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Post by mrsonde on Mar 21, 2016 18:41:52 GMT 1
Errrr...no, not at all, I must not agree. You've seized on a particularly inept and unsubstantiated paragraph that you happen to agree with, but which is obviously so shallow it should have been cut by any competent editor - not written in the first place, by any competent journalist, in fact. The rest, which is reasonable and interesting and well-balanced, you've completely ignored. There's a psychologistic term for this sort of blinkered selectivity - shall I tell you what it is?
Missed it, but no need to repeat.
How do you know? It seems fairly coherent to me - far more so than his opponents, that's for sure.
Eh?!! Hang on - tell me why Trump's economic program is not "coherent" first, please.
You claimed that Trump had said all Mexicans are rapists. That, and long experience of the way you think and argue - if the Witchfinder General sits down in front of me, I don't need to ask him what he thinks of Bacon's experimental method to be able to guess he considers it irrelevant to his God-ordained work.
Another? You haven't mentioned the first yet. Try to concentrate.
Huh?? That's all I've seen you say, sorry. I don't follow your every word, you know. Maybe I should, like one of those metal-detectorists, criss-crossing the Australian Outback.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 21, 2016 23:23:05 GMT 1
You don't know Italy. You've been there a few times, as a tourist, staying in hotels, pretending to be an artiste.
You don't know me, and have never done.
I don't believe you. Either you're a complete liar, or you go around with your head up your arse when you're abroad as much as you do when you're at home.
Wrong decade, signora.. Nothing more embarrassing than the ignorant English abroad, especially the snooty pretentious ones.
Yes, they did, especially in Lombardy. It was all over the papers, and on every channel not owned by Berlusconi - any channel that ran news and analysis rather than housewife strippers. It was a joke you heard every day. There was nothing unusual about that - it had been going on for twenty years at least, which is why no-one was particularly bothered about it. No Italian had any faith in the probity of any Italian politician until Falcone - and I very much doubt they do now.
Everyone knew Berlusconi's origins, his funding, his interests, from the start. I was there, I saw it, I read it, I discussed it, day-to-day. I must have talked to thirty Italian businesspeople every day, it was the main topic of banter. Everyone knew who and what he was, even then. By the 90s even the most ignorant peasant couldn't fail to know it. Any reasonably well-informed English person knew it by then, simply be reading the Telegraph or Times - your opinion of Italians is really so supercilious? They must have loved you.
Utter utter bollocks. You're completely mistaken - actually, you're full of it, because you're merely making it up.
They don't tend to give a fig about foreign affairs, that's true. Largely because your average Italian understands that media reports about such matters are so shaped by American puppet-masters that nothing they hear can be trusted: they've become inured to it, since the war. As for the fabled ignorance of Americans - I doubt that's as profound as your average Brit's, I really do. And if it is - so what? What does it matter? What you and the Washington Post means is that the average American doesn't think like you - and I assure you becoming better educated about foreign affairs isn't going to change that one jot: if anything, you'll find the difference should get considerably worse.
An accurate claim. Berlusconi swept to prominence by claiming to be free of party emasculation, that's true - like Trump, but more pointedly like Obama. Like Obama, his appeal was not due to any particular promises on programs, but by a homespun charm amd certain poetic eloquence of delivery; like Obama, he promised to clear up corruption in government; like Obama, his main platform was the promise of "change" and "hope"; like Obama, his principal promise was to unify, and overcome division, in his case on the North-South split, rather than the black-white; like Obama, his main advantage was the robotic cold-lipped character of his opponents, and his appeal was that he in comparison seemed at least human and understandable; like Obama, he swept in thanks to a well-orchestrated grass-roots upswell, unforeseen by his opponents, and unpredicted by the pollsters. And, most of all, like Obama, all of this hope for change was entirely illusory, with no basis of principle and no drive of intention. They both got into power - job done: all they were interested in.
I first worked in Italy from summer 82 to autumn 83, as a salesman for IPC and Dorling-Kindersley. I was their most successful salesman, so they'll no doubt have some memory of me, if you want to call and check. I still have my little medal, though the Jura whisky is long gone. I returned in late 86 through to spring 88, on a self-employed basis this time, buying direct from IPC in Milan, and doing exactly the same job, though also selling Springer-Verlag and Elsevier titles. I did it again in spring 94 for a year, to earn enough capital to start a self-build co-op. It's the most lucrative and perhaps most pleasurable job I've ever done in my life. Now I never intend to do it again, I don;t mind telling that anyone can do it, if they can sell, speak a little Italian, and know a little about books. I was earning at least a grand a week and having a hell of a time: an apartment in Venice, a Porsche Tiger, and complete freedom to enjoy my early twenties without a worry in the world. Looking back, I only wonder why the fuck I couldn't be happy and stop thinking.
