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Who panders more?

On primary day, Jon Stewart brings us some answers...

Great Britain: mocked by The New York Times

Oh dear. Put like this you can see their point...

Oops...

Always do your research. Andrew Sullivan brings us this little gem.

Think you work hard?

Then pity South Korea.

This handy graphic from The Economist breaks down national work weeks. Turns out that while the South Koreans slog away for over 45 hours a week, we Brits have it pretty easy.

Seems the age of the Protestant work ethic is definitely over.

Alice Fishburn

Paddy Hitler, Max Mosley and the dilemma of Nazi children

As the son of a concentration camp survivor I have wondered what it must be like to be the child of a leading Nazi.

How does one resolve the painful conflicts that such a relationship produces?

Not long ago my mother met with Hilde Schramm, the daughter of Albert Speer, their meeting being featured in a radio programme. My mother thought her a good woman who had struggled to put right her father's crimes in the best way she could.

But nevertheless, my mother decided not to confront her directly about Speer. Why? Because Mum felt it would not be fair. The issue was bound to be so difficult for Schramm. "After all, he was her Daddy".

In today's paper there was the fascinating (if sordid) story of Max Mosley, Oswald's son, and his Nazi sex games. Both Nicholas and Max Mosley have striven so hard to consign their family history to the past. Yet it is clearly still there in Max's case, and strongly so.

Here's a review of ten Nazi children.

Gudrun Himmler: No conflict for the daughter of Heinrich Himmler. She remains, basically, a Nazi. Since 1951 she has been a member of Stille Hilfe, an organisation supporting arrested, condemned or fugitive former SS-members in states of distress. For decades she has been their prominent symbol.

Katrin Himmler: Himmler's great niece, on the other hand, regards Uncle Heinrich as a mass murderer. She worries about what she is going to tell her child about the family. Why? Because she is married to a Jew who survived in the Warsaw ghetto and then went to live in Israel.

Hilde Schramm: The daughter of Hitler's architect has become a bohemian figure, a Green politician, and a brave and outspoken leader of efforts to return works of art stolen by the Nazis. She simultaneously retains affection for her father with an abhorrence for Nazi crimes, including his. This dual stance is made possible to some extent by the lack of clarity still existing about Speer's exact role and knowledge about the Final Solution. Obviously however, Speer knew much more than he admitted.

Max Rufus Mosley: The son of Oswald Mosley was his father's supporter and aide in the 1960s when Oswald had made European federalism his cause. He later was involved in the Tory party, before becoming a Labour donor in the mid 1990s. He keeps talk of the Mosley political past to a minimum and has become successful instead in the world of motor racing. 

Paddy Hitler: Adolf Hitler did not have a son, but he did have a nephew, Paddy. Paddy, the son of Hitler's brother Alois, lived in Liverpool as a young boy. In 1933 he moved to Germany, trying to be a car salesman and cash in on his family name. Things didn't work out and he moved to the US, denouncing his Uncle and serving in the US Navy in the war. Finally he settled in Long Island where he had three sons, including Brian Hitler. I am not making this up.

Nicholas Mosley: Oswald Mosley was married twice. Yet while Diana Mosley, Max's mother was a fascist supporter, Nicholas's mother Cynthia was not. She was alive during Oswald's Labour years. Her son Nicholas is a successful novelist and an outspoken critic of his father and his politics.

Romano Mussolini: The third son of Benito was a successful jazz pianist. So successful in fact that he became one of the top players in Europe in the 1960s, his albums winning critical acclaim and prizes. He started under a pseudonym, Roman Full, but later played under his own name. He claimed that his father had been misunderstood - that he was not an anti-Semite or as ruthless as he was portrayed.

Martin Bormann Jr: Bormann's son was an ardent Nazi as a child, but gradually came face to face with Nazi crimes, recording with horror an incident in which Himmler's family showed him a lightshade made of human skin. He became a Priest and tours the world denouncing the crimes of the Nazis.

