This Week in The Guardian #2
This week sees the nice the terrorists in Syria, the nasty terrorists in Africa and the danger of homemade tampons
Every week, on a Sunday, we like to highlight three or four stories that go full-Guardian, but don’t require an entire article of refutation.
We encourage reader-participation here, so if you come across something you feel should be included in the next edition either post a link below, or send us an e-mail.
Weaponising the LGBT vote
Both sides of the identity politics coin presented themselves in the Graun this week, both concerning LGBT rights and both concerning the Democratic Primaries.
To be brief, Warren is great and Bernie is shit.
In more detail, this article – ‘I felt seen for the first time’: why trans activists are rallying behind Elizabeth Warren – praises how open Warren is to the rights of transgender individuals. It doesn’t really go into the specifics, because those are hard, but suffice to say Warren made one transgender person feel listened to, so she’s great.
Meanwhile, Bernie praised Cuba – or, more accurately, suggested that in 60 years of governing the country, the Castro regime had managed to do one or two things right.
This brought down the hammer of an angry gay rights activist in the opinion piece “If Bernie Sanders thinks Cuba is worth defending, he should talk to gay dissidents”. Apparently post-Revolutionary Cuba was very homophobic. The author gives us one anecdote to prove it (he doesn’t cite any legislation since homosexuality was never outright illegal in Cuba, unlike both Britain and parts of the US at that time).
The Wikipedia article on gay rights in Cuba has a few telling quotes, such as:
Many of the progressive LGBT persons who remained in Cuba became involved in counter-revolutionary activities, independently or through the encouragement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and were jailed.
The author makes out that ALL gay men were detained or punished in Cuba, but that was not the case, it was only those who worked with the US to overthrow the government. Their crime was treason, not being gay.
There were some homophobic attitudes, of course there were, it was a majority Catholic nation in 1959, but the author is overstating the situation to score easy political points. Which is made obvious by what he refuses to discuss…such as healthcare.
The article doesn’t discuss healthcare at all – where Cuba’s nationalised medicine gives free hormone treatment or gender-reassignment surgeries to transgender individuals, and where the most successful (free) AIDS treatment program in the world doubtless saved the lives of many who, in the US would have died, gone bankrupt or both.
Neither article talks about class. Because that’s what identity politics is for, to cripple real class analysis with surface-level issues which distract from poverty, social security and healthcare. The Guardian is always the tip of that spear.
“The west ignores the growth of Islamist insurgents in Africa at its peril“
Simon Tisdall is never satisfied. It doesn’t matter how many troops Western countries have stashed around the globe, it doesn’t matter how much tax-payer money is turned into bombs and bullets, it doesn’t matter just how much of the third world is trampled by Western boots…it’s not enough. In the past he has essentially campaigned for wars against pretty much everyone he doesn’t like the look of, up to and including Russia.
But this week it’s about Africa. Pretty much all of it above the equator. They are struggling with a growth of “Islamist insurgents”, and the West needs to “do more” about it. Because the US having bases in nearly every country in Africa isn’t enough. Neither is the UN’s 13,000 strong “peacekeeping” force for the region. The only country doing something is good old France, thanks to their “colonialist ties”.
(Tisdall is perhaps the only person in Europe who seems to like Macron, drooling over his reign in columns like this, while the people that have to live under his government are busy burning their cities down in protest. Bizarre.)
Simon doesn’t say what “do more” means, but we can assume it involves people from here, going there and shooting at things. Also, he never once points out that these “al- Qaida affiliates” we should all be so scared of in Africa…are actually on our side in Syria. His doublethink is complete.
Speaking of Syria…
“The Guardian view on the assault on Idlib: the stakes are rising“
In case any of you needed to know the “Guardian view” on the situation in Idlib is Syria/Russia/Iran = bad, NATO/Turkey/Jihadi proxies = good. This particular anonymous editorial – which always have the ring of a copy-pasted memo from GCHQ – doesn’t deviate from that general theme.
Besides the usual guff (the world’s inaction this or refugees that, spurious statistics about hospital bombing) there are a couple of interesting thoughts on the escalating violence between Syrian/Russian militaries and the Turkish army:
The prospects of European or US support – beyond rhetoric – appear low […] The best-case scenario for Idlib may be that Turkey manages to preserve what is now left of the rebel-held area
It seems that US/UK or other NATO allies aren’t keen to get involved – but have shifted their proxies from the disposable rebels, to the equally disposable Erdogan.
