Pat Condell, censored by Youtube

Most readers of this blog are probably familiar with Pat Condell's videos, criticizing Islamic thinking, in the name of freedom for all, including Muslims. As the above video explains, he has finally caught up to our own Charles and had one of his videos banned from Youtube, something that happens to many who criticize the left-Islamist worldview. Charles' banned video, as I recall, was merely critical of French politicians; as anyone who reads this blog knows, he's not one for outrageous hyperbole, hate, or vulgarity.

Anyway, while it is not news that Youtube often censors those who don't hold to a certain politically correct party line, the video above is a timely reminder of how those who criticize Sharia precepts, and all the violence Sharia does to people, can, outrageously, be considered something disreputable in today's West.

That's why we, the Covenant Zone bloggers, meet every Thursday and encourage you to join us, wherever you are, in keeping up the tradition of freely speaking your mind, somewhere in public, preferably where others will overhear you and whoever else you can find to talk. (It used to be that when you heard a lone person talking to himself, you figured he was crazy; today we don't have that problem; if you can't find anyone to join you, just pretend you're talking into a cellphone or bluetooth device.)

We meet in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9pm Thursdays, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarves.

Here is the text of the above video:

Pat Condell supported the petition against Sharia law in the UK with his video Welcome to Saudi Britain.

As a result of his usual brave and dignified stand in favour of freedom of speech his video has been removed.

He merely criticised the Saudi-based Islamisation of the UK. He did not incite violence nor hatred of Muslims.

The email I received from Pat said this:

patcondell has sent you a message on YouTube:
My video has been removed
Just got this from dhimmitube:

The following video(s) from your account have been disabled for violating the YouTube Community Guidelines:
•Welcome to Saudi Britain - (patcondell)
Your account has received one Community Guidelines warning sanction, which will expire in six months. Additional violations may result in the temporary disabling of your ability to post content to YouTube and/or the termination of your account.

I want to ask you to do two things:

1. Continue to sign the petition to stop Sharia law gaining more ground in the UK - do this in honour of Pat Condell.

"WE THE UNDERSIGNED PETITION THE PRIME MINISTER TO STOP ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW BEING USED IN GREAT BRITAIN."
Deadline 4th October 2008.
Link:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/sharialawuk/

2. Leave a comment below that demands Pat's video Welcome to Saudi Britain be reinstated immediately - do this in honour of our greatest possession, freedom of speech, something that we will allow to slip a little more from our grasp if we do not do all we can to support Pat Condell in this instance.

I for one will cease to use Google as my search engine if YouTube (owned by Google) does not reinstate Pat's video within the next 7 days.

Use your voice on this video to persuade YouTube to overturn this lamentable decision.

We do not live in Saudi Arabia. We do not adhere to Islamic rules about non-criticism of Islam. We are free to criticise Islam. If Pat Condell's video is not reinstated, I will do all I can to peacefully but firmly fight YouTube and encourage as many people as possible to cease using their products for the foreseeable future.

My question to you is this:

If a voice as humorous and high profile as Pat Condell's can be silenced when asking people to sign a legal petition, who's going to hear our voices, we little people?

And now for something completely different!

OK, I think over the last couple of years we've tried out most of the reasons we have for encouraging people to attend our weekly Thursday Covenant Zone meetings at the Vancouver Public Library, or to develop their own covenant zones for the renewal of our political freedom and anticipation of the form and content of our future national covenants. We meet in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9pm, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarves.

Finding myself looking for more reasons this Thursday, how about this: it's good for your health! I mean, it could save your life! If you spend too much time sitting in front of that computer, without taking enough breaks to move about in the physical world, something could happen to you that happened to me a while ago, during an internet fix, and almost robbed you of the chance to read my, ahem, grasping weekly prose:

WASHINGTON - Far too many Americans are dying of dangerous blood clots that can masquerade as simple leg pain, says a major new government effort to get both patients and their doctors to recognize the emergency in time.

"It's a silent killer. It's hard to diagnose," said acting Surgeon General Dr. Steven Galson, who announced the new campaign Monday. "I don't think most people understand that this is a serious medical problem or what can be done to prevent it."

At issue are clots with cumbersome names: A deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, forms in large veins, usually a leg or the groin. It can quickly kill if it moves up to the lungs, where it goes by the name pulmonary embolism, or PE.

