The ABM / nuke work was predicted and predictable, but the way Obama's people managed to use it as a way of getting Russia's help in dealing with Iran, that was a stroke of genius. His "muslim tour" was an extremely bold move, like his "tough love" attitude to Israel. Chances are that he's going to be the first US president in an extremely long time NOT to start a new armed conflict. For that alone, the prize may well be deserved once he steps down. It basically says to the US administration that they are on the right road, and they should keep going in that direction.
I personally think that this is also a way for the "international public opinion" to help him, while he's under attack in his country for all the wrong reasons. It gives him some more political capital to spend when foreign policy choices have to be justified at home.
And even if it was for "not being GWB", at the end of the day, can you blame us Europeans for celebrating the fact that the most powerful military in the world is finally not led by malicious and corrupt warmongers?
Best news I've read in a while. Note how the British system allows for private profit in this sort of operations: the Crown gets automatic rights on the "loot", but the various institutions that will actually host it have to bid for it, with proceedings going to finders and landowners.
Compare with the Italian or Egyptian systems, where there is no compensation for finders. This means that the (usually accidental) finders have no incentive to declare a discovery. Much better to either ignore it, destroy it, or hide it.
Sylvia: which is exactly why us Western men are so up in arms about the whole burkini thing. I mean, we already have to tolerate you speaking and working and voting and all that, the very least we can expect in return is to see you naked (or tarted-up) as much as possible.
That's the unwritten contract that was signed when all this "freedom" was introduced: you can be as free as you want, but you have to put out more -- metaphorically and literally speaking. And even if it wasn't in the original contract, it's certainly what everyone came to expect in just a few years (free love etc).
I've ridden across Sweden for two weeks when I was 20; my knees didn't like it, but I'd do it again tomorrow if I could. (Stockholm is lovely, btw.)
I'd love to bike to work, BUT there is a little problem. I sweat. A lot. I always did, even when I was playing semi-pro football and was as fit as humanly possible, and now that I got a bit overweight the situation obviously has not improved.
How do regular bikers cope with this logistical nightmare? I have a few colleagues who go on and on about cycling ten gazillion miles per day, but to be honest, at least a couple of them make the office smell. We do have a shower in the office, but it's rarely used. And obviously I can't visit customers all drenched.
That's a big showstopper for me.
I have to apologise as well: I publicly said the petition was useless.
It's probably the first time ever that an e-petition to N.10 produced any tangible result, and I guess it has more to do with the need for a cheap electoral boost (Labour is predicted to lose badly in spring 2010) than anything else.
I do still think, however, that now Mr.Brown will get more and more calls to also apologise on behalf of umpteen other gay personalities of the past, and the thing might get messy. The Tories are silent on these topics, and it will be interesting to see what they do once in power.
John Stanner @10: Being a headteacher is not a license to police the web, period.
If the problem is bad behaviour on social sites, the correct response is to teach bullied individuals how to use those sites better, the features are invariably there (block people, cancel "friendships" etc) and/or complain to the side administrators (which are entitled to policing the space). Otherwise it's like a headteacher asking for the keys to your house because he heard that you might be having issues with your parents.
Abi, I'm surprised you say "dental was not covered in the UK". I don't know how it is in Scotland, but in England, the NHS used to offer free dental care to all UK citizens until a few years ago. As an immigrant though, you had to apply to be granted cover. Then demand started to outstrip supply, because dentists opted more and more to "go private" and not work with NHS schemes (cause? the usual: unregulated greed), so people were still entitled to free NHS services but wouldn't be able to find a NHS dentist in the area. In the last ten years, various plans have been attempted to fix the state of things (basically, free cover has been restricted to the old, the poor and the pregnant), but the result is that one way or the other, almost anyone born after 1975 has to pay something for dental care. Which is why I have insurance, kindly offered by the US megacorp I work for.
Dental is the NHS black hole, but the rest of the system runs fairly well. Obviously it doesn't make money for the government, but it's the largest employer in the country (I think 40%+ of the active population works for it) and it literally stops the underclass from rioting. There are constant debates on priorities (e.g do we need more experimental drugs to cure cancer, or more psychiatric services?) and costs (Labour will usually spend more for it, Tories will invariably slash budgets with a passion), but all in all I'm not disappointed by how they use my taxes. I recently had my first baby and I have nothing but praise for my local service.
This latest incident reminds me of build-up to the Iraq war.
When the Kindle arrived, lots of smart people said it was "defective by design" because of DRM. Obviously, mainstream opinion labeled them as a fringe of lunatics ("why should Amazon want to delete my books?"). Then bad things happened, as smart people said they would. Same with the iPhone AppStore, online music stores using DRM, etc etc etc...
Oh, and to Jules @ 13: "whereas the BNP to the best of my knowledge participates in some reasonably democratic practices within itself to allow its members to govern the party"
Nope. I've read the statute: the head-honcho is the ultimate authority on *everything* and can overrule any decision taken from any assembly/council. You can take the nazi out of the fuhrer, but...
