the original Lord of the Rings

(and this explains the label)

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What they fought and died for

While I dislike the thought of politicizing Remembrance Day any more than it already has become politicized, neither can I stomach the idea of the leaving it to the flag-draped yahoos who are so busy venerating the holy troops that they forget what exactly those people who made the supreme sacrifice and those who survived were fighting for and against in World War Two.

Not everyone who signed up volunteered, and not everyone who volunteered went for some high moral reason. Some of them signed up because they needed a job, because they were ashamed not to join up, because all their friends were going. Many were conscripted. That doesn't matter. What they thought they were fighting for, whether it was "king and country" or as I once heard it put "keeping India British," isn't as important as what they fought for in terms of practical effect. Nobody joined the army to stop the Holocaust, they didn't even know it was going on at the time, but the practical effect of fighting the Nazis was to put a stop to their efforts to kill all the Jews.

They were fighting for your right to disagree with others, even to disagree with wearing poppies on Nov. 11. They were fighting for your right to speak out against authority - even if it means squatting in the park or public square. They were fighting for your right to be free from being asked for your papers any time a cop didn't like your looks. They were fighting for the rule of law, for equality of strong and weak, rich and poor. They were fighting against racial and religious discrimination.

They were fighting against fascism.

Fascism isn't just Nazis or the style of government under Mussolini. It rather emphatically is not what existed in Russia under Stalin or China under Mao, though it shares their bloodthirsty totalitarianism. Fascism didn't begin or end with the Second World War. There were plenty in England, Canada and the United States that were open fascists and many more that thought it was swell that Mr. Mussolini was able to make the trains run on time or that Mr. Hitler had done great things for Germany.

Fascism took a serious beating from 1939 to 1945, but it wasn't stamped out. Spain stayed fascist. Indonesia was pretty much a fascist state under Sukarno and Suharto and it has raised its ugly violent head numerous times and places in Latin America.

Fascism is not dead, it just smells bad. So bad that people who espouse it don't use that name anymore, don't even realize for the most part that what they are espousing is fascism. But calling it "chocolate freedom liberty dessert" doesn't make it smell any less like the shit it has always been.

I won't point any fingers at any groups or individuals here. You can figure out who they are for yourself. There are a few handy checklists or definitions at the usual place, but I'll provide you with two I think are the most complete. As you might expect, there is a great deal of overlap, and oddly enough, both come up with 14 identifying characteristics.

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forgo civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Umberto Eco put together a similar list in his excellent 1995 essay Eternal Fascism,  saying that fascist movements share these traits (I'm paraphrasing his longer essay)

  1.The cult of Tradition. The idea that all knowledge exists and must simply be interpreted. The combining of often contradictory cultural notions to find the same enduring truths ("America's government comes from the Bible!")

2. A rejection of modernism. While fascism may embrace technology, it rejects the ideas of the Enlightenment and generally thinks the Age of Reason was the beginning of civilization's moral decline.

3.The cult of action for  action's sake. Doing is good, thinking is bad. Thinking is for the effete intellectuals "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." Fascism is profoundly anti-intellectual.

4.Disagreement is treason. Science uses disagreement to further knowledge, but if people disagree how can we be sure who is right? Being right is very very important. Disagreement and making distinctions is immoral modernism.

5.Hatred of diversity. Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.

6.Feeds on frustration, especially economic frustration that individuals are not doing as well as their perceived social inferiors i.e. "Where's  my  Cadillac/smart phone/big screen TV? All those welfare bums have one!"

7.Appeals to those who feel deprived of a clear societal identity by telling them they are special by virtue of being born in the same country. (I am Canadian! I am an Englishman! I'm an American) American exceptionalism, the master race notion of the Nazis all fit in here. "Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside."

8.Fascism is both the victim of and the key to victory over an overwhelming enemy, i.e. We are the downtrodden salt of the earth and they control everything, but we will still beat them by virtue of our inherent superiority because they are weak and effete (yeah, I know its completely self contradictory, a lot of fascist 'thinking' is, see #1)

9.Permanent war of one kind or another."There is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare."

10.Total contempt for the weak, for example cheering for allowing people without health insurance to die.

