^pretty much why i don't vote. you have no idea what you are getting.

i know plenty of people who voted for Tony Blair because they had been waiting for a socialist government for more than ten years.... lol @ them.

Thanks for the heads up. I checked the actual links and the code is accurate. I changed the link text and it worked.

In reply to this comment by charliem:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Tony-Blair-on-The-Daily-Show-Pt-2

!=

http://www.videosift.com/video/Tony-Blair-on-The-Daily-Show-Pt-1

http://www.videosift.com/video/Tony-Blair-on-The-Daily-Show-Pt-2

!=

http://www.videosift.com/video/Tony-Blair-on-The-Daily-Show-Pt-1

cool, but as *fake as tony blair's reasons for going to war...

WikiPedia: In April 2006 , Pet Shop Boys released a new single, "I'm with Stupid," a commentary on the relationship between George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

And no matter what the subject, I LOVE love love the Pet Shop Boys =)

that was so carefully worded it leaves him room to do anything he wants. he is a "great politician" (i.e. liar) but that's not what we need right now.

The first word was "Yes" and everything else was "don't hold me to that".

i remain unconvinced by these two, their whole campaign just makes me think of Tony Blair, 1997. People want change so much they aren't actually listening to the precise wording of this "change"

the incumbents fucked up so bad, it's an easy sell.

>> ^MINK:
>> ^jwray:
Mink, you may want sweeping changes, but in the mean time it's good to make small improvements here and there. People aren't going to stop eating meat any time soon.

people aren't gonna fill their tyres up any time soon either, it's just fucking rhetoric. i bet you not more than 5% of the people who said "WHOOOOOO!!!!" went home and filled their fucking tires.
Of course he isn't going to say "stop eating meat" but the reason is economic, not social. He needs to keep the meat industry happy. the fact that meat production is the worst thing in the entire environment after asbestos factories just kinda... isn't relevant, right? send people to their local petrol station to fill up their tyres and buy a coke.
so keep voting for these guys who talk bullshit and pretend they care when really their hands are tied.
gobama indeed. at last the USA has a Tony Blair, and we all know how kewl that is.


The problem with your angry stance is that is ANYONE tried to run for office and go straight for the 'stop eating meat', do you think they'd get into office?

Hmm?

Do you?

No, of course they bloody wouldn't, so what would be the friggen point of running with that? What's the point of running with 'Stop eating meat', that will instantly put off a huge number of people (including myself, I'm very, very pro environment, wish the government would start spending some big bloody money on it, don't care if it hurts us financially at the moment, because it'll be a win in the long run)? All that'd do is not get said person elected.

Brilliant plan.

I'd MUCH prefer someone who takes the steps they can get away with, slowly ramping up the scale of changes as people get used to them. You start off small, or start off with big things that don't directly affect people's way of life, and then slowly introduce those things that require people to change their behaviour. It's the only way you're going to be able to be in power and do ANYTHING.

So stop with the 'Well, if he isn't prepared to ban all cars, make everyone vegans and insist that people only breath out on alternating days, then I won't vote for him'. It's insane logic.

And it just smacks of you trying to be a smartass and saying 'look, I think I know something you don't, meat production causes lots of environmental impact'. If you think it's so damn important, you run for office with that as your lead policy and see how far you get.

>> ^jwray:
Mink, you may want sweeping changes, but in the mean time it's good to make small improvements here and there. People aren't going to stop eating meat any time soon.


people aren't gonna fill their tyres up any time soon either, it's just fucking rhetoric. i bet you not more than 5% of the people who said "WHOOOOOO!!!!" went home and filled their fucking tires.

Of course he isn't going to say "stop eating meat" but the reason is economic, not social. He needs to keep the meat industry happy. the fact that meat production is the worst thing in the entire environment after asbestos factories just kinda... isn't relevant, right? send people to their local petrol station to fill up their tyres and buy a coke.

so keep voting for these guys who talk bullshit and pretend they care when really their hands are tied.

gobama indeed. at last the USA has a Tony Blair, and we all know how kewl that is.

