Discuss anything Huey Lewis related in this thread.
The News
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Yeah it’d be daft to do it now. Just saw the latest poll has them drop 4 more points – 2 each to Labour and Lib Dems, which is a worst case scenario as that means losing seats in both urban and rural areas. For all their sins the Tories are very election savvy, I said before their by-election losses were priced in but I think the size of that Tiverton switch from over 24,000 to minus 6,000 put the shits up them more than expected.
Brown was ahead in the polls in 2007/8 when he mulled over calling it early, and even after the global crash he still got very close so I’m quite confident he would have won.
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Elon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high drama
Who’d have thought. It’s almost as though the whole thing was bollocks in the first place.
Although I would love to go back in time 25 years and see what people made of this paragraph:
Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal, attempted to address Musk’s concerns in a lengthy tweet thread but his efforts to explain the problem “with the benefit of data, facts, and context” were met with a poo emoji from the world’s richest person.
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the world’s richest person
Incidentally, the worlds richest person is also the worlds richest knob, the worlds richest moron and the worlds richest asshole.
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There are religious overtones in the Abe assassination. Apparently the killer thought Abe was part of a certain religious group, the rumor is it is the unification church (moonies). They’re not Japanese in origin but Korean. However Japan has a large number of religious groups that have been accused of being cults, most notably Aum Shinrikyo. Also Soka Gakkai, an offshoot of Nichiren Buddhism has a particular influence in Japanese politics through the Komeito party.
Japanese new religions – Wikipedia
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Shocking developments in Sri Lanka which seems to be collapsing economically. There is inflation, food shortages, a ban on the sale of fuel, power cuts…I hope our economy isn’t heading the same way.
Probably won’t have to worry because the White House said the US is “economically stronger than ever”. ;)
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A good article that sums up much of the earlier discussion here of how the UK’s unwritten constitution does and doesn’t work:
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A good article that sums up much of the earlier discussion here of how the UK’s unwritten constitution does and doesn’t work:
Don’t feel too bad. The US constitution is written, is only about as long as a short New Yorker article, and we still have the same problems.
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It’s almost as if 250 year old legally binding documents should be updated to reflect on the times
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Yeah, that’s more a failure of government than the constitution. Essentially, amendments and acts of congress have updated the constitution so it is not really still a 250 year old document, but Congress has forgotten how to actually do its job and we allowed executive orders and court rulings to do the job that was only intended for the legislature.
I don’t think that will change in the next 30 years, but I imagine that there will be some sort of constitutional convention when all these senior citizens in government are finally replaced by people that didn’t grow up during the Cold War, Civil Rights movements, Reagan and Clinton. All of our political leaders today like Biden, McConnel, Pelosi and half the Supreme Court were already grown up during the Vietnam War. Maybe it’s the people in government that need to be updated more than the constitution.
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I would say the UK’s ‘unwritten’ constitution is not as literal as that sounds. There are hundreds of written legally binding rules across different laws that create a form of constitution but not all in one place, drafted mainly at the same time, that everyone knows.
That Johnson cannot cling on (we hope, I think he is hoping some random event will revive his appeal) is proof it isn’t just anything goes but I think both the UK and US have taken big challenges in the last administrations to undocumented norms of behaviour.
Constitutions can also be a problem. Naomi Klein writes about this that when South Africa ended apartheid the ANC was a socialist party with an agenda to nationalise industries and spread wealth. When De Klerk ceded power, as a very experienced government negotiator, nobody in the ANC was as they were banned from the process, it had many clauses that effectively make that illegal. You can have political power but we retain ownership.
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That is what Amendments are supposed to be for. unfortunately we have not had one since 1992 and even then it was about Congresspeople lining their pockets.
The original “intent” of the Constitution is interesting as the context for it is not well-known especially in American education. I could believe that a student in France or Germany would have a better understanding of the background to the drafting of the US Constitution than their average counterpart in the United States.
