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Belarus and Poland

Some bloggers, though not in abundance probably due to the holiday time in Europe, react to this news. "A leader of an ethnic Polish group in Belarus has been jailed for 15 days for illegally meeting a visiting member of the Polish parliament."

"Is Aleksander Lukashenko so afraid of a tiny ethnic Polish minority that he has to lock them away for merely talking to someone from outside the country?" asks Siberian Light. "Absolutely absurd, and we should be glad that Russia has, so far, not descended to this kind of level."

Broke in Berlin compares Poland and Belarus border crossing to that of Finland and Russia. The difference is striking.

"Poor, poor Belarus," Broke in Berlin writes. "In my harder moments, I have little sympathy, thinking it's up to a nation to set its own fate, and the Belarusians have made their own mistakes, even if getting rid of the dictator is now no easy task (and many don't appear to want to, anyway)."

The beatroot, a journalist working in Warsaw, writes:

What really lies behind the dispute is that the president of Belarus, the Charlie Chaplinesque Alexander Lukashenko, has convinced himself that Poland is leading a campaign to get rid of him and his government, in the same way as what happened in Ukraine and Georgia.

Lukashenko believes that the ethnic Poles in his country are acting as some kind of vanguard in this process.

The beatroot agrees with the clownish Belarussian leader. Lukashenko might not be paranoid, but the CIA really is out to get him!

The Poles did play a major part in the so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

He concludes with this: "So does Lukashenko have a point? Is Poland messing around with another nation's sovereignty? Is the US and EU behind the actions?

Is the Pope a Catholic?"

Robert over at Collission Commentary writes:

What bugs me really about this situation is that when Belarussian media accuse Poles of being imperialist agents Polish authorities prefer to stay wishy-washy. There was no serious reply to Lukashenko's insults. Moreover, our authorities don't want to take any counter-actions, both political and economic (like embargo or freezing EU aid for Belarus), because it'd harm Belarussian society and not its government. Well, they're damn right, but now they are doing nothing concrete totally (not counting asking EU for help). When US government introduced its embargos towards Poland in 1980s after the Martial Law, no one really cared about harming Polish society. And society was pissed, what helped to overthrow communist reign later on :>

Breaking Radio Silence

EWR has been quiet for some time now, due largely to some other projects we've been working on. In light of the terrible events of today, however, I thought it only right that we point readers to the UK Weblog Aggregator, which has been providing useful up-to-date citizen journalism on the terror attacks in London. I know I speak for all peace-loving people when I say that our thoughts are with Londoners tonight.

Barroso Bummer

Just as U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is having ethics, umm, "issues" in Washington, EU Referendum Blog brings us word of similar troubles experienced by EC President Jose Manuel Barroso. Yachts and airports, it seems. In the end it probably won't end up causing Barroso the difficulties that DeLay is encountering, but it's probably not what the former needs right now.

Prime Minister Diaries

As Britain prepares for its election, Labour has made the great leap forward in campaign terms and now features Tony Blair's Campaign Diary, which one supposes is designed to appear to be a non-blog blog, blogging being passe, as all good campaign managers know. An excerpt:

I'd be surprised if the press don't have a fair bit about me and Gordon tomorrow. But as the two of us put the argument about the holes in the Tories' spending plans, I could see a few pennies dropping around the place. The Tories think they can just vacate the field on the economy. They are mistaken. The debate launched today will be central to the outcome on May 5.

Not to be outdone, Guido Fawkes has 'located' Tony Blair's Real Campaign Diary. An excerpt:

Yesterday got buggered up first thing, some no-hoper defected to the LibDems, FT poll shows us 5% behind. Andrew Gowers can kiss his knighthood goodbye. Or does it mean he gets a knighthood? What was it Alan said? "If you want to win handsomely, we have to make it look like we're losing." Well, that's his excuse anyway.

And, as Guido notes, voters in Britain face a bitter choice.

(hat tip to Iain Murray)

Wallström's Blog, Revisited

When EU Commissioner Margot Wallström's blog opened for business, I reviewed it on this site (the review can be found here). In the original review, I mentioned that the idea of "reviewing" a blog was problematic because a blog has a time parameter, developing progressively as it travels forward in time. When I reviewed it there was only one post on the blog, which rendered a little difficult to judge.

If statically reviewing a new blog is insufficient, this implies a couple of approaches - either a running commentary, a blog in itself devoted to covering that blog, which is an idea so infuriatingly postmodern that I don't want to even think about it, or a repeat review some time later.