These clots make headlines every few years when seemingly healthy people collapse after long airplane flights or being in similarly cramped quarters. Vice President Cheney suffered one after a long trip last year. NBC correspondent David Bloom died of one in 2003 after spending days inside a tank while covering the invasion of Iraq.

But that provides a skewed vision of the problem. While there aren't good statistics, the new surgeon general's campaign estimates that every year, between 350,000 and 600,000 Americans get one of these clots - and at least 100,000 of them die.

There are a host of risk factors and triggers: Recent surgery or a broken bone; a fall or car crash; pregnancy or taking birth control pills or menopause hormones; being immobile for long periods. The risk rises with age, especially over 65, and among people who smoke or are obese.

And some people have genetic conditions that cause no other symptoms but increase their risk, making it vital to tell your doctor if a relative has ever suffered a blood clot.

People with those factors should have "a very low threshold" for calling a doctor or even going to the emergency room if they have symptoms of a clot, said Galson, who issued a "call to action" for better education of both consumers and doctors, plus more research.

Symptoms include swelling; pain, especially in the calf; or a warm spot or red or discolored skin on the leg; shortness of breath or pain when breathing deeply.

But here's the rub: Doctors are ill-informed, too. For example, studies suggest a third of patients who need protective blood thinners when they enter the hospital for major surgery don't get them. And patients can even be turned away despite telltale symptoms, like happened to Le Keisha Ruffin just weeks after the birth of her daughter, Caitlyn.

Ruffin made repeated visits to doctors and emergency rooms for growing pain in her leg and groin in December 2003 and January 2004, but was told it must be her healing Caesarean section scar.

Finally one night, Ruffin's husband ran her a really hot bath for pain relief - only to have her climb out minutes later with her leg swollen three to four times its normal size, and then pass out.

"I like to call that my miracle bath," Ruffin said, because the sudden swelling proved the tip-off for doctors.

Pieces of a giant clot in her right leg had broken off and floated to her lung. The ER doctor "said if I hadn't made it in when I did, I may not have lived through the rest of the night," recalled Ruffin, now 32, who spent a month in the hospital and required extensive physical therapy to walk normally again.

These clots "tend to fall through the cracks" because they cross so many areas of medicine, said Dr. Samuel Goldhaber, chairman of the Venous Disease Coalition and a cardiologist at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital.

With the surgeon general's campaign, "DVT after all these years will finally get the national spotlight like cigarette smoking did in the mid-60s," he said.

In addition to Galson's report:

-The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is issuing a 12-page booklet to help consumers tell if they're at risk for DVTs and what to do - and a 60-page DVT treatment-and-prevention guide for doctors and hospitals.

-As a prevention incentive, starting Oct. 1 Medicare will withhold payment from hospitals when patients develop the clots after knee-or hip-replacement surgery.

-

On the Net:

Surgeon General: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov

Venous Disease Coalition: http://www.venousdiseasecoalition.org

Coalition to Prevent DVT: http://www.preventdvt.org

Quoted article from: Menopause - Medbroadcast

Covenant Zone kinda rocks

Just a reminder: we meet every Thursday, 7-9 pm, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, in front of Blenz Coffee. Look for the blue scarf.

If you are interested in defending and exercising free expression in Canada, it's a place to be...

Ultimately it is the law that must be changed, by citizens living in freedom

There is speculation in the blogosphere thanks to this post at Free Dominion that the Canadian Human Rights Commission is getting ready to throw Richard "maximum disruption" Warman under the bus. Some may see this as the CHRC looking for a scapegoat to avoid further public scrutiny of its own establishment. While I might quibble that this would be to misuse the term scapegoat, there is no doubt a risk that we may be now encouraged to forget that, whatever becomes the public historical legacy of Richard Warman, Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, now often known as "Warman's law", was bound to lead to all kinds of injustices, to a highly politicized legal and judicial process, and hence a low-level civil war between conservatives and leftists, whether or not Richard Warman ever got involved in the leftist war against the leftist conception of "hate" using typical leftist tactics. The Canadian state was bound to be backing such a war the moment it wrote into law Section 13. It is impossible for such a law not to become a political tool, unless it be widely ignored and left unused. At least "maximum disruption" Warman has honestly recognized this fact.