However, I would not necessarily discount it due to its age. People today are fairly much the same organisms as people two hundred years ago or even two thousand years ago. The people that drafted the declaration of independence and the constitution looked back to Aristotle and Cicero for their ideas and depended on the philosophies of people like Locke and Hume who were also still debating the works of Plato and Marcus Aurelius.
Nevertheless, it was the historical context that drove the Constitution. The States had just thrown off the government of England, but an important point about the American revolution is that the administration of government in the colonies did not change when they became states. The same people that were in charge on the ground before the revolution were the same people in charge after it. Except for the British governors. These governors were tyrannical before the revolution, so no states wanted a strong central power. Also, Britain, France and Spain were large foreign powers at the time, so the threat of external dominance was a strong fear.
At the same time, the absence of a central authority and strong federal government, standing military or central financial instutution created problems inside the union. Shay’s Rebellion brought this into crisis and it could have easily torn up the Union if the Massachusetts militia had not overcome it.
So, the “intent” of the Constitution was a very theoretical political experiment to create a central government that protected “liberty” from the threats of a tyrannical or oligarchic domestic government while at the same time creating a government that would have the power to oppose both external tyranny or dominance from much more developed and dangerous foreign powers AND to protect property rights from mob violence or the dominance of mob rule.
This mirrors the same conception of government that Cicero had in Republican Rome. He identified three forms of government – the Monarchic, the Aristocratic and the Democratic. Each of these had their most negative expressions in the Tyrant, the Oligarchy and the Mob. His solution was the Republic where the powers of the Monarch would be balanced by a legislative branch that represented on one side the Aristocracy (Patricians) and on the other the commoners (Plebs).
That’s the basis of what we have today – The President is the monarch which simply means the chief executive power, the Senate represents the upper class interests and the House represents middle and working class interests. Meanwhile, like in every society, the poor are left to fend for themselves — let the States deal with that. The Supreme Court was not envisioned in Cicero’s theory, but in practice, if they were to restrict the potential for tyranny from a central federal government, then they needed a separate body to basically call foul if anyone broke the rules. However, also in practice, the Supreme Court was rarely independent of party interests. There weren’t even rules against Senators also serving on the court at the beginning.
At heart, the people that wrote the constitution performed a kind of strange coup as they really overthrew the government and replaced it with their own. However, in another sense, they overthrew a government that didn’t really exist in the first place.
However, the administration of the ideal has left it pretty ragged. Executive orders are pretty flimsy in constitutional thought. Ideally, an executive order could only be applied to the administration of the executive branch, but we’ve seen them used quite broadly. The Supreme Court cannot create laws, but it has been used to interpret laws in ways that essentially cancel out previous laws and as a result they become a quasi-legislative body when Congress refuses to act on divisive issues.
And none of that matters if the “mob” – the majority of people – have no faith in the government anyway. Mob rule and mob violence has always been the most pressing threat to the federal or any representative democratic system, and the result of mob rule usually ends in dictatorship and oppression.
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However, I would not necessarily discount it due to its age. People today are fairly much the same organisms as people two hundred years ago or even two thousand years ago. The people that drafted the declaration of independence and the constitution looked back to Aristotle and Cicero for their ideas and depended on the philosophies of people like Locke and Hume who were also still debating the works of Plato and Marcus Aurelius.
I think it’s a good point. They are rather universal concepts.
The second amendment probably suffers the most with age, it makes perfect sense when written, but technology has rather made the concept out of date. Whether you wanted to overcome a tyrannical government or foreign invader simple guns are going to be pretty useless. You could re-interpret that one of two ways, either take away the guns as they’d be ineffective against fighter planes and drones with bombs or go the other way and propose militias with cruise missiles and cluster bombs.
