Potential hero Arnie from Predator.
Steroids-unleashed John Rambo.
GI Jane, in the war on fashion piracy.
And if all else fails, you ring up NYPD cop, Bruce Willis, to provide some good ol' fashioned American shock and awe, blowing the whole tanker to pieces with zero civilian casualties and maximum baddie kills. Yippee ki yay, mutherf***er!
"Yes, the world can end in so many different ways, but only some are cool when rendered in CGI. Tidal waves and meteors exploding into the earth? These look cool. Everyone coming down with a bad case of the runs all at once and pooing themselves to death? Not so cinematic. Unsurprising, therefore, that no one has ever made a film with that as the plot.
But tsunamis over the Himalayas? That, as Roland Emmerich knows very well, looks cool. And sure, you might lose a couple of monks here and there in the search for looking really awesome, but that's just collateral damage, isn't it?
In between the cool visuals, the plot is teased with three stark chunks of white capitals on a black background.
HOW WOULD THE GOVERNMENTS OF OUR PLANET
PREPARE SIX BILLION PEOPLE
FOR THE END OF THE WORLD?
It is an interesting question, I admit, and look forward to seeing what the answer might be. Luckily, I do not have to wait four years (or even until next summer, when the movie actually explodes into blockbuster season), as the Gods of Trailer have thought to answer the question within the teaser itself ...
THEY WOULDN'T.
Oh. Not at all? Brilliant, so we can look forward to the movie being two hours of people failing to tell some other people that the world's about to end?"
She goes on to describe how since the trailer dares and teases your curiousity by asking you to "google 2012" because some crazy religious prophecy must be out there. I got bored after visiting the first hit I received. Might as well though, because we all know already what a disaster that one will end in. Snore.But Pickard's fantastic idea of bombarding Google with lots and lots of more silly conspiracies will have curious victims looking at pages of completely unrelated things. I'm not impressed with her current suggestions of 2012 being the year that "all the disappeared bumble bees are found once more, discovered to be hiding in a secret underground lair playing bee-poker for pots of honey". Or 2,012 being the "number of unicorns required to make up a unicorn quorum and change policy in the unicorn parliament". But still, there's no denying it's a great concept.
It reminds me of this fantastic email I got recently about counter-spamming. When you read the following, you'll have to admit there is some slight genius to it.
REVENGE ON THE TELEMARKETER
Three Little Words That Work!!
(1) The three little words: 'Hold On, Please...'
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off ( instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear BT's 'beep-beep-beep' tone, you know it's time to go back and hang up your handset .... you have efficiently completed your task.
These three little words could help eliminate telephone soliciting.
(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is then used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' salesperson to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering: If you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialled the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!!!
3: When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-prepaid return envelopes, right?
It costs them more than the regular postage 'IF' and when they are returned.. It costs them nothing if you throw them away! In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-prepaid return envelopes.
Send an advert for your local chimney sweeper to American Express ... they might need one!
Send a pizza coupon to HSBC ... in case their canteen packs up. You get the idea.
If you didn't get anything else that day, then just send them back their blank application form ... after all, it is their form!
If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn't on anything you return.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them, and it is their envelope after all ... you are just returning it!!!!
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the post, but folks ..... we need to OVERWHELM them, in order to stop them.
Let's let them know what it's like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they're paying for it ... Twice!
Let's help keep Royal Mail busy. Since the Royal Mail are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, let's help them so they will not need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
If enough people follow these tips, it will work ---- maybe you'll get very little junk mail anymore.
I've got a whole lot of bricks and some time to kill. Just waiting for some envelopes now..
From the Guardian:
Question: Do we think George Bush is, you know, working anymore? There's no visible sense that he's doing anything beyond the ceremonial stuff, welcoming this or that pimply teenage assemblage to investigative the White House Christmas trimmings. It appears he's mostly dreaming of the day he can get down to Texas and start swinging that driver again.
Can we take two more months of this? The DJIA keeps losing 3% (or more) a day! The bailout money is being misspent and no one from the administration has been cracking the whip on the banks.
It's almost enough to make one suspect sabotage -- just let things get as crappy as possible for the black guy. It's all got some folks I know wondering if the inauguration can be moved up so that people who will actually try something will be in charge. The answer is no, incidentally. But you'd think there would be some element of self-interest at work here for Bush, or maybe he just doesn't give a f#*@ anymore.Well, you know what they say about American presidents now. Once you go black, you never...uh.. nevermind. It's interesting to see how the election to inauguration period has seemed to polarise the two presidents, now and future, even more obviously than ever since they effectively co-govern the country until January (I think to say America is presidentless is a bit further of a stretch). But put the two men together, and it's inevitable one will look like a genius and the other like, not a genius? Not that the latter needed any help.
But wait, it gets better. From Tomasky's blog he also shared this YouTube video of the Governor Palin interview at a turkey slaughter house. I swear she had headless turkeys bleeding dry in the background on purpose just to distract the viewer from her ranting. The interview was broadcasted by the network MSNBC which does protect your eyes from the gory bloodbath in the background. Unfortunately the same can't be said about Sarah Palin's reputation.
