I think the worst I've seen is Blaire White. She had her hand stomped on trying to get her boyfriend's hat back, which broke her nail badly, and she had alcohol thrown into her face as they were walking.



Still kind of stupid. We need to quit assaulting people over free speech. It's childish.

Obama: a Hollow Man Filled With Ruling Class Ideas

If you read that piece by Paul Street, I guarantee you will not regret it. You might need a cup of coffee though, it's rather long. And maybe a punching bag.

Appetizer:
"Like his politico-ideological soul-brothers Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (and perhaps now Emmanuel Macron), Obama’s public life has been a wretched monument to the dark power of the neoliberal corporate-financial and imperial agendas behind the progressive pretense of façade of telegenic and silver-tongued professional class politicos."

Still better than the Blair Witch reboot

I've been watching a lot of anti-SJW stuff lately, mostly because I am a rabid supporter of freedom of speech and I don't like the authoritarian direction a lot of the most vocal (and yes, it's a minority) of SJW's seem to be calling for.

And you know the really hilarious thing? Gays like Milo Yiannopoulous (who has to be the most conflicted gay guy on the planet), or trans like Blaire White? They are accepted. Milo drinks the kool aid a little (okay, he bought the company and consumes their entire output), but Blaire seems fairly centered, and they are accepted by fucking right wing college guys who you would think would be the first ones to yell "OMG get away faggot" or some such shit.

People are still bigoted and I have a sneaking suspicion they always will be in certain aspects, but sometimes tolerance comes from the most unlikely of places. Maybe it's acceptance due to ideological alignment, or perhaps the current generation has the exposure such that gay/trans etc isn't really that big a thing anymore, I don't know.

ps. I think Trump cashed in on riding the Bernie wave of discontent with the establishment, mostly tantrums just make you look like a dumb cunt. ; )

pps. I think my greatest disappointment with the post Trump tantrums is that the total electoral turnout is somewhere around 30-40% of eligible voters in the US? So it's not even a quorum picking the leader of what is still pretty much the biggest and most dangerous nation in the world. There's tonnes of blame to go around here unfortunately, and part of that goes to people who don't give a shit either way, something the DNC really has to own. I think Bernie would have seen record voter turnouts, whereas Clint-bot... /facepalm

I have a bottle of Blair's Mega Death Sauce (the last one). Only really ever use one or two small drops to mix into something more substantial, and it still kicks my ass. Don't think I'd ever try a straight bite with a blob of it on there. I'm impressed by their resilience.

@RFlagg

A disenfranchised person would say that threats or promises about what Trump or Hillary might do in power aren't as effective as they used to be. People who understand that lies are part of the new game aren't going to be surprised when the game reaches the lying phase. At this point, each party promises the world but soon the game will move on and they will do as they please.

Playing the game is giving your consent to what the person eventually does - and that IS scary to some people. I gave my consent to Tony Blair, and I consider him one of the key players in causing some of the most terrible British/worldwide problems, including the current problems with Islamic fundamentalism. Personally my line has been crossed and I'm not going to be convinced by a 'better than the other' option.

'Better than the other' is EXPECTATION MANAGEMENT. They have already set the terms of the debate; now there is no other option but to choose between these two things that are not good enough. There is no time left, our neck is in the noose and we're voting to tighten it an inch at a time for fear of it tightening all at once. Climate change needs attention NOW; poverty and suffering are happening in our communities NOW; diplomacy has to happen in the middle east because children and families are dying and it is happening NOW.

I think the world needs change or protest now, I suspect we only disagree on the time scale. I agree Hillary would be 'better' than Trump. All I'd say is 'better than the other' hasn't worked in 20+ years. We might already be too late.

I have long given up on hoping to see them hang, even though that used to be the punishment for waging a war of aggression against another nation. Simply seeing Tony Blair stand trial at The Hague would be pleasing though.

A man can dream...

Interesting summary by Lord Chilcot so far. Will be interesting to see if either Salmond or Corbyn push through with calls for impeachment/criminal charges against Blair.

The report:
http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/246416/the-report-of-the-iraq-inquiry_executive-summary.pdf

We have the enormous misfortune in the UK to live in a democracy; how could it not? As more people from, effectively, the past enter the country the progress we've been making will be slowed or reversed.

Western, or probably more specifically north-western europe is that special region in the world where religion is actually dying off. More people in the UK are non-religious than religious. Christians in this country finally have the decency to be ashamed of their faith, and any extravagant public expression of belief is met with contempt from believers and non-believers alike - look at the minor scandal created when Tony Blair admitted to being a catholic, and engaging in such outlandish behaviours as prayer.

Orthodox christians from easten europe, and refugees from even less civilised areas, haven't had the opportunity to develop the same attitude. As they settle in their nasty little insular communities, the danger is that they're in a position to act as voting blocs that damage public policy.

Anyway, I'm sure it's heartening for eric to discover that basically none of us has any idea either.