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The second amendment probably suffers the most with age, it makes perfect sense when written, but technology has rather made the concept out of date. Whether you wanted to overcome a tyrannical government or foreign invader simple guns are going to be pretty useless
Honestly, though, tell that to all the insurgents from the Resistance movements in WW2 to the Viet Cong to ISIS today. Asymmetrical warfare can be quite effective as the US military has continually failed to learn. Many extreme militia type groups look at Al Queda and the Taliban as a model for what they expect in armed resistance to Federal authority even though they obviously have completely different philosophies from the Islamic extreme. Also, domestically, the military will be compromised as your soldiers might have more in common with the rebels than with their commanders and the government. Many revolutions can take place with no weapons at all as the armies decide they don’t want to fight their own people.
The precise context of the 2nd amendment though was primarily informed by the militia system of the states (and formerly the colonies) and specifically, again, that came out of the threat of Shay’s rebellion and would later be tested and further reinforced by the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 – both instigated by unfair economic practices.
The 2nd amendment’s direct application was toward the militia system where organized government or state violence was applied against mobs or things like slave uprisings (or even piracy on the seas for about the only external threat). It was a feature to protect minority aristocrat interests – from land holdings and market dominance to shipping routes for privately owned vessels – not primarily as a means for individual (or “sovereign”) citizens to protect themselves against federal tyranny or the abuse of a central governmental authority.
Historically, I could believe that the United States today is actually more violent than it was during the 1800’s. In the Old West, there was no acceptance of the idea that an individual had the right to “bear arms” and most towns forbid carrying weapons in public. The most famous shootout of the time – the Gunfight at the OK Corral – was started with Earp and his men confronted a pair of cowboys to confiscate their weapons as it was illegal for a member of the public to carry guns in town limits. Even then, the Earps were charged with murder after the gunfight though acquitted at trial.
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Honestly, though, tell that to all the insurgents from the Resistance movements in WW2 to the Viet Cong to ISIS today. Asymmetrical warfare can be quite effective as the US military has continually failed to learn.
It’s a fair point, I have been to Vietnam and seen how they converted unexploded US bombs into death pits, melting the coating into spikes below forest traps. They won the war against a far superior force.
This will eventually be a likely issue in Ukraine with Russia, they can take territory but maintaining it against the will of the populace is a much tougher task, as 20 years in Afghanistan taught us.
I still think though the 2nd amendment is largely a policy in response to a 200 year old scenario.
Britain ruled Asia for a couple of centuries with largely no physical force at all, they just paid off the right people. Economics generally hold more power than force, the entire reason Russia is so fucked up with the oligarch stuff is Chicago school economists.
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Secret Service subject to rare criminal probe over deleted Jan 6 texts (usatoday.com)
Occasionally, there are some terms in common American daily use that catch my eye and I think, “if this is the first time I heard or read this word, how would it strike me.”
“Consumer” is a big one. I mean, if you never encountered the word before and heard someone say, “we have to give the consumers what they want.” What would you think? It would sound like some demonic spirits demanding sacrifice to me. The implications of reducing a person’s economic role to consumption seems very dystopian. “If you are what you eat, then that means you are also what is eating you.”
Another one though is “Secret Service.” Why does it need to be secret? It just seems counter to the basic “We The People” ideal of a government by and for its population. Secret Service is a bit too close to Secret Police, and lately it’s starting to feel more like the corrupt (and potentially murderous) Praetorian Guard of the Julian Roman Empire.
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Honestly, though, tell that to all the insurgents from the Resistance movements in WW2 to the Viet Cong to ISIS today. Asymmetrical warfare can be quite effective as the US military has continually failed to learn.
It’s a fair point, I have been to Vietnam and seen how they converted unexploded US bombs into death pits, melting the coating into spikes below forest traps. They won the war against a far superior force.
This will eventually be a likely issue in Ukraine with Russia, they can take territory but maintaining it against the will of the populace is a much tougher task, as 20 years in Afghanistan taught us.
I still think though the 2nd amendment is largely a policy in response to a 200 year old scenario.
Britain ruled Asia for a couple of centuries with largely no physical force at all, they just paid off the right people. Economics generally hold more power than force, the entire reason Russia is so fucked up with the oligarch stuff is Chicago school economists.
Conquest is the easy part. If you put enough resources into it, you can take over just about any opponent’s land.
