This Week in the New Normal #84
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. Yet another “online harms” Bill
Just a few weeks since the UK passed its new “Online Safety Act”, the Canucks are joining the party.
The new “Online Harms Bill” looks near identical to the UK version actually, which you’d expect given that both are influenced by UNESCO’s “guidelines for regulating digital platforms”.
Unsurprisingly, the draft law has already been given the media thumbs up, and called “one of the best” by the Facebook whistleblower (you can read what we think of here here).
Expect a longer article on this subject during the week.
2. The Bechdel Test…for climate change
I genuinely thought this story was a joke when I first heard it, which I’m surprised can still happen to me. Sadly, it is real.
The Hollywood Reporter published a story this week detailing a new “test” for “climate change depiction”, and claiming the Oscars will be testing movies against it.
The Climate Reality Check will ask writers and directors two simple questions: Does climate change exist in this work? And do your characters know it?
Answering “no” to either will mean your movie fails the test. It’s billed as the “Bechdel Test for Climate Change”. Which is absurd on several levels.
For those who don’t know, the “Bechdel Test” (or Bechdel-Wallace Test) is a thought experiment meant to test how “representative” or “feminist” a piece of media is. It asks three simple questions: 1) Are there 2 or more female characters, 2) Do they talk to each other, 3) About something other than a man.
It’s also a joke. I’m not being disparaging, it was just a little joke in a comic strip from the 1980s, the author Alison Bechdel has said it a hundred times.
That doesn’t stop people like Anna Jane Joyner, founder and CEO of the company who developed the Climate Reality Check, telling the Hollywood Reporter:
The Bechdel-Wallace Test debuted in a 1985 comic strip. Four decades later, it still resonates as one of the most effective tools for measuring female representation in film and television.
She’s wrong. It was a joke. The new “Bechdel test for climate” is a joke too, of course, but a less intentional one.
3. The Future of Driving
In Australia this week, Mitsubishi announced the release of their first Utility Vehicle (“Ute”) with an onboard “driver monitoring system”, a mix of AI sensors and cameras designed to detect if a driver is sleepy or losing focus:
One of Australia’s best-selling utes, the Mitsubishi Triton, will soon come equipped with an AI camera to stop drivers falling asleep at the wheel. It’s part of a growing trend, spurring debate about reliability, as well as privacy. https://t.co/VZ3A1cHvFd @Sacre88 #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/iuMzGU2pSN
— 7NEWS Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) March 2, 2024
(There’s an article about it here, behind a paywall I’m afraid)
What does the company do with the data they capture? Do they keep it private? Who knows.
This system of driver surveillance will be mandatory in all new vehicles in sold in the EU by 2026, along with other measures such as “Alcohol interlock installation facilitation”. Alongside that, the EU is also tabling ideas about restricting or even banning repairs on older vehicles.
Meanwhile, in the US in 2022, the Senate passed a new law requiring remote “kill switches” to be added to all newly built cars.
It’s not hard to see where all this is going.
BONUS: Accidental(?) Redpill of the week
Breaking news this week is that former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss said something coherent and true…
🚨🌎🇬🇧 Holy Crapballs
Did a former UK Prime Minister just call out the Deep State & Central Bankers?
Steve Bannon to Liz Truss – “are you a conspiracy theorist?”
Truss – “what I found was once I got to the top of the tree (UK Prime Minister) is that the Governor of the Bank of… pic.twitter.com/3lLnvqcJW1
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) February 24, 2024
Talking to Steve Bannon, Truss recounted how little power she found she had when she became PM, especially when compared to unelected officials and bureaucrats:
What I’m saying is that if the Bank of England governor can’t be sacked, and the Prime-Minister can be sacked, then the Bank of England governor has more power.”
I don’t know if this is just Truss talking out of school, or if the play is to discredit this basic political truism by associating it with an idiot, but there’s no denying she’s totally correct.