Citizens disturbed by the latest revelations in the documents represented and linked at Free Dominion should re-affirm their commitment to a free society in which policing of hatreds becomes the responsibility of individuals and institutions in civil society. The moment we give this job to the state - the moment criminal or "human rights" law becomes concerned not just with wrong actions but also with "wrong" thoughts - especially in a society that defines itself as "multicultural", we have effectively given up our freedom to the whims of those who will define for the competing groups in society what is and is not politically acceptable. We will become locked in resentful group identities and will not lessen hatreds but only fail to mediate them effectively. Instead, we must re-affirm individual rights and responsibilities in ways that maximize our shared freedom. We must protect each other from hate.

At Covenant Zone, we are trying to do our part to maintain the culture of freedom and democratic self-rule in Canada. To this end, the "end" without end, the "end" that allows for no dangerously Utopian visions of an end, such as the leftist conceit to be fighting to end hate and conflict (and only becoming their yet more dangerous agents in the deluded Utopian process) we meet every Thursday (in spirit we meet forever without end) to keep the conversation of free people going. If you can join us here in Vancouver, please do, in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, in front of Blenz Coffee. If you can't, consider creating your own Covenant Zone.

Cafe Libre

How's this for an idea?

Red, white, and blue coffeehouse

Ed Lasky
In a welcome reversal of history, where coffee houses were associated with Beatnicks and then with Millenials, there is now a coffee shop opens for us conservatives.

There is now a cafe that serves up coffee with a "conservative flavor" in Crown Point, Indiana, suburb of Chicago. A picture of Ronald Reagan hangs on the wall.

A former art teacher came up with the idea after souring on Starbucks:

More at: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/07/red_white_and_blue_coffeehouse.html

We meet this evening, as usual, at VPL in the atrium from 7-9:p.m. for coffee and talk and some space in which to be free and responsible citizens and residents of this city. We'll be outside Blenz coffee bar in the atrium. Look for the blue scarves ( in support of our conservative friends in France at the Revolucion Bleue) or Israeli flags on baseball caps in support of our friends under seige in Israel, or look for the tee-shirts in support of free speech in Canada: Hooray Mark Styne and Ezra Levant! Feel comfortable with that? Then feel free to join us for some company and coffee. Coffee's on me.

Covenant Zone, Geeks or Greeks?

From time to time, a notice for our weekly Thursday meetings has appeared at other blogs and websites. It's great to have friends who want to give our "blue scarf" meetings a little publicity. Lately, Findalis at Monkey in the Middle has had a notice on her side bar.

Many thanks Findalis.

If the three of us here at CZ weren't so phobic about matters computer programming, we'd have a side bar full of neat stuff too. But at heart, I guess we're more just interested in just talking and writing about freedom. Heck, this week Sean has had to remind us that we're a bunch of "semantic" toffs more interested in playing homoerotic games like private school boys than with talking the serious stuff, whatever Sean thinks that is.

Well, there's only one way to know for sure what the ever open meanings of Covenant Zone are about. Are you interested in renewing the possibilities and freedoms of our shared culture, of fighting for your stakes in a free society? Then join us one Thursday, or start your own "covenant zone" wherever you are, figuring out how you can do something to guarantee the openness of the systems on which our shared freedom depends.

We meet at the chairs and tables outside Blenz Coffee in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9pm, Thursdays.
Photo by Lightgazer, via mirage bookmark

Covenant Zone in Session

Feel like changing your mind?

I often think of things as normal and those norms as set in stone, unchanging, ideas I hold fast to and refuse to give up simply because they are right. Why would I think otherwise?

I often think that way, in that kind of loop of thought, and out come the things I wish later I might have thought of on my own before I made such commentary. Yes, I do it nearly every Thursday evening in conversation at the Covenant Zone. I do come out with some of the laziest and stupidest ideas of my life in front of people who listen to me and then discuss what I might have said in good faith. Often, by the end of the evening and beyond, I find I've changed my mind, often times fundamentally. But rather than strip away years and decade of good ideas and solid beliefs that have held my person in good stead, I find that I might be closer by some degree to the truer self I would be if I could be.

The Covenant Zone assembles at the Vancouver Public Library this evening at 7-9:00 p.m. to talk again about fundamental and interesting topics regarding our shared lives and our persons as citizens and residents of this nation and of our Modernity under threat. We seek solutions through better ideas.