Screw Barak Obama. This is what I’ve been waiting for. It’s 17 years since Use Your Illusion I and II were released but the new Guns N' Roses (smirk) record, Chinese Democracy is here. In this time The Pixies, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins and something called a George Bush administration have had time to split up and reform. And most importantly, Axl Rose has had time to piss off, alienate and/or fire not only the original members of Guns N’ Roses, but also several bands’ worth of replacements. It is simply amazing that this record was ever completed.
I should take a moment to lament for my native Britain, where the record doesn’t come out until tomorrow (unless you are one of those rich folk with access to the internet). Here in Madrid, and most of the rest of the world it has been for sale for over a day now. And having heard all the tracks I feel self-important enough to write a blow by blow account how my ears received this sainted musical milestone. It’s not like there is anything going on in the world that is more important for me to get on my high horse about.
We can speculate about the delay without knowing for sure what caused it. In the period between Use Your Illusion and now, a plethora of musical styles have gone in and out of fashion, including grunge, industrial metal, rap-metal, nu-metal and that really whiny US punk that dominated the charts a few years ago. I still hear Good Charlotte in my nightmares. Has Axl Rose been trying to keep abreast of the latest musical fashion, fearful that the hard rock of the late 1980s and early 1990s is no longer something people will respect? And how do these styles fit with his bombastic Queen fantasies and desire to write epics and arty rockers? We also need to take into account the man's legendary perfectionism that many working with him attest to; some of these songs have been on the internet for years and sounded fine to us mortals. Was Axl spending all this time reworking them because they didn’t reach the level of a musical high renaissance? We also know that a mass of material was written for this record, probably three records’ worth at least. With all those songs Korean Democracy and Cuban Democracy might have been made in this space of time too.
First, the good news. Before the track listing was made official, rumours were flying around about which songs would make the final cut. Tracks leaked onto the internet ranged from the good to the seriously ugly. Remember Axl Rose’s parting gift on Use Your Illusion II, the one-minute stinker 'My World?' Even hard core fans choked at that pretentious fizzle of brown arse wind. In fact, the hard core fans probably hated it the most because it indicated another degree of separation from what they had come to expect from their band. But judging by some of the internet leaks, Axl wasn’t entirely persuaded that this was a road to avoid, and dangled Silkworms in front of us as a terrifying warning of the shape of things to come, possibly as an attempt to reduce hype about his missing record, possibly to try and make 'My World' look like a masterpiece in comparison. Having killed off Guns N Roses and effectively made it a backing group, Axl Rose’s often questionable creativity would be sufficiently unchecked for him to serve up a pretentious shit-storm, especially since Izzy Stradlin, the other brain of GNR, wasn't around to pen some of his classic 'simpler' songs. In the same way George W Bush is running down the clock as US President, we just had to trust Axl and hope he didn’t do anything too stupid.
It therefore gives me great relief to see the tracklist and know that Silkworms is not on Chinese Democracy.
Anyway, an epic stodgy record needs an epic stodgy review, like nothing else before. Hell, I’m going to review every song in a celebration of all things over-the-top and too big for their own good. From tracks 1 to 14, here is Chinese Democracy:
1. Chinese Democracy – In the beginning there was Axl Rose. And he created the heavens and the earth, and a record that sounds huge, though overproduced. This record did have like five producers after all, and a Big Mac wrapped in plastic would seem organic in comparison. Indistinct chattering sounds are shot through by a crunching intro that sounds like Godzilla chewing cement and then a real song kicks in. It sounds every inch as bad-ass as it should…and it sounds like Guns N’ Roses too, dispelling all my fears that we were going to get some mongrel hip-hop ballet record or something equally misguided. I guess $13 million was worth it. This is what we’ve been missing.
2. Shackler’s Revenge – A very “me, me, me” song, this. But again, it rocks. The verses have that same sinister quality I liked so much in 'You Could Be Mine'. And the chorus makes Axl sound like he is on a one-man mission, probably to prove that carrying on was a good idea after all and that turning your back on him is a bad move. Especially if it ends up with Velvet Revolver. Points deducted for the needless solo, which is just confused and couldn’t have fitted into the framework of the song worse if someone in the studio had just randomly decided to switch on a blender. It sounds like Audioslave lasted long enough to have an influence on some people. But that aside, we’re cruising here and all my expectations and doubts look misjudged. Who needs Slash?
3. Better – Eww, that opening is nasty, like a school playground chant forced through a broken Rapmaster 2000. And it keeps cropping up through the song. The chorus is right on the money, though, sounding as towering and crunchy as a steamroller slowly reversing over a bag of Dorritos. The soloing again is clumsily bolted on and unnecessary. I’m not down on solos but they need to complement the song, if not take it to a new level. Here the already grating tune effectively screeches to a halt so that Axl Rose can announce “and now for a solo”. It’s that gratuitous and, good as this song is in parts, I cannot believe this was a single.