Yeah I'm in Ireland!

Man, I was a news junkie for years, I picked it up from my grandfather. I was one of those guys who sat and watched BBC News 24, all day long, changing over to the ITV news to see their take on the same stories. All I ever watched on TV was News and Star Trek.

I remember the exact moment when BBC News started to change and go the way of American news. It was in 2003, when David Kelly, the british UN weapons expert was found dead in a forest near his home. Just a couple of days previous, I had watched the entire live 2 hour cross examination of David Kelly in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, as he completely tore holes in the dossier that the UK government had put forward claiming that Saddam had WMD. I had been following the whole story in impeccable detail, online, on TV, bookmarking everything I could, and I had been looking forward to seeing David Kelly appear in front of the committee.

Anyone who watched it live was completely blown away by it, it couldn't have been any more dramatic. The government totally shot themselves in the foot. That night on the news, the BBC got stuck right into Tony Blair and the UK government and they continued to do so for the next couple of days, exposing all the lies about the Iraq war. It seemed finally that we were going to get the whole truth, and David Kelly was the key to the whole thing.

Then David Kelly was found dead, an alleged suicide. The same day the government went on the offensive against the BBC, people in the BBC were sacked over the next few weeks, government mouthpieces started appearing on all the TV news programmes shouting down presenters and acting very very strange indeed.

That is the exact moment when it changed. The BBC started becoming very very dumbed down very very quickly. Reports on the Israel/Palestine conflict became very watered down, that was when I really knew that the government had gagged the BBC (also happened in the 80s when Thatcher was in power during the Falklands war). The only decent reports were hour long specials broadcast at 1am or 2am, the normal daily news became a joke. Even the presenters were changed.

Within a year, the ITV News (Independent TV news in the UK), which had been reporting very consistently about the whole debacle ceased broadcasting.

Now the House of Lords - very little of what goes on in there is ever covered on the news. To see it you have to watch the live broadcasts on the Parliament channel (which I don't get any more cos I cancelled my cable a few months ago). It's where law is made, the house of commons is the showpiece for the public. All the stuff they decide in the commons has to go to the Lords where it is actually discussed at a very high level of detail and intelligence before it can be made law. The Lords also recommend what the UK prime minister should be saying to foreign presidents during state visits, a good example was when Blair was going to Russia and the Lords wanted him to confront the Russians about old KGB type activity rearing its head again - fascinating stuff, not a bit of it was ever on the normal news.

The Lords are probably the most well versed people on the history of Europe you could possibly meet. It is an education watching them debate sensibly and intelligently without all the pomp and drama you get on the TV news. They have bloodlines going way way back, they are soaked in the history of Britain and Europe. (Tony Blair near the end of his term even made moves to get rid of the Lords altogether when he wanted to get his 48 days detention without trial bill passed into law, the BBC actually started running hit pieces on the Lords, another sign that the BBC had changed)

Anyway, the point is, the Lords are a bit jumpy about stuff like this, and I'm sure it won't have gotten past them. Someone will have raised it for discussion. Obama making speeches in Israel about fighting extremism is very dangerous for Britain because I have watched discussions about the oppression of Palestine in the Lords and how delicately it has to be handled because the UK is an ally of the US which is an ally of Israel. Following that up with an event reminiscent of a British coronation more than a US presidential acceptance speech will really be ringing alarm bells.

I hope you're following my line of thinking, I'm brainstorming it all right out in full flow...

To Americans, these events will be soaked in pride, hope and patriotism, there is nothing wrong with that.

But to a British politician or to the Lords who have reign over the politicians, it paints a very different picture. It's one thing when Luther King makes speeches about civil rights in this way, it's another when Obama talks about uniting forces against extremism, and even goes as far as talking about Iranian nukes. That's the language of fear, that's the kicker, that's the alarm bell - and I mean that in the most literal sense, this language of fear is one of the things Winston Churchill warned about in the tomes of books he wrote after WW2, about how the world must avoid the same thing happening again, and how he regretted that Britian didn't move sooner against Germany.