From jihad to Left dhimmi fascism to books and thinkers on politics and culture, we discuss and talk well into the evening to seek out better ideas and better ways of understanding. You're welcome to join us. We'll be happy to make a place for you at Blenz coffee bar in the atrium if you care to sit in and talk as well.

If you're interested in ideas, then you are likely worth meeting. Please feel free to stop in for a few hours. You'll recognize us by our -- Screaming Eagle baseball cap! Yes, I got a new hat. I'm very excited. Please come by and admire it.

Yeah, that intellectual stuff too, but what a cool hat I have. Sometimes I change my mind, sometimes I change my hat. Life is a mystery.

A future for all, brave and free

I remember Osama bin Laden. He's the guy who organized the attack on General George Custer. He's at it again. Too bad about Custer. He was a good man. He lives on in our memories as one of ours who died in the great making of our nation. We might not know the names of all those Americans who died with him that fateful day, but they are a part of our lives and we will never really be without them in our nation's person. The killer? Well, who cares. He's at it again, making war whoops and noise. Someone should kill him. Barring that, someone should give him the rope he needs to hang himself and all his own. He puts on an offended face in the sight of cartoons about Mohammed? OK, we can play that game.

We do it, in our small way, by meeting in public to show that we in the West are free to do so, and that we will not be intimidated or cowed by bluster from a savage. We do it to give others a place to come to join us in this act of civil disobedience. where too many others whisper their resentments we sit openly and talk of positive ways of creating a new bond between our fellows, one workable in the real world, one flexible and steady and happy. We speak and hear of new ideas, some so old they are new to my mind, some so old that only God himself would have heard them first. The savage, bin Laden, barks in a cave like a dog. We meet at the public library. We speak. We listen. We understand and we are sometimes surprised and made anew. Challenge the norm. Issue a warning to the bin Ladens that we are at the library speaking sense and good will.

Bin Laden Issues Warning to EU Over Prophet Cartoons

Al Qaida Terrorist Leader Osama bin Laden, in a new message, has warned the European Union that it will be severely punished for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers.

In an audio recording posted to an al-Qaida-affiliated Web site al-Ekhlaas late Wednesday, a voice said to be that of bin Laden's says publishing the cartoons was a greater offense than Western forces bombing the homes of women and children.

Satirical cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammed were published in Danish newspapers in 2006, sparking mass riots in Islamic nations worldwide. In one of the cartoons Mohammed was wearing a bomb as a turban.

The bin Laden statement says the cartoons are part of a new crusade against Islam in which the Vatican has played a large and lengthy role.
http://voanews.com/english/2008-03-20-voa6.cfm

We've lost many good men and women in this eternal struggle to keep our nations free and independent. They are part of our process. Our destiny is manifest, all that can ever hold us back or slow us down being our own who would prevent our greatness from spreading across the face of our Earth. There is no real stopping us, only a matter of how long till we rule as free men and women in all nations as free individuals. No, nothing is written in stone for us, our destiny being manifest only so long as we care to pursue it. And we do. Ours is a blessing and life of great honor to live. If we go down like Custer, we will rise like our heroes of the Plains and bring to all civility and peace and further hope for our future. Bin Laden is a cartoon, as are those who heed him. Join us for an evening of talk and free debate. We meet at VPL outside Blenz in the atrium from 7-9:00 p.m. Make a stand by sitting in for coffee and chat.

Paintings by:

Domenico Tojetti, "Manifest Destiny."

John Gast, "American Progress"

Judging the Covenant

One of the reasons, dear Vancouver reader, you may not be attending our regular Covenant Zone Thursday night meetings - in the atrium of the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, 7-9 pm, look for the guys in the blue scarves - is the proximity of our meeting place to a modest hang out for homeless guys, some of whom beg and display their mental illness for all to see. But, for us, it's a constant reminder of how our society has given up much faith in a shared bond that would work against simply allowing Vancouver's public street culture of tolerance and dependency, that only facilitates some people's collapse into the abyss.

Charles wrote about this shocking assault on an elderly man by a homeless person who was the regular beneficiary of the elderly man's charity, last summer.

And now comes the verdict of the judge who seems more intent on telling off the "tolerant" folks of Vancouver for tolerating the intolerable, than on punishing the malefactor:

The violent encounter last August between a homeless panhandler and an elderly parishioner at the entrance to Holy Rosary Cathedral has led a Vancouver Provincial Court judge to question society's willingness to accept homelessness and the chaos it has brought to the city's streets.

