Author: James Aylett

Just to prove that, despite anything I may have written or said recently, I can still take an anti-BBC view at times, have a quick look at this report on the MyDoom virus. It’s a paragon – of bad writing and slopping reporting.

Firstly, the bad writing. This is actually something that plagues BBCi: the inability of its journalists to manage paragraphs longer than a single sentence. From Elements of Style, the 1918 classic on how to write English, we learn that “as a rule, single sentences should not be written or printed as paragraphs”. Paragraphs give individual topics, and if a topic is so small it only warrants a single sentence, it really should be married to something related to make a larger topic. There’s worse, but it’s minor by comparison to the other issue.

There are two stories here: SCO vs Linux (SCO claims copyright on some parts of Linux; many people, including IBM, disagree, and SCO is busily suing various parties to make its point), and the MyDoom virus. MyDoom has infected hundreds of thousands of Windows computers recently, and was designed to attack the websites of both Microsoft and SCO. Microsoft has been unaffected (partly due to their own security measures, but mostly because the version of MyDoom set to attack them didn’t spread as widely). SCO’s website is unavailable at its normal address at present, and the company is running a website at a different address.

All well and good. The BBC article blurs these two stories together, not bothering to mention Microsoft at all, and making it sound like not only are the two stories inextricably intertwined , but also making Linux supporters out to also be supporters of creating a virus that has caused some amount of havoc, a fair amount of panic, and some financial loss. The article says “there seems little doubt that SCO was targeted because it has enraged many people devoted to the Linux operating system” which, while strictly true, gives the impression that it’s those “many people” who have created MyDoom, not (as is more likely) some loner who doesn’t get on well with other people. By stating “if anyone’s anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots”, the association is made, plain and clear. That’s getting pretty close to defamation, and if I were, say, Alan Cox – Linux advocate, British citizen, and generally honest and nice chap – I’d probably be writing to Mark Byfod right now asking what the hell they think they’re doing.

And who is stupid enough, in this day and age, to fling around phrases like “it’s hard to see how any website could withstand that kind of clever evil” when talking about a computer nerd? Evil? Has he been talking to Donald Rumsfeld again?

Oh, enough. My rant has died down. Have a good afternoon.

There is no news today. No news. I got to page 27 of Metro between King’s Cross and Baker Street – I usually get to page 7. If I’m lucky. Page 27! That’s deep into the lifestyle fluff!

The only interesting bit was on page 9, where they remember a 22,000 mile taxi journey taken by, among others, Mark Aylett. But maybe it’s just interesting to me.

Don’t want to write much, but I enjoyed it, so congratulations to all involved. I doubt I’ll have another opportunity to watch James chatting up Dave Gorman, so hooray for that.

Walking down the street today, hailed by someone looking vaguely familiar, so I walked over. “Is there a special women in your life?” she asked. “Does she like being pampered?” So I walked away again.

It’s not that I don’t have a special woman in my life, or even that she doesn’t like being pampered. It’s the sheer brazen cheek of assuming that I’ll trust a random (albeit vaguely familiar) stranger to help me pamper her.

People collecting for charity on the street, that I can cope with. But people trying to flog you something, especially something that really you should be doing yourself (pamper, vt: to indulge to excess) is just rude. If I ever descend to that level, please, just shoot me.

When I was younger, I was a member of a debating society. The format allowed for junior members to get some experience and test their mettle by doing somewhat throwaway debates before our seniors and betters arrived for the main event. My first such was “This House Likes Bambi”, or words to that effect; I was speaking against.

The first speaker for the motion stepped up and delivered a very credible speech, amusingly comparing the up-and-coming Tony Blair with his woodland nicknamesake, and generally providing some smug popular fluff with very little content – which was what these debates were for, so I can’t fault him on that. Then it was my turn.

“Ladies and gentlemen”, I confessed, “I only just found out that this debate is about Tony Blair. My speech is useless.” At which point I ripped it up, a very dramatic gesture that made me appear completely in control. And then I panicked. I knew who Blair was, but I didn’t know anything about him; he had only recently become leader of Labour (in a non-thrilling leadership contest I had missed, incidentally, because I was too busy worrying about my A-level results), and in any case Labour hadn’t been important in Britain for almost as long as I’d been alive. I remember concern at school when John Smith died, because some people thought he was the Bishop of Salisbury – the point is that I didn’t have any useful facts about Blair whatsoever. If only I’d read a paper that morning, I might have been able to discourse wittily for five minutes or so and survive unscathed. Instead, I went to pieces, trying to crowbar in phrases from my planned speech, descending to personal attacks, and finally rambling into incoherence. I sat back down in humiliation.