These are very specific things contained in Obama's speeches, and I really don't know what to make of it. I think you should be thankful that at least somebody in American media saw this from a perspective of history. WW2 is very fresh in the minds of people in England, the country is soaked in the history of that war in every town and city and bit of countryside and Obama's words are very potent and a bit scary to be frank in that context.

That's why I say it's all about persepective, and what makes it frightening is that Obama's speechwriters couldn't have made it any more potent in the context of WW2.

Phew.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
Are you, as your name implies, from Ireland?

I'm definitely curious on your take as to why the House of Lords would have an objection to what Obama said in Israel, or the fact that he plans on giving a speech to 75,000 campaign volunteers at his nomination (different from inauguration, BTW).

I did a couple searches of BBC News's site, and it seemed to generally be reporting positive reactions in the UK and elsewhere to Obama's trip. Is the UK media as distorted as the US's these days?

Here, there's already a meme forming about how this trip is going to hurt Obama domestically.

In reply to this comment by Irishman:
http://politics.videosift.com/video/Obamas-Speech-Something-the-Fuehrer-would-have-done

In regards to this, I think it's important that this stuff be posted, sifted, and discussed. I'm not into posting stuff that I personally believe or subscribe to. I'm quite the opposite, I post stuff because I want to know what people think so I can get a big brainstorm of commentary. I don't know what to make of it, but I have an excellent knowledge of WW2 and whether intentional or not this is resonates with that history and is very dangerous ground for Obama and America to be on.

To be absolutely honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised if this and the Israel visit are items for discussion in the House of Lords in the UK.

If Bush could apologize, I'd be utterly stunned. Mainly because he thinks he's on the side of righteousness, and history will view him as a magnificent and beneficent leader, so he sees nothing for which an apology is necessary. That is the gall of a dictator on his throne. I really hope Obama can change things. I am not entirely sure about it, but he cannot possibly be worse than Bush.

Oh, and you mentioned he's a President and not a King? Well, if were a King, he'd be on the downswing of a guillotine blade by now.

>> ^Farhad2000:
I read a very interesting article in Harpers the other day called "Democracy and Deference", about how people relate to power in the US, it featured an anecdotal story about Vietnam veteran Jim Webb meeting Bush, Webb has a son fighting in Iraq, Bush asked him about him, Jim said he wanted to get him out of Iraq, Bush said that he didn't ask him about that but about his son.
What followed next was a big media outrage about how rude Jim Webb was to President Bush in the Whitehouse questioning his decisions about Iraq! You simply do not question the president. Unquestionable loyalty is more important then rational dissent.
It then posed the same example with Powell and his presentation to UN, where the statesman part of Powell lost out to the loyal Soldier. Powell later said that even though he had grave doubts about the evidence against Iraq, he still went ahead with the presentation because he was loyal to the President.
When did this type of thinking evolve? The President is not a King, he is an elected official accountable to the population. The White house is rented out by the American people to him.
The parallels are stark when you comparing the US and UK political process, the UK populace believes it has an inherent right to meddle in politics, whereas in the US its more about trusting someone else to do the right thing.
You ever watch Tony Blair giving a press conference? The audience is always full of well informed people who ask challenging questions, who make the PM sweat, who press if the question is dodged, the PM then apologizes (OMFG) and tries to clarify.
Compare that to the US media circus of PR, where questions are always soft balled and there is a silly air of jolly good fun with funny quips, the seriousness is lost. The questions are prescreened, weeding out challengers and encouraging stupid expressions of admiration along the lines of "All my heroes are cowboys" to which there is thunderous applause.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

I read a very interesting article in Harpers the other day called "Democracy and Deference", about how people relate to power in the US, it featured an anecdotal story about Vietnam veteran Jim Webb meeting Bush, Webb has a son fighting in Iraq, Bush asked him about him, Jim said he wanted to get him out of Iraq, Bush said that he didn't ask him about that but about his son.

What followed next was a big media outrage about how rude Jim Webb was to President Bush in the Whitehouse questioning his decisions about Iraq! You simply do not question the president. Unquestionable loyalty is more important then rational dissent.

