MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Questions Of The Day (Politics)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 155, 156, 157 ... 299, 300, 301  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

University Lecturers' Strike

The AEL is setting up a fighting fund. We're going to fight them all the way.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

President Trump has just pardoned an Illinois governor eight years into a fourteen-stretch for selling a senate seat – governors can appoint someone temporarily when one becomes vacant (Barack Obama's as it happens). Among a whole slew of other stuff of a similar nature. A crook, right? Well, Andersen Cooper certainly thought so when interviewing him. But amidst the quite ridiculous liberal hectoring (picture Kirsty Wark on Red Bull interviewing Harvey Weinstein) it became quite clear that he wasn’t a crook at all. Just gathering party funds.

There are pols all over the world being pursued for similar high crimes and misdemeanours.– the French and the Israelis are in the middle of strident campaigns to bring their own to book -- and it is because nobody has yet figured out how you pay for democratic politics in an era when either you are a billionaire or you have to go cap in hand to billionaires. Selling senate seats is cheap at the price.

The governor is a lifelong liberal in case you thought this was Trump looking after his own. But of course he's a Trumpista now, just ask Andersen Cooper. Who used to interview Roger Stone affably and often but I suppose those days are over too. I enjoy the hysteria but I cannot condone it.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Child sexual abuse is in the news again. The most staggering bit of news is that 'widespread sexual abuse of minors in Scottish football' is being investigated by... wait for it ... the Scottish Football Association. We were told that Celtic is the club at the heart of matters so I expect the Catholic Church will send along a working party to help out. But my jaw really dropped with the senior Scottish judge handing out a suspended sentence to one of the prime offenders on the grounds that victims appear not to have suffered too much in the long term. Heterosexual boys being pressured into multiple homosexual acts during adolescence must be part of growing up in Scotland.

Meanwhile English judges have been handing out thirty year sentences to Pakistani groomers for pressuring English heterosexual girls left feral on the streets to do what comes naturally.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Just back from America with news that Joe Biden has wrapped up the Democratic nomination. He had Jomentum on Scooper Tuesday. Which tells us a lot about either the stupidity of American voters or the stupidity of the nomination process. Let me explain.

Biden was the early leader for one reason only -- name recognition. He'd been vice-President for eight years. He had shown no great talent in that role nor in the rest of his career before or after. He was just ahead of the only other candidate with name recognition, Bernie Sanders, who ran noisily against Hills last time round but apart from that had shown no great talent either -- unless staying in American politics when you're way to the left of David Cameron is a talent.

So then the campaign started and Biden immediately started to slide. Partly because of his own inadequacy, partly because he was up to his gullet in Ukrainian sleaze. Finally he bombed totally by coming in behind people with no name recognition in Iowa and New Hampshire. Personally, I was expecting any day that his spokesman would let it be known that Joe could see 'no pathway to the nomination'. I was relieved personally, I thought he was old and unpleasant.

Oh no, I'd forgotten about America's devotion to the Come Back Kid...
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Biden carried on doing disastrously in both the polls and the Nevada caucuses but next came his 'firewall', South Carolina, which he had put all his eggs into (and therefore won). Nevada and South Carolina had knocked everyone else out of the race apart from Sanders and Bloomberg and since, from a Democratic point of view, Bloomberg is Trump-lite, this meant Sanders or Biden. Sanders hasn't a prayer against Trump, so Biden it was. Perhaps he's smarter than I give him credit for.

Certainly Bloomberg wasn't as smart as I took him for. Instead of throwing half a billion at the problem with prime time messaging he should have spent a few thousand going to the Actors' Studio, round the corner from his town house, and learning some method acting. A coupla days rehearsing with Elizabeth Warren surrogates and he would have breezed through the debates that finished him off. But that is always the way with the rich, they think that making money is the highest art form and they don't need lessons in any other sort.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

American Psycho

Bloke in Alabama is due to be executed at 6 pm for killing three policemen in 2004 (!) despite him "not firing any of the fatal shots".
Andersen Cooper: The Supreme Court has, as of 5.30 pm, issued a stay. We go over to our reporter in Alabama for the latest.
Reporter: I'm sorry, Andersen, but I've just had an email saying they've lifted the stay and he will be executed after all.

You can see Alabama's point. Sixteen years ... let's get it on.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Couldn't happen here of course. Our constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishments. Sixteen years of 'Will I/won't I' could not be described as cruel since it is better than our own immediate 'Yes, you will' (latterly 'No, you won't') but we would certainly regard it as unusual. That is another difference between our respective jurisdictions -- over there it's about average.