Occupation is where things get extremely difficult and often go sideways. Maintaining long-term control over a territory means not only dealing with insurgents, but ordinary people who simply don’t want you there. They may not take up arms, but through civil disobedience and just generally being uncooperative, they become the death by a thousand paper cuts. The occupying force not only has to deal with that, but they also have to maintain the mundane, banal things like mail, infrastructure, garbage collection, schools, and the other million things that are part of a normal bureaucracy that have to keep going. And to top it all off, you have to rebuild what you destroyed in order to take over the territory in the first place!
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Another one though is “Secret Service.” Why does it need to be secret?
Actually, they’re kind of not that good at being secret.
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the Senate represents the upper class interests and the House represents middle and working class interests
I don’t understand how this is supposed to work. Both bodies are elected by the same cross-class group of citizens.
I mean, it doesn’t really work. The system definitely just favors the wealthy, but I suppose the idea is that the House should be the more diverse, less moderate branch (which is true enough) while the Senate would be more moderate since they’re going to need to appeal to a broader cross-section. Also, from a monetary standpoint, it makes more sense for the wealthy to pay for senator campaigns than it does for individual House Reps. A senator has more voting power than a house rep and longer terms. But with a two party system, gerrymandering, no ban on stock trades, and Super PACS being a thing, I think things have become increasingly blurry.
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This is why the one-party system is superior.
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I mean, to be honest a one-party system is bound to be superior. There’s no need to spend effort discrediting the other party, there’s no need to spend time undoing their damage after the government switches, there’s no learning curve for the new party coming into power after 12 years in opposition. You just get on with governing.
And if the MPs (senators, representatives, etc.) truly represent the best interests of their constituents, they shouldn’t need a party structure. Every vote in the government should be a free vote, because the MP would always be voting to help their constituents, not what “their” party tells them to vote for.
You don’t need a “winning party” to “form a government”, because the government is every elected representative. If you need a figurehead or specific people to run different departments, the entire body of representatives can pick them.
I cannot see any way in which a two-or-more-party system is better than a one-party (or, effectively, zero-party) system.
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I mean, to be honest a one-party system is bound to be superior. There’s no need to spend effort discrediting the other party, there’s no need to spend time undoing their damage after the government switches, there’s no learning curve for the new party coming into power after 12 years in opposition. You just get on with governing.
There is an element of truth to this. I have seen in Asia, in both effective dictatorships like China or quasi democracies like Singapore (where they do have free elections but everything is stacked against any opposition, the press is not free and charges are trumped up for opposing voices) they plan shit better. Singapore has basically been run by the same family for 60 years and they’ve done a very good job of it, it is enormously more efficient than western democracies.
The enormous downside is of course if the one party is doing really shitty things it’s hard to stop them and also corruption often becomes a much bigger issue, with a lack of accountability it can end up that tax players money is used as an ATM for the leaders, which is true to and extent in democracies but nowhere near the level of say a Ferdinand Marcos.
A great example is the Sultan of Brunei. He ran for a long time what could be considered a benevolent dictatorship, a lot of the oil wealth of the tiny state was shared out, he even built a theme park that was free entry for citizens. Then a few years back his head was turned by religious extremists and it has become quite a nasty place to want to live in and they have no real hope of changing that other than revolution or hoping the next fella is better when he dies.
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I think a one party system would be great, but only if I get to choose what kind of party it is.
An S Club Party.
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But I think “zero party” is a better way to approach it than “one party”. You don’t have 650 MPS all toeing the party line, you have 650 MPs all making their own choices. There’s actually more accountability than the current system, because the “prime minister” has 649 MPs ready to tear him down if he goes off the rails, instead of 400 MPs all backing him because they’re being whipped to do so and are worried about their jobs.
That’s a great idea. And to help get traction for policy initiatives so that they can actually be passed, the MPs could connect with other like-minded MPs to get support for specific ideas! And maybe if they found enough common ground they could regularly ally with the like-minded fellow MPs to get stuff done more efficiently!
