HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY, POLITIC BLUNDER!

Yes, this is Politic Blunder's 50th post, and celebrates approximately four months of giving it to you straight (platonically). No one said we'd make it this far, and now that we have, no one is commenting on the fact, so I'm officially declaring all the critics SILENCED. 

This issue we're bringing you four stories and a birthday present. The birthday present is this fantastic video, which you should all definitely watch (link here). It's about the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, how much sense it makes, and how little that sense is actually listened to. It's also got some flashy Flash effects and a bit at the end about Aung San Suu Kyi that nearly ruins it. But that bit's only a few seconds long, so seriously, watch the video.

Everyone in Britain will remember this picture of Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian civilian who was shot seven times in the head by the police while sitting on the tube, suspected of being a July 21 bomber. The picture was revolutionary because Menezes looked like a nice guy, a guy possibly contemplating a shoulder or bicep-tattoo, but a nice guy nonetheless. The inquest which was launched following his killing revealed a disastrous failure of intelligence, a tragic incompetence on the part of the police, and as it just emerged today, an open verdict.

The open verdict means that the jury was not allowed to reach a verdict of "unlawful killing" because of the coroner's report on the shooting, and thus had a choice between "lawful killing" and "open verdict". By choosing "open verdict", the jury is affirming that a shooting did take place, but is abstaining from passing judgment on anything else, officially making this a cock-up from beginning to end. 

Following in the theme of "people the police were not supposed to kill but killed anyway" is the

 issue of the Greek 15 year-old who was shot by policemen after pelting a police car with stones with his friends. The killing, which has not yet been confirmed as intentional (There's a persuasive ricochet theory floating around) has nonetheless sparked a week of intense rioting and destruction across the country. Athens has been ground to a standstill on more than on

e occasion. This doesn't look nearly as bad as the de Menezes shooting, as even if it was intentional, the killing looks to have been a matter of imprudence and unprofessionalism, rather than seven bullets fired into the head. Still, the anger of the Greek mobs is thought to be relating to more than just the shooting, as Greece isn't doing so well economically. Let's hope the situation cools down.

Rome, meanwhile, is seeing the beginning of the apocalypse. Torrential downpours amounting in one night to the entire average rainfall of December, one of Rome's rainiest months, have completely flooded parts of the city, with officials predicting that the banks of the river Tiber will overflow by the end of the week (the picture of Castel Sant'Angelo to the left should have a lot more land and people in it.). The fascist mayor, Alemanno, unnecessarily characterised

 the flooding as "like an earthquake", when in fact it was a lot more like flooding. As far as intelligence reports show, former-SBR headquarters on Via Stresa have been undamaged, with no comment from the six Jamaican women living there. 

Also in Italy is president-elect Barack Obama... in plastic form! Yes, Barack Obama plastic figurines are now adorning the nativity scenes of Italians in the South. The tradition of the nativity scene is important to Italians, being somewhat of a surrogate for the pagan ritual of Christmas trees. Barack Obama's meteoric rise to celebrity must have had enough parallels with Jesus to warrant his place in the manger. Let's just hope he's not pictured cleaning the place up and serving drinks. 

And that concludes Politic Blunder's 50th birthday. Remember to check out the blogs linked to on the right of the page, they're most excellent, especially the Osu! Tatakae! Nippon!, which recently reached the lofty heights of fifty posts itself. 

Also, a shout out to my lovely girlfriend, who had her wisdom teeth carved out of her jaw a few days ago. I know you can't eat solid foods yet, but hopefully this blog has given you something to digest. Eh?

New Blog Feature Discreetly Sweeps Dead Blog Feature Under The Rug

In the spirit of neverending innovation Politic Blunder has brought both its readers a brand new Blog Feature to feast their four eyes upon. A prize of scorn and sexual rejection will be awarded to the author of the insipid or "puntastic" headline featured in the "Name and Shame" box on the right of the blog, which will be updated with quivering restraint. 

Entrants will have to be writing for broadsheet or otherwise reputable newspapers, in order to cut down the number of applicants and add a frisson of betrayal and disillusionment to the proceedings. Readers can nominate headlines they find and have their fifteen minutes of dizzying celebrity by sending them to my email or posting them as a comment. Any good ones will be put up, along with the submitter's name, in a separate box, "Name and Fame", which will be extremely close to the "Name and Shame" box.

