European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Thursday Open Thread

by In Wales
Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 12:40:05 PM EST

Hello, everyone.

. Home
. About
. Contact
. New User Guide
. FAQ
. ET Editorial Guidelines
. Search
. Search (Google)

Username:
Password:

. Make a new account
. Reset password

Thursday Open Thread | 37 comments (37 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

Endesa and Enel merging renewables holdings in Iberian Peninsula

On 15 and 17 March 2010 respectively, the Boards of Directors of Endesa SA (Endesa) and Enel SpA approved an operation that foresees the integration of the renewable energy operations of Endesa and Enel Green Power SpA (EGP) in Spain and Portugal....
The resulting company that, controlled by EGP, will maintain and have an operational capacity of about 1.4 GW once fully operational, with a generation mix diversified as follows: 88% wind power, 4% mini-hydro, 1% photovoltaic and 7% co-generation and biomass.
Endesa will remain directly involved and will play a key role in the operational management of the plants, the electricity generated and relations with central and local authorities.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 01:29:49 PM EST

" 'torture' on French TV" (4.00 / 4)

A disturbing French TV documentary has tried to demonstrate how well-meaning people can be manipulated into becoming torturers or even executioners.
... The show was inspired by an experiment at Yale University in the 1960s by social psychologist Stanley Milgram.
He used similar methods to investigate how people could come to take part in mass murder.
Jean-Leon Beauvois, a psychologist who took part in the documentary, says he and other members of the team spent months analysing the results.
"When they signed the contract, participants were placed in the position of executioners," he said.
"These were people like others, not exceptional, but 80% of them let themselves be drawn into becoming torturers."
... One contestant said afterwards that her grandparents had been Jewish Holocaust victims and she regretted that she'd obeyed orders to keep inflicting shocks.
Another, originally from Romania, said her experience of living under Ceausescu's regime had given her the strength to say no.
... psychiatrist Claude Halmos said the experiment showed that it was important to explain rules to children and not just impose them.
"We have to teach children to obey," she said, "but we must also teach them to disobey."
The producer, Christophe Nick, said the show had changed the lives of many participants. Some, he said, had become bolder about standing up to their bosses.
But one woman who had obeyed orders was shown close to tears afterwards. "How will I tell my husband and my children what I've done?" she asked.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8573755.stm

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 02:19:38 PM EST

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

How do you think you would have reacted in that position?

I'd like to think that especially given my equalities background and knowledge of similar experiments done previously, I wouldn't follow instructions.

Ad astra per aspera

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 02:31:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

In Wales:

my hard work being run to the ground but also the way others are being treated, and it is winding me up.

Press in on the button and unwind.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 02:37:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

I don't know, obviously like anybody I want ot believe "I'm better than that".

On my plus side I'm the sort of awkward so-and-so who tends towards following my own star and not giving a monkeys what anyone else thinks. (Pretty much a pre-req for changing gender). I've never been good at gaining approval by doing what other people want, so I mostly gave up about age 14.

On the negative side I can also see I'm the sort of awkward so-and-so who doesn't really care enough to worry if someone complains (or screams) if i do something. That's still a holdover from when I was a male and I developed indifference into something approaching a disorder. I'm changing and becoming more empathetic, but I still can't predict how I'd behave in such a circumstance.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:06:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (4.00 / 2)

I'm pretty sure I would have resisted. I know a lot of people think this and when it comes to it cave in to authority. But I used to argue with teachers a lot. One of my lecturers at art school said: "There's a stubborn streak in you Welch, and it won't do you any good." I used to be the main one disagreeing with philosophy lecturers at Birkbeck. As a lecturer I was one of few who stood up to a new, bullying head of school, and forced him to back down and he later said: "You're a fighter like me."

So I think there's a very good chance I would have refused to go very far even with the original experiments. I wouldn't have started this time round, as I knew about the Milgram experiments from the early 80s.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:13:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (4.00 / 2)

As a lecturer I often started my course with a doc about the Milgram experiments and some related stuff and encouraged students to disagree with me and think for themselves.

The most dangerous influences are not necessarily overt pressure, but things you're not even aware of. So I gave students the example that as an art student I'd tended to accept the Romantic myth of the artist - art as an individualistic matter of the expression of feelings, etc. Many of my students came to the course wanting to be ART photographers or Art film-makers, at least in my course they became consciously aware of the nature and origins of such culturally powerful ideas as Romanticism.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:22:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

I've heard of the Milgram experiment a long time ago: I understood it took place in the 50's, during the Cold War and in the aftermath of Nuremberg trials, where many low-ranking (and even high-ranking) defendants line was: I was following merely following orders...

