I was a big fan of Deadline magazine, and used to own every single issue*. Well, now it’s being resurrected, as Missed Deadline.
If this happens, I’ll skip meals if that’s what it takes to be able to afford it.
*They all went to charity shops, after years of following me around, move after move.
Watching it from the outside, US politics is fascinating, terrifying and hilarious. Usually all at the same time.
When the Republican party gathers to decide which moral vacuum they’re going to put forward to run for President, they’ll be gathered at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. The arena management, sensibly, have a policy saying no guns or weapons are allowed inside. A number of gun nut Republicans have taken offnce at this, and started a petition to have the venue’s right to declare itself a gun free zone overturned.
It’s unlikely (I hope) that they’ll get their way. But if they do, I don’t see how it could end well. There wouldn’t even have to be an argument that escalates to shooting for things to go horribly wrong. All it would take would be one accidental discharge, and a stadium full of paranoid people primed by rhetoric about high crime rates and terrorists would have their guns out. One shot becomes another, becomes a fusillade.
And then, probably before they’ve even got all the bodies to the morgue, the surviving attendees would be making statements about how gun deaths shouldn’t be politicised and announcing that they’ll be praying for the victims.
So, there were (more) serious, nasty cuts to disability benefits in the budget on Wednesday, which were hated and attacked by all sorts of people. Lots of Tory politicians, who had previously voted for spiteful cuts, are now running scared, and trying to distance themselves from Osborne’s latest stupid idea.
That they took their time coming out against measures they probably applauded on Wednesday shows up their hypocrisy. There is no reasonable way you can presume their opposition comes from any sort of morality. They’ve seen how unpopular the policy is, and they’re doing what they think will save their careers.
Iain Duncan-Smith has gone one better, and resigned his ministerial position, pretending he’s doing it because he can’t stomach ‘a compromise too far’. More likely, he imagines this stab at Osborne will put him in the good books of the other anti-Europe Tories.
Let’s hope this is the first part of the complete end of his political career, instead.
Work and pension secretary says too much emphasis has been placed on money saving exercises in letter to David Cameron
Source: ‘A compromise too far’: Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation letter in full
On March 8, Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski asked Donald Trump whether he had a foreign policy team. Trump gave a rambling response, saying, “Yes, there is a team. There’s not a team. I’m going to be forming a team. I have met with far more than three people.” On Wednesday morning, Brzezinski gave Trump another shot at the question. She asked him again about his foreign policy team and strategy and, more specifically, whom he consults with consistently.
Trump replied: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things. I know what I’m doing, and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people, and at the appropriate time I’ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself and I have, you know, a good instinct for this stuff.”
Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no. But USA! USA! USA!
Via: Mother Jones
Who wants to sell Donald Trump a bridge?
His tendency to solicit, repeat, and retweet self-serving falsehoods served up by sycophants and hangers-on should be taken seriously. Among the most important tasks the president has is knowing what to believe, whom to listen to, which facts to trust, and which theories to explore. Trump’s terrible judgment in this regard is one of the many reasons he’s not qualified for the office.
Trump’s record here also undermines the strongest argument for his candidacy: that his showman’s persona is just a front, and at heart he’s a calm, thoughtful, coolheaded businessman who will surround himself with the best people and govern in a pragmatic, results-oriented fashion.
New finding could tweak models of global carbon emissions
Source: Some trees could help fight climate change | Science | AAAS
This is one odd book. It starts as one of those low-key seventies thrillers, veers into bizarre campy Bond territory, then ends with some icky supernatural nonsense that feels tacked on.
Steadman used to work for Mossad, doing wet work on former Nazis and other enemies of Israel. Now he’s a private investigator in London. Approached by an old accomplice he refuses to get involved- until his business partner ends up tortured and crucified, nailed to his front door.
Now, he does get involved, and the story wanders around aimlessly for a while, taking in diversions involving mystically controlled tanks and a hot reporter who may be working for the CIA.
Then it all wraps back to the rich, corrupt arms dealer Steadman was tasked with investigating. A long time anti-semite, his plan involves the spear of the title- the one that stabbed Jesus on Golgotha- which will be used to resurrect a high ranking Nazi (though not the obvious one).
Throw in some nastiness involving a hermaphrodite and other oddness before the rotting corpse of undead Himmler staggers around for a couple of pages. The bad guys are summarily killed off, the spear is disposed of and the grand plot foiled.
Herbert was a horror writer, but it feels like the horror and supernatural elements were crowbarred into the story. And the whole thing with the hermaphrodite is just horrible and made an already poor ending worse.
I’ve reduced the price of Sounds of Soldiers as it’s so appropriate to current politics. It is now available for 99c/99p/the local equivalent.
Five years ago the United States began to self destruct. As momentum toward a nuclear civil war grew at home, US covert kill teams- and then the military- rampaged through Europe attacking imaginary enemies. The USA found itself at war with former allies. Great Britain closed its borders and stayed mostly neutral.
Robert Jones didn’t get on the train out of Paris after it was bombed. He chose to stay on the continent and make a name for himself covering the conflict with reports on his blog. He saw the first blows, witnessed nuclear explosions lighting up the Mediterranean and was present for the final acts.