Alessandra Mussolini: Roman's daughter is more fascist than jazz pianist. The Mussolini family has had its revenge on democracy with Alessandra's election to the European Parliament. Or perhaps it's the other way round. Benito's grandaughter has grown up into a fully fledged neo-fascist leader. She has gone through a complex legal process to allow her children to attach the name Mussolini to their father's surname. Bet they are all eternally grateful.

Albert Speer: Hilde turned to politics while her brother chose the alternative route, picking up his father's architectural legacy. He has been fabulously successful in this alternative career, despite bearing such a controversial name.

How well do you know your professional acronyms?

I have, I admit it, signed up for the Popbitch news email. For strictly professional reasons, you understand.

One of the items yesterday concerned ruthless acronyms used by doctors to describe the conditions of the patients.

For instance calling a patient near death CTD. This stands for circling the drain.

It reminded me of the annotations used by political party canvassers to describe voters. There is P for someone who is possibly going to vote for the party, A for against, DK for Don't Know and FN. This last one was used for people with an eccentric range of opinions. It stands for Nutter.

Anybody got any other such professional terms?

Are these the ten greatest ads of all time?

Go on. Admit it. You've sung along to the Budweiser frogs, chanted with the SpaghettiO kids and muttered 'Clunk Cick Every Trip' while bundling the family into the car.

Everyone loves ads. And here we salute ten of the greatest ever made.

Enjoy them. Then let us know what we've missed.

1) Clunk Click Every Trip

2) Wendy's

3) SpaghettiOs

4) Budweiser

5) Guinness

6) Renault Clio

7) Ferrero Rocher

8) John Smith's

9) Gold Blend

10) Smash

Spitzer, FDR and Lindbergh: What's the common thread?

What do the following events have in common?

-- The Governor of New York's tryst with a pricey prostitute named Kristen

-- The assignation of President John F Kennedy with Angie Dickinson

-- J Edgar Hoover's consumption, every day for 20 years, of a lunch of chicken soup, cottage cheese and grapefruit

-- The Mayor of Washington, Marion Barry, smoking a crack pipe

-- The overnight stays of gangster's moll Judith Campbell Exner before sneaking off to the White House

-- The drafting of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's famous first inaugural address

-- The sessions in which members of the House of Representatives interviewed Monica Lewinsky as part of the attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton

-- Charles Lindbergh celebrating the first ever solo transatlantic flight

They all took place at Washington's Mayflower Hotel

Politics: The school for scandal

Another week. Another scandal. But how well do you know your back-seats from your bathrooms?

Test your knowledge of political misbehaviour in this New Yorker quiz.

The great pledge hunt continues...

Do you pledge allegiance to the flag? Or would you rather swear eternal devotion to Jade Goody?

The Comment Central competition to write a British oath - using your very own set of electronic fridge magnets - continues apace.

Here are some of the best entries so far. Think you can do better? Have a go. Downing Street needs you.

I pledge allegiance to....

We like to make the Government's life easy here at Comment Central.

If Lord Goldsmith wants an oath of allegiance, we're going to give our readers every chance to create one. One that can be stuck with pride on every fridge in the country.

So...bring on the interactive electronic fridge magnets.

A Comment Central Prize for the best offering.

(Do have a go. It's great. This wonderful offering is only available to Comment Central readers due to the brilliance of Tom Whitwell. He described its completion as his proudest moment since working on The Times. I'm happy to accept his judgement.)

Deafness and disability: A wonderful response

Clodagh Corbett has sent me this wonderful reply to my column yesterday on laws governing deaf embryos:

I am an almost profoundly deaf Oxford graduate and have been deaf since birth. I could not fathom it if my parents (both hearing) had chosen to inflict this disability on me, and doubt I could forgive them if they had.

