Activity
My piece on the film Juno is being hosted by Tapmag, an e-magazine that discusses politics and culture from a transatlantic perspective that definitely deserves a visit.
As for this blog, it will lie dormant in the nether regions of the “sphere” until I feel like blogging again. Don’t hold your breath.
Clinton Vows to Stay in Race Until Convention – Bad move by Billary
Clinton’s campaign is bleeding donors and losing supporters, this pronouncement was an attempt to, at least temporarily, restore some of the lost confidence.
The obvious downside to this recent proclamation is that it is likely to turn much of the democratic establishment against her. The staunchest Clintonites among Superdelegates pledged their support to Hillary early on in the process, very few of them remain in the ranks of the “undecideds”. These party functionaries are primarily concerned with nominating the candidate most likely to secure a democratic white house. A brokered convention, and the drawn-out process leading up to it, is widely considered detrimental to that very aim. For that reason, Hillary’s vow to stay in the race until the convention is counterproductive; it is likely to push nervous superdelegates into Obama’s column faster than would otherwise have been the case. After all, by signalizing her willingness to maraud her way to nomination, Mrs. Clinton is essentially acknowledging that all orthodox means have now been exhausted.
The National Enquirer’s Take on Rev. Wright
The front page of the National Enquirer is probably viewed by more Americans than any other publication or medium. Staring from magazine racks in supermarkets nationwide, it reaches citizens who are otherwise completely unaware of any political debate or discourse. Fortunately, the Olsen twins overwhelm this page, thus clarifying that white people are perfectly capable of destroying themselves.
Manchurian Candidate
Using the term Manchurian Candidate for Barack Obama isn’t only insanely bigotted, it is also severely out of touch with the origin of the term as laid out by the 1952 novel, and the two films that followed.
In the novel, Sergeant Raymond Shaw and the rest of his platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are all brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat, for which he receives the Medal of Honor when they return to the US.
The Communists intend to use Shaw as a sleeper agent and, using a subconscious trigger, they compel him to follow orders which he doesn’t remember afterwards. Shaw is controlled by none other than his own domineering mother, who is working with the Communists in a plot to overthrow the government.
Captured in an overseas war!?! Returned to the US a war hero!?! Controlled by domineering mother!?!
How is Obama the manchurian candidate in this race?
Don Juan McCain, Oedipus and the Stepford Wives
Cindy McCain taking pointers in presentation from Roberta McCain.
McCain looks for women that remind him of his mother – to the point of embalmment.
Illinois Shooter – Pills and guns
Whenever young people shoot up their place of study, their rampage is followed by tiresome, unimaginative debate. One side, the Joe Liebermans of the world, decry the degeneration of youth culture, and it’s apparently devastating effect on young minds. The other side – the more conscientious types – take the less salient position, and point to the arsenal of weapons stockpiling in suburban playrooms.
What rarely receives mention, and blame, is medication. Many of the most high-profile school shooters of the last decade have enjoyed quite an unhealthy relationship with dangerous pharmaceuticals. The catch of these pharmaceuticals, is that their side-effects wildly betray their original function.
“A man who killed five students and himself during a shooting spree at an Illinois college had stopped taking medication and become erratic in the last two weeks, buying two guns used in the bloodbath just six days ago, officials said on Friday.”
Reuters
Besides his eventual affinity for guns, the only thing that Stephen Kazmierczak had in common with the Harrises, Klebolds, and Seung-Huis of the afterlife,was his medicinal diet. Eric Harris started off with Prozac, and ultimately upgraded to zoloft. Dylan Klebold, like Seung-Hui a decade after him, was also a regular consumer of Anti-depressants (what brandname exactly, was never disclosed by police).
Now, the obvious counter-argument to blaming medication for this kind of violence, is that all of these men were crazy enough to qualify for the prescriptions they received. Unfortunately, anti-depressants are wildly overprescribed in America; mild depression often serves as a sufficient precondition for heavy medication.