11. Every one of us is a hero and ready to make the supreme sacrifice. The motto of the Spanish falangists was "Long Live Death" - this urge to show how you are a hero by dying a glorious heroic death tends to be problematic so it often gets rechannelled into other forms, such as #12

12. "Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise." Or sometimes you just buy a really big truck and watch a lot of football.

13.Fascism is based on a selective populism. The party reflects the will of The People as interpreted by the leader. The fascist leader will say 'The government you elected doesn't understand you, it is rotten. Only I and the party really understand the Will of the People, the Silent Majority.' The fascist will insist they are "not a politician" and will inevitably campaign against "the government" as if "the government" suddenly fell from the sky or was imposed by outsiders. "There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People." (I'm looking at YOU blogosphere!)

14.Fascism uses Newspeak. In everything from framing issues  strictly Manichean terms ("You are either with us or with the terrorists") to the widespread use of euphemistic shorthand and so called dog whistle  (notice anything some people don't like is the result of 'political correctness') Fascism uses a small vocabulary to limit distinctions and control chains of reasoning through semantic limits.  ( you can't call Dick Cheney a babykiller on TV, you can't even call Newt Gingrich a liar or Pat Buchanan a fascist, you can't even call Glenn Beck a jackass)

 I would further add a few items to both lists. These are not necessarily items that are not included or implied in the above lists, they are more a manifestation of combinations of the ideas outlined in the other lists. 

 1. Fascism is driven by an urge to control. Somebody has to be in charge. The boss must show they are dominant. You must obey authority. 

2. Fascism requires an enemy. If there is no handy enemy, one must be created. This enforces unity, puts everything on a "war footing" and plays to the Manichean mindset and enforced simplicity that goes hand in hand with anti-intellectualism. People are a lot easier to control when they are scared of something. 

3. Fascism constantly looks to the usually imaginary past as golden era that must be reclaimed. Fascists are all about seeing the country "reborn" and seeing us get back to the "good old day" before smarty pants effete intellectuals and decadent bohemians ruined the country. "We want our country back." 

4.Fascism is violent. Either in the imagery they employ, the eliminationist language or in the actual physical act, fascists love the notion of taking direct action rather than thinking. "Lock them all up and throw away the key!" "All the politicians do is talk talk talk, why don't they DO something!" See the movie "Joe" or read any blogging tory for all the examples you could want. 

5.Fascism worships strength and simplicity. Whenever someone starts talking about the need to demonstrate "strong leadership" and "common sense" whether its through bombing someone or imposing a flat tax, you are getting a whiff of fascism. Ditto for all the fascination with anyone in a uniform that gets to do 'heroic' stuff like soldiers and police. They want action heroes. They want the guy who hangs drug dealers, not the guy who comes up with a way to successfully treat addiction or reform drug dealers. 

6. Fascism is aristocratic. For all its populist talk, fascists worship power and that means worshipping people who are perceived to have power and use it to take decisive action, whether it is the grand exalted leader, the titan of industry, the general or the university football coach. The rank and file think that the powerful person is a hero and they aspire to be like them. Their heroes are not Nobel winning scientists, great artists or philosophers or humanitarians. 

 So the next time you hear someone sounding off about how we are "losing our country because of multiculturalism and we have DO something about it" or how "the muslims"  or  "the gays" or the "liberals" are wrecking everything or how such and such is a strong leader because at least he takes action instead of endlessly debating what to do, you can be sure you are smelling fascism. And it isn't limited to the right wing either.

  

 

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How long?

This week at Berkely.

How much more will the wealthy's bought and paid for politicians rob from the poor to give to the rich?
How much more will people allow their economic and social mobility to be restricted?
How much longer are audiences going to tune in while those in the political media bubble continue to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted?
How many more homeless are going to freeze to death?
How many more people are going to lose their homes?
How much more will education and social welfare spending be cut to pay for 'law and order'?
How many more tear gassings?
How many more taserings?
How many more pepper sprayings?
How many more kettlings?
How much more unprovoked brutality are people going to put up with before nonviolent demonstrations and civil disobedience turn into a rain of paving stones and molotov cocktails when the riot police arrive? How long before people start sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches?
Tick...tick...tick...
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Things go better with Koch!

 

The Koch brothers (not exactly as pictured above) would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, or at least the world's billionaires anyway. Unfortunately, the song they want to teach them appears to be the Horst Wessel Song. Class warfare - it's the real thing!