Judge William Kitchen's remarks came during the sentencing of Darcy Lance Jones, who has lived in the Vancouver area for almost 20 years subsisting on income assistance, panhandling and petty crime to support a drug habit involving marijuana, crack cocaine and heroin.

Jones -- described by Kitchen as not being a productive member of society ... "in fact he has been pathetically inadequate" -- was given a two-year-less-a-day conditional sentence that amounts to house arrest with strict reporting conditions.

The court was told that on Aug. 1, Jones was waiting outside the cathedral for Peter Collins, who always made a point of speaking to him after mass, and would regularly give him $5.

But on this occasion, as the 81-year-old retired doctor took out his wallet, Jones lunged and grabbed the wallet and threw Collins to the ground.

Jones removed $40, then handed the wallet back to Collins, who was still on the ground.

Kitchen noted the age of the doctor and said he ought to have been injured, but Collins made light of the incident at the time and suffered no apparent injuries.

A video surveillance camera captured the incident and Jones was recognized. Police stopped him on the street the next day and arrested him. He admitted the robbery, was remorseful and told police he couldn't understand why he had done it.

"Nor can others understand," said Kitchen. "Why rob an old man while he is giving you money? And why in the sanctity of the man's church?"
[...]
Jones's criminal record did not show an inclination to violence, Kitchen said, and nothing in his past would predict this attack.

"Which raises again the issue of why this robbery occurred. Jones has been part of the street culture in Vancouver. He has been homeless most of the time and relied on public money and handouts to support a continuing drug habit. His idea of being a productive member of society is to frequent the entertainment district at night performing pushups in front of nightclubs, giving directions, and hailing cabs for money," said Kitchen.

"Most people would see this as being a nuisance but those living on the street view it as their role in society," he said.

Kitchen then made a number of withering observations about the state of affairs on Vancouver's streets and society's tacit acceptance of homelessness and all it brings.

"Two generations ago, there were almost no street people in Vancouver. If a person slept or begged on the street, the police would intervene. Public welfare was even more limited than now. Perhaps family and peers took more responsibility for people with problems.

"Somehow society coped without creating the chaos on the streets that we now have," said the judge.

"Today in Vancouver there are perhaps thousands living on the streets and in the parks. They sleep everywhere -- even in the doorways of the courthouse and police station. Public areas are their bathrooms and garbage disposal facilities. They subsist on inadequate income assistance, food lineups and public handouts, and low-level crime.

"Society created this situation. Law-abiding citizens condone it and it has become the expectation of those like Darcy Jones. In fact it is more than an expectation; it is viewed as an entitlement -- the public are expected to respond favourably to silly justifications for demanding money such as 'squeegee' car windshield [washers] or doing pushups on the street.

"It is not surprising that some street people have taken the next step of physically enforcing their right to this support. We have a name for it -- aggressive panhandling," he said.

Regardless, there was no excuse for Jones's crime, which must be forcefully denounced, Kitchen said.

Since his release on bail two weeks after the assault, Jones has been staying at Luke 15 House, a Catholic transition home for addicts and newly released prisoners in Surrey. His lawyer, Susan Daniels, said he should be allowed to continue rehabilitation there.

Jones told Kitchen he planned to stay at the home for the foreseeable future and was planning to become a Catholic at Easter -- decisions supported by staff at Luke 15 House, who spoke up for him on sentencing.

"How ironic that the very church where Jones committed this offence supports him when society will not provide the resources," said Kitchen. "It is a sad fact that there are more resources provided by such charitable organizations as Luke 15 than by our correction services."

Admitting that a conditional sentence -- house arrest -- would be counter-intuitive for many, Kitchen said this case required it. He sentenced Jones to two years less a day to be served at Luke 15 House, to be followed by three years probation.

How do we begin to even think about how to change the massive social problem that has evolved over the years on the streets of Vancouver? Well, there will be no silver bullet to solve this problem. It will take a lot of people saying "no" to the unacceptable and at the same time providing real opportunities that give lost or losing people a way out, opportunities, freedoms, that come with responsibilities. But none of this can happen until people start talking about and assuming the existence of a covenant we all must share to guarantee each other's freedom. That's what we do every Thursday, to the sometimes curious looks of the street people who hang out around us.