I of course admire the deaf community's need to feel included and equal, when so clearly we are not, but this must stop short of creating more in their image which is so morally wrong. I myself have played no part in deaf communities, having been a child of hearing parents and attended mainstream education, and yes I have felt isolated, but I am under no delusions that what I have is a disability and that I am unequal to hearing people, through this loss of a sense.

I can cushion it all I like if I chose to, with deaf clubs and exclusive use of sign language (which I do not know, as I was taught to exclusively speak, which I am grateful for for the mere fact of inclusion with the hearing society). But I would never choose any child of mine to share in what is an isolating, lonely and incredibly frustrating disability, because I could never be that selfish. I think these people opposing the proposed IVF law must feel so alone in their disability, despite being surrounded by many like them in deaf clubs, that they feel the need for this affinity in the child to ensure they are not rejected by their own flesh and blood.

Heir-raising law reconsidered

The Press Association report on Lord Goldsmith's ideas introduced me to a law I had no idea about:

Laws such as sleeping with the wife of the heir to the throne, which carries life imprisonment, would be scrapped or reformed because they are regarded as outdated.

I did not realise that sleeping with the Duchess of Cornwall was compulsory.

I am certainly delighted that this requirement is being reconsidered.

Can you write an oath of allegiance?

So Lord Goldsmith wants us all to start swearing the oath of allegiance, does he?

Well I think we should help him, don't you?

Not just with that, but with the idea of "re-energising" citizenship ceremonies, perhaps by inviting schoolchildren to come along and sing We Are The World. (I did not make this up).

So. Can you write an oath of allegiance? Or think of alternative ways to "re-energise" the citizenship ceremony?   

Bin the bags? Not so fast

I really don't want you to miss our story on plastic bags. It ran in Saturday's paper and was of first rate importance.

Or at least it should be regarded as of first rate importance.

What, I fear, will actually happen is that the inconvenient truth it tells will be ignored. The anti-plastic bag campaign will power on as if the piece had never been written.

Why? Because too many people are committed already and because the bags are an easy target.

Here is the nub of our story:

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”

In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.

Gordon Brown has signed up to a Daily Mail campaign (in an article entitled Why Sarah and I know this is right) to bin the bags and he is most unlikely to back off now.

A bad day for charities

Perhaps you don't follow the work of the Charity Commission that carefully. And ordinarily neither do I.

But they've just done something very important. And rather worrying.

They have issued new guidance on the political activities of charities. I believe they have made it far easier for charities to become primarily political organisations and vice versa.

This decision - which just happens to reflect the political desire of the Government and a long standing left campaigning agenda - threatens the integrity of charitable status.

Until now charities haven't been allowed to make political campaigning - say campaigning to change a law - their "dominant" activity. Such campaigning must be "ancillary" to their charitable work.

The Commission argues that this wording was confusing and particularly difficult for small charities.

I disagree. The meaning of the words "dominant" and "ancillary" is quite clear. There is no confusion. The Commission is trying (or says that is trying) to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

The "solution" they have chosen, politicises what should be non-political bodies.

In future, the Commission rules:

Political activity cannot be the continuing and sole activity of a charity.

This is very different from the current rules. And much more permissive.

Instead of insisting that political activity cannot be dominant they are now only insisting that it not be the sole activity.

There is also a crucial (and I think deliberate) ambiguity. This involves the use of the word "and". Does the guideline mean political activity can be neither continuing or sole, or does it mean it could be one or the other but not both?

This ambiguity is designed, I believe, to allow some charities to make political campaigning their sole activity for a period.

This is a very bad day for the charitable sector.

Big storm coming? It must be an election year

Batten your hatches. Check up on your house insurance. Election year is upon us again.

Freakonomics points to this fascinating Newsweek article. It shows that more natural disasters are declared in election years than any of the others in the US political cycle.

Mother Nature making a statement or the political eye for some great photo opportunities?