Something similar happened in the House of Commons on Wednesday, after the publication of the Hutton Report. Say what you like about Tony Blair (and I will: he was boring, pompous and arrogantly played to the media and the country for ages when he should have graciously accepted his complete exoneration, and then shut up), the speeches immediately after Lord Hutton’s findings made Michael Howard the loser. Left speaking at a debate whose shape he apparently wasn’t anticipating, he made the expected prepared noise of thanking people he’d rather not thank, before trying desperately to find something to attack Blair over. True, there were one or two – relatively minor – issues he could drone on about, but this hardly seems proper behaviour from someone trying to champion positive rather than negative politics – to say nothing of being insufficiently dignified, robust or moral for such a serious issue. In Labour MP Ann Taylor’s words, he wriggled.

He lashed out at Blair, at Hoon, and at Alastair Campbell, and might have gone further if he hadn’t sputtered out of steam in the face of rising dissent from the floor of the house, and the look of wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed incredulity from the Prime Minister.

After my own disastrous performance, it fell to my debating partner to try to salvage our side of the argument. As it happened, he hadn’t read up on Bambi-Blair either, so he was reduced to apologising for my behaviour, hoping that people might vote against the motion in sympathy. Perhaps I was ill, or fundamentally stupid? Surely I hadn’t just failed to prepare properly for this debate? As it happened, neither of our performances made any real difference to the vote – the debate was not well-attended, and those that were there had opinions on Blair that weren’t going to be changed, no matter what we did. I doubt anyone else remembers it now.

Michael Howard wasn’t so lucky. No one stood up to take his side, no one supported him, and a good number of people attacked him, both directly and indirectly. No chance to walk away from this debating chamber; in a few short, interminable, minutes, Michael Howard threw away his mask of political sanity and revealed an ugly visage of malice and pride. “That is what he says” as Labour MPs fantasised about smothering him. “That is what he says” as if a few short passages of mild criticism could bring down the Government. Like a bad comedian begging the audience when his jokes aren’t as funny as he thinks they are: “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” “That is what he says.”

When an encounter with Tony Blair torpedoed my debating career, I turned away and found something else to do with my life. Somehow I doubt Michael Howard will have the grace to do the same.

I was bored of news stories about the BBC by midday. By late afternoon I was bored of the BBC itself. At this rate I’ll be bored of all media outlets by breakfast tomorrow, and of the whole of existence by sometime Saturday.

Yes, the BBC did some bad things. Smack wrist, go to bed early, the Government will dock some pocket money. Auntie will get a new nanny soon, and it’ll all be better.

There are more important news stories out there. International stories of horror and mystery. Local stories of … well, ice, mostly. Apparently a battleship somewhere is now captained by a woman. If I see Greg Dyke’s face once more I’ll arrange a pile-up between it, Alastair Campbell, and a steam iron.

Today I spent some time stuck in a lift. This is honestly something that I thought didn’t actually happen outside contrived narratives (where either a personal relationship difficulty is resolved, such as the two aliens who want to kill each other in Babylon 5; or everyone has sex). And yet there we were, five of us stuck in a lift in a refurbished jam factory.

Of course, everyone there was very nice, but next time I’m going to be stuck in a small lift with that number of people, I’d probably go for all the others being models, or a girl band or something. And it being a contrived narrative of the second sort, of course.

If everyone responsible for that dossier believed it was based on accurate intelligence – what the hell is our intelligence community doing? Surely a good indication that Saddam could launch WMD in 45 minutes would have been a photo of such a weapon. Or a little ‘X’ on a map. For that matter, surely they’d be required to believe that he had any at all, no matter whether he could launch them in 45 minutes or not?

