jump to navigation

What you want to say – 21st December 2016 December 21, 2016

Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.
trackback

As always, following on Dr. X’s suggestion, it’s all yours, “announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose”, feel free.

Comments»

1. Tomboktu - December 21, 2016

If the letters in Frank Kelly’s “12 Days of Christmas” were written by Nuala to Gobnait, does that make it the first Irish lesbian song?

Liked by 1 person

Reply
2. GW - December 21, 2016

Silicon Valley’s power brokers want you to think they’re different. But they’re just average robber barons.

A good article against the fetishisation of silicon-valley capitalists.

Let us state the obvious: None of these men are Roman Emperors, and they haven’t got the wherewithal to “blow up” anything but a stock market bubble. They are not Lex Luthors or Gandalfs or Stalins. Their products do not bring about revolutions. They are simply robber barons, JP Morgans and Andrew Mellons in mediocre T-shirts. I have no doubt that many are preternaturally intelligent, hardworking people, and it is a shame that they have dedicated these talents to the mundane accumulation of capital. But there is nothing remarkable about these men. The Pirates of Silicon Valley do not have imperial ambitions. They have financial ones.

The vast majority of Silicon Valley startups, the sort that project lofty missions and managed improbably lucrative IPOs despite never having graced the cover of The Economist or the frontal cortex of the president, work precisely like any other kind of mundane sales operation in search of a product: Underpaid cold-callers receive low wages and less job security in exchange for a foosball table and the burden of growing a company as quickly as possible so that it can reach a liquidation event. Owners and investors get rich. Managers stay comfortable. The employees get hosed. None of this is particularly original. At least the real robber barons built the railroads.

Liked by 1 person

Reply
3. roddy - December 21, 2016

I see the “Pakastani asylum seeker” who was blamed for the Berlin massacre is now released.Has it got to the stage now where anyone “foreign looking” is now an immediate suspect for racist police.It reminds me of a sketch from “not the nine oclock news” where PC Savage arrested a man for “possession of curly black hair and thick lips”!

Like

Reply
GW - December 21, 2016

I don’t think it’s that bad Roddy. At least not yet.

What happened was that someone followed the guy who got out of the drivers seat of the lorry on foot, and lost him after a couple of kilometers. Then the police arrested someone of that general description that the witness gave.

The Pakistani fellow ran away because he feared he might be implicated – so in that respect at least the false trail is due to the general suspicion of furriners and especially asylum seekers.

Berliners however are harder to frighten or rope into your standard racist narratives than others down in, say, Bavaria.

Spiegel has been reasonably good in reporting the whole thing.

Take a look at some of the short interviews of Berliners here.

We should never allow foreign-looking people, especially young-men, to come under general suspicion.

Says man on street.

The police are saying they expect to nab someone soon.

Like

Reply
GW - December 21, 2016

I intend to make a point of visiting at least one Christmas market before Christmas.

And to drink at least one more Glühwein in the open air 🙂

Like

Reply
GW - December 21, 2016

From die Zeit

Berlin public broadcaster rbb is reporting a further arrest took place early Wednesday morning. But in this instance, too, police do not believe the man detained to be the perpetrator.

rbb also reports that a struggle occurred in the cab of the semi-truck before the attack, and police believe the perpetrator is injured. They have also secured traces of DNA in the cab.

Police have spent the last hours searching all hospitals in Berlin and the neighboring state of Brandenburg. Investigators have also found more concrete clues about the person who committed Monday’s attack.

A police spokesperson denied the reports and noted that a press conference is planned for this afternoon.

Like

Reply
Alibaba - December 21, 2016

German police have offered a reward of €100,000, for information leading to the arrest of the new suspect of the attack, who they named as Anis Amri, a man whose asylum application was rejected. Police reportedly have discovered identity documents of his under the seat of the truck used in the attack. Didn’t foreign nationals kindly leave their passports in other attacks elsewhere too? A sniff in the wind of scandal perhaps.

