July 1, 2016

FROM THE BBC - Brexit and the easing of austerity

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36682368?post_id=10207404232916689_10207927376074941#_=_

"While it is absolutely vital that the government continues with its intention to reduce public spending and cut the budget deficit, we should no longer seek to reach a budget surplus by the end of the parliament," Mrs May said.

Now the chancellor has said he agrees, arguing that the government must be "realistic" about its fiscal targets and that austerity policies could be eased.

May 31, 2016

Xpost from GD. THIS VIDEO WILL MAKE YOU ANGRY...

... or maybe, ya know.


Just depressed...






hmm.

May 31, 2016

This video will make you angry...

... at least, it says it will...

April 1, 2016

Is there any argument cheaper and less meaningful than "Muuuuuuuh PROJECTION!"

I'd like to hear it if there is.

Well, maybe this one: " "

Or this... " "

March 22, 2016

No, a "SMEAR" isn't the same thing as criticising someone's position.

A smear is a suggestion of meaning that has no basis in reality or a logically unwarranted inference.

Directly objecting to someone's actualy political positions or statements of their position isn't a smear.

Thanks, carry on.

March 20, 2016

Sigh...So.... "Cybernats"...(zzzzz getting really bored of this stupid bullshit)

During the Scottish Independence Referendum an interesting thing happened. The term "cybernat" appeared, mysteriously.

"What's a cybernat, sibelian?!"

Snuggle up, my dears, and I'll tell you.

CYBER is a shorthand for "Internet" and NAT is a shorthand for "Nationalist." Ho ho! Geddit? Not "supporter of independence", mind. "Nationalist". I had many looooong online conversations with people in the South of the UK informing them that the SNP stood for SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY not SCOTTISH NATIONALIST PARTY but that was apparently me being disingenuous because deep down I secretly hated English people. My mother's from London, incidentally.

Anyway... within a few short months of the term cybernat appearing one would see long screeds of arguments being typed up earnestly by supporters of independence on comments sections in newspaper articles all over the place only to be responded to with "meh, cybernat." It was pretty successful. Fairly soon there wasn't a word coming from the mouths of anyone genuinely interested in discussing the actual pros and cons of Scottish Independence without their being followed around by a whole bunch of entirely politically unengaged label-slappers slobbering uselessly all over otherwise interesting threads wittering on about cybernats and refusing to respond to simple points with anything other than things like "well you would say that wouldn't you, you natty, cybery cybernat you" and equivalents thereof.

It wasn't a new experience for me. I'm gay. I've been a "faggot", "shirtlifter", "chutney ferret", "fudgepacker", "fairy", "pansy", blah blah frickety blah for a VERY long time now. But many of my online compatriots interested in actually discussing the prospect were obviously somewhat taken aback as nothing like that had ever happened to them before.

There weren't really any "cybernats". They didn't exist. All it meant was "person whose case I don't want to address as I'm satisfied with the status quo". That's it. It was a very effective way of portraying many thousands of ordinary Scottish people as being weird and geeky and obsessive and USING A COMPUTER and having a propensity to write lots and therefore of no consequence.

"BUT WHY ARE YOU TELLING US ALL THIS, SIBELIAN?"

I actually don't know anymore. I don't really know if it's worth the bother.

But, Anyway, So. There you go. Just thought I'd let you all know, dear cousins.

Have fun!

January 22, 2016

Here is the perspective of a Muslim woman on New Year's Eve in Cologne...

This is a short article, but very much to the point and I hope that this will at least make some inroads into reassuring some at DU that there are perspectives on the potentially troubling effects of mass immigration that don't necessarily come from frothing UK tabloid red-top types (of which, apparently, I am one. News to me, my dears).

http://www.dw.com/en/opinion-new-years-eve-in-cologne-a-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-for-muslim-women/a-18994746

Those who know this problem best are the women who question and criticize the role they are given in Muslim society. Women for whom the Cologne attacks are nothing new. They know such behavior from Taksim Square in Istanbul and Tahrir Square in Cairo. Women who refuse to remain silent about gender relations in their societies.

To clarify: Every person has the right to live in peace. This is not about immigration from Islamic countries per se. People that are fleeing war zones naturally deserve our help and solidarity - especially families, and mothers with children. These children have done nothing wrong, and it is our moral obligation to help them.

Nevertheless, immigration obviously brings problems - problems that we cannot ignore. And as this influx of people from so great a distance provides no historical comparisons, there is no one that we can ask about possible risks and side effects. We have to be careful not to paint the world as black or white. No, the world that we live in is complex, and every person is individually different.

January 22, 2016

Two German feminists debate Cologne in Der Spiegel

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-feminists-debate-cologne-attacks-a-1072806.html

Schwarzer: The debate over sexual violence has re-emerged as a result of that night in Cologne. Even Germany's justice minister, who for years allowed necessary reforms to tighten Germany's rape laws torot in a drawer, has pulled them out again. But when you only speak using generalizations, you run the danger of denying the specific. In recent decades, millions of people have come to us from cultural groups within which women have absolutely no rights. They do not have a voice of their own and they are totally dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands. That applies to North Africa and that applies to large parts of the Middle East. It isn't always linked to Islam. But since the end of the 1970s, at the beginning of the revolution in Iran under Khomenei, we have experienced a politicization of Islam. From the beginning, it had a primary adversary: the emancipation of women. With more men now coming to us from this cultural sphere, and some additionally brutalized by civil wars, this is a problem. We cannot simply ignore it.

Wizorek: But it is also wrong to look only at the origin of the perpetrators. When I see the kinds of people that are now jumping into the debate over women's rights, it also includes, among others, the same politicians who, during the #aufschrei debate in 2013, said that women shouldn't be so demanding. Now that men with immigration backgrounds have committed sexual assaults, it is being instrumentalized in order to stigmatize them as a group. I think that is racist.

Worth reading, I'd suggest. Adds quite a bit of perspective.

January 16, 2016

Europe - migrants - Cologne attacks - The comments section on this Guardian article...

I think some people posting here might get a better idea of what's going on in Europe with the migrant situation if they read this article, which is about Cologne, and then the comments section on this article, (and not the "Guardian picks", which are laughably slanted towards Hinsliffe's position). It would also give some of you an idea of how the left in the UK currently views the Guardian, which is to say - not with fondness.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

A lot of people are extremely angry.

I suggest reading the entire comment thread. I have been posting to the Guardian comments section for some years now and I have never seen an author so roundly lambasted there, the audience completely obliterates Hinsliffe, and given the tone of her article, I'm not at all surprised. There are 6,000 comments and some of the recommendation totals are in the thousands. It's unprecedented in my experience.

It is often better to hear the voice of the people rather than the voice of the journalist or politician. It will rapidly become clear to anyone reading the comment section on the article I've linked to that the current stance of tolerance for uncontrolled immigration is not going to last much longer.

And this is in the UK. I can't imagine how Germany is reacting. Not well, I suspect.