Okay, so no intelligence is perfect, and we know from the FBI’s story surrounding September 11th that if you have lots of information it doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to pull out the right bits, but being certain enough that someone has something that you’ll go to war over it surely, surely, requires some sort of proof that they actually do. Like a till receipt, or a postcard from Basra with Hans Blix standing in front of a rocket with that three-pronged radition symbol on it.

It’s my taxes that are being spent on this. And I wanted a new DVD player.

Well, I’m shocked – that the BBC should want to hire someone with experience of an important area for news coverage, especially since, according to al Jazeera’s own coverage he formerly worked for the BBC anyway – something that doesn’t appear to be terribly unusual for al Jazeera folk.

Except that, again from the al Jazeera report, Ibrahim Helal will be working on “media training projects” – hardly the sort of power-wielding, corporation-rousing position the Express presumably had in mind.

So why does the Express have such a problem with this? Is it just because they’re racists? Or just because they hate the BBC? Or just because they’re stupid?

Or perhaps it’s just a slow news day – nothing else to grab the front page. Yes, that must be it.

The London News Review asks why liberals seem to have a problem with Islam, pointing out in the leader that generalising about Islam is wrong – but then falling into a worse trap, that of attempting to be balanced yet coming off as critical of Islamic writings and practices. In the context of such an emotional topic, this is a bad mistake – and is it any surprise that Robert Kilroy-Silk, backed by half the readership of the Daily Mail, shoots his mouth off and offends half of the Muslim world when reasoned, intelligently-written articles themselves come off as barely-checked criticism?
Generalising about Islam – about anything – is wrong. But dwelling on certain actions carried out in the name of Islam, while ignoring similar actions claiming ties to Christianity, or any other religion, is worse. For instance, most of the LNR article focuses on the attitude to women in some Islamic states, and while it is true that to Western liberal ideals the treatment of women in, say, Saudi, falls short of (the Western liberal definition of) acceptable, it is important to remember that Islam is not the only religion whose teachings have been used to ground this sort of culture. Indeed, Islam is the new kid on the block of monotheistic religions; the limitation, oppression and even persecution of women was prevalent in Western society long before the birth of Muhammed.

There’s not much point in trying to do a blow by blow comparison of passages of the Koran and the Bible; any attempt to show that the scriptures of the two religions are equally restrictive and abusive of women and their rights would either be incomplete and open to criticism, or unreadably long. However it is worth noting that Corinthians, one of the most-quoted parts of the New Testament, has the following:

Few Christians would, I hope, argue that this passage should be followed literally these days. Women’s position in society has changed since the time of St Paul, and to deny women full participation in congregation on the grounds of this passage would no longer seem an appropriate interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Society has moved on since then, and so has the religious interpretation of scripture.

However it isn’t valid to argue that Islam’s youth compared to Christianity means it will in time ‘mend its ways’ as it co-exists and develops alongside other religions; for hundreds of years after the birth of Islam, the Christian church’s hold over state in Europe prevented women appearing on the stage, and could give hold over a woman to her husband, father or brothers; later, Christian scripture was used to justify apartheid, anti-semitism, and continues to be used to give a moral grounding for wars all around the world. Christianity may be founded on an all-encompassing and unconditional love, but that will never stop people hijacking its name. Throughout the history of humanity, people have invoked positive, respected ideas and ideals – be it Christianity, Islam, Science or whatever – as a justification for all manner of actions that are neither acceptable to the rest of the world nor, in truth, countenanced by the religion or movement claimed to back up those actions.

This, then, is the crux of the problem. Making a link between any extremist and his claimed religion should no more tarnish the religion itself than John Hinkley’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan should make us suspicious of people who like Jodi Foster – but, in the case of religion, and particularly in the case of a religion of which many Westerners still are fairly ignorant, that link can have a very negative effect.

We should not blame Islam that its popularity makes it a target for people looking for a moral justification, but rather we should be condemning the nutters, psychopaths and others who claim its backing yet deviate from its tenets as understood and practiced by the majority. Focusing on the religion is about the most dangerous thing we can do right now; the danger of inadvertently generating another Kilroy-Silk, another little racist, a bigot by misunderstanding rather than by choice, is too high.

Perhaps it is true that ‘progressive Muslims should openly admit that Islam lends itself to unsavoury interpretations’ – but more urgently, liberals (and everyone else) should openly acknowledge their responsibility to clear and accurate communication.