Also, echoing last week’s message from Hasan Hasan, there is the very definite threat of “insurgency”:
But Idlib holds the government’s most committed opponents, and jihadist fighters are already planning for an insurgency. An opposition once contained in the province will probably move undercover.
Meaning, should Idlib fall, the US Empire and it’s “allies” will continue to fund terrorists in a bid to destabilise Syrian reconstruction efforts. Don’t hold out hope for Trump’s so-called “Syrian withdrawal”.
BONUS – Guardian headline of the week
For most of the week this was an easy choice, we decided to create this section entirely because of this headline:
A sustainable vagina revolution is under way [sic]. But beware homemade tampons
But then someone in the comments brought this to our attention:
My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity
…which means we have to declare it a tie.
* * *
All told, a busy week for The Guardian, we didn’t even touch on how social media is being weaponised by Mike Bloomberg or the fact too many rapists are acquitted in Britain (we don’t know if they’re guilty or not, but the author doesn’t care so why should we?). Did we miss any others? Tell us about them in the comments below, and keep an eye out for articles that should go in the next issue.
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/05/transphobia-row-leaves-scottish-poetry-scene-in-turmoil
This is actually a rather serious trend towards the ‘weaponising’ of language and the role of the ‘mob’ in society, which is worrying.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/elbow-bumps-and-footshakes-the-new-coronavirus-etiquette
Revealed! social etiquette in crisis! Strangely, the Guardian doens’t mention the draconian retrictions imposed on poor Julian Assange imprisoned in his glass dungeon.
Love the way you guys at Off-G punk the Garbage Wagon and their dedicated crew of low life dumpster divers. I mean how low can you get? Doing an article on homemade tampons has gotta be a race to the bottom. Can they get any lower? Tune in next week. Keep up the good work 🙂
A race to the front bottom, surely?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/03/fresh-call-for-oxford-dictionaries-to-change-sexist-definitions
I feel… uneasy about attempts by a tiny fraction, a zealous sliver, of the wider population, to micro-manage language like this and their use of ‘shaming’ as a rhetorical device to press their ideas down over the heads of everybody else. I think there’s a strong whiff of totalitarianism about this, hiding behind a veil of false ‘progressivism.’
Oh and thanks for this column OffG. It means I can now enjoy laughing at the Groaniad without having to read it at all.
My personal favourite this week is one from the Guardian’s “racism in an empty biscuit tin” school. Normally the Guardian has nothing positive to say about China, and no interest in the Chinese as they fail to fulfil the role of “hapless downtrodden victims” that feeds its narrative, but for once the Chinese, as the targets of a new bout of racism, deserve a bit of Guardian TLC.
Sensationalist media is exacerbating racist coronavirus fears. We need to combat it.
Damn those senasationalist media! Damn their sensationalist reporting, exacerbating racist coronavirus fears!
Unsurprisingly, the article does not contain one single example of any senasationalist media reporting at all, anywhere in the world. But it is rich in evidence of the veritable tsunami of racism that has followed…
“… there are reports of attendees at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s hospital refusing to allow Asian doctors to treat their kids.” There is one report (Guardian natch) containing one claim of one such incident (unverifiable).
But the real meat of the evidence comes later. British-born Chinese comedian Ken Cheng informs us that “99.999% of Chinese have now been victims of coronavirus racism…” This, according to the author, “underlines (should be the) pervasive and indiscriminate nature of the racism stemming from this outbreak…”
Naturally, the Guardian does not actually present any of Ken’s three weeks of carefully researched data, demonstrating that of the 80,000 Chinese students in the UK, all but 0.8 of one of them have already fallen victim of coronavirus racism. But to any would-be sceptic, they have an irrefutable response:
“You STUPID, BLINKERED, old white privilege MAN! A PROGRESSIVE COMEDIAN has said this on TWITTER! How could it possibly NOT be true!”
I would define sensationalist journalism as inventing a fake problem and then screeching about it until people start to get scared. Sensationalist media is exacerbating fears of coronavirus racism. We need to combat it…
And the Guardian long ago went beyond self-parody.
Meanwhile, as you infer, the MI6 Daily runs incessant anti-Chinese, anti-CCP and generally Sinophobic hate-trash, particularly from their pet Chinese compradore traitors, in Hong Kong, the USA or the UK. Obedient little Quislings on and all.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/02/russia-committed-war-crimes-in-syria-finds-un-report
Julian Borger showing his full Atlantic Council/ i.i / bell end credentials as the Groan throws up smoke as the end comes to the fukus in Syria.
