A butterfly existence

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

22 December 2012

 

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

 

This is the first sentence of Chapter 1 of “Speak, Memory”, the much revised autobiography of novelist and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) published in Britain in 1967. Born in St Petersburg, Nabokov wrote in Russian and English.

 

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Literature, Russia, USA | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Πλούτος

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

21 December 2012

 

“Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.”

This is the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of “The Affluent Society”, published in 1958, by Canadian-born Keynsian economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), who for half a century was Professor of Economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In politics Galbraith was a liberal Democrat. He served President John F. Kennedy as US Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Canada, Economics, India, USA | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

What is a cigarette?

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

20 December 2012

 

“A cigarette is a stick with a fire at one end and a fool at the other.”

A Fact from the Book of Definitions.

 

Lest readers come away with the idea that Antigone1984 is opposed hook, line and sinker to everything that comes out of European Union, let us make it clear that this is not the case.

Antigone1984 is opposed to the market economy. The European Union is based on the market economy. Therefore, Antigone1984 is opposed to the European Union.

This is not to say, however, that the European Union does not, from time to time, come up with good proposals at a tangent to its core commitment to the market economy.

It does. And fields in which it does include, for instance, proposals for environmental protection and the promotion of public health.

However, these are second-tier add-on policies that run alongside but do not replace the locomotive of the European Union, which is the market economy.

One of these policies, in the field of public health promotion, involves an attempt to curb smoking.

Seven hundred thousand people die every year in the 27 member states of the European Union as a result of smoking-related diseases. The cost of treating these illnesses amounts to 25 billion euros. Another 8 billion euros is forgone through lost productivity.

The European Commission yesterday 19 December 2012 unveiled draft legislation to impose graphic images of the risks of smoking on all cigarette packs sold in the European Union.

The European Commissioner responsible for health, Tonio Borg, is quoted in today’s London Guardian as saying: “We’re not prohibiting smoking. We’re making it less attractive for everyone. Sometimes you need shocking pictures to shock people into stopping smoking.”

Glenis Wilmott, UK Labour Party leader in the European Parliament, is quoted as saying: “Cigarette packets should look like they contain a dangerous drug, rather than perfume or lipstick.”

She reportedly said that the European Commission proposal did not go far enough. “We need to get rid of all branding from cigarette packets, as it is the only space that the tobacco industry has left to market their products.”

Antigone1984 supports this initiative by the European Commission.

But we wonder, with Glenis Wilmott, why they stop where they do.

Why not go the whole hog?

Tobacco is a lethal addictive drug. Why don’t they ban it  altogether?

As ever in politics, a degree of hypocrisy might reasonably be suspected.

The European Union not only promotes policies to curb smoking – it has also, in the past at least, financed subsidies to tobacco farmers!

Yes, you couldn’t make it up.

We well remember Communist – yes, Communist – Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voting in favour of tobacco subsidies – because they had tobacco farmers among their constituents. Those same MEPs also voted in favour of measures to curb smoking on public health grounds!

Talk about running with the hare and hunting with the hounds!

The draft directive put forward yesterday by the European Commission has to be approved by the European Parliament as well as by the Council of Ministers of the governments of the member states of the European Union. Both bodies have the power table amendments. As a result,  it could take as many as three years, we understand, before any measures become law.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dolce far niente

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

19 December 2012

 

“Don’t mourn for me, friends, don’t

weep for me never,

For I’m going to do nothing for ever

and ever.”

Epitaph on the tombstone of an English charwoman

[A charwoman is an old-fashioned term for a woman employed as a cleaner in a house or office]

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

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Hanged for a sheep

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context.

18 December 2012

“I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.”

Extract from a speech at Bridgend in Wales on 7 June 1983 by British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock (b. 1942) on the prospect of a victory by the governing Tory Party led by Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925) in the parliamentary elections that month.  Her government was re-elected.

NO MERCY FOR DESPERATE SHOPLIFTERS

Faced with rising prices, falling wages and a dearth of jobs, poor British people, including young mothers, have resorted to shoplifting in order to feed their families.

They can expect to be punished with the full weight of the law.