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Each individual representative is accountable to the people who elect him, and it makes no difference whether it’s a multi-party system or not.
Well it does because parties have single candidates and a variety of manifestos and ‘whipping’ systems that to a degree mean they all have to say the same thing. You can’t outvote a single candidate, the best you could do is all abstain and then they’d still get in as they can vote for themselves.
Your ‘zero party’ system is fundamentally different and also more intriguing. If you just had local representatives that voted according to their mailbox and surgery requests things I think would be very different. It’d be hard though for factions and groupings not to naturally form, you could make that illegal, get rid of a parliament and make all proceedings remote, voted in a Mr and Mrs style booth. I quite like that idea.
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the Senate represents the upper class interests and the House represents middle and working class interests
I don’t understand how this is supposed to work. Both bodies are elected by the same cross-class group of citizens.
The senators are statewide, while representatives are voted by districts, so the latter have more accountability to smaller business and resident community interests. Also, much more turnover due to elections.
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That’s a great idea. And to help get traction for policy initiatives so that they can actually be passed, the MPs could connect with other like-minded MPs to get support for specific ideas! And maybe if they found enough common ground they could regularly ally with the like-minded fellow MPs to get stuff done more efficiently!
Inevitably you would have groups co-operating, and it would be essential that they did, but I don’t see why it should automatically mean permanent groupings, or even why you should be exclusive to one group at one time.
Say I’m an MP and I’ve been elected on a platform of lower taxation and independence for Newcastle. When it comes to voting, I’m going to connect with other low-taxation MPS, but they all think the Newcastle Indyref is a stupid idea so there’s no way I’m going to form a permanent alliance with them, I’m just going to work with them on the taxation issues. And when we’ve passed the budget, we’ll part ways and I’ll join the Indyref special interest working group until that’s sorted out.
Even if I have 80% goals in common with the low taxation mob, I’m not going to compromise on the other 20% of my principles. That would be madness. Maybe, just maybe, there are a few small handfuls of MPs whose goals and principles are 100% aligned, but I very much doubt it. Human nature doesn’t work that way.
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I think the problem with democracy is sometimes you just can’t accept another party winning, for democracy to function the big parties have to be willing to accept defeat. We saw that with Trump refusing to accept defeat, but it could be the other way round too. If your party believes it is so important for the country to win that you would do anything to secure that outcome, including rigging the vote, democracy is dead too.
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It’s not the idea of democracy that’s failed, it’s the
implementationcapitalism. -
It’s not the idea of democracy that’s failed, it’s the implementation.
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This happened here…it’s good that they shut down the “human rights center”, but I wonder in how many places this is happening. And what happened to the academics that peddled their bullshit. Buying academics is as easy as buying politicians.
Vrije Universiteit halts China subsidy over concerns of academic independence | NL Times
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Few people are willing to forego their own interests in exchange for political and economic stability.
I am not sure…I think it’s possible a lot of politicians believe them being in charge is really important for the country. You could say it’s just their own interests, but I think many believe they (or their party) really is so great and the others are so bad that the others can’t be allowed to be in charge.
With Trump for instance, I think it’s likely it’s not just his personal interest he cares about, he actually believes what he is doing is vital for the welfare of the country. I think that is common with most (wannabe) dictators. For instance Stalin was not just a mad dictator who liked killing and oppressing, he believed in the cause and its mission in the world. Politicians who are true believers in the righteousness of the cause, and the necessity of it being implemented no matter the the sacrifices that have to be made, can be more dangerous than hustlers who just care about their personal interest.
I won’t argue that a lot of dictators probably start off believing at least some of what they’re doing is necessary for the people. But knowing what I do about Trump, I don’t believe for one second that he believes what he spouts will make the country better. Because he doesn’t care about the country or anyone outside his own family (and it’s questionable how much he cares about them). He’s a spoiled narcissistic man-child who’s always gotten everything he’s ever wanted. He has always been a snake oil salesman. He’s 100% in it for himself.