Note the terrible rushed last paragraph.
Note the inspectors cited.
Note especially the citation of the UN report here when the Groan has totally ignored the report on Assange!
Hypocricy thy name is the Obsersive Groaniad.
And here is the follow up to that bollocks narrative manufacturing, more utter and complete bollocks
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/03/now-we-dont-have-to-be-afraid-syrian-family-turkey
Not a single ground report. Just a video from some father joking about the sound of gunfire with his child!
Good idea putting up gems, excellent!
“” Leaving it to Erdoğan was never going to work. The western democracies have a last chance to do the right thing in Syria: manufacture and enforce a just and lasting settlement – and tell Putin and his bombers to go home.
• Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator””
We were glad when Natalie Nougayrede no longer appeared in the Guardian but now we have Simon Tisdall. The socalled western democracies caused the mess there, they won’t solve it. Erdogan must go, to use Hillary’s terms; i.e. go away from other people’s lands, here Syria. Russians have an invite from Syria – when that is withdrawn they will leave.
Here’s another good one — “California’s rules for independent party voters could suppress the Bernie vote” by Greg Palast. Its a piece telling us (breathlessly) that because of the way that the Presidential primary is set up its de-facto suppressing the votes of numerous would-be Bernie supporters, especially minorities. I call this piece ‘Total BS’ because as a poll worker I know what the rules are for non-partisan and crossover ballots and they certainly don’t disenfranchise anyone.
I’ve posted a link to the piece but I won’t bother with trying to explain the rules (unless someone really, really, wants to know them). Suffice to say we will do everything in our power to ensure that anyone who turns up who’s eligible gets to cast a vote (and those who don’t appear to be eligible for some reason can get to vote conditionally or provisionally — the rule in our county is we never turn a voter away).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/02/californias-rules-for-independent-party-voters-is-another-form-of-suppression
Here’s a present of how the Groping Man can’t even be bothered:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/28/idlib-falls-assad-syria-refugee-crisis
… Labib al-Nahhas is a senior member of the Syrian political opposition and a former member of the armed opposition leadership
####
I wondered who he was so I looked him and and low and behold in the top handful of search results:
But back in 2016, in an interview with the Groaning Man itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/22/ex-uk-student-clocks-up-air-miles-on-mission-to-rebrand-syrian-islamists
Labib al-Nahhas is using his European roots to win cautious endorsement for radical opposition group Ahrar-al-Sham
……Labib al-Nahhas is the “foreign affairs minister” for Ahrar al-Sham, agroup that has fought in alliances with al-Qaida’s Syrian franchise, and aims to establish a Sunni theocracy in Syria. One of its original leaders also had personal connections with Osama bin Laden…
…In 2011 he was detained by government security forces at a demonstration along with his brother, who now sits on the shura council of Ahrar al-Sham…
####
More at the link.
The Groaning Man isn’t just shit, it is professionally drizzle shit! 😉
Big Motherfucker is watching you! Revealed! Mere words can drag you into harmful danger! Beware! Beware!
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/02/nandos-inspired-code-words-for-sex-used-by-girls-as-young-as-10
Sweet Lord, this is all so depressing. I suppose that is its purpose. And of all the entities mankind has ever heard of which conspire to depress people and make them desperate, we really shouldn’t forget the divvel himself while we get lost in the endless Johnson / Warren / Trump / Sanders / Biden / Clinton / Blair / Goldman-Sachs options for depression currently open to us . . .
I’m going to get religious for a moment, and, to all you atheists out there, I would suggest you climb down from your certainty that Goodness doesn’t exist as a thing, and contemplate the Satan standing right in front of you. He’s really quite big . . .
Do you think the Guardian has secretly appointed Titania McGrath as Editor?
No, they’ve appointed Maleficent.
Graun “Headline of the Week” could soon replace Private Eye’s “Pseud’s Corner” in my affections.
Russia’s gone strangely quiet, according to Gordon Duff, Putin is terrified of Erdogan, America and Turkey have F16s capable of delivering nuclear weapons in the area and the Khazars (Turkey and Israel) are jointly attempting to crush Syria.
