Roll up for your weekly economics lecture. I’m sure you’ve heard most of it before but nevertheless this is a comprehensive refresher and he takes a longer term cultural view of how the american middleclass got to where they are today which is very interesting. As is always the case this applies as much to many other countiries besides the US
Capitalism hits the fan
Nakba nakba. So good they named it twice
Pretty chilling video of an attempted protest on Israeli independence day
Assange and Žižek in conversation at the frontline club. Moderated by Amy Goodman
This is a unique event hosted by The Frontline Club that brings together on the stage not just two but three hugely interesting/important fringe culture figures. I think it was hosted in July of last year so we’re somewhere in the middle of the arab spring as we know it now.
A lot of the focus is on the Iraq War Logs, the diplomatic cables and the response of the mainstream media to these leaks. Its fascinating to have Zizek give a cultural reading of the events which counterbalances Assange’s technological and political interpretation. The whole discussion takes on more historical importance and ties in nicely with current issues surrounding gevernment attempts to influence the flow of information on the internet.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen or heard anything about wikileaks, Assange or the wars they’re linked to so this was a great lecture to get back into that mindset and see how its still important and relevant.
Doug Stanhope in an uphill battle with the audience
This is one of the toughest crowds I have ever seen a comedian face. The video actually starts with King-Conspiracy himself Alex Jones priming the crowd with the usual bullshit, leaving Doug to come on stage to an audience that’s already telling him to get off it. Rather than being able to start into his act he has to indulge in a debate with various, irate, often standing hecklers on the military, the troops and American foreign policy generally. I was about to back out of the gig as it seemed to be a complete write off until there’s a moment of reconciliation between Doug and man from the crowd who buys him a beer and he gets just enough peace and quiet to drop this gem of a segment.
If you want to win the war on drugs ill tell you how to do it. You have to attack the source. It’s not attacking the growers and the suppliers, it’s the people who are responsible for making life so absolutely boring and dull and predictable that you have to ingest toxins into your system just to get away from that. The guys responsible for TGI Fridays and Ashton Kutchner and ‘The last comic standing’ and PT cruisers and 8 simple rules for raping my stepchild and Vin Diesel, and whoever made it so fucking dull that you’re working five to enjoy two.
I love that blue-collar rhetoric. People that talk about prison like it’s a good thing. You know the guy, “These prisoners have it pretty good if you ask me: fuckin three square meals brought to em, they got cable television. That sounds like a pretty good goddamn deal if you ask me.” That’s because you’re a fuckin loser and you’ve never thought past cable TV and a frozen dinner as a life.
Maybe that’s what we should sentence prisoners to; your cruel and unusual lifestyle.
“For the egregious crime of assault and battery I sentence you to 15-25 years of a swing shift and the United Parcel Service.”
“No! Please your honour!”
“Don’t you be in contempt of my court son or I will give you two children with crooked teeth to boot.”
Not everyone’s cup of tea but it’ll clear some cobwebs from your ears if you need that.
LATE EDIT: Dear God does it trail off something terrible towards the end! If you find you’re enjoying it around the 3/4 mark then bail out before it takes a dive. Thankfully he’s learned the value of some restraint and editing in the intervening years.
Tariq Ali Lecture: Obama, Pakistan and the US Empire
Some of the references are a bit dated given the lecture was given in 2009 but the core of the lecture is a very enlightening take on these well worn issues. It’s also interesting to note how many of the leaders of countries have changed since this was recorded.
Don’t feed the chain e-mail: #1
From time to time my Dad will forward me on an e-mail he gets from some ex-colleagues or stumbles across on the internet. He doesn’t buy into the rhetoric or message of them luckily, he just knows that I like to get my blood up sometimes and there is no better way to do that then with some racist copy pasta. While I can usually laugh them off, sometimes they strike a chord and I’m goaded into replying. I do this despite knowing full well the exact amount of fucks the author would give were my response to somehow make it all the way back up the chain.
In an effort to take away from the feeling that I’m just shouting at someone who doesn’t even want a part in the argument, I’m occasionally going to publish here the reply that I’ve subjected by father to. This might also be useful for someone who gets one of these e-mails and doesn’t have the time to format a reply. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are your best friends.
I can usually judge how angry an e-mail is going to make me by two things. The first thing that stands out is usually the number of times it has been forwarded. This is then followed by the punch from the formatting. On the first count this one only rates a 5: Fwd: Fw: Fwd: Fw: Fw: Where are Muslims Happy?. This is pretty average for these e-mails but it could represent a frightening number of forwarders. If the original person sends this to five and each person who recieves it does the same this results in 15625 postings. Also here I must congratulate the author on a snappy title that suckers you in with the false promise of Socratic Dialogue. Such hopes are quickly dashed however by the formatting. Each sentence is given a paragraph to itself which is about as offensive as these emails can get. The effect is that of a propaganda poster shouting at you about the Jews from the side of a piss soaked bus stop. I wont subject you to that here. What follows is the reformatted chain e-mail and the response I fired off in a blaze of crackling keyboard keys. I apologise in advance. Continue reading
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