Your Happening World (22)

Activism, Linky Linky, Race, Sleaze
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What happens in Austin, Texas when you babysit your black grandchild as a white grandfather. Hint: not a happy story.

NHS “reform: “Cameron’s put his political credibility on the line, not for ideological or populaist reasons, but to ensure McKinely’s bottom line”. Do read the linked Daily Mail article to show how even a reliable rightwing newspaper is opposed to this tomfoolery.

Why is birth control the Catholic Church’s last stand?

“That no anarchist ever taught us to play Smear the Queer is entirely besides the point.”

“The actual circumstances of the raid on the Sun’s hacks may be up for debate. I think they’re pretty standard for today’s exciting world of high profile send a message coppering, but that may be because I’m a bit too used to living in the kind of authoritarian pro-business society that the Sun has always campaigned for. This is also why I’m a bit baffled by the people who seem to think that we’ll ‘lose something’ when it goes. ‘What will remain’ is the problem.

Why a two state solution will fail

Israel Apartheid state, Israel/Palestine
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A map of the West Bank Palestinian territories re-imagined as an archipelo

What would the Palestinian controlled territories on the West Bank look like if completely isolated from the rest of the West Bank? That’s what Julien Bousac wanted to show with the above map, of the Palestinian territories as a group of islands:

Mr Boussac took advantage of the resulting archipelago effect “to use typical tourist maps codes (mainly icons) to sharpen the contrast between the fantasies raised by seemingly paradise-like islands and the Palestinian Territories grim reality.” The map does have a strong vacationy vibe to it – but whether that is because of the archipelago-shaped subject matter, or due to the cheerful colour scheme is a matter for debate.

It shows how much the reality differs from what politicians imagine when they blithly talk about a Palestinian controlled West Bank. It also shows how unrealistic the idea of a two state solution is. The only really coherent piece of land that the Palestinians possess is Gaza and that can be turned into a huge open air prison by the IDF at will. Instead, what needs to happen is to recreate Israel and Palestina as a true democratic state no longer based on Apartheid ideals.

(Via Vuijlsteke.)

London’s killer app

Funny, Life under Capitalism, UK politics
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In the comments at Blood & Treasure, Dsquared explains why banks threatening to leave London don’t have to be taken too seriously:

In actual fact, the thing that keeps everyone bolted down to the UK with little hope of escape, is that amazingly important national intangible asset called “the commercial common law of England & Wales”. Any time anything goes wrong, or when you’re drawing up documentation to make sure it doesn’t, it’s amazingly useful to be able to make use of all those hundreds of years of precedent. It’s the difference between a well-designed high level programming language, and having to write all your own functions from scratch.

A lot of the reason for not shifting out to the suburbs (for trading at least) is simply telecoms infrastructure. A hell of a lot of the IT talent that’s gone into the City over the last twenty years has gone into the building of what amounts to a very fast, very very reliable specialised telecom system (to replace SWIFT, the previously existing very fast, very very reliable specialised telegram and telex system).

Toughness

New Labour, UK politics
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Chris Bertram is annoyed with Ed ‘N Ed:

In an attempt to demonstrate their credentials as the takers of “tough decisions”, British Labour leader Ed Miliband (whom I backed as leader) and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls have been telling the world that a future Labour government can’t guarantee to reverse Tory public expenditure cuts, and favour a public sector pay freeze, and even pay cuts for public sector workers (to save jobs, apparently). Well it is a funny world where a sign of your toughness is your willingness to pander to the right-wing commentariat.

Toughness in political jargon has always been about how much you are willing to screw the defenceless and poor, how much ship you’re willing to heap up on those at the bottom of society. It’s never about taking on multibillionaire newspaper owners, or forcing harsh new taxes on banks that threaten to move out of the City if their directors have to pay so much as a parking fine or anything else that actually takes guts. Instead we get this whole charade in which a supposedly leftwing politician has to regretfully acknowledge that it’s no longer realistic to expect that…, that the current economic climate makes it imperative to rethink…, that the challenges facing the country leave him no choice but… all to appear realistic and tough to an audience that, as Chris dryly notes, is not his friend in the first place.

It’s easy to see what the rightwing wurlitzer gets out of it; the pre-emptive nobbling of a rival to their champion; while for “impartial” journalists it’s at least a man bites dog story even if this particular man has bitten more often than even the most aggresive rottweiler has managed in its lifetime, but why does an Ed Balls or Milliband join in?

Obviously because they’re not as leftist as their supporters would like them to be and this provides good covering for them to move rightwards; it’s not that they want to move, it’s that they’re forced to. Whether or not anyone believes them is unimportant: it’s the appearance that counts, the willingness to participate in this theatre.

Yo, is this racist?

Funny, Race
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Finally a site that tells you if you’re racist or not. Of course, if you have to ask, you probably are. The guy behind it got a wicked sense of humour and I especially like his answer to the white supremacists who just found the site:

Now, I just wanted to say that, by and large, I will be ignoring your shit and not giving you a platform and definitely not a dialog on your ideas. Mainly this is because, at the end of the day, you’ve already lost. However flawed the world is now, you’re never going to achieve whatever open, racist, white supremacist world you so desperately want, and it’s not going to be particularly fun or useful to swear at you racist fucks.

Think of it this way, at some point in the future, when your kids, or your grandkids, or your great-grandkids speak of you, the nicest way they’ll be able to do it is to ignore the central thing that defines you, your racism. That’s at best. Obviously most likely you’ll be the scary, embarrassing, racist piece of trash that the family wishes never existed.

For more on Andrew Ti, the guy who runs the site, read this interview at Colorlines.