Rav Casley Gera’s Blog

This is one a comment on Managing Globalization (Opinion Blog)

I have long believed that the vast majority of people in Britain are racist.

Put simply, most people - including, i suspect, many black people - feel far more nervous walking at night around young black men than young white men. This is based, in part, on the slightly higher black crime rate. But it nevertheless is racism, because it makes assumptions about individuals, and alters our reactions to them, based purely on the colour of their skin.

Until we stop talking about racism as a rare and evil crime, and instead recognise it as something we’re all capable of, we’ll never have a real conversation about it.

But I’ve said this to friends and they’ve looked at me like I’m mad. What do you think?

UPDATE: This article on the American election cites interesting evidence about the widespread nature of this sort of instinctive racial stereotyping.

April 23, 2008 in Sketchbook | 0 comments

what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage. Among the younger generation, there is much less racial polarization: under 30, whites split evenly. This is a fascinating result. It appears to me as the future struggling to overcome the past… But here’s what she does have: total shamelessness, and an absolute belief that she is the rightful nominee… What sustains her is this deep, deep sense of entitlement and an absolute refusal to let the next generation take over. She will take this to the last day of the convention if necessary. If Obama thinks he has a right to actually be nominated by the Clinton Democrats because he has won more votes, more states and more delegates, he is sadly mistaken. They will never let such a person win without a death struggle. And that is where the Democrats are now headed.

Andrew Sullivan may be exaggerating Hillary’s malevolent mania a smidge, but perhaps not by much. But the generational point is the really interesting one. [Read more →]

Mr Obama has fought a brilliant campaign, out-organising his opponent, raising more money, and convincing undecided Democrats as well as the country at large that he was more likeable, more straightforward and more worthy of trust.

On form, he is a spell-binding orator and holds arena-sized audiences in thrall. He is given to airy exhortations, it is true, but genuinely seeks consensus and has cross-party appeal.

Mrs Clinton’s campaign, in contrast, has been a shambles. She and her team expected to have it all sewn up long ago; they made no plans for a long struggle, ran short of money and had to reorganise on the run.

Her speaking style is pedestrian, when it is not actually grating. Those who dislike her tend to do so with a passion: her disapproval ratings started high and after months of campaigning are climbing still. It is a tribute to her tenacity and to the loyalty she commands in the party that her fate was not sealed weeks ago.

How much the way that a campaign is run tells you about a candidate’s fitness to be president is debatable – but it does tell you something, especially if the candidate with the misfiring strategy is running on a claim of management expertise.

The FT drives in another nail

This is one a comment on Fred's Footprint: Green fascism (New Scientist Space Blog)

…..which isn’t a phrase I ever thought I’d write.

Andrew Sullivan (who [a] I’ve never forgiven for not remaining the attractive, slim role model he was when his book, Virtually Normal, was serialised in the Guardian in the 1990s and briefly lit up my gay teenage life; and [b] doesn’t allow comments any more on his blog The Daily Dish, only pingbacks, hence this post) is slightly unfair with his criticism of the inveterate conservative’s gleeful hay-making over Bittergate. Is Kristol, like many conservatives (and Mrs. Clinton*) being entirely disingenuous in pretending that any time a politician, in a private fundraising meeting, makes sweeping generalisations about a section of the electorate and the socioeconomic drivers of their political positions, they’re importuning its collective intelligence? Of course. He goes on to do it himself, a few lines later, by implying that all wealthy San Franciscan democrats are metropolitan snobs (not a generalisation many would disagree with, but then of course that’s the point - many don’t disagree with Obama either). But he doesn’t actually - as Sullivan suggests - cast doubt over Obama’s religious beliefs. Rather, he argues that Obama believes his own religious beliefs to be complex and genuine, but appears not to think that about others. [Read more →]

American cinema's creative zenith was reached in the 1970s, just as movies were being displaced by TV. Now we have a golden age of American TV drama, just as TV is under threat of being completely displaced by the internet. Was it always thus? Are we doomed to see the economic models of great art forms disrupted, just as they have reconciled their artistic and commercial imperatives?

April 20, 2008 in Asides, Culture, Rav Idly Wonders, Technology | 1 comments

who the FUCK had the bright idea to send Brown to the US?

To meet a President on their way out of office?

Yesterday’s man?

Associated with little else but the Iraq war?

About to be replaced by a slicker, younger, but possibly somewhat vacuous rival?

Because that’s just a great set of associations to make. Nice one.