So here is a little tune from us to them:

Bonus link: Alison over at Creekside has more on the Koch brothers oil pipeline machinations.

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Nail injured in clash with hammer

As a journalist I understand the need to use value neutral terminology in describing events much of the time, but sometimes my colleagues and I  go a bit overboard. I spent a few moments yelling at my radio over one such incident last night.
In their coverage of the events surrounding the call for a general strike in Oakland, California, last night, the CBC mentioned that strike had been called by the Occupy Oakland group after demonstrators there clashed with police last week.
I don't mean to single out the CBC as a quick look around shows many other media outlets used the same terminology.  "Clashed" is a word used in newswriting when you know there was a fight, but you aren't sure who started it. "Clashed" suggests each side gave as good as they got. What happened in Oakland on Wednesday night may or may not have been "clashes" between police and protestors, but the event that lead to Wednesday's call for a general strike was not a "clash," it was an unprovoked, carefully coordinated attack by police on peaceful protestors who were guilty of little more than loitering in a public space and littering.

Riot police stormed the Occupy Oakland camp around 5 am on Oct. firing baton rounds and tear gas and arresting 85 of about 170 protesters who had been camping in the downtown park for about two weeks.There was no suggestion that the protestors were violent or even unruly. Many were asleep when the hundreds of riot cops moved in and detroyed the encampment. That isn't a "clash," that's a "raid" or "an attack" or a "police riot."



The police even threw a flash-bang grenade at people trying to help a man who was nearly killed after his head "clashed" with a baton-round fired by riot cops.


Scott Olson, the man shot in the head with the baton-round, (essentially a either a hockey puck fired from a grenade launcher or a cloth bag full of birdshot fired from a shot gun) remains in hospital with a fractured skull. He survived two tours of duty with the marines in Iraq before coming home to be shot while fighting for freedom.

I think its pretty clear who the police in this case are serving and protecting, and it ain't the 99%
 

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Rick Perry is not as think as you stoned he is!

Here are the "high"lights of soon-to-be-former-presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry's recent speech in New Hampshire. If you want to sit through the entire addled trainwreck you can watch it here.



He doesn't look sleepy and he isn't slurring his speech enough for it to be booze and he isn't jumpy and hyper enough for it to be cocaine and his teeth are too nice for it to be meth. He's a bit too animated for it to be weed (though it really reminded me of this), so I'm guessing some kind of hallucinogen, but he's not trying to hug anyone so it probably isn't X and he doesn't have the manic grin or unblinking laser eyes of someone on LSD, so it must be something a bit more obscure - I'm guessing ibogaine.

After all, he wouldn't be the first candidate to get derailed by ibogaine.




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there is a reason that many newspaper websites don't allow comments

And that reason is this: People who comment at newspaper websites are stupid, as are many people who complain to newspapers, as are many people who work for newspapers.

 Pour yourself a drink, I feel a screed a-comin'

Not offense to the fine people that employ me, and my opinions are my own and not intended to represent or reflect theirs or anybody else's.

Simply put, the newspaper story linked to above is a monument to stupidity on all fronts. In a nutshell, two teachers at a public school decided not to have their junior kindergarten students take part in the school's Halloween events and some Sun-TV viewing parent has decided somehow or other that this is political correctness run amok and destroying Canada.

Stupid like this happens all the time.

But in this case the parent has obviously run to the local newspaper and the editor there hasn't been wise or assertive enough to get rid of them and has instead given them a platform for their incoherent objection to the teacher's possibly ill-considered but totally harmless decision. The reporter assigned to the story wasn't smart or assertive enough to either refuse such a stupid assignment or simply come back and tell the editor "there's no story there boss, just some idiot who needs to stop watching Michael Coren and reading the Toronto Sun.." It's either that or the editor and reporter, tired of being harrassed by this dumbell decided to shine a light under this woman's rock in the hopes that she would scurry away rather than embarass her family.

This kind of stupid "let's you and him fight" process of stirring up a false controversy to provide front-page fodder has a long and mostly ignoble history dating back to the yellow journalism of the Hearst papers ginning up the Spanish American War and continuing to the work of Glenn Beck and hate radio. Given the track record of the paper in question, I suspect it is less a case of ginning up a story or stirring the pot for fun and profict and more a case of not being able to tell the Mom "thanks for your call, but we aren't interested. Go peddle crazy someplace else." And not getting a comment - or more likely a "no comment" - from school's principal or the teachers involved is unforgiveable.If they declined to speak and referred the reporter to the board spokesperson, fine, but say so in the story.