“There is something to be said here about the word “depression,” which has almost entirely eliminated the word and even the concept of unhappiness from modern life. Of the thousands of patients I have seen, only two or three have ever claimed to be unhappy: all the rest have said that they were depressed. This semantic shift is deeply significant, for it implies that dissatisfaction with life is itself pathological, a medical condition, which it is the responsibility of the doctor to alleviate by medical means. Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one’s state of mind, or one’s mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one’s life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct.
A ridiculous pas de deux between doctor and patient ensues: the patient pretends to be ill, and the doctor pretends to cure him.”
Theordore Dalrymple
Widespread debates on violence only seem to stir up in America, when lone gunmen shoot enough people to get the attention from the media that they never received from their peers. After the shots are fired, and the bodies are bagged, different groups hype their main concerns, with differing levels of self-interest. The fact that medication is rarely mentioned, might well have to do with the indisputable power of the pharmaceutical companies in America. It might also have to do with the fact that medication is so deeply intertwined with American existence, that both sides in the debate can agree on it’s necessity. Of course, gun control should remain the central issue in this debate (after all, its hard to stab your way through a full assembly hall) but the liberal distribution, and reliance on these heinous chemicals also deserves mention.
Quick Quote – Straight Talk
“He beat me. I certainly would be glad to get his advice. I don’t think I’d want to revisit how he did it. And I mean that. Not about South Carolina. I mean I don’t feel like reliving my defeat,” – John McCain on Karl Rove.
Sounds like somebody is coming to terms with their illegitamite child.
Obama: A cult of Personality?
“These kids get drunk off hope and change, and before you know it they’re doing…these things; handing out pamphlets, calling relatives to follow this man as well. It’s like Waco…but this time David Koresh…he’s black.”
Sheriff Ben Adam of Waco, Texas
A Liberal Conscience
In yesterday’s op-ed piece in the New York Times (the quite aptly titled “Hate Springs Eternal“) Paul Krugman did himself few favours. Anyone who thought that Mr. Krugman was unduly harsh to Barack Obama in the past, now has a full page of evidence to support that view. Krugman’s intellectual dishonesty boggles the mind. Under the impression that the media are unfair in their criticism of Sen. Clinton, he actively tries to correct this imbalance by attacking her opponent with a similarly unsupported slant.
It is unclear what Krugman aimed to do with this piece. The central claim of the article, that Obama’s supporters are behind much of the venom in the campaign, receives no relevant proof in his arguments. He just plants this assertion on the page, as if his liberal conscience should be assurance enough that it is indeed legitamite.
The most vicious attacks he can point to, all emanate within the media. Krugman seems to be implying, that because these outlets attack Hillary disproportionately, they are by default supporters of Obama. This is, a completely faulty argument. The kind of argument, which, in a fair society, would only find expression in the form of excrement smeared on alleyway walls. MSNBC are as much surrogates of Obama, as Krugman is a surrogate of Hillary’s. As for Hillary’s real surrogates – the Bob Johnsons, Tom Vilsacks, Andrew Youngs – like the Iraq War, they receive little mention in Krugman’s writing.
Obama must be glad to see his most credible adversary make such an unfortunate fool of himself.
Sharia
The donkeys of conservative European punditry are mad at the Archbishop of Canterbury, because of his recent comments on sharia courts in English mosques. His colleagues are calling for his replacement, after all, he is the principle leader of the church of England, and thus wields considerable power. What worries me is not the position taken by said archbishop, it is the power intrinsic to the position he holds within church and, as a result, State.
Why should his comments come as such a surprise? After all, despite doctrinal differences, most Abrahamic faiths agree on more than they disagree on. I would argue that most pious Christians of good conscience, have more regard for a practicing muslim than for a theoretical atheist.