It’s not all bad…
Oh and Lord Jacob Rothschild died. I’m not keen on celebrating a death in general, but maybe this Empirical evidence that the Satanic rituals don’t make you immortal will discourage the others.
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention how eating insects is good for your guts or how George Galloway winning the Rochdale bye-election has saved democracy or something.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
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Ther’s something strange going on with the UK Royal Family (not that I’m bothered about them in themselves but for wider things it might signify).
It looks to me that a Charles’ abdication might be being set up for around the next election.
Strangely when the Epstein flight logs were released and suddenly Charles developed “prostate cancer” and steps back from public duties. However, the hapless uk tax payers are still funding the Windsors to the tune of £100+ million pa despite there now only being WEF William doing any appearances.
The Windsor estate paid no death duty or inheritance tax when QE2 died yet are some of the richest and largest landowners in the country – a “deal” crafted by that top socialist Tony Blair.
The sudden, dramatic announcement about Charles was always odd, as if it was to divert attention from Kate, who went into hospital at the same time – a coincidence. That said, I have always thought Charles is one of the good guys, so I hope if he is ill, he gets well soon.
Anyone who has involvement with the WEF cannot be “a good guy”.
Charles with all his inherited wealth – stolen by military force by his predecessors – is happy to commit treason against this Country.
He needs to suffer the same fate as Charles the first.
CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cia-built-12-secret-spy-bases-ukraine-waged-shadow-war-last-decade-bombshell-nyt
What’d y’all think about the NYT, being used to tell the truth about the 2014 CIA coup and subsequent neo-Nazi civil war on the Eastern Ukraine that provoked the War, plus making Ukraine a CIA AI GR experiment? I dug through these facts in 2014. Then in FB last year i encountered screaming maniacs calling me a Trump Putinite. One old “friend”, a Polish Jew whose family history includes concentration camps, traveled back twice to Ukraine where he published on-site like a roving reporter on contract. Partying in pubs with teens and college age Ukrainians, decrying the horrors of Putin and hailing the young people’s “Maiden Revolution”. When i tried to inform him of the CIA neo Nazis, coups and civil war, he called me names going off axis nuts. This NYT story now confirms what many of us have said all along.
Is this just another article so the SYSTEM can say “Well, we actually reported that once.”? Like the aluminum tubes or any of hundreds of events, that somehow rationalizes wars for empire. Like air dropping food to people so they can be shot by snipers, before the final slaughter of the entire population. So these acts, these articles, this accurate info is used to solidify the pacivity of the US settler-colonial mindset? This country is sick.
From the NEW New Normal:
Craig Murray says to George Galloway;
“You have given many people new hope”.
https://youtu.be/txqSd5hGfZI?si=ILo9hT58pb-UcDYp
“If a good man were ever housed in Hell
By needful error of the qualities,
Would he, surrendering quick to obvious hate,
Fill half eternity with cries and tears,
Or watch beside Hell’s little wicket gate
In patience for the first ten thousand years?
Would he at last, grown faithful in his station,
Kindle a little hope in hopeless Hell? — Edwin Muir, The Good Man in Hell.
If George is the best we can hope for, we may as well call it a day and give up now.
He flip-flopped around the Plandemic restrictions and jabs.
Started out in March 2020, attacking anyone who was against lockdowns calling them part of the “unhinged disease of liberitarian conspiracy theories” Also, interviewed Nurse Campbell when Campbell was pushing lockdowns. This pro-government stance continued for weeks and weeks.
In August 2020, he was bigging up the Sputnik V jab after its announcement.
Although, being a canny lad, our George, saw the way the wind was blowing and by late 2021 stated he was against mandatory jabs but not the jabs themselves.A tad late by then, with millions already poked in the arm.
Lastly, who can forget this little gem from the Big Brother house. A big hug from George for Jimmy S.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgWgSrcBkE
Galloway is a total fraud. I also remember him back in the day telling people they were crazy for claiming that 9/11 was an inside job.