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[Trump is] a spoiled narcissistic man-child who’s always gotten everything he’s ever wanted.
Perfect description, and it also explains why he’s still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen from him; he cannot conceive of a universe where he actually LOST!
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I tend to agree. What’s notable about Trump (and Boris Johnson for that matter) is they have really never shown any convictions ideologically. Trump has supported Democrats in the past, he spoke about supporting abortion rights on TV, he ‘got religious’ when it was convenient. Johnson famously wrote two opposite speeches about which side he’d take in Brexit, as mayor of London he was pro-immigration and then presided over a strong anti-immigration policy as PM.
I don’t think they changed their minds, they took the necessary policy stances with the aim of gaining and retaining power. It was all powered by narcissism with enablers around them who did have strong convictions.
Putin is probably more in the Stalin mode, he’s definitely served his own interests but the rhetoric around the Ukraine invasion suggests he really has a strong belief about what Russia would be. Those driven by ideology can be more dangerous.
Now in the UK the two candidates to be crowned next PM are both – Sunak is an idealogue – an economic libertarian, Truss is another narcissist who changes what she thinks with the wind and has spent the last few years cosplaying being Margaret Thatcher with endless photo ops.
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he’s definitely served his own interests but the rhetoric around the Ukraine invasion suggests he really has a strong belief about what Russia would be.
If he was 100% serving his own interests with this invasion, the above is exactly what he would want you to believe (provided he has half a brain).
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That is quite mind bending but I don’t think there really is a scenario there where it helps him. He basically has all the money in the world anyway by controlling the oligarchs. The invasion long term will severely harm the oil and gas wealth but I don’t think he cares, maybe being older is an aspect.
I think he genuinely believes all that stuff about a wider Russian/Soviet state. It’s not uncommon really, I think it’s a big subtext of the English view of Wales/Scotland and Ireland. The right get very annoyed at the idea that they dare to differ in view to what London wants. It may not be noted outside but the media really don’t like any even mild threat to that imperial status quo.
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That is quite mind bending but I don’t think there really is a scenario there where it helps him.
Name anything else that’s happened with Russia or Putin this year that doesn’t have to do with this war? I’m not saying it’s a diversion, I’m saying it could be for all we know.
I’m not going to turn into some “I’m just asking questions” bullshitogram person, but I’ll say this: There is no way I’ll ever trust anything that comes out of Putins, or one of his cronies, mouth unless I can easily verify it myself (like,”the sky is blue”). E-v-e-r. If they say it, I will default to it not being true.
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He’s a spoiled narcissistic man-child who’s always gotten everything he’s ever wanted. He has always been a snake oil salesman. He’s 100% in it for himself.
I agree with this at least to an extent but I don’t think being a narcissist means he hasn’t a delusion that him being in charge is what the world needs. In fact it probably makes it more likely.
It’s just a right wing version of what the world needs, you know, law and order, tough guy in charge etc
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Yeah, like the way a lot of people think Texas is a part of the United States….
Not the liberals though, in this case.
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yea sure i wanted to post that twice (NOT).
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Texas will return to the US. Florida seems, imo, to be a bigger problem.
There’s very different demographics going on.
Texas’ tech boom has a lot of people moving in there from other states. When I went there with work 7 or 8 years ago most people I worked with were not originally from Texas. It’s not as stark a difference as it is in the UK right now on age but generally there is a trend of younger = Democrat voters.
Florida attracts old people as a retirement destination.
I would project that if you looked over 10 years Texas will be far more likely a Democrat gain than Florida, which for a while has been a swing state. As one shifts left the other shifts right.
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He is in for himself and doesn’t care how his plan works (i.e. getting the world what it needs) just as long as it is his plan.
Eh it’s all speculation of course, like I said it is just possibilities, I can’t know fpr sure what goes on in Trump’s head. I was just making the point a narcissist might have a delusion that he is the single right person to lead the country.
I don’t think Chris and me really disagree here, I agree Trump likely has a narcissistic personality.
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I don’t think Chris and me really disagree here, I agree Trump likely has a narcissistic personality.