Bloated fun fact! The Sun is big. We know this. But the hypergiant star VY Canis Majoris has a radius of between 1800 and 2100 solar radii (ie, the radius of our Sun). So it's bigger.
4. Street of Dreams – Mmm. Before I embarked on this post I had a feeling that songs on this record were going to fall into two categories: songs about ex-members of the band and songs about Axl’s ex-squeezes. Not sure which category this falls into, especially since he’s had plenty of time to accumulate sufficient quantities of wistful thoughts about both. If he’s going to try and echo Use Your Illusion he could have copied 'Coma', 'Civil War' or half a dozen other great tracks. Forcing 'November Rain', 'Estranged' and other GNR weepies to breed mutant offspring is cruel. TO THE LISTENER. This has piano, subtlety, our man getting all heartfelt and croaking, probably while scrunching himself up in a ball and clenching his fists. I’m not enjoying this, probably because more than naything else it makes me think of 'Yesterday' on Use Your Illusion II, and I always skip that aimless little number. I wish I could like it, if only because it must have taken some effort to get that string section and because the lyrics aren’t as naïve or cloying as they usually are on GNR sludgefests.
5. If The World – There must be some mistake. It opens sounding like some toss that George Michael might use as filler on one of his records. Or a second rate James Bond theme tune. Axl quickly soon reminds us that it really is him (something I wouldn't hurry to do if I were in his shoes), his sharp voice strangely making this song even more plodding and starchy. He’s really hoping that some of these epic choruses will hit the spot, but if someone forced you to gnaw through a cardboard cake you would have the taste equivalent of listening to this.
6. There Was A Time – Aka TWAT? Choir singing, backwards guitars and more wretched hip-hop garnish are to be found here. In the FIRST 30 SECONDS of this epic dogs’ dinner, no less. It sounds like it will be another soppy number, but then there is a jagged interlude, which sounds like it could be the refrain - before it disappears, possibly because verse-chorus-verse isn’t avant-garde enough for a misunderstood genius trying to rebuild the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the listeners ears. Then the melody collapses on itself into a black hole where anything goes. There are key changes all over the shop and it bounces back and forth between moods with such bipolar melodrama that Jerry Springer will soon be trying to interview it. Axl tips a vat of obligatory labyrinthine guitar solo on top, something this shapeless blob of a song could do without. I’ve abandoned all hope that this will be a great record, so I’ll play a game, which I shall call, ‘Which New Guns N’ Roses Song Pushed The Other Band Members Over The Edge?’ This is definitely a safe bet.
Bloated fun fact! The People’s Republic of China has the world’s highest population with 1.3 billion. It is not a democracy. Tell your friends.
7. Catcher in the Rye – Now I know how Axl feels when he has to impress his impatient fans. I’m only halfway through and I’ve clearly bitten off more than I can chew. Where is the vitriol or the rage in this sonic gristle? There is a pathetic na-na-na moment that's so lightweight it makes me feel we are not listening to Guns N’ Roses so much as Mums N’ Pansies. Then the song just falls into a ditch and flails about, with Axl yammering on, almost certainly about himself, and making squealing noises while the backing band experiment with almost every note on the high end of their guitars. 17 years’ self-reflection (or could it be pity?) has provided questionable wisdom: “When all is said and done/We're not the only ones/Who look at life this way/That's what the old folks say/But every time I see them/Makes me wish I had a gun/If I thought that I was crazy/Well, I guess I'd have more fun”. That’s right. Axl Rose has been alone so long he wants to get a gun and shoot the residents of an old people’s home. I think it’s called being in denial.
8. Scraped – The sort of title Nine Inch Nails would pick. This is going to be dark and belliger…oh DEAR GOD that introduction is horrendous. It soon gets going, but I don’t think any of these songs, Shackler’s Revenge apart, have started without at least some form of irrelevant dicking around beforehand. If he seeks new ways to make a song sound important he could try coughing politely or tapping a teaspoon against a champagne glass beforehand. It's more logical than recreating the noise of a smoke alarm being forced through a hairdryer. There is some of the dirty rock music I’ve been looking for here and it could have been a contender, but stupid variations of the introduction keep punching holes in the song and ruining the mood. Seriously, you could build a theme park in a graveyard and it would be less out of place. At this stage I should also mention that this is one of the most solipsistic records I’ve ever heard. By now we must have reached at least a century of lyrics containing the words “Me”, “I”, “My” and their variants. Write a song about cars or snakes, or something different, for god’s sake.
9. Sorry – So apparently along with Nine Inch Nails, Limp Bizkit (pfff…) and Kid Rock (Double pfff…), Pink Floyd found their way on to his CD player. Fair enough, they were a band that knew a thing or two about sprawling epics, and therefore this is quite coherent by Axl standards. It fits together nicely, nothing forcibly inserted here to jar me. I like it, and it leaves me so comfortably numb that I can blank out the contribution of the eight year old who wrote the woeful lyrics. “You like to hurt me/You know that you do/You like to think/In some way/That it's me/And not you/But we know that isn't true.”