Galloway has been in Parliament since the 90s, he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother, he’s a communist, he embraces all of the causes of Cultural Marxism, yet somehow he’s our man against the deep state.
Galloway is a kaleidoscopic politician in that his views and positions can transverse a wide spectrum of political views, and in that, can appeal to a wide audience.
However, his main strategy is appealing to an Islamic community electorate and takes advantage of their block voting capacity and in his capacity as an experienced and wily political careerist, in a Scots parochialism, ‘takes a leny o them’, meaning for non Scots, a higher power who takes advantage of unsuspecting or vulnerable people or groups.
Aye, he is a sophisticated and accomplished adherent of politics, however, he is also a political entrepreneur, flogging his discourse and unilinear rhetoric, marketised to an unwary, unsophisticated collective consciousness, particularly aimed at the Islamic community. He has plenty experience honing his craft, practised in his early years, within the Labour party, appealing to the British working class collective consciousness.
A political parasite, simple. Some would say a C…
Look – the animals are crying!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-animals-cry-when-theyre-sad/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
It’s probably all that humanity and its selfishness – the world would be so better off without so many of us. Kill yourself so bison don’t weep!
“Thou shall not kill”. I think our Lord had his good reasons for saying that.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjrjv9r1jyko
Yeah £100m “to help repair damage” caused by the C of E’s “historic links to slavery” is just what we need to be spending money on right now. And apparently that is “not enough”. Who says? A “report says”!
And what is the money to be used for? It “should be invested in black-led businesses focusing on education, economic empowerment and better health outcomes, the report added”. Clever report! It knows how to pitch suitably vague demands.
Notice who never is in the frame for reparations despite being a central pillar of slave-owning.
The same ones who set up perpetual reparations for themselves some 80 years ago?
FFS! Will the Climate Reality Test be applied to films set in the past, too? In Westerns? Sword & Sandal Roman epics? Elizabethan Costume Dramas?
This is so moronic it confirms my growing suspicion that films are over!
I recall the same MSM alt media giving Bojo the heads up when he appeared talking the Steve bannan and water melon smile / letter box comment and Ree moggy did his Illuminati speech in the commons and 5 minutes later getting his LBshill radio job..
Ow how this new alt media screamed the Contrivedatives where honest and decent and fighting the deep state. (original concept).
Liz going on Bannon and “Build the wall” Bannon who stole the Build the wall money of the simpleton mAGa supporters and Bannon could end up in prison for it and he got pardoned by fighting the deep state Trump for other shit. (mind-control also relates to complete forgotten memorys).
The same MSM alt media is making out Liz is now talking honest.
Repeat of the 2019 U.K selections rhetoric.
“Build the wall” stole the wall money Bannon also called Tommy 10 names a hero in that interview with Mary Liz 44.
Obvious but some cant see it.
Electioneering aimed at the MSM alt media to feed the not so wise into going to the ballot box.
Getting blanket U.S. MSM coverage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcsxO6rbhlI
They accuse rural voters of being “anti-democratic” because they are “xenophobic” (i.e. anti-interventionist), anti-immigrant and anti-gay. Who voted for all these wars, illegal immigration and gay rights? Even the pollsters admit that these things do not have majority support but they keep advancing regardless.
When the elite are in the minority, democracy means minority rights; when they’re in the majority, it means majority rule. It’s a cute trick.
The presenter’s “objectivity” is hilarious – she just can’t understand why everyone doesn’t love Joe Biden. She also believes that rural American must love Trump rather than feeling “a plague on both your houses” which is what the book seems to be actually arguing.
White rural voters grow the food that keep us all from starving. What exactly do these people contribute to anything?
BTW in another interview the authors admit that there’s nothing to justify their use of the word “rage” in the title but they used it anyway.
