talkingtocactus
Coroner
i <3 michael sheen, he's fabulous. and welsh which is always a good thing
yep, we were one of very few countries to basically just follow blindly into the war. in a way i always felt more in tune with bush on this one - don't get me wrong, i'm no bush fan, but at least he genuinely seemed to believe in his reasons for going, whereas blair not only lied but knew damn well he was lying. although i think blind conviction in a cause is pretty stupid, i also think i'd rather be led by someone who has conviction than someone who strategises, schemes and lies for it. although, of course, it could easily be said that bush's people (especially cheney, who i'm reading about now and who is a scary figure!) were just as scheming and manipulative as blair, in fact probably worse.
tbh i'm not sure you as americans get the whole story about many things on a political level. that's NOT a criticism of americans, btw, not at all, you're a great nation - what it is a criticism of is your media. by comparison to european media it is heavily biased, easily influenced and very selective with its reporting. obviously over here we have news outlets that are just as bad (for instance the daily mail & daily express which are almost as hate fuelled as fox), but we have balances to it. we have the BBC which has a legal remit to be impartial (and most of the time it is, even though the likes of the mail/express reckon it's run by communists!), and that means we generally get both sides of any political coin. an example: the BBC is legally bound to give equal air time to all parties with a mandate - over here if you want your party to be legitimate come election time (ie if you want to be on the ballot), you have to be mandated by... someone (i'm not entirely sure who but some independent body) - part of it is about numbers of votes but they also have to deem that your manifesto is legal etc. so come election time we lucky viewers get treated to endless political promo broadcasts, which are very tedious and no one really likes them: but we can switch them off if we want, and i'd rather they were on, and with equal exposure, than subject to partiality.
this is why there was such a big fuss recently when the vile nick griffin (who is leader of the BNP who are ostensibly a nice fluffy right wing group but in reality racist NF thugs) was on question time (a big weekly show where politicians/media types are grilled by a random audience - it's a great great show and i think it is one of the most democratic things around, and i've been on it
) - a lot of people hate the BNP (and with good reason), so were saying it was totally wrong he should be given his 15 minutes and how dare the BBC allow him the platform to spout his vileness etc etc etc - but i thought it was good that they let him do it. after all, whether you agree with the decision to give the BNP a legitimate mandate (i don't!), they were given it, and thus they have as much right as any other party to the media, and as a legitimate party they fall under the BBC's partiality clause. the BBC had no choice at all. but you know what - THAT is what freedom of speech is about. letting any party, no matter how vile you find their views, get their moment so they can be questioned thoroughly - in the end the audience (verbally) ripped him to shreds, the other politicians, of all colours/stripes, united against him, and the whole nation got to see just how odious he and his views are, and ultimately it damaged his reputation far more than it helped it. the funniest thing was that he pushed really hard to be allowed on the show, then said it had conspired against him to damage his repuation - not true, he just talked such utter crap that people saw through him, and that's what freedom of speech is about: giving people whose views are badly thought through the rope to hang themselves through reasoned debate. if you really disagree with someone, argue with them properly, don't just shut them out, it just fuels their ideas and sense of martyrdom. by arguing with them on a rational level, the chances are they'll trip themselves up anyway. so that night was a proud one for british politics and basically a triumph for js mill america is, on the surface, all about freedom of speech, but by having hugely partisan and partial media networks which are owned and funded entirely by private interests who, inevitably, influence output and the opinions given, i think freedom of speech is lost, because no one gets a full and frank debate. i've watched fox news and, honestly, to brits it's often seen as comedy - we just can't fathom that a channel calling itself "news" can be so vitriolic, shouty, biased, angry etc. i mean, sure, like i said, we have our one-sided and angry media but having something to counter that goes a long way towards most of us being able to grasp precisely that it IS one sided and angry. and fox isn't the only one, it seems to me all us news networks are pretty biased, at least compared to ours. we get sky news here, which, like fox, is owned by murdoch (ick) and that's far less impartial than the BBC but it is still, relative to fox, not too bad.
oh dear, sorry, i went off on one there - i guess my point is that as a brit (and partly as a politics student) i always find the US news system quite sad, and it makes me understand why so often in the press over here we read about american citizens making bizarre claims (like the one about obama being muslim/socialist/marxist, for instance - and believe me if obama is marxist then true marxists will be defecting sharpish and marx will be spinning in his grave, because obama is far, far from it!) - because if you don't have at least some impartial news output, how the hell are you ever going to get the whole truth? i confess i know i a lot of brits who go "oh, americans, they're so stupid, they think this that or the other" and i have to disagree, americans on the whole are no more or less stupid than we are, they just get propaganda instead of news and when that's all you have to rely on how are you supposed to form a genuine opinion?" - of course there are other outlets if you look for them (for instance the net, smaller channels, some newspapers/mags) but people don't tend to have the time (or the inclination) to look for it - if you get all your news input in an easy and passive format from the tv, why work harder and look elsewhere? again, that's not a criticism, it's just the way life works these days - i'd rather watch the tv news than have to read 3-4 papers to get a balanced view! it's not an "americans" thing, the same thing would happen here if our news media was structured in the same way, luckily we have the balance in place. but it's happening in italy now, i believe, where berlusconi (president) owns and controls the primary media outlet (and has, i believe, attempted to shut down media outlets that have been less than complimentary about him). most of europe/the world can see damn well that berlusconi is a philandering idiot, but in italy he's really popular - couldn't possibly because he's controlling the media output and painting himself in a favourable light, oh no.... honestly, to me it's the start of a very slippery slope to the likes of stalin & mao - ok, maybe there's less forced labour and genocide, but essentially this kind of "news" is propaganda, nothing more, nothing less.
once again i want to say this isn't an anti-americans (or for that matter anti-italians!) rant in the least, i love america, and americans, i just find it really sad when from what i can tell an entire nation of citizens gets duped and because business and government are so deep in each other's pockets, very little can be done to change it.
[/rant]
yep, it's true. there were so many descriptions, cartoons etc at the time describing him as bush's poodle. i just came across this tho, which made me giggle:
a comment on a website said:
yeah he isn't popular, i think during his leadership there were some that still thought he was ok, even for a while after that - but the whole lying about the war and then lying *again* at the inquiry didn't help him at all and his popularity just plummeted. of course he's a narcissist so i'm sure as far as he's concerned all publicity is good.
ok, i'll stop ranting now
