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What you want to say – 19th April Week 16, 2017 April 19, 2017

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

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1. CL - April 19, 2017

Is the urban/rural divide, rather than class or identity, shaping politics?”

“In the 2016 election, virtually every large urban center and many small ones — white Boise and majority-black Baltimore, wealthy San Francisco and beaten-down Detroit, sprawling sunwashed megalopoli and shrinking union strongholds — rejected the man who became president, often by yawning margins….
Conflict between urban and rural areas is a worldwide phenomenon. The Brexit vote shocked Londoners into the realization that they are outnumbered. The right-wing party of Marine Le Pen represents rural France’s revenge on Paris.’
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/the-urban-rural-divide-matters-more-than-red-vs-blue-state.html

“The growing divide between urbanites and rural residents is shaping politics everywhere, from Brexit to the rise of Donald Trump. On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan received a mandate for more personalised rule from most of his country, but not from its big cities….
The gap between the big cities and the heartland, which exists in most countries, isn’t just about globalisation and its spoils. It’s also about two different kinds of communal identity that are increasingly difficult to reconcile within polities.”
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-urbanrural-divide-shaping-politics-around-the-world-20170417-gvmknk.html

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sonofstan - April 19, 2017

“Conflict between urban and rural areas is a worldwide phenomenon. The Brexit vote shocked Londoners into the realization that they are outnumbered”

Hardly rural v urban in England and Wales though – the vast majority of the population is urban, but it was big/ rich urban centres v slightly smaller and poorer ones.

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CL - April 20, 2017

You make a good point. Maybe its big cities versus the rest.

Incidentally Trump hasn’t been back in NYC since he was inaugurated.

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Occasional Lurker - April 20, 2017

We are socialists so let’s look at it from that angle.

It’s not so much about islands of enlightened thinking in a sea of regression but islands of economic growth surrounded by areas of poorer economic growth.

Growth is becoming heavily a urban phenomenon. A city like London has closer economic links to new York and Hong Kong than it does to it’s supposed hinterland in England.

Same phenomenon of decay in America and France.

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Dr. X - April 21, 2017

Even with full automation and universal basic income we will still need someone to farm the land. So looking at it from a socialist angle means finding policies that can resonate with the rural masses (something I don’t recall the Irish left ever doing in my memory).

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RosencrantzisDead - April 21, 2017

Hydroponic farms contained in large sky-scrapers.

Less meat production as it does massive damage to the environment and is an inefficient use of cereals.

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yourcousin - April 21, 2017

Yes get rid of ranchers and move farmers into sky scrapers. That will win over the rural populations…

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RosencrantzisDead - April 21, 2017

Yes get rid of ranchers and move farmers into sky scrapers. That will win over the rural populations…

So humourless you even took this seriously. I am shaking my head…

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yourcousin - April 22, 2017

Irony of ironies the argument you put forward in jest has been put forward in all seriousness on this site. But if I misread you I apologize.

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2. sonofstan - April 21, 2017

Bumped into a long time acquaintance today in Smithfield and in the course of a wide-ranging conversation, I remarked that I thought that, in some ways at least, Ireland was now a more left wing country than the Uk. ‘Ah yeah’ says he, as if I had remarked that there was a grand stretch in the evening of something. Is this now a given?

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EWI - April 22, 2017

I’d think that’s more a product of how far right ‘England’ has gone. My cousin, married to an Englishman, has apparently been repeatedly told recently to ‘go back where you came from’.

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James - April 23, 2017

No hard right in Ireland. Unless you count the regular right.

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Occasional Lurker - April 23, 2017

We have the extreme shite rather than the extreme right

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EWI - April 23, 2017

No hard right in Ireland. Unless you count the regular right.

We’re lucky enough to still be relatively non-aligned and therefore uninvolved in militarism which might give rise to the sort of veteran killers that the hard right elsewhere relies on.

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3. Michael Carley - April 21, 2017

Not political, unless it’s about techno-futurism. My department is currently hosting interviews of A-Level students who have applied for scholarships to fund them in engineering. I passed one of them in the corridor, where he was sitting outside the interview room waiting his turn, and was running his small robot which was solving a Rubik’s cube in a near-optimal number of moves.

I learned to solve the cube when it came out, and now somebody at school can build the hardware to optically read the cube and manipulate it, to solve it in a near-minimum number of moves.

Maybe this should in the good news thread.

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sonofstan - April 21, 2017

Do you reckon he’ll send his robot to lectures so he can optimise his own time?

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Michael Carley - April 21, 2017

Any student who can do that doesn’t need to be going to lectures.

