A Few Friendly Pats on the Head. posted by Richard Seymour

Juan Cole directs his insightful gaze at the story of British Muslims and their attitude to New Labour, terrorism, and the war on Iraq. Chris Brooke , who will eventually get embarrassed by my incessant plugging, has written an excellent coda on the Spanish election result and also lists some of the barkers who have bemoaned the outcome as "a victory for Al Qaeda and so on. Resolute Cynic has a nice quote from Trotsky on the way terrorist attacks always benefit the political Right:

"The smoke from the explosion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before – only police repression grows more savage and brazen."

Hmmm. I'd like to see the fuckers try that in Spain now.

Finally, I also would love to link you to some of the excellent television reviews from The Guardian's weekend mag, The Guide by Charlie Brookner, but they don't have it online. Take it from me, if you haven't had a good read of his Screen Burn column, you don't know what gut laughter is. Rik Waller is a "waddling water-bed", Davine McCall's eyes are "onyx pools", dead and depthless "like a shark's", I'm A Celebrity... viewers are amoeba-like creatures with enormous thumbs hammering out text messages, "barking like seals" every time their message doesn't show ... every week he gets himself worked up into a joyous frenzy of rage that makes the whole supplement rip-off worth the money. However, if he's reading this, he can persuade his useless fucking editors to link me on their site.