Like

Reply
fergal - December 21, 2016

Snap, Alibaba- isn’t that just odd to say the least? Leaving behind your ID card etc? Have no idea what to make of this?
On a lighter note I’m waiting for the foreign affairs specialists on social media to explain how 12 is absolutely nothing compared to the dozens dead in Mexico or how Berlin has been bombing Syria non- stop for the last 30 years now..
GW- great to see Berliners keeping their heads- looks like your ‘man in the street’ is the only person talking sense today.
Roddy what struck me after the Paris attacks on November last year was how one of the guys got back to Brussels and wasn’t taken in although he had been stopped at the border- looks like the police weren’t operating on a (any brown face’ will do basis- which is reassuring to say the least.

Like

Reply
4. Michael Carley - December 21, 2016

May says Irish citizens’ rights in UK up for discussion.

Like

Reply
dublinstreams - December 21, 2016

Kenny and Flanagan have rejected this as a misunderstanding by May. I don’t believe her threat.

Like

Reply
5. sonofstan - December 21, 2016

Still the phoney war and May may be the Chamberlain of the story.

Like

Reply
6. fergal - December 21, 2016

Kathy Sheridan in the IT has an article entitled ‘Beware the seductive simplicity of Apollo House occupation’- well, well, well…
Is this the same Kathy Sheridan that wondered aloud so long ago why Ireland doesn’t have a Syriza or Podemos?- Kathy mustn’t be aware of Barcelona’s mayor’s recent past on occupations etc.
There are now 30+ homeless people in Apollo House- where would they be if the occupation hadn’t happened? Does Kathy know?
Too simple- she claims we need professionals to cater for this fragile population- blah, blah, blah..can somebody send her the abc on direct action?
I think Kathy in a very subtle even compassionate way- is arguing for the status quo- let the professionals do it- they know best. Aren’t ‘home sweet home’ proving the very opposite let the amateurs do it they know best- in this case let the homeless do it- they know best.

Liked by 1 person

Reply
Aonrud ⚘ - December 21, 2016

I like this sentence in the RTÉ report on the High Court case:

Lawyers for the receivers said they had found it difficult to affix the court papers to the gates of Apollo House as directed by the court, as there was a large concert at the building at lunchtime yesterday.

Like

Reply
sonofstan - December 21, 2016

RTE keep trying to get Peter McVerry to condemn the Apollo House action and, while not involving himself in it, he keeps refusing to say anything critical. Have they noticed he’s a jesuit?

Liked by 3 people

Reply
dublinstreams - December 21, 2016

are the homeless doing it?

Like

Reply
fergal - December 21, 2016

Yes, in the sense that they are actually occupying Apollo House..

Like

Reply
sonofstan - December 21, 2016

The basic assumption in much of the reportage is that ‘homeless’ also means incapable of agency or even subjectivity. You exist to be ‘helped’.

Like

Reply
dublinstreams - December 21, 2016

i thought it was the ‘Irish Housing Network’

Like

Reply
7. CL - December 21, 2016

‘A High Court judge has ruled that the occupants of Apollo House in Dublin must vacate the property, but delayed the execution of the injunction until after Christmas.’
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/apollo-house-judge-says-occupants-must-vacate-in-january-1.2913959

Like

Reply
8. Mike Atkinson - December 21, 2016

I’ve found a strange Irish political website that’s been running for a while, called Political Irish

The website seems to be obsessed with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and has an admiring article on Julius Evola.

Like

Reply
Mike Atkinson - December 21, 2016

Also, the forum has a lot of links to Breitbart articles, although some of its posters seem to be ambiguous toward BB.

Like

Reply
GW - December 23, 2016

Worse than bb their major source of information seems to be the British Daily Mail.

Like

Reply
dublinstreams - December 21, 2016

it was set up coinciding with a time that poltiics.ie was having major technical trouble/neglect, but has been totally swamped by racists because few other people post on it, (which nearly could be said for p.ie too :?)

