firm, and Pete, the moronic lecturer who moves in with his student pole dancer (and visits her place of work to “check it out”).

This is what it has come to:

The complainants in Akram’s case have agreed to halt Akram’s execution in exchange for roughly $60,000 (US).

The Archer explains.

And gives a cheery report from the campaign here.

Jimmy Carter is an idiot.

The new Liberal government considered the contracts to be sweetheart deals between unions and their buddies in the old NDP government. “I’m not in the laundry business, I’m not in the food services business,” the health services minister said. Amy Hughes was in the laundry business. And the food services business. And the housekeeping business. And the making chit-chat with elderly patients business.

Always read Tom Hawthorn. Link to his blog.

Over the past few days there have been uncorroborated reports dribbling out of southern Africa that armed Chinese soldiers have been sighted in Zimbabwe. And I mean more than a few observers of the joyful independence anniversary celebrations in Harare. Some even say that armed Chinese troops are patrolling the eastern city of Mutare with their local hosts, harassing MDC activists.

The Citizen reports this version of the story as coming from MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa. Though since it was first posted the reference to “soldiers” has been removed and replaced with “10 armed Chinese men”. Beijing has said that the individuals concerned could simply be “security guards” protecting Chinese business interests.

But others are more forthright. For example, a report of 10 People’s Army army soldiers openly carrying sidearms was published several days ago by David Baxter of the Association of Zimbabwe Journalists in the UK. The Harare correspondent of Afrik.com says 20 soldiers, and there are other reports, some of which at least could be more than the result of a game of Chinese whispers initiated by mischievous bloggers.

With no mobile phone snaps of armed Chinese troops in battle fatigues, and indeed nothing much in the way of evidence, we have to reserve judgement on this. But serious questions should be asked; e.g., would the MDC spread untruths on this scale when it could so easily come back to bite them in the bum?

If the reports are true, then my guess is that the People’s Army soldiers are a liaison group whose visible presence on the streets of Mutare and billeting in the local Holiday Inn is intended to make a political statement. Ten soldiers does not even a single platoon make, so their impact as a fighting force would be negligible.

As for the question in the title above, many might answer “Of course!”. But it is as well to define exactly what we mean by these words, and the degree of subservience involved: political, economic and military. Often the term is used so loosely as to render it meaningless.

China is the only true friend the regime in Harare has left in the world, and Mugabe surely cannot rely for much longer on the South African government. China has for a long time in the international community been stymieing a political resolution to the Zimbabwe crisis. So another question is: exactly how far will Beijing go to protect its geopolitical and business interests in Zimbabwe?

Zimbabwe looks to be heading for a military coup, with or without active support from Chinese forces. And the lack of mainstream media reporting of the situation beyond that of Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s latest speeches is very frustrating. I wonder if anyone knows what’s going on beyond those with direct access to military and signals intelligence.

Both hate Iran

Tehran “has clear goals, which are the annexation of southern Iraq and the east of the Arabian Peninsula” as well as strengthening ties to its followers in southern Lebanon.

In what he imagines to be irony, Marko Attila Hoare has responded in the following fashion:

“Perhaps that’s the solution ? We could have separate schools for the working class and for the middle class. And in the working-class schools, so as not to patronise the children, we could encourage them to swear, twock cars and make spelling mistakes.”

Does this guy know what I do for a living? With regards to the former, we already have this; as for the latter, they need no encouragement from me, I can assure you. But I digress…

“Thanks to Shuggy’s post, I’ve realised the error of my ways. I realise that if Geordies or Glaswegians spew vulgar abuse, mug old ladies and set fire to immigrants’ homes, they are just expressing their true, gritty, proletarian Northern culture.”

Notice the weaving going on here: spewing vulgar abuse, mugging old ladies and racist arson are part of a seamless garment in the hands of Mr Hoare - this being a man eminently qualified to take the measure of the untermensch. Anyway, all this reminds me of the kinda thing we see too much of in the media and especially in the blogosphere: these who think most of the word’s problems are attributable to the fact that no-one asked them to run it. If only they’d realise that there’s a good reason for this…

Dockworkers in Durban have cocked a snook at president Thabo Mbeki and his quiet diplomacy by refusing to unload a shipment of Chinese-supplied ammunition, grenades and mortar rounds bound for Zimbabwe.

According to the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union:

“Satawu does not agree with the position of the South African government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons. Our members employed at Durban Container Terminal will not unload this cargo neither will any of our members in the truck driving sector move this cargo by road.”

This is a most welcome development. Let’s hope we see more of this internationalist initiative-taking by workers supporting their brothers and sisters across the world.

Latest: Southern African anarchists quoting SAfm say that another ship carrying arms is heading for the Mozambican port of Beira, with the aim of gaining easier access to Zimbabwe. Efforts are currently being made to link up with Mozambican workers and have Beira shut down.

Shit and that.

Just a note - nothing else. And that.