Sixteen years and whadaya got?
Another day older and a television slot
If it’s CNN, don't even ask
It’s only Fox now that can save my arse.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Speaking of which

One constant in (Priti) Patel's political life has been her beliefs. A career-long Eurosceptic, she holds views on law and order sufficiently robust that she famously spoke in favour of the death penalty on Question Time in 2011, a view she now disowns. Peter Walker, Political Correspondent, the Guardian

To illustrate her constancy over crime and punishment by instancing a 180 degree turnabout is weird, unless the Guardian is sending a signal. But what is 'famous' about being a Tory hanger in 2011? It was an unexceptional position to hold at that time. Indeed I thought at this time. But Ms Patel 'disowns' (I presume her word) the view she took not so very long ago. This formulation is only used when it's something really awful. Are we to believe that being in favour of the death penalty is on par with youthful membership of the National Front or something? This is ironic in view of her lifelong Euroscepticism -- being in the EU means you cannot have capital punishment, leaving means you can re-introduce it.

It would be interesting to hear which day it was when Priti woke up and said, "I see the light!"

NB AE does not take a position one way or the other (it is a horses-for-courses situation). It only points out that the overwhelming tendency is for both people and states to go thataway but almost never the other way. America is an exception to this rule having abolished the death penalty by fiat of the Supreme Court before it coming back by ... popular demand, one would have to say.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I actually thought that Labour suspending Trevor Phillips was fake news, but it turns out they have. This will probably not end at all well for Labour as Sir Trevor is a former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The EHRC is currently investigating Labour for not taking complaints against antisemitism seriously enough.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Talking of the Labour Party, where are they? This coronavirus business has rather dished them because it means Boris Johnson being endlessly prime ministerial as he mouths something platitudinous flanked by two sombre-looking medical types. It'll be the same when he's finally sectioned. Boom! Boom! No, but seriously, Boris is reaping the Trump factor: every time he does something perfectly normal he gets rave reviews. He has spent his whole life carefully lowering expectations.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

We can, I think, agree that twenty-three years for Harvey Weinstein is absurd in relation to the the crimes he was actually charged with. He would scarcely have got more if he had been a serial rapist. As it is, these were crimes that would scarcely have been regarded as crimes not so long ago. This is important in terms of simple justice since people have a right to know what crimes they are committing and for what in terms of risk and reward. But that is not the real issue.

The nature of his offences means there must be hundreds for which he has not been tried. But this in itself does not necessarily ramp up the tariff that far, a burglar might be TIC'd for hundreds of other burglaries (in the old days, not necessarily ones he did himself) and the sentence would only be increased marginally (which is why they cop for ones the cops want included in their clear-up rate). But in Weinstein's case, that seems fair enough. But even so it does not add up to twenty-three years.

Except for sending-a-message. purposes. Society has to do more than cluck-cluck when it decides, as it has every right to, that it wishes to stop that which was prevalent. And let's face it, Harvey Weinstein was in an ideal position to know which way the wind was blowing and carried right on. Much different from the Rolf Harrises of this world. And the northern Pakistani child-groomers who hadn't a clue the climate was changing. All in all, and given America's extravagant sentencing policies, not too scandalous. Alex Salmond? Eight to twelve, serves four. And not in Barlinnie either.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Some classic Israeli manoeuvres this week. (Details courtesy of Al-Jazeera so mostly reliable.) Outside Nablus there is a hilltop that would make a great Israeli settlement. "Right wing archaeologists" [the mind slightly boggles] are hovering around. Then some Israeli surveyors turn up with some would-be settlers. The locals start mass protests. The Israeli army comes in, shoots dead a 15-year-old Palestinian boy "from close range". It's in the balance. Only kidding.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

An AE aspect of the Cardinal Pell case. He is serving six years for molesting two choir boys back in the nineties and is the highest ranking Catholic prelate (third in the Vatican hierarchy) so far to be named and shamed. We have already observed that if small boys are your thing you are likely to go in for the priesthood (or allied trades) but surely, if you get to be a cardinal, you are also going to be successful in your main hobby. There must be hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians out there who have been molested by him.

True, it's not very Ocker to admit it, on the other hand there's cash, revenge and simple justice on offer if you do. So one witness described as 'unreliable' and one that died of drugs in 2014 seems a suspiciously sparse haul. We must not persecute Catholics just to balance the books.
Send private message
Grant



View user's profile
Reply with quote

On the subject of Salmond, is there a sadder charge than "attempted rape?"
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

But it's a very important one. All these cases, the Pell one especially, seem at the soft end, if that is the right term. This was also true in the Jeffrey Epstein case, where consent was always at issue. Actual penetration by force against the victim's clearly expressed will seems almost completely absent, yet that is what most of us understand by 'rape'. The term has been stretched so far, there doesn't seem to be a name for this any more. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing but it makes me uneasy. Even awful things must be subject to gradation. Perhaps especially awful things.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3 ... 155, 156, 157 ... 299, 300, 301  Next

Jump to:  
Page 156 of 301

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group