It then posed the same example with Powell and his presentation to UN, where the statesman part of Powell lost out to the loyal Soldier. Powell later said that even though he had grave doubts about the evidence against Iraq, he still went ahead with the presentation because he was loyal to the President.

When did this type of thinking evolve? The President is not a King, he is an elected official accountable to the population. The White house is rented out by the American people to him.

The parallels are stark when you comparing the US and UK political process, the UK populace believes it has an inherent right to meddle in politics, whereas in the US its more about trusting someone else to do the right thing.

You ever watch Tony Blair giving a press conference? The audience is always full of well informed people who ask challenging questions, who make the PM sweat, who press if the question is dodged, the PM then apologizes (OMFG) and tries to clarify.

Compare that to the US media circus of PR, where questions are always soft balled and there is a silly air of jolly good fun with funny quips, the seriousness is lost. The questions are prescreened, weeding out challengers and encouraging stupid expressions of admiration along the lines of "All my heroes are cowboys" to which there is thunderous applause.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

This video is retarded. The third word of the title is where it started to go wrong.

Tony Blair was as strong an ally as you could hope for. The "liberal" BBC somehow failed to report huge anti war protests.

Russia saved us all from the nazis, with more blood than you can imagine, retard. check the colour of the flag on the Reichstag in 1945. If it wasn't for the english channel and polish pilots we'd also be fucked. You gonna show some respect to Poland? Nah, you don't even know where it is, or what I am talking about, you weren't really in the war at that point right? Oh wait, NONE OF US WERE EVEN FREAKING BORN YET.

and the french don't like other people speaking french, regardless of nationality. deal with it. they are just like that. Napoleon fucked up and they never got over it. Even my best french friends never reply to me in french, and my accent is damn good. i am not american. "europe" is not a country. kthxbye retards.

>> ^BillOreilly:
I'm part German and part French, the worst of both worlds.
One side of me wants to start a fight, and the other side wants to run away.
Screw you Europe, we saved your behind, and this is the respect we get? Shame.


We?

To quote Yatzhees comments in reply to comments made about his MOH airborne review.

"no you didn't fight in world war 2, all you did was make shitty posts like that one."

Your implying that the nature of states doesn't change and that the USA has always been and always while be the heroes that helped kick the Nazis in World wars 2, alot has changed since world war 2, and america is seen as no longer the land of the free, but more like the land of governmental heavy handed action, yes the USA assisted in world war 2, but I reserve the right to be angry when the leaders of the world invade a country with the contingency plan that pretty much consists of "iraq: lol", especially since in my country there was a majority against the war in iraq, but tony blair went to war anyway.

The allies started the contingency plan for Europe in 1941, the bush administration only started a contingency plan weeks before the invasion.

This is why I hate the america, not because of its perhaps ignorant people at times, not because of its fervent religious beliefs, not because of its supposed lack of culture, but because it tries to police the world, and ends up doing a sub par job of it.

I don't hate you or what your country stands for, I just hate the way that bush administration has governed.

^ my15 - agreed. My point is simply that a person with integrity would either decline to answer a question about his sex life or his drug use or simply admit it and face the issue head on... and at worst, dodge the issue. But to outright lie about it? Or try to under oath? It's offensive and we should hold all politicians to a higher standard than that. The tragedy is that Clinton was a good president and I'd have voted for him again without blinking if he'd simply been straightforward instead of lying in the hope he'd never get caught. Tony Blair complained that he could never get Clinton to commit to doing anything and was relieved when Bush took office because he felt like Bush would make promises, and then follow through on them. Clinton's nickname was "slick willy" for good reason.

You want to see integrity? Watch Barack Obama in this clip (I don't think I sifted it, so you're welcome to if you wish):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBzQI_7ez8

Here I am in all my hyperallergenic middle class vegetarian stereotypical glory.


1. What do you do when you are not on the computer?

eat vegetarian food, fuck a vegetarian, buy vegetables, that sort of thing.
And make music, but that's on a computer... so.... but I play trumpet... Into a computer.