One of the main differences between Christians and Muslims these days, seems to be that Muslim leaders seem to have more control of their flock. Next to natural demographic shifts, it is also this aura of certainty and heavy-handed leadership that has lead to the swelling of Islamic ranks within Europe through conversion. Despite what Americans might believe about Europe, a lot of Europeans are still, very much, men and women of god. Religiosity requires a certain submissiveness, and submissive characters oftentimes fiend for less carrot and more stick; for such people, Islam, and especially it’s popular image, have much to offer. Arguably more than Christianity, a faith blurring with capitalism, and seemingly drowning in paedophilia and doubt.
Hence, reports of Islam rivalling Christianity as the predominant religion of Europe aren’t solely the products of Xenophobia, they are also the results of sober calculation. Moreover, the xenophobia lies in the fear of this development. Personally, I am not so worried. As far as I’m concerned, religious people can plaster the streets, bleeding from crosses or kneeling on rugs, as long as the fanatically promiscuous are allowed to practice just as freely.
Sharia law, as it is practiced already in many mosques in England, isn’t innately expansive. Like the Beth Din courts upheld by European Jews since the Middle Ages, these ‘courts’ (where Allah, peace be upon him, is both judge and jury) merely resolve petty civil and financial disputes, and don’t affect the lives of infidels. They don’t involve themselves in prosecution of any sort. The archbishop merely argued that these already existent courts be acknowledged, and integrated into the system so they stay under state control. This, of course, doesn’t calm the, usually so tranquil, European conservative mob. They argue in their newspaper columns and coffeklatsches, that once you loosen up the law for minor insertions of sharia, the consitution becomes fertile ground for the same Sharia’s feared “penal code”. According, to their “logic”, demographic shifts could allow such a “Machtergreifung” to happen within fully democratic terms.
Such conservatives also tend to characterize immigrants as perepetually coming in “floods”, “waves” or “invasions”; basically, whatever image they can conjure up to suggest both conspiracy and uniformity. These same xenophobes might find it hard to consider that these invaders are a tad more differentiated; in fact, many of them might be quite unenthusiastic about life under the Sharia penal code. After all, their personal experience of such laws, might make them altogether appreciative of their limbs and sinfully uncircumcised spouses. I would argue (for no particular reason except that I am extremely opinionated) that the extremists we really have to worry about are the converts. Converts, generally, have too much to prove. They try too hard to make up for their lack of natural fieriness. (case in point: Assam the American)
The beforementioned conservatives, have pamphlets for both the poor (the sun, Bild) and the rich (Spiegel, Times). In these publications they are rarely concerned with religion as a whole, they focus solely on the evils of Islam. At the same time, they often decry the moral depravity of contemporary society with the same peasant seriousness as any Mullah or Omar. Their habitual “we are capitulating”-bullshit is as disturbing as it is intellectually lazy. Note their obsessive use of the habitual, ill-defined “we.” “We” I often take to mean us “Christians” and, herein lies the great hypocrisy. Many European societies from Denmark to England have tighter bonds between church and state then, the oh-so-conservative United States. In England the Queen is both the head of church and of State, she can veto whoever the people choose as their prime minister. Now, she generally doesn’t decline the peoples choice, and so, this power is often considered purely theoretical, but, as long as its on the books this bond exists. In countries like Denmark and Germany, part of a citizen’s taxes unwillingly end up as tithe to the church.
As long as European conservatives aren’t dedicated to the complete secularization of their own states, they have little right to whine and worry about islamization and the inevitable capitulation to it. Unless you work to completely severe the bond between god and country, and create lasting institutions to protect this secularism, you can’t complain if your state is islamacised once a significant portion of the population is Muslim.
David Shuster – Temporary Eulogy
David Shuster is a hollow character, who went with the irreverent flow at MSNBC and got carried away. What he said about Chelsea Clinton was tasteless but, in the context of pigheaded American punditry, forgiveable. Unfortunately, artificial controversy is easy to whip up and hard to control in America. Something is said, someone gets offended, and before you know it everyone is dismayed, alleging, suggesting, decrying, until another empty face disappears from the screen.