I think we can ALL agree that a man with delusions and personality disorders should not be permitted to become President of the United States. Again.
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I think we can ALL agree that a man with delusions and personality disorders should not be permitted to become President of the United States. Again.
At the same time, what sane person would want to be the President of the United States? I think any candidate would have to have some unhealthy level of self-regard.
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“You buried her WHERE?!” pic.twitter.com/x0Fxuinh0R
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 1, 2022
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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/emmett-till-carolyn-bryant-donham-grand-jury-declines-to-indict/
If Nazis well into their 90s are still being searched and when found, are apprehended to stand trial…
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Hopefully this won’t soon appear in the Obituary thread: Salman Rushdie: Famed author remains hospitalized after stabbing attack as venue faces scrutiny over security | CNN
Later in the day, Rushdie was put on a ventilator and was unable to speak, his agent, Andrew Wylie, told The New York Times. He will likely lose an eye, Wylie said. “The nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged. The news is not good.”
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
I have a The Satanic Verses-shaped hole in my bookshelf. If you want to do this for real, let me know over PM and I’ll give you my adress.
I’ll send you some comics or other books in return. ;)
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This makes me so incredibly angry.
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
Would you recommend it? I’ve never read it, and now I think think about it I don’t know a single thing about it–other than the controversy over it. I mean, I know absolutely nothing, not even whether it’s fiction of not-fiction.
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It’s a novel.
I still haven’t read the Satanic Verses, but this has made me order it, finally. Rushdie is a great writer, and Midnight’s Children is one of my favourite novels. (Like Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses falls into the category of contemporary magic realism, I think, Dave.)
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I had to check that and it doesn’t seem to be the case, although there’s no reason socialists couldn’t have started their own schools. They seem to be happy with public schools.
Then again, according to a recent poll 77 % of teachers vote left wing, soooooo….
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I also haven’t read The Satanic Verses.
Neither have I (and over here I’d have to get a Kindle version I think, pretty sure it’s on a banned list).
I did hear an interesting podcast about it from The Guardian the other day, both presenters were discussing the Rushdie attack and the book and both were Muslim women. One said that when she read it (before the Iranian fatwah) she was actually overjoyed to have south Asian story and background in a British novel, which was very rare in the late 80s. They didn’t take offence at the religious elements at all and that it’s more a metaphorical mocking of religious themes than a rant against Islam.
I suspect to a degree Rushdie was the victim of a bit of bad luck. I see here where we have censors a lot more sensitive than most would be used to (although we all know our ways around them) there is a big random element in what they pick on. There’ll be a fuss about a movie with a small amount of gay content in it while they are running Grey’s Anatomy and Glee on prime time TV that are full of gay characters and nobody seems to care. Frank Miller doesn’t have an Iranian fatwah calling for his death for creating Holy Terror, most probably because nobody who could has heard of it.
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Frank Miller doesn’t have an Iranian fatwah calling for his death for creating Holy Terror, most probably because nobody who could has heard of it.
It’s actually because he already got one after the Iranian religious leaders were so disappointed by DK2.
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Frank Miller doesn’t have an Iranian fatwah calling for his death for creating Holy Terror
He should lobby for one, maybe it would sell better.
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
I have a The Satanic Verses-shaped hole in my bookshelf. If you want to do this for real, let me know over PM and I’ll give you my adress.
I’ll send you some comics or other books in return. ;)
I will contact you the next time I order some books. I assume swedish is fine?
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
Would you recommend it? I’ve never read it, and now I think think about it I don’t know a single thing about it–other than the controversy over it. I mean, I know absolutely nothing, not even whether it’s fiction of not-fiction.
I seem to remember that it was pretty good, but it was a long time since I read it. I picked it up to see what all the fuzz was about, and I must have liked it, since I have read several other books by Rushdie since then.
So I would recommend it, but I would recommend Midnights Children or Shalimar, the Clown even more.