At other times in the 80s, and 90s, and noughties, I travelled and sold my products in northern Italy from a business I had going in France. In that case it was mainly selling honey - high-end Pyreneean honey, from 120 hives. I used my old contacts, from Venice to Turin to Lake Como. I also used my old contacts to buy their stuff and sell them in our Parisian honey market, and then back home in the Ariege and Andorra - anything from precision-cut marble-saw 3D-jigsaws to Italian satellite-TV boxes to designer clothes - anything that would turn a profit. (The last time I did it, one last time, was a year or two ago - mainly to see old friends, and the joy of the trip, getting smashed on the truly excellent weed available only from above Bellagio.) If it really is required, I can give you photos and testimonials - otherwise you can whistle. The reason Italy was for decades way ahead of us, or France, in terms of standards of living, is because like Greece most of their economy ran very contentedly in the black. That's the reason no-one gave a damn about Berlusconi's pecadilloes - it's assumed, understood, expected there. Keep out of our pockets and off of our backs, that's what Italians want from their politicians, and that's why Berlusconi was successful; and until the millenium and the catastrophe that's the Euro that sort of economic model worked very well, so well that returning to England after a year or so in Italy was a bit like coming back to a Third World country. Now they're a basket-case, on the same way as Greece, of course. Another reason to love the effin Germans.
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Post by aquaculture on Mar 22, 2016 0:39:10 GMT 1
Did you - bollocks!
I did nost of that, in the 60s, without invoking bollocks!
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 1:11:10 GMT 1
Did you - bollocks! I did nost of that, in the 60s, without invoking bollocks! In the 60s I was a kid, like you. Even then I knew my bollocks would come in handy one day. You became...right-hand man of Maggie Thatcher, wasn't it? Sorry - a clerk in Rotherham borough council, that is. But you were always right-on and for the workers though, right? And none of this kiddy-diddling crossed your desk! Oh no - it did! You've said as much - you were right in the centre of it all, of course. But naturally nobody in officialdom did anything wrong, did they? Oh no. You've got the reports, you wrote the reports I believe you said? That's alright then. Newspaper gossip-mongering, as usual. Poor Jimmy Savile.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 1:43:46 GMT 1
Hmmm. That shut him up.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 7:56:08 GMT 1
Perhaps you can put names to a famous historic exchange in that noble House Hon Member: "Sir, the member opposite has the moral integrity of a sewer rat." Speaker: "You must withdraw that unparliamentary assertion." Hon Member : "I so withdraw, Sir, and I unreservedly apologise to any sewer rats who were offended by the comparison." Now that's what I call a proper, bare-knuckle debate. Don't know, can't find it. Came across this gem from New Zealand though: www.vdig.net/hansard/archive.jsp?y=1993&m=08&d=12&o=29&p=31And I remember this classic from the Beast of Bolsover (I think he pinched it off Disraeli): Labour MP Dennis Skinner famously said "half the Tory members opposite are crooks". When asked to apologise due to this being unparliamentary language, Skinner replied "OK, half the Tory members aren't crooks."The Canadians seem to be the world leaders however: These are some of the words and phrases that speakers through the years have ruled "unparliamentary" in the Parliament of Canada, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, and the Legislative Assembly of Québec:
parliamentary pugilist (1875) a bag of wind (1878) inspired by forty-rod whiskey (1881)[3] coming into the world by accident (1886) blatherskite (1890) the political sewer pipe from Carleton County (1917) lacking in intelligence (1934) a dim-witted saboteur (1956) liar (consistently from 1959 to the present) hypocrisy, hypocrite (from the early years through the tenure of Speaker Gilbert Parent; apparently not ruled unparliamentary by Speaker Peter Milliken) a trained seal (1961) evil genius (1962) Canadian Mussolini (1964) pompous ass (1967) fuddle duddle (1971)—probably the most famous example in Canada pig (1977) jerk (1980) sleaze bag (1984) racist (1986) scuzzball (1988) girouette (French for "weathervane", Québec 2007) bully (2011) a piece of shit (Justin Trudeau to Peter Kent, Question period 2011)
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 8:07:16 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 8:12:31 GMT 1
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 8:19:18 GMT 1
During the great Paraffin Debate of 1979:
However, that is incidental and should not distract us from the main issue.