MOA is less circumspect:
One thing’s for sure, and you won’t read it in the Guardian, or any other British newspaper, media outlet; Erdogan’s willing to sacrifice Turkis lives for al Qaeda.
The Russians haven’t gone silent at all.
They’ve always been very quiet in syria.
At the most all you ever get is a terse statement or a politically worded appeal to moderation.
When you look at the area and evolution over the last few years it’s clear the Russians are the only people in the room even trying to act reasonably.
For example todays declaration from the russians is: We will not guarantee the safety of turkish aircraft.
.. so that clarifies pretty much nothing.
As for Gordon Duff’s statement that the Russians are terrified of Erdogan why is it then that Erdogan is always the one attempting to initiate talks with Putin and not the other way around?
No one has ever heard of Putin offering to travel to Ankara for anything at all. Erdogan travels to the Kremlin.
Oh for God’s sake. Fidel apologised for his treatment of gays. I can’t be bothered to search for the link but he said it was one of the things he most regretted. I think every country has its gay skeletons and according to your politics, you could weaponise past behaviour.
Anyone watch the American/Israeli Homeland last night? Good terrorist, bad terrorist had a weary Taliban commander throwing his lot in with an American spy against his extremist son….what a load of shit!
And looking at the TV pages, tonight we are blessed with “Warship: life at sea” in which the crew of HMS Duncan “gather intelligence on an Iranian spy base. But all is not as it seems and they must quickly prepare to defend the ship and open fire on the Iranian navy”.
Well, HMS Duncan still exists so I guess they didn’t open fire. But it’s all good propaganda.
An Iranian ‘spy-base’ in Iran, one assumes, spying on UK ships, with Evil intent, several thousand miles from home.
Totally unambiguous, so unlike western politicians “apologies”.
Cuba was homophobic, once, the inheritance of its machismo culture and its use by US Mafiosi as a brothel, including a gay knocking-shop industry. But after Fidel was encouraged by his daughter to change that situation, it was. That the vermin who hate Cuba still use the homophobia slur, as much of Latin America, run by the Right, remains deeply homophobic, shows what scum they are, and that the Western MSM presstitute pond-life go along with it, is simply as one would expect.
Really? The 2017 bombing in Mogadishu allegedly committed by terrorist organisation al-Shabaab and allegedly resulting in at least 587 dead and 317 injured is similar to many other bombings, eg, 9/11 – FBI codename PENTTBOM – Pentagon, Twin Towers bombing; the 1980 Bologna station bombing; the 2013 Boston bombing; the 2016 Brussels airport bombing and a number of others, in that it was a real bombing in an evacuated area. (For Manchester they didn’t even bother with a bombing.)
The 1993 Battle of Mogadishu (film title Black Hawk Down) was also staged.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/other-events.html
It is interesting to note that the Special Representative for UNSOM (UN Somalia) from 2016 to 2018 was Michael Keating who has experience in counter terrorism and has written for Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations. Keating is currently Executive Director of the European Institute of Peace.
This is a 2012 post stating that MI6 had infiltrated al-Shabaab a number of years before.
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_64683.shtml
Note: I have been challenged on expressing my claims without appropriate caution. When they actually tell us that they’re hoaxing us with giveaway clues I see no reason to use careful language. Of course, that isn’t to say I’m not wrong and if I am I welcome correction. I also resent the idea that I should express caution when there is, of course, zero caution expressed in the neverending lies told to us from above.
Priti Patel’s future in doubt after senior Home Office civil servant resigns
Sir Philip Rutnam will sue for unfair dismissal, saying the home secretary began a ‘vicious’ campaign against him
Elected politicians don’t count; Deep State runs the country.
Comments off, of course.
IF she would have been a Muslim they would have praised her: Arab oil money talks and Mi5 and 6 are all in. Why not call this kind of press Mi4?
Arab oil money talks
— sure, everybody knows that Arab oil money runs the world.
https://youtu.be/ceCOhdgRBoc
Israel has only talk to offer; the oil Arabs have oil, gas and cash. Who have bought up a lot of London real estate? Is the EU flooded with Jews or Muslims? How many Muslims vs Jews in the UK: 1 on 9?
Sir Philip Rutnam knew which side of his bread was buttered.