In the town of Rotherham (population 118 000) in Yorkshire, for instance, crime has increased by 28 % in the past twelve months. Local police believe that the rise has been fuelled by the economic downturn. According to a report today 18 December 2012 on the BBC website, shoplifters appear to be targeting essential items, such as groceries, rather than luxury goods.

A police spokesman said:

“What we are seeing is a small number of individuals – particularly young mums – who are committing crimes to feed their children. If you look at powdered milk or baby food, it’s quite expensive. These are individuals that have had no dealings with the police in their lives and this is the first offence they’ve ever committed.”

However, poor people who steal out of desperation can expect no mercy from the law.

Both police and local businesses insist that shoplifting is a crime they take seriously. Anyone caught shoplifting will be prosecuted.

Antigone1984:

 

Britain today is governed by a vicious heartless uncaring government of upper-class toffs and plutocrats headed by posh boy Old Etonian David Cameron and his Tory/Liberal cabinet of well-off ex-public school boys. Since this coterie inveigled themselves into office in 2010, they have cracked down relentlessly on the lower classes, hacking back social benefits and driving even the disabled (including cancer patients) on to the streets to search for non-existent jobs. The aim is to cut public spending so that taxes for well-off fat cats can be radically reduced. In the teeth of the worst recession since the 1930s, their propaganda machine is working overtime to paint jobless paupers as idle scroungers who prefer to lie a-bed in the morning rather than go out and do a decent day’s work. “Anyone who wants a job can find one,” they claim, lying through their teeth in the face of the evidence.

It is in this context that the desperate poor have taken to shop-lifting to put bread into the mouths of their children.

In 1984/1985 Antigone1984 was in Belgium seeking funds and moral support from continental trade unionists for British coalminers involved in a bitter and ultimately futile national strike against an earlier Tory government headed by Ronald Reagan’s buddy Margaret Thatcher. At the time, striking miners who had taken coal from their pits to heat the homes of their families were being arrested by the British police and prosecuted in court. The Belgian trade unionists who heard this were astonished. In Belgium then to steal in order to give your family the basic necessities of life was not treated as crime. We had to inform them that this was far from the case in the United Kingdom.

One needs to remember that in Britain not so long ago poachers were hanged in public on a gibbet for stealing a sheep from the flock of the Lord of the Manor.

  ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Belgium, Police, Politics, UK | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Without comment

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

17 December 2012

There can be few people who listen to the news that do not known that last Friday 14 December 2012 twenty-year-old Adam Lanza shot dead 7 adults and 20 children, aged between 6 and 7, at Sandy Hook elementary school near Newtown in Connecticut.

Not as many will know that a bare two days later, down the road in nearby New Milford, Connecticut, it was business as usual at Shooters pistol range. One marksman brought his young son along, as a treat, for target practice.

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Christmas carol…sort of

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

16 December 2012

Coronemus nos rosis antequam marcescant

 

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice,

With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice!

The changeable world to our joy is unjust,

All treasure’s uncertain,

Then down with your dust!

In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings and pence,

For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence…..

 

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears,

Turn all our tranquill’ty to sighs and to tears?

Let’s eat, drink, and play till the worms do corrupt us,

“Tis certain, Post mortem [est]

Nulla voluptas.

For health, wealth and beauty, wit, learning and sense,

Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence.

Extract from a poem dated 1637 by Thomas Jordan (1612-1685).

And on that note……

 