Alice Fishburn

Help find the worst hotel in the world

Iain Dale has started something. He may not yet be fully aware of it, but he has.

On his blog he provides a tremendous Blackpool story (you'll have to go see).

My own favourite was told to me by Peter Lilley. After a failed attempt to enter the communal bathroom at his hotel he asked the landlady for the key. She replied: "Bath night's Friday". When Peter protested "But today is Sunday!", she said:"Didn't you wash before you came?"

On another occasion I bumped into Sarah Biffen who was asking whether anyone had 50p in change so that she and John could watch their coin-operated television.

But you may have a better bad hotel story from anywhere in the world.

A Comment Central prize for the person who provides the best tale.

When editing goes wrong...

Enjoy the correction...

Six word slogan for America. Vote now

Following our national motto contest, the illustrious Freakonomics team set out to find a US equivalent. Yesterday they drew up their final shortlist.

My vote's with number 3.

Caution! Experiment in Progress Since 1776

Where's yours?

Alice Fishburn

Bridgend: Don't blame the media

In the immediate aftermath of the recent college shooting in Illinois an important question was raised - should the perpetrator be named in public?

It seemed briefly as if he might not be.

Those who wanted to keep his name out of the media made a simple point - these killers want fame, so fame should be denied them. If the name of one shooter is suppressed, copycat killings will be less likely.

But in the end, the name of Stephen Kazmierczak was made public. Keeping a lid on it would, in any case, have been impossible.

A similar question is now being raised over the Bridgend suicides.

Should they be reported at all? If so, how? In Norway, for instance, a code virtually prohibits reporting of suicides. Should that be the case here?

The Illinois shooting illustrates why it should not.

First, copycat suicides are only one kind of copycat behaviour. Shootings are another. And then there is, well, almost everything else. Book reading, eating, playing sport, wearing particular types of clothes.

If you don't want copycat behaviour you wouldn't publish anything in the paper. Or you would have to make judgements about every item you put in.

I don't think this is remotely realistic. And it would have a huge chilling effect on free speech.

Second, those who demand only very restricted publication - in the case of Illinois or Bridgend - believe that it is glamorising that leads to copycat deaths. This, however, is only one theory.

The alternative - and pretty convincing - model is that it is social proof rather than glamour that causes copycat behaviour. People do what others who are like them do, even when this behaviour is widely disapproved of.

It is interesting, isn't it, that the uptick in suicides is in Bridgend, not everywhere. And that teenagers may be copying others in the area not, say, Heath Ledger. This suggests it is similarity not glamorisation that is most important.

I understand the desperation of Bridgend parents and the need to find someone, anyone, to blame. But it is wrong to propose a media blackout.

And I note the irony that the police statement blaming media reporting was made at a televised press conference.

PMQs has a new fan

Actually it doesn't.

My colleague Hugo Rifkind reports today that the much-loved Bruce regards PMQs as essential viewing:

Prime minister's questions, that's two guys getting it on there. At times it's pure variety, pure vaudeville. It's all the people I used to work with, Frankie Howerd and Les Dawson.

I love it, that's why I tape it. Last week I forgot, and I was furious for the rest of the day.

I already knew this. The reason? Because when I worked for William Hague we received a letter from the great man congratulating William on the quality of his jokes.

And as I had a hand in a few of them, this letter was the source of great pride.

Hey, we may have lost in a landslide. But Brucie thought we were funny. That's gotta count for something.

A family squabble - royal style

A situation that offspring everywhere will recognise.

Japan's Crown Prince has been reprimanded by his parents for not visiting enough.

The difference? Most parents don't have their Grand Steward announce this at a press conference. Now that's a guilt trip that would really work.

Alice Fishburn

I learn something about the world

A thoughtful reader informed me of a joke petition on the Downing Street site which read:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to provide free monkeys on the NHS.

Failing to twig, the Government provided this po-faced auto response from an inattentive civil servant:

While we are aware of similar initiatives already in existence, the Government does not currently have any plans to make monkeys available to people with disabilities.