10. Riad N’ The Bedouins – Eh? Is Axl going to do geo-politics? Is this the new name of the band? Is it an attempt to sound clever? Again, there are disparate elements in search of a song here because they don’t totally mesh. A shame. It really could have been amazing, and so far this sounds like the biggest missed opportunity on the record. The wailing intro is dynamic and the verse seethes. I could imagine going nuts at a concert to this. But he keeps doing it. He keeps bolting rickety, ugly sounding parts to great melodies and can’t keep things simple to save his life. It could be worse, I suppose.With $13 million he could have lurched completely into Michael Jackson territory and hired NASA scientists to make him cups of coffee or had special furniture made from the bones of albino monkeys commissioned. Yet I get the feeling that if you asked him to change a light bulb he would disassemble the whole house to do it. Over-complicating music comes so naturally to him that it is the silly faffing about rather than the verses and choruses that seem most routine, such as the ridiculous guitar wankery mid-way - totally jarring and out of place yet as mandatory and contrived as a young child’s Christmas thank-you letter to grandma. Delay the release of the record Axl, I implore you. Fuck Dr Pepper. Run this song by Izzy Stradlin and he will make it world class for you by trimming off the fat. There is still hope. Strangely, while the sound on Chinese Democracy bears no relation to Appetite for Destruction, the lyrics haven’t evolved much at all since those days. This time we get: “Riyadh and the Bedouins/Got a plan and walk right in/But I don't give a fuck 'bout them/'cause I am crazy”. Really man, what the fuck are you talking about? This song, more than any other, sets out my issues with this record.
Bloated fun fact! Streetfighter 2 Sumo wrestler E. Honda was originally going to be called ‘Sumo’. In real life there are no Japanese sumo wrestlers called this because ‘Sumo’ is not a name.
11. IRS – This has been around for ages so I know the meaty chorus is going to beat through the undignified whimpering that he sees fit to slap down as an introduction. There is a real groove here and everything fits together just right. As part of an album this will do nicely, though on a great GNR record I'm not sure I would have noticed it. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt with this track, though it’s certainly not worth getting arrested for. More of this will erase some of those earlier traumas.
12. Madagascar – What the hell? A killer version of this song has been kicking around on the internet for a good while now, an epic that really was the sum of its parts. There will be about 50 plus versions of all these songs sitting on studio shelves gathering dust, so why go with a weaker vocal and more tepid sound? To confound us? This is another one of those songs with lyrics talking about how Axl is against the world and nobody understands him. Yeeees. I can see how that could be our fault. Strangely, returning from the early version of Madagascar are the sound clips of Martin Luther King and Cool Hand Luke. The latter samples were on Civil War, 17 years ago, so it’s safe to say that while the ever-capricious Axl Rose has desperately tried to keep the sound of his band cutting edge, chopping and changing, at least all this time some lines from Cool Hand Luke retain some cult-like meaning to him. And I suspect only him. But now we have four good to great tracks in a row and there is a real second wind to the record.
13. This I Love – Just bollocks. Rancid, wallowing, self-harming, filth-rolling bollocks. There is a level of pomposity here that I can’t bear. THIS has to be the song that pushed the other members over the edge, and it’s a damning indictment of the direction of the band. In Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra the protagonist exiles himself on a mountain for ten years, come back to humanity and teaches them how to better themselves and reach a higher level of being. On Chinese Democracy Axl Rose has locked himself away for 17 years and returned to bleat about what was on his mind back in 1991. Am I too stupid to understand this song? It’s terrible, right?
14. Prostitute – With a title like that it could have been 'Mr Brownstone' or 'My Michelle part II', the sort of sonic Molotov cocktail that GNR specialised in, even if they unfortunately strayed (or took wild detours) into misogyny back then. It’s one last chance to pour oil on flames or wrestle with alligators or ride a Harley Davidson off the edge of a cliff but again it’s the safe option. A frickin’ ballad. Unmemorable and not likely to grow on me either, this is no way to close a GNR record and I don’t care what era we are in.
Bloated fun fact! 148 episodes of US s(h)itcom Just Shoot Me! were filmed. I certainly think that’s too many. There were 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers. The most popular programme ever is The News, which even today is still going strong.
Well, that’s it. There are five or so songs I really like here. In Madagascar there is a fifth that would have been untouchable in its greatness if Axl hadn’t persisted in his obsessive tinkering, while Riad and the Bedouins needs its wings clipped to rock like it should. Other songs have their moments. Others emphatically do not. I’m not totally convinced by this project.
I won’t be the first or last person to make the point that after such a long time this record had to be amazing or it would be crushed under the weight of expectation. To be fair, the hype was generated by journalists much more than by Axl Rose, but even if we set aside the length of time this took, I can’t ignore the fact that just under two thirds of the record is pretty mediocre, and some of it just plain bad. And while I was always ready to pardon the songs for not living up to stratospheric hype, I can’t forgive them for not living up to their own pompous levels of self-importance. This is a self-contained affliction that starts when you play the record and ends when you stop. Axl Rose being an often-pretentious individual is no fault of the music press, nor is his vindictive nature and need to keep haranguing those that doubt him. I hope he can be satisfied that, at least in parts, he has proved many people wrong.