At the same time, I am not shedding a tear for Mr. Shuster. He should have lost his job a long time ago. More specifically: after the release of the documentary “Control Room”. In the brilliant film about media coverage of the Iraq War, Shuster is shown being just another patriotic hyena, conditioned by the governments drumbeat to war, cheeringleading for our boys. In those days he was just another Junior reporter at MSNBC. Despite his failure to do anything but toe the government line, he somehow rose through the ranks of the channel in the years that followed.
In Control Room, Shuster is shown jublilantly celebrating as “our boys” entered Bagdhad. The talking head gets to open his mouth as well. Joking about Iraqis looting in the streets after the regime fell, he quips happily “looks kind of like wheel of fortune.” His other big moment in the film, is when he speaks with great condescension about his Al Jazeera colleagues and their “rebelliousness”. Shuster attributes the superiority of American coverage of the war to “200 years of free speech.” How unfortunate that he was on the wrong side of history.
Whoever still has any pleasent feelings for this man, shouldn’t be too worried. His face is sure to reappear sometime soon on a screen near you, once the public has forgotten his infractions. It shouldn’t take more than a news cycle or two. Until then, his body will be frozen to preserve it’s natural nothingness, and he will await ideological injection in some secret lab in Burbank, California.
Police Brutality
This is what happens when policemen get bored. The job itself tends to attract people who want respect more than anything. As this video shows, it doesn’t take much to put a dent in that fragile sense of authority.
Americans respect their local officials too much. According to national folklore, criminals are innately dangerous and aimlessly destructive, and policemen are all that stops them from imposing their evil upon us. Hence, we should be as patient and forgiving with our police, as we are unforgiving with the men they protect us from. After all, the moral grey area they inhabit serves as a buffer zone between criminal chaos and righteous serenity.
I think that a healthy society should be more weary of abuses of official power, than petty criminal infractions. After all, if our society is built on the assumption that certain people assume the moral highground of official power, our society’s credibility suffers more when these officials infringe on their power, than when comparably powerless individuals break the laws these officials uphold. The few common values we share as a society become increasingly hypocritical to citizens constantly confronted with corrupt politicians and violent policemen who seem immune to serious prosecution, while drugdealers are demonized and waste away in state dungeons.
An economic depression occurs when people lose their belief in the worth of money. A state’s monopoly on violence suffers similarly when people become disillusioned with the fairness of law. Our uncritical worship of our police forces, paired with our unforgiving stance on criminality, further bolsters the fringes and margins of society.
Chuck Norris long ago endorsed Mike Huckabee, today, Sylvester Stallone followed suit and endorsed John McCain. Every republican needs a two-bit action star backing his nomination. Who will be next? My prediction: Wesley Snipes to endorse Ron Paul.
Just a wild stab in the dark…
I can’t help but feel sorry for Bill
Bill is an aging bear, tortured, constantly negotiating between unhealthy passions and predatorial political instincts. Willing to claw his way back home, Bill eats, fornicates, screams, eulogises, threatens, convicts, decries, scolds until he grows splotchyfaced. Then, all of a sudden, in the darkest of places, overwhelmed by his impulses, the animal collapses.
Quick Quote
“At the end of the event, a man yelled out to Obama that he will be a better president than George Bush. Obama responded, “So would you!”
- CBS News
Obama and Reagan – Back like cooked crack
Besides being a muddled primary election, this season’s GOP race, has also been a contest of which candidate can best hijack the legacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the GOP’s last successful president, especially when seen in contrast with the two most recent republican presidential miscarriages. Fiscally conservative, morally completely bankrupt, socially utterly unconscientious; Reagan’s policies (and personality) still serve conservative politicians as a blueprint for their own miserable platforms. George W. Bush himself, crept out of the slime of this hateful ideology, but so did Bill Clinton.
