Category Archives: government

Going Tubular in London

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Boris Johnson‘s ban on open booze on London public transit has certainly brought out the best in his fellow citizens. What better way to prove that drinking on the Tube is a perfectly civilized activity and nothing that Londoners can’t handle than to Facebook a few thousand of your closest strangers and get knee-walking, vomit-comet drunk on the last night of booze-freedom?

The Guardian reports:

Police arrested 17 people and closed six London Underground stations after a party to mark the last day of legal drinking on the Tube ended in chaotic scenes.

Four train drivers and three other London Underground staff were assaulted, one police vehicle was damaged and two officers assaulted and another injured.

Witnesses said the stench of alcohol on the network was overpowering and that people were “being sick all over the place”. Drunken partygoers began fighting and vomiting as the midnight ban on drinking drew nearer.

Way to go, London! That will show them you can handle your booze.

From the BBC:

Londoner Matt Wynn, 43, a banker, said: “I’ve come along with a bottle of Champagne because I want to show that you can drink responsibly on the Tube and not cause trouble.”

But others took a different approach from the beginning.

Peter Moore, 35, a sailor from Brighton, said he had downed a can of beer in 10 seconds. “It’s sweaty on there, but I’m going round and round until I vomit,” he said…

As Saturday night wore on, eyewitnesses described how drunken partygoers began fighting and vomiting, ripping up maps and adverts, spilling alcohol and leaving debris.

British Transport Police said there was a “large amount” of instances of disorder reported.Liverpool Street underground station was closed to ease overcrowding for several hours. Other Tube stations closed by police were Euston, Euston Square, Aldgate, Gloucester Road and Baker Street.

Let’s go to YouTube for a closer look at what really happened, shall we?

remind you of anything?

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Benjamin Franklin on Despotism

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Never Forget

So today we get TWO quotes o’ the day, but when presented with a bounty one must simply accept it and share it with one’s friends. Really, this one is a stunner. I’d add my own thoughts, but what Benjamin Franklin and Gore Vidal have said really cannot be improved upon by my words. It would be like painting the Lincoln Memorial or something.

From We Are the Patriots, by Gore Vidal, here is what Benjamin Franklin had to say about the future and the implications of the newly-written Constitution of the United States of America:

“There is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

And here is what Gore Vidal has to say in his opening paragraphs:

I belong to a minority that is now one of the smallest in the country and, with every day, grows smaller. I am a veteran of World War II. And I can recall thinking, when I got out of the Army in 1946, Well, that’s that. We won. And those who come after us will never need do this again. Then came the two mad wars of imperial vanity—Korea and Vietnam. They were bitter for us, not to mention for the so-called enemy. Next we were enrolled in a perpetual war against what seemed to be the enemy-of-the-month club. This war kept major revenues going to military procurement and secret police, while withholding money from us, the taxpayers, with our petty concerns for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But no matter how corrupt our system became over the last century—and I lived through three-quarters of it—we still held on to the Constitution and, above all, to the Bill of Rights. No matter how bad things got, I never once believed that I would see a great part of the nation—of we the people, unconsulted and unrepresented in a matter of war and peace-demonstrating in such numbers against an arbitrary and secret government, preparing and conducting wars for us, or at least for an army recruited from the unemployed to fight in. Sensibly, they now leave much of the fighting to the uneducated, to the excluded.

During Vietnam Bush fled to the Texas Air National Guard. Cheney, when asked why he avoided service in Vietnam, replied, “I had other priorities.” Well, so did 12 million of us sixty years ago. Priorities that 290,000 were never able to fulfill.

Gore Vidal on The Long War and Brainwashing

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War is peace!

Where is Metro when you need him? Probably sulking because Blogger won’t let me leave any golden droppings in his comment section.

Stolen from the comments on Gawker:

  • Image of rosaluxembourgeoise rosaluxembourgeoise at 03:52 PM on 05/31/08

    Oh, look what’s lying right here on the coffee table, one of my favorite passages by Gore Vidal:

    “Although the Soviets still wanted to live by our original agreements at Yalta and even Potsdam, we had decided, unilaterally, to restore the German economy in order to enfold a rearmed Germany into Western Europe, thus isolating the Soviet, a nation which had not recovered from the Second World War and had no nuclear weapons. It was Acheson– again– who elegantly explained all the lies that he was obliged to tell Congress and the ten-minute-attention-spanned average American: “If we did make our points clearer than truth, we did not differ from most other educators and could hardly do otherwise…Qualification must give way to the simplicity of statement, nicety and nuance to bluntness, almost brutality, in carrying home a point.” Thus were two generations of Americans treated by their overlords until, in the end, at the word “Communism”, there is an orgasmic Pavlovian reflex just as the brain goes dead.”