Followed by a load of cut and paste stuff about their policy on disability.

Hilarious. Except, er....

When I talked to my colleague Hugo Rifkind about it, he told me that he had written about this already. And the response? A large number of angry letters informing him that this was no joke and the Government's reply was perfectly serious.

You can train monkeys to help quadriplegics.

So instead here's a link which allows you to donate to a monkey scheme.

America catches the motto bug

This national motto stuff is catching.

First there was the Comment Central quest for an English motto.

Then came the Scottish and the Australian versions.

And now, the craze has jumped across the pond. Following on from this New York Times article, Freakonomics guru Stephen J. Dubner is searching for an American slogan.

The catch? You only get six words, which automatically rules out the old standby. A case of "In God We Trust? Not anymore."

Alice Fishburn

Spot the difference

Which one's which? Left is a picture of Justin Webb, fourth in line to the throne. Right is famous analyst of US Politics, Prince Andrew. Are they by any chance related?

Did Greta Garbo really want to be alone?

I need some help with a film star quote of great political importance.

Greta Garbo famously said "I want to be alone". These were not her own words, they were the words of her character Grusinskaya in the 1932 film Grand Hotel.

Or were they?

Later Garbo was to say this:

I never said I want to be alone. I only said I want to be left alone. There is all the difference.

And indeed there is.

In fact, the shift that David Willetts and others are trying to make for Conservatives is based precisely on an understanding of the difference between being alone and being left alone. Tory modernisers believe that people want to be left alone, but don't want to be alone.

Hence my assertion that the quote was of importance.

Yet Garbo's remark about the quote is puzzling. Study the script of Grand Hotel and it is quite clear that she did say "I want to be alone".

So is there any historian of films or expert on Garbo able to explain her disavowal of the quote? Does anyone know the context?

Which of these men did the photographer think was a hero?

This morning is the fortieth anniversary of one of the iconic images of the Vietnam War. It was taken on 1 February 1968, with the Tet offensive in its early stages. It pictures General Nguyan Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner.

It is, no question about it, a terrible image. 

This morning, with its admirable instinct for a story, the Today programme told the tale of Eddie Adams's photograph and the impact it made.

Sadly Adams is dead, so the programme featured a different, but also distinguished, war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths. And Jones Griffiths described his feelings about the photo and his own decision to track down and photograph the executed man's widow.

Jones Griffiths had strong views on the photo and gave them to us.

He dismissed the idea that the executed man had been a killer saying both that the idea that the man had just killed others was "kind of propaganda" and that "he wouldn't have been much of a Vietcong soldier" if he hadn't tried to kill people. He clearly viewed the photo's power as being its revelation of the evil of the war and America's involvement.

These were interesting, legitimate, opinions. But it is a shame that it wasn't mentioned that they were not remotely the views held by Eddie Adams of his own photo.

Here's what Eddie Adams had to say about General Loan:

The guy was a hero.

And - surely an essential point in any proper discussion of the history of the photograph - here's what he had to say in Time magazine about his photograph:

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world.

People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.

What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?

When Loan died, Adams - who had called him many times to apologise for the damage done to Loan's reputation - sent a bunch of flowers with the inscription:

I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes.

Adams wished he had never taken the photo, and whether or not he was right about this I think it should have been mentioned this morning, don't you?

Are these the Top Ten British speeches?

Last night, while some friends were swooning over Obama's Ebenezer church speech, we began to talk about whether such a speech could be made in Britain.

I remarked that when I wrote speeches for William Hague he used to tease me for drafting him texts that would be suitable for use on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the culmination of a million man march, when in fact he was addressing the North Western conference of the Royal Opticians' Assocation.

So do British political leaders ever have cause to make thunderous ovations?