The New Original Politic Blunder!

You might be thinking, what has your Politic Blunder correspondant been doing for the past 6 hours? Why was he not covering such juicy headlines as "Abandoned Tower sows dismay in Riverdale, NY", or "Belgian car dealer offers 2-for-1 offer on cars" before they were snapped up by young pretenders New York Times and Reuters? What price idleness?!

My time was well spent. A Politic Blunder now has a slightly modified look! Among the more prominent changes are different (hopefully more readable) fonts and colours and a new sidebar widget so that I can keep track of the names and nationalities of people visiting my blog. Also, the now-famous Politic Blunder banner photo of me has now been justified to the right considerably. My position on the banner will denote, in real time, my current political stance on the left-right axis. I ask you to note that although I appear to be on the right at the moment, I am in fact on my left. The opposite rule applies when I appear on the left, making the banner a questionable gauge of my particular politics. 

Forthcoming: A fuller feature on the Mumbai terrorist attacks and their implications, and a gallery of aborted blog templates that I could have inflicted on you.

A Tragedy of Journalistic Standards

I considered doing a piece today on the recent parliamentary elections in Austria which have led to a worryingly huge increase in support for two far-right parties, Alliance for Austria's future, and the ubiquitously named Freedom Party. But I thought I'd let that pan out and give you all(both of you) a bit of a break from parliamentary intrigue, at least until tomorrow. 

Whilst perusing the BBC's video news in the hopes of bringing you all something a little bit less dry, and possibly something with more tits (there aren't very many in most European parliaments.), I came across the promisingly named video 'Swedish Women Dice With Death on M6'. You can see the video here. What I thought was going to be two mud-wrestling Swedish babes come to England to make it large, mistaking traffic rules on the M6, and having to mud-wrestle their way out of the country turned out to just be a really tragic, sad story, milked for as much drama as possible by British taxpayer money. Obviously.

Two Swedish women attempted to commit suicide, it seems, by running in front of fast traffic on a motorway. After being taken into police custody, they repeatedly broke free and ran into traffic over and over until one had been hit by a lorry and critically wounded, and another had to be restrained by six officers to prevent her from running back into traffic. And this is after she'd already been hit by one car. The video ends with talk of them being charged with assault on the officers, when it's blindingly obvious that they're clearly not in their right minds. 

It takes a certain sort of mind in editorial journalism to not only consider running a story on such a tragic event, but luridly cutting the video so that the cries of the women and officers involved are given an echo to add a dramatic touch to the proceedings. Journalism has a purpose. It's there to inform us on what's going on in the world so that we are better cognizant of our place in it, and therefore better able to make judgments on how to act in it. No one gains from watching a video of two women trying to run into traffic, beyond clucking at the television and saying 'crazy world, eh'. The idea of journalism pandering to the masses and producing 'edu-tainment' is a laboured point.  There is a place for making political or scientific journalism accessible and entertaining for audiences. That's different from dredging up the most tragic, pointless events one can and proudly putting them on display for us to gawk at like some post-modern freakshow.

To cap it all off, the video went black after it finished, then asked me if I wanted to see 'MORE LIKE THIS', and directed me to a wordless video of a boy being hit by a bus. They might as well have cut in ''hurr hurr'' and the sound of crunching popcorn.

Trouser Browsing

Today I downloaded Google Chrome. After digging my way through the 30-page comic-book style explanation of the new features of the browser and why it's a complete overhaul, presenting a whole new philosophy of browsing, I finally got around to tinkering with it. Why, even now I am writing from within the confines of this brand new interweb experience. 

It's aright, but now I'm left with the distinct sense that Technology is leaving me behind. The comic-book explanation was written in a tone that suggested that the information it was assuming was blindingly obvious, and laid out in a way that implied that its target audience was people in their teens. I found it opaque and impenetrable, and only with the help of an intrepid friend did I end up making any real sense of it. I can't help but think that the vast majority of adolescents and young adults out there now are intimately familiar with the internet and all it's components that only seem to frighten and anger me.  

So overall, I'm not sure that downloading Google Chrome was a smart move. At least I felt on top of things with Firefox. I knew how to download a plug-in, I knew how to activate said plug-in. Now, like a boy playing Street Fighter II Alpha with his one friend for years, I am thrust into a Japanese arcade. Fresh meat.