So - how has the blog developed? My initial criticism was that it lacked meat - nothing much about policy, not much about personality either (although the snark directed at Jean-Claude Juncker's anecdotes was memorable). I compared this with the natty design of the blog, and in doing so I seem to have coined an unfortunate meme. I described it as "Martha Stewart blogging", which I now rather regret. Looking back, it seems to bear an unpleasantly misogynistic reading and to have enabled quite a lot of frankly unpleasant grunting. I'd like to place on record that I disassociate myself from this. Unfortunately, though, the criticism still stands if with reduced intensity. The content is still a tad anodyne, although it has developed more policy heft over time.

Mind you, anodyne is a general risk factor for blogging politicians; you can't really blog with the same force if the world press are going to hang it round your neck. Tom Watson's tireless Lib Dem bashing is an exception, possibly because only a limited constituency in his constituency seem to read it. It's doubtful in any case whether vituperation is a sufficient condition of good blogging. Certainly, chilli is required, but without the rest of the curry it's unpalatable and hardly nourishing.

Not that this has had any impact on users of the comment threads, though, which have descended into what can only be described as blatant trolling. They are occupied exclusively by a small group (around five) of hard-right British bloggers who spend their time pouring out abuse. Take this, from "John Archer", who politely declines to leave an email address or URL:"Margot: "And I will not cut off the critics! That would go against everything I believe in when it comes to the right of openness, free expression and debate. Well that's not very reassuring. I see that we critics are at the mercy of mere whim, yours in this case, for not being cut off. I can't put my finger on it, but I feel there's something not quite right about that. I onder what it is." So - *not* moderating the threads is evil and wrong. Perhaps John isn't aware that every blog comments service I know of provides the function to edit, delete and blacklist trolls and comment spammers and he really is outraged that anyone would contemplate such a thing. Or perhaps he is simply hunting for an excuse to bash? Whatever, he shows minimal respect for internet tradition.

The only form of responsibility for one's comments on the net comes in the form that people can answer back to you - providing no means of reply, in my view, is grounds for being considered a troll anyway. Below this, we have the following question already discussed on several other blogs:

"Here in the UK, our Labour politicians say that the European Constitution is only a 'tidying up excercise', while on the continent most politicians state categorically that it is the foundation of a Federal Europe. If one is right, then the other must be either lying or ignorant Where do you stand on this issue?"

Presumably the idea that different people might have different opinions - a key plank of democracy in my view - can be ruled out in advance. Again, this kind of "When did you stop beating your wife?" question is in my view trolling, as is the fact it's been spammed onto all threads. On the same thread - wildly disassociated from the topic - we have this little beauty from "John Coles" (pleiades@dsl.pipex.com):

"You won't get a lot of transparency on this site. Instead you have the spectacle of an unelected apparatchik of the EU trying to justify her cossetted, boondoggle existence and the endless intrusion of Brussels' legislation into the daily lives of "europeans", whatever they are. She's away with the fairies, with no real experience of life and a capacity for thinking so limited that I would not wish it on my cat.
The only transparency here is the real and evident contempt for her maunderings posted by people with a mistrust of the EU and all it has come to represent which, sadly, this includes a rabid, instinctive anti-americanism."

We shall let the grammar pass, but where is the relevance of the assertion-only abuse to the topic? More, from anonymous "Sean":

"Margot, it is very brave of you to blog your feelings. At least you are making an attempt to communicate with the great European public - and for that you should be credited. But I'm afraid there is no getting around the fact that you represent an ELITIST, CORRUPT, AND UNELECTED POLITBURO, WHICH FOR SOME REASON EXERCISES ENORMOUS POWER OVER THE LIVES OF MILLIONS.

Why? Why do YOU have this power? Who voted for you? Who gave you this power? Were you elected? When was this election? Why do YOU, an unelected bureaucrat from a foreign country, have power over ME, a citizen of an entirely different country? When the citizens of the Lebanon and the Ukraine are marching for their democratic freedoms, here in Europe, the very home of democracy, we have the most undemocratic system in the Westerm world. Why is this? How has this come about? Why? When? Can someone, anyone, explain?"

