Recommended Reading.

Anthony Browne, simply. And of course Steyn on Demography, Europe and the Islamists. If I could link Roger Kimball I would, as his Criterion piece was excellent too. I think in Browne (as linked by Stephen Pollard), we come very close to the reality of things in the UK; as I've known them and as I feel them to be. I don't know if I will buy it. Maybe I should; but I know this stuff- know it factually, test it with a modest sort of empiricism- it's the believing that's the hard part, and that Browne helps instill.

The bit that struck me most of what I've read was where Browne reports the suppression of a report by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia; or rather, the re-writing of it to blame white skinheads for anti-Jewish acts, rather than the Muslims identified by the report as the most significant element.

So, a supposedly respectable trans-national agency lies to preserve its PC agenda. That's no surprise, but it should be if they were at all worthy of respect. However, instead of being discredited, what happened? Well, in the UK, the media split:

The Independent reported 'White men blamed as attacks on Jews rise'.

The Telegraph approached the real story that was there to be told. Approached, I say, because there seems to have been no real sense of scandal.

The will to negate the real story of the world's developments is extraordinary. Suicidal even.

Most individuals think a bit before they lie; usually work a little to avoid it, and if they do regret it just a bit. But in Britain the media quite literally thinks nothing of lying to force its mentality upon its readership. Papers like the Telegraph are no paragons; there can't be any when things go so far down that lying is a community journalistic activity- part of the scenery, going with the territory.

People are often pretty nasty, but usually lack organisation. The media in the UK however has organised its rhetorical turf and meanders round the boundaries seeking ways of extending it (the Telegraph occupies a slighty nicer bit of turf, as does the Guardian in its own way. The BBC? They are like some higher former of mafia, with access to all turfs, able to look infinitely more respectable while, whenever they really want to, orchestrating quietly). I often recommend articles not out of any faith in the media, but because somehow they delineate this turf war in a comfortingly close approximation to the reality. So it is with Browne- but it's a very close approximation in this case.