Many Muslims only about 400,000 judens! But guess which one has more sway? Guess which one is a protected species and the other openly mocked? It ain’t the Muslims. Remember when the Jews did nothing wrong and owned 50,000 Berlin businesses alone in a city of 2.3 million in 1933?! Kicked out of every country you lot have set your massive noses in but it’s everybody else who caused it not your behaviour and practices and underhanded ways
Israel has only ‘talk’???!! Are you kidding, Antsie? Do you take us all for fools? As for ‘talk’-well they do control the MSM, and are experts at mendacious character assassination and vilification, see Corbyn and the BND movement, but I rather suspect that their money power, which FAR outweighs anything the Sordid Barbarians could muster, that calls the tune.
All Israel has to offer is MONEY delivered via the Zionist sayanim Fifth Columnists. A good investment, too.
You did so well then your Jewishness came through and you went full anti Muslim as you always do. I don’t know many Mohammedsteins and ahmedbergs who fund these people
Grow up. Nothing’s going to happen to her unless further damning evidence surfaces. She’s a nasty piece of work, an Indian nationalist who doesn’t even come from India, she comes from Uganda. And her boring lectures about the “lazy British working class” are as fake as she is. The “penniless refugees” from Uganda had mostly converted their assets to gold which was disguised as worthless trinkets.
As a retired, relatively senior, civil servant I can judge from experience what might be going on with Patel and Rutnam (and quite likely in other Departments). I was employed in a Whitehall HQ and had daily interaction with senior civil servants, Ministers, and their advisers. Our job was essentially to provide Ministers with objective guidance about policy matters. This would also involve liaising with the Department’s legal advisers beforehand to make sure that what we were advising was consistent with EU and, where EU legislation didn’t apply, UK legislation.
Where a Ministerial decision was called for, all the options were presented to them with a strategic assessment of each. In my personal experience Ministers always made their decision based on the well-researched and legally supported information supplied by the civil servants.
However – and this is where I think things are currently going wrong – Ministers have the power to ignore the supplied information and act unilaterally. It struck me a good while ago that this ongoing government trend of flouting international laws, Treaties and Agreements can only be happening without the endorsement of the civil service. This can only lead to conflict and this is what we are now seeing in the Home Office. In my opinion the UK Government is completely out of control.
UK Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser in the Julian Assange case just called the US – UK extradition treaty invalid – because that suited the CIA. Similar to Whitehall’s way of ruling the roost for eons.
P.S. : Brexit means also that the UK moves out of the EU legislation.
Full marks Boris, you appointed an ideal s**t screen and sacrificial goat.
Priti Patel is possibly the MOST subservient of all the Tory Sabbat Goy stooges to Israel. Not surprisingly, she is a very nassty piece of work. The Zionists do know how to pick them.
She wanted the British taxpayer to pick up the tab for all the ISIS holiday camps on the Golan Heights.
Bad news for the chosen folk if their little Shabbos shiksa gets the boot.
Been done. Perhaps MI7, or MI6 Press Office.
that’s what identity politics is for, to cripple real class analysis with surface-level issues which distract from poverty, social security and healthcare.
“it doesn’t matter how much tax-payer money is turned into bombs and bullets”
Bugger me!
The whole reason I started commenting in The Guardian was to point out sovereign currency owning governments do not spend tax payer money.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9281
Taxpayers do not fund anything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Yn5jT8Hyc
Fiat Money, explained.
It is “public money” created by a sovereign currency owning government through double entry accounting by “the magic money tree” (in this case the British Pound created by the Bank of England and The Exchequer) that is turned into bombs and bullets, as opposed to being created and turned into social services etc, for the good of the public. Sovereign currency owning governments have to spend money into an economy before they can destroy money in circulation through taxation essentially in order to avoid price rises for goods and services … if theuy get their tax regime right that is.
This is an oversimplified explanation but is essentially how fiat currencies work and have done since adopted by most countries in the early 1970s.
Using the term “tax payers money” perpetuates a fiscal falsehood and gives ammunition to nob head bell ends to say complete rubbish like “There’s no money in the public kitty” or “there is no magic money tree” and utter divisive rubbish like “my taxes pay for your pension”.
Most people do not understand how fiat currencies work but then bugger all politicians and journalist do no matter how many times you explain it to them. This is why governments like the UK get away with all this austerity bullshit and the vilification of welfare recipients.
If you’re going to correct the Guardian for accuracy, which in every other respect you have excelled at in this article, you may as well be bloody consistent.
