In honour of Independence Day

I love many Americans - family, Woody Guthrie, Angela Davis, Thoreau ('many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book'), Whitman, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Huey Long to some extent, Cartman, Cesar Chavez, Denis Kucinich, Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Emma Goldman, Stokely Carmichael (immigrants, but aren't they all?) and all sorts of glorious heroes and misfits. I must confess to only having visited Fayetteville (go, Razorbacks) and Eureka Springs, both in Arkansas, and apart from the Confederate flag-wavers, the people I met were very lovely indeed.

But never mind them. Here are a couple of very sweary clips of American-European cultural differences you might enjoy.



The other two I can't embed, but you'll find them here and here.

Meanwhile, as it seems appropriate, here's Woody Guthrie's 'Jolly Banker'.

Meanwhile in America…

Your Republican candidates:
1. Mitt Romney - billionaire who claims the Republicans are about looking after the 'little guy'. Believes that Americans (but not the native ones or the black ones) are the lost tribe of Israel and that God gave them some new commandments on solid gold slabs which were carelessly misplaced. He also believes in converting your dead ancestors, which is how it came about that the Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust are now officially all Mormons.


He's the man in the middle:

Caption competition: 'these are much easier to carry round than gold tablets'? Or 'Wow, I didn't know these came in lower than $500 bills. How cute'. 

2. Rick Perry. Governor of Texas and very much in the GWB mould (i.e. vicious and dumb and not averse to the N-word): he's already accused the chairman of the Federal Reserve of treason and applied Biblical wisdom to the recession and the BP oil spill:

"I think in America from time to time we have to go through some difficult times — and I think we’re going through those difficult economic times for a purpose, to bring us back to those Biblical principles of you know, you don't spend all the money. You work hard for those six years and you put up that seventh year in the warehouse to take you through the hard times. And not spending all of our money. Not asking for Pharaoh to give everything to everybody and to take care of folks because at the end of the day, it's slavery. We become slaves to government." 

3. Hermann Cain: sex pest, pizza shill, possibly corrupt, madman. 

'It will be a twenty foot wall, barbed wire, electrified on the top, and on this side of the fence, I'll have that moat that President Obama talked about. And I would put those alligators in that moat!" - Cain on his illegal immigration plan.'

He did this as a presidential ad (warning: it will sicken you):





4. Michele Bachmann: 

 ''Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.''

“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

Er… no, they were slave owners. 

'[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.''

''And what a bizarre time we're in, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.''

''Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.''

''I don't know where they're going to get all this money because we're running out of rich people in this country.''

''I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.''

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. Its all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

Under normal circumstances, you'd assume that Obama would have to be caught in bed, with a goat, wiping his bottom on the Bible before he lost this election. Now, I'm not too sure… Still, it'll be amusing until one of these loons decides to nuke Eurabia (that's what they call Europe now because we're all living under the Muslim yoke. Apparently.  

Americans Against Democracy

Salon.com has posted a very useful guide to Dictator Mubarak's influential American friends.

For most of them it comes down to a simple equation:

Democracy v. American and Israeli interests (as though they're the same thing).

And it's an easy call: Egyptians' human rights are far less important than maintaining the status quo. Occasionally - but not always - hidden is the claim that Egyptians and/or Muslims in general are incapable of behaving moderately, democratically or sensibly: simple racism.

However: these loud outriders aren't the only ones. While most Americans are, I suspect, largely in favour of the freedom movement (echoes of 1776 and all that) the US government's response has been very slow and cautious: the State Department is well-versed in privileging superpower hegemony over idealism.

I'd add another to this list of oligarchic tyranny cheerleaders: Tony Blair, who threw his largely discredited weight behind Mubarak.

Oh, and Silvio Berlusconi, who called him 'the wisest of men'. You can tell the quality of a man by the company he keeps - and that works both ways.

Americans: your aid needed

A friend who specialises in rightwing/conservative American politics seeks copies of political magazines. If you're going to the US, or a visitor from the US, could you save any copies you see or read of

National Review
New Republic
American Conservative.

Drop me a line via the comments and I'll sort out postage. Thanks in advance!

Well, that's OK then (no, not really: run, Americans)

God, it turns out, won't allow global warming, so we can all stop worrying and spending money on environmental projects.

Says who?

Says, John Shimkus.

Who?

Ah. This is where it gets a little worrying. He's. Well. He's the US Congressman who's running for the Chairman's position on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. If he wins, he's the most powerful man in the world on environmental matters, because he can block anything Obama proposes, and can try to repeal the pathetic environmental laws already in place in the USA (by far the biggest polluter on earth per capita).

Shimkus has also called an energy bill incorporating cap and trade measures for carbon emissions as the "largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I've ever experienced."  His position on carbon emissions includes the belief that reducing carbon dioxide will be detrimental for plant life.