§Mr. Bob Cryer(Keighley) Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House whether he has a financial interest in any oil companies so that pensioners and others who read the debate may decide for themselves—on information provided in the debate and not on an interest declared months ago—what his position is?
§Mr. Viggers I am always delighted to see the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), who jumps up and always reminds me—I do not know whether this is a parliamentary expression—of a sewer rat jumping up to try to—
§Mr. Cryer On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. 580
§Mr. Russell Kerr(Feltham and Heston) The hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) reminds me of a skunk.
§Mr. Cryer I raised a perfectly legitimate point. Hon. Members who have a financial interest in the subject under discussion should declare that interest. That is a well-known rule and it is a resolution of the House that such an interest should be declared.
In response to that, the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) declared my request to be that of a sewer rat. I believe that to be an unparliamentary expression and I shall be grateful for your comments, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I ask that the remark be withdrawn. I was merely pursuing my duty as an hon. Member and I intend to see that all hon. Members declare their financial interests so that people outside know whether those hon. Members are trying to further their own position or the position of the nation at large.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine) It is certainly clear that an hon. Member should declare his own interest. The expression would appear to be unparliamentary.
§Mr. Viggers I stated, Mr. Deputy Speaker, what the hon. Gentleman reminded me of. I did not call him anything in particular. I certainly apologise if the hon. Gentleman is upset by the impression that he makes upon me during a debate.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 8:40:11 GMT 1
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Post by jean on Mar 22, 2016 11:01:12 GMT 1
I see...a few stints of a few months at a time as a travelling salesman. With 'a little Italian'. No wonder your understanding of Italian people and Italian politicss is so skewed. The 'businessmen' you talked to were probably shysters like yourself, and may well have known more about Berlusconi's ways of doing business than the generality of Italians, I grant you. But is it really less insulting to Italians in general to believe they are utterly cynical, rather than that there's stuff they just don't know? I repeat, I lived and worked in the province of Vicenza for several years at the very time when Berlusconi 'burst onto the political scene'. I'd be happy to give you more detail, except that I've seen how you twist any scraps of information you can get your hands on - look at your last post directed at aqua! Italian commentators, too, have noticed the Trump-Berlusconi comparison: Donald Trump esce vittorioso dal SuperTuesday mettendosi in tasca la maggior parte degli Stati. La sua nomina a candidato alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti diventa così sempre più probabile. Un outsider del sistema, odiato dall’establishment del partito repubblicano e adorato dalle masse, Trump parla fuori dai denti, fa ridere, esibisce il suo successo a ripetizione, si dichiara indipendente perché ricco e conquista con il suo politically incorrect...
...Giornalisti, analisti politici, sociologi si affannano a spiegare il fenomeno Trump, le ragioni del suo successo e a capire qual è la sua motivazione a candidarsi e quale potrebbe essere la sua politica se fosse eletto. Ma Trump spiazza, dice una cosa e il suo opposto, il suo successo non dipende da un’ideologia precisa, ma dalla sua capacità di vendere se stesso.Come già vent’anni fa da noi fece Silvio Berlusconi, Trump parassita il sistema politico di aggregazione delle preferenze per fare marketing di se stesso. Politica e marketing sono due attività profondamente differenti, una basata sulla partecipazione dei cittadini, l’altra sulla persuasione dei consumatori. Le due attività hanno negli anni usato tecniche sempre più simili, come la pubblicità e varie forme di propaganda diventando spesso agli occhi del pubblico indistinguibili. Così degli abili uomini di marketing sono riusciti a sfruttare il sistema politico e il meccanismo elettorale per farne uno strumento di auto-promozione. A cosa serva poi l’auto-promozione è un altro problema: a salvare i conti delle proprie aziende, a guadagnare l’immortalità, a soddisfare aspirazioni di gloria…sicuramente non a fare politica.