Yuletide now looming. Can’t be avoided, worse luck. Same every year. Bog-standard Englishman’s home decked out with garish fairy lights. Sequins and tinsel. Downsized fir tree sprouting plastic angels. Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. My mum, if she felt she hadn’t had enough Christmas cards, for the neighbours to see, like, she brought out some of last year’s to make up the numbers.  Christmas pud, a culinary cannon ball, just as heavy.  Not really meant for eating, more for decoration. Not many people know that. Pity.  Stops you up for days afterwards. Never touch it myself. Outside the fortress traffic snarl-ups all over the place. My bag broke and the lamb joint fell into the gutter. Still, it was raining, so I managed to clean it up a bit. Shops gorged with panicking customers. Buy now before it’s too late. It’s the end of the world on 21 December. Didn’t you hear what that Maya somebody or other said? Best enjoy life while we can. Carpe diem. That’s what we used to say in Hull when I was a girl. Mind you, that was a long time ago now. But those were the days, weren’t they? I was young and flighty then….Anyway, where was I? Tube trains packed to the gills with legless commuters “having a good time”. Office parties. Hip-hopping on the filing cabinet. The whole town’s gone mad. Everybody sozzled, blotto, pickled and stoned.  People stuffing themselves in three days with enough victuals for a fortnight. Ramming it back as if there were no tomorrow. Cynosure of the junketings a giant replica of – guess what? – a Jar of Marmite – that’s the literal truth, I’m not making it up, cross my heart and hope to die. There it was all lit up lovely with a thousand light-bulbs at Oxford Circus right in the heart of London. What a great idea! Whoever thought of that, ’e should get a medal, ’e should. You can keep your crib and your manger.  No time for that ’ere now. That’s all passé. We want fun. A sudden cold snap now. Back home and the water pipes burst. Just what we needed! All the plumbers on holiday, too. Better crack open another bottle. The show must go on. Only a few seats left. Christmas stockings packed with trinkets and baubles – and tangerines. Chocolate tangerines. We can’t have real fruit spoiling the festivities, now, can we? No added value, anyway. Unexploding crackers. None of them work. Must have been a bad batch. Excruciating  jokes thought up by OAPs.  Family rows. More family rows. Over-indulgence. Don’t feel too good, right now. Frankly, your sister-in-law… Silly games. Endless videos. Reality TV. Little Jimmie’s got a tablet. No, not that sort of tablet, you twit. Christmas Carols. All the old favourites. “We three kings of Orient are, one in a bus and one in a car….” Old films dating from the seventeenth century. The Queen’s Christmas Message – dating from the same period. We all stand up to watch it. More TV. Leftovers. That overfull feeling. Permanent hangover now setting in. The down-and-outs at the soup kitchen getting their one square meal of the year before hitting the sack again under the arches. The apex of the consumer year. A burning question: how much wonga will the stores make this Christmas? Can’t wait to know. Buy, buy, buy. You won’t be happy if you don’t. Get more, more, more. More what? More of anything. It doesn’t matter what it is, so long as you are getting more of it. Forget the quality, feel the width. Live the life.  Bloated Turkeys, greasy geese, rare beef dripping with blood. Foie gras. Lots of foie gras. Pity about the ducks, but it’s only once a year, after all. The holly and the ivy. Mistletoe. You show ‘em. You can live it up like the rest of ‘em. No trouble. You can turn yourself into a bloated pigskin crammed to the gills with the best things in life. It’s simple once you set your mind to it. Bubbly. Lots of bubbly. Open the stop-cocks.  Roll out the barrel. What’s a party without fizz!  You’ve said it, ol’ man. No buses. But then who’d want to go anywhere when the days are as dark as the nights. Just let’s ‘ave a good time. Oh, and Uncle Fred has just died, too. Poor dear. Well, he was 88. Had a good innings, did our Fred. Pity about the dementia. But then we don’t want a death in the family to spoil our Christmas, now do we? We’ve been waiting all year for this. What was it the Queen said, anyway? Annus horribilis? Well, it’s all Greek to me. Poor dear, bless ’er soul. It’s so ‘ard for them what’s at the top. Kelly, watch that flex. You’ll have the Christmas tree down on us before you know it. Come and sit down and have a nice mince pie. ’ave you tried my mince pies? Yes, you ‘ave, you tell me. You’ve had twenty of ’em since you arrived on Monday. Well, why not try another one now, anyway? It won’t do you any ‘arm.  You’s been looking a bit pale lately. You need to put a bit of colour back into that face of yours. Want to try my face powder?….O dear, she’s fainted and that’s Coronation Street coming on the telly. I gotta watch that. Something important’s gonna ‘appen tonight. Darren, be a good boy and throw a jug of water over our Kelly. If she don’t come to soon, she’s gonna miss the start and she won’t like that. I’m starving again. Any crisps left?…

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Germany, Literature, UK, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thin-skinned Brits

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

15 December 2012

BEST KEEP MUM

John Richards, an atheist pensioner from the County of Lincolnshire in England, emailed police to ask what would happen if he put up a sign in the front window of his house saying “religions are fairy stories for adults”.