My Halloween movie recommendations based upon this video:

V/H/S, The Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project (not the sequel dear GOD), It Follows (soon to have a sequel "Follow It"), The Babadook, and anything spawned from Koji Suzuki's Ring Trilogy -- I bet you didn't know there were THAT many Ring movies, did you? 3 American films (one is a short film), 7 Japanese films, 1 Korean film, 2 Japanese television series, and 1 more American film on the way, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro.

Happy Hallo-fuckin-ween!

I know this is probably the most insipid possible point to raise over an interesting video, but why is everyone always telling us George Orwell's real name? Other authors don't seem to get the same treatment. In the world of pop music it's Elton John (whose original name was actually Walter Sloppycock or whatever it was), in literature it's George Orwell. Or they'll casually mention some fact about a certain Eric Blair and then pause to not so subtly observe your reaction.

It doesn't seem to me to be a very important thing to know. Like the occasional debate over who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays - probably this bloke called William Shakespeare, but maybe not, who knows - someone did it, and a jolly good job they did of it, and that person we call Shakespeare. The body of work is what counts, and good lord but Orwell had a hell of a body of work. Sometimes the bodies of actual fascists.

Thanks, and yes

British music has a long tradition of political commentary in music, like Amnesia about the sense of betrayal that Labour supporters felt with Tony Blair's New Labour:



With the catchy chorus: Do you suffer from long term memory loss? I don't remember. Also "The good ship lifestyle" - https://youtu.be/Uu8gO8d4aT8 and their version of Bella Ciao https://youtu.be/oSpqj3V0s2E

And then, of course, there's Billy Bragg.

Well, Syriza is an acronym for Coalition of the Radical Left (roughly), and everything left of the Berlin Consensus is considered to be radical left. So they are going to call Syriza a radical leftist party until the political landscape itelf has been pulled back towards more leftist positions. But you're right, if they were judged by their positions, they'd be centre-left in theory, if centre-left hadn't turned into corporatism by taking up the Third Way of Schröder/Blair/Clinton.

They are, without a doubt, radically democratic though. As your Grauniad article points out, they haven't turned on their election promises yet, which is quite unheard of for a major European party. Francois Hollande in particular was a major letdown in this regard. Few people expected him to bow down to German demands so quickly. Aside from his 75% special tax for the rich, he dropped just about every single part of his program that could be considered socialism.

Grexit... that's a tough one.

Syriza cannot enforce any troika demands that relate to the programmes of the Chicago School of Economics. Friedman ain't welcome anymore. No cuts to wages or pensions, to privatisation of infrastructure, no cuts to the healthcare system, nor any other form of financial oppression of the lower class. That is non-negotiable. In fact, even increases in welfare programs and the healthcare system are pretty much non-negotiable. Even if Syriza wanted to put any of this on the table, and they sure as hell don't, they couldn't make it part of any deal without further damages to an already devasted democratic system in Greece.

So with that in mind, what's the point of all the negotiations?

Varoufakis' suggestions are very reasonable. The growth-linked bonds, for instance, are used very successfully all over the world in debt negotiations, as just about any bankrupty expert would testify. Like Krugman wrote today, Syriza is merely asking to "recognize the reality everyone supposedly already understands". His caveat about the German electorate is on point as well, we haven't had it explained to us yet – and we chose to ignore what little was explained to us.

Yet the troika insists on something Syriza cannot and will not provide, as just outlined above. Some of the officials still expect Syriza to acknowledge reality, to come to their senses and to accept a deal provided to them. Good luck with that, but don't hold your breath. Similarly, Varoufakis is aware that Berlin is almost guaranteed to play hardball all the way.

Of course, nothing is certain and they might strike a deal during their meeting in Wednesday that offers Greece a way out of misery. Or maybe the ECB decides that to stabilize to Euro, as is their sole purpose, they need to keep Greece within the EZ and away from default. That would allow them to back Greece, to provide them with financial support, at least until they present their program in June/July. Everything is possible. However, I see very little evidence in support of it.

Therefore Grexit might actually be just a question of who to blame it on. Syriza is not going to exit the EZ willy nilly, they need clear pressure from outside, so the record will unequivocally show that it wasn't them who made the call. No country can be thrown out, they have to leave of their own. Additionally, Merkel will not be the person to initiate the unravelling of the EU, as might be the consequence of a Grexit. That's leverage for Greece, the only leverage they have. But it has to be played right or else the blame will be put squarely on Greece, even more so than it already is.

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Edit #1: What cannot be overstated is the ability of the EZ to muddle through one crises after another, always on the brink of collapse, yet never actually collapsing. They are determined to hold this thing together, whatever the cost.
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Speaking of blame, Yves Smith linked a fantastic article the other day: Syriza and the French Indemnity of 1871-73.

The author makes a convincing case why the suppression of wages in Germany led to disaster in Spain, why it was not a choice on the part of Spain to engage in irresponsible borrowing and how it is a conflict between workers and the financial elite rather than nations. He also offers historical precedent, with Germany being the recipient of a massive cash influx, ending in a catastrophe similar to Spain's nowadays.

It strikes me as a very objective dissection of what happend, what's going on, and what needs to happen to get things back in shape. Then again, it agrees with many points I made on that BBC videos last week, so it's right within my bubble.