Go On Home, British Soldiers. Go on Home.

Enough Said, no?

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/reuters-ireland.html?hp

Shanghai Revisted Through An Alternate Lense

Since postings to PW this summer have appeared somewhat sparingly, I offer a blast from past. A year ago Paddy was spewing venom from his desk in Shanghai. In contrast I give you a much more measured and contemplative view of China, from the very same East China Normal.
http://moosedung.blogspot.com/

"Bear suits are funny...and bears are too."

A video you have to see....

The video below is now on YouTube and has spurred a political video making contest on Chris Mathews' Hardball show. ( His censors did not let him show it all....) Lets all have at it. Power to the People:)

Hilary Music Video

Putin's Russia

As a student of Russian language I'm constantly asked "why do you study Russian, what good is that?" Well, typically I ignore the bastion of stupidity that haunts many of the questioner's minds and try to comfort them with an "oh what'd you think of Harry Potter?" but for those of you who recognize the Russian language as a possibly-legitimate venture, I have further reason for the language's importance. Anna Politkovskaya's "Putin's Russia" is a journalist's approach to the corruption and horrors of Putin's regime. I've only read the first 40 pages, but the writing has been intelligent and the content horrifying, and still highly edifying. On par with Peter Maass's "Love thy Neighbor." Furthermore, Politikovskaya was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment last year most probably due to her muckraking approach to Russian politics, specifically the Chechnyan wars. I picked up a copy at Politics and Prose for 12 bucks or something, it is Very much worth the read.

The Washington Post review: "A courageous investigative journalist...In the tradition of the great Soviet dissidents. Politkovskaya was unwavering in telling the gruesome truth about the injustices that she witnessed"

SPS Blog Open for Comment

http://spublics.blogspot.com/

Sieg Heil Mein Tintin

So now they're trying to ban Tintin. Isn't that rich.

London, July 12: Comic book character Tintin is in the midst of a race row, after Britain's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) accused one of the books of making black people "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles".

The CRE claimed that the book -- Tintin In The Congo -- has projected "hideous racial prejudice" and recommended that its sale be stopped.According to The Telegraph, the Borders chain of bookshops has agreed to move it to the adult graphic novels area of its shops, but the official Tintin shop vowed to keep selling it, as did Waterstone's and WH Smith.Tintin, written and drawn by the Belgian author Hergé, was first published in 1931 but was redrawn in 1946, when Hergé removed several references to Congo being a Belgian colony.

I don't recall anyone, myself included, calling for the ban on most of the literature of Britain from the 17th and 18th centuries because it portrays the Irish as lazy, potato-eating, popish dullards and simpltons.

The History Boys

By David Halberstam Vanity Fair
August 2007 Issue

In the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush and his inner circle have been feeding the press with historical parallels: he is Harry Truman - unpopular, besieged, yet ultimately to be vindicated - while Iraq under Saddam was Europe held by Hitler. To a serious student of the past, that's preposterous. Writing just before his untimely death, David Halberstam asserts that Bush's "history," like his war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts.

read full article here http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/070507A.shtml

Maybe More Americans Should Read This From Time-to-Time

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
[A free pint at 4GF for anyone who can identify this patriot; a man who, when pushed to rebellion, let his musket do most of the talkin'.]

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v398363AJEa9FXK?searchId=4184359084443110045&rank=102

WIP Heads to Nanny's

Seission Night still hangs on at Nany's despite the appalling transformation of the rest of the bar.

Wop Sided in Buffalo---

The Wop has gone back to heaven for the weekend to enjoy some of his old haunts. I am sitting here at 9:00 am eating a raw Salens hot dog and loving life. I am going to Mighty Taco, Hoak's on the lake for a real Buffalo Fishfry, will have a plate of "cherrystones", have a beer or two at J.P. Bullfeathers, and party by rear off at Sunset Bay on the Lake. It will get me in the mood to do a Norm at Nite on Tuesday night with the Irish kids when I get back to Washington. To the left is pictured St. Gerard's Roman Catholic Church where I attended school as a kid. The school has long been closed and is now used as a home for unwed mothers.

Interesting news in Buffalo concerns the Catholic Church. The Diocese is plannng to close several Catholic churches and schools in some of the old ethnic neighborhoods around the city. The Polish community has responded very bitterly to the idea. Buffalo Common Council Presient David Franczyk introduced legislation condemning the Bishop's actions including language that the Dioceses' plans has "a whiff of ethnic cleansing" to them because it would force city catholics to attend generic suburban parrishes far from ethnic neighborhoods. Buffalo Bishop Kmieca responded that "Not only to make such a statement, but to put it in writing and to introduce it into the public record is appalling, irresponsible and misinformed" The whole controversy might make a great case study over at Hogwarthe's but then it deals with little people and Catholic issues so maybe it isn't "worthy" of their consideration Read the article in the Buffalo News. The city's Polish community feels particularly picked on in the controversy is predominately Catholic Buffalo and the Buffalo News covered that on Friday. Enjoy the articles if you choose to read them.

PaddyWop is Going to Germany

PaddyKrautWop will have to be the temporary title, just to make our German friends feel welcome. Nonetheless, I have set my sights on Germany for this winter's break from the University of Chicago (December 7-january 7). All Paddywoppers are invited to join me and I will provide more info about flights and what not soon. I just wanted to throw this plan out there, see if anyone has any tips, any requests.