What a hoot! These demonised “rednecks” “don’t believe in a free press” (????!!!!!) Like the one you two cringing (pseudo) Leftist cocksuckers prostrate yourself before? These odious liberal hacks are eager to serve up the dreary supercilious mockery of the “chinless white backwood Neanderthals bashing their King James Bibles” to the delight of the infinitely condescending Democrat “progressives”.
And I’m getting a flashback to the moment Bob Dylan was almost lynched at Live Aid when, amidst the self-celebrating “compassionate” Western voices calling to “give yer fuckin’ money” to those conveniently distant starving Ethiopians, he suggested that perhaps a bit of it could be directed towards American farmers. How dare he! Didn’t he realise that white southerners are evil by default? And poverty is always the preserve of the non-white marginals!
That’s democracy for us. The biggest ruse ever devised where the ones holding the true power/money/resources remain in the shadows, while characters in a play called politicians get the blame only to be reshuffled at the next musical chairs event called elections.
“[…] founder and CEO of the company who developed the Climate Reality Check”
You need a “company” to “develop” that … thing?
Another encouraging sign that many people aren’t buying the bs:
https://www.politico.eu/article/wanted-someone-sell-climate-policies-uk-voters-sunak-carbon-emissions-green-vision/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb
Never forget that the media doesn’t just lie about what’s happening in the world but also about who and how many are buying it. No-one in the general public has ever given a flying fuck about “climate change”. And the transgender bollocks is so outrageously stupid that I don’t think the pushers of it even expect it to lead to some coherent policy. That has never been the intention. It’s primary purpose (beyond the dosh raked in from the gullible and the inevitable depopulation effect) is gaslighting. And a survey of the hyperventilating panic in the media over “gender ideology” is very much a psyop intended to induce similar panic in the general population.
And because the global population is increasingly “not buying it”, the rush to perfect military AI weapons is being played out on battlefield testing grounds in Gaza, Ukraine and Africa:
So They’re Experimenting With Military Robots In Gaza NowHaaretz has a new article out titled “Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots”, which reports that “In an effort to avoid harming soldiers and dogs, the IDF has been experimenting with the use of robots and remote-controlled dogs in the Gaza War.”
“The other day we discussed how the empire’s great weakness is that it depends on normal human beings to carry out its orders and turn the gears of the machine. If you look at the facts and think about them for a moment, it’s not hard to see how the empire managers are hoping to overcome this weakness in the future.”
I have stairs in my house so I should be safe from those pesky robots.
We have insect robots who fly everywhere……..LOL. You cant do a shit man.
Interesting is the lack of reporting on George Galloway’s runaway
victory , over all … talk about indicative signs of the times: whatabout,
A Tinker’s cuss ?
It’s easy to see what’s going to happen next with Galloway, the media will endlessly vilify him, turning him into a national hate figure that no one wants to be associated with, then conflate supporting Palestine with support for George Galloway.
There’s no shortage of talk on YouTube about Gorgeous George and his stunning victory over BOTH “cheeks of the same arse”: getting more votes than Con and Liebour combined.
Style point: Periods and commas go inside quotation marks, not after them.
Not always. Full stops, commas etc. go inside quotation marks only when the entire sentence lies within the marks. When only part of a sentence lies within, the full stop, for example, should lie outside.
i.e. ‘When only part lies within.’
and When only part lies ‘within’.
What you’ve written in your comment above is the American way of punctuation… we here in the UK (usually) put the full stops [what you call ‘periods’] and commas outside the quote marks.
For example, to write, below, what I wrote above, using British punctuation methods…
“What you’ve written is the American way of punctuation”, but most people here in the UK…”… etc.
Thanks for all your advice. As a frequent user of quotes, I shall endevour to continue the British practice of putting the fullstop after the quotation marks, as suggested by Christine, below..
“Alongside that, the EU is also tabling ideas about restricting or even banning repairs on older vehicles.”
Sounds a lot like Australia where a scratch on your car can have the insurance company label it a write-off, causing it to be unregisterable and all but destined for the junk yard (the shredder). A scratch. On an otherwise perfectly fine car. Used, but fine. A scratch!