I remember being impressed by how easily a high proportion of people ended up torturing a perfect stranger who hadn't done anything to them, just because a "Figure of Authority" was ordering them...

Only difference: back in the 50s, the Authority Figure was a white-coat wearing scientist from a government/university agency. In 2010, it's a female TV host (the ordinarily sweet and innocuous weather forecast anchor Tania Young). Sign of the times?

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

by Bernard on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 05:50:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

I saw a programme on TV where they showed that if somebody asked someone to give up their seat on a train (even with others available), people were much more likely to comply if that person wore a uniform.

We are social animals, deeply programmed for pack security to follow leadership figures. This simply shows how thin the veneer of civilization can be.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 06:14:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

You're right, and that was a Milgram experiment too:

Thirty years ago, they were wide-eyed, first-year graduate students, ordered by their iconoclastic professor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, to venture into the New York City subway to conduct an unusual experiment.
Their assignment: to board a crowded train and ask someone for a seat. Then do it again. And again.
"As a Bronxite, I knew, you don't do this," said Dr. Jacqueline Williams, now an assistant dean at Brooklyn College. Students jokingly asked their professor if he wanted to get them killed.
But Dr. Milgram was interested in exploring the web of unwritten rules that govern behavior underground, including the universally understood and seldom challenged first-come-first-served equity of subway seating. As it turned out, an astonishing percentage of riders - 68 percent when they were asked directly - got up willingly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/nyregion/14subway.html

So I think Bernard is unnecessarily dismissive of the French woman, behind her is a powerful social grouping, TV and its audience - some felt, I suppose, that they didn't want to ruin what was supposed to be, after all, a TV game.

Any kind of group can exert power over the individual; in other experiments individuals denied what they could clearly see, that one line was longer than another because the rest of the group, collaborators in the experiment, denied that it was.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 06:57:21 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

I remember this bit too - Milgram himself found this apparently simple task of asking for a seat REALLY difficult:

He suggested the experiment to one of his graduate student classes, but the students recoiled. Finally, one student, Ira Goodman, volunteered to try it with a partner. But instead of coming back after 20 trials as he had promised, he returned with only 14. When Dr. Milgram asked him what had happened, he said that it was just too difficult.
Dismissing his students' fears, Dr. Milgram set out to try it himself. But when he approached his first seated passenger, he found himself frozen.
"The words seemed lodged in my trachea and would simply not emerge," he said in the interview.
Retreating, he berated himself: 'What kind of craven coward are you?"
A few unsuccessful tries later, he managed to choke out a request.
"Taking the man's seat, I was overwhelmed by the need to behave in a way that would justify my request," he said. "My head sank between my knees, and I could feel my face blanching. I was not role-playing. I actually felt as if I were going to perish."
ibid

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 07:21:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

Ted Welch:

"My head sank between my knees, and I could feel my face blanching. I was not role-playing. I actually felt as if I were going to perish."

seems like there's a lot of resistance to breaking unwritten rules built in to what we have assigned ourselves to respect.

it's personality driven though, there are some characters who would have got a kick out of it!

it's irrational of him to care that much, but the program not to offend runs deep, and in the close confines of a busy subway car, peoples' cubic centimetres of personal 'private' space is respected by many or most as inviolable, 'swhy small overcrowded islands like giapan and england have such elaborate and formal politeness codes.

in the subway crush, getting a seat is a big lucky win. asking for someone else's unless you're really handicapped is crass, and his cultural self was appalled at his own behaviour.

obviously the rationalisation that he was doing a sci-experiment seemed weak and hollow to his conscience, his agenda was not transparent and he felt he was betraying common trust on some level.

this experiment, in transpersonal psych terminology, was a giant invitation for the 'shadow' side of self to come out and play.

proving amply that we need to understand this concept much better (and learn to harmlessly diffuse/rechannel it) it in order to have any hope of mitigating it, and remember who we really want to be, even under severe (im)moral pressure.

feed the good wolf!

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 03:38:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

"it's personality driven though, there are some characters who would have got a kick out of it!"

