Nice Prospect Magazine essay by Michael Weiss, who sees a striking similarity between Julian Assange and the 19th-century anarchist and failed Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin.

Born in 1814 and justifiably forgotten today for his lack of theoretical rigor or coherent platform, Bakunin, like Assange, fancied himself a principled anarchist. But it was his personal characteristics that came to define his reputation. To friend and foe alike, he was a chancer, a sponger and a delusional madcap. Bakunin said he wanted to release the “evil passions” of mankind through revolution. Out of a similarly blinding hubris, Assange deflects his colleagues’ criticism by saying, “I’m busy, there are two wars I have to end.”

Both men gloried in the secret society and coded message rather than above-ground operations. Like Assange, Bakunin flitted through Europe with police tails, disguises and an air of conspiracy. He commanded a cult-like following of friends. Edmund Wilson wrote of Bakunin that “he was able to catch people up by the spell of a personality part of whose power resided in the fact that it had the ingenuousness of a child… his conspiracies were always partly imaginary, and he never himself seems quite to have known the difference between actuality and the dream.” Assange is fond of skipping down city streets while journalists are discussing his materials. According to the New York Times, he believes that Stasi agents still control the German secret police archives, which they’re deleting from history.

AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post has got everyone excited. Except me and the inimitable Om Malik. He reports that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong wants AOL home page to be the start page for information. But, says Malik, it ain’t going to happen. The world of today doesn’t work that way. People have their favorites and start their news day at random places.

AOL’s moves are much like the ending scene from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. Surrounded by the Bolivian Army, Dos Hombres have no choice to make a gallant dash to their horses, guns blazing, hoping against hope as thousand guns blaze around them. The ever-increasing web inventory is like the Bolivian Army firing on AOL and others who have not yet come to terms with the futility of chasing page views.

Despite what you might read in the newspapers and blogs, AOL is still in A-O-Hell. In the most recent quarter, the company saw its advertising revenues go down 29 percent, at a time when online advertising grew about 14 percent. According to eMarketer, its share of total online display advertising was down to 5.3 percent in 2010 from 6.8 percent in 2009.

It’s funny how stuff gets laid down in corporate DNA and is then impossible to shift. AOL started out as the ultimate ‘walled garden’: it thought it would be able to keep its subscribers corralled inside rather than venturing out onto the Wild West Web. The fantasy about becoming the start page for today’s Web is a reflection of the same mindset.

NoteSlate is low cost tablet device with true one colour display, real paper look design, long life battery (180h !), together with very handy usage and very simple and helpful interface for pen and paper. This easy, compact and portable gadget is used anywhere you want to make any notes, drafts, sketches, any ideas for future reference. Paper for everyone! Write a note and check it later, save it, or delete it. Maybe send it after. Just one colour is enough to express the basics. Keep your life simple. You will love it. For $99.

Interesting blurb. Supposedly coming to market in June at a price of $99.

One of the mot paradoxical aspects of the last week is that, on the one hand, we have seen endless loops of TV footage of what’s going on in Cairo, and yet the only times I’ve felt that I had any real insight into what it was like has been when print journalists on the ground reported what they were seeing — as, for example, with the report by Robert Fisk that I blogged the other day. Here’s another remarkable account — this time by the NYT’s Nicholas Kristof.

Inside Tahrir Square on Thursday, I met a carpenter named Mahmood whose left arm was in a sling, whose leg was in a cast and whose head was being bandaged in a small field hospital set up by the democracy movement. This was the seventh time in 24 hours that he had needed medical treatment for injuries suffered at the hands of government-backed mobs. But as soon as Mahmood was bandaged, he tottered off once again to the front lines.

“I’ll fight as long as I can,” he told me. I was awestruck. That seemed to be an example of determination that could never be surpassed, but as I snapped Mahmood’s picture I backed into Amr’s wheelchair. It turned out that Amr had lost his legs many years ago in a train accident, but he rolled his wheelchair into Tahrir Square to show support for democracy, hurling rocks back at the mobs that President Hosni Mubarak apparently sent to besiege the square.

Amr (I’m not using some last names to reduce the risks to people I quote) was being treated for a wound from a flying rock. I asked him as politely as I could what a double-amputee in a wheelchair was doing in a pitched battle involving Molotov cocktails, clubs, machetes, bricks and straight razors.

“I still have my hands,” he said firmly. “God willing, I will keep fighting.”

The courage of these protestors is awe-inspiring, given the savagery of the regime they are opposing.

What I want for Christmas. Bet the UK Ministry of Transport will ban it — like it did the Segway. Only available in the US at the moment. Website here.

Enjoyable piece by Christopher Hitchins in the Guardian of January 31.

The King’s Speech is an extremely well-made film with a seductive human-interest plot, very prettily calculated to appeal to the smarter filmgoer. But it perpetrates a gross falsification of history. One of the very few miscast actors – Timothy Spall as a woefully thin pastiche of Winston Churchill – is the exemplar of this bizarre rewriting. He is shown as a consistent friend of the stuttering prince and his loyal princess and as a man generally in favour of a statesmanlike solution to the crisis presented by the abdication of the prince's elder brother, King Edward VIII.

It’s good to see that Hitch is catching up with Memex, which, on January 8 observed:

Given that it’s supposed to be a true story, the film’s portrayal of Winston Churchill’s role in the Abdication crisis seems misleading. The impression is given that Churchill — played by a smouldering cigar ably brandished by Timothy Spall — was firmly behind Bertie and — by implication — implacably hostile to Eddie. But that wasn’t the case. For example, he and Lord Beaverbrook, the newspaper proprietor, were in favour of allowing the King to put his case (for being allowed to marry Wallis) to “the people” via a radio broadcast. This idea was blocked by the Cabinet, on the grounds that it would undermine the principle of a constitutional monarchy (which is that the only body entitled to decide these matters is Parliament).

“If two speeches and a social-media site was all we needed to spread democracy, why did we invade Iraq? Why didn’t we just, I don’t know, poke them?”

Jon Stewart

From Al Jazeera.

From today’s Financial Times…

The rain beats down on a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit. A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms, and puts on the desk a €100 note. The owner gives him a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection.

As soon as he has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who’s been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the €100 note on the counter, the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his €100 note and leaves town.

No one did any work. No one earned anything. Everyone is out of debt. Everyone is feeling better. And that is how a bail-out works.

The stallholder, originally uploaded by jjn1.

Covent Garden, London, yesterday. I found myself thinking: does he really have to pack away all that stuff every night?