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4. roddy - April 21, 2017

Nationalist areas of the north buck the trend with regard to rural areas.Voters there have no problem with SF’S pro immigration stance or same sex marriage for instance.They also disregard right wing attacks on SF from the various “pro life ” groups and support their efforts to mitigate against welfare reform etc.My own mid ulster constituency elected the most Left wing MP in the commons over 40 years ago on 2 occasions (Bernadette Devlin)People here have a natural empathy with “fairness” which may not be ideologically left wing but is definitely the opposite to prevailing attitudes in England.

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CL - April 21, 2017

“As a rural person I keep telling you land is important – who owns the land owns what is built on it, owns what is dug out of it and increasingly fewer and fewer people own the land that is this planet….
If we have a right to live and if we have a right to life then we must have a right to the resources by which we can survive. And to have a right to those resources we must have ownership of land, ownership of water and ownership of the means to the production of wealth….
nation states are merely the puppets of corporate organisations and we are in the process of seeing, both North and South, of seeing this nation sold into the hands of those corporate powers without so much as a whisper. -Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.
https://rfe123.org/bernadette-devlin-mcaliskey-field-day-seamus-deane-honorary-lecture-transcript-a-terrible-state-of-chassis-30-september-2016

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5. Jolly Red Giant - April 22, 2017

March for Justice in support of Jobstown defendants tomorrow

Statement by 43 TDs and Senators about the attempt by the DPP to stack the jury against the Jobstown defendants

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ar scáth a chéile - April 22, 2017

if ever a trial warranted on public interest grounds walll to wall line by line coverage this is it. Not sure we’re going to get it in the mainstream media .

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6. sonofstan - April 23, 2017

Macron Le Pen run off.

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WorldbyStorm - April 23, 2017

A real pity the left didn’t make a better showing and it will be interesting to see how matters proceed but polling does see Le Pen defeated against him. I’m a bit surprised that he was actually ahead in the end.

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sonofstan - April 23, 2017

If they had *normal * PR, then Melanchion +Hamon = 26%, Could conceivably be in the lead in the next to last count (if they had normal PR of course, people would vote differently).
I have to say, I was a bit scared of a Melanchion/ lePen run off, in that Gaullists/ Republicans wouldn’t be able to vote for him and would stay at home, and might even prefer herself. Whereas presumably now she’s toast, and the French will get a taste of Blairism.

The BBC, ever ready with a trivialising list, suggests his policy positions including banning phones in school and giving young people a €500 ‘culture grant’. Try running with either of those in the UK or Ireland!

Again, in Vive le Difference territory, the 35 hour week is a live issue.

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Occasional Lurker - April 23, 2017

Blairism after a dose of Blairism. They went from a touchy feely take about the worker while imposing austerity president to most likely a touch feely talk about entrepreneurs and aspirations while going pro business the whole hog.

A lot of people are going to struggle as they drop Macrons name.

No point in crying about Melenchon but good God it would have been better than this.

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7. Occasional Lurker - April 23, 2017

There is a good posting how febrile the “uk” political scene is right now on slugger.

Labour is dead and the Tories are the new opposition. One commenter wrote:
“Here’s a different take. Even if the poll is true and is borne out, the reason the Tories will make these inroads is by committing wholeheartedly to being THE party of the Union.

Politics in Scotland will therefore permanently rupture from that in England, along a Unionist-Nationalist axis rather than a Left-right axis.”

Interesting stuff but not quite true that is not left right. A permanent rupture.

Signs of dramatic Tory revival causes new headache for Sturgeon’s Indyref 2 strategy

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8. ivorthorne - April 23, 2017

We’re all familiar with conspiracy theories. It’s hard not to stumble across them online and they are usually pretty easy to dismiss. We’re all also probably familiar with the fact that politicians and intelligence agencies will use any technique they can get away with to affect regime change.

How are readers of this site trying to manage the job of discriminating between crazy conspiracy theories and actual attempts to manipulate foreign elections by the likes of Russia and the US?

I read an article today about possible links between Assange, Trump, Russia and Farage. Somebody like Le Pen in France receives money from Russian state-favoured banks. Putin is obviously in favor of certain candidates for election in certain countries but when you see people suggesting that some terrorist attacks might be false flag attacks or attacks facilitated by Russia, I’ll typically automatically dismiss them as outrageous. It’s the “automatic” part that I’m a little uneasy with.

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yourcousin - April 24, 2017

I wanted to respond before this disappears off the comments ticker, but really need to sit down at my computer to do it justice.

I wish there was an easy answer. One of the main dangers today is finding the outlet that lines up ideologically and tells us what we want to hear. The other is the often times purposeful flooding of the news with bat shit crazy stuff, not designed to actually convince but just enough to sow doubt.

I guess after that use common sense and don’t be afraid to call bullshit though. I would be curious to what specifics you’re referring to though?

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