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Books
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The lost art of reading (or drowning in too much information)…
Here’s a great review of a fascinating book (H/T reader Rory) on how the Internet is destroying our capacity for intelligent, focused and critical thought. It opens thus: …here is the news that Ulin brings in this slim, meandering book: that reading is “an act of contemplation”; that such an act becomes more difficult in [...] read our review »
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“It was a trivial problem that… occurs every year”
Just your average family gathering at Christmas, with a bit of an argument about the seating cleaning arrangements… Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the [...] read our review » -
Stay out of Libya: counterinsurgency doesn’t work
A moment of some significance in journalism perhaps, as the New York Times reviews the current talked about book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan by Bing West. The author is no bleeding heart but a former assistant Defense Secretary from the Reagan era who stomped his way round the Afghan [...] read our review »
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Lol – I’m voting for Debbie!
Jesus – that’s absurd. American politics is a joke.
Obscene sinophobia.
Those ads where the policitan has to approve the hachet job at the end is hilarious . Of course over hear there aint much material for attack ads as they attack eachother all year anyway .
Typo – ” over here “
From Wiki -
The 30-second ad featured the sound of a gong and showed an Asian woman riding a bike in a rice paddy and talking in pidgin English. Asian-American groups called the ad “very disturbing”, national GOP consultant Mike Murphy said it was “really, really dumb”, and Foreign Policy magazine managing editor Blake Hounshell called it “despicable.” A coalition of black ministers in Detroit called for Hoekstra to apologize. Two of Hoekstra’s GOP opponents, Clark Durant and Gary Glenn, questioned whether Hoekstra is the right candidate for Republicans to support.[25] The ad was called “blatantly racist” by Michael Yaki, former aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Journalist James Fallows of The Atlantic called it the “most revolting ad”.[26]
Here’s the real Debbie Stabenow
http://www.stabenow.senate.gov/
Her speech on the 175th Michigan anniversary may be of interest to those who view the State as Detroit plus a has been industrial wasteland .
The ‘bail out’ of GM seems to have actually worked in turning the company around . Had it been allowed to go under another million jobs would have disappeared from the USA economy .
Woman speaks sense -Hoekstra is just a neo con nitwit .
And what, in principle, is the difference between that ad and most campaigns in NI?
and most ad campaigns in NI ?
Off topic a little ( sorry mods ) but does anyone remember the old ad for the RUC crimestoppers with a young Billy Mitchell of Eastender fame who calls the number whilst thinking ” I want the hoods off my back “
Can I vote for the Chinese girl? She’s nice.
The US is so far up to its eyeballs in debt to the Chinese it simply cannot repay, if a politician thinks, as I do too, that this is a bad thing, why is it racist to point it out in an election?
The hot looking Chinese girl is hardly some sort of dreadful sino-phobic stereotype is she?
We’re not all being a little bit precious here are we?
I think it was the stereotypically broken English that people found offensive Harry.
‘The US is so far up to its eyeballs in debt to the Chinese it simply cannot repay,’
Yes Harry it can -All it has to do and is doing is print lots of dollars a la Weimar Republic in the early 1920′s or do a Zimbabwe and use other countries currencies although we’re a long way from that . The new word/jargon for printing lotsa dollars is called Quantative Easing . Read up on it .
‘ if a politician thinks, as I do too, that this is a bad thing, why is it racist to point it out in an election?’
You have a point and I even agree that the ‘racist ‘ appendage to criticism of this ad is overdone . But in truth it’s not the ‘racial ‘ that should bother anybody with half a brain but the sheer mindless ‘stupidity ‘ of this ad . Sadly the USA has been forced to rely on the Chinese and other East Asian economies to buy US Treasury Bills to keep ‘governance ‘ of the USA in a position to pay it’s bills NOT just during the Obama presidency but for several presidential terms going back to Reagan’s time . Rather than pay for it’s governance with the monies raised from it’s own taxpayers USA politicians like Hoekstra have for decades thought it much better to let the Chinese do it for them by allowing the Chinese to purchase US Treasury bills until we have now reached the point that the interest payments on these ‘loans/investments’ has now become a fiscal drag on the USA economy .
