Here at last - the first of the new Echo Room.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Iran has admitted that it has sent troops to Syria to help Assad. Is it possible that they played some part in the massacre at Houla?
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Political blogger Guido Fawkes lists the current administration’s policy u-turns, including the latest pasty and caravan tax climbdowns.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
The UN has long been a joke of obese proportions, so it’s no suprise it has appointed Mugabe as one of its tourism ambassadors. Yes, tourism ambassador, from that famous tourist-magnet, Zimbabwe, land of murdered white farmers and brutalised black serfs.
Much like that other delusional institution, the EU, the UN has numerous agencies by which to flatter itself that it plays an important role in the world, telling people how to live their lives. In this case it’s The United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Why the UK Commission on a Bill of Rights is a progressive scam to “protect the HRA and the Strasbourg court” and thus reduce further what’s left of our national sovereignty. No suprise, then, that the LibDems are at the forefront of the exercise. Michael Pinto-Duschinksy, formerly a member of the Commission, explains what is going on.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
The inhabitants of the Greek town of Volos have devised their own currency to get them through the diffucult times. The reporter in the BBC clip talks about “barter” - which it isn’t - this is the use of a medium of exchage, ie money. It’s just that it isn’t “official” money. Good luck to them, I say.
There’s also an article from The New York Times here.
Various schemes, such as LETS, are in use in the UK.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Don’t ask.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
The Fortnightly Review draw attention to a interesting interview with Paul Fussell, who died the other day. Fussell makes a case for the disillusion of the Great War as a major impulse towards the ironic mode in literature:
It protects one from emotional openness which might destroy or just weaken one, and it turns the experience toward intellect and away from emotion. I learned that by my long immersion in eighteenth-century literature, where the urge is constantly outward from oneself; that is, not to try to undertake deep voyages into the self, but, rather, to escape the self, look out at society, see what’s going on, and then comment on it. Irony is a great help there, to protect oneself from self-regarding emotion, which has always been an enemy of mine from the start.
The article also contains a link to the whole interview.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Police are urging Greeks to keep their money in bank accounts rather than putting it at risk of theft, the Guardian reports.
Greece’s banks are likely to be shored up on Friday or Monday with €18bn of bailout funds. Almost 25% of deposits have been taken out from Greek banks.via euobserver.com
Next step will be to stop people taking large amounts out of their accounts. The step after that…
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »
Paul Fussell, literary critic and author of the influential book The Great War and Modern Memory, has died, aged 88.
Posted via email from Michael Blackburn’s Posterous | Comment »