Ever since the newspapers here started writing items about how cars have such a high median age in The Netherlands and Europe, I have wondered how long it would take the EU to come up with something “Australian” for that.
Well, here it is. Shredding perfectly serviceable cars and building new ones to save the environment.
They are pissing on us and now we are to think it is raining.
The reason they want old internal combustion engine cars off the roads is that these are easier to service without needing a specialised mechanic and have less or no electronics nor engine management systems.
Also, the war on diesel cars, I believe, had nothing to do with emissions but was because diesel can be stored for longer periods of time (1-2 yrs), whereas petrol has an effective use-by date of only 3-6 months, as it deteriorates quicker over time.
No engine management system means that a vehicle cannot be killed remotely, killed by connecting to an a engine diagnostics machine or disabled due to chip damage, say, during an EMF pulse.
The EU compelled manufacturers to fit ‘black box’ car monitoring systems from 2023 on all new models launched that year and from 2024 all new vehicles sold regardless of launch year. What is the betting there are kill switches being incorporated?
The UK will not doubt being following suit.
Marianna Spring is back! That she was found out telling a bit of a porky seems to have ricocheted at a hell of a rate down that memory hole. She has (hold on to your ribs!) “written” a book, “Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland” and, according to the Graud, it’s an “unflinching exploration of conspiracy theories and their knock-on effects” which “also makes heroic attempts to understand the people behind them”.
The saint-like hagiography of the wondrous Spring is equalled only by the pathological invective against those UTTERLY EVIL FACTIONS she hs so heroically uncovered.
Be sure to order now!
‘White Rural Rage’ looks at the most likely group to abandon democratic norms
“ A demographic that works hard, pays taxes, raises their children, follows the law, keep their neighborhoods clean and well maintained…. HUGE threat to America.”
I think that opposing Joe Biden is precisely what Marx & Engels once referred to as the ‘idiocy of rural life.’ 😂
Touché!
Watched recently the documentary ‘Shackelton -The greatest story of survival’. Narrated by Tim Jarvis, the explorer. Ten minutes before the end, he shoehorned ‘climate armageddon’ into the story.
Apparently, when Shackelton and the Endurance crew made their epic journey the glaciers on South Georgia covered all the valleys entirely. A 100 years later these have melted and retreated.
Jarvis’ conclusion: It is all down to man-made climate change and we must all pull together just as Shackelton’s boys did to overcome disaster, blah, blah.
Nothing like keeping it simple. I bet he passed the ‘Bechdel Test for Climate Change’ with that huge weight of (non) evidence and got chucked a few extra bucks towards production costs.
The grift never ends….
On message.
Jarvis’s concludes: “we must all pull together just as Shackelton’s boys did to overcome disaster”
Jarvis forgets that Shackleton’s strategy — using horses to slog slog through the snow that clogged their hooves – was a disaster for him and his Daily Mail sponsored team.
The team which won used husky dogs to draw their sledges. As each each sled discharged its load along the journey, Amundsen shot its dogs and fed them to the dogs that still pulled a full load.
I’m not sure that I trust these “elites” even when they claim to be dead. They’re maybe just deserting the sinking ship.
They truly are comic book super-villains. And comic book super-villains never actually die.
A bit like Dracula.
Here is an interesting development – Andrew Bridgen Calls For Debate On Bringing Back Capital Punishment in the UK For Crimes Against Humanity
When ISIS is finished overseas they can continue at home within the British Empire.
Gaza have committed crimes against humanity, violent white men have been suppressing women and children as cheap household over a thousand years.
Republicans released and armed the slaves from their innocent work in the cotton fields, Muslims made crimes against humanity by banning usury, plus many many more.
Andrew Bridgen being outspoken is about as real as Boris being anti Establishment and you lot fell for that.