Sean @105: as far as I know, there is no technical or legal impediment for a non-Anglican to become Prime Minister. (S)he would only be barred from advising the Queen on matters of faith, which would probably also mean that (s)he couldn't appoint people to official roles in the Church of England. There are a few positions which, albeit officially chosen by the Queen, are in practice appointed "through" (i.e. by) the Prime Minister, and obviously these couldn't be appointed by someone not belonging to the CoE. The issue would be easily solved by the appointment of a "dedicated" Anglican minister, I guess.
That's old-school British pragmatism for you: the problem simply didn't came up before, so nobody bothered to write a law for it.
The BNP (or as I call them, The Inbred Party) has another interest as well: they currently accept white members only(*), and have been told they will soon be challenged by State prosecutors if they don't stop discriminating.
* from their statute:
Membership of the BNP is strictly defined within the terms of, and our members also self define themselves within, the legal ambit of a defined ‘racial group’ this being ‘Indigenous Caucasian’[..]
The indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ consist of members of:
- The Anglo-Saxon Folk Community;
- The Celtic Scottish Folk Community;
- The Scots-Northern Irish Folk Community;
- The Celtic Welsh Folk Community;
- The Celtic Irish Folk Community;
- The Celtic Cornish Folk Community;
- The Anglo-Saxon-Celtic Folk Community;
- The Celtic-Norse Folk Community;
- The Anglo-Saxon-Norse Folk Community;
- The Anglo-Saxon-Indigenous European Folk Community;
- Members of these ethnic groups who reside either within or outside Europe but ethnically derive from them.
As far as I can read, nobody here (or in the press) mentioned another big factor that is getting clearer in the current uprising: the "fathers of the revolution" are aging. They are still on display, but in practice the stage is being taken over by their heirs (political and otherwise). This means that the compromises originally forged in that struggle are being renegotiated by the new generation of power-brokers, for which the ghost of the Shah and the Iran/Iraq war are less important than "business at the speed of light" and proto-fascism. These people (Amahdi as well as Mousavi's and Rafansjani's offspring) are getting more and more independent, and with independence comes a phase of radicalization, because they have less to lose than their elders. Amahdi started this process during his term, and the other factions are now responding.
This just to say that I believe things will probably get much worse before they get better. Which is the opposite of what I thought last week :) but the more it goes on, the more elements are becoming clear.
(Sorry, I fell off the internets. )
I just wanted to explain what I meant when I said "ask the Soviets, who destabilized Iran in the 70s"... The Cold War was still pretty hot at the time. Moscow-trained marxists were instrumental in fighting the Shah and creating the conditions for the revolution. They then lost the following power struggle to the islamists. Yeah, the Shah was a crook, but history tells us that underground "resistance" movements need funding and training, which almost invariably will come from foreign interests.
In a way, the Soviet failure in Iran mirrored the fate of their similar attempts in Israel.
Debating whether the results were or weren't fixed is not particularly useful; Iran's electoral results haven't been very "precise" since well before 1979.
What is noticeable is that there appears to be an increasingly large sector of the establishment, at least in/around Teheran, who thinks they have more to gain from a moderate show of force rather than from going through the usual channels. This says a lot about the state of the current regime.
(Also, coming as it does after just a few months of diplomatic glasnost with the US, it also shows what the neocon hardline stance achieved for 8 years: the exact opposite of the stated objectives.)
I doubt that these big shots (Mousavi, Rafsanjani, Khatami etc) will really go through with their threats. Once the figures are "corrected" (i.e. Ahmadinejad still wins, but with low margins and politically weakened), they'll back off.
The problem is, once you a start a riot, you never know how it will end. Ask the Soviets, who destabilized Iran in the 70s, if they had planned to end up with an Islamic state....
Blatant case of "in vino veritas".
It's incredible how journalists still don't understand the Overton window.
It's also funny how often they apply a method devised to "[take] a pass on the toughest calls [they] face". Basically, they now find that average political bickering is "the toughest call". The level of cowardice in the newsroom has clearly risen a lot in the last 20 years.
Ken @2: Actually Columbine should also be on the "Waco list", and was postponed only because of logistical issues. At least this is what the Guardian is saying now.
Steve @7: you have no idea :) half of the Italian parliament is composed by Silvio's lawyers, employees, previous mistresses, current mistresses, etc... He's perfectly safe. Of the two, it's the parliament that should be worried.
The real scandal at the moment is that the government won't drop a proposal (currently being discussed) which would significantly relax current building regulations... and increase the probability of these disasters happening again and again. After all, why have only one "9/11 event", when you can repeat it every few years? I guess Silvio-the-TV-tycoon knows how important it is to keep the audience interested.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 35 |
| 2008 | 35 |
| 2007 | 22 |
| 2006 | 44 |
| 2005 | 24 |
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