I suppose it’s possible that they deliberately scheduled it during the Pope’s visit with this in mind.

Like most of you, I’ve been following the campaign and I have now seen and heard enough to know where I stand. Senator Obama, in my view, is head and shoulders above the rest.
He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”At the moment, critics have tried to diminish Senator Obama through the exaggeration of certain of his comments and relationships. While these matters are worthy of some discussion, they have been ripped out of the context and fabric of the man’s life and vision… often in order to distract us from discussing the real issues: war and peace, the fight for economic and racial justice, reaffirming our Constitution, and the protection and enhancement of our environment.
After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken. I believe that Senator Obama is the best candidate to lead that project and to lead us into the 21st Century with a renewed sense of moral purpose and of ourselves as Americans.

Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President.
- Bruce Springsteen

This was probably inevitable, but still has a vague air of significance to it. Should certainly help sew up that wavering white working-class vote in the wake of bloody Bittergate.

Zimbabwe inflation hits 165,000%
Zimbabwe’s soaring inflation hit an annual rate of almost 165,000% in February, official figures show. Continuing shortages of food and fuel helped to push up inflation from January’s rate of 100,000%. Government officials say the shortages make it hard to work out inflation with any degree of accuracy.
…
The central bank has introduced new banknotes to cope with the spiralling prices. Last month it issued a 10 million Zimbabwe dollar note.

- BBC News

This is just… meaningless. Is this worse than Germany in the 20’s? It must be. This is over 2000% per day. You go out with £20 tomorrow morning, and by the evening it’ll buy you a bag of chips. By the following evening, you’ll need £400 for a bag of chips. And so on. Go on, economists, tell me it’s more complicated than that.

Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my arrows of desire; Bring me my spears: o’clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my pen sleep in my hand, ‘Til I have FINISHED THIS FUCKING ARTICLE I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON FOR THREE DAYS.

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

There’s a moment each year when i realise it’s spring. It’s not about temperature or weather, but light: there’s a warmth in the sunlight that’s never there in winter. Everything seems coated in a warm glow. This year’s moment is right now. Happy spring, everybody!

(Hard to believe it was snowing last weekend)

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Now look. Come on. This is not an insult. This is not a Kerry-style gaffe. And it’s not going to hurt Obama against anyone except, feasibly, small-business owners, who lean Republican anyway. This is the truth. And its harshness is softened by its genuine sympathy for working-class people.

Kerry’s remarks about getting “stuck in Iraq” were harmful because they backed up what people already suspected: that Kerry, while genuinely sympathising with poor people, didn’t know them, didn’t understand them, and deep down, didn’t like ‘em. Barack Obama is not John Kerry. Barack Obama is not an elitist. He grew up in Chicago, not Beacon Hill, Boston.

Top of the Ticket : Los Angeles Times : Barack Obama’s “small town” critique: Is this a game changer?

I know, but seriously, the papers are just shit. Here’s a cracker from the New York Times, “reporting” on the deaths of two bloggers from heart attacks:

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

Right. Possibly because the fucking New York Times rang them up and asked them whether the deaths of their friends had them thinking about the dangers of their work style. I also like the way they describe one’s death of a heart attack and the other’s being from a coronary. Because, you know, they’re not exactly the same thing or anything.

Prize of the day, though, goes to Metro. Ah, god bless London’s shitty freesheets. Thanks to the gossip page, for “informing” us that Mariah Carey has dismissed rumours she spent a fortune on doughnuts, saying, “my trainer would hunt me down.”

The source for this minor revelation? An interview with the nutter herself? Cribbed from some obscure US showbiz blog, even? No. She said it on last week’s The Friday Night Project. On Channel 4. Watched by at least, ooh, several million people.

is just a complete disaster.

“John McCain is a teacher’s pet! John McCain dobs people in!” This is not the way to endear yourself to the conservatives who fucked John Kerry for mentioning soldiers’ confessions of war crimes. I can hear them now: “your hero is your english teacher? what are you, gay?”

BBC:

The number of students going to university has fallen since variable fees were introduced, statistics show.The figure dropped back to 40% of the 17-30 age group in 2006/07 from a high of 42% the previous year.

This is bloody typical. Now that the fight is over, now that no-one talks about it any more, now we find out that - as predicted - fees are reversing 40 years of progress in getting more people into higher education. bah.

UPDATE: oh.

no second-level password requirement. it even accepts auto-login cookies, for god’s sake. Google Checkout is like leaving your credit card on the street.