Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind. Tony Bliar's EU Presidency bid in tatters

The Daily Mail reports:
Tony Blair's audacious bid to become Europe's first president was in crisis last night.
As even Labour's socialist allies refused to back him, Gordon Brown clashed angrily with other EU leaders, telling them to 'get real' and support the Blair candidacy....
Leading German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung - a bellwether of opinion in Berlin - said Mr Blair's chances of becoming president were now 'approaching zero'.

More on this oh, so sad story at The First Post and The Guardian.

If you see someone jumping off a bridge today in London or Washington, it's highly likely to be a neocon.

UPDATE: Over at the Spectator blog, in response to this post by James Forsyth, commenter Paul Hughes writes:
I don't care if Satan gets the job. The man who allowed Brown to wreck the nation's finances, before ducking out in time to make his millions, is not going to have the opportunity to swan around in a job which he will mould so as to be able to outshine our next PM.

But Paul, Satan isn't going to get the job. The Europeans don't want him.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Mail on Sunday reports:

Tony Blair has been in talks with Tesco about helping them open supermarkets in the Middle East - allegedly in return for up to £1million.
It is believed the discussions between the former Prime Minister, now a peace envoy to the region, and the supermarket chain, whose slogan is 'Every little helps', ended after the two sides failed to agree terms.
The disclosure could further damage Mr Blair's hopes of becoming the first President of Europe, as critics will seize on it as evidence that he is as interested in making money as he is in reviving his career as a statesman.
According to one source, Mr Blair's proposed role for Tesco would simply have been to act as a figurehead for their drive to break into the Middle East market.

Larry David urinates on Jesus

In my First Post piece yesterday on gratuitously offensive journalism I wrote:
Journalism is following the path of British comedy where being shocking is deemed more important than making people laugh.

It seems the same thing is happening in US comedy.

The First Post carries the story of the outrage among Christian groups that so-called 'comedian' Larry David (above) has caused by urinating on a painting of Jesus Christ in his comedy show.

Deal Hudson, author and publisher of InsideCatholic.com is quoted saying. "Why is it that people are allowed to publicly show that level of disrespect for Christian symbols?" he asked. "If the same thing was done to a symbol of any other religions - Jewish or Muslim - there'd be a huge outcry. It's simply not a level playing field."

What new depths will tv 'comedy' in Britain and America plunge to next?

Media monkey business in search for readers

This article of mine, on why British journalism has become truly shocking, appears in the First Post.

What was your reaction on reading AA Gill's Sunday Times column in which he boasted about killing a baboon because he wanted to find out "what does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone's close relative"?

The hope that a 'close relative' of the dead baboon would one day kill AA Gill?

That was mine too.

Baboons are, as Guy Norton, a wildlife expert, told the Guardian, "sentient and feeling animals who display similar characteristics to humans with strong parental bonds and sociable group behaviour". Yet here's a Sunday Times columnist boasting about how he shot one.

Gill's obnoxious piece is only the latest in a run of articles in Britain's newspapers whose sole aim seems to be to shock as many readers as possible.

Earlier this month, Jan Moir's Daily Mail article on the death of pop star Stephen Gately, in which she seemed to imply that his sudden death from a heart attack was caused by his homosexuality, led to a record number of calls to the Press Complaints Commission.

While in yesterday's Guardian, Tanya Gold dances on the grave of another recently deceased pop star, Michael Jackson, claiming he was only a "good" dancer, whose "greatest passion" was not music, or dancing, but "to sleep with children".
Gold's "greatest passion" appears to be attacking much-loved figures who are conveniently dead. In September, on the flimsiest of evidence, she tried to portray the late Queen Mother as a "cruel" Nazi-sympathising racist snob. (She's also attacked the Pope in a recent article - no doubt Mahatma Gandhi is next in the line of fire).

Why are we getting more and more of these deliberately offensive columns?

The answer is that the newspaper industry is in dire straits and in order to boost falling sales and get clicks on their websites editors are running articles that would have been spiked five or 10 years ago.