They all flogged the vaccines and bullshit fake testing hard as f*ck and the lockdowns and boosters…
Hear is some facts:
Financial tie between Bridgen and Reclaim. He also got a £25,000 interest free loan last August from his “mate” Jeremy Hosking, who bankrolls Fox’s Reclaim Party and also owns The Critic, which employs Toby Young. It’s a small world!
MP Andrew Bridgen admits Laurence Fox’s group supported his speechwriting between 17 and 31 Jan 2023 As well as “speechwriting support” & “legal consultancy” donations are listed as covering “the cost of meetings, lunches, dinners & counselling”
Wake up.
What a pain in the arse. Ever since including a link in a comment the other day, now all my posts are automatically sent to pending. Guess I’ll have to start yet another account.
It must really irk the ruling psychos.
Surrounded by all that wealth, respect, fawning sycophants and untrammelled authority, and they still die. Just like the rest of us.
Pathetic Turds they are.
It simply doesn’t pay to die anymore.
The Bechdel test is also self imposed of course.
I’ve recently started a couple of novels by Australian authors, and in both of them the dreaded Plandemic was mentioned/hyped.
I didn’t bother finishing them.
How the hell can creative, supposedly erudite people, be so dumb?
It’s the sign of wouldbe Hollywood writers, each one (according to PG.Wodehouse who was there) “cooped in his little rabbit hutch” set to work on the current plot eg, Muslim Terrorists.
Where did he say this? Is it possible to track this quote down? I just spent 10 minutes looking for it on the google, couldn’t find it anywhere. 😅 Thanks, A2
I recall having read something similar by/about Wodehouse. I’m not sure this is it, but it’s on a similar theme, anyway.
https://bookanista.com/wodehouse-hollywood/
Sorry, Sam, I’ve read too much Wodehouse over too many years to remember. All I can say is, it must have been in some autobiographical reminiscence rather than a novel. PG.Wodehouse served his stretch in Hollywood — as did F.Scott Fitzgerald and other famous writers — but emerged unscathed. In fact the experience seems to have toughened Wodehouse to survive his later incarceration, by the German Army of Occupation, in Upper Silesia, Poland.
“If this is Upper Silesia, one wonders what must Lower Silesia be like” — PG.Wodehouse, Reminiscences of a POW.
Wodehouse is one of the best. It’s the humanity that comes through his writing as much as the humour.
Yes. Also, he was one of the veny few English writers who was disrespectful to Mussolini and the Blackshirts:
“Sir Roderick Spode wanted his Movement to wear black shirts but all the black shirts had already been bought up, so he called his the Blackshorts.”
An obvious jibe at Sir Oswald Mosley.
Unless it’s an author I know, writing about a deliberately light hearted topic, I’ve given up on modern literature. I got sick of the obvious social engineering. Plenty of pre 1980s literature out there that I haven’t read.
Same with “the movies.” Can’t stomach the silliness. I only watch old movies now; they’re more interesting even though many are obviously propaganda too…
Marillion (British band) did a song a few years back called “The New Kings” about billionaires just shoving their way in to positions of global control. I thought, “They seem to know what’s going on.”
Nope. Their most recent album (“An Hour Before It’s Dark”) was all about the horrors of COVID, how we all became carriers of a deadly virus, and how doctors are “angels on Earth.”
I’ve never missed a Marillion album. I will never listen to that thing a second time. Hideous propaganda.
Van Morrison’s album of that time is fantastic – the Latest Record Project. The ‘critics’ conspired to pan it, of course.
A.I.?
I didn’t fancy the pub, and there was nothing much to watch on Netflix though I did see Ricky Gervais speech in Hollywood, which I found highly entertaining…and then the AI thing that they all do as I was about to exit..said
Watch this Tony…..you will like this..
Ken Loach’s latest flick
So I did
“The Old Oak”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19883634/
Its about people from The North East of England and people born in Syria…
Awesome Film.