Like

Reply
9. Starkadder - December 22, 2016

Speaking of right-wing websites, the far-right is launching a new social network called Gab, endorsed by white nationalist Richard B. Spencer:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/18/gab-the-social-network-for-the-alt-right?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Like

Reply
10. lcox - December 22, 2016

Just a quick note that the latest issue of the social movements journal Interface 8/2 is now available free online at interfacejournal.net/current/. The theme is social movement auto/biographies but as always the issue also includes general items and reviews.

Like

Reply
11. sonofstan - December 22, 2016

The fascist leader types are regularly called hysterical. No matter how their attitude is arrived at, their hysterical behaviour fulfils a certain function. Though they actually resemble their listeners in most respects, they differ from them in an important one: they know no inhibitions in expressing themselves. They function vicariously for their inarticulate listeners by doing and saying what the latter would like to do, but wither cannot or dare not. [……] the fascist agitators are taken seriously because they risk making fools of themselves.

Hitler was like, not in spite of his cheap antics, but because of them, bacause of his false tones and his clowning. They are observed as such and appreciated. […..] We find similar manifestations regularly in drunkards who have lost their inhibitions. The sentimentality of the common people is by no means primitive, unreflecting emotion. On the contrary, it is pretense, a fictitious, shabby imitiation of real feeling, often self- conscious and slightly contemptuous of itself. The fictitiousness is the life element of the fascist propaganda performance.

Adorno – Anti-Semitism and Fascist Propaganda (1946)

Like

Reply
GW - December 23, 2016

And Kershaw’s biography of Hitler (it’s much more than that) shows the man to have been an affectless shell apart from his rages. And sentimentality towards dogs.

Like

Reply
12. Starkadder - December 22, 2016

This made me laugh: people are wondering if Ted Nugent will play
Tonald Drump’s inauguration and one commentator on the AV Club
said about Nuge:

He has a history of refusing government service.

http://www.avclub.com/article/celine-dion-reportedly-joins-lineup-stars-who-wont-247714

Liked by 1 person

Reply
13. sonofstan - December 23, 2016

The Irish Times today has a picture of people queuing for food parcels at the capuchin day centre. From the front with faces clearly identifiable. As far as the IT is concerned, these people are objects of pity or horror, not subjects who might be mortified at being plastered all over the front of the paper.

Liked by 2 people

Reply
EWI - December 23, 2016

The IT has a history of being ‘respectable scumbags’.

After the 1916 Rising, they ran the names, addresses and employments of every prisoner and internee. The RIC and DMP also dropped in to landlords and employers to try to emphasise the broad hint (Harry Boland’s sister talks about this in her BMH witness statement).

Liked by 1 person

Reply
14. roddy - December 23, 2016

The media basically have no manners.As most people will know,Martin McGuinness is battling some sort of illness at the minute.Last Monday he appeared on TV,noticeably frail looking.Both BBC and UTV zoomed their cameras in on his face and back of his head to highlight this.I have not seen cameras so closely scrutinising anyone so blatently before.

Like

Reply
WorldbyStorm - December 23, 2016

roddy, I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope he’s on the mend soon.

Like

Reply
dublinstreams - December 23, 2016

I think I would have to go with the American approach with this, and we need to know as much as possible, I think the Lenihan situation where the Finance Minister was ill during a financial crisis, if the media know then markets know then citizens need to know, but that is only if he has been fully disagnosed, maybe they are still doing test as was refferred to last week.

Like

Reply
15. EWI - December 23, 2016

Applies here, too:

Republicans in power balloon the deficit with tax cuts to the rich every time they’re in power. The great inventor of fiscal responsibility, Ronald Reagan, began this and it will never end. It’s impossible to convince the press that the Republicans are full of shit about deficits, and it’s only slightly less impossible to convince most Democrats of it.

The Republicans claim to be the austerians, and the Democrats actually are. The rich get nice things, nobody else does, and then we wonder why voters aren’t happy. And, no, that voters don’t necessarily vote logically about this stuff doesn’t refute that fact. What they hear is one side saying that true austerity is the path, and the other side saying that austerity light is. Not enough nice things come with either, so better to go with the true austerity than the fake austerity.

