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Saturday, March 28, 2009 

Weekend links.

Story of the weekend is undoubtedly the large protests in London ahead of the G20 meeting next week. After doing their best to raise tensions ahead of next week's probably more radical protests, the police seem to have made more than the usual effort to count the crowd, saying 35,000 turned up, which means you can probably at least double that, resulting in a more than fine turn out. Lenin, the Daily Maybe and Laurie Penny all have reports.

Elsewhere, Craig Murray examines in detail the latest Foreign Office Human Rights Report, which seems to be saying clearer than ever that it uses "intelligence" which is sourced through torture while at the same time "unreservedly condemning" the practice, Paul Linford says that Stephen Byers' criticism of Brown's economic policy is spot on, Justin puts into detail why Iain Dale should not win the Orwell prize for blogging (I'm rooting for Alix Mortimer), Nosemonkey sets out why he doesn't think the EU is about to become a "superstate" any time soon, David Semple is still (rightly) pissed off about the Jade Goody hysteria, while finally over on Heresy Corner Frank Fisher (aka MrPikeBishop from CiF) guests with a tongue-in-cheek post regarding the "dangerous drawings" legislation and the 18-year-old who painted a massive cock on the roof of where he lived.

In the papers, Ian Jack remarks on how suffering in public became an act, both Peter Oborne and Matthew Parris are rather scathing about Brown's rather unpleasant last week, Deborah Orr covers ground similar on the two contrasting rape cases to that which I did yesterday, and lastly Howard Jacobson rather weakly suggests that we shouldn't disbelieve those who tell us we're all about to die.

As for worst tabloid article of the weekend, normally the Sun would deserve some sort of prize for its curious belief that the mother of a footballer being caught shoplifting is a front page news story for two days running, but when such incredible chutzpah is on the front page of the Daily Mail it rather glosses over it. This country of anger and fear, a damning verdict, says the newspaper which does more than any other publication with the possible exception of the Sun to incite both that anger and fear. We also sadly can't go one week without mentioning the lovely Amanda Platell, who has this stereotypically Mail response to the Peter Bacon rape case:

Answer: because the strident feminist lobby has demanded that every woman's accusation of rape must be treated equally, however weak the evidence.

That does a great injustice to men like Mr Bacon, who - even when proven innocent - will for ever bear the shame and stigma of the trial.

But just as importantly it does a huge disservice to the genuine victims of aggressive rape, who will find their claims lumped together with those of promiscuous, binge- drinking, irresponsible fools who are the victims only of their own stupidity.

That's a rather harsh verdict on Mr Bacon; after all, he was only out for a totally legitimate one-night stand. Oh, she's talking about the woman...

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