Of course, they're people, so there will be personality differences, but what stands out in the article is that so many of them found this very difficult to do. Types who might get a kick out of it, or merely not care, might be the the 1% of psychopaths:

"He suggested the experiment to one of his graduate student classes, but the students recoiled. Finally, one student, Ira Goodman, volunteered to try it with a partner. But instead of coming back after 20 trials as he had promised, he returned with only 14. When Dr. Milgram asked him what had happened, he said that it was just too difficult."
;;;The following semester, he asked 10 members of his class on experimental social psychology to complete the experiment.
... Those tension-filled subway rides in the spring of 1972 are still easily recalled by many of Dr. Milgram's former students scattered across the country.
"I really did feel sick to my stomach," said Dr. Krogh
...
Two weeks ago, a pair of reporters who set out to replicate the experiment struggled with similar inhibitions."

Milgram's point about the shock experiments and to a lesser extent the subway ones is that this had nothing to do with some "darker" side, quite the opposite. He argued that the problem was not that the Germans who ran camps, or the people in the shock experiments were evil or sadistic, but that they were too compliant, too inclined to obey and that Americans can't comfort themselves they are morally superior. The other important fact in the subway experiments, apart from the difficulty for those doing the experiment, was the very unexpected result that in one version, 68% of New Yorkers gave up their seat.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 06:35:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

Ted Welch:

He argued that the problem was not that the Germans who ran camps, or the people in the shock experiments were evil or sadistic, but that they were too compliant, too inclined to obey and that Americans can't comfort themselves they are morally superior.

to train a future generations of moral giants would be a good thing, but the fact remains most will do whatever they perceive they need to to ensure survival.

hard to make a value judgment about that...

and as for the Jungian shadow thingy, i think it proves even more that it's a much better approach to confront our own surprisingly aspects seeing it as a (not immutable) part of our nature, rather than projecting it outside on some satan image.

put even simpler, people need to learn that their own sense of responsibility for their actions can never be deflected on to anyone else, no matter how scary they are, without some collective karma.

i remember my dad saying once he was glad the british army had never ordered him to shovel murdered corpses into ovens all day, and my being shocked at that, still so young and naive... so matter of fact he was.

but then i tried to put myself in some german conscript's shoes ordered to do the same, and i realised i could only hope i'd do the right thing under those conditions, but it would be unbelievably arrogant to assume that moral fibre without a similar, diabolically nightmarish test.

romantically noble notions probably look different at gunpoint.

the milgram experiment was an ersatz situation, but it showed only too clearly how impressed and intimidated people found scientists at the time!

this french episode only reveals how nakedly people feel not to be celebrities, the ultimate circle of hell, for pomo man. reality shows...

but not in 'reality' shows.

first time i met my shadow was in a rugby scrum. i loathed the sport heartily, and was so pissed off one day i just kicked into the middle of it hoping to hurt someone's ankle, whoever.

i was very disturbed by this, i really had no clue i could be such an asshole.

teh stupid got to me. i think about that when i read about the milgram experiment.

course in the 70's and later shrewd entrepreneurs made big $ holding workshops that basically taught people how to celebrate assertiveness, at the price of being assholes, so it goes...

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 03:41:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (4.00 / 3)

I still think you're missing the important aspect by this emphasis on the so-called "shadow side". What the experiments made clear was not that people went as far as they did through some dark, hidden potential for evil, sadism, etc., but that it was far more a matter of compliance, obedience, deference to authority, etc. Things which do have their positive sides in moderate doses in an interdependent, complex society - a lot of teachers' lives are made hell these days due to the lack of such things.

Most people went on very unwillingly and were in clear discomfort, this has nothing to do with your angry violence in a game. Yes, we are extremely flexible creatures and we are capable of anger and violence, necessary for survival in some extreme situations. Stressful situations can lead to unprovoked violence, as we know from experience such as yours as well as experiments on rats.

But it's as well to make relevant distinctions between compliance, deference to authority and angry violence and personally I don't find the need to put the latter into a "shadow" category; it's just another human capacity, sometimes necessary and justified - like compliance.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 06:02:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

Ted Welch:

But it's as well to make relevant distinctions between compliance, deference to authority and angry violence and personally I don't find the need to put the latter into a "shadow" category; it's just another human capacity, sometimes necessary and justified - like compliance.

i get your point. it's a good one, possibly more evolved than my present position of understanding.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 09:55:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 1)

I wasn't dismissive of Tania Young: I merely noted that it didn't take a bunch of burly uniform-wearing guys to represent "Authority"; Ms. Young represented, as you rightly noted, the power of television and its audience.