Oh, I'm sorry, you just wanted a mark out of ten? I'll give it a slightly too generous 7 out of 10.
From the Associated Press:
BEIJING (AP) - A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday.
The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot (2-meter) -high fence around the panda's habitat, said the park employee, who refused to give his name.
The park in Guilin, a popular tourist town in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, houses a small zoo and a panda exhibit. It was virtually deserted when the student scaled the fence surrounding the panda, named Yang Yang, the employee said.
He said the student was bitten in the arms and legs. Two foreign visitors who saw the attack ran to get help from workers at a nearby refreshment stand, who notified park officials, the employee said.
The student was pale as he was taken away by medics but appeared clear-headed, he said.
"Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
If only the panda made bamboo shoot out of him, what a brilliant display of Darwinism at work it would be for all the families at the zoo. In fact, I have a brilliant idea. We should let as many pandas as possible out in the public. They're docile enough to leave us alone. But the cute, cuddly appearance will bait in the idiots, while the grizzly mother nature instinct of the animal should take care of the rest.Comedian Carlos Mencia once said people were shocked when a tiger mauled a magician during a performance. Most people said the tiger went mad. Mencia says the tiger went tiger. If you fail to see yourself on the foodchain in relation to a f*cking big animal, then you deserve to be f*cking eaten. Fortunately though, pandas are vegetarian, so the lucky student lives another day to hug a hungry lion.
Is it only tragic if you're watching?
There was blood on the pavement
The camera will make you god
Thats how jack became sainted
If you die when theres no one watching
And your ratings drop and youre forgotten
If they kill you on their tv
Youre a martyr and a lamb of god
Nothings going to change
Nothings going to change the world
There was lennon and a happy gun
There were words on the pavement
We were looking for the lamb of god
We were looking for mark david
If you die when theres no one watching
And your ratings drop and youre forgotten
If they kill you on their tv
Youre a martyr and a lamb of god
Nothings going to change the world
From News 4 Jax:
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Some voters expecting to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain two weeks ago were surprised to see 11 other names on the ballot. But 736 voters in Duval County weren't happy with any of the choices and wrote in 191 other names.Among the write in votes were those who really ran for president or vice-president during the long primary campaign: Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin and even Steven Colbert.George W. Bush got two votes to serve a third term.
If you visit the news website, there is also a rank of all the write-in votes together with the number of votes each nominee received. It's nice to see Nader sitting down there with Homer Simpson, Bugs Bunny and Oprah. It's good to see democracy is not wasted on Americans. I'd totally queue 7 hours to vote for Weird Al Yankovic.
Fun Fact: Ghosts always become more tolerant when they are burning crosses
There has now been sixty years of occupation, and if the news reports are anything to go by, things are not going well. Certainly not as well as they should be. Today 96 countries recognise Palestine. To put that in perspective, 52 UN members recognise Kosovo, a country feeling sufficiently stable to apply to participate in Eurovision next year. Across the world the Palestinians have a relatively high degree of sympathy, and the mission to liberate them is as fashionable as other 'right-on' causes like freeing Tibet, banning the bomb and saving the whale, if not more so. Two crucial countries that refuse to recognise Palestine, however, just happen to hold the keys to a lasting independent state: The honest broker, the USA and the hungry neighbour, Israel. In fact, despite claims that it is waiting for a true partner for peace, successive Israeli governments, be they Labour, Likud or Kadima, have carried out policies to try and ensure that an independent Palestine cannot come about. Since Israeli occupation in 1967 they have permitted the building of Jewish settlements and Jewish only roads to consolidate control, splintering the Palestinian land into an ungovernable patchwork of territories.
Aah, Gaza. 1.5 million people, 80 per cent of them hanging on international aid, crammed into a small space, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth. It is the very definition of a dependent territory, its airspace, borders and coastline under Israeli control. Since HAMAS seized control last year an Israeli siege has, according to the Red Cross, created a dramatic fall in living standards. Israel's authorities state that the blockade is for their security, and it will persist so long as their Islamist foes stay in control in the strip, while armed groups launch rockets across the border. This week Israel's 'security' needs apparently needed to extend to letting Gaza's electricity run out and shutting the crossings it controls so that no food can get in. Palestine could hardly be more dependent today. Happy anniversary indeed.
The only just and practical solution to this spiral lies with the plan proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League. The Arab states will normalise their relations with Israel in response for its withdrawal from the territories of Palestine and Syria that it is occupying. Even HAMAS endorses it. But the ball is very much in the Israeli government's court. Frustratingly, the recently departed PM Ehud Olmert recently said Israel will have to give up the Occupied Territories, which isn't easy thing to say, even out of power. And the upcoming election will be contested between Tzipi Livni, from Olmert's Kadima party, who has disassociated herself from these comments, and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, a stiff who would sooner shoot himself in the foot than accept the existence of any Palestinian state. Clear thinking needs to come from somewhere, though, for the benefit of the Palestinians and the security of the Israelis, politically intertwined as they are.
