Monday, March 26, 2007

The Internet's Captain Renault

One of National Review's contingent of English bloggers, Iain Murray, is shocked, shocked --

After what seems like an age, the British bloggers have started commenting on the Iranian abduction of British sailors. Here are a few of the best:

Dan Hannan MEP
Tim Montgomerie
Iain Dale
Harry's Place

... What's also interesting is that the Blame Britain First comment trolls seem to be out in force, arguing either that the Iranians are clearly in the right, that Britain had it coming to it, it's all because of the Transatlantic Alliance or/and that anyone who suggests that some response other than diplomacy is warranted is an evil fascist warmonger who should join up immediately.


Aside from the discovery that blog comment threads will sometimes see the appearance of those awful trolls who steal the nation's precious bodily fluids, Iain should also note that at least in the case of Iain Dale, these trolls are facilitated by such practices as allowing anonymous posting, sock-puppetry, and highly selective comment moderation [see also here]. Incidentally, Iain Murray did all the technical initial set up for Iain Dale's blog.1

UPDATE: In a followup post elaborating on his thesis that the Bob Woolmer story had sucked some of the air of the coverage of the Iran incident, Murray does a lot of nudge-nudge/wink-wink pairing of the Woolmer murder with the religious practices of the Pakistan team (what one correspondent calls a "holier than thou religiosity" that has prevaded Pakistani cricket). No mention of the fact that Woolmer had coached another team that featured a fundamentalist revival: South Africa under Hanse Cronje as captain.

FINAL UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan also seems to think that fundamentalism in cricket is an exclusively Islamic phenomenon.

1. See comment at 2.37pm.

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