Paranoia...

A Saddam Hussein memorial plaque that appeared on an east London bench has been removed. It read: "In Loving Memory of Saddam Hussein" and it is not clear who left it there or what their intention was.

Wanstead resident Victoria Richards told the BBC it appeared on the bench on Sunday. Local residents saw it and "expressed their outrage" on a community Facebook page, she said.

Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, born in April 1937, was hanged in 2006 for crimes against humanity. His rule was characterised by a mixture of brutality, megalomania and paranoia.  

How is it going in the past fifteen years?

Resident...

Always...

New York state police say 34-year-old Ashley Rosenbrock was shot Thursday night in her home in Corinth. She was pronounced dead at Saratoga Hospital.

Police said that Rosenbrock's 35-year-old husband was "performing maintenance" on his legally owned handgun when it went off.  The investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed.

The Post-Star of Glens Falls reports that Eric Rosenbrock is a science teacher in the Lake George school district and the father of three young children with his wife. The couple had an 18-month-old daughter who died from an infection five years ago.

Why is it that the wife get killed accidentally as the husband performing gun maintenance?

Mistaken

Sometimes we forget how quickly radical change in politics can occur.

Sweden and the Netherlands, were liberal, the UK because of its strong political institutions and civic culture, and Germany, of the stigma left by the second world war.

But fast forward only 20 years, and each of those countries has now experienced a major populist rebellion. Pim Fortuyn and then Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. The Sweden Democrats, who recently reached a new record share of the vote. 

For Germany, which has more than 90 seats in the Bundestag and seats in 15 of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. And in the UK, Nigel Farage and the UK Independence party forced a referendum on Britain’s EU membership which voted for Brexit. 

Another misconception is that the likes of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen or Matteo Salvini are driven by economic scarcity, competition over wages or jobs, and by the effects of the post-2008 financial crisis and austerity.

A third is the mistaken belief that all these movements are a reflection of lingering racism in society, and perhaps even latent public support for fascism. Others argue, again wrongly, that voters are being ruthlessly manipulated into voting for the populists by dark and shadowy right-wingers who control the media or big tech.

The current wave of national populism actually began decades ago a “backlash” to the 60s liberal revolution.  

Even in Britain we conveniently ignore the fact that Farage and his self-anointed People’s Army first enjoyed major success at the 2004 European parliament elections, after 48 consecutive periods of economic growth, and drew much of their early support from affluent conservatives.

The tendency to dismiss these movements as a political home for old, white racist men ignores the fact that Le Pen picked up much of her support not only from young men but young women in France, while in Austria, Germany, Italy and Sweden, national populists are strongest among the under-40s or draw their support fairly evenly from across age groups. And, when it comes to racism, studies have shown that this is falling, not rising.

Turmoil...

2007

The effort by a number of House Democrats to block Rep. Nancy Pelosi from resuming the speakership that she was forced to relinquish after the 2010 election, bears a resemblance to the acceptance, by some Americans, of the anti-Hillary Clinton narrative peddled on social media by Russian trolls in 2016. In the case of Pelosi, the hostile power that launched the demonization of the Democratic leader was the Republican Party.

GOP campaign organizations dug a rabbit hole that some Democrats eagerly dived into. These Democratic back-benchers in the House who have been mounting a challenge to Pelosi have bought into this grotesque GOP narrative on her and it has soured the growing Democratic majority that has been unfolding since November 6.

Sadly, a number of newly-elected Democratic members also promised to toss Pelosi over the side and now have to confront the fact that there is no plausible candidate to replace her. They are in the untenable position of trying to beat somebody with nobody, and worse, making it their first order of business.

The campaign against Pelosi is a kind of Children’s Crusade whose symbolic leader is perhaps the least-experienced member of the 2018 Democratic cohort.

اختلاف الفكر والتفكير

Refreshing...

Conventional wisdom holds that democracy in both the US and Europe is threatened by so-called populism. Rational and courteous deliberation is being smashed by short-term demagoguery and white identity politics. 

The academic Matthew Goodwin, warns against the myth that populism is “a refuge for irrational bigots, jobless losers, rust belt rejects and angry old white men who will soon die”, to be soon replaced by liberal-minded graduate millennials.

None of this is true. The average income of Trump supporters is above the US average. Over 40% of white millennials voted for Trump in 2016, and appear to do so still. 

The same is true of Brexit in the UK. A fifth of graduates voted for it, and a fifth of under-35s. So did half of all women, a third of city dwellers and a third of ethnic minority voters. “People are voting for [immigration control] because they want it, not because of their socioeconomic group. It is dangerous to ascribe stereotypes to people just because you disagree with them.

Anti-populists cannot have it both ways.
US will see out Trump and survive, like it survived Nixon, the younger Bush, Obama and others.  

On the bright side, I see in Trump’s presidency a refreshing approach to North Korea and Russia, a reset of world trade, a reality check on Nato.  [Simon Jenkins The Guardian]

Repeal...

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed that Ireland will hold a referendum on abortion soon. The electorate will be asked if they want to repeal or retain the eighth amendment to the constitution, which effectively bans terminations. 

Varadkar is acting on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly which considered balanced evidence on abortion, and voted overwhelmingly for liberalisation. He is also acting on the advice of an all-party Oireachtas committee, which reviewed the assembly’s findings. The additional constitutional clause is the recommendation of the attorney general.  

Consent...

Protests have flared across Ireland after a defense lawyer showed a 17-year-old girl's thong or G-string in court as alleged proof of her consent in a rape case.

The outrage has included a female lawmaker brandishing underwear in parliament and women posting pictures of their thongs online with the hashtag #ThisIsNotConsent.

A barrister actually told a jury to 'look at the way she was dressed', that she was 'open to meeting someone' because she was 'wearing a thong with a laced front'", Coppinger added.

Protests in the cities of Dublin and Cork as no- with women appearing brandishing pairs of underwear and placards emblazoned with the phrase "This is not consent."

Culture places "enormous pressure" on women and girls "to be sexualized and to present sexually"  but that rape trials then often punish that same behaviour with the use of such "evidence."

Shore...

Some would like to have a comfortable life regardless who provide it. But then after a while, they may realize the cost of it.