"Just totally baffled by his stubborn refusal to accept that his alleged ‘God given’ perspective is absolutely correct based entirely on his abortion view. As I have said before the so called prolife view of such Christians is totally myopic and contradictory when they totally ignore the non prolife life aspects[ of republican Christian conservatives regarding their ProGun and militaristic stance in terms of war etc. In other words when such people talk about pro-life [pro death]they are just focusing on the 9 months between conception and birth during which the fetus is non conscious for at least half the time as compared when the 60-80 yeAr LIFE SPAN OF A FULLY CONSCIOUS HUMAN BEING WHO CAN EXPERIENCE PAIN SUFFERING AND DEATH WHETHER IT BE THRU A GUN BELONGING TO SUCH SO CALLED PROLIFE CHRISTIANS OR THRU PRE EMPTIVE AND OTHER WARS WHICH SUCH CHRISTIANS ARE CHAMPIONING.!!!!"
It's not hard really to seem black amongst God's sheep when such believers allow rationale to get the better of them. This is a classic example of logic-based argumentation versus a faith-based one. Often enough, it's the logic-driven that faces the frustration of the opposite's lack of rationale whilst the faithful are quite comfortable leaving all responsibility to God. God's word tends to be the final say in these circumstances. Even as this frustrated soul tries to play within the rules of religion, his argument won't and never will be won. This is likely why activists such as Dr Richard Dawkins have only ever succeeded at banding the atheists together for a global attack on religion. As if we didn't have enough groups involved in this mass orgy of ideological warfare already..
Nonetheless, as erroneous as Allan's attempts are, it's great to see sheep who will not follow the herd. Truth won't be found by following other sheep who esteem themselves to be shepherds. And if one were to simply play by the twisted rules of religion, then one could freely attribute the recent election of the anti-Christ to God hating you all.
The title from this post comes from a wonderfully snide response to a Melanie Phillips non-article posted yesterday, on her re-emergence from the bunker. Now I just have to pray that the coming year wont bring us a Netanyahu government in Israel to mess up this little bit of respite and sanity we have had gifted to us.
"Now Bush is gone, and Obama has come. So what? Palestine is still occupied and Iraq is destroyed..."
...hmm. Putting aside the fact that Bush isn't gone and Obama hasn't taken power yet, Shaban Abdul Rahim's cynicism is justified. Afghanistan, Israel and Egypt will see little change under Obama, who might not emulate Bush jr but will probably do a fair impersonation of the wretched Clinton years. I could grow to like this guy. After all, we need a change in the Middle East. New thinking. An end to old prejudices. So what is our analyst's contribution to solving these problems?
"Shaban Abdul Rahim, best known for his hit single in Egypt 'I hate Israel...' "
...oh
Let's stop there. Seriously - reading the lyrics to these poetic outpourings one can see a major problem for anyone trying to campaign for justice and stable peace in the region. Legitimate grievances smothered by inarticulate, discriminatory, unfocused hatred. US presidents aren't the only key players that need to change their spots.
Unless I'm still sleeping.
The post is called "The Politics of Mass Hysteria" and she's not wrong. Here is a choice cut of the madness, complete with clumsily wayward Phillips sarcasm:
"The media proclaims daily that Obama has already won. He cannot lose. He is the Saviour of the Planet. McCain is a mumbling senile idiot. Palin is evil incarnate."
"Evil incarnate?" Not ignorant or unqualified when it comes to international affairs? Not overly confident or brash when it comes to making judgements? Not an exaggerating self publicist who has repeatedly tripped up on the false claims she made when unveiling herself to her own party rank and file, a large proportion of which now want to wash their hands of her? In short, not like the current ass of a leader, whose blind faith and tunnel vision has driven his own people and a good chunk of the world into something approaching absolute chaos and whose popularity has long ago gone so far down the tubes and round the corner that one has to pick through several layers of shit just to work out why people voted for him in the first place? Evil incarnate is a label that hasn't cropped up too often to describe the fizzled out one-shot weapon and all round laughingstock that is Sarah Palin, but it is far easier to ridicule than dwelling on her real shortcomings. Here's more from the article:
"Those who see a racist in every non-Obama voter are themselves the people for whom Obama’s race is his defining characteristic. They say in terms that his race is the reason we must vote for him. They are the people who, by smearing every conceivable criticism of Obama or revelation of his unsavoury associations as ‘racist’, have emptied the term of its meaning."
Putting aside Melanie's use and abuse of anti-Semitism, who is actually claiming this? Is it even a significant cluster of Obama supporters? Unlike the Oval Office this coming January, there is an elephant in the room here. Is her real beef with people who opposed her treasured Iraq war or Bush's ludicrous economic mismanagement? In an election that is unique in the prominence of real issues did the candidate's colour really cause such an upheaval? Or does a population that has been lied to and experimented on want a change in direction? And anyway, what about the real racism that was aimed at Obama by footsoldiers of the GOP and sections of the media? All that Arab/Muslim crap about Obama wasn't just a dream now was it?