Trump è una minaccia per la democrazia, come lo fu Berlusconi ai suoi tempi, perché gioca fuori dalla politica sfruttandone il sistema. Non si sa l’uso che farà del suo successo, sicuramente non ha nulla a che fare con ciò che i cittadini vogliono o pensano, incantati come sono a ripetere il nome “Trump” e a diffonderlo magicamente come un elisir che paralizza le volontà. Trump non vende null’altro che il nome Trump e più lo vende più lo riuscirà a vendere nel futuro. Non ci sono errori politici che può fare o cose sbagliate che può dire che potrebbero sbarrare la strada al suo successo...Your attempts to compare Berlusconi with Obama are fatuous. Just a couple of points. Obama was elected Senator before he was ever nominated as President - how could he claim to be a political 'outsder'? The answer is that he didn't. And if you knew more than 'a little Italian', you'd know there's no comparison between their language. Al mondo della comunicazione politica Berlusconi ha presto dato una ventata di novità, trasferendo il linguaggio del suo mondo imprenditoriale, il gergo sportivo della “discesa in campo”, degli “azzurri” e della “squadra di governo”, forte dei suoi successi calcistici, e trapiantando i codici della persuasione dal mondo del marketing a quello politico. Il suo è un linguaggio corrosivo e irrazionale in cui dominano il sentimentalismo delle parole, la ridicolizzazione dei contenuti, la teatralità dei gesti. Racchiude almeno due forti novità emerse negli ultimi dodici anni. I suoi periodi brevi e non contorti, un vocabolario comprensibile, una fantasia “televisiva” in certe espressioni colorite fino a quel momento rimaste estranee ai recinti della politica, ne hanno fatto un punto di riferimento naturale per coloro che consideravano la politica “troppo difficile” o incomprensibile, distante e monotona. Eppure la sua chiarezza sintattica nasconde secondo gli autori “pericolose operazioni di mistificazione e un degrado che, pervadendo le istituzioni, di fatto costituisce un modello negativo per il Paese”. Con un’operazione di riduzione di complessità Berlusconi si avvicina ai suoi elettori attraverso un linguaggio politico fatto contemporaneamente di dati incontrovertibili perché intoccabili, e termini di marcata affettività (“L’Italia è il paese che amo…”), utilizzando frequentemente parole come “cuore”, “affettuoso”, “commovente”, nel sottolineare i fraterni rapporti coi suoi alleati, o l’amicizia profonda con Putin o Bush. Umanizzazione o “infantilismo politico” che sia, una simile strategia “scongela” i palazzi del potere dalla freddezza impacciata di tanti suoi predecessori, poco capaci e poco simpatici, senza fascino e soprattutto “molto noiosi”. L’altro elemento di grande discontinuità col passato sta proprio in questo. Differenziandosi profondamente dai precedenti leader e stimolato dal contesto internazionale di diaspora continua su temi come la guerra al terrorismo, le alleanze internazionali o gli scontri con la magistratura, Berlusconi ha introdotto la logica dicotomica e manichea del “noi contro loro”, adottata anch’essa dai suoi trascorsi sportivi, e figlia tanto di una logica concorrenziale di mercato, che di una soppesata e strategica estremizzazione del conflitto politico. I mondi inconciliabili emergono dall’opposizione del “vecchio e nuovo”, dai termini coi quali rievocare una politica superata, come “apparato”, “burocrazia”, “partito” “Stato”. E ancora l’avversario definito da aggettivi come “dispotico”, “illiberale”, oppure “strisciante”, per dare l’idea del rivale losco e viscido, oltre all’immancabile “comunisti”, che diventa quasi un’etichetta che li racchiude tutti. A questi si contrappone un linguaggio nuovo, quasi anche la politica fosse stata investita di slang giovanili, investita dal confronto con le logiche di comunicazione dei nuovi media, con i tempi e gli spazi della televisione, della rete, perfino degli sms. Abbondano i termini stranieri per dare spessore internazionale e appeal cosmopolita ai provvedimenti come “tax-day” “security” e “devolution”. I buoni diventano “difensori della democrazia”, affiora un linguaggio bellico che prevede “la chiamata alle armi” o il lessico religioso dei “missionari della libertà”. E la forza della leadership, già solida nella sua espressività fisica del condottiero ritto e fiero che parla all’uditorio estasiato circondato dal cielo azzurro, viene evidenziata dai “sono convinto che”, “non c’è dubbio”, “io ne sono certo”, “vedrete…”.”Obama doesn't talk like that.Falcone was a judge and prosecuting magistrate, never a politician. Maybe you're thinking of Di Pietro.
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Post by jean on Mar 22, 2016 11:26:20 GMT 1
...You've seized on a particularly inept and unsubstantiated paragraph that you happen to agree with, but which is obviously so shallow it should have been cut by any competent editor - not written in the first place, by any competent journalist, in fact. The rest, which is reasonable and interesting and well-balanced, you've completely ignored... The rest, actually, is just as damning of Trump as the bit I quoted. Go back and read it again - or would you like me to post it here it for you? The paragraph I quoted I chose because its last sentence, which I included in my quotation, encapsulates the whole thrust of the article - in spite of everything, the author says, at least Trump is saying this stuff.If the point of the article is something different, please tell us what that is.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 11:42:07 GMT 1
No, more like over three years as a freelance bookshop, actually. Not that there's anything wrong being a travelling salesman - is there? Offends your socialist principles, does it, someone earning their living? Or is it "sales" that makes your thin little lips curl so?