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2016/12/zombie-narratives.html

Like

Reply
16. dublinstreams - December 23, 2016

Michael Martin said in the Dail on October 25th that

The Dáil rose on 21 July and resumed on 27 September. In July we were all told major works were to be undertaken to physically refurbish the Chamber, but that did not happen. Therefore, it transpired that there was no necessity for the longer than usual summer recess.

https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2016-10-25a.84#g162

which sounded like a remarkable claim considering the discussions over the amount of legislation this government has progressed, I emailed Michael Martin and Fianna Fail about but have gotten no reply or explaination, clarification or retraction. I ask the Oireachtas about it and got the reply below,

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 1:19 PM,

As you’re probably aware there were quite extensive works undertaken in the Dáil chamber during the summer recess (read more here and here). The quote may reference the wider restoration work to be completed in Leinster House but this would not have impacted on Dáil sitting dates. Perhaps Michael Martin’s office may be able to clarify the quote however.

Thanks,

Best regards,

Press Officer
Communications | Broadcasting | Web
Houses of the Oireachtas
Dublin 2

the Irish Times, the Irish Mirror, the Independent and the Sunday Times all quoted Michael Martin without clarification ( only the Irish Times added a qualifying sentence some hours later), I can’t get any of them to either stand over publishing the quote without clarification or make a correction.

Its need to be actively corrected if what Michael Martin said is not true.

Like

Reply
17. Starkadder - December 24, 2016

I found this infographic on Cracked.com, of all places!) listing US news sources by political stance and factual accuracy:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-reasons-fake-news-killed-facts-in-2016/

Anyone interested in doing a similar graphic for Irish news sources?

Like

Reply
18. Tomboktu - December 26, 2016
Alibaba - December 26, 2016

George Michael’s death got me thinking about how impressed I was about his actions challenging Sony Music for the way they treat entertainers.

Wikipedia says:

“Panayiotou and others v Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd. ([1994] ChD 142) was a contract and entertainment law case before the High Court of Justice’s Chancery Division. The plaintiff, entertainer George Michael, argued that his recording contract constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade. Michael alleged that the defendant had failed to promote his album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 with due vigour as punishment when the artist decided to downplay his status as a sex symbol. Michael described his situation as “professional slavery” because his contract required that he produce music and cede the copyright to Sony for many years, leaving him no control over how the music would be marketed nor placing a reciprocal requirement that the label invest in promotion. Had the case succeeded, it might have curtailed the practise of signing artists to multi-album contracts. The court wholly rejected the claims.”

RIP to this person of great stature.

Liked by 1 person

Reply
sonofstan - December 26, 2016

Son of immigrants. Imagine british pop under UKIP rules. Unlistenable with prejudice.

Liked by 1 person

Reply
WorldbyStorm - December 26, 2016

Not really my kind of music but he was a character

Liked by 1 person

Reply
6to5against - December 26, 2016

I thought Faith was a really good song. Made me see him in a different light. A lot of the rest passed me by as music, but as a masterclass in how to respond to sexual ‘shaming’, ‘Outside’ had its importance too.

It also makes me think how pop music once had a bigger meaning than that espoused by the x factor: it could be light and breezy while still being the work of genuinely creative artists.

Liked by 1 person

Gearóid - December 27, 2016

Former member of the Young Communist League.

Like

19. Starkadder - December 26, 2016

A bit of a ruckus at Drexel University, Philadelphia. The university has issued a statement condemning a Professor there, George Ciccariello-Maher, after the latter issued a satirical tweet against white nationalists:

Defend George Ciccariello-Maher

Liked by 1 person

Reply
20. Tomboktu - December 27, 2016
21. Michael Carley - December 27, 2016

Carrie Fisher.

Like

Reply
WorldbyStorm - December 27, 2016

Just saw that. Bloody hell. George Michael was an even more remarkable person than had been realised, Fisher was a great character too. And then there’s poor old Rick Parfitt of Status Quo who had a very rough year of it before dying just before Christmas. What a year this has been.

Like

Reply

Leave a comment