I highly recommend The Old Oak and basically everything from Ken Loach.
Ken Loach is a national treasure, a chronicler of the underclass and a REAL, as opposed to exploitative, director and writer.
He’s up there with people like Barbara Ehrenreich, Joe Bageant and Studs Terkel.
I’m sure there are many others like him/her.
They are the Truth tellers of history
Yesterday, Trump said “Shortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled, that’s a bad war”.
Two things Trump, you dumb shit, it isn’t really a war between Russia and Ukraine, and all wars are bad wars. This is the guy who says he would let Russia invade another NATO country if they didn’t pay their fair share to the NATO war-chest, which is ridiculous on its face because Russia is NOT going to invade a NATO country. If I wasn’t convinced of how stupid the asshole is, I’d think he was actually drumming up war propaganda between NATO and Russia by insinuating that Russia is actually a danger to another NATO country. But he’s too stupid for that.
What most people miss when reading or listening to that garbage, especially his kult, is how ignorant he is about what is really going on and why. Not just ignorant. but totally simplistic, like a teenager. And this dude was president for four years! It’s incredible. But it really shows how ignorant his kult members are as well. Not that they aren’t matched by Biden/Dem party supporters. Ignorance reigns supreme in modern day Amerika.
Trump is narcissism writ large. He probably even scares the USian warmongers.
Trump is a product of our sick times.
He epitomises USian ignorance and jingoism.
And yet, he is no better or worse than any of the other excuses for human beings that have occupied the Bloodhouse.
“And this dude was president for four years! It’s incredible.”
Not after seeing the Oval Office occupied in the 70s by a senile B-movie actor, and now by a senile financial huckster. I doubt if any POTU$A has attempted to be more than a puppet after the warning example of Kennedy & Kennedy.
Drumpf is a character – a reality TV actor. He has his signature trademarks, such as repeating things twice for effect, in case his fans missed it the first time. Lots of hand movements for added emphasis.
The theatre around his many indictments, his 2016 campaign slogans of “Lock her up”, “Build the wall” et al amounted to nothing.
He has been given the role of the eternal victim, the “good guy” in this patomime. It seems to me that the plan is to get the Orange Messiah into the White House. A saviour figure – to trick the conservatives – who will turn out to be anything but that.
My guess is that they will install him again, if only due to the lack of any real prospects in the current race, though Nikki Heiley is their darling. They’ve softened him up enough to agree to anything that’ll replenish his legal losses. The ONLY redeeming quality this outlier poseur has is that he often “goes off script”. If only he would stick to the scripted, approved chaos, they would love him more.
They need Trump to sell their war for Israel. Biden really wants to, but he just can’t — his own base won’t let him, just the Republican party’s base is against the war against Russia. So that’s what the upcoming election boils down to: do we prefer starting WW3 in the Middle East (Trump) or in Russia (Biden)? Not much of a choice, is it!
Liz Truss has absolutely no excuse for not knowing about the relative power of politician and civil servant in the UK. The comedy series “Yes, Minister” (which later became “Yes, Prime Minister”) spelt it out in exacting detail. For our amusement only, of course. But the script writers were well connected with the centers of power so they knew exactly what they were talking about.
As an aside, a Chinese colleague once told me that this show was on TV in the afternoons, he and his fellow students used to watch it after they got home from high school. He mentioned this because I made an aside that indirectly referenced something from the show (as we tend to do…) but what was a bit surprising was that en English ex-pat and a Chinese ex-pat, both living in the US as naturalized citizens, were familiar with a 40 year old British TV series. He said that the more advanced English learners used to like the dialog (!). The show was regarded as lampooning something corrupt/western/whatever but did disappear one day without trace. (Which I reckoned was because some Mandarin — the Chinese version, not the British one — came home from work early and saw what his kids were watching.)
(The shows and clips are on youTube, BTW, and should be manadatory course material for younger OffG readers, especially British ones. Nothing that happens in British politics will then be a surprise.)