And last, but hardly least in the parade of stupid, we have the usual assembly of commenters who take time out of their busy schedule of eating paint chips and masterbating to Rush Limbagh to pen little screeds about how the liberals and immigrants from Whoknowswhereistan are ruining perfectly nice white Christian holidays like Halloween.

The teacher's decision was taken partly, I suspect, to keep the four- and five-year-olds from having the crap scared out of them by the older kids' more gruesome costumes, partly to spare themselves from the risk of Mormon or born-again Christian parents accusing them of teaching Satanism to toddlers and partly to keep from having a bunch of overexcited, overstimulated, candy-jonesing four- and five-year-olds on their hands for the day. Instead, they are doing a nature-themed black-and-orange day for the little ones.

It isn't a decision I would have made. I often scare small children, sometimes even on purpose. I'm absolutely in favour of baiting fundementalist whack jobs ("Think of it as lesson on Comparative Religion, Deacon and Mrs. Smith, I'm sure little Caleb and Faith won't try to have a human sacrifice at home and will save their ritual cannibalism for communion on Sunday") and I would have thought that filling the little bugger full of sugar and then sending them home would have been fitting revenge on their parents for any of a myriad number of sins real or imagined committed against the teachers. But then again, I'm not tough enough to be teaching junior kindergarten.

And you can be sure revenge in some form will be taken against the blameless kid involved. Their file will have "this kid's mom is a nut who will call the media anytime the mood strikes her" stamped all over it and teachers will from now on treat the poor child like a beaker of nitroglycerine, meaning that anything off the beaten track in terms of educational experiences or source material will be strictly verboten.

The concerned mom, worried that her little treasure won't get to have the bejezzus scared out of him or her or get to show off the $10 princess trollop jr.or mega-macho action-man costume from Value Village to her classmates, thus denying mommy the chance to compete with other mommies, even raises the spectre of the War on Christmas.

 “We’re losing Canada — in Canada,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) said Friday, stressing schools celebrated Halloween as a slightly ghoulish but fun unofficial holiday when she was a child, but are increasingly turning away from this. “They’re taking away my choice as a parent. This is my culture. I’m from Canada.”...(snip)...
“I don’t want it to be a black-and-orange day,” (name removed in hopes of avoiding annoying lawyery emails) countered, saying she’s now anxious about whether celebrating other traditions may be nixed, including Christmas.
“How much more of Canadian culture are we going to lose?”

She carries on as if the teachers are serving beaver curry and have cut up the flag to make a turban for the her daughter to wear to the human sacrifice and Constitution bonfire. Granted, I've been out of the country for a few years, but when did trick-or-treat day join hockey, the RCMP, maple syrup and complaining about the damn French/Les maudit Anglais as the cornerstone of our national identity?

She's Canadian, we get it. That and $5 will get her a double-double and an apple fritter at Tim's - so what? I can only assume from her insistence on asserting her Canadianess that she thinks denying her little one a chance to participate in the Halloween festivities is somehow the work of nefarious non-Canadian forces.

That is certainly the message the trolls who came out from under their bridges in the comments at the site seized on.I'm not sure what foreign culture they think is being catered to since no one outside of North America pays any attention to Halloween and the only cultural group in North America that objects to it are the Mormons and Christian Taliban who think its a celebration of witchcraft that will turn their kids into cross-dressing Satanic gay readers of Harry Potter novels or some such nonsense.

I don't recall ever seeing troops of Turks, Italians, Brazillians or Chinese out demonstrating against Halloween. I haven't seen any anti-Halloween rallies organized by Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews or Rastafarians. Who exactly do these dimwitted commenters think is destroying their culture?

The so-called politically correct crowd don't have anything against Halloween. It has long been the holiday of choice for those pursing lifestyle choices that don't meet with conservative approval. A chance to dress up and act out? A pagan festival when everyone is a weirdo? Giving away stuff to kids? Going all out to freak out the squares? Getting free stuff from property owners? How much more of a rainbow-freak-flag counterculture approved event can you get?
These xenophobic idiots see some kind of nefarious conspiracy to steal their cultural identity every time they hear someone say 'happy holidays' - I just wish they would get it over with, send Bill O'Reilly or Pat Robertson their life savings, go Galt once and for all and leave the rest of us alone.