In a way, he's actually an improvement on most Christian Republican loons. Many of those who are actually persuaded that global warming is happening (a minority) think that climate change is part of the End Times and shouldn't be prevented: it's God's will.



I think I'll go back to bed. For ever.

The eagle flies at midnight

I'm quite enjoying this Russian spy scandal. One of the set-pieces whenever these stories come around is the confected outrage expressed by the 'victims', in this case the US. It implies that such behaviour is beyond the moral pale, whereas every country does it, all the time. The US has spies in Russia, as does the UK, and Russia spies on both countries. They're all at it because they see each other as political and commercial rivals.

In the last decade, we have had two major expulsions of our spies in Moscow, who were caught on film red-handed trying to do exactly what the FBI caught the Murphys at. In one case, the British resident spymaster used a mentally unstable junior Russian diplomat, Platon Obukhov, to spy on his father, a former Soviet deputy foreign minister and one of the main negotiators of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty removing medium-range missiles from Europe.

The real hypocrisy is the self-righteousness expressed when they catch others at it.

Two aspects interest me. Firstly, these 'spies' seemed to do little more than gather gossip and publicly available information. So why are they being treated more harshly than the Israeli spies (and here, and here) in the US (and let's not forget Israel's repeated forgery of allied countries' passports, the kidnapping of Mordechai Vanunu from Italy and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior). Rosen and Weismann were let off because the 'secrets' they disclosed (on US-Iran attitudes) weren't hugely secret - I assume these Russians will get off on the same grounds, and be expelled for immigration/passport offences.

The other thing that caught my eye was this delightful statement by a neighbour of one of these super-spies:

They couldn't have been spies," said Jessie Gugig. "Look what she did with the hydrangeas."

They use my bathroom!

This is stunning (via Pharyngula): a judge in - well, you guess the country - refuses to marry interracial couples but says he isn't racist:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way,"Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

I know that the US is much more democratic than the UK - and this can be the result. A registry officer in this country would be sacked and charged with several offences for this, quite rightfully. I trust this one's going to a higher court.

Foxy

After making a cameo appearance at the staff pissup (particularly bad free buffet at the Hogshead - insulting considering we spend a good deal of our time and salaries there), I accompanied Emma to Fleet Foxes, last year's critical hit, performing in Wolverhampton as a warm-up for Glastonbury.

Zoot Horn has already compared them to Crosby Stills Nash and Young - I can see why, but I thought of FF as much more similar to a gentler 70s folk band, America, a rather wet but commercially successful lot who were actually only half American. Fleet Foxes are part of this 70s revival going on in indie at the moment - beards compulsory, close harmony singing, mostly songs about love.

The problem with this sort of stuff is that part of the attraction is the musical skill - craft rather than excitement. It runs the risk that band and audience want to hear the album exactly as it is on vinyl, admiring the harmonies and fretwork. However, it wasn't like that last night. These hirsute, portly chaps wandered on and introduced themselves as Blur, and kept up a fairly witty stream of banter for the whole evening, taking potshots at the Killers, and generally having fun. Two thumbs up! Incidentally, they asked from the stage whether the rumours that Jackson was dead were true, but nobody paid much attention. So when people ask where I was when I heard, I'll be able to say that I was listening to some decent music.

All in all, it was very impressive, were it not for Student Grant behind me, talking about himself throughout, punctuated by the occasional whoop as if to prove that he was listening to the band, and attempting to pogo most inappropriately. I decided not to have a word. As the only person in the room not wearing a checked shirt, I already felt rather exposed.

Oddly enough, having seen Fleet Foxes, I met an actual fox on the way home, sitting in a driveway as I walked past. It was only a cub, and seemed completely unbothered by me - it just sat there watching as I came within a few feet of the little fella.

Final thought: watch out for The Nightingales on Glastonbury coverage tomorrow. They're on at 11 on the Peel Stage, as befits Peel's favourite band. Making a special appearance on accordion is Helen Apperley - what a professional debut!

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The doctor is out - of his mind

Here's a bit of fun. The American Medical Association is desperate to stop Obama founding national health insurance because it's 'socialist' - the argument they've deployed since 1900. The plan isn't even nearly a proper National Health Service such as ours, tired though it is. We only got it because the Labour government gave in to the doctors and 'stuffed their mouths with gold' - but anything which smacks of sensible collective provision is pretty much communist in US political debates.

So here's Ronald Reagan, then a famous actor and aspiring politician, warning that government health insurance will lead to the gulags

Spread the Good News

Young Americans are dumping religion! Could it be because fundamentalists have caused wars, damaged the environment and generally degraded American public life? I think it could.