It would be nice to think that with her cries about hysteria and justifiably ironic consecration of St. Barack that Melanie wants a more substance-based electoral culture, though one would have to look the other way from her slavering over Sarah Palin, complete with checklist of cliches. Traditionally in the USA personalities have overshadowed the real issues, reducing the respective bids for power to advertising campaigns. Reagan, Clinton and the even the seemingly unlovable younger Bush all mastered the knack of personality first, substance second. But in reality all she cares for in her analysis of Obama are pathetic little nips at his character and tired accusations that are long dead outside of echoing Republican crypts. She thinks the story of Bill Ayers, thoroughly twisted in her account, is one that the American public want to hear about? It came up in the final Presidential debate and has been investigated thoroughly. Newsflash: Nobody gave a damn because there was liitle of nothing to give a damn about. And even today we have more diversionary fluff, this time about an aunt of Obama's that may be living illegally in the US. It is not just McCain's rubbish that the media is sifting through.
Further nonsense. She claims Obama supporters are "stealing the vote" by committing registration fraud through the group ACORN, and indeed ACORN itself admitted that some of its volunteers had forged votes (before firing them) collecting names such as Mickey Mouse, almost certainly so they could get a few extra bucks, not deliver the election to Team Obama. But this misses the real issue again because Mickey Mouse will not turn up to vote, particularly since many new voters need to bring an ID to the polling station with them on voting day. And driving licenses for giant rodents is more of an Alabama thing anyway, I would imagine. She also omits reports that a Republican group, YPM, tricked people into registering for the GOP. In all honesty I am going to give Phillips the benefit of the doubt here - she might have missed this story because her hated mainstream US media barely picked up on it. But that's only one double standard she is innocent of, for despite evidence from investigations by Greg Palast that potential Democrat voters have been eliminated from voter rolls in past elections, Phillips sees fit to pre-emptively mock anyone that might want a fair election:
"So if the world should revolve backwards on its axis next Tuesday and people wake up and find he [Obama] has lost, then [...] the election will have been stolen in the way we all know evil Republicans always steal elections"
And while Palin and a desperately flailing Michelle Bachmann infuriated many with their comments about patriotism and real Americans, Phillips is happy to bulldoze along the same path, while simultaneously revealing her laughable sources of information:
"Insofar as the American public has managed to obtain some of this suppressed information, it has been delivered by the Western Resistance comprising internet journalists, Fox News and talk radio. The British press, however, have taken their cue entirely from the fifth-columnist liberal US media."
"Western Resistance" indeed. Will we be airlifting these lemmings clothing and food aid next, or perhaps teaching them how to think for themselves? That free press sure sounds like a thorn in America's side. We can see from past columns that Mad Mel goes batshit crazy at the thought that Michael Moore, for example, might know the truth and the rest of America cannot see it. Yet here she is, claiming the same, from a far inferior vantage point outside the country, rabidly squeaking about American patriotism and independence of thought from a small island across the ocean, like an indignant shrew trying to wake a deaf elephant, and tarring the rest of the US media as traitors to boot.
Anyone familiar with her methodology knows that Melanie Phillips selects information on the basis of how much it appeals to her existing prejudices, rather than excellence of research or the authority of its sources. What she might label a "must read" might be just some bog standard drivel and those she labels as experts might be ideological twisted nuts well out of the loop, if not total frauds. That's why Bill Ayers is still an issue for her, while the rest of the media has moved on. So while she skulks around in the sewers of her favourite weblogs and the undead over at the American Thinker, the news that every major US polling organisation is putting Obama ahead of McCain does not compute with her. In fact, I am genuinely amazed that Melanie Phillips can still trudge on with her commentaries on the US election, war on terror and international affairs, given that a short and by no means exhaustive list of the sources she regards as biased or untrustworthy includes Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, B'Tselem, BBC, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, Haaretz, Human Rights Watch, Nelson Mandela, The New York Times, Newsweek, Reuters, Time, UNICEF, The United Nations, the World Bank, the major US public opinion polling organisations and the majority of scientists working on climate change and evolution.
But at least she has Fox.
I'm amazed she can still type, so worn must her fingers be from her bottom of the barrel scraping antics.
Sarah Pulliam
Jim Wallis called for an apology from Focus on the Family founder James Dobson for the fictitious letter posted on Citizenlink.com.
Focus on the Family Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, posted a letter that pretended to look back on an Obama administration. The writer suggested that certain events had happened, including terrorist attacks on four cities.
Jim Wallis responds:
"In a time of utter political incivility, it shows the kind of negative Christian leadership that has become so embarrassing to so many of your fellow Christians in America," he writes. "Such outrageous predictions not only damage your credibility, they slander Barack Obama who, you should remember, is a brother in Christ, and they insult any Christian who might choose to vote for him."
And Wallis isn't the only one upset. There's also a satire piece. The Matthew 25 Network calls it "blatant fearmongering," and more than 2,000 people have joined a Facebook group called "A Christian Bipartisan Rejection of Focus on the Family’s Letter from 2012."