Now the borders have been reopened and Robert Jones is back from the war. He has returned to Manchester to reconnect with friends and family, to investigate the changes the city has gone through and to find out what life was like away from the warzone. He’s striving for a new, peaceful life, but there are still some ghosts and secrets from his time on the continent which are ready to come back and shake it up.
A novella about what happens when a technothriller goes horribly wrong, Sounds of Soldiers is part travelogue from the future, part war story satire, and takes a look at how the civilians usually ignored by the big war fantasies cope and survive.
A good old fashioned monster tale set in the Brazilian jungle. It’s almost a shame that the monsters in the story are given away in the title. The author does a good job of building the mystery and giving glimpses of the terror.
Young anthropologist Jane Sewell returns to the Brazilian tribe she has been studying with her father, only to find the village deserted. All that is left of the former residents is a pile of stripped clean bones and a (temporarily) mute boy.
Before she can begin to work out what has happened, she has to rescue a pilot who crashes nearby. It turns out he flies for a local plantation owner, so the three of them head in that direction.
Only as they near the plantation is the threat revealed- mutant ants! Not giant mutant ants, as you might imagine from the cover, but telepathic mutant ants. That can sometimes communicate with humans, and they’ve enslaved other ants to help them.
There’s lots of soap opera stuff going on at the plantation- the owner’s wife is carrying on with the manager and the local workers are reverting to superstition- which play out in fairly obvious ways as, one by one, they get eaten alive.
In the end, it’s a race to the river, with a little help from a different ant colony. The wrap up is rushed, after all the build up, but it’s a fun, if occasionally predictable, journey to get there.
I’m tempted by the idea of space opera- grand space battles and galactic civilisations and all that. If I do have a go, I’ll have to check back to this list of common failings and try to avoid as many as possible.
Source: Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera – Charlie’s Diary
I did the titles and some other bits of work on this. It’s not bad for something shot on a phone. Future videos will be flashier still, as I learn new tricks.
The crowdfunder for Wendy’s campaign is at www.crowdfunder.co.uk/salford-green-party-mayoral-candidate.
So, we’re halfway into the second week of what’s going to be a tedious and depressing EU referendum campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the country has already become bored and irritated by it all.
I’ll come straight out and say that I’ll be voting to stay in. There’s a lot wrong with the EU, and the only way to fix the problems is by staying in and arguing more effectively for reform*. Also, it’s naive to think we won’t be affected by EU policies if we leave. We’ll still have to meet the standards they set if we want to trade with them, and there’ll be a load of new restrictions on travelling, living and working on the continent.
My stance puts me in the unsavoury position of being on the same side as David Cameron, George Osborne and Tony Blair. I’ll live with that. Not least because of the incredibly low quality of so many of the Brexit supporters. A short list, off the top of my head-
Nigel Farage A caricature of the worst stereotypes of England made flesh. The only good thing I can say about Farage is that, whichever way the vote goes, he’s going to be even more irrelevant after June.
Boris Johnson A man who plays the buffoon in the hope that we’ll not notice all his cheap political game playing. And the fact that he is a bit of an incompetent. It’s hard to take seriously any claims that Boris’ stance is for anything other than the chance to be leader of the Tory party and possibly PM.
Michael Gove Gormless, useless little man, who has only got as far as he has by taking advantage of the friendship he has now betrayed with the Prime Minister.
Iain Duncan-Smith Let’s face it, Duncan-Smith wants out of Europe to save his own skin. He’s scared that a European court might one day hold him to account for introducing policies that have driven thousands of the most vulnerable to early deaths and pushed people to suicide.
Nigel Lawson Walnut faced former Chancellor who now makes millions of pounds conjuring up weak arguments for gullible climate change deniers to keep spouting, thus slowing down progress on fixing the greatest imminent threat to everyone’s way of life.
John Redwood Supposedly hyper-intelligent former minister, who was once known as the Vulcan, but now looks more like Dobby the house elf. Redwood’s highly intelligent and deeply considered opinion on matters of climate change and energy policy somehow always sounds like the sort of thing Nigel Lawson’s group has dreamt up for gullible climate change deniers to repeat endlessly.
David Icke Really. David Icke supporting something is the equivalent of having it stamped “100% guaranteed bullshit”.
These are the people who will be running this country if the referendum results in us leaving (well, apart from Icke, he’ll probably say something incoherent about lizards, then disappear back to wherever it is he hides). They are scum, and they’ll be even harder to escape from, because they’ll trash your chances of going to live and work in Europe.
A vote to stay could be the first part of a double whammy. First, do serious damage to the careers of the would-be leavers by rejecting their campaign. This will have a knock-on effect of destabilising, maybe even splitting, the Conservative party**, offering an opportunity for more sensible parties to sweep in and kick them out at the next election.
It might not happen, but I’m an optimist.
*And kicking out all the UKIP MEPs. Really, is there anything less useful than a UKIP MEP? They’ve been elected to something they want the country to leave, and their constant refrain is how terrible the EU is for Britain. They could use their positions to fix those problems, and make things better for thr UK. But then, that would show that the EU is capable of doing good things for Britain, making the case for staying in. So UKIP MEPs must just sit on their hands and make things worse, because it’s the only way they can achieve what they want. They’re actively making things worse for us, under the pretence that they’re working to make things, somehow, better.
**Actually, either result could have this effect. But In is the best for the majority of us.