Is this the best we can do? British Eurosceptics never tire of Calling For a Debate. We have been debating for years, and this is the level to which we have sunk - when it is offered, the response is a campaign of anonymous abuse. We have folk like Richard North, who recently topped his fictional EU air safety scare with an amusing article for the Sprout in which he argued that Eurocopter's success in getting the contract for the US Presidential helicopter fleet proved that European defence was doomed. That's right. Persuading the most nationalistic US administration ever to buy European helicopters for the president's own transport is a sign of failure. When your answer is the same whatever the facts, it's usually a sign of intellectual dishonesty. Can anyone guess what Dickie would have written, had they not got the contract? Isn't this simply ridiculous? And who is "Sean" anyway? Is he, by any chance, the same delighful character who produced this:

"Here are some words you might like to learn, Ms Wallstrom. 'Voter'. Try it. 'Voter'. It's quite easy. Here's how you spell it. V -O - T - E - R. Here's another one. DEMOCRACY. This is a thing, apparently unknown in the Commission, whereby those who govern are ELECTED by the PEOPLE. Interesting concepts, no? Here are some words I guess you know already. UNELECTED BUREAUCRACY. ARROGANT EXECUTIVE. POINTLESS WASTE OF BLEEDING MONEY."

That little beauty, in a very similar style, comes from the pen of "kissingengland" - google, and you will find this is the title of a novel by one Sean Thomas, quite evidently the Sean we heard from before. Trolling under multiple identities, aren't they grown-up? Here's a sample:

"It is time, time. Now. Yes. She is so small and compact and yet she has all the necessary features. Shall I compare thee to a Sony Walkman, thou art more compact and more. She is his own Toshiba, his dinky little JVC, his sweet Aiwa."

Unsurprisingly that got him a Bad Sex Award, about which he boasted immoderately. For some strange reason, he doesn't like to leave the URL of his blog when he's trolling - perhaps so he can boast quietly to himself as here.

But then, if I ran lists of famous people I've met as blog posts I don't think I'd want to publicise myself. Nor, as it happens, if I'd written this:

"This startling perspective is shared by other Holocaust survivors. Esther Manning is a British Jew. She was living with relatives in Warsaw when the Nazis invaded Poland. For six months she was confined in the Jewish ghetto, then she was transferred to Dachau, near Munich. There she worked in the so-called Joy Division, the part of the concentration camp reserved as a brothel for German soldiers.

For three and a half years she was continually raped by SS officers, on a daily basis. Yet she still remembers her days in Dachau with a certain cheery fondness. 'Oh, it wasn't all doom and gloom, not by any means. I remember one day, when the German guards set an attack dog on a naked Latvian rabbi, we were all standing around watching this dog chew the rabbi, and then one of the sparkier inmates piped up and said: "That's what you get when you stint on the Winalot". It sounds awful, but we had to chuckle. Well you have to, haven't you?"

He follows that up with an appeal to free speech. Indeed. But there does seem to be a slight pattern emerging:

"An intriguing choice of words here. 'Mini-nodule'? 'Little known Cornish novelist'? I feel I have heard these phrases before somewhere. Perhaps during my last visit to the West Hollywood Residential Home for Football-Faced, Snaggle-Toothed, Metallica-Guitarist-Haired Kike Scriptwriters.

The final comment made by Anonymous appeared under the photo of me and Claire. Here is that comment:
'who is the cunt in the hat? Is this an out-take from a Joboxers video? Pathetic.'
Enough already. There's not a lot you can say to someone whose idea of a vivid and timely analogy is to compare something with a 'Joboxers video'. Actually, though, there is something you can say, and that something is:

Zyklon B! Zyklon B! Zyklon BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Link. Pretty rich complaining about anonymous comments, too. And there are the, ah, Hitler photos. And the kike.

Well, eh. Moving on, can anyone explain to me what Worstall is doing talking about us private sector oiks when he finds it impossible to lower himself to use the vernacular? Yes, you know what I'm talking about. "Ceterum censeo Unionem Europaeam esse delendam", which means as far as I know "Tim Worstall is too grand to write in English" or something of the sort. Oiks? Really? Ahem, rough working class Latinist oiks?

TCS Links to EWR

Welcome, readers of Tech Central Station. Tim "Unio Europea Delenda Est." Worstall (see sidebar left) wrote an article for TCS recently which linked to Alex's (rather than Aleks's) discussion of Margot Wallstrom's blog, a rather fluffy and witless corner of the Blogosphere (but the pictures are great and the layout is... well, the pictures are great!).

To be fair, Ms. Wallstrom probably isn't the only politician-cum-blogger lightweight; she's just one of the most visible.