    Gore Vidal, Dreaming War, New York, Thunder’s Mouth Press, p.117-118.

Bonus points for the following as well:

  • “When she was running for the Senate, Hillary’s psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately — I heard she said, “I remind them of their first wife.”

The Long War: Laurie Lee and Alan Rickman

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Here is everyone’s favorite velvet-throated thespian Alan Rickman, reading Laurie Lee’s poem The Long War for Peace Day, which was, apparently, September 21st. I wish they’d tell me these things ahead of time.

The Long War is a title which has been applied to any number of seemingly-endless conflicts, most recently used by the Bush administration to describe their “War on Terror” which has been the excuse for the continuing encroachments on civil liberties both within the US and around the world.

From The Long War by William S. Lind:

Long wars are usually strategic disasters for winners as well as losers, because they leave all parties exhausted. If they work to anyone’s advantage, it tends to be the weaker party’s, because its alternative is rapid defeat. The Rumsfeld Pentagon certainly does not see the United States as the weaker party in its “Global War on Terrorism.” So why has it adopted a long war strategy, or more accurately lack of strategy, unless one sees national exhaustion as a plus?

The answer is a common strategic blunder, but again one that is seldom seen up front; it normally arises as a war continues longer and proves more difficult than expected. The blunder is maximalist objectives. In a speech announcing the QDR, Secretary Rumsfeld said, speaking of our Fourth Generation opponents,

“Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide, with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life or we will succeed in changing theirs.”

Guess which one won.

The Long War
by Laurie Lee

Less passionate the long war throws
its burning thorn about all men,
caught in one grief, we share one wound,
and cry one dialect of pain.

We have forgot who fired the house
Whose easy mischief spilled first blood
Under one raging roof we lie
The fault no longer understood
But as our twisted arms embrace the desert where our cities stood
Death’s family likeness in each face must show at last our brotherhood.

China After the Earthquake: Fascism, Spin, Gullibility and Blame

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Chinese earthquake victims' funeral urns

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

In the wake of the newest reports setting the death toll from the Chinese earthquake north of 50,000, the government response of 50,000 troops, which was initially hailed as a superb example of the actions of a government in complete control of its situation, is looking a little less adequite.

It takes two soldiers to carry one body.

May 14, The Guardian:

Authorities coping with disaster without need for outside help

Duncan Campbell

Initial indications are that the Chinese feel they have sufficient resources and experience to deal with the earthquake’s aftermath, although aid organisations and foreign governments have offered help, both financially and in terms of expertise…

Among international agencies and governments, the general feeling that seems to be emerging is that China has the infrastructure, the personnel, the resources and the experience to deal with the crisis without significant outside help. Whereas it was immediately clear that Burma would not be able to cope with the scale of their disaster on their own, China, with its vast army and its previous knowledge of severe earthquakes, presented a very different picture.

May 17th, The Guardian:

Beijing open to foreign aid and scrutiny in wake of tragedy

Julian Borger

For the first time, Beijing has accepted aid from abroad and invited rescue teams from Japan, Russia, South Korea, Singapore and even Taiwanese charities. US offers of direct assistance were declined but China’s embassy in Washington encouraged Americans to send cash and supplies, a distinct break with the past.

May 21st, The Guardian:

China dissident held ‘for criticising quake response

Jonathan Watts

Chinese police have detained a political dissident because of remarks he made about the government’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake, according to his family and supporters.

Guo Quan, the founder of the China Democracy party, was seized outside his home by seven or eight police officers four days ago. They searched his house and confiscated his computer.

“They waited outside and caught him as he was taking our child to school,” said his wife Li Jing…

In the past week, he is said to have raised questions about the emergency services’ response to the quake and the safety of nuclear facilities in Sichuan. Fellow members of his small party believe his detention is connected to last week’s disaster.

Well then, I think we can all understand why Duncan Campbell was being so boosterish, can’t we? That must be pretty strong Kool-Aid they have in China, I’m thinking, except that … Duncan Campbell is actually in the UK and Jonathan Watts is in Beijing.

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