Obama’s recent monologue on Reagan’s presidency, contains a few sentences that could well be understood as praise for the gipper: for this I condemn him! Once my great disappointment with Obama slowly melted into slick cynicism, I revisited his little speech, and found that, despite the sentence that can be read as praise for Reagan, I don’t disagree.
“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.”
Besides skillfully positioning Big Willy next to the perfectly impeachable Richard Nixon, Obama makes a valid point: Reagan’s presidency, for worse or worse, had much more of a lasting effect on American politics than Clinton’s. For one, Reagan had more of an effect on American politics today than Clinton, because Clinton himself was a continuation of Reagan.
Much in the same way Tony Blair’s policies were an (ever-so-slightly) more socially conscious continuation of Thatcher’s work, Clinton was a continuation of Reagan’s legacy. Clinton’s was a neo-liberal platform, a program of free-trade, deregulation and small government. Clinton submitted welfare, budget and tax bills in the Autumn of his presidency, further completing the Reagan revolution.
What the media have described as Obama’s praise for the gipper, is a most superficial account of Reagan’s presidency and his lasting popularity, “he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” Obama, of course, doesn’t go into any detail, because this loose definition of Reagan is just general and empty enough for Obama to creep into, like Hannibal Lectar slipping into a disemboweled human carcus. This is cheap, but could be effective in wooing Californian voters, who, for some reason or another, still feel sentimental about the Gipper. At the same time, Obama seeks to destroy the battlefield he can’t win on; he doesn’t want the last successful democratic presidency to serve as an orientation point for democratic candidates and voters in the same way that Reagan’s administration serves for the GOP. Hence, Obama’s awkward differentiation.
The primaries are a game of chess. After Hillary successfully provoked Obama into “playing the race card” (the coverage of these unfortunate events, by the way, are an excellent testament to the state of racism in this country), Obama is trying to make Bill play “angry old man”. Because, every time Bill feels attacked, he becomes red-faced, splotchy and says something unfortunate, further chipping away at his legacy. Bill, in his old age, is the true renagade of the Clinton camp, he seems prone to forgetting campaign strategies, instead relying on political instincts – instincts that nowadays seem clouded by senility and temperament.
Besides the validity of Obama’s argument, I hope that in the future he will refrain from participating in such tastless acts of political necrophilia. If Obama feels like comparing someone to Reagan, he should compare Hillary. She has played the race card as skillfully as Reagan in 1980; just overt enough to catch people’s attention, and just minute enough to shrug off.
Hugo Chavez – Failed Entertainer
My problem with Chavez isn’t necessarily that he is undemocratic. I think it is important to note the innate hypocrisy of American criticisms to that effect, when
actions by the US government directly contributed to the near collapse of Venezuela’s fledgling democracy in 2002. In April of that year, a coup intended to oust Chavez, removed the democratically elected leader from power for 48 hours. The new government under businessman Pedro Carmona, was immediately endorsed by the United States. Not surprising, in light of the fact that the White House had supported and helped orchestrate the whole thing.
That is why, when Chavez shuts down opposition television stations, or suggests an overhaul to his country’s Constitution that could allow him to remain in power indefinitely, I don’t think of him primarily as a dictator or despot. Moreover, I think of him as an overambitious entertainer, a man who has repressed his own flaws, who can’t face the fact that he is hopelessly untalented. This reminds me of my good friend EDB’s concept of “Evil of Banality.” Chavez isn’t necessarily ideologically driven to undermining his country’s democracy and paralyzing free speech (evil), he just wants more people to tune in to his show (pure and utter banality).
The same EDB recently articulated my own hopes for the region, “I just hope that the less demagogic lefties in South America outshine him,” she wrote. It would also be nice to see less repetitive, more original leaders emerge. I just can’t hear any more “Bush = el diablo” speeches. There is, after all, a more sophisticated argument to be made. Chavez’s thoughtless propaganda in no way benefits his people, all it does is serve his desire to demonstrate his endless balls. His daily display of buffoonery, does more harm than good to what is otherwise an entirely legitimate cause. It is in this spirit of vanity and pomposity, that Chavez isolates himself from decent, intelligent, liberal world leaders such as Zapatero, who might otherwise be entirely sympathetic to a country like Venezuela’s struggles.