So, to sum up; Stupid teachers, stupid mom, stupid or lazy newspaper people and stupid, stupid, stupid with bigot-sauce commentors.

Happy Halloween!


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happy Halloween

 go easy on the treats, folks!

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This will not stand!

"You won't recognize Canada when I get through with it"
-Stephen Harper

Not content with running roughshod over the wishes of the majority of Canadians and eliminating the long-gun registry, ignoring the majority of wheat farmers and cutting the throat of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Harper conservatives are now starting to tinker with national symbols.

Dam the beaver — use the polar bear as official emblem, Tory saysOTTAWA—A Conservative senator says it’s time Canada was symbolized by something more majestic than a buck-toothed rodent.
Senator Nicole Eaton wants the polar bear to replace the beaver as an official emblem of Canada.
She says the polar bear is Canada’s “most majestic and splendid mammal,” and a powerful symbol in the lives of native peoples in the North.
She believes the furry, white carnivore’s “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is an appropriate symbol for modern-day Canada.
By contrast, she derides the lowly beaver as a “19th century has-been,” a “dentally defective rat,” a “toothy tyrant” and a nuisance that wreaks havoc on its environment.

I suppose next they will want to change the flag to a circle of 10 white maple leaves on a blue field in the top left corner over a field of red and white stripes, or maybe just bring back the Red Ensign, since they seem to want to burn down anything that has happened since Diefenbaker was prime minister. Tweet

Keeping occupied

Cartoon shamelessly stolen from Alison at Creekside, who got it from LeDevoir.

It appears the Occupy Wall Street movement is starting to crumble a bit around the edges. Some of the reasons are the external ones you might expect - like the Oakland police launching tear gas into an unarmed, nonviolent crowd or the steady drip of arrests and trouble sparked by police agent provocateurs and the constant efforts in the press to insists the protesters don't know what they want or understand what they are protesting about (which is, not to put too fine a point on it, utter bullshit).
Then there are the more practical reasons. The weather is turning colder and the resources that make the protest possible are running low. Simply put, most people cannot afford to spend week after week camping out in Zucotti Park or wherever else is being occupied.
Unlike the Teabaggers -- who just rolled up on their mobility scooters or arrived on Koch-sponsored bus tours, got shouty about keeping the gummint out of their medicare and waved badly spelled signs for an hour or two and then went home to watch FOX News, clean their guns and wait for their next social security cheque--the Wall Street occupiers are mostly people of working age who would rather be working. Some of so-called professional protestors or full-time activists, some are  college students, some are returned vets, some are just regular people with nothing left to lose, but most of them would much rather be working a paying job than freezing their butts off and getting threatened with a macing in the park.
No, the main threat to the occupy movement at this point seems to be the movement itself. You can only live in the parks and public squares for so long without bathrooms. The democratic nature of the movement can only be hijacked so many times by malcontents, purity trolls, single-issue hostage-takers and anarchists before the organization starts to pull itself apart. And don't lets get started on the drummers. As in any bottom-up movement, the center cannot hold indefinitely and as in any liberal movement where everyone's opinion is given equal time and consideration from the moderate to the most radical, cohesion has limited lifespan before groups start to splinter.
I think the movement is making their point, but would be better off to push hard while they still have momentum in the short term for some kind of concession in Washington that would let them declare victory and go home before attrition and cold weather whittle down their numbers or the powers that be decide that the short term PR problems a violent sweep by riot cops would bring is a lesser evil than the PR nightmare of Occupy Wall Street carrying on through Christmas.
One possible move the occupiers around the country should consider is a collective march on Washington or Wall Street in the style of the Bonus Army. You think the 1% are worried now, wait and see the panic when a million or so people from around the country converge on a single power center in numbers that would overwhelm any possible police response
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both need braaaaaaains

There is a rare seasonly-themed event this week that I would love to attend, You don't often see seasonally themed events for political wonks, but this one promises to be a classic
Daniel Drezner, a professor at the  Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University is speaking about his latest book at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo tonight. His latest book being Theories of International Politcs and Zombies.
I haven't read it (yet) but thanks to my extensive study of political science and repeated views of The Walking Dead, I have learned to tell the two apart. The trick is that one is a staggering, putrid, rotten, mindless creature that destroys anything it can touch and has a seemingly insatiable appetite for human flesh, the other is a zombie.
Leave your jokes about the UN, the G20, the Commonwealth, the conservative base, the GOP leadership race and the undead in the comments.
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In other news, the sun set in the west today and is widely expected to rise in the east tomorrow...