Apologies for the use of vulgar vernaculaism. I’m Australian and just spent a few months coughing my guts up from bush fire smoke because our commonwealth government cut funding to our bush fire services due to their belief in “taxpayer funding”, “balancing the books” and creating a “fiscal surplus”, their unbelief in anthropomorphic global warming, and their desire to use public money and turn it into bombs and bullets in order to fight wars of aggression overseas so corporations can acquire resources we should be giving up in order to avoid the worst of said anthropomorphic global warming, instead of spending more public money on public services like bush fire resources.
You can reasonably understand why I’m essentially still pissed off.
Besides which vulgar vernaculaism tend to get the point across. Even the Guardian let me get away with them when used in the proper context.
So we don’t need taxes then. Got it.
Taxes create demand for the local currency. You must pay your taxes in the local currency (I can’t swan up to the Australian Taxation Office with greenbacks or gold to pay my taxes), and if you refuse to pay your taxes in the local currency you will lose your assets or be imprisoned.
Taxes, via the threat of imprisonment, create local demand for the local currency.
Yes, we do need taxes, but not for the reason that most people think we do.
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.pdf
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=9281
You are essentially right. But the whole pyramid scheme only works id the economy is always growing. Given that resources are limited, the scheme has a limited life-span. Technology won’t save us. I used to think modern monetary theory was the answer, it’s not; we have to somehow get rid of debt enslavement.
Unless you advocate a halt to population growth (good luck with enforcing that), the economies of the world will always have to grow.
The four core architects of what is now known as MMT, Mitchell, Mosler, Wray and Kelton, are always at pains to stress the importance of real resources when it comes to running a national economy, and a government should only expand fiscal stimulus when there are idle (unemployed) resources, whether those be people or material resources. The point is, however, that a currency-issuing government is never financially constrained when there are resources available for sale which can be bought in its own currency.
Not even the most ardent MMT-er, and certainly not the four mentioned above, believe that MMT can solve all problems. What it can do though is to remove the artificial financial constraints that have continually been placed in the way of progressive governments or parties seeking government, by neoliberal economic orthodoxy for a variety of reasons, but mostly stemming from the latter’s non-progressive outlook.
“The point is, however, that a currency-issuing government is never financially constrained when there are resources available for sale which can be bought in its own currency”
So, if a government gradually issues more currency in ordet to buy those resources ‘available for sale’, what happens to the price of those resources in terms of that issued currency?
I’ve been trying, for 10 years, to convince people their taxes don’t pay for anything. I might as well bang my head against a wall.
These days I use my energy to promote Keynesian economics in hard times, an end to quantative easing, bring the BoE under political control, fair taxation and an end to concealed wealth and offshoring….small steps that are more achievable, though still like pushing a boulder up a hill.
The Guardian.
Your Go To place for titillation and voyeurism.
Be nervous Rupert.
The Guardian is now back into the loving arms of the MI5 and 6.
They strayed from the path of Righteousness with Assange and Mossack Fonseca for a while but all back to normal now.
There’s an article on Craig Murray’s Blog site where if I read it right they actually stated that this is their position now under the editor and board.
Dry as dust articles about cookery – my bad week – poor me – etc etc etc.
A weary online paper.
At least the Sun is amusing – right wing but something to laugh at like Toby Young’s Freedom of Speech
bollocks.
Very funny that idea and the alleged man( men) behind it.
He should be leading from behind similar to his friend in Number 10.
Johnson is getting a Sedan Chair easy ride from the BBC.
Two women missing in action recently at the BBC:
Lorna Kuenssberg and Katya Adler.
have they been silenced or ‘ repositioned’ – ‘ repurposed ?’
A mystery.
One for the mejia to look into.
I’ve heard Laura Kuenssberg on the wireless recently. Perhaps she is thought to be less damaging there.
She’s got the face for radio.
“My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity”
The entire article reads like something your creative writing teacher in high school would give a D- for.
Why subscribe to magazines featuring short fiction or buy Mills & Boon paperbacks when one can read so-called Fraudian articles full of purple prose written by people who got mediocre grades in creative writing or English Literature courses?
When I saw the massive hyperbole and the article starting off like the opening paragraph of a poor novel I knew it was a guardian article without even looking at the logo or webpage. But it’s great seeing liberals admit they’re not as open minded as they claim and they want everyone else to be transgender they want everyone else to have a foreigner live next door but they don’t want it to happen to them. The suburbs of London now filled with none Britons weren’t abandoned by poor people but by guardianista types
How fucking middle-class. Was this American or do they mean the charity shop floor? Don’t answer, I’m busy contemplating Ian’s “scruffy face”, sn unshaven man in a wedding dress.