As reality TV has amply demonstrated already, it holds more authority than anything else nowadays.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

by Bernard on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 01:39:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

There's no need to exaggerate, it doesn't hold "more authority than anything else" - or, if you really think so, where's the evidence ? Vague assertions like reality TV has demonstrated this are not very convincing. People respect the authority of various institutions to varying degrees. I'm pretty sure that if they were in a court of law they'd be even more deferential to authority. The audience was not influential because it was a TV audience but just the fact that it was a large group and, as social beings, we are very prone to influence by all kinds of social groups, family, friends, neighbours, etc.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 06:15:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: " 'torture' on French TV" (none / 0)

Ted Welch:

it doesn't hold "more authority than anything else"

Oh really? That's how it feels to me at times. And as to the need to exaggerate as a rhetorical device, you should be used to it by now, living in the South of France as you are.

I fully agree with you: we're indeed prone to influence by social groups of all stripes -- including reality TV :) -- and deference to authority in general.

Ted Welch:

I'm pretty sure that if they were in a court of law they'd be even more deferential to authority.

I won't be so rude as to return your "where's the evidence ?", but yes, I'd agree with you on this one too, although there are times when I have my doubts.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

by Bernard on Sat Mar 20th, 2010 at 05:19:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 6)

I had a good meeting today but then a very frustrating rest of the day which has ruined having had a good meeting. I leave work in 2 weeks and I can see what a mess everything is in and I'm horribly resentful about it, not just in terms of my hard work being run to the ground but also the way others are being treated, and it is winding me up.

I don't like feeling annoyed and negative.

But I feel a little bit better for whinging. Diolch.

Ad astra per aspera

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 02:29:55 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

vent away, we're listening.

i hope things turn around for you soon.

here's a little gift from Ventral Casting to cheer you up

In It For The Money? Conservative PAC Spends Big, But Not On Candidates | TPMMuckraker

A California-based PAC called the Republican Majority Campaign spent nearly all of the $1.7 million it raked in from conservative donors last year, but less than 2% of the money went to supporting candidates or independent political spending.
The rest of the money raised by the group went to operating expenses, salaries for the PAC's top officers, and back into fundraising appeals -- which often ask supporters for as much as $144 in exchange for sending faxes opposing health care reform to members of Congress.
The lion's share -- roughly $1.3 million -- of the group's 2009 fundraising haul went to a murky Arizona telemarketing firm that goes under the name Political Advertising, which has been linked to questionable PAC activities in the past. Its business type in the state's registry is given as "telephone fundraising."
Republican Majority Campaign's Executive Director is Gary Kreep, the California-based attorney and activist who produced and starred in the Birthermercial. That was the late-night program that, much like the Republican Majority Campaign email appeals, asked viewers to donate $30 to send faxes to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that President Obama produce his birth certificate.

my bold, heh.

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 02:35:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

There's a bottle of wine in the fridge...

Ad astra per aspera

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:04:35 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 0)

Know that one.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:07:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 5)

Well, to mirror InWales woe, I had a rotten appraisal today. It wasn't much of a surprise as I've been increasingly hating this job and I don't hide my feelings. I enjoy teaching, even if I'm staggered by the futility of some of it (teaching PC maintenance to people who can't read !!), but I'm awful at dotting the Is and crossing the Ts as you have to do these days. So many forms.

But a major part of my job is assessing apprenticeships and I can't get my head around it at all. I'm not alone. The woman who was taken on at the same time as me is struggling, just not as much as I am, two guys who've left were subsequently found to have been shambolic in this work. So we have a developing pattern, but each instance is down to individual failure rather than a lack of effective training. If you complain it's all, "we all muddle through", but if you do it wrong you're at fault.

So I'm being offered the chance to go part-time doing some work which is seriously pants, but which will keep money coming in or leaping onto the dolequeue at a time when unemployment is rocketing and I'm way past the "50 yrs old on the scrapheap" mark.

