BNP bust

Oops! The British National Party's member list gets leaked to the general public. As in, a list of every member of the party. Evidently it's even being BitTorrent'ed. Needless to say, this is a bit of a problem for them:

[M]ost embarrassingly of all, an assortment of file notes providing information on their members’ employment, hobbies and interests. The former could prove particular problematic for those members of the armed forces and police for whom the BNP is a proscribed organisation. That said, the list apparently also includes construction managers, receptionists, district nurses, lay preachers, company directors and teachers, some of whom could find themselves with much explaining to do if the list remains in the wild and starts to be widely circulated.

Couldn't happen to a meaner group of people. Liberal Conspiracy has some fun with it:


There are some map links too -- a "heat map" too. A whole site full of lolcats.
Funny.

On the other hand, it appears that many on the list are not even in the Party (well, not any more). So they've been inflating their membership stats -- naughty, naughty.

Updates from Lancaster Unity -- which turns out to be the go-to site for all things BNP.

Vidal Sasoon: scourge of fascists!

Who'da thunkit? Harry at CT makes an offhand joke about Vidal Sassoon's history as a nazi-fighter... and it's true!!

And so it was that the fresh-faced cockney (the measured, mid-Atlantic tones of the modern Vidal are the product of elocution lessons taken in the 1950s) signed up with the 43 Group, a crudely armed paramilitary force which began as 43 Jewish ex-servicemen and which by its peak was to number more than 1,000 Jews and gentiles, men and women. "We had turned the cheek for the last time," says Sassoon, who heard about it on the Whitechapel grapevine. "And as a 17-year-old recruit, I was proud to be involved. The men were mostly ex-servicemen, unsung heroes who had fought for five years and had come back to be abused by fascists as they walked down the street. They didn't want anything but peace, but it was disgusting that having just fought a war against Nazism, home-grown fascists were allowed to start reorganising. Something had to be done.

...

A boy amongst hardened fighting men, Sassoon was to become one of the toughest and keenest of all the informal soldiers.

"He was only a kid, but he was a tough little shtarka", says a former group commander and comrade, retired paratrooper Gerry Lambert, using a Yiddish word that corresponds, more or less, to hard man. Many former 43ers remember Vidal well and his solid reputation of standing firm when the fists started flying. "To think what a big deal hairdresser he would become," said one of the veterans. "You would never have guessed to see him there, deep in the fray. At that time he was just the sort of guy you wanted standing right by your side when the fighting started. And back then, of course, we often had to break the law. It was out of necessity. We had to use the same weapons as the fascists did: knuckle-dusters, coshes, and cut throat razors".

Wow! One to pull out in future lectures for the kids who only know him as a stylist.

quite a lot of experience

Reuters relays Prince Andrew's dissatisfaction with Bush's approach to war and occupation. You mean that Britain had a long imperial history, and that we could have asked advice on how to handle things? Naaaah.

"If you are looking at colonialism, if you are looking at operations on an international scale, if you are looking at understanding each other's culture, understanding how to operate in a military insurgency campaign -- we have been through them all," he said. "We've won some, lost some, drawn some," he told the International Herald Tribune.

"The fact is there is quite a lot of experience over here which is valid and should be listened to."

Breach in tradition for him to speak out this way. But a good point that is hard to dispute.

colonial consequences

Great study (.pdf) of colonial Brazil and the consequences for its modern economic and political structures. Salon has an excellent summary that includes a comparison with Botswana, where

British indifference left local tribal institutions and power structures practically intact, allowing the lucky country to become, economically speaking, one of Africa's rare success stories (if one ignores the devastation wrought by AIDS.)

Definite use for world civ, possibly as assigned reading for the imperial 16th century lecture.

Also there are apparently consequences for present-day energy competition - "a new Great Game" as Salon put it. ("The biofuel scramble for Brazil")

prison diary

American writer has a freak-out on a BA flight to London... he's arrested and spends two months in a British jail. His story discusses the climate of fear in international travel, Muslim prisoner underclass in Britain, immigration, the prison system, etc. Pretty good, especially his interactions with Muslim prisoners.