Whatever your opinion of the war, lets hope today is as peaceful as possible in Iraq.
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politics
…of Austria? Reuters: “California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a citizen of both the United States and Austria, should be stripped of Austrian citizenship for allowing a convicted murderer to be executed, an Austrian politician says.”
There is a lot of France bashing these days, on the basis that France is the most anti-US of its recent allies. The above poll shows that its the Germans, Russians, Turks and Mexicans that view the US in the most negative light, and that French attitudes to the US are pretty much the same as in the UK. Naughtily referencing image here cos it is in an annoying popup. This is where it was from, the rest is mostly yawn inducing usual stuff: BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Global poll slams Bush leadership
A lot of fuss in the news today about a sensible proposal to allow people to check one box labeled ‘multiracial’ under federal requirements for collection of race data for publicly funded universities. The trouble with race classification is that it is scientifically meaningless and empirically racist itself. Statistically we are all ‘illegitimate’ descendants of unknown fathers and racial traits are not always visible. Therefore none of us knows what our ‘race’ is. What you mark on a box indicating race necessarily misleading as any geneticist or genealogist can attest: 1. Because race is an abstract notion attempts to classify it logically are always pseudo science. Hence government forms almost always end up confusing nationality and religious and cultural groupings. (I ended up in a fun argument with a mindless bureaucrat at my local council in the UK because I marked myself down as Irish on a form marked ‘ethnicity’….
When the Democrats became the Republicans, Election results in 52 and 64: I always wondered when the Democrats, who were traditionally a party with an extreme right, racist platform, became the party to the left. What is amazing is how absolute the transformation was, the Democrats basically became the Republicans. Maps of the election results in 52 and 64, illustrate this perfectly, they are almost the inverse of each other. Left and right, conservative and liberal, labels attached to parties are abstract; however conservative is the label that the Republicans want to own. The problem is that the current Republican Party may be socially conservative but fiscally it is careless. But social conservatism is not really what America is about. What made the US special to my mind was that most people, both to the right and left rooted for being socially liberal with a small ‘l’ – they called…
During the cold war, the stand off between the US and USSR channeled energy into substitutes for warfare that were actually interesting and benign. Superpowers flexed their muscles figuratively in the space race and literally at the Olympics. But there is something tawdry about the Olympics these days, it feels anachronistic without having the benefit of being camp, in the way that, say, the Eurovision Song Contest is. The Olympics are a colossal, committee driven, waste of money, vast sums being spent on facilities that flatter politicians
“Last year Mr Niyazov instituted a holiday in honour of the muskmelon, a relative of the watermelon, complete with lavish festivities” link
Oil futures “There is a precedent for price hikes to compensate for dollar devaluation, and it is not a comfortable one.” “The first oil crisis, although prompted by the political furore over the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and the use of the “oil weapon”, was also a response to the devaluation of the dollar that took place in the course of the breakdown of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971-73.” Saudi is at odds with Kuwait and UAE, Saudi wants to cut oil supply to maintain oil prices. Oil price rises are compounded by fact that OPEC revenues are pegged to dollar and the dollar is very weak and that economic growth in China is increasing demand. Higher gas prices in the US are not good in run up to election. US needs lower oil prices and more control of pricing. Iraq plus Kuwait oil reserves equivalent to…
In April 1937, Hitler deliberately bombed civilian targets in a small Northern Spanish town on behalf of his friend Franco. One thousand people were brutally murdered, inspiring the most famous anti-war painting, Picasso’s Guernica. Guernica was a Basque town and the atrocity was used to justify further barbaric atrocities by Basque separatist terrorists, ETA. Guernica Introduction
The Observer: “A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.” Funny how this kind of headline always crops up in the Sunday papers. I guess the Observer needs to boost its circulation.