Very useful, actually. Not too little, but not too much either.
They're the economy, as they are here. The people who are responsible for every penny you've ever been given from the State.
The "generality" of Italians watch telly and read newspapers, just like business people do. Actually, the "generality" of Italians are business people. A solecism, I suspect?
No. They are cynical about politics, and quite justifiably so: that's why they elect people like Berlusconi, Alessandra Mussolini, La Cicciolina, or any random Beauty Queen from one year to the next, like clockwork.
Who's interested?
What "twist" was that, then? "I recommended how the system should operate there, but the way it didn't actually work was 'Nothing to do with me'" was his claim. That's what I said. Savile's shenanigans in Broadmoor had nothing to do with Edwina either.
I know - that's my very point. The comparisons are more accurate and comprehensive than yours with Trump, that's the only difference.
Oh, I see. So Reagan and Sanders can't make that claim either, then? Or Thatcher, or Galloway, or Corbyn?
I can't recall if he did or not - nor can I of Trump, or Sanders. It's irrelevant - everyone else so characterises them, and quite accurately so.
So what? Is that the issue? A little too coarse and direct for you, is he? So, the comparison should really be between Nixon and Trump, then? Or Harding? Kennedy? LBJ?
And by the way, I'm more than happy to know "a little Italian". I'd bet my bottom dollar it's a lot more erudite and fluent than yours, on the other hand! I'll take being a "travelling salesman" for three years over a little study of language books any day. I bet you talk like a nun from the middle ages.
How do you know? Probably not; but one, what does it matter or signify, and two, give me the way Trump talks over Obama any day. At least Trump is making clear and definite policy statements. Obama is and always was just so much hot air - it used to be said of him, by his supporters in response to the complaints that he never actually said anything meaningfully solid, that he campaigns in poetry but will act in prose. It's just that the prose never actually turned up, did it?
Clearly, you don't understand how the Italian legal system works. Or the nature of Italy's political landscape. Being a judge in the Ministry of Justice is a political appointment, and prosecuting the Mafia a thoroughly political task.
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Post by mrsonde on Mar 22, 2016 12:42:58 GMT 1
...You've seized on a particularly inept and unsubstantiated paragraph that you happen to agree with, but which is obviously so shallow it should have been cut by any competent editor - not written in the first place, by any competent journalist, in fact. The rest, which is reasonable and interesting and well-balanced, you've completely ignored... The rest, actually, is just as damning of Trump as the bit I quoted. No, it isn't. The only way you can read it with that interpretation is if you believe Trump's economic proposals are "damning". The article's whole substance is that his supporters do not. They're not racists, they're not ignorant, they're not mad, or a joke - or if some of them may be it's a coincidence, just as Democrats aren't necessarily black or believe America is a racist society, and just as far-left Labour Party supporters aren't necessarily anti-semitic. What "stuff?" I have done - two or three times now. The point of the article - read it again, properly, why don't you? - is to give an account of why Trump is so popular. The article explains that if you actually listen to what Trump is saying, and has said in 95% of his speeches, over and over, clearly and definitely, it's about the economic hardship that the working and middle classes are now suffering. No other Republican candidate was touching this; Hillary isn't touching this, or has only done so peripherally, forced to by Sanders' analogous popularity. The article also explains that the mainstream media - press and TV - have deliberately not been reporting this fact: just as they've been systematically censoring their coverage of Sanders, who makes almost identical points - instead they're solely reporting the allegedly racist, anti-muslim, provocation-to-violence issues, just as they're clearly collaborating to paint as derisive picture as possible of Sanders. Have you followed now?
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Post by jean on Mar 22, 2016 13:30:28 GMT 1
The rest, actually, is just as damning of Trump as the bit I quoted. No, it isn't. It is. Read it again. I am well aware that the article makes a distinction between Trump and his supporters, and I have made it clear that I also understand the distinction. The only views of mine you've had the chance to read are my views of Trump himself, never of his supporters.The "stuff" about Free Trade. Clearly. The point of the article. Indeed. The sad thing is (and I've already said this too) is that Trump has no coherent programme - no programme at all, in fact - for dealing with the causes of this economic hardship. Even if the mainstream media are censoring his policy statements, these statements presumably exist somewhere and if you believe they're coherent, you owe it to the world to set them before us. The author of your article fears they may not be, despite his close study of Trump's speeches. And when I ask you to justify your accusing me in these terms: it's not really good enough to reply Taking lessons from Trump, it seems.
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