I'm shocked, just shocked that Christie Blatchford said something stupid, mean-spirited and offensive about not-police people who work hard to help people in need.That hasn't happened since her last column.
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I smell Nobel prize!

Dear Nobel prize panel,
Never mind handing out prizes for curing cancer or ending war, a solution has been found for the greatest modern plague known to the western world: idiot trolls on internet comment threads. 
While this blog has largely been free of such dumbassery, such people have long since ruined the comment threads at any major media outlet from the Globe&Mail to Youtube (possibly the stupidest, most ill-informed and downright hateful commenters anywhere outside of the right-wing echo chamber blogs coughsmalldeadanimalscough)
All hail the wonder that is OUTKUBE!

your truly,
Rev.Paperboy

P.S. Sorry for not writing to you in Swedish or Norwegian, but since you usually give the literature prize to someone writing in English, I figure you must all be fluent.

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Viva the usual suspects!

92 years old and he is still fighting for the 99%. His machine "surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." FSM bless Pete Seeger and his fellow travellers!


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the birth of the tea party movement

Before Archie Bunker made bigotry just another endearing trait of old white guys, like flatulence or Republicanism, there was Joe.


While Archie Bunker was eventually redeemed and learned to think past his prejudices and was, in reality, a very clever move by Norman Lear to subvert conservative bigotry, "Joe" was a little uh, darker. The sad part is, today's Tea Party Conservative thinks of Joe as a hero and seem to view the movie as a documentary. And FSM knows, today's so-called centerists like David Brooks and the Sunday morning talks show types love to punch the dirty hippies.

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Friday blues!

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I'm pretty sure this is one of the signs of the apocalypse

Holy Shhhhhhhhhatner!


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Don't know if I got the job, but it was a swell interview

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Stay klassy Flyers fans

Ah the city  of  brotherly love. We knew Philly sports fans hated Santa Claus, but who would have imagined that they would boo an anti-cancer campaign?
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Hipster music fail

So I'm watching Saturday Night Live for the first time in ages and Ben Stiller, whom I generally enjoy, is doing an admirable job as host and I'm enjoying the Zoolander  gags and Weekend Update is pretty good and then the musical guest comes on. A band called Foster the People.  And I'm thinking, meh, a bunch of skinny white dudes in sorta asymetrical haircuts that look like they have very carefully cultivated the suburban casual milqtoast nerd-chic look. Guitar, bass, a couple of  eighties-sounding keyboards, in fact they have a very retro-new wave kinda sound,  very dense wash of echo-y repetitive riffs with incomprehensible lyrics sung in a slightly over-theatrical way. Not my cup of tea, but hey, I'm an old fart now and maybe this is what the kids are into when they aren't playing Xbox and wondering if we really have always been at war with Afghanistan. The band has a certain angsty, Human League, Radiohead kinda charm in a pretentious way. Then I notice the horn section is mic'ed and that they appear to be miming a keyboard line, hmmmmmm. Then I hear it, that high pitched honking whine of a soprano or maybe alto sax. The camera pans back and there he is, the biggest selling instrumental artist of the modern era, which is to say of all time - Kenneth Bruce Gorelick.
No, he has not been added as an ironical sampled aside to give the band ironical hipster cred, he is there, on stage blowing a smooth jazz solo that immediately makes me wonder if I have enough scented candles in the house? why do I suddenly want a mayonaise and wonderbread sandwich and a glass of luke-warm near-beer? Is my favorite colour taupe or beige? which floor of this office tower the accounting department is on and hey, how did I get in this elevator any way?
What the hell is this? Was Chuck Mangione all booked up? This stuff makes Ray Coniff and look edgy and hardcore.
That whirring sound I can hear is probably John Coltrane spinning in his grave.
Foster the People - the stench of boring suckitude is upon you!
Repent, and do an album of Sly and the Family Stone covers with Bootsy Collins before it is too late for you to be saved!
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