As a commenter to the Guardian website wrote in relation to Gold's Michael Jackson article: "Columnists and editors use one standard: the column is good if it generates comments, responses and controversy. This is deemed to be the only benchmark that matters."

Of course, newspapers have always chased readers. But today, with the very future of print journalism under threat, there is an increased urgency to grab readers' attention. And that means out with mature, reflective and nuanced articles which deal with important issues, and in with gratuitously offensive columns which set out to raise readers' blood pressure. The number of complaints or hostile comments a piece generates doesn't matter - the main thing is that the article, and the newspaper in question, receives the maximum publicity.

Journalism is following the path of British comedy where being shocking is deemed more important than making people laugh. Think of Jimmy Carr's latest crack on amputee soldiers, the obscenities of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Radio Two and the episode of the IT Crowd which featured cannibalism.

So far we haven't had a journalist write of his/her experiences of eating human flesh. Or a columnist talking about his/her necrophilia or passion for sexual intercourse with animals.

But the way things are going, it won't be too long

Wally of the Week: A.A. Gill

Or rather Sicko of the Week.

The Guardian reports:

Animal welfare groups voiced outrage today after the restaurant critic AA Gill said he shot a baboon on safari "to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone".

"I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this," he wrote. "There is no mitigation. Baboon isn't good to eat, unless you're a leopard. The feeble argument of culling and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil for naughty fun. I wanted to get a sense of what it might be like to kill someone, a stranger. You see it in all those films: guns and bodies, barely a close-up of reflection or doubt. What does it really feel like to shoot someone, or someone's close relative?"


I wonder if Gill is any relation to the equally depraved Teressa Groenwald-Hagerman?

Extremists in our midst

It seems the British authorities are building up lists of 'domestic extremists'.

I wonder if our old friends the neocons will be on the database and monitored by the authorities. And if not, why not?

For surely you can't get much more 'extreme' than propagandising for and urging illegal military attacks on sovereign states?

1m people in Iraq have died due to the neocons' extremism. (Mehdi Hasan has more on the latest victims of that 'war of choice').

How many have died due to the 'extremism' of environmental groups like Plane Stupid- who were are told will be monitored?

Vote for George Galloway!

It's time for the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards.

I've voted for George Galloway. These are the reasons I gave in my nomination:

It has to be George Galloway. He's one of the few MPs not tied to the neocon/neoliberal junta that has dominated British politics for so long and which has embroiled us in a series of catastrophic and very costly wars. He has been proved right on Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The neocons, who even after Iraq, have such a powerful media presence, hate Galloway, which is a sign he is on the right track.
He has been attacked, smeared and demonised, but he hasn't let that stop him from speaking his mind.
The positions Galloway has taken- whether it be his opposition to the neocon war agenda, or his support for railway renationalisation, are shared by the majority of the British people. His views are mainstream, it's only the neocon/neoliberal elite who try to portray him as an 'extremist'.
On top of all of that, he is easily the best, and most inspiring, public speaker of his generation.

The Spectator has described me as ‘plucky’ for nominating Galloway and says that so far I’m a ’fairly solitary voice’ in voting for him. The ’fairly’ is positive- it means that George has got at least one other vote. Let's try and get him a few more.

Serb readers should remember that Galloway was not only one of the few MPs to oppose the criminal bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, but he’s also taken a very strong line on Kosovo.

The neocons would hate it if Galloway won the award. So let's try and make it happen.
Here is the link to the vote. But don't delay- voting closes on Monday 26th October.

Vote Galloway: the man the neocon warmongers love to hate.

Above you can watch George in action- giving neocon David Frum- the man who coined the notorious phrase 'Axis of Evil', a real roasting on Newsnight. Notice how Frum's first tactic is to try and smear Galloway, talking sarcastically about his 'integrity'. And note how George responds.

Bring back the guillotine for Goldman Sachs and co!

Sasha Cockburn makes the case in today‘s First Post:

Here in America, the corporate class is now entirely out of control, lawless and beyond the sanction of prosecutor, juror or ballot box. If corporate lawbreakers felt that somewhere along the line the retribution of the guillotine might await them, it would concentrate their minds marvellously, and cow them into lawfulness.