Open Season

Ok, so we have some self-proclaimed policy hot-shots in the Hogwarts summer program who just cant handle the idea that other people think differently than they on certain issues (no prize in figuring out that these would be Republican-leaning individuals). Today Paddy published the first issue of the Southside P.S., that silly lil lunch-time, desk-published rag that causes so much controversy because the tough-minded, hawkish rightists can't stand the First Amendment. So I throw open the gates of free expression to anyone out there who wants an informed (I think), relatively intelligent, and politically-minded audience: here is the URL of the SPS online. http://spublics.blogspot.com/ Feel free to comment on any of the articles or write your own. I also publish a hard-copy every few days, so if you wish to write an op-ed (from the right, middle or left) there I'd certainly entertain any submissions.

PS - they've been discussing the 'Bong Hits for Jesus' trial before the Supreme Court and will be meeting with Justice Alito on Friday.

Tsarstruck?

Jun 14th 2007
From The Economist print edition

It is time to let the Russian royal family rest in peace
Peter Schrank

WHEN, a few years ago, word came that British bird lovers anxious about the decline of the house sparrow had appointed a sparrow tsar, it seemed that the tsar vogue must have reached its zenith. France already had a crime tsar, London a traffic tsar, Japan a banking tsar, the European Union a
foreign-policy tsar, and America had tsars for adoption, baseball, B-movies, manufacturing, record labels, you name it. No one, however, could outdo the sparrow tsar, or so you might think. Surely he would prove to be not so much the reductio ad absurdum as the dernier cri, the ne plus ultra in the once-rarefied realm of tsardom? But no. The latest newcomer, unless one has been added since you started this paragraph, is President George Bush's war tsar.

In fact, tsar-creation has never even faltered. Newish title-holders include Canada's copyright tsar, New Orleans's recovery tsar, Singapore's baby tsar, Tony Blair's respect tsar, Thailand's condom tsar and America's nipple tsar (Michael Powell, whose job as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission was to prevent a repetition of Janet Jackson's televised bosom exposure). They join an ever-swelling band of AIDS tsars, counter-terrorism tsars, cyber-security tsars, economy tsars, food-safety tsars, learning-disability tsars, piracy tsars, water tsars and even mental-health-service-user tsars.

All of which is a bit odd. One of the few points of agreement for most of the 20th century was that tsars were a Bad Thing, a particularly nasty example of natural selection that started with some brutal caesars, took in some belligerent kaisers and found its most excruciating expression in the Russian variants. Their rehabilitation in almost every quarter must rank as the most sudden, surprising and complete in the history of brand management. Republican Americans cannot get enough tsars. The purist-nationalist French, overseen by the Académie Française, seem ready to embrace them. And the Russians—yes, of all people, the Russians—have succumbed to an advertising tsar. A haemophilia tsar cannot be far away.

Nowhere is the triumph of the tsars more evident than in the wicked world of drugs. This world is divided into countries whose citizens yearn to see a drug tsar appointed and countries that have already got one. Why is a drug tsar so universally necessary? To see off the drug barons, of course. Until quite recently barons were a Good Thing. They brought bad King John to heel at Runnymede. Now they are a Bad Thing. What next? Führers, Caudillos, Duci, Gauleiters and Generalisimos must be due for a comeback.

It is time to put a stop to all this. The English language, borrowing, as so often, from Latin, already has a word for a supreme head. It is supremo. Journalists should try using it (they can fall back on big cheese occasionally). For their part, governments should try using titles that accurately describe the activities of their officials.

Once upon a time Britain had a minister for war. Now the same job is done by the secretary of state for defence. It also has a Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard. No one would guess it, but he is a deputy government whip. Minister for delivery and quality sounds plain and straightforward, but no one knows what he delivers, never mind its quality. Does the minister for social exclusion promote social exclusion, just as the minister for education presumably promotes education? Perhaps it does not matter: in Britain obfuscation is all.

Japan, by contrast, has a minister for the privatisation of the postal services. That is explicit. Unfortunately, minister for the rechallenge is not. His job is to give people a second go in life, though that sounds very much like the responsibility of the minister for disaster management. In Japan, however, that title means what it says. Elsewhere it refers to damage limitation, a task for spin doctors.

Now did the tsars have spin doctors? They certainly had lifestyle gurus. Time, surely, to rehabilitate Rasputin.

Paddy Returns from the Maine Woods (still uncertain if that was a prudent decision)

You make the call............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axxgABK164I&mode=related&search=

Somebody at Blogger is going to pay....

Imagine my surprise at getting an email this morning informing me of the existence of the new and improved PaddyWop... a mere 4 months or so after it happened.

Well, like MacArthur returning to the Philippines; or perhaps more appropriately Napoleon returning from Elba, I'm back. With a vengeance.

Neocons and multiculturalists alike should despair, because this degenerate French aristocrat has a bone or two to pick...

Still on a bar stool......

As the irish character of the new Nanny's continues to fade into corporate nothingness Paddy and the Wop branched out a week of so ago and began to explore Adams-Morgan for new set of bar stools to sit on. We had a great time at The Toledo Lounge on U street. A lot of interesting people sat next to us. A shout-out to the congressional aide we met even if you are a republican with a southern twang. The jello shooters added a new twist to the night....and they were green and purple!

More to come later.

Remember them always.........

May the memory of this president fade into nothingness as the memory of the soldiers he wasted in battle grows to greater prominance. May we all be "rebels of the Sacred Heart" with solidarity forever.