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I already own, and have read, The Satanic Verses, but I really feel like ordering a few more copies and give them to friends and random strangers, just to piss of some far too religious assholes in Iran.
I have a The Satanic Verses-shaped hole in my bookshelf. If you want to do this for real, let me know over PM and I’ll give you my adress.
I’ll send you some comics or other books in return. ;)
I will contact you the next time I order some books. I assume swedish is fine?
Swedish will work jävligt fine, no problemo!
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A Putin ally’s daughter was killed deep in Russian territory: What to know (msn.com)
Not exactly a collateral casualty as Dugina was a vocal supporter of Putin and Russian nationalist and expansionist policies, but since it was her father’s car, seems possible Dugin was the real target. Also, though possibly a Ukrainian guerilla operation, I’m sure there are plenty of groups in Russia and the surrounding former Soviet nations that are opposed to Putin and this ideology and could be motivated to use violence.
Kinda tragic, but also kinda in the category of expected consequences.
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Nah, it was me.
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Next you’ll be telling me that Dugin deliberately swit hed cars with his daughter at the last minute because he heard about the plan, which is ridiculous because how could he possibly know?
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Vegan Mother Jailed for Life After Toddler With Malnutrition Died
No vegan jokes, please.
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Because all the news has switched to the exciting stuff in the Kherson area, that doesn’t mean Russia has stopped trying to destroy the rest of the country. My friend in Kharkiv was in an air raid shelter again last night.
I’m not sure if people realise what it’s like on the ground for Ukrainian civilians, because I haven’t really seen anything about it on mainstream media. My friend is in a shelter for at least a few hours most nights. You know those old photos of London in the blitz? Yes, it’s like that.
And when they’re not in the shelter they are counting seconds between explosions. This is how it works: people to the east of the city see the missile flashes, and alert everyone on social media. They are practiced at estimating flight times and where the missile will land, so people who are (probably) not going to die tonight just freeze, wait, and count the seconds until they hear an explosion. I saw and heard this happening on a skype call a few nights ago, and it was honestly terrifying just for me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people living like that.
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This a very strange moral conundrum. The assassin that killed Abe said his life was destroyed by his mother giving all her money to the Unification Church (or the Moonies as most would know them). Abe was known to let them into elite political circles in Japan and in truth they are just a money cult as pretty much all modern religions are.
When Jo Cox, a British MP, was assassinated a few years back, I had a disagreement with an esteemed old member of this board (offline from here) where the other main parties dropped out of opposing her successor in a byelection. He said it wasn’t properly democratic, which is true, but my argument was if killing a politician could trigger a change of power it just encourages people to do it.
This assassin seems to some extent to be getting his desired result but it’s kind of the right one because the Moonies are bad news and they’d be better rid of them.
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I saw someone on Twitter as the most effective (political) assassination of all time and it’s kinda hard to argue with that. The murderer has got pretty much what he wanted out of it and what he wanted isn’t unreasonable. It’s just a shame it took a murder to get it.
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I think not all causes are equal when it comes to this kind of thing.
Absolutely, they aren’t.
The US analogy isn’t the best because yes Harris just takes over to the end of the term, as happened with LBJ when Kennedy was shot.
I’m a little on the fence on the level of planning, yes in most cases assassins are not very rational (or attempted assassins in the case of John Hinckley) but some political actions are. The IRA for example carried out very specific and planned killings. I had a lot of sympathy for their complaints, if not their methods, but if the Brighton bombing had been more successful and taken out 20 Tory MPs – who I have very little sympathy for, it can’t be right if their seats were replaced in a by-election.
As I said I think the action on the Moonies is the best result but I don’t think you can guarantee that someone with a less justified grievance won’t try and copy its success.
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I actually think there would be more people taking such an action after rational and strategic calculation than otherwise. Most premediated murders are committed after the killer has… well… meditated them.
It would be an unusual defense to argue that an assassination was a crime of passion.
“I was just walking by a political rally and just got this irresistible urge to whack a dude. Y’all know where I’m coming from, right? It was outta my control.”
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