Whether you think Darcy Jones got off easy, or if you agree that church is a better place than prison for a man in need of reforming, just be thankful that Jones is seen as one of the bad guys in all this. More sophisticated players of mental illness can now pick up $80, 000 via our scandalous "Human Rights" Commissions, for lying to their new employers and then getting fired because of it. Margaret Wente asks:

Does it really matter if rights tribunals sometimes make dumb decisions? You could argue that's just the price we pay for all the good they do. The trouble is that they're more and more disconnected from common sense. They're taking on cases that would strike most of us as absurd. They're summoning journalists and magazines to defend themselves for exercising basic free speech. They're prosecuting private-sector doctors who choose not to perform elective vaginal surgery on transsexuals. They're about to hear the case against a small-time restaurant and pub owner who told a guy to scram because his marijuana smoke was bothering the customers. The smoker says he was discriminated against because his marijuana is medicinal, and he has the right to smoke it wherever he wants to.

These bodies are fast losing their legitimacy. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Yes, but are they losing legitimacy fast enough for our governments to actually get off their duffs and do something about them? Or will we all just accept the corrosion of common sense, like we accept the pervasive mental illness on the streets of Vancouver? Will our politicians be willing to stand up to all the ritualistic flack that in doing something about the rogue "human rights" tribunals, or about the mentally ill patrons of the professional social work povertarians, they would be attacking "human rights"? Or will we be forced to endure more and more costly and socially and economically corrosive rulings form the victim religionist at our tribunals? For our governments to act, the people need to lead. There needs to be a lot of phoning, faxing, letter writing to our politicians to tell them that there are rogue bureaucrats acting as Star Chambers with a destructive zeal for victimary thinking, and that it is ruining our national covenant and hence eroding freedom for everyone. If you want to share in working up this angle, making new ways of thinking both compelling and popular, that's one thing the talking shop that is Covenant Zone is for, here in cyberspace or at the library Thursday nights. Or wherever and with whomever you are.

Technorati Tags: Vancouver, covenant zone, homelessness, crime, human rights tribunals

The age of transparencies

Since we've been voted "most obtusely anachronistic and semantic" blog by Sean, the anti-Les Nessman of a groovy, post-coo-ool blog, I've gone looking for truer signs of the times about which to wax runic:

It must be hard being Facebook. When you’re not being accused of endangering the privacy of people who’ve posted their life stories on the web, or of providing a forum for paedophiles, you’re deleting the profiles of Lib Dem MPs, claiming that they don’t exist. It must be hard being a Liberal Democrat too.

Steve Webb, 42, who has been an MP for ten years, used his Facebook profile [to] keep in touch with constituents, but some people, it seems, began to doubt his credentials. When Facebook received complaints, they took prompt action and removed the profile.

"I was essentially accused of impersonating a Member of Parliament," Mr Webb told Reuters.

He accepted that Facebook’s doubts may have arisen because he had more than 2,500 friends – a suspiciously large number for an MP.

Now, when I was trapped in nostalgia, studying history and counting all the Gladstone vs. Disraeli streets in Canada (it's a sad tale), I remember reading about the growth of liberty and how many millions of active, voting, candidate-choosing members the British Conservative, Liberal, and Labour parties came to have. They were a fundamental part of the network of everyday life in British society. Now that British politics has been outsourced to Brussels and what's left is dominated by an increasingly tyrannical Prime Minister, and the other party leaders, there really are only a few people an ambitious MP needs to have on speed dial. So, no wonder Mr. Webb was taken for a fake. At the very least, maybe he is the one truly deserving of the Obtusely Anachronistic-Becoming Transparent award. Mr. Webb even has a nice blog where I found this ditty from the land of Shakespeare:

Once upon a time in England
Stood a very good MP
His election was a landslide
It's North Avon History
But now his very existence
Has encountered resistance
He has helped us all and gladly
Now we come to rescue Steve
Facebook friends, unite and stand up
To make everyone believe
Steve is real, so tell your president
Give him back to North Avon Residents
And one day, in the near future
All this will feel like a dream
Steve will have his Facebook friends back
And Lib Dem's will reign supreme
Until then, we'll do our best
To keep up our Facebook protest!

And here's Steve with his face back.