Ian ‘thrusting’ things, eh? Smiles ‘stretching’ and blue eyes ‘dancing’. Eat your heart out, Shakespeare. But what does ‘sashayed’ mean? It sounds like you have to say ‘bless you’ in response.
As lundiel suspects, the article reads like it was written by an American, obviously bottom of his/her/its Creative Writing class. How did it get into the Graun, though? Perhaps it’s really a coded message from MI6 (the Skripals?). Maybe Petra can help out deciphering it.
‘Graun headline of the week’ obviously has a great future.
They’ve been writing in Americanese for years now.
I clicked on Jen’s link and read the article (I’ve got time to waste today, apparently). It’s worse than anything you could imagine, from start to finish. Fortunately, it’s not very long. Here’s another titillating extract to tempt Off-G readers (sorry, I don’t know how to use the block-quote thingy):
‘On the first weekend we hooked up, I had to yank a green sparkly dress over his head to unclothe him. Foreplay involved palming his glittery glutes while dancing to Kesha’s Woman and caressing his furry thigh along a hemline so tight you could almost see the outlines of each and every hair follicle beneath it.
“That was the first time I’ve undressed a man – from a dress!” I shrieked the next morning.’
Etc. The ‘glittery glutes’ school of writing. Just one question: what are ‘glutes’? On second thoughts, I’m not sure I want to know.
Are you for real Peter, lol! Glutes are bum cheek muscles….
Thanks Maggie, you are obviously a woman of the world. I had never heard the word ‘glutes’ before today (and the spell checker keeps ‘correcting’ it to ‘gluten’, so I can’t be that out of touch). Glittery glutes are therefore just boring old burnished bum cheek muscles – it could have been worse, I suppose.
You’re welcome Peter. Perhaps it is just a British term? Like Abs for abdominals, and pecs for pectoral? Where are you from?
Gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. No, not characters from Gladiator… the three muscles that make up the gluteal muscles of the buttocks. 😀
JJ: That must be one of the funniest things I’ve ever read online …
Yer’ pure diamond. 🙂
Big hugs, in ‘Hard Times’,
& laughing aloud,
Tim
The particular situation in Syria has demonstrated the fact of NATOs de facto obsolescence. In effect the war between Turkey – a NATO member – and the Russian/Syrian/Iranian alliance has not involved Article 5. This is the joint commitment of NATO to go to the aid of other members when the coalition is attacked by Russia, who else would it be. Article 5 is of course total bullshit as Russia has no plans for and could never succeed with such a policy, and everyone knows it including the military brass and bought politicians in the alliance. NATO like the EU is just a gravy train; a parasitic bureaucracy with no purpose other than to act like a gravy train. The foreign policy realists in the US such as Doug Bendow of the CATO institute put it succinctly. Thus:
NATO No Longer Serves American Interests
It’s questionable if it ever did.
It was Joseph Schumpeter who summed up this, what shall we call it, ‘military parasitism’ as follows.
” … In Egypt a class of professional soldiers formed in a civil war against the Hyksos persisted even when those wars were over along with its warlike instincts and interests.” Schumpeter capped this part of the narrative with the pithy summary of this viewpoint. ”Created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars that it required.”
Thus the sight of these war games with NATO’s charging about on Russia’s borders is quite ridiculous. It is all for show as is the absurd rhetoric.
”President Donald Trump returned early from the London NATO summit. Staged to satisfy British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—the official 70th‐anniversary meeting was held in April …
”Of course, the assembled leaders filled their limited time together with happy talk. The greatest alliance ever is more necessary than ever as Europe faces the greatest security challenges ever. The Europeans are spending more and cutting Washington’s burden. NATO is preparing plans both to defend its members from conventional attacks and confront new threats. The Europeans even are ready to tackle the huge new challenge posed by increasingly aggressive China. All in all, the alliance is prospering greatly.
This is fantasy. A very pleasant one. But fantasy nonetheless.”
Doug Bandow
The National Interest – December 2019
eat that bitches!
Maybe it’s just me, but more and more of the content in the Guardian seems to resemble parody of all that’s daftest in contemporary left/liberal discourse, or at least the stuff the Guardian presents as what virtuous people should be thinking about.