Of the 15 trillion dollars of debt (thats just public debt ) some 3 to 4 trillion has been run up due to war . Total USA debt is now over 45 trillion dollars and the total debt incurred by college students now exceeds credit card debt . To put it bluntly the USA has become a debt laden society to such an extent that the ‘system’ may implode before the world’s major economies have time to bring in to effect a new world financial order to replace Bretton Woods . If the USA should implode before the necessary and much delayed reforms are enacted then the Chinese and other East Asian countries won’t be happy .. But I’m sure the Chinese will find some use for the 40 million surplus to requirement males their society has produced due to the former Communist’s government ‘one child ‘ only per family policy of 35 years ago .I trust you are nowhere within reach of any potential Chinese army that might stray over it’s borders for ‘diversion ‘!
Unsurprising simplicity from Harry Flashman again.
Dutch born Hoekstra paid $3.5 million dollars for this ad, not to tell his electorate what issues he had with the US relationship with China, but to get an Asian actress to portray a stereotypical and xenophobic portrayal of an Asian person who’s character is wallowing in the discomfort of the USian economy; discomfort caused by the short sighted libertarian economic approach of people like you incidentally.
I ask;
“We’re not all being a little bit precious here are we?”
Tomas replies;
“to get an Asian actress to portray a stereotypical and xenophobic portrayal of an Asian person who’s character blah blah”
It appears the answer to my original question is, yes.
By the way Tomas if you think being libertarian is by mortgaging the entire nation in foreign debt in order to fund massively unaffordable government spending I’m afraid you haven’t got the slightest idea what “libertarian” means.
Not only China is facing a demographic bomb of too many males – free enterprise, ‘democratic’ India is facing an even greater imbalance due to ultrasonic flagged feminicide abortions.
And its population is now virtually equal to China’s (who would believe stats from either country?) and is projected to rise in the next 50yrs as China’s declines.
the Devil may find work for idle hands, but hormones will do it much faster and more chaotically within a generation.
Summat, summat about a stiff appendage having no brain, let alone conscience.
“But I’m sure the Chinese will find some use for the 40 million surplus to requirement males their society has produced due to the former Communist’s government ‘one child ‘ only per family policy.”
War is certainly not an option for these pampered, obese little princes, their mothers and fathers didn’t invest their entire lives (and the lives of their dead infant sisters) to see the Politburo send the little darlings off to war when they could be making money instead.
Anyway there are few nations on earth with a worse record of fighting wars against half decent opposition than the Chinese, off hand I can’t think of a country they’ve beaten in war in the past two hundred years.
Their one reconditioned Ukrainian rust bucket of an aircraft carrier is good for show but would be a new coral reef resting on the sea bed off the Spratly Islands in ten minutes flat if they ever tried to actually use it.
Harry,
Some old timers down the Legion who were at Inchon would beg to differ.
Metacom,
That’s right I forgot, the Chinese won the Korean war and took over the whole peninsula didn’t they? Oh no wait …
Haven’t won a war in two centuries, the Chinese.
Japanese, French, Russians, Indians, British, Americans, even the poor old bedraggled Vietnamese after beating the French and Yanks managed to beat them.
@ @Harry Flashman,
Past performance is no guarantee of future results and then there is that other form of ‘warfare’ i.e the money game . Correct me if I’m wrong but it is the Americans who are dependent on Chinese buying their T-Bills to help keep the dollar from being Weimarised or even Zimbabweanised ?
Anyway there is such a struggle going on to prevent another world war that soon enough there won’t be a brick left upon a brick and thats not just in Detroit .Spring coming and the occupy movement be regirding their loins for the long struggle ahead as the forces of democracy line up to defeat the forces of anarchic financial capitalism .
Meanwhile the politicians everywhere are just hanging on for they know not whence they are
Not quite sure how it would benefit the Chinese to see their biggest debtor go tits up, it wouldn’t be nice for the Americans it would be catastrophic for the Chinese.