A University of Virginia student had just bought some bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream for a sorority fundraiser when a group of people in plainclothes approached her car. One person jumped on her hood, another pulled a gun on her, and the student, logically, began trying to drive her car as fast as she could out of the parking lot.
And you thought Prohibition ended when Hoover was ousted by Dyson Roosevelt. Americans are always up in everyone's face about freedom, democracy, and due process. Yet again and again stories like this show they are willing to subject themselves to the kind of thuggish state oppression that one finds in Russia or China. And all to stop - wait for it - 'people under the age of 21 from purchasing any type of beverage'. Holy crap.
The next time some NRA-affiliated lunatic shoots a few dozen people at a school or university, we can at least give thanks that the authorities deployed teams of highly-trained, armed operative to protect that heap of dead kids from beer.
The Saudi government is our ally and our government never criticises it for its misogynistic policies, never calls upon it to uphold any of the treaties on human rights it is party to, and never calls chides it for banning free speech, or any of that soppy stuff. The Saudis have got too much oil to ever be wrong about anything, and that's official, if never stated outright.
When we high-tail it out of Afghanistan, I dare say the Taliban will 'do a Saudi' after they take over. They'll probably have conferences about women, too. And if they do, we'll read a lot more about them in our wonderful free press.
Who'd have thought that a guerilla war in Afghanistan would be so tricky?
*cicadas*
Now it is claimed by someone quite important (I suppose) that the first thing to do, about ten years ago, would have been negotiate with the Taliban. It seems that, contrary to popular strategic thinking, the Taliban are not a race of ant-people from another planet/dimension, but human beings. What's more, they are not a disciplined military force but a rag-tag coalition of warriors, ideologues, fanatics, pragmatists, patriots, mercenaries - in fact, it's almost as if they were some kind of nationalist movement! And some of them would have been ready to talk and reach a settlement, seriously weakening the clout of the die-hard extremists.
Pity it didn't happen. I'm assuming that, after most Western forces leave, the Afghan army and police will collapse and there'll be a televised race to the last American helicopter in Kabul. Scenes like this will occur. Once the evacuation of Saigon was an iconic image of What Not To End Up Doing. But for the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, and their enablers in the media it was all ancient history, I suppose.
And in jolly old Britain the lesson learned will be Don't Get Involved in Costly Wars When You Haven't Got a Coherent Plan. Ha ha, only joking, because we do have a coherent plan. It's called Obeying Orders from Americans who've obviously got no fucking clue. Except when it comes to ripping off the natives, of course.
U.S. and other foreign contractors owe Afghan workers and companies potentially tens of millions of dollars, heightening security risks for Westerners living and working in Afghanistan, according to a government report released Thursday.
The report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) details how local subcontractors in Afghanistan are threatening to kidnap or kill Western businessmen and employers over alleged nonpayment for U.S.-financed work. One man threatened to set himself on fire in front of the U.S. Embassy over the issue.
Since I'm feeling a mite cynical, let's also mention that great tradition of treating out Brave Boys (and Girls) as paladins till the war's over, then dumping them on the streets and/or in the prisons while the right-wing press look the other way. That's going to be executed to perfection by the coalition, I just know it. Expect drunken, drug-addled, mentally ill, and of course just plain violent soldiery in your shopping street of choice. They will not be helped.
Hey ho, here's to the next war we'll pretend we haven't expensively lost, even when a Taliban official sets up shop at the Afghan Embassy.
The standard yackety-yack of the right-wing press in the UK is that the American Tea Party movement - basically right-wing Republicans - are largely about people upset about taxes and the heavy hand of the state. It's not true, of course, because it's a movement dominated by religious bigots and white racists. And that means homophobia. So when a gay Democrat stood up to speak in the Pennsylvania senate, guess what happened?
Rep. Daryl Metcalfe was one of the House Republicans who objected.
"I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God's law," said Metcalfe, R-Butler.
But we'll keep hearing that right-wing opposition to Obama and his policies is all about principled conservatism. Not bigotry. Even though it is mostly about the bigotry.
A review is in for Nunkie's H.G. Wells adaptation, which I'm going to see next month. Sounds good. The remarkable Robert Lloyd Parry triumphs again.
Parry’s performance as the Time Traveller is very engaging. He performs the piece with an air of disbelief; as if he still isn't convinced it happened to him. The character is clearly a genius, given his creation, but comes across as fallible, honest and warm. Parry’s physicality is tremendous; he didn't stand still for more than a minute at a time.
And here's the man himself, complete with Victorian scientific beard.
Do I need an excuse to include a clip from the classic George Pal movie with Rod Taylor? Did I ever need an excuse to do anything vaguely Wellsian?
There's a big debate going on about violent porn (i.e. porn that simulates violence, is consensually violent, or may in some cases actually depict rape). It's not a subject upon which I can claim any expertise, but one thing does strike me. There's an implicit assumption in the 'anti' brigade that all porn is inherently bad. This in turn leads me to suspect they want to ban all of it. This is just plain bonkers. Yes, bonkers about bonking - I went there and bought the tee shirt with the dubious slogan.
An obvious analogy - I'm enjoying the French drama series Les Revenants (The Returned) on Channel 4. When I watch it online using 4OD I am informed that it's not suitable for younger viewers. I get the same message when I watch some fairly innocuous comedy on the BBC iPlayer. When I watch Scandinavian crime series like Arne Dahl I get a warning that they include not only violence but also naughty language, even though the latter is only found in the subtitles unless you speak Swedish. (Is it better or worse to read the word 'fuck' at the bottom of the screen, as opposed to hearing it?)
None of the above shows is pornographic, though between them they include sexually explicit language and images. Few people today think such entertainment made for adults should be banned or censored. Once, they did, and films that were deemed offensive didn't get shown in some towns because the local council did indeed ban them. The same went for books, which is why businesses like Olympia Press were created. It seems that whenever any medium achieves a high level of saturation - books (courtesy of state education), then cinema, then television, now the internet - there's a moral panic over its supposedly corrosive influence. And yet society survives relatively unscathed.
Perhaps a more sensible campaign would be to try and promote better porn, though perhaps the official term should be erotica or something. So my solution is to give the BBC and C4 - both recipients of public funding, one way or another - to create high quality erotic TV. The fact that this would give numerous MPs, newspaper editors, and clergy apoplexy is a fringe benefit. Also, I quite like the idea of tuning in to the unexpurgated edition of The Archers at bedtime. 'That's a mighty big silage clamp you've got there, Ed.'
