My timing is always off, but I now realize that the whole "London Calling" theme for the articles on the riots is based on the fact that the song was chosen for the 2012 Olympics jingle. I can't decide if this was
- an example of British irony biting the country on the ass
- a stunning example of precognition
This is your thread to meander about riotous behavior, the relationship between art and real-life, ESP, or anything else. If a thread broke out with links to various articles about the riots, I wouldn't mind at all.
I am so proud of Wisconsin! I have friends and relatives in Republican-occupied Wisconsin and I am so proud of them tonight.
Indeed, the thing about “London Calling” as well as “London’s Burning” is the calling-out of a bizarre mixture of betrayal and boredom, with doses of venality and banality in there – precisely the mix of elements we’re seeing at work in the London riots (should we say English riots? British riots? They are spreading around the country).
I truly wonder what Joe Strummer would have made of the sweet irony of “LC” being put to use in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Then again, he did train to run a few marathons post-Clash…so a sort of irony, ahead of the fact, put on himself?
Every time I read about a riot, and speculations (and that usually is all they are) about the cause, I flash back. I was in college, living in one of the dorms. It was Berkeley in the late 1960s. There was a riot going on. I forget what the nominal cause was for the demonstration which had become a riot.
One evening, one of the other kids was heading out — to the riot. I asked him why, since he didn’t seem to have any particularly strong convictions on the supposed cause. “Because it’s exciting,” came the reply — like that was an entirely sufficient reason to riot.
So I came up with my own analysis. For a lot of kids then and there, going to a riot had exactly the same motivation as their fathers had for going on panty raids (look it up!): it was something that was a little bit naughty, and a little exciting, and had minimal chance of negative consequences. The detail that there was a lot of property distruction going on did not seem to matter much.
I was, however, fascinated by the article mentioning that, in stereotypical British fashion, some of the rioters were queuing up to get loot from shops.
Yeah, more’s the pity that there isn’t more of an ideological component to the carnage in England.
Plus, the scofflaws are always damaging the wrong people’s property.
They could, for example, descend on 10 Downing Street and the City where the guilty reside.
It’s unfortunate many of these soccer thugs don’t have the wherewithal to riot like shareholders do every day lately on the world’s bourses, destroying theirs and everyone else’s financial property, along with retirement savings.
I mean, the owners and shareholders know how to hold a f*cking demonstration! And buy and by doing so raise the prices of U.S. Treasuries, the only financial asset their bought, pussy-whipped Eric Cantor worked so diligently to downgrade and destroy for his own personal gain. I mean, what’s a guy gotta do to convince people that these are just worthless IOUs.
Somebody cover the guy’s shorts!
As for the coming rioting and pillaging in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Greece, I suppose millions of the out-of-work beneficiaries of austerity could buy Eurorail passes with Germany and Brussels as their destination for justice.
The Israeli demonstrators are largely peaceful thus far, but knowing the fascist right-wing religious fanatics who infest their government just like ours do here, I expect Israeli blood to flow soon.
We’re all Syria, Egypt, and Patty Hearst now.
Plus, this is funny:
http://www.angryflower.com/atlass.gif
This is not funny:
http://money.msn.com/investment-advice/6-big-employers-with-new-layoffs-brush.aspx?cp-documentid=6840727
So, I’d like to humbly suggest a rough grand bargain for the President to propose (in a speech tomorrow) to corporate America, public and private, going over the heads (hopefully separated from their bodies soon) of Congress.
Corporate America (we’ll let small businesses out the hook for now, given their professed smallness), sitting on its cash hoard like a sleepy, uncertain dragon (can’t leave it’s lair except to breathe fire all over the thatched-roofed huts of what’s left of the unions) will hire every single out-of work American (not just the 9%; the 17%, regardless of their resumes, competence, mental states, etc) at a base salary of say $20,000 with full benies, including health insurance and retirement plans.
Nothing for them to do? Tough. Hire them, now. Maybe you can put them to work transcribing corporate whining about uncertainty.
Maybe you can have them write a hundred times on a blackboard the corporate whine “Better this than being a government-employee.”
You may never fire or layoff another individual, Obama will suggest unreasonably.
All health insurance companies will remain independent, but will cover, at a reasonable monthly premium, every single otherwise uninsured American in this country, regardless of medical condition. Another boon to small business.
In addition, the health insurance companies will cover every single American now on Medicaid and Medicare at a reasonable (I don’t know, maybe we get Joe Pesci to decide what is reasonable) monthly cost.
Including nursing home care.
In exchange, the U.S. Government will completely discontinue unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid, saving all of corporate America money, and giving them additional time in the day that would have otherwise been wasted whining about the effing government.
Now, at the end of this this, um, offer, the President will lean into the camera and send his voice into a lower intonation like Christopher Walken does, preceded by that boyish smile, when he’s playing a guy who wants to close a deal in no uncertain terms and no misunderstandings, and say:
“You’ve got seven days to accept the deal, in full. Let’s say this time — 9:30 pm EST next Wednesday.”
He’ll cock his head, like Walken, trying to discern in the corporate eyes some glimmer of the weight of their predicament.
And then he’ll say, lowering the intonation into that Walken growl: “Because at 9:31 pm,
if we haven’t reached the deal under the terms I’ve specified, I’m going to burn your world to the ground.”
…at a base salary of say $20,000 with full benies, including health insurance and retirement plans.
Just for curiosity, what’s the base salary of a buck private in the US Army? Do the bennies include room and board?
It seems to me that drafting the unemployed would be an easy political compromise. Their pay would count as “defense spending”, which the GOP is always in favor of. Even their health care would be just another line item in the Pentagon budget.
These new recruits could of course end up being used to invade foreign countries whose governments teabaggers hate (e.g. France) or where riots are threatening to bring down a government teabaggers like (e.g. England), but they could also be assigned useful domestic tasks like reading Atlas Shrugged as a way to “win the future” for corporate America.
To sweeten the deal for the likes of Republicans like Rick Parry (look it up), we could bend the Constitution a bit and assign these raw recruits to pray for an economic recovery. Prayer is probably as effective an economic stimulus as tax cuts — and surely as effective a defense program as Star Wars.
I would propose Countme-In as Chief of Staff for this 5th (6th? 7th?) branch of the US military. No doubt the position would go to his head, causing him to demand a 10% annual increase in his budget for the next 75 years, just to make sure that “defense spending” never gets smaller than Medicare outlays, but I could live with that.
–TP
Unfortunately, pay for the cannon fodder (esp. if it survives and becomes veterans*) is the one part the GOPsters are willing, not to say eager, to cut. Money for soldiers (except ex-brass hired as lobbyists) is wasteful spending. Any penny for that is lost to the contractors. Grunts are a necessary evil because rifles are still unable to walk to the front and fire themselves. Also the meat still costs far less than the robot (partially because the military needs not pay for the basic upbringing from birth to recruitment age).
As someone said during Bush II’s Iraq war: The British equip their men, the Americans man their equipment.
*The ideal soldier (or employee in general) dies at the day of retirement
Just for curiosity, what’s the base salary of a buck private in the US Army? Do the bennies include room and board?
1467.60 per month, plus 3 hots and a cot. That’s base pay; they may very well be getting more for assorted reasons, but that’s the minimum that’s being handed to them before taxes. Mind you, substantially more is being spent on them. And barring adverse action, they’ll go from E-1 (1467.60) to E-3 (1729.80) in the first year.
On the plus side, in case of government shutdowns, that salary goes down to 0, with the understanding it will be paid back once normal operations resume. But even if it doesn’t, we still have to go to work or go to jail.