County police replied that he could be arrested for “causing alarm and distress”.

Richards could, in fact, be prosecuted under section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act, which creates the offence of harassment and causing alarm or distress.

Under section 5, a person is guilty of this offence if he (sic):

             “(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

             (b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

  within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.”

 On 12 December 2012 the upper house of the British Parliament, the House of Lords, voted to tone down the catch-all draconian nature of this provision by removing the word “insulting”.

However, this was against the wishes of the UK’s authoritarian far-right government headed by Old Etonian Prime Minister David Cameron, whose administration is currently proposing a slew of “Big Brother”parliamentary bills designed to curb civil liberties, including the establishment of secret courts and the monitoring of all internet communications.

The House of Lords amendment to section five of the Public Order Act is expected to come before the lower house, the House of Commons, early next year.

Antigone1984:

Hands up those of you who thought Britain was the home of free speech and civil liberties!

Wise up, fellows.

It is ironic that the UK government is mounting its all-out onslaught on civil rights just three years short of the 8ooth anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, the bedrock  of English civil liberties, at Runnymede in 1215 AD.

 ——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Police, Religion, UK | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Illusions perdues

Posted on December 15, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

14 December 2012

The rumour going round the media mills today is that US Democrat President Barack Obama is lining up former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to replace Leon Pancetta as Defence Secretary in his new cabinet.

If true, this comes as no surprise to Antigone1984 and others with long memories.

Obama was elected president for the first time on 4 November 2008 after his “Yes we can” audacity-of-hype campaign.  He took office, replacing Republican President George W. Bush, on 20 January 2009.

Yet even before he took his seat in the Oval Office Antigone1984  had gotten the measure of him.

That is why we wrote a letter to the London Guardian on 27 November 2008 – less than a month after the presidential poll:

“You report (November 26) that Obama supplants Bush. However, plus ça change, plus c’est la même  chose. Obama has re-appointed Republican Defence Secretary [Robert] Gates to intensify the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has picked the Israel-biased party-machine conservative Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He has appointed a bunch of former Clintonites, including ex-Reagan adviser Larry Summers, as presidential aides. He is even reported to want a security official linked to water-boarding as head of the CIA. Already the promises on environment and health spending are being toned down. So much for the hope and change promised on the campaign trail by the president-elect. And he is not yet even in office. It’s all over with Obama before he’s even started. We can already make out his epitaph in the words that Tacitus used of Galba: “omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset” [ “Everyone agreed that he would make a good Emperor –  until he actually became Emperor”].”

Needless to say, our letter was not published. The Obama hype machine was operating at full throttle in those heady post-election days. No doubt of any kind was allowed to cloud the blue skies of euphoria. The commentariat on both sides of the pond – most of them hard-bitten hacks that ought to have been long inured to hyperbole – took leave of their senses. This was the beginning of a new dawn, a Golden Age, Shangri-La on the Potomac. One London journalist lost his mind. “The tectonic plates have shifted,” he screamed, “the world will never be the same again.”

Alas!

Antigone1984 has a hard-and-fast rule when it comes to assessing the credibility of politicians: ignore what they say, judge them by what they do.

Not long after Obama did take office, on 4 June 2009 he made what was purported to be a seminal speech in Cairo. Entitled “A New Beginning”, it was supposed to mend fences between the US and the Arab world.

“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings,” said the President.

He then added:

“Of course, recognizing our common humanity is only the beginning of our task. Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead.”

You said it, brother.

He went on:

“Let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”

The Cairo speech, which seemed to exude empathy with the plight of displaced Palestinians, went down a treat in the Arab street. It was undoubtedly a key factor in the largely incomprehensible award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama later that year.