Sexy dimplomacy
Only a year after his somewhat unfortunate attempt to harass the, admittedly quite saucy, German chancellor Angela Merkel, Dubya yesterday continued his worldwide campaign of sexual intimidation. In a press conference, Bush fondly recalled his conquest of Pakistan’s “Boy of Destiny” Perverz Musharraf, “my message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and…you need to take off your uniform.” This conjures up images worth repressing.
Surprisingly enough, many GOP leaders have echoed Bush’s call for the disrobing of the plump Pakistani. GOP candidate Tom Tancredo, sensing hypocracy, took it a step further and advocated asking Mubarak, Karzai and King Al-Saud to take off their uniforms. According to sources close to the campaign, if elected president, Tancredo would, in his first week as president, invite these leaders to the white house, strip them of their uniforms and force them to form a human pyramid (Mubarak, after all, knows his pyramids…). Bush could then bring in his dog “Spot”, and take some pictures, while Tancredo bombs Mecca and Medina. Abu Great!
Will this appeal to the base? I think so.
Niqab Controversy
Jack Straw, MP of Blackburn, aroused some controversy last week with statements he made in the Lancashire Telegraph regarding Muslim Women who sport full veils. Mr. Straw’s remarks angered members of the Muslim community in Great Britain, which is suprising because the Muslim community in England is well-known for its serenity and its adversity to easy provocation. Describing the veil as “a visible statement of separation and difference” Mr. Straw also revealed how he persuades Muslim women to remove their headdress when visiting his constituency. With controversy swirling like an unfastened veil in a wind, I took to the streets to conduct a survey of public opinion that would help me make up my own mind.
My first interview partner was a Mohammed. I ran into Mohammed at Bethnal Green Station, where he stood out with his long beard and black robe. He proved to be a mere student like myself, reminding me to fulfill the Pope’s wishes for religion and reason to coexist. Mohammed gave me some interesting insights into his Beliefs:
“The veil is compulsory! Compulsory. Especially if you’re a woman who is beautiful.”
This struck a chord in me. This was advertising. No wonder every woman was dying to sport a Niqab — it signifies beauty, such glaring beauty that it needs to be concealed. Such beauty, that it could turn a normal, respectful man within seconds into a rapist. What woman wouldn’t want people to consider her too beautiful for the naked eye? Which husband wouldn’t want his friends to think that his wife was such a great catch? Whoever wanted women to wear veils had developed the perfect strategy for making them desireable as a fashion. But then Mohammed continued:
“Veils protect women against men.”
In other words, eyes can rape too. The truly sensitive pure woman does not want to be violated by a man’s eyes.
To their defence, rambunctious males do have some taste. So, wouldn’t disclosing the fact that the niqab was primarily for beautiful women make unbridled men all the more curious?
Next, I stumbled into Harvey. One whiff of the old irishman’s breath suggested that he wasn’t a muslim – at least not a devout one. “The unveiling of these women is just the beginning,” Harvey drooled, before delving into the nether regions of his imagination.
The clarity of Harvey’s thoughts had fallen victim to his conviviality. But Harvey proved my point — the Niqab serves two purposes that don’t exactly compliment each other. A Niqab is a way of telling a woman that she is beautiful. Yet it is also a shield, a woman’s protection from the glances and advances of the wicked man. The problem being that many a wicked man has expert taste to compliment his rapist wit; and this expertise reduces dark robes to clearly defined hurdles and their inhabitants to mere challenges.
I ended my survey. A resourceful journalist can extract an expert opinion from anybody, even those inebriated in one way or another. I knew enough — Jack Straw is a lucky and also a very clever Bastard.