(PS — For foregners….the term “Mandarin” is the colloquial term in the UK for a senior civil servant.)
Brilliant show. Watched it here in USA in the 80’s.
Your alternative update on #COVID19 for 2024-03-02. 97.4% #LongCovid jabbed 150 Bilderbergers pandemic. Vitamin D deficiency season. Vax 225-year fraud (blog, gab, tweet, pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4).
It’s also a joke. I’m not being disparaging, it was just a little joke in a comic strip from the 1980s, the author Alison Bechdel has said it a hundred times.
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It’s commonplace, not to say trite and inaccurate, to observe that various attempts at humor, especially satire and sarcasm, “don’t work” in Internet discourse.
But you point out a related phenomenon: “laws” or “rules” formulated facetiously, usually in passing, are picked up by non-discerning parties and taken seriously enough to be used as legitimate and rigorous appeals to authority.
Like the “Bechdel Test”, “Godwin’s Law” also originated as a facetious observation, aka a joke. This did not prevent generations of adolescent-minded Internet commenters from regarding it as a “hard” law– perhaps an Eleventh Commandment– and wielding it as the ultimate “gotcha” to undermine and destroy commenters who ostensibly “violated” the law. (I’m not bothering to present the easily-found definition, or Godwin’s futile attempts to correct the mistaken impression that he formulated it in all seriousness.)
Even “Occam’s Razor”, which has a more distinguished history, has been abused and reduced to a one-size-fits-all “gotcha”.
Hmm, perhaps we can call such fallacious and mushwitted hijackings of a facetious remark “Ort’s Law”. 🤔
I believe in the Marvels and the She-Hulk, and its my right to free speech to have my opinion! 😊
– nato leaders are planning to send troops to ukraine
– nato leaders have no plans to send troops to ukraine
– nato leaders oppose sending troops to ukraine
– nato leaders confirm troops are already in ukraine
– nato leaders call for sending troops to ukraine
all true at the same time.
lets hope your second option is the correct one
Nothing is gained by sending troops it will only make that conflict far more dangerous and closer to N war
Unfortunately this is precisely what this evil in the world want, results will be:
genocide on historical scale and obscure the and moral and financial ruin of western societies
Multiple and inconsistent messaging is meant to throw us off balance and facilitate plunder. It was especially apparent in almost every aspect of the “covid” super-scam.
In the NEW New Normal
U$ UK & Israel are Setting West Asia on Fire to distract from their failure in Ukraine
— a discussion between Danny Haiphong and Pepe Escobar: .
https://youtu.be/5kF_KCMIDIo?t=126
In the NEW New Normal
Yeasin Ahmed posts on MOATS;
“Rishi and Keir will have a sleepless night tonight. Not because of the blood on their hands but because they may bump into George tomorrow in the House of Commons.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd3RE55fUYI
“A Good Man in Hell” — Poem by George Muir.
“It is idle to suppose that the simple stirrup pump
Can extinguish the fires of Hell” — Chard Whitlow (with apologies to TS Eliot).
‘Oh well, it’s been a good day in hell, Tomorrow I’ll be going down’ The Eagles.
Correction: Edwin Muir.
in australia, they have phenomenally exceeded CO2 emissions reduction targets:
That is also one of the reasons many small breweries in NZ have had to fold recently. The reason for a commercial CO2 shortage is linked to government sabotage of critical industry. See Marsden Point.
Is the CO2 in soft drinks (coloured sugar solutions) a taboo subject?
imagine asking those companies that manufacture CO2 how they are going to reduce their CO2 to zero
How to comply with the Bechdel Test for climate change:
No matter what kind of movie you’re making – knock-about comedy, biting tragedy, fantasy, Sci Fi, rom-com whatever, always have a scene where you stop all the regular action and have the characters rush around screaming, “Oh my God we’re all gonna die ’cause the world is burning burning burning!”
And then resume the movie!