Here is the one blogger's attempt at a top ten of British speeches:

1. Calgacus / Tacitus, speech to the Britons (85 AD).
2. Winston Churchill, “We will fight them on the beaches…” (1940).
3. Thomas Rainsborough, address to the Putney debates (1647). 
4. Queen Elizabeth I, “Heart and stomach of a king…” (1588)
5. William Gladstone, first home rule bill (1886).
6. David Lloyd-George, proposing the people’s budget (1909).
7. Oliver Cromwell, “for godsake go…” (1653).
8. Geoffrey Howe, savaged by a dead sheep (1990).
9. Earl Spencer, funeral oration for Princess Diana (1997).
10. Harold MacMillan, “wind of change…” (1960).

What has he missed?

Candidates courting the fat vote

And for the final fun of the day, I give you....The Onion.

One small step (in tights) for womankind...

Some good news, courtesy of the Boulton blog.

Hurrah! It's not often we can report a modern, enlightened decision by the House of Commons authorities.

But the appointment of mother-of-two Jill Pay as the first woman Sergeant at Arms in 600 years, in charge of the so-called "men in tights" who patrol the Houses of Parliament, is a breath of fresh air in its stuffy corridors.

Pay will now have to learn how to handle a sword and mace. But at least we can rest assured that she won't recieve quite as many funny glances in the hosiery department.

Alice Fishburn

All change for Alcatraz?

Never mind the Republicans. The residents of San Francisco will have more important things to worry about when filling out their ballots this February. Among the boxes, they'll have the option to vote for a significant makeover of one of their most famous landmarks.

Proposition C is a call to "convert" Alcatraz into a "Global Peace Center." The idea being that Alcatraz gives off negative vibes and so should be replaced by an "International Conference Center For Non-Violent Conflict Resolution"

It gets better. 'The Rock' could see the following improvements.

To help usher in all this peace, the center will also include a "Harmonium", a "multi- media facility of Laser Light, holographic sound, and fragrance" that will shoot out holographs into the Bay...

I can't help wondering what Al Capone would make of it all.

(Hat Tip: Gawker)

Alice Fishburn

Splitters!

People's Front of Judea and Judean People's front update.

Does the internet cause copycat suicides?

I wonder if you have read the moving, tragic, and bizarre story of the suicides in Bridgend. It appears that a number of young people known to each other have committed suicide.

It has raised this question - is the internet to blame for these copycat suicides, if that is what they were?

Now this seems like one of those waffly, vague, pointless questions. But actually I think it is possible to attempt an answer.

The first thing to understand is that copycat suicides are not something new. In fact there is an academic name for them - the Werther Effect - and this name shows that these strange deaths have happened for many years.

Goethe’s novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) was published in 1774. And its publication was followed by many reports of young men shooting themselves. Why? It was widely believed that these suicides were copies of the death of the novel's hero.

When academic David Phillips studied copycat suicides in the early 1970s, he coined the term Werther Effect.

Studying suicides in the US between 1947 and 1968, Phillips found that within two months of a front-page suicide, an average of 58 more people than usual killed themselves. And there is also a sharp rise in car crash fatalities and other forms of disguised suicides.

In 2001 it was noted in the American Journal of Epidemiology that:

statistical evidence indicates that suicide clusters occur primarily among teenagers and young adults and that they account for 1–5 percent of all teenage suicides.

Now, if suicide is contagious (an idea also raised by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point) it needs a means of spreading. And traditionally newspapers were that means.

Thus Professor Keith Hawton of Oxford University's Centre for Suicide Research reports:

Thirty studies were found which examined the possible impact of reporting of suicide in newspapers. In 21 there was evidence of an increase in suicides after the reports, with 10 of these also finding evidence of a causal link between the reported suicide(s) and those occurring following the report.

Most of the studies of copycat suicides look at the impact of celebrity deaths, since these are the suicides reported in newspapers. The death of Kurt Cobain is often cited as an example of a celebrity death that produced an increased number of suicides. And all over the world, newspapers have introduced codes to ensure their reporting does not increase problem.

