Kangaroo artists

Those literary folk who were urging Waterstone's not to host a book-signing by Tony Blair now have a group of counterparts across the Irish Sea. In a letter to the Irish Times, Ronan Bennett, Margaretta D'Arcy, Bob Quinn and others are calling on Easons and RTÉ's Late Late Show 'not to facilitate Tony Blair's promotion of his autobiographical book'. A noteworthy feature of the letter is their reference to Blair as 'this notorious war-criminal'. Obviously, the signatories are entitled to think what they like. But Tony Blair hasn't been charged with, much less found guilty of, war crimes. So it does seem rather (shall we say?) 'creative' of them to give it as a reason for cancelling his visit that he just is a notorious war-criminal - at least, it does under assumptions about due process and innocence and guilt that they themselves would doubtless insist on more generally. Could it be that there is a new theory of legal guilt implied by their letter, to go with the new theory of democracy espoused by other non-fans of Tony Blair? (Via and via.)