I think the liberal/left obsession with gender and identity politics and virtue signalling is a disaster politically, mostly because it has so little real public support as the vast majority of people have more important things to worry about.
What’s ‘good’ about identity and gender issues is that basically they are about applying ‘labels’ to people and ideas, which are ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ This means one doesn’t really have to think to much about the real context or how the labels used, whether it’s right or wrong underneath the label, but instead concentrate on the label itself.
This is all incredibly superficial and incredibly dangerous, and in really something, a way of thinking from before the European Enlightenment. It’s like we’re back in the Middle Ages. Successfully apply the label ‘witch’ to someone for something, and the ‘judgement’ has already happened and all that’s left is a pro forma trial before the sentence, punishment and execution!
For example, the way the ‘double rape’ label was so sucessfully applied to Assange and destroyed his public reputation. Or that Corbyn was a ‘fucking racist and antisemite.’ Or that Putin is the new Hitler.
Or the Skripal Affair. Whatever happened to them? Or Gadaffi created an army of black mercenary rapists!
It’s a pattern that’s repeatedly over and over again. The State applies false labels to people and it’s virtually impossible to challenge what’s happening because to do so opens one up to the charge that one is a ‘witch’ too!
It’s really a terrible tragedy that so many on the left and liberals go along with this nonsense as well. One would think that people on the left would be incredibly sceptical of virtually everything that appears in our ‘trusted’ media, but sadly they don’t seem to be anymore. What happened?
One would think that people on the left would be incredibly sceptical of virtually everything that appears in our ‘trusted’ media, but sadly they don’t seem to be anymore. What happened?
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
It sounds pithy, but is it actually true? What if it’s worse? What if the link isn’t so simple and ‘rational’ at all? What if people really believe this stuff because they been trained not to think about their objective interests, but are prisoners of their feelings and act first and think afterwards?
Perhaps it’s something described even more pithily: “confirmation bias”. People believe this stuff because they want to believe it.
I think the left, and I suppose that includes Corbyn’s Labour, repeatedly make the same mistake of thinking that people are swayed by rational arguments, when, arguably this isn’t true. Modern political culture is about manipulating emotional responses in people, bypassing their brains and going straight for the heart. Hearts first, minds second! And isn’t that really the essence of propaganda?
One would think that people on the left would be incredibly sceptical of virtually everything that appears in our ‘trusted’ media, but sadly they don’t seem to be anymore. What happened?
People enjoy prejudice, because it allows them to feel superior to the objects of their prejudice. Racists feel culturally superior to the objects of their prejudice; fake progressives feel morally superior to the objects of their prejudice (all those rascists, facists, mysoginists and Nazi’s…)
By the same token, people love to read stuff that confirms their prejudices, because then they get a double-hit. The Guardian has a visceral understanding of this phenomenon, and therefore a very large part of its output now feeds it. And obviously the readers love what they are reading…
“My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity”
OR, I decided to take the leap and marry a cross-dressing metrosexual.
In either case, it’s enough to give you toxic shock syndrome.
“His closet full of feminine gear put a tiny dent in his desirability from the very beginning of our relationship.”
At that moment, she realized closet space would be limited for her high heel shoes and handbags.
This regular Sunday article was a great idea. We all need a good laugh.
Sustainable vaginas? Is that why so many Brazilian women now have C-sections? 😀
But seriously:
Not to mention Libya, which explains at least some of the jihadi trouble we’re now having elsewhere in N. Africa.
“My boyfriend’s wedding dress unveiled my own shortcomings over masculinity”. Stroll on! There are some weird people in the world. Still, each to his own, I suppose.
”Sustainable Vagina Revolution.” Almost as good a band name as ”Danny Dyer’s Chocolate Homunculus.”
The Guardian’s article was inspired, of course, by the T. Rex song, ”Children of the (Sustainable Vagina) Revolution.”
¡Viva la Revolución Sostenible de la Vagina!
Or perhaps that should be: ¡Viva la Revolución de la Vagina Sostenible!
Any ambiguity is entirely the fault of the Guardian.
The cheapest and best solution is a silicone vaginal cup. Boil it before usage and save lots of money, embarrassment and pollution.
The Hair Blair Bunch!
They were NOT the Hair Blair Bunch!!!
Okay, okay, how about “Various Artists” then, just to fuck over people with iPods. Might set them back a year or two, though.