"As you can see, Focus on the Family Action has abandoned reasonable appeals and resorted to shameless tactics of fear mongering. They have abandoned the belief that voters can make informed decisions and have instead appealed to fear as their fundamental motivator.
"As Christians, we stand appalled and ashamed at such tasteless demagoguery. We believe that civil, educated, and compassionate dialogue should and can occur with the active engagement of our faith, but believe that Focus on the Family Action has, in this letter, stepped far outside of reasonable boundaries into pure sensationalism. We believe that such thoughtless expressions coming from an organization that purports to represent Evangelicals continues to mar our legitimacy and voice in the public arena, and damages our basic Christian witness."
The list of things proposed in the letter includes:
-Terrorist attacks on four cities
-Israel is hit by a nuclear bomb
-Euthanasia becomes commonplace
-The Supreme Court becomes liberal
-Churches lose their tax exempt status for not allowing gay marriages
-Pornography openly displayed
-Gun ownership restricted and inner-city crime rises,
-Home schooling becomes restricted and families move to Australia and New Zealand
-Conservative talk shows shut down
-Christian publishers forced out of business
-Power blackouts because of environmental restrictions
-Boy Scouts shut down
-Russia occupies four countries
-Bush officials jailed or bankrupt
Focus on the Family Action defended its letter yesterday after a CNN reporter described the organization as "religious extremists."
Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations at Focus Action, has worked in the media for 25 years. He said Feyerick's report "definitely signals a new level of marginalization by the mainstream media of groups like us that stand for biblical truth."
"We can’t control what the media want to call us," he said. "All we can do is continue to stand for the truth. The Bible makes it clear that when you stand for Jesus and His righteousness, those kinds of things will come."
I received this article as an email response to another forward I received. But a cursory search tells me Pulliam also writes for a Christian website (see second link). The letter central to this fear-mongering malarkey is really a lengthy, tedious drone to read. A bit like watching Armageddon but without Liv Tyler and a cool Aerosmith music video. In this case, Obama would be the asteroid, and the right-wing Christians are Bruce Willis with a giant drill bit and a nuclear bomb; grovelling over some sentimental story about "losing" America to the liberals and going Jerry Bruckheimer on the ficticious consequences.But it really shares most of its fear-mongering values with Senator McCain's party lines. Except Christians don't sound as silly when they start mentioning things like:
"THIS IS EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
Minutes ago I spoke with friend Dr. Norman G. Marvin, M.D. and he is so concerned at what he has learned about Barack Obama's family in Kenya that he is calling a special prayer meeting in his home to pray against the witchcraft curses attempted by them against John McCain and Sarah Palin.
[...]
IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, PLEASE PRAY TODAY AND CONTINUALLY THAT ALL SUCH CURSES BE BROKEN AND SATAN'S PLAN FOR AMERICA BE DEFEATED, IN JESUS' NAME. PRAY AND COVER MCCAIN AND PALIN WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO SPIRITUAL WARFARE, IT IS TIME YOU LEARN!!!"
(Does Stan's dad from South Park screaming "We didn't listennn!!" come to mind yet?) and;
"Two days ago, I listened to a 9-6-08 message by Bree Keyton, a young woman evangelist who had just traveled to Kenya and visited Obama's home village and what she found out about his relations with his tribal people was chilling. And his 'cousin' Odinga was dreadful. She said the witches, warlocks and those involved in satanism and the occult get up daily at 3 a.m. to release curses against McCain and Palin so B. Hussein Obama is elected.
[...]
Bree Keyton went and visited Obama's tribal people and she found out Obama is 75% Arab and his family are Muslims. Odinga is still trying to become the President of Kenya. If he does, he will make a law forbidding all public preaching and institute Sharia Law. Bree K. said Odinga has made a pact with satan. Bree K. also said when Obama visited his tribe in '06 and as late as Jan. '08 he went to every elder's home which has a 'shrine' inside to worship the genie and asked for their blessing. She was told Obama and Odinga were both 'destined' before they were born to be president/leader of their nation. They say 'he is the chosen one'. She said Obama's grandmother sacrificed a black and a white chicken to the 'goddess of the river' so both whites and blacks will vote for Obama. All Islam loves and worships Obama."
What must be going through the minds of right-wing Christians eager to jump onto this anti-Obama bandwagon after reading this, I wonder. Is Obama going home every day to slaughter some chickens to give him an edge over McCain? Is Obama not American then for being of 75% Arab decent or even if he were a Muslim? Is it blasphemous to want a leader who can finally offer some harmony with America's Muslim neighbours? Or has everyone just gone f**king dumbass stupid declaring "spiritual warfare"!? The above excerpts are from the original email forward. Thankfully though, many Christians are claiming they did not get this memo about the Jesus fatwah. The fundamentalists would do well to notice that they happen to be sharing the same boat with the neo-Nazis who obviously don't want a black president. Funnily enough, for the same xenophobic, irrational reasons.
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