2. Approximate the percentage of time you work and you play on a computer.

like all the freaking time. since i was 5. asthma (see hatred of cars below)
but mostly design or chatting to people back home, i am not a hardcore leet geek hacker or something.
i like any sport that's wet, but i don't live near a lake or sea, so i don't do much sport.
I DJ, with proper records, dnb, dubstep, triphop... no computer. Then i upload the mix into a computer.


3. If you had a time machine would you travel to an era in the past or future? Explain.

depends if you can guarantee my safety, if so, i would like to see the future. but not my own future.


4. What is your ratio of pairs of shoes to undergarments?

1 to 20


5. Do you wear boxers or briefs?

i think you call them trunks.


6. Do you have a Mac, PC or Linux?

mac, but honestly it's only half as annoying as a pc.


7. Would you prefer death by firing squad or salmonella poisoning?

yo firing squad for real. what kind of idiot says anything else? i turned vegetarian after bad food poisoning so, no thanks, not again.


8. Do is you add sprinkles, gravy, nuts or a cherry on top?

gravy? on top of what?


9. Are you a tits, ass, or legs man?

yes.


10. What kind of pet(s) do you have? Include name(s).

none, i would have a cat if i wasn't allergic and i liked the smell of cat piss, i would call it tony blair. no, i would call it whatever my girl wants to call it (see previous question)


11. What is your favorite kind of taco?

those things that break when you bite them and spill meat all over you which (did i mention) i don't eat?


12. What is your favorite source for news?

videosift


13. What is your beer preference? Or other beverage (poison) of choice?

beeeeeer. anything english from a local brewery. Or Svyturys in Lithuania if i want lager, or a real lithuanian live beer, preferably dark. I feel old just typing this. I even like whisky now.


14. Have you ever been arrested?

No. Searched, but they didn't find it hahahahah.


15. Which is your Cheetos preference: Crunchy Cheese or Puffs?

Yikes. You eat that shit?


16. How would you describe your coif: bangs, balding or rug?

bangs wtf?
it's just off the collar, and a bit girly.


17. Is your face clean-shaven or do you have a beard, a goatee or a mustache?

smooth skin: kiss.
scabby red itchy hairy prickly skin: no kiss.


18. List your five most cherished possessions.

any video or audio recording i ever made.
banksy print, powerbook, trumpet, erm... i haven't got much else.


19. What religion did you practice as a child?

anglican christianity, but i didn't get it.


20. What is your favorite childhood memory?

yikes.
can't choose a favourite. i get vivid flashbacks though, normally embarassment or mundanity.
probably best feeling was sailing, in the sun, in a one man boat.
what i didn't like was the time i fell off waterskiing and forgot to clench my buttocks and about 30 litres of water raped me.


21. What was your favorite childhood television show?

terrahawks (gerry anderson... i think i have a sift somewhere)
things that fly out of buildings into space are awwwwweeeeeesssssssommmmeee.

22. What is your most sacred personal rant?

people should fucking create their own shit, and the government should invest more in creativity and education, capitalism alone doesn't work for art.

also cars and outdoor advertising should be banned. especially outdoor advertising of cars.


23. What is a reason not to go to Burning Man?

it's thousands of miles away and the water's expensive?


24. Who is your favorite Sift Hero?

choggie for insisting on creativity, literally with every word he writes.


25. How would your characterize SiftBot: slave, servant or secret overlord?

fiction


26. Do you have any image(s) of yourself online that you're willing to share?

if the roast is fun i am willing to unmask myself a bit. maybe some music. but i post as MINK, not myself, so my face is not relevant to the roast.


27. What is your quest?

to make 100% of my money from creativity and to spread that around. sounds lofty, but so does the word "quest". I do hope that after i die, someone enjoys something I made, and they say "hey, that guy made cool shit, shame he's dead". That's all.


28. What is your favorite color?

red. aries. what can i do.

Let the record show that I resent the male meat eating american bias in these questions but i'm like cool with it, you know, you can't help being a freaking yank.