Angry Racist White People - Not just in America! (...I kid America, I kid)

Woman goes on a super NSFW racist rant on a British tram, while holding her little kid in her lap.

Alex, you love This is England, which is set in the 1980s. But the reframing of English history as one of a noble people being cheated out of what is rightfully theirs by foreigners is alive and well - and indeed, exacerbated in hard economic times. The rise of the British National Party (BNP) is a testament to this.

Here's an excellent TV doc that aired last year in England on the psychology and narrative framing of far-right extremism among young Britons called, explicitly enough: Young, Angry and White (it's on youtube, I hope it plays outside the UK).

Unguarded Weapons in Libya

Human Rights Watch video on abandoned weapons stashes in the Lybian desert, unguarded and uncounted....

Occupy Wall Street - Chris Hedges shuts down CBC Kevin O'Leary

CBC interviewer pnoed by journalist, author and professor Chris Hedges.

CBC's Kevin O'Leary: "Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but you sound like a left-wing nutbar". So professional.

Interesting side note: The Hurt Locker opened with a quote from Chris Hedge's book War is a Force that Gives us Meaning (2002): "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Anonymous has a flair for the dramatic

They got Stephen Hawkins' hot British girlfriend to narrate.

Thoughts on the "Occupy" movement?

Britain vs America

The debate ends here.

Alex, Alex, Alex...You know what the problem here is?

You're just not a good young liberal white person. I love you and all, but there it is.
I can't have a dialogue with someone who works for a living, who pays these taxes I wish to disperse into the ether of human need, who has no aspirations that involve graduate school, or marrying an indie-ish chick with bangs (and perhaps an ironic tattoo). You may have gone to an Ivy League School, and wish to live by a body of water one day, but that's incidental... it's all incidental (Plus I think Wharton is like a small island of not-Ivyness in the otherwise beautiful clear Blue of the archipelago).

You don't even drink coffee, for fuck's sake.

All you need to know is that I am a sociologist -- it is inscribed in the genealogy of my very profession to know what's best for poor people (this is also, incidentally, inherent to my whiteness ...Double-Rainbow.)

I work with immigration detainees, I am sensitive to the injustice of the world, and I am all 'round a more advanced person.

So just trust me on these things, ok?

( I know baba's with me on this. Hey, bro, facebook me)

And where exactly will Bernie get this money?

Unfortunately Bernie Sanders doesn't know what he's talking about.

Gov't has no money. Gov't is broke. It has trillions in deficits (it borrowed money, then spent it, and now has no more. Worst, since the gov't has been doing this for so long, it now can't function without this borrowed money)

One of two things will happen:

1) Out-of-control government get reigned in by people who understand that now is the time to act before things get catastrophic (the tea party movement thing)
2) The government will go bankrupt

The consequences of (2) are much more serious than taking Pell Grants away from grad studends

Bernie's leftist arguments sound nice in theory but don't apply to the real world.

Here are some realists:




And if you have time for some real clear thinking

Bernie Sanders -- Bernie, Fucking, Sanders

So what is one way to go forward, other than savage cuts for programs for the most vulnerable people in this country? (...)

Why does anyone think it is moral or right to move towards deficit reduction on the backs of the weak and the vulnerable? I understand -- and I know something about politics -- I do understand that the parents of kids who are in Head Start do not make large campaign contributions, and I know that the senior citizens of thic ountry who need some help for social security do not make large campaign contributions -- I undersrtand that. I understand that college students desperately trying to go through college on a Pell Grant do not make large campaign contributions. But there is a sense of morality here that we have to deal with, and I think it makes no sense, I think it is immoral, I think it is bad economics to balance the budget on the backs of working families while we give continued tax breaks to those people who don't need it.

Caracas, Venezula: Squatters living in abandoned sky-scraper

Louis CK partakes in a radio interview with Donald Rumsfeld

"Why wouldn't you let him answer if he was a lizard?"

Oh no you didn't....

So, um... this guy is awesome

Bush on Bush

I stumbled on this, and it's just ridiculous :)

Happiness and Policy

Irish Journalism

Maps from 1942 Imagine an Axis Invasion of the United States

For several months after the US entry into World War II, Americans feared air raids or even invasions of the continental United States by Germany and Japan. An article in the March 2, 1942 issue of Life magazine suggested several possible invasion routes that Axis forces might take. These include a Germany landing at Norfolk, Virginia supported by fifth columnists hidden in the US. At the link, you can view maps of a few other fanciful scenarios.

More maps at the Link

NOTE that on this map, it is posited that a "Fifth Column" in the United States would be providing support for the Axis from within the territory of the US. Who are these native insurgents? German-Americans, Italian-American, and Japanese-Americans....

This was the stated rationale for the mass internment of members of all these groups in both the US and Canada.

How to hide your Nobel Prize (from bad guys)

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of the German physicists Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from confiscating them. The German government had prohibited Germans from accepting or keeping any Nobel Prize after the jailed peace activist Carl von Ossietzky had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935. De Hevesy placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation who recast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck (Ref: Wikipedia, of course!)

Militainment

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

I don't know if you guys watch the Daily Show, or were aware of the "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" that was being held over the weekend in D.C. (and that drew 250,000 people). But it happened. And I wish I had been there.

It has gotten quite a bit of coverage already, even in the British press.

Here are some of my personal favorite shots from the rally (I'll probably keep adding them as they are published...).

In case the connection isn't immediately clear, it's a tongue-in-cheek (though I would contend still significant and serious) answer to the "Rally to Restore Honor" that Glenn Beck et al. held a couple of months ago (need I remind you?).

Prison Economics Help Drive Arizona Immigration Law

An investigation by NPR has some interesting/depressing things to say about the intersection of private prison companies, political lobbying, and the drafting of immigration law, notably in the fine state of Arizona.

The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.
Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about. NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry...

The full article is available here.