[Awarding the prize to a commander-in-chief in the process of waging two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did raise some eyebrows, it has to be said. But then again the Nobel Peace Committee has form in this connection. Henry Kissinger was a previous winner, as was Menachem Begin.]

After the speech in Cairo, however, it was back to business as usual. America concentrated on waging its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding Pakistan to the battleground,  while the Arab-Israeli conflict ground on without remission precisely as it had done since 1948.

Worse was to come, however.

On 31 October 2011, against the wishes of the United States and Israel, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) voted overwhelmingly to accept Palestine as a member. The United States promptedly cut off its funding for UNESCO.

And that was not the end of it.

In the United Nations General Assembly on 29 November 2012, 188 of the 193 UN member states voted on a motion to accept Palestine as a state with non-member observer status. The motion was adopted by 138 votes to 9 with 41 abstentions. The motion was opposed by the United States and Israel, yet despite months of hard lobbying worldwide for a no vote, they managed to seduce only one other top-table country (Canada) into the nay camp.

Hypocrisy? Hard to think of any other word for it.

Let it not be thought that Antigone1984 is alone in focusing a cold critical eye on Obama’s achievements. In a TV interview during Obama’s first term, Noam Chomsky, the elder statesman of liberal America, maintained that Obama was worse than George W. Bush. And only last month in Paris Perry Anderson,  the radical historian who has edited Britain’s New Left Review for half a century, said that you could not slip a cigarette paper between the policies of Bush and Obama.

Naturally, views of this kind do not command the attention of the conventional mass media, subservient as they are to the powers that be.

Let us make it abundantly clear, all the same, that it gives us no pleasure  whatever to be writing this prognostic obituary of Obama’s next term in office.

Had Obama Mark I shown in office a modicum of the radicalism that he had promised on the campaign trail, we would not have been backward in coming forward to acknowledge it.

But no.  It was not to be.

And now here we go again.

As we said in our latest reports on Obama’s second coming as president,  America – and the world – deserves better.

Antigone1984:

For our reports on the 2012 US presidential poll, check out:

A plague o’both your houses!

Et alors?

“The greatest nation on earth”

Clouds over Obama

——–

 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

——-

Posted in Israel, Palestine, UN, USA | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

From Russia with love

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Antigone1984.com

Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

13 December 2012

Hard to credit it, we know, but now we have Russian President Vladimir Putin calling for the revival of spiritual values in his moribund dominion.

Adopting the mantle of a Dostoyevsky or a Solzhenitsyn when he addressed a 1000-strong audience of Russian politicians in the Kremlin yesterday 12 December 2012, Putin said:

“Today Russian society has a clear deficit of spiritual principles – mercy, compassion, mutual suffering and support – a deficit of that which, through all of history, made us stronger, made us proud.”

Exhorting Russian officials to “strengthen the strong spiritual and moral fabric of society”, he called for the reinstatement of patriotism in Russian schools and businesses and hit out in particular at the relocation of Russian businesses off-shore so as to avoid paying taxes.

Referring to a campaign he launched recently to stamp out government corruption, he also flaunted his liberal credentials, saying that “Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy….we share the universal principles of democracy that have been adopted throughout the world.”

Incredible, certainly, but yes, that’s what he said.

One question then, albeit a multiple one.

Is this the same Vladimir Putin

who smashed Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, to smithereens in 1994 and 1999 when       the Chechens rose in revolt against Russian tyranny?

who, during the past 18 months,  has provided a continuous supply of artillery, guns and munitions to Bashar al-Assad, the butcher of Syria, thereby enabling him to slaughter 40 000 of his fellow-countrymen?

who, holding the reins of power in Russia, either as Prime Minister or as President,   without interruption since 1999, has surrendered the Russian economy to a tiny oligarchy of crony capitalist billionaires at the same time that the standard of living of the mass of the Russian people was plummeting to subsistence levels?

who has ruthlessly suppressed all democratic opposition to his despotic rule – outlawing protests and roughing up or jailing critics (such as Pussy Riot) – since he was re-elected to the presidency last May in a poll that is said to have reeked with the stench of widespread fraud?

Yep, that’s the guy.

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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