Yet the work on social proof of Robert Cialdini and others suggests that people are more likely to copy each other's behaviour the more similar they feel they are to the people they are copying. A celebrity who they emotionally relate to might have this effect. But how much more so someone of their own age, in their own community.

Which is where the internet comes in.

The internet allows peer-to-peer publication. It allows the transmission of news about people very similar to you. One would expect it to be a stronger means of passing along the suicide bug.

It is, of course, ridiculous to "blame" the internet, even supposing we were certain of the exact circumstances in these terrible cases. You can't talk about the internet as if it were a person able to bear moral responsibility. And we do know that these sorts of deaths have been happening without the internet for centuries.

Yet there is a reason to hypothesise that in the internet era we will see more of them.

UPDATE: You can watch me talk about the Bridgend suicides here

Top five articles about the late Bobby Fischer

• Portrait of a genius as a young chess master: Ralph Ginzburg,1962
• The Battle of the Brains: Time, 1972
• All the world's a pawn: Newsweek, 1972
• Game Theory: Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 2004
• Endgame on the darker side of genius: The Sunday Times, 2005

Another You Tube. Another subject. Another Downfall mashup

Why we need Oliver Kamm

Philip Agee is dead.

In fact the former CIA man has been dead for several days. He died on January 7th. In Cuba.

I am sorry I missed this story, because the deportation of Agee (along with Mark Hosenball) in 1976, on the instruction of Home Secretary Merlyn Rees is one of my earliest political memories.

I somehow missed the excellent Times obit, and that I didn't miss this landmark entirely is thanks to Oliver Kamm, who exists on this earth entirely to keep me informed about such matters (along with various other more minor selfish interests he may have).

Oliver also picks up the Guardian's report that Agee was described by the elder George Bush as a traitor. He demonstrates that this was not a throwaway insult, but the literal truth.

As Agee has long been portrayed as a persecuted journalist, it's worth airing Kamm's main point:

In the Mitrokhin Archive, 1999, the authors state (p. 300): "Agee became in effect the CIA's first defector. In 1973 he approached the KGB residency in Mexico City and offered what the head of the FCD's Counter-Intelligence Directorate, Oleg Kalugin, called 'reams of information about CIA operations'."

With self-defeating circumspection, the suspicious KGB resident turned Agee away. So Agee turned to the Cubans, who unsurprisingly welcomed him enthusiastically and shared the information that he brought. How many Western agents died as a result of Agee's treachery is, so far as I'm aware, not public knowledge.

The games people play

You'll never see idle chit-chat in the same way again once you've watched today's FORA video. Here, Steven Pinker discusses the nuances of speech and the subtle negotiations taking place behind any conversation.

If you can't see this video, click here

Alice Fishburn

What grade would you give to the Union Jack?

Ever wondered how the Stars and Stripes measures up against the Union Jack? Fret no more. For all you vexillologists (read: flag-enthusiasts) out there, a new grading system is at hand.

Under this system, America's star-spangled banner scrapes by with a C+ while our national pennant gets a respectable B.

See this Marginal Revolution post for more explanation about the method behind this madness and a spirited challenge to Gambia's position in the number one spot. Let's hear it for Turkey.

Alice Fishburn

Found: one moral instinct

If you have a moment, there's a superb piece by Steven Pinker in The New York Times Magazine. It is 7,000 words long, but if you print it off, you'll be able to get through it pretty quickly.

Pinker's subject is the moral instinct.

He argues that we are born with the instinct to make moral judgements, an instinct that arises from our evolutionary development.

It's another instalment of the brilliant arguments made in his unmissable book The Blank Slate. Pinker takes on those who believe that our behaviour is merely a result of our upbringing and the way that society is organised.

This is one of the frontlines in the political battle. It's as well to be armed.