Anyone got 250K ? There's a seriously good renovation project in France to have a crack at.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:16:16 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 2)

:/ I'm sorry to hear that, Helen. I work mostly with teachers old enough to remember when you were allowed just to teach...it's a nightmare now.

by Sassafras on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:43:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 4)

The highest paying job I ever held, ($80/hr), required that I enter everything into computer based forms, but the client's IT could not get me a password for about two months. I thought they would use that as an excuse to terminate me, but instead they did another patented "reorganization" and terminated about 60% of the existing work force and brought in a few from the company owned by the District favored contractor. At the end of every week I would laugh and think, "Fooled em for another week." I earned enough in four months to carry me for another 6 months, while I had and recovered from surgery.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 04:16:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Extend and Pretend (4.00 / 2)

The New Foreclosure Trend -- Seeking Alpha

From the recent Lender Processing Services report comes the chart shown below depicting the latest foreclosure trend - non-foreclosures. That is, where borrowers stop making mortgage payments but stay in the house.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

by ChrisCook (cojockathotmaildotcom) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:29:40 PM EST

Re: Extend and Pretend (none / 1)

In the USA for many of the mortgages made from 2003-2007 the banks may not be able to find the original sales contracts and other documents which were done by fly-by-night "mortgage broker" boiler room operations. If you don't need to move, ceasing payments and staying put is a good bet. Meanwhile, save as much of the payment as possible to prepare for what ever is next.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 04:23:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Real Journalism on Sundays? (none / 0)

Unpossible.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 03:51:16 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (4.00 / 12)

We had a school trip today. Just a walk to the local nature reserve.

An Asian TA took some kids (who happened also to be Asian), and who couldn't manage the walk, in her car, and parked in a nearby car park.

They were verbally abused by a white couple, who then followed them, repeating the abuse. And you can't, when you're with somebody else's children in a professional capacity, respond with the spirit you might if you were on your own. For the children's safety, she had to return to the car park and lock the kids in the car with her until the racists went away.

I'm...there just aren't any words for this feeling of seething, impotent rage. I can't remember when I was last this angry.

And all the way to the nature reserve, we walkers were passing UKIP campaign posters, designed to stir up hatred against immigrants.

Fuck.

by Sassafras on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 04:27:13 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

It's been coming for some time. Economic hardtimes, fear and loathing will make knaves of many people.

and who will organise the resistance when the communitarian left has been discredited by association with the NuLab aberration

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 04:36:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

Scumbags and racists will use any excuse to attack "others". Doesn't matter if they're Asians there, Latinos here -- whatever. They don't care. They're just better-able to take advantage in hard times when people are frightened and looking to blame somebody.

Especially in a pretty diverse place like the UK. It's inevitably going to be fish-in-a-barrel with a certain segment.

Don't let'em get to you.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 06:32:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 0)

Video shows lorry pushing trapped car along motorway | UK news | guardian.co.uk

A haulage firm today began an investigation after a video emerged that appears to show a lorry driver speeding along a motorway unaware that a car was trapped under its bumper.
The mobile phone footage shows an Arclid Transport lorry travelling in the fast lane on the A1(M) near Wetherby, West Yorkshire, with a blue Renault Clio trapped sideways under its bumper.
The footage, believed to have been filmed in January by passengers in a vehicle on the same road, showed the driver of the Clio - who has not so far been identified - appearing to try to release the car by pressing the brakes.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 05:43:12 PM EST

Re: Thursday Open Thread (none / 1)

A friend sent me a link to this earlier - what is amazing is not only the event itself, but that this only got into the news two months later and it's not clear who was involved.

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

by Ted Welch (tedwelch-at-mac-dot-com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 06:59:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Bachmann (4.00 / 2)

Michelle Bachmann, the batshit crazy congresswoman from Minnesota, has been ranting to people to not fill out their decennial Census forms fully, only the question about how many people live in your household.

The problem, of course, is that this doesn't count towards congressional representation if you don't fully fill it out. So Minnesota could lose a seat in Congress because of it.

Which seat, you ask?

Michelle Bachmann's.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Thu Mar 18th, 2010 at 07:55:01 PM EST

Re: Bachmann (none / 0)

Makes you wonder about that part of MN that they'd rather have somebody who is completely mad than a sensible candidate. Surely even the repugs are embarrassed by her.

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 04:51:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Bachmann (none / 0)

But that's 3 years away. She probably expects to have moved on to higher office by then.

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Fri Mar 19th, 2010 at 04:57:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Thursday Open Thread | 37 comments (37 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Go to: [ European Tribune Homepage : Top of page : Top of comments ]