Thursday 10 January 2008

Beyond Parody, Beneath Contempt

Here.

Reagan was benign, the world is safer with nuclear weapons than without them, neocons are not the biggest cranks of all, and a creationist cannot be the Republican Presidential nominee (even though one was the last time, and the time before that), but can be allegedly the greatest ever Leader of the Labour Party and the greatest living British politician.

All this, of course, from a man inexplicably still published on Comment Is Free despite being notable for absolutely nothing except a campaign of criminal harassment against one of its more regular, and infinitely better, contributors.

4 comments:

  1. Are you referring to his suggestion that Guardian contributor Neil Clark hadn't read his book before reviewing it?

    Kamm also claims that Neil misrepresented one of the sources he'd quoted in his review - saying it had come from the highly credible International Institute for Strategic Studies when actually the quote came from the less well known International Strategic Studies Association.

    Reading the article, Neil called it the Institute of Strategic Studies Organisation. So Neil didn't accurately copywrite the name of his own sources - but I think Kamm's making an enormous leap to accuse him of deliberate misrepresentation.

    It's pretty clear that neither of Kamm's allegations can really be proved or disproved - but I wasn't impressed with Neil suing him.

    Bloggers have a wonderful ability to express themselves freely and have the security of being able to make comments and even allegations over the 'net that you wouldn't be able to make public otherwise.

    An allegation can be 100% true, but a clever person can still bully and wrangle the accusor into paying damages and 'admitting' it was a lie (when in fact, it wasn't) by manipulating the legal system.

    By throwing Neil's case out of court, the judge kept bloggers safe and free for at least a little longer. Long may it continue.

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  2. This might well all end up not in the civil, but in the criminal courts. Kamm's campaign is criminal.

    And I say again, if it weren't for that campaign and Neil's valiant fight against it, next to nobody would ever have heard of Kamm.

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  3. Just read the article. I know no backstory, nothing about blogger wars and who is suing whom, but may I say- this guy's a prat. Really unpleasant to equate Holocaust denial with creationism- i'm not impressed. Surely Huckabee's a politician- there must be bigger sticks to hit him with than this one. Who does Kamm think he's talking to? And who does he think he is?

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  4. We should all be grateful that we cannot know the answers to such questions.

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